This is what I'm talking about.

By criticizing "worldview," I've somehow given my worldview, and it turns out to be a bad one.

Here's a suggestion: every time you're about to say "worldview", give instead the specific determinative suppositions from which flows your opponent's system of thought. So, instead of using a vague term ("worldview"), provide the suppositions that necessarily lead to your opponent's conclusion.

The problem with this is that you're often committing the "affirming the consequent" fallacy, because the same consequent can have several possible antecedents. You can't always go from affirming a consequent to affirming the antecedent.

IOW, you're positing the purportedly hidden priors to some view when that view could have many substantively different priors.

"Converting to Rome is based"

Have you not read your own 20th century papal documents? You are not allowed to be based. Converting to Rome requires you to be something akin to a mainline Protestant. "Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues." (Nostra Aetate, §4)

Protestant countries have higher social trust (as numerous studies show), because holiness in Protestantism is found in everyday life, not in a sacerdotal system. Protestantism enables social reciprocity and good will in the mundane. In sacerdotal systems, holiness and good works are primarily performed in an ecclesiastical context, which downplays the importance of holiness and goodwill in the everyday context. Everything becomes purely transactional, and the vice is exploitation, fraud, and graft.

Protestants fight each other quite a lot. But our wars are brother wars. War among brethren is not good. But it is good that we are brothers, and that's made possible by our Protestantism. Being united to Christ does not come via institutional alignment but by faith. We share the same faith, not an institution, and the shared faith is all that matters in the end. I've sung psalms with a group full of Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and others in unity--seeing our shared unity in Christ by faith. And then afterwards we fought, and then we shared the evening with drink and fellowship.

We often judge by appearances. There's a time for that. But we too often forget the more fundamental reality: that we are really united with one another in our shared faith.

According to the Reformed ecclesiology, the one, true, visible church of Christ is not a single, centralized, global institution, and thus institutional membership is not a necessary condition for unity of faith. It is, in principle and in practice, anti-sectarian. But if your institution claims that it is the "one true visible church of Christ", then the unity of faith is found in it alone, and no true unity can be extended to those outside of it. It is, by its nature, sectarian, no matter how big it is.

By the way,

"Classically educated Christians is what the West needs most"

and

"Our education system should be centered on STEM, tech, AI, computer science, etc."

are not compatible visions. If China and India care nothing for the humanities, and our education system must dominate them in tech, then we must lose the humanities...and of course our humanity.

This is how theology becomes an absurd ideology. Sharing the "imputed righteousness of Christ" provides no means of cooperation, covenant, consent, deliberation, etc. to achieve the most basic goods of civil society. It doesn't provide a common language, let alone common laws, customs, culture, etc.

This really is moronic. Please just think it thru for a sec. Sharing the highest good does not mean that you share in the lesser goods that make life together possible.

Everyone understood this until very recently.

Abraham, in Gen. 20:11, confirms that nations can only follow the Second Table rightly if they follow (to some degree) the First Table.

"There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife."

And that makes sense. The First/Second Table distinction does not permit separation. To follow the second, you need the first. Modern natural law people, especially the modern "two kingdoms" people, separate them. But if the second is Law, then you can't separate it from the Lawgiver. It is ironic that VanDrunen appeals to this verse to argue for natural law.

Defending Churchill is a distraction from the church’s mission of preaching the Gospel. Defending Churchill tells the world that our hope lies here on earth, not in heaven.

Making "religious liberty" your main concern in politics is a politics of losers. The world around you can crumble, every good and beautiful thing can be turned into evil and ugliness, but hey at least your "religious expression" is tolerated by the degenerate hordes. It's pathetic, a politics for dainty and effeminate hearts.

Christian politics is an agonistic struggle to see the good and beautiful realized in society, and that means crushing what is evil and ugly. It is not for the weak and faint of heart viz., today's evangelical elite., whose minds are captured by the postwar mind-virus. To these people, civil government as a "terror to evil" conjures up images of mustache man, and so they believe (contrary to Scripture) that government should neither promote what is good, nor suppress what is evil but provide an open society of "contestation" and neutrality.

Critics of CN force me into the postmil camp, even when they know I'm amil, because they are incapable of analyzing or refuting anything political outside of eschatology. This is not good. It's probably the most common argument against CN from Christians.

Postmil is false.
CN is necessarily postmil.
Therefore, CN is false.

"Christian nationalism is unamerican" is political idolatry. America is not your home. Seek first the kingdom of God. Dont turn America into an idol. Fear is not a Christian virtue. The Gospel does not depend on you destroying Christian nationalism. Put not your trust in princes. Do not concern yourself with the things of this world. America will ultimately burn. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter that America becomes Christian nationalist. Instead of using worldly means or hating your Christian nationalist neighbors; show them kindness.

“Winsomeness” is Christians partnering with atheists to attack fellow Christians. “Winsomeness” is attacking Christians to your political right to appeal to the non-Christian left.

"Disagreeing without cancelling" only extends leftward. It never applies to anyone on the right.

https://twitter.com/gavinortlund/status/1753416597790740553

The point being, the "extension of grace" to fellow Christians in disagreement only goes *toward*, not away from, the prevailing social dogma.

Almost everything you do each day is an act of partiality. Partiality is good and necessary. What did you do this morning? Whom did you serve, help, assist, etc? Why do go to work? Who benefits mostly from your income?

You constantly act from partiality. It is the *why" for most of your actions.

The idea of a “Christian civil government” doesn’t require it to be a direct object of redemption as individuals are. It means that the gov establishes the best outward conditions for redemption. And in doing so, it doesn’t fulfill a duty of grace but a duty of nature, because God as Creator intended man to have eternal life. Thus, one cannot reject Christian gov on the grounds that only “redeemed” things can be Christian and act for redemption. Nor that “nature” cannot aim at things above it.

Christians need fewer theologians writing about politics. Politics, for Christians, should mainly be a discipline of non-theologians.

Owen Strachan would have to conclude that Spurgeon doesn’t fully understand the Gospel.

https://twitter.com/nikthestorm/status/1704533551516131787

Melanchthon doesn’t understand the gospel

https://twitter.com/perfinjust/status/1591497521544957952

As I think through the implications of my amillennial position, I'm realizing this one point:

Politics does not get progressively easier. It will always be hard, involve difficulties, and require a strong political will.

Postmill folks, by positing spiritual progress in history, can escape the hardness of politics. For them, we'll just ease into Christian political order, as the natural result of spiritual progress. Apart from arguments in favor or against, this explains why postmill can be appealing. You can avoid the messiness and difficulties of the political, and instead simply wait on God to set the spiritual conditions to ease into Christian political order.

To be fair, weak forms of amill can be appealing for similar reasons: you can avoid the political by saying such conditions will never arise. This is a false and very modern understanding of amillennialism, in my view.

Also, it is quite absurd to think that all power is explicit, open, and clearly discernible. Our social world runs on subtle power relations. The problem with the left is they call them all arbitrary and unjust, based on an egalitarian principle (which the anti-woke largely share). @Byzness @NeilShenvi @tlloydcline And it’s out in the open like never before, because few make arguments, most “arguments” rely on threats of social damage for disagreement, and it is all blatantly performative.

Postwar American conservatism, being dominated by Roman Catholics and Jews, was revolutionary in that it rejected the prewar and predominate principles of core ethnicity (Anglo-Protestant) and confident ethnic conformity (Anglo-conformism). These people viewed the Founding… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Postwar conservatism was, in a way, a replacement movement opposed to the old American political tradition of Anglo-Protestantism, by insisting on the exclusive and simplistic *universalism* of the Founding, which permitted Roman Catholics and Jews to have equal standing in a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…