In the many to and fro’s of kicking around two-kingdom theology with those crazy guys, Tim and David Bayly, I have wondered why their rhetoric so often starts and ends Limbaughesque. For instance, here’s a riff on two-kingdom theology and Keller-wannabes that would make Rush proud:

It’s one of the supreme ironies of our reformed fellowship that, despite what any reasonable person would think, the R2K, 2K, spirituality of the church preppies, along with their brothers mute behind the redemptive-historical gag, are out there in the Aussies’ back of beyond helping the PCA/MNA hiptsers dig. Both sides together, now.

The common denominator is hatred for the shame of the Gospel and a propensity to do the look-at-the-birdie routine, albeit they point in radically different directions.

What’s certain is that no one has a heart to love the lost, to rescue the perishing, to break the jaw of the wicked snatching the widow and orphan from his mouth, or to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its earthshaking power and wisdom and holiness. Find me the hip church plant where former lesbians and pro-abort feminists have been converted to the Gospel and are now zealous for the conversion of their former sisters-in-crime, pitying their bondage and, from love, going out to seek and to save that which is lost to bring them under the preaching of the full Gospel and the teaching of everything Jesus commanded–particularly that so-pertinent part having to do with Adam being created first, and then Eve.

For that matter, find me the R2K, 2K, spirituality of the Church, redemptive-historical preaching church where the pastor or elders or deacons–anyone, for that matter–faithfully show up at the baby-slaughterhouse nearby to plead for the lives of those little ones about to die.

Amazing similarities between the most disparate things are all over the place, aren’t they?

The spite mixed with sanctimony in such an outburst is truly hard to fathom (except when you remember Rabbi Bret).

What is curious, though, is that the Baylys are capable of better verbiage. In rummaging through their archives to try to diagnose the unease that produces such vituperation, I ran across a quite sensible post about the problems with Lutheranism, yes, the Lutheranism that I will go out of my way to hug. Pardon the length of the following quotation, but it is useful for making the point I want to make as well as giving a sense of the Baylys’ (I’d say) legitimate concerns with Lutheranism.

At first I viewed the increasing infatuation with Lutheranism within elements of the Reformed Church with bemusement. But as the trend toward accommodation with–and even emulation of–Lutheranism grew within conservative elements of the Reformed Church, I watched with mounting alarm. In particular, I have serious reservations about the Lutheran law-gospel divide, which, from my experience of LCMS practice, seems either to produce or (in the case of Lutheranism-smitten Presbyterians) to be the product of a desire for theological conservativism without the hindrance of practical piety.

Three things immediately struck me as a seventh-grader of Evangelical background upon entering a LCMS school:

First, I remember how startled my brother and I were by the rampant misuse of God’s name by students and adults alike. Not only did students routinely take God’s name in vain, they did so in front of pastors in class without reproach. Of course, my experience of the LCMS is narrow. There may be vast swaths of the LCMS where the third commandment is honored. Yet within the portion of the LCMS I am acquainted with a tragically casual attitude toward the name of God prevails.

Second, we were struck by the gilded cross and life-size, bleeding Jesus at front and center of the LCMS church attached to our school. Again, this is personal experience, but unlike misuse of God’s name, I am not willing to admit that I have a narrow and incomplete view of the LCMS in this area. Check it out. Visit LCMS churches and see how many contain graven images of Christ. Lutherans embrace icons in worship. If you doubt this, use Google to find pages by LCMS men defending icons of Christ in worship. Lutherans (modern Lutherans far more than Martin), in fact, seem to delight in tweaking Reformed sensibilities by defending the spiritual benefits of icons. They not only publish images of Christ in their curriculum and erect pictures of Jesus in their homes, they unashamedly place them front and center in their places of worship.

Third, one of the chief ways my brother and I stood out from the other students in our LCMS school was our father’s refusal to let us join school teams or attend the majority of school sporting events. Why? Because LCMS schools routinely scheduled games on Sundays. This remains true today. Lutherans have few qualms about pursuing their pleasures on the Lord’s Day. Lutherans were far ahead of culture as a whole in placing children’s sporting events on the Lord’s Day. Many Presbyterians find Calvin’s explanation of the Lord’s Day deficient. Lutheran practice in this area makes even the most liberal of PCA churches appear Sabbatarian. . . .

I suspect I know what most LCMS folk will say to these complaints: they’ll complain that they differ from me and other Reformed folk principially and theologically in these areas. They’ll say, “But we interpret these commandments differently than you.” Yes, they do. But I say back to my LCMS friends, isn’t it interesting how your interpretations of these commandments demolish the first table of the law as a practical force within individual human lives? Wasn’t it Luther who said that if we defend the Gospel at points other than the precise point under attack, we are in fact not defending the Gospel at all?

So, you disdain Allah and revile Buddha: but you put images of Christ, false images, idolatrous images, at the center of your sanctuaries. I know, I know, I’m a Docetist. I don’t really accept the humanity of Christ. In Christ, God took on form; we can now make images of God because God has taken on human substance. But, let me ask one question. In Christ, God did take human form. But the Christ of your crucifixes and icons, do they contain that form? Do you really know His form?

You don’t just put holes in His hands and feet and side, you make them a certain size, you put them in particular locations. You go further still: you put a distinctively formed nose on His head, colored eyes in His brow, particular cheeks and lips on His face. You give your graven image not just form, but personality and character. You show Him with tears. You place emotions and character on His face. Yet are your images true? If they are, why do they all differ from each other? Are there ten-thousand human forms of Christ?

Do your icons truly portray Christ? Would I know Jesus from your icons? Would I recognize Him on the basis of your images? Would I be able to tell Him from the reviling thief on the basis of your icons? If not, how can they be anything less than a particularly blasphemous and reprehensible lie when you place them at the front of the Church for veneration? Surely, a man who put up an image of Bozo the Clown and called it Churchill and told children to look to his Churchill for inspiration would be reviled as dishonest and contemptuous. Yet you do far worse to Christ.

Idolatry, other gods, the Lord’s Day, God’s name: the entire first table of the law the LCMS tragically diminishes.

Of course, LCMS advocates deny this. But the proof is in the pudding. As Calvin says, the second table of the law is given to demonstrate hypocrisy in regard to the first. Shall I mention how antinomian my experience of LCMS practice has been in terms of the second table of the law? The seventh grade teacher and children’s choir director who told his LCMS class that he subscribed to Playboy without the slightest fear that his job might be jeopardized? The eighth grade teacher who, though a delightful man’s man, ran off with another man’s wife? The tenth grade, school-sponsored campout where I had my first (and thankfully, only) experience of a pot-fueled group grope in which the staff sponsor was a full participant (and remained on the job for the rest of the year)?

Shall I mention the drinking and drunkenness common in LCMS churches and even at LCMS events? The disdain for Christ’s teaching on divorce within marriages of the church? Yes, all these things take place within other churches, including the PCA. But the frequency of their occurrence within our particular communions cannot be ignored. I find no pleasure in arguing this way. But I can’t be silent when I know these things to be true.

I have no desire to speak ill of the LCMS. To be honest, speaking ill of the LCMS was the last thing on my mind for many years for the simple reason that the LCMS used to be utterly outside the Reformed, Evangelical orbit. But when the LCMS is portrayed as a paradigm for Reformed churches, and when Reformed men praise Lutheran theology and worship, and when Reformed men leave Presbyterian churches for LCMS churches and try to persuade others of the wisdom of their course, I object. The LCMS is brazenly contemptuous of the first table of God’s law. It pays lip service to the second table, but even there, the standard of holiness in the average LCMS church would prove deeply disturbing to most PCA church members within their own churches.

Granted, it’s overdone at points, but aside from the Baylys’ appeal to the first table, which they disallowed when 2kers were trying to explain why they weren’t dropping everything to run out and picket at abortion clinics, their concern for second, third, and fourth commandments here is admirable. Also worth mentioning is the expressed desire of not wanting to speak ill of Lutherans. Boy, we two-kingdomers could have used a little of that love over the last two weeks at the Baylys home blog.

But the most important feature of this post is that it shows the Baylys are capable of analysis. Instead of simply shooting from the hip and dismissing as folly any form of disagreement, the Baylys based their rather restrained objections to Lutheranism on substantial theological points. And while their posts against 2kers were quick to assume the worst, this post against Lutherans manifests a measure of sadness even about important disagreements.

Wow! I didn’t know they had it in them.

Maybe it is a function of hardening arteries (or craniums). The Baylys wrote about Lutherans in 2004, six years before the current evil regime. Maybe conditions in the United States and the nation’s churches have so deteriorated that they feel the need to embody Guillame Farel more than Johannes Oecolampadius. Or it could be that they simply aren’t spending enough time at Happy Hour.

(Should I close comments now before Truth Divides . . . Truth Unites calls me an idiot?)