Dominion comes through service … It is idolatrous to seek dominion primarily by political means, whether by domination or anarchic revolution.

From the archives of David P. Field’s blog, Thursday, August 24, 2006.

Doug Wilson’s line, “True postmodernism is theonomic postmillennialism” prompts me to dig up a little heap of quotations which I extracted, in 1993, from some of the theonomist books, mostly published in the previous ten years or so. Theonomists were accused of abandoning evangelism and the church, being obsessed with politics, and seeking to ‘impose’ the kingdom and this series of quotations left me wondering whether the theonomists’ critics were being altogether fair (!).

That was a long time ago. You may not believe it but in those days the evangelical gate-keepers, the self-appointed guardians of the tradition were quite often guilty of not-reading, mis-reading, or mis-representing the works of those they declared a danger to the church even though the theonomists’ entire appeal was to Scripture. I don’t suppose anything like that could happen these days.

These are the books from which the quotations come:

The Changing of the Guard – George Grant
Calvinism Today
Healer of the Nations – Gary North
House Divided – Greg Bahnsen & Kenneth Gentry
Theonomy: An Informed Response – ed. Gary North
Inherit the Earth – Gary North
The Institutes of Biblical Law – R.J. Rushdoony
No Other Standard – Greg Bahnsen
Paradise Restored – David Chilton
Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators – David Chilton
The Reduction of Christianity – Peter Leithart & GaryDeMar
Theonomy in Christian Ethics – Greg Bahnsen
Tools of Dominion – Gary North
Westminister’s Confession – Gary North

And the quotations may as well sit on blogger as on my hard disk …

• It must be stressed that the creation of a Christian nation could be accomplished only as a result of the widespread work of the Holy Spirit, not through some bureaucratic top-down, coercively imposed order on a non-Christian majority by a Christian minority. Healer p.34

• It is the missionary … who is best equipped to begin the bottom-up process of evangelism that ultimately leads to the establishment of a covenanted confederation of Christian nations. Healer p.157

• We must seek reform first in the Church, not in the State. The focus on the State as the primary institution of life is the humanist myth of the age. It must not become the myth of Christian reconstruction. Healer p.287

• What is God’s historic means of making the world better ? The preaching of the gospel. Reduction p.xx

• One of the distinctives of Christian reconstruction is its aversion to the use of politics as the method to bring about social change …. But why all the attention to politics in reconstructionist literature … ? The answer is very simple. Politics has become the saviour of the people. Reconstructionists write about politics and civil government in order to call Christians and non-Christians back to their only Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Reduction p.21f

• Christian reconstructionists are looking for the transformation of all of society, including families, churches, business establishments, the legal profession, education, economics, journalism, the media and civil government through personal redemption and adherence to the Bible as the standard for godly rule. Reduction p.23

• Dominion comes through service … It is idolatrous to seek dominion primarily by political means, whether by domination or anarchic revolution. Reduction p.25

• Evangelism is the starting point of social transformation. Reduction p.189

• The key to remedying the [present] situation is … regeneration. There is no hope for man except in regeneration … True reform begins with regeneration and then the submission of the believer to the whole law-word of God. Institutes, pp.113, 449, 627

• The chief blessing of the kingdom is forgiveness of sins. Reduction p.217

• It is through the Spirit-filled church, proclaiming the gospel, that the kingdom of Christ extends throughout the world. Reduction, p.220

• The negative reaction to social reform comes from secularized attempts to do what only the gospel can do. This reaction is legitimate but it should not deter Christians from being truly evangelical in their attempts at reform. Reduction, p.286

• The church, not the family or the state is the central institution in history. Informed, p.204

• If we really do need a graduate school in theology, let us finance one. But let us no longer fool the donors into believing that this sort of rarified academic institution is necessary or even useful for training pastors … For now, let us get on with the task at hand: the evangelization of the world. Informed, p.340f

• The authors of this book … know very well that Christian faith centers on the saving work of Jesus Christ. They profess to love the Savior with all their heart. They know that their new life in Him, their new status of being right with God, and their hope of eternal life have been granted to them by the grace of God. They have nothing of which to boast. With Paul they would say, ‘Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified unto me and I unto the world’. Having been saved from the world, their concern is to love their Lord with all their heart, soul, strength and mind. They now want to walk in those good works which God intends for them. They make a sincere effort to heed the words of Christ to ‘seek above all the kingdom of God and His righteousness’. They know that this kingdom, for which they pray regularly, will not be consummated until after the return of Jesus Christ and the final judgment, when all believers will then rejoice in a new heaven and earth wherein righteousness dwells. In the meantime they seek to perfect personal holiness in the fear of God and to make all the nations disciples of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is only in the light and context of these beliefs and practices that they see and understand their Reconstructionist position in ethics and eschatology. House, p.3f

• It must be understood the Reconstructionists believe that evangelism is the absolute pre-condition to worldwide, postmillennial, theocratic success … We insist that cultural influence and change are to be promoted by God’s people – who are saved by grace alone – at large in their callings, not by the institutional Church as such. House, p.194

• Evangelism, leading to baptism, comes first. House, p.194

• Christian Reconstructionists do not believe that man can be fundamentally changed by changing the conditions of society. Instead we believe that society will be changed when men are first changed inwardly by the Gospel and then seek to apply that change to the spheres of life in which they are involved. Tony Baxter, CT I.4 17

• First and foremost, our emphasis is on the proclamation of the saving power of God through Jesus Christ; and then the regenerate man applying the whole word of God to every sphere of life. Rushdoony, CT II.1 14

• The message of the kingdom of God rests on a concept of salvation which is supernaturally imparted, not politically imparted. Tools, p.38

• The primary need today, as always, is the need for widespread personal repentance before God. Tools, p.39

• The basis for building a Christian society is evangelism and missions that lead to a widespread Christian revival, so that the great mass of earth’s inhabitants will place themselves under Christ’s protection, and voluntarily use His covenantal laws for self-government. Christian reconstruction begins with personal conversion to Christ and self-government under God’s law, then spreads to others through revival and only later does it bring comprehensive changes in civil law, when the vast majority of voters voluntarily agree to live under Biblical blueprints. Tools, p.55

• The key to cultural transformation is the gospel. Productive, p.234

• My slogan is ‘politics fourth’ … it is my concern after individual salvation, church membership and family membership. Westminster’s, p.158

• Politics is not central. The worship of God is central. Changing, p.xx

• What Christians should say in response to humanism’s political theology is that God’s Church, as the institution entrusted by God with His Word and His sacraments, is the central institution of history. Changing, p.xx

• Christian Reconstructionists categorically deny that politics is central to social change. The reformation of the Church is central; every other positive social change will flow from this one. Changing, p.xxi

• The goal of Christian political action then is not to usher in a theocracy but to acknowledge the theocracy that already exists …. Christian political action is not supposed to impose a messianic kingdom from the top down. Only God can lawfully control the hearts of men by imposing His rule …. Christian political action is therefore a bottom-up and inside-out process. Changing, p.11

• The orthodox Christian faith cannot be reduced to personal experiences, academic discussions, or culture-building activity – as important as all these are in varying degrees. The essence of Biblical religion is the worship of God …. True Christian reconstruction of culture is far from being simply a matter of passing Law X and electing Congressman Y. Christianity is not a political cult. It is the divinely ordained worship of the Most High God. Paradise, p.215

• I forthrightly reject any reduction of the sacred message to moralism or politics … the central thrust of the bible is recognized to be the accomplishment and application of salvation to God’s people. Theonomy, p.33f

• I don’t disagree that the issues taken up in Theonomy are of subordinate importance in the Christian life, preaching of the church, range of theological loci etc … Surely the fact that some Christians take up the question of God’s law and its relation to modern penology – and that some write on the subject – does not mean that they believe that subject is the most vital issue for all believers (or even for themselves). No Other, p.43

• We may readily grant that socio-political reconstruction has less urgency than personal spirituality or the church, but this does not bear whatsoever upon the truth or error of the theonomic standard for politics. No Other, p.51

Is it possible for a book of contemplative theology to be neo noir?

INTRODUCTION to Dark Sayings: Essays for the Eyes of the Heart

In some ways, this collection of essays does resemble a detective novel: there are mysteries to solve, it always seems to be night-time, conventional methods are ignored, and nothing is what it appears to be.

The Bible demonstrates that all good theology is not only a story, it is a movie, and not only a movie, but a movie deliberately designed to perplex, surprise, and unsettle us.

We can easily identify classic film noir by the constant opposition of light and shadow, its oblique camera angles, and its disruptive compositional balance of frames and scenes, the way characters are placed in awkward and unconventional positions within a particular shot, for example. But besides these technical cinematic characteristics, there are a number of themes that characterize film noir, such as the inversion of traditional values and the corresponding moral ambivalence… the feeling of alienation, paranoia, and cynicism; the presence of crime and violence; and the disorientation of the viewer, which is in large part accomplished by the filming techniques mentioned above.¹1 Mark T. Conrad (editor), The Philosophy of Film Noir, 2.

However, while the anxiety, alienation, romance, and dark wit (hopefully) remain, this book reserves noir’s hard-boiled cynicism and nihilism for the foibles of those who rebel against God. For the Christian writer-director, the darkness is only a device employed to bring the reader to the light. The deliberate ambiguities are only temporary cowls that eventually will be stripped away. Like the Bible, which, if we are honest, is a very dark book, these dark sayings, in their fundamental mindset and ultimate trajectory, are unshakably optimistic.

The “shadow” is a psychological term for everything we cannot see in ourselves. Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson tells us that, in light of the Jungian practice of shadow work, growing in maturity includes developing a consciousness of one’s “inner psychopath.”²Jordan Peterson, 2017 Maps of Meaning 11: The Flood and the Tower and 2017 Personality 08: Carl Jung and the Lion King (lectures). As the testing of Adam teaches us, a truly good person is not one who is harmless, but one who, like Solomon, has learned to bear the sword in the cause of righteousness. Each individual must come to terms with his own Adamic “blind spot” (Matthew 7:3-5), his personal capacity for evil.

A commitment to truth is always a fight, which is why cowards often disguise their cowardice as morality. Shadow work strips away the personas, the veils of hypocrisy which we wear to dissociate ourselves from primitive desires, the “monsters from the Id.” According to Peterson, a persona is “the mask you wear to convince yourself and the world that you’re not a terrible monster so that when you face the mirror you don’t have to run away screaming.”³Jordan Peterson, August 2017 Patreon Q&A.

The problem with Jung and Peterson is that the mirrors of modern psychology are only broken shards, fragments of a moral framework bequeathed to us by our Christian heritage. The Word of God is the only true mirror.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:23-24).

Thus, reading the Bible is itself a form of shadow work, and a good work of theology should be a house of mirrors. The architectural aspect of this process is almost always understated, by academics and laypeople alike. The features of God’s Temple are expressions of His character, but God works in iterations, in fractals.⁴See “The Bible is a Fractal” in Michael Bull, Reading the Bible in 3D. The cruciform shape and interactive elements of the Sanctuary of God inform every sphere of being. The cubic Holy of Holies behind the Temple veil was a golden tesseract,⁵In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analog of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells. The tesseract is one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes. a construct of parallel “mirrors” in which every side is exposed, a multi-layered dream, the spring of boundless possibilities, a symbol of the hidden mind of God, an eternal light that was quite literally dressed in an ephemeral darkness. Welcome to The Infinite Room.

So much for the exploration of the arcane. What makes this book neo-noir? It is the fact that the claustrophobic corridors and stairwells, the smoky offices with drawn blinds, and the rain-washed streets of the Dark City of our current theological zeitgeist might suddenly dissolve, leaving you dangling in space above the earth, or deposited in the primeval past or far distant future. The present writer is an imp who deals with shadows internal and external, from the hidden things of the human heart to the hidden things of God. Let him take you from the valley of the shadow of death to the court of heaven, from a dark desert highway to a wing of the Temple, from the unfathomable shades of the ego to the outer reaches of the universe. After all, what could go wrong?

Lend yourself to this holy terror, and he will endeavor — though will not guarantee — to have you delivered safely home before dawn.

Michael Bull
Katoomba, January 2018

I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
(Psalm 78:2)

ART: Not to be reproduced, Rene Magritte (1937)

The book of Revelation polarises Christians. Some become obsessed with ‘cracking its code’ while others throw it into the too hard basket. Thankfully, recent advances in biblical theology enable us to liberate this enigmatic book from both mistreatment and obscurity.

The prophecy is attractive to some because of its mystery, its beauty and its terror, and also because interpreting it promises access to divine knowledge about future events. But when it comes to its application in everyday life, most pastors are unwilling to venture beyond the letters to the seven churches in their preaching, since these offer some easily identifiable and practical moral advice.

Continue reading at ethos.org.au.

“I want to be like Doug Wilson when I grow up. My aim is to go full-Wilson in life. But to get there I must not go all-in Wilsonian…”

A guest post by Steven Opp

Doug Wilson is one of my heroes. I check his blog all the time, have read many of his books, and whenever a new interview or discussion with him appears on the internet, I tune in. When it comes to family living, cultural engagement, and politics he is probably the most influential person in my life. I love Doug Wilson and want to be like him when I grow up!

Wilson recently wrote a blog post titled “The Invisible Mainspring of Human Conflict.” It is a history of four major paradigm shifts in his theology over the years. They are:

1. Eschatology (he became postmillennial in 1985)
2. Soteriology (he became a Calvinist in 1988)
3. Covenant (he became a paedobaptist in 1993)
4. Girard (he became a partial-Girardian in 2006)

It was a fun read to see how the Lord has, over time, molded and sharpened Wilson’s views.

The article spends the most time on the fourth one on the list. The anthropologist/literary critic René Girard has a fascinating theory about the source of human conflict which Wilson says has helped him in understanding why clashes sometimes happen the way they do. He concludes, “Since I first read Girard, I have still gotten into conflicts. But I am not really mystified in the midst of them any more.”

While acknowledging Girard’s insights regarding desire and conflict as being extremely important in seeing what is really going on in the biblical text, Wilson also recognizes where Girard misses the mark. He says he finds Girard’s scriptural insights to be about 80% helpful, and where the good Frenchman falls short is mostly due to his views of the atonement.

Not only does Wilson only give Girard’s biblical analysis four out of five stars, he also warns of applying Girardian human conflict theory across the board lest it be abused. In other words, if you observe every motivation and discord through a Girardian lens you’ll miss the forest for the trees. Wilson explains, “perhaps you have absolutized the concept, which is another way of not grasping it. That is one of the reasons I don’t go all in with Girard—I find him too valuable, and don’t want to lose his insights. Going full Girardian means ceasing to be Girardian.”

I agree with everything Wilson says about Girardian theory, the fourth paradigm shift in his theological journey. What I would like to do in this essay is to show how in regards to Wilson’s other three paradigm shifts I am on board to a similar extent, about 80%. I find his views in these areas to be about 80% helpful. And where I believe he has gone 20% too far in each paradigm is where he loses its spirit. In other words, in these three areas going full Wilsonian means ceasing to be Wilsonian.

A Quick Stop in Narnia

Before doing this, let me first introduce a metaphor which I think will be useful in explaining what I mean.

In addition to reading much of what Wilson writes, I sometimes read what he recommends. One of the books he gives five out of five stars to in a review is Planet Narnia by Michael Ward. It is a very thorough and fascinating guide to seeing how C.S. Lewis intentionally themed each of his Chronicles of Narnia books after one of the “seven heavens,” the planets recognized by the medievals. I just finished Planet Narnia, thoroughly enjoyed it, and highly recommend it.

Ward explains how the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, takes place in the “world” of Jupiter. The themes and messages are all “jovial” (Jove is another name for Jupiter). Jupiter is the planet of merriment, royalty, and springtime. It is also the largest planet, and according to Lewis the most important, ruling the night skies. If you’ve read the stories, you know the first chronicle is about jolly Aslan bringing spring and enthroning the four children in Narnia.

The final book in the series, The Last Battle, has a Saturnine theme. Saturn, in contrast to Jupiter, is dark and cold. The positive word to describe the spirit of Saturn is “contemplative”. But Saturn is also regarded as the planet behind ugliness, old age, fate, irony, and death. All of these concepts are heavy in The Last Battle. An ugly old ape tricks the Narnians by covering a donkey in a lionskin in place of the real Aslan before one catastrophe follows another and eventually all the characters die.

Both Jupiter and Saturn are important and have their roles to play, but the contrast is sharp. Saturn is about contemplation. Jupiter is about play. Saturn is godly sorrow. Jupiter is godly joy. Saturn is Father Time. Jupiter is Father Christmas.¹Girard was born on Christmas Day and his middle name is Noël,  a fun foretaste of his wintery secularist anthropology in time converting and fleshing out so much of the Word of God. Girard’s work, which focuses on chronic envy, is ultimately a jovial gift.

The Last Battle, while being Saturnine, does not end with ultimate death. Rather, it ends with a beautiful eucatastrophe, Tolkien’s word for a surprise happy ending. Or, you might say, it ends with a Jupiter ending. The jovial tone of the final chapters of the story is more like the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The point Lewis makes is that though Saturn is big and important, he doesn’t get the final word. Rather Jupiter, king of the heavens, trumps gloomy Saturn and has the last laugh.

What I would like to do is to use Saturn and Jupiter to represent the difference between theology and the spirit of theology. Or, to put it another way, between the theology and the theologian.

Theology, like Saturn, is contemplative. When taken by itself, it is cold, dark ink on paper. Theology is important because ideas need to be presented in order to be understood. But for the words to truly be applied they must be transcended. They must be traced up to the spirit behind them, whether it be the deeper meaning or the character of the writer which the words fail to capture. This significance, the “take home”, is Jupiter above Saturn, what goes beyond the contemplation and has a life of its own.

Doug Wilson is a Jupiter. He is a jolly man. His theology is his Saturn, his contemplations. Where it is correct it is functioning in the appropriate Saturnine way, channeling truth and the character of Wilson himself in it so that others may jump on board. Where it is incorrect it morphs into things like oldness and fate and stillborn irony. Wrong theology is Saturn eclipsing Jupiter. Where I disagree with Wilson on his theology, the 20%, is where I see the contemplations becoming inflated and things going dark, hiding the real meaning and the real man. In other words, going full Saturn means ceasing to be Jupiter. Going full Wilsonian is ceasing to be Wilsonian.

I will now take you through Wilson’s first three paradigms and discuss where I see Saturn being contemplative and wise and where I see it hovering in the way of Jupiter’s spring.

Eschatology
Entering the Wardrobe

Wilson’s book Heaven Misplaced was the second book of his I ever read (after Persuasions) and it was like an oasis in the wilderness for me. It was also a big reason I started reading more of his work and began paying attention to what was going on in Moscow. The clear headed thinking in Heaven Misplaced that Jesus might not be back any time soon, and without any dream-killing disclaimers like “but no one really knows the day or hour so be ready (instead of going out and changing the world)” was wonderful to read.

In addition to learning about this positive eschatological outlook, I also saw it in action. Wilson’s church is full of people who believe in bringing Heaven to Earth in every capacity, and when I lived in Moscow I had the benefit of watching them do it, making schools, businesses, and families all with the kingdom building goals of dominion and legacy.

Too Much Chronicle and Not Enough Narnia

So why does Wilson’s postmillennial eschatology only get four and not five stars? Saturn refuses to give up his seat for Jupiter when the idea that the world won’t end soon extends into the assumption that it might not end for a very, very long time. I’ve heard Wilsonian postmillennialists use language like, “a hundred thousand years from now…” I find this to be irresponsible at best and unbiblical at worst.

First of all, it neglects to take nature into account. I understand that most environmental warnings today are hoaxes. But the oceans will fill with salt eventually, and the sun will one day burn out. To suggest that it won’t is making some of the same errors evolutionists make when they posit millions of years on the front end of things. This world is strong, but not invincible, and it cannot endure the beatings of Father Time for infinity in either direction.

From a more theological perspective, if the end comes when the world is discipled and the last enemy is death, to not put any sort of timeline on that limits the power of God. Just as atheists think they can hide the Creator Father behind a bunch of zeros when talking quantitatively about time past, so this sort of postmil thinking buries the Recreator Holy Spirit behind a bunch of zeros when talking about the future. God does not rush, but it will not take him a million years to wash the 10/40 Window (which is already much cleaner than it was twenty years ago), and we won’t be beaming to other colonies on other planets as we wait for peace in the Middle East. Syria will become Christian, Ceres will not.

Saturn has a Curfew

The spirit of postmillennial thought is wonderful. Let Christians be free and comfortable in this wonderful world. Let us faithfully endure death as we work to overcome all of the other enemies, building beautiful cities and cultures as we go. But let us not forget that Jove has the last laugh, and that Saturn’s old age will not define the future. Death must be with us for a time, but not for that long of a time.

Soteriology
Providence Picks a Picker

My friend David Salazar, now fifty, grew up a hard working kid filling baskets with the fruit that grew on the trees of central California. But when he wasn’t at work, he and his brothers did things their own way and his life was savage and base. One day when he was in his early twenties an evangelist came to his door and David bent the knee. The first book he read after that besides the Bible was Calvin’s Institutes, and it changed his life. He said that for the first time he understood what a loving father is, how he relates to his children, and that God himself is such a father.

My understanding is that this story of God’s grace and paternity encapsulates the “real Calvin”, so to speak. The Jupiter Calvin. The Calvin with no “ism” or “ist” attached. And when I think of Calvin, and reformed theology in general, I think of the sovereignty of God above all things, along with a rich and impactful church history.

Avoid all Isms Except for Prisms

Where I think Calvinists, Wilson included, fall short is in their “marketing,” so to speak. When the guy on the street hears “Calvinism,” he instinctually thinks of fatalism. He instinctually thinks of Saturn and not Jupiter. “But you don’t really understand Calvin” the Calvinist so often must explain. Well, is this a problem with the man on the street or with Calvinism itself? If the distinction is so important shouldn’t it be a bit easier to explain? A bit easier to understand?

One illustration Wilson uses to communicate the sovereignty of God is that God is writing history like Shakespeare would write a play. Can Hamlet challenge Shakespeare for how he wrote his part? Neither should man call out God for how he wrote his part. And the distance between God and man is infinitely greater than the distance between Shakespeare and Hamlet.

This is all true, but we also have to remember that the distance between God and man is infinitely smaller than between Shakespeare and Hamlet. Shakespeare never became one of the characters in his play. God did. To put it another way, as Mike Bull has tweeted, “Was Jesus a Calvinist or an Arminian? Both. The incarnation was the sovereignty of God and the will of Man united at last.”

Calvinism is helpful in emphasizing God’s sovereignty. But the Bible doesn’t speak in these sorts of terms much (predestination, reprobation, etc.) The Bible isn’t that Saturnine about it. But as long as they wear the label, the “ism”, Calvinists are being Saturnine about it, and those reformed beards start to look less like Calvin’s and more like the beard of Chronos. At a certain point this sort of contemplation bends towards fatalism and people don’t see the living Spirit of the Father in Calvin’s theology as Salazar did when he first read him. Rather, they just see a casket with tulips on top.

I Elect the Big Man

So I’m with Wilson 80% of the way on soteriology. But as for how to best communicate the mystery of the marriage of divine and human agency, I’ll fall for the gravitas of Chesterton every time. His cracks at Calvinism tickle my funny bone a little more than Wilson’s pokes at Arminianism. Jovial G.K., in this regard, takes the cake—and no one made him do it.

Covenant
Cair Paravel is for Real

Which came first, the king or his crown? Covenantal theology is wonderful because it emphatically says “Crown!” without any shame. Lewis’ goal in using planet imagery in Narnia was to emphasize that there are constant things going on beyond nature. You are born into something bigger than you.

Covenantal theology also makes sense of many other things as well, and is useful in debates regarding evolution, marriage, and politics, to name a few. It is very important for navigating one’s way in the world.

The fundamentals of the Federal Vision theology which Wilson agrees with affirm the connection between the sacraments and the covenant. This is important because it preserves the power of the sacraments. When someone is baptized into the kingdom of God, something objective happens. They are now enlisted, so to speak. And like a spouse in a marriage, they are in whether they like it or not. Union with Christ is real, and so are the means of entering into it.

Uncircumcised Application

So far so good. But when it comes to covenant theology administration, Wilson drives 100 where the speed limit is 80. And the lead (the Saturnine metal) in his foot is paedosacraments.

Wilson recently admitted on a podcast that at first glance at scripture the Baptists have a better argument when it comes to who to baptize than the paedobaptists do; you don’t see a bunch of babies being dunked, let alone sprinkled, in the New Testament. But, he argues, if you take the Bible as a whole you have a “juggernaut” of structural/typological evidence which supports paedosacraments.

Most Baptists can’t take down that juggernaut. They end up feeling outsmarted, shrug off the argument because they sense that paedobaptism is still weird, and go back to dunking converts. For me, I never wanted to be outsmarted so I took the paedobaptists’ conclusions on authority. But there was always a part inside of me that still thought it strange. It wasn’t until I started reading Mike Bull that I saw exactly why.

What appealed to me about Bull is that he didn’t try to fight the “covenant theology” juggernaut. He commandeered it. Standing on the shoulders of typological giants James Jordan, Peter Leithart, and Doug Wilson he actually took the juggernaut, figured out what a lot of the seemingly useless buttons and levers do, and showed how the paedobaptists had misinterpreted its trajectory. Furthermore, far from being the juggernaut itself, paedobaptism (what he calls “bapcision”, an ugly hybrid of baptism and circumcision) is in fact the rope tying the Federal Vision juggernaut to a stake and keeping it from being released and changing the world.

The main way Bull cuts the paedobaptistic cord is by acknowledging the similarities (covenantal juggernaut) between circumcision and baptism, but also the differences (Baptist horse sense). To understand these differences, you need to read more of Bull’s writing on baptism. You will need to immerse yourself in biblical symbols before it will begin to make sense but as you do, you’ll start to see how the pieces don’t just fit together, they fit in three dimensions.²See The Myth of Covenant Membership. As Bull says, “Bad theologians need to think in pictures. Good theologians need to think in moving pictures.” After reading Bull for a while, I started to see these moving pictures. And like Wilson says of Girard’s scriptural insights, “Once you see them there, you can never unsee them.”

Here is the main thing that those with a strong understanding of the covenant have a hard time wrapping their minds around because they still see it as flat: Every person on the planet, that includes Doug Wilson’s baptized grandchildren and the baby born to an ISIS leader, are born under the New Covenant. They are all born under the same King, Jesus Christ, and his circumcision, that is, his crucifixion, is the new blood boundary encompassing all people—not just Jews, and not just the baptized. Like the Jews under Mosaic Law, everyone within this boundary is under the same terms of faithfulness to the covenant: metanoeite and believe.³See Paranoia and Metanoia. To baptize a baby and say they are now in this covenant is therefore redundant. Christ is Lord of all, wet or dry, churched or unchurched.

So the covenant has to do with authority (the crown), and who wears it (Jesus Christ). But here’s the third dimension that makes paedobaptists go cross-eyed: to truly be baptized into Christ requires a confession. This confession is done in faith, which comes by hearing. It is not taken hold of by being born according to the flesh (Christian parents) but by being born according to the Spirit. It is not about being born into a Christian heritage (generations) but about being born again as a co-heir with Christ (regeneration). It is not about who your earthly father is, or your godfather, but who your Heavenly Father is, your Father God. Now you are not just under the New Covenant in Christ’s blood (like every child in the world since Jesus came), you are now an ambassador of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, washed on the inside by it and adopted into His family. You aren’t just at the event. You wear the staff uniform. You don’t go from being outside of Christ’s realm to then being under the crown (complete with expectations to behave as a Christian, a new form of law) as “bapcision” would have you do. No, a biblical baptism takes from being merely under the crown to wearing a crown of your own.

Covenant theology that veers toward paedosacraments creates an add-on to the Gospel: Christ plus covenant (a word rarely used in the New Testament). But Christ is the New Covenant.⁴See Jesus and Covenant – Part 1. This is the key to truly understanding the covenant. Everyone is under him. But only those who have heard him and have seen him, who believe, who share His Spirit, are in him. You have to go to Narnia and meet Aslan before you are given a seat on a throne in the castle by the sea. You have to encounter Jesus. He is the Jupiter that outshines Saturn. And that impersonal extra 20% Saturnine paedosacramental covenant theology is covering the face of Jupiter, the face of the King.

I will make one final illustration about the bleakness of paedobaptism which goes undetected by those who practice it but is obvious to those on the outside who see a donkey tail poking out from under the lionskin. Saturn is the planet of irony, and that is good and necessary. But it can also fall flat when unchecked by Jupiter. Paedosacramentalists think they are revealing a cute irony in the gospel, that Christ saves us before we even realized we needed saving, that little children who have no knowledge are as valuable as the wise old sage, for God is no respector of persons. True as it is, the joke itself is in poor taste because the butt of it is still in diapers and isn’t playing along.

What makes a biblical baptism jovial is that the sinner who the joke is on is laughing along with Jesus as he or she intentionally follows Him in slipping on the banana peel of recognizing one’s own fallen humanity and voluntarily dying with Him in baptism in order to rejoice with Him when brought back out of the water as a royal (jovial) priest-king. Since confession is laughing at the ridiculousness of your own sinful rebellion because you’re a new person and on the other side of it, running this play on those who do not understand what is happening is cruel, dark, and leveling. Sending these little ones to the baptismal grave without their “getting it” is the kind of black comedy Saturn gravitates to when left to himself.

False baptisms create confusion and place a burden of law and accountability upon the shoulders of those who not only cannot bear it – like child soldiers or child brides – but also did not choose it. This is Father Time eating away at his kids with a spiritual responsibility they didn’t sign up for. Baptism is life to the “twice-born” but it is creeping death to the “once-born.” In dark seasons when children need comfort they are encouraged to look at a cold theological abstraction instead of their gifts, lest they become self-reliant. But “leaning” on a baptism you never chose, a rite which basically spiritualises everything natural, removes the opportunity to discover personally that the flesh isn’t enough. So an exhortation to “remember your baptism” is about as helpful as finding coal in your stocking. There’s nothing you can do with it. The true gospel paradox is that sinful children don’t need contemplation (law). They need Christmas.

Wilson (Not his Tamed Juggernaut) is on the Move

Doug Wilson is the jovial king of Christmas. He knows how to be merry. He knows how to enjoy the good things of life with a full heart. He has a tribe of joyful children and grandchildren to prove it. But this has nothing to do with paedobaptism and everything to do with faithful Christian parenting. It is a result of saturation love, not saturation water. It is of the gospel falling on soft ears, not water sprinkled on soft cranial tissue. It is a legacy of celebrating Christ’s birthday with gifts, not celebrating what family or church family you were born into by good fortune.

Of course, Wilson is not consciously boasting in his own blood or society, but his 20% counterfeit Saturnine covenantal theology is. Wilson’s children and grandchildren (the ones old enough to have spiritual eyes of faith) are believers not because they have looked in the mirror and seen a fake lion skin (bapcision) that some apish theology told them was Aslan. No, they believe because they have seen Aslan himself. And they have probably mostly seen Him not on but in and through their confessing father and mother who wear the royal robes of Christian witness.

Reaching for the Stars

Like I said, I want to be like Doug Wilson when I grow up. My aim is to go full-Wilson in life. I want to be a jolly and contemplative man with a grand and glorious legacy. I want five out of five stars! But to get there I must not go all-in Wilsonian. I find him too valuable and don’t want to lose his insights. So I will continue to follow him, staying close to the spirit of his work and the spirit of his person, but steering clear of those Saturnine traps of old age, fate, and flat irony which would cause me to miss out on the good faith of Jupiter: Christ in Wilson’s paradigms, the hope of glorious theology.

A review of Birds of the Air: Theological Twitter

by Jared Leonard

“Birds of the air dropping bombs on your brain” or “Shot through the heart and you’re to blame”

This isn’t just a collection of tweets; it is more like a quiver of spiritual and cultural crossbow bolts aimed at the heart of secularism and theological syncretism. Mike has a well-oiled crossbow and impeccable aim as each barb pierces and punctures everything from progressive cultural liberalism to ivory tower elitism. Shoot some of these through your social media outlets and enjoy the writhing discomfort of those who enjoy darkness more than light.

“What does it look like when antiestablishmentarianism becomes the establishment?”

In July 2016, in a speech in Cleveland supporting the Republican party nominee Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson highlighted the connection between Hillary Clinton and her mentor, Saul Alinsky.

Famous for his strategies for community organising, Alinsky dedicated his book, “Rules for Radicals,” to “Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.” Carson said:

One of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors, was Saul Alinsky. And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone that she greatly admired and that affected all of her philosophies subsequently. Now, interestingly enough, let me tell you about Saul Alinsky. He wrote a book called “Rules for Radicals.” On the dedication page it acknowledges Lucifer, “the original radical who gained his own kingdom.”

Now think about that. This is a nation where our founding document the Declaration of Independence talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our Creator. This is a nation where our Pledge of Allegience says that we are “One Nation under God.” This is a nation where every coin in our pocket and every bill in our wallet says “In God we Trust.”

So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that. The secular progressive agenda is antithetical to the principles of the founding of this nation.

And if we continue to allow them to take God out of our lives, God will remove himself from us, we will not be blessed, and our nation will go down the tubes and we will be responsible for that. We don’t want that to happen.

Despite the continued mantra of Hope and Change, the Democratic agenda was nothing more than Alinsky’s “Eight Levels of Control” reheated, garnished with positive spin, and served up to a population now willing to trade true freedom to support an addiction to free sex and free money. Behind Obama’s (very selective) crocodile tears over tragic mass shootings were the cold eyes of Leviathan.

1. Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people.
2. Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible; poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3. Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes and this will produce more poverty.
4. Gun control – Remove people’s ability to defend themselves from the government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5. Welfare – Take control of every aspect of people’s lives (food, housing and income).
6. Education – Take control of what people read and listen to; take control of what children learn in school.
7. Religion – Remove the belief in God from the government and schools.
8. Class warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take from (tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.

Throughout her college career, Clinton followed the community organiser closely, and even dedicated her senior thesis to his strategies for political subversion. Despite her public statements, it is clear from leaked emails and reports from staff that, like Lenin, she regarded her supporters as “useful idiots.”

However, the problem for those who gain power by subversion is that their strategy consists only of deconstruction, of negativity. Despite their empty promises, they are not really for anything but power. Once that power is gained, their incompetence is gradually exposed. The promised Utopia fails to materialise because dissatisfaction and entitlement are out of step with the way the world actually works. Robbery might lead to short term gains but always results in long term losses. This is exactly what the Man discovered in the Garden of Eden. The inability – or perhaps deliberate unwillingness – of even educated people, including the media, to consider the obvious connection between Obama/Clinton and Alinsky reveals just how keen human beings are to facilitate their own destruction for the sake of temporary trinkets and pleasures. Without Christ, even the wise of the world are no different at heart from our first father. So much for the “progress” in Progressivism. The apple never falls far from the Adamic family tree.

For Communism, Socialism, and Progressivism, the abstraction from reality of unworkable policies always becomes apparent in their bitter fruits. Hillary Clinton could not credibly promise any Hope because she offered no discernible Change. The silver lining in the dusty cloud of Obama’s second term was the opportunity it gave him to “reduct” his own agenda “ad absurdum.” Hope and Change turned out to be bribery and bullying, long running scandals, lack of transparency, a Supreme Court ruling that overturned democratic votes on marriage, unaffordable healthcare, gender neutral toilets and continued disasters in foreign policy. History has a habit of revealing what things – and people – really are, and the impotence of “Rabble-Rouser-as-President” has become plain. Woodstock’s laziness, promiscuity and lack of experience are fine until one actually has to produce something, whether it be GDP or the next generation of children, the modern equivalents of the “land” and “womb” curses in Genesis 3 and promises in Genesis 15.

What does it look like when antiestablishmentarianism becomes the establishment? One can only incite hatred between rich and poor in the name of generosity, between black and white in the name of unity, and work to excuse and empower bloodthirsty Islam under a banner of international peace, so many times, before the stench becomes undeniable even by a sycophantic mass media. The inspiring speeches of Obama and Clinton can no longer cover the red-handed evidence of their hypocrisy. Their pretty speeches tinkle emptily from mouths that are gaping, ravenous graves. What they sold as fairness and generosity was in fact the removal of personal, familial and national sovereignty – complete nakedness before enemies of every stripe and at every level. It is one thing to share America’s wealth and power with the world. It is quite another to cut America open, bleed it dry with parasites, expose it to predators and leave the remains for waiting scavengers. The death of America, as with the demise of all great civilisations, would be an inside job.

What follows here is an excerpt from Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved? by Richard Bledsoe, and a recent comment by the author which inspired this post, relating to the recent U.S. election result:

One of the great difficulties that theorists and practitioners are up against—from Blake, Shelley, and Byron to Alinsky—is what happens if their protagonists win? From Robespierre through Lenin to our current time, this becomes an insoluble dilemma. They now become the new Establishment. They have no doctrine of authority that does not see authority as oppressive and inherently evil. The only solution to this dilemma is to promote “eternal revolution,” endless chaos and endless opposition. That culture will masochistically undermine and destroy itself in orgies of self-hatred and self-contempt. Eventually, one reaches an inevitable point where chaos can only be completely destructive and nothing is left to rule. One reaches for the final possibility, which is simply to become an oppressive tyrant. Modern history is littered with terrible examples.

How remarkable that this entire election was an election that was in rebellion against The Establishment! Oh, how times have changed. Once upon a time, The Establishment meant Richard Nixon, Republicans, small businessmen, the mores and ethics of sexual prudes and the straight laced who condemned homosexuality, pre-marital sex, pornography, and promiscuity. It meant, above all, The Protestant Ethos and Churches. Things have completely turned upside-down since the 60s. We are the anti-60s now.

But alas, what happens when Leftists win, and they then become the Establishment? What follows is all that can follow. They have placed themselves in the same impossible position as Lucifer himself, who Alinsky very insightfully dedicated his Rules For Radicals to. What is that impossible position?

Michael Polanyi’s very great work, Personal Knowledge, outlines it all. Knowledge can never, never, never begin with doubt and rebellion as the first movement. All knowledge must begin by first believing something, and acting on that. All later doubt is built on a deeper belief. Lucifer wanted to make doubt and rebellion the first and foremost and even only foundation. After one has rebelled against all that is, there is nothing left, and one can only fall into the abyss. Alinsky is dead right. All Leftism is built on the rock solid foundation of ultimate doubt and rebellion. So what happens after you have won, and then become the Establishment yourself?

All that can happen is fake, fraud, and optical illusion. You become everything you originally claimed to hate and imputed and projected onto your enemy. You become a hypocrite.

The Progressive clatch has become the mirror image of the Ku Klux Klan. If you are a Klansman, you are righteous, and your enemy is the Jew and the Uppity Nigger. The righteousness of the Klansman is beyond doubt. There is no doubt, not about that. That is believed. One only believes in ones’ own outlook and righteousness. It is so beyond doubt that if anyone does doubt a Klansman, it is only because he is a traitor, a hater of all previous glories, a destroyer of civilization.

Now, the righteousness of the Progressive is so complete, so beyond all question, that to not agree with a Progressive can only be for the lowest of motives. To disagree, to vote otherwise, can only be because you are a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist. Riots are in order. Lynchings are in order. The enemy must be cleansed.

The hypocrisy is complete and total. One can only mimic the devil himself, who can be nothing but a hypocrite.

The rabble-rousing of king-of-the-trolls Donald Trump was poetic justice for the creeping death of the globalist “Nothing” of the Left. Just as Jacob outcrafted every serpent in his path, Trump turned the tactics of Alinskyites back upon themselves, and the “consensus” of the principalities and powers was exposed for what it really is – a lie. Trump is a man who has seen it all and done it all, and thus cannot be bought and cannot be shamed, like the world-weary but inevitably wiser author of Ecclesiastes. The major difference is that Shepherd-elect Trump and those with whom he is surrounding himself actually believe in Something. This is something beyond rabble-rousing which for Trump was a means to an end, and even beyond power, which for Trump means the power to serve. This something is a different solution to discontent, not a spiral of never ending revolution but an agenda of strategic construction. Unlike Obama and Clinton, the Washington DC swamp and the now-discredited mass media, the members of Trump’s dream team, despite their flaws, have a history of ingenuity, innovation and productivity.

However, as Voltaire famously said, “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” Turning around a big ship not only takes time, the ship has to really want to turn around. The next four years will certainly be interesting for the United States and for all of Western Culture. Christians know that the iron rod of Jesus, facilitating His agenda of not only salvation, but also of wisdom, among the nations, is the only true source of Hope and Change.

Richard Bledsoe’s Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?: Jesus Christ in the Obama and Post-Obama Era is available here.

Christ’s Claim Upon Us, Or Our Claim Upon Him?

I am not worthy to untie the shoelaces of my theological betters, but it is my duty to point out to them when they have tied them together.

It has been a little while since we’ve had a baptism rant around here, mostly because I’ve written everything I could possibly write, refuting not only paedosacramentalism’s flawed foundations but every storey of the house of cards built upon them. Behold, the steel studded gauntlet remains on the ground right where I threw it down.

Peter Leithart has posted some quotes concerning baptism from Michael Horton’s The Gospel Commission, and although responding to them requires some repetition on my part, it can be done with a few quick flicks of my razor sharp credobaptistic rapier.

In his book on The Gospel Commission, Michael Horton includes several insightful pages on baptism. “Like circumcision,” he writes, “baptism is represented in the New testament as God’s decision and claim on us…

Insightful is not the word I would choose. Perhaps inventive. For a start, where is baptism ever represented as God’s claim upon anybody in the way that circumcision was a claim upon the males of Israel? Isn’t the point of the end of the circumcision that God now claims absolutely everybody on the planet?

Is the correlation between baptism and circumcision of heart in the New Testament not blindingly obvious? The Father was pleased with Jesus’ obedient faith at His baptism. Why did He not ask Jesus to marry and baptize His offspring in the way Abraham circumcised his offspring? Could it be that baptism concerns a different kind of birth, one which results in repentance and faithful obedience?

To assert that God chooses the children of believers as inheritors of the faith based upon their heredity means your theology is behind the times by about two millennia. And by implication, it claims that Christ has not yet come in the flesh.¹See Children of Heaven. The problem is that paedobaptists still have not really thought all this through in biblical terms. Their assertion that their baptised infants are “the offspring of Abraham” belies belief.

Although it obligates us to respond in faith and obedience, baptism is God’s sign and seal of his covenant oath. In this act, as in the preached Word, God pledges his commitment to us” (172). Instead of seeing baptism as a sign of my choice of God, it is God’s act toward us.

Another false assumption. Are there really obligations which bind those within the Church but not those outside the Church, in the way that Israel was bound by the Law of Moses but Gentiles were not?²See Because of Transgressions. Are those outside the Church not obligated to respond to the Gospel in faith and obedience? Is everyone not already under the rule of Christ and therefore accountable to the stipulations of the New Covenant?³See The Myth of Covenant Membership. If they are, then paedobaptism is entirely redundant.

If we actually read the baptismal accounts in the Bible instead of disparaging every single facet that we observe (purpose, mode, qualification) by importing obsolete Abrahamic definitions, we can see that it is the Gospel of the death and resurrection of Christ which is objective, something carried out on behalf of all nations, but that baptism is for those who personally respond to it.⁴See Baptism: God’s Work and Ours. God has not pledged His commitment to a renovated Judaistic demarcation.

This shift of perspective has enormous practical consequences: “When baptism is understood chiefly as a promise that I made on a certain date in the past, it loses its relevance for my life in the present, as God’s saving promise to which I continually return. . . . When faced with confusion, temptation, or doubt, I cling not to a decision that I made but to Christ’s public certification that he has claimed me and will not let me go. He will not forsake me, and he will not allow me to surrender myself to another lord who would bind and destroy me” (173-4). When baptism is neglected, “you can gain the impression that Jesus has to take you out of the church, alone in a garden, to really experience his grace. However, according to Scripture, the public ministry of the church is the garden!” (174).

The claim that some see baptism as a sign of my choice of God is not a diagnosis of the actual problem when it comes to assurance. Many, many Christians who were paedobaptized and told that because of this act they are Christians and “saved” also struggle with assurance. That is because “Christ’s public certification that he has claimed me and will not let me go” is a claim foolishly founded on the first birth, not the second, and plenty of sprinkled babies grow up to be history’s most hostile unbelievers.⁵See Raising Cain.

And honestly, how is a deliberate decision I made in the past any less relevant than an event I cannot even remember? The New Covenant is not about physical seed and hearing the law, but about the seed of the Word and the resulting legal testimony, beginning with one’s baptism. The call and the commission are both “objective,” but between call and commission there is a subjective response by each saint.⁶See Sealed for Witness. If baptism is a commission, a public delegation of authority, how many millions of Christians have been robbed of their baptismal commission?⁷See Christendom’s Great Unwashed.

Pointing those who struggle to somebody else’s decision for Christ on their behalf (the time when they had some water sprinkled on their head because they were “born into the right family”) is no better than pointing them to their own decision for Christ. The solution is to point them to Christ Himself. The solution to the flaws in credobaptistic theology is not an even more flawed theology of baptism. Paedobaptism says “You are special.” Credobaptism says “Christ is special.”

He cites a conversation he had with a youth minister: “Youth ministries are so important, he said, because they relate to kids on their own level, ‘where they are.’ ‘That’s just it, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘Where are they?” Presumably, their location is ‘in Christ.’ They are baptized and are therefore members of the visible body of Christ, the covenant community. That’s their primary location” (174).

Paedobaptism seems to be the panacea for all ills. The problem is that it is a distortion of a biblical vow and thus requires the redefinition of everything around it, much like same sex marriage does. If I were this youth pastor, I would have patiently, slowly explained to Michael Horton that when I said, “Where they are,” I meant the young peoples’ level of understanding. The best preachers and teachers know that the only strategy that really works it to take people from where they are to where you are. You have to meet them on common ground. The Bible makes it clear that children and adults are different, both in understanding and in accountability before God. That is why only those men and women who took the oath at Sinai and broke it were held accountable. They were being prepared for ministry to the nations.

Now, if these children are Church kids, they already have a foundation, but that is not what Horton or Leithart are getting at here. What they are getting at is their desire to erase some natural human demarcations in their quest for “unity in Christ,” which is similar in some ways to the sexualisation of children and the blurring of genders in modern secularism. It is a grasping of the eternal state before God’s time. Same sex marriage does something similar in its idiotic quest for inclusiveness. It renders the marriage vow meaningless. A “blanket Covenant membership” that ignores even the distinctions within Old Covenant Israel and says that because everyone ate the Passover meal, everyone should take communion, including the infants, really should notice that even in the Old Testament, the Israelite household table was not actually God’s table.⁸See Covenant Renewal Worship vs. Paedosacraments.

Conflating the two births means that infants are somehow automatically “mature in Christ,” that they cannot only chew the bread but also swig the wine like troopers, and their cries are as terrifying to the devil as saints singing the Psalms. This placing of all ages “into Christ” regardless of any actual personal repentance and faith means that instead of the Church being the nursery of culture, it becomes an actual nursery.⁹See Exposed to the Elements. I’m not against having children in my car, but that doesn’t mean I will let them have the steering wheel. I’m not against having infants and children in the worship service, but concluding that their spiritual needs are identical to those of the adults based on an ideology of inherited “Christianity” is ill-considered. Moreover, it makes the precious Gospel of Christ somewhat irrelevant. If baptism is, rather, a rite of investiture, a “license to die” as a witness, and everyone else is already “in the Covenant,” then all of these definitional problems disappear.

Finally, nowhere does the New Testament speak about a “Covenant community.” It simply does not speak that way, because Jesus Himself is the Covenant.¹⁰See Looking God in the Eye. We are not set apart like the Jews were because the only Jew that really mattered is now in heaven. The Church is not a tribe. Let me repeat that. The Church is not a tribe, so let’s stop turning it into one. This is inherently carnal if not an outright satanic deception. A tribal identity says “KEEP OUT.” An assembly, however, like a political assembly, or even a rock concert, says “COME IN.”

Baptism is not a social demarcation. It is a demarcation of allegiance. It is a circumcision of heart, not of flesh. A communist understands baptism better than paedobaptists do.¹¹See An Atheist Gets Baptism. Do those in the US Navy, when faced with confusion, temptation or doubt, look to the fact that they were born into the Navy (nobody is!) or even their own personal military pledge for assurance? No. They look to the promises, power and authority of the leaders of the force in which they serve. In our case, this is Jesus Himself via the apostolic testimony. In our individual baptisms, we voluntarily identify with them.

Canadian artist and author Michael O’Brien discusses the “soft totalitarianism” of secularism’s “friendly dragon.”

Walker Percy once wrote about the Western writer’s tendency to what he called “Solzhenitsyn-envy.” Percy’s witticim is tongue in cheek, and insightful, but it begs a deeper look: Why is the envy there in the first place? Why would one envy a suffering, persecuted man?

…In the case of the writer who is rooted in the moral cosmos, this kind of envy is a symptom not so much of his personal moral failure as it is his moral dilemma. The creative person sincerely seeking truth can no longer find his bearings with the aid of his social environment. His native culture is no longer his own. He is, in a sense, a kind of exile, but without the fugitive consolations of the exile’s heroism. He is not a sign of contradiction against an oppressive regime; rather he is too often a disoriented wanderer, a stranger in a strange land, and, worse, it is his native land. Thus, he senses that the heroic figure far away in the mysterious East, in facing the dragon of overt totalitarianism, had a cleaner task, a defined task. More threatening to life and general well-being, to be sure, but not nearly so confusing or demoralizing. It might kill his body but it could not so easily kill his soul.

Read the complete article here.

An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.

The ancient and pagan world was conquered by martyrs. Can modernity be re-Christianized by anything else?

Death and Resurrection

The death and resurrection of Christ is now the central and final fact of the world, and it was the decisive blow to evil. I am going to argue that it is also the central reality of leadership. The theory of leadership presented in this book is a theory of martyrdom. One must experience a type of death before one can be raised to new life and authority to deal with evil and problems that are otherwise intractable.

There is nothing new in this. The Church Calendar, which is used by all liturgical communions (Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians), remembers a saint for every day of the year, and it remembers them not on their birthday (other than Jesus on Christmas and a handful of other figures), but on the day of their martyrdom or of their death (the day of their exodus to Heaven). The ancient and pagan world was conquered by martyrs. Can modernity be re-Christianized by anything else?

Islam is the perverse mirror image of Christendom,¹Leithart, P. (2007). “Mirror of Christendom: Why Islam Exists and What To Do About It.” Views and Reviews: Open Book Occasional Papers 24:15. and it is today attacking the West by the power of false martyrdom. Is it not necessary to re-understand the power of martyrdom in Jesus Christ? Even if full martyrdom is not called for, a real encounter with death still is called for.²John Collins states that every “Level Five” leader that he and his team encountered, were marked by peculiar humility combined with extraordinary power of will, and many had either experienced a religious conversion or had come close to death and come back from that experience. Collins, J. C. (2001). Good to great: why some companies make the leap–and others don’t. New York, NY, Harper Business. pp. 17-40. David only became a great king, for example, because of his years in the wilderness fleeing Saul, and this constituted a kind of death. Paul overcame the Roman Empire from whipping posts and prisons. In today’s world, authority still comes by means of wildernesses and what seem like whipping posts and imprisonments. We are called to have “eyes to see,” so what may be typically viewed as hazards to be avoided, or hardships to be resented, may instead be seen as paths to transformation.

On a very large scale in the modern world, leadership by martyrdom can be seen in the extraordinary downfall of Communism at the end of the 20th Century. In the triumvirate of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and John Paul II, Reagan and John Paul both had narrow escapes from death when both nearly died at the hands of assassins. Both of them believed they were spared by God for the mission of toppling Communism. Reagan, who had always had a belief in predestination, had a great deepening in his faith that God’s hand was in all things and especially in this.³Kengor, P. (2004). God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life. New York, Regan Books pp. 197-216. It is doubtful that either man would have had the authority or wisdom to do what they did had they not come back from the dead.⁴It has become the minority report that Thatcher, Reagan, and John Paul were the real force behind the collapse of Communism, and it is now commonly said that the entire event was somehow “inevitable” and would have happened no matter what. But it is very odd that during that era, Reagan alone was predicting the collapse of Communism, and the people now declaring the “inevitability” of its collapse, laughed at his bumpkin notions, and declared that Communism “was here to stay” and that it had now been amply proven that the Soviet style command economy had produced “remarkable results” fully the equal of the West.
D’Souza, D. (1997). Ronald Reagan: how an ordinary man became an extraordinary leader. New York, Free Press. Chapter 1, “The Wise Men and the Dummy.”
Anthony Sutton demonstrated that Communism, because of its economically self destructive nature, was repeatedly on the verge of collapse through the early to middle twentieth century. It was however, repeatedly propped up by the West, and not allowed to collapse. Sutton, A. C. (1968). Western technology and Soviet economic development. Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace Stanford University.
Thatcher, Reagan, and John Paul pushed the tottering giant to the cliff’s edge and did nothing to stop it when it began tumbling. It was also the case that the combined rhetoric of these leaders disestablished any vestige of moral respectability left behind the Iron Curtain. Mikel Gorbochev certainly did his part. He appeared to want the demise of his own empire.
He seems to have begun to believe in something else. Reagan on several occasions told his advisors that he suspected Gorbechev to be “a secret believer.” He was right. Gorbechev made his faith public in 2008 when he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The Advisor to the King Goes First

The advisor is likewise called to experience death and resurrection. If he or she does not, they will lack the requisite authority to help the leader they are dealing with.

The two great biblical models for advisors to the king are Joseph and Daniel. Both experienced death and resurrection in their lives.

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and taken to a foreign land. That was a death. He was then imprisoned because of his virtue while faithfully serving his foreign master. He was eventually raised from the dead by being called out of prison as an interpreter of nightmares and then appointed the Prime Minister of the entire nation. He finally revealed himself to his brothers in Genesis 45 (“‘I am Joseph; does my father still live?’ But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence….‘I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt.’” Genesis 45:3-4) This is one of the first typological foreshadowings of the Resurrection of Christ in the Bible.

Daniel likewise was a refugee. He also faced death when he was put into the lion’s den. His three associates and friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, were likewise thrown into the fiery furnace. In both cases, there was an emergence in a resurrection.

The advisor must pass through great trial, grief, sorrow and difficulty or he will be unequipped to give the requisite help. Much of his calling is to enable the leader to pass through crisis, and sometimes crisis of great magnitude. What but the power of the Cross of Christ could possibly give someone the necessary strength and power to successfully pass through such deep waters?⁵This calls to mind this amusing passage from G.K. Chesterton’s great novel, The Man Who Was Thursday. Garbiel Syme volunteers to become a philosophical policeman in the battle against world-wide anarchism, and he meets Sunday in a completely dark room, and the following conversation ensues when he is recruited for his new position:
Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly stone-blind.
“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice.
And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.
“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.”
Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.
“I really have no experience,” he began.
“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of Armageddon.”
“But I am really unfit——”
“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown.
“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.” “I do,” said the other —“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day.”

A Particular Account

A friend of mine gave a personal account that conveys the heart of this conviction. In an early pastorate, he came to a place of complete deadlock with his church. In all too typical fashion, he became the lightening rod for all of the problems in the church. He was blamed for everything and was repeatedly attacked and lied about. In one horrific congregational meeting, he was personally attacked and vilified and accused of numerous things that were clearly untrue. He described going home, putting his head in his wife’s lap, and weeping like a baby. This went on for hours. He finally felt as though he had come to the complete end of himself. Astonishingly, he believed that it was God’s will for him to stay and not to resign.

The next day, he went to his elders and said that he was determined to stay and that he would not leave. They were stunned. My friend was a dead man. He had been murdered the night before. And yet, here he was, alive and refusing to leave his post. What does one say to a dead man come back to life? They were speechless. That was the turning point. From that time on, he had the authority and wisdom to deal with that church’s failings and needs. The church changed and prospered.⁶The accuracy of this account, and permission to use it, was confirmed to the writer in an e-mail from Rev. Williams on February 28, 2009.

Only a leader who comes back from the dead has the power to do this. And likewise, if one is called to be a counselor to leaders who will themselves have to experience this, then the counselor must likewise go through the same fires in some way before that can be a reality.

Metropolitan Manifesto: Half the world’s population now lives in cities, and that is where the Church must learn to serve. Rev. Richard Bledsoe has spent his life as a pastor to city leaders in Colorado. Over the years, he has become the unofficial bishop of his city, a recognized adviser to the king. In Metropolitan Manifesto: On Being a Counselor to the King in a Pluralistic Empire, Bledsoe lays out the theology behind his work, explains how to minister to leaders, and shares the lessons of his long experience. The Metropolitan Manifesto is an essential, inspiring testament to the transformative power of the gospel in today’s world.

Why You’ve Been Duped Into Believing The Myth That The World Is Getting Worse and Worse

by J. D. King

A former colleague disclosed his anxiety about the violence in the Middle East. Of particular concern for him were the brutal onslaughts against Christians by an organization known as ISIS. This terrorist organization that began as part of al Qaeda in Iraq has spread throughout Arab world. It has beheaded and brutally opposed anyone who differs from their fierce form of Islamic Fundamentalism.

Reflecting on some of the frightening news reports, he said,

“It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that the world is getting worse and worse. Evil is rising all around us and the Christian Church is losing ground. I can’t believe how bad things are getting.”

This acquaintance wasn’t the only one that I’ve heard this kind of rhetoric from. Many have voiced a similar apprehension. You can hear it in the checkout lines, sports stadiums, and in the pews of our local churches. Multitudes are convinced that the world is presently in “freefall” and it’s only a matter of time before everything falls apart.

Yet, is this true? Is evil actually growing throughout the earth? Is humanity descending into greater chaos and destruction?

Continue reading at World Revival Network blog.