In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished. The triumph of sin in 1865 would have stimulated and helped to civilize both sides. (“The Calamity of Appomattox,” 1930)
Machen Day 2024
J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930), page 394-95.
Would our knowledge of our Saviour be essentially complete if the New Testament did not contain the passages which narrate the virgin birth?
That question, we think, should be answered with an emphatic negative; without the story of the virgin birth our knowledge of our Saviour would be impoverished in a very serious way. Exaggerations, indeed, should be avoided at this point. Even without the infancy narratives we should have much upon which to rest our faith. Christ would still be presented in the New Testament as both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever; the significance of His Cross would still stand out in all its glorious clearness; He would still be offered to us in the gospel as our Saviour.
Yet there would be a serious gap in our knowledge of Him, and questions would arise which would be full of menace for the souls of men. How did this eternal Son of God enter into the world? Did the Son of God unite with the man Jesus at the baptism as the Gnostics supposed; was the man Jesus received up gradually into union with the eternal Son? Erroneous answers to such questions would, without the story of the virgin birth, be all too ready to hand. No doubt those erroneous answers would still be capable of refutation to a mind ideally logical and really filled with the convictions which all the Gospels and Epistles would provide. Yet they would be only too natural to the minds of men as they actually are. Without the story of the virgin birth we should be living constantly in a region of surmises like the errors of the heresiarchs in the ancient Church.
Such surmises would deprive us of the full doctrine of the incarnation upon which our souls can rest. To that doctrine it is essential that the Son of God should live a complete human life upon this earth. But the human life would not be complete unless it began in the mother’s womb. At no later time, therefore, should the incarnation be put, but at that moment when the babe was conceived. There, then, should be found the stupendous event when the eternal Son of God assumed our nature, so that from then on He was both God and man. Our knowledge of the virgin birth, therefore, is important because it fixes for us the time of the incarnation. And
what comfort that gives to our souls! Marcion, the second-century dualist, was very severe upon those who thought that the Son of God was born as a man; he poured out the vials of his scorn upon those who brought Christ into connection with the birth-pangs and the nine months’ time. But we, unlike Marcion and his modern disciples, glory just in the story of those things. The eternal Son of God, He through whom the universe was made, did not despise the virgin’s womb! What a wonder is there! It is not strange that it has always given offence to the natural man. But in that wonder we find God’s redeeming love, and in that babe who lay in Mary’s womb we find our Saviour who thus became man to die for our sins and bring us into peace with God.
Moreover, the knowledge of the virgin birth is important because of its bearing upon our view of the solidarity of the race in the guilt and power of sin. If we hold a Pelagian view of sin, we shall be little interested in the virgin birth of our Lord; we shall have little difficulty in understanding how a sinless One could be born as other men are born. But if we believe, as the Bible teaches, that all mankind are under an awful curse, then we shall rejoice in knowing that there entered into the sinful race from the outside One upon whom the curse did not rest save as He bore it for those whom He redeemed by His blood.
How, except by the virgin birth, could our Saviour have lived a complete human life from the mother’s womb, and yet have been from the very beginning no product of what had gone before, but a supernatural Person come into the world from the outside to redeem the sinful race? We may not, indeed, set limits to the power of God; we cannot say what God might or might not have done. Yet we can say at least that no other way can be conceived by us. Deny or give up the story of the virgin birth, and inevitably you are led to evade either the high Biblical doctrine of sin or else the full Biblical presentation of the supernatural Person of our Lord. A noble man in whom the divine life merely pulsated in greater power than in other men would have been born by ordinary generation from a human pair; the eternal Son of God, come by a voluntary act to redeem us from the guilt and power of sin, was conceived in the virgin’s womb by the Holy Ghost.
Spring 2023 NTJ Available (pdf)
The publishing plan – such as it is – is to make available recent issues (after three months) of the Nicotine Theological Journal to anyone by way of this website where a pdf will be posted. Subscribers (those who send an email address) will receive current issues as soon as they have been reformatted courtesy of Adobe’s wonder working powers.
Herewith is the Spring issue for 2023 — not a typo. That is why calling this a “publishing plan” could provoke snickers.
Summer 2023 NTJ (not a typo) Is Out
For those who have subscribed (simply by sending an email address), the Summer 2023 issue of the Nicotine Theological Journal is in their inbox. In that number readers will see the entire short piece that begins this way:
Idolatry in the Negative World
Aaron Renn says that American Christians now experience a culture that is hostile to the Christian faith in contrast to previous eras that either viewed Christianity positively or in which believing was neutral, neither offensive nor appealing. He argues the change came sometime around 2014.
Another change seems to have occurred that may say more about American Protestants than about the nation they inhabit. Somewhere in the mix of changing perceptions of American society and churches, conservative Protestants developed a different conception of sin. One sign of this change was a worship service recently broadcast from Moody Memorial Church in Chicago (Moody, of course, named after the urban evangelist, Dwight L. Moody). The broadcast included the prayer of confession. In it the pastor asked forgiveness on behalf of the congregation for desiring sex, money, and power.
That trilogy struck this listener as odd. . .
David French is No Tim Keller (even if he thinks he’s third-wayist)
My instinct tells me that Tim Keller’s fingerprints are on the PCA’s invitation to David French to participate on a panel on polarization in American politics. The people responsible for the invitation and the program continue to think of the PCA as an influential denomination that has pundits like David French in its network of influencers. I also suspect that the people who issued the invitation are unaware of how polarizing a figure David French is — mainly because they do not follow politics closely or the arguments in the conservative world carefully. They likely perceive that French, who used to be a member in the PCA, is a Christian with a presence at the New York Times and that makes him someone people in the church would likely want to hear. If French is receiving criticism, it must be from extremists because otherwise he is the political conservative that many liberals like to read. That must make him neither hard-left or extreme-right but safely in the faithful Christian middle.
Will those who offered the invitation think differently now that they see the way David French nurses a grudge? I actually hoped that he would rise above the rescinded invitation and go on with his opining. How could not speaking at 8:00 in the morning to Presbyterian officers from a smallish conservative denomination make any difference to a man who has risen through the ranks of opinion-journalism? If French were simply a professional, and tried to rise above whatever personal embarrassment came with the PCA’s about-face, he might keep score, be wary of future involvement with the denomination, but let the whole affair go. Instead, he used the convening of the PCA’s General Assembly (this week in Richmond) to write about his experience with and history in the PCA. No surprise, the meaning of the incident is all about hhiiiimmmmmm:
When I left the Republican Party, I thought a shared faith would preserve my denominational home. But I was wrong. Race and politics trumped truth and grace, and now I’m no longer welcome in the church I loved.
David French claimed to be a friend of Tim Keller. He was probably but a lot of people who looked up to the New York City and had spent time with him considered Keller to be a friend of some kind. Whatever is the case, when James Wood wrote a piece critical of Keller (sort of kind of), French pounced. Wood’s point was that Keller’s version of apologetics were no longer as plausible in a negative world. To which French wrote:
it’s because my friend Tim shuns political tribalism (emphasizing a “third way” between red and blue) and strives, in Wood’s words, to be “‘winsome,’ missional, and ‘gospel-centered’” in his approach. Wood says that Tim recognizes “though the gospel is unavoidably offensive, we must work hard to make sure people are offended by the gospel itself rather than our personal, cultural, and political derivations.”
The rescinding of the Kuyper Prize from Princeton Seminary to Keller was one of Wood’s examples of the change in American society. But French scoffed that this was some sort of leading cultural indicator:
Imagine trying to even explain this to an apostle. “There’s this famous and influential Christian pastor, and . . .” Paul would stop you right there. That very idea would be novel to him, as would the idea that revoking a prize but delivering a lecture would be evidence of any kind of crisis requiring one to change a “winsome, missional, and gospel-centered” approach to the public square.
Did David French imagine what Paul would have thought if a church had disinvited him from speaking at a conference? The apostles modelled being thick skinned only to make the world safe for French’s thin variety?
In fact, French’s admiration for Keller’s reaction to Princeton’s cancelling the award — the New York pastor even suggested to the seminary’s president how to save face by not giving the award and allowing Keller to go forward with the Kuyper Lecture — suggests he learned very little from Keller’s moderation. It’s as if being a friend of Keller gives French a sense of being on the right side of current Christianity, which in turn means that any critics are low, mean, and bigoted.
But if he could counter James Wood’s criticism of Keller with an appeal to the fruit of the Holy Spirit, couldn’t he self-apply that exhortation?
Paul called Christians to exhibit the fruit of the spirit even when they were being nailed to crosses and clawed by lions. Peter called on Christians to give a defense of their faith with “gentleness and reverence” even when they “suffer for righteousness.”
Someone is tempted to think — okay I am — that David French has no sense of optics and that without that awareness he makes life even more difficult for himself and his family than he can imagine.
And then you (I) remember that David French is a columnist at the New York Times, and if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere.
Christian Historians Are more like John MacArthur Than They Admit
A couple of recent posts by historians that identify with the work of doing Christian history leads to the excerpt below which is a critique of trying to follow scholarly standards while believing you are doing so in the name of Jesus.
The first complained about Christian academics failing to come to the defense of a fellow Christian professor (historian) after the latter had criticized both moderate evangelicals and Christian nationalists for “[craving] genocidal rage against Palestinians” and “[wishing] to turn the Gaza Strip into a ‘parking lot.'” Some with less zeal could imagine why defending that opinion might not be a high priority. Instead, the historian feared for his and his family’s lives when the reaction of Andrew Walker at Southern Seminary “set in motion the ire of a cadre of critics, including Mollie Hemingway, William Wolfe, Tom Ascol, and Meghan Basham.”
This post led to another that praised Christian historians for a critical perspective on U.S. history too often lacking in popular evangelical pundits (think the difference between George Marsden and Francis Schaeffer). Historians add value by recognizing that “history must be critical, even prophetic” as opposed to popular leaders who “have seen long-term political goals as more important than the truth of history.”
Thinking that the current generation (or even previous ones) were innocent of politics is fairly remarkable.
All of this wind-up leads to the pitch which is that evangelical historians can come in for criticism too because they mix advocacy (political, theological, moral) with scholarly inquiry just like pastors do. What follows is part of a chapter that faults evangelical historians for having their cake – scholarship – and eating it too – adding Christian faith. They may have better credentials that Francis Schaeffer or John MacArthur, but at some level within the academy their religiously inflected scholarship looks odd, maybe not as odd as non-academic evangelicals, but still strange. (This essay was published in History and the Christian Historian, edited by Ronald A. Wells, under the title “History in Search of Meaning: The Conference on Faith and History.”)
Do Christian historians have a particular perspective or share a set of assumptions that make their writing and teaching different from that of their non-believing colleagues? Though many factors led to the founding of the Conference on Faith in History in 1967, the conviction that the faith of the Christian historian set his or her scholarship apart from that produced by the rest of the profession was probably the greatest reason for organizing the Conference almost thirty years ago and has sustained its meetings and publications ever since. According to Charles Miller, the group who met to begin the CFH came up with three qualifications for a Christian historian: a “profound faith in the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ”; an “understanding through revelation of “the nature of man, of time, and of the universe”; and a “mastery of the craft and of the art of historian.”
What happens, then, when one of the Conference’s more accomplished members publishes a book on a significant epoch in the history of American Christianity that according to church leaders not only falls well short of demonstrating a Christian philosophy of history but also appears to deny the hand of God in the development of the evangelical movement? This is precisely what happened when Harry S. Stout, Yale University’s Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity, published his study of George Whitefield, entitled The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism. This book, which linked the revivalist’s success in part to his theatrics and business acumen, and revealed the less sanctified aspects of Whitefield’s pilgrimage, caused something of a stir among those English-speaking evangelicals of a Calvinistic persuasion who read the Banner of Truth magazine and its publisher’s many reprints of Puritan and Presbyterian pastors and theologians. Not only had Stout presented the English revivalist warts and all. But worse was the implicit conclusion that human techniques, sometimes overtly manipulative, not the work of the third person of the trinity, had been responsible for the many conversions that followed Whitefield’s itinerant preaching throughout the colonies and British isles.
The cries of “say it ain’t so, Skip, say it ain’t so,” first came in a Banner of Truth review of Stout’s biography. The portrait of Whitefield that emerged, a “bombast and showman” guilty of “shameless egocentricity,” was “barely recognisable” to readers long accustomed to Whitefield as the last Calvinistic revivalist. According to David White, the reviewer, “[i]t is fallacious and absurd to trace the origins of modern campaign evangelicalism, with its expensive publicity, deliberate conditioning by a highly charged musical atmosphere and the manipulation of massed choirs, to the straightforward proclamation of a Whitefield who stood in the best tradition of the Puritans.” Iain H. Murray, the editorial director of the Banner of Truth Trust, biographer of Jonathan Edwards and also a historian of Anglo-American revivalism, kept up the attack, using the publication of the papers from an Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals conference on trans-Atlantic evangelicalism in which Stout had a chapter as the occasion for offering his estimate of the new Whitefield. What is lacking in Stout’s handling of Whitefield, as well as in the “new approach to evangelical history,” according to Murray, is a failure to write history from “the standpoint of supernaturalism.” In fact, the whole tone of this history left Murray wondering what these so-called evangelical historians would do to the book of Acts “if they determined to re-interpret its events without reference to God.”
Stout’s response to these charges, printed in both the Banner of Truth and the Evangelical Studies Bulletin, raised and answered important questions about the nature of believers practicing the craft of history. He wrote that “professional” historians “agree to settle for something less that ultimate explanations,” and that academic “canons of evidence and interpretation” leave “off the field” notions of providence and the work of the Holy Spirit. Still, the damage had been done. A member of a body whose purpose was to reflect upon the significance of Christian teachings about creation, providence and salvation for doing history was guilty of saying that in good history, that is, history practiced by university professors, such questions did not matter.
Not being the Evangelical Theological Society which has purged from its membership scholars who appeared to deny the divine origins of Scripture, the Conference on Faith and History took no formal action against the highly regarded Yale professor. Moreover, some of its members have undoubtedly sided in this debate with Stout, in part because they agree with his assessment of the role of faith in the practice of history and also because, remembering the historic warfare between science and theology, they fear the restrictions of church dogma upon the pursuit of historical truth. But despite the tendency of CFH members as academics to prefer the cultural capital offered by Yale University over that available through the Banner of Truth Trust, Iain Murray’s defense of neo-providentialism and the supernatural in the writing of history are much closer than Stout’s critical history to the purposes and contributions of the Conference on Faith and History. Writers for Fides et Historia as well as historians who have presented at the conference’s meetings have argued overwhelmingly against a secular reading of history and have attempted in a variety of ways to articulate a Christian philosophy not just of history but also of historical research and writing.
Pointing out the resemblance between Murray’s charges and the Conference on Faith and History’s mission does not mean that Stout should be banned from the conference or prohibited from attending all conference gatherings. But his biography of Whitefield and subsequent exchange with Murray cast the aims and purposes of the Conference on Faith and History in a different light, one which reveals the difficult terrain the conference has tried to circumnavigate by promoting scholarship of the highest caliber that springs from Christian convictions. What I plan to do in this paper, then, is point out some of these connections between the Conference on Faith and History and the Banner of Truth Trust. In a nutshell, my argument will be that the writings sponsored by the conference and produced by its members show that the kind of history Iain Murray wants has not been that far removed from the kind of history the conference has tried to provide even if a little light on the Calvinism.
Reasons to Subscribe to the NTJ (other than sending an email address)
You might read something like this (from the Spring 2009 issue – a roundtable on the state of the Presbyterian Church in America):
Can This Marriage Be Saved?
Just to lay my cards on the table up front, I will admit that both my ecclesiastical background and my geographical location are very different from Mr. Dunahoo’s. Having been reared in megachurch evangelicalism in Southern California, and currently pastoring a PCA in the Seattle area, I have neither the broadness of perspective that Dunahoo enjoys, nor the memories of this denomination’s early days that he retains. Still, I’ll do my best to make some worthwhile remarks about the Presbyterian Church in America, both present and future.
Dunahoo lists five distinct groups within the PCA. In my four years as a member of the Pacific Northwest Presbytery, I can identify groups 1 and 2 (the “Reformed Fundamentalists” and the “Reformed Evangelicals”) in this neck of the ecclesiastical woods. That’s not to say the others don’t exist elsewhere, but as I said, my experience is limited to the fringe of the movement (“fringe” being used literally with respect to my presbytery’s location, and perhaps metaphorically with respect to its self-perception. More on this below). Now although I balk at the label affixed to me by Dunahoo (I happen to think of “Fundamentalist” as rather antithetical to “Reformed”), I do consider myself to fit squarely into his first category. I believe the Westminster Confession and Catechisms to be the most faithful articulation of biblical truth, and I believe that it is my calling and duty as a minister to expound Holy Scripture through the lens of the doctrinal standards to which I have submitted myself.
I would venture to say that Dunahoo’s second group, the Reformed Evangelicals, is the largest subgroup within the PCA. I may be wrong about this, but my excuse for such misperception is that the denomination’s official publications, as well as its seminary, all seem to presuppose the missional model, with hardly a paragraph being written in their literature that doesn’t remind the reader to redeem this or transform that. Words like “contextual” and “incarnational” are nearly as important in church planting circles as the phrases “Word and sacraments” or “the ordinary means of grace.” Apparently, word, water, and wine are all well and good provided they’re dispensed with sufficient cultural exegesis and social sensitivity. But I digress.
What I do find refreshing about Dunahoo’s perspective is, well, its perspective. In other words, he doesn’t simply draw a circle around himself and his friends and act as if there is no one else in the denomination besides his own subgroup. The reason I mention this is that I know what it is like to be treated like a virtual alien simply because I haven’t drunk the contextual Kool-Aid. I still feel the sting from the lashing I received at the PCA’s Church Planters’ Assessment when, in a certain exercise, I dared use the word “covenantal” while giving a mock church planting presentation to a pretend presbytery. Apparently it is a cardinal sin to assume that presbyters in the PCA understand the nomenclature used in chapter seven of the Westminster Confession (I’m not bitter anymore, really). My point here is that the sooner the confessionalists and transformationists (or, groups 1 and 2) recognize each other’s existence, the better. True, the two may never become one, but at least they’ll realize they are shacked up as roommates in the same house.
In the Pacific Northwest Presbytery where I am a member, the line dividing the Reformed Fundamentalists from, well, everyone else was recently made painfully apparent. At our stated meeting in October 2007, Rev. Peter Leithart and I jointly requested that presbytery appoint a study committee to evaluate Leithart’s Federal Visionist views and compare them with the Westminster Confession, with a particular emphasis on the nine “Declarations” of the previous summer’s General Assembly report on Federal Vision theology more broadly. The committee ended up split 4-3, with the majority concluding that Leithart’s views, though at times confusing and unhelpful, were nonetheless within the bounds of confessional orthodoxy, while the minority (of which I was a part) found his views to strike at the vitals of the Reformed system of doctrine.
When we met a year later to present the reports, the debate on the floor of presbytery was rather telling (to say the least) in that it largely ignored the narrow issues that the committee was charged to address and focused instead on the larger (and, strictly speaking, irrelevant) question, “What is the PCA?” The concerns voiced were primarily focused on self-identity instead of whether Leithart’s theology was Reformed or not. The greatest fear on the part of the members of presbytery was that by voting to depose one of our own we’d become, well, like the OPC. In other words, we already represent a mere fraction of Christian believers anyway, and now, by defrocking everyone who fails to cross their t’s and dot there i’s the way we’d like them to, we will just paint an even smaller circle around ourselves, eventually paling into utter obscurity and irrelevance.
It seems to me that the events of the Pacific Northwest Presbytery’s October 2008 meeting demonstrate, albeit microcosmically, the identity crisis of the PCA as a whole. As the “A” in our name would seem to suggest, we are perhaps unduly fixated on being big, noteworthy, and successful, and whatever stands in the way of such success must be viewed with a measure of suspicion. Hence the ho-hum attitude on the part of Dunahoo’s “Reformed Evangelicals” towards a simple, ordinary-means-of-grace ministry that dismisses the fanfare and obsession with how many artists show up at our wine- and cheese-tasting soirees, and gives attention rather to preaching Christ and administrating the Supper each Lord’s Day. As much as the OPC’s obvious irrelevance (ahem) stands as an ominous warning to the movers and shakers at Covenant Seminary and sends chills down the collective spine of the powers that be in Atlanta, the fact is that our older cousin, though a runt in the Presbyterian litter, enjoys the freedom of Mere Presbyterianism to a degree that the PCA cannot (at least not as long as we’re pining for the approval of the artsy-fartsy, the bohemian, the indy, and the soul-patched).
Not being prone to prognostication, I am loath to guess where the rocky marriage between the confessionalists and transformationists will take the PCA. If Tim Keller’s work with the Gospel Coalition is any indication, it is at least possible that the Reformed Evangelicals will continue to value cultural engagement and renewal more highly than confessional exactitude, perhaps to the point of secession. Or to look at it from the other direction, if the so-called Reformed Fundamentalists continue to be made to feel hopelessly irrelevant and out of touch when we settle for a Sabbath-oriented, means-of-grace-driven piety, a withdrawal could potentially occur. Then again, we could just continue with the live-and-let-live, quasi-congregationalism that we now enjoy, according to which I can be left alone to don my Geneva gown on Sunday provided I don’t hassle the PCA pastor in the next town over for using multimedia and drama to reach the “teenz.”
But either way, the Emergents are certainly right about one thing: the church, if not a mess, is nonetheless messy.
Jason Stellman is pastor of Exile Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Woodinville, Washington.
The Latest Issue of the Nicotine Theological Journal
If you would like to receive the entire issue, contact me on X @oldlife or via email and I will send a PDF. Here’s the introduction of the lead article by R. Scott Clark:
The Origins of 2-K Political Theology
Since David VanDrunen published, in 2010, the first volume in what has become a series of important volumes, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought, Emory University Studies in Law and Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), there has been a certain degree of controversy in some quarters of the confessional Reformed world over the recovery of the “two kingdoms” as a way of thinking about Christ and culture and ethics. The qualifier some is important here because anyone who knows the history of Reformed theology knows that faithful, confessional theologians have been speaking of God’s “twofold government” (duplex regimen and duplex regnum) or “two kingdoms” since the 16th century. It is not a novelty but so divorced are enough contemporary Reformed Christians from their own tradition and heritage that when this way of speaking re-surfaced in 2010 it was taken, in some quarters as a radical departure from Reformed theology.
Why The Controversy?
That reaction, in some quarters, is part of a pattern. Because of the sad state of confessional Reformed covenant theology in the 20th century, when Richard Muller and others in his wake began to re-appropriate the historic Reformed way of distinguishing between theology as God knows it and theology as God has given us to know it, it was denounced as Barthian by one scholar (who should have known better). When some began to try to resurrect the teaching of, e.g., Zacharias Ursinus (1534–83) and the Westminster Divines (see WCF 7.2) on the prelapsarian (pre-fall) covenant of works, it was ridiculed as a deformation of Reformed theology. Similar reactions happened when some scholars began to try to recover the historic Reformed doctrine of the pre-temporal covenant of redemption, e.g., David VanDrunen and R. Scott Clark, “The Covenant Before the Covenants,” in R. Scott Clark ed., Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007). When some contemporary Reformed writers and historians began writing about and advocating the historic pan-Protestant (including the Reformed) distinction between law and gospel they were denounced as “antinomians” and “Lutherans.” E.g., some of the reviews and reactions to R. Scott Clark, “Letter and Spirit: Law and Gospel in Reformed Preaching,” in Clark, ed., Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry. These are analogous cases illustrating the decay of historic Reformed theology in the twentieth century. Doctrines which were nigh-well universally held and taught in the classical period of Reformed theology, when uncovered and dusted off in the late 20th and early 21st centuries were regarded with suspicion. For more on the project of recovery of the older Reformed theology, see R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008). . . .
Gemini AI is More Reliable than Chat GPT: Here’s Why
Looks like the folks at Google have a better read on two-kingdoms theology and Christian nationalism than those at Microsoft. When you ask Chat GPT “which is a greater threat to American society Christian nationalism or two kingdom theology? here’s what you get.
ChatGPT
Determining which is a greater threat to American society, Christian nationalism or two kingdom theology, is a nuanced question as it involves various perspectives and considerations.
- Christian Nationalism: This ideology intertwines Christianity with patriotism, often asserting that the United States is a “Christian nation” and advocating for policies and laws based on Christian principles. Critics argue that it can lead to exclusionary practices, discrimination against minority religions, and a blurring of the lines between church and state, potentially undermining religious freedom and social cohesion.
- Two Kingdom Theology: This theological perspective emphasizes a separation between the kingdom of God (spiritual matters) and the earthly kingdom (secular matters). Proponents argue that it helps maintain religious integrity while engaging in societal affairs. However, critics suggest that it may lead to disengagement from social issues and a lack of accountability for addressing societal injustices.
The assessment of which is a greater threat depends on various factors such as how these ideologies are interpreted and practiced, their influence on policies and actions, and their impact on social harmony and justice. Christian nationalism, with its potential for exclusionary practices and erosion of secular principles, may be viewed by some as posing a more immediate threat to pluralistic societies like the United States. However, two kingdom theology’s potential for disengagement from societal issues could also be seen as a challenge, particularly in addressing pressing social injustices.
Ultimately, both ideologies have their risks and potential impacts, and the assessment of their relative threat to American society may vary depending on one’s perspective and values. It’s essential to engage in critical dialogue and evaluation of these ideologies’ implications to foster a more inclusive and just society.
At Gemini this is the answer your receive:
Two Kingdom Theology is generally not considered a threat to American society. In fact, it’s a concept used by some Christians to navigate the relationship between their faith and civil authority.
Christian nationalism, on the other hand, can be seen as a threat because it blends Christian identity with American national identity. This can lead to policies that favor one religion over others, or a belief that America is inherently superior to other nations.
Here’s a breakdown of why Christian nationalism is considered more concerning:
- Exclusionary: It can lead to discrimination against those who don’t adhere to a specific Christian belief system.
- Erosion of Democracy: It can lead to a push for policies that reflect a specific religious view, rather than the will of the people.
- National Chauvinism: It can breed a sense of American superiority that can be harmful to international relations.
Two Kingdom Theology, while it might be debated in its theological applications, focuses on maintaining separate spheres of influence for the Church and the State. This can promote a peaceful coexistence between religion and government.
It’s important to note that these are generalizations. There are variations within both Christian nationalism and Two Kingdom Theology.
Comparing Christian Liberal Arts Colleges (part two)
The first of these posts compared Hillsdale College and Covenant College as Christian liberal arts colleges by their course requirements in each respective institution’s core curriculum. This follow up calls attention to Professor Jay Green’s initial suspicions about Hillsdale calling itself a Christian college because its mission is more civilizational than confessional.
Any two-kingdom confessional Protestant who read Dr. Green’s first column had to be amused if not frustrated by the way he positioned Covenant College along with its peer institutions in the Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). Evangelical colleges (some of them turned universities) have for almost forty years marched under the banner of the integration of faith and learning. They converted to the Neo-Calvinist cause somewhere around the time that Francis Schaeffer popularized Abraham Kuyper among American evangelicals. This was also around the time that evangelical faculty and students began to read The Reformed Journal and discovered how darned smart Calvin College (now university) professors were (sometimes they were even funny). With the integration of faith and learning came the elixir of w(orld-and-life-vie)w. In that intellectually pietistic hothouse, faculty and students attempted to bring every square inch of the arts and sciences under the Lordship of Christ. One goal of these institutions was to redeem or transform the culture, and a primary way to do that was to bring a Christian perspective to every single human activity — from goat breeding to Division III men’s football. If you think that sounds sort of civilizational, you’re right.
Reformed confessionalists of the two-kingdom type pushed back against the line blurring that such w(orld-vie)w thinking encouraged. The church and the world were separate categories, just as were general and special revelation. Christianity might require a definite perspective on Christ’s deity or the place of the Hebrew monarchy in the plan of redemption. But on matters of interpreting Andrew Jackson’s electoral victory in 1828, Christians had liberty to come to differing conclusions, most of which would depend on the best scholarship produced overwhelmingly by unregenerate scholars who had no trace of a Christian w(orld-and-life-vie)w.
In other words, confessional Protestantism, not the kind to which Dr. Green appeals, produced critics of the confessional-non-civilizational-but-nevertheless-cultural-integration of faith and learning or transformation of culture that institutions like Covenant College promoted. From a truly confessional Reformed perspective, the mission of many evangelical colleges was civilizational. And that transformationalist outlook and mission undermined a churchly or confessional understanding of Christianity irrespective of what it meant for higher education.
But now Dr. Green has tried to use confessionalism to undermine Hillsdale’s claims to be a Christian college. Again, he has largely recanted his original piece. But the argument he initially made is useful for gaining clarity about confessional Protestantism.
One point in particular bears mentioning. In his first piece about Hillsdale, Dr. Green worried that civilizational Christian colleges would make the work of confessional Christian colleges more difficult:
As Christian nationalism grows more attractive and widely accepted, some colleges are feeling pressure to shift toward defining themselves by their civilizational rather than their confessional priorities. I’m guessing that development offices find it easier to raise money for a college actively committed to saving Western Civilization than for one that promises only to walk in the way of Jesus.
Claiming to be taking the high ground where Jesus walked over against those in the ditches of saving Western Civilization has an inspiring WWJD-feel, but it does not actually describe well “the way of Jesus” in which evangelical colleges that are part of the CCCU execute their Christian mission. Dr. Green said specifically that institutions that belong to the CCCU are “‘Christian’ in the sense that their faculty (and sometimes their students) submit to clear statements of faith.”
But when you look at the CCCU website, here‘s what you will find in reply to the question, “What is Christian Higher Education?”
First, we integrate biblical truth not just into “spiritual” aspects of the institution but throughout the academic enterprise. Our professors pursue academic excellence because they are committed to God as the author of truth, and that truth has implications for every academic discipline. The classroom and the laboratory are just as much arenas of Christian integration as the college chapel.
There is the classic Neo-Calvinist move of blurring the spiritual and temporal, sacred and secular. All of life is religious and so all of religion is civilizational or cultural
Second, we are committed to the moral and spiritual formation of students. Education that instructs the mind without deepening the soul is not true learning. Our schools seek to develop students who, in the words of the Old Testament prophet, “act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God” (Micah 6:8). . . . This task gives meaning and coherence to every part of the academy, from the classroom to the fine arts studio, from the internship placement to the residence hall and the athletic field.
Again, in the Neo-Calvinist world of higher education, it’s hard to see where civilization begins and confessional ends because an activist, civilizational Christianity is co-extensive with confession — though so far the confession of faith has little theology (but lots of justice).
Third, we are committed to graduating students who make a difference for the common good as redemptive voices in the world. Our schools offer a wide variety of academic programs because we believe that Christians are called to use their vocations as vehicles to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to a fallen world. Our graduates . . . play a redemptive and restorative role in the world as doctors, teachers, marketers, engineers, parents, soccer coaches, and in a host of other ways. In other words, we are private religious institutions that exist for the public good and contribute to human flourishing.
So integration of faith and learning extends across the curriculum to redeem and transform the world, one that has many civilizations in need of redemption. One has to suppose that if successful, graduates will build redeemed civilizations that could well qualify as Christian. And how is such a transformationalist understanding of Christian education any less civilizational than Hillsdale College’s self-professed Christian identity?
To Dr. Green’s credit, he does acknowledge that CCCU institutions might do better at being explicitly Christian in their mission.
To hear a call for confessional Christianity is encouraging. But in Dr. Green’s case, his brief for confessional Christian colleges needs the clarity that comes from distinguishing the arts, sciences, and theology as separate branches of learning, the way Protestants did before Kuyper.
Old Life 