"Theology and the Peace of the Church"

July 8, 2010

John Webster kicked off the proceedings at the Controversy Conference with his lecture “Theology and the Peace of the Church,” and as one might’ve expected from a man like Webster, it was profound, sophisticated, systematic, and rooted thoroughly in the doctrine of God.  I might add that it was rooted in a thoroughly metaphysical doctrine of God, though I do not mean that pejoratively (a caveat one has to make in this anti-metaphysical age).  His argument was essentially methodological, and sought to make two main points. 

First, attempts to discuss the issue of controversy and conflict in the Church generally move immediately to the ethical, the imperative, without first establishing the theological, the indicative.  Exhortations to overcome conflict thus degenerate into empty moralizing.  Instead of this, we must, like St. Paul, first establish who God is and what He has done, and then we can construct ethical imperatives to act in accord with what is already the case by virtue of God’s character.  

Second, this theological account which we must first provide is one in which peace is ontologically prior to violence, where being is good and evil is a privation of being, not a counter-being, in other words, the venerable Augustinian account of evil, enriched by his discussion of peace from City of God 19.  Anything else ends in Manichaeanism, in which conflict is just as basic to the world as peace, intrinsic to the Church’s life and inescapable.

Webster began by contesting the common claim, mentioned in the introductory post about this conference, that it is through conflict that truth comes to light, that conflict makes clear what would else have remained obscure.  We may think this is so, he said, but this is an illusion that comes from the dramatic oversimplification of the options that conflict engenders.  In the midst of conflict, we artificially draw black-and-white distinctions that, while they appear to facilitate a triumph of rationality, are actually its downfall.  We have two basic options, according to Webster: either we can see conflict as the natural condition of reason, or else it is an aberration from God who is the principle of order and peace.  We must see it as the latter, because peace is ontologically prior to violence, and is indeed the guarantee of the possibility of reason.  “An account of peaceful conduct,” he said, “rests upon a dogmatic account of the peace that God is and bestows.” 

 

God is both the principle and the pattern of creaturely peace, but the former, said Webster, is generally ignored in favor of the latter.  In other words, we exhort ourselves to be ethically conformed to the pattern of God’s peacefulness, without first meditating on how God provides the source and foundation for peaceable being.  To do this requires that we reflect on who God is in himself.  But of course we run into an immediate problem--we cannot know God as he is in himself.  We must, said Webster, let this inhibition stand, but nonetheless recognize that God summons us into his inner presence by his outward activities.

 

In his account of the immanent Trinity, Webster’s hidden interlocutors were surely modern “dynamic trinitarians” (to coin a phrase, if it isn’t already one) like Moltmann and Jenson.  The works of the Trinity, he said, are fully harmonious; there is no disorder, disruption, or contradiction in God’s making of the world, and thus not also in the inner life of God.  At this point I found myself torn; on the one hand, of course--how could it be otherwise--God is perfect peace and harmony.  On the other hand, I have learned too much at the feet of “dynamic trinitarians,” people who emphasized the ways in which the Godhead is also the archetype of diversity and creative tension, to be wholly satisfied.  No disorder in God’s making of the world, sure; but could we say there was tension?  And likewise in the inner life of God.

 

But let us let these objections rest for a moment, and follow Webster’s account out into the world of created being.  Here he founded his case firmly on the Augustinian premise: Peace is intrinsic to creaturely being.  Chaos is not a mode of being, but a declension from being.  Conflict is devoid of ontological weight, because created nature is peaceful.  Because of this, peace is first a property in the order of being, and only secondly a precept in the order of obligation--this is his recurring point about the indicative preceding the imperative.  

 

In the New Testament narrative, peace is integral to grace;  it is the chief product of Christ’s work of reconciliation.  Peace is not first announced as a precept for the Church, but as a condition of the Church.  The Church exists in peace as a function of the reconciliation of peace accomplished by Christ on the cross.  This statement seems to locate the true being of the Church behind the visible church, and this will be troubling to many.  The church that matters, many will object, is the actual visible church, and this is not peaceful; it is torn by conflict; we must seek to address this conflict, rather than offering ourselves false comfort that the Church really does exist in peace.  An understandable objection, said Webster, but one that falls into the error of making practical ecclesiology the first theological science.

 

The summary precept of peacemaking, he said, is “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts”--and this is not directed toward making peace real, but toward making peace visible.  We must insist upon this, that our task is simply to make visible a peace which already defines the Church’s being, instead of manufacturing a peace where one does not yet exist; otherwise, our task is hopeless from the start.  To be sure, conflict remains a present ecclesial reality, but what kind of reality?  We must not assume, said Webster, that we can straightforwardly interpret the reality.  We must read it in light of the illumination of the gospel of peace, by which we can see conflict for what it is: sin against peace.  We must remember that vice is always contra naturam; it is not an ugly mode of being, but as a contrary to the mode of being.  Conflict must not be described in a Manichaean way, as an eternal parallel to peace. 

 

This all sounds great, but what does it really mean in practical terms?  Does the rubber here ever meet the road?  I was skeptical at this point in the lecture, but Webster went on to draw some very fruitful applications.  

 

First, we must deploy intelligence to penetrate through the phenomenon of conflict to the peaceful nature underlying.  That is to say, we must remember that, despite our conflict in the Church, we share a unity in Christ, and because of that, there is much else that we share.  We must seek to discover this source of peace and unity that underlies our disagreements, and recognizing our conflict as a temporary aberration, seek to uncover its cause and dispel it.

 

Second, we must not attribute to conflict an irreducibility that it does not possess.  If we get too worked up about conflict, then we attribute to a being that it lacks.  If evil is non-being, then ultimately it is nothing to fear.  If conflict is but a temporary aberration, then we can rest in confidence that it will be dispelled by faithful waiting upon Christ.  We must see conflict for what it is, which is to say, as Webster put it with surprising eloquence, “The afterlife of what the gospel has already excluded, the lingering shadow that the rising sun has yet to chase away.”  Therefore, in a sense, we do not need to make an assault upon conflict, but rather to reassure ourselves in confidence that no such assault is required.  

 

None of this means that we are to blithely and complacently dismiss the fact of conflict, the fact that we may need to enter controversy at times to defend the peaceable kingdom, but it dramatically changes our attitude to it.   

 

It means that we can lay down these three basic precepts for conflict and controversy:

1. It must be a work of charity, for the Church and our neighbors.
2. It must be exercised in common pursuit of divine truth.
3. It must arise from and attend toward peace.

 

In order to approach controversy in this way, what kind of person does the theologian need to be? Webster asked.

Theological science requires grace-character.  It requires tranquillity of mind, lack of ambition, competitiveness, and vain curiosity.  

At this point, Webster paused to reflect on zeal--is zeal a virtue or a vice?  How may zeal promote the peace of God in the Church?  Zeal is a righteous form of anger, but an unstable one.  What is the distinction between righteous and unrighteous anger?  Corrupt anger corrodes both rational and common life; it reduces controversy to a hopelessly conflictual affair, and destroys the clear vision of intelligence.  Righteous anger is cooler and more objective.  It follows a judgment of reason.  It is a public passion for Gospel truth.   Anger through zeal does not destroy the operation of reason, but nevertheless it may impair its performance; therefore, zeal must be moderated by our recognition of the ontological priority of peace.

 

What should the conduct of theological controversy be?  The Church does not dispute according to the fashion of the world.  Four rules for edifying controversy can be laid down: 

First, it must display and magnify the truth of the Gospel, whose author is peace.  Controversy will only serve peace in the Church if it has an external orientation, toward an object outside of the disputing parties.  It must not become reduced to a simple party strife. 

Second, theological controversy must not allow divergence of opinion to become divergence of will.  Concord in the Church is a union of will, not of opinion.  We must recognize that those who differ from us in opinion often share the same will toward the same good.  There are of course, cases in which this is not the case, where we do not share a common object of love; but when this is the case, these are disputes not in the Church, but about the Church, and here we must await the converting work of the Spirit. 

Third, it must recognize the catholicity of the truth, a truth that exceeds any representation that we may make.  This object of love over which we contend is one too profound for us to rightly grasp.  We cannot ever “end our dealings with it.”

Fourth, it must be undertaken in tranquil confidence that the Spirit will illuminate the Church.  We often let ourselves fall into a barren naturalism, in which appeals to Scripture founder on irreconcilable exegetical conflict.  We lose faith that there is an efficacy in the Word, a Word that will make itself clear to us, and will resolve this conflict.  We may be confident that exegesis, rightly pursued, will, by Christ’s aid, lead us to peace and resolution.

-----

All that by way of exposition.  Now some evaluation is in order.  First, some words of ringing endorsement:

Although I might’ve wanted to put it in somewhat different, more Christocentric terms--Christ has conquered, he has brought us peace and guaranteed us peace--I thought his insistence on the priority of peace over conflict, the essential impotence of conflict, was fantastic.  Too easily we get depressed over the conflicts all around us in the Church, or mired down in the midst of them, and forget that they are ultimately frivolous and insubstantial, Christ will preserve his Church, the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it, and any divisions that appear to loom large for us now will ultimately be reconciled in perfect harmony.  Or else some of us get so intoxicated with the fumes of conflict that we come to imagine it as a positive good, as a joy to be indulged, rather than an aberration to be deplored.  Certainly Webster provides us a wholesome corrective here.  Conflict must never become an end in itself, but must be oriented toward peace, and that a just peace, not the peace of the merciless victor who has silenced all opposition.  Nor is conflict inevitable or irresolvable--patient waiting upon Christ will reveal a resolution.

 

In particular, I liked Webster’s final point about the efficacy of the Word.  Too true it is that, for all our passionate insistence on the authority of Scripture, we treat it as a dead letter.  One side alleges texts that prove their point, and the other side insists upon other texts, or demands a better exegesis of the opponent’s texts.  Both seem trapped by certain hermeneutical assumptions, and conclude that it is hopeless; the text remains silent about its interpretation, and so the quarrel will never be adjudicated.  But in Scripture we do not have a dead letter to reckon with, but a living Word, a Word continually made efficacious by the Spirit who breathes it and the Son about whom it speaks.  This Word will reveal itself to those who wait patiently upon it in faith.  The perspicacity of Scripture is not immediate, perhaps, but it is in the end real.  

 

But then there are some objections to raise, or rather, not objections, merely questions.

First, on a minor note, although I liked his point about recognizing that there can be concord--unity of will--amidst diversity of opinion, so long as we share the same object of love, this leaves a large part of our question unsolved.  After all, at some vague level, we share a “common object of love” with anyone who seeks truth, or wants to serve some kind of God.  If the presence or absence of a common object of love determines whether we have a dispute within the Church or a dispute about the Church, as Webster so meaningfully put it, then how do we define this common object of love?  I talked to him about the problem afterward, and he recognized that this object “had to have some shape to it”--a creed, for instance.  But then, how do we know that we are merely united in will and that we are not confessing the same words with very different concepts or intentions?  The problem is not so easily resolved.  This is not a fault with Webster’s presentation, merely a call for further elaboration.  

 

But there is a much more significant objection, one that I knew Leithart was going to raise, so I asked it for him and beat him to it: while it may be true that God is peace, and that Christ’s redemptive work is a work of peace, how do we maintain this while simultaneously doing justice to the fact that this is not exactly how Scripture often speaks.  The Old Testament is full of war, and Yahweh is described as a warrior; even in the New Testament, Christ says that he comes not to bring peace, but a sword, and Revelation pictures him as a conquering warrior destroying his foes.  Or, to put this problem as Webster preferred to put it--how do we reconcile the immanent reality of peace with the economy that is dominated by drama and conflict?  Leithart pursued the same point further with Webster after the formal Q&A session, and the three of us discussed it on the way over to lunch.  In some ways, this is merely a methodological question, but it seems to make a lot of difference to our paradigm.  After all, if conflict is integral to the economy of redemption, then perhaps we should embrace it with more gusto than Webster would seem to advocate, perhaps seeking peace with the serpent, as Adam did in Genesis 3 (Leithart’s example) is a failure, and seeking conflict is a truer imitation of the divine character.  

Webster acknowledged that it was a thorny problem, and did not want to minimize the fact that, whatever may be the case on the immanent plane, on the level of the economy, peace is only reached through a great deal of “drama and conflict.”  However, he wanted to insist that the crucial point is that peace is the starting point, and peace the endpoint, and conflict is an aberration, it is not eternal, it is not integral.  It all comes down, he said, to whether you accept a privative account of evil, or not.  On a phenomenal level, such an account is deeply unsatisfactory, because it seems to deny the reality of the evil we encounter, but ultimately, he didn’t see how you could do without it; otherwise you end in Manichaeanism.  And he didn’t want to risk going there.  

 

I am quite sympathetic to this outlook, and it does seem that you have to maintain a privative account of evil, but it also seems to me that you have to be careful about not letting that affirmation loom too large in your theology, or else you end up minimizing large sections of Scripture.  I suggested that perhaps this was just one of those many paradoxes that we have to live with in theology, affirming both seemingly opposing truths--God is peace, God is a warrior--without ever satisfactorily synthesizing them.  I think both Webster and Leithart were, at some level, satisfied with this way of putting it

 

Yet, a real difference of theological method persists.  For Webster, we must begin with the immanent and let that condition our interpretation of the economic; we must begin with an account of who God is in Godself, and then use this as an interpretive grid for making sense of what Scripture says that God does.  A cynic would say that this means we begin with philosophy and let this set the parameters of Scripture.  Webster stated his determination to avoid that error, but nevertheless insisted on what he called “a very dangerous, but a very important principle”: the proportions of dogmatics do not have to match the proportions of the economy.  Scripture may tell us very very little about who God is in Godself, but dogmatics needs to talk about it quite a great deal.  As he charmingly put it: “Your conclusion will in the end be that of Job--‘God is great, and we know him not.’  But you still have to spend a few hundred pages saying ‘God is great, and we know him not.’”  Ultimately, I wouldn’t want to deny any of that, and I don’t think Leithart would either.  But Leithart, I know, would be a lot more comfortable starting from the economy, learning that Yahweh is a warrior, that we are called to imitate him in that, and only then seeking to establish the senses in which God is peace, and we are to imitate him in that (of course, it is also possible that one could take Leithart’s method of starting with the economy, but still argue that in the economy, God reveals himself as peace much more than he does as warrior).  

 

In any case, some of the crucial lessons of Webster’s lecture would remain--conflict is not the starting point or the endpoint, peace is.  Conflict is not therefore irresolvable, it is not to be sought for its own sake, and it must only be engaged in with patient faith that God is a God of reconciliation.  

Church and Controversy Quick-Takes

July 5, 2010

(This post is not about VanDrunen--can you believe it?)

I just returned from an immensely fruitful weekend in Aberdeen, attending the conference “Theology, the Church, and Controversy,” hosted by the wonderfully hospitable Francesca Murphy and featuring such luminaries in theology and ethics as John Webster, Robert Jenson, David Bentley Hart, Brian Brock, and the inimitable Peter Leithart.  The conference featured an excellent lineup of papers exploring how the Church ought to engage in controversy from historical, ethical, and theological angles, and a fantastic roundtable discussion at the end that wrestled its way through the question of how we ought to engage the homosexuality controversy today.  (Not to mention, of course, the “Church Controversy Charades” that featured such once-in-a-lifetime experiences as watching John Webster attempt to visually act out the heresy of universalism, or Peter Leithart reenacting the castration of Abelard.)

A recurrent question that seemed to go back and forth during the conference in an irresolvable tug-of-war was: is controversy a blessing for the Church or an aberration that should be avoided wherever possible?  

A couple months ago this question was highlighted by Davey Henreckson at Theopolitical a couple months back, who pointed to an article in Christianity Today comparing an N.T. Wright conference in Wheaton with a simultaneous neo-Reformed conference at Louisville.  For the neo-Reformed, 

“protecting disputed doctrines against heresy is where good theology is born. Clear thinking comes from friction and protestation, from Hegelian dialectics (R.C. Sproul spoke on this), but not from compromise. The Patristic Fathers got it right whenever they were ironing out disputed doctrines and fighting against heresy, said Ligon Duncan in his talk. But on matters that were not disputed, he said, their thought sometimes got muddled up.”  

This is a common sort of claim to make, especially in Reformed circles.  Controversy is necessary to bring truth to light; without it, we would grow dull and lose our grip on the Gospel.  Fighting, then, is a necessary and desirable part of the life of the Church, suggesting that, if we ever find ourselves without fights, we should perhaps stir some up to get ourselves back in shape.  

Although no one at the Aberdeen conference put things quite that combatively, there were certainly a few talks that sought to emphasize a bit more the positive side of theological controversy.  Robert Jenson, for instance, argued that “provocations” are an important part of the Church’s life, and although some of these will be wholly destructive, and some would have been destructive but for God overruling and bringing good out of evil, some are clearly constructive, despite painful side-effects, such as when some Christians began preaching against segregation in the 1960s.  Peter Leithart, too, despite being the gentle irenist that we all know and love, sounded a rather combative note in his defence of Athanasius, so much so that he was quickly type-cast by some who did not know him as the stereotypical pugnacious Presbyterian.  

Brian Brock, on the other hand, taking as his subjects Stanley Hauerwas and the French philosopher Michel Serres, argued that Hauerwas’s combative, intentionally provocative style stood at odds with his pacifistic convictions, and that Serres’s pursuit of peaceful discourse was a more consistent pacifism.  This was not to say that there was no legitimate place for Hauerwasian provocations, but it must be a very subordinate place.  The most powerful account of the negative role of controversy was given in a brilliant and sophisticated paper by John Webster, “Theology and the Peace of the Church,” which came first, and set the tone for much of the rest of the conference, culminating in a fascinating exchange between Leithart and Webster at the roundtable discussion at the end of the conference over the doctrine of God and theological method.

Intriguingly, the flamboyant and combative David Bentley Hart sounded, if anything, a more Websterian note, appearing before us as a public penitent for his own propensity to violent rhetorical outbursts against error.  (Needless to say, I hope that he does not overcome this vice too quickly, as it makes for jolly entertaining reading!)  

That’s just a little taste for now; I hope over the next few days to be posting reflections from each of these talks and a couple others, with particular attention to Webster and the discussions he engendered.

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.  

Priest-Kings?

May 21, 2010
(Note: I'm leaving town tomorrow, and will have little chance to reply to post--hence the barrage today--or reply to comments for several days.  So by all means comment, but I may take a few days to get back to you...the same goes for comments earlier today that I haven't gotten to.)


So I have found a reason to like Vermigli: namely, he’s a bit more restrained than Bullinger.  In “On the Office of the Magistrate” from the Sermonum Decades, Bullinger starts out rather carelessly on his proof that “care of religion belongs to the Magistrate,” by alleging that in ancient times, kings were also priests.

“For among them of old, their kinges were priestes, I mean maisters and overseers of religion.  Melchisedech that holie and wise Prince of the Chanaanitish people, who bare the type or figure of Christe our Lord, is wonderfullie commended in holie Scriptures: Now he was both king and priest together.  Moreover in the booke of Numbers, to Iosue [Joshua] newlie ordained and lately consecrated, are the lawes belonging to religion given up and delivered.”

A bit later, after explaining how the magistrate is to make sure to forbid and punish idolatry, he pushes things further again:

“What may be thought of that moreover, that the most excellent princes and friends of God, among God’s people, did challeng to themselves the care of religion as belonging to themselves, in so much that they exercised and toke the charge therof, even as if they had beene ministers of the holie things?  Iosue in the mount Hebal caused an altar to be builded, and fulfilled all the worship of God, as it was commaunded of God by the mouth of Moses.  David in bringing in and bestowing the arke of God in his place, and in ordering the worship of God, was so diligent, that it is wonder to tel.”

In these passages Bullinger has (deliberately), it seems, blurred the line between kingly and priestly duties, insisting that, so much does the magistrate have the care of religion, that he can pretty much be said to share the priestly office.  In response to an objection a couple pages on, Bullinger protests “But our disputation tendeth not to the confounding of the offices and duties of the magistrate, and ministers of the Church, as that wee would have the king to preach, to baptize, and to minister the Lord’s supper”--nay, Bullinger, your disputation doth tend that way.


Essentially what Bullinger does in this essay and others is to invert the hyper-papalist version of the “two swords” doctrine.  Where Boniface VIII in Unam Sanctam held that the ecclesial authority rightly held all spiritual and temporal power, but condescended to delegate most of the actual dirty work of temporal power to civil rulers, reserving the right to correct them when they messed up, Bullinger tends to present us with a mirror image: the civil authority rightly holds all spiritual and temporal power, but condescends to delegate most of the actual work of spiritual power to ecclesial ministers, reserving the right to correct them when they mess up.


While Vermigli in places presents the same kind of model, on this particular matter of priest-kings, he is more cautious, as I discovered in a passage I just translated today, commenting on 1 Kings 12:26-33 (Jeroboam’s idolatrous sacrifices).  Vermigli attempts to give us a balanced account:

“Indeed, these are two functions, but very much conjoined, and they mutually help and correct one another.  For ministers move the people in a certain way by teaching and admonition, that they might gladly perform the commands of the higher magistrates; and good magistrates, in turn, take care that the people live by the prescription of the divine law.  Again, ministers correct the errors of magistrates, not of course with the sword, but with the word of heavenly teaching. And indeed a magistrate, if the ministers of the Church less than rightly attend to their tasks, or fall into grave sins, can either remove them out of their place or move them by the punishments they deserve.  Yet however much these two resources are thus conjoined, they are not nevertheless one and the same; it is permitted to a single person to execute one of them only....the civil power and the sacred ministry are matters of such weight, care, and concern, that each should expend a whole man and all his strength; and it is hardly possible to find one man who is sufficient to carry out all the duties of either of them.  Nor should anyone raise as an objection the case of Moses, who attended to both; because it was such a burden that he sustained it only briefly.  For God commanded him quickly that he commit the priesthood to Aaron.  To be sure, the Hasmoneans were priests and kings, but, though they are to be commended in this--that they liberated the people--their occupation of the Israelite kingdom is hardly to be approved of.  And in truth, we should not be at pains to explain concerning Samuel and Eli; because their deeds pertained not to making laws, but to judging specific claims, nor are they to be hauled in for imitation.  And in Melchisedek God willed for there to be this joining of offices, so that the express type of Christ might be discerned in him.”  (NB: This was a first stab at a translation, and a couple parts are a bit iffy.)

Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together (VanD Review III.4)

May 17, 2010

The remainder of chapter 3 consists of three main sections--an assessment of Calvin’s use of natural law, an attempt to neatly connect Calvin’s doctrines of natural law and the two kingdoms so they are complementary and mutually interpretive (this is the heart of VanDrunen’s project), and a very brief assessment of some of Calvin’s contemporaries.  Although there is a lot of ground to be covered here, the initial section on the natural law.  Perhaps it is just the fact that I am rather less familiar with natural law discussions than two kingdoms discussions, but this section did not seem  to raise many red flags for me.  The second section raises some serious questions and problems, and will merit a close discussion; while the final section plays too insignificant a role to be worth discussing here.

Calvin has generally been depicted, says VanDrunen, as having a rather negative attitude toward the natural law, often attributed to his voluntarist and nominalist roots.  VanD wants to contest this on several counts--first of all, Calvin was not such a thoroughgoing nominalist and voluntarist as often claimed; second, as he has already briefly discussed in the previous chapter, natural law thinking was not at all alien to the nominalist tradition; and third, in any case, Calvin frequently and repeatedly invokes the idea of natural law.  

Although, as I just mentioned, I’m no expert on natural law discussions, a recurring weakness seems to me to plague VanD’s discussions of it, both in the previous chapter and here: the discussion always remains very vague.  Many different ideas of natural law have be put forward, and many different doctrines of to what extent we can grasp it, what relationship it has to the law of grace or evangelical law, etc.  It is far from a univocal term.  And of course, VanD does not entirely ignore these variations and complexities, but it does often feel that he is just saying, “See, Aquinas believed in natural law, and so did Ockham, and so did Luther, and so did Calvin.  So there!”  So what?  

In any case, what do we learn in these pages?  Well, for Calvin, human beings knew God in two ways, as Creator and Redeemer, and the former could be known via nature (99).  Natural law, we are told, is “related to this general knowledge of God in creation” and has been implanted in human hearts (100).  Natural law for Calvin was closely connected to the idea of conscience, by which we naturally know right and wrong (101-2).  Indeed, in some ways, suggests VanD, Calvin’s notion of the role of the natural law was stronger than Aquinas’s, since while for Aquinas most applications of the natural law had to be deduced and applied by conscience, for Calvin the conscience offered us the immediately accessible testimony of the natural law (101-2), and for Calvin, charity was a matter of the natural law, rather than a supernatural virtue (which, it must be said, seems rather bizarre).  In a footnote, VanD cites quotes one scholar’s list of some of the “moral questions on which Calvin took natural law to deliver rules of conduct”--rules immediately available to us via the conscience.  It is a rather remarkable list, so I will quote it: 

“Calvin thought that ‘nature’ or ‘natural sense’ or ‘reason’ teaches the authority of fathers over wives and children, the sanctity of monogamous marriage, the duty to care for families, breast-feeding, primogeniture (albeit with qualifications), the sacrosanctity of envoys and ambassadors, the obligation of promises, degrees of marriage, the need for witnesses in murder trials, the need for a distinction of ranks in society; and natural law prohibits incest, murder, adultery, slavery, and even the rule of one man.  And again, nature itself teaches the duty to award honours only to those qualified, respect for the old, equity in commercial dealings, and that religion must be the first concern of governors” (102).  

Really?  I mean, come on, you’re telling me that all these things can be known by men immediately as deliverances of the natural law?  If so, you’re going to have to add the qualification that many men have lost sight of these truths through sin, because the fact is that a number of these “universal truths” were universal only to early-modern Europe, if even there.  I shan’t comment more for now, but hold this in mind, because I think this quote will come back to bite VanDrunen before the end of the chapter.

VanDrunen goes on to tell us a few other vaguely interesting but, so far as I can tell, not particularly-to-the-point tidbits comparing Calvin and Aquinas on the relationship of the natural law to the divine character and the divine will, and then VanDrunen turns to briefly consider the side of Calvin that we’re all more familiar with, the side that is deeply skeptical of our ability to know the natural law given the corruption of sin.  “Because of this, Calvin insisted that sin makes the natural knowledge of God insufficient and therefore that moral understanding requires a revealed written law” (106).  Indeed, “in expositing his very stark view of the effects of sin, he asserts that reason, though not entirely taken away, is a corrupted and shapeless ruin” (107).  Again, hold these quotes in mind for the forthcoming section.

Finally, we are offered a brief discussion on “Natural Law, Civil Law, and Mosaic Law in Calvin,” where we are told that Calvin connects these in much the same way as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Luther--namely, that civil law derives its authority from natural law, of which it is a flexible application to the needs of particular societies.  The Mosaic judicial law, then, while providing a model of such application, does not have specific authority for other nations in other times and places. 

Now, where is this all leading?  Well, VanDrunen wants to propose a way of solving the puzzle posed by Calvin’s sometimes very positive, sometimes very negative assessments of the natural law.  How's he going to do that?  By putting together the pieces he has painstakingly laid out in this chapter and reading Calvin's statements on the natural law through the filter of Calvin’s Two Kingdoms theology:

“I argue here that Calvin was in fact not inconsistent in speaking as he did.  Instead, Calvin ascribed surprisingly positive use of natural law (in the form of various cultural achievements) in his discussions of life in the civil kingdom and consistently negative use for it (in the form of leaving all people inexcusable for their sin) in his discussions of life in the spiritual kingdom.  Calvin’s different evaluations of the use of natural law were not the result of intellectual inconsistency but of his view that though natural law permits even pagans to form good laws and produce other social goods in the civil kingdom, it is completely incapable of producing true spiritual good in people for the attainment of heavenly bliss, the realm of the spiritual kingdom” (110)  

Huh.  Well that is quite interesting.  So natural law suffices to tell us how to live our lives here on earth, with other people, and the corruption of sin has not taken this comprehension away from us; all that sin has taken away from us is our ability to perceive God’s redemption in Christ, and to know how to live in relation to Him.  Now I have some screaming objections on several levels, but I’ll try to keep this orderly and under control, and just mention two for now.  One objection is that, on this portrait, I wonder if sin has taken anything away, because natural law never revealed to us redemption in Christ to begin with.  Natural law was always about how to live here on earth, in relation to other people, and if that hasn’t been taken away by sin at all, what has?  A second objection is that, while I’m no Calvin expert, this doesn’t seem to do justice to even the meager bits that VanD has cited, like the bit about sin leaving our reason a “corrupted and shapeless ruin”--so a corrupted and shapeless ruin is able to “form good laws and produce other social goods in the civil kingdom”?  Hm.

VanD is going to tell us more, so let’s wait and hear him out.  The key discussion, we are told, comes in Institutes II.2.12-15, where Calvin believes that reason was “weakened and corrupted in part, but not totally destroyed” (111), and goes on to specify this corruption in light of a distinction between “earthly things” and “heavenly things,” that is to say, the two kingdoms.  “In regard to earthly things, sinful human reason continues to operate at a basic level and enables the human race to maintain a degree of civil order and at times to discover and achieve great things” (111-12), while with regard to heavenly things, the natural man is completely blind.  

VanDrunen summarizes man’s remaining abilities regarding earthly things: 

“The fact that ‘no man is devoid of the light of reason’ is proven by the continuing natural instinct to be a social animal and the primary ideas of justice that express themselves in all human societies.  The accomplishments of sinful human beings in the ‘manual and liberal arts’ display ‘the fact of an universal reason and intelligence naturally implanted.’  The works of pagan authors, the enactments of ancient lawgivers, and the various accomplishments of the philosophers, rhetoricians, physicians, and mathematicians all remind ‘how many gifts the Lord has left in possession of human nature’ and warn against rejecting the truth wherever it appears” (112).  

Now, let’s cross-examine this a bit.  I am perfectly happy to admit that, by virtue of our created faculties of body and mind, we are able, whatever the effects of sin, to grasp a great deal in the way of purely intellectual truths and to gain many practical skills and arts.  Anyone is willing to grant this, even the most hardened Van Tillian.  It is when we come to the questions of how we ought to use these skills and this knowledge, that is, moral questions, that we run into trouble, for our moral sensibilities have been grievously impaired by sin.  And after all, this is what the natural law is mainly about, as VanD himself has said at points--the moral law.  So I must ask whether man, operating solely by means of the natural law, can discern rightly how he ought to act toward others.  Earlier, VanDrunen said he could not--remember “Because of this, Calvin insisted that sin makes the natural knowledge of God insufficient and therefore that moral understanding requires a revealed written law” (106).  But here, VanDrunen suggests the opposite answer in Calvin--fallen man comprehends ”the primary ideas of justice that express themselves in all human societies.”  

And indeed, when you look at the relevant passage in the Institutes, the claim is rather strong: 

“Since man is by nature a social animal, he is disposed, from natural instinct, to cherish and preserve society; and accordingly we see that the minds of all men have impressions of civil order and honesty.  Hence it is that every individual understands how human societies must be regulated by laws, and also is able to comprehend the principles of those laws.  Hence the universal agreement in regard to such subjects, both among nations and individuals, the seeds of them being implanted in the breasts of all without a teacher or lawgiver.”  

But is there such universal agreement?  Perhaps Calvin could make that claim, being familiar only with the nations of Christendom and, before them, with a somewhat rose-colored portrait of Greece and Rome.  With our current knowledge of the variety of the world’s cultures throughout history, few would make such a claim.  Sure, most societies have agreed that there must be some principles of law and order, but there has been rather little agreement as to what those principles might be.  To pick a few random examples, compare sub-Saharan African tribes, the Aztecs, Genghis Khan’s Mongols, and the Samurais.  This problem becomes much more pressing when we consider the quote above, where we were told that things like natural reason teaches such things as the authority of husbands over wives, monogamy, the right of primogeniture, the need for ranks in society, the evilness of slavery, and need for a plurality of political rulers.  It’s easy to think of a host of societies, ancient and modern, that have not recognized these deliverances of reason.  Now remember, this is not to contend that they are not in fact taught by natural reason (even though I would contend that on a number of the points), but that, if they are, natural reason is clearly sufficiently distorted by sin that many people have failed to grasp these moral and social requirements.  So, to VanDrunen I would say, “Sure, awareness of the natural law often (though far from always) allows for some modicum of peace, prosperity, and even justice in the civil kingdom (as Augustine recognized), but it’s usually a pretty meagre modicum (as Augustine recognized) and it clearly needs to be supplemented; it clearly needs to be redeemed in light of the Gospel.”  And of course, that’s precisely what VanDrunen says the civil kingdom is not--redeemed.  

I should note briefly that VanDrunen’s discussion at this point seems to be dogged by over-intellectualism--e.g., “[Calvin] denied that natural law could ever give knowledge of salvation in the heavenly kingdom, even while he affirmed that it provided true and useful knowledge of mundane things in the civil kingdom” (113).  The focus keeps coming back to "knowledge."  When you put things this way, what VanD is saying seems to make sense-- “Oh yeah,” you reason to yourself, “it sure is true that unbelievers are able to figure out all kinds of great things about astronomy and physics, and about history...all sorts of useful knowledge for getting along in the world.  But it’s pretty clear that they couldn’t know Christian doctrines like the resurrection or the Trinity without revelation and grace.”  But this is a rather distorted way of looking at it.  If we put it more in terms of moral understanding and praxis, I think it would become clear rather quickly that, without grace, man gets along pretty wretchedly indeed, and that, with grace, his life in both the “spiritual kingdom” [whatever exactly that is] and the civil kingdom are dramatically transformed.  

It’s also worth noting briefly in passing that essentially what VanDrunen seems to have discovered in Calvin (or read into him; I’m not enough of an expert to make a firm judgment, though I do note that VanD has been rather selective in his quotations) is the sort of nature/grace dualism that was falsely read into Aquinas, and that modern Thomists have been aggressively reading out of him--namely, the so-called “two-tier” model of reality.  Nature provides the bottom storey, complete in itself for all of man’s natural needs of taking care of himself and living in society, and learning about the world around him, etc.; and Grace provides the separate top storey, taking care of man’s “spiritual needs” and teaching him how to live in relation to God.  A common problem with this way of thinking is that it seems generally to leave us with a very unsocial gospel, because all that seems to be left for the realm of grace is man-to-God relationships.  If the realm of grace transformed man-to-man relationships, then it would be intruding on the proper province of the realm of nature, implying that the realm of nature was not in fact sufficient in itself to govern man’s social relations.  We saw this sort of tension in VanDrunen’s admission that marriage, while clearly a civil institution, obviously was the concern of the spiritual kingdom as well.  

Let’s wrap this up, though.  VanD summarizes, 

“An earlier part of this chapter discussed the distinction between the civil and spiritual kingdoms in terms of the distinction between God’s non-redemptive work of creation and preservation and his work of redemption.  Another part of this chapter portrayed Calvin’s association of natural law with creation and preservation (particularly through God’s inscribing the law on the heart and sustaining the testimony of conscience).  This meant, for Calvin, that God gave natural law as part of his creating work and not as part of his redeeming work.  Hence, Calvin was quite coherent in recognizing natural law as the standard of life in the civil kingdom, where God rules but not in a redemptive manner, but not as the standard for the spiritual kingdom, which is the realm of God’s redemptive activity” (113).  

Now, the key problem with this (aside from the fact that Calvin did not recognize natural law as “the standard of life in the civil kingdom,” but as a standard, to which the Bible should be added as an additional standard, a fact that VanDrunen actually admits in the paragraph right above the quote here), is the continued equivocation about “redemption.”  The fact that the civil kingdom and the natural law are products of God’s creating work and are neither products or tools of his redeeming work does not mean that they are outside “the realm of God’s redemptive activity.”  If they are fallen, then they need to be redeemed, right?  VanDrunen avoids this straightforward question with his ambiguous “God does not rule them in a redemptive manner.”  And, on a related but bigger note, I think there’s all kinds of theological problem with this sharp separation of God’s “creating work” and his “redeeming work”--as if the latter was not intended to bring the former to completion!  I don’t think VanDrunen thinks it was, but if not, then this discussion is not about little issues in political theology, but is about the very heart of Christian theology.  

There, closing on a dramatic, alarmist note like that can perhaps offer some justification for my incredible wordiness in reviewing this chapter.  Note that I will omit discussing VanD’s piddling three pages on Calvin’s contemporaries.  I noted at the beginning of this chapter than neither Vermigli or Bucer had a two kingdoms doctrine that was much like Calvin’s, and certainly neither was anything like what VanDrunen wants to recover.  Time permitting, I hope to, some time in the next few weeks, give a decent-sized post to Vermigli, Bullinger, and Bucer each, looking at their “two kingdoms” doctrines, or lack thereof.  (But time may well not permit.)