My summary of Near Death Experiences

I debated this on Puritanboard.  The only good thing that came out of it is I got to sharpen my own thoughts.  I don't really see any future in Reformed apologetics.

You say you weren't impressed with my arguments, but my premises were all drawn from the Christian tradition, the negation of which would be heresy.  I'll restate it.

P1: Body and Soul are not the same thing (correspondingly, neither are brain and mind, which is why I didn't put immediate stock in "physical" explanations.  Physical explanations can only explain the brain, not the mind, otherwise the truth would lie with Dawkins).

P2: The soul outlives the body.  Otherwise, Jesus's parable about Lazarus and the Rich Man would be incoherent.

P3: The Christian tradition holds to immaterial entities that do not exist spatially. We call them angels or demons (and we have a natural revelation analogue: Plato's Forms, Jung's Archetypes)

P4: These entities primary mode of existence is outside the time-space continuum.  Otherwise Belinda Carlisle would be right and heaven would be a place on earth.

P5: (4) helps us understand the soul's mode of existence after death.  Either it doesn't exist, and we have heresy.  Or it exists on earth and we just committed ourselves to the next season of Ghost Hunters, or it exists "on the other side" (call it heaven or hell or hades).

P6: The key problem is that some think I have argued for a realm of existence between Death and Life called "near death experiences."  I have argued for no such thing.  I'm fine with mystery.  But I am not going to be like the Eastern Orthodox apologists I debate and start chanting "Mystery" whenever I come across facts that don't fit my paradigm.

P7: The best explanation--and I am not arguing this as dogma--is that in those "near-death" moments the veil is pulled back or the boundary is weakened.

P8: What about the "Happy Hindus?"  Or more precisely, say there is a dissolute person who sees the proverbial "bright light."  Does that mean the wicked see "heaven?"  Not necessarily.  One of the key points I argued for--and this is Van Til 101--is that facts and interpretation of facts are not the same thing.  The person is probably seeing new phenomena for which he or she has no previous way of evaluating and opts for the next closest analogue.

You Might Be a Hyper Preterist if...

This is from Paul Manata back in the day

1. When you hurt your back playing golf and your buddies look at you and say, "you got a bum glorified body, didn't you?," you might be a hyper-preterist.

2. If after lusting after a Playboy Playmate you go and teach that we were definitively sanctified in 70 AD, you might be a hyper-preterist.

3. If you say you take the time texts seriously but you don't hold that 1 John was written at 11:00 p.m. on 69 AD since it says, "we know it is the last hour" (1 John 2:18), you might be a hyper-preterist.

4. If you say that people weren't regenerate until 70 AD but it was already not yet, and then you read passages which speak of the saints loving God and his law (which the unregenerate cannot do), you might be a hyper-preterist.

5. If you think 70 AD was the most important event in history, rather than the cross, you might be a hyper-preterist.

6. If you have Gnostic tendencies, you might be a hyper-preterist.

7. If you've never read Calvin, Hodge, Warfield, Edwards, Turretin, Witsius, Owen, Murray, Van Til, Vos, et al, you might be a hyper-preterist.

8. If you've read them, and the every other Christian position on the resurrection and the second advent, and you say they're all wrong and you're all correct, you might be a hyper-preterist.

9. If you think you're reformed and hold that God has elected a certain number of people to everlasting life, but yet you think the earth will last forever with people entering into the city, for eternity, you might be a hyper-preterist.

10. If you have a blank look on your face, with glassy eyes, you might be a hyper-preterist.

11. If your family members need to hire people to "get you out," you might be a hyper-preterist.

12. If your position leads to the position that Jesus needed regeneration since he was resurrected, you might be a hyper-preterist.

13. If you get kicked out of every church you go to, you might be a hyper-preterist.

14. If your creed is that you have no creed, you might be a hyper-preterist.

15. If you say that "the end of ALL things is at hand" (1 Peter 4:7) means ALL things, but the fulfillment of EVERY vision without delay (Ez. 12:21-28) does not mean EVERY vision, you might be a hyper-preterist.

16. If your teaching is gangrenous, you might be a hyper-preterist.

17. If you still take the lord's supper even though one reason it was to be taken was in order to "proclaim His death until He comes," you might be a hyper-preterist.

18. If you constantly bombard people with e-mails, you might be a hyper-preterist.

19. If your previous theological bents have been other heretical positions (i.e., the Church of Christ's), you might be a hyper-preterist.

20. If you make yourself feel better by saying, at one time people thought the reformers were heretics, you might be a hyper-preterist.

21. If your two favorite sayings are: (1)Reformed and always reforming and (2) sola scriptura, even though you misrepresent what those mean, you might be a hyper-preterist.

22. If you live in Florida, you might be a hyper-preterist.

23. If you're a fan of "New Covenant Theology," you might be a hyper-preterist.

24. If you think Jesus will kick it with Enoch and Elijah for eternity while the rest of us will float around as disembodied spirits after we phsyically die, you might be a hyper-preterist.

25. If you think that we'll still sin after we die since definitive sanctification has already occurred, you might be a hyper-preterist.

26. If you think that God will live in eternity with active sinners, forever, you might be a hyper-preterist.

27. If you have no education, you might be a hyper-preterist.

28. If you only focus on eschatology, you might be a hyper-preterist.

29. If you can't get off the milk and chew some meat, you might be a hyper-preterist.

30. If you deny Christ's full work of redemption (e.g., the phsyical He made good also needs redemption), you might be a hyper-preterist.

31. If you think that Don Preston "is the man" because he rambles off basic two-premiss syllogisms, you might be a hyper-preterist.

32. If this is the new heavens and earth and you have your glorified body, and upon realizing this if you're not depressed and feeling cheated, you might be a hyper-preterist.

33. If you've had to define what a Christian is and this definition lets just about any wacko into the camp, you might be a hyper-preterist.

Reformed Scholastic Eschatology

Summarized from Richard Muller's Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms.

I suppose as good a starting point as any would be the dius novissimus, the last day, the adventus Christi.  Here the Reformed Scholastics (excepting men like William Twisse) would also place the resurrection and Last Judgment.  As a historic premillennialist myself, I would have a few questions, but moving on...

While speculation of the last times is fruitless, the Bible does urge the wise steward to be ready, which implies some awareness of the times.  Thus, the Reformed Scholastics would speak of the signa dei novissimi, signs of the last day.  These signs can be further delineated:

• signa remota:  opening of the first six of the seven seals of Revelation 6:1-17: wars, famine, conflicts, pestilence, earthquakes.
• signa propinqua:  signs nearer the end; the Great Apostasy; worldliness in the church.  Covenanted church members forsaking the church as the center of the kingdom.
• signa propinquiora:  political unrest; regathering the nation of Israel; increased lawlessness.
• signa proxima:  political disruption from the full manifestation of the Beast (Revelation 13-17); fulfillment of mission to the gentiles.

A note on Antichrist

Antichristus:  arises from within the church and is against the church.

1.  he will sit in templo Dei
2. he will rule as head of the church
3. he will exalt himself above the True God
4. He will cause many to fall away from the church.
5. He will have "lying wonders."

Reposting an old anti-Dugin article

I wrote this some months ago.  With the ruble crashing and the existential crisis that will put Russia in, perhaps some Orthodox polemics will fizzle out.  

In a fascinating article by Vladimir Moss, we have a capable discussion of the Orthodox political theorist Alexander Dugin, particularly his relation to Vladimir Putin. Moss’s article is important because it is written by a conservative Orthodox scholar who hates globalism, modernist Orthodoxy, yet has suspicions about Putin’s conservative Christianity. Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his twice-humiliating Obama (e.g., Syria and Ukraine) have forced conservatives to reevaluate their Russophobia and the future of international conservative thought.

I want to build upon Moss’s analysis, with which I mostly agree. My goal is to show tensions in Russian history that Moss doesn’t note and ponder the implications for Orthodox engagement today.

Who is Dugin?

Back in my Russophilic days I was watching Dugin’s career really take off.  Dugin had abandoned the National Bolshevism Party (!!) and started his own Party.  Eventually, he saw that Russia’s future was with Putin and cast his lot there.  My Orthodox friends were emailing me pdfs of Dugin’s books long before they were in print.  I was leaving any form of Orthodoxy at that point so I really wasn’t interested.

Leaving aside Dugin’s own political views, Moss highlights his “eschatological ecclesiology.”  Moss rightly notes that Dugin’s views cannot be understood apart from his Old Ritualist beliefs.  The Old Ritualists separated from the Moscow Patriarch NIKON in the 1660s because they saw Nikon modifying the liturgy (and they were correct–this has huge and embarrassing implications for semper ubique and an always united church).

Old Ritualists see the world as corrupt and expect a future, purifying catastrophe (a common theme among many Christian sects), even sacrificing themselves in the fire.  I hope you make the connection between their own suicidal deaths by fire and Dugin’s call for nuclear war.  It is not accidental.

Dugin’s own analysis of Revelation is bizarre (yet no more arbitrary and subjective than Reformed amillennialism) and while entertaining, largely beyond the scope of this essay. However, it does break down Christian history into three phases: Pre-Constantinian, Constantinian (and later Muscovite) and post-1660 Muscovite.  The middle period is the Millennial Reign and the Third Period is the Age of Antichrist.  This means, as Moss notes, that little good can be seen in the post-1660 Orthodox Church (which argument by the Old Ritualists is one reason I never joined).

Dugin’s analysis is strained when he comes to the Soviet era.  He can’t simply defend it because of its atheism, but he does give it moderate praise.  He sees God’s exercising a strange power through the Soviet world, but that doesn’t bother Dugin since he’s already identified America as the Antichrist (which is odd, given his dating of 1666 as the beginning of Antichrist).

Contra Moss, Dugin is correct to note that the “spiritual conformism” of the Nikonite patriarchs is no less revolutionary than the Sovietism of the Church. With exception of Fr. Raphael Johnson, very few American Orthodox have owned up to this problem.  Dugin sees the future Philadelphian Church as a combination of the Old Ritualists, the Moscow Patriarchate, and the ROCA church.  This is problematic, to say the least, since all of these churches have condemned each other for “schisming from the true faith” (this is a huge psychological problem for convertskii.  Quite frankly, for any honest inquirer this problem is insurmountable).

Dugin’s eschatology allows him to see Putin in a new, monarchical role, especially in opposing America.  There are many aspects of American liberalism that should be rightly opposed, but one gets nervous in reading the nuclear overtones of Dugin’s proposal! The rest of the article is an analysis of Orthodox and Dispensationalist eschatologies, which do not concern us here.

Orthodoxy Today

So what do converts to Orthodoxy say about Dugin’s analysis?  Few likely have heard of them and that’s expected.  However, everyone in America has to face up to Putin’s Russia, whether good or bad.  Some convertskii have pointed out many goods of Putin’s Russia: it refuses to tolerate sodomy and speaks out for oppressed Christians in the Middle East, much to the anger of the Beltway Alliance.

I suspect American Orthodox will break down in several lines on this question. The hard-core convertskii will understandably praise Putin(and by extension Dugin).  They will see Russia as the last bulwark against the New World Order.  The more moderate convertskii, those perhaps enamored with Schmemann, Thomas Nelson Publishing, and Ancient Faith Radio, might find Dugin’s analysis embarrassing.  Yet he can’t simply be dismissed:  if you accept Putin as a normative figure you have to account for Dugin’s influence on him.

Is Putin King Arthur Redivivus?

I used to think he was.  I like him better than Obama, to be sure, but I do not think the future belongs to Russia, no matter if it is secular, Orthodox, or Communist.  Putin divorced his wife and has taken up with a young and attractive gymnast.  Hardly the actions of the leader of conservative Christendom. While Russia’s own situation has improved since the 1990s, it’s future is far from certain.  The abortion, suicide, divorce, and prostitution rates in Russia are abysmal.  Civilizations have been destroyed for far less (Boer Afrika had its problems, but they didn’t have the decadence of today’s Russia, either, yet they were destroyed by the Marxist torturer Nelson Mandela.  Maybe South Africa did sin.  She was formally covenanted to God).

I thought about doing a sociological analysis on Russia’s birth-rate and related variables. I used to have the info for that, but those days are long gone.  I will give a snapshot analysis:

• While Russia’s energy reserves are formidable, she needs markets. While she has Western Europe by the balls, energetically speaking, her economy is fragile and severe enough sanctions could tip the scale.
• Even though her birth rate has improved, much of it is from Central Asian Muslims, not white Orthodox Christians.
• Most importantly–religiously–she does not appear to have the “want-to” to survive.  Though Bulgakov and Dostoevsky could speak in eschatological veins, Orthodox theology is more inward, mystical, and onto-focused; overcoming estrangement. I realize I am speaking in generalities, but history’s bears it out.  Where is the “Protestant” work-ethic–so famous and so maligned–among the Slavic lands?  It was the Protestant understanding of the Covenant and the law of God that allowed them dominion in Europe and the New World.
• Finally,and I realize few will share my analysis, God doesn’t reward the worship of images.  Civilizations that are built on language and communications are healthier than those built on fetishism.

A Contrast

Even the best of civilizations fall.  If the criteria of success is longetivity, then few will last.  However, we can analyze the nature of their lasting and the religious impulses within it.

Covenanteroes

While I reject as naive those narratives that say the Covenanters produced modern republicanism, the impulses which drove the English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians did create a New World.  Jock Purves writes,

The United States of America, too, is a great result of the further development of the Reformation in the orderings of the most High.  It might have been settled by the Spanish or Portugese, and therefore, now been as South America, Romish, backward and dark. But in genius and constitution, in its strong depths and grand heights, it is a Protestant land.  This is because of a people, such a people, in moral and spiritual stature incomparable, the finest expositors of Scripture ever known, the English Puritans (42).

Whatever else you say about Protestantism, ask why all of the economic and political developments for the common good in the modern world happened in historically Protestant lands? Whenever there is a crop shortage in Russia, why does it always turn into a catastrophe?  Even under the decimating reigns of the Clintons and Obamas, America hasn’t had that.

I can only wonder what would have happened if King James I hadn’t murdered Sir Walter Raleigh at the behest of the Spanish Ambassador. Raleigh was talking of settling Latin America.

Only religion can bring life to a land.  I hope and pray that Orthodoxy in Russia stops women becoming Prostitutes and aborting their babies.  But it will take more than 10% of the population.

Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare

Michael Hoffman analyses both how shadow governments use psychological warfare and why it works on late American man. Along the way we get a brilliant analysis of occult symbolism. Hoffman suggests that moden American man suffers from three things: amnesia, abulia, and apathy (Hoffman 9). This is important for his next thesis: the shadow government (or Cryptocracy or Regime or New World Order, call it what you will) can “pull these stunts” largely because a) the people are apathetic and so b) won’t resist.

Hermeticism and Alchemy

Alchemy is not simply transmuting lead into gold. It is transmuting society as well. It is turn to lead (traditional Christian man) into gold (Enlightenment project). Fabled alchemy had at least three goals to accomplish before the total decay of matter, the total breakdown we are witnessing all around us today, was fulfilled--at least for American culture-- and these are:

1.The Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter (the atom was split at Trinity Site, NM, which runs along the 33rd degree north latitude)

2. The Killing of the Divine King. (JFK was killed at the 33rd degree of north parallel latitude between the Trinity River and the Triple Underpass at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Dealey Plaza was the site of the first masonic temple in Dallas. This was also a televised slaughter in a sense). And for the record, the above analysis stands no matter one’s views on the Official Government Story of Spanky the Magic Bullet. For the record, I believe in the Magic Bullet. The above argument hinges on topography and synchronicity, not on who the shooter was.

3.The Bringing of Prima Materia to Prima Terra (91).

a.The "Phoenix" lunar landing module, after its return to the orbiting mother ship piloted by Michael Collins, was jettisoned directly into the sun in fulfillment of one of the most persistent themes of alchemical lore and Rosicrucian poetry: the "sexual marriage" of the sun and the moon (98).

These alchemical goals have been accomplished. The question remains: what is the affect/effect upon modern society? Hoffman notes,

“We are mocked, disoriented and demoralized. Occult prestige and potency is heightened. This is what simplistic researchers miss: the function of macabre arrogance thumbing its nose at us while we do nothing except spread the tale of their immunity and invincibility further. That is the game plan operant here” (89).

The message is subtler than that. By common law and moral law those who are aware of crimes are also guilty. The Regime’s after-the-fact revelations is designed to further our guilt, knowing we won’t do anything about it. It is social engineering at its finest. Hoffman continues,

“As I've pointed out, secrets like this were rarely revealed in the past because traditional people had not yet completed the alchemical processing. To make such perverse, modern revelations to an unprocessed, healthy and vigorous population possessed of will, memory, adherence to their deepest inner intuition and intense interest in their own salvation, would not have been a good thing for the cryptocracy. It would have proved fatal to them.

But to reveal these after-the-act secrets in our modern time, to a people who have no memory, no will-power and no interest in their own fate except in so far as it may serve as momentary
titillation and entertainment actually strengthens the enslavement of such a people (89)”.

Analysis

The book’s weakness is its brevity. Too many explosive issues were only barely touched upon. One wishes that he would have better documented some Freemasonic references. I understand his interest in the Son of Sam murders, but it appears he overdeveloped that point. Aside from these criticisms, the book is pure gold.