The PCA’s interesting vocabulary.

When I read the PCA’s interim report, one word struck me almost physically: “reactionary.” The term arrives in the midst of Point 11 of their ‘Affirmations and Denials’ (pg 11), wherein the report’s authors allow that “in some cases,” liberal traditions are possible to criticize, “especially in their more radical and individualistic forms.” Yet, they say, “Christians should not embrace reactionary alternatives that sacrifice justice, liberty, or charity.” Their argument here should worry the reader.

Reactionary

The word “reactionary,” in the wider culture, has a jargon-meaning. “Reactionary” is what the Communists (and anarcho-socialists, I think) call anybody who disagrees with them, particularly the national socialists (fascists). The term is a derogatory, intended to declare that any argument the ‘reactionary’ presents is not a legitimate or grounded belief but merely a piece of propaganda designed to defend his class and its hoard from the righteous crusade of the revolution. “Reactionary” is, in fact, a trade-term of politics, a signature insult of the communists and their liberal brethren, used by conservatives or anti-liberals not for their own purposes but as one must handle an enemy’s time-bomb in order to defuse it.

This word is, in a way, a shibboleth. Worse, the way the report uses this term- to identify enemies of liberalism- is precisely how progressives use it. The use of “reactionary” in this work speaks to me of at least one contributor whose mindset is not so much tainted as characterized by modern progressivism.

What is Liberalism?

Liberalism is fundamentally a religious belief in man’s proper or actual freedom. Liberalism’s philosophical root is thus autonomy (a term I used in a way which should betray my reading of the theonomists), is the rejection of God’s authority over mankind. ‘Liberalism’ is basically corrupt (Job 14:4). No ‘liberal philosophy’ is acceptable to Christians, because in order to be ‘liberal’ it has to defy God.

Liberalism, historically, was built by men who rejected orthodox Christianity and by men who, though Christians themselves, accepted certain teachings of those men who rejected Christianity. The great men of Liberalism had real virtues- an emphasis on logic, a desire for knowledge. But they disordered and damned those virtues by refusing to found their construction upon God (Ps. 53:1). They asserted that man could find the world for himself, and what they found eventually led to Hell. Progressivism, Communism, and radical gender ideology are the true-born children of Liberalism, of the relentless search for freedom from Him.

This does not mean all persons friendly with liberal philosophy are heretics. Plenty of ‘liberals’ in the past took on only parts of liberalism (because it was not an unmixed evil); plenty of men have taken on even the evil parts without damnation, not recognizing the problems of what they adhered to. Neither the PCA’s authors nor Doug Wilson (a self-proclaimed classical liberal) need worry I’m herein calling their theology heretical. But liberalism at its root leads to hell.

Good Fruits, Good Parts

Liberalism’s ultimate bankruptcy and foundational vice does not mean we should get rid of Western civilization entirely. Christianity, not liberalism, built the West to greatness; liberalism merely piggy-backed, stealing ideas and vigor from His people, parasitizing the body of the church. Liberalism’s power came from plagiarizing Christianity; its current decrepitude and rapid self-destruction rise from the foundational vice destroying those borrowed virtues. A desire for freedom has been left unrestrained by the law of God, by a culturally pervasive Christianity, and so it has passed from aping “the law of liberty” (Jam. 1:25) and claiming credit for that law’s achievements into cutting off children’s body parts, sucking babies out of the womb with vacuums, and helping rape a quarter-million children in one country alone.

The Western political order, as it now exists, was built by Christianity and liberalism both. Christianity gave strength; Christianity was the clean ground which produced good fruit (Job 14:4). Liberalism is the parasite that has choked the life out of that order, till it begins to topple, producing along the way the ideologies of communism and fascism (both liberal orders), as well as of liberal democracy (American totalitarianism).

Blindness or Participation?

The PCA, nevertheless, has said that only some liberal philosophies, traditions, and politics are worthy of critique (and apparently feels a command to condemn them would be too strong a directive). Whether this acceptance of an evil thing is blindness or participation in the common liberal substrate of modern Western thought, I cannot definitively say. “Reactionary” as a word argues that it is participation; charity hopes it is blindness. Either way, it is unsuitable for the church of God.

God bless.