Windows Into Worldviews

Theonomy/Reconstructionism Creates the Abstracted & Universal Man?

There are those who continue to insist that Theonomists don’t allow for particularity of cultures blaming RJR for demanding a universalist (globalist) social order. These chaps proclaim that Rushdoony insisted that the law could only be applied in only one way in every culture thus resulting in a “Christian” new world order where all particularity is lost.

This is utter nonsense on their part and I was pleased to see the Natural Law aficionado, Stephen Wolfe say in a recent speech, that only some theonomists were guilty of abstracting man so that he loses all his particularity and becomes “universal man”, though Wolfe rightly did put Jonathan Leeman and David Van Drunen and his R2K fanboys in the dock on this score.

Now, that some theonomists like Andrew Sandlin, Doug Wilson, and Gary North (before he recently died) have been guilty of this universalizing and abstracting tendency. This has been due to their Libertarianism and not due to theonomy. The Libertarian, by insisting on the non-aggression principle, reduces all culture to a least common denominator universal sameness. The theonomists who have allowed their Libertarianism to overshadow their theonomy are indeed guilty of abstracting man so that he loses his particularity when belonging to different people groups and different races.

Of course, the Father of Reconstructionism, R. J. Rushdoony, could never be rationally accused of abstracting man from his particularizing contexts. If one reads, for example, Rush’s “The One and the Many,” one sees explained there unity (universal) and diversity (particulars) in both the Godhead and then as among various peoples. Rushdoony, never demanded that all cultures be universal. Rushdoony taught that the ten words are in fact applied identically in all cultures. Murder is murder. Lust is just. Idolatry is idolatry, coveting is coveting and so forth. Those don’t change. However, Rush understood that all of the casuistic laws may vary from culture to culture.

If one desires to find a philosohy/theology that univesalizes and abstracts man one need only look to the Aristotelian paradigm. In that paradigm the state is viewed as an ethical institution aimed at cultivating virtue by applying natural law that tends towards a universalism regulating all aspects of social life.

Theonomy/Reconstructionism to the contrary has a negative concept of law where the state has a strictly juridical function and where that which is not forbidden by biblical law is allowed, leaving much more freedom for different socio-cultural paradigms to develop organically.

Indeed, so varied in Christian cultural outcomes as theonomy / reconstructionism is some students of Rushdoony have termed his position “Perspectivalism” or “Multiperspectivalism.” It is the idea that Christianity (and God’s law) will necessarily be expressed differently through different ethnicities. This view is also evident in Kuyper, et. al.

The people who are accusing Theonomists of an homogenizing globalism are confusing Theonomy with Libertarianism. Which is easy to do if you only know Theonomy through the lens of its platformed claimants today such as Jeff Durbin, Joel Boot, Andrew Sandlin, and Doug Wilson. The problem is that those 2nd generation “Reconstructionists” are represent Theonomy as redacted by and seen through the prism of Cultural Marxism.

Whitehead, Van Til, Sey, Partridge, Tipton & Presuppositions & Worldviews

“So far as concerns methodology, the general issue of the discussion will be that theory dictates method, and that any particular method is only applicable to theories of one correlate species. An analogous conclusion holds for the technical terms. This close relation of theory to method partly arise from the fact that the relevance of evidence depends on the theory which is dominating the discussion. This fact is the reason why dominate theories are also termed working hypotheses.”

Alfred North Whitehead
1861 – 1947
Adventures of Ideas – published 1933

Evidence is what it is due to the presuppositions which are driving the methodology being used in any particular theory. This means that nobody comes to science, evidence, politics, economics with a reason that isn’t beholden to some a-priori considerations. Reason is only a tool that works within the context of a-priori givens. Reason cannot create the givens. Reason can only be a servant of the givens.

Whitehead is only making the point here that Dr. Cornelius Van Til later stated in his book, “Apologetics,”

“To admit one’s presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another.”

The truth of this observation was recently clearly seen in the debate between Samuel Sey and Dale Partridge on the issue of the “Curse of Ham.” Sey and Partridge were beginning with different starting points and so the methodology that each used in order to count facts as facts were completely different. This resulted in each coming to different conclusions. Sey reads the Scriptures through an racial egalitarian prism was Partridge presupposed the existence of racial hierarchy. Only when each challenged the given the other was starting with could progress be hoped to be made. Each appealed to Scriptural texts (facts) to support their positions but the texts they appealed to were read in order to fit their beginning given.

The same is true recently with a clip of a sermon from Dr. Lane Tipton where he insisted that women are not the weaker vessel except in an illustrative manner. Many were those who contradicted Tipton. The problem was the beginning point for Tipton who was presupposing a gender egalitarian starting point while his opponents were presupposing a gender hierarchy starting point. Once each began with their respective starting points (their lens wherein they would read all of Scripture) then all of Scripture was going to reinforce their starting point. The only way to break the contest was for each to challenge the starting point of the other and only by the Holy Spirit’s awakening power would either move off their previous position and that even though powerful evidence might (and should) be provided to prove the other errant.

One way of doing this is by making people be consistent with their beginning points. In the Lane Tipton case, Tipton should be forced to admit that, given his starting point of gender egalitarianism, that he would have to admit that if women are not the weaker vessel except for illustrative purposes then it must follow that men are not the stronger vessel except for illustrative purposes. From there several passages could be brought forth to establish and prove that God has made man to be the stronger vessel and therefore if man is the stronger vessel women indeed must be in some tangible sense the “weaker vessel.”

These kind of differences are “Worldview” differences. Depending on Worldviews, one views what are and what are not facts, completely differently. For example, R2K and Stephen Wolfe have a Worldview that hates Worldview thinking. This is because they are presupposing that reason can start from itself and objectively read reality quite apart from any beginning givens. Their Worldview leads them to hate the idea of Worldview because the idea of Worldview pulls the rug out from under their starting point, their method, and their conclusion.

Wolfe on Worldview Thinking … Worldview Thinking on Wolfe

“Against the autonomy [of man] and its consequent anarchy, the Christian worldview fights with all its strength. Man is not autonomous, but always and everywhere bound to laws not invented by himself, but prescribed by God as rule for human life. In religion and morality, in science and art, in the family, in society and in politics – everywhere there are ideas and norms greater than him, which forms a whole in that all of it finds its origin and existence in the Creator and Lawgiver of the universe.”

~ Herman Bavinck

Stephen Wolfe writes in his usual rant against Worldview thinking;

“We Protestants must stop applying ‘biblical theology’ to questions that can only be understood fundamentally in their own domains. Climate change is not a theological question.

Do carbon emissions warm the earth, or cause more catastrophic weather events? is not a theological question. It’s a question of science, answered through scientific investigation.

Thinking that we can dismiss such questions by appealing to theology has, frankly, made us dumb and also unwilling to enter these fields. Not every question can be answered by simply having the right ‘worldview.'”

Bret responds;

Really…. so somebody’s worldview that teaches that this planet is our only hope isn’t going to have a bias in favor of embracing Global Warming being true as opposed to a Christian whose eschatology (part of a worldview) teaches him that Gen. 8:22 is true and so global warming, as advocated by the Green-Red alliance should be viewed with large amounts of suspicion?

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

I suppose that Christian Global Warming Alarmist could insist that the earth was going to quit remaining because of Global Warming.

Wolfe here, believing as he does in the power of science as fostered by “scientific investigation” refuses to ask, as all Thomists do, “by what standard scientific investigation?” Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet Scientists who used “scientific investigation,” to conclude that summer wheat could be turned in to winter wheat,

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-lysenko-soviet-union-russia/548786/

Anthony Fauci, insisting, “I am the science,” made deathly false claims in the name of “science,” after doing “scientific investigations” into the Covid pandemic. We now know that Fauci like Lysenko was full of shizer.

Wolfe misses the truth that science is only as good as the theology that drives the science. Stephen Wolfe should spend some time reading Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” or Gordon H. Clarks, “Philosophy of Science and Belief in God,” or Vern Poythress’ ” Science and Hermeneutics.”

It may indeed be true in some sense, as Wolfe says, “Not every question can be answered by simply having the right ‘worldview,'” but it is more true to say that no question can be answered correctly by beginning with an errant worldview.

I always find it fascinating that despite Wolfe’s loathing for R2K he has accepted the same principles of R2K. You see, R2K fanboys, like Wolfe, abominate worldview thinking. The linkage between Wolfe and R2K, despite their intramural debate, is the fact that they both believe that autonomous man can enter different fields (science, economics, education, etc.) and by means of autonomous reason, quite apart from presupposing God, come to legitimate conclusions. As such, the Wolfe club and the R2K fanboys together agree that Worldview thinking is a bad thing. The ironic part here is that it is due to their Thomistic worldview that they conclude that non-Thomistic worldviews are bad.

We must constantly remember that science outside the preusppositions that a Christian Worldview requires ends up as Trofim Lysenko and Anthony Fauci science. We must remember our Bahnsen,

“In terms of the Calvinist’s transcendental challenge, the unbeliever’s espoused worldview or philosophy cannot make counting and measuring intelligible, even though the unbeliever continues to count and measure. This is due to the fact that counting involves an abstract concept of law, universals, or order — which contradicts the unbeliever’s view of the universe as a random or chance realm of material particulars. By rejecting God’s Word, the unbeliever would not in principle be able to count and measure things. As it is, unbelievers do engage in counting and measuring, but they cannot give a philosophical accounting of how they can do so.”

Wolfe’s problem when he talks about “questions that can only be understood fundamentally in their own domains,” is to begin with the given that questions can have domains that are isolated from Christian theological givens. There is no domain … no discipline that can make sense of itself outside presupposing Christian theology. Because all domains have to answer theological questions before getting underway (ontology, epistemology, axiology, teleology, anthropology, etc.) all domains/disciplines are theological in their beginning point. If Global Warming (Wolfe’s example) wants to use science the question must be asked of them, for example, “tell me about your ontological beginning premises,” because depending on their ontological premises about the nature, purpose, and role of the cosmos we will get different answers per their scientific investigations.

Respectfully, anybody who thinks that the Christ hating heathen can do “objective” science is just dumb.

Sovereign Predestination & The Beehive/Anthill Social Order

Because fallen man does not believe in a sovereign predestinating God, he therefore must find some other mechanism to provide order, and control in the social order. Most commonly he turns to the State to replace God to do the work of sovereign predestination.

The state, being comprised of fallen men, then provides a sovereign predestination that allows for no individuality. The State, as the sovereign predestinating agent commands and requires absolute conformity by all the individuals in the social order. A fallen social order that locks out the God of the Bible as the sovereign predestinating agent, will always create a beehive/anthill social order. In the beehive/anthill social order all Christian conceptions of “ordered liberty” are eclipsed in favor of “Statist order.” Freedom that isn’t licentiousness completely disappears.

This beehive/anthill social order is reinforced by the reality of the demand for a fallen unity in the social order godhead. The idea here is that wherever the god of the social order is located (usually the state) there one will find a uniformitarian impulse since the social order along with the State is acting as god and all gods are one. That oneness will be expressed via the uniformitarian nature of the social order.

This, provides explanatory power as to why social revolutionary behavior will almost always have the impulse towards social conformity. Here we are mindful of the French Revolution with its “citizen” and with its Phrygian cap. Here we are mindful of the Russian revolution with its “comrade.” Here we are mindful of the Chinese Revolution with its ubiquitous “Mao suit.” In all cases this uniformitarianism in the culture is communicating the oneness of the State/social order god.

One sees, thus, that any social order that locks out the God of the Bible will become a beehive/anthill social order. That is increasingly what is happening in the West as we are constantly degraded in our speech, dress, intelligence, habits and ethnicity to a lowest common denominator vulgarity.

Depart from the God of the Bible and the result is social order ugliness led by a immanent State-god forcing all to conform so as to create a beehive/anthill culture.

Christopher Dawson & McAtee; The Relationship Between Religion & Culture

“The idea that culture is embodied religion runs through Dawson’s writings. According to this view, every culture in its origins has religion at its center, and we may speak of culture as a kind of enfleshment of religion over time. Culture is the sum of ways in which some religion becomes embodied in material forms and patterns of life.”

Christopher Dawson
The Crisis of Western Education
Introduction – Glen W. Olsen

1.) Those who desire to champion two Kingdom thinking can never understand this truth because for them religion/theology belongs in a very circumscribed realm. For two Kingdom chaps religion/theology is one thing while politics, education, arts, family life, philosophy, etc. are all quite different things. Indeed, the two kingdom chaps insist that religion/theology must stay out of these other areas that are the very marrow of culture. Dawson (and Henry Van Til, and all worldview thinkers protested vehemently.

2.) For those with eyes to see all of life, not least of which includes culture, is a window into the soul of those moving through life. From the way a man dresses to the way that they speak to the way that they drive to the foods that they eat are all contributory expressions of the religion/theology they embrace and so animates them. Habits, as well as culture, are the movie screen on which the theology of people(s) is cast.

3.) Because this is true understanding culture grants one the prophetic/predictive ability of what people will do next. This is because people act consistent with their culture/habits. Because that is true one can build on the ability of understanding people by understanding their culture (religion).

4.) This also explains why parents must be careful about the education of their children. The role of the educator is to catechize the student into the religion/theology that is the driving of the curriculum being used. There is no curriculum, nor study, nor textbook that isn’t at the same time inculcating some religion/theology. We would also add that this explains why parents should be careful with the friends they allow their children to make. All potential friends are theology containers. Are those potential friends of your children carriers of the theology/religion that you, as a parent, desire your children to be influenced by?

5.) I note all this fully understanding that Dawson himself believed that Christian culture had a kind of dualism at heart. At this point I believe Dawson was inconsistent with his own project. All of culture is religiously/theologically integrated so as to from one expression of the same religion/theology.