@apologistlayman Philip Schaff's The Principle of Protestantism
Douglas Wilson's and Douglas Jones' Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision of Middle Earth
The highest form of public execution which Christ has commanded is for the Church to excommunicate unrepentant Christians. And this isn't merely prohibiting them from the Lord's Table, and continuing to fellowship with them at Thanksgiving, etc. This is their removal from all interaction with Christ's body, sacramental and ecclesial, until they repent. Every member of the body is to avoid them as Article 33 says, "That person which by open denunciation of the Church is rightly cut off from the unity of the Church, and excommunicated, ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful, as an Heathen and Publican, until he be openly reconciled by penance, and received into the Church by a Judge that hath authority thereunto." Most churches no longer do this. Even most so called conservative churches don't excommunicate for things which merited excommunication in the past. We are a Church filled with unrepentant sinners. The failure of her shepherds to publicly execute the unrepentant means the people are not spiritually acclimated to public execution. The Church's ministry of grace is such that when we execute a sinner (via excommunication), they are given an opportunity to resurrect from the dead (via repentance and restoration). Otherwise they are handed over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh so that their spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. I have literally seen multiple people, including family members, die within a year of being excommunicated. Another ultimately gracious act, which isn't acheived if we don't excommunicate. If the Church were practicing this more regularly, there would be less need for capital punishment from the civil magistrate. And when the need arose to physically execute a criminal, the body politic, being familiar with spiritual executions, will find criminal executions fitting and appropriate. But we first need men who are willing to deal in discipline and death rather than gynocentric, therapeutic, coddling.
A few comments about William Wolfe’s speech at NatCon Jerusalem:
1. William came to Jerusalem because I asked him to come and explain to Israelis why Israel is losing support among young American conservatives. He came in the middle of a war to help Israeli Jews understand this issue better just because we needed his help with this. That’s the act of a friend, and I and many other conference participants are grateful to him for joining us for these discussions.
2. William gave a very good and very appropriate speech that did exactly what it was supposed to do: It accurately reflected what’s going on among young Republicans on the subject of Israel. There is nothing illegitimate in this speech. Every argument William made is worthy of consideration. More than that: It is crucial that Israeli Jews hear and understand these arguments.
3. I know that some of William’s arguments are hard for some Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel to hear. In fact, there was one conference participant who was unable to maintain his composure in the wake of William’s comments and was in the end asked to leave the conference hall. Together with the other organizers, I regret this rare departure from the norms of civil conversation at our conferences. But most of the Israeli conservatives in attendance were able to recognize that the time has come for these arguments to be heard, and they were able to discuss them honestly and openly.
4. I’m proud of the conversations that William and the other American NatCons in attendance were able to help get started in Jerusalem. These are necessary conversations. The US and Israel are not the same countries they were thirty years ago. So the relationship between the US and Israel is changing. It’s not surprising that some are going to have a hard time adjusting to these changes. But we are going to have to adjust.
5. Thanks again to William, as well as to Kevin Roberts, Amanda Milius, Jon Keeperman, Matt Peterson, and the other US participants for making the trip over and engaging in such good spirit with their Israeli counterparts on these subjects.
Listening to Fuentes on NatCon because of course. And he's saying the purpose of NatCon is to dilute nationalism to make it acceptable.
"They (figures like Rubio, De Santis, and Vance) will find ways to synthesize a race-blind view of America and a pro-Israel policy with nationalism. They will say: 'We're in favor of nationalism. We're pro-God, pro-family, close the borders, against immigration--just like Israel does.'"
And it's like...aren't you sawing off the branch you're sitting on?
What it sounds like to me is...with the Zionists, you win.
Like, if the price for getting rid of DEI and shutting down immigration is having race-blind rhetoric and being moderately pro-Israel, 90% of young nationalists will happily make that bargain.
(The remaining 10% will scream bloody murder, but, well, that's what happens when you lose. And you lose because...with the Zionists, you win.)
The 1689 reading of 1 Cor 7:14 only survives by evacuating Paul’s vocabulary. Paul does not reach for a civil term. He reaches for ἅγιος — the covenantal word, the Abrahamic word, the Levitical word, the apostolic word. And once Paul’s vocabulary is allowed to mean what it means everywhere else in Scripture, the Baptist reinterpretation collapses under its own weight.
Paul’s architecture is explicit:
• The unbelieving spouse ἡγίασται — sanctified in relation to the believer
• The children are ἅγια — holy
• Otherwise they would be ἀκάθαρτα — unclean
This is not legitimacy language. This is covenant polarity. It is the same holy/unclean axis that governs Genesis 17, Leviticus, Ezra–Nehemiah, Acts 10–11, and Acts 2:39. Paul is not improvising. He is applying the canonical architecture.
ἅγιος never means “legitimate.” Not once. The Baptist reading requires Paul to be the only biblical writer who uses ἅγιος to mean “legitimate,” and only in this one verse. That is hermeneutical isolationism — a system protecting itself from the text.
Paul’s contrast is covenantal: holy vs. unclean.
In Scripture:
• Holy = inside the covenant sphere
• Unclean = outside the covenant sphere
• Unclean children = covenantally excluded
• Holy children = covenantally included
This is why Paul’s logic mirrors Abraham’s:
• The believer is a covenant bearer
• The unbelieving spouse is sanctified in relation to the believer — covenant proximity
• The children are holy — covenant inclusion
• Covenant inclusion → covenant sign
• Covenant proximity → no sign
Genesis 17 is the load‑bearing beam:
The sign is promised to the seed, never to spouses. Covenant proximity does not equal covenant membership. Paul simply applies that architecture to a mixed marriage.
The Baptist reading must flatten Paul’s covenant vocabulary into civil vocabulary because their system cannot accommodate covenantal holiness without covenantal membership — and covenantal membership implies covenantal sign. But Paul’s architecture will not flatten. It is too thick, too canonical, too Abrahamic.
This is why the children are baptized and the unbelieving husband isn’t.
Paul is not arguing for infant baptism. He is assuming the covenant architecture that makes infant baptism intelligible.
Architectural punchline:
Paul uses ἅγιος — the covenantal word — and applies it to children, not spouses.
Holiness belongs to covenant members, and the sign belongs to the seed.
Everything else is commentary.
#1Corinthians714
#CovenantChildren
#FederalHoliness
#AbrahamicArchitecture
It is far more humane to give heinous criminals a set time to repent, get their soul right with the Lord, and speedily execute them, than to let them rot in a prison cell for life on the public tax dollar where their life consists of navigating prison gangs, beatings, and rape.
Public executions are a way of the civil magistrate showing they actually love the people under their care. And are willing to protect them. It also instills fear into criminally minded people, and curtails their willingness to engage in such anti-social behavior.
We have not had a public execution since 1936.
Now is not the time to restart this dehumanizing practice.
Conservatives who are foolishly defending this: how will you feel when the Left holds federal power again?
Remember: Terrorists aspire to martyrdom — he will be another martyr for them.
Repent and stop the bloodlust.
This is complete nonsense. But even if we grant whatever convoluted point Mrs. Rose is trying to make here, we could respond by saying modern America is now the extreme circumstance. Have you seen what's happening in America?
Capital punishment can be just in extreme circumstances if necessary to protect the common good, but not in modern America. The Bible does not mandate capital punishment in America. To argue God demands the death penalty today in America is not biblical.
Gynocentric popery will be our downfall. Less Mrs. Rose. More public executions of murderers where Jesus will be glorified and pleased and sin curtailed in exactly the way He intended civil magistrates to curtail sin. God's interactions with the world as recorded in Scripture are often soaked in blood. Lots of it. And God gave men the authority under the Noahic covenant to execute murderers. It is part of our becoming like God. Mrs. Rose, along with the official teaching of Rome at this point, are simply in rebellion to God. And they need to repent.
@Gnosisinformant This is a particularly Romanist and Eastern Orthodox cope. Protestants accept and affirm the data on this without trying to impose a revisionist history. Dr. Gavin Ortlund is great on this issue. @gavinortlund
@B_A_Purtle Amen. Genuine question: I've been wrestling with this - How do you harmonize this with the promises that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed?
I believe God hates when Christians look at this and sneer and talk about how their worship is so much better. It is Michal despising King David for dancing. You immediately soil your worship the moment you start despising other Christians in this way even if your worship is done with more skill and aesthetic refinement.
You wouldn’t despise a child for trying to read, but not enjoying Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. This kind of contemporary worship is setting the Word of God to music and thus teaching the heart and mind the grammar of loving God. It is shaping the affections toward God. And over time many Christians, who grow up listening to this or listen to it after conversion as an adult, mature in their faith and seek out more skillful, traditional, worship.
Show them a better way, not by trashing theirs, but by loving God with a pure heart within your own tradition.
And I’m not saying there must not be any criticism here. One can exhort and correct and encourage a different direction without despising.
You’re right, I shouldn’t have accused you of hysteria. Please forgive me. I do think there is an overreaction here. And I stand by my exhortations, which don’t exclude good faith, reasonable, criticisms, like you’ve made here about AI. As such I’m happy to end the conversation with respectful disagreement. Grace and peace to you and yours.
Not need to apologize. I think good faith disagreement can be had here. Here would be my respectful pushback for consideration. Is Ryan not worshipping when he sings along with his heart, mind, and mouth? And isn’t telling a computer to worship similar to telling a piano or harp to worship? Both are soulless instruments in themselves that require human input to produce a joyful noise.
And yet Ryan is still alive. Doesn’t seem like God agrees with your hysteria. Maybe AI is just another instrument like a soulless trumpet or a soulless harp. They all ultimately require souls to be used. That Christians have to a large extent adopted this Luddite panic regarding AI is more unchristian than anything Ryan is doing. Pagans are afraid of mastering creation and continue to live in mud huts. Christians bring creation under godly dominion. Maybe you could learn something here from Ryan.
The Lord is righteous in all that He does. In taking Nadab and Abihu's lives immediately, they were at a stage in their walk where the Lord would not tolerate their continued worship. Were the Lord to take Ryan's life for his worship I would affirm the Lord's righteousness in doing so and denounce whatever would be the analogous strange fire. As it is, the Lord is extending patience to Ryan. Probably because it seems Ryan is just sincerely singing Scripture with music back to God which isn't strange fire.