Matthew Henry, Humanist Manifesto & Constitution of the USSR On Babel

While reading Matthew Henry I came across something from Henry that really flies in the face of much of what we see in our the mad pursuit of multiculturalism, or in suppositions supporting the idea that nations are social constructs that can be held together merely on the basis of propositions. On Genesis 11 (Babel) Matthew Henry can write,

1. Their language was confounded. God, who, when he made man, taught him to speak, and put words into his mouth fit to express the conceptions of his mind by, now caused these builders to forget their former language, and to speak and understand a new one, which yet was common to those of the same tribe or family, but not to others: those of one colony could converse together, but not with those of another.

Understand the implications of Henry’s statement.

When God dispersed the tongues the variation and number of tongues was equal to the variation and numbers of preexisting tribes. The fact that God dispersed them by language implies that he dispersed them by tribal identity. If Henry is correct here (and I think he is) this drives a stake through the often repeated meme of the Christian cultural Marxists that Babel was about languages and not ethnicities. Henry would have us realize that there is a nexus between the confounding of the language and the tribes to whom the languages belonged. When the languages were dispersed, Henry believed, the dispersal was tribe by tribe according to language. Precisely because it was about languages it was about ethncities.

Henry again offers,

(4.) The project of some to frame a universal character, in order to a universal language, how desirable soever it may seem, is yet, I think, but a vain thing to attempt; for it is to strive against a divine sentence, by which the languages of the nations will be divided while the world stands

If, according to Henry’s previous reasoning that the confounded tongues corresponded to the confounded tribes then Henry is telling us that ethnic homogeneity for tribes or nations is the divine standard while the world stands. By Henry’s previous reasoning the attempt to build a universal people at Babel was confounded by dividing the tribes by dividing their languages.

Current Christian Cultural Marxists, according to Herny, strive against the divine sentence when they insist on pursuing a Christianity that ignores God’s dividing of the peoples.

Now, to underscore Henry’s comments we examine how the enemies of Christianity have consistently striven against the divine sentence of dividing people’s and languages of which Henry speaks.

Humanist Manifesto II

ELEVENTH: The principle of moral equality must be furthered through elimination of all discrimination based upon race, religion, sex, age, or national origin. This means equality of opportunity and recognition of talent and merit. Individuals should be encouraged to contribute to their own betterment. If unable, then society should provide means to satisfy their basic economic, health, and cultural needs, including, wherever resources make possible, a minimum guaranteed annual income. We are concerned for the welfare of the aged, the infirm, the disadvantaged, and also for the outcasts – the mentally retarded, abandoned, or abused children, the handicapped, prisoners, and addicts – for all who are neglected or ignored by society. Practicing humanists should make it their vocation to humanize personal relations.

We deplore racial, religious, ethnic, or class antagonisms. Although we believe in cultural diversity and encourage racial and ethnic pride, we reject separations which promote alienation and set people and groups against each other; we envision an integrated community where people have a maximum opportunity for free and voluntary association.

TWELFTH: We deplore the division of humankind on nationalistic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move toward the building of a world community in which all sectors of the human family can participate. Thus we look to the development of a system of world law and a world order based upon transnational federal government. This would appreciate cultural pluralism and diversity. It would not exclude pride in national origins and accomplishments nor the handling of regional problems on a regional basis. Human progress, however, can no longer be achieved by focusing on one section of the world, Western or Eastern, developed or underdeveloped. For the first time in human history, no part of humankind can be isolated from any other. Each person’s future is in some way linked to all. We thus reaffirm a commitment to the building of world community, at the same time recognizing that this commits us to some hard choices.

The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union

ARTICLE 123. Equality of rights of citizens of the U.S.S.R., irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.

We see when we compare and contrast a Father of Historic Christianity (Matthew Henry) with the 20th century Humanists and Communists we see a marked contrasts between the oikophilia (love of one’s household and one’s faith) of Christianity and the Babelphilia (love of Babel and so hatred of ethnic distinctions) of the Marxists. Now, naturally this one point of harmony of Christians and Marxist does not by itself prove that Christians who embrace a globalism that automatically attacks ethnic homogeneity in a knee jerk fashion are Marxists but it at least should cause us to ask questions.

McAtee Contra VanDrunen On Religious Commitment & Social Orders

‎”…what sort of religious commitment, if any, should be promoted or required within the social order? The answer, I suggest, is none. A crucial consideration is the fact that God made the Noahic covenant with “you [Noah and his sons] and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you” (9:9-10). The human race generally (along with the animal kingdom) is God’s covenant partner. Not a single distinction is made between believers and unbelievers, but God promises to preserve them in their common social life.”

~ Dr. David Van Drunen, 2012 lecture

How thoughtful of Dr. Van Drunen to give us so clearly and to so passionately advocate his religious commitment for the social order. Dr. VD’s religious commitment for the social order that he is advocating is that the social order should be animated by the religious commitment of no religious commitment. Another way to label his religious commitment for the social order is ” Social Order Atheism. Interestingly enough this is the exact same social order theory advocated by Marxists of all hues and stripes.

Now, some desire to answer Dr. Van Drunen by insisting that the religious commitment of the social order should be all religious commitments. In this thinking the social order should be animated by all religious commitments. This is sometimes called pluralism but I prefer to label it as Social Order Polytheism. Interestingly enough this is the social order advocated by all anarchists.

The main problem with Dr. Van Drunen’s thinking is that it presupposes that man can cease being Homo Adorans (man the worshiper) in his common realm. For Dr. Van Drunen man is no longer a worshiper as he lives and moves and has is being in the social order, and not being a worshiper man can create a social order that is not reflective of any ultimate religious commitment to a god or god concept. Such a thinking puts a severe strain on ones desire to be a irenic.

In both situations of social order Atheism or social order polytheism, even though they each being with seemingly opposite religious commitments for the social order, they end up in the same place. If the social order is to be Atheistic then it will be the autonomous man deified as the State that will create the social order and the citizenry will be required to have religious commitments to the state. If the social order is to be polytheistic then it will require some institution to set the limits on how these competing religious commitments will interact in the social order. That institutions will likely be the State. Both of these positions lead us to the outcome that in the State we will live and move and have or being for the social order.

Irrational Fundamentalism

Text — I Corinthians 15:1-6
Subject — Resurrection
Theme — Christ’s Resurrection
Propositions — Examining the modern way of thinking of Christ’s resurrection

Purpose — Therefore having looked at the modern way of thinking about Christ’s resurrection let us praise God that in the Scriptures He provides clarity for how we should think about the Resurrection.

Introduction

15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

The great premises of the Bible is that

God is real
God is Holy
Man is a sinner
Man is accountable to God
Man has sought to displace God for himself as god
God intends to judge men for this high handed rebellion
Man can find safety from that judgment in the judgment of God that fell on Christ

That God is satisfied with us because He is satisfied with His judgment that fell on Christ is attested to by the Resurrection. The Scripture’s say that  Christ

“was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

The Scripture teaches that because of Christ’s death and resurrection “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

So … no bodily resurrection of Christ, no possible sense of relief from the inescapable sense of God’s just wrath and opposition to us.

The resurrection then is instrumental to the Christian faith. Without the real live resurrection of Jesus Christ from the doldrums of the grave there is no such thing as Christianity.

Of the import of the bodily Resurrection to the bible believing Christian there can be little doubt. In this Passage in Corinthians Paul turns to the importance of the resurrection of Jesus repeatedly.

14and if Christ hath not risen, then void [is] our preaching, and void also your faith,

17and if Christ hath not risen, vain is your faith, ye are yet in your sins;
18then, also, those having fallen asleep in Christ did perish;
19if in this life we have hope in Christ only, of all men we are most to be pitied.

The Early Church Father Chysostom realized how important the resurrection of Christ was to the spread of Christianity.

“For in what were the disciples confident? In the shrewdness of their reasonings? Nay of all men they were the most unlearned. But in the abundance of their possessions? Nay, they neither had staff nor shoes. But in the distinction of their race? Nay, they were mean, and of mean ancestors. But in the greatness of their country? Nay, they were of obscure places. But in their own numbers? Nay, they were not more than eleven, and they were scattered abroad. But in their Master’s promises? What kind of promises? For if He were not risen again, neither would those be likely to be trusted by them. And how should they endure a frantic people. For if the chief of them endured not the speech of a woman, keeping the door, and if all the rest too, on seeing Him bound, were scattered abroad, how should they have thought to run to the ends of the earth, and plant a feigned tale of a resurrection? For if he stood not a woman’s threat, and they not so much the sight of bonds, how were they able to stand against kings, and rulers, and nations, where were swords, and gridirons, and furnaces, and ten thousand deaths by day, unless they had the benefit of the power and grace of Him who rose again? Such miracles and so many were done, and none of these things did the Jews regard, but crucified Him Who had done them, and were they likely to believe these men at their mere word about a resurrection? These things are not, they are not so, but the might of Him Who rose again brought them to pass.”

Many years later another minister commented on how central a particular understanding of the resurrection is to the Christian faith.

“This truth (Resurrection) is so important that nothing in religion can exist without it. The apostles diligently confirmed it in the first churches; and for the same reason it was attacked by Satan and denied and opposed by many. This was done in two ways: first by an open denial of any such thing – “how can some of you say that there is no resurrection from the dead?” (1 Cor 15:12); and second, those who did not dare to attack it directly expounded it in an allegorical way, saying that “the resurrection has already taken place” (2 Tim. 2:18). Observe that our apostle in both cases does not only condemn these errors as false but declares positively that their admission overthrows the faith and makes the preaching of the Gospel vain and useless.”

(John Owen, Commentary on Hebrews 6)

This evening, following the Scriptures and following 2000 years of Church history we want to spend our time considering different ways the modern Church thinks about the resurrection.

The premise is that as Christians we not only have to affirm the resurrection but that we also have to affirm a very particular resurrection — the resurrection that we find in Scripture.

So what are some of the ways in which the resurrection is confessed today by the Church?

I.) Aesop Fable Resurrection Thinking or Irrational Fundamentalism

This is the way that a large percentage of the Church today thinks about the resurrection. There is a affirmation that the resurrection is existentially true (subjectively true) though it is likely false in terms of its historical reality.

In this way of thinking the resurrection (as well as all of Christianity) becomes like a Aesop fable. We can learn truth from Aesop fables but nobody really thinks the fables themselves are historically true.

We may say there is much to be learned from the Fox who fooled the Crow out of her cheese by falsely flattering her on her singing abilities but no one really believes that a Fox and a crow had a conversation regarding cheese.

Many people want to treat the miraculous accounts of Christianity in just such a way.

“Yes, yes … the lessons that we learn from letting the “truth” of the resurrection impact us are all very well and good but let us not get too cheeky in actually believing that this really happened in history.”

For these types of folks the resurrection and Christianity, as a whole, is one giant Aesop fable.

Emil Brunner, one of their wise men now long dead but still influential underscores this thinking in a couple quotes

“God and the medium of conceptuality are mutually exclusive.”

“All words have only an instrumental value. Neither the spoken words nor their conceptual content are the word itself but only its framework.”

“God can speak His word to a man even through false doctrine”

What Brunner is telling us with these quotes is that there is no getting at objective truth. And if there is no getting at objective truth then the what we believe is no longer the issue but only the “how” we believe — the passion with which we believe whatever we believe.

That this has entered into modern culture is seen everywhere. As one example I offer the film “Serenity,” a film I quite like.

In the scene where the Christian pastor figure of the crew, aptly named “Shepherd Book” dies he grabs the Captain (Mal) and says,

“I don’t care what you believe in, just believe in it.”

As your Shepherd Book I want you to know I don’t care if you just believe in something. I want to know if what you believe corresponds to what God says you must believe.

As such for these types of people it is not what is believed about the resurrection that matters, in terms of content, but rather what matters is the passion with which one believes whatever content one assigns to the resurrection, or similarly, what matters is not believing set truths about the resurrection but rather what matters is having a powerful encounter with a individually defined resurrected Christ thus coming away with a meaningful experience.

“What we require of belief is not that it make sense but that it be sincere….Clearly, this is not the spirituality of a centralized orthodoxy. It is a sort of workshop spirituality that you can get with a cereal-box top and five dollars.” Curtis White — “Hot Air Gods”

This way of thinking about the resurrection insists that personal experience and individual encounter can do for us what the divine record of redemptive history can not do for us. Why try and surmount 2000 years of History in order to find out with precision what God says happened when you can have your own meaningful experience.

Here we see that the objective content of God’s revelation in Scripture gives way to the Jesus encounter — an encounter that is each and every person variable.

Such an encounter has the advantage of canceling out the time chasm between us and the historical Christ who rose from the grave so many years ago and makes us to be contemporaries with Jesus.

Those who have a Aesop’s fable resurrection generally believe that the Scriptures are all paradox and contradiction and given such a paradoxical revelation that can mean anything, it usually does mean any number of things to different people.

And the result of this in the modern Church today does not confess the same resurrected Christ together but rather all confess different Christ’s together. We may be part of the same denomination and perhaps even attend the same Churches yet the resurrected Christ we are all confessing is, potentially, as different as each and every individual doing the confessing.

And all of this is important is because it is not that we believe in some kind of resurrection that matters but rather that we believe in a very particular God defined resurrection that matters.

Now what is behind what we have briefly discussed here happens in two different opposite ways.

1.) Assume the supernatural can’t be true. If it is not true then miracles like resurrection have to be reinterpreted

2.) Presuppose that God is so transcendent that we can’t reach Him.

So … what is the answer to this way of thinking about the resurrection?

We have to be confident in God’s recorded revelation.

1.To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. (Is. 8:20)

2. II Tim. 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

3. I Cor. 10:5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,

We have to do all we can to attend and support Churches which understand what is at stake in this redefining of the Resurrection. As the years unfold and some of you who are younger look for a Church as your life takes you beyond these boundaries look for a place where the Christ of Scripture and a Historical real resurrection is a reality. Make it a matter that is non-negotiable.

This Historical real resurrection is what the Holy Spirit speaks of in I Corinthians 15. Paul there doesn’t speak of “it being true to me.” He calls forth the historical evidence. He cites the witnesses that can be called forth. He is not speaking of a resurrection that was based on the truth that Christ has arisen in his heart. The Scriptures everywhere testify to the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. He has flesh and bones that one can examine by touching. He eats breakfast with His disciples.  Christ’s resurrection is as historical as your birth.

For you parents, you must train your children to think this way. If you leave them to imbibe the zeitgeist they will very likely abandon your faith.

Teach them that the resurrection was not just spiritual but real and because it was real it had impact.

We must be careful of the “Spiritual” Resurrection that wherein we have been resurrected. There is a tendency for the Reformed to make “Spiritual” speak Plato as if to mean “non intrusive in our every day to day lives.”

We have been resurrected so that our relationship to the old Adam is superseded by our relationship to the new Adam. This explains why the expectation is that we would walk in “newness of life.” We are resurrected beings and though we are not yet all that we one day will be we are creatures who live in this present age as walking and living in the age to come. Like Legolas in Tolkien’s work we live in two worlds at the same time but the creational age in which we have been resurrected is impinging on all around us that has not yet been resurrected. In some sense then we, as the resurrected, are the bearers of resurrection life to all that we come in contact with.

This reality of having been NOW resurrected with Christ is why Paul can write about our now being seated in the Heavenlies with Christ. It is why he could write that we have been NOW translated to the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, whom He loves. It is why he could write that our citizenship is in heaven, keeping in mind that heaven is invading this present wicked age via His resurrected citizenry.

The “NOW” of our Resurrected status can not be hidden under the bushel of the “not yet.” The Kingdom as come and we are citizens of that future creational age Kingdom bringing the aroma of Christ and that Kingdom unto all we come in contact with.

Conclusion

By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Doctrine vs. Relationship?

Dear Pastor,

“Where does the Holy Spirit come into the picture? Where does a relationship with Jesus that is personal and growing and vibrant come in? I’m actually sort of heartbroken to see such harshness here, where someone says they absolutely know everything about God and how he should be worshiped and thought about and that if you don’t have a degree in theology you can’t possibly know God rightly. These sort of harsh, hard, almost cruel arguments really shut down discussion and participation by normal Christians who just live in this hard, hard world and struggle to even keep the faith in the face of so much pain because we can’t take the browbeating. God leads us, and he leads us to Christ. But, we live in a world that is knock-down, drag-out brutal. When I’m grieving over the loss of my child, doctrine does nothing for me except break my heart more when it’s used as some sort of argument-trumping hammer. My time at Marion College was some of the best in my life. But, I also love that God uses all sorts of people and maybe not all of them fit into a little mold like good tin soldiers. Some come scuffed and scarred and desperate to that cross where Christ has died, and they cling to it for dear life.

Dear XXXXXX,

Thank you for your questions. They are quite good questions and get us to some very important considerations.

Doctrine is an inescapable category. Even the advancement of a position that denigrates “doctrine,” is itself a doctrinal argument. (i.e. — We should have the doctrine of “no doctrine,” or less doctrine or the doctrine of relationship over doctrine. And yet what can I know of growing and vibrant relationship apart from doctrine? How will I know if it is growing and vibrant if I don’t have a doctrinal standard by which to measure what “growth,” and “vibrancy” is? Is my subjective measuring rod of quality of relationship to be the doctrinal yard stick my which I know I am advancing in cruciform conformity to Christ? )

So, in light of this I would say that the Holy Spirit was given to proclaim Christ and His faithfulness and to that end for believers He is to constantly taking them back to the Scriptures where we find the doctrine of Christ being taught on every page. The Holy Spirit comes in to take us back to the place where we learn Christ and His doctrine. (For example, Christ taught the doctrine, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, for my burden is easy and my yoke is light.”) You say “God leads us to Christ,” and yet without the beauty of doctrine I wouldn’t know that and without the sweetness of doctrine I would know nothing about this God and Christ I am being “led” back to.

It is interesting that you speak of “harshness,” and yet when I see someone champion the doctrine that doctrine isn’t that important all that I can see, despite knowing someone’s good intentions, is harshness, since I don’t know how to keep a faith that is uninformed and unshaped by doctrine. (After all what is “the faith,” I am keeping apart from “doctrine” to tell me what that faith is?)

It is precisely because this world is so brutal that I keep turning to doctrine. As a Pastor I am constantly exposed to all the ragged and torn edges of the world’s brutality as I minister to others. If I did not have the life giving sustenance of doctrine that is drawn from the Scriptures I would be of no aid to those who are dented and damaged from being themselves lacerated by the ragged and torn edges of this brutal brutal world. Without the words of eternal life (doctrine) drawn from Scripture all I could do for those I love, who look to me for answers and comfort in the midst of their being bruised and torn by life would be to join them in their despair. (And even being buoyed by doctrine drawn from the Well of Scripture I sometimes wonder if I will be able to maintain my sanity when I look upon the pain and hurt I often see while ministering to the broken.)

I see harshness and brokenness in the future for these beautiful young ladies who are not being given guidance as to the proper deportment and modesty that they are to display as Christian women. I see brokenness and harshness for the 10-13 year old girls who are watching them “perform,” and saying to themselves, “I want to move my body around like that when I grow up.” And believe me XXXXX I see lots and lots of girls who end up used and broken because they learned their lessons regarding deportment and behavior from MTV as opposed to being given a Christian doctrine of modesty.

No, there is no room for playing doctrine off against relationship. My relationship is only as good as my doctrine and my doctrine always announced in my relationship. If I want my relationship to grow more vibrant and healthy then I must steep myself in God’s Word and so learn doctrine.

Praying that the God who gives us the doctrine of “comfort” will be your sustenance in your loss.

Heartbroken with you over the browbeating we are all inflicted with,

Good Friday

The day of wrath, that dreadful day,
when God did have his final say,
His justice and mercy each had their way,

The wrath of man did but reflect
The wrath of God in this respect
Forsaken, abandoned — Divine neglect

What horror did then invade the mind
Of He who came His sheep to find
And who paid the debt, for His kind?

But no unwilling victim, this sacrifice
He staged the players as His device
To orchestrate His redemption price

Judas’ sordid kiss of treachery
The disregard of Pilate’s plea
The vision of Mary at His knee

Yearly we call this Friday “good,”
And mark His hanging on the wood
And are nourished with Him as our food

Divine jurisprudence satisfied
His death, the death that His people died
We are the blood flowing from His side

His work still doth intercede
For our access He still doth plead
And for our comfort He remains our need

Impervious to alien guilt and guile
Thrown at us by the Serpent’s wile
Animated only by forgiveness’s smile

Now, at the word of His command
We call for all to meet His demand
Be reconciled, that ye may in judgment stand

The day of wrath, that dreadful day,
when God did have his final say,
His justice and mercy each had their way,