Kuyperian, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On February 26, 2013 By Kuyperian In Books Like

Just War as Christian Discipleship – Part 1

I recently finished reading Daniel M. Bell Jr.’s excellent little book, Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State. And while I have neither the time nor the inclination to write a full review, I figured I would post more than a few excerpts here over the next few days and weeks.

Bell’s book isn’t perfect, and there are a few areas where I think we are left with more questions than answers, but overall it is a very good introduction to just war history, theory, and practice from a distinctively Christian perspective, and its benefits and usefulness far outweigh its flaws.

While Bell avoids partisan debates for the most part he pulls no punches in speaking straightforwardly about what justice demands in the Christian tradition as it developed from the Augustine and the fathers (modified from Plato and the Greeks) through to Aquinas, Vitoria, and Grotius in the early modern period.it is an excellent introduction to the Just War tradition from a distinctively Christian perspective, and its strengths are much more prominent than its weaknesses.

After a brief history of Just War thinking, and making an important distinction between modern, secular, just war theory, what he calls Just War as public policy checklist or Just War (PPC), and Just War as Christian discipleship or Just War (CD), Bell asks the question, “Has there ever been a just war?”

Such is the history, in brief, of the just war tradition since its adoption and adaptation by Christianity. What the history reflects is that war is not one thing always and forever, that it is no necessarily and inevitably “hell” as Sherman and others would have it. To the contrary, it is a human practice and as such is capable of being waged in different ways, from the highly ritualized and almost game-like wars of medieval chivalry that were minimally lethal (my favorite example being a yearlong war involving one thousand knights in the 1127 CE during which five died, four of those being the result of accidents), to the limited wars of attrition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the total wars that characterized significant wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

At the outset of this chapter, the question was raised as to whether war could ever be just. Both pacifists and realists suggest the answer is no. While the historical overview suggests that war need not be total, it does not provide an entirely satisfactory answer to the question of whether war can in fact be just. By itself it does not refute the skeptics. These skeptics sometimes pose the question of just war in a more pointed manner by asking, Has there ever been a just war?

Such a question threatens to plunge us into the midst of the culture wars and the ideological battles of the current moment. After all, there is no shortage of persons willing to proclaim this or that war just or unjust in a manner that appears to be driven more by the political fortunes of the moment than by any deep familiarity with the just war tradition. From the longer perspective of history, there are historians of war and of just war who have argue that there have indeed been just wars.

From a Christian theological perspective, however, the question of whether there has ever been a just war is largely beside the point. From the standpoint of the Christian moral life, it is the wrong question. After all, the Christian moral life does not depend on whether that life has ever been lived faithfully before or not. If Christians are called to be a just war people by God then the proper response to that call is not to step back and ask, Has anyone else done it before us? Rather, even if it means going forth like Abram and his family into the unknown and unprecedented (Heb. 11:8), the proper, faithful response is to discern how our life should be so ordered in response to that call that we might be a people who wage war or refrain from waging war in accord with the precepts of just war. In other words, the proper response to the call to just war is not, Has it been done before? but, How then should we order our live so that we might respond to the call faithfully?

Perhaps the misguided nature of the question will be clearer if we put a similar challenge to another facet of the Christian life. Take, for example, the Ten Commandments. We might ask if there has ever been a Christian community that has embodied them perfectly? Has there ever been a Christian church that has succeeded in living out even one of them perfectly? Or take the Great Commandment that we love God and our neighbor. Has there ever been a church that has followed that commandment without flaw or failure? That the answer to these questions is no does not in itself render the commandments invalid, irrelevant, or unrealistic. That the Christian church has displayed and in the course of its life continues to terrible failures with regard to both love of God and of neighbor does not abolish that calling or erase the reality of that love in its life. That we miss the mark, that we continue to struggle with sin, does not diminish either the high calling to or the reality of holiness and virtue in the life of the church. Our failure as a people does not disprove God’s call; neither does our repeated failure establish that we are not in fact capable of accepting and embodying that call. All of this means that even if one could definitively show that the church had never even once embodied the just war discipline in war, that in itself would not prove that just war was neither the church’s calling nor a real possibility in its life.

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On February 19, 2013 By Kuyperian In Politics Like

A Cup of Poison to the Lips of Liberalism

by Marc Hays

Are you a liberal? G. P. Grant thinks you’re insane if you’re not. In his 1974 book, English-Speaking Justice, he proposes,

Liberalism in its generic form is surely something that all decent men accept as good—‘conservatives’ included. In so far as the word ‘liberalism’ is used to describe the belief that political liberty is a central human good, it is difficult for me to consider as sane those who would deny that they are liberals.

Is this merely semantic quibbling? Without any more being said, I suppose, yes, it would be nothing more than a violation of Paul’s admonition to Timothy to “not quarrel about words” (2 Tim 2:14), but what if in the end it isn’t? To quarrel about words would be like quarrelling about anything else—fruitless. To be succinct with our words would be to be like God, who has revealed Himself using words that mean one thing, therefore not meaning something else.

In his 1955 work, The Defense of the Faith, Cornelius Van Til states, “the ‘what’ must precede the ‘that’; the connotation must precede the denotation; at least the latter cannot be discussed intelligently without at once considering the former.” In other words, how can we know what we’re talking about unless the words representing the ideas we’re discussing mean one thing instead of another? Van Til asks how we can discuss the existence of a god, if the god in question has no definite attributes. The ‘what’ must precede the ‘that’.

In our current political landscape, ‘liberal’ has become synonymous with ‘Democrat’, while ‘conservative’ equals ‘Republican’. G. P. Grant argues that perhaps the Republican relationship with conservatism is accurate, but the Democratic comparison should be with ‘progressivism’ instead of with ‘liberalism’. For the Democrat, liberty is not the goal as much as progress is, and if progress is the goal, then it is one that can never be reached. A traveler can never arrive at their destination, if the only reason to go on the trip is to be in a state of perpetual motion.

100 years ago, G. K. Chesterton summed-up progressivism in his work, “Heretics”. He wrote,

“It is not merely true that the age which has settled least what is progress is this ‘progressive’ age. It is, moreover, true that the people who have settled least what is progress are the most ‘progressive’ people in it. The ordinary mass, the men who have never troubled about progress, might be trusted perhaps to progress.”

So when Barak Obama ran on the monoplankular platform of “Change” in 2008, the election’s outcome showed that Americans were indeed progressivists and not liberals at all. “We don’t care where you take us, Mr. Obama, as long as you get us out of here.” As his two terms have progressed, we’ve found President Obama to be quite the conservative as he maintains many of Bush’s policies that he pledged to “change”, and quite the opposite of a true liberal as he’s sought to repossess American liberties granted by America’s Fathers in her Constitution. While admitting that the word ‘liberal’ has come to mean only ‘secular liberal’, Grant stresses that this does not change the fact that the underlying foundations of liberty and freedom remain constant. Since liberty is still the opposite of tyranny, the word ’liberal’ is has become a misnomer– a glaring misnomer that we’re now stuck with.

In Part IV of English-Speaking Justice, Grant gets to his most salient point by describing Roe v. Wade as the “cup of poison to the lips of liberalism”. He elegantly shows that between two members of the same species, the “right” of the one to exist should outweigh the “right” of the other to enjoy privacy and comfort. However, the high court’s decision to refuse the term ‘person’ to one still in utero, reveals that modern liberalism is not about human rights at all. Humans in the womb and humans outside of the womb are still both humans by scientific definition, but the modern liberal agenda set this empirically verifiable fact aside and replaced it with an abstraction of ‘personhood’ that allowed them to cater to a constituency that furthered their political agendas instead of one that didn’t.

Dr. Roberta Bayer, at Patrick Henry College, has summarized Grant’s analysis this way:

“Although the court claimed to be confining its decision to the categories given by the American Constitution, interpreted within a liberal world view, it still found a basis ‘for denying the most elementary right of traditional justice to members of our own species.” Thus, the justices must have held certain philosophical assumptions about being (nature) that were genealogically connected to some other philosophical tradition, a tradition neither guided by the Constitution, nor by what might be known scientifically about the development of the fetus in utero. In fact, the evidence of science would have made it more, rather than less, reasonable to hold that the fetus is a distinct individual with a given nature.”

Whereas American liberalism had been fighting for ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ for nearly 200 years, Roe stands in a stark contrast to those noble concepts. All that had been gained for equal human rights might as well be trampled underfoot, for the salt has lost it’s savor. All of the arguments for equal rights between slaves and free men; all of the arguments for equal rights between women and men; all of the arguments for equal rights between blacks and whites are totally eclipsed by the court-sanctioned murder of the most vulnerable members of our species. The 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, has to be the most inegalitarian U. S. document ever written, and it was the product of the liberal left–the ‘champions’ of equal rights.

Based on Grant’s definition of a ‘liberal’ as “someone who believes political liberty is a central human good”, the pro-life movement has out-liberalled the liberals by mammoth proportions. How can a so-called liberal deny the weakest members of its species the right to exist and still lay any legitimate claim to be a defender of liberty and equality? They can’t. They have placed the poisoned cup to their lips and drunk deeply. Liberalism is dead, and the death has been ruled a suicide.

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On February 12, 2013 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

Television and Dominion

For anyone who watched the Grammy’s—I did not—or saw pictures and reports from the event—I did—it doesn’t take much to realize the importance of shock value when it comes to Hollywood. From the dresses—or lack thereof—being worn by the stars, to the language coming from entertainers during their presentations, one can see how much importance they place on shock value.

It seems the old fashioned way of introducing confrontations to our values has been replaced by shocking us into seeing those things that confront our values as the norm.

It used to be that television would never show, nor even imply, that a husband and a wife shared the same bed. Do you know what the first television series was to show husband and wife sleeping in the same bed? The Flintstones. It was the Flintstones that introduced the notion that a man and woman could share the same bed, and they introduced it slowly to a new generation of viewers (our children, rather us as children). Change the way they think, and when they grow up, that will be the new norm.

Of course, husband and wife do share the same bed, that is not necessarily the issue. It was not the norm, however, to show that on television and this is just an example of how that idea was undermined or subverted.

Nowadays, even Hollywood is too impatient to change our values that way. Now (its actually been awhile this is has been happening) they throw the most shocking thing they can in our faces. In this way, something slightly less shocking, but no less confrontational to conservative, Christian values of modesty, will be seen as the norm.

Steve Wilkins, in his book Face to Face, warns against having friends who are not seeking wisdom, Godliness, obedience to God’s Word, and increasing holiness. He then goes on to define friends as those who impact us and the way they think. He even identifies television show characters as a kind of friend, week in and week out speaking into our lives. Even those friends, though, must meet the guidelines for friendship. It seems, however, that the television industry isn’t looking to offer us friends who are seeking wisdom and holiness, but who can shock us into realigning our tired, old values.

In this season of Lent, maybe we ought to reevaluate what kind of friends we allow ourselves to have—especially those who make their way in through our television. Or, as Steve Schlissel once said, maybe we need to consider the impact television [and friends] have on our taking of dominion and discipling the nations.

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On February 11, 2013 By Kuyperian In Politics Like

The One With the Squished Head

“That’s what I get from these guys–the permission to question everything.” Thus ends the new trailer promoting Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss’ film “Unbelievers”. It is scheduled to be released sometime in 2013.

If you’ve ever seen Douglas Wilson’s “Collision”, then you’ll recognize the trailer for “Unbelievers”. Apparently, the “Unbelievers” folks appreciated what Gorilla Poet Productions created a few years ago with “Collision” and have attempted to create their own anti-theistic version. The camera work, the music, the transportation scenes–all very reminiscent of the fantastic work by Darren Doane, Aaron Rench, Nate Wilson, and the folks at Gorilla Poet. Congratulations to them on being copied. It is the best form of flattery.

And how about that title? Did they intend to prove everything Douglas Wilson said in “Collision” all in one word? The only reference point they have is the truth. All they can do is oppose the God who created them by being UN-believers. As Wilson so aptly states,

“Atheism has two tenets: 1.) There is no God, and 2.) I hate Him.”

In the death throes of their leader–the one with the squished head–the atheists must continue to rely upon the only foundation that there is available, i.e. that God created them, as He did all of us, rational, moral image-bearers of Himself. Every word they speak speaks a word against themselves. Every beautiful image they capture on film displays the glory of their Creator.

So watch “Unbelievers”. Watch “Collision”. Work hard. Sleep well. The mustard seed continues to grow.<>аудит а раскрутка

On February 9, 2013 By Kuyperian In Politics Like

Giving Up Me for Lent?

Lent approaches (Wednesday, the 13th for those who aren’t following along) and many–but certainly not all–Christians will be deciding what to give up.

Many will follow the historic practice of the Church and give up animal products (meat, eggs, dairy, etc.) Others will follow the contemporary practice of the Church and give up something they like (chocolate, soda, alcohol, tobacco, etc.) Still others will follow a more recent, yet popular, practice of giving up something that distracts them (television, Facebook, the internet, etc.)

N.T. Wright, in one of his many good books on the Christian life (Simply Christian, maybe) mentions that Lent is a season of death, therefore we give up something. Easter follows as a season of new life and new creation, so we should take up something–something new and good.

It is not my intention to come across as smug, overly pious, or prideful–but I realize that what I am about to say is all of those things and contradicts the very thing I am intending to do–yet I hope to give readers something to consider for their own Lenten practices this year.

A friend recently shared Andrew Murray’s Humility with me. Then, I re-read C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Then, my pastor preached on humility and pride. Then, well you get the idea. Each of these books or sermons deals directly with humility and pride. It may just be that God is trying to tell me something. Thus, I’ve decided to give up myself for Lent. I don’t know if this is a legitimate thing to fast from during Lent–historically anyway–but it is my plan. From Ash Wednesday to Easter, I am giving up myself. I will strive to not tell any stories about myself, not to “out-do” anyone else. Just listen. Just ask questions about them. Just be interested in them. Just care about who they are. I’m not going to tell people how great I am, and I’m not going to tell people how despicable I am–both are cases of pride, although we often try to convince ourselves the latter is humility when it is not.

Whatever your view of Lent is, whatever your view of fasting is, I’m sure you agree that pride is a great evil for Christians and humility is a great weakness for many. Pray for me, that the Lord would have mercy. That I might give up myself for Lent.

I’d rather hope that I can ask this question without it turning into a competition to out-holy one another. So, if you are practicing Lent this year, what are you giving up?

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On February 7, 2013 By Kuyperian In Politics Like

The Medium is Nearly as Vital as the Message

“The reality is that sometimes the packaging really makes a difference in what you can take away from the book. I remember when Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose first came out in the 80’s. I was just blown away by it. I was captured from page one. As William of Baskerville wanders up the trail toward the monastery and begins to notice clues that wow everyone. He out-sherlocked Sherlock. And then through the labyrynthine theology that takes you to the great climax at the end, I was hooked. I told every pastor friend of mine; every theologian; everybody I knew teaching at seminary, ‘You have to read this book!’ Several of them, having become accustomed to such messages from me, put it off until it came out in paperback. And then I started to get this trickle of voicemails and emails…well, I guess it was faxes back in those days. Anyway, a trickle of messages from folks saying, ‘I can’t get into this. It’s obtuse. It’s dense. I’m not getting anywhere.’ And then I discovered that they’re reading it in a mass-market paperback! On paper that would have been rejected for USA Today for heaven’s sakes! Not even worth printing factoids on it. So I told them, ‘Go to Crown or Barnes and Noble. Go to the remainder table. Buy yourself a hardback, and read it properly.’ Now that may seem silly, but in point of fact, prose that is dense and difficult needs an appropriate architecture to contain it. Aesthetics matter. Aesthetics always matter. We, who think the height of American architecture is some tin shed on a highway, actually believe that aesthetics don’t matter. But when you walk into a stone cathedral in the middle of Stephansplatz, a block from Mozart’s home, you realize, ‘you know–tin sheds aren’t all they’re cracked-up to be.’ And neither are crummy paperbacks… Medium is nearly as vital as the message.”

George Grant (the one in Franklin, TN) from the lecture “Shelf Life: Reading, Thinking, and Resisting the Tyranny of the Urgent”. You can purchase it here.

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On February 6, 2013 By Kuyperian In Politics Like

The President and the Killing of Americans

It is abundantly clear to most folks by now that President Barack Obama has claimed the authority to kill American citizens without a trial. One of the qualifications for such a determination is that the person have posed “an imminent threat” to the United States. The same Department of Justice (leaked) document that exposed all of this also says that the government is not required to “have clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

Some have responded by noting that this just makes it more important to elect the right president in future elections. Surely we want to elect someone who won’t decide that WE are an imminent threat!

This just misses the real point, though, doesn’t it? Responding in this way simply concedes that the government has the authority to make such declarations and judgments. It makes the Executive Branch not just judge, jury, and executioner, but also legislator. The point is not to vote in the person who will do the least harm with authority he shouldn’t have, but to elect someone who will acknowledge and give up the supposed authority the office had previously claimed.

The point, moreover, is that the Church and the Christians who constitute her need to speak prophetically to such abuses of power and false claims on authority that only the Triune God can exercise and delegate. And, we must do these things regardless of whether the Supreme Court–which sits comfortably in the pocket of the Executive–says the Executive has this right Constitutionally or not.

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On February 6, 2013 By Kuyperian In Books, Politics, Pro-Life Like

Abortion and Rights, by George Parkin Grant

“Behind the conflict of rights (between the mother and the fetus MH), there is unveiled in the debate about abortion an even more fundamental question about rights themselves. What is it about human beings that makes it proper that we should have any rights at all? Because of this the abortion issue involves all modern societies in basic questions of political principle.

These questions of principle were brought out into the open for Americans, when the Supreme Court of that country made it law that no legislation can be passed which prevents women from receiving abortions during the first six months of pregnancy. In laying down the reasons for that decision, the judges speak as if they were basing it on the supremacy of rights in a democratic society. But to settle the case in terms of rights, the judges say that the mother has all the rights, and that the foetus has none. Because they make this distinction, the very principle of rights is made dubious in the following way. In negating all rights to the foetuses, the court says something negative about what they are, namely that they are such as to warrant no right to continued existence. And because the foetus is of the same species as the mother, we are inevitably turned back onto the fundamental question of principle: what is it about the mother (or any human being) that makes it proper that she should have rights? Because in the laws about abortion one is forced back to the stark comparison between the rights of members of the same species (our own), the foundations of the principles behind rights are unveiled inescapably. What is it about our species that gives us rights beyond those of dogs or cattle?

The legal and political system, which was the noblest achievement of the English-speaking societies, came forth from our long tradition of free institutions and Common Law, which was itself produced and sustained by centuries of Christian belief. Ruthlessness in law and politics was limited by a system of legal and political rights which guarded the individual from the abuses of arbitrary power, both by the state and other individuals. The building of this system has depended on the struggle and courage of many, and was fundamentally founded on the Biblical assumption that human beings are the children of God. For this reason, everybody should be properly protected by carefully defined rights. Those who advocate easy abortions in the name of rights are at the same time unwittingly undermining the very basis of rights. Their complete disregard for the unborn weakens the very idea of rights itself. This weakening does not portend well for the continuing health of our system.” —George Parkin Grant, Technology & Justice 1986

“George Parkin Grant, 1918-1988, has been acknowledged as Canada’s leading political philosopher since the publication of Philosophy in the Mass Age 1959. He was the author of Lament for a Nation, Technology & Empire, and English-Speaking Justice. He taught religion and philosophy at McMaster University and Dalhousie University.” (from the back cover of Technology & Justice)<>

On February 6, 2013 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

Virginity: Christianity’s Main Idol?

Last October my daughter turned 13, and my wife and I took her out for her “promise ring” event. The evening was a blast, the food was terrific, and the conversation was over-the-top. We presented her with a ring to commemorate the event. It was beautiful; she was beautiful; my wife was beautiful; the whole evening was just… beautiful. During the conversation we focused in on the fact that she was becoming a woman and boys were probably going to start to notice. The promises that were made that night concerned keeping lines of communication open about whatever may be going on in her life over the next few years. We want to rejoice with her as things go well, and help her through any times when things might not go so well. We promised to talk about whichever boy that may show an interest, or that she might take an interest in when he comes calling. The issue of virginity may have come up at certain points in the conversation, but that ideal is not one that is new to her. Scripture is replete with references to God’s desire for sexual purity, so we did not wait until she was 13 to introduce them. True love does not wait until your children are 13 to tell them that “true love waits”.

Attached to this post is a link to an article concerning the “downside” of the “True Love Waits” movement. Perhaps that is the downside–that it is a movement of a Christian bookstore instead of the modus operandi of Christian families in the church. The downsides referred to in the article concern “damaged goods” and “virginity as a commodity”. The “damaged goods” issue comes into play since virginity can only be “lost” once. After it’s gone, by definition, it’s gone. The article raises some valid questions about how the emphasis on mass-marketed virginity can ostracize the young ladies who are no longer virgins and cannot possibly retrieve it. They can be forgiven, but not be really “pure” like a girl who is still a virgin. Is this loving to our neighbors? Is this how we would want to be treated? These are questions the article addresses.

I wouldn’t trade the evening with my wife and daughter last October for anything. I do not plan on changing the general direction of how I am approaching my own daughter, but I appreciate the issues raised in this article. I love my daughter enough to instruct her in righteousness and be there with her as she matures. Do I love my neighbor’s daughter enough to be careful with my words? Are we wise and loving enough to preach “as far as the east is from the west” right alongside “you reap what you sow”?

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On February 5, 2013 By Kuyperian In Politics Like