Climate Cultism and the Providence of God
Christians, standing on the firm foundation of Scripture, can freely assert in the face of climate cultism that Mother Earth is no deity at all, but is merely the footstool of the Father. We need not fear the several false deities and emergent mystery cults in our idolatrous land; we need only fear the God who creates and sustains us, who offers us salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ, and who will one day call us into account for our deeds in his world.
The headlines of the Western world have for several years been rife with tidings of impending climate doom. In the last week alone, media jeremiads have reliably informed the public that there exists an extinction date for all mammals in some quarter-billion years, and that climate change has started to generate stronger hurricanes much earlier in the summer.
The evidences that climate alarmism has become a religious cult are manifest, with Gaia joining the ranks of Molech and Ishtar in the perverse pantheon of our American empire. Take, for example, how a recent Apple advertisement featured Mother Earth, played by a matronly yet stern Octavia Spencer, and her demands that Tim Cook and other executives hold themselves accountable for various corporate sustainability benchmarks. Rather than facing judgment before the resurrected Christ seated on the throne of heaven, these executives provided an account of their deeds before a portly black woman seated at the head of a boardroom table.
Beyond this unintentionally laughable knockoff of Christian eschatology, the climate cult has gained ground in the public square: legal nonprofits are now seeking the recognition of a legal “right” to a clean climate, while teenagers driven by climate anxiety are taking vows to save the environment by no longer bearing children. One investment note even concluded that the “movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline.” The litany of new paganism must always coalesce. The Center for American Progress wants you to know that “climate justice” and LGBTQ “rights” are inseparable. Both must be supported, of course, and to support one is to support the other. Climate idolatry, then, imports the entire apparatus of regime theology.
These confessors of the climate cult, though they would never describe their actions in such terms, are prophets of Baal who “cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances” (1 Kings 18:28). As with all false worship, those who hate the wisdom of God “love death” (Proverbs 8:36), and “like smoke they vanish away” (Psalm 37:20) by means of their folly.
Never to miss an opportunity for false worship, however, the National Association of Evangelicals likewise declared last year that they wished to address the matter of climate change and “love the least of these” by calling for legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Yet this august assembly has never issued a meaningful statement on child genital mutilation or any other blood sacrament which the aforementioned pantheon holds dear. The priorities of NAE are clear, and they are in lockstep with approved opinion.
The assertions of the climate cult and their professing Christian sycophants, beyond their obvious absurdity, most fundamentally contradict the truth of divine providence, by which the Triune God sovereignly governs his creatures and the creation in which he placed them.
-
William Perkins on Keeping it Catholic
According to Perkins, a Reformed Catholic is “anyone that holds to the same necessary heads of religion with the Roman Church; yet so as he pares off and rejects all errors in doctrine whereby the said religion is corrupted.”[4] For Perkins, doctrines such as justification, sanctification, and the sacraments are clear points for paring, yet there are many other issues (e.g. the Trinity, the two natures of Christ) that we can find true agreement on. These are doctrines that have not been wrecked by Trent’s touch.
Reformed Catholicity. Depending on where you are in the Reformed-Evangelical world, this label may prompt songs of joy or cries of disdain. Those who adopt the term for themselves wish to retrieve the best of the catholic tradition, or perhaps seek to confess doctrinal truths with the Great Tradition. Against this view, some have begun to adopt the label of “Reformed Biblicism.” A Reformed Biblicist is typically suspicious of the Great Tradition and of men like Thomas Aquinas. To them, the theology of Thomas led to the Council of Trent, and therefore he must be rejected. Among those who count themselves as reformed Biblicists, there is a growing concern over the loss of sola scriptura and a fear of losing the truths recovered during the Reformation.[1]
How should we approach Aquinas (and others like him) in light of Trent? It’s a fair question, and to answer it we need look no further than the father of Puritanism, William Perkins.
Perkins himself wrote polemically against Trent, recognizing just how much corruption had seeped into the Catholic church. Writing to Sir William Bowes, Perkins states that “it is a notable policy of the devil” to have men think that the church of Rome and the Protestant faith “are all one for substance; and that they may be reunited.”[2] All throughout his works, Perkins goes to great lengths to show the various blasphemies and errors of Tridentine theology. This Puritan pulled no punches, declaring that the church of Rome had turned Jesus into a “pseudo-Christ and an idol of their own brain.”[3]
Yet the purpose of his treatise was not just to show the errors of Rome, but also to show where there may be agreement.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Protestant Scholasticism is the Historical Link that Binds Us to the Reformation
Written by Richard A. Muller |
Friday, May 19, 2023
Without detracting at all from the achievement of the great Reformers and the earliest codifiers of the doctrines of the Reformation – writers like Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bullinger – we need to recognize that not they, but rather, subsequent generations of “orthodox” or “scholastic” Protestants are responsible for the final form of such doctrinal issues as the definition of theology and the enunciation of its fundamental principles, the fully developed Protestant forms of the doctrine of the Trinity, the crucial christological concept of the two states of Christ, penal substitutionary atonement, and the theme of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.As the seventeenth-century documents themselves reveal, the Reformed orthodox were well aware of differences between their “scholasticism” and the several phases of medieval scholasticism: indeed, they typically identified an earlier twelfth and thirteenth-century scholastic model as distinct from and less problematic than the scholasticism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – and they identified differences in method and in the balance of authorities between their scholastic method and the methods of the Middle Ages in general. Thus, when Protestant scholasticism is approached by way of the documents and materials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and an assessment of its style, methods, and contents is based directly on the definitions and the methods evidenced in the seventeenth-century systems, the result explicitly opposes the view of several recent scholars according to which “scholasticism” can be identified specifically with a use of Aristotelian philosophy, a pronounced metaphysical interest, and the use of predestination as an organizing principle in theological system.
In this theologically and philosophically broad but methodologically closely defined sense, the term “scholasticism” can be applied to a theology that is not a duplication of medieval scholastic teaching and method, that is distinctly Protestant, and that is not nearly as concerned to draw philosophy into dialogue with theology as the great synthetic works of the thirteenth century. Scholasticism, then, indicates the technical and logical approach to theology as a discipline characteristic of theological system from the late twelfth through the seventeenth century.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The Empty Shell of Originality
This craving for uniqueness is a race to escape the reality of our human nature. You were made to mirror God’s glory as a free creature of a Sovereign God. To despise this truth is to despise your humanity, and to succumb to beast-hood; descending into the thoughtlessness of a herd creature. Every glory of art, science, literature, music, and mathematics accomplished by mankind is a borrowed glory.
There is a nefarious lust within us as humans. It’s a craving for uniqueness, originality, and innovation. This is seen clearly in how insistent modern man is on society’s unquestioned acceptance of every person’s supposedly unique identity. It also shows up the erasure of great men and women from history. We don’t want to be reminded of the glories of past generations because that would cast a shade on our lame livestream.
No matter how dearly we believe in our individuality and uniqueness, there’s a truth that haunts at every turn: absolutely everything you are and do is imitative. Peter tells us that we receive a “vain tradition” from our forefathers; a tradition of conformity to sin (1 Pt. 1:14,18). Solomon tells us there’s nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). Generations rise and fall, but they invariably follow each other’s footsteps of folly.
This craving for uniqueness is a race to escape the reality of our human nature. You were made to mirror God’s glory as a free creature of a Sovereign God.
Read More
Related Posts:
