Chit Chat Between Opposing Pastors On Pulpit Manners

Rev. Rick Phillips is a fairly well known PCA minister who is a two Kingdom advocate Recently he weighed in on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright incident. I want to take a minute to look at what two kingdomist Phillips had to say.

Having been preaching the prophet Micah for several months, I have discovered quite a lot of concern in the Bible over social ethics, and I have often reflected on how little attention such concerns receive in evangelical circles. A thoroughly biblical worldview will speak to both private and social ethics, and for evangelicals to speak persuasively to the culture we need to be strong in both.

Note here that Phillips is encouraging ‘evangelicals’ to speak persuasively to the culture. That is good as far as it goes. Still, Phillips nowhere suggests that the Church as the Church should speak persuasively to the culture. It seems it is only individual evangelicals who should speak persuasively to the culture and not the Church as the Church. Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s problem isn’t that he was speaking persuasively to the culture from the pulpit, as Phillips will say in the next quote. Wright’s problem is that he was speaking as the spokesman of some other God besides the God of the Bible from the pulpit.

Listen, the problem with this approach is seen beautifully in the California Judge H. Walter Croskey who also is a presbyterian elder and who just rendered a ruling that implied that the State owns the children and so homeschooling is not legal. Croskey, no doubt, is seeking to speak persuasively to the culture. But as the Church, according to two kingdomist views, cannot speak to what Croskey has done because ‘God doesn’t speak to that issue in the Bible’ then we are left with no place that can give God’s corrective authoritative word to the H. Walter Croskey’s of the world.

3. Regarding Wright’s use of the pulpit. When I first saw the Youtube excerpts of Wright’s preaching, my first thought was not, “He hates America!” or “He’s a racist!”, but “What a terrible use of God’s pulpit!” I feel exactly the same outrage whenever I see a candidate standing behind a pulpit — Democrat or Republican. I feel exactly the same outrage whenever I see a preacher extolling the virtues (or vices) of a particular candidate — Democrat or Republican. Surely the church pulpit is intended for higher and better matters than the small concerns of national politics! The pulpit is not an institution of the republic, but of the Kingdom, and it’s only legitimate use is the preaching of King Jesus. Politics should be kept out of the pulpit not merely for reasons of church-state separation, but because the pulpit is for matters of such greater significance. And when King Jesus speaks from His Word on matters that pertain to politics — such as personal or social ethics — He speaks equally to all parties, all candidates, and all voters.

I agree with Phillips that it was a terrible use of the pulpit. The question is, ‘why was it a terrible use of the pulpit(?).’ Phillips seems to suggest that it was a terrible use of the pulpit because the pulpit is not the place to speak to social and cultural issues, for, according to the two Kingdomist view, the Church as the Church can’t speak to these issues, because that is not what the Bible is about. To the contrary, as I’ve already mentioned, I would say it is a terrible use of the pulpit because it grossly misrepresents God’s mind, which is what one expects to find emanating from the pulpit.

With regards to that portion that is in bold I must ask Phillips who he thinks the Republic belongs to. It is true that the pulpit is the institution of the Kingdom but for that matter since the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof so is the Republic. One cannot consistently place a dichotomy between the pulpit and the Republic as if God owns the former and not the latter. When Republics are walking askance of their rightful King Jesus then the pulpit must rebuke the Republic in the name of King Jesus. When Republics are in submission to King Jesus then pulpits must teach people to be in submission to authority. Rev. Phillips problem here is the problem of all two kingdomists, and that is that he wants to interject a compartmentalized reality between the reality of Christ’s Lordship over the pulpit (Church) and a reality where, according to two kingdom thinking, Christ is Lord in a different (non-explicit) way. Rev. Phillips says that the pulpits only legitimate use is the preaching of King Jesus. I agree. If King Jesus is over the Republic then should not the pulpit occasionally speak King Jesus’ mind to the Republic? That is what Wright was doing. Wright’s problem though is he serves a different Jesus than the Jesus in the Bible.

In the italicized section of Rev. Phillips quote above he once again does the compartmentalization thing. According to Phillips the pulpit is for greater things then politics, and yet Phillips just said that, the only legitimate use of the pulpit is to preach King Jesus. Rick, is Jesus King over politics? Is Jesus King over economics? Is Jesus King over education? Is Jesus King over civil jurisprudence? Is Jesus King over the arts? If, as you say Rick, we are supposed to preach King Jesus then I don’t know how it is when we preach Christ as King over the political realm we are abandoning the greater things that you say the pulpit is for. Now, we both agree, that not only Christ’s Kingship must be proclaimed from the pulpit but also Christ in His role as High Prophet (thus engendering sermons on epistemology, philosophy illumination, inspiration, revelation, etc.) and Christ in His role as High Priest (thus engendering sermons on soteriology, sacramentology, hamartiology, etc.). This is why the preachers job is so burdensome Rick, because we have to speak about everything precisely because Christ is Prophet, Priest, and King over everything. Who is sufficient for such a task?

Next as it touches the italicized section we must understand that separation of Church and State never, ever, meant that the Church couldn’t speak to the any realm it darn well pleased. The separation of Church and State only meant that the Federal State couldn’t force a national denomination on the states, who were free to have their own State denominations as they chose. Further, the Separation of Church and State where it functions properly doesn’t mean the division or divorce of Church and State (as if that could ever happen) but rather it means that each realm functions only within its proscribed and God ordained boundaries. Rick, the danger of eclipsing Church and State separation today comes not from politically charged pulpits but rather from the State who wants to become the holder, not only of the Sword, but also of the Keys and of the Rod.

Now in reference to Phillips last sentence it looks like he is trying to hedge his bets. It looks like he is saying that the pulpit can speak to these areas as long as everyone is guilty. Well, the good news Rick is that it is a target rich environment on that score. Still, the idea that King Jesus speaks equally to the abortionists as he does to the pro-lifer in a convicting word on that issue is nonsense. I appeal to James to be sustained. In the book of James Jesus speaks a condemning word to the oppressors (Rich) that he does not equally speak to the oppressed. In short Rick, there will be times that the Church speaks to support some view, and some person holding that view, because it and they are being consistent with the law and the testimony of the King, while correspondingly and simultaneously speaking an unequal word against positions and candidates which and who are inconsistent with the declamations of King Jesus — and all that from the pulpit.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Theocracy

“The Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy.”

Representative Christopher Shays — Connecticut

Given the way that Bush has invoked God in a recurring fashion during his presidency one can hardly fault people for connecting the Republican Party with Theocracy. In point of fact I couldn’t agree more with Rep. Shays. The difference between myself and Rep. Shays, I would guess, is that Rep. Shays thinks that theocracy in the Republican party as it governs is a bad thing that can be avoided while I think that theocracy in all political party’s which desire to govern is a inevitable and unavoidable thing that is good or bad depending on which God (Theo) the government or power (cracy) is serving.

As I have said ad nauseum all political arrangements are Theocracies. The trick is always being able to identify the god or gods in the arrangement. President Bush has taken neo-con ideology and has coated it with Jesus talk and has given us a neo-con Theocracy. If Barack Hussein Obama were elected we would get a Theocracy shaped and fashioned by black liberation theology and socialist and neo-liberal political theory, coated with the requisite Jesus talk. If Hillary Clinton were elected we would get a Theocracy shaped and influenced by radical feminist theology and socialist and radical liberal political theory. At least with Hillary I don’t think we will get the Jesus coating.

In many respects this election is being reduced to a battle of the (false)gods vying for supremacy, and the policy pursued will depend which of the representatives of the respected gods is elected. Once one of the gods is elected the consequence will be that his (or her) adherents will get the best government teats to suck on. Another consequence will be that with the rise of a new Theocracy, particularly if a Democrat is elected, the bottom rail will be on top — which is to say that the priests and priestesses of the god who is elected will displace the priests and priestesses of the present god in charge. This will mean that if Obama is elected that Black people, who embrace liberation theology, of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s mindset, will be favored in the Theocratic halls of power and only people who agree that black ‘Louis Farakhan’ type folk should be on top will have influence, while if Hillary is elected, radical feminists will be favored in the Theocratic halls of power, and only people who agree that the God of radical socialist feminists should be on top will have influence. The point to see here is that since these candidates have the views they have because of the Theology they believe — which stems from the God they serve — the consequence of their election will be continued Theocracy.

Now what is interesting is that the media will smell this out in those candidates perceived to be ‘conservative’ while leaving the radical Democratic party theocrats alone on the issue. For example, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (both really liberals) had this God issue before them all the time. This reveals that the media only sees the danger of Theocracy coming from putatively conservative Christian or putatively conservative psuedo-Christian sources. The media fails to see the Theocracy that either Obama or Hillary would rule over.

Let’s look at Obama for a second. Obama has appealed to the Christian vote, making innuendo that the Christian Right has hijacked the Christian faith and that faith needs to be appealed to again to bring people together. Obama has made appearance in some very large Evangelical Churches in order to speak (Rick Warren’s Church comes to mind.) Further Obama has sprinkled his speeches with Christianese. Obama clearly is influenced by something he is calling Christianity. Now given that this version of Christianity is only a shell that has been infused with the heart of a liberal social gospel, and the lungs of black liberation theology, and the kidneys of socialism, sustained with the convictional flow of blood that white people are evil, one can only wonder why the mainstream media isn’t concerned about the Theocracy that Obama represents.

Now, as I said, Hillary hasn’t coated her campaign with all the Jesus talk that Barack Hussein has but none the less she is still campaigning as a representative of her feminist god. This god, like all gods has a social gospel that it wants to see the government help implement. Hillary and her feminist god for example desire to involve the government ever more deeper into family life as seen in her yet to be denounced earlier efforts to harness the States power to insure that children could divorce their parents. In a 1973 article entitled ‘Children Under The Law,’ Hillary criticized the,

“pretense (that) children’s issues are somehow beyond politics,” and scorned the idea that “families are private, non-political units whose interests subsume those of children

Twenty three years later she could bang that drum again,

“As adults we have to start thinking and believing that there isn’t really any such thing as someone else’s child…for that reason, we cannot permit discussions of children and families to be subverted by political or ideological debate.”

This stance on children serves Hillary’s feminism in the theocratic use of Government to be the universal mother to children that belong to everybody thus freeing women to become the fully realized human beings they can’t become if they don’t make work or career a priority over being a housewife and mother.

Also given other consistent stances it is clear that Hillary’s Theocracy would pursue the non-Christian economics of socialism, yoking mega Corportism with mega Statism.

The over arching point here is that Theocracy is inevitable and unavoidable. Some god or gods will be that which the government is organize around and beholden to. Whether it is B. Hussein Obama or Hillary or McCain, we will continue to have a Theocracy.

Since this is true, isn’t it reasonable for Christians to desire a government that is in some shape, way, and fashion, organized around Christian convictions and beholden to the omni-benevolent God of the Bible? Certainly no Christian government will ever fully manifest all that God’s people will find in the ultimate city of God — a city that God has in store for those that love Him, but just as the fact that our own personal sanctification will never be perfect in this life doesn’t keep us from pursuing that perfection, so the reality that we will never build the perfect Christian city that God has in store for us in the fullness of the eschaton shouldn’t keep us from pursuing that excellence as God gives us strength.

Further, since Theocracy is a inevitable and unavoidable category why should we, as Christians, try to keep thinking that governments can be Theocratically sanitized? Even when Christians promote a putatively benign pluralism we have to see that such a government is headed by a panoply of gods, who in their ruling theocratic consortium, forbid any uniquely singular God to rule. This is the theocracy of polytheism, which, when examined closely, is really a Theocracy where the State rules as God determining how far the competing gods can go in the pluralistic culture that it has created in the name of polytheistic pluralism.

The reason that I close with such thoughts is that the Reformed world continues to have gentlemen like Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster West, as seen in a recent Heidleblog entry, who insists that it is possible to have non-theocratic government. To keep insisting such a thing is to keep whistling past the grave yard that such willful ignorance will land us in if we don’t contend for the crown rights of King Jesus in the civil realm. And when this insistence of pluralism continues in the face of exhaustive explanation it is hard to see how such advocacy doesn’t end in treason to King Jesus.

Famous Whoppers

“I am not a crook.”

Richard Milhouse Nixon

“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.”

Gerald Rudolph Ford

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false.”

William Jefferson Blythe Clinton

“In other words, he (Rev. Jeremiah Wright) has never been my political adviser; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”

Senator Barack Hussein Obama

If anybody believes Barack Hussein Obama on this score they will believe anything. Remember Barack Hussein Obama has attended Wright’s Church since he was 26 years old. We are to supposed to believe that Obama never ever heard Wright speak the way that he has been caught speaking on countless occasions?

Please, Mr. & Mrs. American Electorate let’s not be stupid.

John Milton, & Peter Townshend on not getting fooled again

We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that’ all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
No, no!

I’ll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Which being interpreted by John Milton means,

New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large

This is the way that Milton put it a few hundred years before Pete, Roger, Keith and John.

Because you have thrown off your Prelate Lord,
And with stiff vows renounc’d his Liturgy,
To seize the widowed whore Plurality
From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred,
Dare you for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy,
Taught ye by mere A.S. and Rutherford?
Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent,
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul
Must now be named and printed heretics
By shallow Edwards and Scotch What-d’ye-call.
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent,
That so the Parliament
May with their wholesome and preventative shears
Clip your phylacteries, though bauk1 your ears,
And succor our just fears,
When they shall read this clearly in your charge:
New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large

Milton wrote in the same type of climate as the ‘Who.’ Each era was marked either by revolution or the prospects for revolution. Each era revealed the hypocrisy of those who wanted to take over.

Milton, writing after the English Revolution was saying that the presbyters, like the Anglicans before them, were a ‘new boss that was the same as the old boss’ in terms of wanting to enforce a particular brand of cultural orthodoxy.

Poor Milton, if he had only known what kind of money he could have made putting his sentiment together with a guitar.

Assurance & The Objectivity Of The Covenant

Bret said It is the same kind of promise that was extended to Israel… both to the Israel of Israel and the Israel that was not of Israel. When considering the promise in light of knowing the whole story it is conditional to the reprobate and unconditional to the elect.

David responds,

Agreed, but then how does this establish personal assurance of salvation? The thing FV tries to do is to point to the sacraments and the covenant to establish assurance because they are supposed to be “objective”, but then it has a doctrine of the covenant that is conditional and includes reprobates, curses and the possibility of apostacy. But FV, not being a paragon of logical consistency, fails to see that it undercuts itself in making this very move.

David, I’m not FV so what I am about to say is my answer. I don’t know how the FV would answer it.

As a pastor I deal with two types of people when it comes to the issue of assurance. On the one hand I deal with believers, who realizing God’s great holiness and their own behavior in light of that holiness struggle haplessly for assurance regardless of how superior their Christian character is. They have trouble bringing themselves to believe that God can really forgive them. To these ‘naval gazer’ types
I first admonish them for looking so intently inwardly rather then outwardly but I also say, “Christ is for you and He has given the Sacraments to confirm that He really has forgiven you. Take and feast on Christ and know that you are accepted for the sake of the work for you of He who is conveyed to you in the Sacrament.” In short I emphasize the objectivity of the covenant. Luther made a move somewhat similar to this. When the devil would come to him and remind him of his great sins, Luther, being overwhelmed, would finally say, “It’s true, It’s true, but I’ve been baptized.” The covenant is objective.

On the other hand ministers have to deal with those in the congregation who need to hear a different emphasis because they are dispositionally relating to the covenant in a different manner. These are thus whose lives are characterized by a neglect of pursuit of holiness in favor or a pursuit of behavior that is inconsistent with a professing Christian. To these I need to remind them that the very same covenant that must be taken as rock solid assurance by the naval gazers is a covenant that offers no assurance to ‘the people of God’ who are acting like “dogs returning to their own vomit, and sows, having been bathed, to their rolling in mire.” Indeed that very same covenant that is a rock of assurance to the navel gazers who will look away from themselves to Jesus is a rock that will crush the libertines.

To the former I must tell them to rightly presume on grace. To the latter I must warn them of the danger of wrongly presuming on grace.

Now that can be made to look contradictory, as you have done above, but given how I’ve explained it, and given the fact that different people in the Church with different problems need to be spoken to differently I fail to see the contradiction.