Archive for the ‘Miscellany’ Category

Now that Glenn Beck seems to have moved on from the faith of the founders to the faith behind the Pledge of Allegiance, taking stock of the minor celebrity of a Westminster Seminary president courtesy of the talk-show enfomationist is possible. What stands out is how little controversy Peter Lillback’s ideas about the faith of George Washington or the Christian origins of the United States created.

One looks in vain through Google’s various search oppositions for a blogger or writer who questions Lillback’s interpretation. Sure, some have emerged. The folks over at American Creation have given serious attention to Lillback’s claims on behalf of Washington. Also, another student of the founding history professor, Brad Hart (no known relation) subjects Lillback’s Washington to the kind of inspection you’d expect from an Orthodox Presbyterian. But aside from the efforts of your humble oldlife servants, the conservative Reformed world seems to be willing to give Lillback a pass. (By the way, of some interest in this regard is the absence of news about Lillback’s appearance on the Beck show at the WTS website. When one of your faculty or administrators appears on a nationally televised broadcast – or even in the pages of the London Times – your institutional public relations engines generally rev, not to mention when one of your faculty member’s books ascends to number one at Amazon.)

Meanwhile, the folks at Westminster California can’t get off their beach blanket to enjoy the surf without the anti-2k bullies kicking sand, talking trash, and heaping scorn. (Many of these kerfuffles have received comment at oldlife. Curious readers should take advantage of the search capacity and look for “Westminster.”) Whether it is Machen’s Warrior Children, two-kingdom theology, the framework hypothesis, the republication doctrine, or natural law, the faculty at WSC have the reputation of being viral among many people (or is it a vocal minority?) who lead and flock to conservative Reformed and Presbyterian communions in the United States.

One can plausibly conclude that Lillback’s ideas are much more acceptable than those, for instance, of Meredith Kline, the apparent font of WSC’s worst features. For those who are genuinely concerned about the insights of biblical theology – and Kline was certainly in the tradition – this is a depressing even if unsurprising conclusion. Change happens slowly and convincing American Protestants, with habits of considering the United States as the New Israel, that their nation is not the site of God’s redemptive plan but that his work of salvation takes place in the church, an institution that transcends races, nations, and languages, is a hard sell. Even so, it is surprising that more people who have a background with WTS, another institution where biblical theology runs deep if not in the same direction as Kline, would not be more vocal in raising questions about Lillback’s understanding of the United States’ religious meaning and its first president’s faith.

What makes this lack of interest in Lillback’s understanding of Christian America all the more remarkable is that it goes beyond how to read George Washington to how to interpret the Bible. Lillback’s non-profit organization dedicated to faith and freedom in America, the Providence Forum, has published a Faith and Freedom Guide to Philadelphia in which the city’s top fifty historic sites are paired with biblical texts that illustrate the religious significance of the history made in the United States’ first capital. For instance, the nation’s first Supreme Court building comes with these remarks: “The Bible’s teaching on the importance of the judges maintaining justice is declared in Deuteronomy 25:1, ‘When men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty.’” This may seem harmless enough but it is likely not the best way to divide rightly the word of truth.

When the guide comes to the Masonic Cathedral, across the street from City Hall, the brochure goes off the rails:

The Masonic Order is an international, secret fraternity that played a significant role among the officers of the American revolution. The most famous member of the Masonic Order was George Washington. While their history is debated, the tradition argues that Masonry can be traced to Hiram, who helped build the temple of Solomon that is recorded in 1 Kings 6-7. Their classic symbol is a builder’s square with a compass and the letter G. This symbol is called “GAOTU,” which is an acrostic for “Great Architect Of The Universe” suggesting the geometric orderliness of the universe that argues for a creator and designer of all things. Genesis 1:31 says, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (KJV).

Not only is an effort to find a biblical origin for Free Masonry highly dubious on historical and theological grounds, but the guide seems to have little awareness that Reformed and Presbyterian churches in Europe and the United States have staunchly opposed to membership in Masonic Lodges as activity worthy of discipline. The only explanation for this intellectual construction of Masonry would appear to be George Washington’s membership. So instead of using Masonry against Washington as something that would raise questions about his orthodoxy, his identity as a Mason becomes a reason to delve into the Free Masons’ biblical origins. This raises an important question for WTS and her alumni – if it is wrong to read the Old Testament through the lens of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, is it any better to read it through the squint of contemporary America’s culture wars?

And through it all, Covenant Seminary goes on its merry way with a president who has shepherded through the PCA’s Strategic Plan and takes a very different estimate of the United States founding from Lillback. The lack of response to Bryan Chapell’s video about America’s Christian identity, combined with his slugging percentage in PCA politics, suggests there is hope for WSC faculty who would like to enjoy the waves.

Church Rater is a website in which users may rate churches or look at ratings in order to select a church.
Here is a sample of what church planters are up against:

This is for one of the lowest rated churches, Westminster Presbyterian Church in Dubuque, Indiana: “typical lackluster presbyterian church; bible is read, but not interpreted for adults; kids sermon is down-to-earth; stuffy anglo saxon white community.”

Here is the review for the top-rated Mars Hill Church in Seattle: “Modern facility in a not-so-modern area: the place teamsters would go for a Starbucks, or the place advertising executives would go for a cuppa joe.

There were some paintings inside that reminded me of the cover art for “In the Court of the Crimson King” (http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drg600/g670/g67029zhy8t.jpg)

The lighting was low. The band was backlit in greens and reds. The music was something you could easily hear on the radio… Switchfoot-y, Puddle of Mudd-y, Creed-y.

Mark Driscoll was pumped up: thickset, groomed, a choker around his neck, a lost Baldwin brother perhaps (we were kind of far back: it was a PACKED house).

Here’s what I heard: Marl Driscoll was telling us not to eat chocolate cake, not to be lustful, and by denying ourselves such impulses (and many others), we would glorify God.

I get it: selfish behaviors do not glorify God. But is simply denying those behaviors glorifying God? Was I hearing that I didn’t have to DO anything to glorify God, I only had to NOT do certain things?

I felt like I was being lectured. I wasn’t learning anything. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I knew what I supposed to NOT do next. But I felt like having a piece of chocolate cake anyway.

This website may be useful for Home Missions types, especially in showing that the tricks designed to attract are not so attractive. Are American consumers discerning, or what?

On a different note, oldlifers may want to wander over to Scott Clark’s blog for recent interviews with the co-founders of the Old Life Theological Society. One is about union, the other is about Van Til. The blog provides a handy tool for ratings – it’s called comments.

For those who may be wondering why N.T. Wright is speaking at the church of one of the founders of the Gospel Coalition – as in justification by faith alone coalition – Justin Taylor may have a clue. Here is a quotation from a piece in Christianity Today from 2008 on Keller and the gospel:

Tim Keller and his Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City fall somewhere between Wright and Dever. Writing for Leadership [JT: , Keller answered this year’s question for the Christian Vision Project, “Is our gospel too small?” (The article is not yet available online.) In so doing he took a stab at defining the gospel. “Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from the judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.”

It’s the last clause of this sentence that makes the difference. Is God’s plan to renew creation part of the gospel message? If so, is it the center of the gospel or a peripheral component of the Good News? Again, how you answer these questions affects how you will live, and how you will expect fellow church members to act.

“When the third, ‘eschatological’ element is left out, Christians get the impression that nothing much about this world matters,” Keller wrote. “Theoretically, grasping the full outline should make Christians interested in both evangelistic conversions as well as service to our neighbor and working for peace and justice in the world.”

______________

Doug Wilson is sounding more and more like Mark Horne.

So, saving faith yields, trembles, and embraces. It yields obedience, it trembles at threats, and it embraces promises. But its principal acts are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification. These are indeed its principal acts, but saving faith does other things. It hunts down the red law passages and yields obedience to them. It comes across passages which threaten divine displeasure, and saving faith trembles at these red law passages also. But what is saving faith doing responding to the law passages at all? Don’t the law passages just beat you up? No — in the broader context they are part of God’s saving intention for us. They are gospel. They are totus lex, part of the covenant of grace.

Then what do you do with Paul’s assertion that “the law is not of faith”? Or what do you do with the Protestant protest against Rome that we are saved not by works but by faith?

______________

Apparently Craig Higgins, who pastors one of the congregations in the Redeemer New York network of Redeemer-like churches in the New York vicinity, is still a Presbyterian. Will N. T. Wright tempt him to become an English Christian?

______________

If abortion is an abomination, why isn’t this blasphemy?

______________

Garrison Keillor’s Life Among the Lutherans has arrived. It is already rewarding with merriment. Here are a few stanzas from “Lutheran Song.”

I was raised in Iowa, went to Concordia,
Swedish, I’m proud to say.
Got a job at Lutheran Brotherhood.
And I never was sick one day.
Bought a house in south Minneapolis
Over by Cedar Lake.
If you ask me, this latest merger
Was nothing but a big mistake.
Now I have nothing against Episcopalians;
I believe in an open door.
I’m sure it’s good to get new ideas,
But we never did that before. . . .

Espiscopalians are proud of their faith;
You ought to hear ‘em talk.
Who they got? They got Henry VIII
And we got J. S. Bach.
Henry VIII he had six wives
Trying to make one son.
J. S. Bach had twenty-three children,
And wives, he had just one.
Henry VIII would marry a woman
And then her head would drop.
J. S. Bach had all those kids
‘Cause his organ had no stop. . . .

Once in a while we go to shows,
But a Lutheran is not a fan.
We don’t whistle and we don’t laugh;
We smile as loud as we can.
If you come to church, don’t expect to be hugged;
Don’t expect your hand to be shook.
If we need to know who you are,
We can look in the visitors’ book.
I was raised to keep a lid on it,
Guard what you say or do.
A mighty fortress is our God,
So he must be Lutheran too. . . .

Rabbi Bret explains why short of theonomy, even transformationalists like the Baylys are guilty of two-kingdom thinking:

. . . the Bayly’s are victims of compartmentalized thinking. They seem to think that one can have a Constitutional objection or financial objection that isn’t at the same time a theological connection. Would someone mind introducing me to an objection, that at its root, isn’t theological?

Let’s take the Constitutional objection. The Baylys admit that they may have a Constitutional objection that is somehow cordoned off from a theological objection. Now, presuming that the Baylys are here suggesting that they object to paying social security tax because they believe that the Constitution doesn’t make provision for it how is that not at the same time a theological objection? Theologically we are to give taxes to whom taxes are due (Romans 13:7) but if the King is asking for taxes that is not his due (i.e. – social security tax) given the law of the land as expressed in the Constitution then suddenly I immediately also have a theological reason to not pay social security taxation. My Constitutional reason not to pay the social security tax flows out of my theological reason not to pay the social security tax. When Government demands taxes (governments never “ask” for taxes) that are not its due then the Government is engaged in theft, which is a violation of the 8th commandment. What began as a Constitutional issue, when traced back to its origin, has found its theological source.

Apparently evangelical arguments against porn are now retreading arguments against alcohol – both alter brain cells. I wonder if there is a cure for testosterone. I know of one – aging.

John Fea thinks the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey is a reason for breaking with evangelicalism. I can think of other reasons but many thanks for additional ammunition.

This review of David VanDrunen’s new book on bio-ethics may be instructive for those who think that two-kingdom theology and natural law are just so much pie-in-the-sky rationalizations of the status quo. Rated BBW (for Baylys Be Warned, with love, of course). Bill Edgar, the reviewer, writes:

In the opening chapter VanDrunen compares several possible Christian attitudes toward participation in public healthcare. He concludes that, although the world’s agendas are often different, even at loggerheads with the biblical approach, Christians need to be active in healthcare, if only because we are called to defend God’s justice in a hostile environment. More positively, as VanDrunen articulately demonstrates, cultural activities are still enjoined, alongside the duty to proclaim the gospel.

And for those old enough to remember “2001: A Space Odyssey,” this graphic on the creation of the Space Station may bring back bad memories, not to mention Chicken Little-like fears about what happens when this mass of gadgets falls out of its orbit.

The best college basketball coach in the United States works in Philadelphia and no one knows about him. Congratulations to Herb Magee for winning his 903rd game at Philadelphia University. His closest competitor is Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski with 856 wins. But does Herb get to do ads for American Express? I don’t think so.

Rabbi Bret almost makes up with the Bayly Bros. when he writes the following against 2k (amazing how unifying 2k thinking is):

. . . there are other preachers out there who do raise their voices against R2Kt. Doug Wilson does a fine job revealing its weaknesses. Also, the Bayly Brothers came out with guns blazing against it in the past week. A gentleman named Rev. Ken Pierce also spoke out strongly against it. Now, at least as concerns the Bayly’s and Rev. Pierce they are not as consistent as they might be on the subject given their disavowal of theonomy, theocracy and a bold optimistic eschatology, but still in many respects, they acquitted themselves well in speaking out against R2Kt. I think more and more people are slowly awakening to the danger that R2Kt represents and I fully expect, in the near future, that you’ll hear more Reformed ministers raising their voices against it.

But then Rabbi Bret blows it when he takes on the experimental Calvinism in ways that make the Bayly Bros. wild about the evils of 2k (isn’t this the point of Scott Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession?):

There is a strain in Reformed theology that emphasizes the kind of subjectivism that Alexander warns against. This kind of subjectivism would have us find assurance of faith by examining our faith, or our repentance, or our love for God, or our performance in order to discern whether or not our faith, repentance, love or performance are genuine and not spurious. The problem with this is that when scrupulously honest regenerated people dwell in a concentrated way in examining these realities the more likely they are to conclude that they are unconverted. When we seek to anchor our faith in the quality of our faith, repentance, love, or performance we are sure to be ruined from one of two directions.

If we examine ourselves and find assurance because of the quality of our spiritual virtues we run the danger of being ruined from the sense of a self-satisfaction that may easily give way to self righteousness. We also run the danger of developing a spiritual inertia that does not allow us the capacity to see our real sin since our assurance becomes wrapped up in our ability to convince ourselves of the thorough genuineness of our spiritual virtues.

On the other hand if we examine ourselves and don’t find assurance because of the real lack of quality of our spiritual virtues – thus becoming convinced that our faith, repentance, love, works, etc. are spurious – we run the danger of concluding that God’s genuine work in our lives is false. When sinners such as ourselves turn our gaze inward in order to examine our spiritual virtues what else should we expect to find except the reality that our spiritual virtues are not so virtuous?

Here are a couple of thoughts for the front porch republican heart that beats within the average Old Lifer.

Thanks to John Fea I have new reasons for thinking myself superior. It’s because Ann and I live with Cordelia and Isabelle.

Hide it under a bushel? No! But under camouflage? Yes. At least that the implied message of the new “Camo” edition of the American Patriot’s Bible. (Thanks to our mid-West correspondent.)

This pocket version of the popular American Patriot’s Bible reminds Christians of the Bible’s living legacy in the history of America, a nation built on the biblical values of God and family.

If it is fair to describe The Law is Not of Faith book as embodying the Escondido Hermeneutic, would it also be fair to describe the Kerux Apologetic as evidientialist?

And if union was as important to Calvin as many allege, why does he bury his catechetical instruction on the topic in the section on the Lord’s Supper? (Do a word search of the 1545 Catechism – who wants to read all 340-plus questions? – and check it out.)

(BTW, if we’re going to follow Calvin on union, why aren’t we also following him on eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ? If you’re going to take Calvin literally on union, don’t you also have to take him literally on Christ’s real presence in the Supper?)

Master. – Do we therefore eat the body and blood of the Lord?

Scholar. – I understand so. For as our whole reliance for salvation depends on him, in order that the obedience which he yielded to the Father may be imputed to us just as if it were ours, it is necessary that he be possessed by us; for the only way in which he communicates his blessings to us is by making himself ours.

Master. – But did he not give himself when he exposed himself to death, that he might redeem us from the sentence of death, and reconcile us to God?

Scholar. – That is indeed true; but it is not enough for us unless we now receive him, that thus the efficacy and fruit of his death may reach us.

Master. – Does not the manner of receiving consist in faith?

Scholar. – I admit it does. But I at the same time add, that this is done when we not only believe that he died in order to free us from death, and was raised up that he might purchase life for us, but recognise that he dwells in us, and that we are united to him by a union the same in kind as that which unites the members to the head, that by virtue of this union we may become partakers of all his blessings.

Master. – Do we obtain this communion by the Supper alone?

Scholar. – No, indeed. For by the gospel also, as Paul declares, Christ is communicated to us. And Paul justly declares this, seeing we are there told that we are flesh of his flesh and bones of his bones-that he is the living bread which came down from heaven to nourish our souls-that we are one with him as he is one with the Father, &c. (1 Cor. i. 6; Eph. v. 30; John vi. 51; John xvii. 21.)

Master. – What more do we obtain from the sacrament, or what other benefit does it confer upon us?

Scholar. – The communion of which I spoke is thereby confirmed and increased; for although Christ is exhibited to us both in baptism and in the gospel, we do not however receive him entire, but in part only.

Master. – What then have we in the symbol of bread?

Scholar. – As the body of Christ was once sacrificed for us to reconcile us to God, so now also is it given to us, that we may certainly know that reconciliation belongs to us.

Master. – What in the symbol of wine?

Scholar. – That as Christ once shed his blood for the satisfaction of our sins, and as the price of our redemption, so he now also gives it to us to drink, that we may feel the benefit which should thence accrue to us.

Master. – According to these two answers, the holy Supper of the Lord refers us to his death, that we may communicate in its virtue?

Scholar. – Wholly so; for then the one perpetual sacrifice, sufficient for our salvation, was performed. Hence nothing more remains for us but to enjoy it.

Darryl G. Hart and Camden Bucey discuss the relationship of various Christian epistemologies to a two-kingdoms approach to Christ and culture.  The discussion has been posted at Reformed Forum.

download the mp3

post photo by Joel Bedford

Even republication deniers wind up affirming republication. For them the Covenant of Works is gracious, and so is the Mosaic covenant. So at Sinai there was a republication of grace. (In fact, the way some Federal Visionaries can’t distinguish grace from works, I wonder if they actually think the Covenant of Grace was a republication of the Covenant of Works.)

My, how the three-point shot is ruining basketball (thanks to our mid-West correspondent). Or it could be that those folks in Kansas, going back to the good Presbyterian Dr. Naismith, really do know how to play the game?

Rants like this one make plausible why John Frame can entitle his own festschrift, which he edited and for which he wrote three chapters, Speaking the Truth in Love.

R. Scott Clark is stupid. By that I mean that Dr. S (is for stupid)R. Scott Clark is dazed and unable to think clearly and he lacks intelligence and common sense. He is stupid, first of all because he, in embracing R2K, is embracing a theory that is incoherent. He is stupid, second of all, because even though the Escondido Hermeneutic has been disemboweled by Kerux he continues to champion that very theory. He is stupid, third of all, because he seems to lack the intelligence to understand that with the advent of Wittgenstein’s work on the philosophy of language Natural law theory is a Humpty Dumpty that can not be put together again. He is stupid, fourthly, because he refuses to bow to the clear teaching of Scripture touching total depravity. He continues to insist that fallen man can interpret natural law aright even though fallen men suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. He is stupid, sixthly, because he continues to trump a theory where presuppositionalism is the epistemology that reigns in the spiritual realm while at the same time, in a WSC dualistic fashion, he advocates some form of common sense realism for the common realm. He is stupid, seventhly, because he seems to think that one weekend conference at WSC automatically slams shut the discussion on this very issue. As seven is the number of perfection, I have thus shown that R. Scott Clark is perfectly stupid.

Scott Clark may be stupid, but he also edits the Classics in Reformed Theology series for the Reformation Heritage Books. The latest in the series is out – Caspar Olevianus’ An Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, translated by Lyle Bierma

And apparently, readers of the current review haven’t read very deeply in the journal. But a handy gadget at Kerux’s website reveals some items of note.

First this article by Scott Clark on John 2:13-22, on Christ’s cleansing of the Temple.

One lesson taught is the end of the theocratic arrangement in Israel:

It is ironic that those who were to care for God’s resting place, the place symbolic of God’s covenantal communion with his people, should be so insensitive to Jesus’ actions and words. What the priestly aristocracy does not realize is that by opposing Jesus, the temple guardians are opposing the temple itself! As in the garden and in the theocracy, God’s people have again desecrated God’s temple. Not only have they polluted piety for profit, but they fail to recognize the very purpose for which the temple stands–it is a house for God. We know this because they failed to recognize God when he came to the temple!

Because they lacked the Spirit, the Jews completely misunderstood Jesus to be speaking about the temple in which they were standing. Jesus is saying that his body is the temple. He is the “true” or the “real” temple (Jn. 6:32,33). Jesus’ temple supersedes the Herodian temple. Jesus’ and John’s words explain his act of cleansing the temple. Jesus is prophetically foreshadowing the final destruction of the temple. . . .

[T]he Jerusalem temple is an unsatisfactory habitation for our God. Like everything else connected with the old covenant, the temple is an incomplete expression of God’s grace. To redeem us, God must tabernacle in our flesh (Jn. 1:14). In this way the destiny of the temple is bound to the destiny of the Christ.

We also learn from Clark about the importance of holiness after in the new covenant:

God’s requirements for the holiness of his dwelling place have not been watered down in the new covenant. In fact they are greater. Coexisting with the other “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5) joined together to become a “dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:21) means even greater holiness than that of the old covenant. We no longer have to watch Moses go to the tent to meet with God; he has come to us in his Son and now in his Spirit.

Clark even affirms the importance of union with Christ:

Not only are we God’s temple, but we still have a religious life in the temple. For the evangelist, to truly be in the temple is to be in Christ because he is the true temple. John wrote his gospel to the end that we might find ourselves standing in the temple (Jn. 20:31; Col. 3:3). To be in the temple is to be in communion with God. It is to have intimate, personal fellowship with God. Whoever is united by the Spirit to the ascended Lord is now in the true, heavenly, Spirit-filled, temple and worships truly.

Perhaps even more arresting than Clark’s meditation was David VanDrunen’s essay in Kerux on the culture wars. Since WSC continues to receive demerits for not being hard on crime, and apparently the Kerux review hints at this (only a few have actually seen the review because the print run is so small, and those who have read it have yet to finish it), VanDrunen’s piece, “Biblical Theology and the Culture War,” is particularly worthy of notice.

Here is one point that VanDrunen makes during his reflections on Jeremiah 29:

This brief look at biblical theology should teach us a number of things about this battle. Most important of all, it teaches us that the culture war rages in Babylon, not in the Promised Land. A number of other important considerations arise from this. For one thing, it reminds us that in any of our cultural struggles we are not to set as a goal the annihilation or even the radical transformation of society. The existence of Babylon is completely legitimate. This is a particularly relevant message for Americans especially to heed. America is portrayed as the Promised Land so often—it is the hope of the world, the shining city on the hill, with liberty and justice for all. It is the refuge for the teeming masses of distant shores yearning to be free. It is a land of never before attained prosperity and military strength. America certainly is a great land, and patriotic affections are good and healthy. But it is not paradise, and never was. And neither is any other place on earth. To view any earthly land as the Promised Land is to set our sights both too high and too low at the same time: too high for our nation’s prospects and too low for what the Promised Land really is. People wage culture wars in Babylon, and to whatever extent they win or lose, Babylon continues to be just that—Babylon! It will not be annihilated, and it will not be transformed into something else.

To understand this is to put things into perspective. If the America of 50 or 100 or 200 years ago was Babylon, and if the America of the next generation, apart from the outcome of this culture war, will still be Babylon, should we not conclude that culture wars really are not won or lost, at least not absolutely? Living in Babylon by definition implies living outside of Paradise in a land which does not in any special way belong to the church, and as such is more or less filled with injustice, immorality, and any number of other depravities which motivate the culture warriors. As long as the church has lived in Babylon, it has been involved in cultures with marks of degeneracy. And as long as it continues to live here, it will face the same thing. It is only at Christ’s return that wicked culture and its supporters will be abolished completely: “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels” (2 Thess. 1:6-7). The culture war has been raging for ages and it will not end until Christ returns. Why do we so often act as if the 1960′s, with the corresponding rise of the drug culture and sexual promiscuity, marked the beginning of this war? Perhaps the battle rages more fiercely and more visibly now, but even Christians living in Norman Rockwell America should have realized the existence of the culture war—the same culture war which rages around us now. As a wise man long ago observed, there is nothing new under the sun.

Does this mean that fighting the culture wars is wrong? VanDrunen says, “of course not.” But if Christians do fight in those battles they need to do so with a proper understanding of the stakes involved:

God commanded the people in Jeremiah 29 to seek the peace and prosperity of the city in which they lived, and this applies to us as well. We know that a nation with increasing numbers of cocaine-addicts, abortions, thefts, child-abuse cases, illiterates, etc., etc., will not retain desirable levels of peace and prosperity for long. Therefore we do have an obligation to do things which will, if not eliminate such things, at least substantially reduce their rate of occurrence. The peace and prosperity of our society, not to mention our personal peace and prosperity, depend on it. And the political sphere certainly is one of the institutions of culture which will make its indelible stamp on the peace and prosperity of the society. Christians therefore should have an interest in the political process when their form of government allows it, as ours does. To turn our backs on politics would mean to turn our backs in part to the command of God to seek the peace and prosperity of our nation. We may debate amongst ourselves which political positions to promote and how much emphasis should be given to the political process, but the interest and involvement in politics which we see among the “religious right” is in itself a good thing. But, it must always be accompanied by the realization that we are participating in the politics of Babylon. What should we hope to gain by our cultural, including political, activity? Only a relatively better life for society, ourselves, and our children in the years to come than what we would otherwise face. We seek not the destruction of our enemies, but simply a modestly better society which in the future will face exactly the same kinds of threats and require the same sort of opposition. Perhaps we can turn America back to the culture of the 1950′s. But the 1960′s will always follow.

Our first hope naturally is for the peace and prosperity of our nation. But perhaps we should be secretly pleased when these turn into disorder and depression. We have noted how many Christians today yearn for the days of public virtue present years ago in our nation’s history. It seems that there is little doubt that as far as public virtue goes America has seen better days. But when we see how such memories distort the biblical understanding that we live in Babylon, when we see how they cause our hopes to seek fulfillment not in the next world, but in this, when we see how they paint a falsely idyllic picture in our minds which we ignorantly project into the future, does it not make us at least wonder how much good such relatively peaceful and prosperous days really do. If God answered our prayers and blessed our cultural efforts by bringing us days of unparalleled peace and prosperity, would that not in itself be a tremendous temptation to set our sights no higher than Babylon? Are not days such as ours good reminders of what Babylon really is—a pagan, depraved, and hopeless place over which an angel from heaven will one day shout: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great” (Rev. 18:2)? The Israelites were apparently satisfied with the peace and prosperity of Babylon— only a tiny fraction of them returned to the Promised Land when the opportunity came. Will we as a church do any better?

Yes, let us pray for the peace and prosperity of our land for the sake of the physical well-being of ourselves and our children. But let us also be thankful for God’s often disappointing answers for the sake of the spiritual well-being of his church.

Articles such as these make Kerux worthwhile reading, especially for those inclined to read it along with the Talmud.

(By the way, the Nicotine Theological Journal‘s policy is never to turn on its contributors.)