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Hoedemaker and McAtee on the Relation of Reason to Revelation

“What is this (human) reason, to the guidance of which, in the opinion of the majority of our voters, we cannot surrender ourselves (to) in the area of statecraft?

The understanding is the ability to form correct ideas, to distinguish them, to compare them, and to join them together in new judgments, whether in the form of conclusions or of compound and generic concepts. Reason is sometimes regarded, in distinction from understanding, as the ability of man to come in contact with the transcendental world, to form and apply ideas. However, if, as happened in the debate of the Lower House, reason is set against revelation, then this distinction is lost, and besides that, everything that does not stem from revelation is attributed to reason, giving rise to confusion of concepts which with an eye to all kinds of Romanist errors, has it dubious aspects.

Here reason is 1) a capacity for knowledge: the eye of the spirit with which man perceives, and the hand with which he processes what he perceives; 2) an area of knowledge under which to allocate everything that a natural man, a heathen, an unbeliever, in a word, someone who does not allow himself to be illuminated by the light of revelation, becomes acquainted with.

Let us not for the moment forget that because one can also speak of general revelation, the word ‘revelation’ is equivocal and restrict the use of the word either to the speech of God, by which He makes Himself known, His plan and will, or to Holy Scripture, in which that knowledge is contained, for this word is used in all three meanings. It is purely Romish to make it (revelation) so independent of reason as the organ of all human knowledge that it falls outside the forms of thought of our understanding, is independent of the laws to which our thinking is subject, and that, with respect to investigation of Holy Scripture, reason has no function to fulfill.

Now then, if were to set everything that man comes to know apart from Scripture against the knowledge which is the fruit of special revelation, and thus obtain, as it were, two areas indicated by the contrast ‘reason or revelation,’ ‘nature or grace,’ then we would already be on our way to Rome. It is in this connection that the proposition ‘revelation corrects reason’ becomes very questionable: one forgets that it is not reason but the misuse of reason, not the natural knowledge of God but the mutilation of that knowledge, of which this can be said. Revelation supplements reason.

We confess, it is true, that the understanding has been darkened by sin, but add in distinction to the Roman Church and to Luther: just as much in the area of natural as of the spiritual life! Our fathers used to say that, with man as with a fish, the corruption caused by sin manifests itself first in the head. Consider the Dreyfus affair and the English with regard to South Africa.

How, then, does reason stand in relation to revelation? Article 1 of our [Belgic] confession of faith gives us the answer. According to our confession, there is a natural knowledge of God which nevertheless needs to be supplemented. ‘But God makes Himself known even more clearly in His Divine Word.’ Natural and supernatural revelation are not mutually exclusive. **Armed with the latter, man sees not differently, but only better and further.

With this view, now, both nature and Scripture come into their own.

It goes without saying that in our investigation into the realm of minerals and plants, it is not Scripture to which we primarily turn, although we do not neglect the data that Scripture offers us. We operate this way in the sphere of state life as well. There have been excellent regents, well-appointed states in ancient times, the former walking by the light of nature, that latter established according to the data that all men possess.

Now, then, what place does the Bible occupy in the entirety of this human knowledge? God reveals Himself, and the way of redemption. He acts in Israel as King, Lawgiver, Judge. This revelation spreads its light on man’s origin and destination, and on the various relations in which he acts. It teaches us to see that the state and life in the state are not supreme; that Christ founded His church, why He did so, etc.

All this compels us, then, not to give up nature, experience, or history to unbelief, not to have any part of a division between nature and grace, reason and revelation: and with regard to reason, only contest the sovereignty which leaves the most important part of our knowledge out of consideration. Like Groen (van Prinsterer), we do not fight against reason on the behalf of revelation, but against the philosophical systems that seek to fashion constitutional law after they have first mutilated and falsified the concept of God.

I conclude this part of our investigation with a quotation from Groen’s Verspreide Geschriften (Scattered Writings), where he says ‘Revelation opposes the supremacy of the understanding (Reason) which does not recognize a higher principle outside itself, and itself must oppose everyone who believes in Revelation…. The main question is: does one have to submit to a higher Being who desires respect for His own laws, or is one bound to nothing and no one but oneself, which must end in arbitrariness.’ 

We therefore run no danger of looking in the Bible for a handbook of constitutional law or of giving up the independence of science to which it is dedicated. What the Bible means for that constitutional law, we will discuss in the next chapter.”

P. J. Hoedemaker
The Politics of Antithesis; The Antirevolutionary Government of Abraham Kuyper 1901-1905 — p. 53-55

1.) Reason cannot operate apart from revelation of some God or god concept. Even if reason is said to be operating independently of some revelation at that point the revelation that reason is operating in submission to is the revelation of man as autonomously considered. At that point, man, serving as his own god, melds both his revelation that he provides for himself with the reason he uses to engage that self-revelation. Revelation thus, like reason, is seen as an inescapable category. It is never a matter of whether or not revelation is being appealed to. It is, instead, always a matter of which revelation is being appealed to. That revelation can be explicitly appealed to or it can be implicitly present. The Biblical Christian is more likely to explicitly appeal to Scripture as the basis of his revelation while the humanist will typically try to hide the fact that he has a revelation that his reason is pinioned upon. The humanist will typically say something like; “this is just the way things are.”

2.) Reason is thus only as good as the Revelation that it is based upon. Where “reason” gets matters right when based on a Revelation that is in hostility to the God of the Bible and His Word, that reason is only getting it right by way of coincidence. After all, very few people have been able to be 100% in error, 100% of the time. Also, we should say that sometimes pagan reason can get matters right because it is using borrowed capital from the Christian revelation it denounces generally speaking and it generally uses this borrowed capital without even realizing that it is doing so. One glaring example of this is when the haters of Christian revelation dare to talk about the categories of “right,” and “wrong.” Those who are haters of Christian revelation, were they consistent, would never use those categories.

3.) Hoedemaker points out the difference between Rome and Protestantism on this matter. Rome sees that “reason” and “revelation” are two paths to truth. “Reason” is used in non-spiritual areas whereas “revelation” is appealed to for truth in the realm of grace. This is where Natural law finds its logical appeal, though there have been many Protestants who have embraced this bifurcation of reason and revelation.

4.) The only place I take exception to Hoedemaker above is indicated by the **, where he offers, “Armed with the latter (supernatural revelation), man sees not differently, but only better and further.” I would contend that when fallen man is viewing natural revelation through the prism of a false “supernatural” revelation man does see differently. Conversely, the Christian does see not only better and further vis-a-vis those who despise God’s special revelation, but he does see differently.

5.) The Groen van Prinsterer quote gets at everything. We do not fight against  reason as it exists within a Christian construct. We only fight against “reason” so called as it exists in a God’s revelation hating construct. One can not genuinely call “reason,” reason if that pseudo reason is arising out of a philosophical system context wherein the concept of God has first mutilated and falsified. Any putative reason arising in that context is referred to as reason only out of politeness. Such a reason poisons everything that it engages.

6.) Of course this quote, especially the last Groen van Prinsterer quote completely demolishes R2K.

McAtee on Rev. Dewey Roberts’ Complaint About An Aspect of Federal Vision

On the whole I have been quite pleased with Rev. Dewey Roberts’ book “Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision.” I am glad he wrote it. I would recommend that people read it. I am glad I have read it. I do complain vigorously against his chapter wherein he seeks to tie Theonomy and Dr. Bahnsen to Federal Vision. That chapter alone threatens to make people question his integrity on everything else he has written in the book because people are apt to think… “If he got it so wrong on theonomy how can I trust his analysis in the rest of the book?”  I was able to get past that because I know the Institutional Reformed world has been wetting their beds for 40 years now over the issue of theonomy and I can’t expect someone who belongs to that Institutional tribe to not also be a bed wetter on the subject of theonomy. As such, I can denounce that particular chapter while still supporting people reading this volume.

One other problem I have with Rev. Dewey Roberts’ book critiquing Federal Vision is that he is repeatedly complaining about how FV talks about “Covenant Faithfulness being the way to salvation,” as if there is something wrong with the idea of being covenantally faithful as the way to salvation, or that such a notion is a wrong headed idea. Now certainly if one talks about the necessity of covenantal faithfulnes being the way to salvation apart from forensic Justification then there is a parting of the ways with Reformed orthodoxy since to talk like that puts us back in Pelagian-ville. However, once united to Christ it is the case that covenantal faithfulness is the way to salvation.

Rev. Roberts’ complains against FV;

“The doctrine of final Justification is based on the view that the members of the covenant must live in obedience to God’s laws in order to be finally vindicated. Covenant faithfulness is taught as the way to salvation.”

Rev. Dewey Roberts
Historic Christianity & The Federal Vision — pg. 347

Now, Roberts has expressed his concerns that such an arrangement could well make for self-righteousness as people who believe this would be prone to pride because they become convinced that they can fully meet all the law’s stringent requirements. And there is reason, given the old man in all Christians to want to be careful about communicating that error I am sure. However, the opposite problem that Roberts doesn’t speak much to is the antinomian implication found in Roberts seeming advocacy that covenant faithfulness should not be taught as the way to salvation. Do we really want to teach God’s people that covenant faithfulness is not the way to salvation for the forensically justified?

To solve this perhaps we should resurrect the way the Puritans used to speak on obedience. They would make a distinction between “evangelical obedience” which is required of all saints with the result that covenant faithfulness was indeed the way of salvation for those in Christ, and “legal obedience” which was an obedience that was not resting on Christ’s obedience for us and in our stead. That kind of obedience can never be characterized as covenantal obedience and it cannot be required as the way of salvation because it bespeaks reprobation with its implicit belief that one’s obedience is making God a debtor who will owe the obedient one salvation.

Now, it could be the case that Rev. Dewey Roberts would agree wholeheartedly with all this but it seems to me as I read this book the way he complains about FV expecting that covenantal faithfulness as the way to salvation is seen as not wholesome to Rev. Dewey. However, to complain like Rev. Dewey has to my mind suggests that covenantal unfaithfulness is perfectly acceptable as the way to salvation. Now, again, it must be said that covenantal faithfulness as the way to salvation is never going to meet the standard of faithfulness that is required to be characterized as absolutely and fully faithful but at the same time the covenanted who are moving ever upward in terms of faithfulness on their way to salvation by God’s grace alone understand always, in the context of their obedience, that their only hope is nothing less than Jesus and His righteousness. Indeed, it is because they understand that truth that they so earnestly desire to be found to be covenantally faithful on their way to salvation.

I mean we really don’t want to teach, do we, that for the Saints the way to salvation is covenantal unfaithfulness?

Extremist Hate Group, SPLC, Has Employee Arrested For Domestic Terrorism

Southern Poverty Law Center attorney among 23 arrested for domestic terrorism

“An attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center was arrested for domestic terrorism in a group of 23 who allegedly violently attacked the future site of an Atlanta police training facility.

Thomas Webb Jurgens, 28, was rounded up with the other violent protesters for throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks, rocks, and bricks at the facility.

Liberals and others have expressed outrage over plans to build a $90 million police training facility over 85 acres just outside the city.”

The reason I post this is due to the fact that this extremist hate group (the SPLC) had the chutzpah to list Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church as a extremist hate group back in 2020.

Our crime according to the SPLC? Our crime is that we are “White Nationalist.” Actually, if they had said, “White Christian Nationalist” they would have been more precise.

Our Church Fathers believed that races were distinct and should organize themselves into nations that would likewise be distinct and we merely concur with those who have gone before, contra the Marxist bubbleheads in the Church today;

” [The] differences between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro races, which is known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand years before Christ as it is now. . . . [T]hese varieties of race are not the effect of the blind operation of physical causes, but by those cause as intelligently guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose. . . . God fashions the different races of men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they inhabit.”

Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 1, Section 3 (1872–73)

“You can’t change my mind about God having made us the way we are. The yellow man and the white man and the black man. God made our races. I know the Marxists and the bubbleheads say: “Oh, that’s old-fashioned baloney! Everybody should get together and intermarry and pretty soon there won’t be races, and where there are no races there won’t be any hate, and if there’s no hate, there won’t be any war.” Oh, for cotton batting to stuff in the mouths of people who don’t know better than that!

A.W. Tozer

“I don’t believe [racial integration] is what the Bible teaches. Even though we may have transgressed the boundaries of nationhood and of peoplehood, it seems to me that God did create man of one blood in order that he may dwell as different nations throughout the world. But after the fall, when sinful man cosmopolitanly – meaning by that, with a desire to obliterate separate nationhood, with a desire to build a sort of United Nations organization under the Tower of Babel…attempted to resist developing peoplehood…[God confused the tongues of men]…because men had said, ‘Let us build a city and a tower which will stretch up to heaven lest we be scattered’… Pentecost sanctified the legitimacy of separate nationality rather than saying this is something we should outgrow… In fact, even in the new earth to come, after the Second Coming of Christ, we are told that the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the kings of the earth shall bring the glory and the honor—the cultural treasures—of the nations into it… But nowhere in Scripture are any indications to be found that such peoples should ever be amalgamated into one huge nation.

“In another fourteen years, the future looks bleak for White Christians everywhere. In 1900, Europe possessed two-thirds of the world’s Christians. By 2025, that number will fall below 20% — with most Christians living in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Then, nearly 75% of the world’s Catholics will be Non-Western Mestizos or Black Africans. Right now, Nigeria has the world’s largest Catholic Theological School. India has more Christians than most Western nations. And Jesus is more and more being portrayed with a dark skin. By 2050, more than 80% of Catholics in the U.S. will be of Non-Western origins. Only a fraction of Anglicans will be English. Lutherans, Presbyterians and other mainstream denominations will find their chief centres of growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America — often syncretistically absorbing large quantities of Pre-Christian Paganism as revived Voo-dooism and increasing ancestor-worship. This “Christianity” rapidly degenerates into an immigrationistic, prolific and socialistic jungle-religion.”

Dr. F.N. Lee circa 2011
Christian-Afrikaners pg. 87

These kind of quotes can be repeated countless times over. The fact that the SPLC, a Christ hating organization if there ever was one, put me on their extremist hate list, only says to me that I must be doing something right.

However, the point of this post is to point out that it is the SPLC who are the haters and their slush fund of circa 500million dollars, can’t obviate who the haters really are.

Keep in mind that the extremist hate group known as the SPLC works hand in glove with the FBI and other FED agencies in order to “help” the FEDS keep an eye on extremist hate groups. Don’t miss the irony of the largest extremist hate group in America (the SPLC) being the organization that the FEDS go to in order to identify “extremist hate groups.”

Clearly, this is the case here of the FOX guarding the Henhouse. Clearly, the only ones who land on these extremist hate lists are those who hate what the extremist hate group, (the SPLC), love.

Neither I, nor anybody in the Church I serve has been arrested for rioting and domestic terrorism like this SPLC lawyer employee listed above.



I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; Dan Brannan — “The Library, Liberty & Lies”

Granted, subversive books aimed at kids are nothing new. The works of Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak, and Dr. Seuss soft-pedaled socialism and moral relativism to kids from the mid-20th century forward. And J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was standard curriculum in high schools from the 60s to the 80s despite simultaneously being the most banned book of the era.

Nevertheless, parents still imputed innocence to children’s books as a medium, and took for granted that the library remained a relatively safe institution for kids. What can I say? Naivete is a stubborn thing.

Cognitive dissonance began to evaporate however, with revelations of teachers leading elementary students in talks about kink, all things LGBT+ (Take a wild guess at what the + means.), and demonstrations with sex toys, which apparently came as a package deal with gender neutral restrooms and schools covering for crossdressers raping girls therein. So, when our libraries began arranging face-to-face liaisons between queer exhibitionists and children for the express purpose of desensitizing kids, parents were able to acknowledge it for what it is – organized Predation.

Eyes opening to the agenda, parents began to notice that the library shelves – the children’s and teens’ sections in particular – had become a devils’ buffet of XXX pornography, and LGBT-grooming materials. To say nothing of anti-Western, anti-Father, anti-Family, anti-White, and anti-Christian propaganda found in abundance there now.

Adding insult to injury, when parents objected, they were smeared as “un-American,” “book-burners,” and “Fascists,” hellbent on depriving children of works of mathematics, science, history, etc. Over against which, the predators and their enablers comically declared themselves the champions of Free Speech, Constitutionalism, and Americanism.

Keep in mind, these Leftwing “champions of free speech” are the same people who, up to present, are banning, purging, redacting, or otherwise suppressing every significant work written prior to 1950. Remember Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Harris’s stories of Uncle Remus? Orwell’s 1984? These are all on a constant seesaw of banned status.

Shakespeare has been revised, and intermittently banned. Why, this very morning they are applauding the PC redaction of works by Roald Dahl as well as Fleming’s James Bond books! The virtual whole of the Western canon is under revision by the very people now boasting themselves the champions of free speech. It seems they only don that mantle when pedophile porn is at stake.

Where the Right, including the authors of the 1st amendment, have always conceived the bounds of free speech at matters of indecency, blasphemy, and calls for criminal acts against persons or property, the Left suppresses speech in regard to virtually everything else. “The personal is political” is a 60s radical slogan which assumes all forms of sexual deviance to be sacrosanct; and any speech which might offend the deviant – all standards of the good, the true, and the beautiful – must be suppressed by government bootheel. Survey Leftist regimes around the world and what you find uniformly, is rigid control of speech pertaining to just about everything. All under the auspices of fighting “hate speech,” of course. This despite the fact that ‘hate speech’ means nothing more or less than speech Leftists hate; and this concept is invariably wielded as a terror-weapon against the people Leftists hate.

Thankfully, to date, no such concept is recognized in American law, because the SCOTUS still acknowledges that so-called ‘hate speech’ is both unquantifiable, and antithetical to the 1st amendment. Heedless of all these facts, the Left takes ‘hate speech’ as a given; and that, as pretext against all truths they find inconvenient. Which, as confirmed by their own track record, necessarily touches every subject.

Per their rejection of revealed morality, they see nothing as a sin so long as it serves their cause. A fact summed up in another of their cherished slogans, “By whatever means necessary.”

Hence the timeline of their argument in the library matter:

– “There’s no such thing as pornographic children’s books or LGBT recruitment materials aimed at kids. It’s a Rightwing myth.”

– “Okay, maybe they exist, but there is no such material in our libraries.”

– “Okay, even if it’s in the library, it isn’t available to children, only adults.”

– “Okay, the Young Adult (YA) category applies to children as young as 12, but it isn’t pushed or prominently displayed to children.”

– “Okay, it is pushed and prominently displayed to kids, but checking it out is still at the parents’ discretion.”

– “Okay, we don’t actually inform parents of grooming content in YA books, but it isn’t the library’s responsibility to parent your children or inform you of the contents of every book.”

– “But that doesn’t mean parents can decide what’s inappropriate material for children. That’s the library’s decision.”

– “Afterall, banning sexual content aimed at children is contrary to the 1st amendment. Only Fascists do that.”

Debauchery aside, they simply do not argue in good faith. Because their worldview precludes the possibility.

As covered, the Right has a habit of deluding ourselves on this point too. Acknowledging that men are created in the image of God with rational faculties beholden to absolute truth, coherence, and virtue, we often mistakenly impute our values to our opponents.

We have also taken for granted that the benevolence of the public library, as a concept, so presupposed the unity of truth and virtue that even those of an antithetical worldview would be compelled to the same standards.

Moreover, the Right has tended to take for granted that safeguarding the innocence of children was a value held by all but the smallest margin of reprobates. But both in theory and practice, our opponents testify to the contrary.

More are awakening to the fact, however, that the library, as a repository of narrative, was an inevitable front in the culture war. And the impetus for that battle is that those running the institution now repudiate all of its conceptual underpinnings.

We must not forget that the institution originated with the church libraries of the American colonies. Which were, personal collections aside, the only libraries at the time. And in the early 1700s Christian ministers began opening their libraries beyond their respective congregations, for provincial use. And they described this new institution, the public library, and its reason for being, as a “charitable Christian mission” and a matter of “civic piety.”

Even the most metropolitan example – the famed New York Public Library – was launched entirely with collections donated by Christian ministers and funding by The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

Which is to say that those now framing the debate as between an innately “secular” institution on one side, and interloping Christian Authoritarians on the other, are only repudiating the whole conceptual basis for the Public Library.

Those insisting that the library is a foil against the Christian world order wind up only undermining the foundation of their own house.

To spurn universal (Latin, uni versa, lit. “first verse” a la Genesis 1:1) truth and revealed morality in favor of convention, they can defer only to majorities, expertise (which always means licensure or dictatorial elitism), or even sillier excuses like “it’s the current year.”

And this unmoored thinking results, as it must, in most erratic sophistry: when they believe themselves in the majority, they contemptuously mock any who would protect children as “fringe,” “extremists,” “a backward, outcast minority.” But when they assume themselves the minority, they spin on a dime, claiming to be besieged rebels standing against the “privileged majority culture of Patriarchal White Christian Supremacy.” Between these two extremes they whirl like dervishes, either insensate, or unashamed of their rank hypocrisy.

Unmoored from objective truth, all their wild vacillations come down to one thing though: appetite. Which is to say that after all the excuses are cleared away, what remains is the fact that they are desperate to sexually groom children.

For many, this appetite may not be libidinous interest per se, but rather, “virtue signaling” – a desperation to identify with the system, celebrities, and/or the menagerie of deviants. And, of course, there are those for whom it is in fact, sexual. But pervading all is hostility toward objective morality, and God back of it.

Which is why they find the innocence of children so offensive. It indicts those who have embraced perversion as their identity. And it’s not just me saying this. Articles abound in mainstream journals, magazines, and newspaper editorials explicitly condemning childhood innocence as “privilege,” “a social construct,” “White Supremacy,” and “Christo-fascism.” Thus they openly confess that they are offended by childhood innocence, and feel that corruption is the only remedy.

Having thus rejected the sacrificial atonement provided by God in Christ, the process of corrupting children takes on a religious function as an alternative sacrifice of innocence.

What we face here is not ultimately a political party, or an interest group, but a sex cult. Complete with its own doctrine of original sin, reprobation, sacraments, and priesthood. One whose doctrine of salvation is found in the sacrifice and corruption of children.

And make no mistake, in terms of parental consent, as well as the STDs, drug use, prodigious rates of domestic violence, and suicide rates attendant to the LGBT+ lifestyle, it is a blood sacrifice.

Civilized people do not abide this sort of evil. God save the children