Meg Basham … Not A Wise Person

“Some people caught in this particular sin (sodomy) are lovely, kind, and brilliant people.”

Meg Basham
Author — Shepherds For Sale
Evangelical Female Algophile

This demonstrates how much sodomy has been accepted. Would Basham say the same thing about people caught in sin of necrophilia or bestiality?

She wouldn’t say that because necrophilia, bestiality, and pederasty (as just three examples) aren’t yet socially acceptable. But because sodomy is now socially acceptable one has to confess that at least some sodomites can be lovely, kind, and brilliant people.

Further, per the Meg Bashams of the world, if we don’t agree with her on this then we are being a hindrance to the conversion of these otherwise lovely, kind, and brilliant sodomites.

People like Meg Basham seem not to realize that sodomy is an expression of a serious mental disorder/disease. Do we commonly say that folks with serious mental disorders/disease can be otherwise lovely, kind, and brilliant people?

It’s all so twisted.

Now, having said all that, I don’t deny that some sodomites, no doubt, can be more lovely, kinder, and more brilliant than others when judging on a scale of comparison. However, that doesn’t mean that the means of converting them is ignoring their mental disorder/disease. One of the prerequisites of conversion is being confronted by God’s Law so that those in rebellion to God may see their rebellion that they might see their danger with the consequence that they might flee to Christ for His protective righteousness. Presenting the law to sodomites regarding their sodomy is the very definition of “loving them into the kingdom.” It is not loving them into the kingdom, contra the Meg Bashams of the world, to avoid reminding them of the wrath of God that is upon them for their sin.

Because of their mental disorder/disease I don’t want to see sodomites in place of public responsibility. I don’t want to see the sodomite Scott Bessant as head of the Federal Reserve and I don’t want to see him their because he has a mental disease and I don’t care how good he might be with money. I don’t want to see Rick Grenell as an advisor to the President in any capacity and I don’t care how brilliant he might be on foreign affairs. He has a mental disorder/disease that disqualifies him from that position.

The Meg Basham’s in the church are likewise a disease on the church. I know they are well intended and probably the kind of people you want as Nannies or Au-pairs for your children. But they have no business influence public policy with their inability to understand the world.

Dr. Stephen Wolfe Warring Against R2K … McAtee Warring Against All 2K Thinking

“‘Radical two kingdoms'” is radical only in separating nature/grace, general/special revelation, first-table/second-table, secular/sacred, and nature/scripture. The Reformed distinguished these without separating, and so they could affirm Christian nations, Christian magistrates, and Christian laws. In political thought, r2k is the least radical option. It is nothing but modern conservatism established as fixed, timeless principle rather than something prudential. Late 20th century conservatism is made the timeless politics of Jesus.

Otherwise intelligent people bought into this recent iteration of “two kingdoms” looking for some theological and tradition-based justification for their modern secularist political ethos.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
X 

In political thought R2K is the most radical option because it embraces the classical liberal world & life view born of Enlightenment categories and reasoning and insists that such a libertarian view is Jesus normative for all times and places. R2K isn’t even Reformed, instead really being Anabaptist. If you will recall the Anabaptist movement was that movement now called the Radical Reformation.

Secondly, we would say that the Reformed did distinguish and not separate but they were only able to do so because they were living in a context that already presupposed Christianity as the starting point. The West no longer presupposes that and so political theory, like Stepen Wolfe’s “Thomism” will not be able to provide a unified theory of what it is that Natural Law teaches about political thought in the context in which we live today. This is proven by the fact that Wolfe here is warring against those who share his same Thomistic starting point. Both Wolfe (with his historical 2K view) and Escondido (with its R2K view) both are appealing to Natural Law and two Kingdom thinking and both are coming to diametrically different conclusions. Wolfe is here insisting that R2K has unnaturally divorced nature/grace, general/special revelation, first-table/second-table, secular/sacred, and nature/scripture but of course Dr. David Van Drunen and the R2K lads will just insist that Wolfe’s historical 2K school is unnaturally not seeing the proper distinguishing that must be done.

This battle between Wolfe and Van Drunen really is a sight to behold. They are each suffering from an unbiblical dualism and yet Van Drunen is essentially saying to Wolfe that Wolfe’s problem is he is not consistent in his dualistic world and life view.

In the end it is better to speak of One Kingdom, One Lord, with varying Christ ordained jurisdictions. This delivers one from this hopeless warfare of how much dualism is enough dualism while avoiding a monism that might arise without recognizing any jurisdictional distinctions ordained by the Sovereign God and His Christ.

Dr. Richard Gaffin On Eschatology … Rev. Bret McAtee on Dr. Richard Gaffin

“This period between Christ’s resurrection and return, the period of the church, is distinctively and essentially eschatological; it is, in fact, as we have see, a phase in the coming of the eschatological kingdom. That kingdom significance of the church is apparent by reading Mt. 16:18-19, in the light of the great commission (28:19-20); the keys of the kingdom are to the doors of the church.”

Richard Gaffin
In The Fullness of Time — p.80

On the whole I agree w/ this quote by Gaffin but there is something subtle here that is going on that I do not agree with in the least. You will note, if you read carefully, that what Dr. Gaffin is doing here is that he is compressing into one reality the idea of the church and the Kingdom making those ideas to be synonymous.

I do quite agree that the times we live in — the times between Christ’s ascension and His return — are indeed eschatological times. Indeed, it can be rightly said that we have been living in the last days since the Ascension of Christ and the last days of the last days since Christ’s AD 70 judgment return. We wait only now for the final day. However, all of our living now is eschatological. The kingdom has come and while the fullness of the Kingdom awaits we, who have been united to Christ already have the fullness of the Kingdom in principle as we have died with Christ, been resurrected with Christ and are seated in the heavenlies (ascended) with Christ. The “not-yetness” of the kingdom should not eclipse the already and nowness of the kingdom. Like Tolkien’s elves in his trilogy we Christians live in two worlds. We live now in the age to come and yet we still live in this present wicked age.

Returning to the idea of church and kingdom we would note that while the Church is part of the kingdom the church is not the whole kingdom. The kingdom is expansive. An argument might be made that the Church is to the Kingdom what the hearth fire is to the home or what the armoury is to a battle but the kingdom is far more expansive and broad than the church. When we limit the kingdom so that it is exactly synonymous with the Church what we do is cut off the leavening power of the Christian message from every other area of life.

This is the difference between postmillennialism and amillennialism. Amills typically want to limit the kingdom to the church while postmills see a dynamic relationship between kingdom and church but do not limit the kingdom to be 100% identified only with the church.

A Few Words On The Relationship Between Old Testament and New Testament

Whereas in the Old Covenant the progress of Redemption covers over a millennium and is concerned with the ongoing process that repeatedly points to the growing understanding of the Messiah and His work, the New Testament is not about process but is concerned with revealing that end point of the progress of Redemption.

It’s the difference between reading a novel in its beginning chapters and discovering and working through the inciting incident (Genesis 3), and the rising action (conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 3 – Malachi), and the climax of the novel where all is resolved (Gospels). Yet, even in the New Testament there remains a progress of Redemption inasmuch as we read and see the movement of the incarnation and humiliation of Christ to the exaltation/ascension-session of Christ. Then from there the progress of Redemption continues with the growth of the body of the ascended Christ (Acts-Revelation).

The OT, thus has a different kind of progress of Redemption theology than the NT because it is process, while the NT progress of Redemption is end point or climax, though as we have seen the idea of redemptive progress is not completely absent from the New Testament. However, it is the progress of Redemption accomplished and applied as opposed to the progress of redemption anticipated.

And yet because the Scripture is written with a proleptic dynamic (the reality is in the anticipatory events) even the progress of Redemption retains a end point feel. Because the Gospel is part of one story that begins in Genesis and because all men throughout history have been saved by the same blood of Christ the Gospel climax that is most illuminated in the New Covenant is already present in the Old Covenant like the promissory spark that will eventually become a five alarm fire.

Top Down, Bottom Up, or Inside Out?

Is the Christianization of America more likely to happen from a Spirit-wrought revival of the populace that seems to arise from nowhere? Or from a Christian prince who seems to pop up from nowhere and uses political power to impose his views on the people? Or is some third option most likely?

Rev. Rich Lusk
Question Raised on X

Just to be clear from the outset here. While I do think that Rev. Lusk can be quite insightful from time to time on the whole, since he is one of the worst practitioners of what is now known as “Federal Vision,” I consider him at the very best heterodox and at very his very worse heretical.

However, he asks a good question here that has been bandied about a good bit by folks lately so I thought I would weigh in on the matter.

If we could reduce the question to its essence it amounts to this;

“Will Christian renewal/reformation be top down or bottom up?”

My answer to this question finds me ripping off from the black Marxist Van Jones who was Obama’s Green Jobs Czar at one time. Van Jones likes to talk about “change being top dow, bottom up and inside out.” And honestly, this is a maxim that has been pursued by Marxists for generations — often quite successfully. It’s also been pursued by Christians in history as well. In point of fact I would argue that it is a biblical principle.

So, my answer to Lusk’s query is that it must be all at the same time. At various times I suppose one will lead and the other follow but on the whole I look at history and I see all three happening whenever a nation pivots from its previous historical/theological/worldview antecedents.

I see it, for example, in a book I finished last month on the Spanish Civil War. Both the Nationalists and the “Republicans” were fighting for a renewal/reformation for their nation as understood as coming from their different beginning points. Both sought top down solutions. The Roman Catholic Nationalists had their Franco and others. The Republicans had their Francisco Largo Caballero and others. However, both parties also sought the support of a bottom up constituency and they both fought for hearts and minds (the inside out component).

If you want to go behind that to consider how Charlemagne would use the sword to convert tribes in his orbit of rule one sees again the top down approach being married to a bottom up approach. After these pagan tribes were “converted” Christian missionaries would then swarm over them to knead Christianity into the individual lives of those previously pagan but now, because of Charlemagne’s sword, Christian tribes.

If one reads their Old Testament Scriptures one finds that both Reformation and Deformation come and go with the coming and going of Righteous or Un-Righteous Kings leading the way. The OT Scriptures indeed seem to support more the idea that Reformation and Deformation come from a top down matrix.

Part of the problem behind people accepting that Reformation could come down in a force manner as being led by a Christian Prince is the fact that the American mind is so infected with the Democratic mindset. We want to insist that Reformation will only come as a bottom up “Spirit led” revival. Certainly, with God all things are possible, but consider that God marries means to ends and currently the means that would lead to an end of a “Spirit led” revival are not present. There is very little proclamation of the whole counsel of God in pulpits today in even putative conservative churches. The enemy has completely captured the places where the most intense catechism occurs; the Government schools and the Universities, as well the media industry (entertainment and “news”) as well as most of the Churches in the West today. Then there is the fact that the publishing houses are almost all captured territory as well as the gaming industry. In light of that could bottom up Spirit led revival still happen? Sure … because God is sovereign all things are possible. However, when we look at history, history suggests that a bottom up Spirit led revival is not going to happen apart from a movement that is also top down and inside out.

And most pietistic Christians don’t want to hear that. They would prefer to think that God always works His ends without means that He Himself has raised up. A Christian magistrate has often been the top down means God uses to prompt bottom up Spirit led revival.