John White Profile picture
Love for God’s word, massive optimism, homeschool father, reformed, postmil, theonomic, Van Til’s epistemology, Christ Church Boone (CREC), https://t.co/V6oZ6QTqOi
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Aug 9, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
🧵There is a false ethic that elevates the New Testament above the Old as God’s “more relevant” word for us. This ethic produces a shrunken, weakened, less fruitful gospel than the one promised in the Old Testament. The OT lays the groundwork for understanding the fullness of the New. It makes total claims on all men and shows the nations streaming to the city of God. Many reformers and puritans were headed covenantally down this road as detailed in Iain Murray’s “The Puritan Hope”.
Jul 28, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Jesus spent a lot of time casting out demons and healing the sick. Paul said the prayer of the elders will make the sick well. And Jesus said if we have faith in Him we will do the same works He did and greater works than Jesus did because He was going to the Father. I don’t see how the great commission delivered to the disciples is a ministry for all time but the ministry promises Jesus made to His disciples for doing that ministry are not. I think we’ve inherited a tradition of secular rationalism that militates against the idea of miracles
Jul 25, 2023 17 tweets 3 min read
🧵 It's a mistake to view reason as a power for good in fallen man. Instead, it is a faculty to be used for good or ill depending on the heart of the actor. With faith in God, reason is a powerful tool for God's kingdom. In rebellion against God, it is a powerful tool of Satan. It's one thing to say man uses his faculty of reason to understand God's law. It is another to say w/ Aquinas that fallen man has an "inclination to virtue" (ST I-II, Q85, A1) based on reason and that his will has a "natural appetite for good in accordance with reason" (Q63, A1).
Jul 24, 2023 29 tweets 5 min read
A chief feature of western intellectual history since 1300 is the rise of apostate/secular man. His goal has been liberate himself from God by proving that he can ground knowledge and meaning in himself. He failed, ending chiefly with Hume in the late 1700's. The issue is the subject / object relationship. Can the knower (unbelieving man, the subject) validate with certainty his knowledge about the object of his knowledge.
Jun 15, 2023 15 tweets 3 min read
🧵Western colonialism was a natural outgrowth of the cultural fertility of Christendom. It was a blessing of God to all nations (Gen 12:3). It was the expansion of the rule of Christian government and culture. Who writes about it this way today? Why should a godly nation not rule and disciple an ungodly nation? If God's promise to bring justice to the public square (Is 42:1-4, Is 2) is part of the good news of the gospel, why would godly nation rulership be amiss?
Feb 19, 2023 7 tweets 1 min read
Some say Cornelius Van Til opposes the use of reason and the senses in Christian apologetics. This is simply not true. Consider the following quote from Van Til: "If God is absolute, man must always remain accessible to Him. Man's ethical alienation plays on the background of his metaphysical dependence. God may therefore use our reasoning or our preaching as a way to present Himself to those who have assumed His non-existence."
- Van Til
Feb 3, 2023 24 tweets 5 min read
🧵"God is the Savior of ALL men, especially those who believe." (1 Tim 4:10).

What is Paul talking about? Doesn't the gospel deal with personal salvation? How can God be Savior of unbelievers?

This verse defies our traditions and challenges our understanding of the gospel. The answers are in the Psalms and Prophets which lay out the "good news" of an Almighty King who redeems His people AND brings justice to the nations (Is 42:1-4). He delivers from injustice not just the Christian but all men because every nation is within the scope of His gospel.
Feb 1, 2023 10 tweets 2 min read
🧵Covenant theology determines the church's identity which drives its mission and purpose. This theology is expounded in the New Testament, but its core foundation and structure is laid out in the OT. Consider the identity of God's covenant people.

When God says in Jeremiah 31:31 that He will make a new covenant with "Israel" he is declaring in essence a "new" Israel. She is made of the faithful remnant of the old (Jer. 31:37, Ro. 11:1-5).

Covenant defines the Israel of God.
Jan 21, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
🧵The heart of presuppositionalism:

“Can the unbeliever logically account for ethics apart from the existence of a God who is exactly like God of the bible? Is any other type of god or creation scenario a sufficient logical ground of authority for ethics?” Why is Nelson Mandela better than Hitler? If one believes Big Bang, we are all just random molecules.

Unbelieving thought is massively inconsistent. This is one simple example. Christian intellectuals should call out this inconsistency in every field of thought.
Jan 19, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Israel's redemption and God's vengeance on His enemies always go together. In Song of Moses:

"Rejoice, you nations, with his people,
for he will avenge the blood of his servants;
he will take vengeance on his enemies
and make atonement for his land and people"
Deut 32:43 This is confusing language to most modern Christians. They don't realize that vengeance and pay back is a big part of Jesus' mission in the earth. Consider Isaiah's recounting of the coming King and His kingdom in Isaiah 59:
Jan 19, 2023 13 tweets 3 min read
🧵 Here is a covenant theology test: “What are God’s promises to Israel in the New Covenant?”

If your mind goes directly to Romans 11:25-32, that is a sign your views don’t account for the fact that God made the New Covenant with Israel including its promises. Jer 31 is clear that the New Covenant was made with Israel and Judah alone. Thus, all our reckoning of the New Cov must begin there and remain within that boundary. If we imagine a people called “church” that is not “Israel” we’ve abandoned the first premise of the New Cov.
Jan 19, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Short 🧵— Amillennialism abandons God’s promises of blessing and cursing as “Old Covenant” in favor of a suffering church.

But it cannot abandon God’s abiding promise to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you” (Gen. 12:2-3). Deuteronomy 28, for example, rather than being new promises to Old Covenant Israel, is the clear outworking of God’s covenant promises to Abraham in Gen.12.

Thus, in Deut. 30, God promises that in the New Covenant, He will bring the curses of Deut. 28/29 on Israel’s enemies:
Jan 18, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
Unbelievers can't account for order, conscience, ethics, meaning or knowledge. They live each day based on the assumptions of the Christian worldview because the world makes no sense any other way.

The intellectual case for unbelief is a paper tiger. It may be only a cloud the size of a man's fist, but Van Tillian renewal of Christian academics is on the horizon and coming our way. Reformed and always reforming.
Jan 16, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
🧵 Jesus said 2x the entire law is not abolished. Those who say the law is "fulfilled" (Mt. 5:17), read on: "Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." (Mt. 5:19)

A stern warning indeed. As Christians, Mt. 5:19 should be clear affirmation that the law is not abolished but that we are responsible to not set aside, but instead teach, even the "least of these commands".
Jan 15, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
I think God wants the civil law of the OT in the earth. Jesus is clear in Mt 5 and Lk 16, the law is not abolished. But there are fences...

In Hosea's day God said: "Let no one bring a charge, let no one accuse another" (Hs 4:4). A wicked people can't support God's law. A people can only support God's civil law in society to the degree they obey God in all of life. This is the teaching of Jesus in Mt 7:1. It's the same principle. Without holiness, each man has no standing to civilly judge another. Only truly holy men can apply God's civil law.
Jan 15, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
🧵The thing about the “equity” of God’s civil law is this — most reformed Christians yawn 🥱 at God’s civil law. We’re not working a gold mine to exegete God’s law for civil life. God spoke, we yawn: “Reason is the answer” (NL, since 1200). That view got us where we are today… Underneath the “equity”in the confessions was a 400 year old tradition of Aquinas which abandoned the views of Constantine, Charlemagne, Alfred and his forbears…the men who actually built Christendom.
Jan 2, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Some say Christians can’t teach unbelievers anything until they believe. This is gnostic. God’s law trains the heart to know its own guilt and need. When we hide it away, men become lawless. No surprise there. In Luke 10:25, a man asks Jesus how to be saved. Jesus gives him the law and leaves it right there. The law convicts and and teaches us our need. Our nation is not full of sinners who’ve never heard of forgiveness but sinners who reject the idea of sin.
Jan 1, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
The church of Jesus Christ should aspire with longing to lead a society faithful enough in its private life, doctrine and public confession to be able to support God's civil law as the law of our land.

Read Hosea 4. When a people are wicked, admin of His law grinds to a halt. But let no one bring a charge,
let no one accuse another,
for your people are like those
who bring charges against a priest.
Dec 26, 2022 17 tweets 4 min read
🧵Postmil. A great error in the history of Christendom is the idea that the temporal world is rational and impersonal while the eternal world is beyond reason and relational. Such a view guts the biblical story of God’s intention to show Himself holy in history thru His people. This dualistic project began around 1000AD. God’s personal, relational law in scripture was relegated to govern only eternal things; thereafter it was increasingly excluded from the affairs of men. The path from this framework to the beliefs of the Enlightenment is a short one.
Dec 22, 2022 6 tweets 1 min read
How does Amil deal with passages like Isaiah 2:1-5? The nations still have disputes and wars (v4). It’s not after final judgment.

God’s people are a city on a hill—the chief city in the earth. All nations stream to it and His law goes forth from it. Wars cease. What hope! This, btw, is the foundation for Christian political theory. God’s law is the only possible centering point in creation for resolution of disputes between men and nations. This is why the nations put their hope in “torah” (Is. 42:4).
Dec 6, 2022 7 tweets 2 min read
🧵 The Endarkenment that came on university and church in the late 1600s came in the form of Latitudinarianism—“latitude” regarding the word of God. It was an outgrowth of a doctrine first imbibed in the 1200s which said scripture was for heavenly things alone—on earth, latitude. Harvard was founded almost immediately by the American Puritans in the 1630s. By 1700, it was in the hands of Latitudinarianians as were Oxford and Cambridge. Their view of scripture had in it already all the seeds the 21st century but few saw it as such.