Tag: sola scriptura

The Bible Liberated

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

E. J. Hutchinson argues that sola scriptura follows directly from capacity of language to communicate and worries what a reliance on infallible interpreters does to God’s design in communicating by holy writ:

if we wish to affirm the full humanity of Scripture, we need to have a doctrine that does something like the work of sola scriptura. Why? Because, at a certain level, human communication is perspicuous, even if not exhaustively so. Every interaction we have throughout each day presumes this–and that not only for oral communication, but for written communication as well (which are only two modes of the genus “communication”). The entire edifice of contractual law, for instance, is built upon this presumption, and, if one violates his contract, he is accountable to the law for it, for he should have known–and did know–better.

The same is true of written literature. Take Homer’s Odyssey as an example. If one wishes to know what the Odyssey is about–what it means–one reads the Odyssey. In neither instance, that of contractual law or that of ancient literature, is there a need for an infallible umpire to secure understanding. If such were the case–which is to say, if human communication were deeply opaque by nature–we would need such an umpire for everything (though he could still only use human communication to grant us understanding, and so still and all we would be likewise befettered). 1 In other words, the assumption that we cannot understand each other, even in writing, requires a nihilistic and despairing view of an animal that is social by nature, and neither nihilism nor despair are Christian virtues.

Indeed, it is in principle possible to understand something of a text with no help at all from others, though it is also possible (and perhaps likely) to misunderstand a great deal more. For that reason, it is profoundly unwise to ignore all of the assistance that is available. With respect to the example of contract law, that is why we have lawyers (I knew I would find a reason eventually). With respect to the example of the Odyssey, that is why we have people who specialize in Homer and the reading of archaic Greek poetry. As Solomon says, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” Eric Parker helpfully explicated this principle yesterday via Zanchi. Expertise in exegesis is a great good, whether it is the exegesis of a contract, a poem, or the Bible, and in the case of the latter it is perhaps an even greater good, because the stakes are so much higher. None of this, however, requires infallibility, as we see if we are being honest and reasonable: these are, rather, questions of prudence. All three kinds of texts are instances of human communication, and in that respect there is no reason in principle why their reading should be generically different–and, again, the understanding of an interpretation, or of an interpretation of an interpretation, presumes the basic communicativeness of human language in any case. Perhaps paradoxically, then, Scripture’s humanity requires perspicuity (in the sense used above), which is ingredient in and fundamental to any construal of sola scriptura. If perspicuity exists, then sola scriptura is perfectly reasonable.

Does Bryan Need to Talk to John and Francisco?

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

The way the Callers discuss infallibility you’d almost think that apostasy for the visible Roman Catholic Church is impossible. If truth is what the infallible magisterium determines, if a system of truth does not stand over the magisterium to which they need to conform, if Christian truth depends on the determinations of popes and councils of bishops, how could the Roman church ever be wrong?

But another strain of conservative Roman Catholicism doesn’t construe the truth the way Bryan does. John Zmirak, in fact, sounded very different from Bryan, even to the point of echoing Luther:

These men who are fracking the Church to produce the current “earthquake of mercy” are hungry for recognition and legitimacy. They want to be seen as leaders — which is why they dash out in front of every crowd, wherever it’s headed. But legitimacy is precisely what the bishops and even the pope will sacrifice if the Synod ends up approving the radical proposals that are before it.

If the pope permits divorced couples who now live in extramarital relationships to receive Holy Communion without repenting and promising celibacy, he will be sanctioning one of two things: adultery or polygamy. Marriage is, by Christ’s command, indissoluble. That was taught infallibly by the Council of Trent. If the pope denies that doctrine, if he re-shapes one of the seven sacraments so radically, he will be proving something that the Orthodox have been saying since 1870: That he is not infallible on matters of faith and morals.

That might not sound like such an enormous sacrifice; the Church got along quite well without that doctrine right up until Vatican I. But by flouting the Council of Trent, and proving that Vatican I was in fact mistaken, the pope would be doing much more. He would be demonstrating that such Councils themselves lacked divine authority — that they were not like Nicaea or Chalcedon, the early Councils that built up Christian doctrine. Instead Councils such as the Lateran, Trent, and Vaticans I and II, would be merely local Western synods, exactly as the Orthodox have been insisting since 1054. In other words, the pope would be proving that Roman Catholic assertions of papal authority are grossly exaggerated, and that the Eastern Orthodox have the better claim as the heirs of the twelve apostles.

There’s an irony here, since the Orthodox have permitted the quasi-polygamous “Kasper option” for more than 1,000 years. But the Orthodox make no pretense of wielding infallible authority. They accept the early Councils of the Church (which took place well before 1054) and argue among themselves over how to apply them. They could be wrong.

And on marriage, the Orthodox are wrong. But Rome has no such wiggle room. The claims of the papacy are brave, expansive — and empirically falsifiable. If Rome adopts the Orthodox practice of marriage, that will falsify them. The mouse will have died in the maze.

If this happens, it would not prove that Luther or Calvin were right. Instead it would show that papal claims are false, that God has not left the Church with a central authority for the interpretation of doctrine, and that the Orthodox model is the only viable choice for sacramental Christians.

In point of fact, such an outcome would prove Luther and Calvin correct because they made Christ and his word, not the bishops of the church, the standard for proclamation and ministry. The Protestant outlook on biblical authority winds up being so commonsensical.

Francisco Jose Soler Gil piles on with a reminder that popes can be “calamitous”:

When can we say that a Pope is calamitous? Of course, it is not enough for it that the Pontiff support false opinions on this or that issue. Because a Pope, as any other man, will necessarily ignore many matters, and have erroneous convictions on many others. And therefore it could happen that a Pope who is an aficionado on stamp or coin collecting could make grave mistakes regarding the value or date or certain stamps or coins. When rendering his opinion on matters that are not of his competence, a Pope has greater possibilities of erring than of being right. Exactly like you and me, dear reader. Therefore, if a Pope showed some inclination on making public his opinions on the art of pigeon-breeding, ecology, economy, or astronomy, the Catholic expert on such matters would do well in enduring patiently the outlandish blurbs of the Roman pontiff on matters that, naturally, are alien to his Cathedra. The expert will naturally lament the eventual errors, and more generally the lack of prudence that some declarations make evident. But an imprudent and loquacious Pope is not for this reason alone a calamitous Pope.

On the other hand, [a Pope] is, or can thus be, when he, by word and deed, causes damages to the treasure of the faith of the Church, temporarily obscuring aspects of the image of God and of the image of Man that the Church has the duty to defend, transmit, and deepen.

But can there be such a case as this?… Well, in fact it has happened already several times in the history of the Church. When Pope Liberius (4th cent.) – the first non-canonized Pope – gave in to strong Arian pressures, he accepted an ambiguous position regarding this heresy, leaving in the lurch the defenders of the Trinitarian dogma, such as Saint Athanasius; when Pope Anastasius II (5th cent.) flirted with the defenders of the Acacian schism; when Pope John XXII (14th cent.) taught that the vision of the God by the just does not occur before the Last Judgment; when the Popes of the period known as “Great Western Schism” (14th-15th cent.) excommunicated each other; when Pope Leo X (16th cent.) not only intended to pay for his luxuries with the selling of indulgences, but also to theoretically defend his power to do so, etc, etc, a part of the treasure of the faith remained obscured for a more or less lengthy period due to their actions and omissions, therefore creating moments of huge internal tension within the Church. The Popes responsible for these must be properly called “calamitous”.

One thing that is striking about Gil’s advice is how much it sounds like Machen’s counsel to conservative Presbyterians during the 1930s:

(7) Do not follow the instructions of the Pope in that which deviates from the treasure of the Church.

If a Pope would teach doctrines or would try to impose practices that do not correspond to the perennial teaching of the Church, summarized in the catechism, he cannot be supported nor obeyed in his intent. This means, for example, that priests and bishops are under the obligation to insist on traditional doctrine and practice, rooted in the deposit of the faith, even at the cost of exposing themselves to being punished. The lay faithful must likewise insist on teaching traditional doctrine and practices in their area of influence. Under no circumstances, not even out of blind obedience or fear of reprisals, is it acceptable to contribute to the spreading of heterodoxy or heteropraxis.

(8) Do not financially support collaborationist dioceses.

If a Pope would teach doctrines, or would impose practices, that do not correspond to the perennial teaching of the Church, summarized in the catechism, diocesan Pastors should serve as a wall of contention. But history shows that bishops do not always react with sufficient energy when faced with these dangers. Even worse, they at times endorse, for whichever reasons, the efforts of the calamitous pontiff. The lay faithful who lives in a diocese ruled by such a Pastor must therefore remove his financial support to his local church while the inappropriate situation persists. Obviously, this does not apply to aids that are directly destined to charitable ends, but it does apply to all the rest. This also applies to any kind of collaboration with the diocese, whether it be for example some kind of volunteer work or institutional position.

Of course, Bryan could be right and John and Francisco wrong. But he sure seems to be outnumbered.

The Further Appeal of Sola Scriptura

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

Why is it that Jason and the Callers use the Bible against Protestants but not against the bishops?

The lesson of all this is that God is not impressed by numbers. Yes, our Lord wants all men to be saved. But they will be saved on His terms, and if they will not heed Him on His own terms, He is willing to wipe them away and start all over again. He has delivered His truth and His commands, and if people are not willing to keep them, He will blot them out – even if He has to blot out an entire nation or even a race and start all over again from scratch. In none of these historical examples does God ever suggest that He will mitigate His law, relax His discipline, or soften His demands just because a large – sometimes very large – portion of His people are living in disobedience. He would rather wipe out the huge amount of dissenters and start fresh than relax even a single point of His commands on their behalf.

This is extremely relevant given current discussions about mitigating the Church’s long standing discipline of denying communion to people living in adulterous “second marriages.” The contemporary wisdom, exemplified by Cardinal Kasper, suggests that because there are so many Catholics living in this state who cannot receive communion, there is an “abyss” between Church practice and the real experience of couples in concrete circumstances. If the Church were to continue to deny these people communion, we might lose a lot of people. Therefore, we need to accommodate their rebellion by softening our discipline.

This is not the way God works. God is not impressed by the number of people living in “second marriages”, nor is God afraid to lose them all and work again from a remnant. Reflect again on that passage from Exodus; God had done wonders to bring these people out of Egypt and had given them the Law in a manifestation of divine glory unsurpassed in the Old Testament. According to the census at the time of the Exodus, Moses led 603,550 men out of Egypt (Num. 1:46); a massive throng of humanity! Even so, when they all rebelled, He was prepared to destroy them all and start all over again with a single man – essentially, go back to the starting point he had established with Abraham centuries before. He was not impressed with the numbers of the rebels; no angels made the argument that an abyss existed between God’s demands and the concrete pastoral circumstances of the Israelites that needed to be bridged; they held no committee meetings on the “problems” of Israelite religion. “Let me alone that I may consume them.” God was ready to destroy them all and start over again with a single man. And note that it was not by pleas of mercy for the Israelites that Moses’ intercession saved them, but by appealing to God’s glory and His own word.

You see, God is not afraid of working through a remnant. Cardinal Kasper is.

Too much skin in the game?

Let the Interpretation Resume

Published on by D. G. Hart102 Comments

Or Jason Stellman has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Jason is still justifying his realignment by trotting out the familiar refrain that sola scriptura doesn’t solve anything, thus making Protestantism the road to ruin and mayhem.

For the confessional Presbyterian, the reason the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches is “not a [true] church” is that its theology disagrees with the interpretation of the Bible espoused by confessional Presbyterians, and therefore CREC pastors are not truly ordained and thus ”don’t have the sacraments.” But of course, this is completely circular: “Our view is that the marks of a true church include properly understanding the gospel [or, agreeing with our interpretation of the Bible concerning what the gospel is], and since the CREC falls short in this regard, it therefore fails to meet our criteria of what a true church must be.” But this is a perfect recipe — indeed a license — for anarchy and schism. Any fallible group of people can now gather together, decide what counts as a true church, and then dismiss from that category everyone else who disagrees with them.

This is why Sola Scriptura — even in its more churchly expressions — ultimately fails. As long as there’s some sincere, Bible-believing Christian who disagrees with the church on some issue, all that will result from an ecclesiastical decision on that issue (even from a church’s highest court) is a never-ending “yeah-huh!” / “nuh-uh!”, he said / she said dispute.

In fact, it’s not just that this may be the result, it’s that it must be, for the irresolvability of any theological controversy is built into the whole Protestant system from the get-go. So even if the proper formula is not Solo but Sola, the “A” at the end still stands for Anarchy.

If Protestants suffer from interpretive discord, what is the affliction that Roman Catholics experience when confronted with the statements of their interpretive authority? For instance, I wonder if Jason believes the following affirmations and denials from various popes (or does he have to explain them)?

From Boniface VIII (1305) on the church’s supreme power which includes wielding both swords:

We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords’ [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard’ [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.

However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God’ [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.

From Nicholas V (1455) with global political power trying to arbitrate which Roman Catholic monarch gets to colonize the “new” world and vanquish the Saracens (i.e. Muslims):

The Roman pontiff, successor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Jesus Christ, contemplating with a father’s mind all the several climes of the world and the characteristics of all the nations dwelling in them and seeking and desiring the salvation of all, wholesomely ordains and disposes upon careful deliberation those things which he sees will be agreeable to the Divine Majesty and by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls. This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord, if we bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who, like athletes and intrepid champions of the Christian faith, as we know by the evidence of facts, not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and subject them to their own temporal dominion, sparing no labor and expense, in order that those kings and princes, relieved of all obstacles, may be the more animated to the prosecution of so salutary and laudable a work.

Condemnations from Clement XI (1713) which repudiate the Augustinian convictions of the Jansenists:

41. All knowledge of God, even natural knowledge, even in the pagan philosophers, cannot come except from God; and without grace knowledge produces nothing but presumption, vanity, and opposition to God Himself, instead of the affections of adoration, gratitude, and love.

42. The grace of Christ alone renders a man fit for the sacrifice of faith; without this there is nothing but impurity, nothing but unworthiness.

43. The first effect of baptismal grace is to make us die to sin so that our spirit, heart, and senses have no more life for sin than a dead man has for the things of the world.

44. There are but two loves, from which all our volitions and actions arise: love of God, which does all things because of God and which God rewards; and the love with which we love ourselves and the world, which does not refer to God what ought to be referred to Him, and therefore becomes evi

Pius IX’s condemnation of the separation of church and state:

Others meanwhile, reviving the wicked and so often condemned inventions of innovators, dare with signal impudence to subject to the will of the civil authority the supreme authority of the Church and of this Apostolic See given to her by Christ Himself, and to deny all those rights of the same Church and See which concern matters of the external order. For they are not ashamed of affirming “that the Church’s laws do not bind in conscience unless when they are promulgated by the civil power; that acts and decrees of the Roman Pontiffs, referring to religion and the Church, need the civil power’s sanction and approbation, or at least its consent; that the Apostolic Constitutions,6 whereby secret societies are condemned (whether an oath of secrecy be or be not required in such societies), and whereby their frequenters and favourers are smitten with anathema — have no force in those regions of the world wherein associations of the kind are tolerated by the civil government; that the excommunication pronounced by the Council of Trent and by Roman Pontiffs against those who assail and usurp the Church’s rights and possessions, rests on a confusion between the spiritual and temporal orders, and (is directed) to the pursuit of a purely secular good; that the Church can decree nothing which binds the conscience of the faithful in regard to their use of temporal things; that the Church has no right of restraining by temporal punishments those who violate her laws; that it is conformable to the principles of sacred theology and public law to assert and claim for the civil government a right of property in those goods which are possessed by the Church, by the Religious Orders, and by other pious establishments.” Nor do they blush openly and publicly to profess the maxim and principle of heretics from which arise so many perverse opinions and errors. For they repeat that the “ecclesiastical power is not by divine right distinct from, and independent of, the civil power, and that such distinction and independence cannot be preserved without the civil power’s essential rights being assailed and usurped by the Church.” Nor can we pass over in silence the audacity of those who, not enduring sound doctrine, contend that “without sin and without any sacrifice of the Catholic profession assent and obedience may be refused to those judgments and decrees of the Apostolic See, whose object is declared to concern the Church’s general good and her rights and discipline, so only it does not touch the dogmata of faith and morals.” But no one can be found not clearly and distinctly to see and understand how grievously this is opposed to the Catholic dogma of the full power given from God by Christ our Lord Himself to the Roman Pontiff of feeding, ruling and guiding the Universal Church.

And Pius XII’s condemnation of evolution (complete with a reassertion of the loyalty that folks like Jason owe to the papapcy):

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

(19. Although these things seem well said, still they are not free from error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.

20. Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me”;[3] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.)

Now maybe Jason agrees that the papacy holds both swords, the spiritual and temporal, or that the pope has power to grant the colonization of new lands around the world to European powers, or that something apart from grace prepares a believer for faith, or that church and state should be united, or that evolution is false and that the papacy has the power to rule on matters of science.

Or perhaps, he needs to interpret the very words of his source of supreme interpretation. Then again, he can always appeal to the theory and ignore historical reality.

Blame It On the Reformation (Part 2)

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

In The Unintended Reformation, Brad Gregory objects to the sort of doctrinal and (ultimately) intellectual pluralism that Protestants, with their doctrine of sola scriptura and their belief in the illumination of the Spirity, unleashed upon the West. The common refrain that the diversity of religious claims point to faith’s “arbitrary, subjective character” is the result of the Reformation’s challenge to Rome’s own claim to be the arbiter of truth claims. Gregory illustrates this way:

Try this thought experiment: Put in the same room Remi Brague, Daniel Dennett, Juergen Habermas, Vittorio Hoesle, Saul Kripke, Julia Kristevea, Jean-Luc Marion, Martha Sussbaum, Alvin Plantinga, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Peter Singer. Tell them they will be fed and housed but that they cannot leave until they have reached an agreement about answers to the Life Questions on the basis of reason. How long will they take? I wouldn’t hold my breath. (125)

Gregory goes on to concede that he is not opposed to reason per se “without which any rational endeavor would be impossible.” But this thought experiment does “strongly suggest that reason is as unlikely a candidate for answering the Life Questions as is Scripture alone.” (126)

So what is the solution? Gregory doesn’t state it directly but it has to be the papacy, or more generally, one authority who will eventually determine which of reason’s answers is THE answer to life’s questions.

But that invites another thought experiment. Put Aquinas, Scotus, Augustine, Benedict (the original), Gregory VII, and Thomas More in the same room and ask them to come up with answers to Life Questions. Would they agree? I’m not holding my breath. But put the pope (which one) in the room and all of a sudden you don’t get agreement necessarily but you have an umpire whose judgment will bind everyone in the room. What happens if the pope is not the smartest guy in the room? Apparently, it doesn’t matter. At least we have an authority to determine the answer. It doesn’t really matter if the answer is correct since what we need, apparently, is agreement on answers.

I don’t think Gregory means to imply such an authoritarian account of Roman Catholicism. And I do believe he is several steps from the quest for certainty that prevails among some of the hotter sort of papalists over at Called to Communion. But the resemblances are striking. Rome’s advantage appears to be its unity on paper and the comforting thought that its head will nurture unity and stamp out diversity. That’s an odd construction of Rome’s unified authority structure given the intellectual diversity of places like the University of Notre Dame today not to mention the way that various popes fell asleep at the switch when fellows like Duns Scotus and William of Occam were using their reason and writing.

How 2K Might Have Helped Stellman

Published on by D. G. Hart94 Comments

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.