“The family is grounded in God’s created work. It is re-affirmed in God’s common grace in the Noahic covenant. Marriage and family is just as legitimate in those terms for the unbeliever as it is for the believer. My own unbelieving neighbor is no more or no less married than I am because I am a believer. And I think the basic responsibilities of the family are also common in the sense of the mutual support of husband and wife. The procreating and the raising of children to be the next generation of those populating the earth. Those are common responsibilities that believers have with unbelievers. Of course we expect believers to understand those better but its not a unique responsibilities for believers.”
Dr. David Van Drunnen
Interview / Conversation with Dr. Robert Godfrey
1.) All because something is grounded in God’s creational work does not mean that it cannot be or is not taken up into His redemptive work. The Sabbath is an example. The Sabbath was established at Creation but clearly the Sabbath becomes a central part of God’s redemptive program. In the same way we see that while the family may indeed have been originally grounded in God’s creational work, like the Sabbath, the family now has a Redemptive impact. If this wasn’t true then how could St. Paul characterize Christian children as “Holy?” (I Cor. 7:14).
2.) Notice a move above that R2K is constantly guilty of. On one hand they insist that believers and unbelievers have in common many things (in the case above “Marriage and family”) but on the other hand they define the thing they have in common in a Christian fashion that is not necessarily owned as a definition by the non-Christian whom they have marriage and family in common. The believer and the unbeliever may indeed have marriage in common (maybe) but they certainly don’t necessarily have the marriage in common that Dr. Van Drunnen describes above. The unbeliever who is in a sodomite or lesbian marriage does not have marriage in common with the believer. The unbeliever who is in a polygamist or polyandry marriage does not have marriage in common with the unbeliever. The unbeliever who is a serial adulterer does not have marriage in common with the unbeliever. The man who routinely beats his wife and children is not in a marriage where there is mutual support of the man and his wife as Van Drunnen defines marriage as existing in the common kingdom.
The R2K fanboys are constantly doing this. They talk about what the believer and the unbeliever have in common and then they define that area which is common based upon Christian convictions. This habit really does end up destroying their whole argumentation because if the area in common between the believer and unbeliever really isn’t existing as common then can we really say that the believer and the unbeliever have these common areas in common?
What Dr. VanDrunnen (DVD) and the other R2K fanboys have done, in terms of their common kingdom concept, is that they have taken the common kingdom categories and they have defined them with Biblical parameters. Yes, the believer and unbeliever have monogamous marriage in common — a marriage that fits the description as given by DVD above but only because the unbeliever is acting inconsistently with his own worldview. If the believer and the unbeliever have things in common it is only because of the fortuitous inconsistency of the unbeliever to live consistently with his presuppositions. It is not because the unbeliever and believer have these naturally in common. Let Dr. Van Drunnen go back to the Utopian project that was New Harmony Indiana in the 19th century where the men had all women in common and the let him tell me that the believer and unbeliever have marriage in common.
3.) It is true that marriage is not a unique responsibility for the believer, but it is also true the Christian marriage is a unique responsibility for the believer. As stated in #2 DVD and the R2K fanboys presuppose a Christian worldview and then argue that the unbeliever has in common everything except the Church and so is responsible to carry those common things out in a mutual manner with the non-Christian as if God’s sanctificational reality makes no difference between believer and unbeliever.
All this of this because DVD says that he is trying to avoid the polarization that comes with a non R2K approach to Christian theology. One is forced to ask, “Whatever happened to the Christian doctrine of the antithesis?” When I hear DVD moan about polarization what I hear is that the Christian is supposed to be just like the non-Christian in his marriage, in his politics, in his education, etc. We are living in a time where more polarization needs to exist as between Christian and non-Christian as the non-Christian lives increasingly consistent with his Christ hating presuppositions.
R2K as a “theology” is Roundup as sprayed on the visible Church. I have no doubt the R2K fanboys have the best of intentions. I also have no doubt that those good intentions pave the road to hell. They need to either repent or be cast out of the Reformed Church.
