More Firepower Against Natural Law Theory

Deuteronomy 30:11 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.

“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”      Isaiah 8:20

Here we have it explicitly said that God’s law is to be the standard by which all other standards are measured. We are responsible to God’s law. I should not have to say it, but the point here is not that we are saved by the law, or that we use God’s law as a ladder to climb into God’s presence or to curry His uncertain acceptance. The point here is that as Christians, who have been saved from the curse of the law’s demand that we could never meet and has been met for us in Christ, we should govern our lives consistent with God’s revealed law Word as found in Scripture or as arrived upon by good and necessary consequence as reasoning from God’s law.

This is the clear teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism;

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

Scripture and the catechism clearly point to the reality that we are to be governed in our daily lives by God’s law as revealed in Scripture. In the 21st century should Christians desire to know what it means to have the conversations of our life be pleasing to God then we need to have those lifestyles reflect walking in harmony with God’s law. This explains why the Psalmist delighted in God’s law both day and night.

However, another theory holds increasingly holds sway among platformed Christians, both of the R2K ilk, and of the Christian Nationalist ilk. That other theory is called Natural Law and it has a long and storied history. There is no use in denying that many including, Reformed theologians, throughout Christendom have appealed to Natural Law as a mechanism by which Christians should govern their life. This alternative theory to what we find commanded in Scripture finds Christians insisting that we are not to be governed by God’s explicit written law but rather we are to be governed in our living by a reading of Natural Law, which is a law written in God’s structured reality and stamped upon all men’s hearts.

Recently a book came out from a conservative Reformed Public theologian that argued for a return to this kind of understanding of Natural law. I quote here a few of his statements in the book to demonstrate how the Church is rushing away from God’s law to this concept of Natural law;

So civil law is not mere philosophical reflection, nor should it be the rubberstamped Mosaic civil code.11

Thus, all righteous laws are only potentially just. … This is why the magistrate cannot rubberstamp a ready-made divine civil code.12

A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws, and they should not seek some universal “blueprint” they can rubber-stamp into law.13

The Mosaic law is not above natural law; it is a perfect application of it.14

Mosaic law … is not thereby a suitable body of law for all nations.15

Mosaic law … is a perfect example of law. But it is not a universal body of law.16

We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws.17

So, this Natural Law is to be the governing structure for fallen and redeemed men alike. As such what is posited is that fallen man can and will read Natural Law the same as men who are Redeemed and are now increasing, per their individual sanctification, epistemologically self-aware.

As implausible as it seems, Natural Law proponents argue, that fallen man, with his fallen mind, must read a fallen nature and then by strength of his fallen will act in an unfallen way. And remember, this is done quite independent of the Spirit of God. This completely obliterates the truth of Romans 8:7f

7 Because the [a]carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

On the theory of Natural Law Christians and Non-Christians alike are to make a individual hunt for God’s law, by the usage of right reason interpreting this abstract Natural Law. Natural Law theory insists that men fallen and redeemed, can together use reason to arrive at truth that can then be crafted into public policy as social order guidelines for all people. Natural Law as mediated by the usage of right reason by all men — fallen and redeemed — is the foundation for all legal infrastructure in all jurisdictions (save the Church, which still uses the law found in Special Revelation) for the structuring of our living. In this theory God’s Special Revelation is not necessary for social order structure. Natural Law can do all.

But what does this appeal to do Scripture like II Tim. 3

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Nowhere in Scripture do we find that all Natural law is God breathed being useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training for righteousness.

Of course by now you realize that this is ultimately about epistemology. This is about how we know what we know. All of this answers the question of “How Then Shall We Live.” Shall we live by the use of right reason as it is dependent upon Natural Law or shall we live by reason that can only be right when regenerated men submit to God’s revealed law?

The theory of the Natural Law aficionados is that while God’s revealed special revelation law  was obviously the standard for the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, something happened with the coming of Christ, followed by His finished work, whereby that law became obsolete. That law, so the Natural Law experts insist was ended when Israel as a people ended, with the consequence that mankind had to repair to the Natural law model.

Now, we should interject here that God’s word clearly teaches that all the law that prefigured, announced, and shouted Christ in the OT (called “ceremonial Law”) was fulfilled in Christi and since that was fulfilled that expression of the Law was no longer requisite and so we as Christians, for example, no longer sacrifice animals. However, there is never a word in Scripture that what is now called the civil (or judicial) law  given in the Old Testament became obsolete in the new and better covenant. Indeed, our Master Himself said;

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”

So today, those who raise mint, anise, and cummin should be tithing on the increase of their mint, anise, and cummin.

The Westminster Confession faith affirms this when it offers in Article XIX,

To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

Anti-Natural lawists today insist that the phrase “general equity thereof” proves indisputably that the heart and stuffing of God’s civil (judicial) law remains applicable today.

That St. Paul thought the same as seen by his appeal to the law;

8Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses: “ Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf?

Paul, as inspired by the Spirit of the living God is doing the very thing that the Westminster divines wrote in Article XIX. St. Paul is taking the general equity of that passage and applying it today, communicating thus that God’s Special Revelation and not Natural Law remains the standard by which all standards are measured.

The Westminster Confession itself reaches for OT civil law and not Natural law in order to teach that;

he WCF 24-4 teaches that marriage cannot lawfully occur if it is within degrees of consanguinity and affinity forbidden by the Scriptures.

Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden by the Word.481 Nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together as man and wife.48

This is implicit theonomy for the obvious reason that the civil law is being appealed to as a basis for an ongoing principle of general equity. On this score the WCF is theonomic.

So, for the Natural Law fanboys Israel was an exception in terms of being ruled by God’s explicit special revelation in the common realm. With the dissolution of Israel, the idea that God’s people should be ruled explicitly by God’s explicit revelation and the general equity thereof is extinguished and the new governing matrix for God’s people is the use of right reason based on Natural law. The special Revelation of the OT has passed and the new has come with Natural Law.

David Van Drunen of R2K invention notes of Natural Law,

“The moral order inscribed in the world and especially in human nature, an order that is known to all people through their natural faculties (especially reason and/or conscience) even apart from supernatural divine revelation that binds morally the whole human race. “

[2 I believe the last clause, “that binds morally…” is intended to describe the moral order = natural law, rather than its nearest antecedent (“supernatural divine revelation”). I think that to make this clear Van Drunen should have put a comma after “revelation.” Or, better, he should have put a period after “revelation,” then written “This moral order binds…”]

Dr. Stephen Wolfe in his book Christian Nationalism writes similarly on pages 244 & 245;

“Societies, need, in other words, an ordering of reason — reason expressed as civil law.”

And again,

“Law is an ordering of reason by an appropriate lawgiver for the good of the community.”

“The Natural Law is an ordering of reason, consisting of moral principles that are innate in rational creatures, given by God, who is the author of nature.”

For Van Drunen and Wolfe (each Natural Law fanboys who are not happy with one another) God only authors Special Revelation law in its specificity for OT Israel but not for contemporary man. Instead God authors nature which in turn authors a law that fallen and redeemed man together, starting autonomously from themselves, quite without presupposing God, reasons to by an act of the human will (fallen or unfallen).

The autonomy of man in all this is seen in Dr. Wolfe saying,

“A Christian nationalist must have the strength of will to affirm what is true, even if it doesn’t feel good to him. This is the main reason why I emphasized the will throughout this book…. we have to retrain the mind by the strength of will.”

So, the appeal here for the Christian Nationalist is find the strength of will to affirm the true, but the true this strength of will is to be affirming is a true that is drawn not from Scripture but from Wolfe’s “Natural Law.”

This is a “Natural Law,” that is contained in zero volumes in any library in the world. This is a “Natural Law,” that is kaleidoscopic, having as many variants as there are schools of philosophical thought. I promise you that the Natural Law of the Romanticist is not going to agree with the Natural Law of the Nihilist and they are not going to agree, in  turn, with the Natural Law of the Deist who is not going to agree with the Natural Law of the Marquis de Sade.

We also see the reality of the instability of Natural Law by observing that there are now two contesting interpretations of Natural Law that are adamantly opposed to one another in definition and meaning in the Reformed World. One can choose Dr. David Van Drunen’s R2K Natural law or one can choose Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s Natural Law. These two Natural Laws are at each other’s throats and come to exactly opposite conclusions on a host of matters. Both contestants will tell you that their Natural Law is THE Natural Law. One wonders if there is a Natural Law that can tell us which competing Natural Law we are to choose vis-a-vis Wolfe and Van Drunen.

And of course this is only in the Reformed World. How many other Natural Law paradigms are out there? One can only guess that there as many Natural Laws as there stars in the sky or sand on the seashore.

It is a utterly failed model, and yet because we are in need of a Transcendent authoritative word to serve as the North Star of our Epistemology we turn to this completely contrived idea of Natural Law instead of turning to God’s Law and Testimony.

Why not be like the Psalmist who when wanting to arrive at Truth could speak about the blessed man finding,

 his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.

And again,

The law of the Lord is perfect, [e]converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
8 The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;

And of course that Magnum Opus of the Law found in Psalm 119.

Isaiah in 8:20 was merely echoing the resolve of all God’s people when he wrote,

“To the law and to the testimony: if they (the Mediums vs. 19) speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”      Isaiah 8:20

I do not think it is going to far to say that those who make Natural Law walk on all fours as a foundation for epistemological theory are indeed consulting a kind of man created medium.

Listen to the warnings against Natural Law, not only as what we have seen from Scripture but also many church Fathers;

Canons of Dort III/IV.4:

“The Inadequacy of the Light of Nature
To be sure, there is left in man after the fall, some light of nature, whereby he retains some notions about God,-1- about natural things, and about the difference between what is honorable and shameful, and shows some regard for virtue and outward order. But so far is he from arriving at the saving knowledge of God and true conversion through this light of nature that he does not even use it properly in natural and civil matters. Rather, whatever this light may be, man wholly pollutes it in various ways and suppresses it by his wickedness.-2- In doing so, he renders himself without excuse before God.
-1- Rom 1:19-20; 2:14-15.

-2- Rom 1:18, 20.”

“Where the leaders have no vision, the people perish. And natural law theory with its rationalism was the Trojan horse that brought the legions of Satan further and further into God’s world. The leaders–Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, and in our nation our Presidents, Senators, churchmen–all have failed to see the command of their Creator for their lives and offices, and we as Christians, the salt of the earth, have failed to see and lead for the blessing of ourselves and our posterity.”

Rex Downie
Natural Law and God’s Law: An Antithesis

 

“This synthetic; (Aristotelianism w/ Christianity) standpoint found its most powerful philosophical and theological expression in the system of Thomas Aquinas. The; two foundational tenets of this system were the positing of the; autonomy of natural reason in the entire sphere of natural knowledge, and the thesis that nature is the understructure of supernatural grace.”71 It is in the acceptance of the idea of the autonomy of reason, even though it was supposed to be restricted to the sphere of “natural knowledge,” that Romanism (and all systems that embrace Natural Law — BLM) makes its alliance with the religious dualism of the Greek form-matter scheme. In consequence, the “Biblical creation-motive was deprived of its original integral and radical character.”72 “Creation is proclaimed to be a natural truth, which can be seen and proven by theoretical thought independent of all divine revelation.”

CVT

Christianity & Barthianism

 

“If you want my thesis of natural law theory in one graphic sentence, I will provide it: the most consistent defender of natural law theory was the Marquis de Sade. De Sade’s incomparable perversity was self-consciously based on his observation of the workings of nature. … He also opposed civil laws against prostitution, adultery, incest, rape, and sodomy. After all, these are all natural urges and practices; they are found in nature. Marriage and monogamy are not normal in nature.”

Gary North

Westminster’s Confession

 

“Law is rooted in God’s essence. Apostasy means forsaking justice. For atheists, there are only natural inclinations, no natural law. Conscience and moral inclinations are merely weak reverberations of God’s Law, and wherever the latter is done away with, duty is replaced by pride and selfishness.”

– Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer

Ursinus in his Commentary on Heidelberg (p. 506) writes,

“Furthermore, although natural demonstrations teach nothing concerning God that is false, yet men, without the knowledge of God’s word, obtain nothing from them except false notions and conceptions of God; both because these demonstrations do not contain as much as is delivered in his word, and also because even those things which may be understood naturally, men, nevertheless, on account of innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely, and so corrupt it in various ways.”

Zacharias Ursinus

Commentary on Heidelberg Catechism

Conclusion;

The message of the Gospel is that man is a sinner in need of His sins being forgiven by the work of Christ on the cross. One of the main sins of that fallen man is guilty of is the sin of operating autonomously …. operating as if he and not God is the operator of reality.

There is the garden man operated autonomously according to his fallen reason. His fallen reason told him that the fruit was pleasing to the eye. His fallen reason believed that if he only ate he would be as God knowing good and evil. And then, on the basis of right reason and natural law, per his beginning presupposition that God was in error in what He said, Man ate .. and fell.

It was a mistake to ever take up right reason and natural law as an epistemology…. as an answer to the question how do we know what we know. The answer to the question of how do we know what we know is by affirming our reliance on God’s special revelation.

Only by having a right understanding of special revelation can we read natural revelation correctly.

—————————

 

__________

Below is an excerpt taken by something Martin Selbrede wrote for the Chalcedon Inst.

In Dr. Wolfe’s view, “revealed theology serves to complete politics, but it is not the foundation of politics.”8 Theology provides capstones, not foundations (contra Luke 6:47-49) because man’s “political life is fundamentally natural.”9 Christianity provides a cosmetic finish to perfect a nation.10 The concept of the same hands laying the foundation also installing the capstone (Zech. 4:9) is alien to Dr. Wolfe.

Man, as a moral being, is bound only by the natural law (or God’s moral law) as the rule for his actions. But the natural law in itself doesn’t prescribe specific action. … Being mediators of God’s civil rule, civil rulers issue civil commands – expressed and promulgated as civil law – that are ordinances of God and bind the conscience, though only when they are just … So civil law is not mere philosophical reflection, nor should it be the rubberstamped Mosaic civil code.11

Thus, all righteous laws are only potentially just. … This is why the magistrate cannot rubberstamp a ready-made divine civil code.12

A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws, and they should not seek some universal “blueprint” they can rubber-stamp into law.13

The Mosaic law is not above natural law; it is a perfect application of it.14

Mosaic law … is not thereby a suitable body of law for all nations.15

Mosaic law … is a perfect example of law. But it is not a universal body of law.16

We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws.17

Natural law can hide inside a chrysalis to later emerge as a butterfly.  For Dr. Wolfe, allegiance to the written Law of God consigns a society to caterpillar status. Whereas Mosaic law may have been a perfect reduction of natural law for pre-Christian Israel, it isn’t for us. We must draft the blueprints for a butterfly to emerge from the jelly.

For Dr. Wolfe, “the prince mediates God’s divine civil rule … he makes public judgments in application of God’s natural law, effectively creating law (though derivative of natural law).”18 The prince fills the void left by God’s written law, for “the prince is the instrument by which natural law becomes human law.”19 There is an implied vacancy for the position of lawgiver, and secular lawgivers are seen as divinely inspired bakers cooking up new butterflies from the jelly. “Girolamo Zanchi states that ‘the laws of Solon, Lycurgus, Romulus, and Numa’ were ‘divinely inspired.’ If this is true of pagans, why exclude Christian civil leaders?”20 As John Owen noted, “the scholastics (in whose eyes Thomas Aquinas is second only to God), have conscientious scruples about disagreeing with Aristotle.”21

A “vague knowledge”22 is sufficient to start the legislative ball rolling. This veers away from Mosaic law because “the precursor to any Christian nationalism is a people intentionally working their natural good according to man’s nature.”23 The path to blessings revealed in Psalm 1, Psalm 19, and Psalm 119 is supplanted by Dr. Wolfe’s preferred route.

Dr. Wolfe says that “the magistrate is the living law”24 since otherwise “civil laws have no force.”25 The flying scroll of Zech. 5:1-4 certainly puts the lie to such claims: God’s law enters into the homes of transgressors and destroys them.

Wilson diverges from Dr. Wolfe, referring to “the end result that we are aiming for — obedience to every word of Christ — including the things He said about the words of Moses.”26 In fact, Wilson seems troubled by any alleged inapplicability of Scripture: “What good is an absolutely infallible book that cannot be applied?”27 We would argue that its applicability has been laid out in Dr. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law.

In contrast, the Puritans “never wavered in their belief in the supreme authority and necessity of revelation, and they confidently assumed that the dictates of ‘right reason’ received their full enunciation in the revelation of God’s will contained in Scripture.”28 The mechanisms Dr. Wolfe invokes are denied to him by Jacques Ellul, who “points out that ‘law by itself, as an autonomous entity, does not exist in the Bible,’ … that the Stoic and Thomist and Rationalist arguments are insufficient to produce a Law at all.”29 There’s simply no jelly available for making butterflies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Zielinski / McAtee Chronicles …. Exchange II

Bret,

You will always, within any given group, find extremists who want to eradicate others who aren’t like them — Christianity has those too — but I very much doubt most Jews, at least today, care about Christianity except to the extent of wanting it to leave them alone. But suppose I’m wrong about that. What then?

In that case Judaism would be no different from either Christianity or Islam, each of which seeks to bring about “peace” by killing off, converting (forcibly if necessary), or intimidating into silence all non-conformers. I’ve read enough of your Christian nationalism to know that that’s essentially your end game, even if you might quibble with how I just described it. I’ve read enough world history to know that that’s pretty much what Christian nationalism looked like when it had power (the Inca, Celtic pagans and Native Americans would like a word). So why are you criticizing the Jews for doing the same thing? Other, I mean, than the bald, naked and unsupported assertion that you’re right and they’re wrong.

And here, ultimately, is the societal choice that needs to be made: There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching as the result.

As for your claims about the inquisition and the holocaust, and the books you recommend, I was raised by anti-Semites so I’m already familiar with them. An elder in the church I grew up in once said, in a sermon, that his only real objection to the holocaust was that it wasn’t 100% successful in destroying all Jews. Having been raised in that, I’ve already heard your arguments, and they’re garbage. There really was a holocaust, it really did try to kill off Europe’s Jewish population, and it really was a continuation of the inquisition under a different name, even though Catholics weren’t the only ones involved. If you want to buy into historical revisionism, that’s your right, but that’s what it is.

Kathleen,

All that you’ve sent me is hot garbage stew. You keep pining for Pluralism/multiculturalism without realizing that is a religious conviction that requires a monotheism that says … “No God can be uniquely worshiped in a social order except for the God that requires no other singular God.” Sorry… that’s why I said pluralism is a myth. You want to force that “pluralistic” monotheistic religion on me and you want to force your God upon me. Not happening.

And of course you are wrong about Jewish people wanting to just live and let live. Jewish people HATE Biblical Christianity because a social order governed by Biblical Christianity would not allow porn … would not allow anti-Christ films being made in Hollywood, would not allow the attempt to marginalize Christianity as the Jewish faith of multiculturalism/pluralism has successfully done,. would not allow children to be brainwashed with your propaganda in Government schools. Pluralism = Jewish Nationalism.

If you look and learn your history you will see that Christianity did not seek to kill the Jewish people. By way of official Church policy Roman Catholic teaching early in the Church, w/ its policy of “Sicut Judaeis Non,” taught a doctrine that stated no one had the right to harm the Jew, but at the same time, the Jews were — like Christians and Jews living under Islam — required to accept second class status and refrain from undermining the Christian cultures in which they lived. This is hardly a doctrine that encouraged the killing of Jews as you so wrongly think. It is either have that kind of social order or a social order of your pluralism where Christians living under your pluralism are required to accept second class status being restrained from undermining your filthy pluralistic/multicultural social order.

Again, I say, Kathleen, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. God has provided you the opportunity to learn aright. Will you not take it? And before we leave this you might want to read a Jewish author named Ariel Toaff who wrote; “Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders.” This book has the potential of cleansing your cheery view of what happens when Christians allow pluralism in their midst.

Your grasp on World history is what I might expect from someone who has read only the court historians with their official anti-Christian narrative. Have you never learned that the official history is written by the winners? Wise up and realize that it is typically only in revisionist history where the truth is buried waiting to be discovered. Again, I recommend Rodney Stark’s “Bearing False Witness,” as an antidote for your gross misunderstanding of history. Another book that would help you see straight again is Wm. T. Cavanaugh’s, ”The Myth of Religious Violence.” You are operating under a strong delusion that these kind of books can help you disburse.

Next we speak briefly to your laughable appeal to the ill treatment of “Incas, Native Americans, and Celtic Pagans.” The peoples under the thumb of the Incas and Aztecs praised God for the work of Cortez. Have you read Cortez’s diaries? Have you read Christopher Columbus diaries? I have. You are absolutely clueless when you suggest sympathy for these murderous people. The Native Americans were so busy killing one another, that I’m surprised they noticed when the white man begin to kill them as a defensive measure to stop their raping, murdering, and pillaging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1y_0NfhF9c

Next, my conviction that I am right and the enemies of Christ are wrong are not in the least bald, naked, or unsupported. I have God’s own Word to substantiate all of my claims about Christianity being the truth. All you have is the bald, naked, unsupported, assertion that Christianity is not true and that because Christianity is not true therefore everything else is true. You are not wise.

Then you write this hilarious bit that is worthy of a stand up comic routine;

“There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching (sic) as the result.”

1.) There are so many worldviews therefore there must be no true worldview?

2.) Really, there are, in the end, only two Worldviews. Christianity or Humanism. It’s not that hard. Though I concede humanism can wear any number of masks.

3.) Or, there is another option, and that is people and nations recognizing that religio-ethno states are inevitable. This is what you are arguing for Kathleen. You are arguing that America should be a religio-ethno state that is a place where all colors bleed into one (ethno) and where the religion that rules is the religion that allows no other singular religion or God then the religion of all religions and all gods.

However, where all religions are allowed then the God is really the state (man in his corporate expression — Humanism) so that the God-state can dictate to all the other gods how far they are allowed to go in the public square. You are not a pluralist Kathleen. You are a raging monotheist who desires that this social-order outlaw people like me who desires a different god besides your multiculturalism god to rule over the social order. Can you not see this?

I could care less about the de-churching of the church if that is happening because people don’t want a clear alternative between your god and the God of the Bible. Elijah was alone on Mt. Carmel against all pagan comers. I’ve no problem standing alone. McAtee contra Mundum. 

I quite agree that the Jewish people suffered greatly during WW II.  However as Jewish people were understood as being the ideological champions of Communism, then we understand why many people in Europe were concerned about the enemy in their midst. That it went badly for too many rank and file Jewish people I weep over. It is one reason I am so adamantly opposed to war when not waged on a Christian basis.

Please repent Kathleen. Your understanding of History has been fed to you by Dr. Mephistopheles and his imp culinary school of chefs. Christ will receive you and teach you a better way … a way not characterized by your bitterness and hate against Him.

From the Mailbag; Zielinski & McAtee Chit Chat On the Jewish Question

Dear Bret;

Does it occur to you that maybe the reason the Jews are so hostile to Christian nationalism (and so supportive of things you hate like religious pluralism, equality, and globalism) is that many centuries of Christian nationalism gave them pogroms, expulsions, inquisitions, and the Holocaust? Maybe if, instead of Jews, Christians had been on the receiving end of that, you might see the wisdom in tolerance and pluralism too?

If you’re going to persecute people, they’re going to fight back, so in that sense Christian nationalism is simply reaping what it sowed.

Kathleen Zelinski

Hello Kathleen Zelinski.

Yes, it occurred to me, but thank you for giving me an opportunity to answer my own questions. After it occurred to mee that the Jewish people might have a reason for being the way they are I went and did my research and realized that it was really the case that the reason Christians are so hostile to Jewish people is that for many centuries the Jewish impulse and goal as been to destroy Christianity. The things you claim about above either were defensive measures on the part of Christians, or as myths that Jewish people have made up to smear Christianity.

This clip demonstrates the view of many of the Jewish people (practicing or not) against Christ and Christianity, and provides insight into the intellectuals among the especially the “secular” Jewish people;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCBmJV5VSI8

Lets look to your litany of things you think I should look into. First, the whole myth about the Inquisition is ably dismissed by Rodney Stark in his book, “Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.” As another example when we look at the Holocaust numbers and methods we see that they themselves are largely debatable. See the literature that came out of the Ernst Zundel trial in Canada. Even Auschwitz in 1992 reduced by 2million the number of people who died there from the original accounts that stood for 45 years before they were changed. The Jewish Bolsheviks in the USSR easily killed as many Christian Ukrainians in the Holodomor as died at Aushwitz. Sorry, Kathleen, I just don’t agree with your interpretation of history and I’ve read the literature that substantiates my convictions.

You might find these books helpful:

Bible —  Keep an eye on all the persecutions of Christians by Jews in the book of Acts
The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit — E. Michael Jones
The Holocaust Narrative — E. Michael Jones
Bearing False Witness — Rodney Stark (Stark also has a chapter where he discusses the myth that Pope Pius was against German Jewish people)
The Jewish Threat — Joseph Bendersky
The Plot Against the Church — Maurice Pinay
Ron Unz (Himself Jewish) writes a lot of great stuff on this issue. See His “Understanding World War II: Essays on the Shaping Event of Our Modern World”

On the issue of so many many expulsions from European nations (Ulysses S. Grant even expelled them from the US South during the Civil War for awhile because they were being such a menace) have you ever asked yourself “what did the Jewish people do wherein they found themselves expelled over and over and over again from Christian Nations?” I mean is it even possible that they brought it upon themselves by their behavior?

Finally, in terms of pluralism… well, pluralism is a myth. As we are seeing pluralism is just a backdoor method to dilute Christian influence so that Jewish influence can be inordinately high.

Here is what the Presbyterian minister Dr. D. James Kennedy said about tolerance;

“Tolerance is the last ‘virtue’ of a depraved society. When you have an immoral society that has blatantly, proudly, violated all of the commandments of God, there is one last ‘virtue’ that they insist upon: tolerance for their immorality.” 

I have many more book recommendations I could offer if you are interested. I have read a good deal on this subject because I wanted to cover all bases on such an important subject. I just didn’t want to overwhelm you by giving too many recommendations at once. I have read tons of the literature written by Jewish authors surrounding the Holocaust also. Indeed, I have a nice little library. I also took a whole semester class in Undergrad (circa 1981) on “The Holocaust,” where we were taught all the usual tropes, read all the pro-Jewish books, and viewed all the propaganda film that came out of that time period. I merely believe that one has to look at this issue with a wide angle lens considering centuries of history and not merely 12 or so years in Germany — as horrendous as those years may have been.

Thanks for stopping by at Iron Ink Kathleen. We try to give air time to all kinds of opinions here. I trust that your hope for eternity is rooted deeply and only in Jesus Christ — Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Anti-Christian Nationalism

The “Christians” chanting,
“Anti-Christian Nationalism,
Lord to thee we bow
Savior of our destiny
Thy name be hallowed now”

But heed ye not their ravings
To thyself be true!
Anti- Christian Nationalism
Is the “Kingdom of the Jew.”

Keep your Nationality
His and mine and thine
Be not driven headlong
Like Gadarenian swine

Know ye well, the enemy
of Christendom of yore
Anti Christian Nationalism
Known as Babylon the whore

The “Christians” chanting,
“Anti-Christian Nationalism,
The International we serve
Let all colors bleed into one”
Will get the hell that they deserve

Back to Begging… Well, Maybe Not Exactly Begging

“The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but love.”

Billy Graham
Circa 1957

The Christian has to say to Homosexuals, ‘We will not treat you in those ways. We can’t revile you, but we can’t affirm you. The reason that we can’t revile you is same reason why we can’t affirm you, because of the Bible, because of God’s love, because of His grace, because of His goodness.’”

Rev. Alistair Begg

A recent post here dealt with Rev. Alister Begg’s comments advising a Grandmother that she can indeed attend the perverted wedding of her grandson, and with a gift.

https://ironink.org/2024/01/alister-begg-r-c-sproul-2-0-on-matters-surrounding-attending-sodomite-marriages/

In the face of withering criticism coming from what remains of the Christian dissident voice in America Rev. Begg decided to double down and tell his critics to, in essence, “go pound sand.”

Actually, I admire Begg’s willingness to give the middle finger salute to his critics. I always like seeing backbone. Now if it only was backbone as standing for a righteous cause instead of backbone standing for wickedness.

Rev. Begg opens up by appealing to Luke 15 and the parable of the prodigal son. Rev. Begg tries to position himself as the Father who eagerly anticipates the return of the prodigal son. Rev. Begg sees himself as the loving Father in the prodigal son parable. Further, he sees the perverted grandson getting “married” to another pervert to be the prodigal son and Begg sees all his critics as Pharisees and tax collectors, who are the Older son in the parable.

The problem here of course is obvious to those with eyes to see. In the Parable of the prodigal son, the prodigal is returning to his Father, with a mindset of repenting to take a servant’s place in the household. To the contrary, in real life, the prodigal (perverted) grandson remains in the pig stye dining with the swine, still refusing to return to his grandmother’s God and Christian faith. So, the passage that Rev. Begg appeals to in order to double down finds him guilty of gross eisegesis.

Let it be said here that any Christian worthy of the name Christian would be the first in line to welcome back any returning prodigal pervert. The Christian faith prides itself on the fact that it restores prodigals.

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous[b] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,[c] 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Furthermore, any Christian worthy of the name Christian would even be willing to exercise great effort to articulate the saving message of Christianity to all prodigals, commanding them to repent. However, what a Christ honoring Christian will never do is celebrate perversity, or drink a toast to perversity, or be found countenancing a stiff necked perversity happening in God’s face. A Christ honoring Christian does not deny the message of Christ in the hopes that by their denial of the message of Christ they might win some to Christ.

Rev. Begg in his sermon quotes from a book the he wrote on the necessity of loving one’s enemy. Rev. Begg admits that he does not like perverts but that is irrelevant since he is called to love them. The problem here, I think is Begg’s understanding of love. Allow me to posit that Begg advising the grandmother to attend that “wedding,” is not counsel wherein biblical love is found. It is not Christian love to the lost as God defines love to join in celebration of a pervert marriage, though I am glad to concede that it is Christian love to the lost as fallen man defines love. The most loving thing possible that Begg could counsel is to explain to the grandmother how she is demonstrating love for her grandson by not attending the wedding. Rev. Begg is using the word “love” here in the sense of “that harlot sure loved her latest customer.”

The love I am talking about is the idea found in teaching parents that it is love for a child that visits the child with discipline, and even, when warranted, spankings. Rev. Begg’s logic is the same logic that says that disciplining your children is not loving. However, as any parent knows, as painful as discipline is for both parent and child it is the very nard of love and to neglect it is not loving but is full on hate. This is what Begg told the grandmother. Begg told the grandmother, “In the name of love, you go ahead and hate your grandson by attending this ‘wedding.'” It is profoundly unwise counsel coming from a chap who is 72 years old and who has been in the ministry his whole adult life.

We should note here that Rev. Begg’s warning against Pharisaic behavior is still worthy of hearing. We all (or at least I do) have this tendency towards self-righteousness, and as such it is always good to be probed by God’s warning Word on this matter. Having said that, I continue to insist that Rev. Begg has missed the mark in accusing people of being Pharisaic because they oppose his advice. Speaking only for myself, my life has found me attending gay bars and having gay friends who were genuine friends hoping by some means to communicate Christ. (To my great sadness they never did embrace Christ.)

Rev. Begg said in his double down sermon;

“In that conversation with that grandmother, I was concerned about the well-being of their relationship more than anything else. Hence my counsel. Don’t misunderstand that in any way at all.”

Now, I will be accused of being picayune but here is Begg’s major problem. We can applaud Begg for his well intended compassion here but, as the saying goes, “good intention pave the road to hell.” Rev. Begg’s concern should have been about the well being of God’s glory more than anything else. How is God glorified by the grandmother celebrating a monstrosity called a “wedding,” which is in point of fact a mockery of God and His reality?

In the end one wonders how far Rev. Begg would take this kind of logic? I mean, let’s try a couple reductio-ad-absurdum.

If a lesbian “couple” decides that one of them will get impregnated with the sperm of the brother of her partner so as to be parents does Rev. Begg recommend that their Christian grandmothers tell the lesbians that while grandma loves Jesus and therefore can’t affirm their lifestyle choices, grandma should nevertheless go to the baby shower and take a gift?

If a farmer decides to marry his favorite milk cow does Rev. Begg recommend that the farmer’s grandmother tell the farmer grandson that while grandma loves Jesus and therefore can’t affirm her farmer grandson’s lifestyle choices, grandma should go to the wedding and take a gift — perhaps a silver cowbell for Bessie?

Where does this kind of irrationality end? Honestly the only difference between what Rev. Begg has counseled and these other hypothetical counseling scenarios is that sodomy has now been accepted socially while the others have not. It is still safe to not be seen as being mean, if one counsels grandma not to attend my two pretend scenarios but it is not culturally safe to tell grandma that she shouldn’t attend her grandsons pervert “wedding.”

Rev. Begg goes on to say in her sermon;

“What happens to homosexual people, in my ‘experience,’ is that they are either reviled or they are affirmed. The Christian has to say, ‘We will not treat you in either of those ways. We cannot revile you, but we cannot affirm you. And the reason that we can’t revile you is the same reason why we can’t affirm you, because of the Bible, because of God’s love, because of His grace, because of His goodness.’”

And yet Rev. Begg has no problem whatsoever reviling those non-sodomites who are Christian for insisting he must repent. To those Christians Begg lifts the reviling voice by calling them “Pharisees,” and “Fundamentalists.” Clearly, then the problem for Begg is not the issue of reviling. He has demonstrated he is perfectly capable of doing that. The issue for Rev. Begg is “who shall be reviled.” For Begg, we do not revile perverts but we do revile those we wrongly categorize as Pharisees and Fundamentalists.

Rev. Begg, in his sermon goes on to say that a main reason why there is this problem is that he is a product of British Evangelicalism and not American Fundamentalism. Indeed, in many respects this is the key thing is Begg’s sermon because British Evangelicalism has always been weak. The Brit Evangelicals have been weak on social issues. John Stott, for example, was a proto pioneer for WOKEism. (See his vol. on the Sermon on the Mount.) British Evangelicalism was weak on Biblical inerrancy and inspiration. Even Lloyd-Jones, as solid as he was, found his own church become a laughing stock, after he left, because of his quirky doctrine on the sealing work of the Holy Spirit being a distinct second work of grace. Lloyd-Jones would have never countenanced what replaced him but it was because of his quirky doctrine that his work at Westminster chapel thoroughly deteriorated. British Evangelicalism sucks as is seen by British culture.

We find ourselves asking … Hey Alistair… how’s that British Evangelicalism working out for Britain these days?

Churches filled?
Clergy Orthodox?
Christian family life blooming?
Christian Worldview evident everywhere?
Christian Statesmen abound?
Grooming young girls brought to a halt?

Were I Alistair I would go real slow on glorying in British Evangelicalism over American Fundamentalism.

And while we are on Fundamentalism lets us say note here a dirty little secret. Everyone is a fundamentalist. Rev. Begg just prefers his fundamentalism of celebrating license while I prefer my fundamentalism of maintaining orthodoxy. However, Alister is just as much a Fundamentalist as anybody he would like to name who is opposing him. He is showing in this whole sermon that he is sticking to his fundamentals and one of his fundamentals is celebrating perversity. Rev. Begg is a liberal fundamentalist.

Begg goes on to note how he has been orthodox in the past on marriage and how he has opposed sodomy in the past. He seems to think that because he got it right in the past that makes his getting it wrong today ok, as if being in severe contradiction is not a problem. Sorry, Alistair but a past getting it right does not make sense of a contradiction presently where you get it grossly wrong.

As my Grandmother used to tell me when I did something stupid; “Your heart was in the right place,” so I don’t doubt that Rev. Begg’s heart is in the right place. He has the best of intentions. It’s just that his intentions are driving him to say stupid things that don’t really serve his intentions. Also, there is the matter that when Rev. Begg speaks like this it makes easier for some other young minister somewhere to also compromise because, “Well, if someone like Alistair Begg can say this then certainly I have to be gracious as well.” But, again, this isn’t gracious speech. This is hateful speech on Rev. Begg’s part and good intentions doesn’t change that.

Let’s send British Evangelicalism back to Britain.