Written by R. Albert Mohler, Jr. |
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
I’m not denying that Christian conservatives can have secular allies. I’m not denying that we can share vast areas of common agreement and common concern, but I am saying that at the end of the day, without an ontological commitment which is grounded in theological conviction, I don’t believe there’s any lasting conservatism to be found. Actually, I am certain that without ontological commitments (grounded in theism), conservatism is just an endless negotiation with progressivism and its progeny.

Editor’s Note: This is a transcript of a speech delivered at the National Conservatism Conference on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024. It is printed here with the speaker’s permission. Video of this talk is availabe at National Conservatism’s YouTube channel.
It is an honor to be here at NatCon 2024, and we all know that we are meeting at an urgent moment and we can also see that the urgency has been made clear by some events just even over the last couple of years that have been very sobering. When last I had the opportunity to address this movement in late 2022, I spoke on the impossibility of a secular state. What I want to speak about today is the impotence of a secular conservatism. I don’t mean thereby to divide the room, but rather to speak honestly about where I think we are and what I think we should be thinking. I do speak as a Christian. I do speak as a theologian. I speak with a great deal of common concern and common cause among all of us here. 
I appreciate the invitation to address this conference, but I also want to acknowledge a bomb on our moral landscape that reshapes our consideration, and that is the 2022 Dobbs decision and its aftermath. These developments force a new awareness on us. 
I have been a part of the pro-life movement my entire adult life. I’ve had the privilege of being in rooms where major decisions have been made, strategies have been laid, and where facts and analytics have been considered. I can tell you that there are those now, and were those in the past, who were quite convinced that this is an argument we were winning. Many had convinced themselves that we were winning the argument for life, even if we were not winning that argument everywhere evenly. But the pro-life movement shared the confidence that if indeed all those years of work in conservative argument, and conservative organizing, and what became a conservative legal recovery, a constitutional recovery – if all that led to a reversal of Roe v. Wade, we would be ready for it and we would discover a pent-up, pro-life conviction on the part of the American people, certainly in key states painted red, where we would see pro-life conviction translated into pro-life legislation.
And of course, what we’ve seen is exactly the opposite. First in Kansas, but then also in my own Kentucky, suddenly the bomb went off, announcing to us that whatever commitment there was to the pro-life cause—commitment to the sanctity of human life, to the life of the unborn— was much less substantial than we had thought. It was much less convictional than we had thought. It was, most fundamentally, far less ontological than we had thought. And that leads me to the consideration for today. To be conservative is to hold allegiance to certain fixed truths and principles. 
Now, I’m old enough to remember in my own adult lifetime the argument that conservative basically means holding to a conservative temperament and a conservative commitment to timeless tradition. But the truth I want to underline today is that the tradition without a fundamental commitment to truth – and that truth being fundamentally transcendent and theological – will soon evaporate.
I would take that argument further and insist that conservatism requires fixed religious truths as well as traditions. I would underline the fact that these fixed religious truths are grounded in specific acts of divine revelation, on which we are entirely dependent. 
There are two points of urgency I want to make. Number one, conservatism is not just another form of liberalism, and then secondly, conservatism is not just liberalism or progressivism arriving later on the schedule with greater respect for the costs and challenges of what is defined as inevitable social and moral progress. Neither of these positions is genuinely conservative.
I believe the great challenge that now confronts conservatives, and I mean to include conservative Christians here, as well of course, all conservatives writ large in the United States, is the challenge of first things and fundamental truths. I do speak with a particular appeal to religious conservatives and American evangelicals. The great challenge is understanding that any worldview that does not ground itself in divine revelation, in the moral character of the self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient God – any conservative tradition that is not grounded in a prior commitment to ontology is going to evaporate. The only question is, will that evaporation happen quickly or more slowly?
One of the things we’ve witnessed in recent weeks, as a matter of fact, just in recent days, is the collapse of the Conservative Party in Great Britain. I follow that party and that Anglo-American tradition very closely, and the argument I made in an article published immediately after the election is that we should not be surprised that the so-called Conservatives lost, because the Conservative party had abandoned conservatism long ago.  I would point to an incident that had taken place now more than a decade ago, when David Cameron, then the British Prime Minister and head of the Conservative Party, just basically came out and demanded that the party abandon what had been a very longstanding commitment to social conservatism. Indeed, he called for the party, and thus the government, to abandon the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In his memorable words: “I don’t do this despite the fact I’m a conservative. I do this because I am a conservative.”
At that point, it was just like the entire ontological structure of Creation Order was just  denied by a party that still dared to call itself conservative. I don’t believe a party that does such a thing deserves a conservative reputation, much less conservative affirmation. This act, taken so brazenly, was a repudiation of Creation Order and the order that had made his civilization possible. 
 I’m not denying the importance of social traditions, morals, political principles, constitutional norms, and much more shared among conservatives and shared as a glad stewardship. I want to emphasize anew how important that stewardship is, but I do want to argue that if it all is a matter of constant negotiation and a process of accommodation to changing circumstances, we are losing and are destined to lose. There is no lasting conservatism that is not self-consciously grounded in revealed truth and in ontology. To be conservative is to affirm what is real. If we lose this conviction, we lose everything. 
Now, when you consider the challenges we face at this moment, it’s impossible to say the challenge is not ontological. We’re living in a society that increasingly believes a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy. 
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We live in a time where many voices across the political spectrum are questioning the wisdom of the democratic liberal order we’ve had in much of the West for the past 200 years. As Christians grieve what has been lost of their former cultural influence (and fear what lies ahead), there have been new discussions and new discoveries about what political arrangement can best serve our nation and our world. Some of these discussions have been more heat than light, but many have been welcome forays into a deeper understanding of political theology. 

Abstract: In 1788, American Presbyterians meeting in Philadelphia approved a revised version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The most significant change to the original 1646 version concerned the doctrine of the civil magistrate in chapter 23. In the century and a half following the Westminster Assembly, many Presbyterians grew wary of granting coercive powers to the civil magistrate and were drawn to more robust notions of religious liberty. In revising the Westminster Confession, Presbyterians in America rejected an older, European model of church-state relations whereby the magistrate was obligated to suppress heresies, reform the church, and provide for church establishments. As new debates about the proper relationship between church and state continue to multiply, it’s important to recognize that the two versions of WCF 23:3 represent two different and irreconcilable views of the civil magistrate.

The version of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) used by most Presbyterians in America isn’t identical with the version approved by the Westminster Assembly in 1646. Most of the differences between the historic text and the text used by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) are small—a change related to marrying the relative of a deceased spouse, a softened stance toward swearing oaths, and the removal of a reference to the pope as the antichrist. The most substantial changes—really, the only substantial changes—have to do with the relationship between church and state.
When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America adopted the Westminster Standards in 1788, they amended the Standards in four places: WCF 20:4, 23:3, 31:3; Westminster Larger Catechism 109. The most significant change is in chapter 23, where the third article was almost completely rewritten, reflecting a new understanding of church and state that allowed for more toleration and gave much less power to the magistrate over the realm of religion.
The purpose of this article is to show what changed in the American revision of WCF 23:3 and why the changes were made. In exploring these changes, it’ll become clear the two versions of WCF 23:3, though overlapping in some areas, are, in significant ways, contradictory. In addition to examining the historical record, this article aims to make a point of contemporary relevance: that there’s more than one Reformed view of the civil magistrate and that those who want to subscribe to the Westminster Confession—either in general spirit or in an official capacity—should think carefully about which version they believe is correct.
A church officer in the OPC or PCA, for example, who subscribes without exception to his denomination’s version (the American version) of WCF 23:3 is implicitly rejecting the view that the civil magistrate has the duty to purify the church, to suppress heresies, and to call ecclesiastical synods. He is, instead, affirming a different view of the civil magistrate that does much more to restrict the magistrate’s power and gives members of the commonwealth much more freedom and liberty in the realm of religion (even to the point of practicing no religion at all).
In short, what the Westminster Assembly confessed in London about the civil magistrate in 1646 is not what American Presbyterians confessed in Philadelphia in 1788. The two versions of the Westminster Confession don’t say the same thing, and they cannot both be right.
1. What Didn’t Change
We can see what changed and what didn’t change by looking at a side-by-side comparison of the two versions of WCF 23:3. What’s bolded is the same in both versions (except moving from singular to plural); everything else was a change from 1646 to 1788.

Historic Text (1646) 
Chapter XXIII
Of the Civil Magistrate
III. The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.

American Revision (1788) 
Chapter 23
Of the Civil Magistrate
3. Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.

As we can see, the first sentence of the revised version is unchanged from the historic text up until the word “or.” The Westminster divines and their 18th-century American counterparts agreed that “civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments,” and that they mustn’t exercise “the power of the keys” in the courts of the church. The Confession rejected any species of Erastianism—named after the Swiss physician and theologian Thomas Erastus (1524–83)—that insisted on the state’s authority in ecclesiastical affairs. The Westminster divines may have thought the magistrate was afforded a power about religion (circa sacra), but he wasn’t to exercise power in religion (in sacris).
The Scottish commissioner George Gillespie figured prominently in this debate. True, the lore surrounding Gillespie’s role at the Assembly is sometimes more legend than fact. The 19th-century historian William Hetherington has Gillespie single-handedly vanquishing Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Thomas Coleman, and John Lightfoot; toppling John Selden in a single speech; and thoroughly demolishing Erastianism for all time with Aaron’s Rod Blossoming (1646).
At the same time, it’s true that Gillespie, the youngest member of the Assembly, was an intellectual prodigy and one of the most frequent speakers and most effective debaters. In print, Gillespie argued that while the civil and ecclesiastical powers agreed in many respects (e.g., both are from God, both must obey God’s commandments, both ought to be honored, both can issue censures and correction), they differed in “their causes, effects, objects, adjuncts, correlations, executions, and ultimate terminations.” As he wrote several pages later, “The Magistrate himself may not assume the administration of the keys, nor the dispensing of Church-censures; he can but punish the external man with external punishments.” In short, the church was to be the object of the magistrate’s care but not of his operation.
Gillespie’s views on the civil magistrate, if not entirely convincing to every member of the Assembly, represented the kind of two-kingdom thinking that had been dominant in Scotland for three-quarters of a century. In 1578, the General Assembly in Scotland approved a brief manual on church government called the Second Book of Discipline, what has since been called “the first explicit statement of Scottish Presbyterianism.” A central theme throughout the document is that the Kirk (i.e., the Church of Scotland) and the civil magistrate may work toward some of the same ends but “always without confounding the one jurisdiction with the other.”
The magistrate can only deal with external matters; he cannot make laws that demand affections or compel the conscience to believe certain things. Crucially, the Second Book of Discipline also stipulated that the “magistrate neither ought to preach, minister the sacraments, nor execute the censures of the kirk, nor yet prescribe any rule how it should be done.”
Unlike its neighbor to the south, Scotland insisted the head of the church and the head of the state weren’t the same. When Reformed and Presbyterian pastors make a declaration in the name of “Jesus Christ, the only King and Head of his Church,” they’re denying not only the authority of the pope but also the authority of any earthly monarch over the church.
The Westminster Confession stands in the same tradition, believing the civil realm and the ecclesiastical realm are both under God’s authority but with different officers, different responsibilities, and different aims. As Calvin put it, “Whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual Kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct.”
2. Civil Magistrate as Guardian and Avenger
Of course, “completely distinct” didn’t mean for Calvin, or for the Second Book of Discipline, or for Gillespie, or for the Westminster divines that the civil magistrate had no role to play in the establishment, defense, and promotion of true religion. On the contrary, they all believed the civil magistrate was responsible for enforcing both tables of the law. These responsibilities didn’t mean the state was ushering in Christ’s kingdom. That was the work of the gospel and the church. But the magistrate did have a responsibility to reform the church, to suppress false teaching, and to ensure the moral law was honored by all.
Until recently, most Reformed Christians, especially in America, would have quickly dismissed the historic text as tragically mistaken and embraced the 1788 revision as obviously correct. In recent years, however, as republican virtue has waned and as the democratic-liberal consensus has broken down, some Christians have wondered anew if the magisterial reformers and the confessional documents from the 16th and 17th centuries may have been right after all.
Stephen Wolfe, for example, has argued for a “Christian prince” in our day to do the following: “If the ministry degrades, he should reform it. He should correct the lazy and erring pastor but not perform the duties of pastor. He should protect the church from heretics and disturbers of ecclesiastical peace, ensuring tranquil spiritual administration.”
Wolfe insists the Christian prince “has the power to call synods in order to resolve doctrinal conflicts and to moderate the proceedings. Following the proceedings, he can confirm or deny their theological judgments; and in confirming them, they become the settled doctrine of the land.” According to Wolfe, the prince may look to pastors for theological advice as a father seeks advice from his son, but the prince “still retains his superiority.”
The Westminster divines thought about the relationship between church and state in the way most Reformed Christians did at the time: the civil magistrate has a duty to keep the church pure, to suppress blasphemies and heresies, to ensure the church’s worship and discipline are properly reformed, to maintain a settled church establishment, to call for church synods, and (like Constantine of old) to provide for them if necessary.
The Belgic Confession (1561), for example, declared that the “government’s task is not limited to caring for and watching over the public domain, but extends to upholding the sacred ministry, with a view to removing and destroying all idolatry and false worship of the Antichrist; to promoting the kingdom of Jesus Christ; and to furthering the preaching of the gospel everywhere; to the end that God may be honored and served by everyone, as he requires in his Word.”
Sixty years later, the Dutch theologians were still staying the same thing. The Synopsis of a Purer Theology—often called the Leiden Synopsis because it originated in 1624 as a series of disputations among faculty members at the University of Leiden—argued the civil magistrate’s duties fell into two broad categories: (1) the magistrate must make sure the civil laws are in agreement with the law of nature and with the recorded moral law; (2) the magistrate should establish and keep pure the worship of God in his region, reform what has become corrupt in the church, and “as far as he is able” go against heterodox teachers and those who block the way of progress of true religion.
While the Synopsis does espouse a basic two-kingdoms philosophy, it also argues for “the greatest possible harmony . . . between the two administrations, i.e., the political and ecclesiastical one.” The civil magistrate is lauded as nothing less than the “guardian and avenger of both tables of the Law.”
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Singing God’s praise is a natural outflow of knowing the bountiful grace of God. “I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me” (Psalm 13:6). Singing praise is a natural response of the glad heart that is found in salvation. “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise” (James 5:13). Singing praise is the outworking of a heart that is saturated in the glorious gospel found in God’s holy Word, and direct result of being filled with the Spirit.

All Christians want to be more like Christ. And good news! All Christians will be more like Christ (Rom 8:29). God is committed to taking every person who is in Christ and slowly, but certainly, conforming them into His image. When we think of God conforming us to the image of Christ, we think of being transformed in our affections to love the things that Jesus loves and to hate the things that Jesus hates. We think of God changing our desires for sin and our lives beginning to look more like the perfect Son of God. But did you know that becoming more like Christ means that you become a singer? Here’s what I mean.
In the ESV, the words “sing” and “praise” occur next to each other about 116 times. God loves the musical worship of His people. And Jesus knew this. And Jesus sang! We see Him with His disciples walking to the Mount of Olives after the Lord’s Supper, and what is He doing? He is singing (Matt 26:30). Quoting God the Son from Psalm 22, the writer of Hebrews says, “He is not ashamed to call them brothers saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise” (Heb 2:11-12). This is a mark of Christ. He sings praises. And I’m convinced that this is a mark of those who are becoming like Christ.
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Monday, July 29, 2024
Some people simply aren’t capable of recognizing beauty. This, Burke insists, is due to a variety of factors: stunted powers of discrimination, carnal and materialistic living, an obsession with living for the applause of the world, or “a want of proper and well-directed exercise” in recognizing beauty (33). “The cause of a wrong taste,” in short, “is a defect of judgment” (33). Burke also points out that what is commonly mistaken for total subjectivity with regard to beauty is the fact that there are gradations of beauty. Beauty is on a scale from less to more beautiful. But that is very different from saying that beauty is subjective.

The idea that beauty is objective is not widely shared today. Aesthetic relativism is so widespread in our culture that even those who are firmly non-relativistic in other areas (religion, morality, etc.) are likely to have given up on the claim that beauty in art, music, architecture, clothing, and so on, is objective. Everything has been turned into a matter of preference or pragmatics. Should one believe a painting by George Innes is more beautiful than a Jeff Koons statue? Or that Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, GA is more beautiful than a brutalist office-building masquerading as a church? Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
This is all nonsense, of course. Beauty is objective because it is a reflection of the glory, majesty, and beauty of God’s being. Some things, insofar as they reflect God’s glory, majesty, and beauty, are truly more beautiful than other things. There are many ways this can be defended, but one that may prove particularly helpful today is the revival of an idea found in an early writing of Edmund Burke. Burke, though famous for his political writings and career, first made a splash in the literary world of 18th century England with a treatise on aesthetics entitled A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757).
Burke’s argument is simple. Beauty is objective, but human powers of perceiving of beauty are not. This fact, and not the absence of an objective basis for beauty, is what accounts for the radically divergent claims people make about whether something is beautiful or not:
So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the same in all men; there is no difference in the manner of their being affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the degree there is a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either from a greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and longer attention to the object. (31)
Recognizing beauty, in fact, requires several things: a developed ability to discriminate between what is beautiful and ugly, and sufficient knowledge and experience in such discrimination. “For sensibility and judgment, which are the qualities that compose what we commonly call a taste, vary exceedingly in various people,” Burke maintains (33). “There are some men,” he continues
formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic, that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives. Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a faint and obscure impression. (33)
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We see all over the world, especially in the West, people being given over to their sin. The sacrilegious and blasphemous display in Paris is just one of millions of examples of this. But it will not go on for much longer. That is good news.

Several things that occurred this morning reminded me once again of the reality of the spiritual war that we are in. One of the biggest mistakes the Christian can make is to not be aware of this ubiquitous spiritual battle that we are all involved in. Living as if everything is just sweetness and light will just mean we keep losing to the other side.
The Paris Olympics
My first example of this was what took place at the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympics. When I opened my social media feed today I saw dozens of posts on this. Satan is alive and well in France it seems, and demonised hatred of Christianity seems to characterise those in charge of the Olympics. One news report describes it this way:
The 2024 Olympics opening ceremony in Paris has sparked international outrage with drag-queen themed imagery of religious and historical figures. In between listing all the countries participating in the Olympic Games, there have been several performances riffing on France’s history and culture, such as a headless Marie Antoinette, the last queen prior to being executed amid French Revolution, singing with her severed head in her hands sporting drag-style makeup. This was part of numerous drag queens that appeared to be a recurring theme throughout the ceremonies.
Three drag queens were among the 10,000 torchbearers who relayed the Olympic flame as it started in Greece, passed through French territories and made its way to Paris. One new display on Friday showed what appear to be numerous performers, including drag queens and a large woman in an aureole halo crown, parodying “The Last Supper,” a universally recognizable painting by renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci of Christ and his apostles. https://www.foxnews.com/media/olympics-opening-ceremony-sparks-outrage-drag-queens-parodying-last-supper-gone-completely-woke
Plenty of commentary has already been made on this sacrilegious and diabolical assault on Jesus Christ and the faith of so many. One friend of mine put it this way: “The French misfire in Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. There’s good art and there’s bad art. This was bad art. Good art inspires. Bad art mocks and disgusts. The Olympics are supposed to be a unifying event, not a place to insult the deepest beliefs of many.”
Another said this:
Drag queens mock Christianity during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics in Paris as they attempt to recreate da Vinci’s painting of Jesus’ Last Supper. Not only are Christians the only people that it is socially acceptable to mock… it’s actually celebrated and put front and center when it happens. Remember the words of Jesus: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you (John 15:18).” There will be a day that mocking turns into fear of the One true God. Hopefully, it happens before it’s too late.
I will speak to that coming day in a moment. And big names were also condemning this disgraceful assault on our faith. Elon Musk said this: “This was extremely disrespectful to Christians.” Sports people also weighed in on this. Riley Gaines put it this way: “Men in wigs front & center at the Olympic Games. No one ever tell me this group is ‘oppressed’ or ‘marginalized’ again.”
NFL footballer Harrison Butker said this: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting.’ Galatians 6:7-8.”
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Oh fellow believers, the gospel is the great treasure of the Christian faith with which we have been entrusted (2 Cor. 4:7; 2 Tim. 1:14). We must devote ourselves to searching out its never-ending beauty and power, and we must preach it as those who are under the greatest and gravest stewardship. As Paul declared to Timothy shortly before his martyrdom, “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word!” (2 Tim. 4:1–2). The world’s greatest need is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The gospel is most certainly to be believed, studied, and exemplified in our lives, yet the great emphasis in the New Testament is on proclaiming it. At the very beginning of His earthly ministry, “Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God” (Mark 1:14). At the end of His ministry, He commanded His disciples, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). 
The book of Acts bears abundant testimony that the apostles and early church understood and obeyed their Lord’s command. Preaching was their preeminent ministry, and the gospel was their preeminent theme. They literally devoted themselves “to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). They would not divert from this sacred task even when faced with other valid needs (Acts 6:1–4); even when it was contrary to the laws of men (Acts 4:18–20); even when it evoked the whip (Acts 5:40), the rod (Acts 16:22–23), stocks (Acts 16:24), chains (Acts 12:6–7; 16:26; 21:33; 22:29; 26:29; 28:20), stones (Acts 7:58–60; 14:19), and swords (Acts 12:2). 
The primacy of gospel preaching is further revealed in the epistles of the church’s most prominent missionary, the apostle Paul. The gospel was the message that he delivered as of first importance (1 Cor. 15:3). Regardless of what cultures desired or men thought they needed, Paul did not yield to their petitions but gave them the only remedy prescribed by God. He wrote to the church in Corinth, “Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified…the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:22–24). Samuel Davies wrote, 
“We preach Christ crucified!” The sufferings of Christ, which had a dreadful consummation in His crucifixion; their necessity, design, and consequences, and the way of salvation thereby opened for a guilty world these are the principal materials of our preaching! To instruct mankind in these, is the great object of our ministry, and the unwearied labor of our lives. We might easily choose subjects more pleasing and popular; more fit to display our learning and abilities, and set off the strong reasoner, or the fine orator; but our commission, as ministers of a crucified Jesus, binds us to the subject; and the necessity of the world peculiarly requires it! (1)
Such was the prominence of the gospel in Paul’s catalog of preaching themes that he declared to the church in Corinth, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). This does not mean that Paul did not expound on other matters of the Christian life, but he saw the gospel message as the very foundation on which the church was grounded and erected. If the church’s understanding of the gospel was faulty to any degree, it would bring ruin to the entire edifice (1 Cor. 3:9–11). Thus, the gospel was the treasure of Paul’s heart, the focal point of all his study, and the great theme of his preaching. Davies continued,  
[The preaching the gospel] was not the apostle’s occasional practice, or a hasty wavering purpose; but he was determined upon it. “I determined,” says he, “not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified!” [1 Cor. 2:2]. This theme, as it were, engrossed all his thoughts; he dwelt so much upon it, as if he had known nothing else and as if nothing else had been worth knowing! Indeed, he openly avows such a neglect and contempt of all other knowledge, in comparison to this: “I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord!” [Phil. 3:8].
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We are not to gloat, make fun of, ridicule, rejoice over, etc., our enemy. In other words, we do not go to them or others to gleefully mock them for their downfall. But, as you show, we can go to the Lord and rejoice in His victory over His enemies. This is very closely linked to imprecatory praying, and is actually the other side of it. We might call it “imprecatory praising.” I am not to take vengeance on my enemies (Rom. 12:18-21), but I can pray to the Lord to do so. Similarly, I cannot go and rejoice over my enemies when they fall, but I can thank the Lord who made them do so. This spirit is what we see in Christ, who asked His Father on the cross to forgive His persecutors.

Yesterday, I preached from Isaiah 14 and addressed verse 29, which reads,
Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of you,
    that the rod that struck you is broken,
for from the serpent’s root will come forth an adder,
    and its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent.
This article is not about the difficulty in interpreting the imagery here of the serpent, adder, and flying fiery serpent. (For that, I followed Keil-Delitsch’s insight in seeing, given the context, a surprising but Biblically-based reference to the Messiah. Listen here if you want to hear more.)
Rather, in this post, I’m addressing (with the help of a friend!) God’s command to the nation of Philistia not to rejoice because King Ahaz had died, meaning their old nemesis, the Davidic kingdom, had taken a blow.
In the message, I developed the Biblical principle that we should not rejoice over our enemies when they fall. As Proverbs 24:17-18 says, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him.” I then applied this principle to the church, urging them not to develop a spirit of gloating when we see judgment fall on our enemies.
I’m always glad when people interact with me about a sermon, so this morning, I was encouraged to see the following email in my inbox. With his permission, I want to share Deacon Gib McCracken’s insightful question and my response to him. I trust this interchange will encourage you.
Good morning Pastor,
Here is what you said (in bold), as accurately as I can represent:
The scriptures warn against rejoicing over the downfall of others, even your enemies. Proverbs 24:17-18 says, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him.” We can’t be that way. Remember when David’s great enemy, King Saul, was put to death? Remember what David did in his godliness before the Lord? He wept, and sang a lament over the one who had taken so much away from him. That should be our posture. 
You then gave the example of the abortion doctor who died in a skydiving accident: in our response it’s tempting to be gleeful, to mock, and ridicule. When we do that, we have more in common with Westboro Baptist Church. What happened when the abortionist fell from the sky? His time to repent was over. He faced judgment, eternity away from God. So we’re not to be gleeful over the death and punishment of the wicked, but rather we are to call them and warn them of their pride and arrogance, really to plead with them with tears in our eyes to repent, even as they rejoice in their wickedness. That’s to be our posture. 
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“Gender” tinkering came to a head in 1949 with Simone de Beauvoir’s statement: “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” Her idea was that the attainment of womanhood was no longer exclusive to those born female. Womanhood was simply a social construct and could, therefore, also be deconstructed. De Beauvoir’s existentialist vision of personal actualization and authenticity allowed womanhood to become an abstract state of mind, not a concrete way of being. With womanhood no longer limited to just biological women, feminism opened Pandora’s Box to today’s endless “gender” confusion and creation.

The trans movement is in full bloom. Many are scratching their heads as to how we got here.
A survey of the last two centuries reveals that it was long in the making, with deep roots found in feminist ideology, as discussed at length in my book, The End of Woman. Feminism ushered in significant shifts in thinking about women, fundamentally changing the way Western civilization considers biology, language, and law.
Each of these shifts on its own would have been damaging enough, but like the poisonous tentacles of a jellyfish, when taken together, they were fatal and brought about the triumph of the LGBT movement.
Biological Argument: Make Women More Like Men
One of the earliest efforts of the feminist movement was to help women with the suffering associated with fertility. It is a laudable goal, except that rather than help women as women, the feminist vision was to help women become more like men, namely, rendering their bodies sterile to enable sex without consequences.
The idea was to get rid of the connection between women and motherhood. Among first-wave activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, “The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.” A few decades later, Charlotte Perkins Gilman said motherhood made it “impossible for women to achieve their potential.” And by the 1960s, Betty Friedan completed the transformation by famously encouraging every woman to leave the “comfortable concentration camp” that is the home to do productive work. The message was clear: Career is more important than motherhood.
The biological transformation away from motherhood would not have been possible without the work of Margaret Sanger, promoter of birth control and founder of Planned Parenthood, who envisioned a eugenic utopia where individual pleasure triumphed over the family. Women, she believed, were the source of “the most flagrant of our social evils” because of their fecundity, and as a result, women had not only “incurred a debt to society” but must “pay that debt” by not having more children.
With the Pill and later Roe v. Wade, women could finally live the ideal of consequence-free sex by eliminating their reproductive capacities entirely. Birth control was the prophylactic, and abortion was its backup safety net.
Erasing this essential element of women, the capacity to conceive and bear life — biologically, psychologically, and spiritually — quickly made the meaning of woman murky. For women, motherhood was largely erased as an essential and replaced with a vision of womanhood modeled after a masculine ideal. To maintain this new ideal for women — the pursuit of a career — women were sold the rabid dependence on contraception and abortion that we see today. It can be argued that feminism has been transitioning women into men for decades, with few noticing because of the enticing idols of achievement and independence.
Language Change: Implementing the Sexless Language of ‘Human Person’
While feminism was pushing women to be like men, a second societal change developed: a subtle change in language. What seemed minor was, in fact, a significant change in the way men and women viewed human nature. It started harmlessly enough, with Mary Wollstonecraft emphasizing the common dignity and rationality of all human beings to distinguish women from slaves and cattle. This focus on what is common between men and women quickly undermined what distinguished them, such as the centrality of motherhood. Feminists, seeing the utility of this linguistic emphasis, have used it repeatedly ever since. Consider the following examples:
In the late 1800s, Susan B. Anthony: “The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not.”
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Pausing to recognize the unremarkable should help remind us that even when we do routine things, we are still privileged to participate in the long history of human life. Many of us get up in the morning, pour a cup of coffee or orange juice, pull out a chair, and sit down at a simple table for breakfast. We do homework, we pay bills, we write emails, we laugh, and we hurt. As in the years long past, we are doing the same things today. Sure, we have different technology, but we are still people being people. And we still sit at tables.

Many of our mundane moments go unnoticed, but we should pause to appreciate them occasionally because they will soon come to an end. I am sure this will sound strange to some of you, but I take pleasure in pulling out a chair and sitting next to a table or desk. The simpler, the better.
We own an antique secretary’s desk we picked up at a yard sale for next to nothing. Someone built it either in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I like to pull up a chair and write there, usually with pen and paper. Occasionally, as I write, I wonder who else sat at this desk and what else had been written on this old wooden surface long before computers and mobile phones.
Did someone sit here and write a letter to a loved one who was away at war with a heart full of concern? Did tears fall on this surface while a couple tried to figure out how to pay bills larger than their income during the Depression? Was it used to write wedding invitations, baby announcements, or tell loved ones about a cancer diagnosis?
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For some, the attraction of Roman Catholicism is its emphasis on social ethics. The perception for some—especially those converting from forms of fundamentalism—is that Protestants have become hyper-focused on individual salvation while the Catholics have been busy building and sustaining hospitals, schools, orphanages, nursing homes. And yet, Christian history reveals that Protestants have and can have a robust social ethic while affirming a biblical understanding of personal salvation by faith.

A surprisingly large number of conservative intellectuals in the United States are Roman Catholic. Consider, for example, that six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are Catholics. Many of these public intellectuals are converts from Protestant Christianity. This leaves some with the sense that the Protestant tradition is somehow deficient.
Both the Catholic and Orthodox churches make weighty claims by purporting to be the true church established, continued, and kept by Jesus Christ himself. In Why Do Protestants Convert?, Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo consider nine motivations for Protestant conversions. Despite these claims, the authors argue that the conversion of Protestants often says less about the strength of the Catholic or Orthodox churches that it does about perceived weaknesses in modern Protestant practice.
Intellectual Concerns
Many more people convert to Roman Catholicism than Orthodoxy, so that move is the focus of the book and this review. The Protestant to Catholic pipeline is a topic of ongoing cultural discussion. However, according to a 2015 Pew study on the U. S. religious landscape, Roman Catholicism is losing more members than it is gaining from any source. Still, the conversion trend is significant.
Littlejohn, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Castaldo, lead pastor at New Covenant Church, note that Catholic converts are oftentimes intellectuals who carry a certain public credibility. Historically, converts like John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Richard Neuhaus, and Peter Kreeft have written a great deal about their conversion narratives. Thus, Roman Catholicism, compellingly perceived and portrayed, makes some Protestants wonder whether we left some of the best intellectual resources behind during the Reformation.
In reality, Protestants have at least equal intellectual resources to other Christian traditions. However, “until we teach them effectively to our pastors, parishioners, and children, we should hardly be surprised when they go in search of greener pastures” (10). The apparent contrast between Roman Catholic and Protestant intellectualism is “in large part the natural result of the self-inflicted wounds of the late 20th century scandal of the evangelical mind, which will take generations to undo” (9–10).
At the same time, the Protestant intellectual tradition has largely been overlooked by many contemporary believers. And, doctrines like the belief in “total depravity” have caused some to believe that Protestants disregard the value of human reason, or philosophy. In contrast, the Roman Catholic view appears more positive toward reason, is more openly reliant on philosophy, and thus to some appears better equipped to deal with the social challenges of the day.
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