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.)

Waffling Gnosticism (VanDrunen Review III.3)

May 15, 2010

Alright, it’s time to move this review along...I’m supposed to have read and reviewed up through chapter 6 by now, but I’m still wading through chapter 3.  So I’ll try to step lightly through the rest of the chapter, and only zero in on the parts that really need it.  You may recall that VanD had listed “three important attributes of each kingdom that display the contrast of one with the other.  The three attributes of the kingdom of Christ are its redemptive character, its spiritual or heavenly identity, and its present institutional expression in the church.  The three attributes of the civil kingdom are its non-redemptive character, its external or earthly identity, and its present (though not exclusive) expression in civil government.”  So let’s look at the second one.  

We are told that for Calvin, the spiritual kingdom has to do with “the life of the soul” and “superior objects” while the civil has to do with “matters of the present life” or “external conduct” and “inferior objects” (75).  Calvin elaborates thus: “By earthly things, I mean those which relate not to God and his kingdom, to true righteousness and future blessedness, but have some connection with the present life, and are in a manner confined within its boundaries.  By heavenly things, I mean the pure knowledge of God, the method of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom” (76-77).  Is Calvin trying to tell us here that affairs of this present life have nothing to do with God and his kingdom, a kingdom that pertains only to “pure knowledge” and “heavenly mysteries”?  At this point, I scribbled frantically in the margin, “Mayday!  Mayday!  Gnosticism unchecked!”  Now this is one of those points where I cannot much fault VanD for his historical work, but I have to protest on theological grounds.  Sure, Calvin said stuff like this, but why would any of us want to follow him in it?  Liberal theology in the last century has given us all kinds of problems and heresies, but one blessing it has surely given us is the firm and widespread conviction that our faith is a faith for this life, a faith meant to transform our present world, and the realization that we need to repent of many centuries of various forms of Gnosticism.  VanDrunen goes on to extensively quote “a series of rather moving passages” in which “Calvin lifts his readers’ eyes away from present earthly existence toward a future, heavenly life” (77).  These passages were “moving” all right, as they moved me very quickly to wrath and to wish that I could just take VanDrunen and stick him in solitary confinement with a copy of Surprised by Hope for about a year, and hope that he emerged from it a changed man.  

I should perhaps clarify at this point that, although Calvin’s contrast between “this present life” and the kingdom of God leave me sputtering, I have no problem in principle with articulating a distinction between, say, “the kingdom of this present age” and “the kingdom of the age to come.”  This kind of temporal contrast has a strong historical pedigree in the Christian tradition and is clearly found in the New Testament.  But the key thing to understand about this distinction is that according to the Gospel (and this is what makes our gospel so wonderful) the age to come has already broken into the present age and started transforming it.  So while the kingdom of Christ is certainly not of this present life in the sense that it derives from, and subsists in this present life, it is certainly of this present life in the sense that it comes to and pertains to this present life.  We can see this same misuse of of in the way that VanDrunen and Calvin contrast the spirit and the body.  Of course we are told in Scripture that the things of Christ are of the Spirit, not of the flesh; but in Scripture, this clearly means that they do not derive from the flesh, not that they do not pertain to the flesh.  VanDrunen needs to be more precise with his language here.

Come to think of it, the same sort of problem plagued the previous section, where VanD contrasted the “redemptive” character of the heavenly kingdom and the “non-redemptive” character of the civil kingdom.  Well, of course the civil kingdom is not “redemptive” in the sense that it does not redeem.  But this is not the same thing as saying it is not redeemed.  It is not the source of redemption, but it is surely the object of redemption.  Somehow VanDrunen completely elides this distinction between subject and object, and moves seamlessly between talking about how the civil kingdom is not “redemptive” to talking about how it is unaffected by redemption.  I am not convinced that Calvin was so careless on this point.  

The third difference between the two kingdoms consists in the insitutional contrast between church and civil government.  Now here, I think, a methodological difficulty that has been plaguing VanD all along rises to the surface, the product of the uncomfortable marriage he has tried to force between the Augustinian “two cities” and the Gelasian “two swords.”  The difficulty is this: is the contrast between the two kingdoms the same as the contrast between church and state, or is it a contrast between “earthly” and “heavenly,” “physical” and “spiritual”?  VanD seems to want to have his cake and eat it too, and this, I think, simply will not do, unless you want a totalitarian doctrine of the State.  Let me attempt to explain.  

If you want to develop a strong contrast between the work of the state and the work of the Church, then you have a potentially coherent and workable model, though one that has, to be sure, been fraught with tension for two millenia.  There are a number of different ways to draw the lines between the two: you could draw it in terms of different tools, so that both the Church and the State pursue the good, but one uses coercive tools, while the other uses spiritual and charitable tools; or you could draw it in terms of the extent of their moral reach, so that the State is responsible merely for restraining vice, while the Church is responsible for cultivating virtue; or you could try to draw up spheres, so that the state handles certain functions in society, the church handles others, and presumably, other institutions handle still other functions.  Now, each of these proposals runs into its own difficulties and ambiguities, but all are at least basically coherent and have been practiced with some measure of success.  If you want to draw a strong contrast between the Church and civil society, so that the Church pertains to invisible, spiritual matters, affecting the soul and the future life, but not the body and the present life, as VanDrunen just seemed to be doing in the previous section, then you have something that, I suppose, makes sense in theory, though as I’ve said, it doesn’t make sense to me as an articulation of Biblical Christianity.  But it’s important to realize that these are not the same distinctions.  Historically, arguments over the relationship between Church and State presupposed that these two occupied basically the same plane--human society--and that they had to figure out how they interacted on that plane.  Suggesting that the Church does not occupy the plane of human society at all (as VanD has just been doing) is a different proposition altogether.  The only way in which these two distinctions can be basically the same is if you assume that the realm of civil society is coterminous with the realm of the State, if you assume that civil authority exercises its sway over the entire sweep of human social and cultural life.  Now somehow I don’t think that VanDrunen, as an American conservative, really wants to do this.  

And so it is that in this section, we keep seeing this odd waffliness: “A third and final point of contrast between the spiritual and civil kingdoms for Calvin is the former’s institutional  expression in the church and the latter’s expression in a broad range of cultural endeavors, especially (and institutionally) in civil government” (79).  What exactly is this “especially (and institutionally)”?  We are told that Calvin “includes in this category [of the civil kingdom] ‘matters of policy and economy, all mechanical arts and liberal studies.‘  It would seem fair, therefore, to conclude that Calvin saw the range of (non-ecclesiastical) cultural endeavors as constituting the civil kingdom.  But within this broad conception Calvin also accorded a particularly important place to civil government and its laws” (80).  He then summarizes what he sees as Calvin’s “basic identification of the spiritual and civil kingdoms with the church and civil government” and then discusses the Church-state relationship in Calvin for a couple pages.  This is all just too vague.  You can’t just say that the civil kingdom includes, essentially, all “cultural endeavors” and then say that the civil kingdom is civil government, unless you want to say that all cultural endeavors fall under the legitimate (and exclusive?) purview of the civil government.  Now, admittedly, some of the Reformers did seem to make this elision, as we see, for example, in the extremely wide-ranging responsibilities Bucer gives to the prince in De Regno Christi, but, judging from the political rhetoric of the Religious Right in America (of which the Reformed have generally comprised the most libertarian wing) I can’t see American Calvinists being willing to go this route.  So I’d like to see a little intellectual honesty here--if you’re going to equate civil society with civil government, then embrace the political consequences.  

In the following pages, VanD turns to address the vexing problem of the seeming disconnect between Calvin’s actual practice in Geneva (and of many remarks in his writings outside of Institutes III.19 and IV.20) and the clear two kingdoms doctrine he has just discerned.  I already discussed a bit some of the methodological problems that make this such an issue for VanDrunen, so I won’t rehash them at length here.

VanD begins by reminding us that Calvin lived in an age of Christendom, so you can’t really expect him to have developed the modern secular society that his theology seems to demand.  We are then given a couple pages on the ways in which the civil authorities in Geneva were involved in religious affairs (e.g., the burning of Servetus) and the ways in which the religious authorities were involved in civil affairs.  Regarding the latter, for instance, “the Consistory’s range of concerns included general education and medical care and, according to Witte and Kingdon, especially sex, marriage, and family, but also in later years ‘business practices and disrespect for the leaders of government and church.’” (84)  Now, for me, it’s hard to imagine how these sorts of things would not be concerns of the church, but I suppose that if you’ve said that the Church has nothing to do with “external conduct” this would seem to be something of an inconsistency.  VanDrunen, being an honest scholar, then admits that this is not simply a disconnect between theory and practice, because Calvin seems to endorse such mutual meddling in his writings, including the Institutes, e.g., when (in IV.20 no less!), “Calvin writes that among the duties of civil government are ‘to foster and maintain the external worship of God, to defend sound doctrine and the condition of the Church,’” etc. (86)  

VanD then embarks to determine just how inconsistent Calvin is, and begins by saying that two points can be raised in defense of his consistency on the church’s meddling in civil affairs: “First, Calvin frequently reminds the church, even when assigning such affairs to it, that it does not have civil jurisdiction or the power to coerce through the sword.  Second, most of the civil affairs which Calvin made answerable to the Consistory can be said to have a spiritual dimension.  Certainly the issues of marriage and family that took up so much of the Consistory’s attention are matters that, while clearly civil, also implicate the spiritual condition of people and thus are of rightful concern to their pastors and elders.  Broadly, one might say that since people can fall into any sin in any are of life, no area of life can be completely slotted as civil and not at all as spiritual” (87). 

Now, I pause to quote this whole paragraph because I think that’s it’s jolly fun that, in the course of trying to defend Calvin’s consistency here, he actually does a beautiful job of red-flagging some of the key inconsistencies.  On the first point, the difficulty is that VanDrunen has all of a sudden shifted the ground of the distinction between the two kingdoms--now the distinction lies not in the content of the two kingdoms, but, in much more Gelasian (or Bucerian) fashion, in their means--one rules civil affairs coercively, the other non-coercively.  But this is much more “two swords” than it is “two kingdoms,” and is not at all consistent with the kind of dichotomies VanD was tracing in Calvin just a few pages ago.  On the second point, VanDrunen has made a very important and true statement--“no area of life can be completely slotted as civil and not at all as spiritual,” but at the cost of essentially renouncing everything he tried to establish on the previous pages, and granting a key neo-Calvinist premise.

On the next page, he offers some defenses of Calvin’s consistency on issues of the state meddling in religious affairs.  We are told, for instance, that Calvin “is clear in entrusting to the state concern for the ‘external worship of God,’ a ‘public form of religion,’ the ‘open’ violation of God’s law, and ‘public blasphemy.’  This gives some plausibility to characterizing the magistrate’s activities even here as civil rather than spiritual, given Calvin’s contrast of the two kingdoms in terms of the external and the internal” (88).  This achieves “consistency” at the cost of revealing how unhelpful the external/internal distinction was to begin with, and at the cost of making Calvin unserviceable to VanDrunen’s project, since I am quite sure that the kind of two kingdoms theory VanD wants us to embrace is not one in which the civil authority is in charge of all outward manifestations of religion.  

In the end, though VanDrunen admits (with an almost audible sigh) that to some extent, Calvin really was inconsistent, and we have to remember that he was a man of his times. The problem of course is that VanD seems to want to treat one position--a sharp two-kingdoms dichotomy--as Calvin’s “real” position, and the other--close cooperation between the two kingdoms--as an inconsistent alien element that shows him to be a product of his times.  By what right can VanDrunen single out the two kingdoms doctrine as Calvin’s “real” teaching?  Couldn’t someone just as well argue that Calvin’s real position was one of close cooperation between church and state and that the bits of sharp dichotomy you see in passages of the Institutes are alien elements that come from overstated polemical concerns?  That would be just as historically compelling, or perhaps more so.

VanD closes this section by relating Calvin’s version of Two Kingdoms doctrine to the various forms we have looked at before.  Like Luther, he has a strong Augustinian doctrine of antithesis between believer and unbeliever and yet commonality amid the antithesis, and he has Gelasian emphasis on the positive institutional legitimacy of the state.  Unlike Luther, however, he allowed the use of the sword in religious affairs, and he did not view the law/gospel distinction as coterminous with the two kingdoms distinction--there was a place for the law in the Church.  Indeed, on the whole, says VanDrunen, taking Calvin’s practice into account, his model has a fair dose of Gelasian two-swords theory, mixed with his Lutheran  two-kingdoms theory.  VanDrunen summarizes the unresolved dilemma: “The point of particular tension here is the matter of commonality.  Is the civil realm one that Christians and non-Christians share in common in the present age, as Luther’s two kingdoms theology held, following Diognetian and Augustinian lines?  Or is the civil realm governed by church and state, albeit in their own ways, according to a vision in which the civil realm is populated, or at least ought properly be populated, by a Christian people, as a Gelasian vision suggests?  In other words, is the civil realm ultimately characterized by commonality or Christianity?  Though Calvin’s two kingdoms doctrine provides theological ground for affirming the former, in practice the latter prevailed” (93).  Unfortunately, as I have argued in this review, this is far from the only unresolved tension in the picture VanDrunen has tried to give us.  

This quote concludes VanDrunen’s discussion of Calvin’s two kingdoms doctrine; he moves on to discuss his natural law theory in the next section, and I should be able to tackle that and the remainder of the chapter in one more post.

The Calvinistic Extra-Large with Fries on the Side (VanD Review III.2)

May 13, 2010

Now, VanDrunen starts out by seeking to relate Calvin to what has gone before, telling us that “Lying behind Calvin’s discussions of the two kingdoms is an Augustinian two cities paradigm...a fundamental antithesis divided Christians from non-Christians” (71).  This, however, is not what his two kingdoms are about.  “Both of Calvin’s two kingdoms are God’s, but are ruled by him in distinctive ways....Christians are members of both kingdoms during their earthly lives.  Calvin perceived a clear difference between these two kingdoms but not a fundamental antithesis” (71).  Alright, so what are these two kingdoms?  VanDrunen quotes the famous passage from Institutes III.19: 

“Let us observe that in man government is twofold: the one spiritual, by which the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship; the other civil, by which the individual is instructed in those duties which, as men and citizens, we are bound to perform....the former species has reference to the life of the soul, while the latter relates to matters of the present life, not only to food and clothing, but to the enacting of laws which require a man to live among his fellows purely, honourably, and modestly.  The former has its seat within the soul, the latter only regulates the external conduct.  We may call the one the spiritual, the other the civil kingdom” (III.19.15, quoted on 72).  

If he were merely drawing a distinction, but not making a separation, then we might deem it a somewhat unhelpful distinction, but I could live with it.  But then Calvin goes on to say (and VanDrunen goes on to quote him), “Now these two, as we have divided them, are always to be viewed apart from each other.  When the one is considered, we should call off our minds, and not allow them to think of the other.  For there exists in man a kind of two worlds, over which different kings and different laws can preside” (ibid).

Now this is the sort of thing that, to my mind, only makes sense when read as a rhetorical overreach for a specific goal.  Do we as Christians really want to say that our Christian faith affects only our souls, and that, when considering it, we ought to call off our minds from any consideration of external conduct?  To suggest that the “life of the soul” is unrelated to “matters of the present life” can only be read, in my mind, as a foolish rhetorical excess or as dangerous Gnosticism.  Now, to be fair, VanDrunen much later on expresses some reservations about this language, saying (I will quote him in full): “One question that may be put to Calvin briefly at this point is whether his distinguishing the two kingdoms in terms of things that are ‘external’ and ‘internal’ or that concern the body and the soul accurately captures his intentions in regard to the institutions of church and state.  Calvin surely did not mean to suggest that the spiritual kingdom is concerned only about things that are immaterial, since he assigned to the church tasks such as diaconal relief of the poor and administration of the sacraments....one wonders whether this less than precise language contributed to the lack of full consistency between his theology of the two kingdoms and his views on concrete social matters” (91).  But, if VanDrunen doesn’t think this is quite the best way of identifying the dividing line between the two realms, I’d like to hear him articulate carefully where the line is, since so much weight is being put on it.  What are these “spiritual” things that have nothing to do with civil, temporal things, with matters of everday life?  This is no trivial question.

Some light (but little comfort) is provided as VanDrunen lays out “three important attributes of each kingdom that display the contrast of one with the other.  The three attributes of the kingdom of Christ are its redemptive character, its spiritual or heavenly identity, and its present institutional expression in the church.  The three attributes of the civil kingdom are its non-redemptive character, its external or earthly identity, and its present (though not exclusive) expression in civil government.”

So, first, let’s see what he says about this redemptive/non-redemptive business (hint, it’s pretty wild stuff, and piqued my interest about as piquantly as anything has piqued it all week).  VanDrunen wades into this topic via Calvin’s discussion of Christian liberty.  To be concise, I’ll just say that VanDrunen points out how Calvin invokes the two kingdoms doctrine in III.19.15 of the Institutes as a way of clarifying how the doctrine of Christian liberty is not supposed to overturn all human authority.  He summarizes Calvin’s point thus: “the redemptive doctrine of Christian liberty applies to life in the spiritual kingdom but not to life in the civil kingdom.  No human authority can bind the believer’s conscience in regard to participation in the spiritual kingdom of Christ....In the external things of the civil kingdom, in contrast, salvation in Christ does not at all diminish Christians’ obligation to obey magistrates” (74).  Now, whether or not VanDrunen is interpreting Calvin rightly here, I have major questions about the attempt to broaden this principle into the dictum: “God rules the spiritual kingdom as its redeemer and the civil kingdom as its creator and sustainer” (74).  

I must confess that I just don’t know how to make sense of this kind of statement.  I ask, is the civil kingdom not then fallen?  Presumably VanDrunen must admit that it is fallen.  Then I must ask, is God happy for it to remain fallen?  Where there is economic injustice going on, are Christians not to seek to bring redemption and Christ’s love to that situation?  Where there is violence and political oppression going on, are Christians not to seek to bring redemption and Christ’s love to that situation?  Where falsehood is being taught in schools, are Christians not supposed to bring the light of Christ’s truth there?  

I suppose I know how VanDrunen would have to respond here.  He would insist that yes, each of these situations must be remedied, but not redeemed.  They must be remedied in accord with the natural law, not redeemed by evangelical law.  So, where there is economic or political injustice, Christians should join with unbelievers in seeking reform according to the natural laws of equity; Christ’s love is not necessary to fix the problem.  Where falsehood is being taught, Christians should appeal to reason to prove the truth, rather than proclaiming special revelation.  But this doesn’t seem to do the trick, for at least three reasons.  For one, assuming the natural law to be sufficient, is it not true that our ability to grasp it properly has been undermined by sin?  We need the light of redemption to be able to see natural law rightly, to make use of it in reforming our fallen world.  For another, even if we have perceived natural law rightly, the strength and purity to apply it rightly and steadfastly is impossible without the grace of redemption.  Finally, assuming we have perceived and applied the natural law rightly, is this really enough for Christians?  If the Gospel reveals to us a justice that is made perfect in mercy and love, are we to be satisfied with a civil kingdom ruled by justice alone, without the perfection of mercy and love?  From my reading, it seems to be that many people would be; many Christians would be happy if the “civil kingdom” operated according to sub-Christian standard of justice and morality, while reserving Christian virtues for the Church alone, but I admit I am unable to think that way.  

In any case, this way of looking at things is much more problematic if you understand the “civil kingdom” not as “the civil magistrate,” as VanDrunen wants to take it, but to mean “external conduct,” as Calvin puts it.  I can’t imagine even VanDrunen wanting to say that “external conduct’ does not belong to God’s work of redemption.  But these are big-picture questions about VanDrunen’s whole undertaking, and I’ll lay them aside again for now to attend to his argument in this section, which starts getting really interesting in the next page or two.

VanDrunen asks whether this dualism he has just presented fails to give us a “religiously unified” or “Christological” view of life, as the neo-Calvinists object.  He replies that it does not; Calvin gives us a unified Christological account, but one that is cognizant of the “fundamental distinction between God’s non-redemptive work of creation and providence through his Eternal Son and his redemptive work through the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ” (75).  “Yes, but these two works are two moments in the life of the same person, the second of which brings the first to completion,” we want to object--but VanDrunen will not let us even get past “Yes, but--” before he has an answer for us--the infamous extra Calvinisticum, or if, you really need a translation, the “Calvinistic extra.”  This key point of Reformed Christological doctrine maintained, against the Lutherans, that even when he was on earth, Christ’s divine nature was not confined to his body, but existed “etiam extra carnem (‘even outside of his flesh’).”  In other words, even while Christ the God-man was stretched out upon the cross, Christ the divine Son was simultaneously in heaven (or rather, in all places), upholding the heavens and the earth by his power.  

Now, having been raised as a good Calvinist, I do believe that this doctrine serves to safeguard certain important points that have to be clung to (which is, after all, what Christology is all about), but I do recognize that it is a rather scary and potentially problematic way of expressing things.  It’s like a cross-beam that you have to put into your theological structure to hold it all together, but if you put too much weight on it, the whole thing will collapse.  And reading VanDrunen, I understood finally why the Lutherans have always been so uncomfortable about the Calvinistic extra and unwilling to go that route.

Here’s what he says, 

“This gives Calvin categories for affirming that the Son of God rules one kingdom in a redemptive manner and the other kingdom in a non-redemptive manner.  In his description of Calvin’s social thought, John Bolt helpfully explains: ‘As mediator, the divine Logos is not limited to his incarnate form even after the incarnation.  He was mediator of creation prior to his incarnation and as mediator continues to sustain creation independent of his mediatorial work as reconciler of creation in the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.’” (75)  

Now this is some pretty scary stuff--it looks like what we have here is the development of a “Christology” that can be abstracted from the concrete man Jesus Christ, in whom alone the Logos has been manifested to us; a gulf is being opened up between the immanent Christ and the economic Christ.  Now, the way I learned the extra Calvinisticum, the point was to safeguard the idea that Christ was still fully divine while incarnate, not to drive a permanent wedge between the non-incarnate Christ and the incarnate Christ.  And the way I learned theology, the whole point of affirming that the same Christ was both creator and redeemer was to help us understand that redemption was new creation, was the Son’s bringing to fulfilment of the work that he had begun in creation--the Son’s work of redemption was his perfection of his work of creation, and in his redemption lay the revelation to men of his creating and sustaining.  But now VanDrunen and Bolt want to tell me that far from comprising a unified work, they are two totally different activities that just happen to be done by the same person, much as I study theology most of the time but also do part-time work for my dad and I’s investment advising firm from time to time.  And they want to lay all this on the slender and tender thread of the extra Calvinisticum. Perhaps I’m overreacting, but I found myself having to take some slow deep breaths after this section.  

Whatever the case, VanDrunen has stretched his argument well beyond Calvin at this point.  While he claims that later Reformed theologians did indeed develop this notion of dual mediation (which is still not necessarily the same thing as the extra Calvinisticum) as a basis for a two kingdoms doctrine, he can say no more of Calvin than that he “laid the groundwork.”  And even there, if you look at the footnotes, you find this: “While I suggest here that Calvin’s understanding of the extra Calvinisticum is theologically coherent with and in some sense precedent for the later Reformed doctrine of the two mediatorships of Christ, W.D.J. McKay has argued for an element of discontinuity between Calvin’s understanding of Christ’s kingship over the nations and the understanding of seventeenth-century Reformed thought” (76).  In other words, “Actually, it turns out that my whole thesis here may be fundamentally flawed, but let’s just pretend that it isn’t.”  Sorry, VanD, I’m not going to let you get away with this one.