Is the Eternal Submission of the Son Heresy?

Posted on December 19, 2019 by Matt

Christian theology is quite clear that Jesus Christ submits to his Father according to his human nature. But what about according to his divine nature? In other words, does the Son submit to the Father from eternity apart from the incarnation? This question of Eternal Submission of the Son (ESS) has come up in recent years in connection to the ongoing debate about Ephesians 5. There are hordes of feminists who believe that God’s command for wives to submit to their husbands is inherently denigrating–that it makes women inferior beings compared to men. In response, some of those who accept a plain reading of Ephesians 5 argued that submission implies nothing of the kind because even Jesus Christ submits to his Father. In other words, If it’s good enough for God Himself, why do you think it makes you less?

They will also point to the image of God as evidence for their claims. After all, in Genesis 1:27, it says “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” This explicitly connects our being male and female to our being made in God’s image. And, of course, biology explicitly connects children to our being made male and female. So you have men and women being of one flesh (both in marriage and in woman being made from man) and children who are the very flesh and blood of their parents proceeding from that unity. It would be pretty hard not to the see the analogy between a God who is three persons and one substance (with the third proceeding from the Father and the Son) and the way God designed humanity in his image.

But analogies have limitations, and we must be especially careful when it comes to analogies and the Trinity. After all, while humanity is, in a sense, God’s self-portrait in creation, that doesn’t mean God is the only thing we represent. Going right back to Ephesians 5, Paul points out that husbands and wives represent Christ and the Church to one-another. There’s no necessity that the submission in that relationship also comes from being made in the image of God when we know for sure that it comes from our being representative of Christ and his Church. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that many Christians are now standing up to declare that ESS is actually an anti-Trinitarian heresy akin to some form of subordinationism.

But is that really the case? Heresy is, after all, a serious charge. It is not merely a false teaching, but a matter of having the wrong God or believing wrong Gospel under the guise of proclaiming Christ. Is ESS really an anti-Trinitarian heresy?

First, a few caveats:

1) Trying to determine Trinitarian doctrine as part of a debate about Ephesians 5 is a terrible idea. Don’t get me wrong, God’s design of the family is an incredibly important topic, and the Church needs to recognize the fact that we’ve largely abandoned God’s word on the subject. That’s why I’ve written about feminist rebellion at length.

Nevertheless, I believe it’s unwise to start nuancing Trinitarian theology specifically for use in that debate. The Trinity is an even more important doctrine, and amidst such contention, it’s just so easy to make poor judgments concerning it. Of course, one side begins with a hatred of God’s word, which is always a poisonous place to begin theology. But at the same, the other side’s temptation to alter/broaden Trinitarian theology for the sake of dialectical convenience more than Biblical truth is dangerous. We must always approach the Trinity with reverence–not with pragmatism in mind.

2) I am undecided on whether or not ESS is true. I really don’t know; I haven’t done the kind of rigorous study that would lead me to affirm or deny it. Because of my first caveat, I believe it’s something that needs to be approached with caution and without an ax to grind. That’s why, when I first heard it a few years ago in the context of people furiously working their whet stones, I didn’t really engage with it one way or the other.

So what changed? Why am I talking about it now? Well, it’s been an odd couple of weeks, and all of the sudden, I keep encountering the topic in different places seemingly independently of one another. Among those, many of the accusations of outright heresy are made in incredibly presumptuous ways that ultimately include error themselves. With those particular sparks flying, I think it’s worth grounding the topic a little bit. So while I’m not going to discuss whether ESS is true, I am going to consider whether it’s heresy.

So Is it Heresy?

The charge always seems to proceed from the idea that ESS is anti-Trinitarian. Orthodox Christianity teaches that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one substance, co-eternal, co-equal in glory & majesty, and so forth. The anti-ESS side contends that if the Son were in submission to his Father in his divine nature rather than simply his human nature, it would violate that teaching–relegating the Son to 2nd-class status within the Godhead.

But that’s not actually the case. The various forms of subordinationism (like Arianism) portray the Son or the Spirit as inferior with respect to substance–clearly anti-Trinitarian since we proclaim one substance and three persons. Submission, however, is a matter of relationship and therefore person–not substance. And according to orthodox doctrine, the Persons and their relationships are plainly distinct. After all, the Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Spirit, etc. Likewise, the Son is begotten, but the Father and Spirit are not; the Spirit proceeds, but the Father and Son do not. Accordingly, I cannot see how the core idea of ESS–that the Son submits but the Father does not–must be construed as anti-Trinitarian. While it would certainly be possible to formulate ESS in a heretical way, I cannot say that it must be heretical.

As long as we’re on the subject of heresy, it’s ironic that the reasoning of the anti-ESS crowd resembles the reasoning of Arius. He firmly believed that the Son being begotten of the Father clearly implies that He must have come into existence at a certain point in time (i.e. there was a time when the Son was not.) And if the Son is not co-eternal with the Father, then he cannot be God in the same sense, but is merely a subordinate deity created by the Father. Arius was wrong, of course, but he was wrong precisely because he projected a temporal and worldly understanding of “begotten” onto eternity without considering the ramifications. Begotten describes a relationship, but if that relationship is between two eternal Persons, then it no longer implies a beginning. The eternal Son is eternally begotten.

It’s a similar case when we take a divine perspective on submission or obedience. From the selfish perspective of sinful humans, submission implies inferiority because the person who submits get less of what he wants. Being bent inward by sin, we often think that one person getting more can only mean that this person is more important (leading us either to idolize the one who has more or to take what he has away lest he outshine us.) But if you remove sin and selfishness by filling the void with perfect sacrificial love, it’s an entirely different story. Athanasius’ image of the Trinity is three Persons who lovingly give themselves to one another so completely that there is only a single substance between them–one God. In such a relationship, there could be no loss through submission for everything always belongs wholly to each person. The substance remains the same despite any submission–each Person remaining coeternal, coequal, and so forth.

The same can be said when people object that ESS must imply a division of wills within the Godhead. After all, from a human perspective, submission must always entail one person setting their own desires aside for the conflicting desires of someone else–altering their will so that it conforms with the will of another. But notice that this reasoning entails a temporal if/then: If my will differs from yours, then I will change my own will to match. Such temporal mutability has no place in eternity. Perfect submission between two perfect persons eternally united in sacrificial love need not imply any division of will. On the contrary, perfect submission implies a perfect unity of will, for no Person seeks to take from the others but instead gives themselves completely. As such, the division of wills argument turns out to be a red herring. Submission suggests no such thing from an eternal perspective.

And this projection of either sinful or temporal reasoning onto the Trinity seems ubiquitous. I have yet to encounter a substantive objection to ESS that avoids projecting a worldly distaste for submission among humans onto any potential submission among the three Persons of the Trinity. Those who cannot fathom a perfect submission without the corruption of sin naturally seek to defend Christ’s honor by refusing to countenance the idea of Him submitting. But exactly what business do we have trying to dictate to the Son what is or is not appropriate in his relationship with his Father?

It is precisely that prejudice against submission that lies at the heart of the entire matter–which is why ESS does little to resolve objections against God’s command that wives submit to their husbands. On one side, many want to use ESS as a demonstration that submission doesn’t make a woman less because it doesn’t make the Son less. But on the other side, many are already convinced that submission makes women less, and therefore they cannot allow it to make the Son less as well. It’s effectively an example of one man’s modus ponens being another man’s modus tollens. It doesn’t really resolve anything.

Consider the two syllogisms at work. On the ESS side, we have the modus ponens:

1) If the Son is in eternal submission to the Father, then submission does not make one less.
2) The Son is in eternal submission to the Father
3) Therefore submission does not make one less.

On the other side, we have the modus tollens:

1) If the Son is in eternal submission to the Father, then submission does not make one less.
2) Submission *does* make one less.
3) Therefore the Son is not in eternal submission to the Father.

Neither argument undoes the other. Because both are logically valid, which one is sound depends entirely on the truth of the premises (specifically the 2nd premise since both arguments share the first.) And that leads us right back to the prejudice against submission. The problem is the fact that so many of us falsely believe that submission makes a person less. That’s not a Biblical teaching, of course. Submission to governing authorities does not mean that peasants are inferior beings compared to princes. Submission to parents doesn’t mean that children are inferior beings. Submission to pastors doesn’t mean that laity are inferior beings. Neither does submission to husbands mean that wives are inferior beings. Accordingly, if the Son submits to the Father, it need not make the Son an inferior being. But false or not, as long as worldly Christians firmly believe it, then arguments based on the eternal submission of the Son will never carry much weight.

Does ESS paint a beautiful picture of submission? Of course! What could be more glorious for humanity than embracing such a place in God’s self-portrait? The thing is, Paul already paints a beautiful picture of submission much more explicitly in Ephesians 5–being an image of the Church’s submission to Christ. The primary problem in the debate over Ephesians 5 isn’t that submission is insufficiently appealing. Faithful Christians will know that it is good simply because God commands it of us. The problem is rebellion against God’s word and ordinance–full stop. You can talk about abuse, inequality, unfairness all you want, but you’re only talking about why you’re tempted to rebellion. You can talk about how submission doesn’t really mean submission all you want, but that’s just a hypocrisy you place over the fact that you wouldn’t obey a divine call to submit even if you had never thought of that particular excuse. After all, if you’re honest with yourself about the timing, you’ll realize that you came up with the excuse after deciding that submission was bad. I’ve yet to encounter a woman who wholeheartedly strove to be a submissive wife because she thought submission was a wonderful & godly thing, but then changed her mind only after rigorous exegetical study revealed that she was submitting the wrong way the whole time.

So even if ESS is true, I don’t think it’s particularly useful when it comes to the controversy that brought it to mind. If we have faith in God’s word, then we will embrace His command to submit no matter how we feel about it, and thereby come to understand the goodness of submission eventually as our faith seeks understanding. Without such faith, we will dutifully believe the word of the Spirit of the Age, and at present, that means embracing feminism. Feminism won’t end because the Son submits to the Father; it will end because its suicidal for the cultures that embrace it.

What then of ESS? Given that it recently sprung up from a debate over Ephesians 5, I’m not sure yet that it will ultimately have any relevance outside of that context. When all is said and done, the ESS debate is probably going to end up in the same mass grave that feminism is bound for. Accordingly, it’s worth keeping the controversy in perspective. I have no problem with Christians exploring the idea of ESS. Neither do I have a problem with skepticism of it–on the contrary, skepticism is our duty on any new theology we encounter. But either way, let’s be careful. Let’s be careful about our enthusiasm for convenient theology. Let’s be careful about how we throw the H-word around against inconvenient theology. But more than all, let’s be careful about honoring God’s word and the key doctrines which proceed from it. After all, we have been given a great treasury, and it’s our responsibility to care for it all.

Posted in Feminism, Musings, The Modern Church, Theology | 8 Comments

How Christians Value Politics

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Matt

The world is a den of murderers, subject to the Devil. If we desire to live on earth, we must be content to be guests in it, and to lie in an inn where the host is a rascal, whose house has over the door this sign or shield, ‘For Murder and Lies.’
-Martin Luther

It’s good for Christians to keep politics in an eternal perspective. By that, I mean we need to recognize that we live in a fallen world that will be destroyed in fire and created anew entirely apart from our politics. Our parties, our nations, our ideologies, and our causes will neither spare it from the fire nor immanentize the new creation. Satan is the prince of this world and our politics do no prevent us from living as guests in his treacherous inn. Nevertheless, he has already been defeated by Christ alone in a victory without politics that will be unveiled to everyone on a Last Day known only to the Father.

These things are useful to keep in mind because they temper our political zeal by reminding us where the cosmic buck really stops. As I’ve written before, placing the world on our own shoulders tempts us to desperation. When, for example, people take it upon themselves to end all suffering in the world because they think there’s no benevolent sovereign power, they will pay any price to make it happen. After all, we have to do something—anything–if we are to have any chance of peace. The past century and it’s 9-digit body counts are a monument to the progressive political ideologies which would make any sacrifice for utopia.

They are also useful reminders that Christians need to keep the Two Kingdoms straight–not relying on the State to redeem souls or the Church to execute temporal justice. Though Christians have political responsibilities, the Church itself does not. What’s more, while there is a seemingly ever-growing necessity to condemn various political actions and advocacy under God’s Law, we must never confuse our politics with the Gospel. Whatever good political works the Gospel may lead us into, they are consequences of salvation rather than prerequisites.

But there is an important distinction to be made between keeping politics in perspective and trivializing them–an alternative that can be seen in tweets like this: [HT: Nathan Rinne]

It’s an example of a very common sentiment among contemporary Christians.  Statements like these are likely intended to provide perspective to political ideals, but in actuality, they provide nothing more than confusion.  The idea is flawed in several key ways:

First, it reduces service to neighbor to mere interest and entertainment, as though there were no greater relevance.

The implication here seems to be that people get caught up in politics as a kind of pastime or amusement; and because it’s here in Babylon, they aren’t engaging with anything more significant. The problem is that this isn’t God’s perspective on earthly politics. On the contrary, the left-hand kingdom is established by God for the sake of our well-being in this world. As Paul makes clear in Roman’s 13, the governing authorities are God’s servants for our benefit whose responsibilities include commending right-doers and punishing evil-doers.

This means that the people who fill these offices are tasked by God with important work in service to their neighbors. In the United States, a substantial measure of that authority is given to ordinary citizens, for our governing bodies were founded with ideals of self-government in mind. So when we engage in politics–even as voters and citizens engaging in political discourse–we are acting as servants of God for the good of our neighbors. If even God doesn’t dismiss Babylonian government as merely interesting and entertaining, why should we think it pious for us to do so?

To be sure, politics aren’t the only way of helping our neighbors. More than that, they’re not even the best way of helping our neighbors. A mother caring for her child or a man raking his elderly neighbor’s leaves is more fundamental to human happiness than any amount of blathering by talking heads. Nevertheless, all of our political officials, institutions, and conversations are ordained to be means by which we help live among one another peaceably. Since God has given us this work, we ought to embrace it rather than hold ourselves aloof from it in our false piety.

Second, it ignores vocation by setting all earthly allegiances against our ultimate allegiance to Christ.

As we’ve already considered, governing authorities–including citizens and voters in the United States–are servants of God. We have been appointed to care for a specific set of neighbors: American citizens. As such, we ought to have earthly allegiances to our nation and, for her sake, also to those organizations that truly hold her best interests at heart. And just like we ought to concern ourselves more with our own children and families than with others’, we should also concern ourselves more with our own nation and her politics than others. After all, God has called us to those tasks specifically by putting us where we are. We choose neither our parents nor the nation into which we are born–both are gifts of God.

Of course our highest allegiance must always be to Christ who brings us to our true homes. Nevertheless, we have lesser allegiances to our nations and consequent concerns for her well-being precisely because we have allegiance to Christ first.

Finally, it creates a dichotomy between “redemptive” and “not-redemptive” which is not terribly useful.

It’s true that politics are not redemptive–certainly not in the sense that Christ’s atoning death is. But that’s an argument that proves far too much. As one who believes in salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, I necessarily confess that absolutely nothing else is redemptive in that sense. God becoming man, dying on a cross for the sins of mankind, and drawing us into faith towards God is utterly unique. When something is matchless and incomparable to such a sublime extent, it’s not particularly meaningful to ding anything other than idols for not matching it or comparing favorably with it.

But in the end, it becomes worse than merely useless, because when taken to its logical conclusion, it effectively leads to nihilism with respect to this life. Caring for your children isn’t redemptive in that sense.  Feeding the hungry isn’t redemptive in that sense.  Writing a novel or painting a mural isn’t redemptive in that sense.  And no, politics isn’t redemptive in that sense.  Nothing you or anyone else does in their life is. If everything that isn’t redemptive in that sense is no more relevant than an entertaining curiosity while you’re stuck here in Babylon, then the sum total of all of our lives on Earth is irrelevant.

And yes, there is a reason that I keep saying “redemptive in that sense.” Ironically, this kind of nihilism blinds people to a different sense in which such simple and everyday work is redemptive. In 1 Timothy 2, when Paul explains why women aren’t called to the pastoral office, he instead points women to their unique early calling of motherhood. In doing so, he describes it in a remarkable way: “Yet she will be saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” While Paul certainly isn’t saying women are saved by childbearing, neither is he afraid to speak of an earthly vocation as being related to one’s salvation in a turn of phrase that would make many Christians today aghast.

But then, Christ does something similar when he talks about the final judgement in Matthew 25. When he welcomes believers into his kingdom, he will say “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” The righteous will be surprised at this, for even they didn’t realize that their simple acts of kindness to God’s people had such significance. Neither will the cursed realize the significance of their inaction.

Neither Jesus nor Paul are teaching that we are going to be saved by our good deeds on the Last Day. We are, however, going to be saved through them–they are inevitable stops along the way. These are the paths through which God leads us into eternal life–or, at times, through which He drags us kicking and screaming. God produces meaningful works in those whose faith saves them. Among those meaningful works are things like politics in which he calls us to serve the nation into which we were born. These works don’t redeem us, but they are fruit of that redemption which cannot help but to grow on the vine. If God’s work inevitable produces in this way, then who are we to cast shade on it all as merely interesting and entertaining?

It’s true enough that we shouldn’t place too much significance on politics or any other work. But what that means is that we are not to remove them from the place that God has given them. In their attempts to be piously above it all, many Christians do precisely this, using Christ as their excuse. But the Christian life isn’t a life in which we’re above it all–it’s a life in which God Himself brings us through it all.

Posted in Christian Nationalism, Politics, The Modern Church, Two Kingdoms | Leave a comment

Zombie Heresies – Arianism Part 3

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Matt
[podlove-episode-web-player publisher="1512" post_id="1512"]

Given the extent of the division, how did the Church ultimately overcome Arius and his false Christ?

Thankfully, whenever Satan raises an Arius against us, God provides His Church with an Athanasius–along with the Holy Scriptures on which he stood.

Introduction to Zombie Heresies: https://youtu.be/WhXcjI52eO8
Arianism Part 1: https://youtu.be/HcLMoTxLi1M
Arianism Part 2: https://youtu.be/D-0Z_J-s7os

You can find more of my material at…
The 96th Thesis: https://matthewcochran.net/blog/
The Federalist: http://thefederalist.com/author/matthewcochran/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Though-Were-Actually-True-Apologetics-ebook/dp/B01G4KWQJW/

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Chick-fil-A, Conservatives, and the Nature of Satan’s Power

Posted on November 21, 2019 by Matt

As you no doubt have heard by now, numerous media outlets are reporting that Chick-fil-A has cucked and reversed course on the charitable giving that has so enraged the rainbow mafia. In a recent statement, they announced that they were restructuring their philanthropy in various ways–focusing on education, homelessness, & hunger as well as moving towards annual grants rather than multi-year partnerships. In the midst of those changes, they’ve ended their relationships with the Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes–the two remaining connections which drew so much ire for not toeing the Spirit of the Age’s line on issues of sexual deviancy.

So is this really a capitulation? I’ve heard a lot of conservatives dispute that. After all, Chick-fil-A says it isn’t surrendering–that dropping both of their most controversial associations was just an entirely coincidental side effect of their restructuring. Of course, trusting that would be the first time I’ve ever whole-heartedly embraced a corporate statement intended to save face with an incredibly loyal customer base that suddenly feels very betrayed. Their president’s interview with Bisnow certainly doesn’t help their case either. There’s a whole lot of talk about how much “clarity” this restructuring provides and how that clarity improves their ability to expand into new markets. It’s really hard to interpret that in any way that doesn’t imply laying down arms in the culture wars. On the contrary, the most natural reading is to see it as an attempt to rewrite history and imply that it was actually their historical associations with “anti-LGBT” organizations that were the real coincidences. So while it’s possible that Chick-fil-A pulled the corporate equivalent of accidentally throwing out grandma’s ashes while they were cleaning, I think it’s more likely that they just didn’t want them taking up space in their home anymore, and the “accident” was more of an excuse.

But alongside the conservatives who simply do not believe they were betrayed, exist a more insidious variety. These too-cool-for-school conservatives instead take the line that the capitulation simply doesn’t matter. It doesn’t bother them one little bit because such mundane concerns are beneath them. “Don’t put your trust in chicken sandwiches!” “Waffle fries aren’t sacraments!” “Chick-fil-A isn’t the Church and fast food isn’t the Gospel!” The rhetorical point of these pious ejaculations is to suggest that Christians who feel angry, betrayed, or disappointed were foolishly projecting spiritual relevance onto matters that were entirely mundane.

Back in 2012, some big-city mayors loudly declared “Not in my town!” to Chick-fil-A because they had supported charities run by Christians who believe what 99% of people who ever lived on planet Earth believed about homosexuality until about 5 minutes ago. Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was organized in response. It was a huge outpouring of support from Christians who let the company know that (contrary to what the bullies wanted the company to believe) they didn’t stand alone–that they could succeed without caving. Progressive critics who are used to having a monopoly on activism quickly poo-pooed the situation. “All you did was eat a sandwich!” they fitfully shrieked. “It doesn’t matter!”

It’s strange that 7 years later, I’m hearing exactly the same argument being made by conservatives. It’s a fundamentally Gnostic way of looking at the situation. After all, the implication is that there is no relevance to day-to-day life. It doesn’t matter if you stand up to bullies. It doesn’t matter if you remain loyal to friends. It doesn’t matter if you refuse to back down for telling the truth. At the end of the day, it’s all just chicken and fries.

But it mattered in 2012, and it matters now. It matters because our life on this Earth and the vocations we’ve been given to do here matter. It is precisely in this physical world in which we are enfleshed that we participate in higher struggles. Paul makes this abundantly clear in Ephesians 6 where he writes “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” He tells us this with a “finally” at the end of a long stretch in which he discusses… (drumroll)  how Christian wives & husbands, children & parents, and slaves & masters properly relate to one another. In other words, it’s in the context of everyday mundane relationships. Before that, Paul provided instruction not to walk as unbelievers do. He told us to avoid simple everyday sins like callousness, sensuality, greed, or corrupting talk, and encouraged simple everyday virtues like telling the truth, working with your hands, and sharing with those in need. Its precisely in the midst of this daily grind that we most often meet Satan in battle.

The condition for defeat in that battle is also very simple.  For all his worldly powers and authorities, there is only one way the Devil can actually hurt us when all is said and done: He can convince us to believe his word instead of God’s.  Even when that deception comes in the form of temptations to sin, it’s not simply a matter of getting us to sin.  After all, we fall into sin daily, but Christ also forgives us those sins daily. No, our falls only permanently injure us when we refuse to get back up–when we decide that we like it just fine laying in the dirt. The Devil gets his hooks into us the moment we decide to believe something he says about our sins instead of what God says about them. It’s ultimately our choice to let him defeat us.

This deceit can take any number of forms. He can convince you that your sin is who you are–that it’s your identity rather than a corruption thereof. He can convince you that your sin isn’t really sin. He can convince you that what God says about sin is either unimportant or sinful itself. He can convince you that sin is permanent and inevitable–that you might as well make peace with it now because it will always be this way. His worldly power is used solely to make options like these seem appealing to us.

At present, one of the most popular tactics towards to which that power is applied is convincing Christians that they are being forever left behind by an inevitable march towards progress. He wants us to believe that sin is the inevitable future rather than a past which has been defeated by Christ. This is ultimately why we have all the codes of conduct, the hate-crime laws, the various -ist/-phobe labels, and the “no place in society of people like you” attitudes of the devil’s SJW’s. It is all about pressuring Christians into abandoning something they know to be true so that they can embrace something they know to be a lie.

The irony is that the pressure utilized by SJW’s is nothing more than what society cedes to them. It operates only when we ourselves decide to isolate or punish those who bear the labels they fling about like so much feces. What does it matter when the rainbow mafia labels you “anti-LGBT”–the very same label they give to Holy Scripture!–except when some chucklehead CEO or judge actually treats it like a legitimate indictment? That is the only power they wield, and Chick-fil-A just granted more of it to them.

Christians aren’t upset because a food vendor doesn’t share their values. That’s just business as usual. We’re upset because we just watched an organization which had been an ally fail in our common struggle against the devil by lending aid and comfort to the other side. What makes it worse is that it was an unforced error. They didn’t change their tune because their business was failing and desperately needed to keep the lights on. On the contrary, they’ve been enormously successful. Sure, they drew their fair share of hatred from the world, but they also continued to endear themselves to a growing customer base. We just watched them surrender on the field of victory because of mere words. It is meet, right, and salutary that we should mourn when an ally falls and believes the Lie–what kind of callous and indifferent boor wouldn’t feel anything?

It’s fair enough that those who genuinely believe Chick-fil-A’s official statement don’t feel that way. After all, they simply don’t perceive the defeat. I think they’re incorrect–time will tell one way or another–but we can disagree on such things without embracing the Lie.

The too-cool-for-school conservatives, on the other hand, are a different story. They feel nothing because they actually have embraced the Lie–just in a different way. Satan has managed to convince them to leave the battlefield behind by telling them that it would be beneath them to fight on it. After all, it’s just chicken sandwiches and waffle fries–the deeper values that other people see are just hallucinations which they’re too clever to fall for. They’ve convinced themselves that they will fight when it truly matters–they just haven’t found a battle that truly matters yet. They want to slay dragons, but look down on the day-to-day tasks which comprise the vast majority of soldiering on. Consequently, they pose no actual threat to dragons.

As for Chick-fil-A, they will realize very quickly that their new master is rather unforgiving. The rainbow mafia has already made it clear that their act of capitulation is insufficient. Nothing short of throwing their most loyal customers under the bus will do–something no business is going to recover from. Jesus warned us that that it profits a man nothing to gain the world but lose his soul. And yet, even worldly success is absent from this new path on which Chick-fil-A has planted its feet. How much more embarrassing must it be to trade away your soul for nothing at all?

Posted in Culture, Musings, Politics | 7 Comments

Zombie Heresies – Arianism Part 2

Posted on November 19, 2019 by Matt
[podlove-episode-web-player publisher="1504" post_id="1504"]

One of the great advantages to learning about history is that we can learn from all kinds of mistakes without having to make them ourselves. And boy, did people in the Church make mistakes when it came to a man named Arius.

Introduction to Zombie Heresies: https://youtu.be/WhXcjI52eO8
Arianism Part 1: https://youtu.be/HcLMoTxLi1M

You can find more of my material at…
The 96th Thesis: https://matthewcochran.net/blog/
The Federalist: http://thefederalist.com/author/matthewcochran/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Though-Were-Actually-True-Apologetics-ebook/dp/B01G4KWQJW/

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Theological Liberalism: The Scenic Route Back to Paganism

Posted on November 14, 2019 by Matt

As the old saying goes, when men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing–they believe in anything.

God becoming man? Jesus rising from the dead? Sin and the forgiveness thereof? The theological liberalism of yesteryear decided that such things were too ridiculous–too absurd–for modern, enlightened people to accept. Sophisticated minds, we were told, require a more sophisticated religion–a religion that isn’t beholden to the superstitious nonsense of the benighted past.

And that’s why Union Seminary was unironically praying to potted plants back in September: because they are wise, sophisticated, and not-at-all superstitious.

That’s also why the Church of Sweden appointed as successor to their obsolete savior a little blonde girl who is dutifully terrified of global cooling  global warming climate change. After all, everyone recognizes that mature and learned adults hold up children as their ideal standard for intellects and virtues.

And we cannot forget the Church of Rome, which is growing ever more dedicated in its apparent quest to be “the world’s largest liberal protestant denomination” as LutheranPundit often puts it. What can you do when you’re too worldly and cosmopolitan for orthodoxy, but nevertheless retain a keen eye for tradition? Adopt old pagan traditions from the global south, of course. Planting trees to connect us to the divinity that dwells in Amazonian soil and raising idols of fertility goddesses in their churches are helpful ways to move away from stodgy old superstition rooted in blind faith.

It is truly remarkable just how much the post-Christian world resembles the pre-Christian world. Whether you’re reinventing the pagan wheel or simply bringing it out of storage, it’s the same old paganism either way. Even the kinder & gentler mask it wears at present is beginning to slip as the bloody aspects are already resurfacing. 3000 years ago, pagan priests would encourage their followers to ritually sacrifice their children to achieve favorable weather from the powers that be. Where we once would have considered that the platonic ideal of barbarism, today’s politicians are making what is essentially the same recommendation.  We’re closer to the bloodletting of the past than we may suspect.

Contrary to progressive beliefs, it would seem that humanity doesn’t really advance all that much. The fruits of Western Civilization that we’ve come to enjoy were never the result of our own growing wisdom and sophistication–they were the result of Christianity. After all, as we’re presently observing, it’s a remarkably quick trip back to the bottom once you try to remove Christ from the equation. Having already committed adultery with the Spirit of the Age, the post-Christian “churches” of theological liberalism are merely along for the ride.

But there’s no need for Christians to hop on board the crazy train. Those who wish to avoid being taken in by superstition and therefore look for evidence will find ample reason to believe Christianity is actually true. Those who wish to root their doctrines in something more than the passing fancies of religious communities will find deep soil in God’s inerrant word–faithfully recorded and preserved in the Bible. And most importantly, those who find children, carvings, and house plants wanting can look to Jesus Christ–the incarnate God whose claims to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life were validated not only by legitimate miracles, but by a real and well-documented bodily resurrection from the dead.

And never forget: God might not save our culture, but He will preserve His Church. The story of our sin begins and ends with paganism, but the story of our salvation begins and ends with Christ.

Posted in Culture, Paganism, Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment

Zombie Heresies – Arianism Part 1

Posted on November 11, 2019 by Matt
[podlove-episode-web-player publisher="1498" post_id="1498"]

“Who do people say that I am?”

When Jesus asked his apostles, they reported a variety of answers. If you ask the same question today, you’ll find that the variety has only grown.

And yet, there are really only two answers to the question that matter: Either Jesus Christ is God Himself–the eternal Son of the Father, or he is a creature–some manner of being created beneath the true God.

The original Arians thought he was the latter–so do many of our modern Arians today.

Introduction to Zombie Heresies: https://youtu.be/WhXcjI52eO8

Related:
The Father is Not a Metaphor: https://matthewcochran.net/blog/?p=420

You can find more of my material at…
The 96th Thesis: https://matthewcochran.net/blog/
The Federalist: http://thefederalist.com/author/matthewcochran/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Though-Were-Actually-True-Apologetics-ebook/dp/B01G4KWQJW/

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Don’t Let Entitlement Devour Your Marriage

Posted on October 25, 2019 by Matt

My latest article at The Federalist went up yesterday.  It’s about division of housework in marriage and the way equality corrodes marital love by breeding entitlement.  However, as happens sometimes, I went way over my word limit and the second half of the piece was cut for space.  So read that first if you haven’t, and here’s the rest of the article, in which I discuss how to tell if one’s discontentment is being caused by entitlement and what to do about it.

Feelings of discontentment about housework in a marriage can easily become tyrants when they’re put in the driver’s seat.  As I’ve discussed previously, our emotions are blind guides, and we can easily resent a person because of how we treat them rather than how they treat us.

At the same time, the feelings are what they are. When someone feels that kind of discontentment, she can’t just wish the feelings away. So in the face of persistent feelings like this, how can one discover whether she’s feeling unfairly treated due to a neglectful husband or due to her own entitlement? Well, you can’t tell from examining your feelings. You feel just as angry, overwhelmed, frantic, and desperate either way. And unless you are actually willing to go the spreadsheet route, you’re probably not going to figure it out by comparing workloads either. We all have confirmation bias, and when we’re upset, we’re all inclined to see the tasks they overlooked tasks while ignoring the ones fulfilled. As Honoré de Balzac wrote, “When women love, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even for our virtues.”

Instead, you need to seriously consider whether entitlement is at the root of your feelings—whether it’s about housework or something else. So ask yourself:

Are you unable to experience gratitude?

Can you bring yourself thank your husband for what he contributes to the household? If not, do you immediately start finding excuses for why he doesn’t deserve your thanks for what he does? When you see something that you want him to do, do you ask him nicely? Do you ask him at all? Or do you instead begin conjuring reasons why you shouldn’t even have had to ask for something so simple because he already owes it to you? If gratitude is an alien concept for you, then your sense of entitlement is almost certainly an issue.

When you complain, are you being hypocritical?

Do you angrily point out something he didn’t put away that’s sitting right next to something you didn’t put away? When you pick up the empty cups from last night’s ice cream, are you upset that he didn’t throw his out even though you were only just getting around to throwing out yours yourself? Everyone finds themselves too tired to do housework some nights—yourself included. But do you get resentful when he feels that way or do you reserve that consideration only for yourself? All of us are hypocrites sometimes, but if this is happening frequently, then you can be sure that you’re not judging your husband fairly.

Do you dramatize the little things?

When he fails to put his dishes in the sink, is it like he’s telling you he hates you? Do you find yourself seething with resentment when dinner is 10 minutes late? When he does something minor wrong, do you consider it emblematic of all the times he’s done that thing or even of everything he’s done wrong? To be sure, we’re all sinners, and every husband fails from time to time. What’s more, everybody has a different list of things which bother them, and it can take time for spouses to get on the same page. But if you regularly have to inflate or aggregate his peccadilloes in order to justify the amount of offense you’re feeling, then you need to reconsider why that is.

Do you find yourself saying “I don’t care” when it comes to his feelings?

You want your husband to respect your feelings, and it’s not always natural for men to do so. Temporarily putting our feelings aside is sometimes a necessary part of our responsibilities, and so we tend to expect the same from others. But you don’t want to him to always railroad past your experience and get straight into the practical matters, and that’s all well and good.

So do you show him the same consideration? When you’re trying to communicate on an emotional level, do you find yourself dismissing his feelings while insisting that he respect yours? Do you always railroad past him on the way back to yourself? When he tells you how he feels, do you immediately tell him about the time you felt like that only it was so much worse? If so, you may be crossing the line into solipsism. And if you find yourself mocking his feelings even as you demand he respect yours, then you’ve already blithely careened over that line.

Do you reject your husband’s authority?

If you’re a Christian, when God tells you to submit to your husband as the Church submits to Christ, do you embrace that instruction or find excuses for why its different in your case? Do you accept his judgment calls or do you berate him because it’s wasn’t done exactly the way you would have done it? When you’ve said your piece and he makes a decision, do you get on board or do you passive-aggressively undermine that decision?

But even apart from Christian doctrine, if you believe you are entitled to something from your husband, then there must be a corresponding responsibility on his end. And if he has a genuine responsibility, then logically, he must also posess the authority to carry it out. If you can’t bring yourself to recognize any such authority and submit to it, then your entitlement has become unmoored from that which keeps it in check.

Have you failed to even try just being nice?

It’s an amazingly simple attitude that makes all the difference in the world. Suzanne Venker wrote an excellent article on this subject recently. She (correctly) observes that husbands feed off their wives kindness—it encourages us and energizes us to do the kind of things our wives want us to do. But even if you aren’t ready to embrace that reality, you need to at least understand that “the beatings will continue until morale improves” is a counterproductive strategy. If your approach to getting your husband to do what you believe to be his fair share consists mainly of nagging, browbeating, shaming, and general acidity, then you’re undermining your own interests. When every request for housework is either an angry demand or a passive-aggressive snipe, it’s a solid clue that your entitlement is at the root of the problem.

Do these questions describe your situation? To be sure, there are lazy people out there, which means that there are lazy husbands out there as well. If the honest answers to those questions tend towards “no”, then the husband really might need to simply pitch in more. But if you find yourself answering “yes” to these questions, the problem is likely an overgrown sense of entitlement.

That is a truly dangerous situation for husbands to be in. Our calling, our privilege, and our nature is to sacrifice ourselves for our families. But there is no slaking the thirst of unmoored entitlement, and unlike an uneven split in housework, that kind of entitlement becomes genuinely abusive. The husband who responds to it by simply giving more will not only use himself up, but do no good for his wife by doing so. Christ gave himself up for His Church, but He’s also willing to discipline her and warn her that she faces judgment when she abandons her husband. That itself is an act of sacrifice in an age when husbands & fathers are disregarded by society and constantly subject to the threat of divorce.

And if you’re a wife who sees herself in these questions, then you need to reject your own entitlement. You need to learn to be kind. You need to learn to be grateful. You need to learn to put things in perspective. And the hardest part will be that you need to do it even though you don’t feel like it. But you can fake being nice. You can make yourself say “thank you” even if you don’t feel grateful. The feelings will follow in time as you practice these skills. But for it to even be possible for you to make that kind of effort, you need to be clear in your own mind that you have sinned, and you quite simply need to repent. Stop worshiping equality and allowing it to devour your family.

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“Saving” Young Boys from Their Masculinity

Posted on October 22, 2019 by Matt

The danger in criticizing children’s books is always the drove of fools who will say “It’s just a kid’s book! You’re taking it too seriously!” But the fact is, there’s a reason we read to our children, and there are reasons we choose some books as better than others. Simple it may be, but if a book is meaningful enough that we are serious about reading it to our children, then it’s also meaningful enough to examine seriously. So let’s consider a book I came across while picking out something to read to my own children.

The Sunflower Sword takes place in a land where knights and dragons are always fighting and focuses on a young boy who dreams of becoming a brave knight as well. His mother, however, forbids him from having a sword and gives him a sunflower instead. He pretends its a sword and plays happily with it for a time slaying imaginary dragons, until he encounters a real dragon. Being both unarmed and unable to escape, he desperately swings the sunflower at the dragon. And wouldn’t you know it, the dragon thinks he’s offering him a flower. So the two become great friends and have much more fun than they ever could have had fighting. And one-by-one, all the knights of the land lay down their swords in favor of sunflowers, and nobody ever fights again. The book ends as the mother looks on smiling.

So what’s the deeper meaning of this book? At it’s core, it’s about a boy who aspires to become a man as boys naturally do. Inherent in masculinity is struggle and perseverance against forces that would threaten our families and tear down what we’ve built. The place warriors and dragons hold in mythology is emblematic of that masculine struggle against evil. We need to be strong. We need to be ready to slay monsters because in this life, monsters will always be there to destroy or corrupt what we hold dear.

Women, however, have mixed feelings about this aspect of masculinity. On one hand, they’re attracted to our strength and willingness to risk combat–and this attraction exists precisely because it’s a trait they need for themselves and for their children. On the other hand, it sometimes makes them feel threatened because they know we are stronger than they are. Like Aslan, a man is not a tame lion. Despite Hollywood tropes, most men could overpower most women quite easily if we chose to actually bring our strength to bear.

What’s more, contemporary society distorts that natural tension. For one thing, our high level of civilization has produced an exceptionally safe culture in which security is taken for granted. Women have largely come to believe that their safety comes from government and society rather than from men (even the men who built and still maintain these things.) For another thing, feminism has cultivated suspicion and fear of men in most women, which magnifies that natural feeling of uncertainty about our strength. The result is an extremely unbalanced view of masculinity that results in both women and feminized men labeling it as “toxic.”

So while the boy in the book aspires to manhood, his mother forbids it. She takes away the sword, a symbol of his masculinity, and replaces it with the flower, a symbol of her femininity. At first, he’s quite awkward with this acquisition–flailing with it as though it were the sword he had really wanted in the first place. However, entirely by accident, he ends up discovering the flower’s true value: the creation of peace.

After all, just as struggle and perseverance are central to masculinity, peacemaking is central to femininity. Children are chaotic and homes are constantly subject to entropy. A mother’s role as a homemaker is to bring peace out of that chaos and create a comforting environment in which her family can dwell contentedly. This facet of femininity is precisely why women tend to become passive-aggressive when they’re upset. They want to impose their will just as much as men do, but they greatly prefer to do so without open conflict because that runs against the grain of their nature.

So when the boy accidentally gives the flower to the dragon, the two immediately realize that they were never truly enemies and become friends instead. The book specifically notes how much better their friendship is without fighting–without struggle or perseverance. You see, there was never any reason for knights and dragons to fight in the first place except that, as the book details, it had simply always been that way. It was only masculinity with its drive to struggle against evil that caused the constant fighting in their land. Once you take that away, all that’s left is peace.

And whereas the boy once aspired to be a man, because of his mother’s “help” all the men of the kingdom now aspire to be feminized boys. They rush to lay down their own swords–their own masculinity–so that they can take up the femininity which brings peace and happiness to everyone.

And the last page of the book is the capstone: when the mother (who, though surrounded by armored knights and medieval homes, is tellingly dressed as an upper-middle-class suburbanite) looks out on at all of this and smiles. The thing about children’s books is that they’re not really written for children. They’re written for the parents who buy them, the teachers who assign them, and the librarians who stock their shelves with them–all of which means they’re written primarily for women. Because of that, women’s unbalanced views about masculinity in contemporary society will inevitably become a selling point.

Many of these women–having failed to understand that the relative security and stability  they enjoy in contemporary society was actually produced by men who struggled against evil–instead believe that any remaining insecurity and instability in society only exists because of the remaining masculinity. This book gives such women a message of hope and encouragement in their foolish eschatology. One day, our society might finally become entirely peaceful. And maybe it will all start with one mother who was steadfast enough to make sure that her own boy never grows into a man.

Plenty of Christians and conservatives are starting to be concerned about the messages of children’s books when it comes to the LGBT agenda–and rightly so, though it comes rather late. The quest to normalize the disgusting is in full swing, and we need to protect our children from it now so that they can join us in combating it when they’re ready. But this agenda wasn’t created ex nihilo. We would never see the droves of people who cannot tell men from women if they weren’t already deeply confused about masculinity and femininity in the first place. It’s just as important to be on guard against the already normalized feminist indoctrination from which our confusions about gender and sexual orientation proceed.

As in most children’s books, the father is entirely absent from The Sunflower Sword. The swordless boy is solely his mother’s son, and the only masculine influence comes from the men around him who foolishly engage in meaningless conflict with the smiling dragons who only want to be our friends–a caricature of masculinity born from a feminist worldview.

Fathers, your sons cannot afford for you to be that absent from their lives. And I know that many of your wives and ex-wives make being present a struggle.  But struggle against evil is part of who we are.  Make opportunities to read with them and to think critically about what you’re reading. Given the nature of many contemporary books, be sure to look for older alternatives (e.g. the reissue of the 1918 Collier Junior Classics)  Your sons are not going to learn about being men from their mom or from contemporary media. So make sure they learn it from you.

Posted in Culture, Family, Feminism | 7 Comments

Family is the Highest Calling for Men Too

Posted on October 15, 2019 by Matt

I’ve written quite a bit about prioritizing family lately. I’ve argued that the Golden Rule means having kids, that most people are called to marriage & should act accordingly, advised early marriage and the deliberate pursuit thereof for those struggling with sexual immorality, and answered numerous objections about these subjects. As you might expect, most of the pushback I’ve received has been from feminists and white knights asking how I would dare to tell women that creating new human beings and raising them in a caring home is more valuable than creating Powerpoint presentations in a cubicle farm. How unfair of me to place such a disproportionate burden of home life on women and squashing their dreams of something greater while men get to revel in the workplace!

The thing is, I never addressed any of that solely at women. Marriage and family is without a doubt the highest calling for most men and most women alike. The principle reason that pointing this out feels unfair to women is that contemporary men are much more likely to already accept it than contemporary women are–even as we pursue our careers.

It may be hard to see through the foggy lenses of feminist envy, but men don’t love their careers for career’s sake. Most of us do not see our day jobs as our higher calling. After all, as the Lemke brothers recently pointed out on The Chi Files, it’s not a higher calling if they have to pay you to do it. That’s not to say that the laborer doesn’t deserve his wages; rather, it’s an observation that even if money were no object, a person would still continue to pursue a calling that he truly considered high. If, on the other hand, he’s out the door the day he wins the lottery, then he doesn’t really see it as a higher calling.

The reason most men work and devote so much time to our careers isn’t because they’re higher callings than family, but precisely for the sake of our families whom we already know to be our higher calling. Providing material support for their family is a father’s most fundamental responsibility.  As the Apostle Paul explains, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”  That’s why most of us invest so much time in our careers–to be able to carry out this responsibility well.  And given that women almost universally prefer to pair up with men who make more money than they do and are more likely to divorce husbands who make less, it seems that women also recognize this responsibility as being more fundamental for men on some level.

To be sure, everybody needs to toil to some extent in order to support themselves. Any man who doesn’t see acquiring food and shelter as a higher calling is going to have to do something to get paid. Nevertheless, supporting half a dozen people takes considerably more toil than merely supporting oneself, and men have traditionally based a great deal of their education and career choices on that fact.  We’re already seeing that when the prospect of a faithful marriage is removed from their future, the tendency is for men to disengage from all the extra work they’ve traditionally taken on.

But for men with families, if you take away the need for income, we’d still be caring for them, but our employment would look very different. I’m a software engineer by trade. It’s a good job, and I do find a measure of satisfaction in that work. But it’s ultimately for the sake of my wife and children. There are men who see programming as a higher calling–devoting their time to open source projects and the like without any compensation–but I’m not one of them. If I didn’t need to provide for my boys, I wouldn’t continue doing it. Instead, I’d be spending that free time playing with them, teaching them, and doing other things that are for them.

And yes, I do have work I value highly besides just family–and family never really takes 100% of one’s time. If I had no family, I would spend all that free time doing work I love–studying philosophy and theology, writing my reflections, analyzing life and culture in light of them, and teaching. I know that because it’s precisely what I already do in my free time–at my church, at this blog, at the Federalist, and on YouTube. I don’t have to be paid for it because I consider these things to be worthwhile for their own sake. But I do have a family, and so I spend more time writing software than I do writing social commentary. My family is unequivocally a higher calling than my writing. There would be something seriously wrong with me if I thought otherwise.

Feminists look at this ordering of priorities and decree that families are holding women back–that they are burdens rather than higher callings.  They then project that judgment onto men when they see us spending more time in the office than women.  But that evaluation couldn’t be further from the truth. On the contrary, before we finally decided to have children, I had already left my tech career to go study theology. I had just finished seminary and was working to get into a philosophy PhD program when we chose to start a family. I was already pursuing my “higher” calling in that respect. But I deliberately chose to forgo that path and return to programming specifically so that I could provide a good home for our children. That is the explicit reason for my career–that I value my family more than accomplishment for accomplishment’s sake.

And I don’t regret that choice–my sons are absolute wonders to behold. To be sure, there are plenty of times when I have to clean up poop, break up a screaming match, or do other tasks for them that I don’t particularly enjoy. Some days, my career is more toilsome than others. And yes, I’ve got several unfinished books that will probably remain unfinished for a long time. There are times when all three of those intersect, and it really can be frustrating. Nevertheless, how can that frustration compare to two little boys spontaneously breaking into off-key round robin performances of “This is the day the Lord has made?” Philosophy is great, but how can it compare to helping to populate heaven with eternal joy?

So many women struggle with that blessed reality because joyless feminists have trained them to feel that families are a waste of their lives. But while there are a few men who place career accomplishment above all else, most of us already know that our careers aren’t our highest calling. Women would do well to learn that from us instead of envying toil that we have to be paid to do.

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