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A Reply To Kinsella's "Thoughts On RLP Episode 24"

2025-06-10T21:43:00.001-04:00

The following was re-posted here with some modifications.

Kerry Baldwin and I thank Stephan Kinsella for considering and interacting with what we say in Reformed Libertarians Podcast episode 24, "Why Non-Christian Libertarians Should (And How They Can) Become Christians." We're glad he recognizes that we're on the same page about what libertarianism is. His work has brought tremendous clarity to foundational issues, from which we've learned a great deal. And we highly recommend his writings on libertarianism (for example, see here).

Stephan has asked several important and relevant questions regarding our argument for religious non-neutrality, and the following is a start at answering those questions. We have argued at least three things his questions concern. First, in episode 24, we presented an argument that something must be self-existent. Second, not elaborated in episode 24, but in episode 19, we argued, among other things, that theories and concepts by necessity ultimately presuppose something as self-existent. And third, also in episode 19, we argued that taking something as self-existent is a religious belief. What we say in episode 19 goes some way in answering some of Stephan's questions. But here we will try to answer his specific questions directly.

These are the questions we answer:

1. What do these arguments (seek to) explain?
2. What do the terms ‘self-exist’ and ‘depend,’ as we use them, mean?
3. Why is belief in something as self-existent the right definition of religious belief? Isn't religious belief, rather, about belief apart from reason and evidence?
4. If everyone is religious, even if without knowing it, why not say everyone is a Christian, even if without knowing it?

It's important to clarify that none of our arguments mentioned above are intended as arguments for the existence of any god, let alone the Christian God, or for the truth of Christianity. The Thomistic (5 ways) arguments, the moral argument, and the ontological argument, are arguments for God's existence. However, the 11-lecture series on Philosophy Of Religion (linked in the shownotes of episode 24), at a semi-popular level, elaborates on why we don’t take such arguments to be good arguments, and in fact why the project of seeking to “prove” God's existence is fundamentally misconceived.

It's also important to clarify that we recognize libertarianism can be held upon various differing grounds. We also recognize that affirming what libertarianism is, is enough to be libertarian regardless of one's grounds. To put it in other terms, we agree that libertarianism, as such, is “thin.” What we deny is that anyone holds to it “thinly,” that is without, at least implicit, grounds.

If one were to say, “look, I don't know why, but self-ownership, property right, and the non-aggression principle just seem right to me,” then we don't dispute that one is holding to libertarianism. However, further questions can be asked. Despite not being aware why it seems right to you, it could be asked what “seems right to you” means. Maybe it means it seems to fit with, or at least to not obviously conflict with, other things about the world that also simply seem right to you. And there you have grounds (if implicit) for your libertarianism in however “the world” seems to you to be. It's not that one must justify one's libertarianism in order to believe it. Rather, if one did seek to justify it, then such a justification would be grounded in some view or other of how things more broadly seem to you to be.

We can see this at work in the way some people, after initially claiming to believe it, have talked themselves out of libertarianism exactly by asking themselves such further questions. After identifying something about “how things more broadly” seem to them to be that conflicts with libertarianism, they abandon their belief in libertarianism. After further reflection, their grounds for affirming libertarianism appeared weak, and rather than changing their view of the world, they changed their minds about libertarianism. I don't suppose Stephan necessarily disagrees that this is how our minds and beliefs tend to operate. But I offer the explanation to clarify that we are not trying to argue that one must pronounce on this or that view of the basic nature of reality in general, or on what one takes to be self-existent, in order to affirm libertarianism. And yet, we do argue that such grounds are necessarily implied by anyone's affirmation of it.

1. With that distinction clarified, we're in a better position to see the answer to the first (as I number it above) question. What do these arguments seek to explain? What are we trying to explain by arguing that a.) something must be self-existent, b.) theories and concepts ultimately presuppose something as self-existent, and c.) taking something as self-existent is a religious belief?

The answer is this: we're seeking to explain the (perhaps surprisingly) religious character of the ultimate grounds inevitably implied by one's belief in libertarianism. One may respond by saying, first, this seems counter-intuitive to me, and second, no one need pronounce on what grounds, nor needs to justify, one's libertarianism to believe it. Our reply to this is yes, if you don't consider yourself or any of your beliefs to be at all religious, you will likely find this surprising or counter-intuitive, and yes, we agree that no one need pronounce on (or even be conscious of) grounds for, and no one need justify, one's libertarianism to believe it.

2. In episode 24, we argued this way that something must be self-existent:

“ Self-existence means being in a way that doesn't depend on anything else. Anything that exists either depends on something else for its existence, or it doesn't (in which case it is self-existent). Considering all that exists, either some part of it exists in ultimate dependence upon some other part that is self-existent, or no part depends on any other part, in which case the whole, necessarily, would be self-existent since there's nothing else for it to depend on. So, either some part of all that exists is self-existent, or the whole is self-existent. Any view of reality necessarily entails one option or the other. If anything exists, then something has to be self-existent. ”

In order to understand what is being argued here, the sense of ‘depend’ has to be understood. The general sense of ‘depend’ here is “require as an ultimate (pre)condition” for something's existence. So, ‘y’ depends on ‘x’ in this sense where ‘x’ is a necessary, ultimate condition for ‘y’ to exist. While a more particular sense of ‘depend’ can be relative to a more particular view of the two kinds of things in relation, this is the general, meaningful sense of ‘depend’ that obtains in every case.

This may still seem too abstract to grasp a firm idea of it. And further, there is at least one type of view of what exists that tends to obscure this meaning of ‘depend,’ given that in such a view actual dependency is excluded, since only one thing exists. The following examples and further descriptions may clarify.

Suppose you held to a particular sort of physicalism or materialism. You believe that all that exists is purely and exclusively matter-energy. To exist is to be material; to be material is to exist. There isn't anything non-material that can exist. In this view, matter-energy is not a “part” of all that exists. Rather, matter-energy simply is all that exists (although matter-energy may be variously configured). In such a case, nothing other than matter-energy is taken to be a necessary ultimate condition, because there simply is nothing else. Matter-energy is unconditionally non-dependent, which is to say self-existent. It exists in a way that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence. So, to exist and to self-exist are identical. This view excludes anything actually depending on anything for its existence, since only material exists.

Such a view may be understood in terms of one or another sort of so-called strong reductionism. One sort of strong reductionism might be called “meaning replacement.” The nature of reality is exclusively that of ‘x’ (in this case, material) so all things have only properties of ‘x’ and are governed only by laws of ‘x.’ All terms supposed to have non-x meaning can be replaced by x-terms without loss of meaning, while not all x-terms can be replaced by terms supposed to have non-x meaning. Another sort of strong reductionism might be called “factual identity.” While, here too, the nature of reality is exclusively that of ‘x’ so all things have only properties of ‘x’ and are governed only by laws of ‘x,’ in this case, although the meaning of all non-x terms cannot be reduced to that of x-terms, their reference is, nevertheless, to exclusively x-things.

Now suppose you held to a different sort of physicalism or materialism. You believe that ultimately all that exists, and so the nature of reality, is most basically matter-energy. Some things that are not purely and exclusively material exist, but whatever non-material properties there are (or whatever non-material laws might govern them), it is only something's materiality that makes possible any other kinds of properties (or laws).

Such a view may be understood in terms of one or another sort of so-called weak reductionism. One sort of weak reductionism might be called “epiphenomenalism.” Non-x (in this case, non-material) properties exist, but all things are governed only by laws of ‘x.’ All genuine explanations must be given exclusively in x-terms. Another sort of weak reductionism might be called “causal dependency.” Here, there are non-x properties and non-x laws, however there is a one-way causality. Whatever non-x properties and laws exist could not exist without ‘x,’ while ‘x’ can exist without anything non-x. In either view, ‘x’ is unconditionally non-dependent, which is to say it is self-existent, because it exists in a way that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence.

Unlike the cases of strong reductionism, with weak reductionism there are some things with non-x properties (or also laws) that exist and depend on ‘x’ for existence. And even though with strong reductionism, there is only what is self-existent, and nothing else to depend on it, the general sense of ‘depend’ as “require as an ultimate condition” for existence is still meaningful (if only instantiated negatively, in terms of non-dependence). So, the particular examples and further descriptions given should also help clarify what it means to self-exist, namely to be unconditionally non-dependent, or to exist in a way that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence. To “not depend” means to not require (anything) as an ultimate condition. So to be self-existent is to exist in a way that doesn't require anything else as an ultimate condition for its existence.

3. But, why is belief in something as self-existent the right definition of religious belief? Isn't religious belief, rather, about belief apart from reason and evidence? The primary reason that belief in something as self-existent is the right definition of religious belief is that it is the only feature or element that all (what are commonly called) “religions” have in common. A view of faith as belief apart from reason and evidence is not a common feature of all religions; Reformed Christianity being one example of a religion with a different view of faith (namely, a view of faith as not apart from reason and evidence).

In episode 19 we addressed the possible objection that in order for belief in something as self-existent to be a properly religious belief, it must involve worship or ethics. But, that simply doesn't hold up under examination of various religions, as we explained. Still another possible objection is that granting belief in something as self-existent is the only feature all religions have in common, it doesn't necessarily follow that belief in something as self-existent is always a religious belief, because (even if unconsciously) taking something as self-existent is also (at least implicitly) implied by any and every theory or concept.

Our concisely stated answer to that objection is this: as an equivalent and competing belief in something as self-existent to the belief in, for example, the Christian God, no belief in something as self-existent ceases to be an equally religious belief simply because it occurs in the context of a theory or concept. Whatever anyone takes to be self-existent (although what that may be can vary widely) plays the same role as grounds for the system or complex of one's beliefs as it does in religions, and is held on the same basis, namely, self-evidence.

In any case, it's certainly understandable why, for example, physicalists or materialists would prefer not to use the term “religious” in application to their own beliefs about the unconditionally non-dependent (self-existent) status of matter-energy. Since they associate (tho without warrant) all religious belief with irrationality, or as being apart from reason and evidence, then avoiding the term “religious” for their belief in something as self-existent is an attempt to make their beliefs look uniquely rational.

4. If everyone is religious, even if without knowing it, why not say everyone is a Christian, even if without knowing it? The answer is this: everyone who holds to any theory or concept (for example, the political philosophy of libertarianism) meets the criterion of having a religious belief, viz, that the given theory or concept, at least implicitly, implies some grounds in a view of the nature of reality and of something as self-existent. However, not everyone meets the criterion of being a Christian, viz, trusting in the person and work of Christ alone on their behalf for full and free salvation from the just penalty they deserve of God's everlasting condemnation as guilty sinners.

In these replies, we hope we have offered clear and persuasive (if only initial) answers to Stephan Kinsella's questions. Of course, more questions can be asked. (Or perhaps we unintentionally missed a question). It may be, however, that further clarification requires consulting the more elaborate argument presented in Roy Clouser's The Myth Of Religious Neutrality. Nevertheless, our replies here might be helpful in elaborating what we say in episode 24. Thanks, again, to Stephan, for all his work on libertarianism, and for graciously taking the time to interact on these issues.

How I Became A Reformed-Christian Libertarian-Anarchist

2025-03-06T19:47:00.004-05:00

some autobiography in which I recount
several factors in the development of my political views

Text originally published here: https://libertarianchristians.com/2025/02/19/a-reformed-path-to-libertarian-anarchism/

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yMh52HKHt5o

[ I'm an independent researcher and writer in philosophy, and co-host of the Reformed Libertarians Podcast. My primary interest is in developing and promoting the Neo-Calvinist philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd, the Reformed covenant theology of Meredith Kline, and a Reformed Christian perspective on libertarian-anarchism. ]

Unlike religion, politics was not a consciously prominent feature of my childhood. Nevertheless, without much reflection, I absorbed the political attitudes and opinions of my parents. In the home of my youth, from my birth in the early 70s through the 80s, it was largely treated as a given that the less government interference in society, particularly in the economy, the better.

A central idea was that the United States Federal Government had gone fundamentally astray during FDR’s administration (1933-1945) with its economic interventionism. Constitutionally conservative political reform was necessary to restore the Republic, and to defeat domestic commies and all their pinko enablers. All this was obvious (so it seemed at the time), and so I didn’t think about it much.

However, in high school, I took up the anti-abortion cause, handing out pro-life pregnancy center info and evangelizing outside murder clinics, and so on. In my own minority religious community, and in the broader Christian community, abortion was considered (not wrongly, if myopically) the great societal evil of our day. Whatever the immorality of economic interventionism, legally permitting the mass slaughter of babies was a greater crisis, comparable to the enormity of Southern slavery, but worse. This was my political awakening. And, in a striking way, it brought personal and societal morality, politics, religion, and science, all together in a heady and revolutionary mixture. Abortion, or the anti-abortion cause, became a force that dragged me deep into my own religion and its civilizationally-significant philosophical meaning.

The minority religious community in which I was raised (largely in Baltimore, Maryland) was the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, within the camp of “traditional” confessionally-Reformed churches in the U.S. and Canada. The Reformed religion was once held by a majority of Americans, from colonial times until the early 1800s. However, today, there are only about half a million of us. That’s less than fifteen-hundredths of one percent of the U.S. population. There are about as many Amish and Old Order Mennonites in the U.S. as there are confessionally-Reformed Christians.

Despite our vanishingly-small numbers, we possess a rich and fruitful devotional and intellectual religious heritage. And it was this religious heritage that I came to embrace, consciously and fervently, in my teen years, and that deeply shaped my philosophical and political development. (For those interested in an introduction to this form of Christianity, see “Recommended Reading” at the end of this essay.)

During high school, I read a number of Reformed theological classics, and books by more recent Reformed thinkers. Among the more recent, I read several books by Francis Schaeffer, who significantly helped build the pro-life movement among conservative Protestants. I was particularly inspired by his book The God Who Is There and by A Christian Manifesto. In Manifesto, one of the things that stood out to me was the confessionally-Reformed teaching on Romans 13:1-7. The view of that passage (and others like it, such as 1 Peter 2:13-17) held by the majority of Reformers, was that God only prescriptively ordains civil governance to use “the sword” or coercion against wrongdoing.

When those who claim civil power create and enforce laws that do otherwise than punish actual wrongdoing, then they are unjust and tyrannical, and no one is required to submit to unjust or tyrannical power. Schaeffer particularly highlighted the book Lex, Rex by Samuel Rutherford who said, for example, “[While civil rulers act] against God’s law, and all good laws of men, they do not the things that appertain to their charge and the execution of their office; therefore, by our Confession, to resist them in tyrannical acts is not to resist the ordinance of God.”

The year after high school, I took a gap year teaching English in Japan. Besides exposing me to a substantially unfamiliar culture and social context, strange beliefs, values, institutions, and customs, and so broadening my sense of human experience, it gave me an opportunity to reflect on the meaning and significance of religious belief for history. That year one book that shaped my reflections was The Two Empires in Japan by John M. L. Young. This book helpfully recounts the history of conflict between a largely compromised Christianity with the predominant Shinto-Fascist Nationalism in Japan.

My first year in college (at a Reformed, Liberal Arts school in Georgia), when I was old enough to vote, I met and conversed with a visiting speaker on campus, Howard Phillips. He convinced me of the crucial importance of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the political philosophy of strictly limited government (classical liberalism) that served as its foundation. I became a member of the political party, of which he was a key founder, which came to be known as the Constitution Party. I wasn’t really politically active. However, believing that the U.S. government (not to mention most, if not all, local and particular state governments), as a matter of established policy, persistently violated the supposed “rule of law,” and so was in practice, if not in principle, illegitimate, provided plenty of opportunity to share my increasingly anti-government views.

In the years following, I began to realize that the U.S. government had not only started to go wrong with FDR, but progressively violated its own Constitution and the principles of liberty from the beginning (e.g. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1791-1794), and that the Constitution itself was an unlawful power-grab, against which the anti-federalists had warned.

In college I also read, and was strongly influenced by, the writings of Neo-Calvinist theologians Abraham Kuyper, particularly his famous Lectures On Calvinism as a worldview, and Meredith G. Kline, particularly his book Kingdom Prologue. I also discovered the writings of Neo-Calvinist (or “Reformational”) philosophers Herman Dooyeweerd, for example, his book Roots Of Western Culture among others, and Roy Clouser, and his book The Myth Of Religious Neutrality that superbly explains key elements of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. These and other writings that articulated a Reformed worldview, a view of redemptive-historical Reformed covenant theology in Scripture, and a Reformed philosophical view of the basic nature of reality, continue to represent the biblical and theoretical perspectives from which I view life, religion, culture, society, and politics.

My fourth year of college, I took only one semester, and another single semester in a fifth year. Then I dropped out of school in 1997, not having finished my Bachelor’s, feeling frustrated and disillusioned with, among many other things, the college’s inability to provide deeper instruction in Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. After five difficult years of working numerous odd jobs and personal struggle (with a two year sojourn in southern California, where I also audited some evening courses at a Reformed seminary), I was able to enroll for a final year at a different Reformed, Liberal Arts college (in Ontario, Canada) that had a much stronger emphasis in Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, and finished my BA.

The infamous 9/11 attacks had occurred only a few years before. And the U.S. government’s tyrannical response in the so-called Patriot Act and unjust invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, served to thoroughly undermine what remained of any naive “benefit-of-the-doubt” assumptions I had concerning the state’s supposed interest in protecting and promoting liberty and justice in domestic or foreign affairs.

Around 2003, I also became aware of Ron Paul, a medical doctor, who at the time was a U.S. representative for the 14th congressional district in Texas (that covered a coastal area southeast of Houston). Mostly through a friend who worked in his D.C. office, I became familiar with Paul’s long-time, solitary effort in the Federal Congress, standing for actual constitutional limits on government and for the political and economic liberty envisioned by many of the U.S. Founders.

Two years later, I enrolled at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in a philosophy Master’s program. In the year and a-half I studied there, I focused on the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd (who had been a professor at that university from 1926-1965). I especially focused on his so-called transcendental critique of theoretical thought, political and societal philosophy, and theory of what is called societal “sphere sovereignty.” Better understanding Dooyeweerd’s view of sphere sovereignty (a theory of the normative natures of, and relations between, distinct kinds of societal communities) significantly contributed to my eventual conversion to full-fledged libertarian-anarchism. However, during that same period, I also began an independent study in economics.

Through my acquaintance with the efforts of Ron Paul, I became aware of the Mises Institute, a research and educational non-profit dedicated to promoting (among other things) understanding of the Austrian school of economics. I found a large quantity of academic sources from the Mises Institute for my independent study. I became persuaded of an Austrian view of praxeology (the study of necessary pre-conditions for human action), its premise of “methodological individualism,” the importance of these for a proper understanding of economics, and of a thorough-going free market view. The central idea of methodological individualism is that only individuals intentionally or purposefully act. And this fact is not at odds or in tension with ideas important to sphere sovereignty, such as the reality of communities that cannot be reduced to inter-individual relations, and a non-individualistic conception of society.

Worth mentioning here is that my study in economics and praxeology also led to discovery of ideas that significantly helped me understand other areas of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. Often enough, discoveries in one field of study or even within a given school of thought can illuminate problems or ideas in another. This is a fact I believe many Christian libertarians have discovered in recognizing the mutually supporting beliefs of their religion and political and economic views.

My study of economics led me to the writings of Murray Rothbard, an Austrian economist and historian who also wrote on political theory. Two works crucial to my conversion to libertarian-anarchism were Rothbard’s books For A New Liberty and The Ethics of Liberty (text here; audio here). Alongside those and many of Rothbard’s other writings, I was also influenced significantly by articles and lectures by Roderick Long, who is a professor of philosophy at Auburn University. In particular, I was helped by “Rothbard’s ‘Left And Right’: 40 Years Later” (text here; video here), “Libertarian Anarchism: Responses To Ten Objections” (text here; audio here), and his ten-lecture series “Foundations Of Libertarian Ethics” (audio here; video here).

I remember very distinctly, one day in October 2008, while listening to the final lecture of the Foundations series, “An Anarchist Legal Order,” the proverbial light turned on in my mind. It took a few months, as I remember, to get used to the idea that I was now a convinced anarchist. At first, I didn’t dare admit it to anyone. The very notion seemed almost too shocking, even while I was fully persuaded of it. However, being able to see how the total rejection of aggression (or the initiation of coercion, and threat of it) against another’s person or property, and therefore, a total rejection of the monopoly state as an inherently unjust and illegitimate distortion of God-ordained civil governance, was not only entirely compatible with, but in fact, supported by my religious and philosophical convictions, reassured me that (however shocking), it was right to hold to libertarian-anarchism.

A few years after becoming a libertarian-anarchist, I moved outside the U.S. and taught English until mid-2018. During those years, I had begun sketching-out how to articulate the Reformed religious perspective on libertarian anarchism. In 2019, my friend Kerry Baldwin and I had begun brainstorming about creating a podcast devoted to explaining and promoting our shared views. By the end of 2020, we had written The Reformed Libertarianism Statement (and Principles), and in late 2022 we began recording episodes of the Reformed Libertarians Podcast as part of the Christians for Liberty Network. If you want to find out more about the Reformed Faith, the Reformed view of libertarian-anarchism, and why we believe them, you may find the podcast helpful.

Politics (including the politics of libertarian-anarchists) is by no means the solution to all of life’s problems. And on this side of Christ’s return in glory to judge the living and the dead, and to establish the new heavens and earth, even salvation doesn’t solve all our personal and societal woes. Nevertheless, as those who trust in Christ alone for our salvation, growing in our knowledge of Him, we can also grow in our understanding of what the Christian Faith means for our whole lives, including politics, in service to Him. The Lord does not promise that “it gets better” in this life, and that is not our ultimate hope. But it is our great privilege and joy, insofar as we may, to work for a politics that is more in keeping with the ordinances He has revealed.

Recommended Readings for an introduction to confessionally Reformed Christianity

Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, by Michael Horton
The Study Guide to The Westminster Shorter Catechism, by G. I. Williamson
The Study Guide to The Heidelberg Catechism, by G. I. Williamson
With Reverence And Awe, by Darryl Hart and John Muether

About Reformed "Close" Confessional Communion

2024-04-05T22:58:00.006-04:00

: Why "credible profession of faith" of penitent, baptized church members is not the biblically sufficient criterion for admission to the Lord's Supper

The usual standard for admission to the Lord's Supper in Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) congregations (and in congregations of other NAPARC denominations) is that the would-be communicant have a credible profession of faith in the gospel, live penitently, and be a baptized member of a gospel-believing church. The confessional Presbyterian & Reformed view of close communion or confessional communion is not widely known or understood today. Below, this close/confessional view is described in contrast to usual OPC practice, and some Scriptural and doctrinal support for it is presented.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFFjrU3M5wg

1. Common OPC Practice

The OPC BD 2.B.2. states “The session shall examine the candidate for [communicant] membership to assure itself so far as possible that he [or she] possesses the knowledge requisite for active faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, relies for salvation on the work of Christ alone, is trusting Christ for salvation, and is determined by the grace of God to lead a Christian life.”

The OPC DPW 3.C.3. states “The minister shall then declare who may come to, and who are excluded from, the Lord's Table according to the Word of God…. to invite all who are right with God and his church, through faith in the Lord Jesus, to come to the Lord's Table. If you have received Christ and are resting upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to you in the gospel, if you are a baptized and professing communicant member in good standing in a church that professes the gospel of God's free grace in Jesus Christ, and if you live penitently and seek to walk in godliness before the Lord, then this Supper is for you, and I invite you in Christ's name to eat the bread and drink the cup.”

The OPC DPW 4.A.1. states “Only those may be admitted to full [Supper] communion in the church who have been baptized and have made public profession of faith in Jesus Christ.”

The OPC DPW 4.B.2. states “The minister shall then require the person to profess publicly his Christian faith by giving assent to these or equivalent questions:

(1) Do you believe the Bible, consisting of the Old and New Testaments, to be the Word of God, and its doctrine of salvation to be the perfect and only true doctrine of salvation?
(2) Do you believe in one living and true God, in whom eternally there are three distinct persons—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—who are the same in being and equal in power and glory, and that Jesus Christ is God the Son, come in the flesh?
(3) Do you confess that because of your sinfulness you abhor and humble yourself before God, that you repent of your sin, and that you trust for salvation not in yourself but in Jesus Christ alone?
(4) Do you acknowledge Jesus Christ as your sovereign Lord, and do you promise that, in reliance on the grace of God, you will serve him with all that is in you, forsake the world, resist the devil, put to death your sinful deeds and desires, and lead a godly life?
(5) Do you promise to participate faithfully in this church's worship and service, to submit in the Lord to its government, and to heed its discipline, even in case you should be found delinquent in doctrine or life?”

According to the above sections of the OPC BCO, as I understand it, and as is my experience of usual practice in OPC congregations, would-be participants are generally admitted to the Lord’s Supper on the basis of meeting several requirements:

A. Having received Christian baptism.
B. Having made a [credible] public profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
C. Living penitently [ie, not in unrepentant sin], seeking to live in a godly way.
D. Being a communicant member in good standing [ie, not under censure] of any church that “professes the gospel of God's free grace in Jesus Christ.”

Specifically, the public profession of faith in Jesus Christ required of those who would be communicant members of the OPC includes several distinct affirmations:

a. Belief in the whole Bible as God’s Word.
b. Belief in the Bible’s teaching of salvation to be perfect and the exclusively-true teaching of salvation.
c. Belief in the Trinity and Jesus Christ's identity as God the Son incarnate.
d. Confession of one’s sinfulness, self-abhorrence, humbling before God, and repentance of one’s sins.
e. Confession of one’s trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
f. Acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as one’s Lord.
g. Promise to serve Jesus Christ entirely, to forsake the world, to resist Satan, to mortify sin, and to live in a godly way.
h. Promise to faithfully participate in the church’s worship and service.
i. Promise to submit to the church’s government and to heed its discipline in doctrine and life.

2. Additional Scriptural Requirements

In addition to these things required of those admitted to the Supper in OPC congregations (as explained above), Scripture requires that those admitted to the Supper express affirmation (according to their ability) of the doctrinal standards of the church, not holding any principled objections to or disagreements with its teachings.
This includes a requirement that those admitted to the Supper express an understanding of the meaning and nature of the Supper (for example, as explained in OPC DW 3.C.2 and WCF 29.1, 7; WLC 168, 170), particularly Christ’s real, spiritual presence to those who participate in a worthy manner by faith, so that they are really spiritually nourished and strengthened by Him in the Supper. It may be the practice of some OPC congregations to require this, but it is not explicitly required in the OPC BCO (as far as I can tell).

Here is some Scriptural and doctrinal basis for the confessional Presbyterian & Reformed view of close/confessional communion:

While 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 has sometimes been taken to mean that those admitted to the Supper must have a credible profession of faith in Christ alone for salvation, I believe the passage also teaches that those admitted to the Supper must express an understanding of the meaning and nature of the Supper. Those who were being judged for eating and drinking in an unworthy manner, were receiving discipline from the Lord, not as unbelievers, but as believers, so ultimately they would not be condemned (11:32). The unworthy manner in which some were eating and drinking partly concerned their failure to “discern the Lord’s body” in the sacrament. That is, they ate and drank as though it were an ordinary meal (for example, to satisfy their hunger), without properly recognizing the special sacramental character of the Supper, particularly Christ’s nourishing, spiritual presence in the worthy-participation in the elements for believers. And so there is an exhortation to the church to examine and judge ourselves, in order to ascertain whether a would-be communicant has such discernment.

This passage (11:18) also refers to divisions among believers, not only expressed outwardly in their failure to eat and drink together, but improper divisions or disagreements in what they professed to believe (ie, in their “mind” and “judgment”). 1 Corinthians 1:10 says “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” So, part of what is required in 1 Corinthians 11 for proper participation in the Lord’s Supper is not only that believers should partake together and in a worthy manner, discerning the Lord’s body, but also that there must be no improper divisions among them in what they profess to believe.

Another relevant passage is 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15 that says “If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.” One of the things said in that letter is (2:15) “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.” At issue here is not that someone is denying Scriptural teaching that would entail they aren’t a professing believer. Rather, we are exhorted to not have (at least) Supper fellowship with those who, although they may be credible brothers, do not hold to some Scriptural teaching or other.

These Scripture passages mentioned, from 1 Corinthians and 2 Thessalonians, require that those admitted to the Supper express affirmation (according to their ability) of the doctrinal standards of the church, not holding any principled objections to or disagreements with it. Other passages also require that church members must agree in what they profess to believe. Jude 1:3 speaks of contending for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints;” Philippians 2:2 speaks of “being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” Such passages refer not only to a common spirit of brotherly affection, practical care, and mutual edification, but also to a unity of fellowship among church members in their confession of doctrine.

In addition to the Scriptural basis for the close / confessional communion view explained above, this view can also be understood on the basis of ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the church confessed by the OPC, particularly its doctrine of church authority.

3. Required By The Doctrine Of Church Authority

The OPC FG 3.3-5 says the following:

“3. All church power is only ministerial and declarative, for the Holy Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice. No church judicatory may presume to bind the conscience by making laws on the basis of its own authority; all its decisions should be founded upon the Word of God. "God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship" [WCF 20.2].
4. All church power is wholly moral or spiritual. No church officers or judicatories possess any civil jurisdiction; they may not inflict any civil penalties nor may they seek the aid of the civil power in the exercise of their jurisdiction further than may be necessary for civil protection and security.
5. Nevertheless, church government is a valid and authentic jurisdiction to which Christians are commanded to submit themselves. Therefore the decisions of church officers when properly rendered and if in accord with the Word of God "are to be received with reverence and submission; not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in his Word" [WCF 31.2].”

The (secondary) doctrinal standards of the church (namely, in the OPC, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms) are a “decision” of the church’s (ministerial, declarative, and spiritual) government which not only officers, but also those who would be communicants and communicant church members must receive and to which they must submit. The Confession and Catechisms are to be received not only as in agreement with God’s Word, but as itself an ordinance of God’s Word, declaring Scripture’s teaching.

The practical consequence of admitting to Supper communion those who decidedly object to certain teachings of the church is ultimately refusing to discipline with censure on those points, and declaring that ultimately one need not submit to the discipline of the church concerning those doctrines. And that is contrary to Matthew 28:19-20 because it is a failure to make disciples, teaching them to observe all Christ has commanded.

4. Taught In The Presbyterian Secondary Standards

In addition to the Scriptural basis for the close/confessional communion view, and how it may be understood from the doctrine of church authority, it is also a view taught in the Larger Catechism (although, obviously neglected by many churches that claim the Larger Catechism as a doctrinal standard). WLC 113 says that among the sins forbidden by the 3rd commandment are “misinterpreting, misapplying, or any way perverting [God’s] Word, or any part of it… the maintaining of false doctrines.” (And, recall that WCF 28 says it is a “great sin” to “contemn” [treat with contempt] or neglect baptism’s application to a believer’s infant). Further, WLC 173 says that not only those who are scandalous, but also those who are “ignorant,” “notwithstanding their profession of the faith, and desire to come to the Lord’s Supper, may and ought to be kept from that sacrament, by the power which Christ hath left in his church, until they receive instruction, and manifest their reformation.” This is to say that those who have a credible profession of faith concerning the gospel should not be admitted to the Supper while they object to the church’s teaching.

5. Conclusion

Those convinced of the confessional Presbyterian & Reformed view of close / confessional communion might find themselves conscience-bound by the Word of God to abstain from participation in an improperly administered sacrament. And a possible, but erroneous, response might be to think that one's beliefs about what Scripture requires for admission to the Supper are irrelevant to the question of whether one should participate oneself. It might be supposed that believers should participate in a sacrament even if it is administered contrary to the Lord’s requirement.

However, since we are forbidden by God Himself to worship Him in any way not prescribed in His Word, then, the only profitable way to convince those who hold this view of close / confessional communion to participate in a Supper communion that includes those who openly disagree with the church’s teaching, is to convince them that admitting such people is warranted by Scripture, contrary to the evidence presented above.

---

Cross-posted at: https://gregorybaus.substack.com/p/about-close-confessional-communion

Reflective / Critical Thinking Course

2024-02-05T13:22:00.001-05:00

check it out and register thru the end of Friday 16 Feb 2024
https://mereliberty.com/membership/courses/

https://youtube.com/watch?v=m-1Q4XrcNr8

Empowering people to connect their thoughts with their actions through simple tools and fun practices that will cultivate a free and flourishing society.

There's a self-directed course for $97 or a live-guided course for $297.

The Liberty Seminar is grounded in "Socratic" practice, which is a time-tested way of learning to think well. It is a method developed over time into a form of pedagogy, inquiry and dialogue have proven useful in improving critical thinking skills. The Liberty Seminar promotes productive dialogue, civil discourse, and discovery.

See R.C. Sproul on the Socratic Method here:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aOdjpByHLEQ

Liberty Seminar course guide, Kerry Baldwin, is an independent researcher and writer with a B.A. in Philosophy from Arizona State University. In addition to her content and courses on her website, MereLiberty.com, she’s also a regular contributor for the Libertarian Christian Institute.

She's a veteran homeschool parent, teaching critical thought using the Socratic method and dialoguing about the principles of a free society. Find out more: https://mereliberty.com/about/kerry-baldwin/

Also see her fb page here: https://facebook.com/mereliberty

The Reformed Libertarians Podcast

2022-11-12T01:50:00.004-05:00

Kerry Baldwin of Mere Liberty and I are now hosts of a podcast produced by the Libertarian Christian Institute (along with several other podcasts) in the Christians for Liberty Network.

Go to https://reformedlibertarians.com to find out more.

We aim to educate and inspire listeners to intelligently embrace and passionately promote libertarianism as grounded in the Reformed Faith, and informed by a Reformed worldview.

In brief, the politics are what neocalvinist politics are meant to be (viz, thoroughly libertarian and grounded in the orthodox and confessional Reformed Faith).

For now, Lord willing, new episodes will be released every other Thursday. Episodes that include interviewed guests might be a bit longer, but usually episodes will be between 20-40 minutes (I think). I'd love your feedback (even if unfavorable). If you don't find it on your preferred podcatcher, let me know. We intend to add alternative social media availability too.

You might find this a helpful intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrT9GcCCRbA

Also posted here: https://gregorybaus.substack.com/p/the-reformed-libertarians-podcast

More on Disestablishment (with Hodge)

2022-10-11T17:11:00.003-04:00

An addendum (to previous post): concerning establishment of 'religion'

In whatever way the English Dissenters/Nonconformists in the 1600s, the American Presbyterians in the 1700s, and Neocalvinists in the 1800s might have presented a Scriptural case against civil establishment of the church, I think Charles Hodge's argument is a sound one.

Some Reformed establishmentarians, however, try to argue for --not the civil establishment of a single church institution/denomination, but rather-- the civil establishment of 'religion,' whether that is conceived in broader Nicean orthodox Christian terms, or in relatively more narrow Protestant, or specific Reformed terms.

While I have highlighted the implied concern of Hodge's argument regarding faith and worship, I take one of the main concerns of establishment of 'religion' to be ethics.

If we characterize part of Hodge's argument as a sort of "exclusion" or "regulative principle" argument (viz, discipline in faith and worship are assigned the church, not to civil government, and therefore forbidden to civil government), and this is accepted arguendo, this nevertheless seems to leave open the question regarding ethics. The issue might be put this way: isn't discipline regarding ethics assigned to both church and civil government, although the means of discipline differ?

For example, theft is a matter of ethics, the discipline of which is assigned to the church, and yet discipline regarding theft is also assigned to civil government. So, why does this not extend to some, if not all, other ethical matters, even including those that overlap with matters of faith/heresy and worship/idolatry, such as blasphemy? In light of this, we can raise this fundamental question:
Is there any Scriptural criterion by which we can discern which ethical matters are assigned to civil government for discipline (if the set of ethical matters is not simply identical to those assigned to the church)?

As I understand it, many advocates of civil establishment of 'religion' employ a criterion of "public-ness". So, for example, one may hold private blasphemous opinions and even privately worship in a blasphemous manner, but one should be civilly prohibited from "publicly" blaspheming, say, by publishing a book that says belief in God is stupid, dangerous, and evil.

The following is how Hodge's Scriptural argument addresses this issue.

First, as an aside, notice that Hodge includes an initial 4th point (which may be said to concern sphere sovereignty) that I do not include in my quotation because it seems to me its character as a Scriptural point is not made explicit by Hodge. It focuses on the point of different particular ends ordained by God for these distinct institutions, so that the fact of their having the same general end does not permit the inference that they are assigned to identical matters.

I think that point can be argued in an explicitly Scriptural way. Although, I don't suppose 'religion' establishmentarians necessarily disagree with that point. What I think there is disagreement about is the criterion by which we should discern the respective assignments (to church and to civil government, concerning ethics), and what those assignments are.

Second, I think Hodge's last point about the coercive means instituted for civil government is the key to recognizing the criterion by which we can discern which ethical matters are assigned to civil government. (This is so, even if Hodge does not himself draw this out explicitly, but restricts himself to how we discern what is not assigned to civil government.)

Briefly stated, we may reason from Scripture on the issue like this: given the explicit institution of civil government in Genesis 9 by way of affirming the principle of proportionality in retributive justice, we must infer that the authorization of responsive coercion repeated in Romans 13 is restricted to the wrongdoing of prior initiation of coercion (aggressions) against persons and property. In other words, proportionality entails not only to what degree/extent coercion is used, but whether it is used at all. And to use coercion against non-aggressive immorality is disproportionate and violates the sword power authorized by God for civil government.

That, then, is the Scriptural criterion by which we can discern which ethical matters are assigned to civil government, and it's the way Hodge's argument, although requiring that elaboration, applies to not only establishment of a single church institution, but also to establishment of 'religion' concerning civil enforcement of ethics, or a public morality.

Also posted here: https://gregorybaus.substack.com/p/more-on-disestablishment-with-hodge

Hodge on Disestablishment

2022-09-29T16:53:00.004-04:00

In 1863 Charles Hodge summarized how we Scripturally argue against civil "establishment" of the church in 3 points.

First, he says the proper task or duties of the church and civil governance “must be determined from the Word of God. And when reasoning from the Word of God [on these points], we are not authorized to argue from the Old Testament [old Mosaic covenant] economy [or administration] because that was avowedly temporary and has been abolished, [instead, we] must derive our conclusions from the New Testament. We find it there taught:

(a) That Christ did institute a church separate from [civil governance], giving it separate laws and officers.

(b) That [Christ] laid down the qualifications of those officers and enjoined on the church, not on [civil governance], to judge [which men in the church meet those qualifications].

(c) That [Christ] prescribed the terms of admission to, and the grounds of exclusion from, the church, and left with the church its officers to administer these rules.”

Second, Hodge says “the New Testament, when speaking of the immediate design of [civil governance] and the official duties of the magistrate, never [suggests] that [magistrates have] those functions [related to religious belief or practice that establishmentarianism proposes]. This silence, together with the fact that those functions are assigned to the church and church officers, is proof that it is not the will of God that they should be assumed by [civil governance].”

Third, Hodge says “the only means which [civil governance] can employ to accomplish many [duties proposed by establishmentarians, such as suppressing heresy and preventing false worship], [namely, by coercion], are inconsistent with the example and commands of Christ [concerning faith and worship]; [and inconsistent] with the [liberty] of Christians, guaranteed in the Word of God (i.e., to serve God according to the dictates of one’s conscience); [as well as] ineffectual to the true end of religion, which is voluntary obedience to the truth; and [are] productive of incalculable evil. …By enjoining [duties concerning faith and worship] upon the church, as an institution distinct from [civil governance], [the New Testament] teaches positively that they do not belong to the magistrate, but to the church.”

Also posted here: https://gregorybaus.substack.com/p/hodge-on-disestablishment

Now Also At Substack

2022-08-10T20:03:00.000-04:00

I don't really have a large audience for my occasional posts, as far as I know. But blogger/blogspot doesn't really have good subscription options. Various widgets have been discontinued and/or are at best only semi-functional.

I will be cross-posting here: https://gregorybaus.substack.com/

So, if substack is something you use or might try out, please subscribe to my blog there.
Thanks!

Recovering the Reformed Confession on Resistance

2022-08-03T23:20:00.003-04:00

Here's my discussion with pastor Aldo Leon of Pinelands PCA (southeast Miami area) on the Gospel On Tap podcast, episode 95. We talk about the historical, confessional Reformed view of Romans 13 (the "prescriptive office" view), and its meaning for the proper role and strictly limited jurisdiction of civil governance, and The Right Of Political Resistance (even when the government is not requiring us to sin).

See the timestamp outline below the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcwN0x5tvY

00:14 Pastor Aldo general intro

01:32 Topic intro
Discussed on Presbycast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC95p88UzKg

03:07 Gregory's bio https://sites.google.com/site/ideolog/

04:57 Gregory learned about the Reformed view of the role and limit of civil governance, and the Right of Political Resistance in F.A. Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto
book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1581346921
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwLDP8pocwo

06:21 Singleness https://thelaymenslounge.com/an-open-letter-to-christian-singles/

07:28 F.A. Schaeffer & R.C. Sproul on statism: https://www.ligonier.org/posts/statism-biggest-concern-future-church-america

08:12 The Main Question: Are we obligated by God to submit to everything civil government requires, unless it is requiring sin?
Why not?

09:48 Everything that happens is in God's providence. But the providential fact of someone in power is not God's "ordinance" in Romans 13.

13:50 Romans 13 says there is a God-ordained role/office of punishing actual civil wrongdoing; using coercion (the sword) against injustices (eg, murder and theft). This is the strict God-given limit on civil authority; civil government's actions outside that limited jurisdiction are illegitimate and sinful.

17:37 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 forbids taking civil disputes between Christians to unjust judges. If Romans 13 required submitting to the judgment of those who claimed civil power at the time, this would be a contradiction.

19:20 Reading Romans 13:1-7 from ESV

21:03 Clearly contrasting the wrong view and the right view:
The common wrong view is that we must submit to everything that is not sin required by whoever is, providentially, in power.
The right (Reformed) view is that we are only obligated to submit to what God prescriptively (morally) ordains: specifically, the lawful administration of civil justice. We are not prohibited from resisting tyranny or unjust laws, etc.

24:31 A "providential" view of the passage makes all civil power arbitrary; it amounts to nothing more than "might-makes-right".

26:40 When the false view is applied to and consistently worked-out in other spheres of God-ordained authority, such as home and church, then it would absurdly entail that abusive husbands and fathers are legitimate, and that false teachers could not be deposed from office.
But God does not give us such unqualified "blank check" authority in any sphere.

31:32 Hosea 8:4 clearly teaches that existing civil governments can be contrary to God's will.

37:32 Hebrews 13:17 also speaks like Romans 13, in an indicative way (stating a fact), and it is understood as referring to a moral prescription for church office.

39:24 Question: How should we understand exhortations in 1 Peter about suffering? Or the appeal to Jeremiah 29 about promoting Babylon's peace, etc?

43:51 Correction!
Gregory meant to say John Milton wrote Paradise Lost (not, 'Divine Comedy' by Dante). But see Milton's entry in the bibliography.

44:09 The New Testament exhortations concerning suffering are about how to suffer in Christ (when it's unavoidable). We are not commanded to suffer, or prohibited from seeking to avoid suffering.

48:02 The Reformed Political Resistance Theology annotated bibliography - https://tinyurl.com/RefoPoliResistBib

50:42 Providence cannot be the basis for moral duty, because everything that occurs, even sin, is God's providence. If we shouldn't resist the government because of God's providence, wouldn't resistance to government be equally God's providence? So how can the duty to submit be coherently based on the fact of a government existing by God's providence? (It cannot).

55:17 Saying that any human authority, when they aren't requiring sin, has an otherwise unqualified or unlimited jurisdiction and scope of authority --such a view is idolatrous.

58:40 Question: Why have so many NAPARC (conservative, confessionally Reformed) churches neglected the historical, confessional Reformed "prescriptive office" view?
It is not taught in most Reformed seminaries. Why?
Possible contributing factors: pietistic "personal experience" focus, progressive/liberal accommodationist/syncretist identifying God's kingdom with the state, scholastic nature-grace dualism.
See Gregory's related post: https://honest2blog.blogspot.com/2022/01/reformed-biblical-theological.html

1:18:33 Elements of feminizing men and feminizing worship also contribute

1:27:23 Gregory's closing thoughts:

a. Westminster Confession 20.4 affirms the prescriptive office view in speaking of "lawful" power. (And the other Reformed confessions have similar language.)
b. see forthcoming info at Gregory's blog on authors from the bibliography about the Reformed View of The Right of Political Resistance. Preface here: https://honest2blog.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-right-of-political-resistance.html

1:31:18 Pastor Aldo's closing thoughts:
God's Word tells us what the proper role and limited jurisdiction of civil governance is. The church's role is to declare and minister that Word in witness to the world. And believers individually may testify before those who claim power to the truth of His Word.
Also, if a believer votes for a candidate to civil office, they should discern whether the candidate has a commitment to actual limited government, especially locally where local officers can serve to oppose higher levels of tyranny.

*Important caveat: while some Reformed authors did teach an erroneous 'providential' view, that view was rejected by the Reformed churches in their confessions.

The Right Of Political Resistance - preface

2022-08-02T23:01:00.003-04:00

There is a prominent need for not only Reformed church laity, but also officers to gain greater familiarity with the historical, confessional Reformed teaching on The Right of Political Resistance. Shamefully, this teaching is largely ignored and contradicted in numerous NAPARC churches.

See shownotes for this episode at https://reformedlibertarians.com/006

This topic is important for several reasons:

1. It is an ethical matter of “non-indifference.” It is a matter positively moral or immoral, addressed in Scripture and in our doctrinal standards.

2. As such an ethical matter, it is not something about which the officers of the church must remain silent, but something about which they are obligated to teach and administer discipline.

3. It is a frequently encountered ethical matter. Christians must make choices nearly on a daily basis that may be informed by one’s beliefs on the matter.

4. It is a matter of the church’s faithful witness to the truth of God’s Word; and misrepresentations can be a major, unwarranted stumbling block before unbelievers to the call of the gospel, and to the consciences of believers.

Given the great need for this teaching, and its importance, I hope to make it more accessible by presenting vignettes of several Reformed authors and their statements from an annotated bibliography on the topic. If you find this edifying, please consider sharing and discussing the bibliography and forthcoming posts, especially with your elders and other believers.

In summary, the historical, confessional Reformed teaching on The Right of Political Resistance is:

Since, according to Scripture, God prescriptively ordains the administration of civil justice, and civil governance is strictly limited to this task, we are only obligated to submit to actual civil justice. The claim to civil power or exercise of power that violates civil justice is not ordained by God, and may be legitimately resisted. It is not only orders to sin that must be refused, but any civil requirement beyond the God-ordained sphere of civil justice may, when not otherwise sinful, be justly ignored.

The doctrinal standards of the Reformed churches affirm that unlawful power and unjust exercise of power is tyranny, and may be legitimately resisted because it is not ordained by God, and so no one can be obligated to submit to it. The Westminster Confession of Faith 20.4 specifies that those who “oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it... resist the ordinance of God.” The Second Helvetic Confession of Faith 30 similarly specifies obedience only to “just and fair commands.” The Belgic Confession of Faith 36 specifies obedience only to “things that are not in conflict with God’s Word,” and denounces all, even civil powers, who would “subvert justice.”
[See also the Congregationalists' 1658 Savoy Declaration 24.4, and the Baptists' 1689 London Confession 24.3 similar use of the term lawful to WCF 23.4 in this comparison chart.]

Some prospective vignettes:
1. John Chrysostom (c.347-407)
: one of the most important Nicene era pastors (and a martyr) in Antioch and Constantinople

2. Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575)
: Reformed pastor in Zurich and author of the Helvetic Confessions

3. Theodore Beza (1519-1605)
: Reformed pastor in Geneva and founder of the university law school

4. Zacharias Ursinus (1534-1583)
: Reformed theologian in Heidelberg and author of the Heidelberg Catechism

5. Johannes Althusius (1563-1638)
: Reformed legal scholar in Emden and author of Politica

and many more...

Honest To Pod podcast links

2022-03-22T18:39:00.001-04:00

Here are various and sundry podcast aggregator (or podcatcher) links for Honest To Pod - Gregory Baus talks about stuff. (For now, no apple/itunes).

It's only "occasional," whenever I happen to record something. Topics are my usual: Reformed theology, Reformational philosophy, and Reformed/neocalvinist libertarian-anarchist politics (and economics).

Podomatic (native host) / RSS feed

Amazon Music / Audible

Anghami (Middle Eastern)

Fyyd (German)

JioSaavn (Indian)

If you see it elsewhere, or use an application not listed here, let me know! Pandora and iheart, possibly forthcoming.

more on Reformed Anarchism

2022-03-18T15:09:00.000-04:00

Kerry Baldwin, of Dare To Think / Mere Liberty podcast, and I begin to discuss the statement on Reformed Anarchism. The first section deals with What Is Culture?, and we chat about the first subsection in two episodes.

Part 1 : Rethinking Culture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byB-A5sGJ1E

Part 2 : Mistaken Views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEBHz8i4XKQ

Also see a series of 18 videos in which Pastor Nate Xanders and I give an introductory overview of some issues involved in understanding some basic points of Reformed anarchism.

Reformed Biblical-theological foundations for Christian cultural activity

2022-01-27T13:58:00.010-05:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAnsoqLbrng

Preface: To give credit where it’s due, as I recall, the criticism that Irons raises was similarly raised to me by Dr. William D. Dennison (Pastor of Emmanuel OPC in Kent, WA; Professor Emeritus of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College) sometime around 1994-1996 during one of his private Geerhardus Vos seminars (from which I benefited immensely, personally and academically). Although not very articulately, I attempted to raise the issue with Dr. Albert M. Wolters around 2002. I hope the main point of criticism is clearer in this article.

By Reformed “Biblical theology” is meant not only Reformed theology that is according to the teaching of the Bible, but particularly a sub-discipline of exegetical theology that studies Scripture in terms of the historical, ‘organic’ progress of God’s special revelation. The understanding of the teaching of Scripture that results from such study has foundational significance for Christian cultural activity, that is, for the question of how Christians can do cultural activity in a distinctly Christian way.

One of the foundational teachings highlighted by a Reformed Biblical theology is what may be called pre-redemptive (or creational) eschatology. This has significance for Christian cultural activity because the cultural mandate was initially given by God before the fall in the context of this eschatology. After the fall, when redemption is established and eschatology is set in that redemptive context, the cultural task is also set within that new context. Our understanding of cultural activity must take proper account of the important changes God introduced in the context of the fall and redemption.

Dr. Charles Lee Irons offers superb introductory material on various topics related to Reformed Biblical theology in his The Upper Register videos/podcast. Before presenting a few notes of clarification on his piece about ethics and a view of cultural activity, I summarize what he explained about Reformed Biblical-theological teaching on Adam’s Probation and the Priority of Eschatology. I recommend listening to his full piece here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NJwB_f1P4 .

In summary, our “first parents” were created in God’s image with a prospect of advancement to a consummated, glorified existence. This may be seen by the two special trees in Eden (Gen 2:9): the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, symbolizing Adam’s probationary testing in the Covenant of Works (Gen 2:15-17), and the Tree of [Eternal] Life, symbolizing confirmation of successfully passing the test, and the reward of advancement (Gen 3:22-24).

In Eden, God gave humanity a mandate to be fruitful, to multiply, fill, and subdue the earth, to have dominion over it, to work and guard it (Gen 1:26-28; 2:15). This involved both kingly and priestly elements together. In a unique theocratic arrangement, humans were to protect, extend, and populate the holy sanctuary throughout the world, and so obtain the eschatological fulfillment of God's kingdom. This work was to occur in a condition of confirmed righteousness, having successfully passed the probation. And as a sign of the prospective completion of their labor, God established the Sabbath, symbolizing the consummate and glorified eternal rest (Gen 2:1-3; Heb 4:1-10).

In Adam’s having failed the test and breaking the Covenant of Works, our first parents and their natural posterity became liable to eternal death/damnation. However, God had mercy and in Gen 3:15 made the first promise of the gospel, establishing the Covenant of Grace. Christ would defeat Satan as Adam failed to do. The eschatological judgement would be postponed, and there would be a temporal common curse, frustrating cultural labors in pain and temporal death.

Now, Christ successfully passed the test for His people, took their eschatological curse, obtained the eschatological advancement, fulfills the cultural mandate (fruitfully, bringing many sons to glory, Heb 2; 1Cor 15:20-28), and will bring the consummate kingdom of God. After Gen 3:15, everything in Scripture unfolds that first gospel promise, and this gospel must be understood in terms of Christ fulfilling what Adam did not, and achieving that advancement to consummate glory for those redeemed in Him.

With that in view, the following is a summary of what Irons explained about Reformed Biblical-theological teaching on Ethics (and Christian cultural activity). I recommend listening to his full piece here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkJMD3U7vQ

In summary, the misuse of Scripture in ethics can be either libertine, permitting immorality (such as theologically liberal attempts to erroneously define sexual immorality as non-sinful), or legalistic, imposing extra-Scriptural duties (such as unorthodox ‘neocalvinist’ attempts to erroneously define the cultural mandate as imperative in the same way it was pre-fall). Irons does not criticize neocalvinism as developed by Kuyper and Dooyeweerd, but rather he addresses a specific, partial distortion of neocalvinism, for example as articulated by Dr. Albert M. Wolters in certain statements from his book Creation Regained (CR).

While even a distorted neocalvinism recognizes the historical development of Scripture in terms of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, it nevertheless does not treat the cultural mandate properly in that context. A proper Reformed Biblical-theological view can help correct the distortions. The key issue is this: after the fall into sin, are believers now able in Christ to eschatologically fulfill the cultural mandate as it was given before the fall in order to bring the consummation of God’s kingdom? Wolters says we are (eg, “the kingdom of God will not come in its fullness without the ‘redemption’ [by Christians’ activity] of this area of human [life]” [CR, p.95, 2nd ed. p.114]), but such a claim is a Biblical-theological error.

The distorted view incorrectly argues that Christians may re-direct their cultural activity to its original pre-fall purpose since the fall did not affect the ‘Structure’ (law order) given in creation, but only negatively affected the ‘Direction’ of (viz, mis-directed) our use of creation, for example in cultural activity, and that therefore Christians have a duty to redeem every area of life, thereby contributing to the consummation.

It is, however, a Biblical-theological error to suppose that the fall has not altered the meaning of the cultural mandate in relation to the consummation, and to suppose that Christians have a duty to fulfill the cultural mandate in order to bring-in the consummate kingdom of God, eschatologically.

Rather, a proper Reformed Biblical-theological view recognizes that in response to the fall and in establishing redemption, God separated the objectively holy and priestly ‘cult’ tasks and the (possibly subjectively holy) common and kingly ‘cultural’ tasks. Prior to the fall, these tasks were entirely integrated as one. In the Edenic theocracy, kingly tasks of cultural dominion would extend the objectively holy realm throughout the earth and had a priestly-cultic goal of resulting in the consummate cosmic temple.

However, after the fall, God introduces a particular differentiation into human societal life. God establishes a structural dualism or separation between a.) the objectively holy kingdom of God in a special/redemptive grace covenant community of the institutional church, and b.) the common grace order, in which reality, though under a temporal common curse, is preserved, and the eschatological judgement is postponed, as a context for the objectively holy kingdom to operate alongside those outside the institutional church, and as a context in which both believers and unbelievers participate in cultural activity.

In the non-theocratic context, after the fall, the cultural mandate properly has only this refracted or differentiated form, such that cultural activity is no longer a means of bringing-in the consummate kingdom of God. The fact of the temporal curse in the pains of birth and ground -labors and the ultimate frustration of human temporal death testifies to this significant change. The redemptive kingdom of God is accomplished and obtained by Christ’s work as the second/last Adam, in His calling the elect, and it is finally consummated by Him, not through believers’ cultural activities.

Christians have a duty to subjectively sanctify their cultural activity in their doing it to the glory of God, witnessing to their heavenly hope obtained by Christ. But this does not objectively transform common cultural activity into the holy kingdom, nor contribute to the eschatological consummation of that objectively holy kingdom.

With the foregoing in mind, what follows are four points of clarification about how this foundational Reformed Biblical-theological understanding of the priority of eschatology and the changes concerning cultural activity after the fall relate to a proper view of how Christians can do cultural activity in a distinctly Christian way.

First, while after the fall God separated 'cult' and 'culture’, establishing the Covenant of Grace and the institutional church, as well as a common grace order, this did not involve creating any kind of "religious neutrality" in life or in any area of life. Reformed Biblical-theologian Meredith G. Kline affirms with orthodox neocalvinism that after the fall, every person and everyone's life in every area, including one's cultural life, whether believer or unbeliever, remains religious. After the fall, believers should recognize that all their cultural activities "are to be carried out under God’s mandate as service to Him for His glory and thus are thoroughly religious" (Kline, Kingdom Prologue [KP], p.67).

As there has been a distortion of neocalvinism, there has also been a distortion of Kline's views in a sort of scholasticism. This distortion falsely interprets God's post-fall separation of 'cult' and 'culture' in terms of a supposed religious realm of grace and a supposed non-religious realm of nature, which then has consequences for how, for example, the relationship between faith and reason is (erroneously) conceived and a Christian’s cultural activity is (erroneously) understood.

Some who have such a distorted view deny that cultural activity can be done in a Christian way. I begin to address that here: https://honest2blog.blogspot.com/2012/04/sanctifying-common-2.html

In chapter 5 of Roy Clouser’s The Myth of Religious Neutrality, he summarizes the scholastic view.

Clouser speaks of scholasticism as a view holding that "the proper understanding of [most of] culture does not differ depending on what one’s religion is." It [scholasticism] is "the general relation of divinity [religious] beliefs to theories as corresponding to two very different kinds of information: beliefs which are the deliverances of reason, and beliefs which are the deliverances of [special] revelation accepted by faith, where faith is understood to be a distinct mental faculty from reason.

Scholasticism "emphasizes the need to harmonize [the authoritative] deliverances [of faith and reason] so as to avoid contradiction between them." It appeals "to the biblical teaching that there are two dimensions of creation, which the Bible calls 'heaven' and 'earth'. The proposal [is] that each of these dimensions be taken as known in a different way, one by reason and the other by faith. The dimension of earth [nature] ...was held to be the dimension of reality known by perception and reason. Such knowledge was held to be the same for all people. Concerning nature, reason ...is [religiously] neutral, and the final authority for all ['natural'] truth.

"The heavenly dimension of reality [supernature] ...was [mostly] taken to be known only by [special] revelation from God which must be accepted on faith. These revealed truths conveyed knowledge not provable by reason, such as information about God, the nature of the human soul, angels, and life after death. These truths are therefore not available to all people but only those to whom God’s grace has given the gift of faith. For without faith to accept revelation, reason is relatively helpless to discover truth about the supernatural realm [other than the fact of the existence of God and of human souls]. In this way, each [reason and faith, respectively] is the supreme authority in its own realm.

Nevertheless, the scholastic view is that ..."there is a two-way interaction between faith and reason. [They] each have duties toward one another; each has its own proper domain, but each also affects the other. For example, reason not only discovers truth about nature and proves the existence of a supernatural realm, but also systematizes revealed doctrines and checks all rational theories for their compatibility with those doctrines. This is the task of theology. In case a theory of philosophy or science is found to be irreconcilably in contradiction with revealed truth, that theory is then to be discarded as false [but can sometimes be adequately modified, in this view, by adding God to it].

The duty of faith toward reason is thus to supply an external check on whether reason has fallen into error, and it is seen as an advantage for reason to have such infallible truths by which to test its hypotheses. In the final analysis, therefore, the authority of revelation taken on faith is superior to that of reason alone. ...The guidance that faith offers to reason is a largely negative and external check on what reason may accept. It is not seen as an internally regulating influence."

So, if one held to this scholastic view of the relation of faith and reason, and one associated culture and common grace with the "realm of nature" understood primarily by reason, then it could be supposed that the only significant Christian distinction in cultural activity might be the (partial) contribution of Christian morals/morality. It could be supposed that while it would be advantageous to have special revelation, such an addition wouldn't involve anything distinctively Christian (or otherwise necessarily religious) about cultural activity per se.

Furthermore, if one held to this scholastic view of the relation of faith and reason, and restricted the kingdom of God exclusively to the "supernatural" and its institutional expression in the institutional church, then it could be supposed that expressions of the subjective recognition of the reign of God in a believer's cultural activity were not expressions of the kingdom of God (or, as above, simply not a matter of cultural activity per se).

This response from Clouser to a Thomist's views might shed further light. In any case, Kline’s views are distorted if interpreted through such scholastic assumptions.

Second, we should understand, as Kline says: “The Scriptures compel us to distinguish between the kingdom of God as realm and reign and to recognize that though everything is embraced under the reign of God, not everything can be identified as part of the kingdom of God viewed as a holy realm” (KP, p.170). ...“The cultural activity of God’s people is common grace activity ...[yet] it is an expression of the reign of God in their lives, [although] it is not a building of the kingdom of God as institution or realm” (KP, p.201). ...“The kingdom was already present in the reign of God through his re-creating Spirit within [the regenerate]” (KP, p.382).

This is in agreement with Reformed Biblical-theologian Geerhardus Vos, who in his book The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church [TKGC], says: "To [Jesus] the kingdom exists there, where not merely God is supreme, for that is true at all times and under all circumstances, but where God supernaturally carries through his supremacy against all opposing powers and brings man to the willing recognition of the same [through regeneration] (TKGC, p.85-86). ...Undoubtedly the kingship [reign] of God, as his recognized and applied supremacy, is intended to pervade and control the whole of human life in all its forms of existence. ...Whenever one of these spheres [of activity] comes under the controlling influence of the principle of the divine supremacy and glory, and this outwardly reveals itself, there we can truly say that the kingdom of God has become manifest" (TKGC, p.162-163).
[free online version here.]

So while a Christian's cultural activity is not, and does not become, the objective holy realm of God's kingdom, it can be, nevertheless, a true manifestation of God's kingdom as believers’ subjective recognition of God's reign in their cultural activities, wrought in them by Christ's redemption applied in their regeneration.

Third, we should be clear about the "structure" to which Kline’s term "structural dualism" refers. We must distinguish "Structure" in the sense of "Structure for", that is, the laws and norms God has established for reality and human life in creation (and preserved in God's providence and common grace), from "structure" in the sense of "structures of" human society, such as the objectively holy institutional church, and the various common kinds of societal communities (or spheres of cultural activity).

That is, when someone refers to an "institution" such as the institutional church, or another distinct kind of societal community (such as the family, or civil governance), as "structures", this doesn't refer to Structure (namely, God's abiding laws and norms) in the Structure and Direction distinction. Rather, to call a societal community, such as the institutional church a "structure" is to say an institution OF society, that is, a societal institution/community; a "structure" OF society, not a law or a norm, but something that is subject to God-given laws and norms.

It is true that "the fall does not affect the 'Structure' given in creation." After the fall, physical laws, such gravity, are not changed; nor does God change His moral law or other norms. However, God did change the forms that human societal life would take in the fallen world. Apart from a typologically theocratic, old (Mosaic) covenant Israel, the objectively holy special grace community of the institutional church would be distinct from common cultural activity; even while a believer's redemption would entail their subjective sanctification of such cultural activity.

Fourth, in addition to conforming to the standards of Christian morality in our cultural activities, so that we follow God's moral commands from a regenerate heart of faith, in the ways He requires in His Word (eg, in loving service and witness to our neighbor), and doing all things to the ultimate purpose of God’s glory, how else might Christians subjectively sanctify their cultural activities? How else in their cultural activities and each area of life might believers consciously recognize God's reign? One way, is to grow in our understanding of the various areas of life as thoroughly religious and in relation to the preeminence of Christ. For more on that see here: https://sites.google.com/site/christianviewofeverything/

Again, the issue is: after the fall, are believers now able in Christ to eschatologically fulfill the cultural mandate as it was given before the fall in order to bring the consummation of God's kingdom?

The answer to that question from an orthodox, proper neocalvinist perspective is: absolutely NOT. The further question is then: after the fall, what does the subjective sanctification of a believer's cultural activity actually mean?

An orthodox neocalvinist answer to that further question elaborates Kline's stated view.

i. Kline's view is that, by the application of Christ's accomplishment of redemption in regeneration, Christians are able to (subjectively) rightly recognize the reign of God in all areas of life, and in all those areas perform those activities to the ultimate end of God's glory.

ii. The orthodox neocalvinist view elaborates on what that involves more particularly, saying that such subjective recognition and ultimate end in a believer's cultural activity (which constitutes subjective sanctification) includes (however imperfect in this life) Christian good works (increasingly according to the moral normativity of God's abiding moral will), and increasing conformity to whatever other abiding norms God has established for human action generally, and for cultural activity.

Dooyeweerd Against Vax Mandates

2021-11-24T15:05:00.001-05:00

Originally published at The Laymen's Lounge.
German translation: https://www.libertaerechristen.de/?p=1840

Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) was a Reformed Christian philosopher and legal scholar from the Netherlands. For more about his life and work, see this article.

Before the bulk of his career as professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 1926-1965, Dooyeweerd spent about 5 years as director of the Kuyper Foundation, the policy institute of the Anti-Revolutionary Party. From 1922-1926 he produced several reports, including one in 1923 concerning compulsory or mandated vaccination by the civil government.

The report begins by saying that while some members of the political party are opposed to taking vaccinations, and others are themselves in favor of it, as a party they strongly oppose all civil government coercion of vaccination. Particularly, the party consistently opposes all mandates of vaccination for government school attendance when the civil government requires schooling.

Dooyeweerd then lays out 5 main reasons all civil government coercion of vaccinations must be resisted and opposed.

Compulsory vaccination violates God-given liberty of conscience.
Only each person, and not civil government, has a God-given right as steward over one’s own body.
Civil government has no God-given competence or jurisdiction to rule on medical/health issues.
Native or endemic illnesses are never rightly treated by means of any coercion.
Medical science can be flawed, and vaccinations can be more harmful than the illnesses they are intended to prevent.

The bulk of the report deals with the second main reason that coercive vaccination must be resisted and opposed. Dooyeweerd puts it this way: Civil “government does not have free disposition of the human body, even if it is convinced that such disposition is only for the benefit of that body.”

The term ‘disposition’ here refers to legitimate power or determination over something according to one’s own decision. In Matthew 20:15 where Jesus gives the parable about a generous employer, He illustrates “free disposition” asking rhetorically “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

Dooyeweerd explains that responsive coercion is legitimate, of course, against anyone who is conclusively proved to be initiating coercion upon others. But simply being unvaccinated is not coercive in any way. Moreover, even if civil government officers were angelic geniuses who had infallible knowledge of what is best for you, and were entirely motivated by your best interest, even then they could never have the right to initiate coercion against you, because you don’t belong to them.

The issue here is not a matter of whether just laws should be enforced, but of what kind of legislation is actually just. And whether something is actually just or unjust is not ordained by civil government, but by God. Of course, the God-ordained principles of civil justice don’t enact legislation by themselves, but rather show the proper boundaries and provide guidance for legislation.

The main principle to which Dooyeweerd points is the Christian understanding of human beings as created by God as persons. (What he refers to as “ethical” personhood, he would soon, in the development of his philosophy, come to call the full “religious” personhood of every human). The first thing Dooyeweerd emphasizes is that this principle is in diametric opposition to slavery. Even though it might seem like an extreme comparison, vaccine compulsion is an expression of the same root as the evil of slavery (namely, the claim of owning, and/or having a right to control other people).

Most commonly, in the 'classical liberal' or libertarian European political tradition that appreciates the inseparable connection between liberty and justice (the tradition of which the American founders, as well as Kuyper and Groen, were a part), this principle has come to be known as 'self-ownership'.

But Dooyeweerd is concerned to describe it in terms of its fundamental, true religious grounding. While with respect to other people, it may be said you are indeed the proper 'owner' of yourself (the alternative being slavery), in relation to our Creator to Whom we are ultimately accountable, we are only the respective stewards, the keepers and caretakers, each of our own lives. This is doubly so for those redeemed by Christ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

The political bottom line of this, Dooyeweerd insists, is the fact that civil “government may not, according to God’s ordinances, force the ethically free man to accept physical treatment in any form.”

We must entirely resist all such government injustice from the start, without hesitation or compromise, or else it will inevitably grow like a cancer. This is the principle of obsta principiis. You must have a zero-tolerance policy towards tyranny. “Whoever accepts compulsory vaccination in principle,” Dooyeweerd warns, “has deprived himself of the moral ground for opposing [any] such usurpation by government of individual liberty.”

For a statement of principles influenced by Dooyeweerd’s philosophy that seeks to develop opposition to tyranny more fully, see here.

more on Romans 13

2021-10-10T23:28:00.004-04:00

and political resistance

Here I am discussing with PresbyCast the historical Reformed view that we are not obligated to "submit to civil rulers unless they require sin." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC95p88UzKg

0:14 music intro
1:30 Wresby's intro
2:28 Chortles intros guest
8:17 topic intro
10:30 recent events
12:40 clip from NY governor statement
17:30 Rom13 often misunderstood
25:28 why Reformed view not taught
28:19 lesser magistrates
30:28 Paul's example
37:57 wrong view deeply ingrained
39:30 helpful bibliography
43:35 defining 'tyranny'
55:14 affirmed in Reformed Confessions
1:02:29 Scotland's tyranny
1:11:55 confessional summary
1:15:06 what to do
1:22:52 the Boetie strategy
1:27:01 final remarks
1:35:38 Wresby's outro

0:14 music intro

1:30 Wresby's intro

2:28 Chortles intros guest
+ about Gregory: https://sites.google.com/site/ideolog/

+ Reformed 'mongrel': 1 Cor 3:21-23 "whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas... all are yours"

8:17 topic intro
+ any ostensibly confessional Reformed church that teaches "people are obligated to obey the (providential) de facto powers that claim civil authority, unless they require sin" are contradicting the historical Reformed teaching promulgated in the Reformed doctrinal standards (on the teaching of Scripture)

+central point is not political theory, but exegesis and the teaching of Scripture

10:30 recent events
+ regrettably, some Reformed churches have enacted policies with the rationale that in these things they must "obey govt requirements"

12:40 clip from NY governor statement
+ "I need you to be my apostles [to promote the vax]"
https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/tag/Kathy+Hochul

17:30 Why shouldn't NAPARC (or other orthodox Reformed) congregations do whatever a civil governor says? How has Rom 13 been misunderstood?
+ some indulge in false piety

+ important difference between policy based on church-determined prudential considerations vs. supposed obligation to civil edicts (even if 'constitutional')

+ historical Reformed teaching is that Scripture, in such passages as Rom 13, does not require anyone to acknowledge de facto (providential) powers/persons that claim civil authority as actually ordained by God

+ rather, we should know that what God actually ordains (prescriptively, not providentially) specified in verses 3-4 is the legitimate (office) use of responsive coercion (the sword) to punish wrongdoers (those who commit civil injustice)

+ any de facto power that oversteps this limited God-ordained jurisdiction is unlawful or exercising unlawful power (so, themselves wrongdoers), and no one's conscience should be bound to obey in such matters

25:28 Why hasn't this been taught in churches and seminaries in America?
+ influence of theological liberalism

+ particular influence of govt propaganda in recruiting churches to promote (unlawful) war efforts (at least since WWI)

+ heretical groups were more faithful in opposing unjust wars than otherwise true churches; this is a shame

28:19 What about doctrine of 'lesser magistrates' (eg, Magdeburg Confession)?
+ certainly, while all magistrates have obligation to oppose tyranny, in this case Reformers were addressing a particular civil constitutional arrangement, and resisting tyrants is not only for lesser magistrates

30:28 Scriptural example of disobeying civil rulers when not an issue of sin
+ 2 Cor 11:32-33; Acts 9:25

+ submitting to arrest is not a sin, but Paul evades arrest, and so he resists rulers when they weren't requiring him to sin, and Paul's actions are not condemned

+ this confirms that Paul isn't teaching in Rom 13 that we are obligated to submit to rulers only unless they require sin

37:57 this is important because the erroneous [edit] "providential" view is so ingrained in our minds and in the popular consciousness

39:30 Reformed Political Resistance Theology Annotated Bibliography
https://tinyurl.com/RefoPoliResistBib

+ a Scriptural teaching also found in Patristic era

+ explained in Francis Schaeffer's 1981 book A Christian Manifesto
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1581346921

43:35 How do we define 'tyranny'?
+ Reformed anarchism on this point: https://tinyurl.com/refoanarchism
(monopolization of civil governance functions, ie the 'state', is inherently, systemically unjust/tyrannical)

+ basic principle: what God prescriptively ordains as civil govt is limited to punishment of wrongdoers

+ Scripture teaches no political theory as such, and particulars of what is involved (and what is outside the God-ordained limit) must be discerned (from creation or general revelation) by believers

+ C.Hodge (1835) says "the right of deciding on all these points, and determining where the obligation to obedience ceases, and the duty of resistance begins, must, from the nature of the case, rest with the subject, and not with the ruler"

+ if taxes are properly due for limited function, it follows that taxes for other things are not due. Also, no Scripture teaches we owe taxes, but only that if we owe, we should pay what we owe

+ Reformers advised we should understand 'tyranny' generally as not simply a single act of civil injustice by a would-be ruler (tho that is tyrannous, may be resisted, and should be punished), but habitual or systemic civil injustice (including among other things, failure to punish wrongdoers and violations of the God-ordained limited 'jurisdiction')

55:14 A view taught by the Reformed Confessions
+ not invented by Rutherford

+ separable from 'establishmentarianism'
(credit due to Savoy congregationalists and London baptists for getting this correct before most Presbies)

+ WCF 20.4 "lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it"

1:02:29 clip from London Calling podcast. Why is Scotland presently so authoritarian/tyrannical?
+ while there are other sources of authoritarianism and its stockholm-ish internalization, certainly secularized "puritanism"/pietism and millennialism/millenarianism immanentizes zeal for God and the consummation into statist idolatry.
See "the secularization of postmillennialism": https://www.jstor.org/stable/2711630

+ one distortion of a "two kingdoms" view also erroneously tends to give civil government carte blanche

1:11:55 summary of Reformed Confessional statements
https://tinyurl.com/refoanarchism
(See 3.g.)

1:15:06 What can Reformed church officers and other members do?
+ many Reformed pastors and elders may have never learned or even heard about the historical "prescriptive" (non-providential) view

+ if you cannot bear the policies in your congregation, leave peaceably and find a congregation with better policies if possible

+ you can also have a peaceable and pragmatic discussion about policies without raising the exegetical issues

+ however, if you want to discuss with church officers about their view of whether they think Scripture obligates us "to submit to those who claim civil authority unless they require sin", then the bibliography is a great place to start

1:22:52 So then what, violent revolt?
+ 1553 work Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boetie (friend of Montaigne) presents our strategy, namely, ignore the tyrants.
a. https://mises.org/library/political-thought-etienne-de-la-boetie
b. https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude

+ Ignoring them (also practiced in "nullification" and "secession") is our first line of defense, and it is in keeping with the Bible's exhortation to "live peaceably with all, so far as it depends on you"

1:27:01 final remarks
+ will address other objections in future blog post: https://honest2blog.blogspot.com/

+ key links
a. Reformed political resistance theology bibliography: https://tinyurl.com/RefoPoliResistBib
b. Baus article on Romans 13: https://tinyurl.com/r13civgov
c. audio (on which the article is based): https://tinyurl.com/r13anarchism
d. What is Reformed anarchism? : https://tinyurl.com/refoanarchism
e. further resources: https://mereliberty.com/romans13

+ no one minds extra hand sanitizer

+ 'zero C19' will never be

+ build back better theology (with the historical Reformed view of Rom 13)

1:35:38 Wresby's outro
+ don't be an Erdman

more on sphere sovereignty

2021-10-05T14:33:00.004-04:00

Here I am discussing societal sphere sovereignty with Jacob Winograd of the Daniel 3: Biblical Anarchy podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCDyfRIH-_c

     1:05 beginning
     3:10 about Gregory
     6:40 becoming anarchist
   13:36 helpful arguments
   17:03 sphere sovereignty intro
   18:44 historical background
   30:45 sphere sovereignty explained
   55:31 Summary
1:03:44 What is civil governance?
1:32:12 sphere sovereignty related to 'spontaneous order'
1:44:03 Can we know God is real?

1:05 beginning
https://daniel318.com/

3:10 about Gregory
       profile: https://sites.google.com/site/ideolog/
       previous appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm_wh1ndsxw

6:40 becoming anarchist
       Foundations of Libertarian Ethics: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZo7TOFxgEMP4iRDHidY_PR7AKwwfQO4g
       and https://mises.org/library/foundations-libertarian-ethics

13:36 helpful arguments
https://mereliberty.com/romans13
https://libertarianchristians.com/2018/02/21/anarchism-minarchism-legitimacy-civil-governance/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_iudex_in_causa_sua

17:03 sphere sovereignty intro
       + Christian theory, not exegesis

18:44 historical background
       + basic definition: a view of the normative arrangement among and relations between different kinds of societal communities

       + Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801 - 1876) introduced the phrase 'sovereignty within one's own sphere/circle'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Groen_van_Prinsterer
       part of the European Calvinist revival (Réveil) of 1820s

       + Abraham Kuyper (1837 - 1920) developed the idea further
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Kuyper
       1880 lecture on Sphere Sovereignty: https://sources.neocalvinism.org/kuyper/?ka_num=1993.02

       + Herman Dooyeweerd (1894 - 1977) refined it philosophically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Dooyeweerd
       More on Dooyeweerd and his philosophy: https://thelaymenslounge.com/you-should-know-dooyeweerd/

       other predecessors
       + Althusius (1557 - 1638)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Althusius
       + Alsted (1588 - 1638)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_Alsted

       + arose in terms of the questions of the relation between church and state (and properly defining and limiting their respective powers) after the medieval period

       + Reformed political resistance theology
https://tinyurl.com/RefoPoliResistBib

       + like a kind of 'division of labor' among communities

30:45 sphere sovereignty explained
       + What Is Reformed Anarchism statement: https://tinyurl.com/refoanarchism
       See especially part 2 on What is society?

       + Scriptural teaching about basic diversity of created reality ('each according to its own kind')

       + Kuyper's 1869 article "Uniformity: the curse of modern life"; about the dreary artificial sameness imposed on things in the statist/collectivistic mindset: https://sources.neocalvinism.org/kuyper/?ka_num=1869.14

       + Scriptural 'organic' metaphor about differentiated functions coordinated variously

       + society is not a single whole, rather it is several different kinds of relations involving both individuals and groups; neither is more basic or has their origin in the other

       + community is not just individuals (or inter-individual relation), rather it is relatively more enduring and involves authority arrangements

       + individuals are not mere parts of communities, but wholes in themselves

       + each kind of community is distinguished from other kinds by its own intrinsic nature, differently characterized in its organization and purpose, governed by its own God-given norms

       + no single kind of community properly encompasses or regulates all the others. Nor does any particular community of a given kind properly encompass or regulate all the others of that same kind

       + not a collectivistic view of so-called ‘subsidiarity,’ which, while seeking to be bottom-up, affirming that the lowest level of organization has original jurisdiction, nevertheless subsumes all societal communities (as so-called ‘mediating institutions’) under an all-encompassing state

55:31 Summary:
       1. real communities; distinct kinds
       2. each kind of community (sphere) has its own directly God-normed intrinsic nature, scope of activity, competence, and limited authority
       3. society not a single whole merely decentralized or bottom-up (not hierarchically arranged 'subsidiarity')
       4. within a given sphere, no particular community encompasses or regulates others of the same kind

       + a state’s monopoly is in principle totalitarian, and always increasingly tends toward totalitarianism in practice

1:03:44 What is civil governance?
       (see part 3 of What is Reformed Anarchism statement)

       + Only God in Christ is absolutely sovereign; this biblical teaching entails that no mere human authority is properly total (and so the monopoly state is inherently antinormative)

       + Gregory's paper on sphere sovereignty: https://www.academia.edu/32356017
       2008 conference presentation: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL083BD24DE7A4559E

       + even Christians are sinners who might sinfully seek to justify abuse by appeal to authority; total depravity is REAL
https://libertarianchristians.com/2018/03/28/sinful-nature-question-states-necessity/
       Sproul on 'total depravity':
       a. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvUpyxnqAow
       b. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPVkhssUv5I

       + response to theonomy
       Kline's article on theocracy: https://meredithkline.com/klines-works/articles-and-essays/the-relevance-of-the-theocracy/
       Lee Irons' article: https://www.the-highway.com/theonomy-hermeneutic_Irons.html
       Lane Tipton's article: https://www.kerux.com/doc/1501A1.asp
       T. David Gordon's article: https://web.archive.org/web/20200718055717/http://tdgordon.net/theology/theonomy.pdf

       + Upper Register podcast
https://www.youtube.com/user/IronsLee
https://upperregister.podbean.com/
       Lee Irons' website: https://upper-register.com
       series on covenantal history: https://upper-register.com/mp3s.html#unfolding

       + seeking to coercively enforce moral law (beyond proper civil-justicial rights) outside the old covenant is a usurping of God's sole prerogative, and amounts to statist pagan idolatry

1:32:12 sphere sovereignty related to 'spontaneous order'
       See Reformed Anarchism statement, especially 2.c (and following) on Polycentric and Emergent Order
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/liggio-literature-of-liberty-summer-1982-vol-5-no-2/

       + the broader 'polycentric societal complex' is coordinated emergently, through the self-governance of each instance of the varieties of relations and each particular community of the several distinct kinds

       +by God’s creational design, a dynamic societal harmonization comes about cumulatively through the varieties of normative human action, but apart from any human individual’s or community’s specific intention or attempt at comprehensive coercive regulation

       + Also see a summary of spontaneous order in this 9th vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQhkrYqA7S4&list=PLwrDNUO5MDu95jfsFdfN2oe8vXQ6Cma-h&index=9

       + particular endeavors require planning, but society overall, and any sphere, is far too complex to be planned or coercively regulated; any attempt at such coercive regulation is inherently antinormative resulting in severe distortion

1:44:03 Can we know God is real?
https://www.allofliferedeemed.co.uk/Clouser/CanWeKnow.pdf
       See also "Knowing With The Heart": https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556354320
       and "The Myth Of Religious Neutrality" (which also deals with sphere sovereignty): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0268023662

       + teaser: "proof" (inference) is not the only means of rationally justifying a belief

Audio / Video Gregory Baus

2021-07-07T23:43:00.002-04:00

Some youtube video / audio recordings of me talking about stuff

1. Discussion with Michael Beck of Two-Age Sojourner podcast about Meredith G. Kline's criticisms of post/modern-influenced 'monistic' views, Kline as a neocalvinist, and the resonance of Kline's theology with the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd.
(March 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JksFJK6rqUs

2. Answering objections to libertarian anarchism from a Reformed (Christian) perspective with fellow members of Reformed libertarianism & Reformed anarchism fb discussion groups. Nate Xanders, Kerry Baldwin, and Aaron Cuevas.
(September 2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaoJ8qEH6bg

3. Discussion with Jacob Winograd of Daniel 3 : Biblical Anarchy podcast about Reformed (Christian libertarian) anarchism and Romans 13.
(November 2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm_wh1ndsxw

4. Discussion with Craig Harguess of The Bad Roman podcast about a Reformed view of Romans 13 and stateless civil governance (aka libertarian anarchism).
(March 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAE1DyQIVLQ

5. Here's my own youtube channel: https://youtube.com/c/reformational where I have posted (among other things):

a. (2008) a presentation on Dooyeweerd's societal sphere sovereignty
b. (March 2019) a presentation on a Reformed view of libertarian anarchism and Romans 13
c. (December 2020) a book review of Faith Seeking Freedom: libertarian Christian answers to tough questions
d. (December 2020) an audio recording of What Is Reformed libertarianism/anarchism?
e. (April 2021) an audio recording of You Should Know Herman Dooyeweerd

See respective video descriptions at youtube site for further info relevant to each vid.

Notes on Fesko's poor attempt to interact with Dooyeweerd

2021-06-29T17:42:00.008-04:00

[These notes were originally written in May/Nov 2019]

I got a copy of John V. Fesko’s recent book Reforming Apologetics. I jumped to chapter 7 on “Dualisms” because he was supposed to interact with Herman Dooyeweerd’s views. Fesko's criticisms are sloppy, unsound and erroneous. Here are a few off-the-cuff comments.

p.164
Fesko cites Arvin Vos, but A.V. (in Aquinas, Calvin and contemporary Protestant Thought) largely exonerates Dooyeweerd's analysis. Vos called him “one of the most careful among Protestant critics”(p.131). He says “There is no denying the relevance of this account; Dooyeweerd is pointing to factors that are clearly present in Aquinas’s position” (p.132).

p.168
Fesko erroneously thinks Dooyeweerd rejects the distinction between body and soul! The fact is Dooyeweerd defines body and soul in a non-scholastic, non-substance, non-form&matter way. Fesko seems totally unacquainted with Dooyeweerd's views.

p.172
Fesko misinterprets Dooyeweerd where he says "it can never become a theoretical object", by "it" meaning the non- or supra-theoretical knowledge of God in Christ (by regeneration), Fesko erroneously takes Dooyeweerd by "it" to mean "the Bible".

p.172
Fesko erroneously thinks Dooyeweerd must have rejected the Heidelberg where it speaks of body and soul, but Dooyeweerd explicitly affirms it.

p.173
Fesko erroneously takes Dooyeweerd's mention of "the key of knowledge" (again, meaning the non-theoretical knowledge of God in Christ, by regeneration, per Luke 11:52) to mean, rather, the "supratemporal origin [sic] of the heart". But that is not Dooyeweerd's view. Fesko may have picked this up from relying on, or himself misinterpreting (the sometimes dubious) interpretations of Glenn Friesen.

Fesko also seems to have adopted the erroneous position of John Frame that Dooyeweerd, somehow, does not believe in exegesis. This is a terribly infelicitous move on Fesko's part. (One of the burdens of those who are familiar with Dooyeweerd's writings must be to show this is incorrect; something I will touch on in my master's thesis, DV.) So far, however, Fesko's fundamental misreading of Dooyeweerd's work (or, more probably of his misreading of secondary source material) is less sweeping than Frame's mischaracterizing rants.

Fesko goes on next, to try to defend Aquinas' view of body & soul as non-dualistic, by saying his view was Aristotelian, not Platonic. This entirely fails to engage Dooyeweerd's criticism of the form-matter and nature-grace motives, substance ontology, and of a scholastic view of the relation between faith and reason. Ironically, it also contradicts Fesko's suggestion that scholasticism is simply method and not theoretical content.

This essay is helpful in getting at a main point of Dooyeweerd's distinction (and relation) between "supratheoretical" religious assumptions and (theoretical) philosophical & various 'scientific' assumptions and positions. If Fesko had understood this about Dooyeweerd, Fesko's engagement with Dooyeweerd's views might have had a chance of being on point.
This Dooyeweerdian reply to a Thomist critique may also be helpful.

p.177
Fesko seems to be saying since Prot scholastics reject donum superadditum, that is sufficient for rejecting the nature-grace motive (ergo, Dooyeweerd's critique is a strawman, claims Fesko). But this is simply to miss entirely what Dooyeweerd means by the nature-grace motive.

Fesko, in fact, goes on to define and deal with his own view of a nature-grace "construct"... so he abandons dealing with Dooyeweerd's view altogether, but speaks as though he's still criticizing Dooyeweerd's view!

p.177
Fesko then says "Dooyeweerd's analysis falters on two counts: (1) he rarely, if ever, supports his claims with primary-source documentation; and (2) he erroneously defines scholasticism." [viz, as involving content, rather than 'just a method']

Fesko only cites 7 pages of Dooyeweerd's 3 volume treatment in Reformation and Scholasticism. Here’s volume 2. You can scroll on from page 147 and see for yourself if Dooyeweerd is interacting with primary sources or not. One gets the impression that Fesko is less acquainted with Dooyeweerd than the average Protestant-in-the-pew is with Aquinas.

After several pages of trying to defend scholastic content, are we really supposed to take Fesko's 2nd objection seriously? This is laughable.

p.177
Fesko says Dooyeweerd pitted Calvin against the Calvinists, but doesn't show that the sense in which Dooyeweerd held to a specific discontinuity between Calvin and those after him is the same sense argued against by Muller.

p.178
Fesko says Dooyeweerd calls Calvin's (partially scholastic) theology "pure". Maybe. I haven't seen that. But Dooyeweerd is famous for rejecting application of the term 'pure' to almost everything, and Fesko doesn't offer a citation.

p.179
Fesko says Dooyeweerd “vilifies” moving from self-knowledge to knowledge of God. But Fesko only reveals his ignorance of Dooyeweerd's transcendental criticism (in which Dooyeweerd moves from self-knowledge to knowledge of God).

p.179
Fesko implies that Dooyeweerd rejects the distinction between law & gospel, and between common & special grace. This just isn't so. Dooyeweerd criticizes certain specific views of those distinctions, but does not reject the distinctions themselves.

p.182
Fesko claims that Dooyeweerd's philosophy is "Kantian" because he supposedly deduces a system of thought from a central dogma. Whether such a thing is actually characteristic of Kantianism, Fesko never considers. And Fesko offers no argument from Dooyeweerd's writing that this was Dooyeweerd's approach, but simply makes the bogus charge. One only need read Dooyeweerd's writing to find out otherwise.

p.187
(without a single reference to Dooyeweerd's own writing) Fesko says that Dooyeweerd repeats Harnack's "Hellenization" thesis. In brief, Harnack rejects parts of the New Testament (eg, The Gospel of John) because he believed it employed pagan Greek metaphysical concepts. Further, Harnack's "gospel" is simply modern humanism in a thin veneer of religious language.

In diametric opposition to Harnack, Dooyeweerd subscribed to the Three Forms of Unity, and accordingly held to the full authority and infallibility of Scripture, and to an orthodox Calvinist understanding of the gospel --all about which Dooyeweerd is explicit.

Dooyeweerd rejects the idea that the New Testament writers imported pagan metaphysical ideas. As for theology, Dooyeweerd holds that the issue is not whether terms used in Greek philosophy (eg, logos, ousia) are also used in Christian theology (or in a creedal/confessional statement), but how those terms are defined or redefined. Where Dooyeweerd argues that specific antiChristian pagan ideas are to some extent accepted in any given theology, he makes explicit arguments, and these are nowhere cited or addressed by Fesko.

See further, Rudi Hayward's article that documents Fesko's (spectacularly) hypocritical failure to actually read Dooyeweerd's own writing: https://reformationalintermezzo.blogspot.com/2019/11/dooyeweed-among-reformed-thomists.html

Also see these helpful comments (tho neither has read or understands Dooyeweerd's views):
1. https://www.proginosko.com/2021/07/reforming-apologetics-wrap-up/
2. https://yinkahdinay.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/book-review-reformed-apologetics-4/

Five Different Versions of "Two Kingdoms"

2021-05-20T14:55:00.007-04:00

1. One version of "two kingdoms" views it in terms of the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God.
This is also the sense in which Augustine spoke of the city of God and the city of earth (or sometimes others say the city of man). It is a distinction between salvation and damnation; good and evil; faith and love toward God in Christ vs. unbelief, apostasy, and idolatry.

2. Another version of two kingdoms (while not denying the first) is in terms of two kingdoms of God. One is "internal" and "invisible/spiritual", the other is "external" and "visible/material".
The first applies to God's "immediate" reign/rule over the consciences of believers; the reign of Christ in the hearts of believers. The other applies to "mediated" rule through delegated human authorities in church government and civil government.
This has been held by establishmentarians (theocrats or 'state church' advocates like Luther, Calvin, and most of the early Reformers), but isn't necessarily tied to that.

3. Yet another version of two kingdoms of God is in terms of the two external/"mediated" kingdoms in the institutional church and civil government.
In the church, Christ is the only head/king, and rules through His Word, ministered by church officers. In the civil government, earthly kings or magistrates rule by the (physical) sword.
This can also be held by those who also hold (1. and/or 2.), with or without establishmentarianism.

4. And yet another version of two kingdoms, sometimes held in combination or overlap with any of the above views, is a kingdom of "common grace" and a kingdom of "special grace".
There are several different versions of this view, but in general, common grace is understood to involve that dimension or those areas of life that are common to believers and unbelievers, while special grace is understood to involve salvation and that dimension or those areas of life that are related to believers.

5. And finally, another version of two kingdoms, are the salvific (or special grace) kingdom of God now presently inaugurated as the kingdom of Grace and the future not yet (or yet to be) consummated kingdom of Glory (in the new heavens and earth).
This language is used, for example, in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and is also compatible with the above views.

Notes on Danie Strauss’ and Roy Clouser’s misunderstanding of Herman Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique

2021-01-28T15:41:00.004-05:00

In response to Herman Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique of theoretical thought, Danie Strauss and Roy Clouser have offered objections to and reformulations of it. It seems to me that their main objections are based on misunderstanding Dooyeweerd's view on several points. I don't cite where they explain their objections or document my counter-position with citations from Dooyeweerd here, but hope to do so eventually.

Strauss

1. he mistakes (what is really Dooyeweerd’s) distinction between the operations of antithetic abstraction and synthetic conceptualization for two separate ‘steps’.

While some infelicitous expressions of Dooyeweerd lend to that misunderstanding, these operations actually take place together in Dooyeweerd's view, as other expressions of Dooyeweerd make clearer. The former operation is performed ‘in’ the latter.

2. he mistakes Dooyeweerd’s formulation of the 2^nd transcendental problem about synthesis to be concerned with how one might go about synthesizing(conceptualizing) after one has already abstracted.

Dooyeweerd clarifies that the 2^nd problem rather concerns the basis upon which the synthesizing occurs, although again, certain unclear expressions by Dooyeweerd lend to the misunderstanding.

3. he mistakes Dooyeweerd’s view of 'Gegenstand' (object of theoretical analysis) to be exclusively non-logical.

While Dooyeweerd does refer to abstracted non-logical aspects as Gegenstand, he also makes clear that the logical (abstracted in contrast with the non-logical) may be a Gegenstand – as any non-logical may be – as a field of theoretical/scientific investigation/analysis. Moreover, he also uses Gegenstand in reference to things that aren't aspects.

Clouser (agrees with Strauss’ misunderstandings and adds two others)

4. he mistakes Dooyeweerd’s view of the ‘isolating’ abstraction of one/each modal aspect from the rest to involve its abstractive isolation from the intermodal coherence of meaning, which is tantamount to absolutization.

Dooyeweerd clarifies that, rather, a modal aspect is abstractively isolated, not from the coherence of meaning with the rest, but only from its concrete temporal continuity.

The difference may be further clarified in terms of a supposed precisive and an actual nonprecisive abstraction.

5. he mistakes Dooyeweerd’s view of absolutization as thinking that successfully abstracts a modal aspect from the coherence.

Dooyeweerd clarifies that such (precisive) abstractive ‘seclusion’ or being ‘torn’ from the coherence is only supposed and not actual, because impossible.

Statement on Reformed libertarian anarchism

2020-12-17T14:47:00.004-05:00

What is Reformed anarchism?

1. What Is Culture?
    a. Human production
    b. Reciprocal layers
    c. Based in religion
    d. Structural norms, directional conformity
    e. Fall, redemption, and common grace

2. What Is Society?
    a. Neither individualistic, nor collectivistic
    b. Societal sphere sovereignty
    c. Polycentric and emergent societal order
    d. Economics

3. What Is Civil Governance?
    a. Civil justice distinguished from morality
    b. Self-ownership and property right
    c. Civil justicial norm of non-aggression
    d. God’s ordination of civil governance
    e. Taxation
    f. War
    g. Our Confessions
    h. The state’s Monopoly

This statement was composed by Gregory Baus and Kerry Baldwin in collaboration with members of the Reformed libertarianism and Reformed anarchism discussion groups in 2020.
Also available here: https://sites.google.com/view/reformed-anarchism
audio version here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ubp6DtiLLIE

*****

What is Reformed anarchism?

Reformed anarchism is a view of politics, or civil governance, informed by a Reformed theology (a view of Scriptural teaching expressed in the historical Reformed confessions) and a Reformed philosophy (a view of created reality directed by Scriptural teaching). Based on a Reformed theology and philosophy, the following summarizes a Reformed view of 1.) culture, and 2.) society, as the broader context within which our view of politics is set, followed by 3.) civil governance, and [forthcoming] 4.) some implications for action.

1. What Is Culture?

1.a. Human production

Culture is the human activity of having dominion over the earth; being fruitful, filling, ruling, and subduing the world, cultivating and keeping it. Culture is also the result of that labor, the secondary environment of human production within the natural environment. Being made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15; 9:1-7), designed to exercise dominion, human beings, even fallen in sin, cannot help but act purposely, labor, and cultivate the creation, including ourselves.

See: Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture (1959; rep., 2001), p.xvii, 25ff.
https://www.contra-mundum.org/books/Concept.pdf

1.b. Reciprocal layers

Human cultivative labor and its results can be understood in terms of various layers. On the surface, as it were, people manifest observable behaviors, some of which can be called customs, and produce material artifacts of all kinds. At a deeper layer communities and institutions are developed for numerous ends, and these often reflect, at a deeper layer still, the numerous values according to which people discern what concrete activities to do and how to go about them. And at a base layer people embrace what may be called worldviews; basic understandings of what the world is and diverse purposes within it. And these various cultural layers exist in a dynamic of reciprocal influence. Human technologies, practices, and communities affect values and beliefs, and vice versa.

See: G. Linwood Barney, “The Supracultural and the Cultural: Implications for Frontier Missions,” in The Gospel and Frontier Peoples: a report of a consultation, December 1972 , ed. Robert Pierce Beaver (1973), p.48-55.

Partially quoted here: https://books.google.com/books?id=raf6uV74x4AC&pg=PA102

1.c. Based in religion

The activities within all these layers are all cultural activity. Both Christians and non-Christians participate in all these sorts of activities. By them we form the histories of our individual lives and of civilizations alike. As an expression of our being God’s image, all human action is fundamentally grounded in ‘religion,’ which is our central orientation either towards the true God revealed in the Christ of Scripture, or away from Him towards a false idol. (Romans 1:18-25; Matthew 15:18-19)

1.d. Structural norms, directional conformity

The image of God in human beings can be understood as having two dimensions. There is a ‘structural’ or official dimension, and there is a ‘directional’ or normative dimension. By structural, we refer to God’s creational laws or ordinances that are in force for created things, constituting such things as the kind of creatures they are. (In this sense we mean structure for creation and cultural activity, not structures of creation and culture; that is, not things or cultural products themselves). As there are different kinds of created things, so there are also different kinds of creational laws. Some laws are directly compelling, such as physical laws, for example the law of gravity. Other laws, while always in force, are appealing. That is to say, they can be violated. These appealing sorts of normative laws especially apply to cultural activity and human action generally, and may be referred to as norms (oughts/shoulds), for example logical norms, such as the “law of (non-)contradiction”. By directional, we refer to negative deviation from and positive conformity to God-given norms.

See: Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained (1985; rep., 2005), p.59, 88, 97.

Also see: Anthony A. Hoekema, Created In God’s Image (1986), p.68-73

1.e. Fall, redemption, and common grace

After the fall into sin, humanity retains the structural dimension, continuing by God’s common grace to be His image as those who have an office of authority, called to exercise dominion (epitomized in making judgments). Yet by the fall into sin unregenerate humanity loses the deepest positive directional dimension of that image, no longer judging rightly. In the regenerate person the image of God is renewed in Christ, in true righteousness, holiness, and knowledge. While Christians are centrally re-directed towards God, they can still sin, suffer the effects of sin, and deviate from God’s norms, including those for cultural activity. Nevertheless, the renewal of the image in Christ by redemption provides the possibility for Christians, in some measure, to discern and live in positive accordance with God-ordained cultural norms. Conversely, while the unregenerate are in a basic condition of mis-direction away from God, by God’s common grace, they can in some measure act in external accordance with certain norms.

See: Meredith G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (1980; rep., 1999).

The first chapter is based on this article: https://meredithkline.com/klines-works/articles-and-essays/creation-in-the-image-of-the-glory-spirit/

See also: WCF 16.7 on good works by the unregenerate.

2. What Is Society?

2.a. Neither individualistic, nor collectivistic

Society is not a single whole. Rather, by society we mean the numerous individual and communal relations of several varieties. There are inter-individual relations, communal relations, and inter-communal relations. While only individuals act, neither society, nor any communal relation can be properly reduced to only inter-individual relations. And an individual is never a mere part of a given community of which they are a member. Communal relations differ from inter-individual relations in being comparatively more enduring and involving authority arrangements. Neither individuals, nor communities are more basic than, or have their origin in, the other. Individuals and various communities are themselves wholes, ultimately structured or normed by God in creation. In this sense, we reject both an individualistic and a collectivistic view of society.

See: Roy Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality (1991; rev., 2005), chapter 12.

Also see: Herman Dooyeweerd, A Christian Theory of Social Institutions (1947)

https://tinyurl.com/DooyTheorySocInst

2.b. Societal sphere sovereignty

There are distinct communal spheres, or kinds of communities. Each kind of community is distinguished from other kinds by its own intrinsic nature, differently characterized in its organization and purpose, governed by its own God-given norms. For example, there are familial, ecclesial/faith, political/civil, commercial, social, charitable, medical, educational, and aesthetic/arts kinds of communities among others. No single kind of community properly encompasses or regulates all the others. Nor does any particular community of a given kind properly encompass or regulate all the others of that same kind. Each kind of community has its own particular function and its own kind of limited authority and competence directly ordained by God, not mediated by any other kind. This has been called ‘sphere sovereignty.’ We reject the collectivistic view of so-called ‘subsidiarity,’ which, while seeking to be bottom-up, affirming that the lowest level of organization has original jurisdiction, nevertheless subsumes all societal communities (as so-called ‘mediating institutions’) under an all-encompassing state.

See: Gregory Baus, Dooyeweerd’s Societal Sphere Sovereignty (2006, rev. 2017)

https://www.academia.edu/32356017/Dooyeweerds_Societal_Sphere_Sovereignty_2017_revision_

Also see: Kerry Baldwin, Economics, Hierarchy, and the Question of the State’s Inevitability (2018)

https://libertarianchristians.com/2018/04/11/economics-hierarchy-states-inevitability/

and Inconceivable! The Plausibility of a Stateless Society (2018)

https://libertarianchristians.com/2018/05/07/plausibility-of-a-stateless-society/

2.c. Polycentric and emergent societal order

Society is normatively ordered and governed polycentrically, that is, within a variety of relations and particular communities of different kinds. A political order, or communities/institutions of civil governance, does not have a task of comprehensively regulating society. Rather, the God-given task of civil governance is exclusively limited to administration of civil justice. The broader polycentric societal complex is coordinated emergently, through the self-governance of each instance of the varieties of relations and each particular community of the several distinct kinds. By God’s creational design, a dynamic societal harmonization comes about cumulatively through the varieties of normative human action, but apart from any human individual’s or community’s specific intention or attempt at comprehensive coercive regulation. Any attempt at coercive regulation of society overall violates the nature of society, the various norms and relations, and the distinct kinds of community with differentiated and limited authority ordained by God, and so introduces wide-ranging distortions and disorder.

See: Norman Barry, The Tradition of Spontaneous Order (1982)

https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/liggio-literature-of-liberty-summer-1982-vol-5-no-2/

Also see: https://fee.org/learning-center/concepts/spontaneous-order/

2.d. Economics

Commercial or economic inter-individual and inter-communal relations and communities in society are normed by God to properly function in terms of a ‘free market,’ that is, according to the God-given norms for the acquisition and use of scarce resources and voluntary exchange. Any coercive government restrictions or regulations, going beyond administration of actual civil justice, on the acquisition, ownership, or use of resources, no matter what the intention or pretense (whether this involves money, credit, investment, production, products, distribution, consumption, buying, selling, renting, speculation, saving, labor, employment, services, wages, prices, etc) are all reprehensible violations of economic, moral, and civil justicial God-given norms, and is ultimately destructive to proper societal functioning and well-being.

See: Shawn Ritenour, Foundations of Economics: A Christian View (2010)
Also see: Per Bylund, The Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized: How Regulations Affect Our Everyday Lives (2016)

3. What Is Civil Governance?

3.a. Civil justice distinguished from morality

Civil governance is the administration of civil justice, that is, the adjudication of disputes over ‘civil’/political rights according to the God-given norms of civil justice, with the rules and enforcement that accompany it. Civil (or political) justice and rights concern legitimately coercively-enforceable normative claims on one’s person or property. In this sense, civil justice (concerning civil rights and obligations) is distinguished from the sense of what is due to others regarding properly non-civil/non-political claims. For example, that which is properly moral concerns what is loving. Violations of civil justice may always be immoral, but not vice versa. Lying and coveting are immoral, but do not necessarily involve ‘crime’, that is, the violation of civil/political right.

See: Lysander Spooner, Vices Are Not Crimes (1875)

https://mises.org/library/vices-are-not-crimes

3.b. Self-ownership and property right

All humans are created by God, and so He is every person’s Owner. God in Christ is the Creator and Owner of all things (Colossians 1:15-17). At the same time, having created humans in His image, God has given each person a stewardship over themselves and their property. In relation to other humans, we call each person’s stewardship their self-ownership. And this self-ownership can be extended to acquisition of ownership in scarce resources. Ownership is the right to exclusive control, use, or disposal of a resource. We call this ‘property rights’ (in one’s person and things; cf. Exodus 21:16; Matthew 20:15; Acts 5:4); one’s civil/political right.

See: Stephan Kinsella, What Libertarianism Is (2009)

https://mises.org/library/what-libertarianism

Also see: Stephan Kinsella, How We Come To Own Ourselves (2006)

https://mises.org/library/how-we-come-own-ourselves

3.c. Civil justicial norm of non-aggression

Necessarily corresponding to property rights is the obligation to never initiate (or to never employ first use of) coercion against another’s person or property. We call such initiation of coercion ‘aggression’. The only legitimate use of coercion against another’s person or property is in proportional response to prior aggression. Legitimate coercion is exclusively responsive. Aggression against another’s person or property (whether murder, rape, assault, theft, kidnapping, fraud, or the credible threatening of these things) is never legitimate. This norm concerning the legitimate use of responsive coercion and the illegitimacy of initiatory coercion or aggression is often called the ‘non-aggression principle’. It is a God-given moral norm insofar as it is expressed in the Biblical prohibition of murder and theft (cf, Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5). It is also a God-given norm for civil justice, expressed in the Biblical affirmation of the law of proportionate retribution (lex talionis), as self-ownership/property rights delineate that which is properly coercively-enforceable (cf, Genesis 9:5-6; Proverbs 3:30; 1 Peter 4:15).

3.d. God’s ordination of civil governance

Romans 13:1-7 specifies that God ordains the administration of civil justice. This involves the legitimate use of coercive retribution against aggressors (those who commit aggression against another’s person or property), enforcing restitution by aggressors to their victims. According to God’s ordination, civil governance is strictly limited to this task. The civil rulers to which all should submit (also, 1 Peter 2:13-14; Titus 3:1) are those that administer actual civil justice. The claim to civil power or exercise of power or coercion on any pretense that violates civil justice is not ordained by God according to Scripture, and may be legitimately resisted. It is not only orders to sin that must be refused, but any would-be civil regulation beyond the God-ordained sphere of civil justice may be justly ignored. Those who are unjust are not legitimate authorities to whom believers should submit civil disputes among themselves (1 Corinthians 6:1-8).

See: Gregory Baus, Romans 13 and Stateless Civil Governance: A Reformed View (2019)

https://libertarianchristians.com/2019/05/31/romans-13-and-stateless-civil-governance-a-reformed-view/

And https://mereliberty.com/romans13/

3.e. Taxation

Scripture does not say that anyone in fact owes taxes. Rather, Scripture requires us to pay to others what is actually owed to them (Romans 13:7), that is, to give others what they rightly own. In Matthew 22:15-22 (also Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26), our Lord affirms that only Caesar’s own property belongs to Caesar, and should be given to him. The Lord Jesus neither condones taxation, nor obligates anyone to submit to theft.

See: Jeff Barr, Render Unto Caesar (2010)

https://mises.org/wire/render-unto-caesar-most-misunderstood-new-testament-passage

Also see: Rocco Stanzione, Render Unto Caesar (2016)

https://truthandliberty.me/2019/08/22/render-unto-caesar/

3.f. War

An individual or a community may legitimately defend themselves and their property or that of others, consensually on others’ behalf, using proportional responsive coercion against aggressors. This may include lethal coercion and enforcing restitution by aggressors to their victims. However, what is known as ‘war’ as conducted by states is never moral or just. We condemn and reject war in the strongest terms as a great evil. Christians should never participate in a state’s military that engages in any non-defensive actions, and/or coercive actions that are disproportionate, and/or actions that knowingly injure or murder any non-aggressors. Nor should Christians take employment with any contractors that supply such a state military’s war-making. (Romans 12:18; Proverbs 1:10-16)

See: Murray Rothbard, War, Peace, and the State (1963)

https://mises.org/library/war-peace-and-state

Also see: Wendy McElroy, Libertarian Just War Theory (2010)

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/articles/justwar.html

And The Libertarian Antithesis: War (2016)

https://original.antiwar.com/wendy_mcelroy/2016/09/04/libertarianism-antithesis-war/

3.g. Our Confessions

The historical confessions (and other doctrinal standards) of the Reformed churches do not oppose resistance to powers that violate civil justice. The Westminster Confession of Faith 20.4 specifies that those who “oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it... resist the ordinance of God.” Tyranny is unlawful, not the ordinance of God, and may be lawfully opposed. The London Baptist Confession of Faith 24.3 specifies that submission is only required to “lawful things commanded.” The Second Helvetic Confession of Faith 30 similarly specifies obedience only to “just and fair commands.” The Belgic Confession of Faith 36 specifies obedience only to “things that are not in conflict with God’s Word,” and denounces all, even civil powers, who would “subvert justice.”

3.h. The state’s Monopoly

A state is a monopoly on the use of coercion and supreme decision-making (or ‘final say’) within a territory. This monopoly involves enforcing a claim to exclusive control or prerogative over persons and property that belong to others, and that the state does not own. As such, all states are aggressors, inherently unjust, and antinormative. Every state is an unlawful usurpation of civil power; a tyranny. States are neither legitimate, nor necessary for civil governance. Legitimate civil governance is non-monopolistic because God has strictly limited civil governance to the administration of civil justice (adjudicating disputes over ‘civil’/political rights according to the God-given norms of civil justice) by coercive retribution against aggressors, enforcing restitution by aggressors to their victims. A state’s monopoly is in principle totalitarian, and always increasingly tends toward totalitarianism in practice.

See: Murray Rothbard, Anatomy of the state (1974)

https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state

Also see: Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy (2012)

Partially summarized here: http://tinyurl.com/CaseForAnarchy

The Trinity Psalter Hymnal One-Year Plan

2020-02-03T14:49:00.004-05:00

http://sites.google.com/site/tphyearplan/

This is a guide to singing through the Psalms in one year.

The following plan (in 52 weeks) groups together, according to length, the full Psalm settings as evenly as possible. In weeks with five or six Psalms, you can sing one each day of the week, Monday through Friday or Saturday, then on the following Sunday you can re-sing two or three in the morning, and two or three in the evening. In weeks with fewer but longer Psalms, you can divide the total number of stanzas (e.g., by 5 or 6) and sing a portion each day of the week (and re-sing them all on Sunday). In this way, you'll sing through the entire Psalms twice each year.

Links to Hymnary for texts, sheet music, tunes audio, and videos at URCpsalmody.
Links to tunes audio also at ChristReformedDC.

See also http://trinitypsalterhymnal.org

week 1 : Psalms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

week 2 : Psalms 6, 7, 8, 9

week 3 : Psalms 10, 11, 12, 13

week 4 : Psalms 14, 15, 16, 17

week 5 : Psalm 18

week 6 : Psalms 19, 20, 21

week 7 : Psalms 22, 23, 24

week 8 : Psalms 25, 26, 27

week 9 : Psalms 28, 29, 30

week 10 : Psalms 31, 32, 33

week 11 : Psalms 34, 35

week 12 : Psalms 36, 37

week 13 : Psalms 38, 39, 40

week 14 : Psalms 41, 42, 43, 44

week 15 : Psalms 45, 46, 47, 48, 49

week 16 : Psalms 50, 51, 52

week 17 : Psalms 53, 54, 55, 56, 57

week 18 : Psalms 58, 59, 60, 61

week 19 : Psalms 62, 63, 64, 65

week 20 : Psalms 66, 67, 68

week 21 : Psalms 69, 70

week 22 : Psalms 71, 72

week 23 : Psalms 73, 74

week 24 : Psalms 75, 76, 77

week 25 : Psalm 78

week 26 : Psalms 79, 80, 81, 82

week 27 : Psalms 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88

week 28 : Psalm 89

week 29 : Psalms 90, 91, 92

week 30 : Psalms 93, 94, 95, 96

week 31 : Psalms 97, 98, 99, 100, 101

week 32 : Psalms 102, 103

week 33 : Psalm 104

week 34 : Psalm 105

week 35 : Psalm 106

week 36 : Psalms 107, 108

week 37 : Psalms 109, 110, 111

week 38 : Psalms 112, 113, 114, 115

week 39 : Psalms 116, 117, 118

week 40 : Psalm 119 A, B, C, D, E, F

week 41 : Psalm 119 G, H, I, J, K, L

week 42 : Psalm 119 M, N, O, P, Q, R

week 43 : Psalms 119 S, T, U, V, 120, 121

week 44 : Psalms 122, 123, 124, 125, 126

week 45 : Psalms 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132

week 46 : Psalms 133, 134, 135

week 47 : Psalms 136, 137

week 48 : Psalms 138, 139, 140

week 49 : Psalms 141, 142, 143

week 50 : Psalms 144, 145

week 51 : Psalms 146, 147

week 52 : Psalms 148, 149, 150

In the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, some of the Psalms have only one setting (e.g., Psalm 3), and have no additional designation. For those Psalms with more than one setting, the first setting is a full Psalm, designated as “A” (e.g., Psalm 1A); additional settings may also be full. However, Psalm 119 is an exception. It has 22 distinct sections, and the alphabetical designations (A through V) correspond to those sections. Full Psalm settings include verse numbers with the text. The partial or paraphrased Psalms are indicated at the end of the setting. Including the 22 sections of Psalm 119, there are at least 171 full settings in the Trinity Psalter Hymnal.

*******

Additional Resources

Why Sing All 150 Psalms? by Peter Wallace
https://www.opc.org/nh.html?article_id=809

Bible Project Intro to The Psalms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpny22k_7uk

Bible Project (more detailed) Overview of The Psalms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9phNEaPrv8

Learning to Love The Psalms by W. Robert Godfrey:
[wscal] [rhbooks] [amzn]
Interview with author (audio): Office Hours
Conference presentation (video): Ligonier
12-part series (video): Ligonier

Eschatology of the Psalter by Geerhardus Vos:
[html] [pdf]

1650 Psalter with notes by John Brown of Haddington:
https://thewestminsterstandard.org/1650-scottish-metrical-psalter

1650 Psalter congregational recordings:
https://www.christcovenantrpc.org/audio/psalm-singing

Genevan Psalter (c. 1562) text and tunes:
https://www.genevanpsalter.com/music-a-lyrics

a note on the use of imprecation / imprecatory psalms in the new covenant:

" We believe that Christ is present in all Scripture and certainly in the Psalms, even the imprecatory psalms. In those, our Lord Jesus Christ in his own person, particularly at the cross, receives God’s wrath against us for our sin and, in and by the gospel, makes many former enemies to be friends. (In this way, his enemies are vanquished even as Israel often pleaded for their defeat.) "
~Alan Strange

" 'Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’ ' (Rom. 12:19). In other words, Christians should never seek to do anything to curse their enemies, but we should pray that God will bring His vengeance —as in Psalm 94. "
~Peter Wallace

This (imprecation) is also what we pray in the 2nd petition of the Lord's Prayer:

WSC 102. Q. What do we pray for in the second petition?
A. In the second petition, which is, Thy kingdom come, we pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed; and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.

Praying The Lord's Prayer

2020-02-03T14:27:00.002-05:00

The Lord’s Prayer, elaborated in 8 parts

based on the Westminster Larger Catechism #178-196

1. Our Father who is in heaven

Heavenly Father, we draw near to You our God with confidence of Your fatherly goodness towards us in Your Son Jesus Christ. With reverence and affection, we express our total dependence on You. Acknowledging Your sovereign power and majesty, by Your Holy Spirit, we are grateful for Your condescending to hear and answer us as we pray according to Your will.

2. Hallowed be Your name

We confess our utter inability and unwillingness of ourselves to honor You rightly. So we pray that You would, by Your grace, enable and incline us to know, love, and glorify You as You have revealed Yourself in Your Word and all Your works. And in all our thinking, speaking, and doing, we pray that by Your Spirit You would prevent and remove our unbelief, ignorance, and disobedience. We pray that by Your providence You would continue to direct all things to Your own glory.

3. May Your kingdom come

We confess that through our own fault we are by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan. So we pray that You would destroy the kingdom of darkness, conquering all Your and our spiritual enemies. We pray that You would advance Your kingdom in this age by the propagation of the gospel everywhere, saving the full number of those You have chosen from among all peoples. Equip Your church with qualified officers, we pray, that Christ’s ordinances would be purely administered and effective in converting unbelievers and strengthening Your people. We pray that You would enable Your church to live peaceably and to patiently endure through all hardships. Come again soon, we pray, to consummate Your kingdom in the resurrection and new creation, having us reign with You forever.

4. May Your will be done in earth, as it is in heaven

We confess that of ourselves we are prone to rebel against Your Word, to complain against Your providence, and wholly inclined to our own sinful will. So we pray that You would take away all our sinful unwillingness, ignorance, weakness, and our heart’s corruption. We pray that by Your grace You would make us able and willing to know and do Your revealed will in all things. As holy angels obey You, enable us, we pray, to walk according to Your Spirit in all the good works You have prepared for us in a manner that pleases You.

5. Give us this day our daily bread

We confess that because of our sinfulness we do not deserve and cannot earn any of the outward blessings You give in this life. We acknowledge that of themselves they cannot sustain us, and that of ourselves we are prone to use them unlawfully. So we pray that by Your wisdom and tender care, You would provide for our temporal needs. Enable us each day, we pray, in the use of lawful means to enjoy Your free and generous gifts with contentment and gratitude to Your glory.

6. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

We confess that we are guilty both of original and actual sin, and are debtors to Your justice. We acknowledge that we cannot make the least satisfaction for that debt. So we pray that of Your free grace, through the obedience and satisfaction of Christ, applied by faith alone, You would acquit us from our guilt and due punishment, and accept us in Your Beloved Son. Continue Your grace to us we pray, grant us repentance, pardon our daily sins, and fill us with peace and joy, giving us each day more and more assurance of Your forgiveness. We pray that You would embolden us to ask for, and encourage us to expect Your forgiveness, while You enable us sincerely to forgive others their offenses.

7. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

We confess that of ourselves we would seek temptation, and are unable and unwilling to resist or be delivered. Even after Your renewing our hearts, and pardoning our sins, we are still subject to temptations of every sort. So we pray that You would strengthen us against temptation through all means of grace; in Your providence keep us from being tempted to sin; when we are tempted, enable us to resist by Your Spirit; and if we sin, bring us quickly to repentance and greater sanctification. Give us assurance, we pray, of Your guidance and Your promise to soon crush Satan under our feet, perfecting in everlasting glory our deliverance from sin, death, and all evil.

8. For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever

We acknowledge, our God, that all sovereignty, glorious excellence, and all highest praise is eternally Yours alone. So we are emboldened by Your Holy Spirit to ask these things of You in faith, trusting that You are willing and able to help us. We offer our requests, relying on Your grace to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, praying in His name.
Amen.

concept vs. 'limiting idea'

2019-09-13T00:27:00.000-04:00

On the difference between
concept and limiting idea
from Roy Clouser's The Myth of Religious Neutrality [amzn] [ndp]
Chapter 10, section 6, p.224-227 (with minor edits)

Since our view is that God’s being can’t be conceived, perhaps some have mistakenly supposed this means we can't frame the idea of unconditional reality. Here's an explanation of the difference between a concept and a limiting idea that should help clarify.

When we form a concept we combine in thought a number of properties of whatever it is we’re conceiving. This is why the contents of a concept can be parsed, analyzed, and made specific. A concept, of course, also includes the relation(s) in which its content (properties) are taken to stand to one another, which is why a definition is the linguistic statement of the contents of a concept.

By contrast, a/n (limiting) idea of something is not a combination of its properties, but is our awareness of something that comes about via the relations in which it stands to other things. For example, the property 'red' is not able to be analyzed into any constituent elements because there aren’t any. That’s also why it can’t be defined in a so-called real definition.

A real definition of red would be one by which you could know its color quality from the definition alone. It will not do to offer a circumscription such as “the hue we see when our eyesight is normal and we are exposed to light of such and such wavelength.” We would already have to know what red looks like to be able to set its wavelength parameters. The same holds for other attempts such as “the color of blood or of a ruby” etc.

We know red by contrasting it to other colors, not by combining its constituent elements into a concept. The meta-properties that qualify the various aspects (spacial, physical, sensory, biotic, etc.) are similar in this regard to colors. We have limiting ideas of them, not concepts of them. We come to know them by encountering specific properties of things as further qualified by such meta-properties.

For example, we experience a particular shape as spatial, or a particular instance of hardness as physical, or a particular case of ingestion as biotic, etc. And we distinguish the meta-properties by comparing them to one another, unable as we are of forming even a limiting idea of any of them in isolation from all the others. We also need to keep in mind that limiting ideas can have more or less content; some can be formed by stripping away part of the contents and relations found in concepts. When we form an idea in that way we often use the same term for both the concept and for the idea derived from it, so it becomes important not to shift back and forth between the two sorts of knowledge without realizing it.*

If there is doubt about whether there really is such idea-knowledge as distinguished from concept-knowledge, consider the following example of a limiting idea: numbers no one ever has or will ever conceive of. Since the series of natural numbers is infinite, it is necessarily true that there will always be some numbers no human ever conceives of. But did we just conceive of such numbers by saying that? Surely not. It’s impossible to conceive of any of them, for any number we conceive of is thereby excluded from the class picked out by this limiting idea.

Here, then, is a case of a limiting idea, not a concept. We have the idea that there are such numbers, but no concept of exactly what any of them are. This idea has less content than ideas of, say, colors or the aspectual qualifiers I called meta-properties, but there is still some content to it. All unconceived numbers would still be quantities of some sort and stand in various mathematical relations to other quantities. (This fits with the earlier part of my account when I said that the content of an idea is known via the relations it has to other things of which we have concepts or ideas.) In this same way, yet other ideas can be formed that have even less content than these examples. But they are made possible by the fact that their contents stand in relations to the contents of concepts or ideas which have more content than they do.

Our awareness of existence is, I contend, one of these ideas. Now the idea of existence is a notoriously difficult one, and I will not pretend to resolve here the knotty debates that surround it. I will only try to make clear why I say that it is a limiting idea. No one doubts that we derive our awareness of existence from our experience of the world around us. The term “exist” literally means “to stand out from,” or be distinct from. It reflects the fact that we come to recognize that something 'is' by distinguishing it from other things.

But the existence of something cannot be defined as its ability to be picked out; that is at best a circumscription of it. The fact that we can distinguish a thing is made possible by the fact that it exists, not the other way round. As a result, even the literal meaning of the word “exist” does not name what we are really after when we use it, but points beyond its own meaning to the fact of existence which lies behind it and makes it possible.

To complicate things further, it seems that the existence of each thing we confront in experience is uniquely individual to that thing. It is not a quality a thing possesses alongside its other qualities, because a thing would have to exist in order to possess qualities. And it certainly is not a universal quality shared by more than one thing; two or more things do not have the same existence. (The distinguishability of things which forms the literal meaning of “exist” may be shared, but not the fact of their existence which makes them distinguishable.)

For these reasons, I think that existence is not something we ever really conceptualize. It is an unanalyzable, indefinable, basic factor of creation which we confront in our experience, which we are unable to grasp in a concept, and of which we have only a limiting idea.

When we speak of God’s self-existence, then, we are applying to God our limiting idea of existence which is thereby stripped even further of content: it is existence which does not depend on anything in any way, is outside time, and is not governed by any law that holds for creatures. It is thus a limiting idea that is almost entirely negative, for even the property of being “distinguishable” is true of God only in His relation to creation, since aside from what He has created there would be nothing for Him to be distinguished from.

What is left of the idea is only this: God’s unconditional being is what all else depends on for existence; God can be no matter what, while without God nothing else can be at all. Thus while it is beyond us to grasp conceptually what that being is, we can have the idea that there is ultimate, unconditional being upon which all else stands in the relation of total dependence. As a result, we are brought back to the statement of St. Basil that “We do not know what God is, but only what he is not and how he relates to creatures.”

The upshot is that we do have both conceptual knowledge and idea knowledge of God with respect to His creaturely adaptations to us, while we have only the barest limiting idea of His being aside from those adaptations. And that limiting idea is not of a primordial nature of His being, but only of the relation in which everything else stands to it. Its content, again, is only that God is the unconditional, ultimate source of the existence of everything else. Put the old-time way: God is the reality whose essence is existence.

To this it must be immediately added that (while the distinction between concept and limiting idea involves abstraction) we come to this idea-knowledge of God’s being not through philosophical speculation but by revelation. The idea of God’s transcendent being comes about because in the course of revealing His accommodated nature, God has also revealed that every feature of creation (visible or invisible) has been brought into existence by Him out of nothing.

That revelation, not theorizing, is the basis of the view that His unaccommodated, uncreated being is something we cannot conceptualize at all. Thus our view that we can’t have a concept of what God’s being is but only the idea that it is, is derived entirely from the revelation of His accommodations to us of which we have both concepts and ideas with definite content.

----

* For example, when we use the term “cause” to express that God is the creator of the world, it is as a limiting idea rather than a concept. No concept we have of causality corresponds to God’s creatorship: it is neither formal, nor final, nor material, nor efficient; neither is it any of the causal relations that are qualified physically, biotically, sensorily, historically, or economically, etc., since God is the creator of all the kinds of causality found in the cosmos.

But stripped of these and every other conceptual specification (time, and all laws), all that is left is the limiting idea of one thing bringing about another in an unspecifiable sense. Only in that way, by designating a limiting idea, can the term “cause” be used for the dependency of everything other than God on God.

Another example is the term “could” when applied to God. When we ask whether God could have created the world other than the way He did, or whether He could have made the laws governing possibility different from what they are for our experience, we are using “could” as a limiting idea, not a concept. Our concepts of “could” are all senses of possibility delimited by laws that hold in the cosmos—laws that God created. (Hence God didn’t create by choosing from among antecedently existing possibilities, but created every sense of possibility we can conceptualize.) Stripped of all aspectual (and other) specifications, however, we can use the limiting idea that God “could” have created other laws of possibility which we can’t now even form an idea of, since our knowing is governed by the laws He in fact did create.

This is why asking whether God could have made different laws does not amount to asking whether it’s logically possible that the laws of logic be other than they are. An affirmative answer to that question yields a contradiction. But that is not the right way to understand the question. Rather, the question uses “could” to refer to the limiting idea of the ontological basis of every kind of possibility found in the cosmos. That basis is, of course, the unknowable, originating being of God. The same goes for the idea that God “assumes” relations and properties to Himself. That, too, is a limiting idea meaning that He brings it about that they are true of Him in a way unspecifiable by us.

Abstraction: precisive and nonprecisive

2019-02-20T23:52:00.000-05:00

On the distinction between

precisive and nonprecisive abstraction

3 excerpts from Roderick T. Long *

From “Review: The Benefits and Hazards of Dialectical Libertarianism.” (Reviewing Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism by Chris Matthew Sciabarra) The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 2, No. 2, The Aesthetics Symposium (Spring 2001): p.408-418 [JSTOR]

Aristotle's theory of abstraction was formed in response to that of Plato, who, like the Hegelians, had thought that abstractions do not strictly apply to concrete reality. Unlike the Hegelians, however, Plato had concluded, not that abstraction falsifies, but rather that the reality to which abstractions apply is itself an abstract reality, a realm of Platonic Forms. Aristotle rejects Platonic Forms; only concrete particulars are real. But for Aristotle, abstraction applies perfectly adequately to concrete particulars. Plato had maintained that mathematics deals with immaterial entities apart from the physical world; Aristotle, by contrast, maintains that mathematics deals with the same objects that physics does-it simply deals with them qua mathematical rather than qua physical (Physics 409 193b22-36; Metaphysics 1076a33-1078b6).

The medieval Aristotelians drew a helpful distinction between precisive and non-precisive abstraction:

" Precision is a mode of abstraction by which we cut off or exclude something from a notion. Abstraction is the consideration of something without either including or excluding from its notion characteristics joined to it in reality. Abstraction without precision does not exclude anything from what it abstracts, but includes the whole thing, though implicitly and indeterminately. "
(Armand Maurer note to Aquinas 1968, 39n)

On the medieval view, the concept soul and the concept angel are both formed by focusing on the psychological characteristics of human beings in abstraction from their physical characteristics. But angel is a precisive abstraction from which physical characteristics are expressly excluded, while soul is a non-precisive abstraction in which physical characteristics are simply not specified one way or the other. In forming the concept soul we do not thereby commit ourselves to the soul's separability from the body. The scholastics of course believed in the separability of the soul, but they thought this separability has to be argued for; it is not inherent in the very concept of soul. By contrast, separability from matter is inherent in the concept of angel An angel is conceived of as not physical; a soul is conceived of not as physical. In Objectivist terms, the distinction can be seen as one between measurement-omission and measurement-exclusion. Aquinas writes:

Abstraction may occur in two ways. First . . . we may under-stand that one thing does not exist in some other, or that it is separate from it. Secondly . . . we understand one thing without considering another. Thus, for the intellect to abstract one from another things which are not really abstract from one another, does, in the first mode of abstraction, imply falsehood. But, in the second mode of abstraction, for the intellect to abstract things which are not really abstract from one another, does not involve falsehood. . . . If, therefore, the intellect is said to be false when it understands a thing otherwise than as it is, that is so, if the word otherwise refers to the thing understood.... Hence, the intellect would be false if it abstracted the species of a stone its matter in such a way as to think that the species did not exist in matter, as Plato held. But it is not so, if otherwise be taken as referring to the one who understands. (Aquinas 1999, 157; Summa Theologia I. 85.1 ad 1)

When we form the concepts angel and soul, we are considering psychological characteristics otherwise than as we find them in reality, but in two different ways. In the case of angel we are considering psychological characteristics as though they themselves existed differently from the way we find them to exist in our experience, namely, in matter, this is what Aquinas means by "otherwise" referring to the thing understood. But in the case of soul we are not considering the psychological characteristics to exist without matter: rather, we are considering them without considering matter; this is what Aquinas means by "otherwise" referring to the one who understands. The process by which the concept soul is formed guarantees that the concept applies to reality, for there is no conflict between the concept and the concretes from which it was formed; for the concept angel this is not so, and hence the applicability of this concept to reality requires further proof.

One can now see that the Hegelians, in treating all abstraction as falsification, were failing to grasp the distinction between precisive and non-precisive abstraction. There is nothing "provisional" or "approximate" about non-precisive abstraction; it is perfectly accurate. It may not express the entire truth, but what it does express is entirely true. In fact, the Aristotelian approach can be seen as- what else? —a dialectical transcendence of the false alternatives of Platonism and Hegelianism:

Hegelianism:

1. Precisive abstraction always falsifies.

2. But all abstraction is precisive abstraction.

3. Therefore, abstraction always falsifies.

Platonism:

1. Abstraction does not always falsify.

2. But all abstraction is precisive abstraction.

3. Therefore, precisive abstraction does not always falsify.

Aristotelianism:

1. Abstraction does not always falsify.

2. But precisive abstraction always falsifies.

3. Therefore, not all abstraction is precisive abstraction.

The crucial premise that unites Platonism and Hegelianism is the premise that all abstraction is precisive. That is not to say that either side formulated that premise explicitly; to do that, they would have had to grasp the difference between precisive and non-precisive abstraction, and grasping that difference is the solution to the problem. Aristotelianism grasps it, and so is in a position to reject the mistaken assumption that lies at the root of the false dichotomy Another way of making the distinction clear is to recall the criticisms leveled by economists of the Austrian School against the idealized models of neoclassical economics, such as "perfect competition" and homo economicus. The criticism is not simply that these models abstract from what human beings are like in their full concreteness; after all, Austrian theory does that too. (Austrian praxeology, for example, considers the logical features of human action in abstraction from their psychological causes.) The criticism is rather that the neoclassical models distort and falsify reality by prescinding (precisively abstracting) from, and thus treating human beings as lacking, certain features (ignorance, non-monetary goals) that they actually possess. Of course, idealizations —when they are not too inaccurate— can sometimes be useful, but only if we keep in mind that they are merely provisional approximations. By contrast, praxeological principles —e.g, that voluntary action always involves an exchange of what the agent wants less for what the agent wants more — are not "provisional" or "approximate," for although they abstract from concrete human reality, they do so non-precisively, and so do not "idealize" or "falsify" the concretes from which they were formed. Hegelian internalism treats all abstractions as though they were idealizations.

On this issue, Hayek and Rand are both squarely in the Aristotelian rather than the Hegelian camp. Both believe that, metaphysically, only concretes exist; thus they reject Platonism. But both are also concerned to defend the validity of abstraction. . . . Hayek sees the internalist cult of concreteness as implicitly totalitarian, and explicitly identifies Hegel as his antagonist on this issue:

[A]bstract concepts are a means to cope with the complexity of the concrete which our mind is not capable of fully mastering. . . . Abstractness [is] the basis of man's capacity to move successfully in a world very imperfectly known to him — an adaption to his ignorance of most of the particular facts of his surroundings. . . . We never act, and never could act, in full consideration of all the facts of a particular situation, but always by singling out as relevant only some aspects of it. . . . The rationalist revolt against reason, if we may so call it, is usually directed against the abstractness of thought. . . . Although the use of abstraction extends the scope of phenomena which we can master intellectually, it does so by limiting the degree to which we can foresee the effects of our actions, and therefore also by limiting to certain general features the degree to which we can shape the world to our liking. . . . Perhaps nobody has seen this connection between [classical] liberalism and the insight into the limited powers of abstract thinking more clearly than that ultra-rationalist who has become the fountain head of most modern irrationalism and totalitarianism, G. W. F. Hegel. . . . It is the over-estimation of the powers of reason to the revolt against the submission to abstract rules. Constructivist rationalism . . . deceives itself that reason can directly master all the particulars; and it is thereby led to a preference for the concrete over the abstract, the particular over the general. . . . [T]he very over-estimation of those powers of reason of which man is conscious has led him to hold in contempt what has made reason as powerful as it is: its abstract character. It was the failure to recognize that abstractions help our reason go further than it could if it tried to master all the particulars which produced a host of schools of philosophy inimical to abstract reason —philosophies of the concrete, of life' and of 'existence' which extol emotion, the particular and the instinctive, and which are only too ready to support such emotions as those of race, nation, and class. (Hayek 1973, 29-34; cf. Hayek 1976, ch 7)

Discussing Comte, whom he regards as Hegel's spiritual sibling, Hayek writes:

Comte and many others regard social phenomena as given wholes... contending that concrete social phenomena can be understood only by considering the totality of everything that can be found within certain spatio-temporal boundaries, that any attempt to select parts or aspects as systematically connected is bound to fail.... Having been led [to] the view that the individual is "a pure abstraction" and society as a whole a single collective being, [Comte] is of necessity led to... a totalitarian view of society. (Hayek 1979a, 103, 354)

In short, Hayek recognizes the connection between totalitarian concreteness-worship, metaphysical internalism, and the tendency to treat all abstraction as precisive and therefore falsifying.

Rand, like Hayek, sees abstraction as a means of reducing cognitive complexity: "[T]he range of what man can hold in the focus of his conscious awareness at any given moment, is limited. The essence, therefore, of man's incomparable cognitive power is the ability to reduce a vast amount of information to a minimal number of units —which is the task performed by his conceptual faculty" (Rand 1990, 63).

Of course, the Hegelians too can claim to endorse abstract aids to cognitive economy —but only as precisive idealizations and provisional approximations. For Rand, however, abstraction is non- precisive and therefore does not falsify: "If a child considers a match, a pencil and a stick, he observes that length is the attribute they have in common, but their specific lengths differ. . . . In order to form the concept 'length,' the child's mind retains the attribute and omits its particular measurements. . . . Bear firmly in mind that the term ‘measurements omitted’ does not mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that measurements exist, but are not specified. . . . The principle is: the relevant measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity" (11-12).

Rand regards abstraction as contextual, but by this she does not mean that it is provisional, to be overturned as one's context of knowledge broadens. On the contrary:

[A]ll conceptualization is a contextual process; the context is the entire field of a mind's awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development. . . . If [a person's] grasp is non-contradictory, then even if the scope of his knowledge is modest and the content of his concepts is primitive, it will not contradict the content of the same concepts in the mind of the most advanced scientists.

The same is true of definitions. All definitions are contextual, and a more primitive definition does not contradict a more advanced one; the latter merely expands the former. (43)

Rand was not always on the opposite side of the fence from Hegel on this issue. In keeping, perhaps, with her dialectically oriented education, Rand had an early suspicion of abstraction and a preference for concreteness; in a journal entry for 15 May 1934, she writes:

There have been too many philosophical abstractions, too much intellectual "algebra". . . . What we need is an "arithmetic" of the spirit. . . . [It] is only the individual and the particular, concrete problem that counts. Algebraic constructions are only a convenience. In practice, they have no use, unless the proper arithmetical content is inserted into the formula. . . . This... has to be the cornerstone of my philosophy-proving the supremacy of actual living over all other considerations. . . . [M]y "arithmetic" of philosophy has to be philosophy brought up to the realm of actual living. (I say intentionally brought up to it, not down.) . . . That philosophical "algebra" is, to my mind, the greatest crime of metaphysics. . . . It is the result of that underlying error of human thinking—which forgets the distinction between abstraction and reality, thus denying reality. For abstractions are only a convenience, not a fact. (Rand 1997, 71-72)

This attitude toward abstraction is almost diametrically opposed to Rand's mature views. Two decades later, in a journal entry for 6 January 1952, she would write that "the root of all philosophical errors" is "to substitute for an abstraction one of the concrete applications of that abstraction, and at the same time make that concrete contradict and invalidate the abstraction" (640). Whereas before, the great mistake was to substitute the abstract for the concrete, now the great mistake is to substitute the concrete for the abstract. This is because the mature Rand no longer regards abstractions as a mere “convenience," but rather as indispensable to all knowledge: "[W]ithout abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon" (Rand 1984, 5). In 1934, Rand was saying that the validity of abstractions depends on which concretes you plug into them, which "arithmetical content is inserted" into the algebraic formula. But her mature view is that an abstraction, if it is valid at all, is valid regardless of which concretes one plugs into it. Employing the algebraic metaphor once again but to an opposite purpose, she explains: "The relationship of concepts to their constituent particulars is the same as the relation of algebraic symbols In the equation 2a = a + a, any number may be substituted for the symbol 'a' without affecting the truth of the equation. Let those who try to invalidate concepts by declaring that they cannot find 'manness' in men, try to invalidate algebra by declaring that they cannot find 'a-ness' in 5 or in 5,000,000” (Rand 1990, 18).

This is not to say that Rand gave up her earlier view that one must always be able to relate one's abstractions to the concrete; by no means. But her mature view is that if you can't relate your abstraction to the concrete, you haven't successfully formed the abstraction in the first place. In a journal entry for 4 May 1946, she writes:

In order to think at all, man must be able to perform this cycle: he must know how to see an abstraction in the concrete and the concrete in an abstraction, and always relate one to the other. He must be able to derive an abstraction from the concrete [and] then be able to apply the abstraction. . . . Example: a man who has understood and accepted the abstract principle of unalienable individual rights cannot then go about advocating compulsory labor conscription. . . . Those who do have not performed either part of the cycle: neither the abstraction nor the translating of the abstraction into the concrete. The cycle is unbreakable; no part of it can be of any use, until and unless the cycle is completed. . . . A broken electric circuit does not function in the separate parts; it must be unbroken or there is no current. (Rand 1997, 481)

We don't have the abstraction and then see if we can apply it to the concrete; rather, the ability to apply it to the concrete is part of having the abstraction. It follows as a corollary that “floating abstractions” are not really abstractions, just as counterfeit money is not a kind of money. Hence we never have to worry about having an abstraction we don't know how to apply (though we may have to worry about thinking we have an abstraction when we don't).

For Hegel, Comte, and Marx, the two good things —concreteness and the collective— go together, as do the two bad things —abstraction and the individual. Those individualist thinkers who were influenced by Hegel —e.g., Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche— accepted his preference for the concrete over the abstract, while reversing his preference for the collective over the individual; and so their views about what goes with what altered accordingly. Whereas the Hegelians had dismissed the individual as abstract and extolled the collective as concrete, these proto-existentialists dismissed the collective as abstract and extolled the individual as concrete. It is perhaps a testimony to Rand's early Nietzschean phase that she initially found herself in this camp. In 1934, Rand associated abstraction with collectivism and concreteness with individualism: "Algebra —spiritually— is too much of the mob, of the masses, the collective, being too general. The individual is the arithmetical quantity of the spirit" (71). But in the 1970s, she was making precisely the opposite association: to the "concrete-bound, anti-conceptual mentality," the chief imperative is "loyalty to the group," and its consequent manifestations are tribalism, racism, and xenophobia (Rand 1982, 39-45). Rand ended up reversing both of Hegel's evaluations, whereas the proto-existentialists had reversed only one, and so now concreteness and collectivism went together again, but as partners in sin rather than partners in virtue. In liberating herself from both the Hegelian and the proto-existentialist versions of the cult of concreteness, Rand had migrated firmly from the proto-existentialist to the Aristotelian camp.

We've seen that Hegel and the dialectical tradition he inspired regard all abstraction as precisive and therefore as falsification, and recognize its utility only as a provisional idealization. Hence they believe that nothing is real or comprehensible apart from the whole and so are committed to a metaphysics of internal relations. Aristotle, Hayek, and Rand, by contrast, all recognize the possibility of non-precisive abstraction, and so have no inherent bias toward internalism.

From “Rejoinder to Bissell, Register, and Sciabarra: Keeping Context in Context: The Limits of Dialectics.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2002): p.413-415 [JSTOR]

Register challenges my critique of precisive abstraction by offering the example of a historian constructing an abstract model of the Battle of Gettysburg. But is this historian engaged in precisive or in non-precisive abstraction? Register assumes it must be the former, but this is not so clear. The fact that the model "ignores the overwhelming majority of the facts" does not render it precisive; it need not stipulate the presence of such facts, so long as it does not stipulate their absence. What about the fact that the model treats the average starting time of Pickett's Charge as the starting time? Well, it depends to how many significant figures the starting time is specified. Suppose the earliest soldier to start did so at 2:00:08, and the last soldier to start did so at 2:00:15. In that case, it would not be precisive to say that the charge started at 2:00, but it would be precisive to say that the charge started at 2:00:00. The historian may find a precisive model useful; they often are, so long as they are used with care. But the alternative to a precisive model is a non-precisive one, not "an array of unintegrable facts" (Register 2002, 361).

Register (2002, 364) writes: "In order to understand society and history, it's necessary to abstract parts of a society or historical events from the social or historical whole of which they are parts and then study them in relation to one another. But this is precisive abstraction." Well, it can be; but it needn't be. There is nothing inherently precisive about abstracting parts from wholes; it depends whether the part's connection to the whole is specified as absent, or just not specified as present.

Register also states that precisively abstracting X from Y will falsify only if X is internally related to Y. I disagree. So long as X is related (albeit externally) to Y, if a precisive abstraction treats X as not (rather than merely not as) related to Y, then falsification has occurred.

Since non-precisive abstraction (in Objectivist terms, measurement-omission) is the process by which we form concepts, Register concludes that the product of a non-precisive abstraction is always a concept, but I don't see why. An abstract model of the Battle of Gettysburg is not a concept; but if it leaves features out by failing to specify their presence, rather than by specifying their absence, then it clearly is a product of non-precisive abstraction. Likewise, (not just the concepts but) the assertions of Austrian praxeology are the products of non-precisive abstraction. I'm puzzled at Register's insistence that the products of non-precisive abstraction can never have truth-values, when in the previous paragraph he seems to have granted the status of my "sample praxeological claim" as a "conceptual truth" reached by non-precisive abstraction. I likewise cannot accept Register's assumption that precisive abstraction abstracts parts from wholes, while non-precisive abstraction abstracts features from their bearers. Precisive and non-precisive abstraction are distinguished by how, rather than what, they abstract.

Here is how I understand the distinction. Consider any two relata X and Y. (Their relation might be that of part to whole, that of feature to bearer, or something else.) Consider, further, some way of viewing X that does not include X's relation to Y. (This "way of viewing" might be a concept, a proposition, a model, a theory, or anything else.) If this way of viewing X specifies the absence of X's relation to Y, then it is precisive; if it merely fails to specify the presence of X's relation to Y, then it is non-precisive. Hence, I strongly disagree with Register's claim that whenever we consider parts in abstraction from their social whole we are engaged in precisive abstraction.

From "Realism and Abstraction in Economics: Aristotle and Mises versus Friedman." The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics Vol.9, No. 3 (Fall 2006): p.5-9 [here]

Aristotle’s theory of abstraction may be seen as a response to the following worry. It can easily seem that abstract concepts do not strictly apply to reality. The concept horse, for example, is supposed to apply to all horses, of whatever color. But obviously it could not do so if it had as its content a horse of any one definite color; if it were the concept of a brown horse, for example, it could not apply to a black one. In order to apply to all horses, then, the concept horse must have as its content a horse of no determinate color. But in that case the concept still does not apply strictly to any actual horse; for every actual horse has some determinate color. Either the concept horse somehow falsifies reality, then, or else—as Aristotle’s teacher Plato had argued—its actual referent is not any physical horse but the transcendent, immaterial Form of Horse, which indeed has no determinate color, and of which our familiar physical horses are merely an inadequate reflection. Hence abstractions have either mysterious otherworldly referents or no referents at all; in either case, they cannot refer to the familiar objects of ordinary experience.

Aristotle’s solution to this puzzle is to reconceive abstraction as a matter of attending to some aspects of a thing and ignoring others. To think the concept horse, for example, we focus on an ordinary horse—whether a real horse before us or an imagined horse before our mind’s eye—and then attend to the features it shares with other horses while ignoring its distinguishing features, such as its particular color.

In making [geometrical] diagrams . . . although we make no use of the fact that the triangle is determinate in quantity, we nonetheless draw it as determinate in quantity. Likewise also one who thinks, even if what he thinks is not quantitative, sets up before his eyes something quantitative but thinks of it not as quantitative; and if what he thinks is of a quantitative nature but indeterminate, he sets up something determinately quantitative but thinks of it merely as quantitative. (On Memory450a1–7)

Accordingly, Aristotle disagrees with Plato’s view that physics and geometry study different sorts of objects, physical and nonphysical respectively. For Aristotle, geometry studies physical objects just as much as physics does, but it studies them in a nonphysical way; the two sciences deal with the same familiar spatially extended objects, but geometry attends to their shape and position while abstracting from their physical embodiment:

We must consider how the mathematician differs from the physicist; for physical bodies have surfaces and volumes, lengths and points, all of which fall within the mathematician’s purview. . . . Now the mathematician too is concerned with such things, but not qua boundaries of physical bodies. . . . For they are separable in thought from motion, though from this separation no distinction or falsity arises. (Physics193b22–36)

Just as there are many statements characterizing things qua movable only, apart from what each of them is and apart from their accidents, and it does not necessarily follow from this that there is something movable apart from perceptible things, nor yet that there is some distinct nature within them, so too there will be statements and sciences that apply to movable things not qua movable but qua corporeal only, and again qua planes only, and qua lines only, and qua divisible, and qua indivisible but having position, and qua indivisible only. . . . For a human being is indivisible, qua human being. Now the arithmetician treats him as one indivisible thing, and considers what belongs to him qua human, while the geometer considers him neither qua human nor qua indivisible, but rather qua solid; for it’s clear that whatever would hold true of him even if he were somehow not indivisible can hold true of him irrespective of these characteristics. Accordingly, geometers are right in saying that the objects they discuss are real existents. (Metaphysics1077b23–1078a29)

This Aristotelian conception of abstraction was revived by the medieval Scholastics. Pierre Abelard (1079–1142), for example, undertook to “explain why thoughts gained through abstraction are not erroneous . . . even though they conceive things other than they are.” John Marenbon summarizes Abelard’s solution:

When I regard a man only as substance or only as a body, he explains, I am not conceiving anything in his nature which is not there, but I am not attending to all which he has. My thought would be erroneous if I regarded his nature as being only substance or only body. There is nothing erroneous, however, in regarding him only as substance or body; the “only” must apply to the regarding, not to the way in which the man exists. (Marenbon 1997, pp. 166–7)

Essentially the same position was held a century later by Thomas Aquinas (1224/5–1274), who wrote:

Abstraction may occur in two ways. First . . . we may understand that one thing does not exist in some other, or that it is separate from it. Secondly . . . we understand one thing without considering another. Thus, for the intellect to abstract one from another things which are not really abstract from one another, does, in the first mode of abstraction, imply falsehood. But, in the second mode of abstraction, for the intellect to abstract things which are not really abstract from one another, does not involve falsehood. . . . If, therefore, the intellect is said to be false when it understands a thing otherwise than as it is, that is so, if the word otherwise refers to the thing understood. . . . Hence, the intellect would be false if it abstracted the species of a stone from its matter in such a way as to think that the species did not exist in matter, as Plato held. But it is not so, if otherwise be taken as referring to the one who understands. (Summa Theologia I. 85. 1 ad 1; Aquinas 1999, p. 157)

Aquinas is here distinguishing between two different ways in which we might consider, say, a horse in abstraction from its color. We may consider the horse as not having a determinate color, or else we may consider the horse not as having a determinate color. To consider the horse as not having a determinate color is to hold, or attempt to hold, as the object of our thought a horse that simply has no determinate color—a creature never encountered in physical reality, and having its home either in Platonic heaven or nowhere. This sort of abstraction falsifies and contradicts the concretes on which it is based. But to consider the horse not as having a determinate color is simply to consider the horse as a horse without considering its color one way or the other; and here no falsification is involved.

These two types of abstraction are often referred to as precisive and nonprecisive. As Armand Maurer explains:

Precision is a mode of abstraction by which we cut off or exclude something from a notion. Abstraction is the consideration of something without either including or excluding from its notion characteristics joined to it in reality. Abstraction without precision does not exclude anything from what it abstracts, but includes the whole thing, though implicitly and indeterminately. (Note to Aquinas 1968, p. 39n)

In short, a precisive abstraction is one in which certain actual characteristics are specified as absent, while a nonprecisive abstraction is one in which certain actual characteristics are absent from specification. Plato failed to see how abstract concepts could apply strictly to physical reality because he failed to see that abstraction could be nonprecisive; one might say that he mistook an indeterminate way of thinking about something for a way of thinking about something indeterminate.

This is very much how the Austrian Aristotelian Franz Brentano (18381917) describes the contrast between Plato and Aristotle:

Plato thought that we recognize flesh and the being of flesh by apprehending two different things. . . . Aristotle teaches the exact opposite of this. . . . For it would obviously be a ridiculous assertion that someone who wanted to know something and instead apprehended something else with his intellect thereby reached the knowledge he desired. For example, a scientist wants to come to know the crystals and the plants and the other bodies that he finds here on earth; hence if he apprehended the concepts of tetrahedrons and octahedrons, and of trees and grasses belonging to another world, he would not reach his aim in any way. (Brentano 1977, pp. 86–88)

Brentano thus endorses the Aristotelian solution:

Whatever is is fully determinate. . . . But a thing that is completely determinate may yet be thought of without its complete determination. . . . It is an error, then, to affirm that there are universals in the strict sense. But it is also an error to deny that anything real can correspond to a universal idea . . . because a multiplicity of things can correspond to them. . . . When we think of the object as stone and when we think of it as this particular stone, we have the same object of thought in each case; but what we are thinking of it as differs in the two cases. (Brentano 1981, pp. 25–26, 39)

In recent years, this Aristotelian approach to abstraction has been revived by Ayn Rand. On the issue of universals Abelard was a nominalist and Aquinas a realist, while Rand attempted to transcend the nominalist/realist dichotomy altogether; all three thinkers, however, stand in the Aristotelian tradition, and all three appealed to nonprecisive abstraction to explain how concepts apply to reality. Rand does not employ the Scholastic terminology, but her approach follows that of her Aristotelian predecessors. (It’s not clear how far Rand was drawing specifically on the Aristotelian tradition, rather than being led by her generally Aristotelian approach to develop the same solution independently; the same question, for that matter, applies as well to Abelard, who had access to only a fraction of the Aristotelian corpus.) In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand writes:

If a child considers a match, a pencil and a stick, he observes that length is the attribute they have in common, but their specific lengths differ. . . . In order to form the concept “length,” the child’s mind retains the attribute and omits its particular measurements. Or, more precisely, if the process were identified in words, it would consist of the following: “Length must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity. I shall identify as ‘length’ that attribute of any existent possessing it which can be quantitatively related to a unit of length, without specifying the quantity. . . . Bear firmly in mind that the term “measurements omitted” does not mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that measurements exist, but are not specified. (Rand 1990, pp. 11–12)

To regard the measurements as nonexistent would be to abstract precisively; to regard the measurements as existent without specifying them is, by contrast, to abstract nonprecisively. If all abstraction were precisive, then “every advance of knowledge” would be “a setback, a demonstration of man’s ignorance.” Since “the savages knew that man possesses a head, a torso, two legs and two arms,” it follows that if absence of specification meant specification of absence, then “when the scientists of the Renaissance began to dissect corpses and discovered the nature of man’s internal organs,” we would have to say that their discoveries “invalidated the savages’ concept ‘man’,” and likewise that “when modern scientists discovered that man possesses internal glands, they invalidated the Renaissance concept ‘man’” (pp. 67–8). On a proper understanding of abstraction, however, so long as whatever one fails to include in one’s concepts is merely unspecified, rather than specified as absent, then “even if the scope of [one’s] knowledge is modest and the content of his concepts is primitive, it will not contradict the content of the same concepts in the mind of the most advanced scientists” (p. 43). Like Abelard, Aquinas, and Brentano before her, Rand thus employs the concept of nonprecisive abstraction to reply to the charge that abstraction falsifies reality.