RE: The Problem With Westminster’s Two Kingdoms

59 Responses to “RE: The Problem With Westminster’s Two Kingdoms”

1. S.K.

   May 25th, 2007 at 8:47 am

   The illusion of a Christian nation is due doubtless to the power which number exercises over the imagination. Even if there were something true in this talk about Christian peoples and states yet it is certain that at this point a monstrous criminal offense has been perpetrated , yea, everything this world has hitherto seen in the way of criminal affairs is a mere bagatelle in comparison with this crime, which has been carried on from generation to generation through long ages, eluding human justice, but has not yet got beyond the arm of divine justice.

   Why do you seek further beatings? Why do you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint! From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds.

2. Andrew Matthews

   May 25th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

   Ah! a prophet in our midst. But are you a true prophet?

   “For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ…

   “Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

   “They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

   “These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit.”

3. D Hart

   May 27th, 2007 at 8:34 am

   Mr. Matthews writes: “Since the Church is not exhausted by its ecclesiastical institutions but ecompasses families (and by extension–nations), I see no necessity in preferring the ‘Pilgrim’ metaphor to the ‘Crusader’ metaphor.” If a fairly important point I’ve made can be so readily dismissed, I am hard pressed to know what will get through to Mr. Matthews. In fact, his last two posts seem to render the previous three-week (?) discussion of A Secular Faith pointless.

   But I will try to answer one of his questions: he asks that I provide an alternative account than the one he has rendered. Let’s be clear about the account Mr. Matthews has offered.

   From the previous post he writes:
   “the Westminster Two Kingdom (W2K) School is guilty of attempting to combine temporal and moral categories in such a way as to engender fuzzy conceptual thought.”

   He also writes: “The purpose for which W2K combines ethical and temporal-eschatological categories is not merely to steer theological discourse away from metaphysical speculation. It actually serves to surreptitiously introduce a contrary metaphysic, one that not only divorces being from goodness but positively attributes evil to being. Of course, this is the essential principle of gnosticism.”

   Wow, that’s a mouthful. But I’m not sure it has added clarity to the conversation since the asserstions are so wide and sweeping, adding moral culpability for good measure, as to express their own kind of fuzziness.

   So let me try to be clear (though not very philosophical — if debaters win points here for appealing to ontology, then I guess I lose). My point (I don’t presume to speak for either Westminster, though I learned a lot from Machen) is that all is not lost if America loses faith. Some would argue (Covenanters used to) that at its founding America was more Enlightened than Christian, more beholden to Locke than to Rutherford. American Protestants tried to overcome that by instituting an unofficial Protestant establishment. That lasted about 150 years, and then the politics of identity overwhelmed the liberal-Protestant political order. But — and this is the aim of my book — from an older Christian point of view, all is not lost. God’s purposes remain, the church abides, and Christians must persevere. What is more, by trying to give a spiritual purpose to their social order, Christians may have undone their own efforts to sustain Christendom in the U.S. The reason is that you can’t have republicanism, a separation of powers, and the First Amendment and anything we would meaningfully call Christendom.

   Is the church today any worse off than at the time when Paul was telling Christians to be subject to the authorities God had ordained? This question isn’t about the health of the church. It’s about the freedom of Christians to worship and serve God as they seek. The fairly obvious answer is that Christians enjoy far more freedoms and benefits than the early Christians did. So why do critics of W2K complain so much?

   Yes, liberalism has its problems, as did Nero’s government. Do I like cell phones, air travel, or bans on smoking? Of course not. Even worse, do I think abortion is a terrible evil that even pragmatically makes no sense given the bloated budget lines sustaining middle-class entitlements? Yes, emphatically. But despite all of modern liberalism’s woes, I am hard-pressed to understand how the current state of affairs restricts the ministry of word and sacrement, the discipline of the church, the catechizing of covenant children, or the administration of diaconal assistance, the things that Scripture calls Christians to do while waiting for the return of their Lord.

   Conversely, I have a hard time understanding how Mr. Matthews’ position would not end in closing down every Roman Catholic parish in America and prohibiting Mitt Romney from running for any office in the U.S. It is an obvious rhetorical strategy to tar and feather me with moral relativism and woeful theology, not to mention unthinking metaphysics. But what is so great about Christendom? Doesn’t it also have a few problems? And couldn’t one argue that the U.S. is one way of trying to correct those defects that first played out in Great Britain between the King’s Confession and the establishment of the Kirk? In other words, isn’t America the land of British dissenting Protestants trying to figure out a way of legalizing religious freedom and liberty of conscience who then finally realize they have Roman Catholics, Mormons and Jews in their midst?

   So I may have too much tolerance for false religion (not in the church, mind you, but that may be a distinction prompting greater confusion among the philosophers). But I see no way for Mr. Matthews to institute Christendom without the magistrate enforcing the first table of the Decalogue. (By the way, I wonder what Mr. Matthews’ ideal magistrate would do with Protestants who don’t baptize babies.)

   While I’m at it, despite Mr. Matthews’ philosophical riff, I see little difference between his position and that of Tim LaHaye or James Dobson. Why on earth a Presbyterian would share the same politics as a dispensationalist or a Nazarene I am not sure (though I have my non-philosophical hunches). I suggest a better path for Mr. Matthews would be to reinstitute Christedom where the original Covenanters wanted it — in Scotland. The King is still on record as having made a promise to uphold the true faith. Maybe if Scotland got it right, it could topple Washington, D.C. the way America unseated the regime in Baghdad.

4. W.H. Chellis

   May 28th, 2007 at 8:03 am

   This is an interesting discussion. I like what Mr. Matthews is saying. I also like what Dr. Hart is saying. Call mine fuzzy thinking? Or, maybe, Mr. Matthews and Dr. Hart are talking past each other.

   I wonder if they are understanding the phrase “Westminster Two Kingdoms” in the same way? Maybe I am the one who understands it in an odd way. Here are the possibilities:

   1) The position of Andrew Melville, the Scottish Covenanters, and the original Westminster Confession of Faith (a position I heartily endorse) but which runs contrary to the classical Anglican position of Hooker, Burke, and T.S. Eliot in which church and state are part of one Kingdom… England;

   2) The position of Westinster Seminary, Philadelphia which would include the Hodges (A.A. Hodge was particilarly influenced the RPCNA position) and John Murray who was a Crown and Covenant type of Scotsman. Although Westminster adheared to the American revision, I am not sure there is anything distinctive about their Two Kingdom theory and doubt this is what Mr. Matthews has in mind. Dr. Hart seems to be hearing this from Matthews and he points back to Machen. I think this is where the confusion is found.

   3) The position of Westminster Seminary, California where the Two Kingdom theory is thoughtfully but distinctively defended. This is the position of Hart’s Secular Faith, Michael Horton’s various works on the topic. I think this is what Matthews is being critical of when he speaks of W2K. Maybe it should be WW2K. It is here that the dialogue needs to take place (and I think has been on this blog).

5. Caleb Stegall

   May 28th, 2007 at 8:09 am

   Bill, with due respect and advance appologies for my contrariness, I think the dialogue you urge (in point #3) is a complete red herring and waste of time. See my most recent post.

6. W.H. Chellis

   May 28th, 2007 at 9:38 am

   Caleb,

   I was not urging a discussion but describing one already taking place. I disagree that point number 3 is either a red herring or a waste of time. Clearly, the position described by Darryl’s book and defended by Scott Clark and Michael Horton is a revision of the 2K doctrine described in point 1 and 2. Revision is ok but it needs to be discussed and understood for what it is… which, it seems to me, is precisely what our discussion has been about.

   Now, indeed, the discussion you have suggested in your latest post should be discussed at length but who will have the answers?

7. Caleb Stegall

   May 28th, 2007 at 10:11 am

   Bill, fair enough. And I do think your three points are helpful in delineating the contours of that discussion. But my point stands. The discussion may be of esoteric interest to professional academics and theologians, but as prudential politics (phronesis)–the work of society’s “wise men” (spoudaios)–it avails little.

8. Phil

   May 28th, 2007 at 11:58 am

   Concerning Jim Dobson and Focus on the Family: take care before you broadbrush all this as coming out of the Church of the Nazarene. A friend and I were interested to hear that Focus was promoting a worldview project; it looked mildly interesting, and we thought we should know what they were attempting to accomplish. So we registered and attended a nearby conference. Knowing that Dobson was a Nazarene, we wondered, “Can anything good come out of this?”

   Were we ever wrong. While at first we thought this would be another soft evangelical presentation, we repeatedly heard uncited references to Schaeffer and Van Til. Over and over ideas were promoted that don’t exist except in a Reformed context. But because evangelicalism is so untheological, the audience was able to rejoice with the biblical arguments.

   Only afterward did we find out that the presenter was a PCA elder and that he is an adjunct at a conservative Reformed seminary near Focus. But by that time, we weren’t surprised.

   So take care about labeling evangelicals such as Dobson as a Nazarene. It’s true, but it’s very misleading.

9. stevez

   May 29th, 2007 at 11:15 am

   “So take care about labeling evangelicals such as Dobson as a Nazarene. It’s true, but it’s very misleading.” now that is a curious statement: ‘true but misleading.’

   i believe calvin said that scripture is not, in point of fact, a waxen nose and cannot be made to say whatever man wants, despite his best efforts to the contrary. in the same way, i am at a loss as to how a truly reformed (which i mean to be synonymous with “biblical”–i am usually loathe to use such an overly and poorly used power-phrase but here i will) POV can work to prop up the stuff of the religious right (or left, as the case may be)…no matter how hard one works to makes references to some of her stalwarts. i know intimately some biblicist-fundy-revivalist preacher folk who want, for some odd reason that just baffles me, to be considered calvinists. but when they say of grace, for example, “give them an inch and they’lll take a mile,” or *behave* in worship like revivalists (i.e. altar calls and narrow brands of moralism, AKA “hellfire and brimstone”), one wonders just what it is they think of when they self-ID as calvinists.

   in the same way, what does a “PCA elder and…adjunct at a conservative Reformed seminary” think he’s doing when, at the end of the day, he is championing yet another social gospel? for all his presumed dot-to-dotting, does he know realize the gospel shares no seat with the traditions of men, that God is a jealous God and will not share His glory? how can a “conservative presbyterian” really be one who champions a mere “worldview” any more than a revivalist be considered a calvinist? sure seems like there are plenty of rows available on top decks with so many boats getting missed.

   and to the post proper…it is all i can do to remember i am a presbyterian and desire to see all things done in a good and decent order and so just hold my tongue. so i will just ask a question or two (the spirit of which i think hart has suggested): if you write the rules this way, say again what the problem with liberalism is? that is, if you allow for the assumptions which subsume beneath this post, are not things like liberalism and the religious right simply applying the rules as they see fit? i may be wrong, but i think matthews has lamented phenomenon like theonomy or transformationism (maybe that was another poster here…rusty perhaps?)…but what’s so wrong with such stuff if the lines are so blurred? if there is “no necessity in preferring the “Pilgrim” metaphor to the “Crusader” metaphor,” (i hate using the following term as much as the next conservative…but a suggestion i simply find *offensive*), what keeps such stuff at bay exactly? are not such things only turning up the volume of bad music to begin with?

   i hear transformationists here in GR lament the religious right all the time. but i don’t get it. if “kingdom work” is broadened to mean “claiming every square inch” what is the problem with jerry falwell and james dobson? they are only playing by the rules transformationists and theonomists write: that the church and world are not in fact at odds but are to be seen as one. my hunch is that some do not like the way others *apply* those rules (or the manner in which the apply them). but in the immortal words of holly hunter, “…that’s no answer…that ain’t no answer.” if i forbid my daughter to listen to certain music, it makes no difference how softly she does or if she dons headphones!

   zrim

10. D Hart

    May 29th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    Exactly, Steve. Fundamentalists used to be chided for being apolitical. Now they’re damned for being political. So I guess the point is to be politically active the way fundamentalists’ critics are.

11. Andrew Matthews

    May 29th, 2007 at 8:21 pm

    “i hear transformationists here in GR lament the religious right all the time. but i don’t get it. if “kingdom work” is broadened to mean “claiming every square inch” what is the problem with jerry falwell and james dobson? they are only playing by the rules transformationists and theonomists write: that the church and world are not in fact at odds but are to be seen as one.”

    This is an example of the confusion I speak of. The political “world” is not the same as the the “world” that is characterized by “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn. 2:16). What are at odds, dear sir, are the spiritual realms of light and darkness, not the realm of cultural activity as such.

12. TimBloedow

    May 29th, 2007 at 11:06 pm

    In an earlier post here, Darryl said: “Is the church today any worse off than at the time when Paul was telling Christians to be subject to the authorities God had ordained? This question isn’t about the health of the church. It’s about the freedom of Christians to worship and serve God as they seek. … But despite all of modern liberalism’s woes, I am hard-pressed to understand how the current state of affairs restricts the ministry of word and sacrement, the discipline of the church, the catechizing of covenant children, or the administration of diaconal assistance, the things that Scripture calls Christians to do while waiting for the return of their Lord.”

    The addition of “sexual orientiation” to hate crime law in Canada, a comparable measure that is being advanced now in the US, and which Janet Folger is admirably fighting, bans the public criticism of homosexuality. That embodies calling homosexuality “sin.” In effect, it bans the preaching of the Gospel to homosexuals. Whether the State, today, chooses to enforce the law is another matter, but that is the state of the law in Canada, and possibly soon in the US as well.

    The Bible knows nothing of a false distinction between public and private morality, personal piety and the broader comprehensive claims of Christ over all of (public) life. It is impossible (except perhaps in theoretical modelling that philosophers like to entertain) to seperate out one from the other. The Church’s message is the Gospel, but justification (which the Gospel is often reduced to) is only the beginning of the journey. The Bible is at least as interested in discipleship as it is in initial conversion and discipleship is all about living out God’s truth and ethics in whatever sphere of influence and vocation God has placed you. Unless you are a dispensationalist, you expect a growing # of Christians acting Christianly to impact (i.e. change) their culture. = the development of, or progress towards, Christendom. There’s no moral neutrality, so if someone isn’t advancing Christendom, they are necessarily advancing the Kingdom of darkness. One can clearly debate many details, but I can’t see how any Reformed notion of Christianity can exclude Christendom. It’s not even a matter of whether one agrees with it or not. Christendom would be realised as the outworking of discipleship. If you don’t believe in Christendom, then, by extension, you don’t believe in discipleship - or perhaps you believe in the perpetual frustration and futility of attempts at discipleship, similar to what must be the case for dispensationalists who get involved in political activism while they’re waiting for the rapture.

    Public and private morality are interconnected, and the Church’s message to the world, and engagement with the world, is much larger than simply pursuing converts, and demands engagement, and even confrontation, with the civil magistrate whose laws can manifestly impede the more broadly accepted work of the Church of preaching the Gospel, as is the case already today, at least in Canada. Meanwhile, perhaps even upwards of 98% of clergy, including Presbyterian and Reformed, in both countries can’t hear God’s warning over the sound of their own snoring, so they never utter any public statements outside their own walls, don’t attempt to even meet with the civil magistrates personally (not that such a move would be sufficient), or issue public rebukes, etc. For RPers, this is a humiliating abandonment of our own legacy. I was just reading Bill Edgar’s history of the RP church at his church website, and noted that “By that time the only remaining Covenanter minister left was the aged Donald Cargill. He publicly excommunicated the king and his brother at Torwood before being captured in 1681.” Oh for the days for a more robust “conversation” between church elders and civil magistrates in our countries.

    Not long ago, someone sent me this distributed by fearless Anglican missionary Peter Hammond in South Africa:

    IMPRECATORY PRAYER PROCLAMATION HANDED to ANC GOVERNMENT of SOUTH AFRICA

    Mrs. Cheryllyn Dudley, MP and Spokesperson for the African Christian Democratic Party on Health, today handed signed copies of the Imprecatory Prayer Proclamation on the Sanctity of Life to the Director General of Health, Dr. Mseleku.

    The Director General received the Proclamation on behalf of the Minister of Health who is presently recovering from illness.

    The Imprecatory Prayer proclaims a warning of the judgment of God against the government of South Africa if they fail to speak out and take action against the abortion holocaust that has been raging in South Africa, with over 600, 000 pre-born babies killed in the last 10 years.

    The Proclamation was signed by 80 Christian leaders and concerned members of the public who participated in the funeral procession memorial service and Parliamentary Prayer Vigil (organised by the Christian Action Network), on 1 February 2007, the 10th commemoration of legalisation of abortion-on-demand.

    Taryn Hodgson
    National Co-ordinator
    Africa Christian Action
    PO Box 23632
    Claremont 7735
    Tel: (021) 689 4481
    Fax: (021) 685 5884
    E-mail: info@christianaction.org.za
    Website: http://www.christianaction.org

    ——–

    http://www.christianaction.org.za/articles/Imprecatory%20Prayer%20Proclamation.htm

    IMPRECATORY PRAYER PROCLAMATION ON THE SANCTITY OF LIFE
    Whereas: the first of February 2007 marks the tenth commemoration of the legalisation of abortion-on-demand in South Africa; and in the light of the tragic fact that over 600,000 babies have been killed in South Africa during the last 10 years - through abortion - legally. And whereas the South African government received numerous and detailed expert testimonies concerning the irrefutable and indisputable scientific facts that life begins at conception and abortion is the violent taking of a human life. And whereas the South African government chose to ignore the biological facts of when life begins and the ethical implications of the right to life, and the clear opposition of a majority of South African citizens by legalising abortion on demand on 1 February 1997. And whereas the government had dismissed legal challenges in court - not even allowing the case challenging the constitutionality of the Termination of Pregnancy Act to come to trial and repeatedly ignored communications and protests concerning the abortion holocaust in South Africa.

    Whereas: the providential history of mankind is covenantal in nature, comprised of Divine blessings for obedience to the Word of God, and negative sanctions for transgression of the Law of God, and in consideration of the historic precedent of public prayer proclamations by the Protestant Reformers in the 16th Century regarding the unlawful actions of civil magistrates and associates, many pro-life Christians in South Africa have, during Sanctity Life Sunday 28th January 2007 conducted concerted and public prayer for the government of South Africa using the Davidic imprecatory Psalms of the Bible as our form and pattern. This proclamation serves as a clerical warrant.

    Resolved: to the end that the President of South Africa fulfils his duties as the covenantal head of this nation along Biblical lines, we as Christ’s ministers pray and proclaim blessing. That is, if the President executes his duties in a fashion that would not be tyranny to good works, upholding the abiding validity of God’s moral Law as delineated in the Ten Commandments, we pray that blessing, honour and good success would be upon him and his government.

    Resolved: in that the government of South Africa has thus far sought the legalisation of abominations condemned in the infallible Law of God, especially the exploitative pornography industry and tax-funded state-sanctioned murder in the form of abortion, we as Christ’s ministers proclaim negative sanctions. That is, as the President continues to hold in disdain the immutable Law of God by the ratification of evil and by such legislation holds our lives as citizens of the Republic in bondage to idolatry, we call upon the President and all members of the government of South Africa to repent and cease from this injustice towards those exploited by pornography and the innocents murdered by abortion. If the government does not reverse its destructive policies in promoting abortion, pornography, homosexual “marriages” and inter-faith idolatry, we pray that their days in office will be few, and that others will take their office.

    May God’s Will be done. Amen.

    For more information and resources contact:
    AFRICA CHRISTIAN ACTION
    PO Box 36129, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
    Tel: (+27 21) 689-4481 Fax: (+27 21) 685-5884
    E-mail: info@christianaction.org.za

13. Phil

    May 30th, 2007 at 7:31 am

    zrim wrote about the man from Focus and wonders what he “think(s) he’s doing when, at the end of the day, he is championing yet another social gospel?”

    If by “social gospel” you mean the tripe that divorces “social” from “gospel” and prefers the former, you have grossly misunderstood what I wrote or what he’s doing.

    It’s simply a matter of loving God with all one’s heart and mind, soul, and strength, and then demonstrating that love by talking about God’s Word with his kids in every aspect of life; what must be the content of some of those conversations? Then shortly after Moses told the OT Church to do this, God just about repeated himself by telling Joshua to meditate on the Torah day and night–for what purpose? Cultic activity? No–for a grimy, stinky, bloody military campaign. So what do you think Joshua was thinking about? Preaching and the sacraments or the OT equivalents? While the cult has a God-honored place, the secular is six days a week.

    This is not about fundamentalists pre- or post-1980. It’s about loving God with everything that we have wherever he puts us. I don’t know how W2K guys can do this; I say this with appreciation for the many good things they have done.

    I can’t help but think that the W2K folks have a highly truncated view of Christ’s kingship: the Bible is clear that (1) Christ has received all authority everywhere, undergirding evangelism, (2) Christ is “lord of all,” not simply the cult, and not creation as Creator, but as Messiah, (3) He has received power over all flesh so that we each would be saved, etc. It’s Messianic power that we see around us today, penultimate to be sure, but everywhere and in everything, not simply as Creator but as Messiah. It’s clearly penultimate because I can still see my own sin nature–Christ isn’t finished with me, but my salvation depends on His Messianic power over all flesh today.

14. stevez

    May 30th, 2007 at 9:16 am

    phil,

    having spent enough times in circles that lap up dobsonianism, i respectfully disagree that i have misunderstood much at all. yes, that is what i mean by social gospel. and i quite disagree that dobsonianism, or anything that helps prop as much up, does not do any such divorcing and emphasizing: their more pietistic history of emphasizing the gospel does not win them any points by some sort of default either.

    yes, i teach my covenant children that God is the Lord over all of life (both cult and culture). i like to think i am a good calvinist; i have no argument there whatsoever. i try to engender to them that they have a high calling to both His Church and world, that they are not one iota exempt from either. but it seems to me that confessing His lordship over all of life is just very different from claiming every square inch; i think these are two very different things altogether. granted, i make no friends around here when i say things like, “public schools ought to be thoroughly secularized and christian kids ought to be in them.” i also don’t influence people when i say that “while there is such a thing as a christian life to be led, christianity is most certainly not a way of life.” i think horton said it pretty well recently when he remarked that when we think that it is all we do is “help pagans be better pagans and increase their sin.” or something like that.

    a highly truncated view of Christ’s kingship? yeow. well, i suppose paul is good comapny to keep.

    zrim

15. D Hart

    May 30th, 2007 at 10:27 am

    I am aware of Tim’s point about various legislative efforts to condemn Christian teaching on various sins as hateful. This could be and to some extent is the result of the anti-thesis that exists betweens the church and the world. But I wonder how many Calvinists actually consider that this may also be the result of people perceiving Christianity as a threat to the political order — as in trying to impose their views politically and legislatively on others through the auspices of the Religious Right. I know of few efforts to shut down Orthodox Jews for teaching against homosexuality. And if Christians were perceived more as pilgrims than as crusaders, I think they’d actually get the sympathy-for-victim vote that most minority groups do. (Mind you, I know this sounds pragmatic and I am not advocating pragmatic means to replace the God-ordained ones. I am simply wondering if Christian Republicans know how they are perceived and if that is part of the reason for hate crime legislation.)

    Phil may think zrim and I have an under-realized understanding of Christ’s kingship. But has Phil considered that his may border on either the messianic hopes the escorted Christ on Palm Sunday or that Paul later condemned as the Corinthians theology of glory. Aliens and exiles means a theology of the cross. Somehow God actually wins when it looks like he is being defeated. Why would it be any different for the church?

16. stevez

    May 30th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    andrew matthews,

    “This is an example of the confusion I speak of. The political “world” is not the same as the the “world” that is characterized by “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn. 2:16). What are at odds, dear sir, are the spiritual realms of light and darkness, not the realm of cultural activity as such.”

    if it’s not the categories of cult and culture that are at odds but rather “the spiritual realms of light and darkness,” then i don my the unbeliever cap of my rearing (remember, calvin himself said we all go to our deaths with an unbeliever still resident within us), my question then becomes what need have we of the church?

    bear with me, but your “light and darkness” phraeseology is what sticks in my wheels. i hear more pagan-like categories of good and evil subsuming beneath, categories all have access to in their natural creation. i see images of co-equal deities, both good an devil, battling it out for the souls of men. who knows who will win? i sure hope it’s the good one.

    don’t get me wrong. like darryl always points out, we “confessional liturgicals” are surely not pietists or fundamentalists; we do zig where they zag as they demonize the created order. we are world-affirming, not world-denying. i find that an important dimension when i get chest-thumped in my own local transformationist communion, accused of being a “dispensationalist” who doesn’t appreciate all that christendom has graciously lavished upon us. i have spent enough time PREF circles to know they have none of my sympathies. in fact, to many of my old PREF family and friends i am a “worldly and carnal christian” whoo has crossed over to the dark side and actually embraced what God has said when He pronounced the world good.

    but, again, what need have we of the church if we can mine all the goodies of “light and darkness, good and evil” in the culture? that’s easy, that’s natural, that’s the CoW into which we are all born. the gospel is that which is not natural and that which only the church (cult) can provide. believe it or not, plenty of pagans think abortion is bad and homosexuals shouldn’t marry. there is absolutely nothing “christian” about any of those “worldviews.” i will even up the ante here, and, speaking as one completely persuaded that such examples are in fact wrong, it could be that my conservative conclusions culturally are wrong. maybe it is better for the republic to allow these things. i think not. but my larger point here is simply that if pagans can come up with cultural conclusions we can, then something still has to demarcate us, yes? and that something is the gospel.

    the fulcrum lies not in this age but between the two ages. some may be inclined to call such thinking dangerous (from my experience, it get it all the time). that sits well with me as the gospel has always been charged with being dangerous. i like when romanists, theonomists, transformataionists and evangelicals say what i try and champion will only cause moral relativism and chaos; it means the gospel is roiling around yet again.

    zrim

17. stevez

    May 30th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    …oh, add liberals to that list of slings and arrows. they hate it when i suggest the bible is no more a blueprint for ethics than handbook for living. oh, the names i have been called have been positively…huh?…sub-christian. imagine that.

    zrim

18. stevez

    May 30th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    “If you don’t believe in Christendom, then, by extension, you don’t believe in discipleship.”

    then why do i relentlessly catechize my children 6 days a week and insist on weekly sabbath worship/rest? does someone who doesn’t believe in discipleship really do these things?

    i loathe all forms of activism, in both cult and culture. i consider activism a height of self-righteousness and obnoxiousness.

    zrim

19. TimBloedow

    May 30th, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    Darryl,

    People may perceive Christianity imperialistically due to certain
    activities at the periphery of our overall witness to the world, but
    that is mostly due to their own biased framework for analysing what they
    observe. Both absolutely, and relatively when compared with other
    worldviews, Christianity’s contribution has been far better than worse
    to society and societies - in terms of humanitarian aid of all sorts as
    well as the promotion of genuine equality (equality before the law),
    liberty and justice. We’re not perfect, and if heathens choose to focus
    on our failures in order to avoid taking responsibility for their own -
    or due to whatever motivation they may have - then there’s only so much
    we can and should do about it. Ultimately we’re in a spiritual war and
    people’s opposition to Christians reflects their hatred of God. the
    Orthodox Jews don’t represent God, but Christians do, that is why you
    see the irrationality of Humanist activists targeting Christians and
    generally not Jews - and of course this scenario is repeated many times
    over with various issues. Christians are particularly targeted because
    the battle is ultimately against God by those who hate Him. Not a
    complicated assessment. Furthermore, Secular Humanism is imperialistic
    and tyrannical by nature, and Christianity particularly advocates the
    kind of particular ethics as well as the decentralised principles of
    civil governance that keep tyranny at bay, so Secular Humanists
    naturally hate Christians and Christianity at this level too. The chief
    gods of the Humanists are the state and sex and Christian ethics stand
    square in the face of the unbridled worship of sex by this leading force
    in America’s and Canada’s culture war, so they have to direct their
    attention against Christianity. These are just 3 aspects of probably
    many more that can be brought to bear on this question to demonstrate
    why Christians and Christianity are the particular targets of God’s
    enemies today, without resorting to navel-gazing and self-flaggelation
    over real or imagined failings on our part that some might want to
    attribute excessive weight to in order to allow Secularists off the hook
    for their ruthless brutality, much of which extends beyond Christians in
    their wholesale assault on the weak and vulnerable (i.e. the unborn by
    way of abortion; women and children by their soft-peddling - at least in
    Canada - regarding enforcement against pedophiles, polygamists and
    sexual trafficking, the drug-addicted, by supporting clean needle
    exchange programs, and the like, etc., etc.).

    This outcome of the culture wars has serious ramifications well beyond
    the liefstyle comforts of middle-class Christians, and Christians, as
    imperfect as we are, have far and away the best track record at helping
    the needy and vulnerable. For an idea of what Secular Humanism or
    atheism in power looks like, all we need to do is remember the 10s of
    millions exterminated in Communist China and Communist USSR. Or look at
    Cambodia’s Killing Fields or North Korea today. Christians, serious
    about their comprehensive duty in this world don’t have much time to
    waste navel-gazing in perpetual reflection on how we are perceived. Too
    often I suspect that kind of supposedly humble and contrite
    contemplation becomes simply an excuse for inaction.

20. TimBloedow

    May 30th, 2007 at 6:01 pm

    If you catechise your children without any interest or expectation for Christendom, i.e. explicitly Christian public living, then I can’t imagine it being of any real value - more a mechanistic process done out of sheer obligation. At any rate, you’re establishing a false dichotomy with the implication that our only two options are quite, private religion or activism. As I said in my earlier post, the realisation of Christendom comes when every Christian acts like a Christian in the way they do whatever work God has called them to do. For one of numerous Biblical illustrations, John the Baptist illustrated to a soldier what righteousness would look like in his particular vocation. He did the same for a tax collector.

21. TimBloedow

    May 30th, 2007 at 6:34 pm

    By the way, stevez, what’s wrong with helping pagans be better pagans and increase their sin? (your paraphrase of Horton that you drew on to critize something related to criticism of public schools?

    It’s God who saves or damns anyway, so as long as we are faithful in articulating salvation and Christian morality, then it’s between them and God how they interact with the message. Horton sounds like a (closet?) Arminian. I was reading an article by Horton on the theology of preaching a month or so ago and I almost put my fist through the computer trying to grab it an rip it up. OK, so I’m a little passionate! What can I say…

22. D Hart

    May 31st, 2007 at 5:59 am

    Tim, don’t secular humanists also get credit for founding the U.S.? Isn’t liberal democracy better than totalitarianism? But American Protestants have a real hard time admitting the truth about their nation’s founding. So they white wash it with a Christian covering. And then while taking Christian credit for America, secular humanists become touchy and think Christians are trying to impose their faith on a secular nation. Sometimes perceptions have a lot to do with reality.

23. stevez

    May 31st, 2007 at 8:17 am

    tim,

    ever war has winners and losers. what do you do when, after the so-called culture wars, you have lost? augustine warned about “pinning all our hopes on the republic.” what happens when the culture with which you identify collapses? where will you go? where is your hope, in God’s institution or man’s?

    the discipling method called catechism has resident within in it this notion of christian living…you can’t get away from being covenant keeping categories in catechism (whoa, how’s that for alliteration?). i have an interest in abiding by the laws God has given to His covenant people. how that translates into certain cultural policies that are arguable, i do not know.

    to this confessionalist that dichotomy makes perfect sense. but, then again, it seems at the heart of this disagreement, so perhaps anything more i say will be both repetitive and met with predictable protestations (i am on an alliterative roll here it seems, sorry).

    christendom comes when the gospel isn’t grasped. it comes when christians tell jesus to move over a slight bit in His throne to make way for the traditions of men. the problems seems to be cumulative: He keeps getting told to move until one day you wake up and He is sitting in the back row.

    the problem with increasing pagans’ sin is that it violates our call to genuine evangelism, tim, to say nothing of taking God’s name in vain. social gospels do both.

    “It’s God who saves or damns anyway, so as long as we are faithful in articulating salvation and Christian morality, then it’s between them and God how they interact with the message.”

    agreed that God alone saves His people. but the spirit of your statement here seems quite callous and cavalier. i would agree with it, however, insofar as it may help to work against revivalist assumptions of evangelism which work feverishly to place power in the hands of sinners to save themselves. however i think an honest read of your statement here actually works against genuine evangelism, given the context of your apparent idea that the gospel can be found in particular worldviews. (BTW, preaching the gospel to homosexuals is the same as it is preached to hetero’s; telling them their sexuality is wrong is NOT preaching thhe gospel, contra your sentiments above–it’s an accidental aspect of the substance of the gospel. i have a close relative who is gay and was reared in a fundy-theonimist-transformationist environ, and this is one of the principle mistakes they make in preaching the gospel to him: get straight. the problem is that plenty of straights go to hell. when one begins to unpack the arguments from your side of the table one sees just how tabgled up the gospel really is…it’s like that ball of christimas lights in the basement. it looks like someone took care to assemble them, but it takes 84 hours to untabgle it all.)

    horton as an ariminian…huh. well, careful what you say about my boy; horton is the patron saint of my own reformed conversion lo those many years ago out of explicitly arminian camps. i am not familiar with his “theology of preaching” you cite, but to mistake horton for an arminian seems quite odd, to say the least. i get confused by many things in our world, but horton as arminian seems to be quite a mis-read.

    zrim

24. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 8:39 am

    Steve, you ought to acquaint yourself with the shift button on your keyboard.

25. W.H. Chellis

    May 31st, 2007 at 8:39 am

    A couple comments.

    For Tim: Michael Horton as an Arminian? You have badly confused something. Careful about the 9th Commandment or I will have to edit posts.

    For Darryl: I hear what you are saying but I am also inclined to think you go to far. You have read Shain’s The Myth of American Indiviualism (I think you recommended it to me). Shain makes a pretty strong case that the American founding, aside for some left leaning leadership, was committed to a Reformed communitarianism played out on a field of localism.

    What ever the founders were, they were not Jacobin radicals seeking to destroy Christendom (even if they may have been a bit indifferent to it).

26. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 8:54 am

    The founders were not a coherent group. It is a mistake to assume they were. Thomas Paine? A bit more than indifferent.

27. stevez

    May 31st, 2007 at 9:21 am

    caleb,

    if i had a dime for every time that suggestion was made! what can i say, i am lazy. really, are there not enough things to worry about in a day than making sure one periodically presses two buttons at once? so much for my double english major. and as you might also see, i am not one much for spell checks (perhaps another element for darryl’s list of modern woes). maybe i should be sending you the dimes?

    zrim

28. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 9:32 am

    Steve, it is an indication of intellectual laziness and lapse of standards. It plays into the overall failure of credibility of the internet as a medium. Your response indicates that you do not even accord your own ideas much respect. Why should anyone else? Sorry to play the school-marm, but in my view, this is more worthy of censorship than calling Horton an Arminian.

29. W.H. Chellis

    May 31st, 2007 at 9:40 am

    Caleb, true enough. It is also a mistake to judge the founding generation only by its leaders which, I think, is Shain’s point. The culture, the local leadership, the names less remembered by history, were bye-in-large orthodox protestants committed to localism, communitarianism, and their historic rights as englishmen.

30. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 9:47 am

    Bill, I’m sure you are right. But how did they understand their “historic rights as Englishmen?” How do you understand that phrase?

31. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 9:57 am

    For example, would the founding generation by and large agree with these revolution-era statements or not:

    “There are rights which men inherit at their birth, as rational creatures, who were raised above the brute creation by their improvable faculties; and that, on receiving these, not from their forefathers but, from God, prescription [law] can never undermine natural rights.”

    “How glorious, then, is the prospect, the reverse of all the past, which is now opening upon us, and upon the world. Government, we expect to see, not only in the theory, and in books, but in actual practice, calculated for the general good. . . ; leaving all men the enjoyment of as many of their natural rights as possible, and no more interfering with matters of religion, with man’s notions concerning God, and a future state, than with philosophy, or medicine.”

32. W.H. Chellis

    May 31st, 2007 at 10:24 am

    You highlight well the tension. The high leftist rhetoric of the founding generation and the Novus Ordo Seclorum and the everyday realities of communities built upon localism, community, and traditional protestant orthodoxy (weakened significantly by the great awakening, ect).

    I find both of those statements horribly disagreeable and I am sure they were uttered by some great Patriarch of the American cause. I fully understand the tension. The tension between Patrician farmers like Washington and Payton Randolph and radicals like Sam Adams, John Hancock, and Thomas Paine.

    It is not dissimiliar to our own setting where conservatives continue to point to Paine’s Rights of Man as a document of their canon.

    I suspect that the phrase “rights of englishman” was a source of tension for many. For common lawyers and artistocratic farmers it was likely understood in a paleo-Whig (1688) sense. For such men Burke was foundational. For many others it stood for the ahistorical abstractions of the enlightment. Jefferson can be counted in this camp. Thankfully, many “radicals” like Jefferson were double minded. They thought in abstractions but acted upon concrete realities. Jefferson never gave up being an aristocratic gentlemen and that spirit helped to prevent the American Revolution from degenerating into the French Revolution. No?

33. stevez

    May 31st, 2007 at 10:32 am

    Caleb,

    As one known to correct his own wife’s counter-top notes with red ink, I understand your point. But I think you overstate it as well.

    I do not take the internet very seriously, so I also agree with your sentiment with regard to the failure of credibility of the internet as a medium; I consider it a rather relaxed venue and one not at all of any real import (sorry, Bill). I expressed as much to Darryl when he was in town recently, saying that I have not made up my own mind about the world of blogdom and that it seems more unuseful than anything else. I tend to agree with his assessment that blogs such as these are good for a “fun distraction.” I like that take.

    My presence in blogdom is yet another one of my guilty pleasures. I would humbly suggest that my low-capping seems more a sign of low regard for the medium more than my own ideas. In other words, while I do like to think I take my own ideas seriously, I tend not to take myself, nor cyberspace, all that seriously.

    Steve

34. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 10:34 am

    The first is Wollstencraft and the second is Priestly, both written during the furious debate that errupted in England between Burke and Richard Price over how to understand the glorious revolution of 1688 (Wollstencraft and Priestly took Price’s side–which was the side given theoretical coherence by Locke and later imported into the American context most powerfully by Paine).

    My suspicion is that most who fought the Revolution would have agreed with these statements, by and large. The whole Burke/Price debate centered around whether or not rights were “natural,” and what kinds of rights 1688 secured. Burke is inconsistent on this point, which doesn’t mean he has the weaker argument. So yes, as I have maintained all along, a strong degree of “double-mindedness” is necessary in these things. Jefferson is our prime example, and I am not ashamed to call myself Jeffersonian, which may come as a shock.

35. TimBloedow

    May 31st, 2007 at 10:35 am

    OK, I won’t call Horton an Arminian. After submitting my post and doing some further Internet research to get a better grasp on this scary 2 Kingdoms theory, I found a very helpful article by Andrew Sandlin in a 2001 issue of that great RP publication, The Christian Statesmen, labelling Horton’s theology as Lutheran: http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/01/retreat.html . In the finaly analysis, I care little whether it’s Arminian or half-Arminian, it’s unbecoming theology for someone claiming to be Reformed. BTW, to let the cat out of the bag - my earlier Christian experience was in Pentecostalism, tongue-speaking, health-and-wealth gospel, Jimmy Swaggart, disciple - and God brought me into the Reformed and Calvinistic tradition by way of Gary North and the Recons. And that was more than 15 years ago, and, no, I don’t apologise for the continued enthusiasm I have for the general perspective they provide on reformed theology. (And the RP church is the only Reformed - or Presbyterian - church that I have ever been a member of.) And I have just finished thoroughly enjoying 22 CDs (2 teaching series) of apologetics teaching by the late Greg Bahnsen. (And my 13-year-old son is also enjoying them as I school him in sound theology to protect him from the influence of the theology of people such as Horton.)

36. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 10:37 am

    Steve,

    Fair enough. I am with you on the profound ambivalence (and even hostility) towards the internet. It would seem to me most healthy to abandon it.

    Blogging kills, as someone once said:

    http://japery.newpantagruel.com/2005/12/05/blogging_kills.php

37. W.H. Chellis

    May 31st, 2007 at 10:49 am

    I agree with the profound ambivalence (and open hostility) shown towards the internet and blogdom. I am no champion of it. A word of defense for DRC (speaking of double minded inconsistency), for me the great value is to help me think through ideas. Especially as I have been thinking through Christ’s Mediatorial Kingship issues for the DRC articles in the RP Witness, this group serves me well as a sounding board and gives me a chance to weed out weak arguments and to find a firm place to stand.

    Let’s, please, act like gentlemen and refrain from casting aspersions upon theology of sound and unquestionably orthodox, Reformed teachers. We can disagree and pound on ideas but no personal attacks on men who earnestly seek to teach the truth.

38. stevez

    May 31st, 2007 at 11:03 am

    Caleb,

    And well said it was. I must agree that blogging has diminished my own soul at times, quite right.

    Truth be told, if I were one who actually and formally represented a public institution, etc. I would likely not be found muttering around here or elsewhere. As it is, I am a person of great inconsequence and thus vulnerable to the temptations of roaming blogdom, searching for whom I may devour and by whom I may be devoured! A conundrum of our times, I guess.

    Steve

39. TimBloedow

    May 31st, 2007 at 11:12 am

    Darryl,

    You’re putting my words into a historical context and trying to make me take sides on a historical question rather than examining them in a more academic context. You asked if Secular Humanists also don’t get credit for founding the US? I would probably like to call Unitarians Secular Humanists, with my rhetorical bent, but isn’t that just as sloppy as me calling Horton an Arminian? The founding of the US may not have been Christian, but I would say one would be hard-pressed to call it a Secular Humanist founding. More like a syncretistic mix of Christianity, deism, and what have you, but where is the evidence of open or full-blown SH at that time?

    At any rate, I’m not an adherent of America = the New Israel. The principles of Christian culture and worldview, can potentially be applied in any nation, even some that may not exist today. Principially, it’s not particularly helpful to try to reduce them to the true or imagined historical context of America and then use that context as the means by which to deny the principial basis of the idea of Christian culture.
    Isn’t that superficial, if not backwards reasoning?

    stevez,

    You seem to set up a lot of straw men and false dichotomies. I’m not sure of the relevance or value of your first questions: “ever war has winners and losers. what do you do when, after the so-called culture wars, you have lost? augustine warned about “pinning all our hopes on the republic.” what happens when the culture with which you identify collapses? where will you go? where is your hope, in God’s institution or man’s?”

    You seem to imply that a person advocating Christian culture is necessarily putting their hope in “man’s institution”, whatever that is, over against God’s. That’s a false assumption. But to try to answer your Q., You repent. God’s blessing on the world is an overflow of His blessing on the Church. When the church suffers increased persecution, it is evidence of God withdrawing His hand of protection and blessing due to the unrepentant sin in our midst (Deut. 28 and 29 is a good place to start reading on this point). Therefore, if Christians do “lose” - how does one define that? Have we lost when there are no more Christians in civil gov’t or when all known Christians are in jail or when all churches are forced shut by the civil magistrate? I’m not sure how you define losing? - but if Christians “lose”, then it’s evidence of God allowing “judgement to begin in the House of God - cf. Israelites in slavery in Egypt for 400 years!

    Most professing Christians - church members or adherenets - are probably too spiritual dead to realise they have lost (just look at the # of Christians today who embrace ethical compromise in the form of the social welfare state, or sitting by apathetically while the definition of marriage is changed and the level of divorce becomes equivalent inside and outside the church, etc. Particular Christians who do realise the judgement or discipline the church is facing can stick around and try to be part of the solution, hoping and praying that God doesn’t give them a ministry of Jeremiah or in today’s mobile environment, they can always leave. Quite frankly, I’d be inclined to leave. God is doing things in Asia, Africa and Latin America to revive and build his Church, while allowing the calloused and compromising “Northern” church to come under judgement and growing persecution.

    You say: “christendom comes when the gospel isn’t grasped.” And you say, “i have an interest in abiding by the laws God has given to His covenant people. how that translates into certain cultural policies that are arguable, i do not know.” Those views are incredibly tragic. In other words, you find no Biblical warrant for any public morality, so in your mind laws against murder, rape and assault, etc., are purely arbitrary and are moral positions that Christians should be ambivalent about. Your theology is incapable of making a Biblical case for such legislation, or any legislation. I find that shocking and beyond belief. Or perhaps you distinguish legislation from culture??? They are not synonymous, but legislation is an aspect of the culture. Culture is the manifestation of the aggregate of the values expressed publicly by individuals. Whether citizens have children in or out of wedlock; whether people bother to marry or not; the values expressed in music, art and architecture; the sphere of life over which the civil gov’t exercises jurisdiction; whether people honour their oaths in marriage, business arrangements, or wherever, etc., etc. is all part of culture. Morality is not simply about character and private life. So if you deny the notion of Christian culture, you are ultimately saying that whether or not you lie is inconsequential to God and whether or not you or other people commit adultery or murder is inconsequential to God.

    stevez, you also seem to have some baggage based on conversations with other Christians which leads to the jumping to conclusions on things. You say: “(BTW, preaching the gospel to homosexuals is the same as it is preached to hetero’s; telling them their sexuality is wrong is NOT preaching thhe gospel, contra your sentiments above–it’s an accidental aspect of the substance of the gospel. …” If you go back and look at my comment in this regard you will see that that is exactly my point. Perhaps you can tell me exactly which of my comments you misinterpreted to imply that I argue that the primary point of preaching the Gospel to homosexuals is to get them to “go straight”. Of course, as John the Baptist illustrates in his talking to soldiers and tax collectors, and as Jesus illustrated when He talked to the rich young ruler, God’s work is very personal, so a repentant heart may be demonstrated in one way with one person and in another way in another person, depending on what their particular sins and temptations are. So while a person’s outward behaviour may be “accidental” to their salvation, without the evidence in our lives of transformation, a person should have no confidence in their profession if there are no verifying works.

    And finally, for now, you say “given the context of your apparent idea that the gospel can be found in particular worldviews.”

    Actually, that’s not what I say. What I say is the opposite - that the particular Christian worldview can be found in a comprehensive message of the Gospel (as opposed to a reductionist concept of the Gospel which essentially sees it as simply the message of justification or as simply a message for transformation of the inner life with no public and outward manifestations.)

40. D Hart

    May 31st, 2007 at 11:14 am

    I’ll give Caleb credit. I couldn’t get Steve (zrim) to use his shift key even if he had to use it for question marks and parentheses. There’s hope for the EPC yet.

    I’d caution Tim about how much credence he puts in Andrew Sandlin. Andrew has also accused me of being Lutheran. (BTW — [are such shorthands acceptable, Caleb?] — when did “Lutheran” become an expletive, anyway?)Luther was a brilliant and courageous theologian. If Sandlin and Bahnsen had ever read Luther on the theology of the cross, they might not have been so ready to promote theonomy. In fact, if more Calvinists would read Luther, Reformed Christianity would be in much better health.

41. TimBloedow

    May 31st, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Well, to be more philosophical and less ad hominem, what Sandlin says is not that Horton is Lutheran, but that his theology has been “Lutheranized.” And Sandlin, if you read the article, does not throw out all of Luther or all of Calvin - but he challenges them in particular where they subscribe to a false grace vs. nature paradigm, so Sandlin discusses the matter in the realm of theological and philosophical particulars, not with generalisations and ad hominem, so the issue really isn’t whether Sandlin has any credence as a person - but “do the actual arguments stand up?” And ultimately, it’s not about Luther or Calvin - or Horton or Augustine, but about wether or not the grace vs. nature paradigm stands up to Biblical scrutiny.

42. Caleb Stegall

    May 31st, 2007 at 11:43 am

    Maybe Steve is dictating to smorgarian peasants.

    In fact, if more Calvinists would read Luther, Reformed Christianity would be in much better health.

    Amen!

43. stevez

    May 31st, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    tim,

    “In other words, you find no Biblical warrant for any public morality, so in your mind laws against murder, rape and assault, etc., are purely arbitrary and are moral positions that Christians should be ambivalent about.”

    no, that is not quite how i would characterize what i am saying; in fact, the idea that special revelation does not reflect what is commonly understood as morality would be quite absurd. but you are speaking with one who understands two modes of revelation: special and natural. God wrote two books. my pagan neighbor knows the natural one as well as i do and knows that the above hostilities are wrong and punishable. we may legitmately quibble over how those basic moral beliefs are to be dealt with, but we all agree that killing is wrong and punishable. i am guessing you and i would have similar conclusions on some galvanizing topics. but even as one who sees the legitimicy of something like the death penalty i think the other side of the table that doesn’t is a legit conclusion. same for abortion.

    or are you suggesting that nobody knew what stealing and adultery was until moses came down from sinai? having come from a highly civilized society in the first place, and considering something like the code of hammurabi, that would seem an odd suggestion. the quaked in their sandals not because something new was being revealed in essence but that what was already known was to be the basis for the covenant (i.e. justification and/or punishment).

    as far as the comment about homosexuality, yes, i have some “baggage,” but you say that like it’s a bad thing. you said above, “The addition of “sexual orientiation” to hate crime law in Canada, a comparable measure that is being advanced now in the US, and which Janet Folger is admirably fighting, bans the public criticism of homosexuality. That embodies calling homosexuality “sin.” In effect, it bans the preaching of the Gospel to homosexuals.” i have heard this bemoaning before. and it’s the last sentence that i was commenting about: calling homosexuality a sin is one thing but it is not tantamount to “preaching the gospel.” plenty of pagans know homosexuality is wrong. i knew that before conversion. i also knew that abortion was wrong long before i was converted (i recall long late-night sessions in college when i hated the gospel but thought myself grandfathered into the faith simply due to my cultural conclusions which seemed to be gospel-vital to the christians around me). so, when you equate the preaching of the gospel to one of its accidents i think it is a great mistake.

    if the gospel is as broad as you suggest i do fail to understand who possess it, tim, when so many claim it and yet have such different attendant understandings of what its “manifestation” means. both wallis/sider and dobson/kennedy claim the gospel in all its fullness. so whose “manifestation” should i embrace? they both seems quite antithetical to each other. i thought God was not one of confusion. maybe warren has the right answer? maybe we should gather all the “manifestations” under one big tent? some might say so. i say they all need to be dealt with at once, yes, but booted out is how.

    you seem to think persecution is a bad thing to christians. i think it is a blessing insofar as it separates the un/faithful.

    steve

44. stevez

    May 31st, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    …and hallelujah.

    “I’d caution Tim about how much credence he puts in Andrew Sandlin. Andrew has also accused me of being Lutheran.” Yes, I think that was precisely the point of end-note 18, right Tim?

    Darryl keeps bringing up the theology of the Cross versus glory. And here I thought I made too much of these categories! But I am glad he does.

    Tim is aghast and shocked. But when I have these conversations I am routinely amazed, amazed at how it is unseen just how blatantly the flesh wants to link up the faith to the powers and glories of the world. Although, the more I go on and the more I listen, perhaps I should not be so amazed; it is the natural inclination of the flesh, it seems to me, to attempt such an unholy union and is really at the heart of the very simple thing we call the Gospel. It is the natural piety of man to pull God down and force Him to be want man demands—to idolize ourselves via God. It doesn’t seem to matter who I am speaking with or what their worldviews may be, however disparate they are from each other. Everyone wants God on their side and is quite willing, at best, to manipulate the Gospel, or, at worst, to simply forego the Gospel altogether. One of the results is division. And isn’t this what Paul spoke against in Galatians (3:27), saying that in Christ we are no longer to define ourselves by our temporal categories that divide?

    zrim

45. TimBloedow

    May 31st, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    stevez,

    I’m going to back up for a minute. You wrote yesterday: “but it seems to me that confessing His lordship over all of life is just very different from claiming every square inch;”

    What do you see as the distinction between these 2 ideas. Why would anyone but a heathen want so surrender lordship of any square inch of creation to the devil (which is the only option I am aware of other than Christ)?

46. Andrew Matthews

    May 31st, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    zrim,

    Having just completed a thirty hour work shift, I can’t devote too much time to this response. However, blogging etiquette requires I reply in part now and defer you to my next post, which I hope to have up soon.

    You write: “bear with me, but your “light and darkness” phraeseology is what sticks in my wheels. i hear more pagan-like categories of good and evil subsuming beneath, categories all have access to in their natural creation…”

    Perhaps you have read St. John? He speaks often of “light,” “life,” and “love.” Mabe you should try and integrate your reading of St. Paul with St. John. Along the way you could read John Meyendorff’s Byzantine Theology, paying special attention to his argument for the Christian philosophy of the preeminent Church Fathers (e.g., Irenaeus, Athanasius, the Cappadocian fathers, Maximus). He shows quite well that while there have always been Platonizing thinkers in the Church, the Fathers vigorously opposed pagan thought and articulated the Christian alternative. A specifically Christian metaphysic was worked out by the Fathers as they struggled to defend the Church’s faith from heresy and vindicate the biblical teaching on the Trinity and the Person of Christ, but Horton thinks he can get by without their speculations.

    You also write: “but, again, what need have we of the church if we can mine all the goodies of “light and darkness, good and evil” in the culture? that’s easy, that’s natural, that’s the CoW into which we are all born. the gospel is that which is not natural and that which only the church (cult) can provide…. but my larger point here is simply that if pagans can come up with cultural conclusions we can, then something still has to demarcate us, yes? and that something is the gospel.”

    If you had followed my previous argument, the world (including human culture) was created for a greater good than was possible through the original order of things. This ultimate good is known as theosis, or glorification, if you prefer. The Gospel is the message that this original purpose has not been thwarted by sin, but is still God’s plan and was accomplished in Christ’s redemptive work, and comes through the reconiliatory ministry of the Church to be appropriated by personal faith. This Gospel, which includes free justification, distinguishes Christianity from all other belief systems. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about this.

    Finally, you write: “the fulcrum lies not in this age but between the two ages. some may be inclined to call such thinking dangerous…that sits well with me as the gospel has always been charged with being dangerous. i like when romanists, theonomists, transformataionists and evangelicals say what i try and champion will only cause moral relativism and chaos; it means the gospel is roiling around yet again.”

    How happy you must be.

    But seriously, I don’t argue for Christendom simply because of its potential to enhance social morals and public order, which is only an added bonus. I argue for Christendom because the cultural mandate requires it. Further, I believe Christendom to be the present manifestation of God’s kingdom prophesied by the prophets as they looked forward to the New Covenant. (Of course, Christian cult, being the Kingdom of God proper, resides at Christendom’s core.)

47. stevez

    June 1st, 2007 at 8:47 am

    andrew,

    thanks for the suggestions. i am currently trying to beef up my summer reading list.

    tim,

    i doubt it will have any sway over you given your disdain for horton, but his God of Promise seems helpful. he only gives a very brief and cursory sketch of how the spheres, but i found it to be resonanting. he basically differentiated between how fundamentalism, liberalism and reformed confessionalism see the spheres. fundamentalism makes rigid distinctions between the KoM and the KoG where all that is holy, right and good streams from the latter and all that is unholy, wrong and bad from the former. thus one only need ask of any idea or value, etc. who speaks it: does he come from the KoM? then he is wrong and evil. of course, whatever comes from a representative of the KoG is always right and subject to little, if any scrutiny. this is the system of my extended family an done i tried perosnally to assimilate to, so i like to think i am at least somewhat familiar enough with it to recognize it. in my experience, fortunately, fundamentalists don’t behave as poorly as their system seems to demand. so, at worst, they are just badly inconsistent. this helps a great deal in maintaining healthy civil relations!

    liberalism collapses everything together so that all is holy, where we get universalism, etc. this was the system, to greater or lesser degrees, of my own rearing.

    both these systems are myopicially focused on social gospels and tend to be characterized by very narrowly defined bands of cultural value systems. both claim God as the manifestation of the gospel.

    reformed confessionalism, contra fundamentalism, allows for the two categories of damned and redeemed, but adds a third category of common ground. it is here that we can labor side-by-side with anyone and everyone in the common, creational and cultural tasks assigned us all as those under the Lordship of our common Creator. will the properties in our “remdemption” circle interplay during common endeavor? Most certainly. same is true for the unbelievers conversely, of course. but just because we have redemption “on our side” doesn’t mean what we do/say/think in common intercourse is beyond the common effects of sin (i.e. our ideas are not inherently right); same is true conversely of the unbelievers, of course (i.e. not everything they say/do/think is inherently wrong). so we don’t have a leg up on them in the common sphere, not one iota.

    In my mind, I actually see things working a lot like a venn diagram. I have no idea how your math skills are (mine are bottom of the barrel awful), but in my line of work (standardized student assessments) the Venn has been something I recently had to grapple with. As you may or may not know, the classic venn is two intersecting circles. One circle contains things only proper to one group, the other only proper to another; in the middle, where they converge, is common ground. In the left circle we could say exists unbelievers and all the things proper to them eternally speaking is contained therein (judgment, and all the related properties) and in the right circle the same for us (redemption and all the related properties); but in the middle is where we all exist under natural law and its related properties.

    i apologize for the inconsistency of the caps. that last paragraph was actually cut/paste from a conversation i was having with a friend in the latantly liberal denomination of my father in trying to explain to him how i don’t think revelation provides a blueprint for broad social ethics, that we have all we need in natural revelation, etc. he wasn’t picking up what i was laying down at all either.

    zrim

48. TimBloedow

    June 1st, 2007 at 9:19 am

    OK stevez, but none of those 3 classifications characterises any of my reading and thinking through Van Tilian apolgetic approach, Bahnsen’s apologetics or theonomic/Reconstructionist theology and views, yet least of all fundamentalism or liberalism, so it seems you haven’t identified all the options, or clarified anything respecting the particular disagreements with my comments or the Recon. thinking and Van Tilian thought that, if we’re to pigeon-hole, would be the camp I would fall into.

49. TimBloedow

    June 1st, 2007 at 9:34 am

    Follow-up … Speculating you might see Recons. in the fundamentalist camp, to quote Bahnsen, the issue isn’t whether or not the ungodly can do good, the issue is if they can account for it. To go back to an earlier comment of yours where you list the fact that non-Christians know what is right and wrong just as we do but based on the law written in their hearts. First of all, I would say that making too much of that exploits the fact that we are coming, historically, out of an era of shared Christian views. You can find throughout history and in our day people who disagree on all kinds of ethics, and increasingly, that includes areas where we couod not have imagined disagreements just a few years ago.

    But my main point is that information about what we agree on is, as far as I’m concerned, completely irrelevant and meaningless, by itself. What is useful and relevant is the answer to the question, “What do people do with their knowledge?” Paul is quite clear in Romans 1 that the heathen supress that knowledge, hence God gives them over to increasing wickedness.

    Whereas that Christian, because He has the mind of Christ, and the Spirit indwelling him, and the Special Revelation of God’s inscripturated word, grows from strength to strength in sanctification. This is Scriptural and it is wholly different from the caricature (whether from critics or adherents) that heathen only do bad and Christians only do good. Obviously that’s not true, and it’s an irrelevant straw man to the real issue which is the obligations of a genuine Christian convert in living out his professed surrender to the Lordship of Christ, and how that sets him apart in this life from one whose lord is the devil.

    Again, your earlier comment from which I drew the reference to your focus on common knowledge between heathen and Christian, seems to be the emphasis of your disagreement with my arguments for the Lordship or Christ, and I maintain that as questionable as your view is on this, it completely misses the point. What’s important is what we do with it. Paul was abundantly clear - I think it was Paul, I’m not looking it up just now - when he condemned the person whose looking into God’s law was like the person who looked at himself in a mirror then walked away and forgot what he looked like. And the NT is full of similar condemnations of those who know the law but don’t do it. They are like those who build their houses on sand. In James, they are exposed as heathen because true faith is evidence by good works. So, any notion of shared knowledge between unbeliever and believer is, as I read Scripture, a non-argument against anything I have said to this point.

50. Caleb Stegall

    June 1st, 2007 at 10:14 am

    Timothy, are you in Ganz’s congregation? This is really neither here nor there, but I have fond memories from the mid 80s (I was 12 or 13) of Ganz arguing late into the night in our living room, followed early the next morning by Ganz sticking his head in my bedroom before anyone else was up and saying, “C’mon, we’re going for a jog.” The “jog” amounted to Ganz tearing at breakneck speed, sanz shirt, on the trails along the Kansas River for what seemed like miles upon miles, and me trying to keep up. Ah, the manic energy of Christian Reconstruction!!! It was quite intoxicating.

    And yet, in the years since, I have wondered why the energy of Christian Reconstruction has never turned from book writing to active efforts to infiltrate the government and conduct para-military training camps?

51. TimBloedow

    June 1st, 2007 at 10:44 am

    I was, Caleb. They planted a daughter congregation south east of Ottawa just over 10 years ago - Russell - pastored by Matt Kingswood - and I’ve attended there since it started. My brother also asked me not long ago what happened to the recons? I don’t know. I think many of the new ones have softened their rough edges - rhetorically anyway - and infiltrated more broad-based endeavours while tolerating some temporary compromise on principles. I don’t really know what the Rushdoony people at Chalcedon are doing. I have recently got more interested in Gary DeMar’s work and he, with American Vision, is now hosting annual worldview conferences, bringing together speakers like Gary North, Janet Folger and Doug Phillips, who is also doing amazing work out of San Antonio with his Vision Forum in terms of promoting the reclaiming of practical areas such as film making and business through the application of distinctively Christian ethics within a framework of inter-generational discipleship. So, the spirit is out there, although it has strategically morphed in various ways.

    Myself, with this book I’ve just written, I think I have been completely faithful to what I understand to be Biblical principles related to sphere sovereignty and church, state and family governance issues, yet I have written in such a way that I have received strong endorsements and positive responses from Charismatics, other Evangelicals, Catholics (and so far one politically conservative Jewish activist). Which tells me there is a theocratic impulse in all Christians but most of us have been “trained” to see it as evil and, therefore, to deny it. So, what is needed is someone who can articulate that theocratic impulse in a way that demonstrates the positive nature of it and explains it in a way that is understandable and bypasses the preconceptions against it. So the spirit of theocracy is still here and advancing. Lutherans look out !

    BTW, Rich is into martial arts now and apparently also working on a book re. the martial arts and Christianity. And lifting weights. So he’s still as spry as ever, I think.

52. Caleb Stegall

    June 1st, 2007 at 11:22 am

    BTW, Rich is into martial arts now and apparently also working on a book re. the martial arts and Christianity. And lifting weights. So he’s still as spry as ever, I think.
    

    Now this is the stuff of high comedy! An army of reconstructionist ninjas! There is a classic late-night shoestring-budget movie to be made here, I’m sure of it.

53. Caleb Stegall

    June 1st, 2007 at 11:45 am

    Doug Phillips is an interesting test case in this discussion. Despite my hostility to most (or all) things worldview, and the fact that I think Christian Reconstruction and the theonomy-lite of Phillips et al has mostly become a hilarious joke, it must be conceded that he has been far more successful at getting people to live against the spirit of the age than most anyone else in the conservative Protestant fold.

    This poses a challenge to those of us in the decentralist, localist, anti-modern camp who persist, by and large, in an intellectual ghetto. This raises the touchy subject of how habits of thought and life are generated, maintained, and passed on, and the role of an intellectual elite in guarding such habits. I see this in the homeschooling world all the time. People who are by and large living effective, localist, yeoman lives against the spirit of the age on the foundation of essentially populist anti-intellectualized political grievancances (characterized, for example, by anti-Darwinism, young-earth conspiracy theories, absurd readings of history, rampant biblicism, etc.). This lumpenproletariat stands in stark contrast to both the suburbobourgeoisie progressive Evangelicals of the right (and left) and the embedded intellectuals, neither of which really embrace anything approaching a decent resistance to the spirit of the age, despite all the fatwas against western decline and declension.

54. stevez

    June 1st, 2007 at 1:07 pm

    “Follow-up … Speculating you might see Recons. in the fundamentalist camp, to quote Bahnsen, the issue isn’t whether or not the ungodly can do good, the issue is if they can account for it. To go back to an earlier comment of yours where you list the fact that non-Christians know what is right and wrong just as we do but based on the law written in their hearts. First of all, I would say that making too much of that exploits the fact that we are coming, historically, out of an era of shared Christian views. You can find throughout history and in our day people who disagree on all kinds of ethics, and increasingly, that includes areas where we couod not have imagined disagreements just a few years ago.”
    SZ: Can they account for it? We’re all in the same boat, are we not, when it comes to either knowledge or ability to do righteousness? That you ascribe the fact that even pagans do good to Christendom does not surprise me; I anticipate that. But I would contend this still is borne out of a rather arrogant idea that every society of men has only Christendom to thank for any good it knows/does. But I still can’t swallow the underlying notion that nobody knew not to steal before Moses descended or to love God and neighbor until Jesus came along. This is the same underlying logic that seems to inform modern Liberalism, a tradition I essentially grew up in and never understood so ultimately rejected: the Golden Rule is not profound per se.
    “But my main point is that information about what we agree on is, as far as I’m concerned, completely irrelevant and meaningless, by itself. What is useful and relevant is the answer to the question, “What do people do with their knowledge?” Paul is quite clear in Romans 1 that the heathen supress that knowledge, hence God gives them over to increasing wickedness.”
    SZ: Ok, if that is your question here is my answer: they do evil. But now the question becomes who “they” are. To believe “we” don’t have any of “them” in us seems to contradict the whole of the scriptural witness. Calvin said we got our graves with an unbeliever still in us, you know, “sinner/saint” stuff? The heathen suppress the knowledge of Christ and His Gospel. “We” don’t know any better how to formulate a society than them (or any other worldly endeavor), but what we hold as a mystery within us is how to get to heaven, bluntly stated.
    “Whereas that Christian, because He has the mind of Christ, and the Spirit indwelling him, and the Special Revelation of God’s inscripturated word, grows from strength to strength in sanctification. This is Scriptural and it is wholly different from the caricature (whether from critics or adherents) that heathen only do bad and Christians only do good. Obviously that’s not true, and it’s an irrelevant straw man to the real issue which is the obligations of a genuine Christian convert in living out his professed surrender to the Lordship of Christ, and how that sets him apart in this life from one whose lord is the devil.”
    SZ: At first blush, I have no qualms with this paragraph. But given everything else you say I find it confusing; the implications of all else you say seems to actually comport with what you call a caricature. Like Darryl said, perceptions often reflect reality, Tim. You may want to say that it’s wrong to say only Christians know/do what is right, but it sure seems the obvious implications of main of your words. If the Gospel is broadened to an ethical definition by which all men must adhere, what is it and who gets to define it? What exactly is a Christian state or society?
    “Again, your earlier comment from which I drew the reference to your focus on common knowledge between heathen and Christian, seems to be the emphasis of your disagreement with my arguments for the Lordship or Christ, and I maintain that as questionable as your view is on this, it completely misses the point. What’s important is what we do with it. Paul was abundantly clear - I think it was Paul, I’m not looking it up just now - when he condemned the person whose looking into God’s law was like the person who looked at himself in a mirror then walked away and forgot what he looked like. And the NT is full of similar condemnations of those who know the law but don’t do it. They are like those who build their houses on sand. In James, they are exposed as heathen because true faith is evidence by good works. So, any notion of shared knowledge between unbeliever and believer is, as I read Scripture, a non-argument against anything I have said to this point.”
    SZ: it’s an argument against what you have said (or at least implied) because underneath it all you are assuming that revelation is about the here and now (a theology of glory). Tim, that’s all of us who look at the law, know it but don’t do it. Paul is speaking of all flesh, he’s giving us an otherworldly message, not a this-worldly one. And if that’s me who look sin the mirror, then what sort of credibility do I have to tell another man that what I surface with as a “Christian” law for society ought to be heeded? Don’t we have to ask, if we want a Christian society we should be asking those who call themselves Christians to tell us how that ought to look? If not, we then also allow pagans to peer into holy writ and discern it themselves. That doesn’t sound right. Especially when they peer into it and exit with law everyone already knows (“I guess we should consider rape a bad thing and make it punishable.” You don’t need the Bible to know this.). It seems holy writ is for an entirely other purpose. It’s not a blueprint for ethics for how we get along in the here and now but a pointer to the next age. There are points of contact obviously. But shared properties don’t equate two different things…quartz isn’t diamond. Picking up scripture to discern how we are to get along here and now is like bringing quartz to a jeweler. I can see why you’d make that mistake, but it is still a sizable mistake.
    Tim, in general I think what might be useful to answer your concerns (namely, this issue of accountability, knowing versus doing the law, etc.) is to consider the covenant of works here. The CoW is that by which man was originally to justify himself during the probationary period. That programming is still within us, all of us, even now. for pagans, it is the only deal on the table, as it were, and they labor still to fulfill it. Cultural endeavor is not in itself evil. What is evil is to still operate by the CoW as if we are still trying to justify ourselves. Seems to me that this cultural pursuit your side seems to strongly suggest in the name of God is to actually miss the point of fulfillment altogether, thereby also missing the CoG. To suggest that the Gospel is broad and that it ought to be applied in the KoM is to actually pick with the CoW like pagans do and still try to justify ourselves by it. But this present temporal and evil age is passing. There is no way to save it and stand before God saying we deserve some measure of justification for how we “applied biblical law” to every square inch. I find that to be a latent yet dangerous approach to the very heart of the Gospel. I find these calls for the world to bend the knee to “biblical law” just another form of works-righteousness, helping pagans be better pagans and increasing their sin. I know, I already said that.

    zrim

55. TimBloedow

    June 1st, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    Stevez, you say so many things that misunderstand, misrepresent and falsly charictarise anything remotely resembling Recon. thought. Our views are so far apart it makes no sense discussing without going back to initial presuppositions, otherwise there can be no meeting of minds. It’s pure and utter nonsense to call the ideas I’ve proposed as representative of the Covenant of Works as you outline it. And you define as the Kingdom of Man what I call part of the Kingdom of God (because I’m not a dispensationalist who puts the KoG only into the future and into the ethereal realm). Your dividing line strongly resembles Dispensationalist thinking.

    You ask: “Don’t we have to ask, if we want a Christian society we should be asking those who call themselves Christians to tell us how that ought to look?” Recons. are but one group that has provided very comprehensive modeling in this respect. You may not argree with it, but to imply that it isn’t done, indicates you are not widely read in this area or are guilty of misrepresentation here of the theological playing field before us in the year 2007.

    You say: “Calvin said we got our graves with an unbeliever still in us…” If he meant that instead of meaning that we die with sin in us, then he was categorically wrong because Romans is clear that in the transaction that took place between Christ and His elect, not only did Christ die, but we also died. The old man is dead. Christians are at the root of their being, new men. That is one of the reasons we can’t lose our salvation. Salvation is not simply a change in a legal or a relational arrangement between a man and God, although it is both those things. We become new creatures in Christ. We aren’t dragging the old unbeliever behind us as we live as Christians.

    This was foundational material to the fantastic discipleship course that RP elder-statesman Ken Smith recently taught in Ottawa in a course on discipling the new believer. He noted that many Christians are operational legalists who think the old man is still handcuffed to them and they are dragging him along and trying to dress him up instead of realising he’s dead and living free in Christ.

    I’m afraid that, to me, your view wreaks of the “liberalism” of works righteousness. I see your view as knocking Christ to the ground and kicking sand in his eyes because it shows very, very little appreciation for the particulars of the work of salvation that God has promised to do in the lives of believers to transform them and perfect them in Christ. You are far too preoccupied with the ongoing sin and troubles in the lives of Christians and the areas in which we continue to resemble unbelievers instead of focusing on the newness, the victory and the righteousness in believers. In other words, you are denying the power of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. What about Romans 7 which indicates that at salvation the orientation of our minds has been transformed such that the mind of the Christian is at war with the pull towards sin that he experiences in his flesh?

56. D Hart

    June 1st, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    It’s all about eschatology. Tim, you seem either to have an under-realized one in that you’re looking for a return to the political theocracy of Israel. That’s history. But when it comes to the Christian life you put the believer in the heavenlies, without any sin. Isn’t this what Wesley taught. If the old man is dead, why does WCF 16.5 say that our good works are good only because they proceed from the Spirit, and that these good works, because “wrought by us. . . are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment.” I thought that one of the reasons we die is so that smoldering embers of sin are finally extinguished.

    So you may think “the issue isn’t whether or not the ungodly can do good, the issue is if they can account for it.” But I’m having a hard time believing that Reconstructionists can account for the good (or the not so good) of believers.

57. TimBloedow

    June 2nd, 2007 at 12:33 am

    Let’s see, I know I said it somewhere… Yes, “If he meant that instead of meaning that we die with sin in us …”

    So, where this notion comes from that I believe in some concept of Entire Sanctification, I don’t know. It would help if we all actually read what was on the page.

    Romans 6:3-6 - “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;”

    OUR OLD SELF WAS CRUCIFIED WITH HIM.

    If you don’t like that, take it up with God. I don’t know what else to say.

    The point of my comments was that stevez continues to demonstrate a very dismissive attitude to any comments about those things that separate us from unbelievers, and I’m arguing that he is demonstrating a very unbalanced perspective on this area of tension.

    I also made reference numerous times to the Bible, Christ and the Holy Spirit as the source of any sanctification, yet you are citing comments in what could be construed as a corrective to comments that suggest that I was talking about all kinds of good that I am doing in my own power.

    And quite frankly, in my view, that perspective wreaks of false humility, false guilt and self-flaggelation. How many times do I have to point to Christ and the Holy Spirit as the source and power for good before you’ll believe that I mean it? Are you one of those people, Darryl, who doesn’t let a Christian say anything at all about the good that is in him in case he falls prey to the temptation to pat himself on the back? Did Paul commit the unpardonable sin in Romans 15:14 when he told the Romans, “I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness …”?

    That attitude wreaks of Pharisaism, building a fence around God’s law to try to keep people from actually breaking His law and being guilty of pride for claiming any goodness.

    Sorry, but that isn’t my religion. I would rather risk a bit of pride in the process of celebrating whatever good God is accomplishing in me rather than sleeping on a bed of nails in order to suppress real or perceived pride in my life. Sure, there’s an important place for contemplation in the Christian life, but I think the Church would be far more productive for God in this world if more of us lived by the motto: “Git ‘er done”!!!

58. stevez

    June 4th, 2007 at 11:29 am

    ok, tim, i think we have hit the wall i have expected in terms of having a discussion. i am sure that sounds rather like yet another ploy by me to not really enagage you. sorry i have not pleased you in the conversation. i realize we quite disagree, but i sort of anticipated as much from the start. that, and i cannot say i much understand your last post.

    i will say that, yes, i am quite unbalanced, but not in the bad way you may intend. i have very strong bias toward how we are to read the faith and how it comports with how we generally view the world in which it must trod through. and part of that is to find quite alien this ‘git er done’ piety. sorry, but i find that much too impious and irritating to a properly exilic or pilgrimmatic piety. i was reminded last night during the sermon of how paul has it in mind to convert slave girls, endure with all sorts of heresies, and maintain a rather sad and pathetic group of people that comprise the early church…versus seek the transformation of his world or conversions of the powers that be, the stars of the world.

    like you, i am not sure what else to say either, except to feel free to have the last word here. you may want to git er done, but i think i am. all the best to your endeavors.

    zrim

59. Transformationalism at Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

    July 20th, 2007 at 10:50 pm

    [...] appears to be responding to some level of criticism to his understanding of cultural transformation.. My contention over this matter has always been the same for years. [...]

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