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Normal Now Extreme and Dangerous
Extremism
In the first year of living back in Indiana, my wife and I tried fried chicken at two regional, renowned restaurants. When I say that, get in your mind very homey places like Wagner’s Village Diner in the small town of Oldenburg. It won the James Beard award in 2023 for its chicken. Why do these restaurants do better than others? They are extremists, compared to others. Each goes to far reaches to prepare the best chicken.
In reading through the Bible again, today I read in 2 Chronicles, where my schedule has me. In 2 Chronicles, Solomon builds the temple and at the dedication he offered God 22,000 oxen and 20,000 sheep. I was thinking, “That’s extreme. . . . in a very good way.”
Where I left off in my Bible reading today in 2 Chronicles 15, it says in verses 15-16:
15 And all Judah rejoiced at the oath: for they had sworn with all their heart, and sought him with their whole desire; and he was found of them: and the LORD gave them rest round about. 16 And also concerning Maachah the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove: and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burnt it at the brook Kidron.
Today most people would call that extreme. Yet, it’s what God wanted — what should be normal behavior, but isn’t.
Extremism, a Pejorative
What is extremism anyways? Like when someone such as Mark Ward calls a godly individual an extremist and dangerous? Extreme compared to what?
In general, when someone calls someone extreme, he means it as a pejorative, a personal shot, probably implying some craziness to the person. However, Christianity has so declined, what was once normal is now extreme. Regular preaching of the gospel in our community, I’ve found, is extreme where I live in the Bible belt. For sure, it was extreme in California.
I attended public elementary school. My fifth grade teacher had a paddle hanging from his wall. He regularly swatted students for bad behavior. Now no public schools do that. Our Christian school was the last one to use corporeal punishment in California, a state of almost 40 million people. It’s considered extreme.
A “Balanced Approach”
One of Mark Ward’s favorites, Mark Minnick, preaches that ladies must wear head coverings in church. In 2015, he did an eight part series on it and is a favorite in “the head covering movement.” Is that practice extreme? Really, what Ward expects for non-extremism is something he wrote in support of fundamentalism in the MarchApril2017 of the FBFI magazine:
I am not willing to say that all Christians who listen to contemporary styles of Christian music are living in active, conscious rebellion against God. I do not believe that every Christian whose church has a praise band, a drum set, and tattooed worship leaders that I must abandon to Satan a la 1 Corinthians 5.
1 Corinthians 5, I agree, isn’t the best passage to use for separation over false worship, that is, offering the thrice holy God fleshly and worldly music as worship. He could use 2 Thessalonians 3, 1 Timothy 6:3-6, or 2 Timothy 2:20-22, because among other places that church violates Romans 12:1-2, 1 Peter 2:5, and 1 John 2:15-17 among other places. I know though. What I now believe and practice, men like Ward call an extreme form of separation. Expect more rock bands in church with the association of Mark Ward and others. It’s too extreme now to stand up against that like his alma mater once did. Now they take, what their newest president calls, a “balanced approach.”
Anyone who isn’t “balanced” is now extreme. Balanced means that you look at the “extremes” and find the sweet spot in the middle. The Bible doesn’t teach that. Interestingly, it’s only one extreme that gets most of the attention even from evangelicals such as Ward, who slides further from even a former fundamentalist mooring.
Jesus the Extremist and Danger to Religious Society
Jesus, while on earth, told people these things:
Matthew 5:19, “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Luke 14:26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
Matthew 22:37, “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”
Mark 9:42, “And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.”
So much of the Bible is extreme compared to what people teach or say today. Jesus was considered an extremist by the religious people of his day.
When someone is dangerous, I believe Mark Ward means that he’s leading someone astray from the truth into something harmful. Nothing is more harmful for someone than eternal damnation. Thomas Ross mentioned how that Ward works for Logos Bible Software as a “ministry.” Logos publishes “Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, theologically modernist, and other damnable heresy.”
Ross is exactly right. Apparently Ward sees those groups as part of “the church” that Logos equips to grow (his words). They get silence, while those propagating and protecting faith in the perfect preservation of scripture receive reproach. This manifests the priority of keeping together ungodly coalitions instead of the truth. To use KJV terminology, making money off a false gospel is “greedy of filthy lucre.”
The Divine Expectation
Jesus in His culture was an extremist and dangerous. He was dangerous to the religious leaders. He threatened their popularity with the people and brought potential wrath of the Roman Empire. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus provided the Divine expectation of every “jot and tittle” of His Word. The Pharisees diminished the Divine standard so they could attempt to keep it on their own. Jesus illustrated the paucity of the Pharisaical approach in Matthew 5 and 6. It wasn’t just the keeping of God’s Word, but also the internal attitude and motive. You could murder someone by hating him in the heart and treating him with contempt.
I’m sure Ward would agree with the above verses from Jesus: their practice in real life though, extreme and dangerous. This is not believing what Jesus and the Apostles said. The author of Hebrews writes in 13:13: “Let us go forth therefore unto him [the Lord Jesus] without the camp, bearing his reproach.” I invite others to go forth unto Jesus without the camp and bear the reproach of “extremism” and “dangerous.” Return to normal and stand against the decline of true, biblical Christianity. While those reproaching double down on their reproach, remain steadfast in God’s will for the cause of Christ.
THE MOOD IS NOT THE PROBLEM IN MOSCOW, IDAHO (part three)
Tucker Interview
After already publishing parts one and two in this series, Tucker Carlson teased an interview with Douglas Wilson. This is a boon for he and his brand. Immediately Wilson wrote a post to welcome the Tucker audience with links to his numerous ventures. This gives even greater importance to exposure of Wilson. The content of the Tucker trailer also dovetails closely with this series, because Wilson mentions the gospel.
Wilson surprised me with his representation of Christian nationalism (another still ongoing series here, here, and here). It differed from his norm (see my part three). He gave no hope for Christian nationalism in the United States, except through gospel preaching. In many expositions of Christian nationalism, I don’t remember his saying that. Maybe I missed it. Postmillennialists and theonomist-types like Wilson, who envision their bringing in a physical kingdom on earth, don’t usually convey utter hopelessness remedied only by hot gospel preaching.
Perhaps the whole interview (presently behind the Tucker paywall) will reveal more. Wilson sounded good about the gospel, but he left out infant sprinkling and child communion, something he mixes with the gospel. Shouldn’t he urge Tucker’s audience also to sprinkle its infants? It’s important in his vision of Christian nationalism.
Roman Catholicism
Not Sola Scriptura
Roman Catholicism passed down infant sprinkling among many other scriptural perversions. It condemned maybe as many people to Hell as any false doctrine. Protestants continued in a system of false interpretation and doctrine, albeit better than Roman Catholicism, yet still misleading.
Protestants point to the Latin, sola scriptura, scripture alone, as their heritage. Yet, tradition still guides much of Protestantism. Infant baptism isn’t scripture alone and this challenges the Protestant embrace of sola scriptura. Keeping significant aspects of Roman Catholicism, Protestants also point back to the Catholic fathers as theirs too. Wilson has pieced together a patchwork of belief and practice that required the beginning of a new denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). Jesse Nigro in The North American Anglican writes in his analysis of Wilson:
[H]is trajectory has led him into the broader pool of “Reformed Catholicism” that Anglicans occupy.
Catholic Church
Nigro was praising Wilson. Protestants fork off the Roman Catholic line or trajectory, not in the succession of New Testament Christianity or true churches, separate from the state church, since Christ. Roman Catholicism and its stepchild Protestantism resembles little the belief and practice of the church of the New Testament. Scott Aniol writes in his review of Wilson’s book, Mere Christendom::
I am aware that Wilson’s church recognizes Roman Catholic baptisms and welcomes them to the Lord’s Table, but this Baptist considers Roman Catholicism a false religion.
In his book, Reformed Is Not Enough, Wilson wrote (pp. 73-74):
The visible church is also Catholic in an earthly sense, meaning that it is no longer confined to one nation, as it was before under the law. The visible Church is composed of anyone in the world who professes (biblically) to believe in the Christian faith. When they make this profession by means of baptism their children are attached with them. The visible church is to be understood as the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Church is the household of God, and outside of this Church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
Baptism and Salvation
Later in his section on sacerdotalism, he writes:
Baptism and salvation are not mechanically or magically linked. But in the ordinary course of life, they are linked, and we are to speak of them as though they are.
Furthermore, Wilson writes (p. 111):
By means of baptism, baptism with water, grace and salvation are conferred on the elect.
Paedocommunion
Wilson and Child Communion
In addition to the heretical practice of infant sprinkling, Wilson endorses and practices child communion, inviting the toddlers to the bread and the cup. Wilson writes:
At the very center of the strong family emphasis that you will find in our churches, you will also find our practice of communing our children at the Lord’s Table. This is unusual in Protestant churches, and in some places it is even controversial. . . . [I]n our churches, the Lord’s Table is not protected with a profession of faith; the Lord’s Table is regarded as a profession of faith.
What do Wilson and others imply by children partaking of the Lord’s Supper? They can partake worthily because they have repented, believed, and received forgiveness of sins. Children who cannot believe, do not have the capacity to do so, are said to make a profession of faith through the Lord’s Table. However, the Lord’s Table is a table of examination. A man examines himself and then eats the bread and drinks the cup.
The Wickedness of Child Communion
1 Corinthians 11:27-28 say:
27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
So much contradicts clear scripture and biblical teaching with participation of children in the Lord’s Table. Wilson argues that paedocommunion follows paedobaptism, when he writes:
[T]he apostle Paul compares the entire congregation to one loaf of bread (1 Cor. 10:17). And it is our conviction that all who are bread should get bread.
This is a typical turn-of-phrase or rhetorical flourish intended to persuade in some doctrinal or practical position. Wilson sounds interesting, but he’s false. His teaching confuses the gospel. It brings God’s judgment down on unworthy partakers of the table. Finally, it corrupts the true nature of the church. One can truly say that paedocommunion is false worship. It is not an act of faith in God, but man-ordained, human innovation.
The Church Fathers Are NotThe Church Fathers (Part Four)
If the church fathers are not the church fathers, then who are the church fathers? Can we even know? If we know, then how do we know who they are? If the church fathers are not the church fathers, how did that occur, that they became the church fathers?
Two Possible Paths or Trajectories — One True and the Other False
The history of the church takes one of two possible paths or one of two possible trajectories. One route says the true or right path is a very broad one that travels through Roman Catholicism, then Eastern Orthodoxy, after that the Protestant Reformation, and then it splinters into many different denominations and even cults. This first possible way has offered or given a state church or state churches, religious wars, allegorical interpretation, inquisitions, popes, mysticism, layers of lies, and the Dark Ages.
The other way, a very different and straight one, moves to and through the cross of Jesus Christ, yes, a trail of blood, the suffering church, a persecuted church. It travels always separate of and in contrast with a state church. It is known by different names: On April 8, 1860, C. H. Spurgeon in a sermon at the New Park Street Chapel in London said these words:
Remember your forefathers, not merely your Christian forefathers, but those who are your progenitors in the faith as Baptists. . . . Think of the snows of the Alps, and call to mind the Waldenses, and the Albigenses, your great forerunners.
He continued:
Your whole pedigree, from the beginning to the end, is stained with blood. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been made to suffer the violence of men.
Identifying the True Church and Its Fathers in History
The Suffering Church
After the completion of the New Testament, the earliest history of true churches traces to the persecution of the Roman Empire. This divided the true from the false and sped along the false, the above first and broad path. John T. Christian writes of the separating principles for a pure church in the first paragraph of the third chapter of his The History of Baptists:
Step by step some of the churches turned aside from the old paths and sought out many inventions. Discipline became lax and persons of influence were permitted to follow a course of life which would not have been tolerated under the old discipline. . . . The dogma of baptismal regeneration was early accepted by many and men sought to have their sins washed away in water rather than in the blood of Christ. Ministers became ambitious for power and trampled upon the independence of the churches. The churches conformed to the customs of the world and the pleasures of society.
Earlier in chapter one he wrote:
[I]n every age since Jesus and the apostles there have been companies of believers, churches who have substantially held to the principles of the New Testament as now proclaimed by the Baptists.
Versus Pseudo History
He explains why there is little historical evidence for this true line of churches to begin his second chapter:
The period of the ancient churches AD 100-325 is much obscured. Much of the material has been lost. Much of it that remains has been interpolated by Mediæval Popish writers and translators and all of it has been involved in much controversy. Caution must therefore be observed.
John T. Christian explains the first and false line of history. It was one perpetuated and protected by Roman Catholicism. The Roman Catholic Church made sure that it kept its own pseudo history as an authority for its own existence.
Perpetuity of True Churches
The basis of belief in the perpetuity of the true church with the true gospel are the promises of God. He would preserve His churches. God also promised to preserve His Word and His Words, which He did. And those are the basis for identifying the true church and for a true evaluation of history. Jesus promised in Matthew 16:18:
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The Lord in His Word also promises that only some will depart from the faith (1 Timothy 4:1), not all. Not until the total apostasy prophesied by the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2 will true churches disappear. Based upon those presuppositions, believers look at history. In company with the promises of scripture, enough evidence exists in history of the line of those true churches.
Baptists Through History Known by Different Names
Berlin Hisel in his Baptist History Notebook writes:
Baptists have been known by many different names in the past. They have been called by the name of the place in which they lived. They have been called by the name of the powerful leader among them. In was not until the time of the Reformation that they were called “Baptists.” If time stands, we may be called by another name.
John T. Christian writes:
The first protest in the way of separation from the growing corruptions of the times was the movement of the Montanist churches. This Montanus, the leader, was a Phrygian, who arose about the year A.D. 156. The most distinguished advocate of Montanism was Tertullian who espoused and defended their views.
A good online account of the Montanists as an early sample and explanation of Baptists, even against modern enemies, is the one by Berlin Hisel.
The Church Fathers
Then the Novations, the Donatists, the Cathari, the Paulicians, the Petrobrusians, the Waldensians, the Albigenses, and the Anabaptists among others bridge the historical gaps to form the line of a true church separate from a state church. Much historical evidence exists for a true church since Christ known by different names. The line of churches led to the Baptist churches. It is the History of the Baptists. Those are the church fathers and not the others, who are very often called “the church fathers,” but are not.
God and the Bible Are Dispensational (Part Three)
The Bible did not come in one neat tidy package. God delivered it progressively through men over a period of 1500 years during history in real time, even using forty different men as human authors. As God revealed scripture, it did not come with a separate interpretive handbook and glossary for defining terms. He expected and presumes people will get it through plain reading.
As God imparted scripture through inspiration, people understood who were hearing in that day. The Old Testament audience did not need the New Testament to ascertain the writings. When He delivered more, past writings become better understood in a fuller way, bringing even greater knowledge of God’s message.
God’s Word has one meaning, yet many applications. People knew the meaning as God revealed scripture. He required the original audience to believe and practice what He wrote.
Satanic Attack on Dispensationalism
From the very beginning, Satan directly and then through the world system attacks scripture in several ways. He does this in one key manner by corrupting the meaning of God’s Word. Satan twists and also confuses the meaning. He does not want people to know with certainty what God says. Change of meaning abolishes or invalidates the authority of scripture.
Satan wants people to think and act in a different way than what God said. He does this in an incremental fashion, where people drift or move further away from scripture. The doctrine and practice of the Bible changed over the centuries through a modification of its meaning. By changing its meaning, it becomes at first a slightly different book and finally a very different one. This fulfills what Satan wants, but also satisfies the innate rebellion of man.
Changes in the meaning of the Bible relate to contemporary events and movements in history. Rather than adapting to what God said, people conform what God said to their desires or will. In a plain reading of the New Testament, churches were autonomous assemblies under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ through His Words. Satan and his system attacked them in vigorous and violent fashion.
Individual churches were vulnerable to fear of the fierce opposition of the Roman Empire. This disposed them toward reorganization favoring extra ecclesiastical hierarchy. Many moved toward greater cooperation and confederation. Prominent churches took on more dominance and authority for their leaders.
Philosophies of Men
In Colossians 2:8 Paul warns against philosophies. The New Testament addresses various heresies arising from human philosophy. Preserved early Christian writings trace the invasion of extra-scriptural thinking into the church. Doctrine and practice changed through intertwining neoplatonic philosophy with scripture. The church became something bigger than local.
The church at Rome at the center of the Roman Empire took on enormous prominence. Emperor Constantine I gave Christianity legal status in the Empire with the Edict of Milan in 313AD. When Constantine became the sole emperor of the Roman Empire in 324, Christianity became its official religion. Christianity became a state church for the Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380AD. This is the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Empire was Catholic or Universal, so its state church became Catholic too.
Allegorization and Spiritualization
For a true church, local only, to become universal, allegorization or spiritualization of scripture must occur. This developed over three centuries with a unique influence, it seems, from a theologian, Origen of Alexandria. This allowed for modification of meaning to allow change in doctrine and practice. About a hundred years after Origen, Augustine further systematized allegorization of scripture, now known as covenantal theology. The Bible could become a vessel in which to pour ones own doctrine and practice by allegorizing it.
Allegorization or spiritualization gives a lot of leeway with interpretation, making it highly subjective. Someone can read what he wants into the text of scripture. This affects the authority of the Bible.
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was led by men raised as staunch Roman Catholics. They reformed Roman Catholic doctrine, however, still preserving much allegorization and spiritualization. More than Augustine, they composed a hybrid of allegorical and literal interpretation, now still referred as covenant theology. The immediate spiritual offspring of the Protestant Reformers further systematized an approach to the interpretation of scripture. Their system of interpretation justified a state church, something not seen in the Bible. They could find it by spiritualizing the church.
Amillennialism
In the main, the church could become an actual kingdom through spiritualization, a view of the future called amillennialism. The theologians of Roman Catholicism removed the distinctions by unifying Israel and the church. The church replaced Israel. They adapted the Old Testament prophecies of Israel and the kingdom for fulfillment in the church. Instead of a future fulfillment of the New Testament prophecy of Revelation, they spiritualized it as fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD.
Liberal theology easily proceeded from amillennialism. Liberals take the same approach even further, making almost everything in the Bible to mean what they want. They see now and in the future a spiritualized kingdom, a progressive social order. Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, and the gospel all take on their own meaning, most often related to advocacy of social issues. Modernism dovetailed easily and nicely from covenant theology.
Growing In and Out of Favor
Even though God and the Bible are dispensational, dispensationalism grew out of favor in mainstream teaching. In recent times, institutionalized theology portrays dispensationalism as of recent origin, arising with Darby in the 19th Century. Premillennialism, a literal interpretation of Christ’s kingdom, traces to the first century with the apostles. However, believers responded to covenant theology with a systematization of a literal interpretation of scripture in the 19th century. The Protestant system of covenant theology itself is of historically recent composition.
I contend that the rising popularity of covenant theology above dispensationalism traces to its allure to human pride. Men ascertain from God’s writings their secret meaning. This allows for a wide variety of contradictory belief and practice. Men like it when they’re free to do what they want, justified by what “God said.”
More to Come
Righteous: Declared in Romans 4:17 and Made In Romans 5:19
“Justification” is a scriptural term, one used very often, but not as much as the term, “salvation.” When someone is justified, he is saved, but that doesn’t explain his entire salvation. It’s the first part of salvation. When someone is justified, he is said to be “declared righteous.” That is the language of justification. John Owen wrote in 1797:
[I]t is the righteousness of Christ, and not our own, on account of which we receive the pardon of sin; acceptance with God; are declared righteous, and have a title to the heavenly inheritance.
For the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, unto a person in himself ungodly unto his justification, or that he may be acquitted, absolved, and declared righteous, is built on such foundations, and proceedeth on such principles of righteousness, wisdom, and sovereignty, as have no place among the actions of men, nor can have so, as shall afterwards be declared.
I readily allow that there is a very great agreement between justification and pardon, in their efficient, impulsive, and procuring causes, in their objects, or subjects, in their commencement, and manner of completion: the same God that pardons the sins of his people, justifies them, or accounts them righteous; the same grace, which moved him to the one, moved him to the other; as the blood of Christ was shed for the remission of sins, so by it are we justified; all who are justified are pardoned; and all who are pardoned, are justified, and that, at one and the same time; both these acts are finished at once, simul & semel, and are not carried on in a gradual and progressive way, as sanctification. But all this does not prove them to be one and the same, for though they agree in these things, in others they differ; for justification is a pronouncing a person righteous according to law, as though he had never sinned; not so pardon: it is one thing for a man to be tried by law, cast, and condemned, and then receive the king’s pardon; and another thing to he tried by the law, and, by it, to be found and declared righteous, as though he had not sinned against it.
Divines generally make justification to consist in the remission of sins, and in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness; which some make different parts; others say, they are not two integrating parts of justification, or acts numerically and really distinct, but only one act respecting two different terms, a quo & ad quem; just as by one, and the same act, darkness is expelled from the air, and light is introduced into it; so by one, and the same act of justification, the sinner is absolved from guilt, and pronounced righteous.
DECLARED RIGHTEOUS
(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even] God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.
22 And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. 23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
Although the sinner is justified by the justice of Christ, inasmuch as the Redeemer has merited for him the grace of justification (causa meritoria), nevertheless he is formally justified and made holy by his own personal justice and holiness (causa formalis), just as a philosopher by his own inherent learning becomes a scholar, not, however, by any exterior imputation of the wisdom of God (Trent, Sess. VI, can. x). To this idea of inherent holiness which theologians call sanctifying grace are we safely conducted by the words of Holy Writ. To prove this we may remark [on] the word justificare.
Our word justification (from the Latin justificare composed of justus and facere, and therefore meaning “to make righteous”), just as the Holland rechtvaardigmaking, is apt to give the impression that justification denotes a change that is brought about in man, which is not the case. In the use of the English word the danger is not so great, because the people in general do not understand its derivation, and in the Holland language the danger may be averted by employing the related words rechtvaardigen and rechtvaardiging.
MADE RIGHTEOUS
For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
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