This is a somewhat sombre and unpleasant reflection. Read it, or not. Perhaps by the end the reader will understand the contrast, conflict and both senses of bitter gratitude and denunciation I wish to communicate.
I just learned today that Vic Eliason died. He was the
creator of the radio programme CrossTalk and played an instrumental role in
forming one of the more influential 'Christian' radio networks in North
America. As might be expected, his show devoted an episode to celebrate his
life and achievements. Some will know his daughter Ingrid Schlueter
from his radio show and others.
To me Eliason represents the fruit of Dispensational
Premillennialism and the many rotten theological corollaries it espouses, its
support for Zionism, Middle Eastern war and American Nationalism. He also did
all he could to promote militarism, the police state, racism, xenophobia, gun
violence, greed and historical lies too numerous to mention. His programme was
a font of hellish filth and Anti-Biblical distortion.
Today, our adversary can work more openly with the likes of Joel
Osteen and the many other teachers like him. Men like Eliason have become a
minority and I'm certain their smaller status is in many ways a vindication for
them. They are the Fundamentalist stalwarts, the few still standing for the
truth. If it only it were so.
In truth Eliason represented the theological and cultural values
that eventually led to American Christianity's embrace of men like Osteen, as
well as a host of other social evils. He represents American culture in a state
of transition, the values of the Post-War period, the generation that survived
the Depression and War and then embraced the sweeping cultural changes, the
militarism and consumer culture of Post-War America. They are the values of the
New American Empire that emerged in the 20th century. Though
sometimes cloaked in Biblical language and promised fidelity to its principles,
these 'American' values proved cancerous and today we are reaping the harvest.
The leaders of the Church during this era were largely blind guides and sowed
the seeds of their own destruction. Eliason must be counted as among these.
It was in many respects a repeat of the British Empire which
reached its ascendancy after the Napoleonic Wars and had all but collapsed by
1945. The difference there is men like Eliason find their analogy in the Tories
and the acculturated Church of England. The Bible stalwarts of that era were
outside of the cultural mainstream and did not wield power. Thus the story of
the Church in England is a different tale of decline. While equally lamentable
English Nonconformity has a better testimony than the Imperial Evangelicals who
have equated American Empire with the Kingdom of God.
I always tremble at the death of these men, these celebrated
servants of the Church that everyone is convinced will march with great honour
into the halls of the Celestial Kingdom. God knows, but I know this... I would
have had nothing to do with Eliason in This Age. In my book, he was a
Scripture-twister, a Kingdom perverter, one who held out an ethical formula
that called good, evil and evil, good. While it is true he stood against
homosexuality, drugs and other such evils, the context for Eliason seemed more
a question of politics than an adherence to and application of God's Word. It
must be said in listening to his radio programmes the ethics of Christ seemed
to be of little interest to him. Security and respectability, power and the
threat of retaliation, the very values labeled as worldly by the New Testament
were revered and sanctified by Eliason in his syncretistic religion of
Christo-Americanism.
He paid lip-service to Scripture and its Authority but he
neither embraced it nor promoted it.... not really. The term 'Biblical' is often
invoked in today's conservative circles, but for many of them it is little more
than an attempt to emphasize the correctness of their position and may have
little (if anything) to do with what the Holy Scriptures actually say.
As I learned of Eliason's death, I was reminded of another
teacher who died during December...
Greg Bahnsen died on 11 December 1995 but I didn't learn
about it until January when I received the newsletter from his organization.
Bahnsen was one of the original Theonomists and though I
never embraced his theology, I learned from him, or to put it more accurately I
was challenged by him.
As a new Christian I was immediately confronted with Theonomy
which in the mid-1990's was still a pretty hot-button issue. It faded away in
that original form but is still very much alive. Today it often lives in
different frameworks and hides behind nuanced language. Though the formal
movement has faded away, it did much to provide an intellectual stimulus to the
Christian Right. By the late 1980's with the collapse of the Moral Majority,
the Christian Right project was floundering a bit. Theonomy emphasized Dominion
and helped to introduce some of the themes of Abraham Kuyper to mainstream
Evangelicalism. Even though Kuyper was not technically a Theonomist, the
Dominionism inherent in Dutch Reformed Theology helped to invigorate it.
Theonomy also utilized and tailored the ideas of another
non-Theonomist, one Cornelius Van Til to create a philosophical framework for
their programme. Van Til's apologetic employed a methodology for critiquing other
religions by attacking them on the point of coherence. Theonomists also used
the methodology to criticise all non-Sacralist/Monistic/Holistic systems within
the context of Christianity. Van Til and
his followers assume the validity of the Sacralist outlook and his method
provides a fairly potent way to subsume all thought under this rubric.
Through transcendental logic and deduction it sought to tease
out and develop a comprehensive and coherent system that was able to properly
define how every aspect of thought could be sacralised. To be fair, they would
say 'sanctified', but this of course would be a point in which I strongly
dissent.
The project in the end is a failure and represents a
deviation from Biblical Authority, a syncretism with worldly philosophical
systems and is guilty of the very thing they seek to avoid... an elimination of
the Creator-Creature distinction.
That said, there is much to appreciate about Van Tillian
Presuppositionalism and it is by no means exclusive to Bahnsen's Theonomic
camp. Bahnsen is well known as a Theonomist, but in the realm of apologetics he
is respected as a disciple of Van Til. Bahnsen would have said the two go
together but not all would agree with that assessment.
In the end Bahnsen would have not only agreed with Eliason on
most social positions but would have actually gone farther and held to more
extreme positions with regard to the death penalty etc... He would have accused
Eliason of God-dishonouring inconsistency and of mixing American democratic
values with Scripture.
Bahnsen possessed an intellect and sophistication that
someone like Eliason couldn't hold a candle to. Bahnsen challenged me to think
in ways that Eliason never did. Eliason was something of a talk-radio scam
artist, a propagandist and demagogue. His rhetoric and arguments were shallow
and rooted in weak doctrine.
Bahnsen was made of sterner stuff to be sure but perhaps in
another sense it made him that much worse.
Bahnsen's organization continues but I think it's faded
significantly as has Rushdoony's Chalcedon. Only Gary North survives of the
original Theonomic trio. Amazingly he has repackaged himself as some kind of
Libertarian and even after his rather embarrassing Y2K debacle, he still seems
to flourish. I think most of his audience doesn't really know who he is, what
he's about and what he stands for. If they did, they would have nothing to do
with him. If you understand anything about Theonomy you will see the humour in
the notion that North is some kind of Libertarian. Just because he worked for
Ron Paul does not mean that he would stand for those types of ideas. Theonomy
is really more akin to Totalitarianism. It's medievalism re-cast in a philosophically
Protestant mold.
North in particular has fused his Theonomic stripe with
Anarcho-Capitalism or at least that's how he packages it. He's the enemy of the
tyrannical state and yet Theonomists of course consider Puritan New England and
Calvin's Geneva as shining but weak examples of the programme they would
implement if they had ever gotten control. I doubt too many readers of
LewRockwell.com understand what North really represents.
Bahnsen's 1995 death was a shock. I respected him even if he
was an adversarial teacher. I used to order cassette tapes from his SCCCS
ministry and listen to him lecture. A friend and I watched one of his videos on
Covenant Theology at least a half-dozen times. I was challenged by his famous debate
with Gordon Stein which even today is referred to and lauded as a textbook
example of Presuppositional Apologetics and the Transcendental Argument.
Even as I enjoyed listening to that debate it forced me to
reckon with all of these questions. It drove me to seek some understanding
regarding the fundamental differences between Classical, Evidential and
Presuppositional apologetics, the Clark-Van Til controversy, Analytic v.
Continental philosophy, and a host of other questions related to prolegomena.
I never agreed with Bahnsen and still do not but he certainly
challenged me. It's interesting to think about his influence had he lived. He
would be in his late sixties and I doubt he'd be slowing down.
As I've written many times before even though most Evangelicals
are not familiar with names like Kuyper, Rushdoony or Bahnsen these men have
had a huge influence on them. They helped to lay the groundwork for the modern
Christian Right. They are influencing a wide array of thinkers and I think it
could be argued that they are affecting figures beyond Evangelicalism as well.
Francis Schaeffer and figures like Charles Colson and Pat Robertson were the
mediators of their ideas, they brought them into the mainstream.
Of course I believe their doctrines are not the doctrines of
Scripture and in fact supplant its authority and create a counterfeit version
of the Kingdom of God. But isn't it interesting how being confronted by these
teachings, we are forced to return to God's Word and discover the truth. As a
new Christian that was voraciously reading my Bible I knew Theonomic
Postmillennialism was in error but I couldn't answer it at the time. I just
intuitively knew through the general gist and tone of Scripture that doctrine
was erroneous.
But I'm glad I encountered it and was challenged by it. It
drove me onward and the confrontation spurred within me a fire to learn and
understand the truth. While the subsequent twenty years have been filled with
grief and sorrow as I have watched congregations and many friends succumb to
this evil and the dark and worldly ethics it generates, the spiritual battle
(if I can call it that) has driven me to the heights of Zion and has allowed me
to know Christ and the glories of His Kingdom in a way I would not have if I
had not struggled down many dark and lonely roads.
My Christian path began in 1995 (the year Bahnsen died) and
in those early months and in the subsequent couple of years, Greg Bahnsen
loomed large. I have to thank him for that and I can't help but possess a
certain emotional attachment to the man.
Bahnsen is now long gone and before long his name will begin
to fade into obscurity. I hope Eliason's VCY network will begin to collapse.
There will be rejoicing in heaven. But since they are but ear-ticklers in an
age of liars and those who love the lie, they will probably continue on for
awhile longer.
Both men bore very bad fruit but Bahnsen's people are
intellectually vigorous, alive and swimming in a world of ideas. There's some
ability there to reach them. Listening to CrossTalk and the call-in segments
one is struck by the ignorance if not imbecility of the audience. Apparently
after listening to Eliason's show for years that's as far as they've gotten.
That's his legacy.
This has been a bitter reflection to be sure and some will
find it offensive and think me very unfair and unkind. If you understand the
nature of these questions and what Sacralism really represents, if you
understand the nature and source of the enmity in the New Testament, you will
see the great threat is not the pagan world but the counterfeit kingdom proffered
by false apostles and their deceitful doctrines.
The bride is persecuted by the Beast to be sure but the
greatest threat of all is the Harlot. The Harlot is the Church in a state of
Apostasy, a church that has joined forces with the Babylonian Beasts. Thus the
Harlot is not Babylon, but Mystery Babylon a counterfeit of the Mystery Bride
so to speak.
Rome fits the bill to be sure, but Rome represents but one
form or aspect of this phenomenon. Eastern Orthodoxy is the same harlot in
another context. The Anglican Church is the same unfaithful bride wedded to the
British Empire of old. What I refer to as Christo-Americanism is but another
manifestation of that same Sacral impulse which corrupted the Church in the days
of Constantine and has plagued it ever since.
The theological-philosophical grid that undergirds this
recurring system continues to morph and re-constitute itself in different
contexts but it's always the same creature. It's the tale of This Age. It is
the primary agent of our Adversary... the counterfeit Church that makes the
Gospel into a means of power, wealth and violence.
The false religions of the world present no serious existential
threat to the Church. They steal souls away into hell, but they cannot harm the
Body of Christ, so to speak.
Of course the Church itself cannot fail but will survive the
Eschaton. But in terms of the Church, we are warned repeatedly against falling
away and the grave dangers of false doctrine.
Don't think for a moment the much romanticised Reformation
solved the problem of Sacralism. It heartily re-embraced and re-formed (no pun
intended) the doctrine to suit a new context. Sola Scriptura was one of the
battle cries of the Reformation but it was quickly abandoned. This of course
will be denied by advocates of Reformation denominations and Confessionalism
and yet we will continue to stress and insist their lack of honesty on this
point.
Biblical witness existed before the Reformation and after,
but the truth has always been in the possession of a Remnant which eschewed the
values and ethics espoused by the Bahnsen's and Eliason's of the worldly Church.
Clinging tenaciously to Scripture as their Authority the Remnant has suffered
the consequences and sadly today while there are no doubt many Christians on
the Earth there seem to be very few that are grasping the full import of the
doctrine.
More than ever it must be said that we do not need to
recapture the Magisterial Reformation but we need a new one and one that is
willing to challenge many assumptions treasured by those who claim to be
disciples of Luther, Calvin and Cranmer.
Fiery trials await the world and the Church and even now they
are at the door. Whether these be the final chapter of This Age or not, we
cannot tell. We hope so.
Yet, those that have mixed Scripture with tradition,
philosophy, culture and worldly lusts will not stand the test. By God's grace
some will stand even in the midst of confusion but many will not, and there is
sure to be more sorrow than can be imagined.
So are these comments regarding these dead men unduly harsh
and uncharitable? You can judge that for yourself. I mark their passing but I
will not celebrate it. Yea, I tremble.