Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 19)

While Christian Nationalists busily try to put the theocratic band back together (i.e., to restore Christianity to its privileged place in American society), the culture continues to disintegrate at an alarming rate and to an alarming degree. Christians do well to spend . . . Continue reading →

Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 18)

It is useful to review Augustine’s humane account of just war to refresh our memories or to introduce the reader to Augustine’s approach to war, as a background to considering the Statement on just war. In his Reply to Faustus (c. 397; . . . Continue reading →

Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 17)

“My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” (John 18:36) One of . . . Continue reading →

World And Life View: License To Baptize? (Part 3)

In an essay dated 1 March 1996, Fred Pugh sketches what has become a fairly standard view among many neo-Kuyperians.1 His account probably obviously leans to the cultural-political right, and the antithesis is established as “secular humanism.” Continue reading →

World And Life View: License To Baptize? (Part 2)

The concept of a worldview is essential. Derived from the German Weltanschauung, the English noun denotes “a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.”1 Worldviews are like belly-buttons. Everyone has one. Continue reading →

Distinguishing Spheres Affirms Christ’s Lordship Over All Things (Part 4)

Last time we saw that the very reason Calvin adopted the language of a “twofold kingdom” (i.e., the doctrine that God’s kingdom is one and administered in two distinct spheres) was to oppose the Libertines and Manichaeism. But it remains to be . . . Continue reading →

World And Life View: License to Baptize? (Part 1)

James Bond, Agent 007, had a “license to kill.” There are Reformed folk who also seem to have a license of some sort or other, based on what they call “the Christian world and life view” (hereafter, CWLV). This concept is interesting . . . Continue reading →

Distinguishing Spheres Affirms Christ’s Lordship Over All Things (Part 3)

The Reformation brought about a significant shift in the theology, piety, and practice of parts of the Western church. One theological shift, which was evident in aspects of the practice of the Reformed church, was its insistence that the church was a . . . Continue reading →

Was the Reformation a Big Misunderstanding?

The socially conservative evangelicals do not have a doctrine of a twofold kingdom; nor do they typically distinguish between nature and grace or between the sacred and the secular. Thus the only way they can cooperate with Roman Catholics on social questions is to get them converted and baptized. Continue reading →

Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 16)

God the Holy Spirit worked so powerfully among the apostles (Acts 5:12) that people came to think their ill would be healed if they were laid on cots so that the apostle Peter’s shadow fell on them (Acts 5:15). Through the apostles, . . . Continue reading →

Distinguishing Spheres Affirms Christ’s Lordship Over All Things (Part 2)

The post-apostolic Christians understood what Jesus and Paul were teaching about the kingdom. They confessed universally, in the Rule of Faith, from the earliest decades of the second century, that God is “almighty” (omnipotens). They did battle with radical dualists, whether Gnostics . . . Continue reading →

Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 15)

Between 1513 and 1519, as he lectured through the Psalms, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and the Psalms again at the University in Wittenberg, Martin Luther (1483–1546) not only became an Augustinian anti-Pelagian in soteriology (sola gratia); in that same period he also recovered . . . Continue reading →

Lessons In Christian Nationalism From The Scottish Covenanters

Mt Soledad

Christian Nationalism has become something of a Rorschach test. What do you imagine when you hear this phrase? Is it a rallying cry to a glorious future in which God’s kingdom is manifested on earth? Or does it portend the hellish horrors . . . Continue reading →

Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 14)

Continuing on article XIV: More important, however, than the Statement’s confusion about general equity is what the authors want to do with it, and what assumptions they bring when applying the moral law to civil life in 2023. The Statement says the . . . Continue reading →

Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 13)

The theocratic impulse is truly ancient. All the pagan nations of the Ancient Near East had state religions. The Israelites, Egyptians, and Canaanites all had state religions, as did the Greeks and the Romans. The latter were particularly vicious in enforcing the . . . Continue reading →

Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 12)

In article XIII: On the Great Commission, the Statement says, Article XIII: The Great Commission WE AFFIRM that Christ’s commissioning of His Church to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey all that He has commanded includes . . . Continue reading →