Raphael Warnock Is Not A Christian

As Christians celebrated the Resurrection on Sunday morning, the “reverend” pastor and senator Raphael Warnock took to Twitter to contradict the faith. “The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” declared Warnock. “Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.” In fact, it isn’t, and we cannot.

Warnock’s theology amounts to warmed-over Pelagianism, a fifth century heresy that denied original sin and insisted upon the ability of humans to achieve perfection through free will without divine grace. While Christians believe that through the Crucifixion and Resurrection Christ conquered death and redeemed mankind, the heresiarch Pelagius considered these events unnecessary to salvation. The Church condemned Pelagius’ views at Council of Carthage in 418, but they have cropped up time and again throughout the centuries, notably in the form of progressivism.

Some of the most prominent “Christians” in recent American history have fallen into this error. While attending Crozer Theological Seminary, Martin Luther King Jr. denied the Resurrection as well as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Second Coming, and the “supernatural plan of salvation.” King had many admirable qualities, and he accomplished some great things. He also denied the central tenets of the Christian religion.

The ex-communist Whitaker Chambers described communism as “man’s second oldest faith,” articulated in the first days of creation when the Serpent promised Eve, “Ye shall be as gods.” King echoed Chambers’s description in 1953 when he averred, “Communism is the only serious rival to Christianity.”

Raphael Warnock may or may not be a communist. He has celebrated socialism, and was a youth pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City when the church welcomed the communist dictator Fidel Castro in 1995. Whatever his precise views, he has embraced “the great alternative faith of mankind” according to which mankind can achieve even the perfection of the world through progressive politics.

Progressivism offers an alternative story of the world from beginning to end, anthropology to eschatology. According to progressivism, man is not made in the image of God with a fixed nature broken by sin, but rather “evolves” through random chance toward perfection until a strong heat wave or some other natural disaster wipes us out. Progressivism is a jealous god, determined to subsume all other religions into its totalitarian ideology. But despite progressives’ pretensions, the two faiths posit opposite visions of the world.

Raphael Warnock is not a Christian, and it is an error to describe him as such. Like the Serpent in the Garden, Warnock would have us be as gods. That earliest lie enslaved us; at Easter we recall that the truth shall set us free.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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