The Reality And Prevalence Of Linguistic Deception

“Modernists will usually betray pretty clearly that they use Christian terminology before a pagan background . . . Modernism is the use of Christian terms for the purpose of conveying pagan thought . . . All the words that we daily use and give a Christian meaning must now receive a pagan meaning.

Cornelius Van Til

“What Do You Mean?” The Banner, Vol. 67

This is called linguistic deception and we are seeing it ALL THE TIME now. Linguistic deception treats words like eggs which can be cracked open and emptied of their content and then filled with new content. What these people do is they empty words used by Christians that have traditional meanings and then fill them with other meaning.

This is what J. Gresham Machen was fighting in his classic “Christianity and Liberalism.” The premise in that book was that the Liberals were using the same language as the Christians in the Church but they were filling it with such utterly different meaning that the words used were no longer the same words that the Christians had used for centuries. Van Til himself wrote a book titled “Christianity and Barthianism” which teased out the same theme only as applied to Neo-Orthodoxy. Machen complained about this linguistic deception in his “Christianity and Liberalism,” continuously. He complained that Modernists (Liberals) where cracking open the words, emptying out the meaning, and then filling the words with new meaning, while still insisting that they were “Christian,” when in point of fact they were liars, just as the R2K chaps, the FV chaps and the Full Preterist chaps are liars when they do the very same thing.

We see this w/ R2K for example. All R2K fanboys will affirm that Jesus is Lord, but eventually one learns that the word “Lord” for R2K fanboys means “Lord,” except for where Jesus is only “kind of Lord in a spiritual sense.” When the R2K fanboys likewise talk about “covenant” they have so redefined the word “covenant” that it no longer bears any resemblance to previous Reformed definitions of “covenant.” When the R2K “geniuses” talk about God’s law it is a law so redefined that the Westminster divines would never recognize God’s Law vis-a-vis how they dealt with God’s Law.

We see this w/ Federal Vision types. They assert “Justification by faith alone,” and then they teach that there are two justifications and not all who are initially justified are finally justified. What’s the difference between the those who are initially justified and also finally justified and those who are who initially justified but not also finally justified? Well, what else can the difference be but the contributory dynamic of our works to that final justification?

We see this technique in those “Christians” denouncing “Christian Nationalism” insisting that a truly Christian nation has tolerance in the public square for all the gods and that the God of the Bible should not be given preeminence. By tacking in such a way they have along the way redefined idolatry as well.

We see this in Gary DeMar’s full Preterism. They recite the Apostles Creed but when they get to the part about Jesus returning again for the quick and the dead, suddenly that is reinterpreted to mean “returning for the persons of the quick and the dead but not their corporeal and now glorified bodies.

Perhaps it is the case that some of the examples above are not epistemologically self conscious about their lying and so are merely guilty of being useful idiots. However, there are always some who know what they are doing. They know they are playing fast and loose with the language. They know they are being deceptive. They know that they are offering up a stew that would have never passed in centuries past for Christianity and yet they just keep serving it up.

I don’t envy these types on that final day.

Christians & The US Military — A Post From 15 Years Ago

In one of his recent notes R. C. Sproul Jr. asked the question, How would you counsel a Christian young man who wants to serve in our armed forces? His answer when reduced amounted to, Well yes our Government is corrupt to the core but that doesn’t mean that a Christian young person can’t serve in the US military as long as they are given a good stern warning about the dangers of the US government as they are inducted.

This is my response to Jr.

It’s good to know that you would have been perfectly fine with “Christians” joining up w/ Lincoln’s, Sheridan’s, Sherman’s and Grant’s Yankees in order to kill, rape and savage the South.

The US gov’t today is no less evil than it was in the time of Lincoln and those who fight today support an evil cause now just as “Christians” fighting in Mr. Lincoln’s war in 1861 were supporting evil.

Or if we don’t like that example would you have wanted to find yourself telling WW II era  Russian “Christians” that it was perfectly acceptable to join the Bolshevik  military in order to aid and assist the expansion of the Stalinists?

Here is a enlightening comment from Dr. H. Henry Meeter and his book “The Basic Ideas of Calvinism,”

“Among the Christians of the early centuries of Christianity there were many who opposed war, not as a matter of principle, but because it required their entering into the service of a Government which persecuted Christians and demanded worship of idols by the militia. When the Roman Eagle was exchanged for the Cross and the Empire turned Christian, the attitude toward war among Christians underwent a corresponding change.”

So, as the former friend in the previous discussion you allude to I am just returning to the position of the early Church. In principle I don’t have a problem with Military service or fighting in wars. I do however have a problem doing so when the agenda being pursued by the State is to crush all religions before it (including and especially Christianity) for the purpose of establishing a religious pagan global order. This is what is happening today and any person serving in the US military is a instrument serving to the accomplishing of that pagan agenda end.

As far as Lk. 3:14 is concerned I don’t think you are handling that text properly as it is a open question as to what military the soldiers in question were serving. Were they serving in Rome’s military or in Herod’s. Secondly, even if they were serving in Rome’s these are questions coming from people already in the military and not from people seeking to determine whether they should join the military. Thirdly, if Christian soldier did what John the Baptist said it wouldn’t be long until they would be court martialed.

The Bible does not universally forbid serving in the military. Such a interpretation would be Anabaptist. What the Bible does teach is that we are hate that which is evil and cling to that which is good. If the government service puts one in league with evil then joining it to do its bidding is hardly a sign that one is “hating that which is evil.”

Now, I’m not a purist. I quite understand that there are times when the good guy’s white hats are soiled. I understand that one might fight for a government that is soiled. But in this country our government has long moved past soiled. We are Babylon the Whore and we are the ones who are seeking to set up a religious pagan globalistic order.

How any young Christian person can sign up to aid and assist the US Military and its design is quite beyond me. I counsel against it as a undershepherd of Christ.

Of Proxy Wars And Dog Whistles

“Attacks on the West, America, traditional values, the patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and so on are all proxy wars aimed at Christ. And Christians are largely clueless.”

Doug Wilson
Last Letters of the Year
2022

Doug is speaking in the abstract here but when we start looking at the concrete Doug is tweeting a pretty large dog whistle. Concretely speaking, one has to ask who built ‘the West,” and then America? Who are the people that established traditional values, patriarchy, and hetero-normativity?
The answer is that it is the Christian white man who built the West and then America. The answer is that it is the Christian white man who established traditional values, patriarchy, and hetero-normativity.

And the upshot of all this is that the ultimate proxy war aimed at Christ that Doug speaks of can not be successful unless that proxy war successfully destroys the Christian white man.

And what that means, in turn, is that Doug should be defending not only the West, America, traditional values, patriarchy, and hetero-normativity in the abstract but Doug should also stop with his “race isn’t real” bilge and start defending the Christian white man whom God, out of His pure grace, called to build a civilization where patriarchy, traditional values, and hetero-normativity became the norm.

And maybe Doug could also admit that the attack against these things has, historically speaking, come from one particular and concentrated direction.

By Today’s Standards Jesus Was A Racist

And He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”   Matthew 15:26

Dogs (κυναρίοις). A contemptuous diminutive, rendered by Wickliffe, “whelpies,” or, as we might say, “curs.” This was the term applied by the Jews to the Gentiles, even as Turks nowadays talk of “dogs of Christians,” and as in later times, by a curious inversion, the Jews themselves were generally saluted with the opprobrious name of”dogs.” Some have seen a term of endearment in the diminutive “little dogs,” as though Christ desired to soften the harshness of the expression by referring, not to the prowling, unowned animals that act as scavengers in Oriental towns, but to the petted inmates of the master’s house. But Scripture gives no warrant for thinking that the Hebrews ever kept dogs as friends and companions, in our modern fashion; and our Lord adopts the language of his countrymen, to put the woman in her right position, as one with whom Jews could have no fellowship. To take the blessings from the Church of Israel in order to give them to aliens was to throw them away on unworthy recipients.

Pulpit Commentary

Nine Paragraphs On The Failure Of Natural Law

Fallen man remains God’s man and as Gods man fallen man remains the fingerprint of God. However, fallen man hates God and by extension hates himself as the fingerprint of God. Therefore fallen man both knows God and doesn’t know God. Ontologically fallen man cannot get away from the realities of who he is. However, fallen man uses his epistemological apparatus to deny what he can’t escape ontologically. In Romans this is called “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” This epistemological suppressing the truth in unrighteousness is applied to all of creation and nature since all creation and nature likewise are fingerprinted with the finger of their creator and as such the real meaning and truth of them must be suppressed and denied. The further fallen man becomes consistent with his suppression the more God’s creative reality must be assaulted and denied. This explains the current perplexity where a sitting Supreme Court justice and countless others like her no longer can answer the question; “What is a woman.” Fallen man cannot answer this question because even though fallen man cannot escape ontological reality, he will, by the usage of his epistemological apparatus suppress and deny what he can’t escape from knowing.

When a whole culture is given over to this consistent denial and suppressing of Natural Law givens the result eventually will be death, because all those who hate God love death.

However, cultures strewn with the unregenerate can be stabilized by the presence of believers who are not suppressing reality and who read Natural Law aright because they are reading it through the lens of Special Revelation. In such cultures and in such cases what happens is that fallen man, being inconsistent with his self avowed God denying principles, sneaks into his Christ hating worldview capital from the Christian world and life view. This stolen capital keeps the unbeliever afloat so that, as one example, in a culture leavened with Christ (a Christian culture) they can make marriages that last and are comparatively stable.

In such a culture stabilized by a Christian ethos you would then expect there to arise a philosophy that embraced Natural Law because then the stability of the culture can be ascribed to man who reads NL aright instead of being ascribed to the Biblical beliefs of the Christians in the social order. However, all along, the epoxy of the social order is special revelation.

In such a culture, Christian thinkers themselves may well begin to talk about Natural Law as being the epoxy that allows Christians and fallen man to together create a stable social order. However, if those same Christian thinkers could live long enough lives to see the deterioration of their once stable cultures because the Christ hater began to be more and more consistent with their suppressing the truth in unrighteousness they would then realize that it was not Natural Law that was the epoxy that held the culture together but rather it was the explicit special revelation that was embraced by them and their kind that created a sturdy headwind that allowed the unregenerate to sneak that earlier spoken of stolen capital into their worldviews in order to keep stability in the culture leavened with Christ.

If the above isn’t helpful try to reverse engineer all of this. Imagine growing up in a Cannibalistic adulterous ridden culture where treachery and treason were exalted as genius and so was untouched by Biblical Christianity. Could anyone imagine that such fallen people would ever come up with a Natural law that taught the precepts found in the 10 commandments?

Of course the problem here is never with God’s natural revelation of which Natural Law is a subset. The heavens do indeed declare the handiwork of God. All of creation screams the truth of God. However, fallen man is like the chap who is constantly pushing the buttons in order to find a radio station that doesn’t play “the truth of God’s revelation.” Fallen man, becoming increasingly consistent with his enmity against God (Romans 8:7) would go as far as to rip his own eyeballs out in order to not see the truth contained in Natural Law.

Because of this Natural Law is a weak reed in order to lean on to make law for a particular social order populated by a large majority of people who are being ever more increasingly consistent with their hatred of Christ. We are seeing this daily in the West.

For Christians in the West then, the appeal is not to Natural Law. The appeal is to the politicus usus of God’s perspicuous Law in order to order social order aright. This, in combination of heralding the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to pull back anti-Christ social orders from the edge of the abyss. Appeals to Natural Law will only hasten our nearing, ever nearing, to the final fall.