Category: Apologetics

“Western society, in turning away from Christian faith, has turned to other things. This process is commonly called secularization, but that conveys only the negative aspect. the word connotes the turning away from the worship of God while ignoring the fact that something is being turned to in its place. Even atheisms are usually idolatrous, as Neibuhr said, because they elevate some ‘principle of coherence’ to the central meaning of life and this is what then provides the focus of significance for that life.”

Herbert Schlossberg
Idols For Destruction — pg. 6

This observation by Schlossberg is a the stake through the heart of Westminster West Concordia Seminary (WWCS) radical two kingdom theology (R2kt). WWSC desires a secular, pluralistic, putatively non-religious culture but they advocate for that without realizing that the codification of a secular pluralistic putatively non-religious culture creates a religious culture where the god that has been elevated to provide the ‘principle of coherence’ is a god who will create a civil cult that insists that all the various gods of all those varying competing cults which are part of the pluralistic society must stay within the confines of their religious ghettos. With all the gods (including the God of the Bible) restricted to their religious ghettos what happens is that the putatively common realm will be guided by a god that goes about wearing the garb of non-existence. In other words when we seek to sanitize the public square of God, or when we pretend that the public square can be ruled by ‘no-God’ because it is a common realm, what transpires is that the god who rules the public secular square is a god who escapes notice by his adherents insisting that the god that is ruling doesn’t really exist and will argue that the way things are in the culture is ‘just the way things are supposed to be.’

“Calvin charted a course between the Erastianism (the doctrine that the state is supreme over the church in ecclesiastical matters) of Lutherans that subordinated the church to the state, and the asceticism of Anabaptists that withdrew the Church from the State and society. Like Lutherans, Calvin and his followers insisted that each local polity be an overtly Christian commonwealth that adhered to the general principles of natural law and that translated them into detailed positive laws of religious worship, Sabbath observance, public morality, marriage and family life, social welfare, public education and more. Like Anabaptists, Calvin and his followers insisted on the basic separation of the offices and operations of church, and state, leaving the church to govern its own doctrine and liturgy, polity and property, without interference from the state. But, unlike both groups, Calvin insisted that both church and state officials were to play complementary legal roles in the creation of the local Christian commonwealth and in the cultivation of the Christian citizen.”

John Witte, Jr.
The Reformation Of Rights – pg. 78

A couple notes here.

First, Calvin’s expectation “that each local polity be an overtly Christian commonwealth that adhered to the general principles of natural law,” must be understood in the context that natural law can only yield Christian conclusions when interpreted in a Christian community. Natural law, when pursued in the context of a Christian people and a Christian Worldview, can be expected to fulfill Calvin’s expectations and is the only place where it can really work without the use of raw force to implement it. It is the height of foolishness to think that Natural law will translate “into detailed positive laws of religious worship, Sabbath observance, public morality, marriage and family life, social welfare, public education and more,” when it is considered apart from Christian people living in a Christian commonwealth. One problem with Natural law as the R2Kt people pursue it is the expectation that the Natural law, as promulgated by Christian Natural law theologians, will be embraced by people who do not share the Biblical starting point that the Christian Natural law theologians have. Indeed, what is interesting is that Calvin expected Natural law to translate into detailed positive laws in areas that the current R2Kt Natural theologians insist that Natural law does not speak to at all (i.e. — religious worship, and Sabbath observance).

Second, the appeal to public education must be take into account that public education in a Christian commonwealth will be doing the same thing that public education in Secular humanist pluralist commonwealth does, and that is to catechize children into the guiding dominant mindset. There is nothing wrong with public education when it is pursued in the context of a Christian commonwealth, which is the context for which Calvin and Luther were advocating its existence. (Though I still would never require it through legislation.)

Third, this quote does serious damage to R2Kt idea that pluralism is the ideal societal arrangement. Calvin does not agree with the innovative thinking that is without Reformed historical legs that is coming out of Westminster West.

“Calvin’s principle of separation of church and state bore little resemblance, however, to modern American understandings of a ‘high and impregnable law between church and state.’ Despite his early flirtations with radical political implications of the two kingdoms theory, Calvin ultimately did not contemplate a ‘secular society’ with a plurality of absolutely separated religious and political officials within them. Nor did he contemplate a neutral state, which showed no preference among competing concepts of spiritual and moral good. For Calvin, each community is to be a unitary Christian society, a miniature corpus Christianum under God’s sovereignty and law. Within this unitary society, the church and state stand as coordinate powers. Both are ordained by God to help achieve a Godly order and discipline in the community, a successful realization of all three uses of the moral law. Such conjoined responsibilities inevitably require church and state, clergy and magistracy to aid and accommodate moderate each other on a variety of levels. These institutions and officials said Calvin, ‘are not contraries, like water and fire, but things conjoined.’ ‘The Spiritual polity, though distinct from the civil polity does not hinder or threaten it but rather greatly helps and furthers it.’ In turn, ‘the civil government has its appointed end…to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church…and a public manifestation of religion.’

Calvin’s principles were as much reminiscent of medieval forms of church-state relations as prescient of modern forms. To be sure, Calvin anticipated a number of modern concepts of separation, accomodation, and cooperation of church and state that later would come to dominate Western constitutionalism. But Calvin also appropriated many of the cardinal insights of both the ‘two powers’ theory of Pope Gelasius and and the ‘two swords’ theory of the Papal Revolution. Particularly like his medieval predecessors, Calvin saw that to maintain its liberty, the church had to organize itself into its own legal and political entity, and to preserve for itself its own jurisdiction and responsibility. It had to wield its own ‘sword,’ maintain its own ‘power.’ Calvin differed from his medieval predecessors, however, in insisting on a more democratic form of ecclesiastical and civil polity, a more limited ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and an equality of church and state before God.”

John Witte, Jr.
The Reformation of Rights pg. 76

Now what we are clearly seeing is that Calvin did hold to something that could be called a ‘Two Kingdom Theology.’ However what Calvin developed was far different than what Luther held to and what Westminster West Seminary is trying to sell with their radical two Kingdom Theology. Compared to Luther and Westminster West (which on this score is trying to Lutheranize Calvinist theology) Calvin’s two Kingdom theology is far more nuanced and subtle then the dichotomizing theology evidenced in Lutheran and Westminster West theology. Calvin’s theology eschews pagan pluralism, and embraces the idea of a kind of feudally arranged Christendom, where, because the individual parts that comprise the whole are organized as a Christian community, the whole therefore can be denominated ‘Christendom.’

Calvin’s Mature Formulations

“Calvin’s later formulations on religious liberty had the opposite tendency. As his thinking matured, and he took up his pastoral and political advisory duties in Geneva, Calvin began to think in more integrated and more institutional terms. He blurred the lines between the earthly kingdom and heavenly kingdom, between spiritual and political life, law, and liberty. He also focused more closely and concretely on the institutional responsibilities and relationship of Church and State. Whereas the religious liberty of the individual had been a principle concern of Calvin in the 1530’s, religious liberty of the Church took priority and precedence thereafter — to the point where the individual’s religious freedom would have to yield to the church’s in the event of conflict. This new priority was no more clearly demonstrated than in Calvin’s actions toward Severtus….

Calvin still insisted that liberty and law, freedom and order — and now rights and rules — belong together. But the law and order side of the equation took prominence in his later writings as he struggled to define the functions and interrelationships of moral, political, and ecclesiastical laws and structures within both the earthly and heavenly kingdoms. By the time of his 1559 Institutes, Calvin in effect superimposed on the Lutheran two kingdoms theory his own variant of the Catholic two swords theory. He assigned the church a legal role in the governance of the earthly kingdom, and the state a moral role in the governance of the heavenly kingdom. At the same time, he rendered obedience to church officials and law both a spiritual and a civic duty, and obedience to political officials and law both a civic and a spiritual duty….

At the foundation of Calvin’s later formulations was a newly expanded theory of the moral law, which God uses to govern both the heavenly and earthly kingdom. Calvin described the moral law much as he had described the ‘spiritual law’ before — as moral commandments, engraved on the conscience, repeated in Scripture, and summarized in the Decalogue…. Calvin generally used (varied) terms synonymously to describe the norms created and communicated by God for the governance of humanity, for the right ordering of individual and social lives. He considered the commandments of the Decalogue to be the fullest expression of the moral law, but he grounded many other human customs and habits in this moral law as well.”

John Witte, Jr.
The Reformation of Rights — Law, Religion, & Human Rights In Early Modern Calvinism
pg. 56-59

Calvin can not be appealed to as a proponent of Radical Two Kingdom Theory and was not a carrier of that virus. And as time passes and I continue to advance through Witte’s book we shall see ongoing testimony that the heirs of Calvin were not proponents of the Radical Two Kingdom theology that is being taught as basic Calvinism as Westminster West. We shall see that Calvin, Beza, Althusius, Milton, and the Colonial Puritan divines in the fledgling New England colonies were strangers to Radical Two Kingdom Theology.

Now I really don’t mind if some Reformed people exist who desire to teach Two Kingdom Theology. Clearly, Two Kingdom Theology in one form or another is something that all Reformed people need to take into consideration. But, as we have seen on this site, the Radical Two Kingdom Theology that is being pushed in some quarters is more Lutheran then it is Reformed, and I take great umbrage at the proponents of Radical Two Kingdom theology acting as if their pet theories have been embraced for centuries in the Reformed Church and cantering on as if it is a great pity that so many Reformed people have left the safe haven of their version of Calvinism 101. These Radical Two Kingdomists are the ones pushing aberrant Calvinism and Witte — somebody who doesn’t hold a Theonomic or Theocratic agenda — is going to show us that.

begin to take your name in vain.

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