Darryl G. Hart and Camden Bucey discuss the relationship of various Christian epistemologies to a two-kingdoms approach to Christ and culture. Â The discussion has been posted at Reformed Forum.
post photo by Joel Bedford
Category: Miscellany
(More) This and That
Even republication deniers wind up affirming republication. For them the Covenant of Works is gracious, and so is the Mosaic covenant. So at Sinai there was a republication of grace. (In fact, the way some Federal Visionaries can’t distinguish grace from works, I wonder if they actually think the Covenant of Grace was a republication of the Covenant of Works.)
My, how the three-point shot is ruining basketball (thanks to our mid-West correspondent). Or it could be that those folks in Kansas, going back to the good Presbyterian Dr. Naismith, really do know how to play the game?
Rants like this one make plausible why John Frame can entitle his own festschrift, which he edited and for which he wrote three chapters, Speaking the Truth in Love.
R. Scott Clark is stupid. By that I mean that Dr. S (is for stupid)R. Scott Clark is dazed and unable to think clearly and he lacks intelligence and common sense. He is stupid, first of all because he, in embracing R2K, is embracing a theory that is incoherent. He is stupid, second of all, because even though the Escondido Hermeneutic has been disemboweled by Kerux he continues to champion that very theory. He is stupid, third of all, because he seems to lack the intelligence to understand that with the advent of Wittgenstein’s work on the philosophy of language Natural law theory is a Humpty Dumpty that can not be put together again. He is stupid, fourthly, because he refuses to bow to the clear teaching of Scripture touching total depravity. He continues to insist that fallen man can interpret natural law aright even though fallen men suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. He is stupid, sixthly, because he continues to trump a theory where presuppositionalism is the epistemology that reigns in the spiritual realm while at the same time, in a WSC dualistic fashion, he advocates some form of common sense realism for the common realm. He is stupid, seventhly, because he seems to think that one weekend conference at WSC automatically slams shut the discussion on this very issue. As seven is the number of perfection, I have thus shown that R. Scott Clark is perfectly stupid.
Scott Clark may be stupid, but he also edits the Classics in Reformed Theology series for the Reformation Heritage Books. The latest in the series is out – Caspar Olevianus’ An Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, translated by Lyle Bierma
The Westminster Hermeneutic Apparently Infects Kerux
And apparently, readers of the current review haven’t read very deeply in the journal. But a handy gadget at Kerux’s website reveals some items of note.
First this article by Scott Clark on John 2:13-22, on Christ’s cleansing of the Temple.
One lesson taught is the end of the theocratic arrangement in Israel:
It is ironic that those who were to care for God’s resting place, the place symbolic of God’s covenantal communion with his people, should be so insensitive to Jesus’ actions and words. What the priestly aristocracy does not realize is that by opposing Jesus, the temple guardians are opposing the temple itself! As in the garden and in the theocracy, God’s people have again desecrated God’s temple. Not only have they polluted piety for profit, but they fail to recognize the very purpose for which the temple stands–it is a house for God. We know this because they failed to recognize God when he came to the temple!
Because they lacked the Spirit, the Jews completely misunderstood Jesus to be speaking about the temple in which they were standing. Jesus is saying that his body is the temple. He is the “true” or the “real” temple (Jn. 6:32,33). Jesus’ temple supersedes the Herodian temple. Jesus’ and John’s words explain his act of cleansing the temple. Jesus is prophetically foreshadowing the final destruction of the temple. . . .
[T]he Jerusalem temple is an unsatisfactory habitation for our God. Like everything else connected with the old covenant, the temple is an incomplete expression of God’s grace. To redeem us, God must tabernacle in our flesh (Jn. 1:14). In this way the destiny of the temple is bound to the destiny of the Christ.
We also learn from Clark about the importance of holiness after in the new covenant:
God’s requirements for the holiness of his dwelling place have not been watered down in the new covenant. In fact they are greater. Coexisting with the other “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5) joined together to become a “dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:21) means even greater holiness than that of the old covenant. We no longer have to watch Moses go to the tent to meet with God; he has come to us in his Son and now in his Spirit.
Clark even affirms the importance of union with Christ:
Not only are we God’s temple, but we still have a religious life in the temple. For the evangelist, to truly be in the temple is to be in Christ because he is the true temple. John wrote his gospel to the end that we might find ourselves standing in the temple (Jn. 20:31; Col. 3:3). To be in the temple is to be in communion with God. It is to have intimate, personal fellowship with God. Whoever is united by the Spirit to the ascended Lord is now in the true, heavenly, Spirit-filled, temple and worships truly.
Perhaps even more arresting than Clark’s meditation was David VanDrunen’s essay in Kerux on the culture wars. Since WSC continues to receive demerits for not being hard on crime, and apparently the Kerux review hints at this (only a few have actually seen the review because the print run is so small, and those who have read it have yet to finish it), VanDrunen’s piece, “Biblical Theology and the Culture War,” is particularly worthy of notice.
Here is one point that VanDrunen makes during his reflections on Jeremiah 29:
This brief look at biblical theology should teach us a number of things about this battle. Most important of all, it teaches us that the culture war rages in Babylon, not in the Promised Land. A number of other important considerations arise from this. For one thing, it reminds us that in any of our cultural struggles we are not to set as a goal the annihilation or even the radical transformation of society. The existence of Babylon is completely legitimate. This is a particularly relevant message for Americans especially to heed. America is portrayed as the Promised Land so often—it is the hope of the world, the shining city on the hill, with liberty and justice for all. It is the refuge for the teeming masses of distant shores yearning to be free. It is a land of never before attained prosperity and military strength. America certainly is a great land, and patriotic affections are good and healthy. But it is not paradise, and never was. And neither is any other place on earth. To view any earthly land as the Promised Land is to set our sights both too high and too low at the same time: too high for our nation’s prospects and too low for what the Promised Land really is. People wage culture wars in Babylon, and to whatever extent they win or lose, Babylon continues to be just that—Babylon! It will not be annihilated, and it will not be transformed into something else.
To understand this is to put things into perspective. If the America of 50 or 100 or 200 years ago was Babylon, and if the America of the next generation, apart from the outcome of this culture war, will still be Babylon, should we not conclude that culture wars really are not won or lost, at least not absolutely? Living in Babylon by definition implies living outside of Paradise in a land which does not in any special way belong to the church, and as such is more or less filled with injustice, immorality, and any number of other depravities which motivate the culture warriors. As long as the church has lived in Babylon, it has been involved in cultures with marks of degeneracy. And as long as it continues to live here, it will face the same thing. It is only at Christ’s return that wicked culture and its supporters will be abolished completely: “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels” (2 Thess. 1:6-7). The culture war has been raging for ages and it will not end until Christ returns. Why do we so often act as if the 1960’s, with the corresponding rise of the drug culture and sexual promiscuity, marked the beginning of this war? Perhaps the battle rages more fiercely and more visibly now, but even Christians living in Norman Rockwell America should have realized the existence of the culture war—the same culture war which rages around us now. As a wise man long ago observed, there is nothing new under the sun.
Does this mean that fighting the culture wars is wrong? VanDrunen says, “of course not.” But if Christians do fight in those battles they need to do so with a proper understanding of the stakes involved:
God commanded the people in Jeremiah 29 to seek the peace and prosperity of the city in which they lived, and this applies to us as well. We know that a nation with increasing numbers of cocaine-addicts, abortions, thefts, child-abuse cases, illiterates, etc., etc., will not retain desirable levels of peace and prosperity for long. Therefore we do have an obligation to do things which will, if not eliminate such things, at least substantially reduce their rate of occurrence. The peace and prosperity of our society, not to mention our personal peace and prosperity, depend on it. And the political sphere certainly is one of the institutions of culture which will make its indelible stamp on the peace and prosperity of the society. Christians therefore should have an interest in the political process when their form of government allows it, as ours does. To turn our backs on politics would mean to turn our backs in part to the command of God to seek the peace and prosperity of our nation. We may debate amongst ourselves which political positions to promote and how much emphasis should be given to the political process, but the interest and involvement in politics which we see among the “religious right” is in itself a good thing. But, it must always be accompanied by the realization that we are participating in the politics of Babylon. What should we hope to gain by our cultural, including political, activity? Only a relatively better life for society, ourselves, and our children in the years to come than what we would otherwise face. We seek not the destruction of our enemies, but simply a modestly better society which in the future will face exactly the same kinds of threats and require the same sort of opposition. Perhaps we can turn America back to the culture of the 1950’s. But the 1960’s will always follow.
Our first hope naturally is for the peace and prosperity of our nation. But perhaps we should be secretly pleased when these turn into disorder and depression. We have noted how many Christians today yearn for the days of public virtue present years ago in our nation’s history. It seems that there is little doubt that as far as public virtue goes America has seen better days. But when we see how such memories distort the biblical understanding that we live in Babylon, when we see how they cause our hopes to seek fulfillment not in the next world, but in this, when we see how they paint a falsely idyllic picture in our minds which we ignorantly project into the future, does it not make us at least wonder how much good such relatively peaceful and prosperous days really do. If God answered our prayers and blessed our cultural efforts by bringing us days of unparalleled peace and prosperity, would that not in itself be a tremendous temptation to set our sights no higher than Babylon? Are not days such as ours good reminders of what Babylon really is—a pagan, depraved, and hopeless place over which an angel from heaven will one day shout: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great” (Rev. 18:2)? The Israelites were apparently satisfied with the peace and prosperity of Babylon— only a tiny fraction of them returned to the Promised Land when the opportunity came. Will we as a church do any better?
Yes, let us pray for the peace and prosperity of our land for the sake of the physical well-being of ourselves and our children. But let us also be thankful for God’s often disappointing answers for the sake of the spiritual well-being of his church.
Articles such as these make Kerux worthwhile reading, especially for those inclined to read it along with the Talmud.
(By the way, the Nicotine Theological Journal‘s policy is never to turn on its contributors.)
Dual Citizens
by Jason Stellman
Endorsements
For too long I struggled to recommend reading on the subject of living the Christian life as “resident aliens.” Often I was reduced to directing readers to liberal Methodists (such as Hauerwas and Willimon) as the best embodiment of Christian convictions. At last I can point to practice that is firmly grounded in Reformed theology. Dual Citizens is written by someone who loves the world: its movies, its music, and its authors. But this is a rightly ordered love because it is a penultimate love. Here is a robust pilgrim theology that marches on to Zion while avoiding the pitfalls of asceticism and legalism. By putting earthly kingdoms in their proper place, Pastor Stellman demonstrates how rightly to use the present world even as one eagerly awaits the next. John R. Muether
The subject of Christ and culture have never been as popular among conservative Protestants in the United States as it is today, and the topic has never needed as much attention from the perspective of the church. It gets that attention in this important book by Jason Stellman. Dual Citizens will certainly upset those used to thinking of Christ as mainly the transformer of culture. But for genuine wisdom not only on the culture wars, but on the culture, ways, and habits of the church, Stellman’s discussion is the place to go. D. G. Hart
The Regulative Principle and the Transformation of Culture
On balance, Reformed Protestants were no more responsible for the glories of the modern world (e.g., science, capitalism, education, liberal democracy) than were other western Christians. That is at least the conclusion of Phillip Benedict in his remarkable social history of Calvinism, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed. But Benedict does detect a level of activism among the Reformed that differentiated it from Lutherans. And the difference has a lot to do with the Reformed’s zeal for church polity and liturgical reform. Benedict writes:
It remains the case that at certain critical moments Lutheran church leaders held back from establishing churches under the cross or from defending such churches by force when the Reformed plunged ahead and did so – most notably in the Low Countries in 1566, where the Lutheran refusal to oppose the duly constituted authorities contributed to the Reformed church’s assumption of leadership in the movement of resistance to Habsbourg rule. . . . Surveying the entire period of 1517-1700, one cannot avoid concluding the Reformed embraced and acted upon such views more than any other confessional group. This is not because of any enduringly distinctive features of Reformed thinking about political obligation. It stems instead from two other foundational stone of Reformed theology: its profound hostility to idolatrous forms of worship and its conviction that certain kinds of church institutions derived from scriptural authority. The former drove Reformed believers to separate themselves from the church of Rome in situations in which other evangelicals were prone to compromise, and thus to find themselves especially often on a footing of threatened minority impelled to fight for its ability to worship as it pleased. The latter [church government] sparked movements of resistance to perceived threats to the purity of the proper church order.
This is a key difference between paleo- and neo-Calvinists (not to mention other Presbyterian transformers of cutlure). In the case of old Calvinism, the aim was to reform the church, which in turn led to various forms of political resistance and activism in order to worship God truly. In the case of new Calvinism, distinct marks of Reformed worship and polity are sacrificed in order to work with other Christians for the sake of a righteous and just society.
So if neo-Calvinists really want to enlist the support of paleos for the sake of transforming society, they’ll need to clean up their liturgy and bone up their ecclesiology. Please no Fosdickian responses of “what incredible folly.â€
Mencken Day 2009
To honor the great American writer and editor born in 1880 on this day in Baltimore, comes the following reflection on conversion:
Converting me to anything is probably a psychological impossibility. At all events, it has never been achieved by anyone, though I have been exposed more than once to the missionary technic of very talented virtuosi. I can’t recall ever changing my mind about any capital matter. My general body of fundamental ideas is the same today as it was in the days when I first began to ponder. I was never religious, and never a Socialist, even for a moment. My aversion to conversion extends to other people. I always distrust and dislike a man who has changed his basic notions. When a reader writes in to say that some writing of mine has shown him the light and cured him of former errors I feel disgust for him, and never have anything to do with him if I can help it. I dislike, more or less, all Calvinists, Communists and other such enemies of season, but I dislike ex-Calvinists and ex-Communists very much more. (From Minority Report, #162)
Does T.O. Read CT?
Is it egotistical to think so, bro?
If Americans Drove Less, Would they Drink More Gas?
The breaks at the Calvin 500 conference in Geneva last week featured bottled water with and without “gas,” as the Swiss say. By the end of the week, the volunteers serving refreshments were no longer bringing out the “gas” because the conferees, most of whom were from the States, preferred the still as opposed to the sparkling water. It struck me then that an inverse relationship exists between people who consume a lot of gas in their cars (and especially their SUV’s) but won’t tolerate it in their water, and those who don’t drive as much and prefer commotion in their water. (I myself like water that fizzes, just like soda, champagne, and beer.)
So maybe the key to ending global warming is to persuade Americans to drink more gas than they burn behind the wheel.
Conservatism, Community, and Pilgrimage
I know at least one good Presbyterian pastor on the West Coast who’s jaws tighten at the thought that Reformed confessionalism and conservatism go hand in hand. Part of the problem, of course, is conservatism.  Is it what Rush and Sean, or Roger Scruton, or George Will say it is?Â
Another way to consider the relationship comes from this piece by Caleb Stegall over at Front Porch Republic, which is actually a ping back from ISI’s American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. This section was particularly germane for linking the sensibility of cross-bearing with conservative critiques of modernity:
Two of the most thoughtful defenses of traditional community as a conservative ordering principle were published within a year of Kirk’s Conservative Mind (1953): Nisbet’s The Quest for Community (1952) and Eric Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics (1953).
Nisbet begins his study on the place of community in American political and social life by examining the failed promises of progress. By the postwar period, America had filled up. A sense of dread and ennui had spread through society, and the dominant tropes of psychospiritual expression were no longer found in terms like optimism, progress, change, and reason, but rather alienation, disintegration, decline, and insecurity. Americans, according to Nisbet, no longer seemed to trust or valorize the selfish Randian hero. The problem, he thought, was not technological tyranny or consumer greed or increasing secularism, but the distribution of political power. Modern man’s nervous preoccupation with finding meaning in community is a manifestation of the profound social dislocation caused by the unique power structure of the Western political state. As Western political power had become increasingly centralized, impersonal, and remote, it had atomized the individual and relegated communal interests and relationships to the realm of private personal preference. Nisbet locates the profound unrest in the American soul not so much in the disappearance of communal relationships but in the utter dissociation of those relationships from the exercise of real political and economic power. Traditional communities and the religious, familial, and local ties that bind them have not so much been lost, in Nisbet’s view, as they have become irrelevant at the deepest levels of meaning. It is here, in the unmediated exposure of the individual will to the impersonal power of the state (and to a lesser extent, the market), that Nisbet finds the root cause of man’s spiritual crisis.
Voegelin’s New Science tracks a similar course, providing conservative thought with a powerful analytical tool for understanding the spiritual dimensions of the phenomena Nisbet so clearly describes. For Voegelin, modernity could be summarized as a heretical commitment to Gnosticism, or in other words, a fundamental dissatisfaction with the uncertainties and limits of existence. Impatience for moral meaning and certainty beyond the humble limits of traditional communities leads the Gnostic thinker to imbue human existence in the here and now with the ultimate meaning reserved by traditional Christianity for the next life. By “immanentizing†the Christian eschaton, Voegelin explains, modern man took on the project of remaking existence according to the dictates of political ideology.
I was struck by Stegall’s characterization (via Voegelin) of gnosticism’s impatience with limits and uncertainty. It reminded me of a quote over at Zrim’s Confessional Outhouse about the nature of “biblical patience.”
Good Job, Bruce!
This occasion was too good for only one blog.
Old Life 