Scripture, Westminster Divines, & Claims of R2K Wingnuts

“The truth is, Scripture was never meant to be read as a handbook to civil government. That is one reason why the Westminster Divines appealed to “general equity,” natural law. The Statement mentions general equity four times and natural law twice.”

R. Scott Clark
American Reformed Court Jester

This is something that Clark does by way of habit. He says things that are manifestly not true. Here he suggests that the Westminster Divines did not believe that Scripture provided tons of insights for civil government. This is a huge dissimulation on Clark’s part. Consider if you will that,

The Westminster Divines also appealed to Scripture over and over again as to guide how the Magistrate is to implement Christian religion;

Westminster Larger Catechism Q. #191 – What do we pray for in the “second petition” of the Lord’s prayer which is Thy Kingdom Come?

A – the Kingdom of God is to “be countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate.”

And WLC

Q-108 which asks what are the duties required in the second commandment.

A – “the disapproving , detesting, opposing all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry.”

The magistrate’s place and calling requires him to remove all false worship and all monuments of idolatry.

And

Q-118 “What is the charge of keeping the sabbath more specially directed to governors of families, and other superiors?”

The answer says that it is directed to other superiors, because “they are bound not only to keep it themselves, but to see that it be observed by all those that are under their charge.”

Now, this may not be a “handbook to civil government” type stuff but it clearly demonstrates that Clark is wrong (again) on the idea that the Westminster confession doesn’t give precise instructions on the role of the Civil Magistrate.

If you value coming to truth on this subject then by all means avoid Dr. R. Scott Clark and R2K “theologians.”

The Linkage Between Gramscian Cultural Marxism & R2K

“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

Antonio Gramsci

And per the professoriate at Westminster-Cal what does R2K Christianity, as taught from the pulpit, have to say about Gramsci’s socialism? Well, the answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING because for the minister to speak from the pulpit about such a subject would be an example of a minister “getting out of his lane.” Indeed, R2K teaches that it is wrong (sin) for the minister to speak on such a subject as Cultural Marxism from the pulpit. R2K reasoning says, “Ministers are experts on the Gospel. They are not experts on philosophy, or culture, or Marxism. Therefore they should not spend their time speaking on something they know very little about. These are subjects for the common realm. Ministers are in the grace realm and should concentrate on that realm.”

Don’t you see how wicked R2K is? It is working hand and glove to bring down Western Civilization. If ministers won’t speak out against R2K and other associated cultural ills that stem from Cultural Marxism, as from the pulpit, then the church is going to become completely and overwhelmingly irrelevant. Cultural Marxism is the trojan horse dedicated to destroying the West and R2K is essentially saying, by silencing the mouths of clergy, “bring that Trojan Horse on into our churches and into our civilization boys.”

It is hard to determine which is more wicked…. R2K or Cultural Marxism.

This is why I hate R2K.

Religion is an Inescapable Category; Because of that Pluralism is a Myth

“Yet, if the Two Kingdoms doctrine (dual-fold kingdom) is biblical (and that’s where my leanings are in this debate), it would seem that we might have to acknowledge that the self-avowed Satanist has a point when he says:

‘Feucht is openly a theocrat who courts the attention of politicians and seeks to proselytize through his performances,’ Greaves said. ‘He has his opinions, and we have ours, but one thing the government can not do is preference his viewpoint over ours by giving him exclusive access to perform a concert on the Capitol grounds. That stage is every bit as much ours as it is his, so, in the name of pluralism and religious liberty, there are some state capitols that are likely soon to be hosting Satanic Planet shows.’

Comment left on R. Scott Clark blog

I unwind this comment because this is, in many respects, the essence of what the R2K ‘can’t shoot straight’ gang is teaching.

The key here is the statement ‘but one thing the government can not do is preference his (the Christian’s) viewpoint over ours, (the Satanists)’ as combined with the invoking of the classical liberal’s sacrosanct principle of ‘pluralism and religious liberty.’ The reason that this is key is because the minute the government begins to not preference religious viewpoints they (‘the government’) at that very minute have violated the sacrosanct principle of ‘pluralism and religious liberty’ because the government at that point is preferencing the religious viewpoint of somebody somewhere that insists that pluralism as a religious viewpoints is his religious viewpoint that should be preferred by the government and so forced on everyone else. Indeed when any government prefers the religious viewpoint that they as the government should not preference Christianity over pagan religions they have at that very moment preferred a religious viewpoint of somebody else’s over my religious viewpoint that Christianity should be preferred as the religious viewpoint over all other religious viewpoints.

Religion is an inescapable category and because of that pluralism is a myth.

Elsewhere Clark writes,

“The secular is not our enemy. It is our friend.“

Dr. R. Scott Clark
America’s Reformed Court Jester

The word “secular” falls so easily off of people’s lips, but we must ask… ‘what is it?’

Is it the realm where no religious views are welcome thus keeping those realms clean from endorsing any one faith or is it the realm where all religious views are welcome thus keeping those realms clean from endorsing any one faith?

If it is the first of those two is it really possible to have a common realm that is clean of all faith? If it is the second of those two isn’t it the case that the faith that has been endorsed for the common realm is any faith that allows all other faiths and so a version of polytheism?

The secular is neither our friend nor our enemy because there is no such thing as “the secular.” It is a myth made up by those who are drunk with enlightenment categories. There is in now way that any realm can be faith free. No such thing as a realm that can be “all faiths” because then the faiths that insist that their faith alone is the true faith are not allowed. Those faiths must give way to the faith of “all faiths.”

R. Scott Clark is not a wise man who is really just a representative of the Enlightenment project desiring to reinterpret Reformed Christianity through the ideological lens of Anabaptist liberalism.

Clark and all his R2K ilk are enemies of the Church of Christ.

Reformed Confessions Disagree With R. Scott Clark’s Assertions Regarding Theocracy

“All orthodox Christians affirm that God’s moral law is enduring and binding to all people—to deny that is antinomianism. What is at stake here is the magistrate’s role in enforcing that moral law. The framers of the Statement have a plan, to which we have not yet arrived, but it entails some enforcement of the first table, and thus is theocratic.”

R. Scott Clark
Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 4)

So, what if it is theocratic? The Reformed Confessions repeatedly call for enforcement of the 1st table and also are hopelessly theocratic. Here is the 2nd Helvetic Confession as just one example of a Reformed Theocratic Confession;

“THE DUTY OF THE MAGISTRATE. The chief duty of the magistrate is to
secure and preserve peace and public tranquility. Doubtless he will never do this more successfully than when he is truly God-fearing and religious; that is to say, when, according to the example of the most holy kings and princes of the people of the Lord, he promotes the preaching of the truth and sincere faith, roots out lies and all superstition, together with all impiety and idolatry, and defends the Church of God. We certainly teach that the care of religion belongs especially to the holy magistrate.

Let him, therefore, hold the Word of God in his hands, and take care
lest anything contrary to it is taught. Likewise let him govern the people entrusted to him by God with good laws made according to the Word of God, and let him keep them in discipline, duty and obedience. Let him exercise judgment by judging uprightly. Let him not respect any man’s person or accept bribes. Let him protect widows, orphans and the afflicted. Let him punish and even banish criminals, impostors and barbarians. For he does not bear the sword in vain (Rom. 13:4).

Therefore, let him draw this sword of God against all malefactors,
seditious persons, thieves, murderers, oppressors, blasphemers, perjuried persons, and all those whom God has commanded him to punish and even to execute. Let him suppress stubborn heretics (who are truly heretics), who do not cease to blaspheme the majesty of God and to trouble, and even to destroy the Church of God.”

___

“In Bullinger’s ‘Decades,’ he expounds the above argument further. Using the likes of Solomon, Asa, and Josiah, Bullinger argued that the care and ordering of religion does not belong to Bishops alone. Contrary to those who might relegate these examples to the old covenant, Bullinger responds, ‘The men of this opinion ought to prove, that the Lord Jesus and His apostles did translate the care of religion from the magistrate unto Bishops alone: which they shall never be able to do.’

Both the Reformed theologians Francis Turretin and David Dickson followed this line of argumentation from the example of OT kings.”

Cited in Jonathan Beeke’s
Duplex Regnum Christi — FN 30, pg, 74

Cheong In-Wa, Alexander Jun, and R. J. Rushdoony All Agree On Christian Nationalism

“The gospel of Jesus ought to meet the needs of the people in the life and circumstances where each lives; it should give expression to the latent aspirations in the national sub-conscience. Each people has its typical ways of feeling, its different aspirations. These peculiarities should … find expression in the religious life of the people. Here we find the real meaning of Christian nationalism.”

Cheong In-wa
The head of the Department for Religious Education of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, who famously attended the Eleventh World Sunday School Convention in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1932, where this declaration was put forth.

“We are made in God’s image. [As such] we should take the totality of both our Christian identity and our ethnic identity, perhaps in that order, but we are still recognizing our ethnic society.”

Dr. Alex Jun,
Coordinator of the Korean-American Leadership Initiative in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) defending the continued existence of Korean congregations

“The trend towards internationalism is a part of this desire to eliminate all differences, to say that the idea of having different cultures, different standards, different languages is altogether wrong, and so we must eliminate them, return men to supposedly their original one condition, a common language, a common culture, everyone the same; and at the same time we must abolish all differences. It is for this reason that the U.N. Charter declares that it is determined to save men. (Save men) from what (we might ask). From all inequalities and distinctions, and so it says that there must be no discrimination with respect to race, color, or creed. In other words, all religions must be abolished, as well as all races. And so the idea is of course a return to paradise.”

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony
Nakedness — Pocket College Lecture

Those who oppose what In-wa, Jun and Rushdoony are saying here are opposing Christian Nationalism and so are supporting ungodly Internationalism and in doing so oppose Christ and His Word.