Does Gaffin Have A Point In His Critique of Postmill? Not So Much

“Nothing has been more characteristic of current post-millennialism than its emphasis on the kingship of the ascended Christ; nothing fires the Postmil vision more than that reality. Yet it is just this reality that post-millennialism affectively compromises and, in part, even denies. Postmils especially will no doubt find this last statement startling, maybe even outrageous, so let me explain.

Nothing is more distinctive to the postmil vision than its expectation of promised “victory” for the church, a future “golden age,” before Christ’s return. That golden era is variously conceived; in its reconstructionist versions, for example, it is to be a period of global supremacy and control by Christians in every area of life. But all postmil constructions—past and present, and all of them marked (as postmil) in distinction from other eschatological viewpoints—have in common that the millennial “gold”/”victory” (1) is expected before Christ’s return and (2) up to the present time in the church’s history, apart from occasional anticipations, has remained entirely in the future.

Here, then, is where a problem—from the vantage point of New Testament teaching, a fundamental structural difficulty—begins to emerge. Emphasis on the golden era as being entirely future leaves the unmistakable impression that the church’s present (and past) is something other than golden and that, so far in its history, the church has been less than victorious. This impression is only reinforced when, typically in my experience, the anticipated glorious future is pictured just by contrasting it with what is alleged to be the churches presently dismal state (the angle of vision seldom seems to include much beyond the church scene in the United States!), usually with the added suggestion that those who do not embrace the postmil vision are “defeatists” and contribute at least to perpetuating the sad and unpromising status quo.

The New Testament, however, will not tolerate such a construction. If anything is basic (and I’m inclined to say, clear) in its eschatology, it is that the eschatological kingship of Christ begins already at his first coming culminating at his resurrection and ascension. “God has placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (Eph 1:22; cf. v. 20).

…In other terms, for the New Testament, the entire interadventual period, not just a closing episode, is the “golden age” of the church; that period and what transpires in it, as a whole, embodies the churches millennial “success” and ” victory.”

RICHARD B. GAFFIN, JR.| “Theonomy and Eschatology: Reflections On Postmillennialism” in William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey, ed. Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 202–03.

1.) It is true that Post-mills find Gaffin’s statement startling and outrageous, as well as humorous, but then we find most statements by Amillennialists to be startling, outrageous and strange. We find that to be the case because none of what Gaffin says represents our position. The above is a case of building a straw man and then proceeding to demolish what nobody believes.

2.) Gaffin affirms that Postmillennialism champions the Kingship of Christ but only does so while denying that Kingship at the same time. The problem with Gaffin’s observation here (and a problem, that Gaffin of all people should not make) is that Postmillennialism understands the hermeneutical dynamic in Scripture of the “already/now/not yet.” Postmills emphasize, as Gaffin rightly acknowledges the “kingship of the ascended Christ. Further, Gaffin is correct that “nothing fires the Postmil vision more than that reality.” This truth represents the reality that Christ has indeed already taken up His office of King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The Postmill understands that Christ has been inaugurated as the King of the Cosmos. This is the “already” and “now” of our eschatology. Unlike the Amillennialist Gaffin, the Postmil believes that this Kingship is not merely a spiritual Kingship but the Postmil believes that this Kingship is a reign that rules over every area of life.

However, the Postmil also understands that with the passage of time the already and now inaugurated Kingship of Jesus Christ is going from increasing consummation unto  increasing consummation which each passing day. We understand, unlike the Amills, that the Kingship of Jesus Christ while already present has a “not yet” quality that takes time to demonstrate. Has Gaffin forgot the Kingdom parables?

  “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

And that,

 “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds[b] of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Matthew 13

Gaffin desires to indict the Postmillennialists because we understand this principle and he apparently does not?

3.) So, Gaffin is just in error when he says that for the Postmil the Kingship of Christ is entirely future. It is because we believe in the Present Kingship of Jesus Christ that we expect the future of that already present Kingship to be more and more glorious. However, for the Amillennialists, like Gaffin, the Kingship of Christ is a pretend/fantasy Kingship. The Kingship of Christ is exercised only in the Church realm. We can only see and can only expect to ever see the Kingship of Christ with spiritual eyes that see spiritual realities. In just such a manner the Amillennialist can retire from contending for the crown rights of Jesus Christ in every area of life, satisfying himself with the ability of his “spiritual” eyes to see “spiritual” realities that more often than not are not really there, except so as to satisfy the militant A-millennialists retreatist, defeatest, pietistic, and quietistic cowardice.

3.) So, the Postmil, contra Gaffin’s assertion is quite content in seeing the Kingdom present and growing now, while retaining the expectation that the full flowering of the already present Kingdom will go from fuller flowering unto fuller flowering. We Postmils, of course rejoice in the truth that even now;

“God has placed all things under his (Christ’s) feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (Eph 1:22; cf. v. 20).

And because we believe that is true the Postmils operate from that truth. Because Eph. 1:22 is true we work from the confidence of that truth unto seeing that truth progressively demonstrate its already current truthfulness. Because we believe the King currently reigns we lean into life living as if the King reigns. It is why we keep praying, apparently unlike the Amills, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Or has Gaffin dispensationalized that prayer since, in his world, the King and the Kingdom has already come and therefore we need not pray that any longer. Is Gaffin suggesting that that prayer was for them and not for us?

4.) As a Postmil, I have no problem affirming with Richard that;

the New Testament, the entire interadventual period, not just a closing episode, is the “golden age” of the church; that period and what transpires in it, as a whole, embodies the churches millennial “success” and ” victory.”

Postmils affirm that we are going from victory unto victory and success unto success. It’s just that Postmils don’t spiritualize the Kingdom so that it is always invisible and non-corporeal all of the time everywhere. Postmils, understand, unlike Amils that since the King now reigns there is work to be done in seeing that every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.

Postmils see that happening in time and space (consider B. B. Warfield’s Eschatological Universalism) as the Holy Spirit makes it so the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea whereas Amils like Gaffin, treasuring defeat and surrender, see this only happening with the cataclysmic event that is the return of Jesus Christ.

As a codicil here I will offer that there are many Amillennialists who call themselves “Optimistic Amillennialists.” I call these chaps my friends even if I can’t figure out how they get there. It is the militant Amillennialists who never met a Postmil they didn’t want to pulverize and mock that find my hackles getting raised.

 

Jon Harris On Transgenderism … McAtee Corrects Harris

Jon Harris is one of the guys in a white hat. Typically his material is quite good. However, Jon remains a Baptist and here his Baptist hackles were apparently raised by something Carl Trueman wrote. Jon tries to correct Trueman but fails miserably as I intend to demonstrate.

Jon Harris opined,

“People who think they’re trans don’t think they’re trans because they chose to be trans. On the contrary, they believe it was not their choice. They think its who they actually are independent of any choice they made. They believe gender is a social construct. So they root their identity in social interactions. (i.e. how they “experience” the world). This is why it is so important for them to receive social affirmation. People must experience them as their trans identity if gender is a social construct. Carl Trueman hinging this all on “radical individualism” is causing Christians to make basic mistakes. Mistakes like thinking Baptist theology leads to transgenderism because it supposedly bases Christian identity on choice. Mistakes like mocking people who think they’re trans by saying “if I chose to be a cat would I be?” It’s not about choice. It’s about experience. We need to clearly say, “You do not experience life as a trans person.” Often I hear Christians giving up the entire argument by saying things like, “That may be your experience, but what is true?” What is true is that they experience the world according to the way they were designed. Let’s stop reinforcing delusion.”

1.) Of course people who are trans don’t admit that they chose to be trans and so don’t think they chose to be trans. Just as sodomites don’t admit that they chose to be sodomite and so don’t think they chose to be sodomite. Very few people admit to choosing a lifestyle that is an abomination (Deuteronomy 22:5, Leviticus 18:22). So that people who think they’re trans refuse to say they consciously chose to be trans doesn’t mean that they didn’t consciously choose to be trans. Of course they chose to be Trans. Unless one is going to buy into the idea that they were genetically coded to be trans there is no other choice except that for whatever reason based possibly on whatever trauma in their lives they chose to be Trans.

2.) Of course they wouldn’t say that it was their choice. Now, I grant that it is possible that they didn’t even fully realize that they were making a choice when they made the choice and I grant that something horrific may well have entered into their life that moved them to make that choice, but for whatever reason, consciously made or silently acquiesced to, at some point it was decided that being trans was preferable to living in harmony with the way God made them.

3.) Of course they think being trans is who they actually are independent of any choice they made. What else would they say? If they admit that they made a choice then the whole “this is just the way I am” argument goes right out the door. That “this is just the way I am argument” is key because without it their perversion can’t gain traction. Without that argument then the abnormality of it all has to be admitted.

4.) Jon offers that Trans people root their identity in the way they experience the world suggesting that this “way they experience the world” is different from making a choice to be Trans. However, Jon, at this point has given us a false dichotomy when he wants to make a significant distinction Trans people being the way they are because they chose to be that way and Trans people being the way they are because that is the way they experience the world. At this point we have to ask … “Did not the Trans person choose to experience the world in the way in which they experience the world?” Jon’s false dichotomy gives his argument no traction.

5.) I have my issues with Carl Trueman but in this case Trueman is correct when he observes that all of this grows out of a radical atomistic individualism that has swamped the West. On this score Trueman has not made any mistakes.

6.) Whether Harris likes it or not Baptist Baptism “theology” and transgenderism “ideology” do indeed have a point of contact and that point of contact is the denial that God does designate a person’s identity. Baptists deny God designating a baby’s identity as “covenant member” requiring the individual to choose for themselves and Tranny’s deny God designating a person’s gender as male or female, allowing the individual to decide for themselves. For both the Baptist and Transgender identity at a pivotal point is a social construct. For Baptist being in the covenant or not in the covenant is a social construct to be determined by the sovereign individual. As such they will not give Baptism to a child until that child determines their own social construct by choosing Jesus. For the Tranny being male or female is a social construct to be determined by the sovereign individual, and there are parents that are so buying into this that they are refusing to tell their child what gender they are so that the child can choose the social construct themselves.

Maybe we should refer to such parents as “Gender Baptists?”

Naturally enough, Jon doesn’t like this linkage because it hits too close to his Baptist home.

7.) I must agree with Jon about not using the “If I think I’m a cat does that make me a cat” argument with the Trans person because it is clearly the case that we are at a point that their replying with “yes” is not going to make very many people blink.

8.) And I agree that we must quit reinforcing delusion. However, Jon’s apologetic that we must tell the Trans person that they have to stop experiencing the world as Trans requires them to make a choice to do so, and at that point we see, once again, that Jon is involved in a false dichotomy.

But he has to reach for this false dichotomy because otherwise he may have to give up his Baptist radical atomistic individualism.

R. Scott Clark Praises the Kinist J. Gresham Machen

Today R. Scott Clark, obviously having no sense of irony posted the following post on the Hiedleblog praising J. Gresham Machen, just a day after lambasting me for being allegedly guilty of the very same thing that he elsewhere exonerates Machen for being;

Machen Was Worth a Hundred of His Fellows

“We have lost a man whom our times can ill spare, a man who had convictions which were real to him and who fought for those convictions and held to them through every change in time and human thought. There was power in him which was positive in its very negations. He was worth a hundred of his fellows who, as princes of the church, occupy easy places and play their church politics and trim their sails to every wind, who in their smug observance of the convictions of life and religion offend all honest and searching spirits. No forthright mind can live among them, neither the honest skeptic nor the honest dogmatist. I wish Dr. Machen had lived to go on fighting them.’

Such was the tribute of novelist and former liberal missionary Pearl S. Buck who won both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. J. Gresham Machen was a critic of much of what she represented.”

BRAD ISBELL | “Some of Machen’s ‘enemies’ admired him” | March 21, 2023

Here is another quote from the Machen that Clark is affirming praise for;

“It is true some of them are ‘sticklers’ for the civil rights for negroes — it always makes me intensely angry to hear people talking glibly about equal civil rights for negroes when in many parts of the South those equal rights would mean that every legislator and every judge would be a savage of a type and white men would be more unsafe in parts of this country than in most parts of the world where at least protection of his home government is to some extent with him.”

J. Gresham Machen
Letter to his Mother

R. Scott Clark is a magnificent hypocrite because he has on his blog a whole entry defending the orthodoxy of J. Gresham Machen, despite what Clark considers to be a racist letter to his mother, while at the same time casting modern day Machen Kinists into hell by referring to them as heretics.

Machen’s Letter To His Mother Or What To Do With Dead Sinners?

Obviously, Clark would never step up to the microphone and declare that on the basis of Machen’s social order beliefs that Machen, who was a 20th century Kinist, was a “heretic.” And yet that is exactly what the arch-heretic R. Scott Clark has done with 21st century Kinists. So Clark condemns 21st century Kinists as heretics but begs for understanding for 20th century Kinists like Machen. Bottom line Scotty is that either Machen was a heretic for believing what he believed or I am and all modern Kinists are not heretics for believing the very same types of things that Machen believed. You can not have it both ways. Either we are all in hell (like Machen per Clarkian reasoning) or on the way to hell (like living Kinists) for being heretics.

After all Scott, no heretic ever made it into heaven. Now, lots of people who were in error on this or that issue are in heaven but no heretic is in heaven.

Hey Scott … does Machen’s letter above disqualify him from heaven?

The War Heats Up; Road Runner McAtee Correct Wile E. Coyote R. Scott Clark Part V

R. Scott Clark (RSC) writes,

“They (The Kinists) not only ignore the plain teaching of Colossians 3 and Galatians 3.”

Bret responds,

Galatians 3:26f & The Indiscriminate Nature of the Gospel AND the Foolishness of Social Egalitarianism

Galatians 3:28 & Egalitarianism

RSC writes,

“They (Kinists) also ignore the plain teaching of Acts 10:15, where our Lord told Peter in a vision, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (ESV).”

Bret responds,

Except Kinists don’t call other races “common.”

This statement also implies that the 9th commandment challenged R. Scott Clark doesn’t realize that Kinists come in all hues. I have black friends who are kinist, yellow friends who are kinist, brown friends who are kinists, and on and on. So, once again, Scott is dissimulating about what Kinists believe.

RSC writes,

The next thing we read in Luke’s narrative is that Cornelius, a Roman centurion, wants to speak with Peter. Ordinarily, this would not be a good thing. A Roman centurion had a lot of authority and could have made Peter’s life not only uncomfortable but uncomfortably short. Peter explained to him, “God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So, when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me” (Acts 10:28b–29; ESV). The point of the vision was really about how Christians are to relate to one another across ethnic barriers. Kinism defies and denies the unequivocal teaching of God’s Word about the history of redemption and our new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

Bret responds,

That whole paragraph is SKUBALA. It is just not true.

RSC writes citing the CRC,

At Synod, in 2019, the Christian Reformed Church considered overture 7 (pp. 485–505) regarding Kinism. It adopted the following declarations regarding Kinism:

A. Declare that this is a grievous deviation from sound doctrine, a heresy: the Kinist teaching that interracial marriage is sinful, and the theological reasoning supporting this teaching.

Bret responds,

1.) At least as it pertains to me, which is the person the CRC was pointing at in all this, I have never ever said that “interracial marriage is sinful,” though I have said repeatedly that it is “normatively unwise.” I have also said repeatedly that once a inter-racial marriage is contracted that the local church should do all it can to support such a marriage if such a marriage exists in their congregation while at the same time reminding the congregation that the children of the congregation should not marry along inter-racial lines. To encourage such marriages would be to adopt Marxist principles for God’s covenant seed.

RSC citing the CRC,

B. Declare that this is a grievous deviation from sound doctrine, a heresy: the Kinist teaching that God has ordained separation in a religio-ethnostate, and the theological reasoning supporting this teaching.

Bret Responds,

See

http://www.thedailygenevan.com/blog/2022/11/17/naturalvsnonnatural?fbclid=IwAR0ly5u8bXFPlA-SWWztH1PbARSnLwaAwW-rflGjL3v5152ct66dz8c6eRg

RSC writes citing the CRC,

C. Declare that any office bearer who teaches or promotes Kinist theology is worthy of special discipline in accordance with Church Order Article 83.

Bret responds,

Now, the CRC may someday do this in the future but they did not do so with me.

RSC citing the CRC

D. Instruct the executive director to create, through the appropriate agencies, opportunities for education, instruction, and discussion so that church leaders and lay members can recognize and refute the heresy of Kinism in various social contexts where they may encounter it.

Bret responds,

I am looking forward to the day when someone trained by the CRC tries to refute Kinism, because it has not been done to date. R. Scott Clark certainly has not done so in is laughable and ridiculous two part series.

RSC citing the CRC writes,

According to article 74 of the Acts of Synod (pp. 818–20) for 2019, the Synod adopted those for declarations on this ground:

Ground: Kinist theology and practice is neither biblical nor Reformed. Rather, Kinism is a twisting of Reformed doctrine. The Bible makes clear that God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way. Kinist principles and praxis distort this truth.

Bret responds,

1.) As we have seen from the countless of quotes I have given in this series, Kinism in theology and practice is both biblical and Reformed. It is the Alienism (Marxism as applied to social orders) of R. Scott Clark and the CRC which is neither Biblical, nor Reformed, nor historical.

2.) “Equal in every way?”

Surely the CRC can’t be serious. This is pure hard egalitarianism. Surely all peoples are ontologically equal. Certainly no peoples are made of better dirt than other peoples, and so in that sense are equal. Certainly, all men are equal before God’s law. But to say that all peoples are equal in every way is just French Revolution lunacy. Superiorities and inferiorities run through all races, peoples, tribes, and nations and to suggest that all races, peoples, tribes, and nations are equal is the kind of denial of reality that is in the same league as saying girls can be boys and boys can be girls because they are equal in every way.

RSC citing the CRC,

Synod also adopted the following motion:

That synod, given the recent history of Kinist teaching in a particular church of the CRCNA, admonish councils and classes to promote confessional fidelity and mutually to pursue special discipline of an office bearer who is found to hold views contrary to our standards.

Bret responds,

1.) LOL … the CRC calls for special discipline of any office bearer who is found to be a kinist and yet when they could have tried to do that to me they passed. Is this their subtle admission that I was never an office bearer and so they had no jurisdiction over me?

or

2.) Is it an admission that they did not go after me because they knew they could not prove their case and exoneration would have been something that the Dutch Mafia who runs the CRC would have found mortifying?

RSC citing the CRC.,

Grounds:

a. The pastor who was teaching Kinist views was able to do so for several years without special discipline being successful.

Bret responds,

1.) I was never a Pastor in the CRC, though I did Pastor a CRC Church

2.) Special discipline was never successful because special discipline was never attempted. There were delegates at Synod 2019 who were asking why I was released instead of being disciplined. So far as I know they never got an answer to that question.

3.) And keep in mind that;

a.) When I was released from the CRC (though I was never in to be released) that the governing Church’s Pastor of the Church I served recommended and argued vehemently that I should be released with a “honorable release” as opposed to the “Dismissed” that released me.

b.) The Church that I Pastored unanimously voted to leave the CRC due to the CRC’s heretical stands, knowing full well who I am after ministering among  them for a quarter of a century.

RSC writes citing the CRC

b. By admonishing councils and classes to encourage confessional fidelity and special discipline when applicable, it sends a strong message from the broadest body of our denomination that Kinist teaching will not be tolerated in our churches.

Bret responds,

The CRC has no worries about Kinism in their midst. They are safely Marxist. I was the proverbial “One in a Million.”

RSC citing the CRC,

Synod adopted another overture offered from the floor:

That synod acknowledge, with lament, the historic tolerance and indifference within our Reformed theological tradition to perpetual hateful racial prejudice and the theological error of Kinism as well as the need to act as a prophetic voice on these matters in the present and future.

Bret responds,

AH… here we see the slight glimmer of admission that Kinism, or something very much like it as been part of the Reformed theological tradition. Naturally, quite to the contrary of what is written above, the kinism I’ve read of in Church history (See Achord and Dow’s Anthology, “Who Is My Neighbor; An Anthology in Natural Relations”) has never resembled hateful racial prejudice.

Maybe there has been “hateful racial prejudice” in the Reformed tradition but if it existed it would be hard to top the “hateful racial prejudice” that is being exhibited towards Kinists who are not Marxists.

RSC writes,

Make of the last clause what you will, Synod was clearly embarrassed by the existence of Kinism within the CRC for a decade and wanted to send a clear message that the CRC repudiates Kinism.

Bret responds,

1.) And yet, the CRC had every opportunity to bring charges against me and so run me through their Kangaroo court system. If the CRC really had wanted to send a clear message of their embarrassment regarding Kinism THAT is what they would have done. But they didn’t. Instead they merely dismissed me upon my request. (A strange action considering that I had never been ordained by the CRC.)

2.) Is it interesting that the “Conservative” R. Scott Clark is making common cause in these two articles not only with his arch-enemy Doug Wilson but also with a denomination that he excoriates; the uber-Liberal CRC. It seems that “Conservative” Wilson, “Confessional” Clark, and the uber-liberal CRC have all in common the desire to libel, slander, and rid the planet of Historic Christianity, which is, in the end, all Kinism is.

This has been proven exhaustively by Achord & Dow’s book “Who is My Neighbor.” It is also nicely set forth in the article linked above titled  “Natural and Non-Natural communities.”

RSC writes,

It is certainly a gross error, schismatic (as it separates what Christ has united), it is ugly and unbefitting of a Christian profession. Let no man cast asunder what Christ has joined together.

Bret responds,

Quite to the contrary it is the Alienism that condemns all the Church Fathers who were Kinist just by their virtue of being Christian. By abandoning the idea and truth of Kinism Clark and the rest of his ideological brood of vipers is abandoning the Christian faith. It is they who are vile and ugly beyond all recognition. It is they who are in gross error (and in Clark’s case not only on this count but also on the count of his heretical R2K). It is they who are the schismatics dividing the Church from its Christian past. It is they who are touting beliefs that are not befitting Christian men. It is they who have cast asunder what Christ joined together opting for some red stew because they were tired from hunting acceptance of the world.

And keep in mind this all started merely because R. Scott Clark wanted to smear my book, “Saved to be Warriors; Exposing the Errors of Radical Two Kingdom Theology.”

The War Heats Up; Road Runner McAtee Corrects Wile E. Coyote R. Scott Clark IV

R. Scott Clark (RSC) writes,

“The CRC Is Right”

Bret responds,

I’m sure that the Reformed Alliance, the OCRC, and the URC, who all left the CRC in the 90’s forward would find it interesting that Scott says “the CRC is Right.” I’m sure NAPARC who kicked the CRC out of their Reformed organization would find it interesting that Scott says “The CRC is Right.”

I admit that I find it fascinating that Clark hates orthodox believers, who (Kinists) are merely embracing what the Reformed Church has embraced for 500 years, so much that he would affirm the CRC and even get in bed with Doug Wilson, a man he has loathed for years. All of this just in order to smear the author of a book (me) who wrote a irrefutable take down of R2K. Clark holds hands with Wilson and the CRC in the attempt to deny my book or me credibility.

The logic goes… “McAtee is a Kinist heretic therefore it is obvious that his book exposing R2K can’t be accurate and should be shunned.”

RSC writes,

Over the 15 years that the HB has been published, I have had occasion to criticize the drift of the CRC toward broad evangelicalism. This, however, is an area where confessional Reformed Christians can learn from our brothers and sisters in the CRC.

Bret responds,

Broad Evangelicalism?

When I began to pastor a CRC Church in 1995 I was assigned a “pastoral mentor” who was through and through Neo-Orthodox (Barthian). When he came to the text he presupposed that the supernatural could not be true. The denomination knew what he was when they ordained him decades prior to that. His was a famous case involving his denial that snakes could talk. During my time associated but never ordained in the CRC I heard ordained men make appeals on the floor of Classis for Homosexuals to be members and officers in the CRC. On those occasions I was the only one who stood up to protest. The silence of the other delegates was deafening. During my time associated but never ordained in the CRC I heard on the floor of Classis theologians of the Anabaptist stripe (Yoder) quoted approvingly as support against US going to War in the Middle East. On those occasions I was the only one standing and asking why Reformed men were quoting Anabaptist theologians in order to protest against War. (And I was even against the war myself.) On those occasions I was the only one who stood up to protest. The silence of the other delegates was deafening. During my time associated but never ordained in the CRC I saw men ordained who denied infant baptism, who denied justification by faith alone, and who thought my asking them what the three imputations in Scripture were, “a trick question.” All of this is only the tip of the iceberg of what I saw during my time of being associated by never ordained in the CRC. Believe me when I tell you that if the CRC is merely tacking in a broadly Evangelical direction then Trannyism is merely a tacking towards a more inclusive gender mindset.

If Scott wants to call the CRC’s growing denial of the authority and divine inspiration of the scriptures as summarized in our confession (cf. Belgic Confession Articles 5 & 7), then by all means let him do so. To do so only demonstrates his own incipient liberalism. If Scott wants to say women in office is only a “broadly Evangelical problem” then let him say so. I think such a move tears at the fabric of patriarchy which in turn undoes all of Scripture and so instead is a “decidedly Liberal problem.” Then there is the issue of question 80 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which the CRC has voted to have no binding validity anymore (that question says that the Roman Catholic Mass is an idolatry). Per Scott this is only a “broadly Evangelical problem.”

Clearly, with the “thinking” that Clark demonstrates we can see where the URC will soon enough follow the CRC.

RSC writes,

As Reginald Smith notes, the Kinists,

look at Old Testament examples to demonstrate how God forbade interracial marriages between Israel and other nations, and they use this to justify the statement that God must also forbid interracial marriage today. Kinists use Genesis 1:25 and 11:7–9 to state that God mandated life based on kinship or relationships with people of “the same kind.”

Bret Responds,

Some hard kinists will teach that inter-racial marriages are sin and that therefore God forbids them. Other kinists will say instead that Scripture clearly demonstrates that inter-racial marriages are not normatively wise and so should not be entered into. It is possible that people do not like that but it is not possible to say that some form of those kind of views have been the norm in Church History. For example,

  • “The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with, and intermarry with, people of their respective race; this is part of the God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races.” ~

    Dr. John Edwards Richards
    The Racial Problem Facing America (1964)
    One of the Founders of the Presbyterian Church of America
    Professor of Reformed Theology — Reformed Theological Seminary

    “I don’t believe [racial integration] is what the Bible teaches. Even though we may have transgressed the boundaries of nationhood and of peoplehood, it seems to me that God did create man of one blood in order that he may dwell as different nations throughout the world. But after the fall, when sinful man cosmopolitanly – meaning by that, with a desire to obliterate separate nationhood, with a desire to build a sort of United Nations organization under the Tower of Babel…attempted to resist developing peoplehood…[God confused the tongues of men]…because men had said, ‘Let us build a city and a tower which will stretch up to heaven lest we be scattered’… Pentecost sanctified the legitimacy of separate nationality rather than saying this is something we should outgrow… In fact, even in the new earth to come, after the Second Coming of Christ, we are told that the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the kings of the earth shall bring the glory and the honor—the cultural treasures—of the nations into it… But nowhere in Scripture are any indications to be found that such peoples should ever be amalgamated into one huge nation.”

    Dr. Francis Nigel Lee (1934-2011)
    Reformed Theologian

    “Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

    Dr. Clarence MacCartney
    Presbyterian Minister

    “Again, if diversity is God’s revealed way for mankind, one wonders about any program that advocates the intermarriage of the diverse races in a way which will eradicate the differences that God has established.”

    Morton Smith
    The Racial Problem Facing America

    “What do ye call natural affections?

    “Such as be among them of one blood and kindred, as between parents and children, husbands and wives, kindred, country, heathens, yea Christians also void of these.

    (How) does it differ from human and Christian affection?

    Human affection is that whereby we embrace all men as men; natural affection is that where by we embrace them which are nearer unto us by blood; Christian affection is that whereby we love good men because they belong to Christ.”

    Thomas Wilson
    Puritan
    A Commentary on the Most Divine Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans
    3rd ed. 1653, Chapter 1 — p. 54

    And of course these are just a few of the quotes that sustain that Kinims is merely vanilla Christianity 101 and that despite what either Reginald Williams or R. Scott Clark whines about.

    But there is a flip side of this that needs to be considered and that flip side is the position that both Clark and Reginald Williams are embracing. That position is called Alienism which is just the social order intent of Marxists.

    Reginald Williams, a black man married to a white woman (a point he has labored publicly to make known), and R. Scott Clark a white man who says Kinists are heretics because they don’t agree that normatively that inter-racial marriage is a good idea both agree as Alienists that Kinists should be run out of the Reformed Church. With that idea that “Kinism is evil” they are in agreement with the Marxists throughout history;

    1.) ”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

    2.) “The equality of races and nations is one of the most important elements of the moral strength and might of the Soviet state. Soviet anthropology develops the one correct concept, that all the races of mankind are biologically equal. The genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races serves the struggle against racism, against all idealist, mystic conceptions of man, his past, present and future.”

    —Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959
    “The Origin of Man” (Moscow)Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959:

    3.) “The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them….”

    Vladimir Lenin
    The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

    4.) “… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

    Vladimir Lenin 
    The Rights of Nations to Self Determination 

    5.) “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:

    6.) “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 with this entry we see that it is the Alienists like Reginald Williams, the CRC,  R. Scott Clark, and Doug Wilson, and just about all the rest of the fallen Church in the West today who are the heretics. Call this my McAtee Contra Mundum moment. It is true that I and my handful of Kinist compatriots are standing against today’s world but we are the ones who are perfectly in alignment with the Church Historical. It is people who are harassing us (and keep in mind it was Clark who lobbed grenade at me) who are outside what the Church has confessed in all times and all places where God has been pleased to grant the Church orthodoxy.