The Silliness of Baptist Religious Liberty

“How should we define religious liberty? I contend that religious liberty is the principle of social practice wherein every individual, regardless of their religious confession, is equally free to believe or not believe, AND to live out their understanding of the conscience’s duty, individually AND communally, that is owed to God in all areas of life without threat of government penalty or social harassment.”

Dr. Andrew Walker – Baptist
Dean of the School of Theology, and Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology.

It is difficult to imagine that Dr. Walker really believes the above.

By Dr. Walker’s definition or religious liberty Hindus should be allowed to practice Suttee, Mormons should be allowed to practice polygamy,  Mooselimbs should be allowed to force the pagans to pay the Jizya tax, and Satan worshipers should be allowed to sacrifice babies.  All of this in pursuance of the religious liberty to live out the understanding of their conscience’s duty.

Secondly here Walker talks about being free to live out their understanding of their conscience’s duty owed to God. Pray tell, which God is Walker talking about here. According to Allah, Mooselimbs have a duty to kill the infidel.

Verse 9:5 of the Quran, from Surah At-Tawbah, the full verse states (in a common translation):​

“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans (infidels) wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and pay zakat, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

And what will Dr. Walker do with the God of the Talmud saying this?

“A Jew may have sex with a child as long as the child is less than nine years.”✡️

Talmud: Sanhedrin 54b

Per Dr. Walker there must not be any government penalty or social harassment for this kind of conscience preforming duty.

Walker’s definition is not workable in a public square flooded with competing gods. Religious liberty once worked here but it was only because the religious liberty pursued was a religious liberty by differing expressions of the Christian faith. And even then, it was always dicey.

Some belonging to Walker’s school of thought have argued the following propositions,

The state remains temporary and limited. Final judgment belongs to Christ alone, so equal liberty of conscience must extend to every person.

BLMc responds,

The State is indeed temporary and limited. No Christian Nationalist argues to the contrary. But the temporary and limited character of the State is as under God’s authority. If it is not under the God of the Bible’s authority it will be, by necessity, under the authority of some other god or god concept or under the state as God. When that happens the state is neither temporary or limited.

Second here, it is a  non-sequitur to say, that because the final judgment belongs to God therefore there must be equal liberty of conscience. The final judgment belongs to God but that doesn’t mean the state is not to judge pedophiles, trannies, and other assorted criminals. The final judgment of God does not mean the state has no role in bringing just judgment in space and time.

Another Walker follower suggested,

The gospel advances by faithful suffering not by securing political control or making one confession the foundation of civil law in this age.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Doug Wilson has strong points in his Wall Street letter to the editor, but once unpacked it’s still just theonomic reconstruction made more palatable.

BLMc responds,

Who says the Gospel only advances in the context of faithful suffering? Who says the Gospel can’t advance in the context of faithful ruling? Why do these chaps suggest that Christians can only be losers and be slaughtered in this life?

Second, some one confession is always of civil law in this age. No law system comes to us absent of some religious confession that it is posited upon. Since this is true why shouldn’t Christians desire and pray and work towards our nation’s civil law being founded on a Christian confession?

This position above opposes theonomic reconstructionism in favor of humanist reconstructionism. It is never a question of whether or not reconstruction. It is only even a question of which religious reconstruction.

I am a Christian. Therefore, following Christ’s Kingship, I say to all rulers in all societies “kiss the Son, lest you perish in the way.”

 

Renewing Your Mind in a Mind Conforming Age

12 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

I.) The Premise Behind Paul’s Instruction

The Mercies of God

The mercies of God have been a theme in this letter. The Holy Spirit has set forth over and over again the mercies of God in the book of Romans. The word for “Mercies” here communicates the idea of God’s favor, compassion, and or pity. It speaks of the goodness of God to His people. God has been and continues to be tender towards His people. Paul has written already of these mercies repeatedly,

Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Romans 5:8 God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who[a] do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 

These are just a few times in the preceding chapters Paul has written of the mercies of God. These preceding chapters of Romans have emphasized doctrine. From here on out Paul is going to emphasize our duty in light of the doctrine.

But before we rush into that pause with me again and realize the greatness of God’s mercies towards us in Christ. Remind yourself of how the Triune God has revealed and continues to reveal His great compassion and mercy towards His people. It is important to be settled on this because our response to walk in terms of these great mercies of the Triune God towards, which Paul now calls for, will only reach as high as we are deeply convinced of God’s tender mercies towards His people. The Triune God was never obligated by outside forces to call and cherish you and yet He has loved y’all with a everlasting love. Scripture teaches that God delights in His people (Psalm 149:4). He has poured out His mercies upon us by not leaving us without God and without hope.

Everything that follows in Romans 12 is dependent upon us being confident of God’s tender mercies towards us.

II.) The Two Practices Paul’s Calls For

that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

This language is reaching back to the OT and the sacrificial system. In the OT the sacrifices that were offered up ended up dead in the sacrificial rite. However, we are now living in the new covenant where Christ has fulfilled all the sacrificial imagery. Still, however, we see here that there are sacrifices left to be made by the believer. The sacrifice of the believer is to no longer walk as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind. (Eph. 4:17)

In the original Greek, the term “sacrifice” (thysia) implies a complete offering. Unlike the dead sacrifices of the Old Testament, a living sacrifice is ongoing and involves daily dedication to God.

The reference here to bodies might be a reference to the whole man or the reason “bodies” is mentioned is because of the gross immorality that was so common among the ancient world.

Paul is writing here to the Christian that he is not his own and so is to live unto God as a living sacrifice. The idea that we are God’s living sacrifices reminds us that our living isn’t self centered but is God centered. As a living sacrifice to God all of our living is like the OT sacrifices, in so far as just as their dying was for Him so our living is for Him.

That is also brought out in the idea that we, as living sacrifices, are Holy, acceptable to God. The reminder here is that just as the OT sacrifices were set apart for God (and so Holy) so our living is to be set apart to God. That is the idea of Holy. Of course, if something is Holy it is unique and different from all that is around it that is not Holy. This again emphasizes that our lives are lived before the face of God understanding that our living belongs to Him.

The Heidelberg reminds us that this kind of living is connected to the truths that we are Priests under sovereign God.

I am a member of Christ and thus a partaker of His anointing,2 in order that I also may may present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him (LD 12, Q. 31).

We note here also that this sacrificial living as unto God is acceptable to God.

Holy and acceptable implies the idea that what is being offered up is what God requires. In the OT sacrificial system the sacrifice would not be received apart from being without spot or blemish. In the same say that which is holy and acceptable to God be ourselves as living sacrifices is going to be consistent with what God calls for in a sacrifice. Now, we understand that our lives, as living sacrifices, are never without spot or blemish. However, God’s standard is what we press towards as living sacrifices.

Here we must remind ourselves that all of our living unto God is acceptable for the sake of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit works in us to be living sacrifices and our living as sacrifices is received as acceptable as offered up by Christ our living Head before the Father who finds in our living of sacrifice pleasure.

We are reminded here that because of God’s mercies, we live as God’s sacrifices distinct from those who live with themselves as their own God offering themselves unto themselves for their own glory.

The Greek word λογικὴν has been debated. It probably means rational, denoting a moral and spiritual serving of God. The implied opposition to reasonable or rational that the Apostle calls for would be worship that is mechanical rote performative acts.

It is a reasonable/rational act of service because of the great mercies of God towards us.

The second practice the Holy Spirit calls for is to be a distinct people. This is captured in the idea of not being conformed to this world.

2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

The world in Paul’s lexicon operates according to a different axis. The world lies under the evil one. The world is in opposition to God’s authority and calling. Elsewhere in Scripture we learn that friendship with the world is enmity (warfare) against God. To be conformed to the world is to live as if the sky above is bronze and the earth below is iron. To be conformed to the world presupposes that there is no God except the self. The world lies in opposition to God.

The Holy Spirit says we are not to be conformed to this world. This implies that there is going to be something different about us vis-a-vis the world and the more the world is consistent with being the world the greater the distinction there will be between who we are as we are transformed by the renewing of our mind and who they are. The greater the distinction between the “world conformed” and those “transformed by the renewing of their minds,” the more the animosity is going to rise between world conformed and mind transformed.

The text gives us a means by which we can avoid being conformed to the world and that is by being transformed by the renewing of your mind. R. C. Sproul built his whole ministry with “renewing your mind” as his trademark.

There is a great deal that can needs be said on the idea of the renewing of your mind. We may take some time here beyond this message.

First, we note that this teaching reinforces the idea that the Christian life is the life of the mind. Jesus Himself said, “This is eternal life that they may know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.” Elsewhere Paul can write, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Elsewhere Paul writes that “we take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” The whole of Scripture is posited in order to instruct our thinking.

Of course, it is true that we can not renew our mind apart from the Holy Spirit turning on the lights but that is not inconsistent with the need to be constantly sanctifying our minds.

Perhaps the worlds greatest achievement in working so that we are conformed to the world is by keeping us so accelerated and so busy that we find no time to renew our minds. The conforming world educates us into imbecility from the tenderest of ages and keeps the pressure up all the way through Ph. D. programs. The world conforms us to the world by disallowing us to learn how to think critically. The world conforms us to the world by serving up, from our tenderest ages, the centrality and priority of man centered thinking. From learning the “see and say” system of reading, to Ph.D. Thesis on History or philosophy that explicitly rules out the necessity of presupposing God in understanding History or philosophy all of our systems, both inside and outside the church, labor arduously to NOT allow our thinking to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

This renewing of our minds requires us to think about the world as presupposing God and His Word. Of course, even here the conforming world is hostile. The conforming world doesn’t want us thinking how the God of the Bible informs how we think about beginnings, about how we know what we know, about the purpose, goal, and end of life, about what it means to seek the Kingdom of God above all else. The conforming world tells us to “settle down,” and “you have to go along to get along.” “Don’t make waves.”

This renewing of the mind called for is a staple especially for historic Calvinists. Calvinists have always taught that in light of this call to have renewed minds that therefore Christianity was not just a fire insurance program. A way to escape the lapping flames of hell. Historic Calvinism, above all other expressions of Christianity, understood the Christian faith to be a totalistic world and life view.

Our Calvinistic fathers saw mind renewal as touching every area of life. Not only for the individual, but also for whole cultures and civilizations. All of Christ for all of life was their trademark.

Consider this quote from Machen about the impact of mind renewing on a corporate scale,

“Human institutions are really to be molded, not by Christian principles accepted by the unsaved, but by Christian men; the true transformation of society will come by the influence of those who have themselves been redeemed … [I]t is not true that the Christian evangelist is interested in the salvation of individuals without being interested in the salvation of the race.” Christianity & Liberalism.

What is in this quote is the idea that mind renewed individual Christians desire to live in mind renewed cultures and civilizations. The mind renewed Christian is interested in the salvation and mind renewal of the whole human race. Machen is letting is postmillennial slip show here.

As most of you know I have tried to make this idea of All of Christ for All of Life a cornerstone of my ministry. I have tried, and no doubt admittedly failed at times, to explain what the renewed mind looks like for every area of life. For history. For anthropology. For philosophy. For the arts. For every area of life. It has been an uphill climb in the wider church because the wider church desires, notable exceptions notwithstanding, desires to be conformed to this world.

This was seen again recently as a conservative denomination just last week in a very public action deposed a minister for having his mind renewed on the subject of male and female gender roles. The governing body demonstrated in a 41-0 vote that they desired to be conformed to this world.

Well, there you have it. Two simple verses but implicit in this call for the renewing of the mind is warfare both inside and outside the church. We will look more closely at this warfare the next few weeks considering particularly what it means to have a renewed mind vis-a-vis a conformed mind. This will mean looking at competing ideas of conformity to the world with being transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Is “Saving People From Their Sins” the Ultimate Mission of the Church? A Repudiation of “Reformed” Rev. Chrissy Gordon

“DeYoung expressed, ‘Pugnacity and jocularity are not the occasional and unfortunate by-products of the brand; they are the brand.’ He’s exactly correct. As Christendom has collapsed in the West, Wilson has offered a vision that plays on the fears and emotions of those who are panicking. This is precisely why the mission of the church, all of the sudden, takes a drastic turn in its elevating of cultural transformation while ‘saving people from their sins’ becomes only a means to this greater end.”

Rev. Chrissy Gordon
R2K “Minister”
Quote from 2023

1.) Could anybody tell me what is wrong with toughness and humor (pugnacity and jocularity) being the type of Christianity one lives? Is this a case where people like DeYoung and Gordon are offended by having a sense of humor? Clearly, no one will be accusing DeYoung and Gordon of having the toughness required in order to be accused of being “pugnacious.”

2.) The Reformed have always believed that “saving people from their sins” is only the means to a greater end. It is the Lutherans, historically, who believed that “saving people from their sins” was the end of the message of the Gospel. Contrary to Lutherans, the Reformed always held that “saving people from their sins” was only a means to the higher end of a people determined to live for the glory of God. One of those ways people live for the glory of God is the cultural transformation that is the product of saved people seeking to live for the glory of God.

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological.”

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ – p. 189-190

Another way to put the differences between Lutheranism (what Gordon is trying to sell) and Reformed worldviews is that for Lutheranism salvation is for man and terminates on man, individually considered while for Reformed thought salvation is for God and serves the terminating end of a renewed cosmos dripping and saturated with God’s glory. For Lutheranism the teleology is man atoned for, whereas for Reformed thought the teleology includes but doesn’t end with man atoned for. For Reformed thought the teleology is the atonement as well as all the totality of corresponding and inevitable consequences that the atonement brings upon men who have been atoned for. Atonement for individual men is not the end product of Christ’s work. Atonement is the beginning and creating point of enlisting men into the cause of cosmic renewal for the glory of God. Men are not atoned for and saved for the sake of being atoned for and saved. Men are atoned for and saved to be put on a mission to take captive every thought and take dominion over every crevice of the cosmos to make all thoughts and all crevices obedient to King Christ. In Reformed thought, classical Lutheran thought is provincial and anthropocentric and is far to horizontally circumscribed and vertically nugatory.

Whatever Gordon is expressing here (I think it is Lutheranism) this is not the way the Reformed have thought over the centuries.

In other words… Rev. Gordon is just flat out in error here. However, nobody is surprised by Rev. Gordon and error going together like peas and carrots.

The Sweet Spot … An Explanation of the Demise of Conservative Christianity

In baseball the goal of the hitter is to make contact with a baseball on what is called the “sweet spot” on the bat. The sweet spot on a baseball bat is a 2-inch wide zone located roughly 5-7 inches from the end of the barrel of the bat. At that point the energy transfer of the swing is maximized upon contact while hand sting from vibrations are minimized. In brief, it is the place on the baseball bat where the hitter most desires to strike the pitch because the sweet spot gives the hitter the most bang for his buck, because the concentration of wood in the bat is meeting dead on center the delivered pitch. Hitting the ball on the sweet spot promises the most optimum result in favor of the hitter. The sweet spot is the sweet spot precisely because on the sweet spot the hitter is getting the most concentrated amount of wood on the ball.

When this sweet spot principle is applied to sociological movements it is translated to mean that one desires to speak a message that will naturally have the biggest and best effect upon those hearing the message. When it is taken up by church denominations it means that in pursuit of gaining the best result in terms of adherents and attendance one will want to find the sweet spot in their audience, which means one will desire their messaging to strike the place where the most concentrated amount of hearers will respond positively. While in baseball the pitcher does not desire his pitch    to find the hitter’s sweet spot, in Church growth the minister does desire his pitch (message) to find the hitters (listeners) sweet spot because in such a way the minister can gather the maximum amount of followers.

In every culture there is going to be a sweet spot for messaging. Finding that sweet spot is what is required in order to build large congregations and denominations and podcast audiences. The problem, as it pertains to Biblical Christianity, is that in this current climate Christianity is, by definition, cross-cultural and so is not going to find a natural sweet spot that resonates with the culture. Yet, the former conservative denominations prioritizing finding the sweet spot in the larger culture in order to attract adherents to support their infrastructure have given up a messaging that is consistent with the sweet spot messaging of Scripture.

From a sociological perspective, this is all about giving people what they want to hear, because from a sociological perspective one can’t build a movement by not giving people what they don’t want to hear.

The most naked expression of this “going for the sweet-spot,” is pursued (and this really happens) when a church plant is scoping out an area in order to plant a church. The techniques that will be used before opening is to survey and poll the general area by asking people “if you were to attend a church what is it that you would want to hear.” They then typically give people about 5 choices and they ask people to rank these in the order they would prefer. Having canvassed the general area they take the results and determine where the sweet spot is in the community and then shape the Church and the messaging to what the survey told them people wanted to hear.

Now, most of the Conservative church is not that naked in their search for the sweet spot, but the fact of the matter is that what was once considered the Conservative denominations are playing to the crowd. They will seldom, if ever, associate with subject that are marked by stigma and sacrifice as measured by their sweet spot audience. They have no interest in stigma because stigma consists of all aspects of what is considered social deviance by the sweet spot. The stigma of accepting, for example, the historic Biblical doctrine of the Ordo Amoris is deemed “abnormal” by their sweet spot clientele and so they will not go near such subject matter. Similarly, they have no interest in sacrifice since sacrifice consists of foregone opportunities required of those who would gain and retain leadership (and even membership) in the sweet spot group.

So, as the sweet spot of culture continues to tack to the left, the formerly conservative denominations tack to the left with the cultural sweet spot in order to remain “relevant,” and in order to build up the numbers in their local churches. Examples of this abound. Could you ever imagine, even 30 years ago the conservative denominations deposing, excommunicating or releasing people on the basis of their embrace of the Ordo Amoris, or their teaching that there remain creational differences between men and women. These actions against good men are pursued in order to pursue the cultural sweet spot. Another example is the rise of Tim Keller. It is hard to imagine Tim Keller gaining any traction in the PCA when it was first formed, though along with Harvie Conn and Jack Miller the liberal sweet spot movement was in the PCA very early.

The reason Biblical, and so conservative confessional Christianity can’t survive in this ongoing search for the cultural sweet spot is because Biblical/conservative confessional Christianity is by definition a reality that requires the embrace of both stigma and sacrifice. Stigma and sacrifice sweet spot Christianity avoids like Dracula avoids the cross.

So, as hitters are forever in search of finding the sweet spot on the bat so as to be productive, so clergy today are forever in search of finding the sweet spot in the Culture so as to be productive in terms of noise, nickels and numbers.

When one moves in terms of humanist sociology and not Biblical theology the search of the sweet spot makes sense.

Rodney Stark on Ancient Cities … McAtee on Modern Cities

Rodney Stark in his “The Rise of Christianity,” describes the ancient urban areas (cities). Because of the high death rate the cities were constantly turning over in terms of core populations. Stark says,

“Greco-Roman cities were populated by strangers.”

One consequence of this was the crime rate was high because as newcomers there were no personal attachments to one another as residents.

Stark goes on to write,

“Given the immense cultural diversity of the empire, the waves of newcomers to Greco-Roman cities were of very diverse origins, and therefore fractured the local culture into numerous ethnic fragments.”

In the ancient city of Antioch for example Stark quotes Smith’s work that “estimates are that the ‘citizens were divided into 18 ethnic tribes, distributed locally.'”

Stark then offers,

“What does seem clear is that social integration of Greco-Roman cities was severely disrupted by the durability of internal ethnic divisions, which typically took the form of distinctive ethnic precincts. Ethnic diversity and a constant influx of newcomers will tend to undercut social integration, thus exposing residents to a variety of harmful consequences, including high rates of deviancy and disorder.”

It should be clear what the implications are for us today in what Stark wrote about the ancient cities. The reality is that you can’t swamp a contiguous geographic area with strangers and aliens and expect not to have large scale social disorder and unrest. Now, of course our elite know this and so we know that the elite are purposefully pursuing a policy that they know will end in social order breakdown and disarray. They do this because such disorder creates a need for a centralized government to police and manage the State created disorder. The importing of large numbers of strangers and aliens into one contiguous geographic area is a job security policy for the State. The more friction that is created by moving people of different ethnicity and religion next to each other, cheek by jowl, the more the State is needed to “police” such friction.