A Couple Correctives
Re: A Christian Take on Conspiracy Thought, I must offer a corrective. Having lived 70 years, I know, based on what my Mom, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother taught me, thunder is not evidence of the devil beating his wife. When it’s raining while the sun is shining at the same time, THAT is when you know the devil is beating his wife. QED!David
David, thanks. Where are fact checkers when you need them?
The phrase “devil beating his wife” is a great Southern phrase, but it refers to that weather phenomenon when it’s simultaneously raining while the sun is shining. Some folks call it a sunshower. Though your use of it for analogy holds, it doesn’t actually indicate thunder or lightning . . . just rain under a bright sun.Andy
Andy, yeah, well. I already knew that. See above.
Ogden Still
While you are probably weary of the continual “Reformed X” controversies of late, I think there is something you could clarify at the personal level that would be immensely helpful to many bystanders.
You noted with Webbon, Ogden, etc. that if they kept on their current course they would be “moving away from us.” It might be worthwhile to explain exactly what that phrase entails—I’ve seen people taking it to mean everything from a mere note of differing ideological commitments to “All Moscow is declaring you a heretic and enemy; we’re going to do our best to cancel you.” If folks “move away” then what? And who is “us”?
When you differ with admitted Christians over, say, the Jewry issue, how far are you assuming the separation goes? Are you admitting that you have legitimate differences of interpretation but much else from these men is solid and worth people’s time? No more conferences together? Never retweeting them again? Actively warning against their ministries if people ask you? Declaring them heretics?
You’ve got a significant amount of online evangelical clout these days. What principles guide how you use it? You’ve explicitly disavowed “NEOTR” as a poor pastoral practice, so what are your associational guidelines (particularly since you are not the Internet’s pastor)? It might be helpful to differentiate how you see the difference between a conference speaker vs. an NSA Disputatio speaker, as well, since some have accused you of hypocrisy there.
Hope that’s helpful!Goodeguy
Goodeguy, great question. “Moving apart” did not refer to a flame war, or attempts to cancel anybody, or anything like that. It meant that we would no longer be doing things jointly. We would no longer have our men appear on their podcasts, or speak at their conferences, things like that. Conferences would be places where the attendees would be justified in assuming a great deal of commonality, whereas we could have an atheist speak at Disputatio . . . after which he would be challenged.
Thank you for posting the Ogden timeline in your controversies. I love both sides and it is painful to watch.
The Ogden crew modeled their church, school and publishing after Moscow. They have positively referenced you many times in podcasts, clearly read and listen to a ton of Moscow productions, and defended you and the Moscow mood a little over a year ago.
Two things struck me when reading your timeline:
You make it a point to say that you have only listened to one Ogden production and only because your daughters were discussed, and in regards to their latest podcast regarding you, “I haven’t listened to the Ogden response, and I don’t intend to.” This is a sharp contrast to how they view your words.
By your own telling, you broke an apparent ceasefire and agreement to work things out privately by posting Laced with Poo when they didn’t respond adequately to your concerns for 2 days . . . which encompassed Christmas Eve and Christmas. Further, the post could’ve been about Holden and his content alone and not mentioned who shared it, and still accomplished the goal of opposing the bad video clip.
It is hard to conclude that you had any intent to build up the Ogden group or care about them at all. It seems more like you (or your friends?) deemed them upstarts to be brought into total conformity or cut off. I think this is both unloving and a grave mistake. You don’t have an apparent in-house successor, and in my experience with men 30 and under they are listening to Ogden more than Moscow. Ogden are the brothers closest to your beliefs who will be carrying on the fight when you lay down your pen and keyboard.
Please, extend the olive branch again, exhorting them as brothers, and build them up.Christopher
Christopher, the Santa thing in the Holden Christmas video was such a monstrosity that it should have only taken five minutes to correct. So the problem was not that we think they are “upstarts.” We would be more than willing to extend an olive branch (again). But when we gather together, they insist on bringing company that we are not willing to be associated with at all.
Where Dank Right Reviling Goes
It’s worth noting that the individuals who have attracted said sketchy anons built their platforms originally by “calling out” feminists and statist evangelicals. They didn’t stand out because they preached a hot gospel, they stood out because they punched back at the bullies. But since they attracted their audience with their fists, they now have to keep the fists out—and like all other perversions it needs to get weirder to keep their crowd coming back. I’m bummed, they did create really good content for a while . . . But the desire to protect the personal lynch mob they’ve created is a massive problem. Weirdly enough they became just like the enemy in that way: using a crowd of completely rabid, emotion-driven pagans to bully anybody that “calls them out.”
It would probably be wise for them to consider what might happen when they tick off their own crazies.HF
HF, thank you. And yes.
A Couple of Antisemitism Letters
I just finished “American Milk & Honey.” I think this book proves you have been able to read the stitches on the fastball regarding this issue for quite some time. What has boiled over in our lap as of late has been simmering for a while. Thank you for your diligence, and praise God.
Some of the rhetoric coming from the folks at Calvary Chapel when I was leaving for reformed pastures was that Calvinists are Replacement Theologians and that this is a bad thing because it leads to antisemitism. You bring up supersessionism in the book and differentiate between soft and hard supersessionism. A Google AI search of replacement theology states supersessionism is another name for replacement theology. Is supersessionism replacement theology? Could [this] be interpreted of hard supersessionism but not the soft brand of it? Or is hard supersessionism and replacement theology something different altogether? If supersessionism and replacement theology are not the same, do I smell a conspiracy theory cooking between Big Eva and Google AI painting all reformed Christians as antisemites? ;<)Ryan
Ryan, I think that generally speaking, replacement theology and supersessionism are names for the same thing. All supersessionists believe that the Church is Israel now. But I remind my hard supersessionist friends about Chesterton’s fence. A futurists understanding of the prophecy of Romans 11 really was a good preventative against antisemitism. If you decide that this understanding is wrong (which would be wrong, but work with me), a responsible hard supersessionist would replace that Chestertonian fence with something else that did the same thing. Because a lot of the resurgent antisemites are appealing to the preterist understanding of Romans 11 . . .
Could you name any other authors, books, or other written materials that give the same definition of antisemitism which you give in American Milk and Honey? Your definition is unique, and I’ve never heard it before.
Thank you!Chris
Chris, sorry I can’t. I didn’t think I was doing anything unique. That was just my summary of my reading over all.
On Conspiracy
On conspiracy theories . . .
Before I mention a few quick observations, I must say I really appreciated this post. It’s altogether too easy to forget that God in Heaven laughs at the machinations of men. He directs the hearts of kings. He knows the end from the beginning. He preserves His elect. Parsing through the fact of conspiracies with a level head is a good skill to build.
Gregor Sebba’s quote is fantastic—a perfect corollary for the superstitious nature of many conspiracy theorists.
The Clinton crime family (and the Biden crime family, and the Pelosi crime family, and etc., etc.) all will come to nothing, just as many before them. The tension we Christians have to deal with on a daily basis is an echo of David’s oft-stated complaint—how long, O Lord, will the wicked go unpunished?
Thanks for the insightful post.Andy
Andy, thanks.
In re: A Christian Take On Conspiracy Thought
Doug, as I read your description of the reductionist man and superstitious man, I waited in vain for a tie-in to the Fox and Bardia characters from Lewis’ Till We Have Faces! The contrast between them seems to mirror exactly what you’re drawing out here, and would (I suppose) leave Psyche as the biblically-minded one who can see what’s truly going on. Lewis, as always, seems to have gotten there first (I kid).
Thank you for your ministry.Hartson
Hartson, thank you. That would have been a good thing to do, had I only thought of it.
Re: Conspiracy and Personalism
Pull Quote: “. . . God’s people are instructed not to worry themselves about it. Secular and unbelieving conspiracies are a very real thing in the world, but they will all of them coming crashing down. The believer does not deny the existence of such conspiracies, but he should deny the possibility of their ultimate success.”
I’d love for you to say more (perhaps in another post . . . or better yet, a book) about how we balance “worrying about it” with a Christian duty to truth-seeking. My presupposition here is that one of the means God uses to bring down such conspiracies is having things brought into the daylight. And I am also supposing here that Christians should be a part of this work.
So then, how do we judge which conspiracies to truly let roll off our backs and give no mental energy to, and which we should do our part to understand and expose for what they are? You choose to engage with some (COVIDenialsm, Election fraud, etc…) but don’t bother with others. Could you share some principles that guide both your allocation of attention?
Blessings!Joe
Joe, yes. It is good thing when dirty deeds are exposed. What I would appeal to here would be the principles of justice as laid out in A Justice Primer. The principles would include independent corroboration, reliability of witnesses, who has the burden of proof, and so on. On issues like this, I would also include things like worldview assumptions.
Western Civ Recommendations?
I’m curious if you have any recommendations on meaty books digging into the history of Western civilization. I’m currently reading Kuyper’s lectures on Calvinism and I’m intrigued by his historical analysis. It’s got my appetite going for some other works tracing the development of the West over the millennia. Any suggestions?J
J, why don’t you start with Christopher Dawson?
A Vaccine Blast from the Past
Your blog post “And Now a Brief Word on Vaccines” from 2/4/2015 seems to have aged very badly in light of COVID and the 2020 lockdowns.
“If a person has decided personal convictions about the contagious disease he is carrying, the society in which he lives has an equal right to have decided and contrary convictions about that same contagious disease he has. And if there is an outbreak of such a disease, and the government quarantines everyone who is not vaccinated, requiring them to stay at home, the name for this is prudence, not tyranny.”
Do you have any comment on this?
PS—I greatly appreciate your work. Not trying to troll. The above quote just seems to be exactly what happened in 2020.Kyle
Kyle, yes, that was phrased poorly, and I would reject that now. I still believe the government has the right to quarantine those who actually have the disease. And in my defense, that was written before our public health officials proved themselves to be 14 carat liars.
Works in Translation
I would like to thank you for your work, which is very edifying. I would also like to suggest that you translate your work to a Spanish site. There is a great need for excellent and reformed teaching in Latin America. I greet you from Uruguay, and I pray for your ministry. In Christ,Pedro
Pedro, thanks. Check in with Canon Press—a number of works are starting to become available in translation.
Lewis and the Reformation
I am enjoying The Light Behind the Sun. But I would make two criticisms.
First, I think Lewis was closer to being an Annihilationist than you do. In The Problem of Pain he writes (on pp. 114-115):
“I notice that Our Lord, while stressing the terror of hell with unsparing severity usually emphasizes the idea not of duration but of finality. Consignment to the destroying fire is usually treated as the end of the story—not as the beginning of a new story. That the lost soul is eternally fixed in its diabolical attitude we cannot doubt: but whether this eternal fixity implies endless duration—or duration at all- we cannot say.”
Second, on p. 115 he writes:
“Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity.”
I don’t see how anyone could write the last sentence and be regarded as Reformed in any sense of the word.
I welcome your response,John
John, thanks. If the only thing we had was The Problem of Pain, I would agree with you. But I think you need to set it alongside Screwtape, and The Great Divorce, and The Last Battle. And with regard to free will (about which he said some unreliable things), he also once said that “in whatever sense the Pauline doctrine is true [e.g. predestination], it can’t be true in a way that excludes its apparent opposite.” But in my view, he does understand the broad outlines of sovereignty. I don’t believe he reconciles those views with man’s freedom properly though.
Thanks?
Doug Lil Buddy . You ain’t doin’ too bad . I discovered you in the last year or so and I’m impressed . There’s a need and a shortage of humble , diligent , thoughtful Christians . Keep going . Churchill cabled Roosevelt in the days after the Torch landings : ” O k , full blast ” .
Sincerely ,Dereck
Dereck, thank you. I think.
Is Calvinism the Culprit?
On page 53-54 of “After Virtue” by Alasdair MacIntyre, the author says that Calvin viewed that man’s power of reason was destroyed by the fall of man; Aristotelian ethical reasoning would only be possible if Adam had remained innocent. The spread of this view started the collapse of our society’s ability for ethical reasoning. The collapse ultimately led to the emotivist society we live in where we all pick the conclusions we prefer and justify them after the fact, meaning our moral disagreements are interminable.
I hope the author would agree with my summary of him. I find this interpretation of history concerning. Is Calvinism incompatible with Aristotelian ethics? Did it play a role in the collapse of our society’s moral reasoning?Justin
Justin, even on its own terms, this reasoning doesn’t hold together. First, Calvinism doesn’t teach that man’s reason was “destroyed” by the fall, but rather that it was affected by the fall, and contaminated by it. Second, this meant that we needed to rely on God to reveal the way of salvation to us—we couldn’t figure it out for ourselves. And third, Calvinism taught that everything we do apart from God is contaminated and untrustworthy, including anything like “picking the conclusions we prefer.” So no, Calvinism is not the culprit here.
Female Chaplains?
Do you think it is appropriate for women to serve as (military) chaplains? Why or why not?
Thanks for your time!Joseph
Joseph, no, I do not. Chaplains, when they are doing their job properly, are functioning as pastors. And Scripture prohibits women pastors (1 Tim. 2:12).
Big Game Hunting?
What is your stance on hunting, specifically big-game hunting in places like Africa? Is it all wrong? All ok? Only ok if you eat the meat?
Please just take a shot at it…
Thanks.Caleb
Caleb, I don’t see any scriptural principle that would prohibit trophy hunting. But with that said, I would have to add that I don’t see the appeal of it.
Guarding Family Reputations
I have learned so much about Christian living from you and your family’s work. I remember being quite stunned when I read in one of the Wilson books that parents should keep all of their children’s struggles and shortcomings “in-house,” so to speak. It always bothered me when my parents told embarrassing stories about me in casual conversation or for a laugh. I have tried not to follow in their footsteps this way.
However, within the family, do you have any guidelines for how honest parents should be? I am thinking specifically of telling the next generation their family history. In my family, there are some nasty stories and insinuations about various people, both living and deceased, and I cannot be sure that my children won’t eventually hear some unpleasant things from other family members.CL
CL, I think there is a difference between airing dirty laundry, and doing the laundry. I think it is right and proper for you to be equipping your kids for what they are likely to encounter. If some gnarly family history is part of that, then I think you need to equip them.
As it regards trophy hunting, I think there are a few things from Scripture that should give a Christian pause and cause them to carefully weigh their conscience. The animals were “interviewed” in Eden as candidates for Adam’s companionship; harmony between man and beast is part of God’s design for the new creation; we were only given license to eat animals due the inevitability of human evil. I don’t think these facts warrant prohibition on trophy hunting, but they at least warrant an aversion to callousness about it.
There are several reasons why trophy hunting is good and should be fully supported by Christians. The first is that we are put on this earth to care for it. It is a modern environmentalist lie that nature, left on its own, finds an equilibrium. Animals both prey and predator will over populate the available resources. This tends towards huge pendulum swings in populations which can end in a species going extinct. Human management of animal populations is essential to a healthy environment. Another reason trophy hunting is good is because it gives the animals value to the locals. In… Read more »
There is nothing scripturally or otherwise wrong about trophy hunting. The push against hunting, especially trophy hunting, came from the progressives promoting a false narrative. There are two basic views of game management. The first is the European model where the land owner owns the game and is responsible for managing his property and the game. The second is the US model where the state owns the game and manages it both on public and private land. The European model works extremely well and the American model leads to boom and bust cycles along with various disease such as chronic… Read more »
Hunting is more regulated in Europe than it is in the U.S., whoever is deemed to own the wildlife.
“Stronger, healthy herds of game allow hunters to harvest delicious, all natural meats for their families.”. Sure, when that is what they are doing. Harvesting game is a bit different concept than trophy hunting. I do prefer someone trophy hunting with the benefit of game populations being kept in check over the idea of government doing it at public expense, however I wouldn’t want to kill anything solely so that I could hang it’s head on the wall.
John, very few trophy hunters are only hunting for the trophy and not also the meat. Even legal “trophy” hunts in Africa the meat is used to feed the people nearby. It has gotten to the point that the “trophy hunting” label means nothing, it’s an emotionally charged phrase that few can actually define and when they do they find that virtually nobody is participating in the practice as they understand it.
JSM and Ted gave some additional points for you. One of my friends was able to shoot an elephant with really nice tusks. He asked the professional hunter what would become of the remainder of the elephant. He was told, the hide would be tanned and turned into leather goods, the feet would be made into stools, the bones would be sold and ground into fertilizer, the hair would be made into jewelry. The meat kept two villages fed for several days. Trophy hunting is lots more than hanging a head on the wall. The lots more also includes the… Read more »