RSSThe Problem With Westminster’s Two Kingdoms
Bill Chellis has pointed out that according to St. Paul, ecclesiastical courts should ideally arbitrate disputes between Christians (I Cor. 6:1-11). At the very least we should conclude from this that the sacred/secular dichotomy is an insufficient method for determining what is proper to church versus state oversight. However, Darryl Hart explains that “matters pertaining to this life†really means matters pertaining to the community of faith.
Darryl holds that matters inherently secular attain the quality of spirituality when more than one Christian is concerned. However, this is to involve himself in an experience of cognitive dissonance. For, according to his thinking, Christians are to play by the rules of the City of Man when moving in the secular sphere: that is, the three-dimensional world outside the walls of our churches he identifies as the present age. Much less should ecclesiastical judges be carried away with any thoughts of their competence to decide matters pertaining to this life!
As a spiritualizer of our religion, Darryl has no substantive objection to Christians hashing out their secular concerns in secular courts. Why not let the courts decide if a matter concerns temporal justice? After all, they’re the experts…
Really, it may be demonstrated ad nauseam that the two categories (sacred/secular) describe different experiences of the same life and often pertain to identical subjects. Subjectively, it is true that “to the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and those who do not believe, nothing is pure†(Titus 1:15). However, there is an underlying objective truth about the sanctity of the world: “Do not call unclean what I have made clean!†(Acts 10:15).
Those of us who have tendencies “prematurely immanentizing the eschaton” fail to understand the necessity of Darryl’s precise formulation of the opposition between the two ages, which are both essentially spiritual, not temporal, spheres. Man’s city and God’s city cannot be absolutely separated by the discrete temporal moment of the final judgment. The Kingdom of God is now fully established in principle (Matt. 28:18ff; Eph. 1:20-23), and competitively coexists with the Kingdom of Satan in the present era. Furthermore, the City of Man will continue to exist after the Judgment: it will then be called Hell.
From this we are situated to understand that the Westminster Two Kingdom (W2K) School is guilty of attempting to combine temporal and moral categories in such a way as to engender fuzzy conceptual thought. It is not possible to split off an opposite from one dichotomic duality (old creation/new creation) and identify it with an opposite from another duality (love of self/love of God). This is because both loves equally persist through both phases of history.
The old creation, even in its fallen state, is still fundamentally good, and is now purified by the blood of Christ. Though temporarily subject to futility, creation remains oriented to its original telos (Rom. 8:19ff.). The fallen ethic of “the self for its own sake†cannot be identified with the old creation in its essence without fatally compromising creation’s goodness. Such is to identify the laws and principles of the created order with evil.
The purpose for which W2K combines ethical and temporal-eschatological categories is not merely to steer theological discourse away from metaphysical speculation. It actually serves to surreptitiously introduce a contrary metaphysic, one that not only divorces being from goodness but positively attributes evil to being. Of course, this is the essential principle of gnosticism.
To develop the critique further: W2K theory effectively attributes evil to creation when it attributes common culture with the fallen ethic of self love, and calls it the City of Man. Human culture has been relieved of its chief task to fulfill the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28-30; 9:1ff.) and now serves to maximize comfort and pleasure in this life. Here, collective human activity has been diverted from its original purpose to glorify God and pressed into a different service circumscribed by the limits of “this world,†the world treated as an end-in-itself. Here we see that W2K provides theological justification for idolatry in principle. The end result can only be an abandonment of human society to demonic domination.
A pernicious confusion of categories has led Michael Horton and his disciples to deny the possibility of Christian culture. Only the institutional church may have a transcendent “politics†and “culture†of sorts. The W2K’s particular emphasis on the Calvinist antithesis has led to a denial of the fundamental unity of the race that underlies and is presupposed by the antithesis. It rejects any possibility that the reprobate can positively contribute to or even cooperate with the construction of the City of God. Such possibilities are deemed by W2K men as illegitimate attempts at salvation by works. Yet another example of W2K’s confusion of ethical and eschatological categories.
Darryl Hart thinks that Christian politics is as nonsensical as Christian plumbing or Christian auto mechanics. When he speaks in this way he betrays a confusion of proximate utilitarian ends with ultimate ends. Darryl concedes only practical value to cultural activity in the world and rules out the possibility that culture has reference to the higher purpose of mankind: to glorify God and fully enjoy him forever. But the practical science of plumbing is not the same as the art of politics. Christian architecture is not so silly an idea as Christian plumbing. And if there can be Christian architecture there can be Christian city planning.
W2K is skeptical that creation retains any intrinsic purpose that complements God’s will, but affirms only an extrinsic teleology imposed by sovereign divine determination. Concomitant with this doctrine is the unwarranted assumption that human authority and government came about as a result of the Fall. This theory of political origins implies an unlikely proposition: that Adam was not to administrate the collective activity of the race in its fulfillment of the cultural mandate.
My analysis of W2K is also sufficient to explain the school’s antagonism toward any “grace perfecting nature” language. As shown, W2K attributes only a “good of utility†to created being and specifically denies an intrinsic telos in it complementary to God’s ultimate eschatological purpose. In Klinean terms, there is really no Megapolis to be transformed into the glory-filled Metapolis. Created being exists therefore to be entirely obliterated by the eschaton.
The W2K common grace city can never be Megapolis. Any attempt by “transformationalists†to preserve some semblance of Megapolis in the common grace city is bound to be continually opposed by partisans of W2K. Such partisans prefer any and all forms of polity to Christendom, even sacral pagan, fascist, and communist social orders. This one-sidedness is indistinguishable from the toxic animus that inspires the political left. And so, W2K is finally exposed as a theologically sophisticated form of the same radicalism that inspired Anabaptism, Enlightenment republicanism, and modern (political) liberalism.
W2K proponents share a wholesale repudiation of Christendom’s legacy with their radical brethren. Driven by madness over the sins of Christian civilization, W2K men fail to compare on balance its relative achievements and failings with other civilizations that have actually existed. Apparently, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Salem witch trials are enough to indict a 1500 year old civilization. But contrary to one-sided historical accounts, the Crusades were a response to the aggression of another civilization with theocratic aspirations, the intent of the Inquisition was to counter arch-heretics who threatened social order, and black witchcraft was practiced in colonial Massachusetts. Though excesses were certainly perpetrated during those events, a civilization as old as ours ought not be judged only by its sins but by its ideals and accomplishments as well.
The essential error of W2K is that the created order has not retained an intrinsic transcendent purpose. The effect is to re-orient humanity’s collective teleological ethical imperative to serve this-worldly ends. W2K renders itself more destructive when it associates created being with the fallen ethic of “self love to the exclusion of God.†W2K theology holds that the Incarnation served no other purpose than as a means to the end of delivering the elect from the evil world. The world itself, abandoned to the demonic, will not be redeemed; it will be destroyed. This theology is an expression of profound existential alienation from God’s good world.
Baus
May 15th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Andrew, I appreciate the thrust of your post here. While I continue to mull it over… could you tell us more about yourself? I think I missed your introduction.
Baus
May 15th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Oh, sorry. Now I remember: http://www.deregnochristi.org/profiles/#matthews
Thanks.
W.H. Chellis
May 16th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Now that was true Augustinianism. Thank you Andrew.
D Hart
May 19th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
(Bill, shame on you.) I deny practically everything Mr. Matthews attributes to me. I believe God’s will prevails. Can Mr. Matthews say such for Saddam Hussein or for the Iraq War (which one)? How would he know? I think Christendom far better than the Roman Empire. But did the U.S. of A. do anything significant? At least the Covenanters here didn’t have to worry about “killing times.” And I deny that the created order is evil. In fact, I submit that the constant need to redeem creation, whether politics, plumbing or television, comes from an insufficient appreciation of the goodness of creation — as if it’s sinful and needs salvation. The problem as I see it is that the non-two kingdom folks can’t recognize that cultural and political goods are proximate rather than ultimate goods. That was a crucial component of Roman Catholicism’s error, and it afflicts everyone who continues to pine for Christendom.
We’re pilgrims, not crusaders.
Phil
June 26th, 2007 at 9:24 am
“We’re pilgrims, not crusaders.” But that’s a problem for several biblical reasons:
1. Even when the Jews were commanded to “seek the peace of the city” because they were under God’s judgment (unlike today), they still led a crusade against many Persians: “no one could stand against them, for the fear of them had fallen on all peoples” (Esther 9:2). Thus the dispersed Jews, pilgrims, still acted as crusaders.
2. King David, after he led many crusades against the enemies of God, still wrote that he was “a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers” (Psalm 39:12). Thus David the crusader was a pilgrim.
3. Isaac was a pilgrim (Genesis 28:4), yet the Philistines begged him to “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we” (Genesis 26:16). Thus Isaac, a pilgrim, was regarded as a crusader by the Philistines.
It seems that “pilgrim-crusader” is a false dichotomy–certainly not a biblical one. Life is more complicated than this. We are called to be both.
Phil
June 26th, 2007 at 9:32 am
“In fact, I submit that the constant need to redeem creation, whether politics, plumbing or television, comes from an insufficient appreciation of the goodness of creation — as if it’s sinful and needs salvation.”
On the contrary, the “whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
Just like believers, all of creation “groan[s] inwardly” awaiting “adoption.” Our bodies are groaning until “the redemption” of creation.
This does not affirm that the created order is evil as if we were Manichaean–why do W2K folks keep saying this without evidence? But creation certainly is conflicted.
Phil
June 26th, 2007 at 9:58 am
“In fact, I submit that the constant need to redeem creation, whether politics, plumbing or television, comes from an insufficient appreciation of the goodness of creation — as if it’s sinful and needs salvation.”
The problem with W2K here is that politics, plumbing, and television are not some kind of Robinson Crusoe void of influence from human minds. Rather, politics, plumbing, and television are a composite of God’s good (but broken) creation PLUS whatever man-the-idol-factory does. Remove the human element, and politics, plumbing, and television disappear. Because of this human element, we may find idols in any human endeavor.
W2K isn’t prepared to confront idols in politics and television, for instance, because it doesn’t see any.
stevez
June 26th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
“W2K isn’t prepared to confront idols in politics and television, for instance, because it doesn’t see any.â€
I come from a W2K POV and I see idols aplenty. They tend to show up when the kingdoms are collapsed and deliberations begin about how the 1 kingdom ought to shake out—something that has to be done, of course, once the kingdoms are collapsed. They end up sounding a lot like very particular traditions of men and claiming that God backs them up. The GOP, for example, is then God’s Own Politics. Trouble is that there are other hosts of folks who do the same collapsing and make the same claim that God backs them up. So who is right? For my money, were I to follow this horrid collapsing, I daresay the lefty liberationists win the day: it’s all about freeing the oppressed, setting prisoners free, eradicating poverty, pacifism, the welfare state, minority over majority, etc. and so forth. I find nary an argument in Scripture for anything Newt or any hawk might trumpet. For that matter, I find nothing about democracy or capitalism, but plenty for monarchy. Perhaps the whole American experiment is unbiblical (?). But I do not follow such a lawless collapsing. The Gospel is antithetical to every, single tradition of men and will not share its throne or glory, as it were, with any of these. To suggest that it does is to tell Jesus Himself to get up and move a bit further to the back of the room in order to make way for us as we sit in judgment over Scripture itself. What’s that about God being jealous?
Seems to me that the collapsing is exactly what idolatry is: speaking for God where he has not spoken in order to prop up one’s mere opinion, however persuaded one might be. There’s having a perspective on how the world ought to shake out in the here and how; that’s one thing. But then there’s this inevitable idolatry that comes when kingdoms are collapsed.
And as far as references to OT “pilgrims and crusaders†and transformationism’s inability to grasp fulfillment, etc. VanDrunens’s monograph on natural law should clear that all up. The NT interprets the OT, and in the latter I see absolutely no call to crusade but only to pilgrimage. I realize that frustrates to no end the visions of transformationists of every stripe and brand, but that crusade and pilgrimage are called false dichotomies is a tortured attempt to explain away the foolishness of the Gospel.
steve
Phil
June 26th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
1. As soon as one acknowledges idolatry in politics and television, he concedes my point: there *can* be idolatry in the left-hand kingdom. And that’s confessional: we are “wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body,†including the parts of our lives lived in the left-hand kingdom. That’s why we desperately need Christ’s redemptive work in the left-hand kingdoms, too.
2. Please concisely demonstrate how the pair, “pilgrims and crusaders,†is a legitimate, biblical dichotomy. Please especially show how we should regard David’s claim to be a pilgrim when it was obvious to the Philistines that he was a crusader.
stevez
June 27th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
2. Please concisely demonstrate how the pair, “pilgrims and crusaders,†is a legitimate, biblical dichotomy. Please especially show how we should regard David’s claim to be a pilgrim when it was obvious to the Philistines that he was a crusader.
SZ: I would refer, again, to VanDrunen’s monograph “A Biblical Case for Natural Law,†pages 26-32. The general point here is that in the OT we see saints Abraham through Joseph this way: “When it came to life in society, the civil kingdom, Abraham lived according to the idea of commonality established in the Noahic covenant of common grace. When it came to his religious life and eternal hope in the spiritual kingdom, Abraham lived according to the idea of particularity established in the covenant of grace. This pattern continued through the lives of the patriarchs, Abraham [through] Joseph…In the covenant with Moses, the principle of religious particularity…continued. What is striking…however, is that this particularity was extended to the broader cultural realm. While the patriarchs…were separated from the world in regard to their religious life and redemptive hope but mingled with the world in regard to their social and cultural life, the Mosaic covenant separated God’s people from the world in the social and cultural realm as well.†He goes on to explain that instead of aliens they were given their own land, etc. They didn’t mingle and were in fact commanded to exterminate the pagans, that the commonality established by the Noahic covenant was set aside. But this was temporary, an ‘extraordinary situation that God established only for a certain time and place in order to accomplish specific purposes in his redemptive plan and to point ahead to the eternal, heavenly state.â€
You ask about David. DVD goes on. “What becomes evident in the ongoing story of OT Israel is that this mixing of religious and cultural particularly applied only within the bounds of the Promised Land. When the people of Israel interacted with those living outside these bounds, they dealt with them not according to the principle of cultural particularity established in the Mosaic covenant but according to the principle of cultural commonality established in the Noahic covenant. Kings David and Solomon, during the best days of the Israelite theocracy, had friendly dealings with several foreign monarchs who ruled in lands outside Palestine: Nahash of Ammon, Hiram of Tyre, and the Queen of Sheba (2 Sam. 10:2; 1 Kings 5; 10). Solomon carried on a general commercial trade with nations all around (1 Kings 10:22). Later, the prophet Ezekiel could admire the cultural splendor of Tyre, despite its pagan religion and therefore imminent destruction (Ezek. 26:1-19). Perhaps the clearest examples come in the accounts of God’s people in their Babylonian exile. Here, when banished from the Promised land, they conducted themselves according to the pattern of Abraham and the patriarchs in maintaining religious particularity while observing cultural commonality with the Babylonians…Jeremiah instructed them to engage in all sorts of ordinary cultural practices (building, planting, marrying) while seeking the ‘peace and prosperity’ of the pagan city in which they have now lived (Jer. 29:1-9).â€
And for our friend Darryl, “…Daniel also provides a helpful exilic example: He received a Babylonian education and faithfully served several Babylonian and Persian kings. Nevertheless, in both the letter of Jeremiah and the life of Daniel, Scripture provides ample evidence that this cultural commonality was not to taint their ongoing religious particularity (see Jer. 29:10-14; Dan. 1:8-16; 3:8-30; 6:1-28).â€
And that’s the point here. Simply put, the time of the patriarchs mirrors our time, not the time of the Mosaic code. The latter is pointing forward to the consummation, when Christ returns, etc. We live now in that exilic and parenthetical age where we “mingle peacefully.â€
zrim
Phil
June 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
The exilic period was God’s judgment on the Jews for failing to keep the Sabbaths. For what is the Church of Christ under God’s judgment for the past two millennia? And if we are not in this similarity with the Jewish exiles, on what basis should we regard ourselves as necessarily parallel to them? Thus, why should we regard Daniel as our paradigm? He was a wonderful example, but he lived in a time that appears to be substantially unlike ours.
Furthermore, the exilic period was not exactly a period of peaceful mingling: we read that “the Jews were to be ready on that day to take vengeance on their enemies†and “to kill all who oppressed them†(Esther 8:13 + Geneva notes). So the exilic period, at least in part, saw a physical and bloody realization of the imprecatory psalms. So at least in Esther 8, the exiled Jews were partial crusaders.
As to the patriarchs, Isaac was a pilgrim (Genesis 28:4), yet the Philistines begged him to “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we†(Genesis 26:16). Thus Isaac, a pilgrim, was regarded as a crusader by the Philistines. So the patriarchal period doesn’t seem to work for W2K either.
I know (I think) that you’re not a dispensationalist, so why do you use their trademarked language? I left the language of parenthesis a decade ago for Reformed theology. I really don’t understand your rhetoric.
I’m not likely to buy into VanDrunen’s arguments; I worked through his CTJ article on Calvin (“The Two Kingdoms: A Reassessment of the Transformationist Calvin;†CTJ 40), and I thought he had lots of problems; most notably, he failed to account for Calvin’s establishmentarianism. The mantra, “Calvin was just inconsistent,†isn’t an argument. So you might not want to support your argument from him.
Andrew Matthews
June 27th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Y’all put a lot of weight on that there Noahic covenant, don’tcha?
Now, where have I heard talk about a “parenthetical age” before?
stevez
June 28th, 2007 at 10:52 am
hey, true confessionalism seems to breed healthy ecumenism, i say. i have always enjoyed being tagged as a latent lutheran; never thought i’d enjoy the subtle baptist brand. i will use their language if it suits making a point and not be too squeemish about it. but, honestly, folks, does utilizing their language make a one-to-one correspondance? does my high and institutional view of the Church make me a roman catholic, too?
…i would think you could do better than that.
zrim