Tag: two-kingdoms

For Doug Wilson Apparently Being Reformed Means Evangelicalism That Is Effective

Published on by D. G. Hart195 Comments


Doug Wilson joins the Bayly Bros in heaping scorn on our good friend Scott Clark and the case for recovering the Reformed confessions. To Doug’s credit, he avoids the vituperative edge that characterizes the Baylys’ outbursts.

What unites Wilson and the Brothers Bayly in their criticism of Clark, apart from disdain for Meredith Kline, mind you, one of the true geniuses of twentieth-century Reformed Christianity, is nostalgia for Geneva. Of course, this is not the Geneva that sent Castellio packing or Servetus to the flames – well, it is, but most contemporary pining for Geneva manages to overlook the downside of Constantianism even when practiced by Reformer pastors.

Wilson is writing in response to a piece that Clark did for Table Talk on what evangelicals should expect from a Reformed church. Clark tries to cushion the blow that might come from the doctrinal, polity, and liturgical trappings that disorient the average born-again Christian. When Clark explains that “confessional churches are isolated from both the old liberal mainline and the revivalist traditions” and so offer an alternative to liberal and evangelical Protestantism, Wilson goes off.

First, Wilson laments Clark’s isolationism. Not only are Reformed confessionalists separated from evangelicals and liberals, but also “from the cultural potency of Reformed theology and piety.” This is lamentable because for Wilson, the Reformed theology that he has read and studied “built a great civilization.” In contrast, Clark’s brand of Reformed theology, that of “the truncated brethren,” “would have trouble building a taco stand.”

Wilson also takes exception to Clark’s claim that confessional churches today approximate the churches of the sixteenth century more than other Protestant congregations. For Wilson, this is patently untrue because the sixteenth-century Reformed churches were actually Reformed cities – that is, they were more than merely religious institutions. They were civil polities where supposedly Calvinism shaped all of Geneva’s or Strasbourg’s or Edinburgh’s life (tell that to the magistrates who stuck their neck out against the Holy Roman Empire and hired the Reformed pastors). This suggests that Wilson regards Reformed Protestantism as a way of taking names and kicking butt.

Furthermore, when Clark claims that evangelicals coming to Reformed churches will need time to acclimate to the new spiritual environment, Wilson retorts that Clark has the picture “exactly backwards” because Clark’s otherworldly version of the Reformed faith turns out to be warmed over evangelicalism (read: pietism). According to Wilson:

As an evangelical, and the son of an evangelical, allow me to give my testimony. I was part of the exodus from pop evangelicalism (not historic evangelicalism). I was sick of the cultural irrelevance and impotence of “believe in Jesus, go to Heaven when you die.” I was sick of a pietism that couldn’t find its way out of the prayer closet. I wanted to stop confessing that Jesus was Lord of an invisible seventeenth dimension somewhere. Why not here? Why not now? It was a long story, but the trail to historic evangelicalism, God-honoring worship, and a culturally potent and world transforming faith led me straight to the Reformed faith — the same faith that John Calvin and his successors confessed. Calvin preached to milkmaids and Calvin wrote letters to princes. Calvin drafted catechisms, and he drafted ordinances for the city council. Calvin thought that the idea of a civil society without enforcement of the first table of the law was “preposterous.” Calvin was a loyal son of Christendom, as am I.

It is remarkable that Wilson would seemingly dismiss the idea of people going to heaven, unless he thinks that this world is more than a foretaste but an actual embodiment of the world to come. I mean, people who milk cows to the glory of God still die, at which point the realities of the after life become fairly pressing compared to a Reformed way to pasteurize milk.

Also odd is Wilson’s sleight of hand regarding “pop” and “historic” evangelicalism. My own testimony (both from experience and study) instructs me that appeals to historic evangelicalism generally depend less on historical realities and more to the point the appellant is trying to make. Does Wilson really mean to suggest that Clark has more in common with Joel Osteen than Carl Henry? Let me testify again and say that I’ve spent time with Clark and know that his locks cannot compete with Osteen’s.

But the really arresting aspect of Wilson’s critique of Clark is the idea that cultural relevance and effective change of this world is what characterizes Reformed Christianity. I get it that post-Niebuhr and post-Kuyper Wilson’s brand of transformationalism is par for the course. But what is shocking is the conceit that Reformed are more effective than evangelicals in changing things.

The history of Protestantism in the United States shows that the groups that were most influential in creating the Protestant establishment and its many institutions, along with a civil religion that made the greatest nation on God’s green earth unfriendly to Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and other forms of infidelity, were those evangelicals like Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher, or the ecumenical and liberal Protestants like Josiah Strong and Reinhold Niebuhr. Funny how Calvinism did not characterize those influential voices.

The reason for evangelicalism’s can-do body (as well as spirit) has to do with the inherently activistic and this-worldly faith of born-again Protestantism. Here I am reminded of Mark Noll’s response to a paper by Nick Wolsterstorff about the need for evangelicals to become more engaged in cultural and social matters. Noll said that telling evangelicals to be more active was like pointing an addict to dope.

So Doug Wilson may be the real evangelical. He may be more culturally relevant and effective than Clark and other two-kingdom proponents, though I hear that even in Moscow, Idaho the work of cultural clean up is not perhaps a model for taking on the rest of the nation, globe, or cosmos. Granted, if Wilson can rid the United States of automobiles, Walmart, and illegal drugs, I won’t complain. But I would ask that he put church reform higher on his list. All the infidelity among churches that claim to be Christian (even some Reformed communions) certainly appears to be a matter of greater alarm than getting non-believers to conform outwardly to the manners and customs of Credenda Agenda ‘s readers.

Which means that if Wilson think’s Reformed confessionalism’s dualism is bad ju ju, his works righteousness is bad do do (is the works righteousness of do doism ever good?).

Calvin on Lloyd-Jones

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

Writing on Luke 12:14, Calvin argues:

Secondly, our Lord intended to draw a distinction between the political kingdoms of this world and the government of his Church; for he had been appointed by the Father to be a Teacher, who should divide asunder, by the sword of the word, the thoughts and feelings, and penetrate into the souls of men, (Hebrews 4:12,) but was not a magistrate to divide inheritances This condemns the robbery of the Pope and his clergy, who, while they give themselves out to be pastors of the Church, have dared to usurp an earthly and secular jurisdiction, which is inconsistent with their office; for what is in itself lawful may be improper in certain persons.

David Bayly agrees:

And of course, to all this I say, “Amen and amen.” Yes, absolutely. I have no quarrel with such a two-kingdom approach, in fact I emphatically agree with Calvin that is it wicked for pastors of the Church “to usurp an earthly and secular jurisdiction.”

So I guess if Calvin was 2k and Bayly agrees with Calvin, then Calvin must have praised Lloyd-Jones and Jonathan Edwards. Ba dop bop.

When This and That Comes Home

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The best college basketball coach in the United States works in Philadelphia and no one knows about him. Congratulations to Herb Magee for winning his 903rd game at Philadelphia University. His closest competitor is Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski with 856 wins. But does Herb get to do ads for American Express? I don’t think so.

Rabbi Bret almost makes up with the Bayly Bros. when he writes the following against 2k (amazing how unifying 2k thinking is):

. . . there are other preachers out there who do raise their voices against R2Kt. Doug Wilson does a fine job revealing its weaknesses. Also, the Bayly Brothers came out with guns blazing against it in the past week. A gentleman named Rev. Ken Pierce also spoke out strongly against it. Now, at least as concerns the Bayly’s and Rev. Pierce they are not as consistent as they might be on the subject given their disavowal of theonomy, theocracy and a bold optimistic eschatology, but still in many respects, they acquitted themselves well in speaking out against R2Kt. I think more and more people are slowly awakening to the danger that R2Kt represents and I fully expect, in the near future, that you’ll hear more Reformed ministers raising their voices against it.

But then Rabbi Bret blows it when he takes on the experimental Calvinism in ways that make the Bayly Bros. wild about the evils of 2k (isn’t this the point of Scott Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession?):

There is a strain in Reformed theology that emphasizes the kind of subjectivism that Alexander warns against. This kind of subjectivism would have us find assurance of faith by examining our faith, or our repentance, or our love for God, or our performance in order to discern whether or not our faith, repentance, love or performance are genuine and not spurious. The problem with this is that when scrupulously honest regenerated people dwell in a concentrated way in examining these realities the more likely they are to conclude that they are unconverted. When we seek to anchor our faith in the quality of our faith, repentance, love, or performance we are sure to be ruined from one of two directions.

If we examine ourselves and find assurance because of the quality of our spiritual virtues we run the danger of being ruined from the sense of a self-satisfaction that may easily give way to self righteousness. We also run the danger of developing a spiritual inertia that does not allow us the capacity to see our real sin since our assurance becomes wrapped up in our ability to convince ourselves of the thorough genuineness of our spiritual virtues.

On the other hand if we examine ourselves and don’t find assurance because of the real lack of quality of our spiritual virtues – thus becoming convinced that our faith, repentance, love, works, etc. are spurious – we run the danger of concluding that God’s genuine work in our lives is false. When sinners such as ourselves turn our gaze inward in order to examine our spiritual virtues what else should we expect to find except the reality that our spiritual virtues are not so virtuous?

Here are a couple of thoughts for the front porch republican heart that beats within the average Old Lifer.

Thanks to John Fea I have new reasons for thinking myself superior. It’s because Ann and I live with Cordelia and Isabelle.

Punch Drunk on Baylys

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

In the many to and fro’s of kicking around two-kingdom theology with those crazy guys, Tim and David Bayly, I have wondered why their rhetoric so often starts and ends Limbaughesque. For instance, here’s a riff on two-kingdom theology and Keller-wannabes that would make Rush proud:

It’s one of the supreme ironies of our reformed fellowship that, despite what any reasonable person would think, the R2K, 2K, spirituality of the church preppies, along with their brothers mute behind the redemptive-historical gag, are out there in the Aussies’ back of beyond helping the PCA/MNA hiptsers dig. Both sides together, now.

The common denominator is hatred for the shame of the Gospel and a propensity to do the look-at-the-birdie routine, albeit they point in radically different directions.

What’s certain is that no one has a heart to love the lost, to rescue the perishing, to break the jaw of the wicked snatching the widow and orphan from his mouth, or to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its earthshaking power and wisdom and holiness. Find me the hip church plant where former lesbians and pro-abort feminists have been converted to the Gospel and are now zealous for the conversion of their former sisters-in-crime, pitying their bondage and, from love, going out to seek and to save that which is lost to bring them under the preaching of the full Gospel and the teaching of everything Jesus commanded–particularly that so-pertinent part having to do with Adam being created first, and then Eve.

For that matter, find me the R2K, 2K, spirituality of the Church, redemptive-historical preaching church where the pastor or elders or deacons–anyone, for that matter–faithfully show up at the baby-slaughterhouse nearby to plead for the lives of those little ones about to die.

Amazing similarities between the most disparate things are all over the place, aren’t they?

The spite mixed with sanctimony in such an outburst is truly hard to fathom (except when you remember Rabbi Bret).

What is curious, though, is that the Baylys are capable of better verbiage. In rummaging through their archives to try to diagnose the unease that produces such vituperation, I ran across a quite sensible post about the problems with Lutheranism, yes, the Lutheranism that I will go out of my way to hug. Pardon the length of the following quotation, but it is useful for making the point I want to make as well as giving a sense of the Baylys’ (I’d say) legitimate concerns with Lutheranism.

At first I viewed the increasing infatuation with Lutheranism within elements of the Reformed Church with bemusement. But as the trend toward accommodation with–and even emulation of–Lutheranism grew within conservative elements of the Reformed Church, I watched with mounting alarm. In particular, I have serious reservations about the Lutheran law-gospel divide, which, from my experience of LCMS practice, seems either to produce or (in the case of Lutheranism-smitten Presbyterians) to be the product of a desire for theological conservativism without the hindrance of practical piety.

Three things immediately struck me as a seventh-grader of Evangelical background upon entering a LCMS school:

First, I remember how startled my brother and I were by the rampant misuse of God’s name by students and adults alike. Not only did students routinely take God’s name in vain, they did so in front of pastors in class without reproach. Of course, my experience of the LCMS is narrow. There may be vast swaths of the LCMS where the third commandment is honored. Yet within the portion of the LCMS I am acquainted with a tragically casual attitude toward the name of God prevails.

Second, we were struck by the gilded cross and life-size, bleeding Jesus at front and center of the LCMS church attached to our school. Again, this is personal experience, but unlike misuse of God’s name, I am not willing to admit that I have a narrow and incomplete view of the LCMS in this area. Check it out. Visit LCMS churches and see how many contain graven images of Christ. Lutherans embrace icons in worship. If you doubt this, use Google to find pages by LCMS men defending icons of Christ in worship. Lutherans (modern Lutherans far more than Martin), in fact, seem to delight in tweaking Reformed sensibilities by defending the spiritual benefits of icons. They not only publish images of Christ in their curriculum and erect pictures of Jesus in their homes, they unashamedly place them front and center in their places of worship.

Third, one of the chief ways my brother and I stood out from the other students in our LCMS school was our father’s refusal to let us join school teams or attend the majority of school sporting events. Why? Because LCMS schools routinely scheduled games on Sundays. This remains true today. Lutherans have few qualms about pursuing their pleasures on the Lord’s Day. Lutherans were far ahead of culture as a whole in placing children’s sporting events on the Lord’s Day. Many Presbyterians find Calvin’s explanation of the Lord’s Day deficient. Lutheran practice in this area makes even the most liberal of PCA churches appear Sabbatarian. . . .

I suspect I know what most LCMS folk will say to these complaints: they’ll complain that they differ from me and other Reformed folk principially and theologically in these areas. They’ll say, “But we interpret these commandments differently than you.” Yes, they do. But I say back to my LCMS friends, isn’t it interesting how your interpretations of these commandments demolish the first table of the law as a practical force within individual human lives? Wasn’t it Luther who said that if we defend the Gospel at points other than the precise point under attack, we are in fact not defending the Gospel at all?

So, you disdain Allah and revile Buddha: but you put images of Christ, false images, idolatrous images, at the center of your sanctuaries. I know, I know, I’m a Docetist. I don’t really accept the humanity of Christ. In Christ, God took on form; we can now make images of God because God has taken on human substance. But, let me ask one question. In Christ, God did take human form. But the Christ of your crucifixes and icons, do they contain that form? Do you really know His form?

You don’t just put holes in His hands and feet and side, you make them a certain size, you put them in particular locations. You go further still: you put a distinctively formed nose on His head, colored eyes in His brow, particular cheeks and lips on His face. You give your graven image not just form, but personality and character. You show Him with tears. You place emotions and character on His face. Yet are your images true? If they are, why do they all differ from each other? Are there ten-thousand human forms of Christ?

Do your icons truly portray Christ? Would I know Jesus from your icons? Would I recognize Him on the basis of your images? Would I be able to tell Him from the reviling thief on the basis of your icons? If not, how can they be anything less than a particularly blasphemous and reprehensible lie when you place them at the front of the Church for veneration? Surely, a man who put up an image of Bozo the Clown and called it Churchill and told children to look to his Churchill for inspiration would be reviled as dishonest and contemptuous. Yet you do far worse to Christ.

Idolatry, other gods, the Lord’s Day, God’s name: the entire first table of the law the LCMS tragically diminishes.

Of course, LCMS advocates deny this. But the proof is in the pudding. As Calvin says, the second table of the law is given to demonstrate hypocrisy in regard to the first. Shall I mention how antinomian my experience of LCMS practice has been in terms of the second table of the law? The seventh grade teacher and children’s choir director who told his LCMS class that he subscribed to Playboy without the slightest fear that his job might be jeopardized? The eighth grade teacher who, though a delightful man’s man, ran off with another man’s wife? The tenth grade, school-sponsored campout where I had my first (and thankfully, only) experience of a pot-fueled group grope in which the staff sponsor was a full participant (and remained on the job for the rest of the year)?

Shall I mention the drinking and drunkenness common in LCMS churches and even at LCMS events? The disdain for Christ’s teaching on divorce within marriages of the church? Yes, all these things take place within other churches, including the PCA. But the frequency of their occurrence within our particular communions cannot be ignored. I find no pleasure in arguing this way. But I can’t be silent when I know these things to be true.

I have no desire to speak ill of the LCMS. To be honest, speaking ill of the LCMS was the last thing on my mind for many years for the simple reason that the LCMS used to be utterly outside the Reformed, Evangelical orbit. But when the LCMS is portrayed as a paradigm for Reformed churches, and when Reformed men praise Lutheran theology and worship, and when Reformed men leave Presbyterian churches for LCMS churches and try to persuade others of the wisdom of their course, I object. The LCMS is brazenly contemptuous of the first table of God’s law. It pays lip service to the second table, but even there, the standard of holiness in the average LCMS church would prove deeply disturbing to most PCA church members within their own churches.

Granted, it’s overdone at points, but aside from the Baylys’ appeal to the first table, which they disallowed when 2kers were trying to explain why they weren’t dropping everything to run out and picket at abortion clinics, their concern for second, third, and fourth commandments here is admirable. Also worth mentioning is the expressed desire of not wanting to speak ill of Lutherans. Boy, we two-kingdomers could have used a little of that love over the last two weeks at the Baylys home blog.

But the most important feature of this post is that it shows the Baylys are capable of analysis. Instead of simply shooting from the hip and dismissing as folly any form of disagreement, the Baylys based their rather restrained objections to Lutheranism on substantial theological points. And while their posts against 2kers were quick to assume the worst, this post against Lutherans manifests a measure of sadness even about important disagreements.

Wow! I didn’t know they had it in them.

Maybe it is a function of hardening arteries (or craniums). The Baylys wrote about Lutherans in 2004, six years before the current evil regime. Maybe conditions in the United States and the nation’s churches have so deteriorated that they feel the need to embody Guillame Farel more than Johannes Oecolampadius. Or it could be that they simply aren’t spending enough time at Happy Hour.

(Should I close comments now before Truth Divides . . . Truth Unites calls me an idiot?)

This and That

Published on by D. G. Hart100 Comments

kitchen sinkDavid Strain makes a very good point about the doctrine of the two thingies:

If the Kingdom is not advanced by ‘the sword’, that is, by means of physical coercion, but the God ordained role of the civil magistrate is to use the sword to enforce the rule of law, how can the Christian’s work as a civil magistrate be the work of the Kingdom?

As part of my duty to follow Scott Clark’s marching orders on covenant theology, I’ll mention his post on parallels between the controversy over Federal Vision today and Machen’s contest with liberalism some eight decades ago:

Like the liberals and latitudinarians on the early 20th century the Federal Visionists of our times use similar tactics against the confessionalists. They have tried to silence the confessionalist critics through shame or through implied or express suggestions of ecclesiastical or professional pressure. When that doesn’t work, the other tactic is to suggest that the confessionalist critics are immoral or somehow disreputable. Just as in the case of Machen, the liberals and latitudinarians would rather have the churches focus on the ostensible bad behavior (or incorrect social views) of the confessionalists rather than upon the deviant doctrine or ecclesiastical practice of the theological revisionists.

When J. Gresham Machen was driven out of the PCUSA, the liberals and their latitudinarian accomplices did not “get him” on a doctrinal charge but on a charge of not playing nice with others. He refused to abandon his support for the Independent Board of Foreign Missions (confessionalists do care about the lost AND getting our theology right) so they charged and convicted him in a sham ecclesiastical trial of being disobedient to the church. In light of the developments, in the PCUSA, in the decades that followed the idea of trying and disciplining a minister for supporting an independent (non-denominational) missions agency is amusing but they were able to get away with it then because they had control of the levers of power and because they had the cooperation of the latitudinarians.

On further reflection about the idea of republication, how could the Westminster Divines have been by implication any clearer than when they wrote the Shorter Catechism? It goes like this:

Q. 39. What is the duty that God required of man?

A. The duty which God required of man was obedience to his revealed will.

Q. 40. What did God at first reveal to man for the rule of his obedience?

A. The rule which God at first revealed to man was the moral law.

Q. 41. Where in is the moral law summarily comprehended?

A. The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments.

How Radical was Margaret Thatcher?

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

Hillsdale_Thatcher_1280Actually, according to some British academics I know, very, but that’s another story. Thanks to Scott Clark via Martin Downes via Cranmer comes the text of the Iron Lady’s speech before the 1988 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Here are some of the highlights:

Perhaps it would be best, Moderator, if I began by speaking personally as a Christian, as well as a politician, about the way I see things. Reading recently, I came across the starkly simple phrase:

“Christianity is about spiritual redemption, not social reform”.

Sometimes the debate on these matters has become too polarised and given the impression that the two are quite separate. But most Christians would regard it as their personal Christian duty to help their fellow men and women. They would regard the lives of children as a precious trust. These duties come not from any secular legislation passed by Parliament, but from being a Christian.

But there are a number of people who are not Christians who would also accept those responsibilities. What then are the distinctive marks of Christianity?

They stem not from the social but from the spiritual side of our lives, and personally, I would identify three beliefs in particular:

First, that from the beginning man has been endowed by God with the fundamental right to choose between good and evil. And second, that we were made in God’s own image and, therefore, we are expected to use all our own power of thought and judgement in exercising that choice; and further, that if we open our hearts to God, He has promised to work within us. And third, that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when faced with His terrible choice and lonely vigil chose to lay down His life that our sins may be forgiven. I remember very well a sermon on an Armistice Sunday when our Preacher said, “No one took away the life of Jesus , He chose to lay it down”.

That may not be the best theology upon which to construct a two-kingdoms position, but it sure beats most of the doctrine to come from the speech writers for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

She went on:

The Old Testament lays down in Exodus the Ten Commandments as given to Moses , the injunction in Leviticus to love our neighbour as ourselves and generally the importance of observing a strict code of law. The New Testament is a record of the Incarnation, the teachings of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. Again we have the emphasis on loving our neighbour as ourselves and to “Do-as-you-would-be-done-by”.

I believe that by taking together these key elements from the Old and New Testaments, we gain: a view of the universe, a proper attitude to work, and principles to shape economic and social life. . . .

None of this, of course, tells us exactly what kind of political and social institutions we should have. On this point, Christians will very often genuinely disagree, though it is a mark of Christian manners that they will do so with courtesy and mutual respect. What is certain, however, is that any set of social and economic arrangements which is not founded on the acceptance of individual responsibility will do nothing but harm.

Again, Mrs. Thatcher might have benefitted from courses at Westminster California, but her larger point about the lack of specifics in the New Testament about the social and political order is one that two-kingdom proponents second. So also her call for courtesy and respect when disagreeing – is name calling really necessary?

The Prime Ministerette’s knees went a little wobbly, as so many politicians do, when the thought of Abraham – not the father of God’s chosen people but Lincoln, the father of the U.S.’s second republic – came up:

To assert absolute moral values is not to claim perfection for ourselves. No true Christian could do that. What is more, one of the great principles of our Judaic-Christian inheritance is tolerance. People with other faiths and cultures have always been welcomed in our land, assured of equality under the law, of proper respect and of open friendship. There’s absolutely nothing incompatible between this and our desire to maintain the essence of our own identity. There is no place for racial or religious intolerance in our creed.

When Abraham Lincoln spoke in his famous Gettysburg speech of 1863 of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”, he gave the world a neat definition of democracy which has since been widely and enthusiastically adopted. But what he enunciated as a form of government was not in itself especially Christian, for nowhere in the Bible is the word democracy mentioned. Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians, to take counsel together their purpose is not (or should not be) to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit — something which may be quite different.

But she recovered well enough to finish on a strong note (even if it meant quoting a hymn rather than a psalm):

We Parliamentarians can legislate for the rule of law. You, the Church, can teach the life of faith.

But when all is said and done, the politician’s role is a humble one. I always think that the whole debate about the Church and the State has never yielded anything comparable in insight to that beautiful hymn “I Vow to Thee my Country”. It begins with a triumphant assertion of what might be described as secular patriotism, a noble thing indeed in a country like ours:

“I vow to thee my country all earthly things above; entire, whole and perfect the service of my love”.

It goes on to speak of “another country I heard of long ago” whose King can’t be seen and whose armies can’t be counted, but “soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase”. Not group by group, or party by party, or even church by church — but soul by soul — and each one counts.

If only American civil religion – both evangelical and theonomic – were as capable of such nuance.

The Two-Kingdom Case for Blue Laws

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Rendell and Eagles
(Not to be confused with the “Blue Letter.”)

In 1933, the years the Philadelphia Eagles football club started (thank you Dan Borvan), the state of Pennsylvania considered reforming its laws prohibiting commercial activity on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, so that football players and coaches could play in the afternoon. (How would the NFL make it without violating the fourth and eighth commandments?) J. Gresham Machen, then a resident of Philadelphia, wrote a letter to Gifford Pinchot, the governor of Pennsylvania and requested the retention of the Blue Laws as they were then written.

Machen’s reasoning in this letter is instructive for what it says about a recognition and acceptance of religious diversity, a commitment to religious freedom, and the tensions within a democracy between majority rule and minority protection. Perhaps most important for two-kingdom purposes is the place of an appeal to Scripture in public debate. In this case, Machen argues not for the magistrate to enforce divine law, but for the advantages that come to everyone when the law protects the practices of some citizens.

Not to be missed is what this letter says about the fourth commandment, and that keeping the whole day holy with two services is an occasion of Christian liberty. If only the Bible speaks to all of life crowd would take up the cause of the sanctity of the Lord’s Day. (Do we see a pattern here? Two kingdoms, two services?)

April 20, 1933

The Honorable Gifford Pinchot
Governor of Pennsylvania
Harrisburg, Pa.

Dear Sir:

Will you permit me to express, very respectfully, my opposition to the Bill designated “House Bill No. 1″ regarding permission of commercialized sport between the hours of two and six on Sunday afternoons?

It is clear that in this matter of Sunday legislation the liberty of part of the people will have to be curtailed. It is impossible that people who desire a quiet Sunday should have a quiet Sunday, while at the same time people who desire commercialized sport on Sunday should have commercialized sport. The permission of commercialized sport will necessarily change the character of the day for all of the people and not merely for part of the people.

The only question, therefore, is whose liberty is to be curtailed. I am convinced that in this case it ought, for the welfare of the whole people, to be the liberty of those who desire commercialized sport.

The curtailment of their liberty, through the existing law, does not, I am convinced, go beyond reasonable bounds. There is, it seems to me, a sharp distinction of principle between complete prohibition of some form of activity or enjoyment and reasonable regulation of it in the interest of other people. To ask that commercialized sport should dispense with one day out of seven for the benefit of that large part of our population that desires a quiet Sunday and believes that it is necessary to the welfare of the State does not seem to me to be unreasonable.

Of course it is perfectly clear that in a democracy the majority should rule in this matter as in other matters. I should be the last to advocate any attempt to make people religious or even to make people ordinarily moral or decent against their will by mere legislative enactment. I should also be the last to advocate any tyrannical imposition of the convictions of a minority upon the majority. But how shall the majority will be exercised? I think that it ought to be exercised through the ordinary processes of representative government. To allow commercialized sport on Sunday in Pennsylvania will be a radical change in the whole life of our people. It is a wise provision of representative government that such radical changes should not be hastily accomplished, as might be the case by the referendum vote, but that they should be accomplished only when it is quite clear that the majority of the people really and seriously and permanently desires the change. . . .

As to the merits of the question, I could hardly find words strong enough to express what my feeling is. It does seem to me that the profoundest dangers to our entire civilization are found in the constant rush of noise and jazz and feverish activity which is one of the great faults of the American people and which is a great barrier to true efficiency as well as to the cultivation of the deeper things.

Of course, my own cultivation of a quiet Sunday is based on considerations much more fundamental than these. I am a Christian, and it is quite clear that a commercialized Sunday is inimical to the Christian religion. There are many other Christians in Pennsylvania, and because they are Christians they do not cease to be citizens. They have a right to be considered by their fellow-citizens and by the civil authorities. But the reason why they can with a good conscience be enthusiastic advocates of the Christian practice in the matter of Sunday is that they regard it as right, and as for the highest well-being of the entire State.

Very truly yours,

J. Gresham Machen, Professor of New Testament in Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Postscript: over at David Strain’s blog come a couple of helpful posts about sabbath observance. As a native Scot, Strain knows first-hand about patterns of sabbatarianism among Old World Presbyterians, both mainline and sideline. In fact, during a Hart expedition to Scotland a decade ago, Mrs. Hart and her husband were delighted to see that even the Church of Scotland congregations conducted morning and evening service. This contrasts with the practice of one service among conservative Reformed and Presbyterians in the United States where supposedly Reformed Christianity is doing better.

Strain also mentions one of the common complaints about sabbatarianism – that is it legalistic. Well here is one radical two-kingdom virus carrier who also fully supports the supposed legalism of sabbath observance. In fact, the critics of 2k ought to consider where the leading 2k voices are on matters like the fourth commandment and the regulative principle of worship (as in the second commandment). Antinomian? Reconsider.

The Virus is Spreading – Spooky

Published on by D. G. Hart175 Comments

virusApparently the Westminster California hermeneutic has now infected the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Ligon Duncan recently issued a statement that clarified difference among ACE members on whether or not to sign the Manhattan Declaration. (For some of the diversity among evangelicals or conservative Protestants, go here.)

Duncan wrote:

The Alliance has not historically weighed in on social ethical issues, not because they are unimportant, nor because it is inappropriate for Christians to do so, but because of the mission of the Alliance which is “to call the twenty-first century church to reformation, according to Scripture, so that it recovers clarity and conviction about the great evangelical truths of the gospel and thus proclaims these truths powerfully in our contemporary context.” Specifically, we are an alliance of confessional Protestants (and heirs of the historic Reformed Confessions) who work together to “promote the reform of the church according to Scripture, and to call the church to be faithful to the Scriptures, by embracing and practicing the teaching of Scripture concerning doctrine, life and worship.”

So if the Bible speaks to all of life, including marriage, and the sanctity of human life, and ACE is committed to reforming the church according to Scripture, then why wouldn’t the Alliance advocate the Manhattan Declaration for the church in ministering the word of God? Could it be that even when the Bible does speak to some moral matters, it does not do so in a way suitable for the larger society?

In other words, could it be that the kind of distinction between kingdoms for which Westminster California is notorious is not so radical but even appeals to the good confessing evangelicals that constitute ACE? Hmmmm.

If Not Two Kingdoms, Two Decalogues

Published on by D. G. Hart164 Comments

double
In other words, you gotta serve some dualism.

I’ve had another worldview moment. I am struck that critics of the two-kingdom position, especially the ones who insist upon Christian schools, believe that a major issue in the disagreement is whether or not the Bible is the norm for public life (as well as other sectors outside the church). Fine, I get that. General revelation or natural law may not be sufficient to maintain the order that we desire in society. I suspect, though, that the objection is also that general revelation and natural law won’t yield a Christian society. But that’s another issue.

So let’s concede that the Bible should be the norm for political life. That would appear to solve the problem of abortion, same-sex marriage, and divorce. (Sorry, it doesn’t resolve the debate about Christian schools.) The sixth and seventh commandments would appear to be pretty handy for cleaning up American morality.

But what doesn’t seem to dawn on these Bible-as-norm-for-public-life folks is that we have not simply two but ten commandments. And the first four are particularly hard not on crime but on false worship, idolatry, blasphemy, and profaning the Lord’s Day. So if the Bible is to be the norm for public life, then all of a sudden not simply murder, divorce, adultery, fornication, lying, stealing are punishable offenses but so are Roman Catholicism and Mormonism, for instance, at least from the view of a Reformed world view.

I wonder if the implication of the whole integral law occurred to Dr. Kloosterman when he wrote the following in response to my piece in Christian Renewal. This summer he wrote:

The heart of my disagreement with religious secularism appears most clearly, I think, with this claim of Dr. Hart: “To suggest that Christian norms must be dominant in public life raises the threat of the very sort of religious warfare in which Protestants and Roman Catholics engaged in hopes of maintaining a uniform society.” A number of possible responses come to mind, but two will suffice.

First, if the worldly kingdom (public life) is to be governed by that natural law revealed
in creation, and if the Decalogue is nothing less than the republication of that natural law, then why would Christians not want the civil magistrate to proscribe what the Decalogue proscribes?

To play Rush Limbaugh for a moment: “stop the tape.” This is the heart of the disagreement over Christian schools – whether or not the magistrate enforces the Decalogue. So Christian schooling is really bound up with Christianizing America (and he quotes Machen for support – go figure). In other words, the whole debate over Christian schooling boils down to where one fights in the culture wars – is the Bible the norm for civil society, or is it not? Christian schooling is simply a way of fighting the culture war. We are very glad for the clarification.

“Mr. Snerdly, resume cut one.”

Kloosterman continuuueees.

Dr. Hart’s caution against having “Christian norms be dominant in public life” sounds very much like the warnings against “Christians legislating morality” and against “Christians forcing their religious convictions on others” that have become such common media mottoes in our highly secularized generation. What, in fact, is a “Christian norm”? Are the prohibitions “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not steal” peculiarly Christian norms?

Why is it illicit for Christians to appeal to the civil magistrate in the context of public policy relating to abortion, for example, using as only one among several arguments that the magistrate is called by God to honor the Sixth Commandment? If the magistrate’s authority comes from God, then why is it improper for Christians, as but one component of their public political testimony, to point the magistrate to God’s will revealed in Scripture (Ps. 2, Ps. 110, Rom. 13) for exercising that authority?

And if the civil magistrate’s authority comes from God, why go first to the seventh and eighth commandments. If the first and greatest commandment is loving God, why resort first to laws about love of neighbor? The answer appears to be straightforward. False worship and blasphemy do not trouble Dr. K. as much as sex and stealing. And always keep in mind that if you want to be tough on crime, send your children to a Christian school.

So again, to reiterate: if the law is good for the magistrate and it gives him (or her?) guidance about the culture wars, why does it not also give instruction about which religious groups to support and which to forbid? The good attorney from Indiana somehow thinks that this implication is silly because it reflects a complete misunderstanding of the Christian school lobby’s position. But which is more silly, to think that Christ governs the existing age through two kingdoms, one subject to Scripture the other to general revelation, or to think that we can have the Decalogue to prohibit the sins we most oppose but not to the point of making us look intolerant of other religions?

Last time I checked, both Israel and the church were to purge blasphemy and idolatry from their ranks – why – well, that first table of the Decalogue is pretty explicit. But somehow the Christian school advocates think that the state, which will be governed by the same Bible that governs the church, will be tough on sexual sins and murder but not on blasphemy and idolatry.

That leaves us with an interesting disagreement. The folks who condemn two-kingdoms for its dualism (among other things) have a dualistic view of the Decalogue. How integrated is that?

Dual Citizens

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Dual Citizensby Jason Stellman

Endorsements
For too long I struggled to recommend reading on the subject of living the Christian life as “resident aliens.” Often I was reduced to directing readers to liberal Methodists (such as Hauerwas and Willimon) as the best embodiment of Christian convictions. At last I can point to practice that is firmly grounded in Reformed theology. Dual Citizens is written by someone who loves the world: its movies, its music, and its authors. But this is a rightly ordered love because it is a penultimate love. Here is a robust pilgrim theology that marches on to Zion while avoiding the pitfalls of asceticism and legalism. By putting earthly kingdoms in their proper place, Pastor Stellman demonstrates how rightly to use the present world even as one eagerly awaits the next. John R. Muether

The subject of Christ and culture have never been as popular among conservative Protestants in the United States as it is today, and the topic has never needed as much attention from the perspective of the church. It gets that attention in this important book by Jason Stellman. Dual Citizens will certainly upset those used to thinking of Christ as mainly the transformer of culture. But for genuine wisdom not only on the culture wars, but on the culture, ways, and habits of the church, Stellman’s discussion is the place to go. D. G. Hart