The One & The Many and Our Cultural Moment

For Christianity the cosmos was orderly because the Christian God is a God of order. In God’s creation the parts and the whole served one another in a diversity in unity and unity in diversity symphony — neither the particular nor the universal having dominion over the other. The universals recognized the need for the particulars and the particulars understood the need of the universals.

However, with the rebellion against God in favor of a time plus chance plus circumstance cosmos there is no longer an inherent given coherence to reality. With the abandonment of the eternal One and Many, the temporal one and many loses its way and where there previously been harmony between the temporal one and many there is now a conflict of interest between the temporal one and many.

What this looks like in the social order is a contest between tyranny and anarchy. Having thrown off God in favor of chaos, tyranny seeks to impose itself as a universal before which all particulars must bow. The tyrannical triumph of the temporal one over the temporal many means all things are defined in terms of the temporal one. Diversity is eclipsed in favor of unity. Social order and culture becomes a machine in which undistinguishable men and women and men from women works as universal cogs to support the Universal tyrannical one.

This social order and cultural unitarianism does not allow for mediating cultural institutions. All must serve and exist as derivative of the Tyrannical One (often the State). Everything is for state and nothing is outside the state. Individuality is lost in favor the Mao suit, the Phrygian cap… the comrade and the citoyen. Men become chameleons who all fade into the background provided by the tyrannical state.

On the other hand the triumph of the many is likewise a tyranny but it is a tyranny of the particular (many) over the one. In a anarchistic tyranny the unity (temporal One) is found in hyper-disunity (temporal Many). Each man does what is right in his own eyes. There is no harmony of interest because there is no Universal wherein one can find a harmony. Ironically enough, this leads right back to a beleaguered sameness that is found in the tyranny of the One, although instead of a unitarian motif found in dull sameness one gets the unitarian motif found in the dull sameness one finds in a garbage truck or scow. Precisely because there is no harmony the harmony is found in the lack of harmony, just as garbage in a garbage truck by having no relation to the sundry garbage there is a unity that is found in the negation of unity.

In cultures and social orders who have raised its fist to God the consequence is that often one will find both the anarchistic and the tyrannical temporal one and many operating in the social order and/or culture. In these kind of instances the tyrannical and the anarchistic serve as limiting concepts for one another in their ongoing attempt to have the pre-eminence with the result that there is a fluctuating dialectic that exists between the temporal godless one and the temporal godless many.

We see this phenomenon in our own social order culture. We see the temporal chaotic anarchistic many in the pursuit of much of the citizenry to be completely independent of any unifying social norms or mores. In that anarchistic pursuit away from social conventions people look increasingly the same with their slovenly dress, their tatted up appearance, and their guttural music. They have found a anarchistic unity of meaning in the embrace that there is no meaning.

At the same time we have the State here constantly seeking to provide a temporal tyrannical unitarian/uniformitarian meaning. From the continued increase of the surveillance state to the desire to have operate as a top down control mechanism (think pursuit of social credit arrangements, 15 minute cities, electric cars that can be remotely turned off, Artificial Intelligence, etc.) the Temporal One is seeking a tyrannical arrangement wherein all the anarchy is controlled so as to serve the tyrannical state.

The church likewise is caught in this push me – pull you with its embrace of alienism. By its refusal to understand the temporal one and many in light of the eternal one and many much of the Church today is embracing a unitarian/uniformitarian understanding of race/ethnicity so that the temporal many is swallowed up by the temporal one. The refusal to understand that there can be races in the context of the human race — races that are to be recognized and honored as unique — the Church in the West is currently joining in with the rebellion of the larger culture by denying the impact of the understanding of the temporal one and many in light of the eternal one and many. The Church is in lockstep with the culture insisting that diversity in unity and unity in diversity can not be allowed to exist.

Examining Doug Wilson’s Argument For The Differences Between Races

“Not that many centuries ago, my ancestors were engaged in idolatry, human sacrifice, and mindless superstitions… [but] their descendants would be building cathedrals and writing symphonies. The gospel is the issue—grace, not race.”

Doug Wilson

Wilson exposes his Gnosticism with this quote. However there is some truth in what Wilson writes here as seen in I Peter 1:18

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;

I Peter 1:18

However, Wilson tries to make these kinds of texts prove too much. Wilson’s problem here is that he wants to insist that culture is only a product of what occurs in the thinking that goes on between people’s ears without taking into consideration that men in their variegated existence are composite beings whose genetic inheritance impacts the way that thinking they do is processed.

Wilson’s naked fathers once visited w/ the Gospel are not going to build cultures that look the same as the culture that Mongolians or Hutus build who are visited by the Gospel. History has demonstrated that white people visited with the Gospel build superior cultures compared to non-white people who have been visited with the Gospel. By God’s grace alone White people have been the civilizational carriers of Christianity. This explains why white people are so hated. They are so hated because they are perfumed with the perfume of Christ on a civilizational basis that has never been true of other races.

Herein we find the Gnosticism in Wilson’s (and others) thinking. They refuse to take the manishness of man in his diversity seriously. They think that if all men think all the same way (if they all think Gospel thoughts) they will be all the same building all the same exact cultures.

THAT is both GNOSTIC & IDIOTIC.

Yes, Wilson’s later ancestors (well, the non-Jewish ones … Doug likes to boast of his Jewish admixture) were building Cathedrals and writing symphonies and yes that was all of God’s grace. However, God’s grace was not only found in their regeneration and so change of thinking patterns. That grace was also found in the genetic inheritance (race) that God in creation and in His providential ordering determined they would have. To deny this is Gnostic, and frankly, on this subject, Doug is Gnostic.

Christ’s Death And Ours

God came near in flesh and blood
Which to Adam was a snare
And in that now incarnate state
Adam’s fall, is now repaired

And with this divine remedy
The Redeemer does provide
A death for us as substitute
For in His death we died

In Union now with Christ our head
His Resurrection secures
The healing of Adam’s wound
And warriors who endure

Ephesians 6:1 & Infant Baptism

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: 3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

1.) The phrase, “in the Lord” marks the identity of the children as being the Christian children of Christian parents which points to the inclusion of these children in the new and better covenant just as they were included in the old and worse covenant. If the children were not included in the new and better covenant Paul could not command the pagan children to obey their parents “in the Lord.”

2.) This reading then correlates to I Corinthians 7:14 where the same Apostle under the same inspiration of the Holy Spirit says that the children of even one believing parent are indeed “Holy.”

“Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”

Children are set apart by their relation to the covenant. At the very least they are outwardly related to the covenant, though we extend them the judgment of charity by believing that they have the essence of the covenant (Christ) until such a time, (may it never be), when they forswear their covenant privileges and obligations.

3.) Since that is the way the Apostle speaks of the children (“obeying parents in the Lord,” and “not being unclean but holy,”) it is without dispute that infants should be baptized with the sign and seal of their inclusion. They cannot obey their parents “in the Lord” unless they are “in the Lord,” – which is what the sign and seal of Baptism proclaims, and they can only be considered “holy” by having the sign and seal of the covenant.

4.) The continuity between the old covenant and the new and better covenant which we are insisting should find infants baptized is seen also in the fact that the promise of the old and worse covenant (“that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”) remains in the new and better covenant. This is a lesser to greater argument. If the promise remains to Christian children as articulated in the Old Covenant “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth,” then how much more so should it be obvious that the promise is extended to only those who have been first given the sign and the seal of inclusion into the covenant of grace?

The New Testament makes no sense unless their is a covenantal unity that is presupposed between the old and new covenant.

John Locke’s Vision Of Religious Tolerance … McAtee’s Exposure Of Locke’s Error

“Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the Church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated.”
 
John Locke

A Letter Concerning Toleration

I think what we find above is what today is embraced by many who styles themselves as advocates of “Principled Pluralism.”

1.) These types of chaps are all for toleration and pluralism of religions in one social order as long as it principled and so reasonable. However, the minute one advocates for “principled pluralism,” and a “reasonable toleration,” one has rejected a pluralism that could include a religion that insists “Thou Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me,” for a religion that insists, “Thou Shall Have Other Gods Along With Me.” You see, the God of the Bible does not allow for “reasonable tolerance,” or for “principled pluralism,” because a reasonable tolerance does not allow for His intolerance and a principled pluralism does not have enough plurality in it to allow for a God who allows no plurality.

2.) Locke denies toleration to those who tolerate the denial of the being of God. Subsequently, Locke affirms that the public square can be flooded with all the gods of all those who affirm the being of God. Only atheists it seems, need not apply. The problem here is that the position of allowing all the gods in the public square is not a great deal different than allowing none of the gods in the public square. If all the gods are in then no God is really God and so the State is the only entity left who must decide how far any one of these different gods are allowed to go in the public square. In essence Locke’s position makes the state the God over the gods.

3.) Locke forbad the atheist from creating a system that forbad all religion but he ended up creating a system that likewise forbad all religion except the religion that had the State as its head, determining how far any one god or god could or could not go in the public square. This is where Locke’s system eventually led. Locke’s principled pluralism finally did what he feared the atheist would do … Locke’s principled pluralism destroyed all religion save the religion that announces that “in the state we live and move and have our being.” We live in the condition that Locked feared … “all is dissolved.”

4.) Locke, like many today, did not understand that religion is an inescapable category wherein one and only one religion must dominate. The religion that Locke bequeathed to us, through our Founders, is a religion wherein the God of the Bible is not allowed to be the sole God over the public square. Instead, Locked bequeathed to us a system where the State, acting as the god over all the gods in the tolerant public square, determines what is and is not allowed in terms of morality, religion, and law.

5.) It is true that the atheist can “have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of toleration,” but what Locke didn’t also see as true is that the principled pluralist can “have no pretence because of his tolerance principle whereupon to challenge the privilege of any god, from Allah to the Talmudist Demon God to Buddha to the Flying Spaghetti Monster God, to the God of the Mormons (much the same as the previous one mentioned) the privilege of toleration.” If all the gods are welcomed in then none of the gods are welcomed in. If all the gods are welcomed in then the state must be the GOD who rules over all the gods.

6.) In the last clause Locke basically says other religions can be allowed in a social order as long as they mind their own business. The problem here is that it is the very nature of religion to establish domination over others and so Locke is saying… “As long as other religions do not do what religions do they can be tolerated here.” That doesn’t strike me as a very good principle by which to support principled pluralism.

Principled pluralism was not a good principle even when the whole nation was still largely a nation consisting of squabbling protestant denominations (with Maryland as Roman Catholic and Rhode Island as Anabaptist) each seeking hegemony (Rhode Island finally won). It’s even a worse principle today when the whole “nation” consists of squabbling religions, the chief of which is the religion of no religion — those who call themselves “atheists,” or “no-religion.”

The Principled pluralism of Locke wanted a nation that allowed for tolerance and the presence of sundry expressions of Christianity. What it eventually birthed was a nation that has the presence of sundry religions with no tolerance for the one true religion of Christianity.