R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology)

Dis-assembling Heidleblog’s Jim Cassidy’s Faulting Of the Transforming Effect of Christianity – Part II

James Cassidy writes on Hiedleblog,

The social gospel turns Christianity into a program for changing and improving society. The national gospel turns Christianity into a program for changing and improving the nation. Both fix their eyes upon this-worldly improvement and, in doing so, turn the gospel’s end into a mere means.

BLMc Responds,

The problem with Jimbo’s thinking here is that he views “the Gospel” anthropologically. That is, for Jimbo being right with God is the terminal point of the Gospel. This is a Lutheran position. For the Reformed, however, the Gospel’s terminal point is not man being right with God but rather man living to the glory of God. Jimbo mistakes the ultimate question for the unregenerate, “What must I do to be saved,” for the ultimate question for the regenerate, “How can I live to please God?” Jimbo thus reduces “the Gospel” to a anthropological concern instead of seeing it as the entry way into living life to the glory of God.

Don’t like the point I’m making here? Maybe folks will like it better if Bavinck makes it,

The difference (between Lutheran and Reformed) seems to be conveyed best by saying that the Reformed Christian thinks theologically, the Lutheran anthropologically. The Reformed person is not content with an exclusively historical stance but raises his sights to the idea, the eternal decree of God. By contrast, the Lutheran takes his position in the midst of the history of redemption and feels no need to enter more deeply into the counsel of God. For the Reformed, therefore, election is the heart of the church; for Lutherans, justification is the article by which the church stands or falls. Among the former the primary question is: How is the glory of God advanced? Among the latter it is: How does a human get saved? The struggle of the former is above all paganism- idolatry; that of the latter against Judaism- works righteousness. The Reformed person does not rest until he has traced all things retrospectively to the divine decree, tracking down the “wherefore” of things, and has prospectively made all things subservient to the glory of God; the Lutheran is content with the “that” and enjoys the salvation in which he is, by faith, a participant. From this difference in principle, the dogmatic controversies between them (with respect to the image of God, original sin, the person of Christ, the order of salvation, the sacraments, church government, ethics, etc.) can be easily explained.

—Herman Bavinck
Reformed Dogmatics — Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Baker, 2003), 177.

This quote reveals how R2K is more Lutheran that it is Reformed. R2K is not concerned with how God’s glory is advanced in the common realm for Jimbo’s R2K because God’s glory can’t be advanced in the common realm because the common realm is common. It is a realm where good and evil grow together and the only realm where the glory of God that is advanced happens in the Church. If R2K struggles against paganism / idolatry it struggles against it only in the ecclesiastical realm. It is clear, per Bavinck, that Jimbo’s R2K’s primary struggle is Lutheran in as much as it see’s works righteousness everywhere, especially in those of us who are not R2K. R2K does not think it is possible to make anything in the common realm uniquely subservient to God.

R2K is not Reformed. It is instead a mish mash of Lutheran thinking, and Anabaptist thinking, heavily seasoned with Dualism. This is the real reason Jimbo and R. Scott Clark are upset over Christian Nationalism or any other expression of the Christian faith that understands that the Christian faith, when embraced, transforms every area of life.

Next we need to note that the problem with the Social Gospel was never that it expected Christianity to have an impact on society. The problem, historically, with the Social Gospel is that it was a project of theological liberals and as such the God it was serving was not the God of the Bible and as such the impact it was pursuing was the inverse of the impact that Biblical Christianity brings.

Finally, the Gospel is indeed a mere means. It is the mere means by which God’s freely redeems men so that they can live to His glory. Entry into salvation is not the final word. Now being freely redeemed we, as Christians, make it our goal to please Him.

Jimbo writes,

To be sure, we ought to desire improvement in this world. Everyone desires it. Even pagans want a better society, and sometimes pagan proposals for social improvement are better than those offered by Christians. Nevertheless, neither social nor national improvement is the gospel. Neither is improvement the ultimate or even the penultimate goal of the church’s gospel ministry. The church proclaims the gospel for the gathering and perfecting of the saints. The gospel concerns redemption, not a political project.

BLMc responds,

Well, I think I’ve covered this pretty well by now. First, nobody in the Reformed world who is orthodox – no Theonomist, no Reconstructionist, no postmillennialist – would ever say that social or national improvement absent the Gospel is the Gospel. This is just a reckless and silly accusation.

Secondly, I will just note that, once again, Jimbo has given us a false dichotomy between redemption and politics. It is because the Gospel concerns redemption of every area of life that we can expect politics to be affected.

Jimbo writes,

Some will object: What about sanctification? Is sanctification not God’s plan for improving believers?

Not in the sense envisioned here. We do not believe, as the evangelical prosperity message would have us believe, that grace is a spiritual boost—a power-up that makes sinners into more successful people for the sake of social improvement. As an aside, along with liberalism and Christian nationalism, one could include the prosperity gospel into the same mix.

BLMc responds,

But we would believe, as the Reformed has always taught, that grace restores nature. Jimbo and his R2K fanboys would have us believe that grace leaves nature unaffected.

Secondly, if grace does indeed restore nature than the explosion of grace via Gospel conversion in a person’s life will indeed incrementally restore them to be the best possible version of themselves. When grace restores nature we go from someone who is self serving to someone who makes it our goal to please God. How is that not being more successful? How will the Gospel saving a drunkard, adulterous father not make for social improvement in the wife and family he’s been slaughtering with his demonic behavior?

Jimbo, like all R2K fanboys, will throw the kitchen sink at historic Christianity in order to have their way. We started with just being dirty rotten Christian Nationalists and from there we went to being skunky Social Gospelers and now we have reached insult climax with being associated with putrid prosperity gospel.

Jimbo writes,

The gospel is God’s message of salvation for sinners. That salvation includes both justification and sanctification. Sanctification is a work of God’s free grace by which believers are enabled more and more to die to sin and live to righteousness. It begins at the very outset of the Christian life. The believer becomes increasingly aware of the odiousness of his sin and seeks to mortify it.

BLMc responds,

And in seeking to mortify sin the consequence for the family of the previously drug addled father who is being sanctified is social improvement.

Honestly, what is so difficult about this? Why does this offend the R2K fanboys so much? There is only one reason why and that is their pagan ideology, as imported and so redefining their Christian faith, has blinded them.

Jimbo writes,

But sanctification is complex. It is not a steady process of uninterrupted and publicly measurable gains. Some Christians become prodigal sons for a season. Some struggle against old sins and seem to lose the battle more often than not. Others gain the upper hand over particular sins and make real and enduring contributions to the church and society. Praise the Lord! Some Christians become leaders in society; others become martyrs at society’s hands. Some enter the history books, while most are never known beyond the walls of their local church.

BLMc responds,

And the point here is ….?

I’ll tell you the point … Jimbo’s point is that we can’t expect the Gospel to have decided and long lasting impact on either individuals lives or on cultures or nations. All that Jimbo says here is true but it was St. Paul’s anticipation that sanctification would have ongoing impact,

⁹Or do you not know that the unrighteous^[b] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,^[c] ¹⁰nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Paul’s anticipation here was that the Corinthians, who were recipients of the Gospel, would live lives that couldn’t help but have social improvement impact.

You see, Jimbo, like all R2K fanboys needs to diminish sanctification in order to get his pessimistic eschatology and Christianity off the ground.

Jimbo writes,

God makes no promise in Scripture that Christians will triumph in the public square or collectively tip the scales of the culture wars. Such influence may come, and we may thank God when it does. But he has not promised it, and he never defines the gospel as a message of social or national preeminence.

BLMc responds,

Of course only a militant amillennialist could write the above. Plenty of postmillennialists have demonstrated to the contrary. See the many posts on Iron Ink squashing Amillennial thinking. Just plug in the word “postmillennial” into the Iron Ink serach engine.

Jimbo writes,

As the men on Presbycast rightly noted, pragmatism is the common denominator between muscular Christian nationalism and the liberal social gospel. Both ask, What good is a gospel—or a church—that cannot produce a tangible difference in this world? If the gospel saves sinners but does not transform society or restore the nation, what good is it?

BLMc responds,

I have no earthly idea who or what “Presbycast” is. Probably just another silly R2K blog.

I would say a gospel that does not transform sinners is a false gospel. Further, I would say that a gospel that does not transform society once many sinners in that society are reputed to be freely redeemed by grace is a false gospel. Finally, I would say that R2K’s false gospel is indeed no gospel. These chaps diminish the Kingship of Jesus Christ over lives of believers. These chaps diminish the transforming change the Holy Spirit brings into people’s lives. These chaps have so emphasized the outsidedness of the Gospel that they have forgotten as the Heidelberg Catechism teaches,

To be washed with Christ’s Spirit means
that the Holy Spirit has renewed me and
set me apart to be a member of Christ
so that more and more I become dead to sin,
and increasingly live a holy and blameless life.2

If Spirit washed people increasingly live a holy and blameless life how can that not have societal impact? Inasmuch as these chaps deny that in that much they are anti-Christs.

Jimbo finishes,

What good is it? Paul calls the gospel “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16). There is the good. And it is always good, irrespective of whatever results may—or may not—follow within a particular nation.

BLMc responds,

Paul also says,

I appeal to you therefore, brothers,^[a] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.^[b] ²Do not be conformed to this world,^[c] but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.^[d]

The good is being rescued from the dominion of darkness by being translated to the Kingdom of God’s dear Son to the end that we may glorify God and so fully enjoy Him forever.

Does R2K glorify God?

Is “Saving People From Their Sins” the Ultimate Mission of the Church? A Repudiation of “Reformed” Rev. Chrissy Gordon

“DeYoung expressed, ‘Pugnacity and jocularity are not the occasional and unfortunate by-products of the brand; they are the brand.’ He’s exactly correct. As Christendom has collapsed in the West, Wilson has offered a vision that plays on the fears and emotions of those who are panicking. This is precisely why the mission of the church, all of the sudden, takes a drastic turn in its elevating of cultural transformation while ‘saving people from their sins’ becomes only a means to this greater end.”

Rev. Chrissy Gordon

R2K “Minister”
Quote from 2023

1.) Could anybody tell me what is wrong with toughness and humor (pugnacity and jocularity) being the type of Christianity one lives? Is this a case where people like DeYoung and Gordon are offended by having a sense of humor? Clearly, no one will be accusing DeYoung and Gordon of having the toughness required in order to be accused of being “pugnacious.”

2.) The Reformed have always believed that “saving people from their sins” is only the means to a greater end. It is the Lutherans, historically, who believed that “saving people from their sins” was the end of the message of the Gospel. Contrary to Lutherans, the Reformed always held that “saving people from their sins” was only a means to the higher end of a people determined to live for the glory of God. One of those ways people live for the glory of God is the cultural transformation that is the product of saved people seeking to live for the glory of God.

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological.”

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ – p. 189-190

Another way to put the differences between Lutheranism (what Gordon is trying to sell) and Reformed worldviews is that for Lutheranism salvation is for man and terminates on man, individually considered while for Reformed thought salvation is for God and serves the terminating end of a renewed cosmos dripping and saturated with God’s glory. For Lutheranism the teleology is man atoned for, whereas for Reformed thought the teleology includes but doesn’t end with man atoned for. For Reformed thought the teleology is the atonement as well as all the totality of corresponding and inevitable consequences that the atonement brings upon men who have been atoned for. Atonement for individual men is not the end product of Christ’s work. Atonement is the beginning and creating point of enlisting men into the cause of cosmic renewal for the glory of God. Men are not atoned for and saved for the sake of being atoned for and saved. Men are atoned for and saved to be put on a mission to take captive every thought and take dominion over every crevice of the cosmos to make all thoughts and all crevices obedient to King Christ. In Reformed thought, classical Lutheran thought is provincial and anthropocentric and is far to horizontally circumscribed and vertically nugatory.

Whatever Gordon is expressing here (I think it is Lutheranism) this is not the way the Reformed have thought over the centuries.

In other words… Rev. Gordon is just flat out in error here. However, nobody is surprised by Rev. Gordon and error going together like peas and carrots.

Who Knew? R2K’s Reformed Judiasm’s Roots

I just learned that R2K pinched off of Reformed Judaism w/ its negating of God’s Law. The quotes below, coming from Reformed Judaism could have fallen from the ink pen of David Van Drunnen. Van Drunnen merely took these principles of Reformed Judaism and applied it to Christianity so that Christianity becomes as progressive as Reformed Judaism.

_____

“Samuel Holdheim, the first Rabbi of the Reform congregation in Berlin wrote in 1845 that divine law is given only for a particular time and place:

‘A law, even though divine, is potent only so long as the conditions and circumstance of life to meet which it was enacted, continue; when these change, however, the law must be abrogated, even though it have God as its author. For God Himself has shown indubitably that with the change of the circumstances and conditions of life for which He once gave those laws, the laws themselves cease to be operative, that they shall be observed no longer because they can be observed no longer.’

The Pittsburgh Platform adopted by the Reform movement in its early days in the United States is forthright in its attempt to strip ethnicity from theology. Referring to Orthodox Judaism, the platform proclaimed:

‘Today we accept as binding only its moral laws and maintain only such ceremonials as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.

We hold that all such Mosaic and Rabbinical laws as regulated diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages under the influence of ideas altogether foreign to our present mental and spiritual state.

We recognize Judaism as a progressive religions, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason.'”

Rodney Stark

The Rise of Christianity – p. 53

R2K thinking uses the same reasoning that Reformed Judaism used back in 1845 to break away from Orthodox Judaism. They relativized the OT by saying it no longer applied since times had changed. Van Drunen took the same idea and said that with the New Testament the time had changed and the revelation of the OT, pertaining to the civil/judicial law, was no longer valid and so not to be enforced.

So, what we have discovered here is that R2K is Reformed Judaism for the Christian faith. Just as Reformed Judaism was a progressive move for Jews so R2K is a progressive move for the Christian faith. Just as Reformed Judaism was a break from historic Orthodox Judaism so R2K is a break from historic Biblical Christianity.

Now, given that Meredith Kline is the foundation for David Van Drunen and given Meredith Kline’s Jewish connection as a boy one wonders if R2K has Reformed Judaism roots?

But that’s not all. In the same document quoted from above we find;

“We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community.”

This likewise is a R2K sentiment. R2K does not believe that it is possible for a nation to be Christian. R2K, like Reformed Judaism insists that Christianity is only a religious community and nothing else.

Exposing Dr. David Van Drunen’s R2K Vision of Common Realm

“The book has yet to be written to deliver us from the Kuyperian captivity of the Church.”

Dr. David Van Drunen
Modern Reformation

Here the complaint is specifically against Kuyperian worldview thinking. DVD has spent his career trying to write the book that he lamented had never yet been written. DVD’s objection, being the great advocate of R2K, has been to delimit explicit Christianity to being expressed only in the Church (grace realm). DVD has won the day and now for the modern Reformed church all activity by believers outside the church is no longer to be handled in a specifically Christ honoring manner, since all those activities outside the church are religious free activities. Instead all activities outside the church done my the man who is Christian, when attending church, are now done by men who are conditioned by a Natural Law that conditions Mooselimbs, Bagels, Hindus, Humanists, and Christian all in exactly the same way when they are not at Mosque, Synagogue, Temple, or University. According to Van Drunen and R2K, men across a wide spectrum of religious belief systems can co-exist in harmony in the same social order, since for R2K a common ground can be found in the fact that Natural Law will teach each and all of these men of different faiths, once jumbled all together in the common realm, the same truths. This will result in all these folks from competing religions finding harmony in the common realm.

So, for R2K, multiculturalism is indeed possible because all the tensions that we might think would arise from people of dramatic and distinctive faiths living cheek by jowl in the same social order are removed by the fact that they will all eventually come to understand that their peculiar faith systems will, like this R2K version of Christianity, learn to put aside their distinctly religious convictions once in the common realm and will come to understand that once in the common realm the religious convictions of Islam, Judaism, Zionism, Hinduism, Humanism, etc. fade away in favor of Natural law as being the norm that norms all norms in the religiously neutral common realm. In such a way multi-cultural, multi-faith, and multi-racial social orders can be as common as “peas and carrots.”

2K, R2K, W2K

“The thing is, you don’t have to be a “publicly” rightwing pastor, at least regarding politics. Enter the ministry and be a safe haven for right wing laymen who are doing the work. But be mindful that your calling is not to be a safe haven but administer the means of grace unto.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
X

“The pastor need only point the people in the right direction. No need to become a right wing voice on politics.”

Anthony Fava
X

I would even say you should not be a publicly RW pastor, any more than any other adjective other than faithful. It is a mistake to enter the service of God and His people to “fix” the errors that you see. Get in there, and God will bring you whatever He decides to, and that will keep you busy enough.

Mike Daniels
X

1.) I am seeing more and more of this kind of talk on social media sites and of course I mark it as rising due to the influence of baleful Wolfean (Henceforth W2K) thinking. What is a little ironic here is that Wolfe has said that the clergy need to butt out of politics since that is not their bailiwick. However, it doesn’t look like this is a sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander wisdom. It’s not ok for Pastors to speak on politics in the pulpit, per Wolfe, but apparently is ok for Wolfe to speak on the “grace realm” from his perch in the nature realm. Still, 2K thinking is inherently contradictory and hypocritical so I don’t fault Dr. Wolfe overmuch here.

2.) Wolfe’s counsel here could be reduced, distilled, and translated as advising, “You can be right wing just hide your candle under a bushel basket and preach Christianity as fire insurance and distributed the sacraments. Of course Wolfe is reducing Christianity to “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” and “here are the sacraments to remind you of that preached truth.”

3.) After writing volumes on R2K and now seeing more and more of W2K I am concluding that 2K always works to reduce and constrain the Christian faith. R2K has endlessly chirped, “Pastor’s need to stay in their lanes and stay out of economics, politics, history, family life, arts, education, etc.” Now W2K is getting pretty close to holding hands with that sentiment. Of course this reduces the clergy to being bystanders on worldview issues. The clergy, by this vision of ministry, when taken to its logical outcome has no “thus saith the Lord,” on issues such as sodomy, abortion, war, taxation, education, politics, polygamy, post-war consensus, Marxism, immigration, gun control, etc. Indeed, the clergy must shut up about these issues. A cynic might say that Wolfe wants the clergy to shut up on these issues so that his voice become disproportionately louder. However, Scripture speaks to all these issues and it is the role of the clergy to speak all of Christ to all of life.

4.) A small proviso here. I used to think Wolfe was begging for the clergy to shut up on these other issues because they were so uniformly wrong when speaking to these issues. However, with this quote above its pretty clear he doesn’t want even the clergy that might not that he agrees with God on some issues he champions to speak.

5.) As God is not progressive, nor leftist, nor a Enlightenment Liberal, nor a Marxist therefore clergy must be God’s voice against anti-Christ ideologies. As there is no neutrality all clergy must be right wing in the pulpit. Indeed Christianity is definitionally right wing in as much as it opposes Humanism which is uniformly left wing. This even extends to the Gospel. Inasmuch as man doesn’t save himself even the Gospel is right wing. Only conservatives tell men that God is transcendent and Holy. That man is a sinner. That there is forgiveness in Christ. That the redeemed man then lives in gratitude for God’s glory as informed by God’s Law-Word.

6.) Can you imagine trying to sell the swill above to the Black Robed Regiment in the colonies in 1776. Contrary to the quotes above, the Pastor does need to become a Biblical voice on politics and that voice will be necessarily right wing. What… do these folks think God is a leftist? For example Christian clergy in Texas need to be telling their people, from the pulpit, that the God that James Talarico speaks of in his campaign speeches is not the God of the Bible. To fail in doing that is to abandon their post.

7.) None of this means that the pulpit only preaches on these kinds of issue. Redemptive-historical preaching is required. However, it is not the only preaching required. Preaching that focuses God’s people on the third use of the Law also needs to be heard. That is the kind of preaching that would touch on some of the subjects mentioned here.

8.) In the end the quotes above reflect just plain old antinomianism. For the clergy to not lift their voices against the spirit of the age would be treason. At the very least, the few of us remaining right wing clergy need to be a counter-weight to all the left wing clergy as well as to the left-wing R2K clergy.