McAtee Contra Justice On His Rant Against Presuppositionalism/Biblicism/Theonomy I

“but to the extent that it (Presuppositionalism/Biblicism) has replaced or removed rational argument and empirical observations, to the extent that it has eviscerated the category and utility of common notions, to the extent that it has functionally displaced or even, for some, denigrated the place of nature and natural law and natural theology, and, to the extent that all of this is embraced by professing Christians as an unassailable bulwark of “biblical” intellectual potency, it is not to be commended but to be condemned as an utter usurper.”

Mr. Cody Justice
American Mantle.

You know I’ve tried to play nice with this Natural Law crowd but they keep digging at Presuppositionalism, Biblicism, and Theonomy and as a result there is nothing left to do but to continue to do what we have done here before and that is to repudiate their accusations. I will have to say though, that it was brave of them some time ago to have Rev. David Reece debate Dr. Stephen Wolfe on the issue of Natural Law vs. Presuppositionalism /Biblicism. I highly recommend this debate because, while collegial and congenial, frankly David Reece bested Dr. Wolfe in this debate. It wasn’t even close. I suspect that Reece or any other Theonomist will not be asked back again to debate Dr. Wolfe on this subject.

As to the above quote;

1.) Presuppositionalism/Biblicism (hereafter P/B) has never sought to replace or remove rational argument and empirical observations. A read of the small book by Thom Notaro, titled, “Van Til’s Use Of Evidence” puts such calumny to death and reveals a profound misunderstanding on Mr. Justice’s part on P/B. This accusation rests on the old canard, long disproven, that P/B = Fideism. The P/B advocate is no more or less Fideistic than Mr. Justice or any other Natural Law warrior. The only difference is that Mr. Justice has a fideistic faith that presupposes man as man’s own beginning point while P/B fideistic faith that presupposes God as man’s beginning point. Both then use rational argument and empirical observation that winds out of those beginning points.

2.) Now, quite to the chagrin of Mr. Justice, we have to ask by what standard do we arrive at his idea of “common notions?” Common notions by what standard? Already here in Michigan I can hear the wailing of Mr. Justice and his gnashing of teeth because in the article that this above snippet is from grinds against the question of “by what standard.” It stands to reason that Mr. Justice would grind over this because that question puts the end to the whole notion of Natural Law. Now, I am not denying that Natural Law exists but, unlike Mr. Justice, I believe that fallen man’s mind is at enmity with God. I also believe in the Reformed doctrine called “Total Depravity.” Finally, I believe because the mind of fallen man is at enmity with God, thus revealing the truth of a total depravity that affected the whole man (including his intellect – sans Aquinas) yielding the truth found in Scripture that fallen man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. In the face of all these long accepted Reformed doctrines (Total Depravity, Noetic effects of the fall, A suppressing of the truth in unrighteousness) Mr. Justice and the Natural Law fanboys continue to thump for Aristotelian Natural Law theories.

In pursuit of clarity, I do not deny that all ground is common ground but I do deny that any ground is neutral ground. All ground is common ground because it is God’s ground and that never changes. However, all ground is not neutral ground because fallen man denies the fact that the ground is common ground because it belongs to God. The fallen man is seeking to usurp God’s claim and so suppresses the truth of what he can’t evade knowing. Hence, the idea of common notions is turkey offal.

3.) In light of all this we must ask Mr. Justice… “Who is the usurper?” It is true that the P/B has long usurped the Aristotle / Aquinas  tradition but it is they who usurped Scripture. So, despite Mr. Justice’s cavailing we will continue to be glad to play the usurpers, to his tradition of usurping. I am glad to match Mr. Justice’s condemning of P/B by consigning to the depths of utter hell the whole idea of Natural Law/ Natural theology as it comes to us from the hand of Aquinas and Aristotle. It was one of those areas where the Reformation still had Reforming to do once it picked it up to “advance” the cause of Reformation.

4.) Just to be clear here … I do, as a advocate of P/B denigrate the place of nature and natural law and natural theology. I do so proudly and with all the cheekiness  I can generate. It is an abomination. It is a blemish on the Reformed tradition and you can imagine the delight that I find in the fact that both R2k and this Wolfe Natural Law school both appeal to this same Natural Law to come to conclusions that are 180 degrees different. Where now your Natural Law Mr. Justice that is so obvious to be understood that we find Christian Ph.D’s at each other’s throats regarding how it should be interpreted?

5.) Mr. Justice assails P/B but, alas, his assailing is like so many BB’s off a battleship. Both Van Til and Gordon H. Clark refuted over and over again this whole Natural Law stand up comic routine. Their arguments remain as valid and cogent now as they were when they first made them. If people want to read a quick rebuttal I would recommend, Dr. Robert A. Morey’s book, “The Bible, Natural Theology, And Natural Law; Conflict or Compromise?”

Larry Arnn Goes Out Of His Way To Prove That Hillsdale College Is Not A Christian College

Larry Arnn (President of Hillsdale College) writes;

I appear to have made some people mad by saying a Christian nation is impossible.

 

Bret responds,

I really wasn’t one who was “mad.” I’d more characterize my response as “dumbfounded.” Dumbfounded that someone with this much education as Arnn has could say something both so profoundly dumb and profoundly errant. The passage he cited (John 18:36 – My Kingdom is not of this world) no more teaches that a Christian nation is impossible than it proves that a Christian college is impossible.

Larry Arnn writes;

Let me propose another formulation that I have used often and for years: America is the most Christian nation because it recognizes the principle of religious liberty, which comes from the mouths of the Founders and of Jesus himself, when he says that His kingdom is not of this world.

Bret responds,

Arn still refuses to give up the whole misinterpretation of John 18:36.

Second, America’s and the Founder’s original concept of religious liberty was not what Arnn is advocating for now. Remember, America’s original concept of religious liberty was that there would be no Nationally or Federally sanctioned Christian denomination but that States could themselves (and often did) have state sanctioned Christian denominations. States could be Christian states in the original America.

Does any one believe that Arnn would be OK with Michigan (where Hillsdale college is at) legislating that Presbyterianism was going to be the state approved Christian denomination?

In Larry Arnn’s world, America is a Christian nation precisely because it is not a Christian nation.

Larry Arnn writes,

At Hillsdale we believe that Jesus is the Maker and Savior of all.

Bret responds,

If what Larry reports above is true, then no Reformed person should be sending their children to Hillsdale college since such a confession is explicitly non-Reformed, and therefore non-Biblical. Jesus most certainly is not the Savior of all.

Larry Arnn writes

We also believe with the Founders that no law is good that compels anyone to believe that. Laws that compel belief are what led to centuries of religious persecution and warfare in so-called Christian Europe.

Bret responds,

I agree that no law is good that compels anyone to believe that Jesus is the “Saviour of All.”

Secondly, who has ever argued that statutory law could possibly ever compel someone to believe in Jesus? What straw-man is Arnn fighting against here?

Thirdly, I would recommend that Dr. Arnn read “The Myth of Religious Violence” by William T. Cavanaugh so as to disabuse himself of the idea of religious persecution and warfare.

Fourth, notice how Arnn labels, 1500 years of Christendom as “so-called Christian Europe.”

If you love your children you won’t be sending them to Hillsdale College.

Are Our Meaning Problems Derivative of Darwin … or Derivative of Franz Boas? Wilson’s Errant Analysis

In a recent clip Doug Wilson effectively demolishes Russell Moore’s belly aching about Wilson. There is plenty to belly ache about Wilson but all of what Moore was belly-aching about is exactly the opposite of what the problems with Wilson are. Moore was critiquing Wilson from the Cultural Marxist non-Christian Left. My problems with Wilson are from the Dissident Christian right. Still, how can I not rejoice whenever the right side of the left (Doug Wilson) demolishes the left side of the left (Russell Moore)?

So, a tip of the cap and three “Huzzahs” for Doug here!

(10:23-10:43)

There was a major insight though from Wilson as he aptly and ablely picked apart Moore. Wilson said, in the course of his righteous screed against Russell Moore, that where we, as a culture, are at is “All downstream of Darwin.”

Now, that is a major analysis error on Wilson’s part. It demonstrates that he doesn’t really know the times. Indeed, because of this analysis we can begin to locate why Wilson is so often wrong the way he is. It is absolutely false that where we are at as a culture is all downstream of Darwin. In point of fact, the person we are all downstream of held the exact opposite views of Darwin. I would insist that where we’re now is “all downstream of Franz Boas.”

Franz Boas was the anti-Darwinists of his age and perhaps is one of the least known persons today whose thinking has had monumental impact    on our current zeitgeist. Boas abominated Darwin and it is Boas’ worldview that has gained the ascendency. Boas was a cultural anthropologist who argued against Darwin’s “biological determinism,” opting instead for a cultural relativism that allowed for an egalitarian view of all cultures. Further, Boas argued against Darwin’s “scientific racism” by emphasizing nurture over Darwin’s nature argument.

This inability of Wilson’s to see that the battle we are now fighting in the West is not against Darwinism so much as it is against Boasianism explains a good deal about some of the things that Wilson says about race and culture.

The significance of this error on Wilson’s part is monumental.

Now, certainly there remains a good deal of Darwinism extant. It’s not as if Darwinism has gone away. However, the real fight in the trenches is not with Darwinism but is with the exact opposite mirror error of Boasianism. The lost of meaning that we are suffering from as a culture has more to do with the success of (((Franz Boas))) worldview winning out than it has to do with Darwin’s worldview winning out.

Sure & Certain Victory

“What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.”

Karl Marx

“You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.”

Ho Chi Minh

In reading Carroll’s “The Rise and Fall of the Communist Revolution,” one constant theme across the Communist Revolution where-ever it was found was the certainty of coming victory despite the odds or despite any recent defeats. The Communist elites knew that victory was inevitable. Whether you are talking about Lenin in Russia, Mao in China, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Guevara and Castro in Cuba, Sukarno in Indonesia or Caballero in Spain they all were absolutely optimistic about the coming victory that they would eventually win. These Demon animated men were optimistic in their eschatology. They were not always right but they were right many times more than they were wrong.

What of Christians? What of they who have the truth? What of they who champion the cause of King of Kings and the greatest anti Marxist Revolutionary who has ever lived?

The great majority of Christians admit and boast that they are going to lose. John MacArthur even once went of a jag in the pulpit saying;

“We lose down here. Get used to it.”

And the Amen chorus coming from the R2K “Amen corner” was deafening.

This Christian pessimistic eschatology,which has been the majority report in the Reformed Church at least since the end of WW I, of both the premil and amil variants ends up being a self-fulfilled prophecy. If one really believes that they are going to “lose down here,” then they will live their lives planning for defeat and expecting disappointment.

It seems that where we Christians need to be more like the Marxists in anticipating victory we are at that point most unlike them and where we Christians need to be least like the Marxists in being egalitarian we are at that point most like them.

Yet, despite being saddled with the dead weight of a Church, who in the majority, are pessimistic in their eschatology I still know that small as our numbers might be right now we will, in the end, win out. We are going to win. It is evident. We have the God’s own testimony in Scripture. It is as sure as the sunrise coming the following morning. Tears may last for the night but joy cometh in the morning. The enemy can not defeat us or our cause — no, not even the enemy in our midst.

The Current Common Ground Between Marxism & Christianity

It is well known that the Marxism/Communism of the 20th century was a religion that required of men everything. It required their dissolution of their human-ness in order to be re-designed into the “New Soviet Man.” The New Soviet Man was a man with no allegiances, no identity, no distinctiveness, except as set against the all Sovereign Party/State. The Marxists/Communists so believed this that man became an interchangeable cog in the machinery of the state/party. Practically, what this meant was the destruction of the family for the reason that the family gave one an identity other than the Party. This meant the destruction of maleness and femaleness as sexuality & gender was irrelevant for the New Soviet Man.  This destruction of maleness and femaleness was demonstrated in the Soviet effort during WW II where 5% of the Soviet troops (appx. 800K) were comprised of women who fought as snipers, pilots, and as medical personnel. Per Communist doctrine man qua man was a distinction-less, identity-less, being that was to find his whole identity only in terms of the State/Party.

Of course the same principle applied to man in terms of his racial-ethnic identity. Man’s creaturely distinctive of race, ethnicity, family were irrelevant categories for the New Soviet man. The State/Party was to serve as the the New Soviet Man’s race. One way this was pursued in the USSR, by Stalin was by means of mass deportations of different people groups from one area of the USSR to another. The goal was to so dilute ethnic identity with their distinctive cultural lifestyles by thrusting them amidst new locales and different peoples.

Stalin, and his henchman, Lavrentiy Beria (Head of Soviet NKVD), pursued these mass deportations as a way to suppress any coordinated uprisings by particular concentrated people groups protesting Stalin’s totalitarianism. Such deportations also served the purpose of creating a visibly observable internationalism that bespoke a uniform identity of all Soviet peoples. Between the 1930s-1950s in the Soviet Union approximately 3.5 million from 40 different ethnic groups were relocated (deported) from their previous homeland in order to discover and enjoy become part of the New International man.

All of this is consistent with the explicit statements by the Marxists/Communists on their intent of eliminating all national distinctions so that a new man could be created — a new man whose only identity was the Communist Party/State apparatus. Here are but a few of their own words;

”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

Or we might consult one Nikita Khrushchev;

“Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

And Marx himself,

“Even the natural differences within species, like racial
differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”
 
K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
 
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A

Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

What we have seen here thus is that Communist/Marxist Godlessness has always sought to destroy the distinctive creaturely stamp that God has placed upon men at their birth. Gone are gender/sexual distinctives in the Soviet state. Gone are racial/ethnic distinctions in the Soviet State. Gone are family distinctions in the Soviet State.

Mussolini’s words here describe perfectly this totalitarian arrangement;

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’

Now, I have a larger purpose in pointing all this out, as interesting as it might be by itself. My larger purpose here is to suggest that modern Christianity and the modern Church has become an ape to this kind of Soviet understanding of man with its repeated denunciations of the reality of races, ethnicities, and clans. Indeed, so much like the Soviets of yesteryear have become that churches now are routinely defrocking, disbarring, and disciplining ministers who give even the slightest inclination of believing that the Christian’s Union with Christ does not take away their human distinctives of sexuality, family, race or ethnic belongingness.

The cases of Michel Hunter, Michael Spangler, and my own are somewhat known now. However, other men such as Rev. Zach Garris and Rev. James Baird have likewise been given a good amount of official grief for their views. Then there are cases like Tim Harris, and Ryan Louis Underwood that have not received the publicity that they should have received. Then going way back, there is the case of Neil Payne and Todd Mahaffy where the SPLC was brought in, in order to substantiate the charges “racism” brought by an Alienist PCA minister. Fast forward to this past spring and the RPCNA, ARP, and PCA all adopted Soviet like language in order to condemn that which the Soviet Politburo would have heartily agreed. The Reformed churches keep trying to put a lid on all this but the lid keeps popping off.  Now combine all this with the inability of the PCA to bring discipline against the self-confessed celibate but still sodomite Rev. Greg Johnson and we begin to see that the contemporary Reformed Denominations, in principle, look an awful lot like they are in league with the now defunct Soviet Union in creating the “New Soviet Man.”

The Modern Reformed Church and Reformed clergy, at least in the matter of trying to erase God ordained creaturely distinctives because “since we’re united with Christ we are all one” is singing out of the same hymnbook as Robespierre, Lenin, Marx, Stalin, and Mao. The Modern Reformed Church in its shared embrace with the Marxism/Communism doctrine of egalitarianism is testifying against itself by insisting that “grace destroys nature.” It would have been better if the Soviets had succeeded in this egalitarian attempt rather than our being in the position where the Reformed Churches of Jesus Christ may well be successful in this same effort where the Marxists thus far have not been successful.

Having said all this, I am glad to admit that it is possible to make an idol out of one’s family or ethnicity or race, but having admitted that this is possible is it really the case that the modern West is in danger of sliding into that abyss? I mean, how much ancestor worship do you come across daily in the non third world immigrant parts of the West? It has gotten so bad that there are those who now insist that they have more in common with a Nigerian Grandmother who is Christian than they have with their own unbelieving Mother. Honor thy Father and Mother much?

The modern Reformed church needs to return to the principle that grace restores nature. It needs to admit that churches that practice the homogenous principle are not in some kind of grave sin. I mean, the modern Reformed church if just find and dany with the homogenous principle as applied to Korean or Hmong Churches or even Black church but suddenly it begins to blanch when white Westerners pursue the same thing. The modern Reformed church needs to embrace men like Dabney and Thornwell, Palmer and Girardeau, Morton Smith and John Edwards Richards, Michael Spangler and Michael Hunter, Zach Garris and James Baird. The modern Reformed church needs to quit with its racial and Marxist witch hunts that are determined to eliminate every bit of legitimate racial realism that exists within their confines.

Kinism has always been part and parcel of the definition of Christianity through the ages. The two long anthologies “Who Is My Neighbor,” and “A Survey of Racialism in Christian Sacred Tradition” has made it indisputable that those Christians who understand that Kinism is just Christianity 101 are standing in the tradition of believing what all Christian at all times and in all places have believed.

If the Modern Reformed Church does not change its course on this matter historians of the future are going to look back on this time and describe it as “The Marxist Captivity of the Church.”