Category: Windows Into Worldviews

A Response To CREC Knox Presbytery’s Proposal On Issue of Jews

“We believe the conversion of the Jews is key to the success of Christ’s Great Commission, and it is incumbent upon us to pray and labor toward that end. (1) While, apart from Christ, the Jews are as all others—alienated from God—they have remained an object of God’s care because the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. (2) God’s plan for converting them is for them to see Gentile nations under the blessings of Christ’s lordship, thus leading them to long for the same. (3) Hence, the cancerous sin of anti-Semitism has no place in God’s plan.” (4)

CREC – Knox Presbytery
December 1, 2022

1a.) This whole statement is based on a misinterpretation of Romans 11. Romans 11 was future to Paul but has been fulfilled and so is past to us. The conversion of those who are (wrongly) referred to as “Jews” has nothing to do with the success of Christ’s great commission.

1b.) It is no more or less incumbent for Christian to labor and pray for the conversion of those who call themselves “Jews” then it is to labor and pray for the conversion of any other ethnic people group.

1c.) If the conversion of Jews as a people is “key to the success of Christ’s Great Commission” it would logically imply that Jews must continue to exist as a coherent and distinct people group. The eschatology offered here demands “Kinism” for Jews, right? And yet Doug Wilson continues to derisively refers to those who champion the Ordo Amoris as “skinists.” To be “saved” as a people necessarily demands existing as a people. Given Doug Wilson’s proud proclamation of the Jewishness of his own family this sentence in this proposal sounds vainglorious.

1d.) To say that conversion of the Jews is ‘key to the success of the great commission’ would mean the great commission is a failure until those that call themselves “Jews” are converted is absurd. Further to hang the success of the conversion of all nations on them as if it didn’t hang on the conversion of other nations just as much makes nonsense of the whole question.

2a.) God converted the Jewish Israel of God by AD 70.

2b.) God divorced Israel in AD 70. There remains no special relationship between what is now called “Israel” and the God of the Bible. This divorce was promised in the OT;

2 And He said, “Amos, what do you see?”

So I said, “A basket of summer fruit.”

Then the Lord said to me:

“The end has come upon My people Israel;
I will not pass by them anymore.  (Amos 8:2)

“Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom,
And I will destroy it from the face of the earth;
Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
Says the Lord.  Amos 9:8

And the coming dismissal of Christ hating Israel as God’s chosen people for their sin of rejecting their Messiah was made clear in the NT; Luke 13:1-8, Mark 11:12-25, Matthew 21:37-43. Finally, in AD 70 with the Judgment coming of Jesus against Israel, Israel as a nation which had previously served as the chosen people of God was served divorce papers. The ruination of Jerusalem and the Jewish abomination Temple were destroyed by the Roman armies of Vespasian and Titus. According to Josephus 1million Jews were slaughtered. This was God’s final word regarding National Israel. God may and does still call individual Jews but as a nation God is done with them. God is done with Israel as a nation or people. Now any Gentile nation that God calls and which then covenants with God can be one national expression of God’s people as long as they own the graciousness of grace and then walk increasingly but never perfectly in terms of obedience to God’s gracious Law-Word.

2c.) Then there is the whole issue of whether or not those currently referred to as Jews are indeed Jews. Israel itself has passed laws making it extraordinarily difficult for the “Jewish” inhabitants of Israel to do DNA testing in order to determine ethnic heritage. Could that be due to the fact that they don’t want the hoi polloi to know that they are not really ethnically “Jewish?” The fact of the matter is that the Palestinians have more Jewish blood in them then the Khazars, Edomites, Khazars, Turks, etc. who call themselves “Jews” now living in Israel.

3.) Fulfilled by AD 70.

4.) We really need a definition of the “cancerous sin of anti-Semitism” before we can comment much on this statement. Currently, anti-Semitism often seems to be defined as “disagreeing with a Jew.” In point of fact, per the CREC, I’m pretty sure this whole post is “anti-Semitic.”

There are two major points here.

1.) Modern day Jews in Israel are not likely even Jews

2.) Even if they are Jews the Scripture does not allow us to think that they, as in their unconverted Christ hating state, are still God’s chosen people, since God divorced them as a people in AD 70 — consistent with the statements of Scripture.

Exposing Natural Law For the Cheat It Is (I)

John 1:4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Jesus Himself said;

“I am the light of the world.” (John 9:5)

The Apostle John said that Jesus;

was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

Of course we know that there was no fault in He who was “the light of the world.” So, the fact that men did not and do not comprehend the light is found in the fact, as John’s Gospel reveals in chapter 3;

19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

The practitioners of evil know the darkness and they know the light. They cannot hate the light and refuse to come to the light unless they know yet suppress what they know about the light. The lovers of darkness remain in the dark because they prefer the dark over the light and as they remain in the dark they chant, “there is no light, there is no light.” This is because such men remain dead in their sins and trespasses. Their intellect, will, and affections each and all experience the total effects of the fall. It is because they are sons of darkness that they hate the light.

These Scriptural truths by themselves ought to give the Natural Law fanboys pause before pushing their Aristotelian non-Scriptural position that teaches that fallen man’s intellect is not completely fallen and so can read “Nature” (however that might be defined) aright. But there is more. The Holy Spirit can say in I Corinthians 2:14

14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Yet, despite this testimony of Scripture the Natural Law advocates now blanketing the church in the chemtrail “theology” of both the R2K Escondido crowd and the Dr. Stephen Wolfe Christian Nationalism crowd are poisoning  the Church.

Over and over again the Scripture teaches that man, starting from himself and his own resources, runs from capital T truth. Scripture teaches also in Romans 8;

“… the carnal mind is enmity (warfare) against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”

Fallen man, as Paul says earlier in Romans as the wrath of God upon Him;

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

When non-Christians consider anything that can be found in what people call “natural law” they invariably use what they find to further their sinful ends. So, for example, fallen man finds gender realities in Natural law and for a season fallen man may well conform to gender realities when living in a predominantly Christian shaped nation.  But even in the times of  “conforming” one does not find the non-Christian living out their gender to the glory of God. Instead, fallen men prioritize themselves and their needs above their spouses. Then, over the course of time, as we are seeing now in the West, natural man, using natural law and right reason insist that there are no gender realities to conform to. They insist that the idea that one man goes with one woman for life is antiquated and mistaken. They suppress even more overtly than their heathen fathers the idea of gender realities. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They prefer the darkness to light. They are at enmity with God. The idea that natural law is going to somehow be the means whereby men are going to give up their suppression, warfare, and preference for the dark is a Aristotelian fairytale – a fairytale that more  and more of the Christian church is taking up.

At one time natural law theory taught that “Nature” was the objective, external, corporeal universe that was objectively out there and could be known by all men. There was no consensus on where these laws of nature came from. They just were … and these eternally existing natural laws which existed autonomously governed both the gods and men.

When the philosophical world was ruled by the empiricists the laws of nature along with the external, material, objective universe were just out there in the cosmos. But as the worldview of men shifted from empiricism to different forms of idealism this “out there-ness” view of natural law was eclipsed and in its place the idea of natural law shifted to being located to the internal, subjective, non-corporeal “mind” of man. Human reason itself became the locus of Natural Law. Autonomous man, starting with and from himself could name what the laws of nature were. In this evolution of natural law man even more clearly became his own god determining good from evil.

This has always been and remains the achilles heel of natural law theory. There is no stable definition of natural law. It varies from man to man depending on what philosophical matrix he is living in. It may be the case that the Romanticists/Transcendentalist, the logical positivist, the Deist, and the Utilitarians (to cite random examples) may all agree that Natural Law exists but given their differing philosophical pre-commitments they will never agree on just exactly what Natural Law is as it is concretely defined, and indeed will offer up contradictory definitions.

In the end there is no objective reality in the subjective construct that is Natural Law theory. To be sure God’s creation declares God’s truths. No one disagrees with that. The disagreement arises when the idea is advanced that men’s will and intellect is not so fallen that residual ability remains so that man can, starting with himself  (as fallen), as his own beginning point, identify true truth. The objection arises that fallen man starting autonomously with himself will always identify as true truth a fallen “true truth.”

In order for Thomistic Natural Law theory to work force must be used to re-create consensus as to what Natural Law “clearly teaches.” In our current situation this will have to be a force that moves Natural Law away from existing as within each individual to a Natural Law that is once again pretended to be objective. Existentialism and postmodernism, as well as variant forms of Idealism will have to be squashed in order for non-Christian Natural Law to work again. I have no opposition to those being squashed but I remain opposed to a Natural Law that pretends to be objective but really remains somebody’s subjective inflated to serve as a pretend societal objective.

Instead, what we as Christians should pray for is for the West to return to its Scriptural foundation for truth. We must once again embrace the idea that “in thy Light we see light.” We must understand that the axioms of Scripture and necessary consequences of those axioms form our epistemological foundation as a people. The God of the Bible once again must be our starting point when it comes to true truth. Only by having God has our starting point will we reason with a God honoring methodology that results in God honoring conclusions.

Away then with all Thomistic notions of Natural Law. It was bad when the Stoics owned it and it was bad when the Muslims Ibn Tufayl and Averroes embraced it and it remained bad when Aquinas pinched it from Averroes and “Christianized” it.



 

 

 

Tom Hicks On The Glories Of The Baptist Faith … McAtee On Tom Hicks

“The Baptist faith stands squarely against the authoritarian individual, the authoritarian family, the authoritarian church, and the authoritarian state. This is because Baptist doctrine uniquely stands upon God’s authority in His Word over the individual, the family, the church and the state. Other ecclesiologies give too much authority to the individual (modern evangelicalism) or to the church (papacy) or to the family and state (classic Reformed and Lutheran paedobaptism).”

Dr. Rev. Tom Hicks
Baptist Pastor

Hicks would like to think that the “Baptist Faith” is the Nirvana locale of the Christian faith but the man is deluded.

1.) The Reformed Baptist Faith (Hicks subscribes to the London Baptist Confession) because it eliminates the inclusion of infants into the covenant of grace, and because it does not require Christian Magistrates ruling as Christian magistrates yields a Christianity that, despite Hicks assertion, is thoroughly atomistically individualistic. The Baptist faith, because of its individualism, always eats away and tears down the Institutional jurisdictions ordained and revealed by God in favor of the sovereign individual.

This atomistic individualism is most clearly seen in the forbidding of the children being marked with the sign and seal of the covenant of grace. Instead, the Baptist, in effect, tells the child is that God cannot claim them in Baptism until they first claim God upon coming to the years of discretion (whatever that age may be). This is a complete reversal of the idea of God over the individual and instead places the individual over God so that God has to wait on the individual before God can claim him or her. This is atomistic individualism at its zenith. So, Hicks claim to the contrary Baptists do not avoid the authoritarian individual but instead rabidly promote atomistic individualism.

2.) This Baptist emphasis on the authoritarian individual in turn means the breakdown and eclipse of the other jurisdictional realms appointed by God. Because the individual is atomistically sovereign in the Baptist faith Baptist thinking  creates atomistically individualistic culture where the God ordained mediating Institutions (Church, Family, Civil Magistrates) are eclipsed in favor of the almighty individual. This atomization results in a blank slate culture eventually creating a societal vacuum that cannot be sustained over time. Eventually, since man is a social being, the atomistic individualism of the Baptist faith cannot survive with the result being that some corporate entity fills the vacuum and becomes the sole Jurisdictional realm against which all atomistic individuals will define themselves. In our lifetimes that sole jurisdictional realm that has arisen to define all is the tyrant State, and this is largely due to the majority Baptist Christianity that we currently have. Without competing the healthy God ordained Jurisdictional Institutions of Church, and Family, — ordained Jurisdictional Institutions that the atomistic Baptist faith always chips away at over time, the result is the rise of some single tyrant Institution which will insist that it plays the sole role of the other God ordained mediating Institutions. At that point, the Baptist sovereign atomistic individual culture will flip to become a consolidated borg culture.

3.) The idea that the Baptist faith is superior in standing upon God’s Word alone is ridiculous. If Baptists were standing upon God’s Word alone they wouldn’t think that they could find a non-contradictory way to combine Anabaptist ecclesiology with Reformed soteriology. This combination inserts synergism every time into Baptist theology, thus defying God’s Word revealing that the Reformed Baptist Faith is really inconsistent humanism where God waits upon man to make a decision for Him before He can make a claim on man.

The One & The Many and Our Cultural Moment

For Christianity the cosmos was orderly because the Christian God is a God of order. In God’s creation the parts and the whole served one another in a diversity in unity and unity in diversity symphony — neither the particular nor the universal having dominion over the other. The universals recognized the need for the particulars and the particulars understood the need of the universals.

However, with the rebellion against God in favor of a time plus chance plus circumstance cosmos there is no longer an inherent given coherence to reality. With the abandonment of the eternal One and Many, the temporal one and many loses its way and where there previously been harmony between the temporal one and many there is now a conflict of interest between the temporal one and many.

What this looks like in the social order is a contest between tyranny and anarchy. Having thrown off God in favor of chaos, tyranny seeks to impose itself as a universal before which all particulars must bow. The tyrannical triumph of the temporal one over the temporal many means all things are defined in terms of the temporal one. Diversity is eclipsed in favor of unity. Social order and culture becomes a machine in which undistinguishable men and women and men from women works as universal cogs to support the Universal tyrannical one.

This social order and cultural unitarianism does not allow for mediating cultural institutions. All must serve and exist as derivative of the Tyrannical One (often the State). Everything is for state and nothing is outside the state. Individuality is lost in favor the Mao suit, the Phrygian cap… the comrade and the citoyen. Men become chameleons who all fade into the background provided by the tyrannical state.

On the other hand the triumph of the many is likewise a tyranny but it is a tyranny of the particular (many) over the one. In a anarchistic tyranny the unity (temporal One) is found in hyper-disunity (temporal Many). Each man does what is right in his own eyes. There is no harmony of interest because there is no Universal wherein one can find a harmony. Ironically enough, this leads right back to a beleaguered sameness that is found in the tyranny of the One, although instead of a unitarian motif found in dull sameness one gets the unitarian motif found in the dull sameness one finds in a garbage truck or scow. Precisely because there is no harmony the harmony is found in the lack of harmony, just as garbage in a garbage truck by having no relation to the sundry garbage there is a unity that is found in the negation of unity.

In cultures and social orders who have raised its fist to God the consequence is that often one will find both the anarchistic and the tyrannical temporal one and many operating in the social order and/or culture. In these kind of instances the tyrannical and the anarchistic serve as limiting concepts for one another in their ongoing attempt to have the pre-eminence with the result that there is a fluctuating dialectic that exists between the temporal godless one and the temporal godless many.

We see this phenomenon in our own social order culture. We see the temporal chaotic anarchistic many in the pursuit of much of the citizenry to be completely independent of any unifying social norms or mores. In that anarchistic pursuit away from social conventions people look increasingly the same with their slovenly dress, their tatted up appearance, and their guttural music. They have found a anarchistic unity of meaning in the embrace that there is no meaning.

At the same time we have the State here constantly seeking to provide a temporal tyrannical unitarian/uniformitarian meaning. From the continued increase of the surveillance state to the desire to have operate as a top down control mechanism (think pursuit of social credit arrangements, 15 minute cities, electric cars that can be remotely turned off, Artificial Intelligence, etc.) the Temporal One is seeking a tyrannical arrangement wherein all the anarchy is controlled so as to serve the tyrannical state.

The church likewise is caught in this push me – pull you with its embrace of alienism. By its refusal to understand the temporal one and many in light of the eternal one and many much of the Church today is embracing a unitarian/uniformitarian understanding of race/ethnicity so that the temporal many is swallowed up by the temporal one. The refusal to understand that there can be races in the context of the human race — races that are to be recognized and honored as unique — the Church in the West is currently joining in with the rebellion of the larger culture by denying the impact of the understanding of the temporal one and many in light of the eternal one and many. The Church is in lockstep with the culture insisting that diversity in unity and unity in diversity can not be allowed to exist.

Of Sanctification In Dog Breeds On A Narnian Like Planet

Once upon a time on a Narnian like planet there were three breeds of dogs. There were the Beagle breed, the Yorkie breed and the Pitbull breed. Now, everyone agreed that these were all dogs but at the same time everyone agreed that they were not all the same kinds of dogs. Only a very few people insisted that the idea of Yorkie, Pitbull and Beagle were social constructs, though those people did exist and lobbied very diligently to force the rest of the world to agree with them that breed really made very little difference since all dogs were the same. These folks were do-gooders and very often Christians who couldn’t imagine that God would create dog breeds to be different. They couldn’t imagine that God would delight in dog breed diversity. They refused to countenance that the Yorkie, the Beagle, and the Pitbull were very different kinds of dogs even if they were all dogs.

Now, the Pitbull over the course of their existence was understood by countless numbers of people to be a mean, aggressive and vicious animal. That was its nature. It is the way God created it. There were even studies done that statistically demonstrated that the Pitbull breed was demonstrably different in its nature than the Yorkie or the Beagle.  Despite what was evident to the eye and  what was objectively proven via measuring Pitbull crime stats and IQ ability, there were people who insisted that the Pitbull was the same as the Yorke and the Beagle. They insisted that a dog is a dog is a dog is a dog.

These folks also insist when it comes to sanctification for dogs that the sanctifier has an affirmative action program for Pitbulls since they start out further behind in acceptable behavior than the Yorkie or the Beagle before conversion. The sanctifier thus gooses the factor level of sanctification for the Pitbulls knowing that they need a little bit more sanctification juice in order to become equal (the same) with the Yorkie and the Pitbull.

Now, a strange thing happened to some of the individual Pitbulls in the Pitbull breed in this alternate Narnian like universe in which all this took place. In this Narnian like universe all dog breeds could possibly experience ongoing progressive sanctification. For those people who insisted that all dog breeds are the same they concluded that because Pitbulls, Yorkies, and Beagles could be sanctified that therefore the effect of sanctification on Pitbulls, Yorkies, and Beagles would have the same even impact across all breeds so that sanctified Christian Pitbulls, sanctified Christian Yorkies and sanctified Christian Beagles would become indecipherable in terms of disposition and behavior. Many people started taking their sanctified Christian Pitbulls out to hunt rabbits along with the Beagles while at the same time insisting that Pitbulls were just as cute as Yorkies.

For these people the grace in sanctification destroyed the nature of all three Breeds so that they no longer were distinguishable. These believers in egalitarian sanctification thought that the Holy Spirit could sanctify a Pitbull so as to result in a Pitbull being sanctified so as to be the same as a sanctified Beagle or sanctified Yorkie. As it turned out in our Narnian like Universe many of the clergy recited loudly as a chorus of Rev. Dufflepods, “Nature goes away with Grace,” and “sanctification takes away innate dispositions,” and “A Beagle is a Yorkie is a Pitbull not only before sanctification but especially after sanctification.” Rev. Wilson Dufflepod and Rev. White Dufflepod were the most excitable of all the clergy dufflepods in singing;

Imagine there’s no breeds
It’s easy if you try
No innate dispositions in us
Genetics can be liquified
Imagine all the dog breeds bein’ all the same
Ah, ah, ah-ah

Imagine a sanctification
That makes a Pitbull coo
A Beagel’s now a bird-dog
And Yokies, hunt them too
Imagine all the doggies being all the same
Yoo, hoo, oo-oo

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
Pushing a sanctification that’s this much fun

Imagine no innate behavior
I wonder if you can
Everything is malleable 
Nothing fixed upon to stand 
Imagine all the species becoming now all one
Yoo, hoo, oo-oo

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
Pushing a sanctification that’s this much fun

There were a handful of people who stood up and insisted that there was a boatload of “The Emperor Has No Clothes” reasoning going on as among the egalitarian “all dogs breeds are the same after sanctification” crowd. These folks understood that while Pitbulls could be sanctified they would never be sanctified so as to become the same breed with the same disposition as the Yorkie or Beagle. Sanctification might well make a Pitbull the best Pitbull he could be but it would never make a Pitbull to be a Yorkie or a Beagle. The Pitbull breed, the Beagle breed, and the Yorkie breed would all have to be satisfied that God in His infinite wisdom causes breeds to differ and causes some breeds to have ten talents, while other breeds only have five talents or one talent.

And that’s a good thing since God loves diversity… even after sanctification.