“We Deny that political or social activism should be viewed as integral components of the gospel or primary to the mission of the church. Though believers can and should utilize all lawful means that God has providentially established to have some effect on the laws of a society, we deny that these activities are either evidence of saving faith or constitute a central part of the church’s mission given to her by Jesus Christ, her head. We deny that laws or regulations possess any inherent power to change sinful hearts.”

The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel

1.) Many of the hands crafting this document were Baptists (Voddie Baucham, James White, John MacArthur, etc.) and the whole document as a Baptist feel about it, including this denial. Baptists are forever talking about soul freedom and the separation of Church and State and that mindset that Separates Church and State is seen in this denial. Any flavor of Christianity that separates Church and State is going to, at the same time, fault the Church as Institution having any role in speaking to the State or even the civil-social sphere. Baptists (and lately R2K Baptisterians) are all about saying, “We just need to get people saved and to hell with the social order.” (Well, they don’t say that explicitly but that is what I hear.)

2.) Note the oily way the first sentence is crafted. Political or social activism is written off from the Church’s bailiwick because political and social activism are not, strictly speaking, Gospel issues. The Gospel is the good news proclamation of what God in Christ has accomplished for and in the place (stead) of sinners. The Gospel, narrowly defined, requires nothing and gives all and as such the only activism that is speaks of is the activism of Jesus Christ for sinners.

However, could we agree with that first sentence in the denial above if it said, “We Deny that political or social activism should be viewed as integral components of Biblical Christianity or of any concern with reference to the mission of the church.” I hope we would not agree with such a sentence and yet the way these Baptists have crafted the first sentence we are forced to concede that the Church as Institution is inert when it comes to political and social activism.

And what is political and social activism? Is preaching a sermon on the threat that Marxism presents to Christian civilization to be considered political and social activism? Does forming a men’s militia in the Church with the purpose of preventing the Church from being burned down by anarchistic protesters to be considered a political and social activism?

Allow me to posit that it is precisely the visible Church’s reluctance to embrace a Christianity that politically and socially active that has led to the de-Christianization of Western civilization. Is it really that difficult to preach up Christ in His role as our great High Priest while being involved in activities that preach up Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords?

I would contend that this denial is the result of a Gnostic other-worldly pietism. Now, to be sure, the Church of Christ can be lopsided and fall into the social Gospel but something I’ve never seen or heard of is for the Church of Christ to fall into a Biblical Christianity that seeks to build up and protect political and social realities that were born of a Christian tradition. Maybe we should try?

3.) Protesting at the steps of the Supreme court about the scourge that abortion is, isn’t an evidence of saving faith? Working to keep marriage defined as only existing between a man and a woman isn’t evidence of saving faith? Petitioning Seminaries change their bylaws so as to rid themselves of all R2K professors isn’t evidence of saving faith? Joining a militia to protect my neighbor’s business in the context of a riot, and uphold the law, isn’t evidence of saving faith? Who writes this dreck?

4.) Who has ever said that “laws or regulations possess any inherent power to change sinful hearts?” Who are these Baptists aiming at with that statement? Of course laws or regulations do not have any inherent power to change sinful hearts. However, laws and regulations have inherent power to keep a society under a Christian moral tutelage until such a time when the Spirit of God changes hearts.

What these Baptists are doing here is pitting the pedagogical use of the law (reveal sin and drive men to Christ) against the political use of the law (frame a people’s laws so that they can live Civilizationally as Christians). Would these Baptists have the Muslims (Sharia) or the Jews (Noahic laws) shape our laws even though the having of laws based on Christian revelation cannot in and of themselves, by themselves (apart from the Spirit of Christ) change sinful hearts? And if we are to have Christian laws then why shouldn’t the Church as an Institution have a voice in what those laws might look like as the Church instructs and teaches those who will one day be Judges, Lawyers, and Politicians? Why shouldn’t the Church as Institution catechize God’s people in what Biblical law for civilizations look like?

I am not a Baptist and I want no part of this Baptist denial of muscular and biblical Christianity.

“We affirm God made all people from one man. Though people often can be distinguished by different ethnicities and nationalities, they are ontological equals before God in both creation and redemption. “Race” is not a biblical category, but rather a social construct that often has been used to classify groups of people in terms of inferiority and superiority. All that is good, honest, just, and beautiful in various ethnic backgrounds and experiences can be celebrated as the fruit of God’s grace. All sinful actions and their results (including evils perpetrated between and upon ethnic groups by others) are to be confessed as sinful, repented of, and repudiated.

We deny that Christians should segregate themselves into racial groups or regard racial identity above, or even equal to, their identity in Christ. We deny that any divisions between people groups (from an unstated attitude of superiority to an overt spirit of resentment) have any legitimate place in the fellowship of the redeemed. We reject any teaching that encourages racial groups to view themselves as privileged oppressors or entitled victims of oppression. While we are to weep with those who weep, we deny that a person’s feelings of offense or oppression necessarily prove that someone else is guilty of sinful behaviors, oppression, or prejudice.“

Scripture: Genesis 1:26–28; Acts 17:24-26; 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; 2 Corinthians 12:16-18

Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel

The “Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel,” was supposed to be a conservative response to racial Egalitarianism in the Church. Instead we merely got more of Egalitarianism toned down and supported by Scripture improperly interpreted. The document, while indeed better than what is prevalent today in many many Evangelical and Reformed Churches is still a poor reflection of Scripture, an even worse re-articulation of what the Church has taught through the century, and just a poorly and confused written document.

Let’s note briefly just a few embarrassments in what is written above.

1.) On the statement that “Race is not a Biblical category,” see

https://ironink.org/?p=8662&fbclid=IwAR14Xsh7pRhr2kz4yX3zaMFt0H6T4BbH7qH8JrlVzV9tP9HP4R8U_0QMFTE

2.) On inferiority and superiority it is clear that just as there are individuals that are superior to others (Let’s do have Beethoven over for supper honey instead of Charlie Manson) so there are people groups, ethnicities, and races that are superior and inferior. At the very least this is true in terms of varying tasks. For example, it is clear that White Christians have been, until they recently abandoned Christ, superior at building civilizations. Similarly, it is clear if you wanted recipes for cannibalism you would typically have to go to one of the inferior people groups. Concretely speaking, who would argue that Cortez’ Spanish Conquistadors were not superior to the inferior Aztecs that they mercifully conquered? Concretely speaking, when St. Paul spoke of Cretans in Titus he was speaking to them as inferior people. Concretely speaking, when the Hebrews cleansed the land of Canaan they cleansed the land of inferior peoples.

Now, some may consider the idea of inferior or superior people groups as “hate facts” but they remain facts all the same as long as we recognize that all of this is by the decree of God and as long as we understand that any superiority is by grace alone and has nothing to do with any people group being made of better dirt.

In conjunction with the above observation that it is necessary to understand that just as superior and inferior can run through different genres so that we can talk about superior and inferior fugues, superior and inferior Gregorian chants, superior and inferior Big Band music and superior and inferior Rock Ballads so inferior and superior can run through different people groups so that we can talk about superior and inferior hospitality as existing among people groups, superior and inferior courage as existing among people groups, superior and inferior standards of cleanliness as existing among people groups and superior and inferior organization skills as existing among people groups. Recognizing this we might well say that superiority status and inferiority status co-exist together in all people groups depending on what “genre” or “category” one is speaking of. At one time this was readily recognized. We used maxims to describe these. If we spoke about “Dutch clean” everyone knew was was being said. If we spoke about the Irish Temper or the Irish gift of gab everyone knew what was being said. If we talked about how pugnacious the Scots are everyone knew what was being said. When de Tocqueville wrote “Democracy in America” part of his task was to talk about what made Americans superior and inferior. Once upon a time we understood what is being denied today as a sin against egalitarianism. The above statement gets this dreadfully wrong.

3.) There is nothing sinful in voluntary ethnic or racial group segregating even as pursued by Christians. This is another egalitarian canard that is only an infant in its pedigree when measured against the course of Christian civilization. Here we will refute the idea that segregation is sin by quoting from greater men who lived before this time of egalitarian madness.

When the magazine, Christianity Today, did turn to the question of segregation in 1957, Dr. Carl F. H. Henry wrote that civil rights legislation ending segregation would be morally problematic,

“Forced integration is as contrary to Christian principles as is forced segregation,” he argued. “A voluntary segregation, even of believers, can well be a Christian procedure.”

In the same 1957 issue there was also an article by E. Earle Ellis, a Bible professor at Aurora College, in Illinois, who would later teach theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky (where, according to his obituary, “many students considered it an honor just to sit in his class”). In his article, Ellis argued that racial segregation could actually be a positive good.

Ellis wrote,

“Segregation has the potential to develop into a partnership of mutual respect … Southerners often wonder whether integrationists are as interested in good race relations as in forcing a particular kind of race relations. The unfortunate fact is that ardent Christian integrationists, however conscientious, are one cause of the worsening race relations in the South today. Their moral superiority complex, their caricature of the segregationist as an unchristian bigot and their pious confession of the sins of people in other sections of the country have not been wholly edifying.”

Dr. H. Morton Smith added this on the subject of segregation,

“If from this we may conclude that ethnic pluriformity is the revealed will of God for the human race in its present situation, it is highly questionable whether the Christian can have part in any program that would seek to erase all ethnic distinctions. That such distinctions may be crossed over by individuals may be granted, but it is at least questionable whether a program designed to wipe out such differences on a mass scale should be endorsed by the Christian. It is this line of argument that the average Christian segregationist uses to back his view. He fears that the real goal of the integrationist is the intermarriage of the races, and therefore the breakdown of the distinctions between them. Many who would be willing to integrate at various lesser levels refuse to do so, simply because they feel that such will inevitably lead to intermarriage of the races, which they consider to be morally wrong. . . .

The mass mixing of the races with the intent to erase racial boundaries he does consider to be wrong, and on the basis of this, he would oppose the mixing of the two races in this way. Let it be acknowledged that a sin in this area against the Negro race has been perpetrated by godless white men, both past and present, but this does not justify the adoption of a policy of mass mixing of the races. Rather, the Bible seems to teach that God has established and thus revealed his will for the human race now to be that of ethnic pluriformity, and thus any scheme of mass integration leading to mass mixing of the races is decidedly unscriptural.”

Dr. Morton H. Smith (1923-2017)
(For more see: Dr. Morton H. Smith on Christianity, Race, and Segregation)

4.) The statement above about identity is accurate as far as it goes. For the Christian his overarching identity is found in who he is in Christ. However, the statement above almost sounds as if the writers are diminishing the importance of the creational identities that God has assigned to us. Again, it is true that our creational identities cannot rise above our identity in Christ for that would be a form of idolatry. However that doesn’t mean our creational identities are unimportant. They are extremely important and shouldn’t be disregarded as important.

5.) “We deny that any divisions between people groups have any legitimate place in the fellowship of the redeemed.”

The problem that the Biblical Christian has here is that this seems to assume the multicultural Church congregations should be the norm. Does this statement mean that the authors and signatories believe that Korean Churches are unbiblical or that Black Churches are unbiblical simply because they could easily be seen as existing because of division of people groups? This statement is unclear as is much of the whole document.

On those portions we have not commented upon we are in complete agreement. However, these statements considered above are poison pills for the whole document and as such the whole document should be eschewed and left unsupported.

The radical declares,

“Everyone belongs to all, and all belongs to everyone. All are slaves and equal in their slavery… Slaves are bound to be equal. Without despotism there has never been either freedom or equality, but in the herd there is bound to be equality…. The moment you have family ties or love you get the desire for property. We will destroy that desire; we’ll make use of drunkenness, slander, spying; we’ll make use of incredible corruption; we’ll stifle every genius in its infancy. We’ll reduce all to a common denominator! Complete equality!”

The Possessed
Fydor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky was a 19th century Russian writer who explored the human psyche, particularly as that psyche was conditioned by ideology and religion. In the quote above we find that Dostoevsky understood the nascent proto-Marxist type ideology which he believed were Demon like ideas from Western Europe that were possessing Russia.

It is interesting that even in 1873 Russia, Dostoevsky could identify the heart of collectivism that remains with us yet today. Dostoevsky understood that the end of equality, absolutized, is slavery….

Without Biblical distinctions regarding gender, roles, ethnic groups, and authority structure, we will be amalgamated into the herd reality that Dostoevsky warns about. It will be a herd reality where a few elite are, in essence, the Farmers over the undistinguished and undifferentiated mass herd. Those who advocate complete equality in terms of “equality of identity” are the enemy and they are the enemy because Scripture identifies them as such. They are the enemy who overthrow the 5th commandment where a distinction and hierarchy of parents is required before they can be honored. They are the enemy who overthrow the great commission where a distinction of nations is required before those nations can be baptized, discipled and taught to observe all things taught by Christ. They are the enemy who overthrow Galatians 3:28 where a existing distinction between Jews and Gentiles, Slave and Free, Men and Women, must exist before there can be comfort that all can be justified in Christ. They are the enemy who overthrow the 8th commandment where a distinction must exist between what is my property and what is not my property before any forbidding of theft can make sense. Egalitarianism is the enemy and egalitarians are the enemy precisely because their egalitarianism strikes at the heart of God’s revelation. Keep in mind that the ultimate goal of the Father of egalitarianism is to erase the distinction and hierarchy between the Creator and the creature. He desires to make God and man a common denominator. That is the ultimate distinction that is under attack in all of these penultimate battles.

OPC Minister Matthew Kingsbury

Families Are of this World, but the Church Is of the Next

“We begin by observing that marriage is a temporary, for-this-life-only institution. Although marriage is given us by God for several reasons, its main purpose is to symbolize the relationship between Christ and his church, as the Apostle Paul teaches in Ephesians 5:25-32. This primary and exemplary purpose is more central to the institution of marriage than childbearing, which is the means by which a marriage becomes a family.”

Bret

We would note in our hymnody we sing of families being reunited in the next life,

“Thus to the parents and their seed
shall thy salvation come
and numerous households will meet at last
in one eternal home”

But beyond hymnody the speaks of the coming day when the circle of family will be unbroken Scripture gives us reason to think that families exist beyond this life and so contra to Rev. Kingsbury are not temporary. In the book of Revelation there is the repeated mention of Nations present in the new Jerusalem. Now, as Nations are constituted in the Scriptures as a people with a shared lineage (Genesis), a shared history (Exodus), having a common law (Deuteronomy) sharing a common land (Joshua) and having kin leadership (Judges) it seems obvious that when the book of Revelation speaks of Nations in the New Jerusalem that families, like the Church, are of the next world.

Revelation 22:1 Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, 2in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Revelation 21:23And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it…. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.

Rev. Kingsbury seems to think that the new Heaven and Earth is an existence that is largely discontinuous with this life. It is better to think that what is to be expected of the new Heaven and Earth is a transfiguration of this life with all the expected continuities and discontinuities. The result of the consummation then is not abolition of this world and all its rich familial relationship but rather redemption of it including the redemption of a family structure that exists in the next world.

Second, on this point, though the Ephesians 5 passage does teach that Christian Marriage is analogous of Christ and the Church, Ephesians 5 nowhere explicitly teaches that this analogy is the main purpose of Marriage. Now certainly, the primary purpose of Marriage, like the primary purpose of all things that we as Christians do is to glorify God but to say that the main purpose of Marriage is to symbolize the relationship between Christ and his church goes beyond what Ephesians 5 teaches.

1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life[c]—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

This is a passage that Christians have often mishandled and continue to mishandle today. The stumbling block is the word, “world.” What does it mean to love the world? What does it mean to love the things of the world? How does doing the will of God stand in opposition to loving the world.

When I was a young man, I grew up in a tradition that defined “the world” as anything that was associated with intrinsically sinful behavior. So, for example, people played cards while drinking and gambling and fraternizing with strange women and so in the Church tradition I grew up in, “playing cards with a standard 52 card deck” was “worldly.” As such the college I attended (which was connected with that Church Denomination tradition) forbade playing cards on campus, though playing Rook was perfectly acceptable. Another example was consuming adult beverages. Drinking was often associated with drunkenness, loose morals, floozy women, and broken homes. As such, by that association alcohol was considered “worldly” or “a thing of this world.” Again, like playing cards alcohol was forbidden. Other examples were dancing, and going to see any film. Now, keep in mind, not many of us paid attention to these rules but the rules were there all the same.

There is a way to answer the questions that we opened with about how to concretely define what it means to wrongly love the world and to wrongly love the things of the world and that is found in understanding the distinction between structure and direction.

In creation God created all things good. The whole structure of the Cosmos was created good and when we live in terms of God’s law within that structure created and ordained by God we are at that point living in the world but are not loving the world or the things of the world. As examples here, God created a world of beauty and when we love beautiful creations as created by artists that are consistent with God’s beauty structure we are not loving the world. However, should we fall into loving ugliness as beauty (a John Cage concert, or a Andrew Serrano art piece) we are at that time loving the world and the things of the world.

Another way to love the things of the world is to love the gift above the giver, so that if we start loving our art museum more than we love God we have abandoned the God ordained structure of the world for the world itself absent God. At that point we disobey John’s writ. We would say then, that there is a worldly way to love art that displeases God and a way to biblically love art that pleases God.

We have needs to understand that it is not the God created structure itself that is evil (dancing, alcohol, films, a deck of cards) but the direction of the heart that is plying these structures.

The structure of politics might be another example. God has created a world where there is a necessity to govern. A Christian can theoretically go into politics because it is a creational structure ordained by God. However, the Christian could fall into loving the world and the things of the world by altering the God intended direction of politics. Being a politician is not inherently sinful because politics is one of the structure God created the world with. However, sinful men can fall in love with the world and the things of the world and so by setting a direction for their politics which is contrary to God’s intent and law displease God in their politics. For example, Politicians need to heed the warning of John if they are headed in a anti-Christ direction with the Structure of politics by becoming a Stalin or a Mao. On the other hand Christian politicians properly loving a world structure of God’s creation would be Christlike by embracing politics like a Cromwell or a Kuyper. You see it is not that politics is inherently evil and so always to be avoided as a thing of the World. It is that politics as a World structure that God created can be taken in a Christ like direction or a anti-Christ like direction.

The point here is that in terms of structure (the vertical axis of creation) God created all things good. However men as fallen will set a direction (the horizontal axis depending upon mean’s heart) that is contrary to the creational structure and so will begin to love the world and the things in the world. Another way to think about structure and reality that might be helpful is to realize that structure is reality as God created and intended it to be, whereas direction is the disposition or lean (sinful or righteous) of men and women operating in those God created structures.

What we are seeing here is that there is nothing in the world that can not be received and handled with thankfulness as to its structure. There is nothing in creation that is inherently wicked as a structure There is a great deal that is wicked because of the direction that men move in, in terms of the structure.

Biblical structure as handled in a Biblical direction by a Christian will yield genuine art as opposed to postmodern ugliness, science as opposed to pseudo science, historians who begin with God and His revelation in writing history as opposed to economic determinacy as the foundation of their history writing, and social orders that have a harmony of interests vs. a conflict of interests. The structure is never the problem but rather the direction.

In this kind of understanding, even non-Christian can contribute to a positive direction of the cultural structure as they operate (inconsistently with their avowed presuppositions) in keeping with the majority direction as set by Christians in a culture. Non-Christians like Mozart, can create gloriously beautiful music. Their abilities move in a Christian direction because the structure around them is set because the culture itself is moving in a god-ward direction. A Mozart would still be loving the world and the things of the world because he loved the gift more than the giver but the music that the man made can be received as a good gift from God.

As we consider then what it means to love the world and the things of the world we must keep in mind the question of structure and direction. If we are moving in the proper direction we can handle dance (for example) as a structure from God to the glory of God. Dance won’t be reduced to some kind of sinful sexual grinding but will exhibit the beauty that reflects the glory of God and will be consistent with God’s character.

When we consider the issue of structure and direction we must also speak about Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2k). R2K gets this manner seriously wrong as the R2K boys insist that only biblical structure can exist as it relates to the Church as Institution. All other structures, regardless of the direction in which men handle them, will always be structures that are not Christian and can never be Christian. Institutions like family, law, arts, education, science, or politics will always be structures that are, at the very best, a-Christian. In R2K it is not possible for these structures to be God’s structures in the sense that they can be so directionally handled to the glory of God, and in keeping with His law that they can be considered part of God’s Kingdom. Per R2K they are and always will remain structurally inert. As such, even if these (per R2K) “common” institutional structures are handled by God-honoring Christians the structures themselves can never be Christian. The structures always remain (in R2K land) “common,” which is to say they remain neutral in terms of their Christian impact.

So, by embracing this notion of “structure” and “direction” we can at one and the same time deal a knock out blow to both the often seen otherworldiness of pietism and the refusal of R2K to honor Christ as King in all areas of life.

Summarizing then when we think of the admonition to not love the world or the things of the world we have to make distinctions in our mind. We need to remember that the idea of “world” in terms of structure and direction. As Christians we can affirm, as we have said, the World as structure in the sense that God created the world and everything in it and called it “very good.” This corporeal world that God created is a positive that Christians can and should delight in. After all,

This is my father’s world
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas
His hand the wonders wrought

The qualifier here though is that this is true only as the World as Structure is moving increasingly towards its “age to come,” new creation direction.

For you see, speaking of the World as structure it is always moving in one of two directions. It is either moving in terms of the first Adam or it is moving in terms of the Last Adam. When the World as structure has the direction of the 1^st Adam then we must we obey the words of John here.

1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life[c]—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

However, when the World as Structure is moving towards the Last Adam … towards it’s ever increasingly age to come consummation then we must embrace the World keeping in mind that God was in Christ reconciling the World unto Himself and remembering that the World itself is

itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Direction and Structure … distinctions that we must keep in mind to avoid the anti-Christ other-worldliness found in many forms of pietism, the anti-Christ intentional de-Christianization of the common realm as taught by R2K and the anti-Christ syncretism of Christianity and cultural Marxism as taught by the ubiquitous Marxist clergy.