Category: spirituality of the church

I Believe the Bible Requires Me to Avoid Movies, and If You Go See a Movie You Don’t Believe the Bible – Huh?

Published on by D. G. Hart284 Comments


I learned 2k from J. Gresham Machen. If 2k critics were to spend a little time with the chief founder of Westminster Seminary they might be less alarmed. They might also see in the mirror staring back at them the liberal Protestants who tried Machen for breaking his ordination vows.

Here is where 2k critics might see some resemblance between themselves and liberals (you can also throw in fundamentalists for good measure but you need to fight alarm with alarm). In 1926 Machen was up for promotion at Princeton Seminary to become the professor of apologetics and ethics. General Assembly needed to approve this promotion because Princeton was (and still is) an agency of the Assembly. At the gathering of 1926 Machen’s foes reported that he had voted against a motion in his presbytery (New Brunswick – yes, the one established for the Tennents and other “white hot” Presbyterians) that called for the church to support the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act – that is, Prohibition. Mind you, Machen believed drunkenness to be sin and he believed the church had a duty to call people to repent of such sins.

But that wasn’t good enough. Because he did not support the 18th Amendment, his foes believed he was antinomian. And an antinomian should never be allowed to teach ethics, which has historically always been part of the apologetics division at Princeton and Westminster.

So the Assembly denied Machen his promotion.

Critics of 2k do the same when they say:

1) We are antinomian. Actually, we believe in the law, and may actually do a better job upholding the First Table than those 2k critics who don’t have an evening service and use praise songs in their morning assemblies.

2) We favor abortion. Actually, we oppose the shedding of innocent life. But some of us may not feel called to march at abortion clinics or to engage in political discussions from the pulpit. (Some say we don’t oppose it earnestly enough, but those people don’t actually know us to be able to see how earnest we are.)

3) We favor gay marriage. Actually, 2k advocates believe homosexuality is sin and homosexual sex is not the kind of intimacy to be practiced in marriage. But again, following the example of Machen, favoring an amendment to the Constitution is not the same as regarding homosexuality a sin.

4) We don’t believe in Christian education. Actually, we do. But we don’t believe that only one form of delivery (or two) is lawful. We believe that parents should make that call under the oversight of elders who have no jurisdiction to declare that certain kinds of schools are unlawful (because the Bible doesn’t say so). We also have reservations about Christian interpretations of biology, Shakespeare, and U.S. history. Much of the time, these “Christian” interpretations are as far fetched as appeals to Scripture for prohibiting beer.

5) We take Christian liberty too far. Actually, we don’t. As I have indicated, I don’t shop at chain stores partly because of the 8th commandment, which tells me (along with help from Wendell Berry) that the love of neighbor requires me as much as possible to support local businesses owned by my real neighbors, not by distant corporations. Can I require members of the church where I am an elder to follow my practices? After all, I believe Scripture calls me to this form of economic behavior. Isn’t Scripture binding on all Christians? Well, it is, but Scripture also isn’t air tight about the businesses we patronize. I may suggest the value of shopping locally, and how this seems to encourage love of neighbor. But it’s my application of Scripture and my wife’s cross to bear (especially when traveling); it’s not warrant for declaring other Christians who shop at Walmart to be in sin.

6) We deny the Lordship of Christ. Actually, we affirm it and recognize it everywhere, all the time. We so believe in the Lordship of Christ that we think it exists even when bad rulers occupy office, when non-Christian scientists denounce Christianity, or when evangelicals go to see a Woody Allen movie. Who among us could unseat Christ’s sovereign rule?

7) We deny the authority of the Bible. Actually, we don’t. All the 2k advocates I know believe that Scripture is infallible, inerrant, and the only rule for faith and life. What sometimes gives us the creeps is the identification of God’s will with a person’s interpretation of Scripture. History has shown that people make mistakes when interpreting the Bible. 2kers cannot be forced to submit to faulty interpretations of the Bible. After all, 2k appeals to Scripture for its truthfulness and that appeal doesn’t seem to convince the Brothers Bayly or Rabbi Bret’s of the world. According to their logic, they don’t believe the Bible because they disagree with my interpretation of it.

As I say, huh?

Where's Waldo Wednesday: Union and Two Kingdoms Together

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments


Now this is union-with-Christ piety that is more like Calvin than Kuyper:

Grant Almighty God, that as thou deignest so far to condescend as to sustain the care of this life, and to supply us with whatever is needful for our pilgrmiage, — O grant that we may learn also to rely on thee and so trust to thy blessing as to abstain not only from all plunder and all other evil deeds, but also from every unlawful coveting; and to continue in thy fear, and so to learn also to bear our poverty on the earth, that being content with those spiritual riches, which thou offerest to us in thy gospel, and of which thou makest us now partakers, we may ever cheerfully aspire after that fullness of all blessings, which we shall enjoy when at length we shall reach the celestial kingdom and be perfectly united to thee through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer of John Calvin from lectures on Habakkuk)

And for good reason.

In fact, I continue to scratch my head that the leading proponents of union are not openly on the side of the spirituality of the church and opposed to the this-worldly activism of neo-Calvinists.

Two-Kingdom Tuesday: The Roman Catholic Version

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

The contemporary vocal critics of modern 2k often remark that everyone is 2k, meaning that it is wrong for modern 2k advocates to paint them as 1k. The Roman Catholic expression of 2k doctrine qualifies that claim in important ways. First, it suggests that not everyone is 2k since the Eastern Church allowed itself to be absorbed by the state in the form of Caesaropapism. Second, it reveals that Roman Catholics also believe in the two-kingdoms, especially the idea that the church is and should be free from the state. (Rome would apparently not favor the language of the original Westminster Confession which gives the magistrate power to ensure that church counsels follow God’s mind.) In which case, if part of the point of the 2k doctrine is to separate the church and the state, and the papacy was an important institution for introducing and preserving that autonomy in the West, then the critics of modern 2k may want to explain how their 2k avoids the problems pointed out in the following (i.e., a Leviathan state) without also embracing the papacy. Of course, the other alternatives are Constantine or King David, but not if you want to be 2k along with everyone.

. . . the Church, always maturing as she groped for a just balance in her relations with the state for eight hundred years, finally broke in two, each part exhibiting a possible alternative solution to the problem. In the Eastern half of the Christian empire, in the new Rome founded by Constantine, divided from the West by her inheritance of Hellenistic culture and continuing the division of the empire into two blocks existing from the time of Diocletian to that of Theodosius, the Church succumbed to the States. Or would it be more exact to say that the state succumbed to the Church? . . . The other alternative has had even a greater historical role to play. In the Latin West, the Church, under the guidance of the Pope and her bishops, vindicated her freedom before the state. In this she was helped by a variety of external developments. Not the least of these is the fact that in the West, the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century, and the papacy remained the only rock of cultural unity among the states that rose in the aftermath of the invasions. It is often said that the freedom of the Western Church was built only on the ruins of the civil power; but the Church had in fact defended her freedom against the Emperor Constantius and later against Byzantine despotism, which weighted heavily on Rome and the West from the sixth to the eighth century. What favored the Western Church’s victorious struggle for her freedom was, above all, the fact that in Latin culture the sense of human freedom, especially religious freedom, had deeper roots than in the East. . . . But the most important internal resource from which the Western Church drew renewed strength in her struggle for freedom was the guiding role of the papacy, growing increasingly conscious of the rights granted to it by Christ as it sought to respond to the needs of a Church basically solid but ever struggling even in a Christian empire. It is a fact grasped not only by faith but also seen in history that all the churches who wish to withdraw from the unity of the Church dogmatically first of all seek refuge with the state but soon are absorbed by the state and fall with it. (Hugo Rahner, Church and State in Early Christianity [1962], pp. xiv-xvi)

George Washington: Deistic Christian

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Joe Carter at First Things‘ blog has a helpful summary of one historian’s criteria for evaluating the faith of the United State’s founding statesmen. David Holmes is the author of The Faiths of the Founders and he offers four categories for determining whether a politician was a Deist, an orthodox Christian, or something in between. They are:

1. Examine the actions of the founding father in the area of religion (e.g., Did they attend church regularly?).

2. Examine the participation of the founding father in a church’s ordinances or sacraments (e.g., Did they have their children baptized? Did they take Holy Communion?).

3. Comparison of inactivity versus activity in regards to religious involvement.

4. Examine the religious language used by the founding father.

What is particularly attractive about these criteria is that the church functions as an important measure. Taking affirmations of various kinds, or copious amounts of sincerity, though appealing to many evangelicals who have a low estimate of the visible church, will not cut it. Instead Holmes is looking for religious behavior that conforms to the teachings and practices of a Christian communion.

Applying these criteria to George Washington, Holmes finds:

1) Although he was raised in the Anglican Church, Washington was never confirmed.

2) Washington appears to have consistently refused to take Holy Communion, the principle means by which, as Holmes notes, “Anglicans displayed a commitment to Jesus Christ.”

3) Washington was active in the Episcopal Church, serving as both a vestryman and churchwarden. He attended services with some regularity (about once a month). And

4) Washington consistently used Deistic language in reference to God. Although he often used such terms as “the Deity” and “the Supreme Being” in his correspondence he only uses the name Jesus Christ once (in a letter to an Indian tribe)

Holmes also provides a Christian scorecard for the founding generation of American magistrates:

Non-Christian Deists: Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen.

Deistic Christians/Unitarians: Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe.

Orthodox Christians: Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Jay, Elias Boudinot, John Witherspoon.

This may be upsetting to some, but it sure looks like an astute tool of analysis and a sensible interpretation of the Founding Fathers.

Forensic Friday: Why It Goes with Two-Kingdom Tuesday

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

Our mid-western correspondent alerted me to a piece over at American Vision which is critical of the recent resurgence of Calvinism — as in Young, Restless, and Reformed — for regarding personal salvation as the essence of Calvinism. For the author, TULIP is well and good. It affirms God’s sovereignty. But it hardly covers what it means to be Reformed.

. . . TULIP is not the essence of the Reformed theology. Of course, the doctrines of Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints are an important starting step to the immense body of theological truths called “Reformed theology.” It follows directly from the greater concept of the Sovereignty of God. It correctly describes the fallen state of man and the work of God in saving the individual. When we look up to God to give thanks for what He has done for us personally, we think “TULIP,” even if we never knew the term or never understood it.

To summarize, TULIP is the acronym for the “mechanism” of our personal salvation. And that’s it. Nothing more than our personal salvation. But Reformed theology encompasses immeasurably more than just personal salvation. And when a church makes TULIP the summa of its theology, that church is not Reformed. Yes, it has taken the first step to becoming Reformed, but it is still far from the goal.

So if the doctrines of grace are just a start then where does the Reformed faith lead?

It was not churches full of believers who earnestly study theology only to revel in their personal salvation. In fact, with two exceptions – Scotland and Hungary – the early Reformers didn’t leave us any lasting churches at all. It was not intellectualized sermons of elaborate psychological verbiage that pick on every feeling and every emotion a believer may have. It was not courageous sermons on irrelevant topics of peripheral importance to our age and culture. And it certainly wasn’t a belief in a God who is only sovereign to save individuals, but nothing else.

Their most lasting legacy was on the cultivation of societies, whole cultures based on the practical applications of Reformed theology, from top to bottom. Geneva, Strasbourg, Holland, England, Scotland, Hungary, the Huguenot communities in France and later in North and South Carolina, the Oranje-Vrystaat and Transvaal. Societies that became light to the world, an embodiment of Christ’s liberty and justice for all. The Reformed believers of earlier centuries built a civilization that influenced the world permanently. They changed the world not by the selfishness of the focus on salvation but by the obedience of teaching the nations and building the Kingdom of God.

To counter this Whiggish and transformational view of Reformed Protestantism, one could seemingly emphasize a number of truths. But the one that seems to make the biggest dent is justification by faith alone, where personal salvation is the point of Christ’s saving work, and where the kingdom comes not through civil kingdoms or magistrates but where believers confess and worship Christ as Lord and savior.

On the other hand, a view of salvation that looks for the proximity of faith and good works, and sees personal transformation as a barometer of Christ’s work will often be hamfisted in opposing transformationalism. It’s as if the Reformed faith is chopped liver for serving up an alien righteousness when what we really need for the kingdom to exist and thrive is a personal and active righteousness.

Anyway, arguments like American Vision’s are part of the reason for countering with justification-priority.

Tim Bayly Is Doing His Gilbert Tennent Impersonation Again

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

. . . and along the way denies the teaching and authority of Peter and Paul.

That is, if you use the logic that Tim does in his drive-by post (comments are closed), then you may reach the conclusion that he (and by implication, his brother, David) consider the apostles (except for Matthew) to be unworthy of contemporary Christians’ obedience. Here’s the exact reasoning:

If an officer of Christ’s Church today is not known, as all the Christians were known in the ancient Roman Empire, for taking up the cause of the children being slaughtered, loving the little ones as their Master does, he merits no reading, no listening, no following as a teacher of the church or shepherd of souls.

Tim’s pleasant little introduction to this deduction was another piece of generic slander against two-kingdom and spirituality of the church theology.

Reformed men who promote that hatred of God legislated by the judiciary these past fifty years or so, justifying their cuddly relationships with evil men under the rubric of “two kingdom theology” and “the spirituality of the church,” are unconcerned about the injustice, oppression, and bloodshed of innocents that has long been the foundation of our civil compact here in these United States. They simply don’t give a rip

It’s self evident on any terms a civilized man accepts for the foundation of common law that sending wives, sisters, and mothers off to fight our enemies is evil, but you’ll look in vain for the spirituality of the church men to address the civil magistrate condemning this evil. It’s self evident on any terms a civilized man accepts for the foundation of common law that ripping unborn babies apart in their mothers’ wombs for money, no less is an evil as great as the world has ever known, but you’ll look in vain for the two kingdom men to write about it on their blogs, speak against it in the public square, preach against it in their pulpits, or show up at the killing place to lift a finger to stop it..

Strong stuff. Tim claims that this is the “entire argument,” but he goes on to throw in comparisons with the Third Reich, I guess, just to throw caution to the wind.

Apparently, the Baylys have encyclopedic knowledge of the writings and thoughts of all 2k pastors. I’d have thought this was the kind of comprehension reserved for God. But I guess they have one of those worldviews.

Or maybe they are so right and righteous that they don’t need to be careful with the facts. Have they followed Tennent in donning a the attire and following the diet of John the Baptist?

But one fact they should consider is that the only mention of the slaughter of babies in the New Testament comes in Matthew. I am open to correction since my Bible knowledge could be better. Still, I don’t recall Paul or Peter addressing the slaughter of innocents or abortion in their epistles, let alone women serving as soldiers.

It is also worth mentioning that in the Roman Empire, slavery existed, as did human sacrifice, not to mention infanticide. And yet, the very same apostles who cautioned against the dangers of self-righteousness, also instructed Christians to be subject to the imperial authorities.

So, if the Baylys’ logic holds, since Peter and Paul were not known for condemning the evils the Baylys list, then Christians should pay no heed to the New Testament epistles (for starters). Apparently, Peter and Paul did not give a rip the way Tim and David rip.

Of course, there is a solution to this predicament. It is the teaching of 2k and the spirituality of the church. If the Bible commands something, or if it forbids it, then Christians must follow. If the Bible doesn’t speak to a matter, then Christians have liberty. This is of the essence of sola scriptura and the formal principle of the Reformation. The Roman Church, like the Baylys, tried to bind consciences with their own extra-biblical requirements. In the Baylys’ case, we must not only refrain from certain actions but we must publicly oppose it the way Baylys do – otherwise, you’re not a true minister they way they are. To this logic, the Reformers said that only the Bible should be heeded in matters of conscience because only Christ is Lord of conscience. When it comes to public life, the only real guidance to Christians is to submit to the ordained powers.

So the Baylys fundamentally misunderstand a basic building block of the Reformed faith and are grossly uncharitable in displaying their ignorance.

Of course, they are not wrong to oppose the slaughter of innocents or even women serving in the military. They may do that and likely have plenty of good reasons from the created order and even the sixth commandment (in the case of abortion). They stray when they beat their breast and bray that only those ministers are worthy of hearing are the ones like the Baylys. If they are right about their own example and reasoning, then the apostles – and even Jesus himself – stand condemned.

Strong stuff, indeed.

Two Kingdom Tuesday On Where's Waldo Wednesday

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

I have encountered what seems to me a strange notion — in several places where Federal Vision Worldviewism has left its mark — that the differences between Reformed and Anglicans are not that great, and that historically speaking it is wrong to distinguish them. Along with this perspective usually comes great regard for Richard Hooker as providing a proper critique of the Puritans’ ecclesiology and a correction to Calvin’s excesses.

But when you consdier the way the Dutch Reformed and the English Anglicans (I know it’s redundant but you need a place and a tradition and the English made the mistake of confusing the two) related in colonial New Netherland (later New York), you may understand why the Reformed churches were not wild about the English or the way they ran their church. The following is an excerpt that should point Reformed Christians away from the Canterbury Trail (high church Calvinism doesn’t need a bishop):

Dutch Calvinists had brought this notion with them to the New World. Writing in 1628, Dominie Jonas Michaelius, the first clergyman in New Netherland, conceded that although “political and ecclesiastical persons can greatly assist each other, nevertheless the matters and offices belinging together must not be mixed but kept separate, in order to prevent all confusion and disorder.” Indeed, quite often throughout the New Netherland period the clergy and the West India Company directors-general found themselves at odds; the most notorious such conflict occurred between Domine Everardus Bogardus and Director-General Willem Kieft, who battled each other so fiercely that they sailed together back to Holland for arbitration only to be shipwrecked and perish off the coast of Wales.

This adversarial relationship of church and state was foreign to Restoration Englishmen, however. Building on the writings of Thomas Erastus, a sixteenth-century political theorist, Anglicans believed that the church should be subject to the powers of the state. Richard Hooker, apologist for the Church of England, wrote that “there is not any restraint or limitation of matter for regal authority and power to be conversant in, but of religion whole, and of whatsoever cause thereto appertaineth, kings may lawfully have charge, they lawfully may therein exercise dominion, and use the temporal sword.” (Randall Balmer, A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Religion and English Culture in the Middle Colonies, pp. 20-21)

It does seem that most of the Reformed leaning folks today who advocate that magistrates get the true religion and enforce it (good and hard) are largely Erastian, while the 2k position is deeply rooted in those Reformed theologians and pastors that were always opposing Erastus and the magistrates who appealed to him. I guess another option is out there. Theonomy.

Now He's Channeling Glen

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

Not Glen Beck but Uncle Glen, that is.

Carl Trueman is on a roll and a recent post gives his objections to celebrity pastors. A friend told Trueman about an inquirer who came to him with a doctrinal question because the inquirer’s own pastor was too busy on the speaking circuit to meet with his congregant.

To which Trueman responds:

What was interesting was that this person was a member at one of the flagship Reformed evangelical churches in the US where the pastor is seen as one of the great hopes for the spread of gospel churches in the post-Christian world. In fact, this church member had actually tried to speak to this pastor about the issue, but had not been able to get an appointment. The church leader was simply too busy, with countless external demands on his time; and now, presumably protected by a praetorian guard of personal assistants and associate pastors, he was essentially as unavailable to the masses in his large congregation as the average rock star is to the punters who buy his concert tickets. . . .

I am immensely grateful that I have only ever held membership in churches of a size where the pastor has always been accessible and available. Indeed, my pastors have always even known my name, my wife’s name, my kids’ names, and even what sports they play (this latter may seem trivial but it has been peculiarly important to me: my kids may not always enjoy going to church; but they have never doubted that the pastor actually cares for them; and that is something for which I am more grateful than I can articulate). Indeed, each of my pastors has cared about his people, not as a concept or a good idea or as an indeterminate mass, but as real, particular people with names and histories and strengths and weaknesses; and this surely reflects the character and love of God who, after, calls his sheep by name and cares for us all as individuals. If I gave you the names of said pastors, few reading this post would ever have heard of them: they have written no books; they have never pulled in huge crowds; and they have never spoken at megaconferences. But they have always been there when even the humblest church member has called out for advice, counsel or even help with bailing out a flooded basement.

This sounds a lot like the point that avuncular Glen made in the pages of New Horizons to his nephew James:

The problem with your attraction to Pastor Strong’s church is that you may be succumbing to unhealthy standards for a pastor. Yes, this man does much of what a minister is supposed to do, and he does it in a much more visible way than most. He studies Scripture, expounds and applies it, leads worship, and apparently assumes his responsibilities as a presbyter both in his session and in his presbytery. I say “apparently” because someone who travels the way he does, especially when he is in book-promotion mode, is not going to be available for some regularly appointed session and presbytery meetings, not to mention any committees on which he might serve. He is also an effective speaker, and I have heard a number of recordings that attest to his powers of delivery (though I am not as sure that he preaches as much as he “gives a talk”).

As I say, Pastor Strong does the things that pastors are supposed to do in a very visible or public way. This means that he is ministering the word to a wider audience than that of his congregation. But when folks read his books or listen to his online sermons, Strong is not acting in his capacity as a minister because he has no relationship to the reader or listener. They are not members of the congregation that called him. They did not take vows to submit to him in the Lord, and he has not made promises ratified by real people to minister the word faithfully to anyone who picks up his book in a bookstore. In other words, he has no personal, and therefore no pastoral, relationship to remote listeners and readers.

Granted, you say you would like to become a member of his congregation, and this would put you in a real relationship to Strong. But then comes the flip side of the problem I have just described. How can a man who is as busy as he is have time for a personal relationship with his congregants? What generally happens in situations like Strong’s is that he is at the top of a large pastoral staff in which the pastors without star power have the day-to-day responsibilities of shepherding the flock. At least that accounts for the pastoral oversight that Christians need. I can well imagine the disappointment you will experience if you move to Boston only to discover that you had more access to Strong during his visit to Rutherford than you do in the place where you worship.

Think of it another way. Have you ever heard of a celebrity dad? Well, of course, there are dads who are celebrities because of their work outside the home (Brad Pitt might qualify). But do you know any dads who are celebrities because of their activities as a father and husband? Bill Cosby’s character on his hit television show comes to mind, but that still isn’t the real thing. We do not know what Bill Cosby was like as a father because most of the duties of fathers are hidden from the public eye—taking out the trash, cleaning up after a child’s upset stomach, praying over the family meals. These are not tasks that create celebrity because they are unexceptional and do not attract publicity.

Some might argue that I am simply setting into motion a set of expectations that tolerates average or even mediocre men in the ministry—those without the ability to attract large audiences. Perhaps so, since I believe what Paul writes about God using earthen vessels to accomplish his purposes. The skills of the pastor are not what make his ministry effective; rather, it is the power of God that saves. My point, though, is not to deny the value of excellence. It is rather to underscore the quiet and routine ways in which the pastoral ministry transpires. Pastoral ministry is not flashy, but we need it in the same way that we need fathers and mothers to be in the home, not on speaking tours about parenthood.

It is good to know that Westminster Seminary has someone who understands the personal and routine nature of the pastoral ministry. Back in the day when I was at WTS, a certain transforming pastor in a large metropolis had a reputation at the seminary so large that he not only walked on water but hovered over it. Now, perhaps, sanity about the work of a pastor is reemerging at Machen’s seminary.

Two Kingdom Tuesday: No Confusion, No Massacre

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

August 24 is the anniversary of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a time when in 1572 the hostilities between Roman Catholics and Huguenots reached historic proportions. Thousands of Protestants lost their lives in a string of anti-Reformed riots, aimed a eliminating the “heretics.” According to Philip Benedict, the Massacre marked a turning point in the French Reformation. After the incident, “the once buoyant Huguenot minorities that had taken control of cities like Lyon, Rouen, and Orleans in 1562 amounted to at most a few hundred families. Many of the smaller, more isolated Reformed churches had been extinguished” (146).

One of the casualties of the Massacre was Gaspard de Coligny, a military leader by most accounts of remarkable ability and courage. During Henry II’s reign, Coligny was a friend and close ally of the king. Once Coligny converted to Protestantism, he lost such access but did emerge as a patron and strategist for the Reformed cause. He even supported the establishment in 1557, of an ill-fated French colony in Brazil, complete with ministers supplied by the Company of Pastors in Geneva. On August 24, 1572 Coligny lost his life to an assassin’s sword. His death was the opening act in the subsequent massacre of Huguenots.

As much as the courage and conviction of Coligny and the Huguenots inspire today — and possibly provoke severe cases of head shaking at the thought of a Roman Catholic presiding over a Protestant college — the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre also teaches important lessons about the virtue of distinguishing the affairs of the civil polity from those of the church. Although Paul taught that “to die is gain,” he also counseled Christians to seek quiet and peaceful lives. In which case, secular regimes that are neutral to religion (as opposed to the ones that are explicitly anti-clerical) are far preferable to the confusion of kingdoms that was at least partly responsible for the good Admiral’s death.

Two-Kingdom Tuesday: James Jordan for President (of the U.S.A.)

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments

A constant them in objections to two-kingdom teaching is that it fails to follow the Reformers even while claiming their imprimatur. As the Rabbi Brets, the Baylys, and the Wilsonians like to remind us, the magisterial reformation was just that – a reformation conducted by magistrates, some of whom were the ministers who were themselves agents of the state. The city council of Geneva called John Calvin to be pastor. So, two-kingdom theology must be wrong because it would have never put Calvin in Geneva.

Seldom conceded in this argument is that 2k critics are also a long way from the Reformers. To be consistent with the joys of a magisterial reformation, the critics should be calling for President Obama and Governor Rendell, among others, to reform the churches, call the right ministers, approve the proper liturgies, establish the right forms of church government. Well, the problem here is that Obama might appoint Jeremiah Wright to be his Archbishop Laud. Doh (I)!

That possibility should be a reminder that state-run churches have never preserved Reformed Protestantism (or any religion, for that matter). Even when the covenants with the king were long and exacting, the magistrates only made life more difficult for the good guys in the church and regularly backed the bad guys. This is why the good guys in church history, from Calvin, to the Contra-Remonstrants, to the Covenanters, to the PCUSA, to the Free Church of Scotland, wanted autonomy of the church from state-control in order to govern the church properly (and they argued, biblically).

So if anti-2kers want to be as consistent in their doing as they think they are in their saying, they need to persuade James Jordan, the Godfather of things Federal Vision, to run for the presidency. I assume he will need to run on a political platform very much contrary to the policies and laws that guided Geneva’s magistrates in their oversight of a reformed church. Small government, reduced taxes, vouchers for religious schools, maybe even reduction of the U.S.’s superpower footprint could Jordan’s candidacy off the runway. And then once in office, Jordan can implement the suppression of heresy, the closing of synagogues, mosques, and cathedrals, and the prohibition of usury. Politicians lie through their teeth all the time on the campaign trail. What would be the problem with one more? Wait a minute. Jordan believes in the law. Doh (II)!