“To adopt any theory which would stop the mouth of the Church and prevent her bearing her testimony to the kings and rulers, magistrates and people, in behalf of the truth and law of God, is like one who administers chloroform to a man to prevent his doing mischief. We pray God that this poison may be dashed away, before it has reduced the church to a state of inanition, and delivered her bound hand and foot into the power of the world.”
19th Century Reformed Theology
When it comes to soteriology R2K has its ordo salutis down just fine. It properly speaks of the necessity to proclaim God as Holy, man as sinful, and Christ as the only solution for man’s problem of a wrathful God. When it speaks of salvation of an individual man or woman it is orthodox.
However R2K so limits its soteriology that its doctrine of salvation ends up being severely truncated. R2K results in any number of saved individuals but as Hodge notes above the salvation that R2K offers ends up binding the saved people of God hand and foot into the power of the world. That doesn’t sound like much of a salvation. At the very least it is the kind of salvation that provides fire insurance against hell but it is not the kind of salvation that brings the aroma of Christ to every area of life. In brief, R2K offers a salvation that Christ would not recognize.
To separate the salvation that is in the atonement from the dominion mandate is to give man a man centered meaning to his life, and also to the atonement, and this is precisely what R2K does. Because R2K constrains the impact of the atonement to the private individual personal sphere, R2K strips the Atonement of its vertical impact and so horizontalizes the atonement so that it merely becomes a means of fire insurance — an escape from Hell.
Not so for the Biblical Christian. The Biblical Christian understands the Atonement and the salvation it secures has put the Christian back in the position of being God’s Dominion man. Having his sins removed man can now handle all that he handles so as to establish God’s dominion in what he handles.
R2K tells those who have been atoned for that their atonement has given them peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ but at the price of their making peace with the authorities of this wicked age who hate God and His Christ. R2K trumpets an atonement and so a salvation that is flaccid, weak, and emasculated. It is an atonement / salvation for the pacifist, the coward, and the disobedient. It is an atonement / salvation that allows and even demands the atoned and saved to surrender before those who would have dominion over Christ’s totalistic Kingdom.
This is the atonement that is being sold to you by David Van Drunnen, R. Scott Clark, Matthew Tuininga, Mike Horton, J. V. Fesko, T. David Gordon, Carl Truman and all the R2K imp professors at countless Seminaries sprinkled across America.
To see the limits of R2K’s salvation we have only but to quote one of its leading champions — Dr. Mike Horton.
“This ‘good news’ is not moral improvement or a Christian society or any political system—whether democratic or totalitarian, capitalist or socialist. It’s the announcement that in his incarnation, obedient life, sacrificial death, and resurrection Jesus Christ has accomplished redemption from sin, death, and hell and reconciled sinners with God.”
TGC Article — “The Cult Of Christian Trumpism” One chief problem of R2K is it seeks to reduce Christianity to “the Gospel,” (Horton’s ‘good news’ above) as if Christianity has nothing else to say to Christians except as it pertains to learning that Christ will receive and save sinners. Mikey engages in serious reductionism as to what the Scriptures fully mean by “salvation.” Salvation is NOT limited to justification and no more than that. Doubtless “the Gospel” is the centerpiece of Christianity but to suggest, as R2K consistently does, that Christianity = the Gospel and individual salvation is a gross reductio ad absurdum. So, while the good news, narrowly defined is certainly not a Christian society or any political system as Mikey says, that doesn’t mean that the good news of Christianity does not multiply so that it has far-reaching implications that touch the issue of Christian social order, or Christian political systems bringing salvation to those cultural institutions. It does not mean that the salvation found in the Gospel pronouncement is limited to individuals. While the Gospel in its saving power is never less than the salvation of individuals from sin, the Gospel in its saving power is always more than the salvation of individuals from sin.For R2K the individual “soul” is saved but the salvation has no visible effect on society or culture. Instead R2K soteriology results in the saved “believer” retreating to a position outside society (like a monk) waiting for the destruction of the social order. R2K yields a Gnostic salvation of the soul. Thus we see that the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of R2K is hyper individual to the point of being atomistic. We might say that for all practical purposes it is Baptistic. Individuals get saved but the whole idea of covenantal categories that include children in salvation is negated by R2K’s insistence that the families can not be Christian since family life lies in the common realm and not in the grace realm. Listen to former President of Westminster-Cal. Dr. Robert Godfrey, take Dr. David Van Drunen (DVD) to the woodshed on DVD’s insistence that families could not be Christian,
“Is the family a common institution in every way? It seems to me that the Bible say’s “no, it is not a common institution in every way.” If it were a common institution in every way how could the Apostle Paul talk about the children of belivers as ‘holy?’” Children, it seems to me, must be seen on a Two Kingdoms approach, as Dr. VanDrunen expresses it as a cultural product of a common grace institution, and cultural products of common grace institution are never taken over into the new heavens and the new earth.”
R2K’s denial then that families can be Christian and so spoken of as “saved” is a denial of covenantal categories. Next, in terms of soteriology, while Reformed theology has typically taught that God’s salvation is cosmic so that as salvation comes to peoples and nations so it comes to their Institutions, cultures, and civilizations. R2K denies all of this insisting that salvation is only personal, individual, and private.
Dr. R. Scott Clark, another R2K pop theologian also has a problem with the idea that salvation can be spoken on in anything but an individual sense.
“We might speak of a fourth view: grace transforming nature cosmically beyond redemption. The great question is this: what is the biblical warrant for speaking and thinking this way? Practically, what does it mean to speak of transforming softball or orchestral music or any other cultural endeavor? Why cannot softball simply be what it is, recreation? What is distinctively Christian about “Christian art” or “Christian history” or Christian math”? I understand that the rhetoric is sacrosanct (a shibboleth, as it were) but what does it signify? What are the particulars?”
Here R2K Clark is struggling with the idea that grace has a salvific effect on anything but individuals leading to those other things being transformed. R2K Clark objects to the idea of grace transforming nature (and so culture) preferring instead to say that grace renews nature in salvation. Clark desires to keep the renewing power of grace constrained to humans as it pertains to their salvation. However, this seems to be a constrained view of reality. After all, it is grace renewed and saved people who are the ones who create culture (an embodiment of nature). If grace renews nature in salvation then grace is going to renew everything that those salvifically renewed people are going to create in culture. One simply can’t have grace renewing nature in salvation without that renewal getting into everything the renewed and salvation visited person touches. The products of culture, after all, don’t come into being apart from the renewed or unrenewed people who create them.
Instead of seeing salvation as only personal, individual, and private as R2K Horton sees it listen to the way that salvation and its effects was spoken of in other generations by other men of God;
“A Christian has no right to separate his life into two realms… to say the Bible is good for Sunday, but this is a week-day question, or the Scriptures are right in matters of religion, but this is a matter of business or politics. God reigns over all, everywhere. His will is the supreme law. His inspired Word, loyally read will inform us of His will in every relation and act of life, secular as well as religious; and the man is a traitor who refuses to walk therein with scrupulous care. The Kingdom of God includes all sides of human life, and it is a Kingdom of absolute righteousness. You are wither a loyal subject, or a traitor. When the King comes, how will He find you doing?”
19th Century Reformed Theologian
“We not only claim our rightful place among the commonwealths of education but we have a definitely imperialistic program. No mere Monroe doctrine will suffice. We are out to destroy—albeit with spiritual weapons only and always—all our competitors. We do not recognize them equals but regard them as usurpers. Carthage must be destroyed.” Cornelius Van Til
The problem with R2K’s soteriology is that it is a constrained and limited salvation that is not to extend beyond the boundaries of the individual. Another way to say this is that R2K’s soteriology is without effect except as that effect impacts personal and individual categories. One has to question if such a salvation is really salvation. The Reformed understanding of salvation has always been that individuals being saved bear the effects of that salvation in everything they put their hands to. The saved become the aroma of Christ in all to which God calls them. The saved, being a people characterized as those people who take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ (II Cor. 10:5) bring the impact of their salvation on family life, education, law, politics, arts, politics and everything else. Can salvation really be salvation when it is constrained, as R2K constrains it, so that its effects are disallowed?
What R2K does to arrive at this consequence free salvation is that they cut off the office of Jesus Christ as King from the office of Jesus Christ as our great High Priest. All orthodox Christians concur with the idea that Christ as our great High Priest saves us from our personal and individual sins. Praise God for so great a salvation. However, our salvation is also related to Jesus in His office as our great liege Lord. As our High Priest Christ has saved us from our sins, and as our Great High King Christ has saved us to be warriors in Christ’s Kingdom seeking to bring the effects of our salvation to everything wherein God has assigned us in our lives so that our families, careers, and every other matter we pursue finds the grace of salvation transforming nature. R2K shrinks the domain of the office of Christ as King relating to our salvation so that Christ’s Kingship governs only our personal individual lives. R2K’s Christianity makes their converts nice people (except to those who don’t like R2K) whose Christian convictions wouldn’t threaten the queers reading at the Drag Queen Story Hour.
Read the quotes above again. Can you imagine any R2K fanboy ever saying anything like what is said in those quotes? Can you imagine Mike Horton, David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, or D. G. Hart saying with Van Til on the matter of education, “Carthage must be destroyed?” Of course you can’t imagine that and that is because R2K has a markedly different soteriology when considered in toto than Reformed theology has embraced for generations.
The salvation of the Reformed faith has always been a world conquering, and kingdom of God establishing salvation. The salvation of the Reformed faith has shut the mouths of impious magistrates, while at the same time gently nurturing God’s covenant children placed within our families. The salvation of the Reformed faith shaped the glorious thing we once called Christendom. The salvation of the Reformed faith is heroic.
That is not true of the salvation R2K offers.
