We continue to deal with the problem, in our current setting, of people in the “conservative” “Reformed” “Churches” who desire to relativize the Scriptures by creating a hard sacred vs. secular divide. This has been most handily and readily captured by Dr. D. G. Hart’s constant blathering about the need to live the “hyphenated life.” By this, Dr. D. G. Hart means, that some of life is to be placed and lived in one container that is dualistically distinct from other portions of life that are placed in lived in a different container. These separate containers are called “sacred” and “secular.”
This mindset is being openly pursued again especially by the Thomists who seek to neatly divide life into a natural realm and a sacred realm. Dr. Stephen Wolfe is leading the way in this resurgence of classical Thomistic thought as among Reformed thought leaders. However, there are variants that exist today on this Thomistic schematic and the variants are so pronounced that the fellow travelers in the Thomistic thought world are often at each other’s throats.
There are two variants to the straight up Thomism that is practiced by Dr. Wolfe and his followers. The first is not seen as much though a recent publication by Willem Ouweneel, “The World Is Christ’s: A Critique of Two Kingdoms Theology,” was an example of the thought of Herman Dooyeweerd, a Dutch Theologian who lived from 1894-1977. In Dooyeweerdian thought (Cosmonomic-ism) reality was dichotomized into variant modal spheres each having their own distinct laws. In such a manner theology proper remains a distinct discipline largely unrelated to other modal realms of reality (eg. Law, Politics, Art, Education, Sociology, etc.) which instead find their own trajectory as anchored in their own distinct modal beginning points. The second variant to straight up 100 proof Thomism is what is being offered by the Escondido Westminster West chaps. This has come to be known as Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2K). In R2K, the beginning inspiration, Meredith Kline, dichotomized and dispensationalized the canonical authority of Scripture by positing that both between and within the Old and New covenant discontinuity was to be presupposed when reading the whole text as opposed to continuity. In such a fashion sundry dichotomies were invented in order to sustain a theology that demanded Hart’s “Hyphenated life.”
Dr. Greg Bahnsen analyzed Kline’s “theology” in this manner;
“In the latter case (speaking of Kline’s offerings), the moral authority of certain elements of Scripture is arbitrarily dismissed on the basis of separating (without conceptual cogency or exegetical justification) faith-norms from life-norms, individual norms from communal norms, and ‘common grace’ principles from ‘eschatological intrusion’ principles – implying that the most explicit biblical directions about political ethics may not be utilized today.”
Dr. Greg Bahnsen
The Structure of Biblical Authority
In both Dooyeweerd and in Kline a variant of Thomistic thinking is applied that leaves men as being the autonomous and sovereign authority in determining standards and principles for all areas of life except for the portions of life designated as “sacred.”
It is humorous to see these different schools engaged in their intramural struggles over which variant of Thomism is going to be embraced. Ouweneel wrote his book against R2K and R2K is forever denouncing Dr. Stephen Wolfe and his straight up 100 proof Thomism. Wolfe vs. R2K is especially entertaining because they both and each appeal to the same Natural Law standard in order to prove that the other is in error over their respective uses of Natural Law.
Of course the non-Thomistic variant that wars against both Cosmonomic theology and Radical Two Kingdom theology is that Christianity that was embraced by the Reformers as seen in Scriptures, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and as seen in the Sermons by John Calvin from the book of Deuteronomy. This line of thought has been dubbed “Theonomy” or “Reconstructionism” but it would be better to just label it as “Historic Christianity.” Biblical Christians deny a hard sacred sacred vs. secular divide insisting to the contrary that all of life is Holy unto God while at the same time admitting that what might be called “the common things of life” are made holy when they are handled in terms of God’s authority and revelation.
The correction offered by Biblical Christianity to the antinomianism inherent in all forms of Thomism is that all things are to be regulated and legislated according to God’s Word. In every area of life the Christian is to say, “In thy light we see light (Ps. 36:9).” There is no area of life where God’s Word, rightly handled and understood, should not be brought to bear in order to inform and guide. In God’s light we see light not only for ecclesiastical matters, but also for family life, political order, educational ordering, jurisprudence and law, as well as every other area of life.
Biblical Christians understand that as long as we continue to refuse God’s explicit Word on morality — a morality that informs the making of laws by our legislators — the result will be what we are now seeing; “And each man did what was right in his own eyes.” There must be a standard and Biblical Christianity from Ælfred the Great’s “Doom Book,” to Calvin’s sermons on Deuteronomy, to the Westminster standards, to the early colonial government laws in Puritan New England, that standard has been God’s revelation in the Scriptures.
Now it must be conceded to Thomistic views that for centuries Natural Law theory held sway in the Church — both Rome and later the Reformed church. However, I contend that only worked because the Western Christianized populations and leadership were all already presupposing some form of a Christian world and life view. When one advocates for Thomistic Natural Law theories while dwelling among a people who presuppose Christianity then naturally enough Natural Law is going to teach Christian morality and ethics. However, after over a couple hundred years of Enlightenment thinking — an Enlightenment thinking that is itself now breaking down under its own presuppositions — we no longer live in a time where Natural Law can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Natural Law will not provide a code wherein everyone will sign on. Enlightenment thinking has gone to seed producing early in the 2oth century Nihilism and Existentialism to now evolving in post-modernism and post-post modernism. The dialectical movement of the Enlightenment from mystical irrational apprehensions of reality (Romanticism, Kantianism, Existentialism, post-modernism) to rationalistic apprehensions of reality (Deism, Rationalism, Common Sense Realism) have demonstrated that only a return to an epistemology that is grounded on God’s revelation can fix what is broken about Western and formerly Christian man.
So, as Isaiah said long ago; “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.”