Updates & obiter dicta

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Tuesday 20 May 2025

Amid all the noise on the internet channels, there occasionally is an item or an interview that offers a lot of significant content. This recently occurred on SarahWestall.com in an interview with Dave Janda. Among the many things covered is the reason that Robert Kennedy Jr has been such a disappointment. Of course, many people always were skeptical of placing their trust in a proud member of the Kennedy crime family.

Saturday 3 April 2025

There seems to be a trend of an increasing number of channels on the internet engaged in anti-apologetics. Evidential apologetics is taking a shellacking. Even on the other side, the evidential apologists are joining in with reconsiderations. Kupie McDowell, for example, did a video retracting the argument that the resurrection is true because all apostles died as martyrs, in that way showing their conviction ― an argument that had long been an evidentialist favorite. Is there some connection between this and the current fad for deconstruction? First, why is deconstruction as fad? Previously, some people just stopped believing. Now they need a framework for doing so. Just as the woke are woke because everyone is on board, there seems to be a similar factor in not believing. A movement is required to authenticate even non-belief. The underlying assumption seems to be that people believe because of evidential apologetics, thus the authenticated removal of the evidence is required. Has the internet something essential to do with this? That is, people view videos and have stopped reading, thus losing the practice and ultimately the ability to engaged is sustained thought. Then they notice any anybody from any point of view can spin a good yarn, in internet terms. Therefore they turn to their peers for a different sort of authentication and must join into something that is a “thing” that is going on. If the trend is away from evidential apologetics, what is coming in? We hear a lot about natural theology. Now, natural theology is not evidentialism. It is the integration of Christianity with a cosmology that is is some way scientific. The old natural theology was the integration of a new Greek-Christian synthesis with a basic dependence on Greek cosmology as developed by the philosophers. Immediately there was an opposition to the old natural theology by the other scholastics who saw the implicatons against Christianity and particularly God’s sovereignty. Today’s natural theology seems very sympathetic to Aristotle and Aquinas, so it seems that the advocates believe that they can bring back the old pagan-Christian systhensis, however improbable it seems in the environment of modern science. Are they going to go to the extent of trying to live in a fantasy world like the Trekies do?

Wednesday 26 February 2025

In a new interview with Karen Kingston on USAWatchdog.com, she suggests a divergence in agenda between Robert Kennedy, Jr. at HHS, and Elon Musk. She thinks that Musk has his own agenda, having to do with getting AI run as much of the Federal Government as possible. She seems to have great confidence in RFK2. Given that the Kennedys are another of the great crime families, I am suspicious of him also. Kingston says that RFK2 has already won one battle, by protecting the Federal bureaucracy around services on the Indian Reservations. I notice that the matter of making public Jeffrey Epstein’s activities has now turned into the question of publishing his list of contacts. The whole matter of all the documents and recordings from his New York mansion, the records and recordings from his Island, as well as those from his boy ranch in Arizona, are now forgotten and his little list is represented as the only thing that counts. People who trumpet the need to reveal the little list may actually have the agenda of hiding his activities in general. In South Dakota, a plan is being developed to get rid of the property tax. Already there is no income tax, but the property tax is burdensome. The proposal is to replace it with a recept tax of $1.50 on all sales (with sales below $15 being charged 10%). This would be a constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot.

Saturday 22 February 2025

We have now entered a great divide. On the one hand, power is falling out of the hands, not only of the radical left Democrat party, but of the RINOS who have long controlled the false opposition to the left. In stark contrast to this political situation, in the Evangelical denominations power is still securely in the hands of those who are completely analogous in their commitments and behavior to the RHINOs in politics. Put another way, in the populist/conservative political world the initiative now belongs to those who have principles and are willing to fight for them, while in the denominations those who style themselves conservatives have no such commitment to principles. It is still the realm of go along to get along. To the minds of these people, this is what it means to act in a Christian manner. This raises the question of whether Evangelicals have now lost sight of what Christianity is. There are those who claim to see signs of a new revival breaking out, but not in the midst of the Evangelical establishment but in the Alt world that is rejecting Establishment power and values. The Evangelical world seems to disposed to insure that any such revival stays outside of the Evangelical establishment, which is a good thing.

Thursday 6 February 2025

The Evangelical Dark Web has initated investigations into the Evangelical Swamp (even though James White wants to spank them). The Evangelicals are on the take from left-wing agencies of the Federal government. “Christianity Today received $1,835,073 in 2023, accounting for 18.94% of revenues” as well as other organizations. In addition, Conversations that Matter (Jon Harris) is covering how Chistian publishers have gone left, in this case Our Daily Bread.

Wednesday 5 February 2025

There is a worthwhile interview with Karen Kingston on usawatchdog.com. While the interview is titled as being about AI, the topic is the initiative that Trump promoted immediately after taking office, to create super anti-cancer vaccines. According to Kingston, these will do what Trump’s program from his first term does, that is his “wonderful vaccine”, they will accelerate cancer. Also, usawatchdog.com has an interview with “Dr.” Jerome Corsi, who did a LARP some years ago as a Q expert, inventing silly interpretations. This shows how it is necessary to evaluate sources. Michael Yon has an interview with Shaun Attwood, that is even more forceful than the interview by Sarah Westall. What this indicates is the agenda that operates under the cover of the postwar consensus. The Evanjellycal world - and this includes the Moscow Mood - cannot stand against this because they deny that Americans can have a homeland to defend. The reason is that there are too many Christians in America, and Christians don’t have a right to be whatever people they are by heritage because Jesus wouldn’t like it. Doug Wilson, James White, et. al. would allow them to inhabit states, as long as the states are not national. Wilson even wants laws in those states based on Christian values. This puts Wilson against the majority of Evangelicals who want to live under pagan laws, as they are convinced that Jesus wants that also.

Saturday 25 January 2025

A new interview by Sarah Westall with Michael Yon is worth listening to: Psychological Warfare, Modern Weapons of War, Panama Canal, Special Ops & more, especially if you are inclined to think that any battles have been won yet by the election of Trump or by his appointments. What counts is what they do. James White has been sounding off on the postwar consensus again. He took the most ridiculous caricature of it that he could find and set out to refute it, as though that settle anything. That is the level that he has chosen to operate on. Is this the sort of trick that made his a “master debator”? Even then, his listeners have to endure twelve minutes of blather about himself before he gets to it. Also, White is congratulating himself for basing his thought on Scripture, apparently referring to his Vantilliansim. But Van Til opposed deducing theology from Scripture, and started with certain abstract presuppositions. Moreover, White is posturing as the unholder of Reformed thought, and castigating his rivals for inviting Calvin Robinson, no friend of the Reformation to the Defeating Trashworld conference, while White will be speaking at the rival conference festooned with Federal Vision types who oppose the Reformation view of justification.

Monday 13 January 2025

There is an interview on “Loss of Confidence in the Medical System, Real Facts and Data, with Dr. Michael Schwartz”, by Sarah Westall. Also there is an interview of the widespread blood clots caused by the COVID shot.

Friday 10 January 2025

There is an excellent interview with James White on Romanism, on the Steve Hartland channel. Why can’t White stick to what he does well, instead of making common cause with Federal Visionaries in attacking people who want to live in a Christian society? In fact, the Federal Visionaries have the same idea of being judged at the last judgment by their own righteousness added to that of Christ as White criticizes in this interview in connection with the doctrine of Rome. Also, he should get rid of the ugly sweater if he wants to be taken seriously. He looks like a New Age twit. The fires in Los Angeles have everyone’s attention at present. People are talking about rebuilding. But Los Angeles is in a zone where everything repeatedly dries out and fires sweep through, and the city is build right up against the hills covered with dry grass without firefighting access except by air. The city should not have been built there in the first place. But the bigger problem is that the city is built on earthquake faults, and when the Big One comes it will be a far greater disaster than the fires. There are two reasons. The first is that while it is possible to escape ahead of a fire that is burning through an area, an earthquake happens everywhere all at once. For example, the city of Pacific Palisades was destroyed but at present only two deaths are being reported. If it is rebuilt and then slides into the ocean, houses, streets and all, in the next big earthquake, there will be no escape. The second reason is that the big earthquake will be a regional event, not just a matter of a few towns and neighborhoods. Even houses built to the earthquake codes will not be livable, because the code only means that it will not actually fall down on people’s heads during the earthquake (unless it is a really big earthquake). In a regional event there will be no place to go for shelter or any help coming because everything will be overwhelmed. Nevertheless, the public will be expected to pay, directly or indirectly, to rebuild this death-trap.

Monday 6 January 2025

There is a new interview with Dr. Betsy Eads on the effects of the COVID shots.

Friday 13 December 2024

Plans for the next epidemic and bio-weapon “vaccines” are moving forward, according to a new interview with Karen Kingston. In the early days of the Federal Vision, its creators were known for a perterist interpretation of Romans 11, namely that the conversion of the Jews referred to there happened in the early church in the time up to 70 AD. The Federal Vision, more or less as a group, is now moving toward a more Dispensationalist-adjacent position, as shown in their new semi-creed, the Antioch Declaration. It is interesting, also, that James White has taken to spouting about the Puritan Hope, as the distinctive position that contrasts to what his opposition, namely the Christian Nationalists, believe. The “Puritan Hope” is the title of an old book by Iain Murray, one of the founders of Banner of Truth. BOT, in turn, was long known for its part in the revival of interest in the Puritans, but only as purveyors of a certain type of pietism, and not for their actual social vision. The “Puritan hope”, per White, is the conversion of the world through evangelism and revival. What it really was, though, was the military conquest of Europe and the Near east, in the 17th century, to bring on the start of the millennium. For a discussion of some of this material, see the review “No Dispensationalism Before Darby”. White’s adoption of neo- Reformed positions, such as theonomy and postmillennialism, is still superficial compared to his deeper anabaptist convictions. The deep differences between Reformed and the Baptist visions of the relation of the church to sociey are brought out in the review “A Comparison of Baptist and Reformed Views of the Covenants”. These are more concepts that are alien to White’s mentality, as is seem in his occasional equation of the Reformed identity to pietist fervency, another indication of the BOT legacy. As for the Dispensationalist-adjacent attachment to modern Judaism, evident now in Federal Vision circles, the review of Shlomo Sand’s book, The Invention of the Jewish People, should be informative. James White is still bannering himself as the champion of Reformed theology, in his mind stripped down to the formal principle (sola Scriptura) and the material principle (Justification). How odd, then, that he is making common cause with the Federal Vision proponents, who, in effect, deny the material principle.

Monday 25 November 2024

A declaration against Christian Nationalism, but never mentioning it, is now online under the title The Antioch Declaration. It cannot be called an masterpiece of deviousness only because it is anything but a masterpiece. In fact it has been very badly received in the internet discussion space except by fanboys and pietists. An analysis of major points is available as What Is Wrong With the Antioch Declaration and ¿Qué hay de malo en la Declaración de Antioquía?

Tuesday 19 November 2024

James White has today made a further series of pronouncements. For one, he has taken the position that the idea of a post-war consensus is meaningless. He has also denonced Stephen Wolfe as being the lens that is distorting what other people are saying. What Wolfe actually does is to probe the soundness of peoples statements by pointing to some of the logical implications. This is something that White can’t take much of as he has one foot in Christian Reconstruction and the other in Baptist pietism and logical implications must be cut short to sustain this. White also weighed in on apologetics. The current backlash against Van Til and presuppositional apologetics is directly related to what we are seeing in the blood and soil Christian nationalist and white nationalist movement. Because what offends Thomists, whether Roman Catholic or non-Roman Catholic – and we have Thomists among Reformed Baptists, OPC [Orthodox Presbyterian Church], PCA [Presbyterian Church in America] they’re there, I can name them – what we see is a rejection of what Van Til said about the absolute primacy and priority of Scriptural revelation in the Garden and from that point forward. That’s being rejected, and that has a major impact in many other areas. Keep that in mind, you are going to see it over and over again as these things happen. Van Til, as I have pointed out, could not allow the absolute priority of Scripture as, according to his theory, we don’t know what it means. This is because of Van Til’s true absolute priority, his ideas taken from Idealism. Nor did Van Til believe in logical implications. Wolfe, on the the other hand, believes that he has a consistent system, so he is ready to probe for consistency and implications as a good method. As I have also pointed out, I do not think that Thomism holds up either. I must admit, however, that much (not all) of the argument against the Thomists in that book is against their Englightenment foundationalism, not so much their Thomism. But this is a feature of the “Thomism” that White has in mind. The problem seems, in part, that Baptists have then to attending Thomist deploma mills and emerged as singulary dogmatic, and historically ignorant, polemicists. My name for this movement is retropapism. There is another thing that is bugging White, and that is a reinterpretation of Reformation history. One componant of this has been to rebuke Van Til and his generation for distorting the thought of the reformers and promoting their own fantasy version of Reformation philosophy. But there is also new general interpretation of the Reformation itself. The best example seems to be Matthew Barrett’s book, The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I have not myself yet obtained a copy, but it seems a good place to look to see where things are going. It is being puffed by the usual suspects, and the descriptions seem, from my perseptive, to be all the bad stuff that we need to be getting rid of. That is to say, it is not a bad interpretation of the Reformers, but a celebration of all that was wrong in them. White would say that the problem with that is that it is not theology but philosophy. Be “theology” White prequently means Biblical exegesis. And we are miles ahead of the Reformers in the quality of exegesis. This is partly because we have centuries of attemps and corrections to learn from. But the other acpect of White’s narrow view on what is theology is that is makes him unaware of when philosophy and cultural values come into it, for example the post- war consensus.

Monday 18 November 2024

What is the alternative to the gatekeeping that James White and his friends are doing on behalf of the post-war concensus? That could be taken as the topic of the latest Conversations That Matter, with the title “Paul Gottfried on the State of the Conservative Movement”.

Friday 8 November 2024

Now that there is a new opportunity to try to clean the deep state out of the government of the United States, one naturally wonders is there is a parallel opportunity, or even duty, to clean up the church related institutions. That is, all the pastors, denominations, denominational boards, missions, seminaries, colleges, etc. that are in the hands of the woke, the immoralists, the propagandists the left-globalist agenda, in short, all the personalities that we might well call the Satangelicals. There is, however, a major difference here. As currently constituted, these are all voluntary associations. It is not necessary to fight the long battles to attempt to gain control, because one can simply walk away. The reply will be, are we to leave all these institutions with all their funds and real property in the hands of the Satangelicals? There is a good reason to do so. That is that behind many of these institutions is a wrong idea about the nature of the church the nature of the Kingdom, and practical agendas that these institutions are to carry out. Leaving these institutions to the Satangelicals also leaves behind much deluded thinking that is embedded in the organization and function of the institutions. What about all the people who will be "left behind"? These are people who can't be convinced except by the hard knocks of reality. Leaving them will save you the endless distress and wasted effort involved in attempting to coexist with them. Also leaving is the thing that is most likely to get through to them. They will see that you really mean what you say, and the whole burden of supporting evil will now fall on them, so the will feel your decision as well. Also since size and prestige is a leading consideration for such people, they will keenly feel the decline of these institutions.

Saturday 2 November 2024

In an Alpha & Omega episode at the end of October, James White took upon himself to ridicule the concept of the post-WWII consensus. On Nov. 1 Andrew Isker, CJay Engel, with Paul Gottfried as a guest, made a podcast on "What Is the Post-War Consensus?" Whether or not intended as such, it is effectively a reply to James White. It could also have other criticisms in mind. James Lindsay made an attack on them in an interview with Sarah Westall on October 21, characterizing them as the "Woke Right". For Lindsay this is an execution of what he himself characterizes in the same interview as the affordability trap, which is a false dichotomy. Either you agree with his secularistic (he is an atheist) ideology, or you are "woke right". It needs to be stated that, while Isker and Engel call their channel Contra Mundum, they have nothing to do with the present website and its preceding publishing activity which has been using the name since 1991, while Isker and Engel are recent pop-ups. Also this matter cmae up in the context of some contention among Reformed Baptists over the alleged views of Joel Webbon. What "Reformed Baptist" means anymore is rather problematic. Webbon has taken on at least nominal Kyperianism, notwithstanding its incompatibility with Baptist covenant theology. See Pascal Denault's excellent, though not perfect, introduction to this theology. White has drawn up the battle lines against this group, though it is not clear where he is coming from. He has taken on the theonomy and postmillennialism developed in one stream of Kuyperianism, though apparently not their theological framework, leaving him in a sort of no man's land. This is both good and bad, in that he could avoid the philosophical errors (as he as also avoided the errors of the neo-Thomist group) but it also leaves him without the theological framework, of which he needs to have some sort. What is behind this controversy? For one side, the post-war consensus is a complex of liberal ideas and values, which are presumed to be necessary to hold to be a good person. Secondly, a Christian must hold this complex of liberal ideas and values in order to have a valid Christian testimony. Thirdly, someone has decided that it is now time to take down the leaders who do not accept this consensus. "Someone" seems to include the more extreme Kuyperians, so that is not the issue in their minds. The basis of the dispute, then, seems to be culture, not theology. No one is talking about the promotion of the Heiser mythology, which is where it seems to me Webbon is dangerous to the Baptist movement. Since for some proment people in this dispute, theology is basic to culture, so the reversal is a great irony. So where is the beef? See the first two and a half minutes of this video, which is the teaser. The substance is behind a paywall.

Thursday 31 October 2024

In a new interview, Karen Kingston covers the next plague and “vaccine” about to be released on the public. This is bird flu (H5N1). Doubtless, the usual evangelical leaders will urge this bio-weapon us as a Christian duty. I have been critical of Joel Webbon for his support of the Heiser mythology. I do not, however, support the current attacks on him from the woke German and various unnamed supposedly well-known evangelical pastors.

Tuesday 1 October 2024

The second edition of Theosophy, Van Til, and Bahnsen is now available in English and Spanish.