Paul's Passing Thoughts

The emergence of Donald Trump has made us face up to something we didn’t want to believe: both political parties, that is, Democrat and Republican, are not the least bit interested in being guided and constrained by the American Constitution. Furthermore, elitists will forgive anyone of any sin who understands this one thing: individuals should not have the right to self-rule. Both parties were presenting a pretense of freedom while slowly taking away our freedoms. Trump flushed that out. Regardless of the fix being in, the people arose and the genius of our founding fathers has been put on full display. The Socialist elephant that was being fed to us in small bites was dragged from the barn to the middle of the field for everyone to see, and in time for some Republicans, and maybe some Democrats as well, to care enough about political survival to eat crow served up by the Donald.

Be sure of this: we are in the midst of a cultural civil war and a fight to retain freedom. People better wise up and get involved before this fight to retain freedom becomes a literal shooting war in the streets of America. That’s what the recent Kavanaugh event has clearly revealed. Kavanaugh has stuck it out at the expense of his family because he knows what is at stake. And though our hearts might have been somewhat warmed by the news that former President Bush was calling Senators in defense of Kavanaugh, that’s only because they are friends; Bush is an elitist shill who doesn’t get it. The great unwashed do not need training wheels on the freedom bike, we can ride it without help. The right to bear arms was put in place to protect us from the Kamala Harris’ of the world; tar and feathers were for the likes of George W. Bush.

Now we flip to what the Kavanaugh hermeneutic has taught us about church. Until America, there was never ANY difference between politics and church. Before America,  government in a political sense and church were mutually inclusive. In regard to the cradle of civilization outside of the Garden of Eden: In the beginning was the Democrat Party. Authority to rule over the great unwashed by elitists can only come from one place: God’s throne in the form of religion. Though America blew that up, it did so with a system that is still susceptible to an Aristotelian caste system as opposed to a Platonist caste system, but we will gladly accept the former. In other words, even half-pregnant freedom has been the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen.

We must fight hard to retain the half-pregnant freedom. It could be more free, but nothing has served the world better since Christ came to free mankind from sin. However, lest we forget, sin is the mother of control-lust.

Like Democrats and Republicans, like church. America took the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. With Republican Churchians like Robert Jeffress aside, The Kavanaugh event has exposed the Democrat Churchians. Like the Democrats who claim to defend women and the downtrodden with the sword of justice, Democrat Churchians pose the same pretense as a ploy to gain control over others for the express purpose of fulfilling their power-lust.

Breakpoint: the idea that church poses itself as a Godfearing entity above the fray of politics is utterly laughable. The two are joined at the hip. And why not? Church is fond of theological driven division, politics is just another excuse to have a fight. And besides, both are driven by the same core issue: presuppositions concerning mankind. James, the brother of Christ, called out professing Christians for infighting amongst them. And the cause? Inward desire to control others. Nothing has changed; there is no new thing under the sun.

So, here we are. Those within the church who claim to be the hero warriors for the abused are speaking out on the Kavanaugh event, and guess what? If you watched the utterly despicable behavior and frightening verbiage of Senate Democrats during the Kavanaugh hearings, I want to inform you that the talking points among the supposed women/children advocate church bloggers are exactly the same. There are a plethora of examples, but for time sake, I will focus on the same assertion that ALL women accusers must be believed regardless of anything.

Specifically, Dee Parsons of Wartburg Watch .com, and Boz Tchividjian. To kick things off in my discourse with these people this week, Julia Anne Smith (Spiritual Sounding Board .com), another notable blogger advocate for abused women, excommunicated me for suggesting that Christine Blasey Ford was/is not believable. Yes, merely for suggesting such, Smith abruptly ended our cordial relationship that has included long phone conversations in the past.

Before I move on to the Boz and Dee Parsons, let me preface my point this way: in the same way that the Democrats claim to uphold racial equality while the KKK was created by them, the Boz and Dee claim to be advocates for women and children while one is a practicing Lutheran and the other is a Presbyterian. In fact, Dee is very proud of being a Lutheran and often writes about it. Martin Luther, and any idea of compassion for women is an oxymoron. The same can be said for Calvin and children.

Do you see the absurd irony in that? You do if you know anything about Martin Luther and John Calvin. Of course, I suppose you could argue that Nazis are not necessarily followers of Hitler, for whatever that argument would be worth. In regard to both Dee and the Boz, they continually rail against church practices that are foundational orthodoxy for both denominations. I used to like them enough to be embarrassed for them. Now they just frighten me.

We have a thinking problem, do we not? What would you think of a Nazi that stands against things Hitler did and believed, but refuses to deny Hitler’s basic orthodoxy?

Do I really need to write anything further to make this point?

Nevertheless, I will close with the following. Here is what the Boz stated on Twitter a couple of days ago, after, by the way, singing the praises of CNN’s Brooke Baldwin (I kid you not): “Research has repeatedly found that at most 7% of sexual assault allegations are false. Sadly, it seems as if many focus 93% of their attention and anger on the 7% rather than the other way around.” Considering that the Boz was a prosecutor for many years, this should make cold chills run up our backs. Think about it; in essence, he is saying that presumption of innocence is only 7%, if that, and presumption of guilt is 93% or more. American jurisprudence is based on 100% assumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Besides, as I have written recently, statistics like this are totally bogus.

Soon, I will be stating some things for our young men to consider and will be speaking directly to them…hope you will tune in.

paul

The Reformers, for the most part, were very vague in regard to any specific stand on homosexuality. Given Protestant orthodoxy and its stated position on sin and “Christian” identity, this shouldn’t surprise us. Some focus on degree of sin would be a human merit in and of itself. The Reformers were all about total depravity and “total inability.” Some time ago, Tim Keller was given a lot of grief for teaching that Christians need to repent of good works because human good works (whether from the lost or saved) are a fallacy.

That’s just good solid Protestant orthodoxy…period.

Hence, as we have heard, “Well, bless your heart, come and join us and we will have one more hypocrite,” it can be said as well, “So, come and join us and we will have one more homosexual.” In fact, in order for evangelicals to be logically consistent according to Protestant orthodoxy, any sin can be added to that list. According to Luther, and for that matter, Calvin as well, the ONLY mortal sin is believing that you can do a good work.

The only criteria for any sinner to be accepted into the church is to admit that they are a sinner. But this excludes any active commitment to repent of the sin lest we have a “righteousness of our own.” All that is required is a passive repentance because the so-called Christian faith is “confessional.” Likewise, any gangster will readily admit that they are a sinner while adding that they also refuse to change. Churchians readily admit  they are sinners and add that they CAN’T change lest they have a “righteousness of their own.”

let me pause here. As proponents of justification by new birth as opposed to the false gospel of justification by faith, we would say that when one is born into the world, they indeed have a life of their own which is a like life given by God that everyone shares. That is, it is a life possessed by humans that is in them. Likewise, true Christians have a righteousness of their own because it is IN them and we are righteous as a state of being via the new birth. We are not saying that it is a righteousness that originally came from us, but rather a righteousness that is in us that came from our Father via the new birth in the same way that anyone born into the world has their father’s DNA. Because Protestant orthodoxy clearly denies the new birth as a false gospel and redefines it, a like righteousness from our Father is subtly conflated into a righteousness that supposedly comes from us originally.

The Reformers, both past and present, point to this issue as the very issue that sparked the Protestant Reformation, what is known as the issue of “infused grace.” One whole chapter in The Truth About New Calvinism addresses this issue. The so-called New Calvinism movement is really a pushback against the acceptance of infused grace among evangelicals. Infused grace (infused righteousness into the believer via the new birth) is NOT Protestant orthodoxy…PERIOD.

The New Calvinists are CORRECT. And my aforementioned book documents in detail how this reclaiming of the original Protestant gospel emerged during our present age. But how did evangelicals become confused and stray away from the original orthodoxy?

This is where we will discuss the historical-grammatical hermeneutic versus the historical-redemptive hermeneutic. While the Protestant Reformation sought to put a Bible in everyone’s hands, the purpose was not for a historical-grammatical interpretation by individuals. The purpose was for a historical-redemptive interpretation. What’s that? Simply stated, it’s using the Bible for one purpose and one purpose only: to increase the “Christian’s” awareness of the depths of their depravity as set against God’s holiness. Much more on this in the next part, but this post is about how evangelicals became confused about this issue.

So, instead of the Bible teaching us how to be more like our Father, according to the Reformers, the real purpose of the Bible is to show us how far apart we are from the Father and thus the gospel is more glorified. In essence, sanctification is about making the gospel bigger, not us. The more we are actually like our Father, the more “God is made smaller and man is made bigger.” God must be glorified by making the cross (the gospel) bigger, not smaller. AND, that’s what the historical-redemptive use of the Bible does. The better, or more like the Father a Christian is, the smaller the gospel becomes. A small cross. 

If you know anything about Puritan theology, you know that a historical-redemptive use of the Bible was firmly intact during the colonial era. So, what happened? The American Revolution happened. The American Revolution was a product of the Enlightenment era, and I am not going to get into the Aristotle versus Plato debate here, but suffice to say that church became a hybrid of two different presuppositions concerning mankind that favored a historical-grammatical use of the Bible. Hence, the church became much more synergistic in its view of sanctification. However, not enough, resulting in Christians living by biblical generalities for the most part. Church “worship” remained redemptive focused (salvation focused) while Christian living took on a more individualistic flavor.

So, now you know why New Calvinists are constantly dissing Americanism; it’s not congruent with a redemptive worldview. And by the way, you can find a detailed historical account of how the church rediscovered its true gospel in The Truth About New Calvinism. Long story short, a Seventh-Day Adventist theologian went to Westminster Seminary and showed the Protestant big dogs why they had their theology wrong, and the New Calvinism movement was born. The book has some shortcomings because I didn’t completely understand the big picture at the time, but it is still the best documented advent of the New Calvinist movement available. And, it’s true as opposed to everything else that is a rewriting and coverup of what really happened. I also need to add that regardless of what you think of author John Immel, what he taught us about world philosophy was efficacious in putting the whole picture together.

Simply stated, the Protestant church became a watered down and confused version of biblical new birth minus any understanding of the new birth’s relationship to the law. Nevertheless, this was still much better than colonial Puritanism by far.

Yet, all that is going on presently is a VERY good thing! The natural progression of justification by faith will force people who really love the truth to take a hard look at what’s really going on. They can save face because most of them have been functioning according to justification by new birth while unwittingly using justification by faith terminology. The road to revival will only take a more definitive exegesis of the Bible.

Who will be the first truth-loving pastor to call out justification by faith for the false gospel that it is and blaze a trail forward for justification by new birth? Sure, you will lose all of your friends, and maybe even your wife, but hey, we will be your friend!

Next, a closer look at the gospel question in all of this, and the new birth’s relationship to the law.

paul

In this series, we will discuss several things that will inevitably lead to wholesale acceptance of homosexuality in the church at large. This will happen because the logical conclusions of authentic church orthodoxy (whether Catholic or Protestant) will open the door for such if not an outright calling for it. In fact, the process is presently in full swing.

This post will address the inevitable outcome from the perspective of Christian identity according to Protestant orthodoxy. The Reformation’s definition of sin is central. According to the Reformers, ALL sin is a violation of the law. That part is biblically correct. The error comes in when you consider what the Reformers totally missed: how the new birth changes one’s relationship to the law.

According to the Reformers, Christians fall short of perfect law-keeping, therefore, they still sin; hence, they are still sinners. Accordingly, Christian sinners still need forgiveness for “present sin.” Virtually every person who attends church will testify to the gospel fact that Jesus died for our past, present, and future sins. Therefore, even though the “redemptive event” only happened once, it must be reapplied to the “Christian’s” present and future law-breaking.

“We are all just sinners saved [continually] by grace [by more salvation].”

“We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day.”

Indeed, and don’t forget, according to the big three, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, ongoing salvation can only be obtained through the church and its “means of grace” [means of more salvation].

So, any violation of the law condemns you to hell. There are no big and little sins. Sin is sin. And, no “Christian” sins more or less than any other Christian. This is because, according to the Reformers, NO person, saved or unsaved, can do, or does do, a good work…ever. All of our so-called “good works” are filthy rags. According to the Reformers, no work done by any person lost or saved can escape God’s condemnation. Luther stated emphatically that the very belief that any person can do a good work is a false gospel in and of itself.

According to the advocates for accepting gays into the church, ALL those entering the church remain unchanged, so, if gays are expected to change before they are allowed into church fellowship, how could you allow anyone else in? After all, stealing, lying, or any other sin will condemn you just as much as homosexuality.

That’s just plain black and white Protestant orthodoxy… period.

What do I mean that “Christians” don’t change according to the Reformers? Saving “faith,” according to the Reformers makes participation in the “race of faith” possible, but that faith doesn’t save you. Faith, as defined by the Reformers, is only an ability to see or perceive the truth of our own evil as set against God’s holiness while unable to do anything about it. Hence, homosexuals only need to confess that they are sinners like everyone else in the world, and have no “righteousness of their own.”

All righteousness remains outside of the believer; this is Martin Luther’s alien righteousness. In contemporary terms, especially during the advent of the present-day Protestant resurgence, “the objective gospel” or “the objective gospel outside of us.” In all of this, any righteousness in the church is substituted by Christ anyway; it just doesn’t make sense to deny anyone fellowship who falls short of God’s glory by any means of violating the law.

In other words, justification by faith necessarily opens the door for gays at the very least, and to deny them entry demands that anyone who has righteousness within them to throw the first stone. Remember, Reformation soteriology even excludes the notion that the righteousness within a believer is a like righteousness of the Father via a literal new birth. When debating James White on this issue, he was able to play the justification/sanctification word shell game until I asked him the following question: “Are Christians righteous as a state of being, yes or no?” Those of the Reformed cloth, viz, authentic Protestants, can no longer play on the assumptions of Churchians if they answer that question truthfully.

So, what we see in the present “inclusion” movement is a quibbling over the context in which gays must be welcomed into the fellowship of the church; the logical conclusions drawn from justification by faith demand it.  And, the Protestant big dogs on the porch know it.

The contrast between this and the true gospel of justification by new birth will be discussed in one of the next parts. In part 3, we will discuss how Churchians became confused about the real Protestant gospel of justification by faith and made it something that it is not resulting in mass confusion and controversy.

paul

Part 1