Scruton on the Relation Between the Living & the Dead; McAtee on Scruton

“The dead and the unborn are as much members of society as the living. To dishonor the dead is to reject the relation of obligation between generations.”

Roger Scruton
On Rousseau

Let us proceed to tease out some implications here;

1.) Of course this is nothing but the cream that rises to the surface from the doctrine called “Kinism,” which is itself merely Christianity as applied to social order functioning. There is not only a relation between kin who are living but also a relation between kin living, kin who have gone before and kin who are yet unborn. Without a honored continuity across the generations man becomes hyper-individualized with no sense of belonging to something greater than himself.

2.) Those who deny this truism are violators of the fifth commandment as Scruton’s second sentence clearly communicates. One simply can not deny Kinism and claim Christ.

3.) The only place left to go if one denies Scruton’s channeling of Edmund Burke is some form of cosmopolitanism. The eschew this wisdom is to embrace the life of the rootless nomad, and the wandering Jew.

4.) Without this principle what evolves is an ugly generational selfishness embraced by each succeeding generation. Without this principle living is only about me, myself, and I. Again, the sense of belonging is almost impossible to re-create.

5.) The only time we have authority to walk away from our forebears our walk away from our children is when our forebears were unfaithful to Christ in their traditions or when our children are unfaithful to Christ and His gracious Law-Word. To have to walk away from either of them for the sake of the King would be gladly done but done as with great tears and heaviness of heart. We would weep over their loss and our loss while rejoicing in gaining the Kingdom.

6.) In order to make this concrete keep in mind that all those “Christians” out there who are decrying Christian Nationalism, or Kinism, or even often-times “Racism” are in point of fact functionally denying the essence of this proverb. Those who deny this have to be considered at the very least “alienists” and at the worse, Enlightenment Liberals or Communists.

Proper Enmity, Then & Now

“And I will put enmity (open hostility) Between you and the woman, And between your seed (offspring) and her Seed; He shall [fatally] bruise your head, And you shall [only] bruise His heel.”  

Genesis 3:15
Amplified

In the Hebrew language the first word here is “enmity.” This is important because in constructing the sentence in such a manner the author is telling us that this idea of “enmity” or “hostility” is being especially emphasized. In an act of magnificent redemptive grace God proclaims that the enmity that the serpent bore responsibility for inciting as between God and our first parents, will be reversed with the consequence that the hostility established between God and our first parents would eventually be displaced with a hostility between the lineage of the serpent and the lineage of the Messiah culminating in the arrival of the promised seed (Messiah) who in a contest with Lucifer (Serpent) would finally completely crush that Serpent suffering  wounding Himself in the contest.

This text is commonly labeled the “protoevangelium” or first proclamation of the Christian Good-News (gospel). It is called this because herein is contained God’s first promise to heal the breach that exists now between His image-bearing creation and Himself with what Christian’s refer to as “The Fall.” In Gen. 3:15 we learn that Satan’s wreckage is not the final word. In Gen. 3:15 we learn that God is a warrior God who will provide a warrior Messiah who will  destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Genesis 3:15 is thus a declaration that announces that redemptive history (the most important history of all history) is going to be characterized by warfare ultimately between the Serpent and the Warrior Messiah, but penultimately also between the Serpent Seed and the Warrior seed. And this proclamation of open warfare… this announcing of perpetual hostility between these contestants is God’s magnanimous grace. To see this placement of hostility as divine grace we have to understand that without this gracious and divinely created hostility man’s hostility to God (Romans 8:7) and God’s hostility toward fallen man (Romans 1:18) would have never been healed with the result that all of mankind would have been without God and without hope. God’s creation project would have been a failure.

The point I want to emphasize at this juncture is that God created open hostility between the contestants (God’s people and the Serpent seed) is pure grace. I emphasize this because of the niceness cult that Evangelicals cultivate. This text teaches that Christians are to be hated by the Serpent seed and they in turn will hate the Serpent seed and that hatred for the Serpent seed is born out of love to God who has delivered them from the kingdom of the serpent and delivered them to the kingdom of God’s Messiah warrior whom He loves. In other words, open hostility between Christians and Serpent seed is a positive good and not something Christians should try to avoid or feel bad about when and where it exists.

Genesis 3:15 also marks out God’s temporal beginning of the covenant of Grace. In this announcement God lets it be known that for His own glory He will rescue what turns out to be a multitude of people and He will do so by making that multitude of people He rescues warrior servants (II Tim. 2:3-4) for the promised warrior Messiah. This reminds Christians again that their Christian walk is characterized by the hostility of the Serpent seed against them and of they against the Serpent seed.

We see this open warfare as imposed by divine grace, break out immediately in the biblical record. In Genesis 4 we find the Serpent seed (Cain) murdering the redeemed seed of the woman (Abel). Likewise we find an ongoing anticipation of the arrival of the ultimate promised warrior Messiah who would crush the Serpent’s head (Gen. 4:1, 25) — an anticipation that would characterize the Hebrews in every generation. It became quickly obvious that the conflict would fester long before the warrior Messiah arrives.

That conflict then is traced throughout the Old Testament and becomes iron furnace hot when the seed of the woman finally does arrive in the New Testament.

One example but this is a theme we find repeatedly developed in Scripture. Think of Jael crushing the head of Sisera, the serpent representative opposing God’s people (Judges 4). Similarly there is Judges 9:52-53 where we find a child of the Serpent persecuting God’s people only to find his head being crushed by an anonymous woman.

 52 So Abimelech came as far as the tower and fought against it; and he drew near the door of the tower to burn it with fire. 53 But a certain woman dropped an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull.

Another example of the development of the this Gospel conflict theme between the respective seeds, is David vs. Goliath. David is a picture of the Lord Christ fighting solitary for His people against the serpent champion Goliath. Goliath is decked out in scale armor, the Hebrew word literally meaning “scales” (1 Sam. 17:5). Typologically this harkens back to the scales of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. David posits a stone between the Serpent representative’s eyes and proceeds to cut his head off. Goliath was dressed like a serpent with his scale armor, and he died like a serpent, with a head wound. David, as a type of Christ has crushed the head of the serpent.

Continuing with this theme in 1 Samuel 5:3-4, the false god Dagon of the Philistines falls face down to the ground in front of the Ark of the Covenant with his head cut off. The Philistines, perennial enemies and persecutors of Israel, had captured the Ark and placed it inside their temple, smack in front of their god, Dagon. The result was catastrophic for Dagon. He fell forward and his head came off. Remind you of anything? “He will strike your head.” Dagon and the Philistines are portrayed as the seed of the serpent.

In the New Testament this theme finds its fullest expression. The conflict between the ultimate seed of the Woman (Christ) and the serpent seed is unmistakable. Christ even uses the same type of language when speaking to His enemies that reflects what is promised in Genesis 3:15;

John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks his own native tongue, for he is a liar and the father of it. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.

Matthew 12:4 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

And finally in the cross the Serpent and His seed does their worst work in striking the heel of the warrior Messiah drawing blood. The Serpent believes the battle is over with blood and bruise covered pathetic warrior messiah hanging limp on the cross and finally stiff in the tomb. Yet in the cross as followed by the resurrection and ascension the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

This theme is likewise taken up after Christ’s resurrection and ascension. In Romans, the Holy Spirit, hearkening back to this theme began in Genesis can say in 16:20, The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

So, the conflict continues but it continues as a mopping up exercise. Satan is defeated and now the conflict is just a matter of rolling back outposts of his defeated seed. Our warrior Messiah is victorious and His people are victorious in Him. In Christ we likewise have been crucified (Romans 6:4), resurrected  (Col. 2:12) ascended (Eph. 2:6) and in session (Eph. 2:6). In Christ we are prophets, priests, and kings under sovereign God and when we engage in the conflict again the serpent seed we engage in it knowing that the conflict has already been decided and that we are fighting as the victors going from victory unto victory against an enemy that still has the originally place hostility between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman still present. The seed of the serpent still hates us and we out of the love of our great Liege Lord Jesus Christ hate the serpent seed enough to oppose them at every turn. We meet their hostility with a grace given hostility to match and more.

We must careful not to reduce the hostility that has been sovereignly placed between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman by turning it just a metaphor for fighting against sin. While it is certainly is true that part of our conflict is to fight against sin within us and to fight against yielding to temptation (and many times we will fail) the conflict that we as Christ’s seed have been appointed to can not be reduced only to our fight with sin, essential though that is. No, the conflict is a real conflict where enemy troops align up against one another on real fields of battle. I have experienced in that my own life when the seed of the serpent located in the journalistic serpent seed in the Michigan newspaper, radio, and television media along with the national organization of the SPLC gathered to do battle against me as one of Christ’s warrior seed. I most recently witnessed it when Rev. Michael Shover was assailed by the hordes of serpent seed as he manfully did battle with them in the Iowa State house. Before that it was the great Thomas Achord who did battle with the serpent seed only to be grievously wounded by the vipers. These skirmishes are nothing compared to other contests where greater saints than Achord, Rev. Shover or myself were required to resist to the point of blood. How many saints, in this never-ending conflict have lost their lives for their Liege-Lord only to gain their lives by being ushered into glory to be with their great Captain and their kin who have gone before?

In wrapping up we have need to speak to one more issue. There are those who will fault this line of thinking with being too jagged, too bellicose, to pugnacious. Allow me to suggest that there is nothing inconsistent with what I have said about the conflict between the serpent seed and the seed of the warrior Messiah with the concomitant truth of the necessity of God’s warrior seed to have compassion and pity on the seed of the serpent. Indeed, open hostility to the seed of the serpent is a great kindness to them. Can you imagine how much hatred there is to the seed of the serpent by showering them with what we call “love” today? This pseudo love is seen in any number of denominations who are trying to “love” the seed of the serpent while at the same time taking that seed into the bosom of their denominations. Such behavior is not an act of kindness to the serpent seed but this denial of the grace driven hostility between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent only emboldens the serpent seed to take over whole denominations such as we find happening in most of our “white hat conservative Reformed denominations” today. Do you want to have compassion on the serpent seed? Then give them no rest by engaging them in battle. War with them until they sue for peace demonstrating such by repenting and owning Jesus Christ as their Liege-Lord. If the context calls for your being polite while you slip them the shiv then by all means be polite. If the context calls for buying them the next cup of coffee before nuking them then by all means buy that next cup of coffee.

Above all else though, do not forget that you’ve been called to war and as such you should develop the skills of the soldier. In this context that means knowing what you believe and why you believe it and what you don’t believe and why you don’t believe it. This work of the intellect is the equivalent of how a soldier masters the different tools (weapons) of war. You have need also to realize that in warfare you will likely be required to suffer. You will have to pray for the ability to persevere when you no longer have any perseverance left. Then there is the necessity also to realize that the serpent seed who will do you the greatest injury will likely rise from within the Church. Like Judas attacking Christ with a kiss, so it will be the case that those who wound you the deepest may very likely come from members of the household of God. When that happens pray to God that He will give you the strength to pray that they might repent, be forgiven, and be restored to the household of God.

So, there it is. The Christian’s life is a life that is characterized by a call to a centuries old conflict. We, in the new covenant age, have the satisfaction of knowing that the battle has already been won. We have the satisfaction of knowing that we shall go from victory unto victory if we will only fight. We can have the glow of satisfaction when there is open hostility against us by the seed of the serpent, and we in turn can have joy in the open hostility that we have towards the viper brood who would, if they could, roll the Lord Christ off His throne.

 

 

 

 

Covenant of Grace Musings

The fact that the Church is continuous with Israel so that it is the New & Improved Israel is seen in the reality that the Church’s solution to the apostasy of Judas was to immediately select a 12th man to replace Judas with the purpose being to once again have twelve men to lead in God’s New and Better covenant Israel.

This also indicates that the New and Better covenant was merely the full flowering of all the preceding covenants. Frankly, in many respects each successive covenant in the one covenant of grace in the OT could likewise have been referred to as a “New and Better covenant,” in as much with each successive covenant the richness and fullness of the unfolding one covenant of grace is revealed.

Think of the covenant of grace as an extension ladder. The completeness of it was guaranteed in the eternal intra-trinitarain covenant of peace (Pactum Salutis).  There our extension ladder is eternally in the mind of God based on the eternal covenant made between the three members of the trinity. In time what was a reality in eternity is established and like any extension ladder its full height is not reached until the last fly section is fully extended. Each extension was present in the ladder before the extension was put into operation. Only when the ladder is fully extended do you have the full ladder. So it is with the covenant of grace. Each extension of the one covenant of grace was implied in the first expression (Gen. 3:15) of the covenant of grace but only upon the full extension can the full height and glory of the covenant be known. So, the covenant of grace is a unity that is expressed in diversity with no subsequent covenant (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic) contradicting anything about the previous covenant. Among the covenants there is a harmony of interests just as we find a harmony of interests in the Pactum Salutis (Covenant of Peace).

Here we see covenantal diversity in covenantal unity. Each successive covenant serving the same purpose and end and yet each successive covenant revealing some nuance that previously was not revealed.
With Christ we have the full flowering of the one covenant of grace and no fuller flowering of the covenant is possible. Because of this there is no need for further revelational gifts such as one finds in Pentecostalism. No further need for miracles. No further need for signs and wonders. With Christ and the revelation of His Word we have all. That fact that Christ has completed covenantal theology with the new and better covenant is proof positive that the one covenant of grace is completed.

Contra Mundum, Christian Nationalism Has Always Been a Thing Among Christians

Relative to the interpretation below, consider these quotes from the Geneva Bible footnotes:

Rom.11:22.3 “… we must mark here, that he speaketh not of the election of every private man, which remainest steadfast forever, but of the election of the whole nation.”

Rom.11:23 “…[Some] are cut off and clean cast away: which thing is especially to be considered in nations and peoples, as in the Gentiles and the Jews.”

Rom.11:24.1 “… he speaketh of the whole nation, not of every one part.”

And now for the interpretation of Romans 11 proving Christian Nationalism;

“Romans 11:17, 19, with its “branches broken off” metaphor has frequently been viewed as proof of the relativity and changeability of election, and it is pointed out that at the end of vs. 23, the Gentile Christians are threatened with being cut off in case they do not continue in the kindness of God. But wrongly. Already this image of engrafting should have restrained such an explanation. This image is nowhere and never used of the implanting of an individual Christian, into the mystical body of Christ by regeneration. Rather, it signifies the reception of a racial line or national line into the dispensation of the covenant or their exclusion from it. This reception, of course, occurs by faith in the preached word, and to that extent, with this engrafting of a race or a nation, there is also connected the implanting of individuals into the body of Christ. The cutting off, of course, occurs by unbelief; not, however, by the unbelief of person who first believed, but solely by the remaining in unbelief of those who, by virtue of their belonging to the racial line, should have believed and were reckoned as believers. So, a rejection ( = multiple rejections) of an elect race is possible, without it being connected to a reprobation of elect believers. Certainly, however, the rejection of a race or nation involves at the same time the personal reprobation of a sequence of people. Nearly all the Israelites who are born and die between the rejection of Israel as a nation and the reception of Israel at the end times appear to belong to those reprobated. And the thread of Romans 11:22 (of being broken off) is not directed to the Gentile Christians as individual believers but to them considered racially.”

Geerhardus Vos
Dogmatic Theology Vol. 1 — 118

“God’s decree is not exclusively concerned with individuals but also comprises nations and establishes the bond between generations. The destiny of a nation is weighed by Him, as is the destiny of a person. There is not the slightest interest, indeed is completely impossible on Reformed grounds, to deny national election or whatever it may be called.”

Geerhardus Vos
Dogmatic Theology Vol 1. — pg. 111

A few observations;

1,) This statement more clearly than could be asked prohibits the New World Order agenda of erasing the Nations and turning the world into a vast melting pot. If God elects nations then nations are God’s means whereby he elects persons from those nations. To advocate positions that would destroy nations is to resist God.

2.) Note also that this National Election, Vos offers, establishes the bond between generations. Clearly if National Election establishes the bond between generations it is a ethnic bond as well as a generational bond. Generations in a nation belong to the same ethnos since nation by its very definition is descent from a common ancestor. God works in ethnic lines as covenant theology expressly teaches.  The bond God establishes in a elect nation is ethnic as well as Spiritual. Any attempt to destroy the ethno-generational bond that God establishes in and among nations is an attempt to overthrow God.

3.) Any alienist theology which tries to teach a postmillennialism where all peoples bleed into one is a anti-Christ theology-eschatology. New World Order “Christianity is anti-covenant theology. The same is true of those “theologians” (we refer to them as theologian only by way of courtesy, not by way of conviction) like Doug Wilson or Andrew Sandlin  and numerous others who adamantly oppose Christian Nationalism. If what Vos says is accurate in interpreting Romans 11 then Christian Nationalism is as Biblical as any other doctrine one would like to name. One cannot be a postmillennialist and at the same time eschew Christian Nationalism and its kissing cousin “Kinism.”

4.) The Vos quote exposes the depths of stupidity of people like R. Scott Clark who despite saying he believes that whole notion of Christian Nationalism is cosplay has devoted to this point 7 full entries railing against the notion of Christian Nationalism. If Christian Nationalism is so impossible why is Clark wasting his time on it?

Continuing on this theme we find Reformed Idiots like Andrew Sandlin saying things like this;

“Racism (with its kissing cousin kinism) has deep roots in ancient paganism. The gospel universalizes. Racism tribalizes.”

Keep in mind that the whole concept and idea of “racism” barely existed as a thing until Trotsky wildly popularized the notion, filling it with new negative meaning, as a means to eliminate Slavic political groups he wished to eliminate.

Today, the word “racism” functions in the same way that Trotsky intended it. The word “racism” today has no stable meaning and is merely used as a linguistic cudgel to beat white Christians over the head with in order to seek to fill them with false guilt unto the end of eliminating them as a people who bring the fragrance of Christ to every area of life.
 

Our New Public Rituals Stemming From Our New Culture & Religion

If culture is defined as “religion made public,” then as all religions have rituals we would expect to find public religious rituals adorning every culture. And that is exactly what we do find. In a Christian culture a public religious ritual are things like attending church weekly, saying prayer before school starts, putting “In God We Trust” on our coinage.

As we in the West and in America find our culture changing that means by necessity our religion is changing. As our religion is changing then we can expect different public religious rituals to adorn our new religiously driven culture. And that is exactly what we find with the advent of new rituals. Our new rituals have been things like the administration and receiving of the vaccine. Whereas pagan cultures used to engage in the ritual of offering up a virgin to the volcano God every year, we today have the public ritual of offering up ourselves to the strange belief that the vaccine will save us. Whereas Christian cultures would often don the sign of the Cross as a public ritual, we today in our public ritual took to putting on masks, or hoisting and flying a pride flag. Whereas as a Christian people we would offer our children up to God in Baptism with our new public rituals we are offering up our children to grooming, hormone blockers, and surgery.

Public rituals that communicate the religion that drives the culture are an inescapable category.

Once upon a time American culture, because of its Christian underpinnings, would find public ritual days set aside for prayer and fasting. These days were often called for because some disaster had visited the people and the leadership understood that there was a need for public repentance — a crying out to the God of the Bible for forgiveness.

But now our culture has changed with the advent of our new Globo-Homo religion. Now instead of days and prayer and fasting that bespoke a repentance that took ownership for our sin, what we get in its place is the act of public scapegoating and shaming. We have thus moved from a culture where public rituals would include days of prayer and fasting with the theme of repentance — all of which communicated that we were taking responsibility for our sin — to a culture where via the public ritual of scapegoating where instead of taking responsibility and owning up to our sin and guilt we now transfer responsibility for our sins by shaming and scapegoating thus blaming our problems on things beyond our control like heteronormativity, white supremacy, global warming, and gender bias.

As such we have moved from a culture of guilt to a culture of shame and in a culture of shame one main priority is to make sure that the shame can be passed on to somebody else so as to avoid the cultural isolation that comes when shame finally finds a home. With this kind of religion driving this kind of culture the inevitable outcome is a cancel culture reality where, when the blame finally finds someone to land upon and settle, that person finds themselves cast out of society. With this kind of religion there is a great deal of time and energy spent avoiding the shame. This translates into a cultural infrastructure that does not operate smoothly for the benefit of the citizenry. This translates into a culture of suspicion and defensiveness.

Our new culture, which has changed out the previous one is just a matter of a few decades is a very different culture than the one many of us over 45 grew up in.

And it is all driven by religious commitments.