Creaturely Agency and the Two Kingdoms

At the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference last month, Michael Horton delivered a fascinating paper entitled, "Let the Earth Bring Forth: The Spirit and Human Agency in Sanctification."  Really, though, he could have left off "in Sanctification" from the title, since his wide-ranging paper explored many different loci of dogmatics, and indeed, ran out of time to even properly address sanctification.  The goal of the paper was to challenge the kind of hyper-Calvinistic thinking that has often crept into the Reformed tradition, suggesting that divine and human agency is a zero-sum game, and that the omnipotence of God must be matched by the impotence of his creatures.  In place of this paradigm of Creator-creature relations that threatens to cripple human agency, Horton wanted to offer a more robustly Trinitarian account in which the Spirit functions as the mode of divine agency which creates, animates, and enhances human agency, instead of simply trumping it.  

"Some defences of divine sovereignty," Horton laments, "share with Arminianism a tendency toward a univocity of being between God and humans…both assume that divine and human agency are quantitatively rather than qualitatively distinguished.  Like a pie divided unequally between the host and guests, free agency is something to be negotiated or rationed between God and human persons….

In an analogical perspective, however, God is qualitatively distinct from creation, and so too is our agency distinct from though dependent upon God's.  There is no freedom pie to divide….God alone is sovereign, but that is the source of rather than threat to creaturely liberty.  God does not make space for us by restricting his agency, but rather gives us our own creaturely space precisely by creating, governing, sustaining, and saving us.  Unlike the tyrants of history who stalk the earth extinguishing the voice and power of subjects, God's sovereign presence animates and liberates human agency."

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Two Kingdoms in the Old Testament

(Continuing at last with my review of Living in God's Two Kingdoms) 

One of the greatest weakness of the theological paradigm that VanDrunen advances as a basis for his Reformed two kingdoms theology, is that it leaves him ill-equipped to make sense of the Biblical narrative.  The dogmatic theology, as discussed in the previous post, is problematic enough, but at least there VanDrunen can tie it all together into a coherent, though perhaps not persuasive, package.  But when it comes to the Biblical theology, he is essentially forced to openly excise large portions of Scripture as having little or no meaning for us today, renouncing any aspiration to a unified Biblical narrative.  

Although the New Testament certainly provides plenty of narrative, and offers, I think, glimpses of a prospective narrative, whereby we may understand the Church age and the eschaton, the lion's share of Biblical narrative of course falls in the Old Testament, and it is here that VanDrunen's most obvious problems appear.  After all, 90% of the Old Testament narrative tells the story of Israel, a covenanted people who receive laws from God to regulate every area of their religious, social, economic, and civil life, who exist as a holy nation, a priestly kingdom, under their King Yahweh and those whom he appoints.  This is hardly a promising place to look for a two-kingdoms paradigm, in which divine law addresses only otherworldly matters, and affairs of this life are part of the "common kingdom," ruled by natural law.  And so, VanDrunen sheepishly admits, this whole section of the story (90% of it) is just an interlude--a side-show--not something we should rest too much weight on.

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A Two Kingdoms Hart Attack

Over at Old Life Theological Society, Darryl Hart has been vigilantly policing the web for any criticism of Reformed two kingdoms theology, so I knew it was only a matter of time before my incessant provocations warranted a full-post response.  That response came on Monday, and although I hate the petty squabbling that so often characterizes blog debates, this may be a useful opportunity to clarify some of my critiques of VanDrunen and get a better idea of where R2K folks are coming from.  My main reply proved rather bulky for the comments section, so I've opted to post it here--Darryl's excerpts in italics, mine in regular font:

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Nestorian or Universalist? Hart on Two Kingdoms

Although Darryl Hart, the stalwart and combative online defender of VanDrunen's "Reformed two kingdoms" paradigm, has thus far (remarkably) left me almost entirely alone, my recent post on VanDrunen, Hooker, and Christology was brought to his attention via Nelson Kloostermann and elicited an interesting response:

"Criticisms of 2k theology keep coming and a major source of opposition is the distinction between Christ’s rule as redeemer in distinction from his rule as creator. For some, this kind of division within Christ could wind up in the error of Nestorianism. And yet, I wonder how you avoid Rob Bell’s error of universalism without this distinction." 

Now, oddly enough, nowhere in this post does Hart seek to confront or deflect the charge of Nestorianism, or of Christological confusions more generally.  Instead, the apparent logic of the post is "Well, Nestorian or not, it doesn't matter, because it's necessary, by golly!"  I could, in other words, triumphantly take this as a tacit acknowledgment of the basically Nestorian posture of the R2K movement.  Now, I daresay Dr. Hart would disclaim this interpretation; indeed, he would probably say that the reason he didn't address the charge was that it was so patently absurd as not to warrant engagement.  However, as I did offer some rather detailed engagement with VanDrunen's own words in several posts, and some careful analysis of their Christological implications, and as this is a very serious issue, I think some engagement or attempt at rebuttal is necessary.  

In any case, it's worth pausing to try and see what is behind Hart's somewhat perplexing counter-charge of universalism, and why the R2K Christology does rather more than guarding against this error.

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