Terror from the North

(Perfect timing alert: With all the heat I've been taking today from the Canucks for my FPM article (discussed below), I thought the announcement today that Iraqi Shiite Ayatollah Sistani has issued a fatwa telling Muslims not to attack Canada to be very timely. Do you believe he did this because the Canadians are more friendly, or less friendly, to America's cause? Needless to say, I think it's the latter. )

My new article, Terror from the North, headlines today at FrontPageMag.com. It describes the Canadian complicity in the al-Qaeda Millennium plot to blow up LAX. I also had another Canadian-related terrorism article published last week I never mentioned here, Canadian Blindness to Terror. It discusses the connection between the men arrested two weeks ago in the Toronto area who had purchased three tons of ammonium nitrate (more than three times that used in the Oklahoma City bombing) to wage jihad, and the Khadr family, described by some experts as the "First Family of Canadian Terrorism".

UPDATE: Thanks to the National Terror Alert Resource Center for the plug.

Rome Getting It Right on Islam, Part 2

Back in April I posted a note, Rome Getting It Right on Islam, regarding Pope Benedict's efforts to raise awareness about the growing Islamist threat. Then in May, there were several reports about comments made by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, in a speech he delivered to a group in Naples, Florida, challenging the supposed tolerance in Islam, saying that "In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down the invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages." Of course, the obligatory charges of "Islamophobia" and accusations of inciting "fear and hatred" were immediately forthcoming, but his comments even received the backing of Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

But now Archbishop Pell has upset the apple cart yet again in an interview he gave two weeks ago to the National Catholic Reporter (the whole interview is worth the read). Pell is not only restating his charge that the Koran incites violence against unbelievers, but he is also questioning whether so-called "moderate" Muslims can be faithful to the Koran and challenging one of the chief doctrines of the "Golden Age of Islam" myth by claiming that "[i]t's difficult to find periods of tolerance in Islam. I'm not saying they're not there, but a good deal of what is asserted is mythical."

To the priests of multiculturalism, this is heresy. To Muslims, it is inflammatory and makes Pell deserving of death. But Archbishop Pell is telling the truth. God bless him for it. And those who know me would testify that I am one of the last persons on the planet to be heaping praise on the Church of Rome.

That said, I am curious about the silence of US Roman Catholic officials. Why has there been no American Catholic cardinal willing to speak so bluntly about one of the primary global issues of our day? And throwing a few stones at my own glass house, why since Franklin Graham received a presidential rebuke after his "insensitive" comments about Islam after 9/11, saying that it is "wicked" and "violent", have Evangelical leaders been just as silent? Are they more concerned about currying favor with the White House and Congressional leaders, or speaking the truth to a world awash in confusion?

To his credit, Graham has been unwilling to back off his previous statements. But it seems these other so-called Evangelical leaders are willing to blather on about just any other topic than delivering the message about Islam that the world desperately needs to hear. The example of Pope Benedict and Archbishop Pell should be an example to them all.

The "Golden Age of Islam" Myth

You probably first heard it in school: Islamic civilization was flourishing when Christendom was in the Dark Ages. Most of the innovations enjoyed by Westerners today were really the developments from Muslims scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, physicians, poets and philosophers. The great works of Greek philosophy destroyed by the book-burning zeolots of the early Christian Church returned to the European world through Arabic translations. Muslims invented the scientific method, birthing the Renaissance. Islamic scholars invented the numerical concept of "zero", giving rise to the digital age. Etc.

At best, these are all half-truths. More accurately, they are nothing more than fairy tales, but very popular ones defended by top scholars today.

I got thinking about the myth of the "Golden Age of Islam" after reading an article at The American Thinker by Dr. Jonathan David Carson published this past Friday, Islam, Christianity, Classical Civilization, and Modernity. The article is short, but he does make a good point about the ability of Christianity to adapt their thinking while Islam has intellectually "frozen".

But digging a bit further, I came across two additional articles by Carson:

Hyping Islam's role in the History of Science (07/29/05)

The not-so-golden age of Islamic Philosophy (08/19/05)

In the first of these articles, he offers this important quote by Bernard Lewis, the recognized dean of Islamic studies, from his book, The Muslim Discovery of Europe:

We know of no Muslim scholar or man of letters before the eighteenth century who sought to learn a western language, still less of any attempt to produce grammars, dictionaries, or other language tools. Translations are few and far between. Those that are known are works chosen for practical purposes [philosophy being considered a practical discipline] and the translations are made by converts [who knew western languages before conversion] or non-Muslims.

Carson notes that not a single translation of Aristotle from Arabic to Latin was performed by a Muslim. Instead, they were prepared by Christian and Jewish scholars. However, most of Aristotle's corpus in Latin did not come through Arabic, rather, they were translated directly from the Greek. And for Plato, the only work of his to be translated into Arabic (The Republic), was never translated back into Latin from that source.

In the second cited article, he says:

Access “for western scholars to the great classics of Greece and Rome by their translation into Arabic, from which they were rendered into European languages” almost always means access to a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of a Greek text. Sometimes it means access to a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Hebrew translation of a Greek text. It can even mean access to a Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of a Greek text. Only on rare occasions does it mean access to a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Greek text.

This is an important discussion. Carson provides detailed evidence that refutes the post-modern scholars who are attempting to rewrite history in an effort to discredit medieval (and thus, current) Christianity.

One modern Muslim scholar, Yasser Latif Hamdani, has written a short article, Myths about the Golden Age of Islam, directed at other Muslims who are hoping to revive a supposed "Golden Age of the Caliphs" - one of the ideological selling-points of radical Islamist groups, like al-Qaeda and Hizb-e-Tahrir. This addresses some of their revisionist history as well.

More on this issue later.

Hometown Jihad: Blowback

UPDATE: Thanks to JihadWatch and LGF for the added coverage.

An article following up on my original Hometown Jihad article appears today again as the lead item at FrontPageMag.com, Hometown Jihad: Blowback.

Among the items covered:

1) The interview of Salah Sultan (the individual that was the focus of my original article) that appeared last week on Al-Risala TV (link to video here, thanks to MEMRI), where he stated that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the US "to enable the U.S. to control and terrorize the entire world, and to get American society to agree to the war declared on terrorism,” and defending Yemeni al-Qaeda cleric Abd Al-Majid Al-Zindani, who has been listed by the US government as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”.

2) The recent whitewash of Sultan's record by the Columbus Dispatch (our local paper) just days before his interview of Saudi TV: Muslim Milestone: Islamic school marks 10 years of progress, but suspicions endure.

3) Defending my original article from counterattacks made by our local Muslim school, Sunrise Academy, and the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio, who had challenged several of the claims made there.

As I say at the end of my article, FrontPageMag.com is one of the few places where individuals such as myself can get a hearing and respond to the outrageous mendacity of the mainstream media. FrontPage and its parent organization, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC), are worthy of your support.

You heard it here first: Feds cracking down on Hezbollah

Being right is an old habit of mine, just like being humble, but it seems LTC Joe Myers and I hit the nail on the head with our article last month, Hezbollah, Illegal Immigration and the Next 9/11.

According to an article in yesterday's NY Post, the Feds are cracking down on Hezbollah operations in the U.S. in anticipation of a show-down with Iran: N.Y. Hezbollah Hunt.

N.Y. HEZBOLLAH HUNT
By NILES LATHEM Post Correspondent

May 22, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - The Hezbollah terror group - one of the most dangerous in the world - may be planning to activate sleeper cells in New York and other big cities to stage an attack as the nuclear showdown with Iran heats up, sources told The Post.

The FBI and Justice Department have launched urgent new probes in New York and other cities targeting members of the Lebanese terror group.

Law-enforcement and intelligence officials told The Post that about a dozen hard-core supporters of Hezbollah have been identified in recent weeks as operating in the New York area.

Sources said the activities of these New York-based operatives are being monitored by FBI counterterrorism agents as part of a nationwide effort to prevent a possible terror strike if the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program spins out of control.

Additional law-enforcement attention is being centered on the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, where there have already been three episodes in the last four years in which diplomats and security guards have been expelled for casing and photographing New York City subways and other potential targets.

The nationwide effort to neutralize Hezbollah sleepers in the United States, being spearheaded by the FBI and Justice Department's counterterrorism divisions, was triggered in January in response to alarming reports that Iran's fanatical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, met with leaders of Hezbollah and other terror groups during a visit to Syria.

Among those attending the meetings, according to reliable reports, was Hezbollah's chief operational planner, Imad Mugniyah - considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world - who is responsible for the bombings of the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and who, more recently, provided Iraqi guerrillas with sophisticated explosive devices.

U.S. officials stressed there is no intelligence information pointing to an imminent attack by Hezbollah.

But officials said they have detected increased activity by Hezbollah operatives - including more heated rhetoric by its leaders and in Internet chat rooms as the U.S.-Iran diplomatic showdown heats up.

"Hezbollah is a group that the U.S. has to be concerned about in the current climate. Hezbollah is already coming under heavy pressure by the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, and Ahmadinejad is under pressure on the nuclear issue," said Walid Phares, an outside terror expert who has briefed law-enforcement officials on Hezbollah in recent weeks.

"They are well funded, very well organized, and we assume that their penetration of the U.S. is deeper than al Qaeda's. It is only rational for the U.S. to think in pre-emptive ways. An attack here is clearly in the realm of the possible," Phares added.

A U.S. counterterrorism official called the latest effort a "major undertaking," with separate probes also under way in Los Angeles, Boston and Detroit.

Hezbollah has so far limited its activities in the United States to fund-raising and criminal enterprises. The FBI has already taken down two major rings, one in Charlotte, N.C., and one in Detroit, in which members were smuggling cigarettes, Viagra and baby formula, and kicking profits back to Hezbollah.

This is one I'm not glad to be right about.

Hometown Jihad, Part 3

Well, my old friend and neighbor Salah Sultan is back in the news. You might remember that he was the subject of my Hometown Jihad article back in April. And just a few weeks ago he was defended by the Columbus Dispatch, who tried to airbrush Sultan's extensive record of terrorist collaboration and anti-Semitic tirades and who likened me and FrontPageMag.com (where my article was published) to neo-Nazis for daring to make Sultan's record public. That was the subject of Hometown Jihad, Part 2 blog post.

Last week Salah Sultan appeared on Al-Risala TV in Saudi Arabia, where he enlightened the world by claiming that the 9/11 attacks were organized "to enable the U.S. to control and terrorize the entire world, and to get American society to agree to the war declared on terrorism" and defending al-Qaeda cleric and fellow 9/11 conspiracy-monger, Abd Al-Majid Al-Zindani, who has been listed by the US as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" and was the subject of a 2003 National Review report, Yemeni Sheikh of Hate.

Yes, the US is terrorizing the world, not Islamic jihadis.

MEMRI has provided a translation of Sultan's Al-Risala interview, and also offers a full video clip of the interview on their MEMRI TV site. Here's what Sultan had to say:

"The film 'The Siege,' starring Denzel Washington, portrayed the Muslims in a very bad light. They are shown calling for prayer, performing the ablution, praying, and then planning multiple bombings - a government building, a security agency, the FBI, a bus carrying young men and women, adults and children. They bombed shops.

"The film came out in April 1999. It paved the way for 9/11, since it was filmed in Brooklyn, New York. The truth is that immediately after 9/11, I said people should view these events in the context of 'The Siege,' because these events were identical.

"This scenario... I still believe to this day... This scenario still baffles me. I share the view of many Americans, French, and Europeans, who say that 9/11 could not have been carried out entirely from outside [the U.S.] - by Muslims or others. The confessions by some people could have been edited. But even if they were not edited, I believe that these people were used in a marginal role. The entire thing was of a large scale and was planned within the U.S., in order to enable the U.S. to control and terrorize the entire world, and to get American society to agree to the war declared on terrorism - the definition of which has not yet been determined.

"The U.S. remains the only country to determine who is a terrorist, and what is the definition for terrorism, and it can pin it on anyone. The most recent instance is the case of Dr. Al-Zindani, who has been accused of terrorism, even though he is known worldwide for his refinement, virtue, and broad horizons."

Yep, that Salah Sultan is a real moderate if I've ever seen one. I'm sure the Columbus Dispatch is going to be thrilled that the man they took to defend has been caught going off the deep end not even two weeks after their whitewash appeared.

Couldn't happen to nicer people.

Thanks to Jihadwatch.org for making me aware of the MEMRI report.

"The Project" of the Muslim Brotherhood

Update (5/14/06): Thanks to LGF for plugging my article.

Back in December I posted on a document, called "The Project", recovered by Western intelligence authorities in 2001 in a raid in Switzerland. This "master plan" of the Muslim Brotherhood - the oldest Islamist organization and with one of the largest terror networks in the world - drafted by Muslim Brotherhood scholars details how Islam would culturally invade the West through immigration, escalating confrontation, terrorism, and eventual domination. What should concern every freedom-loving Westerner is that this "master plan" has been executed, and is being executed, flawlessly. More than two decades have proved the success of this plan.

Today I have another article on the topic headlining today's edition of FrontPageMag.com, The Muslim Brotherhood "Project", that also includes the entire text of "The Project", which has only appeared in English serially at The Daily Ablution. The translation accompanying my article was prepared by Scott Burgess, an American researcher and journalist who lives in London. I cited Scott's groundbreaking work in my first post and he greatly assisted me in my research for today's article.

If you want to understand the future and the escalating threat posed by the rising tide of Islam in the West, take the time to read my article, Scott's translation of "The Project", and follow the links to The Daily Ablution to read his additional insights and research on the topic (Parts I, II, III, IV, V, Conclusion). This is an issue that you ignore to the peril of your children, grand-children and great grand-children.

Hometown Jihad, Part 2: Blowback

(Update: Thanks to Lawrence Auster and truepeers for their added coverage of this issue.)

In a review of my Hometown Jihad article published last month by FrontPage Magazine, the Columbus Dispatch, our hometown liberal fish-wrapper, this past Friday (Muslim Milestone: Islamic school marks 10 years of progress, but suspicions endure) likened me to a Neo-Nazi and devoted significant space on the front page of its weekly "Faith and Values" section to promote an open house sponsored by the local Muslim school I identified in that article, Sunrise Academy, which has direct ties to Islamic terrorism, and defending them from the points I raised in that article.

The Dispatch goes out of its way to infer that I'm a Neo-Nazi. Rather than go to the trouble of actually finding something I said that could be construed as racist hate speech, the reporter, Felix Hoover, cherry-picked a quote from an unrelated article published elsewhere on the FrontPage site and authored by someone I've never met or communicated to level the charge.

Here's what the Dispatch article said:

FrontPageMag.com is edited by conservative activist David Horowitz, known for his campaign against perceived liberal bias on college campuses. Another article in the April 3 edition said U.S. immigration policy should be shaped by the nation's "overwhelmingly Christian" and "overwhelmingly white"' heritage.

Did you read that? "Christian" "white" "heritage"? What else could he mean but that FrontPage Magazine is a White-Power front, and that I am, by implication, a Neo-Nazi?

But is that what the article he cites actually says? In fact, it doesn't. Here's what Lawrence Auster wrote in his April 3rd article, "Are We Really a Nation of Immigrants ":

It is also blatantly unfair to make the factoid that "we are all descended from immigrants" our sole guide to national policy, when there are so many other important and true facts about America that could also serve as guides. For example, throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization—in religion overwhelmingly Christian (and mainly Protestant Christian), in race (until the post-1965 immigration) overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn't those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we're all "descended from immigrants?"

Auster never claims that "U.S. immigration policy should be shaped by the nation's 'overwhelmingly Christian' and 'overwhelmingly white' heritage," as Hoover alleges, but I guess that doesn't matter when you're manufacturing bias or making me the object of a game of "Six Degrees of Adolf Hitler". It was close enough to make it seem like he was saying something suspicious enough to tie it to me and to discredit my article. Admittedly, that was a lot easier than dealing with the substance of my article.

But who said that the mainstream media was biased?

After the Dispatch article was published I emailed Mr. Hoover and asked him how he arrived at his interpretation of Auster's comments, and what if anything they actually had to do with my article, but as of yet, no word. Should I be surprised?

I should note that when Hometown Jihad was first published, I contacted the Local News desk at the Dispatch to see if they had any interest in a follow-up. I was told categorically that they were not. And yet, when Sunrise Academy contacted the paper two weeks later, the matter was put on the front-burner, though Mr. Hoover did withhold his article for several weeks until the day before Sunrise Academy's open house, which his article vigorously promoted as if his article was intended as a public service announcement. Might this all just be just coincidence?

As I mentioned in Hometown Jihad, each month at Sunrise Academy a local resident, international terror apologist and raging anti-Semite, Salah Sultan, delivers lectures at the school. Even according to the Dispatch, he previously served as the religious director there. Sultan is a close associate of Muslim Brotherhood cleric and notorious terror apologist Youssef Qaradawi, who the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith recently identified as a "Theologian of Terror" (note: Salah Sultan is one of the few individuals apart from Qaradawi named in the ADL report). His terror connections notwithstanding, Sultan hired him as faculty for the Islamic-American University, which Sultan founded, despite the fact that Qaradawi has been banned from entering the US because of his outspoken advocacy of Islamist terrorism.

Sultan sits on Qaradawi's European Council for Fatwa and Research, which has issued rulings justifying suicide bombings against Israel, and he issues "live fatwas" for Qaradawi's Islamonline.net website. As I note in Hometown Jihad, in 2003 Qaradawi issued a fatwa authorizing suicide bombings, declaring such acts as "martyrdom", and that they did not fall under the Qur'anic prohibition against suicide. In 2004, Qaradawi and 92 other extremist leaders authorized the killing and abduction of American civilians working in Iraq, identifying them as "invaders".

According to Sunrise Academy, they have no active connection with Salah Sultan. This despite the fact that:

1) Sultan delivers lectures at the Sunrise Academy facility once a month;

2) Sultan directs the Islamic Education & Fatwa Center, which is sponsored by the same parent organization as Sunrise Academy, the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus;

3) Sultan spoke in conjunction Sunrise Academy's annual Iftar fundraiser last October;

4) Sultan's website is promoted and linked to on Sunrise Academy's own website.

I think I can be forgiven for confusing these as "active connections" between Sunrise Academy and Sultan.

In a follow-up email to Mr. Hoover after our face-to-face interview, I provided him with information and source documentation that Salah Sultan shared the podium at a 2003 Muslim American Society (the US front group for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) event in Philadelphia with notorious Neo-Nazi William Baker, the once-chairman of the Populist Party, which under his tenure pushed for the revival of segregation-era laws and later would nominate David Duke for President. None of this was addressed in the Dispatch article. Of course, if I had any of these open connections to Neo-Nazis it would have been mentioned in the first line of this story (Wait! Didn't they make the inference anyways?), but the Columbus Dispatch gave Salah Sultan a pass.

The real kicker never mentioned in the Dispatch article is that a local group of liberal usual suspects, the Interfaith Alliance of Central Ohio, began circulating emails (one of which was sent to FrontPage managing editor, Jamie Glazov) alleging that my Hometown Jihad article was "inciting violence against the children of the school" and that I was engaging in "hate speech". In the email, which included an open letter from one of the teachers at Sunrise Academy, the school denied any association with the Muslim American Society, as I alleged in my article. And yet just last month MAS held a youth conference here in Central Ohio. And who was listed among the sponsors of the event? That's right: Sunrise Academy. They were even listed as sponsors on the official flier for the event. Would you think that the Dispatch pointed out this flagrant misrepresentation in their article? I didn't think so.

In their vigorous defense of Salah Sultan and Sunrise Academy, no mention was made by the Interfaith Alliance of what these "interfaith" leaders thought of Sultan's recorded anti-Semitic tirades, quotes of which I provided in Hometown Jihad. Or how about his "interfaith" fatwa published on his own website, which prohibits Palestinians from selling land to Jews in Israel:

...There is no doubt about the fact that the Jews usurped the Holy Lands of Palestine and it is not permitted to bargain with them over anything except the means of their departure from the lands that they usurped by means of violent force and through the killing of hundreds of thousands of people.

How much "interfaith" can you get than that? Salah Sultan - bridge-builder between Muslims and the Jewish community in Israel. I mentioned this to Mr. Hoover of the Dispatch, but it was apparently not worth following up on.

I also wonder how the members of the Interfaith Alliance, a number of members of whom are women clergy in mainstream Protestant denominations, would respond to Sultan's statements on marriage, family and women's rights, like his recent fatwa ruling that women are not allowed to go to the store without the husband's permission (4th fatwa), or his ruling telling an American woman who married a Muslim man who later got married to a second wife that if she objects to the second marriage and wants to keep her marriage she better get pregnant soon (3rd fatwa)?

Yes, that Salah Sultan is a real feminist on top of being an "interfaith" activist.

As I said in my previous article, what concerns me most about Salah Sultan is that he is my neighbor; and as a result of his well-known terror ties, he poses a standing threat to the community I was raised in and recently moved back to. He not only resides here, but freely spreads his message of hate and violence in our community. Just is troubling is that a local Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, while claiming to be run by peace-loving, moderate Muslims, unapologetically hosts an individual like Salah Sultan. I must admit that I wasn't surprised that the mainstream media in Columbus and the liberal interfaith "usual suspects" were so eager to serve as useful idiots and rose to the occasion to help defend Sultan and Sunrise Academy from the negative publicity that resulted from my article.

If anything, my experience should serve as a warning to America, because there are probably hundreds or possibly thousands of communities across the country just like Hilliard, Ohio, which unbeknownst to most residents harbor would-be jihadists. At present, these individuals and groups plead moderation and sign statements opposing terrorism, but they nurture hatred for America and defend hatred and violence when they think no one is looking. This faux moderation is a deliberate part of their strategy, as Salah Sultan made clear in a speech he gave in April 2004 for the New York chapter of MAS, where he said:

"Da'wah [conversion] work can never succeed unless Muslims embed themselves within the very marrow of American society"

Salah Sultan has embedded himself into American society here in Hilliard, Ohio, making good on his threat and serving as an example for those like him. If the blackening of my name by the Columbus Dispatch by likening me to a Neo-Nazi is the price I have to pay to warn my community about who is living amongst us and the potential threat they pose, I will gladly pay it.

Hezbollah, Illegal Immigration and the Next 9/11

Be sure to check out the article I co-authored with Army LTC Joe Myers that was published yesterday by FrontPage Magazine, Hezbollah, Illegal Immigration and the Next 9/11. The article was also picked up by JihadWatch. I'm considering republishing it here as a PDF document with footnotes, etc. for citation purposes. Honestly, this is a critical issue in the present discussion in Congress about illegal immigration and border security. As we note in the article, the most recent National Security Strategy never mentions border security of the United States, but does discuss border security in other countries. We shouldn't kid ourselves; it is more than likely that the next 9/11 (which is inevitable, according to FBI Director Louis Freeh) is going to come from across our border. It's time for America and our politicians to wake up!

Update (05/02/06): James Lewis at The American Thinker comments on our FPM article and offers his own insights, Hezbollah from Sea to Shining Sea.

Reflections on the American National Spirit

I was recently reading an article by Victor Davis Hanson, Has Ahmadinejad Miscalculated?, regarding the ongoing pot-banging by the Iranian ayatollahs’ current political stooge, Iranian President Ahmadinejad. We offer our congratulations to the Iranians for their recent nuclear achievements. We’re glad that you’ve joined the 20th Century now that we are in the 21st, and that you’ve been able to replicate the accomplishments of an American generation that has largely passed into history. We must note, however, that you were only able to reach this goal by using American methods and using our own technology. At best, the rest of the world can only imitate America.

I’ve always appreciated Hanson’s understanding of ancient and modern warfare. But what struck me was something he said towards the end of the piece. He wrote:

Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, “Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live.” The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.

In these few sentences Hanson captures the essence of the American national ethos. Americans are by nature decadent, rebellious, brash and reckless – we always have been. But history has recorded time and again that when America has been threatened and attacked, from the deepest recesses of the American heartland rises a fierce response prepared to let slip the dogs of war to hound its enemies into submission or oblivion.

This national spirit is something we need to remind ourselves of occasionally; and quite honestly, it is something we have tucked away like an old nostalgic remembrance that we only bring out on flag-waving occasions, like during the Gulf War or after the 9/11 attacks. We live in a troubled time when patriotism is mocked more than celebrated; vices are indulged and virtues are forgotten; heroism and sacrifice replaced with self-interest and inaction. That notwithstanding, the national ethos that Hanson identifies still is in the lifeblood pumped by the heart of America. It is woven into the very fabric of American life itself; it is in our civic institutions; it is in our politics; it resides in its people. The fire of the American spirit can be doused, but never extinguished.

The sense of steely determination in the face of terrible odds and fierce enemies has been in the American bloodline since the beginning. In the dark days when General George Washington and his men were struggling for survival at Valley Forge, Thomas Paine would write these stirring words of encouragement in The Crisis:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

These are indeed the times that try men’s souls. Our faith in America’s founding spirit is waning. Critics from all sides express their doubts in loud, whining tones and wring their hands in self-imposed grief at the present state of affairs, all while America’s men and women in uniform live day-to-day in harm’s way in the furthest reaches of the globe to extend freedom to peoples who not long ago were (and some who still are) our enemies. These critics are the summertime soldiers and the sunshine patriots of our day.

Yet it is the weary and wounded men at arms in the dank muck of Valley Forge fighting for their lives from disease and the cold that would gamble America’s future on crossing the icy Delaware just days after Paine’s words were published and capture the Hessian garrison at Trenton, reversing the trend of constant defeat and forced retreat for the embattled colonial troops. George Washington, the Father of our Country, understood the value of risking all to take the battle to our enemies. In the years that followed, America’s hard-won victories and tragic defeats that followed in the War for Independence would eventually win our nation’s freedom. And when the final victory at Yorktown was secured, no one begrudged the summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots from celebrating as well. Even so, few could name any of those colonial naysayers today. America loves the winner.

It isn’t unusual for Americans to lose their way, though Providence has a way of forcing events upon us to remind us of who we are as Americans. These events are the adrenaline that gets the heart pumping our lifeblood to the body politic once again.

As I’ve thought about Hanson’s essay over the past few weeks I have been reminded of two historical incidents (though there are many to choose from) that I think captures the two-sided nature of the American national spirit.

The date of the first event is September 13, 1814. It is an event that we commemorate every time that we sing our national anthem. However, many Americans forget the circumstances surrounding the British assault on Fort McHenry in the misnamed War of 1812. Just weeks before the attack on Baltimore, the British had sailed up the Potomac and put Washington D.C. to the torch, forcing President James Madison and his Cabinet to flee for their lives. The burning of Washington in August 1814 was a demonstration of British military power intended to show America’s impotency. The British quickly sailed back down to Chesapeake Bay to capture the strategic port of Baltimore to issue the coup de grace and bring America to its knees and back under the dominion of the British crown.

This is the plan that America’s enemies had in mind.

But the British miscalculated. They didn’t underestimate the number of men or firepower of the American troops huddled inside Fort McHenry; it was the spirit and resolve of the American forces that the British misjudged.

The British landed a large force at North Point and advanced within sight of the city of Baltimore. The British command intended to sail their fleet up to Fort McHenry and literally pull out their big guns and pound the American forces into submission and surrender and press in to take the rest of the town. On the morning of September 13, 1814, the British Navy began the most intense bombardment ever unleashed in the history of human warfare up to that time against the huddled defenders of Fort McHenry – a bombardment that would continue through the day and well into the night.

Francis Scott Key was an accidental observer to these events. He and a friend had approached the British under a flag of truce to secure the release of an elderly doctor that had been captured and accused of giving aid to some British deserters. As they negotiated with British officials for their friend’s release they became privy to the battle plans of the British and were held onboard one of the ships as a precaution until the British had secured their victory. Even though Key would only observe the bombardment from a ship distant from the battle, the rockets, bombs and flares of the ferocious attack on the American defenders could clearly be seen from miles away.

Using their superior long-range cannons, the British fleet attacked Fort McHenry beyond the range of the American guns. The only American weapon was courage and resolve as the massive bombardment continued. When the shelling stopped at 1 a.m., the dark prevented any view of the American battlement. Key and the other American observers down river would have to wait until morning to see who had won the victory. Those hours of waiting must have tried their souls. They surely must have thought that the awesome firepower of the British fleet had prevailed against the outmanned and outgunned Americans. But the darkness held out the possibility of hope. Maybe the men at Fort McHenry had been able to withstand the British fury.

When dawn finally came, what a sight Francis Scott Key would see: the Americans inside Fort McHenry had taken down their standard storm flag and raised a new massive flag in its place, telling the world of the American ability to withstand the mightiest blow that its enemies could strike and that England’s best was still not enough to prevail. Even though the British had just burned our public buildings in Washington to the ground, the commander at Fort McHenry had the larger flag prepared in anticipation of an American victory. This sign of the triumph of the American spirit was Key's inspiration as he sat down to pen those immortal words familiar to every American heart.

Raising that flag – that Star-Spangled Banner we can still see today at the Smithsonian Museum – was a haughty gesture, but one completely in line with the American national spirit. It was General Patton pissing in the Rhine as he and the crusading American forces were storming into Germany on the verge of crushing our Axis enemies. On that day in Baltimore Harbor, America had taken the most savage beating ever unleashed in the history of warfare from the greatest military power in the world – and won. How utterly American.

We should remember that at the time of the siege of Fort McHenry, the British had Napoleon imprisoned on Elba, and that a year later after his escape they would finally vanquish Bonaparte at Waterloo. The great Napoleon was defeated; America was victorious. American courage and resolve alone had won the victory that brave day on the Chesapeake. This is what our national anthem means when we sing, “O say can you see by the dawn’s early light…”.

Yet it means even more than that. When we sing that immortal refrain, “O say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we should remember what that Key’s question is rhetorical: he urges us to recall that, yes, the flag still waves and Americans remain free and brave. It means you can burn down our Capitol and White House and send our elected officials fleeing, but the American spirit will allow us to take your best shot and overcome. As long as Americans remain on the field of battle, the American spirit will remain. Through the darkness we remember, just like Francis Scott Key, that hope remains for America, because our most potent weapon has always been Americans themselves.

I think it’s for this reason that Americans love a good fight. Raising the Star-Spangled Banner that day recalled the spirit of Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermopylae responding to the Persian King Xerxes demands to lay down their arms, telling the innumerable Persian foe that faced them, “Come and get them!” Americans have been known to scour the world looking to join the other’s fights when we didn’t have our own to occupy us. We think of Davy Crockett and his Tennessee Volunteers arriving at the Alamo spoiling for a fight. And when all looked hopeless, Crockett, the Volunteers and the rest of the men of the Alamo didn’t flee. They had the American spirit. They knew that there are things more valuable than life and leisure; and that death and defeat could not measure up to disgrace and dishonor by abandoning hope in the face of our enemies.

This is the testimony of the Americans who died at the Alamo. And Wake Island. And United Airline Flight 93 on 9/11. They weren’t fighting to beat the odds; they were fighting because they refused to abandon the American spirit. At certain times in our history, all Americans have had left to fight with is their refusal – telling our enemies in desperate hours and deadly circumstances that they would not go gently into that good night. And laying down their lives, they knew there was hope because Americans remained. Their respective sacrifices were not the abandonment of hope, but the preservation of it. Those American heroes believed that the battle would be won and invested their lives in that hope. Through the darkness and doubt, hope remains for America.

The American spirit allows us to see our most prominent commercial and military buildings destroyed in acts of terror, killing thousands on our own soil on 9/11. And yet within ninety days our enemies that attacked us were forced to hide and fight in caves in the most remote point on the planet trying to survive the American fury. They had taken their shot at us and won a symbolic victory. But they miscalculated about the mettle of the American spirit, and many of them have paid with their lives, thanks be to God. That spirit of taking the best shot America’s enemies can deliver is what inspired the men at Fort McHenry: burn down our Capital if you can, because in short order we will chase you into the sea and out of America forever. You may give us your best shot but we will still shove it up your ass in due course.

America’s battles have been won because there is a parallel element to the American spirit. This added element to our national character is what brought to mind the second event that I recalled after reading Hanson’s essay. The date I have in mind is April 18, 1942. Just months before the worldwide furies of nationalism and fascism set their sights on America with the intention of taking her down and neutralizing her to end any opposition to their plans of worldwide domination.

The Japanese Empire struck their first blow on December 7, 1941 by raiding Pearl Harbor. Almost 2,500 American servicemen and civilians were killed that day, along with the destruction of most of our Pacific fleet. Almost sixty-five years later, the USS Arizona still lies in Pearl Harbor as a tomb for her crew. But our three aircraft carriers survived, and so did the American spirit. Through the darkness, hope remained.

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the assault and led the Japanese forces in the Pearl Harbor attack, was aware of this. Even as his planes returned hailing their decisive victory, Yamamoto warned his staff, "I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." As a shrewd commander, he knew the character of his American adversary. Yamamoto knew more about the American spirit than many Americans themselves that dark day. Events like these force us to remember who we are and what we represent to the world.

The attack on Pearl Harbor brought to Americans clarity of vision by exposing the degree of threat posed by their enemies. Much like Hanson observes, it wasn’t just America’s international interests that were being attacked by the fascists Axis Powers – it was the way of American life itself that the enemy was determined to destory. And Americans from every corner of the country and every walk of life rose to fight America’s battle on behalf of the free world. It was not America’s martial might that was released against our enemies; it was the American spirit itself. The country’s resources and industry were dedicated to retaking the initiative from our enemies, and this is precisely what Yamamoto rightly feared. Within months, the engines of American industry were put to the war effort and millions of American warriors were flung to the farthest reaches of the globe to defeat our enemies. Having taken their best shot against America, Yamamoto knew even then at the beginning of the conflict that the American spirit would prevail.

Still bruised and broken from the Pearl Harbor attack, America’s leaders drew deep from the well of our national spirit and approved a plan to take the battle to our enemies and to demonstrate the American resolve to win the war that had been thrust upon us. Less than a month after the attack, a cavalier Army Air Corps Lt. Colonel, Jimmy Doolittle, formulated a strategy to attack the Japanese homeland. The plan, however, was risky and would require that American technology and the flight crews themselves would be pushed to their very limits and beyond. The mission could easily end in total failure and death for all the personnel participating in the raid. One of the three aircraft carriers that had avoided destruction on December 7th would also be put in jeopardy. The B-25s that were used had never been launched from an aircraft carrier, and there was no margin for error as the planes took off. The risks were enormous, but it would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate to our enemies and to ourselves the American national spirit. In a decision that reflects what is best and true about America, just like George Washington crossing the Delaware, they took the gamble.

The stakes were raised even higher on April 18, 1942 when the carrier bearing the sixteen B-25B bombers was spotted by a Japanese ship. One day and 200 miles away from their scheduled launching point, Doolittle decided to launch the attack. Flying 650 miles in single-file formation at wave top altitude, the American bombers reached the Japanese coast. In broad daylight, Americans were able to bomb the Japanese cities of Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and the imperial city of Tokyo.

To any other country, such a raid would have been seen as foolish, unnecessarily risky and a likely failure. But as American bombs rained down on the Japanese that day, just weeks after suffering a stinging defeat at Pearl Harbor, America was delivering an unmistakable message to its enemies: we will bring the war home to you. That’s the American way.

Bombing Tokyo wasn’t a symbolic victory for America; it was a foretaste for the Japanese people of the fury that was to follow. Jimmy Doolittle and his raiders weren’t out to inflict revenge; they came as harbingers of reckoning. Taking the battle to our enemies is what Americans do. While the French national motto since the time of Napoleon has been, “Je me rends” (I surrender), the American national motto since our struggle for first freedom and independence has been, “Don’t Tread On Me!” The Japanese Empire learned first-hand that attacking America has fatal consequences. Strike us and we will apply our greatest minds to find ways to unlock even nature’s deepest secrets, as we did with the atomic bomb, to rain fire and death upon you.

The Doolittle Raid is a consummate example of the second element of the American spirit. Yes, Americans can take the worst blows that our enemies have to offer, just like we did at Fort McHenry. It is something we remember and celebrate. But our enemies who dare to tread on us should remember that in the end, we will bring the battle home to you.

This was the message we delivered to the world after 9/11 when we forcibly deposed the Taliban Islamic theocracy in Afghanistan and Saddam’s Baathist thugocracy in Iraq. Our enemies should recall that what the Soviet Union was not able to accomplish in ten years in Afghanistan, the United States of America pulled off in the matter of weeks. In Iraq, our military strategists developed and our soldiers executed a plan that left the largest Arab army in the world no other option than to go home rather than fight the invading American foe in open battle. It seems they learned from our American military’s last visit to the region. For that reason alone it was appropriate for President Bush and the entire country to greet the returning sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln and the soldiers who fought their way to Baghdad with the words, “Mission Accomplished!”

Yes, some of America’s fighting men and women lost their lives in the rush to Baghdad and Kabul. Some are still the targets and victims of terrorists and cowardly murderers today. Flag-draped coffins are the awful price we pay for our freedoms, but it has always been a price that Americans have been willing to pay. Each one of our war dead is an irreplaceable loss; but they are not irreplaceable because they were young or left families behind. They were irreplaceable because they were Americans willing to fight America’s battles. What better memorial to the American spirit do we have than these men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to take the battle to our enemies?

As we are in a period of doubt regarding the progress of the Global War on Terror, we would do well to remember that America has always been plagued by cranks and cowards – those faithless souls whose iniquity in not losing faith in America, but losing faith in themselves as Americans. Regardless, we should never lose our faith. Even when Congress was considering the recognition of The Star-Spangled Banner in the early 20th Century, there were voices calling our great national anthem a “hymn of hate”. The summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots are always with us, whether they are retired armchair generals or craven moonbat politicians, singing their siren songs enticing us to crash upon the rocks of self-doubt, retreat and inaction. For our own sake, we should stay the course and steer clear of those waters.

America’s enemies should not take any comfort at what the cranks and cowards have to say. Islamists should remember the fate of their predecessors, the Fascists and the Communists, who were swept up into the waste bin of history by Americans. The sunshine patriots could be heard back then, too. And Iranians should remember that no matter how far they develop their nuclear capability that we have some old scores to settle with them as well. Jimmy Carter is no longer President and Iran has a blood debt still left to pay from attacks on Americans from Beirut to the Khobar Towers – and America has every intention of collecting on that debt. We always remember the wounds inflicted by our enemies and will repay at the hour of our own choosing.

The American spirit resides deep within our national soul: moral reckoning is our inspiration and war is in our life-blood. Americans should not ever doubt that the rest of the world marvels at our restraint, even though our enemies mistake our restraint for weakness – a mistake they make at their own peril. It is an everlasting testament to the rightness of America’s cause that at the height of our military power at the end of World War Two in sole possession of the most awesome weapon of destruction ever created by mankind that Americans didn’t blink when we disbanded our armies and sent the American legions home to live and work in peace. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, when America has fought its wars on foreign soil, all America has ever asked for is enough land to bury our dead. The long list of countries that have had their freedom secured through American military might over the past two centuries should shame our loudest international critics and quiet our domestic sunshine patriots. Honest historians will never chronicle the story of an American Empire.

We must keep in our hearts daily the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen living in harm’s way all over the world. They fly the skies in Afghanistan; they patrol the deadly streets of Iraq; they keep in the peace in the Balkans; they sail the Taiwan Straits; they man the line along the 38th Parallel on the Korean Peninsula. America doesn’t have the largest army in the world or the largest navy. From the beginning America has known that it is not strength of arms alone that will secure victory; the America warrior and the heart that beats within him is why we will win the war against terror. And the American warrior is guided by the American national spirit. In war, America is protecting of the innocent; generous to our friends and allies; and merciless to our enemies. As long as there are Americans left to fight our battles, our enemies should tremble in fear.

For two-hundred and thirty years, this has been the essence of the American national spirit and the heart of American war policy: we will take your best shot and we will bring the battle home to you. I thank Victor Davis Hanson for reminding me of it. In this time of uncertainty and doubt about the progress of the Global War on Terror, it is something that both we and our enemies should remember.

Athanasius: On the Incarnation

Christ is risen! He has risen indeed!

One of my personal traditions each year on Easter Sunday is to read Athanasius' classic work, On the Incarnation. Seventeen hundred years later, it is still one of the best expositions of the Christian faith. A work on the Incarnation might seem more appropriate reading for Christmas or Epiphany, but it is the chapter on the Resurrection (Chap. 5) that has always particularly stirred my soul. And yet, every page of my copy is highlighted along with my margin notes. This is good meat for food (Heb. 5:14). So I encourage you, much like the angel told the Apostle John in the Revelation, take this book and eat.

The section that stirs me the most is section 27:

A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by a present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the Savior, even the holiest of men were afraid of death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the Savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But that devil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who remains truly dead. There is proof of this too; for men who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Savior's resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodily discipline to meet it. So weak has death become that even women, who used to be taken in by it, mock at it now as a dead thing robbed of all its strength. Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot the passers-by sneer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the Savior on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, "O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting? (1 Cor. 15:55)

These are excellent words for us to dwell on as we celebrate today, as do all Christians around the world, the testimony of the two angels at Christ's empty tomb on that first Easter morning when they announced to the amazement of the disciples, "He is not here, but is risen!" (Luke 24:6). This is surely the loadstone of the Christian faith.

So I write in these early hours as first light is soon to break as it did that blessed ancient morn, that we may greet one another today with that same angelic greeting proclaiming to each other the glad and triumphant tidings that Christ has conquered Death for us that we may mock and jeer at it still this Easter Day.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

(Thanks to Pooh for the link. Read his own thoughts on Athanasius. We didn't coordinate our same-themed posts. Honestly.)

Rome Getting It Right on Islam

Two weeks ago I posted on Pope Benedict's leadership in Rehabilitating the Crusades. Just a few days after that post was written, Benedict met with his cardinals. As Italian journalist and scholar Sandro Magister of Chiesa notes, one of the four topics under discussion during their day of "prayer and reflection" of the consistory was Islam. Benedict also played an instrumental role in the release of Afghan Christian convert Abdul Rahman from custody and his subsequent asylum in Italy.

Magister also cites a recent article in the Italian Catholic journal, Stadium, entitled "The Islamic Question". The article is authored by two prominent Catholic scholars, Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan. Vanzan is a Jesuit professor and a contributor to the La Civiltà Cattolica Roman Jesuit magazine that has each issue approved directly by the Vatican. These are no mere independent Catholic academics; they are writing on behalf of the Church of Rome.

In their extensive article (only portions of which are available on the Chiesa site), Bertacchini and Vanzan identify six trends of the Islamization of the West:

1) The attacks against Western interests from Morocco to the Philippines;

2) The escalation of terrorism in the West (such as 9/11 and the 7/5 London bombings);

3) The rise of anti-Semetic propaganda (something Islam picked up from Enlightenment Europe; I'll write on that later);

4) Outright missionary activity by Muslims in the West;

5) Immigration;

6) The public expressions of elation by Muslims at the misfortunes of the West, such as Hurricane Katrina.

The authors make three additional points worth mentioning here:

1) The shift in Islamist thinking from "modernizing Islam" to "Islamizing modernity", which was a policy that came about in the dispute between Osama bin Laden's mentor and founder of al-Qaeda, Abdullah Azza, and the man who would eventually become bin Laden's right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri had Azzam assassinated, which allowed the "Islamizing modernity" position to dominate Islamist discourse.

2) The utterly inability for self-criticism in Islam (see David Pryce-Jones' book, The Closed Circle, for the cultural implications of this factor).

3) The incompatibility of the Islamic ideology and system with notions of individuality and personal freedom. They note that there was no word for "freedom" in the Arabic language for more than a thousand years after the founding of Islam; and the word used for it today, "hurriyya", means "entitlement", as if freedoms come by grant (of the sultan or the caliph).

Many Roman Catholic countries in the West (primarily in Europe, but also in Latin America) are facing the immediate threat of Islamization. Pope Benedict, unlike his predecessor, is right to express his concern and openly identifying this threat. He is actively promoting a dialogue and a policy shift regarding Islam as radical as the shift made within Islamist circles itself with the rise of Zawahiri's ideological position.

As I've said before, no one will ever confuse me with an apologist for the Church of Rome, but the rising threat from Islam should convince us of the maxim established by our American Founding Fathers that if we don't hang together in this battle, we shall surely all hang separately. Secularists have neither the cultural tools nor the ability of vision to defeat this threat. The response to the Islamist challenge must come from within Christendom itself. Regardless of the significant religious differences between Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox (distincitions that should not be glossed over), we must understand that nothing less than the existence of Christianity itself is presently at stake. Mutual cooperation between the respective branches of the Christian faith is imperative.

Hayden Run Falls (Springtime)

It has been a while since I posted a picture, so now that Spring has arrived in Central Ohio, let me share with you a local photo. This is Hayden Run Falls, taken May 2005. I spent a lot of time here growing up. What is remarkable about this scene is that there is a busy intersection just yards away from the cliff top, but when you're down by the falls, you can't hear the traffic. When it rains heavily, you can feel the moisture well before the falls are in view. Sadly, some idiots have marked up the area with graffiti, which I have been able to angle out of view. This is one of the richest areas in North America for finding fossils. Invariably, someone will get hurt or killed scaling the cliff walls this Spring.I have some fantastic winter scenes of the falls with ice hanging off all the trees that I'll post sometime. Enjoy!

Hometown Jihad

Be sure to check out my article which leads today's edition of FrontPage Magazine, Hometown Jihad.

View reader comments/hate mail on the article at Go Postal!

UPDATE: A shout-out to my people in Denmark covering my article: MINUT: FRI KONSERVATIV. Goddag! Det glæder mig at træffe Dem!

UPDATE #2: Thanks to JihadWatch for the plug as well.

Conversion, Apostasy, and the "Religion of Peace"

The news last weekend about the Afghan Christian facing the death penalty for converting from Islam is illustrative of the dilemma and the threat we face in the West (and those of us who are Christians anywhere in the world) from the rapidly spreading institutionalization of Islam.

One Christian Science Monitor article I read earlier this week, Conversion a thorny issue in Muslim world, (which LGF rightly termed the “Comically Understated Headline of the Day”), discusses the difficultly of the “Just Give Them Democracy” foreign policy position of the Bush Administration:

The issue of religious freedoms in one in which, as in Afghanistan, modern laws are clashing with ancient traditions. Rahman’s case illustrates a glaring contradiction between Afghanistan’s constitution, which upholds the right to freedom of religion on one hand but enshrines the supremacy of sharia law on the other.

The ideological presupposition of Islam in the Muslim world effectively neuters any attempt to structure any liberal-style democracy. The historic example of the “secular” government of Turkey should have convinced us of the folly of that position. We see it repeated today in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and looming large in Iraq.

When it comes to discussing liberal democracy with Muslims, it is imperative to first define terms, because we regularly use similar language with profoundly different meanings. Presuppositions matter. I was reminded of this over the weekend while I was reading Youssef Choueiri’s book, Islamic Fundamentalism, where he qualifies what is meant by modern Muslims when they talk about “there is no compulsion in religion”:

Jihad is then the continuation of God’s politics by other means. It is an obligation that becomes incumbent on the believers whenever the tenets and legal rules are violated or neglected. In this sense, jihad is a form of political struggle designed, as Qutb argues, to disarm the enemy so that Islam is allowed to apply its shari’a unhindered by the oppressive power of idolatrous tyrannies. By the mere removal of the political obstacle, the central aim of revolutionary struggle is accomplished, a fact which refutes the charge of forcible conversion. This is, for example, the correct meaning of the Qur’anic statement: ‘there is no compulsion in religion’. Contrary to the opinion of liberal-minded Muslims, this Qur’anic verse, Qutb explains, presupposes the hegemony of Islam in society, thereby freeing individuals from the political domination of non-Muslim rulers. Once political power is in the hands of the new Islamic elite, and its divine laws are firmly established, the subjects of the state are given the choice either to embrace Islam or persist in practicing their inherited religions and beliefs. However, this tolerance is a conditional agreement concluded between a victorious party and vanquished subjects. (Youssef M. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, pp. 136-137)

As Choueiri shows, when Muslim ideologues like Sayyid Qutb, one of the most influential Islamist ideologues, talk about the absence of compulsion in religion in Islam, they assume the absolute cultural, political and religious domination of Islam in a society. This presumption of Islamic hegemony should be remembered not only when we talk about apostasy in Islam, but overall freedom of religion for non-Muslims.

But while there is a pretended “freedom” from religious compulsion for non-Muslims, there is no such provision for Muslims themselves. Much like the Mafia, once you are in you are considered in for life. As Abul A’la Mawdudi, perhaps the most widely published and read Islamic thinker of the 20th Century, states in his authoritative treatise, The Punishment of the Apostate According to Islamic Law:

"There is no compulsion in religion" (la ikraha fi'd din: Qur'an 2:256) means that we do not compel anyone to come into our religion. And this is truly our practice. But we initially warn whoever would come and go back that this door is not open to come and go. Therefore anyone who comes should decide before coming that there is no going back.

This issue of freedom of conscience for Muslims has been recently illustrated in Algeria, where the parliament in recent weeks approved a law banning all non-Islamic religions from offering calls to conversion. As this Arabic News report explains, the punishment for violating the law is two to five years imprisonment and 5,000-10,000 EURO fine.

But before non-Muslims breathe a sigh of relief at the exemption from Islamic laws of apostasy, we should remember the treatment – extending from the time of initial Muslim conquests and continuing until today – of countless Christians who have paid for their lives for refusing to convert to Islam. A notable historical example is the 9th Century A.D. Martyrs of Cordoba, Spain. Their history was recorded by one priest, Eulogius, who was also eventually martyred for his Christian faith after being convicted of proselytizing. In the span of nine years, more than 48 Christians were beheaded or impaled in this small Iberian town for refusing to convert to Islam. In one horrible case in 864, a nun was thrown into a cauldron of molten lead.

While punishments for apostasy, and the notion of apostasy itself, having long since disappeared from the West, recent events should tell us that the issue is still an issue that warrants attention. Most Muslim countries are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides for (Article 18) for freedom to change one’s religious belief. But as noted “apostate” Ibn Warraq notes in his short survey of international law and Islamic practice, Apostasy and Human Rights, many attempts have been made to rewrite or gut the freedom of religious choice clause by the block of Islamic nations. He cites one expert, Elisabeth Mayer, who says:

“The lack of support for the principle of freedom of religion in the Islamic human rights schemes is one of the factors that most sharply distinguishes them from the International Bill of Human Rights, which treats freedom of religion as an unqualified right. The [Muslim] authors’ unwillingness to repudiate the rule that a person should be executed over a question of religious belief reveals the enormous gap that exists between their mentalities and the modern philosophy of human rights.”

I have to admit that it is sad to think that there are American soldiers still dying in Afghanistan to protect the very government that was pushing for the death penalty against this Christian man. We shouldn't fool ourselves that this incident is irrelevant to those of us in the West. Failing to understand the historic and religious context of religious freedom – or more precisely, the lack of it – in Islam, and the spreading institutionalization of Islam, could prove fatal to future generations in the Christian West.

Rehabilitating the Crusades

No one could ever accuse me of being an apologist for the Roman Catholic Church, so I think that I'm clear to say that the shifting positions by the Vatican under the new administration of Pope Benedict is a very welcome development. One example is the conference this past weekend at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University sponsored by the Vatican where speakers spoke in defense of the Crusades of the Medieval Era (HT:LGF).

Another example is the private debate last September amongst the Pope's inner circle of former students about the relations with Islam, which was reported by the Vatican beat reporter for L'espresso, Sandro Magister. As Magister reminds us in a piece published back in December, Holy War: The Year the Muslims Took Rome, the Vatican is no stranger to the assaults of the Islamic hordes. In 846, Rome and the Vatican were sacked by the Muslims in a hit-and-run raid. Here's how Magister describes it:

"What happened is that in 846 some Muslim Arabs arrived in a fleet at the mouth of the Tiber, made their way to Rome, sacked the city, and carried away from the basilica of St. Peter all of the gold and silver it contained. And this was not just an incidental attack. In 827 the Arabs had conquered Sicily, which they kept under their dominion for two and a half centuries. Rome was under serious threat from nearby. In 847, the year after the assault, the newly elected pope Leo IV began the construction of walls around the entire perimeter of the Vatican, 12 meters high and equipped with 44 towers. He completed the project in six years. These are the “Leonine” walls, and significant traces of them still remain. But very few today know that these walls were erected to defend the see of Peter from an Islamic jihad. And many of those who do know this remain silent out of discretion. “Bridges, not walls” is the fashionable slogan today."

Magister has also reported recently that the Papal Secretariat of State has lodged diplomatic complaints against Iran's treatment of Christians, and that La Civilita Cattolica, a publication of the Jesuit order, has also chronicled the abuse of Christians in Muslim countries (link includes translated excerpts from the article). This is especially important as the world hears in recent days of the pending execution of an Afghani man for converting to Christianity.

A revisiting of the Crusades is not only helpful to understand past events, but imperative to comprehend present ones. The war against the West by Islam is just another stage in a conflict that has been raging since the Seventh Century. The West has been made to feel shame regarding the Crusades, but this sense of shame wasn't developed by Islamic propaganda, but by the Western critics of Western Civilization/Christendom.

In fact, the Crusades were an effort to take the battle to the Islamic world and reverse the gains of the Muslim world at the expense of Christianity that had accumulated for several hundred years. The Christian occupants of those lands were given two options: forceable conversion or the sword. While many in the West forget about the Muslim invasions of Europe in the Middle Ages that were turned back only with the Christian victory by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours/Poitiers (732) and the battles of "El Cid Campeador" immortalized by the Lay of the Cid, they have even more forgetfulness of the Reconquista of Spain from the Moors by Isabella of Castile (1492), the Siege of Vienna by Sulieman (1529), the great naval Battle of Lepanto (1571; see G.K. Chesterton's poem about the battle, Lepanto) and the Battle of Vienna (1683) between Mehmed IV and Jan Sobieski in the Modern Era. These battles and Christian victories ought to be fresh in the minds and familiar on the lips of every Christian child and adult in the West.

If you're interested in an alternative version of the Crusades to the hand-wringing "Kingdom of Heaven" version made popular over the past century, check out this short but informative article by Crusade scholar Thomas Madden from the April 2002 edition of Crisis Magazine, "The Real History of the Crusades."

And bully for the Papists who are showing signs of cultural courage by challenging the revisionist history of the brave defense of Christendom in the Crusades. If only Protestants and Evangelicals were equally willing to show such courage. Do yourself a favor tonight. Go to Blockbuster and rent the epic film, El Cid.

Mercersburg on the Atonement, Part 1

To help readers get better acquainted with the teachings and doctrines of Mercersburg Theology and its departure from the historic Reformed faith, I intend to post some of their writings here to better familiarize others with just exactly what they taught -- from their own statements and writings. The following is taken from an article published by one of the Mercersburg theology professors and a disciple of John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff. In this article the author rejects that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement of Christ is taught in the Heidelberg Catechism and that the doctrine is incompatible with the gospel. Here are his words taken from the official publication of the German Reformed Church:

"A superficial study of the Heidelberg Catechism may make the impression that the atoning sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross is not only essential, but also fundamental and principial, in its doctrinal system of redemption. It teaches, that Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race, in order that by His passion, as 'the only atoning sacrifice, He might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation (Q. 37); that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is the only ground of our salvation, and that our whole-salvation stands in the one sacrifice of Christ, made for us on the cross' (Q. 67). Again, the Catechism says 'that we have full forgiveness of all our sins by the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ' (Q. 80). Many other expressions occur, which are equally explicit. That this doctrinal system underlies and animates the Heidelberg Catechism we cannot believe. The notion is incompatible with the central position of the Creed; incompatible also with its conception of the gospel, as an order of grace standing in the personal history of Jesus Christ." (emphasis added) “The Doctrine of the Catechism concerning the Atoning Death of Christ." Reformed Church Messenger (September 17, 1873)

Nevin, Hodge, Dabney, and Mark Horne

Following up on my last post regarding the revival of 19th-Century Mercersburg Theology on the outermost fringes of the Reformed world (Mercersburg Theology — A Warning from the Past), the savage and very personal criticisms, both public and private, that was directed my way in response prompted me to revisit some of the materials written by Mercersburg’s contemporary supporters and advocates.

Perhaps one of the more notable of these attempts to rehabilitate and revive Mercersburg Theology is Mark Horne’s 1997 PCA Taylor Aiken Award-winning paper in Church History, Real Union or Legal Fiction? John Williamson Nevin’s Controversy With Charles Hodge Over the Imputation of Adam’s Sin (with a Comparison to Robert L. Dabney). Horne currently serves as assistant pastor of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church (PCA) in St. Louis, Missouri. Even this earlier week he expressed his “appreciation, maybe even admiration” for Nevin.

The bulk of his Aiken Award-winning paper is dedicated to one small aspect of the extended dispute between Princeton professor Charles Hodge and his errant protégé, John Williamson Nevin, the chief theologian of Mercersburg Theology.

Horne’s analysis of Hodge and Nevin on the imputation of Adam’s sin appears a fair representation of the vast theological gulf that existed between the two. It is worth noting that Hodge and Nevin had many other points of disagreement beyond this, such as Nevin’s rejection of Calvinistic soteriology (see Nevin’s second article on “Hodge on the Ephesians”, Mercersburg Review 9 [April 1857]: 192–245), and the Calvinistic view of sacraments (see Hodge’s extensive rebuttal of Nevin’s book, The Mystical Presence, in his article “Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord’s Supper”, Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 20 [April 1848]: 227–278).

But Horne does not limit his discussion to just Nevin and Hodge on this small topic. In order to qualify Nevin within the bounds of acceptable Reformed theology, Horne marshals none other than the great Southern Presbyterian theologian, R.L. Dabney, to verify Nevin’s Reformed credentials. Horne states:

“One reason for believing that Nevin belongs to the debate within American Presbyterianism is that Dabney seems to have articulated substantially the same view of the imputation of Adam’s sin.”

Horne here admits that his purpose is to call on Dabney as proof that Nevin “belongs to the debate within American Presbyterianism”. As one of the most revered theological minds in American Presbyterianism (along with Hodge), Horne does well to cite Dabney. That is, of course, if the slipper does in fact fit.

It seems (not having read all of Horne’s citations for Dabney) that he accurately represents Dabney’s disagreement with Hodge over the nature of the imputation of Adam’s sin. I offer that as a given. But discussion of imputation of Adam’s sin without considering the corresponding soteriological implications for the believers union with Christ, justification, and imputation of Christ’s sin to believer, as well as any sacramental implications, could raise the response of “so what?” And any agreement between Nevin and Dabney on the sole issue of the imputation of Adam’s sin, a subset of theological interest, would hardly be the vindication of Nevin as within the bounds of American Presbyterianism that Horne intends it to be unless it extends to these other important soteriological issues as well.

In fact, in the conclusion to his paper Horne draws his evidence together hoping to build a final case by taking the seeming agreement between Nevin and Dabney on the issue of imputation of Adam’s sin and extending out that alleged agreement to those related soteriological implications. He identifies seven “implicitly or explicitly” held area of agreement between Nevin and Dabney:

In summary, this paper has attempted to make a prima facie case that both Nevin and Dabney share a view at odds with the “immediate imputation” of Charles Hodge, but not, as Hodge claimed in the case of Nevin, at odds with notion of forensic justification. They seem to have held, implicitly or explicitly, the following points in common against him:

1. Union with Christ [51] is the basis for the justification of believers.



2. This union is brought about through the power of the Holy Spirit at a certain point in time in a person’s life (regeneration).



3. The inception of this union not only is the basis of justification, but the beginning of sanctification.



4. This union with Christ parallels the union with Adam which all people possess.



5. Whereas, in the case of Christ, the union is a Spiritual union (= through the Holy Spirit), in the case of Adam, the union is a natural union (= through the flesh).



6. Whereas union with Christ is given to sinners who already exist, union with Adam is given by natural generation and starts their existence.



7. Though the basis for condemnation in Adam and justification in Christ are not simply legal relationships, both the condemnation and the justification arising from the respective unions are essentially legal states. To elaborate, to be justified is to be declared righteous and to be condemened to be declared unrighteous. The legal character of such declarations is not compromised by the fact that they are based on realities which are not themselves reducible to forensic concepts.

Now understand that Horne here has made the leap from talking about the imputation of Adam’s sin — almost the entire focus of the paper — to the added soteriological questions of union with Christ, justification and the nature of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. We discover at this point that this is where Horne has been leading us all along. The intent of his paper was not just to show that there was disagreement between Nevin and Hodge on the imputation of Adam’s sin, and calling Dabney in to verify Nevin’s view on that point; his invocation of Dabney is intended to vindicate Nevin’s entire soteriology, as Horne makes clear in the continuation of his conclusion:

The similarities between Nevin and Dabney, despite real differences in theological and philosophical perspective, should provide additional evidence that Nevin, whatever his faults, was not simply the quasi-Romanist as which Hodge attempted to portray him. The mere fact that Hodge’s depiction of Nevin as rejecting the Protestant doctrine of forensic justification was also applicable to Dabney should indicate a high probability that Hodge was defending his own personal preferences, not the truths of the Reformation. However Nevin’s views later developed (or decayed), and no one claims he changed substantially in this area, he did not say anything in Mystical Presence that justified Hodge’s accusation that he denied forensic imputation. (emphasis added)

Horne says quite clearly that he is using Dabney to defend Nevin against Hodge not just on the isolated issue of the imputation of Adam’s sin, but Nevin’s entire scheme of redemption. It is at this point when Horne begins drawing out these conclusions that his case completely falls apart. Even more than that, Horne knows it. You only need to follow the link to the final endnote [51] of his paper, cited in point 1 of his conclusion, to see how he has rather conveniently buried the evidence against his final conclusion:

51. Dabney radically rejected Nevin’s understanding of that union, however. He wrote: “Now, I cannot but believe that the gross and extreme views of a real presence and opus operatum, in the Lord’s supper, which prevailed in the Church from the patristic ages throughout the mediaeval, and which infect the minds of many Protestants now, arise from an erroneous and overstrained view of the mystical union. This union effectuates redemption. We all agree that the sacraments are its signs and seals. (See I Cor, xii:13: I Cor. x: 17, et passim). Now, the Fathers seem to have imagined that spiritual life must result from a literal and substantive intromission of Christ’s person into our souls, just as corporeal nutrition can only result when the food is taken substantially into the stomach, and assimilated with our corporeal substance. In this sense they seem to have understood the eating of Jno. [sic] vi: 51, etc. (which was currently misapplied to the Lord’s Supper). Hence, how natural that in the Lord’s supper, the sacramental sign and seal of the vitalizing union, they should imagine a real presence, not only of the God-head naturally, and of the Holy Spirit in His sanctifying influences, but of the whole Mediatorial person, and a literal feeding thereon. Hence, afterward, transubstantiation and consubstantiation, and the more refined, though equally impossible theory of Calvin, of a literal, and yet only spiritual feeding on the whole person. The same general law of thought appears in what may be called the Pan-Christism of the “Mercersburg School,” of modern semi-Pantheism. These divines have revived the old mystical idea of the substantive oneness of the human and divine spirit, through the medium of the incarnation, consistently assert a species of real presence of the mediatorial person in the Supper” (Systematic Theology, p. 617). Nevertheless, despite their differing conceptions of union with Christ, both seem to have a similar use for the doctrine in discussing imputation — that “This union effectuates redemption.”

I will freely admit that Horne has done the right thing at least by begrudgingly acknowledging the damning evidence against him here, but it isn’t surprising that it’s buried in the final endnote of the paper. The quote from Dabney here that Horne cites is taken from Lecture 51 of Dabney’s Systematic Theology, Union with Christ. Horne is forced to admit — in the endnote! — that “Dabney radically rejected Nevin’s understanding of that union”. It is important to note that the union discussed here is Nevin’s doctrine of the union with Christ. That Dabney rejected Nevin’s understanding of it is an extremely relevant point — much more than what Horne seems to make of it — because Horne still wants to contend that they share similar views on justification on the alleged basis of their two equated views on union with Christ (Point 1 of his conclusion).

The reason why I believe that Horne’s case is undermined entirely is that if Dabney “radically rejects” Nevin’s understanding of the union with Christ, not only does it eviscerate his conclusion in point 1 equating Dabney and Nevin’s view of union with Christ and justification; it invalidates their supposed agreement drawn by inference from that in all the other concluding points as well. One stiff blast of wind delivered by the Southern Presbyterian Dabney disassembles Horne’s tenuous house of cards and the supposed vindication of Nevin’s soteriology from Hodge’s attack.

With reference to Nevin’s mystical union, Dabney in the quote above calls it “Pan-Christism” and identifies it with “modern semi-Pantheism”. And Dabney makes his view clear with reference to the mystical union immediately following where Horne stopped his citation: “Let us disembarrass our views of the mystical union.” Which views of the mystical union does he tell us to disembarrass ourselves from? The divines of the “Mercersburg School”. And who does he have in mind specifically? None other than John Williamson Nevin, the premier advocate in Mercersburg of “mystical union”.

It is hard to think of a more specific rejection by Dabney of Nevin’s views at the very point at which that Horne argues they are in agreement. Not only does Dabney locate Nevin in the precincts outside American Presbyterianism; he places him outside the realm of Nicene Christianity altogether (unless Horne wants to argue that “semi-Pantheism” should be considered an acceptable expression of Christianity).

Other scholars have been more forthright than Horne regarding Dabney, Nevin and Hodge regarding their soteriological views. Emory theology professor E. Brooks Holifield offered this conclusion more than thirty years ago with reference to this theological trio:

Union with Christ. The phrase pointed to one of the revered motifs of Reformed theology, and neither Hodge nor Dabney had any desire to discard it. But for them the crucial soteriological category was “imputation,” and Hodge feared that Nevin’s language about the mystical union covertly substituted a theory of inherent righteousness for the doctrine that God graciously “imputed” Christ’s righteousness to the elect believer. It was manifest to Hodge that in Nevin’s system the believer received the righteousness of Christ by participating in his nature, which Nevin believed to be uniquely though not exclusively manifested in and through the sacrament. Hodge concluded that according to Nevin there could be no “imputation of either sin or righteousness to us, except they belong to us, are inherently our own.” But this, Hodge continued, was a terrifying notion, because our inherent righteousness, or rather our lack of it, deserved only divine wrath. Nevin denied, however, that he made redemption contingent on inherent human goodness; he claimed, rather, to have merely established an intrinsic “community of life” between Christ and the believer as the basis for God’s imputation of righteousness. Imputation was not groundless; its basis was participation in the life of Christ, but this did not imply any inherent righteousness in the believer. Nevin simply wanted to say that union with Christ was the crucial moment in the order of salvation. He wanted to affirm a relation of participation between the created, fallen self and the incarnate saviour, whose life had passed over to his people as the Church.

Dabney agreed with Hodge’s charge that Nevin pushed the theme of participation to an heretical extremity. He charged that Nevin’s unguarded language about union with Christ led the Mercersburg theologians to adopt a pantheistic “Pan-Christism” that obliterated the distinction between the human and the divine. From Dabney’s vantage point, Nevin’s incarnational theology seemed to entail the “substantive oneness” of divinity and humanity — an unthinkable conclusion. When he lectured on soteriology, Dabney carefully preserved the line of demarcation between the human and the divine. Specifically, he denied the suggestion, characteristic of Mercersburg, that Christ had taken generic human nature into union with himself in the course of his mediatorial work. The denial rested on Dabney’s belief that no reprobate sinners could participate in such a union. Since reprobate sinners obviously existed — and just as obviously possessed a human nature — it was inconceivable that the incarnation effected any union between the divine Christ and humanity-in-general. Conceiving of men and women as atomistic individuals, and affirming with the seventeenth century Synod of Dort that Christ’s atonement encompassed only a portion of mankind, Dabney refused to speak of the salvation of humanity in principle as a prelude to or basis for the actualized salvation of individuals. In Dabney’s view, in fact the incarnation did not involve any “substantial” union even between Christ and his elect; it simply established the basis for a “legal union.” That is, by assuming a specific human nature (as opposed to generic human nature) the Logos fulfilled the formal conditions required for the forensic act of imputation. Thus the distinction between man and God was fully maintained. (“Mercersburg, Princeton, and the South: The Sacramental Controversy in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976): 247–248.)

Holifield cites the exact same lecture and quotation by Dabney as Horne, and yet associates him with Hodge rather than with Nevin regarding their views on union with Christ, justification and the imputation of Christ’s righteouness. He goes so far as to state: “Dabney agreed with Hodge’s charge that Nevin pushed the theme of participation to an heretical extremity.” While Dabney might have shared one theological aspect with reference to Nevin’s view of the imputation of Adam’s sin, Holifield notes that Dabney made one very crucial distinction when it came to applying it to union with Christ:

He charged that Nevin’s unguarded language about union with Christ led the Mercersburg theologians to adopt a pantheistic “Pan-Christism” that obliterated the distinction between the human and the divine. From Dabney’s vantage point, Nevin’s incarnational theology seemed to entail the “substantive oneness” of divinity and humanity — an unthinkable conclusion.

I do find it curious that Horne nowhere mentions Holifield’s analysis anywhere in his paper. It isn’t even cited in the bibliography, which is particularly strange that Horne would not consult, let alone interact with, one of the very few scholarly discussions of the exact topic he is writing on available at that time, especially since it flatly contradicts the very case that Horne attempts to make.

That said, looking at Dabney’s comments and Holifield’s analysis, it seems that Horne’s conclusions regarding Dabney and Nevin’s supposed agreement on the issue of union with Christ is based on nothing more than wishful thinking.

But there is one more curious element to Horne’s representations that I want to explore.

In the last sentence of the very important final endnote, Horne generalizes the agreement between Nevin and Dabney on their views of union with Christ:

Nevertheless, despite their (Dabney and Nevin — P) differing conceptions of union with Christ, both seem to have a similar use for the doctrine in discussing imputation — that “This union effectuates redemption.” (emphasis added)

That last phrase, “This union effectuates redemption”, is taken from the citation of Dabney’s lectures. Horne uses it to claim that Dabney and Nevin had a “similar use for the doctrine in discussing imputation.” Again, the “imputation” involved here is not Adam, the stated focus of Horne’s paper, but the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

But exactly the opposite is true. Let’s look at Dabney again:

Now, I cannot but believe that the gross and extreme views of a real presence and opus operatum, in the Lord’s supper, which prevailed in the Church from the patristic ages throughout the mediaeval, and which infect the minds of many Protestants now, arise from an erroneous and overstrained view of the mystical union. This union effectuates redemption. (emphasis added)

Here Dabney is not stating his agreement with Nevin’s view, but in fact he is actually rejecting it! When he uses the definite determiner “this union”, what union is he talking about? The answer immediately precedes the statement: “an erroneous and overstrained view of the mystical union”, which he later identifies with the “Mercersburg School” — meaning John Williamson Nevin. Dabney identifes as “erroneous and overstrained” the view that “this union effectuates redemption” — the very same view that Horne tells us that Nevin and Dabney share!

There is no language whatsoever in the passage Horne quotes or anywhere in the remote vicinity to turn this into a statement of agreement by Dabney with Nevin. The statement when read in context can only be taken to mean the opposite of what Horne represents it as. This should really call into question whether Horne understands what he is reading at all, or if he is so bound and determined to place Nevin within the pale of Reformed orthodoxy that he will manufacture the evidence out of whole cloth in order to do it. I will leave that question for him to answer, but it should immediately raise concerns about his ability to accurately represent the theological similarities and differences between John Williamson Nevin, Charles Hodge and Robert L. Dabney.

In conclusion:

1. Horne gravely errs by attempting to make the leap from Nevin and Dabney’s roughly similar views on the imputation of Adam’s sin to make them advocating the same position on union with Christ, justification and imputation of Christ’s righteousness, especially when the evidence that even Horne himself cites (and conveniently buries in the final endnote) makes clear that Dabney radically rejects Nevin’s views at this very juncture.



2. When the substance behind Horne’s first point of conclusion regarding the agreement between Nevin and Dabney (“Union with Christ is the basis for the justification of believers”) falls apart, the rest of his set of conclusions, which are inferentially drawn from it and are the ultimate conclusions of the entire paper, fall together with it.



3. In order to cover up the fact of Dabney’s radical rejection of Nevin’s understanding of union with Christ, Horne entirely misrepresents a snippet of Dabney’s statement and makes him say exactly the opposite to get them both to some point of agreement regarding redemption. In fact, Dabney categorized Nevin’s views on union of Christ in the very quote that Horne cites as “gross and extreme” and “erroneous and overstrained”.



4. Not only is Dabney NOT the source of vindication for Nevin’s Reformed credentials that Horne contends him to be, but Dabney in fact directly places Nevin and his views outside the Christian pale altogether, even going beyond Hodge in that regard by calling it “semi-Pantheism”.



5. If Dabney’s alleged support was sufficient for Horne to vindicate Nevin’s Reformed credentials, now that the matter has been fully examined and Horne’s case about Dabney’s support for Nevin’s soteriology found wanting, the opposite should be acknowledged: Dabney stands with Hodge to evict Nevin and Mercersburg Theology from the pale of American Presbyterianism and Reformed Orthodoxy.