Synchronicity …. Wherein Martin Luther & The Outlaw Josey Wales Agree

“You can expect from me everything save fear or recantation. I shall not flee, much less recant. I shall go to Worms if there were as many devils there as there are tiles on the roofs of the houses.”

Martin Luther

“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.”

Josey Wales

Muslim Apologetics In Two Minutes

A well-known evangelist was entering a Muslim country and had this conversation with the customs official.

Customs Official: “For what purpose are you entering my country?

Christian Traveler; “I am a Christian evangelist and have been invited by here by your government for a debate at one of your universities.”

Customs: “Tell me sir. What do you think of Mohammed?”

Christian Traveler: “May I ask you a question?”

Customs: “Yes.”

Christian Traveler:  “Can a prophet lie?”

The Custom’s Officer  thought for a moment and said,

“No. A prophet cannot lie.”

Christian Traveler:  “Mohammed was a prophet?”

Customs:  “Yes.”

Christian Traveler;  “Mohammed said Jesus was a prophet?”

Customs:  “Yes.”

Christian Traveler;  “Jesus said He was God. If Jesus was right then Mohammed was wrong. And if Jesus was wrong, Mohammed was still wrong because Mohammed said Jesus was right!” 

The Customs official stamped his passport and said,

“Get out of here!” 

Exposing The Nakedness Of R2K On The Noahic Covenant

“The pluralism of the Noahic covenant requires members of the human community, Christians included, to cultivate the virtue of tolerance. Tolerance is a proper feature of justice in our fallen but pressured world.”

David VanDrunen
Politics After Christendom

In R2K “theology” The Noahic covenant was a covenant that applied to all mankind and not merely the redemptive line. It was a common grace covenant. This means therefore that in the public square we must realize that God rules by Natural Law and because the public square is the space of common grace where all men interact, therefore the public square must be characterized by tolerance (principled pluralism). This means that no one God can be uniquely God of the public square since God, via the Noahaic covenant has ordained that the public square is a realm of common grace and not saving grace.

Therefore tolerance is the virtue of all virtues as it relates to the public square. The Noahic covenant including all mankind is the basis of a required tolerance in and for the public square.

However, if the Noahic covenant was NOT an expression of the one redemptive covenant of grace as per Van Drunen and the R2K boys then we should not have found in the Noahic covenant;

1.) Noah as a High Priest
2.) Making sacrifice
3.) On an altar
4.) Wherein God takes pleasure
5.) And provides a covenantal sign
6.) to not destroy mankind
7.) so that He can continue to Redeem his people from the world

The Noahic covenant IS an expression of the one redemptive covenant of Grace. David Van Drunen and the R2K lads are full of Shedd’s Nutty Peanut Butter.

The Noahic covenant is made with Noah — God’s representative covenant head — and Noah’s household. This clues us in immediately that this covenant is indeed a redemptive covenant since it is a covenant made with those who have experienced God’s redemption. (Note also that the language, in speaking to Noah and His household, is the same kind of language used when God makes covenant with Abraham.)

We thus finding continuity with the sacrificial, typological, and gracious character continued with the Abrahamic covenant, which in turn teaches us that the Noahic covenant is continuous with God’s unfolding of the one covenant of grace. Now, one of the bits of additional revelational information about the one covenant of grace that we get with the Noahic covenant is that the covenant of grace includes provision that will sustain all creatures so that all creatures can experience providential benefits that are the residual effects of God’s redeeming of his particular people.

From this we learn that the Noahic covenant is not directly made with all people, though the Noahic covenant has an indirect and consequential effect on all people. This means that Van Drunen is clearly in error when he teaches that the Noahic covenant is a common grace covenant that is non-Redemptive and if the R2K project is in error at this point it fails completely. Do not misunderstand this point. If the Van Drunen (R2K) interpretation of the Noahic covenant fails then the whole idea of a common rule fails and the whole idea of Natural Law ruling the common realm fails. So also falls the R2K allegiance to principled pluralism as a Christian virtue fails. It all comes tumbling down.

Whether one views the Noahic covenant as a administration of the one covenant of grace or views it as a kind of gracious interruptus that teaches a common grace covenant what we must say is that the difference here ends up being a continental divide in one’s theology, personality and character. If it is true that as a man thinketh in his heart so he is, the thinking on this point ends up making HUGE difference all the way down the line. The implications are MONUMENTAL.

Because of the vast implications we would offer that the theologoumenon  (a theological statement which is of individual opinion and not doctrine) of the non-redemptive Noahic covenant is a mischievous heresy, and ought to be prosecuted in Church courts as such. Such an opinion is anti-Christological to the core. See Col 1 and Eph 1.  The fact that such an opinion should be prosecuted in Church courts is all the more necessary because this trash doctrine is being used to lock people out of ordination.

Every administration of the one covenant of grace brings a further expansion of revelational insight into the meaning of that one covenant of grace. As such, to insist that the Noahic covenant was NOT an expression of the one covenant of grace, but was instead merely a “common covenant” as R2K does is a ham-fisted handling of the covenant of Grace. Only someone trained at a Jesuit College could figure out how to so convincingly bollix up the history of redemption found in covenant theology.

The Centrality Of Eschatology

Pertaining to eschatology, another reason eschatology is so important is that one cannot understand the individual pieces of the puzzle unless first has a template by which to read the individual puzzle piece. It is the box that has the whole on it that allows us to understand the many parts in the box we will be putting together.

In the same way we will understand no historical incidents (the individual puzzle pieces) correctly unless we have a proper eschatology that gives us a template by which to read the individual pieces (the box top picture that is needed to know about the puzzle pieces).

People (Christians) who have wildly varying eschatologies are trying to use the pieces from the same puzzle to make wildly varying realities — and all in the name of the same Christ. So, at the end of the day their respective eschatologies are giving them very very different Christianities — indeed one is tempted to say different faiths.

As Christians we can not lean into life at all properly without a right eschatology. “Christians” who have a wrong eschatology are, more often than not, at cross purposes from those with a correct eschatology (post-millennialism) and so are pouring water on each other’s fire. To be perfectly candid I don’t want amillennialism or dispensationalism or premillennialism or full Preterism to succeed or grow because those eschatologies detract from God’s glory and end up creating a finished puzzle that does not correspond to God’s reality. I suspect if those other eschatological schools were honest they would likewise admit that they do not desire my eschatology/theology to succeed for the same reasons.
The thing is that a person runs all their theology through their eschatology so that eschatology is before all considerations and not after. One does not do all their theology and say, “therefore my eschatology.” One does all their eschatology ands says “therefore the rest of my theology.” As such eschatology is both prolegomena and last things at the same time.

Our eschatology tells us how the Bible holds together and the way we understand how the Bible holds together tells how we understand all reality holds together. When you tell me a person’s eschatology, you tell me not only what kind of Christian I can expect to be working with but you also tell me what kind of human being I can expect to be working with.

In the beginning was the eschatology, and the eschatology was with God and the eschatology was God. This is so because God had the end in mind when He began the beginning and so everything He began He put the end of the matter in that beginning so that the end that he planned from the beginning would have a beginning that would end at the end planned from the beginning.

Eschatology is everything.

Get your eschatology wrong and all else will suffer. Get your eschatology right and all else will fall into place.

The Noble Savage & Its Continued Impact

In Rousseau’s worldview the one to be esteemed was the noble savage. The noble savage was the one untouched and untainted by Christianity or civilization. The noble savage hadn’t been polluted with the sin of the social order environment. He was the one in touch with his purified self.

Today the theory of the “Noble Savage” lives on in the Western worldview EXCEPT the noble savage is no longer the indigenous people so much as it is the warped and perverted. However, the virtue of the noble savage myth is still anchored in the one who hasn’t been tainted or polluted by Christianity or civilization just as was true of the indigenous people in the 17th century. As such the Noble Savage is now the sodomite, or the transgender or the pederasts or the feminists. These alone have been untouched by a sinful environment and alone can show the way to enlightenment and understanding.

Because this is so, the modern noble savage is raised up on the totem of social importance. The modern noble savage has more being than anyone else and so is admired and emulated.

Rosseau lives and the West dies.