The Nature of the Atonement … McAtee Contra Libolt (I)

Here I pick up critiquing CRC minister Dr. Clay Libolt’s thoughts on the weakness of the Biblical doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). Clay has appealed to a recent book by Andrew Remington Rillera who was trained at that paragon Institution of Orthodox Christianity — Duke Divinity School. Rillera has produced a book that insists that the atonement was not about the effect of the atonement upon God (objective view) but instead the effect of the atonement was upon the believer (subjective view).  Rillera’s book insists that the sacrificial imagery in the NT is aimed at grounding the exhortation for the audience to be conformed to the cruciform image of Jesus by sharing in his death. The consistent message throughout the entire NT is not that Jesus died instead of us, rather, Jesus dies ahead of us so that we can unite with him and be conformed to the image of his death.

Again, the impact of the cross work of Christ is on man and so the atonement is measured by the effect it has on man. This is in contrast to the teaching of the PSA which does not deny the effect the cross work of Christ has on man, but insist that the subjective impact can only make sense in light of the reconciling impact of the atonement on God toward man. In other words there is a manward impact upon the recipient but that manward impact only makes a difference because God set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. In the atonement God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them.

When we understand that differing theories of the atonement historically have fallen under three overarching categories;

1.) Theories which explain the atonement by the moral influence it has on those who will be recipients (Moral influence theories).

2.) Theories which explain the atonement as God’s eternally assigned means by which He would be reconciled to eternally loved but fallen sinners (Propitiation theories).

3.) Theories which proclaim the atonement as a cosmic victory (Christus Victor theories).

Some prefer a twofold classification of atonement theories, limiting the options to subjective theories as those which emphasize the effect on the believer, in distinction from objective theories which put the stress on what the atonement achieves quite outside the individual. Andrew Remington Rillera has given us a scholarly, erudite, but errant book that opts for option #1 with little to no consideration of the effect of the atonement Godward. This is “Christian” humanism and given Dr. Clay Libolt’s track record through the years of his ministry it is not surprising that Clay would be so enchanted by this volume from the Duke scholar and that despite the fact that such teaching goes against the Three Forms of Unity that Clay has sworn to uphold.

From here I will quote Dr. Libolt’s article that can be found here;

Harsh Justice, Introduction

Clay Libolt writes (Hereafter CL);

This theory of atonement is also “substitutionary.” Because we cannot pay the penalty, God sends God’s own son to pay it for us. Jesus steps in where we cannot. He pays the penalty on the cross.

I note here without developing the thought that this second claim of PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is a bit odd for at least two reasons. One is that the idea that someone can step in for the guilt of someone else seems strange. It’s true that occasionally a person will give up their life for someone else. I think about those who stepped in front of Nazi firing squads, allowing others to escape death. To do so was heroic. But what of the commander of the firing squad? To allow an innocent person to be executed or, rather, to require that someone die in those circumstances is on any account wrong. And in the PSA analogy, we would seem to be putting God in the place of the commander of the firing squad: someone must die; it doesn’t matter whom.

BLMc responds;

1.) I can’t explain why Clay would find this at all odd since Scripture explicitly tells us;

Rmns. 5:7 For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

I Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit,

2.) We would note that the Scripture does not teach that the Father “allowed” Jesus Christ to be a propitiatory sacrifice but rather Scripture teaches that God put forth Christ

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. — I John 4:10

3.) Clay writes that such an arrangement as the PSA would be “wrong.” We would ask, “wrong by what standard?” Clearly the death of the just for the unjust is extolled as pre-eminently right by God’s standard.

Him (Jesus Christ), being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:  Acts 2:23

Is Clay saying that God did wrong by sending forth Christ to serve as our substitutionary death.

We begin to see here that Clay is not only disagreeing with the nature of the atonement but we are seeing that Clay has embraced a very different God then the God we find in the Scriptures. This is not just merely a matter of disagreeing about the mechanics of the Cross (as magnificently important as that is). This is about the person, character and attributes of God. In the end this is competition between different understandings of Christianity. Clay wants to start with man. Christians want to start with God.

4.) Note that Clay has God being equal to a Nazi commander executing a poor innocent unjustly. Talk about loading the narrative in your favor. Does Clay really believe that orthodox Protestant Christian theology insists that God doesn’t really care who is the substitute for sinners?

According to the Heidelberg Catechism he swore to uphold the substitute for sinners can’t just any poor schlub;

Question 15: What sort of a mediator and deliverer then must we seek for?

Answer: For one who is very man,7 and perfectly righteous; and yet more powerful than all creatures; that is, one who is also very God.

Secondly on this note, when Clay writes against Penal Substitutionary Atonement he is directly contravening the Heidelberg which explicitly teaches Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

Question 12: Since then, by the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape that punishment, and be again received into favor?

Answer: God will have His justice satisfied (Penal), and therefore we must make this full satisfaction, either by ourselves or by another (Substitution).

Also here, Christ was not “some poor victim” of a Nazi Firing Squad Commander (God) who God just randomly chose to be our substitute as Clay would have it;

John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me.

Ps. 40 “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll: / I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.” (Cmp. Heb. 10)

Jesus was sent by the Father and eternally willingly embraced what the Father eternally tasked Him with. The Son was not a victim of the Father but the Father and the Son with the Spirit entered from eternity into a covenant whereby God would be glorified in the cosmic impact of the Atonement.

Finally, while Christ was innocent in His person, as our sins were imputed to Him while on the Cross, as a public person He was our sin-bearer.

CL writes,

Second, there is a matter of proportionality. This goes in two directions. First, for God to require eternal punishment for temporal sins seems entirely out of proportion. Is it just for God to require hell for the sins of a child who dies young? Or a person who lives an exemplary life apart from the faith? But it is also out of proportion in the other direction. For the sufferings of Christ, terrible as they were, to balance the suffering of the world seems, well, not entirely adequate. Perhaps this is the reason that Christians seem intent on Good Friday of focusing on how much Jesus suffered.

BLMc responds;

This paragraph leaves me nearly speechless. The fact that a minister believes this and writes this is just astonishing. Understand that Clay is arguing here that God is not just. Clay believes that God is being unfair and overbearing by making the punishment fit the crime. Note, what Clay is doing here is that Clay is summoning God to the dock and serving as the jury Foreman Clay is demanding God give an account of Himself to Clay. It is stunning. Clay, according to Clay’s own standards, has determined that God is disproportional when it comes to punishment for sin.

As to Clay’s question;

1.) Yes, it is just for God to require hell for the sins of a child who dies young. Indeed, what is incredible is that any of us, regardless of our age and comparative innocence should be given grace. Clay is surprised by God’s justice. I am surprised by God’s grace. None of us deserve anything but Hell given both our sin nature and our sinful acts. When it comes to these matters we say along with Father Abraham, “Will not the judge of all the earth do right.” Who is Clay Libolt to call God before the bar of His adjudication?

2.) Yes, it is just of God to cast someone into hell who lived an “exemplary life” without faith. We find ourselves asking first, “exemplary by what standard?” Clay is clearly grading on a curve while God grades on a straight scale. All have sinned and fallen short of what God justly requires (living to and for His glory).  Also consider, is it really possible for anyone, saved or unsaved, to live an “exemplary life” when the standard is God’s perfection? Are we really to believe that a person who has lived their whole lives with themselves as God is a person who has lived an exemplary life? Can a person who has lived all his life for his own glory be said to have lived an exemplary life?

Can you believe a Christian minister is reasoning this way?

3.) But Clay doesn’t stop there. The man actually suggests that the sufferings of Christ on the Cross do not meet and so satisfy the way the world has suffered in/during world history. In other words, for Clay, the world has suffered more than Christ could have ever suffered during His life and on the Cross. Christ’s sufferings were not enough to pay (“not entirely adequate”) for all the suffering that sin has brought in the world. Honestly, even in my most generous moments I can’t see this as anything but blasphemous.

So, for Clay, Penal Substitutionary Atonement can’t be true because Christ didn’t suffer enough in order for it to be true.

We could go on a rag here but suffice it to say that Clay does not appreciate the suffering of the sinless perfect Man and Holy God and the suffering of sinners but clearly at Clay’s age it is unlike any reasoning is going to pull him up short.

Clay is Reformed. Bret is Reformed. Both Clay and Bret served in the same denomination. Clay and Bret can’t both be Christian.

Postmillennialism vis-a-vis Amillennialism … Foundational Differences Teased Out

“It is right for you to realise, and to take as the sum of what we have already stated, and to marvel at exceedingly; namely, that since the Saviour has come among us, idolatry not only has no longer increased, but what there was is diminishing and gradually coming to an end: and not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer advance , but what there was is fading away. … And to sum the matter up: behold how the Saviour’s doctrine is everywhere increasing, while all idolatry and everything opposed to the faith of Christ is daily dwindling, and losing power, and falling. … For as, when the sun is come, darkness no longer prevails, but if any be still left anywhere it is driven away; so, now that the divine Appearing of the Word of God is come, the darkness of the idols prevails no more, and all parts of the world in every direction are illumined by His teaching.”

Athanasius, AD 296-372
Incarnation

“…the kingdom of God on earth is not confined to the mere ecclesiastical sphere, but aims at absolute universality, and extends its supreme reign over every department of human life….It follows that it is the duty of every loyal subject to endeavor to bring all human society, social and political, as well as ecclesiastical, into obedience to its law of righteousness.”

A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology: Lectures on Doctrine
(Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, [1890] 1990), 283

“It would be easy to show that at our present rate of progress the kingdoms of this world never could become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. Indeed, many in the Church are giving up the idea of it except on the occasion of the advent of Christ, which, as it chimes in with our own idleness, is likely to be a popular doctrine. I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and the idols be utterly abolished; but I expect the same power which turned the world upside down once will still continue to do it. The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was not able to convert the world.”

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

As Amill eschatology believes that the Kingdom of God is exactly identified with the Church and only with the Church it is inevitable that Amills will diminish the necessity for Christianity to conquer in every area of life outside and beyond the Church. After all, for the Amillennial types, if the Kingdom of God is not inclusive of any area outside the Church and the Kingdom is only synonymous with and for “the Church,” there is no need to conquer those other arenas / areas that for the Amillenialist are “non-Kingdom” arenas.

What I mean is this: As the Amils are always leaning towards identifying the Kingdom of God only with the Church — thus drawing a bright line demarcating between Kingdom/Church activity and non-Kingdom/Church activity — the consequence is that the “consistent with their eschatology” Amils will always chide anybody in the Christian faith who sees the Kingdom as being an arena that is expansive beyond the Church so as in include arenas as education, jurisprudence, just war theory, politics, economics, etc.

Postmils, to the contrary, believing that the Kingdom is not identified as exclusively with the Church and believe thus that the Kingdom of God extends beyond the Church and so will do just the opposite of the Amill and emphasize the necessity that the Church, being the armory of God’s Kingdom, must seek to conquer every arena of human existence. The Postmills believing this then will, unlike their Amill counterparts, address these different various issues from the pulpit. This leaves their Amill counterparts apoplectic.

The fact that this analysis is accurate is seen especially in the writings of David Van Drunen, who I believe has drawn out the most consistently the errant implications of the Amil eschatology. Van Drunen writes in his “Living in God’s Two Kingdoms”;

“God is not redeeming the cultural activities and institutions of this world, but is preserving them through the covenant he made with all living creatures through Noah in Gen. 8:20 – 9:19.”

Van Drunen continues writing;

“God is redeeming a people for himself, by virtue of the covenant made with Abraham and brought to glorious fulfillment in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has completed Adam’s original task once and for all” (p. 15). As VanDrunen explains, “redemption is not ‘creation regained’ but ‘re-creation gained’” (p. 26).

When one follows this reasoning closely one realizes that for R2K Amillennialism the intent of Biblical Christianity is to preserve culture so that individuals alone, as extracted from their cultural context, might be redeemed. Individuals are redeemed while their cultural context by definition is unredeemable. If Van Drunen were a linguist he would say that God intends to redeem the text while leaving the context to experience soul sleep. This is consistent Amillennialism and because of this Amillennial “theologians” will go spastic in condemning Postmillennialists for preaching on subject matter that in their Amillennial worldview does not particularize the need for the individual as an individual to be redeemed.

This thus creates a ever growing hostility between consistent Amills and consistent Postmills. In this hostility the Amils will forever be accusing the Postmills of diluting the Christian message since, as the Amills believe, the Postmills major on the minors and the Postmills will forever rightly accuse the Amills of being cowardly pietists who love them some retreat and who are characterized in preaching a Christianity that redeems the text (individual) while leaving the context (culture) unaffected.

This explanation also sheds light on the fact that Amillennialism Christianity and Postmillennialism Christianity create very different types of character and personalities in people. People who are decidedly Postmil are typically going to be type “A” personalities who have a thirst to conquer while people who are decidedly type “B” personalities will be content to be passive and retiring — except when attacking postmillennialists and their eschatology. Amills typically refuse to fight unless it is to fight those (postmills) who never tire of fighting for the honor of Christ.

Paul’s Admonition To Timothy On Slavery

I Tim. 6 Let as many bondservants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed. 2 And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. Teach and exhort these things.

The Fact of Slavery in Ephesus

In 1st century Rome, slavery was a deeply ingrained part of society, where slaves were considered property with virtually no legal rights, often subjected to harsh labor conditions, and could be punished severely by their masters, although some skilled slaves could enjoy better treatment and even eventually gain freedom through a process called “manumission.”.

Key points about 1st century slavery in the Roman world
Legal status:

Slaves were considered property under Roman law, meaning their owners had absolute power over them, including the ability to sell, punish, or even kill them without legal repercussions.
Sources of slaves:

Most slaves were captured during military conquests, with prisoners of war often being enslaved. Other sources included debt bondage, abandoned children, or people sold by their families.

Slavery was very important in the ancient city of Ephesus during the Roman period. Whether in the countryside or the city, slaves bore the economic burden of society. In Ephesus, as in the whole Roman Empire, slaves were acquired primarily by selling prisoners of war. The slave trade became a very large volume of trade, especially in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC. The Cilician pirates were the ones who were engaged in stealing and selling people in the broadest sense.

It has also been seen that those who could not pay their debts in the city or the countryside sold their wives and children as slaves in return for debt.

Work roles:

Slaves were employed in a wide range of jobs, including agriculture (fields, vineyards), mining, construction, domestic service, manufacturing, transportation, and even skilled professions like medicine or accounting depending on their abilities.

Treatment variations:

While many slaves experienced harsh conditions, including poor food, inadequate housing, and brutal punishments, skilled slaves could sometimes live relatively comfortable lives and even gain some autonomy.

Manumission:

Slaves could be freed by their masters through a process called manumission, which could happen through a formal legal act or informally. Freed slaves (freedmen) often maintained ties with their former masters.

Social impact:

Slavery was so prevalent in Roman society that it significantly impacted the economy and social structure, with a large portion of the population being enslaved

Slaves always paid for their master’s displeasure with punishment. The forms and methods of punishment were very different. The greatest danger to the master was that the slave thought of running away and taking revenge on his master. But the law made escape virtually impossible. Anyone who helped the slave escape or hid the slave was punished.

If the slave managed to escape and was later captured, he was often driven into the arena in front of wild animals. If the slave tried to take revenge on his master, the penalty was death with his entire family. The customary death penalty was executed by crucifixion.

The Fact of Slavery in the Bible

Slavery is regulated in the Bible and so can be Biblical. Biblical slavery is Biblical.

God gave Abraham slaves.
God gave Job slaves.

God’s 10 Commandments prohibit coveting a neighbor’s male or female bondservant.

Onesimus was owned by Philemon and Paul returned Onesimus to Philemon begging for clemency for the slave. Paul never tells Philemon that slavery is sin.

Here are just a few Scriptures on slavery besides the one we have before us this morning;

Exodus 21:16 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

Here we see that man stealing or slave trading is a crime punishable by death. However, having slaves was not punishable by death. That slave trading remained a sin in the NT is seen by Paul’s condemnation in I Tim. 1:9-10

9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless … for slave traders

That the Scripture does not teach that all slavery is sin is seen from;

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.” – Leviticus 25:44

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” – Colossians 3:22

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people.” – Ephesians 6:5-7

“Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them.” – Titus 2:9

“Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.” – 1 Peter 2:18

“Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.” – Colossians 4:1

There are at least seven passages in the Bible where God is depicted as directly permitting or endorsing slavery. Two of these are in the Law of Moses: God permitted the Israelites to take slaves from conquered peoples permanently, and the Israelites could sell themselves into slavery temporarily to pay off debts (Exod 21:2-11; Lev 25:44-46).

The other five passages are in the New Testament, where slavery as a social institution is endorsed and slaves are called to obey their masters “in everything” (Eph 6:5-9; Col 3:22-4:1; 1 Tim 6:1-2; Tit 2:9-10; 1 Pet 2:18-20).

But slavery is viewed positively in Scripture well beyond these commands. Owning slaves was seen as a sign of God’s blessing (Gen 12:16; 24:35; Isa 14:1-2), and there are literally dozens of passages in the Bible that speak of slavery in passing, without comment. Slavery was simply part of life, and most people saw it as just the way things always were, even the divinely ordained order of things.

And yes, in case there is any doubt, this was real slavery: “the slave is the owner’s property” (Exod 21:21). Both Old and New Testaments called for better treatment of slaves than many of the peoples around them, and the Law of Moses in particular called for better treatment of fellow Israelites as slaves.

These passages are all pretty straightforward. One could even say that the Bible is clear on this: the institution of slavery is permitted by God, endorsed by God, and owning slaves can even be a sign of God’s blessing. This has in fact been the Christian view through history: it’s only in the last 150-200 years that the tide of Christian opinion has shifted on slavery.

So why do Christians today believe slavery is wrong? Why don’t most Christians today believe that “slavery is permitted by God, endorsed by God, and owning slaves can even be a sign of God’s blessing,” even though the Bible is pretty clear on this?

This points to the second main reason Christians today believe slavery is wrong in spite of the clear biblical passages that permit or endorse slavery: we have developed a different hermeneutic, a different way of reading the biblical texts on slavery.

The early Christian abolitionists paved the way. Rather than emphasizing the specific Bible passages that directly approve of slavery, they looked at other biblical texts and themes that they saw as more big-picture, more transcultural and timeless: the creation of humanity in the “image of God,” the “liberation” and “redemption” themes of the Exodus, the love teachings of Jesus, and the salvation vision of Paul. That is, they set the stage for a way of reading the Bible that was not grounded in specific texts of Scripture, but in a trajectory of “Exodus to New Exodus centred on Christ,” or “Creation to New Creation centred on Christ”—a larger biblical narrative with Jesus at its heart.

And so when some “Christians” today read the slavery passages in the Bible, this is what they say;

“Sure,  the Bible says this here—but we know from Genesis 1 that all people are created in God’s image, and we know from Galatians 3 that there is no longer slave or free in Christ, and don’t forget about God redeeming Israel from slavery and Jesus’ teaching to love our neighbour as ourselves.”

In other words, we no longer take the slavery-approval passages as direct and straightforward teaching for all times and places. Rather we take these as instances of the way things were done in the past but not the way God really wants things to be. They are descriptive of what once was; they are not prescriptive of what is to be.

So, this type of reasoning goes, “the next time we hear someone talk about the ‘clear teaching of Scripture’ on women’s roles, or saying that ‘the Bible is clear’ on homosexuality, or whatever the topic might be, think about this: the Bible is at least as clear on slavery, yet thank God we no longer believe that slavery is God’s will. We’ve read the Bible, and we’re following Jesus.”

The fact that people really do dismiss Scripture like this on slavery is seen in a quote from the 19th century liberal Theologian Albert Barnes;

“There are great principles in our nature, as God has made us, which can never be set aside by any authority of a professed revelation. If a book claiming to be a revelation from God, by any fair interpretation defended slavery, or placed it on the same basis as the relation of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, such a book would not and could not be received by the mass of mankind as a Divine Revelation.”

Rev. Albert Barnes
Presbyterian Minister

As long as we will not admit that slavery was Biblical and rightly ordered by God we will never win out on the debates on perverse sexuality. Slavery is the lynch pin. If Scripture can speak so plainly on slavery and still be repudiated as sin then whatever Scripture speaks clearly on in terms of perverse sexuality can likewise easily be repudiated and is being repudiated.

In the words of Dr. Leonard Bacon, a Congregationalist from Connecticut writing in 1864,

“The evidence that there were both slaves and Masters of slaves in the Churches founded by the apostles, cannot be got rid of without resorting to methods of interpretation which will get rid of everything.”

This was made even more clearly evident by R. L. Dabney;

“Moses legalized domestic slavery for God’s chosen people, in the very act of setting them aside to holiness. (a ref to Lev 25:44-46)

Christ, the great Reformer, lived and moved amidst it, teaching, healing, applauding slaveholders; and while He assailed every abuse, uttered no word against this lawful relation.

His apostles admit slaveholders to the church, exacting no repentance nor renunciation. They leave, by inspiration, general precepts for the manner in which the duties of the relation are to be maintained. They command Christian slaves to obey and honor Christian masters. They remand the runaway to his injured owner, and recognize his property in his labor as a right which they had no power to infringe.

If slavery is in itself a sinful thing, then the Bible is a sinful book.”

If you will not embrace the perspicuity of Scripture on slavery you will not embrace perspicuity of Scripture on any other subject when it is convenient to disregard it.

The logic is thus… “We know God was wrong on slavery therefore we can come to the point where we see that God was wrong on sodomy, trannie-ism, abortion, and just about anything else. We treated the issue of slavery, as taught in the Scriptures, like a wax nose, and now we are surprised to find that other issues in Scripture are likewise being treated as if we can appeal to some higher or better insight.”

That this is happening is seen in the fact that recently 33 pastors from the Christian Reformed Church bolted the CRC to join another Church because the CRC would not allow them to treat the prohibitions against sexual perversion in Scripture as not being prohibitions. Like the abolitionists long ago, these 33 ministers have putatively found a higher and better way to read Scripture.

So, while we don’t long for a return of slavery, and we ourselves would never want to be enslaved nor enslave others, we do recognize that slavery is not automatically sin if it were to be practiced under God’s regulations.

The Fact Of Slavery As Experienced By All Peoples

Another thing we should be clear about on the subject of slavery is that slavery as well as enslaving has been the lot of every people group you can name. Nobody has the corner on the misery of slavery or of being the victims of slavery. Slavery was not only present in Ephesus but it has been present throughout world history and is still occurring today as seen in the grooming of numerous young white British girls to be sex slaves by foreign interests living in Britain. This kind of slavery is forbidden in the Scripture because if falls under “man-stealing” but it still makes the point that we have slavery today.

Proof of the ubiquitous nature of slavery in nature touching different peoples is observed by from Jordan and Walsh from their book, “White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America”

White slaves in the colonies suffered all the horrors, if not more, than the subsequent black slaves suffered, but their story is not part of the educational curriculum. Blacks and their white advocates would never stand for it because white slavery detracts from the racist image that black studies have created, an image that conveys special victim status to blacks just as the Jews have acquired by the holocaust. But the facts are, report Jordan and Walsh, that black slavery emerged out of white slavery and was based upon it. They quote the African-American writer Lerone Bennett Jr:

“When someone removes the cataracts of whiteness from our eyes, and when we look with unclouded vision on the bloody shadows of the American past, we will recognize for the first time that the Afro-American, who was so often second in freedom, was also second in slavery.”

Likewise we have Robert C. Davis, a professor of history at Ohio State University, in his book “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800″, put the number of white slave at between 1 and 1.25 million Europeans from 1500-1800

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves.

Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.

 

“As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it better,” he said.

While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally – in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.

So, the Bible talks frankly about slavery. The text this morning speaks frankly about slavery and we see that slavery is not unique to the ancient world nor to any particular people group throughout history.

Now, what Christianity did as it entered the ancient world is that it provided a new ethos for both slave and master as we see in the text this morning;

 Let as many bondservants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed. 2 And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. Teach and exhort these things.

The issue of honor ties much of what Paul has been writing to Timothy in chapter 5 and here. In chapter 5 widows who are widows are to be honored. Next Elders in the Church are to be counted worthy of double-honor. And now finally when dealing with the Master slave relationship Masters are worthy of all honor.

τιμῆς (timēs)
Noun – Genitive Feminine Singular
Strong’s 5092: A price, honor. From tino; a value, i.e. Money paid, or valuables; by analogy, esteem, or the dignity itself.

It may be the case that the Gnosticism that was present in Ephesus was of a nature as to level or flatten all relationships so that everyone is seen as being equal or the same. Paul does not desire the Christian faith to be tainted with that flavor and so he tells the slaves to do what might be a difficult at times and that is to esteem their Masters and this so God’s name might not and His doctrine may not be derided – blasphemed. This was Paul’s governing passion – that God’s name might not be seen as being anything but lofty and glorious and so he tells the Christian slaves

Q. 127. What is the honour that inferiors owe to their superiors?

A. The honour which inferiors owe to their superiors is, all due reverence in heart,658 word, 659 and behaviour;660 prayer and thanksgiving for them;661 imitation of their virtues and graces;662 willing obedience to their lawful commands and counsels;663 due submission to their corrections;664 fidelity to,665 defence,666 and maintenance of their persons and authority, according to their several ranks, and the nature of their places;667 bearing with their infirmities, and covering them in love,668 that so they may be an honour to them and to their government.669

Q. 128. What are the sins of inferiors against their superiors?

A. The sins of inferiors against their superiors are, all neglect of the duties required toward them;670 envying at,671 contempt of,672 and rebellion673 against, their persons674 and places,675 in their lawful counsels,676 commands, and corrections;677 cursing, mocking678 and all such refractory and scandalous carriage, as proves a shame and dishonour to them and their government.679

 

 

 

Joel Webbon & His Claim That Hitler Was On The Right

“Hitler was one of the few bad guys on the right.”

Joel Webbon

1.) Hitler was a National SOCIALIST. Socialism, by definition, belongs to the left since it systematically is structured by Marxism. To argue that Hitler was a man on the right would mean that Deng Xiaoping (of China) was also a man of the Right since he wanted to bring reforms into China that would give Socialism a Chinese face. However, socialism is still socialism whether it has a German face or a Chinese face and as socialism it is most definitely NOT on the right.

2.) Now, one may argue that Hitler occupied the right side of the left and that the row between Stalin and Hitler was a row between the left side of the left and the right side of the left (International Socialism vs. National Socialism) but both Stalin and Hitler remained men of the Left along with FDR and Winston Churchill, as well as Franco and Mussolini. Any movement towards a statist collectivization (and here we include Abraham Lincoln and the Black Republicans in our own history) is a movement occupied by the Left. Any movement that would find a society or culture dominated and controlled by the State is a movement from and of the Left. Any movement that collapses society or culture into the State so that they are no longer distinct is a movement of the left.

3.) Hitler’s world and life view was consistent with all the major political heads at that time. That world and life view was captured by Mussolini’s statement;

“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”

Benito Mussolini

This is the religious confession of the Left. Nobody on the right would ever agree that “in the state we live and move and have our being,” and yet Webbon would have us believe that Hitler belonged to the Right. It’s just madness for a member of the clergy to be out there saying this kind of thing publicly.

4.) Hitler’s being on the left was also put on full display by his program of AktionT4 which found the State seeking to genocide the halt, the blind, and the disabled of all categories. Now, Hitler and the Germans learned this from the Americans (see Buck vs. Bell and Oliver Wendell Holmes’ idiotic statement that “Three generations of imbeciles is enough” thus justifying his vote to forcefully sterilize a woman) but how can anyone argue with a straight face in light of AktionT4 that Hitler was a “man of the Right?”

Read the reasoning of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and realize that this was the same reasoning that Hitler and the National Socialist would eventually use and keep in mind that the Germans managed to sterilize 400,000 women before their “Law for Protection Against Genetically Defective Offspring program” was halted;

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. […] Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

— Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)

Webbon and his crew are constantly complaining (and rightfully so) that American clergy have been suckered by the court historians of WW II and yet Webbon and his crew go right on mouthing this inanity that Hitler was a man on the right. They might as well argue that Robespierre was likewise a man of the right because he realized how important religion was to a culture and because Robespierre tried to bring a religion back to the French people.

It’s all so ludicrous and uniformed. It’s just like something Doug Wilson would say.

A Quote On Kinism From The Legendary Lutheran, Walter Maier

Recently the Lutheran church, Missouri Synod, under the “leadership” of one Matthew Harrison has begun to reveal a decline that has doubtless been long in the making. As in so many denominations the Missouri Synod has been afflicted with creeping Marxism. One of the issues that has come to the fore in the denomination is some variant of Kinism. Kinists have been routed out of the denomination with the wildest controversies coming to the fore. All of this is a small part of the rise of Corey Mahler and his controversial Stone Choir podcasts.

In light of all that I thought a quote from the legendary Lutheran, Walter Maier would be of interest.  It is clear from this paragraph that the Lutheranism of Matthew Harrison (who has mixed race grandchildren) would not allow Walter Maier to be ordained in the Lutheran – Missouri Synod denomination.

After a paragraph long description of the marriage of a (white) Seattle girl to the Maharajah of Indore complete with a description of the steps she went through in order to convert to Hinduism, old Lutheran stalwart Walter Maier (1893-1950) wrote in his book “For Better, Not For Worse;

 

“Such interracial misalliances stand condemned before the forum of all clear thinking people. We agree with the verdict of Dr. Eliot, former president of Harvard;
 

‘Intermarriage between members of races that are not kindred is generally condemned by medical, sanitary, and eugenic authorities; so that the right policy in nations which include many different races is not fusion or blending or amalgamation, but a separate, parallel development of each race, acting in concord with the other races, but each preserving through many generations its own bodily and mental characteristics.

 

As evident as these principles are, however, we cannot be unmindful of recent efforts to overstep racial bounds. We believe that the Commission on Church and Racial relationships, maintained by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, has on occasion gone out of its way to encourage interracial marriages. This may be seen from statement in Information Service (published by the Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America) of November 13, 1926. Referring to the widely heralded Olivet Conference of that year, which was devoted ‘largely to the relation of Negroes and whites,’ this bulletin asserted; ‘Dr. George Haynes of the Federal Council presented the problem and illuminated with his very extensive knowledge every discussion of the week…. Nor was the question of intermarriage evaded. That was considered at length. It was felt that some pioneer spirits should take advanced steps in that direction…. After the discussion on intermarriage the group concluded that, if the individuals concerned fully realize the difficulties involved, mixed marriages may be highly desirable.’

 

In the furtherance of its own program, Communism has ardently encouraged interracial marriages; and this enthusiasm has colored the preaching and practice at some of our radical youth gatherings. For instance, an eye and ear witness at the American Youth Congress at Detroit brings this picture of the social mixing: ‘I cannot refrain from saying, simply and positively, that the most shocking thing I saw in connection with the Detroit Youth Conference was the social mixing of boy and girls of the black and white races…. While Clarence Hathaway expounded the doctrine of Communism, not three seats removed from me a white girl clung to the arm of, and openly petted with, one of the blackest sons of Africa I have ever sen. This was not an isolated circumstance.’

 

University lectures, with a flare for this new enlightenment, have based their advocacy on Negro and Caucasian marriages on the theory that the strains of negroid blood wills strengthen the white race. But these social revolutionaries will never be able to remove the insurmountable difficulties that are created by these interracial alliances. What of the children? What of the social restrictions?

This is yet another example of thousands of quotes from our Church fathers that demonstrate that Kinism was the assumed position of the Church until the civil rights revolution. Of course all of this was percolating before as the quote above demonstrates but the real rush of Matthew Harrison type thinking began in earnest somewhat after WW II.

Can it really be the case that all our fathers were wrong on this subject and that we are now reduced to having to believe the low intellects like Matthew Harrison and other ecclesiastical Alienists? Has truth changed from one generation to another?