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Mr. Dunn’s Clock Shop

For a good part of my Seminary years, I had a landlord who repaired clocks and watches by way of making a living. Naturally, my curiosity brought me into his little shop more than once. I even offered my services to learn the craft though he turned me down realizing that my career path wouldn’t be worth the time he would have to invest to teach me. Still, his little clock shop was amazing with all the varied and sundry clocks hanging on the wall. It was wondrous to be in Mr. Dunn’s shop when at the top of the hour struck and all the varied clocks would begin a choir of exclamation pronouncing what time it was. Many of the clocks had their innards exposed as Mr. Dunn was working on getting them ship-shape. The intricacies of those clocks were fascinating. All those myriads of differentiated parts each have their unique responsibility but all work together to make the clock run.

There was a time when social orders, were like unto those clocks. Just to look at the face of a social order like looking at a face of a clock it just seems to be this indistinguishable reality. It’s just there. However, behind the face of the social order, like behind the face of the clock is a maze of differentiated pieces each fulfilling their assigned roles in order to make the social order run. Like Mr. Dunn’s clocks, our social order is meant to work by means of gears, pulleys, and dials each doing their distinct job in order to produce a marvelous whole.

In our social order once upon a time those gears, pulleys, and dials of Mr. Dunn’s clocks were reflected in the varied and sundry covenant communities that made up the social order as a whole. Distinctive families, churches, guilds, schools, differing respective law orders, volunteer organizations etc. all served as the stuffing behind the faces of the watches and clocks Mr. Dunn worked on.  All were distinction and yet all worked together in an interdependent fashion in order to make the clock (social-order) work.

However, with the rise of Democracy our various gears, pulleys, and dials have been flattened out so that our social order is just one giant undifferentiated mess. The Federal State has stripped all the gears, pulleys, and dials from our social order clock so that it alone is seen as the social order. The state has pulled out all the stuffing of the clock and has deemed that it alone is the clock.

Did you know that once upon a time in the West social order existed as being guided by several law-orders at the same time working together simultaneously? In such a way no one law order could govern the whole social order. In the same way, different social institutions each had their own equal ultimacy depending on what the issue at hand was. There was a plurality in those social orders and that plurality worked to the end of unity.

Now, all we have because we have given in to the statist worldview, is uniformity. Like the Italian Fascists from almost 100 years ago, we have taken up the motto; “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

I want my clock back.

Random Musings on This & That

I.) Clearly, if God alone has exhaustive sovereignty and if we, as His people are to live, move, and have our being in light of God’s sovereignty then that necessarily means that any temporal jurisdictional authority that seeks to overthrow God’s sovereignty by commanding what God does not command or not commanding what God does command is an authority that is no longer a legitimate authority and so has excluded itself from the expectation that Christians will obey their pseudo-authority. No husband, no elder in the Church, no magistrate is to be obeyed who is operating outside the context of God’s Law-Word.

To deny this, as much as the Reformed church currently does, is to de-God God and en-God husbands, elders, and/or magistrates.

For Reformed people … we have no King but Jesus and if you want my obedience you will obey him.

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II.) From the beginning of the creation of the putative philanthropic foundations, there have been two objectives pursued by their creators (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Mellon, etc.). The first objective was to shelter the wealth of their creators, and the second was to use that wealth to fundamentally change America into one nation among many under the control of a global governing body.

See

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File under; “Call it irony.”

The underground church in China refuses to submit to Chinese Communist claims of totalistic statist sovereignty while churches in the West snap to attention every time the State demands a closure or passes legislation to make it illegal to counsel sodomites to give up their sodomy. (See Canada’s recent legislation on the latter issue.)

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III.) In an odd confluence, we now have in the West both absolute libertinism for individuals as combined with absolute sovereignty by the State. The state is used to guarantee maximalist individual “freedom” while at the same time existing in order to tyrannize those who would put restraints on this maximalist libertinism.

Behold Sam Francis’ — Anarcho-tyranny

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IV.) Like a 5-year-old impatiently waiting to open his Christmas present, McAtee eagerly awaits to see if he will once again make the SPLC hate list as a “White Nationalist.” Will he once again in 2022 have different Lansing State Journal editions as well as the local “journalistic” outlets give him top-of-the-fold headline attention? Will he once again find PBS spending the whole weekend raising his profile on their radio news every hour on the hour? Will he receive a flurry of hate calls and maybe another couple of death threats? Will yet more ministers in Charlotte run to get in front of the camera in order to denounce him yet again? Will a “Reformed” denomination in America again go out of its way to produce a press release disassociating itself with McAtee?

It is such an exciting time of year. The anticipation is killing me.

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The Retreat of the Church Leaving a Vacuum Now Filled by the State

“This ‘omnicompetent’ vision of the state has become so ubiquitous that many evangelical Christians have lost their cultural memory of God-given, pre-political institutions, rights, and responsibilities that are to be protected but are not created, controlled, or governed by the state. As a consequence, believers have floundered in their response to unprecedented and illegal lockdowns of the church, the growing collapse of civil liberties, the total control of education, expanded abortion, euthanasia, no-fault divorce law, the redefinition of marriage and family, homosexuality, and transgender issues, largely because a scriptural world and life view norming our understanding of these questions and the role of the state with respect to them has collapsed. Instead, we have a liberal democratic and statist worldview drilled into us by the various organs of cultural life, where Jesus and a hope of heaven are spread on top as a sort of spiritual condiment giving religious flavor to secularism via the ministry of the churches.”

Joeseph Boot
For Politics; The Christian, the Church & the State — p. 66

Don’t miss that last part of the quote. Boot is saying there that it is the church via its ministry that is spreading humanism as covered with a patina chocolate shell of Christianity like vanilla ice cream (humanism) dipped in chocolate (Christian jargon).

This explains why the visible church is so insipid and sick. There can only be one reason why and that is because for centuries now the church has refused to embrace a muscular Christianity that is characterized by a totalistic world and life view as drawn from the Scriptures which Boot is advocating. Instead, the Church has been swayed by pietism, quietism, low-grade forms of Gnosticism, Lillithism, defeatism, and retreatism. It has been so fearful of triumphalism it has embraced anything but muscular Christianity as the essence of holiness.

Church and Kingdom

When we think of the church in relation to the Kingdom it is best to understand that the Church and Kingdom are not exact synonyms so that when we speak of “The Church” we are suggesting that the Kingdom exists nowhere else but the Church. This is the mistake of many Amillennialists — especially of the R2K variety — in the Reformed world. They make “Church” and “Kingdom” to be exactly synonymous. This is an error as pointed out by Herman Ridderbos in his magnum opus, “The Coming of the Kingdom,”

[We] should point out the concept basileia (Kingdom) nowhere occurs in the sense of this idea of ekklesia (Church). Nor is it used in the sense that the Kingdom of God in its provisional manifestation on earth would be embodied in the form and organization of any church…; by the term kingdom of God we can denote not only the fulfilling and completing action of God in relation to the entire cosmos, but also various facets of this all-embracing process. Thus, e.g., the territory within which this divine action occurs and in which the blessings of the kingdom are enjoyed is called the basileia of God or that of heaven. (cf. Mt. 5:20, 11:11; 23:13).

Geerhardus Vos agrees with the idea that a distinction must be made between kingdom and church;

“The conception of the kingdom is common to all periods of our Lord’s teaching, that of the church emerges only at two special points of His ministry as recorded in Mt. 16:18, and 18:17.”

The Kingdom is a far more expansive reality than just the Church. The Kingdom includes within it, not only the Church but it includes within it all areas of life which have bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. This means families can be part of the Kingdom of God. This means that businesses can be part of the Kingdom of God. This means that the arts can be part of the Kingdom of God. This means that civil-social orders can be part of the Kingdom of God. This means law-orders can be part of the Kingdom of God.

However, having said that, I do believe that the Church as part of the Kingdom of God is the first among equals. I say this because if the Church fails its task within the Kingdom of proclaiming all the Word for all of life then the odds are incredibly high that the Kingdom has a whole goes south. The church is the keeper of the aeterna ignus which serves as the place where those who build all the other Kingdom Institutions learn of Christ. The Church is the Kingdom’s apologetical and evangelistic armory so that if the Church fails the Kingdom totters. The Church is the place where we come to hear how the third use of the law is applied to all areas of life. There in the Church, those members of the Kingdom whose task and calling are other domains within the Kingdom learn that Scripture is the norm that norms all norms — including the norms for their Kingdom Institutions. There in the Church, all of this comes in the context of the preaching of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ for God’s kingdom people who sin daily in word, thought, and deed.

This does not mean the Church runs those other institutions but it does mean that the Church provides the first principles that can then be teased out by those called to other areas of Kingdom work. For example, the Church, can not tell a Christ-loving businessman how to run his business in terms of nuts and bolts but it can lay down the first principles of prohibiting theft in terms of price, and the idea of just wages for a just day’s work.

So, again, the Church is not solely the Kingdom but it is the agency of the Kingdom that is assigned the task of being the repository of truth as it touches every area of life.

The Church exists to proclaim and placard Christ so as to draw God’s elect Kingdom people into its circle so that having come into the family of God the Kingdom people, now being instructed in answering the question, “How then shall we live” go out and handle all their careers and callings for the glory of God and His Kingdom.

So, the Church and Kingdom while distinct from one another and so not synonyms, are interdependent upon one another and can’t exist without each other.

One more word here. As the varying institutions are equals with the Church in the Kingdom, even though the Church may be the first among equals, those other institutions have to realize that they have an interposition role in being a check if and when the church goes rogue and becomes anti-Church in God’s Kingdom. At that point, these other Kingdom Institutions have to step up and bring correction upon the Church so that the Church will not poison the rest of the Kingdom Institutions. This thought demonstrates that all in the Kingdom is not dependent upon the Church and that this is a philosophy where the Church can’t be corrected.

Keeping with the Theme of Less of Moore

“That’s why denominations with “free” in their name (like the Free Methodists, for instance)—along with those who believe in the necessity of personal repentance and faith—have been the most dogged supporters of religious freedom for all.

These groups of people understand that the gospel according to Jesus is not an external affirmation of generic belief, from a heart still untransformed. It is not accepting Christianity as a ticket of admission into society.”

Russell Moore 
Christianity Astray Article

I would ask Russell Moore (and Christianity Astray for that matter) why it is superior to have an established Church wherein it is possible for someone to have an “external affirmation of generic belief, from a heart still untransformed,” vis-a-vis having Anabaptist “Religious Freedom” wherein it is possible for someone to not affirm any kind of faith from a heart still untransformed? Why is it superior to have religious pluralism that finds Jews, Muslims, and Atheists with no faith vis-a-vis a legal Christian state that finds false professors in the midst? Why is it better to have in one geographic area wheat fields, oat fields, cornfields, soybean fields, and sorghum fields as opposed to one wheat field that contains tares?

Secondly, why is it so criminal that Christianity might be a ticket of admission into society? Does Moore prefer that non-Christianity be the ticket of admission into society?

Thirdly, all because externalism has been a genuine threat to nations that embraced an Established church that doesn’t mean the answer is to create an environment where externalism isn’t possible because genuine Christians are being persecuted by the state.

Finally, genuine Christianity, while necessarily inward and internal still requires an external affirmation of faith and there is nothing wrong that such an external affirmation of faith be a ticket into a Christian society.

Stick with the Belgic Confession of Faith and start now detesting the error of the Anabaptists and all other seditious people.