The R2K Chronicles; Part IV –Covenantal Malfeasance

We continue to demonstrate the grave and serious deficiencies of R2K theology as expressed in this interview with Dr. David Van Drunen done with a view of hawking his upcoming book, “Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World.”

https://reformedforum.org/ctc633/?fbclid=IwAR2RPcamfPPkxuj7P-QdiRY-uI-jMPZhjXXGum2McMtlqu28N92wVdiDAP8

In this entry we first demonstrate R2K’s manipulation of the Noahic covenant as accomplished by the chief R2K guru, David Van Drunen. We then go on to look at other covenant malfeasance championed by R2K so as to refashion and reshape Christianity in a R2K direction.

The reader should not miss that what R2K does to Christianity by its various doctrinal shifts is to create a Christianity that has never existed before. What R2K does to Christianity is not dissimilar to what Liberalism did to Christianity inasmuch as the resultant faith is something completely dissimilar from what it was before R2K got its interpretive hands on it. I am hopeful that this look book exposes that just as Machen’s book exposed the lie of Liberalism being Christianity in his book, “Christianity and Liberalism.”

We start by quoting the Karl Barth of the R2K movement, Dr. David Van Drunen;

 

“I am doing something with this (Noahic Covenant) that I don’t know that any other previous Reformed theologian has ever done exactly what I am doing. I am putting some new questions to it, but the view itself (that the Noahic covenant is a common grace covenant) is not new. The covenant that we find there between Genesis 8:17 and 9:21 or so that covenant that we find there is clearly a universal covenant.”
 
David Van Drunen


https://reformedforum.org/ctc633/?fbclid=IwAR2RPcamfPPkxuj7P-QdiRY-uI-jMPZhjXXGum2McMtlqu28N92wVdiDAP8

 

The above quote is taken from the 37 minute point of the interview with Dr. David Van Drunen (DVD) that is linked above. DVD returns to a central theme in his “theology” and that is his insistence that the Noahic covenant has zero redemptive significance. This position has, in the past, been challenged repeatedly by other Reformed theologians of note. DVD however can not give this position up because it is the lynch pin of his innovative system called R2K. The Noahic covenant was not a redemptive covenant for DVD and so must be common and universal. This position allows DVD to pivot to say that the Noahic covenant is the covenant that all mankind as mankind (considered as neither regenerate or unregenerate) operates and functions in during their lifetime. This appeal to the Noahic coveannt as a common (non-redemptive) covenant gives DVD room to establish a common (nature) realm that is dualistically distinct from his church (grace) realm. Because of the way DVD handles the Noahic covenant it gives him space to create a realm that is not ruled by God’s law but by natural law.

One implication of this for DVD and R2K is that the Church and the Kingdom are identified as exact synonyms. There is nothing outside the Church realm as existing in the public square that is an expression of the Kingdom of God. Everything outside the church realm as existing in the public square is a common realm reality relating back to the common Noahic covenant. The common Noahic covenant teaches us that there is no such thing as Christian politics, Christian economics, Christian Education, Christian family, etc. since all these function within the common Noahic covenant and not as ancillaries to the Kingdom of God. Indeed, this common realm created by DVD’s innovative work with the Noahic covenant is a realm where all man’s civil-social institutions exist. Because all these institutions (except for the Church) exist in the common realm they are not and can not be associated with the kingdom of God. Again, I emphasize that the whole R2K project fails if the Noahic covenant is a redemptive covenant and not a covenant that is generic for all creation and mankind.

That DVD is in error regarding his assertion that the Noahic covenant “doesn’t make any promises of Redemption,” can be seen inasmuch as the Noahic covenant is in point of fact highly redemptive, both in looking back to creation and looking forward to Christ. DVD is in error when he insists that the Noahic covenant was a common realm covenant that had no redemptive significance.

The error of DVD’s is seen in first one finds the flood being presented in similar terms as the chaos of Gen. 1:2, and the ark’s landing on dry land and Noah’s commission by God to be fruitful and multiply both echo the original creation narrative. Noah is a new Adam with the responsibility to take dominion of the earth as God’s sub-regent. God’s work with Noah has zero common or universal connotations.

Second, the rescue of Noah was a Redemptive rescue and this is hinted at when God rescues only someone who had found favor in the eyes of God. In and through the flood God rescues His people and not a common humanity in revolt against Him. Then, Noah offers sacrifice to God upon being released from the Ark. If the Noahic covenant was truly common would we see a blood sacrifice associated with it?

Third, the Noahic is Redemptive if only because it ends in a “new creation — restoration.” The Noahic covenant is a proleptic and typological event that portrays the final and ultimate redemption to be found in Christ. Noah, a type of Christ saves His people in the ark of the Church and pilots them unto the promised land. The Noahic covenant is thus, contrary to DVD’s assertion, Redemptive.

Also we have the fact that the Noahic covenant is Redemptive being pointed to in I Peter in such explicit terms it is difficult to believe that anybody could hold the Noahic covenant as common. The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.

I Peter 1:20 – “to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Eight were saved (Redeemed). The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.”

Now, no one would argue that the Noahic covenant didn’t have implications for what R2K calls the “common realm.” For one there is the certainty we find in the Noahic covenant that mankind will continue with the purpose that out of that sustained mankind the elect will be brought into the Church. However, clearly the Noahic covenant is a Redemptive covenant. Noah points us back to creation and speaks of its renewal, but points us forward to the ultimate renewal in Christ. It is thoroughly redemptive, and not merely “common,” contra DVD and R2K.

If the Noahic covenant made promises of Redemption, contrary to DVD, then his whole R2K project fails.

R2K also does funky things with covenant theology in general beyond their reworking of the Nohaic covenant.

When it comes to covenant malfeasance however, R2K not only fiddles with the Noahic covenant. R2K also fiddles with covenant theology in general. For example Westminster-Cal (R2K’s home base) insists that the Mosaic covenant was at the same time both a covenant of Grace and a covenant of Works. This is accomplished by introducing language of “upper” and “lower” register into the Mosaic covenant while insisting that the idea of typology sustains that “in some sense” the Mosaic covenant was a covenant of works for Israel. Understand this “upper register,” and “lower register” language is a recipe for complete confusion. Who determines how the upper register and lower register in the same covenant operates? Are there set rules for what constitutes the upper register and what constitutes the lower register and are these rules explicitly drawn from Scripture?

 

Of course theoretically, one could use this reasoning not only in the Mosaic covenant but also in any of the other covenants which represent the continual maturing and flowering of the one covenant of grace. For example, one could go back to Genesis 17 and say much the same thing about God’s command/stipulation to Abraham to “walk before Me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1 ). Given that stipulation language in Genesis 17 one can’t help but wonder, given Westminster-Cal’s predilections for a hyphenated Mosaic covenant,  how is it that the Abrahamic covenant also is not an example of a mixed (hyphenated) covenant? In point of fact Dr. Meredith Kline taught that Noah and Abraham were themselves under a legal-works covenant. One thus wonders, if, according to Westminster-Cal, whether the covenant of works was republished to Abraham and Noah as well? The point here is that if we are going to go all arbitrary by establishing that the Mosaic covenant was both one of grace (upper register) and one of works (lower register) than what disallows us from doing the same with any other of the covenants that make for the one covenant of grace?

 

In all this I wonder if there isn’t some covenant confusion that was articulated by a Baptist named Philip Cary in 1640 in a debate with John Flavel and other Reformed luminaries. This debate surrounded the issue of the validity of infant Baptism but some of Cary’s “reasoning” sounds a great deal like Westminster-Cal reasoning on covenant republication. Cary treated Genesis 17 (Abrahamic), Exodus 20 (Sinai) and Deuteronomy 29 (Mosaic) together under a covenant of works. In doing so, the Baptist, Cary, could treat all these passages as discontinuous in nature, purpose and extent with the covenant of Grace. For the Baptist Cary, no commands from the covenant of works could affect the covenant of grace. For the Baptist, Philip Cary, this meant that Abraham, as well as all the elect in the Old Testament were in both covenants at the same time. This sounds strangely familiar to some of the writings of Westminster-Cal adherents on the Mosaic covenant.

 

Keep in mind though that if covenant are both law and gracious at the same time, it is also the case that people living under those hyphenated covenant arrangements lived and moved  by both law and Gospel at the same time. Escondido would have us believe that the Mosaic saints earned, via congruent merit, their stay in the land while at the same time those same saints were saved by unmerited grace. This seems to me to be a “Glawspel” arrangement. If so, it is ironic that the very people (Klinean republicationists) who complain that those who don’t accept their republicationist paradigm are guilty of not distinguishing properly “Law and Gospel,” with the consequence that “Glawspel” obtains are themselves guilty of not properly distinguishing “Law and Gospel” so that “Glawspel” obtains.

 

Think about it. If you’re living under the Mosaic covenant how do you determine if your obedience to God’s law is motivated by earning congruent merit in order to stay in the land as opposed to an obedience that is motivated by gratitude for God delivering your from your enemies and putting you in the land?

 

Second, in light of the constant disobedience of Israel under the Mosaic, how can we speak of going back under a covenant of works in the Mosaic when the covenant of works required absolute perfect obedience? If the Old Testament saints under the Mosaic covenant were put back under a covenant of works it was a very different covenant of works then what Adam was under in the Garden where one violation was all that was required to be cast out of the garden. Are we to believe, per Westminster-Cal, that the covenant of works was more gracious in the Mosaic covenant then it was in the garden?

As we have seen already while looking at soteriology, epistemology, and the matter of dualism R2K with its completely innovative work of reinterpreting Christianity leaves a finished product that nobody in Church history, would have recognized as Christianity. Now, to be sure R2K has borrowed elements from the Anabaptists (Dualism), the Dispensationalists (covenant discontinuity) and Lutherans (absolute equating of Kingdom and Church) but as a whole system R2K is not anybody’s father’s Christianity.

Were the 21st century Reformed church healthy it would do to R2K and its acolytes what the Reformed church should have done in the 20th century to Dispensationalism if the Reformed church would have been healthy in that century. To speak without horns or teeth, R2K should be cast out by the Reformed church.

Matthew Henry … Another Vile Kinist

I.) Numbers 2:2-4f

 And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: “Everyone of the children of Israel shall camp by his own [a]standard, beside the emblems of his father’s house; they shall camp some distance from the tabernacle of meeting. On the east side, toward the rising of the sun, those of the standard of the forces with Judah shall camp according to their armies; and Nahshon the son of Amminadab shall be the leader of the children of Judah.” And his army was numbered at seventy-four thousand six hundred.

1.) Those of a tribe were to pitch together, every man by his own standard. Note, It is the will of God that mutual love and affection, converse and communion, should be kept up among relations. Those that are of kin to each other should, as much as they can, be acquainted with each other; and the bonds of nature should be improved for the strengthening of the bonds of Christian communion.

2.) Every tribe had a captain, a prince, or commander-in-chief, whom God himself nominated, the same that had been appointed to number them, ch. i. 5. Our being all the children of one Adam is so far from justifying the *levellers, and taking away the distinction of place and honour, that even among the children of the same Abraham, the same Jacob, the same Judah, God himself appointed that one should be captain of all the rest. There are powers ordained of God, and those to whom honour and fear are due and must be paid.

* Levellers were a 17th century movement in England that advocated what we would call egalitarianism today. They desired a flattening out of the social order unto a sterile equality. In contrast to their counterparts, “the Diggers” the Levellers opposed common ownership, except in cases of mutual agreement of the property owners.

Matthew Henry
Numbers 2:3-34

3. Every one must know his place and keep in it; they were not allowed to fix where they pleased, nor to remove when they pleased, but God quarters them, with a charge to abide in their quarters. Note, It is God that appoints us the bounds of our habitation, and to him we must refer ourselves. He shall choose our inheritance for us (Ps. xlvii. 4), and in his choice we must acquiesce, and not love to flit, nor be as the bird that wanders from her nest.

4. Every tribe had its standard, flag, or ensign, and it should seem every family had some particular ensign of their father’s house, which was carried as with us the colours of each troop or company in a regiment are. These were of use for the distinction of tribes and families, and the gathering and keeping of them together, in allusion to which the preaching of the gospel is said to lift up an ensign, to which the Gentiles shall seek, and by which they shall pitch, Isa. xi. 10, 12. Note, God is the God of order, and not of confusion.

Matthew Henry
Commentary Numbers Chapter 2

 

Series on Justification From Eternity — Part VII

Justification is one of those spiritual blessings wherewith the elect are blessed in Christ according to election-grace, before the foundation of the world, #Eph 1:3,4. That justification is a spiritual blessing none will deny; and if the elect were blessed with all spiritual blessings, then with this; and if thus blessed according to election, or when elected, then before the foundation of the world: and this grace of justification must be no small part of that “grace which was given in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world was”, #2Ti 1:9. We may say, says Dr. Goodwin {14}, of all spiritual blessings in Christ, what is said of Christ, that his goings forth are from everlasting–in Christ we were blessed with all spiritual blessings, #Eph 1:3 as we are blessed with all other, so with this also, that we were justified then in Christ!

Dr. John Gill 
18th Century Baptist Theologian

I Timothy 1:9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began

Grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. Understand that St. Paul is saying that before the elect took on flesh and blood the elect were given grace in Christ Jesus, the Elect One. Someone please tell me how it is the case that it is a stretch, based on this passage alone, to embrace eternal Justification. What — we were given a grace before time began that did not include the grace of Justification? What kind of given grace doesn’t include Justification?

Look, if you want your Justification time bound, I’m not going to hiss at you. I mean, I think that it is inconsistent but I’m not going to cast you outside the circle of faith. Can you make that kind of space for those of us who want to be consistent in our Reformed theology?

The SPLC Honors Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church for the Second Consecutive Year

Matthew 5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

The SPLC has done it again. For the second consecutive year the SPLC has, because of the Pastor, tagged the Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church as an extremist hate group. We have a little dot in Mid-Michigan on their hate map that designates us as White Nationalist.

We couldn’t be prouder.

I mean, how many opportunities does one get in life to be proud of being normal? What will we be accused of next by the SPLC? White people who love their white families (White Familialism)?  White people who love a White Christ?

It is normal for any Christian, regardless of their race/ethnicity to love their God given people so much that they would desire a nation for their people. To the contrary it is a sign of the deepest kind of mental illness that, regardless of one’s race, that one would not desire a homeland that is uniquely for the people of one’s own race/ethnicity, language, culture and faith. Multiculturalism is aberrant and is not normal. The same is true of multiculturalism when it exists in marriages, families and churches.

I make no apologies for being a White Nationalist. It is just the normal stance for any White Christian who loves Christ and his own people. As a White Nationalist love for my own people would only be interpreted as meaning “hatred for everyone else” by those who took a severe blow on the head as a child, or those who were born without some necessary chromosomes.

Of course these days missing chromosomes is the norm for the Evangelical (so called) leadership. Everyone from Russell Moore to John Piper to Mark Labberton, to Mike Horton to Barney the purple Dinosaur have denounced the idea of white Christian nationalism, choosing instead to embrace some form of multiculturalism and/or cultural Marxist diversity. And the really odd thing about all this? Many of these chaps have the vapors over the idea of the “Jews” having their own distinct nation. Go figure.

For those who have reading comprehension problems, allow me to say once again that love for my own people and my own land does not mean I have hatred for those who are not my own people or for other lands. Indeed, Christians among other peoples finds me with a natural affection for them similar to my affection for my own natural kindred.

To be honest, the really ironic thing right now is that my hostility is now, more often than not, pointed towards my own people — Christian and non-Christian alike. Why is that? Because they all have a death wish and can’t see that the idea of “the great replacement” is not some tin-foil hat conspiracy. Our enemies really desire to see us replaced by those not white and not Christian. The “Christians” among “the great replacement” deniers are those for whom my greatest hostility is reserved. These “Christians” are the ones looking down their nose at me for managing to “embarrass” the Christian faith by landing on the SPLC hate list. These “Christians” are the ones sending their children to Government schools so that their children can grow up to be as torpid as they now are. These “Christians” are the ones who believe in virtue banking and are forever seeking to make deposits by sprinkling their families with different hued babies, by conducting marriage services for polyglot couples, by joining in the fight to denounce Christians like me who are only guilty of saying what previous to 1950 or so all Christians in all places at all times said. I have the quotes to prove it.

Certainly, border-men have always existed. Certainly, polyglot marriages have always existed. Certainly, different hued babies have been adopted in times past. Christians always sought to minister to these exception to the rule scenarios. The difference today however is now we are seeking to make those exceptions the norm. They have never been, are not now, and never will be the norm. Babel will not be rebuilt and if it is rebuilt for a season it will not stand for long.

Let it be said here, once again, to those “Christians” who are heavily invested in virtue banking your judgment against me is going to boomerang against you on that final day. You may indeed be saved (Grace is a glorious thing) but it will be as by fire (I Corinthians 3:11-15). 100 years from now just remember we had this conversation.

As we are celebrating my/our 2nd anniversary on the SPLCE hater list let me note that there are some ways in which I am genuinely disappointed about my relation to the SPLC list. They have me/us down as “White Nationalist,” but fail to give me credit for other categories they have. For example, they list people as “Anti LGTBQ.” Well, I am anti LGTBQ. Why don’t I get labeled with that one? They list “Anti-Semitism.” Well, by their standard I am as Anti-Semitic as they come. Why don’t I get that label? Then there is the label they have of “general hate.” Nope … I don’t get that one either and I am as “generally hateful” as they come. If I am honest I must say that I am feeling slighted by the SPLC here in Mid-Michigan.

Another thing that I find passing odd is the difference between this year’s posting and last year’s posting. This year one has to really go hunting to find out that we made the list for the 2nd consecutive year. Last year the mid-Michigan media did all they could to shout from the roof-top our top honors. The Lansing State Journal gave me not one but two above the fold headlines in their fish-wrapping. Michigan public radio blabbered on for two days about my “sins.” Local television stations ran newsfeed of non-white talking heads standing in front of the Church reporting on my/our crimes. Every local newspaper fish wrapping had something to say about my sins. Local “pastors” of the Elmer Gantry variety ran to microphones to denounce me. A national denomination held a press conference to denounce me which in turn was reported on everywhere across Michigan.

This year it is crickets. I suppose one can reckon that old news is no news. Alternately, one might conclude that last year somebody somewhere was going for a kill shot thinking they could close the church down (and by extension me) by scaring everybody off from the church.

Well, here I am glad to report what they intended for evil God intended for good. As a result of the SPLC and the media onslaught the Church gained in numbers and in general health. Consequently, I owe a debt of gratitude to the SPLC, the Lansing State Journal, Michigan Public Radio, area Elmer Gantry Pastors, The Clown Reformed Church denomination and all the other little people who made this all possible.

R2K Chronicles #3 – Soteriology

“To adopt any theory which would stop the mouth of the Church and prevent her bearing her testimony to the kings and rulers, magistrates and people, in behalf of the truth and law of God, is like one who administers chloroform to a man to prevent his doing mischief. We pray God that this poison may be dashed away, before it has reduced the church to a state of inanition, and delivered her bound hand and foot into the power of the world.”

Charles H. Hodge

19th Century Reformed Theology

When it comes to soteriology R2K has its ordo salutis down just fine. It properly speaks of the necessity to proclaim God as Holy, man as sinful, and Christ as the only solution for man’s problem of a wrathful God. When it speaks of salvation of an individual man or woman it is orthodox.

However R2K so limits its soteriology that its doctrine of salvation ends up being severely truncated. R2K results in any number of saved individuals but as Hodge notes above the salvation that R2K offers ends up binding the saved people of God hand and foot into the power of the world. That doesn’t sound like much of a salvation. At the very least it is the kind of salvation that provides fire insurance against hell but it is not the kind of salvation that brings the aroma of Christ to every area of life. In brief, R2K offers a salvation that Christ would not recognize.

To separate the salvation that is in the atonement from the dominion mandate is to give man a man centered meaning to his life, and also to the atonement, and this is precisely what R2K does. Because R2K constrains the impact of the atonement to the private individual personal sphere, R2K strips the Atonement of its vertical impact and so horizontalizes the atonement so that it merely becomes a means of fire insurance — an escape from Hell.

Not so for the Biblical Christian. The Biblical Christian understands the Atonement and the salvation it secures has put the Christian back in the position of being God’s Dominion man. Having his sins removed man can now handle all that he handles so as to establish God’s dominion in what he handles.

R2K tells those who have been atoned for that their atonement has given them peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ but at the price of their making peace with the authorities of this wicked age who hate God and His Christ. R2K trumpets an atonement and so a salvation that is flaccid, weak, and emasculated. It is an atonement / salvation for the pacifist, the coward, and the disobedient. It is an atonement / salvation that allows and even demands the atoned and saved to surrender before those who would have dominion over Christ’s totalistic Kingdom.

This is the atonement that is being sold to you by David Van Drunnen, R. Scott Clark, Matthew Tuininga, Mike Horton, J. V. Fesko, T. David Gordon, Carl Truman and all the R2K imp professors at countless Seminaries sprinkled across America.

To see the limits of R2K’s salvation we have only but to quote one of its leading champions — Dr. Mike Horton.

“This ‘good news’ is not moral improvement or a Christian society or any political system—whether democratic or totalitarian, capitalist or socialist. It’s the announcement that in his incarnation, obedient life, sacrificial death, and resurrection Jesus Christ has accomplished redemption from sin, death, and hell and reconciled sinners with God.”

Mike Horton
Westminster-Cal “Theologian
TGC Article — “The Cult Of Christian Trumpism”
 One chief problem of R2K is it seeks to reduce Christianity to “the Gospel,” (Horton’s ‘good news’ above) as if Christianity has nothing else to say to Christians except as it pertains to learning that Christ will receive and save sinners. Mikey engages in serious reductionism as to what the Scriptures fully mean by “salvation.” Salvation is NOT limited to justification and no more than that. Doubtless “the Gospel” is the centerpiece of Christianity but to suggest, as R2K consistently does, that Christianity = the Gospel and individual salvation is a gross reductio ad absurdum. So, while the good news, narrowly defined is certainly not a Christian society or any political system as Mikey says, that doesn’t mean that the good news of Christianity does not multiply so that it has far-reaching implications that touch the issue of Christian social order, or Christian political systems bringing salvation to those cultural institutions. It does not mean that the salvation found in the Gospel pronouncement is limited to individuals. While the Gospel in its saving power is never less than the salvation of individuals from sin, the Gospel in its saving power is always more than the salvation of individuals from sin.For R2K the individual “soul” is saved but the salvation has no visible effect on society or culture. Instead R2K soteriology results in the saved “believer” retreating to a position outside society (like a monk) waiting for the destruction of the social order. R2K yields a Gnostic salvation of the soul. Thus we see that the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of R2K is hyper individual to the point of being atomistic. We might say that for all practical purposes it is Baptistic. Individuals get saved but the whole idea of covenantal categories that include children in salvation is negated by R2K’s insistence that the families can not be Christian since family life lies in the common realm and not in the grace realm. Listen to former President of Westminster-Cal. Dr. Robert Godfrey, take Dr. David Van Drunen (DVD) to the woodshed on DVD’s insistence that families could not be Christian,

“Is the family a common institution in every way? It seems to me that the Bible say’s “no, it is not a common institution in every way.” If it were a common institution in every way how could the Apostle Paul talk about the children of belivers as ‘holy?’” Children, it seems to me, must be seen on a Two Kingdoms approach, as Dr. VanDrunen expresses it as a cultural product of a common grace institution, and cultural products of common grace institution are never taken over into the new heavens and the new earth.”

R2K’s denial then that families can be Christian and so spoken of as “saved” is a denial of covenantal categories. Next, in terms of soteriology, while Reformed theology has typically taught that God’s salvation is cosmic so that as salvation comes to peoples and nations so it comes to their Institutions, cultures, and civilizations. R2K denies all of this insisting that salvation is only personal, individual, and private.

Dr. R. Scott Clark, another R2K pop theologian also has a problem with the idea that salvation can be spoken on in anything but an individual sense.

“We might speak of a fourth view: grace transforming nature cosmically beyond redemption. The great question is this: what is the biblical warrant for speaking and thinking this way? Practically, what does it mean to speak of transforming softball or orchestral music or any other cultural endeavor? Why cannot softball simply be what it is, recreation? What is distinctively Christian about “Christian art” or “Christian history” or Christian math”? I understand that the rhetoric is sacrosanct (a shibboleth, as it were) but what does it signify? What are the particulars?”

Here R2K Clark is struggling with the idea that grace has a salvific effect on anything but individuals leading to those other things being transformed. R2K Clark objects to the idea of grace transforming nature (and so culture) preferring instead to say that grace renews nature in salvation. Clark desires to keep the renewing power of grace constrained to humans as it pertains to their salvation. However, this seems to be a constrained view of reality. After all, it is grace renewed and saved people who are the ones who create culture (an embodiment of nature). If grace renews nature in salvation then grace is going to renew everything that those salvifically renewed people are going to create in culture. One simply can’t have grace renewing nature in salvation without that renewal getting into everything the renewed and salvation visited person touches.  The products of culture, after all, don’t come into being apart from the renewed or unrenewed people who create them.

Instead of seeing salvation as only personal, individual, and private as R2K Horton sees it listen to the way that salvation and its effects was spoken of in other generations by other men of God;

“A Christian has no right to separate his life into two realms… to say the Bible is good for Sunday, but this is a week-day question, or the Scriptures are right in matters of religion, but this is a matter of business or politics. God reigns over all, everywhere. His will is the supreme law. His inspired Word, loyally read will inform us of His will in every relation and act of life, secular as well as religious; and the man is a traitor who refuses to walk therein with scrupulous care. The Kingdom of God includes all sides of human life, and it is a Kingdom of absolute righteousness. You are wither a loyal subject, or a traitor. When the King comes, how will He find you doing?”

A.A. Hodge
19th Century Reformed Theologian

“We not only claim our rightful place among the commonwealths of education but we have a definitely imperialistic program. No mere Monroe doctrine will suffice. We are out to destroy—albeit with spiritual weapons only and always—all our competitors. We do not recognize them equals but regard them as usurpers. Carthage must be destroyed.”          Cornelius Van Til

The problem with R2K’s soteriology is that it is a constrained and limited salvation that is not to extend beyond the boundaries of the individual. Another way to say this is that R2K’s soteriology is without effect except as that effect impacts personal and individual categories. One has to question if such a salvation is really salvation. The Reformed understanding of salvation has always been that individuals being saved bear the effects of that salvation in everything they put their hands to. The saved become the aroma of Christ in all to which God calls them. The saved, being a people characterized as those people who take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ (II Cor. 10:5) bring the impact of their salvation on family life, education, law, politics, arts, politics and everything else. Can salvation really be salvation when it is constrained, as R2K constrains it, so that its effects are disallowed?

What R2K does to arrive at this consequence free salvation is that they cut off the office of Jesus Christ as King from the office of Jesus Christ as our great High Priest. All orthodox Christians concur with the idea that Christ as our great High Priest saves us from our personal and individual sins. Praise God for so great a salvation. However, our salvation is also related to Jesus in His office as our great liege Lord. As our High Priest Christ has saved us from our sins, and as our Great High King Christ has saved us to be warriors in Christ’s Kingdom seeking to bring the effects of our salvation to everything wherein God has assigned us in our lives so that our families, careers, and every other matter we pursue finds the grace of salvation transforming nature. R2K shrinks the domain of the office of Christ as King relating to our salvation so that Christ’s Kingship governs only our personal individual lives. R2K’s Christianity makes their converts nice people (except to those who don’t like R2K) whose Christian convictions wouldn’t threaten the queers reading at the Drag Queen Story Hour.

Read the quotes above again. Can you imagine any R2K fanboy ever saying anything like what is said in those quotes? Can you imagine Mike Horton, David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, or D. G. Hart saying with Van Til on the matter of education, “Carthage must be destroyed?” Of course you can’t imagine that and that is because R2K has a markedly different soteriology when considered in toto than Reformed theology has embraced for generations.

The salvation of the Reformed faith has always been a world conquering, and kingdom of God establishing salvation. The salvation of the Reformed faith has shut the mouths of impious magistrates, while at the same time gently nurturing God’s covenant children placed within our families. The salvation of the Reformed faith shaped the glorious thing we once called Christendom. The salvation of the Reformed faith is heroic.

That is not true of the salvation R2K offers.