Diversity? I Don’t Think So

As Joseph Epstein has said, the current quest for diversity is only a diversity of like-minded individuals. It is a rigid conformity to a leftist philosophy; it is groupthink, lockstep conformity with leftist thinking, and not diversity at all.

Alvin J. Schmidt
The Menace of Multiculturalism — pg. 66

Clearly wherever one finds the cult of the multicult there one has happened upon a nest of neo-Marxists. This is true regardless of whether you find the nest in a Government School or in a Presbyterian Church. I mention the Church because legion are the names of ministers and churches who are saying that “diverse” churches are automatically superior, implying that Jesus loves those kinds of churches even more than non-diverse churches. Such thinking is outhouse fodder.

Dr. John Frame has the right idea of all this when he says,

“Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

Yet, the challenge to the historic Christian view that Frame thumps for is seen everywhere in our culture;

“A mark of a healthy church is when the people are part of diverse communities and share the Gospel with diverse group of people.”

Young Yi
Associate Pastor — Riverview Church

E. Lansing Michigan

I often daydream about a scene of an unchurched person walking their dog one late Sunday morning. As this person and their pet turn right on the main road, they peacefully walk by the local church as the service is being let out. As this person and their pet walk by, the pet owner begins to notice that there is something peculiar about the scene in the church parking lot, but cannot quite put her finger on it. There are people of different ages, socio-economic status, and ethnicity in joyful community as they make their way to their vehicles. The pet owner continues on with her walk, but is often reminded about what she saw in the parking lot that day.

Rev. Ron Burns 
SBC Pastor

I call you tonight, dear friends, not simply to repent corporately for past, overt acts of racism— which we must do, and Lord willing, which we will do. I call you to commit to the dismantling of White Cultural Normativity in the PCA. And I call you to the establishment of a new norm—a new vision for our denomination that might be called Multicultural Normativity.

Duke Kwon 
PCA Elder

One could also pull quotes from former SBC President J. D. Grear, former SBC Ethics guru Russel Moore, and current President of Southern Baptist Seminary Al Mohler. One can throw a rock in any direction and easily hit one of these ecclesiastical multiculturalists.

Yet, the irony in all this is that these people, as the Schmidt note above communicates are really pursuing theological-ideological uniformitarianism that is approved by people coming from people who are united by their agreement in championing Cultural Marxism, WOKEism, as well as alternative sexual lifestyles (consider the PCA’s problem with Side-B sodomy).

The leadership in this push are all grifters pulling a long con on people who don’t have the brains that God gave them at birth. Do you really think these chiselers would stand for diversity in ideology and theology? Do you think they would put up with the diversity I would bring to their congregations? Not in a million years would their diversity allow for Bret McAtee diversity. These people desire to build multicultural churches (an oxymoron if there ever was one) that are uniformitarian in the Cultural Marxist ideology they are passing as theology. Only people who understand historic Reformed Christianity are not welcome. Those kinds of people are too diverse for us.

If they were honest they would advertise themselves by saying something like;

“Everyone is welcome here who are in favor of the book burning of Achord and Dow’s book that proves we are teaching heresy.”

Men like this are just the newest version of Elmer Gantry. More than anything else they are ecclesiastical supporters of the NWO.

If the Church had any spine they would throw them out on their keisters.

Wherein We See that Opposition to Kinism is Opposition to Calvinism

We are not interested, they (Liberals) say, in many things for which men formerly gave their lives; we are not interested in the theology of the creeds; we are not interested in the doctrines of sin and salvation; we are not interested in atonement through the blood of Christ: enough for us is the simple truth of the fatherhood of God and its corollary, the brotherhood of man. We may not be very orthodox in the theological sense, they continue, but of course you will recognize us as Christians because we accept Jesus’ teaching as to the Father God….

It is very strange how intelligent persons can speak in this way. It is very strange how those who accept only the universal fatherhood of God as the sum and substance of religion can regard themselves as Christians or can appeal to Jesus of Nazareth. For the plain fact is that this modern doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God formed no part whatever of Jesus’ teaching. Where is it that Jesus may be supposed to have taught the universal fatherhood of God?

J. Gresham Machen
Christianity & Liberalism

Our current Alienist problem in the Western Calvinist Churches is a reflection of the decline of genuinely Reformed soteriology. Biblical and Historical Calvinism has always advocated for limited damnation (particular redemption), where Christ is put forth as a sacrifice for only His people.

In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God’s chief passion is Himself. In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God does all He does for His own interest. He pursues His own interests and in the context of particular redemption, this means He willfully limits His affections to His people.
Reformed folk understood this doctrine had implications. As God’s love was particular so Reformed folk refused the idea of “the Brotherhood of all men.” If God restricts His love so that it is particular so man’s love can be particular as well. In other words, God’s love for His own is a communicable attribute.

If God does not restrict His love so that He loves all men indiscriminately then men must be pluralists and love all men indiscriminately. Holding to the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God over all men and the brotherhood of all men destroys what the Reformed Church has taught for 500 years and that is the idea that men’s affections properly run in concentric circles outwardly from close kin, to clan and then to nation. This is the destruction of family, clan, and nations as exchanged for the embrace of an abstract love for all mankind that applies to all equally. No historic Calvinist would have ever abided with such heresy.

The connection here is that as Calvinists become weak on Limited Damnation they become strong on the Liberal Doctrines of the “Fatherhood of God over all men,”  “the Brotherhood of all men” as well as egalitarianism.

Opposition to Kinism thus is opposition to Calvinism.

Muh White Privilege & The Great Replacement Theory

Eighteen months ago the New York Times announced it would henceforth capitalize the word “Black ” when it referred to race while the word “white” would remain lowercase. This, it was announced would now be its standard style. This move found precedent in one’s King James Bible as the translators of the King James Bible capitalized pronouns referring to God.  A majority of news agencies around the globe followed the lead of the New York Times.

Now when you combine this with the reality that referencing black people with any number of other assorted words that literally mean “black” will find one guilty of a kind of blasphemy that leads to social ostracization and you find yourself realizing that the Old Testament world is not the far away from where we are now with the OT blasphemy laws against speaking God’s name — a violation of which resulted in the death penalty.
Has the white man made the Black man the one whom “thou shalt not take the name of the new Lord thy God in vain?”  This strikes me as a game of “pin the tail on the new god.”

Now in light of all the above keep in mind that thanks to the 1965 Immigration act coming into its own with the last 40 years of immigration policy. Because of that suicidal policy, politicians who practiced skullduggery have caused the formerly majority white nation of America to swell with an influx of immigrants from everywhere around the world save white countries. This has had the effect of reducing the white man’s share of the population from over 85% when I was 22 years of age, to now under 65% of the population now that I am 62 years of age, and the future portends an even greater increase of the non-white percentage in this country as white anglo Saxon Christians children currently make up less than 50% of our school children.

Now, add to all the above the reality of laws that require minority quotas, and set-asides, as well as the points that one has added to their SAT, MCAT, or LSAT just for being non-white, and one begins to wonder just where all this white privilege is?

With the passage of another 40 years will it be the case that my grandchildren will be seeing signs that advertise “white men need not apply?” Will it be the case in 40 more years that white people will uniquely be drawers of water and hewers of wood in the nation my forebears built? Or will the white man even exist given our declining below replacement level birth rates around the world?

Yes, Virginia, despite the mockery of such an idea there really is an agenda to replace white people — especially white Christian people. The fact that the same people group who is now capitalizing the word “Black” in all references to race is mocking my certainty that a “great replacement” agenda exists only proves to me that such an agenda exists.

 

Advent #2 — 2021; Of the Hypostatic Union, Arianism, and Athanasius

Last week we considered the Incarnation of Jesus Christ especially in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity.

We said that the Incarnation is a fine example of the Christian faith inasmuch as in Christianity as in the Incarnation we find that God condescends to man since man cannot rise to God.

We noted that the word incarnation simply means that in Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, took on human form – being miraculously conceived and born of a virgin.

We pursued the idea that the incarnation is the central fact of the entire history of the world so much so that time can be measured as “Before Christ,” and “Anno Domini” in the year of our Lord.

We noted that the Incarnation proclaims plurality in the one God inasmuch as Jesus was and remains very God of very God. We noted that in the Incarnation the preexistent Christ was sent by the Father and was conceived by the Holy Ghost underscoring again the Trinitarian nature of Christianity.

In the Doctrine of the Trinity therefore God eternally exists as three distinct persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the one being of God.

We examined the idea that the incarnation is distinctly Christian as a doctrine because no other belief system can provide the possibility of an incarnation. We looked at the three possibilities for religions (Deism, Pantheism, and Christianity) and saw that Christianity is Christianity, in part, because it alone provides an Incarnation.

And then we spent just a wee bit of time considering the role/work of each member of the Trinity in the Incarnation considering some of the teachings of Scripture on that subject.

We concluded that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity implies one another and depend upon one another.

This week we want to consider the proper way to think about the Incarnation of the preexistent Christ so that we don’t fall into heresy in our Christology – in our doctrine of Christ.

The Church thought getting the incarnation was so important that it spent hundreds and hundreds of years getting our Christology correct. Councils were called and Bishops debated. Some of our most famous creeds on Christology came from those councils – Nicea, Athanasian, and Chalcedon. Legend has it at times punches were thrown as between competing Bishops. History teaches that Bishops, Athanasius repeatedly, were repeatedly exiled because they refused to agree with a consensus they were convinced was wrong. It seems only fitting in light of that contest that we work to get our Christology right as based on Scripture.

As we start out we note that it is easier, when it comes to Christology, to say what is heresy than it is to say what is accurate.

Indeed, Dr. Harold O. J. Brown, in his book titled “Heresies” argued that orthodoxy only comes into existence after heresy has been introduced and so needs to be fought off. And Christology is one area that he uses to prove his thesis. The Church fathers could identify the heresies and in identifying the heresies they mapped out for us today orthodoxy in our doctrine of the Person of Christ.

So… what are the common heresies involved in the incarnation? There are three that we will limn out this week and next. Those heresies are simple to remember.

1.) The church was often guilty of denying the humanity of Christ. – That is error #1
2.) With the Enlightenment going fwd. The heresy dujour is denying the deity of Christ #2
3.) The third heresy is the denial that Christ has two natures – that Christ is 100% God and 100% man at the same time while being only one person.

So we will get through #1 this morning and some of #2 perhaps.

In terms of how these heresies rolled out, there was a pendulum effect to them all. There would be one heresy expressed only to find another heresy expressed that sat at the other extreme. Dr. B. B. Warfield, the greatest theologian for 50 years in America summarized this pendulum heretical whiplash

“To the onlooker from this distance of time, the mainline of progress of the debate takes on an odd appearance of a steady zig-zag advance. Arising out of the embers of the Arian controversy, there is first vigorously asserted, over against the reduction of our Lord to the dimensions of a creature, the pure Deity of His spiritual nature (Apollinarianism).

Arianism was the first great heresy of the Church. Named after a Church Bishop – Arius, Arianism C. AD 256-336) denied that Christ was very God of very God. Arius taught that Christ was the first and greatest creation of God but that he was not Himself very God of very God God.

This of course is a denial of the clear teaching of Scripture.

Titus 2:13-“Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (NKJV).

Philippians 2:5-8-“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

Paul’s statement that Christ was “in the form of God” are words that would have been understood at his time as saying with stark explicitness the deity of Jesus Christ. The phraseology in Greek that St. Paul uses was the linguistic coin of his day. The phraseology was first popularized by Aristotelian philosophy and as such, it was the most natural way of expressing the divinity of Jesus Christ.

The word “Form” as in “being in the form of God” is the equivalent to our saying “Christ Jesus having the specific character of God. In the Greek thought of that time “Form” was that body of qualities which distinguished Christ from all other spiritual beings. It is a way of directly saying that “the incarnate Christ was God.” If Jesus Christ was not in the form of God He would not be God, not having those characterizing qualities which make God God.

Note Humiliation in passage
Note Exaltation in passage

Talk about Kenosis

emptied
ἐκένωσεν (ekenōsen)
Verb – Aorist Indicative Active – 3rd Person Singular
Strong’s 2758: (a) I empty, (b) I deprive of content, make unreal. From kenos; to make empty, i.e. to abase, neutralize, falsify

Some versions translate “made himself of no reputation.” Other’s translate “emptied himself.” Some versions render this “he made himself nothing.”

Often this passage will be made to say too much as if this emptying means that Jesus Christ surrendered His divine nature. This, of course, would be a mistake. The emptying of Himself here points more to the abasement of Himself then the deletion of His divine qualities.

All illustrations fail when we come to these kinds of truths but I often think of Mark Twain’s “The Prince & The Pauper” with this passage. If you remember Tom Canty and Prince Edward looking like doubles switch themselves. Prince Edward takes on the Pauper’s Tom Canty’s life. He remains Prince Edward with all of his dignity as King but no one recognizes Him and no one pays him deference save one soldier returning from war but that only in order to humor the now King Edward. In the story the Prince, quite w/o realizing what he was doing emptied himself. Christ, quite realizing what He was doing emptied or abased Himself. He still retained His Kingship but very few recognized him. His glory does periodically break out but on the whole, in His person, his glory is banked and He is not recognized for who He is and all this so that He might honor the Father.

The important thing to note for our purposes this morning is that when Christ empties himself we should not read that as Christ loses his Divine nature. It is perhaps better to think rather than Christ losing His divine nature he instead adds a human nature to His one person.

Arius never had a divine nature to begin with. The bishop Arius asserted instead that was begotten by God the Father at a point in time thus denying the eternality of Jesus and thus affirming that Jesus Christ was God’s highest creation, making Christ ontologically subordinate to the only one God. Arius still affirmed that Jesus was God’s Son but denied that Jesus Christ was God’s eternal Son.

Arius asserted;

“If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this, it follows there was a time when the Son was not.”

The contest here was never certain. Indeed, for long stretches of time Arianism won the day and interestingly enough the matter was on everyone’s lips.

An early Church Father during this time Gregory of Nyssa could write,

“If you ask for change, someone philosophizes to you on the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you ask the price of bread, you are told, ‘The Father is greater and the Son is inferior.’ If you ask, ‘is the bath ready?’ someone answers, ‘The Son was created from nothing.’”

So it was an issue that was on everyone’s mind and the contest was hot and for years Arius won out in the Church. Athanasius, the champion of Christ’s full deity was exiled more than once as punishment for his crime of not accepting Arianism. Medieval legend insisted that the man that our Santa Claus is based on (St. Nicholas) came to blows with an Arian and though the legend likely is not true, it still reveals how much passion 1000 years later still surrounded the subject.

Let us pause here to draw out some application/ implication.

1.) I can’t help but be stunned at how well the rank and file knew their Christian faith if the issue of the deity of Jesus Christ was as much on everyone’s mind as Gregory of Nyssa records that it was. Wouldn’t be a wonderful thing if once again people everywhere were talking about the central tenets of Biblical Christianity? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the subject of Christ being consubstantial with the Father was as common as whether Aaron Rodgers lied about being vaccinated?

2.) We still have forms of this today within the Church.

“The God and man of Barth’s theology are unknown till, in a common process, they become identical w/ one another and therefore indistinguishable from one another. Thus revelation becomes ventriloquism. The God and man of Barth’s theology are unknown to one another and therefore indistinguishable from one another. Election thus becomes their (God and mans) common aim and task.”

Barth seeks to escape what he speaks of as the monism of traditional Reformed theology. But his own position ultimately destroys all difference between God and man by means of process. For him, all reality is one stream of becoming. This is monism with a vengeance.

CVT

The New Modernism — pg. 386

3.) When we think of all that Athanasius went through to champion the deity of Jesus Christ – his exiles, his denunciations, his heartbreak witnessing Arians being appointed to Bishoprics

We are reminded of James Russel Lowell’s lines,

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

Contending for Christ is often a lonely business that comes at great cost. Can we like Athanasius – the hero of Nicea – be satisfied enough to keep fighting just knowing that God standeth with the shadow, keeping watch above His own?


Athanasius despite all odds, despite being known as “Athanasius Contra Mundum” (Athanasius against the World) Athanasius never quit fighting. The man understood like only few men do that

My orders are to fight
Then if I win,
Or bravely fail
What Matters it?
God only doth prevail

The servant craveth naught,
Except to serve with might.
I was not told to win or lose, –
My orders are to fight. 

The modern Church today … The Reformed Church today is just as ill if not more ill than the Church at the time of Athanasius’ time… or even in Calvin’s time. The issue perhaps has changed though in many quarters the deity of Christ remains up for grabs. Like times past it remains the case that the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.

Are we willing to call a spade a ruddy shovel when it comes to protecting the deity of Jesus Christ? Do we tell Jehovah’s Witnesses that “Unless they repent, they are going to hell?” Do we tell Modernists who deny the possibility of the supernatural, and so deny deity at the same time that they are without God and without hope? Athanasius loved His savior to suffer exile five times. Does our passion for Christ and His honor rise that high? It should.

4.) The fourth implication of this is the connection of Christology to soteriology. The doctrine of Christ to the doctrine of salvation. Arians deny that Christ is consubstantial with the Father. The moment they made that pivot not only did they explode the doctrine of the trinity but they also exploded the doctrine of Salvation. If Christ is not very god of very god, per Arius, then we remain dead in our sins. Scripture and our catechism following Scripture teach that if we are to be saved then the one who dies as our substitute must be very God of very God.

Question 17: Why must He in one person be also very God?

Answer: That He might by the power of His Godhead sustain in His human nature the burden of God’s wrath;3 and might obtain for, and restore to us, righteousness and life.4

If Jesus Christ was not very God of very God then He could not sustain God’s wrath against humans and so we even now remain dead in our sins and trespasses.

5.) If Jesus Christ was not very God of very God … begotten and not made, consubstantial with the Father, sharing in the eternality of the Godhead then he is no more to be esteemed than other false Messiahs. Indeed, He is to be despised and scorned.

But of course, our Father Athanasius was correct here and we owe him a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.

Finally, after years and years literally in the wilderness in 325 Athanasius came back and was at the Council of Nicea where this matter was finally established. There they confessed,

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”

And 1800 years later we still confess the Nicene Creed as being a proper reflection of Scripture. We still affirm the necessity of the deity of Jesus Christ. We still affirm the veracity of Scripture when it teaches repeatedly that Christ was and remains in the very form of God.

Not only our Christology depends upon it but so does our doctrine of Theology proper and our doctrine of soteriology.

Of Bands & Families

“The family brings the past into the present.”
 
 
Carle Zimmerman
Marriage and Family

The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band
I am the living legacy to the leader of the band

Dan Fogleberg

 
 
 
Pretend you were a member of a band. The band retains its name despite band members coming and going. The band excelled so much it became transgenerational. Despite key members changing over the years, everyone associated this band with a particular sound and quality. There may be variations but the band is the band regardless of the individual members who comprise the band.
 
 
 
Whether you had an album from when the band first started or an album from its centennial anniversary you could pick out its familiar sounds and riffs.
 
 
 
This provides an illustration for the Trustee family. The Trustee family, like the band, has key members come and go, and yet it remains the self-same Band. The family (hopefully) has the same quality from generation to generation. It has the same sound (same mannerisms, temperaments, dispositions) over the years so one can readily identify the family. The members of the family may change but new family members are not completely inconsistent with the family members who are no longer living members of the family.

The family is not a one-and-done generational phenomenon. It stretches from the past into the present while all the time remaining one unit. Sure, it has different members but it remains “The Band.” 
 
 
 
Because of this I am as attached to my Great Grandfather as he is to my Great Grandson. Different members…. same band.

Because of this, it is not improper to say as I often heard when I lived in South Carolina; “My family has been knowing that family for 100 years.”