Inescapability of Religion In Driving Culture

 

“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

Of course, the drum that Eliot is beating here is a drum that is often beat  on Iron Ink. Religion is the animating spirit of culture and culture is the visible expression of religion. It is proper to make a distinction between them but they cannot be isolated from one another. Culture is the body of which religion is the animating soul. When I look at a culture I am seeing its religion. When I examine a people’s religion, their culture makes sense.

As an extension of this the form of civil Government of a people, being a part of their culture, is also a manifestation of their religion. All States are organized religiously. There is no such thing as a state that has separated itself from the religion of its church. Now, it may take some doing to locate what is serving as the Church to the State (Temple, Shrine, Government Schools, Mosque, etc.) but the idea of separation of Church and State is at best an illusion and always a surd.

Now, many of been my conversation partners who have denounced this idea. They have contended that it is past obvious that the Church is in decline, and if they are talking about organized Christianity or organized religion in general, they might be right. Recently, in the publishing world, it has been open season on organized religion and religious observances. It is understandable that people might observe that we are living in increasingly profane times.

Not so.

The total amount of faith of a people  (or a person) never dissipates though it may change the object of its affection that it sets itself upon. The faith tank remains full. Only the service of the god the faith fuel is being burned for changes.

To locate the new religion in service of the new god one has to identify the new sacred center of a social order. This is done by identifying a people group’s borders of what is tolerated and what is not tolerated. What kind of speech is blasphemous? Who defines unacceptable behavior and what must be done to remove the guilt of said behavior?

This means that there are no “ages of irreligion,” or “ages of skepticism.” Organized religions may recede but they recede in favor 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.

An interesting phenomenon when organized Christianity goes into decline is the rising of the Shaman. The Shaman is thought of being a person uniquely in touch with the spirit-world. Indeed, he is often the bridge between the unknown and the known. He often is the incarnation himself of the god’s will or even of the god.

Contemporary Shamans in our enlightenment culture are most often found in the field of Psychiatry. The Psychologist-Psychiatrist knows what the laymen  cannot know about himself and the laymen visits the Shrink-Shaman in order to be cured of what ails him. The Psychiatrist Witch Doctor identifies the sin, and for a price provides an incremental cure for the sin.

Contemporary Shamans in more animistic cultures will typically direct their customers to a potion or spell or a ghost dance or a spirit-animal to provide relief. But whether in antiseptic materialistic enlightenment cultures or in animistic spiritist cultures the Shaman always rises when objective Christianity goes into abeyance. In our religio-culture in the West, one can find both expressions. Whether it is some form of psychoanalysis for urban professionals or whether it is astrology or necromancy for those in the santeria cult in New Orleans or New York city the Shaman arises when organized Christianity recedes.

Note, though that religion never disappears. Never.  Man as Homo Adorans is a hopelessly religious being and all cultures are merely religion poured over ethnicity.

Oh … and as an addendum, this is why R2K is a lousy theology. There is no common square that is not an expression of some religion. R2K would have us believe that culture is religion free, operating instead on the basis of some potentially common Natural laws. Don’t you believe it! All law is religious law and the minute one surrenders Christianity as the cult behind the culture some other religion and god will own the culture.

The Connection Between The Second Amendment And Government Schools

“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment,” Trump said to boos from the crowd.

“By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” he then added.

“Though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Donald J. Trump

1.) Hillary Clinton does indeed support abolishing the Second Amendment. At a townhall meeting recently Clinton responded to a question regarding the desire to clamp down on gun ownership by saying,

“the [Australian] government was able to curtail the supply and set a different standard for gun purchases in the future.”

Clinton finished by saying,

“It would be worth considering doing it on the national level.”

Clinton wants to take your Second Amendment God given rights away. In such a context it is fitting and proper for her opponent to note that such an action may well lead to unfavorable consequences.

2.) Our Marxist media is hyperventilating over the fact that Trump noted that Americans in 2016 might take the same actions against a Government that seeks to seize their weapons as Americans in 1776 took when the Government sought to seize their weapons.

Trump is not calling for political assassination. He is merely saying that if the FEDS come for guns some people may not go quietly into the night. This is an objective fact.

Today’s media would have supported the British in 1776.

3.) People who are so exercised in protecting the Second Amendment are a curious lot. I say that because many many of them are so incredibly hostile to any idea of seizing their weapons and yet they turn right around and willingly give up their children to be brainwashed in Government schools. If all the people who are intensely pro-Second Amendment had not sent their children to Government schools to be propagandized into Cultural Marxist thinking no politician would ever dare bring up the idea of overturning the Second Amendment since there would not be the public support for such a policy.

4.) Clearly, rabid Second Amendment types, by their actions, demonstrate that keeping their weapons is more important than keeping their children. The same rabidness about protecting our guns from the clutches of the FEDS should be applied to protecting our children from the clutches of the FEDS. Indeed, keeping our children is more important than keeping our guns, if only because guns need trigger fingers to squeeze the trigger in order to be effective and if we keep our children there will be more children with more trigger fingers in order to fire back at the FEDS when they seek to exercise their tyranny. If you want your children to share your conviction about the Second Amendment and its importance then take them out of Government Schools.

5.) If people desire to be truly consistent about their opposition to gun control then they should be equally opposed to children control. If you really love your guns do your children a favor and get them out of Government schools.

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.