Hatred of Man
The false ideology taking over many churches is best understood as: Hatred of Man.
What are the origins of this false ideology? And when did it start to be emphasized?
The origins are older than Christianity. You find the same anti-individual (collectivist) belief system in ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Persia. You find Hatred of Man in the teachings of many people throughout history, including much of Roman Catholic history. It is also found in counter-Enlightenment Germany. This intellectual approach has been influential on the modern world, especially via Kant, Hegel, and Marx.
The history of ideas is the history of this Great Truth vs a Great Lie — Namely: Respect for the nature of Man vs disrespect for it — Otherwise known as objectivity vs irrationality — Or individualism vs collectivism.
Once you understand these concepts, you can ask the following kind of question, which a friend asked me the other day:
Did the “young, restless, and reformed movement” fan the flames of social justice in your estimation? If it did, what historic doctrines did it twist or ignore that allowed social justice to flourish in new Calvinism?
I answered: You have a dissertation-sized question. Let’s look at some aspects, one by one.
First, let’s look at Timothy Keller.
Keller twisted the Bible in regard to justice (see his “generous justice”). If you need a summary of what went wrong, see this article from Jacob Brunton:
Also see Jacob’s follow-up on that topic:
In 2019 we made an ebook collecting Jacob Brunton’s writings about justice.
You can get that here (tap the blue ebook called Christian Answers to Social Justice):
Hopefully the above resources will demystify what kind of deception has been taking place.
Summarizing Keller’s error about justice
Timothy Keller had a deep interest and sympathy toward Marxist theory and critical theory. He seized an opportunity afforded him by a conceptual error found in the Westminster Larger Catechism.
The WLC presents the 5th through 10th commandments as containing our “duty to man” (Q. 122), and it claims that “giving and lending freely, according to our abilities, and the necessities of others” (Q. 141) is a duty required in the 8th commandment (“You shall not steal”).
In truth, it is not accurate to classify giving and lending freely (even with the qualification “according to our abilities, and the necessities of others”) as being a *duty to our fellow man* that is required in the 8th Commandment.
It may sometimes be our duty *to God* to give to man. But it is not our duty *to man* unless there are specific obligations (such as to family or to a contract). And, in any case, generosity is not a topic handled by the 8th Commandment.
The WLC makes a conceptual error when it implies that a lack of generosity to our fellow man can be a form of stealing from that man. Lack of generosity could be a form of stealing from God (because God owns all things and has the right to command us to give to other people). But a lack of generosity could not be theft *from our fellow man* — otherwise we begin to destroy our concepts.
It would destroy the concepts of
- Man’s ownership of property
- Generosity
- Stealing
The WLC accidentally creates false implications that would lead, if taken to their logical conclusions, to a view of justice that aligns with Marx’s — namely, a needs-based theory of justice.
It is not a surprise that Timothy Keller and others interested in “critical social justice” would make use of this error.
Additional distortions
Keller’s “generous justice” is not the only way that reformed theology was twisted by the neo-Calvinists. Read their woke pastors and experts or watch their videos and they will offer you a whole catalogue of poor arguments and faulty conclusions. Nearly all of it can be understood as reducing to a single error: Hatred of Man.
When they preach “death to self” (a Buddhist-sounding phrase not found in Scripture), they are preaching: Hatred of Man.
They will criticize your special (self-interested) love for your family, your country, and your rights, and then they will try to push critical immigration theory and race-based guilt.
Some even tell you that being “God-centered” and “gospel-centered” means you should not protect your own life, because doing so would mean being “man-centered.” (See John Piper’s disgusting defense of pacifism and Jacob Brunton’s response here.) They are preaching: Hatred of Man.
Total depravity
Consider the errors they make when they teach about the (true) doctrine of man’s total depravity. Instead of understanding the truth — that all the parts of our natures are affected by sin — they often broaden the claim to mean that we all sometime experience all sorts of sinful desires.
If you think the doctrine of total depravity implies that each Christian man sometimes struggles with racism or homosexual lust, you’re simply an idiot. (And I have questions for you.)
Is it true that all Christians are always displeasing God? That we, the redeemed, are still moral worms? Is it true that God has no personal interest in us? Is it true that even after being regenerated by the Holy Spirit and growing in sanctification, we are all sinning all the time in ways we do not even know, and in God’s eyes we are still contemptible?
The Bible says you are a new creation. It says your inner self is being renewed day by day. It says that the love of Christ controls us and that the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Moreover, the Bible teaches that Christians who are living by faith will be: Pure, Genuine, Truthful, Joyful, etc.
“As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:4–10).
What kind of twisting of Scripture must it then be when a pastor tells you that Christians are not these things — and are not even capable of being these things?
Hatred of Man’s mind
If the horrors listed above were not enough, take a look at how today’s pastors show Hatred of Man in how they handle the topics of faith, knowledge, reason, and man’s mind.
The anthropology of many teachers seems to start with the fall of Man, not the original creation. They fixate on a set of claims related to the noetic effects of sin. From an exaggerated understanding of this topic they build arguments for such vicious doctrines as Presuppositional philosophy and other fallacious arguments from authority (typically, the authority is their own, or that of their tradition).
From such a foundation, they are in a perfect position to argue that man’s motivation is always suspect, that man’s knowledge is always suspect, and that the collectives they lead (their churches, featuring them as the Bible’s interpreters and spokesmen) are the main source of authority to which Man must bow.
That is what it means to hate Man. And what it means is: They hate you.
But God does not approve of such men. And he has given an understanding of the truth to men of understanding. This is why we need new Christian intellectuals — so that the church may be recolonized by Man.
For more information about the meaning of the ideas above, here is a series of videos:
Related Post:
Become a Christian Defender of Reason, Individualism, and Capitalism:
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