R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology) – Page 7

Dr. Mike Horton On Separating Christ From The Propositions That Reveal Christ

“Although we have plenty of propositions about the person and work of Christ, these MERELY serve to give definition to the person in whom we place our trust. It is trust in Christ, not the number of propositions we hold, that is the empty hand that receives the treasures of the kingdom.”

Mike Horton

Modern Reformation Vol 15. Number 2

March/April 2006

1.) Horton uses propositions to prove that propositions are not necessary to receive a propositional-less Christ.

2.) “The propositions MERELY serve to give definition to the person in whom we place our trust?”

So, is Horton advocating here that we embrace the person of Christ apart from the MERE propositions that serve to give definition to the person in whom we are placing our trust? What kind of madness is this? We are to trust a person apart from the propositions that define the person?

3.) This chap is actually arguing that we are saved by a Christ absent of the propositions that tell us who Christ is. If this isn’t neo-orthodoxy it is a kissing cousin.

4.) It strikes me that propositions (particularly inspired ones) that do the work of defining who Christ is should not be referenced as “Merely.”

5.) If we don’t rely on the propositions of Scripture that give us Christ then who is the empty hand receiving as the treasure of the Kingdom?

6.) This is a subtle attack on inspired Revelation on Horton’s part. Those propositions that Mike casually dismisses are inspired Revelation. There is no trusting Christ apart from the revelation that defines the Christ that one must trust.

7.) Indeed, even the idea that we are to “trust Christ” comes to us as a “mere proposition.”

The Urgent Appeal Of Dr. R. Scott Clark For Societal Polytheism

Who in the ancient church, before AD 311, draw the inference from the New Testament teaching about the magistrate that Christianity should have a privileged place in the empire? What do you find in the New Testament teaching about the magistrate that leads you to think that Christianity should have a privileged place in society?

Dr. R. Scott Clark
X Post
Advocating for Anabaptist Pluralism

1.) When Scott talks about the ancient church he is implying that the Church only begins with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember, the Church extends back to the restoration of Adam and Eve after the fall. Does Scott believe that the Church is only a New Testament reality? If so that’s a very Baptist way of thinking.

2.) The fact that Scott wants to focus only on the NT here also suggests that Scott thinks that if we want to know what the Church thought we can only consult the Church after the crucifixion and resurrection (and apparently only up to AD 311). The Church’s Scripture prior to the NT apparently doesn’t count. Is Scott, what we call “a New Testament Christian?”

3.) When Scott asks

What do you find in the New Testament teaching about the magistrate that leads you to think that Christianity should have a privileged place in society?

We ought to hear him asking:

What do you find in the New Testament teaching about the magistrate that leads you to think that Christ should have a privileged place in society?

Scott is actually asking the question why Christians today would ever think that Christ should have the preeminence? Scott is suggesting that Jesus Christ who is “King of Kings” and “Lord of Lords,” should NOT have a privileged place in society. According to Scott Jesus Christ should step aside so that other gods can have equal air time. Per. Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary Jesus Christ should not have a privileged place in any given society. Dr. R. Scott Clark is telling God and the world that it is wrong (sinful) for Christians to desire that Jesus Christ should have a privileged place in every society.

THIS IS MADNESS.

Keep in mind dear reader that if Jesus Christ is not privileged in any society that, by default means, that some other God or God concept is going to be privileged in the society where Jesus Christ is not privileged. Since there is no neutrality, it is not possible for a society to not have some God or god concept be privileged. When Dr. R. Scott Clark says these kinds of magnificently stupid things Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary is advocating for IDOLATRY.

However, quite to the contrary of Dr. R. Scott Clark’s expostulations there is a NT text

Act 17:6 “These men who have turned the world upside down have now come here, 7and Jason has welcomed them into his home. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, named Jesus!”

Now unless Dr. Clark wants to suggest that the accusations brought against Paul and his compatriots here in Thessalonica were lies we clearly have a passage where it is taught that the spread of a Christianity which privileged Jesus Christ was a threat to previous pagan social orders.

Folks need to understand what guys like Dr. R. Scott Clark and Dr. Kevin DeYoung are trying to do here. They are trying to rivet upon the Reformed Church in America the idea that it is God’s express will that societies and social orders must be pluralistic/polytheistic. This is societal polytheism is a positive good from God to His Church per these anti-Christs, and to object to them is worthy of being cast out of the Church.

And of course, we don’t hold with Dr. R. Scott Clark that only appeal to the New Testament can be made. Being Biblical Christians we believe that the OT is part of God’s revealed Word and there we find in Psalm 2;

Why do the ^[a]nations ^[b]rage,
And the people plot a ^[c]vain thing?
²The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed,^[d] saying,
³“Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”

⁴He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
⁵Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
⁶“Yet I have ^[e]set My King
^[f]On My holy hill of Zion.”

⁷“I will declare the ^[g]decree:
The Lord has said to Me,
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
⁸Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
⁹You shall ^[h]break them with a rod of iron;
You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’ ”

¹⁰Now therefore, be wise, O kings;
Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
¹¹Serve the Lord with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
¹²^[i]Kiss the Son, lest ^[j]He be angry,
And you perish in the way,
When His wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

Calvinism … Then & Now

“Calvinism denied that the Kingdom of God is to be equated with the church. Instead, wherever God reigns, there is the Kingdom—and God should reign everywhere. Hence, man can serve God everywhere, and the Kingdom of God includes every area of life, and every institution which obeys his commandments. Thus, church, civil government, school, agriculture, art, business, every realm under God’s law is an area of Kingdom activity.”

“All who are content with a humanistic law system and do not strive to replace it with Biblical law are guilty of idolatry. They have forsaken the covenant of their God, and they are asking us to serve other gods. They must be called out of their idolatry into the service of the living God.”

~R.J. Rushdoony

1.) Militant Amillennialism, (R2K) however insists that the Kingdom of God is an exact synonym with the Church. As such, no Institutional realities outside the Church can be part of the Kingdom of God according to Militant Amillennialism. Further, any Reformed Christian who disagrees with them on this are not to be tolerated. Keep in mind that when consistent this means that Militant Amillennialism does not allow for Christian being used in an adjectival sense. Because nothing can be part of the Kingdom of God except the Church there is no such thing as Christian Magistrates, Christian family, Christian education, Christian law, Christian Nations or even Christendom. According to Militant Amillennialism all of this reflects category mistakes in thinking.

2.) As such, per the quote above, it is indeed the case that all Militant Amillennialism (as well as any other expression of “Christianity” that agree with them in this matter) is indeed guilty of Idolatry and as they are guilty of idolatry no Biblical Christian should be found in a Church where the Church itself promotes this or where this idea is promoted by the clergy of the Church. Idolatry is, after all, heresy.

3.) Note that where it is believed that the Church alone is an exact synonym for “The Kingdom of God,” there you are going to find an entitlement mentality. If, as a clergy member, you alone are a servant of “the Kingdom of God,” then you alone are special the way nobody else in any other calling is special. You alone, as a servant of the Kingdom of God, are thus separated and exalted from the rest of the poor schlubs who labor in the comparatively insignificant “common realm.” As such, you dare not correct the “Kingdom of God” clergy about anything they speak on since they have a relationship to God that is unique to the back of the bus crew.

This explains why you find such arrogance among the R2K types. In their theology they’re just better than the rest of us. Now, that idea is likely often left unstated and the R2K clergy may not even be epistemologically self-conscious about their hoity toity ways, but it only takes a little amount of time interacting with them before you realize that these people believe they are riding in the front of the bus and all the folks riding in the back of the bus should just “hush.”

The Common Ground Between R2K & Doctrinaire Communism

“The (Russian) Orthodox Church already had martyrs to Communism: but Patriarch Tikhon (1865 – 1925), for all his earlier courage, was not to be among them. In June, the Communists broke him. He signed a statement declaring that his treatment had been justified because of his anti-Soviet attitudes, and that he had not suffered in confinement. He made this formal avowal of surrender: ‘I have completely adopted the Soviet platform, and consider that the Church must be non-political.’

But the blood of Orthodox Archbishop Benjamin and Catholic Msgr. Budkiewicz cried out from the ground against that.”

Warren H. Carroll
The Rise & Fall of Communist Revolutions – p. 164

What is interesting in this quote is that the Russian Communists, after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 were insisting that the Churches in Russia must be, by way of doctrinal commitment, be non-political — that is to say they must not be involved in speaking to state policy.

In turn, the interest in that is found in the fact that such a Communist policy is the same policy that the R2K chaps from Escondido (Westminster West) and elsewhere in the Reformed denominational world insist must be the policy of the Reformed church. So, both the Communists and the Radical Two Kingdom “theologians” like David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, Michael Horton, J. V. Fesko, D. G. Hart, Chris Gordon, T. David Gordon, Kevin DeYoung, ad infinitum, each agree that the Church must be non-political. (Never mind the consideration that if the church is non-political it is at that point following a extraordinarily political path.)

The Communists tortured Patriarch Tikhon in order to get his mind right on the subject of the “non-political nature of the church” and R2K does all it can to close the door against those who defy their Communist skubala that insists that the Church is necessarily obligated to be “non-political.”

Exposing the R2K Agenda of Dr. Kevin De Young’s In His Interpretation of the WCF

The duties required in the Second Commandment are…the disapproving, detesting, opposing, all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry.

Westminster Larger Catechism 108

It seems pretty clear from the above that those clergy who subscribe to the WCF, are required to be adamantly opposed to a “principled pluralism” that allows for all the gods to be in the public square and yet Rev. Kevin DeYoung can write;

‘”Gone from WCF 23:3 in the American revision are any references to the civil magistrate’s role in suppressing heresies and blasphemies, in reforming the church, in maintaining a church establishment, and in calling and providing for synods…. In its place, the American revision lists four basic functions for the civil magistrate relative to the church…(4) protect all people so no one is injured or maligned based on his or her religion or lack of religion.”

With this quote above DeYoung puts the WCF in contradiction to itself. De Young would interpret WCF 23:3 as in direct contradiction to WLC 108, and while not trying to be too persnickety, Dr. Rev. De Young also, via his interpretation of the American revised WCF 23:3 put the Westminster Confession in contradiction with itself in WCF 19:4;

To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

WCF 19.4

19:4 teaches that a general equity relating to the judicial laws remain and further teaches that Christian Magistrates are required (obliged) to enforce that general equity where it remains. R2K chaps like Kevin De Young don’t like that idea because it doesn’t fit with their pursuit of a body politic devoted to principled pluralism (polytheism) with its god named “Natural Law,” as represented by the priesthood of government officials who interpret the will and Law-word of the god “Natural Law.”

That I am correct about this R2K Tom-foolery is seen in a quote from team R2K Reformed clergy member Dr. R. Scott Clark

“All orthodox Christians affirm that God’s moral law is enduring and binding to all people—to deny that is antinomianism. What is at stake here is the magistrate’s role in enforcing that moral law. The framers of the Statement (Statement On Christian Nationalism and the Gospel) have a plan, to which we have not yet arrived, but it entails some enforcement of the first table, and thus is theocratic.”

R. Scott Clark
Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 4)

Clark here is raising the horrors in the idea that the Magistrate might actually enforce the 1st table of God’s moral law. The danger he is bemoaning is “theocracy.” Like De Young, Dr. Clark desires a principled pluralism (polytheism) for the body politic with the god named “Natural Law” sitting as the God over all the gods. This god “Natural Law” has his word discovered and implemented by the governmental and bureaucratic priesthood who do his bidding.

DeYoung, along with Clark, and all the sycophants of R2K are insisting that the revised WCF now yields a required “principled pluralism,” and yet if DeYoung’s reading is correct on 23:3 then WLC 108 must be either revised or ignored. Note that WLC 108 explicitly says; “according to each one’s place and calling.” Clearly, Christian magistrates are being told that according to their place and calling they are to disapprove, detest, and oppose all false worship by removing said false worship and yet R2K in its pursuit of a non theocratic (principled pluralism / polytheism) theocracy (ruled by the god named Natural Law as interpreted by the governmental and bureaucratic priesthood) is denying their own confession with their errant theology.

DeYoung, wearing the uniform of team R2K is seeking to officially change the WCF from a Christian confession to a polytheistic confession. I say “officially,” because most Presbyterians already treat the WCF as a confession that requires the magistrate to rule over a polytheistic body-politic.