Away With This Move Back To Natural Law

“The citadel of Greek thought, or Renaissance philosophy, & of the Enlightenment has been called by Peter Gay, the great historian of the Enlightenment who also is a great champion of it, simply this; “The autonomy of critical thought.”
 
What does this mean? It means that when man exercises his reason as he approaches anything, and especially in the processes of education, man’s reason plays the role of God. For us, as Christians, reason is extremely important, but we believe in reason, not as God, but as reason…. Enlightenment faith believed that man’s reasoning, philosophy, education had to be omnipotent, autonomous, or it was nothing.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Education and the Autonomy of Thought

Thanks much to the efforts of Dr. Stephen Wolfe there has, in the recent past, been a push to restore that great whore of Natural Law so as to be sitting, once again, on the throne of epistemology. This despite the fact that it was the Enlightenment that was famous for its appeal to “right reason and natural law” as the means to answering the question of “how do I know what I know.”

Indeed it was the Enlightenment and Natural Law that gave us muck and mire we are currently stuck in by championing as a main principle, “Egalitarianism.” Henry James Sumner Maine, a 19th century legal scholar wrote, on this score;

“There cannot, I conceive, be any question that to the assumption of the Law Natural we owe the doctrine of the fundamental equality of human beings.”

It is this Natural Law … the Natural Law that was championed by the French Philosophes and Revolutionaries, which included egalitarianism that is making a comeback among a new generation of pseudo-intellectuals.

Natural Law suffers from the condition of only being as good as the presuppositions with which one begins. The man whose reason begins by valuing sodomy and pedophilia will easily conclude that, lo and behold, Natural Law teaches sodomy and pedophilia. Similarly, the man whose reason begins by valuing Scripture will find Scripture validated everywhere by Natural Law. His problem however, will be that he is positing the strength of God’s revelation on the foundation of his autonomous reasoning as opposed to founding his reason (which is never autonomous) on God’s revelation.

The Natural Law chaps seem to believe that folks can look out upon reality and quite apart from any fallen biases can begin to read the proper nature of things just by the use of this presumed unbiased reasoning. However, this stands in contradiction to God’s special revelation. If these Natural Law types would refers to God’s special revelation first as opposed to referring to Natural Law first there they would read that “the heart is deceitfully wicked above all things.” As such man never looks out upon creation and reasons in an unbiased manner. As the saying goes, “Man has a ox to gore” and that ox is to read all things in terms of himself as the highest and best interpreter.

Natural law aficionados have failed to take seriously the noetic effects of the fall on the mind of fallen man, and as such they are denying the doctrine of “total depravity” with their precious (gollum gollum) doctrine of Natural Law. Indeed, it is not to much to say that the Church’s embracing over the centuries of Natural Law has been one of the greatest boondoggles of the Church in her entire history.

John Dewey in his book Experience in Education, says that man must learn to set his own standards, his own ideals, in terms of himself, as the ultimate criterion.  This is exactly what the Natural Law attaboys are promulgating when they advocate for homo mensura (man the measure). The idea that fallen man will create a just and Christ honoring social order by relying on his autonomous ability to read Natural Law is right up there with the idea that Ph.D. clergy from Reformed denominations are trustworthy men from which to garner advice.

Fan boys of Natural Law think that they are avoiding presuppositions but they have instead merely embraced the presupposition that fallen man has no bias and can indeed act in a neutral fashion as a autonomous free agent. They have returned us to De Cartes by positing that the thinking self is the highest point of reference. This gives us, just as it gave De Cartes, subjectivism. What Natural Law does is it takes the subjective (fallen man) fills him and his thinking with helium so that his thinking becomes a transcendent something and then labels that helium filled subjective as his “objective” naming it with the name of “Natural Law.” The “objective” that the Natural Law man has is a subjective that has been given the status of objectivity. It is a subjective objective.

We would be better served by remembering Van Til  on this score;

“If God exists, there are no brute facts. If God exists our study of facts must be the effort to know them as God wants them to be known by us. We must then seek to think God’s thoughts after him. To assume that there are brute facts is therefore to assume that God does not exist.”

There are no facts that can be known truly as independent of God. Fallen man is by definition someone who seeks to be a knower independent of God. He uses Natural Law to proclaim that all facts are brute facts until he, as fallen man, gives them meaning and coherence. He can know apart from and without God just by the use of right reason and natural law. But, without God, pray tell what is the standard for this thing called “right reason,” and apart from God how does Natural Law have any objective meaning whatsoever?

Natural law, when it “works” is a classic example of robbing capital from a Christian worldview and importing into a pagan concept in order to get it off the ground. Natural Law can only work as a reasoning mechanism if one presupposes the God of Christianity to begin with but if one is going to presuppose the God of Christianity then why not go all the way and presuppose that God’s law as found in special revelation? Why presuppose instead man’s epistemological ability to start from his fallen self and by the use of his right (right by what standard?) reason properly cogitate about the nature of reality?

Save yourself of presupposing yourself as your own God and flee Natural Law theory.

The Storm Is Breaking

In a letter former President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend concerning the 1820 Missouri compromise, which Jefferson perceived as an infringement on states’ rights. Jefferson wrote that the Compromise, came to me “like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.”

For Jefferson the compromise was a portent of what eventually came to pass 41 years later with the war of Northern Aggression.

Being able to read the signs of the times is not always easy. However, one does not need to be a Thomas Jefferson to know that the earth is currently moving under our feet. This is true in a number of fields and disciplines but it is especially true in the putatively conservative church where the lack of genuine conservatism is now being exposed in spades.

In the last few years those denominations considered “White Hat” denominations have revealed that their hats are more gray than white. The PCA could not condemn side-B sodomites in their midst. The OPC first had kittens about a potential but unconfirmed racist at one of their recent General Assemblies. They later found out it was a false alarm but not before accusations were flying thicker than flies on cow paddies. Then later the OPC shanghaied Michael Spangler for the grievous sin of calling a she wolf a “She-wolf.” Word squirreled back to me that one of the Presbyteries in one of these White Hat denominations that they ordained a candidate who boldly asserted his embrace of Socialism. Given Red Karl Truman’s embrace of socialist medicine this is not a wonder.

Not to be outdone the denomination that many at one time thought would be the white knight planting a banner around all conservatives might rally to make one last noble stand is now a laughing stock. The CREC, with its “great man,” Doug Wilson, has demonstrated a defiance against traditional understandings on Christian social order as penned out by the likes of Agustine, Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin and numerous others. This was put on parade in a recent advertisement by Canon Press where the cult Star of Remphan was atop a Christmas tree with the prose, “have yourself a Judeo-Christian Christmas … Israel’s role in the Christmas story.” This was obviously some high leveling trolling against the Ogden, Utah group but one is asking … “At what costs Moscow?” I have had several people tell me that they canceled Canon Press subscriptions because of this stunt. This finds me praying that Doug and his crew will continue with such hijinks.

What has been chronicled above is just a whitman’s sampler of seismic shift that we are currently living through in the “conservative church.” The interesting thing here is that a two generations ago (when I was 25) the Church could get away with this kind of behavior without even it being noticed. However, 2025 is not the same as 1985 and now there is a ground swell of men born after 1985 who are raising the black flag and saying … “We are no longer putting up with this skubala from the clergy gatekeepers.”

You see what has happened is that there has been a kind of awakening. Not the kind of awakening associated with the first great or second great awakening. This is a kind of awakening that not only is embracing Christian truth but is embracing the truth of Christianity long held by Fathers in epochs gone past. This awakening is especially as it pertains to what Christianity looks like as it meets social order realities. This awakening is an awakening to the nobility of the Christian fathers who fought in the Crusades … the Christian Fathers who were colonizers for the glory of God … the Christian Fathers who because they knew the Bagel, kept the Bagel at arm’s length…. the Christian Fathers who knew that Martin Luther King was a con and that civil rights was primarily about Marxism before it was about Christianity. This awakening is not afraid to question the historical veracity of all the details of the Holocaust…. not afraid to call Winston Churchill and FDR  ruddy tyrants, every bit as maniacal and full of blood lust as Stalin. All of these re-examinations of history that this awakening is bringing to pass is based on a embrace of a Christianity that is of a very different species than what the West has concocted since the Endarkenment.

These younger chaps are to the established “Christian” church what the Visigoths at the gates were to Rome once upon a time. There is a cold fear and a hot protest in the James Whites, Doug Wilsons, Joe Boots, Andrew Sandlins, of the ecclesial world. The Dandys in the official White Hat denominations are pissing in their boots afraid that one of these warriors will show up in church upsetting the peace that has come with congregations embracing government schools, tyrannical governments, and limp-wristed clergy.

The shibboleths are fixin’ to fall and when they fall great will be the crash. Shane Anderson in a recent piece noted some of these Shibboleths that are crashing on the cascading protests of those belonging to another generation besides our clues conservative class;

“Israel is our greatest ally; there’s no Jewish conspiracy to corrupt Christian societies.”

“There’s no real sin of gluttony, and we’re not being poisoned.”

“Working out is gay.”

“Christian men are the problem, women are always victims.”

“Diversity is our strength, and race isn’t real.”

“Humility means doing what your rebellious parents want.”

“If people get upset at you, you have been unwise.”

“Stop wasting time by talking about these things, they don’t matter because they don’t matter to me.”

Men are waking up and in their awakening they are in no mood to be told to go back to sleep by those who have anointed themselves as “the Reformed Gatekeepers.” In this climate Gatekeepers will no longer work because everyone has access to the sources. With the proliferation of information its not as if we need people who can claim the status of “the keepers of the wisdom of the ages.” It’s all at anybody’s fingertips who has the time and desires to delve into the books

To be honest, in all of this I am being intoxicated with the liquor of being vindicated. I’ve been screaming ruddy murder for decades along with a handful of blokes my age who share my convictions, about these same kind of things that those a generation or two behind us are now rightly screaming about but our reward as been a prophet’s reward. We have been treated with the mailed backhand — the same way that Spangler has recently been treated, but without the widespread sense of injustice that has accompanied Spangler’s “spanking.”

So, I am satisfied by all this but still I can pray that the establishment awakens before the tidal wave completely sweeps them away.

For those of you in the Church observing all this or just becoming aware of this battle royale you will not be able to avoid the war. The conflict is upon you whether you would wish it to be so or not. The best thing you can do is seek to que up to speed. The pursuit of personal peace and affluence will no longer serve as a harbor for safety. The storm is breaking in the Church and all across every other front and nobody is going to escape the changes the weather is bringing.

If the visible Church does not alter its course it will either go into eclipse or it will remain even more of a tool for the luciferian social order that we are currently living under. Regardless of which they choose, the young blokes who are in attack mode are not going to retire from this battle.

Y’all know who I’m pulling for.

McAtee Contra Rev. Jim Cassidy’s Putrid R2K

“The anabaptist view of church and state is not two kingdom, but one. They want to apply Christian morality to the sphere of the magistrate. And since Christ said love your enemy and turn the other cheek, the state is to be wholly pacifist.

Unfortunately, the anabaptists are sorely mistaken. The Reformed have always recognized the legitimate role of the state to use coercive force, and to punish according to the lex talionis principle. They also recognize that Christian morality in love of enemy and forgiveness of sin is required of believers.

How do these two things sweetly comply? Only according to a Reformed version of two kingdom theology as you find, for example, classically defined in James Bannerman.

The basis and powers of church and state are distinct. The church’s basis is love and service empowered by the Word. The state’s basis is retributive justice empowered by the sword.”

Rev. Jim Cassidy

OPC Minister

Once again we see the Clergy get matters all bollixed up. Really, are we even surprised any longer?

1.) AnaBaptists, not wanting anything to do with”the world” were clearly two Kingdom. They understood that there was their own community and that there were those who were not part of their community. They believed one set of principles guided their own Kingdom they lived in while believing that another set of principles governed over those “outside the faith.” Can you say “Two Kingdoms” Jim?

This is the same reasoning R2K uses. There is one set of principles for the church realm, as set by God’s special revelation, and another set of principles for everywhere else as set by Natural Law. The only difference is that R2K calls that realm ruled by Natural Law “common,” whereas the Anabaptist call that realm not ruled by their community, “wicked.” In the end, R2K’s “common” looks a great deal like the Anabaptist’s “wicked.” We only have a changing out of the word used.

Now to be sure, inside the Anabaptist Kingdom the Anabaptists believed that God’s word applied to all matters but as they were (and are) terrible heretics are we surprised that they got that all bollixed up? All because the heretical Anabaptists misapply God’s Word to their living in their communities is that reason to think that God’s Word can’t be properly applied to all areas of life. Cornelius Van Til put it this way;

“All proper human activity is therefore activity within the Kingdom of the Christ.”

CVT

Christianity and Barthianism — p. 228

And again;

“You cannot expect to train intelligent, well-informed soldiers of the cross of Christ unless the Christ is held up before them as the Lord of culture as well as the Lord of religion.”

Cornelius Van Til

I quote CVT here because Cassidy likes to think of himself as a CVT fan. Cassidy clearly doesn’t understand CVT.One more from Van Til’s nephew;

The radical, totalitarian character of religion is such, then, that it determines both man’s cultus and his culture. That is to say, the conscious or unconscious relationship to God in a man’s heart determines all of his activities, whether theoretical or practical. This is true of philosophy, which is based upon non-theoretical, religious presuppositions. Thus man’s morality and economics, his jurisprudence and his aesthetics, are all religiously oriented and determined.

Henry Van Til
Calvinist Concept of Culture

2.) Cassidy is wrong to suggest that in the Reformed view the Magistrate has to always follow Lex Talionis in adjudication. That is clearly seen in Reformed Magistrates practicing commutation and pardoning for those who, according to the Lex Talionis, should received punishment. That this is Biblical is seen in Jesus parable of the unforgiving debtor where the Magistrate forgives the debtor his great debt.

3.) Love of enemy and Lex Talionis doth sweetly comply when in each case we exercise what is required of God’s law towards both our enemies and towards those who are before the magistrate, inasmuch as we do unto them what is assigned to us in our particular jurisdictions.

4.) When the State gives retributive justice empowered by the sword it is at that time practicing love and service empowered by the Word.

That is not to deny that Church and State have distinct functions. It is true that the Church proclaims grace while the State provides justice but there is false dichotomy in Cassidy’s thinking. When the Church practices discipline there is justice going on and when the State practices discipline there is love and service going on. It is merely that these look different in different jurisdictional realms. The State does not have the keys and the Church does not have the sword but they still, in a Biblical order, doth sweetly comply.

Cassidy’s R2K is heterodox at best.

Are The Jews Still The Chosen People? …. Are the Jews Today Really Jews?

Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

Mt. 12:31

You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did.

Acts 7:51

Read in the context of the unfolding of Redemptive history these passages should be coupled together. In Matthew Jesus communicates that Blasphemy against the Son will be forgiven but blasphemy against the Spirit would not be forgiven. That Israel blasphemed the Son is clearly seen in their crucifying Jesus and by screaming…. “His blood be upon us and our seed.”

When we get to acts we see Stephen saying that Israel is now blaspheming the Holy Spirit as seen in always resisting the Holy Spirit. Throughout the book of Acts we see Israel blaspheming the Holy Spirit by rejecting the messengers of Christ. At this point there are multiple witnesses to this blaspheming of the Spirit.

In light of this Blasphemy of the Spirit, in AD 70 Christ serves divorce papers on Israel and cuts them out of the Olive Tree (Romans 11). Before that time the Israel of God among the Hebrews are gathered into Christ and so when the divorce papers are served in AD 70 it is true what was predictive in Romans 11 that “all Israel was saved.”

This reading fits with the multitudinous passages in the New Testament that communicate that God was done with (divorced) Israel. First we have the parable of the non-productive fig tree (Luke 13:6-9) which finds the servant conceding to cut down the barren fig tree (Israel) if it does not produce fruit after a year (it didn’t). Then there is Jesus cursing the fig tree, saying; “May you never produce fruit again (Matthew 21:18ff) .”

The most clear indication that God was done with the Jews is seen in Matthew 21:33-46. Here it is clearly and unmistakably taught that the Jews are divorced and cast out.  In the story a landowner plants a vineyard, lets it out to farmers, and moves far away (33). The landowner represents God and the farmers represent the Jews (45). When harvest time comes, the owner of the vineyard sends servants to collect his share of the fruit, but the farmers beat, kill, and stone these servants (35). These servants represent the prophets (Luke 11:47) God sent to the Jews through the centuries, and how the Jews mistreated such prophets (Luke 13:34). Lastly the landowner sends his son to collect, but the farmers kill him also. This son represents God’s son Jesus Christ of course.

Jesus asks his audience in verse 40 “When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?” His audience correctly answers “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen ….” Jesus reaffirms this conclusion by saying in verse 43 “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” Precipitated by their longtime disobedience, with the final straw being the killing of the son of God (Matt 23:37-38), the kingdom of God would be taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles. In AD 70 the Lord of the vineyard came in His judgment coming and He miserably destroyed Israel, scattering them to the wind in the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem. In this judgment coming of the Lord Christ the Jews as a people were eternally divorced by God never to be grafted in again to the Olive Tree as a nation. Certainly, individual Jews can be, and praise God are saved but as a people God is done with the Jews.

So read Redemptive Historically, the blaspheming of the Holy Spirt was committed by Israel and they were cut off for that blasphemy (much as the faithless generation in Canaan was cut off from the promised land), just as Jesus had prophetically spoken as recorded in the NT.

As such we know that to interpret Romans 11 as still being future to us about a great ingathering of the Jews is a misinterpretation of the passage.  The ingathering of Jews spoken of there in Romans 11 was future to Paul but past to us and indeed throughout the book of Acts, starting with Pentecost, we do see many Jews grafted back into the olive tree of Romans 11, and in the end all of Israel who was the Israel of God was saved before that AD 70 return.

Also, one has to consider the mistake it is to read Romans 11 as if it referred to physical Israel because in Romans 9 God had clearly stated that “not all of Israel is of Israel.” So, this idea that God still has work to do with the Jewish nation that is tied to His eschatological clock is just bollix. National Israel is in no way tied to God’s eschatological clock, though as postmillennialists we believe that what Jews remain upon the coming of Christ many will be saved as being part of other nations.

We note this final thought above due to the fact that it is an open question as to how many genetic Jews exist yet today. The book, “The Thirteenth Tribe” by Arthur Koestler, as one example, questions whether those whom we call “Jews” today are really, in fact, genetically Jews. Most of them seem to be from Khazaria or are Edomites. The ironic thing is that lately there are reports that the Palestinians in Israel who are being slaughtered by “the Jews” are indeed more Semitic than the Israelis killing them. Of course if it is true that those called “the Jews” today are Khazaria then the whole infrastructure of much of Evangelical and evene Reformed theology has the ground cut out from underneath of it. For the Reformed, if this is true, they will definitely need to re-adjust their interpretation of Romans 11.

From The Mailbag — Could You Give A “Back Of The Napkin” Explanation Of Kinism?

“Hey brother, when you have a minute could you sketch out for me a quick ‘back of the napkin ‘ explanation of kinism and what the opponents of kinism are all twisted up about. Just haven’t been able to nail it down. No rush, I know you are with family and it is Advent, so whenever you are inclined.

Thanks.”

Kyle Patrick

Hello Kyle;

Thanks for asking.

Remember, per your request this is a back of the napkin kind of explanation. Much more could be said.

Kinism is the doctrine that God, by His creative and providential work has set men in families, clans, tribes, and nations and because of that there is a natural and biblical requirement to prioritize and order our loves in just such a fashion.

Kinist do NOT deny that they also have responsibilities to those who share a common faith who are not in those concentric circles of natural responsibilities but they recognize that normatively we are to provide for our own relatives and especially for members of our own household, realizing that the man who does not prioritize his own Kin has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.

Further, Kinists do NOT believe that conversion strips a man of his race, nation, tribe, clan, or family. Instead, Kinists believe that grace restores nature and as such conversion and sanctification lifts us to be the best sons, daughters, fathers, husbands, Uncles, Aunts to our own people that God in creation intended us to be.

In brief Kinism is anti-Gnosticism.

Finally, people (especially Christian Clergy it seems) are all tied up into knots and hysterical about Kinism because;

1.) They were educated in Government schools and so have bought into the egalitarian swill.

2.) They think the civil rights era was all about Christianity when in point of fact it was all about Marxism.

3.) They are afraid of the peer pressure. Their children might not be able to marry just the right people. They might not get the promotion at work. They might get shunned by friends for believing Christian truths held for every generation by Christians until 1950 or so. Most people are basically cowards.

4.) They follow the crowd.

I hope this helps Kyle. If you have more questions I’d be glad to field them if I am able.