International Woman’s Day with Eta Linnemann … Identifying Historical-Critical Methodology

I thought in honor of International Woman’s Day, I would spend some time reading a female theologian. I am sensitive to these kinds of special days as I am always trying to find ways to fit in. In light of that,I am finishing up Eta Linnemman’s, “Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology?” Linneman was trained by some of the best known Historical-Critical “theologians” on the Continent (Bultmann, Fuchs, Gogarten, Ebeling). After writing a couple books using this methodology she was, by her own testimony, converted. In this book, she examines her former “theology” from a Biblical foundation. From the outset Linnemann lets her mind be known,

“Today, I realize that historical-critical theology’s monopolistic character and worldwide influence is a sign of God’s judgment (Romans 1:18-32).

Eta Linnemann
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology — pg. 18

She has confirmed for me that the Historical-critical hermeneutical school is characterized by the following,

1.) Historical-Critical theology presupposes that the supernatural is not true. Now, they may talk about the supernatural and they may talk about God but in their worldview “God” is defined in one of two ways. God is either defined as non-transcendent so that he is completely immanent

“A scientific historiography arose which first excluded God as an active agent in the historical process by introducing ‘a god of the philosophers’ who conveyed awareness of himself immanently in the course of history. This pseudo-god soon turned out to be superfluous, but he had served to eliminate the possibility of the true God’s real and ongoing activity in human history. In this way there came to be a totally atheistical historical ‘science.'”

Eta Linnamenn
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology — pg. 30

Or God is so transcendent that His transcendence is beyond the ability for the creature to know anything about himA God this transcendent ends up being no different than a God who is completely immanent. Any talk of the “supernatural” for this kind of theologian finds such supernatural as the result of the outworking of the Geist in the historical process. This remains a completely immanent process.

Yarbough offers in the introduction to Linnemann’s work,

“In the historical-critical hermeneutic, God as understood in historic orthodox Christian, thought is systematically ruled out of consideration and is replaced by human self-awareness and purely immanent forces; as the historical theology textbooks put it, anthropology replaces theology.”

Robert Yarbrough
Translator’s Introduction
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology — pg. 12

2.)  Historical-critical theology insists that the text must be approached by neither presupposing that it is or is not true or false. Complete neutrality as accompanied by a putatively presuppositional-less bias is the required approach. Of course, by not presupposing that the text is God’s authoritative Word the result is that man becomes sovereign over God’s Word in determining what is to be believed and what is to be eschewed. Of course, this is sold as the ability to be “completely objective,” but objectivity has been completely surrendered the minute that presuppositions affirming the truthfulness of God’s Word are surrendered. There is no reasoning from nowhere. Everyone approaches texts with faith assumptions. Surrendering proper God-centered presuppositions means embracing improper humanist centered presuppositions. Neutrality is a myth.

Linnemann offers,

“In Historical-Critical methodology, the research is conducted ut si Deus non daretur (as if there were no God). That means the reality of God is excluded from consideration from the start, even if the researcher acknowledges that God could bear witness of Himself in His Word. The standard by which all is assessed is not God’s Word but ‘scientific’ principle…. Scientific principle has come to have the status of idol.”

Eta Linnamenn
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology? — pg. 84

3.) One sign of Historical-Critical theology is the tendency to read the varying human authors of the Scripture as if they are in contradiction with one another. As a random example, when one pits the “Theology of Luke” against say the “Theology of Peter,”  as if they contradict each other what one has done, whether they realize it or not, is to have embraced a paradigm that eschews divine inspiration. If God is ultimately the one author of all the authors of Revelation then it cannot be held that those authors contradict one another unless one is willing to say that God contradicts Himself.

4.) The Historical-Critical method tends to find a canon within a canon. This arbitrary canon then becomes the prism through which all other books of the bible are read.

Linneman again,

“In order to do justice to the claim of authority which the Biblical canon has for the church, and also for personal orientation, one seeks a canon within the canon. A few come up with little more than Romans 7, the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, and the parable of the final judgment in Matthew 25. For others, this ‘canon within the canon’ extends further. In either case, this standard is used to assess the rest of the Bible, and Sachkritik (a method in which what is deemed to be of central importance is used as a standard against which other parts of the Bible are measured) is employed, whether implicitly or explicitly.”

Eta Linnamenn
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology? — pg.  86

By using this Sachkritik methodology all that lies outside of or is in contradiction to the Historical-Critical “theologian’s” hobby horses are readily overturn.

5.) The art of Pseudomorphosis is ubiquitous. Linnemann informs us that Pseudomorphosis is when concepts are emptied of their meaning and then filled with a new content which has no more in common with the original meaning than the name itself.  In Pseudomorphosis Christian words and phrases, while being retained, have been hollowed out by the Enlightenment project. The ideas of the Endarkenment, from Deism to Transcendentalism – Romanticism, to Darwinism, to Existentialism – Nihilism to Postmodernism, all have been as so many ichneumon flies who laid their eggs inside their Christian host. On the outside, the host may look fine but on the inside, the larvae are eating out the host from the inside out. The outer form of Christianity has remained undamaged. We still use the same language and jargon. But the thing itself is dead, and what will soon emerge is the ugly offspring of the flies who successfully laid their eggs. What Linnemann offers as Pseudomorphosis others have labeled as “linguistic deception.”

6.) There is a distinction made between the words of the Bible and God’s Word. The Bible is the Word of God is exchanged for “the Bible contains the word of God and so may become the Word of God.” This forms the genesis of what became known as encounter theology. The Bible may well become the word of God for the reader in an encounter that results in a meaningful experience but Scripture itself is not the objective word of God.  Eta Linnemaan offers,

The Bible is no longer esteemed as God’s word in the way it is handled. It is taken for granted that the words of the Bible and God’s words are not identical. The printed matter between the two covers of the Bible is said not to be God’s word in and of itself. It becomes God’s Word only from time to time when it functions as through reading or preaching.”

Eta Linnamenn
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology? — pg.  85

Jesus as Che Guevara, or, Theology as Socialism

“Increasingly the younger generation of theologians is being infiltrated by socialism. God’s saving purpose and eternal redemption in Jesus Christ are replaced by human goals of world improvement. These goals are veiled in arbitrarily selected words of the so-called ‘historical Jesus,’ who is interpreted as social reformer or as revolutionary, depending on what the interpreter desires. Preferred texts include the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the discourse on world judgment (Matthew 25:31-46), as well as Jesus’ words regarding the Sabbath (Mark 2:27-28). In the last passage the term son of man in verse 28 is taken to simply mean man, which is linguistically possible. Jesus table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (e.g. — Mark 2:15-17) is taken as proof that he changed unjust social structures and that we should imitate him in this. 

Characteristic of this approach is the theory of projection. (We might call this ‘social constructs’ — BLM.) The Old Testament is, for the most part, set aside as irrelevant to us because it is, entirely or in part, merely an intellectual construction, a projection. It is the result of then-current patriarchal social structures and conditions. According to this theory, even the ten commandments are no longer normative for us. Jesus is said to have abolished them with the commandment to love. But what love means is not derived from God’s Word, but is rather determined by sensual means. 

The prophets are ranked as social reformers. Amos serves as an alibi for this.”

Eta Linnamenn
Historical Criticism of the Bible; Methodology or Ideology? — pg. 92

How Is It That We Are “Not Under Law?”

Romans 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

When St. Paul writes about not being “under the law,” he is not at that point teaching us that being Christian means being antinomian. The not being under the law that Paul is referencing here has to do with the freedom from the condemnation of the law that is a reality for all those outside of Christ. Man, as being mortal is always governed by some law and so it is literally not possible to be free from law in the sense of having a lawless existence.

Freedom from the condemnation of the law is the good news the Gospel brings. Outside of Christ, we are forever burdened by the accusation of God’s law that we are guilty of not keeping God’s law. In Christ, we are free from that accusation (and the condemnation following) that we are guilty of because of our violating God’s law, and we are free from the condemnation of God’s law precisely because Christ is the one, in His crucifixion, who, as our substitute, already received in Himself the penalty and condemnation that was properly designed for us due to our breaking of God’s law.

Having been set free from the condemnation of God’s law we are now at liberty to walk in terms of God’s law without any fear because there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We are those who no longer walk consistent with our sinful former appetites but who now walk according to our law honoring desires as we are new creations.

That God’s law still functions in our life is the great presupposition of Scripture. After all, how could we ever successfully honor the call to lay aside sin

in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.  (Ephesians 4:22)

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us … (Hebrews 12:1)

unless there was a standard by which we could know whereby that sin is determined? If we are not under law in the sense that the law no longer exists for the Christian then there is no possibility for us to sin, since without law sin does not exist. If we are not under law in the sense that the law no longer exists for the Christian then right and wrong and good and bad really are only existential social constructs with the result that every Christian does what is right in their own eyes. 

The Cultural Marxist Toolbox

“The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped. Their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional power to those who oppress these minorities.”

Herbert Marcuse
Frankfurt School

This “false consciousness,” which one of the truly great Cultural Marxists railed against was the consciousness which has been shaped and formed by thousands of years of Christianity upon the West. It was this “false consciousness” that Marcuse and his cohorts at the Frankfurt School desired to overthrow and so the oppressed must be protected from this “false consciousness” even if it meant denying the proper protection of law to those who were designed as the “oppressors.” In this quote Marcuse is styling his worldview and beliefs as the true consciousness vis-a-vis the false consciousness that he and his ideological soul mates were waging civilizational war against.

This false consciousness would be overthrown by use of the tool-kit developed by the Cultural Marxists. These tools came to be known as,

1.) Critical theory

In Cultural Marxism via the work of critical theory, every aspect of a person’s identity is to be questioned, be it gender, sexual orientation, family, race, culture, religion, in order to benefit supposedly oppressed groups. By deconstructing heretofore stable and unchanging identity social categories (part of the false consciousness problem) those who were part of moral, ethnic, racial, and religious minority groups could pull down and destroy the whole idea of norms that arise in cultures that are comprised of distinct majorities.

The underlying and enduring aspect of critical theory common to all its multitudinous expressions is the creation and application of interdisciplinary theories growing out of a worldview dedicated to overturning the false consciousness of traditional Christian thought and social order and so serving as an instrument of social transformation. Critical theory comes in all shapes, sizes, and expressions but the one thing it has in common is criticizing any residual influence of Christianity that remains on any and all of our Western institutions and disciplines. It typically expresses itself as the voice of the oppressed and the aggrieved and in doing so seeks to employ “social justice” and “fairness” as the sting within the theory. However, in order to do so Critical theory must invert and redefine almost all realities in order to be able to secure the superior position of the oppressed.

2.) The New Proletariat

The Cultural Marxists empirically observed that Marxism, in its classical expression, failed when it posited that there was automatic friction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Because of this observation, the Cultural Marxists understood that if the West was going to be a cake turned then what was required was the creation of both a new model and a new proletariat that would serve the purpose of providing the necessary friction and manpower in order to achieve Marxist transformation.

The Cultural Marxist finally conceived of both new model and new proletariat when it changed the old class model of have vs. have not to the new model of oppressor vs. oppressed. The oppressed was thus to the agenda of Cultural Marxism what the working class proletariat was to the agenda of Classical Marxism. Just as in Classical Marxism there remained the sense of grievance in this new proletariat but instead of the grievance being based on an economic pivot Cultural Marxism chose the pivot of the unprivileged oppressed outcast as the tool by which to achieve social transformation in a Marxist direction. Having chosen that pivot it then worked to propagandize a large number of groups that they were both oppressed and that their identity as humans should be tied up with their oppression.

Concretely speaking, the new Cultural Marxist proletariat — those who would do the yeoman work of the cultural Marxist march through the Institutions — would be comprised of all who would believe the critical theory propaganda that they were underprivileged and oppressed. Those successfully propagandized and recruited were feminists, ethnic minorities, and the sexually deviant. These were the new proletariat oppressed and they would fight against the new bourgeoisie who were cast as the oppressors. The new bourgeoisie were cast as Christian patriarchy, Heterosexual Married, the white majority (especially white males), people who insist that gender is binary (CIS-gender), and most emphatically Christians who rejected this Cultural Marxist social construct template. Ironically the new social construct that the cultural Marxist created used as one of its chief tools for social transformation the idea that previous normativity itself was merely social construct. In the cultural Marxist world, the oppressors were successful as oppressors because they had managed to force their social constructs on the oppressed. The work of the critical theory was to expose these putative social constructs for what they were.

3.) Shaming

In order of this to happen then, the previous normativity must be shamed and countered by the recruitment and so rise of a new normativity. For example, heterosexual marriage must be challenged by other forms of sexuality as mainstreamed into the social order.  For example, since whites are oppressor then new slogans like “diversity is our strength,” as combined with immigration policies which will decrease the overall percentage total of whites must be pursued. For example, if patriarchy is oppressive then matriarchy and anarchy is the solution. For example, if CIS-gender is merely a dominant social construct then transgenderism must be injected into the blood stream of the West. For example if Christianity is oppressive then a two pronged approach must be employed. First, Christianity must be emptied of its previous content and filled with the ideology of Cultural Marxism as its new content and second, those Christians who refuse to be re-programmed must be marginalized and diluted by bringing in teeming numbers of Muslim immigrants.

The ground for all this was set by Theodore Adorno’s book “The Authoritarian Personality,” wherein Adorno patholigizes what had always been considered normative. By the time Adorno is finished patriarchy, patriotism, familialism, and the Christian faith are all given the bum’s rush and characterized as signs of sickness. Of course the consequence of this, if taken seriously, is a social order that is rootless, international, alienated, and godless. These are the very characteristics which are descriptive of the West as a result of the canker that is cultural Marxism.

The ground being set, the Cultural Marxist advance is made by use of the technique of shaming. Shaming occurs when labels are affixed to people for perfectly normal behavior. For example, if one is white and desirous of living in a homogeneous neighborhood or attend a homogeneous church one is shamed with catcalls of “racist,” or “Islamaphobe,” or  “homophobe,” or “Un-Christian.” However when large influxes of differing people groups are relocated into Western cities (Lewiston, Maine comes to mind) with the natural result that these groups create their own sub-culture where homogeneity is characteristic this is called the benefit of multiculturalism. Shaming is saved for the majority White Christian. Normativity is reserved for the alien and the stranger.

4.) Political Correctness

A further tool for the advance of Cultural Marxism is the tool of Political correctness. Political correctness has many expressions but we will consider its use as a tool of thought control by way of linguistic manipulation. Political correctness controls thought by creating taboos in speech usage as enforced via social stigmatization. Words that cannot be said become words that will not be thought. This thought control is ubiquitous on American campuses today as riots ensure when certain speech is to be expressed. The recent riots on University campuses against Charles Murray and before him Milo Yiannopoulos provide proof.

This thought control is also achieved by seeking to control the language by scandalizing language that does not serve the purposes of the Cultural Marxist. Examples of this abound. Most recently the phrase “anchor baby” created a firestorm. The Cultural Marxists insisted that this was a pejorative. However, it is only a pejorative if you assume their worldview. By insisting that this phrase dare not be uttered the Cultural Marxists were advancing their agenda and their worldview. Instead they began to insist that the phrased, “citizen children of unauthorized immigrants” be used in its place. But of course, the very issue up for debate is whether such children should  be citizens. By using their language they win the debate. Another example is “illegal immigrant.” Despite the fact that those immigrants which are here illegally are indeed, by definition, “illegal immigrants,” the Cultural Marxists demand that these people be referred to as “undocumented workers.” Such language advances their worldview and agenda. Control the language, control the thinking. Control the language and the thinking control the outcome. One more example will suffice. What we today call “affirmative action,” is the triumph of political correctness. “Affirmative action,” is in reality ethnic discrimination but many can’t see that because of the thought control achieved by our cultural mind masters.

In the end Cultural Marxism as an ideology has as a goal the elimination of all stigmatization except the stigmatization of those who believe that stigmatism has a proper and necessary role in any social order. In the Cultural Marxist world oppressed and oppressor categories will eliminated with the consequence that stigma will be ended. The pedophile and tranny will be just as normal as the heterosexual and the Christian. In reality what will happen is that God’s normal will be stigmatized and maybe even criminalized.

Future article — The role of false guilt and liberation theology in Cultural Marxism.

United Nations Definition of Genocide and Pertinent Videos

Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as,

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part1 ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

https://www.facebook.com/SmashCulturalMarxism3/videos/1929574013955409/?hc_location=ufi