RSSThe Keys to the Expansive Kingdom
Several comments have registered discomfort with my (and the WCF’s) narrow construction of the kingdom of Christ. Some in fact have argued that the kingdom extends beyond the church.
I wonder if those who make such claims have considered what this view does to the doctrine of the keys to the kingdom. That doctrine is not explicitly taught in the Westminster Standards but it does come in the confessional tradition from which Kuyperianism sprung. And it takes seriously Christ’s teaching in Mt. 16 and 18 and John 20 that he gave his apostles the keys to the kingdom to forgive sins, to open up the gates of heaven, and to close those gates to those who will not believe and repent.
So if the church has the keys of the kingdom (namely, preaching and discipline according to the Heidelberg Catechism), then why aren’t ministers allowed to hold the keys to the expansive kingdom? Church officers would seem to have some responsibility and authority regarding the kingdom of Christ according to Christ’s own words. But now when the kingdom expands to politics, medicine or aerobics, suddenly those keys don’t work.
What gives?
Rusty O.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Dr. Hart,
If you have read Leithart’s Against Christianity I would appreciate a brief assessment of his thesis and a differentiation, if necessary, of your views. The similarities seem apparent.
Sincere Thanks.
D Hart
April 11th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
It’s been a while since I read the book, but I’m probably more comfortable with a privatized Christianity than Peter is. My reading of the sermon on the mount is partly that it is an attack on the religious show-boating that sometimes goes on in the name of integrating faith into all areas of life. I am also likely less on the same page with Hauerwas than Peter is when it comes to the church as polis. I do think the church has her own politics and that the faith needs to be embodied in them. But I also think that the magistrate makes claims on Christians that requires them to live with legitimate and necessary tension between the rival claims of church and state.
Rusty O.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Can one grant your equation of church and kingdom but retain the Divine’s expansive understanding of this kingdom? In other words, they were articulating this position in an era when presbyterians and independents went to war with anglicans. Europe was so thoroughly under the authority of some church or another that the pope was considered the most plausible candidate for the antichrist. American presbyterians who take the kingdom and church language of the divines and trasport it to the unforseen context of the secular state are very mistaken with regard to the Westminsterian intent. Wouldn’t the divines be appalled that we have such a thing as the secular state?
It seems their intention is to grant a degree of sphere sovereignty for the respective kingdoms of christ and man. But to equate church and kingdom of Christ, and I agree we should, doesn’t mean the church isn’t expansive in its reach. If the Bible addresses medical ethics or the weights and measures used by a CPA, then shouldn’t the church claim jurisdiction over such fields? Indeed, isn’t the health of her membership reliant on such an exposition of God’s Word enforced by discipline?
Sincere thanks.
Anthony Cowley
April 14th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Again, the Keys of admission to the kingdom are the Sacraments and discipline. This is why I am, at least in a theoretical sense, an establishmentarian. The nations are to be baptized to enter the kingdom. Just as my family does not become THE kingdom by baptism, but only a part of its realm, so Austria would not become the Kingdom, but partake in it. The job of the father does not revert to the pastor. The session is not to micromanage, not even to manage the affairs of the family. Israel was both a Church (under age) and “a Body Politick.” They were separately organized. They did not even overlap 100% in membership. Not everyone that was “cut off” from the OT Sacraments was to be stoned.
This is a flattening hermeneutics, which does not recognize the different responsibilities of the Deacons and Leturgioi Civil (Rom 13) and Ecclesiastical (Matt. 18). A Christian Family is not a Christian Church. The Father does not adminster the keys to the kingdom. Nor does the Principal, nor does the President, or king. Even the old Anglicans, who messed this up ‘royally’ wrote:
The original (1571, 1662) text of Article XXXVII (Of the Power of the Civil Magistrates)reads as follows: “The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction. Where we attribute to the King’s Majesty the chief government, by which Titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended; we give not our Princes the ministering either of God’s Word, or of the Sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify; but that only prerogative, which we see to have been given always to all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself; that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers.
D Hart
April 15th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Technically, the keys of the kingdom do not involve sacraments. As the Heidelberg Catechism explains, the keys are preaching and discipline. So we won’t need much water for baptizing the nations — though if Al Gore is right, we may have plenty on hand soon.
I appreciate Anthony’s point about the flattening hermeneutic and I wish the other side, especially the Kuyperians would adopt some of these bumps and pot holes because when I hear the rhetoric of a Christian view of everything, or a Christian world and life view, I not only reach for my gun but I also hear a lot of flattening.
So does this mean that fathers, magistrates and pastors appeal to different parts of the Bible for their duties? For instance, I could see a magistrate turning to Rom. 13 for some sense of her high calling. And I could see a father turning to Eph. 5 to understand his responsibilities. In a sense, this would be fair enough and the one way in which I’d concede that special revelation has something to say to secular affairs (but again, it is only to the Christians who hold those offices, not a universal command to any and all magistrates and fathers).
Lest Caleb and Zrim think I’ve gone off the reservation, let me explain that I can’t see how a Christian magistrate could possibly believe that his duty did not involve punishing evil. For instance, there seem to be plenty of American politicians who are fairly selective about the evils to be punished. Think Don Imus and MSNBC versus Dennis Miller and HBO. (Get this, Dennis Miller now has a show on the Salem Radio Network, that “God-fearing” evangelical radio network that also employs Roman Catholics and Jewish persons.)
Even so, I think my comment still has some bite for Anthony because the Bible not only has a few things to say to fathers and magistrates but it has a lot to say to ministers, not only what they should do but also the scope of their ministry. And since a pastor is to minister Rom. 13 and Eph. 5, then why can’t the church administer those affairs of human existence? In other words, if folks like Anthony can distinguish among the duties of magistrates, fathers and pastors, why can’t I distinguish more broadly the difference between the temporal affairs of the state and the eternal affairs of the church without being thought to have gone liberal?
The point isn’t what people think of me or my arguments. The point though is why people find my argument so threatening to Reformed Christianity. It seems to be that my book compromises a Christian America. But how does the point that Christianity is not a political program but a ministry of the gospel threaten or undermine the notion that magistrates should punish evil doers or that fathers should love their wives and discipline their children?
stevez
April 15th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
it is not a threat to reformed christianity (but a boon, in point of fact). i suppose for those who have conflated it (reformed christianity) with a christian america, a book like ASF is perhaps a threat on par with any host of evils seeking to tear down the faith. but the point that something like ASF (which is synomymous with the very arguments of christainity) undermines the right and duty of (christian) magistrates to punish or (christian) fathers to discipline and love seems to say much more about such a grasp of those who assume as much than any threat hart could possibly muster. that is, to see the arguments of ASF as a threat is as suspicious as saying pythagorus was a threat to triangles and venn steered us away from understanding un/common properties.
i would only add that even those charges such as ones given our fathers are themselves really pointers grounded in temporal institutions meant to be understood eternally. that is, even pagans know they “should punish evil, love their wives and discipline their kids.” but they are not told that this has some parallel to the KoG, like we are; they are not told, “love your wives as Christ loved the Church.” our creational endeavors look very simililar to pagans (which is part of what allows us to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them), but why we don’t/do what we don’t/do is from eternal perspectives (or at least, ought to be).
…so, no, for my part, i am not about to send an envoy to retrieve hart back to the reservation.
zrim