The paleo/neo distinction for Reformed Protestants is not only useful for discerning different attitudes toward evangelicalism, but even for figuring out distinct understandings of Calvinism itself. After all, the Kuyperian or world-and-life-view form of Calvinism has always been known as neo-Calvinism. That reputation implies a distinction with paleo-Calvinism, and furthers the wariness that should accompany the use of the prefix “neo” — as in neo-conservative, neo-evangelical, and neo-orthodox.
Neo-Calvinists are prone to dismiss paleo-Calvinists as warmed over Lutherans because of either the two-kingdom doctrine or the spirituality of the church. This is not the place to elaborate on either of these, except to remark that when paleo-Calvinists distinguish between the sacred and the secular, the spiritual and the natural, the temporal and the eternal, neo-Calvinists go batty and think that paleo-Calvinists are following Luther and restricting Christianity to the realm of religion and ethics. (As if Luther’s view of vocation and the goodness of work in this world doesn’t suggest that neo-Calvinists are confused about Luther and Lutheranism.)Â
True enough, paleo-Calvinists do distinguish between redemption and creation and think of Christianity the way the Bible does, as a religion of redemption and not a program of cultural and social renewal (which is why so many neo-Calvinists are tempted by theonomy and a view of Israel as a program of cultural and social renewal). But paleo-Calvinists do recognize the goodness of creation. They simply don’t think that creation is the place to look for redemption.
At the same time, paleo-Calvinists understand that redemption goes beyond creation. Creation as good was not the aim of God’s plan. The idea was to go higher to a place of blessedness that was even better than goodness. Sin messed up that plan. But redemption puts glorification back into play by promising that saints will one day inherit what Adam would have had he kept the covenant of works. The Garden of Eden was not the goal, nor was Old Jerusalem, Grand Rapids, or New York City. The new heavens and new earth was.
Paleo-Calvinists object to neo-Calvinists, then, for not understanding that consummation goes beyond creational norms and structures. Neo-Calvinists seem to want to go back to the Garden. Paleo-Calvinists believe that the Garden was not and is not all there is to man’s chief end. Pale0-Calvinists also sense that ne0-Calvinists are not really comfortable with the goodness of creation as creation. That’s why they keep talking about the need to redeem the culture, or redemption as cultural or social renewal. The implicit point seems to be that if something can’t be saved, then it’s no good. The neo-Calvinist seems to have no place for an in-between state — one between holy and profane such as common or good.
Neo-Calvinists should not despair. Paleo-Calvinists have just what they need, that is a dose of paleo-Calvinism from the most paleo of Calvinists, John Calvin, who made a distinction that neo-Calvinists are loathe to make:
. . . whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual Kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct. Since, then, it is a Jewish vanity to seek and enclose Christ’s Kingdom within the elements of this world, let us rather ponder that what Scripture clearly teaches is a spiritual fruit, which we gather from Christ’s grace; and let us remember to keep within its own limits all that freedom which is promised and offered to us in him. For why is it that the same apostle who bids us stand and no submit to the ‘yoke of bondage’ (Gal. 5:1) elsewhere forbids slaves to be anxious about their state (1 Cor. 7:21), unless it be that spiritual freedom can perfectly well exist along with civil bondage? . . . . By these statements he means that it makes no difference what your condition among men may be or under what nation’s laws you live, since the Kingdom of Christ does not at all consist of these things.
This quotation points precisely at an in-between realm that is neither wicked nor holy — it is temporal, earthly, and provisional. It recognizes that some things in life are good even if they are not holy, and that their proper place is simply to be good and not to be saved (or made holy). It is the difference between a good meal and a holy meal. And the ability to see the difference between an exceptional home-cooked meal and the Lord’s Supper is one that allows paleo-Calvinists to see the difference between the creational realm of culture and society, and the redeemed world of the church. It is, in fact, the only way to make sense of statements like this one from the Belgic Confession:
Now those who are regenerated have in them a twofold life (2 John 3:6): the one corporal and temporal, which they have from the first birth and is common to all men; the other spiritual and heavenly, which is given them in their second birth (John 3:5), which is effected by the word of the gospel (John 5:23, 25) in the communion of the body of Christ: and this life is not common, but is peculiar to God’s elect (1 John 5:12; John 10:28). In like manner God has given us, for the support of the bodily and earthly life, earthly and common bread which is subservient thereto and is common to all men, even as life itself. But for the support of the spiritual and heavenly life which believers have, he has sent a living bread which descended from heaven, namely, Jesus Christ (John 6:32-33, 51), who nourishes and strengthens the spiritual life of believers when they eat Him, that is to say, when they apply and receive him by faith and in the Spirit (John 6:63). (BC, Art. 35)
Old Life 
As Kuyper himself made clear, the only real neocalvinists (in cultural worldview) are themselves at the same time paleocalvinists (in confession and theology).
Of course, various sorts have taken or been given the term ‘neocalvinist’ (e.g. Barthians). But with fellow gnesio-neocalvinists Geerhardus Vos and Herman Ridderbos, I always find it entertaining to wonder who you might be referring to when you use that term.
Where are these neocalvinists who are both tempted by theonomy and are uncomfortable with the goodness of creation? What strange people! I join you in eschewing their unnatural concoctions.
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Spot on – this is excellent.
The idea was to go higher to a place of blessedness that was even better than goodness. Sin messed up that plan. But redemption puts glorification back into play by promising that saints will one day inherit what Adam would have had he kept the covenant of works. The Garden of Eden was not the goal, nor was Old Jerusalem, Grand Rapids, or New York City. The new heavens and new earth was.
You’re sounding like quite the Vossian!
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DGH,
I’m not given to assigning +’s to A’s, but employing the SOTC language warms the cockles of my Paleo-heart. Nice thesis, Ralphie; your Red Rider is in the mail.
Baus,
They’re freakin’ everywhere, man. I’m up to my eyeballs. And from what I can tell, they sure seem to have quite a natural read of Abe.
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I always end up off-kilter, discombobulated even, when reading things like this, because somehow the very things I read in Kuyper, Bavinck, and Wolters that attracted me to NeoCalvinism (the abiding goodness of creation, to name just one) have somehow become the very antithesis (heh) to what NeoCalvinism is supposedly all about.
Yet neither can I comfortably be one of those who “simply don’t think that creation is the place to look for redemption.” What, pray tell, is God redeeming, if not his creation?
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Camden, I’ve been Vossian all along. I just don’t think his BT is the same as his ST.
Baus, do the names Al Wolters, Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton ring any bells? How about Chuck Colson and Francis Schaeffer?
Russ, did Christ die for plumbing? Do you need to be saved to be a plumber? (Maybe it helps cover up a plumber’s plumber crack.) Seriously, all of the cosmological passages that Kuyperians love to claim where Christ saves the world, the ur-paleo-Calvinist, Calvin, interpreted the all to mean men plus angels. Would you at least acknowledge that neo-Calvinists are uncomfortable with Calvin’s modest account of redemption? BTW, I thought I saw the merits of worldviewism until it supplanted TULIP among Dutch-American Calvinists.
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Did Christ die only for the disembodied souls of plumbers? If we can (and are in fact commanded to) eat and drink to the glory of God, can we direct fixing pipes also to God’s glory? (In addition to smoking pipes, of course). What, if anything, does grace have to do with nature?
I’m comfortable with Calvin’s account of the scope of redemption in his commentary on Romans 8:19-22.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom38.xii.vi.html
The Dutch Reformed may tend toward “worldviewism,” but I don’t think that invalidates the insights of NeoCalvinism any more than the Southern Presbyterian tendency towards otherworldly pietism invalidates genuine Reformed piety.
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Great stuff.
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PS, I know you don’t have to be saved to be a plumber. Do you have to be saved to be a worship leader?
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Russ,
Did Christ die only for the disembodied souls of plumbers?
No, he both lived and died for both his body and soul.
What, if anything, does grace have to do with nature?
Grace renews nature (as opposed to perfects or obliterates)
What is so unclear about the notion that (1) the only created agent eligible for sanctification is the one elected, made and fallen in the image of God and (2) the balance of creation is groaning for the former’s consummation?
I don’t have any problem with fixing pipes to the glory of God, as long as it’s understood that the pipes are simply being fixed and not redeemed. What the Neo-Calvinist has yet to demonstrate is just how the reality of sanctification moves from the inside of a believer’s body to the pipes he’s fixing, the state he’s crafting, the education he’s executing or any other part of creation within which he’s participating. It seems that to be asked to believe this happens is not too unlike being asked to believe that osmosis really works in lieu studying for tests.
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Russ, I think you hit the nail on the head. Neo-Calvinists are uncomfortable with otherworldly Christianity. Post-millennialism would be most compatible with this-worldly Christianity. But I don’t know how to be anything but otherworldly as either an amillenialist, or in reading Paul in 1 Corinthians against a theology of glory, or Calvin on how a Christian is to view this life (reprinted in the Golden Booklet of the Christian Life.) I think this is likely the biggest difference between paleo- and neo-Calvinists. Calvin was pretty clear on not locating the kingdom of Christ, or the fruit of grace in “this world.”
It does seem to me that this-worldliness has been the leading edge of liberal Protestantism. I don’t mean that as a way of baiting neo-Calvinists. I mean that as historical observation. The Social Gospel was this-worldly, the CRC has become this-worldly, and the PCA is increasingly flirting with this-worldliness. Why is it that when this-world comes in, a sense of the other world exits? Again, some recognition of the distinction between what is ultimate and what is penultimate, or between what is eternal and what is temporal, is useful for maintaining a proper otherworldliness. But since Jesus isn’t in this world any more, it seems a Christian’s first loyalty is where Jesus is.
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DGH, you may recall that we’ve covered this ground before. You say “neocalvinists hold to such&such.” And I say “to whom do you refer?” And you say “Wolters, Walsh & Middleton.” And I say “chapter and verse, please.” And then… nothing.
So, here’s the thing. I’m claiming to be a gnesio-neocalvinist along with Vos and Ridderbos (and Kuyper, of course), and because real neocalvinists are also confessionally paleocalvinist I’m ready to eschew anything un-paleocalvinist spouted by Wolters, Walsh or Middleton.
But so far you claims about neocalvinism as a whole and/or particular neocalvinists are utterly unsubstantiated.
If you (or anyone) substantiates such claims *anywhere*, I’ll even take a book reference or URL.
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I just don’t think his BT is the same as his ST.
What are you thinking of in particular?
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Daryl,
I just thought I’d point out the fact that you switch topics midway through your post. Neo-Reformed (annoying term) ≠neo-Calvinist. The first is McKnight’s term referring to evangelicals that figured out God is sovereign and want everyone else to figure it out too. The second refers mostly to Dutch people who took Kuyper’s thought about culture and ran with it. I know you know this, but I do not think mixing categories in this way is helpful. As a guy who could potentially be considered “neo-Reformed” (though I’d object to the characterization), I would appreciate it if you didn’t impute transformationalism to the newer group. Some us are quite content to be 2 Kingdoms.
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Greg, so what do you think about Russ’ point that neo-Calvinists believe in redeeming creation? Or do you see any problem in Wolters’ contention that a Reformed world-view denies all dualisms? It seems to me Paul, Augustine and Calvin all affirm a certain kind of dualism, one that distinguishes things spiritual from things temporal.
Jeff, My first post was not about neo-Calvinists. It was about McKnight’s so-called Neo-Reformed. I was simply using his category to show that some Reformed, as in paleo-, don’t really want to run evangelicalism. That was the point. But since you bring it up, it does seem to be the case that the McKnight’s neo-Reformed and the second post’s neo-Calvnists are more willing to consider themselves “evangelical” than are paleo-Calvinists. Still, I called this post “paleo- vs. neo-” for a reason, because it’s the new vs. old distinction that reveals wrinkles that many don’t notice.
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Jeff, oops. Now I see your point. I did include “reformed” in the second title. My explanation above still stands. Neo- vs. Paleo- Calvinist is a separate distinction from Neo- vs. Paleo-Reformed. Though I also think with evangelicalism in the picture the distinction is less clear.
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Camden, my comment about Vos involved a distinction between BT and ST. Vos wrote a dogmatics. As far as I know, it remains in Dutch untranslated. The zinger had to do with the idea that ST is the queen of the theological sciences, and that the BT impulse unleashed by Vos and Ridderbos has overwhelmed ST. So for instance, the doctrine of justification has become much more confused because of BT, in my opinion. ST is a really handy thing for thinking about theology clearly. (BTW, exegetical theology is also different from either BT and or ST.)
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I can understand that. I do believe that Vos wrote early on in Biblical Theology that BT is the servant of ST. If that’s the case I think he may have alleviated your concerns – though that doesn’t mean his disciples wouldn’t alter the relationship.
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Daryl: I was using otherworldly as an insult; you weren’t supposed to embrace the term!
As someone who doesn’t have both feet fully planted in either camp, my temptation is to be conciliatory and to think of this debate as one group standing at Now arguing with another group at Not-yet, each worried the other side has gone fallen off the edge into a this-worldly or otherworldly extreme. But even that sentence confuses two distinct frameworks are likely incompatible, and part of the substance of this debate.
It’s not so much that NeoCalvinists are uncomfortable with otherworldly Christianity as they are uncomfortable with the categories of this- and other-worldly. NeoCalvinists are inevitably Vossian, making an eschatological distinction between this age and the age to come rather than a division of creation into realms of sacred and secular. PaleoCalvinists, it seems to me, are pretty comfortable with the dualism of a temporal/secular and spiritual/sacred world (though as one commentator noted, the article above does have a Vossian tone). To me, it seems more in line with the New Testament to speak of our hope in Christ’s return than our loyalty to him in a different world, and that a longing for the fullness of Christ’s Kingdom will do more to help us resist entanglement with the world more than an otherworldly mindset.
As to where Calvin fits into all this, first I don’t have any problem thinking that Ridderbos and Vos may have contributed significantly to our understanding of Scripture beyond Calvin. Second, Calvin does not seem entirely consistent; he was working within the inheritance of the dualism of the Middle Ages, yet even in the section quoted above, he spoke not just of “this” life and “eternal” life, but this “present” life and “future” eternal life. And third, neither side is repristinating Calvin; the modern “Two Kingdoms” approach which takes Calvin’s temporal kingdom (which was a real kingdom – a state, with a king) and uses as an expansive category to hold business, economics, art, science, education, family (? never was sure what strict Two Kingdom fold do with that) – everything but the church, I guess – are adapting Calvin’s categories, just as Kuyper did. But that’s a different discussion.
Zrim: Some of that might indirectly address your comments; your objection seems to be that NeoCalvinists treat sanctification as if its a thing, moving from the inside of the believer to pipes, changing them from the ontological category of fallen to the ontological category of sanctified. But of course, no one who rejects such an ontological dualism on principle could affirm anything like you suggest.
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And why do other people get little pictures and I look like a chess pawn? Do I register somewhere?
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Russ,
To my 2K mind there are two kinds of otherworldly (bad: Gnostic/pietist/polish-stowing; good: spiritual/Vossian/Pauline/theology of the cross) and two kinds of this-worldly (bad: theology of glory/prosperity/golden age; good: world-affirming/creation very good)…so as to “otherworldly” being an insult, you’d have to get more specific.
When I speak with my this-worldly neo-Calvinists they hear bad otherworldliness, and when I speak with my otherworldly evangelicals they hear “worldly Christianity.” The thing about 2K is that there is a constant shuttling between this world and the next, a juggling act between already and not-yet such that, depending on who is listening and what presuppositions he has, a 2Ker also has to do a lot of ducking.
I realize that when I suggest sanctification moves from believer to pipes and morphs into the transformation of pipes, as it were, that it cannot be affirmed. But (1) silly things have a way of being resistant to affirmation when put directly, yet (2) I cannot see any other way transformationalism works without that being the case. Evidently, the only people able to transform society are those house the Holy Ghost–how does transforming then happen without some leakage?
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DGH, I think Russ and I are on the same page concerning the relationship between creation and redemption. Russ and I affirm (with all neocalvinists I know of) that redemption obtains an eschaton that surpasses “protological” creation.
(btw, Russ, go to gravatar[dot]com )
We do have to define terms more precisely in this discussion so we don’t talk past each other.
I’m going to work up some kind of list of definitions, distinctions, affirmations and denials on this topic (paleocalvinist theological positions in relation to neocalvinist cultural positions)… and maybe it will be something we can discuss more effectively.
I’m willing to consider some specific statement by Wolters concerning dualism where I might disagree with him, but off-hand I’d say I have no problem with the rejection of all dualism.
All neocalvinists accept certain “dualities” (proper distinctions between two things), “pluralities” (distinctions between multiple things), and “antitheses” (oppositions between two things).
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Russ, maybe neither side is following Calvin precisely, but my own view is that the paleo- option resonates much more with Calvin’s meaning than the neo-. An important example of this is the nature and purpose of suffering. Neo-‘s hold a kind of progressivism that doesn’t seem to be able to account for suffering, impoverishment, and loss. They so identify the coming of the kingdom with success and improvement, that they forget that most of the examples of the kingdom coming in Scripture involve God’s people losing, not winning. This kind of progressivism would also seem to account for Nick Wolterstorff’s denial of the eternal decree (I’m not sure if he did so in print but he did in Q&A at the Stone Lectures in 1998) because he felt that Calvin’s view of suffering led to fatalism. Calvin just wouldn’t support the French revolutionaries because Christians are called to suffer.
Baus: if you agree with Russ about the redemption of creation, could you explain what the salvation of television means?
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I won’t dispute that, Daryl, though there are plenty of other factors that make it difficult for North American/Northern European Christians to embrace a Christian view of suffering (including, at least in the 18-19th centuries, Paleo postmillennialism). FWIW, I’m actually uneasy with phrases like “redeeming culture” (though I have no reservations about saying God is redeeming his creation) and prefer to speak of Christian cultural activity as an implication of our redemption, recognizing and countering the cultural effects of our sin. That’s often not a recipe for worldly success. For me, NeoCalvinism fits under the rubrics of faithfulness and discernment rather than transformation, so cultural success isn’t a factor. Perhaps that makes me an odd kind of NeoCalvinist, but perhaps not.
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Russ, don’t give Hart so much ground. You know that Wolterstorff denounces our neocalvinism and Kuyper himself as ridiculous and implausible “religious totalism.” Ole Nick has more in common with Hart in their mutual poo-pooing of real neocalvinism. I think Hart would very much like what Wolterstorff has to say.
Neocalvinism certainly does *not* hold to any kind of triumphalistic “progressivism” or to any confused ideas about the nature and purpose of suffering. Hart can’t give a single real example of what he’s taking about, because what he’s talking about isn’t neocalvinism.
Real neocalvinists will join with anyone in denouncing Wolterstorff! We denounce the entire apostate CRC and all their corrupt seed.
But, yes, Darryl, I can tell you about the salvation of television. But I’ll do you one better: when we’ve had a thorough discussion, you’re going to be able to articulate yourself what I would say to my satisfaction.
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I’ve made the same kind of criticism about NeoCalvinism and suffering, so I can’t deny it just because Darryl said it. But Wolterstorff does seem like an odd example, both for his distance (whatever is roots may be) from NeoCalvinism, and for his book Lament for a Son, where (if memory serves) he talks about suffering as part of our being brought into conformity with the image of Christ.
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According Jamie Smith over at Immanent Frame, Wolterstorff’s latest book on rights now qualifies him as a “Whig Calvinist.” That sounds more neo- than paleo-. My point in bringing up Wolterstorff was not to debate his ouvre, but to suggest that neo-Calvinists have trouble submitting to circumstances because the ideal of transformation breeds discontentment with things as they are. Some of this discontenment if of course natural because we groan against sin. Some of it is not, especially when it becomes the Christian version of either validating Christendom or embracing multi-culturalism and the politics of identity.
Greg, I can actually heap example upon example of neo-Calvinism’s influence: Neal Plantinga, Nancy Pearcey, James Skillen, Chuck Colson — really, the list could go on and on. World-and-viewism is the coin of the realm in evangelical higher education. Your own alma mater, Covenant College is flooded with this stuff. Does the name Bill Davis come to mind? And when I spoke there in 2001 my paleo-Calvinism was not well regarded, even if my reception was polite and my time there enjoyable.
Whenever we have these exchanges, I keep bring up examples and you keep saying that’s not “real” neo-Calvinism. Okay, maybe all of the examples I bring up are “faux” neo-Calvinists. Maybe you are the lone keeper of the flame, the Gideon of Gideon’s band. So would you like to take a stab at critiquing the faux neo-Calvinism?
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Greg, BTW, we are never going to have a thorough conversation in this format. So why don’t you try me on television. I don’t think our Lord died for it, either the matter or the form. Does it mean that people who repair televisions, work behind the cameras, write the scripts, or act can’t glorify God in their work? Of course not. It means that to talk about any of this work as redemptive is to miss the “real” Reformed language that made sense of these folks honoring and glorifying God — vocation. Neo-Calvinists believe in integration, paleos’ in vocation.
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The latter is a hopeful sign, indeed. It suggests that “neo-Calvinists” are willing to maintain the unity of the Body in the face of disagreement — which is precisely what the council of Jerusalem was about.
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Dr. Hart, at this point, I’ve read these two articles as you have suggested. I’ve also now read your debate with Frame on RPW, re-read Frame’s article on RPW and (for good measure) “In Defense …”
I don’t precisely see how this amounts to an exposition of W2K. I could attempt to infer the basic positive statements of W2K, but I’m always nervous about reducing someone else’s system to my own words. The potential towards over-simplification is always real.
Here would be my summary of W2K:
(1) The Church is spiritual and set apart from the world. Within the Church, God’s word is immediately authoritative. For this reason, the RPW, as developed by the English Puritans, is to be followed wrt. all worship. Whatever is not prescribed is forbidden.
(2) The world itself is “common” — created by God as originally good, but now (since the Fall) the realm in which the saved and the unsaved alike have intercourse. Within the world, God’s common grace holds sway, so that men have liberty (wrt other men; not, of course, wrt their own fallen natures) to follow God’s commands or not — in the latter case, storing up judgment for themselves at the eschaton. Specifically in government, then, God’s word is not immediately authoritative. Instead, the magistrate has liberty to use “common sense”, or Natural Law, in order to make decisions. Whatever is not directly forbidden (and the Scripture makes no direct commands to the magistrates outside of the special time and place of Israel) is permitted.
(3) John Frame is always wrong.
Just kidding about the last one.
Do (1) and (2) adequately describe your view, or does something need adding or correcting?
Also, would you prefer for me to write over here or over at my blog?
Jeff Cagle
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I say that Russ is giving DGH too much ground, because whatever Russ’ in-camp critique may be, it is *not* that neocalvinism as a system of cultural thought is inherently contra- theological paleocalvinism; it is *not* that neocalvinism is essentially “progressive” (triumphalistic) and that it has an erroneous view of suffering and seeks to validate a kind of Christendom or multiculturalism.
I imagine that Russ is merely granting that he has criticized this-or-that within a neocalvinist essay or other as inconsistent. But, of course, paleocalvinists that we all are, we do this with theological paleocalvinist essays too. There is a difference between characterizing the roots of a movement or system as fundamentally flawed, and saying that some particular implication drawn is inconsistent.
Darryl, my idea is to eventually entice you to a more thorough discussion in another forum. But, the way to address the question of salvation with regard to something ostensibly implausible given your assumptions, such as television, is to ask: what about television is creational and what fallen & cursed? If there is anything, in any way, fallen and/or under curse about television and there is at the same time some difference in the way that a Christian might ‘do’ television in beneficial and God-glorifying way, different from how a nonChristian might not benefit or glorify-God… well, then you can be sure Jesus and salvation has *something* to do with this arrangement.
Of course, the question is “what *does* it have to do with Jesus?” Now it may not be your particular vocation to ask or answer these sorts of questions, but ignorance about such research certainly doesn’t entail that the answer is “nothing.” And regardless of ones vocation, the answer to this question (what does Jesus have to do with it?) concerning ones own vocation, cannot be dismissed as insignificant out of hand. One should not too hastily conclude that one cannot find a distinctively Christian approach to matters of common grace and natural revelation, which require a Christian interpretation to be understood for what they really are.
My paper on sphere sovereignty was an implicit critique of faux neocalvinism… basically implying that any other view of sphere sovereignty was not the genuine article. Skillen was in the audience when I presented it at Princeton last year, and I had him in mind among others who have confused sphere sovereignty with “pillarization” (verzuiling). I have also strongly and openly criticized Mouw as a neoConstantinian who rejects essential neocalvinist views.
Also, theologically, my criticisms have always been that those who are not confessionally paleoreformed cannot be consistently neocalvinist.
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Greg, I’m glad to hear of your disapproval of most aspects of neo-Calvinism. That leaves you, of course, in a less popular position that even the readership of the NTJ. ba-dop-bop.
But I must question your paleo- bonafides because of your defense of a Christian view of television. I am not sure what forum you have in mind for exploring this. And yes, I am not either a TV repairman or a sit-com producer. But in my own vocation of history, I have found the idea of a Christian approach to be more inspirational than plausible. Even church history resists Christianization. So my hunch is that those Christians engaged in television related vocations will find neo-Calvinism similarly unuseful even if very philosophical.
Jeff, I’d make three clarifications. John Frame is usually (not always) wrong. ba-dop-bop-bop. The Regulative Principle is not British but Reformed — check out Heidelberg on the Second Commandment as well as the Belgic Confession on a true church (can’t remember which article). And instead of common grace holding sway in the common realm I’d rather use the language of providence and the created order. There is more to say about the 2k view and Dave VanDrunen will be doing just that in a book to be published later this year with Eerdmans. But the key point is to distinguish between the church and her purpose and the common realm and its purpose. Two spheres that may overlap but are by no means the same. Neo-Calvinists tend to want to apply the standards of the redemptive sphere (the church) to the common sphere. 2k folks want to maintain the difference. Neo-Calvinists respond by calling 2k folk fundamentalists. Food fight breaks out.
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Food fight indeed. Do I perceive correctly that you prefer to dialog over here?
Let me start with some points of contact.
First, I appreciate your zeal (and Dr. Muether’s) for the purity of Church in this sense: that the church should be free from the love of political power. As I recall from his class, this was one of Dr. Muether’s central concerns, expressed in his discussions of Machen’s objection to Prohibition and the events surrounding the North-South split of 1861. For you, improperly combining the purpose of the church with the purpose of the common sphere is the root of all error in this way. While I will argue against this absolute position later, I will also join you in affirming that the love of political power is a real and corrupting desire for the Church.
Second, I appreciate your zeal for proper worship and affirm the basic RPW principle as articulated in WCoF 21 (even while disagreeing with you on some Puritan particulars).
Third, I appreciate the basic concern for Christian liberty. In my view, we must distinguish between the norms required of individuals by the Scripture and the norms which man may properly lay down for one another. This latter set is decidedly smaller and operates under different principles.
That said, if agreeable, I want to challenge what I understand of W2K in several ways, with the understanding that I’m challenging the ideas and methods, not you as a person. As I mentioned over on GB, the goal here is unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
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Greg: I find it less frustrating to read Hart (and I could add, Scott Clark) if I read them as critiquing Neocalvinists, not necessarily Neocalvinism. They often hit the nail right on the head if they’re talking about Colson, but banging their own thumbs if read to be talking about Van Til (who, it seems to me, is unquestionably a Neocalvinist, of an antithetical sort). So no, I don’t think Neocalvinism is inherently opposed to Paleocalvinism (though frankly Paleocalvinism strikes me more as a slogan than a clearly definable position), or that neocalvinism is essentially progressive (or inevitably liberalizing).
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Russ, out of curiosity, why is paleo-Calvinism any more of a slogan than neo-Calvinism?
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Darryl, I absolutely approve of everything that defines neocalvinism and most (if not all) of its aspects. Neocalvinism does not apply ecclesial standards to any non-ecclesial sphere. Any wouldbe neocalvinist who has introduced some faux element or aberration (which includes departing from reformed confessionalism, aka paleocalvinism) stands under the critique of real neocalvinism itself.
Even though you don’t have a vocation in philosophy, given your own field, we should (were we to have such a discussion) probably talk about Christian historiography/philosophy of history, rather than television programming, repair, or viewing, don’t you think? What ‘historiographers’ have you considered who proposed a ‘Christian’ take on the field in some sense? I mean, I’m thinking of three non-neocalvinists off the top of my head: Butterfield, Dawson, and Bebbington. What do you dis/like about their proposals?
Russ, I guess I should read more Colson and critique him for reformed folk? If he is responsible for giving neocalvinists a bad name, we should be publicly poo-pooing him a lot more and offering the proper neocalvinist alternative. I feel as though Koyzis has dissected Colson often enough, but I’m presently drawing a blank on the nature of those criticisms.
Yes, many today can’t seem to grasp that Bavinck, Vos, Ridderbos, VanTil are all genuine neocalvinists.
btw, I’d say paleocalvinism is theologically paleoreformed, that is “reformed confessionalism” (3forms & WminStandards).
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Darryl: “Slogan” might sound derogatory, which isn’t what I intend. It seems like more of a mood or mindset that, as successors to the Old Side and Old School, looks askance at whatever the latest big new method, program, or new measure might be. Fidelity to the confessions would of course be an essential element, though if it were a simple case of older is better, it would seem strange that most self-idenified Paleos seem to prefer the 1789 WCF over the 1646.
NeoCalvinism is varied but it’s fairly easy to identify founders and interpreters (Kuyper, Bavinck, Dooyeweerd, Runner, Wolters) and essential elements (Christ as Lord over all aspects of life, abiding authority of the cultural mandate, sphere sovereignty, antithesis, common grace, etc.).
Greg: The problem is that NeoCalvinist terminology has become so prevalent that it sounds like NeoCalvinists are everywhere. However, when I listen to evangelicals speak about Christian education, what always runs through my mind is Inigo Montoya saying, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means…”
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Jeff, challenge away, unity and peace withstanding.
Greg, you see, this is one of my problems with neo-Calvinism: why do we have to talk about historiography regarding my vocation? Why always the effort to theorize about everything? Neo’s really do privilege philosophy, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with philosophy, it’s hard to read Scripture as giving philosophers that kind of importance. I’d much prefer talking about history — period. The history of the 1848 elections, the history of the Civil War, the history of the 1960s. And when you get to those subjects, the wonder-working power of Christian ground motives or Lordship of Christ look a lot less certain. In fact, and I suspect Russ will agree about this, many of the neo’s who write history with these ideas in mind usually write bad history — they let their theory determine their reading. I know, I know, that’s the point of neo-Calvinism — no neutral interpretations and all that. But what the neo’s fail to realize is that sometimes the theory driven interpretations are simply foolish — not only do they receive disapproval from non-Xians but also fail to convince Xians. And a Christian interpretation to have any staying power needs to be binding — to say that something is Christian is to say it’s normative.
Russ, does it give you any pause that neo-Calvinism is so Dutch? I mean, maybe this is an internal debate that Dutch-Calvinists need to have and then get back to the rest of the Reformed world when they’ve reached consensus. As for the WCF revisions, last time I checked it is better not to grant George W. Bush or Barry Obama power to call and preside over church synods and councils.
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Russ,
The problem is that NeoCalvinist terminology has become so prevalent that it sounds like NeoCalvinists are everywhere. However, when I listen to evangelicals speak about Christian education, what always runs through my mind is Inigo Montoya saying, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means…â€
To my 2K mind, “Christian education,†no matter who’s talking about it, is incontheivable.
I know what Christians doing education is, but I still have no idea what Christian education is. I have sailed the world looking for an answer to this. After having climbed the Cliffs of Insanity, the bastion-port of Grand Rapids still cannot answer it. Since, as DGH points out, we 2Kers have a penchant for things practical over things theoretical, let me ask you: since you imply there is an answer, what do you think it means?
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Aye, aye cap’n.
Obj. 1: (of five) The W2K position reduces, rather than enhances, liberty.
We’ve discussed before the plight of the Christian magistrate, but I’ve recently realized that my point needs to be clearer. The W2K position is that the Christian magistrate (which we Americans all are in a minor way) must restrain himself from making specifically Biblical arguments for policy positions. Rather, the magistrate is supposed to engage in the “common sphere” using Natural Law reasoning that is common to all.
Supposedly, this enhances freedom for all, since neither the unChristian nor the Christian need fear that liberty will be trampled upon.
On the face of it, this seems like a reasonable position to take. In particular, this position has the positive merit of requiring the Christian to rely upon God’s sovereignty rather than his own strength in order to bring about societal change or to usher in the kingdom of God.
But now we consider the processes of law-making and of executing laws. Both of these processes, at core, are concerned with ethics: “What behavior should we require of society? How should we implement the law?” By introducing ethics at this point, I’m not seeking to privilege philosophy; rather, I’m pointing out what takes place in every public policy school across the country: policy begins with ethics, often in classes entitled “The Social Contract” or “The Rule of Law” or “Social Justice” or whatnot.
DGH, on your theory, Christian and non-Christian alike can find common ground in the Natural Law. This theory is strikingly modernist, imagining that we can all find common ground in a self-evident code of ethics. In practice, this is simply not the way it goes down. Rather, each person brings to the table his own set of ethical ideas, with the result that we have Marxist social theory, feminist social theory, utilitarian social theory, libertarian social theory, and so on.
What of the Christian? As a member of the community, can he bring his own set of norms, Christian norms, to bear on society? Not for W2K. For W2K, there is no such thing as Christian social theory, since the Bible has no section labeled “Christian social theory.”
At this point, W2K has removed the essential liberty of a Christian to think Christianly when operating in the public sphere. Non-Christians are to have complete liberty to be grounded in whatever influences they choose; but the Christian must explicitly eschew his own grounding so as to preserve “liberty.”
At this point, one must ask what liberty that W2K has preserved. Certainly, not the liberty to be guided by the teachings of the Lord. The liberty of a Christian is the liberty, apparently, to live with a divided conscience, upholding one set of ethical norms in private and Church life, and a different set of norms in public life. (And what is worse, the second set of norms don’t actually exist! More on this later.)
I was not aware of Dr. Kloosterman’s comments until after our discussion first started, DGH, but I associate myself with many of them. In particular:
At this point, DGH might ask, “Why should I care if the Christian’s liberty is restricted? After all, we are promised trouble in this world. And all I’m asking is that the Christian not take up the sword in order to force others to obey God’s law.”
If that were all that W2K asked, I would probably not raise any objections. Unfortunately, it goes beyond this: it positively requires the Christian to use a different ethical basis for his laws, to call night, day; and to call black, white.
Over against this stands the Scripture:
The making of laws is the making of justice, and there is but one standard of justice. To ask the Christian to set this aside for a supposed Natural Law is to shackle him with a non-Biblical command of men which requires him to deny the unique moral status of the teaching of the Lord.
W2K does this by failing to distinguish between two separate acts: Christians taking up political power in order to change society (which we agree is misguided), and Christians who are in positions of political power, faithfully holding to the teachings of the Lord as the unique source of right and wrong. By conflating these two acts into one, W2K wrongly shackles the Christian magistrate, withholding from him the freedom to be a faithful follower of Christ.
I sum up with Calvin:
Jeff,
Do you think it is possible that two Christian magistrates can disagree about how to solve any given political problem, or is there only one Christian way to solve for it? Let’s leave the highly loaded and way over-done questions about abortion, etc. alone (sorry, Dr. Kloosterman) and bring things down to a more manageable, but no less important and ultimately helpful, level: What if I think turn-abouts are better than 4-way stops but you think otherwise? We’re both interested in how to make a certain important aspect of society run well, but we differ over how. (I know I’ve done this before, but prudence and generosity are both biblical virtues. You might leave a prudent tip while I leave a generous one, but neither has any ground to say the other is wrong in what he lays down; he only has ground to exhort when the other doesn’t pay his bill.)
How do the classic Reformed categories of indicatives (“You belong to Christâ€) and imperatives (“Therefore, act like itâ€) figure in to your objection? How can the civil magistrate be said to meet the indicative so that the imperative has ground? Your objection seems to suggest that 2K wrongly tears asunder, but what you actually have to show is how something other than 2K can legitimately bring together what cannot be. Another classic Reformed formulation seems to help, namely the first use of the law: nobody needs to belong to Jesus by faith in order to carry out what is right, true and good. 2K doesn’t tear asunder; it wants to think more carefully about who does what and on what grounds.
Given how you speak about it, you seem to assume that natural law is some sort of man-made thing, which allows you to carry forward with this odd notion that 2K promotes some sort of private/public antagonism for the believer. But 2K understands natural law and revealed law to be synonymous. Believer and non- both have equal access to the idea that stealing is wrong. That’s natural law. That’s common ground. The irony of all objections to 2K is that everyone lives happily like a 2Ker everyday but wants to speak as if something better exists. The common sphere is so big many don’t seem to realize they are smack in the middle of it. I think this can often break down between those satisfied with a proximate justice and those questing after an exact one, those who can live with the world as it is and those who want to quest after how it should be.
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Darryl: Most things Dutch give me pause, actually. But it seems to me that more and more the most prominent advocates of NeoCalvinism are found either outside, or only adopted into, the Dutch subculture. And I’m all for the 1789 revision; it would seem that of PaleoCalvinist just means old Calvinism, the Covenanters or even the Still Water Revival types could make a case for being more paleo than thou.
The Dutch question for me raises the question of Van Til. How does he fit into a non- (anit-?) NeoCalvinist PaleoCalvinist framework?
Zrim: I’d say, in brief, that since nearly all knowledge we possess consists of the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man, and that since there is something distinctively Christian about knowing God as he is revealed in Scripture and knowing the nature of humanity as created in the image of God but fallen into sin, there is such a thing as Christian education. For example, history at any level must answer the question of why stuff happened. Any attempt to provide an answer raises questions of how we weight human agency in relation to other factors (evolutionary biology, class conflict, geography, etc.) and human nature itself. These are fundamentally religious questions. I would also affirm what Van Til would say on the antithesis, non-Christians borrowing a Christian framework for interpreting reality, etc., as well as the role of Christian education in helping students develop discernment, etc.
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Russ, the Covenanters (whom I admire) and the Still Water folks suffer from a similar problem as neo-Calvinists — too ethnic. That is, in the same way the neo-Calvinists have trouble getting beyond the Dutch ghetto, the Covenanters and other keepers of the National Covenant flame, have trouble not realizing that what happened in Scotland is circumstantial to being Reformed. Granted, Americans have their own version of this when they privilege revivalism and its offshoot, experimental Calvinism. But it is a problem nonetheless. This does not mean that I’m an advocate of cosmopolitan Calvinism. The more particular Calvinism is, the better in my estimation. But once you take a particular form of Calvinism and transplant it in another place, the particularity needs to adjust. I’d have thought neo-Calvinists would have learned this kind of organicism from Kuyper himself (who was not always at odds with 2k views).
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Jeff, I believe you raise a good point about the 2k view of liberty, at least at one level. But I think you make a couple of assumptions about my view that are inaccurate. First, I do not advocate Natural Law. I am not opposed to it either. But I don’t think it is the magical wand that will resolve all political difficulties. What I do advocate is the ability of fallen reason to make some sense of this world for the proximate ends of stability and order (in the larger providential plan of restraining evil). Just as Calvin recognized the insights of Seneca and Aristotle about politics, so I’m more than willing to recommend the likes of Roger Scruton, Wendell Berry, and Leon Kass about a host of policy and theoretical matters that pertain to public life (James Madison and Thomas Jefferson also come to mind as worthwhile political theorists).
Second, I do not insist that Christians use natural aw in the political realm, nor do I insist that they refrain from Christian arguments. It is a free country and I think all believers have political liberties to express their faith openly. That doesn’t mean, though, that I think believers will be successful. If it’s a free country for them to make Christian arguments, it’s also a free country for non-Christians to reject Christian arguments. So part of my objection to a Christian world view on American politics is its lack of wisdom. If Christians want to convince others to come around to their way of looking at things, using Christian arguments may not be the best way.
But I suspect that part of your concern is not the pragmatic one but the theoretical one — what is the true Christian view of society and government? Here I feel we are headed back to the sorts of arguments that occurred at Greenbaggins after the 2008 election. If you hold, whether tenaciously or no, to a Christian social theory as being the norm that informs your conscience, I sense you are headed to an uncomfortable position of either rejecting the existing secular regime of the United States or needing to cause a revolution to institute a form of government that embodies a Christian social theory. If you think Christians must follow a Christian form of government, then are you not violating your own conscience by submitting to the American powers that be?
I am not trying to be clever or rhetorical about this. I am truly trying to understand how someone who believes the Bible teaches a certain kind of social and ethical order can live in a society where that order is not observed. As I said many times over at Greenbaggins, chances are the advocates of a Christian politics end up behaving like 2k Christians. So why not make the circle complete and simply adopt a 2k theory to go with your 2k practice?
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Russ,
I guess I still don’t understand how it follows that because “nearly all knowledge we possess consists of the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man, and that since there is something distinctively Christian about knowing God as he is revealed in Scripture and knowing the nature of humanity as created in the image of God but fallen into sin†that “there is such a thing as Christian education.†Does that also mean there is a thing called Christian pottery and politics?
I agree that these are “fundamentally religious questions,†just like I agree that Christianity has something to say to the world. But I think where we might differ is just what that answer is: Some say the gospel has a direct and obvious bearing on the cares of this world, some say it doesn’t, rather it has a counter-intuitive bearing and something directly to say about the next world. Some say true religion takes pains to say there is no such thing as Christian versions of any worldly project (politics, education, art, science, salad making), only a Christian version of the church.
In other words, the difference between 2K/SOTC types and, well, everyone else isn’t that the former don’t believe these are fundamentally religious questions, rather that we think the answers are way more counter-intuitive, not-so-obvious or indirect. I think the failure to grasp this is what may help account for all the rotten “antinomian-speak†tomatoes thrown in the typical food fight.
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No, I agree. Not just wrt Christianity, but wrt any worldview whatsoever, I wonder whether the American Constitutional project can survive long-term. I suspect that the Founding Fathers operated on a modernist basis: either that a common mode of ethics was self-evident (Jefferson) or else, they hoped that some form of Christianity would be the established religion of the states.
Today’s America, with a greater Federalist impulse and a particular view of Church and State, cannot but help trample on liberties in one form or another when it comes to issues like land use, marriage, freedom-of-conscience laws, and so on.
More later. Gotta meet the family for dinner.
JRC
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I would think that there might be multiple Christian approaches to, say, turn-abouts; and multiple non-Christian ones as well. I’m not sure what that proves??
For the record, I think Frame deserves a second look from you guys. He handles the “common sphere” aspects by stuffing them into the situational and existential perspectives, which has the effect of elevating the common sphere into a genuine aspect of knowledge.
I know that his perspective on the RPW is anathema, but if you could get past that a bit, you might find some helpful points of common contact in this very area of coordinating the common and the sacred. </advertisement>
This whole paragraph is hard for me to grasp (sorry!). I’ll respond so that you can understand and correct the confusion.
I think what you’re asking is how a non-Christian magistrate could possibly be expected to carry out God’s imperatives? If so, then I deny the premise: belonging to Adam, not Christ, places one under the weight of God’s imperatives.
It was Kant and not the Reformed who taught that “ought implies can.” Kant was simply mistaken.
Tears what asunder? Bring what together? I was really lost here.
Are you referring to Calvin’s first use of the law?
This is so opposite what you wrote that I have to think we’re talking about a different “first use”?
Well, actually, I have more specific assumptions about the Natural Law: namely, that no-one has ever had any success at exhibiting its content, without smuggling in some other ethical theory; and that “Natural Law” suffers from the inability to bridge the gap between *is* and *ought*.
So for example, I agree that believers and non-believers have equal access to the idea that stealing is wrong. But I believe that because I share with you a meta-ethical theory about right and wrong: that God’s commands define what is right.
People that don’t share that meta-ethical theory (ex.: Peter Singer, Joseph Fletcher, Ayn Rand) would not agree that stealing is wrong per se; it is only wrong if it decreases total preferences, is done outside of “love”, or is contrary to rational self-interest, respectively.
Now if you want to stand ground here and say that the Natural Law really *is* just the revealed Law of God, written on the hearts of men, then we have some content to the Natural Law.
But at the same time, you’ve surrendered your main point: that the Natural Law is “common” and can be used in the common sphere in a way that Scripture cannot.
I’ll have more to say about this in a future objection.
Well, I’ll grant that I live happily as a 2K-er. And I even describe myself as some kind of 2K-er. I’m just not a Westminsterian 2K-er. The problem here is that 2K theologies come in multiple flavors, and you’ve tended to rush past the differences and assign everyone to “2K” or “not 2K”, when in fact the world of political theology is much more variegated. This problem is especially acute when dealing with historical figures like Calvin and Augustine. They were 2K, but they were far, far from W2K.
JRC
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I stand corrected. I wrongly inferred your position on the NL by improperly globbing your position and Zrim’s together, and from a vanDrunen article I read.
But now a trio of new puzzles present:
(1) If we take “stability and order” as the goals, would you say that the magistrate is bound by utilitarian ethics? Or, would you say that “utilitarian ethics is as good as we get in the common sphere”?
(2) Does fallen reason include both *means* and *ends*, or means only? How does this work out with, say, the embryonic stem cell debate? You are President Obama’s bioethics adviser. Put your fallen reason to work on crafting a policy for federal funding.
(3) In practice, fallen reason will conflict with Scripture ‘cuz that’s what we do as fallen man. But can fallen reason *legitimately* conflict with Scripture? If not, then why not use Scripture as a check on our fallen reason?
When I suggested this before, you said that I was “turning the Bible into a reference book” (which was really odd to my ear — I thought it was standard 3rd use that I was advocating), but you never gave a reason not to do this.
This is also a useful clarification that gives hope for further common ground. But what then should I make of your objections to Christians making Scriptural arguments?
Say for example: What’s wrong with Chuck Colson arguing that the OT pattern of retributive justice is superior to our modern model of “corrective justice”? Somehow, he’s a naughty transformationalist when he makes such an argument.
Or put another way: you grant that Chuckie C has the political liberty to make these arguments, but you (appear) to object to the wisdom of his making those arguments at the same time. Well, fine. The liberty wasn’t the question; the right thing to do was.
So when you say, “It is a free country…”, are you really giving Christians the moral liberty to make Scriptural arguments? Or are you just commenting on our political freedoms?
Well, no, actually, it’s pretty much a pragmatic concern! There are a couple of reasons for this.
(1) I’m by nature pragmatic. In my view, James teaches that doctrine that does not actually reach our hands (“doer of the Law”) is doctrine that we don’t really believe. For me, belief and practice form a continuum. That’s one reason that I find Frame useful in certain areas: he and I share this prejudice about theology.
So when I encountered the W2K arguments, I started running them through test cases, such as the Case of the Christian Magistrate. My objection really starts there, both in time and in ground.
(2) I’m sufficiently 2K that I don’t believe that government is an essential feature of being a Christian. Christians who govern, should govern as unto the Lord; but Christians who live under a government, should submit as to the agent of the Lord. Some of us get to live under amenable governments, and some of us don’t, but the world is never our home.
That’s the sum of my Christian Social Theory. Well, no, there’s more. But wrt governance, I definitely do not believe that Christians must establish a Christian Social Order in order to be faithful citizens.
So …
Not at all. I don’t think Christians must follow a Christian form of government because I don’t think that the laws of man are, in general, binding on the conscience. They restrict my behavior, but they don’t force me to disbelieve.
BUT
I do think that Christians who happen to govern, should govern Christianly (whatever that means).
AND
I also think that secular governments tend towards idolatry. Even though I resisted Elder Hoss’s strictures about education, I think he’s right that fallen reason tends to make government into an idol. At least one study bears out the negative correlation between reliance on government and reliance on God: Gill and Lundsgaarde.
Therefore, I believe that Christians may at times have to resist the government. Zrim thinks I’m crazy in this regard, even though I multiplied Biblical examples of civil disobedience.
My stance is above, but let me go one further and answer for the theonomists: if one does believe that a certain social order ought to obtain, then the right thing to do is to take the steps to maximize the likelihood of that order materializing. A Bahnsenian theonomist would argue that spreading the Gospel and using the legitimate arms of democracy are the right, pragmatic means to that end. So a genuine theonomist lives as a long-term transformationalist.
JRC
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Jeff,
The point over turn-abouts and 4-ways is simply that there are various ways to solve a temporal problem and that eternal devotion has nothing at all to do with it. You suggest that there are Christian and non-Christian approaches to turn-abouts, but what could that possibly mean? I am honestly asking: what is a Christian view of turn-abouts?
The point about indicative/imperative wasn’t that a pagan magistrate shouldn’t be expected to carry out what is right, true and good, rather that the pagan’s ground is different from the believer’s. I think we have more agreement than not here. But if that is the case I guess I still don’t know why you seem to want scripture to have even indirect bearing on the structuring of society when it belongs exclusively to the church.
But it seems to me there are two ways to get revealed law onto general society, one blatant and the other latent. Those who favor latent ways tend to agree with 2K/SOTC as it opposes blatant things like outside-in theonomy, Constantinianism and even some forms of transformationalism. But because it still harbors the notion that the gospel has direct and obvious bearing on society it seems to prefer a more inside-out posture, a kinder and gentler one and out pops something quizzical about a Christian answer to questions of city planning.
By first use I mean the law referred to in Rom 2:14,15, the moral code written on men’s hearts which alternately excuses or condemns them. It’s the law known by all men, regardless of their covenantal status (i.e. believers and non-) as to what is right, true and good. Christians and pagans have equal ability to get things as right as wrong because each is as indwelt by sin. Christians can try and construct some sort of social theory based on the revealed law of God in order to meet the alleged alternatives; but for what purpose since sin always subverts everything?
I agree that there are myriad ways of understanding 2K. Many agree that there are indeed two kingdoms—after that there are different understandings of the nature of the kingdoms and their relationship to each other. For what it’s worth, I tend to think we may have more to learn from Luther on the kingdoms than Calvin. Luther seems to begin with the basic structures of Augustine but improves upon them and finally renders what I think is a vastly superior approach. Of course, we live on this side of history such that I think even Luther could be surpassed. I wouldn’t seek to disingenuously “enlist†any of these thinkers, but rather capitalize on them and see how they can be brought to bear on our time and place as Xian believers.
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sssshhhhhhh on the Luther business. We don’t want people getting the idea that the NTJ is Lutheran.
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Jeff, what do you see as the difference between 2k and W2k such that you say the former is far from the latter. My own view is that Augustine’s views on the two cities (not necessarily the same as the two kingdoms) is far removed from American Protestant modes of thinking about this world. Luther and Calvin were indebted to Augustine in their own ideas about the church and the world. But again, their ideas are in short supply among American Protestants who prefer the inspiration of Kuyperianism (even though Kuyper himself was not always so inspiring). You make it seem like lots of 2k thinking is going on out there. I suppose you also put Frame in that camp. But his brief for biblicism has had much more appeal among theonomists (both hard and soft) than among those who distinguish the holy from the common.
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Too late.
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I agree with the first part and disagree with the second. My eternal devotion (such as it is … this week hasn’t been a stellar example of such …) drives my views on human needs v. efficiency, environment v. aesthetics, etc.
Ethics isn’t everything, but it is everywhere. Likewise, the Bible may not spell out road patterns in specific, but it does not follow that the Bible is entirely irrelevant to road patterns.
By all means, put me down in the latent camp, and blatant only if absolutely necessary. But that’s a question of means, not ends.
What I’m hearing from W2K is that the *end-goal* is a completely divorced church and state; and my response is, as long as the church is made of people (and it is), and as long as the state is governed by people (and it is), you can’t fully separate church and state without being Amish.
It may be that W2K has over-represented its arguments in absolute terms. Or that I’ve over-read the arguments that you and DGH have made.
Perhaps what you desire is simply a much lower degree of church-state entanglement. If that’s the case, then many of the objections evaporate. But if that truly is the case, then your arguments will need to become much more nuanced. We’ll have to move from sweeping absolute generalizations into more careful assessments of degrees of entanglement.
Example:
I can’t see how this can be maintained in the face of Rom. 6 or the “indicative/imperative” framework you mentioned above. I have to conclude that you’re making a rhetorical flourish here. Else, your words literally say that genuine Christians are no more able to obey God than non-Christians — and that runs headlong into a ditch (cf. WCoF 13.1, 3), since non-Christians are entirely unable to obey God.
JRC
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I meant something slightly different. W2K is a species of 2K theology. Augustine and Calvin also espoused two other species of 2K theology. A’s and C’s 2K theologies are far, far from W2K. I’ll develop this more, but here’s the short of it: Calvin’s Geneva demonstrates clearly that he did not believe in a Secular Faith.
JRC
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Jeff,
My point isn’t that we are “entirely unable to obey God” (for the reasons you suggest) but to put an accent on our sin. I thought that is what Calvinists were supposed to do, emphasize sin?
Besides, I don’t know how else to explain that on any given day I get as much wrong as I get right and the Christ hating unbelievers around me fare no better.
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Jeff, I understand that Philadelphia in 2009 is not Geneva in 1560. But if that is the comparison then again aren’t you putting yourself in a position to renounce, revolt against, despise the American polity? Calvin would not have approved of 1776 or 1789. So again, if you’re going to use Calvin against me, you better save some for yourself (if you are a loyal American).
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Therefore, I believe that Christians may at times have to resist the government. Zrim thinks I’m crazy in this regard, even though I multiplied Biblical examples of civil disobedience.
Jeff,
Did I say “crazy� You said it, not me.
Maybe it’s my being a buttoned-down, first-born mid-westerner adored by WASP-y and Fundy mothers alike, but the Christian life, as I understand it, can be summed up in one word: obey. (Mark 12:13-17 alone should be enough to make this point—they were “amazed†for good, compelling reason, being told to obey he who thought he was the deity and intruded on private lives like nobody’s business).
I’m not sure I can recall what biblical examples you catalogued for me, but just the phrase “civil disobedience†sounds way more American than Christian. Certainly, when I read real fast-like through the NT I simply don’t come away with any notion that disobedience is a virtue. This is doubly odd given how my attempts to guard liberty, etc. are always cast as somehow flirting with antinomianism (maybe not by you directly in so many words). Then I’m told disobedience is something to be nurtured. What gives?
Less Thoreau, MLK and Falwell, more Paul.
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Weird. I would have used the word “believe.” Or “love.” Both of which entail obedience, of course. But “obey” by itself is insufficient, I think.
Here’re the relevant references. I’ll be happy to point you to further examples if needed.
The core problem here is that to dismiss civil disobedience entirely directly implies that civil obedience is always required, that laws of men are morally binding. This is not the case. Civil law restricts behavior, but it does not bind my conscience. I obey the magistrate because I am a citizen of heaven and subject to Rom. 13. But my primary citizenship is not of this world.
Jeff Cagle
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I don’t think I intend to use Calvin against you. I’m not comfortable with Calvin’s Geneva! My only point is to think carefully about 2K theologies and get some agreement that they are not all created equal.
JRC
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Actually, I’ll take the first sentence back. Clearly I think Calvin has some relevant things to say here. But the rest of my comment stands.
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I do too, that’s why I quoted Calvin in the original post. When he wrote: “whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual Kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct. Since, then, it is a Jewish vanity to seek and enclose Christ’s Kingdom within the elements of this world, let us rather ponder that what Scripture clearly teaches is a spiritual fruit, which we gather from Christ’s grace. . .” was he thinking that Geneva was the coming of the kingdom, or a program for urban renewal? Those who claim Calvin seldom go near passages like this.
I don’t presume to know how to determine “the real” Calvin. When thinkers like Calvin, Luther, Edwards, Barth, etc, write as much as they do, trying to find the red-letter thoughts in their writings is tough and contested work. Even so, to make sense of Calvin’s views on the magistrate, his point in this quote would appear to be highly significant.
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Jeff,
What I’m hearing from W2K is that the *end-goal* is a completely divorced church and state; and my response is, as long as the church is made of people (and it is), and as long as the state is governed by people (and it is), you can’t fully separate church and state without being Amish.
Telling 2Kers to complete their circle by becoming Amish the way 2Kers tell blatants/latents to do so by some form of ex-patriotism would be really cool, but Anabaptists have a completely different understanding of the spheres, body and soul, etc. Radicalism is a bifurcation, where Protestantism is triadalism; recall the Venn diagram analogy at Green Baggins—I quite agree that as long as humans make up church and state the distinctions are fuzzy and not always easy to make. But that fuzziness is precisely why a more careful distinction (different from “completely divorced†and “fully separateâ€) is demanded.
And, according to Protestantism, the tension of dual citizenship isn’t resolved by withdrawal (Radicals) or fusion (Rome). Indeed, when fellow Prot’s say 2K/SOTC is Anabaptist I really think they show just how under-tutored they are in church history.
Besides, I can’t see myself in those buggies. I’m way more Harrison Ford than Kelly McGillis.
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Two thoughts:
(1) If you don’t like the first argument (and I can see why!), then why do you employ the second so frequently?
(2) Since we agree that the distinctions are fuzzy, why do you present yourself in such absolute terms?
Neither of these are intended snarkily. Rather, I’m really mystified at the inconsistent method: you get to live in a world of fuzzy distinctions, but others must choose between either W2K or else renouncing their citizenship.
Jeff Cagle
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Jeff,
1) Because I think the second follows better than the first. Does it help that there is such a thing as resident or soft ex-patriotism? Blatants should probably take up arms or get out; latents should probably just talk about Christian turn-abouts or generally improving the world by applying redemption to creation. 2Kers simply participate.
2) I am not so sure the absolutism is mine. But you knew I’d say that, right? Well, OK, Jesus did say his kingdom was not of this world. I tend to believe he didn’t have any crossed fingers when he said it.
No snarkiness taken (really). I feel your pain on being mystified. I’m still trying to figure out what a Christian turn-about is.
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It is, of course, a turn-about that has made a personal profession of faith and has been baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And attends conferences for like-minded turn-abouts. 🙂
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DGH and Zrim, I have a final question and then I’ll move to Objection 2.
DGH, you’ve said that you can accept Christians using Christian arguments (“Second, I do not insist that Christians use natural law in the political realm, nor do I insist that they refrain from Christian arguments.”), though you think it might not be the most effective strategy.
It appears that you are concerned with means here, yes? And further, you do not oppose Christian magistrates being guided by Scripture in order to make wise decisions? Or do you?
Meanwhile, Zrim is entirely opposed: “But if that is the case I guess I still don’t know why you seem to want scripture to have even indirect bearing on the structuring of society when it belongs exclusively to the church.”
So at this point, it’s unclear what the true W2K position on the relationship of Scripture to governing. Should Scripture be excluded (Zrim) or merely stay in the background (Hart)?
Thanks,
Jeff Cagle
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Jeff, As I’ve said before it’s a jurisdiction “thang.” Is the Bible the rule for an American magistrate, Christian or no? Conversely, are the rules and by-laws of the Rotary Club the norm for a session? The answers are obvious (to me, at least). So one of the problems I have with a Christian magistrate being guided and bond by Scripture is that this neglects the very laws he has vowed to uphold. The Bible and Bucks County’s legal code may not be inherently at odds. But I want the officials of Bucks County to know local laws before trying to apply the Bible to the polity.
And so my bigger point is that Christians in the American public square are often more familiar with the prophets or the sermon on the mount than they are with the Federalist Papers or the arguments of the Anti-Federalists. And yet, the disputes between those political outlooks are more relevant to America than the Bible (mainly, he added, to allow for some wiggle room).
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Jeff,
Perhaps in my push to get you to explain how and why holy writ has even indirect bearing on secular enterprise it sounds like I am getting all exclusive-y. But I am with DGH that believers are perfectly free to try–I’m no theonomist. I’m just not convinced of the wisdom, especially when all I ever, ever see in holy writ is God jealously giving his word to his people alone. What is so bad with the Code of Hammurabi ruling Egypt while the Decalogue rules Israel? Doesn’t that just make sense?
And that bit just above about jurisdiction. The first three rules in real estate are location, location, and location. In 2K it’s jurisdiction, jurisdiction, and jurisdiction.
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“Neo-Calvinists seem to want to go back to the Garden”. Actually, we want to move forward towards the City.
One of the interesting things about Natural Law, as Thomas defined it, was that it was in fact no different than Biblical law, just discovered by another means. The issue is the not the Truth, but the way of discovery. To set them up as two distinct systems, with different content is mistaken. It is to say that there are “two truths” that are acceptable under the Lordship of Christ. But to Thomas, and I assume to Calvin as well, there is only one Truth. And although there are distinct spheres of authority, all are to be subject to the Blessed Holy Trinity.
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Dear DGH,
In the states of California and New York, the civil law is still common law, and this has its foundations in Biblical law. The laws are still there, but the will to uphold them is lacking. There would be no contradiction between a magistrates actions if he was to uphold the laws that are on the books, in this case. Besides, reforming law is OK, right?
Sincerely,
Chris Zodrow
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Sorry to leave this hanging. I hope the leisurely pace is OK with all.
So to summarize where we are:
I object that W2K restricts the freedom of the Christian magistrate to decide according to true justice because it unnecessarily restricts the Bible as a source of public ethical norms.
DGH responds that there is some truth to this, but that he is not adamantly opposed to Scripture as a source of norms. Rather, he is concerned with the wisdom of making Christian arguments in the public square on the grounds that they may not be persuasive to all.
Zrim OTOH is willing to concede that believers are free to use Scripture in the public square, but they must be careful of “jurisdiction, jurisdiction, jurisdiction.”
Is this a fair summary?
If so, then my observation is that we appear to have more common ground than at first sight. I won’t say that my objection has evaporated, but it would take on a less stark form. Perhaps
Obj 1 (modified): W2K hampers the liberty of the Christian magistrate disproportionally by discouraging the Christian magistrate from using the Scripture as a source of ethical norms, while leaving nonChristians free to use any norms they wish.
On the positive side, “free to try” is an important and welcome concession to my objection.
On the negative, “free to try” is insufficient (to this objector) when coupled with the many discouraging things said by W2K-ers about Christians who actually *do* try to use Scripture as a source of ethical norms in the public square.
JRC
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Jeff,
While I’d still say that there is a difference between the freedom and the wisdom to bring scripture to bear on public ethics, etc., there is another point about wisdom to consider beyond not being able to persuade those who don’t share our convictions: what are we telling ourselves when we do this? It light of Jesus’ own hermeneutic that all of scripture is about him (i.e. it’s about getting into the next world, not ordering this one), it would seem to me that a more careful wisdom would hesitate to make the Bible useful to man on his terms and in his immediate interests. (If the Bible is not a handbook for tips-for-living how can it be a handbook for public ethics? My own sense is that people make a distinction between the trivial and enduring, such that the Bible is relevant for the concerns of the serious-minded but not for the trivial-minded. But the trivial and enduring are still traits of the passing age; the gospel transcends the cares of this world, from the trivial to the significant, because they are passing. Otherwise, I am not sure what to make of Jesus telling me to hate my parents and that my highly valued marriage and family will be dissolved in the next age—family concerns are enduring, but as temporal concerns if they get in the way of my eternal views Jesus hates them.)
And I’m not saying that pagans are “free to use whatever norms they wish.†That language sure makes it sound like you’re stacking the deck so you can pull out the antinomian Ace of spades. We are all free to make any arguments we want. It would be best if everyone would appeal to the God-given norms as set in creation. To be honest, since it’s really hard to do other wise, I would suggest this actually happens way more than you may presume. But just because some may do it poorly doesn’t mean they are appealing to something which lies outside creational norms of what is right, true and good. Have you ever considered that much of what you think is satanic is actually just a disagreement over interpretation, or even he who doesn’t have your religious conviction may be arguing better per creational laws than you?
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Jeff, why look at the Bible as a source of ethical norms? Isn’t it more a source of how God saves man?
Also, when you do look at the Bible for ethical norms, chances are you’ll go to the second table and neglect the first. But aren’t the Bible’s norms a package? Can you really have biblical prohibitions against murder without sanctifying the Lord’s Day? So is your ideal Christian magistrate ready to fine or imprison blasphemers and idolaters along with those guilty of abortion?
One last consideration, so much of modern statecraft is not about ethical norms. Now, we can debate the size of government and I’m all for anti-federalist agrarianism in principle. But today’s magistrate is engaged with tax incentives for home owners or best practices for the flow of traffic at rush hour. In other words, you could go to the Bible for a lot of the magistrate’s concerns and find nothing. (That’s not disrespectful to the Bible because what the Bible reveals — a savior from sin — is so much more important than ethical norms. The reason is that if you’re anything like me, you’re a breaker of those norms and need a redeemer who propitiates your sin.)
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Jeff,
Those big quotation icons are boss.
I look at the Bible as a source of ethical norms because it presents itself as such as a part of how God saves man. You both in your own way have raised a false dichotomy: “Either the Bible is a source of how God saves man, OR it is a source of ethical norms.â€
In fact, it is primarily the first, and is therefore the second as a consequence. That is to say, when we are saved, we come under the Lordship of Christ and are therefore obligated to follow His commands. (Surely I don’t need to establish this from Scripture, right?!)
Right. Recall the point about indicative/imperative. Nobody is saying that the Bible has no category for ethical norms; rather it is a question of who those norms are for and for what purpose. We share with unbelievers in creational norms, but we don’t share with them our redemptive realities. We both resist stealing and murdering, but for different reasons and with different goals in view. However, see my following response for more twists and turns.
A separate question is whether the Scripture is given to man to “order his life†or to “be useful.†Zrim, I actually agree with you that Scripture is not given to man so that he may “order his life.†But this is as true in the public realm as it is in the private. I follow Christ’s commands (to the extent that I actually do follow His commands!) because I love Him, not because I will get something out of it. This is true individually and therefore true collectively as well.
My Calvinism tells me that, as justified sinners, we are a compromised lot. True, we act out of gratitude to Christ, but we are also still trying to “get something out of it,†not least is the abiding notion that we are still trying to justify ourselves. I’d like to have a higher view of myself, that I am not so compromised, but I’m a really bad prosperity type.
So to my mind, you are chasing a rabbit trail by trying to distinguish between “public†and “private†here. The central issue is idolatry, both public and private: do we obey God in order to get something out of it, or do we obey God in order to be obedient to our Lord?
Again, I do both. I’m a private/public idolater and a private/public saint. As such, I need the cover of a rabbit hole. I am an (imperfect) covenant-keeper who sins privately and publicly. Where in any of your reasoning is your confession, Jeff?
Dr. Hart: One last consideration, so much of modern statecraft is not about ethical norms.
I respectfully disagree. If you want to know the priorities of a nation, you look at its budget. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.†Modern statecraft is entirely about ethical norms. American statecraft is primarily about utilitarian ethical norms. An argument can be made from Scripture that God judges (some?) pagan nations for failing to uphold ethical norms.
I know this one is for DGH, but if I might. It seems to me that if the day-to-day operations of modern statecraft are anything like my day-to-day operations, and I think they are, much of what happens is really more a question of how to get to the next day in one piece. This is not to suggest that ethics are not at play, because they certainly are. At the same time, I know it’s tempting to reduce worldly enterprise to moral or ethical categories, especially for religionists. But I do a hell of lot more maintaining than I do carrying out bare ethics in my typical day (to say nothing of transforming or improving much of anything). I gotta believe it’s the same for my senators, mayors and judges.
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Why does Jesus command us not to worry about our lives, what we will eat or drink or wear?
I’m with you in terms of how I function: much of my day is maintenance, rather than self-consciously glorifying God in my maintenance. But to me, that state of affairs reveals how deep sin runs and how much I need a Savior. Or how much I fail to love my neighbor as myself.
Consider the “small” things that Jesus points out as sin: the barn-owner who thinks to himself, “I’ve got lots stored up for years to come, so I’ll take it easy.” The lustful look. The angry word.
Consider the sins that can occur in the ordinary process of self-maintenance: cutting off another driver by being in a bit of a hurry. Dissing my wife by spending my time on the computer instead of with her. Etc.
Self-maintenance is not morally neutral. As soon as we accept that our lives are “vocations” — spheres in which we are to glorify God — then failing to self-consciously glorify God becomes idolatry, a worship of the creation instead of the Creator.
And that fact makes us all sorry idolaters.
Speaking of, isn’t this the point that was being made in the Wal-Mart thread? That Wal-Mart’s “sound business practices” are actually a violation of the 8th Commandment?
I think you’re confusing what we *do* with what we want to advocate. W2K is all about giving advice to Christians about the proper relationship of Church and State. I’m pretty sure that your advice would not include trying to justify oneself with the Law, yes?
I don’t understand the question? If you mean,”Why are you not including a full-blown picture of how the Gospel connects to ethical reasoning?”, then you’re right — I haven’t presented one. But that’s NOT because there isn’t one in mind; it’s just because I’ve been focusing on what I consider to be a “hole” in W2K; namely, the (partial? apparent?) abandonment of Scripture as a source of ethical norms.
JRC
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Jeff,
I really don’t understand the points you are making re maintenance. I’m not clear on what my point on maintaining has to do with Jesus’ Lordship. He’s Lord over my maintaining. And I am not clear on why maintaining is sinful. Am I sinning because I am minding my own business? Isn’t that the ethic with which we are charged? How is that not glorifying God? What’s any of this have to do with driving habits?
My point about gratitude/getting something was simply that we are compromised creatures as sinners; I’m not sure many really believe this, even those who confess it. And that was also the point of asking where your confession is in all of this. Why am I the one talking about abiding sin while you seem to have no discernible category for it?
I’m not quite as convinced about the Wal-mart stuff. While I think the points being made are good, I’m not clear on what a better conservatism has to do with Christian virtue anymore than a better progressivism. Conservatives appeal to commandment eight, liberals to commandment ten. It’s odd how both seem to end up having a beef with Wal-mart. All I’m trying to do is get some diapers and all my neighbor is trying to do is make a living. I sort of wish the conservatives and liberals would let us mind the square inch of earth over which we are actually ordained.
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Jeff:
Where have I accused you of theonomy? You brought it up, and yes, I do think your construction of Christ’s Lordship and ethical norms makes the world safe for theonomy. But I didn’t bring it up. You did.
You didn’t answer the point about tax policy and stop lights. These are matters that lots of magistrates attend to. What is the ethical norm for the stimulation package?
Your understanding of Lordship seems to be that Christ is Lord whenever and wherever ethical norms prevail. But I thought Christ was Lord even when Nero was ruling. I also believe that Christ was Lord even when he died an unjust death on the cross. That’s bad magistracy. But it’s good gospel. You are trying to harmonize the two worlds. You don’t seem to have any room for Joseph — good coming out of evil, God’s plan coming out of wicked intentions.
And you don’t seem to have pondered the important point from Machen that finally got through to me the basic argument of A Secular Faith: The use of the Bible for the purpose of common public life “in which Jews and Catholics and Protestants and others can presumably agree, should not be encouraged, and still less should be required by law. The real center of the Bible is redemption; and to create the impression that other things in the Bible contain any hope for humanity apart from that is to contradict the Bible at its root.”
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Sorry for that “stimulation package.” Perhaps I’ve been corrupted by watching too many hours of The Wire. I meant “stimulus package.”
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Hah! I need to quit reading this blog while I’m in the library, as it normally makes me laugh out loud at least once a day. (It’s a good thing I usually sit downstairs with the periodicals where there are usually few others around.)
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Well, perhaps my memory is faulty concerning the long Election Cycle thread.
The main point is that we’re clear on the goal: in critiquing W2K, I’m not carrying water for theonomists; any more than in upholding the creeds, you are secretly aiding and abetting Catholicism. Two groups that happen to affirm the same thing, for different reasons, are coincidentally related only.
No, that’s precisely backwards. On my account, Christ is Lord, twice, over all: first, because of Creation; and second, because of Redemption. And where Christ is Lord, ethical norms are obligatory.
So Christ’s Lordship is not contingent. It’s not obedience in order to make Christ the Lord; but obedience because Christ is the Lord.
I think there’s a lot of merit in Machen’s quote; it’s putting the idea to work that becomes problematic.
JRC
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I think that’s just a function of the territory we’ve covered. And the difficulty of reading out another’s entire theology across the ‘Net.
In terms of soteriology, I am heavily influenced by Jack Miller and friends, so the notion of abiding sin is quite comfortable to me. What Miller does best is to bring the Gospel to bear on the true state of our hearts, and that includes admitting the bad news up front: sin runs deep and into every tendril of our existence.
And in fact, that was the point of my discussion of maintenance: it’s not that maintenance is evil, nor driving, nor buying diapers at Wal-Mart. Those activities are just a part of the world, and can be done for good or ill.
But the doing of them is never neutral. Indeed, on this side of the Garden, our actions will never be purely good either. We will, as a function of being fallen humans, harm others or fail to honor God in ways large and small throughout the day.
That point doesn’t lead to despair, but to a knowledge of the need for grace.
So how do I account for abiding sin? By seeing it, admitting to it, calling it for what it is; and then thanking God for saving me from it, and relying on the Spirit to bring about a change of heart.
What makes me uncomfortable with your approach is that you appear (?) to place many activities outside the realm of sin and into a morally neutral zone. Perhaps that’s a reflection of the rhetoric rather than your true thought?
JRC
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Funny you should mention stoplights. The light at the intersection right before my school just changed patterns. For fifteen years at least, it was a “turn left on green.” We’ve had several accidents over the last decade and a half. But there was a fatality there recently, so the pattern was changed to “stop at the blinking red arrow, and then turn left.”
That’s in accord with Maryland DOT policy: introduce a new light pattern only after a fatal accident (or so I’m told).
Now:
* Is there an ethical norm in Scripture that specifies how traffic lights should function? No.
* Is there an ethical norm in Scripture that’s relevant to traffic lights? Yes — the sixth commandment.
* If I were crafting the law about traffic lights, would I feel obligated to employ the sixth commandment in my reasoning? Yes. And especially if the arguments against making the intersection safe had to do with things like money or convenience.
* Would I pressure unbelieving fellow legislators to obey the sixth commandment? Pragmatically, no.
* Would I respect the decision of a Christian legislator who felt that the sixth commandment is satisfied by a different solution from mine? Yes. Given that the details are not spelled out in Scripture, there it is: there is some liberty in the administration. By the way, this hold true in the Church as well — liberty is not a function of the sacred/secular divide, but of degree of certainty: if the Scripture does not restrict in some way, then there is liberty[1].
* Would I mount a campaign to pressure people around the country to set up traffic lights my way? Absolutely not. That’s not my jurisdiction.
Now suppose I were a citizen instead of a traffic-light-lawmaker. Would I petition the government for a change in the law to take into account the sixth commandment? I might very well, but only if I thought such a petition had a reasonable chance of success.
But in my own driving, in my own jurisdiction, I would strive to keep the sixth commandment whether required by law (as in this country) or not (as in Eastern European countries, at least when I was there in the 90’s — cross the street at your own risk!).
But now the big question: are traffic light patterns an ethical issue? AbSoLUTEly. As soon as we ask the question, “What should we do?”, we are asking an ethical question which will ultimately come back to which outcomes or behaviors are desirable. Do we want more income equity, or do we want more property preservation? That’s the ethical issue behind taxation.
See, one of the places where we’re at loggerheads is that you view the ethical use of Scripture in terms of communal agreement. That’ll never happen, not without compromising Scripture. In fact, that problem is not unique to Scripture; any ethical system is subject to the problem of being compromised when consensus is sought.
Whereas for me, I look at the ethical aspect of Scripture in terms of individual guidance: today, with my slice of time and my resources, what should I do in order to fulfill God’s call in my life?
And my whole entire point can be summed up in one sentence: If God’s call in my life is to be the magistrate, then I am obligated to take Scriptural norms as the basis for my “magistering.” (to the extent that they apply).
Now, you might ask, “What if the civil law contradicts the Scripture? Don’t we have to obey Caesar — the Constitution, say — at this point?”
But ironically, you also would be subjecting the Christian magistrate to the Scripture — it’s just that you would be privileging Romans 13 over other ethical norms!
JRC
[1] The RPW does not contradict the general principle. In the case of worship, the Scripture *does* restrict liberty.
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I think this is good example of unethical taxation:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/20/bonus.bill/index.html
JRC
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Jeff, no offense, but I cannot think of a better premise for theonomy: “where Christ is Lord, ethical norms are obligatory. So what does a Christian magistrate do on your scheme with Roman Catholic and Mormon worship? The question of religious liberty in the civil realm hardly squares with your understanding of Christ’s Lordship. In my view, Christ’s Lordship exists even when it looks like it doesn’t. In fact, his greatest power may actually be displayed in his apparent weakness.
Also, why is the sixth commandment the norm at play in traffic lights? Why not the fifth (honor those in authority), and also the tenth (be content with waiting).
Even so, despite these indirect relevancies of traffic lights to God’s moral will, is a traffic light established by a secular magistrate less binding than one put up by a Christian magistrate. Wouldn’t the secular magistrate think he is acting neutrally? And wouldn’t this be a violation of your understanding of ethical norm’s relevancy?
So again, with your own view of ethical norms suffusing all of life, you have set yourself at odds with a secular government. Isn’t that precisely what theonomy is?
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@DGH and/or Zrim: Could you refer me to a (online) source with some kind of introduction in W2K? You make your case here quite well, so I’m interessted in the bigger picture, so to speak.
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Machiavelli: I went over to Zrim’s blog and found this link: http://www.covopc.org/Two_Kingdoms/Two_Kingdom_Social_Theory.html
It should get you started.
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Mach,
Here’s a nice reading list:
http://www.covopc.org/Two_Kingdoms/Two_Kingdom_Social_Theory.html
A more narrow suggestion I would make would be: Begin with David Van Drunen’s monograph, “The Biblical Case for Natural Law,” followed by a lengthier, “A Secular Faith” by some yahoo named, uh, Heart or Hart or something. The key to the latter is uttered here by its author for free:
And you don’t seem to have pondered the important point from Machen that finally got through to me the basic argument of A Secular Faith: The use of the Bible for the purpose of common public life “in which Jews and Catholics and Protestants and others can presumably agree, should not be encouraged, and still less should be required by law. The real center of the Bible is redemption; and to create the impression that other things in the Bible contain any hope for humanity apart from that is to contradict the Bible at its root.â€
Grasp this and all things will be made possible unto you.
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Jeff,
If I might, you really seem to making things way too complicated. The simple truth is that you don’t need the Bible to do any temporal project, from changing diapers to traffic lights to UN resolutions to stimulus packages.
I know you think this is to denigrate revelation (because that’s what I used to think). But I lived for 20-some years without a speck of faith and got along quite well, thank you. I never cracked a Bible and somehow managed to figure out how to be a good citizen, friend, neighbor, student, son, employee, brother and husband. To boot, my father is even less interested in the Bible and I can only hope to be half the man he is one day.
If the gospel is as brutally counter-intuitive as Jesus says and Luther makes plain, then to suggest we need the Bible to do earth is actually what is denigrating to it. It is to co-opt what it lays jealous claim to, namely the salvation of flesh.
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(I honestly thought I had beat you to that link. Blogdom is so weird.)
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Jeff, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think it adviseable to avoid the position where the things with which you disagree are always unethical. It could make you appear to be a moralist and even self-righteous.
I’m not trying to call you any names. In fact, this is really just a suggestion and I could see all sorts of ethical objections to any number of tax policies coming down from on high the last six months. But it does raise the difficulty that sometimes the 2k-averse do not consider — they come across as self-righteous. I know this is one of the reasons for the reactions against the Religious Right not just by the media but also by college students who are Christians. They don’t like the Pharisaical nature of so much tsk-tsking.
Of course, sometimes ethical norms require believers to be scolds. But I hope you’d also recognize that self-righteousness is incredibly unbecoming of Christians, who are sinners just like everyone else. I know it’s a cliche to say that I’m not better than anyone else, just forgiven. But that starting place for social and political engagement might be a better one for seeking the welfare of the city, or the farms, or the burbs. (Heck, no, I’m not going to privilege the city even if I do live there.)
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Ha ha.
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I appreciate the blunt but gracious expression of concern.
It’s true — in my flesh nature, I can tend towards scolding at times. Still and all, that doesn’t prevent me from having ethical concerns about a confiscatory tax law (that’s likely unconstitutional to boot), does it?
Well, anyways, thanks again for the corrective.
JRC
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Jeff, wow! May I give your email address to my wife? I never knew my advice could be taken so well.
At the same time, don’t be too hard on yourself. I’m concerned less with how you come across and whether you’re right. If you are correct about taxes, I need to hear it. But I need a lot more to be persuaded about the theory of ethical norms as well as its application to American federal legislation and policies.
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Well, it’s time to move on, I think.
Obj 2: The Scripture does not sustain a clean division between “public” and “private” faith.
Dr. Hart, in Chap. 6 of SF, you make these observations concerning the Sermon on the Mount:
My understanding of the argument is this:
* Jesus commands privacy in the areas of almsgiving and prayer.
* His command suggests that important areas of devotion should be kept personal and private, so
* It should be possible for the Christian to keep his faith in the private realm and out of the public realm of politics (but not, of course, public worship).
My reaction is to consider the argument from two different directions. First, systematically, it appears that faith is *not* always private and personal in either the NT or the OT. Second, exegetically, it appears that your reading fails to locate Matt. 6.3, 6 within its context.
First, it will be helpful to distinguish “public” from “civic” or “governmental.” When I argue below that faith is sometimes public, I will not be arguing that the Bible legitimates a “civic faith.” There is a necessary distinction between Christians acting publicly and Christians requiring a nation as a whole to subscribe to a particular faith. Even if this difference is one of degree, we can nevertheless agree that a church that starts a housing project is doing something very different in kind from a church that takes over an entire government.
The difficulty is that in SF, you move freely back and forth between the terms “public” and “civic”, which obscures some of the issues involved, I think.
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Systematically, I want to consider occasions and commands.
When Daniel was in Babylon, which was certainly outside of the classic Klinean “Intrusion Zone”, he prayed so that others knew of it. He and his friends SMA accepted Babylonian names but refused Babylonian food, on religious grounds. They worked for the king, but they refused to worship the king’s idols, even in public. What we see in Daniel is not a scrupulous avoidance of public religious expression, but rather a measured decision to fight the important battles.
When we see Paul in public, we see him as an evangelist. In fact, he says, “Woe is me if I do not proclaim the Gospel.” Before kings, Jews, Gentiles, in courts of law and public assemblies, in the Areopagus, Paul asserts the Lordship of Christ in the context of Gospel proclamation. The same was true for the other apostles, and Stephen, and others whom Paul describes as “evangelists.”
Nor was the response a private one only. On one occasion, Paul’s hearers publicly repented of their sorcery by burning their scrolls (Acts 19, an event that Luke records in a positive light). On another, Peter’s 3000 were publicly baptized.
Nor was almsgiving always done secretly. The believers in Acts 4 gave in such a way that Ananias and Sapphira schemed together to give in order that they would receive glory for it. Likewise, Peter’s healings were done in public.
Importantly, Peter, when ordered to keep silent about Christ by the religio-civil authority (Acts 4), turn the tables on the authority and ask them to judge for themselves whether it is right to obey man rather than God.
Now at this point, you might say that evangelism is an obvious exception to the general rule of keeping religion private, since evangelism is by definition directed to non-believers. And of course, I’d be happy to grant that exception. But two problems remain: (1) The public giving in Acts 4, the public repentance in Acts 19 are not remotely in the category of evangelism. (2) Evangelism is high on the list of “problem activities” for liberals who advocate private religion. Recall that your goal as stated was to live in common society:
But in fact, evangelism is much more offensive to liberal sentiments than almsgiving in Jesus’ name (which is viewed as slightly misguided but eminently progressive).
As we further consider the commands in Scripture, the public/private divide becomes even less clear. James says,
Jas. 3.13-17 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.
Jas. 5.1-6 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.
Jas. 5.12 Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, or you will be condemned.
While certainly James here does not advocate civic religion, he nevertheless makes clear that a man who does not act in accord with his faith in the public realms of what he says, how he pays his workers, the giving of his word — he will be condemned. Public realization of private faith is required by James.
Likewise Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (to which you appeal!) says, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matt. 5.14 – 16).
So somehow, while good deeds to be seen by men are prohibited, good deeds that men see and give to glory to God for are required.
Summing up, the Scripture simply does not present a paradigm of cleanly separated private faith and public common life.
So what about Matt. 6.3 and 6.6? Two features about the text shape our understanding of Jesus’ command. The first is location: Jesus’ commands are to be obeyed *not* in the context of the “common public sphere”, but rather in the context of the Church. It was not in the common sphere that alms were given, but in the temple. It was in precisely the location that you wish for faith to be expressed — public worship — that Jesus commands that we give in secret.
The second is situation. In the hearers’ lifetimes, sacred Israel and secular Israel were combined, not separate. It was in this context that Jesus commands that prayer occur in secret. And yet, he does not follow this up with a discourse about the need to separate Church and State; nor does he command his disciples to let their lights shine before men in the sacred sphere but not the secular (as if there were any distinction between the two in their situation!).
In short, Dr. Hart, I think that reading out of Matt. 6.3 and 6 a command to keep faith entirely in the private sphere is an over-reading of the text. Jesus appears to be clear about the purpose of his command: that the disciples avoid self-glory by performing religion to be seen by men. And Scripture at large requires us to put our faith into practice where-ever we find ourselves, whether Israel or Babylon.
Let me close with a practical illustration of an issue near to Hart. You are a strong advocate of strict-ish Sabbatarianism, yes? Consider what has happened in the last 30 years with the collapse of blue laws. I’m not a particular fan of blue laws, so this is not a lament for times gone by; I’m just interested here in cause-and-effect.
In 1978, if a worker asked for a religious exemption for working on Sunday, it was in general readily granted. In fact, many businesses were closed on Sunday. As blue laws were gradually repealed, this granted people on the one hand freedom to shop, or not shop, on Sunday. In other words, the initial result of repeal was an increase in individual freedom to obey the Sabbath, or not, without state coercion.
But in the 90’s, a new trend developed. Shop-owners began to make Sunday shifts a condition of employment, especially for low-paid workers like teens. Likewise, recreational sports teams found new freedom to schedule games on Sundays.
The result was that freedom was transferred from individuals to corporations, so that individuals actually lost the freedom to observe the Sabbath, without making other lifestyle decisions. Teens in my church, for example, have to choose between not participating in soccer teams, or else missing worship on some Sundays. This is not a particularly hard choice in my mind, but the point is that their religious expressions cannot be kept private here.
In other words, Sabbath-keeping in the year 2008 is matter that impacts one’s public life: work and sports.
JRC
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Jeff,
I’m not sure the argument is so much a “clean division†between private and public faith as it is a better, more careful sorting out of what private and public faith mean—which actually can be a complicated project. You seem to be inferring that faith has no public aspect or any place in the public domain. But if that were true then it would seem we’d have no use for church buildings, confessions, councils, presbyteries, books, etc. and so forth. That is not what is being said.
Maybe an analogy. Consider your own family unit. Surely there private and public aspects to being a member of the Cagle family. Surely there are appropriate and inappropriate ways members should behave in private with Cagles and in public with non-Cagles. Is it necessary to bring Caglehood to bear on non-Cagles indiscriminately, or is it only appropriate to bring Caglehood to bear on those who already reside within and/or those who are looking to become Cagles (i.e. adoption)?
Or do you imagine that when you go grocery shopping, where nobody cares about Caglehood and where it is completely irrelevant to the immediate task, that somehow you have to bring Caglehood to bear on how everyone else does that activity? If so, what exactly would that look like: Cagles do not eat Ida Red apples, therefore Cash-N-Carry ought not sell them? What do the peculiarities of Caglehood have to do with how Cash-N-Carry does its task? Cagles and the managers of CAC both agree that stealing butter is not how we do things, but the latter group doesn’t need the former to know that. But beyond the agreement over stealing butter, what does anybody care what Cagles think of how it is manufactured, displayed, marketed, priced, or purchased? In other words, if you’re right in all of this then a trip to the grocery store will likely get a lot more complicated for you than it currently is (I hope), and not a little, well, silly.
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Jeff: I think Zrim’s response gets at the dynamic I was trying to address on the public-private distinction. In SF I was not trying to make hard and fast rules. It was a historical treatment that used particular instances to show how Christians may have misapplied efforts to make their faith public and therefore civic or political. And the point about Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount was to suggest that if on some occasions our faith should be private, then we don’t have to conclude, as many pietists do, that our faith should be evident all the time. That certainly seems to be the practice of Daniel, who administers laws of a regime that denied the true and living God. He was a first-rate politician, and a faithful Iraelite, carrying out his private worship and drawing the line at certain of the king’s laws.
I also agree that public worship is public. But it happens in a private building.
As for blue laws, one of the interesting aspects of liberalism is that in this greatest nation on God’s green earth, I still have liberty to keep the Lord’s Day holy. I don’t see how a change in blue laws has changed my freedom to worship and rest. If Christians had not tried to regulate the Sabbath through blue laws, they’d like have a much easier time pointing out how liberalism at times binds their conscience. But because Christians for a long time bound the consciences of others through laws, their complaints now about the unfairness of the state looks hollow.
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P.S. You probably know this, but Christ’s lordship over all things, and our belonging to Christ does not make us lord of all things. Christ delegates his authority. His authority delegated to the Zrims does not give Mr. Zrim authority over the Cagles. Christ’s authority delegated to me as citizen does not make me lord over the magistrate. And Christ’s lordship over the magistrate does not give the magistrate lordship over my family.
Just as jurisdiction is important. So is the idea of delegated authority. Christ doesn’t give the same authority to all people, and he doesn’t even give more authority to Christians than to non-Christians. He delegates authorites to parents, magistrates, and church officers. The only one of those authorities that needs to be a Christian is the church officer. For the other two, they may actually possess authority delegated from Christ and not even know it. Ignorance does not invalidate the authority.
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That’s right, Darryl.
But if Jeff is right here, not only does his shopping become complicated but so will our relations as neighbors become more busy-body-ish, that is, unless Jeff can conceive of my coming over and suggesting or demanding he raise his Cagles in Zrimian fashion (actually Zrimecian). If Christianity is supposed to bear on non-Christian domains what exactly keeps me from poking my nose in his business?
There’s a lot to be said for sphere sovereingty.
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Fantastic! I am truly encouraged that this is where we are, since this also is where I am: we cannot consign faith entirely to the private domain; nor do we seek for Christ’s kingdom to be realized this side of the eschaton; so therefore, we must sort out the instances or categories in which the Christian *must* act, where is *is free* to act, and where he *should refrain* from acting, for the purpose of giving guidance to those impacted the most: Christians participating in ways large or small in the public sphere.
Unfortunately, every time I suggest this, the W2K rhetorical response moves to the extreme and places me in a totalitarian category. The pattern of reductio refutations employed by my esteemed counterparts carry with them the assumption that any expression of public faith entails every possible expression of public faith.
From this, I infer that either (a) W2K is a dualistic meta-theory about Church-state relations, in which any public expression of faith is prohibited, or else (b) W2K proponents are incorrectly reading out all objectors as belonging in the same boat.
I had concluded (a), but perhaps (b) is the case.
Let me give some examples of what I mean:
Granted that you are employing an analogy, Zrim, but still you have shifted from “… put faith into practice where-ever …” into a much more aggressive, “… require others to put my faith into practice.” Which I didn’t say and have explicitly disavowed.
and another:
and another:
Back in November, I thought that this kind of reductio shift (Oh man — I inadvertently left out the ‘f’ in that last word — what a way to blow the conversation sky-high!) was just a ploy, but I’ve since come to understand that it’s seriously intended.
But what assumption underlies it? Since I haven’t expressed the ‘extreme’ position that the reductios imply, it must be that in both your minds, my milder position entails or ought to entail the extreme one. Indeed, Zrim, you wrote:
Statements like this lead me to believe that W2K is all or nothing: if we don’t have total public/private sphere separation, we have theonomy.
FWIW, I think a lot of the resistance you encountered on the Election Cycle thread was not so much because you opposed theonomy, but because you took much milder positions and lumped them all in together (by means of the reductio strategy).
There’s one more point, as well. Dr. Hart, in SF you explicitly state that you will not be addressing the pragmatic question of how to actually conduct one’s faith in the public sphere:
And of course, the intent is that since Christ’s kingdom transcends the kingdoms of this world, then we should not try to shoe-horn Christians into our liberal democracy as if we needed permission to sit at the table.
But also, your book concludes that Christianity requires very little of its adherents politically. And so, rather than working out a careful sorting as Zrim suggests, this flagship volume of W2K offers up only an argument for separation of spheres.
If more needs to be said, then great. But in the absence of any such signal, I think a reasonable reader would conclude that W2K wants entire and total sphere separation; that its solution to the problem of Church-state relations and of Christians operating in the public sphere is don’t (except as common citizens).
So Objection 2 doesn’t yet know whether it’s aimed at the actual W2K view, or the rhetorical strategies of W2K adherents. Which would you say?
JRC
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Zrim, I think the grocery store analogy is a good one for exploration.
In fact, there are private and public aspects to Cagledom. However, being in public does not nullify the private aspects.
Let’s separate out some issues:
(1) Does being in public change the private rules?
(2) Does having private rules justify requiring those rules be followed by others?
(3) If I were a public magistrate, would my private rules inform my public rules?
In short:
(1) No, mostly.
(2) No, mostly.
(3) Yes, often.
Example of (1): One of our private rules is, “We are loyal to each other.” (it’s not a spoken rule, exactly; but my kids are pretty little, so the time may come…) In public, I would, Lord willing, honor that private rule even if a “common good” could be served by breaking it. More on this concept in a further objection.
Example of (2): I would not, in general, require others to be loyal to their family members, even though I think of it as a basic norm that should be followed.
Example of (3): If I were a public magistrate and the opportunity arose to decide on a law that would encourage or discourage family loyalty, I would be swayed by the ethical norm that ‘loyalty to family is a basic value.’
So it turns out that the answer to your question, “Is it necessary to bring Caglehood to bear…” is not simple.
JRC
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Why? This is another reductio argument. I don’t seem hampered at all by endless ethicizing, nor by busy-bodiness (maybe a little, but not anti-socially so), and yet I also think I’m right, or at least on to something.
So either my position doesn’t entail an extreme position, or else I’m cheerfully but thoughtfully inconsistent.
I think the former. I think it’s possible to begin with the basic premise that God’s Word is sovereign over all of life, that it sits at the center of all human activity, and yet accord others the basic freedom to be wrong.
In fact, I’ll go one step further. I think the Reformed position allows for a tremendous amount of freedom because it distinguishes Scripture from one’s own interpretation of Scripture. That distinction allows me to be personally “theonomic” — that is, to desire to be ruled by Scripture equally in the private and public spheres — and also to allow others to disagree with me, without having to accuse them of selling out the Scriptures or demanding that they conform to my worldview.
It also allows me to obey laws that are wrong without having to be bound in conscience to them.
Zrim, one of the arguments you’ve made several times is that when I pass a law as a magistrate, I’m binding the conscience of another. This is not fully true.
Certainly, if I’m requiring someone to do something unethical, then I’m binding their conscience. But if I pass a law requiring, say, the labeling of nutritional information on containers of food, then my law is not passing moral judgment on other possible labels, or on no label at all. Instead, it is simply requiring a certain kind of behavior, not a certain kind of belief.
That’s one reason that I am not paralyzed by the prospect of accidentally imposing my Christian ethics on non-believers. At a behavioral level, I have to impose *some* kind of ethics via the law, and Christian ethics is the only kind I know (not really — but it’s the only kind I want to use!). At a conscience level, they’re free to believe whatever they want.
So I have no problem with requiring people not to murder, but allowing them the freedom to worship another “god.” The first is a restraint of behavior; the second is an issue of the heart.
JRC
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Jeff,
If I understand your concern it is the suggestion that there is 2K/SOTC and then there is everything else. And you perceive this to be an extreme posture, which also seems to assume there is something wrong with extreme postures. While I’m not much for the implications of being an extremist, I have to admit that you rightly perceive that 2K/SOTC confronts fairly stridently the human default setting. But that seems pretty consistent with the narrowness, exclusivity, intolerance and counter-intuitive nature of Christianity in the first place, at least to my mind.
I think the grocery store analogy is a good one for exploration…In fact, there are private and public aspects to Cagledom. However, being in public does not nullify the private aspects…One of our private rules is, “We are loyal to each other.†In public, I would, Lord willing, honor that private rule even if a “common good†could be served by breaking it…So it turns out that the answer to your question, “Is it necessary to bring Caglehood to bear…†is not simple.
Yes, but “being loyal to each other†is a common rule that Cagles and non-Cagles share, like not stealing butter. Not/eating Ida Reds is peculiar. My point was to ask what relevance peculiarity has on common endeavor. My suggestion is none, only commonality has relevance to common endeavor. Moreover, what is common on the part of Cagles, loyalty and not stealing, is grounded in Caglehood for Cagles. Little Cagles not only don’t steal because, like non-Cagles, they all generally agree stealing is no way to get along but also, and perhaps more importantly, because mom and dad say so. Cagles have indicatives that are distinct from non-Cagles. Their imperatives may look the same but their indicatives are really what distinguish them.
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No they don’t, and not for the same reasons (necessarily) if they do. In fact, if we all shared the same rules, then there would be precious little need for government (above and beyond distribution issues). We have the police for a reason: we don’t all share the same ethical values, and we don’t all practice the ethical values we claim.
Or to use your language, the indicatives will out.
JRC
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In fact, if we all shared the same rules, then there would be precious little need for government…
No, because human beings need governing. That’s the principle. The application (i.e. how) varies. We all already share the same fundamental rules, we just differ on how they should be applied.
We have the police for a reason: we don’t all share the same ethical values, and we don’t all practice the ethical values we claim.
We have police because we have criminals. Everyone agrees that stealing is wrong, even those who violate the rule. (Indeed, Madoff depends on stealing being wrong, otherwise he’d never come into stupid amounts of money.) The point isn’t to get everyone to agree on ethics because we already do; the point is to punish evildoers.
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Jeff, I’m a bad correspondent right now. So here are a jumble of thoughts.
Why is it that a guy who is “personally” theonomic would only advocate nutritional labels on food? What about capital punishment for fornicaters? And if you’re only privately theonomic, would you execute someone in your family who violated an OT capital offense but gladly live in a liberal democracy where such offender would receive only a fine (at most)?
I don’t see you thinking enough about power and it could because you’re thinking so much about ethics. What is your jurisdiction as an elder, father, teacher, citizen? This is a version of what is your vocation? But not all rules or ethics fit all vocations. As a father I would hope you would not turn the other cheek if your son slapped you. The same would go for the classroom. But what about a magistrate (and what does the sermon on the mount do to your personal theonomy)? What about you as a neighbor or citizen?
I think the either-or ness of my position comes from the distinction between what the Bible requires and what it doesn’t leaves us with freedom. I see no instruction for national politics in the Bible. I see instruction for church polity — whether Israel’s or Christianity. But only one nation had rule over matters religious. So the rest of the nations have liberty. The created order and the law written on our hearts help fight complete antinomianism in the civil realm. But the lesson still applies; the church may only require what the Bible either explicitly commends or condemns. After that believers have freedom to eat meat offered to idols or not, to put up a stop sign or a stop light.
Then don’t forget the category of wisdom. In between what the Bible instructs and Christian liberty is what is most fitting according to the created order. This is a much tougher call and one that is almost impossible to execute in the church. But it is one that would allow the Cagles to say they are doing a better job as parents than the Zrims.
One last thought — you need to see the downside of every piece of legislation or policy. Nutritional labels look good and wholesome. Who could be against them? Well, the farmer who doesn’t want pay for the paper work to get licenses, or to have labels on the milk he sells to local residents. It is possible that government can prevent bad things from happening. But it also prevents good things too. A farmer or local businessman who carries on on the basis of trust and reputation rather than regulation is someone who might find your labels unethical and if not an abuse of power unwise for the health of a local community.
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Well, I understand where you’re coming from. This will dovetail with Obj 3. Here’s something to think about: suppose that natural man suppresses knowledge of God and becomes really determined to do so. In that case, would it not be possible that he would *resist* agreement on anything smacking of God’s law? It is my contention that we’ve arrived at that point.
JRC
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Ha! I think I’ll wait about 30 years before attempting to evaluate that one.
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…suppose that natural man suppresses knowledge of God and becomes really determined to do so. In that case, would it not be possible that he would *resist* agreement on anything smacking of God’s law? It is my contention that we’ve arrived at that point.
If I understand, this sounds like there are sinners and then there are sinners. But my Calvinism only understands two categories: saints and sinners. I don’t perceive there to be variations of either. I understand some sinners to also be saints, perplexing and mysterious as that reality can be.
What do you mean “we’ve arrived at that pointâ€? Is this a commentary on the world state of affairs? If so, I don’t believe that the world gets better or worse as time either progresses or retreats (or as place differs); coupled with my Calvinism, my amillennialism isn’t given to either sunny or gloomy views of human history. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to human beings and their world. What we see now is what we would see the day after we were sent packing east of Eden and what we’ll see right before the last trumpet.
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Zrim, maybe Jeff is referring to the state of this discussion — where we are now. Ha!
Jeff, even the most depraved of persons seems to have a keen sense of fairness. Where do you think that comes from? And don’t you think that’s fairly constant?
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Case and point, Jeff. I thought of that crack before Darryl did, but even in the midst of my total depravity I refrained and let him because it’s only fair to let a blog host have such honors.
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Wait, hold on. I’m NOT referring to the current state of the discussion, but of the current state of theories about government current in Western society. More to come.
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What a great example of what I mean! The word “fair” is entirely broken in our society. What is a “fair” tax code? Flat amount? Flat rate? ueber-Progressive? No-one can define it.
What is a “fair” amount of time for students to get to take their SATs? Equal time for all? Extra time for kids with disabilities? (Read “Harrison Bergeron” for an extreme take on this). No-one can say because the word “fair”, in the end, means “I like it.” It is the ultimate in subjectivist ethics.
(We’ve been recently working on the 5-year-old to stop saying “it’s not fair!” about Every Single Little Thing she doesn’t like …)
The basic sense of fairness is a reflection of the law of God written on the hearts of men. But the results of sin are such that a sense of fairness alone does not get us to a governmental theory. The Natural Law, such as it is, gives us a “First Use” function (as in Romans 2), but not a civil government.
Well, this is far afield from where we started.
JRC
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Jeff, I’m not sure how far afield this idea is, especially the one you introduced when you suggested we have reached a time when natural man is so bad that we can’t even begin to agree of ethical standards. Interestingly enough, this seems also to be related to the other conversation about justification and sanctification. Oddly, it is the 2k people who seem to take sin more seriously in the realm of soteriology and keep pointing out how sanctification is imperfect, and hence the need for the priority of justification. But in the civil realm, the idea of man’s depravity is not as troubling to 2kers, and so we’re not as depressed about the current state of affairs — in fact, our expectations for the civil realm were never that high (at least once adjusted for our theology). But you Jeff seem much more hopeful about progress in the Christian life and more despairing about the state of civil society than I do (I think Zrim would agree). Either way, I think there’s enough in man’s instinct for fairness on which to base some form of civil government. No, it won’t be as pretty as the government and order of our churches — ahem — but it will still allow for a measure of order and stability.
Btw, for a great article on the relationship between the 2k view and the ordo salutis, see Dave VanDrunen’s inaugural lecture in the current Westminster Theological Journal.
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Jeff,
I knew you weren’t talking about the state of the discussion but rather how you see the world shaking out these days. My point then is still relevant and stands, even as you appear to be posturing yourself to take on particular ideological, political, social or cultural specifics.
I think the “fair†point was simply one about the fact that sinners all have an enduring sense of what is right, true and good however obscured it may be and however other sinners like to think they have a better handle on it. And, at the risk of sounding like an overly Sunday-schooled snot, the right answer to Darryl’s question is, “God.â€
Nevertheless, your point is very well taken. Like my Catholic friend regularly points out, justice and mercy are far superior, and biblical, categories to use. If experience counts for anything I will suggest to you a bit of due caution in exorcising your 5-year-old of her bad linguistic habits. It scraped me for years, too. But sometimes it is just shorthand for, “I don’t like that; I disagree; you are frustrating me; I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore.â€
Vonnegut is a literary genius. He makes me seriously question the doctrine of re-incarnation, as he is the modern manifestation of Mark Twain (kinda like Hart is to Machen).
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Darn, I wanted to be Mencken. (He died only three weeks before my birth. Coincidence? You tell me.)
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No thanks, providence has a thing about trying to figure it out.
Driscoll and I share the exact same birth date (really). I wonder what that means (not really). We’re both Libras…after that, I don’t know what we have in common.
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I quite agree, yes. But probably only because I think you are right.
Jeff, if I told you I had a proximate justice in one hand and an exact one in the other, which would you choose?
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Yes, I have an intuitive sense that the whole WSC project: W2K, the upholding of ordo and downplaying of union, the definite stance on Kline v. Murray, and Horton’s work on justification are all inter-related. But I don’t have a clear picture yet.
JRC
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Yes, that is my concern exactly (about ‘W2K’ — is ‘SOTC’ the ‘Spirituality of the Church’?). There is nothing wrong with extreme postures per se, but you’ve already given up the extreme posture by conceding that the public and private spheres overlap to some extent. Having conceded that, the only question left to settle is, “to what extent, and how do we know?” (That question is precisely the one that SF leaves unanswered.)
So the problem is one of (apparent) inconsistency. On the one hand, W2K demands pristine sphere separation from others and criticizes them for not obeying the proper jurisdictions of each sphere. On the other, it admits that the spheres overlap BUT it fails to provide a clear account of the overlap.
What we’re left with looks like, to an outsider, that Zrim and DGH are the ultimate arbiters of sphere sovereignty: if someone else commingles the spheres, they are wrong. But if we press the issue, we discover that the spheres can be commingled after all.
The forgoing is an uncharitable take, I admit. I suspect that there’s more to your view than just arbitrary sniping at others! But I want to provoke you to put your cards on the table here and talk about how we go about determining the proper overlap of public and private.
JRC
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Jeff,
This may cause fits, but 2K/SOTC (yes, SOTC is ‘Spirituality of the Church’) is perfectly at ease with what you call “apparent inconsistencies†and imply as contradictions, as well as arbitrariness. This is because 2K understands that the individual believer is the nexus of the two kingdoms. He has a foot in both kingdoms. Instead of trying to resolve the tension of this inherent paradox by bringing one kingdom to bear on the other, 2K lets the believer straddle his dual citizenship and live with the tension. It’s easy to lose balance when one is trying to bring the spheres together instead demanding they don’t move and are left to be what they are. Where you see inconsistency, contradiction and arbitrariness we see paradox, tension and, well, the complications that come with being at once a sinner and saint. That really isn’t too unlike what it means to be simply human, with various demands that need to be sorted out each day and that nagging feeling that not everything was neatly resolved at day’s end.
But you also have to remember that we are also triadalists. Remember the Venn analogy? There is a common sphere. It’s so vast most seem to forget they inhabit it. What you seem to be holding us to is being Fundamentalists who radically separate the spheres such that ne’er the twain shall meet or admit that special revelation is necessary to general revelation. But that’s the leading edge to liberalism where the spheres melt into each other.
But I feel your pain. 2K is not the default setting. It’s hard work. I recognize myself in your slogging through it.
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No fits here.
But I don’t buy it. 🙂
Consider: let’s take at face value “2K is perfectly at ease with inconsistencies, contradictions, and arbitrariness, because it recognizes that we live in the midst of paradox.”
I’m perfectly fine with this.
But now consider W2K criticisms of others. As I pointed out above, the problem is that if anyone expresses the paradox, immediately he is shoved into an extreme group. So for example, if I express that Scripture does not permit a clean separation between public and private, then all of the sudden I’m a busybody.
(Not personally offended — I’m just pointing out the issue re: myself because I know my own views best. I could speak comfortably about either Frame or Bill Davis also).
That suggests to me that far from being comfortable with paradox, you want purity. And in fact, you say as much: “I have to admit that you rightly perceive that 2K/SOTC confronts fairly stridently the human default setting. But that seems pretty consistent with the narrowness, exclusivity, intolerance and counter-intuitive nature of Christianity in the first place, at least to my mind.”
I’m suggesting that if you’re *really* comfortable with paradox, then you’ll feel comfortable giving others space at being somewhere in between, without having to force them to be in a “neo-” or “paleo-” camp.
People really can believe that God’s word is normative for all of life, without believing that the Church ought to run the government. Heck, Calvin believed in two spheres and also thought that the magistrate ought to execute heretics. What kind of “pure” 2k theology is that?!
So my objection, I think then, is directed at the rhetoric rather than the concept, if I can take at face value that W2K admits overlap between the spheres. I just think that admission is at odds with the rhetorical strategy.
JRC
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Jeff, the paradox and apparent inconsistency is not as arbitrary as you allege. If you start with the nature of church power and state power. Church power is ministerial and declarative. It ministers the word of God. The church bears the sword. They have different kinds of power and their jurisdictions are distinct. The church doesn’t rule over the civil courts or legislature. The same can be said for the state.
But then you have this trick situation of church member being in both the church and the state. This is the tension and paradox that 2k views address. It’s not always easy to sort this out. Mind you, it’s not even easy for Kuyperians and sphere sovereignty to negotiate the overlapping spheres of family and church.
The other thing that may be throwing you is the 2k distinction between matters that are holy, common and profane. These distinctions derive directly from the command to keep the Lord’s Day holy. Work that is otherwise fine during the week (common), is not fit for the Lord’s Day (holy), and so becomes illegitimate (profane) if performed on the Lord’s Day.
What the 2k view is doing is rejecting the absolute categories laid down either by theonomists, world-view thinking, or Frame’s biblicism that rejects all “dualisms” of any kind and tries to make the Lord Lord of everything equally. The Lordship of Christ works out differently in different persons, different days, different jurisdictions. 2k tries to respect and account for this diversity. Wolters and Frame, though, try to force everything into a Christian world view or the Bible applies to all of life shoe box.
Speaking of arbitrary, physicial heal thyself after claiming to be a theonomist but only personally.
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Hm. I’ll need to chew further on the latest response. Certainly, I’ve never said it was easy to sort the spheres. However, I currently doubt that W2K is the only (theory) or even best (pragmatism) tool for doing so. I think you may be underestimating the power of Frame’s framework, for example, to sort out spheres by appeal to situational knowledge.
You may not think it consistent (I do), but it’s not arbitrary. God’s commands given to me are not equivalent to God’s commands given to others. By this, I don’t mean that God gives me special commands or anything, but rather that I am not held to account for the obedience of others.
In other words, God’s commands to me do not include, “Make sure that DGH obeys.” That’s why I don’t accept that my view entails busy-bodiness.
An example: in Eph. 5, Paul gives commands to husbands and wives. One of the annoyances of “Christian culture” is that men and women frequently take responsibility for each others’ commands. The husband demands respect and obedience from the wife; the wife, love and sacrifice from the husband.
Nonsense. The command to wives is given to the wives, not the husbands. And vice-versa. “Who are you to judge another man’s servant?”
So there’s nothing arbitrary about saying that I am bound by Scripture, but that I will not bind the conscience of another. It is a limitation principle that shares much in common with your notion of jurisdictions.
But speaking of jurisdiction, that principle looks different in my role as elder. So if we can form a point of contact here, it will be on the point of who has a right to bind consciences about what. But I think I can do that without denying that Scripture informs all of life.
And in fact, you think this also; else, why would you want to use Rom 13 and Matt 22.21 as the source for your meta-theory of Church-State relations? You crypto-transformationalist, you! 😉
JRC
P.S. My limitation principle applies to this conversation also. Even though I am engaging and contesting W2K, in the end, I think you have the space and freedom to try to work out the difficult area of Church-State relations without needing my imprimatur. At the end of the day, if we still disagree, I won’t walk away muttering “Heretic!” I understand you’re trying to find wisdom about a hard issue that is not entirely clear in Scripture.
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So my objection, I think then, is directed at the rhetoric rather than the concept, if I can take at face value that W2K admits overlap between the spheres. I just think that admission is at odds with the rhetorical strategy.
Jeff,
I think you’re getting a little winded. Given that these exchanges rest upon a series of objections on your part, I think it is fair to say that you, in point of fact, do not agree conceptually. If you did the rhetorical strategy wouldn’t bother you.
Again, let me try and pare this down to a simple question: do you think the Bible is necessary or relevant to making everything from a salad (trivial) to society (enduring)? I don’t. I think everything in that wingspan is temporal and the only book needed in “that most elegant†one called general revelation. Special revelation is what is needed to administer eternity, something we are programmed to yearn for but are completely paralyzed to effect.
Bill Clinton once used a thumbnail to determine one’s party devotion: if you think the 60s were mostly a good thing, you’re likely some form of Democrat; if you think the 60s were mostly a liability, likely some form of Republican. The thumbnail here is if you think the Bible has relevance for temporal purposes you are probably a form of theonomist; if you think its relevance is eternal, probably some form of 2Ker. Those are admittedly huge brush strokes, but that’s what a thumbnail is.
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Jeff, you in your own office may not think you need to make sure that DGH obeys the law, but what about if you were a Christian magistrate? Isn’t that what started your objection to 2k thinking? Depending on how you answer Zrim’s question, if you think the Bible applies to all of life (as Frame does), and if you have jurisdiction as a magistrate over lots of those spheres of life, don’t you have an obligation to take your private theonomy public?
Also, my objection to Frame’s analysis, as well as other Kuyperian approaches, is an effort to make the Bible relevant to public life (see James Skillen as one example). What ends up happening so often, aside from applying the Bible in areas where I believe it does not apply (again a jurisdiction question), is that the real laws of the United States and the broader history of how we got those laws, from the Romans and Greeks on down through the West, receives little attention. But those laws are the ones that are binding on American, legislators, and jurists — not a biblical set of principles concocted by Reformed ethicists.
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Not at all. We’ve gone back and forth between “OK, I admit that the public and private spheres overlap” and back to “special revelation is only relevant to eternity.” I’m just trying to get you to either lay out a consistent statement, or else explain why you are allowed to be inconsistent while demanding consistency from others.
But I think it is time to move on, lest we get wrapped around an axle here.
JRC
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Perhaps but not necessarily. Could it not also be the case that applying Scripture to life as a magistrate could include granting freedom to others to make their own decisions? Or some of them? For example, I could conceive of a case for splitting out first table/second table issues on that basis. Or differentiating between “restraining evil” and “requiring good.”
JRC
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Jeff, what possible hermeneutic would allow you to take some verses as guidance for magistracy but not others only two or three away? Is there a Bible verse that says that? Or are you relying on your own wisdom?
As for consistency, maybe the point of 2k is to recognize the paradoxical relationship between salvation and politics, between the city of God and the city of man, that what happens in the latter is not a sign of what’s happening in the former. If that’s the case, and I think it is, then inconsistency is par for the 2k course. It is also par for the Lordship or theonomic course. You can’t make the two cohere directly. So pointing out your inconsistency is only a form of trying to make you see the paradoxical relationship. Bottom line: if you think there’s a consistent position, you have lost sight of the way God is operating on two tracks — one of creation and providence, the other of redemption. And not to be missed, the former serves the latter whether creatures know it or not.
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Jeff,
It may be that you have an over-realized premium for consistency.
But I will lay out something irreproachably consistent once you tell me how to reconcile the fifth commandment (“honor your parents”) with Matthew 10:34-37 (“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”) And how do you reconcile the high demands place on marriage by Jesus with the fact that the very institution will be dissolved in the next age?
That doesn’t seem very consistent to me. In fact, it looks like God is, as DGH suggests, working on two tracks that simply do not harmonize well to the eye. If God can do that why can’t we?
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OK. If we’re all allowed to be inconsistent, then I can be at peace with that.
JRC
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Jeff, I think the point is that we must be inconsistent, not that we may be.
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…and we must be inconsistent for the right reasons.
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This is a very interesting point. I’ll want to chew on it for a while. Off the cuff, I think you are right to call for a closer examination of where our laws come from, and also for a high degree of respect or discretion given to the magistrate, no matter the state of his soul.
I think you mean that while inconsistency is inevitable, not all inconsistencies are allowed. And that is fine. But in saying so, you have taken on yourself a higher burden of proof. Arguments of the form, “You’re being inconsistent, and therefore wrong”, are now off the table. All of the (apparent) inconsistencies that you have hammered on in others’ positions can now be met with a shrug.
So you’ll have to spell out the kinds of inconsistencies that are and are not acceptable. Or to quote someone famous,
Which means that we have to have some idea of what those right reasons are.
—
Let’s sum up at this point.
I’ve objected that W2K calls for a total separation of public and private spheres, when in fact the separation of the two spheres is not sustainable Biblically.
To my surprise, you two immediately agreed with the latter while denying the former.
In your view, the co-mingling of the spheres is inevitable, and requires careful sorting out of the public and private. This leads to inescapable paradox.
In my view, this is an acceptable proposal and one that ought to be consistent with all manner of middle positions, ones which neither require absolute separation of public and private nor yet complete overlap of the two.
However, if co-mingling is inevitable, then your criticisms the positions of others are rendered less intelligible: why are their inconsistencies unacceptable, but yours acceptable? And why are you so wedded to the method of reductio in putting your objections forward?
The response is (implicitly) that your inconsistencies are for the right reasons.
Intuitively, my sense is that triadalism is the “marker” that you use to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable co-minglings.
So there it rests. For my part, I think this is an area where you bear a greater burden of exposition. At some point, you’ll have to get out of the mode of “posing tricky problems” and into the mode of showing the rest of us exactly How to Carefully Sort the Public and Private.
If you gentlemen would like to add anything, or if I’ve erred in my summary, feel free; else, I’ll move to Obj 3.
JRC
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Jeff,
I don’t have anything to add, etc., but I do want to get a straight answer to a simple question I posed at least twice but don’t think I received an answer: is the Bible necessary and/or relevant to any temporal enterprise?
Wait. I do have something:
I think this is an area where you bear a greater burden of exposition. At some point, you’ll have to get out of the mode of “posing tricky problems†and into the mode of showing the rest of us exactly How to Carefully Sort the Public and Private.
1. I still don’t understand why we are burdened in such a way while God can get away with telling us at once to honor our parents and that he came to set us against them.
2. You are assuming an onus onto 2K/SOTC that it never presumes for itself. Theonomists want to show the rest of us exactly how the private and public swallow up each other. 2K just wants to say that is a thing that ought not to be done. We don’t have a plan.
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“Any” or “every”? For we agree, at least, that Rom. 13 is relevant to the temporal enterprise of being a citizen. And presumably, the 7th commandment is relevant to the temporal enterprise of being a prostitute.
But if you mean “every”, then I would answer: the norms of Scripture are always “on” for a Christian. Those norms may restrict liberty in some cases and permit liberty in others. So some temporal enterprises — say, being a burger-flipper — might have so many degrees of freedom that the norms of Scripture might not be frequently obviously relevant. But the norms don’t disappear because of that; they simply recede into the background.
In some circumstances, a Christian burger-flipper may have to think about stealing, or working as unto the Lord, or loving neighbor as self, or executing his calling to the glory of God. And in such circumstances, the norms come into the foreground; and at those moments, the burger flipper should think Christianly and not commonly.
And in fact, I think that’s what Heb. 5.14 is getting at: “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”
Because you’re not God. 😉 But seriously, W2K is a meta-theory about governance. As such, it limits the freedom of Christians who engage in the public sphere — Christians are not free to co-mingle the spheres. A central principle of Reformed theology has always been that restrictions of liberty require a high burden of proof from Scripture.
It strikes me then that W2K will be at a decided disadvantage to other theories that *do* have a plan. That doesn’t make it wrong; it just makes it harder for you.
You’re in the uncomfortable position of declaring a paradox (understandable) and also casting people adrift to sort out the paradox without any guiding principles — except “don’t co-mingle the spheres” and “keep the Church spiritual” (also understandable, given your desire to not regulate), while at the same time admitting that the private and public spheres don’t actually have zero overlap.
JRC
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Jeff, it feels like we’re back to square one when you say that the 2k view (I really think you’re being uncharitable and unbiblical to keep inserting the “W”) limits the freedom of Christians to engage the public square with the Bible or biblical ethics. What the 2k view is saying that the Bible itself limits the Christian. The Bible is the book of God’s people. The public square in our time intermingles God’s people and non-God’s people. To apply the Bible to people who don’t believe the Bible is to do something unbiblical. It is hard to find anywhere in Scripture where the Israelites or Christians when in exile insisted the non-covenanted regime adopt the laws of the Covenant without actually subscribing the Covenant.
Again, this is why I think even your personal theonomy is wrong because I believe you misread the Bible and its authority over different groups of people.
And we should be clear about the apparent inconsistency of the 2k view. It’s inconsistency stems from the in-between-times, when God’s people are in two cities, with two different jurisdictions. The people who want consistency keep wanting to inaugurate the eschaton and collapse those jurisdications — so that the Bible applies to plumbing, farming, baking and governing. One day those jurisdictions will be one. The Bible says as much. But the Bible also says we’re not there yet.
I don’t see why that 2k view should be so unacceptable to other Christians, except if they’ve caught the Corinthian theology of glory bug.
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Jeff,
Actually, it’s not all that hard or uncomfortable to not sign up for the latest “take over or transform the world†seminar. It’s a cinch to just participate instead, fun too.
Lest I just start repeating myself since, as DGH suggests, we seem back to square one, perhaps you should move on to objection three.
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I apologize! I stopped using “R2K” by request and was intending “W2K” as a neutral term to describe “the version of 2K theology taught at WSC.”
What term would you prefer, given that there is not one single version of 2K theology?
—
Well, because it seems like you’re telling me to ignore Scriptural norms when I am engaged in common activities. And that appears to be a betrayal of Christ: “If you love me, keep my commandments.” For you, there is no distinction between a Christian who is personally obligated to Scriptural norms and a Christian who demands that everyone else keep Scriptural norms.
But then you aren’t telling me that; but then again, you are. So it’s all really confusing. And when I ask for clarity, I’m told that there is no clarity to be had.
“Do not try and bend the norms. That’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
“What truth?
“There are no norms.
“There are no norms?
“Then you’ll see, that it is not the norms that bend, it is only your jurisdiction.”
There’s something wrong when a reasonably bright guy can’t make heads nor tails of your system.
JRC
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Jeff: Apology accepted.
It does seem that we are back to square one. It seems that the impasse is that you think I’m telling you you can’t consult Scripture. I’m not really saying that. What I’m saying is that you’ll look at Scripture for about 95% of the things you do in an average day and you’ll accomplish only 5% of those things because you still be looking in the Bible. I get up early to write, I turn on the radio, I make coffee, I feed the cat (Isabelle), I have breakfast while reading the New Republic . . .
Other than when I pray when I rise, and ask the Lord’s blessing on my food, where does the Bible tell me how to get up, turn on the radio etc. (I left out relieving my bladder).
Now, I fear you will come back with a host of texts to govern these matters. But if you do, I’m betting they will be of the most general kind and not directly relevant.
Our days are filled with such activities. Even my vocation, which is mainly writing history, is not governed by Scripture. I tried. I attempted a Reformed world view of historiography and it was a dud, not at all helpful for what I do in the ordinary work of history. Does that mean that I give up a belief in providence, in the laws of nature, in some kind of core of human nature, in a linear conception of historical development? No. But none of those things tell me what the biblical meaning is of Daniel Coit Gilman’s twenty-five year tenure as Johns Hopkins University’s first president.
I understand that lots of believers are predisposed to believe the Bible tells them about every jot and tittle of their lives, and so if you were to go out and stump for your view, you’d get bigger crowds than I. But I’d hope your booth was situated over near the snake oil salesman because your apparent idea that the Bible speaks to everything is not far removed from that salesman. (Don’t take this personally. I was on a roll and liked the analogy.)
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Jeff,
I’d suggest that maybe you’re a dog-person since cat-people (like DGH) don’t make sense to dog-people. But I’m a dog-person, so there goes that theory. So how about trying some Catholic-people?
http://deregnisduobus.blogspot.com/2009/03/paradox-of-parallel-passions.html
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Not personally taken. So what term can I use that is not offensive, but does convey a distinction between the species of 2K theology taught at WSC and the general family of 2K theologies?
That was my sole intent with “W2K.”
—
It seems to me that a view that sees a gradient (as I’ve described) could accommodate your view by saying that Scriptural norms are in the background, or at a low level of restrictiveness, for many of our activities. In other words, instead of drawing a bright line between sacred and common activities, we might instead think in degrees of liberty.
Thus, I might say that a Christian brushing his teeth might look very, very similar to a non-Christian because the norms of Scripture do not particularly restrict his activity — except when he squeezes the tube from the middle (again!) in despite of his wife.
—
It’s interesting to me that your take on historiography is at odds with Marsden’s, who sees Christians “doing history the secular way” as an implicit acceptance of non-Christian modes of thought.
I would imagine that you have vigorously contested Marsden’s view at some point, yes?
JRC
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The middle paragraph has a specific mathematical meaning in my mind, and it may not be clear. So let me try an analogy.
At the atomic level, objects like “table” and “computer” are not distinct. Instead, we have atoms that experience interatomic forces with each other. What keeps the table, “the table”, instead of merging into the computer, is that the interatomic forces within the computer and within the table are a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the interatomic forces between the computer’s atoms and the table’s atoms.
In other words, everything sticks; everything is fuzzy; but at the end of the day, distinguishing the two objects makes sense because the forces within each object are so much greater than the forces between the two, that the sticking is negligible. I pick up the computer off of the table, and a negligible (but not zero!) number of atoms from the table stick to the computer.
You say, OK, why care?
Because under certain circumstances, the forces are no longer negligible. Here are two:
(1) If I slide the computer across the table, the sticking forces between the two show up as friction between the two, which is a real, measurable (and sometimes painful!) effect.
(2) If I replace the computer with a Jello computer, the atoms in the Jello have significant forces of attraction for the table. Thus, when I pick up the Jello computer again, I will lose a noticeable portion of the computer to the table. The object loses its integrity because it the “intra-object” forces keeping it together are of the same magnitude as the “inter-object” forces attracting it to the table.
NOW to the Christian brushing his teeth.
If we think of liberty as being on a gradient, with Scripture at times entirely circumscribing (0% liberty) and at times saying nothing direct at all (close to 100% liberty), then we can construct situations that look like your description of “common” — Scripture does not constrain the brushing of teeth. There are no forces to direct my teeth-brushing.
But change the circumstances, and the nature of the forces change. If my wife is amazingly particular about the direction of tooth-brush-squeezing (she’s not!), then the part of love is to squeeze from the bottom. The command to love the neighbor constrains my liberty.
Could you imagine such a view as being compatible with yours?
JRC
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Jeff: Thanks for being a good sport with my ad hominem analogy. I don’t do emoticons. So sometimes humor comes across as invective. Sometimes they’re mixed.
I have actually responded to Marsden, even though George and I are good friends and he hired me for a post-doc right out of grad school. The project on which I was working was the secularization of American higher education. His book out of that was The Soul of the American University. I also got a book out of it, a little later, The University Gets Religion. It is a pretty different take on the issues involved in relating faith and intellectual life. Ironically, it was George’s generosity that gave me the chance to study the topic and disagree with the hand that fed me.
For a direct critique of Marsden and Noll (also a friend and a benefactor of sorts) see a piece I wrote in the 2000 Christian Scholars Review, an article that sent the neo-Calvinists ballistic. I’ll give away one point — why is H. Richard Niebuhr, a liberal Protestant, basically approaching Christ and culture the way Kuyper, an orthodox Calvinist, does? Does the anti-thesis mean nothing.
On squeezing the toothpast tube, Jeff, man up. Tell your wife to submit. Kidding mainly. But why wouldn’t Eph. 5 apply to that situation? Which sort of proves the point, that our consciences and vocations and circumstances vary. So the indirect Bible references to which we appeal will not be uniform or consistent — making it really hard to get a “Thus saith the Lord” on either toothpaste distribution or wife-loving.
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Tricky one, that. In general, it’s her job to submit, not my job to tell her to submit. But then again, if it becomes an issue in the marriage, then it does become my job — but not on every little issue.
So you see, the whole question of liberty and norms is not a jurisdictional one, split across common and sacred. Instead, it transcends each jurisdiction.
Speaking of: when you pray tomorrow, remember my wife, who is going to visit ailing family.
Thanks,
Jeff
P.S. I’m holding off on #3 until I can get a reasonable name to replace “W2K.”
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Jeff, I fear you’ve read too much Frame. He has a habit of discovering that ideas and arguments are not tidy, and so it is possible to make arguments and ideas even messier because they weren’t clean to begin with. Drama in worship? Well, a play is sort of like a sermon in certain ways, even dramatic, so go ahead, bring in all three acts.
If you would squeeze the tube of liberties and norms at the end, rather than the middle, you’d find that some jurisdictions are firmer than your affinity for fuzziness supposes. Will they always stay in place? No. Life is not mechancial. But if you begin to keep the Bible as the church’s sole norm, the church’s jurisdiction as ministerial and declarative (and extending to her officers and members), and allow that in vocations and secular life believers have diverse responsibilities and talents, you might get the norms and liberties you need and be able to keep the rest in the medicine cabinet.
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Jeff,
I don’t know much about jello computers, and I’m not real clear on what toothpaste squeezing has to do with much of this, but I wonder if you’re beginning to broach a form of what I call the totem pole syndrome. One will hear believers speak of their vocational commitments as if they fall somewhere along a rigid and legalistic spectrum (e.g. “God, family, work, leisureâ€). The problem with the syndrome is that, first, it places godly devotion as an equal amongst many instead of seeing Christ’s lordship as over all things, that at some point devotion to God can be put on hold, and finally it also tends to betray and nurture an individualistic pietism. Second, and more to the point, it doesn’t take into account the reality that sometimes family trumps work, sometimes work trumps family, etc. In the real life I live my vocations are in constant (constant!) flux and different situations call for different attention spans.
And from what I observe this is true for everyone, even those who invoke the totem pole, even those who say the Bible is relevant and necessary to all of life. It’s not too unlike the point that theonomists (of any variety) actually live like 2Kers.
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Nope.
Look guys, is there any reason you aren’t willing to supply a name for the species of 2K thought taught at WSC? I don’t want to be offensive, so I don’t want to use “W2K” if it causes offense.
But I need some noun to work with here. How about “The view formerly known as W2K?” That’s nice and snappy.
JRC
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Jeff,
Well, I tried. I wasn’t sure what to do with the jello computers and toothpaste stuff, but most who think the Bible speaks to all of life instead of much more narrowly also seem prone to totem pole. So you’d agree that our vocational commitments are a series of competing loyalties whose tensions are not easily resolved? If so, what gives with the incessant need for consistency and allergy against paradox?
Re labels, I’m not personally averse to that particular dubya. It may not roll of the fingers, but I’ve taken a bit of shine lately to 2K/SOTC–sort of a hybrid of Lutheran/Reformed nomenclature. Still seems easier than going all Prince up in here.
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The ethno-cultural school of American political historians, when writing on the phenomenon of high church Protestants and how they viewed society differently from evangelicals (i.e. revival friendly Protestants) called the 2k view liturgical or confessional, and the other side, pietist. I still think those categories work even if liturgical spooks too many low-church Presbyterians who otherwise affirm the spirituality of the church, and even if confessional sounds too much like creedal or doctrinal. What both are trying to get at is a churchly form of Protestantism that takes its cues for the direction of history and the meaning of human existence from the workings of redemption and the ministry of the church, not from social progress or political reform.
So how about Reformed Ecclesial Political Theology? REPT.
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Yes, I agree. Go back and re-read my (incessant?!) comments not as a plea for purity, but as a push-back against the syllogism:
Non-2k-ers are not pure in their non-2k-ness
Therefore, they ought to just give in and admit that 2k is right.
I think you’ll find that my Obj 2 makes more sense in that light.
Works for me.
JRC
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Obj 3: REPT drives an unnecessary wedge between philosophy and theology.
Here I should qualify carefully. First, I am only speaking to my experience. It may be that in the larger world, REPT advocates are building bridges to Christian philosophers. Second, philosophy is not the queen of the sciences or anything; I’m not arguing that it should have prominence.
But in my experience, REPT has a tendency to cut itself off from fruitful engagement with philosophy.
At a superficial level, one might point to the tendency to dismiss Christian philosophers such as Frame or Davis; or to DGH’s quip that philosophy has been given too much prominence over history in theology (and yes, I’m aware that Frame has complained in reverse).
Those are interesting divisions, and possibly cause for concern. After all, why would we want to divide up into neo-Corinthian camps like that? However, they are only surface issues.
I’m after something larger: REPT could benefit from a more robust engagement with philosophy. It appears insufficiently cogent because it does not acknowledge the concerns raised by philosophers.
Here are two examples.
Zrim, you’ve mentioned the Venn diagram twice now in connection with triadalism. That caught my attention, since Venn diagrams are commonly used both in mathematics and philosophy; the first being my profession and the second my avocation. You said:
Venn diagrams simply don’t work in this way. In a Venn diagram, the area in the middle consists of genuine overlap — all of the elements that partake of both properties. Using your sets, the overlap would have to consist of people that had both the property of being unbelievers and also believers; of being under judgment and under redemption, at the same time. We agree that this is impossible.
(In fact, in the classic Venn diagram, the things that partake of neither set of properties is the area outside both circles.)
Now, I’m not making a criticism of form, as if making a math error is a mortal sin.
Rather, the math error is related to the deeper concern about triadalism: What picture can we draw of the Christian in the “common” realm? Is he, or isn’t he, subject to God’s Law? etc.
I think we’ve hashed out that latter question as much as we can for now, so I don’t want to raise it again!
Rather, I want to point out that in this area, the expertise of a professional math educator (*coff*) ought to have counted for something. But it didn’t. It was dismissed.
No offense taken, mind; I’ve certainly earned my share of chutzpah points by challenging Dr. Hart here. And I don’t really care if you believe me personally.
But I think it could be really profitable if you could step back and ask, “If I really can’t represent triadalism as a Venn diagram, then how can I represent it?” And one of two things could then happen: (a) the explanation of REPT could be sharpened so as to be more persuasive to Christians who are willing to listen but concerned about some issues (me!), or (b) a real flaw in REPT could be exposed and remedied.
Either way, REPT wins from a robust engagement with symbolic logic.
I’m being very personal with those comments, so forgive me if I’ve overstepped a bound.
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Second example: I’ve hinted before that there are features about American 21st century society that make REPT more challenging. I don’t subscribe to the view that society is always headed to hell in a handbasket. I would much rather live here, now, than in Germany in 1942 or in 942 for that matter.
But the prevailing view of governance in America is currently dominated by utilitarian ethics. As you know, this is the view that the Right Thing to Do is to bring the greatest good to the greatest number. “Greatest good” has been variously defined — J.S. Mill defined good as the presence of genuine pleasures and the absence of pain, but the most influential version today is “preference utilitarianism,” popularized by Peter Singer. For PU, the “good” is the satisfaction of preferences, whatever those happen to be. So that if, hypothetically, we had a preference calculator (read: voting booth), we could determine the Right Thing to Do simply by adding up satisfied and unsatisfied preferences, and choosing the course with the most total satisfaction.
There are philosophical problems with PU, but it currently holds sway in the halls of power, in academia, and in popular media (though Aristotelian “virtue ethics” is attempting a revival of sorts).
Here’s the problem: Preference Utilitarianism is a jealous god.
(1) For the PU-ian, there are no norms at all.
In PU, “ethical norms” serve only as guidelines for the average man so that he can satisfy preferences without having to think too hard. But in reality, there are no norms; and attempting to establish norms is positively wrong, since the norm might well not satisfy preferences under some situation or another.
So the Christian in the common sphere who attempts to reason from Natural Law will serve only the role of “useful idiot” — when Natural Law and PU agree, the Christian’s agreement will serve to establish the validity of PU. When Natural Law and PU disagree, then PU wins and the Christian is wrong for trying to erect a norm.
(2) PU is totalitarian.
Neither the U.S. Constitution (motto: “living document!”) nor the Church is a haven against the self-righteousness of the PU-ian who can cheerfully change the laws — no norms, remember? — so as to tax the Church, or demand that Christians call gay couples “married” if the couples so wish, or even judge God as wrong for making people suffer in Hell instead of forgiving them unconditionally.
Here is one amusing-but-real example of the totalitarian nature of PU.
(3) PU is incompatible with Christian ethics.
This seems odd, since utilitarians from Mill to Fletcher to Singer have all appealed to the principle of Utility as a simple extension of Jesus’ Golden Rule.
But in fact, Christian ethics is centered in covenant loyalty, hesed. For the utilitarian, there is no personal loyalty. If your child is in the burning building, and the cancer researcher whose unpublished work could save millions is in the burning building, then the PU-ian demands that you save the cancer researcher first. No relationships — only the relentless calculation of preferences.
To use the language of philosophy, Christians and Preference Utilitarians might agree on (many) ethical precepts, but they completely disagree on meta-ethics. Far from having overlap, they have incompatible views on what makes right, right and wrong, wrong.
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In light of this situation, it becomes impossible for a Christian to go to work, adopt the “common” mindset of preference utilitarianism, with all it entails, and then return to Church and worship God. Unlike, perhaps, the situation in the 18th century when Natural Law in some form still made sense, the “common” way of going about decision-making in the 21st century is positively anti-Christian. We live in a situation in which the City of Man has made war on the City of God, and the part of wisdom is to be aware of the danger and resist it, not to make common cause with it.
This does not mean that I advocate rebellion; the form of our government is still, nominally, the rule of law under the Constitution. And I can uphold that.
But the underlying mechanism of our government is really direct democracy anymore: the satisfaction of preferences via the voting booth. (Anyone noticed the current administration’s tactics of going directly to the people? The Republicans are kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.)
DGH, you’ve suggested that church involvement in social causes was the primary means of liberalization in the mainline denominations. I would complement that thesis with this one: The growing cultural adoption of utilitarianism made the Social Gospel plausible. It was no accident that “Situation Ethics” made a big splash in the mainline churches, much more quickly than in the academy. The mainline churches were already primed to accept Fletcher’s argument that “love” was “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
I think we need to be wise about the current state of “common” reasoning, and recognize that it is not compatible with either Natural Law reasoning nor direct reasoning from Scripture.
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The main point here is that philosophy has some things to say about the wisdom of the REPT project, Whether my analysis is correct, or somewhat correct, or completely off-the-wall, it only makes sense for you guys to get input from the philosophers instead of holding them at arms’ length.
JRC
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Jeff,
OK, so the Venn analogy doesn’t work for you because it breaks down at some point. But don’t they all? I can find other breakdowns you’d also maybe like. But the point has less to do with the right explanation of Venn diagrams and more to simply say that the redeemed and condemned come together in the common sphere, and their previous status has no direct or obvious bearing on their common endeavor. Affirming or denying the resurrection of Jesus, for example, has no direct bearing on writing history, raising children or baking bread or in any other way participating in creation.
I’ve hinted before that there are features about American 21st century society that make REPT more challenging. I don’t subscribe to the view that society is always headed to hell in a hand basket. I would much rather live here, now, than in Germany in 1942 or in 942 for that matter.
And like I have suggested, my amillenarianism isn’t given to either sunny or gloomy views of human history. Your suggestion that you prefer your time and place implies that human history may be progressing more than digressing. But there really is nothing new under the sun. My neo-Kuyperians speak like this to me all the time, citing democracy, toilet paper and the eradication of polio to make a case for human progress (that was presumably kicked off by the Cross). It’s actually a form of prosperity gospel. I see some snickering here because, as we all know, prosperity gospel is only ever about money and stuff and the crasser felt needs of less than staid segment of the human population. But, like sin, prosperity gospel is an equal-opportunity affliction that can infest the learned, versed, cultured and sophisticated as much as those with cheesy comb-over’s. It leads some to ask, as I recall once being asked, “Are you seriously telling me that you wouldn’t rather live in America now than in Jesus time and place?â€
I prefer my time and place, too, but not because it’s better than someone else’s, rather because it’s mine.
The main point here is that philosophy has some things to say about the wisdom of the REPT project, Whether my analysis is correct, or somewhat correct, or completely off-the-wall, it only makes sense for you guys to get input from the philosophers instead of holding them at arms’ length.
I’ve no problem with philosophy, Jeff. Like politics, it should be afforded its rightful dignity and place. It’s just that when it is suggested it plays a larger role than for that which it was ordained, I squirm. With all due respect Bavinck, Aristotle was not the (co) forerunner to Christ (“a pedagogy unto Christâ€); that was the sole work of a baptizing cousin. This slouching toward worldliness your third objection suggests is precisely the problem I think 2K means to correct.
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OK, I agree that that’s pretty ludicrous. 🙂
Unfortunately, what follows must be a series of flat denials. I can’t help it; it’s just that we’ve failed to connect here.
Nope. It implies exactly what I said: that history is not necessarily getting worse.
Nope. I was careful to qualify at the beginning that philosophy should not have prominence, and that my objection was merely that REPT appears to have not done “due diligence” in engaging with philosophy. The objection means neither more nor less than what I said.
Nope. It doesn’t work, period, because Venn diagrams are structures that express specific structures of thought. My own subjective likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it.
So now the question is, If a Venn diagram doesn’t work to express triadalism, then is it possible (just maybe?) that triadalism can’t be represented because it’s not a coherent idea?
That’s the point I was making.
If it is impossible to represent an idea in language — set language, in this case — then we either need whole new language, or else the idea itself is flawed. It sounds like you would prefer the former, but I would humbly ask you to consider also the latter.
JRC
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How odd. I would think that affirming the resurrection of Jesus would have a direct bearing on whether or not one takes a Hegelian view of history. Or whether or not one sought to raise one’s children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Zrim, there’s a logical error here. You confuse, I think, the true statement “Jesus’ Resurrection does not explicitly direct my steps in bread-baking”, with the false one: “Jesus’ Resurrection is irrelevant to my baking of bread.”
This statement is a logical error because “does not say everything” is not equivalent to “does not say anything.” The U.S. Constitution does not direct our steps wrt. political speech. But it sure does have something to say about it.
Likewise, Scripture does not direct our steps with bread-baking, but bread-baking is an activity that occurs within a context, and the Scripture has a lot to say about our bread-baking within that context. We should use honest weights and measures in our bread-baking, IF it occurs within a commercial context. We should bake bread in the afternoon and not in the middle of the night, IF bread-baking in the middle of the night would keep the family from sleeping. And so on.
And the resurrection has bearing on all of this because the resurrection is the Father’s declaration that Jesus is Lord — and that therefore we are his bondservants (and sons).
Our activities never occur simpliciter; they are always embedded in context. Usually, what the Scripture speaks to is that context and not to the specific activities themselves.
I would like for us to try to find a different way of talking about this issue, because we (both) seem to be repeating ourselves:
“SZ: I don’t see how you could possibly think that Scripture says anything about X!”
“JRC: I don’t see how you could possibly deny it. Look at all these obvious ways in which Scripture becomes relevant in the following circumstances.”
“SZ: So you’re saying that we can’t do anything without finding specific directions in Scripture?”
“JRC: GAAHH!”
I’ve lost count of the number of conversations exactly like this (grocery stores; stoplights; turnabouts; etc.), but I get the sense that you aren’t saying what I think you’re saying. I know I’m not saying what you think I’m saying!
Here’s what I’m saying:
JRC
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Jeff,
How odd. I would think that affirming the resurrection of Jesus would have a direct bearing on whether or not one takes a Hegelian view of history. Or whether or not one sought to raise one’s children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Debates are hot on the campus of Gallaudet as to what school of sign language should win the day (American Sign Language or English Sign Language). The Bible makes repeated reference to deafness, so should there be a Christian answer here, one that the resurrection directly has bearing on? And raising children in the fear of God is only for those who actually fear God. If someone doesn’t fear God he can still raise kids pretty darn well. God-fearers raise theirs differently than those who don’t fear God.
Likewise, Scripture does not direct our steps with bread-baking, but bread-baking is an activity that occurs within a context, and the Scripture has a lot to say about our bread-baking within that context. We should use honest weights and measures in our bread-baking, IF it occurs within a commercial context. We should bake bread in the afternoon and not in the middle of the night, IF bread-baking in the middle of the night would keep the family from sleeping.
Are you suggesting that you wouldn’t know to be honest unless the Bible said to be honest? How can this be when the second greatest commandment is written on the hearts of all flesh? What do you do with perfectly Christ-hating pagans who have never cracked a Bible but also seem to know the things of self-sacrifice, obedience and loyalty? Consider the scandal of the cross. What made it so shameful was the excellence of the Roman system of justice. If you hung on a tree it was because you belonged there. It typified God’s perfect justice while Jesus became our sin. Rome didn’t have any need of special revelation in order to do justice well.
Your point about context is quite well understood over here, Jeff. I keep saying that the Christian life (i.e. its ethic or imperative) is very narrowly conceived. Recall the points made about indicatives and imperatives. Indeed, context is precisely the point 2K is making.
…there’s a logical error here. You confuse, I think, the true statement “Jesus’ Resurrection does not explicitly direct my steps in bread-bakingâ€, with the false one: “Jesus’ Resurrection is irrelevant to my baking of bread.â€
In true Caglian form I will now utterly dismiss your point by saying the magic word, “Nope.†Ooo, you’re right, that does feel good.
Jeff, I have never said belief in Jesus is “irrelevant†to vocation. If I have I either mis-spoke or was making the point by way of hyperbole. I hope what I have consistently conveyed is that is has no direct or obvious bearing on the cares of this world. That is entirely different from suggesting anything about irrelevance. I’m pretty sure you know that. I smell charges of neutrality around the corner.
What you seem to want conceded is that there is something called Christian ethics. This has never been denied; to do so would be absurd to say the least and the repeated points about indicatives/imperatives and “context†actually do more to make the case that 2K is cognizant of ethics in a superior way than any form of theonomy could ever hope to be. But what is curiously absent your argumentation is any conception whatsoever that there is a NT set of ethics that has a lot to do with the church governing only her own (1 Cor 5), or to live quietly, minding one’s own business and working with one’s own hands (1 Thess 4:11), or any conception of what it means to live as pilgrims in the inter-advental age.
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I overdid it with the brusqueness, huh? I’ll try to dial it back a bit.
I need to get ready for the day, but I’d like to proceed on the assumption that I don’t understand your position, and that I need clarification on a couple of points. Here’s the first:
Right or wrong, I’ve always understood “has bearing on” and “relevant” as synonyms. So what do you mean when you say that belief in Jesus is relevant to vocation, but has no obvious bearing on the cares of this world. Is the emphasis on obvious? If so, then why does that word make a difference? If not, then what are you saying?
JRC
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Jeff,
You forgot “direct and obvious.” And why that matters is that non/belief in any piece of orthodoxy doesn’t directly or obviously affect any common activity. Those who think it does usually mean a common activity is done better by those who believe in, say, the trinity. But my Hindi neighbors do common things just fine–even better–without submission to this doctrine. My Mormon friends raise good kids despite their heresies.
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Jeff, A couple of thoughts regarding your objection about philosophy. First, I didn’t know John Frame did anything other than exegesis. That’s certainly the impression I get when he faults traditionalists for not doing exegesis. Now I find he’s doing philosophy? Well, what happened to biblicism?
Second, your assertion that the U.S. is dominate by utilitarian ethics is not a philosophical claim. It is a historical, sociological, or political science claim. I know this sounds like a technicality. But since part of your point about REPT’s weakness is its lack of attention to philosophy, it would help to stay in the same intellectual pigeonhole.
I mean, if you want to debate utiltarian ethics, that’s okay. But I’m not sure it’s a debate worth having if PUE are not as dominant as you say. I always thought the reigning tendency was post-modernism, at least in the academy.
I’m still not sure what this means for weakening the claims of REPT. I’m not sure what ethics dominate plumbing, but I could see them being fairly utilitarian when it comes to fixing a leak. I’d highly encourage a Christian plumber to follow those norms, especially if I hired him. And as for post-modernism in the academy, I actually believing historians have some benefits to accrue by not following an Enlightenment based narrative and allowing for post-modern themes.
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Absolutely.
I rather think the opposite.
My objection is that you have not done enough cross-disciplinary listening. Wouldn’t it be self-defeating for me to limit myself to a single discipline, in the process of criticizing you for being too narrow?
Of course I feel free to make claims that overlap the disciplines! And when those claims wander into your disciplines — history — then I fully expect you to bring your expertise to bear. That’s the point of dialog, right? We don’t know everything; we need the wisdom of many counselors.
I think you’ve answered your own question. There are others out there who have thought about such issues; dismissing them leaves potential gaps in your work.
SF is a cross-disciplinary project. It is attempting to unify the history of Church-State relations in the U.S. with a particular theological perspective on the Church in order to give advice to the Church about how to conduct herself. That’s history, theology, and ethics all in one work. The ethicists deserve a hearing, not a pigeonhole.
JRC
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May well be. And I think your statement is intelligible even without getting into the somewhat tired debate about “good kids according to whose standards?” We can agree, I think, that if we measured the outward morality (as defined by the Law) of your Mormon friends’ kids, they might well rate higher than any given Christian kids.
(Assuming, of course, that it would even be Christian to measure peoples’ goodness by the Law — I think that such a project is a misuse of the Law. But let’s not go there if we don’t have to. We’re conducting a thought experiment.)
But now, here’s the thing that I don’t think you understand about what I’m saying: I’m not interested in giving advice to Hindis and Mormons about their kids. For me, the question has never been about “Do we try to make non-Christians conform to the Law?”
My sole focus, from start to finish, is how to think as a Christian who is subject to the Lordship of Christ about “living as a stranger in reverent fear” in the common realm, which is what Peter is talking about in the passage above. I don’t care if one is able to plumb without the Scriptures; that fact (or non-fact?) is irrelevant to me, a Christian plumber, who still has to be obedient to Christ in his plumbing.
And the problem becomes particularly acute for a Christian who is a magistrate, who has a non-negotiable first priority, the Lordship of Christ, and a second priority, fulfilling his calling as a magistrate.
My interest is in solving that problem — solve it, and we know how the Church should relate to the State. Ignore it, or pass it off as a paradox without further guidance, and we have nothing to say to the Church about its relationship to the State.
The Christian magistrate is the “money problem.” He stands at his desk on Day 1 and asks, “How do I decide what to do?” That’s where the rubber meets the road.
If you read my comments through some other lens, like the lens of “trying to lay down rules that non-Christians can become righteous through”, or the lens of “how can we make our society a Christian society”, then you will get quite the wrong impression.
JRC
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Jeff,
And the problem becomes particularly acute for a Christian who is a magistrate, who has a non-negotiable first priority, the Lordship of Christ, and a second priority, fulfilling his calling as a magistrate.
My interest is in solving that problem — solve it, and we know how the Church should relate to the State. Ignore it, or pass it off as a paradox without further guidance, and we have nothing to say to the Church about its relationship to the State.
The Christian magistrate is the “money problem.†He stands at his desk on Day 1 and asks, “How do I decide what to do?†That’s where the rubber meets the road.
If you read my comments through some other lens, like the lens of “trying to lay down rules that non-Christians can become righteous throughâ€, or the lens of “how can we make our society a Christian societyâ€, then you will get quite the wrong impression.
I understand you are not a hard theonomist. But the fact that you want to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist tells me that not all the theonomy has been shaken off, as it were.
Two Christian magistrates may stand at their respective desks and decide what to do in very different ways while still able to claim submission and obedience to Christ. You seem resistant to that idea from the start. But this is what is so quizzical to me, since this happens every single day in diverse vocations. Do you not teach your students differently than some of your Christian school colleagues? Are you not known by the student body as one who emphasizes this while your colleague emphasizes that? Likely. So why is this any different for the magistrates? (My hunch is that you still seem to presume ruling is purely ethical, which also points up how you may think Christianity itself is primarily ethical. But are you evaluated as a teacher by purely ethical standards? I never was, and my current vocation doesn’t either.)
2K isn’t ignoring your alleged problem, it is questioning its fundamental assumptions. You don’t like the answers you’re getting because of this.
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Jeff, you seem to vacilate between either I’m only looking at history, or I’m doing history, theology, and ethics in ASF. You then say ethics demands a hearing. I’m not sure then whether you’re charging me with ignoring ethics altogether, or simply ignoring Framean ethics.
In my defense, I’d say that much of my writing has been informed by ethicists such as Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert Meileander, Leon Kass, and Wendell Berry (a lay ethicist but maybe as much an expert as Frame). Also, I devoted a chapter of ASF to morality, as in the role of public schools in teaching morality.
So I think I’ve given ethics a hearing.
Plus, I’m still not sure why you respond, “exactly,” to my claim that the United States is dominated by utilitarianim is not a philosophical judgment.
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Thank you for a direct answer. It gives me grounds for reconsidering my objection.
No vacillation. ASF looked to me like a cross-disciplinary project (doing all three), but undertaken without sufficient engagement with all three disciplines.
Surely we can agree that ASF is much longer on history than either philosophy or theology, yes? There’s nothing wrong with that; it just left a lot of gaps in the philosophy area, on my read. That’s all: ASF entangles three disciplines, but majors on one. Is that a flaw? Who knows. We can’t do everything, of course.
All I’m saying is that it would be helpful if you anticipated likely objections and met them. It’s not unreasonable for someone to come to the end ASF and ask the exact questions I’m asking. The Christian magistrate is an obvious test case for a theory about Church and State.
So: where do you converge or diverge from Hauerwas and Meilander? (I’ve not read the other two, but you could talk about them as well.
JRC
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Because I agree… 🙂 I’m making an observation that is not a purely philosophical judgment. Is that a problem? (Rhetorical question …)
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No, not at all. Part of the communication problem here is that we are looking from two different perspectives. And part of it is that we are covering the space of “liberty” using two very different basis sets.
Perspective: Your concern, as I understand it, is with justification of one’s actions before men. Two different people can make different decisions and justifiably claim to be following Christ.
That’s an important perspective, and I don’t want to dismiss it. In fact, I agree with you. But it’s not the perspective of my question, so it provides an entirely inadequate answer to the question.
My concern is of an individual standing before God, desiring to be obedient to Christ in his vocation: How does he decide what to do? What is the process of understanding God’s will?
We both agree that this individual has liberty where the Scripture is silent. Where we seem to diverge is that you seem to be saying that if Scripture has no direct bearing, then the individual has no responsibility to Scripture. Not merely to the Church, not merely to other people, but he can (I’m hearing you say) disregard Scripture itself because of his jurisdiction. But then sometimes you seem to say the opposite.
So what I don’t like about the answer has nothing to do with “challenging my assumptions”, but because (a) it’s answering a different question, and (b) it’s an inconsistent answer. I also don’t like how the answer is laid out, as a series of challenges to opposing views, rather that in a clear synoptic presentation. I much prefer direct answers.
Really, honestly, I’m not trying to score debating points or grind this into the ground — #3 has been a tense objection — I’m trying to say that your answer is not as clear to me as it is in your own mind.
Liberty
For you, liberty is tied up with jurisdiction. For me, liberty is tied up with Scriptural restriction. I, as the individual, have liberty before others on areas that the Scripture leaves open. But I do not have liberty before God to use my liberty to indulge the sin nature, regardless of jurisdiction.
So because we cover the space of “liberty” differently, you with jurisdictions, and me with Scriptural restriction, it becomes hard for me to understand why you would argue (or appear to argue) that a Christian magistrate could disregard the Scripture just because he’s in the “civic” jurisdiction.
Way off on both counts. The problem with the first is that I rarely think things are “purely” this or that. Ruling is ethical, because it is making decisions about what we should do. But it entails a lot more than ethics. Or more precisely, it wraps up a lot of non-ethical considerations into decision-making.
The second — well, it’s an uncharitable assumption on your part. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t think I should have to brandish my Gospel-believing credentials on the basis of a “hunch”, do you?
JRC (yes, it does spell “jerk”, if that’s what you’re thinking)
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I much prefer direct answers.
Jeff, how do treatises on jello computers fit that bill? Kidding. Sort of. I have been trying to offer up what I like to think are fairly direct answers.
My concern is of an individual standing before God, desiring to be obedient to Christ in his vocation: How does he decide what to do? What is the process of understanding God’s will?
We both agree that this individual has liberty where the Scripture is silent. Where we seem to diverge is that you seem to be saying that if Scripture has no direct bearing, then the individual has no responsibility to Scripture. Not merely to the Church, not merely to other people, but he can (I’m hearing you say) disregard Scripture itself because of his jurisdiction. But then sometimes you seem to say the opposite.
Let me direct and clear: the individual believer has every responsibility to Scripture; he mayn’t disregard Scripture at any time or place. When I say Scripture has no direct bearing it is like this: you govern state A and think taxes need to be raised; I govern state B and think they need to go down. Where do either of us have any scriptural warrant to justify our decision? It’s not a disregarding of Scripture, rather it’s to ask where does it blueprint for either of us how to figure temporal things out? In point of fact, where you seem to see disregard, 2K wants to be more faithful to Scripture by keeping it from being mis-used and abused. The ironic thing here is that those clamoring to apply redemption to creation are actually disregarding it.
For you, liberty is tied up with jurisdiction. For me, liberty is tied up with Scriptural restriction. I, as the individual, have liberty before others on areas that the Scripture leaves open. But I do not have liberty before God to use my liberty to indulge the sin nature, regardless of jurisdiction.
I don’t recognize my view here at all, either explicitly or implicitly. My view isn’t that liberty is tied up in jurisdiction or that one may “use liberty to indulge the sin nature.†I agree that liberty has to do with scriptural silence: how else to explain that your governance may zig from my zag on taxes? When I said the first rule of 2K was jurisdiction (thrice) it had nothing to do with liberty—it had to do with the principle that Jesus governs the two kingdoms differently.
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Jeff: you wrote: “My sole focus, from start to finish, is how to think as a Christian who is subject to the Lordship of Christ about “living as a stranger in reverent fear†in the common realm, which is what Peter is talking about in the passage above. I don’t care if one is able to plumb without the Scriptures; that fact (or non-fact?) is irrelevant to me, a Christian plumber, who still has to be obedient to Christ in his plumbing.”
Wow! Where is the situational now? Is it really possible to live in isolation, as if it is just me and my Lord, damn the bystanders? But didn’t Jesus say that the second command, “love your neighbor as yourself,” is like unto loving the Lord our God with our entire being? So how does anyone plumb in isolation, as if the Lordship of Christ was not being lived out in the context of neighbors who hire plumbers, future owners who will use your plumbing, or other plumbers who need to be able to work on your plumbing when your dead.
Your reading of Christ’s Lordship on you suggests that Paul was wrong to tell Christians married to non-Christians to remain married and not to divorce. After all, if it were simply about serving Christ, then being unequally yoked is impermissible. But then again, divorce is wrong. So you live in a compromised way.
It’s not just your rejection of compromise that is apparently driving your approach, it is also your unwillingness to acknowledge that you already live in a compromised way all the time because you are a justified sinner and you live in a fallen world. (BTW, it is the zeal for consistent righteousness that makes conservative Presbyterians such bad political conservatives, as if the Right is simply about behavioral standards or righteous conduct.)
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Jeff: another iteration on your exchange with Steve: you wrote: “We both agree that this individual has liberty where the Scripture is silent. Where we seem to diverge is that you seem to be saying that if Scripture has no direct bearing, then the individual has no responsibility to Scripture.” Huh? How can someone have resonsibility to the Bible when the Bible is silent on something? You seem to be saying that even if the Bible is silent about plumbing, a plumber is still responsible to the Bible in his selection of materials, fixing of leaks, in the actual doing of plumbing. This makes no sense to say the Bible has authority even on matters upon which it does not speak. Pardon me, but I thought logic was part of philosophy.
On ASF I will concede that it is primarily historical. And I think the historical perspective needs more attention from philosophers and theologians. History isn’t normative. But if history shows that certain ideas have been tried and have major problems, it would seem to be smart for those who continue to affirm those ideas as valid and true to try to explain how they have updated and purged the older ideas of the problems revealed by history.
In my case, I see the current arguments of neo-Calvinists, soft-core theonomists, evangelicals, and other segments of the religious right following almost exactly those of mainline Protestants from 1800 to 1960. The mainline churches learned some lessons in the 1960s and adjusted their political theology. Granted, turning the social gospel from a Republican to a Democratic outlook was not the one for which I might have hoped. But they did adjust. The Religious Right is now simply making the Republic social gospel arguments. Both sides assume the validity of a social gospel and each chapter in ASF uses a historical episode to explore one of the assumptions of that gospel.
We can talk philosophy all you want — okay, probably not. But I feel like you need to take into account the failure of your political theology. It does not square with the polity we have in the United States. And this is why yours, I think, is a soft core theonomy. You want to be faithful to Christ no matter what you face now by God’s providence. You do not think that our polity is legitimate because it does not take God’s law seriously. The only way a polity can take God’s law seriously, in your view, is if Scripture is directly in view. (REPT says God rules even when Scripture is not directly in view. God was indeed Lord of Saddam Hussein, as much as he was over Herod.)
The Scripture-dominant view of the US was prevailing view in 1950. It is no more. Will your ethics adjust to contemporary social realities? Or is your understanding of your need to submit to the Lordship of Christ so incapable of compromise that you either need to move to an unsettled place and institute a new polity, or overthrow the current regime and establish in its place a Bible-derived polity?
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Jeff,
Re these points over liberty and being responsible to Scripture, etc., I know I have used this before to relative boos, but I like the analogy (so nyah!). Plus, it seems really direct and simple, the way Presbyterian-Jello is supposed to go down.
When you and I meet for lunch we are in Grand Rapids and, of course, “go Dutch†(each one paying for himself). When our bills come you submit a generous tip while I submit a prudent one. Both choices have biblical warrant but neither may fault the other. The only thing each may hold the other accountable for is paying his bill—that is clear and non-negotiable. Tipping is liberty, paying is being responsible to Scripture. Your demands up to this point are a lot like me demanding from you a justification for your generous tip. In polite company this is considered quite uncouth and it just isn’t done.
You still seem to be doing RPW when you should thinking adiaphora and vice versa.
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Zrim: I knew the Dutch would get to you, cheapskate.
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Yeah, but a cheapskate in a metro way.
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Light loafers are generally cheaper than heavy ones.
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No, quite the opposite actually. At least, that’s what loafer wearers tell me.
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Thank you. That’s what I wanted to know.
Let me be clear about why I’m here in the first place. Back in Oct.-Nov., the things I was hearing from you sounded like you were saying that Christians in government should ignore the Scriptures. I became really concerned about the basis for right and wrong that would replace the Scriptures. I was told, “the Natural Law can take care of it.”
So rather than assume that you are antinomian or something — which is certainly how you came across — I decided to raise objections to you directly and get a clear sense of what you are saying. (Perhaps you’ll notice that I have *not* joined the chorus of “antinomian!” going on on the current GB thread on theonomy).
That’s the goal here: to attempt to falsify the premise that REPT is antinomian, by means of moderately skeptical questioning. OR, to finally settle the question firmly in my mind.
And I have to say — I’ve not been seeing a lot of direct answers over on this end of the ‘Net. What can I say? Communication is hard.
I’m perfectly fine with that, as long as we’re talking from the perspective of justification.
If however we move it to the level of the individual believer and say either “Scripture doesn’t directly spell it out, so I can do whatever feels right, or whatever utilitarian ethics tells me to do”, then I object.
Or, if we try to truncate Scripture so as to limit its reach (in the conscience) to only those things that are “direct and obvious”, then I object.
I think we can be in agreement on this?
OK. The point is not obvious here. Are you not moving from
“Jesus governs the two kingdoms differently” to
“And so we have liberty in the common realm”
?
Finally, I was really offended by your supposition that I think of “Christianity as primarily about ethics.”
JRC
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How do you get from being “personally subject to the Lordship of Christ” to “living in isolation”? That’s nonsensical.
I’m saying what Paul says in Rom. 14 — that I should judge my own actions, not those of another.
You missed the “direct” part. My point is that “indirect bearing” matters as well — to the conscience of the individual. As I said before, the plumber’s choice of material *does* come under the purview of Scripture, IF it begins to transgress, say, the eighth commandment or the sixth. That doesn’t mean that this will *always* occur; just that when it *does*, the Christian plumber is not free to ignore those indirect bearings.
General request of all three of us: can we tone down the rhetoric here?
JRC
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Let me be clear about why I’m here in the first place. Back in Oct.-Nov., the things I was hearing from you sounded like you were saying that Christians in government should ignore the Scriptures. I became really concerned about the basis for right and wrong that would replace the Scriptures. I was told, “the Natural Law can take care of it.â€
Jeff, to the extent that general revelation is a form of “Scripture,†I’d still say that NL is entirely sufficient for the ordering of society. But special revelation is only for the church. The two books have two different purposes. Jesus is the author of both. Does this still concern you? If so, why?
So rather than assume that you are antinomian or something — which is certainly how you came across — I decided to raise objections to you directly and get a clear sense of what you are saying. (Perhaps you’ll notice that I have *not* joined the chorus of “antinomian!†going on on the current GB thread on theonomy).
Yes, I have. But to be honest, as slur-y as it is, I might prefer to be assumed antinomian. Trying to walk this middle-ground between theonomy and 2K seems a bit Erasmian to me. It’s a bit like those who want to find a middle ground between Arminianism and Calvinism and create a patchwork quilt out of two competing views without realizing they are both internally consistent systems.
If however we move it to the level of the individual believer and say either “Scripture doesn’t directly spell it out, so I can do whatever feels right, or whatever utilitarian ethics tells me to doâ€, then I object.
Tips and paying bills. Sorry, but if you are compelled subjectively to be generous who am I to raise my hand? I’m sure you have your reasons. (Actually, in real life I get accused of being too generous by my wife. But she never worked tables or general hospitality in college like me—my reasons have to do with having walked in another’s, uh, loafers. Take that, Darryl.) Why is this so objectionable?
Or, if we try to truncate Scripture so as to limit its reach (in the conscience) to only those things that are “direct and obviousâ€, then I object.
If I understand, what then do you make of something like Dt. 29:29 where it seems pretty clear that we are to be concerned only for the revealed things not inscrutable ones? Again, you can’t skip out on paying your bill because that’s stealing. But how are you to decide when to be generous and when to be prudent?
“When I said the first rule of 2K was jurisdiction (thrice) it had nothing to do with liberty—it had to do with the principle that Jesus governs the two kingdoms differently.â€
OK. The point is not obvious here. Are you not moving from
“Jesus governs the two kingdoms differently†to
“And so we have liberty in the common realm�
Not really. What I mean is that the KoG is governed by grace, the KoM by law. It isn’t that grace cannot be experienced in the KoM (pardon for execution) or that law has no place in the KoG (church discipline), but these are the guiding principles. But when we move to the KoM there are still at once clear rules and places for wide disagreement. You seem to keep saying “liberty†as if that’s a bad thing.
Finally, I was really offended by your supposition that I think of “Christianity as primarily about ethics.â€
If you recall, I said that was my suspicion and was my way of trying to explain what I think are your abiding presuppositions. Why was it offensive?
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Jeff, does rhetoric become more appealing with emoticons? I was pushing back on your philosophically challenged point but trying to do so tongue in cheek. No offense intended.
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Lots of different thoughts here.
(1) Without disparaging the “infallibility” of general revelation; still, I don’t call it “Scripture.” That is, contra Hodge, I don’t place the two in the same epistemic category. There’s a simple reason: general revelation is not written in words.
There’s a lot at the back of that thought — as in Richard Rorty and Romans 2 and 10 — so we may not want to go there.
(2) I’m not persuaded that NL is sufficient for the ordering of society. NL has taken quite a drubbing in the ethical world. It seems to me that NL requires Scripture as a backdrop in order to know which “laws” are truly normative and which are not.
That said, I don’t think NL is any worse than current secular projects. So, hey, in a fit of post-modern pluralism, “Why not?”
(3) Is special revelation only for the church? How do we know this? Is that premise consistent with the word of the Lord coming to Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, or Pharaoh?
You’re crossing the streams here. I’m talking about the level of the individual believer; you’re talking about a 3rd-person audit of someone else’s behavior. As I indicated in the comment previous, 3rd-person audits require a much higher level of scrutiny; they are subject to greater liberty.
I hear you. But I’m going to continue to seek middle ground until I can take either one side or the other with a clear conscience.
More later. Gotta teach harmonic motion.
JRC
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Without disparaging the “infallibility†of general revelation; still, I don’t call it “Scripture.†That is, contra Hodge, I don’t place the two in the same epistemic category. There’s a simple reason: general revelation is not written in words.
Jeff, it was a figure of speech. I’m not sayiing they are in the same epistemic category. All I am saying is that God created both books. He just happened to write the special one down because the gospel is not in our nature.
I’m not persuaded that NL is sufficient for the ordering of society. NL has taken quite a drubbing in the ethical world. It seems to me that NL requires Scripture as a backdrop in order to know which “laws†are truly normative and which are not.
That said, I don’t think NL is any worse than current secular projects. So, hey, in a fit of post-modern pluralism, “Why not?â€
That’s like saying my feet aren’t good enough to use to walk across a room, I need something to help them out. Granted, I may have flat feet, but they are good enough for walking.
Is special revelation only for the church? How do we know this? Is that premise consistent with the word of the Lord coming to Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, or Pharaoh?
And you wonder why you keep getting pegged a latent theonomist? Look, the exegetical, theological and historical arguments for 2K have been made in plenty of places, informally here and formally elsewhere. This question has been asked and roundly answered for you. What I think is at bottom is that you simply don’t agree with the arguments. Either that or you haven’t been listening. Since I think you’re a pretty honest person I’m going to go with the former.
JRC: If however we move it to the level of the individual believer and say either “Scripture doesn’t directly spell it out, so I can do whatever feels right, or whatever utilitarian ethics tells me to doâ€, then I object.
Zrim: Tips and paying bills. Sorry, but if you are compelled subjectively to be generous who am I to raise my hand?
You’re crossing the streams here. I’m talking about the level of the individual believer; you’re talking about a 3rd-person audit of someone else’s behavior. As I indicated in the comment previous, 3rd-person audits require a much higher level of scrutiny; they are subject to greater liberty.?
OK, so you want to know how an individual can decide to be generous. But your problem is that you presume that if he cannot find the answer in holy writ he must be leaning on “utilitarian ethics,†or something otherwise dastardly. But I thought God gave us a conscience, a brain and all the rest in order to make decisions. It’s like the feet thing, Jeff. You seem to have a really low view of what God has created to get us from day to day or from A to B. Maybe you think to rely on one’s faculties is bad Calvinism? I admit my feet are flat, my mind is dim and my eyes are batty. But this isn’t the same as total depravity. Calvinism is to admit these faculties are sin-strewn and highly compromised, it isn’t to dispense with them altogether. That’s utter depravity.
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Yes, I do. It’s not nearly as clear to me as it is to you that one must be “either” 2K or theonomist. I mean, was John Calvin a latent theonomist or a latent 2K-er? Or both? And what would that mean?
I tend to resist pigeonholes pretty strongly.
Yes, exactly. I’m interested in the meta-ethic: On what basis do I, in the absence of a “direct and obvious” Scriptural command, make a decision? I don’t want a dictionary of outcomes (“in a pub, tip 10% unless the waitress spilled your beer on your date, in which case you can give 5%”). I want some basic description of method.
Indeed God did give us a conscience. But that observation doesn’t explain ethical reasoning any more than the observation that “God gave me feet” explains how walking works. Yes, people can come to ethical conclusions using their consciences.
But if they want to examine their decisions, they need some basis for it. The conscientious Christian magistrate wants to examine his decisions — partly to justify them in the context of legislative deliberation, but mostly to have a clear conscience. He wants to know whether he should support a “civil unions” bill for gay couples, and he wants to know that his decision is grounded in something stronger than a gut feeling.
If you want to use Utilitarian Ethics, or Natural Law Ethics, or Hedonism, or Objectivism, or whatever as the meta-ethic, then just say so. If I “don’t like it”, then I’ll say “I don’t like it” and move on with my life. But as it is, I have no idea what you have in mind. For a time, I thought that Natural Law ethics was an integral part of REPT. But Dr. Hart doesn’t seem to agree.
Is that a “low view” of our faculties? No more than is expressed in the Confession:
Notice that the “light of nature” and “Christian prudence” apply to worship and the government of the Church — a bit of a jurisdictional kludge, no? — but these circumstances are common to human actions and societies — another jurisdictional kludge — and both are to be followed according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. Not merely in the Church, but always.
Very different from the “two spheres, two books” view, the Confession uses both books certainly within the Church, and (it appears) within the common sphere also.
Additionally, Christian prudence is to be observed within a framework, “the general rules of the Word.”
And again,
So the conscience, even of a believer, can be directed by the Spirit, and yet still needs the Word to expose ongoing sin.
Now, I suspect that you don’t entirely disagree. In fact, I think at this point that we have agreement that “Christian prudence” is to be used “according to the general rules of the Word.” My point is not that we are necessarily in dispute — except perhaps about “two spheres, two books.”
But the point is that when I question the all-sufficiency of the conscience, keep in mind that I have WCoF 1.6 and 19.6 as the backdrop. The conscience is not nothing; but it’s not all-sufficient, either.
There is another option. Perhaps the answers that have been given have not been as clear and direct as imagined. Or another: that I’m slow to understand.
So humor me and give a direct answer: How do we know that special revelation is only for the Church? If I don’t like the answer, I will say so; but at least I’ll stop asking the question. Which would probably be a relief.
JRC
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Interesting thought. Very crypto-Lutheran and 1st-use-y. 😉 (BTW: I don’t think of “Lutheran” as a pejorative. Just FYI). So is the Kingdom of God entirely co-extensive with the Church, in your view? Perhaps WCoF 25.2 is in mind?
Not at all. I’m just trying to keep “liberty before men” separate from “libertinism before God”, the first strongly encouraged by the Confession and the second, not; the first, having to do with “3rd-person audits” of behavior; the second, with conscience.
—
It’s less so now that things have cooled off a bit (i.e.: I forgive you), but I’d like to explain.
A belief that “Christianity is primarily ethical” is really a heresy, an inversion of the Gospel. I think that we both recognize J.G. Machen when we walk down that road. He more than any other pointed out that “Christianity as morality” was an entirely different religion from Christianity.
Given that you know the history, I interpreted your comment to mean, “You (JRC) are not actually a Christian. You believe the Galatian heresy. Christianity for you is a matter of keeping the law.”
I may well have over-read your comment; it would be a rather explosive thing to say. But it’s not an unreasonable reading at face value and in the shared context of the works we have read.
JRC
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But if they want to examine their decisions, they need some basis for it. The conscientious Christian magistrate wants to examine his decisions — partly to justify them in the context of legislative deliberation, but mostly to have a clear conscience. He wants to know whether he should support a “civil unions†bill for gay couples, and he wants to know that his decision is grounded in something stronger than a gut feeling…
…But the point is that when I question the all-sufficiency of the conscience, keep in mind that I have WCoF 1.6 and 19.6 as the backdrop. The conscience is not nothing; but it’s not all-sufficient, either.
Just to be clear, I do not think “gut feeling†and conscience are synonymous. And who said the conscience is all-sufficient? I didn’t. All I’m saying is that it should be given a lot more credit than is being given here. I certainly appreciate wanting a clear conscience, as well as being able to justify one’s own deliberation. But it sounds to me like you want answers you’ll, well, never get. It sounds like a quest for certainty instead of a contentment with proximity. I don’t think I can answer you to your satisfaction because I simply don’t share this quest. I’m good with being confidently persuaded in my conscience while also equally holding out that I could as wrong as the next guy. Sorry.
Given that you know the history, I interpreted your comment to mean, “You (JRC) are not actually a Christian. You believe the Galatian heresy. Christianity for you is a matter of keeping the law.â€
No, no, no, no and no. Yeeech. I am not in the habit of speaking this way. It is one thing to point out what one believes to be errors, quite another to make any sort of comment on another’s status. I have no interest in the sort of discussion that entertains the latter. But that doesn’t mean I can’t suggest one might have some shared space with those who are in error. Yes, you quite over-read my comment. It may be that the aforementioned quest for certainty is yet afoot.
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To sum up:
I have objected that REPT drives an unnecessary wedge between theology and philosophy. DGH has defended himself by citing his philosophical influences, suggesting that the philosophy in ASF is less overt rather than entirely absent.
This is a plausible claim.
Along the way, we have discovered that JRC’s concern and Zrim and DGH’s concern are significantly different; I am primarily concerned about the Christian decision-maker, finding a reliable process for making good decisions; while Zrim and DGH are concerned primarily about allowing the Christian decision-maker to have freedom wrt. the judgment of others.
This is a helpful distinction, and I hope we all can continue to to keep it in the front of our minds.
There are still some questions that have not received direct answers. The foremost is, “How does the Christian magistrate go about his decision-making?” The answers so far have been “I have no answer”, “no plan”, ‘we’ve answered this before” (!), “This is a non-problem” (!!)
So let me ask the question another way so that the problematic nature can become more clear.
—
Let’s suppose from your answer (“no plan”) that you wish to give the Christian magistrate maximum liberty in decision-making, that he can use a variety of approaches.
(1) Is any approach permissible? Objectivism? Hedonism? Utilitarianism? Totalitarianism? If not, then on what grounds? If so, then
(2) Why not Divine Command Theory (i.e., some form of theonomy)?
Note that the second question is NOT an implicit argument in favor of theonomy. I’m just trying to understand the picture you have in mind for the Christian in the public sphere. I’m assuming you have a clear picture in your mind, and I’d like the cards on the table, if you please.
JRC
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And yes, it was very tempting to leave an elaborate April Fool’s post declaring my sudden conversion and undying allegiance to REPT. 😉
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Jeff,
I suppose what I don’t understand is the idea that some –ism has to be landed on and others need to be vanquished. I have Mark 12 in mind. If, when he has everyone’s ear as he is questioned about how we deal with this man named Caesar, Jesus simply tells us to submit to him, going against probably every conceivable argument for dissent, I think your questions are really wide the mark. In other words, Jesus commands submission. Nowhere is there any hint that rulers are subject to anyone’s critique. Think of it: Caesar is everything the Israelites conceive of as anti-Yahweh. I can just hear Rabboni Bret’s arguments now. And Jesus could give them credence. Yet, we are told to…submit. He turns his questioner’s assumptions on their heads. And Paul explains that this is because all authority is appointed by God—undermine Caesar and you undermine Yahweh.
To be frank, I don’t think this is at all easy for 21st century westerners to grasp. It irritates, nay offends, our sensibilities more than I think we’re willing to admit. We’d rather construct an –ism that is permissible. These just aren’t the questions or categories of Scripture; they are way more American than Christian. What all this means is that it seems way more important to Jesus and Paul that we are submissive citizens, whether our leader is Adolf or the Gipper.
I didn’t realize it was April 1 until I was actually punked at the end of the day. I’m getting old.
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Jeff: I understand that you’re interacting with two people. I also understand that in blogging you don’t respond to every remark or question. But I am surprised that you have not responded to my defense of ASF as history, and what that narrative does for religious conservatives today who sound a lot like the old Protestant mainline when it was trying to preserve Christian America. My comment was on March 31 at 4:01 am.
As for the legitimate options for a Christian magistrate, of your four options, “Objectivism? Hedonism? Utilitarianism? Totalitarianism?”, I recognize only one as a political theory — Totalitarianism. And given how the United States fought one World War and a Cold War against Totalitarianism, I’d say it would be unwise for a Christian magistrate in America to adopt it. Russia? Maybe.
Seriously, why do you think of politics in ethical terms almost always? I don’t think you grasp the essence of politics which is ordered compromise. It even happens in the courts of the church — session would like a red carpet but Mrs. Davis will never let that stand, so we go with blue. Does Mrs. Davis rule? Are the elders being wimps? Politics means compromise.
Also, I don’t think you’re dealing fairly with America. We are a federated republic of states with greatly diminished sovereignty. Our political options are federalism, liberalism, republicanism, anti-federalism, and democracy, with lots of mixing and matching. You may object that these are not ethical categories. But then you would be resisting the political philosophy that God has ordained providentially. Among these options, I myself think that anti-federalism (which is really a hyper-federalism) is the best for preserving local communities and preventing the establishment of a super power. But do I think anti-federalism is more Christian than a New World Order? Hardly. It’s a question of wisdom, not right or wrong.
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Jeff, just to piggy-back on DGH’s point that politics is compromise: consider just how brutally political the most intimate human institution is–the family. It might be that the family is the most political institution known to man. Ethics is certainly in there somewhere, but when I consider how shot through my days are with compromise…heck, I just might run in 2012.
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If we lived in a monarchy I wouldn’t be asking the questions. The very fact that we can discuss “forms of government” comes out of the fact that we *are* the source of government, here in the 21st century. Or more precisely, that we have the ability to affect governance through electing representatives and being representatives ourselves.
I’m not talking about overthrowing the existing order; I’m talking about taking seriously our role in the existing order and trying to do a workmanly job. Such as showing up at school board meetings (good for you!).
JRC
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Jeff,
“Being able to ask the questions” is a nice thing, but I am not so sure it’s all it’s cracked up to be. My point is that our time and place makes it very difficult (impossible?) to understand something like Mark 12. It could be that living under a monarchy would actually nurture a better Christianity wrt the kingdoms, submission, etc. than living within a liberal democracy. I know that sounds odd since we have been trained to think that the west is God’s second blessing on humanity, but the categories of scripture assume a form of governance quite alien to ours. If we think Xianity cannot thrive in any time and place, under any regime, I think we have to seriously re-consider our assumptions.
I know you’re not advocating something like overthrow, etc. It’s just that one wonders what corrective is in place to keep you from it, or from at least lending even modest sympathy to those who do. And for it’s worth, I don’t know of any better view than 2K/SOTC (REPT, whatever) in order to make for “taking seriously our role in the existing order and doing a workmanly job.â€
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Sorry; no attempt to evade there. I have some grading to do, so I’ll spin out some answers piecemeal as time permits.
In exchange, I would appreciate some answers as well:
* Are there any political theories that are unacceptable for a Christian? If so, then on what basis; if not, then why not theonomy?
* How do we know that the Scripture is only for the Church?
—
I’m actually not so concerned with political theory as with individual responsibility. And I’m not amazingly knowledgeable about political theory OR the history thereof, so my thoughts are probably naive.
One of the core arguments of REPT is that political entanglement led to theological compromise. I wonder whether this is the case. It seems to me that the shift in theology preceded the political entanglement. Before Schweitzer, there was Wellhausen. Long before the Social Gospel, there was New Haven theology. So I wonder (naively) whether the evangelicals really are compromising the church in the way you fear. That’s not to entirely dismiss your model. It makes sense intuitively that engagement is a two-way street; I just don’t accept intuitions as the final word. I wonder whether our intuition actually works out in history. And hey — that’s your area — so maybe you can school me a bit on this.
Second, it may be that evangelicals are (as in many areas of culture) taking a look at the liberals and thinking, “Dang, that worked well. We need to catch up!” I don’t know whether that’s wise or not — it seems a bit “also-ran”-ish — but it’s often hard to parse whether catching up, or finding a new method, is the best.
See above. I am not interested in transforming polity, but in guiding individual magistrates.
Gotta run.
JRC
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Yes, I’m looking rather for *answers.*
I think Rom. 13 covers both issues. I think we agree here, right?
Right, we’re not living in a monarchy nor likely to return to such — unless I’ve underestimated the audacity of O.
Which means that each person is not merely a submissive cog in the wheel of government, but rather each of us (and especially the Christian magistrate) is a part of the government, with an active influence on legislation and the execution of legislation. My questions are directed entirely towards giving guidance to people in that situation.
I don’t really care whether “liberal democracy” is a great thing (I don’t think so). I *do* care how best to live in a liberal democracy, being fully cognizant of my active role as a part of government.
JRC
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Perhaps we use the word “ethics” in different ways. In my personal lexicon, “doing ethics” means “answering the question, ‘What should I do’?” How do you use the term?
So I think of politics in terms of ethics because politics asks the question, “What are we going to do?”
WRT the various options I mentioned, all four are politically-oriented ethical theories. Objectivists have a definite governing philosophy in mind: Free-market Libertarianism. As in Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand. Likewise, Hedonism and Utilitarianism were specifically constructed as ethical theories for governments. If one reads the original papers by Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill, their concern to guide legislation is apparent.
JRC
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Jeff, I’m not sure how you can separate personal responsibility from responsibility for society. I understand you are only looking for answers for a Christian magistrate. But shouldn’t the magistrate first decide whether he is able to take the vows of public office before he decides what political theory by which he will govern. If he thinks that monarchy is the Christian form of govt., which it is actually — think David, Christ — then can he really decide to run for office in a republic?
This exchange reinforces my earlier point about how the desire for Christian or biblical politics has blinded evangelicals to the actual polity under which they live, as in a federal republic (which became the greatest nation on God’s green earth, thank you Mr. Medved — shouldn’t he be saying that about Israel?).
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One can’t separate them cleanly; see Obj. 2. Personal responsibility is distinguishable from responsibility for society, but not fully separable from it. That was the point of the much-maligned “jello computer” analogy: we can distinguish objects but we can’t draw pure and bright lines that separate them.
(Hence, I don’t think that a project that proceeds on the basis of a “pure spirituality of the Church” is possible).
What if he thinks that the form of government is a matter of wisdom, and that individual decisions are the meat of governing?
That’s why I don’t care so much about the political theory and much more about the decision-making process.
JRC
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Jeff, sorry to play the heavy, but do you understand how dismissive or even rude your remarks might sound to someone who studies deeply in political theory and knows the history of the West that informed the American founding? You seem to think it is a trifle that a Christian may or may not pay attention to depending on his inclination. Our Constitution and our history is part of God’s providential ordering of our situation. To take seriously our political tradition is to submit to the powers that exist. You don’t seem to think that those traditions or laws are binding. Sorry for the excitement, but wow!!! I find that nonchalance troubling. (But it does fit with the idea that Christians are above it all and don’t need to play by the rules of all sorts of social arrangements. Please don’t take this personally. But I have to raise some real reservations about your apparent flippancy regarding our nation and its founding, not to mention its history.)
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Blue is the spiritual color. That’s why I’m bitter that the Dems. got it. Just kidding. Though I prefer blue.
Seriously, though. Let’s consider the nature, means, and ends of compromise.
Entering into negotiations, I have a bunch of different factors in mind:
(1) What are my non-negotiables?
(2) What are my priorities?
(3) What are the non-negotiables and priorities of the other party?
(4) Can we reach a creative win-win?
(5) If not, can we agree to mutually sacrifice priorities in exchange for some benefit?
That’s the nature of compromise. The means include things like
(6) How can I communicate clearly and effectively?
(7) How can I give the other party “space” to as to make his case and retain his dignity?
(8) How can I avoid unnecessary landmines?
The ends are simple: To preserve my non-negotiables and allow the other to do the same, while making some kind of progress.
—
Now, how does that fit in with governance? Well, I think what you’re suggesting is that, living in the fallen world, there are few *truly* non-negotiables. And I might agree with that.
For Bret M, for example, abortion is a non-negotiable. For Elder Hoss, schooling is a non-negotiable.
And your response to them, and I agree, is that if everything is a non-negotiable, the system breaks; instead of purity, one gets nothing.
In my view, it’s better to give-and-get than to get nothing. In this respect, I agree with the practice (if not the theory?) of REPT.
In another respect, I agree with the practice of REPT: it’s better to give up priorities than to use force to compel them. True force ought to be reserved for in extremis, non-negotiables. I don’t think I need to justify that from Scripture, do I?
But there is, buried in my description, a point where I feel certain we disagree. In preparing for the act of compromise, I must first decide what the non-negotiables are. On what basis do I do this?.
This is a very pragmatic question. If I walk into negotiations without a clear idea of my non-negotiables, I will walk out having been taken for a ride. Especially ’cause I can be a bit of a push-over at times.
This question, “How do I decide my non-negotiables?”, is equivalent to the question of “What’s my ethical meta-theory?”
I think Bret’s view is that y’all have been taken for a ride because you have no meta-ethic by which to decide the non-negotiables, and that Scripture points the way in this regard.
I think your view is that Bret is broken because he wants everything to be non-negotiable all at once, and he’ll get nothing at the end of the day, and that the non-negotiables ought to be found in the first Table of the Law, practiced in the Church, where we actually have a chance of controlling the non-negotiables. Among other things, you want the Church to be wise in not over-extending its reach.
How’m I doing so far?
My view is that liberal democracy is the system we currently have; it is the practical outworking of Mill’s utilitarian ethical theory; that utilitarianism is a jealous god, and it will swallow all *if* I walk into the public square without a clear idea of my non-negotiables. Thus, I am very, very chary of a political theory that is not clear-eyed about how the non-negotiables are derived.
I think those non-negotiables ought to come from Scripture; that’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
But contrary to theonomists, I think that force of government is not required by Scripture to get to those non-negotiables.
So on the abortion question, if I were president, I would pursue a holistic approach to abortion reduction, trying to maximize the goal, not trying to enshrine the principle in law. The sixth commandment (and not some natural law intuition) is the source of my norm, but persuasion and economic incentive/disincentive rather than outright illegalization would be my means.
So where are we? Any chance of getting some of my questions answered now? 🙂
JRC
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Ooh. No, I didn’t. I was cheerfully oblivious. And actually, I’m trying to understand which remarks you meant. Clearly, I’m blind on this; I can’t even see any remarks that were intended to dismiss the history of our nation, nor your expertise on the matter.
Sheepishly,
Jeff
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I think those non-negotiables ought to come from Scripture; that’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
But contrary to theonomists, I think that force of government is not required by Scripture to get to those non-negotiables.
This is what I can’t get past, Jeff. Maybe it’s just been a long day in the common sphere, but…whad’ya mean? It sounds like, “The Bible ought to provide absolutes, but it shouldn’t.” Seems like you’re giving us the come and go gesture at once.
And how exactly does one tell those not convinced around the table that the Bible is more than literature that he’s bringing it to bear on his absolute non-negotiables? Like it or don’t, that sounds like saying your basing your absolutes on Moby Dick.
And as long as we’re solving the world’s problems by pretending to be president, I’d make it mandatory that everyone get along, but not until the jet pack gets invented.
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Jeff: when you wrote: “That’s why I don’t care so much about the political theory and much more about the decision-making process,” that’s when I saw a cavalier attitude to politics and how our system works. It’s like an elder in the PCA saying, I don’t care about the BCO or how we got Presbyterian polity, I just want to be a good ruler in Christ’s church.
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Jeff, believe it or not, abortion is a non-negotiable for me. Somehow you seem to think the 2k view means it is not. But for some of us it is. The point of the 2k view is how that non-negotiable translates into life now. And the reason 2kers don’t line up with pastor Bret is that he can’t distinguish his various roles or vocations. Personally, my non-negotiable means I would never support my wife or a daughter having an abortion. It also means that I would likely work to discipline a mother or physician in my congregation involved in an abortion. But when it comes to politics, it’s a much more complicated question. 2k tries to recognize that complication, the difference between my own ethics and the ethics that provide order in a society made up of people who share my ethics and people who don’t.
This is why the constant search for ethics, or for what is personally possible by a Christian magistrate, misses the import of 2k thinking. It’s not personal. It’s public, and how do I negotiate my personal convictions in a public setting with a diverse group of personal convictions. That calls for compromise, discernment, and knowledge of how the political order operates — what are its rules and laws?
So to answer your question — which question have I not answered — there is no political order that is Christian, except for either Presbyterianism or divine-right monarchy. If I’m in a system that operates according to utilitarianism, and this violates my conscience (my non-negotiables), I don’t become a magistrate. And if it is so bad that it affects my life all the time and causes me to sin, then either I move or I rebel.
2k gives options for handling this conflict by saying the rule of the one sphere is not the same as the other. It takes the pressure off so that pastor Bret doesn’t blow. Your view only adds to Pastor Bret’s build up.
BTW, Pastor Bret’s non-negotiable allows him to live a life in this society very little different from mine. He is functionally 2k, and therefore a dysfunctional theonomist, as most are who allow this terrible regime to exist just one more second.
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Oh, I understand now. I’m sorry; that was a broad generalization that didn’t say what I was intending. Of course polity matters in the sense of being a part of our situation, and of course you are particularly aware of this because of the historical origins of our polity. So “I don’t care…” was just inept and silly on my part. I apologize.
What was trying to say is that all along, I have *not* been trying to argue for a particular form of polity, and I think that we’ve been talking at cross-purposes because that hasn’t been more clear. You’ve been wondering what keeps me from advocating revolution; and (apart from Rom. 13), the answer is that I’m not interested in changing the structure of government, so much as making good decisions within the structure that presents itself to me. Or modifying the structure in lawful ways.
Hence: “My focus is not polity…”
Sorry again. This stuff is hard across the ‘Net.
JRC
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I’m confused, too. What are the “come” and “go” gestures you have in mind?
Certainly it can be made to sound that way when convenient (I’m not certain that these “faith-based morality” arguments are always offered in good faith). But in such cases, I would take different possible approaches:
(1) I would prefer, if possible, to argue for the desirability of the outcome within the other person’s system.
(2) If backed against the wall, I will cheerfully point out that skepticism cuts both ways; an ethics grounded in pure reason doesn’t exist. So I would respectfully request that they permit me the same level of (apparent) irrationality that I’m granting to them.
JRC
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I think the reason Jeff thinks 2K doesn’t think the particular political issue called “abortion†(as 21st century Americans understand that term) is a “non-negotiable†is that 2Kers like me challenge the wisdom of typical conversations about it, be it private or public consideration. To be brief, I think we’re way short on anything resembling pastoral care and way long on punditry.
“Functionally 2K, dysfunctional theonomist.” Good one.
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Jeff,
I’m confused, too. What are the “come†and “go†gestures you have in mind?
How do you go from “non-negotiables ought to come from Scripture†to “But contrary to theonomists, I think that force of government is not required by Scripture to get to those non-negotiablesâ€? It seems like a huge arbitrary leap. Doesn’t the first statement contradict the second? All I can come up with is that your (pardon, but I am making a point) soft theonomy doesn’t like the hardness of the hard theonomy. But if the basic principle of theonomy is right, namely that Scripture bears on public life, what’s wrong with being McAteeish about it? Like DGH keeps suggesting, why can’t your private and soft theonomy go public and hard?
If backed against the wall, I will cheerfully point out that skepticism cuts both ways; an ethics grounded in pure reason doesn’t exist. So I would respectfully request that they permit me the same level of (apparent) irrationality that I’m granting to them.
So what you do with the guy across the table who says certain non-negotiables ought to come from the Koran or the Book of Moroni—works you and I consider fictitious—is to agree that we’re all being irrational. Instead of agreeing to all be irrational, wouldn’t it be better to agree to leave our sacred texts to sacred activity and agree to play by the rules found in general revelation, since that is what general revelation is for?
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Hold the phone a second. I used the abortion issue as an example of my reasoning in a tough case, not as a stick-in-the-eye. Nothing was implied about your own position.
JRC
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Two issues:
(1) Contradiction? I don’t think so. Even within Church government, we hold that things like discipleship are non-optional; but we do not employ the force of discipline on every single issue. Persuasion comes first, second, and third; force is a last resort.
(2) Arbitrary? Not exactly. “Be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves.”
JRC
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Not quite. I remind him that whatever pejorative label he wishes to apply to my view applies equally to his. We are starting at least from the same epistemic score.
The point is to remind him, in this day and age, that an appeal to Scripture is not a disqualifier.
He might be agreeable to an argument that did not include Scripture, so pragmatically, it could be a could move. But there are a couple of hiccups.
First, I’m not persuaded that this is what general revelation is for. So you’ll need to make this case.
Second, an appeal to “rules found in general revelation” are subject to the exact same skeptical scrutiny as norms found in Scripture.
There are two problems here:
(1) There is no agreed-upon method to move from “this is what we find in nature” to “so here’s what we ought to do.” This is the well-known is/ought problem in ethics, and if I present a Mormon or Muslim or atheist with an argument from Natural Law, he can brush it aside just as easily as an argument from Scripture. You might have noticed that for the past few decades, Christians have been arguing against abortion and homosexuality on natural law grounds, all to no avail. “It ain’t natural!” “It’s happening in Nature, so …?”
So we haven’t gained anything by shifting our justificatory basis from Scripture to Natural Law, except in the cases where the mention of Scripture produces an allergic reaction.
(2) Remember also that we agreed to separate the question of justification to others from the question of informing my own conscience. The first is your primary concern; the second is mine; though we agree that both questions are important.
Let’s take for a moment three separate cases.
(A) The Christian informs his own conscience by Scripture, then argues in the public sphere by Natural Law. This is, I think, what you desire to do. Pragmatically, this is what I would often do as well.
The problem here is that when I do so, I am open to the charge of arguing in bad faith. That is, I’m publicly appealing to one meta-ethic (natural law) when in fact, I believe in another (Divine Command).
(Which is no worse than politicians do, but there it is).
(B) The Christian informs his own conscience AND argues in the public sphere using Scripture. This is the theonomist approach. Full integrity (if done consistently), terrible results. You might also argue that consistency is impossible, but I’ll leave that alone for now.
(C) The Christian informs his own conscience AND argues in the public sphere using Natural Law.
This is what I heard REPT arguments to be, initially. This was the origin of my tentative phrase “heteronomianism.” You appear to me now to be closer to (A) than (C), but I would appreciate some confirmation on that.
The danger here is obvious: the Christian in his heart trusts in the creation instead of the Creator.
JRC
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Jeff: you wrote: “The point is to remind him, in this day and age, that an appeal to Scripture is not a disqualifier.”
So is it also possible for him to say to you: “in this day and age, an appeal to the Book of Mormon is not a disqualifier?”
In other words, put yourself in the non-Bible believer’s position. Why would you expect the Bible not to be a disqualifier, if you as a Christian won’t accept arguments based on the Koran or the Book of Mormon? (There is an important difference too between saying “everyone has a right to appeal to the sacred text of choice” to “I’m actually going to listen to an argument because it is based on the authority of the Koran.”
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That’s a fair distinction; it corresponds to the difference between justification and guiding one’s conscience.
I would respond, If we agree that God’s law is written on the heart, then why does it make a difference whether I call it, “God’s Law”, or not? It should be equally persuasive in either case.
So if I throw out an argument from Scripture, explictly calling it such, and you throw out an argument from Natural Law that happens to coincide with an argument from Scripture, it seems to me that we are on equal footing. Both of us are appealing to the conscience of the other within; both of us are equally subject to skeptical review.
The situations are not entirely parallel, however. On the one hand, I might inadvertently come across as trying to force the other to believe what I believe. On the other, you might inadvertently come across as arguing in bad faith. So it might be the part of wisdom to decide which is the worse liability.
That assumes, however, that your conscience in these matters is truly being guided by Scripture and not “Natural Law”, which is (as Mark vdM is fond of pointing out) not a sufficient guide in matters civil. That is, that you are living in option A rather than option C. Is that in fact the case?
JRC
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Jeff: we are not arguing the same point if you are appealing to the Bible and I appeal to common sense or a general consensus (I don’t know enough about NL to say I appeal to it). Don’t take this personally, but the more I interact with you here and with theonomists at Greenbaggins I’m convinced the fundamental difference comes down to this — are we willing to trust unbelievers as fellow citizens and even as rulers? I sense that you are not, and that is why you want to say that you and I come down on the same side in interacting with a Mormom or Muslim, whether I appeal to NL or you to Scripture. I sense that you want to control the world you live in because you need to be faithful to God. That involves you in trying to get God’s law implemented or at least taken seriously. If it isn’t, your faith is compromised.
But when I sit down at the proverbial table, I’m not there trying to work the Christian agenda. I’m hoping simply to work out a common ground that will allow me the setting to serve God in my vocation and worship with the other assembled saints. I have no desire to see Christianity dominate the public realm. As long as the magistrate does not persecute the church, I can live with any one holding office.
I know that will dissapoint many political theorists who talk about the good society and have visions of balancing liberty and order. I like those visions. But my hope is not in this world’s order, but in the world order to come, and in the means of grace that is bringing that order here and now.
So again, to cut to the chase: I trust non-Christians as neighbors and rulers because I don’t think this world order needs to manifest a higher order. You seem to be uncomfortable with non-Christians because you think this world order needs to reflect a higher order.
My trust of non-xians doesn’t make me better than you. I could be way more naive. But we do have very different expectations for this world, and for the Chrisitan’s ability to see the fruit of his faith in the here and now. (Flee the Corinthian temptation! Flee!)
p.s. I’m not sure what you’re saying Mark vM is fond of pointing out. I only see him appealing to Art. 36 of the Belgic Confession.
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Jeff said : [Choice] (A) The Christian informs his own conscience by Scripture, then argues in the public sphere by Natural Law. This is, I think, what you desire to do. Pragmatically, this is what I would often do as well… You appear to me now to be closer to (A) than (C), but I would appreciate some confirmation on that.
DGH suggests : …the fundamental difference comes down to this — are we willing to trust unbelievers as fellow citizens and even as rulers? I sense that you are not, and that is why you want to say that you and I come down on the same side in interacting with a Mormon or Muslim…
Jeff, I am, obviously, with DGH here. I have that exact same sense. You tell me you want to agree that when in the public square we are to behave like 2Kers. But for some reason, when I say that, you are hesitant. Is it me, do I smell, or do you really not believe pagans are to be trusted as both citizens and leaders?
For my part, and contrary to Richard Land and Al Mohler, I really couldn’t care any less that Mitt Romney wears secret magic skivvies and thinks he will be deified (instead of glorified) one day. If he wants to hold public office all I care about is if his policies are agreeable; if he wants to be my elder, he’s got a lot of work to do. And when Bill Mahar faults Sarah Palin for her AoG witchcraft I agree that she practices a form of witchcraft, but I don’t know why he thinks that should keep her from holding public office (her lameness is what should). She’s got a lot of work to do if she wants to meet me at the communion rail. Evidently, Mahar can be brutally Constantinian but those who don’t share his religious beliefs cannot.
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Zrim: you’re forgetting that Sarah is haaaaahhhhhht.
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Focus, Darryl, focus. But you’re right. She’s way hotter than Bill Mahar, way. But I favor Tina Fey. Looks and a killer sense of humor? “What the what?!”
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Nothing personal taken. I can’t speak for theonomists at GB. That description certainly appears to apply to some.
The bottom line is that you and I simply have different concerns, and my concern keeps getting put through your filter, with funny results popping out.
I have no problem trusting unbelievers as rulers. Or at least, submitting to them. Being faithful to God doesn’t mean getting the outcomes I want or controlling things; it means, as far as it depends upon me, acting and carrying out my calling with integrity. I’m interested in faithful decision-making.
That’s it.
Guys, at this point, I’ve answered far more questions of yours than you have of mine. If we’re thinking about compromise and suchlike, it would be helpful to me to have some reciprocation.
Thanks,
JRC
P.S Mark van der Molen noted this here:
“2. Canons of Dort, Third/Fourth Head, Article 4 which says that regarding the natural light that remains in unregenerate man, “…he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil.—
Anyways, that’s what I was referring to.
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Being faithful to God doesn’t mean getting the outcomes I want or controlling things; it means, as far as it depends upon me, acting and carrying out my calling with integrity. I’m interested in faithful decision-making.
Jeff, this is fair enough. But I think the problem is that nobody could take issue with such a vague pursuit (does anyone really want to resist integrity or faithful decision-making?). The question is, How? This is where views diverge, it seems to me. And it really is a pragmatic question: what will your implementation look like, mine, Bret’s? To be honest, I know what mine and Bret’s look like. Yours, well, it seems a bit like trying to describe a color.
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Jeff, I thought I had been giving answers to questions and objections. Granted, some of your comments may have been longer than my ADD blogging self can handle. But if you want to put a point on a few questions, I’ll try to answer.
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Exactly. This is the “money problem” I was describing earlier. I don’t fault you for not having a complete answer; I don’t, either. I just think that this is the most pressing question to be answered, since we are not realistically in a position to change polity, but we *are* realistically in a position to have to make decisions within the existing polity.
My tentative framework would be, Scripture sets the frame; the situation (including current polity) and motives concretize the Scriptural norms.
JRC
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Me? Verbose? Heaven forfend. 🙂
Questions:
(1) Pick one:
(A) The Christian informs his own conscience by Scripture, then argues in the public sphere by Natural Law.
(B) The Christian informs his own conscience AND argues in the public sphere using Scripture.
(C) The Christian informs his own conscience AND argues in the public sphere using Natural Law or some other non-Scripture-based form of reasoning.
(2) Why is “Scripture only for the Church”?
(3) Are there any political theories that are unacceptable for a Christian. If so, why? If not, then why not theonomy?
Thanks,
JRC
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Jeff, I fear you’ve studied too long with Prof. Frame and that has turned you into a literalist. I have actually answered your questions but not directly in a q&a way. But I’ll do so again for the rpw challenged. (I can’t resist the shots, sorry.)
I see none of my positions in question 1. I read the Bible, I see commands and prohibitions, I try to follow them. I also engage in a host of activities not covered by those commands — remember my morning routine — no commandments about making coffee or feeding cats. Even in my primary duty of historical writing, I see no imperatives in Scripture beyond telling the truth — well, duh. So for much of my life I live with a sense of trying to serve God and love my neighbor. Sometimes I read the Bible, and other authors (such as Wendell Berry), who challenge me to be better in my service to God and love of neighbor (recycle more, or drive with more patience for the other idiots on the road). But that’s about the way it goes for me. When I serve on a session, the most power I have — I certainly don’t have that much at home — I operate in a similar way though there the aim is to minister the word all the time and to follow the Form of Government.
So it’s not as mechanical as you suggest in my life and I can’t imagine it being any different if I were a magistrate.
On the second question, we have no record of God revealing himself to people other than his own people. He chooses Abraham. He chooses Paul. He reveals himself. I can’t fathom how the Bible could be for people whom he has not chosen. I can’t fathom how the Bible is for the Chinese, until they become Christians. If communists picked up the Bible and said, we’re going to follow this book but not become Christians, what sense would that make? One last consideration — the preface to the decalogue, the granddaddy of ethical norms. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt . . .” God’s covenant relationship is already in place before issuing these commands. (That’s why you don’t put the decalogue, btw, on a Montgomery, AL, courthouse wall.)
3) The major political theories are monarchy, republicanism, and democracy. All are acceptable because the Bible neither requires nor forbids a particular political system.
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Jeff,
I don’t fault you for not having a complete answer; I don’t, either.
Don’t look now, but you do think you have an answer:
My tentative framework would be, Scripture sets the frame; the situation (including current polity) and motives concretize the Scriptural norms.
Assuming you mean the public domain, no, Scripture doesn’t set the frame because it can’t because it is intended for God’s people alone (I know, you want an answer to that one, but read Van Drunen’s monograph “A Biblical Case for Natural Law” and you’ll get it. It takes all of a quiet afternoon in a leather chair and footstool, not much longer than blogging takes and way more comfortable). It wasn’t given to the Egyptians or the Canannites or the Babylonians. They got the Code of Hammurabi.
I agree with you that “How?” is the most pressing question to answer. I just don’t understand why you keep thinking you don’t do so. You just did, and it is basically Bret’s answer.
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Never did. I’ve read some of his writings; I admire the basic approach; I have some specific differences; and I’ve “independently” arrived at some of the same conclusions. But I never took any of his classes.
Bill Davis, now, taught my History of Philosophy and Christian Thought class, and he rates very highly with me in the areas of clarity, insight, and irenicity.
From birth, actually. My father is a physician, my mother is an artist and historian, and I have a weird mix of “literal” and “literary” going on. On the plus side, the literalism helps with such tasks as debugging code, but it gets in the way at times also.
I tend to turn on the “literalist” mode when communication breaks down, so you’re seeing the extreme end. It’s not that I hadn’t noticed your hints at answers; it’s just that I wanted to be sure that I was reading what I thought I was reading.
In my defense, I find the literalism often helpful when I’m trying to really understand another’s position. I seem to have some success at being able to represent other peoples’ positions back to them in acceptable forms (this conversation being one of the biggest challenges in memory). However, I can imagine that literalness comes across as finger-wagging imperiousness at times: “Say what you mean!” 🙂
Yes, after I hit “Submit”, I noticed my lack of (D) None of the Above.
What would you do if, hypothetically, you felt that your neighbor was demanding a kind of love that Scripture would not allow you to give? For example, if your neighbor demanded that you call his boyfriend a “spouse”? Or if you were a physician and he demanded that you perform an abortion for his daughter? At some point, it seems to me, even a non-busybody such as yourself will be pressed into confrontation. We can be maximally flexible only to a point, right?
Never said it was “mechanical.” We could do with a little more literalism here, I think. 😉
I think I understand. You’re asking, “What’s the point of compelling others to use ethical norms when they don’t possess the internal reality that enables obedience?” (which of course, is Union with Christ 😉 or maaayybe forensic justification.) This is Zrim’s indicative/imperative challenge. And put that way, one could go in three directions:
(1) There’s no point at all, IF we are thinking of the Law as something that changes people. Oddly enough, that’s as true in the Church as it is in the State.
(2) There’s some point, if one thinks that the ethical norms reflect what is truly ethical. That is, if the magistrate’s job is to restrain evil, then it makes some sense for him to have a clear idea of what is truly evil.
(3) It becomes a complex job, if one wants to do the job anywhere close to right. In fact, “anywhere close to right” is probably doomed to failure. I think the best that one could hope for is attempted faithfulness.
I don’t know the terminology of political theory. What are the official terms used to describe the situation in the late Middle Ages, when monarchs were nominally the heads of state, but the Church could use the power of the Interdict to force the king’s hand? Or could establish a bishop as a prince and thereby gain a foothold in policy making? That seems like some kind of “dual monarchy” or “oligarchy” or something.
—
Now a thought experiment: Would the Decalogue have been acceptable on a 16th century Genevan courthouse wall?
In other words, does “Christianity Favor the Separation of Church and State” in America only, or across all ages?
JRC
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“It’s basically Bret’s answer”?
Who is it that’s having trouble with nuance? 🙂
You’ve taken this “whoever is not for REPT, is for theonomy” approach, and it’s getting in the way of hearing what I’m actually saying.
Said with a smile and a slight grump.
JRC
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You’ve taken this “whoever is not for REPT, is for theonomy†approach…
You said it, not me (insert passive/aggressive emoticon here).
But if you mean that 2K and theonomy are equally opposed to each other, just like Calvinism and Arminianism, I can agree to that. And as I have been suggesting, I have no idea where your corrective to theonomy is. You seem opposed to it, but I don’t know on what grounds. Again, is it merely a matter of degree for you? Sometimes, Jeff, compromise works, sometimes it makes little to no sense. More cult and culture.
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Darryl,
I’m curious about something. I know it’s way off-topic, and the following was meant to make a larger point; but I’ve grown a tad bored and have a hankering for some rabbit this morning:
Personally, my non-negotiable means I would never support my wife or a daughter having an abortion. It also means that I would likely work to discipline a mother or physician in my congregation involved in an abortion.
Would you likely work to discipline a judge/lawyer in your congregation involved in securing or granting a no-fault divorce?
And when you say you’d work to discipline a woman in your congregation involved in an abortion do you mean you’d discipline the abortion or the sexual sin that likely precipitated it, or both? I mean, most women of religious persuasion and means and resources (who also tend to carry their husbands children) rarely have abortions, I would guess. If they do it has to be the result of sexual sin. Part of the reason I ask about divorce and the ones about abortion is that I see way more sexual ethics in the NT than concern for making sure believers don’t kill people.
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Ha! *You* said it; I just called you on it. 😉 <raspberry>
Entirely said in jest.
I think there are several possible stopping points prior to full-blown theonomy, and the quest is on for a “third way” that does not live on the 2K-theonomy axis at all.
Here are some:
(1) Full-blown theonomy a la Bahnsen posits that OT law has continuing validity unless specifically repudiated in the NT. A reasonable place to stop (and a Confessional place to stop!) would be to invert Bahnsen: that OT civil law is abrogated except for the general equity thereof.
(2) Theonomy wishes to preach or speak to the State and demand its adherence to the Law or to NT ethics.
It could be reasonable to say that individual Christian magistrates are obligated themselves to keep the moral law, per the Confession, but that the Church does not have the right to demand such of the State en banc. This also would be Confessional stopping-point.
(3) Theonomy is tied up with the projected success of the Gospel as an agent of change — the post-mill vision. One place to stop would be at an a-mill vision: that the Christian magistrate is required to be faithful to the Scripture, but he should have limited expectations for success. In other words, in keeping with Lutheran pessimistic amillennialism (my favorite example here), the Christian is fighting a rear-guard action rather than a dominating action.
Those are three possibilities; I’m sure there are others.
Let’s face it — few in the Reformed world are hard-core REPT, but many repudiate theonomy. If there were only two views, the Reformed world would have polarized long ago.
And what *do* you do with Calvin, anyways? He wasn’t in either camp.
JRC
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Just for instance.
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Jeff,
It must be that you perceive the sort of 2K suggested in ASF as dangerous. But to my mind, this is likely to accept the theonomic notion that there is only theonomy or autonomy. 2K actually rejects this arrangement as a false dichotomy and suggests that there is either two kingdoms that each have a clear respective nature (i.e. one ruled by law, the other by grace) and which have a very peculiar relationship with each other, or there is one kingdom where there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular. On the theonomist view, 2Kers must end up pure secularists. But we’re not, we’re Christian secularists who say that if everything in the inter-advental age is sacred then nothing is.
Re Calvin, you can 1) admit that the Reformers weren’t always consistent in applying their two kingdom theology or 2) make a distinction between a theonomist (Bahnsen) and a theocrat (Calvin). For my part, while the latter always sounds good, the former makes more sense and is less prone to anachronism. Calvin also didn’t live on this side of history, which has to count for something unless you want to say we haven’t learned much. But, to my lights, whatever else it affords, the genius of a better Protestantism is that we can admit when we were wrong and that we can do way better without coming up with a Romanist notion of the “development of doctrine.†In other words, we are not beholden to even John Calvin if he was sub-par. So much for an infallible view of our fathers. The key, as always, is sola scriptura and scripture clearly teaches 2K.
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Jeff, #1 is what we already have in the Westminster Confession.
#2 is contradictory. The church expects one thing from the state — not to follow the moral law, but another from Christian magistrates — to follow the moral law. Put a Christian in the White House and now the Federal Govt. is expected to follow the moral law — which is exactly the point of putting a Christian in office (oh, I mean someone with character).
#3 — theonomic amillennialism is an oxymoron, sort of like theonomic anarchy.
I think you are right that not many people are theonomists. Most are Framean – they want the entire Bible to rule public life, not just the OT, which means that Wallis can appeal to the Sermon on the Mount, Falwell to the Decalogue, Dr. Laura to 1 Cor. 13 (I made that up). Biblicism is rampant and it is making the world safe for theonomy.
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Zrim, I look to discipline wherever I can, I have so little power in other areas of life. Seriously, I’ve been on sessions where we’ve disciplined both fornication and divorce and see your point. So a mother involved in abortion might be guilty of two counts, seventh and sixth commandments. The interesting thing is that I’d bet most sessions that discipline the seventh commandment don’t have many sixth commandment cases before them. Call it the church’s broken windows policy.
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Zrim: Yes, I have no problem with saying that Calvin could be wrong here or there. I was just curious as to your take. Calvin will be the subject of Obj. 4.
DGH:
Yes, I agree that (1) is what we already have in the Confession.
(2) is not inherently contradictory. It draws a distinction between the Church in its offices and individual members of the Church. And FWIW, #2 is also in the Confession in 23.2-3, on my read.
(3) is a non-theonomic amillennialism.
The point of 1-3 was to offer up some non-theonomic options that are not fully REPT.
JRC
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BTW, I enjoyed both of your recent posts on GB. They do a good job of clearing up some loose ends.
JRC
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No, I don’t fully accept van Til on this. There are too many flavors of “autonomy” on his account to make the distinction useful.
However, I do perceive some kind of hiccup in the REPT system. At first, as you know, I thought you were arguing that we should simply set aside Scripture and take on a completely different ethical system in the common sphere. Hence my noises about “heteronomianism.”
But now, I’m not really sure what you advocate for common sphere ethics. My sense is that you and Dr. Hart are not on the same page entirely. My sense also is that you limit the term “ethics” more narrowly than I do. And I think you want to maximalize Christian liberty, which has both positive features and some perils.
But yes, I engaged with you guys because I perceived REPT as something in the region of “dangerous.” Not “pernicious” (per Elder Hoss), but “prone to peril.”
JRC
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Jeff,
But now, I’m not really sure what you advocate for common sphere ethics. My sense is that you and Dr. Hart are not on the same page entirely. My sense also is that you limit the term “ethics†more narrowly than I do. And I think you want to maximalize Christian liberty, which has both positive features and some perils.
Darryl likes Sarah Palin, I favor Tina Fey, so, yeah, we have different views.
What would I advocate in the common sphere? The law written on the human heart. It’s very convenient and, I think, really clear and simple. It’s not very sexy to many, but I think it is mucho fantastico.
Curious: what are some perils of maximizing Xian liberty? I see only benefits.
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Jeff, for some reason your comment got tied up in the pending status and I didn’t see it until today when it was posted. I’m glad you don’t take offense at my directness.
What would I do if a neighbor demanded that I call his live-in boyfriend, a spouse? I can’t imagine this happening, seriously. Many of my neighbors, who do not necessarily practice Christian ethics, wouldn’t make this demand. Plus, I can see all sorts of ways around it while still being polite.
The example of being forced to perform an abortion is equally unimpressive. Thankfully, we do not appear to be at that state of affairs. I can see it possibly coming, and if I were part of a hospital required to perform an abortion, then I’d likely try to find every way possible to keep my job and not perform them. But if still forced to do so, I’d resign and try to find another job, preferably as a doctor. But I wouldn’t go to the magistrate and say, hey, make a law so that I can’t be forced to do this.
Historically speaking, there would have been no need to put up the decalogue in the Geneva court room. The reason why people do it now is to make a point. There, the point was embodied and it was redundant. So if you like that kind of setting, how do you feel about executing heretics? Don’t you think it’s an improvement of the civil order so that people are not criminalized for their faith? This really is the conundrum for theonomists and their enablers.
As for the separation of church and state being true across all ages, I’d say it’s only appropriate for this time, between the advents of Christ. Before in the OT, it was a different arrangement, and in the new heavens and earth, we will have another polity. But in this age, I’d say, yes, it’s the right arrangement. In fact, that’s what opposition to Erastianism even in Geneva was all about — a differentiation between civil and ecclesiastical law and power. After all, the church did not execute Servetus, the state did. And the reaon was that the state had a law saying heresy was a capital offense. The question then was who determined what counted as heresy. Calvin argued it was the church’s call. But you still see the separation of powers in Geneva, which is why medically-challenged pastor Bret insists he is 2k.
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Hey guys,
I’ve been fighting off a wicked virus, so sorry for the delay here. A disclaimer about the following: It could be interpreted as a straight-forward objection, or it could be interpreted as impertinence. The former is intended.
JRC
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Obj 4: REPT takes the “Paleo-Calvin” out of Paleocalvinism.
Obvious Pragmatic Differences
Pragmatically, there are obvious differences between REPT and Calvin’s view of the magistrate. For REPT, the magistrate’s job is to order civil society and preserve religious freedom, so that the Church can proceed unmolested. For Calvin, the magistrate’s job is more proactive. His role is two-fold: to provide for the commonwealth of citizens, and to prevent sacrilege and idolatry. Calvin is quite clear on this:
Following Calvin’s lead, the early Reformed Confessions required the same two-fold role. You’ve already hashed out the Belgic with Mark van der Molen; the 1646 Westminster is well-known also. The Augsburg Confession implicitly recognizes Charles V’s authority by the simple fact of appealing to him to provide Christian unity. And the original Article 37 of the Anglican Church is quite strong: “The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain…” It should be noted that the Belgic, WCoF, and 39 Art. have all been revised so as to reduce or eliminate the two-fold role.
The pragmatic difference might be summarized thus: for REPT, the magistrate is a “2nd Table” magistrate only, while for Calvin, the magistrate was a “1st and 2nd Table” magistrate, in that Calvin required him to maintain both the 1st and 2nd Tables of the Law (cf. Inst. 4.20.9).
The practice of Reformed societies closely followed Calvin. Geneva and Zurich both executed Anabaptists and (a few) heretics. The English Puritans certainly believed that God’s word was the basis for civil law, as did the Massachusetts Puritans. I haven’t been able to hunt down the relevant Dutch law of the 17th century, but I would be surprised if it were any different. In general, no Reformed community in power advocated practiced separation of Church and State. Even Luther used the power of the State to suppress the Kingdom of Muenster.
All of this is relatively non-controversial. DGH, you freely admit that REPT is consistent with the revised WCoF only and not the original. Zrim, you freely confess Calvin to have been “wrong” on the magistrate. So this is not the interesting question.
Underlying Structural Differences
What accounts for the pragmatic differences between REPT and Calvin? No doubt REPT adherents view the difference as a minor corrective to Calvin, much as we Protestants all think Calvin to have been unfair in his treatment of Helvidius. But in fact, there is an underlying structural difference in the 2-kingdom structure of thought between REPT and Calvin. REPT’s “two kingdoms” are a feature of it’s triadalist structure, while Calvin’s “two kingdoms” correspond to a distinction between the physical and the spiritual.
[note: the following three paras are open to correction — I’m just trying to reflect back what I think I understand]
For triadalists, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan are the sets of the saved and unsaved, respectively. These have their physical intercourse in the “common sphere”, the Kingdom of Man. The “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Man” are the two kingdoms of which the Christian is the dual citizen. The KoM is ruled by common grace given to all, which includes both wisdom and conscience, which are the “best-we’ve-got” basis for civil law. Zrim likes the term “Natural Law” for this; DGH has been less definite.
Scripture, meanwhile, is canon only for the Church (KoG) for the ordering of God’s people (cf. Kline’s comment that the OT was “canon” for Israel only, somewhere in Structure of Biblical Authority). Attempting to bind unbelievers’ consciences to Scripture is unwise and unkind.
So the triadalists “two kingdoms”, the Kingdoms of God and Man, are “spiritual” and “common” respectively. They operate under different canons (Scripture, conscience), and REPT advocates vigorously resist application of Scripture to the common realm in more than vague ways, citing the freedom of conscience against any application of Scripture to the common except what is expressly laid down, such as Rom. 13.
Calvin meanwhile, while not denying common grace (Inst. 2.2.12-17), does not include it in the structure of his 2K thought. For him rather the Church is a “spiritual” kingdom, instructing the conscience, while civil government is a “physical” kingdom, restraining evil behavior and educating men for “the duties of humanity and citizenship that must be maintained among men.” (Inst. 3.19.15). He says of the two kingdoms,
Thus, Calvin has no worries about “binding the conscience.” For him, obedience to the civil government is outward only, with the conscience reserved to the church only (cf. his discourse on binding the conscience in 3.19.14-16).
In short, Calvin’s 2 kingdoms rest on principles entirely other from REPT’s 2 kingdoms. For him, civil government is the outward maintainer of justice and piety. For REPT, civil government is an essential feature of the “between times” state in which we live, in which the KoG and KoS have common intercourse in the KoM.
Ursprung: Theological Differences
It appears that there are two major theological differences between Calvin and REPT that are the source of their divergent structures. Calvin and REPT advocates differ on their understanding of Natural Law and of Christian Liberty. Calvin is much more pessimistic about Natural Law than REPT, causing him to require Scripture as the basis for knowledge about proper governance; meanwhile, REPT is more expansive of liberty than Calvin, leading to a greater confidence in the magistrate to muddle through for himself without interference from the Church.
In REPT, Natural Law (or common grace wisdom and conscience) serves a positive function, albeit imperfectly: people who possess the fallen image of God possess along with it the wisdom, conscience, and skill that are reasonably adequate or at least “non-improvable” as tools for governance. The locus of Natural Law for REPT is Genesis 4, in which Cain though excluded from the kingdom of God nevertheless founds a city and continues to display the image of God in his skilled offspring (cf. Kingdom Prologue pp. 162ff).
For Calvin, wisdom and skill are not to be despised, but they are secondary to the true function of Natural Law, which is to bear witness in the conscience to God’s existence and law. The locus of Natural Law for Calvin is Romans 1. While wisdom and skill are part of God’s image, they are specifically insufficient a guide for the Christian magistrate. In the introductory preface to King Francis, he says,
And he binds the magistrate to the general equity of the OT moral law (Inst 4.20.9,14,15) (as, interestingly, WCoF 19.4 seems to do as well).
Now, the separation between REPT and Calvin is not total. Every REPT-er, I think, would quickly admit that one function of the Natural Law is to “leave men without excuse” as in Rom. 1. Likewise, Calvin admits that the content of Natural Law is that same as that of the moral law (Inst. 4.20.16). But for REPT, Natural Law is enough or as good as we may expect, allowing for a separation of State and Scripture (except perhaps where Scripture is explicit?). For Calvin, the equivalence of Natural Law and the moral law of the OT justifies differing with the OT law in particulars while upholding the OT law in equity (Inst. 4.20.14, 16).
Likewise, there is a significant difference between REPT and Calvin on Christian Liberty. For Zrim, liberty is loosely bound according to direct commands. If an action is not in direct violation of a Scriptural command, it is permitted (in the common sphere; worship is another matter). This permits him to think of the magistrate in terms of maximal liberty. The Christian plumber is entirely free to choose his materials according to wisdom and should not seek guidance from the Scripture in doing so. Likewise, since the Scripture does not give direct guidance about governance, Zrim’s magistrate has maximal liberty to govern according to wisdom without seeking implicit guidance from Scripture. Or especially, receiving “suggestions” from the Church.
Calvin’s view of liberty is different. For him, the purpose of liberty is that we might joyously obey God’s Law out of love (Inst. 3.19.4,5). Thus, Scripture forms a contextual framework in which wisdom is exercised so as to fulfill the commands to love God and love neighbor (3.19.12, 13). The result is that our gifts are exercised for God’s purposes (Inst. 3.19.8).
Frankly, your stances on liberty are a bit perplexing. I would imagine that you would affirm that liberty’s purpose is to obey God’s law out of love. Certainly, you have both repudiated antinomianism. On the other hand, you have both dismissed the notion of a Scriptural framework for liberty as being “overly complex”, insufficiently grounded, and tending towards over-restriction of liberty.
When I imagine Calvin responding to the question, “What does the redemption have to do with plumbing?”, I would think he would respond — “Everything! Because of the redemption, I am set free from God’s law to as to plumb out of love for my neighbor with a joyful heart.” But somehow, those sorts of answers don’t seem to be enough for you. Or something. They are “biblicist” — horror!
In any event, Calvin’s view of liberty filters into his view of the magistrate. For him, the magistrate should be free from the impudent disobedience of his subjects(Inst. 4.20.23-29). But he is not free to rule without considering the Scripture. Instead, he is bound before God, as an agent of God, obligated to maintain the interests of both man and God:
Summary
It is no crime to disagree with Calvin. The argument here is not, “REPT conflicts with Calvin, so there.” Rather, the aim has been to expose the deep divide between REPT and Calvin. The latter was so firmly opposed to “2nd Table only” magistrates that he called such views “folly.”:
In light of Calvin’s implacable opposition to REPT-like systems, why do you desire the title “Paleocalvinist”?
JRC
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I’ve been fighting off a wicked virus…
I’ve been nurturing mine.
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Jeff,
I can’t respond at the length you have shown. A couple of thoughts. First, I think you’re wrong about Calvin and Natural Law. David VanDrunen has written an article for the Journal of Church and State, which is the basis for a chapter in his forthcoming book, that follows a lot of the literature saying that Calvin used and argued for Natural Law. The problem could be that if the idea of Natural Law is as foreign to contemporary Calvinists as it is, it is hard to think that Calvin used it. Actually, the Calvinist repudiation doesn’t really come until the 20th century. (The same point holds for common grace. Ken Myers many years ago assembled a host of quotations from Calvin to show his affirmation of Common Grace.)
Second, I don’t follow your point about Calvin not being worried about the state binding consciences. If the state can uphold the true religion, and it should, then it is in the business of binding not only the outward but also the inward man. That surely seems to have been Servetus’ experience.
So I don’t think your general remarks about the differences between Calvin and REPT are going to be that fruitful since REPT takes more of its inspiration from Calvin that you allow.
Second, I don’t think your
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i>When I imagine Calvin responding to the question, “What does the redemption have to do with plumbing?â€, I would think he would respond — “Everything! Because of the redemption, I am set free from God’s law to as to plumb out of love for my neighbor with a joyful heart.†But somehow, those sorts of answers don’t seem to be enough for you.
That’s because they don’t seem to take into account certain realities I can’t help but see because I live with them all the time.
What does plumbing mean for him who does not believe? How do believing plumbers and unbelieving contractors get along (and vice versa), and why? And what of the fact that he who does believe takes payment for his plumbing because he must support his family? See, I don’t think your imagined response takes into account these sorts of questions, but rather imagines something hasty. I mean, it sounds fine and good to say that one “plumbs out of love for one’s neighbor,†and in some sense I don’t disagree, but baby gotta eat and my neighbors are just as much those under my roof as those under others.
But your general point above seems to be that Calvin would take great issue with certain 21st century renditions of two-kingdom theology. Not only is that much more arguable than you allow, even where you can find grounds for it it has already been admitted that the reformers weren’t always consistent. So what? Everyone, even the reformers, are situated beings and products of their time; everyone must negotiate and compromise his way through. Even so, Constantianism just doesn’t work and Christendom was a mistake.
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It’s difficult for me to work backwards from your questions to the “certain realities” you mean and the perceived conflict with “plumbing for the love of one’s neighbor.”
It might be helpful if you expressed those realities directly instead of implying them with questions, understanding that at times I am a Bear of Very Little Brain.
I’ve not disallowed argumentation! Rather, I’ve presented the strongest case I know, with the understanding that rebuttals will come. We’re all trying to muddle through here, right?
However, I think you’re conceding that I’m somewhere in the ballpark.
I think the So What? is that you’re welcome to criticize Calvin; I have some sympathies for your criticism. I just think that in light of your criticisms, the self-label “Paleocalvinist” or “Paleoreformed” may communicate something that you don’t intend. I mean, if Elder Hoss came along and said, “guys, I’m more Paleocalvinist than you are”, could you really refute him?
Additionally, another question is raised by my analysis. The sections of the Confession on the Law and the Civil Magistrate very closely follow Calvin’s reasoning and wording in the Institutes. So, is it possible that REPT has re-interpreting the Confession in ways that are not according to original (1789) intent?
In particular, I have in mind, “It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate, when called thereunto: in the managing whereof, as they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth.” (23.2)
For Dr. Hart, “maintaining piety” is very minimal, being equivalent to the stricture in 23.3 to leave churches unmolested.
But given that this wording originates with Calvin, is it not more likely that the Confession means that the magistrate is to positively promote piety, although without regard for denomination?
JRC
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Understood about the length. I think van Drunen is clearly the next book to read, so I’ll take that up as time permits.
But now, regardless of what vD demonstrates, Calvin’s quote to Francis seems so clear that I can’t imagine concluding that he really repudiated the use of Scripture for the magistrate.
Likewise, I’m sure Ken Myers quotes *do* show that Calvin affirmed Common Grace. I admit as much above. The problem is not one of polar opposites, as if Calvin denies common grace but REPT admits it. Rather, the problem is one of sufficiency for governance. REPT affirms; Calvin denies.
The Canons of Dort shed additional light on Calvin’s view:
Ya know, I’m tempted to agree with you. In the end, I’m not sure that it makes sense to divide up kingdoms into “spiritual” and “physical” like Calvin does. At least, I’d want to think it about it much more carefully. And so Calvin’s treatment of Servetus may well reflect the hiccup in his system: the state enforces the outward laws, but in so doing, it binds the conscience.
BUT
My point was simply that, right or wrong, this is what Calvin actually taught — that the state is the outward enforcer only, while the church instructs the conscience. And, he makes an explicit and good faith attempt to deal with your objection in 3.19.14-16.
So it’s not that your objection is wrong or anything; it’s just that it places you at a significant distance from Calvin in a structural, rather than an incidental way.
“Taking inspiration” is not in dispute. I’m asking whether the paleo-Calvin would have accepted your structure and theology as consonant with or as a minor modification of his own, or if he would rather have said, “this is a completely different system.”
JRC
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Jeff, it says “according to the laws of the commonwealth.” It seems to me that you keep missing this reality, that we live not only in the light of God’s revealed will but also in specific settings under authorities that God has ordained. So a magistrate is to maintain piety in America according to a Constitution that forbids religious tests for public office. That means, a Christian magistrate would have to take office with the possibility of serving with a person who didn’t know a thing about maintaining the piety of the commonwealth.
2k is a way to reckon with this reality. Theonomy and its enablers doesn’t seem to take this reality into account, but only kvetches about those who do.
Meanwhile, those who defend and enable theonomy never turn these questions on themselves. What would it mean for you, Jeff, to be committed to maintaining piety in a nation that forbids any kind of state support for religion. As I’ve been trying to get Pastor Bret and others to see, the questions you guys keep putting to 2kers are equally relevant to yourselves because you are living under the same political jurisdiction that I am. Unless I missed something, you’re wanting to say that a state should encourage true religion even while paying taxes to a state that does not encourage true religion. It seems to me that your questions have more force personally for you than they do for me. You are the one who appears to be at odds with his faith, not me.
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I forgot to add, this is a way of saying, that if (big IF) you are right about Calvin and the WCF, what are you going to do about it? We 2kers are the smallest of obstacles to implementing a state in North America that supports and promotes Christianity.
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Guys, my thesis is a very narrow one.
I’ve not denied that Calvin holds to some form of Natural Law; nor have I argued that Calvin is always right; nor have I argued that REPT is actually Lutheran/Anabaptist/Rastafarian instead of Calvinist in origin.
My sole point is that differences in structure and theology lie at the heart of REPT’s dispute with Calvin over the particulars.
So the similarities between you and him are not in dispute. I’ll cheerfully grant any number of similarities. I just don’t count them as liabilities to my thesis.
JRC
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You’re right — I haven’t really addressed this point yet. It makes sense to me to think of REPT as American-contextualized submission to a civil authority that has already foreclosed on 1st Table issues.
But was not the thesis that *Christianity* favors the separation of Church and State? Not merely in America, but everywhere? That Constantinianism and Christendom are failed ideas?
So while I might well practically live like you as we are both submitting to American civil authority, I wonder if you and I would have the same approach if you became president and I the prime minister of Zimricia.
And no, submitting to American civil authority is not a violation of conscience even for Bret. For him, the wrong is committed by the government; he is merely submitting to an unjust government like a wife might submit to an unbelieving husband.
What will I do about it? Be an annoying pest on the blogosphere, obviously. What else is Reformed theology good for if not to bash one’s neighbor on the head while on the road to Jericho?
Just kidding. In fact, it’s about time for me to dial back my online time and focus on eldering and teaching more fully.
I will continue to seek out a third way. You make good points about the potential of theonomy to become a power grab, about the need for the Church to be the Church, and about giving the magistrate his proper due.
I would like to find a framework in which to put those points that gives practical advice to the Christian magistrate, which is really the only question that’s in my jurisdiction.
Permit me some impertinence to turn it around: what if (and it’s a big IF) I’m right about Calvin and the WCF. What will you do about it?
JRC
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Jeff, my point is actually to dispute your reading of Calvin and the Reformed tradition. Your quote from Dort 4 illustrates the point. That quotation is not talking in the slightest about the magistrate. It’s talking about salvation and the knowledge necessary for it. I do not have any trouble saying that the law written on the heart is only sufficient to convict a man and leave him without excuse. But the moral basis and capacity of that man to govern is an entirely question — apples and oranges.
And this is where I think you don’t see how close you come to theonomy. If you’re going to quote from passages about saving knowledge with regard to capacities for governance in politics, then it sure looks to me like you’ve painted yourself into the corner of only allowing for magistrates who have saving knowledge of Christ. I know that isn’t your intent. But this is the kind of confusion than can set in if you don’t first go to the places where Calvin or the standards talk about the magistrate, as opposed to those places that talk about total depravity or saving knowledge.
You get no argument from me that Calvin and I would apply our distinction between the spiritual and political kingdoms differently. But I still would argue that structurally far more similar because of Natural law, common grace, and the important distinction between this world and the world to come. In other words, I think I am closer to Calvin than you are.
But again, if you’re closer to Calvin than I am, what are you doing about making Anapolis, Md. look more like Geneva?
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Jeff, as you can see I deny the premise that REPT and Calvin differ structurally.
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It’s difficult for me to work backwards from your questions to the “certain realities†you mean and the perceived conflict with “plumbing for the love of one’s neighbor.â€
It might be helpful if you expressed those realities directly instead of implying them with questions, understanding that at times I am a Bear of Very Little Brain.
Jeff, all my questions mean to get at is that sunny assertions about how redemption makes me a better plumber don’t deal with a more realistic and complicated set of realities: I may plumb my neighbor’s house understanding that I am to be a thankful and obedient, if imperfect, covenant-keeper (like everything else I do), but I still expect him to pay me. And more than providing good pipes to one neighbor, I am working to provide for other neighbors, my family. And I still have to know how to go forward when he refuses to pay me, and I need to know what happens if he is a fellow believer. And what do I do about the fact that another unbelieving plumber is way better at it than me? Wasn’t redemption supposed to improve my craft?
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Yes, I can see that. I think that’s a fair place to leave it, and I’ll continue to consider how Calvin might be read differently.
What am I doing to make Annapolis MD look like Geneva? I’m not settled on that goal, actually. My aim is to make Christ known — which means evangelizing the lost and discipling the saved (and their children, mostly, these days).
Will that result in “Geneva”? Who knows? It should result in something better than it would have been.
JRC
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And Zrim, your questions assume that I’ve somewhere said that redemption improves the craft, as opposed to informing the context in which the craft occurs.
But I haven’t.
For the fun of it, I asked my wife in the car last night (9 hr drive to Myrtle Beach … lots and looots of Wiggles, some James Taylor, some David Wilcox, and we never got to the Kings X) whether being a Christian makes her a better doctor.
She thought a bit. And then said,
You can see that my wife and I, though we’ve not been talking a lot about this subject, tend to think alike.
So I’m with my wife; God may somewhat improve my skills as a result of being a Christian and praying for wisdom. In some cases, He may even cause a drastic improvement. But in most cases, it’s a change of context that occurs, not a turbo-boost to the common wisdom.
What makes the magistrate peculiar is that his craft is particularly ethical, so that a context change makes a qualitative difference to his craft. And now: how does one measure the quality of craftsmanship of a magistrate? You might think it would be in the skillful interpretation of laws, but this is the least difficult part of a judge’s job.
JRC
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Jeff,
And Zrim, your questions assume that I’ve somewhere said that redemption improves the craft, as opposed to informing the context in which the craft occurs. But I haven’t.
Perhaps. But you say you think like your wife, who says, “So I think that my skills as a doctor are somewhat better because I am a Christian than they would be if I were not.â€
It’s easy to confide as much to a husband who thinks the same way. But the trick, Jeff, is to get your wife to say that out loud to a doctor who is Hindi. It might be that the Hindi doctor will then claim his/her god makes him/her somewhat better because s/he is Hindi than if s/he were not. But, fun as that may be, the real question is who is right with God and who isn’t. I have no problem saying your wife is while her colleague may possess the skills that make for a better doctor. Who knows, maybe your wife is the whole package and is both right with God and a better doctor. But one has nothing to do with the other. If it did, and if the Hindi doctor is a better physician, what’s that say about his/her claim on his/her god? As soon as you allow that something eternal has direct bearing on something temporal you might end up trying to wriggle out of why you don’t pay homage to an idol without being just plain arbitrary about it.
If your wife is right then my math skills should have improved at least a skosh after I converted to Christianity mid-way through college. Trust me, I really wish she were right. Doh!
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A reply to something back up in April 9:
That’s pretty much the only point of gay marriage laws in states that already have civil unions. And yes, being “civil” – hey! – used to count for a lot. But nowadays, civility is brushed aside for interest-group politics.
Must be nice to be able to walk away from all that med school debt so quickly. Speaking as the husband of a physician who has to wrestle with whether or not to refer young ladies for abortions, I would say that we *are* at the point where abortion-related issues are a matter of mandatory laws: the sale of Plan B is required by law to 17-and-over (e.g.. Our current president is determined to overturn conscience rules (discussion here)
And we will continue to move in that direction because the preferences of the point-of-origin are secondary to the preferences of consumers, simply by virtue of sheer numbers. One pharmacist is much less important than hundreds of women.
Why not? If you had been in practice for 25 years and someone wanted to change the law to make your practice of medicine illegal, why would you stay quiet?
OK. And I agree with you that the point is silly. Symbols do no good past the point of no return.
How do I feel, or what do I think? My feelings are pretty soft on executing heretics, penalizing homosexual behavior, penalizing blasphemy, penalizing petty theft, penalizing drug use, penalizing adultery.
I’m not sure that my feelings are a reliable guide, though. My feelings about homosexual behavior have changed over the years, tracking pretty closely with the out-of-the-closet movement through the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s. What does that say about my feelings? That they are quite culturally contextualized.
What do I *think* about executing heretics? I’m not sure what standard I would use to assess the idea. It strikes me that on the one hand, executing heretics would throw us back to the 30-Years’-War. Death to the papist idolaters! 🙂 And on the other, permitting heretics to run free has wreaked havoc within the churches, since our “feelings” about Church discipline are strongly informed by our “feelings” about religious freedom. Hence, the Briggses within the Church are mostly coddled, while the Machens are mostly ousted or marginalized. Not sure how to fix that, but having completely different rules for Church and society creates a mental disconnect, I think (as opposed to some differences, with some overlap).
What standard do you use to evaluate the execution of heretics? Or the criminalization of adultery? Obviously, the first is non-Constitutional in the U.S.A. But the second would not be.
So ASF is right for all ages (post-Christ, pre-eschaton), and Calvin was moving in that direction, but didn’t go far enough?
FWIW, I think Calvin used the State as proxy for the execution of Servetus. He did write that threatening letter, after all.
JRC
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Zrim, I’m curious about what you mean by As soon as you allow that something eternal has direct bearing on something temporal you might end up trying to wriggle out of why you don’t pay homage to an idol without being just plain arbitrary about it.
What do you mean by direct bearing? And are things like church discipline and family worship temporal or eternal?
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Nothing at all. See your comment about your math skills 😉
OK, that was mega-snarky. But here’s what I mean: my wife might well be bottom of her class or something, and the Hindu might be top. But she can still pray in faith for wisdom, and trust that God will provide it. Claiming that God gives marginal improvements to believers does not say anything about the skills of non-believers.
Then you’ve got to deal with James 1.5. He’s the one who promises that God gives wisdom to all who ask in faith. That’s the eternal having direct bearing on the temporal.
Well, did you pursue it by faith? I’m not saying that God definitely would have helped you pass Calculus or whatnot, but seriously, He does promise to give wisdom. Did you seek it?
The point is not “name it, claim it”; I can’t control God and say, “by faith, I can become a neurosurgeon.”
But at the same time, you’ve so disconnected the eternal from the temporal that Jesus’ teaching about trusting God for our daily bread or James’ teaching about asking for wisdom doesn’t mean anything anymore.
JRC
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Brian,
What do you mean by direct bearing? And are things like church discipline and family worship temporal or eternal?
What I mean is that true faith (eternal) doesn’t make me better at math or Jeff’s wife better at doctoring (both temporal). I am not sure what church discipline and family worship being eternal or temporal has to do with it, but I will say that both seem to have a foot in both. And the need for discipline and the institution of family will both pass away. I know we won’t need doctors in the new age, and I hope if we need math my glorification will take care of my spatial-mathematical challenges.
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Jeff,
But she can still pray in faith for wisdom, and trust that God will provide it. Claiming that God gives marginal improvements to believers does not say anything about the skills of non-believers…you’ve got to deal with James 1.5. He’s the one who promises that God gives wisdom to all who ask in faith. That’s the eternal having direct bearing on the temporal…you’ve so disconnected the eternal from the temporal that Jesus’ teaching about trusting God for our daily bread or James’ teaching about asking for wisdom doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Maybe the wisdom she’d receive would be the understanding that true faith doesn’t translate into immediate skills, that rain falls on the just and unjust alike. Maybe the wisdom we directly and intuitively ask for is answered indirectly and counter-intuitively. Like the man said, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you must might find you get what you need (any Stones on that car trip to Myrtle Beach?).
And I am not clear on how marginal improvements to believers doesn’t say anything about the skills of unbelievers—isn’t the former exactly what the latter means?
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Just the math point:
Take Alice and Dr. House. Alice is a faithful believer, House is not. House’s natural skill level is, say, 9.8. Alice’s is 7.5. In a particularly difficult operation, Alice prays, “God, guide my hands and give me wisdom.”
God responds to the prayer prayed in faith by giving her insight into the patient’s condition. As a result, Alice performs the operation as if her skill level were 8.5.
Dr. House is unaffected.
JRC
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Jeff, this is borderline health and wealth gospel, and it runs the risk of treating Christianity as a lucky charm that helps us out in tight spots. Couldn’t it be just as likely that Alice might perform down to say 5.5 and that God is trying to teach something through her underperformance.
The train of logic I see running through your arguments is that Christianity is successful when Christians win or succeed or are moral or are better. It is a progressive narrative, but one that stumbles mightily with the way that God actually saves us, through the suffering of his Son and through our own suffering.
Succeeding at math is a good thing but ultimately it is of little value. Isn’t that the point of Ecclesiastes? I wonder if transformationalists have ever read the book. It might be their “epistle of straw.”
It does seem to me that the big difference is how to relate the temporal and the eternal. You seem to think that there is a co-relationship, when things go well in the former it is a sign of things going well in the latter. It is a view that sustains hopes for Christendom, Christian America, and even the Roman Catholic view of salvation, as if we can do something to contribute to our salvation, or as if our earthly status is a sign of divine favor.
I just see too much of the argument that we don’t contribute to our salvation running through Scripture to have time for such progressive transformationalism.
Have a nice day.
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Jeff, do you see any example in the NT of the saints going to the magistrate for protection, for legal support, for reform of society? Is there anything there on the order of general equity that would be the basis for Christians today going to the magistrate to pass laws on Christianity’s behalf?
If not, if Christ and the apostles did not do so, then where do we get off?
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Take Alice and Dr. House. Alice is a faithful believer, House is not. House’s natural skill level is, say, 9.8. Alice’s is 7.5. In a particularly difficult operation, Alice prays, “God, guide my hands and give me wisdom.â€
God responds to the prayer prayed in faith by giving her insight into the patient’s condition. As a result, Alice performs the operation as if her skill level were 8.5.
Dr. House is unaffected
Jeff, DGH beat me to the punch, but I’m seeing seeds of prosperity gospel again. You seem to be assuming the ability to peer into things not deemed for mere mortals in order to make your point. All we can know is if one person has skills at certain levels. We cannot know if those skills were the result of prayer or even due to just having true faith. This is not to suggest that such prayer is somehow obsolete or inappropriate, but rather to suggest there can be no way to know if it causes certain results. We can only assess what is before us. So saith Dt. 29:29: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.â€
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Both of you are over-reading my comments. And the “have a nice day” dismissal was really over the top.
I’m not saying — I’ve denied — that we can “name and claim.”
I am saying that when James says, “If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God”, that he is serious about that. If you insist on labeling that “health and wealth gospel”, then I think we’re just going to have to be at an impasse.
If you want to condition James with Ecclesiastes, I’m fine with that. Just don’t gut James of all meaning in your zeal to avoid health and wealth.
JRC
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Paul in Acts appeals to the magistrate for protection against the mobs. And he uses his status as Roman citizen to receive favorable treatment.
But more to the point, do we see much at all in the NT about interactions between Church and magistrate, or how Christian magistrates, or plumbers, or whatnot, ought to behave?
No.
And from that silence, you conclude that we should not ask the magistrate for relief when he passes laws making the judgments of our conscience illegal. It’s not a sound argument from silence that you make: “the Bible doesn’t specifically show any examples of appealing to the magistrate, so we should not do so.”
On that logic, Christians shouldn’t drive cars.
If you want to limit Christians’ freedom to appeal to the magistrate for redress, then the burden is on you to prove a specific prohibition in Scripture that forbids us to do so.
JRC
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The train of logic that you “see” is a figment of your imagination. Without knowing me, you have no notion of my understanding or experience of suffering.
Dr. Hart, your response was really offensive. The “have a nice day” was just the small of it. The larger picture was that you took a single comment, blew air into it, and said, Behold the View.
I have tried really hard to do the opposite to you, to give your views careful consideration and to make sure that I’ve understood you clearly, to refrain from cartoons and straw men, and even to defend you at points on GB against straw man attacks. I think I deserve something better than this kind of caricature.
JRC
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Jeff, I don’t do emoticons, except one, which is not something I do in mixed company. The “have a nice day” line was meant to be funny after such a seemingly dismissive reply.
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Jeff, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t appeal to James’ instruction on asking for wisdom and apply it to math or medicine and then say that my argument about the NT and the magistrate is anachronistic, as if that means we shouldn’t drive cars.
I don’t think that the wisdom James is advocating is the same thing as our modern conceptions of knowledge or learning or expertise. You’d have to make a pretty big leap to do so.
But even if the NT saints didn’t have cars, modern medicine or algebra, they did have magistrates and they didn’t appeal to them.
On the wealth and health stuff, don’t take it too personally. You are the bearer of a certain torch here and while I find you quite sensible in the way you argue, I do think you also need to be aware of the way you can sound. And I do think that the effort to correlate grace and creation that comes across in your comments has a certain resonance with prosperity proponents.
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Jeff, I’m sorry to offend. You yourself may suffer in a host of ways and endure it with the best of Christian graces. I’m not questioning that. What I am criticizing is a view of Christianity that comes through, not just in one comment, but in your reflections on the magistrate, on Christian piety, on ethics, that suggests “things go better with God.” If citizens, magistrates, or people are Christians, they will be more moral, have better societies, and rule with greater equity. Heck, they may even perform better surgery.
I don’t see how that is an unfair construction of things you have said. You would not be alone in thinking this way. I see it at work in various transformationalists and their theonomic cousins. If you don’t like this construction, I’d encourage you to leave more wiggle room in your comments for Christian citizens who average and uninformed, magistrates who don’t know what laws to pass when confronting difficult situations, for Christian surgeons who don’t save their patients, for stupid Christian math students.
I believe in God’s sovereignty and Christ’s Lordship. I also believe that those things are true even when folly, sin, and weakness prevail. In other words, I don’t think Christians or their faith need to be victorious, powerful, or influential for God’s rule and plan to be accomplished. I am amillennial, not postmill. And the amill position cultivates a recognition of the paradoxical as opposed to directly proportional relationship between the affairs of this world and the coming of the next.
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Jeff,
I’m not saying — I’ve denied — that we can “name and claim.â€
I know, it’s a bold suggestion. But you must admit that simply waving your hand over things and saying you deny it doesn’t mean you do. I am going to make a comparison that might irritate but bear with me. Roman Catholics will tell you that Jesus finishes our salvation, there is no other way to God but through him, that grace and faith are necessarily vehicles to this end, the Bible is the book of the church, etc. And to the extent that this is all true, it is a bit uncharitable to suggest Roman Catholics “don’t believe in grace or faith or the Bible.†But, the whole system actually works against these things. Theonomists say they believe in Jesus’ fulfillment of the law. But their whole system contradicts messianic fulfillment.
The problem for you could be that you are thinking only of prosperity gospel in stereotype, as if all it is ever about is something crass and uncouth about money and stuff. It’s like thinking legalism is only about substance use (maybe worldly amusement). But if these things are just a bunch of principles they can be applied in many different ways. And I might suggest that yours could be a proto-prosperity gospel for the more subdued and staid suburbanite.
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Understood. I’m glad it was not what I thought.
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I forgive you. I’ll leave sufferings at what you and I share in common: as elders, we walk people through cancers, and divorces, and lost children, and apostate children, and the rest.
It’s an unfair construction because you are connecting some dots by going outside the lines.
I’ve not said that Christians will be “more moral” (which immediately raises the question, “by what standard?”). I’ve said that Christian magistrates are obligated to be faithful to YHWH and not some other god. That’s it, line drawn. I’ve never prognosticated any outcomes based on faithfulness. I think the right approach to forecasting outcomes is illustrated by Shadrach and friends: “Our God is able to save us, but even if He does not, we will not bow.”
Separately, I’ve repeated James: “If any man lacks wisdom, he should ask of God.” That’s it, line drawn.
I’ve not made any claims about Christians therefore doing better than non-Christians (you’ll notice in my example that House still outperforms Alice).
But there aren’t any dots in between the “we need to be faithful” and the “we can trust God to take care of us.” God does not take better care of us when we are faithful. This is the mistake you’ve made in your reading of me, to try to associate those things together.
I’ll go further, if you want: I think we ought to pray for our daily bread, too. And for sick people. And for our rulers, so that we can live in peace.
And I think we ought to expect persecutions and troubles. And to put our trust in God, not riches.
Don’t tag me with “prosperity gospel” until you can explain why we *shouldn’t* pray for those things in the face of God’s plain commands to do so.
I admit it: denial is not enough. Now in exchange, I ask you to admit that your hunch and a couple of similarities are not enough for an accusation, either.
Two things:
(1) When interacting with knowledgeable RCs, I refrain from broad brush strokes about grace and works. Points like that fall on deaf ears because RCs say that they believe in salvation by grace (with an alternate definition of “grace”, of course) and that they deny salvation by works (with an alternate definition of “by”, of course). So what’s the point in trying to tag them with labels that they reject? Does it promote understanding? Charity? Acceptance of the gospel?
Instead, I try to present an alternative to the grace-sin-penance cycle. In fact, I try to present the “Union with Christ” concept, and show how Galatians teaches the ongoing work of the Spirit as the real basis for sanctification, and the finished work of Christ received by faith as the real basis for justification.
And I try to undermine a “quantifiable grace” theory.
(2) Also when interacting with RCs, I gain a lot of credibility by being able to represent their own system fairly to them. It saves a whole lot of time, and covers a whole lot of ground quickly, when I can say, “so you believe that X, Y, and Z” and they can say, “Yes, exactly.”
What you’ve noticed is a single similarity. The prosperity gospel claims that God answers our prayers. I’ve claimed that God answers prayers for wisdom. On this basis, you conclude that my view is a “proto-prosperity gospel.”
But the prosperity gospel is a specific belief: God’s purpose for our lives includes “victorious living”, where “victorious living” is defined by a standard outside of Scripture.
I deny this specific belief. Therefore, I deny the prosperity gospel, regardless of any perceived similarities. That’s really the end of the matter.
I mean Zrim, we could play the “similarity game” all day long. I could, if uncharitable, look at your comments here and say, “He doesn’t believe that God answers prayers. He’s a proto-atheist.” Or, “He doesn’t believe the spiritual world has any relationship to the temporal world. He’s a crypto-Anabaptist.” Or whatever. The bottom line is that arguments in the form
“A believes X.”
B believes X.
Therefore B is a form of A.”
Are unreliable arguments. They mislead, confuse, and are generally not helpful. They are logically invalid.
If you think that I’ve got “proto-prosperity” thoughts lurking, then just ask. Get a clear, not intuitive and partial, sense of what I actually believe about things like suffering and wealth and the relationship of obedience to those things. And *then* you can be in a position to diagnose my spiritual ailments.
JRC
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It’s not “anachronism” that’s the problem; it’s “arguing from no data” that is the problem. We just have no records (other than Paul) of NT interactions with magistrates.
That’s an interesting point. It’s possible that James is talking about a specific kind of wisdom that excludes … what, exactly? But I’d need to see a specific exegetical argument that decouples James’ “wisdom” from that of, say, Proverbs (which includes life skills).
…and we have no record of their appealing to them.
We are pretty sure that they baptized babies, too, but we have no (certain) record of that, either. And they probably used arithmetic and rode horses, but we have no record of that, either.
Again, you are proposing a restriction on a Christian’s liberty. You need something stronger than “No record of X” as a basis for forbidding X.
JRC
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It strikes me that we might make a useful distinction here.
And somewhere above is a reference to Elder Hoss’s phrase, “grace transforming nature” (which is really an Augustinian phrase, or earlier).
There are (at least) two ways to think about sanctification. The first is to imagine that I get a new nature upon becoming a Christian, and then the Holy Spirit makes it better and better, so that I sin less and less.
The second is to recognize that I get a new nature upon becoming a Christian, and the indwelling Spirit dynamically empowers the new nature, by faith, so that I obey Christ’s commands.
The distinction is that the first is a kind of “grace transforming nature” in a very Augustinian sense: God’s grace changes me into “better Jeff”, so that I autonomously obey better and such.
In the second, I remain who I am in my flesh; the old man never improves. Instead of “getting better”, I am sanctified because of the ongoing work of the Spirit. Thus WCoF 16.3: 3. Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in them to will, and to do, of His good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.
I want to be clear that in my doctoring example above, I’m talking about the second and not the first. Alice receives wisdom and performs the surgery, but her baseline abilities do not change.
So I would specifically deny, for example, that one can become a Christian and expect to get better at guitar playing. I would affirm that a Christian mechanic trying to fix a car should pray for insight as to the specific problem he’s facing. The former is a “grace transforms nature” view; the latter is simply faith as James appears to require.
JRC
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Jeff,
The prosperity gospel claims that God answers our prayers. I’ve claimed that God answers prayers for wisdom. On this basis, you conclude that my view is a “proto-prosperity gospel.â€
Huh? I think God answers prayers, too. Does that mean I’m prosperity? (That’s a bad way to determine prosperity gospel.) And you’ve not merely claimed that God answers prayers for wisdom; you have claimed God answers prayers as we have designed them, e.g., want to be better at math and medicine? Ask God to make you better at math and medicine.
If you think that I’ve got “proto-prosperity†thoughts lurking, then just ask. Get a clear, not intuitive and partial, sense of what I actually believe about things like suffering and wealth and the relationship of obedience to those things. And *then* you can be in a position to diagnose my spiritual ailments.
OK, are you proto-prosperity? I get your point, I think, but, Jeff, isn’t this like asking the guilty if they are guilty? You may say a lot of good things about suffering and wealth, etc., but when you also tell me you can pray to get better at math either 1) you harbor prosperity or 2) it doesn’t jibe with other non-prosperity things you say. And if you’re demanding we know things about you we can’t possibly know from blogging, then there’s more abiding Pentecostalism. I mean, I can only go by what you write or say. I can’t diagnose your spiritual ailments (nor do I want to); all I can do is examine your statements.
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That’s exactly the point. You’ve waved the “prosperity gospel” red flag after using a bad method to determine my “prosperity gospel-ness.”
You sure I said that? I think rather that I said that God provides wisdom when we ask. I’d be surprised if I said anything else.
And anyways, DGH thinks math and medicine don’t count for the kinds of wisdom James is talking about, so apparently God doesn’t answer those prayers.
Where are we, anyways? This began with an objection: Calvin’s 2K thought is different from REPT structurally and theologically, because
(a) Calvin’s 2Ks are “spiritual” and “physical”, while REPTs 2Ks are “spiritual” and “common”
(b) Calvin IDs the Natural Law closely with the Decalogue (and look, R.S. Clark agrees with me), so that Natural Law as the basis for civil law encompasses both tables, while REPT IDs the Natural Law primarily with the culture, which means that the 1st Table is excluded. And for Calvin, Natural Law is limited in ability because of depravity, so that a magistrate needs the Scripture for good governance; for REPT, this is rejected; the conscience is “good as we get.”
(c) Calvin conceives of liberty as exercised in the framework of Scripture; REPT denies that liberty need be exercised in the framework of Scripture, and that to do so is “unnecessarily complicated.”
So far, the response is that I’m mis-reading Calvin.
And then followed a discussion about my similarities to Joel Olsteen.
Is that the signal to move on?
JRC
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Jeff, hey, you brought up the stuff about TV doctors. I’m just going with the flow. But for whatever it’s worth the point hasn’t been to merely smear you. It’s been to point out some interesting dimensions to things you say, that’s all.
By all means, move on if you wish. You’re the boss here.
But when my mechanic (fellow church member) tells me he prayed for a week but still cannot figure it out, I go elsewhere. But Bob’s a good, Old School Dutchman–he’d never say that.
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Well, I would find another mechanic, too. Why wouldn’t I?
But now, would you tell Bob, “Don’t bother to pray about the car. God doesn’t answer those kinds of prayers”?
Which is (apparently) the basis for your criticism of me, saying that I would pray about the car.
I’ll sum up below and post Obj 5 later.
JRC
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Summary:
I objected that REPT was structurally and theologically different from Calvin’s 2K system in the following ways:
(1) Calvin closely identified the Natural Law with the Decalogue. His locus for Natural Law was Rom. 1, in which the Natural Law convicts man of the knowledge of God. The Natural Law was specifically insufficient for governance, requiring the magistrate to use the revealed Word, both tables of the Law, for guidance.
REPT meanwhile identifies the Natural Law with common-grace wisdom. Its locus is Gen. 4, in which the Natural Law enables man to build the City of Man, the common-grace triadalist sphere in which believer and un-believer jointly dwell. Thus, Natural Law *is* sufficient for governance, and the Decalogue is neither required nor is it canon law for the magistrate.
(2) Calvin thought of liberty as circumscribed by the Word, and specifically by the commands to love God and neighbor. For him, liberty was the opportunity to obey God’s commands out of joyous obedience. For Calvin, the Christian exercises his vocation as a subset of his Christian life.
For REPT, liberty is circumscribed much more loosely; the Christian is entirely free except when he transgresses a specific command of God. In his vocation, unless the Scripture gives a specific command, the Christian is maximally free to order his vocation according to common-grace wisdom.
Thus, the REPT Christian magistrate, not being guided by any specific commands outside Rom 13 in the Scripture, has maximal liberty to order his work according to wisdom, and does not need to seek principles for governance from Scripture.
—
The response is that I have misunderstood Calvin, details unspecified.
As one final protest, I reply that (a) my representation of Calvin is remarkably consistent with how he ordered Geneva; (b) my representation of Calvin is remarkably consistent with how Reformed societies and creeds were ordered (pre 1789); (c) my representation of Calvin makes sense of his requirement that the magistrate enforce the two tables of the Law.
JRC
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Wouldn’t it be neat and creepy at the same time if we could see ourselves through others’ eyes?
So I’ll ask: What torch am I bearing? How do I sound? (Meaning: as having a certain affinity with prosperity proponents? Or something different?)
—
At some point, I have to bite the bullet and accept that certain things I say could “make the world safe for theonomy” or “sound like health-and-wealth lite.”
For one thing, stopped watches tell time correctly twice a day. So even a theonomist like Chilton will say some right things, and I can’t and don’t want to purposely sound different from him in those areas.
For another, if I live my life controlled by “not wanting to sound like X”, then I can end up in some pretty extreme postures. I would rather “sound like a Lutheran” on grace than work so hard to avoid Lutheranism that I end up teaching legalism. Right?
Or put another way, I don’t really believe that the world of ideas is controlled by certain axes (theonomy/2K, libertinism/legalism, paleo-/neo-Calvinism), and that our job is to locate the right place on the axis. I am instead a big proponent of getting off the axis entirely and finding a precise third way.
So rather than guard my phraseology carefully so as to not give off certain “vibes”, I instead work on the phraseology so that it parses literally into what I mean. That style doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me. Sometimes.
So, yeah, the prosperity folk and I both believe that God answers prayer. We disagree about everything else — how often, why, prayers for what, you name it — but we agree on that point. If that “makes the world safe for them”, then I’ll leave it to someone else to make them afraid again.
JRC
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I am instead a big proponent of getting off the axis entirely and finding a precise third way.
Exactly, Jeff. This is how I have read you since November. The problem is that soemtimes the third way works and is even noble. To my 2K mind, this posture works well in the (Klinean alert) cultural. But in the cultic, it gets really dicey. I mean, are there multiple ways to build a car, teach a student, raise a family and order a society, all as sucessful as they are diverse? Yes. Are there multiple ways to do Christology, apprehend sin and grace, the role of faith and works, define the atonement? Hmmm, not really. Trying to work out a third way between theonomy and 2K, like I have suggested at various points, is like tryin gto work out a way for Arminians and Calvinists to get along. But neither Gomarus nor Arminius would be at all sympathetic to you, because each system is inherently consistent.
And theonomists can be right, even sane (I can’t believe I just said that), about plenty of things. It’s theonomy that is whack-a-doo. I’d suggest that trying to manually avoid “sounding like thus-and-so” is a bad way to press on, agreed. But you also seem to have an allergy against labels, which seems to also drive your effort to forge the nobler way. But I perceive that there is nothing at all wrong with labels; I like to hang my hat. And I don’t even mind being labeled (2K). What I mind is being labeled wrongly (antinomian…well, since Paul got that one, too, maybe I kinda dig it).
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Jeff, I tell Bob what’s wrong with my car and it is mutually understood that I am the customer, he the vendor. If he wants to pray about it, go wild. Every time I go to his shop prayer never comes up. So your question is quite moot. But, if I come back in a couple of days and he pleads prayer didn’t help him I’d be stumped because that was never a part of the original–albeit unspoken–agreement. I’d be more interested in what his studied expertise yielded. Moreover, I think this is how your dealings also go with your guy.
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Are there multiple ways to define the Atonement? Ransom Theory, Christus Victor, Anselmian Satisfaction Theory, Calvinian Satisfaction Theory, Governmental, Moral Influence.
Yeah, I’d say so. Not all are correct, obviously. But the point is that they are not different locations on a single axis.
Having two inherently consistent systems, such as Arminianism and Calvinism, does not preclude thinking about something along entirely different lines. (And Arminianism isn’t even consistent, which is why Open Theism was invented).
But I perceive that there is nothing at all wrong with labels; I like to hang my hat.
I’m not sure what I could do to persuade you otherwise, but I would dearly love to do so. The problem with labels is equivocation. Two people get the same label, but it doesn’t mean the same thing for each. Then confusion results.
JRC
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Jeff, I think there’s a good reason the prosperity gospel came up, and it has to do with the ways whereby you assess the vitality of the Christian faith. Just as soft and hard-core versions of theonomy exist, so soft- and hard-core versions of prosperity exist. I put you clearly in the soft camp on both counts. I actually think you are too reasonable to engage in some of the theonomic excesses over at Greenbaggins. At the same time, the way you think about morality and politics, morality and the Christian walk, prayer and performance, all suggest a way — as I said above — of correlating the progress of Christianity with some kind of well being of Christians, their societies, and their endeavors. The 2k view, in contrast, confronts the external-internal dynamic taught by Paul (and throughout the Bible) which says that “to die is gain.” The 2k view holds enough to the goodness of creation to know that masichism is not an option. We can regard this life as a good thing. But it is only proximately good. And this age is wasting away. And that’s okay because a better age is to come. The theonomic/prosperity view, which is bound up with postmillennialism, is trying to locate the glories of the world to come in the here and now.
There is of course a good reason for this, and you shouldn’t be too defensive about being charged with this vice. The Covenant of Works has us hardwired to think, do this and you shall live. If we follow God’s laws, we will earn his favor and prosper. That is the way we were created and we still carry that dynamic within us, which explains why so many immoral people can still be incredibly self-righteous.
But obviously, sin thrrew a wrench into that fundamental aspect of man’s existence and part of our plight is to still think that if we only live according to God’s ways, we inherit not only then but also now the rewards of law-keeping.
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Jeff, all I meant is that you’re having to uphold your part of this discussion alone. Zrim and I are tag-team 2k wrestling.
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Jeff, Again, I think you’ve put too great a difference between Calvin and REPT. First, as the recent collection of essays, The Law is not of Faith, shows, most 2k thinking regards the decalogue as a republication of the Covenant of Works, which in turn is broadly conceived the moral fabric of creation. So there’s not as much distance between NL and the Decalogue as you suggest. Second, your account of Calvin’s view of liberty is off if it excludes REPT because the very same logic that Calvin uses in the Regulative Principle of Worship (and I would argue, he uses elsewhere), is the one that 2kers apply to the rest of life. And here is where your reading in Frame may get you in trouble. Frame didn’t want the RPW to apply only to worship. He wanted it to extend to all of life. That is a biblicistic/theonomic-lite move. And it disregards the distinction between the church as institution and individual Christians, with the church only being able to do what Scripture commands, and Christians having liberty where Scripture is silent. The REPT is far more adept at handling the difference between Christian ministry and Christian vocation in Calvin than you have suggested.
Finally, in one of your other posts, you suggested a difference between Calvin and REPT on the nature of the two kingdoms, as if the role of the magistrate is in Calvin’s category of physical and in REPT’s category of common. But again, if you read Calvin, in the post on Booalism, or his introduction to the magistrate in book four, the physical is synonymous with the earthly and the realm that believers and non-believers inhabit in common.
So while you think you’re account of Calvin is closer to his because of the differences between Geneva in 1560 and Geneva today — and I will concede that Calvin was not a forerunner of political liberty in the American or French senses — I think REPT captures the Augustinian theology of Calvin better than your account does. It recognizes the paradoxical relationship between this world and its progress and the coming of the kingdom. I still have yet to see that recognition on your side.
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Jeff, sorry, my fault: are there multiple ways to define cultic-Christian truth that confessional types like us would accept? No, there is one God and three persons.
What do you mean Arminianism isn’t consistent? Of course it is. What it might breed doesn’t have anything to do with its consistency. Hyper-Calvinism doesn’t mean Calvinism is inconsistent.
Re labels, come on now. Are you an American, a father, a husband? I don’t think you appreciate just how many labels you have and how many you’d like to keep. I think your quest here is a lot like the one generally in finding fault with 2K: you seem to be after some sort of exact justice instead of a proximate one.
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**Golf clap.**
Oops, sorry, how do they show favor in baseball?
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Right, there is exactly one true doctrine. But recall that you began by speaking of dualisms — Calvinism v. Arminianism was the example you used. Clearly, only one (at most) can be correct. Likewise, only one Trinitarian theology (at most) can be correct.
You weren’t speaking of true doctrines, but of possible ways of thinking. For you, there are only two ways of thinking about free-will and sovereignty. Those are Calvinism and Arminianism. For you, there are only two ways of thinking about Church and State: theonomy and 2K.
I just don’t accept the dualism. It may be that you’re light-years ahead of me on this and have already foreseen that in the end, I’ll be at one pole or the other. But in the meantime, I humbly request the right to continue to look for a third way.
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The reason I call Arminianism “inconsistent” is that traditional Arminianism believes that God foreordains according to His foreknowledge of our decisions. However, Clark Pinnock rightly recognized that this *still* leaves man will no possibility of controlling his destiny; perfect foreknowledge is still incompatible with the kind of freedom that Arminians believe we have.
Hence, Open Theism: God knows the future, but the future is not yet written.
This is a recognized problem with Arminianism; I’m not the first to point it out.
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Sure, labels can work; but they need clear definition based not only on similarities but also on diagnostic dissimilarities. It’s what I do in the field all the time: this is a Juniper Hairstreak because it has the right field markings, but it is NOT a White Cedar Hairstreak because it is in the wrong clime and associated with the wrong host plant.
What I’ve basically been asking you to do is to not declare a label based solely on similarities, but to go further and show that the label you want to assign is uniquely suited to me.
So e.g.: You want to label me as “proto-prosperity gospel” because of a similarity. We both believe that God answers prayer. My point is, that similarity is not enough. A whole host of different types of Christians (i.e., all of them!) believe that God answers prayer. You need to show some kind of discriminating diagnostic that shows that my view is uniquely situated in the “proto-prosperity” bin as opposed to some other bin.
This is not, as you suppose, a desire for unrealizable certainty. Rather, it’s a desire to have the words you use be useful tools for analysis as opposed to creators of confusion.
But look, it was just a suggestion, and I’ll say no more of it.
JRC
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Right, there is exactly one true doctrine. But recall that you began by speaking of dualisms — Calvinism v. Arminianism was the example you used. Clearly, only one (at most) can be correct. Likewise, only one Trinitarian theology (at most) can be correct.
You weren’t speaking of true doctrines, but of possible ways of thinking. For you, there are only two ways of thinking about free-will and sovereignty. Those are Calvinism and Arminianism. For you, there are only two ways of thinking about Church and State: theonomy and 2K.
I just don’t accept the dualism. It may be that you’re light-years ahead of me on this and have already foreseen that in the end, I’ll be at one pole or the other. But in the meantime, I humbly request the right to continue to look for a third way.
Actually, my larger point was to see the Klinean juxtaposition of cult and culture. When it comes to the latter there are multiple ways of thinking; when it comes to the former it becomes a much more narrow enterprise. In this way, we can speak of a radical intolerance for things cultic, a radical tolerance for things cultural. But your more or less Framian approach reverses this arrangement and does adiaphora when we should be doing RPW and vice versa. When the RPW is applied to all of life there are limited ways to “skin a cat,†but various ways to worship God.
I wasn’t meaning to explore the doctrines of Calvinism and Arminianism, Trinitarian theology or theories of the atonement per se. Rather, the narrow lines of confessional Reformed orthodoxy in these things were assumed in order to make the point that we need the rules of a larger dualism of cult and culture (not the smaller one of Calvinism and Arminianism).
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This was a helpful post, DGH.
Clearly, Dr. Clark identifies the NL with the Decalogue as well. So I’ll grant that there is some similarity in origin.
But this creates the puzzle: if the Natural Law is the basis for governance, AND the Natural Law is the Decalogue written on the conscience, then why does REPT exclude the 1st Table from the magistrate’s domain?
It’s an (apparently) arbitrary move, since the natural syllogism runs thus:
(1) The First table is within the scope of the Natural Law.
(2) The magistrate should use the Natural Law.
(3) Therefore, the magistrate should enforce the First table.
AND, Calvin makes a really big deal out of that point: that it is “foolishness” to consider only the second Table and not the First.
Now, I’m not interested (in this objection) as to whether Calvin was right or wrong. Rather, I’m curious as to how REPT could (a) claim to have the same view as Calvin on NL, but (b) deny the logical consequence that both Tables are in the purview of the magistrate.
So: why not the first Table, if indeed the NL is the Decalogue?
This is confusing to me. Leaving Frame aside — he is not the source of my reading of Calvin — it still seems to me that Calvin says exactly what I said: that liberty is given for the purpose of joyous obedience to God’s commands, and that such obedience occurs within the framework of the Word and specifically within the framework of the commands to love God and neighbor. Do you dispute this reading of Calvin?
Meanwhile, you and Zrim especially have said that liberty need only concern itself with things that the Scripture directly addresses. So in particular, the magistrate need not consider the commands to love God and neighbor in his governance.
It cannot be taken for granted that you and Calvin are univocal on this point. It appears that his version of “the exercise of liberty” is more tightly coupled to the Word than yours is.
Aside: note that you have expanded the RPW to cover not merely “worship” but also “whatever the Church can do.” This is potentially problematic and needs a defense, I think. The Church does more than worship, and the RPW is not generally understood to extend to those other things. For example, we are not bound in evangelism by the RPW.
Yes, I do suggest that there is a difference here. Granted: for Calvin, the physical is synonymous with “earthly” and “temporal.” And by extension, Calvin’s temporal realm would contain both believers and non-believers.
But the difference appears here: for Calvin, the fact of being “common” (which AFAICT he does not reference in 4.20) has no bearing on the rules the magistrate is to follow. No account is to be taken of the fact that the physical realm contains both believers and unbelievers. Instead, he says, “Thus all have confessed that no polity can be successfully established unless piety be its first care, and that those laws are absurd which disregard the rights of God, and consult only for men” (4.20.9)
Instead, for Calvin, the emphasis is entirely on the “physical” — that the magistrate is authorized to deliver physical punishments because he is a physical ruler. 4.20.10 demonstrates this clearly: the magistrate delivers physical punishments as the agent of God.
I mean, we agree that Calvin and REPT come to almost opposite conclusions about what the magistrate should be doing, esp. in the area of the First Table. Is it really plausible, therefore, that you’re adopting Calvin’s structure of thought whole-cloth, and making only minor modifications to it?
Rather, is it not more plausible that you’ve restructured Calvin’s ideas in a very different way, which leads you to very different conclusions?
And in particular, is it not the case that Calvin’s center of thought on the magistrate is “physical”, while yours is “common”?
The fact that your domains can both be described as “physical” and “common” is not enough to show essential likeness in thought, if the emphases are so different as to lead to opposite conclusions.
OK, that’s fair. I haven’t really expressed how the “now-not-yet” factors into governance. But let’s say that I do. Here’s some stuff about the relationship of this world to the the coming of the kingdom, and where that kingdom is located: Blah, blah, blah, Jeff goes on and on as usual.
Now that that’s been said, we still have the stubborn fact that REPT doesn’t show up until 1789 at earliest.
Calvin, Turretin, Beza, the Westminster Divines, the Puritans, the Covenanters — all missed the fact that what Calvin *really* meant is that the Scripture is not canon for the common realm, and the magistrate should not enforce the first Table of the Law.
Shouldn’t I view that conclusion skeptically? Hey, I’m happy to concede that you are trying to make Calvin’s thoughts more faithful to Scripture. They just aren’t “paleo-Calvinic” anymore.
That’s OK; we don’t take Calvin to be infallible. I just would like to be clear on this point: your differences are not mere incidentals.
JRC
P.S. And if we’re going to go back to Augustine’s 2Ks, then we’re going to have to account for medieval practice, the divine right of kings, Christendom — all of this was the fruit of Augustinian 2K thought. I thought REPT was specifically repudiating all of that?
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OK, so you’re saying that there are two ways of thinking about cult and culture: total wall of separation (Klinean), or complete breaking down of barriers (Framean).
And I’m saying, “What if we decide not to operate with the categories of cult and culture as the primary axis?”
In other words, if I grant your analytical method (“cult and culture” as the lens), then I also have to grant your conclusion (either Kline, Frame, or compromise in between).
But the Scripture doesn’t appear to require the “cult/culture” lens. There is culture within the church. Much of modern culture is also cultic. So … I’m not under obligation to operate within your category, right?
And in fact, I wonder if you’re reading Frame correctly as the “total breakdown of the wall between cult and culture.” Just because you are using that lens doesn’t mean that he is.
I think he reads much more naturally on his own terms: there is “broad worship”, which covers all of life, and there is “narrow worship”, which covers the traditional term “worship.” For Frame, the RPW applies broadly (but without specific detail) to broad worship, while narrow worship requires more narrow justification. I wouldn’t defend this approach, but I can understand it more clearly using his own language than in terms of “cult” and “culture.”
JRC
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Jeff,
But the Scripture doesn’t appear to require the “cult/culture†lens. There is culture within the church. Much of modern culture is also cultic. So … I’m not under obligation to operate within your category, right?
You’re under no obligations from me. I’m just trying to explain our differences. And, yes, cult and culture and vice versa–but that may be precisely why we need the rules of cult and culture better articulated.
And it just occured to me about your claim to forging the noble third way: so far, the leader board has 2k waaaaay over par, while theonomy seems to be chipping them in one after the other (which an occassional bogie here or there). Are you running another leader board somewhere out there, maybe one theonomy-oriented, that makes up for it? I’m taking into account this board and the one at Green Baggins.
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oops…(my fingers and mind are still more “being sanctified” than transformed)…
And, yes, within cult can reside culture and vice versa–but that may be precisely why we need the rules of cult and culture better articulated.
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Jeff, I do think the aims of the first table are involved in NL, in the same way that the WCF does in the first paragraph of Ch. 21 on worship, where it says that the created order in effect tells us there is a God who is to be worshiped. So I’m fine with the magistrate encouraging religion, say with tax exemptions. But where Calvin and you stumble is with a religiously diverse society. Call me paranoid, but wasn’t the inability of different Christians to live together partly the reason for religious wars? (That is one reason, btw, why it took so long for REPT to take shape institutionally. It took a while to outlive Constantinianism and to find other models for religion and the state.)
The RPW is just another form of the sufficiency of Scripture. The church may only do what Scripture commands. Silence is not a warrant for the church to do something. This is a major difference of the Reformed from other Protestants. I’m not extending the RPW to the entire church. I’m taking the doctrine of the sufficience of Scripture and showing its connection to RPW.
On the medieval world and Augustine, I am no pre-modern historian. But I don’t think you can say that whatever happened between 400 and 1500 was a footnote on Augustine. There was actually in the West far more of a rivalry between pope and emperor because the West did not have the Caesaropapist arrangement of the East. And that rivalry was abused by both the pope and emperor, which each claiming to be superior to the other. But in practice, there was far more 2k in the West than in the East.
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Jeff, the cult/culture distinction is at the heart of sabbath observance (and I wonder if 2k would have more adherents if the Sabbath were more rigorously observed). There are things I do during the week that are lawful. I have liberty in them because Scripture does not govern them the way it does the things on the Lord’s Day. We can even disagree (eat offered to idols) about things we do on weekdays. But if we do those lawful things on the Lord’s day, they become profane. So the things that happen on the Sabbath are the cult. The rest of the week is culture.
I don’t see what’s so complicated about that. Nor do I think Frame’s categories are clearer or more helpful. Isn’t that the point of intellectual advance to make matters clearer rather than more confusing?
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You’re referring to the “2K” v. “theonomic” content of my comments?
I wouldn’t make too much of that. Think “context” and it will all become clear. If I were to spend more time on GB, I would train my guns on the conflict between theonomy and Gal. 4.
Gotta run; a day with the family awaits.
JRC
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Just a small note: I know that it’s commonly called “Constantinianism”, but it was Theodosius who made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Constantine merely legalized Christianity by the Edict of Milan (313).
JRC
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For starters, I would place the work of creation at the heart of Sabbath observance. And I would place “rest” as at least a co-equal with worship as the main point of the Sabbath. And again, the functions of the Church are not limited to worship, nor are they performed only on the Sabbath: evangelism, once again.
It’s a little hard to understand Jesus’ teachings on the Sabbath if absolutely every lawful “other day” thing, like picking grain, becomes profane on the Sabbath.
So yes, the cult/culture distinction is more complicated than it seems on the surface, and it’s not obviously warranted by Scripture.
Anyways, I’m dragging this into a tangent plane.
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Is Frame clearer and more helpful? (than whom??) Well, one thing I wish he would do a little more is come to rest at some points instead of leaving all of the pieces on the cutting-room floor.
Having said that, I think the aim of his method is to be “maximally cogent” by incorporating 100% of the data where possible. In that regard, I find him quite helpful.
JRC
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There’s a deep issue here that may be problematic. In my understanding, the Church is not simply an institution, but consists of its members (Eph. 2, 4; 1 Cor 14; cf. WCoF 25.1,2). If we are saying that “silence is not a warrant for the Church to do something”, then you are potentially saying that “silence is not a warrant for any Church member to do something” — and that guts liberty entirely.
There’s also a surface issue. The Confession allows that certain features of worship and church government may be ordered according to the light of nature (1.6). You seem to be precluding that by insisting that “The Church may only do what the Scripture commands.” I know it’s an aphorism, and that there are qualifications buried in there somewhere, but still and all — it’s an extreme phraseology.
And once you begin qualifying it, then we have to figure “out on what basis?”, etc. And that calls into question the simple structure presented by “cult and culture” — cult being regulated by RPW and pertaining to the Church; culture being regulated by liberty and pertaining to the common sphere. We’ve got “liberty leakage” and “light of nature leakage” moving over into the “cult” side of things.
I think the cult/culture distinction is a neatly packaged can of nightcrawlers.
JRC
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Obj 5 (and final!): REPT is not a uniformly “good and necessary inference” from Scripture.
Immediately, two qualifications and an announcement need to be entered.
(1) The word “uniformly” is an important part of the objection. As will be seen below, certain features of REPT are fairly clearly Scriptural; it’s just that some others are not so clear or are in some cases in apparent tension with Scripture.
(2) This objection carries no water for theonomy.
Announcement: I’ll be closing the curtain on my involvement here on Sun Apr 19 so as to return to responsible citizenry (translation: Spring Break is over). I will of course read any final words entered afterwards; but please accept a lack of response as nothing more than my feeble attempt at self-discipline with the ‘Net.
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Let’s divide REPT up into various propositions, ranging from “fully Biblically warranted” to “speculative.”
(1) The magistrate deserves the Christians’ obedience, regardless of the quality of his magistering.
This is a no-brainer based on Rom. 13, the examples of Daniel and Joseph, and more.
In particular, I think (1) makes a good case for a limited “functional REPT.” Namely, if I were a judge in the U.S.A., I would feel obligated wrt 1st Table issues to either (a) rule according to the Constitution, or (b) resign. Before you get your hopes too high, I’m limiting this to the particular circumstance of the U.S.A. in which the Constitution is the highest magistrate and has already foreclosed on 1st Table issues. Were I to become Grand Pooh-bah of Hartistan, things might be different. Additionally, I think Christians in government ought to be guided by Scripture to the extent that the law permits.
(2) The Natural Law is the Decalogue written on the human heart.
There are some philosophical issues here, the most important of which is “sufficiency” (below). But we can agree that Romans 1 establishes that the Law of God is written on the human heart.
(3) The Church and the Magistrate are two separate domains.
This is sufficiently established, I think, by 1 Cor 5.12-13 alone.
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But now, the specifically REPT teachings are less certain.
(4) There is a “common realm” that operates by “common grace”, distinct from “the Church” that operates according to the Scripture.
There is an element of truth to this that needs more research. In the end, however, this proposition rests heavily on the work of Meredith Kline, and while his structuring of the covenants is brilliant, it doesn’t solve every problem. It is not itself a certain inference from Scripture.
Here are some problems:
(a) God judged pagan nations — not merely Canaan, as Kline would have, but also Babylon (“Mene, mene tekel upharsin”), Edom, Damascus — for failing to uphold His justice. The Law, it appears, extends beyond the boundaries of the “Theocratic Kingdom.”
(b) If the Natural Law really is the Decalogue written on the hearts of men, then it appears to be an arbitrary move to say that the Law cannot be used in the common realm.
(c) Scripture does not limit itself to churchly issues. Instead, it addresses the life of the Christian, including such “common” activities as the use of the tongue, the payment of wages, the treatment of servants, the payment of taxes: in no place whatsoever does Scripture hint that certain activities are outside its purview. Instead, it appears to teach that it is all that is needed “for life and godliness”, as the Confession would have it.
(d) It may well be that Kline’s dictum that “The Old Testament is no longer canon [law] for the Church” is flawed in some way. And if so, then REPT’s extension, that Scripture is not canon for the realm of common grace, would be equally flawed.
For example, the Confession does not treat the OT in exactly the same way, but instead upholds the abiding validity of the general equity of the Decalogue — following the wording and reasoning of Calvin, I might add.
It may be that Kline has taken WCoF 19.4 and expanded on it in such a way as to obscure or distort WCoF 19.5.
(e) Most importantly, the Christian belongs to both spheres (“Kingdom of Man” and “Kingdom of God”), but he is not equally a citizen of both. As Hebrews teaches, and Augustine following it, the Christian is a citizen of heaven but a resident alien here on Earth.
As a result, he has a primary allegiance to the Scripture. REPT obscures this fact (not denying it, exactly, but making it hard to see) by denying that the Scripture applies to the common realm, thus suggesting that something or someone else is lord in the common, or perhaps that God rules by decree in the common but not by precept.
Let me rush to say that both of you, Dr. Hart and Zrim, do not believe that Jesus ceases to be Lord in the common. But you do believe that His word does not have full jurisdiction in the common — which appears to amount to the same.
And in particular, it would be easy to see that REPT advocates could (perhaps unconsciously?) adopt a different ethic for the common than they practice in the cultic.
Let’s leave it at this: REPT needs to rearticulate itself so as to make clear how and in what ways the Word of Christ is normative for the Christian in the common sphere.
(5) There is a distinction between “cult” and “culture” that structures creation, providing different norms for each.
In particular, the cult is normed by the RPW, while the culture is normed by liberty; the Scripture is canon for the cult, but not for the culture.
The difficulty here is that Scripture does not explicitly or implicitly teach a distinction between cult and culture. Nor does it appear to limit its own jurisdiction only to the Church, but in fact sees itself as the basis for God’s judgment of all men (interestingly: Rev. 19.15. If I were a postmil guy, I would take that as my life verse or something).
And in fact, “liberty” cuts across the cult/culture divide. Paul’s discussions of Christian liberty are in the context of Church life, not common; and as previously noted, Paul gives commands to Christians about their behavior in the common — as does Jesus, as does James.
(6) The Christian magistrate has liberty in doing his job, as long as he does not contradict any definite command of God.
This proposition is equivocal. WRT judgment by the Church, I would say, “yes, certainly” — in keeping with Paul’s teachings on liberty.
But wrt the ethical guidance he is to seek, I would say that he, like all Christians, should define what is good and what is evil by the Scripture. This seems to be required by Scripture itself (Rom 2.12-15; Ps. 1; 119; passim) and also by the Confession (1.6, 19.2).
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Now, not being a “good and necessary inference” is not a crime. Certainly, theology exploration is needed, especially in areas like civic polity that are so little-addressed in the Scripture.
But the difficulty that I have is that REPT very confidently precludes other ways of thinking about civic polity. I would hope to see a broadening of the position that could clearly mark Scriptural non-negotiables from more speculative points, so that we could come to agreement on “thus saith the Lord.”
JRC
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Jeff, you really are making this more complicated than it needs to be. Of course, the church is made up of members. And the church is an institution. But can the officers of the church, that is, the institutional church, deliberate on the basis of anything other than Scripture? And doesn’t someone who is an officer, when not an officer, have other ways of deciding what to do. When I sit as an elder, my only rule is Scripture. When I write as a historian, that’s not true.
So I find this objection again to stumble over the problem of multiple roles, jurisdictions, and callings. It’s as if you want one rule to operate all the time, and because of that desire, you don’t see other rules that operate.
So I don’t find this compelling.
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Jeff: you wrote something important: “Let me rush to say that both of you, Dr. Hart and Zrim, do not believe that Jesus ceases to be Lord in the common. But you do believe that His word does not have full jurisdiction in the common — which appears to amount to the same.”
Why is it that you think Jesus isn’t Lord if his word is not obeyed or the norm? Do you think that Jesus wasn’t Lord when he was crucified? Talk about good and necessary consequence.
You also seem to conflate the covenant community with those who are not in covenant with God and you assume that the norms for the one apply to the other. Why would you do that? You don’t do that with the covenant of grace, do you? If you did, that would make you a universalist — everyone in the covenant. So why expect that those not in covenant with God would need to abide by the terms of the covenant.
This seems like a similar problem as the Lordship. You want Lordship and the covenant to apply equally to everyone. Why? The very premise of much OT instruction is to set Israel apart from the rest of humanity.
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Your question is interesting; you’ve read me as saying, “if we don’t obey Jesus, He isn’t Lord. Therefore, we have to obey Him in order to make Him Lord.” And so you wish to affirm that Jesus is Lord, reigning over all, even if every man rejects Him. And that’s a valid point.
But now the good and necessary consequence is that *if* we do acknowledge the Kingship of Jesus, then we must necessarily accept His Word as normative for us.
So it’s not “Jesus isn’t Lord if we don’t obey Him”, but rather, “because Jesus already is Lord, we must obey Him.”
And the question then is whether (a) that extends to Christians operating in the common sphere, and (b) whether that extends to non-Christians operating in the common sphere.
I would like to get some agreement that (a) is a definite “yes.” And then (b) is the subject of your next reply:
This really gets to the nub of it. In my view, those outside of the covenant community are not, by simple virtue of that fact, entirely outside of the norms of God.
On a philosophical level, it is important on my view that God’s preceptive will defines what is right and what is wrong. So on that account, the norms are universal. I would say that this is my overlap with van Til.
On a Biblical level, I don’t find that those outside the covenant community are freed from Scriptural norms. Rather, the pagan is judged according to the Law written on his heart. Ninevah is judged “because they have sinned” — transgressed God’s Law. Ditto for Sodom.
So while I see an intensivizing of the Law in Israel, so that the Jews are “under the Law”, I don’t find the corollary, that those outside the covenant community are therefore free from God’s Law, to be true.
So your question is, Why? If the Law was given in order to set apart Israel from the rest of humanity, then how would it make sense that the Law also applies to the nations?
And I would reply, that the Law was really given in the Garden. Isn’t that what the Confession teaches?
So it’s not that all men are part of the covenant community, but rather that all men are bound to the obligations of the Law because they are in Adam. What set Israel apart was not that they were held to a different standard, but that they had an exacting knowledge and excruciating enforcement of that standard (cf. Rom. 2-3).
Now, you might reasonably counter that theonomy wants to hold the whole world to the exacting standard and enforcement given to Israel. And I think that’s a fair objection (see here). It may be that our third way makes a distinction between ethical norms and their enforcement.
But from where I sit, the norms are the same everywhere. They just aren’t known in the same way everywhere.
JRC
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But the difficulty that I have is that REPT very confidently precludes other ways of thinking about civic polity. I would hope to see a broadening of the position that could clearly mark Scriptural non-negotiables from more speculative points, so that we could come to agreement on “thus saith the Lord.â€
I am not sure what you mean by this. If you mean that 2K precludes theonomic ways of thinking about civic polity, OK, and? (I’d ask for the next objection, but after five heads of doctrine I “couldn’t eat another bite,†said Mr. Creosote.)
But 2K is the precise opposite of precluding other ways of thinking about civic polity. There are lotsa ways to conceive of civic shaping. This is where you raise your hand because you seem to think such a statement is to turn tail on what is right, true and good. But this seems to me to be as odd as those who have something against the God-made conscience guiding mortal men (converted or not) day in and day out. What exactly owes to this fear of creational norms could be speculated on at length. In the end, though, I must admit it completely mystifies me.
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Jeff, you continue to think as if God’s law and norms only come from the Bible. It is the view of 2k, with the leaven of some sort of natural law theory, that men are in submission to Christ who obey or submit to the created order. And it is the view of 2k that men do this all the time, yes imperfectly, but they still do it when the penalize a man for selling his daughter into prostitution or when the U.S. retaliates against pirates. What you don’t seem to see is that you are being biblicist by implying that the courts need a biblical proof text to lock the father up or for pulling the trigger to attack the pirates. Man, if that were the case, I could understand how the world would be a scary place — so few people reaching for their KJV to determine how to live today. But if the norms are there, whether acknowledged or not, then why not chillax and let Christ be Lord, rather than coming up with your own idea of how Christ should be Lord?
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Well, chillax is a class 3 narcotic, so my wife can’t prescribe it for me. 😉 Do you have a street source over there in Delaware? (In MD, the drug of choice is “hopium”)
Two thoughts:
(1) I think you’ve confused me with Bahnsen. For B, the biblical proof text is needed to justify X. For me, X need only be consistent with Scripture to be permissible. AND, I reject the use of OT Law as the specific basis for law today, so proof-texts would be hard to come by anyways.
(2) I’m not particularly disturbed by charges of “biblicism.” Granted that some methods of exegesis are faulty, such as exegeting without an eye towards the collected wisdom of the Church (such as the wisdom found in the Confession) — still and all, I’m a down-to-the-metal kind of guy who wants every doctrine to be tested by the Scriptures per WCoF ch. 1.
So label me a biblicist and I’ll wear it cheerfully.
Putting aside the bravado and such, I closely identify myself with Keith Mathison’s position in the Shape of Sola Scriptura.
So: do I continue to think that God’s Law and norms only come from the Bible? No, I recognize that (a) the Scripture is not exhaustive, and (b) our consciences play a role in moral reasoning. BUT, I do think that to the full extent that the Bible speaks to our lives, it is normative. So in particular, I don’t accept the hard division between cult and culture that you do, in that I believe the Decalogue is binding on everyone.
JRC
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I think you’ve confused me with Bahnsen. For B, the biblical proof text is needed to justify X. For me, X need only be consistent with Scripture to be permissible.
Jeff, I’m curious as to the principled difference between proof-texting to justify locking up certain fathers and needing to show consistency. It seems to me that one is merely hard theonomy and the other is soft.
Also, though, how do you harmonize being a citizen of a liberal democracy when Scripture arguably teaches monarchy? I’m being quite serious. I don’t see one word in Scripture that seems at all consistent with the ruled being invited–nay encouraged–to criticize the rulers, or voting, the legitimacy of campaigning, the separation of powers, checks and balances, or individual and human rights. I certainly see nothing that encourages the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
Don’t get me wrong. I love being an American. But it’s not because it’s “consistent with Scripture.” I love it because it’s the citizenry God gave me and it’s really the only one I know. It’s a lot like how I see my parents, siblings, kids and wife. I can say my dad is the best dad in the world, which is the way we speak of America. But that’s an utterance of love and loyalty; if I said he was the best dad in the world because his parenting is the most consistent with Scripture even he’d look at me funny, as if I were making some objective statement about things about which I know nothing.
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I’m not sure where the “locking up fathers” thing came from. Did my evil twin advocate that somewhere?
Anyways: do you think your being a citizen of a liberal democracy is inconsistent with Scripture? That you are actively disobeying God by being a citizen of the U.S.A.?
If not, then your question is hard to parse.
JRC
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“I knew Calvin, and you my friend are no ‘Calvinist'”
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To whom are you referring?
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Jeff, the fathers reference has to do with DGH’s suggestion that everyone knows that fathers who sell their daughters into prostitution should be locked up. So the questions are:
1) If everyone knows that, why do we need biblical proof-texting (hard theonomy) or a good and necessary consequence from Scripture (soft theonmoy, AKA transformationalism) to justify it?
2) What is the principled difference between Bahnsen and you, since you suggest to DGH that he is confusing the two of you? (My answer, of course, is that there is no principled difference between hard and soft theonomy.)
Anyways: do you think your being a citizen of a liberal democracy is inconsistent with Scripture? That you are actively disobeying God by being a citizen of the U.S.A.?
I’d think my comment would have answered that. I don’t think it’s even a question of scriptural consistency (because I’m no kind of theonomist). How can I be disobedient when I live thankfully and peacefully where God has put me? But my question to you is this: if everything must justified by its “being consistent with Scripture”–if locking up bad dads has to be then being a citizen also has to be–where do you find American citizenry in Scripture? (I don’t think any sort of civic polity is found in Scripture. But if we begin by assuming there is, then the case could be made that monarchy is taught by good and necessary consequence and not democracy. Maybe that’s to add an unnecessary layer to my question, so ignore it if you want.)
But I still want to know how you justify being an American by scriptural inference when Scripture no where says, for example, anything about criticizing your leaders but in fact teaches more on civil obedience than a polity that nurtures, encourages and even rewards civil disobedience.
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Jeff, if I follow these lines correctly, I think me.
Jason, if I’m right, fubar. I can spell “potato” correctly.
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There’s a confusion here about what “being consistent with” means. Let’s take for a moment the Gordon Clark thesis that Scripture is mostly propositional (I don’t buy this for an instant, but it’s a helpful model for understanding what follows). Let’s say for simplicity that Scripture teaches X, Y, and Z.
Then, any propositions that do not contradict X, Y, or Z are “consistent with Scripture.”
So if Scripture says nothing about being an American, and says nothing that is contradicted by being an American, then being an American is “consistent with Scripture.”
What you were on about was something stronger: everything must be justified by positive propositions from Scripture. But if that were the case, we couldn’t use telephones or do math. I think we agree that that’s silly; it is the RPW applied meticulously to all of life.
So being “consistent with Scripture” is not a justifying move for me, but a filter — anything inconsistent with Scripture is rejected.
JRC
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Well, if you’ve read him correctly then I want to be clear:
At no point have I called your general “Calvinist” credentials into question. From here, you seem at least as Calvinist as many at Calvin college. I have disputed the “paleoCalvinist” label because it seems to mislead wrt Calvin’s views of the state.
But I consider myself a Calvinist and disagree with Calvin’s views of the state, in part. In fact, I think Calvin’s thoughts on the magistrate contain a hiccup that requires disagreement somewhere.
You two are certainly Calvinist as far as I can see.
JRC
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Gentlemen:
My shot clock has expired, and I must return to civilian life.
Thank you for your patient endurance of my questions and challenges. In the immortal words of Bob Lynn, I’ve been the “little dog gnawing on your ankles – rrr, rrr, rrr.”
I’m taking away two things:
(1) A greater appreciation for the underlying motivations of REPT — the desire to uphold the Gospel without the need for physical props in this world; the desire for the Church to be the Church; a genuine concern about the implications of transformationalism and its aggressive cousin theonomy.
(2) A better (but still incomplete) understanding of the arguments underpinning REPT.
I’ve hoped to communicate two things:
(1) The question, “What does the Christian magistrate do with himself?” is the money question.
(2) There need not necessarily be two poles of answers – theonomy or else REPT.
This dialog has been challenging, but I’m walking away with a greater sense of rapport with you than I began with.
Grace and peace to you, and God’s blessings on your ministry.
Jeff Cagle
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Jeff,
I suppose I am still unsatisfied with the principled difference between “filtering for consistency” (you) and “RPWing all of life” (Bahnsen). I rather conceive our charge as believers to be (imperfect) covenant-keepers with lives structured by the explicit and clear stipulations of the moral law.
Maybe I’m just this side of cynical after a worship committee meeting today with some from the campus, but I’m not sure Calvin College should be the litmus for Calvinism; but I get your point and appreciate it.
It has been fun. I think you’ve been a good sport in all this. 2K is at odds with most default settings, if you ask me, and can be an acquired taste for most.
Be good and stay well.
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Jeff, Thanks for the interaction as well. I’m not sure how much progress we’ve made but I do appreciate the chance to understand how others hear the 2k doctrine. I guess the thing that strikes me is how much the 2k view makes distinctions that your view does not, between jurisdictions, between the Bible and general revelation, between the church and the world.
One of the ways this came up in your last comment is your assertion that you think the Decalogue applies to everyone and 2k does not. Well, actually, 2k believes the decalogue does apply to everyone — it condemns the unrigheous (2nd use), and it provides a guide for the saved (3rd use). I’m willing to allow the magistrate to use the decalogue, though I’m not sure I’d want to live in that polity. But I would never think that the magistrate was using the law for gracious ends. It would be a standard for judgment and justice. It would not be a means of grace and forgiveness.
I think that is the biggest mistake of your conflation — to think that the magistrate is doing something Christian by meeting out justice. The covenant of grace has never been about law and justice. If it were, it would be the covenant of works.
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DGH, I thought you would appreciate this. My daughter’s has homework for preschool. We pretty much let her read the directions and figure stuff out on her own. Her recent homework was as follows (directions in bold, her answers in italics)
Trace the word CAN below. Then write the word once in each space below
CAN
once
once
once
once
once
The literalist apple falls close to the tree, no? 🙂
JRC
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Jeff,
That is funny. Somewhere Art Linkletter is smiling to himself like a Cheshire cat.
But from what I recall in my Early Childhood Development courses, preschoolers have an excuse: they are in the throes of a brutal concreteness. It’s part of what makes mine such (relatively) good catechumen. But one wonders what explanation big people have. Smile, it’s a joke.
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Jeff, I think you’re daughter is brilliant. It’s her father I’m worried about.
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Dude, you have got to be kidding! If I were as touchy as you, I’d be weeping in the corner: I’m a teacher committed to the project of a worldview-oriented school, and you consistently and high-handedly belittle and ridicule such a project and thus the parents and teachers who have made economic sacrifices to pursue such a calling, in good conscience before God as serving him. You express utter contempt for a variety of Christian theologians, philosophers, and ordinary believers trying to understand what the Word calls them to in the world but coming to conclusions different from 2K, and you get all indignant at someone stepping on the toes of your own personal area of study? “Boo hoo, he didn’t take my book seriously!!”
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Josh, bull bleep. Theonomists don’t cry.
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