Tag: Christianity

Churchian theology

Erick Erickson ‏@EWErickson
Oh no, alt-Reich! It turns out the creator of heaven and earth is a Jew! Literally!! You are not His chosen people, they are!

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Who are the “Jews who are not Jews”? And what is “the Synagogue of Satan?”

Since you’re a theologian and all now.

I’m actually genuinely curious how people explain those two concepts from Revelation 3:9, whether they are preterists or more conventional eschatologists.


Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.

Moreover, my understanding is that Jesus was a Galilean, not a Judean. However, I don’t see how it matters much, considering that we’re in virgin birth territory anyhow.

The fruits of cuckservative Churchianity



Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
– Matthew 7:15-20

If an apple tree brings forth a withered pear, it is not a good apple tree, but a corrupt one. So it is with men.

There was a time when Americans considered America blessed by God. What sort of madman would dare to make that claim now?

UPDATE: the cartoon was created and commissioned by Faith and Heritage. Clearly an organization that understands the concept of good rhetoric.

Not so, however, with ‘cuckservative.’ Not only does it not suffer from the vagueries of its close equivalents; it also cuts much deeper because its targets cannot be in doubt. It lays finger on the more personal dimensions of treason – the relinquishment of one’s own house, wife, and children to invasive predators. The power of its poignancy lies in the fact that it highlights the abdication of a man’s most intimate duties. It brings home the implications of liberalism on border and race issues as violating the principle of 1 Timothy 5:8, disregard of one’s own family. It impugns the manhood of its subjects, and concomitantly any and all professions of a man’s Christian faith as well. So yes, the acerbic potency of this word is couched in the most basic allegiances and undergirded by the biblical understanding of familial duty. Even if it would seem indecipherably archaic to post-family Marxists, those yet anchored to traditional categories, however so tenuously, still comprehend the gravity and accuracy of the charge.

The caterwauling it has evoked from so many so-called conservatives is indicative of not only its power, but the identity of those to whom it most applies. As the old chestnut goes, “When you pitch a rock into a pack of dogs the one that yelps is the one you hit.” Its targets simply cannot be mistaken. Yes, they may cavil that allusions to cuckoldry are somehow just not cricket. But none putting on the most delicate Victorian airs presently ever imagined the term cuckold as improper before now; in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or the whole roster of English literati since, it appears no one ever took the term ‘cuckold’ as unchristian, uncharitable, or inappropriate till the dawning of the age of the Social Justice Warrior and Neo-Christianity. Clearly, the reason so many Beltway Conservatives* balk at it is that it crystallizes the depth of their betrayal and heaps burning coals upon their heads.

I have to say, I kind of like these guys.

Smack my atheist up

In which Stickwick and I tag-team a pair of godless self-appointed wonderboys. First up, DookerT:

On people like Sam Harris. I don’t know how anyone can really debunk anything he says, you can just make your own subjective moral arguments of why you think he’s wrong and you’re right. As far as the final word goes, it’s in the eye of the beholder. The Christian will generally see people like Vox as being correct and an atheist might generally agree with Harris . There simply are no certainties in this realm of debate, at least in my opinion.

It’s quite easy to debunk much of what he says, as it happens. Sam Harris makes many arguments that are based on objective assertions. They can be, and have been, conclusively debunked by the simple mechanic of showing those assertions to be factually false. There is nothing subjective about it. A very good example can be found in the appendix of On the Existence of Gods.

The ironically named Mr Rational picked the wrong blog to try to dazzle with pseudo-intellectual posturing when he responded to a statement about the Big Bang theory:

You do realize that the current model of cosmology is a creationist theory, do you not?

That statement utterly discredits you.  Creationists may have tried to claim Big Bang/Inflation theory as their own, but it is utterly without theistic implications.  If you are listening to people who claim it does, you are listening to liars.  The left has its own liars telling lies which support its dogmas; if you commit the same errors you are no better than the left.

I am moderately familiar with the theory of inflation (far more than most readers here, I’m certain).  The fluctuations in the temperature of the Cosmic Background Radiation associated with quantum density variations frozen in the cosmic fireball as space expanded too fast for them to reach equilibrium again is predicted by WHAT holy book in WHAT passage, precisely?  If it is fair for Vox to demand a specific list of mutations to turn organism X into organism Y, it is eminently fair for me to demand this specificity in theological claims and pronounce the theology worthless if it fails.

I responded to this myself, by pointing out that a) the Big Bang Theory and expansion were conceived by a Belgian priest, and b) the Big Bang Theory is a necessary, though not sufficient requirement for the Bible to be true, but Stickwick’s response is better. She is, by the way, a very well-regarded astrophysicist with a bibliography of published scientific papers on esoteric cosmological matters that is much longer than my list of publications:

I can’t decide if this is the stupidest thing ever said here or the funniest. Others have done a sufficient job explaining to you why this is wrong, but I’ll add one thing. A few years ago, I was present as a Nobel laureate and one of the greatest living physicists explained to a group of non-scientists that the multiverse hypothesis was developed at least in part because of the theistic implications of the big bang.

You’re doing something very annoying, which is attempting to dazzle people with the details of science instead of addressing the heart of the matter. Unless you’re an expert, this is a bad idea, because not everyone is going to be bowled over by your ability to parrot this information. I’m certainly not, because you’ve failed to realize that inflation is not yet a theory with any predictive power. The recent BICEP2 results that supposedly confirmed it were disproven. Inflation is a nice idea, and one that I think is probably correct, but let’s be honest — so far there is no conclusive evidence supporting it.

In any case, it’s absurd to say that the theistic implications of a theory hinge on whether a holy book mentions one particular unproven detail of the theory. It’s like the idiot biologist I talked to who said Genesis was bogus, because out of the dozens of scientifically-testable statements made by Genesis 1, she could find no mention of bacteria. The theological implications of a theory do not hinge on whether it contains every possible detail of the theories of the natural development of the universe, but on whether it says anything that confirms or denies a central tenet of a religion.

As Vox already explained to you, the big bang confirms the first three words of the Bible. The Bible begins with Genesis 1, because, among other things, it establishes God as the sovereign creator of all things. Without this, the Abrahamic religions are meaningless. If the universe is eternal, that’s obviously a big problem for Christianity. Scientists in the 1950s and 1960s understood this very well, which is (partly) why there was so much initial resistance to the big bang and why physicists continue to try to find loopholes in the theory that imply the universe is de facto eternal.

Now, before any atheist gets his panties in a bunch, I hasten to add that I know perfectly well that neither DookerT nor Mr Rational speak for all atheists nor are representative of the best that they have to offer. There are atheists I like, respect, and even admire.

But I think it would be wise for the average Internet atheist to understand that not only are there Christians who are better-educated and more intelligent than they are, but that there are actually more highly intelligent Christians than there are highly intelligent atheists. According to the GSS, in the United States, there are 11.4x more +2SD theists who either know God exists or believe God exists despite having the occasional doubt than there are +2SD atheists who don’t believe God exists.

And if you don’t understand why that is, you’re really not equipped to even enter the lists here.

The intellectually fearsome atheist

For some reason, Google occasionally emails me comments that people are making about Stefan Molyneux’s videos in which I’ve appeared. This one, by ismelljello, was particularly amusing.

Read the reviews of his book. It honestly compelled me to make a video series where i debunk his tired old arguments. If you’re going to peddle other peoples ideas, at least make sure they haven’t already been trounced.

He made a video series to debunk the tired old arguments of a book he hasn’t read. That’s… an interesting approach.

I have the distinct impression that he has absolutely no idea that The Irrational Atheist cannot possibly contain “tired old arguments” because they are new critiques of the arguments put forth by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray, among others.

It should certainly be interesting to discover how he proves that religion causes war and is worse than child molestation.

This is the danger of intellectual posturing. Sooner or later, you’re going to strike a pose that will catch the attention of those who actually possess the information you’re pretending to have. Never pretend to know what you don’t.

When the Pope is not the Pope

What does that make him? Ann Barnhardt explains that, resignation or no resignation, Benedict XVI is still the Pope, not the Pope Emeritus, which makes the so-called Francis, what, exactly? I’m neither Roman Catholic nor an expert on Vatican law, but there is no question that Mr. Bergolio’s behavior has been worrisome, even to many Protestants and non-Christians:

Pope Benedict XVI Ratzinger submitted an invalid resignation in February of ARSH 2013, predicated upon the error that the Papacy could be bifurcated or in any way shared or expanded.  The relevant Canon is Canon 188, which states very plainly and succinctly:

A resignation made out of grave fear that is inflicted unjustly or out of malice, substantial error, or simony is invalid by the law itself.

Last week, one of the most prestigious Vatican journalists, an Italian named Sandro Magister, published a piece called “A ‘Pontificate of Exception’. The Mystery of Pope Benedict Against the Antichrists who are undermining The Church.”  In this piece, the VERY influential and respected Magister quotes Italian Canon Lawyer Guido Ferro Canale at length, who honed-in on a very specific German term used by Pope Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein in late May: “Pontificate of Exception”, or “Ausnahmepontifikat”. Canale argues persuasively that Ratzinger may have thrown the Petrine Office into a suspended state of juridical emergency.

Magister also quotes Ganswein at length showing that Ratzinger STILL BELIEVES himself, and RESIGNED WITH THE INTENTION of continuing to BE THE POPE….

Jorge Bergoglio is NOT the pope. Joseph Ratzinger is the pope – Pope Benedict XVI.  “Pope Francis” is a fiction, and thus all of the scandal and damage that this wicked man Jorge Bergoglio is wreaking is, at its core, a function of the fact that we are calling him by a false name. We all know that it is a wicked lie to call Bruce Jenner “Caitlyn”, because to do so is to assent to a lie.  If we can all understand the gravity and scandal of a z-list celebrity and madman calling himself a woman, how much more grave is it to call a man who is NOT the Vicar of Christ, “the Pope?”

What it is high time people start discussing openly is the distinct possibility that Antipope Bergoglio is the False Prophet Forerunner of the Antichrist.  Students of End Times prophecy tell us that The Antichrist will neither be the pope (obviously), nor even APPEAR to be the pope.  BUT, the False Prophet Forerunner of the Antichrist could certainly APPEAR to be “a pope”.  And if one thinks about it, it makes perfect diabolical sense for the False Prophet Forerunner to be precisely that – an antipope.  He would wield the authority of Peter, auto-destruct the institutional Church, and even establish a false, apostate church, a “one world religion” with himself at its head, all in preparation for the coming of The Antichrist, who will be a secular leader that attempts to deify himself.  And if the False Prophet Forerunner were an antipope, the Holy Ghost would be “kept out of the way” with regards to the graces and protections of the Petrine Office.  This is why Bergoglio spews heresy on a near-daily basis.  It isn’t because The Holy Ghost is failing, or has forsaken the Petrine Office or the Church.  It is because Bergoglio is not the pope.  It really is that simple.

What I am now convinced Antipope Bergoglio is doing is attempting to draw “all peoples unto himself” and coalesce his power in preparation for the unveiling of a “one world religion” which will ultimately be the client of a “one world government”.  This has been the stated goal of Freemasonry for these last 300 years, manifested in the United Nations, the European Union, and the regime now occupying Washington D.C., and now we see the open and aggressive drive to dissolve all international borders, both conceptually and physically, with Antipope Bergoglio as its primary propagandist.  This has also been foretold in countless prophecies.

Now, having grown up in the shadow of various Christian eschatologists, I am extremely disinclined towards the paranoia of the Left Behind crowd, who see the Revelation of St. John playing out every time Russia sends a gymnastic squad to a competition, someone shoots someone else in the Middle East, or a Democrat is elected President. I have heard more candidates for “the Antichrist” than I can recall, from Jimmy Carter to an up-and-coming political player in Uzbekistan.

So, I don’t take this sort of Christian fretting about the End Times seriously at all. And yet, it’s impossible to deny that there is some seriously freaky stuff taking place behind closed doors in the Vatican at the same time the globalists are going off the deep end with their one-world policies.

All I can really say is that this is really not the world I envisioned when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Let them go their wicked ways

An eloquent reminder of why women should neither vote nor speak in church. Particularly self-declared “lifestyle theologians”.

Evangelicals are endorsing Trump by and large because he promises to return our nation to the “good old days.” Trump promises to bring back steel and coal, to return our country to an immigrant-free land, and, with gusto, he promises to make America the world super power it used to be. His campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” has deeply resonated with leaders across the spectrum.

But our generation doesn’t quite know what that means. Don’t forget, we grew up during war times. On September 11th, 2001, I was in eighth grade. When the war in Iraq started, I was in high school. Graduation came and many of my high school friends enlisted. I can still remember my friend, Kyle, telling me he had enlisted and feeling this overwhelming sense that we were far too young for all of this. These are the days in which we have grown up. We haven’t known the days of peace and tranquility that older generations reminisce about and desire to return to. It’s not that we don’t think things should change, it’s just that we don’t know a different way.

But war was not the only thing the separated the “good old days” from today in many leaders’ minds. There were many “benefits” of that by-gone era for those supporting a traditionalist view. Women were in the home raising the children without complaint, the Christian feminist movement hadn’t yet touched the churches and immensely inconvenienced pastors who had not had to grapple with these issues in a long time, and the notion of being politically correct wasn’t as demanding on conference speakers, writers, and preachers as it is today. When some Evangelicals look back, they see more tranquil days simply because these things were absent. But when millennials look back, we see how far our society has come. Evangelicals have warned us against the allure of progressivism, but I’m here to say that we actually like the progress. We actually like that women are on their way to equal pay, we like that you can’t make a racist comment as a public figure and go unnoticed, and we like that there are more female theologians and teachers and professors than ever before in American history. So when you try to pull us back to the “good old days,” you’ll miss us.

She’s right. National greatness doesn’t appeal to these millennials because they have no idea what it is. They love their degradation and their evil. They crawl like animals and believe themselves superior to those who came before them and walked upright. They genuinely believe that a descent into a crime-ridden third-world hellhole that can’t even teach children how to read, let alone put a man on the Moon, is “how far our society has come”.

Let them go. They worship feminism, globalism, and progressivism, not Jesus Christ. Follow the Divine example and abandon them to the Hell of their own choosing. We don’t need them. We don’t need numbers. All we need is 12 God-fearing men.

You will be hard pressed to find a millennial nationalist outside of the Republican intern pool. Perhaps it is that international travel is more available to our generation, or that we are living in more diverse communities that celebrate that diversity, but we don’t think America is the only great country, and we certainly don’t think that America is a Christian country.

Evangelical leaders are not just supporting nationalism, but are elevating nationalism to a Christian virtue. Many point back to the founding fathers as Christian leaders in our nation and impress upon us that we must support the constitution and protect our country because it is a Christian thing to do. We have deeply muddied the language between serving our God and serving our country. Forget the martyrs of the faith around the world, posters show us that soldiers make the “ultimate sacrifice.” As Christian millennials, we just can’t buy this. We look over our shoulders at our nation’s history and wince a little. We don’t have a lot of national pride because we are waking up to the immense on-going racism that exists in our nation’s systems, the horrors of early American history, and the tragedies around the world that happen because every country has nationalists. So when you equate nationalism with Christian virtue, we’re out.

Then you’re out and good riddance too. It’s not so much that nationalism is a Christian virtue as anti-nationalism being a Satanic one; globalism is overtly anti-Christian Neo-Babelism. Foolish millennials like these belong to neither the nation nor the church and should be kicked out of both without hesitation or regret. Evangelicals aren’t losing a generation, rather, Satan is running out of Baby Boomers and is in the process of reloading.

Although it may be tempting, there is no need to tell stupid young women like this to go to Hell. They are already well on their way.

Now he’s just trolling Catholics

The current pope has gone from reprehensible to ridiculous:

Pope Francis on Tuesday appointed a special commission to examine the role of female deacons in the Church, in a potentially historic opening on the possibility of women joining the clergy.

The 13-member commission, made up of seven men and six women, will study the question of female deacons with a particular focus on the history of women having played this role in the early years of the Church, the Vatican said in a statement.

The move follows a pledge made by Francis in May during a question-and-answer session with members of female religious orders.

Advocates of women serving as deacons have long argued that they are pitifully under-represented in the Church’s hierarchy and decision-making processes.

Allowing women to enter the clergy at a rank just below a priest would represent a first step towards correcting this imbalance, they argue.

They also insist there is no theological obstacle to the move because of the precedent established by women performing the role in the early centuries of Christianity.

At this point, given what we know about the deleterious effects of female ordination on every single Christian denomination, this has to be considered an intentionally destructive act.

At this rate, he is going to change his name to Francine, declare himself a trans-woman, approve married clergy, and announce his marriage to an imam before Christmas.

It survived the Borgias and Avignon

So one would presume the Catholic Church will also survive the increasingly disastrous Pope Francis. But I expect he is testing the Catholicism, though not the Christianity, of more than a few Catholics these days. I mean, seriously, “a new humanity”? What sort of Communist post-Christian anti-Biblical happy talk is that?

Flying back to Rome Sunday night from Krakow, he was asked by reporters why he has never used the word “Islam” when denouncing terrorist attacks.

Francis said he thinks “it’s not right to identify Islam with violence.”

He added that every religion has its “little group of fundamentalists.'” He said that if he speaks of violent Islam, he’d have to speak of violent Catholicism, since Catholics kill, too.

Referring to Isis, also known as Islamic State group, Francis said it “presents itself with its violent identity card, but it’s not Islam.'”

God, said Francis in his final homily of the pilgrimage, “demands of us real courage, the courage to be more powerful than evil, by loving everyone, even our enemies.”

“People may judge you to be dreamers, because you believe in a new humanity, one that rejects hatred between peoples, one that refuses to see borders as barriers and can cherish its own traditions without being self-centered or small-minded,” Francis told his flock.

Earlier in his pilgrimage, Francis had expressed dismay that many people and places aren’t welcoming enough to refugees or those fleeing poverty in their homelands.

That’s not Catholicism. That’s not Christianity. That’s raw Neo-Babelism. One observes that despite his attempt to encourage Poles to meekly accept Islamic invasion, Francis has taken in fewer refugees than the so-called Nazi Pope took in Jews.

He’s literally preaching an anti-Crusade of Muslim occupation. I understand that his comments often get taken out of context, but this is straight from the jackass’s mouth. No wonder the very Catholic Polish government wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit.

I’m very interested in knowing what the Catholics here think about this pope. I am NOT interested in hearing the various anti-Catholics spewing their usual venom nor is this an invitation to do so, so be aware that I won’t hesitate to delete Protestant comments on this post. But from an outsider’s perspective, considering the way in which this pope followed on the heel’s of Benedict’s resignation, there does appear to be something seriously wrong in the Vatican.

Mailvox: Churchianity and Cruz

JM is mystified by the continued enthusiasm of Churchian cuckservatives for Ted Cruz:

I used to respect the authors of this blog and some of those they quote with approval, but I’ve lost respect for them in the last few months, and have dropped them from my blogroll.  I find it both interesting and annoying to see how they rationalize Ted Cruz’s refusal to keep his word into an act of Christian principle.  To be charitable, they may be unaware of all the dirty tricks pulled by the Cruz campaign, but they’d probably find some way to justify them, anyway.

I suspect that Cruz, Jeb, and Kasich never had any intention of supporting Trump regardless of the pleedge they made, and they’re just making up excuses to rationalize their dishonesty.

Most of the women mentioned in this post who are so upset at Trump and Christians who favour Trump are extremely judgmental Calvinists, who seem to be making this a test of Christian orthodoxy.

If these people are so enthusiastic about Cruz’s alleged adherence to the Constitution, why don’t they notice that he isn’t even constitutionally eligible to hold the office he was running for?

It’s just a form of Christian identity politics, that’s all. After all, once you’ve determined that Ted Cruz is the Holy and Anointed One, it’s a little hard to back down and admit that not only are you wrong, but you’ve been listening to false prophets you should never again give any credence.

Like any other cult that’s faced with dealing with false prophecies, the response of the hard core is to double down even as everyone else falls away.

The only reason they’re so upset with Trump is because he has shown their prophets to be false, their principles to be fake, and their pretensions to be ridiculous. I suspect that most of these die-hards are either women or gammas, as neither can ever forgive someone who humiliates them by publicly proving them to be wrong.

I wasn’t even a little bit surprised to see the poster boy for Churchian cuckservatives, Matt Walsh, being prominently featured in the approved quotes club. That is the sort of people JM is dealing with here.

Mailvox: Jesus Christ and the SS hierarchy

This was a fascinating take on interpreting the original Alpha and Omega and applying it to the observable socio-sexual hierarchy.

As we believe Jesus is fully God and fully Man, I also believe him to have fully exhibited the redeemed traits of every rank of men. In the Teacher we each see our own place in his Kingdom and our own wavelength of light to the world, forming together as his Body now on earth the same pure light that shone through his flesh many years ago.

 α: Christ was the alpha male when he overturned the tables in the Temple and drove out his enemies with a whip. He as the alpha male when he rebuked the Pharisees to their face in public, demolishing their power and credibility in the most humiliating way possible.

The glory of the alpha male, redeemed, is the power he exerts over immoral and weak leaders. When he asserts his dominance over the corrupt he brings justice to the world as no other can, and he provides upright leadership and inspiration that other men and women thirst for without even realizing it. The alpha has the power and energy to inspire in his followers the best of themselves for his cause.

Read the whole thing at Alpha Game.