Ryan McIlhenny responds to David VanDrunen’s review of Kingdoms Apart:
Neo-Calvinists would agree that Christians and non-Christians share truths equally, but on a surface or common (creational, natural law) level only. Anyone digging deeper into a particular area of study will be confronted with anomalies, irony, or just plain mystery that can never be critically and creatively worked out apart from a theoretical interpretive grid rooted in one’s religious ground motive. It is the religious heart that reveals the competing understandings of the common. As I mentioned in the book, the neo-Calvinist distinction between structure and direction is helpful on this point. Thus, in both morality and reason, an explicitly biblical approach is better or more advanced, again in theory, than one that rejects or simply ignores the importance of Christ.
The “religious heart” reveals competing understandings? Does that apply to interpreting the Civil War (U.S.)? Or do graduate students in history need to learn from a host of non-saved historians, whose hearts are not religious, to sort out the competing understandings of what led to the war and what its consequences were for the nation (and local communities)?
And does this apply to medicine? When I need to have my hip replaced and get a second opinion, do I need to ask whether the surgeons’ hearts have been strangely warmed?
No one lives this way. Neo-Calvinism leads to intellectual theonomy. It allows pietists to wear their faith on their intellect. But if doesn’t explain how Christians operate (unless neo-Calvinists are willing to claim that the way Christians ordinarily operate is sinful), how smart can it be?
Old Life 
Should I check a bridge before I go over it to make sure it was designed by a graduate of Dordt’s Engineering program and not Iowa State’s?
Speaking of that, a Dordt faulty member has been worshipping with us while he completes his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Iowa State. Great guy, great family, elder in a URC. Great to have them with us for an extended period. He would say he is “Kuyperian” (Neocals seem to prefer that term to Neocalvinist). He has mentioned to me that he has been involved in the “Christian Engineering Society” (I may have the name not quite right). I’ve never had the courage to ask exactly what it is that they do at their meetings.
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He has mentioned that they have Catholic members, so they are apparently ecumenical.
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Cue Erik’s stock remark about doing business with Xians’s in 5, 4, 3, 2… I’m sure it only applies to business though.
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I went to a CBMC meeting many years ago. Opinions refrained for these public purposes, here, I can share offline, Erik. I haven’t gone back for seconds, tho.
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McIlhenny says he wants to “avoid a descent into a series of puerile ripostes”. I think we’re onto a potential Old Life Credo…
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Sorry Chortles, no new horror stories to share. Making good money dealing with pagans, though.
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I wish some of McIlhenny’s 11 authors would come here for debate.
http://www.amazon.com/Kingdoms-Apart-Engaging-Two-Perspective/dp/1596384352/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370626996&sr=8-1&keywords=kingdoms+apart#reader_1596384352
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Once I finish Van Drunen do I go onto Bahnsen or these 2K critiques? Tough choice.
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Forgive my ignorance, but what does this have to do with Jonathan Edwards?
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McIlhenny says that Hart “seems to be intransigently opposed to even a tincture of neo-Calvinism.”
Come on, D.G., not even a tincture? How about a smidgen, jot, or tittle?
Doug,
Note that Neocalvinists take offense at being linked to Theonomy, as McIlhenny also notes.
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McIlhenny:
“Anyone digging deeper into a particular area of study will be confronted with anomalies, irony, or just plain mystery that can never be critically and creatively worked out apart from a theoretical interpretive grid rooted in one’s religious motive. It is the religious heart that reveals the competing understandings of the common.”
Yeah, that’s why we see Christians clearly at the pinnacle of achievement in all pursuits. Oh wait, we don’t.
McIlhenny makes a lot of typical Neocalvinist assertions in his response without backing them up with any evidence whatsoever.
The problem with all this is that it inevitably leads to an unwarranted smugness, pride, and air of intellectual superiority, purely on the basis of being a Christian. What we end up with, as noted previously, is the Most Interesting Neocalvinist Man in the World:
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McIlhenny seems to make nice with Van Drunen at the end of his piece, but maybe not so much with Hart? Is Hart a “Bandwagoner”? Hard to say that since “A Secular Faith” was published in 2006.
One thing to note about McIlhenny. Not to discount his work, but he is an academic in a Christian college. If you don’t defend what he is defending, some of the urgency to go to Christian college goes away. I like Christian college. I went to Christian college. Some of the anti-2K hysteria could be motivated by people who are nervous about the fate of their Christian colleges and “day schools”, however.
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Riley, it’s a heart matter.
Or using Edwards in the title is a way to attract hits.
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Riley,
Edwards = the First (pretty good) Awakening, Religion of the Heart, Religious Affections, etc. as opposed to Old Side Presbyterianism, Confessionalism, Word & Sacrament, etc.
McIlhenny used the phrase “religious heart” which is sure to elicit a response around here.
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If only McIlhenny had ended his sentence here it would have been better:
“Anyone digging deeper into a particular area of study will be confronted with anomalies, irony, or just plain mystery that can never be critically and creatively worked out.”
When he continues with the “apart” is where things begin to fall, ah, apart.
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Erik, some have a lot of cultural stock to lose.
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I do think 2kers are somewhat less hypocritical than most neo-Calvinists. All that Skillen and Colson and Schaeffer rhetoric is not only very inspecific but intellectually dishonest.
But a 2ker is honest enough to say—-well as a Christian in the church I would need to love my enemy, but as just a regular private guy who thinks that even a sovereign God needs me to kill you to pre-emptively protect my wife from rape, my selfless courage is just what any nonChristian should do, no matter what Jesus did or said….
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Mark,
You complicate your hypothetical by including a third party – the wife who would be an innocent victim. Why do you have to favor the rapist over the wife?
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The command is to not overcome evil with evil, to not resist in kind, to love our enemy. It wouldn’t change the equation if there were only two parties, me and the bad guy. Erik, you could and should still ask–why favor the bad guy over yourself?
But my comment was not an attempt to get you guys to look to the new covenant law as a regulative principle. I was just trying to say that there was something more honest about people who are upfront about having two world-views at the same time.
I can see how my compliments (and definitions) are a bit tendentious. Let me ask 2kers some questions.
1. What is your preferred name for the second kingdom, the earthly city, the city of man, the kingdom of Satan, or some other name? if you can tell me why one name is better than another, all the better.
2. If two kingdoms are good, wouldn’t three kingdoms be even better? Do we need more or less diversity, more or less unity? If one can put all ‘spheres” besides “the church” into one other kingdom, is that a good thing? Why or why not?
3. When “one worldview” folks tell you that “everybody has one, even if they don’t know it”, is the best way to reciprocate their patronizing to tell them that “everybody lives in two kingdoms, even if they won’t admit it”?
4. Was Calvin’s attempt to “Christianize Geneva” somehow more defensible than Doug Wilson’s because of a situation ethic? Do we need different worldviews for different historical situations?
Erik, I was attempting to say that those with only one worldview are arrogant and dishonest. They are saying “my view is God’s view” . They are also saying “while you may view a little corner, I myself see the big picture, the whole world”.
This comes right after they have told us that everybody has a worldview….
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“Anyone digging deeper into a particular area of study will be confronted with anomalies, irony, or just plain mystery that can never be critically and creatively worked out apart from a theoretical interpretive grid rooted in one’s religious ground motive.”
This, is, of course, is the underlying conviction – that the correct presuppositions (ground motives) clear the fog and lead to the Land of Correctness. But, you know, this is somewhat verfiable. Have neo-Cals inexorably ascended to the top of academia and all the rest of life’s endeavors? Have they cleared up long lists of heretofore unresolved mysteries? If so, someone needs to write a book detailing such results and we’ll all hop on board. But if such a book can’t be written, maybe it’s about time to say the above quote has been falsified.
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MM,
No, but rumor has it they have perfected the recipe for dutch letters.
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mm: Have neo-Cals inexorably ascended to the top of academia?
mark: well, yes, some did, Wolsterstorff, Marsden, Mouw, Noll, Hatch…Notre Dame still trains people for Baylor….
Have they cleared up long lists of heretofore unresolved mysteries?
mark: no. And I agree, Michael, about the verification (or de-verification!) Read one essay by Max Stackhouse and you know that neo-calvinism is only another metanarrative, with nothing specific to show us in the end
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MMc, men of intelligence and diligence have done well from all kinds of perspectives. But there are some who really believe it is THE perspective, both in terms of alleged superior results and a moral/spiritual obligation to think that way.
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