https://caldronpool.com/the-gospel-has-many-political-implications-for-a-nation/
New Calvinist pastor Matthew Littlefield asserts that those
who believe the Church should not engage in politics are guilty of trumpeting
ignorance. He then proceeds to elaborate what he believes are the political
implications of the gospel.
But as is always the case with such commentaries there's a
striking lack of connection to the New Testament. Where's the evidence? Where
are the imperatives? Where's the impetus for such actions, let alone the
motivating factors and principles necessary to undergird them and generate the
overall vision of political power and Christendom to begin with?
They're not to be found. In fact, the New Testament is
actually replete with messages to the contrary. From descriptions of the
Kingdom in terms that it cannot be seen or even perceived by the lost, to the
ethos and ethic that invites persecution and characterises such cross-bearing
as the norm for the Church throughout this present evil age, on a more
fundamental level the New Testament posits an antithesis between the Christian-Kingdom
life and that of mammon. A more careful read and a larger consideration of
mammon's ethical implications leads one to understand that money and power are
in fact inseparable and thus the two being always hand-in-hand are utterly
incompatible with the Christian calling. Not only are the middle class values
of security and respectability excluded from the purview of New Testament
values and expectations, the entire social and political project of
Evangelicalism is excluded and in reality must be categorically rejected.
Instead Littlefield engages in the same kind of demagoguery
and false appeals that characterise the leaders of this movement. Many
meaningless statements are made and the assumptions behind them are never
questioned. The gospel changed the West we're told.
Does he know the history of the West?
Does he glory in castles and cathedrals, crusades, and empire?
Maybe he does. He wouldn't be alone. Like many he doesn't realize that the
legacy of the West is not Zion manifest on Earth, but the kingdom of
Antichrist, the triumph of the False Church. Many revel in the Western heritage
and aside from its utterly unbiblical foundations it is (in many respects) a
marvel and a testimony to the energies and imagination of man – even fallen
man. And yet it is not Zion – nor is it the first 'great' civilisation by any
means. But 'great' is always measured by the parameters of the world and how it
quantifies glory. The New Testament rejects such definitions.
Such romanticised thinking is dangerous because it leads
intellectuals and demagogues to whitewash and explain away the evils of the West
and its record of brutality, exploitation, idolatry, Biblical heresy, violence,
theft, avarice, mammonism, and murder. Again, it needs to be stated clearly
that it is and has been the Kingdom of Antichrist. The Church has always been a
persecuted remnant in its midst and the Magisterial Reformation did little to
correct this. In fact in some respects by muddying the waters it just made
things worse. It was not by any means a recovery of apostolic Christianity.
Sadly Littlefield's piece typifies all of this confused
thinking and its application. And while he decries the proliferation of error
and the many travesties of
eisegesis and doctrinal cowardice, his thinking represents not only
doctrinal error and flawed hermeneutics, but ethical abdication in the name of politics and mammon.
Where in the Scriptures are we
told that we're to seek societal flourishing? To the contrary we're told it's a
present evil age under the god of this world. The lost are children of wrath.
Only by redefining terms like Christian, Kingdom, Church, and Gospel can these
discussions even be entertained. Is that not literally another gospel?
Where are these concerns to be
found in the New Testament, among the discourses of Christ and the writings of
the apostles? They're nowhere to be found. They are the fruit of the Constantinian
Shift – the great apostasy that occurred in the fourth century when the Church
embraced power and completely shifted its posture toward money, authority,
violence, the state, and so forth. Already extant currents of error in the
realm of philosophy were making inroads and under the aegis of the new era they
were allowed to flourish, birthing a new type of theologian and theology –
indeed a new type of worldly minded Church filled with a new type of nominal
and worldly Christian.
Ignoring what the Scriptures
say with regard to Caesar's coin, the nature of the beast powers, and the fact
that all the works of men are doomed to perish in the fires of judgment,
Littlefield is himself on fire because the Church isn't being political enough.
For the past thirty-plus years the broad Evangelical movement (which continues
to be re-defined and expanded in its scope) has been completely re-tooled and
driven toward political engagement and culture war. The previous efforts had
fizzled and failed and thus the movement was infused with explicit Kuyperian
Dominionism and the co-belligerence teachings of Francis Schaeffer and others.
It spread first across the Anglo-American world, then throughout Europe, and
has now gone completely global affecting Christianity in places as diverse as
China, Latin America, and Africa.
And yet the great irony is
this. Even as the movement seemingly scores political victories – it's only
through compromise with the world. By lowering the bar, by moving the goalposts,
and increasingly making compromises and embracing worldly thinking and the lost
social paradigms of the world are these 'advances' made. It is no surprise that
that net result is a loss and the larger culture and world is rapidly moving
away from their values.
Littlefield quotes 1 Corinthians 15 but then misapplies it
and refuses to accept what the New Testament itself teaches about the nature of
this age, and the reign of Christ.
How do nations believe? How do nations enter into covenant?
How do nations become indwelt by the Holy Spirit? How are they Baptised? How do
they Commune?
Some nations like Scotland have attempted to 'covenantalise'
their polity but not only is such a notion foreign to the New Testament, such
thinking also deviated from Old Testament precedent. God established his
covenant with Israel. Nations don't take this on themselves, and get to
negotiate the terms and nature of the arrangement.
Why does Paul contrast Christian ethics in Romans 12 with the
function of the state in Romans 13? Paul does not envision Christians bearing
the sword. Littlefield has (like many others) fallen for the artificial and
ultimately harmful chapter division at this point. Paul was not switching gears
and Romans 13 (and its vengeance) can never be read apart from the lens of
Romans 12 (and its teaching regarding vengeance) along with the ethics of the
renewed mind, the sacrificial life, the call to meekness and submission to
providence, rejoicing in tribulation and blessing in the face of persecution.
Passages like Isaiah 9 and Psalm 2 when read through the
viewpoint of New Testament are understood eschatologically – as is the fullness
of Christ's victory in 1 Corinthians 15.
While he decries eisegesis, he's guilty of it. Littlefield
has an over-realised eschatology that dangerously rejects the way of cross and as
a system acts like it wants to force God's hand and bring the Kingdom into
actualisation now – in this age though we're told that it is not of this world
and belongs to the age to come. And thus the 'now' is effected by the Kingdom
(as defined in terms of worldly kingdoms) being brought about through the
Church's sword and coin efforts.
In one sense he's right. We can experience the Kingdom now.
'We' – the Christians can because of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not
given to the world and thus the Kingdom to them is foolishness. They can
neither grasp it nor see it.
This is the time of pilgrims bearing the cross, the time of
laying up treasure in heaven, the time of suffering to the glory of God.
Vengeance is mine says the Lord – a reality we will witness with the Second Coming.
It's not our task to bring about that vengeance through the mechanism of the profane
state or through forming some kind of unholy alliance with it.
Littlefield rejects this New Testament paradigm, as well as
its explicit and implied ethic and wants to exercise that vengeance through the
hand of the 'Christian' state – through 'Christians' who hide behind badge,
robe, and uniform, who execute this vengeance and are granted theological cover
by the false paradigms of Vocation and Christendom. It's a model that turns the
New Testament on its head and again one the Magisterial Reformation did nothing
to remedy.
We should also note that quoting the Old Testament and
integrating it with various myths about the West and the nature of its rule and
historical record does not make for biblical truth. It's bad doctrine and bad
history.
Littlefield argues that since God has authority over all, and
that since He is the source of life – this therefore implies and informs how we
should structure and maintain our societies.
Where's that? It's not in the New Testament. In fact the very
categories of viewing society in terms of 'we' or 'us' or 'our' are not to be
found. All of this is the fruit of philosophical theology, coherent inferences
and deductions of a sort, but not born of Scripture nor in accord with it. He's
asking questions that the Scriptures don't ask. This is the road to eisegesis
and it also consistently leads to another phenomenon – the tendency for the eisegetical
or contrived system to take over which results in ignoring what the New
Testament actually says or effectively overruling it. Dominion was lost with
the Fall. It's nowhere taught in New Testament apart from eschaton and the
ultimate reign of Christ in the age to come.
These philosophically rooted arguments and flawed Scriptural
appeals have been repeatedly answered but that never stops these folks. Yes,
the New Testament posits the state as 'ministers – yes, Assyria and Babylon are
also referred to as such in the Old Testament. They too were God's servants –
one ruler even took on a Messianic typology! And yet the arrangement is not
covenantal. These states, along with the Neronic Rome of Paul's epistle are not
sanctified, not aspects of the Spirit-wrought and led Holy Kingdom. They're
part of the 'outside' as he puts it in 1 Corinthians 5. And once again in
Romans 13 Paul wasn't positing an ideal but explaining a reality – one that
existed at the time of his writing and one that would be normative for the age –
one that 'Romans 12' Christians needed to understand. The state is there for a
reason and in terms of Providence we can be thankful for it. But it's not us
and we're not to have anything to do with it. Its temporal mission is different
than ours.
After distorting Paul's lessons in Romans, Littlefield then
quotes the Sermon on the Mount – and yet to his own hurt. For it is this
remarkable passage that emphasizes the very point that counters his argument – that
we can't live out Christ's Kingdom ethic while wielding the sword and amassing the
coin. Only through sleight-of-hand theological trickery and ethical sophistry
can it be done – the very eisegesis and doctrinal cowardice that Littlefield
decries. He does not realize that Christ's calling is much higher. Taking up
the sword is the easy route as it feeds man's fallen proclivities toward hubris
and vengeance and the base desire to glory in power and domination over others.
To turn the other cheek, to allow for the spoiling of your goods, and to suffer
patiently requires an ethic – even an ontology that is not of this world.
The state and the sword it wields are not the realm of the Christian.
Let the dead bury their dead. Let them build their Babels. We testify against
them. We preach the gospel – the proclamation of alienation and death with a
promise of life and reconciliation through Christ. He is coming. He will be
either your saviour or your judge. We are ambassadors of another city. We take
up the cross and live as pilgrims. Kill us if you will, but we will not serve
your gods nor buy into your lies and false hopes and promises.
Littlefield functionally rejects the Sermon on the Mount for
it condemns everything he's saying. He wants power and mammon and he builds a
theology to support it. He's too much of a doctrinal coward to follow through
on the implications of New Testament teaching and ethics and so he attacks
those who do.
Further, Paul's reference to nations in Romans 1 is not about
nations as political entities. It's the same kind of misguided argument Dominionists
use in reference to the Great Commission. It's the nations, the Gentile peoples
as opposed to the limited scope of Israel in the Old Testament. It's not a call
to political action nor can the fiction of social Christianisation be implied
from it.
Dominionism, Catholic Integralism, Judaized theology and
hermeneutics, over-realised eschatology, and worldly ethics are the perfect
formula for Christendom and provide the basis for its sordid history of
violence and apostasy. It why the Scriptures warn us – because of the false
teachers that will plague the Church, the way of truth will be evil spoken of.
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Postscript:
I find an irony in the website name By Caldron Pool – a Narnian reference to living on the edge of the
wilds it would seem. But here's the irony related to that story in The Last Battle.
Littlefield's thinking is what fuels the theology of Shift the ape who has no
interest in waiting on Aslan or (in faith) suffering the injustices of this
life in hope of the eschatological kingdom. Littlefield's Dominionism is the
lion skin put on Puzzle the donkey – a falsely claimed authority rooted in a
counterfeit Christ and a phony, compromised (even treasonous) ethic, and while
Littlefield doesn't understand this point – it leads to syncretism in the end.
In our context we must think of nations, flags, false ideologies and ultimately
idolatry. There are other forms of Tashlan-like syncretism than Lewis'
conflation of Christianity and Islam (or something like it) in The Last Battle.
Lewis loved Christendom and had some insight but failed to see that Christendom
itself and the abomination of the British Empire with all its theft, mammonism,
and murder was itself a kind of Tashlan-like syncretism.