Two Kingdoms and the Reformed Tradition (II)

Common Grace is a reality, a mercy, and restraint while the Church bears witness in the world and (this is critically important) wins by losing. We win by bearing the cross, we conquer by being sheep for the slaughter. By living as pilgrims and rejecting the world, we testify against it and to the spiritual powers that undergird it – and proclaim a way of life, a coming Kingdom, and a coming doom. This is foolishness to the world, madness, and supremely unappealing and unattractive. Only people who have lost their minds would embrace such a message and calling – or so it would seem. It's tragic that the majority of Christians think the same as the world does on these points and view such glory and victory, such testimonies to the power of the Holy Spirit as pessimism, defeat, cowardice, and offensive foolishness. One wonders if such thinking has in fact grasped even the broad strokes of the gospel message and the core principles of New Testament doctrine – let alone its ethics. No wonder Christ's words concerning mammon (and the security and power it represents) are incomprehensible to them.

Two Kingdoms and the Reformed Tradition (I)

https://theecclesialcalvinist.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/the-two-kingdoms-theology-and-christians-today/

The cited article by William B Evans provided a well-argued and concise analysis of the question of Two Kingdom theology viewed from the perspective of Reformed Confessionalism and as such provides a good opportunity for some interaction and comment. Reading this essay alongside the work by Evans will hopefully assist readers in understanding the nature of the issues and just what is at stake.

Inbox: Protestantism as Progress

I was asked to elaborate a bit on the question of proto-Protestantism's relationship to Magisterial Protestantism and the question of conservative vs. progressive movements.

Vigilantius and the New Piety

In a Journal of Early Christian Studies article from the 1990's David Hunter argues contrary to Jerome and later interpreters (such as Edward Gibbon) that the late fourth century protests of Vigilantius of Calagurris were not the result of innovation on his part, nor the lone voice of an outlier, but rather represented an extant and thus older tradition in protest to a newly developing piety.

Berkhof on the Early Church (II)

The problems that Berkhof refers to concerning the Godhead and the Incarnation are dilemmas only for the systematician who thinks he can dissect the very nature of God. Our task is not to parse, disassemble, and re-engineer Biblical doctrine into a form that fits our limited, temporal, and fallen notions of symmetry or aesthetics (as some have argued) but rather to submit to what has been revealed.

Berkhof on the Early Church (I)

Louis Berkhof's The History of Christian Doctrines (published in 1937) is a great resource if one is looking for a broad overview of historical theology. As a systematic theologian, Berkhof seems to struggle at times and grows frustrated with men like Augustine who are able to present theology in the framework of a dynamic. To Berkhof this is to embrace contradiction, even if the dynamic is supported by Scripture. This demonstrates the tendency of systematicians in their endless quest for coherence to subordinate Scripture in order to maintain the integrity of the dogmatic edifice to which they are committed. This point comes to mind every time I see the book on the shelf. Recently I picked it up again and revisited Berkhof's assessment of the ante-Nicene period.

The Wider Implications of The Ukraine War (II)

The hypocritical and frankly spurious ICC indictment of Putin for war crimes was timed perfectly to coincide with Xi's recent trip to Moscow, and meant to embarrass the Asian leader who got to claim the credit for the Riyadh-Tehran agreement. Washington's posture regarding the ICC is hypocritical, self-serving, and even ridiculous as the American government consistently claims the court (which it helped to create) has no jurisdiction over either the United States or Israel because they are not signatories to the treaty. However, when it comes to non-signatories such as Russia (who also refuses to acknowledge the court), the ICC has full jurisdiction – or so it is argued.

The Wider Implications of The Ukraine War (I)

These are mostly points that have been touched on over the past year and even well before the war erupted in February 2022. However, some of these points demand revisiting as the dynamics continue to change and the implications of this war are becoming more pronounced and profound. The Ukraine War is affecting global politics and economics but it's also starting to look like the opening chapter in what history may reckon a much larger war of consequence – even possibly a world war. There are certainly those clamouring for it. Perhaps some readers are tired of hearing about Ukraine but in reality one can barely discuss anything right now that touches on geopolitics or the economy without discussing the war in Eastern Europe.

Scholasticism and Muller's Concession

https://derekzrishmawy.com/2015/06/30/dont-underestimate-the-scholastics-or-gleanings-from-richard-mullers-prrd/

Critics of the Calvin vs. the Calvinists thesis often seem to suggest that those who posit the notion have erected a straw man – the supposed epistemological and methodological divide between the first generation of Magisterial Reformers and their seventeenth century descendants just isn't there.

Melia and The Waldenses (II)

Many of the doctrinal points Melia wishes to make (which he does by means of collating numerous quotations and references) are troublesome to the type of Protestant history one encounters with someone like JA Wylie. Melia wants to show how Catholic the Waldenses were and thus drive a wedge betwixt the group as they appeared in history and the romanticised narratives of later historians.

And yet for someone like myself who argues the First Reformation was essentially different on many key points than the Magisterial Reformation, these claims made by Melia are not troubling in the least.

Melia and The Waldenses (I)

The Origin, Persecutions, and Doctrines of The Waldenses by Pius Melia. The original was published in 1870. The copy I read was a 1978 AMS re-print of James Toovey's 1870 edition published in London.

It's a short book but packed with useful information. The Jesuit theologian pulls no punches. It is his intention to dismantle and deconstruct many of the popular narratives surrounding The Waldenses. The book despite its significant flaws is not without value.

Responding to Kenneth Bailey on the Role of Women in the New Testament

https://theologymatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/00Vol6-No1-TM.pdf

While there are certainly some advantages to understanding the context of the Ancient Near East and while this knowledge can sometimes elucidate certain episodes in Scripture, Bailey provides a sterling and noteworthy example of how this should not be done.

The Unity of the Brethren before The Thirty Years War

Through the efforts of my son I was able to read Peter Brock's The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (The Hague, Mouton & Co., 1957).

Copies can be found but it's a somewhat rare and expensive book. This is one of Brock's early works and probably not his best known. Recognized as an authority on pacifism, he specialised by focusing on many of the groups in Eastern Europe such as the Unity of the Brethren or Unitas Fratrum.

Kids Leaving Home and Middle Class Assumptions (III)

In light of these struggles and the fact that money is not the goal – but to honour God and hopefully (if possible) find something you enjoy doing, we have wrestled with whether to encourage our children in terms of college and career, or simply to wait and let them live awhile, gain life experience, save some money, and so forth. For the most part I think we've opted for the latter.

Kids Leaving Home and Middle Class Assumptions (II)

This question of daughters seems especially difficult in today's context, all the more when you make something of a stand and yet no one else is doing so in your local congregation. In fact, not only will your daughters grow frustrated by all the 'exciting' things the other young women are doing, the other parents are likely to start raising eyebrows at you when your daughters (and perhaps your sons) aren't attending college and moving out. Once again, these assumptions are more about status and middle class respectability than anything else. For them, it's embarrassing to have kids not going to college – there's almost an unspoken assumption that you've failed and they're too undisciplined, dumb, or otherwise incapable of getting through a university programme.

Kids Leaving Home and Middle Class Assumptions (I)

As my children are all now in early adulthood and yet living at home, we have been forced to wrestle with some of the assumptions in the culture about kids leaving. These questions are coming from both within and without the Church.

A Theonomic Critique of Lee Irons: A Primer in Flawed Theological Method (III)

The New Testament teaches that the Mosaic order has been disannulled – hence the harsh words in the epistles of Galatians and Hebrews, the errors of these groups being close cousin to what contemporary Theonomy advocates. Exodus 20 cannot be appealed to in the way DiGiacomo would use it. There is no Theocratic order in the New Testament apart from the Church, the earthly manifestation of Christ's Kingdom which is not located on Earth in terms of a political, cultural, or geographic order, but in Heaven itself. Exodus 20 is Scripture, but fulfilled Scripture and must be read through the Christocentric lens of the New Testament. To do otherwise is to invert the Scriptures and read them unfaithfully in a Judaized manner.

A Theonomic Critique of Lee Irons: A Primer in Flawed Theological Method (II)

The various Babylons of the world will to greater or lesser degrees build law codes and ethical systems and they will all be flawed and tainted by idolatry. They will contain grains of truth – some more and some less. This all brings judgment on them. Evil laws condone sin and thus condemn them. Good laws which reflect something of the will and character of God condemn them too in the fashion of Romans 1. They are without excuse. This does not make their society better or help the believer and if anything such legislation can sow seeds of confusion and represent a danger as believers might be tempted to think such a state to be godly, when in fact it cannot be. This is a point Paul emphasizes when he contrasts Christian conduct and imperatives with the Providentially ordered and temporal nature of the state and the sword it bears (Romans 12-13). In terms of Providence, the state rewards 'good' in a highly generalized sense, just as it is a minister or servant in the same way Babylon, Assyria, and other Beastly powers were servants or ministers under the old epoch. This does not mean the state has a positive role in terms of enforcing God's law and the dichotomy established by Paul suggests that Christians should have no part in this. The good of the state is clearly something very different from the kind of 'good' a Christian would define by means of the eschatological ethics of Romans 12.

A Theonomic Critique of Lee Irons: A Primer in Flawed Theological Method (I)

https://philosophical-theology.com/2022/04/02/lee-irons-view-of-unbelievers-and-the-christian-sabbath/

The Theonomist in question argues that Irons holds to an esoteric position on the Sabbath that has no confessional status or Biblical precedent. This begs the question as to whether or not confessional status has any bearing or authority for those concerned with following the teaching of the New Testament. And in terms of Biblical precedent, he's simply mistaken.

Revisiting Revisiting Constantine

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2015/03/constantine-defended-and-revisited.html

Recently, I decide to re-read this book and the article I wrote about it in 2015. The book I'm referring to is "Constantine Revisited: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate" edited by John Roth (Wipf and Stock 2013). This book was written in response to Peter Leithart's "Defending Constantine" (IVP Academic 2010).

As I wrote in 2015, the book made many good points against the Leithart thesis, but most of the contributors missed the mark and some don't even belong within its pages.

The Frankfurt Declaration: Its Disordered Assumptions, Deceit, and Dangers (II)

Providence lobbed the American Church a softball when it came to Covid. Did it rise to the occasion? No, the episode exposed a metastatic spiritual cancer, a real ugliness, and it revealed a reigning ethical system antithetical to the New Testament. The rotten harvest of a generation of Right-wing Dominionism came to bear in the selfishness and avarice we witnessed. The survival of the fittest ethic of capitalism and the sociopathic mercenary ethics of Libertarianism contributed to the deaths of over 1 million people – just in the US. These false social systems and ideologies have been deeply established in the minds and hearts of American Evangelicals due to an aggressive programme of false teaching that has been in place now for more than a generation. Covid exposed the rotten heart of the larger Evangelical movement – of American Christianity in all its mammon-loving repugnant splendour. Many Church leaders (including the supposed and farcical tyranny-resisters of The Frankfurt Declaration) have blood on their hands.

The Frankfurt Declaration: Its Disordered Assumptions, Deceit, and Dangers (I)

https://frankfurtdeclaration.com

This last summer a new doctrinal declaration appeared that for all its bluster has received surprisingly little attention.  From what I can tell the forces behind it represent an informal effort or loose alliance that would include the likes of John MacArthur, and people associated with James White and G3 ministries.

Cheap Grace and Peace with the World

I happened to catch a news story the other day about Amy Grant and how she has completely caved to the Sodomite ethos that now dominates this culture. She is hosting her niece's lesbian wedding at her house. We've certainly come a long way from the early days of CCM. That now seems innocent, wholesome, and even steadfast.

Inbox: Questions Concerning the Apocrypha (IV)

One could say (given all that has been argued here) that I might be a prime candidate for swimming the Tiber (or Crossing the Bosphorus) and I have been forced to acknowledge the weight of such arguments and to a degree I can understand why many have abandoned the Reformation (and especially Evangelicalism) for Rome or Constantinople. But this is folly of an even greater magnitude as Rome and Constantinople are false systems – false and counterfeit manifestations of Christianity. This doesn't mean that every last thing Rome holds to or proclaims is wrong – as even the heirs of the sixteenth century Reformation will acknowledge, though there is little agreement as to what that all means. Those who defect to Rome have already embraced erroneous assumptions and then when the weight of everything is else is factored in – they make the perilous move and thinking they do Christ service, they join with His enemies. Unlike most contemporary Evangelicals, I still argue that Roman Catholicism is antichrist and at least a manifestation or a component of the Whore-Beast imagery of New Testament prophecy.

Inbox: Questions Concerning the Apocrypha (III)

While the aforementioned councils of Late Antiquity were not 'ecumenical' councils – a point some make to argue their canon proclamations weren't considered universally authoritative – such an argument or appeal proves too much.

Inbox: Questions Concerning the Apocrypha (II)

As mentioned previously contemporary Evangelicals and Confessional Protestants are quick to adopt the canons and concepts of Higher Criticism when it comes to these books and lump them in with the many (and often dubious) Second Temple narratives of the academy implying these works are pseudepigrapha and syncretistic.

Inbox: Questions Concerning the Apocrypha (I)

http://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2022/12/gems-from-shepherd-of-hermas.html

In light of recent statements regarding the Early Church Fathers I was asked to elaborate and perhaps defend some issues regarding the Old Testament Apocrypha. This issue has gnawed at me for years and as I have worked through the narratives and claims of the Magisterial Reformation I finally came to a conclusion that its positions and arguments concerning these books are highly problematic. As I have repeatedly stated, this does not grant anything to Rome. That's not really the issue here.

Truth Obscured: An Exchange Between Arnzen and Boot

https://www.ironsharpensironradio.com/podcast/november-30-2022-show-with-dr-joe-boot-and-joel-webbon-on-the-mission-of-god-a-manifesto-of-hope-for-society/

I could write a full rebuttal of all the things I heard in this episode of Iron Sharpens Iron, but what I found necessary was to (at the very least) provide a real response to the hypothetical question asked by Arnzen (the host) to Joe Boot at around the forty-one minute mark.

Gems from The Shepherd of Hermas

It's been quite a few years since I read The Shepherd of Hermas. Reading it anew I was reminded of how alien it is to Evangelical sensibilities. For my part, I found the second century work refreshing if a bit of a slog. But some of that perception is merely cultural. We are certainly impatient in our day and so many of the older works can seem tedious.

Once again my thoughts drifted back to Catholic claims regarding the Fathers – ones echoed by nineteenth century figures like Cardinal JH Newman and John Nevin. While I will once again grant that the Magisterial Reformation and its Evangelical progeny may find the waters of Hermas strange, I still contend they are something other than Roman Catholic.

Ignatius on Worship as Spiritual Warfare

Recently re-reading some Early Church Fathers, I was both pleased and inspired to discover this exhortation on the part of Ignatius of Antioch who was martyred in the early second century. Quoting from the longer extant version of his epistle to the Ephesians, we read in Chapter XIII:

 Take heed, then, often to come together to give thanks to God, and show forth His praise. For when ye come frequently together in the same place, the powers of Satan are destroyed, and his "fiery darts" urging to sin fall back ineffectual. For your concord and harmonious faith prove his destruction, and the torment of his assistants. Nothing is better than that peace which is according to Christ, by which all war, both of aerial and terrestrial spirits, is brought to an end. "For we wrestle not against blood and flesh, but against principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places."

More Right-Wing Rehabilitation, Revision, and Anachronism Concerning the Crusades

https://issuesetc.org/2022/07/29/2101-christian-crusaders-raymond-ibrahim-7-29-22/

This was but another ridiculous interview I found on Issues Etc., yet another case at the attempted rehabilitation of The Crusades. Ibrahim inadvertently all but confesses that his work is not just revisionism but hagiography focusing on the 'heroes' of The Crusades.

Inbox: A Psychology Follow-up (II)

The psychology explosion took place (culturally speaking) in the 1970's and the Evangelical movement in its zeal to be culturally relevant trailed closely behind. We see this in Tim LaHaye's psychologically-rooted approach to spiritual gifts which gained popularity during the same decade. He revived and recast The Four Temperaments, a notion rooted in the long discounted physiology based on humors and the ideas of ancients and pagans like Galen. How this took root in ostensibly Bible-based circles is still a wonder.

Inbox: A Psychology Follow-up (I)

This piece is in response to the 16 August 2022 piece entitled Secular Psychology and the Denial of Scriptural Authority found here:

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2022/08/secular-psychology-and-denial-of.html

I was asked to clarify and expand upon some of the ways Evangelicalism has been compromised by modern psychology and feminism. These questions could easily fill up a multi-volume series but I'll touch on just a few points.

The BCO or Presbyterianism's Canon Law

https://rfbwcf.substack.com/p/does-the-bible-trump-the-bco

The Book of Church Order (BCO) is utilised in various forms by various Presbyterian denominations and as such represents a fluid canon (or authoritative body of laws) that is parallel and in some cases equal to Scripture and functionally can often supersede it.

Finding Meaning in History and the Dangers of Historicism

Following recent Christian discussions on historiography, it was inevitable that criticism directed at Historicism would eventually be put on the table. In this case the reference is to the argument for inevitable historical processes that govern human development and progress. Following in the footsteps of thinkers like Hegel, the philosopher studies these processes and by understanding them, a right view of history can be developed and with it a coherent political theory and strategy.