What Makes an Education "Christian" in Quality and Character?

A Christian Liberal Arts Education

The term "liberal arts" has entered the scrapyard, and  is awaiting the crusher.  It appears to be following the course of the dodo.  But for Christians the matter is urgent, pressing, and thoroughly modern.

The first hurdle in coming to understand why the study of Christian liberal arts is vital is to parse "liberal" correctly.  The common understanding of that particular adjective these days refers to something without bounds, limits, or controls.  In today's parlance, a liberal is someone who confronts controls or limits as something to be smashed.  The social conservative might argue that marriage is a sacred life-long institution between a man and a woman.  The "liberal" would rise up against that notion as an affront to human fulfillment and self-realization.  For the liberal, marriage is whatever you might want it to be--a term referring to a relationship between both genders or between a man and his pigeon, or whatever.

But the meaning of "liberal" in the phrase "Christian liberal arts" is something of another order entirely.  It derives from the classical world and refers not to breaking down order and restraint, but the exact opposite.  According to Wikipedia,

The liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) are those subjects or skills that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free person (Latin: liberalis, "worthy of a free person") to know in order to take an active part in civic life, something that (for Ancient Greece) included participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service.  [Emphasis, ours.]

In this usage, "liberal" means to live and act in a disciplined manner, so as to take up the roles and responsibilities of citizenship.

Fast forward to the beginning of the Modern period.  In the sixteen hundreds, Christian liberal arts schools and curricula and education abounded, particularly under the influence of the Puritans in England and New England.  But, at the same time, these institutions and schools were drawing upon Luther and Calvin and the earlier Reformers.

According to Leland Ryken, Luther had written to the councilmen of Germany:

If I have children and could manage it, I would have them study not only languages and history but also singing and music together with the whole of mathematics. . . . The ancient Greeks trained their children in these disciplines; . . . they grew up to be people of wonderous ability, subsequently fit for everything.

To which Ryken adds:   "Fit for everything: this has always been the goal of liberal education, as distinct from vocational training."  [Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Academie Books/Zondervan, 1986), p. 164.]

The goal of a Christian liberal arts education was to mould the student into a capable and qualified person, able to fulfill a variety of callings and roles.  Milton said it most succinctly:

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which  fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.  [Cited by Ryken, op cit., p. 169.]

To which Ryken appends: "a liberal education is comprehensive.  It prepares a person  to do well at all that he or she may be called to do in this life. . . . Learning a certain amount of information will not by itself constitute a liberal education.  Such knowledge becomes worthwhile only as it is instrumental in forming a qualified person; . . . .  education influences people in their personal lives, and it makes them productive members of society."  [Ibid.]

As Nehemiah would have said, it's time to start building, folks.

Letter From America

Completely and Unreservedly

Posted by Derek Thomas

(Derek Thomas was a colleague of ours many years ago.)

It was forty years ago today (December 28, 1971) that I became a Christian. My conversion was Saul-like: sudden, unexpected, and decisive. I was eighteen, a freshman at university studying physics and math at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

I was not raised in a religious home. My memory holds only fleeting acquaintance with the church - a "Christening" in my early teens with just my mother, an Anglican vicar and myself present; the ritual of "confirmation classes" and the visit of the bishop followed by rebellion and atheism. By eighteen, I was, like most of my peers, a firm believer in science. The universe was the product of a Big-Bang and everything that exists - Mozart, The Beatles, Rembrandt, Salvador Dali, you name them - came from this primal event. Everything comes from nothing.

            Enter John Stott.

The Funniest Thing

A Really Good Interview


Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, December 02, 2011

Douglas Wilson's son, Doug is now not just an accomplished author, but has achieved a degree of public attention.

Below is a fascinating piece on his background, the home in which he grew up, and on his life's work to date.

Thinking Critically About Movies

Putting on the Mind of Christ

Dr John Frame has written a short piece on how to think critically about movies and write effective reviews of them.

In my discussion of film and culture, I identified the general thrust of modern secular liberalism and its antithesis with Christianity. My reviews will deal with those themes in general. Here I wish to be a bit more specific. What follows are certain questions that are always in my mind when I go to films. I would recommend that other Christian viewers ask the same questions. I will not go through this whole list in each review; I will only discuss the ones I think most important to the particular film.

1. Who wrote the film? Who produced it? Who directed it? Do we know through the writings and previous work of these people anything about their philosophy of life? The previous works of actors are also important. Actors contribute much to the quality of a film, little to its fundamental conception. But actors do tend to sign on to projects with which they have some ideological affinity (assuming financial rewards are not otherwise determinative). Mel Gibson almost never takes on films with a heavy sexual element; Mickey Rourke almost always does. The presence of certain actors, granting that they sometimes go "against type," can tell you something about the message of a film.

2. Is it well-made, aesthetically? Are the production and acting values of high quality? These factors may have little to do with the "message." But they do tend to determine the extent of the film's cultural impact, and that is important for our purposes. If a film is well-made, it can have a large impact upon the culture for good or ill. (Of course some bad films also have a major impact!)

3. Is it honest, true to its own position? This is another mark of "quality." Generally speaking, an honest film, regardless of its point of view, will have a larger cultural impact than one which blunts its points.

4. What kind of film is it? Fantasy? Biography? Realistic drama? Comedy? Obviously each film must be judged according to its purpose and genre. We don't demand of a fantasy the kind of historical accuracy we demand of a supposedly literal biography.

5. What is the world view of the film? Is it theistic or atheistic? Christian or non-Christian? If non-Christian, is its main thrust relativistic or dogmatic? How does it employ the theme of "equality?" Is there any role for providence, for God? Is the film pessimistic or optimistic? Does the action move in deterministic fashion, or is there a significant role for human choice?

6. What is the plot? What problems do the characters face? Can these problems be correlated in some way with the Fall of mankind in Adam? Does the film in effect deny the Fall, or does it affirm it in some way?

7. Are the problems soluble? If so, how? What methods are available to the characters so that they can find the answers they need?

8. What is the moral stance of the film? Is the film relativistic, dogmatic, or both in some combination? What are its attitudes toward sex, family, human life, property, truth, heart-attitudes? What is the source of moral norms, if any? Does justice prevail?

9. In comedy, what is it that is funny? What are the typical incongruities? Who is the butt of the jokes? (Christians? traditional values? the wicked? the righteous? God? Satan?) Is the humor anarchic? Is it rationality gone awry? Is it bitter or gentle? Does it rely on caricatures? If so, of whom?

10. Are there allusions to historical events, literary works, other films, famous people, Scripture, etc. that would give us some idea where the filmmakers are coming from? We should remember, of course, that allusions may be negative, positive, ironic, or merely decorative. A biblical allusion does not necessarily indicate acceptance of biblical values.

11. What are the chief images of the film? Is there anything interesting about the lighting, the camera angles, the sound, the timing which would reinforce a particular theme? Are there significant symbols?

12. Are there any explicit religious themes? Christ-figures? [1] Does the film express significant attitudes toward Christ, the clergy, or the church? Does it distort Christianity or present it at its worst? Or does it present it with some insight and/or sympathy? Does it recognize the element of personal piety in people's lives? [2] There are exceptions. If so, does it approve or disapprove of it? What about Satan, the demons, the occult? Does the film recognize their activity in some way? Is the devil taken seriously? If so, how is he dealt with? _

[1] Steven Spielberg's "E. T." is, I think, a genuine Christ figure: recall the themes of pre-existence, growth, teaching, miracle, healing, death, resurrection, ascension. Spielberg denied this parallel, but in my view it is objectively there, even if Spielberg was unconscious of it. The reason is that the human mind has a need for a gospel like that of the New Testament. Those who don't accept that gospel often instinctively give to their idolatrous inventions powers parallel to those of Christ.

[2] The character of Frank Burns in the original M*A*S*H was a pious fellow who kneeled to pray at his bedside, to the scorn of his fellow soldiers. Eventually, it turned out that he was an adulterer and hypocrite. That is fairly typical of the way Hollywood portrays Christian piety.

Biographical footnote:

Dr. John M. Frame is an American philosopher and a Calvinist theologian especially noted for his work in epistemology and presuppositional apologetics, systematic theology, and ethics. He is one of the foremost interpreters and critics of the thought of Cornelius Van Til (who he studied under while working on his B.D. at Westminster Theological Seminary). An outstanding theologian, John Frame distinguished himself during 31 years on the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, and was a founding faculty member of WTS California. He is best known for his prolific writings including ten volumes, a contributor to many books and reference volumes, as well as scholarly articles and magazines.

Dr. Frame was born (1939) and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He came to know Christ at around 13 or 14 years of age, through the ministry of Beverly Hights UP Church (in particular the youth and music ministries) and some Christian friends.

For his education, Frame received degrees from Princeton University (A.B.), Westminster Theological Seminary (B.D.), Yale University (A.M. and M.Phil., though he was working on a doctorate and admits his own failure to complete his dissertation), and Belhaven College (D.D.). He has served on the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary and was a founding faculty member of their California campus. He currently (as of 2005) teaches Apologetics and The History of Philosophy and Christian thought at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL. He is appreciated, by many of his students, for his charitable spirit and fairness to opposing arguments (although, he fairly demolishes them nonetheless).

Dr. Frame is also a classically trained musician (he plays the piano and organ) and a critic of film, music, and other media. He has been involved in the music/worship ministry of the church since he was a teenager, upon coming to faith in Christ. He is deeply committed to the work of ministry and training pastors.
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/bio/johnframe.html

Hat Tip: http://theologica.blogspot.com/

The Culture Wars, Round VI

Genuine Culture Wars Rising Again in the West

For two centuries or more, Unbelief has triumphed in the West. We have been living in a post-Christian world. For most, Christianity is no more than a vague cultural memory, something that once was, but has now passed away.

But it will not stay that way forever. For the Lord is always at work smashing the idols in the minds of their subjects—one by one. The false gods of the Church leaders of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were broken by world wars. Yet Church leaders desperately clung on to them. They hardened their hearts. They still wanted to prove to the world that they, too, believed in the sovereignty of rational man. They preached a “compliant” god, who would always change and adapt and be whatever unbelieving scientific empirical research said he ought to be. Because of their treachery, Unbelief in the culture grew stronger and stronger. Why wouldn't it, when even the Church leaders disbelieved.

But gradually, the true Culture War has broken out again. It has become more overt. It is now far more clear that the issue of conflict is between those who believe in the sovereignty of the Risen Lord, and those who believe in Man as god. A growing army of Christian believers understand the issues and understand that their fathers were false prophets.

Moreover, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Risen Lord will win this battle. But how? The triumph of Jerusalem over Athens will not come by the sword or by force. It will come as large numbers of people repent of their sin and turn to the Lord Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. But what will lead them to come? The Scripture leaves us in no doubt.

Firstly, the false gods always end up being shattered. This means that there will emerge a widespread, growing conviction that man really is wicked and that the thoughts and intentions of his heart are only evil continually. It will become increasingly obvious that the ratiocinations of the mind of fallen Man are not to be trusted. People will realise that Unbelief is always grinding an axe. It always begs the question. It always has an agenda. It will become clear that Unbelief has always been deeply and bitterly prejudiced. Unbelief has always assumed from the outset that the God of the Bible does not exist. Unbelief may entertain the possibility that some gods may exist--and it will endeavour to tell us how, what, and when they do. But one thing it will always emphatically maintain is that the God revealed in the Scriptures most certainly does not exist.

As the rationalistic idols are shattered, more and more people will come to be epistemologically self-conscious. They will see Unbelief for what it is: the carefully nurtured cant of enmity against God Himself, cloaked with reasonableness. People will come to see this as sinuously serpentine, the deep subtlety of the Accuser of old. What particular means the Lord will use to bring this conviction upon any society in particular is not clear, but it always involves letting us see man as he really is, man in the fruit of his folly, man with his vain hopes dashed.

Our modern age has glorified Man as few have before. It is likely that the smashing of the idol will involve God showing us the ignobility of Man in new and extreme ways. Unbelief will be shown up to be foolishness, eventually becoming deeply offensive and distasteful as a consequence.

Secondly, the stronger wickedness and Unbelief become, the weaker they turn out to be. Evil is self-destroying, self-defeating, self-immolating. Abortion is an unmitigated evil. Yet it is the wicked who kill their own. They exercise vengeance upon their own seed, thereby culturally weakening Unbelief, cutting it off at its roots. Homosexuality is sinful. But it is sterile, unable to reproduce itself. Homosexuality is self-negating, self-destroying. Materialist man, swelling with pride in his technological prowess, becomes a global-warming obscurantist whose drive to protect material reality leads to enforced impoverishment and economic decline. Evil integrates into the void of cultural impotence.

Thirdly, as the idols are smashed, the sound of the Gospel preached will be heard once again. As bruised and battered souls seek refuge in churches they will hear once again of Christ the Lord, not through the treachery of a Fosdick, but the fidelity of a Spurgeon; not the false god of a Norman Vincent Peale, but the faithfulness of a Wesley. And people will look to Him and will be saved. This is how the Culture War will be won. There is no other way.

An imperative in this endeavour is that the Church must give up its fawning love-affair with this world. It must no longer seek respect in the Academy in the vain attempt that it will somehow win a favourable hearing. To be sure, the Academy needs to be spoken to, not ignored. But the method is to be apostolic; it is to bring the polite but firm confrontation of a Paul to the philosophes and intellectual magpies of the Areopagus.

A second imperative is that the Church must not persist with this constant craving to be liked and respected by the world of Unbelief. How this has damaged Jerusalem! How we all—believer and unbeliever alike—have paid for this folly! The Lord God said, “I will put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.” Many professing Christians retort, saying, “No thanks. I am going to remove that enmity so the seed of the serpent no longer dislikes me and other Christians.” Christ made it very clear: if we are not prepared patiently to endure the “scorn and mockery” of Unbelief which so troubled Brunner we are not fit to be His disciples. For He endured it and remained jealous for the Name of God. He expects nothing less of us.

Let us be clear upon this. There will always be Unbelief, no matter how tenuous it may become, prior to the Final Advent of our Lord. The best circumstances in which Unbelievers could possibly live in this life is in a world and culture which predominantly respects the Lord and His Word. Blessings upon blessings will be upon such a land, as indeed the Scripture promises.

In the blessing of God's people, Unbelievers shall also receive blessing. If we truly want Unbelief grudgingly to appreciate and respect the City of Jerusalem the only way forward is to stand unashamedly and unreservedly upon the rock of God's holy Word. For if we are ashamed of God, He will be ashamed of us. But if we honour Him, He will honour us.

If we have a true love for mankind, let us be sure of this: as God pours out His Spirit and blesses His people, Unbelief itself will increasingly share in the good gifts of God.

Thus, if there is to be any hope for the West, genuine Culture Wars must break out afresh. There are no short cuts. We must go back to the mistakes and sins of our fathers and repent of them and correct them. It will be a hard fight from here. But our Risen Lord is amongst us as Captain of the Lord's Host. In the end, Pharaoh and his riders He will cast into the sea.

The Culture Wars, Round V

The Church “Repents” and Promotes a New Orthodoxy

We have been discussing the decline and fall of Christianity in the West. We have argued that the seeds of the the ignoble crop were sown during the Enlightenment. The Church, to curry the favour of Unbelief, began to speak more about Reason, about progress, about society, and about Man. The Church tried to find a common neutral ground to discuss these matters with Unbelief--and that ground was autonomous human reason, which would judge, measure, and assess all things and determine truth for itself.

The Church entered a Faustian pact: it agreed that if God were true and if the Bible were to be believed both had to be grounded upon and authenticated by human reason. It therefore sought to "prove" the reasonableness of God before the bar of fallen man and his sinful ratiocinations.

It was a faithless enterprise from the beginning. Seeking the respect and approbation of Man, the churches dishonoured God. Lusting after the wisdom of this world, the nineteenth and twentieth century fathers despised and were embarrassed by the "foolishness" of God--as Paul ironically describes it (I Corinthians 1: 18ff).

The overthrow of Christendom in the West occurred very, very quickly--although it had been building gradually for decades. Like the frog in the pot, the influence of unbelief had been gradually rising, until suddenly it killed the faith--at least its hold over the wider culture. What was left was an empty shell. Into that vacuum rushed a militant atheistic rationalism. The belief in the Mind of Man being the measure of all things, including God, had won the battle (although, as it would subsequently turn out, not the war.)

Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the United States, for example, saw itself as a Christian country. It believed it was going to lead all of mankind into a world-wide Christian triumph. It was common to hold that the United States as a nation was in the vanguard of global Christendom. But by the 1920's the veneer of a false Christianity had been stripped away, and the nation was rapidly and overtly turning from God. In 1924, H. L. Mencken would remark: "Christendom may be defined briefly as that part of the world in which, if any man stands up in public and solemnly swears that he is a Christian, all his auditors will laugh." Walter Lippmann, also in the 1920's, would write: "irreligion of the modern world [is] radical to a degree for which there is, I think, no counterpart." (Marsden, p.3)

How did the fathers of the Church in the West respond to the wars and the deaths and the growing apostasy from the Christian faith in the twentieth century? Did they repent? Yes and no. The twentieth century witnessed a strange development in the Church in the West. There arose a “school” of theologians termed the Neo-orthodox. In particular, the two Argonath who sought to hold back the tides of Unbelief were Swiss: Karl Barth and Emil Brunner.

These two and their followers sought to reassert the transcendence of God. They tried to rescue Him from the morass of war and degradation. Their response to the culture wars was to attempt a grand Dunkirk-like manoeuvre and withdraw God right off the planet, banishing Him to Mars. Since God was so great, so “other”, so transcendent He was beyond our understanding and comprehension and must not be thought in any way relevant or related to Belsen's ovens.

But Barth and Brunner and their followers still clung to one idol above all others. They continued to believe that the ultimate ground of truth was human Reason: in the end, God and His revelation had to be judged by Man. What was true was that which was reasonable to men, whether Believers or Unbelievers. No matter how much Brunner railed against “autonomous reason” he could not help but demonstrate over and over that pagan rationalism was alive and well in his own heart.

Nowhere is this more evident than in his discussion of Adam as the first man. He begins by agreeing that the rationalists and Unbelievers were right.

This whole historic picture of 'the first man' has been finally and absolutely destroyed for us to-day. The conflict between the teaching of history, natural science, palaeontology, on the origins of the human race, and at of the ecclesiastical doctrine, waged on both sides with the passion of a fanatical concern for truth, has led, all along the line, to the victory of the scientific view, and to the gradual but inevitable decline of the ecclesiastical view. Upon the plane of empirical research, whether that of history or of natural science . . . no facts have been left which could support the Augustinian ecclesiastical view of the historical “first man”, or which could prove that the empirical origin of the human race was to be sought on a specially elevated plane of spiritual existence.
Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt, [London: Lutterworth Press,1939], pp. 85,86 (Emphasis, ours)

Autonomous reason still lived, and Brunner bowed down before it. Adam and Eve did not exist—the Bible was engaged in mythical reconstruction—because empirical research said so. Alas, there were “no facts” which supported the biblical account. Imagine that. No facts! What Brunner has not realised, whilst clutching his idols of rationalism and empiricism to his bosom, is that once you grant autonomy and objective rationality to Unbelief at just one point, it will rapidly assert its claim over every point. There is a driving, relentless logic in this. If one particle of the creation is beyond the direct control of God, in principle all of the creation is beyond His control. This logic becomes turbocharged when the Mind of man is considered to be independent and objective, able to test whether God exists or not. For if we can actually determine for ourselves whether God exists or not, then all reality lies at our feet. Man is the master of all things, subject to none. Either God is true and every Man a liar, or Man determines what is true which means that the God revealed in the Bible cannot possibly exist. There is no other alternative.

Brunner shows that all along he is in the same camp of the nineteenth century fathers who had conceded that human reason was a reliable and infallible authority, untouched by sin, and that Man had, therefore, a right to put God in His place—or more accurately, in the place Men would prefer Him to have.

Brunner goes on, even more revealingly:

The pitiable comedy which is produced when theology claims that a 'higher, more perfect' human existence of the first generated existed in a sphere not accessible to research, as it retires before the relentless onward march of scientific research, should be abandoned, once for all, since it has for long provoked nothing but scorn and mockery, and has exposed the message of the Church to the just reproach of 'living in the back of beyond.' . . . . The ecclesiastical doctrine of Adam and Eve cannot compete with the impressive power of this scientific knowledge.
Brunner, pp.86,87

Well, we can't have scorn and mockery. They mocked the Christ, but doggone it, they are not going to mock us. If Unbelievers are upset at the teaching of God's Holy Word about creation, we had better jettison the Bible. If the “relentless onward march of scientific research” has “proved” that Adam and Eve could not have existed, then that's it then. Naturalistic, autonomous scientific knowledge is “impressive.” The Bible cannot compete with it. Clearly the Bible is wrong, Unbelief is right, and autonomous reason is the ultimate judge of truth and of the gods.

This rubbishy defalcation was hailed by many Church authorities and fathers in the previous century as Christian! No culture wars here. Only wolves in sheep's clothing. And the wolves were feeding, gnawing the ossified bones of a bankrupted false faith. Now we know why Christianity has declined in the West. Now we can undestand why the Lord has given us over to the dominion of the idols our fathers nursed and not-so-secretly worshipped. Does not the Lord warn that this is exactly what He will do to an idolatrous and unbelieving people.

What, then, did our wonderful new "orthodox" theologians do with the Biblical doctrines of Adam and Eve, Paradise, and the Fall? Ah, well, you had to realise that underneath all those myths and primitive notions there was a kernel of timeless truth. There was “real content” underneath all those childish and naive formulations. And what is this “timeless truth”? Well, says, Brunner. Actually Genesis teaches us “idealistic evolutionism” and that man is opposed to his divine origin. (p.87,88).

Whew. Thank goodness for that. At least there is something that can be salvaged from the wreck of primitive childishness in the Bible. Idealistic evolutionism--whatever that is. And a revolt against our divine origin. By mid-century, these were the broken reeds which the Church in the West was desperately leaning upon to try to survive and win some respect back from Unbelief.

Oh, but hold on. What does the “relentless onward march of scientific research” say about the idea of "idealistic evolutionism" as an "explanation" of man's divine origin? Oh. Empirical science has gone on to explode idealistic evolutionism as yet another myth. There are apparently no facts to support it either. (A cursory review of evolutionist literature shows that it reserves its most scornful disdain for those who propound theistic evolution--as Brunner does. In seeking to stop the laughter and the mocking of Unbelief, Brunner adopts a false position which makes it all the more raucous.)

And what about God Himself? Sorry. Relentless empirical scientific research provides not one fact for God either. So there we have it, Dr Brunner. If you grant credence to autonomous rationalism at one point, it will go on to assert the non-existence of the Living God at every point. But, since you have already conceded that Unbelief is authoritative, you cannot protest its conclusions at any point along the line. A false and vain prophet you have proved to be.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the West was already substantially post-Christian. The Church fathers of that era were aiding and abetting this development with all their strength. But despite the judgements of two World Wars and many other horrors in the century that followed, the Church continued to bow down to the idol of human reason and insist that God be subject to Man's infallible dictums. The Church meanwhile, according to these false prophets in the West, must mince and step, and seek some place, some room, which it could claim for its own. The Church in the West long ago gave up the true Culture Wars and ran the white flag of cowardly surrender up the pole.

The Faith was banished from creation and nature; then from society and the public square; then from children and the schools, now increasingly it is being banished from family life. Now it is even being proscribed from speech, thought, intents, motivations. Unbelief is relentless. It will leave nothing to those in the West who have decided that God and His Word are not to be trusted as infallibly authoritative in all things.

This is where the post-Christian West has stayed ever since the nineteenth century. It is like being in a time warp, while the Living God passes it by. We cannot resist jumping right into our present day to illustrate how the Christian West continues to bow down at the feet of rationalistic humanism. At his recent speech at Notre Dame, President Obama, a professing Christian no less, answering his critics over his strong support of abortion, said this:

For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It’s no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule — the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. The call to serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.

Ultimately, all religions boil down to one. They are really all the same. Underneath, implies Obama, all religions actually serve and worship Man. It is Man who is the ultimate reality. This is is the “law” that binds all people both Believers and Unbelievers together. All religions are worthy and tolerable insofar as they genuflect to Man. This is the great apostasy of our fathers—and it is alive and well in the West today.

President Obama, as a professing Christian, truly walks in the paths of the Western Church fathers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is a true son of the post-Christian idolatry of the West. He is in the train of the false prophets. He follows in their footsteps. He, like they, long ago decided to fraternize with Unbelief. He, like they, long ago looked into the face of Unbelief, and found his own reflection. And he, like they, secretly called that reflection, god.

The Culture Wars, Round IV

The Church Makes Itself Irrelevant to the West

Historians have told us that the twentieth century represented the bloodiest and most lethal hundred years in all of known human history. But the wonder is not that in the past hundred years, the world saw the bloodiest century in its history to date, but that it was not more so. Most of the bloodshedding was European in origin and course. So much for the coming new Age heralded at the end of the nineteenth century. And the bloodletting is likely not over. It will not cease until the West swallows its vaunted pride and returns humbly, once again, to the Prince of Peace. We fear that unless that happens, the twenty-first century may well turn out to be more bloody still.

But the faithlessness of our fathers, on the one hand, and the willing promotion of the gospel of peace, prosperity, and plenty for all, on the other, meant that when the apocalypses of the Great War, the Depression, Nazism, and Communist totalitarianism did come, the West doubly rejected the Church and the Christian faith. “You Christians promised much—but you lied,” was the reaction.

The twentieth century was ushered in with a false Gospel of optimism and progress, underpinned by the idolatry of Enlightenment rationalism. Shailer Mathews, Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School, aptly represented the new false faith. According to George M. Marsden,

In Matthew's view, human religious experience provided the data for the scientific study of religion. The Bible, accordingly, was not a source of facts or true propositions about God, but "a trustworthy record of a developing experience of God which nourishes our faith." Similarly, the doctrines of the church were the products of group religious experience.

Christianity "Is the concrete religious life of a continuous ongoing group rather than the various doctrines in which that life found expression." The goal of the modernist (Mathews's term for "modern, up-to-date Christianity") was "to carry on this process of an every growing experience of God."
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 177

God is to be found and known not through the Scriptures, but through the growing understanding of believers as they experienced God through Nature or society. For Mathews, and most of the Church in the West,

the needs of modern society, which after all is where God is found today, should therefore properly set the agenda for Christians. The principle that God was immanent and revealing himself in the modern world, was at the heart of the modernist impulse.

. . . The answer was above all a moral and a practical one. ["Christianity"] brought a "full moral life" which was impossible without God. Ultimately it introduced "goodwill" which, "though never fully realized, is of the nature of God, and is the law of progress, the foundation upon which human society can safely be built. . . ."
Ibid., p. 177

This is the "Gospel of the Enlightenment" in a nutshell. God is banished and made irrelevant to the universe; therefore Nature is substituted for god; reading the "Book of Nature" enables us to see and know this god. As we live a moral life, we will co-operate with the law of the progress of Nature, and society will become better and better. Man, Nature, and god are now to all intents and purposes indistinguishable. This had now become the accepted, mainstream "christianity" of the West. It mattered not in what particular denomination or ecclesiastical system you were found. All imbibed deeply from the trough of the new religion of Man.

That is why thousands upon thousands of people lost their faith in the trenches. Their faith all along, it seems, had not been in Christ, but in Man and his wondrous glory. When Man began tearing up the place, their so-called faith in Christ—Whom they foolishly believed would continue to bless them while they worshiped at the altar of human rationalism, made their compromises with the world, and nursed their embarrassment and shame of the Son and His God and Father—their “faith” collapsed. Their christ had merely been their servant to warrant their forlorn hope to be able to live coseted privileged prosperous lives. When "he" failed them, they rejected him.

It was not the evil they witnessed that led millions to turn away from God. They had already stopped actually believing in the Living God. But they used the pretext of evil to make their Unbelief justified. Christ, if He was true, and if He existed, had allowed the evil to happen. In other words, in their heart of hearts, these so-called Christians really believed that human kind did not deserve what was happening at Verdun and the Somme. This, more than anything else, showed that they were more jealous over Man than the Living God. They did not believe in their own sinful wretchedness. They, underneath it all, really did believe the crapulous Enlightenment doctrines of man's goodness and perfectibility through sweet reason. They did not see Verdun or the Somme as a divine judgement upon them; they turned it into a judgement upon God.

Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Church came to be ruled, led, and dominated by false prophets, whose screech was “peace, peace”, but there was no peace. Those faithful prophets who instead spoke of the glory of the Living God, of man's depravity and proclaimed Christ alone as the Saviour of man through his blood shed at Calvary—these were deemed by the Church to be foolish antiquaries, madmen, extremists, primitives, fundamentalists, and simplistic uneducated rustics. The West preferred to believe the false prophets, because their message was what the entire community had come to believe in any event. The inate goodness of Man. The inevitability of progress. The identification of society as their god.

However, when their message of humanistic optimism was proved to be a terrible lie by the Great War, the Great Depression, the tyranny of the Soviets and the Facists, and the Second World War, and their aftermaths, the population in general became yet even more sceptical of the Church.

Now, looking back, how stupid, venal, foolish, and profoundly unfaithful were those preachers, theologians, teachers, and church leaders who counseled common cause with Unbelief, who sought to make the faith acceptable to the other side; and who craved and curried the favour and intellectual approbation of non-Christians. How treacherous were those in Jerusalem who sought to conduct the great Culture War by fawning obsequiousness and unconditional surrender. How insidious and serpentine was their embarrassment over the Risen Lord, the Living God. One is reminded of the words of our Lord: they have already had their reward, and it has been in this life.

Yet, their curse lives on even to our day. It is a singular phenomenon that scepticism, atheism, and materialism were turbo-charged as a result of the two world wars. How did that happen? Why did not these terrible conflagrations turn people back again to God? For many professing Christians who had been fed by their false shepherds upon the lie of humanistic optimism, the horrors of the wars shattered the veneer of their false faith, exposing only the actual scepticism and atheism underneath. The god of whom they had once heard and in whom they had once believed was obviously false—the horrors of war had proved it beyond doubt. Atheism and the lust for material comfort was the reflex position. It was all that was left or could be salvaged.

We did not deserve the suffering of the Somme, they said. These horrors proved only that God did not exist. The Church had spoken falsely of a glorious world about to come. It was all a lie. But what was not a lie was that Man is the master of all things. If I can decide for myself that God does not exist, then to all intents and practical purposes, I am a god. Nietzsche was right. Let me now be honoured and glorified with trappings appropriate to my status. Prosperity in this world is my right.

Like Pharaoh, the plagues that fell upon the West throughout the twentieth century have only served to harden Unbelief, and make its hold more vicelike. But, also like Pharaoh, this has set the West up for an even more devastating judgment to come.

The Culture Wars, Round III

Culture Wars: Sold Out by False Prophets

The optimism of the Victorian period was pervasive. Darwin was believed to be right. The latest version of mankind was the biggest and the brightest and the best that civilisation had ever seen.

Right across the Western Church leaders and teachers agreed that mankind was entering a new, glorious age where technological and economic advancement was a harbinger of moral and social and ethical progress. The Church, in order to "keep up" came to believe it had to adopt, if not subject itself to the rationalistic questioning spirit of the Age. The Church, to maintain an audience, and to keep the respect of Unbelievers, had to agree with their basic premises. The desire for respect, and the intent to win a hearing led the Church to sell our her Lord, to sacrifice Him on the altar of human autonomy and the exaltation of human reason.

If you cannot beat them, join them was the unspoken wisdom of nineteenth century Church fathers. Many now “wanted a Christian religion that would share joyfully in all the good and beautiful things of the world and enthusiastically correct the faults and defects of society.” (L. Praasma, Elect from Every Nation, [St. Catherines, Ontario: Paideia Press], p.23). Social progress became conterminous with the Kingdom of God. The Church joined with Unbelievers of every stripe: Marxists, environmentalists, idealists, peace activists, trade unionists. They would join with these and co-labour with these so that together the Church could be in the vanguard of those entering the new promised land. This would preserve the Church's existence.

As a corollary, Church leaders and teachers began to teach that it was essential to doubt, if not flat out disbelieve the historic Christian faith. To maintain the credibility of the Church and the faith it had to demonstrate that it fully embraced the critical rationalism of the Age (which, after all, was the secret to prosperity and the bright future of Mankind). The best the more faithful could do was assert that Christianity and the Gospel was probably true, which was to say it was possibly false.

The first step to maintain the relevance and acceptability of the Christian faith was the urgent task of “separating” the essential truths from their historical packaging. So, miracles were embarrassing to the scientific rationalistic mind, but the “essential truths packaged within” the Bible's account of miracles were immediately relevant to the Age if they were unpackaged and re-communicated to continental romantics, German idealists and English empiricists and the like.

The “miracles” were just a literary device of a primitive age to teach us wonder at life, the possibility of a new beginning, the belief in being able to make a quantum leap forward in human progress—and on, and on. The miracles were thus historical literary devices—a kind of cosmic metaphor. Nineteenth century Church leaders were no longer looking over the parapet at an Unbelief as an enemy. Once they had done that and seen Nietzsche, Kant, Hume, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin as Goliaths to be slain. Now they were running across no-man's land shouting “we are with you!" Goliath had won and Israelites were rushing to become Philistines.

In this terrible period of defalcation and compromise, fighting the cultural war meant defecting and joining with the “other side”. The overwhelming motivation was to gain the respect of Unbelief and unbelievers. “If we show them we can be relevant, they will accept us and listen to what we are saying,” was the pervasive undertone. It was an age of fawning obsequiousness to idolatry. It is still with us, in large part, although less so. It is more difficult to be fawning and obsequious when the wolf has bared its teeth, and they are bloody.

But in those days, the pressing need was to show that the Church cared about those who had thus far missed out on the great economic leap forward of the industrial and mercantile revolutions. Yes the new Age was indeed dawning, but we need to offer a helping hand to oppressed labourers, to the poor, to the sick, and to the indigent. Then the Kingdom's glory will truly come. This, the leaders said, was the essence of Christianity.

J Gresham Machen, true Gospel warrior, captured the essence of how the Church generally had capitulated, and fawningly deserted to Unbelief, in a letter to his mother, written on November 14, 1914, after attending church:

Last Sunday I heard Dr Parkurst on Madison Square. The interior of the church building is characterized by a certain rich magnificent simplicity, and the music seemed to me the finest church music I have ever heard. The whole service was possessed of perfect unity . . . . the sermon was exceedingly stimulating. There was not a touch of Christianity in it . . .
Praasma, p.34. Emphasis, ours

Two years later (March 14, 1916), he wrote:

In the afternoon I heard Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick has great vogue—especially, I believe, among college men. And he is dreadful! Just the pitiful modern stuff about an undogmatic Christianity.
Praasma, p. 35

This, more than anything else, led to a decline in church attendance in the US and right across the West. When idolatry and unbelief began to be preached, churches emptied out. By 1900, in London churchgoing had reduced to just 16 percent of the population. It has not improved. In Germany, on the eve of World War I, just four percent of the population was attending Church on a regular basis. Of course, the percentage of “Christians-on-wheels” was far higher: that is, people who came to church only in a pram, a wedding car, or a hearse. But the reality was that already, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the West had already become post-Christian.

The decline of the Christian faith and the entering into a post-Christian era was not a twentieth century development. It was a nineteenth century malady. That century was the most overtly consistent expression of the rationalistic Enlightenment seen to date. That century made Enlightenment rationalism the established religion of Europe. Everybody, Christians and non-Christians alike all came to sing from its hymnbook.

But the fruits of this new paganism were yet to appear and ripen. Europe entered the twentieth century in a blaze of optimism and self-glorification. The New Model Man was no longer crawling: he was walking. In a few short years, he would no longer be walking, but striding—and then strutting. Then the bloodletting would begin.

The Culture Wars, Round II

The Triumph of Unbelief in the West

The Christian faith declares that all power and authority belongs to the risen Lord Jesus Christ. His authority embraces all reality: both material and immaterial realms; all nations, all cultures, and all societies. He is the Alpha and Omega. The past, the present and the future are His and He is their Lord. Consequently, all Unbelief—wherever it be found—is doomed to fail. Resistance is not only futile, it is evil.

Of course, to Unbelief it does not seem this way. Non-Christians would insist that they are on the winning side, that the Christian faith is a relic of a by-gone ignorant and superstitious age. They would point to the triumph of Enlightenment rationalism in the West, the decline of belief in Christ, and the ebbing of His (mythical) Kingdom. They would refer to the decline of influence of Christian beliefs and of the Christian Gospel everywhere in the West. And they would have recent history on their side. They will find no argument here—at least as far as the West is concerned (the Southern Hemisphere being another story).

Christians, however, see the long run very differently (as you would expect). To Christian eyes, the post Christian, pagan West appears like an outpost of Unbelief across the centuries and generations. It is like a primitive tribe which is celebrating because, with its spears and clubs, it has fought off an enemy scouting party, unaware that just over the ridge sit a division of M1 Abrams tanks about to unleash. Or, to change the figure (with apologies to Byron), the Believer knows that the might of the Western Gentile, unsmote by the sword, shall melt like snow in the glance of the Lord.

But Christians also know that the decline of the faith in the West did not come about by accident. It is Jerusalem, and the Church within her walls, that is largely responsible. And for this we weep and mourn, and like Daniel of old, confess the sins of our fathers in praying for the restoration of Jerusalem. It is we in Jerusalem who have been unfaithful and so the Lord has made us face the consequences. The strength of the post-Christian pagan West is a story of the infidelity of Jerusalem, not a story of the merits or powers of Unbelief.

By the end of the nineteenth century our fathers had decided that Christianity, if it were to prosper, needed modernising to make it more relevant to the world around it. This meant taking up the concerns and aspirations of the surrounding culture and joining with them.

The nineteenth century ended in Europe amidst a blaze of glorious optimism. Universal peace and prosperity was about to break out upon mankind. Progress was inevitable. Unending prosperity was just around the corner. The response of the Church, in general, was to agree. The so-called triumph of Man and of human reason meant that Man could now exercise control over God and His Christ, and His Bible. Modern Man could see flaws, faults, mere imaginations, and prejudices in the Bible that rude and crude scholars could not see before. “Scientific” criticism had exposed all kinds of errors and weaknesses in the Bible. Just as all now needed to be subject to Reason and rationalistic criticism, Christianity was no exception.

Unbelief triumphed in the West in the nineteenth century because of the defalcation of the Church. The critical point of the apostasy was to agree with Unbelievers that human reason was the ground of all truth, and that God needed to be subject to it. “Fair enough”, said the Church—and in so saying, parroted the reasoning and speech of Eve when she had turned away from God. Did God really say that? and, Do I agree with it? was at the heart of sin in the Garden. It was also at the heart of the sins of the Church in the West at the end of the nineteenth century.

The Church had agreed with Unbelief that if God and the Bible and the Christian faith was to have any credibility and integrity at all, it had to be made reasonable to fallen men. For human Reason had become the measure of all truth and reality in the community at large. The leaders and teachers of the Church concurred--and so exchanged the Living God for an idol.

The apple had not fallen far from Adam's tree.

The Culture Wars, Round I

Phony Culture Wars

The rubric “culture wars” has entered our lexicon. In vulgar parlance it refers to the clash between the world-view or social vision of the Left versus the Right. Rudely put, the social vision of the Left is for a society organised around and cascading down from the prior rights of the collective, the state, and the community. The Right's social vision is a society cascading down from the prior rights of a human individual, and, therefore, voluntary groups and free associations.

The conflict is pretty much total in the sense that confrontation between the two views is experienced right along the entire front of human activity. We, however, view this conflict as one between members of the same family. In an estranged family, it is not uncommon for the members to disagree on practically everything—but members of the same family they inescapably remain. In the vulgar use, the term “culture wars” must definitely be written in lower case. In the end, the conflict between Left and Right represents a mere disagreement, and a relatively minor one at that. Describing it as a “war” is certainly colourful, definitely emotive, but nothing more than a hyperbolic figure of speech.

Consider the deeper level of pervasive agreement between these two camps. Both presuppose from the outset that the Living God does not and cannot exist. Both assume the final authority of Man in determining truth, meaning, together with the goals, motives, and standards of existence itself. Both presuppose the ultimacy of chance and that in the final analysis meaningless wins. Any "gods" or "higher powers" there may be have their existence only by warrant of human reason. Both agree the "rational" is the real. Both deny the existence of infinite ethical values. Both camps are therefore moral relativists, with all ethics being nothing more than an expression of mere preference, not in any sense a reflection or application of an absolute, eternal value. Both agree that meaning is what Man says it is.

Therefore, in our view the culture wars are phony. They resemble the stage managed conflicts of the WWF, or Survivor. They provide entertainment value for the credulous. But anyone who seriously believes the disputes, the fights, and the wrangles are genuine is a sucker. As soon as it dawns on the punter that the conflict is stage managed and choreographed, the lustre goes.

But that does not mean that genuine culture wars do not exist. They do. It is just that the front lines and the trenches are in a different place. The real culture war exists between those who believe and know for sure that the Living God is, and those who have presupposed that He cannot be and that Man is the ultimate self-determiner of all things. And what a war it is! It embraces the heights of heaven and the depths of Sheol.

The ascended Lord commands and demands that everything in heaven and upon earth, even every thought and intention and act of every human being, be subject to Him. Unbelieving Man asserts that if any god were to exist, it would only do so if it were subject to the dictats of human reason--which is to insist that Man remains sovereign over all deities and "higher" powers. This is a religion the Devil endorses and encourages with all his might and main. It is the religion he subtly preached to our first parents and to which they became the first converts.

Since culture is nothing other than an outward manifestation of human thoughts, words, and deeds, particular cultures are either predominantly subject to Him or they are not. Those who do not believe in Christ, reject His reign. They are rebels. They resist, resent, and ultimately hate the idea that all that they are and all of their being must be subject to the risen Lord. Everything that they do manifests this committed rebellion.

Although forced by the exigencies of being a feeble and severely limited creature to act in particular ways, they wish it were not so. If God makes them breathe or eat or reproduce or clothe their children they insist that it is not He, but they who are in control. This is the precise point of thermo-nuclear fission in the cosmic culture war. Who is Lord? The Unbeliever insists that Man is the measure of all things, and mastered by none. The Believer insists that the Lord Jesus Christ is the measure of all things and Master of everything.

Because the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of all lords and King of all kings, He has something to say about everything. And what He says is infallibly true and bears totalitarian authority. There can be no neutral ground between the lines. Because literally there is no square inch of creation, no sub-atomic particle of reality, no instant of time, that is not controlled and ordered and commanded by Him there cannot be any “middle ground” between Belief and Unbelief, as if there were some place Christ's realm was not operative. You are either for Me, or against Me, He said.

The real culture war, then, is between Christ and those whom He has redeemed and called as His people, on the one hand, and those who remain fighting a hopeless, desperate rearguard action against Him, on the other. But in this war, no quarter will be given, nothing will be uncontested, nothing will be left to Unbelief. It is this infallible and relentless certainty that lends urgency and passion to the merciful cry to Unbelief and unbelievers: “turn to Me, turn to Me, for why would ye die, O house of Israel.”

In the series of posts to follow we will endeavour to trace, in general outline, how this great culture war has played out in the West over the past one hundred years. We will do this in an attempt to gain some insight into what contribution we need to make in our generation. Like our fathers of Issachar of old, we seek an understanding of the times so that we might understand better what we ought to do.

ChnMind 2.24 The Essential Principles of Justice

When the Foundations are Destroyed

“Justice!” is a universal cry throughout the world. It has, however, become little more than a slogan, the content of which is a wax nose and reflects no more than the prevailing prejudices of the day. For example, in the post-Christian West, for one, justice is having a house provided by the State. For another, justice is the State providing an abortion of an unwanted child. We could go on. Justice is whatever people desire and to which they attach the rubric "human right". And new human rights are being "discovered" and promulgated by the hour.

In more authoritarian nations, justice tends to be viewed as requiring compliance of all citizens to the rules of the State. If one does not comply, one is stealing from or defrauding the “people.” In such nations, not to obey the State is itself an act of injustice.

But what is common—whatever the particular meaning and content given to the concept of justice—is the axiomatic belief that it is the duty of the State to provide and administer justice for its citizens.

For Jerusalem this is also true. The State is the ministry of justice. In fact, it is about the only recognised competence of the State within the Scriptures. State involvement in any other activity almost inevitably ensures that the State ends up perpetrating injustice and acting unjustly, at least insofar as the Bible, our constitutional documents, define what justice is and is to be.

The responsibility of the State to administer justice justly is clearly set down in Psalm 82, where God is revealed to be the Judge of all judges:

God takes His stand in His own congregation; He judges in the midst of the rulers. How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality to the wicked? Vindicate the weak and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.
Psalm 82: 1—4

Rulers, politicians, all the organs and branches of the State have a duty before the Living God to judge, rule, administrate, and legislate justly. The opposite of justice, according to the Christian faith, is to show partiality—to favour one person or group at the expense of another. Particularly, to show favour to those who are wicked and would do wickedness.

Then the text goes on to address specifically the plight of the poor, the weak, the orphan, the afflicted, the needy, and the destitute. Now this passage has been seized upon, quite wrongly, by socialists and those who advocate that justice requires redistributing wealth in favour of the poor, the indigent, etc. But, as we shall see elsewhere our constitutional documents explicitly forbid showing any favour to the poor at all. Rather, what is being utterly condemned here is the rich and powerful conspiring against the poor, using their wealth to buy judgments in their favour. This is absolutely inimical to justice, and kindles the wrath of the Living God.

The second key constitutional provision for justice is found in Leviticus 19:15:

You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor not defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbour fairly.
Leviticus 19:15

This is the source of the concept within the older Western legal tradition that “justice is blind.” Under a just State the judges and courts care not (they do not regard) whether the plaintiffs or defendants are rich, famous, powerful, or notorious—or whether they are poor, uneducated, deprived, orphaned, or destitute. Justice, in order to be just, has to be completely disinterested and neutral towards all. One law, one rule for everyone—for kings and princes, and for subjects and paupers. This is the essence of the rule of law. The Scriptures explicitly forbid showing partiality—but particularly partiality on socio-economic grounds. When the State does so, the State has devolved into a ministry of injustice.

The third key constitutional definition of justice is equal access to the courts of justice. If the rich can get to be heard in court, but the poor cannot afford to get access to a judge, the State has become a ministry, not of justice, but injustice. Moses, the great Lawgiver, the steward of the House of the Lord, laid down this constitutional principle as follows:

Then I charged our judges at that time, saying “Hear the cases between your fellow countrymen, and judge righteously between a man and his fellow countryman, or the alien who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not fear man, for the judgment is God's.
Deuteronomy 1: 16—17

Modern Athenian city and nation states have shut up the law courts to the poor and, therefore, the societally and politically weak. Access to justice has become more and more the preserve of the wealthy which means that entire societies in the West are becoming systemically unjust.

The final key constitutional principle which defines justice is constantly repeated prohibition against taking bribes. Moses, again:

You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns which the Lord you God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous. Justice, and justice only, you shall pursue, that you may live and possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
Deuteronomy 16: 18—20

When we see how the constitution of the City of Jerusalem defines justice, we rapidly conclude that modern Western post-Christian democracies have become systemically and constitutionally unjust. Athens and injustice are now inextricably interwoven.

Firstly, Athens is a City built on bribery and the corruption that inevitably follows. The essence of the modern Athenian democratic process is for state legislators and lawmakers to seek favour with a majority of the community by promising to pass (or maintain) laws that favour them and their factional interests.

“Vote for me. I support unions, or employers, or the unemployed, or students, or the aged, or families by passing laws which favour you, reward you, give money to you, or advance your case against others.” This is what an Athenian election is predominantly about. Lawmakers get elected by promising to pervert the essence of justice by enacting laws that favour one group or other. Or, to put it another way, Athenian lawmakers achieve office through bribing voters; if they bribe sufficiently cleverly and lavishly, they get to be elected. Then they get to write the law in such a way that it pays the bribes they have offered to the people in exchange for their support. It is called "distributive justice" which is a monstrous oxymoron. The whole fabric of Athenian society is thus tawdry and unjust.

The populace in Athens enters into this systemic injustice with relish. It wants to be bribed, and allows its vote to be bought. It sells it to the highest bidder. We should not be surprised at this, since the practice was rife in ancient Athens as well. In a Western democracy, in the end the people are the Judges: everywhere, throughout modern Athens, the Judges (the people) are up for sale and open to bribes. This is why the West has become systemically and irremediably unjust. This is why the corpus of law in Western countries has institutionalised injustice in a way that can never now be changed or addressed, until Athenian idolatry is no more. This is why government has become so pervasively corrupt. Government is all about getting and dispensing favours towards one group or other, not administering justice.

The West has been remarkably self-blinded to this development. It operates in a crazy “hear no evil, see no evil” mode. If an individual or a company were to walk into the office of a judge or legislator and lay money on the table in order to get a favourable outcome, the briber, if exposed and convicted will be punished. But if a politician (seeking to become a legislator) appeals to the electorate by offering to lay “money on the table” in order to get a favourable outcome it is called fair and just. It is regarded as the working of a healthy democracy. But in fact the ethics and morality of the two situations are exactly the same. The only difference is the quantum of money involved. In the latter case, however, the quantum of the bribe and the extent of the injustice involved is much much greater. It is so much more evil that it is called systemic, and recategorized as “just”. Athens is compelled to this hypocrisy. To reverse it would be to tear down the fabric of modern Unbelieving society itself. The whole Athenian polity is built upon a foundation and superstructure of injustice and could not now continue or exist without it.

A further great perversion of justice in Athens is that the government or the State insists on regarding the socio-economic status and condition of people in its administration of justice. Despite the prohibition of the Living God that the law courts have regard to whether the person or case at issue involves the rich or the poor, modern legal systems insist upon it. Tax law, welfare law, health administration and law, educational law—it is all built upon an edifice of redistribution in favour of the less wealthy or so-called disadvantaged groups.

In other words, virtually the entire legal corpus in modern Athens is built upon the premise that you have to take into account and have regard for the socio-economic status of citizens. If you do not, you are condemned as unjust. Yet, this, according to the law of the Living God, is inimical to justice itself. Justice is no longer blind, but it has its eyes wide open, and is deliberately and overtly partial. The law has been perverted to become an instrument of evil and injustice.

Thus, on three basic counts, Athens is a systemically and perpetually unjust City. It has removed access to the courts, except for the rich. It has made bribery an intrinsic component in its political and legislative—and therefore its judicial—processes. Thirdly, it has removed the impartiality of true justice and substituted it with an entire edifice of law built upon the principle of favouring some at the expense of others. Corruption, oppression, deceit, lies, self-interest—these are simply the order of our day.

Athens, built on unjust foundations, has become an edifice of systemic corruption. Its dissolution and destruction is inevitable, not just because it will rot from the inside, but because all kings, rulers, and judges must answer to the Living God. Because they have turned to idols and made their laws and their law courts places of systemic, rampant, and irremediable injustice, He will turn upon them.

The West long ago lost any grounds to plead for the care and protection of the Almighty.

ChnMind 2.23 The Accessibility of Justice

Jerusalem and The Accessibility of Justice

Justice delayed is justice denied. This adage is self-evidently true in the Christian world-view where justice involves restitution to victims, the damaged, and the hurt. The longer justice is delayed, the longer the damage borne. Therefore, to delay justice is to deny it for those to whom it is due.

In modern Athens access to the courts has become increasingly difficult, with many impediments—amongst which the greatest is cost. Justice has become the preserve of the rich or at least those wealthy enough to fund a prosecution or court hearing. A second significant impediment is the work load on the court system: overloaded dockets, with too few magistrates, coupled with an overly prescriptive and bureaucratic procedure mean that court operations are unduly complicated and delayed.


The ideals of justice are portrayed vividly in the account of Solomon's court. Solomon, being the king, was the Chief Justice and the highest court of the nation of Israel. This vignette represents the working of justice within Jerusalem at its best. We read in I Kings 3:

Then two women who were harlots came to the king and stood before him. And the one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. And it happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house. And this woman's son died in the night, because she lay on it.

“So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your maidservant slept, and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom. And when I rose in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead; but when I looked at him carefully in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne.” The the other woman said, “"No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son." But the first woman said, "No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son." Thus they spoke before the king.

Then the king said, "The one says, 'This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one'; and the other says, 'No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.'" The king said, "Get me a sword." So they brought a sword before the king. The king said, "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other."

Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son and said, "Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him." But the other said, "He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him!" Then the king said, "Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother."

When all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had handed down, they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice.

Firstly, note that this is a civil case, where two citizens are in dispute—in this case, over a child. Yet the case also has criminal overtones since the one woman was endeavouring to steal a child: kidnapping is a criminal offence. The vast majority of cases that ought to be heard by judges or magistrates are civil cases—arising from a conflict or disagreement between citizens. The more emphasis, focus, and provision paid to civil cases and hearing disputes between people, the more biblical the system of justice becomes. A high priority placed upon civil cases helps preserve the accessibility of justice for all people—which, as we have argued, is fundamental to justice itself.

Athens has reversed this priority. In modern Unbelieving Athens the state is the most important entity of all. Its prerogatives and rights are virtually without check, since politicians occupy the highest court of the land. Within the Athenian model of justice criminal matters are far more important than civil matters. Justice is preoccupied with the prerogatives of the State. Offences against the State are to be prosecuted with vigour and the apparatus of justice focuses upon and centres around criminal justice. Civil actions have limited place—and in modern Athens are generally preserved for property disputes between larger businesses, or between corporations and government (either central or local).

Jerusalem pays far more attention to civil matters since this not only means that justice is accessible to all, but comprehensive civil justice helps nip matters in the bud before they escalate into full-blown criminal acts. The matter before Solomon is a case in point.

Secondly, the accessibility to the courts of justice for everyone—particularly the poor, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged—is underscored by the fact that these two women were prostitutes. Within Israel their social standing would have been parlous, to say the least. They were shunned and outcast from society. Yet the king, the highest judicial official, is open to hear their case. Within Jerusalem even the lowest, the most despised, and the outcast is to have access to justice. Everyone has a right to be heard and judged fairly. Solomon in all his glory did not consider it beneath his contempt to hear a case such as this. Rather, his glory is manifested in his insistence upon hearing and judging just such a case. It is glorious indeed that prostitutes and the child of a prostitute are dealt with so gravely and so carefully in the court.

Thirdly, the case shows that intrinsic to justice is discernment—of the facts, and between good and evil. This is what Solomon prayed for, when he said: “And Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people which Thou has chosen, a great people who cannot be numbered or counted for multitude. So give Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Thine.” (I Kings 3:8—9)

Get the facts and discern hearts. That is an essential prerequisite of justice. Solomon's command to kill the child, dividing him between the two women was employed to discern the hearts. True motherhood showed itself, as did malicious envy, by means of this test.

If justice is to be accessible to all, the doors of its courts must be nearby for everyone. This necessitates an extensive system of lower and higher courts. Thus we should understand that the case of the two prostitutes and the disputed baby came before Solomon because it was a difficult case, that could not be resolved by the lower courts. When Moses, the lawgiver of God's people, established Israel's judicial system, it replaced Moses as the sole judge.

The account in Exodus reads as follows:

It came about the next day that Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood about Moses from the morning until the evening. Now when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, "What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge and all the people stand about you from morning until evening?" Moses said to his father-in-law, "Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a (T)dispute, it comes to me, and I judge between a man and his neighbor and make known the statutes of God and His laws."

Moses' father-in-law said to him, "The thing that you are doing is not good. You will surely wear out, both yourself and these people who are with you, for the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone. Now listen to me: I will give you counsel, and God be with you. You be the people's representative before God, and you bring the disputes to God, then teach them the statutes and the laws, and make known to them the way in which they are to walk and the work they are to do.

"Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens. Let them judge the people at all times; and let it be that every major dispute they will bring to you, but every minor dispute they themselves will judge. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this thing and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all these people also will go to their place in peace."

So Moses listened to his father-in-law and did all that he had said. Moses chose able men out of all Israel and made them heads over the people, leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens. They judged the people at all times; the difficult dispute they would bring to Moses, but every minor dispute they themselves would judge.
Exodus 18: 13—24

The civil courts in Israel went as low as a judge appointed for every ten families. That means that justice was extensive and accessible. The next highest court was a judge who presided over fifty families. Contrast this with the judicial system in Athens where courts are now distant, expensive, delayed, and practically inaccessible. Moreover, in Athens because the State has become so intrusive, and has broken its boundaries and moved way beyond its sphere of competence or delegated authority, the law has become inordinately complex and the domain of specialists, accessible only to the monied.

Therefore Athens is an intrinsically unjust society and implicitly bent towards a tyranny of systematically denied justice—an indictment which will grow more pointed and urgent as time passes. Justice in Athens is removed, expensive, bureaucratic, and complex. Justice in Jerusalem, the City of God, is close, inexpensive, direct, straightforward and accessible. Therefore, Jerusalem is rightly called the City of Peace. Athens, however, is a ceaseless tumult of the bitter and the angry.

ChnMind 2.21 The Myth of the Secular State

The State is Inescapably a Religious Institution

The entire human race up to the modern period had it right; the modern world has it wrong. Until materialism (that is, the belief that matter is the only reality) gained a predominant hold in Athenian minds, all races, nations, and peoples understood that the State was a religious institution and that the civil government established the tenets and beliefs of a particular religion.

The twentieth centuries adoption of the philosophy of materialism, whether of the militantly aggressive kind (communism) or of the effete liberal kind (western democracy) has resulted in the peculiar notion of the State being non-religious, or secular in nature. The movement from the implicit atheism of the Enlightenment to the explicit atheism of the West is well documented and easily understood. What is not so widely understood is that the modern penchant to insist that the State be secular—that is, that the State not be allowed to have any connection with any particular religion, but be neutral towards all—is itself a distinctly and deeply religious position and a consistent attempt to establish the religion of materialism.


Firstly, let us rehearse the major dogmas and doctrines of materialism. This belief system asserts that there is no reality or existence beyond physical matter. The gods, therefore, by definition do not exist, for they are not material; they cannot be scrutinised in a scientific laboratory (which to the materialist constitutes more than adequate proof that the gods are imaginary). The belief that many people have in a deity is an outcome of the peculiar functioning of their physical bodies, such as the conditioning of their neurons. However, the belief itself is superstitious only. What they believe no more exists than Santa Claus.

The all-determiner of existence is the material (natural) order. Man, insofar as he can use his reason to investigate and manipulate the processes of the material world, to that extent he is master over matter. To all intents and practical purposes, then, the only ultimate power in the universe is man himself--unless and until a superior alien species turns up. Meanwhile, man is cock of the hill.

Men become truly free and self-actualised when they shed all the superstitious beliefs in deities, Santa Claus, and existence after death. As they do this and interact with the universe as it truly is—that is, a cluster of atoms and resultant matter—then they know the truth and are, thereby, set free.

All human culture and institutions, including schools, governments, law-courts, judgments, parliaments, families become truly enlightened when they are able to discard religious superstitions and live and act in the real world, which is the world of matter only. The enlightened world, therefore, is the secular world.

The philosophy of materialism and the religious dogma that flows out of it has become the dominant religion of Athenian governments, schools, universities, media, and of western culture in general. This reality alone makes the modern world acutely peculiar when judged against the backdrop of the history of mankind upon the earth to date. Naturally, modern man sees this peculiarity as a superior and enlightened position. Historical humanity, however, would view it as idiotic, naive and stupid in the extreme. We suspect subsequent generations will look back and likewise shake their heads in disbelief at the naiveté and stupidity of twentieth century western civilisation.

Materialism relentlessly drives society into increasingly secular activity and beliefs. Materialism insists that the State must be secular and it must be the ultimate authority in all human society. Since there is only matter, and since Man can rule over matter, Man is to all intents and purposes the functioning deity. There is no higher law than Man. Corporate Man, the State is the highest expression of human power and authority and law. Therefore, the State is the functioning deity.

But, as a true deity, the secular State will have no other gods in its presence. Therefore, the secular state must not mention or name any other god or any other religion. There must be an absolute wall of separation between the State and religion—which is to say, any other religion.

Consider the following constitutional precepts:

1. The Church is separate from the State.

2. It is prohibited to enact on the territory of the Republic local laws or regulations which would put any restraint upon, or limit freedom of conscience or establish any advantges or privileges on the grounds of the religion of citizens.

3. Each citizen may confess any religion or no religion at all. Loss of any rights as the result of the confession of a religion or the absence of a religion shall be revoked. The mention in official papers of the religion of a citizen is not allowed.

4. The actions of the government of other organizations of public law may not be accompanied by religious rites or ceremonies.

5. The free performance of religious rites shall be granted so long as it does not disturb the public order and infringe upon the the rights of the citizens of the . . . Republic. In such cases, the local agencies are entitled to take the necessary measures to secure public order and safety.

6. No person may evade citizen's duties on the grounds of his religion.

7. Religious oaths shall be abolished. In cases where it is necessary only a solemn vow may be given.

8. The acts of civil status shall be kept solely by civil agencies.

9. The school shall be separate from the Church. The teaching of religion is prohibited in all state, municipal or private educational institutions where a general education is given. Citizens may give and receive religious instruction privately.

10. All ecclesiastical and religious associations are subject to regulations pertaining to private societies and unions, and shall not enjoy any advantages or receive any subsidies either from the State or from local self-governing institutions.

We have here a classic expression of the secular state which in turn is a consistent reflection of the belief of materialism. The question is, What constitution is being quoted? Is it a sort of model constitution found in the Humanist Manifesto? Is it taken from the US Bill of Rights? Is it the working brief of the American Civil Liberties Union? Or, is it from the NZ Human Right Commission?

The thinking and the concepts are familiar to us all. This is indeed the world of modern Unbelief as we have come to know it. So, what is the provenance of this stirring and very modern declaration of the separation of Church and State?

It is dated 23rd January, 1918 and is a decree promulgated by Vladimir Illyich Lenin on behalf of the new Soviet regime.

At this point, we expect you, the reader, will have one of two reactions. Some of you will react with surprise that the Soviet Union was so enlightened and advanced and that maybe it was not as bad a society or government as you have been lead to believe. Others will react with sadness and maybe anger that the Soviet Union did not live up to, nor keep, the declarations contained in this decree. The blood of Jerusalem's martyrs in that place still cry out to the Lord for vengeance.

To the first reaction, we say that the Soviet Union was neither enlightened nor advanced, but brutish and stupid—as all materialism is. The fact that we, however, find the statements so familiar tells us volumes about the brutishness of our own Athenian societies and nations and how implicitly sovietesque they have become, rather than the relative enlightenment of the Soviets.

To the second reaction, we reply that the Soviet establishment of the State as secular secular and that the Church must be separated off from civil society, inevitably led to the active and aggressive persecution of the Christian Church and of Christians. As it will in the West! Soviet tyranny was not an aberration, but an necessary extension of this establishment of the secular faith. If the state bans religious faith from the public sphere and restricts it to a private sphere only (one's conscience or heart) the state will end up persecuting any who evangelise others, or who teach their religion, or instruct their own children in their faith. They will do so while they subscribe the the statements made above. This is precisely what happened in the Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin under the Five Year Plan, than later under Krushchev, who presided over a period of intense and bitter persecution of Christians and Churches.

Materialism's doctrine of the secular state is a religious dogma. It draws upon a peculiar view of origins, of reality, of man and his place in the cosmos, of power, of truth, of ultimate loyalties and devotion, of ethics, of right and wrong, and of justice, judgment and righteousness. The secular state of modern materialism is an intensely religious institution, with religious loyalties and religious dogmas. It seeks to impose its religion upon people by force and compulsion. It is, in a word, an establishment of religion.

People of earlier ages were smarter than the current crop. They knew that the State was inevitably religious: they were smart enough to elevate the debate to one over which religion it was to be.

Jerusalem has, likewise, always known that the State is an institution and establishment of religion. The only question is whether it will be acknowledged to be a servant of the one true Living God, or of an idol. Jerusalem has always known that the modern secular state is just one more front for human self-worship.

ChnMind 2.20 The State an Intrinsic Part of God's Kingdom

Sub-Christian Views of the State

History has thrown up four different views on the place and role of the State within Christendom or God's Kingdom. Three of these views are sub-biblical and not of Christ. Only one is true. The three sub-Christian views all draw upon pagan themes or elements and seek to incorporate them into the Christian faith. They represent an attempt to syncretise Athens and Jerusalem.

The first pagan influence is represented by popism. The medieval Roman Catholic church postulated that the pope—the head of the church at Rome—was the vicar of Christ upon earth. As Christ's representative, it was argued that the pope carried the authority of Christ upon earth, ruling over all things. Papal ideology therefore asserted that the pope had higher authority than the State: the pope ruled over kings. An historic avatar of this claim was the papal crowning of Charlemagne on Christmas night, AD800 by the pope as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Popism represents a syncretised sub-Christian version of the ancient idea of the king or emperor being the vicar of the gods and himself semi-divinised.

The second pagan influence is represented by divine right theories. Here the king is seen as God's representative on the earth. In this pagan variant, the king rules over all things, including the Church. The king is an implicit absolute monarch, the vicar of Christ upon earth. An historical manifestation of this pagan variant is the claim by Henry VIII to be the head of the Anglican church—a claim continued to be maintained by the British monarchy to this day.

A particular historic avatar of this sub-Christian view is the coronation of Napoleon on December 2nd, 1804. The pope blessed the crown (Charlemagne's crown remade) then Napoleon walked forward, took the crown up, and placed it upon his own head. The symbolism was deliberate and carefully planned. This variant also is a manifestation of the older pagan view of the emperor being the vicar of the gods.

The third, and final sub-Christian view of the State is represented by the Anabaptists at the time of the Reformation. The Anabaptists asserted that while the New Testament clearly taught that the State or the civil magistrate was an office appointed by God Himself, it belonged to the realms of this world, and not the Kingdom of God. So sharp was the disjunction that Anabaptist teachers forbade Christians to hold government office. Christians, it was argued, shared the perfection of Christ and the civil magistracy was a worldly institution, belonging to the realms of this world, not of Christ.

This sub-Christian view represents the syncretism of pagan platonic and neo-platonic views and the Christian faith. The non-material, non-earthly, other worldly perspective of the Anabaptists was in fact an “anaplatonism”, an insinuation of Socrates, without his mortal coils, into the Kingdom of God.

Against all these defalcations and compromises with Athens, reformed Christianity captured and faithfully presented the Scriptural teaching concerning the State and its place and role in God's Kingdom. We can summarise the revelation of God concerning these matters in the following propositions:

1. Universal totalitarian authority belongs to Christ alone.
2. There is no head of the Church, but Christ.
3. There is no head of the State, but Christ.
4. His Kingdom embraces all created reality.
5. Spirituality is a matter of being of the Holy Spirit, or led by the Spirit.
6. The State is an intrinsic and essential institution of the Kingdom of God
7. Christ has endless vicars upon the earth; every servant of God is a vicar of Christ.
8. Every vicar of Christ has a duty to follow his or her particular divine callings.
9. No servant of Christ can judge or reject another servant of Christ: to his own Master he stands or falls.
10. Every vicar of Christ is subject to His law and command as given in Holy Scripture.

These ten propositions mean that Jerusalem is unique in all the earth. Every other political ideology, every other version of the role of the Kingdom of God or of the State is a doffing of the cap to speculations and lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God, and are not part of the obedience of Christ.