Which Came First; The Way R2K “Reformed” Chaps “Reason” Or The Way Baptists Reason?

1. Yes, Christ is Lord. Amen!

2. Yes, all people are called to submit to Christ’s Lordship.

3. At the level of the human person, we really are in either Christ or chaos, then.

4. But this does not follow for institutions and nations and stores and the public square. These entities are nowhere Christianized in the New Testament.

5. Jesus does not teach that Caesar is “neutral,” exactly, but Jesus does teach us to render to Caesar what is due Caesar (Matthew 22:21).

6. So too does Peter tell us to honor the emperor (1 Peter 2) in an era when the emperor was decidedly not Christian.

7. All this means that while the public square isn’t “neutral,” it’s also not savable like the human person is.

8. Nowhere in the NT do governments or stores or schools get saved.

9. We believers seek to influence the public square and the cultural order in a serious way; that’s what being “salt and light” means (Matthew 5:13-14).”

Owen Strachan
Provost – Grace Bible Theological Seminary  (Baptist)

Bret Responds;

1.) For Owen, Christ is Lord except when Christ isn’t Lord. Christ is Lord over the individual but Christ can’t be Lord in any kind of Institution among men where the men in that Institution resolve together to operate that Institution as Christian Men.

2.) For Owen all people are called to submit to Christ’s Lordship until they start to work together in some kind of corporate endeavor. Once you put more than one person together with another person to sell widgets or Lemonade then the requirement to submit to Christ’s Lordship ends.

3.) Agreed, as far as Owen goes here.

4.) First here, note that Owen restricts his Bible to the NT. Quite to the contrary of Owen we note that the Scriptures are comprised of both the OT and NT.

Second, if “institutions and nations and stores and the public square” are not to be Christianized then what is left? Does Owen realize that Mooselimbs, Bagels, and Hindus are not going to reason that “institutions, and nations, and stores and the public square” are not to be Islamicized, Judaized, or Hinduized. So, Owen, like R2K, would argue for a religiously naked public square but will provide no answer to the conundrum that Mooselimbs, and Bagels, and Hindus, and Atheists will pursue with definite conviction a public square, a nation, and Institutions that are beholden to their demon gods?

Frankly, as I have said repeatedly in connection with R2K this kind of reasoning is not just off, it is monumentally stupid and worse yet it is dangerous because if pursued by all Christians as living in a multicultural setting it means the success of Mooselimbs, Bagels, Hindus, etc. to roll Christ off the throne in the public square. It means the persecution of the Christian faith. It means Dhimmitude status.

Look, the hour is late and we no longer can just smile and shake our heads at these R2K/Lutheran/Baptist idiots. Their theology is a theology of absolute abject surrender. It is a theology that is embraced by people who hate their children, hate their neighbors, and worse of all hate their God.

5.) It is true that Jesus said to render unto God the things that are God’s and to render unto Caesar the things are Caesar’s. This, by necessity, means that we, as Christians, must render Caesar and all he claims to God since Caesar is a thing that belongs to God. If Caesar can find anything that is uniquely is and not God’s and I will be sure to render that thing unto Caesar.

6.) It is true, that we are to honor the King. However, that honor due to the King does not exceed our responsibility to honor the King of Kings and so if it is the case that the Emperor becomes in his duties an “Anti-Emperor” then Christians are duty bound to honor the office of Emperor by throwing him out on his keister.

7.) If the public square is not neutral then the public square must be rendered unto Christ as King since the public square belongs to Him. We are sinning if, as Christians, we do not render the public square unto Christ. If Christian men and women render the public square unto Christ, I’ll be glad to let Christ worry about whether or not the public square is salvable.

8.) Christianity has such an effect that when it is introduced into the bloodstream of a nation, public square, or Institution it completely turns that nation, public square, and Institution on its head. See the account in Ephesus recorded in Acts 19:23f. There we see a city fighting against being saved.

9.) It seems that Owen desires Christians to salt and influence the public square much like the seasoning oregano season a tomato dish. Owen can’t envision where the salting and influencing rises to the point to be the dish served and not merely the seasoning.

I suspect that, like R2K, Owen is not postmillennial and so is retrofitting his theology to fit his a-priori eschatology.