And makes a very good point about ecclesiology, as opposed to sexual misconduct, along the way.
No presbytery just wakes up one morning and, out of the blue, declares `I’m going to ordain a practising homosexual today.’ As every presbyterian knows, our church courts change very, very slowly. So the question to ask is: how did the C of S come to such a pass? The answer, in part (and I stress ‘in part’ — I am interested here only in the evangelical dimension), lies with the policy of William Still and his followers, which was essentially built on the notion that the courts of the church could be conceded to the liberals as long as the evangelicals were allowed to keep preaching the gospel from their own pulpits. This was the very antithesis of the Southern Baptist policy and ironically, meant that, while the baptists acted like quasi-presbyterians, the Stillites acted like Independents.
The policy worked well for the big C of S churches — e.g. the Tron, Gilcomston South, Holyrood — who were large enough to keep the hawks from George Street at bay; what it meant, however, was that the smaller churches, the anonymous evangelical pastors, and the lowly ministerial students candidates frequently came under huge pressure from presbyteries. Since my first post, I have heard from one old friend who, as a student, was roasted in a presbytery on the gay issue while the evangelicals present literally sat in silence; another who was told by an evangelical leader to ordain a woman elder against his conscience because women’s ordination was not the hill to die on. Both have since left the C of S, at considerable personal hardship.
Old Life 
And let’s back up a bit and ask how they got there. Did churches go liberal because they adopted a transformationalist ethic (as REPTers charge)? Or, did churches go liberal because they failed to maintain the lordship of Christ in their scholarship, and conceded the theological arguments to scholars who operated “autonomously” (as van Til charged)?
The correct answer to this question has huge implications for the 2K discussion.
JRC
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Jeff, some of us have been trying to argue for some time that a place like PTS did not go liberal but succumbed to the PCUSA’s desire to transform the culture. That aim took root at the time of the Old School/New School reunion, when Charles Briggs was an undergrad at UVA. My answer is that the agenda of Christianizing America came first, and that liberal biblical scholarship and theology was the justification for that agenda. Evangelical social reform came well before the Social Gospel, as Timothy Smith showed. Sometimes its not ideas but bad eschatology that has consequences.
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Given your particular thesis, I think your concerns are quite understandable.
I’m still trying to see how it all fits. The Tuebingen school, for example, didn’t go liberal because of a social transformative agenda, did it? Did the Netherlands “go liberal” because of Kuyper?
I am certainly willing to go this far: Either, as you say, the transformative agenda made the Church receptive and vulnerable to liberal (“progressive”) theology, OR perhaps the transformative agenda became a honeypot that attracted progressives to the church as a locus for change.
That certainly seems to be the case for the current POTUS, right? He didn’t go liberal in his theology because he first adopted a progressive agenda. Rather, he chose a particular Chicago church because it was a good platform for his already-established agenda. Trinity United functioned as a honeypot for Obama.
The second issue with the thesis is how absolute it might be. Are *all* transformative agendas really just Trojan horses (or honeypots) for liberalism? And how does one define a “transformative agenda” in the first place?
So far, you’ve treated transformationalism in the same manner as the Ark of the Covenant: touch it and die. But that may not be the case for all forms.
Finally, I think your thesis needs to account for the legitimate work of subduing the creation in the creation mandate, in two ways. First, there *is* a legitimate kind of ordering of creation in obedience to God that should occur. In what ways is that different from the transformationalism you distrust? Second, the Creation Mandate is given prior to the Fall, when there was no common realm (even accepting the triadalist structure). Should that not tell us something about the way in which the Creation Mandate is to be carried out?
JRC
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Jeff, a wing of the Aufscheiding would not join with Kuyper’s Doliantie church in the 1890s. My impression is that they regarded the transformationalism as proto-liberal. Plus, you gotta remember that all the German liberal theology was produced in a state-church environment. Constantine was a transformationalist. And if you object to Constantinianism as I do, then the German theologians were cheek by jowl in a transformationalist setting.
I think we disagree on the cultural mandate. You admit it came before the fall. I think the fall called a lot of the bets of the cultural mandate off, in a way similar to the covenant of works. Yes, we still try to make our selves good, to merit blessedness. And a residue of the mandate abides. But it’s been twisted. So just as women bear children under the curse, so our work is now futile. I didn’t say that. The preacher in Ecclesiastes did. (I do wonder if the transformationalists are tempted to remove Ecclesiastes from the canon the way Luther was with James.)
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The Aufscheiding were cool, and Ecclesiastes, that epistle of straw, would be my favorite book of the canon if it weren’t for my personal, categorical rule against “favorites.”
Jeff, I think the fall translated the cultural mandate from a quest for exact justice to a satisfaction with proximate. Does that feel like a let-down?
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Whoa. Do you mean, “we attempt to do this”, or that “we should do this”?
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I suppose it hangs on how one defines “satisfaction.” You make it sound like the creation mandate was called off.
Whereas I would say, our job is to continue the Creation Mandate as a goal — but to expect thorns and thistles as an outcome.
JRC
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Jeff, do you really think I am advocating salvation by works? Come on.
On the cultural mandate, do you believe that the Great Commission is a mere extension of the Cultural Mandate? In other words, was the cultural mandate redemptive or restorative? I suspect you’ll say no. It wasn’t redemptive. How could it be? Sin wasn’t around. So then with the introduction of sin, how can the cultural mandate still be in force?
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Jeff,
Re satisfaction, I can’t get none. How does one charitably read “satisfaction with proximate justice” to mean “the mandate was called off”? The CM, as DGH suggested, came into a different set of rules post-fall. How could it not?!
The CM is law, the GC is gospel.
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No, I surely would think not! And that’s why I asked — because your words at literal face value did say that. So I figured, “surely he doesn’t mean that; I’d better check.”
The cultural mandate was neither redemptive (clearly) or restorative (what needed restoring, exactly?), but something else. It was an ordering, it was establishing of dominion, it was creative.
So with the introduction of sin, the cultural mandate doesn’t disappear — Adam still works the ground, the first family still has the task of going forth and multiplying (reiterated to Noah, I should add). It’s just that the results are much less satisfactory.
JRC
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Zrim, really truly I’m not trying to read you uncharitably. Keep in mind that I don’t actually *understand* your phraseology or even your approach to theology. The result is that I can misunderstand even basic phrases like
“satisfaction with proximate justice”
to mean
“exerting no additional work to bring about justice on the earth.”
or
“think the fall called a lot of the bets of the cultural mandate off, in a way similar to the covenant of works. Yes, we still try to make our selves good, to merit blessedness. And a residue of the mandate abides. But it’s been twisted.”
as an affirmation that we strive to make ourselves good, in order to merit blessedness.
On this side of the screen, I keep hearing stuff that doesn’t make sense. It possibly happens on your side also.
JRC
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Then why can’t the Enlightenment be part of the cultural mandate as you understand the CM? It was creative and it was ordering.
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Jeff,
The result is that I can misunderstand even basic phrases like “satisfaction with proximate justice†to mean “exerting no additional work to bring about justice on the earth.â€
I think you’re trying to hard.
When I go through the drive through and the “4:1 fast food rule†come to bear (i.e. for every four requests there will be one error) a few miles down the road satisfaction with proximate justice says, “Oh well, you can’t win all the time. Can I have your fries?†and the quest for exact justice moves heaven and earth to make sure one gets his fries no matter who gets hurt. My hunch is that you live like an approximater more than an exacter in your daily life, just like me.
If we’re being honest, we all do way ore maintaining and getting from day to day than “bringing about justice on earth.†I don’t understand what is so evil about admitting what is true, nor do I grasp what is so bad about being content, nor do I apprehend how doing one’s level best each day means “exerting no additional work to bring about justice on the earth.†I mean, by the time I’m done with my day, I certainly don’t feel like I’ve not exerted myself. I fall into bed pretty whipped. And that’s just by maintaining.
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Because it was specifically grounded in the belief that God is not. The Creation Mandate was grounded in a command from God. The “Enlightenment as Creation Mandate” cuts off the branch on which it sits.
JRC
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Jeff,
Because it [Enlightenment] was specifically grounded in the belief that God is not. The Creation Mandate was grounded in a command from God.
So what? Most false religions are grounded in the belief that God is. And democracy sure isn’t grounded in a command from God, yet you live in one and probably think it’s a pretty workable system. If you’re watching out for your kids immersed in all that Enlightenment, who’s watching over you immersed in all this democracy?
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Don’t make me go all Lillback on you. But come off it. Some of the Enlightenment philosophers were agnostics. Some were deists, some were liberal Protestants. For civil society, I’ll take a liberal Protestant any day. Heck, I’ll take Ben Franklin as a neighbor. It does seem Jeff that you’re applying standards of church membership to your fellow citizens.
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Dr Hart,
What books could you recommend with the view you have put forward of the cultural mandate ?
Thanks
Colin
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Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s that I don’t recall the French Revolution as being a particularly “peaceful and quiet” time for the Church.
Or that I don’t trust the movement that brought Unitarianism into the Church — amongst the Old Lights, no less; hardly transformationalists, those.
One of the major points of disagreement between us is that you seem to believe that the Church will be safe from the culture if she can get a high enough wall of REPT between herself and culture.
I say, the church will always be affected by the culture in different ways, so we need to be mindful of the structure of thought in our culture, and be on guard against it.
JRC
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Actually, no, I don’t think democracy is a workable system. On the historic time-scale, American democracy is not really a time-tested system. If Athens is any guide, we will end up running out of money because democratic (little “d”) pressures always carve out more pie than actually exists.
I like the benefits of the 1st Amendment, but I’m under no illusions that democracy caused that. In this country, the momentum is in the other direction: the need for a secular democracy crowds out freedom of free exercise of religion.
JRC
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So DGH, on your account, does the Fall actually change the command given in the Creation Mandate, or does it change the expected results, or both?
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Jeff,
One of the major points of disagreement between us is that you seem to believe that the Church will be safe from the culture if she can get a high enough wall of REPT between herself and culture. I say, the church will always be affected by the culture in different ways, so we need to be mindful of the structure of thought in our culture, and be on guard against it.
The church will never be safe. But it’s not because of something outside her–you keep looking outside, you even have 2K doing it now–but because of something within her. This isn’t a pollyanna disregard for the ways of the encroaching world, rather it is to suggest that we take sin much more seriously by recognizing that “the world is near to us, it is our mouth and heart.” The Word is, too. Calvin said we go to our deaths with an unbeliever still resident within. We are the problem, not them.
And 2K isn’t about erecting protective or insulating walls, like Pink Floyd’s “Mother.” It is simply pleading for faithfulness, knowing at the same time sin runs deep and is wherever sinners are, including the church. I’d suggest that those who don’t grasp this can usually be the ones found erecting fabricated walls trying to keep sin out, because they don’t see that it is within.
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Kline’s Kingdom Prologue is a start, but can be tough going. I believe Dave VanDrunen has a writing project on Christ and culture. But I don’t know when that will be out. Also, Horton’s book on Covenant Theology might be useful.
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The way I see it, the fall means the cultural mandate cannot be fulfilled by human effort, just as the fall means that man cannot merit eternal rest.
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Jeff, the French Revolution was not the only example of the Enlightenment. But the Religious Wars of the seventeeth century were no picnic.
I think the difference between us is simply how threatening we understand the contemporary culture to be, and this is a difference that extends to the theonomists and other “mandate” types. 2kers generally aren’t that impressed by the woes of our time. They know that the early church faced a lot worse and that the church then was not setting up Christian schools, Christian political parties, or ammunition for the culture wars. So if they weren’t alarmed by pagan government but said that such rulers were for the church’s good, how much have neo-Calvinists and theonomists missed a crucial piece of calm that the early church had. Again, it was the Jewish leaders who were far more alarmed by the Roman empire — why, because they believed God’s kingdom was political and earthly.
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You sure about that? From here, that’s precisely what it looks like: creating a clean separation between church and culture so that we won’t be tempted to import the culture into the church.
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Double agreement there. But does the command change?
Here’s what I mean. The decalogue (which acc. to the Confession is just a fuller exposition of the covenant of works) cannot be fulfilled by human effort either. And yet, we do not say to Christians that their freedom from sin includes an exemption from the moral demands of the law. Instead, we say that Christians are still bound to the demands of the law (WCoF 19.5, 6).
Likewise, it seems to me that the Creation Mandate, even if we grant it the status of law (a reasonable hypothesis — but perhaps in conflict with WCoF 19.1), remains in force wrt its demands even after the Fall.
If that is the case, then it doesn’t make sense to say that the Creation Mandate is “no longer in force”, as you did above.
It does make sense to say that the Creation Mandate cannot be fulfilled by human effort — but that is equally true of the decalogue.
JRC
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Jeff,
Quite sure, yes. The brutal amil Calvinism 2Kers have doesn’t allow for any illusions that the project will be successful (it’s also what keeps us relatively unmoved about the alleged progress of mankind in general). We don’t call for the construction of 2K schools, etc. Instead, 2K is yelping in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey and getting its head lopped off for it. All in a day’s work.
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Agreed maybe. The original CM was salvific, like the covenant of works. Do this and live had an eternal life dimension to it. The CM no longer has it. But I’ve heard neo-Calvinsts compare the Great Commission to the NT version of the Cultural Mandate. I think they are two different projects, and sin made one impossible, the other necessary.
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So why yelp? Since God providentially cares for his church, and since the 2k project can’t be successful anyways, then isn’t your yelping just an attempt to bring about righteousness in the church through human effort? 😉 I think your Real Problem is that you just don’t trust God’s providence enough. 😉 😉
(All said tongue-in-cheek, BTW — but with a point).
JRC
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Well, I think you’re right about the first. The GC and the CM (an equivocation — “Creation” rather than “Cultural”, but the acronym works for both!) are certainly not the same.
I would just say that both are impossible and both are necessary.
JRC
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Meredith Kline’s take in Kingdom Prologue is interesting. He affirms the perpetuity of the cultural mandate, even post-lapsarian, but argues that it has been “refracted.” He seems to assert that the post-lapsarian economy divides the cultural mandate into parallel redemptive and common-grace rays, and moves cultural labor over to and under “common grace” for a different purpose or end, what the Preacher in Ecclesiastes contends is futility and meaninglessness. Kline writes:
“The common culture that is the direct fruit of common grace is not itself identifiable with the holy, Sabbath-sealed redemptive kingdom of God … Another way of saying this is that common grace culture is not itself the particular holy kingdom-temple culture that was mandated under the creational covenant. Although certain functional and institutional provisions of the original cultural mandate are resumed in the common grace order, these now have such a different orientation, particularly as to objectives, one cannot simply and strictly say that it is the cultural mandate that is being implemented in the process of common grace culture. It might be closer to the truth to say that the cultural mandate of the original covenant in Eden is being carried out in the program of salvation, since the ultimate objective of that mandate, the holy kingdom-temple, will be the consummate achievement of Christ under the Covenant of Grace. On the other hand, the genealogical and earthly aspects of the original cultural mandate that were to consummate its preconsummation history are not part of the redemptive program per se¦ As brought over into the postlapsarian world, the cultural mandate undergoes such refraction that it cannot be identified in a simple, unqualified way with either the holy or common enterprises.” (KP, 156-7,)
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