Kuyperian Tug-of-War (VanDrunen Review VII)

June 30, 2010

In keeping with my new commitment to keep this review concise, I’m going to try and cover this chapter in just one installment (though it will be a very long one).  This shouldn’t be too difficult, moreover, as it is a shorter chapter, its argument is generally rather clear and straightforward, and where there are difficulties in the argument, they’re at points already discussed in this review.  Also, having officially and publicly lost patience with VanDrunen in the last chapter, I have regained my composure, and don’t expect there to be any more outbursts of that sort, although from here on out the focus of the reviews will be essentially critical, rather than expository.

VanDrunen’s basic point in this chapter is to argue, that even when it comes to Abraham Kuyper, the father of “Kuyperianism” and thus of modern “neo-Calvinism,” neo-Calvinists do not have a firm foundation for their views.  Kuyper, he wants to argue, remains by and large in the two kingdoms, natural law camp, despite--you guessed it--some lingering inconsistencies.  

My complaint, as you might have expected, regards VanDrunen’s continued certainty that all these historical Reformed figures simply could not make their practice consistent with their theory.  This is plausible at first, but as the inconsistencies pile up, the most persuasive conclusion is simply that their theory is not what VanDrunen insists it must be.  Admittedly, VanDrunen says that the inconsistencies in Kuyper’s case are somewhat different than those we’ve seen in the previous chapters--Kuyper is no Erastian.  But there still seem to be some assumptions VanDrunen is foisting on the discussion that make it inevitable that he will find “inconsistencies.”  

One assumption that I am still trying to figure out is exactly what he thinks modern “neo-Calvinists” think.  This is a problem that is coming to dog the discussion more and more insistently, as the polemical target of this book becomes ever more prominent--who is the target?  If he intended to write a book against the “neo-Calvinists,” as he clearly intended to do, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain what precisely he thought they were.  The opening chapter made some stab at doing this, but it was a stab in the dark, if there ever was one.  No particular “neo-Calvinist” was ever cited, but instead what we had was a vague mosaic containing figures as diverse as John Howard Yoder, N.T. Wright, and John Milbank, who have few things in common except for the fact that none of them are Reformed.  So, we begin the book with almost no idea of what these Reformed neo-Calvinists look like, except that they want “to construct specifically Christian world views, bring Christ’s kingdom to exprssion in every area of life, and level radical critiques of non-Christian thought.”  

Now, as it turns out, VanDrunen is planning to turn in chapters 8 and 9 to examine these neo-Calvinists, and I am eager to see what he has to say.  However, the fact that he has not clearly identified them earlier makes many of his contrasts between true Calvinism and neo-Calvinism vague and unhelpful at best.  This becomes particularly true in this chapter, where he seeks to claim that Kuyper was not like a modern neo-Calvinist because he still saw that there were essentially two kingdoms, rather than one kingdom of Christ, even if he didn’t exactly use this terminology.  Now that VanDrunen has allowed for a little flexibility in terminology, then we may fairly ask why the mere fact that some neo-Calvinists use the terminology of “one kingdom” puts them in an entirely different paradigm.  After all, all neo-Calvinists that I know of would still affirm many important distinctions between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and they would all (at least, all the ones with whom I have any familiarity) insist that the Church remains the kingdom of God in a uniquely important sense.  So it seems a bit disingenous when VanDrunen says something like, “Kuyper maintains a distinction between the two realms, and identifies the Church as the focal point of God’s redemptive activity; therefore he’s with the old two kingdoms paradigm, not the new neo-Calvinist paradigm” (leaving aside of course the problem of VanDrunen’s failure to offer us a clear portrait of the “old two kingdoms paradigm” in the first place).  

I’m a bit suspicious that when VanDrunen speaks disparagingly of the modern neo-Calvinists, he has something like theonomy and Christian Reconstructionism in mind.  If so, this clarifies a lot, but it also greatly cheapens the value of his critique, given that there are probably about 15 Christian Reconstructionists remaining in the US.  Ok, I’m joking, and there are certainly still circles with a strongly theonomic bent; however, they do not represent most “neo-Calvinists,” and in any case are on quite an opposite pole from the Milbanks, Wrights, and Hauerwases in many important respects.  Here’s why I have that suspicion: VanDrunen acknowledges that Kuyper sought to apply the Bible to all areas of life, including politics, since Scripture “clarifies the things revealed in nature and allows people again to perceive ‘the ground rules, the primary relationships, the principles that govern man’s life together and his relationship to the most holy God’” (282).  But then VanD lays great stress on the fact that Kuyper distances himself from “biblicism” and denies that Scripture can be used to make concrete decisions in the political realm, saying, for instance, “A state polity that dismisses and scorns the observation of life and simply wishes to duplicate the situation of Israel, taking Holy Scripture as a complete code of Christian law for the state, would, according to the spiritual fathers of Calvinism, be the epitome of absurdity” (283).  VanDrunen seems to think he has established a significant point in the argument, and repeatedly seeks to build on it.  Kuyper thought that Scripture provided only general principles for the political realm, that must be applied differently in different times and places; it did not provide a detailed theonomic blueprint--ergo, Kuyper was not a neo-Calvinist.  However, I don’t think this is a tremendously significant point after all, because hardly anyone except a few die-hard theonomists would say otherwise.  Even hard-core theonomists, in fact, would recognize that many features of the OT law should be adapted to changing circumstances in line with their “general equity.”  Necessarily, Scripture’s teaching with reference to life in the civil realm is a matter of rational deduction and flexible application, not a matter of a timeless detailed blueprint.

But--and here’s the kicker--so is Scripture’s teaching on many matters, including many matters that are clearly within the ecclesial realm.  Scripture does not, despite the desperate attempts of hard-line regulativists, provide us a detailed timeless blueprint for worship.  It provides us with certain general instructions and illustrations, which we must use our reasons to adapt and apply.  In fact, it does provide a detailed blueprint, but in the Old Testament, which we generally recognize cannot be applied directly to our current situation--rather, it must be sifted and applied in light of New Testament revelation and common wisdom.  Or how about church polity?  Here too, although clearly Scripture should be our authority on the subject, it is not terribly helpful in laying down the law with precision.  Centuries of polemical struggle have failed to make the New Testament any clearer on how the government of the Church is to be organized.  Oh, to be sure, we can figure out a number of things from the New Testament, rule out a number of possibilities, and, I think, establish the likelihood of certain conclusions.  But ultimately, we must conclude that we do not have a detailed blueprint, and the Church must rely on its general wisdom, illumined by the Spirit and the light of nature, to ascertain how the general principles of Scripture are to be applied, and how much of the Old Testament can be carried over.  

Note, then, that on two hugely significant issues about the spiritual kingdom of God, the “visible Church”--its worship and its polity--Scripture leaves us with general principles and with suggestive illustrations, but requires us to work out specific applications on our own.  This does not seem to me all that different from how Kuyper envisions Scripture’s testimony on matters of culture, politics, and society--it gives us “ground rules, primary relationships, and general principles” without giving us “a complete code of Christian law.”  Now don’t me wrong.  There are still some important differences between these kingdoms, but I cannot understand VanDrunen’s argument: “If you grant that Scripture does not give us a detailed blueprint for X, then you commit yourself to saying (if you want to be consistent) that natural law, not Scripture, is the authority for X, and Scripture is in fact wholly unnecessary.”  This is in fact a sort of reductio ad absurdum in favor of the theonomists.  Theonomists, you may recall, were fond of arguing that if we did not allow that Scripture was, on its own, the sole, absolute, detailed standard for civil law, then we were erecting in its place another standard, a higher standard, so that reason, and not Scripture, was our highest authority.  If this is true, then any time you use reason to help you interpret and apply Scripture, you are no longer letting Scripture be the highest authority!  And yet VanDrunen here seems to happily accept the theonomic charge, and wants to insist that if Scripture does not provide us a precisely detailed standard, then it can provide us with no standard.  

But, we have digressed far from Kuyper.  It is also worth observing, briefly, that eager as VanDrunen is to rescue Kuyper from the neo-Calvinists and throw him into the camp of Reformed orthodoxy, this merely serves again to highlight the incommensurability of VanDrunen’s own commitments with Reformed orthodoxy.  You may recall in the last chapter that VanDrunen chided even Thornwell for not sufficiently recognizing that the Church must refrain from offering any guidance on civil affairs, since Scripture offers no guidance for them.  But Kuyper here has insisted that Scripture provides various principles for life in the civil kingdom, a position that VanDrunen has had to acknowledge ase consonant with the historic Reformed position.  He has also provided us, incidentally, with a rather helpful and clear position on the relationship of natural law and special revelation, one which for the most part fits with historical Reformed reflection on these issues.  This position can be briefly summarized thus: there is a natural law, implanted in creation--it provides the principles by which God intended creation to operate.   However, because of the fall, creation no longer operates as it was intended to, and we are no longer able to properly grasp how it was intended to operate.  Special revelation helps show us what natural law is supposed to look like, and corrects the misunderstandings into which we would be prone to fall if relying on our sinful intellects alone.  The Gospel, then, does not try to divert the creation toward some new purpose, but helps show us what creation’s original purpose was supposed to be, and gives us the tools we need to realize that original purpose in this fallen world.  Now, this is how Kuyper sees natural law, and this is, so far as I can tell, how most of the earlier figures that VanDrunen discusses saw it.  And yet VanDrunen thinks that, on the whole, this provides evidence for his case.  “See, they believed in natural law!” he shouts and waves; “See, they believed that creation had its own purpose, which it continues to have even after the Gospel!”  Well, yes, but they believed that the gospel, that special revelation was necessary to help us realize all that.  They did not believe that just because there was a natural law meant that it was completely self-interpreting and self-authorizing even in a sinful world.  This is the lacuna that VanDrunen has never filled in his historical analysis--his idea that the natural law alone was fully sufficient for life in the civil kingdom.  The earlier Reformers did not seem to make this claim, becuase they understood that sin got in the way of our understanding of natural law.  VanDrunen continually gives lipservice to the problem of sin, but he never explains how his understanding of the sufficiency of the unilluminated natural law squares with a robust doctrine of human depravity.  

Now, given that VanDrunen seems reasonably happy with these aspects of Kuyper’s thought (even when it is hard to see why), where does he identify the problem?  Where is the tension in Kuyper, the tension that neo-Calvinists resolve in the wrong direction?  The answer comes in the past couple pages.

First, VanDrunen says, “Kuyper believed that societies and nations could be ‘Christian’ even if few true Christians were in them, so long as Christianity had had a formative influence on the character of their culture.  The point of tension is that the cultural life of such a society is then both ‘common’ and ‘Christian’ simultaneously.  Since it exists on the terrain of common grace there is never anything new in it, as it simply develops the potencies inscribed on the original creation.  Special grace, that is, the ‘Christian’ influence,  serves merely to help the common realm develop these potencies better than it otherwise would.  This is therefore a non-redemptive ‘Christian’ influence, a ‘Christianization’ that does not save or pertain to re-creation.  Though Kuyper here is careful not to confuse the salvation or re-creation that is administered in the institutional church with the common preservation of the original creation in the other spheres of human endeavor, his use of ‘Christian’ terminology for both seems at best confusing.” (312-13)

Now, in objecting in this way, VanDrunen seems to want to put a wide chasm between the original creation, which is simply preserved, has its original “potencies” developed, and is not redeemed, and the “re-creation,” salvation, which is something entirely different.  This isn’t how Scripture speaks: “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” (Rom. 8:19-23)  Sure, we could say that creation only has its original “potencies” developed, because the glorified new creation is what creation was built to become.  But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need outside help, just as a child will not develop the “potencies inscribed” on him without good parenting--thus grace must perfect nature (even in the absence of sin, I would tend to argue).  But after sin, creation has been subjected to futility, and needs this redemption even more.  Its redemption, its bringing-to-fulfillment, is bound up with our redemption, says Paul here.  When Scripture speaks of “new creation” or “re-creation,” when Christ says, “Behold, I make all things new,” the picture is of a “renewed creation,” not of some totally new project that Christ decided to undertake.  This is why, for all his problems and tensions, Kuyper can legitimately speak both of something being “Christian” in the sense of being itself within the locus of redemption--the Church--and of something being “Christian” in the sense of being in the sphere of common grace, of the original creation, as it is being renewed by redemption.

This problem is related to the second, which has come up before--this issue of the dual mediatorships of Christ.  I have charged VanDrunen with latent modalism at this point, and he is not giving me much opportunity to back down from that charge.  Kuyper too uses the language of dual mediatorship, but in a way that seems to me safe from heresy, as he makes a distinction without a separation--these are two distinct works of Christ, but they cohere in the same person and so are ultimately related and inseparable.  But VanDrunen won’t have it: 

“But once Kuyper makes this distinction and seeks to use it to construct his cultural and political program, theological coherence and clarity require considerably more precision in language than Kuyper exhibits.  To distinguish between the Son as creator and the Son as redeemer entails that the title of ‘Christ,’ or ‘Messiah’--the Anointed One--in his special mission of becoming incarnate for the particular work of saving his people.  The Son redeemed the world, but did not create the world, as the Messiah, the Christ.  Therefore, for Kuyper to make the traditional distinction between two mediatorships and then defend the idea of the ‘Christianization’ of the common grace realm because it is the work of ‘Christ,’ is to confuse categories and language precisely where categories and language are at issue.  If the Son of God creates in a different capacity from his capacity as redeemer, then he does not create as ‘Christ,’ and the terrain of common grace, grounded in the creation order, is not ‘Christian,’ no matter how noble it becomes.”  

In other words, not only can you not attribute the same office to the person who does both of these works, you can’t even attribute the same name to the person, because that might lead us to think that there might be some kind of connection between these two things that he does!  Let us not fall into the danger of attributing any more unity than necessary to this bifurcated person of Christ!  In any case, VanDrunen is being exceptionally disingenuous in chalking this up to a confusion of language, because he himself has indulged in this same confusion repeatedly in this book (e.g., p. 180: “as creator and sustainer, Christ rules the temporal kingdom as the sovereign lord of all; as incarnate redeemer, Christ rules the spiritual kingdom as a tender savior”) as do all the major figures he cites.  VanDrunen, immediately after this quote, grudgingly acknowledges that Turretin spoke this way, but, it was different, he says, because Turretin did not use this language in support of error.  Ah, ok.  Well, what about the Apostle Paul, who repeatedly uses the name “Christ” to refer to the Son in his eternal role of upholding creation and ruling every principality and power (e.g., Col. 2:2-3, 8-10), and Paul seems inclined to use this unity of name and person as a device to--God forbid!--confuse the offices: “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and confeyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.  And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” (Col. 1:13-18)  Here Paul moves seamlessly between Christ as eternal mediator, ruler of the nations, to Christ as saving mediator, ruler of the Church.  Paul wants us to see these two works of the one Christ in close relationship, as complements of one another.  But, let’s not get overly distracted by the Bible, now.  This is after all supposed to be history.

Just in case there’s any confusion, I should make clear that I am no Kuyperian, just as I am no Erastian.  I would’ve identified myself self-consciously as a Kuyperian for a brief span between, if you really want to know, the eighth month of my seventeenth year (i.e., the year when I was 16) and roughly the fourth month of my eighteenth year.  Since then, I have considered Kuyperianism a serious problem, indeed, for some of the same reasons VanDrunen does.  One of the strongest points in this chapter was his criticism on the marginalization of the visible Church in Kuyper’s life and thought.  I am wholeheartedly against that, and I think that an overemphasis on Christ’s kingship over the nations instead of his kingship over the Church is part of the problem.  But here’s the rub.  VanDrunen thinks he can solve this problem by completely separating Christ’s kingship over the nations (Oh, forgive me...I meant to say, “the Son of God’s kingship over the nations”) from Christ’s kingship over the Church; whereas I think, rather, that we need to much more closely bind Christ’s kingship over the nations to his kingship over the Church, and make the latter the source, so to speak, for the former.  This is, after all, what Paul seems to do in 1 Corinthians 15, Ephesians, and Colossians, and what the author of Hebrews seems to do, so I’m pretty comfortable taking that route.  

Taking Off the Gloves

June 26, 2010

In chapter 6, this book turn a turn from the wearisome to the farcical, and I’m afraid I lost my patience.  I no longer have the patience to write 10,000 words slowly and politely deconstructing the argument of each chapter.  Chapter 6, although massive (65 pages) and full of details crying out for attention, does not merit such time.  So, I’m going to whip through it in one rather tempestuous segment.  I’m going to promise to keep this under 2,500 words, though methinks I can dispose of it even quicker than that.  

VanDrunen’s argument in this chapter seems to be that, although the universally-held position of the Reformers and their heirs for 150 years on the two-kingdoms was always hobbled by blatant inconsistencies, that they were unable or unwilling to recognize or expurgate, that finally, 270 years after the Reformation, in a new land across the sea, under the sunny influence of Enlightenment philosophy and still reeking of gunpowder from a recently successful revolution, the Virginian heirs of the Reformation finally realized what their forefathers had been trying to say but hadn’t been able to enunciate properly, and embraced the true, pure form of the two kingdoms doctrine--separation of Church and State.  It turns out, though, that this isn’t his argument; it is only Stuart Robinson’s, a Civil War-era Kentucky Presbyterian who constructed this narrative so as to make his own bizarrely innovative position look historical.  VanDrunen begins by appearing to endorse Robinson’s narrative, but on a closer look at the historical evidence, dismisses it for a still more fantastic one.  No, it turns out, the Virginia Presbyterians in the 1780s did not consistently embrace two kingdoms teaching either, for they still thought it was fine for the Church to give its input on civil affairs.  No, it wasn’t until another 80 years later, 350 years after the Reformation in the midst of an attempt to defend Negro slavery from ecclesiastical censure, that the true meaning of the two kingdoms doctrine was finally understood, in the idiosyncratic and novel teaching of Stuart Robinson and James Henley Thornwell.  Finally, upon closer examination of these figures, VanDrunen concludes that, although they got close, these men too failed to purge the two kingdoms view of its inconsistencies and realize its true genius, because they too still felt that the Church might have something to say at least on the moral dimension of civil affairs.  The true meaning of the Reformation view, it seems, continued to remain hidden to its heirs, until God brought VanDrunen himself along to purge it of its inconsistencies, and present it pure and unspotted before the world.  

Purged of its inconsistencies?  What a joke!  How, I must ask, is one to make sense of the claims that the Church must limit its preaching, teaching, and application to the prescriptions of Scripture only, and that therefore the Church must confine itself only to spiritual affairs, offering no insight on civil affairs?  What Scripture, I must ask, are we talking about, if it is one that speaks only of “spiritual” matters and has no insight to offer on “civil” matters, whatever those two terms might mean (and VanDrunen has yet to offer us anything coherent they could mean in his usage)?  I’d best quote the whole paragraph in which this claim transpires, because you have to see it to believe it: “Thornwell suggests a position quite similar to Hodge’s, namely, that though there may be a relatively small class of ‘purely political’ issues, there are a wide range of issues for which the church and state have overlapping jurisdiction, namely, civil issues about which the Bible has something to say.  Perhaps one cannot blame Thornwell too much for tripping on this matter, for the matter of assigning respective jurisdictions to church and state had tripped his Reformation and Reformed orthodox predecessors as well.  As discussed in previous chapters, their incoherence involved enunciating the two kingdoms doctrine and then trying to find a civil aspect to religious concerns and thus entrusting magistrates with protecting religious purity as a civil responsibility.  The issue here with Hodge and Thornwell entailed the reverse scenario.  American Presbyterians had in significant ways (though not entirely) rejected the idea that the state was to enforce religious purity as a civil task.  But Hodge, despite his stance against the Spring Resolutions, held on to common American Presbyterian notions that the church should project its voice directly into political and other cultural affairs.  Insofar as Thornwell echoed similar concerns after enunciating his spirituality doctrine, he lapsed into incoherence by finding a religious aspect to civil concerns and thus entrusting the church with promotion of civil good as a spiritual responsibility.  Thus, Thornwell’s thought illustrates the continuing difficulty with which Reformed theologians sought to apply their two kingdoms doctrine in a theoretically and practically consistent way.”  

Well, I bet he lapsed into incoherence, because it’s impossible to enunciate something like Thornwell’s spirituality doctrine without doing so.  But tell me, Dr. VanDrunen, why it is incoherent to find a “religious aspect to civil concerns?”  Oh wait, you can’t do that, because you’re just a historian, right?  Could’ve fooled me.

The root problem here is, as I have insisted before, the methodological separation of Reformed political theory from Reformed political practice, as if the former could be established without reference to the latter, and then used to prove that the latter was incoherent.  Notice how VanDrunen puts it above: “their incoherence involved enunciating the two kingdoms doctrine and then trying to find a civil aspect to religious concerns and thus entrusting magistrates with protecting religious purity as a civil responsibility”--as if there were a temporal sequence: first they enunciated this pristine “two kingdoms doctrine” and then they tried to find a civil aspect to the religious side of it.  But of course, it wasn’t like that...it was all part and parcel of the same theory.  And, simply as a matter of historical probability, it is extraordinarily unlikely that for hundreds of years, all the proponents of this theory consistently failed to say what it was they meant to say, consistently failed to see that their “real” theory differed from the one they sought to propound and apply.  As it turns out, unsurprisingly, it was not.  Their real theory simply wasn’t what VanDrunen tries to make it out to be, as Steven Wedgeworth very neatly summarizes here: http://www.credenda.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=218:two-kingdoms-critique&catid=96:theology&Itemid=122.  Again, I can’t really imagine how it could’ve been, because I still can’t find a way to actually make coherent sense of what this “pure Two Kingdoms” theology is, in VanDrunen’s mind. 

Essentially, then, what VanDrunen is asking us to do is to suspend our historical disbelief in order to try and imagine a fictional real doctrine lurking hidden behind the stated Reformed teaching, and he asks us to make this leap into historical incoherence in service to a theological proposition that he has never made any effort to establish the coherence of, because he’s supposedly just a historian.  I’m sorry, I just can’t go with him along that road any longer.   

The worst part is that the would-be heroes of the fantastical narrative of this chapter just aren’t very good heroes.  John Cotton appears as the villain, because after all, he persecuted Roger Williams and wouldn’t allow religious freedom.  In the words of Brian Regan, “Wow, you’re breakin’ some new ground there, Copernicus.”  VanDrunen makes little effort to go beyond traditional prejudices here.  That doesn’t mean I’m a fan of John Cotton; no, but I’d much rather go with him, a man of principle, than the next set of actors that strut across the stage--the Virginia Presbyterians in the 1760s-80s.  These men, VanDrunen wants to say, finally broke free of the bonds of inconsistency that had tied up the Reformed tradition for centuries by espousing the separation of Church and State.  But then, it turns out, as even VanDrunen must regretfully admit, that actually they didn’t do this out of principle, but simply because they happened to be the religious minority in Virginia, and “Separation of Church and State” was a way of getting the Anglican establishment off their backs.  When the opportunity presented itself of them being co-established alongside the Anglicans, they jumped at the opportunity, before lapsing back into separationist mode as soon as the opportunity disappeared.  Hardly the most principled lot.  In any case, VanDrunen is unhappy with them himself, because they failed to see that, as a corollary of freeing the Church from state control, they needed to keep the Church from, on its part, giving advice to the state.  Oh, heaven forbid that the Church might ever want to do anything like that--that would be too much like...oh, I don’t know...Isaiah?  Elijah?  John the Baptist?  Jesus Christ?  

So onto the stage strut our pair of arch-heroes, Negro servants in tow, grovelling as appropriate--James Thornwell and Stuart Robinson.  VanDrunen momentarily entertains some doubts that perhaps their motivations in keeping the Church out of anything besides “spiritual affairs” were more a matter of trying to protect slavery than of theological principle, but tries to gloss over these objections: “The consistency of and motivation for Southern Presbyterian advocacy of the spirituality of the church are interesting and difficult questions, but this section will delve into them only lightly.” (249)  Wait, hang on a second--it might well be that the masterminds of your pet doctrine actually just cooked it up so they could hold onto their African slaves, but you don’t see that that really matters to your point?  Actually, it makes sense that VanDrunen would not think that it matters, because this kind of mind/body dualism has been an operating principle all along--if he can just distill the intellectual theological essence of the doctrine, it does not matter what ugly practical applications it was wrapped up in.  This is perhaps understandable for a systematic theologian, but it is just bad history.  A footnote acknowledges the debate over Thornwell and Robinson’s motivations, but while it lists six sources that have been written to make the case that slavery was their chief motivation, it lists only two for the contrary position, one of which hardly counts, because it is by D.G. Hart, a buddy of VanDrunen’s who has the same polemical axe to grind.  

But again, whatever we are to think of the ignoble heroes VanDrunen has scripted for us, we come back to the same mystifying question--just how is it that Scripture--we are talking about the same Scripture, right? Genesis through Revelation, 66 books and all that?--does not have anything to say about, to use Robinson’s words, “wrong moral views of social and civil affairs,” and not just wrong moral views, mind you, but wrong moral practice?  (If you think that was a convoluted sentence, at least it wasn’t as convoluted as this paradigm.)

Essentially, what VanDrunen leaves us with are the alternatives either to accept his historical narrative and grant that the Reformers must’ve chucked Scripture out the window as soon as they started thinking about these matters, or else to trust that the Reformers must’ve had a few ounces of Biblical sense and so discard his historical narrative.  I’m no big fan of the Reformers’ political theology, but I know which alternative I’ll take.  

(There, only 1914 words..)

The Procrustean Paradigm (VanDrunen Review V.4)

June 25, 2010
If you're getting tired of VanDrunen, I don't blame you.  I did too, as you'll see in the next installment after this one that I'm going to post.  The new website is still under construction, but should be up soon.  In the meantime, anyone out there who's really into two kingdoms theology in the 17th century can read on.

In the concluding section, VanDrunen endeavours to reconcile this two kingdoms theory with its practical application in seventeenth-century Reformed political thought.  At this point, he finally turns to take note of documents such as the National Covenant, and cites passages in Althusius, Rutherford, and Turretin where they insist upon a relationship of mutual harmony and support between Church and State, each assisting it in its duties, and correcting it if it fails.  VanDrunen is certainly troubled by all this, and regarding the Church’s instruction toward the civil authority, he says, “if there are even different primary standards of authority in the civil and ecclesiastical realms (natural law and Scripture, respectively), then there seems to be reason to doubt that ministers, whose training lies in spiritual things, have the competence to offer useful and even authoritative instruction on political matters” (195).

 However, he does not want to simply dismiss these figures as completely inconsistent; while acknowledging that there was certainly some inconsistency, he wants to show the way they articulated this relationship is in many ways consistent with the kind of two kingdoms theology and natural law theory they propounded.  I appreciate VanDrunen’s honesty at this point, though as I argued earlier, his flawed methodology inevitably distorts the picture, since, instead of trying to understand their doctrine in light of their practical application of it, he tries to establish it on independent theoretical grounds, and only at the end makes certain adjustments and concessions in light of the practical application.  This means that the significance of these adjustments and concessions is easily lost, and in the conclusion, VanDrunen quickly moves to reassert his master-narrative, suggesting that these thinkers were hindered by their Christendom context from drawing the proper conclusions from the theological groundwork they had laid.

What are some of the adjustments/concessions made in this section?  Well for one, we find that these thinkers reconciled the magistrate’s care for religion with their two kingdoms thinking by distinguishing “between caring for religious affairs civilly or spiritually, externally or internally, with respect to the body or the soul.  Repeatedly, Reformed orthodox writers permitted the magistrate care of religion only in a civil, external, bodily way, never in a spiritual, internal, or soulish way” (199).  In other words, yes, these thinkers did believe there were two kingdoms, but the division between the two kingdoms was drawn between oversight of the body and its actions on the one hand and oversight of the soul and its actions on the other, not between “secular” affairs on the one hand and “religious” affairs on the other.  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that drawing the distinction this way is a very problematic way to draw the distinction, and one that will land you in contradictions before long, but this is clearly how these thinkers intended to draw the distinction.  It will not do for VanDrunen to come along and say, “Well, what they really meant to say was that one kingdom was civil and therefore secular, and the other was spiritual and religious.”  Reformed theologians gave an enormous amount of thought to political theology, and had a good idea of what they wanted to say about it, and that is clearly not what they meant to say.  Now, if VanDrunen wants to say, “The Reformers provided certain categories and arguments which we can use in order to argue that one kingdom is civil and therefore secular, and the other was spiritual and religious,” well, then, more power to him, but in that case, he needs to very clearly separate his historical claims from his contstructive theological claims, something he has yet to do.

Another adjustment/concession regards the use of natural law.  Natural law, claims VanDrunen, particularly in the form of the Decalogue, rather than Scripture (the irony in that sentence is not lost on me, but I’ll leave it to VanDrunen to try and resolve it) was the source for their teaching that the magistrate should have the care of religion.  Now, even if VanDrunen can successfully make that argument (which does not prove very easy to make), what are we left with?  Well, we’re left with a doctrine of natural law that tells us rather a lot about how religious affairs should be conducted, not a natural law that restricts itself to secular civil affairs, which is clearly the kind of natural law that VanDrunen wants to propound.  Again, it will not do to say, “Oh, well, what they meant to say regarding natural law was that it tells us simply of moral, civil duties toward our fellow man, and not of how we ought to conduct ourselves toward God and in the Church.”  That is clearly not what they meant to say.  

To my mind, these fellows are not very inconsistent with themselves, at least not in the ways that VanDrunen feels compelled to admit; however, they are very inconsistent with the alien paradigm VanDrunen seeks to foist upon them.  In his concluding remarks, VanDrunen laments that “Reformed orthodoxy, like Calvin, seems to waver between two ways of speaking.  It speaks in Diognetian, Augustinian terms of a civil realm whose characteristics imply a common area between Christians and non-Christians, and it speaks in Gelasian terms of the civil realm as part of a unified Christian society which, alongside the spiritual realm, is governed by two complementary authorities” (207).  Perhaps there is a simpler way of putting it.  Perhaps what all these thinkers are trying to say is that Christianity is not of the esse of the civil realm, but it is of the bene esse.  Yes, it is possible for unbelievers to form a civil society, and to function passably within it on the basis of what they can grasp of natural law; however, for those who have the benefit of Christian truth, it is clear that civil society will function much better if it it oriented toward the pursuit of the true religion.  This is a fairly clear, consistent way of putting the matter, and certainly seems to make sense of everything these fellows are saying.  And yet, VanDrunen seems unwilling to put it this way, as he seems personally convinced that the bene esse of civil society consists in remaining formally secular.  Once again, the historical task gets clouded by the constructive theological task.  

Two Kingdoms=Two Christs? (VanDrunen Review V.3)

June 24, 2010

In the section on the doctrine of the two kingdoms in the age of Reformed orthodoxy, my suspicion is immediately aroused by VanDrunen’s invocation of the Scottish Presbyterians as leading proponents of two kingdoms thinking.   These Scottish Presbyterians are often known as “Covenanters” for their signing of the National Covenant in 1638, a document that united both civil rulers and churchmen in the task of protecting the Reformed religion in Scotland.  This document repeatedly blurs together civil and ecclesiastical concerns, going so far as to cite passages such as these from Parliamentary Acts: 

“Seeing the cause of God's true religion and his Highness's authority are so joined, as the hurt of the one is common to both; that none shall be reputed as loyal and faithful subjects to our sovereign Lord, or his authority, but be punishable as rebellers and gainstanders of the same, who shall not give their confession, and make their profession of the said true religion” and “That all Kings and Princes at their coronation, and reception of their princely authority, shall make their faithful promise by their solemn oath, in the presence of the eternal God, that, enduring the whole time of their lives, they shall serve the same eternal God, to the uttermost of their power, according as he hath required in his most holy word, contained in the Old and New Testament; and according to the same word, shall maintain the true religion of Christ Jesus, the preaching of his holy word, the due and right ministration of the sacraments now received and preached within this realm, (according to the Confession of Faith immediately preceding,) and shall abolish and gainstand all false religion contrary to the same.”  These passages are quoted, mind you, not in order to contest them, but as the legal basis upon which the Covenanters take their stand.  They go on to pledge their resolve to faithfully serve both the King and the cause of true religion, since these two are inseparably conjoined, and to resist equally enemies of the king and of the true religion.  

Documents like this should be enough to tell us that, whatever the sense in which these fellows may speak of “two kingdoms,” it is certainly not in the sense VanDrunen has in mind.  Nevertheless, it is certainly true that some of these fellows have some troubling things to say.  For instance, we again find some strikingly dualistic language.  Turretin is at pains to state that the redemptive kingdom “is not mundane and earthly, but spiritual and celestial” (177) and “Rutherford distinguished between one kingdom ruled by God as creator (and hence temporal and mundane) and the other kingdom ruled by God as redeemer (and hence spiritual and heavenly)” (177).  Now this “and hence” befuddles me--both of them do.  Why should creation necessarily be merely “temporal,” and thus, in this context, temporary?  In this picture, it is as if God just created a physical world for kicks as something he was just going to dispose of a little later on in favor of a “spiritual, heavenly” world.  On such a model, how are we to take the current creation seriously at all, or attribute any significance to life in the body?  And why should redemption be necessarily “spiritual” and “heavenly,” as if God could not possibly redeem this earth or our earthly existence, but could only redeem us out of it, or redeem some “spiritual” dimension of our existence that floats uneasily above this world?  This sounds more like Manichaeanism than Christianity.  Of course, Turretin and Rutherford are far from the only Christians to speak this way--such dualism has been a long-standing malady in the Church.  But inasmuch as much recent theology has helped us to break free of it and return to a more Biblical, creation-affirming stance, I find it bizarre that VanDrunen wants to lead us back into captivity, as it were.

But there are still more troubling problems in this section.  Remember that whole scary bit about the extra Calvinisticum and the dual kingship of Christ back in the chapter on Calvin?  Well, VanDrunen finds all this more systematically and explicitly stated by Turretin.  He summarizes Turretin’s statements thus: “Christ rules the one kingdom as eternal God, as the agent of creation and providence, and over all creatures.  Christ rules the other kingdom as the incarnate God-man, as the agent of redemption, and over the Church.  The latter kingdom is redemptive, the former is non-redemptive.  The latter is exclusive, the former is inclusive” (177).  This kind of sharp separation of two distinct roles in Christ raises significant questions of Christology and Trinitarian theology.  Such sharp discontinuity implies that these two different kingships of Christ have no essential relation to one another; they are just two different offices that happen to be filled by the same person, just as (to use the example I used above in chapter 3) I happen to be both an investment advisor and also a research student in Reformation political theology, two widely distinct roles that have little effect on one another.  Such hat-wearing may be common enough in human affairs, but orthodox theology has long recognized that it is problematic for theology.  The heresy of modalism was condemned precisely for such a hat-wearing view of God.  God, the modalists claimed, was not really three distinct persons, but was one person who opted to reveal himself under three different guises, carrying out three different offices.  Now, that’s not what’s going on here, but the same basic concern presents itself.  The problem with modalism, orthodox theology contended, was that it asserted a sharp discontinuity between the immanent and economic trinity, between who God was and how he revealed himself.  God manifested himself in history as three agents, and yet he was only one agent--if this was true, then God had not truly revealed himself.  Don’t we have the same the same problem with this bifurcation in Christ?  Christ manifests himself in Jesus of Nazareth as redeemer, and this self-revelation bears little or no relation to his pre-existent role as the eternal Son who governs a creation without redeeming it.  How does Jesus Christ faithfully reveal to us the Father, then, if he is not even a faithful witness of himself?  

Moreover, we might well ask, what exactly is the theological point in asserting that it is Christ, the second person of the Trinity, who executes this kingship over creation, “as eternal God, as the agent of creation and providence, and over all creatures”?  This office bears no relation to his distinctively Christological work, to his distinct second-personhood within the Trinity, but rather appears simply as a function of his generic God-ness.  In what sense is it Christ who exercises this particular kingship and not rather God the Father?  This turns out to be no mere idle question when we see how Samuel Rutherford assigns the two kingships--to “God as creator” and “God as redeemer.”  VanDrunen takes note of the distinction in language: “while Turretin speaks of the temporal kingdom as ruled by Christ as God, with the Father and Spirit, Rutherford simply speaks of this kingdom as ruled by God (the creator).  But the theological idea expressed by these theologians is substantively identical” (178).  

He returns to it later, at more length: “Rutherford’s language is similar though not identical to Turretin’s, and their substantive theological claims are the same.  As noted above, Rutherford put the temporal kingdom under ‘God the creator’ and spiritual kingdom under ‘Christ the Redeemer and Head of the Church.’  In speaking futher about the former, he writes that it is ‘not a part’ of Christ’s spiritual kingdom and thus states bluntly that the civil magistrate ‘is not subordinate to Christ as mediator and head fo the church.’  Along similar lines, he says later that ‘magistrates as magistrates’ are not ‘the ambassadors of Christ’ but ‘the deputy of God as the God of order, and as the creator.’... In light of this evidence, I suggest that Turretin and Rutherford teach the same doctrine in these passages, though from somewhat different angles.  Turretin answers Yes to the question whether Christ rules the temporal kingdom, but with qualifications (i.e., that he does so only as eternal God, with the Father and Holy Spirit, as creator/sustainer); Rutherford answers No to the same question, but with qualifications (i.e., that God the creator does rule this kingdom).  When the qualifications of each are compared to the other’s, the effect is the same.  To put it as precisely as possible, they both teach that the Son of God rules the temporal kingdom as an eternal member of the Divine Trinity but does not rule it in his capacity as the incarnate mediator/redeemer” (181).  

In his haste to reconcile Turretin and Rutherford here, VanDrunen has, in my view, stumbled headlong into what looks like serious Trinitarian heresy.  Rutherford’s viewpoint, whatever its weaknesses, seems to me to at least be theologically coherent and safe, if I am correct in interpreting “God the creator” to mean for him “God the Father.”  In this model, God the Father creates and governs the world, and delegates authority to magistrates as governors of the world,  and God the Son redeems this creation, and delegates authority to the Church as a redeemer of the world.”  This basic model certainly needs work, but it is reasonably stable and has been frequently employed in political theology.  But what Turretin (and certainly what VanDrunen) is saying seems different.  They posit a disjunction between what the Son does in his own person, and what he does as a member of the Trinity, as generic God.  This suggests that there are four agencies in the Godhead--one for each of the persons, and one for “eternal God”--the unity of the three persons, thus turning the three-in-oneness of orthodox theology into a three-plus-oneness.  Moreover, it suggests that, while one of the Son’s offices is executed coordinately with the Father and Spirit (that of governing creation), another is unique to him as Son (redeeming the world), thus violating the fundamental dictum of Trinitarian orthodoxy: “in the opera ad extra, the works of God are undivided.”  We must affirm that, in all his work, the Son works both uniquely as himself, and coordinately with Father and Spirit as a member of the Trinity.  Finally, we have here what looks like undisguised modalism: a sharp rift between what the Son does (and thus, who he is) as incarnate mediator, and the Son as “eternal member of the divine Trinity”--in other words, the incarnate mediatorial work of Christ turns out to just be a hat-wearing, an identity fundamentally separate from the eternal life of the divine Trinity, and of the Logos himself.  To put it simply: for VanDrunen, Jesus Christ the Son of God does not even really show us himself, the Logos, much less show us the Father, as he claimed to do.  He is merely an avatar.  

The only way to avoid this frightful conclusion, it seems to me, is to insist, with the New Testament, on the deep unity between Christ’s work as creator and as redeemer, as the one “by whom all things were made” and the one who “makes all things new.”  The opening to the Gospel of John makes this all as clear as one could wish (what follows is my own translation, as literal as possible): 

“1 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 

2 This one was in the beginning with God.

3 All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be that came to be. 

4 In him was life and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness overtook/understood it not.

6 A man named John came to be, being sent from God.

7 He came for a witness so that he might bear witness concerning the light that all might believe through him.  

8 That man was not the light but he came that he might bear witness concerning the light.

9 He was the true light who lightens every man who is coming into the world.  

10 He was in the world and the world through him came to be and the world did not know him.

11 He came unto his own and his own received him not.
12 As many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believed in his name, 

13 those who not from blood nor from the will of the flesh nor from the will of man but from from God were born.  

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the unique one from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15 John bore witness concerning him and cried out, saying, "This was of whom I said to you that he coming behind me should become before me, because he was earlier than me." 

16 And from his fullness we have all received and grace because of grace.

17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.

18 No one has seen God at any time, but the unique Son, who is in the bosom of the father, that one has exegeted him.”

This passage is uncompromising: it is the Word who was God and through whom all things came to be that himself became flesh, whose glory, that is to say, whose true dynamic identity, we witnessed, from whose fullness we received grace.  In him from the beginning was the life that by his life he brought to the world.  From the beginning he shed the light of his grace in the world, and finally he came to offer in himself the fullness of grace to the world which he had created.  In so doing, he perfectly revealed (“exegeted”) not only himself as he had been from all eternity, but also God the Father.  This Word who becomes flesh is not only the Creator from all eternity, but is redeemer from all eternity, and comes into the world so that men his creatures might become “sons of God”--what they were created to be in the beginning. 

Now, how exactly all this cashes out in terms of the nitty-gritty of political theology, and of Church and State, still needs a lot of work.  But it is at least clear that, however we cash this out, we cannot do so in a way that seeks to drive a wedge between Christ the creator and Christ the redeemer.  

Still Mired in Obfuscation (VanDrunen Review V.2)

June 21, 2010

(Sorry, I like the word "obfuscation.") 
VanDrunen's extensive discussion of natural law in this chapter sheds little more light on the problem than did his singularly unhelpful discussion in chapter 4.  The opening subsection of the main discussion in this chapter starts out promisingly, as VanDrunen quotes Francis Turretin and John Owen on the nature and origin of natural law.  Turretin says that the natural law arises “from a divine obligation being impressed by God upon the conscience of man in his very creation,” and, moreover, “that so many remains and evidences of this law are still left in our nature (although it has been in different ways corrupeted and obscured by sin) that there is no mortal who cannot feel its force either more or less.” 

Now this last bit is intriguing, because it is here, I have suggested, that a crucial part of the question hangs.  For natural law to be a sufficient guide for life in the civil kingdom, then natural law must be clearly and sufficiently knowable by us even in our fallen state.  It isn’t enough for natural law to exist, it isn’t enough for us to have comprehended it in a pre-fallen state, and it isn’t enough for us to have some remaining notions of it.  What VanDrunen needs to show in these thinkers is that we still have a clear and sufficient knowledge of it to conduct our lives by it.  Is this what Turretin says?  I’m not sure--“there is no mortal who cannot feel its force either more or less.”  That doesn’t sound terribly promising to me.  To feel the force of it (more or less) does not seem the same as having a clear apprehension of all its essential dictates. 

The Owen quote increases my doubt.  Owen, VanDrunen tells us, did not want to define natural law as “the dictates of right reason.  Which all men, or men generally, consent in and agree about”--instead, he said, “By the law of nature, then, I intend, not a law which our nature gives unto all our actions, but a law given unto our nature, as a rule and measure unto our moral actions....And this respect alone can give it the nature of a law,--that is, an obliging force or power.”  Now, the way I read this (though I may be misunderstanding), what Owen is trying to say is that natural law is not something within us that tells us how to act, but something that functions as a measure to judge our actions--in other words, not an infallible guide for our actions prospectively, but something by which they may be held accountable retrospectively.  Now this makes good sense to me.  Because of sin, we have an insufficient grasp of the natural law to simply use it in determining what to do, but God can nevertheless judge us by whether we have lived up to it.  

Owen goes on to say, “This law, therefore, is that rule which God hath given unto human nature, in all the individual partakers of it, for all its moral actions, in the state and condition wherein it was by him created and placed, with respect unto his own government of it and judging concerning it; which rule is made known in them and to them by their inward constitution and outward condition wherein they were placed by God.”  Now this seems pretty explicit: the rule was “made known in them and to them,” but in the “condition wherein they were placed by God,” that is, Eden.  Is it still made known in the same way to us in our current condition?  This quote doesn’t say, but I figure VanDrunen would’ve quoted Owen on it if he had said so.  

Based on what VanD has shown me so far, then, his summary comments about these writers are simply unjustified: “the natural law is known by nature apart from special revelation, it teaches the basic content of the moral law, it is written on the heart of every human being and roughly associated with the conscience, and assures everyone’s accountability before God.”  It is known, now, without special revelation?  Do you want to put any qualifiers on that?  Show me where Turretin and Owen said that.  

The next couple of pages discuss the relationship between natural law and God’s nature, which, while a mildly interesting question, does not really assist us in answering the questions at hand.  Following this is a discussion of the connection between the natural law and the conscience.  Now, again, this makes sense to me--natural law speaks to us through our conscience, sure, encouraging us to choose what is good and to turn away from what is evil.  However, conscience is rather vague and notoriously unreliable.  Conscience is much better at telling me, “I don’t think that would be a very good idea” than it is at telling me just what would be a good idea, and inasmuch as for me, as a Christian, it does tell me what would be a good idea, it is almost always relying on what I know to be good because my faith has taught it to me.  Conscience can easily be deceived, or misled by a false set of principles.  If I have come to accept false criteria about what is right and what is wrong (as fallen man is always wont to do), then my conscience will no longer be a reliable guide.  Nor, even when conscience is functioning properly and telling us what to do, can it get us very far on its own.  Its voice is too easily drowned out or misheard.  In short, if the conscience speaks the natural law to us, very well; but this will hardly be sufficient to tell us how to rightly govern a kingdom or set up an economy.  It just doesn’t tell us enough on its own to get us very far.  

A couple pages later, the equation of the natural law and the moral law is mentioned, along with the role of the Decalogue as a summary of the moral law.  I will pause here briefly to consider one of the questions I touched on in my introductory comments about this chapter.  VanDrunen says, “the common teaching of Reformed orthodox theology...equated the content of the natural law with the moral law (as summarized in the Decalogue).  More technical discussions distinguished the natural and moral laws insofar as the former was unwritten and known through general revelation and the latter was written and known through special revelation.  In Turretin’s words, they differ not in substance or principles, but in ‘mode of delivery.’”  If this is so, we may naturally ask what need there was for the special revelation?  If the Decalogue simply tells us what the natural law already told us, then why did God bother to tell it to us?  The simple answer seems to be, “because the natural law was insufficiently clear, and special revelation elucidated it.”  But this answer seems fatal to VanDrunen’s purpose, which is to establish the independent sufficiency of natural law for life in the civil kingdom.

VanDrunen moves on in this section to discuss the relationship between the natural law and the covenant of works, a relationship that demonstrates for him the fact that the natural law is rooted in God’s creating work, as opposed to his redeeming work.  I have touched on VanDrunen’s odd use of this dichotomy a few times before, and will merely reiterate my central objection--rooted in and related to are different.  The natural law may well be rooted in creation, but insofar as it cannot remain unaffected by the basic trajectory creation-fall-new creation, redemption in Christ must needs have an important relation to the natural law, whether it be one of transfiguring, of resurrecting, or of illuminating, depending on your paradigm. 

The invocation of the covenant of works also displays another weak point in VanDrunen’s case, in my opinion.  He quotes Turretin saying that “It [the covenant of works] is also called ‘legal’ because the condition on man’s part was the observation of the law of nature engraved within him.”  Now, what’s all this language of engraving (language that VanDrunen really latches onto)?  Let me quote from another Reformed scholastic source, the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 12): “When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death.”  This “covenant of life” is what is elsewhere known as the covenant of works, and what does it consist in?  God’s specific commands to Adam about what he was and wasn’t to do.  In Genesis 2, there is no talk of engraving, but rather talk of speaking and commanding.  The terms of the covenant of works, then, appear to be given via special revelation--revealed directly by God to man--rather than by natural man--engraved in man from the moment of his creation.  Now, I am certainly open to the argument that, although the specific terms of the covenant of works were given via special revelation, there were certainly other moral duties, implicit in the covenant, which God simply engraved in Adam’s heart at creation, and these are what we call the natural law.  But if that be the case, then the covenant of works is not the same as natural law, but is in fact an exception to it.  

Two other points need to be mentioned in this section.  First, VanDrunen continues to elide the important distinction between “binding on” and “knowable by.”  To be sure, the natural law remained binding upon men after the Fall, and VanDrunen has plenty of quotes from Reformed scholastics to back that up.  But that fact does not demonstrate that they were able to recognize its binding rules in detail, certainly not in the kind of detail necessary to make it a sufficient basis for successful life in “the civil kingdom.”  VanDrunen claims that “natural law serves to sustain moral life in the world without itself offering a means for attaining to a life beyond this world” (164).  This seems to be an odd dichotomy--I thought that attaining a life beyond this world had something to do with--indeed, depended upon--a moral life in the world.  Perhaps VanDrunen’s paradigm here is dependent on the modern Reformed sola fideism that ignores good works.  In any case, to suggest that natural law allows unredeemed man to live a moral life seems to neglect the robust Reformed teaching on total depravity, which VanDrunen repeatedly glosses over.  

Second, VanDrunen’s sources do not support the neat connection he wishes to draw between the natural law and the civil kingdom.  They clearly believed that natural law related to affairs of the “spiritual kingdom” as well.  For instance, he cites, as an example of the continuing role of natural law WCF 21.1: “The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all, is good, and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heard, and with all the soul, and with all the might.”  WCF 21 is concerned with issues of worship and the Sabbath.  In other words, here we have the WCF invoking the role of “natural law” precisely in those areas where, according to VanDrunen, it does not extend, but gives way to special revelation: life with God and duties toward Him, as opposed to horizontal duties toward others in this life.  This tension does not go away, of course, but manifests itself over and over in the thinkers VanDrunen surveys, such as in their claims that magistrates are to enforce both tables of the law.  Of course, VanDrunen himself has highlighted the idea that the Decalogue is a summation of the natural law, so this ought not to trouble him--these thinkers are just saying that the magistrate should enforce all of the natural law.  But VanDrunen wants to continue to insist that the civil enforcement of spiritual duties is wrong and is inconsistent with these men’s teachings.  

This problem continues to be highlighted in the following section on the relation between the natural law and the Mosaic civil law.  To be sure, the way these thinkers construed this relationship seems to be a strong point for VanDrunen’s case.  They generally agreed that the Mosaic civil laws were not to applied in detail in contemporary principalities, because circumstances were different--rather, whatever was enduring and “moral” in these laws, that is to say, the natural law component of them, was binding in the present day.  This paradigm grants hermeneutical authority to the natural law as a grid for using the Mosaic law, and thus privileges the role of natural revelation over special revelation in this situation.  This is very useful for VanDrunen’s argument, to be sure.  But the fact remains that these thinkers thought that the Mosaic civil law was a perfect application of the natural law to the Israelite polity, and if this is so, it is hard to see how they could also think that the natural law pertained only to civil affairs, or authorized rulers only to govern civil affairs, and not spiritual.  And the fact also remains that, for whatever reason, God saw fit to give this law by special revelation, even though, on the natural law paradigm, the Hebrews ought to have been able to deduce it perfectly well for themselves.  

VanDrunen concludes this section with a recap of what he has covered and emphasizes that this natural law thinking was deeply engrained into the structure of Reformed theology in this period, declaring “Clearly, natural law was not an aspect of Reformed orthodox theology and ethics that could be eliminated without serious ramifications for the system of Reformed thought as a whole” (173).

This may be clear, but it is not clear either exactly how much authority natural law wields or how clearly it could be discerned and applied on its own.  And it is certainly not clear how 17th-century natural law teaching could be integrated into the system of theology VanDrunen wants to propound, a system that wants to make natural law the guarantor of a religiously neutral, unredeemed, universally accessible saeculum.  This certainly is not how Turretin, Rutherford, Althusius, et al. envision it.