Form and Matter

Greek Philosophy held that truth was arrived at dialectically by putting form and matter in dialectical tension. Both form and matter were each seen as being equally ultimate and as being limiting concepts to one another. In other words, if you had only form you would lose matter and if you had only matter you would lose form so there was a need to force these two equally ultimate opposites to be in relation to one another out of philosophical necessity.

In Greek thought “form” is the structure or essence of an idea and
“matter” is the substance or content of that idea. In Greek thought the forms existed in an “upper story” of reality while matter existed in the everyday world which was considered the “lower story.” Forms were the realms of the universal ideals of reality while matter was the particular instantiations of those ideals. For example the ideal of a “Horse” existed in the universal upper story of “forms” but the particular examples of horses existed in the lower story. So, the forms existed in a non-corporeal ideal realm and served as the antitype realities to which the imperfect types in the realm of matter could alone find their correspondence.

The problem that philosophy sought to handle was how “form” and “matter” could be brought into relation to one another. How could one get the particular to participate in the universal or how could one get the universal into the particular?

Aristotle sought to use dialecticism to bring the two in contact with one another. Refusing to surrender form to matter or matter to form Aristotle demanded dialectical tension between the two, emphasizing a unity arrived at via anthropocentric means. The idea of dialectical tension is explained in putting opposites in relation to one another in such a way that they can each satisfy the extreme of the other.

What Aristotle did, following Plato, was to objectify the previously subjective State to serve as his “form/idea/mind or spirit,” meanwhile the State, as the basic agency in society, and serving as the saving order, was the Aristotelian Universal that was brought into dialectical tension with individual people and the natural world which served as the matter to the States form. In doing so individuals and the natural world found their meaning in the State. In the Universal state as form all particulars (matter) lived, moved and had their being. In the State as Universal form the particulars of the natural world (matter) would be brought into meaningful relation.

In all this Aristotle emphasized the particulars (matter) more than the previous platonic arrangement which found the universals (form/ideas/spirit) emphasized over the particulars. Remember, this arrangement for both Plato and Aristotle was dialectical and as such the exact point of tension could indeed easily differ.

The difference between Plato and Aristotle is this regard is captured in the painting “School of Athens” by Raphael.

https://www.alamy.com/plato-and-aristotle-school-of-athens-raphael-image386295694.html?imageid=9A29E562-981A-448A-80EF-C089055AE247&pn=1&searchId=2e8a3c87a8c90b8ab541d104d9d4cdbc&searchtype=0

You will notice in this painting that Plato is seen pointing upwards. Raphael is communicating here that Plato’s emphasis is on the Universals (the Forms). On the other hand Aristotle is pointing downwards, communicating his preference for matter (particulars). Both kept these in dialectical tension with each serving as a limiting concept of the other.

Plato, like Aristotle after him, stipulated that the State was where unity was realized between form and matter. The implication of both Platonism and Aristotelianism was a totalistic state that today we might call a “totalitarian order” where “everything is inside the state and nothing is outside the state.”

Because Plato emphasized  the universals (forms) there was sure to follow those who would out Plato, Plato, and sure enough the neo-Platonists would in time emphasize the forms so much that the universals began to lose contact with the particulars (matter). Because of this the neo-Platonists ended up saying that matter didn’t matter and so began to despise the particulars (flesh, nature, the corporeal) and became aesthetics. As in the church this was the base of the Gnostic heresy that so early and so often bedeviled the Church. These Gnostics, as inspired by philosophical platonism, would tend to disregard the flesh and would flee into the desert to deny themselves of any creature comforts. These desert fathers would go without bathing, without eating, and without sleep in order to prove how superior they were in holiness. Later we read of the traveling flagellants who, smitten by this platonic/Gnostic virus, would flagellate themselves with whips till their bodies bled.

This Gnostic impulse has traveled with the Church throughout the centuries. One can locate it not only in many of the Early Church Fathers but one sees it in Church History in the Bogomils, the Albigensians, the Cathars and the Anabaptists. One sees it in the Church today in many expressions of Pietism and it is seen in the Reformed world in the teaching of Radical Two Kingdom theology. Whenever you find the insistence that there is a hard impenetrable barrier between a “common realm” and a “grace realm” there you find Platonic thinking on Form and Matter happening. Whenever you find the Anabaptist warning their children about “the English” or about the worldliness of automation there you find Platonic thinking.

Biblical Christianity alone solves this problem. In Biblical Christianity God is the Form that gives definition to all matter and by knowing God in Christ in His Word we increasingly, but never perfectly, come to know the realm of matter as God knows the realm of matter. If, “in God we live and move and have our being,” then we have the beginning point for all true knowledge of matter since God is the creator. So, for Christians God is the form that gives meaning to all matter and only by knowing God in His Word can we know particulars. God is not only Creator and Redeemer but He is also the meaning maker and meaning keeper. Nothing can be genuinely known of the realm of matter without knowing the God of the Bible. So, we see here why Francis Schaeffer taught that “mind (Form) is primary.” We might say that God is the form that forms all matter. Christians, thus, have no need to reason dialectically having a univocal point of contact for all our analogical thinking.

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The Dhimmitude Of The West

The word “Dhimmitude” is of fairly recent origin as brought forth from the pen of Muslim scholar Bat Ye’or. Bat Ye’or took the Arabic word Dhimmi, which means “Non-Muslim” and slammed it together with the suffix “tude” from “servitude” to give us Dhimmitude. Its meaning thus is the permanent state or condition of subjection of Non-Muslims (particularly Jews and Christians) living under Muslim rule. Living under dhimmitude requires the dhimmis to either accept their status of second class citizens or failing that face forced conversion, enslavement, or death.

Naturally enough, those living under dhimmitude live in both fear and silence. The live in fear that they might somehow hit the tripwire of insufficient subjection to their Muslim lord and they live in silence because silence is the best way to insure that one doesn’t hit that trip wire of insufficient subjection. Obviously, living in such a manner in such a culture brings it with the prohibition to criticize the culture, manners, or customs of the Islamic culture.

The idea of dhimmitude is not unique to Muslim cultures. Anybody who has read about life behind the Iron Curtain during the reign of the Communists knows that those who lived in Eastern Europe and Russia during the Cold War were also kept under Marxist dhimmitude.

Once dhimmitude is established generationally it is hard to even notice the servitude that one is living under. One becomes so conditioned to the status of second class citizen one just owns it as a way of life. The minds of people who have lived generationally in dhimmitude have the minds of dhimmis and begin to find it to be a natural condition. In other words, they dhimmis don’t even see their dhimmi-ness.

I submit that something like this has happened in the West. Of course it is not that we are living under the servitude of Islam. (Though you might disagree with me on that if you live in Dearborn, Minneapolis, Columbus, or Lewiston/Auburn Me.) The dhimmitude that the West has been living under and is now living under I submit is the ruling and reigning religion of Cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism might be slapped with different titles. People might call it “political correctness,” or they might call it “Critical Theory,” or they might call it “WOKE,” or they might call it “Multiculturalism” but whatever one calls it, it is clear that we are living under the shadow of this Muslim like dominance. This dominance has folks silencing themselves for fear of being completely ruined.

And well people should have this dhimmi like fear. As someone who decided not to follow the multicultural dhimmi code years ago, I myself know what it is like to have the dhimmi clergy and dhimmi police bring charges against me for infractions against the multicultural dhimmi code. More than that I have seen people leave churches for fear of being associated with someone else in the local congregation of a putatively Christian church who refused to accept his or her dhimmi status.

We Westerners right now are living as dhimmis under dhimmitude. We have learned, whether originally from our time in the classroom, or later during our time in the local Christian church to censor and silence ourselves when it comes to the prevailing maxims of the ruling multiculturalism that we are now living under. Indeed, it may be the case that the only religion that is more totalistic than Islam is the religion of multiculturalism. Indeed multiculturalism is so totalistic, with its central faith demand of tolerance that it refuses to allow the dhimmis to be intolerant of any other and all other religions.

It is our multicultural dhimmitude with its central plank of tolerance that finds us unable to criticize both Zionism and Islam, despite the desperate need for each of these to be criticized harshly. As dhimmis we dare not speak the truth about Zionism and/or Islam because to do so threatens the very fabric of the worldview that now controls the West. One has to understand that to criticize Zionism, Secular Judaism and/or Islam is to, at the same exact moment, to criticize multiculturalism since multiculturalism rises and falls with the ability to be tolerant of all other religions. Any criticism of any religion except Christianity is a criticism of the religion that is ruling us as dhimmis, and that can not be allowed.

Now some might wonder why it is that Christianity is a faith that multiculturalism allows to be criticized by us dhimmis. The reason for that is that Christianity is the only religion that doesn’t have a dog in this fight. It is the Jews who created multiculturalism and so obviously they desire to keep it going as the reigning faith, and it is Muslims that the Jews are using as a hammer to keep the Christian faith down. As such the current multiculturalism, oddly enough, serves the ends of both the Mooselimbs and the Bagels while at the same time keeping the Christian dhimmis down. Also, one has to take into consideration that the cultural gatekeepers who keep Christians in dhimmitude status understand that Biblical Christianity alone has the ability to completely throw off the shackles of dhimmitude. As such any biblical Christian who rises to challenge his or her dhimmitude status is going to be met with all the fury that multicultural gatekeepers can find.

Now, earlier I mentioned Talmudism, Zionism, and Islam as the enforcers of Multiculturalism. We should also include among these three Christian Zionism and Christian Marxism. Right now, one of the greatest enforcers of keeping us in dhimmitude is the conservative Christian denominations. They have reinterpreted Christianity through the lens of dhimmitude and have yielded up a form of Christianity that is compliant with multicultural dhimmitude. That this is the case is seen by the repeated statements put out by the “conservative” denominations over the past decade or so. Just this last summer it was done again by the PCA, ARP, and RPCNA. However, in doing so, they merely are keeping lockstep with previous statements by previous denominations. Such behavior is reflective of the fact that they themselves understand their own dhimmi status and it is reflective of the fact that they want to be enforcers of multicultural dhimmitude along with the Talmudists, Zionists, and Islamists.

We see the modern Reformed church filling this role at every turn. Within the next month, for example, the Reformed church will seek to discipline Rev. Sam Ketcham for daring to rise up to throw off multicultural dhimmitude. Rev. Ketcham is not facing the death penalty as violators of dhimmitude in Islamic countries might if they had been caught violating Islam. Instead Rev. Ketcham faces being defrocked by the ministers of dhimmi in the Reformed church. Such is the way that all those who refuse their dhimmi status are to be treated.

One has to understand that the maintenance of this totalistic religion of multiculturalism has to be maintained at all cost. If the cost is a man’s reputation and good name that is a cost that must and will be paid. If the cost to maintain complete tolerance as required by multiculturalism is the intolerant religions of Islam, Talmudism, and Zionism being set free to build Mosques, to implement Sharia law, to continue to give a pass to the ruinous presence of AIPAC, the ADL, and the SPLC, then that cost will be paid. Multiculturalism requires it and Biblical Christians will learn their dhimmi status or else.

It ought to be clear then from the above that the institutional conservative evangelical/Reformed Church in the West is no longer the friend of Biblical Christians. These denominations and clergy are themselves high Priests of multiculturalism and enforcers of WOKE. That was pretty clear at the recent AMFEST where the great high priest of multiculturalism for Christians, Doug Wilson, stepped forward to speak to the necessity to remain tolerant of Zionist conspiracies.

This is where we are at in this moment. We either return to Biblical Christianity with its proper intolerance for antiChrist religions or we continue to live as dhimmis in the service of the state religion of multiculturalism. There is only one cure for where we are at right now and that cure is courage. People have to resolve that they are no longer going to live as dhimmis under the reign of multiculturalism with its tolerance for every religion under the sun except for a muscular Biblical Christianity. People have to resolve to bear any burden and to pay any price to be delivered from this antiChrist totalitarianism that we are currently living under as dhimmis.

Diana West, Lawrence Auster, & McAtee On The Consequences Of WW II

“Having failed to destroy the democracies by making Nazi war, then, Hitler may have unwittingly managed to destroy democracies by effecting a post-Nazi peace in which the act of pledging allegiance to the flag itself, for example, would practically become an act of nationalist supremacism – racism, even; bigotry too. Quite suddenly, it didn’t matter whether the culture in question led to a reign of terror, or to liberty and justice for all. The act of maintaining or defending the culture, or, ultimately, even defining it — whether through unabashed opposition to communist expansionism, purposefully selective immigration practices, or even sticking to the Western canon – became confused with and condemned as an exclusionary and, therefore, evil chauvinism. In this way, having won the great victory, the Allies lost the will to survive. Writer Lawrence Auster has explored this theme.

‘Having defined the ultimate evil of Nazism, not as the ultimate violation of the moral law as traditionally understood, by as the violation of liberal tolerance, postwar liberalism then set about dismantling all the existing ordinary particularisms of our own society (including in the case of the EU, nationhood itself) in the name of preventing a resurgence of Nazi-like evil. This was the birth of political correctness, which sees any failure on our part to be completely open to and accepting of the Other – and thus any normal attachment to our own ways and our own society – as the equivalent of Nazism.'”

Diana West
The Death of the Grownup – pg. 191

1.) What West describes here is a description of the triumph of Communism over the West as a result of WW II. The post-Nazi peace she describes is, in point of fact, a peace driven not by a over-reaction to Hitlerian National-Socialism but a peace driven by Communist triumph. The Western “Democracies” got in bed with Stalin and the result was a Communist peace at the end of the war that resulted in all that West describes above. Consider that it has always been a descriptor of Communism to flatten out all distinctions. This flattening of all distinctions brought on by the Bolshevik Communist victory in WW II is what Lawrence above refers to as “dismantling all the existing ordinary particularisms.” This dismantling that occurred as a result of WW II was not a matter of Hitler “unwittingly managing to destroy democracies by effecting a post-Nazi peace” but rather a matter of the Communists – in Russia and in the Democracies – wittingly setting loose a virus that would destroy those democracies.

In brief, where we are at now, is not a matter of something that accidentally happened as a result of WW II, rather where we are at now is a matter of being purposefully designed and pursued by the Communists in the West in the US government and US universities.

2.) Note above that while Diana West properly notes that exclusionary practices that favor Western traditions in culture are now condemned as bigotry and evil chauvinism what remains just as vibrant as ever are the exclusionary practices. The habit of exclusion has not disappeared in the West with the triumph of Communism and political correctness. We are every bit exclusionary today as we were before WW II. The difference is that our exclusionary vision today now chooses different exclusions. What has been excluded today is a White Christian patriarchal culture and that in the name of an anti-bigotry inclusionary vision. We are not bigoted against particularity of any sort save the particularity that pursues a different particularity then the particularity of the New World Order (Babelism … Alienism … Oikophilia, etc.).

3.) The reason that Christian Nationalists today as so adamantly opposed is due to the fact that they want to pursue a different set of exclusionary practices than the anti-Christ One Worlders desire, but have no doubt, both the anti-Christ One Worlders and the Christian Nationalists are every bit as exclusionary in their vision of a desired culture. The reason that so many people find Christian Nationalism to be such a threat is that the Communist anti-Christ one world vision has been fed to us, as a people, morning, noon, and night, for every generation since the Communist victory in WW II.

4.) IF, having a normal attachment to our own ways and our own society  is now seen as “Nazism,” as Auster writes above, then we should just own the fact that we are Nazis. If that is the way that the Communist are going to define Nazism then we need to get over being called “Nazis,” because that is what they are going to call us all day long. It is clear that to a Communist any proper love for a particular people, particular place, and a muscular Christian faith, is now routinely called “Nazism.” We should laugh at the pejorative the way Nick Fuentes laughed at Piers Morgan.

5.) We need to understand that our Communist enemies today desire to do to us what they did to the Germans when they triumphed over them in WW II. This is not a polite disagreement. This is a fight for life and death. Those people intend to destroy us. They are beginning with seeking to ruin people economically and professionally but if they get their way eventually they will move beyond “ruin” to “dead.”

Children In Adult Bodies

The paradox of the 21st century life is that in the following of previous obvious and once reflexive middle-class manners and mores has now become, oddly enough, an act of rugged individualism that is found to be suspicious. This is so true that the extent to which the once previous standard behavior, that was considered obviously adult and mature, is now considered the behavior of the oddball or the maverick. It is now surreal to our current forever adolescent population to behave in way in which our Christian great-grandparents thought to be distressingly obvious.

For example, our great-grandparents would not attend worship services without dressing so as to be in the presence of the King. Our great-grandparents would be shocked with the casualness in which we enter into worship. Today, in many churches, if a young lady were to wear a modest dress into worship with an appropriate hat for a head-covering most folk would see it as an act of “rugged individualism,” or of “being quirky.” Yet, I have boyhood memories of this once standard behavior of all the women in the church.

For example, what passes for worship today in your average church, complete with praise band, 10 – 15 minute self-help talks from the clergy that we are told are “sermons”, coffee baristas serving up hot joe just outside the sanctuary, all point to adolescents being in charge and running the show. Years ago, while on holiday I attended such a church where the young ladies in the praise band were wearing skirts so short that I’m sure young men attended in hopes of seeing the female band members raise their hands high in praise.

For example, some years ago in Farmland, Indiana (population 1300) the Ladies’ Bridge Club bard its 70-90 year old female bods in a pinup calendar in order to save a courthouse that was a wee bit older than they. It’s hard to imagine our great-grandmothers coming up with that idea. It is more likely that anybody who came up with the idea would be shunned by the Ladies’ Bridge Club of Farmland, Indiana.

For example, the phenomenon of middle age crisis (which I’ve seen a great deal of during my years in the ministry) finds middle age and older adult seeking to reach back to be “young again.” The ironic thing here though is that the attempt to remain “forever young,” by adults of all ages has made the idea of “mid-life crisis” passe. I mean, how can an adult reach back to be young again, when they have never grown up to begin with?

For example, can you really imagine your great-grandparents take your grandparents (when your grandparents were children) to Queer-Time story hour at your local community library? Now the rare few who put up a protest are seen as “prudes” and “puritanical.”

For example, a decade or so ago I overheard a couple Mom’s talking about their teenager sons. One of the Mother’s noted, while giggling, that she had discovered a condom in her son’s jeans while doing the laundry. That Mother’s Grandmother’s response to such a incident doubtless would have been to call the girl’s parents her son was dating in order to warn them. This woman was laughing while she was relating the incident to her friend. She thought it humorous. The grown-up was nowhere to be seen.

What we need to keep in mind here is in the attempt to remain forever adolescent we, as a people, have jettisoned the Christian mores and standards that once defined what it meant to be a healthy adult, and, as said earlier, acting in a way that was considered standard Christian behavior by our Christian forebears is now seen as odd, quirky … even surreal.

What we have experienced in our race to the bottom of the drain is the disappearance of the adult, or perhaps better put, the re-definition of what it means to act like an adult. This pursuit has been a long time coming. Perhaps one could trace its beginning to the “burning of your bra” movement. Perhaps one could trace the disappearance of the adult to the presence of the passage of no-fault divorce laws that turned marriage into a matter of children playing grown up. Instead of being the adult, adults played the child and walked away from marriages saying, “well, that was a fun game while it lasted.”

So, we are in the place where we have to put up a note somewhere saying; “Will the last adult leaving please turn out the lights.”

We have come to the point where even Grandpa and Grandma want to be like the adolescent and the adolescent wants to be like whatever manages to become popular among his/her adolescent peers. This has brought us to the place where we have no gravitas as a people. Our literature is of a comic-book quality. Our music hasn’t advanced much beyond “Jailhouse Rock.” Our language to often sounds Orc-like with eloquence having long ago made its way to the grey-havens beyond the sea. Our learned men are too often fools. Our Christian faith reduced to egalitarian platitudes.

The good news is that our Fathers, though being dead, can still speak if only we will take up and read. By accessing the wise and the wisdom of the ages we can once again become adults. We can once again give our children aspirations to once again desire to “grow up and be adults.” We can return to a time when there is a clear line in people’s thinking between being an adolescent and being an adult.

Slaughter of the Innocents 2025

“[T]he suffering of the Mediator does not date from the end of His stay on earth…. The blood of the Savior’s circumcision is as much atoning blood for us as is the blood shed on Golgotha. His entire life was a continual suffering.”

Geerhardus Vos

Yesterday, on the Church calendar, is the day when the “Slaughter of the Innocents” is remembered. Matthew’s Gospel records this event as being continuous with OT anticipation as he connects the lamentations of the Bethlehem mothers with the lamentation or Rachel as recorded in the book of Jeremiah (31:5).

Matthew is informing us that Rachel’s weeping was a type of the weeping that was present in Bethlehem when Herod ordered the slaughter in an attempt to kill off any King that might arise to replace him.

Interesting enough, Rachel was known to have been buried in Ramah, a town not far from Bethlehem. Jeremiah’s prophecy, in its immediate context, spoke of the sorrow that would arise surrounding the Babylonian exile. Matthew, by reaching for this prophecy, informs us that the mourning and lamentation had a dual fulfillment. First, what Jeremiah speaks of was fulfilled when Israel went into captivity, but there is a deeper and greater fulfillment in the weeping surrounding the slaughter of the innocents. In doing so, Matthew, as he does throughout his Gospel, teaches us to read the Bible, as one book, with one overarching narrative. This in turn reminds us that all attempts to read the Bible in terms of discontinuity and dispensations except when explicitly informed by Scripture is a misinformed way of reading Scripture that leads to no good results.

Moving from reading the slaughter of the innocents exegetically we consider the theological significance. Theologically we find the slaughter to be consistent with the promise found in Genesis 3:15 that there would be constant conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Herod is the seed of the serpent making war on the seed of the woman. Much like Pharaoh ordering the extermination of the seed of Israel, Herod likewise takes up the attempt to extinguish the seed of the woman. Matthew gives us Jesus through whom Israel’s story is retold, with the difference being where Israel failed as God’s Son, Jesus is God’s faithful son who does not fail.

Teasing this out, we would notice that the slaughter of the innocents puts on display the ongoing conflict that continues between the children of their father the Devil, and those who have been swept up in the train of Christ’s blessed redemption. Herods exist even now who continue to seek the death of those who champion the Redeemer King’s truth.