We continue to demonstrate the grave and serious deficiencies of R2K theology as expressed in this interview with Dr. David Van Drunen done with a view of hawking his upcoming book, “Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World.”
In this entry we first demonstrate R2K’s manipulation of the Noahic covenant as accomplished by the chief R2K guru, David Van Drunen. We then go on to look at other covenant malfeasance championed by R2K so as to refashion and reshape Christianity in a R2K direction.
The reader should not miss that what R2K does to Christianity by its various doctrinal shifts is to create a Christianity that has never existed before. What R2K does to Christianity is not dissimilar to what Liberalism did to Christianity inasmuch as the resultant faith is something completely dissimilar from what it was before R2K got its interpretive hands on it. I am hopeful that this look book exposes that just as Machen’s book exposed the lie of Liberalism being Christianity in his book, “Christianity and Liberalism.”
We start by quoting the Karl Barth of the R2K movement, Dr. David Van Drunen;
The above quote is taken from the 37 minute point of the interview with Dr. David Van Drunen (DVD) that is linked above. DVD returns to a central theme in his “theology” and that is his insistence that the Noahic covenant has zero redemptive significance. This position has, in the past, been challenged repeatedly by other Reformed theologians of note. DVD however can not give this position up because it is the lynch pin of his innovative system called R2K. The Noahic covenant was not a redemptive covenant for DVD and so must be common and universal. This position allows DVD to pivot to say that the Noahic covenant is the covenant that all mankind as mankind (considered as neither regenerate or unregenerate) operates and functions in during their lifetime. This appeal to the Noahic coveannt as a common (non-redemptive) covenant gives DVD room to establish a common (nature) realm that is dualistically distinct from his church (grace) realm. Because of the way DVD handles the Noahic covenant it gives him space to create a realm that is not ruled by God’s law but by natural law.
One implication of this for DVD and R2K is that the Church and the Kingdom are identified as exact synonyms. There is nothing outside the Church realm as existing in the public square that is an expression of the Kingdom of God. Everything outside the church realm as existing in the public square is a common realm reality relating back to the common Noahic covenant. The common Noahic covenant teaches us that there is no such thing as Christian politics, Christian economics, Christian Education, Christian family, etc. since all these function within the common Noahic covenant and not as ancillaries to the Kingdom of God. Indeed, this common realm created by DVD’s innovative work with the Noahic covenant is a realm where all man’s civil-social institutions exist. Because all these institutions (except for the Church) exist in the common realm they are not and can not be associated with the kingdom of God. Again, I emphasize that the whole R2K project fails if the Noahic covenant is a redemptive covenant and not a covenant that is generic for all creation and mankind.
That DVD is in error regarding his assertion that the Noahic covenant “doesn’t make any promises of Redemption,” can be seen inasmuch as the Noahic covenant is in point of fact highly redemptive, both in looking back to creation and looking forward to Christ. DVD is in error when he insists that the Noahic covenant was a common realm covenant that had no redemptive significance.
The error of DVD’s is seen in first one finds the flood being presented in similar terms as the chaos of Gen. 1:2, and the ark’s landing on dry land and Noah’s commission by God to be fruitful and multiply both echo the original creation narrative. Noah is a new Adam with the responsibility to take dominion of the earth as God’s sub-regent. God’s work with Noah has zero common or universal connotations.
Second, the rescue of Noah was a Redemptive rescue and this is hinted at when God rescues only someone who had found favor in the eyes of God. In and through the flood God rescues His people and not a common humanity in revolt against Him. Then, Noah offers sacrifice to God upon being released from the Ark. If the Noahic covenant was truly common would we see a blood sacrifice associated with it?
Third, the Noahic is Redemptive if only because it ends in a “new creation — restoration.” The Noahic covenant is a proleptic and typological event that portrays the final and ultimate redemption to be found in Christ. Noah, a type of Christ saves His people in the ark of the Church and pilots them unto the promised land. The Noahic covenant is thus, contrary to DVD’s assertion, Redemptive.
Also we have the fact that the Noahic covenant is Redemptive being pointed to in I Peter in such explicit terms it is difficult to believe that anybody could hold the Noahic covenant as common. The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.
I Peter 1:20 – “to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
Eight were saved (Redeemed). The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.”
Now, no one would argue that the Noahic covenant didn’t have implications for what R2K calls the “common realm.” For one there is the certainty we find in the Noahic covenant that mankind will continue with the purpose that out of that sustained mankind the elect will be brought into the Church. However, clearly the Noahic covenant is a Redemptive covenant. Noah points us back to creation and speaks of its renewal, but points us forward to the ultimate renewal in Christ. It is thoroughly redemptive, and not merely “common,” contra DVD and R2K.
If the Noahic covenant made promises of Redemption, contrary to DVD, then his whole R2K project fails.
R2K also does funky things with covenant theology in general beyond their reworking of the Nohaic covenant.
When it comes to covenant malfeasance however, R2K not only fiddles with the Noahic covenant. R2K also fiddles with covenant theology in general. For example Westminster-Cal (R2K’s home base) insists that the Mosaic covenant was at the same time both a covenant of Grace and a covenant of Works. This is accomplished by introducing language of “upper” and “lower” register into the Mosaic covenant while insisting that the idea of typology sustains that “in some sense” the Mosaic covenant was a covenant of works for Israel. Understand this “upper register,” and “lower register” language is a recipe for complete confusion. Who determines how the upper register and lower register in the same covenant operates? Are there set rules for what constitutes the upper register and what constitutes the lower register and are these rules explicitly drawn from Scripture?
Of course theoretically, one could use this reasoning not only in the Mosaic covenant but also in any of the other covenants which represent the continual maturing and flowering of the one covenant of grace. For example, one could go back to Genesis 17 and say much the same thing about God’s command/stipulation to Abraham to “walk before Me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1 ). Given that stipulation language in Genesis 17 one can’t help but wonder, given Westminster-Cal’s predilections for a hyphenated Mosaic covenant, how is it that the Abrahamic covenant also is not an example of a mixed (hyphenated) covenant? In point of fact Dr. Meredith Kline taught that Noah and Abraham were themselves under a legal-works covenant. One thus wonders, if, according to Westminster-Cal, whether the covenant of works was republished to Abraham and Noah as well? The point here is that if we are going to go all arbitrary by establishing that the Mosaic covenant was both one of grace (upper register) and one of works (lower register) than what disallows us from doing the same with any other of the covenants that make for the one covenant of grace?
In all this I wonder if there isn’t some covenant confusion that was articulated by a Baptist named Philip Cary in 1640 in a debate with John Flavel and other Reformed luminaries. This debate surrounded the issue of the validity of infant Baptism but some of Cary’s “reasoning” sounds a great deal like Westminster-Cal reasoning on covenant republication. Cary treated Genesis 17 (Abrahamic), Exodus 20 (Sinai) and Deuteronomy 29 (Mosaic) together under a covenant of works. In doing so, the Baptist, Cary, could treat all these passages as discontinuous in nature, purpose and extent with the covenant of Grace. For the Baptist Cary, no commands from the covenant of works could affect the covenant of grace. For the Baptist, Philip Cary, this meant that Abraham, as well as all the elect in the Old Testament were in both covenants at the same time. This sounds strangely familiar to some of the writings of Westminster-Cal adherents on the Mosaic covenant.
Keep in mind though that if covenant are both law and gracious at the same time, it is also the case that people living under those hyphenated covenant arrangements lived and moved by both law and Gospel at the same time. Escondido would have us believe that the Mosaic saints earned, via congruent merit, their stay in the land while at the same time those same saints were saved by unmerited grace. This seems to me to be a “Glawspel” arrangement. If so, it is ironic that the very people (Klinean republicationists) who complain that those who don’t accept their republicationist paradigm are guilty of not distinguishing properly “Law and Gospel,” with the consequence that “Glawspel” obtains are themselves guilty of not properly distinguishing “Law and Gospel” so that “Glawspel” obtains.
Think about it. If you’re living under the Mosaic covenant how do you determine if your obedience to God’s law is motivated by earning congruent merit in order to stay in the land as opposed to an obedience that is motivated by gratitude for God delivering your from your enemies and putting you in the land?
Second, in light of the constant disobedience of Israel under the Mosaic, how can we speak of going back under a covenant of works in the Mosaic when the covenant of works required absolute perfect obedience? If the Old Testament saints under the Mosaic covenant were put back under a covenant of works it was a very different covenant of works then what Adam was under in the Garden where one violation was all that was required to be cast out of the garden. Are we to believe, per Westminster-Cal, that the covenant of works was more gracious in the Mosaic covenant then it was in the garden?
As we have seen already while looking at soteriology, epistemology, and the matter of dualism R2K with its completely innovative work of reinterpreting Christianity leaves a finished product that nobody in Church history, would have recognized as Christianity. Now, to be sure R2K has borrowed elements from the Anabaptists (Dualism), the Dispensationalists (covenant discontinuity) and Lutherans (absolute equating of Kingdom and Church) but as a whole system R2K is not anybody’s father’s Christianity.
Were the 21st century Reformed church healthy it would do to R2K and its acolytes what the Reformed church should have done in the 20th century to Dispensationalism if the Reformed church would have been healthy in that century. To speak without horns or teeth, R2K should be cast out by the Reformed church.
