Category: Neo-Calvinism

The Otherworldly Calvin

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

I continue to read Paul’s first epistle (sanctimony alert!) to the church and Corinth and am struck by the apostle’s understanding of the fleeting character of this life compared to the world to come. In his commentary on 1 Cor 7:29 (“This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none. . .”), John Calvin writes:

All things that are connected with the enjoyment of the present life are sacred gifts of God, but we pollute them when we abuse them. If the reason is asked, we shall find it to be this, that we always dream of continuance in the world, for it is owing to this that those things which ought to be helps in passing through it become hindrances to hold us fast. Hence, it is not without good reason, that the Apostle, with the view of arousing us from this stupidity, calls us to consider the shortness of this life, and infers from this, that we ought to use all the things of this world, as if we did not use them. For the man who considers that he is a stranger in the world uses the things of this world as if they were another’s — that is, as things that are lent us for a single day. The sum is this, that the mind of a Christian ought not to be taken up with earthly things, or to repose in them; for we ought to live as if we were every moment about to depart from this life.

John Calvin may not be the last word on the Bible or even on Calvinism, but my jaw continues to hit the desk when I try to reconcile such an understanding of the world with that of neo-Calvinism (or other varieties of postmillennialism). For all of the talk about the sufficiency of Scripture, the law-gospel hermeneutic, or the spirituality of the church, acknowledging the otherworldiness of Christianity (eegads! fundamentalism) seems pretty basic to the differences between neo-Calvinists and proponents of two-kingdom theology.

Was Paul In League with Wormwood?

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

Readers may be encouraged to learn that Dr. K. has recanted somewhat of his repeated attempts to associate the defenders of 2k with the views of Misty Irons on gay marriage. The exacts words are:

Having re-read both my original blog post and the ensuing relevant comments, I publicly regret insinuating that some advocates of 2K theology defend homosexual marriage. As the interaction made clear (I hope), I should have claimed only that the hermeneutical argument employed by one defender of homosexual marriage is identical to the hermeneutical argument employed by some current 2K advocates. Simply stated, that hermeneutic is this: the Bible governs the spiritual kingdom/church, unaided reason and natural law alone govern the civil kingdom.

But this welcome news only goes so far because Dr. K.’s website if filled with other inaccuracies and wrongheaded notions. For instance, in his long (boy was it long) series on w-w for Christian Renewal, he took several detours, one of which included a C.S. Lewis-styled epistle from Screwtape, written by David Naugle for BreakPoint. The letter included this paragraph:

But our crowning achievement has been in the churches. Under the well-intended influence of their hoodwinked leaders, they actually believe our lies are the truth! They think they came out of the Bible. The silly little Christians have confused creation with sin, and now they can hardly wait to evacuate the planet and head off to heaven where they think they really belong! How joyfully they sing, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.” They promote heaven over earth, the spiritual over the physical, grace over nature, the soul over the body, the eternal over the temporal, faith over reason and so on. They see everything as essentially sacred or secular. They think that Christianity is its own distinct realm of life rather than a way of life for every realm. They separate their faith from the bulk of their lives, and set Christ in opposition to their cultures. How proud they are of their resulting super-spirituality, nicely ensconced in their cozy, well-fortified Christian ghettos. They have bought into our vision of disintegration. They are compartmentalists, par excellence.

Lo and behold, an hour of so later during family worship (TMI), I came across this passage from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5 ESV)

What is striking about this passage is that Paul seems to do the very things that are supposed by the neo-Screwtape to be devilish — distinction between the body and spirit, between the church and the world, between body and soul, and between the rules applying to Christians and non-Christians. Even more curious is what Calvin does with verse five, the one about delivering the evil doer over to Satan:

For delivering over to Satan is an appropriate expression for denoting excommunication; for as Christ reigns in the Church, so Satan reigns out of the Church, as Augustine, too, has remarked, in his sixty-eighth sermon on the words of the Apostle, where he explains this passage. As, then, we are received into the communion of the Church, and remain in it on this condition, that we are under the protection and guardianship of Christ, I say, that he who is cast out of the Church is in a manner delivered over to the power of Satan, for he becomes an alien, and is cast out of Christ’s kingdom.

I understand that neo-Calvinism inspires believers to take the world by storm. But the way they get there and the folks they throw under the bus in the process are — dare I say — unbecoming. This is all the more the case when the New Testament is littered with the very distinctions that neo–Calvinists denounce as dualistic and of the devil. Do ways exist to interpret these texts so that you avoid the errors of monasticism and fundamentalism? Of course. Calvin and Luther come to mind. But do you need to avoid texts like 1 Corinthians 5 to bolster your gospel of w-w? Apparently.

Calling All Neo-Calvinists and Kuyperians!!

Published on by D. G. Hart90 Comments

I need serious help. I have been conversing (yes, snarkly) with the good Dr. K. about 2k after all that Rodney King mojo that descended like a dove on Lookout Mountain last week when Mike Horton ascended the same. He keeps faulting 2kers for many faults — basically giving away the faith — and then in comments he does a great impersonation of Muhammad Ali, dodging and weaving against any untoward construction, at once sounding biblicist, then bobbing like a Dutch Calvinist, and then ducking like a 2ker. It’s enough to give you vertigo.

Here are some samples from the comments and exchanges. On the one hand he wants the Bible to be the norm for all of life:

Declaring the Bible to be authoritative over all of human living, and acting accordingly, are confessional matters. Nevertheless, all of us continue to wrestle with how the Bible is authoritative (for example, more directly / less directly; by way of norm, orientation, or example; and the like). The concretization of the principle, however, need not be a confessional matter. . . .

The neo-Calvinist vison is that together Christians cultivate their witness and walk in the various spheres of cultural activity. Insofar as they seek to apply the principles of God’s Word in the particular area of politics, the neo-Calvinist vision aims to pursue biblical justice for all members of society according to the divine norms relevant to various kinds of human activity.

One of those norms involves protecting unborn life. Another involves protecting the divine institution of marriage, which, as we know even from Scripture, by divine permission allows divorce for the hardness of the human heart. Another norm involves truth-telling, such that biblical teaching requires fidelity to one’s oath, the enforcement of contracts, punishing perjury, anti-libel laws, etc. I know of no neo-Calvinist who would argue that politicians must advocate to ban heresy or false religion. Some might advocate punishing blasphemy. Most would seek to do everything politically feasible to limit non-marital sex.

On the other hand, Dr. K. strives (why, I don’t know) to distance himself from advocating a Christian state or the state’s enforcement of Christian norms:

The prohibition of polygamy is most certainly entailed in the Seventh Commandment. As WLC 139 puts it, among the sins forbidden in the Seventh Commandment is “having more wives or husbands than one at the same time.” (Though the WLC list of sins prohibited also includes “allowing, tolerating, keeping stews.” I’m not sure if I’ve ever done that; I’ll look in the fridg.) You compare polygamy with divorce, with respect to how Christians should respond to this in the public square. If it were possible for me as a Christian legislator to introduce now, in 2012, a law that upholds monogamy over against polygamy, should I do so, or would I be forcing my morality on the public? By the way, in none of my comments, questions, or observations, have I called for the state to enforce any commandment—Seventh, Third, Ninth, or any. Rather, I have simply pointed to specific duties or obligations, whose wording I have borrowed conveniently from the WLC, which we have as Christians, we who presumably who adhere to the WLC. That as a Christian living in a democratic republic I should want the state legislatively to promote and preserve unborn human life, monogamous heterosexual marriage, and truthful contracts is not at all to desire that the state somehow become Christian, or that the state enforce what are merely Christian values. These values are universally binding moral values. (emphasis mine)

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I emphasize this line because in the previous quote (all in the same discussion thread) Dr. K. did speak about Christian politics and the application of biblical norms of justice to all members of society.

What is also worthy of emphasis (hence the bold) is Dr. K.’s assertion that pro-life, heterosexual marriage, and honest contracts are matters that we recognize as true universally, in other words, apart from the Bible. Here he adopts the 2k logic of natural law.

Finally, the kicker is that Dr. K. believes 2k is in fundamental opposition to Reformed Protestantism:

For my part, our disagreement begins with the Bible—with the exegesis of the entire biblical story from Genesis through Revelation. It continues with the Confessions—both the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards. It moves from there to the application of the truths and principles harvested from these sources to all of Christian living in the world. None of this denigrates the institutional church, the office of minister of the Word, the pivotal, crucial role of the means of grace, the essential ecclesiastical activities of catechesis, family visiting, discipling, and service. It is simply saying: the gospel is for more than these.

I’d like to say I understand where Dr. K. is coming from but I cannot. Perhaps my neo-Calvinist friends, few though they may be, can help me translate. Is this a function of not understanding Dutch?

Do Neo-Calvinists Actually Think Before They Speak (or sit)?

Published on by D. G. Hart148 Comments

As noted a few days ago, the fallout from the recent discussion of two-kingdom theology at Covenant College (with Mike Horton) has touched off several lively discussions. The one at Dr. K.’s blog led the good doctor to use a phrase in connection with the virtues of neo-Calvinism that I had never heard before: “a public Christian theology of cultural obedience.”

If you perform a Google search for the phrase you find variations on cultural obedience or public theology but nothing with the whole enchilada of Kuyperian grandeur.

A public theology of cultural obedience would be one thing. It must be a way to distinguish a public from a private or personal theology of cultural obedience. But to add Christian to the phrase would apparently distinguish this from Muslim and Jewish public theologies of cultural obedience (though it does not address differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants or confessional differences among the latter).

Even odder is the phrase cultural obedience (more below). Public theology would seem to be one way of describing a Christian’s engagement with social, political, and cultural affairs. So cultural obedience seems to be redundant. But I suspect it is a form of overstatement for emphasis. Like Isaiah’s utterance of “holy, holy, holy” to describe the gulf separating him and God, this phrase indicates that we really, really, really need to be engaged with human existence outside the church.

Fine. Culture is important. But it is also one of the least useful categories for assessing problems in political, economic, and social life.

Still, what is cultural obedience and how does it square with Christian liberty? If Christians do not have a culture the way Israelites did (food, language, politics, land) because Christians now find themselves living in all the nations of the world, and if a hallmark of Reformed conviction has been the notion that Christians are free in those activities not prescribed by Scripture (like meat offered to idols or whether to speak Dutch or English), what possibly could the phrase cultural obedience mean? I get it. It’s supposed to indicate that Christians are supposed to live their lives before the face of God and not treat areas of life as if independent from Christ’s Lordship.

But here is where some serious theological reflection needs to go on because the ideals of Christian liberty (which allows for Christian smoking) and the Lordship of Christ for all areas of life are in tension. If I have liberty in those areas where the Bible is silent but now find out that I need to submit to Christ in everything I do, my brain cramps. Either I have liberty or I must show submission the next time I reach into the humidor. Neo-Calvinists really could provide some assistance if they would wrestle with these contrasting theological notions rather than simply trotting out pious and inspirational bumper stickers.

They might also benefit from some serious cultural reflection, such as the kind that comes in books like Witold Rybczinski’s Home: The History of An Idea. (I am on a Rybczinski kick since I am teaching a seminar on place and home and have assigned his book which is — truth be told — brilliant in its ability to instill a sense of wonder about things we regard as ordinary.) What neo-Calvinists could learn from books like Home is that culture is never as self-conscious or intentional as the ideas-have-consequences model alleges. Like history, culture is accidental, and it comes to us without a rule book or manual. We inherit the choices (ironic and unwitting) of previous generations and accept them as part of the cultural norm. And when those norms prove unacceptable, we change them but often the changes are as much functional as based on ideals. Perhaps the greatest example of how common and unthinking culture is is the chair (a piece of furniture that absorbs architects’ attention almost as much as the exterior of buildings). Here are a few excerpts from Rybczinski that might give users of the phrase cultural obedience the willies:

Differences in posture, like differences in eating utensils (knife and fork, chopsticks or fingers, for example), divide the world as profoundly as political boundaries. Regarding posture there are two camps: the sitters-up (the so-called western world) and the squatters (everyone else). Although there is not Iron Curtain separating the two sides, neither feels comfortable in the position of the other. (78)

If this is true, and it surely has the ring of it, what does cultural obedience mean for posture. Do I submit to the Lord by sitting in a chair or squatting on the floor? And if one of these is more obedient, do Christians have an obligation to transform squatters into sitters (or vice versa, though sitting would be better for the furniture makers in Grand Rapids)?

Rybczinski goes on to try to answer how sitting developed in the western world and does so by suggesting how little inevitability accompanied those pieces of furniture that would never imaginably produce calls for a Christian public theology of cultural obedience:

A little reflection shows that all human culture is artificial, cooking no less than music, furniture no less than painting. Why prepare time-consuming sauces when a raw fruit would suffice? Why bother with musical instruments when the voice is pleasant enough? Why paint pictures when looking at nature is satisfying? Why sit up when you can squat?

The answer is that it makes life richer, more interesting, and more pleasurable. Of course furniture is unnatural; it is an artifact. Sitting is artificial, and like other artificial activities, although less obvioulsy than cooking, instrumental music, or painting, it introduces art into life. We eat pasta or play the piano — or sit upright — out of choice, not out of need. . . .

Here is an explanation of why the world came to be divided into sitters and squatters. The coincidence of all the factors necessary to comfortable sitting is so unlikely, the probability of awkwardness and discomfort is so great, that it is not hard to imagine that many cultures, having had a try at it, would abandon the effort and wisely resort to sitting on the ground. This choice, in turn, would have affected the development of furniture in general, for without chairs, there would be no need for tables and desks, and little likelihood that a floor-sitting society would want to surround itself with other upright furniture such as cupboards, commodes, and bookcases. (80, 96)

Bottom line: culture and its development (or transformation) are far more complicated and independent of human control or manipulation than phrases such as a Christian public theology of cultural obedience would suggest. The Lordship of Christ? Of course. The Lordship of Christ involves neo-Calvinists’ lordship of culture? Hardly.

Not So Fast

Published on by D. G. Hart111 Comments

Neo-Calvinist lions have buried the hatchet with two-kingdom lambs, at least according to Matt Tuininga’s report on Mike Horton’s roundtable discussion of 2k with Covenant College faculty earlier this week:

When it comes to the two kingdoms doctrine and Christian liberal arts institutions like Covenant College (the college of the Presbyterian Church in America) in Lookout Mountain, Georgia there may not be that much conflict after all. That, at least, is the conclusion to which one might come in response to a panel discussion on the topic yesterday between Michael Horton, a professor at Westminster Seminary California, and several Covenant College faculty.

The proof of agreement (though Dr. K. is not buying) comes from a list of propositions that Horton believes 2kers and neo-Calvinists affirm. I paste them below italicized but offer comments in normal font. I do so not to be disagreeable but to attempt to clarify the disagreements (I still regard Mike as a better drinking companion than Mark Dever, and now we have a lot to discuss over adult beverages):

1) Both clearly distinguish the form of cultural and political engagement obligatory on Christians from the model of Old Testament Israel.

If neo-Calvinists look to the Bible for models of political engagement, where are they looking other than the Old Testament since the New Testament is silent on political strategies unless you count “my kingdom is not of this world” as a form of political engagement. In which case, the neo-Calvinist insistence on biblical politics (see James Skillen) paves the way for theonomy even if Kuyperians are uncomfortable with Greg Bahnsen.

2) Both maintain a sharp critique of the militancy and culture war mindset that marks much of the Christian Right, which has its own version of the social gospel.

Since many neo-Calvinists do actually denounce 2kers for not lending adequate support to the culture wars or for criticizing statements like the Manhattan Declaration (think Chuck Colson, Nancy Pearcey, and some disciples of Francis Schaeffer — say, didn’t Schaeffer have a connection to Covenant?), I am waiting to see the neo-Calvinist critique of culture war militancy. Criticizing the evangelical baptism of the Republican Party and George W. Bush does not count.

3) Each perspective affirms basic neo-Calvinist concepts concerning common grace, the antithesis, and sphere sovereignty.

This is one of the more agreeable affirmations in the list, but the fine print is important. Since some neo-Calvinists construe the antithesis in a way that obliterates the proximate goods of the earthly secular city, or insist that special revelation must interpret general revelation (fine, but what if the Bible is silent on plumbing?), affirmation of antithesis is not going to produce synthesis. Meanwhile, this 2ker finds the notion of common grace unhelpful. Christianity already has good doctrines — creation and providence — that teach what common grace attempts to affirm. Adding grace to something common only gives license for speaking about realms like culture and politics redemptively. As for sphere sovereignty, see here.

4) Both seek to distinguish the work proper to the institutional church (church as organization) and the way in which believers serve Christ and witness to his kingdom in every area of life (church as organism).

Perhaps, but all of that talk about kingdom work and every member ministry leaves me thinking that neo-Calvinists share with evangelicals an inability to understand the kingdom of Christ aright, that is, as a realm of redemption (as opposed to creation and providence). In other words, the American Historical Association is not but the visible church is, as the Westminster Confession teaches, the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

5) Both agree that Christians cannot bring the kingdom of God to earth through their cultural work.

If this is true, why did Abraham Kuyper describe the cultural task as holy?

6) Each perspective insists that Scripture has much to say about how Christians should be involved in culture through their vocations.

Maybe, but 2kers are much more cautious about reaching for their Bibles to justify their political, philosophical, or scientific convictions and tasks. That is to say, that 2kers come closer to the Belgic Confession’s distinction between the books of general and special revelation than Kuyperians do. Those cosmological passages (e.g. Col. 1:15-20) give neo-Calvinists inches that look like the entire canon.

7) Both agree that the church must proclaim what the word of God says about God’s law to the state, while avoiding false claims to expertise in matters of economics or policy.

Actually, 2kers are much more inclined to cite Westminster Confession chapter 31.4 on the church’s duty to refrain from meddling in civil affairs, while neo-Calvinists (or those inspired by its broad claims) are inclined to tell government officials how they are godless nincompoops.

8) Both affirm that while the actual objective work of Christians often looks similar to that of unbelievers, in terms of motivation, worldview, and sometimes objective results such work is profoundly different.

Some 2kers wonder whether anyone can be as self-conscious as w-w language suggests. They even think that when a mother sees her child spill a plate of spaghetti over the new dining room carpet she is not necessarily thinking about how she can glorify God or extend Christ’s Lordship when she instructs little Sammy about the importance — for the eleventh time — of staying in his chair, sitting up, and not playing with his food. Some 2kers even think that this believing mother will act to rear her child in ways common to most female parents (as part of the created order) rather than consulting a Kuyperian handbook on child discipline and carpet cleaning. (She may wish for a neo-Calvinist cookbook that would yield a recipe for spaghetti sauce that little Sammy would eat.)

9) Both affirm the value of Christian parachurch organizations like colleges and seminaries, while at the same time preserving the liberty of Christians to participate in non-Christian organizations as well.

The irony here is that denominational colleges like Covenant and Calvin fail to meet neo-Calvinist criteria of sphere sovereignty and in so doing put their respective churches in an awkward place of having to oversee matters over which their pastors and elders have no competence (such as the arts and sciences, since the Bible does not reveal German, Shakespeare, or Austrian economics).

I apologize if these comments rain on the warm and fuzzy fog that descended on Lookout Mountain, but many points of disagreement remain to be clarified.

And one of the greatest is the very criticism that 2kers regularly endure from neo-Calvinists. Notions of sphere sovereignty, church as organism or institute, w-w, and cultural engagement are not in the Reformed confessions. In other words, they have never been confessional matters, that is, until neo-Calvinists expressed shock — simply shocked — that 2k thinking is going on here. Do 2kers ever receive praise for defending the gospel (as in justification by faith alone), the regulative principle (of Reformed worship), the importance of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, what the Second Commandment says about images of God, or maintaining a lively opposition to the errors Roman Catholicism? 2kers have taken positions on all of these pieces of Reformed faith and practice that have been central to Reformed Protestantism’s development and witness. Neo-Calvinists, in contrast, have been largely silent on these same topics. Yet, neo-Calvinists react to 2k as if its teachings were a denial of the fundamentals of the Christian religion.

That is why some 2kers (me, anyway) are not going to join any common affirmation with neo-Calvinists until Kuyperians show that they can tell the difference between Reformed Protestantism’s central and peripheral matters.

Postscript: Matt also summarized Horton’s presentation with these lines about the spirituality of the church:

[Horton] clarified that the two kingdoms doctrine does not amount to a distinction between material and immaterial things but between the present age and the age to come. For that reason he rejected versions of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church that have been used to argue that the church should not speak out against patent evils like the racial slavery of the Antebellum South.

This is the second time within the last month or so that Mike has taken a swipe at the spirituality of the church. Without getting into a lengthy discussion, I would try to correct this assertion by noting that the reason some Presbyterians did not speak out against slavery was not to preserve the spirituality of the church. The reason was that Paul and Jesus and Abraham and Moses did not speak out against slavery. Whether or not Presbyterians read the Bible correctly, they were starting with Scripture and from that followed the spirituality of the church — as in the church may not speak where the Bible is silent. It is the same idea that led and leads some Presbyterians to oppose the church’s support for the Eighteenth Amendment and the church’s ban on women serving in the military.

Why Neo-Calvinism Sounds Novel

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

I understand Dr. K. is trying to give 2k theology another try and for this Matthew Tuininga deserves much of the credit. I would have thought this an instance of “if you’re not Dutch you’re not much.” But since VanDrunen is a Dutch name — at least — and since Dr. K. has not begun to take back his 13-part take down of Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, factors other than ethnicity are at play.

But before anti-2k aggreessors lie down with 2k innocents, we need to keep our wits and check the fine print. In a recent post Dr. K., again in a mood of generosity toward Tuininga’s 2k, wondered if 2kers and neo-Calvinists might have more in common than he thought. The occasion for the piece was the recent decision of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Colorado Springs not to serve communion to Vice President Biden because of the latter’s support for abortion rights. This controversy led to considerations about when Roman Catholic politicians violate church teaching and are guilty of sin, as well as whether Roman Catholic church members are also guilty of sin for voting for candidates that don’t follow church teaching. Since Tuininga applauded Rome’s consistent opposition to an “evil so grave,” Dr. K. thought he saw an opening for further 2k and neo-Calvinist agreement.

This encouragement should be applauded because eliminating this evil is also required by “the principle of moral obedience binding on a disciple of Christ that simply cannot be compromised.” We would be troubled if our applause for the church-as-institute were permitted by our NL2K friends to be one-sided—applauding the church’s opposition toward intolerable evil, but not the church’s promotion of the good over against that evil.

Dr. K.’s point about the church as institute supporting opposition to evil seems to break down in Tuininga’s case since he is hardly the church as institute — he was merely one Christian opining about the Roman Catholic Church.

My concern is not with the Kuyperian distinction between church as institute or as organism but with the Calvinistic notion of evil. Dr. K. used the phrase “eliminating evil” or “eliminate evil” at least three times in his piece.

Eliminate? Really?

Can any good Calvinist, who takes Total Depravity seriously, ever entertain the idea that evil will be eradicated this side of the new heavens and new earth? Is not the notion of eradicating evil utopian and radical, sort of like the breathless idealism of Charles Finney’s perfectionism? For instance, in strictly legal terms, we have laws against murder. Have those laws stopped murder? So does Dr. K. actually believe that the criminalization of abortion will actually eliminate this evil?

But outside the ephemeral and fleeting world of law and the courts, does Dr. K. actually think that people who don’t murder are not guilty of murder? Has he not heard what Christ said about hate being an instance of murder? The reason evil cannot be eliminated this side of glory is that wickedness pervades the human heart — even the hearts of the regenerate.

And if Dr. K. followed the teachings of historic Calvinism (not to mention if he were a political conservative) he would never use the words “eliminate” and “evil” together. Of course, his word choice could be simply a slip of the word processor. But my suspicion is that Dr. K.’s mistake is actually an expression of the postmillennial tranformationalism that generally follows from taking “every square” inch captive. And this difference — whether the kingdom comes here and now in affairs outside the church or whether the renewal of all things awaits the return of Christ — is what keeps 2k lambs on the watch for anti-2k lions.

Spheres are Sovereign but Kingdoms Can't be Distinct?

Published on by D. G. Hart98 Comments

I have for some time wanted to offer a little response to Matthew Tuininga’s first (and good) piece on two-kingdom theology for the confessing evangelical allies. The essay is not all about me — shucks — but he does interact with several of my arguments. The reason for responding now is that Matt observed a tendency in my writing that has also recently spawned criticism of Dave VanDrunen (by none other than Cornel Venema in the book that has anti-2kers breathless in anticipation of its imminent release). The criticism that Venema and Tuininga (note all of the Dutch Reformed genes at play here) register is 2k theology’s fault of bifurcating the religious and political realms. Here’s how Matt describes a tendency in my work:

Part of the reason that Hart’s version of the two kingdoms doctrine is somewhat controversial is that at times Hart has pressed the distinction between the two kingdoms to the point of separation. Indeed, if the classic two kingdoms doctrine denoted the difference between two ages and two governments, Hart has often written about it as if it amounted to a distinction between two airtight spheres, one the sphere of faith and religion, and the other the sphere of everyday life. While it is clear that Hart views these two spheres as expressions of the two ages, by speaking of them in terms of separate spheres he ends up downplaying the overlap between the two ages. This tendency becomes all the more marked in Hart’s more polemical moments.

Venema detects a similar weakness (or is it error?) in VanDrunen (via the international Calvinists):

For Calvin, the spiritual and the civil government of God do not stand independently alongside each other. The civil government or jurisdiction, although it is not to usurp the distinct spiritual government that Christ exercises through his Spirit and Word, has the task within God’s design to secure the kind of public order and tranquility that is indispensable to the prosecution of the church’s calling. In this way, the civil jurisdiction serves the redemptive purposes of God by protecting the church and ensuring its freedom to pursue its unique calling under Christ. Furthermore, as servants of God, civil magistrates have the task of ensuring that both tables of the law – the first table dealing with the service and worship of God, the second table addressing the mutual service of all human beings to each other – are honored and obeyed. Although the civil magistrate is not authorized to usurp the distinctive prerogatives of the spiritual kingdom, namely, the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word in renewing human life in free obedience to God’s law, it does serve to advance the redemptive purpose of the spiritual kingdom by requiring an outward conformity to the requirements of God’s moral law.

In case I am missing something, both objections apparently stem from the neo-Calvinist aversion to dualism. As one recent graduate of a neo-Calvinist college summarized the problem of dualism:

“Dualism” is an incredibly dirty word. Why? For two reasons: A) Dooyeweerd’s non-dualist and non-monistic, non-reductionistic philosophy of modal spheres, B) Kuyper’s insistence that all things be reclaimed under the Lordship of Christ, which means there is no such thing as a dualism between “sacred” and “secular.” All spheres of life should be reclaimed under the dominion of Jesus Christ.

I for one continue to be stupefied by the reflexive dismissal of dualism since distinctions between the physical and spiritual, secular and sacred, temporal and eternal appear everywhere in the Christian religion, not to mention the history of the West. Jesus himself seemed to justify some kind of differentiation between sacred and secular matters when he spoke about what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar. He did not immediately qualify himself by saying “of course, everything belongs to God,” but let his assertion dangle. Neo-Calvinists, of course, won’t, suggesting an apparent discomfort with the very words of Christ.

Then there is the apostle Paul and that two-age construction which distinguishes between the eternal and the temporal (secular) so much so that he could say “to die is gain.” Paul also wrote: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor 4:17-18 ESV) If Paul affirms dualism, it’s okay but if 2kers do then it’s bad? Or maybe neo-Calvinists don’t read Paul outside those cosmic “all things” passages.

And then there is the classic distinction between the earthly and the spiritual in the Belgic Confession:

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. (Art. 35)

The distinction between things secular and sacred is everywhere in the history of the West, even if its usage does not always match. Augustine had his two cities, Gelasius his two swords, and Christendom its pope and emperor. Some kind of dualism is writ large in the Christian tradition. Neo-Calvinists may not like it but that’s too bad.

But what makes this suspicion of 2k all the more annoying is that the language employed to describe the neo-Calvinist idea of sphere sovereignty places church and state and family in separate realms with their own — get this — sovereignty. The two kingdoms can’t be distinct but need to bleed into each other lest dualism surface. But the spheres can be as distinct as Holland, Michigan and Pella, Iowa.

In the introduction to Kingdoms Apart, the book that will be the kinder, gentler version of John Frame’s Kuyper warrior-children manifesto, describes sphere sovereignty this way: “God has created distinct social, economic, cultural, and political spheres that have their own unique functions. . . (xxvi)” Then follows a quote that describes sphere sovereignty as “each sphere possess[ing] its own authority within itself.” Shazam! That’s a lot of distinct authority. The introduction goes on, “state, church, business, family, and academic institutions . . . ‘have the liberty to function on their own according to the divine ordinances God has established for each one.” (xxvi-xxvii) Because neo-Calvinists say that these sovereign, liberated, and autonomous spheres receive authority from God, I guess the distinctions are somehow permissible. But when have 2kers ever said that the temporal kingdom is independent from God? Straw man comes to mind. But divine sovereignty notwithstanding (never thought I’d write that) it is remarkable that sphere sovereigntists can divide the world up into such tidy spheres but won’t give 2kers the same freedom. And, by the way, the 2kers claims go much deeper than late nineteenth-century Netherlands.

What makes 2k superior to sphere sovereignty is that 2kers are really willing to live with distinctions. For sphere sovereigntists the distinctions are only skin deep. The spheres exists, but they are all under God, so religion needs to inform all the spheres thus raising important questions about which members of which spheres are introducing religion into a sphere since religion won’t do it by itself. Do I bring religion to bear on politics as an elder, husband, historian or citizen? In other words, does my functional identity change when I go from one sphere into another? It may, especially Scripture’s claims on me as citizen are thin compared to its teaching about overseeing the flock. But I don’t hear neo-Calvinists talking about these bugs in their system. Maybe it’s because they are too busy looking at the bugs in the paleo-Calvinist’s eye.

To illustrate how complicated religion’s relationship is to the various spheres, I appeal to a review I wrote for Ordained Servant:

Life in modern society is tough. In any given week, an average American may have to decide which is the best and prettiest paint for the exterior of his house, what are the best and most affordable tires to put on his car, whether to replace a deep filling with another filling or with a crown, whether to diversify the investments in his retirement portfolio, and which candidate from the Republican Party is the best to run against a Democratic incumbent in the upcoming presidential election. No single American has sufficient knowledge to make all of these decisions simply on the basis of his own learning and reading. In addition to confronting these dilemmas, this person likely has a full-time job that occupies much of his time, and a wife and children that take up most of his spare time—not to mention incredibly difficult choices about bad influences on his son at school, whether his daughter should play field hockey, and consulting with his wife about his mother-in-law’s declining health and the best arrangements for her well being. If he is a Christian with responsibilities at church, he may need to wade through files of applications for a pulpit search committee, or consult with architects and engineers about plans to expand the church’s parking lot.

Complicating further this average American’s decisions are the accompanying choices to be made over which advice to follow. For in addition to life’s complicated questions are a bevy of advisors, available on the radio and television, folks such as Oprah, Rush Limbaugh, and Dave Ramsey—people who seem to have a lot of insight into life’s difficulties. But which of these advisors to heed raises an additional layer of decisions.

Throw the Lordship of Christ and biblical interpretation into these various decisions and related evaluations and you have the potential for nervous breakdown (maybe that’s what happened to Abraham Kuyper). For negotiating the regular world — the temporal kingdom, that is — I’ll take 2k any day. Neo-Calvinism leaves me with sphere schizophrenia.

Jihad If You Do, Holy War If You Don't

Published on by D. G. Hart39 Comments

I continue to scratch my head over Christian reactions to Islam. Granted, I would not be so itchy had a three-week journey in Turkey not raised a host of questions through which I am still sorting. Even so, the Christian (and especially neo-Calvinist inspired) criticisms of Muslims for rejecting secularity are richly ironic.

Take, for instance, this plug for the new Trinity Institute to be led by theonomists-turned-Federal Visionaries, James Jordan and Peter Leithart, which talks about the all encompassing claims of Christianity, even on those areas of life considered by secularists to be not religious but secular (i.e., temporal):

When I first came to Japan in 1981, I was a premillennial dispensationalist struggling to plant a church in a pagan culture. Jordan’s The Law of the Covenant, which I read in 1984, showed me how the Bible could and must be read to apply to cultural issues today. Jordan’s various writings on Biblical symbolism, especially Through New Eyes fundamentally changed the way I read and taught the Bible. Our local church here now practices paedobaptism and paedocommunion, employs a liturgy we learned from Jeff Meyers, Jordan, and Leithart, and relies extensively on the voluminous writings of Jordan and Leithart in the research institute that supports our Christian education program. Faithfulness to the Scriptures and love for the Triune God exude from their wide ranging works that address questions and problems in Biblical exegesis, theology, liturgy, history, politics, philosophy, literature, music, and even popular entertainment. When young pastors ask me for book recommendations, I tell them to buy and read everything they can get by Jordan and Leithart.

Note that “faithfulness to Scriptures” involves politics, the arts and sciences, and movies. Note as well that Leithart himself has defended the political theology of Constantine precisely because it is a worthy alternative to secularity.

So what makes Muslims different aside from a different sacred text?

But the irony is all the more apparent in Bill Evans’ recent post about Islam. I won’t go into all of Evans’ points but a couple of paragraphs stand out. The first is the standard line about Islam lacking any room for secularity, despite the examples of Turkey and Dearborn, Michigan:

Islam is a religio-cultural-political package. There is no ultimate distinction in Islam between the sacred and the secular, and thus none between mosque and state. All of life is understood as a matter of submission to Allah. For this reason, while there has sometimes been religious toleration under Islamic governments, there can be no real religious pluralism in the practical political sense of the term. That is to say, adherents of other religions will not be viewed as equal members of society in a context governed by Islamic principles.

Don’t lots of neo-Calvinists also say this about Christianity? Substitute God for Allah and you have a fairly close resemblance, though neo-Calvinists, at least in their Dutch iteration, were never able to rid the Netherlands of the incredible toleration that the nation practiced.

Later in his piece, Evans invokes Richard John Neuhaus’ brief against a Naked Public Scqure, or an overly narrow conception of secularity:

Western secular liberal democracy no longer takes the question of religious truth seriously. In fact, it largely lacks even the vocabulary to discuss religious truth claims, and this places it at a distinct disadvantage when deals with groups for whom such truth claims are central. We in the West are the heirs of the post-Enlightenment fact/value dichotomy—on the one hand there are empirical, scientific facts; on the other hand there are values which cannot be rationally confirmed. Such values are matters of opinion, and religious beliefs and convictions are, on this reading of things, merely values. Along with this comes the inevitable privatization of religion. Religious belief is simply a matter of personal opinion that is acceptable only so long as it remains private and unobtrusive.

The public square, as the late Richard John Neuhaus aptly observed, has thus become “naked” or stripped of religious expression. When Barack Obama claims that Muslims will have a different opinion of America because he “understands their point of view,” Muslims know full well that he is not taking them as believers or their truth claims seriously, and they are not impressed. But we really cannot expect a Western secularist like Obama to respond in any other way, and hence the persistent disconnect between Islam and the West.

This may be a plausible construction of secular society, though if Christ himself introduced the notion when he distinguished between what is Caesar’s and God’s, Christians may actually embrace secularity as part and parcel of their religion. But if Evans is right about secular society in the West, can he really blame Muslims for objecting to secularism?

If Christians are going to portray the struggle between Islam and the West as a clash of civilizations, and then take shots at the West for abandoning Christianity, they will need to give a fuller account of the differences between Islam and Christianity on secular politics. Without that, they sound a tad whiney and a whole lot inconsistent.

Pia Desideria

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

That title, the famous expression of Jacob Spener, the so-called father of pietism, came to mind when I read Richard Doster’s article at ByFaith, “Politics: Why Christians Must Be Involved.” (Thanks to Neoz for the link.) The reminder owes not so much to the contents of Spener’s book (though the connections between pietism and neo-Calvinism are striking — Christianity must make a visible difference on daily life). Instead, title itself, which has something to do with pious desires (or wishful thinking), is indicative of the tone of Doster’s article:

Christians, when rightly informed and motivated, change the character of political debate. They bring the moral standards of God’s kingdom into the civic realm and thereby become agents of His common grace — of His provision for those who believe as well as those who don’t.

“Forgiveness of sins is the central message of the gospel,” says theologian Wayne Grudem. “That’s the only way people’s hearts are truly transformed.” But that’s the opening of a fuller gospel story. The whole gospel, Grudem believes, includes a transformation. God’s grace changes people, and as a result they change everything around them. Families are renewed. Schools are rejuvenated. Businesses reorient their mission and purpose. What’s more, the gospel of Christ, because it changes hearts, changes the course of civil government.

When and where has this ever happened?

I don’t like to pull the expertise card, but I do know a little bit about the history of Protestantism and the record is never as stellar as the whoopers claim. Some good things happened here and there. But some good things happen in my home from time to time. Does that mean that Christianity has the wonder-working powers that Doster claims? And what about the times after the good times? What about America after Witherspoon, England after Wilberforce, Scotland after Chalmers, the Netherlands after Kuyper (not to mention Ephesus after Paul)?

At some point, dreamy accounts like this are going to need to show their homework. Until then, critics of the transformationalists will counter with articles like, “Knowledge: Why Christians Must be Informed.”

Where's the Boeuf?

Published on by D. G. Hart253 Comments

Via Justin Taylor comes Mark Dever’s top-ten list on the factors that spawned the New Calvinist phenomenon (given Tim Keller’s precise definitions, I’m loathe to describe the young and restless as a movement). Here’s the list (each one receives a separate post at Dever’s blog):

1. Charles H. Spurgeon
2. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
3. The Banner of Truth Trust
4. Evangelism Explosion
5. The inerrancy controversy
6. Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)
7. J. I. Packer
8. John MacArthur and R. C. Sproul
9. John Piper
10. The rise of secularism and decline of Christian nominalism

Before offering an OldLife perspective, it is worth noting that Dever buries his lead by ranking John Piper at number nine. My impression, after reading Collin Hansen’s book, is that Piper and Desiring God (DG, you know, not always about me) is largely responsible for turning Millenials into Jonathan-Edwards-is-my-homeboy T-shirt wearing evangelicals. Dever agrees even if number nine doesn’t reflect the agreement:

When all those seminarians and ministers in their 20’s stood up at Together for the Gospel in April of 2006, if I couldn’t give a 10-part answer, but if I had to give a 2-word human explanation for their presence there, I know what two words I would utter: “John Piper.”

What is curious about this list, with all due respect (going Hollywood alert) to my friend, Mark Dever, is how culturally and historically thin it is. Granted, as an OPC elder, I am surprised that the PCA (nos. 4 and 6) gets more credit than my own communion and its influential scholars such as Machen, Van Til, Young, Murray, Stonehouse, Kline, VanDrunen, Fesko, and even — dare we say — Trueman.

But denominational bragging rights aside, the list is decidedly Anglo-centric and recent. Nothing on the list suggests the sixteenth-century origins of Reformed Protestantism in Zurich and Geneva, nor the huge contribution that French-speaking Protestants made in the initial phases of Calvinism (Calvin, after all, was not English). Nor does this list acknowledge the remarkable nature of the Dutch Reformation, both in its hiccups and fits during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in its modern phase guided and inspired by Abraham Kuyper. And not to be discounted is the influence of Scottish Presbyterianism (though Banner of Truth is in Edinburgh) again in the initial phases of reformation, a presence at the Westminster Assembly, and the important struggles of the nineteenth century in which Thomas Chalmers figured so prominently. This does not begin to admit the important influences on American Calvinism by immigrants from these various communions who settled in North America and established denominations and schools to propagate the Reformed faith. Princeton Seminary would surely be high on such a list, as would its step-child, Westminster. So too would be the Dutch-American contribution from western Michigan.

All of this raises a question about how well the New Calvinism represents the Old Calvinism. Does it stand in continuity or is it really new? And if new, how much might it need to learn from the old, especially if wearing the Calvinist badge? If most of your sources of influence and inspiration come from the twentieth century when a theological tradition is four hundred years older, and if it draws largely on the English variety of experimental Calvinism without listening to French, German, Dutch, Scottish, and Swiss voices, you may be guilty of selling a Wendy’s hamburger when you could be serving Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon.