Oh No! Kurgan vs Vox Day Theology!

I know there are now going to be heads exploding in various gamma hives around the internet as they hope and pray to their slithering nether-gods for a major rift between myself and Vox.

While I am sure nothing of the sort is or will be the case. In fact, many moons ago, I asked Vox if he would be willing to have a friendly discussion/debate on Catholicism vs Protestantism, or to be more precise, my Sedevacantist Catholicism and his specific brand of Protestantism which I believe hinges on the original Nicene creed.

Even back then, somewhat to my surprise, he said he wasn’t against it in principle, but the time required for it (and I suspect utility of it) was not really worth it. Which, in general I agreed with.

That all said, my brain can’t help but want to continue down paths that in my view are likely to increase my understanding of reality. Christianity, is one of those paths that is essentially endless in this regard, so, like say learning to paint, or make music, is a lifelong continuous investigation.

With such endeavours, after a time, there comes a point where your understanding or skill in the topic is good enough to outdo the common men and women in the field and then even the well-known ones. In short, it becomes difficult to find other minds against which you can confront yourself in order to learn more of the topic that interests you. And when you do find one, naturally, at least for me, you’d like to investigate it and push and prod at it and test your theories and ideas and baselines against.

Well, Vox has such a mind. I also consider him a friend and few things in life are as enjoyable to me as philosophical conversation of some substance with a friend. Preferably over a good wine and light meal, or with decent cognac after a good dinner. Alas, distance and circumstance prevents such discourse in the customary civilised fashion I just described. So I find myself limited to this rather barbaric format. Blog to blog. Well, perhaps we might do a livestream on it one day, but be as it may, I will now simply dive into the post Vox put up which prompted this one for me: This is it.

As baseline axioms I think I have the following, which are:

• Pretty sure both Vox and myself do not like having human authority over us. I think the generic difference might be that I am willing to go along with it for the greater good as long as the human with “authority” over me continues to follow the correct rules. As far as Catholicism goes, if the priest/bishop does not himself contravene Canon Law (as per Code of Canon Law of 1917) and his advice is in line with it, I will obey. The reason I believe the Code of Canon Law is correct is because at core, I believe that Jesus would not have left a FALLIBLE Church on Earth. He wanted a Church and we are instructed to use reason and logic to figure stuff out, but not that it’s all guesswork. Having read the CoCL twice, while I find rules that personally bug me, in objective consideration, even those rules are civilisational, and my personal preference is the one that is not ideal to building a truly civilised world. The classic example is duelling. I am all for it, but Catholicism forbids it, because, in general, duelling would be a sin of pride. Not really my problem, but if it were widespread you can see that the sin of pride would be what motivates it for most, instead of a burning desire to see justice done.

• Pretty sure we both dislike dishonesty in general and especially dishonesty designed to lead people astray spiritually.

• One thing I think we differ on is that I think Vox is more prone to the error of Erroneous Loyalty. Something I discussed in Reclaiming the Catholic Church at some length. It is an error I used to live myself for many years, so I think I understand the dynamic well. As an extreme and hypothetical example that ignores human laws for the purpose of the intellectual exercise, I recall a long while back, in one of his posts, Vox mentioned that under certain circumstances, a friend that was guilty of certain crimes would be best served by being handed a pistol with one bullet in it and leaving him alone in his room, giving him the dignity of suicide. I believe he was referencing a supposed “friend” of John Scalzi that had been discovered to be some kind of sexual predator, and if memory serves Vox’s comment was along the lines of what you would do if someone you considered to be a friend turned out to be, say a child rapist. In my case, my loyalty of friendship would NOT prevent me (again, in a hypothetical world of no human laws being present) from helping the man pull the trigger, or even doing it for him. You don’t want to leave these things to chance! In fact, as per my comments many times, I absolutely believe that the punishment for child rape should be the legalised and accepted method of burning at the stake. Suicide is considered a mortal sin by Catholicism and as such, judgement by the community so you burn at the stake gives you the chance to repent while you burn and possibly enter purgatory and eventually heaven instead of eternal Hell. So, in broad terms, I think Vox may be more prone to being loyal beyond the just point. As I say, an error I myself had for a long while in my youth, but that I gradually got out of over several years until I finally realised that the line of Justice is more important than the line of loyalty. Vox may have other theories on this, which I am unaware of but that’s the sense I have of it presently.

Given the above premises/axioms, I will then look at the above linked post critically. And consider that I am absolutely in no way defending the Boomertastic Doug Wilson. I read a couple of his post years ago, before I was even a Christian and the illogic and hypocrisy prevalent in Protestantism made me conclude he’s an idiot and not worth listening to at all.

• One more difference between Vox and myself I need to point out, the man is certainly more patient than I am as well as far more forgiving. I remember we briefly discussed Jordan Peterson at the time and Vox stated the man was intelligent. I was astonished and asked why on Earth he thought that, he quite correctly pointed out that in order to spew the level of bafflegarble nonsense he does and fool a lot of people into thinking he is not some absolutely insane globalist with severe psychological issues, takes a certain level of IQ. Personally I evaluated the bafflegarble nonsense and concluded the man is mentally unstable and absolutely wrong and a liar. I can’t reconcile that with being intelligent, but strictly speaking, that is an error on my part conflating ethics and sanity with intelligence.

Vox concluded that Doug Wilson is a gatekeeper but still keeps tabs on him clearly, which is understandable, as I keep tabs on other gatekeepers like Milo and EM Jones and Taylor Marshall and so on. But perhaps does not condemn him as thoroughly as I do, and perhaps, in general he might not condemn the gatekeepers as thoroughly as I do. I may be wrong, but I suspect he is more forgiving than I am on such matters.

Anyway, to examine the post in more detail:

And so far we are in absolute agreement. For example, the Catholic Church teaches that it is better to leave aborigines in jungles alone and not instruct them at all than to instruct them with Protestantism. Because as per Church doctrine, a savage that has never heard of Christ might yet enter heaven judged by God on the merits of his own conscience, but one that has taken on a perverse version of Christianity is far less likely to escape the mortal sins of pride and in essence, choosing “me and my way” over “God and His ways”. I have always had the same idea. I met some of the last Khoi San that were free of any influence from so-called civilised men, and I found them to be honest, reliable, friendly, and just. Their society might be very primitive, but within the confines of that limitation they were essentially innocent and good people. Take a couple of generations of essentially Protestant “education” and a previously scrupulously honest primitive people become dishonest, haphazard, unpredictable and liable to suffer from everything to alcoholism to being criminals.

Again, I agree whole-heartedly. Although, I realise Vox here was referring specifically to Civic Nationalism and so on, the fact remains that:

no one who falsely asserts that which is not a sin is a sin, should ever be considered a genuine or reliable advocate of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, no matter what their other positive attributes might be.

And this remains the absolute point for me which I cannot reconcile with Vox’s theology.

Vox, is, after all, a Protestant. A very unique one he might be, but he (as far as I know) does not subscribe to the rules of the Catholic Church as per the Code of Canon Law of 1917 which in essence simple explains/extrapolates from both the Bible and Catholic (Christian) Tradition and has compiled and summarised all the various extrapolations, dictates, and dogma of the Catholic Church into one volume that covers all of those documents from the period of human history up to the year 1917. As a Catholic, you then may also wish to add the Papal ex-cathedra commentaries made from 1917 to 1958. After that we have not had any valid Popes since, so everything else can be safely ignored.

I am fairly sure Vox has not read the Code of Canon Law. And if he did I think the things he might object to are probably not as many as he might envision, but I am (foggily) aware he has some issue with some aspects of Mariology, though I am not sure what they are. I feel fairly confident he is well-read enough to be aware that Catholics do not actually “worship” Mary, but simply ask for her intercession, as we do to various Saints. In essence, the difference between catholics and Protestants is that we don’t stop communicating with our dead friends and people. We pray for them and we also ask them to pray for us.

One of the only times we briefly discussed my Catholicism (sedevacantism) and I pointed out some of the main issues he immediately said words to the effect of “Oh, well, those are Catholics I can get behind”. So again, I doubt the differences between us are huge in terms of theology.

He also agrees with me that in general humans need rules, otherwise they will pretty much eat each other alive in the street, which, to a certain extent we are starting to really see on a global level when Christianity fades.

We are also both smart enough understand that, while perhaps a certain optional rule for people may not really be designed for me or him specifically, we can’t really have rules for thee but not for me. And if there are exceptions, they should be based on sound reasoning, logic, and justice, not personal preference. So, in short, I ask myself:

“Why is Vox not actually a sedevacantist?”

I am presently only aware of one possible hitch which is his specific interpretation of the Trinty. Which I will not attempt to speak for him on as I would probably get it wrong. For myself, I do not pretend to know the intricacies of the Trinity, and I am perfectly happy to act in this regard very much as an illiterate peasant from the year 800. The Church says the Trinity works thusly, and I accept it as a given. I see no possible profit in trying to atomise that concept, nor do I have any interest in it.

While I may atomise the concept of not duelling and understand it very well, and instinctively want to say: “But Bishop, I don’t want to run that guy through with a rapier because I am proud, but because he defrauds little old ladies and steals candy from children, and blasphemes! C’MAWN…Just this one (ok, half-dozen) time?!” But intellectually I understand I must just bow my head and NOT challenge the man to a duel to the death. And if I do confront him, it would be a sin to smack the living crap out of him until he makes amends. I know that. Which makes it a bad sin. But… y’know… I’m only human. Maybe next time I’ll give him a warning first. You know, if I really see the error of my ways. Otherwise all I can do is really try to work on it over time. But in the meantime: no duels have been had. #winning.

So, it might be an intellectual disparity, perhaps the things that interest Vox to dissect are so different from the ones that interest me that it causes him a problem with Catholicism. And this, THIS is the real interest to me.

What are those details? Is he seeing something I am not, or is it vice-versa? Or is there a third possibility that we are both missing?

Such conversations, or investigations, if you prefer, are what fascinates me, and the ones that I think help us to see more truth when done with an intellectually honest person that is also curious enough and interested enough to examine such details.

I seem to recall for example that Vox also labelled Once Saved Always Saved as a retarded concept (he may have been more polite about it) and I would expect he similarly considers Sola Scriptura as absurd, but I never asked him the question. I also seem to recall that his generic approach to the Bible was not that this or that version was “better” but to just read one and go with it as best you can, which is “close enough” for really about 99.99% of people.

I suspect that his avoidance of hardcore Catholicism is linked to what he believes are “lies” or untruths that the Catholic Church has as various dogmas. What these are, however I am unaware, and it is my experience that most such ideas are usually rooted in some Protestant fake news about Catholicism. Several aspects of which, honest historians like Rodney Stark have pointed out even though they are not Catholics.

At any rate, I would certainly be interested in looking at what the differences between his and my theological philosophies are.

I suspect he doesn’t have the time, but the invitation is open.

UPDATE: A reader pointed out I have not explained the absolute point that anyone who advocates that a sin is not a sin should not be trusted. As often happens with me, I thought the point was obvious, but I failed to realise it is not as obvious to many as I think. So, to clarify, The very concept of Protestantism that each man can interpret the Bible as he wishes, is a pernicious sin of pride. Even the sola scriptura retards must know that man is perfectly honest, clean and good as well as smart and reasonable. It very clearly states this in Hebrews and elsewhere if memory serves.

Secondly, it is just as obvious that a good and loving God would not leave a DYI kit for interpreting His Will and what the rules He wishes us to follow are. Because given the fact we are all a bunch of retards to one degree or other, we are guaranteed to screw it up. And the idea a flawless and loving God would leave us a flawed theology is equally retarded.

Therefore, a FLAWLESS theology MUST exist. And there must be a way to know which it is. As it happens, there is. Jesus Appointed Peter as the Head of His Church, instructed the Apostles to teach His teachings and Paul tells us also that we are to reject things that are not as per their teachings as given to them by Jesus (that is, Apostolic succession, is a thing).

All of which would still screw up if it were not for the fact that Jesus also told us He would be with us to the end of time. Now, if Jesus is with us always to the end, and He commanded the Apostles to teach what He taught them, then their teachings cannot be in error. Not because even the Apostles are flawless, but because Jesus is.

That is the whole point of Papal infallibility. It’s not due to some superhuman characteristic of Popes. There have been plenty of greedy, power-hungry, deviants as Popes, but they did not teach erroneous dogma when speaking ex-cathedra because of the supernatural protection due to Jesus’ promise. Who can speak erroneous or wrong doctrine? People who are not protected by Jesus’ promise and who is that? People who are not the foundation on which the rock is based, which has two parts. The non visible supreme one, Jesus, and his vicar on Earth, which is the man holding the position that Peter held as leader of the Apostles.

Priests can lie or be wrong. Bishops can lie or be wrong. Popes can lie or be wrong. But valid, legitimate Popes talking officially for the entire Church on matters of faith and morals, that is the foundational principles of Christianity, cannot be wrong. Again, not because they are infallible in and of themselves, but because Jesus specifically said he was specifically with them to the End of the World. And Jesus cannot be wrong, nor is he a liar. And what He taught the apostles is true and He also specifically stated he would build the Church on Peter,, renaming him from Simon to Peter, which in Latin, Aramaic and most Latin languages literally means Rock.

Regardless of whatever brain-twisting Protestants come up with to try and say Jesus didn’t mean or say what he meant and said, even a child can understand that if someone says, to a guy called Simon:

“Hey buddy, come here, gonna run a little test by you…”

And he does, and Simon passes, and the guy says:

“You know what buddy, I’m gonna call you Rock from now on, and on this rock, I will build my church.” It’s a fairly clear point that Good old Simon/Rock, is now the head of the Church. Seriously, a child gets it. You need to be indoctrinated into lies from birth not to see this as it is.

So, the first lie is to tell people that to not be Catholic is not a sin. It is. You’re ignoring God’s Will. And the entire retinue of sins that follows from anyone following that advice is literally endless. And frankly, it ALL stems from pride to begin with. Some German fattie with a penchant for sexing up nuns and raping maids and swearing and calling reason literally “the whore of the devil”, comes along some 1500 years after Christ and the Catholic Church which has been the ONLY valid Christianity to that point and he FIXES everything? It’s moronic. Jesus didn’t say:

“Oh, by the way, all the people for the next 1500 years or so that call themselves Christians, and all the Popes which everyone agrees for that long are the main dudes, yeah, well, forget about all of them, they are all wrong and Pagan worshippers that ask my mother and a bunch of dead guys of no importance whatsoever to put in a good word for them with me. Anyway, all those guys? Going straight to Hell. Only when that rotund German with the beer and all the sex comes along will AKCHUAL Christianity be fixed. And he will do it by changing the Bible before he says it’s the only thing you should refer to at all. But only the one he changed, not the one everyone used for 1200 or so years and that was put together by the same Catholics who got it all wrong. And oh that Bible that the German guy changed, which was also changed by the Pahrisees, you know, the guys who had me killed, for 700 years before him, that’s the good Bible, scrap that other one. And oh, oh, one more thing: The best Bible, it’s the one with 33,000 translation errors ordered to be put together by a flamingly homosexual English King. Jimmy boy, that’s his name. He also starts up the Freemasons, which are Satanists, but don’t let that bug ya, seriously, his version of the Bible is the best one.”

So… yeah. I hope it’s kinda obvious now.

Tags: catholicism, Protestantism, sedevacantism, vox day

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