Deep intimations of our condition and state before God

There is a deep sense from childhood on of being under condemnation. There is also memory of how powerful the depiction of being proclaimed innocent is, whether in court drama or in other depiction such as after army desertion or naval mutiny; i.e. surviving the escape or rebellion in immediate conflict with nature and man is not enough without the final pronouncement of innocence by the law at the end.

This is man's state as a descendent of Adam and living under the condemnation of the law and in need of a Mediator and Saviour to be free of that wrath and condemnation.

We feel this state even as a child when seeing rebellion and mutiny and crime depicted, and even knowing instinctively how the usual common emotions involved play into it (resentment, righteous anger, justifications for the actions taken), emotions taken as noble by fallen man, yet ignoble and of a loser quality to one who knows his true condition and state before God.

'Social justice' again...

>is it possible that being concerned with justice is a necessary part of our behavior as Christians?
>doesn’t the exegete have to preach social justice?

The problem here is the very term itself - social justice - coming out of the mouth of anybody is *foundationally naive.*

The world preaches resentment and entitlement; 'social justice' is about resentment and entitlement, and resentment is always directed at other humans. The Word of God, on the other hand, preaches gratitude and the fact that we are in this world, not of this world.

'Social justice' presupposes in the person mouthing it a very worldly unself-aware self-estimate of holiness and righteousness. "We want social justice for these poor people!!!" So who are you shouting at? Yeah, that's right, resentment always needs a human target (if indeed the target isn't God Himself). So you, as the mouther of 'social justice' are now judging other humans in the *unbiblical way* which is from an inherent sense of your own holiness and righteousness.

The best government is one that puts checks and balances on all the features of fallen man. The best system of economics is one that recognizes self-interest and allows it to work freely for the benefit of all. You want 'social justice'? Take the government shackles off the 10 percent of society who are energetic and creative and make the jobs for everybody else. The people who shout 'social justice' are the same people putting those government shackles on our job creators.

The devil's kingdom wants tyranny. Become more self-aware, Christian, and learn to discern these things. See that your call for 'social justice' is your fallen nature wanting to indulge resentment towards others (whoever is a good target) and God Himself and to cloak it in biblical terms. Wake up.

Atheists, the majority of business for psychic hotlines

Terminal dumb fuck...because we don't believe in your sky daddy bullshit...BWAAHAHAHAHAA!

Mark my words. In our lifetime you will see your precious faith marginalized further and further in to the primitive superstitious novelty that it is, just like every other pagan belief before christianity. And when you die, you'll simply turn in to dirt, just like me. Have a nice day douche bag! And don't forget to pray harder:)

Pressure an atheist hard enough and they will always admit a belief in some kind of psychic hotline reincarnation. Atheists are pussies. Just as they are afraid to follow their philosophy in real life and truly 'live to the hilt' rather than spending their precious one-and-done life looking at internet sites, for instance, they also are afraid to face the reality of true annihilation at death. Little Sam Harris adopts Buddhist beliefs of reincarnation (I guess people who believe in committing genocide against other humans get to reincarnate too). All atheists are similar pussies, if not as up front.

In two successive posts R. Scott Clark defended Rome and mocked the Waldensians (he is considered a historian and Reformed by his fellow churchians)

Life is short. The times are evil. Prepare for heaven.

"To fear God only and not man makes you a dangerous figure on the landscape of the world. Expect war, and fight like a king." - ct (Damn right I wrote it. You can mock anything that isn't published by your academic Christian presses, but you don't know anyone who could have written that. You're reading that person now.)

The full armor of God is what you need, not ritual. There are no 'sacraments' in Eph. 6:10-18. The baptism of the Holy Spirit which is regeneration puts you on the battlefield which is the Way. Increasing the Spirit within you is how that 'sacrament' manifests in a born again believer. Fearing God alone and not man and having real union with Christ in the most intense and difficult events and moments and circumstances and situations is how the so-called 'Lord's Supper' manifests within a born against spiritual warrior of Christ on the battlefield that is the Way. They are eschatological. Now. There is no 'church' in Pilgrim's Progress. No 'pews'. No 'sermonizor.' The closest thing is the pathetic churchians sitting docilely at the gates of heaven *waiting* for permission to enter. Then the knight in black armor arrives, draws his sword, assaults the guards at the gate, forces his entry, and enters heaven. To the cheering of those already inside heaven. The pathetic churchians remain sitting outside angry at the knight and embarrassed for him and apologizing for him to the guards and the cleric sitting at the table demanding they have all their papers in order. The knight should have done them a favor and killed them all before he assaulted the gates and entered heaven.

In two successive posts R. Scott Clark defended Rome and mocked the Waldensians (he is considered a historian and Reformed by his fellow churchians). This churchian couldn't know a bible-believing Christian if God took him by the collar and showed him first hand Waldensians fighting and dying for the faith at the hands of their Romanist murderers. He defended his academic crush Michael Horton's recommendation of Pope Ratzinger's theology. Then he said Waldensian confessions have no place in a book of Reformed confessions. This default jesuit is angry that the Waldensians kept the received text alive through the centuries. This practical deist and ritualist jesuit and his fake Calvinist academic comrades are making of themselves the gatekeepers for what is Reformed while they mock Waldensian martyrs and praise Pope Ratzinger. When the King returns it will be difficult to jump to the forefront of the line when volunteers are called to hunt down these fake Christians. When you set yourself up as a gatekeeper and a teacher of Christians and you promote the system of the Beast: God comes down hard on you. And he does it using his saints in his army. Seek out your rocks to crawl under now, jesuits masquerading as Protestant Christians.

Prophets, priests, and kings vs. the devil's ministers

Awhile back this was posted on the so-called PuritanBoard:

Priests (and Prophets and Kings)

Does anyone know of any good literature, online for free, or in a hardcopy book on the subject of believers being spiritually priests (The Priesthood of All Believers), and for that matter on believers being spiritually prophets and kings (The Prophethood and Kingship of All Believers)?

The thread was summarily 'closed', with zero responses. The good, fearful denizens of the so-called PuritanBoard know an 'off-limits' subject when they see one.

To answer the poster's question, a Brakel in his Christian's Reasonable Service actually has three separate chapters on the subjects of a Christian being a prophet, priest, and king respectively.

Why is this subject off-limits in today's churchian environment? The last thing Beast ministers want is for Christians to learn that they are prophets, priests, and kings. Beast ministers profit from the fear of man and an obsequious posture from the churchians they keep in spiritual bondage for the devil's kingdom. Even the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers alone which Martin Luther hammered on so resoundingly has been successfully muted in today's Beast-controlled church environments. That fact makes the doctrine of Christians being actual prophets and kings seem outright dangerous and pagan or something.

How successful the devil has been in taking over Christian environments and asserting his control through his ministers who demand man-fearing over God-fearing and who then make of the faith something either outright poisonous or deathly shallow and empty. They all will receive their reward.

A final word on 'sacraments'

I think the best way to understand the 'sacraments' is this: prior to being regenerated by the Word and the Spirit ritual sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper) provide for the currently unregenerate a visual parable to teach them and keep them drawn towards Scripture (ideally).

After regeneration though ritual sacraments become vain matter. Regeneration itself is baptism of the Holy Spirit. What the Lord's Supper symbolizes is union with Christ which a regenerated Christian has in reality.

The unregenerate in the church (especially leadership) never want to think anybody is regenerate. So the regenerate Christians have to just silently grin and have understanding for them. While at the same time not allowing themselves to be drawn into dead ritual or an experience of the faith that is beneath them. (Intentionally chosen words there.)

Fear God, not man. Don't ever exalt man and ritual above the Word and the Spirit. (Man being cleric or scholar or anything else.) And don't succumb to those who demand that man and ritual be exalted over the Word and the Spirit. That is a point of difference that defines the battle-line in the spiritual world. A soldier of Christ - a true spiritual warrior - does not concede or play such games for *any* reason or justification or demand on the part of the currently unregenerate.

Dostoevsky, interesting

It's interesting (to me, anyway) that when you write a list of Dostoevsky's major novels, novellas, and stories there aren't that many.

About a baker's dozen:

The Double
Notes from Underground
Crime and Punishment
The Gambler
The Idiot
The Eternal Husband
The Possessed
The Brothers Karamazov
White Nights
A Nasty Story (also trans. as 'A Disgraceful Affair')
Bobok
A Gentle Creature (also trans. as 'The Meek One')
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Dostoevsky is interesting because he portrays the psychology a person who has developed into being able to see and value the Work (Fourth Way, Ouspensky) possesses. Experiences are similar. Alienation. Isolation. The insulted and humiliated. Embarrassment as a means and an end in development. One I love, the 'scandalous feast' or 'scandalous gathering' where the veil is lifted on the facade of societal unity and people are exposed and things get crazy. D. has these scenes in all his major novels. The love triangle (which doesn't need to involve consummated love). The figure of the 'dreamer.' The dreamer as idealist who wants to transform his squalid reality into something more noble, more lofty, more beautiful. It ends badly. Reality triumphs. Though the ideals are vindicated in various ways. Then, isolated consciousness has recognized its isolation. Love this quote from Notes from Underground: "...to tell long stories of how I defaulted on my life through moral corruption in a corner, through an insufficiency of milieu, through unaccustom to what is alive, and through vainglorious spite in the underground - is not interesting..." Another motif is the motif of the double, the lack of unity or oneness in a person. Obvious Work theme. Then, the General Law, depicted as the social nexus (the outer, collective world) that impinges upon the inner, personal world. These clash in the aforementioned 'scandalous feasts' or 'scandalous gatherings.'

In the above paragraph, in places, I have paraphrased Richard Pevear in his Intro to the Bantam Classics edition of The Eternal Husband.

I didn't mention one other theme because Pevear presented it as confused. The theme of separation from 'what is living' leads to violence towards what is living. What is confusing is Pevear doesn't say if 'what is living' is the isolated individual or the collective social milieu.

For us, Work types, we can see that there is an element of violence going on, and criminal behavior is always close. Perhaps a percentage of inmates of prisons are in very early stages of development (recurrence) and succumbed to violence. I always use to say: "Don't get yourself into a prison cell!" when talking about accumulating higher energy in early stages of development.

Dostoevsky and Homer

I was skimming through a biography of Dostoevsky (Joseph Frank wrote a definitive 5-volume bio of Dostoevsky which has been abridged to a one-volume edition), and came across a letter the then 19 year old D. wrote where he stated (I was going to jot it down but didn't) basically: Homer is at the level of Christ. The Iliad sums up the entire spiritual world of the old world as Christ sums it up for the new world.

Though his theology is a bit off, I found it interesting just from the angle that he really seemed to be influenced by Homer at a young age.

I was directed back to Dostoevsky because a new Reformed systematic theology, the first volume of one, was recently published (written by Douglas Kelly) where he quotes long passages of great literature to illustrate biblical truths. He quoted long passages from D.'s novel Demons (or the Possessed). D. had a lot of prophet in him. (Funny, Turgenev thought the religious aspect of Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's work was not appropriate for literary works. That's why they are who they are, and you are who you are, Turgenev. Dostoevsky thought Turgenev and Tolstoy were his main competition, for the record.)

But I was thinking if one wanted to get a complete download of Dostoevsky these seven works might do it:

Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
The Possessed
a volume of his great short works
A Writer's Diary (abridged to one volume)
Joseph Frank's biography of him (abridged to one volume)

On those Susan Wise Bauer histories

OK, when I very first recommended the Susan Wise Bauer books on world history I *did* say they have their limitations. I also said they *might* just seem like too much of a mere outline, and too focused solely on kings and caliphs and regimes and battles with no mention of culture and what everyday people were actually doing and so on. So I wasn't totally blind to their faults. Yet I have to say now those faults may out weigh the virtues and that the books maybe aren't worth acquiring.

I don't write this because she deleted my comment from her mommy blog. I've been suffering over that event, I admit, but I am able to be objective and render a now more informed opinion of her work apart from that treacherous act on her part. (For those who don't know me I am joking...)

Still, though, I think she's pretty valuable for getting the Medieval period in order in your mind (a difficult era to get straight in one's mind). It's just that a little goes a long way.

One problem with her book is the numerous sections on Chinese, Indian, and Korean history. It turns out there is a reason we don't read much Chinese, Indian, and Korean history. It's because *nothing is happening in Chinese, Indian, and Korean history.* Other than the usual. But once you read through a cycle or two of the usual then you've got the sense of it. It's like reading about animals and their territorial battles. Yet what Bauer does is over and over write out the same cycle as if she is intent on following her chronological outline no matter what. (Also, Korea translates and publishes all her books, so she obviously probably feels an obligation to really lay on the Korean history.) I mean, though, really, it's the same historical types and patterns and events played out over and over and over, and you don't have to recite them, names and dates and battles over and over and over. As you read through the book you really see how *much more interesting* western history is. You keep saying, "Go back to Charlemagne. Go back to the Byzantine empire. Go back to the Germanic kingdoms. Go back to the Vikings."

Her virtues I still proclaim. The perspective is still valuable. She's just a bit shallow. (That's another thing, she is a mommy involved in a thousand different family things, and you get no sense that she has experienced and digested what she is writing about, though she does have understanding of the time-line and players and geography and can deliver that which is actually very valuable for the Medieval period.)

For instance, though, she let on in her blog that she is just now listening to and appreciating Renaissance Mass (polyphony) as she is researching her next volume on the History of the Renaissance World. That's what I mean. She has a shallow understanding of these things.

I also noticed this here and there when she mentioned Christianity. She wrote something on the Puritans that exposed a severely shallow understanding of the Puritans. (Why she was mentioning Puritans in a book on the Medieval period I don't recall, but she did it.) It was like a popular myth understanding. That level. I wrote it off. But it was telling.

They're good books to skim. The first two volumes anyway. I'll probably acquire the third and fourth volumes too when they appear over the next several years.

I want to add, though... I don't want to discount the value in going through the entire time-line in the way - limited though it is - that she presents it. It needs to be filled in, yes; and the disappointing thing here is she is very much capable of filling in a story here, a well-chosen event there, a discussion of a central work of art as well, single things that capture a 'whole', just as she stated in the forward to her first volume where a good story tells us more than the usual encyclopedia article style of presentation. In fact, the fact that she is failing her own standard is probably due to her not focusing enough on the project and thinking she can do everything else at once and not sacrifice anything, which, getting back to the comment of mine she deleted, was exactly what I was implying, which is why she deleted it. I think she realizes she's falling short of the mark on this particular project. /ct

ps- I wrote all this in an email just to write it, but it's really for my PPP blog in case she or anyone she knows googles her name periodically to see what people are saying about her...

pps- One way to say the above is there are no set pieces in her presentation of history. It's almost like when she gets close to a set piece she backs off like she is saying: "Whoa, I'm not actually a real literary or inspired writer. Let's go back to reciting the bare outline..." I think she is a good enough writer, and inspired at that, to present some necessary set pieces. She's inspired in that she is capable of presenting history in a clear way, with understanding (arts and technology and such aside), and her approach of encapsulating a time and place in a well-chosen story rather than distant fact is a good and needed one, she is just not living up to her own approach. As her Medieval volume gets on into page 400 or so the droning "let's get this done", unfinished, hurried, outline aspect of it really comes to the forefront.

Shadows and wind over the landscape

If all the noise and nonsense that goes on among Christians on the internet seems empty and ridiculous and makes you think: what is the point, who here has a vision of eternity and death and sanctification and glorification and etc.?

What is going on is the particular emotional and intellectual things triggered by being in the mix of religion in general.

Yet, underneath it all (all the noise and nonsense) when a person is called and regenerated that is the main thing. That is a threshold that can't be fallen back through. Individuals are being called out of the world and into the Kingdom. They may not understand it all to the degree a person who buries themselves in theology and the Bible might, but that's not necessary.

There IS a spiritual war that takes place too, and that gets mixed in with it all (stoking the emotional fires and misfires and indulging in lower, pleasurable contention and debate and accusing and what not), but it is often real and necessary nevertheless.

Defending the pure and whole Word of God is necessary, for instance.

But the main thing is regeneration and the slow and steady developing of understanding and of faith. It goes on. And it goes on in time in ways we can't perceive. Recurrence, or living time. People who may not be called now may be in another part of their time. That kind of thing. Your own calling may play a role in that, by you somehow influencing others in your time, maybe not even directly, but in some way.

(Consult Tertullian on 'recurrence.' It's just a way to say that God can act in time in a way we can't perceive, because God is in eternity and above the linear, birth-to-death time of individuals. The Holy Spirit can apply regeneration to an individual at any point in the linear birth-to-death timeline of that individual's life. We can't see how that can be, yet with God all things are possible. God acts from eternity. This is not an argument for univeralism or second chance-ism, though I know some pugilists will insist it is, so be it. It's not the main point of this post.)

The main thing here is there's a simplicity to the faith that can be recovered. And built on. And the noise and nonsense isn't as destructive as it seems. It's just shadows and wind over the landscape. Christians are often looking for a worldly conformity (of church polity or ritual or whatever) which isn't the faith. The Kingdom of God exists foundationally here and now and is universal and the same for all who are called and regenerated into it. The noise and nonsense doesn't effect it...

Something funny

The historian I have been recommending so annoyingly deleted my only comment I ever left at her blog.

Yes, Susan Wise Bauer didn't like something in my comment. I'll explain.

She has what is called a 'mommy blog'. "Just dropped the kids off for soccer, then I'll have to clean that playroom, also I want to try that new recipe, oh, and have to get my clothes together for a two day trip to New York for a publisher's meeting, plus I have to read 17 volumes on Renaissance era northern Italian kingdoms and finish my third draft of the manuscript..."

OK, mommy blog plus her writing a world history.

The thing is: mommy's are very tuned in to the voice of the stranger. They hear that 'stranger voice' and they gather the cubs together and go into defend mode.

It's common on Christian blogs run by women.

It's also what makes churches so ridiculous. Same thing going on. They're family centers, so strangers are very unwanted. And, of course, real Christians are *strangers* in this world (like Jesus was, who had things to say about family, remember?). That's not just a chance correlation of words.

So, I have the 'stranger' in my voice. I've said before, I'd go on Christian forums and just say 'hello' and I'd get the same reaction. They hear the 'vibe'. It doesn't matter what you say. My comment she deleted was about as innocuous as could be. It was like one sentence about how she seems to have so much going on at the same time. But the subject matter itself is not why she deleted. It was the sound she could discern in it of the 'stranger.'

I usually don't go near mommy blogs (or churches), now I've learned that lesson again.

Who is Reformed? what is Reformed?

A lot of asinine discussion on this subject of who is Reformed and who isn't, and what is Reformed and what isn't. Here is the answer:

Reformed means you don't exalt man and ritual above the Word and the Spirit.

Period.

End of discussion.

Regeneration is the main thing. Once an individual is regenerated by the Word and the Spirit they are beyond the grasp of the world and of man and of cleric and of ritual and of the Beast in all its manifestations.

And once regenerated a person will gravitate towards on-the-mark biblical doctrine, derived from the Bible itself. And they will actually value it, as they also actually value the Word of God, received, not constructed by scholars.

The Reformation was not about 'correct' ecclesiology or 'correct' "sacramentology". As for biblical doctrine (five solas, doctrines of grace, Covenant of Redemption, Works, Grace, Federal Theology) that exists whether one is regenerate or not. It's there to be accepted and valued once an individual is able to accept it and value it.

The Reformation was about freeing the actual Word of God and hence enabling the potential of individuals to be regenerated by the Word and the Spirit. The Reformation was about *not exalting man and ritual over the Word and the Spirit.*

Anybody who says differently is a shallow, unregenerate churchian, and if they are setting themselves up as teachers of Christians they have the stench of hellfire on them.