Hopefully, Sound of Freedom will help encourage people to speak out. However, the exploitation of children is not just about Epstein and secret Hollywood parties. The film will shock ordinary people and show them how nefarious worldwide networks operate and what it takes to battle them. When Ballard thought of quitting his job and going it alone in the fight against child trafficking, he feared for his family and was wracked by doubts. But his wife Katherine – played in the film by Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino – dispelled them, saying, “You have no choice. You have been called to do this. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

Last week, JPMorgan accused Cecile de Jongh, wife of the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), of working for Jeffrey Epstein and facilitating his underage sex ring.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan itself reached a $290 million settlement with some of Epstein’s victims.
The two incidents do not just highlight Epstein’s vast network; they remind us of the horrific crime of child trafficking, believed to yield annual profits of $32 billion in the U.S. and $150 billion worldwide. It is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, in competition with drug running and the arms trade.
One man, Tim Ballard, has made it his life’s mission to fight this evil and rescue as many of its innocent victims as he can. A former undercover operative for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Ballard worked on its anti-child-trafficking teams but felt frustrated by the limitations of a government agency. In 2013, he and some colleagues quit to set up Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), which now has 150 employees, 80 contractors, and 70 trained dogs. Ballard and other staffers, who pose as customers to infiltrate child sex rings, have so far been involved in 7,000 direct rescues, resulting in 5,000 arrests. They also provide therapeutic aftercare to rescued children and train law enforcement agencies in five regions worldwide.
His valiant story is the subject of Mexican producer Eduardo Verastegui’s film Sound of Freedom, available for viewing nationwide beginning July 4.
Indeed, there’s an Epstein connection: Jim Caviezel, who plays Ballard, says the film features an Epstein island allegory, and wonders how the “three-letter agencies” could not be aware of the extent of the child-trafficking problem. He hopes the film will motivate more witnesses and whistle-blowers into speaking up.
In the film’s dramatized storyline, a boy whom Ballard has rescued while a government agent tells him to also rescue his sister, handing over a necklace to help identify the girl. Unable to do much in his official capacity, but not having the heart to ignore the boy’s request, Ballard quits his job, teams up with some other agents, and against great odds rescues the girl from Colombia.
While there is no denying that multiple factors encourage the sexual exploitation of children, the real-life Ballard believes that one major contributor in our times is the woke political atmosphere in the country. The irony, he says, is that 20 years ago, people could be arrested for giving pornography to minors, but today, teachers supply what is essentially pornography as part of the curriculum. He warns of the harm teachers and school authorities inflict by manipulating children into gender confusion and gender transition treatment without parental approval. “If you can consent to genital mutilation, you can consent to sex with a 50-year-old,” he says, adding that there are attempts to normalize pedophilia by portraying it as “child liberation” rather than abuse and viewing parents as the enemy for limiting access to their children.
In a parallel development, pedophiles are insinuating themselves into the LGBTQ movement, reinventing themselves as an alternative orientation – Minor Attracted Persons (MAPs).
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Protestants have historically believed that the Reformers were recovering a fundamentally biblical insight: sinners are declared righteous by God (the one who justifies), on the basis of Christ’s finished work (the ground of justification), and through the instrument of faith alone (the means of justification). The Reformers simultaneously (1) recovered a biblical insight and (2) sharpened a key biblical insight in the midst of conflict and debate. 

The Reality of Confessions, Statements, and Creeds
Christians throughout their history have determined that it is necessary to articulate the faith. Whether we call these articulations “creeds,” or “confessions,” or “statements” is somewhat beside the point—as every effort of this sort shares a basic family resemblance: the desire to articulate something important or essential or pressing about what we as Christians believe. I, as a Baptist, was taught that we have “no creed but the Bible.” This has a kind of bravado and swagger about it, but is it really true? Is it the case that Baptists—if we are consistent—have “no creed but the Bible”? I have come to reject this understanding. Indeed, even the Anabaptist Schleitheim Confession (1527 A.D.) is, well, a confession (and yes, I know it is a big debate to trace the relationship, or lack of a relationship, between the Anabaptists and contemporary Baptists). It is a summary of Christian belief—whether we call it a confession, a statement, or a creed.
The purpose of this article is to ask a basic question: Is Nicaea enough? Or more importantly: Is the Nicene Creed (381 A.D.) adequate as a summary of Christian belief, confession, fellowship, and shared ministry? The more one reflects on this question (as I see it) the more complex one sees that such a question is. If one is asking whether all Christians should affirm the Nicene Creed, the answer should be a hearty “yes” (though Calvin’s reservations about the exact way to understand the source of the Son’s deity is a legitimate reservation with which I have sympathy). But if one comes from a different angle and asks if the Nicene Creed is optimal or sufficient for meaningful Christian belief, confession, fellowship, and shared ministry, then a different answer might emerge. In short, if one asks the latter kind of question, it may very well be the case that the Nicene Creed in fact is not enough.
So perhaps there are two questions one should think through:

Is the Nicene Creed adequate as a summary of Christian belief, confession, fellowship, and shared ministry?
Should all Christians be able to affirm the Nicene Creed?

I will suggest that we answer “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second question. I take it as a matter of course that all Christians should answer “yes” to the second question—we will not linger much more on that question here. But we will linger on the first question in this article.
Why the Draw to the Nicene Creed as Enough?
On the first question, we might ask why would one be inclined to think that Nicaea might be enough for Christian belief, confession, fellowship, and shared ministry? One might be the understandable impulse or desire for unity. There is a right and proper yearning, on my view, for Christian unity. Most of like to be liked, and would not—generally—seek to live a life of tension, friction, disharmony, and disagreement. If we are honest, most of us probably think along the following lines: “It would be nice to live a life where we get along with all or most persons, and where our lives are not marked by combat, fighting, debating, and constant disagreement.” We know from Scripture that a day is coming where there will be a blessed and joyous unity. Indeed, we know that in the future the wolf will lie down with lamb (Isa. 11:6). But we also know that it is a mark of unfaithfulness and unbelief to say, “peace, peace” when there is no peace.
But it is a mistake—a serious one—to yearn in the wrong way, or to yearn for unity without grasping where one is in history. Political commentator and theorist Eric Voegelin warned against “immanentizing the eschaton.”[1] Voegelin meant by this terminology that it is a perennial temptation to try and force the blessed future eschatological state into the present by the use of force (Voegelin was particularly concerned with what develops, and had developed in the 20th century, of using centralized political power to “usher” in the eschaton). Perhaps, analogically, it is also mistaken to so wish for peace and unity that one fails to have the courage to live in our age of antithesis, where there is an animus which exists between the things of the evil one and the things of God (e.g., Gen. 3:15). That is, we live in the period of the already-not yet, where the future state of unity and peace has not arrived. It is not wise, prudent, or faithful to fail to know our place in God’s economy. Thus, we should both (1) seek unity where we can, but we should also (2) know that we shall not find perfect unity in the present time.
It is perhaps also the case that to think that the Nicene Creed is enough is perhaps rooted in a desire to return to an age where the universal Church seemed—at least in broad outline—to be a united church with a common theology. But this is only somewhat the case. In the fourth century, Nicene trinitarianism “won” in 325 A.D. at Nicaea (and again in 381 A.D. at Constantinople). But Athanasius, the leading proponent of Nicene Trinitarianism in the fourth century, was forced out (banished) from his teaching/bishop position some five times over seventeen total years in the course of his ministry. In short: the church was only “united” to a certain degree.
Or perhaps the desire to think that the Nicene Creed is enough is rooted in the conviction that once one has got the Trinity and the deity of the Son and Spirit figured out, that is enough. That is, cannot the Christian church simply rally around a simple confession that there is one God, and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully divine persons? Certainly, a Christian should confess no less than this, but is there any good reason to think that such a confession is enough?
John Henry Newman and James Orr
Perhaps we might find help in the 1901 work, The Progress of Dogma, by Scottish divine James Orr. But to understand James Orr’s work we must briefly recall the work of John Henry Newman. Orr wrote his volume just over ten years after the death of John Henry Newman (1801–1890).
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Written by Edward J. Erler |
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Transgenderism seeks the ultimate victory of technology over nature—the goal of science at its very origins, “the conquest of nature.” You can ask my friends (if I have any left) whether I predicted that transgenders would soon outrank gays in the new morality, a morality which judges based on who is most committed to the denial of the relevance of nature and all standards of nature. But has transgenderism succeeded? Has it driven out nature with its virtual pitchfork of technology? Or is it merely deluding itself? Isn’t cannibalism a greater denial of human nature? Doesn’t cannibalism outrank transgenderism in the new morality? 

The flagship publication of Hillsdale College, Imprimis, which the College claims has a readership of more than six million, has recently published an article by the current enfant terrible of conservatism, Christopher F. Rufo, entitled “Inside the Transgender Empire.” The article explores the question of how transgenderism became so successful, and especially how the transgendered and Drag Queens became so celebrated among the ruling elites. Rufo rehearses all the horrors that have been visited upon American society and politics by the transgender movement and, I believe, he thinks his analysis of that danger goes to the radical source of that danger.
It does not! His analysis is not radical enough; it ignores the fact that the triumph of the transgender movement will inevitably lead to cannibalism. If you think that statement is too harsh for polite readers, read on.
The Los Angeles Times has published not one but two rave reviews of a movie celebrating cannibalism. Glenn Whipp, reporting from the Telluride Film Festival in September of 2022, describes Bones and All as “a tender story of young love” starring two “fine young cannibals trying to negotiate their natures and doing their best to ethically source their next meal.” What makes the cannibalism ethical, one supposes, is that the movie’s two cannibal stars are “people on society’s margins” who are stigmatized and shunned. Whipp seems to think that this brings ethical issues into the equation. In this clash, the ethical conundrum seems to be a choice between the right to life of the victims of cannibals, and the cannibals’ desire to pursue the food of their choice; who is the real victim?—those who are eaten by the cannibals or the cannibals whose way of life is considered unacceptable and stigmatized by society?
The second review, by Mark Olsen describes the film as “part horror film, part coming-of age tale, part romance.” He explains part of the movie’s plot as “two young ‘eaters’” “attempting “to stake out a semblance of normalcy and stability.” But, of course, it is difficult to imagine normalcy and stability developing among cannibals, and the reviewer observes that “the film is driven by a sadness, a mournful, haunted quality that covers even moments of freedom and joy.” The “freedom and joy” presumably breaks forth from the mournful gloom when then cannibals have stalked and succeeded in consuming their next meal.
We should have been prepared for the praise of the morality of cannibalism. I, for one, have been prepared for it for years. Friends, casual acquaintances, and bystanders have endured my discussions, sometimes polemics and even screeds, on how the result of progressive thought would ultimately be cannibalism. All those many years ago, it sounded utterly fantastic, but when I first heard the claims from anthropologists and other social scientists that opposition to cannibalism was merely western food aversion—in other words, an irrational prejudice—I knew that cannibalism was coming.
Liberation movements from the very beginning sought to free human beings from the restraints of nature and of nature’s god. Marx, of course, wasn’t the first, but his simple account is the easiest to explain. We create God to put moral restraints upon ourselves. Creating this non-human or divine source gives the restrains greater authority. But once we realize that God is only a myth or creation, it loses its authoritative power as a tool of oppression for the ruling classes. Once the proletariat seizes power in the inevitable dialectic of history, God, will be exposed as a fraud foisted on the people and can be dismissed. A new, secular morality will be designed to support the party of the working class. Today’s secular religion of the “woke” resembles that party, but it no longer has its roots in the working class, even as it demands the same loyalty and metes out the same harsh discipline as Marxist-Leninism.
Feminism was a successful liberation movement. Once feminism realized that there are no significant or relevant natural differences between the sexes, it became obvious that there were no grounds in law or politics for any inequality. Elimination of classifications by sex for civil rights issues—equal opportunity in employment, voting rights, etc.—were certainly warranted and just, but once the natural distinction between the sexes was deemed irrelevant for civil rights, then it was almost inevitable (and here I paint with a broad brush) that it became irrelevant for all purposes.
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