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?

The Totalitarian State & Its Wreckage on Community

“The totalitarian state … wages war against the community, because the community is a powerful rival government. It works to weaken the community, the family, the church, and vocation in order to strengthen its own power.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Inst. of Biblical Law Vol. II – p. 82

Whether it is sodomite marriage, the encouragement of trans-genderism the exploitation of our children, or the pushing of pedophilia, you can be sure that the tyrant state is behind it all pushing the destruction of community, family, and church so as to be without competition in the matter of ruling and governance. It is in the interest of the tyrant state to pursue a social order that maximizes atomistic individuality for where there is atomistic individuality there is no other corporate or covenantal entity which can challenge the god-state.

The pushing of multiculturalism fits in this agenda. Multiculturalism destroys previous community boundaries leaving the individual naked to understand and identify themselves only as against the backdrop of the God-State. Likewise postmodernism and post-postmodernism pushes this agenda for if there is no unifying transcendent truth then each man by their autonomous self decides what is truth for them. This destabilizing of the concept of stable transcendent truth thus feeds into the climate that demands the atomistic individual.

If you believe in family, church, and community the State is your enemy. Not only that but everyone who works for the State is your enemy inasmuch as they keep the beast operative.

This problem now though is complicated by the fact that the Church in the West is just as compromised as every other of our Institutions. Further, the clergy, exceptions notwithstanding, are likewise part of the problem and not the cure.

The flip side of the RJR quote is the necessity to build strong families in strong churches and so being a contributing member to strong communities. This of course requires a shared Christian faith as the adhesive that glues the family/church/community together. There will be no resisting the degenerating and dissolving work of the State or Corporate America or the Lugenpress without a shared faith informing these covenant entities. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Either we hang together or we hang separately.”

In the context of all this remember you are going to be a minority. If you want to fight against atomistic-individualism as coming from all comers in the culture you’ll have to determine you’re going to do it as a member of Gideon’s small army. The fact that they we’re outnumbered by the Normies should not concern us and should only serve to strengthen our brotherhood and reputation in the future.

Keep in mind the well-known lines from the rousing St. Crispin’s Day Speech given by the king in Shakespeare’s Henry V;

‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.’ 

McAtee Contra Dewey Roberts in Defense of Bahnsen and Theonomy

What then are Bahnsen’s fundamental flaws with respect to the law? His emphasis on being obedient to the law in exhaustive detail brings about a possible conceit that such obedience is actually possible for the believer…. The moral law is the rule for the obedience of the believer, but no Christian can perfectly fulfill it. To the unbeliever, the law is a fearful threat of impending doom.”

Dewey Roberts

Federal Vision and Historic Christianity — p. 196

Roberts really jumps the shark in this chapter titled, “Federal Vision and Theonomy,” from his book “Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision.” In this chapter Roberts seeks to tie Federal Vision to theonomy and in doing so Roberts reveals that he is a clown, who on this subject is NOT to be taken seriously.

Keep in mind that I write all of the below as a adamant opponent of Federal Vision.

Regarding the quote above,

1.) Bahnsen never taught the necessity of obedience to God’s law in exhaustive detail. Bahnsen taught the necessity of obedience to God’s law in exhaustive detail in the context of the law’s general equity. Roberts is wrong.

2.) Would Roberts have clergy so emphasize the inability of God’s people to honor God’s law that it becomes possible that God’s people no longer bother even paying attention to God’s law?

3) Bahnsen never came close to teaching that the believer could keep God’s law in its exhaustive detail so that the believer ended up conceited. Bahnsen understood the necessity of the law to convict and expose as well as the necessity of the law as a guide to life.

4.) If I were to avoid preaching on every subject wherein my hearers might possibly come to carnal conclusion I would never preach a word. The same was true for Bahnsen. What people might possibly do upon Bahnsen emphasizing the truth is not the same as what Bahnsen (or anybody) intends for them to do.

5.) Is Robert’s desire that we preach the law in such a way that all believers say to themselves, “Well, since I can never keep God’s law perfectly therefore I shall never try to keep God’s law.” Clearly Roberts preaching on the law so emphasizes the believers inability to keep the law perfectly that it is possible that some people will hear that they shouldn’t ever bother seeking to honor God’s law.

6.) Bahnsen never denied that to the unbeliever God’s law is a fearful threat of impending doom.

Elsewhere Dewey Roberts writes,

“Second, he (Bahnsen) emphasized obedience to the law so strenuously that he often comes close to the dangerous Pelagian spectrum of errors. Pelagius, as we have seen, taught that mankind could live in obedience to God’s requirements. ‘Theonomy in Christian Ethics’ often makes it seem that the believer can fulfill all of God’s laws. There is very little emphasis on the threatening aspect of God’s law…. Concerning the law, Pelagius taught;

‘But we do praise God as the Author of our righteousness, in that He gave us the law, by the teaching of which we have learned how we ought to live.’

 

Pelagius, likewise, almost completely discounted the threatening aspects of God’s law and saw the law as a gracious act of God which revealed the way the righteous should live.”

Dewey Roberts
Historic Christianity & The Federal Vision — p. 197

1.) Look Dewey, just as a woman is either pregnant or not pregnant so someone is either a Pelagian or he is not a Pelagian. The whole idea that someone is “close to the dangerous spectrum of Pelagian errors” is like a woman being close to being pregnant. Either she is or she isn’t. Either Bahnsen is Pelagian or he is not. If he is not then shut your ignorant trap. I mean if you don’t your close to committing libel. (Did you get the joke in that last sentence Dewey?)

2.) I read Theonomy in Christian Ethics. I did not put it down upon finishing it, thinking, “Wow, now I can go out and perfectly fulfill all God’s laws.” So, I guess we should say Dewey, that when YOU read “Theonomy in Christian Ethics” that YOU wrongly came away from it thinking that it SEEMED to teach that the believer could not fulfill all God’s laws.

3.) Now, about that weasel word “seemed.” Seemed to whom? Seemed to whom by what standard? It seems to me that on this score you’re an idiot. But it only seems that way. In reality it might not be that way.

4.) There is little emphasis on the threatening of God’s law in ‘Theonomy in CHRISTIAN Ethics,’ because Bahnsen was writing to Christians. Christians have already been delivered by Christ’s work on the Cross from the threatening of God’s law and so arise as a people who are zealous for good works. Bahnsen in his book is instructing the believers who are zealous for good works as to what those good works look like. As the Heidelberg Catechism teaches Dewey;

Question 91: But what are good works?

Answer: Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8

Tell me Dewey, is the Heidelberg Catechism here, because it does not threaten with the law here, “close to the dangerous spectrum of Pelagian errors?”

5.) I don’t care who talked about “the law as a gracious act of God which revealed the way the righteous should live.” whether it was Pelagius, Socinius, or Fosdick, if they were talking about the law in its usage as a guide to life they were or would have been absolutely correct and for anybody to deny that makes them a full blown antinomian.

6.) And speaking of Antinomianism, honestly Dewey, these criticisms sound to my ear to be the criticisms of someone close to the dangerous spectrum of Tobias Crisp or John Saltmarsh errors.

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.



Rapid Fire Against Classical Liberalism … Four Musings Attacking Liberalism

I.)

Modern Liberalism, like Classical Liberalism by definition is religiously pluralistic. Modern Liberalism insists that all the gods be allowed into the public square. Given this definition no Biblical Christian can be a liberal or can support Liberalism as a social order motif. The Biblical Christian insists that only the God of the Bible be allowed to rule in the public square. This is why chaps like Jeffrey Ventrella, Doug Wilson, Toby J. Sumpter are being disloyal to Christ. Their advocacy for a “muted pluralism,” or a “principled pluralism,” remains pluralism and is a violation of the 1st commandment.

Now, the ironic thing about all this is that Liberalism really isn’t pluralistic, though it certainly sells itself as such. The hidden secret of Pluralism and so Liberalism is that while Liberalism does ostensibly allow all the gods into the public square it is only on the condition that each of them and all of them realize that their authority is always underneath the authority of the singular God of the the social order; to wit, the State. Pluralism (Liberalism) says all the gods are invited into the social order. Pluralism (Liberalism) gives that appearance to fools but at the end of the day Liberalism is just as monotheistic as any religious forming social order you would like to name.

And this is why, for the Biblical Christian, Liberalism as a worldview has to go. Biblical Christians resolve that Classical Liberalism has to go because Classical Liberalism provides a singular God as located in the State’s authority to dictate to the God of the Bible as to how influential He is allowed to be in the public square. For the Christian to support Classical Liberalism is for the Christian to support idolatry.

____

II.)

“For my part, I will start by repudiating all of these tired old forms of “post-liberalism.” Because it will not end any differently than it did the last time.”

Dr. Brian Mattson

Substack Article

One of the “tired old forms of ‘post-liberalism’ that Mattson is rejection is Nationalism. Indeed, the whole article is given over to why Nationalism is evil and how it alone is the reason for two world wars in the 20th century. Of course, in order to conclude that one has to ignore the Internationalism that was seeking to conquer the world. One has to ignore as well that a particular and unique kind of Nationalism arose in the 20th century precisely as a defensive mechanism against the Internationalism being floated by the Bolsheviks. Perhaps Mattson is right that Nationalism has killed its millions but he fails to remember that Internationalism killed its scores of millions.

Mattson sems also to forget in his article that in Genesis 11 the agenda wasn’t Nationalism but it was International Empire and that God’s solution to Babel was on one hand to scatter the effort at Internationalism while at the same time to raise up a confederation of Tribes to be a Nation that would be a light to the Gentiles. Mattson likewise seems to forget that Jesus himself sanctions nations — and by extension nationalism — when, in giving the Great Commission, He commands His Lieutenants to “Disciple the Nations.”

All this anti-Nationalism, issuing forth from Reformed-dom and Evangelicalism is a testimony to a profound misinterpretation of history as combined with a profound misinterpretation of the Scriptures. Sometimes it really seems to be the case that we are being led by the dumbest smart people the Church has ever produced.

It is interesting though, that when the topic turns to the sovereignty of Ukraine, all these post-nationalist pastors (paging Brian Mattson) suddenly become regular Garibaldis shouting “Long Live Ukraine.” Yet, according to them God hates Nationalism for White Christian descendants of Europe.

These WOKEsters laud the post-nationalism of atheists like Klaus Schwab and Pope Francis while at the same time consigning the Calvinist Viktor Orban to the Hate Bin. This is just the kind of thinking one might expect from Team Church. And herein we see the irony of it all. We may be living in a time that has never seen a bigger push towards one World Internationalism and clowns like Mattson are out there hanging on the cord of the tocsin shouting;   BEWARE NATIONALISM.

It’s hard to believe anybody is really that stupid and as such one has to
conclude that there is no reason to think that guys like Mattson aren’t ALL bought-and-paid-for WEF agents. Although since they’re Team Church, no doubt they sold their souls for a criminally meager price. On the other hand maybe they really are just that stupid after all?

Well, I hope that if they have sold their souls they at least received in the bargain a year’s supply of adrenochrome, or maybe they were just happy to know that they were practicing neighbor love. Sometimes getting people to do the right thing is satisfaction enough.

_________

III.)

“For simplicity’s sake, I will explain it in this way: a radical is a complete liberal in the same way that a liberal is a half-radical. A liberal is a radical stopped in his tracks. A radical is a liberal who, by virtue of suitable circumstances, was able to grow to maturity. Or, to put it even more briefly: liberalism is the seed of which radicalism is the fruit.”

Groen Van Prinsterer
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: A Refutation of Liberalism

Liberalism gives birth to Alienism inasmuch as Liberalism alienates the liberal from the idea of objective moral values as seen in the fact that consistent Liberalism allows all religions, with their varying moralities, into the public square.  If there are no objective moral values that eliminate the smorgasbord of other values then all that is left is an alienism from all else besides the sovereign autonomous self that is sovereignly determining which moral values will be embraced. As such the Liberal is alienated from any civilization/culture which does insist on objective moral values that must be bowed to by all peoples. The Liberal is alienated from any idea of transcendent truth. The Liberal is alienated from any notion of an extra-mundane God. The Liberal is alienated from reality. All that is left to the consistent Liberal is his own alienation born of the conviction of the sovereign autonomous self that there are no objective moral values. There is nowhere else to go except to an alienism that supports the Liberal’s instinct that there is no objective moral order to call home.

This leads me to conclude that the idea that Magistrates are not supposed to legislate/teach/require morals and instead just allow people to be free to pursue whatever morality they like (Classical Liberalism) has to be the greatest engine for Atheism ever developed.

As a Christian I am duty bound to oppose living in a pluralistic “free society” that allows for all faiths to ply their wares.

As a Christian, I am against Classical Liberalism.

_________

IV.)

Should Christians desire to win the culture wars against the WOKE cultural Marxists crowd they have to be done with classical liberalism as a worldview and embrace censorship once in power while suppressing ideologies, organizations, and persons who would subvert the Christian vision. In short Christians must practice cancel culture just as is prescribed in God’s Word. In God’s Word if someone, for example, committed a sexual crime their life was canceled. This kind of mindset must be take up again by Christians if they are to defeat those who would practice cancel culture by seeking to economically and personally destroy those who oppose sexual perversion.

The idea of absolute freedom of speech has never been practiced in American History. Early American communities has crimes against taking God’s name in vain. Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchel Palmer threw known communists out of America because of their radical speech and actions that were attempt to overthrow American interests. And today it is no different. Political Correctness does not champion an expansion of free speech. Political Correctness instead exchanges one contextual inhabitation wherein a certain kind of Christian speech dwells for a different contextual inhabitation wherein a certain kind of anti-Christian speech and behavior can dwell. Think of Political Correctness not as broadening the standard for free speech and liberty but rather as introducing a new anti-standard standard for free speech and licentiousness.

To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton we must seek to censor “the thought that stops thought.” We must give up classical liberalism (which was always a myth) and embrace once again God’s Law as the norm that norms all speech and behavior norms.

Now, some will think this sounds harsh and even, dare say it, Puritanical, but keep in mind that this is exactly what is being done to the Christian sense of proper speech, liberty, and decency by the anti-Christ left to the Christian. The anti-Chris left has succeeded in ushering in a liberty that finds kiddies being brought before perverts in order to hear the perverts read during Drag Queen Story Hour. The anti-Christ left has succeeded in brining an “expanded standard” that allows teenage boys to use the girls locker-rooms while the teenage girls are changing. The anti-Christ left has succeeded in shutting down speech that opposes these kinds of things from happening.

Is freedom of speech as wrongly absolutized really something that Christians want to support if it leads to where we are at? We must turn the censoring tables on the enemy. We must quit with the freedom of speech nonsense and begin to censor our enemies just as our Fathers did before us.

The culture war will not be won by aligning with Libertarian who, at least according to their principles have to allow every speech and behavior under the sun (as if that were possible).

If Christians who fancy themselves biblical and so conservative hope to recover anything akin to standards that they need not be embarrassed by then must not only articulate a moral and political vision that are wholesome by God’s standard but they also must suppress and censor and practice cancel culture on individuals, ideologies, organizations, and institutions that subvert our Christian vision.