Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX C
of modern “neutral” education have left faculties
without an adequate defense against confident, shrill,
vociferous Marxists, primarily young Marxists, who
began to appear on the campuses after 1964.
Epistemological rot has left the establishment campus
liberals with little more than tenure to protect them. 25
Since 1965, however, Marxism has made more inroads
among the young intellectuals of the industrialized
West than at any time since the 1930s – an earlier era
of pessimism and skepticism about established values
and traditions. Marxists are successful among savages,
whether in Africa or at Harvard – epistemological
savages. Marxism offers an alternative to despair. It has
the trappings of optimism. It has the trappings of
Christianity. It is still a nineteenth-century system,
drawing on the intellectual capital of a more Christian
intellectual universe. These trappings of Christian
order are the source of Marxism’s influence in an
increasingly relativistic world.
Satan’s Final Rebellion
In the last days of this final era in human history, the
satanists will still have the trappings of Christian order
about them. Satan has to sit on God’s lap, so to speak,
in order to slap His face – or try to. Satan cannot be
consistent to his own philosophy of autonomous order
and still be a threat to God. An autonomous order leads
to chaos and impotence. He knows that there is no
neutral ground in philosophy. He knew Adam and Eve
would die spiritually on the day that they ate the fruit.
He is a good enough theologian to know that there is
one God, and he and his host tremble at the thought
(James 2:19). When demonic men take seriously his
lies about the nature of reality, they become impotent,
sliding off (or nearly off) God’s lap. It is when satanists
realize that Satan’s official philosophy of chaos and
antinomian lawlessness is a lie that they become
dangerous. (Marxists, once again, are more dangerous
to America than are the Ik.) They learn more of the
truth, but they pervert it and try to use it against God’s
people.
Thus, the biblical meaning of epistemological selfconsciousness
is not that the satanist becomes
consistent with Satan’s official philosophy (chaos), but
rather that Satan’s host becomes consistent with what
Satan really believes: that order, law, power are the
product of God’s hated order. They learn to use law and
order to build an army of conquest.
In short, they use common grace – knowledge of the
truth – to pervert the truth and to attack God’s people.
‘They turn from a false knowledge offered to them by
Satan, and they adopt a perverted form of truth to use
in their rebellious plans. They mature, in other words.
Or, as C. S. Lewis has put into the mouth of his
fictitious character, the senior devil Screwtape, when
materialists finally believe in Satan but not in God,
then the war is over. 26 Not quite; when they believe in
God, know He is going to win, and nevertheless strike
out in fury – not blind fury, but fully self-conscious fury –
at the works of God, then the war is over.
Cooperation
How, then, can we cooperate with such men? Simply
on the basis of common grace. Common grace has not yet
fully developed. But this cooperation must be in the
interests of God’s kingdom. Whether or not a particular
ad hoc association is beneficial must be made in terms of
standards set forth in biblical law. Common grace is not
common ground; there is no common ground uniting
men except for the image of God in every man.
Because external conformity to the terms of biblical law
does produce visibly good results – contrary to Prof.
Kline’s theory of God’s mysterious will in history –
unbelievers for a time are willing to adopt these
principles, since they seek the fruits of Christian
culture. In short, some ethical satanists respond to the
knowledge of God’s law written in their hearts. They
have a large degree of knowledge about God’s creation,
but they are not yet willing to attack that world. They
have knowledge through common grace, but they do
not yet see what this means for their own actions. (To
some extent, the Communists see, but they have not
yet followed through; they have not launched a final
assault against the West.)
The essence of Adam’s rebellion was not intellectual; it
was ethical. No one has argued this more forcefully than
Van Til. The mere addition of knowledge to or by the
unregenerate man does not alter the essence of his
status before God. He is still a rebel, but he may possess
knowledge. Knowledge can be applied to God’s
creation and produce beneficial results. Knowledge can
also produce a holocaust. The issue is ethics, not
knowledge. Thus, men can cooperate in terms of
mutually shared knowledge; ultimately, they cannot
cooperate in terms of a mutually shared ethics.
What of the special curse? What is the ethical rebel’s
ethical relation to God? Common grace increases the
unregenerate man’s special curse. When common grace
increases to its maximum, the special curse of God is
revealed: total rebellion of man against the truth of God
and in terms of the common grace – knowledge, power,
wealth, prestige, etc. – of God, leading to final
judgment. God does remove part of His restraint at the
very end: the restraint on suicidal destruction. He
allows them to achieve that death which they love
(Prov. 8:36b). But they still have power and wealth, as
in the Babylonian Empire the night it fell.
Pagans can teach us about physics, mathematics,
chemistry, and many other topics. How is this possible?
Because common grace has increased. They had several
centuries of leadership from Christians, as well as
Enlightenment figures who adopted a philosophy of
24. Martin Bronfenbrenner, “Radical Economics in America: A 1970 Survey,”
Journal of Economic Literature, VIII (Sept. 1970).
25. Gary North, “The Epistemological Crisis of American Universities,” in
Gary North (ed.), Foundations of Christian Scholarship: Essays in the Van Til
Perspective (Vallecito, California: Ross House Books, 1976).
26. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1969), Letter 7.
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