Category: Apologetics

– Can you give  a few examples of what standard classical 2K is?

Hello Jason

Thank you for writing with that question.

First, to be clear here, there is not only one classical 2K understanding. Nuances have existed through history. Luther’s 2K is different than Bucer’s 2K which is different than Calvin’s 2K, etc. This needs to be understood.

Speaking generally standard classical 2K like R2k teaches that there is a “Duplex Regnum Christi” (Christ’s Twofold Kingdom). Classical 2K unlike R2K attempts to orient the earthly life to the heavenly life without conflating or confounding them.  This means that for classical 2K there is going to be far less of a dualistic feel to what they advance and champion.

Because the above is so, classical 2K is going to allow for the fact, for example, that the magistrate is responsible not only for the second table of God’s Law (Ten Commandments) but also is responsible for the first table of God’s Law as well. R2K, will typically insist that the Magistrate should not be concerned with enforcing the first table of God’s Law. On this score Dr. R. Scott Clark (he of R2K villainy) has stated;

“It is not the magistrate’s duty to police every sort of violation of natural law and sin. For example, no one but theocrats want the state enforcing obedience to the first table of the law. The magistrate’s natural sphere of concern and authority is in the second table.”

http://heidelblog.net/2008/10/natural-law-the-two-kingdoms-and-homosexual-marriage/.

R2K maven Dr. D. G. Hart agrees;

“To expect the Bible to address the affairs of state is to apply the wrong standards.  We have general revelation to muck through the political realm.  We have the Bible to plod along in the church.”

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/election-cycle-2008-and-the-christian/#comment-56987.

Calvin, however, himself being classical 2K did not agree with Dr. Clark and Dr. Hart’s theological novelty. Instead Calvin writes (as he writes likewise in sundry places) in his Institutes 21.5:
 

“The Inadequacy of the Light of Nature

“To be sure, there is left in man after the fall, some light of nature, whereby he retains some notions about God,-1- about natural things, and about the difference between what is honorable and shameful, and shows some regard for virtue and outward order. But so far is he from arriving at the saving knowledge of God and true conversion through this light of nature that he does not even use it properly in natural and civil matters. Rather, whatever this light may be, man wholly pollutes it in various ways and suppresses it by his wickedness.-2- In doing so, he renders himself without excuse before God.”

-1- Rom 1:19-20; 2:14-15.
-2- Rom 1:18, 20.

R2K (NL2K, E2K) cannot get off the ground apart from their leaning on Natural Law as their epistemological source of authority. Epistemology answers the question, “How do we know what we know,” and R2K insists that for the common realm we know what we know on the basis of natural law. The theory of Natural Law goes way back into the ancient mists. Aristotle is often considered a pivotal figure in the systematic organization of natural law. What Aristotle systematized the Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas baptized and the Reformers, unfortunately embraced. At the beginning of the 20th century there were a coterie of men who arose who began to seriously challenge the sufficiency of Natural Law as an epistemological option. One of those men was Dr. Cornelius Van Til who said of Natural Law:

This synthetic; (Aristotelianism w/ Christianity) standpoint found its most powerful philosophical and theological expression in the system of Thomas Aquinas. The; two foundational tenets of this system were the positing of the; autonomy of natural reason in the entire sphere of natural knowledge, and the thesis that nature is the understructure of supernatural grace.”71 It is in the acceptance of the idea of the autonomy of reason, even though it was supposed to be restricted to the sphere of “natural knowledge,” that Romanism (and all systems that embrace Natural Law — BLM) makes its alliance with the religious dualism of the Greek form-matter scheme. In consequence, the “Biblical creation-motive” was deprived of its original integral and radical character.”72 “Creation is proclaimed to be a natural truth, which can be seen and proven by theoretical thought independent of all divine revelation.”

Cornelius Van Til
Christianity & Barthianism – p. 235

R2K wishes to return to the epistemology of Aristotle, Aquinas, the Roman Catholic church, and the errant Reformers, who themselves noted the necessity to be Reformed and always Reforming.

In starting out here we should first note that all Christians agree that Natural Law exists. Scripture clearly teaches in Psalm 19 that the “heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament shows forth His handiwork.” The disagreement arises on the point of the fallen man’s capacity to read Natural Law, given the fact that, as the Holy Spirit says in Romans 1, fallen man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. Paul also writes in Romans 8 that “the carnal mind is at enmity with God: it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

So the difference between R2K epistemology and biblical epistemology is that R2K by denying the clear teaching of Scripture in preference for Aristotelian scholasticism embraces man as the interpretive norm that norms all norms. Per R2K, fallen man, autonomously presupposing himself as his own beginning point, has the ability to read aright Natural Law well enough to legislate, quite apart from presupposing God and His Special Revelation, all needed to build a functioning social order. This is a humanistic epistemology that lacks the understanding that the reality of the Natural Law that God sends is purposefully warped and twisted by fallen man to serve his fallen ends due to his beginning bias against God and His revelation. Thomistic Natural Law fails because Thomistic Natural Law, like all of semi-pelagianism, refuses to recognize the effect of the fall both on man’s intellect and on man’s will.

A Biblical response to all Natural Law reasoning is to point out that beginning presuppositions end with conclusions that reflect those beginning presuppositions. If man begins with himself as his own epistemological authority then man will end with conclusions that reflect his authority. If a fallen man begins with himself the morality he arrives at will be naught but a morality wherein man is said loudly. If a fallen man begins with his ability to read Natural Law correctly then fallen man will merely turn his beginning subjective starting point into an inflated objective ending point that is, in reality, a subjective objective. If fallen man as subjective begins with himself than any objective he arrives at, will, by necessity be a subjective objective. Fallen immoral man will never conclude divine morality.

The objection of the Biblical Christian to the Natural Law epistemology of R2K is that

1.) Such epistemology denies the Reformed doctrine of “Total Depravity.”
2.) Such epistemology denies that the ability to read Natural Law aright requires the presuppositions found in Special Revelation.
3.) Such epistemology is unstable as seen in the multiplicity of differing and opposing philosophical schools who each and all say Natural Law proves their unique and differing interpretation of Natural Law.
4.) Natural Law is an epistemological mechanism that competes with Special Revelation, and in doing so ends up prioritizing Natural Law over Special Revelation.
5.) Natural Law always ends in relativism since the only anchor for Natural Law is men’s shifting beginning points.

Let us be as succinct and pithy as we can be here. Fallen man denies God. Inasmuch as fallen man denies God he therefore denies himself. Inasmuch as he denies God and denies himself he denies his ability to read Natural Law correctly even though

Romans 1:19 … “what may be known of God is evident in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

It is the fallenness of fallen man that makes Natural Law to be not an option for epistemology and that because fallen man suppresses the truth of natural law in unrighteousness.

R2K fails, like all Natural Law projects, on the shoals of the fallen-ness of fallen man. Appeals to Natural Law are consistent for non-Reformed theologies but they stand in stark contradiction to any Reformed epistemology which is inclusive of an anthropology that includes total depravity.

Zacharias Ursinus, co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism understood this. Ursinus offered in his commentary on the Heidelberg catechism;