More Carson Weakness

“The first will be most clearly perceived when we recall that up to that point in history, religion, and state were everywhere intertwined. This was true, of course, of ancient Israel: at least in theory, Israel was… a theocracy. Similarly in the pagan world: most of the gods of the people were necessarily the gods of the state. When the Romans took over some new territory, they arranged a god-swap: they adopted some of the local gods into their own pantheon and insisted that the locals take on some of the Roman gods….But nowhere was there a state that was divorced from all the gods, what we would call a secular state, with the state and religion occupying distinct, even if overlapping, spheres. But on the face of it, this is what Jesus is advocating. At the very least, insofar as he envisages a transnational and transcultural community that is not identified with any one state, he anticipates the obligation to give to Caesar that is in power whatever is his due.”

D. A. Carson
Christ And Culture Revisited — pg. 56-57

1.) The idea that a state could be divorced from all the gods is a comparatively recent Baptistic notion and it shares in the nonsense that characterizes much of Baptist theology.

2.) This insistence that the scriptures teach that a non-theocratic state can exist is exactly that which has given us a state apparatus that believes itself to be god, which has in turn yielded a state a state dedicated to no gods will be allowed to challenge its primacy.

3.) State and religion can no more be separated then body and soul. Carson asserting that such a situation is a reality doesn’t prove that it is a reality.

4.) Carson’s interpretation of what Jesus says (“Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesars the things that are Gods unto God”) is not the same as what Jesus actually said. When Carson invokes the words of Jesus to support the idea that the New Testament model is one that supports a state that isn’t beholden to and reflective of some God or god concept is eisegesis of the worst sort.

5.) The reason that the ancients never had a state that was divorced from the gods is that the ancients were smarter then us, realizing that such an arrangement is literally impossible. Since God is an inescapable category, it is no more possible to posit a non theocratic state then it is to posit a person who can have no god.

6.) All of this in no way denies that the State and Religion occupy distinct spheres. Just as in Israel the King and the Priest fulfilled distinct offices though both were responsible to the God of the Bible so today the Magistrate and the minister have distinct offices though both remain responsible to God. Carson tries to say on one hand that State and Religion occupy distinct spheres while saying at the same time that while some God or god concept should rule the religious sphere no god of god concept need be present in the sphere of the state. Carson seems to think that it is acceptable — nay even Biblical — for the State to de-god God. This kind of theology is madness. Does he really believe that God wants the state to de-god God?

7.) Jesus may indeed envision a trans-national and trans-cultural community but that is not the same as envisioning a a-national and a-cultural community. Carson seems to be suggesting that in the Kingdom people lose their nationality and culture. But there is another understanding of the Kingdom that is more respectful of the diversity that reflects trinitarian thinking and that is to suggest that the community that Jesus envisions is a community that includes all nations and all cultures as their own nations and cultures. This would be a vision that is pan-cultural instead of trans-cultural.

8.) Carson’s view implicitly supports cultural pluralism. If there is no god over the state then there is no one god over the people. But if the State must rule the people then Carson’s state must be that which rules over the people’s varying gods thus making the state the god of the gods.

9.) Carson’s a-millennialism skews his interpretation about Christ and Culture as it pertains to the Christ transforming culture paradigm.

The Obama Campaign Racial Strategy

“Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.

‘They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?'”

Anybody who has ever worked in a affirmative action work environment has seen this Obama campaign technique a million times. A member of a minority community is caught in some kind of error or malfeasance and the immediate response on their part is the cry of ‘racism,’ thus seeking to shift the blame on the person who revealed their error. This moves the focus off of their error or malfeasance and makes the issue the motives of the one who revealed their error.

The ‘post-racial candidate’ who is supposed to take us beyond race has now officially introduced race into the campaign. With this injection of race we see how Obama and his handlers intend to use race to their advantage. You can be sure that each and every time a effective and legitimate criticism is raised against Obama that he is going to hang his blackness out on the American Media clothesline for all to see and scream that the opposition is being racist. And when he doesn’t scream it, he will imply it with all the subtlety of a meat grinder. For the next nineteen weeks we are going to hear more versions of affirmative actions cries of racism then there are versions of the Bible.

I believe the reason that the Obama campaign is pursuing this is threefold. First, Obama has some real problems on this front has as already been established by his associations and by some quotes, that if examined closely, and taken in conjunction with his black nationalism associations reveal his problems. By bringing up the race issue in the way he has, he theoretically de-fangs his opponents from going after him on this score. Second, by raising this issue Obama continues to frame himself as the victim and his opponents as the victimizers. In our culture the poor victim always has a political advantage. Third, by raising the issue Obama takes advantage not only of the politics of pity, but also of the politics of guilt. For several generations a large percentage of Americans have been manipulated by a false guilt about race relations. A large percentage of Americans, buying into the false race narrative of this country seem to think they can atone for their sins of the past by voting for a black guy.

In this political climate Republicans would have to be brain dead to try and make Obama’s race a political issue. This reality reinforces the idea that Obama is the one injecting race into the campaign in order to try and take an issue away from Republicans (his associations with Black Nationalists and other radicals) and in order to smear his opponents with a charge in our culture that is worse then the charge of molesting children.

Will the Republicans meet this challenge directly? Will they call the racial bluff and tell Obama and his handlers to shove his race baiting plaints up his affirmative action post-racial sphincter? Will the Republicans turn the table and expose Obama’s racial campaign?

Only when hell freezes over, melts again, and refreezes.

No, what the Republicans will do out of fear of politically correct backlash will either stumble over themselves giving long and involved explanations insisting that they weren’t being racial, thus giving justification to the accusation, or failing that they will apologize for their insensitivity. Instead of saying that Obama is being racial by constantly injecting race they will roll over.

Having seen this technique successfully used frequently in the affirmative action workplace, I would say, from a tactical perspective, it is a brilliant move on the part of the Obama campaign.

Sal’s Advice

Billy Bob

I don’t have to “prove” anything. The burden of proof is on those who insist that the Bible furnishes us with the kind of economic- or foreign policy that can be legitimately held forth “prophetically” to the state.

My view is that the Bible is the account of the creation, fall, redemption, and consummation of all things. But if it’s economics or foreign policy we’re interested in, then we should go to the local library and read the experts.

I cut this from Green Baggins comment column. It is written by somebody infected with the R2Kt virus.

In this snippet Sal says that the Bible is about the Redemption of all things. What does Redemption look like in the realm of economics and foreign policy? Sal says it doesn’t look like anything we can measure because Economics and Foreign policy apparently aren’t part of the all things that Christ has come to Redeem.

Second, I would say the burden of proof is on Sal and the others infected with the R2kt virus who insist that the Bible doesn’t furnish us with the kind of economic or foreign policy that can be legitimately held forth. Sal, is part of the crowd who insist that the Bible is about individuals getting their souls saved but not about what embodied saved souls look like in the culture they live in once they’re saved. I mean, come on, you can only expect King Jesus to do so much after all.

Quite clearly the Bible does speak to Economic issues in the 8th Commandment. Not stealing is a great guideline for a nation and its government to follow. Salvation in the Economic realm thus looks like a government that is restrained in stealing money from the people. But those experts in the Library that Sal says we should check out keep insisting that stealing and redistribution of wealth does work so we should believe Marx over God’s Word according to Sal.

And how could Sal disagree with me about taking my Economic cues from Marx as discovered in the Library? After all the Church can’t speak to those things so it is fair to say that we can genuinely have Christian Marxists. Indeed, it is reported that in Sal’s Church Christian Marxists sit next to Christian Supply Siders and even though they fight like cats and dogs in the common realm they live in peace in the Church because the Church just keeps reminding them that their souls are saved.

And what of Foreign Policy? Does the Bible really have no guidelines for us in that realm? Is Sal suggesting that 2000 years of just war theory is just so much dung? Is Sal suggesting that there really isn’t any Biblical base in Just War theory?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it till the cows come home, Sal and his kind are gnostic. Salvation is for the soul but it doesn’t apply to anything else. Jesus saves us for heaven and does not rule by command in any realm in this life saving his ruling here as that which happens by secret divine decree.

This theology is called so only by way of courtesy.

Standing By Aslan Even If Aslan Isn’t True

“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia”

C. S. Lewis
The Silver Chair

I love Lewis. The Silver Chair is my favorite book in the Narnia Series. Having said all that this quote has forever driven me nuts because it strikes me as something more an existentialist would say when contemplating the meaninglessness of life then something a Christian would say. A true blue existentialist believes that life has no meaning except the meaning he gives it and even though he knows it has no meaning it is an act of existential courage to act as if it does have meaning. Lewis seems quite neo-orthodox with this quote.

First, I have never been able to understand how made up things could ever seem more important than real things. Now made up things might be more comforting than real things but only an insane person would say a made up thing seems more important than a real thing. Standing by a play world that is known as a play world over against the real world is something that you find frequently from people in a nut house, and I don’t think it does any favors to Christianity to suggest to people that a Christianity that isn’t true would be preferred over a world without Christ that is true. If Christianity and Jesus isn’t true then let us join Nietzsche’s ubermensch and be done with it. If only in this life we have hope in Christ we are of all men to be pitied.

Second being on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan is likewise just plain stupid. If there isn’t any Aslan then there isn’t a Aslan’s side to be on.

The reason this quote came to mind again is because recently I was in a setting where somebody was suggesting that it didn’t matter whether the miracles of the Bible were true since all that really mattered is that, historically, people have believed them to be true. The suggestion was that, as ministers, we shouldn’t worry about the truth or not truth of the miracle accounts, since to do so would be indicative of enlightenment thinking. Rather we should lose the enlightenment category hangups and just emphasize that these stories were the myths that guided the people in Scriptures and they should be the myths that guide us.

Please accept my apologies but I can’t do this. It makes no more sense to say I am going to stand by Aslan even if there is no Aslan to stand by then it does to say that I am going to believe (and act as if) the miracles are true even if the miracles aren’t true. Further, it is quite important whether or not they actually happened or not, because if they didn’t happen then we would be people following cleverly devised tales. I can make up and follow my own tales just as easily as I can follow somebody else’s tales.

Everything hangs on the objective truth of the Scriptures. If the Miracle accounts aren’t true then the whole thing unravels and if the whole thing unravels, I’m warning you now, you don’t want to be around me because I promise you that I will be consistent with what it all means if those Miracles aren’t true.

Carson, Christ & Culture Revisited — Early Problems

I’ve just begun Carson’s “Christ and Culture Revisited.” It looks to be an interesting read.

Already though we have hit a snag. Carson offers,

“My focus is on how we should be thinking about the relations between Christ and culture now,at the beginning of the twenty first century….Our reflections are shaped by six unique factors,

4.) … debates rage regarding what is ‘cultural’ in ‘multicultural,’ which in turn has precipitated debates over the relative merits of one culture over another. That in turn, of course, feeds into debates over religious claims, since religions, too, under the definition of ‘culture’ already given, are necessarily forms of cultural expressions. What gives a religion, any religion, the right to claim its own superiority or even uniqueness.

The problem here is that Carson has presupposed without establishing that religions are merely forms of cultural expressions. I would contend that the opposite is the case arguing that cultures are merely forms of religious expressions. If we say that religions are necessarily forms of cultural expressions, as if culture is the goose that lays the egg of religion then we run the danger of suggesting that culture is a kind of ultimate starting point. But to make culture an ultimate starting point is to get things backwards since the cult (religion) is that which makes the cultus (culture). If we are to examine culture profitably, as Carson intends to do, then the beginning point is not the culture itself but rather the religion from which the culture springs. And behind the religion of a culture looms the God whom both cult and cultus serve.

Carson’s problem begins to reveal itself even more acutely when just a page later he can speak of ‘secular countries.’ What does Carson mean by this? Does he mean that these are countries and cultures that have never been based on any religions? Such a view would require culture to be seen as something prior to religion and something out of which religion might or might not come. But of course we know that it is not possible to have a a-religious culture and so the whole idea of a “secular country,” or a “secular culture” must be surrendered.

Another sign of looming trouble in Carson’s book is by his early assertion that, “in some ways the world has become more furiously religious.” This cannot be since religion can neither increase nor decreases but can only transmute itself into different forms. Christopher Hitchens is every bit as religious as Osama Bin Laden, and were Hitchens to convert tomorrow to Christianity he would not at that point become “more furiously religious,” just as if Osama Bin Laden decided to walk away from Allah and become an agnostic he wouldn’t become “less furiously religious.” Now, it may be that the world is becoming more furiously epistemologically self conscious about how religious it is but no individual, nor any culture can ever increase or decrease their religious quota.

Carson begins this book by giving a definition of culture that he favors from a gentleman named Clifford Geertz.

“The culture concept…denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitude towards life.”

Now this is fine as far as it goes but the question that begs being asked is, where do the pattern of meanings that are embodied in symbols come from? Sure, they are historically transmitted but the question is where did they originally come from? The answer to that is that they came from the cult (religion) of a people, which itself originated from how the people thought about God.