From the Reformation to the Third Reich: Protestantism’s Impact on Western Culture – Part 7
The following is part seven of a nine-part series.
Taken from John Immel’s fifth session
at the 2014 Conference on Gospel Discernment and Spiritual Tyranny
~ Edited by Andy Young
The Rise of National Socialism and the Assault on Capitalism, Continued…
Capitalism has become a byword in the United States, actually a byword globally. Rarely do you hear anyone speak openly about being a capitalist, and that is because there is an-all out assault to destroy capitalism. And that assault is largely led by the fact that most people have no clue what it is. No one has ever explained it to them. Capitalism is not specifically economics, and most people are only vaguely aware of what economics are.
There is a common mis-conception that there are forms of capitalism and that various governments practice various forms of capitalism. This is actually not true. There is only one form of capitalism. In the 18th century, a group of French economists called the Physiocrats identified that wealth was the product of individual production. John Locke arrived at a similar conclusion – that property was the product of human labor; his reasoning power and his action to organize whatever his substance is.
The Physiocrats said that the nature of production is the source of wealth, and they came up with the term “laissez-faire capitalism”, which literally means “let them do as they please.” They identified correctly that individuals will solve their own problems with their own production and that the government should not be anywhere close to it. This was a profound contrast to the traditional explanation of a nation’s wealth, e.g., it was either the wealth of kings, the country’s gold reserves, the country’s arable land. They were the first to formulate that government should keep their hands off of economic transactions.
This is where the issue of “forms” of capitalism comes into play. Capitalism is like the definition of water. The chemical formula of water is H2O. Now you can add a lot of things to H2O, and you can add some tasty things to H2O. You can add some sugar and some Kool-Aid, and you still have water, but you also have now Kool-Aid. And you can drink it. But if you are in the Jim Jones cult and you add something else, suddenly water becomes poison. And my metaphor is apt with capitalism. As John Locke correctly identified, it is a man’s labor that produces prosperity. A man produces to advance and sustain his life, and that production is his property alone. There is no distinction between the man and that which he produces.
When you start out as a farmer in a basic economy, you have a seed of corn, you plant a seed of corn, and you have to wait 12 weeks for that seed of corn to come up and actually have a harvest. Now if you are only planting one seed and getting one ear of corn out of your cornstalk, you are going to be hungry.
But let us assume you have the ability to produce thousands of seeds of corn and then have a specific harvest. Now you spend all of your time planting that corn and then specifically getting that harvest. But corn is not shoes, and it is not shirts, and it is not beef. So you have to have a means by which to get these other things. The only peaceable way to get those other things is to trade, and the nature of trade means without force.
There is no compulsion in a free economic transaction. The parties are willing, and the parties decide on the values that they want to trade. That’s it. This concept is only possible in a politically free environment. Capitalism is the product of liberty, and this is crucial to understand. It is the individuals who enter into social contracts, and it is the government that is given the limited permission to act. It is only within that environment that people are free to trade. There is no compulsion, and when I say compulsion, I mean force. I mean violence. Just because you want to eat, your necessity is 
not the guy who has food. You do not get food from him by compelling him to give it to you. If you were by yourself out in the middle of nowhere and you were hungry, you would still have to work to feed yourself.
Conversely, just because you would go to a guy who already has the food does not mean he compels you to come to him to get food. The responsibility of your survival, of individual survival, is the responsibility of the individual. The peaceable way to make that happen is to exchange value for value. In a social context, there are many people offering value into this environment, and you have the ability to pick whatever you want or not. The absence of compulsion, the absence of violence, is the central theme.
There are only two kinds of markets: compulsory or free. In a compulsory market, you have no choice about what can be bought or sold. There is no choice about the disposal of property, and there is no recognition of private property. In the United States we do not have a capitalism economy. We have a mixed economy because we have compulsion. We have to ask the government permission to take action to exchange our goods and services. This is not a capitalist economy.
The other kind of market is a free market. This presumes private property. The definition of private property is the right to an action, the right to dispose of that property or the right to retain that property. A free market then is simply two people willingly exchanging values. A free market is never present when there is fraud, which is a misrepresentation of reality, where you have specifically 
deceived the other party about the nature of reality. A free market is never present when there is force or implied force, which is extortion.
So a free market only exists where there is private property and free individuals. Free individuals produce value, and they must be entitled to their private property, and private property by definition means they can dispose of it as they see fit.
Next we have to have a root discussion of money. You have to understand what money is and what money is not. You don’t work to get money. You work to create money. Consider once again the seed planting example. After you harvest your field you now have a big sack of corn. Your neighbor may need corn to feed to his herd of cows so he is willing to trade you a sack corn for one cow. The problem is you may not need a cow, what you need are new tires for your tractor. Obviously, cows are not tires.
In this situation, trade becomes an inefficient means of exchange. In addition, payment in kind is impractical at a distance. What is needed is the creation of a medium of exchange, and this was the emergence of money. You needed a means by which you could represent a bag of corn or a cow or tires for the tractor.
Furthermore, when you are done harvesting your corn you now have tens of thousands of seeds. What you do not eat between the end of harvest and the beginning of next season is your excess. This is work (production) that is now stagnant. It is not doing anything. It is not producing anything. This excess prosperity is called capital. You need that excess prosperity to continue through time which allows you to plan for your next action of prosperity, your work to produce more.
Well, in an agricultural environment the distance on your production is your growing cycles, maybe a year. But the more industrialized you get, the longer your production cycle, your sight line, has to be, so you need larger and larger holds of production held in store. This is the root of capital. It is production held in a static state that you have the ability to then distribute down through time so you can produce your next action.
Well, of course, for lots of reasons, gold and silver became the standard means by which you could actually take a cow and exchange it for corn, and that coin then began to hold value. Over time, a particularly productive person might accumulate lots of coin. That coin represents capital, but that accumulation of capital is not producing anything. At the same time, this productive individual has no reason to give up this capital unless he has some incentive to put his gold at risk. In a capitalist society there is a fundamental need to take capital (static production) and then give it the opportunity to be put into production either by the holders of the capital directly or by other people who want to take the risk. This is the basis for interest or usery.
Now in a free market, in a capitalist culture, you have no guarantees. The government is not there to penalize you, and it is not there to advantage you. If at any point the government enters in and compels or restrains economic action, we are no longer talking about capitalism.
The single greatest expansion of prosperity occurred between the 18th century and the 19th century. And the reason the greatest expansion of prosperity occurred is precisely because John Locke correctly defined the exact requirements for government. The United States of America, and for a very brief time Great Britain, put into practice the logical result which was “laissez-faire” capitalism. This time period is called the Industrial Revolution. Man set out to solve his own problems, and wealth exploded.
There is a common misconception then when someone gains wealth it is because he took it from someone else, as if there is a giant pie, and every time someone takes a piece there is less for everyone else. There is no pool out there somewhere called “wealth” from which people partake. Wealth is created when individuals produce. Therefore when production increases, so does wealth. Man creates his own level of prosperity. He creates it every day he applies his work product.
The assault against liberty and capitalism and the production of wealth started almost immediately. It specifically started with doctrines that were designed to:
- Eradicate reason from man
- Place man back in state control
This two-fold philosophical assault against wealth is what led to the rise of Hegel and then Karl Marx. These men crafted an immoral justification for the destruction of capitalism. But here is the thing. You cannot destroy capitalism without destroying liberty, and you cannot destroy liberty without destroying capitalism. Since capitalism is merely free individuals acting to exchange values willingly, the moment you put the government in charge of either side of the equation, either production or person, you are destroying liberty. This is exactly what happened at the turn of the 19th century.
Even though the First World War did not go well for Germany, it still became an enormously successful industrial nation. They had some totally inept leadership. The Weimar Republic was a joke. In their minds they were still Prussian. They were still sort of under monarchy and tried to throw that off somewhat.
Following WWI the rest of Europe decided to pile on the German people and really make them pay for it. Over time that began to wear on them. With economic collapse right on the horizon, you can begin to understand why the German people consistently discussed the issue of greed. They resented other people’s prosperity, and this is central to the rise of National Socialism.
Here are some excerpts of what became the National Socialist platform, originally published in 1920. This will give you some sense of what they are after. As you read through these, pay close attention to what they advocated, and contrast that with John Locke, and liberty, and the United States.
“12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.”
Now think of what this really means. They are saying sacrifice is an ethical ideal, and because some sacrificed, anybody who prospered from their sacrifice, equating their profit with sacrifice, must necessarily have all of what they created confiscated. This completely eliminates the reality that the government is what went to war. The government is what caused the death and destruction, and in order to fight the war, the government asked businesses to create this production. Now they are blaming profit for their problems when in actual fact it was the government’s fault.
“13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises converted into corporations.”
“14. We demand profit sharing in large enterprises.”
Where have you heard that in modern American culture? The endless determination to denounce big business as if the people who do not work have a moral right to the product of somebody else’s work?
“15. We demand a large-scale development of old age pension schemes.
“16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class, the immediate communalization of large department stores which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen.
“17. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.”
This is the absolute eradication of private property. For people who have been successful, the nature of their success necessarily means that the government should somehow penalize them for their success. The communalization of large department stores. The reason that large department stores appeared is because they became better at delivering the best quality products for the best price to the most people. How many times have you heard people say that Walmart is somehow fundamentally evil? Yet everybody benefits because Walmart gets you the products you are willing to pay for at some of the best prices anywhere. Your life is better, and yet somehow because Walmart cannot be fleeced every five minutes for its money there is something fundamentally evil about that.
“18. We demand land reforms in accord with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes, abolition of ground rents and prevention of all speculation in land.”
This is talking about the seizing of property.
“19. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities…”
Now watch what they define as harm.
“…persons committing base crimes against the people, usurers, profiteers, etc., and are punished by death without regard to religion or race.”
In other words, bankers. Bankers were Jews. Jews had capital. Profiteers, people who made money. Give over your profits or we are going to kill you.
When it came right down to it, they could declare anybody they wanted to be a profiteer, and that is exactly what they did. That was the real focus of the Jewish hatred, centralized in their ultimate covetousness. They wanted prosperity, but in their view the way to get prosperity was to seize it from most people who had created it or to kill them. The presumption was that if somebody else has it, if I do violence to them, I can get it.
“The Party as such stands for positive Christianity, without associating itself with any particular denomination. It fights against the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a permanent revival of our nation can be achieved only from within, on the basis of Public Interest before Private Interest.”
Take note of that: “Public interest before Private interest.” Man is first and foremost the property of the State. You have no private interest. Your only interest is your specific responsibility to the collective. These are the founding ideas that brought forth Adolf Hitler. He is not the cause. He is merely the extension of a logical body of ideas. And at the root, what causes good men to do nothing? Change the definition of good.
I just produced for you from start to finish how they defined good. At the root, they said man is not entitled to his own life. He is not entitled to his work product. He must sacrifice his life on behalf of the collective. They changed the definition of good.
“You didn’t build that.”
That is not your property. The government has to give you permission. You want to understand what actually happened in the rise of National Socialism? You want to understand why the Church was so specifically involved in the rise of socialism? Because the Church fundamentally believed the exact same things. They ultimately believed that man had no business with himself.
The reality is that socialism is not a kinder, gentler economic organization, and I frankly don’t care how you parse it up. I don’t care whether you say it is communism, socialism, or fascism. Ultimately, the end result is about who owns man? As long as the state owns man, there is no liberty. And if there is no liberty, there is no production, and if there is no production, there is no prosperity.
To be continued…
From the Reformation to the Third Reich: Protestantism’s Impact on Western Culture – Part 6
The following is part six of a multi-part series.
Taken from John Immel’s fifth session
at the 2014 Conference on Gospel Discernment and Spiritual Tyranny
~ Edited by Andy Young
The Rise of National Socialism and the Assault on Capitalism
It is my conviction that the anti-Semitism and, of course, the Holocaust directly related to anti-Semitism is what obscures the larger discussion about National Socialism. I know that the eradication of a specific genetic population really hits us where we live. We know that is the one thing we can never escape, and so when there is organized, government-driven hostility towards the genetics of our creation, that’s hard to get out of your head. But you must also remember the National Socialists wiped out almost an equal number of people who were not Jews. They wiped out pretty much anybody who they decided stood in their way of whatever their statist ambitions were.
Let us begin with the champion of all Germans, Martin Luther. Little-known to people who do not pay any attention, Luther wrote a book entitled, On the Jews and Their Lies. I want to give you a few excerpts out of the introduction.
“I had made up my mind to write no more about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that those miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book so that I might be found among those who oppose such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them…
“We propose to discuss their arguments and boast and prove convincingly before God and the world, not before Jews for, as already said, they would accept this neither from Moses nor from the Messiah himself… To this end, we quote Moses in Genesis 17… When God instituted circumcision, he said, among other things, ‘Any uncircumcised male shall be cut off from his people.’ [Genesis 17:14 ]”
Now I want you to notice Luther’s stated purpose. “We propose to discuss their arguments and boast and prove convincingly before God and the world…” He is trying to make a specific intellectual rebuttal. This is a theological treatise, and this is important. There is a common myth, one of many around us, that Luther was somehow just misled, and these are just some vague ramblings. No. This is just as important in Luther’s mind as the Heidelberg Disputation. This is just as central to Lutheran thought as the rest of his doctrinal works.
As I said, it is often stated in his defense that Luther was a victim of long-held prejudices. He was merely reacting out of his horrible biases, that it is the unfortunate writing of an ignorant soul, that he can’t really be held responsible for the actions of people 400 years in the future. I contend this is all nonsense. Luther wrote this when he was 60, and this is after a long-considered development.
Notice in his first comment he said, “I made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them.” He had a long history of dealing with the Jewish people in his mind. So he writes this at last because he ultimately believes he must organize a defense for Christianity against the Jews. So those people who actually insist that Luther is somehow not culpable here are people who are trying to wipe out reality and rewrite history.
And really, it will take you about an hour and a half to two hours to wade through, but on its face, On the Jews and Their Lies is a theological treatise with the same intentions as Bondage of the Will and the Heidelberg Disputation. The notion that he should not be responsible for the actions of people 400 years later is nonsense. The fact of the matter is that everybody expects people to conform and to act according to Luther in theology. This is a fundamental expectation. You cannot pick and choose. You cannot tell me his doctrine is what everybody should do because of his orthodoxy and then in turn tell me that something he wrote with just as much theological impact is somehow irrelevant to people’s actions. Luther was a definer of his time. He was not a victim of his time. Luther is the intellectual plumb line for all things orthodoxy, and it is expected that people conform, and it is nonsense to assume that he should not be directly accountable.
He goes on to say,
“Shame on you, you damned Jews, that you dare to apply this earnest, glorious, comforting word of God so despicably on your mortal greedy belly and that you are not ashamed to display your greed so openly. You are not worthy of looking at the outside of the Bible, much less of reading it. You should read only the Bible that is found under the sow’s tail, and eat and drink the letters that drop from there.”
Do I really have to unscramble that? This is the kind of language you would find in an elementary school. Gooey poop and pee, really? Now, I didn’t say it was a great theological treatise, and I didn’t say he was a whiz kid of theological defense. I’m only telling you he intends this to be held this way. But I do want to notice the theme that gets lost among the distraction, and that is Luther’s preoccupation with the perception of Jewish “greed”. In this short paragraph there are two references to it; “greedy belly” and “that you display your greed so openly.” Keep that in mind as you consider this next quote.
“They curse us goyim (literally means ‘nations’ but is used as a pejorative for all non-Jews). In their synagogues and in their prayers, they wish us every misfortune. They rob us of our money and goods through their usury, and they play on us every wicked trick they can. And the worst of it is that they still claim to have done right and well, that is, to have done God a service. And they teach the doing of such things. No pagan ever acted thus. In fact, no one acts thus except the devil himself, or whomever he possesses, as he has possessed the Jews.”
Beyond the entirely paranoid ramblings up here, again what is the theme? What is he really criticizing the Jews for? Their money, their wealth, their prosperity. He calls it greed. That’s designed to condemn it. But what he’s really upset about is that they have prosperity and he does not. Notice the theme of this next quote.
“So we, the German Christians, are even at fault in not avenging all the innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem. We, German Christians, are at fault for not slaying them. Rather, we allow them to live freely in our midst despite their murdering, cursing, blaspheming, lying and defaming. We protect and shield their synagogues, houses, life, and property. In this way we make them lazy and secure and encourage them to fleece us bodily of our money and goods, as well as to mock and deride us, with a view to finally overcoming us, killing us all for such great sin and robbing us all of our property. Now tell me whether they do not have every reason to be the enemies of us accursed Goyim, to curse us and to strive for our final complete and eternal ruin.”
Now I’ve spent a little bit of time searching through history, and I cannot remember any Jewish incursion to oppress the German people. I can think of no place in history where the Jews were pillaging and plundering their way to wealth. I’m being a little facetious here, but the point is I do not know where Luther gets all this. But I do want you to notice again the fundamental theme. Luther thinks that Jewish wealth and greed is a problem. With this in mind, it makes abundant sense why Adolf Hitler could say this:
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
This is from page 65 in my copy of Mein Kampf. Now, it is important to note that even in its original inception, no one objected to Hitler’s thoughts published in Mein Kampf. No one in the Christian Church thought this was a strange thing to say. There was no appreciable theological objection to Hitler equating defending himself against the Jews with being the work of the Lord and it necessarily being a Christian ideal. So what you are actually seeing here, as we roll from Luther to 
Hitler, is that a theologically-founded anti-Semitism was in fact considered Christian orthodoxy for most of Church history. The Christian orthodox position is what shaped how the Germans created their legislation, and this is well-documented.
Here is a guy by the name of Kirche Bischof (which is German for “church bishop”). He makes this comment in June 1933:
“If anyone can lay claim to God’s help, then it is Hitler, for without God’s benevolent, fatherly hand, without his blessing, the nation would not be where it stands today. It is an unbelievable miracle that God has bestowed on our people,”
The “unbelievable miracle” being Adolf Hitler.
Germany’s population was roughly 65 million people in 1930. I want you to notice this next quote from a pastor by the name of Mathias K. This was an interview after the war, and I want you to notice how he describes his mindset and the mindset of the German people.
“Part of my childhood memories is how the cattle were driven past my parents’ home to the cattle market. Those who had control of the cattle were the Jews. In every village it was the Jews who had the trade and traffic in their hands, and they had the cattle business, the grain train, and they had the general store where you could buy everything. The farmers had simply become slaves of the Jews, and they never got anywhere. The Jewish question ate away at those in the countryside.
“All that hatred sat deeply within the people. Strong anti-Semitic concerns were already there. It’s not at all the case that Herr Goebbels invented all of it. Rather the entire ideology and also the rhetoric were there. The Nazis had only to take it and carry it to its conclusion.
“So one can’t overlook the fact that when 1933 came and there were not a few good Christians who had no objection at all if the Jews got pushed back a bit. They didn’t start with concentration camps; it began with propaganda. But people said, ‘Oh, the cheeky Jews, let them get what is coming to them.’”
Again, I want you to notice the theme. The Lutherans equated their poverty with Jewish prosperity. They specifically resented Jewish prosperity. Jew meant prosperous. It meant upper class. This is the root of their hatred.
Here is another quote from a guy by the name of Erich Koch. He was the president of the provincial Protestant Church – actually, the president of the provincial Protestant Church synod, which means he was actually pretty important. I’m trying to think of an American variation, maybe like being the head of the Moral Majority or the Southern Baptist Convention. There will be somebody of that stature within the church.
“Externally, much has changed. But in our church the world of Christ according to the doctrine of Luther remains…Righteousness, truth and love should guide us, but not only at the level of charity but also in the joyful and active struggles for our Protestant confession of faith.”
He also said, and this is after the war in court records,
“I held the view that the Nazi idea had to develop from basic Prussian Protestant attitude and from Luther’s unfinished reformation.”
Now here’s the punch line. Erich Koch ultimately decides to resign his position as president of the synod, and he became one of the leading men to kill thousands of Jews and political dissidents, and he helped to enslave the remaining Slavic population.
This is the cover from a pamphlet called “The Cross and the Swastika.” It was created by a small church group in some Prussian province by Gerhard Hahn, president of the provincial church council. Here’s what he said:
“The cross of Christ and the swastika do not need to oppose each other. They must not do so, but rather they could and should stand together. One should not dominate the other, but rather each should maintain its own meaning and significance.
“The cross of Christ points towards heaven and admonishes us. Remember that you are Christian people carried by the eternal love of the heavenly Father, free through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, sanctified by the power of God’s Spirit.
“The swastika, however, points to the world as a divine creation and admonishes us. Remember that you are German, born in German territory to parents of German blood, filled with the German spirit and essence formed according to German nature.”
He goes on to say later in the pamphlet:
“The cross of Christ and the swastika must have a positive relationship!
“The church must affirm without reservation Adolf Hitler’s total state, the last bulwark against the Satan of Bolshevism. It should not be forgotten that had it not been for Hitler, we would have long since sunk into Bolshevism and probably would no longer have churches and ministers.
“The church must affirm without reservation the Fuhrer of the National Socialists, Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of the German Reich. He expects the church to help build the Third Reich… It is the task of the Church to create and provide this foundation.”
There is no question in the mind of the Evangelical Lutheran Church that there is a synonymous action. The National Socialists and the church are only divisions in name. They are not divisions in fact. And this is very important for me to point out. The presumption is that somehow the Church was set apart and all this was done to them. This is historical error of the first order. And when I say Evangelical Lutheran Church, if you look at the Lutheran Church here in the United States, we are talking about a denomination with virtually no difference in doctrinal distinctions. The rudiments of Lutheran orthodoxy then are the rudiments of Lutheran orthodoxy today.
So let us ask the question. What causes this kind of devotion? Let us briefly explore the idea that Christians are led astray. There are three variations of this: Hitler was possessed. It was the devil. It was satanic delusion. I have heard this objection a few times, and this is one of those objections that – I’ll be blunt – you shouldn’t utter this in public. And here’s why. If there are Christians that would like to advance this excuse, I’m going to suggest that you should be quiet. You must understand what you’re really saying.
Of the 65 million people in the Germany, 40 million people named themselves “Lutheran.” So if Christians can be deceived by the devil on so massive a scale, Christians should be banned from all political action because their judgment is nonexistent. If you are going to blame this on the devil, delusion, mass delusion, mass hysteria, and say it is confined specifically to Lutheran Christians, then the logical assumption is that Lutheran Christians have no business around anything important.
Blaming mass action on demonic forces makes the governing force of man’s mind malevolent ghosts. If the devil can corrupt Christian epistemology, then the solution is to make sure Christians are kept far away from all the important decisions. There should be no Christian in the White House near the atomic nuclear button. And I guarantee you, if you want to offer this up, and you want to continue to advocate this as something that should be genuinely accepted in public, and you want to reasonably make this case, what will happen by offering this argument in public is going to guarantee that eventually legislation will be passed to prevent Christianity from being part of any public discussion.
Now here’s a variation on the same argument. I call it a kind of “Stephen Spielberg” defense. Remember in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, there was the maniacal Nazi who wanted to find Ark of the Covenant because he wanted to gain absolute power. Here, it was the idea that the Nazis led the world astray because Hitler was obsessed with cultic doctrines. So, if Hitler had not had an obsession with cultic doctrines and held to real Christian doctrines, the Nazis would not have done these things. Well, first of all, this still means that Christians were incompetent to grasp the truth. In other words, they saw what was happening, they heard what Adolf Hitler said, and they still could not grasp what the man was saying. This, of course, still speaks to Christian epistemological incompetence.
But I want to make a secondary point, and it has to do with the source of moral action. I know that this gets to people because, as of right now, most Christians are under the expectation that the last best hope for human morality is Christianity. The Neo-Calvinist movement has set themselves up as the source of this last great hope. Without them, the United States is doomed to total moral chaos, and the reason they say this is because the Bible says thou shalt not whatever. That the Bible is the actual source of morality. And I know why people say that, but what you are really saying is that the source of morality is located in a metaphysical otherworld.
Now here’s the problem. The moment you open the door to the source of morality being in an otherworld, you have severed morality from this earth, and you have no control of what walks back through the door that leads to this otherworld. If the Christian God is the source of morality, then why can it not be the Muslim god or the Hindu god? If morality is merely the product of a transcendent religious world, then the entire spectrum of the transcendent religious world is available. But by simply repeating the mantra of “The Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says,” Christians think that they are going to somehow gain traction.
The easiest way to defeat this argument is to say, “So what?” It is ultimately no argument, and at its root, it ultimately severs man from morality. If there is no reason to be moral, then man has no means to be moral. This is exactly historic Calvinist teaching, that because there is this transcendent world, this heavenly realm, and man is metaphysically corrupt, he cannot do good anyhow.
So at the end of the day, the Christian doctrine ultimately condemns man to the exact same place as antinomianism does. Antinomianism says that there are no laws man is morally obligated to keep. The doctrine of pervasive depravity is effectively the same thing. The nature of man’s depravity is so vast he cannot keep the law. He cannot be moral. We are in exactly the same place. Ostensibly, Christianity is not advancing morality, and we see the prime example in National Socialist Germany.
Next I would like to actually address the assumption that the people just did not know what Hitler and the Nazis were going to do. Let me first reiterate that there really was no practical distinction between the Church and the National Socialist Party. It does not matter whether Hitler or Goebbels or any of the rest of those guys actually had a statement of orthodoxy in and of themselves. That is irrelevant. The point is that whatever the people heard from the leadership, they saw no conflict within their Christianity. This is crucial.
In 1925, the social malcontent, out-of-work painter, and a ham-fisted scribbler wrote a book about his struggles while cooling his heels in the clink. The miles and miles of rambling prose revealed a mind filled with logical conundrums, philosophical plagiarism, and dead-end German phrases. The book correctly received a cool reception, and from the few that waded through the tedious, often bellicose rants, the “Fuhrer of the Beer Hall Putsch” was a joke rat in an Austrian-Jewish punch line.
The book, of course, was Mein Kampf, and its author was Adolf Hitler. The book was not well-written. Having read it myself, I can tell you it is not compelling. On occasion you’ll run across something that is kind of cool. Since I do not speak German I cannot testify to this first-hand, but some commentators have observed that there are some sections of it in German they cannot translate because it makes no sense even in German, so it has no ability to be translated into any other language.
There are many historically inaccurate details. Hitler was fond of quoting contemporary thinkers but often quotes them inaccurately or draws erroneous conclusions. He is given to long passages that are devoid of reality. There are quite a few of those. Despite all these shortcomings, however, it sold roughly 240,000 copies by 1933, about the time he was voted chancellor.
After he was elected chancellor, Mein Kampf was a wedding gift to every newlywed couple and every soldier. By 1942, 10 million copies were in print, available to a total population of people in excess of 65 million. His ideas were not a secret. There is no way anyone could have honestly said, “I don’t know what this man is about.” He was not a master communicator. He did not have some massive Svengali-like hypnosis or Criss Angel ability to compel you to think things. I read the book, and never once was I compelled to utter, “Sieg heil,” not once.
The error behind assuming that it was Hitler’s force of personality that did this leads people to ignore the ideology. It leads people to equate tyranny with the flamboyant and the charismatic. Political action is not sustained by personality. It is always ideology. Ideology is philosophy turned into political action. There was nothing unclear about Hitler’s program.
Adolf was a shrewd judge of political actions and adversaries. He told everyone what he thought and how the political program should progress. He detailed re-armament in spite of the Treaty of Versailles, territorial expansion in spite of the Treaty of Versailles, the abolition of democracy, which at that time would have been the Weimar Republic, and a commitment to socialism.
He believed in the German state. He believed that the people born of the German blood were property of the German State. He believed in eugenics and the elimination of the Jewish threat. Now mind you, the bulk of Germany believed in eugenics, but the specific application to Jews had not manifested yet. The Final Solution hung out there, but no one ever really objected.
He detailed his contempt for the Catholic Church, because he knew German Catholics were not German first. He knew they were Catholics first, and since he knew he could never influence Rome, he knew he could never dominate them. Since he could never dominate Rome, he knew he would never have access to their minds.
But for all of its failure, what Mein Kampf revealed was threefold:
- It was a crystal clear picture. It was a detailed blueprint for National Socialism.
- It showed a man who had an amazing capacity to size up his political adversaries and allies.
- Above all, it showed that he was a man who believed it was moral to build the first and exploit the second with impunity.
And this is the bottom line. The political ideal, the social ideal, the government ideal was no secret. It was available for anyone paying attention. And the people did pay attention, and they agreed. And that is the point. The people of Germany voted to put Hitler in power. And that’s because they saw no fundamental distinction between what they believed as Christians and his specific policies.
There was no mass delusion. There were no demonic forces. There was no fiendishly clever super secret plot. The German people willingly, openly, purposely took action in accord with National Socialism. From the least to the greatest, they voted for a man who pledged lies in service to despotism, and the Lutheran Church insisted that Hitler was God’s man to protect the people.
So what was the appeal of the National Socialist Party? Before I can explain the answer to that question, I have to lay one more foundation. I have to talk to you about a dirty word in America. I have to talk to you about capitalism. But that will be in the next article.
To be continued…
Is America a Christian Nation? Dissecting the Worldview
Originally aired January 31, 2015
Tonight we are discussing the question, “Is America a Christian nation?” Is America a Christian nation? The fact that the question is trending really should alarm us. The fact that the very question is trending is an open display of the average Christian’s errant view of history and really reality itself. Because of Protestant tradition, most Christians have a completely bogus worldview. Nevertheless, we will answer the question biblically tonight. We will present a truly biblical worldview. We’re not going to spend a lot of time on that. I’m going to present what I think is the biblical worldview at the end of the presentation reading from Romans Chapter [UNINTELLIGIBLE 0:03:35]. Really another way you could ask it is, “How should true Christians process reality itself?”
Well, where to start? First, let’s start with defining what a Christian is. Christian is one of those generic words that we kind of throw around, right? We are going to stop here and ask why that is. Why do we just kind of – are able to throw around these words like Christian, Gospel and so on and so forth? And we need to look at that because it speaks hugely to the point at hand here. How can we have this conversation without a definitive understanding of what the word Christian means? This question is discussed on radio and other venues, that is, the question of “Are we a Christian nation?” America, that is. The question is discussed on radio and other venues comfortably while crossing every line between everything and the kitchen sink that calls itself Christian, and nobody blinks. How can this happen? Well, here’s how. Because all stripes under the nomenclature of Christian define the word this way. You ready? Not secular. That’s the definition of Christianity, not secular.
So during the day when Christian soccer moms are running the home base and listening to this discussion on the radio via the Janet Mefferd Show or whatever, it can be Catholic, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, Unitarian or whatever. To all of them, the word Christian in this context means the same thing: not secular. Yes. While this subject is being discussed, all theological differences can be put away because all of these parties have one thing in common. They believe in God in one way or the other. For the time being, they are united against the greater evil, the secular, the big S, those who don’t believe in God. And as we know, the godless have been out to destroy the godly since the beginning of time, us against them. Yes, as we think, the primary nemesis of the Church has been all of those secular people who don’t believe in God. And on the other hand, you could also say their definition of secular are those who don’t believe in God. Usually, more times than not, it’s just equated with atheism. Secular equals atheism.
This so not human history. Do this. Find one account in human history where a secular government persecuted religion. Well, your answer is probably going to be, “Well, Marxism.” But even if that’s true, even if you could use Marxism as an example, Marxism is a parenthetical historical anomaly really. But let’s look at the notion. Marxism was/is an equal opportunity persecutor when it gets right down to it, that is merely intolerant of different views on how to achieve its utopia. I think it’s fair to say for the most part Marxism doesn’t care what you believe. It primarily believes whether or not you give them any trouble or stand in their way. Those who die under its tyranny usually do so as a result of its policies, not a targeted persecution. Its targeted persecution is usually against dissenters. Even if you find fault with my assessment, remember Marxism is primarily a 19th and 20th century phenomenon. And, by the way, secular governments in general are really a post-American Revolution phenomenon. Before that, church states were the norm, and by church, which is a very handy word with a 5th-century etymology, we mean organized religion. Organized church states were always the norm by and large before the American Revolution, and again, really, the whole secular government thing is kind of a post American Revolution phenomenon.
Okay. So here at TANC, which sponsors this radio show, we are big on defining words because words mean things. “Church” is defined as a religious institution with an authority structure. By and large, all international violence in human history is predicated by religious intolerance. This is a violence that will not even tolerate those who keep their mouths shut and look the other way. This is a violence that goes door to door demanding that you agree with them. This is an intolerance that one day announces that your race has been proclaimed anathema. Have a nice day. Please note the first step kind of sounds like this: Don’t you want a government ruled by godly principles? Of course, you do. Christian good, secular bad. Those who believe in God, good. Those who don’t believe in God, bad. Second step, once they get into power using that ploy, hark! Not all who claim God really believe in God. Then the secular boogeyman that never existed in the first place is now the pseudo-Christian. Let the slaughter begin. That’s history, period. This is the way it always happens.
So this is what we really are asking when we ask if America was founded on Christian principles. Was America founded on belief in God? Was belief in God principal in which the nation was supposed to function? After all, don’t we have money with “In God we trust” printed on it? We have defined what is really behind the trending conversation. I’m going to pause and give a short answer to the question, really longer than I thought it would be, and then develop the first notion. Really, I’m going to first develop more the second notion, that is, what’s behind the trend? I’m going to address the second notion first, actually. What is the true historic answer to the question? Then I’m going to conclude with what a true biblical worldview should be. (more…)
Is America a Christian Nation? Dissecting the Worldview
Originally aired January 31, 2015
Tonight we are discussing the question, “Is America a Christian nation?” Is America a Christian nation? The fact that the question is trending really should alarm us. The fact that the very question is trending is an open display of the average Christian’s errant view of history and really reality itself. Because of Protestant tradition, most Christians have a completely bogus worldview. Nevertheless, we will answer the question biblically tonight. We will present a truly biblical worldview. We’re not going to spend a lot of time on that. I’m going to present what I think is the biblical worldview at the end of the presentation reading from Romans Chapter [UNINTELLIGIBLE 0:03:35]. Really another way you could ask it is, “How should true Christians process reality itself?”
Well, where to start? First, let’s start with defining what a Christian is. Christian is one of those generic words that we kind of throw around, right? We are going to stop here and ask why that is. Why do we just kind of – are able to throw around these words like Christian, Gospel and so on and so forth? And we need to look at that because it speaks hugely to the point at hand here. How can we have this conversation without a definitive understanding of what the word Christian means? This question is discussed on radio and other venues, that is, the question of “Are we a Christian nation?” America, that is. The question is discussed on radio and other venues comfortably while crossing every line between everything and the kitchen sink that calls itself Christian, and nobody blinks. How can this happen? Well, here’s how. Because all stripes under the nomenclature of Christian define the word this way. You ready? Not secular. That’s the definition of Christianity, not secular.
So during the day when Christian soccer moms are running the home base and listening to this discussion on the radio via the Janet Mefferd Show or whatever, it can be Catholic, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, Unitarian or whatever. To all of them, the word Christian in this context means the same thing: not secular. Yes. While this subject is being discussed, all theological differences can be put away because all of these parties have one thing in common. They believe in God in one way or the other. For the time being, they are united against the greater evil, the secular, the big S, those who don’t believe in God. And as we know, the godless have been out to destroy the godly since the beginning of time, us against them. Yes, as we think, the primary nemesis of the Church has been all of those secular people who don’t believe in God. And on the other hand, you could also say their definition of secular are those who don’t believe in God. Usually, more times than not, it’s just equated with atheism. Secular equals atheism.
This so not human history. Do this. Find one account in human history where a secular government persecuted religion. Well, your answer is probably going to be, “Well, Marxism.” But even if that’s true, even if you could use Marxism as an example, Marxism is a parenthetical historical anomaly really. But let’s look at the notion. Marxism was/is an equal opportunity persecutor when it gets right down to it, that is merely intolerant of different views on how to achieve its utopia. I think it’s fair to say for the most part Marxism doesn’t care what you believe. It primarily believes whether or not you give them any trouble or stand in their way. Those who die under its tyranny usually do so as a result of its policies, not a targeted persecution. Its targeted persecution is usually against dissenters. Even if you find fault with my assessment, remember Marxism is primarily a 19th and 20th century phenomenon. And, by the way, secular governments in general are really a post-American Revolution phenomenon. Before that, church states were the norm, and by church, which is a very handy word with a 5th-century etymology, we mean organized religion. Organized church states were always the norm by and large before the American Revolution, and again, really, the whole secular government thing is kind of a post American Revolution phenomenon.
Okay. So here at TANC, which sponsors this radio show, we are big on defining words because words mean things. “Church” is defined as a religious institution with an authority structure. By and large, all international violence in human history is predicated by religious intolerance. This is a violence that will not even tolerate those who keep their mouths shut and look the other way. This is a violence that goes door to door demanding that you agree with them. This is an intolerance that one day announces that your race has been proclaimed anathema. Have a nice day. Please note the first step kind of sounds like this: Don’t you want a government ruled by godly principles? Of course, you do. Christian good, secular bad. Those who believe in God, good. Those who don’t believe in God, bad. Second step, once they get into power using that ploy, hark! Not all who claim God really believe in God. Then the secular boogeyman that never existed in the first place is now the pseudo-Christian. Let the slaughter begin. That’s history, period. This is the way it always happens.
So this is what we really are asking when we ask if America was founded on Christian principles. Was America founded on belief in God? Was belief in God principal in which the nation was supposed to function? After all, don’t we have money with “In God we trust” printed on it? We have defined what is really behind the trending conversation. I’m going to pause and give a short answer to the question, really longer than I thought it would be, and then develop the first notion. Really, I’m going to first develop more the second notion, that is, what’s behind the trend? I’m going to address the second notion first, actually. What is the true historic answer to the question? Then I’m going to conclude with what a true biblical worldview should be. (more…)
Are Atheists Calvinist at Heart?
Do I have anything in common with atheists? Sure, they believe in reason. This means I will often have more in common with them than Protestants. The anti-reason sentiment of the Reformers is well documented and therefore won’t be cudgeled here, but the Protestant mentality of “faith over reason” has a long and horrific history. For example, Rudolf Hess once lectured the German people to “not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!” The rest was history as the German people blindly followed Hitler into the abyss.
Biblical faith is always based on reason, and calls on the individual to “come and let us reason together saith the Lord.” Every bogus religion that has ever hijacked Christianity is based on elitist gnosis that demands a following by faith alone in what they say is truth. We call that “orthodoxy.”
This reality always makes me curious about how atheists perceive religion; hence, a referral on Twitter regarding the book Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith by Dr. Richard Carrier caught my attention. Prior to downloading the book to my Kindle, I took note of Amazon’s summary of the theses:
Dr. Richard Carrier, world renowned philosopher and historian, explains the four reasons he does not accept the Christian religion, describing four facts of the world that, had they been different, he would believe. He is brief, clear, and down to earth, covering the whole topic in under ninety pages of easy-to-read explanation. Those four reasons are God’s silence, God’s inaction, the lack of evidence, and the way the universe looks exactly like a godless universe would, and not at all like a Christian universe would, even down to its very structure. Dr. Carrier addresses all the usual replies to these claims, in ways you might not have heard before, relying on his wide experience in debating and studying these issues all over the world for more than fifteen years. A perfect book to introduce yourself, or your friends, to why fewer educated people are embracing Christianity than ever before. Ideal for handing out to door-to-door missionaries.
Wait a minute. At least initially, it would seem that Carrier has a problem with the idea that God did not predetermine reality in a certain way. God does not speak to every thought we have lest we would have to figure something out on our own, doesn’t intervene in every bad situation, and allows ungodliness; i.e., allows man to act on his own desires whether good or evil. Therefore, because God does not predetermine goodness, there must not be a God.
Does this not assume that a predeterminist God is the definition of God?
I have written before that this is the unfortunate inclination of mankind; a bent towards determinism. If God creates man with freewill, he has every right to expect man to choose what’s right. If man has no choice, that’s determinism by default.
I will read the book, but these are my initial thoughts based on the summary. It would seem that some kind of determinism by God is expected as a valid definition of God. Either God ordered what is here because determinism defines God, or there isn’t a God because he wouldn’t have predetermined evil.
Whether atheist or Calvinist, it would seem that determinism is the starting point for interpreting reality.
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Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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