Contra Omnia Adversa
Augustine as Common-Law Conservative
Liberals and Conservative want to claim Augustine as their own. With the doctrine of precedent, we explore his views on law, justice, and equality.
Machen: Politically Incorrect
According to Machen, the state was an involuntary organization whose duty was to protect the freedom of individuals, families, and other private associations.
2023 Reading List to Rebuild Civilization & Community
Rebuilding civilization will be a project soon halted without literature,…
What was the Revolution?
The Revolution is essentially an epistemic rebellion against the authority and will of God. This epistemic rebellion was rightly identified by our conservative fathers as the soul of the Revolution underlying all its socio-political manifestations.
Libertarians And The Eternal Contract
Conservatism and libertarianism, at heart, are at odds. Conservatives hold that society is no mere temporary contrivance, but based on ‘Eternal Contract,’ as it were.
Distributive Justice and the Book of Job
Because evangelical social liberals are inattentive to important distinctions within the notion of justice, many of their appeals to biblical uses of “justice” are compromised.
Machen’s Rejection of Libertarian Individualism
Two more principles are at work in society. The ancients saw these as the principles of the One and the Many. Today, we call it the collective and the individual.
Correcting Scanlon and the Doctrine of Double Effect
The doctrine of double effect is a Christian teaching going back to Aquinas. It is commonly attacked today, with T.M. Scanlon leading the charge. If Scanlon is correct, pro-life arguments have just gotten harder.
The Problem with Borders
Oikophilia, the love of home. Do we have a duty to protect it and even share it? Is there a disctinction between immigration and assimilation?
Liberation Theology: A History
A key to understanding the present social justice theology is understanding liberation theology, and the key to understanding that is by understanding its history.
Confounding the Postmodern Mind
Christians dare not succumb to either rationalism or relativism; rather, because of our mind’s limits and our sins, we must be dependent on revelation. The Word of God breaks into our narrow, human minds with God’s judgment and His grace, confounding both the modernists and the postmodernists.
What Is Reconstructionism? What Is Theonomy?
Should we as Christians fall under “Reconstructionism” or the “Theonomy” Camp? Should we focus on God’s law or man’s law? Could there be a middle ground?
2020 Reading List to Rebuild Civilization & Community
A shared love of ideas, ideals, stories, and histories are necessary to rebuild civilization. Therefore, literature and history are necessary points of departure as we move forward in a crumbling civilization.
What is Republicanism?
What binds republicanism to conservatism and reformed protestantism and what can republicanism offer to benefit our families, churches, and society?
Dabney on Education as a Religious Task
Dabney’s prophetic voice has rung true in many areas, perhaps most of all in education and the secularization of American schools.
Thomas Sowell on “Atomistic” Libertarians
Libertarians, ironically, tend to feed modern secularism. Libertarianism fails to balance the individual and the collective.
Is Oikophilia Biblical?
“Love of home” is central to conservative political philosophy. We at the Reformed Conservative contend that Oikophilia is a biblical concept.
On The Right to Lethal Self Defense
Individuals have the right to lethal, self-defense in cases of mortal danger from other persons.
Antidote to the Liberal Principles
It is regrettable that, even today, many Christians, disillusioned by the promises of liberalism, nevertheless believe that they can take on board its principles.
The RTS Professor Against Social Justice
Social justice confuses different conceptions of justice and merit, and chases after an undeserved and jealous-based equality that never leads to equality, but only tyranny.
State Education Entails State Religion
Every statesman of the Reformation epic who, like John Knox, argued the right and duty of the states to educate the children, also argued State religion as an imperative duty from the same premises. Not a single leader of opinion can be found for two hundred years so absurd as to assert the one inference and discard the other.
Weimar Republic and Gun Control
History has proven repeatedly that a disarmed populace is at the mercy of whoever seizes the government.
Race Counseling in the Early Church
To employ the vocabulary of the modernists, the early church seemed to suffer from a classic case of xenophobia and privilege. Successful evangelical work on the part of the Church in and around Jerusalem had brought members from two diverse groups of distant brothers back into closer proximity than they had been for centuries and problems were bound to arise.
By the time of Acts chapter six, dissension had arisen between the Hellenists and the Hebraics. The accusation was favoritism.
Catholicism’s Impotence and the Liberal Revolution
Never forget that most of the abuses of the Roman Church are inextricably bound up with its doctrines, and that its so-called infallibility renders it incorrigible.
Groen van Prinsterer on the Nature of Civil Authority
Groen van Prinsterer’s conservative political message from the nineteenth century, and in particular his conviction that societal decline and state tyranny are fruits of apostasy, is surprisingly relevant for our current times.
Rawls, Neutrality, and Public Reason
Should public discourse be neutral in regards to religion? Read more about neutrality and John Rawls’ use of comprehensive doctrines and public reason.
The Restless Heart of Public Education
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our…
How to Restore Community and Home
Community-building then is none other than home-building, and home-building is none other than—when understood broadly—love-making, though the narrow sense works as well.
Reparations and Ezra 6
Should Christians support reparations for American slavery? Some evangelicals believe so. Some have even attempted to make a biblical argument for reparations.
Breaking Boundaries
Orthodoxy gave way to “tolerance” as the goal of the church. Liberal factions grew until in the 1920’s they gained control of the major Protestant denominations.
Principle of Variegated Distribution
Different roles, different jobs, produce different rewards; Christ’s reward is His Bride and no one else’s. To attempt to redistribute rewards goes against justice as the Godhead understands it.
A Brief Introduction to Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke is one of the most important — if not the most important — political thinkers in the last three hundred years.
A Depraved New World
Sex is one of the most foundational issues in our culture today. Read more to see what caused the dramatic shift in our culture’s attitude towards sex.
An Unorthodox Introduction to Libertarianism
“An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by…
Psychology of Political Witch Hunts
Political witch-hunts follow a basic pattern. Random violence, false accusations, and crimes against a vague collective. These witch-hunts drive the cultural revolution, propelling the injustice of social justice.
Neo-Feminism
Instead of saying that Paul was wrong, feminism now claims that Paul’s teachings are misunderstood by the modern reader — they are culturally bound commands.
Abraham Kuyper: Reformed Statesman
Abraham Kuyper used his massive intellect and top-flight educational achievements to wage war against the destructive forces of Modernism. He wrote, “it must be felt that in Modernism the vast energy of an all-embracing life-system assails us, then also it mush be understood that we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power.” He then asserted that the alternative “life-system” was the comprehensive worldview of Calvinism.
Challenging Divine Authority
As a totalitarian system, communism is hostile towards religion as it threatens authority. Karl Marx declared that “communism begins where atheism begins,” and communism “abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.”
Diagonisis of the Psychosis of Postmodernism
Reinhold Niebuhr correctly observed that identity comes from family, community and craft, or work. These three have taken a huge hit, and so we now struggle with a lack of identity. No identity; no meaning. Therefore, we have a deficit of happiness.
Bavinck, Rousseau and the French Revolution
Every generation in the modern era has had to deal with the question of inequality. As Christians, we desire to know if Scripture is sufficient for our life and our neighbors. Does Christianity alone have the requisite solution to make progress in the so-called “Social Question?”
Divine Concurrence and Moral Responsibility
To be human is to be a responsible agent, accountable before the face of God. Paganism and secularism alike seek to deny that responsibility — either by denying God or by denying culpability.
Three Reasons Against Cloning
Leon Kass, author of the essay, The Wisdom of Repugnance, gives three arguments used to defend cloning. These three arguments are: the Argument of Technology, the Liberal Argument, and the Meliorist Argument.