Today’s Wondermark! made me think of 2K, so I thought I’d share. Don’t forget to hover the mouse over the comic for the extra punchline in the mouseover text…
Obviously, that’s not a Christian Realtor’s Office, or they’d have a more sanctified sign.
Alan Jacobs speculates on what it means (or doesn’t, as the case may be) to be a conservative:
I am not and never have been a Republican. I feel roughly as alienated from that party as I do from the Democratic Party. I hold a number of political views that strong-minded Republicans typically find appalling: I think racism is one of the greatest problems in American society today; I am not convinced that austerity programs are helpful in addressing our economic condition; I am absolutely convinced that what many Republicans call free-market capitalism is in fact crony capitalism, calculated to favor the extremely wealthy and immensely powerful multinational corporations; I think that for all of the flaws of Obamacare, it was at least an attempt to solve a drastically unjust and often morally corrupt network of medical care in this country; I dislike military adventurism, and believe that our various attempts at nation-building over the past decade were miscalculated from the outset.
So is there any sense in which I might plausibly be called a conservative? I don’t really know; I’ll leave that to others to decide. It doesn’t really matter to me whether I fit into any pre-existing political or intellectual categories. I can only say this: that I do have three overarching political commitments (or beliefs, or convictions) that are more important to me than any others.
The first is that I strive to be a consistently pro-life Christian. I am aware that many people believe that the whole notion of a “consistent pro-life ethic” is a way for liberal Christians to minimize the evil of abortion by wrapping it in a whole series of other issues, and that may well be true for many, but I do believe that there is such a thing as a consistently pro-life position and that that position involves an absolute commitment to the unborn and also to the weak, the sick, the elderly, the mentally ill, and all the others who find themselves at the margins of our society, generally unloved and uncared for. My models in this quest are the Cappadocian fathers of the Church.
One might hope that in trying to describe what a conservative is that something like the pro-life movement, that signature set of social politics in the late 2oth century which acts as a hinge to distinguish conservatives from the rest of the world, would deserve the sort of healthy skepticism Jacobs affords hyper-capitalistic economics and expansive militarism.
Some are trying to connect the dots between Calvinism and the formation of our rights-heavy republic. The project seems shaky, given how Calvin himself wasn’t particularly wild about notions of civil rebellion and disobedience. But there might be something to be said for how Calvinism bears on what it means to be conservative when it comes to a movement that tends to exalt that highest good provisional life affords, life itself, and portrays the unborn as angelic cherubim. Calvinism says that human beings are conceived in sin and that we are born children of wrath (Heidelberg Catechism QA 7).
It could be that another test of conservatism is to take the same measure of exception to “an absolute commitment to the unborn” as to the sweeping allegiance to something like nation-building and fat-cat capitalism. It may be more reflective of a modern tendency to exalt youth over age to such an extent that that segment of the human population is said to be deserving (insert Calvinist squirm) of a zealous and absolutist protection that other segments of the human population simply aren’t. Conservative Calvinists know that death is a reality. Sometimes people die, and that as a result of disease, age, violence, and even public policy. This isn’t at all to undermine the virtues of pro-lifery, namely that the strong and powerful have a duty to look out for their weak and powerless neighbors, but it is to wonder why there isn’t more effort on the parts of those who conceive themselves as conservative to moderate at least the rhetoric or dial down absolutist claims about life. And if it’s the Bible we want to bring to bear on the public square and conversation then Jesus’ words in Luke 14 about the cost of discipleship might have just as much, if not more to say about life as Psalm 134:
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Yes sir, yes sir, three posts full! (and probably more)
The OPC is a bit of a black sheep of a denomination, so I guess it should be no surprise it would have some Woolley, but I had never heard of him, probably because he didn’t publish much (book-wise). But in the opening article of Confident of Better Things, John Muether introduces this too-little known, but very important character Paul Woolley, who was right there alongside Machen in the Independent Missions Board, filling all sorts of roles at Westminster Seminary, in addition to teaching every historical subject for years.
One of the two books that Woolley did publish was called The Significance of J. Gresham Machen Today (whence the title of Muether’s article, “The Significance of Paul Woolley Today”, which by the way can be found online, I guess as a preview of the book, which by the way is pretty cheap as books go). This will be the first of a series of at least three quotes from this article, relevant to this blog’s focus on 2K and confessionalism.
After his retirement from full time teaching at Westminster in 1972, Woolley wrote The Significance of J. Gresham Machen Today. As slim as this book was (a mere eighty-four pages), it was a timely response to some unfounded rumors. Machen, Woolley felt, suffered from a bad press, and he was zealous to correct the record about particular episodes in Machen’s life. One surrounded the Machen family’s alleged involvement in illegal liquor traffic. Machen himself was puzzled by the constant rumor that his family’s fortune was secured from the liquor trade, and he searched his father’s investments thoroughly on the matter. A variant of this story, that spread even to the classrooms of Harvard Divinity School, had to do with a distillery that was located somewhere in the basement of Westminster’s original campus on Pine Street in Philadelphia.
However fanciful, the origin of these tales lay in Machen’s conviction that the church should not engage in political acts. When the New Brunswick Presbytery of the PCUSA debated a resolution to support the Volstead Amendment, Machen spoke out strongly against the resolution. From that point on, Machen was dismissed as a “wet” by liberals and even by some fundamentalists, both of whom were eager to promote the cause of Prohibition.
Since this nugget was quoted in none of the responses to DGH’s response to the response to the response to the…, I thought it would be good fodder for a discussion here in the ‘house. From DVD’s Nth level response (I add my own emphasis, and I leave in place footnotes linked to the original article)…
I believe it is crucial to make a basic distinction between, on the one hand, natural law itself as an aspect of God’s objective natural revelation and, on the other hand, the subjective response to natural law on the part of sinful human beings. As objective revelation, natural law is sufficient for the purposes for which God gives it. The same is true for all divine revelation: whether special or natural, God’s revelation is sufficient for the purposes for which he gave it and insufficient for other purposes. One purpose of natural law, I think we’d all agree, is to hold all people accountable before God’s judgment for their violations of his moral law. This is explicit in Romans 1 and implicit in many other biblical texts, such as Amos 1. This means that the substance of the moral law is revealed in natural law; otherwise, many people could stand before God’s judgment and legitimately claim excuse for their sins. Therefore, natural law must objectively reveal sufficient moral knowledge for a human being to live a blameless life in the present world. But immediately one must add that, subjectively speaking, no sinner could possibly respond to this revelation blamelessly. Natural law reveals God’s perfect law but does not convey the ability to respond without sin. Fallen sinners distort the truths that they know through natural revelation, as Romans 1 also teaches. So in response to McIlhenny’s questions regarding an advantage for Christians: Christians do not have, objectively, an information-advantage with respect to the moral law; Scripture reveals the same substance of the moral law that natural law reveals.[4] But Christians may be said to have a moral advantage in that Scripture clarifies many aspects of natural revelation for our dull minds and in that Christians’ sanctified hearts should be less prone to distort natural revelation.[5]
It’s hard enough to advocate for a form of educational delivery many in our conservative Reformed environs deem as unwise at best and satanic at worst–have you ever noticed how the Reformed talk about secular education the way Fundamentalists talk about beer? Harder still is it when that form of education is serving up mediocrity and its own applications of worldviewry. Which is why it is so refreshing to stumble upon this sort of thing.
It is important for the functioning of civil society that Christians along with everyone else are part of their community. That means that Christians are not expected to be different for the sake of being different. Christians are meant to be good neighbours – to participate in community activities, join in with local customs, play their part in their local society, to the fullest extent possible. While this world is never going to be a comfortable stay for pilgrims whose home is above, Christians still have a responsibility to be good friends, neighbours, and citizens in their local contexts. Society itself is not evil, and our non-Christian neighbours are not people to be feared or distrusted or kept at arm’s length. Standing aloof and refusing to be involved in what everyone else regards as a perfectly normal part of life, especially if you’re transmitting overtones that your children are too good or otherwise too special to mix with the rabble, is hardly conducive to good relationships in your community.
It’s a fairly popular way of theorizing against Islam, namely that to be a good Muslim one must also embrace violence. But, loathe as I am to admit, it may be that NRA logic is onto something. Maybe books don’t kill people, people do. To quell my unease at giving gunnie culture props, I will here borrow from the Van Tillians and suggest that the NRA is just stealing Calvinist capital.
But this Calvinist is pleased to borrow from a secular Jew on what’s wrong with the Bad Book theory:
I’m just saying that there are perfectly logical arguments that can be made that completely reverse the Christian apologetic claim that because Jesus preached non-violence and Muhammad (like Moses) led an army, therefore Christian civilization is inherently less-violent than Muslim (or Jewish?) civilization. Obviously, if you’re a Christian, you’ll find a Christian apologetic argument congenial. But that doesn’t mean it has analytical value.
For that matter, the United States was founded by genocidal racist slave-trading colonialists. Does that mean the Constitution is essentially and irredeemably racist? Isn’t that where the “bad book” theory logically leads?
In light of the recent dust-up that Darrell Todd (“Scoop”) Maurina’s hit piece has created (again, again, again, and again.But wait, there’s more), an Outhouse correspondent has reached back into the archives and requested something get re-posted. As if Old Life didn’t already cover it. And as if some of us haven’t been yawning for some years at Scoop’s cyber tirades. But far be it from us not to honor a request. There are many hyperventilating charges that get leveled at two-kingdom theology and its proponents. One of the most popular is dubbed public square antinomianism or some variation thereof. The idea, evidently, is that 2kers are Reformed Dispensationalists who are reluctant to break out the polish for the rails of the sinking ship, which tends to simply be code for, “So you take a pass on protesting abortion clinics? Well, take this.” Continue reading
