Bavinck on Nature & Grace & What It Means For SAC When Grace Restores Nature

“Bavinck frequently and forcefully underscored that the reformation Christ brought about by his revelation differs fundamentally from revolution. Moses and the prophets, Christ and the apostles ‘discriminated in an inimitable manner between healthy and sick reality.’ Whereas in other religions and philosophical systems ‘these two spheres’ are constantly confused and mixed together, the special revelation that comes to us in Christ,

keeps the two in clear distinction; it acknowledges nature, everywhere and without reservation, but it nevertheless joins battle w/ sin on every front. It seeks reformation of natural life, always and everywhere, but only for the purpose and by the means of liberating it from unrighteousness.

This insight is also determinative for the assessment of concrete events and movements in social and political affairs:

Because the gospel is concerned exclusively w/ liberation from sin, it leaves all natural institutions intact. It is in principle opposed to all socialism, communism and anarchism, since these never oppose only sin, but identify (through the denial of the Fall) sin w/ nature, unrighteousness w/ the very institution of family, state and society, and thus creation w/ the Fall. For the same reason the Gospel is averse to revolution of any kind, which arises out of the principle of unbelief, since such revolution, in its overthrowing of the existing order, makes no distinction between nature and sin, and eradicates the good together w/ the bad. The gospel, by contrast, always proceeds reformationally. The gospel itself brings about the greatest reformation, because it brings liberation from guilt, renews the heart, and thus in principle restores the right relation of man to God.

Jan Veenhof
Nature & Grace in Herman Bavinck — pg. 23-24

1.) What Veenhof is drawing out here from Bavinck is that Grace restores nature because Grace has the effect of removing from nature its participation in sin driven sick reality. Grace never turns nature into grace but the effect of grace upon nature is to restore nature to its healthy reality from the sick reality that sin has it in bondage to.

2.) Nature and Grace remain distinct for Bavinck but Grace has an impact on nature thus indication that Grace is not divorced from nature.

3.) For Bavinck Socialism, Anarchism, and Communism (SAC) had to be opposed by all right minded Christians because SAC are part of the disordered sin sick reality that nature was poisoned with. SAC creates sick reality because they identify sin w/ nature, and creation w/ the fall, and so in order to attack sin and the fall they attack nature and thus seek to pull down God’s institutional created social order that includes family, state, and society, preferring instead a sinful social order where God’s diversity is blended into a humanistic Unitarian sameness. This creates the sick reality that Bavinck speaks of.

4.) Where the Gospel flourishes and brings Reformation (i.e. counter-Revolution) SAC is brought to heel since SAC is the revolutionary antithesis based on the principle of unbelief. From this I would say that we can legitimately conclude that Reformation is being granted where SAC is seen in abysmal retreat. Where SAC isn’t in retreat there is no Reformation.

Read Between The Lines

This is a genuine letter w/ a few of the details altered. I’m posting it so people can see the implied expectations of Christian ministers for public ceremonies.

Pastor Handley Miller
Christ Church
3495 Moonbeam Avenue
Rock Hill, SC — 29206

Dear Pastor Miller

Thank you for your kind acceptance of our invitation to offer the invocation and benediction at our evening commencement ceremony on 13 June at 6:30 pm in the Smiley Sports Center. As the proud Grandfather of a graduating Senior (who is also very proud of her Grandfather, I might add!), you surely know it is a special time for High Plains University and we look forward to your participation. Since our students come from very diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, we know the words you offer will be welcoming to all.

For your part, you will be introduced at the beginning of the ceremony and asked to come to the stage to offer the invocation, which should be brief. You will then return to your seat with your spouse in the front row for the remainder of the ceremony. At the conclusion, you will again be asked to return to the stage to offer the benediction. Again, we know your words will be accepting of people of many faiths and ethnic backgrounds who are represented in our student body.

We are very pleased you and Mrs. Miller will be able to join us, and are grateful for your willingness to participate in this way. If you have any questions, you may contact my assistant Marsha Brady at 1.800.PC.JESUS or multicultural@HighPlains.edu. We look forward to your role in our ceremony, and we know it will be a very special day for our students, and their families and friends.

Sincerely,

Were you a minister who were to pray at this ceremony how would you pray, given the clear expectations?

Race & Christianity & The West

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/jetbrane?v=wall&story_fbid=117193671635972

If you can access the thread above you can read an ongoing conversation on race, Christianity & the West.

The thread was kicked off by my comment that,

“The issue of race is and always has been a red herring. Even when there were problems that needed addressed that was never the concern of many of the people who were bitching & carping about race. The concern was (and is) to use race as a wedge issue to overthrow Western civilization in favor of humanistic Utopian arrangements – arrangements that, ironically enough, lead to far more oppression tyranny & bondage then the worst slavery that the West has ever known. Down w/ the race pimps.”

I posted this comment immediately after reading the below article by Dr. Thomas Sowell which confirms much of what I have learned about the issues of Race in the West through my own independent studies.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/27/filtering_history_105321.html

It reveals how explosive the issue of race remains when such a simple statement in the blockquote above can cause people to come unglued. Let’s examine sentence by sentence that blockquote comment.

Sentence #1 — The issue of race is a red herring.

Red herring is defined as any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue. The issue of race is and always has been a red herring because the main issue that race is diverting from has been the desire of humanists to overthrow Christian culture in order to establish egalitarian Utopian social orders. (Which I say in the third sentence.)

Sentence #2a – 3 — I concede that there have been racial problems that needed addressed. There was no attempt to suggest that racial grievances were completely imaginary.

Sentence #2b – 3 — I insisted that many people who were fanning the flames of racial problems that needed to be addressed were more concerned with other issues besides the racial problems. Were I to elaborate on that I would say humanists were using minorities to achieve a egalitarian Nirvana that would mean more misery for all races if achieved, or alternately humanists were using minorities in order to keep themselves in power or to enrich themselves.

Sentence #4 — I insisted that we should suppress those who fan the flames of race in order to enrich themselves.

Now, for the life of me, I am absolutely floored that any of this would be in the slightest controversial.

However it was. Indeed, it was so controversial that it was suggested that my comments displayed a incredible lack of intelligence.

The following is the latest objection to what I have written.

“As someone who generally agrees with your point, I think you need to consider the delivery of the truth to the audience from the hearer’s (Andy’s) perspective.”

The problem Ricardo is that it is Andy’s perspective that is all messed up. The fact that he can go all alarmist over four such non-controversial sentences indicates that the very thing that needs to be hammered is the thing that you say I need to consider. It is precisely because I am considering it that I am hammering it.

“One of things I think important in the discussion of cultures and civilization is to have the attitude that Joshua had in Joshua 5:13-15. The issue isn’t whether Western Civilization (WC) or any of the African cultures is better, but whether does that culture or civilization reverence the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and his Law-Word throughout every aspect of the culture.”

I agree completely w/ the Joshua passage. The issue isn’t whether or not God is on our side but whether we are on God’s side. But I’m not sure you can use the passage to suggest that cultures can’t be adjudicated as “better or worse.”

Clearly Western culture is better than African cultures only because Western culture was informed in a significant degree by Christianity while African cultures on a large scales have not been. (Remember culture is defined as theology made incarnate.) Now obviously this is not to say that Western civilization has been perfect. It manifestly has not been. However, it is to say that Western Civilization, built largely by Christian people who, in God’s mysterious providence and due only to his sovereign choice, were White, has been superior to cultures built in Africa, the Orient, South America, and any number of other locations you would like to mention. Now, the superiority of Western culture lies not in the melanin level in the people who were saved by grace alone, but it lay in the Christianity that animated the people who were saved by grace alone. It is only God who causes one man to differ from another, and why he does it for one man and not another, or for one people and not another is a mystery that remains locked in His providence.

To deny that Christianity builds superior cultures as compared to other cultures is to deny that Christianity is a superior religion when compared to other religions which is to deny that Jesus Christ is a superior God to all the competing gods. The whole idea that all cultures are equal is a treasonous denial of Jesus Christ.

Now this superiority is a superiority unto mission and service. Christian cultures are to be a servant and a beacon to the nations bringing the peoples Jesus Christ in all of His saving offices with the prayerful hope that God will grant Reformation to other inferior cultures that they may know Jesus Christ and experience the culture of life that only Christianity can bring.

Now, what is happening today is that Western civilization is doing all it can to strip it of its Christian influence. Part of the means by which that is happening is by the work of the white Christ haters in introducing race as a wedge issue. The white Christ haters fan the animosities of minorities in order to overturn the hateful remains of the Christian social order. The white men who are Christ haters convince minorities that Biblical Christianity accounts for their misery when in point of fact what accounts for their misery is God’s cursing upon them as a people for having refusing to pledge allegiance, as a people, to the Lord Christ. What accounts for their misery is that God has turned them over to their sins (Romans 1). This cursing of God and this turning over to sins is the same thing that is happening now to the euro-Americans as they seek to flush their Christian influence. If the West goes down, the result will not be life for those white men who are Christ haters w/ their Utopian dreams and their minority shock troops and their pervert shock troops who are currently being manipulated by the white Christ haters as the instrumental means in the tearing of the West down but it will be death for all.

The way that men, regardless of their ethnicity or race will be blessed, is for them to turn to Jesus Christ and Kiss the Son. Only when that is done will peoples who bow to Christ build cultures of life, beauty and goodness.

“In light of this I judge WC in its epochs. The Kingdom of God is much bigger than WC, nor is it a given that WC will always be an expression of Christian civilization.”

I agree 100% that the Kingdom of God is much bigger then Western Civilization. Indeed, it is so big that having encompassed the whole world it will encompass the whole world.

“WC does not automatically command my allegiance, only Christ’s Kingdom does — and at any particular time a culture may not be under its influence, or may be an ally or enemy of that kingdom. In my judgment WC is today a committed enemy and many of its representative cultures and nation-states are full participants in the attempted suppression, corruption, and overthrow of Christ’s Kingdom in the earth.”

I agree again. Western Civilization is largely anti-Christ. However, the only place that you can still find a remnant of Christian culture on a civilizational level is in the West. The West is seeking to destroy the Kingdom of God but only in the West can you yet find the memory of Christian culture and so the means to destroy the elements of the West that is anti-Christ. Part of what it means to destroy the elements of anti-Christ in the West is to destroy political correctness and multiculturalism that informs the narrative and worldview of so many minorities today.

“That being said I think your original statement was overly broad. Any discussion about what folks today call “race” isn’t always “bitching and carping”, nor evaluating the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its impact on millions of Africans over generations by the various laws and mores of WC always about the “overthrow Western civilization in favor of humanistic Utopian arrangements”.

I think you are wrong about my original statement being overly broad but having already examined that original statement above I will not repeat myself.

How can anybody deny the awfulness of those matters you mention? Nobody denies it. What is denied is that the pulling down of the West that many minorities are pursuing will lead to deeds visited upon them that will make those deeds you mention look like nothing in comparison. If the white men who are Christ haters are successful in erasing all the memories of what made Western Civilization what it was in its best expression the people who will suffer the most will be the minorities that are being used by the white men who are Christ haters to pull the what remains of the West down.

Secondly, you did not read what I wrote. I didn’t say that any discussion on race was always about bitching and carping. I said,

“Even when there were problems that needed addressed that was never the concern of many of the people who were bitching & carping about race.”

Finally, I really think you need to re-read that Sowell piece I linked.

“In my series on Slavery and the Civil War on YouTube I attempt to use a theonomic philosophy of history to evaluate these subjects with a challenge to the class to see the Great Commission (especially that part about discipling the nations in the Word of God) to bring the healing that America desperately needs for the glory of God and the restoration of Christ’s rule in our land. I contend that only when the people of the today’s WC are willing to pray as Daniel did in Daniel 9 will we see change for God’s glory.”

Sounds good. I will try to look up your lectures and listen to them.

Perhaps Andy (and our fellow brothers and sisters who grew up in another culture) would more easily receive the truth you’re trying to communicate if you become a little more acquainted with our world and speak with that understanding close at hand.”

That sounds suspiciously like those, “Its a Black thing … You wouldn’t understand,” T-shirts that were all the rage 10 years ago.

1.) Having lived in this world for 50 years and having made a habit of continually studying it from as many different angles as one can possibly do in 50 short years I would say that, on the whole, I understand it — both the version that is kept from the children and the version that is being made into a movie — as well as the elites and those who the elites are feeding their dog food account of World History.

2.) It is precisely because I’ve looked behind the curtain where the great Oz is sitting that I don’t buy what is sold as “being rightly acquainted” with the subject matter. It’s all BS Ricardo. The other world of which you speak and which you intimate that you live in is a world that is pinioned on the smoke and mirrors of Political correctness, and Marxist multiculturalism. The people who live in that world will only be set free from it when they are wiling to embrace that it is all BS and turn their back on it.

3.) It is curious that I have to ask why you would assume that I am not acquainted w/ your world. How do you know whether or not I’ve spent time in Zimbabwe doing Mission work? How do you know whether or not I’ve spent time doing inner city missions? How do you know whether or not my wife spent time in the Ivory Coast doing missions work. How do you know whether or not my Dad worked for Martin Luther King? How do you know whether or not Spike Lee is my cousin? You know virtually nothing about me, so for you to assume that I am not acquainted w/ your world is a HUGE presumption. It may be the case (and I assure you that it is) that I am very familiar w/ it and have simply rejected it for being the poison that it is.

4.) It is my concern for Black folks that has me speaking as I am speaking. Only a foul hatred would countenance the current narrative that informs most of the Black community’s worldview. (I say most because the black community consistently votes in the 90 percentile upwards for candidates who espouse various expressions of cultural Marxism.

A cynic would look at your assumption that I am not familiar w/ your world as just a means to cavalierly dismiss my arguments because I’m not “black enough,” to have an opinion. (Whatever that means.)

Along w/ Andy, you’re one of the good guys Ricardo, but even the good guys can get things wrong.

Now, why do I spend so much time on such an issue. I do so because I am convinced that Gospel will not successfully go forward until the anti-Biblical Christianity narrative of the Cultural Marxists is strangled to death. The Cultural Marxists find their greatest success in resisting or bastardizing Christianity by pointing at Christian influenced Western civilization and preaching that Christian influenced Western civilization is the reason that the minority community has been kept down. It is just not true that Christian civilization keeps minorities down, and it is also not true that Cultural Marxists civilizations will lift minorities up. This lie needs to be ended.

Obam’s Race Card

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/26/obama_calls_upon_minorities_for_upset_vote_in_2010.html

In the video above B. Hussein Obama implores young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women who voted for him in 2008 to vote in the 2010 midterms for Democrats. The reason why this is interesting for a couple reasons. First, Obama is clearly pitting minority America against White America. Obama, here, is doing more than playing the Race card, he is being revealing his racist colors.

Secondly, it is interesting because the groups that Obama appeals to are the very groups, which I have been insisting for quite some time on Iron Ink, who constitute the shock troops of his cultural Marxist agenda. Remember I have said that cultural Marxism differs from classic Marxism inasmuch as the wedge that the cultural Marxists seek to drive is not economic as much as it is cultural. The proletariat who will overthrow the bourgeoisie is not so much the working class (though some of them may be involved) as it is the disaffected groups that Obama appealed to in his pitch. Minorities are appealed to because as victims they have putatively been kept down by the Christian white man. (Feminist) Women are appealed to because the Cultural Marxist have been able to convince them that they are victims of Male hegemony. Youth are appealed to in this victim coalition because they have been brainwashed into believing that they are the ones who will bring in the brave new world that their parents and grandparents represents.

In Obama’s appeal to Women, young people, African-Americans and Latinos we find an appeal that is both anti-white in its appeal to minorities vis-a-vis non-minorities and anti-Western in its appeal to women and young people who have been convinced by the anti-Western narrative that the West is responsible for the lack of progress and the infliction of all sorts of evils upon the world. What all these people have in common, w/ Obama is a hatred of all things Western.

I can’t remember, in my lifetime, such an overt appeal to racial identity by a sitting President.

My Homeschool, “Run In W/ The Law” Story

This is a story that tells not only about the difficulty that home-schoolers have with law enforcement but also it gives a little bit of insight into the tyrannical and egotistical nature of too many of those who wear a uniform and a badge. I post this true account in order to shine the disinfectant of light on the corrupt nature of too many cops. I haven’t posted it before here because my Son was a little traumatized by what I am going to recount. He is now at an age where he is way past all of that. I, however, remain royally steamed about all of this.

This happened approximately five years ago during the winter months. Anthony had been given the job of keeping the Church sidewalks clear so that government school students could use them going to and fro to their educational internment camps. Since we had received a good amount of snow in the morning Anthony was out snow-blowing the sidewalks about an hour before the inmates were released from school. While Anthony was doing this I was a stone’s throw away in the Church in my study.

While Anthony was snow-blowing a squad car pulled up and the Cop belligerently demanded to know why Anthony was not in school. It seems that the officer was convinced that Anthony was a truant. One would have thought that the officer might have thought it strange that someone would have spent his time skipping school in order to clear sidewalks. Be that as it may, the Cop, copped an attitude from the word “go” w/ Anthony presuming his guilt. When prodded on the question of “why he wasn’t in school,” Anthony finally responded to the question w/ a question of his own. He, politely but directly, asked the rude guy in the squad car, “if it was any of his business as to whether or not he (Anthony) was in school.”

That response flipped the Cop out. He immediately got out of his car and roughly pushed Anthony against the squad car in order to “pat him down.” After patting my Son down he threw Anthony in the back of the squad car. Now, keep in mind, that this was Anthony’s first encounter w/ the police. This was a 15 year old kid who had no idea what was going on or what was being done to him.

Once the officer returned to the vehicle Anthony repeatedly pleaded w/ the Cop to drive the 30 yards to the Church in order that the officer might talk to his father who was in his study. The Cop refused all these appeals, opting instead to make half a dozen radio calls to see whether or not anything could be done to force Anthony into the government schools. He called the Cop at the local High School (which is right across the street from where Anthony was blowing snow) to come and identify Anthony as a student. When the High School Cop couldn’t confirm Anthony as a truant the Cop called the Intermediate Eaton County School District to see if anything could be done to force my Son into their concentration camps they call schools. He also called the local Cop Shop to see if anything could be done to that end. He did everything he could to try and force a situation where Anthony would be compelled to be enrolled at government school and all this only because Anthony had the temerity to ask him if the Cops interest in Anthony’s school attendance was any of his business.

All of this took about 45 minutes to accomplish. 45 minutes of sitting in the back of a squad car, a stone’s throw from the safety of his Father. 45 minutes of having no earthly idea where any of this was going.

Finally, once the Cop realized there was no way to force Anthony into the government schools and that there was nothing he could do with him, the Cop finally decided to listen to Anthony and drive into the Church parking lot to see if I was indeed in my study.

I was.

The Cop came to the door and knocked on it. I keep the Church door routinely locked because I am the only one in the Church and my study is secluded enough from the rest of the Church that people could go in and out without my knowing. Upon hearing the Cops rapping I went out and inquired through the door what the problem was. The officer demanded being let in but as I was alone and as he was 6’5” and about 350 pounds and was wearing a gun I would not let him in until he told me what the problem was. I don ‘t trust Cops and I am not in the habit of letting large armed men into buildings I am alone in unless I know them or unless I have a weapon of my own.

Finally, he informed me that he had my Son. Immediately I burst out the door fearful that Anthony had been hurt in some fashion. I demanded to know what was going on. When the Cop finally told me his considerably revisionist version I was, to put it mildly, outraged, and let him know that in no uncertain terms.

He made some kind of comment about “seeing where he (Anthony) got ‘it’ from.”

The frustrating end to this story is that we complained to the police and never received an apology for the behavior for this all too common behavior. Further, HSLDA, who we paid insurance premiums to for years for just such an eventuality, refused to send any kind of letter asking for redress of the situation. They insisted that it “really wasn’t a school related event.”

One can tell that five years later I’m still roiled about this whole event. My Son was minding his own business and instead of presuming the best the bully Cop presumed the worst and felt like he was threatened by a kid asking him, after he had already been belligerent himself, if he had any authority in the issue that was being demanded.