Kline Klatch

Recently, in the comments section David R. from Fla. has been mildly defending R2K theory by quoting Dr. Meredith Kline. I thought I would interact a little with David’s pull quotes. I hope to help pull back the curtain on the problems with this thinking.

Some people might remember Dr. Kline as the man who built a straw man out of Dr. Greg Bahnsen’s Theonomic position and then proceeded to destroy the straw man he had built, insuring before he wrote his unseemly attack piece that Dr. Bahnsen would not be able to respond to his attack piece in the same journal in which Dr. Kline attacked Dr. Bahnsen.

David R. writes,

In Kingdom Prologue, Kline has a very helpful discussion of the common grace city and its relationship to the kingdoms of God and Satan. He describes two aspects of the common grace city, that of religious antithesis and common grace, as follows:

David R. then quotes Dr. Meredith Kline,

“There is in the city a spiritual malignancy, the fatal consequence of the usurpation of the world kingdom by Satan and the prostitution of the city to demonic service. In the lurid expose found in the apocalyptic mode of Scripture, the satanically perverted urban power structure is seen as a beast savagely turned against the citizens of the city who refuse its mark…. The victims are not those disadvantaged in things temporal. It is rather a matter of religious antithesis, an ancient diabolical enmity. It is against the redeemed of the Lamb that the controlling powers of the world kingdom direct their hellish hostility.

“Yet in the face of the bestial aspect assumed by the city and the ensuing religious warfare that rages within it,
Scripture affirms the legitimacy of the city. One thinks of the historical context of Romans 13. The legitimacy of the city is affirmed not because the bestializing of the city is a relatively late historical development. As a matter of fact, the Beast-power is not just a phenomenon of the present church age. The founder of the city was himself the slayer of the first martyr-prophet…. Our positive affirmation of the city structure is not based on a mere chronological priority of positive to negative factors in the make-up of the city. It is due rather to the fact that fundamental structural legitimacy is a matter of divine ordinance, not of the nature of man’s administration of the institution. The frightful religious tension of the city belongs to the story of the apostate direction taken by the city potentates and should not be allowed to obscure the character of the city as a structure founded on the common grace ordinance of the Creator.

1.) Dr. Kline would have us believe that the city (common realm) is prostituted to a demonic service that is a beast that is turned against the redeemed of the lamb who are to endure the hellish hostility of an ancient diabolical enmity and yet despite the fact that these controlling powers have usurped the world kingdom so that common realm is implacably opposed to those who will not receive its mark Dr. Kline’s followers would have us believe that some kind of principled pluralism in the common realm can make it so Christians and non-Christians can function harmoniously despite all this hostility?

Well, I suppose some people can reconcile that position.

2.) Note that Dr. Kline mentions in these brief paragraphs both the idea of “religious warfare that rages within the common realm,” and again, “the frightful religious tension of the city.” This is fundamentally important to critiquing the disciples of Kline (the grand-daddy of R2K). Dr. Kline admits of this religious warfare that rages in the city and yet the disciples of Kline insist that the common realm, at least for Christians, is a religious free zone. Christians, according to the R2K acolytes are not to appeal to their Christianity (their religion) in the common realm but instead they are to appeal to natural law. I’ve even had one R2K supporter tell me that it is only natural religion that is to shape the common realm since Christianity was never intended to be a social order factor. Many of the R2K fellows communicate this same thing when they tell you that “there is no such thing as Christian culture,” or when they rail against the idea of Christendom. So, here is the question. If, in R2K thinking, Christianity is not to shape or impact the common realm, which is instead shaped by common grace and ruled by common law, how can it be that there will be “religious warfare that rages within” the common realm, and how can there be a “frightful religious tension?” If the common realm is common and Christianity does not exist in a public square sense in the common realm then whence this frightful religious tension? Whence this religious warfare that rages within the common realm?

Here we have one of the R2K disciples quoting Dr. Meredith Kline and yet Kline assumes to be the case what R2K insists can’t be the case.

3.) Dr. Kline refers to the city (common realm) as “bestial.” By what standard are we defining the common realm as bestial? Naturally that standard has to be the Scripture. Dr. Kline, looking to the standard of the Scripture, insists that the common realm is “bestial.” So, if the common realm is “bestial” it seems like it would be fair to say that the common realm is also evil. (Bestial and evil do kind of go together.) However, the R2K lads insist on telling us that Dr. Kline’s bestial common realm is NOT evil — not bestial — but rather is merely “common.” The common realm can not have in it a Christian culture the R2K lads tell us and yet their mentor, Dr. Kline tells us that the common realm must remain decidedly non-Christian. (After all, if the common realm remain bestial in hardly seems a stretch to insist that a bestial realm yields non-Christian cultures.)

The reason this is so important is that it was the Anabaptists who insisted that the realms outside of their communes were inherently evil. Dr. Kline’s position, like the R2K position, does sound Anabaptist at this point. Note that Dr. Kline seems to be saying that the common realm is animated by “the Beast power.” One wonders how that common realm can be considered common if it is, by definition, animated, shaped, influenced by “the Beast power?”

Dr. Kline continues

“Over against every tendency to identify the city at its essential core with those demonic powers that seize and manipulate the power of the state we must assert the biblical testimony to the goodness of this postlapsarian institution as an appointment of God’s common grace, beneficial and remedial in its functions.”

So, despite all the apocalyptic language earlier used to describe the common realm, the goodness of this common realm is asserted. This is akin to Alexander Solzhenitsyn writing about the horrors of the Gulag Archipelago and then concluding by asserting the goodness of the gulag.

Biblical Christianity, contrary to R2K dualisms, does believe that there is a present evil age that is every bit as wicked as Dr. Kline describes. However, Biblical Christianity doesn’t teach that the present evil age is good or dualistically permanent. Biblical Christianity teaches that this present wicked age is being incrementally pushed back by the age to come that was inaugurated by the coming and triumph of the Lord Christ. God’s Christ, being victorious over this present wicked age, and having bound the strong man is now, by the work of His Spirit and through the Spirit given obedience of the Church and through His providential orchestration of all things, is going from victory unto victory. The age to come is not yet in all of its manifested authority and will not be until the consummation of all things but the fact that the age to come is not yet seen in all its coming brilliance does not mean that it can not, will not, or should not be incrementally and increasingly turning the desert of the present wicked age into the Oasis of the already present and ever increasingly present age to come.

God’s common grace is seen in the reality that the present wicked age is not perfectly consistent with its own Christ hating presuppositions. God’s common grace keeps the present wicked age from nihilistic destruction so that the age to come, of our Lord Christ’s delegated authority to the Church, has the time and opportunity to be about the mission of teaching the nations to observe all things so that age to come goes from glory unto glory over this present wicked age which resists it at every turn.

Dr. Kline continues,

“Summing up then, the meaning or essential identity of the postlapsarian city is not found in identification either with the kingdom of Satan or with the kingdom of God. Nor is it to be explained in terms of a dialectical seesawing between the demonic and the divine. This divinely appointed institution exists within the sphere of common grace, which is the corollary, the counterpoise, of the common curse. The fundamental shape of the city is the resultant of the interplay of these two correlative principles of divine action, a divine wrath and a divine grace that restrains that wrath according to the measure of sovereign divine purpose. Such is the biblical conceptual framework for defining the basic meaning of the city.” (pp. 168-172)

Dr. Kline has thus given us two dualisms.

1.) The first dualism is the dualism between the City of God and the City of man. (Let’s not even venture into the fact that Dr. Kline’s followers uses these in a non-Augustinian sense.)

2.) The second dualism is the dualism that is found in the second duality of the first dualism. In the City of Man Dr. Kline has suggested that there is a dualism that exists between the ying of common grace and the yang of common curse.

Dr. Kline says that the essential identity of the postlapsarian city is not found in identification either with the kingdom of Satan or with the kingdom of God. Another way of saying that is that the postlapsarian city is found in identification with both the Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God. After all, remember the descriptors earlier that was given to us by Dr. Kline. The City of Man was “Bestial.” The City of man had a spiritual malignancy. The City of man The World Kingdom had been usurped by Satan and the city of Man was prostituted to Demonic service.

After saying all this, how can Dr. Kline turn around and say “the postlapsarian city is not found in identification either with the Kingdom of Satan or with the Kingdom of God?

Yet at the same time Dr. Kline now says that this city of man is a divinely appointed institution. This is why I say that Dr. Kline is saying not only saying that the City of man’s identity is not to be found either with the Kingdom of Satan or the Kingdom of God, but Kline is also saying that the city of man’s identity is found both in the Kingdom of Satan and in the Kingdom of God.

Notice also, that with Kline’s assertion that the city of man is not to be identified with the Kingdom of Satan we are still left asking, “Where exactly is the Kingdom of Satan in Radical Two Kingdom theology?

Finally, note that Dr. Kline can deny his creation of a dialectic in the City of man all he wants but that is exactly what he has given us. In a very Hegelian manner Dr. Kline has given us, for the City of Man, a thesis which is the Kingdom of God and a antithesis which is the Kingdom of Satan and Dr. Kline has left the synthesis to only be arrived at with the consummation. It strikes me then, that the city of man for those who accept this thinking (R2K), is a Manichean reality. The common realm is a place where ultimate good and ultimate evil are perfectly counter-poised so that neither will have conquest over the other. This is perfectly consistent with Amilliennial eschatology that insists that good and evil grow together and evil only begins to triumph finally on the brink of Christ’s return.

Now keep in mind that this is the quote that was given to me by David R. I have only dealt with that quote which I was given.

Now Comes An Ending

Now comes an ending of our faith
And Pastors have led us thus
Positioned as Masters, they’ve wrought thinking disasters
And have been the undoing of all of us
Now comes an ending of our faith

Now comes an ending of our People
And the Clan has brought us here
Lust on demand, so unable to withstand
The assault by pagans and queers
Now comes an ending of our People

Now comes an ending of our Kingdom,
And the State has led us thus
immigrant rate, without debate
but by guile and blunderbuss
Now comes an ending of our Kingdom

Now comes an ending of our money
And the Banksters have brought this end
The ethic of Gangsters, the practice of pranksters
Their villainy doth evil portend
Now comes an ending of our money

Now comes the end of the West
And our treason has brought us here
revolt against reason, treachery in each season
Against God in whom no longer we fear
Now comes the end of the West

So, rejoice in these failings and ends
For God makes all things anew
His Name is at stake, He works all for His sake
There is nothing He can not renew
So, rejoice in these failing and ends

Bites On Holy Week

In the cleansing of the Temple Jesus is communicating that the Spiritual core of a people (in the Jew’s case, dead in their sins) is more important than their temporal corporeal condition (slavery under Rome) but notice that in order to cleanse the cult (Spiritual) Jesus takes a very corporeal whip and kicks their very corporeal backsides. The Spiritual is more important but where the importance of the Spiritual is rightly placed it will have corporeal (physical) instantiations. Jesus did not drive the Banksters out of the Temple with Spiritual whips.

It is a good insight to note that Jesus shows us with the cleansing of the Temple that in order for a culture (corporeal instantiation of the cult) to be set aright it is the cult (spiritual) that must first be cleansed. That He cleanses first the Spiritual realm by means of corporeal tools teaches us the good insight that lauding the priority of the Spiritual apart from physical action is incongruent.

Jesus drives the Banksters out of the Temple because they were sullying God’s honor and reputation in God’s own house. God’s house was to be a “house of prayer” but they had turned into a “den of thieves.” In the Banksters iniquity they had replaced the Spirituality that was required of God’s people with a Spirituality of greed, avarice and envy and the Bankster spirituality, and how their spirituality was incarnated in their legal thievery in God’s house, is exactly what Jesus opposed with His spirituality as it was incarnated in whips, overturned tables, and righteous indignation that God’s house of prayer was being turned into one of the earlier versions of the Federal Reserve.

The Third Word — II

Scripture — Ex. 20:7
Subject — God
Theme — Not taking God’s name in vain

Proposition — The requirement to not take God’s name in vain should cause us to consider carefully all of our speech and living.

Purpose — Therefore, having considered, not taking God’s name in vain, we should rejoice that Christ is our righteousness in this matter, and so live with God’s glory before us.

Intro

The “Thou Shalt Not-ness” of the law. 8 of the 10 are cast in terms of “Thou Shalt Not,” and of the other two (Sabbath and Parents) the keeping of the Sabbath is defined largely by the “not working (Ex. 20:10, Dt. 5:14).” So of the 10 words 9 are cast in this mode of Prohibition.

We have to keep in mind that the law was given not only to inform and regulate personal individual behavior but it was also given in order to function as the law order for God’s people in their culture and social order. In light of this it is interesting that God gave the law primarily with a prohibitive character. There is sound reason for this.

First, the prohibitive (the Thou Shalt Not-ness) of the law deals with particular wicked behavior. Murder is prohibited or Adultery is prohibited. These are very concrete areas that are well defined for Magistrates to regulate. The law thus has a modest function in terms of how it operates in a social order or culture and so because the law has well defined limits so the State has well defined limits as to what it can and cannot do. The State, as God’s enforcement agency is thus limited to regulating concrete and specific evils and so is not allowed to control all men.

The second advantage of this negative character of the Law (the Thou Shalt Not-ness of it) is related to the first. As it is the case that the law is defined, for the social order, in a negative cast, liberty is encouraged. The State can control specific evil but it can not control that which man legitimately does. For example, theft is excluded but the Magistrate can not meddle in the area of honestly acquired property. As another example when the law prohibits Blasphemy and false witness, it assures that all other forms of speech are beyond control and regulation.

Law cast in terms of prohibition (as opposed to being cast in terms of “Thou shalts”) restricts the function of the Magistrate to very precise areas. God’s law cast in this prohibition mode serves not only to regulate man in very specific ways but also it serves to regulate the State. The State is only to enter in to control what God calls evil. And it is interesting that much of God’s law does not have outside enforcement mechanism. In those cases God is the one who enforces His own law.

Remember, at this point we are looking at the “Thou Shalt Not” character of the law. We are asking the question, “Why does God’s Law come to us in terms of these “Thou Shalt Nots.” And the answer is that such an approach is productive of liberty and provides sets parameters for the Controlling agency which is delegated to regulate these very specific evils.

If the law was cast in terms of “Thou Shalts,” (what might be called “positive law”) the result would be, not merely the regulating of evil, but the result would be a far more expansive regulating and control of men. For example, in our own Constitution we find people trying to create this “positive law” by invoking the “general welfare” clause. The idea of “promoting the general welfare” is used to drive through all kinds of legislation for the “good of the people.” The danger of a social order then, set up on the idea of positive law, is that it ends up deconstructing individual personal liberty in favor of a omni-competent Nanny State delegated to control men in the direction of what it believes are the best “Thou Shalts” for the people. God did not give His People, for their social order organization, positive law, but He gave them negative law that very specific evil should be outlawed and so that those functioning within the law would have personal liberty within the constraints of that negative law.

As we come to the third commandment again we might ask what is specifically forbidden.

Last week we dealt w/ the 3rd commandment in a general sense but what is specifically forbidden here?

I.) We would say that what the 3rd commandment forbids is profaneness, and what it requires is Hallowing God’s Name

Now it is interesting that the word pro-fane comes from the Latin pro (before) and fanum (temple). Profanity then is all speech, action, and living, that happens before or outside where God dwells. For the Christian, the earth is the Lord’s footstool and so all falseness in speech and action is a violating of the third commandment. To violate the 3rd commandment is to use in a unholy fashion the Holy name of God and His Holy things, especially we might say in the way of swearing false oaths in or under His name.

Oaths are serious matters that have fallen on hard times. Speaking to a judge friend recently he told me that people routinely lie under oath and are only caught at it a very small % of the time.

So … since oaths have fallen on hard times we would say that an oath is swearing with appeal to the name of God, who serves as witness that a person is speaking the truth or intends to fulfill a vow.

We can swear an oaths of assertion in court, to confirm the truthfulness of our statements (I swear to the tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth SO HELP ME GOD).

Or we can swear a promissory oath, a oath of office, obligating us to a careful exercise of our office or calling (e.g. presidents, members of parliament, judges, military oaths etc.).

As Christians, even if we don’t directly invoke the name of God in our oaths, we are not free to take God’s name in vain in our promises, if only because we carry God’s name on us as His people.

So, if we testify in court, under oath, or if we serve in some office where we have taken oaths, we are duty bound before God to honor Him in our testimony or in our oaths.

For example, I have promised to uphold the three forms of confession. When I sign the form of subscription I am taking an oath to uphold these Confessions. If I do not speak out when the confessions are violated, I am not hallowing God’s name and am taking it in vain. When someone enters into the Military they say,

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Both in Church and in the civil realm we can clearly see that Oaths are not taken seriously. If they were taken seriously our social order would not be on the brink. But … God is not mocked, if a man will sow the wind in taking God’s name in vain he will reap the whirlwind in God’s response.

This casual dismissal of profanity … of taking God’s name in vain becomes both a personal and societal barometer that measures the health of a people and a society. The more men wander from God the more they will reveal their profaneness in a thousand different ways. Not only will language become coarsened but so will lifestyle. The more that men run away from Hallowing God’s name the more they will run toward profaning God’s name with all zeal. The more we forget God the more we will integrate into the void, and the more we will embrace a least common denominator civilization.

Christ Himself noted the special nature of God’s name in relation to the 3rd command when He taught us to pray that God’s name would be Hallowed. To Hallow God’s name is the opposite of taking His name in vain … of profaning God’s name.

II.) And Christ Himself hallowed God’s name being mindful of the third commandment,

Of course we already mentioned that the first request our Lord Christ taught us in the Lord’s Prayer was that God’s name might be “hallowed.” It should be our chief desire that God would pursue the Holiness of His name and our penultimate desire should be that in light of God’s hallowing of His name we should Hallow His name.

But Christ also was mindful of the third commandment when, during Holy Week, he could say,

27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

The Gospel reminds us that Christ died for our sins of blasphemy. Not only our blasphemy while dead in our sins and trespasses but also our taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain after being resurrected w/ Christ to newness of life. How many of us can hear a sermon like this and not be convicted of their own sin and failure in this regard? Do we really believe, that as Christians, that we Hallow God’s name perfectly? Do we really believe that we don’t fudge on our oaths and our living? Do we really believe that we adorn the name of God with all the comeliness and beauty it deserves?

In Christ’s death, Christ glorified the Father perfectly with the result that God’s name was vindicated and with the result that I do not have to pay for the sin of my constant profaning of God’s name and with the result that we as God’s people take seriously the charge to “not take God’s name in vain.” Because my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus and His righteousness, I am free to be increasingly obedient to hallow the name of God.

Conclusion

Re-cap

A Simple But Perspicuous Example Of Why Christian Young People Have No Business Going Into The US Military

It’s an Obama World… Gay Flag Flies at Afghan Base But the Christian Cross Is Banned

The US Military, like the Government schools, is opposed to the Christian faith, opposed to Jesus Christ, and opposed to Christians in as much as those Christians esteem the Christian faith and stand with Jesus Christ.

The photo makes it clear that while the US Military is in league with the Sodomite agenda (witness the Rainbow flag) it will have nothing to do with Christianity (witness the requirement to take down the Cross from the worship barracks). Now, the US Military and their civilian overlords have been insisting that they have been going soft on Christian symbols because they didn’t want to offend their Muslim “hosts” in the Middle East and yet Muslims are also typically offended by public displays supporting Sodomy. Yet, despite the US Military’s Muslim “hosts” being offended by sodomy the US Military still boldly flies the symbol of sodomy in the face of the Muslim Afghans.