Tag: two-kingdom theology

Does Christian Marriage Depend on the State?

Published on by D. G. Hart18 Comments

This story got me wondering about all of the grief Christians are displaying over the institution of marriage (some of which I share). It is about the government of Israel not recognizing the marriages of some evangelical Protestants.

Hundreds of Israeli evangelical couples have traveled out of the country in order to get married because the Jewish government does not officially recognize their faith. Church leaders are escalating efforts to change that.

The Council of Evangelical Churches in Israel (CECI), which includes 51 churches and organizations such as Campus Crusade and the Bible Society, formally requested in August 2011 that Israel recognize four denominations on behalf of nearly 5,000 followers. More than a year later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who must approve the request—has yet to respond, says Michael Decker, chief counsel for the Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ).

The reporter goes on to supply a quote from a from Mr. Decker: “”We’re dealing with a basic civil right. . . . It really is degrading for large groups of people that have a religion and want to get married according to their religion.”

From one angle, it is useful to recognize that once the state is the one responsible for legitimizing marriage, some groups may be excluded, such as gays in the U.S. and evangelicals in Israel.

But from another angle the notion of Christian marriage or being married “according to [your] religion” as a basic human right is odd. The first Christians (I’m supposing) didn’t enjoy a state that sanctioned their marriages. And the New Testament (the whole Bible for that matter) is remarkably silent on which institution — state, family, or church — is responsible for allowing access to marriage.

For instance, here’s the best the OPC could do in its proof texts for the Confession of Faith’s chapter on marriage:

a. Gen. 2:24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Matt. 19:4–6. And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Rom. 7:3. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Prov. 2:17. … which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.

b. Gen. 2:18. And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. Eph. 5:28. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 1 Pet. 3:7. Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

c. Gen. 1:28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Gen. 9:1. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. Mal. 2:15. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.

d. 1 Cor. 7:2, 9. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.… But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

e. Heb. 13:4. Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.

The proof texts go on, but the point is that none of the biblical material supporting a Christian view of marriage say anything about whether the state has a role in recognizing or granting marriages, or that believers should seek the state’s approval of their religious convictions about marriage. That contemporary Christians view biblical teaching on marriage through the lens of politics is a further indication of how Christian political activism skews the reception of Scripture and the practice of Christianity.

By the way, of the major Reformed confessions, the Standards are the only one to devote an entire chapter to marriage.

And yet, Protestants continue to look to the state to baptize their marriages when the early church knew no such blessing or use Christian norms for marriage as leverage for spiritualizing political debates. This does not mean that Christians in the United States should not think about the civil institution of marriage or voice objections to proposed changes in marriage laws. But it does mean that Christian marriage has endured a variety of political and legal conventions. The Bible may teach what form marriage should take but it says practically nothing about the legal and political arrangements.

If Critics of 2K Have So Much Time To Criticize 2K, the Culture Must Be Fine

Published on by D. G. Hart127 Comments

Recent interactions with Dr. K. and his followers have confirmed at least to (all about) me that no end (or substance) is in sight for the fine tooth comb applied to two kingdom theology. In an earlier exchange, potential clarification of views went essentially nowhere. Dr. K. did admit finally that Misty Irons may not be the best evidence of 2k’s problems, though he continues to make gay marriage a test case for cultural engagement (when he is not banging the drum for Christian schools). Why blasphemy laws are not also not on the table for culture warriors is still up for grabs (at one point Dr. K. said that gay marriage and blasphemy were apples and oranges).

So too some clarification came in the realm of biblicism. Dr. K. went out of his way to say that the Bible is not sufficient for all of life. But then with the other hand he insisted that the Bible must provide the lens with which to interpret everything. I don’t know about you, but if a book is silent on plumbing and then I am told the book in question needs to be used to interpret plumbing, the drip in my mental faucet quickens.

Arguably, the only glove that landed on 2kers was our failure to be as outraged as neo-Calvinists were about the incident of a transgender man exposing himself (herself?) to co-eds at a Washington State college.

Now (okay, a little while ago) comes another assessment of Matt Tuininga’s effort to find a middle way between 2k and neo-Calvinism. Part of the annoyance of this post is the mind-numbing numbering of paragraphs the way that European academic books do (arguably nothing makes scholarship look more arcane than numbering and sub-numbering paragraphs in the manner of a automobile manual). After three articles of trying to explain 2k to people unfamiliar with it and a tad frightened, Tuininga receives a barely passing grade from Dr. K.:

This essay written by Matthew Tuininga is the third in a series seeking to explain the heart of the new movement known as “natural law and two kingdoms” (NL2K, R2K, or simply 2K). It remains to be seen, however, whether his numerous qualifications designed to safeguard his position and to effect rapprochement with worldview Calvinism will offer genuine clarity or generate more confusion.

With the culture in such bad shape as neo-Calvinists have it, you might think Dr. K. would see 2k as a rather minor concern. Do anti-2kers really think that a few book writers, who are by no means celebrities at the Gospel Coalition’s registrants count celebrity, are derailing the project to return the United States to biblical standards? If only Old Life were that popular.

Meanwhile, not to be missed is a good statement of 2k convictions on Tuininga’s part:

Perhaps the most obvious expression of this reality is Ephesians 4, the passage Calvin used to link his two kingdoms doctrine with its institutional implications for church government. Paul explains that the fruits of Christ’s ascension, in which he was made Lord of all things, is expressed in his pouring out of the gifts of the church’s ministry. It is as the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers equip the saints for ministry and build up the body into Christ that the saints “grow up in every way into him who is the head” (Ephesians 4:7-16). This is Paul’s presupposition when he declares in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23, “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”

Thus, the church is the only corporate expression of the kingdom in this age. It is only as we join ourselves to the body of Christ, the body of those who hold fast to Jesus, that we participate in the kingdom that is coming. And although we witness to our citizenship in this kingdom in every single thing that we do in this age, doing everything “as unto the Lord,” the primary form this witness to Christ’s lordship takes is that of submission, service, and sacrifice in an often hostile and oppressive world. Only after believers, like Jesus and in conformity to his example, set aside the glory that they have been promised, take up the form of a servant, and humble themselves to the point of death, can they be confident that God will exalt them above every knee “in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Philippians 2:5-11). Only by following in the way of the Lamb that was slain, to the point of martyrdom if necessary, do the witnesses of the Lamb conquer with him (Revelation 12:11; 14:4).

My lone quibble with Matt is the sign of lingering neo-Calvinism (which I attribute to his Covenant College education, in part, and which he denies). For instance, he still believes that Christians will look or be different and noticeable when they apply the Bible to their daily lives:

The call of the Christian life is therefore not to establish the Lordship of Christ through conquest or external cultural transformation but to witness to Jesus’s lordship by imitating him in his sacrificial service. When we conform to Christ’s example faithfully the effect on our various vocations and communities will indeed be profound. Those in government will recognize the Lordship of Christ (Psalm 2) and seek to use their power to secure peace and justice for those under their charge, rather than self-aggrandizement, and to protect the church in order that it might fulfill its task (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Those in positions of economic power will serve those placed under them rather than dominate them (Ephesians 6:9). Husbands will sacrifice themselves for their wives in imitation of Christ, recognizing their equality together in him (Ephesians 5:25-33). Those who have been given gifts, talents, or riches will use those resources to provide for those who are in need (Ephesians 4:28; 1 Timothy 6:18). About all of these cultural affairs, in which believers engage in common with unbelievers, Scripture has much to say.

I know Matt thinks I am less than moderate at times in my expression of 2k and part of my provocation stems from an unwillingness to grant culturally distinct ways to Christians based on biblical teaching. But I also know and I am sure Matt knows, plenty of non-Christians who believe government officials should serve the public, that businessmen should not ruthlessly pursue profits, that husbands should be considerate and loving toward their wives, and that those with resources will share them with those in need. In other words, I see nothing inherently distinctive or biblical in the Christian pursuit of these social and cultural goods. Do different motives exist for Christian businessmen compared to their unbelieving peers? Sure. Can I see those motives? No. And that is the point. The best stuff that Christians produce in public or cultural life is hardly distinct from non-Christian products. Where you do literally see Christianity at work is on Sunday.

Oh no, there goes 24/7 Christianity.

Without 2K It's All A Muddle

Published on by D. G. Hart78 Comments

The response to last week’s post about the similarities between the religious right and political Islam is in (at least from the person who inspired the comparison) and it seems to be to deny the point about the ways in which Christians and Muslims object to secular society simply by stamping feet harder and louder. Bill Evans is back with this rejoinder (though it is not all about me):

Some are opposed to Christian political involvement on theological grounds. Here we think of the current proponents in Reformed circles of the so-called “two-kingdoms” doctrine (2K). According to this way of thinking, Christians have no business involving themselves as Christians in the political process, nor of proclaiming that there is a Christian position on the issues of the day. Such political activity, it is argued, fails to recognize the essentially spiritual mission of the Church, and to acknowledge that the task of the Church is to prepare people for the hereafter, not to work for political or social transformation. Some 2K advocates (e.g., here) have recently upped the rhetorical ante, suggesting that there is no essential difference between Christians who seek cultural transformation and Muslims seeking to impose Sharia law.

Although my main point here is not to provide an extended critique of current Reformed 2K thinking, I do have significant reservations about it. I tend to agree with the standard objections—that it has rather little connection to the two-kingdoms theme in Calvin and the earlier Reformed tradition (Calvin certainly thought that Geneva should be governed in accordance with broadly Christian principles), and that it confuses the Kingdom of God and the Church (biblically speaking, the Kingdom involves the Church but is not coextensive with it). Moreover, its working assumption that there is no middle ground of principled pluralism between theocracy and 2K is certainly open to question, and I sense that what traction 2K is getting stems largely from the fact that it provides a theological fig leaf for the evangelical culture-war fatigue referenced earlier.

Not to be missed is that Evans’ main point is that Christians have an obligation to engage the culture war (say, hello to Abraham Kuyper):

Simply put, a refusal to engage the cultural and political issues of the day is no longer an option for thoughtful conservative Christians in America. The battle has been forced upon us. Reasons for this have to do with current political realities, especially the wholesale shift of administrative power to a technocratic elite with a rather clear progressive social agenda. Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism has recently explored this development in an insightful article in The Weekly Standard. Smith writes, “Liberals today seek to create a stable, and what they perceive to be a socially just, society via rule by experts—in which most of the activities of society are micromanaged by technocrats for the economic and social benefit of the whole. In other words, social democracy without the messiness of democracy, like the European Union’s rule-by-bureaucrats-in-Brussels. This is the ‘fundamental transformation’ that President Obama seeks to implement in this country.” . . . If Smith is correct, and I think he is, culturally conservative religion and religious believers are in the crosshairs of these secular, culturally progressive technocratic elites.

This is a remarkable misreading of 2k and American politics. First the theology bit.

Evans, who is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, should know something about J. Gresham Machen who advocated the church staying out of politics (a 2k view) but then turned around and testified before Congress against the Department of Education, for instance. The lesson Machen taught me at least is that 2k is not opposed to Christian political involvement. What 2k opposes is the blurring of categories and confusion of arguments that so often afflicts Christians who either want to redeem the world or fear the world is out to get them. What is more, 2k actually follows the categories supplied by Reformed orthodoxy, such as the Westminster Confession.

Notice that within the Confession Christian involvement in politics has three possible expressions — believers, church officers, and Christians who hold political office.

On the involvement of Christians: It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate, when called thereunto: in the managing whereof, as they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth; so, for that end, they may lawfully, now under the new testament, wage war, upon just and necessary occasion. (23.2)

On the involvement of church officers as members of assemblies (and all Presbyterian pastors are members of presbyteries, not congregations): Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate. (31.4)

On the involvement of the magistrate, well here you may get a difference of opinion, but the revised confession says: It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. (23.3)

I believe this would apply to Christian magistrates protecting Muslims even though Islam is not Christian. Even the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, for which Evans works (at Erskine Seminary) allows the possibility of Christian magistrates in a secular country protecting Muslims:

Christian magistrates, as such, in a Christian country, are bound to promote the Christian religion, as the most valuable interest of their subjects, by all such means as are not inconsistent with civil rights; and do not imply an interference with the policy of the church, which is the free and independent kingdom of the Redeemer; nor an assumption of dominion over conscience. (23.3 ARPC Confession of Faith)

Since the United States is not a Christian country (just ask the Covenanters), the part about promoting the Christian religion is off.

What this adds up to is that 2k is once again tried and true according to the confessional heritage of the Reformed churches. I don’t suppose that Evans faults 2k for teaching that Christians may participate in politics (whether we turn into a Kuyperian holy duty is another matter but that sacred cause of politics is not something that Reformed Christians have adopted as part of their confession). Evans may disagree with 2k for arguing that churches should not meddle in politics. But that’s an issue he should likely take up with the Westminster Divines.

Perhaps the real disagreement comes over the nature of the magistrate. Here comes the political part of the post. Again, I wish that 2k’s critics would just once notice how practically all of the Reformed churches, liberal and conservative, have revised the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chapters on the duties of the civil magistrate. But let’s go one step farther. Let’s say that Evans wants the kind of magistrate taught by the Westminster Divines, the one who can call councils and synods, be present at them, insure that they follow the word of God in Constantine like fashion, not to mention have the power to abolish heresies and blasphemies. If that is the kind of magistrate Evans wants, isn’t that what he has with today’s “technocratic elite” who are increasingly regulating more and more aspects of human life? Of course, the problem for him is that today’s politicians are not Christian and are not implementing Christian orthodoxy and morality. But if his fear is of a powerful state that can interfere with all parts of our affairs, wouldn’t the magistrate envisioned by the original Westminster Confession of Faith be the kind of big government that Evans believes Christians should oppose?

This is why if you want small government you should spend more time reading not the Bible but the debates between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Bible has virtually nothing to say directly to check and balances, constitutions, executives, legislatures, and judiciaries. But the framers of the U.S. Constitution and their critics did.

2k gives a better reason to oppose the technocratic elites than Evans’ dismissal of 2k does on the way to a call for culture war (jihad?). It frees Christians to take their cues politically from non-believers. Evans appears to be left with either the Bible or the sixteenth-century Constantinian order which give him no grounds for a constitutional republic. Aside from a different religion, how is that different from political Islam?

Jihad If You Do, Holy War If You Don't

Published on by D. G. Hart39 Comments

I continue to scratch my head over Christian reactions to Islam. Granted, I would not be so itchy had a three-week journey in Turkey not raised a host of questions through which I am still sorting. Even so, the Christian (and especially neo-Calvinist inspired) criticisms of Muslims for rejecting secularity are richly ironic.

Take, for instance, this plug for the new Trinity Institute to be led by theonomists-turned-Federal Visionaries, James Jordan and Peter Leithart, which talks about the all encompassing claims of Christianity, even on those areas of life considered by secularists to be not religious but secular (i.e., temporal):

When I first came to Japan in 1981, I was a premillennial dispensationalist struggling to plant a church in a pagan culture. Jordan’s The Law of the Covenant, which I read in 1984, showed me how the Bible could and must be read to apply to cultural issues today. Jordan’s various writings on Biblical symbolism, especially Through New Eyes fundamentally changed the way I read and taught the Bible. Our local church here now practices paedobaptism and paedocommunion, employs a liturgy we learned from Jeff Meyers, Jordan, and Leithart, and relies extensively on the voluminous writings of Jordan and Leithart in the research institute that supports our Christian education program. Faithfulness to the Scriptures and love for the Triune God exude from their wide ranging works that address questions and problems in Biblical exegesis, theology, liturgy, history, politics, philosophy, literature, music, and even popular entertainment. When young pastors ask me for book recommendations, I tell them to buy and read everything they can get by Jordan and Leithart.

Note that “faithfulness to Scriptures” involves politics, the arts and sciences, and movies. Note as well that Leithart himself has defended the political theology of Constantine precisely because it is a worthy alternative to secularity.

So what makes Muslims different aside from a different sacred text?

But the irony is all the more apparent in Bill Evans’ recent post about Islam. I won’t go into all of Evans’ points but a couple of paragraphs stand out. The first is the standard line about Islam lacking any room for secularity, despite the examples of Turkey and Dearborn, Michigan:

Islam is a religio-cultural-political package. There is no ultimate distinction in Islam between the sacred and the secular, and thus none between mosque and state. All of life is understood as a matter of submission to Allah. For this reason, while there has sometimes been religious toleration under Islamic governments, there can be no real religious pluralism in the practical political sense of the term. That is to say, adherents of other religions will not be viewed as equal members of society in a context governed by Islamic principles.

Don’t lots of neo-Calvinists also say this about Christianity? Substitute God for Allah and you have a fairly close resemblance, though neo-Calvinists, at least in their Dutch iteration, were never able to rid the Netherlands of the incredible toleration that the nation practiced.

Later in his piece, Evans invokes Richard John Neuhaus’ brief against a Naked Public Scqure, or an overly narrow conception of secularity:

Western secular liberal democracy no longer takes the question of religious truth seriously. In fact, it largely lacks even the vocabulary to discuss religious truth claims, and this places it at a distinct disadvantage when deals with groups for whom such truth claims are central. We in the West are the heirs of the post-Enlightenment fact/value dichotomy—on the one hand there are empirical, scientific facts; on the other hand there are values which cannot be rationally confirmed. Such values are matters of opinion, and religious beliefs and convictions are, on this reading of things, merely values. Along with this comes the inevitable privatization of religion. Religious belief is simply a matter of personal opinion that is acceptable only so long as it remains private and unobtrusive.

The public square, as the late Richard John Neuhaus aptly observed, has thus become “naked” or stripped of religious expression. When Barack Obama claims that Muslims will have a different opinion of America because he “understands their point of view,” Muslims know full well that he is not taking them as believers or their truth claims seriously, and they are not impressed. But we really cannot expect a Western secularist like Obama to respond in any other way, and hence the persistent disconnect between Islam and the West.

This may be a plausible construction of secular society, though if Christ himself introduced the notion when he distinguished between what is Caesar’s and God’s, Christians may actually embrace secularity as part and parcel of their religion. But if Evans is right about secular society in the West, can he really blame Muslims for objecting to secularism?

If Christians are going to portray the struggle between Islam and the West as a clash of civilizations, and then take shots at the West for abandoning Christianity, they will need to give a fuller account of the differences between Islam and Christianity on secular politics. Without that, they sound a tad whiney and a whole lot inconsistent.

2K Reinforcement

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

Richard Gamble, my colleague in history and fellow elder in the OPC church plant in Hillsdale, has a new book, In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. It is a deconstruction of the Puritan and American abuse of the biblical metaphor when applied to either Massachusetts Bay or the United States. Here’s a tantalizing excerpt (thanks to our friends at The Imaginative Conservative):

Whether Jesus had in view only his chosen disciples, his followers in general, or the universal Church he promised to build, he clearly did not address the metaphors of salt, light, and city to the Roman Empire of his day. He could have done so. Others living during roughly the same era did just that. A century earlier, the Roman statesman Cicero combined two of these three images when he warned his fellow Senators at the time of Catiline’s conspiracy that he “seem[ed] to see this city, the light of the whole world and the fortress of all the nations, suddenly involved in one general conflagration.” Centuries earlier, the Athenian general and statesman Pericles had praised his city as a model to all the Greeks. Jesus, in contrast, gave these metaphors to his Church and not to an earthly kingdom. At some point in history—we will never know when—someone first applied the city metaphor to something or someone other than Jesus’ disciples, to something or someone outside the boundaries of the Christian church. That may not have happened for many centuries. It may not have happened first and only in America. But along the way it became commonplace to talk about America as the embodiment of Jesus’ hilltop city.

It is not natural or inevitable that America should have been given this sacred identity. The path from first-century Palestine to twenty-first century America is not an obvious one. Nor is the path from a sermon about life in the Kingdom of God to blogs about national destiny. Along that path, individual Americans did something to Jesus’ metaphor that changed it. Gradually or abruptly, intentionally or not, they helped remake the “city on a hill” from “a metaphor into a myth,” to borrow a phrase from historian Michael McGiffert. Even if we cannot pinpoint the exact moment of transformation, we will see in the following pages that at one time Americans chiefly used the “city on a hill” to describe something transcendent and theological, and then at a later time chiefly to describe something earthly and political. The transition required nothing less than the unmaking of a biblical metaphor and the making of a national myth.

Clearword Church Coming to Bloomington!

Published on by D. G. Hart963 Comments

And it is going to build at the corner of South Endwright and West Gifford Roads, just down the street from where Tim Bayly struts his stuff as a godly, manly promoter of praise bands.

Actually, this is a fabrication, but I do wonder what Tim, who wonders where the Escondido men are — here’s one answer — would think of a rival church right down the road from his congregation. Tim recently tried again to tarnish the reputation of two-kingdom folks by asserting that someone like me would oppose Archbishop of Nigeria’s recent decision to form a diocese in Indianapolis.

Anglican bishops from Africa are violating parish boundaries here in these United States, planting orthodox Christian parishes where the presiding Anglican/Episcopal authorities have betrayed the faith. Is this good or bad?

Ask Darryl Hart and his fellow Escondidoites and it’s bad… Right? After all, this is the sort of thing that was done by Anglicans like Whitefield during the Great Awakening, and Darryl and his fellow Orthodox and Old Light Presbyterians oppose such violations of proper ecclesiastical boundaries. . . .

For myself, though, I’m not holding my breath waiting for Old Presbyterians to mount a campaign against men like Nigeria’s Anglican Archbishop Nicholas Okah for trampling on the proper local Anglican authorities here in Indianapolis.

Unlike Tim, I believe that the United States is and should be a free country. Unlike Tim, I don’t pine for the days of Calvin’s Geneva when civil magistrates would have run out of town priests and pastors who had come ministering without an invitation. Unlike Tim, I know what my response would be to this situation — which is, what happens in the Anglican church stays in the Anglican church.

And unlike Tim, I know that the Old Siders he disparages actually reacted the way that Tim Bayly would if a new church started right down the road, and if the new pastor said that members at Clearnote Fellowship should leave their congregation to worship at Clearword Church because Tim Bayly was an unregenerate hypocrite (which is what Gilbert Tennent said about Old Siders). I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Tim would exhibit some of his manliness and not sit by while a fellow minister called him names or took away his flock.

Funny how if you look at something you thought you understood, you end up identifying with the people whom you denigrate.

What is Special about Neo-Calvinism?

Published on by D. G. Hart42 Comments

One of the things you hear from neo-Calvinist critics of 2k is that a view that strongly distinguishes between the church and civil magistrate, or between Christ’s redemptive and creational offices, or between religion and culture (as 2k does) winds up limiting faith or piety to one day out of seven. Or it denies the Lordship of Christ over all areas of life. The breakthrough of neo-Calvinism, apparently, is to overcome the dualism of fundamentalism or pietism and show how Christianity pervades all things.

And yet, this insight is hardly the sole possession of neo-Calvinists. In fact, you see it come in all shapes and sizes from believers who want to see Christianity have a wider scope of influence. Even Michelle Obama,editors at Sojourners, and missional Christians agree with neo-Calvinists (thanks to John Fea):

Last week, the First Lady spoke to the quadrennial General Conference of the African American Methodist Episcopal Church. While the speech was a get-out-the-vote plug, it also shed an interesting light on both her personal faith and the theological tradition of the nation’s oldest independent, predominantly African-American congregations.

In reading the First Lady’s speech, I was intrigued to see a strong emphasis on some concepts I often associate with “missional” churches.

Within the church world, especially among those who are planting them, the term missional has become ubiquitous. It critiques existing church models that focus on creating programs, services, and marketing campaigns intended to draw people to the church instead of encouraging members to go out and serve—to be on “mission.”

Here’s a good example of the type of thing my pastor says all the time when he talks about being missional from the mouth of the First Lady:

“Our faith journey isn’t just about showing up on Sunday for a good sermon and good music and a good meal. It’s about what we do Monday through Saturday as well — especially in those quiet moments, when the spotlight’s not on us, and we’re making those daily choices about how to live our lives.”

One of the signs of a missional church is a de-emphasis on the Sunday-morning worship service put on by professionals. Instead of focusing on a 60-90 minute performance in which most people are passive attendees, increased time and attention are given to the active work believers are doing to further the mission of the church throughout the week. Some churches have abandoned what would be thought of as traditional services all together.

Mind you, Mrs. Obama and this writer at Sojourners don’t have the philosophical apparatus to support this view. Still, how fundamental an insight is neo-Calvinism’s cultural engagement when so many other Christians pursue cultural engagement in such similar language?

If Dr. K. is now receptive to taking a less antagonistic attitude toward 2k, if he believes that radical (as opposed to representative) neo-Calvinists need to hear important criticisms from 2kers, then perhaps he can point the way by showing where so many of the 24/7 Christians go wrong. I have a suggestion: start with Scripture and the confessions of the Reformed churches; second, leave the activism to believers’ consciences and vocations; and finally, resist all efforts to turn cultural engagement into a program or even a paradigm.

Locating the Source of 2K Objections (aside from theonomy and Neo-Calvinism)

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

I would prefer not to encourage these guys (don’t worry, discouragement is coming) since the Calvinist International provides a highly dubious reading of Reformed Protestantism. But because the Aquila Report (an equal-opportunity aggregator, they even link to Old Life) gave their views on Hooker, Calvin, and political theology a measure of respectability, some response is in order. For a better and more thoughtful response, continue to keep an eye on Matt Tuininga’s blog (with whom the Internationalists have been carrying on a fairly vigorous debate).

In their own words, here is the heart of the matter:

The matter of the controversy can be briefly summed up. We say that the Kingship of Christ is of universal extent, and in two ways: the first spiritual, invisible, immediate and pertaining to the just, though eschatologically and cosmologically universal; the second temporal, visible, mediate and pertaining to all. We say the original two kingdoms of the Reformers means those two modes, the invisible and the visible, not the ministry and the magistrates, both of which are on the visible side. They say that the church is a politically distinct group of people who have no real investment in the temporal realm, but are temporally governed by ordained leaders representative of God by divine right, and that Christ’s kingship is exclusively over it and not over creation or the commonwealth. We say that the church is primarily invisible, but that its temporal profile is a vast multitude, the corpus christianorum, which in situations where the whole community has not recognized the kingship of Christ, constitutes a voluntary schola, but in situations where the community has formally and representatively recognized Jesus’ Kingship, is basically coterminous with the commonwealth. They call our position “Erastian” or “Zwinglian,” and say that Calvin was up to something fundamentally different.

(I have finally figured out who this “we” is — I do find its repeated use by the Internationalists dumbfounding since when I claim “we” on my wife’s behalf I generally pay for it once the guests leave. It is Wedgeworth (W) and Escalante (E) who seem to have more agreement than most couples.)

This is, by the way, one of the oddest readings of church polity since it would seem to make the visible church a matter indifferent to the spiritual and invisible church. As long as you belong to Christ, it doesn’t matter what the preaching, sacraments, ordination standards, or worship patterns are in your own church. Of course, WE don’t say this, but it is an implication of THEIR view and seems to be how church life played out in the Church of England — a communion that their beloved Richard Hooker defended.

THEY go on to say:

In pointing to Hooker as the better reader of Calvin, and in saying that the idea of a Christian commonwealth is normative, we have been repeatedly, and despite repeated clarifications, misconstrued as “theonomist” or “Erastian” by Dr. Darryl Hart, who seems to think that we wish for an authoritarian State applying the Mosaic penal code, when the opposite is in fact the case. Neither Hooker nor Calvin is our regula fidei, and we are happy to adapt their principles appropriately within the context of the modern order of political freedom- an order which only follows from those Protestant principles. Still, we do claim the history for our side. We share the basic theological principles of the Reformation, and specifically those of Luther, Calvin, and Hooker. We hope our contribution can be the accurate genealogy and specific application of the older principles in the 21st century context.

What we have recovered is what seems to us the classical Protestant doctrine of politics. In particular, we have said that the two kingdoms do *not* directly correspond to the two estates of magistracy and ministerium, but rather, that both magistracy and ministerium are within the temporal kingdom.[4] Our opponents do, however, identify the two estates with the two kingdoms respectively.

What is important to see is that WE claim not to be Erastian and THEY also claim that Hooker is the better interpreter of Calvin than Thomas Cartwright or anyone else who holds to jure divino Presbyterianism. That jure divino view, by the way, was an effort to assert the autonomy of the church from the oversight of the state and to claim for the visible church the real keys of the kingdom and the power of excommunication. One of the reasons that folks like Hooker didn’t want the church to have such autonomy or power was that it might give back to the papacy authority that Anglicans understandably didn’t want the Bishop of Rome to have. A contemporary application for those associated with Federal Vision is that if the church doesn’t have such authority, then Federal Visionaries won’t face church discipline, because the magistrate sure isn’t going to do it.

What gets particularly difficult for WE’s interpretation of Calvin and Hooker — not to mention Calvin’s own discussion of church polity in Book Four or Ursinus Zacharias’ commentary on the keys of the kingdom in his companion volume to the Heidelberg Catechism — is the way THEY invoke W. J. Torrance Kirby, a scholar of Zurich and England’s political theology who teaches at McGill University. In his book, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology, Kirby would seem to regard Bullinger, Hooker, and WE as Erastian and as different — even hostile — to Calvin.

The influence of Zurich theology is particularly evident in the theory underpinning the political institutions of the Elizabethan Settlement, chief among them the Royal Supremacy, the lynchpin of the constitution. In his defence of the royal headship of the church in the 1570s against the attacks of the disciplinarian puritans Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, John Whitgift, then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, relied closely on the political writings of Vermigli, Bullinger, and two other prominent Zwinglians – Gualter and Wolfang Musculus of Berne. Whigift’s so-called “Erastian” conception of society as a unified “corpus christianum,” where civil and religious authority were understood to be coextensive, takes its name from the Zinglian theologian Thomas Lieber . . . alias “Erastus” of Heidelberg. The controversy between Whitgift and promoters of the Genevan model of reform in England is in many respects a replay of the dispute on the continent between Erastus and Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor in Geneva. Richard Hooker’s celebrated defence of the Elizabethan constitution published toward the end of the century is an elaboration of the same Zwinglian-Erastian political theology. It is worthy of note that Hooker’s patron while at Corpus Christi College in the late 1560s and early ‘70s was John Jewel, Vermigli’s disciple and secretary who had earlier followed his master into exile at Zurich. . . .

The heart and substance of Bullinger’s prophetical office with respect to England was to defend, to interpret , and to promote the Civil Magistrate’s pivotal role as the supreme governing power in the ordering of religion in the realm. . . Strange though it may appear, the institution of the Royal Supremacy with its hypostatic conjunction of supreme civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Prince, constitutes for Bullinger a vivid exemplar of the unitary character of Christian polity, and also of the distinction and cooperation of magisterial and ministerial power. From the standpoint of Bullinger’s unique covenantal interpretation of history, it is certainly arguable that the Old Testament exemplar is more completely realised under England’s monarchical constitution than under the republican conditions of Bullinger’s own city and canton of Zurich.

In other words, if Kirby is right, contrary to WE, Hooker is not following Calvin but is tracking with the Erastians, Bullinger and Vermigli. At this point, WE’s point about continuity between Calvin and the Church of England would seem to go up incense. Also, THEIR reading of the Reformed tradition, which virtually ignores the important disagreements between Zurich and Geneva, looks like another case of historical cherry picking.

But aside from the historical debates, what the disagreement between WE and Tuininga also reveals is that opposition to the contemporary recovery of 2K is coming not simply from theonomists or neo-Calvinists but from Zwinglians. And what all of these forms of protest share is a high estimate of the state compared to 2k’s assertion of the church’s legitimate access to the keys of the kingdom. Whether it’s a case of not trusting the church, or sensing that circumstances need a solution more effective than word, sacrament, and discipline, the critics of 2k enlarge the kingdom of Christ so that the officers responsible for guns and bombs have power to enforce a Christian community.

I understand the frustration with church power. I wouldn’t want to be disciplined any more than Peter Leithart, and I recognize that church discipline is hardly binding in a society where religion is largely private and personal. What I don’t understand is pining for sixteenth-century England or Geneva. Calling on the magistrate to help with church work, after all, did not work out so well. Don’t these folks ever consider the important connections between established religion and liberal theology? Bullinger and Hooker perhaps could not since they were only a handful of decades into a disrupted Christendom or the rise of the nation-state. But for folks living over four hundred years from Erastianism not to see its faults is stunning.

The Hits Keep Coming

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

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.

Jamie Smith's Surprising Concession

Published on by D. G. Hart34 Comments

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.