Presbyterians, Relativism, and Nostalgia

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Over at Vintage 73 (a nostalgic name?), a PCA blog, Bobby Griffith reflects on the communion’s 40th anniversary and cautions about nostalgia.

As we meet together as the 40th General Assembly, there will likely be a resolution or some sort of commemoration that recognizes the date. Surely, there will be a few in attendance who were commissioners to that first Assembly, back when we were the National Presbyterian Church.
Those things are great, an Ebenezer, if you will.

However, we must resist the temptation to believe the past was so much better. We cannot let ourselves think that only theological issues led to our founding. We cannot let ourselves believe that first assembly spoke with 100% unity and all the commissioners shared all the same opinions and had the same reasons to be there when they were. . . .

When we attempt to use the past for our agenda, instead of a guide, we run the risk of distorting it with nostalgia. We make cotton candy. Something that is sweet but empty. Nostalgia causes us to ignore the things that make us look bad because we want heroes and triumph. We want something to live up to.

Of course, Griffiths has a point. One of my frustrations (all about me) as a historian is that lots of students and church folk enjoy historical study for its inspirational value. This is why so many Presbyterians treat the Westminster Divines the way most Americans regard the founders — these are the heroic founders of our religious and political institutions. Noting the problems and flaws that haunted these folks is not what most people want to hear. They’d rather contemplate the genius, commitment, and courage that led to the triumph of good over bad.

At the same time, Griffiths’ point needs to be seriously qualified if he is to avoid a form of egalitarianism that always leads to relativism. To say that the PCA was not uniform, always pure, or even good looking at its founding is not the same as saying that the church then was no better than the PCA today. Griffith appears to want to avoid an assessment that might lead some to conclude that the PCA is in decline from its founding. If I were in the PCA I’d also like to avoid that conclusion.

But is the way around this to recognize the flaws in every moment of church history and refuse to give any kind of grade? If that were the case, then the PCA should not have bet so many chips on Tim Keller and Redeemer NYC. For that kind of backing — using TKNY and Redeemer as a model for home missions and home missionaries — puts into motion a nostalgia for the good old days of Tim Keller’s wonder working ministry in The Big Apple.

How 2K Might Have Helped Stellman

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I hope Jason Stellman does not consider this piling on. He is a friend and I mean to be respectful of his decision even if I lament his loss of Protestant convictions. At the same time, since some have invoked the two-kingdoms theology as a plausible factor in Stellman’s resignation, a response is in order. And Jason’s reasons for leaving the PCA provide yet another occasion to clarify the 2k position with which he once identified.

First, on the matter of sola scriptura, 2k theology does not pit ecclesiology against the word of God but in fact limits the ministry of the church precisely to what Scripture teaches. At the risk of beating a dead Machen, the hero of conservative Presbyterians put the matter this way in his defense of his refusal to comply with the PCUSA’s Mandate of 1934 (which deemed illegal the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions):

The Bible forbids a man to substitute any human authority for the Word of God. . . . In demanding that I shall shift my message to suit the shifting votes of an Assembly that is elected anew every year, the General Assembly is attacking Christian liberty; but what should never be forgotten is that to attack Christian liberty is to attack the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

I desire to say very plainly to the Presbytery of New Brunswick that as a minister I have placed myself under the orders of Jesus Christ as his will is made known to me through the Scriptures. That is at the heart and core of Protestantism. It is also at the heart and core of the teaching of the Word of God. It cannot give it up.

If I read the Bible aright, a man who obtains his message from the pronouncements of presbyteries or General Assemblies instead of from the Bible is not truly a minister of Jesus Christ. He may wear the garb of a minister, but he is not a minister in the sight of God.

By the issuance of this command, the General Assembly has attacked the authority of the Bible in very much the same way in which it is attacked by the Roman Catholic church. The Roman Catholic church does not deny the authority of the Bible. Indeed, it defends the truth of the Bible, and noble service is being rendered in that defense, in our times, by Roman Catholic scholars. But we are opposed to the Roman Catholic position for one great central reason – because it holds that there is a living human authority that has a right to give an authoritative interpretation of the Bible. We are opposed to it because it holds that the seat of authority in religion is not just the Bible but the Bible interpreted authoritatively by the church. That, we hold, is a deadly error indeed: it puts fallible men in a place of authority that belongs only to the Word of God.

The point here is not to claim that Machen settles the dilemmas with which Stellman wrestled or that Machen’s clear assertion of biblical authority addresses adequately the squishiness of interpreting and applying an infallible word from God. Instead Machen shows that the spirituality of the church (a variety of 2K), affirmed sola scriptura, Christian liberty, and the Lordship of Christ as part and parcel of Presbyterianism. To the extent the church has authority, Christ delegates it and limits ecclesiastical authority to the Word of God. As practically every Reformed church affirms:

All church power is only ministerial and declarative, for the Holy Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice. No church judicatory may presume to bind the conscience by making laws on the basis of its own authority; all its decisions should be founded upon the Word of God. “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship” (Confession of Faith, Chapter XX, Section 2). (OPC, BCO, III.3)

In other words, 2K’s understanding of church authority is bound up with and limited by sola scriptura. 2K is not the window through which to fly to Rome.

Stellman’s second reason for leaving the PCA concerns his change of mind on sola fide. He no longer believes that justification by faith alone and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is basic to New Testament teaching. Instead he believes that the Bible teaches that justification comes through faith working by love. (This is, by the way, a Protestant form of argument – what the Bible teaches as opposed to what tradition or the church instructs.) I myself disagree with Jason’s reading of the New Testament, not to mention that experientially I have no hope apart from Christ’s righteousness, (though purgatory may provide a way out of this problem). As Bill Smith said:

It seems that Mr. Stellman’s evolving view is that our acceptance with God depends not on an imputed righteousness alone but on an imparted, transformational righteousness. I can only say I hope he is wrong, because there is no way I am going to heaven if my going depends on anything at all other than the righteousness of Christ.

But the point here is not with justification per se but its relationship to 2K. Again, the two-kingdom theology is bound up with the material principle of the Reformation. In his inaugural lecture, David VanDrunen argued for the priority of justification to sanctification in the application of redemption and drew implications for 2K:

The civil kingdom is a realm in which judgment is always future, in which strict justice is administered based upon the talionic principle. The spiritual kingdom, on the other hand, is a realm in which judgment is passed/past, in which the talionic principle of strict, retaliatory justice is foresworn for the peaceful practice of turning the other cheek. The non-Christian moral life is characterized by the specter of judgment-to-come, by the obligation to obey so that, somehow, acceptance before God might be earned. The Christian moral life, on the other hand, is characterized by the profound, radical, and decisive act of justification already accomplished, such that one lives no longer in order to sustain the judgment but in response to that blessed judgment already rendered.

. . . these considerations have far-reaching implications for the church’s position in relation to the world, and to the state in particular. To put it simply, the church finds the state’s business foreign. As an institution that forsakes the lex talionis and refuses to take up the sword in judgment or even self-defense, it can have in some sense no cognizance at all of what the sword-bearing state does. The church acknowledges the state’s existence, thanks God for its work, and blesses her saints as they submit to its authority and join in its work, but how can the church itself dare to participate in or contribute to the state’s work? What a strange thing for an institution defined by its peacefulness and mercy to tell the state how to do its work of coercion. What a bizarre scenario when the office-bearers of the church, chosen and ordained in recognition of their knowledge and practice of the things that are above, make declamations on public policy as if they were experts on things that are here below. And certainly similar things could be said about the church’s forays into economic development and whatever other cultural work might promote an agenda of social transformation. How wise were our Reformed forebears who spoke of the spirituality of the church and the solely ministerial character of ecclesiastical authority. The church is the community of the justified; may her shepherds feed the sheep with the bread of heaven and leave uninfringed their liberty in regard to the affairs of earth.

Again, VanDrunen’s comments are not meant to end all debates. Some will undoubtedly take issue with both his views on union with Christ and on church and state. Still, the idea that 2K is some boutique doctrine that its advocates trot out to provoke, create a following, or use as a hobby horse is wrong. For most of the 2k advocates I know, the doctrine is bound up with teachings that are crucial to the Reformation and at the heart of Reformed Protestantism. Those who oppose 2k are not necessarily outside the Reformed camp. But if they affirm the material and formal principles of the Reformation, they are on the road to two-kingdom theology. If they deny 2k, they ride on a rocky road.

Visually Stunning, Narratively Challenged

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The better half and I (all about us) finally got around to seeing “The Tree of Life.” I (all about me) sat down to watch with ambivalence. Some people I know (and even respect) loved it, and others thought it was tedious. I now place myself in the latter category, while admitting that the cinematography was breathtaking. I wish I could have done the movie justice by seeing it on the big screen. Even so, I don’t think even an Imax experience could salvage a smidgeon of coherence from this bloated film.

Take, for instance, the plot. What exactly is it? Not to give the story (such as it is) away, but a tragic outcome awaits one of the members of the featured family. And we needed 140 minutes to learn that this development deeply moved parents and siblings? Meanwhile, after all that time we have no more of a clue about the circumstances surrounding this tragedy than we do about the vastness of the universe. What we do learn — news flash — is that the family suffered as a result.

Oh, wait. Maybe this tragedy was the consequence of the Big Bang theory. If so, that might explain the inclusion of a half-hour sequence of shortish takes that seem to show the evolution of the physical universe. Again, visually bedazzling but what is the connection to the family?

As for character development or dialogue, “The Artist” goes well beyond “The Tree of Life” even though the former is about a silent-film era movie star. Even so, “The Artist” has virtually more dialogue than “The Tree of Life.” The DVD we watched instructed viewers to turn the volume way up. That helped us to figure out a few of the words that sounded more like grunts and accompany various visual sequences. But cranking the volume up to 80 wasn’t enough to come anywhere near figuring out the mother of the family. I sure hope feminists were upset by the film because this woman – who was not as visually stunning as the Milky Way – had no excuse for a presence in the movie other than to observe or weep.

But for all of its defects, “The Tree of Life” was successful in one very important way. It confirmed what most viewers suspect about Sean Penn. The experience of the boy who grows into the adult played by Penn must have been exactly what the actor was like when an eleven-year old – willful, devious, and rebellious against a disciplinarian father. Still, I didn’t need 140 minutes to have that hunch confirmed.

Tech Troubles…

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We apologize for the sparse availability of the website lately. The site admin has been dealing with several technical issues —including what appear to be the results of a malicious hacker. Please bear with us while we address these issues and take measures to make sure the Old Lifers continue to get their fix.

The Hits Keep Coming

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Just when I was recovering from the sobering news of Jason Stellman’s decision to leave the PCA along comes Carl Trueman’s double-whammy of heaping scorn upon those “for whom the doctrine of the church and 2K are all they ever seem to talk about.” (For Stellman’s response, go here.) Trueman’s is a remarkable performance since Trueman admits his own 2k inclinations and reports on those in Sovereign Grace circles who also concede a better doctrine of the church would have saved them some grief. He also acknowledges that 2k avoids “the excesses of Christian America, Theonomy, and the various social gospels — left and right.” So Trueman is in the 2k camp, as his own book on religion and politics in the United States attests, along with his own high regard for Luther. But he is apparently not extreme about it, thus protecting his standing seemingly among the gospel’s co-allies. His is supposedly a moderate 2k despite his invocations of Marx, Nietzsche, and Led Zeppelin. This is where his decision to echo John Frame’s swipe at Machen’s warrior children comes in handy even if it is a blow that conflicts with Trueman’s own combative posture, as the Peter Lillback ‘s foreword to Republocrat confirms. (Trueman is a fan of boxing, after all.)

As unnecessary and contradictory as Trueman’s jab at 2k was, I don’t readily associate him with Rabbi Bret who also used Stellman’s announcement as yet another proof of 2k’s errors and harm. Never mind that the Rabbi’s interpretation of 2k’s dualism as the path into Roman Catholicism’s nature/grace divide would seemingly indict Trueman’s own positive accounts of Thomas Aquinas. The attacks on 2k never need to be consistent in order to be consistently negative. As Bill Smith remarked to me by email:

I believe that soon high churchism and 2K theology will be blamed for global warming, the lagging economy, the high price of gas, the decline of western civilization, the composition of RUF tunes and their twangy singing by females, the election of Barak Obama, praise bands and worship leaders, and the banning of biggie sized soft drinks. And, I am not surprised. I could see it coming.

Still, it’s a curious way to respond to Stellman since not even the Baylys used the occasion to pounce on 2k. Instead, they took Stellman’s decision as an occasion to go after Peter Leithart’s weak affirmation of Protestantism. Instead of affirming justification, Leithart rejects the exclusivity of Rome’s sacramental theology. Going to Rome will leave Protestants outside the sacramental fold. For the Baylys the division between Rome and Protestants is all about the doctrine of justification.

That was encouraging to read even if their critique of Leithart and defense of justification came a little close to stepping on the toes of their hero in the culture wars, Doug Wilson, who is in some way Leithart’s boss and fellow minister at one of Moscow’s CREC congregations. Wilson also could not help but reflect on the disputes between Leithart and Stellman in the Presbytery of the Northwest. He also welcomed Stellman’s coming around to the “biblical” understanding of justification:

With regard to sola fide, he is quite right to see the very narrow position he was nurtured in as contrary to the teaching of the New Testament. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to sinners, and the instrument of a God-given faith is what receives that gracious gift. But the gift received is that of living faith, breathing faith, loving faith, the only kind of faith the living God bestows. It is sola fide, not nuda fide. Stellman was wrong to identify his previous narrow view of sola fide as the doctrine of sola fide itself.

Where that puts Wilson and other Federal Visionaries on the matter of the Reformed churches’ confessions and Roman Catholic teaching is a mystery since Stellman led the prosecution of Leithart precisely on the conviction that the latter’s teaching was contrary to the Westminster Standards. Now that Stellman no longer finds the confession’s teaching agreeable, he has done what he thinks Leithart should have done — leave the PCA (going to Rome may be another matter). Meanwhile — keep your eye on the bouncing ball, Wilson agrees with Stellman on justification but doesn’t think he should leave the Protestant fold.

That confusion over justification — whether Federal Visionaries actually adhere to the Reformation’s teaching or whether their views are beyond the pale and more compatible with what the Reformers opposed — is the best place to situate Stellman’s regrettable decision. The source of this confusion was not 2k or ecclesiology. It grew prominent in the teaching of Norman Shepherd which gained a hearing among the proponents of Federal Vision and received defense from John Frame, the man who first ridiculed those who identify with Machen.

Scoring points against 2k of course has its appeal and plays well in certain circles. But 2k and ecclesiology have virtually nothing to do with this. If you want to look for the clearest defense of Reformed Protestantism and its teaching on salvation, the church, and worship — convictions and practices that were pretty central to the sixteenth century — you’d be clueless to ignore those who promote 2k.

What a Turkey! Part 5: Another Parallel between Islam and Contemporary Calvinism

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If Ohran Pamuk’s setting of northeastern Turkey reveals how the simple religious act of a woman donning a scarf becomes a vigorous expression of political Islam, Nafisi’s book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, shows the extent to which political Islam in an Iranian setting will go for the sake of covering women, whether Muslim or not. Her memoir follows her experience as the daughter of the mayor of Tehran before the Islamic revolution, her education in the United States for graduate training in literature, and her return to teach in Tehran, first at the university and then privately. Along the way, Nafisi, whose religious identity is unclear, has to go from wearing jeans and T-shirts as a graduate student, to blouses and slacks as a professor, and then to a chador under Iran’s Muslim republic.

The book is less about politics and more about the way zealous believers read (or misread) literature. Hence Reading Lolita in Tehran is of use once again for Reformed Protestants who advocate w-w and Christian education. This is not meant to be a cheap shot. It is rather a way of considering parallels between totalistic claims upon knowledge and ways of understanding. If w-wists do not want to look like a Christian version of political Islam’s reading of Western literature, they could well learn from Nafisi and consider whether the reach of a w-w needs to be as entire as neo-Calvinists sometimes claim.

One particular passage from Nafisi struck and moved me. The book, thankfully, is not entirely about Nabokov’s very dark novel about a middle-aged man’s illicit relationship with a girl. Nafisi also uses discussions of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry James to explore her experience within Iran. Since I am an inveterate romantic (all about me), I am also a sucker for Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which I consider to be arguably the greatest American novel and the teaching of which was crucial to my budding intellectual awareness. Nafisi’s reading of the novel is as persuasive as it is arresting and comes in the context of a university classroom trial where dedicated Muslim students wanted to prosecute the novel for its immorality and decadence, thus, embodying the evil United States’ secularism and materialism.

Here is one part of the prosecution’s case against Gatsby:

“Okay,” he conceded, “but the values were such that adultery went unpunished. This book preaches illicit relations between a man and a woman. First we have Tom and his mistress, the scene in her apartment, even the narrator, Nick, is implicated. He doesn like their lies, but he has no objection to their fornicating and sitting on each other’s laps, and, and those parties at Gatsby’s . . . remember, ladies and gentlemen, this Gatsby is the hero of the book – and who is he? He is a charlatan, he is an adulterer, he is a liar . . . this is the man Nick celebrates and feels sorry for, this man, this destroyer of homes!” . . . . “The only sympathetic person here is the cuckolded husband, Mr. Wilson,” Mr. Nyazi boomed. “When he kills Gatsby, it is the hand of God. He is the only victim. He is the genuine symbol of the oppressed, in the land of, of that Great Satan!”

Nafisi (as well as one of her sharp students) will have nothing of such a surface and pietistic reading of either Gatsby’s longing for Daisy or the American Dream:

The reality of Gatsby’s life is that he is a charlatan. But the truth is that he is a romantic and tragic dreamer, who become heroic because of his belief in his own romantic delusion.
Gatsby cannot tolerate the shabbiness of his life. He has an “extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness,” and some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.” He cannot change the world, so he re-creates himself according to his dream. . . . Gatsby’s loyalty was to his reinvented self, which saw its fulfillment in Daisy’s voice. It was to the promises of that self that he remained faithful, to the green light at the end of the dock, not a shabby dream of wealth and prosperity.

The city is the link between Gatsby’s dream and the American dream. The dream is not about money but what he imagines he can become. It is not a comment on America as a materialistic country but as an idealistic one, one that has turned money into a means of retrieving the dream. There is nothing crass here, or the crassness is so mingled with the dream that it becomes very difficult to differentiate between the two. In the end, the best ideals and the most sordid of realities all come together. . . .

Nafisi then quotes from Gatsby’s final pages:

“‘And as the moon rose higher the in essential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island where that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplating he neither understood nor desire, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.’”

Part of Nafisi’s point is that religious zeal misses the higher and even spiritual dimensions of Gatsby and his quest. If viewed only from the standpoint of the antithesis between belief and unbelief, or between obedience to God or sinful disobedience, the political Islamic reading of Gatsby has merit. But applying the antithesis in this way also misses what could plausibly be Gatsby’s own quest, as deformed as it may be, for spiritual fulfillment and even for a new heaven and new earth. Someone might even argue that Gatsby’s condition is what all persons experience this side of paradise lost.

Still, the point here is not about the best reading of Fitzgerald but the limits of w-w thinking that relies so heavily on the antithesis. That division between believers and unbelievers, between the city of God and the city of man, is a spiritual reality that goes all the way down to a person’s inclinations and final destiny. But it is not the last word on human beings even if it is the ultimate one. Persons are bodies as much as they are souls, and while inhabiting planet earth between the advents of Christ, people are still capable of remarkable accomplishments and aspirations. The reason is not because they are free from sin or unbelief but because they are created in the image of God and the residue of that image is responsible for those noble even if unholy longings that sent Jay Gatsby to his soggy death.

If w-wers can produce that kind of intellectual agility – if they can recognize the doubleness of human existence and the dance among spiritual longings, human ingenuity, and the imperviousness of original sin – then we need to pay them more attention. If not, then they sound like just one more version of identity politics to be shelved near the section with political Islamists who also rely overwhelmingly on the antithesis.

What A Turkey! Part 4: When Christianity Imitates Islam

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For this trip I brought along reading that might give me some acquaintance with Turkey and its culture and history. This meant including a novel by the Nobel Prize author, Orhan Pamuk, who has set most of his stories in Turkey or the Ottoman Empire. I also brought along a book about Turkey’s political predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, just to get an overview of that regime. And because I wanted to consider the character of contemporary Islam, and because I have wanted to read the book for some time, I included in my bags Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. I trust any readers of Turkish descent will not take offense that somehow I have equated Turkey with Iran. I brought along Nafisi precisely to see the difference between Turkey, a secular state that is demographically Muslim, and Iran, a republic ruled by Muslims. (In this sense, the U.S. is closer to Turkey than to Iran — a secular state that is demographically Christian.)

While reading these books I can’t help but notice parallels between political Islam and those Reformed Protestants who most emphasize the antithesis – to the point where it goes all the way down to every square inch. Pamuk’s novel, Snow, is all about the tension and sometimes conflict between radical Muslims who hate the West (i.e. Europe) for its its secularity and therefore its rejection of God. The following is an exchange from the novel between a Turkish official and a proponent of political Islam:

. . . because I happen to be a free man who can do as he pleases, I sometimes end up getting on a bus and traveling to the other end of Turkey to track down the perpetrator, wherever he is, and have it out with him face-to-face. So please, sir, answer my question. What’s more important, a decree from Ankara or a decree from God?

– This discussion is going nowhere, son. What hotel are you staying at?

– What, are you thinking of turning me int to the police? Don’t be afraid of me, sir. I don’t belong to any religious organizations. I despise terrorism. I believe in the love of God and the free exchange of ideas. That’s why I never end a free exchange of ideas by hitting anyone, even though I have a quick temper. Al I want is for you to answer this question. So please excuse me, sir, but when you think about the cruel way you treated those poor girls in front of your institute – when you remember that these girls were only obeying the word of God as set out so clearly in the Confederate Tribe and Heavenly Light chapters of the Holy Koran – doesn’t your conscience trouble you at all?

– My son, the Koran also says that thieves should have their hands chopped off, but the state doesn’t do that. Why aren’t you opposing this?

– That’s an excellent answer, sir. Allow me to kiss your hand. But how can you equate the hand of a thief with the honor of our women? According to statistics released by the American Black Muslim professor, Marvin King, the incidence of rape in Islamic countries where women cover themselves is so low as to be nonexistent and harassment is virtually unheard of. This is because a woman who has covered herself is making a statement. Through her choice of clothing, she is saying, Don’t harass me. So please, sir, do you really want to push our covered women to the margins of society by denying them the right to an education? If we continue to worship women who take off their head scarves (and just about everything else too), don’t we run the risk of degrading them as we have seen so many women in Europe degraded in the wake of the sexual revolution? And if we succeed in degrading our women, aren’t we also running the risk of – pardon my language – turning ourselves into pimps?

Of course, radical American Calvinists who detest what the West does to male and female relations and roles, don’t advocate that women wear scarves. But they do insist on female subordination to men, and some also speak favorably of Old Testament penalties being carried over to places like sixteenth-century Geneva. Why I have had exchanges in the blogosphere that resemble this one. A theonomist brings up the death penalty for adultery. I respond by mentioning that the state does not outlaw blasphemy and idolatry, a situation that works well for theonomist’s Roman Catholic or Mormon neighbors. But rather than trying to kiss my hand, this theonomist interprets my response as a form of infidelity, as if I don’t love the Lord.

Thankfully, political Christianity in the United States has imbibed enough of the West and its differentiation between religion and politics not to try to enforce their religious convictions with physical violence or political treason. The worst they do is defame other Christians and excoriate certain public officials — always in the name of God and his law.

As welcome as the pacifism of political Christianity in the United States is, I do wonder if the Calvinists who hate secularism and its cultural consequences ever ponder their resemblances to political Islam. (Not to wind up the neo-Calvinists too much, but have they ever considered how intoleranttheir views of the French Revolution and political liberalism are.) Of course, Islam is not wrong simply because of its political embodiments like those in Iran. It could be that Christians should imitate regimes like Iran with imprisonment and execution of political dissidents and intolerance of deviations from orthodox practices. But since Jesus and his apostles left no traces of the political profile exhibited either by Joshua, David, or Mohammad, it could be that Christians pining for a regime that enforces their faith and practice is actually an alien notion among Christ’s followers. To prove the point, just imagine the Baptist Republic of South Carolina where Presbyterians are forced to dunk their adolescent children and Episcopalian men are required to wear white patent leather shoes.

Jamie Smith's Surprising Concession

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Early returns on James K. A. Smith’s critical response to 2k (largely David VanDrunen) are coming in and his remarks will likely keep alive debates about whether two-kingdom theology is alien (i.e., Lutheran) to the Reformed tradition. What needs to be said at the outset is that for all Smith’s criticism, it is measured and responsible as opposed to the hysterical misrepresentation in which John Frame, the Brothers B, Dr. K., and your average theonomist traffic. That may be an instance of being damned by faint praise. But anytime a 2k critic in Reformed circles actually treats a 2k proponent as if he is a Christian and a human being to boot these days, the critic deserves a compliment.

Also important to see is that Smith generally understands the difference between 2k and neo-Calvinism and expresses it accurately rather than resorting to caricature. For this reason, the contrast that Smith draws early in his essay is very useful for understanding the nature of the debate. According to Smith:

At its heart, the Kuyperian tradition has emphasized the Lordship of Christ over all things and hence affirmed creation and culture as realms of God’s redemptive in-breaking grace (Col. 1:15-20). Rejecting the functional Gnosticism of fundamentalism and otherworldly pietism, neo-Calvinists have emphasized a “transformative” project – or at least the importance of cultural labor that is restorative and redemptive – undertaken by a people fueled by grace and informed by revelation’s claims about how things ought to be. Redemption, then, is about bodies as much as souls and is about social bodies as much as individuals. In Christ, our creating and redeeming God effects a redemption that is nothing short of cosmic and nothing less than cultural. The wonderworking power released by the resurrection redeems us from punishment but also retools the arts to the glory of God; the ascended Christ grants his Spirit to empower us to overcome sin, but the same Spirit also equips us to probe into the nooks and crannies of cell biology, trying to undo the curse of disease. In short, the Great Commission is the announcement of the Good News that Christ has made it possible for us to take up once again humanity’s cultural mandate. God’s grace is as wide as his good creation, and he gathers us as a people to take up our creational task of forming and transforming creation for his glory.

You are a neo-Calvinist if you get goose bumps reading this.

In contrast, 2k stands for:

God’s grace is more circumscribed (than the Kuyperian vision). The gospel of grace is announced and enacted within the spiritual realm of the church, but in the temporal, civic realm of our cultural life – the work of building schools and families and libraries – we are governed by natural law. We meet Christ as Redeemer in the Word and sacraments, who births in us a longing for his coming kingdom; but in the rest of our mundane lives, we deal with God the Creator, giver of natural law. While Sundays give us a taste of the spiritual kingdom of heaven, the rest of the week we inhabit the earthly kingdom of the present. While in the church, we feast on the Word of God’s revelation, in our cultural lives in this temporal world we live by the “universally accessible” dictates of natural law.

Some of us might want to qualify how air tight these compartments of Word vs. natural law are in Smith’s description. For instance, the Bible does reveal general norms for family life which take place on the common days of the week. And believers should avail themselves, according to most 2kers, of the word and prayer during the days between Sabbaths. Even so, Smith draws a fair contrast between the two. And what is important to notice for the rest of his essay is how cultural the Kuyperian vision is and how ecclesial 2k convictions are. In fact, one could well ask Smith where is the church in his outline of the neo-Calvinist outlook? (One could wonder additionally if Reformed pastors during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were as silent about the church and so voluble about culture.)

Rather than arguing for the superiority of neo-Calvinism to 2k, Smith decides to criticize 2k – again, mainly VanDrunen – for misunderstanding Augustine. Smith believes that VanDrunen collapses Augustine’s two cities into Luther’s two kingdoms; the Calvin professor dodges entirely the 2k language in Calvin that makes the Geneva pastor sound a lot like Luther.

This is the heart of Smith’s article – to blame 2k for misunderstanding Augustine. It doesn’t address at all the merits of either neo-Calvinism or 2k and for that reason, according to this referee, Smith doesn’t lay a glove on VanDrunen. In fact, though I don’t have VanDrunen’s Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms with me in Turkey (can you believe it?), I am fairly certain that the Westminster California professor distinguishes clearly between Augustine’s two cities and Gelasius’ two swords, and that the real genesis of 2k is in the distinction between the temporal and spiritual powers that Augustine along with other early medieval authorities make.

Be that as it may, also notable about Smith’s essay is how his interpretation of Augustine puts the Bishop of Hippo far closer to modern 2k than to neo-Calvinism. In fact, Smith’s reading of Augustine and the way Christians interact with the earthly city, what he calls, “selective collaboration,” is almost exactly what 2kers are arguing for over against the hyped neo-Calvinist language of redeeming the culture or w-w.

While Augustine suggests the center of gravity for heavenly citizens’ political energy is ecclesial [when do neo-Calvinists ever say this?] and articulates a basic stance of suspicion and critique of the political as embodied in the earthly city, this does not translate into any kind of manichaean, absolutist rejection of participation in the politics of the earthly city [would Kuyper ever say this of the French Revolution?]. Rather, Augustine’s political phenomenology advocates selective collaboration based on four factors. (Bold text all about me and my thoughts)

First, the earthly city attests to “an ineradicable creational desire” such that the earthly city is a “sign” of the heavenly city.

Second, Augustine is attentive to the teleological nature of virtue in such a way that the earthly desire for virtue is to be preferred to vice. Meanwhile, the desire for earthly peace – “which is only a semblance of peace – is nonetheless preferred to its absence.”

Third, Augustine recognizes that some “cultural configurations are closer to being properly directed than others – [which] also permits an ad hoc recognition that there can be aspects of penultimate congruence even where this is ultimate, teleological divergence.”

Fourth, these affirmations of “even disordered communal love” do not translate into a program of deep affirmation or even Christianiization of the political configuration of the earthly city.” Smith adds, “Augustine is not Eusebius.”

The purpose of seeking some modicum of political peace in the earthly city is ecclesial: “that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life with all devotion and love.” This does not sound like a project for “transforming” the empire.

Neither does it sound like Kuyper and his followers. My own reading of Kuyper is that his practice was better than his rhetoric. In the demands of Dutch public life, he was willing to work within the limits of the nation’s political order for the sake of the church as institute and for the sake of God’s people. But to justify that work, he relied upon the antithesis in a way that drew a manicheaen contrast between the original Dutch republic and the French Revolution, and between a Christian w-w and the Enlightenment.

It seems to me that on the basis of Smith’s reading of Augustine the Calvin professor is a welcome contribution to the neo-Calvinist world. The reason is that he sees how ecclesial Augustine was. And one of the foremost concerns of contemporary 2kers is to restore to the church her unique calling. To do that requires jettisoning much of the transformational logic that leads to the “redemption of culture.” Redemption takes place in the church. Creation and providence take place in culture. Smith recognizes this in his description of Augustine, even when he uses the word “creation” instead of “redemption” to describe the ways of the earthly city.

Unwittingly, then, Smith has confirmed the 2k objection to neo-Calvinism. It appears that his real target is not the resurgence of 2k within Reformed circles but the overreach that regularly afflicts Dutch Calvinism when while reading Colossians 1 their knees go wobbly.

What A Turkey! Part 3: Abraham's OPC Children

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

Today while folks back in the States are firing up grills, marching in parades, and watching baseball games — actually rising from bed to prepare for these activities — the group from Hillsdale visited the alleged birthplace of Abraham in Urfa (also known as Saliurfa). Muslims claim Urfa as Abraham’s birthplace. Others say that the city of Abraham’s birth, Ur, in southern Iraq, is the one referred to in Genesis. Since Urfa is only 24 miles from Harran, where Jacob had to work for his wives, Leah and Rachel, and it is where Isaac sent Jacob to find a wife, some believe that Urfa, with the family’s ties to the region, may be the real place of Abraham’s birth.

Either way, it was good to see the male Orthodox Presbyterians in the group take their identity as the spiritual seed of Abraham seriously amid Muslim tourists and pilgrims by donning the traditional head gear and thinking about what Paul wrote in Galatians (yet another part of Turkey!):

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:23-29 ESV)

Looks Like Peter and Paul Were "Radical" 2Kers

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

Here is Rabbi Bret’s benchmark:

In R2K “theology” the only time the Church can protest this seizure of sovereignty is when the state seeks to dictate to the Church about its formal worship patterns. But if the Church is only concerned about its formal worship patterns then why would the state ever have any reason to want to absorb a sovereignty that it views as irrelevant? In point of fact if the R2K church is telling its people that they must obey the state, the state may very well view the R2K church as already effectively one of its agents.

Here is what the apostles of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wrote:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4 ESV)

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:13-25 ESV)

The more some try to read their political opposition into Scripture, the more they resemble political Islam. Then again, he’s found a home in the Christian Reformed Church where the saints are gearing up to declare that global warming is a reality.