“Hello Argo,

Sorry that I am commenting so late but I have down with a nasty bug for the last several days. It’s tough to comment when sleeping 20 hours a day.

I am going to have to study your ideas on context a bit more because the central tenets of it still escape me. Very abstract stuff and not intuitive for me.

Of course many leaders in historic “Christendom” have used inerrancy to acquire power for themselves. This isn’t too surprising. Men have been using any excuse to gain power over others since the dawn of time. Confucians, Buddhists, Muslims, and atheists have all shown the desire to gain control. Just because something is abused isn’t proof that it is bad.

Okay, you won’t agree with I am about to say and I am not able to defend it. I know I am leaving myself open but what the heck. I have thought a lot about where the freedom in the United States came from, what is the “fountainhead?” I believe it is directly related to the Scripture becoming available to everyone without being filtered through a priest or pastor. The RC Church rightly feared the bible being translated into the native languages of the unwashed masses, they knew it would destroy their monopoly on power. I also know that Luther and Calvin were no Boy Scouts, they had no problem killing dissenters. When the people could read scripture for themselves it put limits on how far Christian “leaders” could push their power grabs. The ability to study scripture for oneself, and have confidence in it, is truly empowering. The U.S. took this farther than any other place on earth and I believe it shows.

I also don’t believe that enlightenment intellectuals were a source of freedom as many contemporary atheists claim. The French Revolution was the fruit born of the Enlightenment tree and the blood flowed, there was no freedom. Ditto for the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, etc.

I do believe in the inerrancy of scripture but not the inerrancy of creeds, popes, priests, reformers, or anyone else. I’m running low on energy right now. I look forward to your next post.

Glenn”

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Glenn,

Sorry to hear that you have been unwell!  I hate being sick.  It is the worst!  I am wishing you a speedy recovery.

Please do not feel any obligation to this blog or to me.  I appreciate your comments and I appreciate you reading here when and if it is convenient and pleasurable for you to do so.  Beyond that, I have no standards by which I judge anyone’s participation.  You are always welcome to comment and read when you feel like it, and only if you feel like it.  You owe me neither excuse nor explanation.  I am sure you already know this; I just want to be clear that my expectations for when and why anyone comes here extend no further than their own desire and time to do so.  I appreciate all your participation thus far.  Any more is just gravy.  🙂

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With respect to your answer to my question, “What is your standard of TRUTH”…I prefer not to think in terms of “rebuttal”, as it were, but in terms of the general “discussion”.  Rebuttal to me sounds…hmm, antagonistic, and that’s not the vibe I’m going for (well…not in the comments section, that is LOL).

It would be reasonable for me to begin with this; for what follows is not nearly as concise nor poignant, I don’t think:

Without man, Jesus Christ is wholly irrelevant.  Man’s life gives Christ meaning.  Christ is Savior.  Savior of whom?  Of man.  Which means man’s life, man’s existence, is the prerequisite for Christ.  Unless man exists first, Christ cannot exist.  Further, and more viscerally, Christ was born of a human woman.  And without the humanity of Christ, there is NO CHRIST.  So to me, Christ as the Truth is the same thing as declaring MAN as truth.  And since all men are individuals, the logical conclusion is that human INDIVIDUAL’S are TRUTH…or, more to the point, they are the standard of TRUTH.

Incidentally, this is a nod to your third question “do I define man individually or collectively.  I would argue that there is no such thing as a “collective”.  The only salient, material and actual objects which comprise the “collective”, or the “party”, or the “government”, or the “people”, or the “workers” are individual human beings.  The collective then, like any other idea, can only be good and consistent with truth when it is subject to the absolute standard of the individual SELF.  The individual human is actual.  The “group” is conceptual.  Non-actual.  Thus, the group is always subservient to the right of the individual to BE him or herself absolutely.

In short, without man, there there can be no Christ; there can be no “Inerrant Word of God”; there can be no God defined as God.  This is a truism which Christians constantly reject, and this is why Christianity has been, for centuries upon centuries, an enemy of life. And why governments predicated upon the idea of Christian doctrinal “authority” have always liquified civilizations…dissolving them into rivers of blood.  You thrown into the pot the French Revolution as the fruit of the Enlightenment?  And I will raise you every other war which claims Europe as its epicenter, from the Crusades to the Cold War, as the fruit of Augustinian and Reformed “orthodoxy”.

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WHY is Jesus your standard of TRUTH?

It is well and good to say that Jesus Christ is the truth, but what is the root assumption(s) which leads one to accept that? What foundational premises are satisfied when Jesus becomes the yardstick by which everything man integrates cognitively via his senses is judged as “good” or “bad”, “true” or “false”?  What is it that Jesus Christ, as the absolute standard of all TRUTH, ultimately validates as absolute and infinite, perfect and perpetual, to the exclusion of ALL else?

The answer is:  Himself.

And that is a problem.

Because if Jesus, Himself, alone, is the standard of absolute TRUTH, then the standard is by definition outside of man.  Which means that your life, my life, are no longer relevant to the equation of TRUTH.  This means that there is no logical line to be drawn between human life and TRUTH itself.  And if this is the case, how can man ever be in a position to know and thus confirm the TRUTH?  We have just conceded that the standard by which TRUTH is known as TRUE is NOT man.   We just conceded that the standard of TRUTH–that absolute by which anything is affirmed or denied–is completely exclusive to his very existence.  Which includes his mind, which “knows” and “confirms” ideas.  This is utterly in perfect keeping with the Reformed Primer on Spiritual Tyranny.  Man is never in a position to apprehend TRUTH by his very existential nature.  ALL of man is beyond truth.

Thus, the only incentive left for man to live “righteously”, since it cannot be reason or knowledge, is fear.   Fear of violence.  Or, more precisely, fear of the ecclesiastic divine mandate to violently punish–to steal from, to blackmail, to murder, to banish, to torture–those who do not obey their “authority”.  And of course there are examples upon examples littered throughout bloody history of God’s “chosen people” committing all of those atrocities in the name of absolute “truth”, and then some.

If Jesus is the absolute standard of TRUTH, then humanity and TRUTH are inexorably separated.  That is, you are only “true” as a human being insofar as you conform to the standard of TRUTH.  But of what relevance is man’s conformity to TRUTH then?  The standard of TRUTH is that which defines what is true and what is false…and, by extension, what is good and what is bad.  If man is not the standard, then man’s “truth” is not defined by his own SELF, his own existence, but by something outside of that existence.  But since man’s existence, man’s SELF, is the only context he has by which to know anything at all, man’s entire epistemology (how he knows what he knows) is irrelevant.  Man isn’t the one who gets to decide or concede or reject or refute, for that is solely the prerogative of the STANDARD.  Man can think and do what he thinks and does, but NONE of that contributes anything to his morality or his existential worth value (his truth).  Man is wholly at the mercy of the standard of TRUTH.  That standard reserves the sole right to determine who is true and good and who is not according to itself.  What you DO and THINK is immaterial.  YOU don’t get to declare anything at all with any reasonable expectation that what you believe and profess is true or good because what is true and good is nothing that you, within the context of your own SELF, can possibly recognize.  The standard is the only thing that gets to say what is good and true, and since YOU–that is, your existence and the context of your SELF–is not the standard you can never be in any position to declare anything true or good at all.  Nothing you think matters; nothing you profess matters.  In fact, all you think is automatically void as non-truth because YOU don’t get to say what is true.  To pretend that you can observe reality from the point of view of a standard that you concede is wholly outside of yourself is the apogee of pride and damnable arrogance. You become nothing more than a mindless extension of the standard…only true and only good insofar as the standard says; and whether or not the standard changes its definitions from moment to moment, or seems to contradict itself and its own declarations, or becomes the very epitome of rational capriciousness as a rule, cannot ever warrant your criticism.  Once the standard which defines TRUTH is proclaimed to be beyond the context of man’s own SELF then man forfeits his mind and his reason and utterly surrenders his epistemology to that which claims ownership of him by claiming the sole right to decide between right and wrong, good and bad.  Whether or not the standard actually judges correctly is completely beyond your own senses and thus your ability to say.

So, yes…what I am saying–and this would have gotten me burned at the stake a thousand years ago…heck, more recently than that–is that it is MAN who ultimately gets to observe and thus claim Jesus Christ is TRUE.  MAN is not subject to Jesus’s plumb line of reason; Jesus is subject to MAN’S.  But here is the catch:  only if man’s plumb line is reasonable.  Meaning, only when man’s definitions of TRUTH and GOOD are rooted in an absolute objective standard of TRUTH which man can rationally define according to a context which is utterly knowable and categorically and infinitely undeniable.  That context of course is the existence, the very being, the IS, of the individual material (read, actual) SELF…his or her life.  Man is only in the position to rightly define and know and describe and worship God when man can claim that his understanding is efficaciously vetted according to a wholly and absolutely reasonable standard of TRUTH.  And it is this fact which does NOT make the TRUTH of God’s Holy and magnificent SELF a product of human epistemological and moral relativism.  You declare that Argo is saying that man gets to define God, God does not get to define man.  And you are correct…that’s exactly what I am saying.  But I am also saying that in order for man to define God without blasphemy or ignorance man must defined Him according to reason…NOT according to the fickle vacillations of man’s philosophical subjectivism.  For the TRUTH is indeed objective, and thus is God’s great power and glory, but only when the TRUTH is vetted against an objective standard.  That which can and indeed MUST be infinitely and observably TRUE by each and every human being alive (those that are not cognitively compromised, that is).  And that, again, can only be man’s SELF.

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If you declare that the standard of TRUTH is outside of you, and thus is not something that you can grasp within your own existential frame of reference (which is absolute…you are always you), you are never in a position to either confirm or deny that the what the standard declares is actually true, or not, or is actually good, or not.  You can no more confirm or deny what the standard declares as truth and goodness than you can BE the standard, itself.

Only the standard gets to to qualify and/or quantify anything according to truth and morality.  And to pretend that somehow you can be true and good by being “conformed” to the ontologically external standard of TRUTH is ludicrous.  You cannot be conformed to the standard of TRUTH, you can only be defined by it.  And as I said, the definition of your moral worth and the truth of your existence from moment to moment is never something in which you get to have a say.  All YOU are is that which the standard declares at any given instance.  You are never in a position to cry “fair” or “foul” according to your own insufficient and existentially deficient judgments.  Remember, the standard reserves the absolute monopoly on truth and the absolute right to declare it according to is own utterly self-contained understanding.  You are never privy to its definitions because they are a direct function of ITSELF; and since you are not it, you can’t possibly understand.  Only the standard understands itself, because its understanding IS itself.

*

The instant individual man is declared subject to a standard of TRUTH outside of his own SELF, man’s existence becomes a contradiction to TRUTH; a limitation to its “absolute-ness”. Which makes man an anathema to it, which makes the destruction of man the greatest moral good.  Man by his existence is an affront to TRUTH, because he is utterly outside the standard.  Destroying man then clears the way for all TRUTH to reign. For how do you integrate man into a standard of TRUTH which is absolute and perfect only when it EXCLUDES all else (because in order for anything to be absolute, it cannot, by definition include anything else)?  The answer is that you do not.  You destroy man in service to that TRUTH which cannot include him.

So then what are we to make of it when Jesus says “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me”?

The first thing we do is jettison any irrational interpretations such as “absolute TRUTH is outside of man”.  Without man, Jesus Christ is wholly irrelevant.  Man’s life gives the Christ meaning.  Christ cannot give man’s life its meaning because, God as the Christ, existed only AFTER man was already established as a completely separate agent from his Creator.  So, strictly speaking, without man’s efficaciously defined existence, Christ could not exist.  It is logically impossible to say that that which comes AFTER man is the source of man’s TRUTH.  Man’s TRUTH had to be established first before Christ, Himself could have any meaning or relevancy.

The second thing we do is establish a rational and therefore legitimate standard of TRUTH.  Which can only be individual human life, as I have said, ad nauseam.  For what is the one thing required above all for anything in man’s life to be declared true or false, good or bad, or given any kind of qualification/quantification at all?  It is man’s LIFE; man’s root existence as an absolute and self-contained SELF which is innately capable of discerning between what is SELF and what is NOT SELF (OTHER).

In other words your very existence is the prerequisite for ANYTHING you observe, hear, feel, touch, and thus integrate into your canon of Knowledge.  Therefore if anything is claimed as TRUTH which does not require first the existence of the human being (the agent to whom everything which has been revealed is revealed) then it cannot possibly be TRUTH, because there can be no TRUTH which does not require the existence of man in order to be known by man as TRUTH.  Any truth which does not require the existence of man is an irrelevant truth…and an irrelevant truth cannot be defined as “true” at all. What is true can only actually be true if it can be efficaciously and practically observed to affirm the standard by which all things are defined.  “Irrelevant truth” is thus an oxymoron…a contradiction in terms.  What is irrelevant can neither affirm nor deny any standard, therefore it is wholly outside of any reasonable definition.

Further, how can man know what is true if he doesn’t exist first to know it?  And if his existence is required for all TRUTH to be known as TRUTH what then must the standard be by which all things are known objectively and rationally and efficaciously as true?

Man’s life.

Man’s life is the only verifiable and rational standard of TRUTH.  The absolute need for individual human beings to exist before they can claim anything as being “true” means that the standard of the TRUTH is the individual SELF.  The absolute of the human SELF is the only absolute which man can reasonably known.  Existence is the very means by which all people know God.  This makes existence itself the plumb line for how we know what is good or bad, true or false.  Therefore any doctrine which proclaims that man must be subject to an “authority” which claims the right to define him and to own him must be rejected.  And doctrine which claims that man is the material fruit of depravity and thus is incapable of doing good as a function of his innate and inherent nature must be rejected.  Any doctrine which claims that man is inherently incapable of apprehending TRUTH and GOOD must be rejected.

Lydia, this is for you.  🙂  I refer specifically to your comments in the last thread.  What struck me is how you said the discernment blogs helped you stay sane as you were going through a journey of faith and a breaking of doctrinal ties with your old ways of thinking.

Do I have that right?

By the way, if I am off base in any of this please call me out.  This is just what I have been thinking…if it doesn’t speak to you or your situation at all, then I would like to know.

*

But, you see, to me, I don’t understand how discernment blogs can keep anyone sane, really, because when you parse down their thinking just like we parse down the thinking of institutionalized tyranny like SGM and the SBC, they all still concede the exact same premise: the doctrine is fine, and no real evil is being perpetrated.  This makes all the “abuse” and the “abused” they dramatically wax on about on the blogs just as meaningless as it is in churches these people go to (or went to).  I would think the very fact that so many of these people on the blogs (I submit) still go to the same church is evidence that they don’t really think there is anything wrong with what goes on there. Further evidence is the bald-faced Calvinist masquerading as the benefactor of all the abused on a certain discernment blog with a resident “E-Pastor”.  You say cognitive dissonance?  I give you that circus.

My enlightenment about the discernment blogs mirrors my enlightenment about Sovereign Grace Ministries, of which I was a swaggering, neanderthal dickhead for, for over fifteen years.  After observing and thinking, I saw the exact same kind of tyranny on the blogs, just in a different form.  But regardless of the form, it was always in service to the “doctrine”.  In SGM, the doctrine was whatever CJ said it was.  And you know what?  On these blogs, it’s STILL whatever CJ says it is.

What I mean is that in neither place is the Reformed/neo-Calvinist doctrine considered a problem.  This implies that these blogs do not believe IDEAS really drive actions, which means that actions of people are driven by something OUTSIDE of themselves. Which means that people can’t help being the depraved despots they are, and abuse cannot really be rationally defined as abuse because abuse necessitates an efficacious human apprehension of an epistemological dichotomy of “good and bad”,  which of course is impossible if we concede that ALL that happens is God’s pre-ordained Will.  And this precludes the ability of “victims” on these blogs to claim that they are, in fact, “victims”, or for critics of Calvinism to be anything other than hypocrites.

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I will say it again.  Unless the assumptions reconcile, the outcomes are always the same:  subjugation of man in service to some external absolute; to some “idea” that only certain “priests” are privy to.  As I said before, the “discernment” blogs, when you get down to it, are really only places which serve up seasoning for people’s hypocritical “righteous” indignation.  They hate those who abuse them, and yet they AFFIRM the doctrine (assumptions) which their tormenters appeal to as the authority for their despotism–their mandate from God, Himself, to do such things-as absolutely GOOD.  Which makes them twice the hypocrite as CJ and Piper, in my opinion.  The moderator on one blog criticizes Piper, yet lauds her E-Pastor, when there is virtually NO doctrinal difference between these two men.  She does an article on “sin and suffering” and goes in logical circles, arriving nowhere, just like every single Calvinist I’ve ever met.  Even the person running the vitriolic anti-Calvinism site I referred to in my last article (and I don’t mind the vitriolic part…at all), when you examine his ideas, is still, I submit, a Protestant purest.  Just today he declared on his blog that people who are saved are saved before they are born; and almost immediately prior to this he said that “he doesn’t know where he stands on the whole “election” thing”.

Huh?  Those two statements are completely contradictory. He JUST SAID that the saved are saved before they are born.  If this isn’t election then what is?  But it is okay with this person because he declares that this is NOT what the Calvinists believe.  They don’t believe in “election” as he defines it (and he is wrong; they sure as hell do believe in election, unless he wants to say that SGM and CJ Mahaney isn’t Calvinist). So, effectively, what he is doing here is assuming the right to perpetuate an irrational, utterly impossible and inevitably destructive idea simply because it isn’t Calvinist as he would define it.

Sigh.  And this is considered a “good effort”, even among some of the people I respect most, if not THE most.

Sigh, again.

See?  Who cares what we call the false idea? Calvinist.  Biblicist.  Catholic.  Shrug.  It is still destructive.  But people don’t care about individual human life, they only really care about proclaiming that THEY have the monopoly on divine “truth”, whether reasonable or not.  And that blogger’s definition of election explicitly means that you are saved before you exist.  But how in the world can this be a rational basis for ANY faith?  If salvation occurs not only in spite of man, but with man literally out of the picture, as in, categorically non-existent, then how can he reject ANY crazy idea, even a Calvinist one, without being a hypocrite?  If God determines all there is, which is what his definition of election demands, how can he criticize Calvinists?  They are no less determined by God to do what they do than he is.

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If I may be so bold…

You went to the discernment blogs, not to save your sanity, I submit, but to convince yourself of something you ALREADY knew was true:  that you have every right to be YOU; which means you get a say in what goes on in your own life. The discernment blogs showed you that there are Christians who engage their brains; that you weren’t alone in this.  But the issue really wasn’t your sanity…you already knew you were right because you already knew that what you were hearing wasn’t reasonable. Ergo, you couldn’t be the insane one.  But knowing you were right terrified you, because if you were the only one then you were on the outs…you were alone, and that has epic psychological ramifications.  You were scared of being alone, not of being insane because you couldn’t accept the metaphysical rape pouring forth from the plexiglass podium.

In other words, you weren’t afraid that you were insane. You were afraid that you were, somehow, the ONLY one who WAS sane.  And that was something that, in the Calvinist theology you had conceded for so long, couldn’t possibly be true.

But you knew it was.  Hence the personal dilemma which sent you on your journey.

And once you found relief in knowing that you weren’t the only one thinking, via the discernment blogs, and that you weren’t alone, you quickly realized that it isn’t thinking which is the problem.  It is WHAT people think that is the problem.

And the thinking of the “discernment” blogs bears no functional difference to what you learned in church.   And that?  Is not sane.

Ever.

In this day and age, where merely having an idea is the only necessary “proof” that the idea has rational value, it is easy to confuse the conceptually abstract–that which is solely a product of man’s conceptualizing brain (like, for example, mathematics/laws of nature, or religious “doctrine”)–with what is literal…what is materially actual, what exists, what are the observable, knowable objects of man’s abstractions in the first place (like, for example, HUMAN BEINGS).  This presents a huge problem in the form of that age-old bugaboo, moral relativism.

Now, moral relativism isn’t really moral relativism at all…it is more like what should be described as moral equivalency.  As my friend, the brilliant metaphysician, John Immel, might say, moral relativism is nothing more than the elimination of objective truth as that which man can either comprehend or pursue.  In other words, moral relativism is nothing more than saying there is a full-on moral equivalency between actions which are objectively observed to destroy human life, and actions which are objectively observed to affirm and promote human life.  As the great, contemporary neo-Calvinist tyrant Albert Mohler said in his article on Nelson Mandela:  “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”.

This is true but only if one assumes what I just said: the promotion of human life is not the objective of man’s ideas; the promotion of ideas is the objective of man.  In other words, human beings become food for abstract ideas.  When this is conceded, it is no big thing to kill another person if it means your particular philosophy gets to rule the world.  Indeed, if man’s life is no longer the absolute moral and epistemological standard, then the abstractions MUST be.  And if that is the case, man’s life presents an obvious logical affront to the absoluteness of the ideas, and must be sacrificed.

You see, the only way a terrorist can be thought of as a freedom fighter is if we concede that morality has nothing to do with human life.  Of course if that is the assumption then there is no such thing as a freedom fighter.  All fights become about ideas specifically designed and logically constructed to exclude man from the moral and epistemological and metaphysical/ontological equation.  Thus, all fights boil down to FORCE.  Whoever kills the most number of the other human beings wins not only the war, but the right to declare his or her abstract ideas/assumptions morally perfect and perfectly true.  Thus, morality is directly tied to the DEATH of human beings.  Morality is defined solely by violence, by force.  The claim that TRUTH and GOODNESS lay outside of man’s individual life is simply claiming that killing human beings is the greatest moral act in the universe.  And it is literally nothing more than that.

Believe me, at the end of the day, any proponent of Calvinism–and really, any proponent of any “orthodox” Christianity–must eventually come to this conclusion:  terrorists are freedom fighters, always.  Terrorists are nothing more than people who will slaughter any and everyone–from children on school buses to marines sleeping in barracks to soldiers on the battlefield–for one reason only:  to FORCE other men to their philosophy because man’s greatest obligation is to die in service to the “truth”, which is totally OUTSIDE of man.  Since Calvinists concede the same philosophical ideal–that man exists to serve doctrine; that man is perpetually outside of truth–Calvinists, along with any other person who shares the same ideal, must declare a moral equivalency between a terrorist and any other “soldier”.  They can no more condemn the terrorist than they can condemn the “god” they serve.  For their “god”, like the terrorist, condemns everyone to die, no matter who they are.  The only absolution for people comes in the form of conceding that death is not only perfectly acceptable, but is the apogee of moral perfection. Only then can they be “saved”.  Buuuuuuuut…since man at his existential root is utterly incapable of making such a moral distinction, by doctrinal/philosophical definition, the decision by “god” or anyone else to murder them for their own good is quite an easy one to make.  You see, you cannot ever choose not to die.  You are either one who accepts your death as your cosmic moral obligation or you are one who does not.  And this ends the relevant distinctions between men.  You MUST die…that is the inevitable, MORALLY inexorable outcome of your existence, ironically .  Life is not about choice, it is purely about death.  The “saved” ones are simply the ones who admit (confess) this  “truth”.  

In this sense then, there is no such thing as salvation within these philosophies.  If anyone who does not concede individual life as the singular source of all moral truth and good, and yet still asserts that it is for your salvation that you must convert, then they are liars of the worst kind.  Period.  Full stop.  Reject them.

The truth with respect to these philosophies is that everyone dies.  Everyone.

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As an aside, please visit John Immel’s site, http://www.spiritualtyranny.com, and read his latest article.  It is positively brilliant, and by that article alone you will gain an understanding of the devious, surreptitious nature of tyrannical ideas, and be significantly prepared to recognize and reject them when they come in sheep’s clothing.

*

The efficacy and moral integrity of any law of any kind, civil or religious or scientific, must be vetted by an absolute, singularly infinite standard.  The standard cannot obviously be the law, itself, for that presents an impossible contradiction of logic and conflict of interest.  A law in the rational sense should point to man’s life as the root of all moral GOOD; that is, the standard of morality and TRUTH.  With this in mind, the law then becomes wholly unnecessary as a “law”–that is, having in and of itself “authority” (force/punishment)–and it becomes merely a ideal pointing to the standard of TRUTH, which can only objectively be man’s LIFE, or MAN (humanity). Once this is realized, the law is no longer a law at all…for it can possess no power over man.  Man realizes that the pursuit of himself, by himself is the singularity of all goodness and truth, and thus, man is neither condemned by nor affirmed and justified by a “law”.

Now, for those who who cry “selfish, oppressive, capitalist pig!!”, let me state the obvious for you, since you seem perpetually incapable grasping it yourself…because you are an intellectual sloth and a categorical affront to reason and humanity.  Of course, man cannot deny his “neighbor” and claim to be pursuing himself.  It is this rational axiom/truism which prevents man from pursuing his own comfort, peace, and prosperity at the expense of other human beings, which his senses and rational faculties indubitably tell him are equally free agents, possessing the same inherent rights to pursue SELF as he has.

Did I clear that up for you?  No?  Well, don’t blame me.  I trust what I observe.  I can make rational distinctions between human beings and ideas.  And my ideas include the reality of my human neighbors and thus their implicit right to own their own existence.  If you cannot make that distinction, well…I suggest you get the fuck away from whoever you are hanging around with and whatever books they are reading.

The point then is that laws can no longer claim to have any authority over man, period.  Laws are solely abstractions…and man’s abstractions have only one rational purpose:  to affirm and perpetuate man’s life.  Laws can only be guideposts to point man in the direction of himSELF, as the ultimate and singular source of truth and morality.  If any law claims to have authority over man as a function of itself, it is an unjust law, unnatural, and irrational.  A law either points to man’s individual LIFE as the source of all GOOD and thus should be respected and considered sacred, or the law points to something ELSE as the source of all TRUTH and MORALITY…the “state”, the “collective”, the “poor”, the “government”, the “church”, the “race”, the “culture”, the “natural laws/laws of physics”, the “workers”, the “monarchy”, the “leader”, the “minority”, the “philosophy”, etc., etc.

Notice how in every single example above we are looking at what is not a material reality but are looking at a figment of man’s conceptualizing brain.  There is no such actual THING as “workers”, or “race” or “church”, or “poor”, or “government”, or “philosophy”.  All of these are merely euphemisms for some group…and a group is what?  A collection of individuals.  And since individuals are the only thing in the equation which actually, observably, materially exist, then EVERY OTHER IDEA must logically give way to the reality which is before our eyes:  man’s individual SELF is the PRIME and singular source of all truth.  Any attempt to make man’s illusory abstractions the ruler of man WILL lead to man’s destruction and the wholesale institutionalization of tyranny.

Thus, a law must point to individual man as the source of its authority or it is a false law.  And if it points to man as the source if its authority, then the law is no longer “law”, it is merely what?  An assumption.  The assumption being this:  man’s LIFE should be the standard which drives ALL of man’s volitional actions.  Justice can thus be objectively defined as: governing and ruling in sole favor of the right of individual human beings to pursue their own existence in service to themselves, not at the expense of others, and not in the interest of others.  Any attempt to force men into a morality which excludes the singular SELF (e.g. “morality” proceeding directly from the “masses” or the “state” or the “church”) as the infinite source of moral GOOD and TRUTH is logically indefensible, irrational, and will inevitably lead humankind to its destruction and death.  In other words, morality outside of man demands death.

And obviously, any idea which demands death as man’s greatest moral obligation is a rank evil.

The only logical outcome of Reformed Protestant orthodoxy, most directly subscribed to by the neo-Calvinist movement (which is, as I have often said, merely another variation of Plato’s “forms” philosophy, sharing its philosophical seeds with Marxism, Theocratic collectives, and Secular Humanism (atheism), among others) is to completely remove man from the existential equation.

That is, according to Reformed theology, man can never be qualified as actually existing.   He becomes a function of unobservable, and thus unknowable “forces” outside of his existence.  But when you get beyond the Twilight-Zone mysticism and the shameless and silly appeals to divine “mystery”, what Reformed theology, like Platonism, really teaches is that man is a product of the ideas he creates, which are conceptual abstractions designed to perpetuate and affirm his life.  Of course, when the equation is reversed, and man becomes a product of the abstractions he devises, man becomes an affront to them.

Why?

Because any concept which cannot be given value by a material object which man can observe–a value that is ultimately measured against a standard of TRUTH, which must be man’s life and material SELF–is automatically absolute.  It becomes the infinite, all-perfect “thing” or, as I said “force”, to which man’s existence explicitly presents a logical and metaphysical stumbling block.  Since man then become the finite and imperfect agent which this absolute “thing” must subdue in order to, in fact, be absolute, man’s greatest moral good is to get the fuck out of the way and let the THING be the THING (the force be the force, the form be the form).  The unobservable, unknowable, and thus infinite standard of “thing” becomes the standard of absolute TRUTH, instead of man’s life; and thus man is valued directly against the absolute, infinite and perfect form, and not, as reason would dictate, his own life.  So the ethical and metaphysical plumb line looks like this:  the more man sacrifices his own individual agency to the form/thing, the more “moral” and “true” he is.  Again, the logical conclusion of this premise is that the death of man, both physically and spiritually (not that there is any real distinction…there is not) becomes his greatest moral action.  DEATH makes man perfect.  His life becomes the very reason he is evil.  It is not that man CHOOSES, or that man DOES this or that…no, it is that man IS.  Man, at his existential singular root, from which all of him proceeds, is the very manifestation of his depravity.  Depravity and evil stop being concepts man uses in order to define and organize his environment in service to his life, they become absolute forces and agents in and of themselves which possess man to the point where man is these concepts incarnate. Man is an affront to God not because of the evil he chooses to do but because of the evil he IS.  There is–and this should be obvious, but it isn’t–a huge distinction here.  In the first sense, man can know himself, and thus man is a able to relate to his God, which means that God can be known and defined as the GOOD Creator, who is GOOD for man.  There can be an exchange of true value between man and his God, and true love can flow, man can be both reasonably rewarded and condemned/judged according to his actions.  Man can love God and and God can love man because man understands that at the root of both himself and his Creator is the moral perfection implicit within their respective material singularities.  In the latter sense, none of this is true.  God must hate man and condemn him categorically.  Which, as man’s Creator, makes Him a hypocrite.  There can be no salvation for man, despite what the Reformed Protestants might tell you (it’s a lie), and neither man nor God can actually be defined or known.  There is no exchange of value, and God becomes culpable for sin by creating evil incarnate, in man.

And indeed, this is in perfect keeping with the Reformed assumption that all babies, should they die, go to immediately to hell to be tormented eternally, burning and gnashing their…er, gums.  They do not pass go, they do not get purgatory, they do not get to sleep the sleep of unconscious oblivion.  They go to hell.  And they go there for no other reason than they were born.  That they were.  It is their very existence which is their failure.

Now,  you may be tempted to entertain some of the equivocations so common to the neo-Calvinist mystics who want to claim that they do not in fact believe babies go to hell.  Trust me, this is even more of an insult to your intelligence than the doctrine of “total depravity” is, without the bald-faced attempt to serve you a glass of piss and call it lemonade.

There is no way anybody can rationally claim to accept the notion of “Original Sin” and “Total Depravity” and declare babies absolved from their own abominable existence.  If the very material SELF of man is corrupt, and no distinction can be made between what is depraved about man and what isn’t (a thoroughly impossible distinction because bad and good cannot co-exist in a metaphysical/physical singularity:  man), and God demands moral perfection as the standard of salvation, and that only comes (irrationally) through “accepting” Christ, then God would be a full-on hypocrite to save babies.  So, not only do these mystic deviants declare that you are unable to do any good–because your own very SELF is incapable of moral action, making it thus impossible for you to make a right judgement about anything at all, including God, and thus must mean that you can’t really think–but they impugn God in their schemes and deception by claiming that He can engage in hypocritical actions which are an extension of his “goodness”.  Calling evil good is specifically condemned in the Bible, but even more than that, this removes the meaning and relevancy of “good”.  Which makes God not only a hypocrite, but also incapable of actually doing anything out of love.  Why?  Because love qualifies actions which are a direct function of “grace”, which is, despite what you might have heard, a direct acknowledgement of someone’s inherent moral worth.  If man can never be a recipient of God’s love, because he is totally depraved by his material self, then man has no moral worth, which makes any action of God towards man NOT loving by definition.  There can be only judgement and condemnation against that which lacks any moral worth whatsoever, or else the love is irrational and hypocritical.  Thus, all of God’s actions of “love” towards man are ultimately really only to Himself, which makes God, Himself, and all He does a contradiction.  God doesn’t need to show love for Himself to humanity which isn’t, according to Reformed doctrine, ever in a position to recognize love in the first place.  Why does God need man?  Man becomes besides the point.  Man, as the doctrines of Original Sin and Total Depravity explicitly teach, is wholly corrupt in every way.  Man therefore is nothing but a mere bystander to whatever God does.  If God saves man, it is in spite of man.  If God sends Jesus to the Cross, it is not for man, it is in spite of man.  If God sends man to heaven, it is not for man, it is in spite of man.  In other words, God saves Himself, through Himself, for Himself.  Man is an irrelevant observer to both his own salvation, should he (somehow) be elect, and to his own damnation should he not.  This of course wrecks man’s frame of reference for both the suffering of hell and the bliss of heaven…for since both occur in spite of man at his very material root existence, then man really can never define either one.  Therefore, any man, as a function of this theology, could never tell the difference between one or the other.  You see, again, if man’s depravity is absolute…

*

Let me break for a sec and address this.

Depravity.  Is absolute.

Let’s talk.

Depravity being absolute is the same thing as saying it is “total”, without the bullshit semantics and childish intellectual games that Reformed Christians try to play.  Don’t believe the bullshit about “total depravity doesn’t mean that man is as sinful as he could be”.  I have heard this a thousand times, and trust me, it is nothing but more equivocation by those whose understanding of everything is grounded in thoroughly impossible, irreconcilable presumptions.  No matter how hard you press them and how hard they try, they cannot make a distinction between the “sinful” parts of man and the “not sinful parts”.  Indeed, any attempt to place , let alone parse, mutually exclusive concepts within a singularity (man’s SELF) is a full on rape of logic.  If man is ONE self, then there can be no “parts” to him.  In order to have man as a combination of depravity and NOT depravity (mutually exclusive concepts), man must have existential and metaphysical parts, not physical parts…for total depravity, remember,  literally speaking is completely conceptual, NOT material.  And, of course, making man a composite of metaphysical parts means that man is and is not, somehow, at the same time.  Man is existentially defined by “parts”, which means that where one “part” of man’s metaphysical self ends, another begins, which means that one part stops at NOT man, and NOT man is where man thus begins again.  Which, in both cases, means that man is a direct function of NOT man…which is impossible.  Man, in order to be defined as MAN, must be consistently himself.  If man always begins at man, which he does–for there is no way to rationally deny this–then man is ONE…he is infinite.  There can be no interruption of man’s SELF, because that creates a schism which cannot be logically reconciled.  If man cannot view himself as a singularity of existence then man cannot rationally define himself.  And if man cannot rationally define himself, which is his absolute and perpetual frame of reference, then man cannot define anything at all.    Again, nothing which is can be a direct function of what it is not.  That may be hard to understand, but believe me, when you think about it, it’s just basic logic.  Red cannot be a direct function of blue.  Up cannot be a direct function of down.  Left cannot be a direct function of right.  SELF cannot be a direct function of NOT SELF.  And this is why the whole dualism of man between “spirit” and “body” is not and cannot be reasoned to be literal.  Man is his physical SELF, and all that man is proceeds directly from this singular, infinite SELF, which is why man is ONE SELF, not a composite of “selves”.  Man is ONE; just like God is ONE.  Spirit and body are merely ways man abstractly qualifies certain properties of himself which he observes.  The same is true for the Trinity.  The reason Christians cannot explain the Trinity has nothing to do with it being a function of God’s divine omnipotence and thus beyond man’s understanding (note:  anything beyond man’s understanding due to his metaphysical/existential being is categorically outside of man’s frame of reference, and is therefore, totally irrelevant…which makes the Trinity a pointless doctrine; which is why, I submit, it is not found in the Bible).  The reason man cannot explain the Trinity is because it is a totally impossible concept.  It is unreasonable…that is, it cannot be reconciled logically.  Period.  Full stop.  Not even God can reconcile it…for God cannot be both God and NOT God at the same time.  There is no possible way that He who is infinite and absolute, a perfect singularity of SELF just like man is can have three “distinct” persons.  Because this contradicts God at the root.  God ends at NOT God and begins at NOT God. Impossible.  God is God is God, just like man is man is man.  Any compromise of the singularity of SELF creates an irreparable epistemological schism and voids ALL knowledge of everything in the universe, including and especially God.  Put simply, infinity has no number, regardless of how man decides to qualify/quantify what he observes.  Take note of this, because it is important.  If you take nothing else away from my blog and my almost one hundred and seventy articles, please, take this:  Conceptual abstractions are not causal. 

Conceptual abstractions are not causal.

It doesn’t matter how much we want to claim math is “objective”, numbers do not cause what materially IS to conform to what is abstract…that is, materially IS NOT.  When you see God, you see God, period.  Full stop.  He is not a number any more than YOU, your metaphysical SELF, is a number.  God is God.  You are you.  “One” is not a mathematical distinction then in this sense, it is a metaphysical one.  

And how about this:  everything you observe is, in itself, an infinite singularity of self.  Everything you define as A thing, is infinitely what it is.  And by this assumption, every abstraction we use to qualify/quantify whatever “thing” we observe, cannot actually exist.  They have “existence” then only insofar as they serve man in organizing the environment he observes.  Morality, number, distance, color, etc., etc., are purely products of man’s ability to conceptualize.  They do not cause.  They describe the IS of the things man observes.  Why?  For one reason only:  so that man can promote his own life, which is the only rational standard of all TRUTH

*

If man’s depravity is absolute then his depravity must then apply to man’s thinking as well.  Which means that all your thoughts are literally without meaning.  If your mind is also inflicted with your mortal and moral failure then there is no way to actually know what you claim to know.  And as such, again, heaven and hell, and how you would “experience” them become impossible distinctions to make.  You simply haven’t the existential ability to apprehend either on any level.  So take heart those of you who are not “elect”…those arrogant Calvinists won’t be able to understand their heavenly utopia any more than you can understand your hell.  And even more gratifying, according to their doctrine, they could be surrounded by angels and lutes and clouds and white robes and still not know if they were saved or not.  And if they turn around and claim that they can know, then they should be careful.  For to claim that one can know that heaven is GOOD and hell is BAD means that one CAN in fact make a moral distinction in and of themselves.  And this means that Calvinists purposely avoid pursuing good and confronting evil because they make themselves (and everyone else they successfully propagandize) moral hypocrites by their own doctrine.  I find it hard to accept that rank hypocrisy and intellectual deception are the “narrow road” to heaven.

In the Reformed Protestant paradigm (and the Catholic as well, if you want to be honest…its all Augustine, and he lifted it from the Gnostics who lifted it from Plato) punishment has nothing to do with culpability in the legal, rational sense. Punishment is man’s reward for being born.  The only way to avoid, according to most Christian orthodoxy, it is for man to NOT BE himself.  And many Christians say that getting “saved” is precisely how this happens.  Of course, the logically fallacy only proceeds to worsen and give way to even more madness once an individual is “saved”.  Being saved by no means absolves man of his moral depravity in Reformed theology.  (I have written a huge article on this very issue, which was prompted by a long discussion with my sister-in-law over the Christmas holiday.  By the way, I recommend that you don’t eschew these kinds of discussions…they are a cornucopia of source material for ferreting out the rational flaws in Christian theological/philosophical assumptions.  Once you know what to look for, you better bring a fucking fishing net, because you won’t have enough hands or a big enough car to carry all the rational larceny.  No offense to my sister-in-law of course…she is a sweetheart.  She’s just been at the Reformed chow line for too long.  Lest I be a hypocrite, I should admit that three years ago we wouldn’t have even had that conversation.  I’d have agreed with her.  And believe me, the depth of my guilt is matched only by the depth of my invective towards what I used to believe.  The evil.  The lies.  I tortured myself and others for years with that shamanistic, fraudulent mysticism.)

But getting to the point of my article:  the Original Sin doctrine does just what I have been describing.  It attempts to portion the singularity of man’s SELF by making him a direct function of a rank conceptual abstraction:  morality.

Morality is a heavy word.  It is so often used as a mystic or socialist bludgeon that people almost physically flinch when it is leveled as an accusation…as if people are constantly on the hook for defending their own existence.  They somehow just know that they are immoral assholes, eschewing their cosmic and existential obligation to collectivist altruism (e.g. communism, Calvinism, socialism, fascism) and that their entire lives are little more than a poster boy for “selfishness” and “self-indulgence”.  This of course is rooted in the Platonist ideas I elaborated upon above.  The notion that you are not really YOU, but are a function of some abstraction–in the Marxist sense altruism–demands your guilt for simply being born and waking up each morning.  And once you convince man that he only exists insofar as he sacrifices himself perpetually for others (the “collective”; the “workers”,  the “poor”,  the “people”, the “needy”, the “state”, the “church body”) it is easy to rob his person and property. In Reformed theology the abstraction is “morality” if you are “saved”,  or “immorality” if you are not.  But the purpose is the same:  to put man outside himself in order to to steal from from him to feed your own wicked will to power.

What I mean is that by making man’s existential essence–his material self–a direct function of an abstraction like “morality”, the Reformed oligarchs can easily twist the logic into the deception of the false and unbiblical doctrine of Original Sin…which, like the Trinity, is not anywhere to be found in the Bible (that’s because God is categorically rooted in reason and rational assumptions–and I will gladly debate any atheist anytime and anywhere for free, and destroy their arguments with a giddiness which will undoubtedly strain my Christian charity)…yes, they can twist the logic to deny that man has any kind of material, knowable, definable SELF at all, which is how you can get from utterly moral (pre-Eden) to wholly morally corrupt (post-Eden, or “the Fall”, which I also do not believe is in the Bible).  What they do is just what I described above:  they attempt to place mutually exclusive concepts within the singularity of man’s SELF.  This makes man a direct function of these unobservable concepts; and once this is accomplished, man is removed from any kind of epistemological TRUTH and thus epistemological efficacy (pursuing knowledge to a rational, knowable, objective end:  man’s individual LIFE).  And once man is removed from his SELF and any efficacious knowledge of his SELF and anything else, by extension, then the mystic overlords, the theo-marxists, are free to control man in service to their own power; to rob man in service to their own evil gain.  It is as simple as that.

If man can go from being one absolute–morality–to the absolute mutually exclusive antithesis of it–immorality–then there is NO man to speak of in the equation.  You aren’t really YOU…which, as you know is the whole fucking point and why that root assumption of all tyrannical philosophies is my utter bag.  How dare these people tell me I’m not me; that I’m some pre-determined figment of God’s musings, unable to make any kind of moral or practical or intellectual distinction of any kind for myself because myself?  Doesn’t exist.  I mean, really…do I look that fucking naive?

And further, let me explain something:  If man is utterly changed at his existential rootfrom the complete ground up, so that he can go from being a moral agent to an immoral agent then there can by no means be any way to rationally explain how man could even know that in the first place.  If man’s metaphysical alternation was absolute (total), then man cannot seen anything beyond the absolute of what he now is:  immorality/depravity/sin nature.  You would not be able to look upon the “old Adam” and declare:  See!  That is the perfection I used to be!

It would be impossible for you to recognize the old Adam, for the new absolute of the “fallen” Adam has completely consumed man.  There could be no “perfect moral objective” that you could even define, or observe, or pursue.  You could not, from your metaphysical slavery, recognize the “free” you which you used to be.  Indeed, he/she would not and could not have any meaning to you whatsoever.

When you change from one absolute to another (which is impossible, of course), you cannot observe the first absolute.  If blue were to become red, then it couldn’t ever observe itself as blue again.  Because its “redness” is absolute.  There is then, by definition, now nothing beyond the infinite absolute of its redness.

So, no…man did not undergo some metaphysical metamorphosis in the Garden of Eden whereby he materially and existentially and epistemologically changed from this to that.  Man is the same as he ever was, now, or before the “fall”:  HIMSELF.

How the interpretive approaches to Scripture are used–to what epistemological objective or purpose, as valued against the standard we choose to make the yardstick of what is epistemologically “true” or “false”, “good” or “bad”–must utterly inform the interpretation.  And this is the problem.  For neither the Redemptive Historical Hermeneutic or the Grammatical Historical Hermeneutic assumes the standard to be human life/existence.  Further, in my studies, I have yet to see either one define any standard beyond its own assumptions.  This means that the interpretation is right merely because it is the interpretation chosen.  Neither claims to validate the veracity of its interpretive conclusions against any standard other than “it means what it means”, so to speak.  Thus, the “plain meaning” of Scripture is an argument both use.  Again, the interpretation is valid because of the conclusions it draws, not because the conclusions it draws comport with an objective and external-to-the-interpretation standard of TRUTH.   The conclusions must support the interpretation because the interpretation is already assumed to be correct.  Therefore it is impossible for the interpretation to reveal anything that does not bulwark its self-assumed monopoly on interpretive truth.  This of course, in turn, makes it impossible for anyone or anything, be it man or God or Scripture or anything else, to gauge the accuracy of or to even remotely question the interpretive approach.  It is right simply because it is what it is and says what it says.  Therefore, the interpretive approach is not informed by God and certainly not the Bible.  On the contrary, the relationship is quite the opposite.  The interpretation is the standard of all TRUTH to which everything else in the universe must agree.  If anything does not, then it is both epistemologically and metaphysically non-existent…without any definition.  In short, the interpretive approach becomes the “lens” of the primary consciousness by which one decides what the Bible (and God, Himself, is the implication) “plainly” says.

It is not necessary, I am assuming, to point out the irony here.

Do you see the conflict of interest then?  The circular logic?  And of course this makes the “intellectual” root of each interpretive approach exactly the same:  the interpretation speaks for itself, and it must necessarily by default then draw conclusions out of the text of scripture which are “plainly seen”; and “plainly” verify that the interpretive approach is, indeed, infallibly veracious.

In both cases, the Primary Consciousness approach to existence is assumed and remains indefatigable.  Man is incapable of deciding truth on his own, due to the absolute insufficiency of his material existence in essentially all matters (moral, physical, metaphysical, epistemological, etc., etc.), and thus requires an external, abstract/conceptual “intelligence” to explain everything for him…and this “intelligence”, this divine gnosis, is accessed by specially enlightened individuals who have been, somehow, chosen as God’s emissaries; His chosen vessels to bring enlightenment–by any means necessary–to the masses, who are only different from rank animals in that they are morally culpable for their mindless existence and thus will get hell and torment should they resist God’s chosen priests…even though they cannot help but resist because they are mindless animals by nature, but anyway…

In the face of this epistemological rape, the only alternative of course of action is for man to assume that his conscious existence is not only sufficient for apprehending and organizing his reality/environment but is, being the singular and infinite constant frame of reference for anything and everything he sees, knows, and/or does, the only standard of TRUTH which can be credited as reasonable…and as such, valid.

And this is what Christians, in the death-worshiping, mystical, philosophical smorgasbord that has become Christian theology (and has been since at least Augustine, if not earlier) will never, ever, ever concede.  They would rather play Russian roulette with interpretive approaches and hope–out of naked blind and utterly vacuous faith–that they will somehow be spared the requisite death and destruction which must follow mankind when he decides that his own mind is actually antithetical to his life…that his very own created SELF is perpetually in God’s way, and that if he would just lay down and roll the fuck over and die (intellectually/psychologically is preferred…that way you can still tithe; but physically?  Just as good in the end….).  Yes, they would rather do this than concede the standard of truth which stares plainly at them in the mirror every day of their lives, begging and screaming to be accepted as God’s gift to man–his very SELF–but is brushed aside with about as much rational sense as one would brush aside a rocket ship whilst planning a trip to the moon.

And here is the sad little lie.  There is no such thing as an interpretive approach to Scripture which can be said to use God or the Bible as the standard of TRUTH.  This simply isn’t possible, and if we spent more time studying Old Testament philosophy as we do attempting squeeze all of our theological understanding out of a very few, very short epistles from Paul, who is about as easy to drag a “plain” thought out of as…well, as Paul, then we’d understand the futility of putting the plumb line of TRUTH outside of the human ontological context.

The whole point of the Law was to do what?  To point to itself as the standard of TRUTH and morality?  Of course not…for if that were the case then what is the point of Christ?  What is the point of the incarnate Messiah?  What is the point of the death of the new Adam to satisfy the Law?  Why have a perfect, flesh and blood human being as the conqueror of death?  For if the Law itself is the standard of TRUTH, then death is man’s purpose.  It hardly seems logical that God would come as that which the Law decries and condemns (in service to its own absolute TRUTH) in the interest of proving that the Law as the standard of judgement and TRUTH.  I mean, where is the sense in that idea?  It is completely self-contradicting.

On the contrary, Jesus Christ affirms–as does even a cursory look at at the Old Testament and its linking of the morality of the Law to the preservation and affirmation of human LIFE–that human beings are the point of the Law.  It is not their death it demands, it is their life.  And if it is their life that the Law is in service to, then to what is man’s life subordinate?  It cannot be the law; it can only be itself.  Man’s life is the ruler of man’s life.  

If the point of God’s Law is to preserve, persevere, and perpetuate human life then only one inexorable conclusion can be drawn:  man is suppose to exist as he does, in the form he takes, with the mind he has, and with the bone-stock senses with which he integrates and organizes his world to himself.  And the implication then is that it is this form of man which is perfect already.  YOU are who and what you are supposed to be.  Your goodness and perfection is NOW, not after you DIE…as if death is, again, the panacea for all ills.  No, that is the easy, weak, and intellectually lazy approach to life:  “Well…[shrug], when we DIE it’ll all make sense; when we DIE our infinite depravity will be done away with; when we DIE we can finally be good for God; when we DIE then we will live; when we DIE there will be no more pain or suffering or evil or…er, death.”

Yeah…no fucking shit, Sherlock.  It’s funny how death works, isn’t it?  Just seems to take care of everything, huh?  How marvelously convenient.  What a fucking a-okay theology.  Please, tell me who to make my check out to…I gotta have more of this “good news”.

But God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.  And it is only through your life that you have Him.  Remember that.  If you die, you will by no means see God.  And that is the whole point of Christ.  To defeat death, not to worship it.

In his usual Calvinist form:

“When the act of confronting evil is borne out of a desire for personal gain (healing), then the confrontation itself is in danger of becoming actively evil by seeking to take from or harm another human being for one’s personal profit and pleasure.”

Wade Burleson, E-Pastor, www.wartburgwatch.com

And this is an astute comment by David, from the previous post’s thread:

“Besides that, aren’t the Calvinists forgetting their own supposed doctrines of justification by faith alone and once saved always saved? If you have faith in Jesus and you happen to engage in the “sin” (falsely-so-called) of rejoicing when the Calvinist enemies of God get squashed, what’s God going to do to you? Damn you? My oh my! They’ve forgotten their own theology.”

My response:

David…of course you are completely right about this. Like Lydia said before, it is mystifying the level of cognitive dissonance that passes for “truth”.

But I submit they haven’t forgotten their theology; on the contrary, they are quite conscious of its inherent rational flaws.  They are aware, and simply do not care.  Rational flaws, you see, get punted into the cosmic abyss of God’s mystery (thanks to John Immel for his most excellent phraseology) So, its not a memory problem, it is a philosophical one.  They fully concede that “mystery”–what I refer to as rank contradictions in assumptions; because there can be NO mystery inherent in any legitimate epistemology–is at the root of their belief system.  They have no problem surrendering their reason to a theology that ultimately declares them completely inadequate vessels for knowledge.  The reason Wade pushes for being “nice” and “graceful” to rank evil actions is precisely because he is FULLY AWARE that his doctrine demands immoral equivalency (the hardworking, church going old man is as morally corrupt as the 18 year old SGM child rapist).  So, it is always best to fall back on “but for the grace of God go I”, lest you be “evil” in confronting “evil”.

Now, let’s look at this “evil in confronting evil” Burleson-ism again, because it speaks volumes as to how dangerous these Reformed pastors are; and how inadequate they are as teachers of…well, anything, but particularly God’s moral standards.  This idea of “being evil, or having evil motives in confronting evil” is a wholly impossible scenario.  Because if there is evil in your assumptions for confronting evil, then your problem is that you don’t have a real definition of evil, and thus, cannot be in a position to confront it, because you don’t really know what it is.  Your assumptions drive your actions, you see, and if your assumptions are wrong then so is the definition of what you think you are confronting.

That might be a little confusing.  Let me see if I can break it down.

What I mean is that if you are a hypocrite, you cannot really confront evil.  It takes a proper understanding of evil to confront evil…and if you had a proper understanding then your motive for confronting evil would be naturally good.  By Wade’s statement above it is clear that his assumptions cannot ever place him in a position to truly confront evil because he concedes, I submit, that he cannot really define evil; and that is reason enough to scare people off of Reformed theology .  Again, if you truly think that evil assumptions can drive behavior which confronts evil, then it is obvious that your very definition of evil is flawed.

That is why this doctrine is so vile…it destroys all moral definitions and creates a cult of moral relativism.  You MUST surrender all your judgements to the mystics who are, somehow, the ONLY ones in a position to have true revelations; to be in a position to possess real, efficacious “truth”.  And these men will stand at the podium and teach people that it is not really possible for you to confront evil in your lives; and to teach you that “healing” is somehow selfish gain.  It is a dreadfully un-Christian and unbiblical theology.  They completely distort the notions of mercy and “turning the other cheek” and “not rejoicing over ones enemies”.  The real reason Christians are to act in mercy and grace is not because all people are morally bankrupt and worthless and therefore cannot possess knowledge of anything with any certainty, but because they HAVE fundamental worth,and are thus fully capable of making rational and epistemologically sound moral distinctions…because they understand that all TRUTH starts with the human life, which is their singular, inexorable, perpetual frame of reference.  We respect the fundamental goodness of the humanity of all people as God’s creation, which is why we are not to take pleasure in the fact that there are some people who choose to deny their own selves, and God in the process, by engaging in wickedness.  Like David said, we are to ultimately rejoice in the destruction of evil (not people) because it represents the triumph of God and man’s existence; and we are to reject belief systems which demand man’s death in service to some subjective standard outside himself.

You see, Calvinist theology rejoices in the death of MAN, while true Christian theology rejoices in the death of EVIL.  And this is really the crux of the difference between God’s truth and the World’s truth.  The world loves external, subjective standards.  They smirk and smile when they think of “god” (whatever primary consciousness happens to be in question at the moment…political party, culture, race, tribe, science, philosophy, nation, “bible”, leader, cult, CJ Mahaney etc., etc.) bringing destruction to cities full of people.  But godly philosophy laments the destruction of humanity…it cries like the prophets at the thought of God’s creation being consumed in His wrath.  It pleads and begs with humanity, like God does so often, to turn from its wicked ways; its denial of human self and human life and God’s truth.  It does not take pleasure and get giddy about the destruction of human beings.

But Reformed theology does.  Because goodness only comes in spite of man, never because of man.  To them, God hates you with a hate that has no end.  If there is any love towards you it is only because, somehow God has possessed you, in spite of you.  He loves Himself, and that’s all.

But back to my other point:  it is not that they have horrible memories when it comes to their theology, it is that they totally concede that God’s “mystery” is the backbone of all physical and metaphysical and epistemological reality.

But the problem is that anything which is truly an “unknowable” mystery cannot possibly be relevant to man’s life.  If it is outside of man’s capacity to integrate into how he organizes his environment, then it is pointless.  Mystery cannot ever be rationally grafted into any serious philosophy.  “Allowing for mystery” is one thing, but it is unreasonable to actually ACT on what is NOT known, which is precisely Wades’ point:  all your behavior is in service to that which you don’t know…which is, according to his doctrine of Total Depravity, everything.  You and life your life exist as a purely function of God’s mystery.  Which means that there cannot ever be a YOU in there because YOU can’t even really know YOU…you are a vessel with a hole in the bottom.  Whatever truth you think you have is fleeting, nebulous…never still and always just out of reach.

They think:  well, we’ll understand in heaven. But the problem with this idea is that if whatever you don’t know isn’t actually relevant NOW, then there is no reason to think it will be relevant THEN.  If it isn’t going to help you to get to heaven, because you can’t know it, then it is meaningless. And if it is only relevant in heaven then why bother even bringing it up now?  Concentrate on what you KNOW, not what you don’t.  And if the sole end and beginning of its relevance is “trust God’s mystery”, then…well, where is the reason behind that statement?  It goes right back to the fundamentals of Reformed epistemology:  there is no way you can ever really know anything, because your mind is ultimately corrupt.  You are to trust that God is doing things in your life that you don’t understand, and so you just let go and let all manner of life happen.  Because confronting evil? Isn’t possible for you, really.  So turning the other cheek to a slap in the face becomes turning the other cheek to a serial rapist in your church.  And the fact that Reformed epistemology is utterly rooted in “God is doing things you can’t understand” means your understanding is irrelevant to life and living; both now and in heaven.  Assuming that people who engage in a wholesale rejection of humanity actually get there.

You are not really you.  That is the beginning and end of Reformed theology.  And that is why discernment blogs which do not confront the doctrine will never curb abuse. Because, as I said before, to them–exhibit A being, I submit, the Wartburg Watch–evil is a disposition, not a philosophy.  As long as you are nice, you must be good.  And they never realize that by conceding the doctrine they have conceded that they cannot possibly qualify “nice” in the first place.  They have no definition of good or evil, and so they cannot have a definition of anything else.

Remember, any philosophy which does not require man’s life to be true will require man’s death to the same objective.