Peter The Anabaptist

“Division rules in the childish world of the old covenant (cf. Galatians 4), the world split in two by the cut of circumcision, a world of tribes and tongues and nations and peoples. To be content with division is to revert to that old world. Division is a form of Judaizing.”

Peter Liethart
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/09/maturing-into-one

 

1.) What I’m hearing here is that

a.) The Old Testament God wanted distinctions and proper divisions but the New Testament God has changed and He doesn’t want distinctions and divisions of tribes, tongues, nations and peoples. Marcionism anyone?

b.) The death of Jesus was to the end of creating a Monistic God and egalitarian world where, in the words of the famous Band, U2, “all colors bleed into one.”

2.) Is it too terribly haughty of me to prefer  the epistemologically self conscious Jacobin theologians over the ones who are merely ignorantly Jacobin?

3.) Is the comment, “Division is a form of Judaizing,” an egghead academic way of translating Rodney King’s, “Can’t we all just get along”?

4.) Wasn’t it the Radical Reformation that insisted that the division between clergy and laity was a sinful division? “Peter the Anabaptist” has a certain ring to it.

5.) If “Peter the Anabaptist” is correct then we must conclude the following,

a.) the Protestant insistence on translation into all the vulgar tongues of the nations was a Judaizing tendency. The  Reformation was compromised from the beginning.

b.)  If division is Judaizing then the Protestant Reformation was sin as it divided from Rome.

c.) If division is Judaizing, the distinct historic creeds as they have been embraced by distinct Reformed denominations have been sin.

d.) God involved Himself in a Judaizing tendency on the plains of Shinar.

6.) Dr. Leithart is here ruling exactly opposite the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. The position there advocated by the Judaizers was an absolute and uncompromising unity that demanded that the Gentiles become cultural Jews in order to be Christian. The apostles repudiated that idea. Which is to say that Dr. Leithart is actually siding with the Judaizers but calling the Jerusalem Divines the Judaizers. This is worst then Jacobinism. This is devilry.

7.) One wonders if this is a kind of Hindu Christianity where all divisions and distinctions are Maya (illusion).

8.) Unity without diversity is Uniformity and Unitarianism. In Unitarianism all must become as one as the one god that is served. This Leithartian Unitarianism seems to be trying to immanentize the eschaton so that the idea of “the other” is lost in a sea of oneness. It is Van Till’s illustration of the man of water, seeking to climb out of a ocean of water, on a ladder of water, into a heavens of water come to life.

 

Mr. Marinov’s Internationalist New World Order Kingdom of God

“The Gospel IS the New World Order and yes it IS against sovereign nations. The only difference between the Biblical New World Order and the counterfeit statist “New World Order” (which is not new at all, the same old crap) is who the world ruler is.”
Bojidar Marinov
1.) We quite agree that the Gospel creates the Christian New World Order. What we don’t agree with is that a Gospel is against the whole idea of Nations.  Mr. Marinov’s idea testifies to the fact that he does not comprehend the implications of “The One and the Many.” By insisting that all must be uniform he communicates a belief in a Unitarian God.2.) The Internationalists would love this marketing campaign

The Gospel: “Destroying National Sovereignty for over 2000 years”

 3.) Mr. Marinov’s “reasoning” flounders on verses where we still find Nations existing in the New Jerusalem.Revelation 21:23 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.

Rev. 22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

4.)  Mr. Marinov provides a modern clear example of what Tolkien pointed out in his Middle Earth trilogy. Bojidar is advocating that Christianity, as Saruman, set up  a New World Order to overcome the New World Order of Sauron. Mr. Marinov can not envision Christ’s Kingdom as a plurality of kingdoms … a Kingdom of kingdoms. This in spite of the fact that God Himself gives instructions to (plural) Kings to “kiss the Son, lest He be angry and they perish in the way.”

I Am Not Mario Cuomo … Neither Am I Darryl Hart … I Am A Christian

Darryl at it again over at

http://oldlife.org/2015/01/i-am-mario-cuomo/

This time Darryl is singing the praises of Mario Cuomo’s ability to live the contradictory hyphenated life. Set aside that Darryl is so enamored with a man who was the darling of the Cultural Marxist left that he proclaims his bromance for Cuomo. Ignore for a moment that Darryl is self identifying with a man who kept abortion chic via his repudiation of his church’s explicit teaching. Instead, focus just a second on what Darryl says here,

Darryl,

But it (private morality vs. public action as a Magistrate) is not a problem that only bedevils Roman Catholics. Protestant politicians may be personally opposed to desecrating the Lord’s Day, and if such a public figure is an officer in a Presbyterian church has even vowed to uphold Sabbatarianism, but in their public duties or owing to political calculation fail to work for Blue Laws. In fact, all believers who hold public office in a religiously diverse and tolerant society need to separate the teachings and practices of their religious communities from the norms that guide civil life. At the very least, they need to juggle the public and private unless they are willing to seek the implementation of their own faith for all of civil society

The irony is that religious right championed a view of the relationship between personal and public responsibilities that derided folks like Cuomo as either hypocritical or cynical. The irony becomes even more ironic when the religious right complains that radical Islam is incapable of making the very distinction that Cuomo defended.

Bret responds,

1.) Consider the call to separate “the teachings and practices of their religious communities from the norms that guide civil life.” This “reasoning” has always flummoxed me. According to Darryl there is a necessity to separate private morality from public morality so that a Christian magistrate’s private morality is not pursued as he serves as a public person and yet it is perfectly acceptable for this Christian magistrate to pursue the private morality of other people (even other Magistrates of other faiths) in their public capacity. For example, Mario might have had personal reservations about abortion and yet he did not force his private reservations upon the public he served. Instead Mario forced the private reservations of countless numbers of other people  about being “pro-life.” So, Mario and Darryl believed and believe it is not acceptable to push their own private morality while a public person but it is perfectly acceptable to push other people’s private morality in the capacity of a public person.  The public positions that Mario held certainly was the private morality of untold numbers of people. Why else hold to those positions? So, why was it acceptable for Mario to push their private morality on the citizenry and not his own?

2.) The policies themselves that Mario pushed were not religiously divers nor did they reflect tolerance. Think about it Darryl. The policies that were finally implemented were policies that some of the citizenry liked and some of the citizenry did not like. Those policies once implemented were in no way diverse nor did they reflect tolerance. They reflected, instead, both a lack of diversity and a severe intolerance. Policy implemented is by its very definition is non diverse and intolerant because it ends up not reflecting what large sections of the citizenry desire.  The whole plea for “diversity and tolerance” is a smoke screen to excuse the moral cowardice of Politicians and to justify the rebellion of high profile ministers.

3.) We do not live in a religiously diverse and tolerant society. This is proven by Darryl’s intolerance for my religion which sees his religion of “diversity and tolerance,” to be intolerant. We live in a society where the varying faiths of the varying religions have been tamed so that they all understand that none of their God or gods are to be taken so seriously as to overthrow the God State who keeps all the other gods in their place. We have the diversity and tolerance of old Rome. Everyone is free to serve their God or gods as long as, like Darryl, they keep pinching incense to the genius of the Emperor.

4.) I do not criticize Islam for its lack of ability to make the distinction about private morality vs public morality that Darryl holds. I criticize it because it hates Christ. I see the totalism of Islam as being perfectly consistent with its opposition to all alien Worldviews including the Christian worldview and the Liberal Darryl worldview.  I criticize Darryl because he deigns to criticize other worldviews (Christianity, Islam, etc.) all the while his pagan worldview is in the ascendancy. I criticize Darryl because of the totalism of his bifurcated worldview that demands everything be divided into private morality vs. public morality. In Darryl’s worldview everyone must operate like this or they are shunned and denounced, just as everyone who does not operate in the context of Sharia in a Islam world and life view must be shunned and denounced. Darryl’s worldview has the same totalism in it that he decries in both Islam and in Biblical Christianity. It’s easy for Darryl to criticize competing worldviews for their desire to have totalistic hegemony while the pagan worldview he holds to, is, in point of fact, exercising totalsitc hegemony.

Je Suis Bret McAtee

The best way to return volley when dealing with satirists, mockers, and the irreverent is to give them a taste of their own medicine. All the West is taking up for the filth put out by French magazine “Charlie Hebdo” and in favor of  their gutter freedom of speech. This is a freedom of speech that found Charlie Hebdo satirizing the members of the Trinity as engaging in sodomite sex with one another simultaneously.

Well, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If we are going to mock and satirize Christianity then mocking and satirizing the sacred truths of the secular religion if also fair game. The most sacred truth of the Cultural Marxist Left today is the Holocaust ™. It is an event that dare not be questioned lest one be imprisoned for merely questioning the facts around the Holocaust ™.

Isn’t it curious that while blaspheming the Lord Jesus Christ is a Free speech matter, and insulting the pervert Mohammed is a free speech right, what isn’t a free speech matter is denying the holocaust? I wonder why that is?

So, if we really are going to march for freedom of speech then let it be a march for freedom of all speech. But that will never happen because all cultures and social orders protect via the fence of the law, what is held sacred that culture and social order.

The mocking limericks that follow are here to make a singular point and that point is to eliminate the double standard.

The Double Standard

Trying to get this all straight
Questioning Six Million is hate
But one is perfectly free
To pen the Trinity
As sodomite sexual soul-mates?

It Goes Both Ways

They tell me that the satire pen
Must be free to lampoon all men
But if that is quite true
Then what will they do
When Auschwitz is mocked now and then?

Now Who’s Ox Is Being Gored?

Satire Mohammed as you please
Cartoon the Trinity as in sleaze
But if you do all of that
There is tit for tat
Prepare for jokes about the Holo-hoax disease

Jes Suis Zundel & Irving?

There once were satirists from France
All religions they’d love to lance
But if this is the game
Then others look tame
Give Zundel and Irving a chance

 

Mrs. Marinov … Please Notify your Husband that there is Linkage between Genetics and Culture

 

In the graphic below our old friend, Bojidar Marinov, suggest that proof is found that genetics and culture have nothing to do with each other.  He offers this pearl of wisdom, in his trenchant commentary on the graphic,

<i>”The awkward moment when you think that genetics determines culture, and then geneticists tell you that Spain is more “Celtic” than Scotland, and Austria is about as “Germanic” as Ireland.”</i>

Now the point we will be making below the graphic is not that culture is a reflection of only genetics. That position would force one into the unbiblical position of materialism. No Christian can claim to be consistently Christian and believe that culture is alone dictated by genetics.

However, contrary to Mr. Marinov’s views, neither is it, in the least, consistently Christian to deny that genetics has anything to do with culture. Such a position gives us Gnosticism, the very opposite of materialism. Mr. Marinov’s views that whom God has created us to be in our humanity, has nothing to do with culture is the stuff of which Gnosticism is made.

The best approach to culture is that it is the outward manifestation of a people’s inward beliefs. Note that in this definition we have the inclusion of both what a people think and the fact that it is very real corporeal people, with all their DNA (genetics) who are thinking.

The point that we will be making below the graphic is that Mr. Marinov observation, given above, is just nonsense.

 

View post on imgur.com

1.) We might start by asking Mr. Marinov how it is exactly that Europeans, being closely related to other Europeans, is some kind of “awkward moment.” After all,  Europeans are closely related to each other. That’s not a revelation. And it seems to imply the exact opposite point as Mr. Marinov imagines — that there really is a European / White identity.

2.)  Secondly, we need to note that all because there are different ethnic markers in different places doesn’t mean that  English, Irish, Scots, etc are Swedes, Germans, Danes, etc. Also, we must take into consideration that the West is a lot more mobile now. International corporations have greatly contributed to that mobility (along with the ebb and flow of conquering armies). Corporations have undermined the state and regional loyalties here in the US. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there is a mixture of European ethnicities.

3.) Touching Mr. Marinov’s observations regarding Spain being more Celtic than Scotland. This really isn’t that difficult and if Mr. Marinov knew his history better he wouldn’t be getting out on this limb that is currently being sawed off from beneath him. You see, Galicia (a part of Spain) is borderline one of the Celtic nations. The Gaels who settled Ireland came from Galicia, then went to over to mess with the Picts in Scotland. Also, Celts covered the continent at one point until empires were established over them. Obviously, given this reality one would expect to find just what the graphic reveals. Mr. Marinov’s post demonstrates his ignorance of tribal migration. One hopes this isn’t intentional on Mr. Marinov’s part. Regardless, whether it is ignorance or subterfuge the truth of the matter is that Mr. Marinov is quite inaccurate on this point.

4.) The fact that Europe’s culture is being re-made by the arrival of  non-European people groups ought to be evidence enough that there is a relation between genetics and culture. If one ventures into different parts of “Londonistan” or “Parisistan” one finds a very different genetic pattern accompanied by a very different culture then one finds in French Paris or English London.

5.)  Mr. Marinov says that genetics has no impact on culture. Well, as genetics is determinative of gender (as well as ethnicity) does he really want to advance the idea that there are no genetic differences between male and female such that those differences impact cultures that men and women create?

Are the differences between men and women (not physiological but cultural) only to be accounted for by how men and women think? This is what Mr. Marinov would have us believe if “genetics have absolutely nothing to do with culture.”

Mr. Marinov should visit an all girls school and a all boys school and take tours to demonstrate that genetics effect culture.

More might be said but this is enough to, once again, dismiss the Gnostic impulse of Mr. Marinov.

This rebuttal was a corporate effort by the members of one America’s more illustrious Reformed Think Tanks of which I am a member.