Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XVI)
The time is now.
The revisiting and recasting of Church History along with the
aforementioned crises drive us to step back for a final time and to consider
and survey the state of Evangelicalism and the magnitude of its compromise and
its moral and spiritual collapse.
The doctrine of Sola Scriptura was lost within a century of
the Reformation, choked by the revival of Scholasticism and the rise of
Confessionalism. In our day it is buried under consequentialist thinking that
cancels out its ethics and imperatives. It is both negated by cultural
syncretism and the cultural war's drive toward philosophically-driven
apologetics. It's a case of death by a thousand cuts. Though it is commonly
professed, few in fact hold to it and even fewer have seriously thought out
(let alone applied) the concept of Scriptural Sufficiency.
Sacralism, another attack on apostolic New Testament-rooted Sola
Scriptura reigns in our present context. So deeply ingrained is this impulse to
confuse the world and its political order, the system built around the sword
and coin with Christ's Kingdom, it is the default setting for most Christians,
even among many bodies that previously would have conscientiously rejected it.
This has been especially true in places like America but this teaching has
within just a generation spread across the globe and is now the dominant form
of Protestant Christianity. Truly the circle is complete. The Church is back to
where it was in the Middle Ages. Magisterial Protestantism never truly broke
with Roman Catholicism on this point and though some of its descendants did so
in waves – as of now the sacralist impulse has captured all and consumed all in
its path. The spirit that drove Constantine to put the cross (or chi-rho) on
the shields of his legions is once more the dominant spirit within the larger
realm of Christianity – indeed this is the very foundation of the erroneous concept
known as Christendom, an expansion of the Biblically defined Kingdom to include
not just culture but a whole civilisation.*
Sacralism produced the worldliness that dominated Medieval
Catholicism and it has produced the same rotten compromised fruit in the
Protestant sphere. But under Evangelicalism it has been taken to new heights
especially as that movement has embraced (with zeal) the values of capitalist
consumerist culture. Truly it is a counterfeit in every way – a new Tower of
Babel crowned with a cross of gold.
Dominionism, a facet of the larger Sacralist concept has
produced ethical compromise and collapse as the Church has become mired in the
world of politics – ever pursuing and prioritising the sword and the coin. It
is the Church of the Mammon Worshippers and it has produced and largely
embraced all the evils that flow from this paradigm – just as the Scriptures
warned.
Sacralism has in our day once again (as under Medieval
Catholicism) produced a larger body of Churches and Christians that a have a
form of godliness but deny the power thereof. It produces apostasy. Biblically
minded Christians recognised this a thousand years ago and yet there seem to be
very few in our day ready and willing to discern the signs of the times.
Sacralism in the context of Late Roman Antiquity produced one
type of cultural Christianity that later merged with the cultures of Central
and Northern Europe producing the Roman Catholicism resisted by the First and
Second Reformations. And though its political power was largely broken, Roman
Catholicism is still a powerful force in the world – and still influencing the
larger Christian community.
Sacralism in the context of Renaissance-Enlightenment Protestantism
produced Confessionalism and later Evangelicalism – a movement just as defined
by its culture, just as worldly and every bit as syncretistic and corrupting as
was (and is) the abomination that is Roman Catholicism.
Today we are confronted with a bankrupt theology, a twisted
and watered down gospel, an ecclesiology not rooted in Scripture but tied to
bureaucracy, institutionally driven polities, liturgical traditionalism and
increasingly to the para-church and its celebrity and brand-driven gimmicks.
In terms of eschatology, the apocalypticism and sense of
imminence found in the New Testament has been abandoned for non-apocalyptic
chiliasm – hope placed in worldly triumph, political victories, force of arms,
mammon, and social transformation. Even Dispensationalism has largely abandoned
its sense of transience and its focus on the hereafter but has instead turned
to endless politicking and attempts to seemingly thwart the natural development
and unfolding of their prophetic schema. They retain the model and lay it out
to their audience but then focus all their energies on resisting it and
attempting to thwart the doom their system pronounces on this age. It's as if
what little is Biblical within their system – even that, they are determined to
jettison.
In every case mammon has corrupted the leaders of
Evangelicalism and Protestantism in general and it has led to evil alliances.
Money drives dominion theology and here we refer not just to
the ostentatious teachers of prosperity. No, in fact the whole movement is characterised
by an obsession with money and the status and influence it affords. How often
do hear about God's blessing on America as expressed in her greatness, wealth,
and power? Indeed, the entire movement fawns over the rich and those who attain
riches are exalted even if they filled their coffers on the sweat and toil of
others.
Dominionism needs money and what it can buy in order to
accomplish its goals but in pursuing this false jade they have lost sight of
the true prize, the heavenly treasure. Rejecting the exhortations of Christ to
lay up treasures in heaven they have dragged heaven down to the Earth and
sought to sacralise and sanctify the latter. In their pursuit of worldly glory
they have adopted the values of mammon and even while they seek to 'save the
family' they have built their house on a socio-economic (and thus ethical)
foundation that inevitably destroys it – for indeed the pursuit of mammon
subjugates all concerns and relegates them to secondary status. This quest for
mammon has sowed the seeds of destruction in the very 'Christian' society they
hoped to create. It has bred error in the Church, it has fostered feminism
which can destroy families within a couple of generations. They provoked it and
then ratified it. The movement has sanctified avarice and granted it an ethical
veneer and in the process the economic system they identify as Christian has
expressed sheer brutality to the poor both in their own lands and across the
world – and in defiance of the overwhelming preponderance of Scriptural data
that condemns such an ethic. It has also fueled the divisions over race and it
continues to cover its tracks by its constant revision of history. Money and
power buy the scholars and the influence needed to pursue this mad and obscene
project.
It has led to political evil. Dominionism has through its
consequentialist ethic sanctified the manipulation of law. Might is right.
Winning is all that matters. It has spread lies regarding the nature of the
state and its power under this Last Days order. It has formed alliances with
evil institutions and powers, and taught compromise in order to effect its
goals and policies. It has fueled geopolitical evils. The movement has
generated and sustained wars and proxy wars. Under its Roman Catholic and Evangelical
guises the entire world has been affected as governments have been toppled,
rebels armed, and leaders assassinated. They have conspired with evil regimes
to slay the poor, to steal natural resources and to break the will of those who
would resist them. They have fostered a climate of militarism and grown rich
from its proceeds. In many cases they have supported the growth of the police
state and as has been repeatedly demonstrated they are quick to turn to this
draconian model when the resistance is largely broken or in order to maintain
their iron grip. They have done this in the West when they've been able to do
so and have certainly armed and enabled their proxies to do so across the wider
world.
They have built an elaborate power structure that is so
intertwined with the world system that at times it is indistinguishable from
it. They have taken the Kingdom of Christ and wed it to Wall Street. They have
used corporate money to fund their mendacious think tanks, to work with the
state, to write policy and they have proven repeatedly eager to collaborate
with the military to accomplish their goals.
In many respects the holistic form of Dominionism that has
arisen within the Evangelical sphere is worse than what is found in Roman
Catholicism which is so broad that it is able to incorporate nuance, duality
and tension. Throughout the twentieth century the Evangelical movement inspired
by the likes of Kuyper, Rushdoony, and Schaeffer sought to eradicate these
tensions and have produced a Monistic doctrinal structure giving these cultural
elements carte blanche to work within
the Church – and they have not been idle. Indeed many Church and para-church leaders
are little more than agents for these powerful cultural forces.
There are hints of the gospel left and they pay lip service
to Scripture but was it any different with Roman Catholicism in the Middle Ages
or even today? Rome always affirmed the basics but it was (and is) no less a
false Church or Antichrist as the First Reformation and Second Reformation
fathers rightly deemed it. But in today's climate even much of the good at work
within the Magisterial Reformation has been abandoned and while the strict
Confessionalists will not formally form allegiance with Rome, on a practical
level they have embraced 'co-belligerence' and have become functional allies
with it in terms of the larger cultural sphere.
Evangelicalism and Rome were bound, even destined to form an
alliance for they have more in common than any real difference that might exist
on paper. They both represent acculturated Christianity. They both represent
the same cultural theology – merely in a different context. Their differences
are not substantive but really questions of form and style. Today's
acculturated Christianity in the post-Enlightenment context doesn't produce ascetic
monks, pilgrimages, relics, chant, high church liturgy, or clericalism. Instead
the worldly Christianity of today produces psychology driven theology and
ethics, therapeutic sanctification, patriotic oriented piety, materialism, pop
music liturgy, entertainment-oriented ecclesiology, and in lieu of clericalism,
a tendency toward celebrity. It's the same cancer merely in a different form.
It is the Catholicism of our culture. Even Catholicism has in no small part modified
its style to conform to this modern day manifestation of False Christianity.
There were still some actual Christians within the fold of
Rome and who would doubt there are some in today's Evangelical sphere? But both
systems continue to harbour large numbers of false Christians. Both systems are
deceptive and destructive – both lead people away from the Christ revealed in
Scripture.
Things were bad enough but in recent years a decidedly bad
turn has occurred and the falsity and speciousness of their Christianity is
becoming all too manifest, even painfully obvious.
The Evangelical system is in crisis. Built on sand and ungrounded
to begin with, the sham fortress it sought to build has already developed fatal
cracks. This has led to the various reactions already touched upon – high
churchism and pop ecclesiology, libertarian-Trumpism and models built around
cultural relevance, affirmation and compromise.
One thing is clear. The center will not hold. Some will drift
toward Rome and even now are doing so. Others are drifting toward fascism and
dangerous anti-Christian ethics. Alternatively the world-affirming schemes and
factions are rapidly embracing feminism, fornication and sodomy. In so many
cases the impulses are driven by the same spiritual poisons – power and mammon
(which are inseparable) and in other cases they're little more than
affirmations of already extant cultural decadence – or to put it bluntly, attempts
to retain numbers, which again is about money and influence.
Delusion, lies and the rejection of the Scriptures govern
these groups, and even while many swear falsely by His Name that the Scriptures
are their authority – they demonstrate by their practice that the Scriptures do
not govern their thoughts nor do they rely on them to build their empires. They
are deceived deceivers – lying to their followers even as they lie to
themselves.
These people have misread the Bible on a massive scale and no
longer represent anything even close to apostolic Christianity. They are
degenerate and degenerating and it is terrible to behold.
Over and over again the faithful are called to come out of
this type of harlot Church, to separate ourselves, to not be partaker of their
sins.
The hour has come that we must again live as dissident Christians,
a sect, an underground movement in ethos – if not in fact.
There were certainly some Christians surviving in places like
Corinth, Galatia, and Sardis but those churches were in grave danger and their
status was being called into doubt. The time to repent is running out. Things
are rapidly moving in worse directions and Rubicon-like lines are being crossed
creating situations that cannot be easily remedied.
It also needs to be said and understood the New Testament
does not teach eternal security as popularly expressed in many Evangelical and
Calvinist churches and traditions. The New Testament certainly teaches election
(and a profound and glorious doctrine it is) but the larger body of doctrine
reveals a series of dichotomies within that doctrine, within the concept of
perseverance, and within the doctrine of assurance. This does not lessen or
detract from the work of Christ, God's sovereignty, the profundity of
predestination, or the nature of grace. Salvation is not of works nor dependent
on man but the sum of New Testament teaching presents a picture far more
nuanced and complex than either the simplistic and cheapened paradigm of Evangelicalism,
the rationalist-driven reductionism represented by much of Calvinism, or the
half-pagan superstitious contrivance that is the Roman Catholic sacerdotal
system.
A proper grasp of this drives one to fully realise that while
God is sovereign, at the same time the eternal battle is real and false
teachers are leading innocents astray. They will not finish the race, or not
finish it well and many will fall away or functionally will do so by embracing
idolatry and the corrupt anti-Christian ethic that always flows from it – the
world-affirming flesh-indulging ethics of mammon, violence, and ultimately decadence.
Don't rest in the notion that they're merely forfeiting rewards for their
unfaithfulness and subversion. No, the Scriptures are clear. The stakes are
eternity itself.
This indictment and warning is not to suggest that all extant
churches are false. By no means. If you have a reasonably solid congregation
then be thankful but at the same time don't fool yourself, don't be blind to
what is happening. Understand the trends and be vigilant for things are moving
fast.
Committed, Biblically minded Christians need to start
rethinking things or else they're going to quickly find themselves in bad
situations in churches tolerating sin or promoting it. Indeed many are already
there but have closed their eyes to it. Having broken with denominational
affiliation I can testify to the fact it's lonely to be a part of congregations
and yet never be fully one of them – so pervasive is the factionalism at work
in the Protestant world. And yet in another sense it is liberating as the
paradigm advocated here allows us to look beyond what in many cases are but
petty differences. We can find Christians in many quarters but the number of
viable congregations that can be tolerated is growing fewer by the day.
For years I have hoped for an exodus – that the moment would
come when people would wake up and in frustration depart from the Evangelical
sphere and the denominational trap. In one sense it is happening but for the
most part it has proven disastrous.
There is an exodus taking place but it's rooted in Trumpist
theology and of that vein. People are leaving conservative (by Evangelical
estimations) denominations and congregations because they're not sufficiently
Right-wing. In other words things are going from bad to worse.
In reality this is a desperate moment. The gospel will not
fail but far from revival we are on the cusp of a new dark age and the
testimony of New Testament Christianity, the legacy repeatedly appealed to in
this series is about to disappear – once again betrayed and subsumed – and it
will take generations to reappear if it does.
But take comfort. Christ is coming and the New Testament
teaches that true Christianity will be effectively silenced and outwardly
eradicated. Whether this imagery (so poignant in Revelation 11 and elsewhere) is
cyclical or meant to be understood as fulfilled in a final and ultimate way, we
are about to enter such a cycle and with it experience generations of pain. If this
is the final and ultimate expression of this phenomenon then this is judgment
and a sure sign that Christ is coming soon. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Don't be
caught on the wrong side – not watching but drinking with the drunken as it
were.
This world is passing away. This simple but profound message
has been lost and in many Christian circles it has even been repudiated. But
it's at the core of New Testament teaching and it overshadows how we are called
to live in this present evil age. This revisiting of Church History and
theology has been a call to re-think our lives and re-think the nature of the
Church because for the most part we've been fed lies. The shepherds have for
the most part been wolves in sheep's clothing. In some cases they didn't
realise they were. They sincerely thought they were serving the Lord even while
they persecuted the faithful, grew drunk from their blood, and wrought evil on
the Earth. Will he not say to such people that He never knew them?
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*Even the Anabaptists are rapidly giving up their resistance to this impulse and losing their identity in the process. Indeed when we've reached a point in which Amish are attending Trump rallies, and Mennonites are setting up Wall Street investment schemes – then the movement is effectively dead or might as well be.