Matt Marino

Pastor of Grace ARP | Professor at New Aberdeen College | Theology ☩ Philosophy ☩ Ethics ☩ Old Books | “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone” (Phi. 4:5)

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Expectation level — 0

[Berith Press @BerithPress]

Can we expect to see a Presbyterian study committee to address the ideologies and policies that led to this?

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Where are the NAPARC study committees on CP? That is, Christian Progressivism. Always remember that in an age of political ignorance among seminarians, officers (including those who create study reports) don’t have to take exceptions to all of the ways the Standards oppose modern liberalism. They don’t need to take exceptions because no one knows enough to inquire to begin with. The older LIBERAL generation senses that things are changing—young men moving to the right—and may be maneuvering to hold on to their modern inheritance.

[Sean McGowan @irishpresby]

The #PCA CN report says:

“ An officer who advocates for the magistrate’s duty to suppress heresies is in tension with the Standards.” 2731, lines 30-31

How does this square with WLC 108, which is also part of the PCA standards?

WLC 108 says it is the duty of all (including magistrates) to not only detest, disapprove and suppress false religion, but actively remove it, and all monuments of idolatry.

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Logic 101 lesson for today: Spot the Fallacy . From a FB post on a recent podcast from the R2K perspective …
_____________

"It's important to note that just because the civil magistrate is in some way under the natural law, that does not mean that it's supposed to enforce [[every single thing]] in the natural law. Take the Tenth Commandment, for example, Thou shalt not covet. The Tenth Commandment is part of the decalogue. It's part of the natural law. But everyone knows that the civil magistrate can't enforce the Tenth commandment. I mean, can you imagine? If you think government's big and intrusive now, just wait."

— David VanDrunen

🤦 Let’s add to the straw man fallacy (who holds this?), the whole to part fallacy (All moral law relevant for government is within the set of natural law, therefore every imperative of such law is to be civilly legislated), and the non-sequitur. A concise summary of this criticism would demand:

If the magistrate must know the substance of the true religion to x degree (so, add the question-begging fallacy: e.g., to *what* degree?),

Therefore, he must know when you are coveting so as to enforce “civil coveting,” etc.

This is bad. Really bad.

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Once again, I remind you that as long as you are not independent of the Regime, the Left side of your organization or your social spheres is not required to be winsome (wholesome). Only you, holding the Edenic fort down against the barbarians, are required to be winsome (wholesome). This article explains the what, the why, and the how.

https://t.co/WYi7MkZZ1g

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

There are very few trials or even mild struggle sessions in contemporary Reformed circles for violating the 9th Commandment.

[Zachary Garris @ZacharyGarris]

The 9th Commandment requires “the preserving and promoting of…the good name of our neighbor… a charitable esteem of our neighbors; loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name” (WLC 144).

Sadly, some Christians disregard this for brothers they consider to be “enemies.”

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

“Seeking” and “control” and “requires” are potentially ambiguous terms. Getting beyond much of the pietism of 20th century Reformed thinking is actually a pretty low bar to clear. For example, if we grant that any of those authorities in Romans 13 or 1 Peter 2:13-14 may be Christian—in other words, that it is even permissible for Christians to exercise power, then we are at least not Anabaptist. The next level is deciding to use such power lawfully and effectively: e.g., to actually stop the violent from murdering, stealing, etc., and that such laws or the enforcement of them, in order to be just, must conform to God’s law. How do these terms—“seeking” and “controlling” and “requiring”—function against this?

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Civil octopuses and ecclesial octopuses say what they need to wrap themselves around the affections of women and weak men. They expend only enough venom to cast off the unwinsome by trials over tone. By the time you know it’s got all its tentacles around all the fish, it’s too late. There is a season to chase it away and then a season when escape is impossible. But there is a second season, a moment in between those two, when the discerning make history by making a break—whether to chase the octopus away or to lead an escape from the octopus will vary, but a decisive strike either way.

[Berith Press @BerithPress]

"The nature of the octopus is deceitful, and it is an image of flatterers and hypocrites.

For just as the octopus assumes the color of the rocks to which it approaches (for it changes color when it fears, and resembles what it fears), so flatterers turn themselves into every habit and form in order to please those from whom they hope to receive something.

The same do pseudo-politicians, who are proverbially called “octopuses.”

For synonyms are: the political chameleon, the political octopus, the “half-Ulysses,” "the man-for-all," and "the man-of-all"."

Johann Alsted
Natural Theology

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

What if I told you it’s been one man / one woman marriage month—every month—from the beginning?

[Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Matthew 19:4-6

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

The word of the LORD.

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Leviticus 18:22

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Rutherford on the freedom of the conscience of a people to be governed for their own protection.

“Where God hath not bound the conscience, men may not bind themselves, or the consciences of the posterity. But God hath not bound any nation irrevocably and unalterably to a royal line, or to one kind of government; therefore, no nation can bind their conscience, and the conscience of the posterity, either to one royal line, or irrevocably and unalterably to monarchy.”

Lex, Rex, Q10 [44]

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Only the “unwholesome” ever put crowds like this to permanent flight.

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

@michaeljknowles Well, this ain’t helping:

[Ethan Levins 🇺🇸 @EthanLevins2]

The U.S. and Israeli militaries are moving to combine.

KEY: Sec. 224 2027 NDAA

I’m serious.

https://t.co/hvvAUOPkxY

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Rutherford continuing to multiply the “which magistrate” dilemmas to his antagonist: but relevant for any circumstance in which one denies a portion of God’s prescriptive will for politics on the ground of His decretive will for the contrary.

“because if birth speak God’s revealed will, that the heir of a king is the lawful king, then conquest cannot speak contrary to the will of God, that he is no lawful king, but the conqueror is the lawful king. God’s revealed will should be contradictory to himself, and birth should speak, it is God’s will that the heir of the former king be king, and the conquest being also God’s revealed will, should also speak that that heir should not be king.”

Lex, Rex, Q10 [40]

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

@realtimsharp @MattH_4America The correct answer is: (a) the invaders currently on our soil, (b) starting with their generals in DC, and then (c) on to arming freedom fighters in all Western nations to drive out the Muslims the same way.

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

I’d like to propose a trade.

[RON .D. WATKINS @Ron_WatkinsQ]

BREAKING 🚨 El Salvador President Nayib Bukele landed in America to meet with Donald Trump

This is going to be EPIC 🔥

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

The Canons of Dort Against the Error that None May Have Assurance They Will Persevere Except by a Special Revelation

Having set forth the orthodox teaching, the Synod rejects the errors of those who teach that apart from a special revelation no one can have the assurance of future perseverance in this life.

For by this teaching the well-founded consolation of true believers in this life is taken away and the doubting of the Romanists is reintroduced into the church. Holy Scripture, however, in many places derives the assurance not from a special and extraordinary revelation but from the marks peculiar to God’s children and from God’s completely reliable promises. So especially the apostle Paul: “Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39); and John: “They who obey his commands remain in him and he in them. And this is how we know that he remains in us: by the Spirit he gave us” (1 John 3:24).

Refutation 5 under the Fifth Point of Doctrine

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Sunday school this morning.

Rutherford on the Root of Civil Authority https://t.co/fwKRGRavG3 via @YouTube

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

@Zvdotson 🫡

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Rutherford refuting the criticism that the right of the people to dissolve their bonds from a tyrannical power implies a willy-nilly, constant, arbitrary, readiness to opt out over the “slightest” grievances.

“the community keepeth to themselves a power
to resist tyranny”

“The community’s law is the law of nature—not their arbitrary lust.”

“We teach not that people should supply all defects in government, nor that they should use their power when anything is done amiss by the king, no more than the king is to cut off the whole people of God when they refuse an idolatrous service, obtruded upon by them against all law. The people are to suffer much before they resume their power.”

Lex, Rex, Q9 [35, 36]

[Matt Marino @RefClassicalist]

Instead of playing to win (which means a final disarming of one’s opponent), conservatives play not to lose. They are managers of the inheritance, ignoring the laws of cultural entropy and craving the approval of the respectable image that comes with such adherence to fair play. This reflects an ignorance of a hybrid of Conquest’s second and third laws. These laws apply to both the civil and the ecclesial spheres. No further elaboration.