Archive for the ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum’ Category

A little over a month ago I attended an evening of offbeat film where one of the archivists responsible for the program introduced himself as hailing from Raleigh, N.C. He said that he used to say this was the home of Slim Jims (I think) and Jesse Helms. But since the cooking of spicy meat bi-products was going on somewhere else, and since Jesse Helms had died, he could no longer talk that way about his home. At the point where he mentioned Helms’ death, the mostly academic and artsy crowd began to applaud.

Now I know conservatives are regularly guilty of bad taste and the examples of Rush and Glen provide daily reminders to non-conservatives of how mean the Right is supposed to be. But I find it hard to believe that even the vox talk-radioli greeted the news of Edward Kennedy’s death with the same glee evident at this evening of film. Granted, everyone on planet earth is a sinner and so constantly guilty of hypocrisy (which is sort of Paul’s point in Romans 1 and 2, right?). So I shrugged off the incident and despite discomfort with the egregious bad taste stuck around for the movies (plus, I had paid my $7). But I do scratch my head at the liberal talking point that conservatives are meanies when instances like this, not to mention various hosts at MSNBC, seem to balance the scales of meanness between the Right and the Left. If liberals want conservatives to stop being mean, shouldn’t they embody the niceness that supposedly typifies their understanding of a good society?

I was reminded of this incident when reading Randall Balmer’s recent reflections about the appointment of Kenneth Starr as president of Baylor University. I myself think that the Republicans treatment of Bill Clinton during the Lewinski scandal was in the ballpark of Clinton’s own shameful behavior – maybe not at home plate, but still inside the white lines. But liberals don’t forgive and forget anymore than conservatives, hence the helpings of meanness that fill up both the Right’s and the Left’s plates.

Balmer writes:

Starr’s appointment is not surprising because it apparently reflects the right-wing leanings of the regents, if not necessarily the faculty or the students. Starr as special prosecutor, of course, sought to bring down the Clinton administration. (Was it my imagination, or did Starr seem just a tad too interested in the tawdry Monica Lewinsky business?) Starr also has been dean of the notoriously right-wing Pepperdine Law School, and he has been in the forefront of supporters for California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that reversed the legalization of same-sex marriages.

At the announcement of his appointment, Starr sought to play down his past. “Baylor’s pursuit of knowledge,” he intoned, leaning closely to read his notes, “is strengthened by the conviction that truth has its ultimate source in God.”

As a person of faith, I have no quarrel with that statement. But the real question for the faculty and students at Baylor is how the new administration approaches the “pursuit of knowledge” at the university. What if the pursuit of knowledge entails stem-cell research or leads to the conclusion (gasp!) that evolution is the most satisfactory explanation of human origins? What if a member of the religion department or the divinity school faculty notices that Jesus really had little or nothing to say about homosexuality or that Paul’s statement that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female merits a capacious interpretation?

The difficulty for Balmer here is even greater than the one that afflicted my fellow movie watchers. On a minor level, he should know that universities, their trustees, and presidents regularly engage in activities that are inconsistent with the ideals they uphold. Think, for instance, of the welcome that Balmer’s institution, Columbia University, gave to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But an even greater problem is that Balmer identifies with the evangelical left, a group of believers who supposedly point to the kinder and gentler Sermon on the Mount, as opposed to the Right’s harsh Ten Commandments, as the model for Christians getting along. So if Christians are to do as Jesus did, turn the other cheek, and forgive at least seventy times seven, why is Balmer publicly bearing a grudge against Starr? If the love and forgiveness that Jesus taught and practiced is supposed to provide a different model of Christian engagement in public life and discourse, wouldn’t it be good either to let this editorial against Starr go, or extend the right hand of fellowship and thereby embody the sort of ethic that Balmer finds lacking in the Religious Right?

It could be that wherever you get your law, either from Moses or Jesus, it is awfully demanding and so fails to produce the Rodney King-like society for which that liberals and evangelical lefties pine. Or it could be that Balmer is simply regretting that his most recent book has come out with Baylor University Press. At least he can explain that it wasn’t issued on Starr’s watch.

Many years ago – too many for those of his vintage – Ken Myers, the talking voice behind Mars Hill Audio, wrote a piece that should be more widely known and read, “Christianity, Culture, and Common Grace.” It is available in pdf at the Mars Hill website. Ken is one of the best students of culture, as attested by his book, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, a work in which he draws explicitly upon the arguments of Meredith Kline about cult and culture. (Kerux readers beware). Those same insights inform Ken’s essay on common grace and lead him to write the following about the sufficiency of Scripture:

We don’t hear much about the “insufficiency of Scripture.” But it is an important point to keep in mind when thinking about Christianity and culture. Scripture does not present itself as the only source of truth about all matters. It does not even present itself as a source of some truth about everything. It presents itself as the only authoritative source of truth about some things, and they are the most important things. But the Bible does not claim to teach us the fundamentals of arithmetic, of biology, of engineering, or of music. About most of the matters of culture, the Bible has little explicit to say. Many people insist on taking implicit statements from Scripture (or allegedly implicit statements) and deducing from them an entire theory. This is often done in the name of a high view of Scripture, but it is rather to treat Scripture as a magic book. It is a superstitious view of Scripture, not the view God has himself presented. The belief that all the blueprints for all of life are in Scripture is in part derived from the notion that reason and general revelation are not to be trusted.

Makes sense to me.

In other words, you gotta serve some dualism.

I’ve had another worldview moment. I am struck that critics of the two-kingdom position, especially the ones who insist upon Christian schools, believe that a major issue in the disagreement is whether or not the Bible is the norm for public life (as well as other sectors outside the church). Fine, I get that. General revelation or natural law may not be sufficient to maintain the order that we desire in society. I suspect, though, that the objection is also that general revelation and natural law won’t yield a Christian society. But that’s another issue.

So let’s concede that the Bible should be the norm for political life. That would appear to solve the problem of abortion, same-sex marriage, and divorce. (Sorry, it doesn’t resolve the debate about Christian schools.) The sixth and seventh commandments would appear to be pretty handy for cleaning up American morality.

But what doesn’t seem to dawn on these Bible-as-norm-for-public-life folks is that we have not simply two but ten commandments. And the first four are particularly hard not on crime but on false worship, idolatry, blasphemy, and profaning the Lord’s Day. So if the Bible is to be the norm for public life, then all of a sudden not simply murder, divorce, adultery, fornication, lying, stealing are punishable offenses but so are Roman Catholicism and Mormonism, for instance, at least from the view of a Reformed world view.

I wonder if the implication of the whole integral law occurred to Dr. Kloosterman when he wrote the following in response to my piece in Christian Renewal. This summer he wrote:

The heart of my disagreement with religious secularism appears most clearly, I think, with this claim of Dr. Hart: “To suggest that Christian norms must be dominant in public life raises the threat of the very sort of religious warfare in which Protestants and Roman Catholics engaged in hopes of maintaining a uniform society.” A number of possible responses come to mind, but two will suffice.

First, if the worldly kingdom (public life) is to be governed by that natural law revealed
in creation, and if the Decalogue is nothing less than the republication of that natural law, then why would Christians not want the civil magistrate to proscribe what the Decalogue proscribes?

To play Rush Limbaugh for a moment: “stop the tape.” This is the heart of the disagreement over Christian schools – whether or not the magistrate enforces the Decalogue. So Christian schooling is really bound up with Christianizing America (and he quotes Machen for support – go figure). In other words, the whole debate over Christian schooling boils down to where one fights in the culture wars – is the Bible the norm for civil society, or is it not? Christian schooling is simply a way of fighting the culture war. We are very glad for the clarification.

“Mr. Snerdly, resume cut one.”

Kloosterman continuuueees.

Dr. Hart’s caution against having “Christian norms be dominant in public life” sounds very much like the warnings against “Christians legislating morality” and against “Christians forcing their religious convictions on others” that have become such common media mottoes in our highly secularized generation. What, in fact, is a “Christian norm”? Are the prohibitions “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not steal” peculiarly Christian norms?

Why is it illicit for Christians to appeal to the civil magistrate in the context of public policy relating to abortion, for example, using as only one among several arguments that the magistrate is called by God to honor the Sixth Commandment? If the magistrate’s authority comes from God, then why is it improper for Christians, as but one component of their public political testimony, to point the magistrate to God’s will revealed in Scripture (Ps. 2, Ps. 110, Rom. 13) for exercising that authority?

And if the civil magistrate’s authority comes from God, why go first to the seventh and eighth commandments. If the first and greatest commandment is loving God, why resort first to laws about love of neighbor? The answer appears to be straightforward. False worship and blasphemy do not trouble Dr. K. as much as sex and stealing. And always keep in mind that if you want to be tough on crime, send your children to a Christian school.

So again, to reiterate: if the law is good for the magistrate and it gives him (or her?) guidance about the culture wars, why does it not also give instruction about which religious groups to support and which to forbid? The good attorney from Indiana somehow thinks that this implication is silly because it reflects a complete misunderstanding of the Christian school lobby’s position. But which is more silly, to think that Christ governs the existing age through two kingdoms, one subject to Scripture the other to general revelation, or to think that we can have the Decalogue to prohibit the sins we most oppose but not to the point of making us look intolerant of other religions?

Last time I checked, both Israel and the church were to purge blasphemy and idolatry from their ranks – why – well, that first table of the Decalogue is pretty explicit. But somehow the Christian school advocates think that the state, which will be governed by the same Bible that governs the church, will be tough on sexual sins and murder but not on blasphemy and idolatry.

That leaves us with an interesting disagreement. The folks who condemn two-kingdoms for its dualism (among other things) have a dualistic view of the Decalogue. How integrated is that?

Turns out I went with my carbohydrate friendly and folk heritage – Pennsylvania Dutch – for lunch. (You may breath now.) The turkey salad on Amish sandwich roll was enjoyable as I watched Blood Simple next to the kitten with teeth and claws from hell.

BTW, has anyone noticed how great Carter Burwell’s scores are for the Coens, and that barely no one else in the movie business seems to use him. What’s up with that?

Then I decided to be productive. I purchased a shopping cart for post-automobile urban life en route to purchasing a case of Yards IPA.

In case you thought that was a full day, I am now posting at oldlife.org before Secret Cinema, mind you.

How could Twitter ever do justice to such a day?

After a visit to my father at his local hospital, I had a worldview moment. What should have alerted me from the outset was the name of the place – St. Mary’s. But then I noticed that the spiritual services wing of the hospital had dropped off for him a brochure about their activities which was included with information about television channels and daily menus – talk about trivializing the eschaton. But the kicker was the crucifix in my dad’s ICU room. Shazzam!!! That’s a whole lot of idolatry for a man who is on a heart monitor.

But is Roman Catholic medicine really any different from Reformed medicine or even – dare I say – secular medicine. If worldviews go all the way down to the very tips of our toes, and if we can’t escape the claims of Christ in any parts of our lives, can I really look the other way in good conscience when entering a hospital room that displays an image of Christ on a cross?

And then there is the concern for quality of health care. If Abraham Kuyper was right that Roman Catholicism “represents and older and lower stage of development in the history of mankind” and if Protestantism occupies a “higher standpoint,” shouldn’t my dad try to find treatment at a Protestant hospital? Kuyper, by the way, wasn’t real complimentary of Roman Catholicism on science either.

It could be that I have once again misunderstood the claims of neo-Calvinism and that some algorithm exists for taking the gold of scientific advances from the dross of defective worldviews. But it could also be that the language of worldviews and the difference they make for every aspect of human existence is overdone, simply a rallying cry for inspiring the faithful, but not anything that would prevent my father from receiving treatment from unbelieving nurses employed by Roman Catholic administrators. Then again, the power of modernity is stunning, making all of those religious claims about connections between spiritual and physical reality look fairly foolish – as if a creed actually produces better medicine.

I mean no disrespect to the neo-Calvinists and their epistemological purity. But if they could help me out on this one, I’d be grateful. Does a Reformed worldview really make a difference for modern medicine and the ordinary decisions a sick believer must make in seeking a physician or hospital – under the oversight, of course, not of the elders but the insurance company.

Postscript: yes, I am preoccupied with neo-Calvinism. Shouldn’t Keller’s fans be happy? Oh, wait a minute.

The reviewer of Westminster California’s Evangelium has repeatedly in different online exchanges accused the two-kingdoms proponents of denying Article 36 of the Belgic Confession where it teaches that the magistrate has the God-ordained duty to promote the true religion and punish idolaters and blasphemers. It says: “And the government’s task is not limited to caring for and watching over the public domain but extends also to upholding the sacred ministry, with a view to removing and destroying all idolatry and false worship of the Antichrist; to promoting the kingdom of Jesus Christ; and to furthering the preaching of the gospel everywhere; to the end that God may be honored and served by everyone, as he requires in his Word.” (Often not mentioned by such appeals to Article 36 are the revisions that Dutch Reformed communions in the United States made to this part of the Confession. See postscript below.)

What is striking for all good Kuyperians is that Abraham Kuyper himself rejected the original language of Article 36 and refused to let anyone claim he was less of a Reformed Protestant for doing so. In the early 1880s Kuyper wrote a pamphlet on the reformation of the church that the editors of the Standard Bearer, the denominational magazine of the Protestant Reformed Church, translated and published over many issues during the 1980s. (Thanks to John Halsey Wood for reminding me of this resource.) Under the heading of “Concerning Reformation and the Magistrate,” Kuyper wrote the following:

We oppose this Confession out of complete conviction, prepared to bear the consequences of our convictions, even when we will be denounced and mocked on that account as unReformed.

We would rather be considered not Reformed and insist that men ought not to kill heretics, than that we are left with the Reformed name as the prize for assisting in the shedding of the blood of heretics.

It is our conviction: 1) that the examples which are found in the Old Testament are of no force for us because the infallible indication of what was or was not heretical which was present at that time is now lacking.

2) That the Lord and the Apostles never called upon the help of the magistrate to kill with the sword the one who deviated from the truth. Even in connection with such horrible heretics as defiled the congregation in Corinth, Paul mentions nothing of this idea. And it cannot be concluded from any particular word in the New Testament, that in the days when particular revelation should cease, that the rooting out of heretics with the sword is the obligation of magistrates.

3) That our fathers have not developed this monstrous proposition out of principle, but have taken it over from Romish practice.

4) That the acceptance and carrying out of this principle almost always has returned upon the heads of non-heretics and not the truth but heresy has been honored by the magistrate.

5) That this proposition opposes the Spirit and the Christian faith.

6) That this proposition supposed that the magistrate is in a position to judge the difference between truth and heresy, an office of grace which, as appears from the history of eighteen centuries, is not granted by the Holy Spirit, but is withheld.

We do not at all hide the fact that we disagree with Calvin, our Confessions, and our Reformed theologians.

Granted, the appeal to Kuyper here may look a tad inconsistent because of regular objections to the idea of transformationalism that Kuyper himself apparently launched. At the same time, this quotation does show that even in the efforts to claim Christ’s lordship over every square inch, Kuyper recognized limits to the logic of that sovereignty, limits that many modern-day Kuyperians seem incapable of making in order to avoid the shoals of theonomy.

Postscript: Latter day Kuyperians also recognized the limits of Christ’s lordship when they attached notations to the Belgic Confession like this one found in both the Christian Reformed Church and the United Reformed Churches of North America (it follows the assertion that the magistrate is not only responsible for the “welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry”:

The Christian Reformed Church Synod of 1910, recognizing the unbiblical teaching, contained in this sentence, concerning the freedom of religion and concerning the duty of the state to suppress false religion, saw fit to add an explanatory footnote. The Christian Reformed Church Synod of 1938, agreeing with the Christian Reformed Church Synod of 1910 as to the unbiblical character of the teaching referred to, but recognizing a conflict between the objectionable clauses in the Article and its footnote, decided to eliminate the footnote and to make the change in the text of the Article which appears above, corresponding to the change adopted in 1905 by the General Synod of the “Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland.” (See Christian Reformed Church Acts of Synod, 1910, pp.9,104-105; also Christian Reformed Church Acts of Synod, 1938, p. 17.). The Christian Reformed Church Synod of 1958 approved the following substitute statement which has been referred to other Reformed Churches accepting the Belgic Confession as their creed for evaluation and reaction: “And being called in this manner to contribute to the advancement of a society that is pleasing to God, the civil rulers have the task, in subjection to the law of God, while completely refraining from every tendency toward exercising absolute authority, and while functioning in the sphere entrusted to them and with the means belonging to them, to remove every obstacle to the preaching of the gospel and to every aspect of divine worship, in order that the Word of God may have free course, the kingdom of Jesus Christ may make progress, and every anti-christian power may be resisted.”

Scott Clark observes an arresting inconsistency in the pages of Christian Renewal, on the order of Captain Renault’s being “shocked, shocked” to find that gambling was going in on Rick’s café (in Casablanca). CR is the Dutch-Canadian publication that gives lots of room to those who attack two-kingdom theology through the cross-hairs of Christians schools. And yet, as Clark shows, CR is seemingly silent on the sins of Masonry, and it has implications for other commandments in the Decalogue.

He writes:

So, just to keep score, according to the CR it’s unforgivable to defend Christian schooling incorrectly but it’s okay to be a Freemason? Which of these issues cuts closer to the heart of the Reformed faith: denying the uniqueness of Christ (by virtue of membership in the Lodge) or defending Christian schooling imperfectly? Why does Elliott get a pass but WSC “gets it in the neck”? Where’s the scathing editorial condemnation of this violation of the law of God?

While we are at it we should wonder about the CR’s stance on the other ground for the formation of the CRC. Where is the CR on hymnody vs psalmody? Is the CR a vocal advocate for the recovery of genuine Reformed worship? I don’t recall the CR beating the drum for ridding our churches of organs and man-made hymns.

For that matter, where are the URCs on this question? Why does our church order not follow the 1619 Church Order of Dort strictly on this? Why did not the founders of the URCs connect CRC’s departure from the regulative principle of worship to her decline? Did they imagine that if we only turned the clock back to 1959 we could make history turn out differently than the CRC did? (See Recovering the Reformed Confession on this).

Is it that we are to be “foursquare” on “Christian schooling” but liberal on the second commandment as confessed and understood by the Reformed churches since the 16th century? If so, what does that say about us? It’s essential to be “orthodox” on views that are not confessed in Heidelberg Catechism, e.g. how we teach math, but it’s acceptable to ignore the clear and consistent teaching of the Reformed faith on how we worship God? For those of us who think that the Reformed confessions, rather than social conservatism, define what it is to be Reformed this is all very confusing.

So it seems that the antithesis really boils down to who sends their children to Christian schools and who doesn’t. But when it comes to Freemansonry, one of the best examples of autonomous, French revolutionary thought – you know the kind that Abraham Kuyper denounced with institutions like the Anti-Revolutionary Party – the antithesis doesn’t look quite so antithetical.

Our favorite theonomic pastor in the Christian Reformed Church has ranted yet again on the infection he diagnoses as the “radical 2k virus.” The good pastor’s comments are useful for showing what the two-kingdom view actually says and does not say, and also for showing the inherent weakness of those who overrealize Christ’s Lordship in this life.

The pastor in question is responding specifically to the claim made here that the teaching of history should differ little if taught in a class at a secular university or a Christian college. The point being that the standards governing historical scholarship do not come from Scripture – since the Bible as little to say about the use of primary and secondary sources or about the polity of nation-states and the relations among them – but from organizations like the American Historical Association.

The really right reverend comments:

Can Darryl be so thick as to miss the decided difference between the Marxists Charles and Mary Beard teaching a survey of American History and a R. L. Dabney teaching a survey of American History? Darryl assumes his position and then goes on to act as if the standards of “secular” history proves his position. Talk about circular reasoning! What Darryl has forgotten is that Theology is the Queen of the Sciences. Biblical Christians would insist that History is but Theology clothed in a different discipline, but this is not the way Darryl reasons. For Darryl, Theology resides in the Church and each compartmentalized discipline is Lord over its own realm. Talk about creating sacred and profane realms. By Darryl’s standards a student could become a Marxist historian, complete with all that implies, and still be a Christian as long as he could navigate the gross contradiction.

A couple of points show how convoluted this reaction is. First, hello! Robert Louis Dabney was not a historian and simply being a theologian does not grant proficiency or expertise in every single academic discipline, secular vocation, or square inch (Kuyper even knew this). If it did, then theologians would function in western society the way Imams do in Islamic societies – that is, as interpreters of God’s word they have authority over everything. So, I would likely trust the Beard over Dabney on interpreting American history – though I might give Dabney extra credit on the South.

Second, why does being a Marxist invalidate one’s credentials as a historian? Why even some very good Christian historians such as Carl Trueman have been known to have affection for Marx and the usefulness of Marxist analysis not only for secular but also church history. Our CRC pastor is apparently aware that sometimes Christian historians apply the insights of Marx but rejects outright the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism.

So as in all good circular reasoning, what goes around comes around. We trust the Pastor will not become so dizzy about two-kingdom theology that his mind explodes. Here’s the trick: take two aspirin (get it?) and keep your theology in the appropriate kingdom.

Man, is it hard being ideologically pure even with a biblical mandate.

I do not do Facebook, though I might sign up for MyFace. I am happily uninterested in Twitter, which as T. David Gordon has suggested, is what twits do. So using a blog to tell others about what I’m doing seems silly if not narcisistic.

With those qualifications out of the way, a recent speaking engagement at Grove City College (where I heard Gordon make a very compelling presentation on the need for caution in using technology that requires batteries and plugs) got me thinking about the world-and-life-viewitis that has reached epidemic proportions among Protestants. Most evangelical Protestant colleges these days are justifying their existence and identity by saying they provide a wholistic vision on learning that is grounded in the Christian faith. The Lordship of Christ, the authority of Scripture, even the cultural mandate come in for aid and comfort.

This ideal is an honorable one and springs from generally wholesome motives. Who would not want to see Christ honored in all aspects of the created order, and who would want to be unfaithful where Scripture has revealed God’s holy will?

There’s just one problem: the Bible doesn’t speak to all the arts and sciences, let alone whether incoming freshmen should receive a laptop or whether it should be an Apple or an IBM machine. In fact, the one place where Christ is revealed, the Bible, has very little to say about the curriculum of an undergraduate education. If we say that it does, we are in danger of putting the imaginations of men above the Word of God — that is, making the Bible say what we want it to say. (more…)