Okay, that’s a little over the top, but it may be a fitting response to those who use scare tactics to oppose two-kingdom theology. Our favorite theonomist in the CRC, Rabbi Bret, has posted at his blog a piece that apparently appeared in Christian Renewal, that un-American (okay, it’s Canadian) publication which touts worldviewism from its corner of Dutch-Canadian culture. (The author is an elder in the URC and a supporter of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. I thought the URC and MARS were opposed to developments in the CRC but apparently Christian schooling makes the ordination of women look trivial.)
The article in question is a review of Westminster California’s recent issue of Evangelium where the faculty write about the importance of Christian education. Now we are all for a return to the polemics of nineteenth-century America when Charles Hodge would engage in lengthy debates with the likes of Edwards Amasa Park by simply responding to articles published in another theological quarterly. But a review of a publicity piece that offers a little food for the mind of potential and existing donors? Hello!?!
As if a “review†of promotional material doesn’t prove the lengths to which the editor and author will go to try to demean two-kingdom theology, the author’s introduction seals the deal. He begins by quoting someone who doesn’t even write for Evangelium – that would be me, whom he identifies as a WSC professor. Since the author is a lawyer, you might expect him to pay respect to technicalities, which would mean identifying me at least as an adjunct professor, not a professor. But higher purposes will not get in the way of righteousness, justice, and a Christian school.
To add insult to WSC’s injury, he even quotes a comment I wrote about teaching American history to a string of interactions about worldview at this blog. What this has to do with the issue of Evangelium under review is again one of those technicalities that one would expect a practicing attorney to understand. A quotation from a random comment on a blog would likely not hold up in a court of law, or even an ecclesiastical court. But for the cause of Christian education, all evidence is legitimate, all two-kingdom comments are in contempt.
Such disregard for minor formalities may explain the author’s complete indifference to major questions of jurisdiction. The author seems to agree with the idea that parents are responsible for the education of their children. But then he assumes that parental responsibility is the equivalent of the Christian school. Here are a few illustrative quotations:
So Daniel’s mastery of pagan education while maintaining his godly faith serves as an example for the education of our covenant youth. Translation for our time: as long as your child maintains his spiritual faith, education in a non-Christian school may be a legitimate venue of choice.
Let’s pause here to note that foundational principles of Christian education do not vanish due to someone’s bad experience at a non-Reformed Christian school, or one’s favorable memory of “witnessing†to unbelievers at a public school. Rather, the issue is our principled commitment to a full-orbed, Reformed-shaped, Christian education.
Read again the representative NL2k quotations cited in the introduction to this review and ask whether these be can reconciled to our Reformed worldview. If you find they cannot, then until such errors are rejected, general affirmations coupled with contextualized qualifiers will not stem the concern over the effect NL2k could have in the Reformed churches and in our Christian schools.
Each of these quotes highlights the way that the author only thinks of Christian schools when considering a Christian education. For him, the antithesis is writ large in the subjects children study and that antithesis is manifest formally in the antagonism between Christian schools and state schools.
Pardon my interruption, but did the rapture occur and leave this author behind in the year 1960? Has he never heard of home schools where the Christian teacher is the parent? Do the advocates of Christian schools really mean to exert tyranny over Christian parents so that fathers and mothers who educate their children at home are found guilty of providing a non-Reformed education?
One line is indicative of this slight to Christian parents: “Christian parents can be like a customer deciding between a Cadillac and a Ford. One choice may be better and cost more, but either one will get you to your destination. Such a consumerist ‘common realm’ approach to education certainly strikes a discordant note from our historic Reformed ethic.â€
So it comes to this, the sacred responsibility of parents to teach their children becomes for Christian school advocates something as trivial a buying a car made in Detroit. This is a long way from the sphere sovereignty taught by the likes of Abraham Kuyper in which parents do have responsibility for education. Home schooling, in fact, is the purest form of parental responsibility for education. But “reviews†like this one heap spoon fulls of scorn upon those parents who sacrifice time, careers, parts of the house, and even standing within the community to insure that their children receive a Christian education.
And here I worried about the Obama administration destroying the family. Little did I know I had to worry about the Christian school board.
61 Comments
Zrim, I didn’t say experience counts for nothing. Your exp is just that, as is mine. I’ve seen people kicked out of education departments for handing out “Holiday Cards” with a Scripture reference on the bottom back. That was at Western Washington University. I could lay on a host of experiences, which might be instructive. My point was that the anti-Christian folks get down to the nitty-gritty of stupid cards and greetings. If not a veggie-tales card, how much less the gospel? How much less all of Christian truth? The root is rotten. It was from the beginning. We’ve seen a great deal of corruption of our government schools. Maybe things are honky dory on your side of the world, but they’re not here. Neither are they as bad as they will be be.
You move from a cashier breaking a $10 to your child’s education with such ease, as if there’s not a world of difference! If that’s what you think of education, you can have it, brother. I’m just glad you weren’t responsible for my education.
Just to recap my thinking, I’ve tried to show: 1) Yahweh requires the education of his children rigorously to be wrapped around his revelation and commandments. 2) Both curriculum and catechesis are involved in that education. 3) Government schools do not, by design, do this. Therefore, 4) government schools are not a legitimate Christian choice. I’ve happily admitted that this is mitigated by varying situations and the development of the child. Maybe we have somewhere to go, yet, and maybe not.
The tone of this discussion is vitriolic, caustic, and sophomoric, unbecoming brothers in Christ. It should cease and desist. This exchange should, I suggest, be taken down for the good of the church and to avoid embarassing the participants. It provides fresh evidence why Reformed blogs too often descend to the level of Lord of the Flies. Enough.
Tim,
The cashier point wasn’t to compare making change to educating children. The latter is indeed a higher temporal good than the latter, but that’s actually the point: education is a temporal task, not an eternal one. They are both creational tasks, and if we don’t ask one to be eternally justified then why ask the other just because its temporal value is higher? But it seems you think education rises to eternal value. This is what I mean by theonomists mirroring the modernist in his over-realizing of education (and politics), where these things are expected to do more than that for which they were created. For the modernist, education is a device (along with politics) that ushers in progress and social utopia, for the theonomist it is co-equal with parenting and makes human beings and nurtures piety.
Re your re-cap, yes, I understand. You want education to be a fourth mark, so to speak. Where we go from here is for you to capitalize on the existing soft legalism, convert it into a hard legalism and just come out and say that my public schooling warrants my discipline. In some sense, I’d prefer that to the current soft legalism that chastises with that wet-noodle category of “wisdom.†In my old Fundamentalist circles this was how the soft legalism of substance use was conveyed: we’re not explicitly telling you what you may or mayn’t do, but we’ll brow-beat you into second class citizenship by saying wise believers abstain from the thing in question while dimmer, less pious ones participate. This outlook wants all the power of “discouragement†without any responsibility.
Zrim, I’m very interested in your temporal/eternal distinction. I think I get the root of if, but it appears (like with so much R2K thought) that simple categories get abused into a different shape and function than would be warranted by the categories themselves.
Would anything fall into eternal besides the following: public worship, ministries of word and sacrament, prayer, catechism, family worship, private worship? In your mind, where’s the point of division between the two?
What relation does, say, cashiering have to the eternal? Of itself, I’d think very little.
What relation does, say, covenantal education have to the eternal? A lot more than a little. First, the ministry of word and sacrament is part teaching? In fact, that ministry gives us the basis to understand the rest of the world as we come into contact with it. It lets us put cashiering (a temporal exercise) into a context quite different from the pagan cashier (Eph 6:5-8). It helps us eat and drink (both quite temporal) to God’s glory (1 Cor 10:31 – cultic meals are extended to “whatever you do’), while unbelievers do not. But, wait, both Christians and non are eating and drinking, right? Is there “Christian” eating and drinking? Yes. Both unbeliever and Christian put food and drink into mouth and eventually swallow, but the Christian does it to a different end (glory of God) and with thankfulness to God. See, the eternal keeps getting down into temporal things. (That’s part of the incarnation.) We’re not allowed simply to abandon temporal issues and act as if they have no eternal significance. If this applies with cashiering, eating, and drinking, how much more with education? After all, doesn’t Yahweh say: “the fear of Yahweh is the beginning (head) of knowledge and wisdom”? Doesn’t education deal with things like knowledge and wisdom? Education, though common to all people (Christian or not), still has eternal aspects to it. Thus, you’ve set up a false dilemma with your eternal/temporal assessment of it.
As to the rest, 4th mark and all… that’s mere caricature, tomfoolery; not worth responding to.
Tim,
I think at bottom of the failure to understand what 2K is saying is actually a low view of creation, such that creation has to be rescued and redeemed in order to have the sort of intrinsic worth it already has; the mistake seems to have something to do with not distinguishing between the essence of creation (very good) with its condition (very sinful). It’s not a matter of “abandoning temporal issues and act as if they have no eternal significance,†but rather putting very good temporal issues into eternal perspective.
The dividing point is between this age and the next age. This means that everything from the lowest temporal good (cashiering) to the highest (life itself) stands against the age to come. Even faith itself, which is good, will give way to sight; the church militant, which is good, will give way to the church triumphant. The temporal order has an order from trivial to enduring, but it’s all passing away. Marriage is an esteemed temporal good, but it will be dissolved in the next age. Life is very good, but we have to die before we live. Family is very good, but we must hate our daughters and dads if they get between us and the next age. If it’s true that creational enterprise like education “has eternal aspects to it†that must mean we’ll have schools in the age to come. But if we won’t even have spouses or the temporal lives we have now, what makes anyone think we’ll have Calvin College?
So I know what Christians eating is, but I don’t know what Christian eating is; I know what Christians doing politics and education is, but I don’t know what Christian politics or education is. Now, if we mean communion, church polity and preaching/catechism, I suppose we can, in a manner of speaking, say there are such things as Christian eating, politics and education. But I don’t think that’s what you mean. I think you mean there are redemptive versions of creational enterprise and stuff. But if that’s true then there really must be a thing as a Christian salad, a Christian voting booth and a Christian chalkboard.
Sorry you think my “fourth mark†point was such grand and negligible folly. I was being quite serious.
Ok, Sully, so one of the flying chocoate cream pies smacked you up side your head. Well duck next time.
GLWJohnson: I have no dog in this hunt. But your strident reply is emblematic of the problem. Apparently you don’t see that the kind of pie throwing that amuses you dishonors Christ. One would have expected that those with letters after their name and ordination credentials would attain a level of maturity beyond that of high school or frat boys. Playing with words, the clever retort, the amusing put-down that marks the Reformed blogosphere is apparently a Reformed version of pie throwing. But it hardly exemplifies the “love for the brethren” that should mark even Reformed Christians, even seminary professors and clergy. For amusement, the players would do better to invest in a Game Boy than to play on a blog. They reveal a serious spiritual deficit and set a poor example for the young seminarians who are training to be pastors. If they cannot reform themselves, it becomes necessary for consistories and boards of trustees to step in.
To quote Steve Martin, “Well eeeexxxcccccuuuussssse me!”
Sillivan, you might have had a point, though why you’re reading blogs looking for uplift and edification is a mystery — you don’t seem to understand the genre. But you comment comes after important substantive responses from Scott Clark to someone who has shown no capacity to even try to understand the 2k position. You’re timing is lousy.
Zrim, thanks. Your last post was very helpful. So, the dividing line is between temporal and eternal. Exactly what things bridge the gap, just people? What relation does, say, ministry have to the people that move from temporal to eternal? These are honest questions. I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from on this.
So, the dividing line is between temporal and eternal. Exactly what things bridge the gap, just people? What relation does, say, ministry have to the people that move from temporal to eternal?
Well, the imago Dei is the aspect of creation that is the primary target of redemption. (The secondary target is all of inanimate creation that groans for the sons of God to be revealed, as it were, because as goes the imago Dei so goes the rest of creation.) I suppose, to use your language, it would be correct to say that “people bridge the gap.†But I am not so sure of the implication that this is somehow mere. After all, Jesus came, lived, died, rose, descended, ascended and will return for…his people. His primary target doesn’t seem to be either secondary creation (trees and fish) or the projects of his primary target (education, government, art, science).
Ministry administers a semi-realized eternity to those who live in the temporal while they wait for eternity to be fully-consummated. This is what two kingdoms means it speaks of believers having a dual citizenship. Heaven on earth comes to pilgrims in Word and sacrament, not by way of warriors taking over creation.
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