R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology) – Page 11

I Had A Dream The Same Night Chris Gordon Had A Dream

As I sailed on the waters of the Great Lakes, I came to a certain place that seemed like an island, and I laid down in that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream…

I was driving through Tekonsha on Mi 60, and I came to a fruit stand that filled me with the urge to listen to some androgynous music. Finally I stumbled across Ziggy Stardust singing,

“Here comes Dick, he’s wearing a skirt
Here comes Jane, y’know she’s sporting a chain
Same hair, revolution
Same build, evolution
Tomorrow who’s gonna fuss?

[Chorus]
And they love each other so
Androgynous
Closer than you know, love each other so
Androgynous

The next song I heard in my dream was some kind of rift off of the Eagle’s “Hotel California;

Last thing I remember, I was
Countering their lore
I had to turn their worldview back
To the Calvin it was before
‘Relax,’ said the ordained man,
‘We are programmed to deceive.
You can argue anything you like
But we will never believe!’

And my dream turned even more surreal with men in skirts in pulpits lisping as they read something about being pilgrims and strangers in this land, yet feeling quite at home with their six figure income and book sales. As they deposited their checks they chanted “in this world we have no continuing city.” Koreans pressed for their autographs while they boasted about how they had people in their congregations on both sides of the “gay” marriage issue. In my dream the babies that had been aborted, as the men in skirts had remained silent in their pulpits on the issue of abortion, were now speaking at the men in skirts ordination services mentioning something about how as little ones they had been offended by the silence of Escondido. Chris Gordon was there giving the Benediction while obviously dreaming himself.

And then a great dream arose within the first dream and ate the first dream from the inside out, like Jonah eating his way through the great fish, and in that dream I dreamed I saw all men praising God in the public square. I saw D. G. Hart, Mike Horton, and R. Scott Clark urging their students to become men like John Knox, Samuel Davies, and R. L. Dabney. (I told you it was a strange dream.)

In my dream David Van Drunen and Matt Tuininga sat at a table as tweedle-dumb and tweedle-stupid playing ping pong. The ball they were hitting back and forth had stamped on it “surrender.” In the corner of the room stood Jacques Rousseau and John Locke arguing with Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson over who was the most responsible for R2K theology. Periodically they would suddenly become doubles partners playing against Van Drunen and Tuininga in a round robin ping pong tournament.

Van Drunen, Tuininga, Williams, Hutchinson, Rosseau, Locke, D. G. Hart, Gordon, Horton, and Scott then suddenly were violin virtuosos who played with great dissonance while in the background the cultural Marxists were going all arsonist on the building in which they were playing. But it was all alright because people were getting saved while everything burned down around their violin concert. Van Drunen, Tuininga, Williams, Hutchinson, Rosseau, Locke, D. G. Hart, Gordon, Horton, and Scott suddenly began to laugh maniacally as they played faster and faster and the walls burned hotter and hotter because they had always predicted that this is how it would all end anyhow. The hotter it burned, the more they laughed and the more they laughed the hotter it burned.

Suddenly, in my dream Scrooge was there but as converted to the Escondido Jesus. He was lecturing to me about the desire to reduce the surplus population of theonomists in the Church. He said, and I quote;

“Every theonomist idiot who goes about with ‘God’s Law’ on his lips, should be burned alive with his own copy of Bahnsen’s “Theonomy in Christian Ethics,” and buried with a stake of general equity through his heart.”

Then in my dream I saw, as it were, two air tight compartments which in no wise could be pierced by the other except as by hallucination. As I had one hallucination I was regulated by the Escondido magisterium. As I had another hallucination I was regulated by a unnatural natural law.

Then I awoke from my dream and opened my Bible and the place where I landed was this:

“Be ye not conformed to this world but be yet transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

I realized that the impulse of the Anabaptists to retreat from the world was exactly the spirit that had overcome me.

In my dream of trying to leave this world I found that there was no way to do that. Every action or lack of action on my part was impacting everything. How was I to be effective if I were to re-build the monastery? Cowardice was driving me and I suddenly remembered that no coward was ever saved. I realized that I must die to my desired retreatism and must once again seek to be a warrior for Christ. I realized that it was I myself, by my retreatist theology, who had created divisions and disunity in the church and that I couldn’t blame everyone else. I must die to my desire to be conquered by this present evil age. I realized that I too must die to myself, along with my own vision of how I want to see Christ’s kingdom come by not coming and by not contending for it.

It was Jesus who said that upon the confession that Jesus is Lord, Jesus would build His Church, and I realized that I was not confessing Jesus in the public square. I had forgotten that the early church had always been arrested for sedition and not because they were worshiping secretly in the catacombs. I realized that, truth be told, I care more about not being persecuted for righteousness sake than I cared for aborted babies.

Back to Tekonsha, Mi, confident in my calling to be a witness to wicked potentates so as to be as a shining star in a dark universe, I decided to go.

The Point of Linkage Between the R2K Dispute & The Kinism Dispute

“The R2K crowd is willing to cede the point that Christ’s spiritual kingdom or mediatorial kingdom is synonymous with the church. This is the classic non roman position. But they are unwilling to admit that Christ’s kingdom of power exists at all. The Kuyperians are unwilling to admit that there is a distinction between the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of power at all. Thus they are unable to draw a distinction between grace and the natural order. Or if they do nature is bad and so must be eliminated. Grace eats up nature and your church membership becomes more fundamental to your being than your father’s blood.

Both are errors. Neither comport with magisterial Protestantism or confessional Christianity.”

Robert Hoyle

Over the years here at Iron Ink two of my main foils (though not my only adversaries) have been R2K and “Christian” Alienism. What Robert offers above shows the reason for that. There is linkage between these two errors. Now, Robert and I do not agree on Natural Law scholastic theology but all theologians talk about the relationship between nature and grace. It has been a Reformed motif over the centuries that “grace restores/renews nature.”

The CREC wants grace at the expense of nature. This is seen in Doug Wilson’s silly diatribes against biblical Kinism…. well, except when it is his Kin who are at stake. When it is his kin at stake then suddenly we begin to smell ethnic puffery. Take for example these two paragraphs from Pope Douglas read back to back;

I.) Doug “I hate white Kinism” Wilson

“We of course reject all such ethnic pufferies, and we do so with just the right amount of loathing…By making absolutely everything about superficial ethnicity indicators, it turns out that some have learned this lesson in reactionary ways, and have embraced their superficial ethnicity indicators. Instead of being ASHAMED of this made-up reality, they became PROUD of this made-up reality. And that’s how we got a collection of Proud Boys going down to heckle folks at an Antifa rally, with the Boys in question made up of Scots, Norwegians, Germans, and a Ukrainian, arms locked, singing a Celtic war song. This is nothing more than playing tribal dress-ups, or ethnic cosplay, and all of it based on nothing more than a shared susceptibility to sunburn. ” –Doug Wilson

II.) Doug “I love me some Jewish Kinism” Wilson

“My affection for Israel is personal, in addition to being theological and political. My wife’s great-great-grandfather was Rabbi Cohn, one of my co-grandfathers is a Christian Jew, my kids and grandkids have cousins who are Israeli, and according to AncestryDNA, I myself am 2% European Jewish. Nancy is 11% European Jew, her mother 26%. What all this amounts to is that our family would be much more involved on an active personal level if terrorists overran Israel than we would be if terrorists overran Vermont.” — Douglas Wilson

At least in the first paragraph nature is just so much “ethnic puffery” that is to be met with just the right loathing of all those ethnic pufferers who share the common trait of susceptibility to sunburn. However, in the second paragraph its all bagels and matzo ball soup serious.

The CREC would replace the ethnic puffery of the first paragraph with ecclesiocentrism and grace. White boy summer ethnic puffery is not important. What is important for the CREC (at least for white boy summer) is grace over nature unless, of course unless all your grandchildren are descendants of Rabbi Cohn. This may be accounted by the wide spread admission of ecclesiocentrism that is found in the CREC. What is important per the Moscow boys is not the family (the ground zero for ethnic considerations). What is important is the Church. Apparently, for the CREC types it is in the Church we live and move and have our being.

However, not to be outdone, R2K comes along with their famous condescending “tut, tut, tutting,” to remind us that the CREC is wrong. It is not grace eclipsing nature. Rather, it is grace and nature set in dualistic compartmentalization from one another. This explains why the grand Pu-bah of R2K can say things like;

“God is not redeeming the cultural activities and institutions of this world”…“Those who hold a traditional Protestant view of justification consistently should not find a redemptive transformationist perspective attractive.”

David Van Drunen — Westminster Seminary California Professor

“Living in God’s Two Kingdoms”, pp. 13–21.

One readily sees here that grace and nature have been compartmentalized from one another. Grace is an upper story reality and nature is a lower story reality and never the twain shall meet institutionally speaking.

So to reduce to a Venn diagram

CREC = Grace Supplants Nature (No unapproved of ethnic puffery allowed)
Materialism = Nature is all there is (The Cosmos is all there is)
R2K = Grace and Nature exist in a dualistic ying & yang (Secularism forever)
Rome = Nature must come under Grace for Nature to count
(This explains why for Rome everything had to come into the Church to be Holy.)
Animism = Spiritual is all there is

To the contrary, for right-minded people it is the case that the Church is a central expression of the Kingdom but it is not the only expression of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God, being among us, or in our midst (Luke 17:21) is a Kingdom that is not only redemptive as it works in the Church with its means of Grace in the Word and Sacrament unto the end of opening and closing the Kingdom, but the Kingdom is also authoritarian as it works as under Christ’s Kingship through redeemed Kingdom men, who, by the means of taking every thought captive to Christ and doing all things to the glory of God unto, labor unto the end of the ongoing expansion of the already present Kingdom of God so that one day the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

The model is found in the Incarnation. Taking seriously the Council of Chalcedon’s definition of the incarnation is how one avoids going off the road into either the R2k ditch or the CREC ditch which in the end both lead to Gnosticism by either over materialization or over spiritualization.

R2K R. Scott Clark Attacks Oklahoma Gov. Stitt For Claiming Oklahoma For Christ

“Gov. Stitt of Oklahoma had no business as governor claiming Oklahoma for Christ. As much as it is his vocation as a Christian and as a private person to advance the Kingdom of God in Oklahoma, through the due use of the means of grace, by prayer, witness, etc., that is not his vocation before the Lord as governor. His vocation as governor is to secure justice for all the citizens of the state and to fulfill his natural, secular responsibilities.”

Dr. R. Scott Clark
Westminster-Cal R2K Professor
Heretic

1.) Note that Oklahoma, per R2K, is NOT to be claimed for Christ. This is classic R2K doctrine. Christ does not rule Oklahoma explicitly but only by means of Natural law. R2K calls this “Christ ruling by He left hand.” Now, keep in mind that all the other gods out there are just delirious with delight over this R2K doctrine because as Oklahoma is not to be claimed for Christ that means the door is open for the adherents of the competing gods of the false religions to claim Oklahoma for their gods. I promise you that the other gods are not shy whatsoever in the drive for hegemony.

And indeed, truth be told, Scott’s god is Enlightenment pluralism and Scott is doing his damnedest to make sure his god reigns. Of course this clearly communicates that Scott’s Christ and my Christ are different Christs.

2.) No Christian who is a public person, per Clark’s R2K, is to be a public Christian. When Gov. Sitt of Oklahoma becomes Governor he is, per Escondido’s R2K, supposed to sit aside his private convictions in order to rule as a public person.

3.) Notice that Scott is defining justice in a non-biblical direction. Justice can only be had by presupposing the rule of King Christ. It is Christ and His Law-Word which defines “justice.” If Christ is not King of Oklahoma it is not possible for Oklahoma to have justice. No King Christ … no law of Christ. No law of Christ … no justice. Justice in Scott’s worldview is a complete abstraction w/ no concrete roots in Biblical Christianity.

4.) Note how Scott and his R2K divides the world into a secular realm and an non-secular realm. Gov. Sitt of Oklahoma has secular responsibilities that should not find his Christian faith impinging upon. Politically speaking this is pure Libertarianism.

5.) How in the world does Scott square all this with the Belgic Confession of Faith which teaches;

“Their (Magistrate) office is not only to have regard unto and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry, that the kingdom of Christ may thus be promoted. They must therefore countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshipped by every one, as He commands in His Word.”

Acknowledgement Page

Expressing gratitude can be a losing proposition because once one begins one is bound to not express enough gratitude to enough people and so one can disappoint those who were instrumental in a project that should not have been overlooked. Forgive me for overlooking you.

The way these acknowledgement pages work, I’ve noticed, is to remind the reader that any insights are the fruit of learning from others more intelligent and wise than one’s self while any errors belong uniquely to the author of the finished product. That is true again in what is now in your hands. I have come up with nothing originally original. Any ability to pick apart R2K is due to the mentoring of Dr. Glenn R. Martin that began in 1977. Dr. Martin taught us to see life as a unity underneath the express authority of Jesus Christ. I extend thanks thus to this great saint who though now part of the Church at rest, still speaks through me.

I am thankful for the conversation partners Mark Van Der Molen and Mark Chambers. They spent countless hours with me on the phone and in person listening to my rants and adding their important insights. They have both been good friends and fellow warriors in this project and have been pushing me to write this book for some time. Thank you Mark & Mark.

I extend sincere gratitude to Dr. Adi Schlebusch. Dr. Schlebusch connected me with his Pactum Institute and then asked me to write this book. That was a gamble and I am thankful he took it. Thank you Adi also for proof-reading. I likewise am thankful for Ruben Alvarado and Pantocrator press for publishing this modest work.

I shouldn’t forget thanking my R2K enemies. You know who you are. In your contrariness and vitriol expressed against me you only sharpened my arguments and made me more convinced that “Rabbi Bret” was right. Thanks gang. You made this book possible.

I cannot forget to tell the congregation I serve “Thank You.” They have patiently allowed me to pursue this subject. They have listened to numerous sermons and lessons on this subject. Many of them could probably write this book by now since I have banged so hard on the subject over the years. Thank you Saints of Christ members at Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church.

Then there are my children, Laura-Jane, Anna, and Anthony. Y’all brought the stability into my life that made such a project possible. Y’all were patient while I read late into the night and wrote later into the wee hours of the morning. You put up with me carrying my books to your every event and didn’t mind me (too much) multi-tasking. All of you will never know how thankful to the Lord Christ I am for your presence in my life.

Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to my wife to whom I dedicate this volume. Jane, you have been both my muse and my sounding board. Thank you for your patience with me being distracted while I continued to sort all this (and much more) out. No minister ever had a better woman to be “the Pastors wife.” Thank you seems insufficient but all the gratitude I have is all yours.

And now this portion of the project is complete. More could be said but enough has been said for now. It is my prayer that this book contributes to the destruction of Radical Two Kingdom Theology.

The Whoppers R. Scott Clark Tells About R2K

In a blog post at Heidleblog Dr. R. Scott Clark basically tells us that if we were smart like him and had the smart books he has read we would see how foolish we are for daring to disagree with him on Radical Two Kingdom theology. Clark, the anti-nomian, accuses R. J. Rushdoony of writing a talmudic three volume set on God’s law. Well, I suppose to RJR does look talmudic when viewed through the lens of those who hate God’s law.

Anyway, here is the take-away quote from Scott’s first blog post;

“There has been a certain degree of controversy in some quarters of the confessional Reformed world over the recovery of the “two kingdoms” as a way of thinking about Christ and culture and ethics. The qualifier some is important here because anyone who knows the history of Reformed theology knows that faithful, confessional theologians have been speaking of God’s “twofold government” (duplex regimen and duplex regnum) or “two kingdoms” since the 16th century. It is not a novelty but so divorced are enough contemporary Reformed Christians from their own tradition and heritage that when this way of speaking re-surfaced in 2010 it was taken, in some quarters as a radical departure from Reformed theology.”

R. Scott Clark

R2K Theologian

Escondido

Now here we have to say that either R. Scott Clark is historically ignorant beyond plumbing the depths of said ignorance or he is a liar.

It is true that Reformed Two Kingdom theology has been around for centuries. It’s also true the R2K theology is a completely different beast from historic Reformed Two Kingdom theology. This has been admitted to by no less a person then Scott’s colleague and R2K guru David Van Drunen. In an office hours interview Van Drunen admits;

“I have tried my best to make a kind of NEW Biblical-theological argument for why there needs to be a generous measure of tolerance and religious liberty and I am happy to hear back from other people who want to engage that argument seriously.”

Notice the bold print. This is another key admission. Forever, R2K has flip-flopped on the issue of whether their version of “Christianity” is the faith once and forever delivered unto the saints or something completely innovative that no Christian has ever seen before. Here, in the bold print, we have admission from one of the key architects of R2K that what he has done is completely innovative. No Christian who has ever lived as ever seen what DVD has done with R2K. I find this beyond significant.

The historic Reformed Two Kingdom was not interested in tolerance and so called religious liberty as sundry quotes on Iron Ink have demonstrated repeatedly. Here are just a couple;

“Then let us not think that this Law is a special Law for the Jews; but let us understand that God intended to deliver us a general rule, to which we must yield ourselves … Since, it is so, it is to be concluded, not only that it is lawful for all kings and magistrates, to punish heretics and such as have perverted the pure truth; but also that they be bound to do it, and that they misbehave themselves towards God, if they suffer errors to rest without redress, and employ not their whole power to shew greater zeal in their behalf than in all other things.”

John Calvin
Sermon on Deuteronomy
Sermon 87
Deuteronomy 13:5

In a treatise against pacifistic Anabaptists who maintained a doctrine of the spirituality of the Church (just like R2K) which abrogated the binding authority of the case law (just like R2K) Calvin wrote,

“They (the Anabaptists) will reply, possibly, that the civil government of the people of Israel was a figure of the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ and lasted only until his coming, I will admit to them that in part, it was a figure, but I deny that it was nothing more than this, and not without reason. For in itself it was a political government, which is a requirement among all people. That such is the case, it is written of the Levitical priesthood that it had to come to an end and be abolished at the coming of our Lord Jesus (Heb. 7:12ff) Where is it written that the same is true of the external order? It is true that the scepter and government were to come from the tribe of Judah and the house of David, but that the government was to cease is manifestly contrary to Scripture.”

John Calvin
Treatise against the Anabaptists and against the Libertines, pp. 78-79

“But it is questioned whether the law pertains to the kingdom of Christ, which is spiritual and distinct from all earthly dominion; and there are some men, not otherwise ill-disposed, to whom it appears that our condition under the Gospel is different from that of the ancient people under the law; not only because the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but because Christ was unwilling that the beginnings of His kingdom should be aided by the sword. But, when human judges consecrate their work to the promotion of Christ’s kingdom, I deny that on that account its nature is changed. For, although it was Christ’s will that His Gospel should be proclaimed by His disciples in opposition to the power of the whole world, and He exposed them armed with the Word alone like sheep amongst the wolves, He did not impose on Himself an eternal law that He should never bring kings under His subjection, nor tame their violence, nor change them from being cruel persecutors into the patrons and guardians of His Church.”

John Calvin
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses – p. 77.

What Clark and Van Drunen have done, in a act of linguistic deception, is emptied the previous meaning of historic Reformed Two Kingdom and have filled the words “Historic Reformed Two Kingdom” with a completely different content. There is no way in Hades that a Knox, or a Calvin would recognize Escondido’s R2K as having anything in common with their R2K project.

Can it really be the case that Church Historian Dr. R. Scott Clark doesn’t realize that Escondido’s R2K is a altogether entity as compared with historic Reformed Two Kingdom theology? I mean, it seems to me that Scott is giving us a classic example of gaslighting. He can’t really be this dumb.