Reading the Tea Leaves

The following was submited by "Jack" to a comment thread at Mises.org.

A Big Problem With Tea Partiers:
Neoconservatism

This seems to stem from
a lack of knowledge, and stances based upon misinformation, disinformation and bias built upon
a poor philosophical foundation.

Philosophy matters and is important. Ayn Rand was correct about that particular issue. (and many others)

They all need to examine the philosophies that their positions grow out of:
The branch of neoconservatism leads back to a tree of ultranationalism and Trotskyite socialism.
The Tree is deeply rooted in Authoritarian and Totalitarian Philosophy.
At its core its Caesarism (worship of an all powerful leader)
That is why for years the neocons constantly pushed for an all powerful executive branch.
It also explains their fetish for Lincoln.
Many Tea Partiers sadly glom onto neocon talking heads and blindly take their words as gospel truth.
Many Tea Partiers profess to be Christians but support issues and ideas contrary to Christian Teachings:

Lets Compare Christian Philosophy with Neoconservative Philosophy:
Christian: ‘Let us do good so that good may result’
Neocon: ‘let us do evil so that good may result’

Christian: ‘Doing good makes right’
Neocon: ‘Might makes Right’

Christian: ‘Doing evil is unjust’
Neocon: ‘The ends justify the means’

Christian ‘Overcome evil with good’ (Bible)
Neocon: You must become the Devil to Defeat the Devil’

Christian: ‘God comes first’ (Bible)
Neocon: ‘Nation comes first’

Christian: ‘war as a very last resort…if ever’ (Just War Theory + Pacifism)
Neocon: ‘never met a war I didnt love’ (pro war pro ‘preemptive strike philosophy of Bush et al.)

Christian: ‘Promote peace’ ‘Jesus is the Prince of Peace’, ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers…’ (Bible)
Neocon: ‘peace is for wimps, sissies, and the naive’

Christian: ‘We should be concerned about the Rights of others’
Neocon: ‘The Constitution is an outdated document, people who fuss about losing Constitutional Rights are crazy’ (Often said when their great leader is running the show)

Notice a difference here?
These are just a FEW examples. Everyone should think of more examples and ask themselves:
‘Do I believe any of that neocon garbage?’
ALL Tea Partiers should switch off FOX News on their TV and go read a good Book.
Such as reading a Book by Ron Paul
A Christian who displays Christian philosophy.
Rather than blindly buy into the pablum that the neocons are peddling as so many do.

Neocons worship war and they conflate and confuse true strength with being a reckless belligerent d-bag. Also Unlike our Founders, they want an Empire not a Republic.
They swoon for the might of Ancient Rome. (The same one that crucified all those Christians)

If Tea Partiers rejected all aspects of neoconservatism...they would be far better off for it.

Read more: The Mixed-Up Culture of the Tea Party — Mises Economics Blog here.

How We Rate the Church

(1) We must not overrate the position and importance of the Church. It is only too possible to do this. But it will mean spiritual loss and disaster. If we exalt the Church we are likely to forget Christ. High views of the Church often mean low views of Christ. If we emphasize the Church as the depository of grace we tend to neglect Christ as the Source of grace. If we place the Church between the sinner and the Saviour we may easily shut Christ out of the sinner's view. But if we exalt Christ the Church finds her proper place. If we honour Christ we shall value the Church aright.

(2) We must not underrate the position and importance of the Church. It is only too easy to do this. But this too will mean spiritual loss. The individual Christian needs the Church for fellowship, growth, love, and progress. The world needs the Church for witness and blessing. We must therefore honour the Church, value her life, further her progress, and enable her to realize God's purpose. We must foster Church life, Church unity, Church fellowship in every possible way. We must pray for the Church, that she may realize her high calling and glorify God in the world. Thus shall we be Churchpeople in the truest sense, members of the family of God, branches of the Vine, members of the Body, and stones in the Living Temple.

W.H. Griffith Thomas, The Catholic Faith* (1920), p. 194.

*This was the author's evangelical treatise on the Anglican catechism and Prayer Book.

A Tale of Two Niceas

Here is an excellent lecture presented by Craig Blaising (one of my favorite theologians) to a chapel program at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, on Reformation Day, October 29, 2009. The message consists of a powerful call to the authority of the God-breathed Scriptures, a stark comparison of the two Councils of Nicea (325 vs. 787), and, by implication, a rejection of the authoritative claims of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Blaising, a member of the North American Patristics Society who engages Roman Catholics and Orthodox in dialogue, is at the end of the day an eloquent and firmly-rooted defender of evangelical faith and sola scriptura.

Update: Thanks to Andrew Preslar for providing the video link above.

My Favorite Anglican: William Henry Griffith Thomas (1861 - 1924)

Though W.H. Griffith Thomas emerged as a British scholar with a sterling education and prestigious positions in the church and academia and Lewis Sperry Chafer was a “self-made” student of the Scriptures, the two shared much in common that bound them together. The commonalities were theological and ministerial. Both men were a blend of theological traditions. They were certainly not Arminian, nor were they comfortable with traditional five-point Calvinism; both were conservatives, but they were not fundamentalists.

Five theological points may be noted about their views. First, both men embraced the Reformation concept of sola Scriptura. Unlike his principal mentors, James Orr (professor of apologetics and theology in the United Free Church College of Glasglow, Scotland) and P. T. Forsyth, Thomas believed the Bible was the inerrant Word of God, a conviction on his part that was foundational. His philosophical approach to the Scriptures was not rooted in Baconian empiricism reinforced by Common Sense Realism. He affirmed that Christ is the central, all-consuming point of the Bible and life, and the Bible is the means of cognitively experiencing Him. Knowledge is limited; it can make something seem real, but it requires the witness of the Spirit of God to know that it is true. Thus Thomas did not possess confidence in the role of apologetics that was embraced at Princeton Seminary. As a teacher of apologetics, a position denied him in Canada, he said its role was not to construct the edifice of faith. Why? Because it is not a source of revelation equal to “the revelation of God.” Instead the function of an apologist is to demolish his opponent’s arguments and to demonstrate the reasonableness of faith. Supernatural truth is not beyond the grasp of knowing, but it is beyond the grasp of a whole-hearted affectional embrace. To Thomas and Chafer the Holy Spirit is the only Teacher of religious knowledge because well-crafted arguments can never produce certainty. A correct philosophy of ministry must be erected on a correct epistemology. Consequently the focus of ministry in Thomas’s view, and here Chafer would agree, must be on proclamation, not clever arguments or transient contemporary issues.

Second, while Thomas adhered to the Calvinism enshrined in the Anglican Prayer Book and the Thirty-Nine Articles, which he defined and explained meticulously in The Catholic Faith and The Principles of Theology, his Calvinism was at odds with the Reformed Faith. (Like Chafer, he might be described as a “reluctant Calvinist” and a “marginal Fundamentalist.”) Though Thomas knew and embraced predestination as “a Fundamental principle of Protestantism” and his adherence to the Princetonian, he did not extend the logic of his theology to double predestinarianism or limited atonement. In explaining the doctrine of irresistible grace Thomas was willing to live with such ambiguity that Benjamin B. Warfield furiously condemned him. Yet Thomas was a Calvinist, and Princeton theologians were forced grudgingly to recognize it. Sharing Thomas’s Calvinism, Chafer too felt the probing of Warfield’s surgical pen. Neither Thomas nor Chafer was Arminian. They shared a modification of Reformed dogma with which they were comfortable. Chafer may have been a little misleading when he wrote in a publicity statement that the curriculum of the new (Dallas) seminary was “in full agreement with the Reformed Faith and its theology is strictly Calvinistic.”

Third, while Thomas did not embrace the intricate distinctives frequently made by advocates of classic dispensationalism, he was aware of the stream of dispensational thought that ran from John Darby via James Brookes and C. I. Scofield to Chafer. In organizing and interpreting the Scriptures Thomas adopted a dispensational framework that included “three dispensations of the Divine revelation to man, involving a progressive economy of grace.” (emphasis added)

There were a few differences between Thomas and Chafer. For example, though a premillennialist, Thomas did not see the millennium as a dispensation (he did not embrace the details of the dispensational system advanced by Scofield and Chafer). By the standards of classic dispensationalism today Thomas might be perceived as suspect, but he was a committed proponent of the system as a whole. When Chafer sent a copy of the proposed doctrinal statement of the new seminary to Thomas for review, Thomas had only two suggestions for revision, neither of which pertained to dispensationalism.

Thomas was an heir of the premillennial tradition within English evangelicalism, though he spoke on eschatological themes with restraint. As he moved outside English evangelicalism, and more so when he moved from Canada to the United States, he increasingly spoke on these themes. Thomas wrote an article in The Fundamentals on this theme and contributed articles to the Sunday School Times (one of which he coauthored with Scofield), Our Hope, Christian Workers Magazine, and others. When he chaired the resolutions committee of the World Christian Fundamental Association, he affirmed premillennialism in its creed. Again he was not as detailed in his delineation of premillennialism as Scofield and Chafer, but he was firmly in that camp. “In his dispensationalism, as in his theology in general, Thomas demonstrated his preference for a few major articles and avoided a rigid and comprehensive system.”

Fourth, Thomas emphasized the spiritual life, accepting, like Chafer, a form of Keswick theology that rejected perfectionism and taught a progressive, counteractive view of sanctification...

As Thomas explained, there are three views on the believer’s relationship to indwelling sin. One view is eradicationism, the notion that sin can be entirely done away with. This is biblically unjustifiable and contrary to human experience. Another view is suppressionism, the idea that the believer must war against the remnants of sin without any hope of succeeding in this life. But this too is not the teaching of Scripture. Suppressionism, as Thomas called Warfield’s view, has the advantage of being more realistic than eradicationism, but it fails because it is too pessimistic. A third view is counteraction, the belief that believers have responsibilities and that spiritual progress and victories are more than an ideal. Though it is frequently asserted that the Keswick motto is “Let Go and Let God,” neither Thomas nor Chafer were passivists; they were, however, triumphalists and this brought on them the wrath of Warfield for their supposedly being too naive. Thomas and Chafer’s view is better captured in the words “Let us go on.”

Fifth, in Thomas’s dispensational approach to Scripture, he believed that the present era is “the age of the Holy Spirit.” He stressed that the work of the Holy Spirit is integral to the Christian faith. The Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures, the Spirit alone regenerates, the Spirit is the key to the spiritual life, and the Spirit alone is the believers’ Teacher. Thomas believed, as Chafer often repeated, “at Dallas Seminary we have but one Teacher.” What they meant by this is that the Christian faith is beyond the grasp of the merely rational; being supernatural, it requires a believing, regenerate, affectional heart change. The Christian faith is not merely a careful collection of maxims; it is beyond a teacher’s ability to explain it fully or a preacher’s talents to describe it adequately. To become a Christian, to embrace Christian truth, to have the hope of heaven is to have an assurance of knowledge that is described in the Bible but that goes beyond it to the living Christ described in it. For both men apologetics has a narrowly defined function that was at the foundation of their common educational philosophy.

“The ‘Thomas’ in the W.H. Griffith Thomas Memorial Lectureship,” by John D. Hannah, Bibliotheca Sacra, no. 163 (January-March, 2006).

Christian Austrians

It took me close to eleven months to muddle through Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State. In March, I received an alert from the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL that its spring catalog contained a misprint: the scholar’s edition of Mises’ Human Action was listed for only $20 (it was supposed to list for $40). I couldn’t resist. My copy arrived three weeks ago and I’m already two-thirds of the way through it. It is proving to be much more a page-turner.

Another book I’m eager to get a hold of is Foundations of Economics: A Christian View, by Shawn Ritenour, a professor of economics at Grove City College in Pennsylvania (my Plymouth Brethren friends will recognize GCC as the location of one of their annual Bible conferences). Ritenour is both a biblically conservative Christian and an Austrian school economist. In an earlier post I erroneously insinuated that Austrian economics and Christianity are strange bedfellows; actually, that is not the case. A number of prominent Austrians are believers: Robert Murphy, William Anderson, Art Carden, historian Thomas E. Woods, and Jeffrey Tucker, to name a few. Dr. Ritenour recently gave an interview to Julie Roys of Moody (Bible Institute) Radio about his new book, which can be heard here.

An Anglican Dispensationalist

Nature is full of oddities. Here’s an example of one.

As we pass through the penitential season of Lent at St. Jude’s Mission, we, like millions of Anglican Christians around the globe, find necessary changes in the liturgy for Holy Communion. One of these is a recitation of the commandments given to Moses. As each one is read the congregation responds, “Amen. Lord, have mercy.” We do so in acknowledgement that we, in sundry and numerous ways, have violated God’s glory, and confess our failures. For one like me who adheres to a form of dispensational theology (as did the late Anglican minister W.H. Griffith Thomas), the Fourth Commandment is particularly interesting:

Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.
Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Interesting because, as anyone schooled in dispensational theology can tell you, the Sabbath was a unique sign of God’s covenant with Israel. When we scan the New Testament epistles, written to the mostly-Gentile churches, we find no reiteration of the Sabbath commandment. Many Gentile believers did not keep it. Apparently, the apostle Paul did not teach it.

I remember a situation involving my oldest daughter when she was a student at a local Christian school. Her teacher asked the class, “What day is the Sabbath?” Lindsay raised her hand and answered, “Saturday,” for which she received catcalls from her classmates and correction from the teacher. But Lindsay was quite correct – the seventh day was set aside for Israel as an everlasting statute. On the other hand, there was precedent for Christian believers to gather on the first day of the week, the “Lord’s day.” This was the day Jesus rose from among the dead. It was the day the believers in Troas (Acts 20:7) customarily assembled. That this day came to be re-interpreted as the “Sabbath” is semantical. Christians do not literally refrain from all forms of labor or travel on Sunday. We go to church, then possibly to lunch, to the park, or set up the badminton net in the yard. Faith does not preclude some from flipping on the NASCAR race or the ball game.

The matter of holy days was a touchy one for the Apostle as he dealt with diverse sensibilities within the new commonwealth, the assembly of Jewish and Greek believers.

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God (Romans 14:4-6, ESV)

Neither dietary laws nor holy days were enjoined upon the whole assembly. John Chrysostom renders a similar spirit of liberality in his famous Easter (Pascha) homily:

Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Still, there is one aspect of the Sabbath that does apply to all believers, regardless of race or time. It involves what the Sabbath, in type (Colossians 2:16-17), depicts: the rest that is available for all who put complete trust in the Person and work of Christ.

There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone should fall according to the same example of disobedience (Hebrews 4:9-11, NKJV)

To the extent that I or anyone neglects “so great salvation,” then indeed: Lord, have mercy.