Wherein Rev. Toby Sumpter Goes Full Retard — Part I

“Dude, You Just Went Full Retard.”

 Character Kirk Lazarus 
 2008 comedy film Tropic Thunder 

I have somehow entered an alternate universe as discovered by Dr. Stephen Strange when exploring the multiverse. In this universe there is absolutely no correlation between the usage of language and logic. Almost anything can be said that leaves the inhabitants of this alternate universe completely unphased. It’s like they all speak a different language each having their own decoder headset.

Below is a conversation I stumbled across between Rev. Andrew Torba and Rev. Toby Sumpter. Torba is a good man fighting on the side of the angels. Sumpter is an idiot as seen in this exchange below.

I am told that Sumpter is something of Doug Wilson’s right hand man these days. I have to wonder if when Doug sees exchanges like this if he doesn’t go all “double face palm.” Does Doug experience “cringe” at conversations like what we find below? Does Doug start looking around to see if Stephen Sittler or Alfred E. Newman (he of MAD MAGAZINE fame) might be able to replace Sumpter?

This is sooooooooo bad.

Rev. Andrew Torba writes;

“God created different ethnic groups. To preserve them is to preserve God’s creation and is therefore an inherent good.”

Bret interjects;

Now before we turn to Rev. Sumpter’s response to Rev. Torba let us take just a second to realize that what Rev. Torba has said above has been the position of the church for 2000 years. This is clearly and unequivocally proven by Achord and Dow’s anthology; “Who is my Neighbor; An Anthology of Natural Relations.” (Have I mentioned lately that to date nobody has refuted this book and only one CREC clergy nincompoop has even tried and what a goulash he made of that attempt.

Anyway, after Rev. Torba made that comment above Rev. Toby Sumpter weighed in and I think this response deserves as wide as publication as possible. Sumpter replied;

“At best this is half-baked primitivism, and at worst it’s a form of incestuous Judaizing and radically misunderstands the Cultural Mandate and Great Commission.

This is like saying God created different kinds of food. To preserve them in their original state is to preserve God’s creation & therefore an inherent good. 

So wine and cheese and tacos are out y’all. Also, no mining, no fossil fuels, no building anything, no medicine — no changing or mixing anything that God made. Leave it raw and untouched just like it was when God said it was good. No fruitful dominion for you.

Despite the idolatry of statist multiculturalism, Christians must do better.”

Just when I think I’ve found the bottom of CREC stupidity, Toby Sumpter steps up to the plate to tell me that I believe that Cheese, Wine, and Tacos must be out of bounds because I am a Kinist.

1.) Maintaining and preserving ethnic distinctions is incestuous Judaism?

Well, I guess Rev. Sumpter must conclude that St. Cyprian was guilty of incestuous Judaism;

“If it is a source of joy and glory to men to have children like unto themselves — and it is more agreeable to have begotten an offspring then when the remaining progeny responds to the parent with like lineaments — how much greater is the gladness of God the Father, when any one is so spiritually born that in his acts and praises the divine eminence of race [genus] is announced!”

Dow and Achord note about this quote, “Cyprian’s argument presupposes that it is proper and fitting for men to take such joy, and hence that it is improper and unfitting for men to neglect the value of lineal similitude or, worse, to positively value dissimilitude.”

And according to Rev. Sumpter, St. Augustine is a practitioner of incestuous Judaism;

“Difference of race or condition of sex is indeed taken away by the unity of the faith, but it remains imbedded in our mortal interactions, and in the journey of this life the apostles themselves teach that it is to be respected and they even proposed living in accord with the racial differences between Jews and Greeks as a wholesome rule.”

St. Augustine
Epistle to Galatians (3:28-29)

And Aquinas guilty of incestuous Judaism?

“God holds first place, for He is supremely excellent, and is for us the first principle of being and government. In the second place, the principles of our being and government are our parents and country, that have given us birth and nourishment. Consequently, man is debtor chiefly to his parents and country, after God. Wherefore, just as it belongs to religion to give worship to one’s parents and one’s country [i.e. — one’s people]. The worship due to our parents includes the worship given to all our kindred, since our kinfolk are those who descend from the same parents.”

Summa Theologica
Vol. III, Part II, Second Section

John Calvin guilty of incestuous Judaizing?

You betcha;

“Delightful to every one is his native soil, and it is also delightful to dwell among one’s own people… all his relatives and the nation from which he sprang.”

Commentary on Jeremiah 9:2

Puritan Thomas Wilson? Yep… he was a incestuous Judaizer;

“What do ye call natural affections?

Such as be among them of one blood and kindred, as between parents and children, husbands and wives, kindred, country, heathens, yea Christians also voice of these.

How does it differ from human and Christian affection?

Human affection is that whereby we embrace all men; natural affection is that where by we embrace them which are nearer unto us by blood; Christian affection is that whereby we love good men because they belong to Christ.”

A Commentary on the Most Divine Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans
3rd Edition. 1653, Chapter 1, page 54

I have pages and pages of quotes like this. I can demonstrate that per Toby Sumpter that the following men were guilty of incestuous Judaism.

Edwards
Winthrop
Althusius
Knox

By crackey, it would be easier to tell you who in church history has not been an incestuous Judaizer. At best this accusation is ignorant on stilts. At worse Sumpter was born with a birth defect in his ability to reason. You decide for yourself.

Let’s round off with one of my favorite from A. W. Tozer;

“You can’t change my mind about God having made us the way we are. The yellow man and the white man and the black man. God made our races. I know the Marxists and the bubbleheads say: “Oh, that’s old-fashioned baloney! Everybody should get together and intermarry and pretty soon there won’t be races, and where there are no races there won’t be any hate, and if there’s no hate, there won’t be any war.” Oh, for cotton batting to stuff in the mouths of people who don’t know better than that!

Many of you have taken a good look at history. Did you happen to notice that since the beginning of the world there never has been worse hatred between nations than today, and that hatred rarely crosses the color line? It is within the race itself.

 

The presence of specific races is not the source of our trouble-it is the disease of sin within our own hearts. Twice within twenty-five years the white Germans tried to kill and destroy the white Englishmen. Occasionally there are flare-ups between races, but mostly it is within races.

 

It is not race, brethren. It is sin, sin, sin, sin, sin! In place of having love for our fellowmen, we have quarreling, lying, and exploiting and competing to a shocking degree. Most people don’t want to be reminded that the Bible says we should love the Lord our God and our neighbor as our self.

 

 

Let me remind you of the warbler, almost universally distributed in this country, and will you believe that there are 120 species of this bird called the warbler in the United States? One hundred and twenty varieties, with only the slightest differences of feather, or wing, or stripe or spot. In these 120 varieties, we are told, there is no crossing the line, they mate within their own racial strain, hatch and have little ones. Nobody puts them through college, but when they get big enough to hop out on the edge of the nest and begin looking for another warbler, they always pick one like themselves, and stay within their own strain.

 

 

Now, you get a Communist or a starry-eyed American fellow traveler working on that, and he will say: “That’s an evidence of race hate, and it’s a proof those warblers hate each other!” Hate each other – your grandmother’s nightcap! They don’t quarrel, they never fight, they just go on living and warbling. They’ve got sense enough to know that God made 120 kinds of warblers just for fun to show what He could do, and He doesn’t mean for them to cross over and make one warbler out of 120!

I think it is a most amazing thing in our day that the godless who have sowed the seed of discontent among the nations try to tell us that racial lines are artificial and an evidence of “wickedness” – and they don’t even believe in the Word and won’t allow it to be used in any other way!”

What else can we conclude but that Rev. Toby Sumpter and his ideologically inbred CREC mates are just historical aberrations? Listening to these men is like discovering an island where everybody has a third eye. The inhabitants all think it is quite normal but the sane know better.

Next our brilliant Sumpter steps up to the mic and tells us that Rev. Torba radically misunderstands the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate. Indeed his brilliance is so effulgent I can barely read his words for the brightness of their glory;

Here we go again…

Did N.T. scholar Martin Wyngaarden misunderstand the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate when he offered:

“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, though each nationality remains distinct.”

“For, though Israel is frequently called Jehovah’s People, the work of his hands, his inheritance, yet these three epithets severally are applied not only to Israel, but also to Assyria and to Egypt: “Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.” 19:25.

Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. Yet the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria, and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”

Martin Wyngaarden
The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture — pp. 101-102.

How about Dr. Geerhardus Vos? Did he also misunderstand the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate?

“Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.

Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme… [In this] was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.”

-Geerhardus Vos,
Biblical Theology

Again, in the words of Captain Steve Rogers, “I can do this all day.”

Next the genius Sumpter comes up with analogy;

“This is like saying God created different kinds of food. To preserve them in their original state is to preserve God’s creation & therefore an inherent good.”

We will pick that up in part II.

 

 

Interrogating Dr. Stephen Wolfe & His Book, “The Case For Christian Nationalism” VI

I.) “The fear of ‘human autonomy’ in determining suitable law, which some corners of Protestantism today voice, is misplaced.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 269

This is a breathtakingly amazing, naïve, and jejune statement. Does Wolfe live in the same culture I live in?

II.) “Spiritual unity is inadequate for formal ecclesial unity.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

The Case for Christian Nationalism

I would bet my retirement fund that 90% of conservative clergy would viciously disagree w/ that statement.

III.) “Taking dominion is not an adventitious duty or a divine positive command. It proceeds from the very nature of man, and so it cannot be rescinded, even by God, without violating the fundamental nature of man. The right to rule creation as vice-regents is derived naturally and necessarily from divinely granted majesty.”

Stephen Wolfe

The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 53

Well said!

Which is to say that dominion taking by the sons of Adam is an inescapable reality. It is never a question of “will you take Dominion” but only if you will take dominion badly or well.

IV.) “Supplying a set of laws, in my judgment, only feeds into the tendency of Westerners to retreat to universality, whereby people look for something outside themselves to order themselves concretely. A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws, and they should not seek some ‘blueprint’ they can rubber-stamp into law.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 264

WOW! For sure no Christian people would ever want to look outside of themselves to order themselves concretely. What was Alfred the Great doing when he gave the people the Book of Doom as a law code? Clearly, the Book of Doom was a sad example of a Christian people wanting to be ordered by a law outside of themselves.

No people should look to God’s ‘blueprint’ as a template for their law but instead should look inwardly to their own resolve, strength, and spirit?
How is this not pure humanism. I almost want to ask how this is not blasphemy.Keep in mind that Dr. Wolfe here is giving the backhand to Theonomy which does indeed insist that God “supplies a set of laws,” that should be implemented in every Christian culture while at the same time conceding that all Christian cultures will not look universally alike since it will inevitably be the case that different cultures will understand the principle of the general equity of the law differently. Yet, despite those very real differences each culture will rightly be understood as a “Christian culture” all following God’s law standard.

When Wolfe writes about, “A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws,” all I can hear is the lisping of the serpent saying; “hath God really said?”

Look, we need to realize that despite all the good things Dr. Wolfe says in his book, in the end he really is opposed to Biblical Christianity as demonstrated by this quote.

There is no predicting from page to page what Wolfe will say. No consistency. I can peg thinking to pragmatism, Thomism, squishy conservatism, Lutheranism, and yes, some Reformed thought. It is a pick and choose approach. Dr. Wolfe gives us a “total package theology.”

V.) “Christian homeland is a mode of true religion; it directs you to your ultimate home. Thus, serving one’s Christians homeland is serving the Kingdom of God.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 179

So, here we stand and applaud Dr. Wolfe.

I think if I spent a year reading Wolfe I would become bipolar or suffer from multiple personality disorder. It is amazing how one man can be so right and so wrong at the same time, as in one volume.

Doug Wilson, Crosspolitic Podcast, the CREC, and a Ohio Republican

In an interesting and happy confluence of events that really makes the point well that Doug Wilson, Crosspolitic podcast, and the CREC in general are out to lunch when it comes to the ability to properly analyzing our cultural moment we find a happening in Ohio recently sticking out its tongue at Doug’s insistence that Jew malice (left undefined) will not be tolerated as combined with Crosspolitic’s recent podcast starring Nate Wilson, Chocolate Knox, and Aaron Wrench where we hear that the Jewish question (JQ) must not even be discussed because it is so uncivilized, nekulturny and frankly, “not pleasing to Jesus.”

Then in God’s wonderful providence what should happen but a Republican Congressman in Ohio decides to denounce a fellow Ohio Republican for being “bigoted,” because a fellow Republican tweeted on Tuesday that  there is;

“no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone.”

Congressman Miller’s exact words to his fellow Republican Marbach were;

“This is one of the most bigoted tweets I have ever seen. Delete it, Lizzie,”  “Religious freedom in the United States applies to every religion. You have gone too far.”

Miller, having not yet clearly communicated his position also posted on social media;

“God says that Jewish people are the chosen ones, but yet you say we have no hope.”  “Thanks for your pearl of wisdom today.”

Now the kicker for the CREC types out there is that Ohio Republican Congressman Miller who condemned the above statement is Jewish. So we find someone with political power condemning Christianity 101 as being bigoted. Now, Congressman Miller finally did say “I’m sorry” and mumbled some words about his statement not being what he intended to say (Yeah, Right) but clearly all of this should be driving at least some conversation about the JQ. I mean if a Muslim Congress critter had said what Miller said can you imagine the response? Indeed Muslim Congress critters have said scurrilous things against Jewish people lately and there were all kinds of hue and cry to officially censor them in Congress. Why isn’t Dougie and the Crosspolitics guys and the CREC Doug wannabees declaring that we should not talk about the Muslim Question (MQ)?

But don’t quit reading because this JQ story gets even better. Sometime in the last 36 hours or so the Ohio Right to Life dismissed communications director Elizabeth Marbach from her position. Do keep in mind that it was Marbach who made the “disgustingly bigoted tweed about how being saved by Christ alone is our only hope,” to which Jewish Congressman Miller had so strenuously objected.

Did we mention that Jewish Congressman Max Miller’s possibly Jewish wife sits on the board of the Ohio Right to Life’s organization?
 

Interrogating Dr. Stephen Wolfe & His Book, “The Case For Christian Nationalism” V

“Pastors as pastors are no more competent to analyze or make civil law than any other person.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 275

We might first add here that while it may be true that Pastors as pastors are not competent to analyze or make civil law neither is it the case that, typically speaking, lawyers, legislators, nor politicians are likewise competent to analyze or make civil law.

The above is true now but it has not always been true. Indeed, in our now most pastors are  incompetents at both analyzing civil laws and shepherding their flock.

However, this should not be true today since the political/governmental jurisdiction is constantly now invading the ecclesiastical realm with their immorality and death dealing. Today Pastors should be equipped to analyze civil laws as interpreting them and so reading them through a Biblical grid.
We are at the point that neither the greater or lesser magistrates are going to help the Christian people/Church and so the principle of interposition has to fall to the Elders in the ecclesiastical realm to correct the legislators in the civil realm. As such the clergy need the ability to analyze legislation.

We should note that once upon a time the clergy did have this ability. Samuel Rutherford wrote the masterpiece Lex Rex and George Gillespie with him wrote the Civil Government section of the WCF. John Calvin, who was a law school graduate before theology, wrote most of the laws of Geneva, and a number of them are still in place today, and Geneva and the cantons have largely been peaceful and civil ever since. Many of the leaders in cause for American Independence were members of the clergy. Pastors in Puritan America were the most wise and educated people in the community. The fact that the clergy has fallen so far should not be used to excuse the necessity of pastors once again being competent.

Another point to be made here is that if would only give our clergy a thorough worldview training it would be a far less strenuous reach for them to analyze law since law is such a religiously oriented discipline. Once upon a time, pastors took it upon themselves to master the workings of the world to the best of their abilities in order that they might rise above it. Now they just believe whatever CNN tells them and focus on exclusive psalmody.

Let’s keep in mind that St. Paul said that the Church ought to be able to adjudicate in the affairs of this world;

“If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? 2 Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!”

II.) “Modern theonomy provided both a universalist alternative to prevailing visions and promised to reverse moral decay.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
The Case for Christian Nationalism – p. 269

1.) All who contend for any unique law order project are offering a universalist alternative. Indeed, Wolfe’s own plea for Natural law likewise offers a universalist alternative. There is no shame in offering a universalist alternative to paganism.

2.) Do keep in mind that Rushdoony, while eschewing movement Libertarianism, did advocate for a law order that was decentralized in terms of Governmental enforcement. This mitigates against Wolfe’s “universalist” accusation that suggests that Rushdoony was going to force Theonomy on the world.

3.) It is true that an acceptance of God’s law by a redeemed people would indeed reverse moral decay. Nothing else will. Certainly not Wolfe’s Natural law Humanism.

Stephen Wolfe’s book “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” is unlike any other book I’ve ever read in my whole life with its pillar to post statements. Sometimes I want to stand and cheer Dr. Wolfe. Other times I wonder where in purgatory he will spend time.

Interrogating Dr. Stephen Wolfe & His Book, “The Case For Christian Nationalism” IV

I.) “Since Scripture contains the natural law (in scripturated form), Scripture can and ought to inform our understanding of the natural law, the common good, proper determination for civil laws, and the means to heavenly life.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 262

Ummm… if Scripture contains natural law then why do we need natural law? In brief, if Natural law agrees with Scripture it is un-necessary. If Natural law disagrees with Scripture it is un-true.

I would like to take credit for that simple but brilliant insight but I learned it from the  Zacharias Ursinus;

“Furthermore, although natural demonstrations teach nothing concerning God that is false, yet men, without the knowledge of God’s word, obtain nothing from them except false notions and conceptions of God; both because these demonstrations do not contain as much as is delivered in his word, and also because even those things which may be understood naturally, men, nevertheless, on account of innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely, and so corrupt it in various ways.”

Zacharias Ursinus
Commentary on Heidelberg Catechism

II.) “Put differently, God has ordered man by a rule which he discerns what he must do and must avoid in order to achieve his ends.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 245

And here is all we need to read to realize that Wolfe’s worldview cannot be entirely trusted. This sentence demonstrates that the Natural Law types do not comprehend the noetic effect of the fall upon reason. It is true that Natural Law proclaims the will of God but what is also true that what the Natural Law types like Wolfe don’t get is that man’s reason is fallen and fallen man has an agenda to read wrongly what God is making known by General Revelation as contained in Natural Law.

Better to listen to Rushdoony on this score;

“Now, what does the Bible have to say on the subject? As we saw at the beginning, the Bible says nothing from cover to cover about a law of nature. It speaks about God’s law, for men and nations, God’s requirement in every area. Hs moral law, his civil law, his law for the church, his law for the family. It’s all God’s law, directly from God.”

Or, if one prefers Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer;

“Law is rooted in God’s essence. Apostasy means forsaking justice. For atheists, there are only natural inclinations, no natural law. Conscience and moral inclinations are merely weak reverberations of God’s Law, and wherever the latter is done away with, duty is replaced by pride and selfishness.”

Now some from the Natural law school will warn us here that. “we have to be careful here lest you accuse the entirety of Protestantism of never taking the effect of sin seriously.” However there is a proper response to this well intended warning and that is to note that historically Protestantism embraced a Natural law concept that could work in the context of a Christian people. Protestantism in its origins never paused to consider if Natural Law would work per their theories in a culture that was no longer described as Christendom.

We must keep in mind that there are as many Natural laws as their are different schools of philosophies. Can Natural law tell me which one of those contending Natural law theories is the right Natural law theory?

Nope … I’ve done my work here. Natural Law is a wax nose driven by the unstated presuppositions of those who are reading Natural Law.

God’s world does shine forth Natural Law but fallen man suppresses the truth (all truth) in unrighteousness except when convenient. This is what the Synod of Dordt teaches when it notes;

Article 4

“There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay, further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God.”