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

R2K and its Harm of the Sheep

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.