Christianity as Culture … Culture as Theology Incarnated

“Van Drunen’s juxtaposition of ‘Christianity and culture’ suggest that we can first look at Christianity and cultural separately, and then decide whether there is any connection between the two and if so what this might be.”

Willem J. Ouweneel 
The World is Christ’s; A Critique of (Radical) Two Kingdom Theology — pg. 70

This is a simple yet brilliant insight. Neither Christianity nor culture comes to us as disembodied abstracted gnostic realities. Even with Christianity it comes to us as embodied in cultural trappings, be those trappings, denominations, congregations, Bible Colleges, Seminaries, or just one on one discipleship. Christianity thus can’t be abstracted from a culture carrier.  There is no Christianity that can be known apart from some cultural delivery system. Culture likewise is not an inert something that can be dissected apart from the theological respiration system that gives it life. Culture is animated by the theological afflatus of some God, gods or god concept.

To say we can have Christianity without culture is like saying we can have a wedding without a bride. To say we can have culture without a religious impulse is like saying we can have “Charlie McCarthy” without an Edgar Bergen.

And to say we should have culture without Christianity is to say the Kingship of Christ is null and void and is to favor the Kingship of another God in treason against Christ.

How Propaganda Turns ‘Rich Man’s War,’ Into ‘Poor Man’s Fight’

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China, in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Mar. General Smedley D. Butler
“War is a Racket”
Two Time Winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor and America’s Most Decorated Soldier

Gen. Butler reminds us that “War is a Racket.” If Gen. Butler is right and war is indeed a racket, then War has to be sold as something other then a protection racket for the Oligarch class. In the modern world, the State is responsible to turn the “rich man’s war” into the “poor man’s fight,” and the way that is done is via mass propaganda.

Here is a brief rundown on how the propaganda machine was ginned up in order to rally a nation to a war footing for the purposes of protecting the moneyed Mafiosi incarnated in what is known as the International Money interest. This is how propaganda has worked in order to give moral legitimacy to justify illegal wars which are really about the profit motive.

World War I 

Propagandist machine — “We must go to war because Germans are throwing Belgian babies into the air and catching those babies on their bayonets.” (Editorial Cartoons provided showing such.)

Fact —  World War I was warfare regarding the possession of colonial territories and their raw resources and was fought between the European powers for those resources. It was all about profit motive and had nothing to do with Belgian babies on German Bayonets, innocent Americans dying on the torpedoed Lusitania or a German letter to Mexico intercepted by Brits and turned over to Americans. Follow the money.

World War II 

Propagandist machine – We must go to war because just look at what the Germans did to the poor innocent Polish people.

Fact — World War II was actually about the outrage of the International money interest because Germany had found a way to operate outside their monetary system. The International Money Interest declared war on Germany long before Germany went all belligerent on Europe. The International Money Interest realized that if Germany was allowed to create its own monetary system that was the end of the wealth creation system that had profited many important people.

Iraq War

Propagandist machine — We must go to war because Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi military are dumping Kuwaiti premie babies out of their incubators to just die on the hospital floor.

Fact — The Iraq war was actually about controlling the flow of oil, and who would profit from that flow of oil. It was also about Saddam Hussein trying to build a pan-Arabia which would rival the International Money Interest. Both Hussein and later Qaddafi (villains both) were murdered by the International Money Interest in order to protect and keep their monopoly on their International monetary system.

War of Northern Aggression

Propaganda — We must go to war because Southern Plantation owners are going all Simon Legree on the “noble savage” black slaves. ( This “noble savage” idea was a Yankee vestige of Romanticism thinking.)

Fact — War of Northern Aggression was actually about Northern Corporate and Banking interests not losing their financial jackpot as provided by the Tariffs paid by the South that went into Northern industrial and Federal Government coffers. Lincoln and the North knew that if the South was allowed to depart unimpeded that meant the end of wealthy financial houses and Yankee families.

Lincoln murdered 660,000 thousand Americans because of the profit motive. After him, Wilson and FDR murdered countless more for the same motive. None of these wars were about “keeping America safe for Democracy.” None of these wars were about “fighting for our freedoms.” Your Father, Grandfather, or Great-Grandfather were brave men but they died only for the principle of keeping themselves enslaved to the Oligarchs who lied to them in order to get them to sign up.

These were all wars so the Oligarchs could keep their money.

In each case, a moral reason is cynically arrived at in order to be used as a political sop to give moral and political legitimacy to justify the death and murder of countless numbers of people. People will not volunteer to fight to enrich Corporatists and Politicians but they will fight in order to “safeguard American freedoms” and blah blah blah.

The Disadvantage of Seeing

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King”
Or so the proverb goes
But honesty in prose
Requires a different linguistic string

The one-eyed man in the land of the blind
Is the target of hate and spite
“Why should he have an eye to see
When all others have no sight?”

King, he may be, but uneasy rests the crown
And careful he should be in guarding his eye
As envy plots to pluck it out
In order to bring him down

The one-eyed man may be King
But not without the cost
Of all resolving to blind him also
To see him finally tossed

“We will have no eyes, in this Kingdom”
Shouts the rabble crowd
‘If we can’t see, no one will
No seeing shall be allowed.”

And so the one-eyed man better act as blind
If he desires to keep his vision
Les’t seeing and warning of the cliff ahead
Earns him an optical excision

History teaches that those who see
As living among the blind
Serve seldom as the respected King
But as outcast and maligned

Hotel Escondido

With Apologies to “The Eagles”

Off an Ocean sprayed highway, sea salt wind in my hair
Must smell of academy, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw the the absence of light 
My mind grew heavy and my sight went dim
I had to stop for the night

There they stood in the doorway;
Of their two Kingdom place
And I was thinking to myself
Was the Mosaic merit or was the Mosaic grace?
Then they took up their lecterns and they told me the way
There were voices from the corridors,
I thought I heard them say …

Welcome to Escondido California
Where Natural law’s place (Natural Law’s place)
Is in the left hand space (In the left hand space)
Plenty of room at Escondido California
Any time of year (Any time of year)
We’ll take your money here (Take your money here)

Their minds are hermeneutically twisted, they got the dualism bends
They’ve trained a lot of pretty, preacher boys whose thinking now ends
How they spin in the classroom, with exegetical dragnet
Some spin to remember, some spin to forget

So I called up the Porter
‘Please bring third law-wine’
He said, ‘We haven’t had that spirit here since Dr. Meredith Kline’
Still Reformed voices are calling regarding your stay
Wake you up in middle of the night
Saying, “Get far away!”

Welcome to Escondido California
Where Natural law’s place (Natural Law’s place)
Is in the left hand space (In the left hand space)
They’re changing it all at Escondido California
Now theocracy (Now Theocracy)
Is no more you see

Razors in their speaking
With Intrusion Ethic device
And they said ‘We are all just radicals here, giving well-paid advice’
And in the torture chambers,
They declare Mosaic Fatah
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill God’s Law

Last thing I remember, I was
Countering their lore
I had to turn their worldview back
To the Calvin it was before
‘Relax,’ said the ordained man,
‘We are programmed to deceive.
You can argue anything you like
But we will never believe!’

A Paradigm For A New Reformation

“I have noticed the following parallel between the fourth century and the sixteenth century, periods I consider to be times of fundamental reform for the church. In both periods the dominant theology was a kind of synthesis between biblical thought and Greek philosophy: in the fourth century, Origenism; in the sixteenth, the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In both periods there came a heresy that upset the balance; in the fourth century, Arianism, in the sixteenth, the sale of indulgences by people like John Tetzel. Then came a Reformer: in the fourth century Athanasius; in the sixteenth, Luther. Then came a consolidator, someone who rethink the whole of the Church’s theology in the light of the gains of the Reformation: in the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine; in the sixteenth, Calvin.”

Rev. John Frame 
A History of Western Philosophy and Theology — pg. 107

I am convinced that Rev. Frame is on to something here and I would suggest applying this template to a 21st-century setting. However, instead of Greek thought being the syncretistic factor as being added to Biblical thought and categories I would suggest that the syncretistic factor as being added to Biblical thought and categories is the hybrid form of Marxism called “Cultural Marxism.”

Per Rev. Frame’s model, I would offer something like,

1.) 20th-century syncretistic synthesis of Christianity with the Cultural Marxism originating with Antonia Gramsci, as introduced in America by the Frankfurt School (Herbert Marcuse,  Wilhelm Reich, Theodore Adorno, etc.) popularized by the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, and embraced in principle by many young Reformed Churchmen who would later become leading light in the Reformed Church. They absorbed this thinking during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and at the very least have said very little to overthrow this warfare on God ordained distinctions.

2.) This syncretism that developed as a combination of Christianity and Cultural Marxism begat the egalitarian heresy that currently infects all of our social order including the Church. The egalitarian heresy has given us a warfare against distinctions wherein ontology as well as roles are flattened out so as to result in a social order where all colors, differences, and distinctions bleed into one. Viva la the distinction-less society.

3.) We are still awaiting a God raised Reformer to emerge to lead the Gideon sized orthodox army to do battle with the multitudinous heretics who currently control the Church.

4.) Then comes the consolidator who will rethink the whole of theology in light of the knowledge gained in what will be a new post tenebras lux.

This is the way that God has worked historically. First, the downgrade as exemplified in one particular person, then the widespread infection, then the battle to heal as exemplified in one particular person, and finally the reconstruction, again, as exemplified in one particular person.

We might add here that with each example in each century (fourth, sixteenth, and prospectively the 21st) the issue really comes down to the Supremacy of God. Athanasius and Luther, each in their times, were contending for the Sovereignty of God vis-a-vis the desire of man to pull God off His throne. The 21st century is no less a battle for the supremacy of God. If the Egalitarian heresy is given in its head then the final outcome will be the removal of the distinction between God and man… between the Creator and the Creature.

It is also interesting here that while the Reformations in question (4th, 16th, 21st) are separated by centuries the formal cause of Reformation in each case is the issue of Scripture as Authoritative.  The material causes of Reformation may switch but it seems the formal cause of Reformation is always the issue of whether or not Scripture will be taken as Authoritative. In the 4th century, the Arians refused to come under the authority of Scripture pertaining to the deity of Jesus Christ just as the Medieval Roman Catholic Church refused to submit to the authority of Scripture pertaining to the issue of justification by grace alone just as today the modern church refuses to submit to authority on the issue of God-ordained distinctions. In each Reformation, the formal cause remains the same (the authority of Scripture) while the material cause (the occasion for Reformation) changes.

In reading what I have offered here some may think that I am involved in a kind of Hegelian dialectic where I have posited a  Thesis/ Antithesis/ Synthesis.  Allow me to note the distinction between the Hegelian dialectic and what I am advocating here.

 First, the Hegelian dialectic is man wrought in opposition to God. This is a matter of God’s providence.
 
Secondly, there really is no synthesis here because it is the previous synthesis that is being pushed off the scene in favor of God’s thesis reality.
 
Thirdly, the Hegelian dialectic presupposes that truth is always becoming. There is no absolute Truth. This paradigm presupposes absolute truth and a return to God’s reality.
 
Finally, the Hegelian dialectic speaks of historical “progress” via the outworking of the Geist. This approach is not about progress or process so much as it is about providence.
 
 In brief, while the Christian offers a Thesis (proper distinctions) contra the Thesis of anti-Christianity (no distinctions allowed) no synthesis between the two or of the two is allowed.  Orthodoxy allows no synthesis. Only repentance and then realignment to God’s thinking and reality.

Our role is to pray that God will work to bring the man and the moment together as He did with Athanasius’s opposition to Arius and as He did with Luther’s opposition to schoolmen of his time.