“Were this version of Lutheran Theology (the paradigm of R2Kt virus – BLM) taken to its logical conclusion it would deprive the gospel of any intellectual content and the law of any moral content. The biblical narrative and theological reflection on it would not be given any epistemological status to engage secular learning. It would champion a form of Lutheran quietism in the realm of education. Much as German Lutheranism in the 1930’s separated the two kingdoms (government under law separated from Christianity under the gospel) and allowed the Nazi movement to go unchecked by appeal to an intellectual and moral content of the Christian vision, so this approach would allow modern secular learning to go unchallenged by that vision.”
Robert Benne
Quality With Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith w/ Their Religious Traditions — pg. 133
The Two Kingdom theology that informs the R2Kt virus of Westminster West offers no answer for a unified theory of knowledge. Following the implications of R2Kt viral thinking there would be little if any possibility of building University if only for the reason that knowledge that obtains in the realm of grace is not the same kind of knowledge that is obtained in the the common realm. Instead of Universities we are left with Multiversities.
The dualism incipient in R2Kt viral thinking creates two different kinds of knowledge. One kind of knowledge is anchored in right reason. A second kind of knowledge anchored in revelation and faith. But in keeping with classical dualism R2Kt viral thinking offers no answer as to how these two kinds of knowledge can be reconciled. When such a situation obtains resolution must be arrived at in one way or another, if even only in an unofficial or pragmatic sense. The possible resolutions, it seems to me, reduce to two. The first possible option was seen in history when the Church was in the ascendancy. Here the ‘spiritual’ truths triumphed over the truth of reason. When the state has been in the ascendancy the option has been for the truths of reason to triumph over ‘spiritual’ truths.
Of course another consequence of R2Kt viral thinking is that different realms are created where the different knowledges hold sway. The realm that right reason rules is the secular realm. The realm that revelation rules is the gracious realm. This creates another dualism where the former realm is ruled by the age to come and the latter realm is ruled by this present wicked age. This viral way of thinking has the ‘now’ front loaded in the realm of grace with the ‘not yet’ being overwhelmingly predominant in the secular realm. The result of this is not only a dualism between a secular and gracious realm, and a dualism between two different kinds of knowledge but also it largely turns the ‘now, not yet’ into a dualistic program.
R2Kt seeks to resolved this by offering Christ’s Lordship as the means by which unity is found between their dualistic realms. The problem here though is that Christ’s Lordship is dualistically divided between a Lordship that is explicitly revealed (for the realm of grace) and a Lordship that is, at best, only subtly suggested (for the realm of grace). Christ’s own Lordship is thus put into a kind of dualism mode. There clearly is no way whereby these differing forms and expressions of Christ’s Lordship can be reconciled.
Since such a theory cannot work in the real world the effect has been, as Benne notes,that a kind of retreatism prevails. This in turn allows the most vile of cultures to flower.
One can see how it might be possible for R2Kt viral thinking works in a culture largely influenced by Christian categories. I can only see it as being an unmitigated disaster when present in a culture where Christianity is in eclipse.
