The Current Common Ground Between Marxism & Christianity

It is well known that the Marxism/Communism of the 20th century was a religion that required of men everything. It required their dissolution of their human-ness in order to be re-designed into the “New Soviet Man.” The New Soviet Man was a man with no allegiances, no identity, no distinctiveness, except as set against the all Sovereign Party/State. The Marxists/Communists so believed this that man became an interchangeable cog in the machinery of the state/party. Practically, what this meant was the destruction of the family for the reason that the family gave one an identity other than the Party. This meant the destruction of maleness and femaleness as sexuality & gender was irrelevant for the New Soviet Man.  This destruction of maleness and femaleness was demonstrated in the Soviet effort during WW II where 5% of the Soviet troops (appx. 800K) were comprised of women who fought as snipers, pilots, and as medical personnel. Per Communist doctrine man qua man was a distinction-less, identity-less, being that was to find his whole identity only in terms of the State/Party.

Of course the same principle applied to man in terms of his racial-ethnic identity. Man’s creaturely distinctive of race, ethnicity, family were irrelevant categories for the New Soviet man. The State/Party was to serve as the the New Soviet Man’s race. One way this was pursued in the USSR, by Stalin was by means of mass deportations of different people groups from one area of the USSR to another. The goal was to so dilute ethnic identity with their distinctive cultural lifestyles by thrusting them amidst new locales and different peoples.

Stalin, and his henchman, Lavrentiy Beria (Head of Soviet NKVD), pursued these mass deportations as a way to suppress any coordinated uprisings by particular concentrated people groups protesting Stalin’s totalitarianism. Such deportations also served the purpose of creating a visibly observable internationalism that bespoke a uniform identity of all Soviet peoples. Between the 1930s-1950s in the Soviet Union approximately 3.5 million from 40 different ethnic groups were relocated (deported) from their previous homeland in order to discover and enjoy become part of the New International man.

All of this is consistent with the explicit statements by the Marxists/Communists on their intent of eliminating all national distinctions so that a new man could be created — a new man whose only identity was the Communist Party/State apparatus. Here are but a few of their own words;

”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

Or we might consult one Nikita Khrushchev;

“Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

And Marx himself,

“Even the natural differences within species, like racial
differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”
 
K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
 
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A

Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

What we have seen here thus is that Communist/Marxist Godlessness has always sought to destroy the distinctive creaturely stamp that God has placed upon men at their birth. Gone are gender/sexual distinctives in the Soviet state. Gone are racial/ethnic distinctions in the Soviet State. Gone are family distinctions in the Soviet State.

Mussolini’s words here describe perfectly this totalitarian arrangement;

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’

Now, I have a larger purpose in pointing all this out, as interesting as it might be by itself. My larger purpose here is to suggest that modern Christianity and the modern Church has become an ape to this kind of Soviet understanding of man with its repeated denunciations of the reality of races, ethnicities, and clans. Indeed, so much like the Soviets of yesteryear have become that churches now are routinely defrocking, disbarring, and disciplining ministers who give even the slightest inclination of believing that the Christian’s Union with Christ does not take away their human distinctives of sexuality, family, race or ethnic belongingness.

The cases of Michel Hunter, Michael Spangler, and my own are somewhat known now. However, other men such as Rev. Zach Garris and Rev. James Baird have likewise been given a good amount of official grief for their views. Then there are cases like Tim Harris, and Ryan Louis Underwood that have not received the publicity that they should have received. Then going way back, there is the case of Neil Payne and Todd Mahaffy where the SPLC was brought in, in order to substantiate the charges “racism” brought by an Alienist PCA minister. Fast forward to this past spring and the RPCNA, ARP, and PCA all adopted Soviet like language in order to condemn that which the Soviet Politburo would have heartily agreed. The Reformed churches keep trying to put a lid on all this but the lid keeps popping off.  Now combine all this with the inability of the PCA to bring discipline against the self-confessed celibate but still sodomite Rev. Greg Johnson and we begin to see that the contemporary Reformed Denominations, in principle, look an awful lot like they are in league with the now defunct Soviet Union in creating the “New Soviet Man.”

The Modern Reformed Church and Reformed clergy, at least in the matter of trying to erase God ordained creaturely distinctives because “since we’re united with Christ we are all one” is singing out of the same hymnbook as Robespierre, Lenin, Marx, Stalin, and Mao. The Modern Reformed Church in its shared embrace with the Marxism/Communism doctrine of egalitarianism is testifying against itself by insisting that “grace destroys nature.” It would have been better if the Soviets had succeeded in this egalitarian attempt rather than our being in the position where the Reformed Churches of Jesus Christ may well be successful in this same effort where the Marxists thus far have not been successful.

Having said all this, I am glad to admit that it is possible to make an idol out of one’s family or ethnicity or race, but having admitted that this is possible is it really the case that the modern West is in danger of sliding into that abyss? I mean, how much ancestor worship do you come across daily in the non third world immigrant parts of the West? It has gotten so bad that there are those who now insist that they have more in common with a Nigerian Grandmother who is Christian than they have with their own unbelieving Mother. Honor thy Father and Mother much?

The modern Reformed church needs to return to the principle that grace restores nature. It needs to admit that churches that practice the homogenous principle are not in some kind of grave sin. I mean, the modern Reformed church if just find and dany with the homogenous principle as applied to Korean or Hmong Churches or even Black church but suddenly it begins to blanch when white Westerners pursue the same thing. The modern Reformed church needs to embrace men like Dabney and Thornwell, Palmer and Girardeau, Morton Smith and John Edwards Richards, Michael Spangler and Michael Hunter, Zach Garris and James Baird. The modern Reformed church needs to quit with its racial and Marxist witch hunts that are determined to eliminate every bit of legitimate racial realism that exists within their confines.

Kinism has always been part and parcel of the definition of Christianity through the ages. The two long anthologies “Who Is My Neighbor,” and “A Survey of Racialism in Christian Sacred Tradition” has made it indisputable that those Christians who understand that Kinism is just Christianity 101 are standing in the tradition of believing what all Christian at all times and in all places have believed.

If the Modern Reformed Church does not change its course on this matter historians of the future are going to look back on this time and describe it as “The Marxist Captivity of the Church.”

 

 

 

Machen’s Christianity & Liberalism & The Contemporary Church

“A terrible crisis unquestionably has arisen in the Church. In the ministry of evangelical churches are to be found hosts of those who reject the gospel of Christ. By the equivocal use of traditional phrases, by the representation of differences of opinion as though they were only differences about the interpretation of the Bible, entrance into the Church was secured for those who are hostile to the very foundations of the faith.”
 
 J. Gresham Machen
Christianity & Liberalism

One point covered yesterday in Sunday School as we continue to work through Machen’s “Christianity & Liberalism” is that Liberals are forever accusing Biblical Christians of having a “mean” God and a “mean” faith. Their reasons for their existence, in part, is to give us a kinder and gentler Christianity. However, the ironic part here is that the Christianity of the liberal is an example of “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Liberal Christianity, that seeks to get rid of all the “cringe factor” in Biblical Christianity is, in point of fact, the cruelest and meanest “Christianity” going. It yields a God who cannot save, a Christ that is not God, a salvation that is only experiential and emotional, and a anthropology that tells man he is basically good and just needs a few tweeks. It is the meanest of all faiths because it leaves men damned.

Machen was dealing with men who had emptied Christianity of its historical and doctrinal meaning and were refilling it with a content that was not Christian in the least. We fight the same battle today in our Churches with that problem. “Christianities” like R2K, Federal Vision, Dispensationalism, New Perspective on Paul, Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, Pentecostalism, all empty Christianity of its original historical and doctrinal content in favor of a redefined Christianity that is no Christianity.

Machen wrote “Christianity and Liberalism,” but today we could write books titled “Christianity and R2K,” “Christianity and Federal Vision,” “Christianity and Arminianism,” etc. because it is all bogus Christianity and it is all mean and cruel to those who embrace it.

Revolutionary Marxism & Biblical Christianity

“Mao barely knew the German philosopher Hegel, and had only a limited understanding of the concept of the dialectic which Marx had derived from Hegel. But his mind ran in the same channels as Hegel’s and Marx’s and Lenin’s, for all the vast difference in his cultural background. Like them, he saw a universe in which conflict was not temporary disharmony, but the esse — the supreme fact and law of existence. Mao said: ‘Balance, qualitative change and unity are absolute and permanent.’ ‘If there were not contradiction and no struggle, there would be no world, no progress, no life, there would be nothing at all.”

What did this mean for communism, his dream and his goal?

‘The universe, too, undergoes transformation, it is not eternal. Capitalism leads to socialism leads to communism, and communist society must still be transformed, it will also have a beginning and end…. Monkeys turned into men, mankind arose; in the end the whole human race will disappear, it may turn into something else, at that time the earth itself will also cease to exist. The earth must certainly be extinguished, the sun too will grow cold.’ – Mao

So, even a communist society must have its revolutions; and he, Mao Tse-Tung, the supreme revolution maker, would keep on making them.”

Warren H. Carroll
The Rise and Fall of the Communist Revolution – p. 462

A few observations

1.) Note that a major foundation for Marxist thought is the idea of conflict of interests. This is what is taught with the Hegelian dialectic. Communist Revolution is never final. It always progresses to the next thing. This explains in the West the movement of accepting adultery, to accepting sodomy, to accepting Trannie-ism. It is how the progressive nature of Revolution works. Revolution is always restless and never complete. The result of one Revolution is the necessity of the next Revolution.

2.) This in turn underscore the Marxist core theme of always returning to chaos. Because the Marxist Revolutionary believes in the necessity of the conflict of interest there is a constant pursuit away from whatever order might initially be established and towards absolute chaos because it is the Marxist Revolutionary faith that out of chaos order comes. As such whenever any order is established in any society given to Marxist emphasis there will always be a vanguard who is pushing for chaos. This explains the constant rioting that we found in the “Black Lives Matter” movement and the whole George Floyd affair in Minneapolis. In a social order where there is an overwhelming presence of just a significant minority of Revolutionary Marxists there will always be a drive to chaos. The pursuit of chaos is in keeping with their religion.

3.) Notice how the biological presuppositions of Darwinism twined their way into social theory. This explains why Marx and Engels rejoiced to see Darwin’s book. They knew that once Darwinism was accepted in biology that Marxism would be accepted in social theory. Sociologist Herbert Spencer was the great mind that took biological Darwinism and translated it into a full world and life view through his writing.

4.) Only Christianity can put an end to Revolution making and the Marxist thought that drives it because, unlike Marxism, Christianity presupposes not a conflict of interest but a harmony of interest. Also, Christianity, unlike Revolutionary Marxist thought does not believe that man is just matter in motion. For the Marxist, because man is merely matter in motion, man has no significance and having no real significance man is something that can be slaughtered in order to make the better if indeed not perfect social order. After all, in the words of Stalin, “If you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs.” For the Marxist Revolutionary the individual man is of no consequence. Christianity challenges this and opposes Marxism because Christianity teaches that man is made as an image bearer of God.

5.) For Revolutionary Marxism the State / Party is God. “All within the state and nothing outside the state” is its Maxim. The State/Party thus becomes God walking on the earth. The Revolutionary Marxist understood that Christianity was his enemy because he was self aware enough to know that Christianity has always opposed, throughout its existence, any institutional structure that takes itself as the ultimate meaning maker. In order for Marxist Revolutionary thinking to gain traction real and serious Christianity and Christians must be wiped out.

The Clever & Incredibly Subtle Errors Of Federal Vision

Federal Vision teaching is an error that arose in conjunction with the New Perspective of Paul teaching. A good deal, but not all, of the errors of Federal Vision can be traced back to N. T. Wright and behind him to chaps like E. P. Sanders and James Dunn.

Rich Lusk is one such minister who pushes for the Federal Vision. He belongs to a denomination (CREC) that has been a nest of Federal Visionists.

The errors of the Federal Vision crowd are subtle and clever and it is because they are so subtle that they are difficult to catch for the average layman or clergy. The Federal Vision chaps can sound quite orthodox until one goes under the hood and begins to play with the engine.

One more thing about the FV blokes is the interesting observation that their movement arose (at least in popularity) just about the same time that the Radical Two Kingdom error arose in popularity. I have written elsewhere on Iron Ink that these two errors are mirror errors making opposite but corresponding mistakes. FV gives up Justification in light of their emphasis on Sanctification while R2K gives up Sanctification in light of their errant teaching on Justification.

Below, I interact somewhat with something that Lusk posted on X and then end with a quote from 18th Century Scottish Covenanter Ralph Erskine.

Rich Lusk (RL) writes,

“Many will argue that the gospel must sound antinomian if it to be kept pure of legalism. Indeed, sounding antinomian is a test of orthodoxy. For example, Robert Godfrey, following Martyn Lloyd-Jones, says “If no one ever comes to you after you preach the gospel and asks ‘So should we sin so that grace may abound?’ you have probably never preached the gospel.”

BLMc responds,

We know we are on FV ground here given the complaint above. FV constantly insists that “faith works” (with which I agree) and in that emphasis ends up denying that in Justification faith does its proper work when it rests in Christ for all.

Second, anyone who had read Lloyd-Jones knows that Lloyd-Jones repeatedly emphasized works but only in their proper place. Another thing is that like the Apostle Paul, all Christian ministers immediately reject, as the Apostle Paul did, the idea that “we should sin that grace may abound.” The problem between Lloyd-Jones and Lusk is not on the matter of works but on the matter of the role and place of works. (Godfrey being R2K is another story.)

RL writes,

But the Godfrey/Lloyd-Jones point is really an exercise in missing the point.
The objection of Romans 6:1 (“Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?”) is not raised after the gospel has been preached; it is raised in the middle of preaching the gospel. In other words, the antinomian objection is not a sign that you have preached the gospel; rather, it is a sign that you have not yet finished preaching the gospel. Paul’s presentation of the gospel does not end in Romans 5:21; Romans 6 is pure gospel as well. Thus, the gospel is not preached in full if union with Christ in his death to sin and rising to new life are ignored (Rom. 6:2ff). The gospel is not preached in full unless a call for obedience to all of Christ’s commands is issued (Matt. 28:20). The gospel is not preached unless the promised gift of the Spirit, given to enable us to put to death the misdeeds of the body (Rom. 8:13), is included in the offer. The gospel is not preached unless there has been a summons to repent (Acts 17:30).

BLMc responds,

1.) Let’s make some necessary distinctions here.

First, St. Paul often arrange his Epistles so that duty will follow doctrine. In Romans the first 11 chapters are heavy with Doctrine and in chapter 12 forward the Apostle segues to the Christian’s duty. As such, Romans 6 is indeed part of the preaching of the Gospel and in terms of Justification is pure Gospel.

Second, there is a narrow sense of the word “Gospel” and a broad sense of the word “Gospel.” When used in its narrow sense, Gospel is a good news proclamation/declaration of all that has been accomplished in Christ for sinners who close with Christ. The Gospel, in this narrow sense, is not dependent upon our behavior or our works. It is the proclamation/declaration that we have been released from being imprisoned because another has born our penalty for us as in our place.

2.) However, there is a broad sense of the word “Gospel” as well that stands in for the idea of the Christian faith as a whole. One thing FV does is it gloriously confuses these two usages. This is clearly seen when Lusk writes above;

The gospel is not preached in full unless a call for obedience to all of Christ’s commands is issued (Matt. 28:20).

Here Lusk has, in a startling fashion, clearly confused law and Gospel. The call for obedience to all of Christ’s commands is required indeed, but it is required as the demands of a law that no man can keep. It is these demands of the law that cause us, by God’s grace alone, to see our peril and desperation so that we, by the Spirit’s work, cry out, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” A Gospel message preached that includes a call for obedience to all of Christ’s commands as if those commands could be kept by the supplicant who realizes the demands of the law is no Gospel at all. Lusk as confused terribly Law and Gospel.

3.) Lusk cites Mt. 28:20 where Christ commissions His Apostles to teach the nations all that Christ has commanded them. But the kicker here is that “the nations” referenced at this point assumes that they are Christian nations because they have been Baptized. The making disciples of all nations can only occur once those nations are Christian and the nations can never be Christian until they are convicted that there is no command keeping on their part which can satisfy the demands of the law.

The order of Christian evangelism is not Glawospel as Lusk would have it. The order of Christian evangelism is Law (which convicts of sin) and Gospel which pronounces pardon. Then, as the Puritans noted, the Cross sends us back to the law to answer the question; “How Shall We Then Live.”

4.) The Christian does indeed need to be taught the law but only as a guide to life (so called third use of the law) once they’re in Christ. Before they are in Christ it is heretical error to tell the non-Christian that in order to be a Christian they have to keep Christ’s commands as if they could. Our pressing of the law upon those outside of Christ should be met not with “I will do that,” but with a “I can’t (not able) to do that.”

5.) Of course we agree that there is a summons to repent. However, surely Lusk does not think that the unbeliever, though responsible to repent is able to repent? Responsibility does not imply ability Rich.

RL writes,

The pure grace of the gospel is not threatened by a call to obedience. Indeed, the gospel, properly preached, understood, and embraced, demands and promises obedience. In the Scriptures, heralds of the gospel essentially interchange faith and repentance as appropriate responses to the message (cf. Acts 2:38 and 16:34). In other places, Scripture speaks of “the obedience of faith” and calls hearers to “obey the gospel” (Rom. 1:5; 2 Thess. 1:8). In still other texts, faith and obedience (cf. Rom. 10:16) as well unbelief and disobedience (Heb. 3:18-19) are interchangeable. The basic gospel confession is, “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 9; 1 Cor. 12:3) – which is to say, “He has given himself for me, and I now owe him my allegiance.” In the gospel, we find that God’s righteous requirements are not legalistic impositions, but gracious gifts he promises to work in us (cf. Rom. 8:1-4).

BLMc replies,

1.) The pure grace of the gospel, in its narrow sense, is indeed threatened by a call of obedience if that call for obedience is understood as being contributory in any way to relief from the law’s demand. The pure grace of the gospel in its narrow sense does emphasize obedience but it emphasizes the obedience of Christ in our place. It emphasizes the obedience of Christ as our surety and declares that God accepts the incarnate Son’s obedience in our stead. The pure grace of the gospel in its narrow sense tells the deflated and hopeless sinner that though his obedience will always be as filthy rags there is hope for him because the obedience (an alien obedience) of another has been vouchsafed for him. Christ’s obedience is our obedience and the Father is pleased with the repentant sinner.

Now here we must interject something that is not in Lusk’s scribblings. That something is that many of the FV guys repudiate the idea of Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us (reckoned to our account). Given this denial of Christ’s righteousness to us, it stands to reason that at least some FV guys would place this kind of emphasis on our obedience as necessary to Justification because without Christ’s righteousness imputed to us there is a need to build up our righteousness before God with our own righteousness. I don’t know if Lusk falls in this camp of denying double imputation but it sure sounds like it given the way he reasons here.

2.) Of course faith and repentance are called for as the proper response to the Gospel message but all Reformed Christians insist that what God requires He must first give. It is not as if faith and repentance are being auto-generated in our fallen state and are being traded up for Justification. To think like that would turn faith and repentance into our good works offered up to earn Justification. This would then be a denial the Justification is a completely gracious act of God whereby He declares the sinner righteous in Christ because Christ has had imputed to Him the sinner’s sin and in turn has imputed to the sinner His law keeping obedience. In point of fact the sinner’s repentance and faith are only received because they are imputed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

3.) As we noted earlier, we agree that St. Paul can speak of “obedience to the Gospel,” but that is in the broader sense of being obedient to the Christian faith and demonstrates that there is a close relationship between Justification and Sanctification but not in the way that Lusk is suggesting. Lusk, by emphasizing obedience the way he does is, whether he intends it or not, is giving us a Justification that is dependent upon Sanctification. This is back asswards and works to make the gracious Gospel not gracious but legal.

4.) Note how Lusk brashly includes our obedience in the definition of the Gospel. He calls it “our allegiance.” Now, of course our allegiance/obedience is requisite to the Christian life but that is an allegiance born of gratitude and not as contributory to Justification or the Gospel in its narrow sense. Our owed allegiance is not unto the attaining of a yet unsure forgiveness but rather the consequence of a certain forgiveness. Our allegiance is the response to the Gospel and not a condition of the Gospel.

RL writes,

The only kind of faith that justifies is a faith that lives – that is to say, a faith that loves, obeys, repents, calls, and seeks. Thus, faith can be seen (cf. Mark 2:5) and demonstrated (Jas. 2:18); it is embodied and embedded in outward action. True, at the moment of initial justification, faith has not yet done good works. But the kind of faith that lays hold of Christ for justification is a faith that will issue forth in obedience, not because something will be added to that faith a nanosecond after its conception (as if faith had to be “formed” by additional virtues, ala Roman Catholic teaching), but because that faith already carries within itself the seeds of every virtue.

BLMc responds,

Or course faith must be living. Who could disagree? However this living faith does its proper work in Justification in resting in Christ for all. Then this living faith does its proper work in Sanctification in working out all that Christ works in me unto love and good works.

It is true that faith is demonstrated but what it demonstrates is that our justification is justified. James does not teach that works are part of our person’s being justified but rather James teaches that our good works justify our claim to being justified. When Paul speaks about Justification he is commonly speaking as to how our persons are justified. When James speaks about Justification he is commonly speaking as to how it is we justify our Justification (by good works). There is a profound difference here.

Note here Lusk mentions the phrase “initial justification.” I wonder if in Lusk’s “Gospel” if all those who are initially justified are also all those, man for man, who will be finally justified? I ask this because a number of FV types will talk about folks who are initially justified who fall away and will not be finally justified, thus denying God’s preserving power.

RL writes,

The faith God works in us, in order that we might be justified by faith, simultaneously begins the process of transformation by faith. Faith never exists on its own, even at its inception. The kind of faith God gives his elect is a living, working, penitent, persevering faith. It is a faith that is inseparable from repentance and obedience. When faith grasps Christ, it grasps the whole Christ, so that he simultaneously becomes Savior and Lord. Indeed, given that faith is a gift of God, its presence in us is proof that the Spirit has already begun his work of transforming us.

BLMc responds,

Here Lusk is pinning imputation (what God does outside of us) upon impartation (what God infuses into us by the pouring out of the Spirit). This is expressly what the Reformers fought against. Calvin wrote against it in his Institutes when he took on Osiander’s view of Justification. Nobody, among the Reformed who was orthodox has ever suggested that what God does outside of us is dependent upon what God does inside of us. Quite to the contrary of Lusk’s claim the Reformers talked about this thing called “Faith Alone.” The Reformers abominated the Roman Catholic idea that Justification was affected by “faith working through love.” This is what Lusk is trying to sell and it is a false Gospel that is no Gospel and it explains why I am so adamantly opposed to Federal Vision. It is Roman Catholicism brought into the Reformed Church. It is a lie from the belly of hell and it smells of sulfur.

And these guys get away with their subtle nonsense because so very few people can recognize what they are doing.

RL writes,

Works, then, are the public manifestation of faith. When Paul describes the life of faith, in union with Christ, he immediately turns to how we re-pattern the use of our bodies (Rom. 6:12-13). Faith redirects and reorients the way we use the body. We put to death the body’s misdeeds and begin to embody future resurrection life even in this present mortal existence (Rom. 8:1-17). While faith is certainly a matter of the heart, and renews the mind (Rom. 12:1-2), it has an inescapable communal, even political/cultural, dimension as well. The person acting in faith offers his body as an instrument of righteousness (Rom. 6:13); he becomes a holistic slave of God, even as he was previously a slave to sin (Rom. 6:19). Faith gives us a new posture, a new way of “leaning” into all of life.

BLMc responds,

Here though Lusk is talking about the Faith that Sanctifies. The faith that sanctifies does all this but it is all done not as contributory to Justification … not as required in order to be brought from death to life. Faith does all this as the glad response of one who was brought from death to life. It is done by one who has been made alive by grace alone … it is not all done by one who is seeking to become alive. Faith does all this as the consequence of being Justified and not as a working towards Justification.

RL writes,

The faith/obedience nexus is a critical aspect of biblical theology. The key thing to note here is that the gospel is bigger than merely the offer/promise of forgiveness; it is also the offer/promise of a changed life. God accepts us as we are, but he doesn’t let us stay that way. The necessity of obedience is not bad news tacked onto an otherwise antinomian gospel message. People need (and should want) transformation and freedom from sin’s enslavement, every bit as much as they want pardon and release from the burden of sin’s guilt. A gospel that did not ultimately aim at and guarantee the complete destruction of sin in our lives and the complete renovation of our humanity would actually be mediocre news at best, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Every demand God makes is also a promised gift in the economy of grace. It is good news to hear that God not only desires to clear us from sin’s penalty, but also re-humanize us so that we can begin to enjoy the kind of life we were designed to live.

Here I will let Ralph Erskine rebut Lusk;

“However a believer may lie in darkness, yet I conceive that soul is out of danger, who is made willing to receive Christ both as a Saviour and a Lord; and so, willing to receive out of his hand poison to kill his lusts, as well as pardon to remove his guilt; the desire of pardon of sin, and the desire of purification of heart, bear proportion; none can truly take Christ as a Saviour for justification, but they will also truly take him as a Lord for sanctification. This we maintain, let calumny say what it will; as if our doctrine were an enemy to holiness!2

What can be the ground of the calumny, I cannot know, unless it be that men cannot distinguish betwixt saving faith and justifying faith; for saving faith (of which we are now speaking) respects Christ in all his offices as a Prophet, Priest, and King; but when we speak of faith merely as it is justifying, we maintain against all the subtle Popery in the world, that it respects Christ only as a Priest, as a sacrifice and propitiation; but not Christ as a King. For, to make that act of faith, that receives Christ as a Lord, to be the justifying act of faith, is the very soul of Popery, that builds justification upon sanctification, or upon sanctifying faith; whereas it is the receiving of Christ as a Priest, that alone justifies before God.”

Ralph Erskine

McAtee & Lusk Disagree On Whether Or Not Dabney Would Repent If He Were Alive Today

“I fully believe that if Dabney were around today, he would repent of some of his racial views expressed in his writings. When contemporary racists say things like, “You’d excommunicate Dabney if he were around today,’ they are not saying anything useful. I usually counter, ‘If Dabney were around today, he’d repent.’ Why assume that Dabney would not be willing or capable of receiving greater light on the issue of race?… Yes, I think many 19th century Southern theologians (some of the first theologians in history to have to deal with the issue of race in such an experiential way) would gladly receive further light from the Scriptures on the issue. There is no reason to assume their views are frozen in time or that they’d be unwilling to reconsider. I’d like to think that I’d be open to reassessing my views if strong Biblical arguments can be made against something I currently believe. Why not grant Dabney the benefit of the doubt as well?”

Rev. Rich Lusk

It’s hard to fathom how utterly subjective the above quote is. However, we will start by linking to a web page that doubtlessly Dabney, were he alive today, would be familiar with if only because it so thoroughly supports his convictions on race when he was alive.

The Color of Crime, 2016 Revised Edition

The Shade of Dabney, being the education man that he was would have pointed Rev. Lusk to this link and asked, “Rev. Lusk, based on the information provided by this study and by these statistics whatever would prompt you to think that I would change my views were I still alive today?”

A Dabney revivified from the dead would have asked Rev. Lusk, given that;

a.) In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.

b.) In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85 percent of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.

Why would you ever think that being revivified I would not repent of my views at my death but would instead say, “Rev. Lusk, I rest my case that I was right then and you are wrong now and indeed you are the one who is need of repenting.”

Clearly, what Lusk is doing in his quote above is called “projecting.” I mean I can imagine someone writing 130 years after Lusk is dead and buried;

“I fully believe that if Lusk were around today, he would repent of some of his egalitarian and globalist views expressed in his writings.”

Such a statement would be pure projection. Lusk, being a card carrying egalitarian on the issue of race will not repent today and if you could dig him up in the year 2255 and revivify him he would still not repent, even if being presented with a postmillennial culture that is once again Kinist and so Christian. Lusk, is doing the same with Dabney when he, by the way of projection, insists that Dabney would repent were he alive today because he would know better. And this in spite of the fact that all the evidence would give Dabney the ability to say to Lusk and his ilk; “Dude, I told you so. I tried to warn you.”

Also, Lusk seems to assume here that there has been no further light to break out of the Scripture on this subject since this subject was exhaustively debated repeatedly in the 19th century. Has Lusk never read any of those debates? There is nothing being said now that wasn’t being said by the Christian clergy in those debates as they debated the abolitionists, Transcendentalists, and Jacobins. Does Lusk think that merely because today’s clergy like himself are mouthing Jacobin debating points on race as covered in a patina of Christian-speak that therefore Dabney would be convinced and so repent? If so, Lusk severely underestimates the intellect of R. L. Dabney and the work of the Holy Spirit to keep Dabney from wrongly repenting of the truth.

Doubtless Dabney would have presented to Lusk a copy of the slave narratives that were sponsored by the US Government completed some 35 years after his death and would have said to Lusk; “Many of these slaves agree with me and yearn for the days when they were treated so well as slaves.”

I don’t doubt for a skinny minute that any saint gone to be with the Lord, if they could return, might well repent of matters they held while still alive. However, Dabney, with his views on race isn’t one of them. Now, Dabney might well repent over his embrace of Scottish Common Sense realism and agree with me that presuppositionalism is the better way, but on the issue of race Dabney would say, “130 years later my views on race have been substantiated, however given the civil rights revolution that began with the loss of my beloved South continuing through to this day in 2o25 upon my re-visitation, it clearly is the case that my views are even more unacceptable now by Christian clergy than they were when I spoke them in the face of Yankee and Abolitionist Reconstruction. Today it is even more unacceptable to commit the sin of noticing than it was in the days before I left off this mortal coil.”

On this matter it is Rev. Lusk who needs to be pursuing repentance and not Dabney.