In discussions I’ve been privy to lately there is some contention that R2K, unlike Federal Vision, does no harm to the flock. As such, I thought I’d list 10 harmful effects of R2K upon God’s flock. In the end I think that R2K is every bit as harmful to the flock as Federal Vision.
1.) R2K teaches the flock to read God’s word in a dichotomous fashion with the result that the flock begins itself to think in a gnostic fashion as it approaches every issue with the question, “Does my behavior on this issue require me to behave as in the spiritual realm or as if I am in the common realm.”
2.) R2K teaches the flock personal and individual moral cowardice. The way it does so is by the flocks observing that their minister refuses to take a stand against the wickedness of this present wicked age simply because that wickedness is located in the common realm. If the minister refuses to take a stand the flock is likely going to follow suit. If the minister refuses to take up his cross and follow Jesus, why should the flock? the only courage the minister is showing is the courage to stand against those who insist he is a coward.
3.) By separating and dividing the common realm from the church realm R2K guarantees the flock will be harmed because the flock is guaranteed to live in a culture that is overtaken and animated by ideologies that are opposed to Christ. In living in such a culture the flock will find it increasingly difficult at every turn to live out their Christian lives in the calling wherein that God has called them.
4.) R2K harms the flock by playing word games so that meaning largely become relative to every individual. Take for example this gem from an R2K advocate that so wonderfully manifests these types of word games,
… there (is) a difference between politics and morality, such that while a political petition (circulated in Church on a Sunday) is inappropriate because it can deflect sheep and is a fault of the church, preaching the moral evil of abortion from the pulpit is appropriate and any offense that gives is the hearer’s problem.
Here we see that not only has politics been sundered from Theology, but also now in the R2K word games world, morality has been sundered from politics. Further, it is acceptable for morality from the pulpit to offend the hearer but it is not acceptable for morality in action (petition against abortion) to come to the fore.
If anybody has been following Matthew Tuininga’s blog on Jesus and the law one can easily note the many word games surrounding “Ten Commandments,” “Moral Law,” “Decalogue,” and the “Law of Christ.” One needs a venn diagram to keep track of the different ways Tuininga keeps shifting the meanings of words.
Such word games does serious damage to the language and has the effect of largely relativizing truth. This can be see in how within a week Tuininga goes from confusion on the law to writing a piece championing a well known Marxist.
5.) Because R2K abandons the Ten Commandments as God’s law word for today, R2K ends up supporting Humanist law for today. There is no neutrality. As the Ten Commandments recede from the public square as God’s standard, the public square become nasty, brutish, and ugly. This, of course, harms the flock.
6.) R2K harms the flock because it, or some version of it, owns, exceptions notwithstanding, the Reformed Seminaries, Denominations, and Pulpits in the West. In that ownership R2K, or its over the counter retail versions, are silencing the voices of Biblical Christians in the Reformed world. What those people did to Dr. Greg Bahnsen they are now doing to everyone who refuses to think dualistically.
7.) R2K damages the flock because it teaches abstractionism, allowing almost no concrete expression of Christianity in the public square.
8.) R2K damages the flock because it sneers at those very people (“Middle Class Chatterati”) who pay the way of those who embrace R2K.
9.) The militant amillennialism of R2K harms the flock of Christ because it predicts woe and despair and the impossibility of transformation and then turns around and guarantees that its predictions come to pass by not allowing the Theology of transformation to be preached in pulpits or taught in Seminaries. It bids the gelding be fruitful (demands transformation) but only after castrating the gelding. So, R2K creates the conditions of failure and then once failure finally arrives (as a result of self-fulfilling prophesy) it then points the finger at Biblical Christianity and taunts and mocks it for believing in transformation.
10.) R2K harms the flock because it is not Biblical. Anything taught as Biblical that is not Biblical cannot but harm the flock of Jesus Christ.