Ehud Would On The Calvinist Concept of Culture — And Commentary

“Gordon H. Clark in his signal work, ‘A Christian View of Men and Things,’ juxtaposes the two modern canons of historical interpretation against one another: Spengler’s theory of history at one extremity, and Toynbee’s at the other. And he upbraids both equally. Where Spengler followed Herodotus in the pagan cyclical theory of history, claiming no ultimate purpose or end, his metaphysical narrative yet depicts history as the march of peoples. Whereas, Toynbee’s linear view of history envisions all, after the Aristotelian perspective, primarily as the march of ideas. Both are in equal measure right and wrong, albeit in tension; they supplement each other well. And Francis Parker Yockey has resolved that tension equally well:

‘Race is the material of History, it is the treasure which a people brings to an idea.’

This was the view presupposed in every jot and tittle of Bishop James Ussher’s Annals of World History, as well as Augustine’s City of God: history is neither solely the march of peoples nor ideas, but both; because certain ideas only occur to and resonate with certain peoples in any appreciable numbers. As it pertains to the Gospel, we know certain groups have proven more receptive than others, and in varying degrees. Some groups seem to continue demonstrating Christian principle in their culture even when the inward substance of that culture has slipped away. Other groups, having long accepted Christianity in abstract, have never gone on to demonstrate it in their societies. And others still, such as the Pirahã people have proven thus far incapable of grasping the most rudimentary aspects of Christianity.”

Ehud Would
The Calvinist Concept of Culture: Kinism

Here we see teased out and expanded the simple idea that has been articulated often here on Iron Ink that culture is defined as theology externalized as that theology is poured over particular peoples. If culture was simply theology externalized, without any consideration of the people who embraced the theology the inevitable outcome is a kind of Gnosticism where the creational and material reality that God ordained for particular people completely disappears into the ether. On the other hand if culture was simply the expression of particular peoples without any consideration of the impact of what particular people’s believed in terms of ultimate considerations (epistemology, axiology, ontology, teleology, etc.) then the results would be a naked materialism. Also, in each view there would be an arc towards a Globalist and Universalist reality as both views (Gnostic and Materialistic) would expect the whole world to move towards the singular reality that they espouse. We have seen this in conversation with Christian Alienists who expect that there will be a New World Order that will be Christian but a type of Christianity where all colors bleed into one — all ethno-distinctions disappear into the great miasma of Christian oneness. This is hardly dissimilar from the heathen Babel vision where the goal is the same. The only difference being is that the label “Christian” is slapped on this Christian globalist view.

In the Christian understanding of culture and eschatology, the world is converted to Christ so that the result is a variegated panoply of different Christian cultures, with each Christian culture finding a harmony of interests because despite their distinctions in flavor and arrangement there exists a unity given the reality that they each embrace “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism.” This stands in contrast to the uniformity of people demanded by the Christian Babel views that insist that Christianity will turn Chinese, or Ndebele, or Shona, or Intuits, or Mongolians into the same exact people with the same exact culture expressing the same exact Christianity. That this vision is a myth of exaggerated proportions is seen in Revelation 21 where we read of the existence of particular nations streaming into the New Jerusalem as particular nations;

24 And the nations [n]of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor [o]into it…. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.    

And then in this grand vision of John the Revelator we are told that;

2 In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Even in the new Jerusalem when the great consummation has arrived nations and peoples do not disappear as distinct nations and peoples.

This reality is why Calvin Seminary Martin Wyngaarden could write in the 1960s;

Now the predicates of the covenant are applied in Isa. 19 to the Gentiles of the future, — “Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance,” Egypt, the people of “Jehovah of hosts,” (Isa. 19:25) is therefore also expected to live up to the covenant obligations, implied for Jehovah’s people. And Assyria comes under similar obligations and privileges. These nations are representative of the great Gentile world, to which the covenant privileges will, therefore, be extended.”

Martin J. Wyngaarden, The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), p. 94.

And again,


“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, though each nationality remains distinct.”


“For, though Israel is frequently called Jehovah’s People, the work of his hands, his inheritance, yet these three epithets severally are applied not only to Israel, but also to Assyria and to Egypt: “Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.”


Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. Yet the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria, and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”

Martin Wyngaarden

The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture — pp. 101-102.

This is the great contest that we find ourselves currently in. The question resolves to whether the Church of Jesus Christ will pursue a Uniformitarian Christianity where all colors bleed into one and where grace destroys nature so that the creational distinctions that each people group (and perhaps eventually even each gender) were assigned by the Creator God are snuffed out so that the current version of Babel distinction-less Christianity can flourish. The alternative is the embrace of the Trinitarian idea of Christianity as applied to culture where the whole globe is won to Christ but won to Christ allowing for unity in diversity as among the varied Christian cultures that each and all embrace “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism,” and yet that without becoming uniformitarian clones of one another.

May God grant us His grace to avoid the gray, bleak, uniformitarian cultures that the Christianity of modern churchmen desires to produce.

John Chrysostom …. The Kinist

Recently, I had a couple situations where more than one family protested rather decidedly that my embracing of Kinism was wrong since

a.) Kinism was not a first order doctrine related to salvation and so shouldn’t be front and center.

b.) Kinism was going to be a hurdle for their other friends making it difficult for children to find marriage partners.

I thought I would turn to the words of St. Chrysostom in order to demonstrate that Kinism is a first order doctrine and is related to salvation.

Speaking of those accursed who turn from God Chrysostom writes:

“Did they not trample kinship under foot, did they not forget their children, did they not forget the very God who created them.”

John Chrysostom
Discourses Against Judaizing Christians
3.3.8

“For if a man deserts those who are united by ties of kindred and affinity how shall he be affectionate towards others?”

St. John Chrysostom
The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom: Archbishop of Constantinople
ON the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Parker 1843), pg. 115

“If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house,” that is, those who are nearly related to him, “he is worse than an infidel.”
And so says Isaiah, the chief of the Prophets, “Thou shalt not overlook thy kinsmen of thy own seed.” (Isa. lviii. 7, Sept.)

For if a man deserts. those who are united by ties of kindred and affinity, how shall he be affectionate towards others? Will it not have the appearance of vainglory, when benefiting others he slights his own relations, and does not provide for them? And what will be said, if instructing others, he neglects his own, though he has greater facilities; and a higher obligation to benefit them? Will it not be said, These Christians are affectionate indeed, who neglect their own relatives?

(2) “He is worse than an infidel.”

Wherefore? Because the latter, if he benefits not aliens, does not neglect his near kindred. What is meant is this: The law of God and of nature is violated by him who provides not for his own family. But if he who provides not for them has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel, where shall he be ranked who has injured his relatives? With whom shall he be placed? But how has he denied the faith? Even as it is said, “They profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him.” (Tit. i. 16.) What has God, in whom they believe, commanded? “Hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” (Isa. lviii. 7.) How does he then believe who thus denies God? Let those consider this, who to spare their wealth neglect their kindred. It was the design of God, in uniting us by the ties of kindred, to afford us many opportunities of doing good to one another. When therefore thou neglectest a duty which infidels perform, hast thou not denied the faith?”

Chrysostom
Homilies on 1st Timothy XIV

In terms of (b) above the only thing that might be said is that there will be a greater cost born by family members for a patriarch abandoning truth than will be born by family members if the patriarch stands by the truth.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; Mueller & Chambers On The Inconsistency Of Arminianism

“Arminianism, like the Molinist theology on which it drew, is little more than the recrudescence of the late medieval semi-Pelagianism against which the Reformers struggled. Its tenets are inimical to the Pauline and Augustinian foundation of Reformed Protestantism.

In the Arminian system, the God who antecedently wills the salvation of all knowingly provides a pattern of salvation that is suitable only to the salvation of some. This doctrinal juxtaposition of an antecedent, and never effectuated, divine will to save all and a consequent, effectuated, divine will to save some on the foreknown condition of their acceptance of faith, reflects the problem of scientia media. The foreknowledge of God, in the Arminian view, consists in part in a knowledge of contingent events that lie outside of God’s willing and, in the case of the divine foreknowledge, of the rejection of grace by some, of contingent events that not only thwart the antecedent divine will to save all, but also are capable of thwarting it because of the divinely foreknown resistibility of the gift of grace. In other words, the Arminian God is locked into the inconsistency of genuinely willing to save all people while at the same time binding himself to a plan of salvation that he foreknows with certainty cannot effectuate his will. This divine inability results from the necessity of those events that lie within the divine foreknowledge but outside of the divine willing remaining outside of the effective will of God. Arminian theology posits the ultimate contradiction that God’s antecedent will genuinely wills what he foreknows cannot come to pass and that his consequent will effects something other than his ultimate intention. The Arminian God, in short, is either ineffectual or self-contradictory. Reformed doctrine on the other hand, respects the ultimate mystery of the infinite will of God, affirms the sovereignty and efficacy of God, and teaches the soteriological consistency of the divine intention and will with its effects.

Richard A Muller

Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice:
Arminius’s Gambit and the Reformed Response.

Philosophical and Theological Problems with Arminianism in all its various forms.

“1. Free will theology absolutizes the will of man and thereby reduces god to ontological equality with man. The knowledge of god is bound to the temporal actions of men. God cannot know the future acts and actions of men because those actions, products of a libertarian volition, do not yet exist in time. Thus God cannot know the future.

2. Foreknowledge being impossible, God’s knowledge is contingent on future potentials. God must learn from actions of men that occur outside of His mind and independent of His will. God cannot know all things, His knowledge being dependent on the arbitrary and indeterminate choices of the libertarian will of man. Thus god is not omniscient.

3. God then is not sovereign in all spheres and therefore not sovereign at all as sovereignty is understood in the classical Christian sense. God is limited and no longer all powerful. This is not the Christian God who declares the end from the beginning or who works all things after the counsel of His will. This is a god who learns and reacts to events that occur in a creation that has an existence independent of Himself. This God is not omnipotent.

4. Since there are conditions that occur outside of Himself, conditions which of necessity cannot be known in advance, events which He must learn as they occur, God must react and change to adapt to these circumstances. This God is not immutable.

5. In order to keep creation moving towards his desired end, he must of necessity intercede at times and violate the indeterminate will of man. But this is the very will that is said to be inviolable in the soteriological act. This god is compromised and inconsistent. This god is arbitrary and capricious. This god is confused and contradictory.

6. This god, it is said, has died for all men for all time, knowing full well that His plan of salvation will not save all men. So while some men decry the determinate God of Calvinism, they are more than willing to accept a god who knows the future infallibly, knows his plan will be ineffective for the majority of mankind and institutes this plan anyway knowing full well that it’s result will be the death of most who have ever lived.

7. Free will adherents reject a God who determines all things. But they are willing to accept a god who knows all things and chooses to do nothing about them. This is, so they say, because the will of man is free. God knows full well that terrorists will fly a jet into the WTC and chooses to do nothing. He is capable of doing something but values the libertarian will of men above the eternal destiny of all those in the buildings and so chooses, by his refusal to intercede, to consign most of those inhabitants to eternal death. If I observe a crime and have the ability to do something to prevent it or know in advance of it’s occurrence and fail to notify the proper authorities I am as guilty as those that perpetrated the crime. This god is guilty of complicity. He is an accessory before the fact.

8. In the case of open theism, god didn’t know what he was doing or what He would get by doing it (sin, evil, murders, war, untold human suffering on a massive scale) yet was willing to take that chance. This is the god who risks, but exactly who and what were affected by this risk? To add to the conundrum god could not know if there was anything he would be able to do to correct the mess he created. And the open theist suggests that the god of Calvinism is cold hearted and despotic?

9. This god potentially died for no one. The atonement is universal in scope. God has not done anything more for one person than He has done for any other person and the one thing he has not done for those who are lost is to save them. Salvation is for everyone in general, but for no one in particular. This god is dependent and ineffective.

10. Libertarians tacitly reject total depravity. Man is not dead in sin but merely sick. He is inclined to do evil but is not in fact evil. Salvation is a potential that must be appropriated by the individual. Man cannot be wholly dead in sin and make this choice. The potential for good must be present. Man must overcome the inclination to reject God in order to accept the offer of the Gospel. Unfortunately, the Gospel itself, while evidently powerful enough to save those who choose to accept it, is impotent to convert the hearts of most of mankind. Free will theology suffers from its own type of particularism, but it’s an arbitrary particularism dependent on the condition of the individual. Salvation is “available” only for the ethically advantaged.

11. No wonder then that the evangel is often reduced to begging and pleading. God is not going to do anything but offer a potential. MAN is the decisive factor. Man is the determinative agent. We must convince man to make a positive decision for Christ. Better salespersons are more effective evangelists. Solus Christos is lost as salvation is synergistic. Arminianism stands on the same epistemological ground as atheism.”

Mark Chambers

Observations on The Relation of Christianity to Christian Culture

Recently I have been seeing people say; “Christianity is not a culture.” I believe that is not a very nuanced statement.  Now the folks who I have been seeing say this are not R2K people. R2K routinely utter this kind of tripe because R2K does not believe that it is possible to use “Christian” as an adjective for anything but the Church and maybe individual Christians. R2K believes that all cultures are “common” (read neutral). R2K believes that all culture can and should be religion free prefering to think instead that Christianity as a religion that shapes culture will and should be replaced by Natural law.  R2K believes it is a confusion of categories to speak in terms of “Christian culture.”

However, the folks I see now saying that “Christianity isn’t a culture” are not R2K but are those who are chanting this, I believe, with the intent of avoiding the idea that says “since Christianity is a culture therefore all cultures that are Christian will be clones of one another.” If this is what the idea of Christian culture necessarily meant I would be forced to agree with this sentiment. However, the fact that cultures can indeed be Christian is not to say that all Christian cultures must look the same. Despite recent errant accusations that theonomy and theonomists desires a global Christianity where all cultures will look the same because they are all Christian, I still insist that Christianity produces culture. I just don’t agree that all culture that Christianity creates will look the same, and neither did the 1st generation theonomists, though many of their latter day disciples seem to embrace this knuckleheaded conclusion.

Theonomy has always held to the incarnation of the one and the many principal. As applied to culture this means that there can be many distinct Christian cultures that while differing in extraneous matters all remain Christian. Theonomists have always believed that not all Christian cultures will look alike. For example… Charlemagne’s Christian culture would have looked different from the Cavalier Christian culture in the antebellum South would have looked different from the Puritan culture in New England in the early 18th century would have looked different from Calvin’s Geneva would have looked different from Knox and Goodman’s England would have looked different from Lutheran Germany. Yet, as distinct as they each were they could all rightly be referred to as “Christian cultures.”

We can see this if we look at a map of the world. We can colour it according to the depth of Christian influence. In Europe Switzerland and the Netherlands there was once a greater moulding by Calvinism, whereas  German culture was shaped by Lutheranism, yet the Christian cultures were hardly clones of one another. Part of the reason for this is because each people group expressed a slightly different variant of Christianity and part of the reason for this is that the people group themselves were genetically and so constitutionally different peoples.

So, Christianity as a faith system does contribute to the creation of cultures. Indeed, one can’t have Christian culture without Christianity. Now, having said that the cultures that Christianity produces will be variegated and sundry depending on the people group who is embracing the Christian faith we still retain the fact that they are each and all Christian. There exists a trinitarian modeling of “the one” and “the many.”

All that I am saying here was said by Abraham Kuyper long ago;

“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

Now this is not something special for the Javanese, but stems from a general rule. The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood and soul, and they do not always remain the same, but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different, as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races, countries and traditions cannot be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”……

Abraham Kuyper:
Common Grace (1902–1905)

Part of the problem we are having here in understanding what I am saying and what Kuyper said before me is due to the fact that our cultural Anthropology as found among churchmen today is not particularly epistemologically self consciously Christian. My South African Friend Joshua Paries nails this matter on the head when he recently wrote;

I think the main problem with mainstream Christian anthropology and why it gets culture so wrong is two-fold:

1. Any distinct and genetically homogenous collective of mankind is not seen as a sacred expression of God’s Image equal to that of individuals. And therefore such collectives, in the eyes of the Church, have no right to advocate for a unique identity separate from the influence of other distinct peoples.

2. The first mistake bleeds into the second.The Church fundamentally misunderstands the nature of “culture”. “Culture” has become shorthand for the standards of religion, ethics and morality on a collective level.

“Christian culture” has thus become a generic code of faith and conduct that completely disregards the specificity of a people’s collective identity to which it is being applied.

An apropos analogy would be the Church ignoring the Creational distinctions between men and women and insisting that the “culture” or expression of Christianity should be identical for both genders.

Christianity should not be understood as a culture; rather, culture is the manifestation of a unique collective identity informed by religion.

It is this inability to reckon with God as the author of both the Creationally-ordained distinct and varied identities of mankind’s races and the general standards/principles of worship and obedience set forth in the Word that creates the reality-denying anthropology of the Church.

No one denies that both an artist and an engineer can both serve Christ while freely allowing for the manifold differences springing from their inherently distinct “expressions of being.”

The same would go for a Christian with Down’s Syndrome on one hand and a Christian with an IQ of 200 who started calculus at age six. And yet no amount of shared faith could bridge the gulf in their day-to-day existence and the expression of their personal identities.

Yet the idea that genetically homogenous individuals might share and live out a distinct cultural identity or expression of being common only to those of the same blood is deliberately disregarded by the Church as ‘Darwinism’ and ‘racism.’

To date, as far as I can see as I look over the theological landscape of the Church, the only blokes who are getting this whole matter of Christian culture correct are the Kinists. All other parties out there (Moscow, Ogden, Natural Law following Wolfe) are fuzzy on this matter seeking to fold into their definitions of “Christian culture” allegiance to concepts where propositional dynamics are forefront resulting in the Kinists being seen as “the Darwinist” and “the Racists.”

Election 2024 — A Brief Reprieve?

Do you suppose the Democratic party has learned anything from their defeat in 2024?Do you think that they will now reverse themselves touching their conviction that the planet is going to implode from climate change? Do you think that they will give up on the whole utter nonsense of “The Green New Deal?” Do you think that Democratic Governors will cease appointing sexual freaks like Rachel Levine to key posts in their administrations? Do you think that some Democrat will now arise who will say loudly and boldly, “Sex change operations for children at hospitals receiving state funding will no longer be a thing?” or “We are no longer housing males who pretend to be females with the female population in our prisons?” Will some Democrat say, “The whole concept of required DEI hiring as policy was not well thought out from the beginning.” Will Democrats give up on the policy of equity where they discriminate against able bodies cis-gendered whites in favor of crippled, lesbian, minorities?” Will some prominent white Democrat come out and say; “I love white people,” or “we must pursue policy that will strengthen and advantage our core population so that the whole country can prosper?” Will some Democrat apologize for the statement that “white supremacy groups are the greatest extant domestic terrorist threat to our country?” Will any Democrat, after the drubbing of 2024, now pursue a policy that finds the health of the traditional family as a cornerstone?” Will some Democrat come out and say, “Our push for sodomite marriage was not beneficial to our country?”

To the contrary, I suspect that the Democratic party is now so much the vehicle of the New World Order Cultural Marxist left that it will double down on the agenda that Democrats have been pursuing since the rise of the Clintons and the Obamas. I think this radical Cultural Marxism is in their bloodstream and as a party they will not be able to shift. Instead, what I anticipate is that they will now try to cloak their extremism. 2028 front running candidates like Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer will still run from the left while still desperately seeking to present themselves as moderate.

What has happened is that the Democrats have become Darth Vader’s embodiment of “The Empire” and we should be certain that they are even now plotting to “strike back.” The unfortunate reality here is that the coalition that defeated the Democratic Empire in 2024 may well not be stable enough to consistently defeat the Empire. This is due to the fact that in way of principle many of the Rebel forces hold to the same ideas of the Empire, even if those principles have not worked themselves out to their logical conclusions. For example, Rick Grenfell and Peter Thiel who are both part of the rebel forces are themselves sodomites. Tulsi Gabbard is Buddhist. Vivek Ramaswamy is Hindu. RFK Jr., Trump, and Matt Gaetz are all sexual Draculas. The Rebel forces are littered with Zionists from the new Sec. Def. to Huckabee as the new Ambassador to Israel. Still, we can continue to hope that God still draws straight lines with crooked sticks. But we shouldn’t count on in this case.

All of this reminds us that the Church must continue to be salt and light – and that to the Rebel forces as much as the Empire stormtroopers. The Church must lift up Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords who alone can deliver men from those sins that they are so tenaciously clinging to thinking that in those sins they will find meaning and fulfillment when in point of fact those very sins explains their unbearable guilt, their constant misery and continuing alienation from themselves, others, and from God.

Having said that we must admit that the Church itself, in many if not most of its expressions, is the Church of the Empire. It will not be a reforming agent until it is first Reformed. I have concluded that will not likely happen without abandoning the current infrastructure of conservative denominations. These denominations are maintained by men who have embraced Cultural Marxist leftist principles and so is of no use in terms of being salt and light. It is not a certainty but it is a pretty safe bet that our political parties will not reform the Church until the Church becomes again Reformed itself so it can be an agent of Reformation.

So, it looks we have been given a window of opportunity to get our house in order before we could see the Empire striking back.

Let us pray that we put the time we have to good use.