R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology) – Page 32

Machen, The Worldview Thinker … The Machen Hart Never Told You About

“What has Christianity to do with education: What is there about Christianity which makes it necessary that there should be Christian schools? Very little, some people say (R2K “Christians, for example — BLM). Christianity, they say, is a life, a temper of soul, not a doctrine or a system of truth; it can provide its sweet aroma, therefore, for any system which secular education may provide; its function is merely to evaluate whatever may be presented to it by the school of thought dominant at any particular time. This view of the Christian religion…is radically false. Christianity is, indeed, a way of life; but it is a way of life founded upon a system of truth. That system of truth is of the most comprehensive kind; it clashes with opposing systems at a thousand points. The Christian life cannot be lived on the basis of anti-Christian thought. Hence the necessity of the Christian school.”

~ J. Gresham Machen

“It is this profound Christian permeation of every human activity, no matter how secular the world may regard it as being, which is brought about by the Christian school and the Christian school alone. I do not want to be guilty of exaggerations at this point. A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian; and truth is truth however learned. But while truth is truth however learned, the bearings of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part, but all, of the curriculum of the school. True learning and true piety go hand in hand, and Christianity embraces the whole of life — those are great central convictions that underlie the Christian school.”

~ J. Gresham Machen

The Second Coming Of Jenny Geddes Stool

Comes now a story as told from 21st century lore
When the Church was living in captivity as Babylon the Whore
Escondido had sworn that R2K would become the new Reformed jewel
They never dreamed they’d be undone by Jenny Gedde’s stool

The Ph.D’s and their sycophants, with printing presses hot
Expected all to genuflect over the theology they had wrought
Meredith Kline had sworn that Westminster 19 would never be the rule
But he passed before he could be introduced to Jenny Gedde’s stool

Kline’s disciples filled his shoes with Academic gravity and pomp
Resolved to cover the Reformed globe with their Republication swamp
VanDrunen, Hart, Horton, Clark, and others among those counted “cool”
Never expected they’d feel the wood of the metaphoric Gedde’s stool

They pushed their books insisting that Recovered Confessions meant
That all the Reformed World must offer up its assent
They introduced saints gone by, claiming all taught the hyphenated dual
But their plans began to crumble when met by Jenny Gedde’s stool

First Machen was trotted out by Hart as crypto Radical 2K
And that floated among the dupes until Machen’s words were displayed
And all the time they gnashed their teeth at the stubborn mules
Who had the temerity to resist R2K with Jenny Gedde’s stool

Then Natural Law was spun by the Magic of Van Drunen’s pen
The common realm was ruled by it, without Scripture’s intoned “Amen”
In the hearts of the saints the blood upwelled with bitter anguish full;
And to their blogs they took as one, casting Jenny Gedde’s stool

Next came covenant republication in this Reformed poison brew
Here the fingerprints of Horton were found creating this ballyhoo
To defend the truth rose warriors to expose this Escondido tool
And the weapon of their choice was Jenny Gedde’s metaphoric stool

Came forth then the sputtering of men not used to being told they’re wrong
Reinforcements did arrive but Gordon and Trueman could not prolong
The inevitable demise of these schoolman’s Reformed Theology re-tool
It was brought to an end by the flying wood of Jenny Gedde’s metaphoric stool

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Machen, The Postmillennialist — Part II

“But this is not the first period of decadence through which the world has passed, as it is not the first period of desperate conflict in the Church. God still rules, and in the midst of darkness there will come in His good time the shining of a clearer light. There will come a great revival of the Christian religion; and with it will come, we believe a revival of true learning: The new Reformation for which we long for and pray may well be accompanied by a new Renaissance.”

J. Gresham Machen
The Modern Use of the Bible
Princeton Theological Review, 23 (1925), p. 81

Machen would have never countenanced the current militant amillennialism as found in R2K. Any representation of Machen that he was no culture warrior — that he was a man uninterested in the Transformation of age — is just idiocy on stilts.

Machen, the Postmillennialist

“At present we are inarticulate; we know the riches of the gospel; we wonder at those who have it already at hand and yet are content instead with the weak and beggarly elements. When will God raise us the man of His choice to give His message powerfully to the world? We cannot say. But the truth is not dead, and God has not deserted His Church. Behind all the darkness and perplexity of the present time we can discern, on the basis of the promises of God, the dawn of a better day. There may come a time, sooner than we can tell, when again we cry in the Church, as every redeemed soul cries even now: ‘The old things are passed away; behold they are become new.”

J. Gresham Machen
God Transcendent, pg. 51

It is funny how R2K claims Machen for its own and yet Machen’s postmillennialism would have found him aghast at the R2K fighting as hard for their pessimism as he was fighting for the PCUSA. It was Machen’s postmillennial optimism that kept him in the fight when all was dark about him. It seems, at times, the only optimism and hope that the R2K advocates have is the optimism and hope that they will defeat the optimism and hope of the postmillennialists and the optimistic amillennialists.

So, who exactly started this war?

“Readers who do not assume that there is a distinctively “Christian” cultural-political task, or that the kingdom of God is the measure for all earthly kingdoms, or that the present social order is supposed to be transformed, or that Reformed Christianity is a Calvinism consisting of a “life-principle” or worldview, will probably come away having eaten much but not finally satisfied. The book that we still need is one that critically challenges rather than promotes the Kuyperian captivity of the church.”

~ David Van Drunen

If the Reformed Church is being stirred up by controversy it is being stirred up by the R2K club. This quote, which served as a kind of public commencement of R2k hostilities against Kuyperian theology dates back to at least to 2002. If there exists rancor in the Reformed Church it is rancor created by the innovation called R2K. R2K had an agenda to throw off basic Biblical Christianity in favor of this nouveau experiment in fashion designer “theology.”

So, don’t be fooled when you hear R2K champions like R. Scott Clark say things like, “”Carl Trueman has waded into the swamp that is the current discussion of transformationalismism.” No, what Carl Trueman waded into was the swamp that is R2K’s incessant attack on basic vanilla orthodox Christianity…. and he waded into it with both guns blazing in support of R2K.

You can hardly accuse the party who is merely defending themselves as being the aggressors.

Hat Tip — MVDM