Here are four ‘posts’ I Tweeted in succession earlier today. This is sort of a miscellanies, and I thought I would post them here as well.
I
Neo-Marxism and Critical Theory is not the key that unlocks the kerygma (Gospel) for the world; Jesus does that. Jesus plundered the frailty and wickedness of a fallen humanity in the asumptio carnis, and out of that poverty made us rich from His riches. It is only the Gospel itself that is the power of God; that is, Jesus Christ. With Christ comes the tools, categories, and emphases to engage with a fallen world from the inside out. It is sheer arrogance and utter theology of glory that leads the theologians and pastors to imagine that they have the mastery to pierce the veil of nature and plunder it. Only God in Christ is capable of such a feat, and the second He did that He was intent on following the Jerusalem road; which eventuated in Him putting ‘nature’ to death and re-creating a new nature, a new humanity. This is the Gospel key for engaging this world system. There are no critical tools to plunder from the old-nature; for that realm has been put to death by the death of Christ. So, we walk by faith not sight; we walk in the reality of the resurrection from whence our tools come to us from the eschatos of God’s life for us in Jesus Christ. Neo-Marxism and Critical Theory is purely Antichrist and the doctrine of demons all the way down.
II
For much (most) of American (Western) Evangelicalism it seems clear to me that her Babylonian Captivity is finally blossoming. Her uncritically examined pietistic roots, and thus turn to the subject anthropology, is finally giving way to what might be called the: being and becoming of a Babylonian Christian. A Babylonian Christian can no longer distinguish between God’s Word and their word; they are the same, in effect. The scandalous nature of the Gospel has become too scandalous for the Babylonian Christian, as such the more genteel culture has been allowed to regulate the way the Babylonian Christian thinks and lives; all in the name of Jesus Christ. The Babylonian Christian is not allowed to speak of hell, or to maintain, along with Jesus, that there are people who are children of the devil. That is hard doctrine, and the Babylonian Christian will not hear it, and definitely not speak it! The Babylonian Christian has a total fear of appearing as a Fundamentalist, out of step with the modern foot. kyrie eleison
III
I didn’t grow up as a Calvinist. My way into Calvinism is circuitous; and it isn’t your grandpa’s Calvinism either. I’m an After Barth (like trad) “Calvinist” or Reformed person. There are real antecedents in the Reformed tradition that pre-date Barth, Torrance et al. which I was introduced to by my former historical theology prof in an iteration known as Affective or Free Grace theology (of the Puritan period). Some of these past emphases find corollary with what Barth and TFT developed latterly; indeed, ironically after Von Harnack. All this to say that my “Reformed faith,” while confessional, in a reified sense, is quite Free church in orientation. I have never in my entire life affirmed a decretal God, or the 5 Points of Calvinism, for example. This may be why I’m so openly constructive in in my appropriation of various theological loci and theologians. My concern is to live and breathe in a theological frame that is slavishly regulated by the centrality and reality of Jesus Christ concentration as the ground and grammar of all that was, is, and will be.
IV
Something I Tweeted: Evangelical Calvinism, of the sort that me and Myk Habets propose in our two books, and what I write about at my blog, is not 5 Point Calvinism and is counter classical Federal/Covenantal theology. People almost always presume that to be Calvinist equals the aforementioned. Indeed, the iteration we propose has roots in the contemporaneous development and history of the so-called classical Calvinism (think Westminster); but what we imbibe operates from a Calvinism focused on God’s triune filial life as the ground and grammar of all theological reflection. We emphasize a God of winsome love and grace, rather than a brute God of law and gratuitous decrees. This is in the history and development of Reformed theology, but most Reformed et al know nothing of this. It is a revisionist history that makes people think Westminster Calvinism was always and the only orthodox form of Reformed theology. Evangelical Calvinism works from what my former historical theology professor identifies as Affective theology in the theology of someone like Richard Sibbes. We work from the more contemporary framing of theologians like Thomas F. Torrance, and his Scottish Theology, along with the Swiss man, Karl Barth and the whole *After Barth* trad that has developed subsequent to him. We represent a genuine stream in Reformed theology that you would be churlish to ignore. You would do well to acknowledge the breadth of the Reformed tradition and not come under the false illusion that Westminster Calvinism is the only thing going.
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Let me reply to a commenter in this thread, whose comments I deleted along with my responses to him. You came here, clearly, to correct me and show the world (or at least the part of it that reads here) your chops. I’d say the most ironic aspect of your engagement is that, as you said, you were focused on critical RACE theory. But the very picture I use, of Adorno, in my post, should have alerted you to what I was referring to in the main; i.e. Critical Theory in its history of ideas. Critical Race Theory is a particular appropriation of that. So, my critique and posture against Critical Theory is just at that point; i.e. contra its genesis at Frankfurt. If you cut out the stump there are never any branches. That’s the point which you utterly missed. I don’t need to spend all my days reading Bell and Delgado et al in order to have a working knowledge of the entailments of Critical Theory in the main. Instead, I can simply go to its progenitors, and think and CRITIQUE from there. At base, theologically, my critique is against NATURAL THEOLOGY and what I will call EPISTEMIC PELAGIANISM. You also failed to grasp that.
Anyway, you didn’t start the so-called dialogue you ostensibly wanted to have in good-faith; that was clear to me from the get-go. Which is why I told you to get lost. 🙂