DKQ – Van Prinsterer, Nigel Lee

“Just as all truth rests upon the truth that is from God, so the common foundation of all rights and duties lie in the sovereignty of God. When that sovereignty of God is denied or (what amounts to the same thing) banished to heaven because His kingdom is not of this world, what becomes then of the foundation of authority, of law, of every sacred dutiful relation in state, society, and family? What sanctions remain for the distinctions and rank in life? What reason can there be that I obey another’s commands, that the one is needy, that the other is rich? All this is custom, routine, abuse, injustice, oppression. Eliminate God, and it cannot longer be denied that all men are, in the Revolutionary sense of the words, free and equal. State and society disintegrate, for there is a principle of dissolution at work that does not cease to operate until further division is frustrated by that indivisible unit, that isolated human being, the individual – a term of the Revolution – naively expressive of all destructive character.”

Guillaume Groen Van Prinsterer
Unbelief & Revolution 
Lecture 9 

1.) R2K is one of those errant theologies that banish the sovereignty of God to heaven because God’s Kingdom is not of this world. This is why it must be so strenuously rejected.

2.) Those who banish the sovereignty of God in the Christian community most normally turn to Natural Law to provide the foundation of authority required for every sacred dutiful relation in state, society, and family. However, the beginning presupposition of Natural Law is that man, starting from himself via his own sovereign authority can, while being totally depraved, use his unfallen reason in order to discern every sacred dutiful relation in state, society, and family.

3.) The elimination of God is the elimination of all distinctions. If there is no God, then distinctions are completely arbitrary. That “class does not exist” yields to “race does not exist” yields to “gender does not exist” yields to “age does not exist.” All of these become social constructs. (What Van Prinsterer calls arbitrary “custom, routine, abuse, injustice, oppression.”)

4.) When Kinists see NAPARC churches disciplining Kinists they see this Revolutionary (Jacobin/Marxist) agenda being pursued.

5.) This explains the horrors of egalitarianism. The presence of egalitarianism is horrific because its presence means the absence of the God of the Bible. Denominations that are practicing egalitarianism as seen in the claim that races are equal are diminishing the Christian faith. Denominations that are practicing egalitarianism as seen by putting women in positions of leadership are testifying they don’t believe in the sovereignty of God. Denominations that are practicing egalitarianism as seen in insisting that congregations which are racially integrated are automatically superior to congregations which are not have signed up for the egalitarian agenda.

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Even after God has totally banished sin and all its consequences at the end of the age, even in the city of the New Jerusalem on the renewed Earth – “the nations of them which are saved walk in the light of it and the kings of the Earth…shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.”26
Then, “they shall be His peoples (laoi) — plural. Laoi, plural – not singular (laos). Rev. 21:3,24-26. For then, they all return to Genesis 1:1’s eternally-Triune Elohiym (and not to a unitarian multiracialistic Allah).
Francis Nigel Lee
Reformed Theologian

DKQ … Charles Hodge

“If the fact that the master and slave belong to different races, precludes the possibility of their living together on equal terms, the inference is, not that the one has the right to oppress the other but that they should separate. Whether this should be done by dividing the land between them, and giving rise to distinct communities, and wise conditions, is not for us to say. We have undertaken only to express an opinion as to the manner in which the Bible directs those, who look to it for guidance, to treat this difficult subject, and not to trace out a plan to provide for ulterior results. It is for this reason, we have said nothing of African colonization, though we regard it as one of the noblest enterprises of modern benevolence.”

Charles Hodge
Slavery – p. 511

“Whether the slaves of this country may be safely admitted to the enjoyments of personal liberty, is a matter of dispute, but what they cannot, consistently with the public welfare, be entrusted with, is the exercise of political power. This is on all hands admitted.”

Charles Hodge
Slavery, Essays and Reviews – p. 502

Now tell me that the NAPARC denominations, who are disciplining men for agreeing with Hodge, are not out of their ever-loving minds.

Refuting David Van Druen’s Work on Natural Law

“Christians do not think that their unbelieving neighbors should be baptized or participate in the Lord’s Supper, but they do think they should work rather than steal, get married rather than cohabitate, bear and raise children rather than abort them, and vote for good candidates rather than bad ones. But how can Christians have meaningful moral conversations about such things? If Christians only appeal to Bible verses to try and persuade their non-Christian neighbors, they communicate a not-so-subtle hint that such moral issues are simply Christian things, things our Holy book tells us to do. But work, marriage, and child rearing are not simply Christian things, but human things. They concern matters that obligate all human beings and that have profound effect on earthly communities. Without natural law, we could not explain why these moral issues concern all members of our societies and not just Christians who read about these issues in Scripture. The reality of natural law creates the possibility of Christians making moral appeals to their unbelieving neighbors in ways other than simply quoting the Bible.”

David Van Drunen (DVD)
Natural Law; A Short Companion

1.) Do not miss the subtlety of what DVD is doing here. DVD has told us that we cannot appeal to non-Christians on the basis of Biblical authority. We must set aside Biblical authority and move to an authority that the non-Christian can accept according to their epistemological standard. We must move away from God’s authoritative word as standard to a standard that man’s authoritative epistemology can accept. Fallen man cannot accept God’s standard, but he will accept Natural Law as a standard for right and wrong and so since that is a standard he will accept we must use that standard.

This is a subtle appeal to neutrality. Natural law, DVD, is telling us, is more acceptable because there is a neutral cast to it that an appeal to God’s revealed law does not have. We are to move to Natural law appeals because it is more acceptable to fallen man’s sense of independence from God’s law. Thus, DVD re-establishes the standard from “thus saith the Lord,” as a moral standard, to “this seems reasonable to fallen man.” Fallen man’s epistemological independence from God is thus left unchallenged. Van Til squashed the idea of neutrality but here DVD dusts it off and makes it the centerpiece of His epistemology.

2.) I hate to tell DVD this but those items that DVD uses as illustrations are moral issues and the morality or immorality of them can only be defined in the matrix of one belief system or another. It is true that DVD’s “things” are also human things but these things that humans do or do not are either moral or immoral and morality or immorality can only be defined according to the God or god concept that every person or people owns and embraces.

3.) DVD seems to fail to understand that natural law itself and what it teaches is worldview/religious dependent. For example, for the pagan Christian Natural law teaches that Radical Two Kingdom theology is taught by Natural law. However, for the Natural Law followers of Stephen Wolfe Natural law teaches that Radical Two Kingdom theology is an abomination. Now, why the difference here between two putatively Christian camps as to what Natural law does and does not teach? The explanation of the difference is that each camp has embraced a worldview/religion that teaches alternate and opposite views on Natural law. So, we see that it is not Natural law that gives us objective truth, but rather it is the worldview/religion prism with which we view Natural law that convinces those in error that their subjective error is objective truth. When DVD or the Stephen Wolfe disciples shop their Natural law they are not shopping Natural law. They instead are shopping their worldview/religion that renders up the Natural law that they subjectively prefer.

4) It seems to be the case that given the quote above that DVD is suggesting that people can be moral without being Christian. Now, most Christians would say that is true in a relative sense. Some non-Christian people(s) can be more moral than other non-Christian people(s) but most Christians would never agree that non-Christians can be moral according to God’s standard.

5.) But work, marriage, and child rearing are not simply Christian things, but human things.

It is true that work, marriage, and child rearing are human things, but they only become fully human as they are pursued as increasingly Christian. I would argue that these human things become increasingly human as they are defined and lived out in terms of being Christian things. These things are indeed human things, but they become less and less human the more they are preformed outside the definitional boundaries of Christianity. Take marriage as an example. Marriage is a human thing but if it is not defined according to a Christian worldview/religion it becomes a decidedly less human thing. This is being testified to right now by the pursuit of polyamory in our social order. These folks will argue that Natural law teaches polyamory. They will argue that they are most human when allowed their polyamory. Only Christianity, and not Natural law, can give an objective standard by which to challenge the Natural law of those who are pursuing polyamorous marriages.

6.) The best that DVD’s Natural law can do is give us one Natural law to contest against other Natural laws. DVD’s natural law cannot even reign supreme within conservative Christian circles.

7.) Without natural law, we could not explain why these moral issues concern all members of our societies and not just Christians who read about these issues in Scripture.

I’m pretty sure I can easily point to the wrecked lives of the gender blenders, the ruined lives of children living through divorce, the high body count of today’s youth to explain why these moral issues concern all members of society. I don’t need Natural law to explain why these moral issues concern all members of society. The culture of narcissism that we live in is daily living proof that these moral issues concern us all.

The only answer to our current situation is a return to the law and to the testimony. DVD’s appeal to Natural law as being a lifeline to restore Western culture is bankrupt. It has no power in it to restore. The same is true of the Stephen Wolfe anti-DVD version of Natural law. Both of these methods begin their reasoning with allowing fallen man to retain his authority. Both of these methods appeal to the idea of some neutral realm where man does not have to epistemologically kneel to God’s authority.

Todd Friel or Samuel Rutherford / Andrew Eliot?

“Tyranny being a work of Satan, is not from God, because sin, either habitual or actual, is not from God: the power that is, must be from God; the magistrate, as magistrate, is good in nature of office, and the intrinsic end of his office, (Rom. xiii. 4) for he is the minister of God for thy good; and, therefore, a power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is not a power, but a licentious deviation of a power; and is no more from God, but from sinful nature and the old serpent, than a license to sin. God in Christ giveth pardons of sin, but the Pope, not God, giveth dispensations to sin.”

Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex, p.34

“For a nation thus abused to arise unanimously and to resist their prince, even to the dethroning of him, is not criminal, but a reasonable way of vindicating their liberties and just rights; it is making use of the means and the only means, which God has put into their power, for mutual and self-defense. And it would be highly criminal in them not to make use of this means. It would be stupid tameness and unaccountable folly for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious, and cruel man to wanton and riot in their misery. And in such a case it would, of the two, be more rational to suppose that they who did NOT resist rather than that they who did, would receive to themselves damnation.”

Rev. Andrew Eliot (1718 – 1778)
Congregational Minister – Boston
A discourse concerning Unlimited submission

Or, you can go with this idiot,

I’m sorry, but if you ever say something this dumb and never apologize your credibility is forever lost. Even if you do apologize, I am not listening to you without remembering how wrong you were with this one.

We Decided to Convert the Enemy by Becoming a Watered-Down Version of the Enemy

One startling truth about the past 60 years of American social life is the collapse of Mainline Protestantism. In 1965, more than 50 percent of Americans belonged to the country’s historic Protestant congregations. Now less than 10 percent do, and that number continues to drop.
The second startling truth about the past 60 years is how the Evangelical movement, which was designed to be a via media between Mainline Protestantism and Fundamentalism, has completely capitulated to the old mindset of Mainline Protestantism. Indeed, one could even say that Mainline Protestantism lives on in Evangelicalism.

One suspects, as one looks to the future, that the new movement of “Neo-Calvinism” as the new via media between Old Line Historic Calvinism and Evangelicalism will likewise fail. It’s leaders show no more promise than the Harold J. Ockenga’s and D. Martyn Lloyd Jones’ of old, who were so instrumental in forming Evangelicalism.

The only answer is to quit trying to form movements which keep trying to keep one foot in the enemy camp. Whether we consider the Mainline Protestantism of old, or the Evangelical response, or the current Neo-Calvinism, what we see is that the attempt to present ourselves as reasonable to the enemy never ends well.

These movements are destroying the church in their quest to reach the lost. In seeking converts they are only giving unbelief a patina of Christian respectability.