Axe to the Root with Bojidar Marinov | Reconstructionist Radio Reformed Network

Welcome to Episode 51 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes we will cover what I call the “frugal tramp economic theory.” Have patience, you will learn why I call it this way. We will also see how it has affected our government’s policies, and how especially it has affected the philosophy of government of the current administration – although, to be fair, it has always been present in the policies of all administrations for the last 100 years . . . or at least, all the administrations since FDR.

I remember when I first encountered a “frugal tramp” story, about 30 years ago, in some British tabloid, about a homeless beggar who carefully saved every single penny he got by begging on the streets of some English city, and never paid a penny for either clothes or food, or cigarettes, being content to mine those basic necessities from the dumpsters around restaurants, supermarkets, and clothing stores. When he died, his relatives discovered that he had a bank account of several million British pounds, the result of both his thriftiness and of the compound interest the account had accumulated. I don’t know if that first story I read was real – British tabloids 30 years ago were just as an unreliable source of news as FOX News or CNN are today – but over the years, similar, and more truthful, stories have appeared. The best documented of those is the story of “Tin Can Curt,” real name Curt Degerman, a Swede who spent his whole life on the streets of the small Swedish town Skellefteå (about 30,000 population), scavenging for tin cans and glass bottles for cash. He never had anything more than an old bicycle, and he was avoided by the people in his town because of his poor hygiene habits – with the exception of one distant relative, who kept contact with Curt. Curt Degerman died the richest person in his hometown, bequeathing to his relative the amount of $1.5 million. The man hardly spent any money on anything. Or, to put it in the slang of modern theoretical economics, he had a total positive trade balance: in all his transactions, money was flowing to him, and never from him. That is, in modern economic terms – as defined by Keynesianism – Curt Degenhart was a really wealthy man.

Or was he? Was he really wealthy, having all that money in the bank while eating food from dumpsters and seldom taking a bath, while engaging in the least productive occupation one can ever have, collecting tin cans and glass bottles for cash? Did Curt Degerman’s positive balance of trade really make him a wealthy man? Granted, he left a significant amount of money when he died . . . but if we only count money as “wealth.” Could there be more to “wealth” than a simple accumulation of money?

These questions, plus Curt Degerman’s example, came to mind when I was criticized a couple of weeks ago in a personal letter for a previous Axe to the Root episode, “Economic Nationalism and the Religion of Death.” The author of that letter accused me of “economic illiteracy,” and that I didn’t really understand the concept of “balance of trade,” and how important it is to the economic wealth of a nation. The more a nation exports, the more money comes in, and therefore the wealthier it is. The more it imports, the less money it has left, the less wealthy it is. That is, less money and more goods makes you poor. More money and fewer goods makes you wealthy – like Tin Can Curt Degerman. In the final account, my critic said, President Trump’s idea of closing the borders for imports is a good idea given the “economic realities,” and even if we need to pay more for some goods – because domestic production of them is more expensive – this will be offset by the fact that more money will stay home in the US. That is, more money plus higher prices will make us wealthier. But even better if President Trump takes the steps to re-orient the US economy towards more exports. That is, more legislative and tax incentives for companies that produce for export, and more legislative and tax obstacles for imports. That’s economic reality. I just don’t understand economic reality.

Ironically, while such positions are touted in the name of conservatism and free market, in reality, this obsession with national trade balance has always been characteristic to leftist, and even Marxist economists. John Maynard Keynes was so obsessed with what he saw as the “problem of trade balances” that his proposed “Keynes Plan” in 1944 was to create a system called International Clearing Union based on an international currency, which would work to even the disbalances and flow money to the nations with negative trade balance. (To translate it in English, he wanted to make sure that when a nation keeps buying so much that it runs out of money, it will be given more money to continue buying. If you think the idea is ridiculous, remember modern Greece.) Marxists have been similarly preoccupied with the specter of trade balances. Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, defined imperialistic colonialism as an economic system in which industrial nations buy cheap raw materials from third-world countries and sell them expensive industrial products. The disbalance of payments is in favor of the industrial nations, and thus wealth is being stolen from the so-called “colonies” to the industrial nations. It never occurred to him that the “colonies” profited by forfeiting cheap raw materials – which were useless to them anyway – to get valuable industrial goods. Both men, Keynes and Lenin, had zero understanding how the economy really works; in their view, it was nothing more than currency numbers. Thus, economic growth for them was simply abstract manipulation of currency numbers; it never occurred to them that economic growth has only one real basis, and that is increased productivity. And increased productivity depends only on the religious commitment of a nation, and very little else.

Meanwhile, the economists on the right side of the specter have always rejected the validity of the concept of “national balance of trade.” Adam Smith believed that it is unnecessary for a government to enact trade regulations to encourage exports and discourage imports; he even used an unusually strong expression to demonstrate his disapproval of the doctrine:

“Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade, upon which, not only these restraints, but almost all the other regulations of commerce are founded.” [end of quote]. Frederick Bastiat, known to American readers for his book, The Law, proved that the very notion of “balance of trade” is a misnomer, for it only takes in account declared value at the customs; he concluded that a national trade deficit (as measured by the government statisticians) is actually evidence for private profit for the individual participants on the market. Which is the only possible solution to the puzzle which no economist today wishes to mention, namely, that if we take the trade surpluses and deficits of all the nations in the world and add them up with their respective signs (plus for surplus, minus for deficits), the result will be deep in the negative. That is, the global economy as a whole seems to be running a trade deficit . . . but against whom? Bastiat also ridiculed the economic nationalism and protectionism of politicians and professional guilds (trade unions) of his time in his brilliant essay, Candlemakers’ Petition, in which candlemakers lobby the Parliament to block out the sun as unfair foreign competition to their domestic supply of light and heat. Under the principles of Classical Liberalism, which are based on methodological individualism, there is no such thing as a “national balance of trade.” The very notion has no meaning at all. In a nation, we have millions of individuals. Some of them want to use their money to buy the cheapest product of the best quality, and they don’t care whether that product is made in the US or abroad. To use the government to punish these people for their choices to use imported goods is no different than any other kind of socialism where the government dictates the personal choices of individuals in favor of certain policy of the elites. (Think Obamacare.) Milton Friedman also taught that trade deficits have no significant meaning for the economic development of a nation, because all that a deficit does is lower the value of the national currency, which in turns makes the national economy more competitive, which sends the pendulum in the other direction, of more exports, which raises the value of the currency, etc., etc., forming a natural cycle which balances itself and therefore doesn’t need any government regulations.

In the final account, it is leftists – Keynesians and socialists – who worry about the trade balance and who call for government intervention. They even use the imaginary problem of the balance of trade to attack capitalism and free trade; in 2010, Ian Fletcher, a leftist economist, published a book on the issue titled (take note), Free Trade Doesn’t Work. From the perspective of the free market economists, the obsession with trade balances is absurd, because they have no bearing whatsoever on the economic growth or the prosperity of a nation. After all, keep in mind that the only two nations in the Western hemisphere that have maintained a trade surplus for the last 20 years were Cuba (about 1% of the GDP), and Venezuela (a whooping 3% of the GDP). In comparison, the US has maintained a trade deficit of more than 3% of its GDP. You make you own conclusions from these facts.

When we look at other nations, we see no pattern of correlation between trade surpluses or deficits and economic growth. Among the nations with net surpluses we find Germany and France, whose GDP however has stagnated in the last 10 years. On the other hand, the US has grown by a steady 2.5%, and the UK – another nation with high deficits – has grown by 2% a year. Russia has had surpluses, and yet, it’s growth is quite meager. Among the nations with stable trade surplus we find nations like Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and even Yemen. Among those with deficits are Australia and New Zealand. If anything can be said about trade deficits and economic growth, it is that there is no visible connection between the two. In the final account, Tin Can Curt Degerman had the perfect trade balance. And yet, he lived like a poor man. Because accumulated money is not a measure of wealth.

It should be obvious, of course. When we exchange money for a commodity or asset, we are not giving up wealth. To the contrary, whenever we exchange, we do it because the thing we get is more valuable to us than than the thing we give up. When a buyer in the US spends $40,000 for a BMW made in Germany, he has not only become poorer by $40,000; he has also become richer by one BMW. When people buy stuff, when they exchange, they do it only to become wealthier, to surrender a less valuable commodity for a more valuable one. In the case of the BMW, it as some quantity of Federal Reserve fake money for a real value high-quality car. How can anyone say that such exchange (fake government money for real private business high quality item) is a loss of wealth is beyond me. When we buy cheap things from foreign nations, we are giving up a “commodity” that America produces – Federal Reserve dollars – for something of high value and lower price, which someone else produces. The wealth of the nations flows to us.

The only group of people who may object to such increase of wealth are the government bureaucrats. Why? Because wealth that is converted into real commodities – assets or consumer goods – is by nature decentralized. Goods and services are always decentralized; it is very difficult to create a central bank of BMWs, or of any other asset or consumer good. Neither is it easy to tax commodities: How do you take 10% of a BMW in taxes? Throughout history, statists have tried to create centralized systems of distribution or taxation of goods, and they have always failed. More market exchange means less possibilities for the government to control marker transactions. But a government can easily control the money supply of a nation through a central bank. Thus, if the wealth of a nation is stored primarily in some currency, it would be easy for the government to control that wealth. If it is in billions market exchanges involving billions of different real items, goods, commodities, or services, centralized control of that wealth is not so easy. This is why governments of nations like Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, who have had enormous revenues from the sale of oil in times of high oil prices, have never bothered to use that money to encourage more diversified economies in their countries: a more diversified economy would mean less controllable wealth, and therefore less control for the government. Thus, such governments have preferred to use their surpluses to bribe their populations through handouts. Russia’s economy has never been anything else but an addendum to its mining industries, mainly oil and gas; something like a convenience store in a mining town, owned by the mining company itself. Every government wants to control the wealth of its people. The best way to do it is convert all wealth into currency, and then the control is easy. To do that, a government needs an export-oriented economy, an economy where goods produced using cheap labor at home (cheap, because they have to be competitive on the world market) are sold for cash outside home, and the cash is centralized in the hands of an elite of exporters, or in the hands of government bureaucrats.

This leads us to a main characteristic of government regulations on trade. For the government to keep the economy constantly oriented to export, it has to keep its people constantly underpaid. After all, labor is always the greatest expense for any business. Low-paid labor is a comparative advantage for exporters – they can keep their prices low and keep underselling their international competitors. The modern assumption is that when a nation starts exporting, more money flows into the nation, and more people become wealthier. But wait a minute? How would these people become wealthier, if not through higher wages? And what would higher wages do to the cost of the exported commodities? Thus, the government has only one way to continue a constant trade surplus: Keep the domestic workers constantly underpaid. This will, on one hand, keep the expense low, and on the other hand, will make the worker less capable of buying stuff – which means, imports will be lower. After all, no one wants to import goods into a nation where the population has no money to buy anything.

What are the government’s ways of keeping the people poor so that the exports are maintained? One way, of course, is a cap on wages. But such caps have never been popular, and they can’t easily be defended. A better way is a manipulation of the currency. Also known as “quantitative easing.” Or, we also call it “inflation.” In order to keep a nation’s economy exporting, a government can lower the value of its currency by printing more money. When this brings down the value of the currency, this change is reflected on the foreign exchange markets. The local currency becomes less valuable, and thus the prices of local goods become even more competitive on the world markets. This is what China has done with their currency in order to keep its exports going.

But who suffers from such manipulation? The workers in that economy. While foreign buyers see lower prices for the goods produced in that economy, local workers will see inflation for themselves and their families. They will get more money into their hands, but the prices for their basic necessities will jump too. In the final account, they will be impoverished to be able to afford less than before, so that the government and its exporter cronies have more business and better profit. China has done it to its workers for the last 20+ years. Thus, despite the gigantic economic growth in China, the majority of its population still remains at very low, poor levels. Because that economic growth has been achieved not through an increase in productivity, but through manipulation of the money supply with the purpose of encouraging exports. In the final account, the average Joe on the street loses. The same principle works when the government imposes tariffs on imports: In the final account, the prices rise, and the average Joe on the street loses for the benefit of a few exporting companies. Any government intervention on the market to encourage an export-oriented economy will by necessity involve impoverishing those who are expected to produce the goods. There is no way around that. Those who call for the US government to “stimulate the economy” by regulating import and export are calling for and economic disaster. They are calling for the government to turn us all into frugal tramps – and keep us so for the purposes of a government policy.

What should we do, then, with a nation which constantly scores trade deficits? Wouldn’t this mean that one day the nation will run out of money? No, it doesn’t. Deficits and surpluses are temporary conditions, and they are self-regulating. They have no significance for the economic growth; and they have no need to be controlled by the government.

Think about an individual person, or a family. I mean a normal person or a normal family, not some frugal tramp. There are periods in their life when they work hard and save money. That is, periods of trade surplus: more money is coming in than is not going out. Then, one day, they decide to buy and furnish a home with the money they have saved. Or start a business. Or just spend it on a cruise. This will be the period of trade deficits: more money is going out than is coming in. until they run out of money, and they return to their work routine again, saving and not spending, that is, trade surplus. Then the kids are grown and they need to be sent to college. That would be another period of trade deficits. Etc., etc. The trade deficits may mean many things: they may be investing, or consuming, or just throwing money away. The fact that there is trade deficit doesn’t tell us what is done with that deficit, whether something foolish or something productive. All we know is where the money flows, technically. But from that flow alone we can’t have any clear knowledge what is happening. Eventually, they will be brought back to reality.

The same with a nation. In certain periods, a nation can have a surplus. That surplus then can be used in the future for new investments, or just for squandering. But remember, both surplus and deficits affect prices. From the perspective of the domestic economy, imports have the same effect as deflation: less money supply, more goods. This will tend to lower the prices. (Deflation also means lower prices.) Low prices will then lead to the economy being more competitive, and therefore exports will rise. But from the perspective of the domestic economy, exports have the same effect as inflation: more money and fewer goods. More money and fewer goods will tend to increase the prices in the economy, which will make foreign goods more attractive. This will increase imports, and the pendulum will turn again. On and on, this process of economic calibration of the economy will continue. But again, it is self-regulated, and it has no need for government intervention. The only result of government interventions will be the further impoverishment of the poorest people in the society. Manipulation of export and import won’t produce prosperity; it will only produce more poverty.

The Bible, of course, tells us what produces prosperity: covenantal faithfulness before God, and especially faithfulness to His Dominion Mandate. A nation which stands in the covenant of God and increases its productivity will see greater prosperity. But the Bible also has a very specific instruction concerning the issues of export and import. It is found in Proverbs 31; in the chapter that tells us about the wisdom of the virtuous wife. We know that she is a woman who is constantly working to increase her economic dominion. She looks for wool and flax and works with her hands in delight; she buys a field and she plants a vineyard, etc., etc. and in the midst of all this, there is a verse that should shock us, if we read it carefully: verse 14: “she is like merchant ships; she brings her food from afar.” Huh? Why? This is the same woman who has no problem with producing food. She has her fields and her vineyard and her servants; why would she want to buy food from afar?

Because, when you can buy food cheaper than what you can produce, it is foolish to not buy it. That is what merchant ships do: they look for the lowest possible price, and take advantage of it, even if it is far away, in another land. The wise woman is like those ships: she will buy cheap, even if she herself can produce it. Because buying low is one part of increasing one’s wealth.

Thus, a wise nation won’t close its borders for cheap merchandise. To the contrary. If others can produce the same goods, cheaper, we will buy them. This will free more money for other expenses, or for investment. Government regulations that ban cheap goods from being sold in America are simply an example of socialist foolishness. Wisdom is getting the best quality for the lowest price. Always.

The book I will assign for reading this week is Ian Hodge, Baptized Inflation. It will teach you something the real origin of some of the modern economic theories and practices. You are in for a surprise.

And remember, in your prayer and your giving, Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a mission in Eastern Europe committed to teaching the comprehensive Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and building the intellectual foundation for the future Christian civilization in Bulgaria. Visit BulgarianReformation.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and donate. And God bless you all.

Welcome to Episode 50 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes we will talk about educational and career choices. That’s correct, the topic of this episode is science and engineering, but we won’t talk about science and engineering in a general, abstract way, not in terms of systematic theology. We will talk about them in terms of applied theology; that is, what do science and engineering have to do with our life choices for this specific point in time and history. And even more, what do they have to do with the choices our children make, choices for which we as parents are partially responsible, given that it is our parental responsibility under the Dominion Covenant to teach and direct our children in their individual purpose in the Kingdom of God. Thus, we will dive into the issue of educational and career development, and its relation to the Kingdom of God.

Among Christian families, and especially homeschoolers, it has become popular in the last decade or so to get their children interested and involved in activities and career choices of high social visibility. On one hand, we have a number of Christian colleges and universities – like Regent, Liberty, Grove City College, etc, – that place a high emphasis on education in social sciences, specifically geared towards training professional Christian social and political activists. (Whatever that means.) A number of them claim to offer a “classical liberal arts education.” In case you don’t know what the word “liberal” means in this combination of words, as was explained by one such educational activist a few years ago, its original meaning was that such arts are meant to be studied by “free men” (hence “liberal”). This, as distinct from the other arts, like mathematics, natural science, applied sciences, engineering, entrepreneurship, management, banking, etc., which in the classical world were reserved for the lower classes, that is, slaves and freedmen. Naturally, for we all know that engineering, entrepreneurship, applications require work, and work is simply another word for servanthood – in fact, in Hebrew, the word is exactly the same – abad – for “work” and “serve.” (In the Slavic languages the word for “slave” also comes from the word for “work.” The modern word “robot” comes from the Slavic word for “slave” and was first used by the Czech science fiction author Karel Čapek in his novel R.U. R.)The concept behind the popularity of liberal arts and the classical curriculum is that liberal arts must be studied by those who want to influence the culture. That is, learn the social sciences to understand the society and the culture, take an influential position in the society and the culture, and thus you will influence the culture.

Then, as part of the same drive, there was a renewed interest in Christian circles in Christian art. More specifically, Christian music and movies. Christians have always made music for their internal use, in the churches, Sunday morning. But recently that has expanded to mimic secular music – which, of course, is not in itself bad. Secular movie making, that is, Hollywood, has influenced Christians as well, and there has been a rising interest among younger Christians in this area as well. The success of the Kendrick brothers gave it a new impetus, as well as the short-lived but quite popular annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. A number of young men and women got involved in studying how to make movies. The impetus behind it was, again, that the high social visibility of the movie makers shapes the culture. Thus, if Christians learn to make expert movies, they will be capable of influencing the culture. There is also a philosophical reasoning behind this: the conspiracy theory of the so-called Frankfurt School and their “cultural Marxism.” I have talked about the oxymoron of “cultural Marxism” in another episode, and I have shown that the influence of the “Frankfurt School” has been rather a myth. But that myth in itself has prompted some circles within the Christian and conservative churches to oppose that supposed influence through producing Christian art and culture.

Then there is also the Seven-Mountains Dominion Theology, a Charismatic imitation of Christian Reconstruction, which sees the restoration of Christendom in Christian working to capture the “seven mountains of the culture,” namely, religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment, and business. The idea is, again, cultural influence, through producing leaders in every one of these areas, who will take over leadership and will command the cultural choices of a nation. Only a small segment of all Charismatic churches has been affected by this theology, and much of it has been only wishful thinking – so far no great leaders have been produced by this movement, and, as I suspect, it is still in the stage of defining its terms.

There is nothing wrong with all these efforts per se, to be sure. No matter what we do, we need to work to bring the principles of the Word of God to every area of life, and we should be working to apply our faith to all we do, personally or corporately, as a society. There is, however, an unhealthy focus in all these campaigns of “capturing” or “influencing” the culture, which prevents them from producing fruit. So far, these efforts have not produced a single dent in our largely secularized and secularizing culture. If anything, it seems we have been spending money and effort only to register some small movement at the periphery of our society. The central idols of the society, however, have not been touched yet. The homeschool movement was and continues to be a smashing cultural success for Christianity; but it took no special efforts, training, or strategic planning or campaigns to do so, only the commitment of individual fathers and mothers, and a few small publishers to make the first steps. In comparison, all the Christian colleges and their classical liberal arts programs, all the Christian movies and music makers, and all the sound and fury of Christian organizations for capturing this or that “cultural mountain” still have their “successes” registered only in the small eco-chambers of their own small niches. As I have pointed many times before, just about 100 years before whatever happened in the Presbyterian churches in America was front-page news for most newspapers. Today, there is no Christian organization, ecclesiastical or not, that would capture the interest of the broader culture, despite all our efforts to “influence the culture.”

There is a reason for that failure. The reason is that behind all these efforts to “influence the culture,” there is a false philosophy. That philosophy is that cultural influence is achieved through high social visibility. The higher one’s position in the society is, the more influence he can have on the culture. Since in our own time the highest level of social visibility belongs to politicians and Hollywood actors, the assumption is that these are the true cultural leaders of the today. And that politicians and Hollywood producers by default set the cultural standards of today. Therefore, the majority of Christians today – well, the majority of active Christians today, to be precise, since a vast majority of those who go to church couldn’t care less about anything whatsoever – see the capture of those positions of high social visibility as the only way to turn the tide of secularism. If we only elect Christian politicians, we’ll have a Christian America again. (By the way, it was a majority of Christian judges who removed Judge Roy Moore in Alabama. And it is majorities of Christian politicians who keep abortion legal in most states.) If we only have a Republican majority on the Supreme Court, we will overturn Roe v. Wade. (By the way, it was a Republican majority that gave us Roe v. Wade in the first place.) If we only have more influential Christian lobbyist organizations, we could change Washington DC. (We have dozens of those, and they do nothing more than consume donations.) If we only start producing Christian movies, we will change the culture. If we only capture Hollywood. Etc., etc.

The problem is, even if we capture these “cultural mountains,” we won’t be able to change the culture nor influence the culture. Because the culture is not influenced by social visibility.

You all know about the modern obsession with gender and sodomite “marriages”; it’s a constant talking point for some conservatives pastors and church activists. Some even say that this is the first time in the history of Christendom when the meaning of marriage has been changed to mean a union between two men or two women . . . or whatever else it may mean. But this is not true. There has been such a period in history before, in the 14th century, when sodomy was on the rise among the ruling classes and even in the monasteries. It was openly depicted in art (just google homosexuality in art 14thcentury and see for yourself), and churches and priests in Italy and France openly performed same-sex marriage ceremonies. It was everywhere, among the most highly visible members of the society. Some Italian cities had their special part of town where male prostitutes lived and members of the nobility openly visited those parts. On the surface, it looked like Christendom would surrender to sodomy; after all, it was the most culturally visible members of the society who practiced it and promoted it. And yet, within just a generation or two it disappeared from the society. By the time of Erasmus in the second half of the 15th century, no memory had remained of the rampant sodomy just a couple of generations prior; and Erasmus only makes a hint to it in the monasteries of his time. Luther seems to not know of the problem in his time in the 16th century. Apparently, sodomy’s high social visibility didn’t give any cultural advantage to sodomy; the culture didn’t accept it as normative, and it died away. There is a multitude of such examples in history, the most amazing of which is the victory of the early church against the Empire in the first three centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection: Not only the Church was not culturally visible, it had to hide to survive. And in the final account, the catacombs won the culture over the palace. Social visibility doesn’t produce cultural influence.

Then what does?

Jesus explained it in Matt. 20:24-28 (also Mark 10:41-45; Luke 22:24-27):

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. “It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

The mother of sons of Zebedee had come to Him and asked Him to place her sons in a position of high social visibility: “Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left.” Jesus’s answer was, “You don’t know what you are asking for. My social visibility is of a different kind. And in fact, in the new world I am about to inaugurate, cultural greatness will be defined in a different way: not through being socially visible, but by being a servant. Or, as Dennis Peacocke summarized it perfectly well three decades ago, in God’s world, “whoever serves, leads.” The culture is never and has never been dominated by crafty political manipulators, or artists, or movie producers; these have, at best, only followed the culture. The culture itself follows those who serve. This truth manifested itself in Jesus’s life as well, when in John 6:26 He said that the real reason the people were seeking Him was not the miracles (that is, the high social visibility) but the fact that they ate of the bread and were filled (that is, real social service).

This, now, leads us to an important conclusion: if we want, as Christians, to influence the culture, we need to be looking not for ministries and occupations of high social visibility, but for those of real service. Whoever wants to be great culturally, must be the servant of the culture. And servant means not someone who simply speaks with culturally acceptable cliches of pretended humility – as so many of our churchian celebrities today do – but someone who has identified the real needs of the society and works to minister to those real needs. And in order to identify those needs, he has gone to the Bible, and to the meaning and purpose of man’s life, within the framework of God’s Covenant. And then, when he has identified and defined those needs, he has organized his life and the lives of his children – in terms of training, education, and career choices – to meet those needs.

Of course, the needs of men are a countless multitude . . . but only on a first glance. In reality, they are very few, or at least, can be summarized under one heading only: the Dominion Covenant. Man was created for a specific purpose: work to turn the formless earth into an ordered, capitalized city. Work real value into God’s creation; make it ordered and useful for future generations. Take the resources scattered in the garden and build then into a productive society in order to save other men time and effort, which they would be able to apply to even more stewardship of the creation. That original Dominion Covenant is still in force; we have never been freed of it. It continues to be our debt and obligation to God, and it continues to define our very nature as human beings. (Listen to my sermon, “What Is Man?”) This Dominion Covenant is also at the foundation of why we were saved: not to enjoy a purposeless eternity in golden slippers, plucking golden harps, but to continue to transform God’s creation into greater and greater order, for the glory of God. Make the creation productive. Make the society productive. Think of a country like Russia, having GDP of about $1 trillion with a population of 140 million. Now consider the fact that Greater Houston has an economy half that size, with a population of less than 5 million. When you add some adjacent areas, Houston has economy comparable to that of Russia. That is, it can produce as much as Russia, with a population of only one-25th of the population of Russia. And now consider that the Kingdom of God in its developed stage of covenantal faithfulness and blessings will have productivity far greater than that of Houston today.

This task at increasing the productivity of creation through order and capitalization helps serve all the other needs of man. While poor people will always be with us, and we can always give them whenever we want (Matt. 26:11; John 12:8), the best solution for poverty is not alms but increased productivity. Look around yourselves; even our poorest in America today are richer than many average people just 200 years ago. Increased productivity also helps men find new occupations and get involved in more and better focused ministries. It helps finance missions. It also helps give men their individual purpose in life better than poverty can. In the final account, a faithful culture is a culture that takes the Dominion Covenant seriously, and applies its energy to work and productivity, so that in the final account, the earth is subdued and serves man in the best and most economical way. Work, according to R.J. Rushdoony, is the social energy of the redeemed man in action. The redeemed man is a working man.

True covenantal service, therefore, must be sought not in socially visible positions of power. It must be sought in those occupations and ministries that help develop the productivity of mankind. It is there where we can only expect to achieve such positions of authority as to influence the culture. And it is there where we need to focus our attention and the attention of our children.

There’s hardly a need to explain to modern Americans the importance of science and technology for the enormous levels of productivity – and therefore prosperity – that our world today enjoys in comparison to previous generations. there’s probably not much need anymore to explain to American Christians the Christian origin and the Biblical foundations of modern science and engineering. Whatever mythologies secular historians may devise to claim some non-Christian origin of modern science and technology, historical data are clear: we owe our science and technology to the development of Christendom in the last 1,000 years. Indirectly, we can see the proof for this Christian character of science and technology in the cultural agenda of the enemies of Christianity today: it is not just by mere omission that Common Core math is designed to confuse children using completely illogical principles of reasoning. It is not by chance that environmentalists and socialists and global warming alarmists and others like them have made their target the technological development of the West. It is not by chance that modern governments are trying to take control over and restrain, where possible, technological development. (Think of the recent decision of several European countries, and of some US cities, to ban Uber and Lyft, for example, or to control Internet.) This war against science and technology is not a side issue to the covenantal battles of the Kingdom of God; it is one of its main battles. Technological growth is a testimony to God’s victory; His Dominion Mandate to man is being fulfilled even with mankind still burdened by sin, and only lifted by the redemption of Jesus Christ. For this technological development to happen, more and more people – whether Christians or not – have to abandon their pagan worldviews and adopt the worldview of the Bible. Whether they believe the Bible or not, they have to agree with its presuppositions in order to be able to do science. In the Dominion Covenant, even the enemies of God are forced to learn more about Him and His Kingdom. They may hate it, but they have no choice. The worldview of the Gospel – which only makes science and technology possible – will eventually permeate every area of man’s thinking.

That’s where true service is. Especially in America, where, because of the retreat of the church and the Christian families from education, we have allowed math and science instruction to deteriorate to disastrously low levels. We are a culture increasingly dependent on technology; which, in itself, is good. And yet, we are a culture that is increasingly incapable of supplying the job market with technicians and engineers trained to not simply perform tasks but to understand the very processes they are supposed to control and manage. That’s the real reason why US companies are forced to h ire more and more engineers and technicians from abroad. Donald Trump recently spoke against US companies hiring foreign engineers and technicians; thus, he vowed to cut the work visa quotas. He imagines that US companies just don’t like to hire American employees. This is nonsense. The reality is, we don’t have the trained engineers our economy needs. Very soon we will either have to abruptly repair our education, or open our borders to immigrants; else the US will lose the enormous technological advantage we have always had over the rest of the world. President Trump’s near-sighted policies will only lead to an economic disaster.

And here, Christians can make the difference. Because it is where the culture is bleeding where true service is needed. And since our culture is bleeding in the field of trained scientists and engineers, because of the low quality of math and science education, Christian homeschooling families can and must effect a change by changing their educational and career priorities. There’s a void to be filled; we must be there to fill it. That void is not in the area of high social visibility; it’s not that we don’t have enough actors or movies or music bands or social activists or politicians or lobbyist groups or even lawyers. Sure enough, we need Christians in all of these fields, and we need Christians who know what the Word of God says about all the areas of life and action. But our overall focus must be where the void is, and how to fill it. A void in the culture – especially a void which has to do with productivity and therefore with the Dominion Covenant – is God’s opportunity for the church to engage in real service. If the church doesn’t take up the challenge, someone else will.

A few years ago, Joel McDurmon delivered a lecture on the Reformation in Germany in the 16th century. To our modern sense, it sounds impossible that Luther’s Reformation actually succeeded. With Luther being held secretly in an isolated castle for his safety, and with the church and the nobility (the socially visible classes) against him, how did his ideas spread throughout Germany? The answer is: through the new technological entrepreneurs, the printers. The Gutenberg press was a new technology, and some entrepreneurs embraced it for the purpose of making money. It turned out, Germany needed it, for millions were willing to pay the lower prices for books and pamphlets. In the final account, it was Luther’s books and pamphlets that were most often printed and sold on the markets. Luther himself ever made a dime on his writings. But the men who exploited the void on the culture through the new productivity, serving their communities and making money out of it, were those who spread the Reformation. The Roman church lagged behind, and eventually lost the war. There’s a similar opportunity today. It is again a void. It is again about technology and productivity. It is about a real need, which will soon lead to greater demand, and the supply will be lower. Train your kids in mathematics, engineering, and science. In a generation, they will be shaping the culture better and more efficiently than Hollywood and DC together.

Social visibility doesn’t influence culture. Only service does. True service, under the Dominion Covenant.

The book I will assign for reading this week is Ships, Clocks, and Stars, by Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgit. Read to learn how just one small technological innovation changed the course of history. And then consider that there are millions more to be discovered, in God’;s universe. Your children may be the ones who discover some of them, and change history accordingly.

Keep Bulgarian Reformation Ministries in your prayers, and when you consider donating to worthy causes. We are working on organizing another Biblical worldview conference this summer in Bulgaria. Part of what we will be covering will be this: what service does the culture need that Christian can supply? What void is there that God has left for Christians to exploit? To support us, visit BulgarianReformation.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and donate. God bless you all.

Welcome to Episode 49 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes I will talk on a topic that I know only theoretically: art, artistic expression, beauty, harmony, etc. I said I know only theoretically, because, I must admit, I am not gifted to be a producer of beauty and harmony in any area whatsoever. But art always has two sides: that of the artists and that of the “connoisseurs,” the people who, in a sense, “consume” art, or are on the receiving side of it. So I am on that side. I am an avid consumer of all kinds of art, from visual arts to music and literature. And I can say that to some extent, I can tell the difference between art and a sloppy imitation of art; you can call me an educated amateur consumer of art. Or something. Now, I don’t think everyone should be a consumer of art; the snobbishness of those who pride in being fine connoisseurs of art is just another version of pridefulness which I don’t share. (Well, to be honest, I did share for a certain period of my life, but it’s over, I hope.) I can certainly tell the difference between a Rubens and a Rembrandt, I never make the mistake of using the term Classical music for Baroque or for Romantic music, I can recite by heart Shakespeare and Alfred de Musset, but I don’t make much of it. Technical details don’t matter in a covenantal frame.

Scripture, however, gives a very special place to art. Not to a specific style or fad of art, not to specific forms of expression or specific rules of harmony. Some specific forms or styles may be found in Scripture under certain interpretations, but even if found, they are not given any covenantal significance over other forms or styles. But art in general is clearly depicted to be part of the Dominion Covenant, of that mandate God gave man in the beginning to take dominion over the earth and transform it to God’s glory.

The first mention of art and craftsmanship is in the early chapters of Genesis, a natural consequence of the Dominion Mandate. It is interesting, however, that such mention is made in the family line of Cain, not of Adam’s righteous son, Seth. Genesis 4:20-22 says this: “Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. As for Zillah, she also gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron; and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.” Adah and Zillah were the wives of Lamech, the first man to openly brag about committing a murder, so Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Cain were his sons. All these were descendants of Cain, and therefore were legally excluded from mankind, from the family of man in Genesis 4:11-12. Notice that the descendants of Cain are first listed, but then the next chapter immediately starts with “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” The chapter then continues only with the descendants of Seth, and in verse 3 explains why: “When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.” The theology behind this remark which mirrors the language of Genesis 1:26 is an issue for another episode, the question here, however is, “Why are art and metallurgy mentioned in relation to the sons of Cain, even though they were legally excluded from the family of man?” Why weren’t they mentioned in relation to the redeemed family of Adam, the descendants of Seth?

I am not sure about the exact interpretation of these verses, but my best guess would be that God’s purpose was to show that art (as well as crafts, as well as metallurgy and other productive activities) can, for a time, exist outside a covenantal frame. Unbelievers, even as wicked as the sons of Cain, can produce beauty and harmony. The act of productivity itself or the beauty itself does not make up for unfaithfulness of the covenant. In the final account, beauty can exist outside the covenant of redemption, but it must serve the covenant of redemption. It must only exist in a covenantal, that is, ethical/judicial frame.

Beauty, of course, is very difficult to define. “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” is an established truism, and indeed, people do have different tastes . . . supposedly. But then, on the other hand, we all seem to know when we see something beautiful, or something ugly. Some girls are sought after more than other girls, and that’s not because boys are smart enough to be attracted to the girls’ moral character. There seem to be differences, and yet, there seem to be certain shared tastes among all the people. And yet, we are still not capable of giving a rational, academic definition of beauty. Or of harmony. But art is all about beauty and harmony, and about their impact on the human senses. An artist may claim to not care about other people’s perception of his own art, he may claim to do art for the sake of art, to be driven by motives far above the approval of the crowd, and yet, at the end of the day, he wants to see his work displayed in an art gallery and admired by other people. That is, every artist expects that there is some sort of objective reality which makes people have the same appreciation for beauty (or ugliness) as he does. We all do. And yet, we can’t define beauty objectively. Historically, a number of art schools and academic groups have tried to produce an objective definition of beauty in terms of rules and relations of harmony, and yet, the moment they did it, new forms of beauty and harmony have appeared which disobey the old rules, and yet are perceived by the senses as beauty.

How do we solve this obvious contradiction that art – or perception of beauty and harmony – is both subjective and objective?

The solution is found in the Word of God, and that is, that art is a direct inspiration and revelation by the Holy Spirit. The New Testament speaks much of being filled with the Holy Spirit, and the Old Testament has its stories of people filled with the Holy Spirit. Even Saul, a man who was not in any way in any intimate relationship with God, was filled with the Holy Spirit at least once in his life, in 1 Samuel 10:9-13. (Just as a side comment, so unusual was his religious zeal that all who knew him were amazed, “What happened to Saul? Is he also among the prophets?”) As much as the Bible speaks of being filled with the Holy Spirit, however, the first person mentioned to be filled with the Holy Spirit was an artist. In Exodus 31 God speaks to Moses about building the Tabernacle and tells him that He has supplied the man who will make all the designs:

See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship, to make artistic designs for work in gold, in silver, and in bronze, and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood, that he may work in all kinds of craftsmanship (Exodus 31:2-5).

But Bezalel is not unique. The next verse explicitly say that similar inspiration and revelation is put in the hearts of all who have skill:

And behold, I Myself have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all who are skillful I have put skill, that they may make all that I have commanded you. . . . (v. 6).

The key words here are the repetition of “skill”: “in the hearts of all who are skillful I have put skill.” The English translation of “skill” is harmonized with the context, of course, but in Hebrew the word translated “skill” is the plain common Hebrew word hakmah, that is, “wisdom.” The same “wisdom” which speaks in Proverbs 8, and the same “wisdom” whose beginning is the fear of God, according to Psalm 111:10. The verse sounds like this in Hebrew: “All the wise-hearted in whom I have put wisdom.” The men who have artistic skill are filled with the Spirit of God, and that artistic skill is nothing more than the same wisdom we all are supposed to have, just expressed in a different area of life. The same connection between wisdom, the spirit of God, and artistic abilities can be seen in Exodus 28:3: “You shall speak to all the skillful persons whom I have endowed with the spirit of wisdom. . . .” Again, “skillful” in Hebrew is “wise-hearted,” and the spirit of God is the source of that skill.

If art is supernatural inspiration given to specific people, this would explain both the subjective and the objective aspect of art. There are objective standards, obviously, because all art comes from the same Spirit. Of course, as everything else, spiritual inspiration can be twisted to serve evil purposes, or even twisted to subvert the very objective concept of beauty. But no matter how humans may try, the objective concept of beauty is still there, because it comes from the same Spirit. And yet, since the Spirit gives it as a direct inspiration and revelation to specific individuals, its specific expression remains ostensibly personal and subjective. And not only the expression but the perception as well: after all, the appreciation of art needs just as much of spiritual discernment as the production of art. Art does require what we call “intuition,” which is nothing less than supernatural, that is, spiritual understanding of reality that can’t be defined by rational standards. That doesn’t mean that an artist can’t be self-conscious in obeying rules and standards in his art, but that within the bounds of those rules and standards one needs supernatural inspiration to really produce works of beauty that appeal to the senses and the inner heart of other people.

To deviate shortly from our topic, this also explains why Christian art has deteriorated so sharply in the last one century compared to Christian art ofprevious centuries. If artistic abilities are direct inspiration and revelation by the Holy Spirit, just like Biblical wisdom, then any ideology that diminishes the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church will by necessity diminish the faith in His direct operation in inspiration and revelation to individual believers. Less inspiration and less revelation will lead to less artistic ability, and to fewer people having artistic talents. In the last 100 years, we have had such ideology: cessationism, the belief that the Holy Spirit has ceased being involved directly in the life of the Church through the manifestation of His spiritual gifts, described in the New Testament. One of the fruits of that ideology – among many others – has been the disappearance of talent and the dominance of mediocrity. Churches – especially the Reformed churches – have been strictly rationalistic in their worldview; and rationalism can’t produce artistic talent. I have read a number of articles and book that complain about the decline of arts and literature in our day; but the critics seldom follow through with finding the source of the problem, namely, the decline of the belief in the real presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church today. When the Holy Spirit is reduced to church activities regulated by a churchian elite, His inspiration disappears. And therefore art disappears too. Next time some pastor of theologian complains about the decline of arts, remind him that he is part of the problem by teaching and preaching the doctrine of Enlightenment rationalism, also known as cessationism.

Returning to Bezalel and Oholiab, their direct appointment tells us not only that artistic abilities are a direct work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men, it also reveals to us the ultimate purpose of covenantal art.

The sacrificial system of the Old Testament was not designed to be a system of occult atonement. There was nothing in the ceremonies and in the blood of the sacrifices that would satisfy God. This was a common knowledge among both Jews and Gentiles, for Stephen told his persecutors that “God doesn’t dwell in houses made by hands” (Acts 7:48) and Paul told the Athenians the same, adding that “God is not served by human hands” (Acts 17:24-25). There was no spiritual reality in the OT ceremonies, for Paul says in Col. 2:17 that they were only shadows, while the body – that is, the reality – is Christ. Heb. 10:1 speaks of the Law – the sacrifices of the Law, in context – as only the shadow of the good things to come, not the form of things. In fact, the whole epistle to the Hebrews is a theological treatise on the difference between the shadows of the Law and the light of the coming of Christ. We will talk in a future episode about this division in the Law between shadow and light, but for our purposes here, what is important to understand is that the Old Testament sacrificial system was not a system of religious service to God. God, in fact, destroyed the Temple and the services in it for a while, and yet the Hebrew nation continued being the Hebrew nation, and all the covenantal obligations continued to be in force even without the Temple and the sacrifices. Even under the Old Covenant, a person and a nation could be in covenant with God without the ceremonies.

The purpose of the system was evangelism and teaching. The Temple and the ceremonies in it were the Old Covenant equivalent of modern street preaching and evangelism crusades and missionary outreach. There was nothing magical in the ceremonies; God simply used them to teach both Israel and the nations about His world and His redemption. And thus, the purpose of the artistic skills God, through His Spirit, put in Bezalel and his co-workers, was evangelism and teaching.

It started, of course, with an appeal to the senses – beauty and harmony. The Ark and the Tabernacle combined a number of materials which gave the appearance of beauty and majesty – gold, acacia wood, linen and goat hair, different colors (color was an expensive luxury at the time, especially purple), etc. There were special measurements that were meant to give the appearance of harmony as well: and the measurements were given not only for the Tabernacle as a whole but for every single item in it, including the tables and the laver and the lampstand, etc. We today sometimes criticize appeal to the senses when we see it – cause it doesn’t look “spiritual” to our rationalistic minds – but the Bible clearly endorses it as something good and useful; provided, of course, it is used in a covenantal way. The Tabernacle was meant to be a feast for the eyes of any beholder, and the Temple built later by Solomon even more so. Beauty and harmony were a necessary part of Israel’s place as God’s priest to the nations. In other places in the Bible we see the same: the appeal to the senses is perfectly legitimate. For example, throughout the Song of Solomon, female beauty is extolled a number of times. Deut. 21:11 also acknowledges the legitimacy the appeal of female beauty to the senses, and regulates it to prevent injustice. Beauty is good and lawful, art is good and spiritual. It all needs to be regulated by the law of God. It must be subject to a higher covenantal principle.

At times, that higher covenantal principle, of course, requires that beauty is diminished or ignored, and God even uses ugliness – a negative appeal to the senses – to teach His lessons. The ultimate example of it is Jesus Himself. While our modern illustrators and historic painters of icons have been tripping over each other to depict Him as a fairly handsome man, we know from the Biblical record that He was quite inconspicuous when among other people; we also know from Isaiah 53:2 that in His earthly image, Jesus had no majesty to look upon, and no beauty for others to be attracted to Him. At times in the Bible, we see plain ugliness in literary expression, again, with the purpose of conveying higher truths. Thus, beauty, and art, while important, are not necessary in themselves. They are only to be used in service of the covenant. The appeal to the senses can’t have an independent existence. It must have an ethical/judicial purpose.

When we come to that ethical/judicial purpose, however, too often it is understood as an artistic version of an altar call: a bland, simplistic repetition of a few moralistic cliches, plus a call to praying the sinner’s prayer and “accepting Jesus in your heart.” Our modern songs are such repetition of cliches, to the point where they are simply unbearable to even listen to, let alone sing, in the church or outside the church. A few Christian movies I have seen in the last 20 years are just as unbearable: again, cliched, bland, preachy, and at times straight out patronizing the viewers. Visual arts, of course, are almost non-existent today among Christians; where Christians undertake them, the result is again tasteless and simplistic. We are today devoid of the ability to represent beauty, but even worse, we are devoid of the spirit of art and beauty in all we do, whether visual, performing, or literary arts.

The reason for this mediocrity is that our modern Christianity has abandoned the comprehensive worldview of the Christian faith. The world is left to the enemy, and Christian endeavor in it is restricted to “preaching the gospel,” which means not really preaching the Gospel but repeating a few intellectual propositions about personal salvation. I have talked about this truncating the Christian message in other episodes and articles; what is important to realize here is that one of the reasons for the mediocrity of Christian art these days is that art is supposed to be a representation of a world and a worldview, and Christian today have no world nor worldview to represent. Christian art can’t be greater than the gospel it serves; thus, a truncated “gospel” will by default produce a mediocre and truncated art. Even where we have talented artists, their product will inevitably be bland and simplistic. Your worldview determines the art you produce.

Covenantal art in the Bible, and specifically in the Old Covenant, included all of life. The Tabernacle, and later the Temple, were representative not simply of God’s salvation; they were supposed to be a microcosm of the larger cosmos. A person who looked at the Tabernacle and the sacrificial system and the objects in the Tabernacle and the ceremonial activities of the priests saw not only salvation; he saw the history of the human race from the Creation to Christ. He saw the age-old struggles of the human race; he saw the futility of human efforts; he saw the promise and the hope of God’s intervention; and he also saw God’s justice and the bright future of the redeemed mankind. In the Song of Solomon, a love story is presented without one single line of moralism or preachiness; just straight love poetry. But that poetry again is so interwoven with the comprehensive worldview of the covenant that we can see Christ and the Church in it even as we are enjoying the beauty of the words.

Covenantal art, therefore, must not simply issue a call to repentance or conversion. For such a simple call there is no need for art. Art must take the world as interpreted by God and represent it in a form that emphasizes either beauty or ugliness, and re-interpret them ethically/judicially after God’s interpretation of them. It must presuppose an absolute source of ethics; or present the picture of a world without such a source. It must depict and describe the real man in his fallen state, his struggles and failures and insecurities and fear; or it must present the redeemed man in his victories. It must explore and exploit to the utmost the central topic of our created world, namely, self-sacrifice for a higher purpose. (That’s what made Rogue One, for example, such a good movie: That principle of self-sacrifice never fails to produce good art, does it?) It must take present reality, past reality, and even imaginary reality (think The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars) and create a world out of it. Not necessarily a world of the same religious or churchian slang of today. It may be even a world using the vocabulary of the enemy, and yet, subjecting it to a Biblical worldview. (Think of the wizards in The Lord of the Rings). Its music must appeal to the senses, and through them lead the mind and heart discern between good and evil. Etc, etc. The list of legitimate horizons that covenantal art can reach is as great so the world God has created. The limit is only in the ethical/judicial interpretation of reality; what that reality is – modern, historical, futuristic, imaginary, fantasy, poetic, even ugly (think Solzhenitsyn) – doesn’t matter. The legalistic moralism against certain types of artistic reality is stupid; no Christian has ever tried wizardry because of Gandalf the Grey.

I recently had the chance to listen to several songs by a modern Christian popular music group. Not commenting on the quality of the music, the lyrics left in me the impression that what they were trying to do was to give exactly the same simplistic altar call under several different tunes. (And how different they were I don’t want to discuss.) After listening to the songs, my conclusion was that there was more Biblical worldview in some songs of the hippie generation of the 1970s (think, for example, Dust in the Wind by Kansas or Blinded by Science by Foreigner), than in all of these supposedly Christian songs. The hippies, apparently, for all their resistance to Christianity, had a much larger world in view, and, exploring their much larger world, inevitably had to discover and agree with certain Biblical truths, which they then included in their songs. The majority of modern Christian artists, having a truncated gospel and a small world to draw on, end up having no covenantal truths to convey. Having no covenantal truths to convey is the surest road to mediocrity, even if you are the most talented person on the planet.

Much more can be said on this issue if I had the time, and we will expand on art in a future episode. For now, the assigned reading for this week will be a book by the French author Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence. Barzun was born in France but spent the last years of his life in Texas; and he lived to be 105 years old. The book is an enormous essay on the rise and decay of European art for the last 500 years. While Barzun had no explicit covenantal worldview, he nevertheless grasped quite a few of the ethical/judicial issues related to art, and related to its decline. It’s a fat book, but worth your time.

Keep in your prayers, and in your considerations for support, Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a foreign mission devoted to a comprehensive Biblical worldview, working the create the intellectual foundation for the future Christian civilization in Eastern Europe through translation of books and teaching the Biblical faith for all of life. Visit BulgarianReformation.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and donate.

Welcome to Episode 48 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes I will try to cover an issue that has become very important in the last one century, in respect to the victories and the defeats of the church, and especially in respect to the work of spreading the Gospel, both at home and in the field of foreign missions. So important, in fact, that I have seen foreign missions fail exactly because of lack of understanding on this particular issue. As far as its influence at home, we can safely say that a large part of the cultural defeats of the church in the US have been caused by lack of understanding on this particular issue. And, as we will see later in this episode, a number of false church practices have come out of either lack of understanding, or of deliberate false teaching on this particular issue. So this issue needs to be resolved; we need to lay the axe to the root of this sacred oak of modern church theology and eschatology, and deal with it before we are able to score again cultural victories for the Kingdom of Christ.

The issue is the moral condition of our hearts. Or, to be more precise, the moral condition of the hearts of all men taken as an aggregate; that is, the moral condition of mankind, the covenantal unity of all human beings living on earth in this particular moment of history. Are we as mankind better than our ancestors? Are we more morally upright? Are we less cruel, less violent, less prone to commit crimes against property? Are we less willing to lie? Or are we more corrupt and more eager to commit all kinds of crimes? The answers to these questions are very important to everything we do, from our personal undertakings to our business decisions, to our cultural and church practices. The dynamics of mankind’s morality in history gives a clue to the expectations we should have of our immediate future and of the future of our children. And while it is impossible to know the future for certain, we still need to have somewhat reliable expectations. After all, no one makes any decisions without certain expectations of the future, right? (If you don’t believe this last sentence, try making even a single decision without taking the future in account.)

Of course, those of us who have been involved in Christian Reconstruction and have preached and taught postmillennialism have had to face the question: “Is the world getting better or worse?” There have been multiple sermons and lectures and books on this issue; all of them showing that contrary to the nearsighted view of a world that is gradually declining, we actually have a world that is getting better, generation after generation. Yes, even with all the wars we have had in the last one century – after all, at the end of all these wars, all the bad guys and their extremely wicked ideologies have been defeated, to the point that they are extinct today, or limited to only a few small impoverished nations around the world. My favorite question in this regard has always been, “What century would you prefer to live in, compared to today?” Most people who believe the world has been getting worse, after giving it a good thought, come to the conclusion that they would still prefer to live in our own day. Some would mention some period of the past, usually of what they assume to have been a period of unquestionable prevalence of Christian ideas. And yet, when I point to them the reality of that specific period, stripped of the romantic and nostalgic descriptions, they take an exception, “Well, without these bad things.” In other words, they would like to live in a past of their own imagination, sort of a modern cultural setting (without the bad things of the past) with a vintage wardrobe.

Anyone who is trying to prove that the world has been getting worse and worse will have serious hard time with collecting his evidence. The world has been getting better and better, and that is obvious. Economically, our poor today, in the West, are richer than the richest people just 300 or 400 years ago; and the vast majority of the world’s population today is not under the danger of starvation. Politically, we don’t have the gigantic and cruel empires of ages past. With time, the empires of man seem to be shorter and shorter-lived. Remember, as a political entity, Rome existed for 12 centuries; the Ottoman Empire for just a little over 7, the Russian Empire as established by Peter the Great for only 2 centuries, and the Communist Soviet empire couldn’t survive even two generations. Would-be dictators in Africa and Latin America seldom stayed in power for more than a few decades, and the remaining ones are viewed as remnants of a forgotten past. Not that we have achieved the perfect state of civil government in the world today, but yet, we don’t have anything close to Caligula or Tamerlane. Judicially, one may argue, we have had ups and downs, but then again, remember that even in America, we had slavery on the books until just 4 generations ago, and legal segregation was a daily reality in the childhood of millions of Americans who are still living today. And while police brutality today is just as bad as it has always been – because police is created to be an institution of brutality and oppression – the public opinion is changing against it. Technologically, we have the world at our fingertips today, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the direct access to a world of literature and knowledge; making Paul’s reward in 1 Cor. 9:18 come true, namely, the Gospel is offered free of charge around the world. And speaking of preaching the Gospel, nowhere is progress more visible than in the fact that within just the last century, the unreached groups in the world shrank from 60% to less than 5% of the population of the world, during a period when the population of the world increased 7-fold!

The world is getting better with every generation. Really. There is no doubt about it. No matter what anyone says, no one really wants to live in ages past. Not without some disclaimer like, “without the bad things,” most of which “bad things” were in fact characteristic for the ages past. The world today is a serious improvement over the world of 200 years ago, or of 2,000 years ago. In all respects.

While this issue has been dealt with in numerous publications, one legitimate question remains: “Have our hearts changed also?” Yes, we have seen technological and scientific progress, no doubt about it. Yes, we have certain judicial and political progress; no one really wants to live in earlier ages when there was no rule of law, and everything was dependent on the whim of rulers. Yes, undoubtedly, we have economic progress; what is the last time we saw real famine? (Think about it, we have thousands of gyms where spend energy to spend energy, so that we don’t get too fat!!!) But in all this external progress, is there internal progress? Are our hearts changed compared to the generations before us, or are we the same moral degenerates, or even worse? I said that the question is legitimate because if that external progress is only external, then it is only temporary, and it is only a prelude to judgment, a judgment from God on our civilization. But if this external progress is also internal, then the progress is not only here to stay, but we should expect even more progress coming our way, including more and better ways of spreading the Gospel.

So, what is it? Is the current state of mankind common judgment, external progress without internal sanctification, and therefore a prelude to judgment? Or is it special grace, that is, internal moral sanctification plus external cultural redemption, a manifestation of the Kingdom of God?

Now, while there can no perfect assurance when we covenantally interpret history and present circumstances, and while there is no broad-brush interpretation that would apply to everything without exception, we have a very good reason to believe that mankind has been experiencing a steady moral sanctification ever since the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let me start with this: Even before the ministry of Christ, and before the Cross and the Resurrection, the Word of God exercised a redemptive role in the ancient world. It is hard for us today, having been brainwashed by the modern secular concept of ancient history and ancient chronology, to imagine that the Law of God actually had any influence in the world before Christ, but the reality is, it had a much greater impact than we today imagine. I have written an article on the impact it had on Greece and Rome, titled “The Shadow of Christ in the Legal Revolutions in Greece and Rome,” found on ChristendomRestored.com. But Greece and Rome were not the only cultures affected. According to Eusebius, the first great historian of the Church, the Law of God given through Moses did change the hearts of mankind from a state of savagery to a civilized state:

…an entire nation appeared, sprung from the Hebrews and practicing the true religion. To them, through the prophet Moses, he revealed images and symbols of a mystical Sabbath and of circumcision, as well as instruction in other spiritual principles, but no complete revelation of the mysteries, for they were still bound by old practices. Yet when their law became famous and penetrated everywhere like a fragrant breeze, the minds of most of the heathen were moderated by lawgivers and philosophers. Savage brutality changed into mildness, so that profound peace, friendship, and easy communication prevailed.

Yes, yes, I know, it sounds like Eusebius was exaggerating or making it up, but in reality, such was the common consent in the antiquity, even among the pagans, that the Law of Hebrew God was the foundation of all civilization. This was the reason why Julius Caesar had read the Septuagint and had freed the Jews in the Empire from taxes every seventh year; and why Titus ordered his legions to not destroy the Temple. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing two centuries before Eusebius, had the same view. The same view, in fact, is confirmed by Scripture in 1 Kings 4:34: “Men came from all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.” Modern secularist history and chronology have brainwashed us to believe otherwise, but the Biblical truth is, the ancient world knew about the Law of God, and this knowledge became especially widespread with Solomon, over the whole earth. As I have argued in a previous episode of Axe to the Root, if we reject the secularist chronology and adopt a chronology that is in agreement with the Biblical narrative, we will see that all known civilized societies in history – societies of some established form rule by law, as opposed to rule by the whim of a ruler – appeared after 900 BC, that is, after Solomon’s reign. The ancient world knew this, and what Eusebius wrote about the minds of the heathen being changed by the Law of God was a common knowledge. Even before Christ, the Word of God was changing the minds and the hearts of even the worst of the heathen.

This change was obvious to the ancients, for in the first century AD, the memory was still kept of earlier empires and conquests. Rome was an exquisitely cruel culture by modern standards, but by the standards of, for example, the Assyrian Empire or the Phoenicians, it was rather mild and tamed. Assyrians liked to flay all their war prisoners alive and leave heaps of flayed, still wriggling bodies in the scorching sun. The Phoenicians sacrificed their children to their gods. Rome didn’t practice unnecessary cruelty on the battlefield, and human sacrifices were especially loathsome to the ordinary Roman. The reason why the early church fathers tried to preserve the Empire was exactly this: in their eyes, the alternative was much crueler and more savage.

The problem was not only with the pagan nations. The Bible tells us that before Christ, even the Jews had extraordinary hardness of heart. Jesus specifically said it when discussing the provisions for divorce in the Law of God, in Matt. 19:8 and Mark 10:5: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives.” The general understanding here is that Jesus was giving indulgence to the husbands. The truth is, however, he was protecting the wives. Because of the hardness of the hearts of the men under the Old Covenant, when a husband quit loving his wife, her life would become a nightmare, while she would be trapped in a marriage without love and care. It was much safer for such a wife to receive a divorce from her husband, for given the hardness of men’s hearts, she wouldn’t get anything better. Under the New Covenant, however, Jesus restored the original legal condition, namely, whatever God has joined together, man can’t put asunder. Therefore, Jesus expected that under the New Covenant, there won’t be the same hardness of hearts, and therefore the protection of the wife would be not so much in outward legal rules but in the inner sanctification of her husband. In fact, such family sanctification even of unbelievers is specifically anticipated by Paul in 1 Cor. 7:14, where the unbelieving spouse is expected to be sanctified (not necessarily saved) by the believing spouse; therefore, the physical proximity would lead to some sort of inner sanctification and partial redemption in the unbeliever.

The early church fathers began to see signs of cultural sanctification as early as the 4th century. In his work On the Incarnation, Athanasius testifies how his compatriots, the Egyptians, have abandoned their worship to idols, and even the non-Christians have stopped offering sacrifices to their temples. He even speaks of the sacrifice of Jesus as “restoring the whole nature of man.” We may judge his enthusiasm a bit premature, from our own vantage point, but for Athanasius to declare such things, the change in the hearts of men – all men – must have been really obvious and surprising, within just a generation or two. Missionaries testified of similar experiences on the mission field where even the unconverted were still influenced by the preaching of the missionary, and changed their conduct accordingly. (Today’s missionaries also testify of such indirect influence of the Gospel upon even those who are just listeners, even if they have never turned to Christ.)

And these were still the times of the Roman Empire, with all their cruelty and oppression and personal wickedness. People still flocked to see gladiatorial games and found entertainment in the cruel death of human beings in the arena. Roman women still found pleasure in torturing their male and female slaves. Sexual immorality was still rampant in the culture, and temple prostitution was the norm. And yet, even in those early centuries of the Church, the change of heart was obvious. A new paradigm of personal conduct was replacing the old paradigm. Step by step, the pagan concept of morality and conduct was being replaced. Cruelty to slaves gradually disappeared. The old paradigm of dominating other human beings did not disappear, but it was softened by the introduction of new codes of conduct that emphasized the servanthood aspect of power. Chivalry was one of those new codes of conduct; while in itself imperfect and not really Biblical, chivalry did change much in the way the ruling classes saw themselves in relation to their subjects. The social position of women changed from being second-class citizens under the old pagan laws (whether Roman or German) to position of full rights and even social influence and special protection for women and other weaker members of the society. The change was legal, but it was also ethical, for the teaching of equality came through the preaching of the church.

Overtime, more changes came in the hearts of men, through that same preaching. Our modern economic prosperity didn’t come by magic; it was a fruit of the Protestant Reformation and its concept of spiritual calling. (Read Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.) It only happened because the doctrines of the Reformation changed the concept of work, stewardship, and wealth. Where previously the middle class of productive entrepreneurs was viewed with suspicion, under the Reformation this same class was now elevated to the status of the most important class in the society. This elevation of the entrepreneurial class by the preaching of the Reformers changed the hearts of many people and created a new role model to follow for future generations. Modern atheists often point to the fact that many unbelievers have high work ethic – therefore, they say, Christianity is not unique in creating such work ethic. The question, of course, is, how did this sanctification in the hearts of these unbelievers happen? The answer is: through the preaching of the Reformers, and through later imitation and historical legacy, which modern unbelievers have taken advantage of. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Henry Ford and Sam Walton etc could only happen in a culture that had been previously saturated with Gospel truths. Such saturation inevitably leads to sanctification not only in the hearts of the Christian believers, but also in the hearts of everyone.

The decline in crime is another example of the influence of the preaching of the Gospel. We often today imagine that crime is on the increase, that the world is becoming less and less secure . . . but the truth is, we have never had crime rates so low, and we have never been safer, especially in the West. The crime statistics show a much lower rate of all violent crimes, from murder to rape, and multiple studies confirm it. In fact, despite all the scares of terrorism, terrorism is in decline compared to the second half of the 20th century. Only France in the 1970s had as many terrorist acts and people killed in them every year as all of the US today, again, a year. Such decline is not simply due to some change in the legal system; it is very clearly a change in the heart of the population in general. Violence is not considered a normal conduct anymore. Again, we can say many things about the moral condition of the hearts of all our neighbors, but it is still true that a world of less criminal violence is a better world than the one with more.

And such decline in violence is obvious even in nations where Christianity is not the prevalent faith of the population. India is a good example. Just a generation ago, in India, any act of cruelty against people of lower castes was considered the norm, and no one was surprised. (Read the story of Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen of India.) The caste divisions which had ruled India for millennia, were enough of a justification for any cruelty against the lower castes. This situation has been changing rapidly for the last several decades, even for the lowest of lowest castes, the Dalits. Just recently, the harassment of a Dalit professor by his colleagues which led to his suicide became a public scandal in India; obviously, the heart of India is changing. And much of this change has come through the preaching of the Gospel. (Read the novel Karukku by the Christian Dalit writer Bama Soosairaj to find out more.) If even India is changing, the rest of the world is changing too. And the change is not simply in technology, or politics, or economics. It is in the hearts of men as well. The Gospel never returns back empty. It changes hearts. Even where the hearts remain hard against the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can continue with more and more evidence, if we had the time, in any case, one thing is obvious: The hearts of men have not become harder. To the contrary, they have grown softer. Even the unbelievers these days understand justice and mercy better than some Christians in ages past. Mankind is growing more sanctified. God’s special grace is at work, overcoming the curse of the sin. Until every enemy of Christ is made subject to Him.

The only issue that needs to be resolved is, can there be any harm from this false belief that the hearts of men become harder and more wicked? Yes, such belief is harmful. The promise of the New Covenant is that the more the Gospel is preached, the more mature and self-governing men will be. That applies to Christians first, by special grace, but it also applies to unbelievers as well, as common grace which spills over the cup of special grace. When we understand special grace at work in history, in changing the hearts of mankind, we will plan for a world that will be much better, much more mature and responsible, and much less prone to violence and crime. In such a world, we don’t need to spend more energy on building institutional controls. In such a world, preaching the whole council of God will be a much more effective tool for securing justice and liberty for all. The Holy Spirit at work in the culture will be the protection of our society, as the promise in Zechariah 2:3-4 says, that God Himself will be protection around His Church.

When we, however, expect men to become less mature, more wicked, and more prone to commit crime, we will invest more effort and resources into building institutional restraints. In a world of immature men, we will want to make sure we have as many guardians as possible – whether as police presence or as church bureaucrats. In addition to wasting resources for such “security,” we will be opening the door for tyranny, civil or ecclesiastical. Any institution that is given the power to constantly correct the steps of men, is an institution that can impose a foreign agenda on men. In the final account, we will be back to Rome, in both civil and ecclesiastical sense. And back to Rome means no growth, and no future.

And Paul tells us that the future belongs to us.

The reading I will assign this week is an audio by Gary DeMar, titled The Paralysis of Pessimism. Listen to him explain the consequences of our expectations of the future. Add to this the assigned reading of several weeks ago, Gary North’s Millennialism and Social Theory. Your expectations of the future determine your present. And your effectiveness as a worker of the Kingdom of God.

Consider in your prayers and your giving Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a mission organization committed to preaching the whole council of God in Eastern Europe. Our goal has never been to create immature men and place them under the care of ecclesiastical baby-sitters in some sort of spiritual nursery. Our goal has been raising mature, spiritual men, who can apply the Word of God to every area of life and change cultures. Help us continue the work. Visit BulgarianReformation.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and donate.

Welcome to Episode 47 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes I will be speaking to you as a fear-monger . . . well, sorta, not really. But I want to talk about an issue, or rather, a trend in the church today that should strike godly fear in the heart of any Christian man who cares about the future of the Church, and of the future of his family in the Church; and it certainly should strike even greater fear in the hearts of the shepherds in the Church, those who, in one way or another, have been invested with the power of decision-making, and especially decision-making in respect to the content of teaching from our pulpits. It is a trend that has not been abrupt, visible, or overwhelming enough to take us by surprise; it has rather crept on us by small increments, year after year, and today we are beginning to see it and experience it, and some pastors and commentators are already sounding the alarm.

The trend I am talking about is the disappearance of men from our churches. Men, as distinct from women.

Now, before I continue, let me make this disclaimer: the church is not the men in the church, as some modern patriarchalists seem to believe. There have been extreme situations in history when the church has consisted mainly of women and has survived. Rodney Stark gives a reliable account of the early church in the Roman Empire, and that during the persecutions, and that the church had a high ratio of women to men. He even believes that the church encouraged believing women to marry unbelieving men and bring them to the church; and indeed, there is historical evidence to somewhat back this claim. A recent example of the same situation would be the Hungarian Reformed Church in Transylvania under the Communist rule of Nicolae Ceausescu. In many places the men in the churches were either murdered by the authorities or sent to concentration camps. The women took over and they kept the flame alive, by organizing church services and Bible readings, keeping their Bibles and copies of the Heidelberg Catechism in special hiding places in the walls and under the floors of their houses. (I personally visited Transylvania in 2003 and I saw the churches and the places and I heard many stories by participants in these events.) The underground churches in China have survived the Cultural Revolution almost entirely without men. Most of us, when we are looking at the growing church in China, do not realize that this growth has been planted in the efforts of millions of women who today are simply cute Chinese grandmothers in today’s churches. Most of today’s Chinese Christians can trace Christianity back to a patient grandmother who would insist on family reading from the Bible written in the old script. And why go to all these historical examples, when we have the example in the Bible, when it was the women of Israel who dared disobey Pharaoh and save the children of Israel. The men? Well, the men were rather timid, and later, when Moses came to rescue them, were not willing to save even their own backs from the whips, let alone save their children. But, these were extraordinary times, times of survival, and it seems that Christian women have been extraordinarily prepared and capable to fight and survive for the faith and for God’s Church in such times. I have no doubt of that.

But, again, those were extraordinary times. And extraordinary times can not and should not be our norm and standard. And besides, we are the Church of God, and survival can not be and should not be our normative mode of operation. The Gospel as described by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:1-28, has as its aim the subjection of all enemies of Jesus under His feet. And for this victory to be complete, we need men in the churches; men who will take their battle stations and won’t leave them until the victory is secured, in history and on earth. Therefore, we should be very concerned, if Christian men are disappearing from our churches.

I have noticed the trend first on the mission field, where it is very clearly discernible. And it seems to be a plague that doesn’t discriminate between the different denominations. Whether a mission is Charismatic or Baptist or Presbyterian, the same problem always persists: foreign missions are mainly capable of attracting women, but they seldom attract men. Or at least, they seldom attract enough men to balance the number of women in the planted churches. We had the same problem with our mission in our first years, before we figured out the problem and its solution. I have seen Presbyterian churches on the mission field where there are two and three men, and two dozen women in the church. (I have also seen a Presbyterian mission send to the mission field young single American women as short-term missionaries. A very, very foolish policy.) I have seen Pentecostal missions where there are so many women and so few men, that their evangelism teams are entirely manned – pun intended – by women. In fact, in some churches the young girls just plainly ignore the teachings of their pastors and marry unbelieving men from the culture around; of course they would, the biological clock is ticking, and they don’t have the time to wait for the pastor or the missionary to figure out how to fix the discrepancy. Whether these families will produce godly children or apostate wives is left to the mercy and providence of God; but the mercy and the providence of God do not excuse the incompetence – and sometimes the unwillingness – of the pastors to face the issue and find its Biblical solution.

The situation may be a little better on the home front, in the churches in the US; but don’t be quick to relax, it is not much better. Commentators and polling agencies and church leaders from all denominations are sounding the alarm concerning the American Church. Ten years ago Biola Magazine wrote of “the Feminization of the Church,” and quoted from David Murrow’s book, Why Men Hate Going to Church. Even earlier, Leon Podles wrote a much deeper study, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Women, even then, in the 1990s, outnumbered men in the churches by anywhere between 25 and 40 per cent. In year 2000, Barna research came up with a study titled, notice, “Women Are the Backbone of Christian Congregations in America.” At the time, 25% of all Christian women would worship without their husbands. About one-fifth to one-fourth of all single Christian women won’t find a husband who would share their faith. More than 90% of the American men profess some faith in God, but only one in six view see a point in attending church.

As a female blog author – a member of an orthodox, Reformed, conservative church expressed it, “Do single Christian men even exist anymore?” And her answer is, “Yes, they do exist. But they are hard to find because the demand is outstripping supply. And, unlike the case of the early church, or the persecuted churches in Transylvania or China, the supply is low because the churches have neglected their obligation to create what J.H. Bavinck called a “power of attraction.”

Some churches have awakened to the problem, and have tried to give it a solution by creating such a power of attraction; but their attempts have followed the same tactics as for attracting women: make some sort of a men’s ministry, or a men’s fellowship, focused superficially on something that men might be interested in. It seldom works, except as just another avenue of wasting church funds and propping the ego of just another church activist. I have been to a few of those. Whenever a fishing trip, or a paintball game, or something else is organized, some unchurched men from the community would come to hang around for the event, and sometimes even listen politely to sermonizing. Then, the next Sunday, they don’t show up for service. Such lame attempts at luring men in the churches are an insult to people’s intelligence; men don’t go to church not because it doesn’t have enough men’s events. Others have tried to attract men by displaying some sort of superficially manly, macho behavior from the pulpit, using even profanities or mimicking the manners and the lifestyle of some masculine subcultures like lumberjacks or criminal gangs. It doesn’t work either. Men don’t go to church not because they are looking for a theatrical setting where they can pretend they are masculine. There is a deeper reason for the aversion American men have to church, and until we discover this deeper reason and act on that discovery, we won’t solve the problem. And if we don’t solve the problem, the next extraordinary situation will be created not by our persecutors but by ourselves, by our own apathy and by our own stupidity. And especially by the apathy and the stupidity of our church leaders.

I have had multiple encounters with pastors and missionaries on this particular issue, and my question, when I talk to them about it, has always been: Have you tried to find the creedal, theological root for this problem? The righteous shall live by faith, and faith is at the foundation of all our prosperity or poverty, including the presence or the absence of men in our churches. And our Christian faith is not just a bare mystical awareness, it is a confessional faith, a faith that is self-conscious about itself, and is expressible in specific definable terms, which we call a creed. And then that creed must be developed into theology, which means, into a systematic worldview, a system of presuppositions and propositions about God, man, law, history, and the future. When we have such consistent, coherent, and cogent theology and worldview, our faith is well-informed about itself, and therefore we can find the solutions to our problems in terms of that informed and self-conscious faith. So may question has always been, have you tried to find the creedal, theological root for the problem?

Most of the time the people I talk to can’t even understand what I am saying. (Yes, Reformed seminary graduates.) The minds that are trained in the modern Reformed seminaries – unless they were self-educated from extracurricular materials – are usually incapable of even grasping the question. I mean, what does theology have to do with attracting men in the church? Men don’t come to church for the theology, do they? Well, a few may, but most won’t. So what does theology have to do with it?

Men don’t come to church for the theology, of course; although, some modern fundamentalist “Reformed” celebrities seem to believe this. But a Biblical, orthodox theology will help us understand the nature of man as he is in God’s eyes. And by understanding the nature of man, we will be capable of figuring out what it is in the constitution of man which keeps him away from the church, even when he professes faith in God, and even when he professes a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Our preaching is our power of attraction, or repulsion. Whatever we preach, based on our theology, will either attract men to our church, or will send them away dissatisfied. And let’s not soothe our consciences by saying that it was because these men were not seeking the Lord. In the majority of cases – if not all of them – the fault lies with the preacher and his preaching.

A few years ago, in a sermon titled “What Is Man?”, I presented the case that the definition of man in the Bible is not the Greek, metaphysical definition we are all used to today. We all know today that man – and I mean man generically, as man and woman – we all know today that man was created in the image of God. So far it all sounds clear, except that we need to find out what that “image of God” is or means, in order to find out what man is. A variety of solutions and answers have been given by theologians, all seeking to find a fixed, essential, internal characteristic of man which defines him as “in the image of God.” Some have placed that characteristic in man’s intelligence; others in his ethical nature. “Although, both technically won’t work since the angels also have both intelligence and ethical nature (they can fall, too), but they are not made in the image of God. There have been other attempts at definition, but again, all of them have focused on a metaphysical, fixed, stagnant feature or nature in man to describe him and define him.

But such metaphysical definition is not supported by the Biblical text. In the very text where God declares man to be made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-30), there is not even a trace of such definition, whatever the inner metaphysical nature of man is, God has not reveal it, and neither has He defined man on the basis of it.

What we see however, is that man is defined in terms of his external purpose. And not in only in terms of his external purpose, but also in terms of his external purpose as applied in time, and extending into the future. Hear the words of God’s definition of man, the image of God:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it. . . .

From the very beginning, man was given a definition in the very purpose for which he was created. And that purpose included a development in time, a distant but final goal to which man had to reach through time, through generations of his descendants, until the final goal, the subduing of the earth, is complete. Man didn’t learn what he is; but he learned what he was created to do. And his whole knowledge of himself was supposed to revolve around this simple fact: “you are created for a purpose, and that;s all you need to know about your real nature.”

In short, the definition of man was the Dominion Mandate given to man. Nothing else. You are in image of God, go take dominion, subdue the earth. You are given power and authority, you are lower than the angels, and yet because of the purpose I have put in you, angels are supposed to serve you as your serving spirits (Heb. 1).

This definition of man didn’t go away in the Fall. To the contrary, it is in his fallen condition that man is even more under the compulsion to stay faithful to his definition and his calling, or else. In fact, according to Romans 8, not only man himself, but the creation itself is groaning and eagerly expecting the fallen man to be restored to his position of its ruler and developer and capitalizer. Man has lost his covenant status before God, and therefore has lost his privilege of working towards his purpose in a world free of corruption and decay. But losing the privilege is not the same as losing his nature; and in his nature, man is still under the compulsion of the Dominion Mandate. It is in his DNA. He can’t flee from it.

In the words of the great Dutch theologian Klaas Schilder,

“Covenant of Works” is the name given to the initial relationship between God and man. This relationship was a covenant simply because service of God is possible only in the form of a covenant. The term “Covenant of Works” was applied in retrospect, in contrast with “Covenant of Grace”; and the very Covenant of Grace adds depth and meaning to the concept of the Covenant of Works. It is evident, then, that the Covenant of Works must not be looked upon as merely temporary; it is rather the original, fundamental, and therefore irrevocable covenant.

The sequence of events must be explained by their beginning, if we would see whither they tend. If we proceed from the Covenant of Grace as the starting point, we go astray; but when we see the Covenant of Works as basic to all covenant relationship, we are on the right track.

You may ask, “what is the difference”? Why would it matter if we define man in terms of his inner nature or in terms of his purpose? How would this attract men to the church?

Where it matters is that in all our modern programs of trying to attract men to the church, we have treated men as if they are stagnant metaphysical impersonal entities who can be manipulated by behavioral techniques. We have basically assumed that man is a machine – not necessarily mechanical, but certainly a psychological or metaphysical machine – and therefore all we need to do is use some user manual to trigger that machine to do the things we want it to do. There has to be a button somewhere. We find it, we push it, and, voilà, man prays for salvation, comes to church, gets baptized, and participates in out church programs. Oh, don’t forget, and tithes. And everyone is happy, and “the gospel” is preached, or whatever passes for “the gospel.”

Men, however, don’t fall for it. And what we think are their buttons – fishing trips, men’s gatherings, or anything else – just doesn’t work. And we are losing men by an alarming rate, and we still can’t figure it out.

What will restore men to the church is not the magical button triggering their metaphysical nature. What will restore is the knowledge of a transcendent and yet tangible, real, personal purpose in life. What will restore then is a theology – and a preaching based on that theology – that doesn’t keep men busy flipping through repetitious pages of abstract religious terminology, but instead creates in them a vision for each one’s personal place in the work of the Kingdom of God. An identity based on purpose, and extended in time, towards a final goal glorious enough to deserve the hassle. Glorious not simply in the eternity, but glorious on earth and in history. A goal of victory, in which every individual man will have his share, and his opportunity to prosper and contribute.

Such personal purpose and goal can be created in men only when the theology of the Dominion Mandate – given at the beginning as the very definition of the nature of man in the image of God – when that theology of the Dominion Mandate is restored in our churches. When those colonists 200+ years back followed their pastors to fight King George, they were self-consciously Christian because to be a Christian was to be a man of the frontier – a man of purpose and a vision, and an unbreakable optimism of the future. A man in those days could be alone against the whole world and still believe in his destiny to conquer the world. “You may all go to hell, and I shall go to Texas” were not the words of one superman of superabilities. Such was the sentiment of hundreds of thousands of just regular Christian men. And why were they such supermen compared to our modern effeminate churchmen? Because they were nursed with a theology that instilled in them a sense of destiny, a sense of purpose, and an urgency of finding their own part of creation which they should develop for the glory of God, under their personal destiny in Him. The men were not extraordinary beings; they were the same men as we are today, with their personal weaknesses and shortcomings. But the preaching they heard in their churches, the Christianity they grew up with, was what brought to the surface their gifts and talents, and gave them courage to serve God in ways more courageous and gallant than anything we can imagine today.

A few weeks ago I read the words of a modern preacher of the group of the modern so-called “covenanters” who stated that Christians should be centering around local churches, and should not be seeking better and more gainful employment in places they can’t find a good church. What an unfortunate and miserable end of the legacy of the original Covenanters and Presbyterians who, to the contrary, encouraged their church members to go out and expand their dominion over the land, whether there was a church or not. The golden age of Presbyterian Scotland saw Scotsmen traversing the globe as sailors, settlers, entrepreneurs, explorers, natural scientists, doctors, etc. (Did you know that the real-life prototype of Robinson Cruzoe, was a Presbyterian Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk. He survived his years of solitude by building a prosperous one-man economy and by reading his Bible every day.) But such false teachings are not limited to the modern so-called “covenanters.” Such a theology of passivity and purposelessness is common to most churches today, and common to most missionaries on the mission field. By preaching purpose out of our churches, we have preached manliness out. And then we wonder why men are not attracted to our churches.

For this to change, we need to change our definition of man. Man is first and foremost a purpose, a mission, a vision of a future victory, in history and on earth. Our preaching must speak to this kind of man, because this is the kind of man that the Bible describes and defines. And when we change our definition, and when we preach it, men will come. Because they are made to come to a purpose. Individual purpose. And a victory.

The book I will assign for reading this week is John Chamberlain, Enterprising Americans. Read and learn what made those Americans be the men they were. And take notes. And then take the notes to your pastors. And force them to preach it. Or force them out of the pulpit.

In your prayers and giving, consider Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, on the mission field, we have tried to remain faithful to this definition of man. As a result, our mission churches have attracted more men than women – and yes, we have the opposite problem now, praise God. Our work has given fruit abundantly, but there is more to be done, and more books to be translated and published, until we have the secure intellectual foundation of the future Christian civilization in Bulgaria. Help us build it. Visit BulgarianReformation.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and donate. God bless you all.

Welcome to Episode 46 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes I will be defending against slander the reputation of one of the Christian heroes of the 20th century who has been a major intellectual influence on my worldview, thinking, and on the practice of my ministry, R.J. Rushdoony. Not against all slander, of course, for the man has received way more than his fair share of flak throughout his life, and keep receiving it even after he is gone; which is normal for a writer of such disproportional influence. But I can’t deal with all of it in one episode, neither do I need to. I will only defend his reputation against one of the many accusations hurled against him, based on one single quote, taken out of context and butchered. And while defending Rushdoony’s reputation, I will also try to take a look at the topic of his quote from a Biblical perspective, and I will try to build a principled Christian understanding of it. And hopefully, principled Christian practice.

As a very short introduction, for those unfamiliar with the name, Rousas John Rushdoony, son of Armenian immigrants, was a Reformed missionary (among Native American tribes), pastor, educator, theologian, and author, known for his defense of what today is known as Christian Reconstruction: a theology of applying the truths of the Gospel to every area of life. Rushdoony’s unique contribution to theology was that he applied Biblical analysis to areas outside pure theology, like history, legal theory, sociology, economics, psychology, education, even math and engineering, with the goal of creating a comprehensive Biblical worldview, a faith that applies to every area of life, not simply by borrowing crumbs from the table of the secular academia (as has been done before him) but by consistent application of the Bible. To achieve that goal, he turned to the Law of God in the Bible as the most consistent and systematic expression of God’s will for the ethical and judicial standards for the life of man and his society. Rushdoony never really held any position of institutional power in any big denomination or seminary; his Chalcedon Foundation stayed away from the institutional struggles and alliances in the American churches. But his books exercised a ton of influence on many church and social figures, as well as upon a growing number of ordinary Christians in the US. Rushdoony is also considered the “grandfather” of the homeschool movement; his book, The Messianic Character of American Education, revealed that government education is not religiously neutral, and was never intended to be; it was this book that inspired a small minority of Christians to pull their children from the government schools and start the Christian homeschool movement in the US. Another very influential book of his has already been advertized in Axe to the Root as the most unique book ever written in the history of Christendom, The Foundations of Social Order; in it Rushdoony gave evidence that the modern Western civilization emerged not as the product of social or economic forces, but of the creedal definitions of the Christian faith in the early Creeds. His main influential work, of course, is The Institutes of Biblical Law, a three volume commentary on the ethical and judicial principles of the Law of God in the Bible, and their applications to the modern society, and to the building a Christian civilization. Rushdoony’s influence was not and is not the influence of a celebrity preacher whose main skill is to bring his listeners to excitement over emotional issues; his is the influence of a true Biblical teacher, one who trains and equips his readers to apply their faith to all of life. Given that such influence is much more important – and therefore dangerous to his enemies – we should expect that he would be slandered abundantly by them.

The accusation I want to deal with is based on a specific quote from one of Rushdoony’s books. The quote says the following:

No society has ever existed without class and caste lines.

If you google this specific quote, you will see that it is repeated in many places, in Wikiquote, in blogs of secularist opponents of Christian Reconstruction, in sermons of fundamentalist preachers opposed to Christian Reconstruction, in writings of fringe racist groups who try to pass for Christian. It is one of those quotes by Rushdoony that have caused much stir among his opponents. “No society has ever existed without class and caste lines.”

Norman Geisler, a premillennial author, who has spent a good part of his career blasting postmillennialists for their supposed agenda of political power-grab (who also last year endorsed Donald Trump, because, y’know, some power-grab is OK, just not one that is based on too much following the Bible), so Norman Geisler, in one of his papers attacking postmillennialism, used this quote by Rushdoony to declare that

“Rushdoony actually favors a kind of caste system.” [end of quote]. This is nonsense, of course. Of all 20th century theologians, Rushdoony is the only one who systematically opposed elitism and argued for a society of equal justice for all, and that explicitly on Biblical grounds. Meanwhile, it was Norman Geisler who declared that freedom, moral education toleration, and many other good things in our modern world came from secular humanism. (Yes, even moral education.) This is not a joke, folks, read Geisler’s book, Is Man the Measure? Rushdoony in fact wrote a special paper, now part of his collection of articles, Roots of Reconstruction, titled “Elitism.” In that paper, Rushdoony specifically traces elitism and all its manifestations – including a caste society – back to pagan thought, specifically Plato and his Republic. Elitism, or caste society, according to Rushdoony, comes about when men abandon Christianity; here the relevant quote: “When men depart from Christianity, they abandon hierarchy, which means sacred rule in terms of God’s law-word, for man’s rule by elitists.” [end of quote]. Notice, true hierarchy for Rushdoony is opposed to rule by man. Geisler also accused Rushdoony of being anti-democratic. True, Rushdoony is against the secularist form of democracy, but here’s what he has to say about elitism and democracy:

The elitist hates the free market because it gives in its own way a good form of democracy. In a free market economy, most men, if they want them, can earn enough for an automobile, television, and their own house. In this way, they pass out of the servant class (“It’s so hard to get good servants these days”) into the middle class, and this means an independence from the elite. The great evil of Puritanism and of Cromwell to the English elite was that “Merry England” was “destroyed,” since now no large class of servitors were bowing and scraping before them. For some ever since, the restoration of such an order has been a dream, whereas their ex-servitors in many cases want to hurt “the ruling class” even if it destroys the country in the process.

Do these words sound like the words of a man who advocates for a caste society? Obviously, Geisler has read into Rushdoony’s words not what Rushdoony really believed and taught, but his own bias.

Others have expanded the scope of accusations and have used this quote to accuse Rushdoony of racism. The reason is that just a few sentences above Rushdoony speaks about “the black nigger.” And then about “class and caste.” Ergo, his critics say, therefore Rushdoony wants to create a “class and caste” society along racial lines. What else do we need? Two trigger words (which were just regular words back in the 1960s when he wrote the book), and our modern prejudices, and we can easily come to any kind of conclusion. Especially if we are committed to smear the author of these words. The total quote, however, shows that Rushdoony was only quoting from other sources, and that the quote had nothing to do with any racism:

The radical humanists in and out of the church, and the Death of God school of thought hold to a concept of communion which is beyond good and evil and in which communion with man is communion with god. Erich Fromm has written, “God is one of the many different poetic expressions of the highest value in humanism, not a reality in itself.” True communion for this faith means that good and evil are denied validity as objective moral standards, and all men must be received into communion as gods without any regard to their moral status. Thus, a “Litany” popular in these circles identifies “God” with the city, with the “spick, black nigger, bastard, Buddhahead, and kike,” with “all men,” and calls for communion with all men as they are. Some churches have held meetings for homosexuals and worked to further homosexual “communion” with their members. In terms of this new faith, there is no God or Christ in heaven; God and Christ must be found in all our fellow men, accepted as they are without moral judgment or censure. This concept runs deeply through the so-called “Civil Rights” Revolution. It was expressed by a degenerate criminal and murderer as he was being executed. Aaron C. Mitchell was dragged screaming to the gas chamber at San Quentin, and his last words were, “I am Jesus Christ — look what they have done to me.”

Obviously, his point was not some racist complaint about mixing blacks and whites in the society. In fact, in his Institutes of Biblical Law he specifically speaks against racial divisions and against the idolatry of blood brotherhood:

The revolutionists and the statists thus have a common cause, to destroy society, to wipe out community. It is important to understand the reasons for this. Men have tried over and over again to establish a community on the basis of blood. Modern attempts to do so include the national states, Nazi Germany, the Arab states, and Israel. Others have extended this racist idea of community to include all men, a one-world order…

Rushdoony’s point when mentions the “Litany” and all the other attempts at non-Christian communion is that such communion outside Christ, without any regard for objective moral standards or moral status, is a communion with evil. Such communion with evil will never produce the desired equality; the only way for it to work is to destroy the personal identity of the individual man. But in this destruction of personal identity no new society of equality will arise; social distinctions will only become worse. And a community of race and blood is no better than a world community united under one government; in all the cases, it will be a community based not on faith and covenant, but a community with evil.

The central point here is that any communion or community has to be based on a moral commitment to a creed or a faith. It can’t be metaphysical, based on some neutral characteristics like genetics, place of birth, economic status, IQ, or anything else. It has to be ethical/judicial; at its very foundations, there must questions and answers about the definitions of good and evil, about the purpose of human existence and life, and about the purpose of human society. There has to be a transcendent faith, and that faith has to have a transcendent moral law which would unite all the members of the communion into one body, without losing each one’s identity. Without such selective communion with people of the same faith and the same moral status, any community will end up being a communion with evil. The Litany which Rushdoony quotes is not a Litany which calls for racial reconciliation; it calls for moral neutrality and for the obliteration of moral standards. Historically, the church has never been racially conscious until the 18th century, when Enlightenment ideas of metaphysics and race crept in it from the French philosophes. The moral neutrality which Rushdoony opposed would only create a world of elitist social lines; contrary to the Biblical social and cultural lines which are creedal and religious.

Or, as y’all remember from the first episode of Axe to the Root, the solution is covenantal. And covenantal means ethical/judicial. Never metaphysical, genetic, economic, financial, or anything else. The only true communion and true individualism can be found in communion along creedal and ethical lines. Rushdoony again,

As against this enforced collectivization, which is hostile both to true community and true individualism, is the communion of saints. The enforced community of evil has, first, no true community to it. It cannot see men united except by force or for gain. Second, it also hates the individual; it denies him his integrity of person and of property. The Biblical communion of saints rests on a God-given communion with an inner bond. By the grace of God, there is, first, a loyalty to Christ. The true Christian views the world in terms of God’s law. He sees the world in terms of a given perspective, a revealed framework, and the more he grows in grace the more sharply is his thinking governed by this Biblical framework. He is a member of Jesus Christ; he has a citizenship in heaven, a prior citizenship which governs every human relationship. His life is not his own, but Christ’s.

Second, because the governing force in his life is increasingly grace, it is an inner bond which binds him to Christ and to his fellow Christians. The Christians draw together, not in terms of advantage, and often at the price of some sacrifice, in terms of this inner bond. They have a common life in Christ and therefore a common future. They are governed by a moral unity; they move in terms of the Biblical morality. And they are governed by a doctrinal unity, professing one Lord, and one faith, and one baptism in Christ. But their unity is not alone in faith and practice, but a unity in the heart. They are one people. They are closer to one another than the members of the fraternity of evil can ever be to each other, but this unity is not at the price of their particularity, their individualism. The fraternity of evil is ultimately destructive of both unity and individuality, of both the one and the many, but the communion of saints establishes both on their true foundation, the triune God. In Him they are truly one, and in Him they are truly themselves, so that both the unity and diversity of life come to their realization.

Rushdoony’s position will become even clearer when we include the bigger picture of his theology. He was a theonomist, that is, he believed in the continuing validity of the Law of God today, not simply for the personal morality of individuals but also for the corporate morality of man’s social institutions, whether family, or business, or the state. He was criticized for this belief; the prevailing opinion today is that the Bible has nothing to say about man’s institutions, that the state, business, education, and others are to to be ethically neutral, not governed by the precepts of the Law of God. But Rushdoony’s main contribution was his The Institutes of Biblical Law, and in it, he showed that the Biblical Law, when applied to our society today, will be, in the words of James (1:25), the perfect law of liberty, and a society that is governed by the Law of God will be a society of justice for all, and blessed with prosperity by God.

But when we examine the Law of God, we see that in contrast to all the laws of the nations, the Law of God contains not a single mention of any judicial difference between classes or castes. To the contrary, the Law specifically contains a provision that the rights and freedoms of that Law are guaranteed for all, including foreigners: “The same law shall apply to the native as to the stranger who sojourns among you” (Ex. 12:49; Lev. 24:22; Num. 9:14; 15:15-16). Imagine our modern debate, whether the US Constitution guarantees the life, liberty, and property against the tyranny of the US government only for US citizens, or if foreigners are protected as well. The Law of God didn’t acknowledge difference even for the stranger; so complete was its liberty and justice for all. In terms of protection and rights, all people were equal. There was a social difference only in the privilege of political participation – and even there, that privilege was only judicial, that is, only limited to being a judge or jury on court cases, or electing judges. And that difference in privilege was based on a creedal profession; a stranger could become a member of full privileges if he declared his faith in the God of Israel and vowed to obey the Law of God. In all else, every Israelite was equal to every other Israelite, and every Israelite was equal to any foreigner who would decide to leave his country and come to live in Israel. There were no castes and no classes. Any man was equal before the law to any other man; and men were free to pursue their callings and their goals by all means possible, except for committing crimes.

The New Testament not only continued this tradition, it specifically insisted that there is now no difference between Jew and Gentile, and even between male and female or between slave or free (Gal. 3:28). Within the church, the writers of the New Testament warned their readers against importing the class and caste divisions of the society within the church. In James 2:2-4 the apostle says about such divisions, “For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?” Half of the Epistle to the Romans is devoted to destroying the class and caste distinctions between Jews and Gentiles. The whole First Epistle to the Corinthians is devoted to the concept of the unity of the body of Christ, against any divisions. “For consider your calling, brethren,” says the apostle Paul, “that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong” (1 Cor. 1:26-27). and then, later in the same letter, in chapter 11, he admonishes Christians to wait for each other when they are about to break the bread. The meal was supposed to be a meal of all together, making them all equal before Christ in His Supper.

And of course, from this followed the political and legal theory of the early church which denied any special moral or covenantal status to political rulers or the powerful of the day. When Bishop Ambrose told Emperor Theodosius that he didn’t have the right to even enter a private home, that was a revolutionary concept at the time. But was a Biblical concept. No one had the privilege to break the Law of God, no matter how powerful he may be. And we won’t have the time to talk in detail about the views of Augustine and Isidore of Seville, and of Anselm of Canterbury and of many other faithful church ministers, who fought to establish the principle of liberty and justice for all, as opposed to only a limited class of men of privilege.

In a Christian social order, therefore, there can be no special classes of special privilege, established by a law. The only such privilege can be based on a confession of faith; in a Christian society, as it was in the early colonies in America, only professing Christians could vote and elect judges. Outside the limited political franchise, there was no other privilege except for what a man could achieve through his own faithfulness, productivity, and ingenuity. A man who could produce more than anyone else and therefore prosper more than anyone else, can have social privilege by paying for it. Such privilege is Biblical, and men are encouraged, in the context of the Dominion Covenant, to seek such privilege. Such economic privilege, however, can not be protected by law more than the laws of protection for private property which apply to everyone, from the poorest to the richest. Neither can there be a law that prevents people from achieving prosperity – like confiscatory taxation, re-distribution, or government regulations on the economy. In everything outside political franchise, the Law of God provides full equality by giving full liberty of all individuals from the state. No favorites. Everyone is free. No special classes, and no special castes. And even the strangers are included. As Rushdoony says, a free market is the only good form of democracy. And it is also the only true expression of a Christian social order.

The assigned reading for this week is a book that has been a classic in its field for a century. A book that at the time it was written was not considered anything unique. It was only the loss of the Christian legacy in Europe that made the book so important again for our modern world. It has been ridiculed and rejected by secular and even Christian commentators and historians. The book is worth being part of your library, and it is worth reading. It The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by the German sociologist Max Weber.

In your prayers and giving, consider Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a mission in Eastern Europe devoted to preaching the whole counsel of God, the applications of the Gospel in every area of life. A mission that has been successful in changing the worldview of many people, of planting churches, training families, establishing and helping Christian homeschooling, and even influencing the political and social life in a nation that has had zero Reformed heritage just 20 years ago. Visit BulgarianReformation.com; subscribe to the newsletter, and donate.

Welcome to Episode 45 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes I will try to challenge one of the dominant myths in the modern Reformed churches – or, I should say, churches who pass for “Reformed” – namely, the myth of cessationism, the myth that the Bible says it, somewhere, no one knows where, that the gifts of the Spirit described in 1 Corinthians 12-14 were supposed to cease, to pass away at some point in AD 1st century. That is, what was described as a normal and normative in Scripture for the early church, and especially for its worship gatherings (1 Cor. 14), suddenly became obsolete and even heretical for the church after AD 1st century. That the gifts which Scripture describes as “of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:1-11), and therefore present wherever the Spirit is present (Mark 16:17-18), have suddenly become only “apostolic” (a word Scripture never uses), and therefore have passed away with the passing away of the apostles. And if we have the time, I will also show how that doctrine is partially responsible for the retreat of the Reformed churches in America from their previous position of cultural influence and dominance, and also for the ghettoization of the Church and for the rise of the celebrity cult in the churches.

If you are a Reformed Christian in any kind of Reformed – or supposedly Reformed – denomination or church, odds are, you have been taught that cessationism is the default Reformed position. And of course, it is dominant today in the supposedly “Reformed” seminaries, and since Reformed churches only get their teaching elders from those seminaries, it is also the dominant position of most “Reformed” pulpits. If you ask about sources, you will be referred to Benjamin Warfield’s book, Counterfeit Miracles, which, despite its multiple examples of poor logic, poor historical scholarship, and lack of any Biblical support – mostly rationalist conjectures and a priori reasoning fallacies – is considered a classic in the field. Among Christian Reconstructionists, Greg Bahnsen had audio lectures and Ken Gentry has a book against the continuation of the spiritual gifts today. (Unfortunately, for all my respect for these two men, their position on this specific issue is just as un-Biblical and illogical as that of Warfield; but I will probably give them a specific refutation in a future episode.) If you ask about direct Biblical justification of cessationism, what you will be given is 1 Cor. 13:8, “Love never fails; but if there are gifts ofprophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.” We will talk about the meaning of the this verse in a few minutes, but for now it is worth mentioning that even if that verse really spoke of cessation of gifts in history, it is only one verse. The rest of the argumentation you will be given will be either rationalist conjectures or experientialist complaints. Among the rationalist conjectures you will find arguments like, “We have Scripture, we don’t need any other supernatural revelation,” as if supernatural revelation must by default compete with Scripture. Or, “the gifts were given only as a testimony to the Jews” – a claim that has no support in Scripture. Among the experientialist complaints, the main one is, “We don’t see the gifts practiced today, therefore they must have ceased.” Another one is, “Look at the abuses in the modern Charismatic churches; therefore, the gifts must have ceased.” In the final account, the whole intellectual defense of cessationism relies on one isolated verse and on a number of extra-Biblical conjectures and logical fallacies. Whereas the Bible contains systematic – and in some places, quite detailed – description of the function of the spiritual gifts and their importance in the New Covenant, the Biblical support for cessationism is quite meager.

Not all Reformed theologians in the last 100 years have been cessationists, of course. A few have remained unconvinced in the Biblical veracity of the doctrines of the cessation of gifts. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is perhaps the most well-known name among them; in his series of sermons, The Sovereign Spirit, he has shown the inconsistency of cessationism with the Biblical message. Even among those who have adopted a mildly cessationist view, there are those who have remained mindful of the impossibility to defend cessationism directly from the Bible. Greg Bahnsen, even in the context of his lectures against the spiritual gifts, still admitted that the only verses that directly speaks of cessation of gifts, 1 Cor. 13:8, is not a good proof text for the doctrine. This left him without any direct support from the Bible, and he had to find extra-Biblical proofs for his thesis. A more interesting case is Rushdoony, who, even though he followed the academic tradition of modern Presbyterianism to assert the cessation of gifts (he believed they have ceased in AD 70) still rejected the main intellectual argument for cessationism, namely, that there can be no more direct revelation after the completion of the canon. In his Systematic Theology, in the chapter on the Holy Spirit, he pointed to the logical connection between the Reformed and the Charismatic doctrines:

A charismatic emphasis should be highly Calvinistic. . . . Likewise, those who are Calvinistic and who stress God’s sovereignty should logically be very emphatically given to a high emphasis on the doctrine of the Spirit.

But, as he continues, “this is clearly not the case.” He hits the core of the problem when he discusses the philosophical reason for it:

It may be that sovereignty is confused with an exclusive transcendence, so that immanence is seen as a compromise

To translate it in more common terms, we as Calvinists like our God to be sovereign only in His transcendence, when He writes that transcendent Word. When it comes to His direct immanent intervention in our everyday lives, to give us knowledge how to apply His Word, we push back. In the immanent issues of the day, we prefer to give the sovereignty of interpretation and application to our minds.

In the same chapter, Rushdoony figured out that at the foundation of modern cessationism is Enlightenment rationalism, and he said clearly on page 324 of his book. “The result,” he said, “was that the form of Christianity remained, but its power was diminished or negated.” And then he concluded,

Thus, without agreeing with all that the charismatic movement holds, we need to welcome it with certain dissents. The Holy Spirit has not spoken for the last time, not is His work limited to ordination services and ecclesiastical functions.”

Saying these things, Rushdoony was not out of line with historic Reformed theology. To the contrary, modern cessationism is a novelty compared to Reformed theology. It indeed, didn’t enter Reformed churches until the Enlightenment took hold of their theology. Before the 1850s, the continuing validity of the spiritual gifts was an established doctrine in Reformed circles. Puritan and Presbyterian divines (including names like John Knox and Samuel Rutherford) acknowledged the validity of the spiritual gifts; the belief in their continuation was even included in the Second Book of Discipline of the Scottish Kirk of 1578 (which means that modern Presbyterian cessationists would have been excommunicated for their cessationist beliefs). Scotland and England in the 16th and the 17th centuries saw a higher concentration of miraculous and revelatory gifts than even the early church. Both Presbyterian and Puritan church leaders and ordinary members experienced and practiced different supernatural gifts and manifestations, from word of knowledge and prophecies to healing ministries, speaking in tongues, and even raising people from the dead. (Yes, some Scottish divines even raised people from the dead.) All these were abundantly documented at the time, and were summarized in several books, the most popular among which was John Howie’s Scots Worthies. The book was published in 1775, when Presbyterians still believed in the validity of the spiritual gifts. When the book went through a second publishing, in the late 1840s, the editor purged from it all mentions of supernatural gifts – at the time, the rationalism of the Enlightenment had already permeated the Reformed churches, and the doctrine of the spiritual gifts was rejected. Historically, as far as the Reformation goes, the real novelty was cessationism. The original views of the Reformed churches were Charismatic. If anything, the modern Charismatic renewal is only a reaction to the Reformed churches dropping the ball on the doctrine of the spiritual gifts.

Before 1900, every single theologian interpreted 1 Cor. 13:8 as applied to the last day of history. Obviously, the “perfect thing” can’t happen before the end of history. Calvin himself declared “stupid” any discussion that referred it to an intermediate time. Calvin himself made a few isolated cessationist statements, but he never gave any Biblical foundation for them, and at times sounds unsure of them. Meanwhile, his spiritual and intellectual heirs developed both the doctrine and the practice of the gifts. When reading all the occurrences of miraculous gifts and manifestations in the Reformation in England and Scotland, the question is: “Where were the cessationists to tell these people that such things shouldn’t be happening?”

It becomes even more interesting when we go back to the early centuries of the church. Not only didn’t the church believe in a cessation of gifts, but even the designations “apostle” and “prophet” were maintained for most of the history of the church. John Knox was called by his heirs “the Prophet and Apostle of our nation.” The history of the church is full with such apostles: St, Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland; St. Boniface, The Apostle of Germany, Cyril and Methodius, Apostles to the Slavs, etc. Throughout its history, the church also had its acknowledged – and some unacknowledged – prophets and even prophetesses. Prophecies were seldom despised, even if they sounded weird. My favorite example of such Biblical attitude to prophecies is Oliver Cromwell’s military council on the Christmas night of 1648. The council had convened to decide the fate of Charles I. That night, the procedures of the council were interrupted by the intrusion of a woman who claimed to be a prophetess of God, and that she had a message from God to the council. The message was that the council should refrain from sentencing the King to death. The message was clearly against the desires of most military commanders; and yet, these same commanders interrupted their gathering for the purpose of examining the woman to decide if the message was really from God. The examination and the discussions over the prophecy continued for several days, and they included distinguished Puritan divines like John Owen, who was Cromwell’s personal chaplain at the time. Again, the question is, Where were the cessationists? And such historical examples are way more than we are aware of.

So what is the Biblical position on the spiritual gifts?

It is obvious that the Bible speaks of the spiritual gifts in some very particular details. Three chapters are devoted specifically to the theory and practice of the spiritual gifts in the church: 1 Cor. 12-14. Other verses also point to the significance and meaning of the gifts, for example, Mark 16:16-18. The New Testament also contains a very strong doctrine of the Holy Spirit, one that is seldom replicated in the sermons of our modern Reformed churches. If anything, the New Testament has much more material on the gifts of the Spirit than it has on water baptism . . . and, as I mentioned in a previous podcast, every time it mentions of water baptism, it also mentions baptism in the Spirit, as a higher and more important baptism. (And yet, baptism in the Spirit is entirely ignored in the modern supposedly “Reformed” churches.)

The spiritual gifts are not described as something limited to a specific age; there is no such verse in the Bible. The gifts are specifically declared to be “of the Spirit,” and their purpose is specifically declared to be the establishment of Christians in the faith (Rom. 1:11). Obviously, such need for establishment can’t be limited to a specific period of history. There are more purposes of the gifts, as well, the main among which is the unity of the body. 1 Corinthians 12 is the chapter entirely devoted to this principle, starting with the gifts of the Spirit and continuing with the unity of the body which these gifts serve. Another purpose of the gifts is evangelism, and especially convicting unbelievers (1 Cor. 14:24). None of these purposes can be limited to AD 1stcentury; they are all relevant to the church in all of history, and they just as needed today as they were in the early church. And just as valid.

Obviously, also, the spiritual gifts have a function in what we call today a “church service,” or the gathering of the saints. 1 Cor. 14 is by fat the most detailed chapter in the Bible describing what a church service is supposed to look like. I will leave for a future episode the hypocrisy of those today in Presbyterian circles who beat themselves in the chest about the “Regulative Principle of Worship,” and yet judiciously avoid mentioning the only chapter that describes in detail Christian gatherings. The reason is obvious: 1 Cor. 14 give a very clear preeminence to the supernatural gifts in the church service, and specifically to the revelatory gifts, prophecy, tongues, and interpretation. Tongues are to be used in prayer and singing, in balance with prayer and singing with the mind, and the chapter specifically regulates the order of prophesying and the self-control of the prophets in church. Given this detailed information, it is absolutely absurd to imagine that one day, when the last apostle died, the church of Corinth had to all of a sudden change their mode of service, because the old mode had suddenly become “heretical.” In addition, the idea that the mode of service had abruptly changed with the completion of the canon leaves modern cessationists with a big scriptural problem: that the modern church service has no mandate in Scripture, for Scripture was written before the supposed cessation of the gifts. So much for sola scriptura.

It is then expected that there would be no specific, direct verse in Scripture that speaks of the cessation of gifts. For all the detailed descriptions of the gifts and their purpose and function and use, we have not a single specific verse to speak of any cessation before the end of history. Not a single verse. I have read as many cessationists interpretations as I could lay my hands on, and none of them give any Biblical verse supporting the idea of cessation. Everything they have is indirect rationalizations, but never a direct verse. Isn’t it strange that God would give such detailed descriptions and then fail to mention that they don’t count anymore?

The main such indirect rationalization used by cessationists is the claim that modern prophecy will by default undermine the authority of Scripture; or, if that prophecy is true prophecy, then it must be recorded as new Scripture. Ironically, the Bible contains a very direct refutation of this argument. The main argument for the sufficiency of Scripture are Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Tim. 3:16-17, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” According to the verse before, 15, Timothy knew the Scriptures from his childhood. And yet, it is that same Timothy whom Paul reminds to remember the prophecy which first pointed and on the basis of which he was ordained. And Paul mentions it not just once but twice: 1 Tim. 1:18 and 4:14. If prophecy conflicts with Scripture, why would Paul remind Timothy of a prophecy, if Timothy already had a near perfect knowledge of Scripture?

The answer to this is that prophecy and Scripture are not in conflict; they just operate in totally different spheres. To quote Calvin on 1 Cor. 12:

For we have said that prophesying does not consist of a simple and bare interpretation of Scripture, but includes also knowledge for applying it to present use — which is obtained only by revelation, and the special inspiration of God.

So prophecy, under historic Calvinism, is revelation and special inspiration, but it is not writing Scripture, only applying it. That is, prophecy relates to Scripture in the same way engineering relates to science: applies general principles to present use. For this application, the human mind is not sufficient – while Scripture is clear and open to all, its applications in a complex may be quite difficult even for the brightest minds. In this, the Holy Spirit comes to aid by giving us revelation – in different ways, including prophecy and miracles – of how Scripture should be applied. Just reading Scripture won’t tell Timothy whether he was supposed to continue the business of his father or become Paul’s apprentice and later an apostle. Such everyday choices must be all controlled and guided by the Holy Spirit. As Rushdoony says in this regard, the charismatics have not gone far enough. We can’t limit the Spirit to specific meetings and revival sessions. We need Him to speak every day, in every place, to everything, in direct application of His Word.

The argument that “there are so many abuses with prophecies in charismatic churches” doesn’t hold water either. For one, if Reformed Christians have abandoned the doctrine of the spiritual gifts altogether, we have no real theological basis to know if something is an abuse or not. You can’t beat something with nothing. It is also an argument that works in many other directions. The vast majority of Presbyterian churches have severe cases of abuse of pulpit (disastrous sermons of the lowest possible quality) and of authority (cases of incredible injustice by church sessions against individual church members). Are we then to assume that preaching and church government have ceased? By the way, the Bible does say that in the New Covenant, the people of God will need no teaching and no guidance by men, Jer. 31:34 and Heb. 8:11, so there’s that. Perhaps we should argue for the cessation of preaching and church government because of the Biblical promise and the obvious abuses in Presbyterian churches?

But the most obvious argument against cessationism is the loss of cultural influence of the church in the 20th century. The abandonment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts didn’t come at zero price. What it did to the churches is that it destroyed the concept of spiritual authority. Once the Holy Spirit was silenced through the introduction of a rationalist theology, the criteria for church leaders changed. No more are leaders expected to demonstrate any spiritual gifts as in the early days of Presbyterianism in Scotland. In fact, if anything, such manifestation of spiritual gifts would earn these elders ostracism and even excommunication. In fact, these days, even just an opinion that is off the mainstream center in the churches can earn that. Let’s not forget that both Rushdoony and Bahnsen had problems with the OPC, the former for his stance against government schools, the latter for theonomy. Modern church governments have become faceless bureaucracies manned by people who have no gifts, no identity, and bring nothing whatsoever to the table except for their ability to pass the bar for eldership. A mass of such faceless people is the fertile soil for the celebrity cult: gifted men skillful in manipulation rise above the mass and use the bureaucratic oligarchies in the churches to build their careers. The final result of all this is that the church suffers defeat after defeat in the culture, while at the same time its leaders only encourage apathy in their followers. The loss of the doctrine of the spiritual gifts naturally leads to the church being governed by men with no gifts at all. But this, after all, is what works for the leadership. For, as Rushdoony says in his Systematic Theology,

, “where a strong doctrine of the Spirit is not operative and governing, institutional controls and government replace the Spirit.”

The only solution to all these problems – from the abuses in the charismatic churches, through the institutional abuses within the Reformed churches, to the lack of real spiritual authority in the churches today – is the rejection of the rationalist doctrine of cessationism. We as Reformed Christians need to start working on building a Biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and a Biblical doctrine of the purpose, function, and practice of the gifts. We can’t beat something with nothing. We better start working on the something.

The reading I will assign this week is an article in three parts I wrote: “A Truly Covenantal View of Prophecy and the Other Gifts.” It is my attempt at restoring the dominance of Reformed theology in a field we have abandoned. It is by no means exhaustive. If you disagree, that’s OK. Just give it its day in court.

And I would like to issue my regular call to help Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a mission which preaches and teaches a comprehensive Gospel to all of life, in Eastern Europe. Help us continue our work in translating and publishing Christian books, and build the intellectual foundation of the future Christian civilization in Eastern Europe. Visit BulgarianReformation.com. Subscribe to the newsletter, and donate. God bless you all.

Welcome to Episode  of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes I will rant. The purpose of my rant is to try to shake churchmen out of their sleep – something I shouldn’t have to do, if the church in America were doing her job. My thesis is this: As a church, in the last one century in America, we have dropped into a complacent slumber, content of going through the same useless motions over and over again, repeating the same meaningless rituals over and over again, not paying attention to the obvious historical trends around us, namely, that we are slowly but surely becoming a pavement for the culture around us, being trampled under the culture’s feet. Which, if we are paying attention to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, is a clear indication that we have become a salt that has lost its savor. But instead of looking for radical solutions to what appears to be a radical problem, we continue the same things over and over again, mindless of the danger we are facing as a church.

The prospect of being salt that has lost its savor would be deeply alarming to any Christian. It is certainly deeply alarming to me. In an episode of Axe to the Root last year I spoke about “Modern Presbyterianism: Under the Feet of Men,” showing that Presbyterianism in the US went from being the dominant intellectual and cultural influence in the society to a marginal sect which no one really pays attention to. And this in a mere two generations!Granted, cultures change, and different cultural influences may have their ups and downs, but such a fall from the top to the bottom, within such a short period of time, after about two centuries of total dominance (including and especially during the very formative period of the US, the Revolutionary War) should be troubling to any Presbyterian Christian, and even more to the leadership in Presbyterian churches, for in the Bible, whenever God promises judgment, His judgment starts with and is especially severe against the shepherds, those who hold a position of formal authority and actual power in the churches.

Presbyterianism is not alone in this complacency in the face of obvious decline and near death. The same situation applies to all the other denominations. If you think American Baptists are any better, just think of Judge Roy Moore in Alabama. That’s right, Alabama, in the Bible Belt, the very heartland of the Southern Baptists. And it is in Alabama where a panel of judges, most of them members of Baptist churches, removed from office a legitimately elected judge for his stance for the Biblical family, against sodomite perversion. Let that sink. And how deep corruption goes in the Methodist and Episcopalian and other churches and denominations, I don’t even have to mention.

We have the highest percentage of church-attending population in the Western world: over 50% of Americans report to attend church regularly. And yet, we have a declining imprint of our churches in the culture – in fact, declining so quickly, that if our great-grandfathers were here today, they would hardly recognize our culture.

Such abrupt fall from dominant influence to irrelevance should trouble every Christian heart in this land. It should also grip in fear the heart of every single person in a position of leadership in the American churches, whether a pastor or elder, or a theologian and seminary professor. We have the clearest signs of our times that the church has become salt-less and light-less, and that in a radically short time after it had all the influence it needed to spread the Gospel and build Christendom. Such radical change in the times should produce a radical alarm in our hearts and lead to radical changes in our churches and practices and beliefs . . . and yet, nothing is happening. The pulpits continue business as usual, as if nothing has happened. The weekly rituals continue, as if nothing has happened. The same useless discussions and conferences on theological trivialities continue, as if nothing has happened. If someone from outside would observe the American church without knowing the historical and cultural context, he would come to the conclusion that the American church has nothing to worry about anymore, except for achieving perfect assurance on minor things, of which the Bible contains little more than a few ambiguous verses.

God has given us a clear sign that our church today is useless in His kingdom, by removing her lampstand out of its place: a clear invitation to “remember from where we have fallen” (Rev. 2:5). And yet, the sense of urgency that should follow such invitation is lacking, and it is lacking especially among the leadership of the American churches. Yes, even among those who can see and acknowledge that there has been an abrupt loss of cultural influence, even where leaders understand that the church is trampled under the feet of men. In fact, if anything, modern churchmen have mostly been busy devising theologies and eschatologies that justify the decline rather than analyze the reasons for it or the remedies for it. How to live a Christian life in a fallen world, you know. Because once we define the world as intrinsically “fallen,” we don’t have to worry about the fact that the Bible calls that world God’s world (1 Cor. 10:26) and that it is subject to redemption (Rom. 8:21).

A few of us have tried to sound the alarm in articles, sermons, books, lectures, that the radical fall of the church from cultural authority is a clear sign that the American church has radically quit being salt and light. This cultural authority was not incidental; it was not simply some historical aberration. It has been the result of the hard work and faithfulness of generations of Christians and churches. The church hasn’t always been perfectly faithful, neither has she been perfectly knowledgeable about the Gospel, but she must have dome something right to be the factor for the creation of a society where the Bible exercised so much influence over both men’s lives and the operations of the civil government and all other social institutions. This accumulated cultural capital has been dissipated in just a short period of time, and we have tried to bring this to the attention of the church. From heavy theological guns and preachers like R.J. Rushdoony and Leonard Ravenhill to self-sacrificial groups and movements like Operation Rescue and Abolish Human Abortion, the writing has been on the wall for a long time.

And yet, the only argument raised against such attempts at correction has been the trivial and nonsensical, “You can’t be a valid critic of the institutional church, unless you are a member of the institutional church.” Which means, to legitimately speak against corruption, you need the approval of the very system which is corrupt; that is, you need to join the corruption. The saltless salt and the lightless lampstand must approve your salt and light, otherwise your salt and light are not legitimate. The system that is near death is expected to judge life. The shepherds of the modern church whom the signs of the times reveal to be on the defendant stand want to be on the judge’s bench, and judge the witnesses sent against them according to their “submission to authority.”

The answer of many of those churchmen to the obvious failure of the church in the last one century has been to blame the flocks for their supposed lack of submission to the “local church.” In my conversations with different elders of different churches on proposed solutions of the problem with the diminishing relevance of the churches in America, they always resort to the argument that in the past, when the church was successful in changing the culture, there has always been some institutional structure to which men submitted, and this was what made the church strong. Thus, if we just have all men submit to the modern institutional structures that pass for “churches,” we will surely have the renewal and the revival which will restore the church to her relevance in the world today. To the decline of the American church in the last one century, their solution is more institutionalism.

But such faith in the power of external institutionalism is nothing more than a modern form of the Cargo Cult. The Cargo Cult was a religion which developed spontaneously on some of the islands in the Pacific during WWII. The island populations who had their indigenous religions, saw the arrival of the US Seabees to their islands. The Seabees built airstrips and piers and roadways to provide the infrastructure for the US Navy and Army and the Marine Corps to defeat the Japanese. Once the infrastructure was built, planes and ship with cargo started to arrive, and this cargo had a number of nice things which made the life of the islanders much easier: from pocket knives and flashlights and batteries to compasses and rubber tires and textiles, the Seabees performed a real miracle in the eyes of the locals. The old religions and myths lost their adherents: they couldn’t deliver. But the more important part came after the war.

When the war was over, the Seabees were gone, taking their materials with them. The ships and the planes stopped arriving to bring cargo anymore. The locals figured the solution: They started building their own improvised versions of piers and airstrips and roadways, out of available materials like bamboo or palm trees. Once the infrastructure was built, they figured, it would attract the planes and ships with cargo. Just like the Americans had done during the war. In the minds of the locals, the cargo just existed out there. No one knew how and why it existed. It was just a given reality. The mechanism to bring it over to the island was the infrastructure. The infrastructure was the altar to which the cargo will be attracted. Thus, any restoration of the prosperous years during the war had to start with building the altars. That the infrastructure of delivery was only the end product of centuries of civilization growth and development, of hard work and entrepreneurship and accumulated knowledge and organization of production, could never occur to the natives.

In a similar way, it doesn’t seem to occur to the modern churchmen that the authority of the institutional church is not the beginning of revival or of restoration of the cultural authority of the church in the society. Submission to the local church or to any institutional body is not, nor can it be the magic altar which will attract revival and Reformation. All that institutionalism can do is institutionalize already existing conditions. Where there is true relevance, life, and victorious expansion, institutionalism will channel and organize that relevance, life, and victorious expansion. Where there is irrelevance, death, and retreat, solidifying the institution of the church will only solidify and establish that irrelevance, death, and retreat. An institution is never an instrument for growth and victory. It is nothing more than city walls; it will protect what’s inside – whether misery or prosperity – but it will never conquer anything outside. Conquest is only achieved through men outside the city walls.

But more importantly, true authority doesn’t come through more institutionalism. If it could come through institutionalism, North Korea would today be the highest authority in the world, and everyone would be looking up to them for guidance. It’s the other way around: a really successful and healthy institution can only be established where there already exists a reliable authority, trusted by the majority of the people in the society. The institution is the final product of authority, not the beginning of it. The attempt to build prosperity through building airstrips and waiting for the planes with cargo to land will only produce more poverty in wasted time, labor, and material. In the same way, the attempt to produce relevance through solidifying institutional power and demanding submission to it will only produce more irrelevance. The institutional church is only the final product of a long process. And that process never starts with the institution. Our attempts at solutions, therefore, will always fail when we base them on more institutionalism.

We have a radical problem on our hands. We need to look for a radical solution. Doing the same thing and expecting different results won’t do. The church will continue to lose influence, and the legacy we will leave to our children will be misery.

As Protestants, the Reformation should be a good example to us. It didn’t start with the establishment of a hierarchy. In fact, if anything, it started with a destruction of a hierarchy. It started with a radical departure from an institutional system. It took more than a century in most of the Protestant churches to develop any institutional system. In most places, the new institutional system was nothing like the Roman Catholic one, of before the Reformation. In fact, the majority of the great Reformed confessions of faith were written and adopted not in the context of an organized institutional system but to the contrary, in the context of institutional chaos. The very Westminster Confession of Faith, which became the foundation for many other confessions, was adopted in the midst of such chaos: it was a predominantly Anglican confession (yes, folks, it was not Presbyterian in its origin, only 6 Scottish commissioners and 9 elders of the Scottish Kirk attended, compared to 12 Anglican bishops and about 80 Anglican vicars or other clerics), so it was a predominantly Anglican confession in a time when the Anglican church was at its lowest institutional state, being controlled mainly by non-separatist Puritans. And England was not alone. The influence and the cultural impact of Protestantism not only didn’t come by institutional means, it in fact came in opposition to any institutionalism.

It is in that very Westminster Confession, in its chapter on the Church, that we see the explanation to the current problems we have in the church today. In its 25th chapter, the Confession specifically defines the visible Church in non-institutional terms, declaring it to be the sum of all believers, without any institutional limitations:

The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. (Chapter 25, point 2)

To be a member of the visible Church, therefore, one doesn’t need to submit to a local church. All he needs to do is profess the true religion. Outside of that profession, there is no Church. But also, there is no other requirement for being a member of the Church but that profession.

But what do we do with the institutional churches? Aren’t they true representatives of the visible Church? Not necessarily. In points 4 and 5 of the same chapter, the confession speaks of churches in plural, and has to say the following:

IV. This catholic Church has been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular Churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the Gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.

V. The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated, as to become no Churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a Church on earth to worship God according to His will.

Obviously, when it comes to the institutional aspect of the church, that is, the many particular churches, the authors of the confession were careful to not put too much confidence in them: they are more or less pure, and some have degenerated to the point that they are not churches of God anymore. In this here, could the confession be telling us the possible reason for our situation today? Could it be warning us against investing too much confidence in earthly institutions, even if they are “churches” with all the right accreditation and correct Sunday morning rituals? After all, if we are Protestants, spiritual heirs of the Reformation, shouldn’t we be traditionally suspicious of any hierarchy, whether universal or local, which claims for itself a monopoly on salvation, and a monopoly on revival and renewal? Shouldn’t we be naturally resistant to any claim to authority, testing it through the Word of God? And if any institution claims authority, but its history proves that it is salt without savor and a lampstand without light, aren’t we as Protestants, the first who should challenge its claim to authority and reject it? Even if it is our own Protestant churches and seminaries?

The Great Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck understood the problem and understood the necessity of breaking out of the institutional mold for the purpose of reformation of the church and the society:

It is not unbelievers primarily but the devout who have always experienced this power of the hierarchy as a galling bond to their consciences. Throughout the centuries there has not only been scientific, societal, and political resistance but also deeply religious and moral opposition to the hierarchical power of the church. It simply will not do to explain this opposition in terms of unbelief and disobedience and intentionally to misconstrue the religious motives underlying the opposition of various sects and movements. No one has been bold enough to damn all these sects because they were moved to resist the church and its tradition. Even Rome shrinks from this conclusion. The extra ecclesiam nulla salus (no salvation outside the church) is a confession that is too harsh for even the most robust believer. Accordingly, the “law” we see at work in every area of life is operative also in religion and morality. On the one hand, there is a revolutionary spirit that seeks to level all that has taken shape historically in order to start rebuilding things from the ground up. There is, however, also a false conservatism that takes pleasure in leaving the existing situation untouched simply because it exists and—in accordance with Calvin’s familiar saying—not to attempt to change a well-positioned evil (malum bene positum non movere). At the proper time everywhere and in every sphere of life, a certain radicalism is needed to restore balance, to make further development possible, and not let the stream of ongoing life bog down. In art and science, state and society, similarly in religion and morality, there gradually develops a mindless routine that oppresses and does violence to the rights of personality, genius, invention, inspiration, freedom, and conscience. But in due time there always arises a man or woman who cannot bear that pressure, casts off the yoke of bondage and again takes up the cause of human freedom and that of Christian Liberty. These are turning points in history. Thus Christ himself rose up against the tradition of the elders and returned to the law and the prophets. Thus one day the Reformation had the courage, not in the interest of some scientific, social or political goal, but in the name of Christian humanity, to protest against Rome’s hierarchy…

This certain radicalism of which Bavinck speaks, is very needed today. Again, with the obvious transformation of the American church in the last 100 years from dominant influence to under the feet of men, it is time for us to realize that business as usual will only produce more of the same. This radicalism may require that we revisit and revise many of our assumptions about how we should do church, and what system of church organization we should have. We can’t afford to continue doing the same things. We can’t afford to let the same people whose leadership brought us to this point control what is legitimate criticism and what is not. We can’t let the same pulpits whose false conservatism – to borrow Bavinck’s phrase – produced the powerlessness of the modern church – continue producing more of the same. As in the Reformation, we need to have the courage of opposing the institutional system of the modern American church, and look for alternatives. I don’t know all the answers.

I don’t know what a new system of church organization should look like, and whether we should have such a system in the first place. What I know, however, is that we should be open to radical changes, which may include – as in the Reformation – the total abandoning of the current institutional church system in the US.

Otherwise, the America we will leave to our kids will be much worse than what we have inherited.

The book I will assign for reading this week is my new book on this specific issue: One Holy Local Church? The Ghettoization of Protestantism. In it, I am dealing with this very objection against the critics of the modern institutional church in the US: “Are you a member of a local church?” I have shown that mandatory institutionalism is not a Biblical concept. And more than that, that it is not historically Protestant concept. It is a modern invention, and it needs to go.

And remember in your prayers and your giving, Bulgarian Reformation Ministries. In our mission, we have been open to different ways to bring the Gospel to all aspects of the culture, not limit the new wine to old wineskins. And God has granted us success. This is amission worth supporting. Visit Bulgarian Reformation.com, and subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

Welcome to Episode 43 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes I will be getting in trouble – which means, I will be speaking to modern American Christians and conservatives about the Biblical view and historic Christian practice on an issue about which they think as liberals and progressives. Have you ever noticed that American Christians, when challenged with the Biblical or historic (that is, conservative) position on some issues, respond as progressives, “But we live in different times today”? Just like the progressives, who like to say about the Constitution or about the Second Amendment, “But we live in different times today.” Well, immigration is one of those issues. Every time I point to modern Christians or conservatives in general that the Bible doesn’t allow the state to control non-criminal individuals, and that America was an open borders country historically (that is, conservatively), the answer is, “But we live in different times today.” Different, indeed: the lowest crime rate ever, the lowest number of terrorist acts per year ever, the highest level of safety and prosperity ever – I mean, such times are the best times to tremble in fear, right? But such facts are of no consequence to people paralyzed by fear; and that’s exactly what modern American Christians have become. It is for this reason Donald Trump’s ban on accepting refugees – and in general, the immigration restriction policies of the federal government in the last 100 years – have met such thunderous applause among today’s American Christians. Thus, we are safer and more prosperous than ever before, and yet, we are more scared and fearful than ever before, and thus, “the times are different now,” so let’s cheer for policies that have no support in the Bible, and have no support in the history of Christendom, but were always policies of the enemies of God.

But my point here today is not to argue about the facts. There is plenty of evidence that much of the reporting about the threat of Islam, or terrorism, or of the refugees, is either exaggeration or plain fake news. Thomas Eddlem has exposed some of it in his blog post, “Legitimizing Lies.” Others have done it too. I have done it in some of my articles. My purpose today is to examine some of the assumptions we make today about the kind of society we want to have in principle, and the relation of that society to safety and security. I know, we have had a previous episode where I talked about safety, security, and state-worship, so it may sound like I am repeating myself. I am not; we just need to address the issue of safety and security from all its points, because of this idolatry of fear we have among the majority of Christians in the US; an idolatry which trumps everything they read in the Bible, and is effectively destroying the Gospel testimony of the Church in the US.

Donald Trump’s immigration ideas, ban on refugees from certain countries, and immigration restrictions in general have been praised and supported and rooted for by the majority of Christians on the basis that they are just “common sense.” You know, when you are facing that humongous threat by Islam and Muslims terrorists, it is “common sense” to close your borders and isolate yourself, so that you can fend off the threat. Now, for the purposes of our talk here, we will ignore the fact that the threat is really insignificant and doesn’t deserve the $100 billion spent every year on it (in addition to the half trillion spent on dropping bombs on Muslim countries, which create resentment fueling terrorism in the first place). Our focus this week will be, is it really common sense to close our borders to refugees in order to achieve safety, even if the threat was real?

Let me start with “common sense.” Or, rather, the deception involved in the phrase “common sense.” To explain that deception, I need to return y’all back to the 1990s, the longest decade in my life, and perhaps the longest decade in the lives of millions of Eastern Europeans. The longest, because it made us meet with the worst discrepancy of expectations and reality. Communism had fallen, politically, but the economic and social effects of Communism were still there. In the first 5 years after the fall of Communism, the economies in Eastern Europe were still in shambles, there were shortages, and food was scarce. In this situation, it looked like “common sense” that the government should control, in one way or another, the regulations and price controls which were a leftover from Communism. After all, with the scarcity of food, if there were no regulations and price controls, food would be so expensive, no one would be able to afford it, right? Well, with the low prices, everyone could afford it, it’s just it wasn’t there. At times, it was a daily struggle to buy food. Bulgaria, a country which for most of its history was a net exporter of food, was struggling to feed its own people in the 1990s. So the government employed its “common sense” and imposed regulations and price controls to make sure people could afford to buy the little food that was offered on the market.

Things got worse and worse, of course, and for what reason I don’t know, at some point the public opinion started changing from the traditional “common sense” of “regulate them to make it affordable” to the novel “radical” concept (also called “market fundamentalism” by some opponents) of “free them to produce.” So eventually the Parliament and the government decided to experiment with – horror of horrors! – a liberalization of prices and production. Defying “common sense,” by an act of Parliament, the bulk of regulations on food production, import/export, and pricing were removed overnight. So now the speculators could take advantage of the shortages, and where a loaf of bread used to cost 25 cents, they could sell it for $2.5 now, if they wanted. (The average monthly income was a little over $100.)

Guess what. It never happened. First, within just a couple of weeks, the stores were full. Prices first jumped just a little bit above the previous regulated levels, and then quickly dropped to below them for most products. Most of it was imported (for the agriculture was desolated under Communism), but within a few years owners of agricultural lands figured it out. By year 2000, Bulgaria was back to being a net exporter of food, disproportional to such a small nation. Even today, this is the country with the lowest food prices in the European Union. There’s still tons of problems to solve in the politics, the economy, and the society in Bulgaria, but this one is a clear success story. Put it on your list to visit one day. You may be shocked to find out how much food you can buy for your dollars. And it is real food, not Walmart junk.

The lesson was that “common sense” was not common sense. Or, rather, that what passes for “common sense” is in fact not so common, that it is conditioned by our religious presuppositions. The previous “common sense” was based on a metaphysical view of reality, that there is a certain metaphysical amount of goods in the world, and that in order to not have people starve, the government had to intervene with a metaphysical solution, namely, regulate the prices and the distribution of that food. The problem turned out to be, surprise, surprise, ethical/judicial: food producers and importers liked to be free, and therefore didn’t like regulations and price controls. Notice, it wasn’t even about money, since the prices eventually settled down to lower than the previous price controls. It was all about liberty and justice: they would produce only if they were free and independent of bureaucrats. Thus, only an ethical/judicial solution could work. Common sense was not what we thought it was; it was contrary to our instincts. Scratch that, it was contrary to our presuppositions.

Yeah, I know, this would come as a “Duh!” to most Americans, what’s the big deal about it. We all know that the supply and price of any commodity depends entirely on the initiative of producers; thus, it is obvious “common sense” that government regulations won’t work. What most Americans don’t realize is that we are besieged by thousands such examples, in our personal lives, in our communities, and in our social and political and economic endeavors, where our “common sense” is not common sense, because it is not informed by nor based on covenantal, that is, ethical/judicial presuppositions, but is rather informed by inherited cultural bias which is seldom Biblical or covenantal.

The Bible, in fact, speaks of such conflict between “common senses,” and, guess what, this conflict is one of the major conflicts in the Bible. Common sense is not an objective reality, it is conditioned by religion, and in many places in the Bible God contrasts the common sense of His Law-Word to the common sense of pagan religions and man’s word. Some of the examples are more obvious and mundane, but some are spectacularly “radical” and literally turn the world upside down. The most radical, of course, is in Matt. 16:25, Mark 8:35, and Luke 9:24: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” What passes for common sense, the instinct for self-preservation, is really not common sense at all. It is those who sacrifice themselves that get life; or, expressed figuratively in John 12:24 and 1 Cor. 15:36, the seed doesn’t come to life unless it dies. Another, just as radical, has to do with principles of leadership, Matt. 20:25-27: to be a leader among the Gentiles, one has to learn how to lord over people; but in the Kingdom of God, whoever wants to be a leader must become a servant. Or, as Dennis Peacocke expressed it in a lecture about 30 years ago, “Whoever serves, leads.” In a similar vein, we see the conflict between two views of common sense in 1 Samuel 8: The elders of Israel had abandoned God and wanted a king to solve the problems with the arbitrariness of the courts and national security. What could be more common sense than having a king to deal with these issues? Isn’t that what the government is supposed to do? Look at all the nations around, don’t they all have their kings? Samuel’s view of common sense, informed by the Word of God, was to the contrary: having a king won’t make you more safe and secure, for your king will be your oppressor. Scrap that nonsense with having a strong central power and strong borders, and return to God as your King, obey His Law, and you will have safety. Common sense, in the final account, is not so common, and is not really sense, that is, reason. It is nothing more than the outworking of a faith. When the faith is false, the common sense will be false, too. And you will know the faith of a person by his views of common sense.

This is an important truth to keep in mind when we look at the modern conservative and Christian view on immigration controls, and especially on the travel and refugee bans of Trump’s administration. The main argument for such controls and bans is supposed “common sense”: we live in such a dangerous world, with so many enemies trying to destroy America, therefore it only makes sense to close our borders and thus provide safety for The US and its citizens. Again, such dangers are grossly exaggerated and even imagined, given the real data. But is that “common sense” really common sense? Could it be that such common sense is based on a false faith and is therefore false? Is it possible that the Bible has a different common sense for us?

What does the Bible say about strangers and national security?

In my lectures on immigration of two years ago, I laid out the principles for a Biblical immigration policy. These principles, if we follow the testimony of the Bible, must be, first, that the same law must apply to the stranger as to the homeborn. This, of course, applies to the basic rights of individuals against the state (not against God), the rights protected in the second table of the Ten Commandments, namely, life, liberty, and property, if we appropriate this convenient summary. And, second, that the function of the state is only to punish evildoers, not to control non-criminal individuals. Which means, any person who has not committed a crime – as the Bible defines crime – should be left free to pursue his goals and improve his own life and the life of his family in any manner he decides and in any place he decides. These two Biblical principles, of course, logically lead to the only Biblically defensible immigration policy, namely, open borders. Since some people are eager to misinterpret this concept, I will only throw in that open borders for non-criminal individuals is not unprotected borders against criminals or hostile armies. It only means that as long as we have individuals for whom we have no proof to be part of an army or to have committed crime, we should not stop him from traveling or from seeking gainful employment or safety for his family. Now, when we have a testimony against certain individuals, that’s a whole’nother ball game altogether.

In those lectures, I also expounded on a concept that is embedded in the Biblical view of borders and the stranger, namely, a society that is a city of refuge. Which means, a society which opens its gates and borders for people fleeing slavery, persecution, or other injustice. It was not just the cities of refuge within Israel where someone who had killed a person without intent could flee to. Israel was supposed to be a society open to the world to see and taste, and to the world’s poor and oppressed to flee to and join. There were no laws that established any restrictions on immigration, nor was there any institution that would control immigration. To the contrary, the Law expected that strangers would freely come to live in Israel and take advantage of its liberty, and economy, and even of its system of care for the poor. The charity that the Law prescribed was to be extended to the poor not only of Israel, but also to the stranger. Gleaning was to be open to all, including the stranger (Lev. 19:10; Deut. 24:21). The tithe each year was to be deposited in the towns for sustenance for the poor, and the stranger in town was entitled to eat from it (Deut. 14:28-29). But there was more. Refugees from oppression were to be allowed free entry and liberty within the nation of Israel, in Deut. 23:15-16:

You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him.

In other words, not only was Israel to have open borders and full legal protection to immigrants, it was supposed to be a sanctuary society. Now, keep in mind that Israel was not the United States, a mighty and populous nation protected by two oceans, the technological miracle of the world, spending on its military and security as much as the 20 largest nations combined. It was a small nation surrounded by greater nations, all utterly hostile to it and its God, lacking any centralized authority or professional standing army. The surrounding nations were ruled by military hierarchies which normally went on military raids to acquire slaves. This means that any fugitive slave could belong to a military leader in a neighboring country. Offering such a slave a sanctuary could mean a foreign policy conflict, leading directly to war. Our “common sense” today would tell us that such sanctuary policy would be detrimental to the national security of Israel; and yet, God specifically commanded that runaway slaves were granted freedom and full legal protection in Israel.

Such sanctuary was not limited to slaves, however. Any individual could immigrate to Israel and settle and become a citizen, even if he originally belonged to the enemies of Israel, even if Israel was at war with them currently. In fact, such defectors seem to be extremely valuable, and they often became political, military, and religious leaders. Rahab is a well-known example, but there are many more. Caleb, the leader of the largest tribe, Judah, was a Kenezzite; meanwhile, his own countrymen were one of the Canaanite tribes whose land God would give to Israel (Gen. 15:19). Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba, was a Hittite, another tribe whose land was to be taken and the tribe wiped out; and yet, he was a neighbor of the King of Israel and a captain in his army. Obed-Edom was a Philistine, a compatriot of Goliath of Gath, and yet, the Ark of the Covenant stayed in his house for three months (2 Samuel 6:11), and he and his 68 relatives later served before the Ark in the Tabernacle (1 Chr. 16:38). If Israel was as fearful as modern Americans, and if its borders were closed to immigrants in times of wars worse than anything America has experienced, these men would never be able to come to Israel and join Israel. Man’s safety is in closed borders and building walls. God’s safety – true safety – is in building a sanctuary society.

In comparison, the pagan nations around Israel were all closed to immigrants. Edom would not allow Israel to pass through their land. Egypt had closed borders and a permission by the Pharaoh was needed to settle in it. Pagan Greece and Rome denied any rights to non-citizens. How is it, then, that God commanded Israel to be a sanctuary society in the midst of so many enemies who had closed borders? How was God planning on building safety?

Because the safety of a nation is not in its isolation, but in its relations. And specifically, in its evangelism to those outside. Israel had a superior culture, of superior liberty and justice for all. Nothing in the pagan world could compare to this. That’s why the nations were invited to see and experience the Law of God in action. Deut. 4:5-8 establishes this function of Israel and its laws as evangelistic tool:

See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today?

Solomon, in his consecration prayer for the Temple he built, declared the same principle of evangelism through open borders, in 1 Kings 8:41-43:

Also concerning the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel, when he comes from a far country for Your name’s sake (for they will hear of Your great name and Your mighty hand, and of Your outstretched arm); when he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name, to fear You, as do Your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by Your name.

The principle was clear: a godly society is a sanctuary society. It is not afraid to keep its borders open, it welcomes the stranger and grants him protection, it especially welcomes those who flee persecution and sets them free; and it invites the world to come and experience the superiority of its liberty and justice for all. By doing this, a sanctuary society wins the hearts and the minds of its enemies – that is, in a way, evangelizes them – and thus prevents wars and disasters. A paranoiac society which keeps its borders closed and returns the slaves to their masters, earns only the hatred of the world, and the wrath of God. And there is no wall or immigration policy that can prevent that wrath.

This was the accepted common sense of Christian America for three generations after the War for Independence. America kept its borders open, and invited the huddled masses of the world, yearning to breathe free, to come to its shores and join it. And as along as America did it, it grew and prospered and became the mightiest nation on earth, commanding 50% of the world’s GDP. Until, in 1920, a coalition of socialists, occultists, racists, and warmongers was able to change the tide and pass the first immigration restriction laws. After 1920, America was no more a sanctuary society, except for a very short time in the 1980s. And it is more insecure than ever. Contrary to man’s common sense, closed borders do not provide safety. Only a sanctuary society can be safe. When we as a nation reject the plea of the oppressed and return them to their oppressors, God delivers us to our worst fears.

That’s why Trump’s executive order will only bring more insecurity and danger on America.

The reading I will assign for this week are two essays by Gary North. One is old and exists in a pdf format, and can be searched through google, “The Sanctuary Society and Its Enemies.” The other is fairly recent and is titled, “Immigration Control: Federal Social Engineering.”

And, as usual, I will ask you to consider supporting Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a mission in Eastern Europe which has been preaching and teaching the comprehensive application of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every area of life, from personal ethics to institutional justice, and has proven to be successful in its work. Visit BulgarianReformation.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and donate. God bless you all.