Category: R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology)

Debunking Radical Two Kingdoms Theology

The Old Testament Saints Were Not Holy?

Hebrews 3:1 Therefore, [a]holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly vocation, consider the[b]Apostle and high Priest of our [c]profession Christ Jesus:

“What strikes me by this adjective, ‘holy,’ is that under the Old Testament you weren’t always necessarily holy. There was a kind of covenantal holiness which referred to membership, but in terms of Leviticus and Numbers only the priests were holy. The people were not. And he just has told us that Jesus is our high priest who’s the one who sanctifies and we are the ones being sanctified in chapter two and now [Christ] has made this propitiation. To say ‘holy brothers’ is granting them a new covenant status that you could not attain in the Old Testament, unless you were a priest. And so, he really honors them with this and really builds upon this idea that Christ is this high priest who’s made this propitiation, and now…. ‘holy brothers’.”

– Zach Keele, OPC minister
From the White Horse Inn radio broadcast
Commenting on Hebrews 3:1

Just a few observations

1.) The OT seems to contradict Rev. Keele about the Old Testament saints being holy.

Leviticus 11:44-45 For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground.45 For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”

Leviticus 19:2 Speak unto all the Congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them,Ye shall be [a]holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

2.) If the Old Testament saints weren’t holy then could they have been saved? And if they were saved, how were they saved without being holy and without the Lord Christ.

3.) It has always been a Reformed staple that the OT saints were saved the same way the NT saints were saved, and that was by the propitiatory work of the Lord Christ. The OT saints saw that from afar through the sacrifices while we, as NT saints had the reality that was *proleptic and promissory for the OT saints.  Still, if the OT saints were saved (and they were) then the only way they were saved was by their looking forward to the finished work of Christ that proleptic to them.

4.) Remember that “Holy” simply means “set apart for a unique usage.” Are we really being told that Israel and the Israel of Israel were not a set apart people? This is not well thought out by Rev. Keele.

5.) Hence the statement above is a significant departure from Reformed theology in favor of some kind of Baptist / Dispensational / R2K  hermeneutic where the standard Reformed hermeneutic of continuity has been replaced in favor of a hermeneutic of discontinuity. This quote does extreme violence to what it means to be Reformed.


_________________________
* proleptic — the assigning of a person, event, etc., to a period earlier than the actual one; the representation of something in the future as if it already existed or had occurred;

I Am Not Mario Cuomo … Neither Am I Darryl Hart … I Am A Christian

Darryl at it again over at

http://oldlife.org/2015/01/i-am-mario-cuomo/

This time Darryl is singing the praises of Mario Cuomo’s ability to live the contradictory hyphenated life. Set aside that Darryl is so enamored with a man who was the darling of the Cultural Marxist left that he proclaims his bromance for Cuomo. Ignore for a moment that Darryl is self identifying with a man who kept abortion chic via his repudiation of his church’s explicit teaching. Instead, focus just a second on what Darryl says here,

Darryl,

But it (private morality vs. public action as a Magistrate) is not a problem that only bedevils Roman Catholics. Protestant politicians may be personally opposed to desecrating the Lord’s Day, and if such a public figure is an officer in a Presbyterian church has even vowed to uphold Sabbatarianism, but in their public duties or owing to political calculation fail to work for Blue Laws. In fact, all believers who hold public office in a religiously diverse and tolerant society need to separate the teachings and practices of their religious communities from the norms that guide civil life. At the very least, they need to juggle the public and private unless they are willing to seek the implementation of their own faith for all of civil society

The irony is that religious right championed a view of the relationship between personal and public responsibilities that derided folks like Cuomo as either hypocritical or cynical. The irony becomes even more ironic when the religious right complains that radical Islam is incapable of making the very distinction that Cuomo defended.

Bret responds,

1.) Consider the call to separate “the teachings and practices of their religious communities from the norms that guide civil life.” This “reasoning” has always flummoxed me. According to Darryl there is a necessity to separate private morality from public morality so that a Christian magistrate’s private morality is not pursued as he serves as a public person and yet it is perfectly acceptable for this Christian magistrate to pursue the private morality of other people (even other Magistrates of other faiths) in their public capacity. For example, Mario might have had personal reservations about abortion and yet he did not force his private reservations upon the public he served. Instead Mario forced the private reservations of countless numbers of other people  about being “pro-life.” So, Mario and Darryl believed and believe it is not acceptable to push their own private morality while a public person but it is perfectly acceptable to push other people’s private morality in the capacity of a public person.  The public positions that Mario held certainly was the private morality of untold numbers of people. Why else hold to those positions? So, why was it acceptable for Mario to push their private morality on the citizenry and not his own?

2.) The policies themselves that Mario pushed were not religiously divers nor did they reflect tolerance. Think about it Darryl. The policies that were finally implemented were policies that some of the citizenry liked and some of the citizenry did not like. Those policies once implemented were in no way diverse nor did they reflect tolerance. They reflected, instead, both a lack of diversity and a severe intolerance. Policy implemented is by its very definition is non diverse and intolerant because it ends up not reflecting what large sections of the citizenry desire.  The whole plea for “diversity and tolerance” is a smoke screen to excuse the moral cowardice of Politicians and to justify the rebellion of high profile ministers.

3.) We do not live in a religiously diverse and tolerant society. This is proven by Darryl’s intolerance for my religion which sees his religion of “diversity and tolerance,” to be intolerant. We live in a society where the varying faiths of the varying religions have been tamed so that they all understand that none of their God or gods are to be taken so seriously as to overthrow the God State who keeps all the other gods in their place. We have the diversity and tolerance of old Rome. Everyone is free to serve their God or gods as long as, like Darryl, they keep pinching incense to the genius of the Emperor.

4.) I do not criticize Islam for its lack of ability to make the distinction about private morality vs public morality that Darryl holds. I criticize it because it hates Christ. I see the totalism of Islam as being perfectly consistent with its opposition to all alien Worldviews including the Christian worldview and the Liberal Darryl worldview.  I criticize Darryl because he deigns to criticize other worldviews (Christianity, Islam, etc.) all the while his pagan worldview is in the ascendancy. I criticize Darryl because of the totalism of his bifurcated worldview that demands everything be divided into private morality vs. public morality. In Darryl’s worldview everyone must operate like this or they are shunned and denounced, just as everyone who does not operate in the context of Sharia in a Islam world and life view must be shunned and denounced. Darryl’s worldview has the same totalism in it that he decries in both Islam and in Biblical Christianity. It’s easy for Darryl to criticize competing worldviews for their desire to have totalistic hegemony while the pagan worldview he holds to, is, in point of fact, exercising totalsitc hegemony.

Mike Horton and Zacharias Ursinus Contradicting One Another On Natural Law

Mike Horton of Escondido wrote,

“Positive law is grounded in natural law—the law of God known to the conscience of everyone as God’s image-bearer, even if the truth is suppressed in unrighteousness…. (N)one of us comes to general revelation neutrally. But remember that we are all made in God’s image, including rebels, and that the Spirit restrains wickedness and promotes justice by his common grace. When you offer good “general revelation” arguments, you’re not disengaging from the teachings of special revelation (Scripture).

But Ursinus in his Commentary on Heidelberg (p. 506) writes,

“Furthermore, although natural demonstrations teach nothing concerning God that is false, yet men, without the knowledge of God’s word, obtain nothing from them except false notions and conceptions of God; both because these demonstrations do not contain as much as is delivered in his word, and also because even those things which may be understood naturally, men, nevertheless, on account of innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely, and so corrupt it in various ways.”

Will the real Reformer please stand up.

And so as to ward off the inevitable naysayers who offer that Ursinus and Horton are not speaking of the same objects of knowledge allow me to offer that it is simply the case that if, as Ursinus offers, Natural Man cannot know God, then, as all meaning for all facts are found in their relation to God (Basic Van Til Presuppositionalism) then what Horton offers, by definition, cannot be true.

As Bahnsen was fond of saying, men may “know” things but they cannot account for their knowing. So… while Ursinus and Horton are not talking about the exact same thing (Knowing God {Ursinus}) vs. (Knowing reality {Horton}) the implications that I note are valid.

Of course fallen men always sneak stolen capital into their God hating worldview to get it off the ground but it is never done so in admission to knowing God. As such … they hold what they”know” of reality as a thief. It is theirs but it isn’t theirs. They know but they don’t know.

Ambrose contra Symmachus, Piper, Mohler & all R2K

“Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive against them.”

Proverbs 28:4

In the 4th century Emperor Gratian’s removal of the pagan altar of victory from the Senate was the occasion for a great debate between Symmachus, the leader of the pagan aristocracy, and the ablest Italian ecclesiastic, Bishop Ambrose of Milan (St. Ambrose). Symmachus was the classical Liberal in this debate and was arguing against Ambrose that all the ancient pagan religions should be reinstated in Rome and Christianity not be allowed to be the unique religion of the people. Symmachus had all the liberal qualities that arise when liberals are in the minority. Symmachus was tolerant, generous and simply wanted fairness. Symmachus argued that many roads lead to God — why should the old religion of Rome, under whose aegis the Roman state had prospered, not be left in Peace he reasoned.

“We demand then the restoration of that condition of religious affairs which was so long advantageous to the state. Let the rulers of each sect and of each opinion be counted up; a late one(3) practised the ceremonies of his ancestors, a later(4) did not put them away. If the religion of old times does not make a precedent, let the connivance of the last(5) do so….

(Formerly our Emperor) enquired about the origin of the temples, and expressed admiration for their builders. Although he himself followed another religion, he maintained its own for the empire, for everyone has his own customs, everyone his own rites…. Now if a long period gives authority to religious customs, we ought to keep faith with so many centuries, and to follow our ancestors, as they happily followed theirs….

Let me live after my own fashion, for I am free….

We ask, then, for peace for the gods of our fathers and of our country. It is just that all worship should be considered as one. We look on the same stars, the sky is common, the same world surrounds us. What difference does it make by what pains each seeks the truth? We cannot attain to so great a secret by one road; but this discussion is rather for persons at ease, we offer now prayers, not conflict.”

Read those words of the champion of the pagan cause, Symmachus again, and ask yourself how similar they sound to modern day Symmachus like Christian clergy.

“Well, Christians should step back for a moment and recognize that there is something important here at stake. There is no reason why Christians should argue against having a Muslim holiday on the school calendar if there is a significant group or percentage of Muslims in the community – that would simply be fair and it would simply makes sense. We should not claim the privilege of having our religious holidays on the calendar and consider it some kind of Christian victory to keep other religious holidays off the calendar.”

Albert “Symmachus” Mohler

“We express a passion for the supremacy of God… by making clear that God himself is the foundation for our commitment to a pluralistic democratic order-not because pluralism is his ultimate ideal, but because in a fallen world, legal coercion will not produce the kingdom of God. Christians agree to make room for non-Christian faiths (including naturalistic, materialistic faiths), not because commitment to God’s supremacy is unimportant, but because it must be voluntary, or it is worthless. We have a God-centered ground for making room for atheism.”

John Symmachus Piper

Contrary to Symmachus of old, and modern day Symmachus’, Ambrose was the man who stood upon the principle that Christianity as the one true religion must by necessity eclipse all other religions as the God of the Bible eclipses all other gods. Ambrose dealt with Symmachus’ arguments one by one exposing the fallacy in each of them. In that context he addressed Theodosius as to the need to put away the old pagan of religions as they were empty and ineffectual rites. In 392, after Theodosius gained control of the whole empire, he issued an official proscription of paganism, forbidding anyone in any place whatsoever, even in private, to exercise any of the ancient rites of the ancient religion. This action supporting the Christian faith the “Christian” clergy Piper and Mohler would be aghast over.

Ambrose argued against Symmachus, Piper, and Mohler such,

But, says Symmachus, Piper, and Mohler, let the altars be restored to the images, and their ornaments to the shrines. Let this demand be made of one who shares in their superstitions; a Christian Emperor has learnt to honour the altar of Christ alone. Why do they exact of pious hands and faithful lips the ministry to their sacrilege? Let the voice of our Emperor utter the Name of Christ alone, and speak of Him only, Whom he is conscious of, for, “the King’s heart is in the hand of the Lord.”(1) Has any heathen Emperor raised an altar to Christ? While they demand the restoration of things which have been, by their own example they show us how great reverence Christian Emperors ought to pay to the religion which they follow, since heathen ones offered all to their superstitions.

I have answered those who provoked me as though I had not been provoked, for my object was to refute the Memorial, not to expose superstition. But let their very memorial make you, O Emperor, more careful. For after narrating of former princes, that the earlier of them practised the ceremonies of their fathers, and the later did not abolish them; and saying in addition that, if the religious practice of the older did not make a precedent, the connivance of the later ones did; it plainly showed what you owe, both to your faith, viz., that you should not follow the example of heathen rites, and to your affection, that you should not abolish the decrees of your brother. For if for their own side alone they have praised the connivance of those princes, who, though Christians, yet in no way abolished the heathen decrees, how much more ought you to defer to brotherly love, so that you, who ought to overlook some things even if you did not approve them in order not to detract from your brother’s statutes, should now maintain what you judge to be in agreement both with your own faith, and the bond of brotherhood.

Now, it is true that our leaders are hardly Christian but the principle we see in Ambrose is a Christian contending that the one true faith should be honored as the recognized unique faith of the people. This is contrary to the argument that Symmachus, Piper, and Mohler (and all of R2K) advance when they contend that the one true faith of the people is that all the faiths are equal and should be equally honored.

Who will you stand with? Christian Ambrose of Milan or the consummate Liberals Symmachus, Piper, Mohler and R2K?

The full discussion between Symmachus and Ambrose can be found here,

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/ambrose-sym.asp

Thankful for the Explicitness of Rev. Dr. Pastor Lee — R2K Unleashed X

3. Do forget the OT, please. Seriously. You must understand that Romans 12 – 13 and the rest of the NT is a radical departure from OT Israel. Israel’s mandate was to make the land of Canaan (and other nations by extension) submit to its rule and reign. The NT Church is to submit to the reign of the nations. These two mandates are not only different, they are opposite. The prophets were calling the kings to account because it was in their portfolio, it was a theocracy, and the “King” was a type of Christ. NT prophets are preachers, and Caesar is not in their portfolio. Only sin in and among God’s people. This is why Paul says that God himself instituted the civil authority, they are God’s servants, and they answer directly to him, not to him through the church. Romans 13 is not a command. It is a description. They are doing this, now, apart from the Bible or the Church. God has given them sufficient knowledge of good and evil to fulfill their office since the fall.

Dr. Rev. Pastor Brian “Latin reader, no coward, Titles indifferent” Lee

1.) Here we find an explicit dispensationalizing of the OT and a hermeneutic of radical discontinuity. Now, R2K may apply their dispensationalism in different ways but the idea of counseling someone to “Do forget the OT, please. Seriously,” is a Dispensational impulse.

2.) This provides a window into why the Republication theory of the Mosaic Covenant is part and parcel of R2K. R2K needs to slough off any and all general equity talk that remains from the Mosaic covenant, as well as all concrete application of the OT Law to the Post-Resurrection public square. The R2K Republication theory of the Mosaic Covenant serves that purpose. We can make distinctions between R2K and the Mosaic Republication but we must keep before us that the innovative theology that is R2K can not be “successful” apart from their innovative reading of the Mosaic covenant as a Republication with it’s upper and lower registers and its “merit here” but not “merit there” “reasoning.” What the republication of the Mosaic covenant theory offers R2K is the ability to disregard the Mosaic covenant law in any of its concrete expressions, while still retaining the Mosaic law as somehow abstractly abstracted from the Mosaic covenant.

3.) The way that Romans 12 and 13 is read by Lee is yet another example of innovation. I would challenge the reader to read the way that Christopher Goodman read Romans 13 which was fairly typical of men like Knox and a share of the Puritans.

http://www.constitution.org/cmt/goodman/obeyed.htm

Harold Berman offers a good work that traces how the Reformation impacted the Law and Social Order of Nations. Berman traces out how the Reformation applied the insights of God’s Law as expressed in all of Scripture for the ordering of the civil realm.

http://www.amazon.com/Law-Revolution-Protestant-Reformations-Tradition/dp/0674022300/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0HJ54FNAXBDMQ1ZDWVVR

Lee is asserting that his innovative reading of Romans 12-13 should just be accepted upon his word but his assertion is just not accurate.

We need to keep in mind that it is incumbent to read all of the bible in context with all of the Bible. Just consider though how Lee and R2K does not do this. They excise the Mosaic covenant. They tell us to forget the Old Testament … Seriously. They dispensationalize the Scripture. Sure, if you read Romans 13 presupposing your own historically innovative and mistaken matrix naturally one is going to find Romans 12-13 convincingly proving that the Church’s only role is to submit to the anti-Christ State. Lee has need to heed Van Prinsterer’s warning of the need to avoid “serious conceptual confusion when it comes to Church and State and their mutual relation and the misuse that is being made … of the no less apostolic admonition, ‘Let every soul be subject to the higher powers,’ with the result that people run the risk of …. lapsing into a passiveness which is injurious alike to civil liberties and law and order and which in no wise resembles genuine Christian submission.”

All I can do is to beg the reader to look into these things and not accept the assertions of R2K-philes.

4.) Lee’s statement that in the OT the Nations were to ruled by Israel’s religion while in the NT the Israel of God is to b ruled by the pagan religion of the Nations is breathtaking.

“Israel’s mandate was to make the land of Canaan (and other nations by extension) submit to its rule and reign. The NT Church is to submit to the reign of the nations. These two mandates are not only different, they are opposite.”

Please keep in mind, dear reader, that the reign of a nation never happens in a vacuum. To be ruled by a Nation, by necessity, means to be ruled by the religion of said Nation since reigning, like law, has to be informed by some religion or worldview. When Lee tells us that the Church is to submit to the reign of the Nations, he is, by necessity, telling us that the Church is to be ruled by the religion that informs that reign. In my hearing that statement has the sound of treason about it.

Part of our difference here is eschatology but not even amillennialists of old never went so far as to suggest that the Israel of God is to be ruled by the pagan religion of the Nations.

“The thought of the kingdom of God implies the subjection of the entire range of human life in all its forms and spheres to the ends of religion. The kingdom reminds us of the absoluteness, the pervasiveness, the unrestricted dominion, which of right belong to all true religion. It proclaims that religion, and religion alone, can act as the supreme unifying, centralizing factor in the life of man, as that which binds all together and perfects all by leading it to its final goal in the service of God.” (page 194)

Geerhardus Vos
The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church

It is Lee’s militant amillennialism (another characteristic of R2K) that informs him. The Nations can not be ruled by the Church’s Christian faith (as opposed to being ruled by the Church) since such ruling can not happen until Christ’s returns. Indeed, for R2K, Christ ruling over concrete Nations in time and space is an impossibility. Hence their hatred for Christendom. You see, their eschatology can not allow it.

Even if you are amillennialist, dear reader, will you close ranks with Lee or Vos on this matter?

5.) Lee’s statement about the mandates being opposite brings us to another conclusion and that is that R2K and standard historical Reformed theology are also opposite. The extremity of the R2K position makes it another Reformed religion. The similarities between R2K and standard historical Reformed theology are only linguistic. R2K has poured new meaning into all the old words and phrases so that even though we may use the same words the meaning is entirely different. One simply cannot rummage around and change beginning principles (covenant, law, denial of general equity, etc.) of our undoubted catholic Christian faith and end up with the same faith.

6.) The fact that Caesar remains in our Portfolio is demonstrated by the fact that in a Constitutional Republic we Christians (Citizens of America and Heaven at the same time) are inclusive of those who are Caesar’s employer. Being Caesar’s employer means that we take of what we learn from our Catechism (LD 40), as it is taught in home and Church, and we apply it in the civil realm. No one denies that a distinction between the two realms exist but to bifurcate the two realms the way R2K does approaches being unfaithful.

As Exodus 18:21 says “But select capable men from all the people–men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain–and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.” America was set up in this republican form of government. Christians are to be involved in the selection of capable God fearing people to represent society. You will find that the Bible teaches that legitimate civil (not criminal) government is an ordinance of God, and tyrants have no claim upon conscientious submission of Christians in Romans 13.

Ridderbos, an amillennialist, explains how this non-bifurcation realm reality works where the Kingdom of God interacts and transforms the world,

“But the Kingdom of God also defines the Church in its relation to the world. The Church has a foundation of its own, has its own rules, its own mode of existence. But precisely because of the fact that it is the Church of the Kingdom, it has also a positive relation with the world, for the Kingdom of God is seeking acceptance in the world.

A sower went forth to sow. And the field is the world. That is why the Church is seeking catholicity. And this catholicity has a double aspect, one of extension and one of intensity, in accordance with the nature of the Kingdom. So the Church is as wide as the world. The horizons of the world are also the horizons of the Church; therefore its urge to carry on missionary work, to emigrate, to cross frontiers. This is because the Church is the
Church of the Kingdom. She is not allowed to be self-contained.

But there is also an intensive catholicity of the Church because of the Kingdom. The Church is related to life as a whole. It is not a drop of oil on troubled waters. It has a mission in this world and in the entire structure of the world. This statement does not arise from cultural optimism. This is the confession of the kingship of Christ. For this reason, too, the Church is the Church of the Kingdom.

And the third remark is my concluding one: as Church of the Kingdom, the Church is seeking the future. She has received her talents for the present. But her Lord who went into a far country will return. Her waiting for Him consists of working. Otherwise she will hear: What have you done with my talent?”

Herman Ridderbos,
“When the Time Had Fully Come: Studies in New Testament Theology”

Of course the militant amillennialists cannot agree with this quote because for the militant amillennialists the Church and the Kingdom are exactly co-extensive. They are one and the same.

7.) Nobody is advocating that the Civil Magistrate answer to the Church. It’s hard to believe that Lee would make that statement since it is widely known that the Reformed vision, as it came to America, was neither Church over State, nor State over Church. The Reformed vision had it, as it came to the America, that Church and State while distinct were interdependent spheres, each under sovereign God. The State’s end was unto providing Justice to God’s people as God defined Justice, and the Church’s role was to the end of ministering grace to God’s people by word and sacrament in the Christian Church. Each had their own place but neither was cut off and bifurcated from the other. The traditional election cycle sermon is one proof of that.

8.) Finally, the 20th century as the bloodiest century in human history wherein more people were killed by Governments than all other centuries combined completely mocks Lee’s statement, “God has given them (The State) sufficient knowledge of good and evil to fulfill their office since the fall.

This is part of the problem with much of the current ministerial corps. They seemingly have so little knowledge of History. Has Lee never heard of Lenin and Stalin and their murderous purges where tens of millions of people were tortured and killed? Has Lee never heard of Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Hitler, and any number of other Tyrants who certainly did not have sufficient knowledge of good and evil to fulfill their office?

What Lee and R2K is doing with that kind of magnificently stupid statement is to absolutize the State as God walking on the earth and in doing so may be guilty of fostering idolatry in God’s people. No Institution … no person has absolute authority. All authority is dependent upon and must be in submission unto God’s revealed authority.

Look, in the end R2K is a different Reformed religion. The Understanding of God is different. The understanding of the Kingship of Christ is different. The eschatology is different. The ecclesiology is different. The Hermeneutic is different. The understanding of covenant is different. The understanding of the place and the role of the law is different. It is just a different religion.