AK47 Season 2 Episode 29: Video Games, Movies, and Culture

Aaron and Kyle do another B.S. episode talking about entertainment.  We talk about video games like The Witcher 3, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption 2, and movies like Captain Marvel, You're Next, and more.  Of course, we couldn't help but get into the deeper cultural, political, and biblical issues of the day like leftism and conservatism, sexuality, the importance of community, the Bible vs. the Koran, the nature of work in our modern industrialized era, and more.

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AK47 Season 2 Episode 28: Joshua Harris and Purity Culture

Aaron and Kyle talk about the recent Unbelievable? discussion between the apologist Sean McDowell and filmmaker Jessica van der Wyngaard on Joshua Harris's recent fall from faith and the effect his book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, on the church and "purity culture."  We have our usual sidetracks in the conversation where we bring up people and topics like Steve Chalk, David Bentley Hart, Quillette, and evolutionary psychology, but we give our overviews of how Sean and Jessica did in the conversations, what purity culture is, people being in the internet spotlight from an early age, the sexual lives of Old Testament figures and h ow purity culture handles it, what we suspect Harris might do next, dating, and more.

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Sources

Find the Unbelievable? discussion between McDowell and van der Wyngaard here.

The statement that Kyle mentioned by John Cooper, lead singer of Skillet, can be found here.

AK47 Season 2 Episode 27: Libby Emmons is Back! (She's a feminist, we swear!)

Libby Emmons, writer for places like The Federalist, Quillette, and more, is back! She discusses #metoo, drugs and miniskirts and loads of other inappropriate stuff with Aaron. You can find her writing all over the place. Just google Libby Emmons and you'll find some controversial topic that she's opinionating all over. Also, and this isn't the first time, the explicit tag is on here for a reason. Whenever we tag something with the dreaded E it's because naughty words are spoken. Aaron is just sick of taking the time to put bleeps in when no one really cares that much about naughty words anymore. 
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AK47 Season 2 Episode 26: A Pastor's Thoughts on Jordan Peterson

Paul Vanderklay, a pastor in Sacramento and avid Youtuber, comes on the show to talk about Jordan Peterson and the phenomenon surrounding him.  We talk about Peterson's effect on people, his approach to interpreting the Bible, and his views of God.

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Links to Paul's Content

Paul Vanderklay's Youtube channel.

Follow Paul on Twitter.

AK47 Season 2 Episode 25: Paul Gottfried on Cultural Marxism and Conservatism

Author, historian, and former Elizabethtown professor, Paul Gottfried, comes on the show to talk about Cultural Marxism, Conservatism, and their historical context. 

Listen to the episode here.  If you prefer other platforms to listen to the episode, click any of the links on the left side of the screen.

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Note: The audio quality of the episode is lower than normal, but Gottfried is still easy to understand.  For first time listeners of the podcast, don't let this discourage you.  Our other episodes have higher quality audio and if Gottfried ever comes back, we'll be sure to have better quality.

AK47 Season 2 Episode 24: The New Chappelle Special, Comedy, and Joshua Harris

Aaron and Kyle are back after hiding in the shadows for way too long!  They discuss Chappelle's new comedy special on Netflix, comedy in general, and a little bit about what recently happened to Joshua Harris, the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye.  Of course, politics are big part of the conversation as well.  About an hour and 26 minutes into the recording you'll notice a pause because we ended up having some technical difficulties and had to cut our conversation short, but we'll try to continue the Joshua Harris conversation when we're more prepared in a future episode.

Listen to the episode here or on any of our other platforms.  Find the links on the left of the site.

An Eschatological Argument for Free Church Ecclesiology

(This is a paper I wrote during Seminary and presented at the Biannual Baptist Association of Philosophy Teachers in 2014)

The differences between radical reformation and Episcopal based churches are overwhelming.¹ In this paper I will elaborate on one particular difference between them and defend a “conservative” radical view against the Episcopal.² The particular difference in question is Apostolic Succession, or rather the necessity of the traditional understanding and praxis of Apostolic Succession. It is my goal to provide a theological case or justification for the non-necessity of traditional episcopal succession and a positive case for a minimal non-exhaustive church form. In other words rather than arguing textually or historically it is my goal to make a theological case based upon the nature of the current dispensation for the more radical view. There is not space to treat the three major episcopal traditions as well as their idiosyncratic spinoffs low church Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Methodism in all of their richness and fullness. Nor is there space to treat the Calvinist traditions or even lower churches like Quakers or Moravians. The reason for this is that the conservative radical need not defeat every argument, biblical, historical or otherwise if he can provide a substantial theological case against the necessity of Apostolic Succession and indeed any exhaustive normativity for the functioning of the church. The substantial theological case I want to make is that adherence to the Apostolic Preaching is fundamentally pre-millennial in eschatology and ecclesiology, and that pre-millennial eschatology and ecclesiology is incompatible with the ecclesiology of traditional Apostolic Succession.

First I want to make clear my presuppositions and influences. I have spent my life living across borders and continents. I have seen, experienced, and known God’s people in many places and settings. And what I have seen is that the streams of life being manifested in the various churches are not only different but fundamentally different. Some post-modern religious theorists would have us believe that all the world’s religions are fundamentally the same and superficially different. But in stark contrast to this ridiculous reductionism stands the Christian faith. Within her numerous spheres and denominations we find not superficial difference and fundamental similitude, but rich and deep differences. Differences in both fundamentals and so called superficials. This conclusion comes from my personal experience and reflection as well as reading and researching different Christian traditions contemporary and ancient. If this claim is an accurate accounting of the Christian faith then I take this truth to be possibly the greatest practical and existential proof for the genuineness of the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead and his bodily ascension to the right hand of God. But whenever anyone says the greatest, we should immediately be skeptical. I mean to be rhetorically provocative and thereby draw attention to the serious nature of the claim, I do not mean to be saying something which I think can be proved with certainty. Because the state of the church as divided and lacking unity is a strong candidate for the most oft repeated criticism of God’s people within and without the church. I used to think that this criticism was valid. But my theological adventure has finally brought me to the exact opposite place. I believe that this place is called pre-millennial.

This is part of a broader long term project I am calling Inaugurated Pre-Restorative Teleology, or IPR Ethics for short. This ethical system is essentially trying to answer the traditional ethical questions by placing human nature within the context of a robust pre-millennialism. The reason I chose this highly technical title rather than simply pre-millennial ethics is because of the baggage associated with dispensational interpretations of Revelations 20, and the very imprecise nature of the word millennium. The fundamental question that dispensationalism³ has finally, after decades of revision, been able to provide an answer to is the eschatological nature of the church. The profundity of the current partial consensus amongst dispensational theologians cannot be grasped without this maxim: Eschatology must always precede ecclesiology. The next step in God’s plan is what defines the previous step. This seems to me to be necessarily the case. Even before the fall in some sense God’s kerygma towards pre fallen man was proleptic.⁴ The negative command given to Adam is not given without reason but given in light of the future possibility of his death. In other words God’s self-revealing has always been eschatological. If Adam eats discriminatingly and avoids the tree singled out as forbidden, God makes no recourse to his future. In other words if he obeys the one simple command that God has given the implication is Adam will live forever.

There are few statements that find almost universal acceptance within Christianity, outside of the New Testament and some of the ancient creeds. But one phrase that I think falls under this narrow category is the very first question of the Westminster Catechism. “Q.1. What is the chief end of man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” This rings so clearly as if it were the very bell of truth because it is only in our teleology that we can understand our present, only in knowing the destination that we know how and where to travel. And so despite the aforementioned deep differences there is agreement within Christianity but it is living agreement. This is why I take Christian diversity and even Christian schism to be a sign of the bodily resurrected Christ, not an argument against Him. Why are the various strands of the Church so different? For the same reason that there are differences within the synoptic tradition of the so-called Lord’s prayer: the Lord’s Prayer was actually being prayed liturgically in the early church.⁵ In all likelihood this means that we don’t have access to the verbatim prayer that Jesus actually told his disciples to pray almost two thousand years ago. We have access to something better, the Spirit led and inspired doxology of those who were present at the kerygma. A synoptic gospel tradition which has no variances would, apart from being pedagogically redundant, be more untrustworthy and worthy of suspicion then the variant yet unified Gospel traditions that we have today. The differences and idiosyncrasies account for them being grounded in genuine history and human experience. This is often seen as a weakness, as if something truly God breathed would be absolutely monolithic. But God himself is not monolithic, He is three persons. And post-incarnation He does not even possess one nature but two. And this is why it seems clear that the primary medium of theology is not endless tomes of philosophy and exegesis, but rather prayer and worship in personal communal Christian experience. We didn’t receive the official secretarial minutes from God’s kerygma event in Jesus Christ, we received the Holy Spirit led personal doxological testimony of the Apostles who knew him as the one who had “the words of eternal life.” What if we had the actual words of the Lord’s Prayer, would there be less division within the various churches? No, in fact there would likely be more. If we had the unmediated kerygma the stakes for interpreting it correctly would be even higher, but instead God gives us four doxological interpretations.

I take this to essentially be the traditional doctrine of lex orandi lex credendi, the rule of prayer is the rule of faith. This means that we know God primarily through prayer. It also means that our faith is a reflection of the way we worship, not the other way around. Here is one area that the traditional church is miles ahead of the magisterial evangelical but maybe not the radical evangelical.⁶ My church celebrates the Lord’s Supper every Sunday and on the “high” liturgical holidays, like Easter and Christmas. The reason that we began to do this was not because of a particular interpretation of scripture or reading of church history. No typical protestant justification could be given for this change. The elders have admitted to this in a sheepish manner, as if slightly embarrassed that they can’t give an exegetical argument. We began celebrating the Lord’s Supper every Sunday because we decided to try it during lent one year and everyone enjoyed this change so much that we simply kept celebrating Christ in this manner. But from my perspective that was theology of the highest order. We acted and the spirit responded, or the spirit acted and we responded. One way or another there was a divine and human response going on within the context of the Christian liturgical community. What does the word theology literally mean? “Study” of God. If God is alive the best place to “study” him, that is to know him is wherever He is revealing himself. If someone were to ask us for a justification external to our shared history and experience we could not give them an answer. This has simply become who we are in Jesus Christ. And without always realizing it this is the very way in which Catholics and Orthodox do theology. They need not appeal to scripture or to history to prove their praxis, though they still can and do these things. But in a very profound way to have a Pope is simply what it means to be Catholic. The papal defender Fortescue writes this against Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans using historical arguments against the Roman Catholic Church:

We believe in a church that exists and lives all days, even to the end of the world, guided by Christ, infallible in faith and morals as long as she exists. We have exactly the same confidence in the divine guidance of the Church in 1870 as in 451. To be obliged to hark back some fifteen hundred years, to judge for yourself, according to the measure of your scholarship, what the documents of that period imply, would be the end of any confidence in a living authority. It is a far worse criterion for religion than the old Protestant idea of the Bible only.⁷

Elsewhere he writes:

Our objection is that antiquity as the final standard throws every article of faith to each man’s private opinion, just as hopelessly as appeal to the Bible only…the Anglican appeals to antiquity against the Pope; the Presbyterian appeals to the same antiquity against any bishops; the Unitarian and nearly all Protestant leaders in Germany and Holland now appeal against the Trinity…This is as essentially Protestant, as subjective, as to make each man’s private judgment of the meaning of Bible texts his final standard…The Catholic criterion is what the living Church, guided always by God, teaches today.⁸

And the current Pope, Benedict XVI, writes this:

The Vatican council represents a condemnation of papalism just as much as episcopalism. Actually, it characterizes both doctrines as heresies, and in the place of one dimensional solutions on the basis of late theological ideas or those of power politics, it sets the dialectic of the reality already given, stemming from Christ, a dialectic and a reality that confirm their obedience to the truth in their very renunciation of a uniform formula satisfying to the intellect.⁹

In other words God will be God, and for Catholics God is ruling his church through the Pope right now with the bishops, councils, and scripture. The heresy cited isn’t papalism as such, but papalism set against episcopalism and vice versa. It is not a truth to be grasped but a kerygma that is experienced doxologically. Does this mean that the current Pope and Fortescue do not believe that the papacy can be defended biblically and historically? No they clearly think it is established by holy tradition and Holy Scripture, but that is not really the basis of their acceptance just further reasons that they think the Roman Church is the center of Christian communion.

Likewise even though I was raised a low church Baptist evangelical I became a sacrementalist of some sort when I was baptized. The experience was so deeply moving, and I was so profoundly changed by it I couldn’t help but see that God had imparted grace to me through this ritual. I did not even know what sacramentalism was until several years later, but upon my discovery I realized this was what I had believed since baptism.¹⁰ But it is important to note that I think my experience can be defended biblically and historically as well, just as my church thinks that our continual celebration of the Lord’s Supper is compatible with scripture. It is just that neither my church nor my person came to these beliefs by reading the Bible but by experiencing the life of God in worship, which always involves Scripture so the two are not separated just distinguishable. And we also have not come to these conclusions for or on behalf of others. I do not think that the Catholic and Orthodox communions need to do and believe everything that I do. That is not an admission out of humility and respect for their venerable communions which have brought so much light, beauty, and progress to our world. The admission flows from a genuine conviction that Christ’s reign over the world is incomplete, that the Holy Spirit is manifesting his presence to the ends of the earth and insular development and even error will be part of that story and progress.¹¹ It is Christ’s job as our head to lead the church, not mine. And in light of this and to avoid the problems of private judgment I think that in general so called “conversion” to a different Christian communion is a bad idea. Unless truly convicted or led by God to that change it seems best to me that people stay where they first met Christ until such time as Christ’s Spirit moves them. The desire to find The Church, the one where Christ really reigns seems to be a good God given desire but it is ultimately an unmet desire in this dispensation. This desire is the very human desire for the eschaton, for the physical rule and kingdom of the Messiah on the earth.

This whole line of thought is based on Pannenberg’s distinction between kerygma and doxology, which I have already been utilizing.¹² The scriptures as they are in themselves are kerygmatic. They retain the actions of God in history. The general schema for protestant theology is that this should be what shapes our doxology. That we should not deviate from the kerygma in our doxology, but the kerygma of scripture is a doxology. Pannenberg writes: “In the sense here intended, doxological statements are statements about God on the basis of events that have been experienced as having occurred from him. They speak of the way in which God has shown himself in specific occurrences.”¹³ And so the events of God’s self-revelation are strict kerygma, but the passed on kerygma of the Apostles is doxological. In a very real sense it is their worshipful interpretation of the events which took place. Likewise Zizioulas writes:

The accounts of the Last Supper in the synoptic Gospels make no mention of the Holy Spirit. They tell of the Supper without trying to bring out the relationship between this event and the Church. Their witness as to the role of the Holy Spirit is only negative. It is clear from these accounts, the disciples present at the Supper could understand neither its meaning, nor its importance, as demonstrated by their subsequent conduct. But in the Fourth Gospel, which takes advantage of the experience of the Church and gives account of the Supper more properly described as ‘Eucharistic’, the role of the Church is described so that it becomes clear that the understanding of this role depends on our understanding of the Eucharistic anamnesis.¹⁴

The point demonstrated here is both profound and problematic. While the Apostle John’s Gospel has always been marked by its theological robustness the other three Gospels seem to be the more normative experience of the early church. Zizioulas has this profound insight that because John’s gospel comes later it is a more lived in, more liturgical gospel than the Synoptics. This has a very serious danger to it as well. Is John’s Gospel just more deeply personal and prayerful or is it actually an Apostolic theology text rather than a doxological approximation of the literal kerygma events that John experienced in a way none of the others did? Since Zizioulas is Eastern Orthodox he views the Eucharistic communion as the thing which is most central to the church. A recent theological work expositing his views specifically is titled The Eucharistic Makes the Church.¹⁵ In other words if his exposition of John is correct then it bodes well for the Orthodox communion, it would make them more Johannine than the rest of us.

And if Zizioulas’ understanding of the source of the theological depth of the Johannine Gospel is correct then it also bodes well for his view of the church because John’s Gospel would be informed by the prayers and the faith of the church. But John cannot be adding anything to his personal experience with the kerygma, just interpreting it more fully with the Holy Spirit and years of worshipful reflection. Remember this is the Apostle who ended his gospel by saying “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”¹⁶ In other words John couldn’t have been adding anything to the kerygma because he is omitting a huge amount of kerygma. He is simply led by the Holy Spirit to widen the range of the synoptic tradition, but there was much more kerygma of our Lord that he could have included beyond this personal doxology.

But since Zizioulas is Orthodox he is also doxologically committed to the legitimacy of the concept of hagiography. Hagiography stands in stark contrast to the doxological tradition of the Gospels. Strictly speaking hagiography is simply meditating on holy people. But practically speaking it is a response to no kerygma, it is a response to a lack of genuine kerygma. Concerning the most shameful and difficult passage associated with Jesus, the forsaken cry upon the cross, Bruce writes: “No one would have invented it; it was an uncompromising datum of tradition which an evangelist had either to reproduce as it stood or else pass over without mention.”¹⁷ This is the doxology of a true Apostle. For the doxology of the church is a living doxology based in history and living in history. And it is this genuine doxological characteristic that has led the traditional churches into such hagiographical error. They prize the synaxarium and the lives of saints as part of the genuineness and historical activity of God within their churches because they believe in the God who is there and is not silent. But the synaxarium uses a view of history more akin to the gnostic accounts of the life of Christ. Careful attention to what actually took place in the life of a saint is not the point, rather the goal is pedagogy and exhorting Christians to righteousness. It is symbolic of the holiness of the saints, rather than a genuine kerygmatic account. In the worst and most extreme forms they gave up the historical and uncompromising kerygma for apparitions and tall tales. But so have the Christians in my church who would rather make up farcical tales of what they think the founding fathers of America believed, and other numerous subjects of rational inquiry like the natural sciences or what really happened during the reformation.

Also if Zizioulas is right in his understanding of John’s account then he is almost certainly wrong in his estimation of the other three Gospels. They are not written as late as John but they are informed by the doxology of the church. They must be, especially in the case of Luke who is the only Gospel writer we are sure was not an eyewitness to the life of Christ. His Gospel must be the most ecumenical and corporately doxological of the four because all the information he records is from the eyewitness testimony of the church. So then does Christ through his Holy Spirit guide and enable the church to make the church what she is or does the Eucharist make the church? The Eastern communion would say this is a false dilemma and that their doctrine of Eucharist includes all those things. But if they are going to resort to normalizing the deeply personal experience of John and deny the doxology of the other three gospels then they are simply interpreting the kerygma through their doxology. But this is to be expected, in good and bad ways. Bruce writes:

At times it is not the interpretation of a passage of Scripture, but it’s very rendering, that becomes a hallmark of a particular tradition. For example, when I hear Matt. 16:19 (cf. 18:18) translated “Whatever you forbid/permit on earth must be already forbidden/permitted in heaven”, or Acts 2:38 translated “Repent and be baptized with reference to (or even ‘on the basis of’) the forgiveness of sins”, I have a good idea what company I am in.¹⁸

Looking finally to the Apostolic Preaching we find that the kerygma and the doxology are so linked to history that personal temperament accounts for some aspects of the Apostolic Preaching. Paul begins to soften a bit in his controversial dealings later on in life.¹⁹ He never loses his Apostolic edge, but after his religious experience in Ephesus he has a changed perspective. And what seems to become solidified in his thought is the personal Eschatological hope of the Christian life.²⁰ His thought crystalizes into a clear inaugurated and proleptic view of the Christian life.²¹ The resurrection of Christ isn’t just a kerygma that must be argued historically but a genuine and comforting doxological reality, yet without the spiritualization of later church tradition. Despite their protestations to the contrary the traditional successional churches believe that “heaven” in its eschatological fullness is available to righteous believers upon death.²² This is most damningly demonstrated when the very end of the orthodox funeral service prays to God that the person taken from them would be established in the mansions of the just, a present place repeatedly referred to as paradise.²³ This is not a Pauline liturgy for the dead. The comfort is not found in the resurrection life of the believer based upon their Lord’s death and resurrection, nor is it an eschatological comfort found in the parousia of our Lord. Paul views the consummation and hope of the believer as grounded in two historical events, the inaugurated event of Christ’s resurrection and “spiritual” body and the future consummation event of our Resurrection. Of course he also recognizes that to be absent in the body is to be present with our Lord, but at the same time he calls those who have died sleeping.²⁴ The traditional successional Christian eliminates the Apostolic eschatological hope and removes the proleptic dimension by equating the paradise where Christ is now with eschatological completeness.²⁵ To be sure Christ is at the right hand of God and that place is glorious and perfect. If that were the Biblical idea of the eschaton then Paul is indeed wholly complete right now. But the Christian hope is a breaking in from the spiritual to the physical. Paul seems to think that the current restful state of the saints in heaven is both of conscious knowledge and presence with Christ but also an incomplete situation, he does say they are asleep after all. We were created to be embodied. Without our bodies we are not fully actualized.

Because of these sorts of theological issues I reject the standard uses of the different millennial views and instead fully endorse Moltmann’s millennial categories. The important or significant thing about the millennium is not it being a period of a thousand years or even in the future. It should be understood as the restorative Messianic kingdom. One’s view of its location in time is determined not so much by an exegetical argument but by the very life and prayer of the church. In other words the millennium is essentially the activity of Christ physically ruling and restoring the earth prior to the New Creation. This is why I called my previously mentioned ethical theory pre-restorative, the focus is not on the millennium but on what the millennium actually does. But the restorative kingdom is a reality, not a private intellectual opinion. It is something which obtains or does not, just as the church or national Israel are states of affairs which either are or are not. And so rather than allowing for the trite exegetical definitions given for the millennium by various scholars I put forth Moltmann’s categories: eschatological millenarianism and presentative/historical millenarianism.²⁶ Every view of the millennium will collapse into one of these positions. Really what Moltmann is claiming is that the traditional successional churches act and believe as though the restorative kingdom has already come, in fact this theology has been with us for quite a while. This is a far cry from inaugurated eschatology, more in the vein of C.H. Dodd’s realized eschatology.²⁷ Inaugurated eschatology is deeply Pauline and pre-millennial or eschatological millenarian. But this realized eschatology is not new, this is the old view. It may not be exactly the same through church history but this confusion over Christ’s physical reign and national Israel has been rampant throughout church history. Headley writes concerning Luther:

Christ has come. The law has been fulfilled. The Kingdom of Christ is established. In contrast to the league and House of David which had appeared well ordered and serene, now, after Christ, His kingdom, if universal, surpasses all others in being disordered and wasted (54:78). With the fulfillment of the promise in Christ, time is at an end and nothing more remains (16:53).²⁸

Clearly this would be a very confusing state of affairs to find oneself in, Christ is reigning and yet the church is a disaster in terms of unity. Well what Luther should’ve asked was what is the nature of Christ’s reign now, is it a reign of physical unity?

This is precisely the problem with a normative view of the church. We want a well ordered church, an established church, a national church because there is an eschatological hope within us for the earthly reign of our risen Messiah. This is precisely the problem Moltmann addresses when he discusses historical and presentative millenarian theology.

The initial fulfilment of messianic hope in Christianity was political in nature. As consequence of the turn of events under Constantine, the old apocalyptic martyr eschatology was transformed into a millenaristic imperial theology. This transposition can only be understood apocalyptically, even if historically speaking the early Christian apologists had already prepared the way. Those who with Christ had fought against the political demons and had suffered under them, began in the Roman empire after Constantine, with Christ to be victorious politically and to rule religiously.²⁹

But the proof is in the doxological pudding. How does the Apostolic church exercise authority versus the church of Constantine?

First let us look specifically at Paul’s exercise of authority. According to Banks:

As he says elsewhere, the “authority that the Lord has given” him is for “building up and not for tearing down.” Nothing is gained by conformity to his point of view unless they see the truth and embrace it for themselves. A nominal obedience does not result in any real growth in understanding or living.³⁰

So he recognized that his authority was to establish not exclude, it was to welcome not deny. This does not mean that he cannot address problems and excommunicate. But the Apostles were not given authority to divide and set factions against each other. Their authority was given from God for service, not for successional and physical establishing. The local churches governed during their tenure were viewed as individually theocratic.³¹ And so here again we see the point that Fortescue was trying to establish, it isn’t about one form versus another but the actual rule of God. Paul does not lord his authority over the church because Christ is their Lord.³²

The council of Jerusalem is very important to this discussion as well. This being the first church council one would think that it would bear great resemblance to at least the council of Nicaea. But the differences between them are shocking and irreconcilable. The Jerusalem council was not authoritative in the same way that Nicaea clearly thought of itself. Paul did not show up trembling, hoping for his perspective on the issue of circumcision to be vindicated.³³ The decision of the Apostles was something which could be challenged without fear of repercussions.³⁴ The decision of the council was very open and ultimately negative, that is rather than requiring certain practices or dogmas it said Gentiles didn’t have to be circumcised and that they should not be sexually immoral, avoid food offered to idols, and from eating the blood of animals.³⁵ By stark contrast the letter to those not present at the council of Nicaea records this very disturbing teaching:

It would still be your duty not to tarnish your soul by communications with such wicked people [the Jews]...as on the one hand it is our duty not to have anything in common with the murderers of our lord ...for all which takes place in assemblies of the bishops ought to be regarded as proceeding from the will of god.³⁶

In other words we see a change from Jewish “Christians” asking very Jewish questions within a non-authoritarian context turn into unabashed anti-Semitism and absolute authority claiming not only divine origin or inspiration but the very will of God. If any group of men in church history had the right to bind conscience as tightly as this it was the Apostles and yet they refrained from doing so, they bound minimally in freedom for the sake of the Gospel. The fathers at Nicea bound for the purpose of church unity, that is calendar or festival unity (a kingdom not a gospel purpose) and to be able to not have to speak to the Jews (an explicitly anti gospel purpose, since the gospel was supposed to go to the Jew first). And yet, even with this institutional realized millenarian form of racism the gates of hell did not prevail against Christ’s church. The fathers at Nicaea despite their sinful misapplication of the Gospel fought and won against a terrible heresy and helped to establish a widespread theological peace and brought forth the foundations of some of our most cherished theologies.

And so finally we can conclude the discussion because it is here that Moltmann’s and Pannenberg’s theologies are most profound and helpful. Moltmann gives us the eschatological nature of the ecclesiastical problem and Pannenberg rightly discerns the proper nature and path of the Christian churches. Ecumenical dialogue always tends towards either monolithic agreement or equivocating agreement, how can we figure out how we are all actually the same or how can we make ourselves the same. But we aren’t the same. The problems that the Apostles dealt with are different from ours, and throughout all church history we assumed that they were a norm we needed to import into the present.³⁷ That is the problem with apostolic succession, it is trying to physically import a perception of the apostles ministry into all times and places. But the apostles were located in a time and place. And so the solution is not trying to figure out how we can all be the same but genuinely try to understand each other and learn from our different perspectives and histories.³⁸ It seems too simple, because it is. The total picture is more complicated, spanning thousands of years and ultimately the eternal perfect state. But what are we called to now, here in this time and place? How can what the Apostles preached transform this now? We hope for unity and a millenarian King to unite us, and one day He will. But now we need to minister in the theocratic communities he has called us to and trust that our Messiah will take care of the Eschaton when the preordained time comes.

1By this I do not mean the historic Anabaptist tradition per se, but any broadly Evangelical tradition that has rejected confessionalism and attempts at an exhaustive prescription for normative church form, function, and government. I believe that while the magisterial reformers were well meaning their project was not so different from the traditional churches. They desired to recreate (rather than inhabit, which was the catholic view) a repeatable and sustainable form of church. From my perspective this is to reenact previous Christian generations through the sin of ancient Israel who desired an earthly king rather than allowing God to be their King. But as we will see this sin as I have called it, may not be much of a sin at all but genuine and positive insular development as a response to the strengths, weaknesses, and problems arising within church establishments.

2I am essentially espousing a Baptistic/Brethren free church model along the lines of a plural male Pastorate with a regular male diaconate, and a mobilized rather than authoritative view of the congregation. But this is purely basic, like a foundation. As Jewish and Christian history shows God mobilizes his people in any number of ways. But some things have always been true, such as male leadership of some sort or organized corporate liturgy centered on a meal or sacrifice, and these things seemed to be based on our teleology rather than merely divine command or tradition. Free Church doesn’t mean anything goes, it means theocratic and community oriented. There has not always been prophecy amongst God’s people as the writer of Maccabees suggests. I would never desire to tell God what he cannot do with His people, but it seems clear that there are basics which at least need to be mastered and maintained. The Theological basis of my argument should confirm this as well. This view is radical in that it disavows the necessities attributed by traditional and mainline churches while also not condemning their idiosyncrasies based upon the freedom, mobility, fallibility and incarnational nature of the church dispensation. And if one of those three pillars of church form is lacking it is because God has not provided it. Based upon Paul’s criterion for bishops and deacons the church may not always have access to men who meet these requirements. In which case that church simply won’t have bishops and deacons until God provides them.

3Dispensationalism is the version of pre-millennial thought I am most acquainted with, but dispensational distinctives are not important for this theological discussion.

4In addition to pre-millennialism and a modest dispensationalism I am working within what I take to be broadly Neo-Orthodox theology. While Karl Barth himself has not been much of an influence on my thought I think that Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jurgen Moltmann are in some sense carrying on his visionary legacy. And in turn their works have impacted the argument of this paper. Whether these esteemed theologians actually think that they are Neo-Orthodox in any sense is beside the point. I am using Neo-Orthodoxy in a slightly reductionist sense, that is those Evangelicals who desire to re-appropriate genuine Christianity within our contemporary setting, stripping it of historical baggage as much as is possible. In any case I shall use three words that are indicative and thematically connected to Neo-Orthodox theology. The first is kerygma, the second is doxological, and the third is proleptic. Kerygma, within this context, means God’s uninterrupted and unmediated activity and revelation. Doxological means appropriated liturgically or interpreted through prayer. Proleptic means viewed in light of the future. If I knew what Barth meant by krisis I would try to utilize that as well, but alas some things must wait for the millennium.

5Larry W. Hurtado, “The Place of Jesus in Earliest Christian Prayer,” The Truett Seminary Podcast, double Twist Podcasts, MP3 Audio file, http://podcasts.doubletwist.com/The-Truett-Seminary-Podcast/0I2h1U7Y3m#q=a&id=0I2h1U7Y3m.

6But many baptistic churches are indiscernible from magisterial or mainline protestant churches in the fact that they view the New Testament as normative or essentially like the new book of Leviticus for the church. Even the lowest churches tend to locate genuine church in a magisterium rather than the actual local worshipping and ministering churches, see Steven Harmon, “The Nicene Faith and the Catholicity of the Church: Evangelical Retrieval and the Problem of Magisterium”, Evangelicals and Nicene Faith, Timothy George ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 74-91. Luther viewed the new testament as a tentative or possibly flexible norm at the beginning of his reformation, but because he was still basically a Catholic in temperament he wound up making at least the first four ecumenical councils normative in some sense because of his very anti pre-millennial ecclesiology, see John Headley, Luther’s View of Church History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), 164-169.

7Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2008), 21-22.

8Fortescue, 23.

9Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI, God’s Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2008), 20.

10Likewise someone may have encountered Jesus during his earthly ministry and felt something he couldn’t explain. It wouldn’t leave him. But he meditated on it, maybe it was just a glance or the way the Lord touched one of his disciples. But the experience hounded him. He experienced a kerygma, but he had no doxological terms for it. Then he sees Stephen martyred and hears the Apostolic doxology and realizes “Yes, this is why I have felt this way all these years. Jesus Christ, the man I saw that day he is God.” Latent beliefs that are activated by doxological terms and knowledge is probably a very common Christian occurrence and direct evidence of the genuineness of kerygma.

11See Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Church (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1983), 153.

12Which he received from Edmund Schlink. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 184.

13

Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 184-185.

14

John Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 7.

15Paul McPartlan (Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark, 1993).

16John 21:25, ESV.

17F.F. Bruce, The Hard Sayings of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1983), 248.

18F.F. Bruce, Tradition Old and New, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970), 15.

19F.F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 300.

20Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 300.

21

Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 304.

22Bauckham, 269.

23Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of New York and all North America, Service Book of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, (Englewood Hills, NJ: 1971), 186-199.

24

Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 313.

25

Because traditionally eschatology was viewed in an eternity-time model rather than future-present. So eschatological fulfillment was eternal fulfillment, which is true except that the eternal fulfillment comes after the present in the future. And at that time the eternal fulfillment will be present. Moltmann, The Coming of God, 16.

26Richard Bauckham, “Must Christian Eschatology be Millenarian?”, Eschatology in Bible and Theology, Kent Brower and Mark Elliot, eds. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1997), 265. He has another category called epochal millenarianism where he deals with how modern humanist thought is moving towards their own version of the millennium through secular utopian ideals.

27

See Dodd’s appendix on Eschatology and History, The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments, (London: Hodder & Stoughton Limited, 1939). While generally excellent I think he has in many ways seriously undermined the Apostolic Preaching by placing too much emphasis on mythological and realized eschatological themes. See also Moltmann, The Coming of God, 15.

28

Headley, 143.

29Jurgen Moltmann, Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004), 159-160.

30Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 181.

31

Banks, 148.

32

Banks, 178.

33

Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 184.

34

Banks, 172-173.

35

Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 185-186.

36

Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Volume 14 The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 54-55.

37Pannenberg, The Church, 47.

38

Pannenberg, The Church, 153.

Mark Hemingway returns for the third time!

Mark Hemingway is back to help Aaron break down the recent intramural Conservative debate between First Things and National Review, a debate that apparently everyone else wanted to have also. It started with this piece by Sohrab Ahmari and then mushroom clouded over the entire internet. Mark pointed out that this is really a continuation of the debate sparked by Patrick Deneen in his now infamous book Why Liberalism Failed. There is no easy way to characterize this debate because it stems from the fundamentally anti ideological philosophy of Edmund Burke. This quality continues to be both the main strength of Conservative thought and also the point of tension that has generated endless debate.

Also check out Mollie Hemingway's (Mark's Wife) book on the Kavanaugh Debacle coming out soon. It's gonna be a massive success!

And of course Mark gives us new music recommendations! Check out our third Hemingway Spotify Playlist. Also it was brought to my attention by a past podcast guest that not everyone is subscribed to Spotify, so here is the same playlist on Youtube.

Find the episode on Anchor Here

And iTunes Here

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Aussie Con on the AK47 Podcast

This is an older episode that we never promoted because Kyle and I have been having some very separate, but very sad, family problems. Without boring you with the details of our lives I'll just say that we're both alright but your prayers are much appreciated.

In any case our guest decided to keep his identity mildly concealed. We're just calling him Aussie, or The Man from Snowy River, use whichever moniker you prefer. He's a Conservative blogger from Down Under who loves Patrick Buchanan. Virtually none of his beliefs are what I would call Politically Correct. It's a long wide ranging conversation that deals with race, culture, and eventually the Chinese Communist Conspiracy to destroy everything we all hold dear!

Give Aussie some love on his blog and social media so that he'll be willing to come back on a semi regular basis.

You can find his blog here

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The Civil War was Illegal

I started a fight on the NRO Facebook group by claiming Lincoln was the worst president in US history and I’m only partly joking about this. But before I get into this mess I first need to qualify my opinions:

A) I have great affection for Lincoln the man. He has been so mythologized in the American imagination that it is virtually impossible to not love him. He had a particular kind of genius. That does not by definition make him a great or even good president. The executive branch is supposed to uphold the constitution and execute the law, I think Lincoln ultimately destroyed the Constitution and thereby broke his oath by fighting an illegal war. A war that was catastrophic and completely unnecessary.

B) I am not defending the racist or brutal aspects of slavery by criticizing Lincoln or the Civil War. Much more could be said on this but it’s simply fallacious to equate these things. The Vietnam War was also an illegal disaster but claiming such a thing does not make me pro Communist or anti US. Wars rarely have good outcomes. The CW led to Jim Crow, a less desirable outcome is hard to imagine. 

C) I would not have been a secessionist in the 1860s because I’m a Conservative. Radical solutions rarely if ever succeed and secession ultimately led to the destruction of the Southern tradition and the American political tradition generally. It gave space for a culturally impoverished liberalism to take hold of America that had more to do with the French Revolution than the American. This has led to all sorts of awful tendencies in US public policy. Nothing good came from any of it. It was all a mistake. I deny the supposed right (or worse duty) of Revolution talked about by thinkers like Locke. 

I try to spend as little time on social media as possible so this blog post is a response to one comment that is highly relevant for this discussion. I asked one of the people on the group to provide a legal justification of the Civil War (because this is a trap, there is no legal justification for the War) and this was his response: 

This is exactly what I thought he would say. This is exactly what Daniel Day Lewis argued in Spielberg’s Lincoln. This is typical, predictable, and false. Like I said: it's a trap. If you want to defend Lincoln it has to be on moral or political grounds, he can't be defended legally. More realistic people, like Jonah Goldberg, basically admit that they think what he did was right but that he had to do horrible things to do it. And I think he did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons in the wrong way way and got almost a million Americans killed because of it. I think he was a truly horrible president. But none of that would've happened without secession. It's just a huge multi sided disaster. In any case the "legal" case provided is pretty easy to destroy so I'll go through the three meager points provided one at a time. 

I) “A region of the nation was in rebellion.”

This is assuming many things but the two most important are 1) That these United States were a Nation and 2) that secession is an act of Rebellion. Both of these assumptions were false (I think they’re still legally false but time, tradition, and convention have mostly made it irrelevant) when Lincoln used them to justify the War. The legal authority to act against Rebellion is not granted to the Nation of America, since no such entity exists. That authority is granted to the central government that was formed by a compact of The States. In other words statement I) is essentially nonsensical because it doesn’t refer to anything. Secession from a compact government by Sovereign states is not an act of insurrection. The Central government was not overthrown by secession the States simply left. This is similar to saying that Brexit is an act of rebellion or insurrection against the EU. Obviously there are massive discontinuities between the two movements but the fundamental principle of National Sovereignty is at play in both. The constitution was created to guard the sovereignty of the States by granting very few powers to the Central Government. 

The retort to this historical truism is that after the States Seceded they attacked the US at Fort Sumter so in fact it was an armed insurrection. This is true and false. It was clearly a mistake on the part of the South to attack first because Lincoln didn’t declare war until the South attacked. But this makes it obvious why Lincoln had no grounds to do what he did according to his own reasoning. The legal game being played here is that without the States of the United States there simply is no United States. The Central government governs the Union, and the Union is the States themselves. In other words as soon as some of these Sovereign  States got out the Union simply ceased to exist which meant that whatever happened next would be a struggle between two different groups of Sovereign states. So they couldn’t recognize the fact of Southern Cessation if Lincoln wanted to make the insurrection argument, but making War on the States is clearly treason so Lincoln had to argue the fiction that these States were still in the Union but had Rebels within them that were trying to overthrow their government...in other words this whole conversation is legally a kind of nonsense. 

The Civil War was a political war not a legal one. War is politics by other means. Lincoln used War Powers without Congress declaring a War, but War Powers don’t apply to insurrection. It’s also telling that the first part of the original insurrection act states “Suppress an insurrection against a State government at the request of the Legislature or, if not in session, the Governor.” In other words Lincoln needed the permission of the States where the “Rebellion” was taking place to put down those Rebellions. But those Rebellions weren’t taking place against those States because they weren't anti state Rebellions. Secession wasn't unilaterally imposed on the South. The various states held public conventions and voted to leave, in other words they left democratically. Lincoln imposed his will by force on a democratic movement of secession. That is tyranny, there is simply no other name for it. The justification for such tyranny must be moral or political, it can never be legal under the Constitution.

The truth is that my interlocutor is simply assuming the Constitutionality of the pledge of allegiance, which is at best a silly or unserious thing to base our political opinions on. Brion McClanahan writes: 

“The modern pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, a socialist minister who wanted to indoctrinate American schoolchildren with a nationalist message, one based on the “great speeches” of Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln in relation to the “One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove.” Sprinkle in some “liberty and justice” from the French Revolution and you have a message that any good leftist nationalist can embrace. The founding generation would not have said such a pledge, if for no other reason that most did not view the United States as a “nation” in the strict sense of the word, a single people.” 

McClanahan is one of our greatest living defenders of the American political tradition and his case for the legality of secession is truly devastating. He doesn't argue this, as far as I'm aware, but if you should be pledging allegiance to anything it should be your state or local government of some sort. That idea pains me greatly as a citizen of Calipornia... but the Conservative position has always been to think locally and act locally. We must be members of what Ben Sasse calls good tribes, and out of good tribes we can have good states and out of good states a good union. 

II) “There is no constitutional provision made for a State leaving the Union.”

This is true but that means it’s easily settled by the 10th Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

No provision means no provision, which means it’s also not prohibited, which means that secession is up to the states. For the claim that no provision means no legal ability to secede to make any sense one has to assume, as Lincoln and many others have, the compact that formed the Union is literally eternal and indissoluble, making it similar to God’s covenant with Abraham. There is no reason to believe such nonsense because when the South Seceded they did in fact dissolve the Union. Madison clearly recognized that there was nothing magical about the compact, in fact Jefferson assumed that there would be a revolution of government every twenty years or so. The belief that the union is a magical contract is very silly and a kind of reification (or worse deification) of “America”.

III) “Lincoln was upholding his oath of office.”

The oath is

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

If we are to understand Constitution here in the classical sense, which referred to the character of a nation and not its laws, then this could be read as an argument for the Preservation of the Union. But that’s not what it means.

Aside from that the only possible way to see him as upholding his oath is that since the Constitution doesn’t apply without the United States the war was a way of keeping the Constitution a reality. But it’s obvious that Lincoln violated the Constitution in all kinds of ways. He ruled with Martial Law which meant that he violated all kinds of Civil rights. He suspended Habeas Corpus and violated freedom of speech. He fought an undeclared War either against the states (treason) or within them without their permission (illegal). No matter how one looks at this Lincoln simply did not uphold his oath of office. Few presidents have. It’s a hard oath to keep. But Lincoln was one of its worst violators. I’m sure he believed he was doing the right thing, and maybe he was, but he wasn’t doing the legal thing. Maybe it’s right to break your oath...

And that’s all my interlocutor argued. Three false assertions easily knocked down.

The sad truth is that the Civil War was a horrible event in US History, probably the most horrible. Nothing positive can be said about it. Especially not the abolition of Slavery because Slavery was replaced with Jim Crow. For a fuller understanding of why the Civil War was such a disaster see this episode of Al Mohler’s Thinking in Public. 

The truth is that this is not an intra Conservative debate but rather an inter debate between different ideas of Conservatism. I am arguing for the correct Conservative position on the Civil War and my interlocutors are arguing for the Harry Jaffa interpretation of US history. Jaffa was not a true Conservative. The very well respected scholar Paul Gottfried has been arguing this for decades:

“Indeed, when such journalists as Rich Lowry casually observe that Jaffa may have been the key thinker for their movement, and when they rate his book on Lincoln as the single most significant book in molding their ideas, the compliments are fully justified. All other contemporary thinkers pale into insignificance beside Jaffa, thanks to his exposition of equality as the prime “conservative principle.” More than forty years ago I stood with Russell Kirk in front of his library as he showed me an anthology on conservative voices (put out by William F. Buckley, Jr.) which included Jaffa. “This man shouldn’t be here,” remarked Kirk with obvious irritation. In point of fact, neither Russell Kirk nor I would belong to the future of a movement that became closely identified with Jaffa’s thinking and which, by the 1970s, had come to reshape the thinking of the founder of the National Review.”

Jaffa's influence fully explains the Lincoln cult that pervades what we call modern American Conservatism. The NeoCons simply aren’t Conservative, they’re battling over control of a modern American progressive consensus, one that is based in the ideals of the French Revolution. The Civil War was identified in many ways historically with the third French Revolution. The NeoCons belong to this political tradition. It is not hard to find evidence of this. After all AEI came out in support of Transgenderism last year.

That’s the real reason I picked this fight. 

Because it matters. 

Conservatism matters. 

Lionizing the Civil War and hagiography of Lincoln are deeply anti Conservative. 

Think locally and act locally. Love the little platoon that God in his providential grace has brought you to.