West Port Experiment

In my previous article, we began to revisit the question of the Jews from a Reformed perspective during our present Western “noticing.” What overlap or divergence is there between the woke right and confessional, Reformed Christianity? Having approached matters from the economic or redemptive-historical perspective of Scripture, especially as found in Romans 9 to 11, let’s consider some doctrinal issues relating to Original Sin, the “world” as enemy of the Church, and divine providence.

The Jews & Original Sin

In considering Jewish identity across the ages, we argued that the Jewish people have continued and must continue essentially intact and identifiably so for the fulfillment of the ancient promises to the fathers. Not in terms of temples and tribulations, mind you—but “natural branches,” being torn away by their unbelief, must by true faith be re-grafted in to their “own olive tree” by national repentance and faith in the Messiah and their inclusion within the catholic, Visible Church on purely equal terms with their Gentile counterparts.

But the woke right mood, when mixed with a generic Reformed Christianity, seems to produce at least a functional rejection of Original Sin. Specifically, the universality of Original Sin. Now, in all fairness, our kinist friends are not wide of the mark in pointing out that the Jews are unique sinners, having sinned against unique privileges. The prophets would have agreed with them, one and all! Moses was weary of living because of them. Elijah, their Moses redivivus, was pretty down on them too and was also pushed to the brink. Christ excoriated them as a “crooked and perverse generation.” And Stephen denounced them as incurably obdurate across the generations: “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.” It is also not hard to find similar witnesses among our Reformed divines. Thomas Boston, a most tender-hearted evangelist, yearning over the fallen Jews, himself did not blush to write in his sermon on Acts 2:40, “Save yourselves from this untoward [insufferably perverse] generation”:

The character of the generation among whom their lot was cast; they were an untoward generation. They were a crooked, perverse, and forward set of men, who were not so much through weakness led out of the way, as through wickedness bent to forsake the way. They were wilful and headstrong in their evil courses, and would not be reclaimed, but proceeded from evil to evil. He points out that generation as a signally-untoward one, this untoward generation, who have signalized themselves for obstinacy, rebellion, and apostasy, having crucified the Lord of life, and being still carrying on the war against him; being the generation which Moses specially pointed at …..

But whatever lip-service some of these personalities pay to universal, distributive human depravity is betrayed by their obvious fixation on “the Jews” and all their real and perceived sins. While we fully admit that they Jews win special marks in the historic depravity category, the way some talk in the Christian manosphere would lead one to think that the Jews are actually more depraved, with a far more generous dose of Original Sin than their Gentile counterparts. Given all the now fashionable scapegoating of the Jews for all the woes of the West, one wonders how they square Paul’s indictment of the Gentiles in Romans 1 with that of the Jews in Romans 2? Why such equal bad press? And why do we find them both at the bottom of the moral barrel in Romans 3? Was Romans 1 actually a Jewish interpolation—like Esther as some now opine—a fraudulent psyop to guilt-trip the noble savages? That’s the other side of the coin. The fixation on Jewish sin, real and imagined, is coupled with what seems to be an implied innocence of Gentile moral nature. If only whites of northern European heritage could simply expel all Jews from their borders, then the West would return to Edenic moral purity. But my Bible tells me it’s just not that simple. And that Gentiles are pretty rotten too: both tie for first place in rebellion against God (Rom. 3:9-20).

Further, woke right Christianity seems to drift perilously close to secular, evolutionary racialism. And in some cases it looks practically indistinguishable from it. Neo-kinist distinctions among the various peoples of the world are pressed to the point that a common humanity practically evaporates. “Culture” is played down, while “race” is played way up. While some pay lip-service to the essential humanity of different races, as well as their changeability or redeemability—sinners from all races can be regenerated or at least reformed—the majority of their discourse takes back with the left hand what was offered with the right. And then it’s a short step to racial determinism, as well as the innate and unchangeable superiority of some races (white) over others.

As an aside, it is a curious question as to whether the Jews are “white” or not. Really, it is probably just as important to determine whether the Irish, the Italians, or the Mexicans are “white.” “Whiteness” very much seems to be a moving target historically, with some people being grandfathered into the category with enough time, enough winters, and socio-economic improvement on U.S. soil. But I digress.

Yet for the sake of argument, we will say they are not “white.” We’ll say the Jews are a distinct genetic people group from fair-skinned northern Europeans, however inter-married. But when it is contended that the Jews are an absolutely distinct race from such Europeans, and that they possess innate and unchangeable properties; and when this is further combined with the notion (stated or implied) that their national propensities are radically and incurably vicious, that they are invariably parasitic to every body politic on which they fasten, abundantly meriting all the suspicion, derision, and disgust they receive, this is just downright wicked. Fearfully so. While it may co-opt Christianity and wave the banner of Christian nationalism, it has nothing to do with Christ and bears disturbing resemblances to pre-Christendom paganism and the modern Nietzschean “will to power.” As I see it, the frequent appeal to the aesthetic and the prevalence evocative imagery over rational persuasion in these things is both telling and scary, especially when social media is the new public square. Visceral instincts may not always be bad; but given Romans 1-3, I’d be rather wary.

The Jews & the World System

Next, who is the enemy of the Christian Church? Admittedly, the Jews–especially in the very early Church–have proved to be great enemies. “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes.” And let us not fail to appreciate Paul’s solemn condemnation:

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost (1 Thess. 2:14-16).

And what shall we say of the “synagogue of Satan?”

But that is hardly the whole story. Just as with Paul’s doctrine of Original Sin, so also with the world beyond the Church. “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 Jn. 5:19). Yes, Jews were the first persecutors of the early Christians. They killed Stephen, the first martyr of the New Covenant. But they weren’t alone in their hostility to the “seed of the woman.” Paul and his companions had their share of opposition from heathen mobs, magistrates, and magicians. And while angry, unbelieving Jews agitated for Paul’s death, let’s not forgot which empire we have to thank for his execution. Christians had a lot of enemies, and not all of them were Jewish. When a deranged Nero set Rome on fire and blamed the Christians, he ignited a centuries-long baptism by fire for the Church, courtesy of Rome.

The enemy of the Church is not a monolith, but a confederation. The nations raged, the peoples imagined a vain thing. They were combined together against God and His Christ. The Jews killed the Messiah, yes. But they sure had help: “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done” (Acts 4:27-28). And it is so to this day. There is not just Judaism, secular and devout; there is evil on every side, if we will also notice that. There are many obviously scary threats like jihadist Muslims and woke left cultural Marxists, and there are also worldwide religious systems and philosophies that are “anti-Christ.” Let’s not underestimate the spiritual lethality of Mormonism or forget the menace of Roman Catholicism, however much the latter seems less of an overt threat than they were in the 16th century. Not should we forget that our forefathers confessed that the Pope of Rome is that “man of sin.” The point here is that, the enemy is one, yet many. There are many heads on the hydra. “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists” (1 Jn. 2:18). They are just different battalions under the same spiritual banner and under the same dark lord, who happens not to be Jewish or Gentile (Eph. 6:12, 2 Cor. 2:11), but is quite happy to use both for his nefarious ends.

The baptized Christian swears loyalty to Christ and takes up the fight of faith against that age-old “trinity of evil,” the world, the flesh and the Devil. Even if they don’t explicitly say it, it sure seems like they concentrate most or even all the evil in the world as in the Jews, as though Satan sang only one song. But he is far more sophisticated than that. He’s pretty pragmatic and adapts his strategies to lure his prey in all their diversity. But this leads us to something else that at least subtly gets minimized: the flesh. The world is the enemy of the Church, under Satan, the Master Puppeteer. But what of the heart? “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?” I’m not at all suggesting that Reformed kinists deny the depravity and corruption of every heart, any more than they deny Original Sin, as we have said. But the fixation is the tell. Like ascetics, the great danger is always “out there.” In this case, it is “the Jews.” True, the Reformed faith doesn’t call for us to bury our heads in the sand. But it also radically calls us to suspect ourselves first. We have to be ever so careful when identifying the “real” evil of the world “out there,” that we don’t fail to see it lurking within the man in the mirror. It’s these emphases and preoccupations that worry me, not so much the paper orthodoxy of these voices. But the absorption with our enemy the Jew is just out of sync with confessional Reformed Christianity. Jesus never taught us to pray, “forgive the Jews their debts,” nor did Paul call us to mortify the Jews. We just need some greater perspective and proporionality.

The Jews & Divine Providence

So, we’re sure that there is a lot of evil in this world. And there are lethal forces combined against the Church. But this prevailing fixation on the Jews as the main threat to the Church and humanity belies a much more heathen, polytheistic view of the world, where powerful players vie for power and God is at best one among many. That’s scary. Now we all have fears; but unchecked, unsanctified fears warp our perspective. We easily exaggerate and minimize reality as it is. Fears become suspicions, suspicions become accusations, and so on until even worse things happen. It’s especially scary to suspect a hidden council of power-brokers behind all my problems and who are slowly crushing my future beneath their boots. Demagogues then play on these fears and whip their followers into a frenzy. Groupthink is real, and really dangerous under manipulation (Acts 19:21-41).

But simple as it sounds, God is actually in control. He is God sits in the “assembly of the gods,” and yet these “gods … shall die like men.” God is sovereign even over sin. Even really, really bad sin—and even coordinated, well-concealed conspiracies by people of means and power. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain” (Psa. 76:10). Not Pharoah, not Goliath, not Haman, not Pilate; not real, actual, demonstrable enemies, but also those whom we fear are pulling the wool over our collective eyes: none of them is God. And He who sits in heaven shall laugh and shall dash them like an earthen vessel. Yet the way some woke right Christians talk these days, you would think that Jehovah is but one power in world actually controlled by a Jewish cabal. And unless we talk enough, agitate enough, advocate enough, and weary ourselves with our panicked speculations, we will face certain doom. If our woke right friends are actually correct about the international Jewish threat, I want to say, let us rule our fears and not let them rule us. “God is our refuge and our strength, / in straits a present aid.” Even if we end up disagreeing on particular facts and the relativity of threats, we will think and reason far more clearly with less frenzy.

Also, this outlook misses the role of common grace in this world. God rules and overrules the raging of men. And even their hearts with their most subtle movements are controlled, ruled, and overruled (Prov. 21:1). And it is a fundamental element in our confession of human depravity that while men are radically sinful, they are by the restraint of God often not as sinful as they could be. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain” (Psa. 76:10). This world would be a living hell if it were otherwise. There is a lot more restraint and goodness and blessing in this world than our doomscrolling would suggest. Even heathen can be “good heathen.” And believe it or not, there are actually some “good Jews,” some conservative, anti-Marxist Jews who work hard, pay their taxes, and raise decent families. Even Bibi has some common grace, I would dare say.

Yes, there is diversity in the administration of common grace. God distributes His favors unequally. On some, He pours out His regenerating Spirit, with all saving graces; from others He withholds it. On some reprobates, He bestows greater and lesser common grace. Some heathen are born in the projects and trailer parks, others are born to great privilege. Some rise out of their poverty by sheer determination, and some heirs to unspeakable wealth degenerate into moral monsters. The Jews have known all three in their history: saving grace, greater common grace, and lesser. And for that matter, so has Christendom. And while nothing changes, everything changes. We believe in divine sovereignty, but not determinsm—and certainly not fatalism! Natural men may both reform themselves (Lu. 11:24-26) and degrade themselves (2 Pet. 2:22). Common grace ebbs and flows, is given and taken. But the tendency to view one nationality of the world as wholly and perpetually bereft of common grace—nevermind saving grace—that God puts a leash on Gentile depravity but none on Jewish, this just doesn’t square with the Bible or our experience. Jews aren’t the only reprobates, and not all “no-go” neighborhoods are Jewish. In fact, many Jews make good neighbors.