Iron Ink

Pietism And the Hyphenated Life

“Pietism no doubt, expressed the religious reaction of devout evangelicals agaisnt orthodox formalism, and it tendend to concentrate upon the doctrine of salvation and to develop Arminian rather than a Reformed doctrine of Grace. God’s offer of salvation was supposed to be made to all men and it was believed that Christ died for all mankind. Given such a doctrine of grace it is not surprising that pietists have tended, with a few notable exceptions, to think of religion as being mainly concerned with the salvation of the individual and with his spiritual state of mind and feelings. As a consequence Pietism has greatly assisted the secularization of Western Society as a whole, since its religious individualism takes for granted or ignores the structures of Church and State, seeking within society to build up significant religious cells. The main concern of Dutch pietists, as of Wesleyan pietists in England and America, became the salvation of one’s individual soul rather than of society as a whole. Instead of thinking that Christians should be concerned with the whole of life—business, political, educational and cultural, pietism demands the segregation of a certain sphere of life as peculiarly religious and teaches that the believer should concentrate his entire efforts upon cultivating subjective religious states of mind and feeling, as well as various personal devotional and ascetic disciplines. The larger questions of church and state and culture tend to become discounted, sometimes because of apocalyptic expectations, or because they are considered to be religiously neutral. As a result, the attention of the evangelical pietist tended to become concentrated upon personal rather than social morals, and the sins of the flesh have been more often feared than the spiritual sins, such as selfishness, pride, envy and jealousy.”

E. L. Hebden Taylor
The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, p. 29f.

What modern current Reformed movement are you reminded of when you read this quote?

Obama’s NSA Speech … Welcome To The Burgeoning Police State

“It is therefore, because of ‘the deep deprivation’ of man’s nature due to original sin, most wholesome for magistrates and officers in church and commonwealth never to affect more liberty and authority than will do them good: for whatever transcendent power is given will certainly overrun those that give it and those that receive it. There is a strain in a man’s heart that will sometime or other run out to excess, unless, the Lord restrain it; but it is not good to venture it. It is necessary, therefore, that all power that is on earth be limited, church-power or other.”

John Cotton (1584-1652)
“Limitation on Government”
Quoted in “The Journal of Christian Reconstruction” Vol.III No.1

In light of Obama’s speech yesterday wherein he defended NSA mega spying and compared the NSA spying on Americans, per the collection of some 200 million text messages per day, to Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty lads spying on British troop movements we need to remember the words of John Cotton. Obama, in essence, insisted that Americans should calm down over NSA spying since, after all, “NSA Agents Are ‘Our Neighbors and Friends’…” John Cotton on the other hand reminds us, in his own words, ‘that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Americans and Obama together need to keep in mind that once upon a time the men who comprised spy organizations like the NKVD, Gestapo, the Stasi, GRU and the Cheka were also just neighbors and friends to those that they spied upon. Police States are started by neighbors and friends spying on one another as sanctioned by despots, usurpers, and tyrannical heads of State.

The fourth amendment is supposed to mean something,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Obama’s proposals continue to allow surveillance of Americans without requiring a Fourth Amendment determination of probable cause. As such, Obama continues to act in a high handed and unconstitutional manner. Obama promises he will implement safeguards against potential abuses but such promises are akin to Messr. Fox promising to implement safeguards to make sure the Hen-house will be safe. The Founders, in the 4th amendment, created the only safeguard we need. It would be nice if our current Tyrant in chief would be ruled by it.

With Obama’s Speech on the Police State you can write it down that we now live in a archipelago of oppression. The FEDS now effectively have a choke point on individual citizens whenever they desire to access it. What we are living through is a soft oppression whereby we are suffocated into silence by a Federal tyrannical apparatus that can turn on any citizen whenever it has need to do so.

According to former NSA official Bill Binney, who served 32 years as a spook,

“All of the information gained by the NSA through spying is then shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges.”

We should listen to John Cotton and rise up and constrain the transcendent Federal power for it certainly has overrun those who gave it, its power.

Matthew 28 and the Great Commission

Most of modern Western Christianity, both liberal and “conservative,” misunderstand the Great Commission as a command to make Disciples of people from all Nations. This is decidedly not what Jesus commanded His Disciples to do. Rather Jesus commanded them to disciple the Nations as Nations, i.e. to make Christian Nations. The misunderstanding is a result of a mishandling of the Greek in Matthew 28. The way that we have translated that into English has allowed us to interpret the passages to mean that we are to disciple people from among the Nations. That is not the meaning that was retained in Older Versions such as the Geneva Bible. In the Greek the command is to Disciple Nations as Nations.

Now certainly that cannot be done without discicipling people in the Nations but the emphasis in Matthew 28 is Corporate. Nations as Nations are to be discipled.

Of course the upshot of all this is that all of life — all its Institutions, all its civil-social structures, all its cultural corporate infrastructure — is to be brought into allegiance to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Matthew 28 teaches there are to be such things as Christian families, Christian schools, Christian social orders, Christian law, and Christian Nations.

Of course an implication of this is the continued place of Nations in a world that has been discipled unto Christ. Christianity does not create a New World Order where internationalism becomes the socio-political means of the organization of mankind. The success of the Gospel means that the Nations as Nations continue to exist. In such a way the long standing Christian principle of unity in diversity is maintained. When the Great Commission is taken in its Biblical context, according to its original intent, the converted World finds a spiritual unity in Christ while the diversity of who God has ordained them to be as Nations continues on. In such a way the created One and many reflects the un-created One and Many.

Supporting this older reading are chaps like Matthew Henry who could say on Matthew 28,

[2.] “What is the principal intention of this (Great) commission; to disciple all nations. Matheµteusate-“Admit them disciples; do your utmost to make the nations Christian nations;’ not, “Go to the nations, and denounce the judgments of God against them, as Jonah against Nineveh, and as the other Old-Testament prophets’ (though they had reason enough to expect it for their wickedness), “but go, and disciple them.’ Christ the Mediator is setting up a kingdom in the world, bring the nations to be his subjects; setting up a school, bring the nations to be his scholars; raising an army for the carrying on of the war against the powers of darkness, enlist the nations of the earth under his banner. The work which the apostles had to do, was, to set up the Christian religion in all places, and it was honourable work; the achievements of the mighty heroes of the world were nothing to it. They conquered the nations for themselves, and made them miserable; the apostles conquered them for Christ, and made them happy.”

This interview is excellent on this matter,

The Murder Of God … The Death Of Man

As the West continues to attempt to murder God thus scrubbing Him from its thinking, the consequence is that it likewise murders anything and everything that would stand in as a Representational figure of God. As such the murder of God in the West is the death of all authority which would be suggestive of God. This observation is as old as the French Revolution. In a 1819 Caricature by English caricaturist George Cruikshank. Titled “The Radical’s Arms”, we find depicted the infamous French Revolution guillotine with the phrase in the Republican Banner, “No God! No Religion! No King! No Constitution!”. You see the elimination of God is the elimination of all that approximates a Fatherly authoritative figure in the social order that is attempting to negate God.

So, when a culture attempts to delete the God of the Bible from its thinking it will inevitably turn to integration downward into the void as all horizontal social order structures that mime the reality of God are given the same heave ho as God is given. The result of this attempted escape from divine patrimony is an escape from all authority bearing structures in favor of man’s sovereign autonomous self as shaped by his uncontrolled lusts.

A further consequence of the West insisting that they will not have God rule over them is the loss of a ruling standard. With no transcendent reference point by which to adjudicate the value of all things human the only thing left is to do, by those still suffering with the residual effects of a long spent Christianity — a Christianity which still recalls some quaint notion that all things must be “fair,” — is to insist that all things human are of equal value. As such the absence of a God transcendent is to make all things transcendent, which is to make no thing transcendent. All must be equal in value. Because of this we find the obnoxious idea that all cultures are equally valuable and equally good. Because of this absenting of God transcendent there are no disabilities, no perversions, and nothing or anybody superior to anything or anybody else. Behold the egalitarian cult wherein because all are equal, and a elimination of all things unequal, becomes the Holy grail to be pursued by all “right-minded people.”

A third consequence of the of God whacked is the necessity to find another transcendent point to take his place. Since God lies bleeding the only candidate left is man. Man said loudly becomes God and this loudly spoken man is most often the God-State. Man can not live without a point of transcendence that can be used for a canon of standardization for social order norms and ethics. Whether one desires to consider the Pharaoh gods of the ancient Egyptians or the modern Hegelian divine Spirit-Mind that incarnates itself into the State men who refuse to have the God of the Bible rule over them will always hoist a immanent god into the vacated place of transcendence.

Now, this has an implication that needs to be teased out. As the God of the Bible is always one and is a unity, what happens when man makes a immanent to be transcendent is that man insists that his immanent transcendent God be one. A god who does not have the attribute of oneness is no god at all. This means that the immanent transcendent God-State must now work to make sure that, as God walking on the earth, all those who have given it life, must be one since the immanent transcendent godhead is a projection of one people. What this means is that the God State will demand conformity to its image. This means that diversity must be eliminated and all must become Borg unto the God-State. Cultures that overthrow God in their thinking become cultures of the anthill and the beehive.

Yet another implication for men who seek to eliminate God from their thinking will be the continued need for a sense of and attraction for “that which is Other.” Rudolf Otto was the author of a book titled “Knowledge of the Holy,” and in it he argues that man is drawn to this numinous sense of the Other. For Western man, God has been He who is wholly Other. This desire for Transcendent otherness if it is not to be found in the God of the Bible will have to be found some place else. The argument could be made then that the West’s current preoccupation with third world and alien cultures is how it is satisfying the lost sense of “Otherness” that was eclipsed when the West abandoned the God of the Bible. As such, those things that are most strange, most different, and most unfamiliar are now those numinous things which the West is pursuing, precisely because the West has overthrown He who alone can answer to man’s need for “Otherness.” This may answer the West’s growing ethnocidal embrace of the macabre body modification cult, third world immigration policy, and sodomite marriage. Having thrown off God as “Other,” only sinful “Otherness” remains and it is pursued with all the zeal of new found love. When you combine this observation with the one from the previous paragraph it is easy to envision that the Oneness that we will finally come to is the Oneness of the Other teased out in this paragraph. This represents a complete integration downward into the void.

Of course the flip side of this observation that because we have committed deicide, thus eliminating the numinous Other, and as a consequence have embraced an immanent other, the results have meant the hatred of the familiar, the known, and the normative. This is seen in the West by the knee-jerk hate impulse against all things Christian and as seen in the destruction of the family. That which is “other” is glorified and pursued, while that is kith and kin to us is abominated. Naturally this means that eventually with the killing of God we will kill ourselves as we worship as “other” that which is most contrary to who the West has historically been.

Finally, for our purpose here, when God is rolled off His throne the Creator Creature distinction evaporates. The meaning of this is that man, no longer having an ontological distinction between God and Man, pursues with rabid fervency, the egalitarian impulse mentioned earlier. When the Creator Creature (God – Man) distinction fails then all other distinctions have no anchor by which to be kept in place. The creeping disintegration and even erasure of horizontal distinctions such as between Male vs. Female, such as between the different races, such as between cultures, such as between Employer vs. Employee can all be attributed to the erasure of the Creator Creature distinction. The scrubbing of the Creator Creature distinction that comes with the scrubbing of God from the consciousness of man means the simultaneous scrubbing of all temporal and horizontal distinctions in favor of a social order reality where distinctions are seen as a social construct to be eliminated in favor of the god uniformity mentioned earlier.

All of these consequences of eliminating God, as recited in this essay, serve to reinforce one another. The consequences are distinct yet complimentary. When man reaches out to strike and eliminate God the result is always that man loses his own mannishness.