The Obstacles to True Catholicity

 Why, a friend asks on social media elsewhere, do we divide over baptism, rather than things abundantly addressed in Scripture, like patriarchal leadership in the home, and headcoverings? The context was a suggestion that nondenominational churches are truly “catholic”, in that they try to set aside unnecessary divisions between believers. But anybody who knows history, I would suggest, knows that this is always a failed experiment. Here’s my response, which I’m posting here as well so as to get more mileage out of it.

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You see baptism in the Gospels, see it talked about in the epistles, and you see baptism after baptism in Acts. So I would disagree with the idea that it isn’t a major issue. You also have baptism in many texts, and head coverings only in one - though that’s not to suggest the latter isn’t important.

I’ll add too that I grew up in a group that emphasized male headship and head coverings - the Plymouth Brethren. I was at church multiple times a week. I was involved in multiple ministries. I heard more sermons on 1 Corinthians 11 than I could possibly remember. And yet I was well into adulthood before I understood justification by faith alone, because nobody taught it. The teachers, who were all laymen, didn’t know how to tackle the soteriological texts. Lots of practical, last-half-of-the-epistles teaching, very little or none from the first halves of the epistles. None of them knew Greek or Hebrew, and they had no regard for or knowledge of the historic Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Reformed approaches to soteriology.

The Plymouth Brethren started with the stated intention of meeting simply in the Lord’s name, around the Lord’s table, apart from denominational distinctions. But pretty quickly they developed Dispensationalism, about which they became dogmatic. They developed factions over church government - the closed or exclusive set under John Nelson Darby, versus the open group associated with George Muller. The two men became heatedly opposed to one another and never reconciled before their deaths. Darby’s group wouldn’t let Christians from other groups break bread with them, but Muller’s group would. If a person in one group unknowingly fellowshipped with somebody in the other group, their own group would excommunicate them, even if they were one of the founding fathers of that group. Darby allowed for household baptisms, whereas the Muller group didn’t.

Darby, incidentally, taught against the idea of the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to the believer in salvation. If I was to say that to a modern Plymouth Brethren person, they would be uncomprehending. They would think I was speaking Latin to them.

But hey, they have all agreed on male headship and head coverings.

If people are going to be taking God and His Word seriously, division in a fallen world is going to take place sometimes. The goal should be to try to mortify our own sin, so that it doesn’t get in the way. Still, there has to be an understanding of what issues are primary, secondary, and tertiary, or else any Christian group will go off the rails. We won’t even always get that right. But it won’t help to be unrealistic about what’s achievable.

The Civilization that Didn’t Die

 It was clear to anybody listening that the Trump administration, in its conflict with Iran, was being very particular in its targets. Certain targets were being avoided and saved in case Iran absolutely refused to cooperate. Those end of the line targets were the bridges and power plants, as the major infrastructure. We were told this outright a couple of weeks ago.

Over the weekend, the president, because of Iran refusing passage through the Straight of Hormuz, threatened their infrastructure again, the bridges and power plants. Destroy the infrastructure, destroy the civilization. And because Iran was attacking our civilization by keeping oil from us, Trump threatened theirs.

Then move forward to the president’s statement yesterday about the destruction of a civilization. Trump was not planning on bombing Iran’s civilians. That wasn’t what he was saying at all, and anyone following his train of thought and the flow of events knew this. His point was the same - if we take out your infrastructure, mass casualties on the level of civilization collapse will be the result. It would be a literal case of bombing a people back into the Dark Ages. And even though he didn’t want to do that, it’s America first, and he had a duty to America. His modus operandi is always to threaten worse than he plans or desires to do, but to always hold on to the possibility that the worst might be necessary. And in such a situation, one must have the will to do it.

He is very thoughtful, deliberate, and methodical about what he does. Those who continue to believe he is just crazy will never really understand.

The Slavery of the Developed World

 They’ve tried eliminating automobile ownership, instead pushing for all “public” (I.e. government) transit. If you do “own” a vehicle, they want you to pay on it forever so that it’s a long-term uncancelleable rental until it breaks down. They want to be able to charge you a monthly fee to use certain features. And they want to be able to shut it down remotely at will without your consent. 

In certain vehicles, like John Deere combines, they want you to never actually own the vehicle, and they don’t want you to be able to repair it yourself.

In video games now, they want to charge you constantly for access to certain features.

They’ve tried pushing a clothes for rent service, to keep you dependent on them to clothe yourself.

They want you to be trapped in a regular food delivery service of preplanned meals, rather than figuring out how to cook like an adult.

Buying a house is now outrageous. They want perpetual renters.

They want you living on plots too small to grow your own food.

They don’t want you to eat meat. They’d rather you ate their preprocessed garbage.

If they can keep you busy and exhausted, you won’t have the time and energy to think for yourself, question or resist their authority, or do anything to improve your life and escape their grasp.

They don’t want strong, moral, independently thinking individuals. They want weak, malleable workers.

They don’t want private ownership. They want slaves.

I don’t have a problem with corporations at all. But I do have a problem with slavers.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

 Watching The Greatest Story Ever Told. It was made with a cast of Hollywood stars - Charlotte Heston, Robert Blake, Sydney Poitier, Angela Lansbury, Telly Savalas as Pilate, John Wayne as the centurion at the Cross. With all the sins of Hollywood at the time, the weight of Christian culture still remained, and the film, with all its faults, had the gravitas appropriate to our Lord’s life and death.

But I wouldn’t trust Hollywood to make a film like it today. In the Golden Age of Hollywood, most actors at least had a Christian upbringing they couldn’t quite escape, no matter how much they strayed. The mainline churches still carried influence as well, for good or ill. 

The fall of Hollywood was inevitable, though. The sixties revolution just brought to the front of the stage what had been going on for decades behind the curtain, and gave it justification.

It’s easier to tear down than it is to build, and the losses are great. Hopefully future generations of Americans in entertainment can recover what has been lost over the past sixty years.

The Curse of an Early Death Undone

 Elsewhere on social media, I some time back suggested, coming from a Postmillennial perspective and in light of current scientific advancements, the possibility of a lengthening of the average years of human life prior to Christ’s return, as an effect of the reversal of the curse as achieved through His death and resurrection. Some folks weren’t convinced. Here, in an appendix to his book “Days of Vengeance”, David Chilton argues for a reversal himself:

“Until the ark was completed, the world was safe from the great flood. The people seemed to be prospering. Methuselah lived a long life, but after him, the lifespan of mankind steadily declined. Aaron died at age 123 (Num. 33:39). Moses died at age 120 (Deut. 31:2). But this longevity was not normal, even in their day. In a psalm of Moses, he said that “The days of our years are three score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they before score years, yet is their strength, labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away“ (Ps. 90:10). The common curse of God could be seen even in the blessing of extra years, but long life, which is a blessing (Ex. 20:12), was being removed by God from mankind in general.

The Book of Isaiah tells us of a future restoration of long life. This blessing shall be given to all men, saints and sinners. It is therefore a sign of extended common grace. It is a gift to mankind in general. Isaiah 65:20 tells us: “There shall be no more than an infant of days, nor an old man that has not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be cursed.” The gift of long life shall come, though the common curse of long life shall extend to the sinner, whose long life is simply extra time for him to fill up his days of iniquity. Nevertheless, the infants will not die, which is a fulfillment of God‘s promise to Israel, namely, the absence of miscarriages (Exodus 23:26). If there is any passage in scripture that absolutely refuse the amillennial position, it is this one. This is not a prophecy of the New Heavens and New Earth in their post-judgment form, but it is a prophecy of the pre-judgment manifestation of the preliminary stages of the New Heavens and New Earth - an earnest (down payment) of our expectations. There are still sinners in the world, and they shall receive long life. But to them, it is an ultimate curse, meaning a special curse. It is a special curse because of this exceptionally long life is a common blessing – the reduction of the common curse. Again, we need the concept of common grace to give significance to both special grace and common curse. Common grace (reduced common curse) brings special curses to the rebels.”

Carrie Prejean Boller and Tucker Carlson

 I watched a couple of extended clips today from Tucker Carlson in his conversation with Carrie Prejean Boller. While I know of Mrs. Boller, I haven’t generally made a habit of keeping up with her, or any of the more well-known conservative commentators over the past few years.

In addition, I’m not entirely sure what to make of Tucker these days. He seems to have become an enemy of the President and his administration. And I honestly have neither the time nor the energy to keep up with the “he said, she said” of it all. What all he may be guilty of, if anything, is beyond me to judge.

Nonetheless, I did resonate with Mrs. Boller’s experience with being called an anti-Semite for not unquestioningly supporting Israel in every move they make. And the use of Scripture to defend such accusations is familiar.

For those in Dispensationalist circles, this is all standard stuff. I have friends and acquaintances who would consider me a heretic, or at the very least won’t hear anything I have to say about Scripture, because the big issue in Scripture is supporting Israel. To not support Israel, they erroneously believe, is to be a liberal, theologically speaking. There’s a whole history of how Postmillennialism came to be associated with theological liberalism through the late 19th and early 20th century in America, which John Jefferson Davis covered in his book on Postmillennialism. I had an acquaintance, now deceased, who once referred to Postmillennialism specifically as liberalism, in a conversation at my old Dispie church before I left it in 1999. Essentially, Postmillennialism became attached to the Social Gospel in the mainline churches’ departure from historic Christianity. And Fundamentalism, in its anti-intellectualism, still is lost in that milieu, is ignorant in many ways of the world of the Church outside of its own circles, and ignorant of what theological liberalism is and why non-Dispie theology became branded as such to begin with. Spend all your time letting the world go to pot waiting on the Rapture and inside your bubble, and you become unqualified to speak about the culture.

Scholarship is chronologically-bound, and you can only live off of older scholarship for so long. The world moves on, even if we don’t.

Getting Your Own System Right

 According to Dispensationalism, God has two peoples, Israel and the Church, and can only work with one of them at a time. After Israel rejected Jesus in the first century, the apostles turned to the Gentiles, and God rejected Israel temporarily and began working with the Church. The current period we are in is a parenthesis, the Church Age. Until the Rapture occurs and the Church is taken to heaven, God cannot work with Israel and is not working with them. And none of the passages about Israel are in play again until after the Rapture. So none of the verses being quoted about Israel by Dispensationalists, in memes or otherwise, are applicable to the state that today calls itself Israel, nor are they applicable at the present to any Jewish person living right now.

So according to Dispensationalism, the Israel we have in the Middle East today IS NOT THE BIBLICAL ISRAEL. The establishing of the state today known as Israel wasn’t the promised return to the land. It isn’t their return to Yahweh that is foretold.

It’s simply the case that Dispies don’t know the system of theology they claim to hold to.

Martin Luther and Jack Chick

 Watching Rick Steve’s documentary on Martin Luther. One of the things he highlights is how Luther spread his ideas through his tracts or pamphlets. Not everything has to be a long book. Especially on the Reformed side of things, everybody wants to write a long tome. But I’ve benefited much from shorter books and pamphlets through the years. I think of anything from Our Daily Bread monthly devotionals on the Dispie and Bible church side of things, to the booklets from the Chapel Library, reprinting Puritan works. The beauty of Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening is how much Spurgeon was able to say in one page.

But Steves also mentions that Lucas Cranach illustrated Luther’s pamphlets with his often hilarious pictures of figures like the pope and other church leaders. So basically, Luther was publishing theologically dense comic books. The entertainment aspect was a part of their popularity and success. That, with them being in a language people could read, a sense of freedom from the burden of the Church and having to save one’s self, and just the appeal that we all find in the notion of rebellion against oppressive authority, helped fuel the Reformation.

All that said, maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on the late Jack Chick.