The State of the Union According to Tolkien

[Updated  2/11/11]  

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;

Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution

To summarize the recent State of the Union Address Jan. 25, 2011 by the President of the United States of America to a joint session of Congress is not difficult. It was already stated over fifty years ago on the opening pages to J.R.R.Tolkein's classic trilogy, the Lord of the Rings:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie

In other  words, to translate the latest Saruman speak and WashingtonDC.orc talk: More Big Government as the Savior of all our  Economic Woes and American Sorrows. 

And, of course, upon delivery of this august address, there was great rejoicing all through the House of Congress and the Cable TV Studios. Implicitly it was understood that the Great Ogre of Unemployment with his Hordes of Underemployment would not dare to show their faces within the city limits of  the national version of Mordor on the Potomac. (Likewise faint hearts should not fear, Nationalsozialistische HealthCare for all will still be enforced freely and rationed  as prudently and carefully as every case may require.)  Neither did anyone have the unmitigated gall to interrupt and insist that someone was a liar as has happened in the past, regardless if lies, half truths or inaccuracies prevailed.

Yet as others have asked, is there any constitutional mandate for what was presented as the resolution of the problems that are facing the nation? But to ask is to answer, you silly goose. Perish the thought. May it never be.

Twin Siamese Parties

Still the real problem with all this, is not how does one go about electing a new president, or a new congress, but rather how does one elect a new electorate to replace the old electorate who voted for the incumbents. The same,  who largely, the Tea Party not excepted, promise more of the same old same old that got us here in the first place.  In case we haven't figured it out yet,  what was pretty much a  Republican version of a Stalinist personality cult preceded this administration's version  -  of  the exact same thing. Neither is it mentioned in polite society or  acknowledged by the  corporate bought and paid  for media,  but the two political parties in America are actually Siamese twins.

Socialist Parties
Tweedledum and Tweedledee   may be separate entities for tax purposes,  but by and large, they are still both firmly  rooted in the trunk  of  the Dire Necessity of More Big Government  Management/Control of the Economy -  whether indirect, through corporate collusions and  cartels (fascism) or direct, through  actual ownership of business, i.e. Government Motors (communism). In other words, whether direct or indirect, government control of the  economy is  of the  essence and definition of socialism, however it escapes the talking heads. Ben Gleck can't understand that Social Security is a socialist program, however much that Jon Stewart  Leibowitz might chide him about it on the Daily Show because at the least, both of them are really in  favor of the fascist version of socialism,  with respective emphases  on either warfare or welfare. But it's all ice cream, regardless of the flavor.

Of Pimps, Prostitutes and Primadonnas: The PCA and the Federal Vision

(updated 1/31/11)

A Report from the Friends of the First Amendment Society
As the Federal Vision more and more is starting to resemble a theological gong show, no doubt the Larger Catechism on the Ninth Commandment will be permanently drug (sic) out of cold storage and "hurt feelings" will be the de facto response to anything resembling plain and blunt speech, which in its turn will be labeled intemperate "hatespeech" and consequently dismissed via Geo. Orwell's memory hole. Even those who oppose the FV run the risk of being sucked in, as the following items might indicate.

Likewise, the title above has already transgressed the thin red line for the discerning reader, but we takes our chances in these days of declining literacy, theological or otherwise. That Scripture itself refers to heresy, idolatry or apostasy in terms of whoring around is, of course, completely beyond the pale of modern moderate calvinism and the finer sort of tea parties to which brazen faced women are seldom invited. But to continue.

The Green Hobbit Society
Over at the Green Baggins website, there was a discussion, entitled Misdirected Apology?, concerning what passes for an apology by Mr. J Meyers to the Missouri Presbytery (MOP) of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). This,  regarding his previous utterances, public and private as per  the Federal Vision theology currently perturbing the modern P&R churches - which incidentally, MOP absolved him of all connection  -   in that the PCA, along with the majority of other N. American P&R churches (NAPARC), has declared the FV to be off limits.

Nevertheless Mr. Meyers in 2007 signed the Joint Federal Vision Statement,   which makes for a prima facie case that Prov. 30:20 contains the substance of Mr. Meyers's apology, if it does not contain, at the very least, a wholesale, full scale repudiation of the JFVS - which it did not:

Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.

Likewise any discussion or critique of that same apology is misdirected/mistaken if it fails to aknowledge the obvious. To put it very mildly. Which is pretty much what happened at Bilbo's blog.

Partners in Crime/Band of Brethren
Of Meyers's  PCA brethren,  Messrs. Wilkins, Leithart and Horne, who also signed the JFVS, Wilkins of  Louisiana Presbytery and his congregation has since fled - surprise, surprise - PCA jurisdiction in Jan. 2008 for the safe haven of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) to escape - what else? -  censure for his FV theology. Peter Leithart, though a member of  Pacific NW Presbytery of the PCA, serves a CREC church in Moscow, Idaho and is currently facing charges in the same presbytery after the PCA's Standing Judicial Commission  directed the PacNW  to re-examine Mr. Leithart's views. (As below, we think a standing judicial commission more pragmatic than presbyterian.)

Only Mark Horne, also of Missouri Presbytery  and formerly an assistant pastor at  Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, MO.  where Jeff Meyers serves as senior pastor, is not under process.  To his credit Mr. Horne has pulled many of his provocative comments from his website defending J. Meyers and others, but that could also be from a heightened sense of self preservation kicking into gear. Of the high profile FV personalities of interest in the PCA, he is the last on the official  (JFVS)  list. (As Mr. Horne undoubtedly knows –  ominous drum roll here – "first they came for. . . .")

Plainly and Simply Crazy

Further Remarks on Frank Schaeffer’s
Impatience with Fundamentalism and 
Infatuation with Mysticism
Due to Studied Ignorance of the  Protestant Reformation

While this is not a complete book review,  just an examination of the Prologue  which can be read for free on the internet,  to Frank Schaeffer's latest book, some things are still a dead giveaway. Schaeffer still tells us what he thinks as  bluntly as he used to in the old days when, as “Frankie”, an angry young evangelical, he wrote A Time for Anger, The Myth of Neutrality in 1982.

Yet for those who appreciated his father, the well known Christian pastor, theologian, philosopher  and best selling author Francis Schaeffer, even as separate and apart  from his  political activism with Frank in getting the Religious Right started and Reagan elected in 1980, these have not been happy days since Francis died in 1984.   Among other things, Frank ended up joining the Greek Orthodox Church in 1990. 

 

Unfortunately that means when he is not voting for or playing the Byzantine sycophant to Barack Obama - see for example his Open Letters to the Republican "traitors"   and the President -   he’s been busy castigating both his parents  and his past involvement with   the Religious Right. Ergo his book  Crazy for God : How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (2007).

Patience with God
Now however, in his latest title of 2009,    Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), while Frank is beyond being crazy for God,  he’s still crazy -  as in irrational. (But that’s  OK because it’s part of being both religious and experience oriented according to Frank.) His latest tells us of his irritation with and  rejection of both evangelical and the secular “New Atheism” fundamentalism as opposed to his fascination with Kierkegaard’s philosophical existentialism, if not again Eastern Orthodoxy, which always hovers in the background.

In other words, his thesis is that these two mysticisms, philosophical and theological  thoroughly refute  the various contemporary fundamentalisms, religious or otherwise. Uncertainty, paradox and experience are the ultimate truths that rebut those who arrogantly claim to know different  ultimate truths. While this makes for a  bizarre and eclectic  melange of a substitute for those same evangelical fundamentalist  certainties, it comes at the expense of the genuine Reformation alternative. Hence the following.

Mr. Schaeffer is either genuinely ignorant of,  if not that he deliberatively chooses to ignore, Biblical Christianity,  at least  as it was understood and confessed at the Protestant Reformation in the Reformed Faith by the Presbyterian and Reformed churches in concocting his rebuttal of fundamentalism. Of course, Mr. Schaeffer is entitled to his opinion on these matters; that is beyond question. That his arguments are new, of substance and persuasive is an entirely different matter. Consequently an examination and critique of both  evangelical fundamentalism on the one hand and existentialism and Eastern Orthodoxy on the other is in order, as below and  in contrast to Mr. Schaeffer's evasion of the orthodox and Biblical solution to the issues he raises.

8/10/01 A Reply to Credenda Agenda

Leithart, Schlissel, Wilson  and Hal Lindsey  versus the Westminster Assembly, Ursinus, O.T. Allis, R.L. Dabney and John Knox 

[Something else grubbed up from the archives and  formatted for the web, in light of Mr. Schlissel's latest confusion on the RPW.]

Letter to the Editor
Credenda Agenda
Mr. Doug Wilson
August 10, 2001

Dear Sir,

In order to forestall any incipient prelacy in the New World order, Moscow, Idaho style, the Credenda Agenda, if not its good Editor, need to stop hem-hawing around and clarify its position on worship. Specifically this means explicitly affirming the historic reformed exposition of the Second Commandment commonly known as the Regulative Principle of Worship (the RPW hereafter): "Whatsoever is not commanded in Scripture is forbidden in the worship of God."

6/25/01 A Reply to Messiah's Update on the Four R's:

Romanism, Reconstructionism, the RPW and Rom. 3

1/11/10
As was alluded to in the previous on Mr. Schlissel's latest, been there, done that  is the short hand response. Of course, shortly after the old letter below  was mailed, our active and congenial acquaintance with the mailing list for Messiah's Community Church Update ceased and desisted.

Along with worship issues, the  influence of N.T. Wright's covenantal nomism can also  be seen developing in Mr. Schlissel's gloss of Rom. 3 as not applying to the Jews, at least not as totally depraved according to the classic view of reformed theology and the confessions. The gospel is all about the covenant or ethics or ecclesiology; not justification, how a man might be right with God. Now of course the Federal Vision  is in full blossom; Schlissel, Wilson, Jordan, Lusk, Barach and Wilkins all came out of the closet at the Auburn Avenue Pastors' Conferences beginning in 2002.

June 25, 2001
Messiah’s Update
2662 East 24th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11235

Dear Mr. Schlissel

A few comments regarding past Updates that the generosity of Messiah’s has deposited in our mailbox.

If we are going to insist that Romanists are in the covenant but unfaithful to its terms, informing them of those terms includes informing them that Rome has apostatized from the covenant. Funny how that got left out of the April 2001 letter. And if we’re going to quote Calvin in the first place, go on to include his concluding remarks in the same chapter. “But, on the other hand, because those marks, which we ought chiefly to regard in this controversy, are obliterated, I affirm, that the form of the legitimate Church is not to be found either in any one of their congregations, or in the body at large (Inst. IV:2:12).” The differences between Rome and Protestantism were worth dying for at the Reformation. And still are.

In A Theological Daze And Confusion About Days of Thanksgiving:

Or More Befuddlements, Old and New on Reformed Worship from the Rev. S. Schlissel
[updated 1/31/10]

There are any number of things that can be said about Steven Schlissel’s two and a half page pastoral letter “Thanksgiving Reflections” posted Dec. 1, ‘09 at his Just Another Blog in the Wheel site as anybody might have guessed that is familiar with his point of view. Schlissel's latest not only opposes the historic doctrine of reformed worship, otherwise known as the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW), but is also in favor of celebrating the annual national Day of Thanksgiving in America as it is now observed.

Worse than his disagreement with the RPW though, is that he still cannot - or will not - define it properly. He  continues to restrict the RPW to only what is explicitly commanded in Scripture  and denies that there are any commands implied as  good and necessary consequences of the approved examples of  worship in the Bible.

Schlissel's Misrepresentation Develops into Judaizing
But that is not enough nor is Mr. Schlissel content to rest on his laurels in only repeating himself. His suppression of the truth about the RPW, only leads to his  further expression of error in arguing  for Thanksgiving on the basis  of the Old Testament ceremonial  feastdays.  But this is to turn the whole idea of an example of approved worship in Scripture inside out and on its head. Unfortunately Mr. Schlissel appears to be entirely clueless that these OT holydays are completely  abolished in the NT as categorically fulfilled in Christ. Neither the days themselves or  any post NT Christian imitations are permissable.

Addendum on the Free Offer

[revised 2/22/09]
As per the previous post, what is at issue in the disagreement over the free offer of the gospel, is whether God "desires" the salvation of the reprobate in any other than a preceptive sense. In other words, if God really desired all men to repent and believe in Christ, it would be a done deal. What God desires must come to pass, for God has no unfulfilled desires or intentions. But such is not the case. So what is the explanation? While it pleases God that men repent and believe the gospel, his secret will or decree is not that the salvation of all men comes to pass. Nevertheless the gospel is to be preached -offered- to all men and salvation promised to all who believe on Christ. 

The Free Offer of the Gospel - Dr. William Young

[While the OPC Minority Report on Songs in Worship (1946) written by John Murray and Wm. Young advocating psalmody is well known in P&R circles, what might not be so well known is that Wm. Young also wrote the OPC Minority Report on the Free Offer of the Gospel (1948) to Murray and Stonehouse's OPC Majority Report, both found here. What follows below is a further analysis and critique of the free offer theology  by William Young according to the OPC Majority Report (updated 1/11/09).]

The Free Offer of the Gospel

In some Calvinistic circles there is an identification of the free offer of the gospel with an alleged desire that all who are called externally should be saved. Those who fail to find Scripture warrant for such a claim are sometimes regarded as denying the gospel offer and even the gospel itself. It should be pointed out that there are ambiguities in the claim itself. 

The "War Against Christmas" on Thursday, December 25, 1551 in Geneva

In a day when both the West and Christianity are under attack in various ways and under various guises, such as multi-culturalism or political correctness, it might be well to remember, that all that glitters is not gold. In other words, not all that passes for Christianity is exactly that. We think this applies to what some call "The War Against Christmas" in certain conservative, nominally Christian or even evangelical circles. To that end, an excerpt from a sermon preached on Micah 5:7-14 by the great Reformer of Geneva, John Calvin on December 25th, 1551.

. . . Now I see here today more people than I am accustomed to having at the sermon. Why is that? It is Christmas day. And who told you this? You poor beasts. That is a fitting euphemism for all of you who have come here today to honor Noel. Did you think you would be honoring God? Consider what sort of obedience to God your coming displays. In your mind, you are celebrating a holiday for God, or turning today into one. But so much for that. In truth, as you have often been admonished, it is good to set aside one day out of the year in which we are reminded of all the good that has occurred because of Christ's birth in the world, and in which we hear the story of his birth retold, which will be done Sunday. But if you think that Jesus Christ was born today, you are as crazed as wild beasts. For when you elevate one day alone for the purpose of worshiping God, you have just turned it into an idol. True, you insist that you have done so for the honor of God, but is more for the honor of the Devil. 

The WCF Into the 21st Century:

But Not Without Confusion on the Regulative Principle of Worship, Psalmody and Musical Accompaniment.
(From a Dec. 2005 review revised, corrected and updated through 2/1/09)

A Long Overdue Review in Part 
of:
The Westminster Confession of Faith in the 21st Century, Essays in Remembrance of the 350th Anniversary of the Westminster Assembly,
Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, (Vol. 1, 2003, 443 pages), Vol. 2, 2004, 540 pages.

This symposium on the Westminster Confession of Faith flows from the 350th anniversary of the 1643 Assembly at Westminster Abbey. While the actual lectures given at that commemoration in 1994 are perhaps better known (See To Enjoy and Glorify God, BoT, 1994), the introduction to the WCF in the 21st Century (WCF21) tells us that the purpose of the essays enclosed is to inform, challenge, evaluate and commend the Assembly and its theology to today’s church (p.x), a most (note) worthy goal. While not outstanding, on the whole the two volumes are worthwhile. Particularly in the second volume, the focus of this review, Ryken on the pastoral ministry of Oliver Bowles, the oldest member of the Assembly and J.L. Duncan, the series editor, on the consensus between Calvin and the Westminster Assembly regarding the Lord’s Supper are good efforts. (Unfortunately the proposed translation of Bowles’ Puritan classic on the pastoral ministry, A Treatise on the Evangelical Pastor is on hold.)

Drs. Kelly and Needham
That said, the essays by Drs. Kelly and Needham on the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW) - the good and necessary consequences of the Second Commandment as confessed in the reformed catechisms and creeds - and its application to the singing of psalms and musical instruments in worship, fall short of the mark and leave much to be desired, if not that their shortcomings should corrected in the planned third volume. Of the two, Needham’s is by far the longest, if not the centerpiece of all the essays in WCF21 at 116 pages with the next closest in length being Fesko’s 50 pages on Calvin, the Confession and supra/infralapsarianism, while Kelly's at 36 pages is seventh of fourteen articles and about average in length.

General Error and Negligence

Whatever their respective lengths though, the general error of Kelly and Needham is a twofold negligence of the primary sources and the secondary literature.