We continue dissecting the honorable Rev. Lee.
“It’s important to begin this discussion with a note of charity. There is great diversity in how Christians answer questions of Christ and culture, because the New Testament says very little explicitly about the matter, and the questions raised are necessarily highly contextual, reflecting one’s particular time and place. We need therefore to hold loosely to our conclusions and applications in this area, and respect those in other times and places and other traditions with whom we disagree.
As a minister in the Reformed tradition, I answer these questions with a series of distinctions that aren’t often clearly understood in our day, so establishing a framework is important to avoid confusion.
The Reformed tradition begins by acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, but also makes careful distinction between how Christ rules in different spheres, or kingdoms.
First, Christ rules all the nations by his common grace. As Creator, all civil authorities are instituted and given by him (Romans 13:1), and the moral behavior of all men will be judged by him. Jesus does not administer this common grace kingdom to save, but to preserve the created order until the end of this age (Genesis 8:22) so that his redemptive work in the kingdom of grace may continue. The Law by which he rules in this realm is generally known through nature and our consciences, and it is sufficiently clear for all magistrates to punish evildoers by the sword (Romans 13:4).
1.) Those who are advancing a Heterodox position are always those who plead the loudest for “a note of charity.” This is merely the plea for “tolerance” wrapped up in Christianese. I’m all for “a note of charity,” in the non essentials (adiaphora), but what “Rev.” Lee is advocating is certainly not a matter of adiaphora. Rev. Lee, as we shall see, is advocating muting the Church’s voice in the face of the State’s invasion of the morals of her membership.
2.) “Rev.” Lee raises the issue of “contextualization” as a reason to go slow. Of course it was the ploy of Liberals and progressives to insist that contextualization required us to allow women in office. It is the ploy of Liberals and progressives to insist that contextualization requires us to affirm homosexual marriage. Contextualization has become one of the great levers by which the clear teaching of Scripture is overturned.
3.) When Lee recognizes that “Jesus Christ is Lord of all,” we might say that he says it with a lisp. You see for Lee, “Jesus Christ as Lord” means that Jesus is Lord enough to not be Lord in the common realm. We must recognize for Lee, and for all R2K, the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a spiritual (read — Platonic) reality that can not manifest itself in the common realm.
4.) The fact that Christ rules all the Nations by His common grace does not mean that Christ has no interest in seeing the Church, as Institution, being salt and light to the Nations. Nor does it mean that the Church’s witness ends at the common realm’s shore. The idea that since Christ rules all the Nation by His common grace therefore that means that Christ is not interested in His Church resisting the wickedness of the State is a position without precedent in Reformed Church History.
5.) Lee desires to cut the Noahic covenant off from the covenant of Grace so that he can posit a dualism between a realm of grace (the Church) where Christ is explicitly Lord and a common realm wherein the possibility of being conditioned by Christianity is literally not possible. This is a very tenuous exegesis that has been repeatedly challenged. Consider O. Palmer Robertson’s words where the Noahic covenant is seen as having continuity with the covenant of grace as opposed to Lee’s attempt to create a dualism between the Noahic covenant (establishing a common realm) and the covenant of grace (establishing a grace realm.)
“God does not relate to his creation through Noah apart from his on-going program of redemption. Even the provision concerning the ordering of seasons must be understood in the framework of God’s purposes respecting redemption. . . . The covenant with Noah binds together God’s purposes in creation with his purposes in redemption. Noah, his seed, and all creation benefit from this gracious relationship.”
Robertson continues: “A second distinctive of the covenant with Noah relates to the particularity of God’s redemptive grace.” This we see in Genesis 6:8: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” In other words, “From the covenant with Noah it becomes quite obvious that God’s being ‘with us’ involves not only an outpouring of his grace on his people; it involves also an outpouring of his wrath on the seed of Satan.”
Again, the reason it is important to overturn Lee’s confusion on this point is that Lee’s whole article stands or falls on his ability to create a dualism via the Noahic covenant. If the Noahic covenant has continuity with the covenant of Grace then Lee’s insisting that the Church must be mute in the common realm cannot stand.
6.) Like all Radical Two Kingdom advocates Lee insists that Natural Law is to be preferred over God’s revealed law as it pertains to the common realm. There is no place in Scripture where it is taught that we are to prefer Natural law (whatever that may be) over revealed law in the common realm. This is all pure hypothetical theorizing on Lee’s part.
