1.) David Van Drunen, the malevolent genius behind R2K was trained at a Jesuit Educational Institution where he learned the classical Roman Catholic philosophical divide between nature and grace. He then, quite obviously took that Thomist divide learned at his Jesuit Roman Catholic school and created a Reformed expression of it in his creation of R2K.
Personally, I am of the conviction that one cannot be Christian and R2K even if their Reformed soteriology is perfect.
2.) R2K teaches that Education, Law, Politics, Art, etc. are all common realm phenomena that are ruled by Natural law. However, if one pauses to think about this just a moment one realizes that these (Education, Law, Politics, Art, Family, etc.) are abstractions. These things do not exist concretely apart from people as Educators, Lawyers/Judges, Politicians/legislators, Artists. So, R2K, concretely speaking is teaching that men as lawyers/judges, men as Educators, men as Artists, etc. are not to be governed by God’s revealed Word. These flesh and blood people are not to be guided in their respective fields by God’s special revelation but instead are, in agreement and consultation with concrete Hindu Educators, Jew Judges, Atheist Artists, and Satanist Legislators to come to a consensus on natural law ao that they as Christians can be governed by in these respective fields.
Such Princeton Tower Club “thinking” is shocking and yet our pulpits are filled today with morons who are touting this god-forsaken theory as truth.
3.) R2K is a theology perfectly cast to avoid confrontation with Idolatry and false religions. Whereas earlier Missionaries would challenge the false gods in public demonstrations R2K says, “The idols in the common realm are not to be addressed and defied by the Institutional Church since that would be to get clergy out of their lanes.”
R2K is heresy. When is some denomination going to stand up and say “R2K is heresy?”
4.) R2K teaches that the Jurisdiction of King Jesus and His revealed word is limited to the Church realm. Any Jurisdiction that King Jesus has in the common realm is present by a common grace, a common providence, and a common (Natural) law. R2K thus is teaching that in the common realm Jesus has delegated His rule to an abstraction called Natural law.
5.) R2K teaches that there exists a statist orthodoxy as taught in Government schools that the Church Institutional should not raise its voice against even when the statist orthodoxy is contrary to Christian orthodoxy.
6.) R2K loves to talk about a common kingdom where people of all faiths meet and have social intercourse around a common set of shared values as all based on Natural law.
However, the problem here is increasingly clear. As sodomites are now marrying and adopting children, as queers show up for Drag Queen story hour to read to our children, as women have to compete against biological men in women’s sports, where is this so-called common realm where Christians can enter into a common kingdom?
Clearly, the R2K project has never existed in a time where its fruit is seen to be more absent. Natural law as defined by R2K as a governing mechanism upon which law orders for whole peoples has never more gloriously failed than the failure it is undergoing now and yet there is David Van Drunen, Mike Horton, D. G. Hart, and R. Scott Clark still thumping for it like they have concrete examples where R2K has worked as positioned in Christ-hating social orders. There they are all thumping for R2K like adolescents for the first time having a young pretty thing speak pretty things in their ears.
If this is true (and it is) why are R2K churches and ministers still being supported?
Get out, before you experience a Sodom and Gomorrah type of visitation from God.
7.) In the way that R2K treats the Bible, the Bible becomes ecclesiasticized — trapped inside the four walls of the Church — and even there the Bible is not allowed to speak to public square issues outside the Church.
8.) Because R2K insists that the Institutional Church is not allowed to speak to civil Institutions such as education, family, law, arts, international relations, etc. the consequence is that Christians attending R2K churches become bipolar in their thinking. In the Church realm, they are Christian but in the so-called secular realm (a realm created and sustained by R2K type thinking) the Christian can be a humanist in education, a Sharia fan in law, or even a polygamist in family life. If God’s word does not speak to the common realm as stated from the pulpit then the laity may come to any conclusion they like in these realms as long as they can in some creative way attach their positions to Natural law.
9.) When God’s word is ecclesiasticized so that it cannot be applied to all of life (per R2K) the Church immediately becomes politicized as the laity become vectors for various humanist thinking diseases that descend from theologies and gods that are not Christian.
So, R2K’s attempt to cordon God’s special Revelation from every area of life finally leads to a politicized church where each member votes and advocates and does in the public square what is best in his own eyes.
10.) R2K excels at thumping the formal authority of the bible. This is the authority that teaches the infallible, verbal plenary inspiration of the Bible. However, R2K fails in embracing the material authority of the Bible. This is the authority of the Bible wherein its applicability to all of life is embraced. Another way of saying this is that R2K holds the Bible as abstractly authoritative but it is horrid in concrete application.
11.) Whenever R2K starts up with the idea that there is no such thing as “Christian stir-fry,” or “Christian plumbing,” or “Christian diaper-changing,” they are at that point advocating, contrary to Christian thinking, that there is indeed such a thing as neutrality. R2K when it argues this way is saying in essence, “See, all of the common square is neutral and so we should not insist on Christian law, or Christian Education, or Christian family, seeing those matters as just as neutral as stir-fry, diaper changing, and plumbing.
First, we should note that suggesting that Christian law does not exist because Christian diaper changing does not exist is a leap of magnificent proportions that only a very stupid person could make.
Second, we would argue that there is such a thing as a Christian diaper changer. Imagine if non-Christian parents changing out dirty diapers didn’t apply diaper rash medicine with the result that the child in the diaper is miserable having a severely burned bottom. Would that baby complain, if he could, about his parents not practicing Christian diaper changing? Would not failing to apply diaper rash medicine in the context of changing the diaper not be a violation of the 6th commandment?
Neutrality is a myth and that is as true about diaper changing, plumbing, and stir-fry as it is about Law, Education, and Business.
12.) R2K cuts off the story of Redemption with Christ crucified. They fail to see that the resurrection, ascension, and session of the Lord Christ continue the Redemption narrative in terms of absolute Kingship. Jesus Christ is not only our Great High Priest but He is also a Great High Priest who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords over every principality and power. To give a Gospel that so wrongly centers on the Crucifixion so that it only tells the story of a dis-empowered Great High Priest who is not ruling as the Mediatorial King as very God of God is to do a great disservice to both our soteriology and our doctrine of Jesus Mediatorial Kingship.
R2K gives us a Jesus who is a Gnostic King. In R2K thinking Jesus rules over our spiritual lives but Jesus dare not flex His authority in culture, family, education, law, politics, etc. R2K has divorced Jesus’s office of Priest from His office as King. That is a grave sin when pointed out and still continued in.
13.) In our sins we seek to alienate God’s creation from Him. R2K “theology” supports our work of alienating God’s creation from Him as R2K refuses to allow Christians to be Christ’s Kingdom people joining in the work, under Christ’s Kingship, of taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. In R2K every thought is not brought captive because many thoughts are never intended to be brought captive and as such, all of creation remains alienated from God. R2K turns Christ’s Kingship into the Kingship wherein His people don’t live and move and have their being in light of Christ’s ascension and session and as such God’s creation remains alienated from Him except in some Gnostic sense.
