“…what the greatest threat of all is—even a bigger threat than the Nazis; even a bigger threat than the communists—is radical, fundamental Islam.”

-Cal Thomas

By the way, John Immel has touched upon this subject in an article he wrote at spiritualtyranny.com, as well.  I highly recommend you read it.  And of course, I highly recommend you read all of John’s articles.

Last week The Wartburg Watch posted a sermon by Cal Thomas, famous Journalist and past member of the Moral Majority.  This was in place of the usual preaching by Wade Burleson…who, as any regular reader here knows is a favorite subject and target of this blog as of late.

Now, let me emphasize again this: I continue to respect Wade for interacting here on unreformingtheology.com; and I mean this in no way facetiously when I say that Wade is still a class act in my mind by putting his arguments, ideas, and positions out in the open, playing the “away” team, knowing full well that they will be eviscerated by a nobody like me–someone who unabashedly declares that his Pure Reason will subordinate their mystic “wisdom” any day or time.  But I understand that I criticize Wade’s doctrine and beliefs (or what I believe them to be) in the strictest and frankest of terms, and will continue to do so; and this is why I prefer to continue to repeat myself in stating how much I admire him on other—meaning, not doctrinal—levels.

Anyway, this article is the first in a series on Cal Thomas’s sermon, which, frankly, I found egregious and terrifying.  It confirmed many of my suspicions regarding just what horror show we can expect to be in for should the Calvinist autocracy ever get its iron (maiden) fists on the reigns of civil government.  We need to be very afraid of this kind of thinking; for the assumptions in Cal’s sermon—the ideas he flings about, with his nonchalant air of divine “wisdom” and monopolized “truth”, as if these ideas were just as obvious and natural and efficacious to beauty and wholesomeness as a blue jay in the sky or an apple pie on porch—concerning the nature of humanity; particularly the non-Christian, should cause any man or woman who believes this country does and should stand for the freedom of the individual…well, it should at least cause them a heart palpitation or two.

Folks, let me be blunt:  we need to reject reformed Protestantism and all its creeds and confessions and start brand, fresh anew (something Paul Dohse is trying tirelessly to accomplish…I don’t envy him his task).  All of it needs to be thrown into the fire; the drawing board erased; the blueprints wrapped around rocks and tossed indifferently into the ocean.  It is an evil doctrine.  It will kill people as freely as any ideology has killed before if its “authority” moves from the pulpit to the infantry.  The baptized will become the bombed if the Priest becomes the Provost Marshal.

I don’t know how many articles I will do on the sermon.  It will depend on how I feel…my posts, as you might have noticed, tend to run the gambit of ideas.  I envision at least one more, but I’m mulling over determinism again, thanks to a couple of commenters over at Wartburg continuing to argue, as proof of their divine and absolute “truth”, that what has not happened can still somehow exist to be “known”.

Yeah.  They still push that one.  Er…how can “nothing” be known?

The answer…oh, yes the wonderfully Platonist scientific notion of “natural law”.  That’s how. More bullshit from the nerds who were good at math in high school.  Whose inability to dress in a manner that didn’t bring a beating like a worm brought a fish…whose poor luck with girls, even the homely ones, was only emotionally buffered by their superior ability with the theoretically abstract…whose disregard for religion and philosophy as sources of truth in favor of a more “empirical” method, but which is derived from the exact same philosophical assumptions as most of the metaphysics they claim to be defunct, is never considered hypocritical in their eyes.  Whose school of thought brought perhaps THE greatest METAphysical equation of all time: E=MCsquared.

That got you, didn’t it?

Have your attention?

Oh yes…enter the metaphysics of Einstein.  Well, when you finally realize that energy is nothing more than a theoretical place-holder, you get…ta da!  A very, very fine metaphysical TRUTH!  More later.

Back to our article.

Within the first minute or two of Cal’s sermon, he offers this little bit of subjective insight:

“…what the greatest threat of all is—even a bigger threat than the Nazis; even a bigger threat than the communists—is radical, fundamental Islam.”

-Cal Thomas

Ho hum.  Fairly innocuous start to a sermon…kind of obvious on some, superficial level.  But it isn’t what they say, it is the context from which it proceedeth.  And the context is: Emmanuel Baptist Church.  Protestant.  Reformed.  And I would submit, unashamedly Calvinist in its doctrinal roots.  (Cal Thomas’s full name is John Calvin Thomas…I’m just saying.) Believers of the theological and intellectual embarrassment of Total Depravity.

Enter my cry of “hypocrite“!

I submit that the radical Islamist and the committed Calvinist hold to the exact same metaphysical assumptions.  This is what this short article will deal with.  Now, I am NOT saying they behave the same way…yet.  What I am saying is that all behavior which man engages in as a function of his religion begins with basic assumptions man makes about who HE is versus who GOD is.  And IF the root assumption is that God is more valuable than man as a function of his LIFE…meaning, that God’s life is worth more than man purely because man is man and God is God, then this puts man on a metaphysical plane that can only…and I mean only, at the end of the day, when the sword is pulled from the fire and cooled to steely hardness by the simmering and hissing water, lead to this truth:  the only way man can be at peace with his Maker is to die.  And I mean literally. Dead in the individual self of the mind, or dead in individual self of the body.  Because for this assumption to be truth—that man’s life is less valuable than God’s, then in order for God to truly be good, he must purge all that is not Himself from utter existence. (For what fellowship hath light with darkness?)  This results eventually and inexorably in two kinds of death:  the spiritual/emotional/psychological death of a human being who has utterly given himself (herself), his mind and his property over to the abstract neo-Marxist collective known as the “church”, or the “body of believers”; and the physical death of those who refuse to comply.

Both radical Islam and Calvinism are fatalistic/deterministic, and both believe that the only way to deal with the un-elect or those who dare to define truth for themselves, beyond the purview and beyond the scornful and watchful eye of the religion’s priests, is to compel them by FORCE.  Both make FIRST appeals to the authority of God and never human reason nor individual human context, and by extension His “church”; and since a church is merely a collectivist abstraction, and since, as John Immel rightly points out (an obvious point which somehow people miss constantly), God is not here giving orders in person, it must fall to someone, some PERSON to enforce TRUTH on all of those recidivists and recalcitrant stick-necked barbarians whose sole purpose in life, according to doctrine (sin nature; total depravity; limited atonement) is to get in God’s way, lead the “elect” to hell (which is of course impossible by the very nature of the doctrine, but…hey, the priests need to pretend like what they do actually effects something, otherwise, why pay them).  And so, in a religion which, as the cornerstone of its metaphysical truth is the idea that man IS the problem of evil, and can do no good thing unless God (i.e. the ecclesiastical “authority”) does it FOR him, what is the natural outcome of a natural born killer like reformation theology?  Right.  It is killing.  It is death.

So, in light of this fact…the fact that any destruction of humanity is by doctrinal definition in keeping with God’s sovereign will and perfect moral GOOD (not one molecule is out of God’s “control”), added to the fact that God’s existence is infinitely more moral and important than man’s, added to the fact that God has given only a select group of mystics the “grace to perceive”, and the “power of the Keys”—which is merely the power of destruction per capricious volition;  added to the fact that truth is utterly beyond the senses of mankind to grasp any true knowledge unless God has specifically imparted it, and even so, it is NOT then the mystic “person” which knows truth, but God through him, and so when the mystic enforces truth by any means he wants in service, of course, to “shepherding” the herd and “preaching the word” he is acting as God, and thus can never be held accountable for death or destruction because…well,  He is in the “place of God”.  And God is accountable to no man; to no idea; to no justice or morality or mercy save Himself.

And added to this the very idea of divine “calling” of leadership within the epistemological construct of truth-beyond-humankind must mean that the leadership has carte blanche to act in whatever way they see fit in service to God’s “will” and can by no means be held to a standard of morality beyond themselves.  Added to this that human kind is never then in a position to claim injustice because by definition, they cannot possibly know good from evil in any real way, because they have not been given the level of insight the Priests have been given.

How can anyone who holds to the fundamentals of reformed Protestantism ever be in a position to declare Islam EVIL?  How can they ever be in a position to condemn a mother for having an abortion or a terrorists for blowing up a bus full of Jews (for Luther likely wouldn’t have minded “On the Jews and Their Lies”, by Martin Luther)?

This is rank hypocrisy at its very glittering finest.  Since there is absolutely NO reformation/Calvinist protestant who will declare that the greatest and only objective moral standard is the LIFE of the individual, which makes man of equal value and worth as God, then man is always, always, always in position of moral corruption…for he can never attain divine worth, by definition.  You can say “well, Jesus is in our place” until the hordes of your Calvinist ideology return with swords now dulled, but it doesn’t change the eschatological fact that MAN must, in keeping with the absolute nature of total depravity, always be EXTERNAL to his relationship with Christ.  In other words, since God is the on one who has the perfect worth, then the only real way Christ can relate to anyone is if He has a relationship with Himself, not with man.  Which leaves us again, as humans, in the same bloody predicament I have been talking about:  the only way man can be saved is if man is destroyed.  Either he is destroyed in favor of being GOD in essence, so that he can be worthy of love and affection by God, which he could never be on his own, because he is forever of LESS worth than God; or he is literally destroyed in service to disseminating the truth, under the auspices of which the church of Calvin has the heavenly mandate to disregard all human ideas, reason, property, and life to usher in the New Heaven…in service to the only life that really matters:  God’s.

I say, what in the hell is the difference?  On man’s terrorist is another man’s pastor in the stead.  All of the death starts with an ideology.  It all starts with doctrine.  And believe me, if the “sound doctrine” can only be revealed in spite of man, and not in service to his life, then it is an extremely short walk from doctrine to flying planes into buildings.

A short walk indeed.

Don’t bother packing a lunch.  If you are truly “on fire for God”,  and your vest is properly tightened, you won’t be making a return trip anyway.

For those of you who have taken a distinct disliking to the Wartburg Watch since the advent of the season of “Wade Watch” (thanks to Paul Dohse for yet another excellent play on words; his other great one being “Googleburg Press” LOL).  This playful label of Wartburg Watch as “Wade Watch” refers to the fact that for the past year or so Wartburg’s e-church has been represented by Calvinist/Reformation-ist preacher, Wade Burleson.  I have below a few of my comments which Dee and Deb have deigned to allow to see the light of day over there (but they still won’t speak to me or respond to my comments…awww, they no likey Argo, he make bloggers mad, he make Calvinist readers saaaad) after the requisite amount of exactly one million hours in the moderation time-out corner wearing the meanie-labeled dunce cap…still.  The thread is dealing with Calvinism, related to a couple of Calvin posts, and I think the intention of the posts was to try to convince those who hold Calvinism as THE benchmark of theological “truth” must begin to put love ahead of doctrine.

Okay…you can stop laughing now.

Seriously, you are going to give yourself a heart attack.

Oh…you know what, you’re right.

Yes.  You read me right.  For all of Dee’s waxing eloquent about her heavy forays and and Ph.D. level self-educational excursions into the annals of the school of Calvinist Death-Worship, Debauchery and Doctrine, she…uh, excuse me, I have to go laugh my ever-loving ASS off here…

(LOLOLOLOLOLOROTFLMAO!!!!!!)

Yes, she has the nerve to post an article entitled

To Calvinists: Stress God’s Love Before You Get Into Doctrine

Insert ear-ringing forehead slap here.

I mean…honestly, in all Dee’s time in listening to and reading and posting and commenting on the stories of sordid abuse; of railing against the injustice and sick-minds of the SGM leadership in the child sex abuse scandals…after hundreds of posts detailing the ongoing violence perpetrated upon unwitting parishioners and the public in general from Calvinist monolithic monstrosities who pass for the “moral majority”; from declaration after declaration that she has studied and sat under the teaching of Calvinist doctrine…still, it is painfully obvious that no amount of reason, from me, from any other commenter, from herself, from anyone else at all, not even from the abused and tormented, have made a single dent in her understanding of what really is going on in the minds of her Calvinist friends whom she “admires”.

And this is where this blogging thing…which is done at the expense of my own time, my own energy, my own family, and my own pocketbook, with absolutely zero compensation of any sort save for the blessed satisfaction which comes from seeing even just one human being experience the dawn of the morning of TRUTH; and from that truth a resolute determination to declare the rank hypocrisy and base evil of reformation and Calvinist doctrine…yes, this is where it becomes a CHORE.  It stops being fun.  It stops being anything except a digging of a hole only to see it filled in again by the very people who claim they want to uncover truth.  (Actually…no they don’t.  They fully concede, it seems, that ultimate truth is a “mystery”…but because it’s God’s mystery, it’s okay.)

I mean, seriously, if you cannot understand by now that love for humanity is completely mutually exclusive to Calvinist theology…well, I mean, what to do?  Do we throw up our hands?  Is it time?  I hope not, but still.  To think that Calvinists can categorize “love” and “doctrine” as somehow two ideas which can co-exist in harmony is just plain silly at this point in the discussion.

Human beings are by no means entitled to LOVE!  That’s the whole fucking point!!!  Haven’t we been listening to at least WADE?!!  Human beings are NEVER entitled to demand LOVE…they are never entitled to cry FOUL, or INJUSTICE!  For their very existence is WHY they are so horrible.  Humanity is to blame for EXISTING.  Human existence is EVIL, and what partnership can light have with darkness?!  The ONLY love is that which God, without ANY appeal for justice from man, arbitrarily decides to “give” to an “elect” person…and this only in spite of that person, and never because of them.

Really…looking at Dee’s post, I just want to cry now.  Their understanding has been exorcised.  By Wade?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that you cannot declare Wade Burleson the spiritual authority and mentor of your blog and your blog’s church and ever truly confront Calvinism for the atrocious evil that it is.  Because to do this you must confront and destroy the very root doctrinal assumptions Wade holds.  And they cannot do that; they will not do that.  For, in their mind, the panacea for all Christian ills is tolerance.  And that means that letting Wade, in all his neo-reformed glory and unfettered “authority” as God in the stead, teach his destructive Calvinist ideas is the very pinnacle of GOOD, no matter how many human lives these ideas have wrecked in the past and will wreck in the future and continue to wreck, of which Wartburg Watch is stark evidence.  Exhibit A.  A once-great site in the throws of utter capitulation to the very ideas it was founded to confront.

So far I have not been able to understand exactly what the attraction is to Wade over there.  He is, with the exception of overt fire and brimstone teaching and a threatening jangling of the “keys to the kingdom” in front of the faces of his parishioners like a carrot in front of a tired and dead-eyed horse, every bit as rank a Calvinist in his doctrine and his assumptions about the “authority” of the reformed “orthodoxy” as CJ Mahaney or Al Mohler or John Piper as far as I can tell.  And make no mistake, the authority of orthodoxy IS the authority of the PASTOR who teaches that orthodoxy.  For orthodoxy is nothing…but he who has been “called” to preach it has been given the authority inherent as the divinely bestowed priest in the stead, because orthodoxy can compel no man.  But a human being with the divine mandate of FORCE certainly can, if given enough power.  And make no mistake about this either:  power is what the neo-Calvinist movement seeks (I am going to do a post on Cal Thomas’s terrifying sermon at Wade’s church last week).  A theocracy of their own making, wherein the state is truly merged with “the Christian religion”, making TRUTH not a function of individual human beings or the purview of human contextual REASON, but of the government guillotine.

So, regardless of what Wade says or even believes (because believing one thing about your philosophy and having it actually mean something entirely different is not a farfetched idea, regardless of how commenters like Jeff S over at Wartburg whine that I am “misunderstanding him”…no he is misunderstanding his own presumptions)…so, regardless of what Wade thinks, the very idea that TRUTH is utterly beyond human agency means that the only people who get to have truth are those whom God has somehow, someway, in spite of their own innate evil and blindness in the spirit of total depravity managed to–in utter contradiction of Himself; which implicates God in their hypocrisy–bestowed this utterly mutually exclusive TRUTH.

And so what are they to do with this TRUTH then?  For, surely God has given it to them for a purpose, and that purpose–what these pastors in their million-plus dollar churches with their expensive clothes and fine, large houses get PAID for–is to disseminate that TRUTH.

Well, I ask you, how is this possible?  By their own doctrinal definition man does not possess the capacity to understand truth, for he is so lost in a sea of his depraved self…for in Calvinism man IS evil, and does not merely DO evil, and so man then is never in a position actually “get it” without some kind of…er, external help.

And what kind of help is that, exactly?  Well…there a few ways these pastors, Wade included, disseminate truth as the “specially dispensed” ones, divinely placed in positions of “authority” (FORCE).

….and let’s take a break for a side note:  from now on, anytime you read or hear the word “authority”, no matter who from, think VIOLENCE.  Think FORCE.  For this is the practical meaning of authority.  Nothing more.  Authority never implies that the recipient of this power gets to decide when to bow to that authority…authority is absolute at the end of the day.  Authority breeds violence ultimately.  This is sobering.  And it helps to think of it this way…for it ceases to allow those who carelessly throw this word around (and even some folks I respect, like Paul Dohse, speak way too much of “biblical authority” for my comfort) to get it past your brain’s “warning/danger” trip circuit.  Respecting the pastor’s or the bible’s authority is nothing more than acknowledging that they both have an inherent right to do violence against you–to HURT you–in the event you refuse to concede their perspective; and it NEVER implies that he or it which has authority must convince you of their point of view using a rationale that you can understand and that speaks to your own individual self context.

Oh, sure, by the goodness of their heart, and according to whatever plumb-line of “charity” they have arbitrarily decided to allow themselves (because, of course, as those given authority from God, they get to decide what is “truth” in ALL things, even the limit of their patience with the slobbering barbarians they “teach”), they may not exercise force until their own good pleasure runs out, but understand that they are not obligated to “convince” you of anything.  But if needs be, they acknowledge violence as an appropriate tool, and that in their capacity as God’s holy priests, they will be held completely innocent before God, because ultimately it is God’s “truth” that matters, not human lives.  And of course the two are indeed, by their own doctrine, mutually exclusive.    Human existence is the root of all evil.  For without humanity, there would never have been a “fall”.  And thus, God’s greatest mistake is in creating you and me, then.  So, all of Calvinist thought is wholly devoted to the idea that somehow those standing in the stead must cull the elect from the damned.  And, really, they reserve the right to declare who is who…which is another contradiction in terms, for how do they get the “keys to the kingdom” if God has already elected whom he has elected before they even existed?

Enter the single greatest truth in all of reformed theology:  the great cosmic SHRUG in the sky.

So, how does Wade or any other neo-Cal pastor get to “teach” this truth?  Well…it’s pretty simple.  First, those who wholly agree with every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of Go….er, Wade (or whoever) are of course among those God has elect–provided they continue in their “agreement” with God’s authority.  As such, they need no convincing.  For they have abdicated the throne of their own minds (and thus, their property, which is of course of the most practical benefit to “God’s” kingdom…ehem).

Next, to those who disagree.  Well…elect?  Hmmm.  Who can say? For by definition, since election in reformation theology is totally arbitrary (and it must be, for it has nothing to do with man or anything outside God…which means election is based on God’s whim) then these people may be elect.  And of course, as this possibility is evident, the hypocritical and logically contradictory assumption is that they will eventually “see the light” and agree with Calvinist orthodoxy and thus the “proof” of their calling will be sure.  So, Calvinist pastors aren’t so heavy-handed with the keys right away.

Perhaps they will try to convince them of the “truth”.  This certainly is charitable, but seeings as how by their own doctrinal assumptions man is wholly incapable of grasping truth, because he is an evil slob jerk-off at his core, this tactic seems a futile endeavor…which is why Wade frankly states that he is under no obligation to “impress” my readers (by “impress”, I submit he means, “convince”…which makes sense; he cannot convince those God has not given the “grace to perceive”…a grace which I would say that Wade, himself, fully assumes he has been given).  But since “teaching” is what they get handsomely paid for (seriously, has “treading out the grain” ever seemed so cushy and so profitable as in the American Reformed church?  Ew.) they must at least make an attempt to teach what by definition cannot be learned.  And maybe God’s election of this dude or that gal will be revealed this way.

Those who refuse to accept…well, this is where the man-God behind the plexiglass must actually, for the first time in his life, take into account the context of REALITY.  He must look and see just what practical and actual power he has in light of the social and civil constructs of his surroundings.  That they can do this so well, as is evidenced by all their lawyers (see SGM lawsuit) and their carefully worded “membership-agreements”–or as I like to call them “less impressive and less intellectual versions of the Communist Manifesto”–is proof that they are not insane and thus are completely culpable and at fault for their evil abuse and abusive teaching.

And their level of civil authority will be the yardstick for their abuse.  In places where the state is wholly merged with reformation theology, the unsurprising and unrestrained violence perpetrated upon the citizenship is patently seen with all the clarity of a bright spring afternoon.  Just take a quick gander at the Wikipedia article on John Calvin, the part where this despot is in Geneva, and…well, here we see the fullness of all of the presumptions of Calvinist pastoral “authority” in the likeness of a serial flasher.

But the lower the level of their civil authority, the more they temper their violence…but not always, as a cursory reading of any one of the discernment blogs, like SGM Survivors or Spiritual Sounding Board, will show (make sure you don’t eat for at least four hours before reading the stories of how “sound doctrine” is applied in many churches…or just stick your finger down your throat in service to medically necessary preemptive vomit).  So, they may not be burning you at the stake, but excommunication?  Oh sure.  Stalking?  Following you to your new church with the intention of purposefully maligning your reputation in front of another entire body of believers?  Of course.  Threatening you with violence?  Yeah…they got that.  Putting you under “redemptive church discipline”?  Oh that you should be so lucky.  For that one presumes that you can be “reconciled”, and thus, there may not be any immediate violence done to you…well, at least not outside the church.

Or, there is the Wade way.  The “loving” way.  They will dismiss you with a wave of their charitable hand.  “It may not make sense to you” he says.  Which is just another way of saying that they will see your dumb ass in hell.  Sorry to be so blunt, but really…what else could that mean?

You are beyond help.  You are lost in your ignorance.  Shrug…it’s up to God.  You ain’t my problem.  Wade, I submit, has merely selected the the lazy way of applying “authority”:  Shelve it.  Your problem, not mine.  Go to hell then, and let God deal with you.

(Not that he actually says it or thinks in in such base terms; but the meaning, I submit, is the same.)

Again, the presumption is that they have NOTHING to learn from you, because what they know, they have gotten directly from God.  And this is merely a passive aggressive form of authority; merely a non-physical form of violence.  But it is a psychological punch in the groin.  It is a shrug of which the veiled meaning is that you are not his problem.  You are to be handed over to Satan.  In Wade’s church, I would be surprised if you are permitted to proclaim oppositional views in his building.  You may be tolerated, but I feel like eventually you (as I was at SGM) be “invited” to attend at church you are more comfortable with.  Which is fine…I’m a big believer in libertarian capitalism.  You want to have a place where only your brand of “truth” is tolerated, that is fine with me.  But let’s not mince words.  Let’s stop the presumption.  Just admit that YOU have truth because God has given it to you, and as such, you don’t have to explain a damn thing to anyone else.  They either get it or they don’t.  Admit that you will NEVER concede that you could actually be teaching ideas that are false, because since they are GOD’S ideas, and God is merely using you as a vehicle for Himself, you cannot by definition ever be wrong.

Why?

Because HE is God’s AUTHORITY.  Period.  He is the priest who has special knowledge, and you are not.  And thus, as I have said before and will say again, proof of TRUTH is nothing more or less than agreeing–not with the Bible; not with God–but with HIM.

So, after all that, here are my comments on Wartburg for your reading pleasure, in case you have either a.) eschewed that site, on account of you witnessing its decline in effectiveness in actually defending the abused or b.) don’t see my comments because they appear seventeen days later and you don’t have enough computer memory and/or time in your schedule to scroll up to find them.

These comments deal with the same old and tired and trotted out defenses for the indefensible doctrines of “total depravity”, and a little bit of Biblical Inerrancy, just so we an rest assure that these “absolutes” are still, in as jaded and rote way as possible, bandied about by stunted thinkers as proof of their divine enlightenment.  Enjoy.

Nancy,

You said: “…not the bible says, but “the bible says and this is what it means””.

Wow. Exactly right. For all the claims of biblical inerrancy, we seem to forget, inerrant or not someONE…some HUMAN, has to interpret it. So the question is not “is the bible inerrant?”, but “whose interpretation is inerrant?”.

An this is the problem. If we concede that truth is not ultimately rooted in individual human context based on a moral value of the human SELF as the objective plumb line for truth and love, then we are forced to trust that God has somehow given some person a “divine” insight you can’t have. And this is why so many Calvinists are comfortable with contradictions in their assumptions. The realize that the only proof of truth they have is merely to agree with whomever they have decided speaks “for God”.

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I would disagree that anyone on TWW–and I have been reading here a long time–has misrepresented Calvinism. In fact, with respect and not intending to hurt feelings, it is the Calvinists who are misrepresenting their own doctrine by refusing to acknowledge the contradictions (which…they do this by arguing that truth really can’t be known). Many of us come from heavy Calvinist backgrounds, have studied the confessions and the institutes, and can find no basis for a distinction between Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism. For example, the word “total” in Total Depravity is an absolute…there is no such rational idea as “partly total”, which is what some Calvinists want to say when they declare that humans are “not as bad as they could be”…as if this matters in the dualistic Calvinist paradigm: God is Good, and you…are not. This, of course, is totally irrelevant. The ideas of “bad” and “good” are meaningless in Calvinist doctrine. The simple interpretation of total depravity is this: because you are human (totally), you are perpetually and inexorably morally corrupt, and the only way you can understand any truth is if God functionally does it for you via the doctrine of arbitrary “election”. People like RC Sproul understand that he can woo you all day long with heady notions of “secondary causes” because he understands that it will appeal to your false, but emotionally necessary urge for “feeling loved” and your “sense of justice”, without actually conceding his utterly deterministic assumptions. A secondary cause is always subservient to the primary cause, which is God. Hence, your “free will” is categorically subject to God’s absolute control (meaning, God “allowing” is functionally the exact same thing as Him “not allowing”; anything that happens happens as a direct function of his will, either via that positive (allowing) or the negative (not allowing)…in either case, your “free will” is utterly under God’s sovereign control. In light of this, RC understands that “free will” cannot possibly be free, by definition. But RC, as a neo-Cal intellectual, is, I think, trying to avoid what so many Calvinists do with regularity, and have no problem with it: concede that at the root of what they believe are ideas that simply cannot be reconciled.

Some Calvinists who want to make a distinction between “hyper calvinism” and “proper Calvinism” will gravitate to these equivocations in an effort to convince you–and I suspect themselves–that God in their construct is not some despotic puppet master who controls all things including abuse, rape, etc (e.g. by “allowing” them). But those of us who are labeled as “misconstrue-ers” of Calvinism are simply pointing out the logical flaws in their arguments. I am not trying to hurt or be cruel…I am trying to say that ideas must have basis, and one does not get to declare an idea and then refuse to defend it rationally by appealing to humanity’s inherent inability to understand it, and THEN proceed to give examples of why what is a contradiction in the doctrine really isn’t a contradiction.

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I would be happy, however, to never use the label “Calvinist” again, out of respect for Jeff and Jeff. I have no problem with that…no one likes to be labeled. I get called an Arminian routinely…LOL, I don’t even know anything about Arminianism. How one can be labeled an Arminian after a decade and a half as an SGM bobblehead is beyond me. But I do…and I understand where Jeff S is coming from here.

Anyway…that’s fine. We can just debate doctrine. Or the ideological roots of abuse.

Buuuuuut the problem with this is that trying to pin a Calvinist down on what doctrines they actually believe is like trying to hold a wriggling cat using hands stuck in oven mitts (not that we’d be putting the cat in the over…gross, and, uh, cruel). Because their first and most precious assumption is that truth is forever beyond any human agency. Thus, just when you think you’ve got them pinned with the logical plumb line, they slip deftly away with a declaration of “no…you don’t understand; I don’t BELIEVE that”. By which they really mean: God hasn’t given you the “grace to perceive”; or, as my mother in law likes to say to end all discussion “I just know that I know that I know”.

Uh huh.

This is merely a nice way of saying that God hasn’t enlightened you to the “truth”. You are still lost in your finite mind. And thus, we are left with the only real “proof” that anyone has been given the truth: by agreeing with THEM.

But, no…they will say, you don’t have to agree with me! That’s misrepresenting my heart, Argo! Yet again!

I disagree. They MUST insist you agree with them…it is implied in the very protest to my assertion: You don’t understand me; you can’t understand me; thus, your only response is to AGREE that you could be wrong. In other words, the Calvinists want you to agree that YOU have a FINITE mind and “could be wrong”. Agree that you can’t really know, truth, and as such you can have NO basis for denying their doctrine. After all, you could be wrong.

No. I am not wrong. And I will not say I could be…because many of us understand that once we concede that men and women cannot know truth, then there is only one thing left to decide who gets to wield God’s “authority” on earth, because reason and logically reconcilable ideas have no place in “truth”: violence. He or she who has the bigger gun or knife or bomb–he or she who has the juggernaut of “platform” or Church Leadership “seniority”–is the one who gets to compel others to their point of view. Once we agree that all ideas have the exact same chance of being wrong…we have merely held the door open for ANOTHER, and even more sinister and vicious, arbiter of truth to be released: the power of the “keys”, which is nothing more than the power of DESTRUCTION…and with this, the powers that be continue to be the powers that be. And those of us who see the logical cause and effect of Calvinism-to-abuse are against Calvinism because we don’t WANT the powers that be to be the power any more.

Well, the disturbing trend continues over at that once shining virtual city on a hill, The Wartburg Watch.  Ever since the gnosticism of Wade Burleson became focus prime over there, this once great site where ideas and doctrines were vetted for clarity and held up to the scope of rational ideas with an end towards (at least in part) eliminating abuse in the modern American Christian church has now become a haven for hypocrites…for those who declare that the new moral standard which most exemplifies the “truth” of Christ is the tolerance of ideas…those doctrines, interpretations, opinions etc. which regard the wherefores and whys of biblical commands and theologies.

Except, as is common in these types of communes, the one idea they will absolutely not tolerate is the one which says that since ideas inevitably lead to action, only the idea which actually affirms and protects human individual life is worth staking your moral claim to and eternal peace upon as a blog site or as any entity, really.  Rejecting the evil ideas as those which destroy life is the real benchmark of Christian truth.  But not over there are Wartburg.  No…getting along, even at the expense of reason, is the new morality.

Oh…why yes, of course they still presume that once ideas, though wholly acceptable as ideas in man’s brain frame, manifest into destructive behavior then the behavior should be condemned.  And though this is all fine, and evil behavior should be condemned, the real question is what is the ACTUAL problem…the problem of all problems.  Is it that people act in service to ideas, or is it the ideas?  Put more simply, is it the behavior or the ideas that cause the behavior?  Which one is the head that most pressingly needs cutting off?

Now…I don’t want to be misunderstood.  Wartburg Watch does not tolerate ALL ideas…as I’ve already said, they won’t tolerate mine, for a start.  So right there is the exception that proves the rule.  I am the trouble maker because I DENY that Wade Burelson, for example, can hold to the doctrine he does and still be a good, life-affirming pastor.  There is no way I can accept that because my acceptance can only be engaged if I assume that Wade, though staunch and robust and relentless in support of his own ideas, will somehow refrain at all the right times from acting in service to their destructive logical conclusions.  Take, for example, his doctrine of “election”, which is utterly deterministic according to his own explanation of it (once you get past the contradictions and double speak, that is).  Wade concedes that men and women are “dazzled” and “spellbound” into acceptance of Christ, as a function of God’s election.  The implication being that God decides who He wants around in the New Heaven and then proceeds to bewitch them into some kind of gospel trance.  Which, by definition makes man’s free will utterly moot and thus not free at all, because you cannot describe that which cannot be shown to exist anywhere in the existence equation as being “free”.  And yet, Wade still proclaims, as if we are all idiots and the kind of third rate thinkers the neo-reformed seminaries are churning out these days, that we still have “the power” to resist Christ.

Here is  Wade’s direct quote:

“God makes His love for us so captivating, so alluring, so charming, so dazzling, so enthralling, so mesmerizing, so spellbinding (gospel comes from “good spell”), so magnetizing, so enrapturing, so gripping, so compelling, so hypnotizing, and so absolutely “sweep me off my feet” enamoring that I cannot, I must not, and I will not refuse, though I have the power to do so.”

You can access the entire comments thread here:  http://thewartburgwatch.com/2013/08/16/a-tale-of-two-abusers/#comment-110775

I could go into a long description of the gruesome murder of logic which Wade perpetrates in this declaration, but it wouldn’t be anything you, my wise and handsome readers, can’t already see clearly for yourselves.  And…let’s be honest.  A blind road lizard can see the monumental contradiction in declaring a person who has been put under a “spell” and “dazzled” and who “cannot” resist as one who still retains the power to freely choose.

And besides that, Paul Dohse did a wonderful article on the egregious assumptions and twisted semantics of Wade’s idea already over on his site, paulspassingthoughts.com.  I invite you to check it out.  It’s very good.

But let’s get back to the new moral plumb line we are seeing over at the Wartburg Watch.  And really, truth be told, it is nothing more than a very old, very familiar, very Marxist moral plumb line known as: keeping the “collective” cohesive.  It is the presumption that the greatest moral good is found in maintaining the integrity, not of individual human life, but of the group (because in Platonism and Katianims, there is no such thing as an individual…the collective is absolute, and thus, you are only YOU if you are “part” of the collective).

Now, the group in this case is Dee and Deb’s very idea-xenophobic blog site.  They are the mama bears and they will protect to the death their subjects and their philosopher King(Wade), even though they have openly said that “God can shut down the site anytime He likes”…but God isn’t in the business of shutting down sites, Dee and Deb.  God is in the business of loving human beings and affirming and pursuing ideas that lead to loving actions and outcomes.  Whether you choose to run a blog site towards those ends is YOUR CHOICE, not God’s.  Don’t assume that the “success” of your site equals God’s affirmation of its assumptions.  That is extremely presumptuous on its face.

The sad thing is that Dee and Deb actually think that the “collective” at Wartburg Watch which they work so hard to maintain (yes THEY, not God) is real Christianity in general.  Why?  Because they think that this is the practical result of declaring that the greatest moral benchmark is found in accepting ALL ideas as “good” in service to maintaining the “peace” and “love” of “Christian” groups…the primary one in question being of course that which they have created at Wartburg Watch.  And as such, as a collective, they believe that they have the monopoly on Christian charity.

This could not be further from the truth.  When you declare that the greatest moral benchmark is the active acceptance of ideas which are utterly destructive to humanity, you share the guilt in the violent consequences.  It is that simple.  To attempt to disassociate the evil behavior from the evil ideas you DEMAND people accept as PROOF of their Christian charity is a murder of reason which does not go unnoticed by God nor those who are curious as to whether or not Christians really have something good and true to offer, or are merely just another bunch of irrational fanatics who worship books and make up their definitions as they go along.

So, again, only the acceptance of ideas is allowed (well, those ideas Dee and Deb have arbitrarily decided are “disputable” enough to maintain the peace and integrity of the Wartburg collective); and no deviation from their subjective assumption of moral purity will be tolerated.  Certainly, they rightly reject any obviously destructive ideas…but keep in mind, in keeping with full-on Marxist politics, it is the GROUP there that has the monopoly on truth.  And Dee and Deb and Wade, as the “authority” of the group…well, THEY will decide which people meet or exceed the benchmark of tolerance or not.  The ideas they reject do not have to be blatantly and frankly vile, they merely have to deny the right of the Marxist authority to declare what is “good” and what is “evil” absent a RATIONAL argument.  Which is why I am moderated into oblivion without the slightest sense of shame.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Once again, to declare that you care about the victims of abuse while ceding that the greatest moral good is found in the abject tolerance of the kind of fatalistic determinism Wade Burleson believes and TEACHES there…a doctrine which declares that human beings have NO right to EVER claim victim status because at the root of the doctrine is an utter denial of human existential integrity (i.e. YOU are not YOU at all) goes to the very core of why Christianity is dying and will soon be dead in this country (and, honestly, a good part of me believes that we have already passed the point of no return…I don’t think honest Christianity frankly exists in America in a pure form).  Wartburg Watch is a once great shining blog of hope now turned ugly hypocrite.

I don’t relish this, I weep over it.  I weep over the continuing slide of Wartburg Watch into moral relativism, all in service to the idea that morality is not a function of reason, but of blind tolerance.  But even worse than that is the altruistic and charitable charade which plays out like some macabre carnival where all the children are turned into meat patties on the way out.  It is a logic defying act of straddling the fence between ideas and behavior, as if there is some kind of stark delineation between them.  ALL ideas which do not upset the “peace” and “love” of the collective are acceptable, and yet the destructive behavior of these very same ideas is NOT tolerated .

The greatest moral action is cognitive moral relativism within the framework of “Christian charity” (as they define it)…to accept that everyone has a right to the ideas which they hold; and that the greatest moral affront is to deny that this is right.  But, again, they all want to draw the line at actions.

Okay, I get it that Ideas which fit your collectivist paradigm are fine, but when they manifest themselves into action that you somehow will denounce with a straight face and a firm, punitive resolution–without the slightest hint of irony–well, what kind of “reason”, pray tell, are you planning to have on hand to bulwark your accusations?  The kind that SGM churches who have left the corporation use?  The kind Brent Detwiler uses?  Deciding that the ideas are fine until someone gets hurt (and the someone is usually themselves, personally…which is oh so telling).  You are going to stand there with a straight face and an aura of arrogant moral superiority and decry the abuse despite your inexorable culpability?  Despite the rabid fact that though you are on the hook for never challenging the implicit (or even explicit) physical abuse which flies from every doctrinal proclamation of “election”, “depravity”, the “dazzling” and “spellbinding” gospel, “limited atonement”–ideas which deny the very SELF of human beings–because your moral plumb line is the tolerance of ideas YOU declare are acceptable so that your greatest moral action is found and maintained in defending the subjective integrity of the Wartburg Watch collective at all costs?

So again, what will be the counter argument when people like me call you a hypocrite for decrying the abuse but affirming the idea?

Here is the answer:  there can be none.  Your belief in the supremacy of tolerance will wash nothing at all in any whiteness of Christ’s righteousness when the innocent victims of the very doctrines you never challenge are piling up in ditches.  And it will certainly wash noting when you throw people off your site for challenging these doctrines because they always result in burning people alive, excommunicating God’s saints, and covering up the sexual abuse of children, and worse.

And this is precisely why a Calvinism resurgence in the world is seen again and again and again, and the abuse is seen again and again and again.  It is the Platonist and Marxist idea that somehow the ideas of the collective can protect and fit the paradigm of the individual human being.  Christianity is no longer about individuals being saved, loved, cared for.  Christianity is a collective.  And this collective is materialized in churches, communities, and now, blog sites.  And when moral truth becomes that which is utterly in service to protecting the peace and safety of the collective, people get hurt.  People get thrown out to the dogs.  People get murdered in the streets like Stephen.

Then people wake up for a brief moment, see the horror, and say they need to change.  And they do, for a while…but they never quite cross the rational line which demands that ideas and actions go together.  That what drives horror is the DOCTRINE.  No, somehow, the doctrine is NEVER wrong.  They change a few people, some churches separate, there is love, love, love and acceptance all around.  Tolerance becomes the moral standard of the day…and that is when the hoards of reformation despotism come marching right back in, and we like idiots hold the door open for them.  You see, they understand fully well that tolerance as the moral plumb line means that they can continue to preach “sound doctrine” until the cows come home, and they will never be challenged because that?  Would just not be loving. It wouldn’t be kind.  Why, after all, it’s that kind of rigid demagoguery we have fled from in the first place, no?

So back in come the Calvinist shills, proclaiming their “confessions”, and their “orthodoxy”, and their “inerrancy”, and if it weren’t for these dastardly human beings fucking everything up then we’d all be just fine.  We just need to get back to sound doctrine.  Oh…of course authoritarianism is wrong.  We shouldn’t have to COMPEL you to the “obvious” right-ness of our traditions, should we?  No, of course not.  If you are a REAL Christian, you will be dazzled and spellbound in to right understanding.  And, really, you should understand that my divine authority is not authoritarianism.  It is only that if you show yourself un-dazzled.  Then my mandate is to “protect” the church (read:  collective).

So, Calvinism comes in once again, perhaps a “soft” version, like Wade Burelson’s.  The ideas are accepted (they sound good…they aren’t overtly “evil” or “abusive”, there is a lot of grace talk, and after all, no one would actually TREAT another human being as if who they were and what they do don’t actually matter to a “sovereign” God)…and sooner or later, uh oh…someone decides that they must be “on fire” for God, and this inevitably means they must put their money where their mouth is.  They MUST stop just talking and ACT in service to the doctrine by openly engaging in–as a matter of pure got-me-love-for-Jesus faith; to prove their election–the logical destructive behavior. 

So then what happens is people like Dee and Deb and Wade and Brent Detwiler rush in to decry the abuse.  They proclaim love for fellow man.  This leads to the formation of new collectives around which this love is defined as “tolerance”.  This tolerance becomes the new moral benchmark, the “authorities” of the collective rush in at every turn to now protect the group in service to the the new and improved moral plumb line of tolerance.  Human beings then by necessity become secondary to the collective, which means they are secondary to the new abstract moral plumb line of “tolerance”.  Intolerance, then, towards persons deemed subversive is meted out in a tribal manner, meaning, reason is now no longer and nevermore the guide, but anything considered an affront to the “moral purity” of the collective is run out of town on a rail.  Eventually (which I submit is the stage we are at on Wartburg Watch) people who rule the new collectives finally realize that individuals are really the problem, and that if people just sacrificed themselves to the good of the group, all would be well.  Then these rulers finally realize that this fits the Calvinist/neo-reformed theological construct perfectly, and eventually the destruction and merciless abuse is doled out  liberally and enthusiastically in defense of the reformed doctrinal ideas…

…and so it goes again and again and again and again.

All because people like Dee and Deb, in the presumption of their own moral perfection of “tolerance” decide that ideas cannot possibly drive action.

And in this sense, the pagan Platonism shows its face once more as the Wizard behind the curtain.  Men do not exist, but only the “forms”…the source of the ideas, of the “truth”, which is the Primary Consciousness that only the gnostic overlords are privy to.  Therefore, there are no real “actions” of men; for men are nothing more than an extension of the absolute consciousness which controls and owns them, through the gnostic proxies.  The Pastors and Priests.

And humanity is once again nothing more than the universal pawn and scapegoat in a cosmic war of attrition between morally relative primary consciousnesses.

I ask, how is there anything of Christ in any of this?

This is now where Wartburg Watch stands.

Now, finally, to what I consider to be the soft tyranny of Wade Burelson, which is the exact same kind of tyranny found in the idea that morality can exist exclusive of and outside the individual human being.  That is, morality does not actually have to be premised on what physically IS, objectively, like individual people, but on what is wholly abstract, like tolerance, or collective, or in this example, whatever Wade decides it is going to be at the moment.  It is the idea that somehow, you, as the established “authority” (and in Wade’s case, I can only assume it is his role as resident Pastor over at the Wartburg Watch collective) get to declare just what is the benchmark for moral truth at any given moment, and thus force your opponent into submission by virtue of nothing other than your gnostic mandate to interpret reality anywhere and at any time for any reason.

And Wade swears he isn’t a Calvinist.  That is just rich.  This is precisely Calvin’s point.  The laity cannot be in a position to know anything, so it falls to the divinely chosen ecclesiastical “authority” to TELL them what to think.

The exchange took place on the same thread where Wade committed his rational larceny by declaring that God “dazzles” you into accepting Jesus Christ.  The topic of the debate is immaterial to my point, but you can access it at the link to the Wartburg Watch comments thread I provided above.

The recipient of Wade’s presumptuous moral superiority was a commenter who calls himself “Gene”.  This was Wade’s comment to him.  Please note that I have edited the comment so that only the relevant portions (to my point) are reproduced:

“I appreciate your comments and the spirit of interaction with those who have responded to your statements. I have been on the Internet for over eight years, writing blog posts, answering questions, and trying, in general, to help people…”

This is Wade setting the stage for his upcoming, but subtle, declaration that morality has nothing really to do with facts and reason, outcomes and observable issues, but with HIMSELF…that is, he starts by defining himself as the moral plumb line in the debate. The ideas being debated are besides the point.  Wade is setting the stage for his “truth” fiat by letting Gene know that HE is the “good” one here.  HE has eight years blogging, answering questions, blah, blah, blah. And, best of all, his motives have been to “help people”.  Well, this is all fine and good, but since when does any of this have to do with the discussion at hand?  The answer is, if you read the thread, it doesn’t.  It is a manipulation tactic.  It is Wade seizing the high moral ground simply because he is Wade.  And you must understand that in the neo-reformed construct, morality has absolutely nothing to do with reason.  Moral “good” is never a function of rational beliefs or logical cause and effect observations.  No, morality is purely a function of AUTHORITY, of FORCE, of GOVERNMENT.  This is why God, in reformation protestantism, can consign people to hell for nothing but arbitrary reasons, and can remain culpable for sin via the fatalistic determination which under girds the theology and yet still remain morally GOOD and categorically just and innocent.  His “authority” is proof of his goodness, period.  God is “good” simply because of who He is–as the supreme GOVERNOR–and not because He actually affirms life and ordains justice in accordance with objective reason which man can grasp via his own human context and observation.  And in this way, you cannot separate then moral truth from “truth” period.  They are one in the same.  He who gets to be GOOD is he who gets to be RIGHT.  And who is it that gets to be good and right, based on his divine authority in this debate, over at the Wartburg Watch?

Right.  Wade does.

The equation is simple.  Wade = authority = good = truth.

Wade starts off giving an ostensibly irrelevant and innocuous personal history of his life on the internet.  But it is relevant in this sense…that what Wade is doing is saying:  the plumb line for GOOD is ME, and since GOOD equals TRUTH in my “Christian” world view, then I, as the divinely chosen “authority” here on Wartburg Watch, get to be right, even before we start the discussion.

Yes, this is precisely how they always win these arguments.  They subtly proclaim their right to declare TRUTH for everyone else, and no one ever…and I mean EVER challenges them on this.  It is one of the primary reasons the Calvinist leadership is so damn resilient.

But the most offensive part of Wade’s e-mail is much, much worse.  Take a gander at what follows.  It is nothing short of a flagrant appeal to a categorically and ridiculously irrelevant idea as the sum and source of the moral truth in the whole thread and discussion.  But this is why these neo-reformed pastors are so terrifying.  The actually think that they speak divine TRUTH.  They actually believe that they just sort of get to declare that anything that catches their fancy in the moment absolutely forms the crux of divine moral and epistemological inerrancy.  Please note that I have put the most relevant parts in bold print:

“(a). You let us know that Dr. Patterson’s degree is from New Orleans, and then later you write, “I don’t care about the SBC or the politics of it.” In my experience, only those who truly care about the SBC and the politics of it would know where Dr. Patterson received his doctorate. Identifying yourself would help me know I am mistaken about you. And second,

(b). You write ” I don’t often read Wade because I don’t care about the SBC or the politics of it, but it seems that every time I see Burleson’s name come up, it is about his comment about politics in the SBC.” Shakespeare nailed it when he said, “Thou dost protest too much.” If you identified yourself, it would help us know that your statement about “not caring about politics” is truthful and will give us confidence to trust other statements you make.

I think asking you to identify yourself is fair. You know my background. My life is on display. However, you are anonymous. In my experience on the Internet, anonymous people on the Internet who make general assessments of someone else’s motives, are usually full of motive themselves. I could be wrong about you, but identifying yourself would help me clear up my misperceptions.”

Now, the utterly egregiousness of this comment should cause anyone who reads Wade, or listens to Wade, or has Wade on their blog site as the resident e-Pastor for the e-church, to feel a sour pang of uneasiness at the very least in the pit of their stomach.  Regardless of what Wade might think or say, I believe this to be nothing more than a rank tactic of despots.

What Wade essentially does is declare Gene to be a liar merely because Gene is uncomfortable revealing his true identity, as if knowing who Gene really is somehow relevant to a discussion that doesn’t actually involve Gene personally at all.  And, as an aside, with people like Wade Burelson in positions of authority, I’m not sure how anyone can possibly be comfortable giving out their real name. I mean, do you hold out your hand to a hissing snake just because you think it makes you morally pure?  It makes you somehow good, perhaps brave, to do something kind of stupid?

Wade equates anonymity with moral depravity, pure and simple.  Wade does not believe the best, as is commanded by scripture.  On the contrary!  He clearly lets it be known that he CANNOT assume Gene is being truthful unless Gene stops being anonymous!  As far as Wade is concerned, everything Gene says must be considered a lie because Gene has violated Wade’s arbitrary moral plumb line:  Thou shalt not post comments on the internet anonymously.

Read what Wade wrote one more time:

“If you identified yourself, it would help us know that your statement about “not caring about politics” is truthful and will give us confidence to trust other statements you make.”

Again, what is TRUTH, according to Wade?  Wade is TRUTH, and Wade has made it a fact that by using his real name, He meets and exceeds the standard of moral perfection in this debate.  How convenient!  You see, Gene’s anonymity is proof of Gene’s depravity…his ethical wanting in comparison to the blinding righteousness of Wade.  It doesn’t matter WHAT Gene says, Wade gets to be right because Wade is NOT anonymous. Anonymity is EVIL, and evil cannot ever be right, because what is right or wrong is a function not of facts and reason, but of who gets to be the morally good side of the dualistic, relativistic gnostic coin.  Wade, as the authority-in-the-stead, gets to decide this.

And what about: “You know my background. My life is on display. However, you are anonymous.”

Once again, what is Wade doing here?  Declaring the plumb line for moral perfection, which is commensurate with TRUTH, and then declares that His dart lands squarely (by God’s divine anointing, of course) in the middle of the moral bulls eye.

And Gene responded…kindly.

Sigh.

I was aghast.  Here was a perfect opportunity to demand Wade answer for his moral relativism, his rape of logic, his authoritarianism, and his hypocrisy, and Gene merely gave a milquetoast, tepid response, answering Wade’s egregious and logically insane accusations without batting an eye.

This is the problem, people.  You have got to stop conceding what Wade thinks:  that HE is the divine authority who gets to demand that you defend your ideas against his moving-target of capricious morality and vapid, nebulous “wisdom”.

Instead, Gene played nicey-nice, and Dee (or Deb) predictably gave Wade a big old virtual smooch on the cheek for being oh so graaaaacious to actually come on the blog and hold a discussion with the depraved idiots who are tripping over themselves not to offend the sensibilities of the supreme PASTOR or the peace and security of the Marxist blog collective.

Here is my response to Gene, which saw the light of day over on the Wartburg Watch sometime after eight o’clock this morning, hours and hours and hours after I originally posted it last night:

 “Gene,

Wade’s questions were egregious. You were under no obligation to answer them.

 Notice the implicit equation in Wade’s comment: anonymity=deception and false witness. Basically, he called you a liar just because you don’t use your real name. How convenient. His assumption is that your hiding your identity can only mean that you must be morally corrupt.

 You should have ignored his questions and demanded he defend his irrational accusations.

 I believe that his entire message to you was a not-so-subtle way of declaring that since you are anonymous and he is not then he gets to assume the moral high ground. And since moral authority equals “truth”-as opposed to actually having a rational argument-in Wade’s construct it seems, he gets to declare your ideas false without ever actually having to defend his own according to logical premises and the facts at hand.”

Today, Randy posted a comment under the thread of the last post.  You can read his entire comment there.  This was my response.  I add it as a new post for instructive purposes.  It is an abject lesson on destroying despotic neo-Calvinist in a single stroke of HUMAN reason:

Randy,

“After all, reason, so-called, trumps revelation every time.”

Reading the sarcasm in there, I must say I had a guffawing laugh over that one.  Oh yes…as if revelation cannot POSSIBLY be vetted by human reason.  Reason and revelation are ultimately exclusive…and this is why you and your ilk terrify me.  At the end of the day, you NEVER have to prove WHY your ideas are better.  They are just better because you say they are.  Because, by some mystic divine enlightenment, you somehow, hypocritically beyond your own self-confessed sin-nature, get to define truth for the rest of humanity without ever having to defend it.

I appeal to reason because reason is the only way man can ever know TRUTH.  If revelation falls outside of reason, then revelation has nothing to do with man.  In which case, it is impossible for you to accede it or not.

But here is where you entire argument with me comes crashing to the floor in the face of my “mind numbing” arrogance…which, arrogance is irrelevant. My idea crushes yours because you cannot even RESPOND to it without conceding that I am right.

You ready to lose?  Here you go:

The wickedly ironic thing is that REASON is the ONLY way you yourself can claim to believe anything.  Why do you believe revelation, even if it isn’t reasonable (logically reconcilable)?  Because you REASONABLY assume that God has truth and you don’t.  But your acceptance of that fact is wholly rooted in this:  it makes SENSE to you to believe that. Meaning, you still use YOU OWN version of reason to decide whether this thing (be it “revelation” or whatever thing you accept or reject) is true or not.  You can never appeal to some greater “understanding”; reason is the very way you vet ALL you believe. If you appeal to some kind of “divine enlightenment”, it is still axiomatic that you must DECIDE to agree.  And if it is YOU deciding, then YOU must have a plumb line for measuring it veracity.  So you are not really arguing that “revelation” supersedes reason.  No, you are saying that YOUR reason is better than mine.  Nothing more.  And you are demanding that I accept that YOUR reason is better than mine.

That won’t happen, Randy.  Because your reason is rooted in insane ideas.  What you accept as reasonable is the ANTITHESIS of human life.  Your reason despises humanity and will go to destructive ends to compel it to your insanity.  And I as a Christian will never yoke myself to such darkness.

But even worse for you, is that to answer my argument you must, again concede I AM RIGHT.  Because by responding, you must FIRST concede that YOU get to decide on what basis…by what REASON you will agree or disagree.

And this is why you are a hypocrite and you will have much to answer to God for.  You are a hypocrite who capriciously and viciously condemns others for doing that which YOU yourself do.  And even in the face of my utterly logical argument you will reject the idea that human reason is the ONLY source of truth for ANYONE, Christian or not, which is precisely why all revelation must be REASONABLE revelation.

You will reject it because that is your heart…the heart of a Pharisee.