Category: Apologetics

A Discussions On The Vacuity Of R2K

Bret wrote,

“Culture is defined as “theology externalized,” or, “the outward manifestation of a people’s inward beliefs.”

And David Rothstein responded

“As far as I know, this is not a commonly accepted definition, even among Christians, though of course you’re free to use it. I personally don’t find it helpful since most things that we associate with culture do not necessarily manifest theological systems—or at the very least cannot be fully explained in these terms.”

Bret answers,

First off, the definition isn’t mine but comes from Henry Van Til who borrowed it from Paul Tillich. You might want to interact with them and show why they are wrong on the definition of culture before you so casually dismiss it.

Here is the appropriate section from Van Til’s book, “The Calvinistic Concept of Culture.”

“It is…more correct to ask what the role of culture is in religion than to put the question the other way around, as Hutchison does, ‘What is religion’s role in culture?’ For man, in the deepest reaches of his being, is religious; he is determined by his relationship to God. Religion, to paraphrase the poet’s expressive phrase, is not of life a thing apart, it is man’s whole existence. Hutchison, indeed, comes to the same conclusion when he says, ‘For religion is not one aspect or department of life beside the others, as modern secular thought likes to believe; it consists rather in the orientation of all human life to the absolute’. Tillich has captured the idea in a trenchant line, ‘Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion.’

The Westminster Shorter Catechism maintains at the outset that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. However other-worldly this may sound to some, Presbyterians have interpreted this biblically to mean that man is to serve God in his daily calling, which is the content of religion. This service cannot be expressed except through man’s cultural activity, which gives expression to his religious faith. Now faith is the function of the heart, and out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23). This is the first principle of a biblically oriented psychology.

No man can escape this religious determination of his life, since God is the inescapable, ever-present Fact of man’s existence. God may be loved or hated, adored or debased, but he cannot be ignored. The sense of God (sensus deitatis) is still the seed of religion (semen religionis). All of primitive religion is corroboration of the cry of the Psalmist, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or wither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Ps. 139:7).”

Second, your assertion that “most things that we associate with culture do not necessarily manifest theological systems—or at the very least cannot be fully explained in these terms,” is just plain errant. History, Law, Education, Arts, Family life, Ecclesiastical, Fashion, Architecture, and all other institutional infrastructure of a culture is explained by theology.

Bret wrote,

But I would disagree w/ you that the handling of that common reality by those committed to hostility of Christ allows them to understand the dialect with which the Christian speaks.

David responded,

I never claimed that unbelievers understand the significance of “justification,” “sanctification,” or “regeneration.”

Bret responds,

And I never said that was the dialect that I was speaking of. The Christian dialect is based on the fact that objective meaning exists by virtue of God’s reality. The Christian believes and speaks with the dialect that recognizes that, all things are what they are because of who God is. The non Christian dialect locates meaning subjectively and their dialect is based on their own fiat word legislating meaning. Because this is true when I say “culture,” for example, the Christian finds meaning in God’s word that, “As a man thinketh in his heart so he is,” and then by good and necessary consequence understands that God’s definition of culture is that it is the manifestation of men thinking in their heart (theology externalized) while the non Christian or the unbiblical Christian will try to define “culture” (our working example) based upon their own self legislating subjective fiat word.

Bret had asked,

Is the clothing that the hooker wears the same as the clothing that the pastor’s wife wears?

David responds,

I live in a neighborhood inhabited by many unbelievers, but as far as I know, none of them is a hooker. My next-door neighbor happens to be Jewish and his wife dresses much like many pastor’s wives that I know of.

Bret interacts,

And what does this prove?

It merely proves that the Jewish wife is not dressing in a way that is consistent with her denial of the God of the Bible. It is common grace that your neighbor Jewish wife is not immoral as she could possibly be given her Christ hating presuppositions. I never denied common grace.

However, that your Jewish neighbor’s Jewish wife is not dressing like a trollop is not due to the fact that she has given up her work of determining meaning by her own legislative fiat word. It just happens to be the case, by God’s common grace, that her subjective legislative fiat word coincides with God’s objective fiat word when it comes to modest dress. As Christians we are always glad for this felicitous inconsistency that results from common grace.

Bret had inked,

“Are our houses furnished the same way? I can foresee a consistent Christ hater having a secret dungeon for S & M games.”

David responded,

Again, you’re having to stretch past the edges of socially acceptable behavior for all your contrasts. I am quite certain that the vast majority of my non-Christian neighbors are apparently not “consistent” Christ-haters and don’t have secret dungeons.

Honestly, it almost seems that you can’t tell the difference between “non-Christian” and “criminal.” Prostitution is illegal, gang bangers are likely to end up in prison, and while S&M may not be as frowned upon as it once was, there is a reason why they still keep those dungeons “secret.” But most of my non-Christian neighbors somehow manage to stay out of trouble with the law. There’s no denying that certain behavior that has become more socially acceptable in the society at large is not acceptable for professing Christians, but this is consistent with the thesis of a cultural realm that is common and not exclusively Christian.

Bret engages,

First, a slight correction … “Prostitution is not illegal in some places in this country.”

This is a key point of our interaction David. Note what you have done here. You have told us that your standard is “socially acceptable behavior,” but my question in response to you is, “what is the standard for socially acceptable behavior” (?).

What is the standard for what is “criminal?”

The answer to both of those questions is God’s legislating law word. To the law and to the Testimony as Isaiah says. But you don’t like that answer because you want to seemingly want to allow “socially acceptable behavior” to be the standard. But by that standard Homosexuality and Abortion are perfectly acceptable behaviors for our social order since they are now socially acceptable and now no longer criminal.

I can tell the difference between non-Christian behavior that isn’t criminal and criminal behavior but then I have a standard that allows me to make such a distinction.

And again, I am glad that God’s common grace is operative for your neighbors the way it is but the fact that God’s common grace prevents your neighbors from being consistent in their Christ hating does not mean that such a thing as a common sphere exists that is not to be normed by God’s word.

Bret had inked,

“The non Christian, as they are increasingly consistent w/ their anti-Christ presuppositions will despoil and mar all the culture they share with the Christian who is becoming likewise increasingly consistent w/ their Christ embracing presuppositions.”

David responded,

I know that Van Til spoke in terms like these, but I’m not sure what you mean by it. If you simply mean that unbelievers abuse God’s good gifts for selfish ends, then granted. Or if you mean that anti-theistic philosophical systems are opposed to Christianity, then duh. But in what sense do non-Christians “despoil and mar” culture? (Did Aristotle despoil logic? Did Itzhak Perlman despoil violin music?)

When hip hop and gangsta rap is called “music” culture is despoiled. When modern art is considered art culture is despoiled. When homosexuality is legalized culture is marred and despoiled. When the church allows women in office the culture is marred and despoiled. When education teaches humanism culture is marred and despoiled. When law becomes ordered by logical positivism culture is marred and despoiled. When families are redefined and are fractured because of the theology of foreign gods culture is marred and despoiled. When science embraces evolution culture is marred and despoiled. Enough examples David?

In terms of philosophy, according to Dr. David Noe, one of the R2K aficionados, we are told there is no such thing as Christian philosophy.

“If by “Christian philosophy” one means philosophizing (the production and evaluation of rational arguments that deal with such things as ethics and metaphysics, for example) that deals with explicitly Christian topics, then at first glance the adjective has some salience. But deeper reflection, I argue, proves that this designation is also problematic. Presumably a very bright non-Christian reasoning consistently, diligently and with complete access to the basic data of special revelation, can more often reach sound and valid conclusions than the most devout yet dim-witted believer on the topic of our Lord’s incarnation.

If that is true, what would it be about the believer’s philosophizing that makes it uniquely Christian? If we cannot tell based on the product of his or her work whether our philosopher was practicing “Christian philosophy” even on topics that deal explicitly with matters of faith, does the noun “philosophy” receive any meaningful modification when we add “Christian” to it? Could one really be said to practice Christian philosophy in that instance? Are we not rather just back at the same point with philosophy done well (producing both sound and valid arguments that tell us something meaningful about the world), but that it is Christian when done by Christians with specific goals and dispositions motivating them and non-Christian otherwise?”

So, if there is no such thing as theistic philosophy how can there be such a thing as anti-theistic philosophy. I don’t think R2K acolyte Dr. David Noe would understand you “no duh” statement. Of course Dr. Noe’s problem is that he doesn’t take account of the fact that the non Christian philosopher takes as his starting point that the God of the Bible is not and should not be His starting point. Dr. Noe allows autonomous man to be his own authority and so questions whether or not Christian philosophizing exists.

Finally in terms of logicians like Aristotle or violinists like Christian Ferras, once again we rejoice in a common grace that results in felicitous inconsistency.

Bret had written

“The things you classify as “accouterments of culture,” are indeed a consequential manifestation of ultimate theological commitments. Will we as a culture build Tepees for houses? Will we listen to hip hop or classical? Will we fund with our taxes a gulag archipelago or will we fund interstate highways.”

David responds,

If a native American becomes a Christian, is he required to move out of his tepee and into a suburban home? What is it about a teepee that make it non-Christian, and which ultimate theological commitments are manifested in suburban homes? I don’t know that these things are patently obvious. Preference for hip hop or classical is an issue of low culture vs. high culture, which of course transcends the antithetical divide. And I don’t know what is particularly Christian about interstate highways.

I never said that Teepees weren’t or couldn’t be Christian. I said that they were consequential manifestations of ultimate theological commitments.

If you can’t see that it is patently obvious that a people who build Teepees and a people who build Cathedrals have different conceptions of God, I’m sure I can’t explain it to you. If you can’t see that hip hop is anti-music as opposed to the music of a Bach I can’t explain it to you. Some of these matters ought to be self evident to someone who believes in Natural Law.

Van Til could say this about your examples,

“It is God’s longsuffering patience which would lead you (unbeliever) to repentance that enables you to do all those things which “for the matter of them” are “in themselves praiseworthy and useful.” God intends to accomplish his ultimate end, the establishment of his kingdom. That is the reason why you are now able to contribute positively to the coming of that kingdom. The harps you make, the oratorios you produce, the great poems you have written, the scientific discoveries you have made will, with your will or against your will, all find their place in the unified structure of the kingdom of God through Christ. Now, then, in God’s name repent, for otherwise the Israelites will “borrow” your treasures and you shall perish in the Red Sea like the Egyptians (91).”

Now clearly this quote from Cornelius Van Til reveals he not hold to R2K because he understands that realities from the R2K common realm all find their place in the Kingdom of God.

Bret had wrote,

“I keep telling you that in the “already,” of the “already, not yet” the world to come is already here but you keep telling me that world to come is still all not yet.”

David Rothstein responds,

But what I keep hearing you tell me is that the “not yet” of the “already/not yet” is already here—or at least that we can cause it to arrive by being more epistemologically self-conscious. Perhaps it is a matter of differing millennial positions (though even Van Til, as far as I know, was amil).

The “already” is already here. That is why the “push me, pull you” is called “already, not yet.”

And I do believe that as we grow in faith that the Spirit who leads us into faith growth does cause us, both personally and corporately, to be transformed from glory unto glory.

Van Til was indeed amil although all of Old Westminster was postmil.

In the end David, for the Christian his regeneration is a introduction to the ability to consistently find proper meaning in everything. Outside of Christ the meaning that the pagan finds is a meaning that is autonomously legislated by the pagan’s fiat word. Once regenerated he begins to move increasingly in glad submission to God’s legislated meaning, discovering that his Redemption and regeneration has awakened him for the first time to the meaning of objective meaning.

This reality explains why the Christian can not allow any project to succeed that would allow the pagan to have objective meaning in and of themselves or by their own authority in any realm (R2K). This desire to be the one who creates or, supposedly discovers meaning, is the very thing that is in rebellion to God and has to be overcome by the Spirit of Regeneration.

This is not to say that the pagan who legislates their own meaning always gets matters wrong. Clearly they don’t. Common grace exists. It is to say that when they get meaning right they can not account, epstimelogically speaking, and on the basis of their own presuppositions, why the meaning they have assigned to this or that is the proper meaning. If even a blind old sow can find a acorn once in awhile so a unregenerate pagan can stumble on proper meaning occasionally even if they do so in spite of themselves.

McAtee Contra VanDrunen On Religious Commitment & Social Orders

‎”…what sort of religious commitment, if any, should be promoted or required within the social order? The answer, I suggest, is none. A crucial consideration is the fact that God made the Noahic covenant with “you [Noah and his sons] and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you” (9:9-10). The human race generally (along with the animal kingdom) is God’s covenant partner. Not a single distinction is made between believers and unbelievers, but God promises to preserve them in their common social life.”

~ Dr. David Van Drunen, 2012 lecture

How thoughtful of Dr. Van Drunen to give us so clearly and to so passionately advocate his religious commitment for the social order. Dr. VD’s religious commitment for the social order that he is advocating is that the social order should be animated by the religious commitment of no religious commitment. Another way to label his religious commitment for the social order is ” Social Order Atheism. Interestingly enough this is the exact same social order theory advocated by Marxists of all hues and stripes.

Now, some desire to answer Dr. Van Drunen by insisting that the religious commitment of the social order should be all religious commitments. In this thinking the social order should be animated by all religious commitments. This is sometimes called pluralism but I prefer to label it as Social Order Polytheism. Interestingly enough this is the social order advocated by all anarchists.

The main problem with Dr. Van Drunen’s thinking is that it presupposes that man can cease being Homo Adorans (man the worshiper) in his common realm. For Dr. Van Drunen man is no longer a worshiper as he lives and moves and has is being in the social order, and not being a worshiper man can create a social order that is not reflective of any ultimate religious commitment to a god or god concept. Such a thinking puts a severe strain on ones desire to be a irenic.

In both situations of social order Atheism or social order polytheism, even though they each being with seemingly opposite religious commitments for the social order, they end up in the same place. If the social order is to be Atheistic then it will be the autonomous man deified as the State that will create the social order and the citizenry will be required to have religious commitments to the state. If the social order is to be polytheistic then it will require some institution to set the limits on how these competing religious commitments will interact in the social order. That institutions will likely be the State. Both of these positions lead us to the outcome that in the State we will live and move and have or being for the social order.

Michael Horton — 1995 / Michael Horton 2012

Nevertheless, Kuyper did make “Christian” versions of many things in the world: Christian schools, newspapers, and political parties tended to obscure the earlier Protestant confidence in the realm of nature as possessing sufficient life and justification for its existence without having to be organized as specifically Christian. This Kuyperian spirit has been especially attractive in some circles in North America, because it is world-embracing and eschews the pietistic retreat from society, and yet it should not be too hastily concluded that one can find a distinctively “Christian” philosophy, political theory, or aesthetic. If these are indeed realms of common grace and natural revelation, they do not require a specifically Christian explanation. Looking for one will only tend to polarize Christians from non-Christians until believers are at last exiled again from the public square forced to pursue their “Christian” philosophy in their own spiritual ghetto.[1]

Dr. Michael Horton
“Where in the World is the Church? A Christian Viwe of Culture and Your Role in It”
Moody Press, 1995 , page 32.

This is an older quote from Mike and it may be the case that he has changed his mind about this, though I would be surprised if he has. I have my doubts about his having changed any given this quote from Mike that is very recent.

“Christians, of all people, should be concerned about the pressing issues in culture and society today. However, even in the same church, where people share the same faith, worldview, and values, there will be different applications, policies, and agendas.”

1.) Mike speaks of an earlier Protestant consideration, pre-Kuyper, of a nature realm that possessed sufficient life and justification for its existence without having to be organized as specifically Christian.

And yet guys like John Knox, who certainly represent the earlier Protestantism that Mike speaks of, could insist that Mike’s natural realm be organized as specifically Christian.

“For it is a thing more certain that whatsoever God required of the civil magistrate in Israel or Judah concerning the observation of true religion during the time of the Law, the same doth he require of lawful magistrates professing Christ Jesus in the time of the Gospel, as the Holy Ghost hath taught us by the mouth of David, saying (Psalm 2): ‘Be learned, you that judge the earth, kiss the Son, lest that the Lord wax angry and that ye perish from the way.’ This admonition did not extend to the judges under the Law only, but doth also include such as be promoted to honours in the time of the Gospel, when Christ Jesus doth reign and fight in His spiritual kingdom, whose enemies in that Psalm be most sharply taxed, their fury expressed and vanity mocked. And then are kings and judges, who think themselves free from all law and obedience, commanded to repent their former blind rage, and judges are charged to be learned. And last are all commanded to serve the Eternal in fear, to rejoice before Him in trembling, to kiss the Son, that is, to give unto Him most humble obedience. Whereof it is evident that the rulers, magistrates and judges now in Christ’s kingdom are no less bound to obedience unto God than were those under the Law.”

John Knox, The appellation of John Knox from the cruel and most injust sentence pronounced against him by the false bishops and clergy of Scotland, with his supplication and exhortation to the nobility, estates and commonality of the same realm (Geneva, 1558) in idem, On rebellion, ed. R. A. Mason (Cambridge, 1994), pp 91-2.

I could repeat these kinds of quote many times over from Reformed men that long predated Abraham Kuyper and at least call into question Mike’s assertion of a earlier Protestant confidence in a natural realm that could be organized neutrally.

2.) Mike almost dismisses the idea of the possibility of Christian philosophy. With such a casual dismissal Mike dismisses the work of Christian Philosophers who believed that they were advancing Christian philosophy. Mike dismisses the work of men like Augustine, Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, C. Gregg Singer, Francis Schaeffer, Ronald Nash, Greg Bahnsen, and any number of other Christian philosophers who insisted that they were advocating Christian Philosophy. This dismissal made so casually is a bit shocking even considering that it comes from a R2K advocate.

3.) The polarization that Mike warns against arising between believers and pagans is the natural consequence of Christianity contra non-Christianity. Is Mike saying that we should jettison Christian thinking so that we can get on better with the non-Christians? And in terms of ghettoizing isn’t the consequence of clash of belief systems the eventual marginalization of those who lose that clash, whether Christian or non-Christian?

Take R2K for example. It is in the midst of a worldview warfare against Historic Reformed doctrine and should it lose it will be ghettoized. Similarly, if Historic Reformed doctrine loses in this worldview warfare against R2K it will be ghettoized. Ghettoization is always the consequences of those who lose worldview clashes. For example, look how ghettoized that the Church in Russian was as a result of losing the worldview warfare with the Bolsheviks. Were Mike alive then would he have been writing things like, “The Russian Church needs to jettison Christian thinking so that we can get on better with the Bolsheviks?

4.) In Mikes second quote he advances the strange idea that people who have the same worldview will have different applications, policies, and agendas. How is it possible Mike, to have the same exact world and life view and yet contend for different applications, policies, and agendas? Can two people have the same Christian worldview and find that one desires the legalizing of abortion while the other desires that abortion be made a crime?

Certainly there might exist slight nuance differences and strategy differences among those who share a worldview but to say that those with the same worldview have different agendas is quite curious speech.

Ask The Pastor — What Of Immanentizing The Eschaton?

Dear Pastor,

As for the question of immanentizing the eschaton, you vote that we usher in the Christian one; I vote that we wait for Christ to usher in the eschaton.

David,

Thank you for your insightful offering.

In reference to ushering in Eschatons. You seemed to miss the point that I was trying to make earlier when I said,

by insisting that the common realm belongs to common grace and natural law what they (R2K adherents) end up doing is creating a vacuum in which the other adherents of other gods will try to immanentize their respective eschatons. So while at least some amillennialists want to avoid immanentizing the Christian eschaton what their retreat ends up doing is allowing the immanentizing of other non-Christian eschatons. We must remember that it is never a question whether or not if some eschaton will be immanentized but only a question of which eschaton will be immanentized. I vote for the Christian one.

There is no neutrality on the question concerning immanentizing eschatons. The question isn’t, “Will we or will we not usher in a eschaton,” the question rather is, “Which eschaton will we work to incarnate?”

Concerning this matter keep in mind that culture is the consequential manifestation of what we believe concerning ultimate theological reality. Now since all theology is teleological and always has the end (eschaton) in mind, it simply is impossible for humans to build cultures where no consideration (whether epistemologically conscious of that consideration or not) is given of immanentizing the eschaton. The culture that we live in right now is the result of some successful theology managing to bring its vision of the future end into the present.

Let me note, that I quite agree that there can be dangers in non-humble considerations of eschaton immanentizing. However, for all the dangers I see there I see far more dangers in a escapism or retreatism which allows the eschatons of pagan gods to have their way.

We need to keep in mind here the words of A. A. Hodge when he wrote,

If the national life in general is organized upon non-Christian principles, the churches which are embraced within the universal assimilating power of that nation will not long be able to preserve their integrity.

A. A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology, p. 283-84

Now, Hodge doesn’t explicitly reference eschaton immanentizing but he has in mind exactly that which I am trying to get at. If we will not live in such a way that puts the feet to our prayers of “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” thus immanentizing the Christian eschaton, we will, as God’s people be embraced in the assimilating powers of non-Christian principles which are working to immanentize their version of their religions eschaton.

Thanks for the conversation David.

Kline Klatch

Recently, in the comments section David R. from Fla. has been mildly defending R2K theory by quoting Dr. Meredith Kline. I thought I would interact a little with David’s pull quotes. I hope to help pull back the curtain on the problems with this thinking.

Some people might remember Dr. Kline as the man who built a straw man out of Dr. Greg Bahnsen’s Theonomic position and then proceeded to destroy the straw man he had built, insuring before he wrote his unseemly attack piece that Dr. Bahnsen would not be able to respond to his attack piece in the same journal in which Dr. Kline attacked Dr. Bahnsen.

David R. writes,

In Kingdom Prologue, Kline has a very helpful discussion of the common grace city and its relationship to the kingdoms of God and Satan. He describes two aspects of the common grace city, that of religious antithesis and common grace, as follows:

David R. then quotes Dr. Meredith Kline,

“There is in the city a spiritual malignancy, the fatal consequence of the usurpation of the world kingdom by Satan and the prostitution of the city to demonic service. In the lurid expose found in the apocalyptic mode of Scripture, the satanically perverted urban power structure is seen as a beast savagely turned against the citizens of the city who refuse its mark…. The victims are not those disadvantaged in things temporal. It is rather a matter of religious antithesis, an ancient diabolical enmity. It is against the redeemed of the Lamb that the controlling powers of the world kingdom direct their hellish hostility.

“Yet in the face of the bestial aspect assumed by the city and the ensuing religious warfare that rages within it,
Scripture affirms the legitimacy of the city. One thinks of the historical context of Romans 13. The legitimacy of the city is affirmed not because the bestializing of the city is a relatively late historical development. As a matter of fact, the Beast-power is not just a phenomenon of the present church age. The founder of the city was himself the slayer of the first martyr-prophet…. Our positive affirmation of the city structure is not based on a mere chronological priority of positive to negative factors in the make-up of the city. It is due rather to the fact that fundamental structural legitimacy is a matter of divine ordinance, not of the nature of man’s administration of the institution. The frightful religious tension of the city belongs to the story of the apostate direction taken by the city potentates and should not be allowed to obscure the character of the city as a structure founded on the common grace ordinance of the Creator.

1.) Dr. Kline would have us believe that the city (common realm) is prostituted to a demonic service that is a beast that is turned against the redeemed of the lamb who are to endure the hellish hostility of an ancient diabolical enmity and yet despite the fact that these controlling powers have usurped the world kingdom so that common realm is implacably opposed to those who will not receive its mark Dr. Kline’s followers would have us believe that some kind of principled pluralism in the common realm can make it so Christians and non-Christians can function harmoniously despite all this hostility?

Well, I suppose some people can reconcile that position.

2.) Note that Dr. Kline mentions in these brief paragraphs both the idea of “religious warfare that rages within the common realm,” and again, “the frightful religious tension of the city.” This is fundamentally important to critiquing the disciples of Kline (the grand-daddy of R2K). Dr. Kline admits of this religious warfare that rages in the city and yet the disciples of Kline insist that the common realm, at least for Christians, is a religious free zone. Christians, according to the R2K acolytes are not to appeal to their Christianity (their religion) in the common realm but instead they are to appeal to natural law. I’ve even had one R2K supporter tell me that it is only natural religion that is to shape the common realm since Christianity was never intended to be a social order factor. Many of the R2K fellows communicate this same thing when they tell you that “there is no such thing as Christian culture,” or when they rail against the idea of Christendom. So, here is the question. If, in R2K thinking, Christianity is not to shape or impact the common realm, which is instead shaped by common grace and ruled by common law, how can it be that there will be “religious warfare that rages within” the common realm, and how can there be a “frightful religious tension?” If the common realm is common and Christianity does not exist in a public square sense in the common realm then whence this frightful religious tension? Whence this religious warfare that rages within the common realm?

Here we have one of the R2K disciples quoting Dr. Meredith Kline and yet Kline assumes to be the case what R2K insists can’t be the case.

3.) Dr. Kline refers to the city (common realm) as “bestial.” By what standard are we defining the common realm as bestial? Naturally that standard has to be the Scripture. Dr. Kline, looking to the standard of the Scripture, insists that the common realm is “bestial.” So, if the common realm is “bestial” it seems like it would be fair to say that the common realm is also evil. (Bestial and evil do kind of go together.) However, the R2K lads insist on telling us that Dr. Kline’s bestial common realm is NOT evil — not bestial — but rather is merely “common.” The common realm can not have in it a Christian culture the R2K lads tell us and yet their mentor, Dr. Kline tells us that the common realm must remain decidedly non-Christian. (After all, if the common realm remain bestial in hardly seems a stretch to insist that a bestial realm yields non-Christian cultures.)

The reason this is so important is that it was the Anabaptists who insisted that the realms outside of their communes were inherently evil. Dr. Kline’s position, like the R2K position, does sound Anabaptist at this point. Note that Dr. Kline seems to be saying that the common realm is animated by “the Beast power.” One wonders how that common realm can be considered common if it is, by definition, animated, shaped, influenced by “the Beast power?”

Dr. Kline continues

“Over against every tendency to identify the city at its essential core with those demonic powers that seize and manipulate the power of the state we must assert the biblical testimony to the goodness of this postlapsarian institution as an appointment of God’s common grace, beneficial and remedial in its functions.”

So, despite all the apocalyptic language earlier used to describe the common realm, the goodness of this common realm is asserted. This is akin to Alexander Solzhenitsyn writing about the horrors of the Gulag Archipelago and then concluding by asserting the goodness of the gulag.

Biblical Christianity, contrary to R2K dualisms, does believe that there is a present evil age that is every bit as wicked as Dr. Kline describes. However, Biblical Christianity doesn’t teach that the present evil age is good or dualistically permanent. Biblical Christianity teaches that this present wicked age is being incrementally pushed back by the age to come that was inaugurated by the coming and triumph of the Lord Christ. God’s Christ, being victorious over this present wicked age, and having bound the strong man is now, by the work of His Spirit and through the Spirit given obedience of the Church and through His providential orchestration of all things, is going from victory unto victory. The age to come is not yet in all of its manifested authority and will not be until the consummation of all things but the fact that the age to come is not yet seen in all its coming brilliance does not mean that it can not, will not, or should not be incrementally and increasingly turning the desert of the present wicked age into the Oasis of the already present and ever increasingly present age to come.

God’s common grace is seen in the reality that the present wicked age is not perfectly consistent with its own Christ hating presuppositions. God’s common grace keeps the present wicked age from nihilistic destruction so that the age to come, of our Lord Christ’s delegated authority to the Church, has the time and opportunity to be about the mission of teaching the nations to observe all things so that age to come goes from glory unto glory over this present wicked age which resists it at every turn.

Dr. Kline continues,

“Summing up then, the meaning or essential identity of the postlapsarian city is not found in identification either with the kingdom of Satan or with the kingdom of God. Nor is it to be explained in terms of a dialectical seesawing between the demonic and the divine. This divinely appointed institution exists within the sphere of common grace, which is the corollary, the counterpoise, of the common curse. The fundamental shape of the city is the resultant of the interplay of these two correlative principles of divine action, a divine wrath and a divine grace that restrains that wrath according to the measure of sovereign divine purpose. Such is the biblical conceptual framework for defining the basic meaning of the city.” (pp. 168-172)

Dr. Kline has thus given us two dualisms.

1.) The first dualism is the dualism between the City of God and the City of man. (Let’s not even venture into the fact that Dr. Kline’s followers uses these in a non-Augustinian sense.)

2.) The second dualism is the dualism that is found in the second duality of the first dualism. In the City of Man Dr. Kline has suggested that there is a dualism that exists between the ying of common grace and the yang of common curse.

Dr. Kline says that the essential identity of the postlapsarian city is not found in identification either with the kingdom of Satan or with the kingdom of God. Another way of saying that is that the postlapsarian city is found in identification with both the Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God. After all, remember the descriptors earlier that was given to us by Dr. Kline. The City of Man was “Bestial.” The City of man had a spiritual malignancy. The City of man The World Kingdom had been usurped by Satan and the city of Man was prostituted to Demonic service.

After saying all this, how can Dr. Kline turn around and say “the postlapsarian city is not found in identification either with the Kingdom of Satan or with the Kingdom of God?

Yet at the same time Dr. Kline now says that this city of man is a divinely appointed institution. This is why I say that Dr. Kline is saying not only saying that the City of man’s identity is not to be found either with the Kingdom of Satan or the Kingdom of God, but Kline is also saying that the city of man’s identity is found both in the Kingdom of Satan and in the Kingdom of God.

Notice also, that with Kline’s assertion that the city of man is not to be identified with the Kingdom of Satan we are still left asking, “Where exactly is the Kingdom of Satan in Radical Two Kingdom theology?

Finally, note that Dr. Kline can deny his creation of a dialectic in the City of man all he wants but that is exactly what he has given us. In a very Hegelian manner Dr. Kline has given us, for the City of Man, a thesis which is the Kingdom of God and a antithesis which is the Kingdom of Satan and Dr. Kline has left the synthesis to only be arrived at with the consummation. It strikes me then, that the city of man for those who accept this thinking (R2K), is a Manichean reality. The common realm is a place where ultimate good and ultimate evil are perfectly counter-poised so that neither will have conquest over the other. This is perfectly consistent with Amilliennial eschatology that insists that good and evil grow together and evil only begins to triumph finally on the brink of Christ’s return.

Now keep in mind that this is the quote that was given to me by David R. I have only dealt with that quote which I was given.