“After examining myself and studying historical subjects I am not so convinced that religion is so basic to a person’s identity….

In other words, life as a Christian is complicated. The best word to describe that is one that the intellectual historian, David Hollinger, coined in his book Postethnic America— hyphenation. To recognize that people (even Christians) are a mix of different responsibilities and loyalties is to admit that ‘most individuals live in many circles simultaneously and that the actual living of any individual life entails a shifting division of labor between the several ‘we’s’ of which the individual is part.’”

Hyphenated Greetings

Dr. D. G. Hart

 

1.) In this quote Dr. Hart demonstrates, once again, how his religion bleeds into his identity. His religious conviction is that religion is not so basic to a person identity. Now, inasmuch as that statement is a religious conviction that statement of his religious conviction creates for him his “hyphenated life,” where there are official zones where religious impact must be considered and official zones were religion must not be considered. But, make no mistake, it is his religion of compartmentalized religion that is basic to Darryl’s identity. His whole reason for existence is characterized by his zeal for his religion.

2.) The implication of Hart’s last sentence above is that there are some areas where the Christian individual must consider Christ and other areas where the Christian individual can dispatch with considering Christ. For example, according to Darryl, why should a Christian have to consider Christ when he is cheering for the Tigers at a Tigers ballgame? I suppose this means that when Darryl attends a Tigers game he can scream invective at the Umpires for bad calls since that is part of the ballgame. After all … it is a hyphenated life and what does Christ have to do with rooting as a fan at Tigers games?

3.) It is true that Christians have many roles in life but to suggest that any of those roles can be taken up apart from consideration of Christ is just not wholesome.

^{Hebrews 3:1} Therefore, ^[a]holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly vocation, consider the^[b]Apostle and high Priest of our ^[c]profession Christ Jesus:

“What strikes me by this adjective, ‘holy,’ is that under the Old Testament you weren’t always necessarily holy. There was a kind of covenantal holiness which referred to membership, but in terms of Leviticus and Numbers only the priests were holy. The people were not. And he just has told us that Jesus is our high priest who’s the one who sanctifies and we are the ones being sanctified in chapter two and now [Christ] has made this propitiation. To say ‘holy brothers’ is granting them a new covenant status that you could not attain in the Old Testament, unless you were a priest. And so, he really honors them with this and really builds upon this idea that Christ is this high priest who’s made this propitiation, and now…. ‘holy brothers’.”

– Zach Keele, OPC minister
From the White Horse Inn radio broadcast
Commenting on Hebrews 3:1

Just a few observations

1.) The OT seems to contradict Rev. Keele about the Old Testament saints being holy.

^{Leviticus 11:44-45} For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground.⁴⁵ For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”

^{Leviticus 19:2} Speak unto all the Congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them,Ye shall be ^[a]holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

2.) If the Old Testament saints weren’t holy then could they have been saved? And if they were saved, how were they saved without being holy and without the Lord Christ.

3.) It has always been a Reformed staple that the OT saints were saved the same way the NT saints were saved, and that was by the propitiatory work of the Lord Christ. The OT saints saw that from afar through the sacrifices while we, as NT saints had the reality that was *proleptic and promissory for the OT saints.  Still, if the OT saints were saved (and they were) then the only way they were saved was by their looking forward to the finished work of Christ that proleptic to them.

4.) Remember that “Holy” simply means “set apart for a unique usage.” Are we really being told that Israel and the Israel of Israel were not a set apart people? This is not well thought out by Rev. Keele.

5.) Hence the statement above is a significant departure from Reformed theology in favor of some kind of Baptist / Dispensational / R2K  hermeneutic where the standard Reformed hermeneutic of continuity has been replaced in favor of a hermeneutic of discontinuity. This quote does extreme violence to what it means to be Reformed.

_________________________
* proleptic — the assigning of a person, event, etc., to a period earlier than the actual one; the representation of something in the future as if it already existed or had occurred;

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.