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There has existed through out history a war of worldviews in which every man is involved and for which every man has lived and died. However, referring to this war as a war of mere ideas would be a distortion of the truth that lies beneath the surface of the controversies, and inquiries of man. In contradiction to the reverberations of public opinion, “ideas” do not have power - persons have power; persons who act on ideas have power. The war of worldviews is a war between two people groups. The people of the City of Man and the people of the City of God (1).
The people of the City of Man, by their very nature, live in fixed and total opposition to the people of the City of God. While they are forced to borrow, from orthodox Christians, the fundamental preconditions to make an account of all of life, they assail the City of God in order to abrogate all recollection of their borrowing. The City of God and the City of Man are fundamentally antithetical and cannot exist together forever. As long as they coexist they will be at war.
These people groups are alike - created in the image of God, relational, and inherently political - and are thus inclined to build. However, it is their incongruities which cause them to build in two opposed directions. The City of God towards a theocratic (God ruled) city of peace and mercy, and the City of Man towards oligarchy, tyranny, and death. The contraposition of the cities is interminable by nature of their aims, values, and behavior.(3)
Through out history the City of Man, time and again, has hoped to re-imagine itself in light of some novel delusory knowledge that has filled its people with the expectation of new world order. Disclosures of the attempts of the City of Man to actualize their world order have been made by a few men in history. These men, despite their own shortcomings in grasping the full account, have dared call conspiracy that which can be called nothing else. Their work however ignored is of great value and The Counterplot intends to explore it.
The question remains as to how far-reaching, and consolidated - or unconsolidated - the conspiracy of the City of Man has become, and what its aims are. Also of significance is the question of the Church’s involvement, willfully, or ignorantly, in this conspiracy. (2)
The Counterplot is concerned with questions of Biblical eschatology, political theology, and economics with a view towards the establishment of a new city for new man - a city of peace, full of mercy.
In order to undermine the progress of the City of Man, and to build the Kingdom of God we look to God’s word and to the life of the Church.
Counterplot is dedicated to researching the failures of the City of Man, and the glory and future of the City of God. One might ask what purpose is served in exposing the failures of unbelieving polities. This is a fair question, but it answers itself in some respect. It is due, at least in part, to the Church’s naïveté regarding the underlying worldview, and failures, of the city of man that it has unwittingly been brought into that cities conspiracies against God. Had the Church been doing it’s work, in obedience to the word of God and the culture explicated therein, it would have uncovered and expounded the evil of the City of Man. The question then is raised: what the Church’s work?
The Church’s work is politics, but not in the way you think.
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1. The City of Man refers the the individual and communal life of those who reject the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and have thus severed themselves from the life of the Triune God of scripture. We often think of men as merely individuals, and fail to recognize that by nature men form cities, or societies of one kind or another. However denied, the individual is often subsumed by the society. Inevitably the reprobate of the City of Man conspire against the Christ (Psalm 2) and plot evil. The City of Man is conscious of the fact - a fact the Church often ignores to it’s own peril - that the City of God is called to reform the whole world through the Gospel of Christ. The City of Man resents the power and calling of the City of God - a power often unseen, yet unbreakable. The Church, on the other hand has regularly abandoned it’s worldly calling for an erroneous other-worldliness. While the Kingdom of God is not of (or from) this world, it’s calling is toward the earth for the renewal of humanity in Christ.
2. The Church, sadly, has attempted to reform humankind in accordance with some amalgamation of the knowledge, and praxis of the City of Man. This adulteration of Biblical law has produced repeated failure and has served to further establish the City of Man. Whereas the City of God has implicated itself in the conspiracies of the City of Man it has come under extensive scrutiny. A relentless self-critique has provoked, among many scholars, an exposition of the residue of pagan culture within the Church. A number of non-Biblical worldviews and presuppositions - Gnosticism, Platonism, Mysticism, Modernism, etc., - have been exposed, along with their many effects. While the City of Man rhetorically, and sometimes physically, hammers away at the Church for it’s involvement in some of the past evils of unbelief, segments of the Church have employed themselves in uncovering the roots of, and solutions to, this problem. The Counterplot is a part of this endeavor.
3. Modern “christian” political movements, like the Christian Coalition, are not at all a part of an attempted theocratic conspiracy on behalf the Church. A thorough study of these movements will show that the fundamental assumptions shared by those within them are also shared with the City of Man, and these fundamental assumptions make theocracy unrealizable. Moreover those in these movements have made it clear that they are oppose to theocracy and are quite at peace with pagan polities.
