Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 6, 2023

 August 30

To R. Scott Clark and his article on how the current direction of the Church is affected by some of the same problems and troublemakers that so bothered the Church in the past. This appeared in Heidelblog.

I welcome the collapse of Christendom with open arms. Why? It is because now the Gospel cannot be blamed for atrocities committed by the state or tolerated by society. That doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with the injustices that we see today. Rather, the justice concerns held under Christendom tolerated gross corporate sins while using shame and punishment to reign in people's individual sexual sins.

Though Clark reminds us of how some things from the past will continue to haunt us, there is an important omission in his list of troubles. What Clark forgot to mention is that for at least the past few centuries, the dominant branch of the Church in various nations have thrown their support behind wealth and power. That most noticeably occurred in the pre revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain. And the results of that misplaced support were that the reputation of the Gospel suffered great harm while the Church suffered unnecessary persecution after those revolutions succeeded. 

That same siding with wealth and power has been occurring here for quite a while. It is demonstrated by the margin by which the Church has been supporting the Republican Party--even when Donald Trump was the Republican Presidential candidate. It's not that the Democratic Party offers that many incentives for the Church to support it. And I am not downplaying the significance of the abortion issue. But the Republican Party's candidates provide the most morally questionable positions on how businesses should be allowed to operate. 

Cuts in regulations that protect workers and the environment as well as cuts in taxes promote social injustices as well as both threaten government programs for the vulnerable and continually shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the lower economic classes. Here we should note that the form of Capitalism employed now is not the same form employed from WW II to around the 1970s and 1980s. And none of that mentions the religiously conservative Christian support for militarism and hegemony.

Many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians are rightly critical of Critical Theory and Post Modernism. But what they neglect to notice is that both are, in part, responses to Christendom. And so both Critical Theory and Post Modernism, despite their flaws, still speak prophetically against the Church for as long as the Church continues with some of the same sins it practiced during Christendom.

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August 31

To Heidelblog for the title it gave to the portion of Harrison Perkins's  article on Signs, Seals, and Means of Grace. Since Perkins's article cites the Augustinian traction of the sacraments, the title that Heidelblog gave this post was Augustine Contra The Postmodernists.

Harrison Perkins's full article can be found at:

https://issuu.com/modernreformation/docs/sola-359-2023_05_mr_final_2_singles/s/23257929

Before we condemn Post Modernism's response to the past, we need to see what it is reacting to. Seeing that won't justify Post Modernism's response. But understanding what Post Modernism is reacting to just very might make us look at a non-magic mirror to see some of what we need to repent of.

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Sept 5

To Adrian Walker and the reposting of his article on how liberal economics have failed and how that could be remedied through changes in ideology and the size of businesses. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog. 

 

Though Walker's criticisms of Liberal economics were mostly on target, his proposed solutions could be beneficially altered by Socialistic approaches. 

How could that be if Socialism is what Walker said it was? It is because Walker's views on Socialism are based on faulty models. Let's take the former Soviet Union for example.

From its beginning Lenin did not take a socialistic approach to governing the Soviet Union. That is because, unknown to conservatives, it takes more than just centralized planning to make socialism. 

Socialism, as pointed out by Rosa Luxemburg's criticisms of Lenin, is where workers are in charge and structure of the government is more horizontal than what Lenin employed. Luxemburg called Lenin's regime a dictatorship based on a 'bourgeois model.' She said that because of the structure of Lenin's government.

Now Marx's main error in analyzing and proposing a solution to the bourgeois economy and political situation of his day was his binary thinking. According to him, there were two classes and that the proletariat should be the rulers of the nation rather than bourgeoisie.

What binary thinking prohibits in Marx's case here was a collaborative structure such as what they have in Germany with their codetermination laws. Working in collaboration could also put an end to the oppression of the bourgeoisie. In other words, what we need is a redistribution of power so that power, whether in a small or large government or business, isn't centralized in one economic class. Rather, we need business and governmental structures that redistribute power to the other economic classes with the hope that the heterogenous class structures would force those from all classes to work not only for their own interests, but for the interests of others.

Walker's solution is to both reduce the size of businesses so that they become more localized and promote a Christian economic ideology among those in charge. But outside of a centralized mandated effort, which he opposes, Walker's solution is not feasible here in America especially because of the diversity in our nation.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 25, 2023

 Jan 18

To Harrison Perkins and his article that reviews a collection of Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies on the continuity the Scriptures. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

My problem with the above article is not with references to Reformed doctrine and the contributions made in Church History, it is the pedestal on which we put those sources which is the problem. If the pedestal is too small, we end up refusing to learn from the past. But if the pedestal is too big, we make Reformed doctrine and selected contributions from Church History a canon above the canon with the latter canon being the Scriptures. This is precisely what the Pharisees did with their traditions as condemned by Jesus in Mark 7.

When we have a canon above the canon of the Scriptures and we start to depend on eisogesis when reading the Scriptures while the uninspired, that which is not God-breathed, becomes paramount in determining what is God-breathed can say. We need to realize the many mistakes made in Church History and how, unlike with the writing of the Scriptures, cultural and psychological and situational influences could partially corrupt how past Church History heroes misunderstood the Scriptures.

I understand the reluctance to part company with what has been said by many past Church History heroes. That reluctance stems from a fear that we will stray too far from the faith they proclaimed. But that potential problem is solved by distinguishing  the essential teachings of the Reformed faith from the non-essential teachings. It isn't that such distinction do not already exist; it is that not enough distinctions have been made.

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Jan 19

To the Heidelblog and its reproduction of the Edict of the Emperors Grati, Valentinian II, and Theodosius I which made Christianity as the state religion in its time.

It seems that the plague of authoritarianism in Christianity goes back a long way. And authoritarianism doesn't have to be as extreme as what is portrayed above to damage and sabotage how we both live in the Church and carry out the Great Commission.

In addition, we can see some of where Calvin and Luther got their bombastic tendencies from.

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Jan 22

To David Eisenberg and his article that defends the conservative notion of America from what he claims are the efforts by Democrats to imitate what was done in the French Revolution by destroying America's past and remaking the whole nation. This article was posted in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Comparisons depend on being selective in noting the similarities between objects. However, selectivity can be used to try to make comparisons that, for the point they are used to support, use incomparable objects. That is especially true when a small set of similarities are used to support generalizations. And that is the problem with comparing the French Revolutionaries with the democrats.

The democrats want to undo America? Really? Those of us who lean toward Marx don't believe that. Rather, we see more similarities between the Democrats and the Republicans  than between us and the Democrats. And that is despite the culture war issues on which we can agree with the Democrats. In the end, the Democrats, like the Republicans, believe in Capitalism and American Hegemony. The Democrats and the Republicans protect the wealthy from paying their fair share and they both support a malignantly high spending on defense, only part of which is in the DOD appropriations.

But let's get to the basic differences between the Democrats and today's Republicans. The Democrats also believe that government should protect its people from having their rights infringed on by elites in the private sector. Today's Republicans believe that only government can infringe on people's rights and thus their call for a "limited government" gives many elites in the private sector privileges that both only those elites have and that infringes on the rights of the people. The history of labor unions in this nation testifies to that as does the current battle to acknowledge climate change let alone do something about it. And the current battle over CRT in education shows that some Republicans believe in the overreach of government.

But more importantly, let's look at the key paragraph from this essay:

The truth is that for all its failings, America has provided more opportunity, security, and freedom to a group of people more diverse than any other nation in history. There is a reason why people come to these shores, why they risk and sacrifice so much in doing so, and why they have been doing so for centuries. It is not because America is systemically rotten; but because it is foundationallY good. Justice for all calls for those foundations to be defended, not destroyed. 

If America is judged good by how many people it has provided freedom to, then the America could not have always been judged to be good from its very beginning up through the days of the Civil Rights Movement.  And today's debate about racism is whether there is a systemic racism that continues to rob people of opportunities, security, and equality based on race--and one could include class here.

America provides more opportunity, security, and freedom now because those who lacked such had to either figuratively or literally fight, sometimes to the death, to obtain those things. And if we look at the government founded by The Constitution, we discover that it was founded in response to widespread dissent and actions, like Shays Rebellion, to protect America's then new elites from the anger of many common people. And note the continuity between many the contributors to The Constitution and today's Republicans: to orchestrate a government that protects the elites while ignoring many of the voices of the people.

While the above essay seems to see America's only fault as being the institution of slavery, it forgets that slavery was allowed and based on the belief in white supremacy. And that white supremacy survived the institution of slavery and what is being debated today is whether it has survived the Jim Crow era. And if we include other minorities, such as Native American, we see that Blacks were not the only victims of white supremacy. And that does not include the oppression of women, economic classism, and the oppression of the LGBT community in society.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 4, 2022

 April 29

To Harrison Perkins and his blogpost that reviews a book by Bryan Estelle called The Primary Mission Of The Church: Engaging Or Transforming The Culture. According to Perkins, Estelle states that the Church is there to preach the Gospel and avoid taking sides with movements, ideologies, or political groups. However, according to Perkins, Estelle acknowledges that the Church must speak out on moral issues without proposing policies or taking political sides. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

Like it or not, when we call ourselves Christians, people can associate anything we do or don't do, say or don't with the Gospel. And that truth should frighten all of us Christians because we have failed all too often to keep negative associations from being paired with the Gospel.

So the title of the article can be misleading regarding the Church because one of our jobs as Christians is to protect the reputation of the Gospel. That means that included with preaching the Gospel, we also have to speak out on issues or do works not directly involved with sharing the Gospel in order to enhance the reputation of the Gospel.

But if  Perkins is correct in his assessment of  Estelle's book, then Estelle's intention of keeping the Church from being aligned with any particular political party, ideology, or cause while speaking prophetically to the moral issues of the day amounts to balancing the multiple issues involved with both preaching the Gospel, doing what is right, and protecting the reputation of the Gospel.

Now one can hope that Estelle's book encourages the Church as an institution to speak out against social injustices that include wars, elective abortion, racism, economic exploitation, and the oppression of people of different faiths or the LGBT community, while also warning us about the poisoning of the environment and climate change. That the Church as an institution must speak prophetically in pointing out the injustices being done in the world without proposing policies or aligning itself with any ideologies, movements, or political groups. That is because Church must speak prophetically not just to individuals and nations, but to all ideologies and movements for the injustices they might, however inadvertently, be causing. The question is whether Estelle's Two Kingdom Theology will encourage the Church to do that.

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To R. Scott Clark and Rosaria Butterfield for Clark's blog article pointing to an interview of Butterfield and her example in conquering homosexual desires as model for Christians in contrast to Greg Johnson's struggles. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Butterfield's interview can be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvOuBdsFmU8

It seems that Rosaria Butterfield provides a mirror image of Greg Johnson. Johnson is accused of saying that no one can be healed of having homosexual desires because of his experience. Butterfield seems to be saying that every Christian can be healed  of homosexual desires because she was. And which person one wants to side with, they are still embracing the logic of the person they disagree with because both Butterfield and Johnson employ the same logic.

There is something else to be stated here. The tax collector, from the parable of the 2 men praying, calls himself a sinner. He identifies as a sinner. And the question becomes then, do we Christians pray tax collector's prayer only once?  We should also note that we Christians never repent of all of our sins. This was. a point made by Martin Luther and one reason why he said that was because we are not aware of all of our sins. Frederick Dale Bruner points out an even greater problem with the belief that we can rid ourselves of all known sins. That problem is the damage that does to a Christian's assurance when that Christian is honest with their own sinfulness.

Also, my reading and interactions with others say that Side B Christians are not a monolithic group. It certainly is wrong when some Side B Christians rationalize homosexual desires and that is often done because of their struggles with homosexual desires. At the same time, us religiously conservative straight Christians must admit that we really don't understand all of the dynamics that come into play in SSA. And one reason for that is that there are multiple reasons why some are SSA.

Finally, none of what is said in the interview addresses the issue of whether Christians should support full equality for the LGBT community.

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April 30

To R. Scott Clark and Carl Trueman for Clark's blogpost on Trueman's 2 latest books that blame some well known past intellectuals, technology, and 'radical individual freedom' for many of the problems that are often associated with the sexual orientation. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Does any religiously conservative Christian ever consider that a major driving force for the Sexual Revolution was the place that women had in society back then. To give a picture of their place, one only needs to consider the relationship that was portrayed in the movie Fifty Shades of Grey and remove sexual content. Women, married or not, were, generally speaking, made financially dependent on men.  Also, women faced significant job discrimination and disparity in pay. Even though they had the right to vote, they were treated as second class citizens and many used their Christian religion to defend treating women that way. So women wanted equality in all areas of life including their sex lives. And because initial efforts to undo long-standing social injustices often employ all-or-nothing thinking, which reduces one's ability to make distinctions, many practices and things that were coincidentally associated with women being treated as second class citizens were found guilty by association and were targeted for reversal. Pregnancy and motherhood were found guilty by association and thus were targeted for change by the Sexual Revolution. The same goes with sex being confined to monogamous, heterosexual marriages and freeing sex from procreation.

When talking about the LGBT community, does Trueman mention the centuries of persecution that homosexuals faced by Christians and the Christendom determined status quo? Does Trueman mention how some Native American tribes recognized up to 5 genders when talking about gender identity? Or is Trueman too focused on blaming traditional whipping boys for today's changes that Trueman finds to be so offensive?

It's not that Trueman has no valid points to make for some of the problems that are associated with the Sexual Revolution which we see today. But we are like Pilate, when he washed his hands after finding Jesus guilty, when we blame only others and do not include the groups or ideologies we favor for the problems we see today.

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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that opposes an overture by a PCA presbytery that calls for the denomination to make a doctrinal statement against political violence. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Besides mislabeling what was happening in Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis as the Antifa-BLM riots, the issues of those riots and the subject of the January 6 riot and insurrection are worlds apart. While the former started as protests against racially-based state violence, the latter was a Constitutionally unlawful attempt to overturn a legitimate election by force. We should note that distinguishing the causes for violence between the two sets of events implies nothing that justifies the violence in those events. 

Has Christ authorized the Church to speak on His behalf regarding those riots? Going to the example and admonitions given to Apostolic Church or the Reformed Confessions themselves might not provide a sure answer to that question simply because of the contextual differences between now and then. And the need to address the issue becomes further complicated by the possible participation in those events by members of Reformed churches. Also, if participation in those events is immoral for anyone to engage in or violates what the Scriptures say to us, then doesn't that play a role in determining an answer to the question?

Unfortunately, Reformed traditionalists share the same flaw that all traditionalists and many older people have: they rely too much on the past to interpret and respond to the present. While Reformed traditionalists rightfully believe that the giving of special revelation is over with, the flaw that Reformed Traditionalists have has a parallel to the ending of special revelation. That parallel is that because they rely too heavily on the past to interpret and respond to the future, they have employed a priori logic to conclude that today's Church has nothing to teach those who wrote the confessions and catechisms. Thus, the time for writing standards for the Church is over despite the disparity in political-social and historical contexts in which the Church has existed between then and now. 

The flaw of the Reformed traditionalists can be summarized by the following adaptation of a Martin Luther King Jr. description of the West in its relation to the rest of the world during the Vietnam War. That the Reformed traditionalists believe that Church during the times of the writing of the Confessions and Catechisms have everything to teach today's Church while having nothing to learn from today's Church. And not only that, if we can't apply the scriptures differently than what our confessions and catechisms have prescribed, then we have made our confessions and catechisms into a canon above the canon of the Scriptures. And thus we have elevated our confessions above the Scriptures and we have made the writers of our confessions and catechisms at least equivalent to the Apostles.

Clark's test for consistency by noting that there was no institutional church response by the reformed churches in the more recent past carries not weight here. For if it was wrong for Church to be silent on the episodes of political violence he mentioned then, it is possibly wrong for the Church to be silent on today's episodes of political violence.

Finally, in citing the threefold vocation of the Church from the Belgic Confession, Clark forgets one of the concerns that the Apostles had during their time. That concern was with the reputation of the Gospel. Is the reputation of the Gospel well served by Church silence on this issue of political violence? The answer to that question might make some overly eager to have the Church speak out on civil affairs and political issues. But do we use that zealousness to prohibit the Church from speaking out on any civil affairs or political issues?  Great caution must be exercised and we can't let the Church be hijacked by those with their ideological and political agendas. At the same time, just as the Church speaks out against sins of the individual, it must also speak out against corporate sins and social injustices. The Church must speak out then not just to help the victims of corporate sins and social injustices, but to call to repentance those participating in those sins and injustices.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For April 20, 2022

April 12

To Joshua Farris and his article on gender binary and the back and forth discussion we had on the subject. In particular, the comment below is a response to his April 12th comment at 7:27 PM. This appeared in Mere Orthodoxy.

JF,

Again, your theology is dictating a reality that observation has contradicted (see https://www.news-medical.net/news/2006/10/23/1500-animal-species-practice-homosexuality.aspx  and https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-is-same-sex-sexual-behavior-so-common-in-animals/ ). I’ve seen other articles report other numbers but the point is clear, that there is scientific consensus supporting the widespread practice of homosexuality in many animal species.

What is the point of my notes to you? The point is rather clear. How we judge homosexuality and transgenderism depends on the context. We agree on the same message about homosexuality and transgenderism when the context involves what is acceptable in Church or evangelism. But when the context is society, we cannot force New Testament sexual morality on unbelievers in society. We cannot not only because there is no New Testament examples or teaching to do so, we cannot because doing so harms the reputation of the Gospel. Now I’ve been clear about context determining how we talk about homosexuality and transgenderism from the beginning.

My citing of Deborah provides a counter example to the binary gender parameter about which you proclaim. That is because, in some Native American Tribes, Deborah would not fit into the binary gender parameter. Not every group works with the same understanding of gender identity.

There is as problem that I mentioned in my very first comment: the conflation of biological sex with gender identity. Whereas the conservative approach seems to say that one’s biological sex should be the only factor in determining gender identity, the LGBT community says that one’s gender identity must be considered ones biological sex. Both sides are wrong.

Finally, by calling my case a revisionist one, my guess is that you are implying that my case is wrong. But what is my case? That we use the Scriptures as the ultimate guide for the Church and in evangelism but that in society, we use history and people’s experiences along with the principle of treating others as equals.

The value of revisionism depends on the reliability and results of older views. After all, would we call abolitionists in the 1800s ‘revisionists’ in an effort to imply that they were wrong? Did Calvin, Luther and the leaders in the Roman Church regard heliocentrism as revisionist even if they didn’t use the exact word? It’s not that we should easily disregard the past, but we can’t afford to make it canon either.

Finally, you know the Christian perspective, but do you understand the varied perspectives of unbelievers? Also, can you escape the intense gravitational pull that your theology has placed on you to see the Christian perspective from the eyes of an unbeliever. It is what I wrote before, you try to deduce too much which is why you employ a plethora of labels from which you then make conclusions. And in so doing, you make it more difficult to share the Gospel.

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April 17

To Harrison Perkins and his blog article on why we Christians must abide by the Church's confessions. This appeared in Heidelblog.

To really represent Post Modernism here, one must first acknowledge that it has real problems with exclusive truth claims. Thus, what light does Post Modernism shed on Confessionalism?

First, we need to acknowledge that the sources for much of Confessionalism comes from Europe and thus comes from a very limited representation of the Church both geographically and in terms of the times.  And so some of the above claims made about Confessionalism need to come with a disclaimer besides the fact that there is no single expression of Confessionalism because the Church has multiple sets of confessions. Thus, whose confessions should serve as a guide for the Church as a whole? Perkins favors the Reformed confessions but he doesn't address why those are the confessions we should follow.

Second, if we were to be honest with ourselves, we would immediately acknowledge that confessionals is a kind of traditionalism. And what we should generally note about traditionalism is that it tends to depend too much on the past to interpret and respond to the present. And part of that over-dependence  assumes that there have been no significant changes in historical context between then and now so that what was said back then fully applies today as it did back then and what was practiced back then can be strictly practiced to today because what was said and practiced back then run no risk of becoming irrelevant. At this point we should note that it is not that time eventually makes the everything past irrelevant; it is that time does introduce new problems and situations. Thus, some things from the past do become irrelevant while other things require different applications of principles taught in the past. 

Third, when talking about traditionalism in the light of the Scriptures, we must always keep Mark 7 in mind lest we become like the religious leaders whom Jesus spoke against then for substituting their pet traditions for God's Word. We must always be cautious to not put our pet confessions on such a high pedestal so that they either replace the Scriptures or become a canon above the canon of the Scriptures. The latter is done by claiming that one's pet confessions almost exclusively, if not exclusively, contain the best explanations of the Scriptures.

Here we should note that like the Scriptures, the writers of our confessions were human and thus contained their own personal issues as well as  saw things from the context of the culture and times in which they lived. However, unlike the Scriptures, confessions are not God-breathed which means that they were spared the prevention of errors being entered included in the confessions.

We should note one more thing about traditionalists. Traditionalists are the mirror-image of narcissists. For those from both groups elevate a given set of time periods above all other time periods in terms of some particular goodness such as knowledge or virtue. For example, narcissists elevate the present time above all other time periods so that the past is irrelevant and thus unnecessary to learn because it has nothing relevant to offer to people living today.  In contrast to that, traditionalists elevate a given set of time periods from the past above the present so that  we only need to consult the wisdom from those given time periods from the past to solve any of today's problems. Thus, what traditionalists do carries with it the implication that those favored teachers from those designated past time periods have nothing to learn from people living today.

So while Perkins would like us to favor his pet set of confessions as almost, if not, exclusive guides to understanding the Scriptures, he is directing us Christians to run into problems and even perhaps even partial threats to our faith all of which have been experienced by others in the past.

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