Neo-Calvinists are, is the short answer. Even James Bratt’s kvetch about the abuse of every-square-inch language, offered this resistance to hierarchical distinctions between the world and the spirit:
Over against any kind of body-soul, nature-grace, fulltimeChristianservicevs.secularwork dualism, Kuyper’s words insist that God can—must—be served anywhere and everywhere. No better jobs or worse jobs before the Lord by how “spiritual” they are. No writing off whole sectors of culture or society as inherently worldly, or privileging others as inherently good. No more traditional pietist (Victorian?) hierarchies. I get it, and endorse it.
Lots to unpack there and not enough space in a post to do it. A lot of the spade work needs to go in the direction of “pietist” and “Victorian” as code for some sort of objectionable distinction between the realms of religion and common life. At the same time, the entire history of the West, philosophy, and liberal education makes no sense without some kind of distinction between what Greeks, Romans, and Christians deemed were higher aspects of human existence (the realm of the spirit or philosophy or reason or language) and the lower (eating or sex or wealth). In fact, what continues to bedevil me about neo-Calvinism is this Turrets Syndrome like reaction to binary distinctions. It is as if the West was swimming along sorting out and thriving on the distinctions between spiritual/intellectual and temporal/physical spheres and along came Kuyper and said, “we will have none of it” or “this is all fault of the French Revolution.” And he might have added “we will not pay any attention to similar distinctions between flesh and spirit, or Caesar and God, in Scripture.” “Dualism is bad because all of life, the cosmos (do we hear an echo of Carl Sagan?) needs to be integrated.” So writes Kuyper in his famous Lectures:
. . . wherever two elements appear, as in this case the sinner and the saint, the temporal and the eternal, the terrestrial and the heavenly life, there is always danger of losing sight of their interconnection and of falsifying both by error or onesidedness. Christendom, it must be confessed, did not escape this error. A dualistic conception of regeneration was the cause of the rupture between the life of nature and the life of grace. It has, on account of its too intense contemplation of celestial things, neglected to give due attention to the world of God’s creation. It has, on account of its exclusive love of things eternal, been backward in the fulfilment of its temporal duties. It has neglected the care of the body because it cared too exclusively for the soul. And this one-sided, inharmonious conception in the course of time has led more than one sect to a mystic worshipping of Christ alone, to the exclusion of God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. Christ was conceived exclusively as the Savior, and His cosmological significance was lost out of sight.
This dualism, however, is by no means countenanced by the Holy Scriptures. (118)
What is particularly troubling about Kuyper’s disregard for distinguishing the temporal from the eternal is that paleo-Calvinism used this distinction for making sense of Christianity and the work of the church. For instance, here is the very confession and Kuyper subscribed on the Lord’s Supper:
We believe and confess that our Savior Jesus Christ has ordained and instituted the sacrament of the Holy Supper to nourish and sustain those who are already born again and ingrafted into his family: his church.
Now those who are born again have two lives in them. The one is physical and temporal– they have it from the moment of their first birth, and it is common to all. The other is spiritual and heavenly, and is given them in their second birth; it comes through the Word of the gospel in the communion of the body of Christ; and this life is common to God’s elect only.
Thus, to support the physical and earthly life God has prescribed for us an appropriate earthly and material bread, which is as common to all as life itself also is. But to maintain the spiritual and heavenly life that belongs to believers he has sent a living bread that came down from heaven: namely Jesus Christ, who nourishes and maintains the spiritual life of believers when eaten– that is, when appropriated and received spiritually by faith.
To represent to us this spiritual and heavenly bread Christ has instituted an earthly and visible bread as the sacrament of his body and wine as the sacrament of his blood. He did this to testify to us that just as truly as we take and hold the sacraments in our hands and eat and drink it in our mouths, by which our life is then sustained, so truly we receive into our souls, for our spiritual life, the true body and true blood of Christ, our only Savior. We receive these by faith, which is the hand and mouth of our souls. (Belgic Confession, Art. 35)
Parenthetically, if you apply this distinction then you might distinguish between the eternal words of Holy Writ and the temporal words of Shakespeare, which would in turn shape the way you understand the task of Christian education and the relationship between the humanities and divinity.
But if neo-Calvinists have their way, then Belgic makes a distinction that partakes too much of a pietistic or Roman Catholic or Greco-Roman view of the sacrament.
Meanwhile, Calvin himself relied on this very distinction between the temporal and eternal when trying to understand the relation of church, state, and the heavenly kingdom:
Having shown above that there is a twofold government in man, and having fully considered the one which, placed in the soul or inward man, relates to eternal life, we are here called to say something of the other, which pertains only to civil institutions and the external regulation of manners. For although this subject seems from its nature to be unconnected with the spiritual doctrine of faith, which I have undertaken to treat, it will appear as we proceed, that I have properly connected them, nay, that I am under the necessity of doing so, especially while, on the one hand, frantic and barbarous men are furiously endeavouring to overturn the order established by God, and, on the other, the flatterers of princes, extolling their power without measure, hesitate not to oppose it to the government of God. Unless we meet both extremes, the purity of the faith will perish. We may add, that it in no small degree concerns us to know how kindly God has here consulted for the human race, that pious zeal may the more strongly urge us to testify our gratitude. And first, before entering on the subject itself, it is necessary to attend to the distinction which we formerly laid down (Book 3 Chap. 19 sec. 16, et supra, Chap. 10), lest, as often happens to many, we imprudently confound these two things, the nature of which is altogether different. For some, on hearing that liberty is promised in the gospel, a liberty which acknowledges no king and no magistrate among men, but looks to Christ alone, think that they can receive no benefit from their liberty so long as they see any power placed over them. Accordingly, they think that nothing will be safe until the whole world is changed into a new form, when there will be neither courts, nor laws, nor magistrates, nor anything of the kind to interfere, as they suppose, with their liberty. But he who knows to distinguish between the body and the soul, between the present fleeting life and that which is future and eternal, will have no difficulty in understanding that the spiritual kingdom of Christ and civil government are things very widely separated. Seeing, therefore, it is a Jewish vanity to seek and include the kingdom of Christ under the elements of this world, let us, considering, as Scripture clearly teaches, that the blessings which we derive from Christ are spiritual, remember to confine the liberty which is promised and offered to us in him within its proper limits. (Institutes IV.20.1)
None of this means necessarily that neo-Calvinists are wrong and 2kers are right. Maybe Kuyper came along and corrected a deep flaw within both Reformed Protestantism and the West more generally. But since distinctions between spiritual and worldly affairs haunt the pages of Scripture, not to mention the leading texts of Western civilization, neo-Calvinists have some obligation to explain why they reject (or appear to) the categories that practically all Europeans and their offspring have used to make sense of the world and Christianity.
Old Life 
Surely you wouldn’t deconstruct the “binary distinction” between the spiritual defined as “non-physical” and the spiritual defined as “Spirit-controlled”, or would you? What about the difference between “the age to come” and “the eternal”? Should we make distinctions between the Platonic distinctions and the biblical distinctions, such as grace and works?
I Corinthians 15: 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. 42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Romans 9:5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
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McMark, all distinctions are fair game (they are actually the stuff of critical reflection). Saying dualism is bad seems anti-intellectual.
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I agree. It’s much like the trick of the “unionists”. First, they don’t define “union”. Second, they say that the order of application is not important. Third, they say that the order of application is faith before Christ indwelling and Christ indwelling is before imputation. Conclusion—your order is not important, but our order is very significant.
Even so, for the making of distinctions—which “dualism” are we talking about? Even though I don’t agree with his final conclusions, I would recommend the questions asked about “dualism” by John Cooper in Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting.
John Calvin: Now let us examine the arguments by which certain mad beasts (he’s talking about some anabaptists) ceaselessly assail this holy institution of God. First of all, they strive to set these baptism and circumcision apart by a wide difference so that there may seem to be nothing in common between them. For they say that these two signify different things, that the covenant in each is quite different, and the calling of children under each is not the same… In asserting a difference between the covenants, with what barbarous boldness do they dissipate and corrupt Scripture!
Calvin: “For they depict the Jews to us as so carnal that they are more like beasts than men. A covenant with them would not go beyond the temporal life, and the promises given them would rest in present and physical benefits. If this doctrine should obtain, what would remain save that the Jewish nation was satiated for a time with God’s benefits (as men fatten a herd of swine in a sty), only to perish in eternal destruction? (IV. 16. 10)
mark: Augustinianism formally recognizes three kingdoms, on the one hand, Satan’s kingdom, and on the other hand, the two other kingdoms, one the church and the other the world of which Christ is now also king.
Augustine: The field is the world, and the world is the church. Compel them to come into the onecovenant!
the persecuted: The earth is the Lord’s, and only the Lord can give life or compel. Christians do not take life of compel.
Augustine: To avoid a dualism which rejects the Old Testament as being only about the physical, we Christians must even now bring both wheat and tares into the one broad church, and the Lord in the next age will show the difference.
the persecuted: The field is the world, and the churches are NOT the world.
Augustine: But original sin of the entire world is removed by water baptism. Do not make a Marcionite and gnostic distinction between baptism with water and baptism with the Holy Spirit. Since there is only one church, there can be no other true church and this one church has the power of the keys, not only to bring you in apart from or against your will, but also to turn you over to that second kingdom of Christ, which though it is only of this age, serves also Christ’s purpose …
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Calvin: “Indeed, the apostle makes the Israelites equal to us not only in the grace of the covenant but also in the signification of the sacraments. In recounting examples of the punishments with which, according to Scripture, the Israelites were chastised of old, his purpose was to deter the Corinthians from falling into similar misdeeds. So he begins with this premise—there is no reason why we should claim any privilege for ourselves, to deliver us from the vengeance of God, which they underwent, since the Lord not only provided them with the same benefits but also manifested his grace among them by the same symbols. (II. 10. 5)
The answer to “dualism”, therefore, is “mono-covenantalism”
Calvin: “God willed that, for the time during which he gave his covenant to the people of Israel in a veiled form, be grace of future and eternal happiness be signified and figured under earthly benefits, the gravity of spiritual death under physical punishments.” (II. 11. 3)
Calvin: “Here we are to observe how the covenant of the law compares with the covenant of the gospel, the ministry of Christ with that of Moses. For if the comparison had reference to the substance of promises, then there would be great disagreement between the Testaments. But since the trend of the argument leads us in another direction, we must follow it to find the truth. Let us then set forth the covenant that he once established as eternal and never perishing. Its fulfillment, by which it is finally confirmed and ratified, is Christ.” (II. 11. 4)
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I just covered the Humanist Manifesto I in my (don’t hold it against me) Worldviews class today and found what I think is an eery similarity.
“SEVENTH: Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation–all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.” (written in 1933)
All is sacred or all is religious.
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Matt, inspiring, no?
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Br’er Thornbury read Matt’s quotation and enthused “Galactic high fives!!”
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Correction: “COSMIC high fives!!”
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Is that like saying that Neo-Cal’s have a dualism problem because they overemphasize the dualism between dualism and monoism?
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Maybe the problem isn’t exactly with a distaste for “dualism” or binary distinctions but with what is perceived as simplistic dualism/binary distinctions.
We can talk about ftemporal vs eternal, flesh vs spirit, worldly vs spiritual, etc., but do all these concepts mean exactly the same thing? Certainly there is overlap, but is there absolute equality?
Perhaps the band known as Kuyper and the Neo-Cals simply want to use more than two chords in their songs but end up losing the battle of he bands because they try to play a complex opera with a guitar, bass, and drum set.
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Stuart, to be sure, those distinctions are not equivalents. But w-w pays almost no attention to the tensions between our physical and spiritual existences. Some of that tension may be pagan. But you sure find a lot of that tension in the NT. And Kuyper just runs right through the stop sign.
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D.G.,
I’m picking up what you’re laying down. Simply trying to postulate a theory as to one of the reasons why the Neo-Cal life hermeneutic can be so attractive to so many.
Maybe if 2kers would lose a little weight and put on something sexy every once and a while . . .
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Stuart, but 2kers do use more than two chords. The categories are holy, unholy, and common, the latter of which is neither holy nor unholy and is actually where most of life is lived. It’s the common that seems off the neo-Cal radar. Fortunately, most neos don’t live the way their theory would seem to demand, as in splitting up un/believers when doing common life (sort of like the way Baptists don’t actually treat their children like little pagans when doing ecclesial life). Though Xian schools might make one wonder.
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Zrim,
Three chords are better than two, for sure. But what about a 4th chord? Now we’re playing Chris Tomlin!
To be clear, my point wasn’t to criticize but to try to understand how the Neo-Cal idea gains traction. I think there are times when the categories 2kers present seem too neat and tidy for the Neo-Cal. There’s a lot of misunderstanding in that, of course, but I think that perception plays a part.
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z: The categories are holy, unholy, and common, the latter of which is neither holy nor unholy and is actually where most of life is lived.
mark: So the unholy is NOT the not set apart? So the unholy is a third satanic categpory? This is not merely a semantic question, because I am concerned about Satan’s present reign. Yes, I am amill, but nevertheless it seems that even in Augustine’s worldview, there was some attention to the overlap of the city of man and the devil’s dominion. If we don’t commonly say “three kingdoms”, what does that say about the kingdom of evil? Is there no such thing now that Christ is risen and ascended? Do 2ks agree with neo-Cals about that?
z: Fortunately, most neos don’t live the way their theory would seem to demand, as in splitting up un/believers when doing common life (sort of like the way Baptists don’t actually treat their children like little pagans when doing ecclesial life).
mark: I certainly agree that most southern baptists are no less culture christians with a christendom ideology than those who water their infants but without allowing them to membership or communion. But the difference between us is that you think that is good thing, that their inconsistency is a blessing for their children. But of course some of us (like me, with my two children) told them from a very early age 1. that God did not love every sinner. and 2. that God promised to save every sinner who believed the gospel, but with no special extra promise for those people with a parent or a grandparent who believed the gospel.
One other interesting question–I don’t know that anybody on this list denies that 2 k parents can sometimes send their children to Christian schools. Given that this is the right thing for a 2 k parent sometimes to do, is there a duty for the parents to warn their children against some of the “every inch is sacred” bull—–, or is it better in that situation not to rock the “capture the culture” boat?
I would imagine that some of you have experience in this area.
Of course there is a lot of that “regain the culture” stuff even in fundamentalist baptist schools, though there it might be more nakedly the house of representatives they are talking about, instead of Christian cat cleaning….
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Stuart, for my money, neo-Calvinism is easier than 2k, so is big government easier than republicanism, so is Egyptian food tastier than manna. I don’t discount the convenience that w-w brings. It has all my apps in one device. 2k is complicated and requires modesty and uncertainty at times. Heaven forbid (except in Ecclesiastes — go figure) that we not opine on all of life with bluster — holy bluster, of course.
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McMark, Satan still has a kingdom, at least as the Shorter Catechism renders the Lord’s Prayer’s second petition; we pray that Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed in “Thy Kingdom Come.”
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Mark, Augustine did indeed have that sense of overlap (of the city of man and the devil’s dominion), but Luther wasn’t quite as given to his predecessor’s suspicion for the temporal powers that be, preferring to emphasize their divinely ordained legitimacy. Keeping the kingdoms at two seems sufficient for covering it all.
Re schools, it’s a good point. Some 2kers see as much problematic in worldviewry as worldviewers see in secularity. The difference may be that some 2kers aren’t as given to hyperventilating about worldviewry as worldviewers are to secularity. The upshot is that 2kers can send their kids to any form of school knowing that some measure of de-programming is always necessary wherever the faithful find themselves, unlike worldviewers who don’t seem as able to compute the perfect legitimacy of secular education.
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If we don’t commonly say “three kingdoms”, what does that say about the kingdom of evil?
Personally, I’m a 5ker. That’s right, 3.10686 miles of chasing after the wind.
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dgh: Satan still has a kingdom
mark: But this seem to suppose the second kingdom later, and that lends itself to the narrative of one kingdom now. But as you say, 2k is more complicated, as is life.That doesn’t absolve anybody of the need for definitions. As one of them “fundy” guys, I always like the sound of “antithesis”. It’s so much easier to ignore the “if not against us, with us” and latch on to the “if not for us, against us”.
But it does look like an either or. Either holy or not. If not holy, either neutral or Satanic. Even 2 k folks tend to end up saying that some things cannot be neutral. But then we need to quantify–how many square inches are neutral, how many still belong to Satan?
The difference between “this evil age” and “this age” is not as great in the Bible as we might think.
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Sometimes we are told that we all have a w-w, even if we are too ignorant to know it. At other times, we are told that we need to acquire a w-w, but I think what our culture calvinist friends want for us is a “wholistic” w-w. I think we can know the gospel without adding on the epistemology or metaphysics of Augustine. Which is to say that we can talk about the good news of election and predestination without agreeing or disagreeing with the Platonic categories. If we have time on our hands to “sort out” stuff, maybe we can work on what the New Testament has to say about the ages.
Luke 4: 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the age in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”
Romans 12: 2 Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
II Corinthians 4:4 In their case the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Galatians 1: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
Colossians 1:13 says, “God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
II Timothy 4:10 For Demas, in love with this present age, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.
Hebrews 6:5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come,
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z: The difference may be that some 2kers aren’t as given to hyperventilating about worldviewry as worldviewers are to secularity. The upshot is that 2kers can send their kids to any form of school knowing that some measure of de-programming is always necessary
mark: one gal’s hyperventilating is another gal’s necessary warning and caution, but if we would agree that it’s a relative thing, that might be added to the charges against us that we are “secular”. As a teacher now retired from both state and religious schools, I must agree about the need for some “de-programming”. Of course there are some problems when a teacher in the two different systems attempts to do that de-programming. At a certain point, it’s no longer ironic or even educational. It’s either subversion or self-sabotage.
What’s the difference between saying that there is no such thing as the “secular” and saying that the secular is another religion? What’s the difference between saying that nothing is neutral and saying that the neutral is something evil?
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Mark, what are the differences between the categories of worldview and faith? The former is concerned for the cares of this world, the latter for the age to come. The former is the category in philosophy, the former the category of the Bible. The former keeps us here, the latter is the alone instrument for eternity. Worldviewers may complain all they want about the foibles of secularism and how it can deconstruct the faith, but when you think about it, there is plenty for a Christian parent to worry about in worldviewry doing the same thing.
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McMark, I am with you on “this evil age,” which is why if you read Augustine on politics in the City of God you would never think of it as something redemptive. The optimism about the world we see among the transformers is astounding. Then again, film noir is valuable because it gets this age.
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4:3—The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to them who rule, for they destroy themselves by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free. But the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave of as many masters as he has vices….
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David VanDrunen, p 77, Living in Two Kingdoms—-“There is no middle ground and no zone of neutrality–each person belongs to one master or the other. And whether a person belongs to Christ or belongs to Satan will be profoundly important for how he thinks and acts in this world.”
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McMark, I think I am less convinced of this than DVD. I am not sure how intentionally any of us can live our lives. But if DVD means that “nothing can separate us from the love of God,” and that God is in control of our lives and history, then I’m on board with the profundity.
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I get DVD’s subjective vs. objective referent but when it comes to ‘impact/intentionality’ and antithesis, these categories still seem most biblically oriented to cult, and non-cult(anti-cult), for example the intentionalness of directive given in 1 cor. 5 as regards dealing with sexual immorality within the cult as opposed to without. God(providentially and ultimately, in this case,) judges those outside the cult.
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I resist “translation” of what our friends say so that they say what we want them to say. I don’t think that dvd was saying what your “if he was saying” concludes, and I don’t think you do either. I agree with you that things are more complicated and nuanced than his statement allows for. But then I agree with him about non-neutrality.
At the very least, I think, something is either holy or not. But the complexity is that we are not simply talking about “cult”, about being set apart by the imputation of Christ’s death. (Hebrews 10:10-14). Those who are holy are commanded to be holy (moral), so this must mean that those who are saints can sin.
So, I don’t like the language of “progressive sanctification”, because people either are or are not transferred from Satan’s kingdom into Christ’s mediatorial kingdom. But God’s saints have some days which are better than others, at least when it comes to them obeying God’s commands with the right attitude, which doesn’t make them more or less saints.
Must still be a pietist—here I am talking about persons, and not cultures and civilizations.
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Seconded on the intentionality point. But, Mark, I’d also add that it seems better to say that a person’s relative citizenship will have profound importance for how he believes and practices religiously rather than in the world. The way DVD puts it, the line seems to be between professing Christians and non-Christians six days a week. It’s true that Protestants and Catholics will have outlooks in common with each other and different from atheists and agnostics in those six days, but come the seventh an even more profound difference arises between the former pair. This is what worldviewry undermines, that the Reformation was a religious concern, not a cultural one.
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thanks z for bring in I Corinthians and the inside/outside.
now we judge those inside.
but what about one day judging those outside? what do you make of that?
how would the King need us to assist in the day when the books will be opened?
or with the angels?
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I don’t think i would agree to something common with Romanists on the 6 days a week
not all Romanists think alike politically and culturally
as somebody who opposes Christians carrying guns, I have more in common culturally with some Romanists than I do with many who believe the same gospel as I do
I certainly don’t want to confuse law and gospel, but the difference between the “religion” of the gospel and the “political consequence” of the gospel, well, that difference keeps escaping me…
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It has all my apps in one device. 2k is complicated and requires modesty and uncertainty at times.
Brilliant. Makes me feel better about having a crap phone, outdated iPod Touch, obsoletes netbook, and two PCs.
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Mark, the 1 Cor 5 point was Sean’s. But it comports with mine about the fulcrum being better set at religious as opposed to common life. And by what you say, I think you do in fact agree with it (how’s that for putting words in friends’ mouths?). But come Sunday, you’re over there and I’m over here.
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McMark, what’s wrong with neutrality (watch Van Der Molen and Maurina surface on this one)? It may not be the most felicitous of words, but it reflects an understanding that we cannot use areas that believers and non-believer share (like society, the earth, basketball, English) as if Christians owned them.
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z, sorry for confusing you with sean. But ex-Romanist is more exciting than ex-baptist anyway. Come Sunday, neither of us meets with the Romanists. But on the days between Sundays, I don’t carry guns. I don’t know what Christians do about that in Michigan, but the ones I’ve met from Texas….
Of course my pacifism might not be a consequence of the gospel, no matter what I think about it. Maybe it’s a result of being a certain kind of parasite with a certain kind of University of Virginia education with Fox news parents. The more educated one gets, the less likely to sound like bob dylan—-
You may be a state trooper, you might be an young turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name.
You may be a construction worker working on a home
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody’s landlord you might even own banks.
You may call me Terry, you may call me Jimmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say.
You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
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To the extent what we have in common is capitalist “society”, do we either support the violence which maintains that “society” or do our bourgeois claims to “neutrality” about that society amount to a conservatism about that which has come about with the passing of time? Can an inductive reading of what God has presently predestined tell us what God has predestined in terms of discontinuity? Old School folks tend to think so.
Yes, Jesus is coming and things will change then. But does that mean mere patience now, with the wisdom of the long-term against the short-term? Or does the future coming of Jesus the Christ means that we cannot be “neutrals” even now, since we are aliens, not at home here, already citizens of the kingdom of heaven? Shall the redemptive-historical complexity (the Gaffin gray, I call it) mean that we only suffer in our own private ways but not by public persecution occasioned by an ethic so different it offends those with whom we play basketball?
anybody want to answer my previous question?
now we judge those inside., but what about one day judging those outside? what do you make of that?
how would the King need us to assist in the day when the books will be opened?
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McMark, you say a lot(which is fine, but I can’t always track), but I’m gonna pull out what I hear to be a recurring theme; beyond a particularity,(American, Mexican, German, English, Ugandan, whatevs…) a distinction grounded in place and understanding(education, training), you seem to at least indirectly want to ground that particularity in scripture or maybe in an attribute of God. I don’t know how that escapes the category of theonomy of one stripe or another? And doesn’t, at least implicitly, obscure a common realm. We all agree the cult maintains an antithesis with the kingdom of satan but what do you do with the common but argue NL and place(American, Mexican, German et al.) and time(21st century), so as not to prematurely eclipse the already/not yet?
I have no immediate thoughts of your ponderings of the hereafter other than to say it’ll be a theocracy and all those things temporal both cultic and common will be no more.
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Mark, with Sean, I’m not sure I’m tracking. But as to your last question, I call speculation as in no mind has conceived and all that.
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Being a pacifist, in imitation of Jesus Christ (I Peter 2) instead of doing secular killing for the common economy, is “theonomic”?
So be it. Killing is not playing basketball. If you can’t kill for Jesus, then don’t do it for the common society either. You can’t leave the particular incarnate example of Jesus out of it, because Jesus Christ also lived in a city lived in by others who did not agree with Him about what makes for peace.
I have noticed that “theonomists” are more willing to disagree with the “moderate wars” of the Republicans than lots of 2k folks. While the common “evangelical” joins the war parade rather quickly, the theonomist says–all or nothing. If we can’t do it the right way, let’s not do it. No compromise.
The difference between pacifist and theonomist being of course the theonomist idea that Jesus was merely clearing up some misunderstandings of the Mosaic law. But at least the theonomist knows that the Noahic covenant was not given to “humans as creatures” but to those who brought sacrifice and worship to God.
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D.G. – Turrets Syndrome
AKA Tourette’s Syndrome:
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