When Calvinists speak of humans as “totally depraved,” they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality — his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. So, total depravity is extensive, not intensive. Not all total depravity looks the same. People and / or Nations can remain totally depraved and still be morally superior to other people and / or Nations who are also totally depraved. Total depravity does not mean that everyone is equally depraved. Total depravity most certainly is not the moral leveler that Cassidy contends. People and / or Nations who are totally depraved can be morally superior though that moral superiority lends no salvific aid.
John Calvin on the Legitimacy of Slavery
“Here a question arises, Is perpetual servitude so displeasing to God, that it ought not to be deemed lawful? To this the answer is easy, — Abraham and other fathers had servants or slaves according to the common and prevailing custom, and it was not deemed wrong in them. Before the Law was given, there was nothing to forbid one who had servants or maids to exercise power over them through life; and then the Law, mentioned here, was not given indiscriminately and generally, but it was a peculiar privilege in favor of the chosen people. Hence it is without reason that any one infers that it is not lawful to exercise power over servants and maids; for, on the contrary, we may reason thus, That since God permitted the fathers to retain servants and maids, it is a thing lawful; and further, as God permitted the Jews also, under the Law, to bear rule over aliens, and to keep them perpetually as servants, it follows that this cannot be disapproved. And still a clearer evidence may be adduced; for since the Gentiles have been called to the hope of salvation, no change has in this respect been made. For the Apostles did not constrain masters to liberate their servants, but only exhorted them to use kindness towards them, and to treat them humanely as their fellow-servants. (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 4:1) If, then, servitude were unlawful, the Apostles would have never tolerated it; but they would have boldly denounced such a profane practice had it been so. Now, as they commanded masters only to be humane towards their servants, and not to treat them violently and reproachfully, it follows that what was not denied was permitted, that is, to retain their own servants. We also see that Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon. (Philemon 1:12) Philemon was not only one of the faithful, but a pastor of the Church. He ought, then, to have been an example to others. His servant had fled away from him; Paul sent him back, and commended him to his master, and besought his master to forgive his theft. We hence see that the thing in itself is not unlawful.”
John Calvin
Calvin’s Commentary on Jeremiah 34:8-17
VP Alexander Stephens & Gov. James Hammond Cite Scripture On Slavery
I am currently reading Volume II of Alexander Stephens “A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States,” in preparation for a class I will be teaching in the Autumn on the War of Northern Aggression.
I have often believed that the Church will not be able to make a stand against sodomy, transgenderism, and women in office until it returns to thinking correctly about slavery again. William Webb’s book “Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis” demonstrates the truth of this observation as Webb goes out of his way to suggest that the hermeneutical arc of Scripture allows us to see how God’s Word anticipated a day when God’s people would be mature enough to understand that God’s Word was in error on these subjects when originally written.
None of what is written in this post should be taken as a desire to return to race based slavery. None of what is written in this post should be taken to say that slavery in America was never without sin and abuse. Just as the Biblical Institution of Marriage is never without sin and abuse. However, all because an Institution is abused by some does not mean it is not a Biblical Institution sanctioned by God in the Scripture. None of what is written in this post condones man-stealing which African tribes were guilty of in initially selling off the prizes of war to predominantly Yankee and Jewish traders.
All this post seeks to reveal is that the argument for slavery as in submission to Scripture is a weighty argument as seen by considering the words of Alexander Stephens and James Hammond.
Begin Quote:
“One digression I am here compelled to make in following Judge Bynum. He speaks of Slavery as it existed with us, as a “sin in the sight of men and in the sight of God” — as the “summation of all iniquity!” I stated in the outset that the right or wrong of this Institution did not legitimately come within the purview of our present discussion. That related exclusively to the rightful powers of the Federal Government over it, to interfere with it in any way, except as is expressly pro vided in the Compact. But these remarks of his demand notice. They require a reply. In replying briefly as possible, but pointedly, I have to say I know of but one sure standard in determining what is, and what is not sin or sinful. That standard is the written law of God as prescribed in the Old and the New Testament. By that standard the relation of master and slave, even in a much more abject condition than existed with us, is not founded in sin. Abram, afterwards called Abraham, the father of the faithful, with whom the Divine Covenant was made for man’s salvation and the redemption of the world from the dominion of sin, was a slave-holder. He was enjoined to impart the seal of this everlasting covenant not only to those who were born in his house ; but to those who were “bought with his money.” It was into his bosom, in Heaven, that the poor man, who died at the rich man’s gate, was borne by angels, according to the Parable of the Saviour. Job certainly was one of the best men we read of in the Bible. He was a large slave-holder. So, too, were Isaac and Jacob and all the Patriarchs. The great moral law which defines sin, the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, written on stone by the finger of God himself, expressly recognizes Slavery, and enjoins certain duties of masters towards their slaves. The chosen people of God, by the Levitical Law, proclaimed under divine sanction, were authorized to hold slaves — not of their own race — (of these they were to hold bondmen for a term of years) — but of the Heathen around them — of these they were authorized to buy slaves ” bondmen and bondwomen/’ for life, who were to be to them ” an inheritance” and ” possession forever.”
Slavery existed when the gospel was preached by Christ and his Apostles, and where they preached it was all around them. And though the Scribes and Pharisees were denounced by Christ for their hypocrisy and robbing widows’ houses and divers other sins, yet not a word did he utter, as far as we are informed, against slave- holding. On the contrary, he said he had not found so great faith in all Israel, as in the slave-holding Centurion! Was he truckling to a Slavery Oligarchy when he made this declaration ? In no place in the New Testament is the relation of master and slave spoken of as sinful. Several of the Apostles alluded to it ; but none of them, not one of them, condemned it as sinful in itself, or as violative of the laws of God, or even of Christian duty. They enjoin the relative duties of both masters and slaves. Paul sent a fugitive slave, Onesimus, back to Philemon his master. He did not consider it any violence to his conscience to do this, even when he was under no stipulated obligation to do it.
He frequently alludes to Slavery in his letters to the Churches, but in no case speaks of it as sinful. What he says in one of these epistles, I must read to you. It is the first five verses of chapter vi. of the First Epistle to Timothy:
1. “Let as many servants” (δοῦλοι, in the original, which according to Robinson’s Greek and English Lexi con, which you can see, means slaves, or those bound to serve, and were the property of their masters,) ” as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed.
2. ” And they that have believing masters,” (according to the judge’s idea, there could be no such thing as a Slave-holding believer, but so did not think Paul,) ” let them not despise” (καταφρονείτωσαν, that is, as it might better be rendered, think slightly of, or neglect) ” them, because they are brethren ; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.
3. “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;
4. ” He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
5. ” Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain, is godliness : from such withdraw thyself.”
Can we suppose that Paul would have so written, if he had considered that there was anything morally wrong in the relation of master and slave, much less if he had looked upon it as the ” summation of all iniquity ;” and if our Ministers of the Gospel did continue to teach the same doctrine, to enjoin the same duties upon master and slave, can it be justly said that they thereby ” dese crated the Temples of the Living God ?” If they with drew themselves from those who taught otherwise, and whose doctrines brought “envy, strife, railings,” and finally war, did they not follow the advice of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, and likewise the words, as he affirms, of our Lord Jesus Christ, “that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed ?”
It is not, as I have said, within the purview of this discussion, to speak of the right or wrong of Slavery morally, or the evils of the Institution politically, arising from an abuse of power under it, any more than it is to speak of the institution of marriage, or the relation of parent and child, as it is regulated in any State. These are matters which under the Federal system belong exclusively to the several States. What I have here said in reply to Judge Bynum, is therefore a digression. From this I will now return, with but one single additional remark upon what he has said on this point ; and that is this : To maintain that Slavery is in itself sinful, in the face of all that is said and written in the Bible upon the subject, with so many sanctions of the relation by the Deity himself, does seem to me to be little short of blasphemous! It is a direct imputation upon the wisdom and justice, as well as the declared ordinances of God, as they arc written in the inspired oracles, to say nothing of their manifestation in the universe around us.*
Here Stephens footnotes Gov. James Hammond;
* James H. Hammond, of South Carolina, one of the most intellectual men this country ever produced, when Governor of his State, in 1844, in reply to a communication he received from the Free Church of Glasgow, {Scotland, upon the subject of Slavery, amongst other things, said:
‘Your memorial, like all that have been sent to me, denounces Slavery in the severest terms ; as ‘ traversing every law of nature, and violating the most sacred domestic relations, and the primary rights of man.’ You and your Presbytery are Christians. You profess to believe, and no doubt do believe, that the laws laid down in the Old and New Testaments for the government of man, in his moral, social and political relations, were all the direct revelation of God himself. Does it never occur to you, that in anathematizing Slavery, you deny this divine sanction of those laws, and repudiate both Christ and Moses ; or charge God with downright crime, in regulating and perpetuating Slavery in the Old Testament, and the most criminal neglect, in not only not abolishing, but not even reprehending it, in the New ? If these Testaments came from God, it is impossible that Slavery can ‘ traverse the laws of nature, or violate the primary rights of man.’ What those laws and rights really are, mankind have not agreed. But they are clear to God ; and it is blasphemous for any of His creatures to set up their notions of them in opposition to His immediate and acknowledged Revelation. Nor does our system of Slavery outrage the most sacred domestic relations, Husbands and wives, parents and children, among our Slaves, are seldom separated, except from necessity or crime. The same reasons in duce much more frequent separations among the white population in this, and, I imagine, in almost every other country.”
See “Speeches and Letters” of Hon. J. H. Hammond
War of Northern Aggression / War Against the Constitution — Reading List
This class will be geared towards telling the untold story of the War Against the Constitution. The class will elide past the motif of war that the victors get to write the history. One can find that “history” everywhere. The goal in this class is oriented to give you the whole story of the War of Northern Aggression. I am providing a long list of books. We will not be able to get to all of these but now you will have this list in case you ever want to go diving for yourself. We will be using the books that have an asterisk next to them. This does not necessarily mean they are the best books, though they sometimes will be. It means they are the books that will fit into our time frame most easily. Shelby Foote’s III volume series, for example, is elegantly written and is a living book but, alas, we can not fit Foote’s III volume into this course. Still, I would encourage all to turn the TV off and read Shelby Foote.
There are countless books on this huge subject. These are some of the ones I have read. My hope is this will wet the appetite of both children and parents to desire to continue on in their learning regardless of their age.
I would say that he who gets the history of the War Against the Constitution wrong will get very little else right about US History. It is an important subject.
Keep in mind that the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) could be a whole separate semester class with a reading list every bit as long and controversial as this one. You really can not tell the story of the War Against the Constitution without telling the story of Yankee Reconstruction.
Keep in mind that learning never ends.
(1.) Shelby Foote — The Civil War: A Narrative (III Volume set)
(2.) * R. G. B. Horton — A Youth’s History of the Great Civil War in the United States From 1861-1865
(3) Alexander Stephens — A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (II Volumes)
(4) Edgar Lee Masters — Lincoln the Man (Free Audio on Amazon)
(5) * Webb Garrison: Lincoln’s Little War; How His Carefully Laid Plan Went Astray
(6) * Thomas J. DiLorenzo — The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
(7) * Thomas J. DiLorenzo — Lincoln Unmasked
(
* Walter D. Kennedy — Myths of American Slavery
* Walter D. Kennedy — Myths of American Slavery(9) * Understanding the War Between the States; A Supplemental book by 16 writers that Enable A More Complete and Truthful Study of American History (Middle School, High School, College, and Beyond)
(10) *Ludwell H. Johnson — North Against South; The American Iliad 1848-1877
(11) * John S. Tilley — Facts The Historians Leave Out: A Confederate Primer
(12) Otto Scott — The Secret Six
(13) *Mildred Lewis Rutherford — Truths of History
(14)* Walter Brian Cisco — War Crimes Against Southern Civilians
(15) James Ronald Kennedy & Walter Donald Kennedy; “The South Was Right”
(16) Al Benson — Lincoln’s Marxists
(17) Jeffrey Manber & Neil Dahlstrom — Lincoln’s Wrath: Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a President’s Mission to Destroy the Press
(18) Avery Craven — The Coming of the Civil War
(19) Thomas & Debra Goodrich — The Day Dixie Died
(20) Howell Cobb — A Scriptural Examination of the Institution of Slavery in the United States
(21) Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, Jennifer Frank — Complicity; How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
(22) Jennifer L. Weber — Copperheads; The Rise & Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North
(23) C. C. Goen — Broken Churches, Broken Nation
(24) Lyon Gardiner Tyler — John Tyler & Abraham Lincoln; Who was the Dwarf?
(25) Jefferson Davis — The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (II Volumes)
Excising R2K — The Stakes
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. — Colossians 2:8
I have labored in this volume to demonstrate by teasing out a host of reasons that Radical Two Kingdom theology is a false gospel and so a false Christianity. Should one wholly embrace R2K the consequence is a un-biblical epistemology (chapter 1) which in turns yields the dualism of a “hyphenated-life” (chapter 2). Should one have a presuppositional epistemology for the R2K grace realm and a Natural Law epistemology for the R2K common realm the consequence will be a raging Platonic dualism. Every single time. The owning of R2K also yields a warped soteriology, (chapter 3) where Jesus Christ’s office of King and Liege Lord is reduced to a Gnostic reality. R2K fanboys end up turning into a militant Amillennialist (chapter 6). The only place R2K will fight for the Kingdom is when it is fighting those who hold to a optimistic eschatology. Together we have considered the covenantal malfeasance of R2K (chapter 4) and we remind ourselves again that per Reformed giant Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield federal (covenant) theology is the, “architectonic principle” of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647).Chapter 4 is important because if you get your covenant theology wrong (which R2K does) then the rest of your theology is going to be seriously skewed. In chapter 5 we noted the failures of R2K to understand that religion – even in their “common realm” is an inescapable category as it pertains to both magistrates and states. R2K, in good Jeffersonian fashion seeks to erect a wall of separation between Christianity and State quite without realizing that all laws invoke a moral order and all moral orders in turn rely upon religious tenets. Sans R2K it is not possible to have a religiously naked or neutral public square. Cult and culture deriving from the same root word as they do reminds us that what a culture forbids or sanctions reveals the religious orientation of the culture. Religion is an inescapable category for both Magistrates and States and since it is the religion of the realm and of Magistrates needs be Christian and not neutral or naked as R2K advocates. Together in chapter 7 we listened to the R2K gurus in their own words and discovered the reason for the “R” in the R2K. Radical is a understatement. As chapter 8 unfolded we learned that R2K does not believe it is possible that families should be, or even can be “Christian.” In chapter 9 we explored the theocratic fears of R2K. We demonstrated that R2K needs to get over its fears since all social orders are organized, either explicitly or implicitly as theocracies. In chapter 10 we exposed some of the spoof texting of R2K. It really is not possible to expose all their spoof texting since R2K runs all of scripture through their R2K grinder with the consequence that R2K reads all of scripture as proving R2K. The best approach to defeating the spoof-texting of R2K is to go after it from a systematic theology approach. As we worked together through chapter 11 we examined the fears of R2K when it comes to the idea that Christianity is to be a transformational faith. R2K, locking Christianity away into the Church realm, becomes nervous when Christians begin to speak of Christianity leavening all areas of life and being salt to all callings. As we traveled through chapter 12 we noted that R2K has some strange ideological soulmates in places as diverse as Marxism, Anabaptist theology, classical liberalism, and other strange bedfellows. Chapter 12 reveals how R2K has been taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition. In chapter 13 we provided a better way to handle the issues that seem to bother Radical Two Kingdom theologians.
The matters that we have mapped out in our time together are matters that others have seen and are seeing. In July of 2022 Dr. Rev. Sacha Walicord raised a warning similar to what can be found in this volume. Walicord offered in his sermon, “Two Covenants, One Law;”
“Christ is the mediator of this covenant of grace and here is something we need to hear — especially have to hear in the United Reformed Churches, as increasingly our people are being confused with a false understanding of exactly this topic. You have to understand that the Law and the Gospel are not opposites. They are in full harmony as Paul in vs. 21 reiterates … He asks exactly the question that has been plaguing the United Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for a along time; ‘Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not’ he says. How much clearer do we want it? How crafty does it get with our enmity against the law of God? How deception can preachers become in luring our people away from the truth – away from a wonderful benefit of the covenant of grace, (of God’s dictated order of life) and changing the Gospel into something else?
And Paul continues, ‘If a law had been given that could give life then righteousness would indeed be by the law.’ Now this describes exactly the trap in which many of the contemporary Reformed have fallen. They do rightly understand that we have been saved through faith in Jesus Christ but they go ahead and say, “Since it is the promise and not the law that saves we have to abandon the law’ and they become anti-nomians. They become enemies of the law – discarding the law altogether. They portray the Law and the Gospel as contrarians – as competitors and they pit the two, as it were, against each other, just like the Marcions of old did with their heresy. That’s in its core the fasle understanding and the false doctrine — the so-called Radical Two Kingdom doctrine, which is being heavily promoted by a seminary on the west coast and by many of its graduates almost cult like — even in our Federation and we have to begin of calling this out this as what it is. It is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But it is another Gospel.
There I said it with all the possible repercussions and consequences. It (R2K) is another Gospel.
Because that is clearly not what the Bible teaches and that is not Gospel that Paul preaches who driven by the Holy Spirit says just the opposite.
Dr. Rev. Sacha Walicord
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/walkerurc/sermons/8722150511983/
Begin at 19:00 Mark
Dr. Walicord has lifted a battle cry that needs to echo from Reformed Churches across the West. If we, the Church, do not excise Radical Two Kingdom theology from the Reformed Church the consequence will be that the Reformed Church will become the enemy of Jesus Christ. The task before us upon defeating R2K is to follow the words of Reformed Theologian Dr James Orr and to realize that;
“The Church has another and yet more difficult task before it if it is to retain its ascendancy over the minds of men. That task is to bring Christianity to bear as an applied power on the life and conditions of society; to set itself as it has never yet done to master the meaning of “the mind of Christ,” and to achieve the translation of that mind into the whole practical life of the age — into laws, institutions, commerce, literature, art; into domestic, civic, social, and political relations; into national and international doings — in this sense to bring in the Kingdom of God among men.”
James Orr
The Progress of Dogma — pp 353-354 (1897)
Consistent with Orr, a generation later, J. Gresham Machen could write in his essay Christianity & Culture;
“We may preach with all the fervour of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. Many would have the seminaries combat error by attacking it as it is taught by its popular exponents. Instead of that they confuse their students with a lot of German names unknown outside the walls of the universities…. What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combatted; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mould the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity….
The real difficulty amounts to this—that the thought of the day, as it makes itself most strongly felt in the universities, but from them spreads inevitably to the masses of the people, is profoundly opposed to Christianity, or at least—what is nearly as bad—it is out of all connection with Christianity. The Church is unable either to combat it or to assimilate it, because the Church simply does not understand it. Under such circumstances, what more pressing duty than for those who have received the mighty experience of regeneration, who, therefore, do not, like the world, neglect that the whole series of vitally relevant facts which is embraced in Christian experience—what more pressing duty than for these men to make themselves masters of the thought of the world in order to make it an instrument of truth instead of error? The Church has no right to be so absorbed in helping the individual that she forgets the world.”
J. Gresham Machen
R2K, in ignoring men like Dr. James Orr and J. Gresham Machen would turn Christianity into a faith that will, in this life and world always be a minority voice laboring away in the catacombs of irrelevancy. R2K, with its avowed convictions creates conditions where the faith once and forever delivered unto the saints will always be a marginalized voice begging just be allowed to exist so it can demonstrate to all with eyes to see how fabulous it is for its great ascended and triumphant Liege-Lord to always be in subjection to pagan Kings and Magistrates. R2K with its theology guarantees that Christianity will always be a private religion not allowed to walk in the public square and taken up only by old women, fools, and people who have a masochistic tendency. R2K sells itself as that elixir that promises to keep the Christian faith irrelevant, defeated, and supine. R2K promises your soul to God while giving your body to the State.
The stakes are high in this debate. Should the Reformed Churches not rid themselves of Radical Two Kingdom theology the consequence is going to be that a theological/ideological vacuum is going to come to the fore in the Reformed Churches and that vacuum is going to be filled by cultural Marxism – the predominant worldview du-jour today. The inevitability of this is guaranteed due to the fact of the R2K soy boy pulpiteers refusal to give a “thus saith the Lord” on moral issues facing Christians in the R2K common realm. If there is no voice from the pulpit about what pleases God on issues ranging from abortion to economics (Heidelberg Catechism Q. 110) to trannie-ism to the idolatry of putting children in Government schools, to God’s mind on the New World Order, etc. then the voice that God’s people in the pews are going to be hearing is going to be the voice of the Cultural Marxists. If the R2K Church will not give a “thus saith the Lord,” then the consequence is the laymen is going to absorb the worldview zeitgeist on these issues. R2K guarantees that the Church will eventually tack to the hard left.
One wonders if that is in part what all this R2K emesis really is about. Has R2K been just a clever way to emasculate the Church in the face of the belching of Hell? Anecdotally speaking, it seems that so many of the R2K fanboys tilt to the left in their thinking and speaking (see chapter 7). Is R2K just providing cover for the Cultural Marxists? Silent the pulpits and the slime of Cultural Marxism can more easily ooze into the Church?
This has never been the way that the Reformed Churches, when healthy, have functioned in the past. When healthy the Reformed Churches were always at the front of cultural battles. When healthy the Reformed Churches have warned Kings, refused to bow to threats of Magistrates, and insisted on the law of God as the norm that norms all norms for all men in all settings.
We end with a statement that brings together the best of historic Reformed Christianity in its missionary impulse. The best of historic Reformed Christianity has always been evangelistic to the individual while holding out God’s standard to nations, social orders, and cultures. R2K tries to half that equation and by doing so ends up losing the best of the historic Reformed faith.
“In giving the Church a mission to the nations, Jesus does not diminish the importance of the individual. The offer of the Gospel must be sincerely extended to individual persons in all times and places. After all, at stake is the salvation of human beings, called to repent and believe. But also at stake is the salvation, well-being, and peace of the nations, that is, societies as God would have them. The Son of God must ‘rule all nations’ (Rev. 12:5). The nations must bow down before the Lord and come to walk in His light (Rev. 15:4; 21:24). These nations, with their cultures, traditions, and religions turned away from the God of Holy Scripture, are called to be converted to a sure salvation. This conversion of a nation does not happen apart from the individual lives of faithful Christians, but precisely through the influence of such lives. Moreover, each nation’s conversion is to reflect the uniqueness of that nation.”
Pierre Courthial
A New Day of Small Beginnings — pg. 112
Let God be true and every R2K theologian a liar.