Discussing War With Justin Johnson

Bret wrote,

Things done to evil people by good men are by definition “good.”

Justin Johnson replies,

At scale it never works out all good at the micro level. That’s the point.

Not a reason to stop it. But no such shifts can happen without atrocity.

Bret replies,

Justin Johnson .. if it is atrocity that sets the world aright by God’s standard then it is not atrocity at all but blessing.

And God says it always works out for good at the micro level. Always. That is God’s point.

Justin Johnson

 Eventually it can. But there is no non messy way that doesn’t harm the innocent.

That’s my point.

Bret responds,

If you’re saying that in war Christians die unjustly … then of course there is no disagreement.

Justin Johnson writes,

 That’s true but not what I’m getting at. Collateral damage is not avoidable.

Bret responds,

Yes, Christian’s die unjustly as collateral damage. I agree.

Justin Johnson writes,

Death of all image bearers who aren’t evil is also terrible.

Quit pretending I agree. It’s unbecoming.

There are plenty of non Christians here who do not deserve death or or deportation.

As Lee said it is good war is so terrible or else we would grow too fond of it.

As someone who would never be a participant, and of advanced age, you should be the first to at least acknowledge the inevitable unjust sacrifices in such an endeavor.

Asymmetrical warfare is one of man’s most horrific creations. Whether used for good or evil.

Bret responds

1.) Death of image bearers who renounce and are opposed to Christ is not evil, because they are evil. Rather death is to them God’s justice. See what Jesus said in the Tower of Siloam incident (Luke 13).

2.) Quit being contumacious. It’s unbecoming.

3.) All non-Christians deserve death since the wages of sin is death.

4.) I’d probably agree that all non-Christians shouldn’t be deported though I would insist that they not be allowed to vote or contribute to political campaigns. I would also tax them at a higher rate.

5.) I quite agree w/ Robert E. Lee. What does that have to do w/ this conversation?

6.) I tell the people I serve here ALL THE TIME that war is the very last option that should ever be chosen unless it is the only option in a just war.

I’m sure you’re relieved that I tell them that.

I also tell them not to think in Arminian categories.

When the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy. Proverbs 11:10

Justin Johnson replies,

 Not sure where to start with the broad interpretation of such scriptures.

Your hermeneutic is clearly incompatible with mine and I’d guess irreconcilable.

Bret responds,

Justin Johnson … Not to worry … that’s only because your hermeneutic is errant.
😉
Peace

 Justin ends with the irresistible and boring  ad-hom, “OK Boomer.”

Dr. Winston McCuen on “The Fall Of Man: John Calvin, Leibniz, And Deeper Truths”

 Preface;

The below piece is by Dr. Winston McCuen. He asked me to post this. I post it as a thought piece for my readers. There may well be matters in this essay that I would have phrased differently. There are questions of clarification that I would ask Dr. McCuen. However, I thought the piece to be a quite valued essay that could provoke thoughtful interaction.

Also, Dr. McCuen has added great value to Iron Ink with his often brilliant comments as supported by a rich treasury of quotations from sources that most people aren’t exposed. Agree or disagree with Dr. McCuen I consider him brilliant, as I do many of those who I am privileged to call “friend.”

Dr. McCuen also lives in a state (South Carolina) that I was privileged to reside in for 11 very formative years. I almost always sense a bond with people I meet who are from South Carolina.

Without then, further ado, I give you Dr. McCuen exploring the causation of the Fall.

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The great Anglican bishop and theologian J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) astutely observed that most bad preaching, bad teaching, bad theology, and actual heresy may be traced to the failure of their authors to grasp the nature and effects of the Fall.

In the two millennia since the revelation of Christian truth by His Written Word (the Bible) combined with HIs Spoken Word (nature or creation), some of the best human minds, endued with high measures of His common and sanctifying grace, have struggled to trace, in their proper order and relations, the precise causes of the Fall.

One common error has been the tendency of commentators to attribute a fully corrupted and sinful nature to Adam before he disobediently decided or willed to partake of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But to attribute to man a sinful nature that supposedly caused his fallen and corrupted and sinful nature is, of course, circular and fallacious reasoning. It is an instance of the question-begging fallacy, as logicians would say.

The crux of the matter is Adam’s willing.  This is so because the ruling faculty of created man is his volition or will.  And it is, specifically, the direction or orientation of his will — either toward God or toward himself — that determines the life course of a man and his use or abuse of all of his other faculties, including reason, sentiment or emotions, memory, the five senses, and imagination.

The Fall occurred precisely when Adam, by an act of his own will, determined to disobey God.  It happened before his mouth touched the fruit.  And God had forewarned and pre-announced the sentence for such disobedience — death, both spiritual and physical (Gen. 2:17).  And after Adam partook of the fruit, the interrogation by the Lord of our original parents came (Gen. 3: 9-13), and then their expulsion from Paradise, to prevent their infinitely compounding their sin by partaking of the tree of life (Gen. 3: 23-24).

So we ask:  When, before Adam’s mouth touched the fruit, did Adam’s will turn away from God and toward himself? And, far more importantly, what were the deeper causes — anthropological and metaphysical — of that turning away from God by Adam?

Our concern here is to identify, as it were, the pre-sin-nature cause(s) of man’s fall from the spiritual-moral state of original created innocence, where man could chose to sin or not to sin, into the spiritual-moral state of sin, where man, now in his damaged nature, sins continuously in thought, word, and deed.  This latter state or condition descended on all humanity as of Adam’s first sinful decision, and that condition would be inherited by all descendants of Adam, all of humanity, through his seed.  So every person, from conception, is not able to not sin (non posse non peccare).

And man in the fallen state of sin is dead in trespasses and therefore, by definition, cannot — as no dead man can — help or save himself, but instead can be saved only by God’s choosing (and not man’s) and solely by His regenerative power.   And so are all the elect and all the reprobated predetermined and foreknown by the Lord in their personal existences and ultimate individual destinies before the beginning of the world.

The deep and mysterious causes by which fallen and corrupted sinful human nature is passed on or inherited down through generations is a subject for another day.  But in treating our present subject, the deeper causes of the Fall, we can consider how Adam’s sinful decision, while committed by a single person in a discrete instance, was sin of a type that any created person would, by his very nature, commit. And this is where we do well to bring in two of the greatest Christian thinkers who have expounded on the subject, the great French Reformer theologian John Calvin (1509-1564) and the great German polymath and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716).

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John Calvin’s discussion of the original and ultimate causes of man’s Fall occurs within the general context of his brilliant and systematic and definitive and irrefutable Augustinian discussion of the Biblical-Scriptural doctrines of election and reprobation.

Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (Ch. 23, Section 8), says:

    “The first man fell because the Lord deemed it meet that he should:  why He deemed it meet, we know not.  It is certain, however, that it was just, because He saw that His own glory would thereby be displayed.  When you hear the glory of God  mentioned, understand that His justice is included.  For that which deserves praise must be just. Man therefore falls, divine  providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault. The Lord had little before declared that all things which He had made were very  good (Gen. 1:31).  Whence then the depravity of man, which made him revolt from God?  Lest it should be supposed that it was from His creation, God expressly approved what proceeded from Himself.  Therefore man’s own wickedness corrupted the pure  nature which he had received from God, and his ruin brought with it the destruction of all his posterity.  Wherefore, let us in the corruption of human nature contemplate the evident cause of condemnation (a cause which comes more closely home to us), rather than inquire in a cause hidden and almost incomprehensible in the predestination of God.  Nor let us decline to submit our judgment to the boundless wisdom of God, so far as to confess its insufficiency to comprehend many of his secrets.  Ignorance of things which we are not able, or which it is not lawful to know, is learning, while the desire to know them is a species of madness.”

So it is in our present corruption, Calvin most aptly reminds us, that we now contemplate the original causes of our Fall and corruption. And in this earthly life, in this veil of tears, we fallen men see through a glass but darkly (1 Cor. 13:12) — including even the best and most powerful and most noble and most sanctified philosophical and theological minds among us; though, as Calvin’s own genius attests, by God’s unequal distribution of grace, all minds and hearts are far from being equally perspicacious.

Next, Calvin directs us to dismiss all (necessarily sinful) thought of blaming God for our fallen condition, but directs us rather to look more closely into our own human nature to find the causes of that fall.  He then ends Section 8 of Chapter 23 with a philosophical warning, a fundamental and recurring but woefully neglected theme in Scripture, about the limits of the human mind and the wisdom of learned ignorance, a wise and pious warning that echoes the famous prior warnings of Socrates (c.470-399BC) and Nicolas of Cusa (1401-1464).

Calvin correctly sensed that the locus of the ultimate cause of the Fall was in man’s very nature, a nature which was indeed “very good” (Gen. 1:31) but alas, not perfect.  And this is where, in order for the inquiry to proceed, we must turn to that sub-discipline of philosophy known as metaphysics, or the study of being as such.  And this is where we must bring in Leibniz, the greatest metaphysician of the modern age and a Christian apologist with intellectual powers without equal (non pareil).

In his Theodicy, Leibniz says:  “… it is goodness which prompts God to create with the purpose of communicating Himself; and this same goodness combined with wisdom prompts Him to create the best; a best that includes  the whole sequence (of created nature), the effects and the process.”  Having thus explained the cause of creation in God, Leibniz then turns to the causes of the subsequent Fall of man, agreeing with Calvin in assigning blame to man as well as responsibility for his resultant misery; and in the process, Leibniz keeps going and penetrates deeper than any writer outside Scripture by saying:  “… the creature alone is guilty, … his original limitation or imperfection is the source of his wickedness, … [and] his evil will is the sole cause of his misery” (emphasis added).

So here, with the phrase “… his original limitation or imperfection is the source of his wickedness”, we catch a first glimpse of a deeper, metaphysical speech on the causes of the Fall.  Significantly, close after that phrase in the Theodicy, Leibniz says, “… things are endued with that necessity which philosophers and theologians endeavor to avoid.”  Here Leibniz is lamenting the profoundly unscientific and unphilosophical and untheological sinful unwillingness of heathen thinkers in every age to consider the things of nature in their true light as creation, or as God’s spoken Word.

To understand Leibniz’ meaning here as it relates to the causes of the Fall, we must turn to his essay titled “A Vindication of God’s Justice Reconciled with His Other Perfections and All His Actions.”  There, in Section 79, Leibniz tackles the problem head-on, saying:

“The true root of the Fall … lies in the aboriginal imperfection and weakness of the creatures, which is the reason why sin has its place in the best possible series of events … .  As a consequence, sin had to be permitted despite the divine power and wisdom; indeed, this permission could not be refused without prejudice to these perfections.”

Now, dear reader, there is much to consider here, in Leibniz’ words: and we are now dealing in the realm of metaphysics, the deepest and most complex of all the human sciences.  So what is Leibniz saying?

First, we note how Leibniz speaks of the “imperfection and weakness of the creatures” (emphasis added), thereby making clear that it was not a deficiency unique to Adam but was rather a generic propensity of his human nature that led to his first sinful decision, a spiritual watershed for man generally.

More generally, in this passage, Leibniz is saying that God Himself is perfect, and that God, in creating man, did not create God, a perfect being, but instead created a “very good” (Gen. 1:31) but imperfect being.  For a part of being a perfect being is being a being that is uncreated (like God) and not created (like man).  Made in God’s image as the very centerpiece of creation, man, in the state of innocence before the Fall, was a partaker of divine wisdom and divine goodness and divine glory.  His faculties, including will, reason, the senses, memory, and imagination, were powers given to man by God that allowed man to be a partaker of God’s wisdom and goodness and glory, and to walk in Eden in close and direct communion with God. It was by these God-given powers that man was charged with ruling over all the earth (Gen. 1:26) and naming the animals (Gen. 2:20).  And “very good” man, being less than perfect, required a helpmate (Gen.2:18), woman, derived from his own substance (Gen. 2:22-24).

Now Leibniz, being also a pioneering, and indeed, foundational, physicist and mathematician, was ever disposed and ever bent on looking hard into the nature of things.  And here we find him, as metaphysician,  looking hard into the respective natures of God and man.  And in doing so, his comparison of these central things of all existence was inevitable and fruitful. 

A Reformed Christian, Leibniz lived and wrote a century and a half after John Calvin, and being very learned and very well-read, would certainly have imbibed the Frenchman’s Institutes and been acquainted with its central points.  And arguably the most salient teaching of that work was Calvin’s moral and metaphysical insight that true wisdom for man can come only from man’s coming to know himself by honest and humbling comparison with the one and only true (Triune) God.

By suggestion and by implication, then, Calvin argued, and Leibniz later agreed, that the ancient Greek exhortation to “Know thyself” (gnothi seauton) can be fulfilled only by orthodox Christian faith and by recourse to Christian revelation about the nature of God and man.  And from that revelation we find that the great differences between man and God are both moral and metaphysical. 

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These two types of being, man and God, creature and Creator, are profoundly different in their ontic natures and yet lovingly connected by the Creator.  And certainly, one of the most obvious and salient aspects of man’s “aboriginal imperfection and weakness” is man’s finitude of both body and spirit, as compared with infinite and omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent God, in His three Persons. 

Finite man, in his freedom of will under God’s sovereign will, is at liberty by God’s predestinating decrees to focus on self instead of on God; and, as we shall see, it was precisely by and on this narrow avenue of mental focus, endemic to man, that man initiated his sinful self-separation from God.  Infinite God, in contrast, is able to “focus” on or see completely and through all things, including Himself and all of His creation, all at once, in a manner therefore far beyond finite man’s ability to comprehend.

Finite Eve, the weaker vessel, was beguiled by the Serpent, the fallen and evil archangel Satan in disguise, and then finite Adam, because of his natural affections for his specially-created mate and helper, and by his natural or endemic limits of thought and attention and focus, inclined toward joining her in the sinful partaking of the forbidden fruit.  And, because of his priority in creation and headship over Eve, and because of his headship over the rest of creation — excluding the angels, who were created by God as His messengers to man — all creation fell and was corrupted upon Adam’s sinful and disobedient partaking of the fruit, and death entered into the world.  

Infinite God created a vast (to man) but ultimately limited creation consisting of finite things.  

By a deep mystery far beyond the comprehension of limited or finite man, God created creation ex nihilo, or out of nothing; that is, from no pre-existing materials — unlike, for example, Plato’s demiurge in his creation dialogue Timaeus.  The Christian metaphysician Leibniz explains in detail in his Theodicy and elsewhere how created things are necessarily finite and not infinite things.  

But created man, because of his very finitude, is not merely limited in his focus and attention and range of vision, both physical and mental, but is also radically limited in his capacity to receive the things of God.  This limited receptivity, or limited ability to receive or to take in all manner of good things from a perfectly good and great God, combined with his limited focus, are, again, anthropological-metaphysical conditions that made possible Adam’s turning away from God and toward self and the forbidden fruit. 

Man before the Fall cannot be justly and accurately charged with sinful pride, since the corruption of pride (or any other corruption) did not yet exist in man.  Man can however be “charged” with limited mental and physical vision and focus.  But to so charge him would be to sinfully condemn him for possessing a nature that God Himself had declared “very good.”  Man’s original nature was therefore pure or uncorrupted yet susceptible to fall by its finitude, and the Fall occurred by man’s free but errant willing.

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Following Leibniz, we agree that the world that God, the only perfect Being, created is the best of all possible worlds.  Being perfectly good and perfectly great, God freely chose to create the best of all possible creations. And the world or creation He created consists of necessarily finite or limited things, including finite and limited man at its center.  And the ultimate purpose for which God created was for His own glory, and not for the sake of all or of any part of creation, including man.  And this last point is one that fallen and self-centered man tends to forget, just as man forgets, as the Westminster Standards remind us, that the first aim of created man is to glorify God. But man after Adam, again by his limited focus, seeing only his origin from proximate parents, becomes forgetful of his first parents and of their direct and divine creation.

Before creation, before the beginning of the world, God fore-decreed or fore-ordained and therefore of necessity fore-knew how all would proceed in creation, from its beginning until eternity-after, when the reprobate are in hell-everlasting separated from the Lord and when the elect are in heaven-everlasting in joyful communion with the Lord.  

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In Eden, man’s finitude did not lead to sin and Fall so long as man committed no covenant-breaking act of will.  But direct violation of the express command of the Lord by Adam led to the Fall into corruption and to man’s self-inflicted alienation and estrangement from God. 

Infinite and all-knowing and all-good God had given finite and radically ignorant man a command, for man’s own good.  God told man to refrain from partaking of the fruit, but man was told through the woman by the Father of Lies that he would not die by partaking, but instead would thereby attain God-like knowledge.  And of course, God and not man fully fathomed all the causes and effects attending this situation.  Also, we are not told in Scripture if Adam and Eve, having had no experience of death before the Fall, possessed anything approaching an accurate conception of death.  Instead, we are left with the impression that our first parents were expected to accept on faith that death was something bad and therefore something to be avoided. On the other hand, God-like knowledge is something they must have seen evinced in their direct communion with God, so such knowledge likely seemed to them a positive good, making it therefore a potential object of their desire. So, direct witnessing of divine knowledge and inexperience with death were elements in the lead up to Adam’s sinful decision.  And here, at this juncture in our analysis of the causes of the Fall, let us review another critical aspect of man’s nature as created.

In his Disquisition on Government, the great political philosopher and statesman John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) points out how man was created with an internal psychological constitution such that, as a general rule, he feels more intensely those things that affect him directly than those things that affect him indirectly through others.  Adam and Eve possessed this basic internal constitution before the Fall, just as all people have possessed it after the Fall.  This structure of human feeling, as Calhoun argues, is essential for human survival and flourishing.  Without it, the species could not be perpetuated.  Calhoun also explains how exceptions to this general rule, such as a mother sacrificing her own life and well-being for her  child, or a man giving his life self-sacrificially for his family and country, do not negate but rather underscore and confirm the general rule; and the evidence of this is how such self-sacrifice strikes all men as extraordinary. 

So man in Eden, in his finitude, personified and gathered together in Adam (Romans 5:12), was impelled by thoughts and feelings infinitely less perfect than those of God, thoughts and feelings and passions that would coalesce into sinful decision.  So Adam’s disobedience was a disobedience universal to all humanity.  And, because of man’s aboriginal constitutional limitations and weakness, the eventual outcome could hardly have been otherwise.  So finitude led to turpitude, and afterward, when the damage to human nature and to creation and to man’s relation to God had been done, God alone could, for His elect (Romans 8:28), transform their personal damage during the earthly life by justification and sanctification, and then finally remedy completely their turpitude at the Judgment, as the elect enter the state of glory. 

Near the end of his Theodicy, in a striking and brilliant passage, Leibniz says:  “…among older writers the fall of Adam was termed felix culpa, a fortunate sin, because it had been expiated with immense benefit by the incarnation of the Son of God:  for He gave to the universe something more noble than anything there would otherwise have been amongst created beings.”  So, without the Fall, there would be no glory for God as Savior and Redeemer.  But in this best possible world, as fore-chosen and created by Perfect God, there is. 

And so God, having created man, knows all that is to be known about man’s good, and about all other things.  But because of his finitude and imperfection, man, in Eden before the Fall, was able to mistake what was truly good for himself, and for his helpmate.

 

As the philosopher Rousseau (1712-1778), following his master Plato (424BC?-347BC?), notes in his Social Contract, all men, including vicious men, want what they consider to be good, but all men do not know what is truly good.  Seeing that Eve his helpmate had transgressed, Adam joined her in sin and precipitated thereby the systemic corruption of all of nature, including himself.  Had Adam refrained from sinning, after Eve’s transgression, no Fall would have occurred at that point.  But in the physical presence of Eve, and out of immediate proximity to God, Adam sinned. 

Again, in Theodicy, Leibniz illumines deeper truth:  “There is always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice. … The will is never prompted to action save by the representation of the good, which prevails over the opposite representations.” So infinite and perfect God, in His willing, adheres always to what is truly good, and indeed, to what is best.  But finite and imperfect man, according to the grace God dispenses to the particular man, wills either what is truly good or what merely appears to him good. 

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For centuries, before Calvin and Leibniz, Christian theologians had struggled to explain the Fall.  Calvin, in the Institutes, in his brilliant and systematic and definitive discussion of the Biblical doctrines of election and reprobation, grapples with the difficult and recondite subject of the ultimate and proximate causes of the Fall. 

A century and a half later, Leibniz, influenced by Calvin, Plato and others, introduced metaphysical concepts and categories like finitude and infinitude to explain the Fall.  Specifically, Leibniz employed the Platonic insight that evil is privation, or the absence of being, and inferred from that that finitude, being by definition existence that is limited, involves an absence of being or dearth by which moral evil may enter into the created world (but not, significantly, into the infinite God).  

By creating a world of finite existents or beings, the Lord, to His glory, could derive or draw evil out of good, and then He could, by further interwoven pre-designing that far-surpasses human understanding, generate a good (the best possible world with its best possible outcomes) out of that evil.  Well-versed in Scripture and in the Western philosophical tradition, including the Scholastics, Leibniz supplied the critical metaphysical categories and insights to give definitive explanation, so far perhaps as human capacity allows, into the central proximate cause of the Fall, with the ultimate cause being God’s pleasure.  

Metaphysical evil is lack of being, and lack of being is the root cause of moral evil.  God is pure act, and man is a combination of act and potency or potential.  But God, in this world, according to His plan, allows some potency to be thwarted away from healthy and full actualization, as in the Parable of the Sower, where grain seed falls on hard ground. 

Calvin and Leibniz agreed that depth and clarity and accuracy about the causes of the Fall, to the extent humanly possible, are essential to undergirding Christian orthodoxy and to combatting heresy.  Being pious and faithful men, the overarching object of their theological and philosophical inquiries was to fulfill their duty, using the prodigious and extraordinary gifts they were given, to give all glory to God. 

When we reflect on God’s Providence as His Plan for this, the best possible creation, we see that without human finitude and the consequent Fall of man, there would have been no need of a Savior and Redeemer for His elect.  Without this best possible creation and best possible world, the glory to God would have been less. But God, being perfect, and encompassing all perfections, created that particular creation and world that, most befittingly, would give Him the most glory. So let impious men with their benighted and puny minds sinfully dispute with the perfect Triune and with His true followers and cavil as they will, and then let them consider how all their wicked impiety was, from before the beginning of the world,  made by Him a part of His perfect and best plan.

Dr. Winston McCuen, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Furman University, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Emory University and is a John C. Calhoun scholar. A native of Greenville County, South Carolina, he is the son of Bill and Anne McCuen.

How Long Will We Remain Satisfied With The Bones?

Almost 40 years ago, as a newly minted Pastor, I found myself ministering to a number of Senior Citizens who were being sustained in life by being on Social Security, Welfare, and public assistance. These folks were some of the most down-to-earth and welcoming people you’d ever want to meet, but almost universally they lived in very humble abodes and they barely eked out their existence.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the way the public dole works is the State gives you just enough to remain dependent upon the state, but never so much as to break free of being dependent upon the state. In point of fact the system positively punishes people for income that is above the allotted acceptance level. As such, these folks were stuck in the poverty that they were in.

Recently, it has dawned on me that this is the way the Republican party operates with its base. The Republican party is not substantially different from the Democrat Party. Indeed, I have long said that together they form a “Uniparty.” The Republican party works in such a way to give their base just enough of what the base wants to keep them voting Republican but never so much that they might actually address the foundational problems that keep their voters returning to vote for them. Like my former parishioners who were given just enough of a stipend to barely survive, so the Republican party gives just enough satisfaction to the base to keep them thinking that their only hope is the Republican party. It’s all a con.

The abortion issue is a perfect example. The last people in the world that want to end abortion is the Republican party and that is because people vote for Republicans based on the morsel of opposition the Republican party provides against abortion. The Republican party knows though, that if the abortion issue was really finally solved, that would translate into losing hundreds of thousands of voters who no longer would have a reason to vote Republican. As such, Republicans provide just enough opposition to slow down abortion in order to get the anti-abortion vote but never so much opposition to abortion as to really end it.

Trump has also been a perfect example of this long running grift. As Fuentes has noted Trump is the first white race pimp. He has promised the moon but not delivered. Remember when Trump said in his debate with Biden;

“our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,”

This was a dog whistle to whites that Trump saw the same replacement agenda that has been going on for decades. Trump hustled the white vote so much that the opposition never ceased in calling him “Nazi,” “White Supremacist,” and “KKK.” Yet once in office Trump has said repeatedly that we need more H1B workers because we lack the domestic talent (read “white people”) to do the jobs that need done. Trump has said we need more legal immigration. Here we see Trump, the race pimp. Promising the world to get elected but delivering nothing upon election. Oh, Trump, like all Republicans, will throw a bone here or there to his white base but always just with the purpose of keeping the white dupes on the Republican plantation.

The same is true of Trump’s whole “MAGA” persona. In real life though it is Make Israel Great Again, as Trump glories in being bequeathed with the sobriquet, “First American Jewish President,” as dished out by Mark Levin. Trump bemoans the dwindling power of the Jews in America;

One wonders why Trump doesn’t bemoan the dwindling power of Christians in America?

Trump’s affection for all things Bagel indicates that Trump, like all Presidents, was nothing but a Manchurian candidate. Not only has Trump been a race pimp but he’s also succeeded in being the best friend of Israel and the disgustingly stupid Evangelical Zionists.

Yet, despite all this the rank and file remain fast in matrix and the next time the vote is required the white folks will flock out to vote for the next Manchurian Republican candidate absolutely convinced that the little meat on the bones they are thrown is worth the surrendering of their souls.

One more example of this “giving people just enough to keep them impoverished” principle is found in the modern Evangelical Church. If one attends the average modern Evangelical Church they will get just enough Christianity to satisfy them but never so much as to cause them to question the Christianity of the church they are attending. Currently, it has become clear that there is a brewing, and roiling that is going on in the Evangelical/Reformed church. Young men are waking up to the fact that Christianity and the classical liberalism that has been woven into it are not mutually compatible. So, they go to these “churches” and they are given the soteriological realities of Christianity but always packaged in an Ana-Baptist framework. They are being given enough of the real thing to keep them satisfied but they are not being given all of historical Christianity (with its natural animus to Classical Liberalism, egalitarianism,  to nations as economic zones, and its historic embrace of the Ordo Amoris), and these young men are beginning to notice. It is here that the most difficulty is arising in keeping those who are awakening “down on the farm.” For whatever it worth, I think the next 10 years may find minor explosions in the varying “conservative” “Reformed” denominations.

The world is changing. People, at least in some areas, are realizing that they don’t have to live on the bones thrown to them.  People are realizing, at least in some areas, that they’ve been duped and played the fool and are becoming resolved to no longer play the fool.

For those who aren’t away of the change in the air;

You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin’

Responding To Rev. Joe Spurgeon’s Latest Attack Of The Vapors

“I’m saddened that we squandered both Trump’s election and Kirk’s assassination to spend all the time talking about Jews. No repentance. No turning to Christ. Our people turned to a black boss girl to give them Q anon in another form.”

Rev. Joseph Spurgeon

1.) Maybe Joe should repent for not talking more about the Christ-haters?

2.) Maybe Joe could connect the dots on how we might have leveraged Trump’s election and Kirk’s assassination together with the need to repent? Besides, I thought the televised Kirk lollapalooza was supposed to be evidence of all the repentance that was supposed to be happening?

3.) I think Joe needs to realize that before we can turn to Christ we must turn away from Bagels. That might require some more talking about.

4.) Joe sounds absolutely racist here? A black boss girl? Would it have been better if it had been a white boss girl Joe?

5.) Isn’t Joe talking about Jews in his comment here?

6.) Don’t miss the irony found in Joe’s concern for “our people.”

A Conversation With Darrell Dow On The State Of Protestantism

Darrell Dow writes,

I’m uncertain if there is tangible evidence rather than mere anecdote, but it appears that men with rightist convictions about politics and the world (e.g., revelation trumps reason, hierarchy is better than egalitarianism, human nature is not plastic, culture and politics are downstream from peoplehood, etc.) are moving toward Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Why? It seems that in the midst of chaos, uncertainty and alienation, they are seeking something that at least has the appearance of order, stability, and tradition.

Bret responds,

1.) There is severe contradiction here. We are told that men with rightist convictions are those who believe revelation trumps reason and yet Rome has never believed in Revelation, choosing instead to own a Thomist position where the intellect is not completely fallen and so reason can cooperate with revelation. Nobody who belongs to Rome as Rightist convictions when it comes to this issue.

2.) Another contradiction is to think that culture is downstream of peoplehood. Culture is theology poured over ethnicity. Neither are downstream of the other but together they forge the stream called culture. If we say that culture is downstream of peoplehood it seems we commit ourselves to a materialistic view of culture.

3.) The word “Appearance” above is key. Rome has always been about the smells and bells and as such shallow people are attracted to things that appear to have gravitas. However, Protestantism has indeed made a mistake here with their often strict iconoclasm (regulative principle-ism) or their often cheesy gimmicky “worship.” It is our own fault that people are leaving Protestantism given the embarrassingly shallow “Bad Neil Diamond concert” that is being offered up as worship in Protestant churches.

4.) People who are indeed fleeing to Rome and Constantinople to find gravitas will soon enough be disillusioned unless they are total mindless bots willing to follow fools in vestments.

DD wrote,

Modern Protestantism sanctifies schism. The slogans semper reformanda and the priesthood of believers, untethered from binding authority, create an ecclesiology in which schism is not a failure but a feature and can be recast as purification, growth, and mission. Every disagreement turns into a hill to die on as men seek to micro-manage the affairs of others rather than leaving that task to an actual priest.

Bret responds,

1.) Rome has every bit the schism in it that Protestants do. The only difference is that Rome is able to keep all this schism in a organizational unity. The unity Rome has is not genuine. Does anybody believe that there is ideological/”Theological” unity that exists between those who still esteem Trent and those who esteem Vatican II? Unity as between the Charismatic Catholics and the Dominicans? Yet Rome keeps all their schism in one tent and then BS’s people that, unlike Protestants, they have unity.

2.) In terms of solutions to problems … well, it all depends on which Priest one gets as to what solution one will get.

3.) This criticism sounds like someone who well understands our problems and wishes that there were other expressions of Christianity that didn’t have those same macro problems. However, Rome is every bit as schismatic, divided, and bedeviled with a lack of authority that anybody respects except as on paper.  How many people really believe that the Priest is the voice of god?

4.) Look, nobody hates more the current condition of the Protestant Church in America but the only thing that is worse than the current Protestant Church in America is the current Roman Catholic church across the world. Same goes for EO.

DD wrote,

Churches become provisional arrangements awaiting correction. An ecclesiocentrism where the church is the center of life becomes one more off-ramp to division. “Church planting” provides the moral alibi because, after all, division is not failure but multiplication! It’s not rivalry, it’s evangelism! The result is an ecclesiology in which impotence is spiritualized, authority becomes like a visit to the buffet, and the gospel is endlessly re-launched.

Bret responds scratching his head,

If you want to avoid ecclesiocentrism don’t go to Rome or Constantinople.

Generally speaking though, I completely agree here. However, I would only add that Rome is all the above minus ever having the Gospel. One could attend the ideal Roman Catholic Church or EO Church and there find the outward trappings to be just fine – even excellent … all the while putting their soul in the hands of demons.

Some people have never studied so as to understand how anti-Christ Rome and EO is. They have never done the reading. When one understands that … when one understands how demonic Rome is, one could never even hint at the superiority of Rome to the real abysmal and ugly failure of modern pseudo-Protestantism.

I do hear though that the Mormons are excellent at unity, church planting, and evangelism.

DD wrote,

On the other hand, one looks at the contemporary denominational landscape within Protestantism and wonders why any prudent group of men would join it at all. The institutions have proven unable either to maintain fidelity or to correct themselves without disintegration. Faced with corrupt and often dumb denominational bureaucracies, reasonable men do what reason permits—they leave! But because exit is the only available tool, it becomes the default setting. The result is not reform but exhaustion, kicking the can down the road for the next division.

Bret responds,

Unfortunately, all true.

DD writes,

Until we recover some credible form of authority–which involves something more than shouting Sola Scriptura– that can punish corruption without demanding perpetual schism, decentralization will remain both necessary and fatal. It’s the very definition of cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Bret responds,

Well, ideally Confessionalism is supposed to be that answer.

Still, in the end I would rather have the problems we have w/ our lack of authority than the problem that would present itself to a return to a time when the Church could be absolutely dead wrong and yet had to be supported upon pain of ostracization or worse.

Most of us hate the current zeitgeist in the Protestant church, but any idea that the false church … the demonic church … the Christ hating Church of Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy is an option that absolutely buries the needle on empty.

I have no problem with cursing the darkness. I just find it unacceptable to hint in any way that even darker darkness is preferred to the darkness we are properly cursing.