Jesus as Che Guevara, or, Theology as Socialism

“Increasingly the younger generation of theologians is being infiltrated by socialism. God’s saving purpose and eternal redemption in Jesus Christ are replaced by human goals of world improvement. These goals are veiled in arbitrarily selected words of the so-called ‘historical Jesus,’ who is interpreted as social reformer or as revolutionary, depending on what the interpreter desires. Preferred texts include the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the discourse on world judgment (Matthew 25:31-46), as well as Jesus’ words regarding the Sabbath (Mark 2:27-28). In the last passage the term son of man in verse 28 is taken to simply mean man, which is linguistically possible. Jesus table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (e.g. — Mark 2:15-17) is taken as proof that he changed unjust social structures and that we should imitate him in this. 

Characteristic of this approach is the theory of projection. (We might call this ‘social constructs’ — BLM.) The Old Testament is, for the most part, set aside as irrelevant to us because it is, entirely or in part, merely an intellectual construction, a projection. It is the result of then-current patriarchal social structures and conditions. According to this theory, even the ten commandments are no longer normative for us. Jesus is said to have abolished them with the commandment to love. But what love means is not derived from God’s Word, but is rather determined by sensual means. 

The prophets are ranked as social reformers. Amos serves as an alibi for this.”

Eta Linnamenn
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology? — pg. 92

How Is It That We Are “Not Under Law?”

Romans 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

When St. Paul writes about not being “under the law,” he is not at that point teaching us that being Christian means being antinomian. The not being under the law that Paul is referencing here has to do with the freedom from the condemnation of the law that is a reality for all those outside of Christ. Man, as being mortal is always governed by some law and so it is literally not possible to be free from law in the sense of having a lawless existence.

Freedom from the condemnation of the law is the good news the Gospel brings. Outside of Christ, we are forever burdened by the accusation of God’s law that we are guilty of not keeping God’s law. In Christ, we are free from that accusation (and the condemnation following) that we are guilty of because of our violating God’s law, and we are free from the condemnation of God’s law precisely because Christ is the one, in His crucifixion, who, as our substitute, already received in Himself the penalty and condemnation that was properly designed for us due to our breaking of God’s law.

Having been set free from the condemnation of God’s law we are now at liberty to walk in terms of God’s law without any fear because there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We are those who no longer walk consistent with our sinful former appetites but who now walk according to our law honoring desires as we are new creations.

That God’s law still functions in our life is the great presupposition of Scripture. After all, how could we ever successfully honor the call to lay aside sin

in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.  (Ephesians 4:22)

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us … (Hebrews 12:1)

unless there was a standard by which we could know whereby that sin is determined? If we are not under law in the sense that the law no longer exists for the Christian then there is no possibility for us to sin, since without law sin does not exist. If we are not under law in the sense that the law no longer exists for the Christian then right and wrong and good and bad really are only existential social constructs with the result that every Christian does what is right in their own eyes. 

The Cultural Marxist Toolbox

“The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped. Their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional power to those who oppress these minorities.”

Herbert Marcuse
Frankfurt School

This “false consciousness,” which one of the truly great Cultural Marxists railed against was the consciousness which has been shaped and formed by thousands of years of Christianity upon the West. It was this “false consciousness” that Marcuse and his cohorts at the Frankfurt School desired to overthrow and so the oppressed must be protected from this “false consciousness” even if it meant denying the proper protection of law to those who were designed as the “oppressors.” In this quote Marcuse is styling his worldview and beliefs as the true consciousness vis-a-vis the false consciousness that he and his ideological soul mates were waging civilizational war against.

This false consciousness would be overthrown by use of the tool-kit developed by the Cultural Marxists. These tools came to be known as,

1.) Critical theory

In Cultural Marxism via the work of critical theory, every aspect of a person’s identity is to be questioned, be it gender, sexual orientation, family, race, culture, religion, in order to benefit supposedly oppressed groups. By deconstructing heretofore stable and unchanging identity social categories (part of the false consciousness problem) those who were part of moral, ethnic, racial, and religious minority groups could pull down and destroy the whole idea of norms that arise in cultures that are comprised of distinct majorities.

The underlying and enduring aspect of critical theory common to all its multitudinous expressions is the creation and application of interdisciplinary theories growing out of a worldview dedicated to overturning the false consciousness of traditional Christian thought and social order and so serving as an instrument of social transformation. Critical theory comes in all shapes, sizes, and expressions but the one thing it has in common is criticizing any residual influence of Christianity that remains on any and all of our Western institutions and disciplines. It typically expresses itself as the voice of the oppressed and the aggrieved and in doing so seeks to employ “social justice” and “fairness” as the sting within the theory. However, in order to do so Critical theory must invert and redefine almost all realities in order to be able to secure the superior position of the oppressed.

2.) The New Proletariat

The Cultural Marxists empirically observed that Marxism, in its classical expression, failed when it posited that there was automatic friction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Because of this observation, the Cultural Marxists understood that if the West was going to be a cake turned then what was required was the creation of both a new model and a new proletariat that would serve the purpose of providing the necessary friction and manpower in order to achieve Marxist transformation.

The Cultural Marxist finally conceived of both new model and new proletariat when it changed the old class model of have vs. have not to the new model of oppressor vs. oppressed. The oppressed was thus to the agenda of Cultural Marxism what the working class proletariat was to the agenda of Classical Marxism. Just as in Classical Marxism there remained the sense of grievance in this new proletariat but instead of the grievance being based on an economic pivot Cultural Marxism chose the pivot of the unprivileged oppressed outcast as the tool by which to achieve social transformation in a Marxist direction. Having chosen that pivot it then worked to propagandize a large number of groups that they were both oppressed and that their identity as humans should be tied up with their oppression.

Concretely speaking, the new Cultural Marxist proletariat — those who would do the yeoman work of the cultural Marxist march through the Institutions — would be comprised of all who would believe the critical theory propaganda that they were underprivileged and oppressed. Those successfully propagandized and recruited were feminists, ethnic minorities, and the sexually deviant. These were the new proletariat oppressed and they would fight against the new bourgeoisie who were cast as the oppressors. The new bourgeoisie were cast as Christian patriarchy, Heterosexual Married, the white majority (especially white males), people who insist that gender is binary (CIS-gender), and most emphatically Christians who rejected this Cultural Marxist social construct template. Ironically the new social construct that the cultural Marxist created used as one of its chief tools for social transformation the idea that previous normativity itself was merely social construct. In the cultural Marxist world, the oppressors were successful as oppressors because they had managed to force their social constructs on the oppressed. The work of the critical theory was to expose these putative social constructs for what they were.

3.) Shaming

In order of this to happen then, the previous normativity must be shamed and countered by the recruitment and so rise of a new normativity. For example, heterosexual marriage must be challenged by other forms of sexuality as mainstreamed into the social order.  For example, since whites are oppressor then new slogans like “diversity is our strength,” as combined with immigration policies which will decrease the overall percentage total of whites must be pursued. For example, if patriarchy is oppressive then matriarchy and anarchy is the solution. For example, if CIS-gender is merely a dominant social construct then transgenderism must be injected into the blood stream of the West. For example if Christianity is oppressive then a two pronged approach must be employed. First, Christianity must be emptied of its previous content and filled with the ideology of Cultural Marxism as its new content and second, those Christians who refuse to be re-programmed must be marginalized and diluted by bringing in teeming numbers of Muslim immigrants.

The ground for all this was set by Theodore Adorno’s book “The Authoritarian Personality,” wherein Adorno patholigizes what had always been considered normative. By the time Adorno is finished patriarchy, patriotism, familialism, and the Christian faith are all given the bum’s rush and characterized as signs of sickness. Of course the consequence of this, if taken seriously, is a social order that is rootless, international, alienated, and godless. These are the very characteristics which are descriptive of the West as a result of the canker that is cultural Marxism.

The ground being set, the Cultural Marxist advance is made by use of the technique of shaming. Shaming occurs when labels are affixed to people for perfectly normal behavior. For example, if one is white and desirous of living in a homogeneous neighborhood or attend a homogeneous church one is shamed with catcalls of “racist,” or “Islamaphobe,” or  “homophobe,” or “Un-Christian.” However when large influxes of differing people groups are relocated into Western cities (Lewiston, Maine comes to mind) with the natural result that these groups create their own sub-culture where homogeneity is characteristic this is called the benefit of multiculturalism. Shaming is saved for the majority White Christian. Normativity is reserved for the alien and the stranger.

4.) Political Correctness

A further tool for the advance of Cultural Marxism is the tool of Political correctness. Political correctness has many expressions but we will consider its use as a tool of thought control by way of linguistic manipulation. Political correctness controls thought by creating taboos in speech usage as enforced via social stigmatization. Words that cannot be said become words that will not be thought. This thought control is ubiquitous on American campuses today as riots ensure when certain speech is to be expressed. The recent riots on University campuses against Charles Murray and before him Milo Yiannopoulos provide proof.

This thought control is also achieved by seeking to control the language by scandalizing language that does not serve the purposes of the Cultural Marxist. Examples of this abound. Most recently the phrase “anchor baby” created a firestorm. The Cultural Marxists insisted that this was a pejorative. However, it is only a pejorative if you assume their worldview. By insisting that this phrase dare not be uttered the Cultural Marxists were advancing their agenda and their worldview. Instead they began to insist that the phrased, “citizen children of unauthorized immigrants” be used in its place. But of course, the very issue up for debate is whether such children should  be citizens. By using their language they win the debate. Another example is “illegal immigrant.” Despite the fact that those immigrants which are here illegally are indeed, by definition, “illegal immigrants,” the Cultural Marxists demand that these people be referred to as “undocumented workers.” Such language advances their worldview and agenda. Control the language, control the thinking. Control the language and the thinking control the outcome. One more example will suffice. What we today call “affirmative action,” is the triumph of political correctness. “Affirmative action,” is in reality ethnic discrimination but many can’t see that because of the thought control achieved by our cultural mind masters.

In the end Cultural Marxism as an ideology has as a goal the elimination of all stigmatization except the stigmatization of those who believe that stigmatism has a proper and necessary role in any social order. In the Cultural Marxist world oppressed and oppressor categories will eliminated with the consequence that stigma will be ended. The pedophile and tranny will be just as normal as the heterosexual and the Christian. In reality what will happen is that God’s normal will be stigmatized and maybe even criminalized.

Future article — The role of false guilt and liberation theology in Cultural Marxism.

United Nations Definition of Genocide and Pertinent Videos

Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as,

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part1 ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

https://www.facebook.com/SmashCulturalMarxism3/videos/1929574013955409/?hc_location=ufi

II Peter 1:21 …. Men Moved By The Holy Spirit — Infallibility

Peter, as we saw last week, is seeking to provide credibility to what he has been saying. Last week we saw that Peter appealed to his own,

I.) First-hand testimony to sustain the credibility of his message

We demonstrated last week how this kind of appeal is not unique to Peter. We find St. John doing so. We find St. Paul doing so.

“The narration of the facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried”–that is history. “He loved me and gave Himself for me”–that is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive Church.”

― J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism

Christianity cannot survive as Christianity if the empirical historical facts that are bound up with Christianity are found to be not true.  If Peter was lying about the History of the Transfiguration then the Transfiguration cannot be mysticized and so rescued. If St. John was lying about the History of the Resurrection the Resurrection cannot be rescued as having any meaning by somehow transcendentalizing it so that it is religiously true but not historically true.

People, seeking to avoid the hard work of studying Christian Doctrine and Christian History might appeal to the idea that it is the Christian life that is what is really important but if these historical facts are not true then any idea of a “Christian life” is just so much wish-mongering, personal preference, and poppycock.

All of this is why Peter insisted that “We had not followed cleverly invented tales.”

II.) Appeal to Scripture to Sustain Credibility

“The Prophetic word confirmed.”

You see what Peter is saying here is that their experience confirmed that which they had owned as “prophetic.”

What we labored at last week in demonstrating on this point is that their understanding of the Prophetic Word was the lens through which they understood and interpreted their eyewitness experience.

Imagine if Peter had been on the Mount of Transfiguration and had not been conditioned by Scripture as to what could and could not be possible. Peter believed in a coming Messiah. Peter believed that this Messiah would be extraordinary in every capacity and so Peter’s Scripturally informed Worldview allowed Peter to see that Transfiguration as being what it was — the inbreaking of the age to come on this present evil age.

But people who do not interpret their experienced reality through the prism of Scripture can’t see reality for what it is even if they eyewitness it.

I appeal to Luke 16. You know this account,

27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham *said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 But he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ 31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”

You see what is going on here? Abraham is saying that even if they were eyewitnesses of someone rising from the dead they would not be eyewitnesses of someone rising from the dead because they have not listened to Moses and the prophets. Their capacity to be eyewitnesses of the supernatural unto believing it was anchored in what they first believed about the verity of Scripture.

1.) Experience is pre-interpreted through a grid that informs what is and is not possible. A warning from the dead would not matter to those who disbelieve an even more credible witness (Moses and the prophets) to begin with.

2.) In order for experience to be valid as a source of credible information that experience must be reckoned through the prism of Scripture. It is not only the case that Scripture must interpret Scripture but it is also the case that Scripture must interpret experience. That the Brothers of Dives would not believe the testimony of the Moses and the Prophets means that they would even interpret wrongly the testimony of the Dead come back to life to warn.

3.) Scripture then is our epistemological foundation. Not experience. Not reason. Not tradition. Not mystic revelations. Only Scripture can give us the capacity to know the times and what should be done.

In his letter Peter anchors his credibility in his eyewitness account and then he anchors the credibility of his eyewitness account in the “prophetic word confirmed.”

The prophetic word confirmed.  God has given us epistemological tools. History, reason, tradition, experience, but each of those tools is only as good as the foundation upon which they are anchored. The prophetic word confirmed is what inform all our other epistemological tools.

So, that was by way of review of last week. In the few minutes we have left we want to take up one more point here and that is how Peter,

III.) Appeals to God to Sustain Credibility of Scripture

19 [k]So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. 20 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, 21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

So, Peter starts out with his eye-witness account. He then places that eye-witness account on the foundation of the “prophetic word confirmed.” Lastly, Peter places that “prophetic word confirmed” on the foundation of God’s sovereign working.

Peter spoke about the prophetic word confirmed and now he speaks to the origin of that prophet word.

Negatively — never made by an act of the human will
Positively — Men move by the Holy Spirit spoke from God

This is intended to provide a stark antithetical contrast that doesn’t demonstrate itself as well in the English.

Prophecy was not brought in by men;
but men were brought to utter it by the Spirit.

Remember, Peter is dealing with people who are being inundated with false teachers. He is trying to shepherd and protect them. He is providing an apologetic for his truthfulness… that he can be trusted.  He has appealed to his own eye-witness experience. He has based that appeal on an appeal to the “prophetic word confirmed,” and now Peter is saying “and that prophetic word it trustworthy because it comes from God.”

The words and idea of men being moved by the Holy Spirit is a picture of the wind carrying a sailboat along.  The men speak but the Spirit impelled.

Of course, this is one passage we look to for our doctrine of Inspiration. It teaches that the Scriptures, like the Incarnation, have a human and divine nature. Indeed, we might say that the Scriptures are 100% Divine and 100% human.  While we do not hold that God used men as human dictation machines we would say that God so ordained the ordering of these men’s lives, their personality, their character, their experiences, their socio-linguistic background that they were the perfect instruments to bring what they were to what God had to say.

You must understand that when people inveigh against the mechanical dictation theory of inspiration (MDTI) the problem is not that they are suggesting that God had to much control of the human author. No, the problem with the accusation of “the mechanical dictation theory of inspiration” is that it doesn’t credit God with enough sovereignty.

Those who rail against the MDTI act as if God, in inspiration, suddenly descended upon the author, who heretofore had been completely unaffected by the sovereign working of God. And yet, any Christian theory of inspiration insists on something more then MDTI. The Christian theory of inspiration says that God controlled all the events, all the learning, all the experiences, of the inspired author’s life to bring him to the point that he would say just exactly what God intended Him to say as ordained from eternity past.

No … the MDTI will never do because it doesn’t emphasize enough God’s sovereignty in the whole Inspiration process.

Now we would say here that as it is clear from the passage that God is ultimately responsible for Scripture, therefore we do no believe that it is possible for Scripture to be errant or fallible. I hope we can see the contradiction between believing in a God that cannot fail while holding that the Scripture which was “God-breathed,” is fallible.  If it is the case that God breathed out the Scripture (II Tim. 3:16) then it would be an impugning of God’s character to suggest that there are errors in God’s Word.

Now let’s take a brief moment to talk about this idea of infallibility. Many are the men both within and without the Church who mock Biblical Christians for believing that God’s word is infallible and in doing so they suggest that they themselves are more enlightened inasmuch as they don’t believe in infallibility.

But allow me to suggest that when men give up on the infallibility of Scripture they always relocate that same infallibility someplace else. They may deny infallibility as belonging to Scripture but they affirm, knowingly or not, infallibility in some other knowledge source. In short, infallibility is a concept that cannot be escaped.

Many Evolutionists act as if their evolutionary theories are infallible. And of course, if God is ruled out, a-priori, then where are we to find truth except in infallible evolution? The infallibility of God’s Word traded in for blind time plus chance plus circumstance infallibility.

In the political realm, we have the phrase,  “vox populi, vox dei.” The voice of the people is the voice of God.” Telling phrase that. In Democracy the people taken as God now speak infallibly in their majority voice. The voice of the people as the voice of God gives us an infallible truth and if we don’t like a new infallible truth we can soon enough replace it with a different one.

In the philosophy of existentialism it is the meaningful experience the individual has wherein infallibility is discovered.

For the Nihlist it is the sovereign ubermensch self who is infallible.

The Roman Catholic Church posits infallibility in the Pope as he speaks from the chair.

Infallibility is an inescapable concept because people have to have someplace certain and authoritative to stand upon. If they will not stand on the Scripture as certain and authoritative — infallible — then they will find something else that is infallible to try and stand upon.

It might be Rousseau’s theory of the “General Will”
It might be his idea of “the Noble Savage.”

— That the man who is uncorrupted by the trappings of civilization is the one who is to be most listened to and who will have the most inherent wisdom.

For Hegel it was the State which was the incarnation of the Universal Spirit and so infallible

“Every creed, every philosophy has either openly or implicitly a doctrine of infallibility. Because man has to live by an authority of certainty. He has to have something as his ultimate standing ground. A man cannot stand on nothingness, on thin air. I am standing on a platform here…it is this platform that supports me as I speak to you. And intellectually the platform that supports me and gives me the foundation for my speaking is the infallible word. Now every man has a platform on which he stands. And he must believe, he cannot escape believing, it is an inescapable requirement of human thought, that he affirm that platform without qualification, whatever it may be. That he hold to its infallibility, its certainty, its authority. And so there are a variety of infallibility concepts current among us.”

RJR

And so back to Peter. Peter says but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

And we believe therefore that Peter’s testimony and all of Scripture is infallible.