Preview - The World is Christ's

THE WORLD IS CHRIST’S A CRITIQUE OF TWO KINGDOMS THEOLOGY

WILLEM J. OUWENEEL

CONTENTS Foreword: Rev. Dr. Joe Boot XI Preface XV Abbreviations XIX

PART I: THINGS TO BE SAID FIRST 1 A Reformed Debate 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

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One or Two Kingdoms?

Underlying Problems How Reformed Is the Debate?

Do I Qualify?

What This Book Is Not About

2 Scholastic Theology 2.1 Theology and Philosophy 2.2 The Reformation 2.3 Later Calvinism 2.4 Biblicism 2.5 Confessionalism

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PART II: THEOLOGICAL TOPICS 3 Creation Theology 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

4 Natural Law Theology 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

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Church and Kingdom Kingdom and Church The Church and the Coming Kingdom Various Views Eight Societal Relationships The Kingdom and God’s Righteousness

7 Two-Kingdoms Theology 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6

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Social Philosophy Sin in Societal Relationships The Biblical Two Kingdoms Subjects of the King Separation of Church and State

6 Kingdom-Church Theology 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6

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Romans 2:12–16 Natural Revelation Varieties of Natural Law The Fall and the Creational Structures Again, Structure and Direction The Erroneous Approach of nl2k Additional Considerations

5 Kingdom Theology 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

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The Cultural Mandate Good and Bad Culture The Creation Order Natural Law and Scholarship

Jesus’ Lordship Submission to the Lord Jesus’ Lordship in Societal Relationships The Heart of God’s Kingdom The Mediatorship of Christ The Noahic Covenant

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8 Sojourner Theology 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

Strangers and Sojourners “Sacred” and “Profane” Heavenly Citizens Babylon and Canaan The “Redemptive Kingdom”

9 Re-Creation Theology 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4

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The New Creation An Essentially New Approach Kingdom Theology “Christian” Politics

10 Ecclesiology

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10.1 What Is the Church?

10.2 The Church’s Authority 10.3 Not the Church 10.4 Churchism Leads to Theologism 10.5 Church and Academy 10.6 Biblical Counter-Examples

PART III: PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS 11 Philosophy and Theology

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11.1 What Is Philosophy?

11.2 The Necessity of Philosophical Premises for Theology 11.3 Theological Theory Building 11.4 Theology and the Other Sciences 11.5 Overlap with the Special Sciences 11.6 Three General Paradigms

12 A Philosophy of the State 12.1 “From Where Does My Help Come?”

12.2 nl2k Ideas of the State 12.3 Economics 12.4 More on the State 12.5 Other Confusions

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APPENDICES Appendix 1: Foundationalism versus Fideism

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Appendix 2: Matthew Tuininga and Two Kingdoms:

Idiosyncrasy, Instability, and Injury

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Appendix 3: The Republication Hypothesis

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Bibliography 363 Name Index 383 Subject Index 387 Scripture Index 393

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PREPARATORY PONDERINGS 1. Before you read any further, what is more plausible: that the glorified Man Jesus Christ is King over all the world, or only over a limited part of the present world?

2. How can we (insofar as we are familiar with these problems) find a biblical road in the midst of all the controversies between Kuyperians and Klineans, between Old Princeton and New Westminster, between Reformed and Presbyterians?

3. Do the controversies about who is most genuinely Reformed appeal to you? What purpose might they serve? What injury might they do?

4. Do you think that a European theologian might throw any light on these matters? Or are these things that North Americans themselves must solve?

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THE WORLD IS CHRIST’S / PART I

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1.1 ONE OR TWO KINGDOMS? 1.1.1 A Neo-Scholastic Model In this book, one of the main things I am doing is trying to refute the two-kingdoms model as conceived and articulated by David VanDrunen and some congenial thinkers.1 VanDrunen has described this view as follows: “God rules the church (the spiritual kingdom) as redeemer in Jesus Christ and rules the state and all other social institutions (the civil kingdom) as creator and sustainer, and thus these two kingdoms have significantly different ends, functions, and modes of operation.”2 John Frame called the two-kingdoms (hereafter: 2K) theory the Escondido theology because several of its proponents have worked, or work, at Westminster Seminary California (WSC).3 As the quote above indicates, adherents of this 2K model believe that Christians live in two kingdoms: a sacred realm and a secular realm. The former is what the Bible calls the “kingdom of God;” in the present age, it is supposed to coincide more or less with the visible church.4 This is the redemptive, supernatural kingdom. The other kingdom is the realm of our common duties and vocations, which are neither holy nor unholy. The former kingdom stands under the kingship of the glorified Christ, the latter stands under the general providence of the (Triune) God (“secular” supposedly does not mean godless).

In contrast with this, I present a “one kingdom” view: the entire world stands under the kingship of the glorified Man at God’s right hand, including the work of the Christian plumber, and in a certain sense, even including the work of the non-Christian plumber. I believe that this is the implicit testimony of Scripture (Matt. 28:18; Eph. 1:20–23; Col. 1:15–18; 1 Pet. 3:21–22; these passages will be investigated later in this book).

The opponents of 2K theologians are first and foremost the (transformationalist) neo-Calvinists, and after them also theonomic theologians (or reconstructionists, or dominion theologians), and (free church) evangelicals.5 The first group allegedly makes the mistake of believing that the entire 1

VanDrunen (especially 2006; 2009; 2010a; 2010b; 2014); also see Horton (1995/2002a; 2006), Hart (2006), Clark (2008), and Stellman (2009, xiv, xix, xxvii, 22, 32, 53).

2 VanDrunen (2010b, 1).

3 Frame (2011).

4 Cf. VanDrunen (2010a, 30, 101, 106, 123, 133–34).

5 See extensively, Littlejohn (2012a).

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society is under the kingship of Christ, or has to be actively brought under it (“transformation”). The second group allegedly errs because they believe in, and long for, a worldwide Christian society brought under the Mosaic Law. And the third group is alleged to be wrong because of its supposed biblicism and its devaluating the institutional church (as the term “free church” already indicates). We see that we are dealing with at least four views here, which mutually exclude each other. Is one of them right, or should we look for a fifth view?

1.1.2 Two Comments Let me immediately make two comments here. I have enjoyed reading especially David VanDrunen’s book Living in God’s Two Kingdoms. It is expertly written, it presents the two-kingdoms case very well, and it contains a lot of practical Christian wisdom. The same is true for Jason Stellman’s Dual Citizens. It is just a pity that, in my opinion, the core thesis of these books is entirely mistaken. It is not heresy (it falls within the lines of the Nicene Creed)—yet it is mistaken, and even misleading. Scripture does not teach two kingdoms (except in the very different sense of Matt. 12:25–28, the “kingdom of Satan” and the “kingdom of God”), neither explicitly nor implicitly. The present book tries to explain what is wrong with the 2K model, how such a model could possibly arise, and what damaging effects it has.

Second, I am not a reconstructionist nor, I hope, a biblicist (cf. §2.4).

I am a transformationalist in the sense that God by his Spirit transforms the hearts of people (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18), and from there changes their lives, including their functioning within their various societal relationships, and from there even influences culture as a whole. But I am not necessarily a transformationalist (or neo-Calvinist) in the sense that I would believe in a Christian-cultural task that aims at transforming the entire world into the kingdom of God, or into the new heaven and the new earth.6 Moreover, I do not like the triumphalism and cultural optimism that has often characterized this approach, apart from the eschatological problems connected with it (see especially chapter 9).

In the North American Reformed and Presbyterian scene, it may sometimes look as if one has to choose between these two approaches, neo-Calvinism and 2K theology (reconstructionism being in retreat). Some 6 See, e.g., Plantinga (2002); Wolters (2005); Goheen and Bartholomew (2008); cf. also Seerveld (2014a; 2014b); all these have been strongly influenced by Dooyeweerd (see, e.g., 1960; 1979; 1984).

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have presented a Third Way, which tries to avoid the problems of both the 2K approach and transformationalism.7 Perhaps my approach could also be called a kind of Third or Fourth Way. Nelson Kloosterman spoke of “A Third Way” as well.8 In his counting, theonomy/reconstructionism is the “first way,” and “religious secularism” (read: 2K theology) is the “second way.” Both ways are extensively reviewed, although his discussion of the “second way” is now a little outdated because of newer publications.9 Kloosterman called his “Third Way” “Worldview Christianity.” I feel very much at home here, especially because he wrote: “In our generation, the Lord seems to be surprising and humbling Calvinists with the reality that worldview Christianity is being championed by non-Calvinists around the world. These are Christians who are coming to see that the Christian faith provides an integrative-comprehensive understanding for all of living in the world.” I am thankful to belong to this group.

1.1.3 Scholasticism and Reformation I intend to show in the present book that 2K theology is a kind of neo-scholasticism—and this in an age in which Reformed thinking was finally liberating itself from its ties with scholasticism. In their essences, Reformational thinking and scholasticism do not fit together. Luther and Calvin brought Christian life back to the Word of God, although scholastic elements remained in their own thinking. No wonder—it is extremely difficult to get rid of this bug, certainly at such an early stage of renewal (early sixteenth century). Therefore, after these two Reformers, scholasticism was soon reintroduced into the German-speaking world by Luther’s successor, Philip Melanchthon, and into the French-speaking world by Calvin’s successor, Theodore Beza, as we will see. It is hard to blame them: there was little else at hand. One of the things Luther and Calvin failed to do was to develop a Christian philosophy, that is, a Christian-philosophical basis for our thinking about nature and culture, state and society, justice and economy, etc.

Of course, someone like VanDrunen is aware of the accusation of scholasticism.10 His response to this is quite remarkable: there is no actual response.

This is an interesting tactic: he does not hesitate to quote extensively the 7

See, e.g., Aniol (2013).

Kloosterman (2008).

9 E.g., VanDrunen (2009; 2010a; 2010b; 2014); Stellman (2009); see on VanDrunen (2010b): Kloosterman (2012a).

10 Boot (2016) has wondered whether VanDrunen imbibed scholasticism at Loyola University, a private Roman Catholic university in Chicago.

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objections that his critics level against 2K theology11—and subsequently does not explicitly answer any of these objections. Presumably, his critics are invited to follow his arguments, and then conclude for themselves that they are wrong. Similarly, VanDrunen extensively quotes the accusation that his approach is nothing but the ancient scholastic nature-grace dualism12 but, although he enters into certain detailed questions (e.g., does grace perfect nature?), he hardly enters into the factual question: Is 2K nothing but a variety of this nature-grace dualism, and might this be a problem?

The basic difference between Reformational thinking and scholasticism was and is this: the great power of the Reformation was to place again the entire world, and people’s entire lives, under the authority of Scripture and under the kingship of Christ. Scholasticism, however, placed only the spiritual (sacred) domain under the authority of Scripture and under the kingship of Christ, whereas the natural (secular) domain was placed under the authority of pagan thinking, especially Aristotle (d. 322 bc). This is the well-known nature-grace dualism of scholasticism. In the course of the sixteenth century, the Lutheran and Calvinist universities were gradually placed entirely under the sway of scholasticism, though this time it was covered with a Reformational frosting. The nature-grace dualism of scholasticism led to the idea of a Christian theology versus a supposedly “neutral” (read: Aristotelian; today: humanist) philosophy.

Even today, many Christian theologians have great difficulty with the idea of a Christian philosophy, or they astonishingly claim that Christian theology as such constitutes this Christian philosophy. For instance, during a lecture at the Free University in Amsterdam (1970), the great German dogmatician Wolfhart Pannenberg claimed that theology is the true philosophy.13 He certainly was in line with Augustine (d. 430) here—but that does not make it correct. Whatever one can say of Thomas Aquinas, the premier practitioner of scholastic thinking, he at least knew how to distinguish between theology and philosophy.

In his battle with French modernist philosopher René Descartes (d.

1650), who lived for a while in the Netherlands, the greatest Dutch Reformed theologian of the seventeenth century, Gisbert Voetius (d. 1676), called Aristotle “our philosopher.”14 No wonder: Voetius was the premier exponent of Reformed scholastic thinking in the Netherlands. Please note: 11 E.g., VanDrunen (2010a, 18–19).

12 VanDrunen (2010b, 27–36, 526–27).

13 Quoted by Strauss (1971, 64).

14 Ouwendorp (2012, 149).

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against Descartes, he placed not a Christian philosophy (he probably was not even able to imagine what such a thing might involve), but a pagan philosophy. I don’t know how the ghost of scholasticism within Reformed thinking could have been exposed in a more painful way.

1.2 UNDERLYING PROBLEMS 1.2.1 Theology versus Philosophy A great number of the issues brought up by VanDrunen are, strictly speaking, not theological problems at all, such as “natural law,” the “cultural mandate,” the meaning of “religion,” the relationship between theology and the sciences, or the arts, or politics, etc.; a Christian view of culture, a Christian view of the state, the separation of church and state, the relationships between the church, the state, and other societal relationships, and so on. It is typically scholastic to either declare all these topics to be “theological,” or to declare them to be philosophical, and thus present us with “neutral” (secular, common, non-Christian, sometimes outright apostate-Christian) solutions for these problems.15 The former idea (“all is theology”) is objectionable because Scripture does not contain a view of science, of art, of culture, or even of theology for that matter—so theologians cannot derive such ideas from it. Theology (at least the core of theology: exegetics and dogmatics) must expound Scripture, and nothing else.

The latter idea (“neutral philosophy”) is objectionable because it denies the universal authority of Scripture and the universal kingship of Christ.

There is no neutral domain within cosmic reality, as we will see. It does not help if one objects to the term “neutral” by emphasizing God’s universal providence (“God is always ‘involved’ in some way or another”).16 I call a domain “neutral” or “secular” if it is thought to be not under the universal kingship of the glorified Man Christ Jesus, and not under the universal authority of Scripture. These two things mean the following: (a) As to the former point, I do not just speak of the kingship of “Christ” 15 Advocates of 2K do not like the term “neutral” (see, e.g., VanDrunen 2010a, 179); I will

nevertheless use the term at all places where the “common kingdom” is viewed as religiously neutral.

16 VanDrunen (2010a) prefers the term “common(ality),” but I find this insufficiently specific. By “neutral” I do not mean “apart from God,” for this is not what VanDrunen intends, but “apart from the explicit guidelines of God’s Word and the kingship of the glorified Man Christ Jesus.”

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because of the bizarre doctrine that the sacred domain is under the Logos sarkos (“incarnate Word,” read: the glorified Christ), and the secular domain under the Logos asarkos (“non-incarnate Word,” read: the Second Person in the Godhead).17 This doctrine is bizarre because there is no Logos asarkos at present, and there will never again be any such person. The Son is both God and Man, but we can no longer speak of his deity apart from his humanity (see §8.5.2). (b) As to the universal authority of Scripture, of course, 2K theology does not deny that the Christian as an individual, living and functioning as a member of a state, a family, a working environment, etc., is under the authority of Scripture. But it does deny that states, families, schools, and companies as such are under the authority of Scripture; that is, it denies that Scripture as such supplies us with a Christian worldview that helps us to develop a Christian view of marriage, of the family, the school, the company, the association, and even the state.

In contrast with all these views, which I consider to be erroneous, I wish to present what I believe to be a truly Reformational picture, one in which the entire world is viewed as being under the authority of Scripture and under the kingship of Christ. For me and many others, this implies that there is, or must be, a Christian(-philosophical) view of religion, a Christian(-philosophical) view of culture, a Christian(-philosophical) view of the state, of science, of the arts, and even a Christian(-philosophical) view of theology. Where this is denied, we again encounter scholastic dualism, no matter what new garment it may be wearing.

In its simplest form, scholasticism is always this: there is a spiritual (sacred, Christ-ruled) domain and a natural (secular, common, neutral) domain, which have to be carefully kept apart. There is a domain under the authority of God’s Word and a domain that is supposedly governed by the God-given “natural law” but, as we will see, actually by pagan (or apostate-Christian) principles. There is a domain under the kingship of Christ and a “neutral” domain (which is at best a domain that falls under God’s general providence). Such a dualism is a fundamental attack on the spirit of the Reformation: God’s Word has its sway over all of reality; for instance, a notion such as that of “natural law” has no meaning apart from God’s Word, which provides its underpinning, its nature, and its meaning (see chapter 4).

17 Bolt (1983, 30); cf. VanDrunen (2010b, 75–76, 426–27).