How does a pilgrim become a transformer? First, I don’t hold these in tension as you do. Second, use a public, historic hermeneutic to apply the Bible everywhere (as described by Van Til, Machen, etc.).

To the extent that I understand the medieval crusaders, I do not regard them as legitimate transformers. Transformation is (esp. Matthean) evangelism; the sword is disallowed for this, certainly on the part of the institutional church.

“Exiles and strangers submit to the powers that God has ordained” to be sure, but a few will become those God-ordained powers; what then?

“Reformers and citizens resist and overturn the structures that they find around them.” Like Calvin, I accept the Law of the Lesser Magistrate. But as a private citizens, I have no business overturning something I don’t like: legitimate channels must be used (except for immediate, life-threatening situations to one’s person or family).

What about planning “to get God to vote?” He doesn’t, but we do know what He thinks.

But how exactly does a pilgrim become a crusader? Or has transformationalism changed the meaning of words? The Christians who went to the Holy Land in the eleventh century were not pilgrims. When Luther went to Rome in 1515 he was on a pilgrimage. Exiles and strangers submit to the powers that God has ordained. Reformers and citizens resist and overturn the structures that they find around them.

If neo-Calvinsts believe they can’t save anything, that it is only the work of God, how do they plan to get God to vote? And does his vote count as three?

Have you read about Mark Lilla’s upcoming book, *The stillborn God: Religion, politics and the modern west*? The NY Times just had an essay from his book; it’s available here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/magazine/19Religion-t.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=a098a9ed1ed27038&ex=1187668800&pagewanted=all

His concern is the problem of “political theology,” especially Islamic incarnations. He thus launches into a sweeping history lesson concerning “The Great Separation” between Church Street and Main Street, focusing especially on Thomas Hobbes, then Rousseau.

He writes, “This liberal-democratic order is the only one we in the West recognize as legitimate today, and we owe it primarily to Hobbes.” Surprised?

How would we decide whether Hobbes were the primary source of the separation of spirituality and the civic square?

(It’s demonstrable that links either to Augustine or Calvin cannot be sustained.)

The neocalvinist is that it doesn’t. Redemption is not something that exists in a dualism with creation. Neither is the physical something that exists in a dualism with the spiritual (but that’s a different point).

But in confusing that distinction with the antithesis, you have inadvertently regarded creation as evil. I have demonstrated how you have done this. Let me do so again:
Hart claims 1) we are dualists concerning language.
question: it is true that redemption does not add to creational structure, but how is that a dualism?
Hart claims 2) dualism is difference between all people (including Christians) in sin and obedience in Christ.
response: that is the anithesis, not the distinction between creation and redemption. To equate the antithesis with the creation-redemption distinction is to regard creation as sin.

Let me address the Augustine issue, since it may be relevant. Besides the distinction between membership in a political community (”citizenship”) and what the Scripture analogously calls “heavenly citizenship”. There is another distinction between kingdom memberships that is mutually exclusive. The kingdom of sin, evil, darkness, Satan in contrast to the kingdom of redemption. For example, Colossians 1:13-14.

If Augustine is making this contrast of kingdoms (ie, the antithesis) then he is not referring to creational societal communities as such at all. It may be that Augustine is torn concerning whether “politics is evil,” and so there may be confusion in his writing. Whatever the case with Augustine, Hart has certainly shown this confusion.

Hart interprets the neocalvinist perspective through his own confusion and gets Arminianism. But if he would actually read neocalvinist scholarship (such as Roy Clouser’s The Myth Of Religious Neutrality) he would be in a position to consider our claims on the terms as we use them. Simply considering the neocalvinist understanding of the antithesis would be enough to demonstrate that our understanding of redemption in culture is at real odds with what Hart supposes tranformationalism to be.

No Calvinist or neo-Calvinist has ever believed that THEY can save anyone or anything. We haven’t the power to draw the next breath, let alone effect cultural transformation.

Cultural transformation, as with personal regeneration, is the monergistic work of God; one is an individual transformation, the other is social. Both rest entirely on the fact that Christ has been given “authority over all flesh” (John 17:2), who also is “ruler of kings on earth” (Rev. 1:5), and who demands that kings “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry” (Psa. 2:12).

Cultural transformation has not the least to do with a synergistic or Pelagian gospel. Otherwise we should all walk away from the authors of the paleo-Reformed confessions: W2K depends on creedal changes since 1776.

As a transformationalist, I do not know a reason to oppose dual citizenship. In fact, I have more than two citizenships: I’m a citizen of this city, county, state, and nation, as well as Christ’s kingdom. Sometimes the first four memberships conflict (especially living in the South!), and sometimes the first four conflict with the last. This is not an essential problem for a transformationalist any more that it was for the warrior-king, David, who combined warfare with his pilgrimage (Psa. 39:12).

This point needs to be drilled home: our life as a pilgrim does absolutely nothing to support W2K. Nothing at all. Read how Isaac was a pilgrim (Gen. 28:4) yet he was mighty in the land so that the Philistines begged him to leave, even before he owned the land: “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we” (Gen. 26:16).

The dilemma W2K poses between pilgrimage and transformation is a false dilemma: biblical heroes combined pilgrimage with transformation, so why shouldn’t we?

Thus I would never deny multiple citizenships, and this gives not an inch to W2K.

Also, Machen’s aristocratic bearing, if it existed, was not responsible for his advocacy of states rights. Lot’s of middle-class and poor southerners also wanted the fed’s to keep their noses out of local politics.

Greg, how does a distinction between creation and redemption and yes, with it a dualism betweeen the physical and the spiritual, involve a commitment to regarding creation as evil? You’ve completely lost me in trying to capture W2K in the neo-Calvinist trap. It is neo-Calvinists who talk about redeeming the culture, not W2K. Redemption is a remedy for sin. W2K implies that in the realm of creation we are dealing with better and worse, better and worse ways of acknowledging and submitting to the good created order, not that the creation needs to be saved. By the way, if neo-Calvinists really think that they can redeem society, politics, TV, education or the like, then they are Arminians because paleo-Calvinists believe that only God saves.

If you haven’t read or heard about Anne Rice’s website (http://annerice.com/), she endorsed Hillary for President on August 10. In her endorsement, she says that Darryl’s book is the “best book” on the separation of church and state. However, she believes that “when one enters the voting booth, church and state become one for the voter.” Then she affirms her loyalty to the Democratic Party because “the Democratic Party best reflects the values I hold based on the Gospels. Those values are most intensely expressed for me in the Gospel of Matthew, but they are expressed in all the gospels. Those values involve feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, and above all, loving one’s neighbors and loving one’s enemies.” She affirms her pro-life position, and believes that a non-judicial solution must be pursued; she believes that the Democratic Party is the one party from which this solution may best be found. She then tells of her admiration of Hillary, but without any development.

I saw this first at Reformation21, as many of you did, I’m sure. But maybe some of you did not.

In VanDrunen’s CTJ article, “The two kingdoms: A reassessment of the transformationist Calvin” (2005), he concludes that for Calvin, the heavenly kingdom has an earthly expression, but only in the church (p. 257). He writes that “to the common interpretation of the kingdom of Christ offered by contemporary transformationists, with its focus upon earthly progress and the redemption of this world’s institutions, Calvin wrenched the eyes of his readers away from this world toward the next. Christ’s kingship is spiritual and his kingdom heavenly” (p. 257). However, VanDrunen apparently overstepped the data by claiming that Calvin’s two kingdoms, both ruled by God, are divided into the secular and sacred, or “the spiritual kingdom of Christ . . . in explicit comparison to the civil kingdom” (p. 258).

As Calvin inaugurates his extended discussion of civil government, he writes that “Christ’s spiritual Kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct,” and that he “previously laid down” the differences between the two (4.20.1); Battles gives these references as 3.19.16 and 4.10.3–6 (fn. 5, pp. 1486). An examination of these sections gives the reader a basis for Calvin’s meaning of the two kingdoms.

In the first section, Calvin has been discussing the liberty of conscience that Christ purchased with his death; one of his concerns is to demonstrate that human laws are invalid in the spiritual kingdom and that they nullify the gospel (3.19.14). In the following section, labeled “The two kingdoms,” Calvin continues his concern for conscience as he writes of “a twofold government in man;” one is “spiritual,” related to the “life of the soul,” while the other is “political” or “temporal,” involving such things as “food and clothing.” Surprisingly for Calvin, these kingdoms have “different kings” as well as “different laws” (3.19.15). He writes that he will later discuss the temporal kingdom when he discusses “civil government” and “church laws” (3.19.15). In the next section (3.19.16), Calvin contrasts the two kingdoms by noting that “as works have regard to men, so conscience refers to God.”

In the second section, Calvin discusses human laws, the horizontal kingdom, remarkably including “church laws.” He continues this surprising view of the church a few paragraphs later when he writes of “human laws, whether made by magistrate or by church . . . (I speak of good and just laws). . . .” Therefore “good and just laws” exist both in the church and state as “human laws,” and therefore both church and state belong in the political or temporal government. Thus it seems that Calvin’s view contradicts VanDrunen’s separation of sacred and secular: for Calvin, the two kingdoms instead distinguish the vertical, conscientious relationship to God from the horizontal relationships to humanity, whether in church or state (4.10.5).

How can such a vertical-horizontal model of the two kingdoms better explain Calvin? First, this model honors Calvin’s concern that the state not be identified with the Kingdom of Christ: the spiritual kingdom is not the temporal kingdom, yet the temporal kingdom requires First Table proaction from both magistrates and gospel ministers. Second, it helps to explain why Calvin could say that these kingdoms are “two worlds, over which different kings and different laws have authority” (3.19.15) as opposed to the Escondido view in which the two kingdoms have a single king; for Calvin, God reigns alone in the vertical kingdom, while men rule in the horizontal kingdom under God. Third, in contrast to VanDrunen’s distinction of otherworldly vs. this-worldly, Calvin seems more concerned to distinguish man’s individual relationship to God from his social responsibility to society, but the kingdoms are equally concerned with the here and now. Last, while VanDrunen is noticeably unable to account for Calvin’s discussion of the civil magistrate and the First Table (pp. 264–265; 4.20.1ff), a vertical-horizontal model can coordinate all horizontal relationships under Christ’s authority, since both church or state are in the same kingdom for Calvin.

There seems to be a fundamental misalignment between Darryl and David on the nature of Augustine’s two cities. David tells us that for Augustine, “Christians have no dual citizenship: they belong only to the heavenly city, even while making temporary use of the earthly city” (p. 253).

Thus Augustine’s cities do not correspond to the W2K idea of the left hand and right hand kingdoms. Rather, they correspond to Kuyper’s antithesis.