Bruce Banner Meets The Hulk

Apologetics Into The Vacuum

Dear XXXXX

Translated — Dear (fill in name here)

It is a form letter. It is a form, “kind of, but not really apology” letter. There is probably one of these laying on the table of many many other readers around the county at this very moment.

“Thank you so much for your recent communication in which you express concern re “The Gonfalon” publishing of two controversial articles. We appreciate very much your response and receive it in the spirit of helpful and constructive reflection on the best way to conduct our conversations on such topics.”

Translated — We have to say something to the complainers that will make them think that their letters add some kind of impact so we’ll use words like “appreciate,” “helpful,” and “constructive.”

Note the Psychological tone here. Soft words. Disarming.

Note also one is never told in the whole letter, “We were wrong,” or, “Please forgive us,” or, “we are sorry for our error against you,” or, “We ask you to forgive us for promoting positions that violate our club charter and our club membership vows to defend the club charter.”

“We want to assure you that we hear you. It had been our intention, from the outset, to answer the opinions expressed in these recent articles. For example, in the September issue we have Dr. Perry Crook, a well-known NWO biologist, challenge Sellout’s assumptions re “Abiogenesis.” And my September editorial will address the issue raised by Dr. Alfred Kinsey. We have also reserved space in future issues of the magazine to publish further responses on these topics.”

Translated — We are going to make it all better by having some good works balance out our bad works. Does anyone believe that the good articles will be as strongly “traditional,” as the bad articles were strongly “Cultural Marxist?”

Note — Does anyone really believe that Hefner is going to repudiate Kinsey, root, branch and twig? We shall see. Further, I doubt Crook’s article will completely repudiate all notions of Macro Hypo Maturation that include the necessity to re-read our origins.

In the end the seed planted by these two articles that were published will remain firmly planted. The take-away, at best, will be …“You can be a evolutionist like Sellout and be a member of our club, or have the views that everyone in the club had prior to 1850, like Crook and be in the club.” Similarly, what is communicated is, “One can advocate fornication like Kinsey did in his article and be in the club, and one can be a sexual traditionalist and be in the club. All of these options are valid options. The club is big enough for every contradiction.” Hence, the Cultural Marxists win because the club charter and membership vows are seen as irrelevant.

On this paragraph we have to say also that the Editor, in our opinion, reveals that he is either incompetent or dissimulating. The reason we advance such a theory is that the Editor is telling us that in an article written in April there was a design to print a answering article in the September issue … and this without even announcing with the publication of the April article that there would be a forthcoming article to provide “balance.” If the Editor here is not dissimulating it proves he is incompetent, and if he is not incompetent it strongly suggests he is dissimulating. It stretches credulity for one to believe that the Editor is not either incompetent or dissimulating.

“Upon reflection, we realize that that’s too late and also that our selection of these articles did not help us to frame the discussion well. Although we believe such concerns may and should be raised if, as in these cases, they are being expressed widely among our club members, they should be raised (and answered) in a more constructive way that does not leave our readers wondering and concerned about the direction of the magazine.”

Translation — We got caught pushing the envelope to hard and to fast. That was not wise of us. Better to continue with our Fabian incremental approach.

Note — What discussion were they trying to frame? Were they trying to frame a discussion on whether or not our founding document is true? Were they trying to frame a discussion on the necessity to embrace modernity in all its glory? Just what discussion were they trying to frame?

How do they know these concerns are being raised among club members? Did they take a poll? Was their impression that these concerns existed from random conversations? Is their evidence for these concerns anecdotal?

Do they believe that if, for example, the desire to sleep with one’s dead Mother (Necrophilia and Incest) were a concern to some club members they therefore could write articles advocating for having sex with one’s dead Mother?

“In short, as editor I should have done better and I have learned from your response and the responses of others. Again, my sincere thanks for expressing your concerns. I pray that they will help us to serve you and our readership better in framing these conversations.”

Translation — More required groveling. “Are you satisfied yet?”

The Articles and the Editor’s response is a classic case example of how Marxist dialectics work. The Marxist keep shoving in the bayonet until they meet resistance whereupon they withdraw ever so slightly only to recoup their strength for the next bayonet charge. The Gonfalon is the hammer of the dialectic. It hammers so far and when the nail (readership) finally resists a blow, it recoups for awhile in order to marshal their strength for the next hammer blow.

Tomorrow’s Theology, way back in 1925

In this recent article,

http://www.thebanner.org/features/2013/05/tomorrow-s-theology

Edwin Walhout advocated his vision of “Tomorrow’s Theology.”

I don’t intend to completely deconstruct Walhout’s article. Mainly I just wanted to show that Walhout’s “Tomorrow Theology,” has been advocated as “Tomorrow’s Theology” for at least several decades. My point is to try to take the shine off the idea that there is anything innovative in what Walhout is advocating. In point of fact what Walhout is really offering is “Yesterday’s Theology.” The fact that anybody could see Walhout’s “Tomorrow Theology” as novel or futuristic is laughable. As far back as 1925 people were saying the same thing.

“The evolution of man from lower forms of life was in itself a new and startling fact, and one that broke upu the old theology. I and my contemporaries, however, accepted it as fact. The first and most obvious result of this acceptance was that we are compelled to regard the Biblical story of the Fall as not historic, as it had long been believed to be. We were compelled to regard that story as a primitive attempt to account for the presence of sin and evil in the world …. But now, in the light of the fact of evolution, the Fall, as a historic event, already questioned on other grounds, was excluded and denied by science.”

Charles E. Merriam
New Aspects of Politics, 3rd Edition — pp. 59-60

So 88 years after Merriam offered “Tomorrow’s Theology,” Walhout is still insisting that theology from 1925 remains “Tomorrow’s Theology.”

Of course what Rev. Walhout is giving us is just the archaic version of Modernism so aptly advocated for by men like Shailer Matthews in his various books. Like Matthews before him, Walhout’s Christianity is one where his god is the god of the process philosophers. Creation is a process and not an act. (Except possibly as an act that starts off the more important process.) Most commonly then this process philosophy god gives us a word of flux that is determined and regulated by humanistic historicism. Higher Criticism, in “Tomorrow’s Theology” legislated the meaning of Scripture for each “progressing” generation. Naturally, if the Modernist’s god is in process with his creation then so must any legislative word be in process with creation. Next, in the reasoning of “Tomorrow’s Theology,” — or is it “Yesterday’s Theology?” I get so confused on this point — one has to realize that as one has only an immanent god who is working in process with his creation, and who has no absolute legislative law word, therefore ethics are evolving as well. Joseph Fletcher’s “Situational Ethics,” comes to the fore and “right and wrong” are determined by whoever has the biggest and most advanced weaponry.

So, whether Walhout’s theology is “Tomorrow’s Theology” or “Yesterday’s Theology” it remains a Theology that reinterprets the faith once forever delivered to the saints through the anti-supernatural grid of humanistic process theology, where all is becoming (including god), where whirl is King, and where man loses his manishness at the same time as God loses His Godhood.

If you would like to see the consequences of Walhout’s “Tomorrow Theology,” — a theology where original sin is denied — the place to look is at the Soviet Gulags, the Cambodian Killing Fields, or the Cuban Psychiatric wards. If man has no original sin then we have no reason to think that man is basically sinful. If man is not basically sinful then man is either basically good, and only needs to discover his goodness, or man is neutral and needs to be socially engineered to achieve Utopian desires. Such has always been the reasoning of those promising to usher in the Kingdom of man. Of course, I say this fully conceding that Rev. Walhout finds all that 20th century ugliness abhorrent. Most people don’t have the capacity to trace out the consequences of their ideas.

So … beat the rush and reject “Tomorrow’s Theology” today.

Two Cosmologies

“I stand before you as a 40-year-old, single, celibate, and chaste yet openly gay man . . . no longer willing to be silent,” Bowman told the hushed delegates.

Saying he had been excommunicated from another church, Bowman added, “I want to thank this denomination for being affirming of somebody like me.”

Delegates gave him a standing ovation.

Journalist Report From CRC Synod 2013

“All the crosscurrents of present-day liberation struggles are subsumed in the gay struggle. The gay moment is in some ways similar to the moment that other communities have experienced in the nation’s past, but it is also something more, because sexual identity is in crisis throughout the population, and gay people—at once the most conspicuous subjects and objects of the crisis— have been forced to invent a complete cosmology to grasp it. No one says the changes will come easily. But it’s just possible that a small and despised sexual minority will change America forever.”

1993 Cover Story from “The Nation” magazine

Some observations cross correlating the two quotes.

It should be noted that the word “cosmology” in “The Nation” quote is largely synonymous with “Worldview,” and I am using it that way as well.

1.) In a Christian cosmology the main means of identifying one’s self is by the noun “Christian.” In a Christian cosmology one finds their identity in Christ. We are baptized into Christ. We are crucified with Christ. We are raised with Christ. We are even seated in the heavenlies with Christ. The Catechism reminds us that “we are not our own but belong to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.” ST. Paul even can say that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” All of this is what one expects to find in both the individual and the covenant community where a Christian cosmology is in the ascendancy. In a Christian cosmology Christians identify with Christ.

However, when sodomy comes to the fore a new cosmology has to be created in order that the chief identifying mark is not “Christian,” but rather “gay.” In a sodomite cosmology one finds their identity in their homosexuality. This is so true, that the sodomy identity even for the “sanctified Christian homosexual,” is “gay” and not “Christian.”

Now in a Christian cosmology there is understanding that all Christians struggle with what the Scripture call besetting sin and Christianity is sympathetic towards those who are constantly seeking to mortify the old man in order that the new man in Christ might be vivified. As such, in a Christian cosmology there might be those who would confess that they struggle against sin and who might even admit that they have been made a “eunuch for the Kingdom,” (Mt. 19:12) but they would not identify themselves — their persons — with their sinful inclinations. St. Paul reveals this kind of mindset in his letter to the Corinthians when he, speaking of those who have been redeemed from such sinful lifestyles,

9 Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality,

10 Nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor greedy graspers, nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and slanderers, nor extortioners and robbers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.

11 And such some of you were [once]. But you were washed clean (purified by a complete atonement for sin and made free from the guilt of sin), and you were consecrated (set apart, hallowed), and you were justified [pronounced righteous, by trusting] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the [Holy] Spirit of our God.

Note that their identity has changed. They no longer are foulmouthed revilers and slanderers or those who participate in homosexuality. They are now known simply as Christian. They once were the old man but now they are the new man.

In a Christian cosmology it is true that all the saints are sinners but it is also true that in a Christian cosmology no Christian, who is self conscious of their identity in Christ identifies themselves with that sin from which they’ve been delivered. They identify themselves with Christ because they’ve been washed.

2.) Another difference between the Christian cosmology and the sodomite cosmology, when it is played out to its fullest implication, is that in the Christian cosmology how people engage their sexuality cannot be divorced from their Christianity. In the Christian cosmology sexuality is disciplined and harnessed by the Christian faith. In the the sodomite cosmology absolute individual freedom of sexual expression is the center around which all other considerations must orbit. Note the distinction here between a Christian cosmology and a sodomite cosmology is that in the former there are sexuality prohibitions that are part and parcel of the Christian cosmology while in the sodomite cosmology, as it comes into its own, it is only sexuality prohibitions that are prohibited. In the Christian cosmology lust is sin and is to be confessed and denied. In the sodomite cosmology sexual repression is sin and is to be confessed and denied.

3.) In the historic Christian cosmology anthropology and sexuality are bound up together. Man without a helpmeet woman is incomplete (where he or she is not gifted with singleness) and man is not complete until woman is taken from him, fashioned anew, and returned to him in marital union. This historical imagery is so integral to the Christian cosmology that it is taken up in the New Testament with its testimony that the male female union relationship is a reflection of Christ’s relationship with the Church. In the Christian cosmology this male female relationship is fruitful and is to the end of glorifying God and raising faithful covenant children. Sodomy overturns all this cosmology and anthropology for a cosmology and anthropology that teaches that sexual intimacy is not unique to a male and a female and that sexual union is by definition sterile apart from technological contrivances.

4.) The cosmology of Christianity and the cosmology of sodomy are in antithesis and so are incompatible with one another. If there is an attempt to mix them together the end result will only be semantic deception. By semantic deception what is meant is that any mixing of these two antithetical cosmologies will result in the language of Christianity being retained but emptied of its historic orthodox Christian meaning in favor of meaning that is subservient to the cosmology of sodomy. The results will be a retention of Christian jargon but only as that jargon is emptied of its objective historic Christian meaning.

5.) The whole issue of sodomy is so important because it is not just about who is sleeping with whom. I really couldn’t care less about that. The whole issue of sodomy is so important because if the LGBT – sodomy agenda is to overthrow standard historic Christian cosmology then everything changes. If the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins the day it is not merely a matter of a slight alteration in our social order. No, if the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins historic Christianity is thrown off completely and with the embrace of the new sodomite cultus a new culture and social order is born that is opposed to Christ and His Kingdom.

At this point it appears that the sodomite cosmology might win in the short term. It has been steamrolling since the enlightenment in one form or another. However, in the long term it can not win because it is a cosmology of death.

John Calvin on Edwin Walhout

John Calvin.

“Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness. For certain giddy men have lately appeared, who, while they make a great display of the superiority of the Spirit, reject all reading of the Scriptures themselves, and deride the simplicity of those who only delight in what they call the dead and deadly letter. But I wish they would tell me what spirit it is whose inspiration raises them to such a sublime height that they dare despise the doctrine of Scripture as mean and childish. If they answer that it is the Spirit of Christ, their confidence is exceedingly ridiculous; since they will, I presume, admit that the apostles and other believers in the primitive Church were not illuminated by any other Spirit. None of these thereby learned to despise the word of God, but every one was imbued with greater reverence for it, as their writings most clearly testify. . . Again, I should like those people to tell me whether they have imbibed any other Spirit than that which Christ promised to his disciples. Though their madness is extreme, it will scarcely carry them the length of making this their boast. But what kind of Spirit did our Saviour promise to send? One who should not speak of himself, (John 16: 13) but suggest and instill the truths which he himself had delivered through the word. Hence the office of the Spirit promised to us, is not to form new and unheard-of revelations, or to coin a new form of doctrine, by which we may be led away from the received doctrine of the gospel, but to seal on our minds the very doctrine which the gospel recommends.”

CRC Defeats Belhar As Confessional Document … Creates Remote Parking Area For Almost Confession

On the evening of 12 June, 2012 the CRC synod defeated the attempt by progressives within the denomination to foster upon the Denomination the Belhar Confession. The news agency of the CRC sought to spin the defeat of the Belhar by offering the headline, “Belhar Yes, Confession No.”

In what looks like a move that assuages the progressive conscience the denomination created a “Ecumenical Faith Declaration” category as a remote parking lot and pulled the Belhar into a parking space where it can be safely ignored and yet can be taken out for a short drive when necessary. Placing the Belhar in the remote parking area allows the denomination to say, “see, we allow all kinds of vehicles to park in our stadium.”