94 thoughts on “How 2K Might Have Helped Stellman”

1. Mr. Stellman’s apostasy from the gospel and his recent confusion over basic truths such as sola scriptura and sola fide are disconcerting. Let us pray that his apostasy is not final, and that he may be restored to a sound mind and stable faith. I am thankful that at least he had the integrity to step down from his position once he could no longer sincerely receive and adopt the Westminster Standards as his confession of faith. Would that more apostates from the gospel had his integrity.

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2. Pingback: Two Kingdoms Is Protestant | The Confessional Outhouse

3. Jason affirmed the material and formal principles of the Reformation and strenuously affirmed NL2K and he now rides the rocky road to Rome. Lee Iron affirmed the material and formal principles of NL2K and the OPC said he was on a rocky road. Kloosterman, Venema, and Kerux, et. al. denies NL2K and they seem not on any rocky road.

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4. Therese, that’s right, 2k took Lee Irons right into the PCA where he now communes with Kloosterman. In case you missed it, Stellman has now rejected the material and formal principles of the Reformation. Using Occam’s Razor (or is that too Thomistic?), it sure looks like that rejection is more responsible for Jason’s decision than 2k which he never mentioned.

   But if the dots you connect get you through the night, have a swell time.

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5. I understand that the present “civil kingdoms” are not the same as Christ’s churches. I also appreciate the point that future judgment according to law is the way the civil kingdoms work. As an anabaptist, I do not think that churches need to have a plan or a standard by which they presume to say how Hitler should be replaced. But I do wonder why the justified elect should not be able to say No to Hitler or to slavery.

   What would it mean to say NO? It would NOT mean having a comprehensive worldview which guides as we put our hands on the metanarrative and attempt to make history “come out right”. Rather, it would mean that Christians secede from any civil kingdom where Hitler is in charge or slavery property is defended with violence. If the ministry of law should be foreign to the church, why should it not also be foreign to the individual Christian?

   Is it “grace” that keeps us from saying no to Hitler? “Grace” does NOT mean that we have no confessional standards about the doctrines of grace. “Grace” does NOT mean that legalists can remain legalists and at the same time be justified by grace. “Grace” does NOT mean that I continue to have the “liberty” of believing and teaching the false gospels of Arminianism and Romanism. “Grace” does NOT mean that the Galatians can be circumcised and still have Christ “profit them”. So why should “grace” mean that individual “private Christians” have the liberty to take up the ministry of law?

   I can acknowledge that Hitler exists and submit to God’s providence without needing to obey Hitler or be thankful for Hitler as a blessing to the churches. I can submit to what God has ordained without inductively concluding that I need to help replace Hitler with a different better kind of Hitler. What a very strange thing it is to get hot and bothered about churches saying anything about Hitler, and then turning right around and teaching that individual Christians from the churches have the liberty to either kill for Hitler or to kill those who would kill for Hitler.

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6. Marky Mark, how do you get out from under any civil authority with Romans 13 looming over your head?

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7. Marky Mark, how do you get out from under any civil authority with Romans 13 looming over your head?

   http://www.amazon.com/Superior-Subjects-Lawfully-Disobeyed-Resisted/dp/116143545X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339597661&sr=1-1&keywords=Christopher+Goodman++How+superior+Powers+ought+to+be+obeyed+of+their+subjects

   http://www.covenanter.org/JMWillson/CivilGovt/civilgovernment.htm

   http://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Resistance-Magdeburg-Confession-Tradition/dp/0570016436

   http://www.amazon.com/appellation-sentence-pronounced-bishopes-Scotland/dp/1149292784/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339597883&sr=1-1&keywords=John+Knox+Appellation

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8. Instead of speculating about possible cause-effect relationships between Stellman’s love for formality and his rejection of faith alone and scripture alone, I continue to want to go back to the source, his book Dual Citizens. Stellman claimed that “God never deals with us as individuals” (p9). I do not agree. At the very least, let me say that we can disagree with Stellman about that and still believe in faith alone and scripture alone. We do not have to dismiss individualism as something non-protestant in order to affirm the gospel of justification by Christ’s imputed righteousness.

   Some of us “protestants” disagree with Stellman’s claim that when we hear an official “minister” absolving sins, that we hear Christ forgiving our sins (p13). Does that mean that we are not “really” Protestant, like Stellman is (was)? Does our suspicion of sacerdotalism and sacramentalism somehow make us “gnostic” and “pietist” and MORE like the Roman Catholics than those who redefine the “priesthood of the believer” by means of a magistrate approved “clergy”?

   When the “minister” tells those in the church that their sins are forgiven, who is it that hears? Are the non-elect not hearing, because they don’t care about their sins? If so, doesn’t everything comes back again to God giving faith to individual hearers?

   Is it “pietism” to warn people that the New Testament is written only to “as many as” are individually Christian? It’s still seems strange to me that Stellman could make distinctions for sabbath (no more death penalty now ) but he would not divide individual Christian from individual nonChristian in “taking the sacrament”.

   Formality is not only about claims that some forms of worship are better than other forms. Formality is pretending that everybody in the room where the sermon and sacrament are should be thought of as exiles from the world and Christians. But of course to Stellman, such gestures are not pretending. They are more real than anything in our hearts. As he asks, even if there is no faith, is there no blessing? (p 14)

   Even though he attended to redemptive history on sabbath, when it came to “sacramental observance”, Stellman still wanted to talk sanctions and curses. (p77)

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9. “If they deny 2k, they ride on a rocky road.”

   I missed the part where you argued that *only* your particular nuanced brand of 2K affirms, defends, and upholds sola scriptura and sola fide. At a minimum, your argument needs a premise like that.

   And really, denial of 2K is a sufficient condition for riding the rocky road? So if a denial obtains, this this *guarantees* one rides the rocky road?

   Moreover, here’s another implication of your conditional: “If someone does not ride on a rocky road, then they do not deny 2K.” So not denying (your particular, nuanced brand of) 2K is *necessary* to not ride the rocky road? Talk about conscience binding! Didn’t your post say something about affronts to liberty of conscience being affronts to the Lordship of Christ? “The Bible forbids a man to substitute any human authority for the Word of God. . . .” Does the Bible have a verse that says, “You *must* not deny neo-2K, otherwise you ride the rocky road.” Does the Confession say that? Can you *derive* by “good and necessary inference” the necessity of affirming your own particular, nuanced brand of 2K?

   You’ve overstated your case and reasoned poorly once again, Darryl.

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10. Zrim, the idea is not “to get out from” the authority of Hitler. I clearly say (twice) that we are to submit to what God has ordained. (exousia is the word). Surely you would agree that we can submit by being killed rather than obeying?

    At any rate, if you want to deal with what I did say (instead of what I didn’t), the question is about why it’s not foreign for individual Christians to carry out the ministry of the law when it is foreign for the churches to do that. I agree that churches should not do that. Now I am asking why there is individual “liberty” to do that.

    I know it’s not a simple question. It has everything to do with ecclesiology, and with a definition of “church” as individual Christians gathered “plus”…..here’s where it gets complicated, Zrim, and why I am glad that you (or I!) can be wrong about ecclesiology and still right about the gospel.

    Also feel free to comment about the possibility of being saved by grace while still believing a false gospel.

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11. As an octogenarian, grad. of WTS, 1954, OPC elder for 30 + years and prof. University System of Georgia for 16 years, I try my best to follow most of DGH’s postings and the scads of often contradictory comments. I confess I don’t get a lot of it. Our guest pastor at ROPC ATL (6/10) spoke about the tired saying: Some leaders in the OPC “are too heavenly minded to be any earthly good”. I guess he thought that quote was far from summarizing his views on Church and/or State. Seemed to me he was saying that we shouldn’t even TRY to be earthly good! Stay out of Politics? (Church fighting Roe v. Wade, same sex “marriage’, Islam, etc.). I often hear, “Changing our USA laws doesn’t change HEARTS!” I reply, “True! BUT laws, Christian value laws and other laws(speeding), DO change BEHAVIOR! And THAT is pleasing to our Creator. It surely changed behavior, great increase in the murder of babies, made in His Image, when Abortion was made legal in 1973! I guess I should give up in making this point to DGH and many commentators to his Old Life essays. Love in Christ, OBM. PS. I can’t, for my life, get the point made by some that the words “Christian” and “schools” should NEVER belong together! Bigger fish for us to fry!?

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12. Here’s something a pastor friend of mine said (he’s a WSC grad): “I am thankful I didn’t attend WSC later. I think John Frame inoculated me against a lot of the radical Confessionalism and two Kingdoms views that are being taught there now.” John Frame? Ohh, that’s gotta burn 😉

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13. to replay, Darryl G. Hart quoted Scott Clark
    Posted December 8, 2010 at 3:06 pm | Permalink

    Just because the Enlightenment was totalitarian does not mean that our response to it must be undifferentiated. Yes, Christ is Lord over all things, but he administers that dominion in distinct spheres (Kuyper’s term) or kingdoms (the older Reformed language). His revelation speaks to everything but not in the same way. The cultural or civil sphere is normed by God’s general or natural revelation. Special revelation wasn’t given to norm cultural or civil life. E.g. if we wish to apply special revelation to civil life, then we should all become theonomists, since they are those who wish to apply the only civil code in Scripture (the Mosaic civil laws) to post-canonical civil life. Most Reformed folk aren’t theonomists and reject theonomy so I take it that most Reformed folk agree, in principle (if not in rhetoric) with me that special revelation is redemptive not cultural or civil in focus.

    Thus, most Reformed folk don’t insist that the magistrate implement the Mosaic civil law. We do, however, rightly insist that the magistrate be restrained by natural law. In the nature of the magistrate’s office there are things that properly concern him and things that do not.

    The church, however, is a distinct sphere from cultural or civil activities. The church has a specific, divinely revealed charter in Holy Scripture. This doesn’t mean that the Christian faith is thereby “privatized.” Rather we ought to respect the intent of Scripture itself. When Paul wrote the pastoral epistles he was not laying out a charter for civil society. He was, however, laying out a charter, with divine authority, for the church, the principal and chief manifestation of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking or painting or softball but about sin, guilt, salvation, and grace in Christ.

    Because they are citizens of the heavenly kingdom and members of the civil kingdom simultaneously, Christians ought to conduct themselves differently. Our heavenly citizenship should be manifested in our civil life, not that we have a solution to the financial crisis but that we don’t steal. A Christian who runs an investment business may not turn it into a Ponzi scheme! It ought to be manifest that we’ve been bought with a price.

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14. Paul, exactly. I’m stupid and you are brilliant.

    But in case you missed it, a blog is not a treatise, and posts are not syllogisms. The point was the 2k is not a sufficient cause for abandoning sola scripture or sola fide, as your homeboy Trueman alleges.

    Reflect, Paul, don’t deduce.

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15. McMark, who says that Christians SHOULD NOT say no to Hitler. (BTW, did I miss something? Did the Anabaptists collectively say no to Hitler?) And where does Christ tell Christians that they must say no to slavery? The Bible is fairly important to these questions and answers.

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16. Therese, while you’re aggregating, why don’t you actually say something?

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17. Bob, some law changes behavior. No one denies that, though laws also create problems (remember Prohibition and organized crime). These are, however, merely civil matters. They are not examples of the kingdom of Christ since changing behavior doesn’t get you into the kingdom. So why don’t you simply make the political argument about why some kind of morality gets legislated without dragging theology or Christianity into it?

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18. I am going to need to leave this computer and read Dual Citizens again. At the least it shows that Stellman and David Van Drunnen and other 2 k folks are not all saying the same thing all the time.
    John Y sends this out the following comment:

    Stellman started off the chapter, “Bridging the Gap, The Cross, the Spirit and the Glory to Come,” with a critique of Luther’s theology of the cross : “While I certainly do not call into question what Luther intended by his cross/glory antithesis (ie., that the cross is the lens through which the Chritian life must always be examined), I have reservations about his choice of categories (and his limiting of our options to only two). To insist that the cross and glory are antithetical is, from the perspective of the New Testament, difficult to maintain……In fact, the cross and glory are not enemies at all, but friends; the latter is the natural outgrowth of the former.”

    Stellman concludes after trying to prove this with, “the cross is good only when it leads to glory, and conversely, glory is bad only when it circumvents the cross and shirks the suffering that the cross represents….for Peter insists, that ‘the sufferings of Christ,’ being followed by the resurrection, inaugurated, ‘the subsequent glories’ (1Peter 1:11).” Stellman concludes: “the experience of the saints who worship God according to the “new and living way” that Christ has instituted by His death and resurrection is characterized by a lot more “already” and a lot less “not yet” than that of his old covenant counterparts (Heb. 10:19-25).”

    John Y concludes that Stellman goes subjective here and insists that we should be experiencing much more glory in our personal lives, which I interpret as victory over our sin.

    mcmark: we should be, we will be? I find it interesting to be antithetical about the antithetical. The glory is not in the cross? Oh really? But is the glory of the cross the only glory?

    The law is not the gospel, but the gospel is not about God’s end run around the law but about Christ’s perfect satisfaction of the law (so that there is no imperfect remainder needed in our “faith working by love”.)

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19. Paul, the only burning I experience is a good Fuente. After all, that is the John Frame who defends Shepherd, New Life, and Theonomy.

    I thought you gave up Old Life for life.

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20. “A blog is not a treatise and a blog post is not a syllogism.”

    I am assuming that’s *not* the ‘is’ of identity, right?

    Anywho, yes, since syllogisms are three propositioned arguments, most blog posts are longer. But, some blog posts are treatises. You mean yours is neither, right? I agree. But that *doesn’t* mean you aren’t offering an *argument* and it doesn’t mean that when you use logical operators, the rules of logic don’t apply to them.

    Your claim was bogus, and misleading, and false. Whether you wanted to or not, your very words implied just what I said they did. When the error is pointed out, you simply say, “I’m not accountable for what I write!” Okay, I’ll buy that if you tell me you’re off your meds again. Otherwise, you’re culpable.

    Anyway, you have a self-serving way about you, Darryl. Let me show you. Did you know that you said that 2k theology DOES PIT ecclesiology against the word of God? You said it right here, you wrote:

    “2k theology does not pit ecclesiology against the word of God but in fact limits the ministry of the church precisely to what Scripture teaches.”

    See? Oh, you don’t see? What’s that you say? You used the word ‘not’ and that implies the negation of what I said you said? Oh, but I thought when Darryl Hart writes blog posts the rules of logic magically don’t apply to any of his statements anymore. What’s that you say? You never said that? Oh, okay, that’s more clear. You just think the logical structure of your sentences and the rules of inference that apply to them just magically don’t apply in those, and only those, cases where what you said logically commits you to the absurd and ridiculous. I see. Can’t say I understand, but I see.

    Or, was the above remark about how your blog isn’t a syllogism your own special way of admitting error? Okay, if so, then I take it that you *deny* the conditional: ¬(If you deny 2K, you’re on a rocky road.) Okay, that’s better. But then there goes your post.

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21. ok, let me stipulate that the spirituality of the churches means mcmark not discussing here the possible difference between slavery in the old covenant economy and slavery in the new covenant. As for anabaptists and Hitler, all I could give you would be episodes of saying no (saving jews) without killing. And of course there were Huguenauts and Plymouth Brethren who did that as well (both as individuals and as churches, see Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, by Hallie).

    It’s my fault for putting details out there (slavery, Hitler) when what I really wanted to do was to question the normality of “individual” Christians doing what what it would be foreign for churches to do?

    It would be weird for a church to become the town dogcatcher, but not so very odd for a private Christian to do so. It would be unseemly for a clergyman to take up arms against King George, but not for him to turn his “ordination” back in and then taking up the rebellion against British tyranny as a private Christian? Did I make my question clearer, or only replace one historical detail with another?

    Why is the ministry of law legitimate for the individual Christian? I don’t have to do it, so why should it bother me if you turn from grace to law when it comes to getting things done in the real world? Has anybody out there read Paul Zahl’s account of Kasemann in Germany in Grace in Practice, (p 189-190)

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22. Mark, what you may have said (twice) about needing to submit to what God has ordained seemed undercut by your looking for ways to resist a civil authority. I just don’t see how anybody can read the NT—which is all about obedience—and spend time wondering how he can justify disobedience.

    But if your real question is why a Christian person may engage in carrying out the ministry of law when it’s foreign to the church, the short answer is that it has to do with the difference between persons and institutions and how the former have dual citizenship and the latter don’t.

    The extended answer comes from NL2K:

    Luther’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount through the two governments paradigm, however, did not separate Christians entirely from the use of the sword or make political life irrelevant to them. He goes on to explain that though Christians have no use of the law or sword amongst themselves, they submit to its rule and even do all that they can to help the civil authorities, in order to be of service and benefit to others. In fact, he explains, ‘If he did not serve he would be acting not as a Christian but even contrary to love….” [94]. This counter-intuitive conclusion leads Luther to encourage Christians to seek out temporal occupations, even those that require using the sword: ‘If you see that there is a lack of hangmen, constables, judges, lords, or princes, and you find that you are qualified, you should offer your services and seek the position….” Luther reconciles these seeming contrary injunctions by emphasizing that Christians should never take up these tasks for the purpose of their own vengeance, but only for the safety and peace of their neighbors. And so, when a matter arises concerning themselves, Christians live according to Christ’s spiritual government ‘gladly turning the other cheek and letting the cloak go with the coat when the matter concerned you and your cause.’ This, claims Luther, brings harmony to the Christian’s life in both kingdoms: ‘at one and the same time you satisfy God’s kingdom inwardly and the kingdom of the world outwardly’ [95-96]. Shortly thereafter, Luther announces the final reconciliation of life in the two kingdoms: ‘No Christian shall wield or invoke the sword for himself and his cause. In behalf of another, however, he may and should wield it and invoke it to restrain wickedness and to defend godliness.’” [103]

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23. Paul, so once you’ve shot your rounds of logic and civility, when are you going to respond to the point, which is that 2k is not a sufficient factor to account for leaving Protestantism but that it has been a piece of the most zealous defenses of Protestant convictions? You call that accidental? Then why not call 2k accidental to Stellman’s move? Reason has no more to do with one conclusion than the other.

    Oops. I forgot. You’re the king of thought. I’ll put my dunce cap back on.

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24. Mark, if what you mean is that Christians should resist being personally compelled to transgress God’s moral law, then of course. But then this would apply to Reagan as much as Hitler should the former somehow compel it. But being a citizen of Hitler’s didn’t mean 24/7 law breaking for every single citizen. It was actually more ordinary for most, in which case the call for obedience was more relevant than the extraordinary call to obey God rather than men.

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25. McMark, 2kers have always distinguished between what Christians do and the church does. The mistake for most critics of 2k is to assume that their norms, because they believe the norms are biblical, apply to everyone else. 2k has been all about limiting the church to what Scripture teaches. Christians have freedom to think their view is biblical, but they need to get the church to back them up if all believers are going to follow.

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26. Darryl, Thanks for reply. “Reply”? You really didn’t have to take your valuable time to tell me (1) That laws can create problems: Prohibition. Also laws redefining “marriage”. Laws allowing a flood of Muslim rights in our USA. Legal abortions. Legal “mercy” killings of Old Goats like my wife and me (82 & 84). On and on! (2) Even our youngest grandchildren know that changing behavior doesn’t get us into Heaven (part of K of G reality)! (3) Dragging theology and Christianity into “Saving the lives of old and young Image bearers being led by evil laws to the slaughter—- “speaking up for those who can’t speak for themselves”? Wow! Not at all like prohibition law problems! Life is much more serious than drunkenness. Did I have to tell you that? Oh me, I am getting “ugly” like some others who regularly visit Old Life. I will try to do better! I have this idea that our God would want me to fight for th physical SURVIVAL of my church, our 25 grandkids, nation, etc. and not make the same lazy mistake of sleepy Christians in Germany of the 1920s and 1930s as Hitler rose to kill millions! And Germany! All this has nothing to do with theology and Christianity? Tell me about it! Love, Old Bob.

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27. Bob, you asked, I’ll tell. If Christian teaches that the law is not of faith, then what Germany and the U.S.A. need is not more law but more gospel. Right? So why do you think that a return to Christianity in the U.S. will bring more and better law? Wouldn’t the Christian thing to do be to preach the gospel to the lost? Sure seems to be what Christ and the apostles did. I missed that part of the NT where the church complained about the nation’s laws or the slaughter of innocents.

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28. dgh: 2kers have always distinguished between what Christians do and the church does.

    mcmark: Yes, but if the ministry of law is not good for the church why is it perhaps good for the Christian? That was my question. I understand and agree with DVD’s point about law and the civil kingdom, but that being the case why should a Christian think he has a vocation to go to the law to get things done? I don’t question that the Magisterial Reformers always did this.

    dgh: The mistake for most critics of 2k is to assume that their norms, because they believe the norms are biblical, apply to everyone else. 2k has been all about limiting the church to what Scripture teaches.

    mcmark: The “apply to everybody else” needs some thinking. On the one hand, I can say that the new covenant is only for the justified elect. But on the other hand, when I am talking to somebody who does not know themselves to be a justified Christian, I can still tell them that God commands them to be converted and come into the new covenant. I don’t see how I have a duty to tell them what to do if they refuse to come into the new covenant. I can’t say–well, in your case, there is some other sacrifice for sins. Nor can I say-well, in your case, let’s agree that we have another law in common which ignores Jesus but which will get done what needs to be done.

    Rather, I would say, well if you won’t come into the new covenant, I’ve got nothing else for you, no laws. And I can’t work with you in ignoring Jesus. But I don’t doubt that you will come up with some laws. I understand that comes off as a tad ‘antithetical”.

    dgh: Christians have freedom to think their view is biblical, but they need to get the church to back them up if all believers are going to follow.

    mcmark: anabaptist churches (Scheitheim) taught believers that the ministry of law was not for those who are citizens of heaven.

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29. Mark, there are two distinctions here. One is between the temporal and spiritual powers. Trying to get the temporal authorities to act like the church is a problem, right?

    But that distinction doesn’t mean the church doesn’t “minister” the law (as in 3rd use, at least). And yet the church ministering the law is different from a father in the home or a plumber at work.

    Different circumstances require different applications and different senses of the law. So your remark that the law is not good for the church but good for the Christian is confusing. The law is good, always. Whether someone is interpreting and applying it well (in their capacity as a believer, church officer, father, magistrate) is another matter entirely.

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30. Zrim: But then this would apply to Reagan as much as Hitler

    mcmark: I agree that submission to Reagan does not mean liberty to work with Reagan anymore than to and with Hitler.

    zrim: should the former somehow compel it. But being a citizen of Hitler’s didn’t mean 24/7 law breaking for every single citizen. It was actually more ordinary for most, in which case the call for obedience was more relevant than the extraordinary call to obey God rather than men.

    mark: The Bible does not say which is ordinary— submission with mostly obedience OR submission with mostly disobedience. Now, unless you want to say that submission always means obedience, you have granted the possibility of obeying God resulting in disobeying the magistrate (while submitting to both God and the magistrate). In that case, the remaining question is about your presumption that the civil kingdom of the status quo (even during the time of Hitler) is usually and normally to be obeyed.

    Do you think this because of an inductive approach–since God has predestined it, it most often is a good and useful thing? Or do you think this because of a historical study—even for the Jews, life with Hitler was still better than life without a magistrate? Or is it because you think submission is really obedience ( with certain exceptions)?

    I promised not to ask about fugitive slaves. Would you make a “compelling” exception in the case of a Jew you see hiding from Hitler on your property?

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31. I like distinctions, and I like your distinction between the use and abuse of law. But I was referencing your essay and its quotation of DVD: “To put it simply, the church finds the state’s business foreign. As an institution that forsakes the lex talionis and refuses to take up the sword in judgment or even self-defense, it can have IN SOME SENSE no cognizance at all of what the sword-bearing state does… how can the church itself dare to participate in or contribute to the state’s work? What a strange thing for an institution defined by its peacefulness and mercy to tell the state how to do its work of coercion.”

    If I understand this correctly, there should be no possibility of the churches abusing the law in the civil kingdom because the churches simply should not be using the law at all in any way to tell the civil kingdom how to make things happen. So my question is about why this same thing should not be said about the individual Christians? Why should they have the “liberty” to do a foreign thing, by being a magistrate or voting for which magistrate or what the magistrate should do?

    I know this question is so foreign to the thinking of Luther and Calvin and Augustine that it’s difficult to hear. On the one hand, you have your worldview/dominion critics telling you that if you don’t let the church abuse the law in politics, you may as well become anabaptists who put up an antithesis even against individual Christians abusing the law in politics.

    On the other hand, there is a legitimate fear of antinomianism. Let me assure you, DGH, that I do think the law of Christ is not some vague feeling in our hearts but a standard which names sin as sin.. The gospel is not about the abrogation of all law, as some “anabaptists” would have it, but about Christ’s satisfaction of divine law for elect sinners.

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32. I am getting a headache after reading through these comments which is not a bad thing. It reveals that the issues are getting more complex. Juno Linebaugh wrote an article about the Law which now has me asking how the law functions differently in the civil realm than in the realm of redemption. Is there a difference? Luther said it was easy to distinguish the meaning and difference between the Law and the Gospel in words, but in our experience, when we are facing temptation, they are the most difficult words to hear and distinguish. In the civil realm I can easily see and hear the command to obey the civil authorities but in my experience (when the state wrongly executes my friend or takes more taxes than I think is just) it becomes much easier to disobey and harder to obey. So, in principle it seems easy to obey but in experience it is not so easy and becomes much more complex due the internal conflicts we experience inside of us. We have the capacity to be upholding the law in our rhetoric but disobeying it in our practice. This happens all the time in our experience. You tell me, what is the solution to this and does it differ in the civil realm than it does in the realm of redemption? I think I am seeing McMark’s point more clearly. And, from an Anabaptist’s point of view, how does one reconcile and understand Luther’s agreeing that the state could justly slaughter the Anabaptist’s like they did.

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33. I do believe both the formal and material principles of the Magisterial Reformation. And I take your point that Calvin, even if not 2 k in the way Luther was (and Luther not 2 k in the same way DGH is), also was on the way to 2 k. But does that mean that everybody who believes those two principles is logically 2K?

    I certainly believe in scripture alone, even if sometimes I throw in a little Milton (old presybter is but old priest writ large). And I believe in faith alone, especially when we define faith as meaning “not including works”. But the true Reformation must say more than faith alone, must say what Stellman now denies, and that is “by imputed righteousness alone”. The object of faith must be the righteousness Christ alone obtained and not what Christ does in me. Faith is not a substitute for works, because God demands a perfect righteousness that satisfies God’s law.

    And also “for the elect alone”. I don’t where Stellman was or is on that. But who talks about that anymore, except when they are talking about the Confessions?

    So (to make it about me) if I am not on the “rocky road” away from the formal and material principles of the Reformation, and yet I am not 2 k, where am I?

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34. Darryl, were you insinuating “incivility?” Without bothering to discuss the notion in its current incarnation, you of all people have a lot of nerve playing that card. One thing I could always count on your for was your snark, smarm, and overall toe-stepping rhetoric; you’re better than to sink to this level.

    Anyway, your comment Oh boy, we’re a long way from getting you to cogent. Let’s walk through this:

    Darryl: “when were you going to respond to the point, which is that 2k is not a sufficient factor to account for leaving Protestantism but that it has been a piece of the most zealous defenses of Protestant convictions?

    Paul: We’ll let slide the fact that you’re king of point dodging and get right to it: I do not think, and have never thought, and have never said, and would never say, that 2K is “a sufficient factor to account for leaving Protestantism.”

    Darryl: “You call that accidental?”

    Paul: That 2K affirms the solas is *accidental* to it. One can affirm natural law, and that God rules the church and the common realm differently, and that the one ought not intrude on the other, that the state is a post-fall common grace institution, without affirming the solas. That Reformed theologians have affirmed 2K along with the solas does not mean that 2K entails affirming the solas, neither does it mean that the solas as essential to 2K (where ‘essential’ is used in its technical sense).

    Darryl: “Then why not call 2k accidental to Stellman’s move? Reason has no more to do with one conclusion than the other.”

    Paul: The basics of 2K are accidental. But here where a problem comes in: When you 2Kers get criticized, you fall back on a definition of 2K that is so broad as to encompass almost all Christians. Indeed, Michael Horton once wrote in MR that, “If you affirm a distinction between common grace and saving grace, you’re two kingdoms.” Right, on this view, I’m 2K, you’re 2K, we’re all 2K.” Aint it grand? That’s a bigger tent than the Gospel Coalition! The benefit of this is that the 2Kers gets to act all dumbfounded and slack-jawed at push-back against 2K. But the dirty secret is that when we read you guys, we come to find all these extra rules, regulations, guidelines, do’s and don’ts. And many of these things are indeed radical and extreme. But you guys act as if they’re all entailments of the above basics of 2K. On so on that understanding, your rigid stance makes you think that everyone is rejecting 2K per se because they reject whatever nuanced or idiosyncratic spin you want to attach to 2K as a necessary rider. Things do not need to be this way, but as with most new movements, there’s a lot of hype and fever at the beginning stages and things are frequently overstated or put far more ambitiously than should be. You (and Zrim) need to learn to separate your personal tastes from 2K essentials. But I’ve said this 1,000 times to you, there’s no reason to think you’ll listen the 1001 time it’s told to you. So you’ll continue to spin your wheels and fight battles for 2K that are not necessarily 2K’s battles.

    As far as reason not having more to do with one conclusion that the other, this is a curious statement. Surely there are many ways we could point out that reason “has to do” with one conclusion or the other. In any event, the point from reason is that many 2Kers seem to disparage it. They’ve bought into, whether knowingly or not, some basic Rawlsian assumptions about reason and public discourse (the student of both understands the parallels are striking). But attach to this the overemphasis on historical theology and insufficient care to demarcate it from normative theology, and the dearth of apologetic and philosophical training (on the latter, I mean knowledge of philosophical positions as well as development of the tools of paradigmatic philosophical thought), you’re sending pastors and theologians out from WSC unequipped and unarmed.

    Now, the more Philistine among us might reply to my comment here this way: “Theys be ‘quipped with the spirit and the word, that’s all theys needs.” This not only fails to take into account the ordinary way God works—using means—but sounds strange coming from a Machenite, for Machen was surely correct when he wrote:

    “It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.”

    There, I answered your “point,” should I hold my breath for you to interact with mine?

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35. Mark,

    Ok, let’s play this out. Here is DVD’s quote with a substitution: “To put it simply, the church believer finds the state’s business foreign. As an institution person that who forsakes the lex talionis and refuses to take up the sword in judgment or even self-defense, it he can have IN SOME SENSE no cognizance at all of what the sword-bearing state does… how can the church believer itselfhimself dare to participate in or contribute to the state’s work? What a strange thing for an institution defined by its peacefulness and mercy to tell the state how to do its work of coercion.”

    I’m relatively comfortable with this way of reading DVD, minus the exclusion of the Anabaptist sentiment that Christians may not wield the sword.

    Where does this put us?

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36. Paul, thanks. That’s all I wanted. 2k is accidental to Stellman’s decision.

    As for the rest of your gripe about “all you guys” — is that a technical philosophical category? — please pound sand (was that civil?).

    BTW, no 2ker is objecting to reason or the mind, just your reason and your mind.

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37. “Paul, thanks. That’s all I wanted. 2k is accidental to Stellman’s decision.”

    Yeah, no one’s said otherwise. That’s your paranoia.

    “BTW, no 2ker is objecting to reason or the mind, just your reason and your mind.”

    Good to hear! Now, show me don’t tell me.

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38. Paul, I show you every day that Old Life is up an running.

    Trueman, whom you used to challenge “all you guys” (talk about psychological disorders), did say that 2k was more than accidental to Stellman’s decision. Since you defended him, I take it that you were drawn to his argument. My bad. You just don’t like “all you guys,” but try to cover it up with appeals to philosophy and logic. I get it.

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39. Jason, Ligonier has a habit of sanitizing it’s site. It even happens to those who defend and maintain the Reformed faith. Go figure.

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40. DGH: 2k is accidental to Stellman’s decision.

    PLM: no one’s said otherwise

    I’m pretty sure Trueman blamed Stellman’s decision on overemphasis of 2K (and ecc), not to mention Leithart and McAtee did it before, and just today again.

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41. Trueman did not say that. Get. A. Clue. At best, he said an OVER EMPHASIS on 2K was.

    Sheesh, the poor guy can’t think straight again. Darryl, I thought I told you to loosen that bow tie, it cuts of the oxygen flow to the brain.

    And you need to learn the distinction between defending A and critiquing B’s arguments against A. These are not equivalent.

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42. Paul, Trueman’s title was “which should have been predicted.” And on what basis? 2k.

    Come on, Paul. Be as charitable with “all you guys” as with you are with Trueman. Or just admit this is personal and give up the intellectual games. You don’t like 2k and you’ll use every digit of your Intelligence Quotient to defame it. Way to go.

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43. Dgh: Here is DVD’s quote with a substitution: “To put it simply, the believer finds the state’s business foreign. As a person who forsakes the lex talionis and refuses to take up the sword in judgment or even self-defense, he can have IN SOME SENSE no cognizance at all of what the sword-bearing state does… how can the believer himself dare to participate in or contribute to the state’s work?

    mcmark: yes, that IS the anabaptist version of 2 k. The individual Christian has no more vocation to use the sword than do the churches. There is a second kingdom which we Christians are not to govern but over which God is sovereign. And if there are different versions of 2k, then the anabaptist rejection of the sword does not inherently put you on a rocky road leading away from the formal and material principles of the Magisterisal Reformation.

    One difference between the versions of 2k being that the anabaptists do not agree to some common law, less than or other than the law of Christ, by which they will work with the world to run to the world. If God doesn’t call you into the new covenant, we say to the world, we have no plan B for you.

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44. McMark, well, now. Not to be uncivil — as Paul Lawrence Manata alleges — but when has Anabaptism ever been confused with the material and formal principles of the Reformation? I’m not saying some Anabaptists may have had some sympathies, but the tradition has never been long on confessions or systematic theology. The point about brownies remains, your own example notwithstanding.

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45. Darryl, yes, I think we all know Trueman’s title. And on what basis? AN OVER EMPHASIS on 2K.

    Notice, Darryl, he says this: “one might also say that Two Kingdoms theology too has some importance.”

    So, he does not blame 2K per se. What does he do?

    “there is a breed of Christian out there for whom the doctrine of the church and 2K are all they ever seem to talk about. They are, it appears, the number one priorities for Christians. . . . [they] spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about their pet ecclesiological and 2K projects. . . .Given this and given the concerns and emphases of Jason Stellman’s own thinking over the past years as stated on his blog, his move seems not so much a surprise as the logical outcome of a loss of Pauline emphases. ”

    Now, disagree with *that* all you want. But let’s not say that Trueman was saying that 2K itself, i.e., the basic propositions of the theory, wasn’t accidental to Stellman’s change.

    Now, for foot-in-mouth disease:

    Durrrrryl Hart: Come on, Paul. Be as charitable with “all you guys” as with you are with Trueman. Or just admit this is personal and give up the intellectual games. You don’t like 2k and you’ll use every digit of your Intelligence Quotient to defame it. Way to go.

    Can I get a retraction? C’mon, Durrryl, let everyone see how honorable you are, and how this isn’t an “intellectual thing” for you, so you can easily admit when you’re wrong.

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46. Jason here has an interesting idea about the “continuity” of persons before and after.

    http://www.creedcodecult.com/2008/06/gimme-gimme-gimme.html

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47. Where was this Van Drunen address taken from?

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48. Stellman’s review of Carson’s book was terrible, and it’s a piece of inductive evidence that WSC didn’t train him well. Didn’t train him to think well.

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49. I think I missed something about brownies, but anabaptists thought they were “scripture alone” people. The fellows who did Bible study with Zwingli thought they were “by faith alone” people, at least until Zwingli changed his mind about baptism and decided to drown them.

    I have no desire to defend the false gospel of the historical Anabaptists. I know too much about their history to engage in wishful thinking about the theology of those who were killed by Protestants. But my point is that you can logically have an anabaptist ecclesiology (professing believers alone) and an anabaptist ethic (no sword for individual Christians) and still sincerely believe in both the formal and material principles of the Reformation.

    You could simply agree that anabaptists are some kind of 2 k, and then also that some of them believe both the material and formal principles of the Reformation. Or you could elevate the ecclesiology until it takes over the gospel, so that your ecclesiology becomes inherent in both principles. Maybe that’s what Stellman has done. But no need for us to do that. We can disagree about church and still agree about the gospel.

    In any case 2 k is not to blame for false gospels. There is only one true gospel. And more than one version of 2 k.

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50. DJ, here is audio from WSCAL of DVD’s inaugural address. I’m not sure if DGH found a transcript online (or private communication with DVD?) from which to paste that quote, or typed that out himself.

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51. DJ, it was his inaugural and published in the Westminster Theological Journal maybe three years ago.

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52. Sheesh, Paul. Always flawed thinking and reasoning with you. Who died and made you frigging Socrates?

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53. Darryl, gonna retract? Didn’t think so. You’re so humble. I guess it’s because you can never be wrong. Who died and made you God?

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54. McMark, I would agree that Anabaptists are some kind of 2k, an anti-creedal, anti-liturgical variety. They may be people of the Bible, but have they ever articulated the doctrine of justification by faith alone in a confession, have they?

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55. Paul Lawrence, I’d be glad to take back the assertion that you don’t like 2k. But that would mean you’d have to affirm that you like 2k.

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56. I like 2K. Did you read my link on the other page? The one where I interacted with Stellman’s hatchet job of Carson’s book on Christ & Culture? In there I even wrote “The basic case for 2K is sound.” So, Paul like 2K. paul like 2K real good.”

    But, that’s not the retraction I’m talking about. I showed you that Trueman was not implicating 2K or saying Stellman’s leave was not accidental to 2K. I showed it. You said I wouldn’t read Trueman any other way because not liking 2K was personal for me. But we see that you misread Trueman. We see that you are incapable of correction. We see that you can’t be charitable. Even if *I* were those things, what’s your excuse? I thought you were ordained? Aren’t you supposed to be teachable and humble?

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57. Mark, you said: “I agree that submission to Reagan does not mean liberty to work with Reagan anymore than to and with Hitler.” But I don’t know with whom you’re agreeing, because it isn’t me. Submission to both civil authorities means liberty to work for both. You know, like the way Jospeh did for Pharooh and Danil for Nebuchadnezzar. You ask for a philosophical and historical rationale, but I am upping the ante by providing a biblical warrant. Joe and Dan lived in the exilic eras of the OT, which is the era we live in now as NT believers (the final and eternal theocracy is yet to come). The upshot is that believers are not only to obey their magistrates but are also free to wear jack boots or three-piece suits in service to them. My inner American does shudder at wearing jack boots, but it might be because he hasn’t shaken off all his cultural Christianity yet.

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58. Zrim, is not admitting when you’re wrong considered good 2k behavior? Or do you only blow your whistle when a non-2ker breaks one of your rules?

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59. The problem with anabaptists today (and maybe always) is that they think more highly of what “the church” says together in community than they do about what the Bible says.

    I agree with Paul Zahl that (any) ecclesiology is trouble when it “places the human church in some kind of special zone — somehow distinct from real life — that appears to be worthy of special study and attention. The underlying idea is that the church is in a zone that is more free from original sin and total depravity than the rest of the world, but the facts prove otherwise” (p. 226, Grace in Practice).

    We must see Christ alone standing apart from all churches. We must put what Christ taught and said over what churches teach. We must, if need be, put grace alone over against the churches. Christ’s past saving work has priority over His present work by the Spirit in the churches.

    I think Stanley Hauerwas, for example, has elevated his “ideal non-existing the church” to a place way more important than Christ’s atonement for and justification of the individual sinner. After all has been said about the historical claims of various churches, or the purity of their “shelf-doctrines”, or the formal beauty of their worship, churches can and do often become ends in themselves.

    Paul Zahl thinks ecclesia happens (or not). “Church is pneumatic, Spirit-led movement, always, like mercury in motion. Church is flux. A systematic theology of grace puts church in its right place. Church is at best the caboose to grace. It’s the tail. Ecclesiology, on the other hand, makes church into the engine” (p. 228).

    And then the “anabaptist” in me thinks, well that’s what a loosey goosey Anglican would say, but I know better, because church is Christians alone and nothing more….oh really?.

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60. DG Hart,

    Your column seems to indicate Mr Stellman has abandoned his 2k convictions as well. Do we know this? If true, it is strange. The idea solace can be found in Rome for Mr Stellman on several issues he deems important to ‘Christianity’ and his own self-identity, is absurd—then again, culturally, there are reasons one could see Stellman’s inner tempest blowing him toward the Tiber.

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61. David, I’m not sure. But from Stellman’s own comment here, it sounds like he thinks he needs to reconsider 2k.

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62. D. G. Hart: McMark, I would agree that Anabaptists are some kind of 2k, an anti-creedal, anti-liturgical variety. They may be people of the Bible, but have they ever articulated the doctrine of justification by faith alone in a confession, have they?

    RS: If you think of all Baptists as being Anabaptists in some way, then the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith does set this out quite clearly. The 1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession also sets this out as well.

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63. Trueman was not implicating 2K or saying Stellman’s leave was not accidental to 2K

    To put it in terms that Reformed understand, Trueman was not saying that JJS’s departure was grounded in 2K, but he was saying that 2K was instrumental.

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64. Rube, did you miss JJS’s own words in this very thread: “2K had absolutely nothing to do with it…In fact, I still hold to a form of 2K. Now, I realize I may have to change that depending on where I end up, but for what it’s worth, my 2K theology was never a factor. And if it was, it was a factor in keeping me confessional for as long as I was.”

    Truemanians have an option: take a man’s own word for it, or try and divine his mind’s inner workings and force the instrumentality. But why would it not be sufficient to admit that his 2k might have to undergo serious rehab in the future instead of trying to force it to the front?

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65. Yes, there’s a difference between baptists and anabaptists. In both London Confessions, the baptists wanted to make it clear to the magistrate that they were not anabaptists, so much so that they would politically agree with treating anabaptists as seditionists. It’s not simply that they wanted to save their own skins. They really were NOT anabaptists. They were the kind of people who said the church should not talk about politics, and then only welcomed Republicans into their fellowship. They were not pacifists. They were patriots.

    That’s why I have to think of myself as “anabaptist”, even though I believe that Christ died for the elect alone and that justification is legally given by God’s imputation as a result of Christ’s work outside the sinner. And I am not the only such “hybrid”.

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66. Rube, did you miss JJS’s own words

    No, I saw them; I’m just trying to clarify Trueman’s allegations.

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67. I am pleased with Zrim’s idea about biblical warrant. We could be talking about Joseph and Daniel instead of about Hitler, George Washington, and Ronald Reagan. I think I am also pleased with Zrim’s idea that we are now in a new covenant version of exile, in analogy to the exiles of Joseph and Daniel. This means that for us exile is not a curse but our vocation. Diaspora is not a punishment but an opportunity to sing the songs of Zion in strange lands.

    This means, I assume, that Zrim would not be appealing to us with the paradigm of Exodus 32 in which we ordain ourselves as priests to God by means of slaying our ethnic brothers. It seems clear that Zrim would not argue for the republished “covenant of works aspects of the Mosaic economy” to serve as the standard for those who serve as resident aliens in the regimes of foreigners. But I do wonder what difference, if any, Zrim sees between the exile of us now and the exiles of the Old Testament. Does the law of Christ (the Sermon on the Mount) make anything different today? Does there continue to be a law-ordeal aspect to our getting things done in the civil kingdoms in which live as exiles today?

    I would welcome an answer to any and all such questions, but my basic one is simple. Does Zrim think that Joseph and Daniel acted as agents of the sword for their magistrates? Why would foreign magistrates trust aliens with the sword? By what standards did they exercise the sword? Or do you think that Joseph and Daniel had acquired dual citizenships, not only in Israel (that was and is to come) but also as Egyptian and Babylonian and Assyrian citizens?

    Then maybe we can talk about Jeremiah. 29:4: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream,

    I take it that Jeremiah was referring to the theonomists and “federal visionists”of his day.

    And then in pursuit of biblical warrant we can talk about Naaman. II Kings 5:14 So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.” 16 But he said, “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” And he urged him to take it, but he refused. 17 Then Naaman said, “If not, please let there be given to your servant two mule loads of earth, for from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god but the Lord. 18 In this matter may the Lord pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon your servant in this matter.” 19 He said to him, “Go in peace.”

    On this manner of singing the songs of Zion in strange lands, I would recommend one Mennonite book: For the Nations, by John Howard Yoder (Eerdmans), especially the chapter on diaspora, “See How they Go with Their Faces”. And one book by a Quaker, A Biblical Theology of Exile, by Daniel Smith-Christopher( Fortress). And also a great book by the premill evangelical Robert H Gundry, Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian (Eerdmans).

    Federal visionists like Leithart are a lot more Constantinian than many Roman Catholics today even though they agree on “sacrament” making the church (or churches) It’s interesting to me that folks like Leithart and Hauerwas have made a case for going back to Rome, without ever doing it. They even claim to be “too catholic to be catholic”. But Jason may prove to be more honest and consistent than those two have been.

    The same folks who want to follow the OT (making all covenants “the” covenant) model for worship are not agreed about what is legitimate for the people of God when they operate in a second kingdom. In his book, Stellman wrote an interesting note about being guilty (as a member of the “legitimate” second kingdom) for the guilt of all the innocent killed in Iraq.(p 71) I wonder if he thinks that God’s protection of Cain from the death penalty (on earth) was God’s “common grace”?

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68. An observation: It’s a shame that a fellow must fight through so much acrid smoke and scorching heat to find the light. Perhaps I’m being idealistic in believing that Christian brotherhood should make this an enjoyable exploratory process.

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69. Rube, no, he did not say 2K was instrumental. He said an OVER EMPHASIS on 2K was instrumental.

    Zrim, Stellman’s response was unresponsive. Trueman never said what Stellman denied.

    Anyway, Zrim, when you say I’m “angry” or “egotistical” how can you say that when you haven’t divined my mind? Why do you always demand other people behave in ways you are apparently immune from? Pwned again.

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70. Over emphasis or not, it seems that 2K got dragged in as central to Jason’s deal with no real support from what Jason says he’s dealing with. Why? Maybe to cast aspersions at those who “over emphasize” according to some? Don’t know… Makes me wonder.

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71. Pingback: How 2K Might Have Helped Stellman – via the Old Life Blog | Pilgrimage to Geneva

72. Jason, I just don’t see how it has to be someone’s “fault” (i.e. 2K over-emphasizers, WSCA, etc.).

    And the only thing that I have seen that could/should have “predicted” your change was your previous blog comments on various subjects. (I am taking that from comments that others made on CCC, not from any first-hand knowledge of your comments.) That is to say that although some may be less than surprised at your change of mind, no one could rightly say that they could have predicted it, much less that they could have predicted it based upon 2K or anything like that.

    If that is the case, we can soon expect DGH to “go pope” (although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one).

    – Andy

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73. Andy, I have poped and — get this — I am the pope. But why won’t my wife heed my encyclicals?

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74. Whatever happened to our good friend, R Scott Clark? The world wide web is not the same without his presence. We need Gospel champions that know what they believe and why they believe it! Modern-day Machen! He must be losing his hair over the Stellman news…

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75. Bingo, JJS. I have a pet project against political activism, bow ties, cigars, and facial hair. I blame those for your theological developments. I mean, it’s so obvious.

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76. And given his recent posts, I may as well add the name Horton to that list.

    I was wondering about that. I would think that the crux of the issue is the relative strength/weakness of the argument for apostolic succession, rather than a perceived need for epistemological certainty (which was Horton’s focus).

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77. Daryl, you are the pope?

    I think that takes the QIRC to a whole new level! 😉

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78. Jason Stellman: “But then, what else are you going to say when someone understands perfectly well what he is now doubting?”

    Some people have said that your resignation letter indicates that you possessed a faulty understanding of Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura. Your statement above indicates that you totally reject that claim, yes?

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79. I would like elaboration, Jason. I don’t have your e-mail address. Mine is truthunites@hotmail.com

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80. JJS,

    You’re in my prayers, Sir.

    I think people have an axe to grind and that is why they look to WSC and confessionalism as the culprit of someone looking at ‘non-Protestant’ pathways to God. I’m a pretty big fan of Westminster California and her professors, past and present (That’s about you D.G. Hart!). I have also been an admirer and huge fan of ‘Dual Citizens’. I think your struggle is a heart and mind issue, not 2k, WSC, High Churchmanship, or anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m against your new found positions as much as you have articulated them—but abiding by confessional standards you questioned, and decided you no long held too, would have been far worse. So, I salute you there. Still, I believe the alternative to be hopelessness.

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81. Jason, didn’t you meet with Horton to discuss your questions/doubts recently?

    If so, would he not have at least a better idea of where you are coming from & how you got there than many? (At least a better idea than Dr. Trueman or any other number of bloggers who have tried to Vulcan Mind-meld with you lately?)

    And I don’t mean that as an insult to Trueman or anyone, just saying that theirs must necessarily be more or less guess work, while I would think that Dr. Horton (if indeed you met with him over this issue) would have some idea of the facts involved in your decision.

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82. I guess Horton’s article is more directed as a response to the kind of struggle Joshua Lim expresses:

    It is not simply that Reformed Christianity is wrong and some other denomination is right, or even that all denominations are right; rather, if one small group of Christians could claim to have the truth to the exclusion of some or many others, and if this boiled down to an arbitrary construct of a man’s or a group of men’s imaginings (i.e., their interpretation of Scripture), then I could no longer believe that any Christian denomination had the truth. Moreover, I could only believe that this sort of arbitrary selection of dogma could only be what has occurred throughout the history of Christianity.

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83. Well, You heard it above gents (and ladies). Mr Stellman said when all the copies of Dual Citizen are gone-that’s it. Looks like I’m going to have to find a way to get a new one because my saintly mother has marked up my old copy. D.G. Hart wrote that for him, it sounds like Mr Stellman thinks he needs to reconsider 2k as well. That tears it! (to mimic D. G. Hart). This situation is terrible (no offense JJS). One thing is sure, the situation is ironic enough to submit Hemingway’s iceberg theory has room to breath in our present situation. That is, most of an iceberg is underwater. In the case of Jason J Stellman, his recent pronouncement-and his theological wrestlings with sola fide and Zola scriptura, I can assure those on the combox (and myself), we’re looking at only the part of the iceberg above water… and no, I am not ocusing Jason J Stellman of dishonesty.

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84. JJS’s remark about his ongoing agreement with 2k, “Now, I realize I may have to change that depending on where I end up, but for what it’s worth, my 2K theology was never a factor” weirds me out a bit. I sympathize with the general trajectory, having wondered a few years ago whether my differences with evangelicalism (the lack of any ecclesiology and sacramentology, to speak of) made returning to Catholicism something of an option.

    But I wasn’t persuaded of the truth of their distinctives, many of which are still as ridiculous to me as the worst of evangelical excesses. (Lutheran sacramentology had similar problems, and with a closed table in the confessional churches, you can’t privately remain a communicant presbyterian without a Framean level of confessional rigamarole.)

    JJS hasn’t mentioned Rome as his destination, but the idea of changing something that you still agree with depending on where you end up reminds me a lot of other protestants who leave evangelicalism for good reasons, then adopt the Assumption, kissing statues in public worship, eucharistic adoration, etc. with no reservations. If a claim to authority is all that’s necessary to overrule doubt, then the problem with evangelicalism ultimately isn’t anything other than the lack of claiming apostolic succession. Whether Rome actually displays it is impossible for anyone to question without being rebellious, from her perspective.

    If 2k is worth still holding to after questioning sola scriptura and sola fide, it’s not worth abandoning simply because someone else says to. But hopefully I’m just misreading his intent.

    On the other hand, if there were an annual Machen award for Presbyterian of the Year, I would nominate him for the way he’s handled everything were it not for the small matter of no longer being presbyterian. Even there, he could be an example for certain others.

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85. Great Scott, Brother Darryl, Paul and 90? others! Was it only yesterday DGH wrote all this stuff? You (DGH) asked about Why think a return to Christianity should bring us better laws?) Darryl, Ya gotta be kiddin? Oh my, sweet Old Bob is getting as mean as Darryl v. Paul! I doubt if anyone of the 90 commentators will get to this. Maybe if I had energy and time to read all that came before, my following comments would not be necessary? Question: At what point in all this and in history (American Revolution, etc.) Should we “Obey God rather than men:? Doesn’t this sum it all up?— “USA needs gospel (#1 priority)”. and, And, AND our USA needs Christian value LAWS (#2 priority).” Darryl, I think having some kids and grandkids might have been a balancing factor 4 U. I tried, firstly, to lead our many young ones to Jesus. We ALSO tried, secondarily, to teach them to be unselfish, tell the truth, have good manners, dress appropriately, read, do math, history, play ball, etc. Isn’t this what 2K-Neo-Calvinism (or whatefer) is all about? Kive, Old Bob

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86. Gary North, “The Blessings of Serfdom.”

    Joseph, acting as the head of a pagan State, provides us with an acceptable model for a civil magistrate. The key question is this: In what circumstances is his model judicially legitimate: In a pagan State or a Christian State? I argue that his model is valid only in the former case. Pagans who break God’s civil laws deserve to be enslaved politically since they are enslaved religiously. This is the message of Genesis. Joseph did the righteous thing in extracting everything from the Egyptians in the first two years: their land, their animals, and their money. Then, when they faced starvation in the third year, he gave them a choice: either perpetual bondage to Pharaoh, plus a perpetual obligation to pay 20% of their increase in taxes, or else starvation.

    This rate of taxation was double the rate that Samuel said would constitute God’s judgment against Israel (I Sam. 8:15, 17)…. The text shows that Joseph made the Egyptians pay dearly to stay alive. He bought their lands in the name of the State. He brought them into permanent slavery. He bargained sharply.

    There was another quite obvious alternative: Joseph could simply have given away the food, year by year. The people would have retained their land and their legal status as free men. Later Joseph gave food to his family; he did not enslave them…. I argue in my commentary on Genesis that what Joseph did was tyrannical: not immoral but righteous, for he brought a pagan, God hating nation under God’s negative sanctions in history. He enslaved them.

    (Gary North, Westminster’s Confession: The Abandonment of Van Ti1’s Legacy [Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991], 274-276.)

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87. McMark, I assume that you, as an Anabaptist, are not persuaded by North.

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88. Correct, I am not persuaded. But of course I like it when I think “the covenant” theologians are being consistent. But I have learned from you and many other paedobaptists that most of you don’t neglect covenantal discontinuity in the way I think you should. For that I am grateful.

    John Robbins responds to Gary North. 1. The first problem with North’s argument and conclusion is that the argument applies not just to pagans, but to all men. All men are sinners, and all deserve death. North’s argument, if valid, would justify, not just an ancient African despotism, but the complete slaughter of the human race in 1991. His argument, if valid, would prove too much.

    2. The second problem is this: North’s argument assumes that governors ought to judge the religious beliefs of their subjects and mete out punishments according to the truth or falsehood of those beliefs. Therefore it is not only permissible to enslave “pagans,” the enslavement of “pagans” is positively righteous.

    3. If it is righteous and moral for governors to enslave their subjects, then the civil laws of the Old Testament, such as those found in I Samuel 8, must not apply to governors. Thus, there is no Biblical restriction on the power of governors.

    4. Theonomy teaches that the Biblical civil laws are applicable to all governors even today.

    5. If God’s civil laws apply to all societies, including pagan societies, then tyranny can never be righteous or moral.

    The question is not, What do the citizens deserve? but rather, What may governors righteously do? Did Joseph, or does any ruler, have the authority to enslave his people? Whether the people deserve it or not is irrelevant. May a ruler righteously enslave his people?

    God may and has used governors, wicked tyrants, to punish sinners. That is a clear teaching of Scripture. God used the wicked nations surrounding Israel to punish Israel during the time of the judges. The whole of God’s prophecy through Samuel in I Samuel 8 consists of a warning that by rejecting God and demanding a king, the people would be getting the tyranny they deserved.

    It is an equally clear teaching of Scripture that the rulers who do such things are wicked, not righteous. The kings of Israel and Judah were wicked, almost without exception. The kings of the lands surrounding Israel were wicked. They were neither righteous nor moral, even (indeed, especially) when giving a sinful people the punishment they deserved. The issues of whether the people deserve punishment and whether rulers may enslave them are two separate issues.”

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89. For those interested Stellman’s statement of why he is seeking full communion with Rome, you can read that at the site below. It should also be good for a few BLOGs from D.G. Hart.

    http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/07/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/

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90. Richard S., the link to Stellman is cold/dead. Ve Protestants have our vays.

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91. D. G. Hart: Richard S., the link to Stellman is cold/dead. Ve Protestants have our vays.

    RS: Too bad, but maybe it was just a glitch. His two problems, he said in the article, were sola fide and sola scriptura. He fought the Church, and the Church won (or so he said). James White also saw the article and responded to it which gives some insight into the situation. http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=5167

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92. So, we exchange the diversity of practice and some doctrinal variance from nuance to gaping chasms, for magesterial authority who don’t actually do any of the exegetical spade work and a tent so large that it houses liberation theologians, contemplatives, sold-out maryologists and adherents of the higher-critical method taken full cloth from protestant liberalism, but hey we all go to mass and submit to the priestcraft and the guys with the pointy hats who superintend the deposit of faith and oversee it’s maturation but don’t actually know how to mature it or what all it says. And this is the catholicity of faith that is lacking in protestantism but is exhibited in Rome, that is reflective of NT canon unity. REALLY! The council of pointy hats and priestcraft that harkens back to type and shadow judaism is the undergirding of orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the NT. Well, good luck with that. Been there done that, not sure I still have the shirt but still have the notes.

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93. There’s always a good archive article just waiting for me to click.

    I am not a spam-bot (goes the spam bot trollers of OL).

    A little slice of nice history, this. Thx.

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94. Pingback: How 2k Might Have Helped Stellman. By Dr. Darryl Hart | Machen's What is Faith?

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