Responding To R. Scott Clark’s Vicious Attack on Bahnsen & Theonomy

Over at the “HIDEOUSBLOG” Dr. R. Scott Clark demonstrates (yet again) that he is stupid. If you search engine “R. Scott Clark Hideousblog” you will find the site. The column title is; “Stemming Another Rising Tide Of Theonomy: Hebrews 7:11–14 (1): Background.” I am not going to link it here because the thought of Iron Ink giving HideousBlog traffic makes me ill.

Herein follows the list of Clark’s errors;

1.)   “no Republican was going to win the White House that year” (1976 election).

I only include this rather off hand comment by Clark in order to demonstrate that the man doesn’t know what he is talking about. If Clark can be wrong here, in such an obvious manner, then it gives support to the idea that Clark doesn’t know what he is talking about in any number of any other “factual” accounts he gives.

Briefly put, Republican chances in 1976 were good. Ford ended up losing in the closest Presidential race of the 20th century at that time, save one. Many experts believe that if Reagan had received the nomination that Republicans would have indeed won. Failing that if Ford would have just run more to the right he might have pulled out Ohio and won. Clark is just in gross error here, as he continues to be throughout this piece. For Pete’s sake Ford won 27 states, the most states ever carried by a losing candidate.

2.) “Still, Bahnsen’s book, which advocated the (future) reimposition of the Mosaic judicial laws, went off like a bombshell, provoking reviews and responses in Christianity Today and a volume of essays by the faculty of Westminster Seminary.”

Throughout the history of Westminster Seminary the faculty had never, to that time, put out of a volume of essays denouncing anything. Never a joint volume denouncing Dispensationalism. Never a joint volume denouncing the sexual revolution. Never a joint volume denouncing liberalism in the Church. Only upon Greg Bahnsen’s publication advocating respecting God’s Law did the Westminster faculty determine that they had to put out a joint volume of essays in order to squash Bahnsen. That volume of essays has since been torn from limb to limb and scattered to the wind as it has been exposed as to how shallow and errant it is.

While we are on it, a good booklet to get that overturns Westminster’s and Clark’s silly hostility to Bahnsen’s theonomy is “Theonomy and the Westminster Confession” by Martin Foulner.

3.) “His (Bahnsen’s) argument was shocking to the consciences of many American evangelical Christians for a variety of reasons. First, many American evangelicals had been reared in Dispensational fundamentalism. As strict as they might have been in their piety and personal morality, theologically and practically they were antinomian. The Old Testament was thought generally to belong to previous “dispensations” in history and thus not even the Ten Commandments were thought to be “for today,” let alone the Mosaic judicial laws.”

Yeah, antinomian Dispensationalism was and is kind of like Clark’s antinomian R2K buddy, David Van Drunen writing,

“Scripture is the sacred text given to God’s covenant people whom he has redeemed from sin. . . . Given its character, therefore, Scripture is not given as a common moral standard that provides ethical imperatives to all people regardless of their religious standing.”

DAVID VAN DRUNEN

Even antinomian R. Scott Clark reveals his antinomian slip by writing;

 

“It is not the magistrate’s duty to police every sort of violation of natural law and sin. For example, no one but theocrats want the state enforcing obedience to the first table of the law. The magistrate’s natural sphere of concern and authority is in the second table.”

Heidelblog, October 27, 2008

So, per antinomian R2K Clark Magistrates should not be concerned to create and then enforce blasphemy laws, laws supporting the sabbath (old “blue laws”), and laws against perjury?  Antinomian anyone?

Yes, Bahnsen and all Biblical Christians oppose both Dispensationalism and R2K on these matters. Theonomists do believe that God’s law applies in the common realm today.

It’s not a wonder Clark hates theonomists so. It is the same hatred that the Dispensationalists have for theonomists. Wait … could that mean that R2K is really just “Reformed Dispensationalism?” Some have thought and said so.

4.)   Nevertheless, Bahnsen argued for the “abiding validity of the law of God in exhaustive detail.” Specifically, what was at issue was the abiding validity of the Mosaic judicial laws. This is what he intended by “theonomy.”

First, Bahnsen went out of his way to demonstrate that general equity remained. There were OT Judicial laws that were no longer in force such as building a fence around the roof of one’s house, though Bahnsen pointed out that as a principle that law remained in force with the idea that since it was about protecting people from harm (since the ancients entertained on their roofs) therefore building fences around swimming pools would be an example of how the general equity of the law remained.

Second, what the libertine Clark and his R2K buddies desire is to throw out the whole law, including, as we saw above, the 10 commandments. R2K says incest may be OK since incest was a OT judicial law only for OT Israel. R2K says that bestiality is OK since bestiality was a OT judicial law. R2K says that public square blasphemy is ok since the forbidding of that is OT judicial law.

So, yes, Bahnsen taught the abiding validity of God’s law. And R2K teaches the abiding eclipse of God’s law. Now, dear reader,

“Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region where Escondido is, or the gods of the R2K-ites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

5.) “Major mainstream media outlets are paying attention to the new locus of the theonomy movement, to Moscow, Idaho, and to the plans of theonomic-reconstructionist church to Christianize Moscow and, from there, the rest of the world. “

First, I could only wish that Moscow, Idaho was theonomic the way Bahnsen was theonomic. Clark needs to keep in mind that Wilson himself has said that he is NOT Rushdoony 2.0 but that he is trying to be Rushdoony 0.5. Wilson is no theonomist. Wilson, like Clark, is just another version of an Elmer Gantry cult trying to rope in the rubes. Imagine how petrified Clark would be if Wilson were really a theonomist.

Second, notice Scott’s problem with the very idea of anything being “Christianized.” Scott is miffed because someone — anyone might want to see some small social-order potentially Christianized. Scott’s R2K infection driven fever prevents him from ever entertaining the thought that even his own family might be Christian someday — never mind a whole city or even country. Scott has taken dark oaths of allegiance per his militant R2K eschatological amillennialism that he is duty bound to stop the Christianization of anything because that is not possible. Good grief, Clark is the one who has said that the disappearance of Christendom is a good thing.

6.)  Further, apparently ignorant of the classical and traditional Christian usage of the term “general equity” (natural law)…

Maybe Scott would be kind enough to list all of the theologians who exactly equated “general equity” with natural law. I would find that interesting.

7.) History has not been a strong suit of the theonomists

Says the guy who makes stupid history claims about the 1976 election.

8.) “After all, this argument is really about the progress of revelation and redemption. Were the specifically Israelite laws temporary or not? With the church universal, the confessional Protestant traditions have said that they are.”

Again, I refer the reader to Martin Foulner’s “Theonomy & The Westminster Confession,” in order to give the lie to Clark’s assertions.

9.) Several of the Anabaptists postulated a future glory age on the earth when Christians shall have conquered their enemies.

Here Scott just tells us that he hates postmillennialism and tries to suggest that theonomists are really Anabaptist. Yeah … right … the postmill theonomists see the world they are seeking to conquer by the Spirit of Christ as for Christ as evil (that “the world is evil” is classical Anabaptist thought) refuse to baptize their children (like the Anabaptists), and believe in the community of goods (like the Anabaptists). Scott is just throwing cow dung against the wall here to see if it will stick. Any smear will do. Of course, being antinomian he can get away with that without coming under any conviction.

10.) The Reformed biblical theologians recognized that the Mosaic theocratic-state was intentionally temporary. They recognized that it was intended to point to the New Covenant and to Christ. They recognized and repeatedly said that the judicial and ceremonial laws were part and parcel of the types and shadows which have been fulfilled by Christ.

Hey, Scott, was Martin Bucer a Reformed Biblical Theologian?

“But since no one can desire an approach more equitable and wholesome to the commonwealth than that which God describes in His law, it is certainly the duty of all kings and princes who recognize that God has put them over His people that follow most studiously his own method of punishing evildoers. For inasmuch as we have been freed from the teaching of Moses through Christ the Lord so that it is no longer necessary for us to observe the civil decrees of the law of Moses, namely, in terms of the way and the circumstances in which they described, nevertheless, insofar as the substance and proper end of these commandments are concerned, and especially those which enjoin the discipline that is necessary for the whole commonwealth, whoever does not reckon that such commandments are to be conscientiously observed is not attributing to God either supreme wisdom or a righteous care for our salvation.

Accordingly, in every state sanctified to God capital punishment must be ordered for all who have dared to injure religion, either by introducing a false and impious doctrine about the Worship of God or by calling people away from the true worship of God (Dt. 13:6-10, and 17:2-5); for all who blaspheme the name of God and his solemn services (Lv. 24:15-16); who violate the Sabbath (Ex. 31:14-15, and 35:2; Num. 15:32-36); who rebelliously despise authority of parents and live their own life wickedly (Dt. 21:18-21); who are unwilling to submit to the sentence of supreme tribunal (Dt. 17:8-12); who have committed bloodshed (Ex. 21:12; Lv. 24:17, Dt. 19:11-13), adultery (Lv. 20:10), rape (Dt. 22:20-25), kidnapping (Dt. 24:17); who have given false testimony in a capital case (Dt. 19:16-21).”

Martin Bucer
16th century Magisterial Reformer
The Fourteenth Law: The Modification of Penalties

Hey, Scott, was John Calvin a Reformed Biblical Theologian?

…“But this was sayde to the people of olde time. Yea, and God’s honour must not be diminished by us at this day: the reasons that I have alleadged alreadie doe serve as well for us as for them. Then lette us not thinke that this lawe is a speciall lawe for the Jewes; but let us understand that God intended to deliver to us a generall rule, to which we must tye ourselves…Sith it is so, it is to be concluded, not onely that is lawefull for all kinges and magistrates, to punish heretikes and such as have perverted the pure trueth; but also that they be bounde to doe it, and that they misbehave themselves towardes God, if they suffer errours to roust without redresse, and employ not their whole power to shewe a greater zeale in that behalfe than in all other things.”

Calvin, Sermons upon Deuteronomie, p. 541-542

And again, in a treatise against pacifistic Anabaptists who maintained a doctrine of the spirituality of the Church which abrogated the binding authority of the case law Calvin wrote,

“They (the Anabaptists) will reply, possibly, that the civil government of the people of Israel was a figure of the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ and lasted only until his coming, I will admit to them that in part, it was a figure, but I deny that it was nothing more than this, and not without reason. For in itself it was a political government, which is a requirement among all people. That such is the case, it is written of the Levitical priesthood that it had to come to an end and be abolished at the coming of our Lord Jesus (Heb. 7:12ff) Where is it written that the same is true of the external order? It is true that the scepter and government were to come from the tribe of Judah and the house of David, but that the government was to cease is manifestly contrary to Scripture.”

John Calvin
Treatise against the Anabaptists and against the Libertines, pp. 78-79

 

11.) “Thus, it is no surprise that Bahnsen’s biblical exegesis in Theonomy is spectacularly unpersuasive. His interpretation of Matthew 5:17–20 has been dismantled more than once.”

I’m just wondering here. If Bahnsen’s work on Matthew 5:17-20 has been dismantled more than once than why is it that almost 30 years after his death Clark still is spilling cyber ink trying to refute theonomy?

Oh, and by the by, if Bahnsen’s work on Mt. 5 doesn’t satisfy you then maybe B. B. Warfield’s work on the same text promoting the same end as Bahnsen will satisfy.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/does-theonomy-have-a-fatal-flaw

Finally, I would only note that Clark repeatedly accuses Bahnsen and theonomy of being guilty of the sin of Judaizing. I am sure that rabid antinomians find Judaizing everywhere.

William F. Buckley, Doug Wilson, & the Lying Lugenpresse Anointing our Leaders

In the early 1950’s a young man named William F. Buckley was tapped by the CIA to serve as the single head of the conservative movement that was rising then in America. The problem the CIA hoped to correct by tapping Buckley as their guy is that the conservative movement was getting out of control because it was such a broad and variegated movement. By anointing Buckley as the head of the movement that gave the CIA the ability to streamline the conservative movement into one single expression and thus could be monitored, controlled, and manipulated more easily. In his position as unofficial head of the conservative movement Buckley became the guy who was the gatekeeper of conservatism. Without Buckley’s legitimizing nod any hopeful movement conservative was out in the wasteland. By not granting that nod Buckley read Robert Welch and the Birchers out of the conservative movement early on. In later years Buckley threw Sam Francis, Peter Brimelow, and Joe Sobran out of the conservative movement. Murray N. Rothbard’s “The Betrayal of the American Right,” exposes all this.

The reason I go into all this history is to suggest that it may well be being repeated. Here we are in a time where Christian Nationalism is on the rise and suddenly we find the left wing Media anointing who the “Leader” is going to be by hotfooting it out to Moscow Idaho to do a mild hit piece on Doug Wilson. They hit Doug just hard enough for everyone to think that Doug must now be the leader of this Christian Nationalism movement that they kind of like. Next, we learn the BBC is coming out to do another mild hit piece on Doug.

The irony in all this is that Doug has said how he was a National Review junkie for years and years. Doug loved him some William F. Buckley. Now Doug has become Wm. F. Buckley. Pity poor Doug.

Now, any other time Conservatives know that they are not going to get a fair shake from the National and International media and so they decline the opportunity to be flayed alive. Conservatives know that in interviews their words will be spliced and segments will be edited by the Lugenpresse. But does that stop Doug from opening his doors to the Lugenpresse? Not Doug … nope, Doug steps right up to the microphone and speaks. And in so doing what has happened is that Doug becomes the leader of the “Christian Nationalism” movement and this despite the fact that all Doug is offering is warmed over classical Liberalism and not Christian Nationalism at all. Doug now has what Buckley had long ago and that is the ability to read who is and who is not part of a movement that the media says is such a danger. The man steps right up to the microphone in his latest column and thanks the media for making him the titular head of the Christian Nationalist movement;

“Christian nationalism is on the rise!”, they (the Lugenpresse) shout, like Paul Revere riding off into the night, and then their Exhibit A is the work God has assigned to us in our little town. Okay, so now we are part of the face of Christian nationalism. Now this is a term I would not have picked out at a store, but it is a term (for reasons explained elsewhere) I am willing to work with). Now the fly in their ointment is this. I have been publicly arguing against various forms of anti-Semitism for years now, and I have been brawling with white supremacists and kinists for decades. So as part of my acceptance speech, I am now in a position begin this way. “Thank you, thank you. This is truly a great honor. I want to begin by saying that Christian nationalism stands for the need for mankind to base all of our laws on the firm foundation of coming to God the Father through the worship of a Jew. And because of this we have good news for all mankind, for the Jew first, and then also for the Greek (Rom. 1:16 ; 2:9-10).

The hilarious thing is that Doug has already said that Kinists are not allowed in his Christian Nationalism and so Doug is already acting like Buckley in assigning who does and does not get to be part of his movement. And as I said earlier Doug is no more Christian Nationalist with his classical liberal lean then Lenin was a Russian Royalist.

In short, those of us who are Christian Nationalist are being betrayed by the Lugenpresse being allowed to choose for us who is the head of the movement we have been serving as winter soldiers now for years. Wilson’s is as much of a dead end for Christian Nationalism as Buckley now in retrospect is seen as having been a dead end for conservatism.

What are the alternatives?

Well, I think we need to start looking more and more towards Dr. Adi Schlebush’s “Pactum Institute,” as providing the only real resistance left. Publishers like Zach Garris and Ruben Alvarado need our support if we are going to raise a protest to the dishwater vision of Doug Wilson’s Christian Nationalism ruining us all.

The Confusion of Torba & Isker’s “Christian Nationalism”

Today I received Torba & Isker’s Christian Nationalism in the mail. I think it took me 30 minutes to read. It is more of a pamphlet then a book and so I probably paid too much for it. Below are a few random observations on a book that overall, left me discouraged, if only because I had others telling me that there was a good deal here to be hopeful about even if it was written for those just getting on the Christian Nationalist train.

I.) The Good

1.) Torba and Isker return repeatedly to the necessity for Christians to build parallel communities. This is something I have been saying for over 20 years. My only qualification on that has been to say that Christians need to be building parallel but not completely isolated communities. If and when we build our parallel communities we still want to be connected enough to the larger culture around us so that we can be salt and light in that context. This is why our parallel communities dare not be completely isolated. Think of the necessary communities I am talking about as ice cubes in a drink. The ice cubes influence the drink but are not influenced by the drink. The ice cubes are parallel to the drink but are not isolated.

2.) Torba and Isker take on the whole “Judeo-Christianity” myth driven for the most part as it is by a Dispensational theology.

“True antisemitism is overlooking Jews or failing to evangelize them because you believe they are ‘chosen’ by God and therefore get a free pass from rejecting Jesus Christ.”

Torba & Isker
Christian Nationalism

This was a brave thing for them to do since writing anything that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism is touching the third rail of social concourse. It is just not done without being electrocuted. I salute them for pointing out the contradiction in “Judeo-Christianity” and further insisting that Christians need to realize that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are enemies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

3.) Torba and Isker clearly are postmillennialist in their eschatology. They understand that Christianity as a public square faith will never regain its traction until it is forever done with premillennialism and amillennialism — with defeatist and retreatist eschatologies. They remind their readers continuously that Jesus Christ has bound the strong men, that He came to usher in the Kingdom, that He, having all authority in heaven and earth, commissioned His people to disciple all the nations, that Jesus Christ is ascended to the right hand of the Father in order to rule until all His enemies have been placed under His feet. A Christian Church that does not have the mindset that it is to conquer all non-Christian kingdoms that rise up against the Kingdom of Christ is a Christian Church in name only.

4.) Torba & Isker take on the foolishness of Dispensationalism with its horse dung theology of rapturism and escapism. They point out rightly that supercessionism (which Dispensationalism denies) is the normative position of the historic Christian Church. (Supercessionism is the Christian knowledge that that not merely that the Old Testament Hebrew faith has been fulfilled by the coming of Jesus Christ and so being incomplete apart from Christ is ended. This means that God has no special relation with Judaism and is only the God of Jews inasmuch as they repent and trust Jesus Christ to forgive their sins.) Torba and Isker rightly point out that the God of the Bible is done with Judaism just as the God of the Bible is done with Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, and every other false religion.

5.) We concede that Torba and Isker are reaching for something that might approximate Christendom. They have miles to go before they are ringing exactly the right notes but at least, unlike most of Christianity, they realize that where we are at now is only promissory of complete and utter destruction.

II.) The Bad

1.) Whatever Torba and Isker are peddling, at the end of the day, it is not any kind of Christian Nationalism that I would understand as Christian Nationalism.

First, of all the Christian part of their nationalism is iffy. Torba and Isker include Roman Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox in their aspiration for a return to Christian Nationalism. Torba & Isker call the Quakers who settled Pennsylvania a heretical sect (and they were) but are silent about the heretical sect that were the Roman Catholics who settled Maryland.

This displays a gross ignorance of church history. Protestant Christians do not view Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox as being particularly Christian. Maybe Torba and Isker need to review their Reformation history. Maybe a review of the St. Bartholomew’s day Massacre in France? Maybe a few lessons on the filioque controversy between East and West. Maybe some teaching on the anathemas issued forth from the council of Trent against the Protestants. I’m sorry Andrew and Andrew but Christian Nationalism is not Christian Nationalism when you seek to include non-Christians into your Christian Nationalism. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox need to repent before they can have any role besides bus riding in our Christian Nationalism.

Second, the Nationalism part of their Christian Nationalism is also iffy. Andrew & Andrew seem to fail to understand that the very idea of Nationalism includes the idea of racial/ethnic harmony.

“We (Our Christian Nationalism) don’t care about your race, ethnic background, or your past sins because neither does Jesus care.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

“Christianity is not limited to any race, ethnicity or culture (I Cor. 12:13, Gal. 3:27-29). Therefore Christian Nationalism cannot be limited to any race, ethnicity, or culture.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism –p. 7

 It is not Nationalism if in the Nationalism one is trying to build  is characterized as a hodge-podge of peoples from every race and ethnicity imaginable just so long as they are “Christian” (even Roman Catholic and Easter Orthodox). Clearly, where we are at here with the twin Andrews is a kind of Civil Nationalism which has always been a bastard child of genuine Nationalism and as a bastard child never lives for long very well. In order for any Christian Nationalism as pursued by any people of any race/ethnicity there must be stable large percentage core of people who share a common race/ethnicity and so culture. Let’s go, for the sake of argument, 85%. After that core there can then be another assimilated 10% of peoples from other ethnicities and then the last 5% or so will find the unassimilated strangers and aliens that every Nation likely has.

Torba and Isker give a running account of how all the original 13 colonies began as explicitly Christian states. What Torba and Isker fail to mention is that each of those explicitly Christian states also had the commonality of all being comprised of white people. The Christian Nationalism we had in our beginnings was not mélange Nationalism.

So, the Christian Nationalism of Torba and Isker is fine as long as one isn’t expecting either a genuine Christianity that produces Christian Nationalism or a Nationalism that is particularly ethno-National. Besides that, it’s great stuff.

In the end what the Andrews are giving us is a Ecumenical non-Nationalism. I suppose, as I said above, they are going for a civic nationalism but I’m not sure they realize that.

Honestly this is weak sauce.

2.) I have to protest the painful reductionism of this pamphlet. As I was reading I found myself thinking; “This is Dick and Jane meets Political Philosophy.” Now, I get the idea of having to reach your audience and of writing for your audience but dear God in heaven above if we have been reduced to the 2nd grade reading level and sentence structure of this book I’m not sure I’d want to be part of any successful Christian Nationalism that grows up in such a populace. Can it really be that we have become the simpletons that Torba and Isker are writing for? Have we descended that far? I found myself thinking that this was such a far cry from the Federalist Papers which were written for the average farmer and newspaper reader in 18th century America that we perhaps should just surrender. I’m not sure I want to be a part of a Christendom that is inhabited and characterized by the kind of reader to which the Andrews are appealing.

I prefer instead to believe that the Andrews vastly underestimate their audience.

III.) The Ugly

1.) “We do not … think that America is ‘chosen by God…'”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

Actually, properly understood I do believe that America was chosen by God. I look at the arrival of those first explorers, Pilgrims, and Christians and I do believe that God chose America to be a covenanted nation and that indeed it was a covenanted nation by its relation through its ancestors to the Solemn League and Covenant. Indeed, one reason I think we are getting spanked good and hard is because we have rebelled against the God who chose us for His ends.

Now, I don’t believe that America is chosen by God when that is invoked by all the flag wavers who are forever wrapping the flag around the Cross in order to advance their latest anti-Christian project. I don’t believe that America was chosen by God when Billy Sunday revivals ended with the men who got saved signing up to fight in WW I. I don’t think America was chosen by God when Franklin D. Roosevelt led the troops in singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” when on a Battleship in the Atlantic. I don’t think America was chosen by God when God was invoked on the side of the abolitionists or the temperance movement idiots. So, objectively speaking, “yes, American was chosen by God,” but subjectively America was not chosen by God to do any number of things that it has done as invoked by cracked head clergy.

2.) “American Christianity no longer looks like it once did at the founding of the Christian nation, but it is still nevertheless a nation of Christian people.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

How anyone can say this with a straight face just leaves me dumbfounded. I allow it is possible that I don’t get out and around enough but in my world America is not even close to being a nation of Christian people. The fact that we have stood by while over 60 million infants have been tortured and slaughtered in my estimation gives the lunacy to the quote above.

3.) “The US was founded as a Christian nation. It was only the federal government that was founded as a secular entity, so as to not infringe upon the established religion of these Christian states.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism — p. 12-13

Yes, and we all know how that plan worked to allow the Federal Government to be a secular entity and how the FEDS indeed did not infringe on the established religion of the Southern States in 1861.

Torba and Isker seem not to realize that secular is not possible if by that you mean a position or institution that has no religious underpinning.

4.) Wherein Torba and Isker teach me that my forefathers were abolitionists.

“As Christian Nationalists, we generally do not seek to apply uniform laws across the entire US of America, except in the most egregious circumstances, such as for example the legal acceptance of slavery which our forefathers (abolitionists) sought to abolish…”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

How do Torba and Isker explain the Bible’s uniform acceptance of slavery as a Institution that is acceptable among Christians?

5.) File Under: Somebody notify Charlemagne;

“Christians do not believe in forced or coercive conversion to Christianity. This is inconsistent with our religion’s teaching on free-will (II Pt. 3:9) and all conversions to Christianity must be voluntary.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism — p. 10

Actually, the idea that Christianity can’t be forced or coercive is historically a relatively recent idea. Charlemagne believed in forced conversions. The Crusaders certainly believed in forced coercion.  The tribes set free by Cortez were glad for their forced conversions.

Look, I get it that we desire men to see the reasonableness of Christianity and so bow the knee to Christ willingly but I’m willing to go all Boniface on peoples if the need calls for it.

6.) “Christians are integralists and not theocrats, in that we have favored two separate institutions, one for religion (the Church) and one for government (the state).”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism — p. 9

Actually, inasmuch as Christians expect both of those separate institutions to each be Christian they have indeed always throughout history been both integralists and theocrats. Where they have not been theocrats they have not been Christian.

 

McAtee Contra Doug Wilson on Charges of “Skinism” and Other Theological Points

“One collection of folks who excel at both racial vainglory and racial animosity is a group that call themselves kinists. I call them skinists…”

The thing that requires me to identify kinists as racists (and as much in defiance of the Scriptures as any they oppose) is the overt malevolence they routinely show toward the image and work of God Himself. To mock folly and sin is a prophetic duty. To mock the color of a man’s skin is to defy the handiwork of God. Crimes motivated by racial animosity (in any direction) reveal a pathetic culture, the end result of worshipping pathetic gods. They were not the end result of the triune God’s decision to make some of us white and some of us black. When whites worship pathetic gods, the end result features the same kind of twistedness. And how the people (Kinists) say they love God, whom they have not seen, when they routinely taunt the handiwork of God in others, handiwork they have seen, thereby showing they detest the image of God? Of course they might say they only mean to insult certain sins — they might say that in response, but it is not what they actually do. Spend 15 minutes on a skinist website or FB group, and will find plenty of examples of hostility to the creational work of God. If I were admonishing a man for laziness, and I suddenly found myself upbraiding him for having two legs, I have crossed over from legitimate admonition …

 

Racial malice and racial vainglory are sins against God, not because they take the obvious factors of race into account as they interpret the world, but because they are malicious and vainglorious.”

Doug Wilson

Skin & Blood

1.) Allow me to admit that there have been times when I have seen black people being mocked by white Kinists simply because they are black. I do agree when this happens this is a bridge too far. However, I do not think this is the norm for Kinists and I know that Wilson can’t prove it is the norm. Anecdotal evidence is not proof.

I do think though that the Rev. Wilson might want to take into some considerations that there currently is an ongoing attempt to genocide white people, or at the very least turn them into hewers of wood and drawers of water (slaves). I would anticipate that as such red pilled white people might be a wee bit touchy towards those who are seeking to do that to them. Does Wilson need to be reminded that it is minorities along with other constituencies who are have been captured by the cultural Marxists so as to be the new version of the proletariat who are being employed to bring down Biblical Christianity with its unique Western Institutions — nearly all of which was built by our Christian white forebears?

I will grant that it is still sin to mock the color of a man’s skin if Wilson will grant that a majority of people with pigmented skin have been co-opted to genocide White Christians and to roll Jesus Christ off His throne.

2.) Having admitted the above, I would also say that the white Kinists I know are the people who are the most likely to reach out and help people from other races when they are in genuine need. I completely reject Wilson’s anecdotal charge of malevolence. The Church I serve, for example, has sent several thousands of dollars to black Africa in the past to seek to relieve problems there.

3.) Note also that Wilson assumes above that only white people are Kinists. I know black Knists, Filipino Kinists, Mexican Kinists, Sub-continent Indian  Kinists, and Mexican Kinists. Are all these people skinists also or does Wilson save his pejoratives for only white kinists?

These Kinist Christians have no problem having fellowship with one another while at the same time prioritizing their respective peoples as the Scriptures teach. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and participated in it myself. Wilson wants to paint kinists as solely white and as uniquely haters. In doing so he reveals his ignorance on the subject.

Doug talks about Facebook groups. I am in a facebook group that is Kinist and is populated by a potpourri of kinists from different races. We love one another but do so as understanding the principles of kinism (the Bible).

Some time ago when I was being attacked by people like Wilson (SPLC) it was not only white Kinists but kinists from other races who came to my defense. Doug just doesn’t know what he is talking about. Nothing new to that when it comes to this subject.

4.) Doug would have to concede that Paul affirming true the race of Cretans being always liars, evil beasts and lazy gluttons a racial slur. Hey Doug, was the Kinist St. Paul (actually the Holy Spirit) guilty of overt malevolence and of wrongly mocking the Cretans?

12 One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” 13 This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, (Titus 1:12-13, ESV)
Today Paul might say some races are more prone to violent crime than others. It’s just an observation of a natural reality in differences of races. Just as we talk about the penny-pinching Dutch, or the stubborn/fighting Scotsman, or the quick-tempered Irish.

5.) I still insist that there is a stream of the Gnostic in Doug. Doug seems to think that if the black man and the white man would alike properly worship the same God that would eliminate all the differences between race. I do not believe that is true. I believe that the races were created by God to be distinct and different and those distinctions and differences remain even when they all worship the one true God in the proper manner.

6.) Culture is not merely the consequence/outworking of the gods people worship in a set culture. This is contrary to Doug Wilson’s assertions. Culture is also the consequence of the gods people worship as combined with the genetic reality that God in creation made those people to be.

Wilson wants grace/worship to overthrow nature and as such he reduces culture as a consequence of only what/who a people worship. To the contrary grace restores nature and as such culture has to take into account both grace/worship that is restoring and the nature that is being restored.

Wilson tends towards Gnosticism.

 What I am trying to say here is that a renewed Irish man and a renewed Kenyan are still Irish and Kenyan, and just as those of us of particular qualities or dispositions yet have those qualities or disposition after Faith, so does the Irish or Kenyan retain ethnic or racial qualities and dispositions. If the Irishmen and the Kenyan worship the same God the same way they are not going to cease being distinctly Kenyan or Irish merely because they have been regenerated. Regeneration and proper worship of the one true God doesn’t erase what it means to be Irish or Kenyan. It doesn’t negate or remove the distinctions.

Upon grace the Irishman is a better Irish man then He was before grace and the Kenyan is a better Kenyan then he was before grace, but they are still God ordained products of what they are made of, yet now touched by God’s grace.

7.) Keep in mind that Doug keeps talking about race when Doug has said he does not think race exists. How can he do that?