Symposium On Creation Jcr Vol 1 No 1

Specifics concerning creation are officially relegated into the realm of things indifferent to salvation or the life of the church. Various perspectives serve as popular alternatives to the six-day creation within circles that still concern themselves with the question of biblical inerrancy.

Witchcraft, occultism, paranormal science, and mysticism are growing like plagues in the Western world. These phenomena have baffled modern educators and conventional rationalists, since such activities seem to be completely opposed to everything that the public schools have taught for over a hundred years. Worst of all in the minds of conventional secularists, all this discussion of demonic forces may lead to an even more appalling conclusion: the idea that God, also a supernatural force, may reappear in the modern, "post-Christian" world. At all costs, a God who can make himself felt in time and on earth must be avoided. Mysticism is one thing—totally internalized—but supernatural forces are not supposed to have any impact on external, so-called phenomenal affairs. Occultism is another form of humanism. It is the product of the quest for power apart from God and His law-order. It was not a major force in the so-called "Dark Ages." Not until the fifteenth century did witchcraft become a serious problem in Europe, and it was the Renaissance, not medievalism, which sparked the great explosion of demonism and magic in the sixteenth century. During the period of the early Middle Ages (A.D. 500-1000), there were practically no signs of witchcraft in Europe. Only with the revival of ancient Gnosticism and the invasion of Middle Eastern dualism did signs of widespread witchcraft reappear. Occultism and humanism are not sworn enemies; they are first cousins. It was only the influence of Christian principles, which laid such stress on the orderliness of God's universe, that made possible the confidence of modern rationalists in denying the influence of supernatural forces. As the confidence in creation-law has waned in this century, "rational" humanism has become increasingly unsuccessful in retarding the expansion of occult humanism. This Journal of Christian Reconstruction offers readers the necessary evidence for a refutation of the familiar charge that occultism and religion necessarily go together, and that only a hard-headed rationalism can restrain the forces of spiritual anarchy. Far from retarding occultism, modern rationalism's blindness to the reality of occult forces is now creating a perverse inquisitiveness on the part of modernism's children, who have learned to be critical of everything, including old-fashioned rationalism. The philosophy of the "open universe"—closed to God—has produced the new occult experimentalism. If anything except Christian orthodoxy might be true, why not find out through personal observation and experiment? Since 1965, the Western world has faced the greatest explosion of occultism that it has seen in three hundred years. This time no one can blame orthodox Christianity: it has been the secularists who have wielded the power.

The continuing and intensifying economic crises of the twentieth century are the direct product of the interference into the economy by the civil government. The messianic state cannot permit any aspect of human life, animal life, and inorganic nature to assert any claims of lawful independence from political manipulation. The end result of the deification of the state is the breakdown of humanistic society.

By every known academic measurement, government-subsidized, secular, compulsory education is a massive failure and getting worse. Yet the American public continues to believe that government-financed education is moral,useful, and basically a great economic bargain.

What’s wrong with Reformed evangelism? Something certainly appears to be wrong. When we look at the growth of Arminian Baptist churches and compare this growth with the various Reformed Baptist and Presbyterian denominations, the numbers are very discouraging. When J. Gresham Machen left the old Presbyterian Church of the USA, he believed that his newly formed Presbyterian Church of America would grow rapidly as a result of its commitment to biblical inerrancy and the fundamentals of the faith. Instead, it suffered a split the next year (June 1937), and the two new denominations, the Bible Presbyterians and Orthodox Presbyterians, have not grown much in membership since 1937. Much the same has been true of the various Dutch-based Reformed denominations. They grow only if the birth rate increases, and the death rate decreases within the respective groups. As I noted (at age 21), the Dutch churches seem to have substituted procreation for a Board of Home Missions. (I wasn’t tactful in my youth, the way I am today.) So what’s the problem? As you might expect, there is more than one problem. There is a whole pile of problems, such as: 1) not systematic evangelism programs; 2) imitation Arminian evangelism programs; 3) ineffective evangelism programs; 4) a message geared to confrontation, not conquest; 5) the humanism of our era; 6) lack of capital; 7) lack of confidence; 8) lack of past successes to serve as precedents; 9) seminaries that don’t emphasize evangelism; 10) too much concern for the rigors of theological speculation, and not enough for the demands of applied theology; 11) an inability to recognize and emphasize the strong points of the Reformed heritage (relevance, concrete answers for social problems, scholarship, organization; 12) fatalism regarding stagnation and defeat; 13) ignorance of the warfare between Christianity and humanism; 14) compromised apologetic methodology (rationalism); 15) a constricted view of the Kingdom of God; 16) incompetence in the area of communication; 17) a failure to tithe. One of the criticisms that has been aimed at the Christian reconstructionist movement is that it has not been concerned with evangelism. An odd charge, coming from pastors who have never demonstrated that they have had any grasp of evangelism techniques, given their tiny churches and invisibility in their communities. The Christian reconstruction movement is less than a decade old. It has little capital. Yet despite its youth and its lack of capital, it has been influential enough to become a force in American thought and culture. When Newsweek identified the source of the “religious right’s” ideas, it listed Chalcedon, and only Chalcedon (Feb. 2, 1981, p. 60). But this is not “evangelism” in the eyes of the critics. This doesn’t count. So what does count? Not sheer numbers, certainly; the critics cannot point to their own success using this criterion. What is the nature of legitimate evangelism? The latest issue of The Journal of Christian Reconstruction addresses itself to this important question. But more than this: it offers specific, affordable suggestions to struggling congregations about how they can grow, become more influential, and count for something within their communities. We need both a theory of evangelism and a practical program for evangelism. The “Symposium on Evangelism” offers both. There has been an enormous waste in virtually all popular programs of evangelism. They have not been cost-effective. They have not targeted their audiences properly. They have not been geared to repeated contacts. They have not been structured in terms of long-range objectives—objectives stretching out two or more generations. The evangelism programs popular (if that word can even be used) in Reformed circles have generally been warmed-over versions of Arminian evangelism. These techniques have not worked for Reformed churches, yet the pastors have not been willing to scrap them and rethink the whole question. Is there a distinctively Reformed evangelism? Are its techniques fundamentally different from those employed by Arminian churches? Is there a distinctively Christian reconstructionist evangelism—a type of evangelism unavailable to the majority of Arminian denominations and congregations? The answer to all three questions is the same: Yes. The Journal provides the evidence. Far from being unconcerned with evangelism, the Chalcedon movement is vitally concerned with evangelism. It is a small movement at present, and it needs capital. How can it expect to become a world-wide force for social change if it neglects evangelism? How can its perspective spread to the decision-makers of this age, except by evangelism? Everyone needs evangelism; the Arminians, the introspective Reformed groups, the traditional conservatives, the Roman Catholics, the universities, the heathen seats of power, the media, the Iron Curtain nations, and all points in between. But the average pastor faces more immediate problems. He has to build up his struggling congregation. He needs to take the first steps. That’s why we have devoted an issue of the Journal to evangelism. What distinguishes the Chalcedon movement’s view of evangelism from the rival varieties that are common today, is the scope of evangelism. We are convinced that no evangelism program can hope to succeed unless it is driven by a vision of universal conquest. The three strongest political forces in the world today are Marxism, militant Islam, and modern science. All three are predestinarian. All three are officially optimistic. All three believe that they possess the key which will unlock the door of history. All three believe that they have access to the true law structure which will give them power over the world. All three see themselves as agents of historical and social change. All three see the whole world as their proper and required domain. Until Christians can match them, doctrine for doctrine, vision for vision, we will sit on the sidelines of history, cheering for no one in particular. Waiting for the “game” to end so that we can go home. That’s what most Christians are doing now. This produces an ineffective evangelism. It produces a socially irrelevant witness. It produces the kind of witness the Roman emperors would have preferred to see the early church proclaim. The “emperors” of our day can live with this sort of witness, too. It is time to change both our strategy and our tactics.—Gary North

In the previous issue of The Journal, we presented the case for the puritans as reforms who were determined to reconstruct society in terms of Biblical law. Not every Puritan had this vision, of course; not every Puritan agreed about the nature of Biblical law. But sufficient numbers of them did share this vision, especially in New England, and the world still reaps the benefits of their efforts. This is another way of saying that the Puritans expected success to come their way, and when it did, it left its mark on Western Civilization. By unleashing the talents of men in every station in life, the Puritan doctrine of the priesthood of all believers transformed the West. A grass-roots reconstruction began which was to lead eventually to the American War of Independence. The top-down hierarchy of Anglicanism did not take root in the Puritan colonies. Because of this, American political life was freed from the dead hand of a church-state bureaucratic tradition. But it was not simply in the realm of politics that Puritanism left its mark. Consider modern science. Without the doctrines of Puritanism, it is unlikely that modern science ever would have appeared. The calling before God, the legitimacy of the mechanic's trade, the optimism concerning the study of nature, and many other Puritan concepts brought forth modern science. Two articles, one by Charles Dykes and the other by E. L. Hebden Taylor, demonstrate this forcefully. Christians seldom know what modern historians of science know, namely, that Puritanism was basic to the advent of modern scientific progress. This ingrained optimism stemmed from their eschatological presuppositions, as James Payton demonstrates with respect to English Puritans and Aletha Joy Gilsdorf shows with respect to the first generation of colonial Puritans. And then there was Oliver Cromwell. Judy Ishkanian provides us with a detailed biography of this crucially important military and political leader of the Puritan forces in England. Who was he, how did he accomplish his goals, and where did he get his vision? These questions are answered in considerable depth, given the limitations of a single chapter in biography. This issue of The Journal is a continuation of an investigation into the nature of the Puritan reformation. It is followed by the third and final volume, "Puritanism and Society." Anyone who wants access to illuminating introductions to the impact of Puritanism outside of the institutional church as such, should have these volumes in his library. They will serve later Christian scholars as starting points for further research. Even more important, they open up a whole new world of Christian history and inspiration, for the Puritans vision-that all of the earth is open ground for the establishment of God's Kingdom-can be revived in our day. That vision can become a heritage for later generations. But to become a part of that heritage, men must reconsider the standard accounts of Puritanism's influence in the less informed (but widely read) secular textbooks. For Christians who want to learn why and how Puritan theology led to Puritanism's reconstruction of seventeenth-century though and culture, these issues of The Journal are indispensable.

This volume is devoted to a study of the Puritans, the contributors survey the impact of Puritan sermons, thought, and law on society in general. There is little doubt today that the Puritan movement in England and the New World helped to reshape the basic institutions of the Anglo-Saxon world. In previous issues, we have surveyed the Puritan views concerning civil law, economics, science, and other kingdom institutions. Now we focus on those aspects of Puritan life that concerned the family, the institutional church, music, death, and Cromwell's Protectorate. Whatever politics you adopt, he says, should be liberal; whatever economics you adopt, of course, should be interventionist. Not impressed by biblical law. Dr. Lloyd-Jones falls back upon the conventional "unconventionality" of late-twentieth-century British politics—all in the name of liberal innovation. He ignores the fact that the dominion covenant was reestablished, after the Fall, with Noah. The Fall has now become an excuse for not doing anything to cure its effects. However, he said in his 1975 essay, "Looking at history it seems to me that one of the greatest dangers confronting the Christian is to become a political conservative, and an opponent of legitimate reform, and the legitimate rights of people" (p. 103). But if explicitly Christian reform is doomed, what kind of "legitimate reform" does he have in mind? Why, "Calvinist reform," meaning economic interventionism, since Arminianism supposedly leads to laissez-faire: "Arminianism over-stresses liberty. It produced the laissez-faire view of economics, and it always introduces inequalities—some people becoming enormously wealthy, and others languishing in poverty and destitution" (p. 106). Free enterprise creates inequality! If these conclusions seem preposterous to you, you will want to order the latest Journal of Christian Reconstruction, which contains my article showing how free enterprise economics came to the Puritan colonies iii the final years of the 17th century. You will want to read Gordon Geddes' essay on the Puritan view of death, Greg Bahnsen's defense of biblical law against Merideth Kline's attack, Rita Mancha's study of women in Calvinist thought, Richard Flinn's essay on the Puritan concept of the family, James Jordan's essay on Puritanism and music, and David Chilton's defense of Oliver Cromwell. "Puritanism and Society" will provide you with information which will enable you to decide whether Dr. Lloyd-Jones' assessment is correct, whether his view on 17th-century Puritanism's outlook is truly heretical. These three issues of The Journal have created considerable controversy. The idea that Puritanism was essentially a "package deal"—a comprehensive world-and-life outlook that affected all spheres of social life—has alienated numerous self-proclaimed neo-Puritans. This series has also driven another group to abandon the Puritan tradition, and to adopt a kind of neo-anabaptism to replace the older "theonomic" Puritan tradition. The "reprinting neo-Puritans" have faced a dual challenge: either adopt the theonomic tradition which was fundamental to the Puritan movement, or else abandon Puritanism's tradition in favor of new-anabaptism. Predictably, they wish to do neither. Yet to remain "betwixt and between" is to remain caught in a crossfire. The interesting product of this immobility has been a narrowing of focus: endless articles on the ("beneficial") emotionalism of Puritanism, and a stream of biographical articles, primarily dealing with the less well-known later preachers who have defended predestination, but who had little or no lasting influence on Western culture, and who were not explicitly Puritan in their outlook.

There are millions of Bible-believing Christians in the United States, people who affirm their faith in the infallibility of the Bible. Yet it is obvious to anyone that the United States is dominated by the forces of secular humanism.