Tag: two-kingdom theology

Pastor 2K to Tim Keller's Rescue

Published on by D. G. Hart97 Comments

The watchdogs of Redeemer Church in NYC have noted Tim Keller’s response to questions in a public forum about homosexuality and gay marriage. The exchange came at the end of the interview and according to the Bayly’s transcribing powers went like this:

Lauren Green (interviewer): As a church, how should we as Christians and how should the church view gay rights and gay marriage?

Tim Keller: The Minister of the Word: Ha! I would definitely say this is time to come to a conclusion! (Laughter).

I would definitely say… a thoughtful Christian Biblical response doesn’t fit into any of the existing categories out there. It’s not a simple matter of saying there should be no moral differentiation between any kind of sexual activity. Christians can’t go there–they can’t say, “no it doesn’t matter.”

It’s also true however, that this is a country where we’re supposed to love our neighbor. This is a country where a Christian is supposed to care about a just society for ALL our neighbors whether they believe like we do or not. And that’s gotta mean our gay neighbor.

And I would say people in the more conservative movement don’t really want to talk too much about that because they’re very upset because they feel like the gay agenda is too anti-Christian and too anti-religious.

So I would say–the reason it’s good to end on this question is–it’s not something, the way forward, I don’t see spelled out anywhere in public. I don’t see anybody in public taking all the Biblical concerns about justice and mercy in that area and speaking about them. But I’m certainly not going to get started.

Just to let you know I don’t really think the current options out there–about what we should do–are really the best ones from a Christian standpoint.

The Baylys have tagged this post as “two kingdom, spirituality of the church,” which is interesting because if Keller were truly a two-kingdom fellow he would not have has a hard a time answering this question as this interview suggests. What follows, then, are a few pointers to both the Baylys and to Keller on how a 2k pastor – in New York City, no less — might answer questions about the Ten Commandments:

Reporter: What does your church think about the first commandment?

Pastor 2k: We do not tolerate the worship of Allah in our church, but in a free society many members of our church would support religious liberty for peoples of all faiths and as a session we do not believe that his conflicts with their profession of faith.

Reporter: What does your church teach about the second commandment?

Pastor 2k: Well, we forbid images of God – including Jesus – at our church, but many in our congregation are supporters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which has many depictions of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and again our session does not believe it is a sin to go to museums and see such art.

Reporter: What is your church’s policy on the third commandment?

Pastor 2k: We exhort our members not to use God’s name flippantly, or as an expletive, but many of our members go to movies where Christ’s name is taken in vain and no one on the session is forcing them to repent. Some of them also listen to Rush Limbaugh whom I gather sometimes uses the words “damn” and “hell.” While we wish Mr. Limbaugh would not use such words, our session does not forbid members from listening to conservative talk radio.

Reporter: How does your church implement the fourth commandment?

Pastor 2k: We teach that all our members should avoid all forms of work on Sundays, unless they are in vocations such as the law enforcement, medicine, or public utilities. But we are not looking for the implementation of Blue Laws, again owing to the diversity of faiths and peoples who populate the United States and New York City.

Reporter: What does your church consider to be the obligations of the fifth commandment?

Pastor 2k: We do teach our members to submit to Mayor Bloomberg even if they prefer Rudy Guliani’s administration, but we are not about to endorse any party or set of candidates for the government of New York City.

Reporter: What does your church think about the sixth commandment?

Pastor 2k: We teach that murder is a sin, and that even hate is a violation of the sixth commandment – a spiritual hate crime if you will – but we are not about to go out to Citibank Stadium and tell the Mets fans to give a brotherly kiss to the Phillies fans who come up to see their team play. Please get real.

Reporter: What does your church teach about the seventh commandment?

Pastor 2k: We believe that homosexuality is a sin – as is pornography, adultery, and any form of sexual activity outside marriage. But again we recognize that the state cannot legislate Christian morality, even if some of our members are very concerned about the public policy implications of our currently licentious society. We try to make sure that our own members are living lives that conform to the teachings of Scripture. How the rest of Americans live their lives is not our church’s responsibility even though we proclaim all of God’s word weekly and publicly and call upon all New Yorkers to repent and believe.

Reporter: What is your church’s practice on the eighth commandment?

Pastor 2k: We believe that stealing is wrong but we are not convinced as a session that high tax rates are a form of robbery.

Reporter: How does your church handle the ninth commandment?

Pastor 2k: We do require our members to defend the honor of fellow members and their neighbors. But we also believe that if we name sins, address all people as sinners, and call them to repentance, we are not dishonoring their good names or reputations.

Reporter: What does your church do with the tenth commandment?

Pastor 2k: We teach our members and visitors to be content with their station in life and not envy the prosperity of others. This did not lead us to warn our members away from watching the royal wedding.

2k is complicated, but it doesn’t tie its pastors in knots.

Theonomic Dreaming: President Obama Gets Religion

Published on by D. G. Hart58 Comments

One of the recurring criticisms of 2k is that it denies the authority of God’s word for the civil magistrate. In some cases, the assertion is simply that the state should enforce both tables of the law. But since God’s word is filled with teaching that is binding, the anti-2k view does not lead necessarily to a narrow view of God’s law – as in only what Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. In fact, among the theonomic critics of 2k, the laws of Israel are as much part of God’s law as the Decalogue.

So, let’s see what happens when President Obama is having a quiet time (after recently speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast where he gave his testimony: “My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years”). He orders one of Max Lucado’s books sold by his former church in Chicago, where Jeremiah Wright was pastor, and begins to read through parts of Scripture on his own. He comes to the conclusion that murder is absolutely wrong and that abortion in many cases seems to be at odds with God’s law. He calls for a meeting of his cabinet to address the matter, calls the Speaker of the House about drafting legislation, and may even decide to address the nation during prime time.

Is that enough for the critics of 2k, or do they want President Obama to go farther and read the New Testament as well?

So let’s say the President continues to read the Bible daily and comes to the conviction, after counsel from nearby pastor, Mark Dever, that infant baptism is sinful. He knows that many churches, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, practice infant baptism. But he still believes that God’s word teaches only people who have made a credible profession of faith are eligible for baptism. So he calls another round of meetings with cabinet officials, members of Congress, and church leaders to begin to draft legislation that would prohibit infant baptism. Let’s also suppose that he gave the churches a year to stop their practices and if they did not the government would shut down all congregations that still used a baptismal font.

This scenario is not so hard to imagine since Presbyterians in Scotland and Northern Ireland experienced from Oliver Cromwell the kind of repression that President Obama might visit on Reformed churches if he got evangelical religion. According to Crawford Gribben, The Irish Presbyterians Puritans:

In May 1653, the English elite decided to remove the leading Presbyterian ministers and lay families [from Northern Ireland] by force to a remote part of Ireland. This plan, the goal of which was described as sending Presbyterian “to hell or Connaught”, was so breathtaking that it was never actualy carried out. Leading Catholics were removed instead.

The fact that this plan was adopted by leading Irish Independents shows the betrayal that existed at the heart of the Puritan alliance. . . . These Puritans believed that, with the end of the Stuart monarchy in the execution of King Charles, the fourth monarch was being swept away, and would be replaced by the millennial kingdom of God.

The Fifth Monarchist vision of the kingdom was grounded in Old Testament law. They believed that the coming kingdom . . . would see the restructuring of civilization. All over the world, nations would be brought into submission to King Jesus, who would govern them with a “rod of iron”. The evidence of his rule would be that the nations would abandon their old laws, and be governed instead by the laws of the Bible . . . . English policy in Ireland was governed by this type of millennial interest. (pp. 101, 103)

Is this the kind of magistrate that anti-2kers want? Is this the kind of eschatology that anti-2kers affirm? If they don’t, how do they distinguish between a magistrate that enforces only part of God’s word and one who follows Scripture in everything, both national and ecclesiastical policy? I know I have raised this point in other ways before. But it does seem mightily selective to think that magistrates need to pay attention to sexual sins but need to mind their business when it comes to liturgical infidelity.

Can you really have a godly magistrate without having a ruler with powers that restrict the church? Is it really possible for the separation between church and state to apply only to the first table of the law and not to the second also? If Israel is the model, and if Old Testament Israel was biblical – duh – then those questions would seem to answer themselves.

Silence is Leaden

Published on by D. G. Hart18 Comments

I am detecting a parallel among critics and questioners of 2k. On the one hand, opponents have trouble with the idea (sorry Jeff, I’m not going ad hominem intentionally) that the Bible is silent on a range of subjects and activities. At the same time on the other hand, critics feel free to draw conclusions about someone’s views simply by virtue of their silence upon a subject. I don’t necessarily believe these are at root the same. But I also sense a high degree of affinity.

The latest example of this phenomenon comes yet again from the Baylys in their reaction to a 2k post by Brian Lee over at the Daily Caller. He writes, for instance:

Christianity is not politically conservative or politically liberal — though Christians may be either. Christianity is not political at all. It is in a sense politically agnostic. But in another sense it calls into question the basis of every earthly power, including politics.

The entire article is worth reading as a healthy summary of biblical argument that goes by the name 2k but is really an expression of a redemptive historical reading of the difference between Israel and the church.

But Brian’s silence about abortion is not golden from the vantage of mid-western conservative Presbyterianism. According to the Baylys:

What Pastor Lee needs to think about is that obedience to the call to suffering, to our Lord’s command to take up our cross and follow Him, is at least as applicable to his parishioners as they exercise political authority and power as it was to Herod as he considered the call of John the Baptist, and the Areopagus as they considered the call of the Apostle Paul, to repent. Which is the call it appears Pastor Lee studiously avoids–unless, that is, his call to repentance is aimed at his fellow URC churchmen and women from Grand Rapids and Friesland who pray and write letters and vote, hoping their legislators will, for instance, bear the sword against those slaughtering the unborn across our land.

One wonders when the Baylys will listen to what folks like Brian Lee say rather than simply calling them up short for what they don’t. Maybe the Baylys actually need to cogitate upon pastor Lee’s own views about Christianity and politics as much as they are certain of their own. After all, Lee is a minister of the gospel just like they are. He may know the Bible as well as the Baylys and may actually know what to do when the Bible is silent – namely, remain silent.

Rhetorically Different, Functionally Similar

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

After yet another round of snark-prone discussion of 2k at Green Baggins (I don’t think we’ll reach the record of 800-plus comments that we did in the fall of 2008), I have come to understand better the attacks upon 2k.

By holding to the position that the Bible speaks to all of life, folks like Dr. Kloosterman and the Baylys believe they have a platform by which to upbraid President Obama for his various failings to enforce biblical morality. It is also a firm foundation upon which to insist upon public morality without having to countenance relativism.

When 2k proponents then say this is an improper use of Scripture or a legal conundrum for Americans bound by a Constitution that avoids religious tests, anti-2kers respond with the charge of antinomianism and unbelief. For without the Bible in hand, Christians have no basis upon which to tell President Obama or the rest of U.S. citizens, with love of course, what to do.

No, no, no 2kers reply. We can tell President Obama what to do by appealing to the light of nature and to the laws of the republic. The Bible doesn’t have to speak to all of life for us to speak to all of life because God gave all of life and created life has an inherent order.

But because anti-2kers don’t really believe in the light of nature’s reliability, they are left with the Bible as the only source of ethics or law.

Another difference between the two sides is the use to which each side puts Calvin and the magisterial Reformation. For anti-2kers, the arrangements between church and state from 1522 to 1776 are just fine (even though the state basically ruined the Reformed churches from 1600 on), and 2kers betray the Reformed tradition for criticizing those same ecclesiastical establishments.

Not so fine, however, is the older legal provisions for blasphemy and idolatry and witchcraft. When pressed to defend the practice of executing heretics or blasphemers, anti-2kers try to change the subject and say that 2k is the issue on trial, not the anti-2k position. But so far, no 2k critic has actually defended the execution of Servetus or Massachusetts laws calling for the execution of adulterers. Not even Doug Wilson can seem to stomach the execution of heretics.

One last important difference is that anti-2kers are censorious about their differences with 2kers – calling 2k outside the Reformed tradition and worse. Meanwhile, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, they are shocked, just shocked, to find that Roman Catholics and Mormons are practicing idolatry freely in the greatest nation on God’s green earth.

Christian Hell?

Published on by D. G. Hart32 Comments

Mark Horne apparently thinks he has landed a damaging jab against 2k by ridiculing Jason Stellman’s point about the discontinuity between culture here and the new heavens and new earth – a point raised in Keith Mathison’s review of David VanDrunen’s new book, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms. Stellman wrote:

If my marriage to my wife will not survive into the age to come, then why would I think her wedding ring will? Sure, it’s a nice ring and very well-made, but it’s hardly a higher example of human productivity than our marriage is.

For what it’s worth, the absence of marriage in the new heavens and new earth would certainly seem to unravel arguments that look at redemption as the restoration of creation. If marriage existed as part of the created order and then vanishes in the glorified order, something is going on that seems to escape the average neo-Calvinist’s redemptive-historical horizon.

But Horne does not consider Stellman’s point for very long and rushes instead to his own – perhaps listening to too much Focus on the Family – about the difference that Christianity makes for marriages and child rearing. He writes:

If we use this principle for a generalized defense of R2K, then we must state that there are no such things as Christian marriages or Christian families. Jesus does not want us wasting our time talking about how husbands and wives should behave or raising their children according to God’s word. This is all a compromise of the Gospel and a confusion of law and grace. We should leave family issues to secular family counselors just as we should leave the economy to Bernanke.

(By the way, humans rear children; they raise cows. And I’ll take my chances with Bernake over Gary North running the economy.)

First, marriage is a legal status determined by the state. As such, Christian marriages do not exist unless we want to turn matrimony into a sacrament. But when you refuse the categories of holy, common, and profane, how else to make marriage meaningful except to baptize it?

Second, since marriage as an institution is not Christian but a creation ordinance that is open to all human beings (except for gay ones – lest anti-2k hysteria surface), then the issue is whether a Christian’s vocation is married or single. Christianity has to do with persons, not with institutions (other than the church). Christians who are married have clear instruction from Scripture about how they should conduct themselves as spouse or parent or both. But that does not mean that the institution of marriage (or the church for that matter) will survive in the new heavens and new earth. I mean, the Bible gives some instruction about the Lord’s Supper but does that mean we’ll still be observing that meal in remembrance of the Lord whom we see with our resurrected eyes?

Horne concludes with this whopper – the antithesis doesn’t come any more antithetical:

It is one or the other. Either you affirm that Jesus is “ruler of the kings of the earth” or you deny that it is “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”

Huh? Since when does denial of Jesus as ruler of the earth unseat him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords? This is where the literal mindedness of 2k’s critics is most revealing. They do not seem to have any conception for Christ ruling all things in different ways (you know, some as redeemer and others as creator and redeemer). Which means in the case of marriage that Christ rules all marriages, whether entered by believers or unbelievers. And those people who deny Christ as Lord are no less married than those who confess his name. To implicitly question the legitimacy of unbelievers’ marriages is to throw all conventions that support a measure of good social order to the wind. The implication of Horne’s antithesis is – if you don’t have Christ in your heart, be who you really are, a hell raiser. Since I’ve had hell raisers as neighbors, I much prefer those unbelievers who follow the order of creation even if they can’t identify the creator in a multiple choice test.

And speaking of hell, I wonder if it has ever occurred to 2k critics like Mark Horne that Christ is Lord of both Heaven and Hell, and that his rule in those places is markedly different. If Christ is indeed Lord of the cursed and the blessed, then it may be possible to imagine that Christ’s rule in a Christian home will be different from his sovereignty within a secular family. And if this is the case, then Christians need neither force non-believers to live like Christians nor inaugurate the eschaton by having the state start the judgments that Christ will execute when he returns. In other words, if Christians will simply follow what their Lord has told them to do – attend the means of grace, live quiet and peaceful lives, and glorify God and love neighbors in their work – Christ, who is Lord, will take care of the rest.

Uncanny how Christ does that without our ruling in his name.

Act Two, Scene Three: How Soon They Forget

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

In his serialized review of VanDrunen’s Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, Nelson Kloosterman finishes his inspection of the chapter on Calvin with the line, “Remember the Puritans.”

This is a curious appeal because Kloosterman’s memory may not be as good as his review of VanDrunen is long. His major objection to 2k appears to be that its advocates do not insist that Scripture is necessary for prescribing the duties of the civil magistrate. To VanDrunen’s point that Calvin did not believe civil government should be ruled solely by Scripture, Kloosterman finds an opening to insist that the Bible does inform at least part of the magistrates duties.

On the one hand, Kloosterman asks:

. . . if God’s natural law, embodied in OT Mosaic law, prohibits public blasphemy, and if this natural law ought to underlie civil enactments, then why should Dr. VanDrunen so vigorously oppose appeals to God’s requirements amid public policy discussions about moral issues covered by the Decalogue?

That would seem to mean that the civil magistrate is bound to uphold both tables of the law since Kloosterman is not only concerned about violations of the seventh commandment in the instance of gay marriage but also about instances of blasphemy covered in the third commandment.

Kloosterman also goes on to quote, as he is wont to do, from the Canons of Dort which give him the green light to insist that special revelation must be the lens through which to read general revelation (though he never seems to consider that this reading of Dort would prohibit all non-Christians from using natural law, whether as fathers or magistrates, since without regeneration they cannot properly interpret natural law). This is what Dort says:

There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in man after the fall, by virtue of which he retains some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrates a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling man to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him—so far, in fact, that man does not use it rightly even in matters of nature and society. Instead, in various ways he completely distorts this light, whatever its precise character, and suppresses it in unrighteousness. In doing so he renders himself without excuse before God” (III/IV.4, italics added).

Since Kloosterman italicizes those portions which correctly portray the limitations of natural man using natural law, he would seem to be saying that without Scripture, no one can interpret general revelation correctly. In fact, he said this in his interviews on Christ and culture at Reformed Forum.

But on the other hand comes Kloosterman’s selective memory, perhaps a function of having to venture beyond Queen Wilhelmina’s mints and wooden shoes. To VanDrunen’s point that Calvin did not use the Bible solely for civil matters, Kloosterman writes:

“Calvin did not believe,” we are told, “that the civil kingdom can be governed solely or primarily by the teaching of Scripture.” But who does believe that? Some of us insist that the civil kingdom (public society) should be governed in part by the teaching of Scripture, in connection, say, with issues like homosexual marriage and abortion, and even debasing monetary currency. But who among us has ever claimed that “the civil kingdom can be governed solely or primarily by the teaching of Scripture”?

Actually, as already mentioned, Kloosterman did claim that the Bible is the basis for civil government and its laws (and his invocation of Dort is further testimony to this point; how else to read the deficiency of natural revelation apart from the lens of Scripture?). But the curious aspect of Kloosterman’s concession that the Bible does not govern all of public life comes when he mentions those areas where the Bible should govern the civil magistrate – gay marriage and abortion.

What about blasphemy, mentioned in the previous quotation? And what about both tables of the law? Does the magistrate follow only the second table but get a pass on the first? Does this mean that the civil polity should tolerate blasphemy and idolatry, but not murder and stealing? If so, then how does this view follow biblical teaching or even show the usefulness of the Decalogue in civil government? Is Kloosterman really a closet advocate of 2k?

If he remembers the Puritans, he is. Because those English Protestants who fled the old country to establish a city on Beacon Hill were not at all reluctant to let the whole Decalogue (and even parts of the Pentateuch) inform their civil laws. To assist Dr. K’s memory, he might want to consider the following (only the first ten out of fifteen capital offenses) from The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts (1647):

1. If any man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other God, but the lord god: he shall be put to death. Exod. 22. 20. Deut. 13.6. & 10. Deut. 17. 2. 6.

2. If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death. Exod. 22. 18. Levit. 20. 27. Deut. 18. 10. 11.

3. If any person within this Jurisdiction whether Christian or Pagan shall wittingly and willingly presume to blaspheme the holy Name of God, Father, Son or Holy-Ghost, with direct, expresse, presumptuous, or highhanded blasphemy, either by wilfull or obstinate denying the true God, or his Creation, or Government of the world: or shall curse God in like manner, or reproach the holy religion of God as if it were but a politick device to keep ignorant men in awe; or shal utter any other kinde of Blasphemy of the like nature & degree they shall be put to death. Levit. 24. 15. 16.

4. If any person shall commit any wilfull murther, which is Man slaughter, committed upon premeditate malice, hatred, or crueltie not in a mans necessary and just defence, nor by meer casualty against his will, he shall be put to death. Exod. 21. 12. 13. Numb. 35. 31.

5. If any person slayeth another suddenly in his anger, or cruelty of passion, he shall be put to death. Levit. 24. 17. Numb. 35. 20. 21.

6. If any person shall slay another through guile, either by poysoning, or other such devilish practice, he shall be put to death. Exod. 21. 14.

7. If any man or woman shall lye with any beast, or bruit creature, by carnall copulation; they shall surely be put to death: and the beast shall be slain, & buried, and not eaten. Lev. 20. 15. 16.

8. If any man lyeth with man-kinde as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination, they both shal surely be put to death: unles the one partie were forced (or be under fourteen years of age in which case he shall be seveerly punished) Levit. 20. 13.

9. If any person commit adulterie with a married or espoused wife; the Adulterer & Adulteresse shall surely be put to death. Lev. 20. 19. & 18. 20 Deu. 22. 23. 27.

10. If any man stealeth a man, or Man-kinde, he shall surely be put to death Exodus 21. 16.

I wonder if this is the system of law that Dr. K. would have the readers of Christian Renewal remember. Since he seems to shy away from putting people to death for adultery, Kloosterman would appear to be much closer to VanDrunen than he is either to Calvin or the Puritans whose notions of a Christian society perhaps only contemporary theonomists have the stomach to swallow.

In which case, what seems to motivate Dr. K.’s objections to 2k is pining for the sort of American society when liberal Protestants were running things and setting the standards for public life. Ramesh Ponnuru gave a useful description of the virtues of that wonderful time in American life in his essay, “Secularism and Its Discontents” (National Review, Dec. 2004) He wonders what would happen if religious conservatives actually achieved legislative success in the U.S. Their wish-list includes prohibiting abortion, restricting pornography, restraining experimentation on human embryos, and banning gay marriage. Some might like to have more prayer in public schools, and those who don’t home school would prefer that the public school teachers giving tips on condoms. But Ponnuru thinks this is hardly a return to John Winthrop’s Boston or John Calvin’s Geneva:

My point . . . is to note that introducing nearly every one of these policies – and all of the most conservative ones – would merely turn the clock back to the late 1950s. That may be a very bad idea, but the America of the 1950s was not a theocracy.

Likewise, Kloosterman’s critique of 2k is hardly a return to Massachusetts of 1647, Amsterdam of 1595, or to Zurich of 1550. If he could remember the Puritans, he might actually see how much in common he has with his Dutch-American nemesis, the lovely, the talented, David VanDrunen.

Otherworldly Thursday: Calvin on the Spiritual Life

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

As much as some critics may question my personal piety, I do daily attend to private worship and often make use of readings from the likes of the Reformers. (It grieves me to admit this since such public unction seems to be at odds with Christ’s own counsel to his followers in Matt 6: 5.) Just this morning I ran across a passage that I felt I should pass along, especially for those neo-Calvinist readers who do seem to be unaware of the difference between their own piety and the one that Calvin embodied and attempted to cultivate among the citizens and exiles in Geneva.

Here is Calvin’s comment and prayer from his lecture on Joel 2:28: And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

Calvin writes:

We have explained why the Prophet began with earthly blessings. One may indeed think that this order is not regular; for Christ does not in vain remind us, that the kingdom of God ought to be first sought, and that other things shall be added in their place, (Matthew 6;) for food, and every thing that belongs to this frail life, are, as it were, additions to the spiritual life. But the Prophet designedly mentioned first the evidence of God’s favor in outward benefits; for we see how slow the perceptions of men are, and how slothful they are in seeking spiritual life. As, then, men rise to things above with so much difficulty, the Prophet makes use of the best helps; and we must indeed be dealt with as we usually deal with children. For as there is not so much discernment in them as to be influenced by reasons, we set before them what is suitable to their weak and simple comprehension; so the Prophet did; for he showed first that God would be kind to the Jews in food for the body, and having used this as a help, he then added, Afterwards I will pour my Spirit upon all flesh.

By these words the Prophet reminds us, that people act absurdly when they are satisfied with vanishing things, when they ask of God nothing more excellent than to be pampered like brute animals; for in what do the children of God differ from asses and dogs, except they aspire after spiritual life? The Prophet, then, after having set before them lower things, as though they were children, now brings before them a more solid doctrine, (for thus they were to be led,) and affords them a taste of the favor of God in its external signs. “Ascend, then, now,” he says, “to spiritual life: for the fountain is one and the same; though when earthly benefits occupy and engross your attention, ye no doubt pollute them. But God feeds you, not to fill and pamper you; for he would not have you to be like brute animals. Then know that your bodies are fed, and that God gives support to you, that ye may aspire after spiritual life; for he leads you to this as by the hand; be this then your object.” We now, then, understand why the Prophet did not at first speak of the spiritual grace of God; but he comes to it now. He began with temporal benefits, for it was needful that an untutored people should be thus led by degrees, that on account of their infirmity, sluggishness, and dullness, they might thus make better progress, until they understood that God would for this end be a Father to them.

Then Calvin prays:

Grant, Almighty God, that since we want so many aids while in this frail life, and as it is a shadowy life, we cannot pass a moment, except thou dost continually, and at all times, supply through thy bounty what is needful, — O grant, that we may so profit by thy so many benefits, that we may learn to raise our minds upwards, and ever aspire after celestial life, to which by thy gospel thou invites us so kindly and sweetly every day, that being gathered into thy celestial kingdom, we may enjoy that perfect felicity, which has been procured for us by the blood of thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I do wonder if neo-Cals ever thought about life on planet earth in this way (a radically biblical one?) then they might come around to a higher estimate of the visible church and a more sober regard for cultural endeavor.

Heidelblog Is No Longer Hibernating

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

Anyone who thinks this is perverse may need to look in the mirror. Two-kingdom theology is remarkably simple. As Scott Clark explains, it’s all about priorities:

This inversion, this social precisionism and theological and ecclesiastical latitudinarianism, is precisely why it’s important to distinguish between the two spheres of the administration of God’s sovereignty. The social sphere is a common sphere, a sphere shared by believers and non-believers. It’s what used to be called “secular” before the word “secular” became a pejorative and the antithesis of “religious.” The proper antithesis of religious is pagan or atheist or something on that order. Properly, “secular” denotes “non-ecclesiastical.” It is still used this way in the UK but in the USA the connotation of “secular” as “opposed to God” has overwhelmed the older usage. Allow me to use it in the older sense of “non-ecclesiastical” to make a point. The common or the secular sphere is, in God’s sovereign providence, governed by general principles (laws) revealed by God in nature and in the human conscience. The Apostle Paul teaches us as much in Romans 1-2 and in Romans 13. The Apostle Peter teaches this throughout 1 Peter. Neither Peter nor Paul laid out an agenda for the civil magistrate (Caesar) because there was no need. They knew that Caesar already knew what to do: punish evil doers and protect the innocent.

The sacred sphere represented by the chief visible, institutional manifestation of the kingdom, the church, is not common. It is governed not by general principles revealed in nature. It is governed by God’s extensive revelation of his law and gospel in Holy Scripture. This is why the Apostles wrote at such length to the churches, not about the great civil problems of the first century, but about the great ecclesiastical problems of the 1st century, about getting the gospel right, about not confusing the law with the gospel, about church discipline, about who is eligible for special office in the church and the like. The Apostles were positively precisionist. They were not latitudinarian about these things.

Stellman Nails It

Published on by D. G. Hart78 Comments

N. T. Wright’s recent appearance at the Evangelical Theological Society has most evangelical biblical and theological professors swooning the way that teenaged females greeted the Beatles almost fifty years ago. What is it with the American obsession with English accents (or Scottish for that matter)? In response to a post by Doug Wilson on yet further discussion of Wright’s views in which Wilson criticizes Scott Clark, Stellman spots the subtext of Wilson’s beef with Clark:

But when you stop and think about it, it becomes immediately clear that the errors for which Clark faults Wright are the very same errors for which he faults Wilson. Wilson’s mocking dismissal of Clark’s disagreements with the New Perspective, therefore, can seemingly be explained by the fact that they also apply to the Federal Vision.

It would appear, then, that the reason Wilson wants people like Clark banned from the New Perspective discussion is not really because of the overly-scrupulous nature of his attacks, but because those attacks aren’t narrow enough to just zero in on Durham, but they also set their sights upon Moscow, Idaho. In a word, Wilson’s problem isn’t that Clark is too nitpicky, it’s that he’s not nitpicky enough, for if he would agree to pinpoint only those errors of Wright’s that Wilson agrees are erroneous, then all would be well and Clark would welcomed back into the discussion. But since his attacks on Wright are broader than what Wilson is comfortable with, he is branded a mere irritant and dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Not only a ding ding ding ding moment, but Stellman’s outlook is further proof that 2k is far more reliable than its hysterical opponents suppose. In fact, we are still waiting for the anti-2k folks to step up to the plate on justification.

Suffer, Submit, and Suck It Up

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

One of the interlocutors at this site suggested that neo-Calvinism and biblical theology of an amillennial variety go together well, and that no reasons existed for suggesting tension between someone like Geerhardus Vos and Abraham Kuyper. He linked to an essay that Richard B. Gaffin wrote on theonomy and claimed that Gaffin, a marked proponent of biblical theology in the Vosian tradition, was on board with neo-Calvinism. He even supplied a quotation from Gaffin that showed his neo-Calvinist bona fides:

It will not do simply to dismiss this chapter as the ramblings of someone who has be-
trayed his Reformed heritage—with its ennobling vision of life itself as religion and the whole of life to the glory of God—for an anemic, escapist Christianity of cultural surrender. Without question, the Great Commission continues fully in force, with its full cultural breadth, until Jesus returns; “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” is the mandate of the exalted Last Adam to the people of his new creation. We can not measure the limit of that “everything” and its implications; of it we can only confess with the Psalmist: “To all perfection I see a limit; but your commands are boundless” (119:96). That mandate, then, is bound to have a robust, leavening impact—one that will redirect every area of life and will transform not only individuals but, through them corporately (as the church), their cultures; it already has done so and will continue to do so, until Jesus comes.

Not to pick nits but when this comment referred to this paragraph as the concluding one in Gaffin’s essay I decided to take a look. In point of fact, Gaffin concludes that essay on a decidedly different note, one that fits the allegedly wimpy profile of 2k as opposed to those world-beaters, the neo-Calvinists. Here is what Gaffin wrote in his conclusion:

The comprehensive outlook found in the Book of Hebrews provides a fitting close to
these remarks. Two realities dominate the writer’s marvelous exposition of God’s eschatological, “last days” speech in his Son (1:2). The one reality is Jesus, the high priest in heaven (e.g., 4:14; 8:1). Fulfilling Psalm 110, the exalted Christ is “priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek” (e.g., 5:6; 6:10; 7:17); the New Testament contains no more impressive presentation of the realized eschatological dimension of his person and work than this.

But for whom is the exalted Christ high priest? Who is served by his sanctuary service (8:2) of eschatological intercession (7:25)? The answer to that question is the other reality in view—the church as a pilgrim congregation, a people in the wilderness. Utilizing a broad covenant-historical analogy, the writer compares the church between Christ’s exaltation and return to Israel in the desert (see esp. 3:7-4:11): just as the wilderness generation delivered from Egyptian bondage (picturing realized eschatology) had not yet entered Canaan (a picture of still future eschatology), so the New Testament church, presently enjoying a real experience of the salvation promised in the gospel, has not yet entered into the possession of that salvation in its final and unthreatened form (“God’s rest”).

Two basic perspectives emerge with these two realities. On the one hand, the writer’s realized eschatology leaves no room for a premil position: Once Jesus “has gone through the heavens” (4:14) and “has sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven” (8:1), his return for a provisional earthly rule, prior to the eternal heavenly order, would be retrograde for the writer, a step backward eschatologically. Christ’s return will be the return of the heavenly high priest, not the appearance of Christ temporarily exchanging heavenly ministry for earthly duties. That return will mean the appearance on earth of the heavenly order/sanctuary where Christ is “a high priest forever” (6:20), the manifestation on earth, without delay at his return, of the “heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22), the “lasting city” (13:14), the eternal “rest”-order (4:11).

But the writer is no less indisposed toward a postmil outlook: Until Christ returns the church remains a wilderness congregation; like the Patriarchs in the land of promise, believers are “aliens and strangers on earth” (11:13). That tension is an essential dimension of their identity — aliens in the creation that is theirs by right and whose eschatological restoration has already been secured for them by their high priest-king.

There is no “golden” age coming that is going to replace or even ameliorate these desert conditions of testing and suffering. No success of the gospel, however great, will bring the church into a position of earthly prosperity and dominion such that the wilderness with its persecutions and temptations will be eliminated or even marginalized. That would have to be the outcome if prosperity—understood, for instance, in the terms of Isaiah 65:17ff.—is to be at all meaningful. Such prosperity and blessing for the church are reserved until Christ returns.

The writer of Hebrews operates with a simple enough eschatological profile: the bodily absence of Christ means the church’s wilderness existence, his bodily presence, its entrance into God’s final rest. What he must confront in his readers is a perennial problem for the church, a primal temptation bound up with its wilderness existence: the veiledness, for the present, of messianic glory and the believer’s eschatological triumph; “at present we do not yet see everything subject to him” (Heb. 2:8), with the longing as well as the promise that “at present” holds for the church. All of us, then, are involved in a continuing struggle—against our deeply rooted eschatological impatience to tear away that veil and our undue haste to be out of the wilderness and see the realization of what, just because of that haste and impatience, will inevitably prove to be dreams and aspirations that are ill-considered and all too “fleshly.”

“For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14).

The point of this exercise is not to expose the error of an Old Life reader. It is to raise a question, though, about the way that 2kers and neo-Calvinists read. It strikes me that neo-Cal’s generally favor readings from texts that highlight a progressive and triumphant understanding of Reformed Protestantism’s effects upon the world. This extends to which passages of Scripture to highlight in exploring a believer’s identity as well as how to read the development of history and culture.

Abraham Kuyper established the model for this sort of reading when in his infamous Lectures on Calvinism he uttered inspirational prose such as the following:

The avoidance of the world has never been the Calvinistic mark, but the shibboleth of the Anabaptist. The specific, anabaptistical dogma of “avoidance” proves this. According to this dogma, the Anabaptists, announcing themselves as “saints,” were severed from the world They stood in opposition to it. They refused to take the oath; they abhorred all military service; they condemned the holding of public offices. Here already, they shaped a new world, in the midst of this world of sin, which however had nothing to do with this our present existence. They rejected all obligation and responsibility towards the old world, and they avoided it systematically, for fear of contamination, and contagion. But this is just what the Calvinist always disputed and denied. It is not true that there are two worlds, a bad one and a good, which are fitted into each other. It is one and the same person whom God created perfect and who afterwards fell, and became a sinner– and it is this same “ego” of the old sinner who is born again, and who enters into eternal life. So, also, it is one and the same world which once exhibited all the glory of Paradise, which was afterwards smitten with the curse, and which, since the Fall, is upheld by common grace; which has now been redeemed and saved by Christ, in its center, and which shall pass through the horror of the judgment into the state of glory. For this very reason the Calvinist cannot shut himself up in his church and abandon the world to its fate. He feels, rather, his high calling to push the development of this world to an even higher stage, and to do this in constant accordance with God’s ordinance, for the sake of God, upholding, in the midst of so much painful corruption, everything that is honorable, lovely, and of good report among men Therefore it is that we see in History (if I may be permitted to speak of my own ancestors) that scarcely had Calvinism been firmly established in the Netherlands for a quarter of a century when there was a rustling of life in all directions, and an indomitable energy was fermenting in every department of human activity, and their commerce and trade, their handicrafts and industry, their agriculture and horticulture, their art and science, flourished with a brilliancy previously unknown. and imparted a new impulse for an entirely new development of life, to the whole of Western Europe. (from Lecture 2)

2k proponents, in contrast, tend to take a more restrained even pessimistic view of Christian existence in this world. Believers have enough trouble overcoming sin in their own lives that taking on the entire world in a project of domination seems foolhardy and not the best use of spiritual resources.

This leaves 2k in a decided disadvantage with the Reformed rank-and-file. Neo-Cals can win people to their side because they are long on inspiration even if short on practical steps toward square-inch subjection. They can rally the faithful for all sorts of “yes, we can projects,” from taking back city hall to reclaiming the proper interpretation of the American or Dutch republics’ foundings. All 2kers can do is tell the faithful to cope; look to the Lord, count your blessings (name them square-inch by square-inch?), receive the means of grace, pray, and be faithful in your callings. This is not a project for changing the world. Most people – Reformed Protestants included – want to know “Can’t we do more!?!”

But if neo-Cals are better at inspiration, they are not so good at close reading. Not only do we fail to see in the New Testament exhortation for Christians to change the world, but we also read terms that 2kers are prone to use and neo-Cals to avoid. Peter and Paul refer to believers as strangers, aliens, and pilgrims. These are not the words that come to mind with neo-Calvinism. The mascot of neo-Cals is the crusader (retired recently by Wheaton College for obvious culturally insensitive reasons; but when have neo-Cals been sensitive to culture let alone people?)

But 2kers can take hope from the original Calvinist, John Calvin. He is hard to turn into a cultural transformer despite the efforts of Kuyper and H. Richard Niebuhr (has any neo-Cal ever asked why Kuyper’s reading of Calvinism is so similar to a liberal Protestant’s?). When you read Calvin you see the biblical themes of exile and pilgrimage. And when he comments on those favorite texts of cultural dominators, he is very short on the inspiration that typifies neo-Calvinism. Here are a couple of illustrations.

Calvin on Romans 8: 37 (“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”)

We do more than conquer, etc.; that is, we always struggle and emerge. I have retained the word used by Paul, though not commonly used by the Latins. It indeed sometimes happens that the faithful seem to succumb and to lie forlorn; and thus the Lord not only tries, but also humbles them. This issue is however given to them, — that they obtain the victory.

That they might at the same time remember whence this invincible power proceeds, he again repeats what he had said before: for he not only teaches us that God, because he loves us, supports us by his hand; but he also confirms the same truth by mentioning the love of ChristAnd this one sentence sufficiently proves, that the Apostle speaks not here of the fervency of that love which we have towards God, but of the paternal kindness of God and of Christ towards us, the assurance of which, being thoroughly fixed in our hearts, will always draw us from the gates of hell into the light of life, and will sufficiently avail for our support.

Calvin on 2 Cor. 10:5 (“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”)

And bring into captivity I am of opinion, that, having previously spoken more particularly of the conflict of spiritual armor, along with the hinderances that rise up in opposition to the gospel of Christ, he now, on the other hand, speaks of the ordinary preparation, by which men must be brought into subjection to him. For so long as we rest in our own judgment, and are wise in our own estimation, we are far from having made any approach to the doctrine of Christ. Hence we must set out with this, that he who is wise must become a fool, (1 Corinthians 3:18), that is, we must give up our own understanding, and renounce the wisdom of the flesh, and thus we must present our minds to Christ empty that he may fill them. Now the form of expression must be observed, when he says, that he brings every thought into captivity, for it is as though he had said, that the liberty of the human mind must be restrained and bridled, that it may not be wise, apart from the doctrine of Christ; and farther, that its audacity cannot be restrained by any other means, than by its being carried away, as it were, captive. Now it is by the guidance of the Spirit, that it is brought to allow itself to be placed under control, and remain in a voluntary captivity.

So the lesson for 2kers is the same lesson for all Christians: suffer, submit, and suck it up. But is contrary to such sucking to wish neo-Cals were better students of the Bible’s and Calvin’s assigned readings?)