“God alone is sovereign. His authority alone is absolute and universal. All men and spheres are subject to God. The civil magistrate derives his authority from God. Apart from divine institution and sanction, civil government has no right to exist. ‘The powers that be are ordained of God’ (Rom. 13:1). Since civil government derives its authority from God, it is responsible to God and therefore obligated to conduct its affairs in accordance with God’s will. The infallible revelation of his will God has deposited in the Scriptures. It will surely be granted that there is much in the Scriptures that has to do with the conduct of civil government. And this simply means that the Word of God bears upon civil authority with all the stringency that belongs to God’s Word.

“Furthermore, the Word of God reveals that Christ is head over all things, that he has been given all authority in heaven and in earth. The civil magistrate is under obligation to acknowledge this headship and therefore to conduct his affairs, not only in subjection to the sovereignty of God, but also in subjection to the mediatorial sovereignty of Christ, and must therefore obey his will as it is revealed for the discharge of that authority which the civil magistrate exercises in subjection to Christ. . . . To recede from this position or to abandon it, either as conception or as goal, is to reject in principle the sovereignty of God and of his Christ”

John Murray
Collected Writings of John Murray, Volume One: The Claims of Truth,
The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976 Valerie Murray, pp. 364-365.

At this link,

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2013/08/cigar-smoke-and-mirrors-and-tr.php

Dr. Carl Trueman (fan of the Cultural Marxist Edward Said) steps in it … again. For previous Trueman “stepping in it” see

https://ironink.org/2008/07/a_brief_look_at_trueman_s_look_at_a_refo/

and note the links in the comments.

In Trueman’s most recent offering he aligns himself with the burgeoning R2K movement and seeks to land a left, right combination to the mid-section and jaw of Abraham Kuyper, Kuyperians, and Transformationalist theology in general. I must admit from the outset that I’ve never been a big fan of Dr. Trueman and his recent offering reminds me again why. If he spent as much time lambasting the idolatry of Statism as he does routinely bashing other Christians we might get on better but alas his efforts at Transformationalism are only pointed towards his fellow Christians.

The main problem I have with Dr. Trueman’s article is that it is inherently contradictory and self defeating. Here we have a prominent Christian in the Church exerting all his effort in his column to transform the believers in transformationalism into admitting that transformationalism is not a biblical position. Carl seeks to transform other Christians who believe in transformation to quit believing in transformation. Reading his article is like reading a Cattle Rancher write on the evils of eating steak, or listening to a lecture by a Libertarian on the dangers of individualism. One wonders why Carl is even writing about this subject? Doesn’t the insistence to be done with transformationalism require him to cease with trying to transform the transformationalists into no longer being transformationalist? Dr. Trueman’s article is a classic example of the author hoisting his own petard. One almost next expects Dr. Trueman to create a curriculum for a new Seminary course entitled, “Transforming the Transformationalists as Pursued by the Anti-transformationalist Transformationlists.”

Of course there is more to be disillusioned by then just this in Carl’s piece, though admittedly the above paragraph alone destroys any necessity to take Dr. Trueman seriously. There is also the curiously derisive statement about concerns of the singular ‘Christian Worldview.’ Now, I’m glad to admit that I may not be understanding something here but that sure sounds like it could be a swipe at the idea that there is such a thing as singular truth claims. After all a Christian Worldview is only concerned with teasing out truth claims. Is Dr. Trueman suggesting here that truth is poly-chromatic? Is it possible, according to the good Doctor, that there are many different Christian worldviews that are all equally valid? We used to call that relativism. I’m sure there is some new academic term for it now. Maybe “poly-symphonic Theology?”

Another howler in Carl’s piece is his attack on Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper, like all men, had feet of clay, but the very point that Carl attacks Abraham at is Abraham’s success in effecting Dutch culture in a wholesome direction. According to Dr. Carl, Abraham was a failure in the early 20th century precisely because he is not a success in the early 21st century. Now that is the kind of reasoning that only a Doctor of the Church can arrive at. Maybe this is just as case of Professor envy? But really folks … are we to actually believe that Amsterdam’s harlotry today is proof of the failure of Kuyper’s theology? That’s like saying that the harlotry of the PCUSA today is proof of the failure of B. B. Warfield’s theology. And this chap teaches Seminary students?

Next up is Carl’s bemoaning that a PCA Pastor can’t find rental space because of the PCA’s stand on sodomite marriage. This complaint is akin to some “learned pundit” writing in the 1st century about the obvious problems of St. Paul because he keeps getting thrown out of synagogues. Why if the PCA and St. Paul would just be more reasonable regarding their teaching they wouldn’t have any problem at all at finding rental space or in constantly getting thrown out of synagogues.

Next we have to endure Carl’s pronouncement that there is not one place in the whole country where culture is being transformed at any point where it really counts. That is a statement crafted in and with hubris. How could our good Doctor know such a thing to be true? As he traversed every nook and cranny of the whole country to catalog this as truth? Secondly, even if Carl’s observation were true would it mean that because we are failing we shouldn’t even try? Is current failure proof that future success is hopeless. Mercy … I’m glad that Edison or the Wright Brothers didn’t live by that insightful little proverb, never mind a Calvin or a Machen. Finally, on this score we might ask whether or not we are to take the providence of God into account on these matters. God, in His wisdom, gives and withholds Reformation and so transformation as He sees fit. That God may withhold Reformation for a generation or for several generations doesn’t disprove the reality of Reformation or transformation when God see’s fit to grant it. Could it be that we’ve been living so long without Reformation that suddenly we are concluding that God is never going to give it again so we just need to get used to living with the moral sewage of Amsterdams, Londons and Philadelphias?

Carl then informs us that Tim Keller is the “transformationists’ best shot today.” I don’t know whether to cry in my beer or laugh up my sleeve.

However, I must agree with Carl at one point. I agree that much which passes as transformation is only so much folly. Much of what Keller accomplishes is not transformation in the slightest but just accomplishment of giving a Christian patina to endeavors that are not particularly Christian. (Consider Keller’s recent book “Generous Justice,” to see a Christian overlay put on top of soft Marxist presuppositions.) On this point I give Carl kudos. Much of that which passes as Christian transformation needs desperately transformed in a Christian direction.

Carl ends his manifesto against transformation with an amillennial flourish. In his final paragraph he gives us a Christian Hee Haw version of,

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

It needs to be said in ending that there really is no surprise in Carl finally casting his lot with the R2K boys, since R2K is nothing but militant and “consistent” amillennialism. Carl is amill so what should we expect from an amill except an attempt to transform the transformationalists in an “anti-transformationist” direction?

“Those who hide behind the idea that the church should never speak to political issues have missed the scriptural accounts of what we would call prophetic criticism….

…The principle reason for the existence of any government is to maintain, sustain, and protect the sanctity of human life. When the state fails to do that, it has become demonized. And it is the sacred duty of the church and of every Christian to voice opposition to it….

..It is time for Christians to give prophetic criticism to the church, specifically those churches that support abortion on demand or remain silent on this major issue…

..When the church is silent in the midst of the a holocaust, she ceases to be a real church. Wherever human dignity is under attack, it is the duty of the church and of the Christian to rise up in protest against it. This is not a political matter, and neither is it a temporary matter. It is not a matter over which Christians may disagree. It is a matter of life and death, the results of which will count forever.”

R.C. Sproul
Tabletalk, April 2013

Dr. Sproul has given us a couple principles here.

First, Dr. Sproul has told us that the Church, as the Church, must speak out whenever the demonized State pursues an agenda that is contrary to the revealed norms of Scripture. Of course this principle is exactly contrary to R2K, with its insistence that the Church must not speak out on common realm issues. Dr. Sproul goes as far to say that such a responsibility is a “sacred duty.” R2K denies that this “sacred duty” ever exists.

Second, Dr. Sproul has told us that the R2K principle of Churches not speaking out against a demonized state are Churches that themselves must be spoken out against. Churches that employ the R2K principle of “silence on common realm issues” are churches wherein prophetic criticism must be raised against. In short, such churches are to be denounced.

Third, notice the mention of the “demonized state.” I would suggest that implicit in such an idea is the fact that the State is not common in the sense that it serves no religious agenda. Obviously if a state can become demonized, it is also the case that a state can be “Christian.”