Consequences of Ideas

How seemingly small differences will be the difference between victory and defeat.

“We appreciate the patience you, our dear listeners and readers, have had with us of late. We have delved deep into serious matters of philosophy, religion, ethics and more, and, at times, you might not have fully understood the why of it. We offered up a lot of conclusions, lots of rules and heuristics, but little of explanation that links fundamental beliefs to their very tangible effects socially, governmentally, religiously, and more.

Today, we will try to do what we probably should have started out with: explaining the consequences of ideas. In this you will come to learn why it matters what others believe, deep down, even when it appears the outworking of their ideas are in agreement with your preferred outcomes – often, there’s something dark just beneath the surface that has yet to rear it’s ugly head. More often still even the seemingly smaller differences in ideology will, when brought to their logical ends, mean the difference between victory and crippling defeat. We will do this by, first, outlining what we believe, and what the outworking of that belief looks like, and by comparing it to some other commonly held beliefs.

Let’s explore the way in which what we believe shapes what we do, and how we can extrapolate that to societies, political movements, and more.

First, our household is Christian, as in the “King of Kings, Lord of Lords” variety, Reformational, and one that believes in Covenant Theology with a Post-Millennial eschatology. What does that mean? Let’s break it down.

First, to be “Christian” means, in it’s most basic sense, to believe that Jesus Christ, God-made-flesh, the creator of all that exists, died on the cross to atone for our sin, resurrected, claimed all authority in Heaven and on Earth, and gave mankind both an instruction manual and mission, and, importantly, to be a Christian means you act like it.

Now, that describes a whole swath of persons, namely those persons making up the great Church, of very many denominations and varieties. It does, however, exclude some who do not conform to the most fundamental beliefs of Christianity even while calling themselves “Christian.” Such exclusions include broad swaths who deny the deity, born-deity, or flesh of Christ, often with some esoteric intentions, such as claiming that Christ was merely a man who became a god, and that this path to godhood is available to all who would undertake the study of their cult.

This definition also excludes very many of all denominations who would speak their beliefs insincerely while failing to act like they believe. There is no true belief in he who merely speaks the words as if some kind of incantation but does not elevate Christ to Lord over their own heart and life, and who bear no fruit.

That said, there is still a very broad variety of Christians still qualifying under that definition, and who hold extremely different beliefs that produce very, very different outworking in the world. So, the fundamentals so far, to recap, are:

· Believe in Christ as deity.

· Submit to Christ’s Lordship.

· Act like it.

Now, just that much already covered has dramatic implications for how one operates in the world. To genuinely make the Creator, Christ, your absolute standard in all things means you will be acting out what you believe the requirements of those things are every day. This would be equally true for the beliefs of Muslims, Jews, Libertarians, Azteks, and so on, but to very different cultural effect.

In following Christ, you will avoid and condemn hedonism, libertinism, and voluntarism as a basis for any social, governmental or moral system. The basis for your social and moral system is found in your foundational beliefs about the nature, character, and requirements of God. What, specifically, you believe those requirements are, however, will vary greatly depending on whether you look to both Scripture and “Tradition,” or to Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura), whether you believe any living person has the authority to deliver correct interpretation, by the various interpretations and teachings one might adopt, in the inclusion of Greek philosophy and “Natural Law” versus some flavor of Theonomy, and so on.

Next, we are of the Reformed sort of Christian, being a part of that which broke away from the chains of Rome, who had severely tortured the plain language of the Bible under the banner of “Tradition,” claimed the authority of God Himself for the dictates of the Pope, presumed the authority to forgive sin in exchange for gifts, and so on. The purpose of the Protestant Reformation was to cut off that unfruitful branch of Rome, which had come, over the many years, to preach a different gospel, and return to the foundations of the faith as found in Scripture – a presuppositional commitment to abandon all “Tradition” that departed from the Word.

This, then, has many implications for the outworking of the Christian faith in public. While “Tradition” under Rome promoted an “integralism” and “sacralism,” which, in theory, meant that civil government is under the authority of the “Church.” In reality, this system, while pretending to elevate the Church over the State actually subordinates the Church to the State, as it is always the State that wields the sword and exercises violent coercion. This was the case for a substantial portion of Christian history, and the outworking of this in culture was oft tyrannical, militant, imperial, and contrary to the Law-Word of God. This is the system which our American founding fathers had in mind when they penned the Establishment Clause, prohibiting the establishment of religion by the State.

The foundations for American government lie not in integralism and Roman imperialism, but in the Reformed, Scripturally-informed “Spheres Theology” of the Puritans, which identifies that while Christ is the Head of all spheres, the Church, being that corporate body of Christian believers, has a specific scope of governing authority as outlined in Scripture that is separate from the specific scope of civil government also outlined in Scripture. So, too, does the family have a specific scope and type of government as outlined in Scripture. Of course, the scope of Church government jurisdiction extends only to those believers voluntary subjecting themselves, as they ought to, to the Church elders – in other words, non-believers are not subject to the Church, though we would argue they will nonetheless be subject to Christ and will, eventually, bend the knee or have it bent for them in the next life. See our video on the order of loves and order of government for more on this.

The outworkings, then, of the internal logic of Reformed Christian theology are to decentralize authority away from civil government, elevating the individual as the first level of government, (self-government), as it is the individual who will answer for their own actions in eternal judgement, thereby solving for the philosophical problem of the “one and the many” by rejecting manmade philosophy for God’s covenantal wisdom, embracing the ordered government of family, male-headed, and order of loves as ordained in Scripture, and voluntarily being in subjection to such a good government as described in Romans 13. This was the beating heart of the “Protestant Ethic” that built America.

Next, we have “Covenant Theology,” which stands in constant opposition to “Dispensationalism” among those calling themselves “Reformed.” We’ve covered Dispensationalism and the severity of errors it lends to in some depth previously, so we will not belabor the point here, but Covenant Theology views the modern State of Israel as entirely unrelated to Biblical Israel, as it is the Church, that corporate body of elect believers, that represents, and has always represented, true “Israel,” and to which the promises of the covenants belong.

We are also Post-Millennial in our eschatology, which likewise stands against Dispensationalism in suggesting that the promise of Scripture is not Earthly defeat, as Dispensationalism suggests, but Earthly victory heralding the Second Coming. We believe in no specific period of “tribulation,” and no “Gog-Magog” “final battle,” and our mission is not to allow chaos to reign until we’re rescued in some magical “rapture,” but to tame Earthly chaos under the authority of Christ, as the gates of Hell, that fortification of the enemy, shall not withstand against the onslaught of His Church.

Theonomy simply stands on the presupposition that the Laws of the Old Testament ought to be presumed as in effect, and binding on the Christian, absent reasonable evidence that any individual ordinance was overturned as part of the New Covenant. This is the plain message of Scripture, as Christ Himself said not a single portion of the Law would pass away until the end of time. In practice, this significantly broadens the scope of teachings, and therefore the specificity, of those ethical duties of the Christian, Christian family, and the Christian nation. In doing so it, too, stands against Dispensationalism and a great many other traditions in wholly rejecting pacifism, apolitical beliefs, “easy-believism” of the New-Testament only “Christians,” and the syncretic gnosticism of “Natural Law.”

The outworkings of this Reformed, Covenantal, Post-Millennial, Theonomic theology, or perhaps more simply and accurately “Puritan theology,” elevates Scripture as the daily manual for all of life. Commands to live peaceably among all so long as it is good and reasonable to do so, to teach the nations to obey Christ actively in missions and evangelism, and to constantly be engaged in every sphere to the glory of God mean, in today’s vernacular, “you can just do things.” This lends toward an active social and political engagement against unjust war, against genuine oppression, for ordered liberty, a duty to engage the villain with righteous violence on behalf of our innocent neighbor, and to wield the sword of civil government to strike down the murderer and rapist. These are not the outworkings of a defeatist theology such as Dispensationalism, which quietly promotes and celebrates the chaos that might just bring Christ back to save them, but of an active, engaged, high-agency, high-speed, low-drag theology of victory!

Are you beginning to understand, now, the consequences of ideas? Overwhelmingly, actions are downstream of ideas. Whatever the system of belief of a society is, regardless of how many layabouts there may be doing nothing, there will always be those that drive that society towards its logical ends by invoking the ethics of that system.

This is why we, for instance, can make much common cause with Libertarians, but we could never join them, and we understand that they cannot be allowed, in the final analysis, to rule. Despite quite a few of the desired end-points of their system of beliefs being akin to our own, because theirs stands on manmade (Hobbesian, mostly) philosophy, presuppositions to the legitimacy of social constructivism, the wielding of the dialectic and applied “oppressor-oppressed” lens, the gnostic disposition of life as a prison that must be escaped (by abolishing government – a rather hysterical impossibility), the ultimate outworkings of their system of belief, if enacted in the real world without mitigation, would be much the same as any Communistic or Fascistic system. By refusing to solve for the Paradox of Toleration by coercive action against revolutionaries they succumb to perpetual revolution, by promoting “voluntarism” as the basis of law and ethics, and thereby failing to solve for the problem of the one and the many, they invite hedonism and judgement, and in attempts to abolish government they create a vacuum in which the powerful may enact a might-makes-right paradigm that promotes genuine oppression of the weak, and transitions Libertarian government into tyranny.

You see, what may appear as “small differences” to the uninitiated often represent such fantastically different consequences, as ideas are enacted in the world, that they might as well be gaping chasms of distinction. These things will come to matter as, and if, the Right broadly gains and maintains power in America. We don’t particularly want to live under another utopian ideal that descends into chaos and tyranny. We don’t want to advance a cause of defeatism and nick-of-time rescue as we squander the cultural inheritance we ought to be leaving to our progeny. We’d strongly prefer decentralization of authority and power as opposed to an American Ceasar.

We want all of Christ of all of life, a doctrine of assault against the forces of evil, a promise of Earthly victory – even if not in our lifetimes – and Earthly renewal, the liberty to orient ourselves and our family towards God and His good, defined and constrained spheres of governance each worthy of our voluntary submission, and to the glory of God, war only when just and righteous and fought to victory for America and Americans, and suitable justice for the oligarchs who brought us low.”