Fermentations Online is Here!

After many long delays and fruitless vigils, the new web platform of Fermentations magazine is online!  We still have lots of work to do on architecture, styling, and content, but the basic structure and a couple dozen of our most recently published articles are there now, so please feel free to go rummage around, and check back frequently for updates!

Featuring articles by Peter Leithart, Doug Jones, Wesley Hill, and a crew of exciting young writers, and interviews with writers like Stanley Hauerwas and Eric Stoddart, Fermentations seeks to provide thoughtful and creative reflections on the intersection of theology and culture.  With the new website, soon you will be able to read all of our old articles, recipes, poems, short stories, and trademark "Bits of Tid," including some material never before published; and once we get everything running smoothly, you can expect brand-new content on at least a weekly basis.

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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The Sole Un-lordship of Christ

About a month ago, I posted an initial reaction* to David VanDrunen's Living in God's Two Kingdoms, with the promise that a more thorough summary would be forthcoming.  At last, I shall attempt to begin to make good on that promise, though the further posts will still be few and concise compared to other book reviews I've posted.  I plan to offer four further posts: this one, dealing with basic theological underpinnings of VanDrunen's paradigm, another touching on the problems of biblical theology that his view runs into, another dealing with the ecclesiology offered and implied in the book, and finally one discussing in more detail the practical political and cultural applications VanDrunen offers, and how they seem at odds with the theological assumptions.  On to the theology then.

In my first post, you may recall I claimed that so alien was VanDrunen's theological paradigm in this book that I often felt like we were practitioners of two totally different religions.  This was not meant uncharitably, or as a casual charge of heresy in the venerable tradition of Southern Presbyterianism.  VanDrunen is certainly orthodox.  But the following quote may give you an idea of how vast is the gulf between his kind of Christian theology and mine:

"The Lord Jesus, as a human being--as the last Adam--has attained the original goal held out for Adam: a glorified life ruling the world-to-come.

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