Calling for a Return to the Doctrinal Ideals and Kingdom Ethics of the First Reformation
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Albert Mohler and other Evangelicals are right, we as Christians cannot vote for Democrats. Amen. And they go further and suggest those that do so fall under condemnation. Amen to that as well.
When inflation rates rise, the Right often makes demagogic appeals to the Gold Standard accompanied by denunciations of fiat currency and central banking policies. Some go much further and speak of conspiracies. Others focus on the ethical side of things and how inflation is a form of theft in that it decreases the value of money that people have worked for, saved, and invested.
As our routine has been further derailed by my son's injury, I decided on a recent rainy Sunday to revisit an Alliance (CMA) congregation near us that we attended over twenty years ago. I have stopped in on occasion over the years and to be blunt the decline has been remarkable in terms of numbers, content, and overall quality. My recent visit was particularly disappointing.
Whether Meloni is able to implement her policies or not is yet to be seen. Her coalition may very well implode as she is contending with some powerful personalities and egos that will certainly challenge and undermine her leadership at points. If they can actually work together they will be very powerful and given what's happening in France and Germany, (the only EU members more powerful and influential in Italy) – the prospects for the future are a cause for concern.
God, Family, and Country – what's wrong with that? This is the response of the Christian Right to the electoral victory of Giorgia Meloni and her choice slogan. In fact it sounds a lot like what one hears with the Trumpite movement. Meloni who is all but set to be the next prime minister of Italy has certainly been making the rounds and has garnered considerable support in American Right-wing circles. Fluent in English she has been able to blend in nicely at the National Prayer Breakfast and CPAC.
What drives these Christian teachers to stay in the public system? For some it's just pragmatic concerns about job change and pensions. For all the whining about being underpaid, it's steady work with lots of time off and in rural areas it is in fact one of the better paying jobs.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/12/1121999705/sex-education-school-kindergarten
Parents need to understand the sodomite-feminist ethos is
omnipresent in the culture and in the public school. It's something much bigger
than the agenda of specific sex-ed classes. Pulling your children from these
sessions is not enough. Christian parents must get their children out of public
school. This is not negotiable. If it was at one time, that day is now long
past.
On many occasions I've been driven to reflect on the immigrant experience. Apart from my Germans who came from Russia in the late nineteenth century, my ancestors almost all arrived in North America back in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. My point being, apart from the one branch, my family doesn't have an 'immigrant story' that is located within memory.
I was asked concerning Romans 9 and Paul's affection for the Jewish people. Apparently this passage is used by some Dominionists to justify ethno-nationalist agendas or forms of patriotism, suggesting that Paul effectively endorsed such thinking by his expressions for the Jewish people.
Did Biden err in making this now infamous speech – in calling out MAGA Republicans and the Trumpite movement, and in identifying them as a threat to the country?
It goes without saying that the death of Elizabeth II is a cultural milestone. It's unsettling for many as one of the foundational pillars of British society has been removed. The monarchy continues but because of the length of her reign and the stability it brought during the tumultuous cultural upheaval of the post-war period – the stability is associated less with the monarchy as a whole but is instead associated specifically with her person. And now she's gone.