Sundry Observations On Genesis 11 … A Small Case For Biblical Nationalism

Genesis 11:1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone,and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused[a] the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

As we come to the passage we want to give some immediate context which will guide our understanding of the text,

The unfolding of the events in Genesis 9-11 is

1.) God makes covenant with Noah and so mankind

2.) God ordains that mankind will under Government, which compliment patriarchal rule. (Genesis 9:6).

3.) Noah’s descendants are then ordered to disperse (Be fruitful and multiply) and inhabit their own territory per ethnic/family divisions, (Gen. 10).

10:5 From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations.

10:20 These are the sons of Ham, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

10:31 These are the sons of Shem, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

Notice the connection between clans, lands, languages, and nations. Clearly, the idea is presented that languages are unique to the various unique Nations. This will be important later.

***When we look at Genesis 9 we get a sense of embryonic Nations that God always intended to flower. What I am saying is that the dividing of Shem, Ham, and Japheth in cursing and blessing implies, at the very least, the nations which would later arise in connection with God’s actions at Babel. Noah had to understand that by blessing Shem with early dominance, and then Japheth with latter dominance, and no blessing upon Ham except that his children would be servants, he was clearly segregating them after a fashion.

***Genesis 10 gives us the results of Genesis 11. Genesis 11 explains how Genesis 10 happened in detail. I think it happened this way in order to put Gen. 11 and Gen. 12 in sharp relief.

***There is no contradiction here; Moses merely put the effect before the cause. Genesis 10 gives an overview, and then Genesis 11 fills in the details.

***Also, the way that it is organized with the placing of the Tower of Babel incident just prior to the stories of Abram and his descendants, the biblical writer is suggesting, in the first place, that post-flood humanity is as wicked as pre-flood humanity. Rather than sending something as devastating as a flood to annihilate mankind, however, God now places His hope in a covenant with Abraham as a powerful solution to humanity’s sinfulness. This problem (Genesis 11) and solution (Genesis 12) are brought into immediate juxtaposition

4.) Instead of dispersing they decide, in disobedience to God to fill the earth, to congregate at Babel to build what we can legitimately call an amalgamated and conglomerated New World Order Empire with the purpose of making a name for themselves.

5.) God confuses the tongues with the purpose of compelling what He originally intended, to wit, the separation of the Nations as nations. The confusion of languages was salutary discipline for the disobedience of not filling the earth by nations.

1.) One lip and one tongue

This seems to suggest that both the substance of speech and the form of speech were the same among the inhabitants of Babel. If this is correct then what is being pointed at here is that the denizens of Babel not only had a shared language but they also had a shared pagan worldview, as seen in the unified resolve to be disobedient to God.

God had told the families and nations (Genesis 10) to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:2) but the nations (Genesis 10) decided, instead, to congeal and coagulate on the plain of Shinar with the humanistic purpose to make a name for themselves.

Genesis 11 cannot be read accurately apart from the prior establishment of the table of nations in Genesis 10 and the command to multiply and fill the earth in Genesis 9. The natural reading of this, would be that God intended the nations as nations (Gen. 10) to multiply and fill the earth (Gen. 9)  but instead the nations decided to build a uni-polar world of no nations or all nations in order to establish themselves as God walking on the earth.

Brief Definition of Nation

According to Dr. Bruce Waltke, in his “Old Testament Theology,” a Nation. according to Scripture, is defined as

1.) A common people (Genesis)
2.) Sharing a common history (Exodus)
3.) Having a common law (Deuteronomy)
4.) With a common land (Joshua)
5.) And a Kin King (David’s Kingship)

2.) “As they journeyed Eastward” vs. 2

Traveling to the east, in Scripture, is often identified with traveling away from God’s presence and into exile, into captivity, or away from God’s presence. Moving east is a bad idea because it’s moving away from God.

Adam and Eve are sent away “East of Eden.” (2:24)

Cain was exiled to the east after killing Abel

People travelled east to build the Tower of Babel.

When Abraham and Lot decided to go their separate ways, Lot went east and ended up in Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Israelites were exiled to Babylon, in the east.

So, if we are to follow the hints of Scripture the very fact that we have this movement Eastward is suggestive that they are fleeing the presence of God.

2.) Let us build for ourselves a city and a tower

The desire to build a Tower lends the religious feel to the passage. In the ancient world this tower (Ziggurat) would have been the center building of a Temple complex where worship of the gods was practiced. The Ziggurat, in the ancient world, were believed to have been the dwelling places of the gods and naturally enough only the priest class were permitted on the ziggurat to care for the gods.

***Clearly, what is going on, on the plain of Shinar, is the building of a religious community in defiance of God. As all false gods are but man said loudly. Babel was the exercise of man made and defined religion committed to the end of man worshiping himself.

While we are at it here we should note that all social orders are held together by some religion or religious expression. Religion is an inescapable concept for both individuals and social orders.  In point of fact all social orders or cultures are, are religion externalized or made visible. When one looks at a culture or social order one is, at the same time, looking at religion.

“The culture of a people [is] an incarnation of its religion,” and “no culture has appeared or developed — except together with a religion. . . .”  
T. S. Eliot
Notes towards the Definition of Culture, pp. 32, 13

Now that is clearer in some social orders than others. We see it clearly in Muslim countries where the Koran births sharia law that all have to follow.

But we need to understand that all culture … all social orders are organized around religion, theology, and faith commitment.

 

This means that there are no “ages of irreligion,” or “ages of skepticism.” Organized religions may recede but they recede in favor of unorganized or embryonic religions. Curiously, it is the “so called” skeptics who write the books denouncing religion who are most obviously full of the inescapable religious impulse. Their objection is not religion as it is other people’s religion that they don’t approve of — a disapproval only arrived at as informed by whatever religion they harbor.

So, here men are denying God’s authority and sovereignty but they haven’t escaped the authority and sovereignty of some god, they have merely transferred the quality of godness to their city-state Babel. If man denies such qualities of God such as predestination to the God of the Bible, predestination doesn’t go away, it merely transfers to the new god in town.

Example — School to work program // Social engineering intended to push people in a set direction.

If man denies such qualities of God as transcendence to the God of the Bible, transcendence doesn’t go away, it merely transfers to the new god in town.

If man denies the qualities of God such as His authority as found in God’s law  divine law doesn’t go away, but that authority is merely transferred to a new god’s authoritative law.

Men are forever seeking to build new cities and new towers in defiance of the God of the Bible. Men will go to all lengths to escape the presence of God and part of those lengths they will go to is build religious-social orders on the back of false religions and false gods.

3.) With the Babel project we are right back to the fall in the garden in Genesis 11. Just as the Serpent had said there, “Hath God really said,” so man here has determined that God had not really said to “multiply and fill the earth.” Just as the project in the garden was man’s attempt to en-god himself by holding to his putative fiat word over God’s revelational Word so here on the plain of Shinar man is seeking to en-god himself by seeking to give reality to his fiat word as opposed to submitting to God’s Word which creates and governs all real reality.

***4.)  let us make a name for ourselves — Let us make us a name.

It is interesting that man attempts to make a name for themselves apart from God in Genesis 11, while in Genesis 12 God tells Abram that God Himself will make Abram’s name great (12:2). Obviously, therefore, the desire for a great name is not sinful in itself. The sin is found in seeking a great name autonomously, apart from God and His character and His Law-Word.

***In the desire to make themselves a name we find the desire to define themselves and to establish their own authority.

RJR offers here,

“Instead of being defined by the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28), man now held that he would be his own creature and creation and would define himself. If man becomes a self-definer, he then, like a god, names or defines everything else. ”

***4a.) Lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth

In this new Babel religion which the social order reflected, there was a desire for uniformity. No scattering allowed. I submit to you that this fear of being scattered was theological. These men are seeking to unite as god to be god as is seen in their defiance of god in building babel. In order to do that, there had to be a unity of the godhead and that unity is found in fear of scattering.

Every  attempt to replace God with a one world order breeds a fear of scattering. There must be unity in the humanistic godhead. All people must be uniform under the god-state.

“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” –

Benito Mussolini

This is why Socrates drank the hemlock rather than being exiled.

This is what we find in our social order. There is a fear of scattering in our speech and so we have Political Correctness to monitor speech. There is a fear of scattering in our thinking and so we have the equivalent of political commissars in Social Justice warriors in order to monitor proper thinking. There must be no scattering in our allegiance and so we have propaganda piled on top of propaganda to make sure we are not thinking contrary to those who would make war against the God of the Bible.

5.) And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built

This is not a case where God didn’t know about the details of what was going on in the building project at Babel. Often in Genesis we find divine investigation as prior to divine judgment (Genesis 3:11-13, 4:9-10, 18:21). What we find here, as opposed to a denial of divine omniscience, is a anthropomorphic setting forth of God’s investigative activity in order to communicate that God’s judgments are altogether just. As God is a personal God, God Himself personally investigates the disobedience of man.

6.) Behold they are One people

At this point the question needs to be asked, “One people as opposed to what (?)” God’s answer clearly is, per Genesis 10, “One people as opposed to the Nations in which I had divided them into.” God had ordained a Biblical Nationalism and man’s response was to pursue a pagan Internationalism. We can say perhaps, that this was the attempt at the first New World Order. The Shinar Ziggurat was the ancient version of the United Nations Building. God has set forth Nations and man responded in rebellion by pursuing an amalgamation that leads to an integration downward into the void.

God clearly did not intend the people to be one. Nothing in Scripture suggests that God today has changed His mind so that He today intends the people to be one.

Let me say this as clearly as I can. God is opposed to all plans which would end in an amalgamated faith (Chrislam) and amalgamated culture (multiculturalism) or an amalgamated people. God as Creator ordained distinctions between peoples, faiths, and cultures and Christ’s work of Redemption does not destroy those Creaturely distinctions but instead redeems them.

Christians do not sing

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today… Aha-ah…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… You…

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world… You…

Instead Christians sing

3. We’ve a message to give to the nations,
that the Lord who reigneth above
hath sent us his Son to save us,
and show us that God is love,
and show us that God is love.

7.) “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

Here the question that needs be asked is who are the pronouns “their” and “they” referring to. The obvious answer is the inhabitants of Babel. However, we need to go on and ask, “Who are the inhabitants of Babel,” and with the answer to that question we are right back at Genesis 10 and the table of nations. So, the confusing of “their language” is the confusing of the language of the nations who had disobediently sought to create a uni-polar world in defiance of God.

Now, if we grant that it is a small step to think that the confusion of the languages was in keeping with the existence of the nations so that each nation, as descended from Noah, was confused with a language in keeping with its national identity.

The reason I point this out is that there exists a kind of school of thought that denies the familial-national dynamic in this passage insisting instead that the division here was not familial-national but only linguistic. The argument seemingly goes that the division at Babel was of such a nature that men from the different family-nations of Genesis 10 were all jumbled up together in the linguistic dispersion. We are therefore expected to believe that all those people who God divided by language were each and all nationally mixed in the linguistic division that God visited them with.

I am suggesting that the weight of the context of the passage is overwhelmingly against that kind of reading. Genesis 11 is not merely a linguistic division but it is a linguistic division in keeping with the already pre-existing familial-national distinctions. God wanted distinct people group Nations and the language confusion was pursuant to that end.

At Babel God makes the physical aspect of the divisions between the Nations explicit. One can easily envision that each Nation is given a distinct tongue at Babel.  This connection between peoples and tongues is underscored, when millennial later at Pentecost devout men from every nation under heaven all hear the Gospel in their own tongue. I submit in both cases (Babel and Pentecost) the differing tongues is emblematic for differing nations.

Those who would treat the passage as “linguistics alone” are also bedeviled by the reality that, per their theory, these jumbled up linguistic units comprised of men from all the varying nations (Gen. 10) in each linguistic sub-unit eventually, over the course of time, do become nationally distinct. If each and all of the linguistic units from Babel were amalgamated entities all sharing the same gene pool of the various nations in Genesis 10 how did they eventually end up being so ethnically distinct one from one another?

All of this then sheds light on Genesis 10:32

32 These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.

Babel was a nation spreading event and the way God spread the nations was to give them each a tongue so they could not create the uni-polar world that defied God and so they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him (Acts 17:27).

All of this is more than suggestive that God’s plan for the World is a Biblical Nationalism wherein there is a God-ordained unity and diversity honored. The diversity is found in the reality of nations and the unity is envisioned in each diverse and distinct nation submitting to God as their Creator, Christ as their Redeemer and the Holy Spirit as their Sanctifier.

There is no biblical postmillennialism that puts all the Nations into a blender as a result of the Nations being Redeemed. We do not lose the identities God has created us with all because God redeems us.

All this is supported by the fact we find the “Nations” in Revelation

Rev. 21:22 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.24 By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, 25 and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. …  22:5 The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations

**** 8.)  6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

Compare that with Genesis 3

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man,

In both cases there was an aspiration to be God. In both cases God prevents man from arising to the most high. In both cases God drives them from their respective sanctuaries. In both cases grace was mixed with judgment.

*****9.) So the Lord scattered them abroad

God scattering already is a theme in Genesis. God scatters Adam and Eve from the Temple-Garden.  God scatters Cain so that he is a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth. God scatters wicked humanity by drowning them in the flood. Here God scatters the inhabitants of Babel. They had gathered to find unity and instead were visited with alienation. They had gathered here to make a famous name for themselves and instead they made their names to be a byword of folly. They had gathered out of fear of being scattered and the result was their being scattered.

The last word in this judgment though is grace. In this expulsion and dispersal Nations are ratified with the purpose that in their isolation they may more readily turn to God (Acts 17:26-27).

11.) Back to the Ziggurat

Remember, as we said earlier, the Ziggurat was in essence a “Stairway to Heaven.” (Cue Led Zepplen song.) This is man’s attempt to rise up to God. Just as in the Garden man had fallen by their ambition to be God so now man has fallen and now they are trying to ascend unto the heavens to arise unto God.

God blocks man’s efforts to arise unto God via this Ziggurat but that doesn’t mean that God will not lift man up to God on His own terms.

Turn a few chapter to Gen. 28:10-17

Jacob has conned his Brother and Father and is on the run. One night he has a dream of a Ziggurat. Only we call it a ladder. In your Geneva Study Bibles that we give to the graduates you will find a note that says,

“Probably a vast stone ramp with steps. The phrase in Gen. 28 “top reached to the heaven”  recalls the description of the Tower of Babel. Jacob may have seen a Ziggurat. This is supported by the reality that Jacob calls what he has seen “the gate of heaven,” and “the house of God.” One seldom refers to an extension ladder as the “house of God.”

On  that Ziggurat Jacob sees angels going up and down.

So, here we’ve got the image of another ziggurat. However, this time it is in a positive context. This time what is communicated is that God intends to have concourse with man on His terms. Those terms include establishing Jacob (later Israel) as a nation and then blessing the nations through the descendant of Israel.

And who is Jacob’s most famous descendent?

The answer is Christ.

Jesus, who in John chapter 1, tells his new disciple Nathanael: “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” The image echoes Jacob’s dream.

Concourse with God is NOT by us building Ziggurats to God.
Concourse with God is NOT by esteeming Israel as some kind of Ziggurat.
Concourse with God is a Cross as the only Ziggurat to God.

The real stairway to heaven the Son of Man – Jesus himself, through the Cross.

Conclusion

Babel = Confusion
Ancient Akkadian meaning = Gate of god

Both remain true depending which worldview you drop the word Babel in. If the word resides in a Biblica Worldview then it does mean confusion and it means confusion because man is seeking to create a world apart from the only one who can give order. Confusion results when any people seeks to create order apart from God.

If the word resides in a humanistic worldview then Babel does mean “gate of God,” inasmuch as man believes that by deleting God they can be on the cusp of being god themselves.

At Babel man is at war with God.

The good news is that Christ has come so that man can sue for peace. Christ has turned away God’s warrior wrath against insolent Babel builders who find themselves weary of prosecuting war against God.

Christ is our Akkadian Babel. He is the true gate of God. Only through a known Christ can men find peace with God.

 

 

McAtee Contra Leithart On Nationalism

Recently, on the Web-blog of “First Things”

http://www.firstthings.com/tag/globalism

Dr. Peter Leithart, champion of the Federal Vision movement, wrote that Christians are forsworn against being either Nationalists or Internationalists.  Leithart wrote that Christians “must refuse the choice,” of embracing either nationalism or globalism, arguing instead that Christians must be “Kingdom First” people.  Leithart’s notion is that Christians cannot be either Nationalists nor Globalist because they are Christ Kingdomists and being Christ Kingdomists they must forswear both Nationalism and Globalism.

All in all this article was rather badly put on Dr. Leithart’s part. What I’d like to think that Dr. Leithart  was actually arguing is that Christians are forsworn against being unbiblical Nationalists. With this truth every right minded Christian agrees. Biblical Christianity has no more use for the anti-Christ Nationalism of the Alt. Right, for example, than it does for the anti-Christ Globalism of Russel Moore or much of the PCA and the modern misguided Reformed clergy corps.

However, at the end of the day all Biblical Christians are duty bound to embrace a Biblical Nationalism where the Lordship of Jesus Christ and His law are to be bowed to by the Kings of the earth, lest those Kings perish in their way. There is simply no way to get to Leithart’s proffered Biblical Globalism apart from a return to a notion of Christendom where many individuated Nations find a harmony of interests and so a sort of biblical Globalism because they are each, in their own capacity as individuated Nations, bowing to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Naturally, it can be easily agreed upon that as biblical Christians our first commitment is to Christ and His Kingdom but it is precisely because Christ and His Kingdom is our first commitment that biblical Christians are duty bound to champion concepts of Biblical Nationalism. Scripture clearly teaches that God

Acts 17:26 made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place

That God supports nationalism is seen in the reality that He has made every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. If God supported pagan globalism — the kind of globalism that desires to erase all National distinctions in favor of an amalgamated melting pot of an undifferentiated glop of peoples — then He would not have made every nation of mankind and so given people National identities. Clearly already we have an idea that God supports godly nationalism. As such we see that if it is true, per Dr. Leithart, that we must be Christians who seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness we must be at the same time be Christians who advocate biblical nationalism. Any hopes of a biblical globalism — a return to Christendom as it were — is pinned upon a return to biblical nationalism first.  In all this we are merely echoing far greater minds who went before us,

“Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.

Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme… [In this] was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.”

-Geerhardus Vos,
Biblical Theology

Dr. Leithart insists that the Church is ecumenical, a worldwide “Abrahamic empire.” And with this we agree. However the Church is ecumenical in the sense that it is Nation of Nations. It is not ecumenical in the sense that it is filled up with jumbled together individuals who have lost all their creational identity markers because they’ve become Christian.  It is ecumenical in the sense that Christians in their nations, from every nation comprise the catholic Church.

Leithart goes on to note that, “our deepest  brotherhood isn’t with other citizens of our nation but with those who are united with us by the Spirit in the Son.” It is true that we have a deeper brotherhood with those who are united with us by the Spirit in the Son, than we have with citizens of our own nation who are outside of Christ, but we wonder if Leithart misses the deepest of all brotherhood that exists when we are united by the Spirit in the Son with those we are already united with us by blood ties?

Thus while we agree with Leithart that commitment to Christ reigns above commitment to Christless family we still also agree with Charles Hodge when he noted, while commenting on Romans 9:3,

Paul had two classes of brethren; those who were with him the children of God in Christ; these he calls brethren in the Lord, Philip, i. 14, holy brethren, &c. The others were those who belonged to the family of Abraham. These he calls brethren after the flesh, that is, in virtue of natural descent from the same parent. Philemon he addresses as his brother, both in the flesh and in the Lord. The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It therefore approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, of peculiar love for the people of our own race and country.

Charles Hodge
Commentary Romans 9

Because of this Leithart is wrong when he writes, “we cannot be nationalists,” unless what he means is that we cannot be unbiblical nationalists and must instead be careful to be biblical nationalists.

Leithart’s problem also comes through when he writes on why the Church cannot be globalist. We agree that the Church cannot be New World Order globalist but the reason that is so is because the Church is a Nation of Nations and to eliminate nations by a babelistic amalgamation would be to eliminate the Church. I agree here with a earlier generation of Biblical Scholars,

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

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

Martin J. Wyngaarden, The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011),   pp. 101-102.

And those national distinctions exist right into the New Jerusalem where we see the nations existing as nations and being healed in their capacity as nations,

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.  (Rev. 22:2)

Nations, as Leithart rightly notes, retain their national identities – their languages, histories, and customs and so the Church is and remains, as I’ve noted earlier, a nation of nations. Christians must be nationalists because they serve a God who “possesses all the nations” (Psalm 82:8).

The disagreements I have with Dr. Leithart shouldn’t negate the agreements I have. I thought this paragraph by Dr. Leithart to be wonderfully put,

Put it positively: Our internationalist and nationalist instincts infuse and qualify one another. Christian “globalism” acknowledges the goodness of peoples, the beauty in the difference of human experience and culture. The church is polyphonic. We live within political communities and, as Augustine said, we are specially obligated to love our nearest-neighbors. Christian “globalism” will thus exhibit “nationalist” features. Yet Christian “nationalism” is always qualified by our more fundamental attachment to the trans-national church. Christian patriotism will appear suspiciously thin to a true-blue nationalist.

First, it needs to be said that the Church is more intra-national than it is trans-national. Second, I would take exception here to the idea that the unbiblical nationalist is the “true-blue nationalist.” In point of fact it is the Biblical Christian who is the true-blue nationalist because they realize that any nationalism apart from Christ is idolatry and as such will destroy true-blue nationalism.

A true-blue biblical nationalism would never lift the nation above Christ. A true-blue biblical nationalism would never absolutize the nation so that it bears a sacredness above Christ and His Church in other nations. We refuse impure unbiblical nationalism but we enthusiastically embrace, without embarrassment, a biblical nationalism. There is no other option.

Having said that we understand that there is no longer any nation that exists that has pledged, as a nation, its fealty to Christ. As such biblical nationalism goes a beggaring. However, in principle, biblical Christians must work for the day when once again, political leaders of particular nations acknowledge they are servants of a universal King and where fealty to the king is a fealty to one who saw himself as a vassal of Christ.  This is our postmillennial expectation.

We live in a time when all the pieces are moving towards a Babelistic New World Order. The media moguls with their Hollywood films, books, radio, and magazines are cramming down our throats the messages of a Globalism that offers an amalgamated, unisex world union as a promised utopia.  Likewise Corporations, and Governments are pushing us incessantly towards this nightmare dystopian New World Order vision.  Even the modern contemporary Church in the West, both “conservative” and liberal, having reinterpreted Christianity through a Cultural Marxist grid, is pushing this globalist agenda. Leithart’s warnings against nationalism in this climate is like warning against prudery while living in a bordello culture. Surely prudery can be a problem but it’s hardly a real danger in a bordello culture.

Biblical Christians live in a time where they must say “no” to New World Order globalism, as well as to anti-Christ Alt. Right Nationalism, as well as Leithartian scriblings that embraces open borders all the while insisting that we should beware of globalism. If the embrace of open borders is Leithart’s idea of an appropriate nationalism we have problems.

In the end I see what Dr. Leithart is advocating for as a “soft Globalism.” Leithart’s globalism is not the in your face variety found in the Halls of White House or as advocated by Angela Merkle. Instead it is a kinder and gentler Globalism where Nations lose their identity incrementally and where the idea of nations can still be spoken about in theory even if they are eclipsed in practice. Honestly, I see Dr. Leithart, on this monumentally important issue, being a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Beware this leaven.

 

 

 

Who Does the Shaping?

“This is what this election is about — who will have the power to shape our children for the next four to eight years of their lives.”

~Michelle Obama @ the DNC

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers
Thomas Hodgskin

1.) I’ll make the obvious but necessary observation that this is an example of the State thinking that it is the State’s role to shape our children. Parents are merely instruments of the State.

2.) Look folks, this culture has been cooked for decades. Anybody who has managed to get out of the statist Matrix and on to the good ship Nebuchadnezzar (Matrix reference) and so out of the State conditioned culture are already the exception. It simply is the case already that the State is shaping most Children. One way we know that is that the shaping process means adults remain intellectually children. Only a handful of people would have ever caught Michelle’s words as irregular.


McAtee Contra The American Vision Pyromaniac

Well, the perpetual “foot in mouth” McDurmon, over at American Vision, has done it yet again. McDurmon has once again flashed his Cultural Marxist credentials in order to prove his Social Warrior status by doubling down on his last article that Iron Ink disassembled. We easily dismissed his previous effort at White guilting and we are glad to dismiss this most recent effort by McDurmon to sell the Black Lives Matter narrative to Christians.

Here is the link to Dr. McDurr’s recent attempt to shore up his work as a neo-theo Cultural Marxist,

A consideration of blacks and disproportionate crime

Dr. McDurmon starts his article with a untrue quote that nobody has ever cited and then tries to use this untrue quote to taint all those who cite true statistics about black on black and black on white crime.

Joel McDurmon starting with a self admitted untrue quote wrote,

“Blacks are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. Blacks, who make up only 1 percent of the population, account for 34 percent of drug dealers, 47 percent of robberies, 47 percent of illegal gambling, 82 percent of gangs, and 98 percent of pimps. The most common expressions in the jargon of gangsters comes from black hip hop and rap. These characteristics alone refute the liberal blabber about “equality.”

Bret responds,

Now, Joel will eventually inform us in the article that this quote isn’t a true quote about blacks but instead the quote was from an Nazi war propaganda film about Jews. Joel replaced the word “black” for the word “Jew” and suggested it was a legitimate statistic that people were citing.

Of course the punch in this technique used by the esteemed Dr. McDurmon is that it is the hated Nazis who propagandized with this quote. The intent is to suggest that anyone who cites statistics (even if they are true) that are not flattering to particular people groups must themselves be Nazis.

There are several ways to handle this but I want to start with my own quote. This one is a true quote. It is from a man that has been lionized by the West. This quote is from Winston Churchill and it makes much the same observation regarding Jews that the Nazi propaganda film made but without the statistics.

Churchill wrote in 1937 in the London Herald Tribune

“Most, if not all, of them (International Jews) have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”

Now, here is the question for Joel. Since Winston Churchill made much the same point as the Nazi propaganda film does this mean that Winston Churchill was also a Nazi just as those of us are who today cite hate facts and hate stats?  Or, is it the case now that those today who cite the “hate” statistics are now themselves the heroes since a hero non Nazi like Churchill made much the same type of point once upon a time about particular problems with particular people groups?

Dear reader, do you see how jejune this technique of McDurmon’s is? Instead of dealing with the statistics at hand, what he does is he rolls out a quote that has nothing to do with anything, except for its ability to paint people who cite the very real statistics as automatic racist Nazis who obviously want to killsixmillionjewsandblacks.

McDurmon writes,

I think we’ve all heard something like this before. While you may note that a couple of the statistics are a bit askew, you’ll acknowledge the general spirit and, to be honest, a close proximity to the actual statements frequently repeated by conservatives, reactions to some claims of movements like #blacklivesmatter, and even the comments on which some people still base their own diatribes and criticisms of “black culture” or “black youth,” or the like.

Bret responds,

The actual statements frequently repeated by non Cultural Marxists are repeated because the actual statements are true, unlike the fake quote that McDurmon started us off with. For example, it is an actual matter of fact that,

FACT 1. Over 1,400 more black Americans murdered other blacks in two years than were lynched from 1882 to 1968.

According to FBI data, 4,906 black people murdered other blacks in 2010 and 2011. That is 1,460 more black Americans killed by other blacks in two years than were lynched from 1882 to 1968, according to the Tuskegee Institute.

FACT 2. Black People (mostly men) commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime.

In 2012, white males were 38 percent of the population and committed 4,582 murders. That same year, black males were just 6.6 percent of the population but committed a staggering 5,531 murders.

In other words: black people–at just a fifth of the size–committed almost 1,000 more murders than their white counterparts.

The figures above highlight a horrific truth that black racialists and white liberals routinely ignore: Lawbreaking black Americans, young black males particularly, put themselves in close proximity to (mostly white male) police officers at rates sometimes five to 10 times higher than whites. This is a recipe for disaster. Thusly….

FACT 3. Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks committed half of homicides in the United States for nearly 30 years.

DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, black people committed 52% of homicides.

In 2013, black criminals committed 38% of the murders. Whites accounted for just 31 percent.

There are five times fewer black people than white people in America and, yet, they consistently carry out a larger share of the crimes? Given this rate, it’s no wonder that there aren’t more assistances where cops kill black criminals.

FACT 4. Chicago’s death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined.

There have been almost as many deaths in one American city as there have been in the two major wars carried out by the U.S. military this century.

FACT 5. It would take cops 40 years to kill as many black men as have died at the hands of others black men in 2012 alone.

No amount of bleating innuendos and dissimulations by Joel can change this true narrative. No amount of guilt mongering can change this narrative. No amount of Social Justice Warrior-ing on Joel’s part can flip this narrative so that somehow white Christians and paleo-conservatives are the problem.  Joel McDurmon is championing a false template and he knows it.

Joel McDurmon writes,

To be truly candid, we would have to admit that there is still a very firm streak among so-called “paleo-conservatives” that affirms that such statistics form foundational truths about race relations (read: animosities) in American life. Witness the surprising percentage of southern Presbyterians who voted against their denomination’s recent resolution to apologize for its past racism and role in segregation.

Bret responds,

Once again McDurmon dissimulates when he suggests that anybody who takes these real statistics seriously automatically are in animosity to all minorities. It is a out and out subterfuge on his part. A statement he has absolutely no proof of. It is an assertion without any foundation.

Second, the statistics in question do indeed form foundational truths about race relations. Only a fool would deny this. Statistical averages mean something and to not take statistical averages seriously is both careless and foolhardy. For Pete’s sake, Joel’s fellow Social Justice Warrior and comrade in arms, Jesse Jackson himself said, a few years ago,

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Is Rev. McDurmon going to fault Rev. Jackson for taking these “hate” stats seriously? You can bet that Joel would fault Rev. Jackson if Rev. Jackson was white?

Finally, Joel sites the surprising 13% who voted against PCA resolution 43, thus demonstrating he is a true believer who will not be satisfied until 100% of the Church’s doctrine is reinterpreted through a Cultural Marxist grid.

Joel wrote,

Witness the recent story of a slight, about 90-lb black kindergarten teacher wrongfully manhandled by an Austin police officer when she didn’t lock-step as quickly as he liked during a traffic stop. (To its credit, the Austin PD acknowledges that the actions and comments on the part of two officers were wrong—a small victory.) During her handcuffed trip in the back of the police cruiser, the transporting police officer was filmed calmly informing her that people are, yes, afraid of black people, but for good reason: because of their “violent tendencies.” He explained,

“99 percent of the time, when you hear about stuff like that, it is the black community that is being violent.”

Now there’s a striking stat for you.

Bret responds

1.) Let me get this straight. Joel is using a false stat of some half baked cop in Austin in order to dismiss genuine statistics honestly arrived at? He can’t be serious.

2.) Here Joel is giving anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is notoriously bad as evidence of any general overall point. Personally, I’ve had several people tell me, with first hand knowledge, that Joel suffers from torpidity. Does this mean that I should conclude that it is a truism that Joel is torpid? In the same way, Joel, citing an anecdotal example does nothing to support his dismissal of irrefutable statistics that support, to a significant degree, the violent tendencies of some people groups in comparisons to other people groups.

Dr. McDurmon writes,

In fact, you, dear reader, may be among those who think, or even practice, the type of condemnation-by-statistics in the quotation at the start above, whether as a justification for rejecting black-power or black-equality movements, or rebutting the leftism inherent therein, because you always give conservatives the benefit of the doubt, or for whatever reason. The fact is, statistics create a collective umbrella which provides shelter for certain prejudices or sins committed, often routinely, against individuals of that class to whom such stats may or may not apply.

But if so, you have no idea of what spirit of death and destruction you may be partaking.

Bret responds,

Given the statistics that I provided earlier what more justification do we need in order to reject the unbiblical and Jacobin egalitarianism as pursued by Social Justice Warriors like McDurmon? The fact is, statistics this overwhelming mean something even though SJW’s like McDurmon doesn’t like what those statistics mean. Joel, can call these hard stats “hate stats” all he likes but it doesn’t change the facts and does nothing to support his false narrative hawking.

It is Joel McDurmon who is the one who is guilty of spreading the spirit of death and destruction. Police officer Jeff Maples gets at how it is that McDurmon is guilty of spreading the spirit of death and destruction in his Social Justice Warrior-ing when Maples wrote regarding other SJW Ministers currently plaguing the visible Church in the West,

“The fact that their very own hasty rhetoric and judgment contributes to the anger of those who would kill police is apparently lost on them.  You can’t perpetuate a false narrative of widespread police racism (or white racism as Joel is arguing) and then in the next breath be shocked that someone believed it and sought to take vengeance.  Of course, they’ll call the murder of police officers wrong, they just won’t say that the REASON was wrong.  They’ll cry out for justice, for action, for something to be done, and then stand shocked when some depraved, racist cop-hater decides to take justice into their own hands.  They’ll pour gallons of gasoline onto the pyre and then act appalled when someone finally strikes a match.”

Joel is a irresponsible pyromaniac playing with matches in a gasoline dump when he writes this tripe.

Finally, it is true that statistics don’t tell us about every single individual. We agree that anyone who would automatically dismiss all people based on statistics concerning their people group would be unwise. Just as it would be unwise to not heed these statistics at all as the earlier quote from Rev. Jesse Jackson suggests.

McDurmon writes,

Just one more fact for your consideration:

That quotation above—the one about the blacks being disproportionate in crime—yeah, I edited it a bit. I adapted it to fit modern discourse and more contemporary expressions.

Yeah. The original quotation is not recent, and it is not about blacks. Here’s the original:

The parasite nation of Judah is responsible for a large part of international crime. In 1932, the Jew, who make up only 1 percent of the world’s population, accounted for 34 percent of the world’s dope peddlers, and 47 percent of robberies; 47 percent of crooked games of chance, 82 percent of international crime organizations, and 98 percent of dealers in prostitution. The most common expressions in the jargon of international gangsters and criminals stem from Hebrew and Yiddish words. These physiognomies refute the liberal theory of the equality of all who bear a human countenance.

The quotation comes from the Nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew, which was produced in 1940 in an effort to demonize Jews in Nazi Germany and justify their opposition to the Jewish race….

Bret responds,

Is Joel suggesting here that the current statistics we have are the same kind of propaganda as was embedded in the film he cites? Is Joel saying that anyone who believes the statistics he clearly doesn’t like are just like the Nazis? Is this an example of the “Ad Hitlerum” logical fallacy? It sounds to me like Joel is saying here, “Agree with me or you’re just like a Nazi.”

Really, has this what rational argumentation has come to?

Joel should have just written that, “crime stats are for Nazis.” The End.

Joel writes,

Even if the stats were accurate, it would not justify either the spirit of fear and derision, or the castigation of any given individual as if those stats pertained to them—despite their appearance or race. Yet the use of crime statistics was a prime piece of evidence used to turn the hearts of an entire nation against a race. It’s a powerful force. And it has had undeniably powerful effects. Contradiction much Joel?

Bret responds,

1.)  Joel  finds himself free to upbraid Whites for their “spirit of fear” of being raped, robbed, beaten, or killed by Blacks as “vile racism” and “damnable heresy,” yet Social Justice Warriors like him affirm Blacks’ fear of cops as innocence and righteousness.  Whites and Blacks are judged by two very different standards. SJW’s like Joel maintains fear is sin for Whites, but grace for Blacks.1

2.) Does Joel have concrete examples of Christians castigating individual blacks because these statistics?

3.) The stats that JM references did not turn Germany against the Jews unless Joel is suggesting that Churchill was a liar.

Joel wrote,

If we don’t fight for our basic constitutional rights for everyone, all the time, we undermine them for ourselves. We destroy our own liberty and future.

If we don’t love the Samaritan, we don’t love our neighbor. It’s that simple. The moment we start down the other road, we start to imbibe this demonizing spirit of the Nazi. You need to assess whether you’ve started down that road or not, and if so, how far.

Bret responds,

1.) Joel has yet to establish as truth that, currently, constitutional rights are being held, in a discriminatory fashion, against any sole particular people uniquely. Joel has bought into a false worldview that pushes that narrative but Joel agreeing with the Cultural Marxist false narrative does not make it so.

2.) Joel is the one not loving the Samaritan. He is hating white people who he is implying are racist who dare disagree him, and that without a shred of proof or evidence. If you don’t agree with Joel’s Cultural Marxism he does not treat you like a good Samaritan.  Instead, like the Priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan pericope, Joel passes by those who have been beaten up falsely as racist and who are are laying at the side of the road dying from the libel and slander of Social Justice Warriors like Joel McDurmon.

Physician heal thyself.

1 = Conversation with Ehud Would

What Is Left of Biblical Christianity When Penal Substitutionary Atonement is Eliminated?

The Penal Substitutionary teaching of the Atonement (sometimes referred to as the Forensic theory of the Atonement) following Scripture, insists that Jesus Christ, consistent with the Covenant of Redemption, by His own choice, became obedient unto the sacrificial death of the Cross. In the doing of so, the Lord Christ satisfied, as a substitute, the just penal demands of God’s law against elect sinners with the consequence that the punishment that should have fallen on elect sinners is understood to have been fallen upon Christ. The whole idea is encapsulated in Peter’s phraseology that, “Christ died for sins once for all;  the just for the unjust.”

The centrality of this doctrine is so important that any denial of the Forensic theory of the Atonement leaves us with a Christianity that is completely redefined. Indeed, this is so much true that those who profess Christianity yet deny the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement profess a different Christianity than those who profess Christ while affirming the penal substitutionary atonement.  A different Christianity ensues when the Forensic doctrine of the atonement is deleted.

This also means that all who affirm a hypothetical universal atonement whereby Christ dies for all in theory but where the intent of the hypothetical universal atonement is limited by sovereign man confess a thoroughly different Christianity than those who submit to the Scriptures teaching of Penal substitutionary atonement where the intent of the atonement is limited by our Sovereign God.

Now, felicitous inconsistency sometimes keeps these different expressions from coming into the collision that they rightfully should be involved in but at the end of the day Christianity with a penal substitutionary atonement and Christianity without a penal substitutionary atonement are both Christianity the same way that Marxism without a Hegelian dialectic is the same as Marxism with a Hegelian dialectic.

As Dabney noted on this score,

“This issue is cardinal. As the Churches of all ages has understood the Scriptures, the whole plan of gospel redemption rests upon this substitution of Christ as its corner-stone. He who overthrows the corner-stone overthrows the building. The system which he rears without this foundation may be named Christianity by him, but it will be another building, his own handiwork, not that of God — another gospel.”

The cash value of this observation is that non Reformed churches (Holiness Churches, Lutheran Churches, Roman Catholic Churches, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Pentecostal Churches, and assorted Free Will Baptist Churches) teach a different Christianity than Reformed Churches. People would be do well to be aware of this

In the next few paragraphs I hope to explain why this is the case. I want to zero in on the impact upon other historic Christian theological doctrines that a denial of penal substitutionary atonement necessitates.

When we examine Theology proper we note that a denial of the Forensic doctrine of the atonement calls in to question God’s distributive justice. No substitutionary atonement means that God is not just and He is not just because the penalty that sin requires is never fully leveraged.  If Christ is not on the Cross bearing the just and exact penalty required due to the breaking of God’s law then God is not just in letting sin go unrequited as promised. God’s perfect holiness is also called into question. If sin is not visited with its just penalty then the character of God is seen as accommodating sin. Sin is not seen as sinful as it really is where sin is not visited with the full measure of penalty as taught in the penal substitutionary doctrine as it reflects Scripture.  All of this in turn calls in to question God’s immutability. If God was a perfect being in His justice, and holiness and then transmuted into a God who was not perfect in His justice and holiness as seen in not visiting sin with its full penal consequences then God’s un-changeableness is automatically called into question.

All of this then diminishes both our estimation of the majesty of God and the sinfulness of sin. The consequences of playing with the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement results in a diminished God and a lowered conception of sin as an infinite evil, which in turn results in exalted views of man and a correspondingly higher estimation of man’s goodness and his abilities.

As we look at the connection to soteriology we again see the hollowing out of Christianity by denying the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement.  When one denies that Christ paid the definite sin for a particular people, in the sense of Christ being the sin bearer, by way of imputation, for an atoned for people who were objectively justified by the finished work of Christ’s atonement one affirms a Messianic death that is uncertain and incomplete short of some necessary addition to complete that, at best, partial atonement. If it is denied that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to a particular people because of His penal satisfaction then original sin as imputed to sinners must also be denied. We know this because St. Paul teaches that one implies the other in Romans 5.

Also, as hinted at above, if the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement is denied than Justification must also likewise be denied. If Christ is not filling the laws demands for a particular people by His satisfactory death then Justification is a mirage and some other mechanism, besides Christ’s Forensic death, is the means by which we are redeemed.

Next, we would have to say that if Christ’s penal substitutionary atonement is not true then the idea of faith alone is transmuted. In historic Christianity faith operates in salvation as entirely receptive and so not contributory. If Christ’s death is not penalty bearing, satisfactory, and substitutionary then faith is required to do work that is other than receptive. Indeed, our faith itself, as a work, as opposed to Christ’s righteousness, likely becomes that which is imputed to us as the ground of our justification.

The theological doctrine of Adoption becomes perverted when the Forensic doctrine of the Atonement is denied. If it is not Christ’s satisfaction that is the ground for our Adoption then it needs be that it is our performance that becomes the ground for our Adoption into the family of God.

The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is made raw by a denial of Christ substitutionary death. If Christ has not paid the full and complete penalty for our sins then there is no guarantee to bank upon that our continued status as “in Christ” means anything more than our continued merit worthy performance.

If Christ’s death is not penal, but only remedial, as some suggest then the whole doctrine of eternal damnation must be rejected. This kind of thinking insists that God’s love cannot allow for punishment and, by definition, can only be remedial. Thus Christianity becomes the handmaiden for Universalism as well as a faith system that disallows even eternal perdition for Satan and his fallen minions.

We therefore see that a Christianity that denies the Penal substitutionary doctine of the Atonement yields a Christianity where God is not Holy, Just, or Immutable. It yields a Christianity where sin is  not awful, and God is not big. The denial of the Forensic death of Christ — the just for the unjust — moves us from a theocentric soteriology to an anthropocentric soteriology.  Without the truth of the penal substitutionary atonement we lose gracious justification, gracious adoption, and gracious perseverance of the saints. Without the truth of the forensic doctrine of the atonement we embrace Universalism.

Now, as was said at the outset, there are many who do not embrace the penal substitutionary atonement who because of felicitous contradiction end up orthodox in areas where they should not be. Still the truth is that if people were consistent with their denial of the Forensic atonement they would be practicing a Christianity that would be filled with a content different than the Christianity of the Bible.