Category Archives: Ethics

The Original Sin of Sex in Augustine, Ambrose, and Lombard

Posted on by

It is no secret, for those whom it is no secret, that Augustine believed that original sin was a genetic material stuff that was propagated in and among the human mass through the lust of sexual intercourse. Indeed, some of this, no doubt, was developed in the context of his Manichean background; but also, Augustine believed that the passions themselves were ultimately representative of the very base of sin, or what he identified as concupiscence (self-love). He wasn’t the only one who believed this, there were many others, following, like Ambrose, and later Peter Lombard, who affirmed the same in regard to the relationship between post-fall sexual relationships and the propagation of original sin sired in that act. Here is Lombard in his Sentences giving his own view on this, followed by prooftexts from both Ambrose and Augustine.

Chapter 4 (209)

HE SHOWS THE CAUSE OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE FLESH, FROM WHICH SIN OCCURS IN THE SOUL. For the flesh became corrupt in Adam through sin. Before sin, a man and a woman could join together without the incentive of lust and the burning of concupiscence, and there was a marriage bed without stain; but after sin, there cannot be carnal joining without lustful concupiscence, which is always a flaw, and even a fault, unless it is excused by the goods of marriage. And so it is in concupiscence and lust that the flesh is conceived which is to be formed into the body of the offspring. And so the flesh itself, which is conceived in vicious concupiscence, is polluted and corrupted. From contact with such flesh, the soul, as it is infused, derives the stain by which it is polluted and becomes guilty, that is, the vice of concupiscence, which is original sin.

  1. THAT BECAUSE OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE FLESH, WHICH IS THE CAUSE OF SIN, SIN IS SAID TO BE IN THE FLESH. And that is why sin is said to be in the flesh. And so the flesh which is sown in the concupiscence of lust has neither guilt nor the action of guilt, but its cause. Therefore, in that which is sown, there is corruption; in that which is born by concupiscence, there is vice.
  2. Hence Ambrose, on the words of the Apostle, says as follows: “How does sin live in the flesh, since it is not a substance, but a privation of the good? In this way: the body of the first man was corrupted through sin, and that corruption remains in the body through the nature of the offense, preserving the force of the divine sentence promulgated against Adam, by association with whom the soul is stained by sin. And so it is because the cause of the deed remains that sin is said to live in the flesh.” This is the law of the flesh.—The same: “Sin does not live in the spirit, but in the flesh, because the cause of sin is from the flesh, not from the soul; because the flesh is, from its origin, of the flesh of sin, and through its transmission all flesh becomes [flesh] of sin.” But the soul is not transmitted and so it does not have the cause of sin in it.
  3. Augustine too, in a sermon On the Words of the Apostle, shows that the soul contracts sin from the flesh; he says: “The vice of concupiscence is what the soul contracted, but from the flesh. For human nature was not first established with vice by God’s work, but it was wounded by vice coming from the choice of the will of the first humans,” so that there is not good in the flesh, but vice, by which the soul is corrupted.[1]

A truly unbiblical development and accretion, but one that Augustine, and those following, felt needed to be pressed in order to keep the heretical teachings of Pelagius, and the Pelagians at bay. This is what happens when an imbalance is presented into the mix of theological development, particularly as that obtains in the heat of polemical relationships. Not to mention, by time the Augustinian and Pelagius disputation occurred, theological matters had also become a deeply political aggression.

Clearly, from Scripture, the Apostle encourages sexual intercourse (not to mention the epistle to the Hebrews) as a duty, and yet a pleasure, to be had in the marriage bond between a man and a woman.

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. 3 The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 But this I say by way of concession, not of command. 7 Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that.[2]

Not simply as an act for reproduction, as Augustine would press. But indeed, as an act of undefiled and pure intimacy; i.e., the two become one in the ‘flesh’ in the communal bond of the love of the Holy Spirit. Latterly, Bernard of Clairvaux, Martin Luther, Puritans like Richard Sibbes et al. would pick up on what came to be called ‘Marriage Mysticism,’ in regard to the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church. In other words, the intimacy envisaged by the act of sexual penetration in the bonds of holy matrimony were so (and are so) sanctified, that it could be the symbol of the intimacy that Christ and His Bride have within the bond of God’s Holy Life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (whose life itself is known to be perichoretic and interpenetrative in a Subject-in-Being fellowshipping relationship) (see Eph. 5:18ff). All of this to underscore that sex within marriage coram Deo is a peak event in the human experience in regard to attesting to the very triune life of God itself; inclusive of God’s life with us (Immanuel) and in us in Christ.

Augustine, Ambrose, Lombard et al. couldn’t get everything right.

[1] Peter Lombard, The Sentences: Book 2 On Creation: Distinction XXXI, trans. by Giulio Silano (Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), 154–55.

[2] I Corinthians 7:1–7, NASB95.

A Brief Sketch on a Theology of Pets and Animals

Posted on by

Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” –Jonah 4:11

Animals have become too humanized. They deserve respect, care, and love, indeed. They serve as companions, and as a source of comfort and release (and sometimes terror). But at the end of the day, they aren’t human beings. They have their rightful place in an “order of being,” but that order cannot (should not) supplant the value of a human being vis a vis God. I’m not suggesting that a family pet doesn’t become “part of the family,” they often do. But I am asserting that animals are inherently worth less than human beings. But as with everything else, sin disorders the way we operate as fallen beings. As such we ascribe and project value upon things, that in their proper order before God, don’t deserve that value, per se. Family pets, particularly dogs and cats, have a certain stability and unconditional love type of loyalty for their owners. And in this sense, they can offer things to people that make them seem more valuable than what humans can offer. But by implication, this ends up dehumanizing humans whilst humanizing pets into an image that we declare valuable; indeed, towards meeting our perceived needs and desires.

Understand, I’m only making my observations on a relative continuum. I’m not targeting folks who have pets, and love their pets as part of the family. I’m just targeting an imbalance that has crept into the broader cultural psychology, relative to an imbalance that has most certainly obtained, in regard to the valuation of animals juxtaposed with the valuation of other human beings. That is to say, more biblically: that humans are created and recreated in the image of God, who is the image of Christ for us. As long as we keep this theological order in mind, we will approach animals/pets with the right type of contextual order that God has declared both good and then VERY good. In our profane society we often see people replacing having babies with, as the alternative, having pets; as if there is a one-for-one correspondence between the two. All I’m saying with my post here, is that biblically, this ultimately is not the case.

God is Not on a Binary or even Trinary: With Reference to Christianity and Sexuality

Posted on by

It’s unfortunate that, on a binary, either you are a “conservative” and thus believe that God relates to humanity as Law prior to Love; or that you are a “progressive,” and thus that God only relates to humanity as Love (which entails, that God stands with the other, so-called, in a purely affirming way—in this instance I’m thinking of so-called Gay Christianity and LGBTQ in general).

And yet it is possible, and I believe, required, to think God as triune Love, and yet a God of holiness who contradicts all of our righteousnesses; whether that be left, right, or in between somewhere. God’s life and act of love doesn’t allow us to stay where He finds us—tossed off into the brambles of the ditch in our mother’s afterbirth—but He picks us up, cleans us up, in His holiness, and sets us next to Him, as the Bride of His Son. He calls us to deny whatever we are predisposed to—that is, whatever base desires that reign prevalent in our lives, whatever those might be—and to live a life in participation with His, through union with Christ. A life that continuously burns away what we take to be okay and good and righteous, and instead clothes us with His robes of righteousness, wherein freedom for Him, and thus others abounds.

I am one of those who sees God as inherently loving and gracious. But at the same time believes that entails a Fatherly contradiction to what we, left to our own sinful natures, would project onto Him; as if He is simply there to affirm us in whatever we believe is the good way. God’s Law, as the Apostle Paul states, is the Law of Christ. Which is to say, that God is love; with all of the weight, contradiction, and transformation that comes with. As a consequence, we ought to expand beyond the secular social imaginaries we inhabit, and repose in what God has eternally imagined for us in participation with the Son of His bosom forevermore. First and foremost, it is to live a life of Godly love wherein His holiness, rather than “ours,” is the centerpiece.

A Brief Soliloquy on the Phantom of the Lesser of Evils

Posted on by
The “lesser of two evils”–on a slippery slope–reduces to utter chaos and travail. At some point on that slope, the Christian in particular, must step off before oblivion hits. At some point the realization must hit that within the current framework–whatever that is at the time–there must be a “redline,” which indicates that the most prudent thing to do is to jump off the slippery slope onto the solid ground of Christ’s kingdom. Canaan kept devolving, devolving, devolving, and on the logic of the “lesser of two evils” Christians would continue on with compromising, compromising, compromising, to the point that their convictions of two decades ago, for example, now look like the opposing party’s of that time. On a scale of “evil,” how can this approach consistently be one of a “lesser of two evils,” when the goal posts of evil are constantly being shifted and downgraded into something even more intense? Evil is evil. A compromise with evil is a compromise with death.

Contra a Christian Nationalist Christendom and the Crusades

Posted on by

A few weeks back there was a debate on X with reference to the Crusades. Unsurprisingly there are certain Christian Nationalist groups who are promoting the legitimacy and value of the Crusades (and not Billy Graham’s); attempting to justify them in the name of Christ. This all makes sense in the sense that these folks want a resurgence of a certain type of Christendom, primarily of a Protestant hue. I responded thusly,

The Crusades were a function of a Catholic ecclesiopolitical state. They were ostensibly carried out in the name of Jesus Christ; and for the preservation of the Gospel and all its entailments. The last thing Muslims saw, as the sword came crushing through their skulls, was the cross on the crusader’s shield. This was not done in the name of Christ, ultimately; but in the name of a sectarian Latin church who asserted that its authority was simply a prolongation of the incarnation of God on earth. This assertion is neither Christian, or Holy; and therefore, cannot be justified in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Tale of Two Evils: One Greater the “Other Lesser”

Posted on by

The lesser of two evils model is a mythology. Evil is simply evil. The mass murder of babies in the womb is the epitome of evil de jure. There is no “scale” or quantification of evil that can ever balance out sheer evil. One problem with committing oneself to a lesser-of-two-evils model is that it becomes a slippery slope; as this presidential election perfectly illustrates. It is a slippery slope because within the winds of the cultural mores we all become conditioned in ways that are increasingly beholden to comparing this level of evil to that level of evil; but when this is done, we can become persuaded that compared to this evil over there this evil right here isn’t so bad. In fact, after a while living in this type of pressure cooker, we easily become entwined and melded into the juices of the cultural wash. The only way out is to look at evil as evil, compared to God’s holiness Self-revealed in Jesus Christ, and make our decisions from this Holy Ground of God’s life. It is His alien righteousness for us that ought to be the frame we see the world, and the “choices” it offers us, through. When we move and breathe in this way, we come to have the capacity to simply say, No! And we live a life of continuous repose upon God’s Word rather than the culture’s word baked into God’s Word.

A pushback to this might be: “well, this is too idealic and pie-in-the-sky.” But the opposite is actually the case. In fact, trusting God’s Word, living as seeing the unseen as the seen, is the only way a Christian can truly move and breathe and have their being in this shifty and shadowy world of dissolution. This is not to say that we don’t have difficult decisions to make living as Christians in a fallen world; indeed, it is to say the inverse. It is much more difficult to live a life that the basic human senses cannot penetrate; to live by the faith of Christ. The fallacy of the lesser-of-two-evils model is that it presumes that a person has the capacity to weight this evil against that evil, this amount of evil against that amount of evil, and discern which side of the scale is the right side. But what if one evil is so being-shaking, what if one evil, in a basket of many evils, so utterly strikes at the being of God, the being of Life itself, that it becomes impossible to weed through to the point that we believe we can come to the conclusion of what weighted side is more acceptable than the other? What if there is an evil that like yeast becomes so intracule to the total loaf of bread that its pervasiveness becomes inescapable; to the point that it finally becomes absolutely necessary to simply trust God? To move beyond the supposed possibility to divine between the evils, and simply recognize the LORD has not given us a viable choice to choose.

On Chemical Warfare in the Womb and Trump

Posted on by

I have been posting on my other social media accounts (FB and X) today with reference to Trump’s support of the abortion pill; in other words, on his support of abortion en masse. It is a dilemma, indeed. Kamala and Walz will seemingly be the final death knell for America. If they win it will be akin to jumping out of the window of a high-rise building that is on fire. The country, and world, will simply get to where it has already gone, it will find its bottom quicker than if Trump and company win. In my view Trump will only offer a retarding effect on what has already been set in motion. He will put a skid on the total and immediate economic collapse, and all the upheaval that will cause. He will bring an end to the wars that are currently underway across the world. He will bring energy independence back to America. And he will do more that will seemingly be positive, in regard to national flourishing. And yet with all of the above in the balance, on the other side he is pro-abortion (pill). He believes that accessibility to the abortion pill ought to be in reach for anyone who has access to the post office. Just to be clear, the abortion pill is not the “morning after pill,” or anything like that. A person ingests the abortion pill if they are confirmed to be pregnant; it chemically destroys the baby from there. The abortion pill is something like making a mother’s womb like mini-mobile-gas chambers. Drop the poison, and it engages in a shoah catastrophe that reaches even beyond the gas chambers of Hitler’s satanic scepter (as far as numbers go in regard to loss of human life). Ultimately the logic and activity Trump is committed to, with reference to the abortion pill, is something like going full circle. It is a logic of death that has no graded place in the economy and Kingdom of God in Christ. It is the same logic of death that Kamala and Walz et al. are committed to on the “other side” of the same coin of death.

  1. God’s judgment on the USA entails a false-dilemma. That is to say: we have been presented with two false choices, before God, for the office of the president of the United States.
  2. It is a form of natural theology that says that God spared Trump (from assassination) because God endorses Trump (He clearly doesn’t endorse Kamala either).
  3. The only abyss the human being ultimately hangs over, apocalyptically that is, depends on whether a person is for Christ or against Him. Whether a nation in the now fails or prospers is contingent on the aforementioned. It is not contingent, per se, on who the President is. If the core of the country is rotten, who the President is in the midst of that core will not bring the salvation so many hope that it will.
  4. Has the political situation become so dire that in fact it is better to jump out of the window of the burning World Trade Center than it is to stay and endure the flame and the total collapse of the building? That’s the question I am reflecting on. They both end in the same place, it’s just how you get there.
  5. Leaving abortion up to the states is like leaving slavery and segregation up to the states. It is a federal issue like nothing else is. If it cannot be banned at the Federal level, in my view, we don’t deserve to be a country.
  6. My Dad’s church (where he was senior pastor) in North Long Beach, CA was very involved with the House of Ruth, and Walk for Life. The House of Ruth was/is an organization that helps unwed and abused mothers find refuge and a way out, without being reduced to abort their babies. Walk for Life provides a public witness that there are people who oppose abortion, but also who are there to minister to those who otherwise might abort their babies. And now of course there are many other organizations (Crisis Pregnancy Centers etc.) that are involved just the same.
  7. “Abortion is not, therefore, one issue among other issues. It is the most fundamental postmodern issue. As we saw earlier in this book, the gods of the ancient world demanded that their servants sacrifice their children to their power. This was the “abomination” that the Lord refused to Israel in the Old Testament and to which Israel was continuously tempted. In the Bible, this is not a random picture of evil meant merely to shock us. It is, rather, based on an anthropological insight: the willingness to kill your child and the consequent construction of a system of child murder is the only path to pure power, pure sovereignty. Pure power demands that keeping helpless people alive be a voluntary display of power, a whim of the strong; otherwise, if power is ever revealed to be for the weak, the social hierarchy is inverted, and the whole system is exposed for the lie that it is. This is why, as we saw earlier in this book, nearly all pagan societies condone the killing of babies. This is how human power can speak order into chaos without opening itself to what is beyond it, to the transcendent. Nowhere is the West’s final slide into post-Christian paganism clearer than in the abortion regime, which kills around sixty million children every year, roughly 20 percent of all babies. As the pope wrote: ‘Where God is denied and people live as though he did not exist, or his commandments are not taken into account, the dignity of the human person and the inviolability of human life also end up being rejected or compromised.'” -Andrew Willard Jones, The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2021), 336-37.

Nala’s Salvation: Against Her “Christian” Legalistic Critics

Posted on by

Legalism continues to be rife on the theological interwebs. An OnlyFans porn star (at the top of the “game”) just gave her life to Christ (she grew up as a Baptist pastor’s kid, like me). I watched her whole interview, where she shared her life story and testimony, on the Michael Knowles show (2:20 minutes). She has gotten lots of pushback and skepticism, particularly on the website formerly known as Twitter. There is a high profile (on said website) Jewess who has been saying vile things about this former star. But she’s a Jewess and not a Christian; so, definitionally she wouldn’t understand the nature of God’s grace (at least not yet). But then there have also been “Christians” pushing back at this sister. I want to highlight one of these fellas. Of course, this guy has written a book on “biblical masculinity,” has a podcast on the topic, and unfortunately, has quite a few followers on X and probably other social media platforms. What he says about this young sister makes my blood boil; it is as antiChrist/antiGospel that someone can get (let his message be anathema). Here is part of what he said:

Nala’s entire life has been a lie. She has profited in multi-millions from the twin society-crushing evils of Feminism and the Sexual Revolution. She has led countless men astray for pay, selecting for her profession a task built on values that are explicitly anti-family, anti-Law, and therefore anti-Christ and anti-Logos. She should be revolted at the multi-generational forces that twisted a creature made in God’s image into this demonic mockery of a human female. God didn’t just save her from hell. He saved her from years of her own sin-enslaved wretchedness, which spread virally over the internet touching the lives of potentially millions in exchange for cash. Honorable men with grit under their nails and sweat on their brow and scars on their arms engaged in months of backbreaking labor to make less than she probably did for one weekend’s parade of digital sin. You do not understand the truly cosmos-rending chain of confession, repentance, mercy, grace, and salvation well enough if you think baptism and a few words on camera suffice to expunge the stain on the earth, let alone herself, that she has created. A repentant heart would scrape off all remnants of that clownish makeup to reveal the unadorned face of the woman underneath, as God sees her, and beg the men she exploited for forgiveness. She would stare into the image of the photo below with horror and never wish for one second to be mistaken for that death-cult parasite again. She would decry from the mountaintops the fallenness of the world that allowed and even encouraged her digital prostitution, and tear her garments witnessing the wickedness in her bones and bloodstream that seduced her into this line of “work.” Work which she then relished in perfecting her craft to infernal excellence, I might add. She would strip herself of artificial beauty and clothe herself in modesty then disappear into her husband’s home and hearth, next seen by the public with a small pack of children, and a tearful song of Romans 8:28-29 on her grateful lips. In so doing, she would model the true path home for women. We live in a Christ-hating nation that despises God with every fiber of its being, making a middle-class, single-income household all but impossible as an explicit attack on the institution of the family and especially the role of the father. And suddenly I’m supposed to believe we’re all celebrating a sinner being saved? On the network that just fired a female commentator, in part, for daring to say, “Christ is King”? Please. Candace Owens, who showed at least a flash of true courage, should be furious. Nala has stepped onto the public stage and been thrust into a default position of spiritual leadership, as many celebrities sadly are the moment they whisper the name of Christ to a camera. Thus I criticize her as a leader. “Give her time”? How about instead we bring on a repentant believer who has already had time? I propose Rosaria Butterfield. Maybe Nala should give herself time. Maybe the media should give her time. Maybe the legions of female sinners and their white knight cheerleaders should at this very moment be ushering Nala off the stage forever, for her own good, rather than clapping like seals in the hopes that she’ll legitimize their poorly-discipled, halfhearted repentance for sins. Because she won’t. She literally can’t. Not until Feminism and the Sexual Revolution that produced her (and women like her) are ripped up root and branch from the salted earth of the American family, burned, and the ashes cast into the brook Kidron. (2 Kings 23:6) But that’s not what we really want, is it? Women today desire to be led… but only where they were already planning on going. Others want this to be a “meat sacrificed to idols” moment. 1 Corinthians 8 is the world-befriending Christian’s dog-eared chapter, isn’t it? “It’s not that bad. I’m under grace not law.”[1]

All this gal is doing is sharing her testimony. When a person is “born from above” they are born again of an imperishable seed; the seed of Christ’s life blossomed to the right hand of the Father for them/us. This guy, Will Spencer, thinks we need to “wait and see.” Is that what Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well; or many other female sinners, inclusive of prostitutes? No, once the re-birth is realized in someone’s heart, they become participant with Christ (participatio Christi), and partakers of the divine and triune being of God. Nobody can separate Nala from Christ, not even her. She’s entered into an indestructible life that is not contingent on her obedience, but Christ’s for her (which in fact is what the Gospel is all about).

This guy, Will, is simply a product of a nomist subculture that has swallowed much of the North American evangelical community whole. It is through the “retrieval” of precisianist and juridical categories, as those are found particularly developed in the Post Reformed orthodox theologies of the 16th and 17th centuries, that this legalistic subculture, of the type this Spencer guy is fomenting, has come to have root. And yet, most of these cats aren’t aware of their informing theology. They simply receive it, and run with it. They don’t recognize, critically so, its historical and philosophical beginnings; and as such they simply conflate these mercantilist categories with the biblical Gospel. As a result, we end up with this “wait and see” attitude in regard to having certainty if someone is saved or not. This is absurdum! But this is simply a projection of their own uncertainty and lack of assurance before God. Barth was right when he wrote the following with reference to Calvin’s thinking on assurance of salvation:

How can we have assurance in respect of our own election except by the Word of God? And how can even the Word of God give us assurance on this point if this Word, if this Jesus Christ, is not really the electing God, not the election itself, not our election, but only an elected means whereby the electing God—electing elsewhere and in some other way—executes that which he has decreed concerning those whom He has—elsewhere and in some other way—elected? The fact that Calvin in particular not only did not answer but did not even perceive this question is the decisive objection which we have to bring against his whole doctrine of predestination. The electing God of Calvin is a Deus nudus absconditus.[2]

It is this ill-formed doctrine of election that hangs over all of these legalists’ heads; it’s actually rather tragic. Not only can they not find rest in Christ for them, but then they project that unrest and uncertainty on anyone else who confesses Jesus as Lord; like Nala. If Jesus isn’t both the object and subject of God’s election, then election simply hangs in the balances of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree). And it is this type of election, the type grounded in an unrevealed, secret and arbitrary decree of God, that leaves these types of legalists floundering in their salvation. But, often, such people believe they’ve hit some sort of magical mark in their lives, finding a level of assurance that they indeed are one of the elect of God (because they haven’t sinned in certain ways like they used to; so based on their performance). But they’re still “waiting to see” if other new converts really have come to Christ based upon some subjective and abstract standard of judgment vis-à-vis the performance of said new converts. That’s what this Spencer guy and others are now doing to Nala. Historically this exercise is called experimental predestinarianism, which entails exactly what it says.

I have written more than I intended. Let me leave Will Spencer and his cohorts with a parable of Jesus’. It speaks against the type of performance and legalistically based salvation he unfortunately has been “discipled” into.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; 4 and to those he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. 5 Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around; and he *said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ 7 They *said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He *said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard *said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ 9 When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. 10 When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ 13 But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. 15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last shall be first, and the first last.” –Matthew 20:1-16

 

[1] Will Spencer | Renaissance Man, accessed on X 04-08-2024.

[2] Karl Barth, CD II/2, 111.

A Rejoinder to Christian Nationalism[s] via Appeal to a radical Reformation

Posted on by

If you’re on X, the site formerly known as Twitter—Christian theological X, in particular—you will more than likely be exposed to a certain mode of so-called Christian Nationalism. This mode is of a modern postmillennial variety of the theonomic type. Without getting into the nuts-and-bolds of said framework, it essentially believes that the Great Commission entails the Christianizing of the entire world; in other words, the establishment of a Christendom. Some might look at a post-Constantinian world as what a Christendom involves. So, that is one take on a theological Christian Nationalism, which is seeing some legs under it these days. There is another type that is more philosophically based; maybe of the type that the French revolution was motivated by. A nationalism motivated by the self-determination of the people; we might even think of Libertarians in this way, or even of the Republic we inhabit de jure (in principle) in the United States of America (loosely conceived). It is the latter type the rest of my post will be responding to.

I had a friend pushback on me, on FB, with reference to a short little post I posted earlier today. I wrote: “I understand the impulses for a Christian nationalism, but I am not a proponent. We aren’t actually in Babylon (like Israel), we’re already/not yet in the Kingdom of the risen Christ; emissaries.” The pushback from the friend (and I won’t use his name because I didn’t ask him if I could use his quote here) went like this:

Maybe I don’t see the eschatological tinges to Christian nationalism. It seems more practical, or commonsensical to me. If you’re given the responsibility for, say, passing traffic laws, and setting the budget to expand the existing roadways and water treatment plant, or are faced with formulating some kind of immigration law or setting the penalties for crimes… does it really matter if the kingdom is not yet? Does that have any relevance to the question? Seems like you have to make the best decision that you can whether the kingdom is here or not here. And for the Christian, that will be informed by Christian convictions and not naturalistic or atheistic ones. “Ok, ok, you’re an emissary. I get it. Now, what should we do about the problems caused by these pharmacy-benefit managers? People can’t afford their prescriptions.”

My response was the following (off the top):

I suppose make decisions and support movements that are in line with best bearing witness to the kingdom. The church is not the state, and vice versa; but both are claimed by the domain of the Word, of Christ. The church’s role in the singular kingdom of God, which encompasses ALL of creation, is to bear witness; which often entails resistance etc. I’m unsure though how passing laws etc. constitutes a *Christian Nationalism* per se. That is not what most Christian Nationalist proponents of today (they are en masse on Twitter) are motivated by. It is indeed about spreading a Christendom that will pervade the entire globe; of the type that will usher in the consummate kingdom. I don’t know how to think about this abstractly either. I see some proposing a Christian Nationalism as if some type of sanitized theory of government that remains just as buffered as the secular does from thinking things from a genuinely theological imaginary. Which is ironic, since it is claiming to be “Christian.” I’m unsure what “Christian convictions” are in abstraction from the kingdom, what are those? And if there isn’t a distinction, then in what way would/could you differentiate your view of a Christian Nationalist from the postmil reconstructionists I have in mind? It seems to me that your premise, in regard to Christian convictions (which I believe are real), without some sort of robust qualification, starts functioning, ironically, in the same way that the postmil theory does. In other words, what makes your inchoate theory of a “Christian” nationalism distinct from the theonomists version in function? If we are in the world, but not of it, then how does that bear upon the relationship of nationhood vis a vis ultimate and prior commitments as those are conditioned by being ambassadors of the kingdom? IOW, I don’t see a Christian + Nationalist as a possibility. I see Christians inhabiting nations, indeed, as emissaries from another country. But not one detached from this world, but precisely and concretely for it. But not from an abstract set of conditions in the world, but from the concrete conditions of the primacy of Christ as the telos and eschatos of all creation. I think our primary task as Christians in the now of the kingdom is to bear witness to the not yet; as we all (of creation) are in fact in the kingdom of the risen Christ. So, I see the world, indeed, as the kingdom of Christ, waiting its final victory when Christ will finally place the last enemy, death, under his feet. As Christians in His kingdom, then, we ought to be about bearing prophetic and martyrological witness to the inner ground and reality of all of creation; inclusive of the nations. How this informs the way the Christian operates within the parameters of whatever nation they find themself within, will take shape by asking the questions of what it means to be a *witness* (an ambassador). I don’t see those questions and answers being formed by someone’s status within this or that nation, per se; but by someone who recognizes that they are of the city whose maker is God. This does not evade the question of laws regarding mundanities such as civil law etc., but it frames it within a kingdom rather than an absolutely “nationalistic” frame.

I don’t think it is possible, of course, to have a politick without a theopolitical framework (in that sense the postmils are onto something). So, I reject this idea that there is some pure notion of nationhood that isn’t somehow absolutely entangled with the kingdom of Christ. To think those as if different spheres (Kuyper) make no sense to me. Clearly, I’m functioning from a universalistic logic; but one, again, that is kingdom/Christ conditioned rather than abstractly or untheologically framed. E.g., if you talk to a progressive Christian (typically democratic socialist) they would see pharmacological laws as profoundly grounded in the reality of kerygmatic and thus ecclesial witness bearing activity. Ironically, their respective theopolitical theory has a utopian end to it (really not much different than a theonomic postmil). But I’m somewhere in that mix as well, as far as seeing the theological framing of these matters. I don’t really understand what you mean by “commonsensical” or “practical.”

My responses are very rough draft-like inklings that need to be developed much further. But as far as a conversational response on the way, I think they reflect the heart of the matter for me. I need to finally sit down and write out my own theopolitical theory, in a way that has substantial development and thematic coherence through and through. But the above is what I opine for now, and what floats my boat for the moment. I am seemingly radically Reformed, even when it comes to my theopolitic; with leanings toward a qualified type of Anabaptism.

No One But God is Good: And Its Implications for Modern People

Posted on by

Some people confuse the Enlightenment for the New Creation. To the point that the human spirit has come to a crossroads in its development, and become civilized, or good. But this is not what the Gospel says. The Gospel says that we are constantly being given over to the death of Jesus that His life might be made manifest through the mortal members of our bodies. This presupposes that as Martin Luther rightly emphasized, as Christians, we are simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner) while we continue to inhabit this in-between time within our bodies of death. The New Creation is not an abstract human achievement; that is to say, there is no turn or development to the good without the Godman (Theanthropos), the mediator between God and humanity, becoming sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in His vicarious humanity for us. It is the lie of the desperately wicked and above all evil hearts, that fallen humanity is born with, that asserts that humanity has a spark of good (or divinity) built into them. Indeed, the ultimate lie is that humanity, on its own, has the capacity to achieve a holiness deigned by its own whims and desires; that it can simply call something good, and it is so. All that the Enlightenment did was push the Edenic lie further into the hearts of men and women; that is, that they could be God in and of themselves. It said that the indomitable human spirit in fact is God, and that humanity stands the best chance of flourishing by finally accepting the notion that all of the traditional attributes of God are in fact really just projections of the collective humanity of all times. As such, the conclusion (to the Enlightenment) is that humanity, in fact has really been God all along; that humanity has the capacity to be good on its own self-possessed and self-designed terms. Look at where this type of thinking has gotten us in the world. The world is literally collapsing under the pressure of its own “enlightened” thinking. Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy!)