A Book Review … Rodney Stark’s ‘Bearing False Witness; Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.’

I completed Rodney Stark’s ‘Bearing False Witness; Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.’

I can’t recommend this highly enough. Stark takes a battleax to modern embraced narratives and hacks them to shreds by  examining revisionist historical evidence and by citing the best and brightest scholars in each respective field.

This book necessitates that Protestants understand that our Church in history is the Roman Catholic church before it excommunicated itself upon excommunicating and casting out the Reformers. As Protestants we are in error when we don’t understand that the Church in History is our Church and it’s history thus should be defended. We should be careful defenders when we can be of the Church’s actions in history that goes behind the Reformation.

Stark does just that in this volume by demonstrating that the modern narratives surrounding the “guilt” of the Christian faith for this or that unconscionable activity as capture in some false narrative is pure bunkum.

Stark gives us evidence that the being based is Church history by exposing the falsity of modern narratives against Christianity in chapters dealing with,

1.) The Church being anti-Semitic.

Stark does admit that the Church did discriminate but he (rightly) insists that any social order in order to maintain its hegemony must discriminate. Stark teaches the idea that the Church was hunting down Bagels in order to kill them is just ridiculous.

2.) The Christian faith persecuted the tolerant Pagans after Constantine legalized Christianity.

Stark gives the historical account demonstrating that such a narrative is pure fairy tale. The Christian Crown was quite tolerant of pagans as long as pagans did not seek to overthrow Christianity. This chapter gives us a glimpse on the life and failure of Julian the Apostate.

3.) The idea that any thing called “the Dark Ages” ever existed. Stark explodes the myth that the time of the burgeoning Christian social order following the fall of Rome was backward and dull. Stark demonstrates that this was a time of great learning and advancement. Stark demonstrates that it was the Christ hater later writers that dubbed this time “The Dark Ages,” and then the later time periods of “The Enlightenment,” and “The Age of Reason.”

4.) Stark demonstrates that Christianity opposed slavery thus denying modernists to cast in the teeth the idea that Christian were always slavers. I do think that we need to distinguish here the sin of man stealing for slavery which requires the death penalty, and the fact that Scripture supports the idea of slavery as Biblically conducted. However, Stark’s chapter here demonstrates that the Christian faith never countenanced man stealing.

5.) Stark demonstrates that the Church has not historically supported naked Authoritarianism. He cites the experts who note that if and when the Church supported Authoritarians (such as Franco) it was because those who opposed the Authoritarians they were supporting had been trying to snuff out the Church. Here Stark cites the Church’s support of Franco against the Communist “Republicans.” Stark in this chapter also goes out of his way to explode the myth that Pope Pius XII was in any way ‘sreltiH Pope. In this chapter Stark recites the record of the oppression of the Church by the State during Revolutionary France, Spain, and Russia during their Revolutions.

6.) Stark takes on the idea that Capitalism didn’t exist before the Reformers. Stark seems to think modern Capitalism is a good idea. He can have that idea. Stark notes how interest and capitalism goes way back behind the Protestants to the 11th century. Stark insists that the early Monastic movement was quite capitalistic. Stark notes that usury was not uncommon prior to the Reformation even citing Aquinas in support of usury. (Stark does say Aquinas spoke out of both sides of his mouth on the issue. I was quite glad for this chapter because I’ve met many Roman Catholic who has insisted that usury started with the Reformation. Stark puts the lie to that idea.

7.) Stark demonstrates that the Crusades were a defensive maneuver on the part of the Church in order to defend itself from the offensive marauding and land stealing of the Muslims. Stark spends some time explaining the connection between Christian piety of the time and going on Crusade. Stark spends some time talking about the quality of the character of many of the Crusaders. He also spends time demonstrating that the Christians were not more bloodthirsty than the Muslims whom they were defending Christendom from. In brief, the Muslims were animals and the Crusaders in order to defend human life from these animals had to be brutal themselves in many instances. Stark clears the Crusaders and crusading from the false witness of the Christ haters who maintain the modern narrative.

8.) Stark demonstrates that modern science could not have existed without Christendom producing Christian scientists. Stark demonstrates that the whole idea that Christianity was and is against science is a creation of those who hate Christianity.

Stark cites medieval scientist scholar after medieval scientist scholar to demonstrate that these men were faithful and pious Christian men.

He cites;

“The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and the harmony imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”

Johannes Kepler

In his last will & testament, the great chemist, Robert Boyle (1627-1691) wrote to the members of the Royal Society of London, wishing them continued success in their ‘laudable attempts to discover the true Nature of the works of God.”

Rodney Stark
Bearing False Witness – p. 162

Stark reveals how only Christianity, with its concept of a personal and logical God alone could examine the cosmos. It was the presuppositions of the Christian faith that made modern science possible. In this vein, Stark notes regarding about false faiths and science;

“For Islam, the orthodox conception of Allah is hostile to the scientific quest. There is no suggestion in the Qur’an that Allah set his creation in motion and then let it run. Rather, it is assumed that he often intrudes the world and changes things as it pleases him. Thus, through the centuries, many of the most influential Muslim scholars have held that all efforts to formulate natural laws are blasphemy in that they would seem to deny Allah’s freedom to act. Thus did their images of God and the universe deflect scientific efforts in China, Ancient Greece, and Islam (as they held to pagan notions of God.”)

Rodney Stark
Bearing False Witness — p. 162-163

Stark also has a chapter demonstrating the absolute falsity of recently discovered “Gospels.” Stark does so in order to put the lie to the idea that these “new” Gospels have anything to add to the Christian faith.

Finally, Stark puts the lie to the now givens of the fantastical horrors behind the Inquisition. All that really needs to be said here is that when one compares the Inquisition (and burning of witches) to the real horrors of Secular governments like those of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, and Mao’s Revolution suddenly one begins to understand that in comparison the Inquisition was a day at the park.

Stark has done the Church a great favor by exposing these ridiculous narratives that continue to plague the Christian Church today. Genuine Biblical Christianity has nothing to apologize to secularists, atheists and Christ haters.

A Response to “As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark,”

In his article; “As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark,” Doug Wilson has a gif of the character played by Christopher Plummer in the “Sound of Music” where Plummer’s character rips in half a Nazi flag.

Score one for Captain Von Trapp.

However, the usage of this gif by Doug to adorn his article indicates that Doug really does think that he is standing on his lone bulwark fighting Nazis. In brief, everybody who doesn’t agree with Doug’s views of natural affections, Kin, race, or tribe is a Naziwhowantstokill6millionJews.

But it’s just not so and no matter how hard Doug tries to paint the Samuel Francis and Joseph Sobran battalions in his movement as Nazis it is clear by now that it is not going to work.

Doug’s history is as bad, in places, as his sociology. For example here;

“When Hitler double-crossed the Soviets, invading Russia,”

Historical context requires us to realize that it was a race between the Communists and the Nazis as to who was first going to double cross whom. Recent evidence has been put forth in books like “Icebreaker” that Hitler double-crossed the Communists before the Communists double-crossed him. It was a race to see who would double cross whom first. Read, in that light it hardly seems like double crossing.

Next, in the category of terrible history, Doug offers;

So while Churchill was certainly a great man, we still have to say that, great man or not, history still has a way of unfolding and/or unraveling on you.”
Doug Wilson
As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark

Blog Mablog

Anybody who suggests that Winston Church was a great man is clueless about WW II history. Was Churchill a great man as a result of his Gallipoli campaign? Was he a great man in conjunction with his work to make sure passenger liners carrying war ordinance were torpedoed by German U-Boats? Was he a great man because of the copious amounts of alcohol he consumed during critical times of decision during war? Was he a great man because of his acquiescence at Teheran and Yalta to the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe? Was he a great man because of the Quebec conference? Was he a great man because he was all in on the Morgenthau plan to murder countless German civilians after the war? Was he a great man because of his demand for the firebombing in German cities or even just the routine bombing of civilian centers? (Churchill was doing this to Germany long before Germany responded in kind against England.) Was Churchill great when he stood on the roof defying the German bombers to bomb him knowing all the time because of intelligence reports that the German Bombers were not going to come near his location? Was Churchill a great man for how he starved out India? Was he a great man for conspiring with FDR to get us into a war we had no business being involved? Was Winston Churchill great because his leadership in both World Wars resulted in the end of the British Empire and the Communist take over of half of Europe?

You see… Doug Wilson is not a wise man. He calls one of the greatest villains of the 20th century a great man. Someone should tell Doug that it is possible to think Hitler a villain while at the same time thinking that Churchill was a villain as well.

So, we see that not only is Doug’s sociology dreadful but his 20th century history is dreadful as well. As a result, he puts the wrong chaps in the dock.

Now, we should say here that Doug’s concern that there may be people who are crypto-Nazis among white Christians in America is understandable but having been around and knowing a good number of Kinists it is not the Kinists who want to “Heil” them some “Hitler.” How does Doug figure that the Filipino Kinists I know, or the Hispanic Kinists I know, or the Black Kinists I know, or the sub-continent Indian Kinists I know are going to look going around going all “sieg-heil all the time?” As I have said countless times it is just ridiculous to suggest that Kinism = Nazism. But that is what Doug does and what Doug continues to do in this most recent piece.

Doug seems to take some exception to Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s recent tweet stating;

“White evangelicals are the lone bulwark standing between us and the disaster of moral insanity.”

He admits that it is a true statement but that whiteness has nothing to do with the observation. He notes that it is equally true that;

“Zionist dispensationalists are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.” If we were to offer this up as a demographic observation, it makes the same kind of sense as does the white evangelical version because, in North America, white evangelicals really are overwhelmingly Zionist dispensationalists.

Perhaps, but it is also true that Zionist dispensationalists are overwhelming white people and so Stephen Wolfe’s statement remains true. As a whole we could say that “White evangelicals, many, but not all of whom are Zionist Dispies, are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.” However, the one constant between these two groups (White Evangelicals in America and Zionist Dispensationalists in America) is that they tend to be overwhelmingly white.  All Doug has proven here is that some of those white people who are part of the Bulwark against moral insanity in America are eschatologically insane when it comes to thinking that modern Khazars in the Middle East have anything to do with the return of Jesus. However, that point does not negate Stephen Wolfe’s point that white Evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.

Now, we would reassure Doug here that we are convinced that the reason that White Evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America is primarily because White Evangelicals are Christian. However, those White Christians remain White, as much as that seems to bug Doug.

Now, the question arises; “If White Evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America, where do we find the corps of moral insanity arising in the West against which White Evangelicals have to serve as the lone bulwark?”

However, in answering this question Doug would vigorously protest because a certain bone would get stuck sideways in his throat could he be dispassionate about the answer.

Doug next manages to call many of those who oppose his Churchillian vision of reality of being mangy dogs. In this context the Pope of Moscow writes,

“Now I have been maintaining for a long time that any conservative Christian minister who is not routinely accused of racism and misogyny is a minister who is not doing his job. I have also maintained that if the charges are in any way true, as determined by the scales of the Temple, he is also not doing his job. Got that? Faithful Christians are slandered as racists and misogynists, and secondly, the slander is in fact a slander.”

1.) Yes, but should faithful conservative Christiana (be they ministers or otherwise) be slandered by Doug as being dogs (mangy or otherwise) or as being “racists” or as being “Kinists” with the innuendo being that Kinism = racism? Et Tu Doug?

2.) I’m all for going by the scales of the Temple as long as Doug Wilson isn’t the one operating the scales while the weighing is going on. Got to watch that thumb on the scales routine.

3.) I know many Kinists and I have to tell you I am dancing with rage over the constant hinting by Doug that this group of men I know are racists, Anti-Semites, or misogynists. Now, I suppose there may be Kinist men I don’t know who are secretly racist (whatever that might mean), Anti-Semites, and/or misogynist but if those men exist they are buried pretty deep. I mean, after all, I have been called “The King of the Kinists.” You would think I would know my subjects. (I say, I say, I say, that’s a joke Son.)

To put a fine point on this matter. I don’t know all the men out in Pella, Iowa but I know some of them and I am hear to tell you those men are racists the way that Aunt Jemima syrup is a brand of Kaopectate. It is just ridiculous the way that Pella CREC church — modeling so well as it does the idea of a Christ centered community of faith — should have to put up with the slings, arrows, and denunciations coming from Moscow and the CREC Pope.

In this context Doug writes,

I want to fight for the truth in such a way as to make people accuse me of being a bigot. I also want to fight in such a way as to make it manifestly clear to all the sensible observers that I am not a bigot.

And here we find irony because I would 100% agree with that sentiment and yet Doug tries to cleanse himself of the bigot accusation by pointing his gnarly finger at ethno-nationalists/Kinists and in good Commie fashion denounces them as … “Bigots,” “Racists,” and “Anti-Semites.” I know… I have come under Doug’s examination myself in the past. So, to be clear here, I am accusing Doug of cleansing himself of the accusation of bigot by putting other men in the dock and falsely charging them with being a bigot. In such a way Doug can say to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal neo-con crowd, “See, I’m not a bigot like these filthy bigots.” That kind of behavior can tend to make people resent you.

Doug includes in his irrational diatribe,

“that doesn’t keep the situation in Pella from being a real pastoral mess.”

I know some of the men in that Pella Church. I know them as good men. I also know what it means to be a Pastor and I can guarantee you that when the Pope of the denomination one is attached to says things like the sentence above it makes your job as Pastor a giant 5 alarm migraine headache. I don’t know Rev. Michael Shover of Pella CREC. I have never talked to him. But, I can still sympathize with the headache that Doug has created for him in Doug’s authorial petulance.

Doug then talks about the stupid proposed Memorials that the CREC is fixing to adopt. Personally, I applaud those Memorials because they are going to serve to make the CREC irrelevant in the fight that is ahead for the survival of Christendom in America. Really, what Doug is trying to build now is a soft-multicultural ecclesiastical reality. The CREC, when it comes to multiculturalism, metaphorically speaking, objects to the rock group “Black Sabbath,” but they are perfectly fine with Ozzy Osbourne.

Doug finishes his article with this rhetorical flourish;

The edgy brethren, let us call them, think that they are the real threat to the regime. They believe that they are the lone bulwark. They have seen through all of the lies. They took one of the red pills, and then six of them, and then they emptied the bottle. They believe that years ago the Moscow gang started down the right road with our little putt-putt reformation, but they have come into the brutal truth. They, and they alone, have faced up to the stark realities.

Moscow, with its worship services, and psalms, and feasts, and wedding ceremonies, and conferences, and publishing, and Canon plussing, and small business start-ups, and education work, and so on and furthermore, is simply LARPing. They, by way of contrast, know the truth about the Jews and the start of the Second World War.

1.) Clearly, they have seen through the WW II lies that Doug has embraced. They are more likely to read David Irving or Patrick J. Buchanan while Doug is reading the court historians on the subject.

2.) Praise God there are people left who are emptying the red-pill bottle while swallowing rapidly. It is simply the case that seeing through all the lies and smog of this culture requires a hefty consumption of red-pills. Would that Doug tried swallowing a few more.

3.) Count me as one of those who believes that Moscow started something good but then got sidelined by bad theology (Federal Vision), bad history, bad sociology, and bad ecclesiology (Ecclesiocentrism). I am glad that a corrective to their corrective arrived on the scene. Doug is not the final word on Ecclesia semper reformanda est. Doug refuses himself to face historical stark realities. Shrug … God will raise up someone else who isn’t fearful of these stark realities.

4.) Doug finishes with what, in my opinion, looks to be insecurity. He cites the great might of his Empire and implies… “how dare you suggest that I could possibly be wrong?”

We tip the cap to all that Doug has accomplished and praise God for that work. However, Doug is not the end of the road. There is more road ahead and if Doug does not want to travel it, some of the men of Pella and others like them will travel further down the road.

 

 

Doug Wilson & The Book He Finds So Desperately Objectionable

“There is a difference between talking to someone who wrote an objectionable book and offering a toast at the book release party for said objectionable book.“

Doug Wilson
As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark
Blog & Mablog

1.) The objectionable book that Wilson is referencing is Achord & Dow’s Anthology; “Who is my Neighbor.”

2.) Doug brings it up because a few men in the CREC church in Pella, Iowa had the unmitigated gall to actually sit around on a porch and have a conversation with Achord & Dow. Does Blake Callens know what they were talking about? Does Doug know what they were talking about? Maybe the men of the Church were indeed agreeing with them on everything in their book. On the other hand maybe the men of the Church were telling Achord and Dow why they should repent. The photo doesn’t tell us, but it seems that Doug is doing some mighty fine jumping to some mighty big conclusions.

3.) Technically, Achord and Dow didn’t author a book. Technically they were the editors who gathered a ton of quotes from men throughout history proving that the Church and Christendom has embraced some kind of kinsim/ethno-nationalism/natural affections from the beginning of recorded history.

4.) #3 means that Doug, if he was the master wit that he portrays himself at being would spend some time — any amount of time — trying to discredit all those quotes in Achord & Dow’s Anthology. Doug seemingly hates the “objectionable book” but he has given us ZERO reasons as to why “Who is My Neighbor” is objectionable. Me thinketh the lady doth protest too much.

5.) So, Doug Wilson needs to put up or shut up about this “objectionable book.” Either give us your objections Doug or “shut the blarney up.” Go ahead Doug… tell us why “Who Is My Neighbor” is objectionable. Discredit all those quotes. Tear it to shreds. Demonstrate how Achord and Dow are being disingenuous by finding all those quotes and then placing them all in one place.

6.) In my opinion Doug finds this book so objectionable because it overturns his Alienist worldview. It does not allow him to keep spewing all his verklempt at all the critics who pound him on the issue of race and Talmudists. The book sinks Wilsonism. Wouldn’t you hate a book you couldn’t overturn and was instead caught like a chicken bone going down your gullet sideways?

Doug is a fighting moderate indeed, but what kind of bulwark he is, looks to be a Boomer-con bulwark fighting for the post WW II consensus. Buckley sought to be this kind of bulwark against the likes of Sam Francis and Joseph Sobran. Didn’t work for Buckley and Doug’s attempt to read Achord & Dow’s objectionable book out of being accepted as reality isn’t going to work for Doug either.

More Firepower Against Natural Law Theory

Deuteronomy 30:11 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.

“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”      Isaiah 8:20

Here we have it explicitly said that God’s law is to be the standard by which all other standards are measured. We are responsible to God’s law. I should not have to say it, but the point here is not that we are saved by the law, or that we use God’s law as a ladder to climb into God’s presence or to curry His uncertain acceptance. The point here is that as Christians, who have been saved from the curse of the law’s demand that we could never meet and has been met for us in Christ, we should govern our lives consistent with God’s revealed law Word as found in Scripture or as arrived upon by good and necessary consequence as reasoning from God’s law.

This is the clear teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism;

Question 91: But what are good works?

Answer: Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8

Scripture and the catechism clearly point to the reality that we are to be governed in our daily lives by God’s law as revealed in Scripture. In the 21st century should Christians desire to know what it means to have the conversations of our life be pleasing to God then we need to have those lifestyles reflect walking in harmony with God’s law. This explains why the Psalmist delighted in God’s law both day and night.

However, another theory holds increasingly holds sway among platformed Christians, both of the R2K ilk, and of the Christian Nationalist ilk. That other theory is called Natural Law and it has a long and storied history. There is no use in denying that many including, Reformed theologians, throughout Christendom have appealed to Natural Law as a mechanism by which Christians should govern their life. This alternative theory to what we find commanded in Scripture finds Christians insisting that we are not to be governed by God’s explicit written law but rather we are to be governed in our living by a reading of Natural Law, which is a law written in God’s structured reality and stamped upon all men’s hearts.

Recently a book came out from a conservative Reformed Public theologian that argued for a return to this kind of understanding of Natural law. I quote here a few of his statements in the book to demonstrate how the Church is rushing away from God’s law to this concept of Natural law;

So civil law is not mere philosophical reflection, nor should it be the rubberstamped Mosaic civil code.11

Thus, all righteous laws are only potentially just. … This is why the magistrate cannot rubberstamp a ready-made divine civil code.12

A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws, and they should not seek some universal “blueprint” they can rubber-stamp into law.13

The Mosaic law is not above natural law; it is a perfect application of it.14

Mosaic law … is not thereby a suitable body of law for all nations.15

Mosaic law … is a perfect example of law. But it is not a universal body of law.16

We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws.17

So, this Natural Law is to be the governing structure for fallen and redeemed men alike. As such what is posited is that fallen man can and will read Natural Law the same as men who are Redeemed and are now increasing, per their individual sanctification, epistemologically self-aware.

As implausible as it seems, Natural Law proponents argue, that fallen man, with his fallen mind, must read a fallen nature and then by strength of his fallen will act in an unfallen way. And remember, this is done quite independent of the Spirit of God. This completely obliterates the truth of Romans 8:7f

7 Because the [a]carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

On the theory of Natural Law Christians and Non-Christians alike are to make a individual hunt for God’s law, by the usage of right reason interpreting this abstract Natural Law. Natural Law theory insists that men fallen and redeemed, can together use reason to arrive at truth that can then be crafted into public policy as social order guidelines for all people. Natural Law as mediated by the usage of right reason by all men — fallen and redeemed — is the foundation for all legal infrastructure in all jurisdictions (save the Church, which still uses the law found in Special Revelation) for the structuring of our living. In this theory God’s Special Revelation is not necessary for social order structure. Natural Law can do all.

But what does this appeal to do Scripture like II Tim. 3

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Nowhere in Scripture do we find that all Natural law is God breathed being useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training for righteousness.

Of course by now you realize that this is ultimately about epistemology. This is about how we know what we know. All of this answers the question of “How Then Shall We Live.” Shall we live by the use of right reason as it is dependent upon Natural Law or shall we live by reason that can only be right when regenerated men submit to God’s revealed law?

The theory of the Natural Law aficionados is that while God’s revealed special revelation law  was obviously the standard for the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, something happened with the coming of Christ, followed by His finished work, whereby that law became obsolete. That law, so the Natural Law experts insist was ended when Israel as a people ended, with the consequence that mankind had to repair to the Natural law model.

Now, we should interject here that God’s word clearly teaches that all the law that prefigured, announced, and shouted Christ in the OT (called “ceremonial Law”) was fulfilled in Christi and since that was fulfilled that expression of the Law was no longer requisite and so we as Christians, for example, no longer sacrifice animals. However, there is never a word in Scripture that what is now called the civil (or judicial) law  given in the Old Testament became obsolete in the new and better covenant. Indeed, our Master Himself said;

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”

So today, those who raise mint, anise, and cummin should be tithing on the increase of their mint, anise, and cummin.

The Westminster Confession faith affirms this when it offers in Article XIX,

To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

Anti-Natural lawists today insist that the phrase “general equity thereof” proves indisputably that the heart and stuffing of God’s civil (judicial) law remains applicable today.

That St. Paul thought the same as seen by his appeal to the law;

8Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses: “ Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf?

Paul, as inspired by the Spirit of the living God is doing the very thing that the Westminster divines wrote in Article XIX. St. Paul is taking the general equity of that passage and applying it today, communicating thus that God’s Special Revelation and not Natural Law remains the standard by which all standards are measured.

The Westminster Confession itself reaches for OT civil law and not Natural law in order to teach that;

he WCF 24-4 teaches that marriage cannot lawfully occur if it is within degrees of consanguinity and affinity forbidden by the Scriptures.

Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden by the Word.481 Nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together as man and wife.48

This is implicit theonomy for the obvious reason that the civil law is being appealed to as a basis for an ongoing principle of general equity. On this score the WCF is theonomic.

So, for the Natural Law fanboys Israel was an exception in terms of being ruled by God’s explicit special revelation in the common realm. With the dissolution of Israel, the idea that God’s people should be ruled explicitly by God’s explicit revelation and the general equity thereof is extinguished and the new governing matrix for God’s people is the use of right reason based on Natural law. The special Revelation of the OT has passed and the new has come with Natural Law.

David Van Drunen of R2K invention notes of Natural Law,

“The moral order inscribed in the world and especially in human nature, an order that is known to all people through their natural faculties (especially reason and/or conscience) even apart from supernatural divine revelation that binds morally the whole human race. “

[2 I believe the last clause, “that binds morally…” is intended to describe the moral order = natural law, rather than its nearest antecedent (“supernatural divine revelation”). I think that to make this clear Van Drunen should have put a comma after “revelation.” Or, better, he should have put a period after “revelation,” then written “This moral order binds…”]

Dr. Stephen Wolfe in his book Christian Nationalism writes similarly on pages 244 & 245;

“Societies, need, in other words, an ordering of reason — reason expressed as civil law.”

And again,

“Law is an ordering of reason by an appropriate lawgiver for the good of the community.”

“The Natural Law is an ordering of reason, consisting of moral principles that are innate in rational creatures, given by God, who is the author of nature.”

For Van Drunen and Wolfe (each Natural Law fanboys who are not happy with one another) God only authors Special Revelation law in its specificity for OT Israel but not for contemporary man. Instead God authors nature which in turn authors a law that fallen and redeemed man together, starting autonomously from themselves, quite without presupposing God, reasons to by an act of the human will (fallen or unfallen).

The autonomy of man in all this is seen in Dr. Wolfe saying,

“A Christian nationalist must have the strength of will to affirm what is true, even if it doesn’t feel good to him. This is the main reason why I emphasized the will throughout this book…. we have to retrain the mind by the strength of will.”

So, the appeal here for the Christian Nationalist is find the strength of will to affirm the true, but the true this strength of will is to be affirming is a true that is drawn not from Scripture but from Wolfe’s “Natural Law.”

This is a “Natural Law,” that is contained in zero volumes in any library in the world. This is a “Natural Law,” that is kaleidoscopic, having as many variants as there are schools of philosophical thought. I promise you that the Natural Law of the Romanticist is not going to agree with the Natural Law of the Nihilist and they are not going to agree, in  turn, with the Natural Law of the Deist who is not going to agree with the Natural Law of the Marquis de Sade.

We also see the reality of the instability of Natural Law by observing that there are now two contesting interpretations of Natural Law that are adamantly opposed to one another in definition and meaning in the Reformed World. One can choose Dr. David Van Drunen’s R2K Natural law or one can choose Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s Natural Law. These two Natural Laws are at each other’s throats and come to exactly opposite conclusions on a host of matters. Both contestants will tell you that their Natural Law is THE Natural Law. One wonders if there is a Natural Law that can tell us which competing Natural Law we are to choose vis-a-vis Wolfe and Van Drunen.

And of course this is only in the Reformed World. How many other Natural Law paradigms are out there? One can only guess that there as many Natural Laws as there stars in the sky or sand on the seashore.

It is a utterly failed model, and yet because we are in need of a Transcendent authoritative word to serve as the North Star of our Epistemology we turn to this completely contrived idea of Natural Law instead of turning to God’s Law and Testimony.

Why not be like the Psalmist who when wanting to arrive at Truth could speak about the blessed man finding,

 his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.

And again,

The law of the Lord is perfect, [e]converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
8 The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;

And of course that Magnum Opus of the Law found in Psalm 119.

Isaiah in 8:20 was merely echoing the resolve of all God’s people when he wrote,

“To the law and to the testimony: if they (the Mediums vs. 19) speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”      Isaiah 8:20

I do not think it is going to far to say that those who make Natural Law walk on all fours as a foundation for epistemological theory are indeed consulting a kind of man created medium.

Listen to the warnings against Natural Law, not only as what we have seen from Scripture but also many church Fathers;

Canons of Dort III/IV.4:

“The Inadequacy of the Light of Nature
To be sure, there is left in man after the fall, some light of nature, whereby he retains some notions about God,-1- about natural things, and about the difference between what is honorable and shameful, and shows some regard for virtue and outward order. But so far is he from arriving at the saving knowledge of God and true conversion through this light of nature that he does not even use it properly in natural and civil matters. Rather, whatever this light may be, man wholly pollutes it in various ways and suppresses it by his wickedness.-2- In doing so, he renders himself without excuse before God.
-1- Rom 1:19-20; 2:14-15.

-2- Rom 1:18, 20.”

“Where the leaders have no vision, the people perish. And natural law theory with its rationalism was the Trojan horse that brought the legions of Satan further and further into God’s world. The leaders–Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, and in our nation our Presidents, Senators, churchmen–all have failed to see the command of their Creator for their lives and offices, and we as Christians, the salt of the earth, have failed to see and lead for the blessing of ourselves and our posterity.”

Rex Downie
Natural Law and God’s Law: An Antithesis

 

“This synthetic; (Aristotelianism w/ Christianity) standpoint found its most powerful philosophical and theological expression in the system of Thomas Aquinas. The; two foundational tenets of this system were the positing of the; autonomy of natural reason in the entire sphere of natural knowledge, and the thesis that nature is the understructure of supernatural grace.”71 It is in the acceptance of the idea of the autonomy of reason, even though it was supposed to be restricted to the sphere of “natural knowledge,” that Romanism (and all systems that embrace Natural Law — BLM) makes its alliance with the religious dualism of the Greek form-matter scheme. In consequence, the “Biblical creation-motive was deprived of its original integral and radical character.”72 “Creation is proclaimed to be a natural truth, which can be seen and proven by theoretical thought independent of all divine revelation.”

CVT

Christianity & Barthianism

 

“If you want my thesis of natural law theory in one graphic sentence, I will provide it: the most consistent defender of natural law theory was the Marquis de Sade. De Sade’s incomparable perversity was self-consciously based on his observation of the workings of nature. … He also opposed civil laws against prostitution, adultery, incest, rape, and sodomy. After all, these are all natural urges and practices; they are found in nature. Marriage and monogamy are not normal in nature.”

Gary North

Westminster’s Confession

 

“Law is rooted in God’s essence. Apostasy means forsaking justice. For atheists, there are only natural inclinations, no natural law. Conscience and moral inclinations are merely weak reverberations of God’s Law, and wherever the latter is done away with, duty is replaced by pride and selfishness.”

– Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer

Ursinus in his Commentary on Heidelberg (p. 506) writes,

“Furthermore, although natural demonstrations teach nothing concerning God that is false, yet men, without the knowledge of God’s word, obtain nothing from them except false notions and conceptions of God; both because these demonstrations do not contain as much as is delivered in his word, and also because even those things which may be understood naturally, men, nevertheless, on account of innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely, and so corrupt it in various ways.”

Zacharias Ursinus

Commentary on Heidelberg Catechism

Conclusion;

The message of the Gospel is that man is a sinner in need of His sins being forgiven by the work of Christ on the cross. One of the main sins of that fallen man is guilty of is the sin of operating autonomously …. operating as if he and not God is the operator of reality.

There is the garden man operated autonomously according to his fallen reason. His fallen reason told him that the fruit was pleasing to the eye. His fallen reason believed that if he only ate he would be as God knowing good and evil. And then, on the basis of right reason and natural law, per his beginning presupposition that God was in error in what He said, Man ate .. and fell.

It was a mistake to ever take up right reason and natural law as an epistemology…. as an answer to the question how do we know what we know. The answer to the question of how do we know what we know is by affirming our reliance on God’s special revelation.

Only by having a right understanding of special revelation can we read natural revelation correctly.

—————————

 

__________

Below is an excerpt taken by something Martin Selbrede wrote for the Chalcedon Inst.

In Dr. Wolfe’s view, “revealed theology serves to complete politics, but it is not the foundation of politics.”8 Theology provides capstones, not foundations (contra Luke 6:47-49) because man’s “political life is fundamentally natural.”9 Christianity provides a cosmetic finish to perfect a nation.10 The concept of the same hands laying the foundation also installing the capstone (Zech. 4:9) is alien to Dr. Wolfe.

Man, as a moral being, is bound only by the natural law (or God’s moral law) as the rule for his actions. But the natural law in itself doesn’t prescribe specific action. … Being mediators of God’s civil rule, civil rulers issue civil commands – expressed and promulgated as civil law – that are ordinances of God and bind the conscience, though only when they are just … So civil law is not mere philosophical reflection, nor should it be the rubberstamped Mosaic civil code.11

Thus, all righteous laws are only potentially just. … This is why the magistrate cannot rubberstamp a ready-made divine civil code.12

A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws, and they should not seek some universal “blueprint” they can rubber-stamp into law.13

The Mosaic law is not above natural law; it is a perfect application of it.14

Mosaic law … is not thereby a suitable body of law for all nations.15

Mosaic law … is a perfect example of law. But it is not a universal body of law.16

We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws.17

Natural law can hide inside a chrysalis to later emerge as a butterfly.  For Dr. Wolfe, allegiance to the written Law of God consigns a society to caterpillar status. Whereas Mosaic law may have been a perfect reduction of natural law for pre-Christian Israel, it isn’t for us. We must draft the blueprints for a butterfly to emerge from the jelly.

For Dr. Wolfe, “the prince mediates God’s divine civil rule … he makes public judgments in application of God’s natural law, effectively creating law (though derivative of natural law).”18 The prince fills the void left by God’s written law, for “the prince is the instrument by which natural law becomes human law.”19 There is an implied vacancy for the position of lawgiver, and secular lawgivers are seen as divinely inspired bakers cooking up new butterflies from the jelly. “Girolamo Zanchi states that ‘the laws of Solon, Lycurgus, Romulus, and Numa’ were ‘divinely inspired.’ If this is true of pagans, why exclude Christian civil leaders?”20 As John Owen noted, “the scholastics (in whose eyes Thomas Aquinas is second only to God), have conscientious scruples about disagreeing with Aristotle.”21

A “vague knowledge”22 is sufficient to start the legislative ball rolling. This veers away from Mosaic law because “the precursor to any Christian nationalism is a people intentionally working their natural good according to man’s nature.”23 The path to blessings revealed in Psalm 1, Psalm 19, and Psalm 119 is supplanted by Dr. Wolfe’s preferred route.

Dr. Wolfe says that “the magistrate is the living law”24 since otherwise “civil laws have no force.”25 The flying scroll of Zech. 5:1-4 certainly puts the lie to such claims: God’s law enters into the homes of transgressors and destroys them.

Wilson diverges from Dr. Wolfe, referring to “the end result that we are aiming for — obedience to every word of Christ — including the things He said about the words of Moses.”26 In fact, Wilson seems troubled by any alleged inapplicability of Scripture: “What good is an absolutely infallible book that cannot be applied?”27 We would argue that its applicability has been laid out in Dr. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law.

In contrast, the Puritans “never wavered in their belief in the supreme authority and necessity of revelation, and they confidently assumed that the dictates of ‘right reason’ received their full enunciation in the revelation of God’s will contained in Scripture.”28 The mechanisms Dr. Wolfe invokes are denied to him by Jacques Ellul, who “points out that ‘law by itself, as an autonomous entity, does not exist in the Bible,’ … that the Stoic and Thomist and Rationalist arguments are insufficient to produce a Law at all.”29 There’s simply no jelly available for making butterflies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Zielinski / McAtee Chronicles …. Exchange II

Bret,

You will always, within any given group, find extremists who want to eradicate others who aren’t like them — Christianity has those too — but I very much doubt most Jews, at least today, care about Christianity except to the extent of wanting it to leave them alone. But suppose I’m wrong about that. What then?

In that case Judaism would be no different from either Christianity or Islam, each of which seeks to bring about “peace” by killing off, converting (forcibly if necessary), or intimidating into silence all non-conformers. I’ve read enough of your Christian nationalism to know that that’s essentially your end game, even if you might quibble with how I just described it. I’ve read enough world history to know that that’s pretty much what Christian nationalism looked like when it had power (the Inca, Celtic pagans and Native Americans would like a word). So why are you criticizing the Jews for doing the same thing? Other, I mean, than the bald, naked and unsupported assertion that you’re right and they’re wrong.

And here, ultimately, is the societal choice that needs to be made: There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching as the result.

As for your claims about the inquisition and the holocaust, and the books you recommend, I was raised by anti-Semites so I’m already familiar with them. An elder in the church I grew up in once said, in a sermon, that his only real objection to the holocaust was that it wasn’t 100% successful in destroying all Jews. Having been raised in that, I’ve already heard your arguments, and they’re garbage. There really was a holocaust, it really did try to kill off Europe’s Jewish population, and it really was a continuation of the inquisition under a different name, even though Catholics weren’t the only ones involved. If you want to buy into historical revisionism, that’s your right, but that’s what it is.

Kathleen,

All that you’ve sent me is hot garbage stew. You keep pining for Pluralism/multiculturalism without realizing that is a religious conviction that requires a monotheism that says … “No God can be uniquely worshiped in a social order except for the God that requires no other singular God.” Sorry… that’s why I said pluralism is a myth. You want to force that “pluralistic” monotheistic religion on me and you want to force your God upon me. Not happening.

And of course you are wrong about Jewish people wanting to just live and let live. Jewish people HATE Biblical Christianity because a social order governed by Biblical Christianity would not allow porn … would not allow anti-Christ films being made in Hollywood, would not allow the attempt to marginalize Christianity as the Jewish faith of multiculturalism/pluralism has successfully done,. would not allow children to be brainwashed with your propaganda in Government schools. Pluralism = Jewish Nationalism.

If you look and learn your history you will see that Christianity did not seek to kill the Jewish people. By way of official Church policy Roman Catholic teaching early in the Church, w/ its policy of “Sicut Judaeis Non,” taught a doctrine that stated no one had the right to harm the Jew, but at the same time, the Jews were — like Christians and Jews living under Islam — required to accept second class status and refrain from undermining the Christian cultures in which they lived. This is hardly a doctrine that encouraged the killing of Jews as you so wrongly think. It is either have that kind of social order or a social order of your pluralism where Christians living under your pluralism are required to accept second class status being restrained from undermining your filthy pluralistic/multicultural social order.

Again, I say, Kathleen, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. God has provided you the opportunity to learn aright. Will you not take it? And before we leave this you might want to read a Jewish author named Ariel Toaff who wrote; “Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders.” This book has the potential of cleansing your cheery view of what happens when Christians allow pluralism in their midst.

Your grasp on World history is what I might expect from someone who has read only the court historians with their official anti-Christian narrative. Have you never learned that the official history is written by the winners? Wise up and realize that it is typically only in revisionist history where the truth is buried waiting to be discovered. Again, I recommend Rodney Stark’s “Bearing False Witness,” as an antidote for your gross misunderstanding of history. Another book that would help you see straight again is Wm. T. Cavanaugh’s, ”The Myth of Religious Violence.” You are operating under a strong delusion that these kind of books can help you disburse.

Next we speak briefly to your laughable appeal to the ill treatment of “Incas, Native Americans, and Celtic Pagans.” The peoples under the thumb of the Incas and Aztecs praised God for the work of Cortez. Have you read Cortez’s diaries? Have you read Christopher Columbus diaries? I have. You are absolutely clueless when you suggest sympathy for these murderous people. The Native Americans were so busy killing one another, that I’m surprised they noticed when the white man begin to kill them as a defensive measure to stop their raping, murdering, and pillaging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1y_0NfhF9c

Next, my conviction that I am right and the enemies of Christ are wrong are not in the least bald, naked, or unsupported. I have God’s own Word to substantiate all of my claims about Christianity being the truth. All you have is the bald, naked, unsupported, assertion that Christianity is not true and that because Christianity is not true therefore everything else is true. You are not wise.

Then you write this hilarious bit that is worthy of a stand up comic routine;

“There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching (sic) as the result.”

1.) There are so many worldviews therefore there must be no true worldview?

2.) Really, there are, in the end, only two Worldviews. Christianity or Humanism. It’s not that hard. Though I concede humanism can wear any number of masks.

3.) Or, there is another option, and that is people and nations recognizing that religio-ethno states are inevitable. This is what you are arguing for Kathleen. You are arguing that America should be a religio-ethno state that is a place where all colors bleed into one (ethno) and where the religion that rules is the religion that allows no other singular religion or God then the religion of all religions and all gods.

However, where all religions are allowed then the God is really the state (man in his corporate expression — Humanism) so that the God-state can dictate to all the other gods how far they are allowed to go in the public square. You are not a pluralist Kathleen. You are a raging monotheist who desires that this social-order outlaw people like me who desires a different god besides your multiculturalism god to rule over the social order. Can you not see this?

I could care less about the de-churching of the church if that is happening because people don’t want a clear alternative between your god and the God of the Bible. Elijah was alone on Mt. Carmel against all pagan comers. I’ve no problem standing alone. McAtee contra Mundum. 

I quite agree that the Jewish people suffered greatly during WW II.  However as Jewish people were understood as being the ideological champions of Communism, then we understand why many people in Europe were concerned about the enemy in their midst. That it went badly for too many rank and file Jewish people I weep over. It is one reason I am so adamantly opposed to war when not waged on a Christian basis.

Please repent Kathleen. Your understanding of History has been fed to you by Dr. Mephistopheles and his imp culinary school of chefs. Christ will receive you and teach you a better way … a way not characterized by your bitterness and hate against Him.