Mary’s Magnificat and the Liberation Theology Narrative

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

Luke 1:52f

The position of Mary (or Zechariah, or Simeon, or Anna, etc.) is not important because they were low on the social ladder but because they were saints of God despite their poverty and oppression. Poverty as poverty doesn’t score you any points in the Kingdom of God if one doesn’t belong to Christ and the people of God. The antithesis of the Scripture is not between rich vs. poor but between the Seed of the Serpent vs. The seed of the woman. This is underscored also in Dr. Luke’s parabolic account of the rich man (Dives) and Lazarus. Lazarus is not in Hades because he was rich and Lazarus is not in Abraham’s bosom because he was poor. Dives is an occupant of Hades because he would not listen to Moses and the prophets regarding the Messiah while Dives did listen. God does not hate the rich because they are rich and He does not love the poor because they are poor.

The emphasis in Mary’s Song is that God remembers His people who are being oppressed by the wicked mighty. The whole thrust of Luke’s songs is to demonstrate that God has not forgotten His people despite the fact it might look that way and despite the fact that they are being oppressed by wealthy wickedness in high places (Herod, Augustus Caesar etc.). The fact that the Lord Christ is born among the lowly does not prove that lowliness as lowliness is a virtue. After all, Jesus was born of the line of great King David and God includes the High Born in the nativity story by including visitation from the Kings of the East. In Scripture, God esteems those in Covenant, rich or poor, and destroys those outside of covenant, rich or poor.

The point in Luke’s Songs is not that God favors poor wicked people over righteous rich people. The point is that God has remembered Israel and He has remembered Israel despite her captivity and the low status she has sunken into. This is Redemptive History and what is being accentuated is God remembering His promise to raise up a Messiah. The character of God is what is being put on display, not the status of those whom He is remembering. What is not being accentuated is that God is social class conscious. Believe me, if the nativity story were written today, given how much the Wealthy are hated by our current Cultural Marxist clergy, God would have His Messiah born among the rich and royal to add the factor of “isn’t God amazing that He brought His Messiah among such ignoble filthy rich people.” However, what we don’t see in the nativity narrative of the cultural Marxist clergy is the amazing God who keeps His promises no matter what. No, what we see are the amazing poor people who, “naturally enough” are lifted up. Given their noble poverty they deserve it after all.

Does God bring down all the “Mighty” from their thrones? Did God bring down Job? Abraham? David? Are Zaccheus or Joseph of Arimathea to be counted as inferior saints in the New and Better covenant because they were wealthy? Is the New and Better covenant characterized now by God hating all wealthy people and loving all poor people regardless of their faith or lack of faith in Christ? Has the lack of wealth now become the new standard of inherent righteousness? Is God now for the proletariat and against the Bourgeois? Did God inspire Das Kapital?

This preoccupation of the Church in the West with Marxist categories completely flummoxes me. God loves the righteous in Christ regardless of their socio-economic status and he hates the wicked outside of Christ regardless of their socio-economic status… even if they are as poor and wretched as Dicken’s Fagin.

Why is it that we seem to think that God loves the impoverished more than the wealthy simply on the basis of their impoverishment? God loves His people in Christ. It is a certainty that the wealthy saints have a charge to keep in terms of their brethren of low estate but those of low estate are not superior to those of wealth if they are both looking to Christ and resting in him, just as the wealthy are not superior to those of poverty in terms of status before God just because they are wealthy.

God hates the unrighteous wealthy wicked because they do tend to oppress the poor but he equally hates the unrighteous impoverished wicked because they do tend to envy the rich. It strikes me that we have made the envious unrighteous wicked poor some kind of gold standard to aspire to. This is not what Scripture teaches and it is all very strange.

This then is the verdict – the light has come into the world, but men have hated the light because their deeds were evil. If you walk in the light as he is in the light, then they will hate you too, regardless of your socio-economic status. Oppression is due to the gospel and very often the estimable poor are poor due to their righteousness eliciting persecution and not because the in Christ wealthy are keeping them down.

The Implications of Biblical Election When Thinking About Social Order Issues

“There are doctrines of modern liberalism, just as tenaciously and intolerantly upheld as any doctrines that find a place in the historic creeds. Such for example are the liberal doctrines of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. These doctrines are, as we shall see, contrary to the doctrines of the Christian religion. But doctrines they are all the same, and as such, they require intellectual defense. In seeming to object to all theology, the liberal preacher is often merely objecting to one system of theology in the interests of another.”

Dr. J. Gresham Machen 
Christianity and Liberalism

Our current Cultural Marxist egalitarianism problem in the Western Calvinist Churches is a reflection of the decline of genuinely Reformed soteriology. Biblical and Historical Calvinism has always advocated for limited damnation (particular redemption), where Christ is put forth as a sacrifice for only His people. God makes distinctions when it comes to salvation and men are not equal when it comes to their determined soteric status.

In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God’s chief passion is Himself. In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God does all He does for His own interest. He pursues His own interests and in the context of particular redemption, this means He willfully limits His affections to His people.

Reformed folk once understood that this had implications. As God’s love was particular so Reformed folk refused both the idea of “the Father of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.” If God restricts His love so that His love is particular so man’s love can be particular as well. In other words, God’s love and favor for His own is a communicable attribute. Like God, men can love and favor their own.

If it were the case that God did not restrict His love so that He loved all men indiscriminately then men by necessity would have to be pluralists in their affections and love all men indiscriminately and so egalitarianism would by necessity be a Christian requirement. Because of our inability to tease out the idea of God’s discriminating election we are seeing that the idea of the brotherhood of all men, when taken to its egalitarian conclusion, would be destructive of the idea of men providing uniquely for their own household (I Tim. 5:8), or positing a special love for their kin (cmp. Romans 9:3). In brief, the Arminian idea that God loves everybody equally works itself out in the destruction of family, clan, and nations and the embrace of universal love.

The connection here is that as Calvinists become weak on Limited Damnation they become strong on the Liberal Doctrines of the “Fatherhood of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.”

In this context, it is interesting that Abraham Kuyper noted that in the late 1800s the belief in Unconditional Election with respect to natural conditions like family, nation, and race was universal in every denomination, though Arminians disagreed with Election of the Soul.  Listen to the great Kuyper on this matter,

“ Before I close, I feel nevertheless that one question continues to press for an answer, which accordingly I shall not refuse to face, the question namely, at what I am aiming in the end: at the abandonment of the doctrine of election … Our generation turns a deaf ear to Election [God’s order], but grows madly enthusiastic over Selection [encompassing everything from evolution to democracy, liberalism, imagination, and license] … The problem concerns the fundamental question: Whence are the differences? Why is not all alike? Whence is it that one thing exists in one state, another in another? There is no life without differentiation without inequality. The perception of difference, the very source of our human consciousness, the causative principles of all that exists, and grows and develops, in short, the mainspring of all life and thought … Whence are those differences? Whence is the dissimilarity, the heterogeneity of existence, of genesis, and consciousness? To put it concretely, if you were a plant, would you rather be a rose than a mushroom; if insect, butterfly rather than spider; if bird, eagle rather than owl; if a higher vertebrate, a lion rather than a hyena; and again, being a man, richer than poorer, talented rather than dull-minded, of Aryan race rather than Hottentot or Kaffir? Between all these there is differentiation, wide differentiation. Everywhere then differences, differences between one thing and the other; and that too, such differences involve in almost every instance, preference … This is the one supreme question in the vegetable and animal kingdom, among men, in all social life and it is by means of the theory of Selection that our present age attempts to solve this problem of problems …

Now the blade of grass is not conscious of this, and the spider goes on entrapping the fly, the tiger killing the stag, and in those cases, the weaker being does not account to itself for its misery. But we men are clearly conscious of these differences, and by us therefore the question cannot be evaded, whether the theory of Selection be a solution calculated to reconcile the weaker, the less richly endowed creature, with its existence. It will be acknowledged that in itself this theory can but incite to a more furious struggle, with a lasciate ogni speranza, voi che’ntrate for the weaker being. Against the ordinance of faith that the weaker shall succumb to the stronger, according to the system of election, no struggle can avail …

For this is precisely the high significance of the doctrine of Election that, in this dogma, as long as three centuries ago, Calvinism dared to face this same all-dominating problem, solving it, however, not in the sense of a blind selection stirring in unconscious cells, but honoring the sovereign choice of Him Who created all things visible and invisible. The determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as girl or boy, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored, or even as Abel or Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all embracing predestination … all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in Providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature … all Christians hold election as we do, in honor, both in creation and in providence; and that Calvinism deviates from the other Christian confessions in this respect only, that, seeking unity and placing the glory God above all things, it dares to extend the mystery of Election to spiritual life, and to the hope for all life to come?”

(A.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, pp.117-119)

Now that many Arminians have been smitten with the egalitarian infection, they’re just being consistent with their soteriology as it works itself out in social order thinking. Arminians denied election in terms of grace and now they deny election in terms of nature. In order for the Calvinists to turn egalitarian, however, they have to be radically inconsistent with their soteriology. Most Calvinists and Calvinist churches still confess Election with respect to God’s differentiation among men and so the unequal states of their persons as it pertains to salvation before God, but many Reformed are no longer sure about unequal states of nature. That is to say many Calvinists can no longer affirm an Election (Predestination) which affirms that not only does God elect some and not others in regards to salvation, but also that God predestines some people and peoples to an unequal status as compared to His predestinating of other people and peoples. Does this contradiction between what we might call spiritual inequality as taught in the doctrine of election and natural inequality as implied in the doctrine of predestination (and so a necessary denial of the foundational tenets of modern egalitarianism) perhaps hint at the idea that many Reformed don’t understand the implications of their Calvinism?

Certainly, everyone agrees that men are all brothers in the sense that all men are created by God and that all men thus are the image of God. Likewise, everyone can agree that all men are brothers in the sense that all men are responsible to God’s law. This is gladly conceded. However, all men are not brothers in the sense of having God as their redemptive Father.  That fact that God makes distinctions among men has impact all the way down the line of our thinking.

The Politically Correct Narrative Challenged

One of the many guilt trips that are foisted upon Christianity is the terrible treatment of the American Indian. The modern narrative finds the White Christian coming upon the noble savage American Indian who was one with a pristine nature.

Now doubtless the treatment of the American Indian by those calling themselves Christian was not always consistent with Christianity.  However, to embrace a narrative that is absent of the whole truth is to embrace a lie.

Below is an excerpt from some of my reading from a couple of years ago. It helps give a larger context in order to understand.

“Given that human sacrificing and scalping were part of American Indian culture, but not mentioned in Government school textbooks, it is not surprising that the cannibalism that was also present in many tribes likewise is not mentioned. A little-known fact is that the Mohawk tribe derived its name from its habit of eating human flesh. Alpheus Hyatt Verill writes: ‘ The Mohawks were notorious eaters of human flesh, and were called Mohowauock or man-eaters by the Narragansets. William Warren, a native of the Chippewas, noted in his History of the Ojibways (1852) that his people occasionally ate human flesh. In 1853 John Palliser wrote that the Sioux and Minitares had their women cut pieces of human flesh from slain enemy warriors. These pieces were then broiled and eaten. Eskimos, especially during times of stress, also consumed human flesh. The Pawnees would roast their prisoners for food. The French explorer, La Sale, reported that the encountered an instance in which the slaves of Indians were forced to eat their own.

In the 1670’s Father Chrestien Le Clercq described some Iroquois cruelties that often including forcing prisoners to eat their own flesh. The Roman Emperors, Diocletian and Nero, the two savage persecutors of the early Christians, ‘would hold in horror the vengeance, the tortures, and the cruelty of the Indians of New France [Quebec], and above all the Iroquois, towards their prisoners. Le Clercq noted that the Iroquois cut off the prisoners’ fingers, burned them with firebrands, tore away their nails, and made ‘them eat their own flesh.’

The Menace of Multiculturalism
Alvin J. Schmidt — pg. 48

Next time someone wants to tell you about the evil culture of the white man you might want to recite the above. Apparently our forebears had a good reason for calling many of the Natives they happened upon, “savages.”

Nisbet and McAtee on the Professional Man of Knowledge

“Who, we are obliged to ask, looks with respect any longer to the professional man of knowledge: whether scientist or scholar?”

Robert Nisbet 
Twilight of Authority — pg. 110

Nisbet goes on to explain why this is so. This is so because the putative “wise men” for so many generations have disappointed and let us down. People have gotten wise to the con that the professional men of knowledge pulled for so long. For a couple generations, now these men have been all hat and no cattle.

In my environs, I see this most commonly among the clergy. The clergy was once accepted as the professional men of knowledge par excellent. This is rightfully no longer the case among and for those who are not simpletons or groupies.

The clergy has shown themselves too often to be vacuous hacks whose expertise is more akin to the kind of expertise one finds in those who have made a career of building McDonald and other fast food franchises.

Clergy as “Professional men of knowledge?” That is almost as incongruent and ridiculous as the idea of Psychologists as being “Healthcare providers for the mind,” or “Friends of the Court” as being “Friends of the family.”

And so, we must each, on our own, go to the well of knowledge, and labor to be our own “Professional men of knowledge,” because it is unlikely (though not impossible) that we are going to find Professional men of knowledge in this culture. We must become a culture of autodidacts, eschewing the popular outlets of knowledge such as University, and Pulpit.

Now, don’t mistake this commentary as the kind of anti-intellectualism found among what was known as the Fundamentalist movement that arose in response to the Liberalism of the early 20th century. If anything this is a plea for a return to a Biblically centered and grounded intellectualism. Everywhere we turn it seems as if Nisbet’s professional man of knowledge has been educated into imbecility. We are asked to believe the most outlandish contradictions and to embrace the most preposterous suppositions. In the Reformed Church alone we are presented with just ridiculous systems to believe in such as the New Perspective on Paul, Radical Two Kingdom “Theology,” “Reformed Catholicism,” “Federal Visionism,” and “Liberation ‘Theology,'” not to mention the usual Pietism that has infected the Reformed Church for so long.

The Professional man of knowledge, may well still exist, just as the Bornean orangutan or the Black-footed ferret exists but all and each is nigh unto extinction.  If you find a live professional man of knowledge still in his original habitat make sure you do all you can to protect him from predators. If you can’t find one, it is to the library you must go for only there does the professional man of knowledge still exist.

Marriage … It Either Has A Stable Meaning, or It Means Everything and Nothing

‘Once one says that a homosexual orientation is no more culpable or disordered than a heterosexual orientation, and once one observes that Scripture does not teach that God says that homosexual activity is always wrong, I think we’re left to conclude that justice requires that the church offer the great good of marriage both to heterosexual couples committed to a loving, covenantal relationship, and to homosexual couples so committed’.

Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff 
American Philosopher
All One Body Lecture

A pedophile should be held responsible for his conduct — but not for the underlying attraction.

Margo Kaplan
New York Times Article

How long until we hear that the orientation for pedophiles is no more culpable or disordered than a heterosexual orientation? Where in Scripture do we see that bedding children (even of the same sex) is wrong if done in the context of a “loving, covenantal relationship, and to Man-boy love so committed,” as stated by Dr. Wolterstoff in regards to sodomy?

After all, if God is the one who gives the underlying attraction and if God is the one who wired some adults brains differently who are we to deny what God has done? If God has made pedophilia (or Necrophilia, or Beastiality) as merely a creational variance of sexuality who are we to challenge God?

In 1986, a short 31 years ago,  SCOTUS Chief Justice Warren Burger considered by many to have been a liberal could write in the Bowers v. Hardwick decision,

“To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”

In the same Hardwick decision Burger also cited the “ancient roots” of prohibitions against homosexual sex by quoting William Blackstone’s description of homosexual sex as an “infamous crime against nature”, worse than rape, and “a crime not fit to be named.”

Somehow, in 30 years as a culture, we have gone from a liberal Supreme Court Justice inveighing against sodomy to a well-respected Churchmen and philosopher giving his imprimatur on the same.

Also,  we have to note the linguistic play that is found in describing marriage as something two people of the same biological sex can enter. Scripturally, as well as historically, marriage, by definition, is an institution that only can be occupied by males and females.  In the 1888 California court case, “Sharon vs. Sharon,” we find marriage defined,

“Marriage is the civil status of one man and one woman united in law for life, for the discharge to each other and to the community of the duties legally incumbent on those whose association is founded on the distinction of sex. “

In Scripture Jesus defines Marriage as being composed of males and females,

Matthew 19:4 – Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ 5and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

So, when people begin to talk about the “church offering the great good of marriage … to homosexual couples so committed.” we should recognize that linguistic deception has just been leveraged, even if unwittingly done. Because of the definition of marriage, we can no more offer the great good of marriage to sodomite couples then we can legitimately offer the great good of the US Presidency to someone born in Kenya. Neither of the Institutions, by definition, are allowed legal occupancy by those who don’t adhere to the definition.

And while we are at it, we might as well note the same is true for the word “sex.” Given definitional realities, it is not possible for sodomites or lesbians to engage in “sex,” whatever it is they may be doing to and with one another with their reproductive organs.

When we get sloppy with our language we begin to lose what the reality that the language is supposed to represent.