The triumph of style over content is one of the defining features of contemporary British society. “Cool Britannia,” the inane “sound bite” of current political culture, represents the dominating influence in society of an infantile world-view that prioritises outward appearance and the superficial and denigrates the deeper, more fundamental spiritual questions about life for which the condition of our society, and indeed the world, demands an answer. This triumph of the ephemeral and the superficial prioritising of the unimportant over the vital questions facing mankind has led modern society to cast aside much of the valuable spiritual, intellectual, moral and cultural heritage that previous generations have put at our disposal.
This deleterious trend has been as evident in the life of the Church as it has been in the rest of society. The result has been that the mission of the Church has been vitiated by the dominating influence of the trivial. What the preacher is wearing, his acceptance in the right clique, i.e. whether he can drop the right names, his ability to speak without notes and amuse his audience (histrionics) all take precedence over the content of the message, with the result that the ministry is no longer focused on the training and equipment of the members of the congregation for service in the world when they leave the church building but rather on giving the right impression, and often this amounts to no more than a game of “spiritual” one-upmanship or keeping up with the Church down the road. The consequence is that the Church becomes irrelevant in society because she is no longer being properly equipped to fulfil her true mission, indeed she no longer recognises her true mission. The cult of personality replaces the preacher’s calling under God to equip those under his care for service and outward appearance dominates the life of the Church instead of the pursuit of the cultural mandate.
If we look to the Bible, however, we see, both in the Old Testament and the New, that this attitude is a worldly infatuation, an attitude that is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and that should have no part in the life of the Church. The Old Testament prophets were almost to a man outsiders, people who did not fit in with the prevailing old-boy network and whose uncompromising stance against the apostate fashions of the times puts them in stark contrast to the men of the ministry who overwhelmingly dominate modern Church life, yet whose leadership has taken the Church in Britain to utter ruin. As Jesus said of John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets, “What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. But what went ye out to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet” (Mt.11:7–9). The prophets were not great orators who entertained the political leaders or the people of Israel with fine appearances, men-pleasing social connections, charismatic personalities and inspiring preaching. Not a few of them found the whole business of speaking for God difficult precisely because they were not great orators. One did not invite a prophet in to give a politically correct after dinner speech or deliver a congenial homily—which is what most preaching amounts to today. The same applies in the New Testament. Christ did not choose for his disciples respectable pillars of society who fitted in well with the religious authorities of the day so that they would give a good impression. He chose for the work of his kingdom those who were without the necessary credentials for leadership in the eyes of the scribes and Pharisees. Even the apostle Paul, who was, before his conversion to the Christian faith, an accepted member of the Jewish religious establishment, was not regarded as a charismatic speaker and natural leader by many in the Church, even among those who had been converted by his ministry. He had to defend his apostleship not only against the Jewish leaders of the Church in Jerusalem, who had promulgated as dogma a criterion for apostleship, i.e. a “qualification,” that Paul did not have and could never have had (namely to have been one of the disciples from the beginning—Acts 1:21–22), but also against those in the Gentile Church who complained that his letters were “weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible” (2 Cor. 10:10). And he rebuked the Corinthians in this very context for looking at the outward appearance, the style if you like, rather than at the substance, the content, of the message (2 Cor. 10:7).
The Bible rejects the prioritising of style over content that so dominates the modern world (Jn 7:24). The Church’s acquiescence in this worldly trend is a departure from the straight and narrow path of the Christian faith. The loss of substance and content in the proclamation and practice of the Church, indeed the deliberate rejection of the content of the faith in much of modern British Church life,—one might justifiably characterise this as an obsession with ignorance, which is often perversely seen as a superior spiritual condition—has created a Church that is emaciated and weak to the point of being virtually useless. The Church is sick. She suffers from malnutrition as a result of her infatuation with the outward appearance, the ephemeral, which cannot provide the spiritual sustenance that she needs in order to grow and mature into a healthy body. Spiritual anorexia is the only fitting description of this condition.
The answer to the dilemma that this situation poses is, of course, that the Church must abandon her obsession with the outward, with mere style, and return to the Bible. The content of the Christian faith as a biblical world-view, a way of thinking and living in the light of biblical revelation, must be embraced. This way of life must be intellectual as well as emotional, theoretical as well as practical. It must embrace the whole man in the whole course of his life, in his thoughts, emotions, will and actions, and it must embrace his social life no less than his individual devotional life. Only by living in this way can the Church, i.e. the community of the faithful, provide an alternative culture to the culture of sin and death that presently surrounds her and thereby fulfil her role as the conduit through which God’s salvation in Jesus Christ is manifested to the world. Without this antithesis, however, the Church is no use, has no role to play, and has become worthless to the world, fit only to be trodden under foot by men. Men-pleasing, following the fads and fashions of the world, the constant infatuation with style over content, is death for the Christian Church, and therefore death for the world, which is the Church’s mission field. The Church must repent of her abandonment of the vigorous spiritual, moral and intellectual content of the Christian message, and by embracing this content in her thoughts and actions once again provide light to a fallen world. The discipling of the nation to Christ cannot take place without this change of mind by the Church, without repentance.
Yet we face a problem at this point. Many Christians do not know what repentance is nor what they need to repent of. And this condition is only made worse by a ministry that is unable to provide spiritual guidance for the Church and that has substituted infantile entertainment for spiritual edification. Let me give an example. I recently went to hear someone speak in a church about the problems confronting Christians living under Muslim rule. His talk raised some important questions that Christians in Britain, and indeed most other Western countries, need to face. There was a brief time after his talk for questions and some discussion. After about 15 minutes of this the speaker was asked what he thought was the way ahead for the Church in Britain. His answer was “repentance.” However, immediately after this and before we had opportunity to discuss what this meant, the leaders of the Church brought the meeting to an abrupt end by announcing the final chorus. The opportunity to think through the issue facing us was snatched from under our noses and the meeting ended with the singing of a banal chorus that totally destroyed the atmosphere of serious contemplation that had up until that point characterised the meeting. The serious issues that had been raised in the meeting and that needed further discussion were effortlessly dispelled by the dominating triviality of the final chorus. Before leaving the church I asked two of the Church leaders what they thought about what the speaker had said at the end. They both agreed that what the Church needs to do is repent. When I said that the word repentance (metanoia) in the New Testament means a change of mind and asked what we needed to change our minds about I was faced with a look of total blankness.
The point is simply this: it is impossible to change one’s mind if there is nothing going on in one’s mind in the first place. And this is sadly the condition of much of the Church today. The only thing vaguely related to the Christian faith that occupies the minds of many Christians is banal choruses, the superficial and the ephemeral, which has little relevance to the daily life of faith and how this should be different from the way the world lives. There is virtually no content to the life of faith for the Church much of the time and therefore the superficial and the ephemeral take on an importance out of all proportion to what they should have. And what little content there is often amounts to an infantile infatuation with choruses and “doing the actions” like little children. The content of most Church services in Britain today is moronic, i.e. adults behaving like little children. The Oxford Concise Dictionary defines a moron as “an adult with a mental age of about 8–12.” This adequately defines the condition of spiritual life for much of the Church in Britain today—adults with the spiritual maturity, and often the intellectual immaturity, of children.
How does the Church expect to win the world for Christ, to constitute a new, alternative society that will grow and overtake the culture of secular humanism in our land, with an attitude like this? How can such moronic spiritual behaviour generate a mature Christian culture capable of leading the world rather than being led by it? Does the Church expect to win the world, to lead the nation culturally? Probably the question has ceased to have any relevance or meaning in the lives of most Christians. Christianity is not perceived as a life- and culture-transforming religion anyway, not even by most Christians, but rather as a free ticket to the afterlife. Instead of being a religion it has become a mere mystery cult practised in a ghetto.
This is not the Christian faith (biblical religion). The Bible teaches that the Church is to disciple the nations to Christ, i.e. bring the nations under the discipline of Jesus Christ so that they will serve God by submitting to his authority and rule. The Church has not fulfilled her mission until the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ (Rev. 11:15 cf. Ps. 2). Our calling is to subdue the world for the glory of God (the cultural mandate—Gen. 1:27–28; 2:15; 9:1–7) by discipling the nations to Christ (the Great Commission—Mt. 28:19–20; Mk 16:15; 2 Cor. 10:5). If we are to fulfil this mission we must understand the content of the Christian faith and we must be prepared to live accordingly. And this means we must be prepared to make the sacrifices that the fulfilment of this mission involves, since there can be no progress in the kingdom of God without the Church being prepared to take up her cross for Christ’s sake. All progress in the work of the Kingdom involves tribulation (Acts 14:22) i.e. the living sacrifice of obedience to the covenant.
A Church suffering from spiritual anorexia does not have the strength to fulfil the Great Commission. This condition is the result of the Church’s neglect and abandonment of the content, the substance, of biblical faith for the fads and fashions of the modern secular world in which we live. Without a return to the vigorous spiritual, moral and intellectual tradition of the Church the nation will not be won for Christ. Without this the world has no reason to listen, and the Church has nothing to offer. Non-believers do not need to get their secular lifestyles second hand from the Church, mediated through an irrelevant and stifling Christian sub-culture. They can get it direct from the source. Christianity is a religion, i.e. an overarching structure to human life that anchors both the individual and the society to which he belongs in God’s will for man in Christ, not a mystery cult centred on mere devotion to Jesus. The Bible has a world-view of its own, and it is our duty to think and live in terms of this world-view. This is a totally different way of life from that of the world. Christendom is a kingdom in its own right that must conquer all other kingdoms. It is our calling to live as subjects of this kingdom. This means that we must abandon the idolatry that characterises the life of the world and commit ourselves to the covenant life of faith that the Bible sets before us as the only way of obedience. This way stands in stark contrast to the way that the unbelieving world lives. If the antithesis between the Church and the world is not obvious in an age of apostasy such as our own the Church has failed. The only obedient course of action is repentance, a change of mind that will work itself out in every sphere of life.
Anorexia is a behavioural problem not a disease. The state of spiritual anorexia in which the Church finds herself today is also a behavioural problem, a result of her unwillingness to feed the mind with the word of God and an infatuation with the world that is sapping her bones. What an anorexic person needs is nourishment that will build up the body so that it can function properly. What the spiritually anorexic Church needs is the word of life, the spiritual, moral and intellectual nourishment that can only come from understanding God’s word. But just as the anorexic person cannot get better if she is unwilling to eat, so too the anorexic Church cannot grow and mature into her God-given role unless she is prepared to repent of her refusal to feed her mind with the word of God. The Church must abandon the worldly prioritising of style over content and subject her mind to the word of God. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2).
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Illiteracy
We live in an culture in which for most people the terms “intellect” and “intellectual” are dirty words. Illiteracy is all the fashion in Britain today. This can be seen at many levels. Despite the fact that more money is poured into the education system today than at any other time in our history, illiteracy is a growing problem for children in State schools, not a diminishing one. There is even a charity now dedicated to raising money to help solve the growing illiteracy problem among children in State schools. This is in addition to the already massive amount of taxes spent on the State education system. A good example of the growing illiteracy problem in our society is the fact that if teachers in many State schools wish to write a letter to the parents of children in their classes that all the parents will be able to read, they must assume a reading age of eight. If a higher reading age is assumed the likelihood is that the parents of some children in the class will not be able to read the letter.
There are a number of reasons for this growing problem of illiteracy. Despite the fact that the government would like us to believe that the real problem is lack of funding and investment in the latest computerised technology etc., these things count for very little in providing a good education. In Britain the real problems affecting ability to make use of a good education are not lack of opportunity and poverty. Rather they are personal and family problems of a moral and spiritual nature. There is a hierarchy of needs in life for all people, and in the case of children the correct ordering of this hierarchy is essential to their being able to make good use of the educational opportunities before them. An education is of very little value to someone who is homeless and starving. Before one can make use of a good education one needs to be fed, clothed and given a home. Most children have these needs met in our culture. But there is another vital priority that needs to be met before a child can make good use of an education, namely, a stable, loving and disciplined family environment. Without this it is unlikely that a child will be able to make good use of his education, no matter how good that education is. Most behavioural problems afflicting school children today boil down to a deficiency at this level. The Christian ideal of the family—i.e. the married heterosexual two parent family in which the husband and wife remain faithful to each other—is now in a minority in Britain. The decline of this ideal of the family has produced a culture in which a significant percentage of children are having to deal with situations such as their parents going through a divorce, or not having a father or mother, or their single parent’s dysfunctional relationship with the latest live-in partner etc. The emotional turmoil and pain that this kind of family instability causes makes it very difficult for those children having to live through it to make good use of their State-funded, information super-highway saturated education. Until they have their home lives sorted out so that they can develop emotionally in a normal way they will not be able to make good use of their time in school. But do our mamonist politicians take this into account? Not in the least. They do not seem to be able to see past the ends of their own noses. The answer is always deemed to be money. Throw more money at education and we shall get better results. But it does not work. Things get worse not better because the problems are not financial problems, they are behavioural problems that have their root in society’s abandonment of Christian morality. Rather than trying to reverse this problem, our governments seem intent on stripping away as many of the Christian values from our society as they can. They are making the problem worse by their own espousal of secular values and their insistence on the creation of a secular culture. As a result children from dysfunctional families grow up with dysfunctional lives and contribute to the creation of a dysfunctional society in which the values and virtues of being educated (rather than merely schooled) are abandoned. Modern secular values and a highly educated society are ultimately conflicting ideals. The abandonment of Christian family values is one of the causes of illiteracy in our society.
Of course this is not the only cause of illiteracy. Another problem is the way television, and now computers, have changed the way people become informed. Information is not passed on by means of reading to the same extent. To a large extent TV and computers are replacing education with programming. The ability to think critically about the vital issues of life is not on the agenda today. Instead information cramming for the purpose of acquiring a “qualification” (i.e. a certificate) is what matters. This is achieved by drilling not by the encouragement of understanding and critical thought about the real issues confronting the individual and society. And the passive intake of information via the media, TV, videos etc., in which images and the content of the message change constantly and nothing is studied in great detail, seems to have produced among very many people a shortened concentration span and an aversion to applying themselves, perhaps even an inability to apply themselves in a disciplined manner, to thinking for themselves. The result is that people leave school with their heads full of certain kinds of information but with very little understanding, and often no desire to understand the purpose of their lives beyond the mundane task of “getting on” in life. And this brings us to another cause of illiteracy in our society.
The fact is many people just cannot be bothered to use their minds. There are many who do not fall into the category of those who were not able to make good use of their education because a more fundamental human need was lacking in their hierarchy of needs in childhood. They went to school, availed themselves of the opportunities to learn and acquired the skills needed to become educated people. But in the end they might as well have not bothered for all the good it has done them. These are people who simply do not want to be educated, who do not want to understand the vital issues of life and interact with the world in which they live in such a way that they make a meaningful contribution to the development of human culture. Their aim in life is not to make good use of their lives, equipment for which is surely the proper purpose of a good education. Rather, the meaning of life is football, or the next holiday, or getting a better car etc., and the only real purpose of a good education in their eyes is to facilitate their progress up the banal ladder of modern materialism. Such people pass through life passively, resisting by all means possible the hideous idea that any meaningful thought should take up residence in their minds. Despite their ability to use their minds constructively and meaningfully they object to any suggestion that they ought to engage their intellect in life as well as their emotions and passions, and they reject anything that might lead them to do this, particularly if it manifests itself in the shape of a book. This is functional illiteracy, a kind of self-imposed exile from the contemplation of anything meaningful and a refusal to consider using the mind in any way that would compromise this state of intellectual paralysis. There is another and much better word for this condition though: ignorance.
It is particularly troubling, however, that this culture of illiteracy is as strong in the Church as elsewhere, in some respects even stronger. Even many Christians who are able to use their minds and who are required to engage in intellectual activity for their jobs and hobbies will baulk at having to do this in church or in relation to their faith. Ignorance is bliss for many Christians. In one Church house group I attended I was asked by a university graduate in astrophysics to repeat a question I had asked in words of not more than two syllables so that he could understand it—a request that could not even be asked in words of not more than two syllables.
This worship of ignorance, particularly in regard to the doctrines of the Christian faith, has produced a serious deficiency in the Church’s witness to the world. Apologetics—giving a reasoned defence of the faith—is required of all Christians (1 Pet. 3:15). Understanding the faith is not an option therefore, but a requirement of effective witness to Jesus Christ. Emotional testimonies of conversion to the faith and the like will not fulfil our duty to bear witness to the truth of the gospel. We live in an age in which secular humanism has made a frontal assault on the intellectual veracity of the Christian faith, and moreover, in which the Church has, by and large, failed to defend the faith against this assault. As a result many Christians have swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the secular humanist myth of evolution. The facts are out and they stand witness against Christianity in the minds of many Christians no less than non-believers. Instead of challenging this error Christians have come up with “theistic evolution,” which is an attempt to mould the Christian faith into a form that will accommodate the facts as interpreted by secular humanists. But this is nothing more than an accommodation by Christians to the religious apostasy of the modern age. The Christian doctrine of Creation and the doctrine of evolution are based on contradictory religious presuppositions. It is absolutely vital that in our apologetics we make this point clear. If we fail to make this clear and, and having made it clear, fail to hold the non-believer to this point and demand that he address it, we fail to provide him with biblical apologetics that holds him to account for his religious apostasy.
This is why the traditional apologetic method of relying on evidence for the Creator is ultimately futile. It is the fundamental difference between the religious presuppositions of the believer and the non-believer that accounts for the conflict between evolution and Christianity. No matter how much evidence the Christian puts before the non-believer the latter will always interpret that evidence in a non-Christian way because his basic presuppositions about the origin, nature, meaning and value of life are different from those of the Christian faith. In other words, he starts from a different religious perspective, and it is this that accounts for his interpretation of the facts. Facts do not speak for themselves; they are spoken about by human beings with theories about what the facts mean. This does not mean that evidence is of no value, that is does not have a role to play in apologetics. It most certainly does. But arguments from evidence must be set in a context that recognises and exposes the fundamental role that religious presuppositions—the non-believer’s as well as the believer’s—play in understanding and interpreting the evidence. When this is done the theistic evolutionist theory is seen to be no more than a compromise with the presuppositions of secular humanism and the dominant world-view created by those presuppositions, namely the atheist religion of evolution, and therefore just as inconsistent with the teachings of Scripture as the undirected, random evolutionary perspective of the non-believer.[1]
In the past Christians have often been leaders of culture and science not worshippers of ignorance or followers of the latest fads of apostasy. The vigorous intellectual tradition of Christianity is something the modern Church should cherish and emulate. We should aspire to be thinkers for Christ, not mindless morons addicted to chanting repetitive choruses that mean virtually nothing. God requires us to use our minds in his service, i.e. to worship him with our minds (Rom. 12:1–2).
Our appreciation of much of the best in human culture requires us to be educated. The Church has always in the past proclaimed the importance of education and led the way in establishing educational institutions. But why is education so important to the Church’s mission? Not merely because the educated person can “get on” better in life and earn a larger salary etc., but because an educated society can pursue the cultural mandate and the great commission more effectively than an uneducated society can, and as Christian it is our duty to pursue the cultural mandate and the great commission. “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men” (Ps. 115:16). As Christians we are called to develop the earth, physically and culturally, for the greater glory of God and to disciple the nations to Christ. This requires intellectual maturity. Unfortunately, intellectual immaturity as a way of life has become entrenched in the popular culture of modern Britain, and the Church has followed the world in this. If the Church is to fulfil her cultural mandate she must abandon her infatuation with ignorance and apostasy and provide vision and leadership for the world around her, and she must lead the way in developing an ethos of intellectual maturity and integrity that will bear fruit across the whole spectrum of cultural life. This is what the Church has done in the past, however imperfectly, yet with inestimable benefits for mankind as a result, and this is what she must do again. Christianity does not work by magic. God works through his Church—i.e. the members of his body on earth. When the Church is faithful to her calling, when she dedicates herself to the works that God has called her to, the result is the advancement of Kingdom for the greater glory of God and the benefit of the whole earth.
One of the difficult problems we face today is how to get the Church to recognise the importance of her cultural mission once again. Another problem is how to convince Christians that they must abandon the ethos of ignorance and intellectual immaturity regarding matters of the faith that presently hamstrings their ability to pursue the cultural mandate effectively. Until we have addressed and overcome these problems the Church will remain ineffective in her calling to disciple the nations to Christ. A Church that is illiterate in her understanding of the faith and the cultural mandate will be unable to fulfil the great commission. As such she will have lost her saltiness and will be fit for nothing, except to be trodden under foot by men (Mt. 5:13). Unfortunately, this is the sad state of the Church on the whole in Britain today. If the Church in Britain is to recover from this condition she must pursue understanding and intellectual maturity in her practice of the faith. This means that Christians must repent of the culture of ignorance and illiteracy that presently dominates the life of the Church and dedicate their minds to God’s service, as Christ commanded (Mt. 22:37; Lk. 10:27).
NOTE
1. On presuppositional apologetics see Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, [1955] 1967); A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969); A Survey of Christian Epistemology (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company). On the importance of religious presuppositions as they relate to scientific work see Colin Wright, “Karl Popper’s Scientific Enterprise” parts 1–3 in Christianity & Society Vol. XI, Nos 1–3 (Jan., April & July 2001); “The Presuppositions of a Christian Scientific Enterprise” in Christianity & Society, Vol. XIII, No. 1 (Jan. 2–3). On the problems with theistic evolution (i.e. Christian compromise with the religion of evolution) see Stephen C. Perks, Baal Worship Ancient and Modern (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2010).
There are a number of reasons for this growing problem of illiteracy. Despite the fact that the government would like us to believe that the real problem is lack of funding and investment in the latest computerised technology etc., these things count for very little in providing a good education. In Britain the real problems affecting ability to make use of a good education are not lack of opportunity and poverty. Rather they are personal and family problems of a moral and spiritual nature. There is a hierarchy of needs in life for all people, and in the case of children the correct ordering of this hierarchy is essential to their being able to make good use of the educational opportunities before them. An education is of very little value to someone who is homeless and starving. Before one can make use of a good education one needs to be fed, clothed and given a home. Most children have these needs met in our culture. But there is another vital priority that needs to be met before a child can make good use of an education, namely, a stable, loving and disciplined family environment. Without this it is unlikely that a child will be able to make good use of his education, no matter how good that education is. Most behavioural problems afflicting school children today boil down to a deficiency at this level. The Christian ideal of the family—i.e. the married heterosexual two parent family in which the husband and wife remain faithful to each other—is now in a minority in Britain. The decline of this ideal of the family has produced a culture in which a significant percentage of children are having to deal with situations such as their parents going through a divorce, or not having a father or mother, or their single parent’s dysfunctional relationship with the latest live-in partner etc. The emotional turmoil and pain that this kind of family instability causes makes it very difficult for those children having to live through it to make good use of their State-funded, information super-highway saturated education. Until they have their home lives sorted out so that they can develop emotionally in a normal way they will not be able to make good use of their time in school. But do our mamonist politicians take this into account? Not in the least. They do not seem to be able to see past the ends of their own noses. The answer is always deemed to be money. Throw more money at education and we shall get better results. But it does not work. Things get worse not better because the problems are not financial problems, they are behavioural problems that have their root in society’s abandonment of Christian morality. Rather than trying to reverse this problem, our governments seem intent on stripping away as many of the Christian values from our society as they can. They are making the problem worse by their own espousal of secular values and their insistence on the creation of a secular culture. As a result children from dysfunctional families grow up with dysfunctional lives and contribute to the creation of a dysfunctional society in which the values and virtues of being educated (rather than merely schooled) are abandoned. Modern secular values and a highly educated society are ultimately conflicting ideals. The abandonment of Christian family values is one of the causes of illiteracy in our society.
Of course this is not the only cause of illiteracy. Another problem is the way television, and now computers, have changed the way people become informed. Information is not passed on by means of reading to the same extent. To a large extent TV and computers are replacing education with programming. The ability to think critically about the vital issues of life is not on the agenda today. Instead information cramming for the purpose of acquiring a “qualification” (i.e. a certificate) is what matters. This is achieved by drilling not by the encouragement of understanding and critical thought about the real issues confronting the individual and society. And the passive intake of information via the media, TV, videos etc., in which images and the content of the message change constantly and nothing is studied in great detail, seems to have produced among very many people a shortened concentration span and an aversion to applying themselves, perhaps even an inability to apply themselves in a disciplined manner, to thinking for themselves. The result is that people leave school with their heads full of certain kinds of information but with very little understanding, and often no desire to understand the purpose of their lives beyond the mundane task of “getting on” in life. And this brings us to another cause of illiteracy in our society.
The fact is many people just cannot be bothered to use their minds. There are many who do not fall into the category of those who were not able to make good use of their education because a more fundamental human need was lacking in their hierarchy of needs in childhood. They went to school, availed themselves of the opportunities to learn and acquired the skills needed to become educated people. But in the end they might as well have not bothered for all the good it has done them. These are people who simply do not want to be educated, who do not want to understand the vital issues of life and interact with the world in which they live in such a way that they make a meaningful contribution to the development of human culture. Their aim in life is not to make good use of their lives, equipment for which is surely the proper purpose of a good education. Rather, the meaning of life is football, or the next holiday, or getting a better car etc., and the only real purpose of a good education in their eyes is to facilitate their progress up the banal ladder of modern materialism. Such people pass through life passively, resisting by all means possible the hideous idea that any meaningful thought should take up residence in their minds. Despite their ability to use their minds constructively and meaningfully they object to any suggestion that they ought to engage their intellect in life as well as their emotions and passions, and they reject anything that might lead them to do this, particularly if it manifests itself in the shape of a book. This is functional illiteracy, a kind of self-imposed exile from the contemplation of anything meaningful and a refusal to consider using the mind in any way that would compromise this state of intellectual paralysis. There is another and much better word for this condition though: ignorance.
It is particularly troubling, however, that this culture of illiteracy is as strong in the Church as elsewhere, in some respects even stronger. Even many Christians who are able to use their minds and who are required to engage in intellectual activity for their jobs and hobbies will baulk at having to do this in church or in relation to their faith. Ignorance is bliss for many Christians. In one Church house group I attended I was asked by a university graduate in astrophysics to repeat a question I had asked in words of not more than two syllables so that he could understand it—a request that could not even be asked in words of not more than two syllables.
This worship of ignorance, particularly in regard to the doctrines of the Christian faith, has produced a serious deficiency in the Church’s witness to the world. Apologetics—giving a reasoned defence of the faith—is required of all Christians (1 Pet. 3:15). Understanding the faith is not an option therefore, but a requirement of effective witness to Jesus Christ. Emotional testimonies of conversion to the faith and the like will not fulfil our duty to bear witness to the truth of the gospel. We live in an age in which secular humanism has made a frontal assault on the intellectual veracity of the Christian faith, and moreover, in which the Church has, by and large, failed to defend the faith against this assault. As a result many Christians have swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the secular humanist myth of evolution. The facts are out and they stand witness against Christianity in the minds of many Christians no less than non-believers. Instead of challenging this error Christians have come up with “theistic evolution,” which is an attempt to mould the Christian faith into a form that will accommodate the facts as interpreted by secular humanists. But this is nothing more than an accommodation by Christians to the religious apostasy of the modern age. The Christian doctrine of Creation and the doctrine of evolution are based on contradictory religious presuppositions. It is absolutely vital that in our apologetics we make this point clear. If we fail to make this clear and, and having made it clear, fail to hold the non-believer to this point and demand that he address it, we fail to provide him with biblical apologetics that holds him to account for his religious apostasy.
This is why the traditional apologetic method of relying on evidence for the Creator is ultimately futile. It is the fundamental difference between the religious presuppositions of the believer and the non-believer that accounts for the conflict between evolution and Christianity. No matter how much evidence the Christian puts before the non-believer the latter will always interpret that evidence in a non-Christian way because his basic presuppositions about the origin, nature, meaning and value of life are different from those of the Christian faith. In other words, he starts from a different religious perspective, and it is this that accounts for his interpretation of the facts. Facts do not speak for themselves; they are spoken about by human beings with theories about what the facts mean. This does not mean that evidence is of no value, that is does not have a role to play in apologetics. It most certainly does. But arguments from evidence must be set in a context that recognises and exposes the fundamental role that religious presuppositions—the non-believer’s as well as the believer’s—play in understanding and interpreting the evidence. When this is done the theistic evolutionist theory is seen to be no more than a compromise with the presuppositions of secular humanism and the dominant world-view created by those presuppositions, namely the atheist religion of evolution, and therefore just as inconsistent with the teachings of Scripture as the undirected, random evolutionary perspective of the non-believer.[1]
In the past Christians have often been leaders of culture and science not worshippers of ignorance or followers of the latest fads of apostasy. The vigorous intellectual tradition of Christianity is something the modern Church should cherish and emulate. We should aspire to be thinkers for Christ, not mindless morons addicted to chanting repetitive choruses that mean virtually nothing. God requires us to use our minds in his service, i.e. to worship him with our minds (Rom. 12:1–2).
Our appreciation of much of the best in human culture requires us to be educated. The Church has always in the past proclaimed the importance of education and led the way in establishing educational institutions. But why is education so important to the Church’s mission? Not merely because the educated person can “get on” better in life and earn a larger salary etc., but because an educated society can pursue the cultural mandate and the great commission more effectively than an uneducated society can, and as Christian it is our duty to pursue the cultural mandate and the great commission. “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men” (Ps. 115:16). As Christians we are called to develop the earth, physically and culturally, for the greater glory of God and to disciple the nations to Christ. This requires intellectual maturity. Unfortunately, intellectual immaturity as a way of life has become entrenched in the popular culture of modern Britain, and the Church has followed the world in this. If the Church is to fulfil her cultural mandate she must abandon her infatuation with ignorance and apostasy and provide vision and leadership for the world around her, and she must lead the way in developing an ethos of intellectual maturity and integrity that will bear fruit across the whole spectrum of cultural life. This is what the Church has done in the past, however imperfectly, yet with inestimable benefits for mankind as a result, and this is what she must do again. Christianity does not work by magic. God works through his Church—i.e. the members of his body on earth. When the Church is faithful to her calling, when she dedicates herself to the works that God has called her to, the result is the advancement of Kingdom for the greater glory of God and the benefit of the whole earth.
One of the difficult problems we face today is how to get the Church to recognise the importance of her cultural mission once again. Another problem is how to convince Christians that they must abandon the ethos of ignorance and intellectual immaturity regarding matters of the faith that presently hamstrings their ability to pursue the cultural mandate effectively. Until we have addressed and overcome these problems the Church will remain ineffective in her calling to disciple the nations to Christ. A Church that is illiterate in her understanding of the faith and the cultural mandate will be unable to fulfil the great commission. As such she will have lost her saltiness and will be fit for nothing, except to be trodden under foot by men (Mt. 5:13). Unfortunately, this is the sad state of the Church on the whole in Britain today. If the Church in Britain is to recover from this condition she must pursue understanding and intellectual maturity in her practice of the faith. This means that Christians must repent of the culture of ignorance and illiteracy that presently dominates the life of the Church and dedicate their minds to God’s service, as Christ commanded (Mt. 22:37; Lk. 10:27).
NOTE
1. On presuppositional apologetics see Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, [1955] 1967); A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969); A Survey of Christian Epistemology (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company). On the importance of religious presuppositions as they relate to scientific work see Colin Wright, “Karl Popper’s Scientific Enterprise” parts 1–3 in Christianity & Society Vol. XI, Nos 1–3 (Jan., April & July 2001); “The Presuppositions of a Christian Scientific Enterprise” in Christianity & Society, Vol. XIII, No. 1 (Jan. 2–3). On the problems with theistic evolution (i.e. Christian compromise with the religion of evolution) see Stephen C. Perks, Baal Worship Ancient and Modern (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2010).
Friday, February 8, 2013
Idolatry as Government
The American internet web site LewRockwell.com ran an essay in 2006 by a British libertarian thinker on how the United Kingdom is governed.[1] The thesis put forward in the essay was that the resignation of the man who was at the time the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and the subsequent revelation of the immoral behaviour of one of the candidates for the leadership of the party, along with the election the leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, the general rehabilitation of the Conservatives in the media, and the destruction of the UK Independence Party, was all part of a grand conspiracy orchestrated by the “ruling class” and put into effect by the secret police. The essay sought to fit the deleterious liberal trends of recent British history into an overall conspiracy theory. In doing so it identified some obvious and baneful developments in our society. But in seeking to explain these harmful trends in terms of a grand conspiracy theory the essay has missed the real point about how Britain is governed today.
One should always be sceptical about conspiracy theories, not because conspiracies do not exist—they do, as the Bible clearly teaches. But such conspiracies are underpinned and shaped by a more basic, indeed one could even say fundamentalist, conspiracy that is religious in nature, namely a conspiracy against God and his righteousness, against his anointed, Jesus Christ, and against the social order created by the Christian world-view (Christendom): “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:1–3).
It is this rebellion against God, originating in the sinful orientation of man’s fallen nature, that determines and shapes the conspiracies of men and nations. But it would be a completely false inference from Scripture to attribute to these conspiracies the kind of power, authority and influence that conspiracy theorists attribute to them because, as the Bible also teaches, the Christian God is a predestinating God who controls history according to his own will, and he holds such conspiracies in derision: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou are my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Ps. 2:4–12).
Believers should likewise hold these conspiracies in derision. God controls history and uses the evil plans and deeds of men and nations to accomplish his own will no less than the works of his Church. The Gospels themselves make this unequivocally clear in their account of the accomplishment of man’s salvation in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. But even given that rulers do conspire against God and his will for the nations, and that in his providence God uses such conspiracies to bring his own purposes to pass, we must seriously doubt the reality of grand conspiracy theories such as the one suggested by the essay in question above, even though they may be theoretically possible.
The real problem we face in Britain is not government by conspiracy, but rather government according to idolatry. After 1500 years of being pulled out of the slime by Christianity the West has rejected the faith and returned to the grand idolatry of all history—the State as God. Our modern Western world is a new Babylon, and we should expect it to engage in the politics of Babylon. The only difference is that this is a secular Babylon.
Idolatry of the State as the supreme authority (God) was the religion of the ancient world. All things were subordinated to the State, which claimed sovereignty over everything, including the cults of the national divinities. This was especially true of Rome. The function of Roman religion was political, to provide social cement and support the State, which is why the official religion of Rome continued long after people had ceased to believe a word of it. In the ancient world Pharaohs and kings were called divine and divine attributes are no longer imputed to our rulers. Because of this people today fail to understand the real nature of the modern State, i.e. that it is a religious institution that claims the rights and authority that legitimately belong to God alone. The only difference between the modern idolatrous State and the idolatrous States of the ancient world is that our modern State does not establish and promote the cults of official deities or insist on the divinity of those who have ultimate rule. It is secular; in other respects idolatry of the State is largely the same today. The only real difference in the modern world is that our gods are secular gods. But the chief God of the modern Babel/Babylon is the State. Of course there are a few secular humanists who are libertarian or anarchist in their beliefs. But libertarianism is very much a minority sport, and always has been. The dominating religion of the modern Western world is the secular humanist religion of politics, the State as God. This is the new Rome.
The contest between the early Church and Rome was a political one, not a religious one in the narrow sense. To say Jesus is Lord was primarily a political statement, and the Holy Spirit, in choosing the word ecclesia as the proper designation of God's people assembled together chose a highly political terms that had no cultic associations whatsoever. The ecclesia was a meeting of the demos—the people constituted as a body politic—for political purpose. The term is purely political. To claim that one belonged to a new ecclesia with a divine king whose law is absolute and whose rule is universal, as the early Christians did, in opposition to the Roman State, which claimed its emperor was divine and that the State was sovereign over all things, was treasonous to the Romans. The early Church was a political threat to the political order of Rome, which was of course a religious order, as all political orders are.
British society, having rejected Christianity, is of course returning to the old religion of politics that governed the world before Christ. Modern politics is secular religion. The irony is that Christians on the whole have failed to see this because they have bought into the lie that "Christianity is not political." They have also bought into the lie that "Christianity is not a religion." These two common errors have been devastating for Christian civilisation. In fact modern atheists have no more problems with religion than they have with politics, though they do not like the term "religion" (because they perceive it as referring to Christianity, Judaism or Islam); but with the concept of religion (i.e. an overarching belief system that structures the life of both the individual and the society to which he belongs) the modern secular world has no problems and is just as religious as every society ever has been. But the religion that is dominant today is the religion of secular humanism, the chief idol of which is the secular State. This is the new secular religion of politics. It is the logic of this idolatry that is now working itself out in our society and in our politics, and it is this idolatry that the above conspiracy theory of government fails to recognise.
It is not really conspiracy that is driving modern political religion but idolatry that is driving men politically, who will of course conspire to achieve their politico-religious topias, whatever their nature. The real point is the religious apostasy of the age, not the conspiracies. Conspiracy theory misses the point because it does not recognise the real issue. Our politics is being driven by idolatry of the secular State, which has usurped the role of God in our lives and society. For the modern atheist God is dead; but men cannot live without their gods and so someone or something has to replace the true God that modern men believe they can live without. The institution that has in our society, as a result of the decline of belief in God, inherited the attributes of deity, though in a secularised form, is the State. The insights of the essay on government by conspiracy mentioned above are virtually non-existent, and those who are taken in by it will miss the real point about how modern Britain is governed and what is happening in the modern world of politics in the UK and Europe. We are returning to the religion of the ancient world, but in a modern secularised form. Our modern politics is highly religious. The Church has not only failed to see this idolatry for what it is, but has become severely compromised with it. We face the return of ancient idolatry today in a secularised form. The Church faces a threat she has not seen for a long time, and has no idea how to deal with it, indeed does not even realise the nature of the threat.
The issue at point here is the fact that the logic of this idolatry will work itself out in all spheres in society, including the political. But Christians no longer believe their faith is a religion that must work itself out in all spheres of life. The faith is seen largely as a form of escapism, not as a religion that structures life, including political life. In the vacuum created by the Church's abandonment of Christianity as the true religion the modern religion of secular humanism has become dominant. This religion is atheistic, not theistic, but it is a religion nonetheless, and in modern Western society the kind of atheism that is dominant can only be described as fundamentalist in nature. Religion is inescapable. Men are religious by nature. The question is, which religion will dominate: the true religion, or a false religion? What dominates modern Britain is the false religion of secular humanism, which is a form of political idolatry. This political idolatry is the form of religion that has overwhelmingly dominated human civilisation outside of the influence of the Christian faith. The difference today is merely in the secularised—i.e. atheist—form in which this idolatry is manifesting itself.
Because the Church does not recognise the issues she does not call her members to abandon this idolatry. Therefore the Church is engaged in a severe form of syncretism. Babylon the Great is back with a vengeance, only in a secularised form, and we must do battle with it. The problem is that most of the Church's soldiers are in the wrong army. They worship in the cult of Jesus on Sundays, but Monday to Saturday they serve in the Emperor's army, send their children to his schools, engage in his politics and thoroughly abominate anyone who tries to point out the problem with this kind of compromise. If the emperors of ancient Rome had only had such an understanding and compliant Church in the first century they would have had no need to persecute the Church and would have retained control over their pagan empire with gratitude to the Church for her subservient attitude to Caesar's claim to be Lord. Fortunately, the early Church did not see it that way and Caesar had in the end to bow the knee to the true Lord, Jesus Christ.
We need to see what is happening in our society from a different perspective to the conspiracy theories of the world and analyse modern politics in terms of the idolatry of the age, to which Christianity as the true religion is the only answer. The choice before us is whether we shall engage in the politics of God or the politics of man. There is no third way. If we fail or refuse to engage in the politics of God we shall, wittingly or unwittingly, engage in the politics of man and deny our true Lord, Jesus Christ, in whom is concentrated all authority in heaven and on earth and therefore whose sovereignty encompasses all things, including how societies should function, politically and economically no less than at the level of the public religious cultus. It is the task of the Church to proclaim this lordship of Christ to the world, a task that, at least in Britain, she has abandoned because of her infatuation with the chief idol of the modern world, the secular State. In a sense the Church in Britain is engaged in a modern secular form of the hybrid Yahweh/Baal cult that vitiated the religious life of ancient Israel before the Babylonian captivity,[2] and just as Israel was sent into exile for her unfaithfulness in playing the harlot with the Baals, so it seems the Church in Britain shall have to suffer the same consequences at the hands of our own Babylonian captivity.
Please observe that my point here is not that the British nation will be taken into captivity. Britain is already in that condition effectively, and the modern British State is thoroughly part of the new Babylon. My point is that the Church will be taken captive and effectively internally exiled by the idolatrous State in a spiritual and cultural ghetto that will leave her without influence, relevance or the freedom to preach the gospel or even practice the Christian way of life fully. The writing is already on the wall, but few seem to understand this and many more in the Church are ideologically committed, though perhaps unwittingly, to the religion of the new secular Babylon. They are engaged, therefore, in an extreme form of syncretism. If we are to overcome the modern idolatry that confronts us by means of our faith (1 Jn 5:4), as we are commanded (Mt. 18:18–20), and as the early Church overcame the idolatry that confronted her, we must deal with this syncretism and reject the idolatry that is at the heart of it. Jesus is Lord, not the State—in every sphere of life, including politics.
NOTES
1. Sean Gabb, “Mark Oaten, Rent Boys and the Secret Police: A View of How England Is Governed at the End of Its History” (www.lewrockwell.com, 24 January, 2016).
2. See my book, Baal Worship Ancient and Modern (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2010).
One should always be sceptical about conspiracy theories, not because conspiracies do not exist—they do, as the Bible clearly teaches. But such conspiracies are underpinned and shaped by a more basic, indeed one could even say fundamentalist, conspiracy that is religious in nature, namely a conspiracy against God and his righteousness, against his anointed, Jesus Christ, and against the social order created by the Christian world-view (Christendom): “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:1–3).
It is this rebellion against God, originating in the sinful orientation of man’s fallen nature, that determines and shapes the conspiracies of men and nations. But it would be a completely false inference from Scripture to attribute to these conspiracies the kind of power, authority and influence that conspiracy theorists attribute to them because, as the Bible also teaches, the Christian God is a predestinating God who controls history according to his own will, and he holds such conspiracies in derision: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou are my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Ps. 2:4–12).
Believers should likewise hold these conspiracies in derision. God controls history and uses the evil plans and deeds of men and nations to accomplish his own will no less than the works of his Church. The Gospels themselves make this unequivocally clear in their account of the accomplishment of man’s salvation in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. But even given that rulers do conspire against God and his will for the nations, and that in his providence God uses such conspiracies to bring his own purposes to pass, we must seriously doubt the reality of grand conspiracy theories such as the one suggested by the essay in question above, even though they may be theoretically possible.
The real problem we face in Britain is not government by conspiracy, but rather government according to idolatry. After 1500 years of being pulled out of the slime by Christianity the West has rejected the faith and returned to the grand idolatry of all history—the State as God. Our modern Western world is a new Babylon, and we should expect it to engage in the politics of Babylon. The only difference is that this is a secular Babylon.
Idolatry of the State as the supreme authority (God) was the religion of the ancient world. All things were subordinated to the State, which claimed sovereignty over everything, including the cults of the national divinities. This was especially true of Rome. The function of Roman religion was political, to provide social cement and support the State, which is why the official religion of Rome continued long after people had ceased to believe a word of it. In the ancient world Pharaohs and kings were called divine and divine attributes are no longer imputed to our rulers. Because of this people today fail to understand the real nature of the modern State, i.e. that it is a religious institution that claims the rights and authority that legitimately belong to God alone. The only difference between the modern idolatrous State and the idolatrous States of the ancient world is that our modern State does not establish and promote the cults of official deities or insist on the divinity of those who have ultimate rule. It is secular; in other respects idolatry of the State is largely the same today. The only real difference in the modern world is that our gods are secular gods. But the chief God of the modern Babel/Babylon is the State. Of course there are a few secular humanists who are libertarian or anarchist in their beliefs. But libertarianism is very much a minority sport, and always has been. The dominating religion of the modern Western world is the secular humanist religion of politics, the State as God. This is the new Rome.
The contest between the early Church and Rome was a political one, not a religious one in the narrow sense. To say Jesus is Lord was primarily a political statement, and the Holy Spirit, in choosing the word ecclesia as the proper designation of God's people assembled together chose a highly political terms that had no cultic associations whatsoever. The ecclesia was a meeting of the demos—the people constituted as a body politic—for political purpose. The term is purely political. To claim that one belonged to a new ecclesia with a divine king whose law is absolute and whose rule is universal, as the early Christians did, in opposition to the Roman State, which claimed its emperor was divine and that the State was sovereign over all things, was treasonous to the Romans. The early Church was a political threat to the political order of Rome, which was of course a religious order, as all political orders are.
British society, having rejected Christianity, is of course returning to the old religion of politics that governed the world before Christ. Modern politics is secular religion. The irony is that Christians on the whole have failed to see this because they have bought into the lie that "Christianity is not political." They have also bought into the lie that "Christianity is not a religion." These two common errors have been devastating for Christian civilisation. In fact modern atheists have no more problems with religion than they have with politics, though they do not like the term "religion" (because they perceive it as referring to Christianity, Judaism or Islam); but with the concept of religion (i.e. an overarching belief system that structures the life of both the individual and the society to which he belongs) the modern secular world has no problems and is just as religious as every society ever has been. But the religion that is dominant today is the religion of secular humanism, the chief idol of which is the secular State. This is the new secular religion of politics. It is the logic of this idolatry that is now working itself out in our society and in our politics, and it is this idolatry that the above conspiracy theory of government fails to recognise.
It is not really conspiracy that is driving modern political religion but idolatry that is driving men politically, who will of course conspire to achieve their politico-religious topias, whatever their nature. The real point is the religious apostasy of the age, not the conspiracies. Conspiracy theory misses the point because it does not recognise the real issue. Our politics is being driven by idolatry of the secular State, which has usurped the role of God in our lives and society. For the modern atheist God is dead; but men cannot live without their gods and so someone or something has to replace the true God that modern men believe they can live without. The institution that has in our society, as a result of the decline of belief in God, inherited the attributes of deity, though in a secularised form, is the State. The insights of the essay on government by conspiracy mentioned above are virtually non-existent, and those who are taken in by it will miss the real point about how modern Britain is governed and what is happening in the modern world of politics in the UK and Europe. We are returning to the religion of the ancient world, but in a modern secularised form. Our modern politics is highly religious. The Church has not only failed to see this idolatry for what it is, but has become severely compromised with it. We face the return of ancient idolatry today in a secularised form. The Church faces a threat she has not seen for a long time, and has no idea how to deal with it, indeed does not even realise the nature of the threat.
The issue at point here is the fact that the logic of this idolatry will work itself out in all spheres in society, including the political. But Christians no longer believe their faith is a religion that must work itself out in all spheres of life. The faith is seen largely as a form of escapism, not as a religion that structures life, including political life. In the vacuum created by the Church's abandonment of Christianity as the true religion the modern religion of secular humanism has become dominant. This religion is atheistic, not theistic, but it is a religion nonetheless, and in modern Western society the kind of atheism that is dominant can only be described as fundamentalist in nature. Religion is inescapable. Men are religious by nature. The question is, which religion will dominate: the true religion, or a false religion? What dominates modern Britain is the false religion of secular humanism, which is a form of political idolatry. This political idolatry is the form of religion that has overwhelmingly dominated human civilisation outside of the influence of the Christian faith. The difference today is merely in the secularised—i.e. atheist—form in which this idolatry is manifesting itself.
Because the Church does not recognise the issues she does not call her members to abandon this idolatry. Therefore the Church is engaged in a severe form of syncretism. Babylon the Great is back with a vengeance, only in a secularised form, and we must do battle with it. The problem is that most of the Church's soldiers are in the wrong army. They worship in the cult of Jesus on Sundays, but Monday to Saturday they serve in the Emperor's army, send their children to his schools, engage in his politics and thoroughly abominate anyone who tries to point out the problem with this kind of compromise. If the emperors of ancient Rome had only had such an understanding and compliant Church in the first century they would have had no need to persecute the Church and would have retained control over their pagan empire with gratitude to the Church for her subservient attitude to Caesar's claim to be Lord. Fortunately, the early Church did not see it that way and Caesar had in the end to bow the knee to the true Lord, Jesus Christ.
We need to see what is happening in our society from a different perspective to the conspiracy theories of the world and analyse modern politics in terms of the idolatry of the age, to which Christianity as the true religion is the only answer. The choice before us is whether we shall engage in the politics of God or the politics of man. There is no third way. If we fail or refuse to engage in the politics of God we shall, wittingly or unwittingly, engage in the politics of man and deny our true Lord, Jesus Christ, in whom is concentrated all authority in heaven and on earth and therefore whose sovereignty encompasses all things, including how societies should function, politically and economically no less than at the level of the public religious cultus. It is the task of the Church to proclaim this lordship of Christ to the world, a task that, at least in Britain, she has abandoned because of her infatuation with the chief idol of the modern world, the secular State. In a sense the Church in Britain is engaged in a modern secular form of the hybrid Yahweh/Baal cult that vitiated the religious life of ancient Israel before the Babylonian captivity,[2] and just as Israel was sent into exile for her unfaithfulness in playing the harlot with the Baals, so it seems the Church in Britain shall have to suffer the same consequences at the hands of our own Babylonian captivity.
Please observe that my point here is not that the British nation will be taken into captivity. Britain is already in that condition effectively, and the modern British State is thoroughly part of the new Babylon. My point is that the Church will be taken captive and effectively internally exiled by the idolatrous State in a spiritual and cultural ghetto that will leave her without influence, relevance or the freedom to preach the gospel or even practice the Christian way of life fully. The writing is already on the wall, but few seem to understand this and many more in the Church are ideologically committed, though perhaps unwittingly, to the religion of the new secular Babylon. They are engaged, therefore, in an extreme form of syncretism. If we are to overcome the modern idolatry that confronts us by means of our faith (1 Jn 5:4), as we are commanded (Mt. 18:18–20), and as the early Church overcame the idolatry that confronted her, we must deal with this syncretism and reject the idolatry that is at the heart of it. Jesus is Lord, not the State—in every sphere of life, including politics.
NOTES
1. Sean Gabb, “Mark Oaten, Rent Boys and the Secret Police: A View of How England Is Governed at the End of Its History” (www.lewrockwell.com, 24 January, 2016).
2. See my book, Baal Worship Ancient and Modern (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2010).
Monday, January 7, 2013
The Work of the Church
Our society is in a state of disintegration. The nation faces moral, social, economic and ultimately political collapse due to the deleterious consequences of the triumph of secular humanism and its acceptance as public truth (i.e. religion) by both our rulers and the people. As a result of this the Church faces a situation today that she has not faced since the days of the Roman emperors, namely a secular political system of government that acknowledges no God higher than itself and no law higher than its own, and that is increasingly hostile to the Christian faith.
Despite the recognition by some politicians that “society is broken” there is no consensus on what should be done to solve this problem, and it is becoming all too clear that the political ideologies and institutions that govern our society are unable to save us from the social disintegration that the secular humanist belief system has inflicted upon society. The only real answer to this situation comes from repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Only by turning back to God can our society be delivered from its present social disintegration and the growing disaster that looms before us. But Christianity does not work by magic. God works through his body on earth, the Church, which must be a living community of faith that demonstrates the practical reality of living as the Kingdom of God.
The Church is called to be a prophetic community, a society that functions across the whole spectrum of human social life, and through the witness of this life in words and action, i.e. by modelling to the world what society should be like, calls the world to repentance and faith in Christ. Only as the Church incarnates the gospel in this prophetic society will the Great Commission be realised.
But what does this mean practically?
In order to pursue this mission the Church must constitute herself as a functioning social order in the provision of the following services:
First, we must establish a Christian justice (or arbitration) system. In his first epistle to the Corinthians the apostle Paul rebuked the Corinthians for going before the pagan courts and for failing to establish competent law courts for settling disputes between Christians (1 Cor. 6:1–8). It is necessary for the Church to re-establish such courts today since the secular courts of the land are now subject to ungodly legislation and justice cannot be expected from them. The functioning of such courts would also be likely to have an influence far beyond the Church, as indeed was the case with the courts of the early Church.
Second, we must establish a Christian welfare system. This is taught in the New Testament, and of course the same principle was set forth as essential for the community of believers in the Old Testament. The Church is required to care for the genuine poor and help those in need who are not able to help themselves and do not have family to help them (Acts 20:35; Eph. 4:28).
Third, we need to establish a Christian medical system. Christ commanded his Church to preach the gospel and heal the sick (Mt. 10:7–8; Lk 9:2; 10:9). Wherever the missionary work of the Church has been established healing and the setting up of hospitals has accompanied the work. Preaching the gospel and healing the sick go together and always have done in the work of mission. This is no less essential today than it was in the past. Likewise,
Fourth, we must establish a Christian education system. The establishing of schools has been one of the foremost cultural works of the Church throughout history. In the work of missions education has always been seen as a vital accompaniment to the work of preaching the gospel and healing the sick. The Great Commission cannot be completed without it. We are commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ to teach all nations (Mt. 28:19).
These systems must function and be funded independently of secular provision. The Church must begin to function as a distinctive and independent counter-revolutionary social order.
This is what the Church did historically in the first few centuries of her history, and it was by functioning as a society in this way that the Church was able to transform the ancient Roman world as the society of late classical antiquity collapsed under the deadening weight of paganism and the Roman State’s political secularism. The modern Church faces a situation that is not dissimilar to that faced by the early Church of the Roman Empire.
But the purpose of these endeavours should not be merely to provide for the Church’s own members; it should also be to provide these services as an essential aspect of the Church’s mission to the world, so that as this Christian social order grows it will displace and eventually replace the secular humanist social order that now dominates our society. As the secular order collapses, as it inevitably will and is already doing, the nation must be able to see the Christian faith as the only real answer to man’s personal crisis and the Christian social order as the only answer to man’s social crisis. Just as the Roman Emperors eventually realised that Christianity was the only real alternative to the collapse of Rome, so too our people and rulers must come to realise that only in the Lord Jesus Christ can man find salvation and that the Christian social order is the only answer to the disintegration of our society.
Of course evangelism is an essential part of the Church’s response to this situation. But our call to individuals and to the nation to repent must be seen against the backdrop of the Church living in this way as a true society of faith, a Christian social order.
Another essential aspect of the Church’s life is the gathering of believers for fellowship and worship. Non-believers perceive Church rituals as meaningless to their lives and society, largely because they are. They do not engage with the real world in any meaningful way. We need to replace these rituals with a Church meeting that revolves around the biblical pattern, namely the agape feast, the Christian Passover, a fellowship meal, which should be the context of the celebration of the Eucharist and around which the whole gathering should revolve. This is also an essential aspect of what it means to live as a prophetic community, a prophetic social order that calls the world to repentance, since by doing this we proclaim the Lord.
There are five elements, besides the celebration of the Eucharist in the context of the agape feast, that need to be incorporated into the liturgy of our assemblies:
1. Confession of sin
2. Confession of faith
3. Prayer
4. Proclamation of the Ten Commandments.
5. The reading of Scripture and teaching of the faith.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive description of what should happen when the Church assembles but rather a bare minimum if the Church is to be edified and built up in the faith and thereby equipped for the work of service. But ritual is not enough. Ritual for the sake of ritual does not build up or edify the Church, and this applies not only to high-Church ritual, such as the ritual of the Church of England, but also to the low-Church ritual of the Free Churches. What we confess, hear, pray for and proclaim in the Church assembly must take place in the context of real fellowship and be a true manifestation of that fellowship. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ ordained the Christian Passover, the Eucharist, in the context of a fellowship meal and why the early Church practised it in the context of a fellowship meal, the Agape feast. The Eucharist is a communion feast, and it should not be reduced to a rite performed by clergymen; rather, it should be a real fellowship event, a social gathering in which the community partakes of a shared meal.
The ministry of the Church must also be directed to men. The Church must teach men to be heads of their households and pastors of their families under God. The responsibilities of male headship should be taught and modelled by the Church for the world. This means that the feminist ideology that presently dominates the Church and virtually every aspect of Christian culture, and the effeminate role models that it has engendered in the life of the Christian community, must be abandoned and replaced by a biblical theology and the patriarchal role model of leadership that this produces.
When the Church begins to function in this way the evangelical invitation of non-believers, and particularly men, to join the Church will be meaningful and practical. It will produce two responses: many will be attracted and there will be growth, and many others will be incensed by it and will seek to attack the Church. But the Church will begin to transform the nation in obedience to the Great Commission. Given the situation we face today this is the only way forward for the Church if the Great Commission is to be fulfilled.
Despite the recognition by some politicians that “society is broken” there is no consensus on what should be done to solve this problem, and it is becoming all too clear that the political ideologies and institutions that govern our society are unable to save us from the social disintegration that the secular humanist belief system has inflicted upon society. The only real answer to this situation comes from repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Only by turning back to God can our society be delivered from its present social disintegration and the growing disaster that looms before us. But Christianity does not work by magic. God works through his body on earth, the Church, which must be a living community of faith that demonstrates the practical reality of living as the Kingdom of God.
The Church is called to be a prophetic community, a society that functions across the whole spectrum of human social life, and through the witness of this life in words and action, i.e. by modelling to the world what society should be like, calls the world to repentance and faith in Christ. Only as the Church incarnates the gospel in this prophetic society will the Great Commission be realised.
But what does this mean practically?
In order to pursue this mission the Church must constitute herself as a functioning social order in the provision of the following services:
First, we must establish a Christian justice (or arbitration) system. In his first epistle to the Corinthians the apostle Paul rebuked the Corinthians for going before the pagan courts and for failing to establish competent law courts for settling disputes between Christians (1 Cor. 6:1–8). It is necessary for the Church to re-establish such courts today since the secular courts of the land are now subject to ungodly legislation and justice cannot be expected from them. The functioning of such courts would also be likely to have an influence far beyond the Church, as indeed was the case with the courts of the early Church.
Second, we must establish a Christian welfare system. This is taught in the New Testament, and of course the same principle was set forth as essential for the community of believers in the Old Testament. The Church is required to care for the genuine poor and help those in need who are not able to help themselves and do not have family to help them (Acts 20:35; Eph. 4:28).
Third, we need to establish a Christian medical system. Christ commanded his Church to preach the gospel and heal the sick (Mt. 10:7–8; Lk 9:2; 10:9). Wherever the missionary work of the Church has been established healing and the setting up of hospitals has accompanied the work. Preaching the gospel and healing the sick go together and always have done in the work of mission. This is no less essential today than it was in the past. Likewise,
Fourth, we must establish a Christian education system. The establishing of schools has been one of the foremost cultural works of the Church throughout history. In the work of missions education has always been seen as a vital accompaniment to the work of preaching the gospel and healing the sick. The Great Commission cannot be completed without it. We are commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ to teach all nations (Mt. 28:19).
These systems must function and be funded independently of secular provision. The Church must begin to function as a distinctive and independent counter-revolutionary social order.
This is what the Church did historically in the first few centuries of her history, and it was by functioning as a society in this way that the Church was able to transform the ancient Roman world as the society of late classical antiquity collapsed under the deadening weight of paganism and the Roman State’s political secularism. The modern Church faces a situation that is not dissimilar to that faced by the early Church of the Roman Empire.
But the purpose of these endeavours should not be merely to provide for the Church’s own members; it should also be to provide these services as an essential aspect of the Church’s mission to the world, so that as this Christian social order grows it will displace and eventually replace the secular humanist social order that now dominates our society. As the secular order collapses, as it inevitably will and is already doing, the nation must be able to see the Christian faith as the only real answer to man’s personal crisis and the Christian social order as the only answer to man’s social crisis. Just as the Roman Emperors eventually realised that Christianity was the only real alternative to the collapse of Rome, so too our people and rulers must come to realise that only in the Lord Jesus Christ can man find salvation and that the Christian social order is the only answer to the disintegration of our society.
Of course evangelism is an essential part of the Church’s response to this situation. But our call to individuals and to the nation to repent must be seen against the backdrop of the Church living in this way as a true society of faith, a Christian social order.
Another essential aspect of the Church’s life is the gathering of believers for fellowship and worship. Non-believers perceive Church rituals as meaningless to their lives and society, largely because they are. They do not engage with the real world in any meaningful way. We need to replace these rituals with a Church meeting that revolves around the biblical pattern, namely the agape feast, the Christian Passover, a fellowship meal, which should be the context of the celebration of the Eucharist and around which the whole gathering should revolve. This is also an essential aspect of what it means to live as a prophetic community, a prophetic social order that calls the world to repentance, since by doing this we proclaim the Lord.
There are five elements, besides the celebration of the Eucharist in the context of the agape feast, that need to be incorporated into the liturgy of our assemblies:
1. Confession of sin
2. Confession of faith
3. Prayer
4. Proclamation of the Ten Commandments.
5. The reading of Scripture and teaching of the faith.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive description of what should happen when the Church assembles but rather a bare minimum if the Church is to be edified and built up in the faith and thereby equipped for the work of service. But ritual is not enough. Ritual for the sake of ritual does not build up or edify the Church, and this applies not only to high-Church ritual, such as the ritual of the Church of England, but also to the low-Church ritual of the Free Churches. What we confess, hear, pray for and proclaim in the Church assembly must take place in the context of real fellowship and be a true manifestation of that fellowship. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ ordained the Christian Passover, the Eucharist, in the context of a fellowship meal and why the early Church practised it in the context of a fellowship meal, the Agape feast. The Eucharist is a communion feast, and it should not be reduced to a rite performed by clergymen; rather, it should be a real fellowship event, a social gathering in which the community partakes of a shared meal.
The ministry of the Church must also be directed to men. The Church must teach men to be heads of their households and pastors of their families under God. The responsibilities of male headship should be taught and modelled by the Church for the world. This means that the feminist ideology that presently dominates the Church and virtually every aspect of Christian culture, and the effeminate role models that it has engendered in the life of the Christian community, must be abandoned and replaced by a biblical theology and the patriarchal role model of leadership that this produces.
When the Church begins to function in this way the evangelical invitation of non-believers, and particularly men, to join the Church will be meaningful and practical. It will produce two responses: many will be attracted and there will be growth, and many others will be incensed by it and will seek to attack the Church. But the Church will begin to transform the nation in obedience to the Great Commission. Given the situation we face today this is the only way forward for the Church if the Great Commission is to be fulfilled.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
New Year Message 2013
Now that the end of the world in 2012 is out of the way we can look forward to the new year with optimism. Christians are the only ones who have the real answer to the problems the world faces in 2013. In the Great Commission Jesus commanded us to disciple the nations, i.e. to make Christian nations, not to disciple individuals from among the nations. Of course it is not possible to disciple the nations without making individual disciples. But it is possible to convert individuals to the faith without discipling the nations, and this is the problem that the Church faces today, namely, an incorrect vision of our task on earth. The reason the Church is not discipling the nations is that she is not trying to do so on the whole. For example, where I live in the UK there is simply no vision for this, and no interest among pastor and clergymen for it. They do not want the Kingdom of God because that means a loss of power and control for themselves. They want to keep Christians in bondage to their own beggarly principalities, their denominations and feeble institutions, rather than setting them free to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God. They want to control God and his work on earth. This is the essence of all pagan magic: to control God or whatever powers are above man from below. In keeping Christians in bondage to this demonic vision the clergy, pastors and denominational leaders have effectively dispossessed Christians of their citizenship in the Kingdom of God and replaced it with servitude to their own feeble agenda, namely, centralised bureaucratic control of the Church by a professional clergy that is focused on ritualised cultic activity because they believe that this is the essence of the life of faith. It is not.
In most Western countries there are enough Christians even still to turn their societies upside down. We do not lack the numbers (nor even the money, judging from the stupendously wasteful way that Churches spend their money). We lack only vision. We lack this vision because Christians are brainwashed week in week out by the clergymen and pastors who believe in control from below, who believe in the official magic they promulgate each Sunday, which, like a narcotic, numbs the minds of believers and keeps them in bondage to a false vision of the Christian faith, namely that it is an escapist mystery cult. The Lord Jesus Christ has sent us out to convert the world, to convert the nations. He will not return until this task has been fulfilled. He will not return soon. There is too much work to do. Mt. 28:18–20 gives us the Alpha of eschatology: “Go and disciple the nations.” Rev. 11:15 gives us the Omega of eschatology; “Behold the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall rule forever.” This is the Alpha and Omega of eschatology. The Lord Christ will not return until the Great Commission is fulfilled. And when he does return, it will be said on that day: “Behold the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his.”
The theology that Christians are fed each week in church by their pastors is a drug that dulls their minds to the word of God and the vision that it sets before us. This is why the Church in our day is so weak and beggarly and defeated before the world. The vision that the Bible gives us is one of conquering the nations and bringing them into subjection to the will of Christ. How do we achieve this? By Christians constituting themselves as a true society of faith, a Christian counter-revolutionary prophetic social order that displaces the culture of death that surrounds us (secular humanism) and grows until it replaces that culture, i.e. until the Christianity becomes public truth, the dominant world-view that determines the cultural life of the nations. The only thing we lack to achieve this is the vision, the ability to see that this is our task. You will not get this vision in your clergy-controlled churches. You are being drugged each week with a deadly perspective that neutralises the Great Commission and your role in it. You need to get off this drug and get a biblical vision. The Lord will not return and take his Church away from all her tribulations. It is through tribulation that we enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore we must embrace the tribulation along with the task, because that is the only way to victory.
We are more than conquerors through Christ. Conquerors of what? Of the world that we are commanded to disciple. If Christians will act together in pursuing the Kingdom of God (rather than the principalities foisted on them by their clergymen), they will transform the earth. But we must act together. What we can accomplish as individuals is something, but not as much as we can accomplish as a family. What one family can accomplish is something more, but not as much as what several families can accomplish. What a few families acting together can accomplish is more again, but not as much as what the Church as a whole can accomplish. We need to become real communities, real societies, with a social order that transforms the world, not one that conforms to it. The clergymen have had their day. They have led the Church to utter defeat before the world. It is time to get rid of them. We need leaders who are prepared to face the battles ahead not cowards who run away as soon as they see the enemy, or even worse, leaders who are actually in the pay of the enemy, which is often what we have in the Church.
2013 presents us with great opportunities. We have the opportunity, the power and the authority to transform the world. But we will only do this if we follow the biblical vision. We must call all men everywhere to repent, because God commands all men everywhere to repent. And we must model to the world what this means, not only in our individual personal lives, but also in the way we live as the true society of faith, the true social order, the Kingdom of God. The Christian faith is not Church-centred, much less denomination-centred or petty principality-centred—and unfortunately most Churches are petty principalities. The Christian faith is Kingdom of God-centred. A Kingdom is a true social order, not an escapist mystery cult.
In my next post I will look at some practical aspects of what this means, both for our living as a social order and for our Church gatherings. In the meantime for more on how to go about this see: http://parekbasis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/mission-impossible.html.
In most Western countries there are enough Christians even still to turn their societies upside down. We do not lack the numbers (nor even the money, judging from the stupendously wasteful way that Churches spend their money). We lack only vision. We lack this vision because Christians are brainwashed week in week out by the clergymen and pastors who believe in control from below, who believe in the official magic they promulgate each Sunday, which, like a narcotic, numbs the minds of believers and keeps them in bondage to a false vision of the Christian faith, namely that it is an escapist mystery cult. The Lord Jesus Christ has sent us out to convert the world, to convert the nations. He will not return until this task has been fulfilled. He will not return soon. There is too much work to do. Mt. 28:18–20 gives us the Alpha of eschatology: “Go and disciple the nations.” Rev. 11:15 gives us the Omega of eschatology; “Behold the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall rule forever.” This is the Alpha and Omega of eschatology. The Lord Christ will not return until the Great Commission is fulfilled. And when he does return, it will be said on that day: “Behold the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his.”
The theology that Christians are fed each week in church by their pastors is a drug that dulls their minds to the word of God and the vision that it sets before us. This is why the Church in our day is so weak and beggarly and defeated before the world. The vision that the Bible gives us is one of conquering the nations and bringing them into subjection to the will of Christ. How do we achieve this? By Christians constituting themselves as a true society of faith, a Christian counter-revolutionary prophetic social order that displaces the culture of death that surrounds us (secular humanism) and grows until it replaces that culture, i.e. until the Christianity becomes public truth, the dominant world-view that determines the cultural life of the nations. The only thing we lack to achieve this is the vision, the ability to see that this is our task. You will not get this vision in your clergy-controlled churches. You are being drugged each week with a deadly perspective that neutralises the Great Commission and your role in it. You need to get off this drug and get a biblical vision. The Lord will not return and take his Church away from all her tribulations. It is through tribulation that we enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore we must embrace the tribulation along with the task, because that is the only way to victory.
We are more than conquerors through Christ. Conquerors of what? Of the world that we are commanded to disciple. If Christians will act together in pursuing the Kingdom of God (rather than the principalities foisted on them by their clergymen), they will transform the earth. But we must act together. What we can accomplish as individuals is something, but not as much as we can accomplish as a family. What one family can accomplish is something more, but not as much as what several families can accomplish. What a few families acting together can accomplish is more again, but not as much as what the Church as a whole can accomplish. We need to become real communities, real societies, with a social order that transforms the world, not one that conforms to it. The clergymen have had their day. They have led the Church to utter defeat before the world. It is time to get rid of them. We need leaders who are prepared to face the battles ahead not cowards who run away as soon as they see the enemy, or even worse, leaders who are actually in the pay of the enemy, which is often what we have in the Church.
2013 presents us with great opportunities. We have the opportunity, the power and the authority to transform the world. But we will only do this if we follow the biblical vision. We must call all men everywhere to repent, because God commands all men everywhere to repent. And we must model to the world what this means, not only in our individual personal lives, but also in the way we live as the true society of faith, the true social order, the Kingdom of God. The Christian faith is not Church-centred, much less denomination-centred or petty principality-centred—and unfortunately most Churches are petty principalities. The Christian faith is Kingdom of God-centred. A Kingdom is a true social order, not an escapist mystery cult.
In my next post I will look at some practical aspects of what this means, both for our living as a social order and for our Church gatherings. In the meantime for more on how to go about this see: http://parekbasis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/mission-impossible.html.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Some Facts About the Worst Mass Murderers in History: namely, Secular States in Pursuit of Socialist Utopias
The triumph of secular humanism has led to a complete shift in the way people in British society think, speak and live. Under secular humanism the control and regulation of life by the State will continue relentlessly. It has to because this is the logic of the idolatry of man as his own God. This is why individual freedom is ultimately an obsolete concept for secular humanism. Even the terminology has now shifted decisively away from freedom to rights. This means that there has been a shift from the real, the tangible, the individual, to the abstract and the ideal, which must be embodied in some institution that has absolute control and authority.
This move to the abstract is inevitable because individual men disagree and dispute with each other and their rights cannot be harmonised on an individual basis. Therefore the many (individuals) must always give way to the one, the abstract idea of human Will, which is embodied in the State.[1] The one and the many cannot be reconciled on the basis of man as his own ultimate principle, man as God.[2] The question therefore is this: can the abstract, the ideal, as embodied in the State, guarantee the freedom of the individual? The answer is that it cannot. In enforcing the rights of one it must negate the freedoms of another. The State, therefore, must rule as an absolute authority and suspend the liberty of the individual in principle.
This is the only alternative to total anarchy for secular humanism.[3] Ultimate authority has to reside somewhere, and if there is no God then ultimate authority must belong to man. But such authority cannot belong to each man. Ultimate authority is therefore embodied in the State as the realisation of the abstract idea of human Will, and the one (the State) takes precedence over the many (individuals), thereby abridging the God-given liberty of the individual. The State, therefore, as Hegel tells us, is its own motive and absolute end; and the highest duty of the individual, over whom the State exercises a supreme right, is to be a member of the State.[4] The State is “the objective spirit, and [the individual] has his truth, real existence, and ethical status only in being a member of it.” [5] This is where Great Britain is heading. The increasing control and regulation of life by the State is all part of the religious apostasy of the age, all part of the politics of man. Slavery is the end product of the politics of man. It always has been, and it will be no different in the societies of the Western nations as they increasingly reject the Christian faith. The thin veneer of liberty that we still have in Western society is being relentlessly stripped away by the modern secular State. “[W]hile under the old order the state had recognised its limits as against a spiritual power, and had only extended its claims over a part of human life, the modern state admitted no limitations, and embraced the whole life of the individual citizen in its economic and military organisation.” [6]
The consequences for mankind of this idolatry of political power by modern secular States have been immense, from the reign of terror unleashed by the French Revolution to the mass murder programmes of national and international socialism. Leaving aside those killed by the two World Wars, over 100 million people were murdered in the twentieth century alone by secular States in pursuit of the religious ideals of secular humanism. This is a fairly conservative figure, though not the most conservative. Gil Elliot, writing in 1972, estimated the total number of “man-made deaths” in the twentieth century up to that point, including both World Wars, between 80 and 150 million [7] and assumed a mean figure of 110 million, with World War One accounting for about 10 million and World War Two accounting for about 40 million deaths.[8] A more recent conservative estimate, again including both World Wars, has put the total number killed by the State in the twentieth century at 188 million.[9] A less conservative estimate puts the figure at 231 million.[10] According to Jung Chang and Jon Halliday the Chinese Communist State alone was responsible for over 70 million peacetime deaths under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung.[11] Alexander Solzhenitsyn claimed that a similar number perished in the Soviet Union.[12] Commenting on State activity in the twentieth century Paul Johnson writes:
Likewise, Niall Ferguson states that the “hundred years after 1900 were without question the bloodiest century in modern history, far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any previous era.” [14] The secular humanist State has been responsible for more deaths, both in war and as a result of the various secular humanist inquisitions and witch-hunts carried out in the twentieth century, than any other form of religious establishment in history. In 1957, only half way through the twentieth century, Denis de Rougemont stated that “The wars of this century killed more men than all the other wars of our history.” [15] Even the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm acknowledged that the twentieth century was “an era of religious wars, though the most militant and bloodthirsty of its religions were secular ideologies of nineteenth century vintage, such as socialism and nationalism, whose god-equivalents were either abstractions or politicians venerated in the manner of divinities.” [16]
The modern secular State has proved to be the most brutal and murderous form of political rule that the world has ever seen. “Every idol, however exalted,” said Aldous Huxley “turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.” [17]
NOTES
1. See for example Jean Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the “general will” in The Social Contract, Bk, I, chapters vi–ix; Bk II, i–iv.
2. On the philosophical question of the equal ultimacy of the one and many and the irreconcilable nature of these concepts outside of Christian thought see R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy.
3. According to Ernst Nolte, “The word ‘totalitarian,’ in the sense of laying full claim to, and obligation on, a human being, is applicable to every religion, every outlook on the world and on life, even the liberal. But only in the eyes of liberalism is this form really purely formal—that is, not ultimately concretizable and hence Kant’s categorical imperative is its classic formulation. It leaves religions free, tolerates them, because it does not regard truth as demonstrable or personal freedom as definable. The only reason it is non-totalitarian in the material sense, and appears to abandon man to the mere whim of his moods, is because, from a formal point of view, it is more totalitarian, that is, more inexorable, than other ideologies. In an analogous sense Western Christianity is also liberal. By distinguishing between God’s sphere and the emperor’s, it leaves many possibilities open to political man; but it lays unyielding claim to his soul for its path to salvation. The ancient world never knew this kind of separation, this kind of freedom, even the polis was ideally a completely totalitarian unity of the spiritual and the political” (Three Forms of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism [London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965, trans. Leila Vennewitz), p. 219). But in the West it appears now that the more liberalism has become disconnected from the Christian cultural matrix from which it originated the less its totalitarianism has remained purely formal and the more it has sought to realise this totalitarianism in concrete social forms, and consequently the less freedom the liberal political establishment is willing to grant to Christians in the modern liberal societies of the West. Britain’s increasingly institutionalised apathy and even hostility to Christianity and the growing restriction of previously recognised fundamental freedoms stemming from its Christian past are testimony to this fact. It is precisely this trend that gives modern liberal Western States the character of totalitarianism similar to that of ancient Rome. But because of its relativism liberalism is weak and cannot provide a stable foundation for civilisation, and it is becoming apparent now that Western liberalism is a transitory phenomenon, a mere staging post on the road from one civilisation to another.
4. “The state, which is the realised substantive will, having its reality in the particular self-consciousness raised to the plane of the universal, is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its highest right. This end has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the state” (S. W. Dyde, trans., Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, p. 240 [§258]).
5. Ibid., p. 240f. [§258]. According to Hegel “The State is . . . the embodiment of rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form . . . The State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human Will and its Freedom” (The Philosophy of History [New York: Dover Publications, Inc., (1899) 1956, trans. J. Sibree], p. 37). Bertrand Russell described Hegel’s doctrine of the State as “a doctrine which, if accepted, justifies every internal tyranny and every external aggression that can possibly be imagined” (A History of Western Philosophy [London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946], p. 768f.).
6. Christopher Dawson, Enquiries into religion and Culture (London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1933), p. 111.
7. Gil Elliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (London: Alan Lane/The Penguin Press, 1972), p. 1.
8. Ibid., p. 215.
9. Matthew White, “Wars, Massacres and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century” in Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm; accessed on 26 March 2007).
10. Milton Leitenberg, Deaths in Wars and Conflicts in the Twentieth Century (Cornell University Peace Studies Occasional Paper No. 29, Third Edition, 2006), p. 1.
11. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), p. 3. Of all secular political systems it is the socialist States that have proved to be the most oppressive, both economically and socially, and the most murderous. Yet ironically Lenin predicted in 1917 that the Communist State would be transitional, eventually “withering away,” that it would cost mankind less than the capitalist State, and that it would engage in less bloodshed: “during the transition from capitalism to Communism suppression is still necessary; but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the ‘state,’ is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state; it is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage labourers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear . . . the state will also wither away” (The State and Revolution [Peking: Foreign languages Press, 1973], p. 107f.).
12. “Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations” in Alexander Solzhenitsyn, ed., From Under the Rubble (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1975), p. 119.
13. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the year 2000 (London: Phoenix Giant, 1999 [1982]), p. 788.
14. Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred (London: Alan Lane/Penguin Books, 2006), p. xxxiv.
15. Denis de Rougemont, Man’s Western Quest: The Principles of Civilization (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1957), p. 156.
16. Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994), p. 563; my emphasis.
17. The Devils of Loudun (London: Chatto and Indus, 1952)
This move to the abstract is inevitable because individual men disagree and dispute with each other and their rights cannot be harmonised on an individual basis. Therefore the many (individuals) must always give way to the one, the abstract idea of human Will, which is embodied in the State.[1] The one and the many cannot be reconciled on the basis of man as his own ultimate principle, man as God.[2] The question therefore is this: can the abstract, the ideal, as embodied in the State, guarantee the freedom of the individual? The answer is that it cannot. In enforcing the rights of one it must negate the freedoms of another. The State, therefore, must rule as an absolute authority and suspend the liberty of the individual in principle.
This is the only alternative to total anarchy for secular humanism.[3] Ultimate authority has to reside somewhere, and if there is no God then ultimate authority must belong to man. But such authority cannot belong to each man. Ultimate authority is therefore embodied in the State as the realisation of the abstract idea of human Will, and the one (the State) takes precedence over the many (individuals), thereby abridging the God-given liberty of the individual. The State, therefore, as Hegel tells us, is its own motive and absolute end; and the highest duty of the individual, over whom the State exercises a supreme right, is to be a member of the State.[4] The State is “the objective spirit, and [the individual] has his truth, real existence, and ethical status only in being a member of it.” [5] This is where Great Britain is heading. The increasing control and regulation of life by the State is all part of the religious apostasy of the age, all part of the politics of man. Slavery is the end product of the politics of man. It always has been, and it will be no different in the societies of the Western nations as they increasingly reject the Christian faith. The thin veneer of liberty that we still have in Western society is being relentlessly stripped away by the modern secular State. “[W]hile under the old order the state had recognised its limits as against a spiritual power, and had only extended its claims over a part of human life, the modern state admitted no limitations, and embraced the whole life of the individual citizen in its economic and military organisation.” [6]
The consequences for mankind of this idolatry of political power by modern secular States have been immense, from the reign of terror unleashed by the French Revolution to the mass murder programmes of national and international socialism. Leaving aside those killed by the two World Wars, over 100 million people were murdered in the twentieth century alone by secular States in pursuit of the religious ideals of secular humanism. This is a fairly conservative figure, though not the most conservative. Gil Elliot, writing in 1972, estimated the total number of “man-made deaths” in the twentieth century up to that point, including both World Wars, between 80 and 150 million [7] and assumed a mean figure of 110 million, with World War One accounting for about 10 million and World War Two accounting for about 40 million deaths.[8] A more recent conservative estimate, again including both World Wars, has put the total number killed by the State in the twentieth century at 188 million.[9] A less conservative estimate puts the figure at 231 million.[10] According to Jung Chang and Jon Halliday the Chinese Communist State alone was responsible for over 70 million peacetime deaths under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung.[11] Alexander Solzhenitsyn claimed that a similar number perished in the Soviet Union.[12] Commenting on State activity in the twentieth century Paul Johnson writes:
“The state has proved itself an insatiable spender, an unrivalled waster. It has also proved itself the greatest killer of all time. By the late 1990s, state action had been responsible for the violent or unnatural deaths of some 135 million people during the century, more perhaps than it had succeeded in destroying during the whole of human history up to 1900. Its inhuman malevolence had more than kept pace with its growing size and expanding means.” [13]
Likewise, Niall Ferguson states that the “hundred years after 1900 were without question the bloodiest century in modern history, far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any previous era.” [14] The secular humanist State has been responsible for more deaths, both in war and as a result of the various secular humanist inquisitions and witch-hunts carried out in the twentieth century, than any other form of religious establishment in history. In 1957, only half way through the twentieth century, Denis de Rougemont stated that “The wars of this century killed more men than all the other wars of our history.” [15] Even the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm acknowledged that the twentieth century was “an era of religious wars, though the most militant and bloodthirsty of its religions were secular ideologies of nineteenth century vintage, such as socialism and nationalism, whose god-equivalents were either abstractions or politicians venerated in the manner of divinities.” [16]
The modern secular State has proved to be the most brutal and murderous form of political rule that the world has ever seen. “Every idol, however exalted,” said Aldous Huxley “turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.” [17]
NOTES
1. See for example Jean Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the “general will” in The Social Contract, Bk, I, chapters vi–ix; Bk II, i–iv.
2. On the philosophical question of the equal ultimacy of the one and many and the irreconcilable nature of these concepts outside of Christian thought see R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy.
3. According to Ernst Nolte, “The word ‘totalitarian,’ in the sense of laying full claim to, and obligation on, a human being, is applicable to every religion, every outlook on the world and on life, even the liberal. But only in the eyes of liberalism is this form really purely formal—that is, not ultimately concretizable and hence Kant’s categorical imperative is its classic formulation. It leaves religions free, tolerates them, because it does not regard truth as demonstrable or personal freedom as definable. The only reason it is non-totalitarian in the material sense, and appears to abandon man to the mere whim of his moods, is because, from a formal point of view, it is more totalitarian, that is, more inexorable, than other ideologies. In an analogous sense Western Christianity is also liberal. By distinguishing between God’s sphere and the emperor’s, it leaves many possibilities open to political man; but it lays unyielding claim to his soul for its path to salvation. The ancient world never knew this kind of separation, this kind of freedom, even the polis was ideally a completely totalitarian unity of the spiritual and the political” (Three Forms of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism [London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965, trans. Leila Vennewitz), p. 219). But in the West it appears now that the more liberalism has become disconnected from the Christian cultural matrix from which it originated the less its totalitarianism has remained purely formal and the more it has sought to realise this totalitarianism in concrete social forms, and consequently the less freedom the liberal political establishment is willing to grant to Christians in the modern liberal societies of the West. Britain’s increasingly institutionalised apathy and even hostility to Christianity and the growing restriction of previously recognised fundamental freedoms stemming from its Christian past are testimony to this fact. It is precisely this trend that gives modern liberal Western States the character of totalitarianism similar to that of ancient Rome. But because of its relativism liberalism is weak and cannot provide a stable foundation for civilisation, and it is becoming apparent now that Western liberalism is a transitory phenomenon, a mere staging post on the road from one civilisation to another.
4. “The state, which is the realised substantive will, having its reality in the particular self-consciousness raised to the plane of the universal, is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its highest right. This end has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the state” (S. W. Dyde, trans., Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, p. 240 [§258]).
5. Ibid., p. 240f. [§258]. According to Hegel “The State is . . . the embodiment of rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form . . . The State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human Will and its Freedom” (The Philosophy of History [New York: Dover Publications, Inc., (1899) 1956, trans. J. Sibree], p. 37). Bertrand Russell described Hegel’s doctrine of the State as “a doctrine which, if accepted, justifies every internal tyranny and every external aggression that can possibly be imagined” (A History of Western Philosophy [London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946], p. 768f.).
6. Christopher Dawson, Enquiries into religion and Culture (London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1933), p. 111.
7. Gil Elliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (London: Alan Lane/The Penguin Press, 1972), p. 1.
8. Ibid., p. 215.
9. Matthew White, “Wars, Massacres and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century” in Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm; accessed on 26 March 2007).
10. Milton Leitenberg, Deaths in Wars and Conflicts in the Twentieth Century (Cornell University Peace Studies Occasional Paper No. 29, Third Edition, 2006), p. 1.
11. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), p. 3. Of all secular political systems it is the socialist States that have proved to be the most oppressive, both economically and socially, and the most murderous. Yet ironically Lenin predicted in 1917 that the Communist State would be transitional, eventually “withering away,” that it would cost mankind less than the capitalist State, and that it would engage in less bloodshed: “during the transition from capitalism to Communism suppression is still necessary; but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the ‘state,’ is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state; it is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage labourers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear . . . the state will also wither away” (The State and Revolution [Peking: Foreign languages Press, 1973], p. 107f.).
12. “Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations” in Alexander Solzhenitsyn, ed., From Under the Rubble (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1975), p. 119.
13. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the year 2000 (London: Phoenix Giant, 1999 [1982]), p. 788.
14. Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred (London: Alan Lane/Penguin Books, 2006), p. xxxiv.
15. Denis de Rougemont, Man’s Western Quest: The Principles of Civilization (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1957), p. 156.
16. Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994), p. 563; my emphasis.
17. The Devils of Loudun (London: Chatto and Indus, 1952)
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Communism in the New Testament (Part IV—concluded)
Although the Bible does not explicitly condemn the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with voluntary communism as sinful per se, it seems clear from what Scripture says elsewhere about the use of wealth and the organisation of society economically that it was a mistake that produced long-term adverse consequences for the Jerusalem Church and her mission Churches in the Gentile world, which had to support the believers in Jerusalem financially. And although it cannot be argued directly from Scripture, this may well have weakened the Jerusalem Church’s ability to function as an example to the growing Church throughout the Roman Empire and beyond, thereby weakening the moral and spiritual authority of the Church at Jerusalem. Already, within the time span covered by the Book of Acts, Antioch takes on a much more important role as a centre of missionary activity than Jerusalem, which quickly seems to lose authority and credibility as the geographical centre of the Christian faith.
If this is the case it may well be asked how the Church over which the apostles presided could have made such a significant mistake. But of course this was not the only mistake made by the early Church and the apostles that the Bible records for our instruction. The apostolic Church was not infallible, nor were the apostles infallible. There are two other incidents that illustrate the fallibility of the apostles and caution us against treating their actions as examples to be followed and drawn into rules without further confirmation from the broader teaching of Scripture.
First, Acts 2:12–26 records the decision of the Church following the Ascension to replace Judas Iscariot, thereby bringing the number of the apostles back up to twelve. The criterion that the apostles laid down as being essential for anyone who was to fulfil the role of an apostle was that he should have been a fellow companion with themselves and Jesus from the beginning. They therefore chose two men who fulfilled this criterion and selected one of them, Matthias, by means of lot. This whole process of choosing another apostle to replace Judas was carried out in direct disobedience to the explicit command of Christ himself that the apostles should remain in Jerusalem and wait for the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4f.). Instead of waiting for the outpouring of the Spirit, whom Christ had promised would lead them into all truth (Jn 16:13), Peter decided to set himself up effectively as the archbishop of the whole Church and establish the first code of ecclesiastical law to govern the future ministry of the Church. But this led to a problem, because God then chose Saul of Tarsus to be his apostle to the Gentiles, a man who not only had not been with the apostles and Jesus from the beginning, but who had been a fierce persecutor of the Church up to the point of his conversion to the faith. Furthermore, he was sent out as an apostle from Antioch, not Jerusalem, and the apostles in Jerusalem had no part in his being chosen and ordained as an apostle to the Gentiles. After his first mission to the Gentile world, therefore, Paul had to defend his apostleship before the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. When Paul appeared before the apostles and reported to them all that had taken place in his mission to the Gentiles the apostles accepted Paul and Barnabas into the company of the apostles (Acts 15:1–35; Gal. 2:1–10). In doing so they overturned their previous criterion for accepting anyone into the company of the apostles. The criterion initially used to determine suitability for apostleship by the apostles themselves was clearly erroneous, and the recognition that this rule was worthless was only brought about when the issue was forced upon the apostles by subsequent events. Indeed, in 2 Cor. 5:16 Paul attacks the very principle upon which the apostles’ original ruling was based, i.e. knowledge of Christ according to the flesh, which for Paul has no bearing on apostolic authority.[1] With the conversion of Paul and his calling to preach the gospel to the Gentiles it became clear that the man-made and self-serving rules laid down by Peter and the apostles in Jerusalem were detrimental to the mission of the Church and that the spread of the gospel could not be dependent on the authority, direction and example of the Jerusalem Church. Centralised international control of the Church by clergymen and ecclesiastical law-making had no part in God’s plan for the apostolic age—and if the apostles themselves could not be trusted with such power, much less are the lesser men of the papacy and large centralised denominations to be trusted with it. The divine calling of Paul took no account whatsoever of the ecclesiastical law laid down by Peter and the other apostles for ordaining their successors. It was as if God had thumbed his nose at the apostles’ vain attempts to control the future of the Church’s ministry by means of ecclesiastical laws and regulations and the ordaining of clergymen. The concept of apostolic succession was, therefore, discredited at its very inception by the divine calling and ministry of Paul, which represented its complete antithesis.
Second, when the apostle Peter visited Antioch he at first joined in fellowship with the Gentiles, who had been accepted into the Church without having to convert to Judaism. The acceptance of the Gentiles in this way was a principle that Peter believed and practised as a result of being shown by the Lord in a revelation that the Gentiles were to be accepted into the Church without having to be circumcised first. But when certain Judaisers, who had come from James, arrived in Antioch Peter, fearing the party of those who insisted that Gentile believers should be circumcised, stopped mixing with the Gentiles and stood aloof from them, with the result that the rest of the Jews joined him and even Barnabas was led astray by Peter’s hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11–21). Paul therefore opposed Peter and rebuked him for his hypocrisy and the bad example he had set.
It is clear from these incidents that the apostolic Church was not infallible, that the apostles were not infallible, that they made mistakes and committed sins, and that the Scriptures, which are the inspired and infallible word of God, record these errors for our instruction, i.e. so that we might understand what happened and learn from the mistakes of the early Church.[2] In neither of these incidents can the initial actions of the apostles be held up as examples to be followed, let alone drawn into rules for the Church to follow in all ages. In just the same way, the community of goods practised by the apostolic Church in Jerusalem is not an ideal to be followed. As with the criterion for apostleship and Peter’s hypocrisy in Antioch, subsequent events and the wider teaching of Scripture must be taken into account when assessing the meaning and value of the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism. These events are recorded in Scripture to teach us something. Of that there can be no doubt. But it is not that the community of goods is an ideal to follow. Rather, it is that the community of goods is an example that we should not follow and that such practices end in the economic and/or social impoverishment of the communities that adopt them. What is held up in the Bible as the ideal of a just economic system is incompatible with the community of goods: i.e. private ownership of property, private stewardship of the economic resources of society and the inviolability of legitimate inheritance.
The communistic model is nowhere repeated in the Bible, nor is it held up as an example to be followed. If it were a good example to be followed we should expect it to be referred to in other passages where the Bible gives teaching on wealth, work and helping others. But there are no such references. Paul does not refer to it in giving advice to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:8–12; 2 Thess. 3:8–12) or to the Ephesians (Eph. 4:28), where we should expect it if it were good advice and where helping the poor is commended—something that is only possible if we produce wealth in greater abundance than our own needs. On the contrary, in these Scriptures Paul gives alternative advice that is incompatible with the community of goods. Neither does he refer to it when writing to the Corinthians regarding the support of his own ministry while among them (2 Cor. 11:7–9). In this respect it is significant that the great model of welfare provision for the needy was pioneered by the Gentile Churches of the Roman empire and was one of the great testimonies to the Christian faith in the ancient world.[3] But this was not the practice of the Jerusalem Church, which was a recipient of welfare not a provider.
What this experiment in the community of goods in the Jerusalem Church clearly demonstrates, therefore, is that if communism did not work in the New Testament Church under the guidance of the apostles of Christ, it has little chance of working anywhere. The end product of communism is universal poverty, and this was just as much the case with the New Testament Church as with any other society that has practised it. The only exceptions to this general rule historically are communities that have abolished the Christian ideal of family life and either denied procreation altogether or separated it from the normal family context of raising children—in other words marriage and procreation are practised but the family unit is replaced by the broader community.
However, the Bible does show us that the Church [4] is to be a real society, i.e. a social order that functions effectively as a model for the nations. The goal of apostolic labour in the New Testament period is the Christian community, which stands in Christ as a work of God’s redemptive power manifested in history.[5] This work of God’s power is not a commune, but it is a community,[6] a social order that should grow and increase until it displaces and ultimately supplants the godless society of non-belief that surrounds it.[7] This is our calling in the Great Commission to disciple the nations (Mt. 28:18–20). The Jerusalem Church was a failure in this respect. There is nothing about the economically debilitated condition of the Church in Jerusalem that commends itself as an example to the world. The example, rather, is the practice of the Gentile Church, which did not follow the ideal of communism and was able to provide financial assistance to those in need. Both the mission and the influence of the Gentile Church were therefore much greater.
We must not confuse the ideal of the commune with the ideal of the Church living as a real society, a social order that functions across the whole spectrum of human life. When the Church functions as a real society, meeting the needs of human society in a Christian way of life, she provides light to the world. This of course involves helping and caring for each other and for those in need. But the Jerusalem Church fell at this very point, as do all communistic societies, with the exception of those that reject the family as the basic unit of society. Helping those in need is an important part of living as the Church. But in order to do this we need to provide an example to the world of how society should function. This necessitates the rejection of the social ideal of the commune and the adoption of the Christian community—i.e. a true society founded on faith in Christ—as our social ideal.
NOTES
1. See von Campenhasuen, op. cit., p. 37.
2. Despite the clear testimony of Scripture regarding these matters it is common to find theologians arguing to the contrary on the presumed authority of Scripture—i.e. claiming scriptural authority for dogmatic statements that contradict Scripture. According to Charles Hodge, for example, “the apostles were inspired, and as religious teachers infallible” (Commentary on Romans [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, (1835) 1975], p. 16). Similarly, Edward J. Carnell tells us that the marks of an apostle were “to be with Jesus from the beginning, to be appointed by Jesus, and to perform signs and wonders" (The Case for Orthodox Theology [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1959], p. 20f.) According to Carnell, “Orthodoxy is that branch of Christendom which limits the ground of religious authority to the Bible” (ibid., p. 13). On this basis Carnell’s own statement about the marks of apostleship is unorthodox. Peter claimed that a mark of an apostle was to have been with Jesus from the beginning. Subsequent events proved him and all who follow him in this claim to be wrong; these events are recorded in Scripture for our instruction. Furthermore, at one point even Paul himself in his first epistle to the Corinthians warns his readers that what he has to say on a particular question about which he had been asked for guidance is his own opinion and not to be considered the infallible word of God (1 Cor. 7: 6, 12, 25). It is of course true that orthodoxy limits the ultimate ground of religious authority to the Scriptures; but it limits it to the Scriptures as a whole, not to texts taken out of context and interpreted contrary to the genre of the literature from which they are taken or contrary to reason, though of course what is to be considered reasonable must also be determined in subjection to the teaching of Scripture. In other words, Scripture must be allowed to interpret itself: “The infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, (which is not manifold, but one,) it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly” (Westminster Confession of Faith, I.IX). To read the Bible in any other way is to reduce it to a mere collection of unrelated proof texts at best, and therefore unorthodox and unfaithful to Scripture as a whole.
3. This led the apostate emperor Julian (361–363) to comment that “the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well” (cited in Hugh Flemming, Post Hippocratic Medicine: The Problem and the Solution—How the Christian Ethic has Influenced Health Care (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2010), p. 30.
4. I am using the word Church here to refer to the body of Christ, the community of believers, in other words the Church as an organism, not an institution, much less a denominational structure.
5. Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theologial Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1968, trans. G. W. Bromiley), Vol. II, p. 313.
6. See my essay “The Church as a Community of Faith” in Common-Law Wives and Concubines: Essays on Covenantal Christianity and Western Culture (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2003), pp. 179–194.
7. According to Christopher Dawson, for Augustine “the Church is actually the new humanity in process of formation, and its earthly history is that of the building of the City of God which has its completion in eternity . . . Hence, in spite of all the imperfections of the earthly Church, it is nevertheless the most perfect society that this world can know. Indeed, it is the only true society. Because it is the only society which has its source in a spiritual will. The kingdoms of the earth seek after the goods of the earth; the Church, and the Church alone, seeks spiritual goods and a peace which is eternal” (op. cit., p. 256f.).
If this is the case it may well be asked how the Church over which the apostles presided could have made such a significant mistake. But of course this was not the only mistake made by the early Church and the apostles that the Bible records for our instruction. The apostolic Church was not infallible, nor were the apostles infallible. There are two other incidents that illustrate the fallibility of the apostles and caution us against treating their actions as examples to be followed and drawn into rules without further confirmation from the broader teaching of Scripture.
First, Acts 2:12–26 records the decision of the Church following the Ascension to replace Judas Iscariot, thereby bringing the number of the apostles back up to twelve. The criterion that the apostles laid down as being essential for anyone who was to fulfil the role of an apostle was that he should have been a fellow companion with themselves and Jesus from the beginning. They therefore chose two men who fulfilled this criterion and selected one of them, Matthias, by means of lot. This whole process of choosing another apostle to replace Judas was carried out in direct disobedience to the explicit command of Christ himself that the apostles should remain in Jerusalem and wait for the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4f.). Instead of waiting for the outpouring of the Spirit, whom Christ had promised would lead them into all truth (Jn 16:13), Peter decided to set himself up effectively as the archbishop of the whole Church and establish the first code of ecclesiastical law to govern the future ministry of the Church. But this led to a problem, because God then chose Saul of Tarsus to be his apostle to the Gentiles, a man who not only had not been with the apostles and Jesus from the beginning, but who had been a fierce persecutor of the Church up to the point of his conversion to the faith. Furthermore, he was sent out as an apostle from Antioch, not Jerusalem, and the apostles in Jerusalem had no part in his being chosen and ordained as an apostle to the Gentiles. After his first mission to the Gentile world, therefore, Paul had to defend his apostleship before the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. When Paul appeared before the apostles and reported to them all that had taken place in his mission to the Gentiles the apostles accepted Paul and Barnabas into the company of the apostles (Acts 15:1–35; Gal. 2:1–10). In doing so they overturned their previous criterion for accepting anyone into the company of the apostles. The criterion initially used to determine suitability for apostleship by the apostles themselves was clearly erroneous, and the recognition that this rule was worthless was only brought about when the issue was forced upon the apostles by subsequent events. Indeed, in 2 Cor. 5:16 Paul attacks the very principle upon which the apostles’ original ruling was based, i.e. knowledge of Christ according to the flesh, which for Paul has no bearing on apostolic authority.[1] With the conversion of Paul and his calling to preach the gospel to the Gentiles it became clear that the man-made and self-serving rules laid down by Peter and the apostles in Jerusalem were detrimental to the mission of the Church and that the spread of the gospel could not be dependent on the authority, direction and example of the Jerusalem Church. Centralised international control of the Church by clergymen and ecclesiastical law-making had no part in God’s plan for the apostolic age—and if the apostles themselves could not be trusted with such power, much less are the lesser men of the papacy and large centralised denominations to be trusted with it. The divine calling of Paul took no account whatsoever of the ecclesiastical law laid down by Peter and the other apostles for ordaining their successors. It was as if God had thumbed his nose at the apostles’ vain attempts to control the future of the Church’s ministry by means of ecclesiastical laws and regulations and the ordaining of clergymen. The concept of apostolic succession was, therefore, discredited at its very inception by the divine calling and ministry of Paul, which represented its complete antithesis.
Second, when the apostle Peter visited Antioch he at first joined in fellowship with the Gentiles, who had been accepted into the Church without having to convert to Judaism. The acceptance of the Gentiles in this way was a principle that Peter believed and practised as a result of being shown by the Lord in a revelation that the Gentiles were to be accepted into the Church without having to be circumcised first. But when certain Judaisers, who had come from James, arrived in Antioch Peter, fearing the party of those who insisted that Gentile believers should be circumcised, stopped mixing with the Gentiles and stood aloof from them, with the result that the rest of the Jews joined him and even Barnabas was led astray by Peter’s hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11–21). Paul therefore opposed Peter and rebuked him for his hypocrisy and the bad example he had set.
It is clear from these incidents that the apostolic Church was not infallible, that the apostles were not infallible, that they made mistakes and committed sins, and that the Scriptures, which are the inspired and infallible word of God, record these errors for our instruction, i.e. so that we might understand what happened and learn from the mistakes of the early Church.[2] In neither of these incidents can the initial actions of the apostles be held up as examples to be followed, let alone drawn into rules for the Church to follow in all ages. In just the same way, the community of goods practised by the apostolic Church in Jerusalem is not an ideal to be followed. As with the criterion for apostleship and Peter’s hypocrisy in Antioch, subsequent events and the wider teaching of Scripture must be taken into account when assessing the meaning and value of the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism. These events are recorded in Scripture to teach us something. Of that there can be no doubt. But it is not that the community of goods is an ideal to follow. Rather, it is that the community of goods is an example that we should not follow and that such practices end in the economic and/or social impoverishment of the communities that adopt them. What is held up in the Bible as the ideal of a just economic system is incompatible with the community of goods: i.e. private ownership of property, private stewardship of the economic resources of society and the inviolability of legitimate inheritance.
The communistic model is nowhere repeated in the Bible, nor is it held up as an example to be followed. If it were a good example to be followed we should expect it to be referred to in other passages where the Bible gives teaching on wealth, work and helping others. But there are no such references. Paul does not refer to it in giving advice to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:8–12; 2 Thess. 3:8–12) or to the Ephesians (Eph. 4:28), where we should expect it if it were good advice and where helping the poor is commended—something that is only possible if we produce wealth in greater abundance than our own needs. On the contrary, in these Scriptures Paul gives alternative advice that is incompatible with the community of goods. Neither does he refer to it when writing to the Corinthians regarding the support of his own ministry while among them (2 Cor. 11:7–9). In this respect it is significant that the great model of welfare provision for the needy was pioneered by the Gentile Churches of the Roman empire and was one of the great testimonies to the Christian faith in the ancient world.[3] But this was not the practice of the Jerusalem Church, which was a recipient of welfare not a provider.
What this experiment in the community of goods in the Jerusalem Church clearly demonstrates, therefore, is that if communism did not work in the New Testament Church under the guidance of the apostles of Christ, it has little chance of working anywhere. The end product of communism is universal poverty, and this was just as much the case with the New Testament Church as with any other society that has practised it. The only exceptions to this general rule historically are communities that have abolished the Christian ideal of family life and either denied procreation altogether or separated it from the normal family context of raising children—in other words marriage and procreation are practised but the family unit is replaced by the broader community.
However, the Bible does show us that the Church [4] is to be a real society, i.e. a social order that functions effectively as a model for the nations. The goal of apostolic labour in the New Testament period is the Christian community, which stands in Christ as a work of God’s redemptive power manifested in history.[5] This work of God’s power is not a commune, but it is a community,[6] a social order that should grow and increase until it displaces and ultimately supplants the godless society of non-belief that surrounds it.[7] This is our calling in the Great Commission to disciple the nations (Mt. 28:18–20). The Jerusalem Church was a failure in this respect. There is nothing about the economically debilitated condition of the Church in Jerusalem that commends itself as an example to the world. The example, rather, is the practice of the Gentile Church, which did not follow the ideal of communism and was able to provide financial assistance to those in need. Both the mission and the influence of the Gentile Church were therefore much greater.
We must not confuse the ideal of the commune with the ideal of the Church living as a real society, a social order that functions across the whole spectrum of human life. When the Church functions as a real society, meeting the needs of human society in a Christian way of life, she provides light to the world. This of course involves helping and caring for each other and for those in need. But the Jerusalem Church fell at this very point, as do all communistic societies, with the exception of those that reject the family as the basic unit of society. Helping those in need is an important part of living as the Church. But in order to do this we need to provide an example to the world of how society should function. This necessitates the rejection of the social ideal of the commune and the adoption of the Christian community—i.e. a true society founded on faith in Christ—as our social ideal.
NOTES
1. See von Campenhasuen, op. cit., p. 37.
2. Despite the clear testimony of Scripture regarding these matters it is common to find theologians arguing to the contrary on the presumed authority of Scripture—i.e. claiming scriptural authority for dogmatic statements that contradict Scripture. According to Charles Hodge, for example, “the apostles were inspired, and as religious teachers infallible” (Commentary on Romans [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, (1835) 1975], p. 16). Similarly, Edward J. Carnell tells us that the marks of an apostle were “to be with Jesus from the beginning, to be appointed by Jesus, and to perform signs and wonders" (The Case for Orthodox Theology [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1959], p. 20f.) According to Carnell, “Orthodoxy is that branch of Christendom which limits the ground of religious authority to the Bible” (ibid., p. 13). On this basis Carnell’s own statement about the marks of apostleship is unorthodox. Peter claimed that a mark of an apostle was to have been with Jesus from the beginning. Subsequent events proved him and all who follow him in this claim to be wrong; these events are recorded in Scripture for our instruction. Furthermore, at one point even Paul himself in his first epistle to the Corinthians warns his readers that what he has to say on a particular question about which he had been asked for guidance is his own opinion and not to be considered the infallible word of God (1 Cor. 7: 6, 12, 25). It is of course true that orthodoxy limits the ultimate ground of religious authority to the Scriptures; but it limits it to the Scriptures as a whole, not to texts taken out of context and interpreted contrary to the genre of the literature from which they are taken or contrary to reason, though of course what is to be considered reasonable must also be determined in subjection to the teaching of Scripture. In other words, Scripture must be allowed to interpret itself: “The infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, (which is not manifold, but one,) it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly” (Westminster Confession of Faith, I.IX). To read the Bible in any other way is to reduce it to a mere collection of unrelated proof texts at best, and therefore unorthodox and unfaithful to Scripture as a whole.
3. This led the apostate emperor Julian (361–363) to comment that “the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well” (cited in Hugh Flemming, Post Hippocratic Medicine: The Problem and the Solution—How the Christian Ethic has Influenced Health Care (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2010), p. 30.
4. I am using the word Church here to refer to the body of Christ, the community of believers, in other words the Church as an organism, not an institution, much less a denominational structure.
5. Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theologial Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1968, trans. G. W. Bromiley), Vol. II, p. 313.
6. See my essay “The Church as a Community of Faith” in Common-Law Wives and Concubines: Essays on Covenantal Christianity and Western Culture (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2003), pp. 179–194.
7. According to Christopher Dawson, for Augustine “the Church is actually the new humanity in process of formation, and its earthly history is that of the building of the City of God which has its completion in eternity . . . Hence, in spite of all the imperfections of the earthly Church, it is nevertheless the most perfect society that this world can know. Indeed, it is the only true society. Because it is the only society which has its source in a spiritual will. The kingdoms of the earth seek after the goods of the earth; the Church, and the Church alone, seeks spiritual goods and a peace which is eternal” (op. cit., p. 256f.).
Monday, November 26, 2012
Communism, in the New Testament (Part III)
How are we to understand the community of goods practised by the Church in Jerusalem in the light of what the Bible has to say about this practice and what it has to say about other issues bearing upon it?
First, the community of goods practised by the Church at Jerusalem is nowhere in the Scriptures commanded, nor even commended. In fact the practice of the Jerusalem Church is not commended in the Book of Acts; it is merely described. What then, it may be asked, does the story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11), who failed to enter into the Spirit of this experiment and were struck dead for their sin, teach us? It teaches us precisely that they were under no obligation to participate in the community of goods and that failure to do so brought no disapprobation. This is clear from Peter’s rebuke of Ananias: “But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou has not lied unto men, but unto God” (Acts 5:3–4). Sapphira’s offence was that she was complicit with her husband in this lie (Acts 5:7–10). Their sin was lying to the Holy Spirit about what they had given to the community, not their holding back part of the proceeds of the sale of the land. Peter acknowledged that the property was their own, that they had the freedom to dispose of it according to their own will, and that they were under no obligation to give the land or the proceeds of its sale to the community. Scripture makes no further direct comment on this incident nor on the experiment in the community of goods as practised in Jerusalem, nor does it give any further teaching on this issue other than what can be deduced from the condition of poverty into which the Church subsequently fell, evidenced by the need of the Gentile Churches to support the community of believers in Jerusalem financially. Nowhere in the Bible is the community of goods advocated as a social theory or an advisable way to life.
Second, however, the teachings of the Bible on the use of wealth and the kind of economic system advocated in the Bible are incompatible with the community of goods. For example, the Bible teaches that “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children” (Pr. 13:22). Leaving an inheritance to one’s children and grandchildren is a godly ideal in Scripture. The expropriation of a man’s inheritance is condemned in Scripture (1 Kg. 21). The inheritance of the Israelites was jealously guarded by the laws of the Torah. The social and economic system of ancient Israel as laid down in the law of Moses was aimed at protecting the inheritance of the Israelites and ensuring that a family’s inheritance could not be permanently alienated either by force or choice. Furthermore, the eighth commandment (Ex. 20:15) and the command not to move the boundary mark of another man’s land (Dt. 19:14; 27:17; Pr. 22:28; 23:10f.) are meaningless in a communistic society. The Jubilee was instituted precisely to ensure that the people were not permanently dispossessed of their inheritance.[1] Inheritance is a significant theme in the history of Israel and an important concept in Scripture both economically and eschatologically. Such an economic and social system is not compatible with the ideal of communism.
Third, the community of goods practised in the Jerusalem Church runs contrary to the principle taught by Paul to Gentile believers, namely that they should work to provide for their own needs and produce a surplus (i.e. a profit, to use the economic term) so that they would be able to help those in need (see for example Acts 20:33–35; Eph. 4:28; 1 Thess. 4:11–12 and 2 Thess. 3:8–12 taken together). The community of believers in the Jerusalem Church was not able to provide for its own poor, let alone provide help for others, and this is why Paul had to secure financial help from the Gentile Church.
Does all this mean that the experiment in the community of goods in Jerusalem was sinful? It may be difficult to maintain such an argument without some qualification, but it is clear, first, that for those participating such an experiment could only be entered into voluntarily and second, that one would need to ensure that such a lifestyle did not lead to the disinheriting of legitimate heirs (Dt. 21:15–17; Pr. 13:22) or neglect of one’s duty to provide for one’s dependants (1 Tim. 5:8–16).[2] Failure to abide by these two principles would have involved participating members of the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism in sin. It is clear from the case of Ananias and Sapphira that communism was not mandatory for individual believers in the Jerusalem Church, even though it appears to have been practised by the community as a whole. Third, subsequent teaching by the apostle Paul makes it clear that the Jerusalem Church did fall short of the Christian ideal with regard to the provision of welfare: “But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God . . . if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel . . . If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged; that it may relieve them that are widows indeed” (1 Tim. 5:4, 8, 16).[3] The communism of the Jerusalem Church produced a lifestyle that Paul here condemns in no uncertain terms as worse than that of non-believers and a practical denial of the faith—i.e. an ongoing situation in which neither the participating believers nor the Church as a whole could provide for their own dependants. Surely, if the community of goods practised by the Jerusalem Church is God’s will for his Church, and indeed for society as a whole, we must ask why the apostle Paul never teaches this himself in his epistles nor requires its practice in the Gentile Churches he founded. He does not even so much as hint at such an arrangement. Indeed, he teaches the precise opposite, namely that believers should provide for their own dependants and that Church welfare should be available only when the family is not able to provide. It is as if the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism was an embarrassing failure that is not spoken about, but rather avoided. It may even conceivably have been the failure of the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism that prompted Paul to give these strongly worded instructions to Timothy. In the light of this subsequent apostolic teaching, therefore, it is questionable whether such an experiment in communism as that undertaken by the Jerusalem Church could now be repeated without sin, i.e. without the flagrant disregard of subsequent apostolic teaching, which, Scripture tells us, is part of the foundation of the Church and of the life of faith (Eph. 2:19–20). At the very least we can say that even in the best scenario (i.e. where no sin is involved) such a way of living is not advisable in the light of biblical teaching. The community of goods is not a biblical ideal. The Jerusalem commune failed miserably to live up to the ideals given us in Scripture about the use of wealth and charitable provision for those in need. Charity necessitates the production of a surplus—i.e. a profit. Subsistence living is incompatible with the ideal of charitable aid to the poor because such aid requires the accumulation of wealth that can be transferred to those in need. But the Jerusalem Church did not last very long before the community of goods failed even to produce enough to meet the needs of her own members. Instead of providing for their missions in the Gentile world the Christians in Jerusalem became dependent upon their mission Churches financially.
NOTES
1. On the biblical Jubilee see Appendix C, “Help for the Poor and the Meaning of the Jubilee” in my book The Political Economy of A Christian Society (Taunton: The Kuyper Foundation, 2001), pp. 282–300.
2. Cf. also the implications of the case of the daughters of Zelophehad in Num. 27:1–11 and 36:1–9. On the Old Testament laws of succession and inheritance see Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961, trans. John McHugh), p. 53ff. and R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973), p. 180ff.
3. See further Rushdoony, op. cit., p. 770ff.
First, the community of goods practised by the Church at Jerusalem is nowhere in the Scriptures commanded, nor even commended. In fact the practice of the Jerusalem Church is not commended in the Book of Acts; it is merely described. What then, it may be asked, does the story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11), who failed to enter into the Spirit of this experiment and were struck dead for their sin, teach us? It teaches us precisely that they were under no obligation to participate in the community of goods and that failure to do so brought no disapprobation. This is clear from Peter’s rebuke of Ananias: “But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou has not lied unto men, but unto God” (Acts 5:3–4). Sapphira’s offence was that she was complicit with her husband in this lie (Acts 5:7–10). Their sin was lying to the Holy Spirit about what they had given to the community, not their holding back part of the proceeds of the sale of the land. Peter acknowledged that the property was their own, that they had the freedom to dispose of it according to their own will, and that they were under no obligation to give the land or the proceeds of its sale to the community. Scripture makes no further direct comment on this incident nor on the experiment in the community of goods as practised in Jerusalem, nor does it give any further teaching on this issue other than what can be deduced from the condition of poverty into which the Church subsequently fell, evidenced by the need of the Gentile Churches to support the community of believers in Jerusalem financially. Nowhere in the Bible is the community of goods advocated as a social theory or an advisable way to life.
Second, however, the teachings of the Bible on the use of wealth and the kind of economic system advocated in the Bible are incompatible with the community of goods. For example, the Bible teaches that “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children” (Pr. 13:22). Leaving an inheritance to one’s children and grandchildren is a godly ideal in Scripture. The expropriation of a man’s inheritance is condemned in Scripture (1 Kg. 21). The inheritance of the Israelites was jealously guarded by the laws of the Torah. The social and economic system of ancient Israel as laid down in the law of Moses was aimed at protecting the inheritance of the Israelites and ensuring that a family’s inheritance could not be permanently alienated either by force or choice. Furthermore, the eighth commandment (Ex. 20:15) and the command not to move the boundary mark of another man’s land (Dt. 19:14; 27:17; Pr. 22:28; 23:10f.) are meaningless in a communistic society. The Jubilee was instituted precisely to ensure that the people were not permanently dispossessed of their inheritance.[1] Inheritance is a significant theme in the history of Israel and an important concept in Scripture both economically and eschatologically. Such an economic and social system is not compatible with the ideal of communism.
Third, the community of goods practised in the Jerusalem Church runs contrary to the principle taught by Paul to Gentile believers, namely that they should work to provide for their own needs and produce a surplus (i.e. a profit, to use the economic term) so that they would be able to help those in need (see for example Acts 20:33–35; Eph. 4:28; 1 Thess. 4:11–12 and 2 Thess. 3:8–12 taken together). The community of believers in the Jerusalem Church was not able to provide for its own poor, let alone provide help for others, and this is why Paul had to secure financial help from the Gentile Church.
Does all this mean that the experiment in the community of goods in Jerusalem was sinful? It may be difficult to maintain such an argument without some qualification, but it is clear, first, that for those participating such an experiment could only be entered into voluntarily and second, that one would need to ensure that such a lifestyle did not lead to the disinheriting of legitimate heirs (Dt. 21:15–17; Pr. 13:22) or neglect of one’s duty to provide for one’s dependants (1 Tim. 5:8–16).[2] Failure to abide by these two principles would have involved participating members of the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism in sin. It is clear from the case of Ananias and Sapphira that communism was not mandatory for individual believers in the Jerusalem Church, even though it appears to have been practised by the community as a whole. Third, subsequent teaching by the apostle Paul makes it clear that the Jerusalem Church did fall short of the Christian ideal with regard to the provision of welfare: “But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God . . . if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel . . . If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged; that it may relieve them that are widows indeed” (1 Tim. 5:4, 8, 16).[3] The communism of the Jerusalem Church produced a lifestyle that Paul here condemns in no uncertain terms as worse than that of non-believers and a practical denial of the faith—i.e. an ongoing situation in which neither the participating believers nor the Church as a whole could provide for their own dependants. Surely, if the community of goods practised by the Jerusalem Church is God’s will for his Church, and indeed for society as a whole, we must ask why the apostle Paul never teaches this himself in his epistles nor requires its practice in the Gentile Churches he founded. He does not even so much as hint at such an arrangement. Indeed, he teaches the precise opposite, namely that believers should provide for their own dependants and that Church welfare should be available only when the family is not able to provide. It is as if the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism was an embarrassing failure that is not spoken about, but rather avoided. It may even conceivably have been the failure of the Jerusalem Church’s experiment with communism that prompted Paul to give these strongly worded instructions to Timothy. In the light of this subsequent apostolic teaching, therefore, it is questionable whether such an experiment in communism as that undertaken by the Jerusalem Church could now be repeated without sin, i.e. without the flagrant disregard of subsequent apostolic teaching, which, Scripture tells us, is part of the foundation of the Church and of the life of faith (Eph. 2:19–20). At the very least we can say that even in the best scenario (i.e. where no sin is involved) such a way of living is not advisable in the light of biblical teaching. The community of goods is not a biblical ideal. The Jerusalem commune failed miserably to live up to the ideals given us in Scripture about the use of wealth and charitable provision for those in need. Charity necessitates the production of a surplus—i.e. a profit. Subsistence living is incompatible with the ideal of charitable aid to the poor because such aid requires the accumulation of wealth that can be transferred to those in need. But the Jerusalem Church did not last very long before the community of goods failed even to produce enough to meet the needs of her own members. Instead of providing for their missions in the Gentile world the Christians in Jerusalem became dependent upon their mission Churches financially.
. . . to be continued
NOTES
1. On the biblical Jubilee see Appendix C, “Help for the Poor and the Meaning of the Jubilee” in my book The Political Economy of A Christian Society (Taunton: The Kuyper Foundation, 2001), pp. 282–300.
2. Cf. also the implications of the case of the daughters of Zelophehad in Num. 27:1–11 and 36:1–9. On the Old Testament laws of succession and inheritance see Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961, trans. John McHugh), p. 53ff. and R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973), p. 180ff.
3. See further Rushdoony, op. cit., p. 770ff.
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