This ran in a recent Christian publication and I am publishing it here for broader readership. Though I would like to credit for authorship, you’ll notice at the end of the article that it was written by Mark Van Der Molen, an Elder in a URC church

Review of the WSC Evangelium on Christian education: The Good, the Bad, and the Missing.

Westminster Seminary California recently published the fall 2009 edition of its pamphlet Evangelium, which is devoted to the topic of Christian education. As with any publication, this tract arises out of a particular context. On Reformed internet discussion boards and here in Christian Renewal, there has been increasing examination of the Neo-Lutheran/Natural Law/Two Kingdom Theology {NL2k} being promoted by certain WSC professors. One of the many concerns raised is that this NL2k theory undercuts the Reformed theological foundations of Christian education.

This edition of the Evangelium carries the theme “Learning to Love God with All Our Minds”. It contains short articles by various WSC faculty members who profess a commitment to Christian education. The unwary reader may thus feel reassured that NL2k is no threat to the Reformed foundations for Christian education. Such reassurance would be seriously mistaken.

NL2K: some representative samples

Before we begin the review of the Evangelium, let’s be reminded that the scrutiny has arisen in response to increasingly bold NL2k formulations such as these:

“{Guided by} the Lutheran two-kingdom perspective on scholarship, scholars at Christian institutions will not feel the need to introduce questions of faith in literature or chemistry classes, or to require theological precision from every new hire in sociology. Indeed, only in the Bible and theology departments, where faith and theological convictions make the most difference, is close scrutiny of a professor’s profession of faith immediately relevant to academic work”. D.G. Hart, WSC professor

“… the Bible doesn’t speak to all the arts and sciences, let alone whether incoming freshmen should receive a laptop or whether it should be an Apple or an IBM machine. In fact, the one place where Christ is revealed, the Bible, has very little to say about the curriculum of an undergraduate education. If we say that it does, we are in danger of putting the imaginations of men above the Word of God — that is, making the Bible say what we want it to say.” D.G. Hart.

“From a penultimate perspective, it’s hard to see how a history prof teaching the survey of the United States at Cow College U. is doing the job any worse than the prof at Consistently Calvinist College. The standards for that evaluation are not Scripture or the creeds; they are set by the American Historical Association and the leading graduate departments of history.” D.G. Hart.

“…the human race is not divided at the present time between those who are blessed and those who are cursed. That time is coming, of course, but in this present age, believers and unbelievers alike share in the pains of childbirth, the burdens of labor, the temporal effects of their own sins, and the eventual surrender of their decaying bodies to death…there is in this present age a category for that which is neither holy nor unholy but simply common.” Michael Horton, WSC professor

“… there is no difference between Christians and non-Christians with respect to their vocations.” Michael Horton.

“So what is the relationship of Christians to culture in this time between the times? Is Jesus Christ Lord over secular powers and principalities? At least in Reformed theology, the answer is yes, though he is Lord in different ways over the world and the church. God presently rules the world through providence and common grace, while he rules the church through Word, sacrament, and covenantal nurture.” Michael Horton.

“His revelation speaks to everything but not in the same way. The cultural or civil sphere is normed by God’s general or natural revelation. Special revelation wasn’t given to norm cultural or civil life.” R. Scott Clark.

“…I recognize problems in CVT’s {Cornelius Van Til} rhetoric, indeed in the rhetoric of all the neo-Kuyperians when they talk about distinctly Christian approaches to this and that. Yes, there is Christian education INASMUCH AS (please note this qualifier) education must address and emerges from beliefs that are properly basic (to borrow from Plantinga). When it comes to baking, plowing, or math(s), however, adding the adjective “Christian” remains as problematic as it has always been.” R. Scott Clark.

With these quotes in mind, let’s review the Evangelium itself.

THE GOOD: an initial embrace of Calvin, Kuyper, and the necessity of Christian education:

Dr. Dennis Johnson’s article begins well: “Christian parents’ responsibility to the Lord and to our children, born into his covenant community, is to strive with all the resources available to us to introduce them to this gracious, glorious God, and to form their minds to engage the world as his loving children and loyal subjects.” This statement echoes Kuyperian mission statements found in most CSI Christian schools, i.e., the equipping of covenant children for their faithful engagement with the world. And this engagement is not limited to the spiritual or churchly realm. Johnson writes, “[t]he education of Christians in every subject—philosophy, literature, history, music, sociology, political science, economics, architecture, engineering, chemistry, physics—belongs in the context of the biblical worldview that traces all things to the sovereign Creator.” Johnson then lays out his fundamental convictions:

1.Parents are responsible to oversee their children’s whole education—both “religious” and otherwise.

2.Parents are not alone in their responsibility to nurture their children in God’s wisdom. (Here Johnson affirms the complementary role played by the church in nurture and training of covenant children through the means of grace.)

3.The wisdom that our children need centers in the fear of the Lord, and then reaches out to embrace all of life.

4.No educational enterprise is religiously neutral.

5.Our children’s education should enable them not only to investigate God’s world, but also to engage confidently and winsomely those who do not see that “this is our Father’s world”.

Dr. Robert Godfrey’s article describes Calvin’s understanding of the kingdom of God. Godfrey also cites approvingly Kuyper’s “sphere sovereignty” refinement of Calvin’s theology in relation to education: “[Kuyper] believed that recognizing the family as a distinct kingdom was crucial to breaking the tyrannical tendencies of the state (and of the church). Since education is not neutral at any point, but either glorifies God or rejects him, Christian parents must seek a Christian education for their children.”

Dr. Julius Kim most clearly affirms the necessity of Christian education for our covenant children: “I began to see that all knowledge must be framed within the reality of the Creator and all that he has created. All disciplines, not only science and math but also the humanities and the arts, must be seen within the framework of a Creator who created all things for his own glory. All of life, then, is interpreted through the lens of God and the coherence he brings to all reality. That is why we decided to send our children to a Christian school and why I serve on the board of Covenant College….We firmly believe that God has given us as parents the responsibility to raise and educate our children ‘in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.’”

Standing alone, these affirmations would have been good beginnings to embrace the necessity of Reformed Christian education.

THE BAD: contextualized qualifiers

Unfortunately, what is extended with the right hand by affirmation of the necessity of Christian education is often undermined with the left hand by contextualized qualifiers.

As noted above, Dr. Johnson argues that biblical wisdom is “not restricted to a narrowly circumscribed ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ sphere. He cites Solomon’s vast learning in literature, song, botany, zoology and human relationships to support his conviction that full orbed education begins with the fear of the Lord and from that starting point moves out to explore all that He has made.

Johnson then cites Daniel’s experience in Babylonian exile, where Daniel received a pagan education in a pagan institution and yet maintained his faith in God and served the nation. Johnson recognizes that this pagan education was not religiously neutral. He lauds the fact that Daniel was able to maintain his faith in God, and then suggests that by God’s common grace, aspects of truth could be found in those pagan institutions. Thus, Johnson says: “As Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah managed to master Chaldean learning without compromising their loyalty to the Lord, so this is our purpose for our children’s education, whatever its venue.” [emphasis added]. So Daniel’s mastery of pagan education while maintaining his godly faith serves as an example for the education of our covenant youth. Translation for our time: as long as your child maintains his spiritual faith, education in a non-Christian school may be a legitimate venue of choice.

Dr. Michael Horton’s mostly anecdotal piece continues that troubling theme. Horton recounts that when he was growing up, he had attended non-Reformed Christian schools and public schools. He states that in his judgment, the Christian schools were “more dangerous to my faith” than the public schools. He recalls that as a student, after he had read Reformed writers, the teachers in one such Christian school “became hostile to my honest questions” [We might suspect that the unnamed teachers would have a different account of their interaction with Horton]. Horton then tells us this Christian school was closed due a sex abuse scandal. [Why is he telling us this sordid detail?] When he transferred to the public school, he found he “had something to say to unbelieving friends and they, in turn, put my arguments to the test.” He warns this should not be interpreted as some general endorsement of public education, but rather, that “as with every decision as believers, we need to weigh things in the light of godly wisdom, the input of our elders, and the concrete circumstances of each local context.” So secular schools get Horton’s qualified endorsement; an acceptable option for Christians, provided they “weigh things.”

Let’s pause here to note that foundational principles of Christian education do not vanish due to someone’s bad experience at a non-Reformed Christian school, or one’s favorable memory of “witnessing” to unbelievers at a public school. Rather, the issue is our principled commitment to a full-orbed, Reformed-shaped, Christian education.

Horton continues: “Wherever we choose to send our children to school, it is crucial that we inculcate early on the conviction that precisely because this is our Father’s world, it is intelligible, full of goodness, truth, and beauty. Their faith is not something that we have to keep from contaminating (or being contaminated by) responsible reasoning, questioning, and probing, but the best resource for their flourishing in the world” [emphasis added]. Yes, faith is a resource. But by whose standard will a teacher judge what is “responsible reasoning” in a school where the curriculum is built on presuppositions hostile to that very faith? Here again, we see the undercutting qualifier: hold to your faith, but the setting and content of education in the “common realm” is situationally variable.

In contrast to Johnson, Dr. David Van Drunen shifts some of the educational sphere from the family such “that the church has primary responsibility for biblical and theological education.” Van Drunen also draws lessons from his educational experience. His early education was “typical of the Dutch Reformed tradition”. Later he studied at a Christian college, and also at “a Roman Catholic institution”. Surveying the impact of his education, Van Drunen says he can “recognize how valuable this educational background—especially Reformed but also in non-Reformed settings—was to prepare me to teach and write about theology, ethics, and culture.” So by his lights, the non-Reformed education was one among the different “valuable” types of education that he received. Indeed, such non-Reformed training apparently has shaped Van Drunen as seen elsewhere in his ongoing quest to harmonize elements of Roman Catholic Natural Law theory and Reformed theology/ethics.

Dr. R. Scott Clark provides a brief history of different types of schooling in different historical periods. During the modern period, Clark suggests that in the Netherlands and in North America, “one response to this aggressive post-Christian ideology was to form distinctively Christian schools. This movement took root among Reformed folk in North America with the formation of the Christian Reformed Church in 1857.” Clark reminds the reader that this movement coincided with the Industrial Revolution where private tutoring was replaced by mass education. Why the history lesson? Clark reveals a clue:“Despite the intentional antithesis between belief and unbelief on which it was founded, the Christian school movement was unavoidably a child of its time.” Yes, but so what? Does Clark think the Christian school movement is now past its time? Shouldn’t schools still teach the Reformed antithesis? Does he believe that the antithesis no longer exists, or is the only antithesis in the common realm between natural law teaching vs. non-natural law teaching? Clark does not answer these questions, but what he does say demands we ask. Because if we accept Clark’s NL2k where God’s Word does not norm the so-called common realm, the rationale for continuing the Christian school movement is dubious at best.

Dr. Godfrey tries to calm the waters over NL2k, but only clouds things further. Regarding Calvin’s “two kingdom” theology, Godfrey states that Calvin’s position was: “The spiritual kingdom as the church was directly accountable to Christ alone who was King of the church and completely regulated the life of the church (its doctrine, worship, and offices) by the Bible. The temporal kingdom as the state owed obedience to Christ, but not through or under the church. The state had its own constitution adopted largely according to human wisdom. The Bible should guide the state, but did not exhaustively reveal the answers to all political decisions.” [emphasis added]. Human wisdom according to whose standard? If the State was run by abortionists and radical Marxists, would Calvin have us find such “human wisdom” acceptable and properly assigned to the temporal kingdom? Hardly. In his commentary on Daniel 6, Calvin reflects on the command found in 1 Peter 2:17: “Fear God, honor the king”:

The two commands are connected together, and cannot be separated from one another. The fear of God ought to precede, that kings may obtain their authority. For if any one begins his reverence of an earthly prince by rejecting that of God, he will act preposterously, since this is a complete perversion of the order of nature. Then let God be feared in the first place and earthly princes will obtain their authority, if only God shines forth, as I have already said. Daniel, therefore, here defends himself with justice, since he had not committed any crime against the king; for he was compelled to obey the command of God, and he neglected what the king had ordered in opposition to it. For earthly princes lay aside all their power when they rise up against God, and are unworthy of being reckoned in the number of mankind. We ought rather utterly to defy than to obey them whenever they are so restive and wish to spoil God of his rights, and, as it were, to seize upon his throne and draw him down from heaven. [emphasis added]

Thus, Calvin grounds the legitimacy of the magistrate’s authority on its conformity to the revealed will of God, a principle clearly codified in Belgic Confession Article 36.

Godfrey summarily states that through history, the Reformed have “spoken about one kingdom, two kingdoms, and many kingdoms of Christ. These ways of speaking may sometimes seem a little confusing, but when we understand the different problems they are addressing it is easy to understand them.” However, Godfrey misses the source of the confusion. There is no confusion over Calvin’s or the Reformed’s understanding of “two kingdoms”. It is easy enough to read in our Reformed confessions that the King’s Word is authoritative and normative in the civil realm which includes the education of our covenant youth. The confusion arises from NL2k obfuscation of “kingdom” categories which cloud that clear confession.

THE MISSING: an unqualified rejection of errors:

We can readily applaud the general affirmations of basic Reformed principles for Christian education expressed by certain professors in this Evangelium. However, these affirmations lose their weight when juxtaposed with the contextualized qualifiers, sounding far less than clarion calls to grateful duty. We’re left with the impression that Christian education is a good choice, but not a necessary one. So if special revelation does not norm the so-called “common realm”, then we should just trust God’s common grace that little Johnny’s experience at a Catholic or public school will yet yield “valuable” results. Christian parents can be like a customer deciding between a Cadillac and a Ford. One choice may be better and cost more, but either one will get you to your destination. Such a consumerist “common realm” approach to education certainly strikes a discordant note from our historic Reformed ethic.

What’s at stake is the role of the Bible—special revelation—in life outside the ecclesiastical walls of the church. As some articles of this Evangelium acknowledge, the Christian faith is not compartmentalized into a spiritual realm. But neither is God’s Word cut off from His normative claims over all peoples and all of life. By His Word, we go out from our churches as “salt and light”, testifying to God’s normative Word and bringing every thought in captivity to Christ whether in our culture, our vocations, or in our children’s education.
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What’s missing in this Evangelium is the approach seen in Reformed church history when faced with theological disturbances— a clear and unequivocal rejection of errors. Stating principled objections to a “common-realm” approach to education could bring some much-needed clarity. Read again the representative NL2k quotations cited in the introduction to this review and ask whether these be can reconciled to our Reformed worldview. If you find they cannot, then until such errors are rejected, general affirmations coupled with contextualized qualifiers will not stem the concern over the effect NL2k could have in the Reformed churches and in our Christian schools.

Mark Van Der Molen is an elder in the United Reformed Churches, has served on Christian school boards, and is a legal/policy advisor to Christian schools.

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