R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology) – Page 8

Refuting Rev. Chris Gordon’s “Babel Christianity”

This showed up in my newsfeed today as coming from Rev. Chris Gordon. I find it so interesting because both Gordon and his conversational partner here, Dr. Stephen Wolfe embrace Thomistic Natural Law thinking and yet they are vehemently disagreeing on the effects Christianity should have when landing among different social orders. So, they are both Thomists, philosophically, and yet they are at distinct loggerheads here.

A couple more things, first, Rev. Gordon teed this up by writing;

“Most important moment in my CN discussion with Stephen Wolfe:”

Chris clearly thinks he had Wolfe on the ropes here in this part of the interview.

Chis Gordon: Most people in CA are mocha, a mix of different ethnicities, do these people have a homeland?

Stephen Wolfe: California is unique though. If I stayed in CA…I don’t know. I bring this stuff up because of the importance of it…do you have a homeland? When I hear the stories of old CA…horseback riding in hills of Napa, 22 riffles…there is a sense of loss…

Bret Interjects:

1.) Gordon here clearly concedes that race and ethnicity are realities. After all, you can’t get to a “mocha, a mix of different ethnicities” without acknowledging that there were different ethnicities that existed that are now mixed.

2.) Second, I would say that if the decided majority of California was a thorough mix of different ethnicities than the homeland for those who were a thorough mix of different ethnicities would be California. It would be the homeland for those who had successfully embraced the Babel project that God judged in Genesis 11. California would be the homeland of the multicultural, multiracial and multi-faith people.

3.) Notice Wolfe’s response is to say that the previous people who occupied California have been run out by the new multicult crowd who now owns California, and that there is a certain sadness about that. I don’t know how anybody could disagree that it is sad when a particular people group is extinguished in favor of another people group whose bond is established by the fact that they have no bond except the bond of no bond.

Chris Gordon; The great message of the Christian gospel is I get to tell these people the church is the people and place, you have your soil, you have your place on the kingdom of God. Is this really the message that Christians want to give people, that previous generations lost all that was good with horses and guns, and that all of these many different “Johnny come lately” people groups really don’t belong with us? Is that our message, as Christians? Or might we seek to live in peace and harmony in this age together but with a distinctively Christian message that elevates us to a better salvific good, that God does give people a true homeland together in his kingdom, the church as Christ’s body, tearing down walls of hostility until we reach the heavenly land together of a multitude of nations worshipping God?

Bret responds,

1.) I’ll start at the end of Chris’ peroration here. One simply cannot have a multitude of nations worshipping God in the heavenly land if those nations have been bred out of existence, so that all that exists is a polyglot Babel stew in the land that is not yet heaven.

2.) As to this sentiment by Chris:

“The great message of the Christian gospel is I get to tell these people the church is the people and place, you have your soil, you have your place on the kingdom of God.”

All I can say is that it is contradictory to what John Calvin taught;

“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

John Calvin (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3)

The Reformed faith does welcome all to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” It does not say that there is no grace for the mulatto, mestizo, or whasian. All men everywhere are commanded to repent and if they do repent they are members of the Kingdom of God. However, just as repenting doesn’t change one’s gender, so repenting doesn’t change one’s ethnicity or race. Differences remain and those differences should be acknowledged.

I have a friend who Pastors a church in a large urban area. This church is comprised of different ethnicities and races and yet this Pastor friend tells me that he repeatedly tells his flock, from the pulpit, that even though they are all one in Christ that when it comes to marriage they should not intermarry because race/ethnicity matters.

3.) As to this portion by Rev. Gordon;

Is this really the message that Christians want to give people … that all of these many different “Johnny come lately” people groups really don’t belong with us? Is that our message, as Christians?

I would say the answer to that question is, “yes, that is the Christian message.” Just as the stranger and alien could never own land in ancient Israel because they were not Hebrews so Christianity teaches that it is not ideal to give your nation as a homeland to those who do not belong to your nation by way of descent. Chris really need to consider reading James Hoffmeier’s book on immigration to understand that Christianity has never taught that “Johnny come lately” people groups belong with us. Until Chris does read Hoffmeier maybe he’ll consider this quote from Robert Putnam on the subject;

“Immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to `hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”

Robert Putnam
E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century
The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture

I am of the conviction that what Gordon is giving us here is a Anabaptist paradigm. The Anabaptist were (and remain) the great levelers and what Rev. Gordon is calling for here is for leveling, whether he realizes it or not. Gordon is offering here a “All colors bleed into one” Christianity. He is, as Calvin describes above, a flighty and scatterbrained dreamer.” If Gordon gets his way the result will not be some Christian paradise composed of a Babel organized social order. If Gordon gets his way he will get a social order such as described by Putnam in the quote above.

Finally, note here that Gordon, who is R2K, is doing what R2K says should never be done by ministers. He is getting out of his lane talking about an issue that isn’t a “Gospel issue.” However, if Gordon wants to insist that this is a “Gospel issue” notice once again how liberal/progressive R2K is when it takes up social issues. R2K forever wants to present itself as uncommitted on political issues but here is Gordon being the raging liberal.

Christianity As An Adjective

Dr. Thomas Shirrmacher, in the April, 1992 Chalcedon Report, called attention to the fact that the word religion came into use with the Renaissance, and that previously, the word used for differing faiths was law; the Christian Law, the Islamic Law, the Buddhist Law, and so on. A faith was either polytheistic or catholic; that is either limited in scope or universal. The term catholic properly belongs to the faith and only to a church if it insists that God’s Law—not the church—is universal in its jurisdiction. But since the Enlightenment, or about 1660, Christian catholicity has waned, especially since the French Revolution. Christianity has been replaced, or Christendom has been replaced by the concept of the West, that is Humanistic Statism.

R. J. Rushdoony

Lecture — Religious Earthquake I

All religions are law systems and all law systems are the servants of some religion. This explains why theocracy is an inescapable concept. All governments must enact laws and when they do enact laws they do so on the basis of religion since law is a statement of morality and morality a reflection of religion. This, obviously, means that all governments are the reflection of some religion. No form of government is religion free. All forms of government are as equally intensely religious. This is true when the government says it eschews all religion, or, to the contrary when it insists, that it accepts all religion. When any government says that it is religious free it only means that it is basing all its legislative and governmental work on its own authority, which tells us that it is based on the religion of humanism where man dictates the morality upon which all legislation is based. Religion has not gone away. When any government insists that it accepts all religion, once again we have a testimony of humanism since in the accepting of all religion it is the government which will determine which religion will be the religion that dictates the morality upon which legislation will be based.

The above is true for any institution in any jurisdiction wherein laws are made for the institution. Because, families, for example, have laws that govern the family, families are downstream of some religion, since the laws for the family are based on a morality and the morality in turn is based on some religion and God concept. Because this is so families will be “Christian families,” or “Humanist families” or “Jewish families,” or “Muslim families,” etc. However no family will ever be a non-religiously defined family. The same is true for law courts, for educational institutions, for workplaces, for political parties, etc. Religion is an inescapable concept and never goes away, though often it is insisted that this or that is “irreligious.”

All this explains, in part, why R2K is so disastrous. R2K insists that these different realms (family, arts, juridical, education, politics, government etc.) all should be, by definition, areligious. R2K, bone-headedly, insists that the adjective “Christian” should never define these different realms. Indeed, R2K goes so far as to say that it is sinful before God to insist that the adjective “Christian” should be supplied as a descriptor for any of these areas. In doing so, R2K turns over all these areas to non-Christian religions. This is so because once R2K has successfully convinced Christians that they should not pursue “Christian Education,” “Christian Politics,” “Christian Jurisprudence,” “Christian Art,” then all that is left as an adjective to define these jurisdictional disciplines is some non-Christian religion. This explains, in part, why R2K is idolatry and an abandoning of the Christian faith.

Postmillennialism vis-a-vis Amillennialism … Foundational Differences Teased Out

“It is right for you to realise, and to take as the sum of what we have already stated, and to marvel at exceedingly; namely, that since the Saviour has come among us, idolatry not only has no longer increased, but what there was is diminishing and gradually coming to an end: and not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer advance , but what there was is fading away. … And to sum the matter up: behold how the Saviour’s doctrine is everywhere increasing, while all idolatry and everything opposed to the faith of Christ is daily dwindling, and losing power, and falling. … For as, when the sun is come, darkness no longer prevails, but if any be still left anywhere it is driven away; so, now that the divine Appearing of the Word of God is come, the darkness of the idols prevails no more, and all parts of the world in every direction are illumined by His teaching.”

Athanasius, AD 296-372
Incarnation

“…the kingdom of God on earth is not confined to the mere ecclesiastical sphere, but aims at absolute universality, and extends its supreme reign over every department of human life….It follows that it is the duty of every loyal subject to endeavor to bring all human society, social and political, as well as ecclesiastical, into obedience to its law of righteousness.”

A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology: Lectures on Doctrine
(Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, [1890] 1990), 283

“It would be easy to show that at our present rate of progress the kingdoms of this world never could become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. Indeed, many in the Church are giving up the idea of it except on the occasion of the advent of Christ, which, as it chimes in with our own idleness, is likely to be a popular doctrine. I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and the idols be utterly abolished; but I expect the same power which turned the world upside down once will still continue to do it. The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was not able to convert the world.”

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

As Amill eschatology believes that the Kingdom of God is exactly identified with the Church and only with the Church it is inevitable that Amills will diminish the necessity for Christianity to conquer in every area of life outside and beyond the Church. After all, for the Amillennial types, if the Kingdom of God is not inclusive of any area outside the Church and the Kingdom is only synonymous with and for “the Church,” there is no need to conquer those other arenas / areas that for the Amillenialist are “non-Kingdom” arenas.

What I mean is this: As the Amils are always leaning towards identifying the Kingdom of God only with the Church — thus drawing a bright line demarcating between Kingdom/Church activity and non-Kingdom/Church activity — the consequence is that the “consistent with their eschatology” Amils will always chide anybody in the Christian faith who sees the Kingdom as being an arena that is expansive beyond the Church so as in include arenas as education, jurisprudence, just war theory, politics, economics, etc.

Postmils, to the contrary, believing that the Kingdom is not identified as exclusively with the Church and believe thus that the Kingdom of God extends beyond the Church and so will do just the opposite of the Amill and emphasize the necessity that the Church, being the armory of God’s Kingdom, must seek to conquer every arena of human existence. The Postmills believing this then will, unlike their Amill counterparts, address these different various issues from the pulpit. This leaves their Amill counterparts apoplectic.

The fact that this analysis is accurate is seen especially in the writings of David Van Drunen, who I believe has drawn out the most consistently the errant implications of the Amil eschatology. Van Drunen writes in his “Living in God’s Two Kingdoms”;

“God is not redeeming the cultural activities and institutions of this world, but is preserving them through the covenant he made with all living creatures through Noah in Gen. 8:20 – 9:19.”

Van Drunen continues writing;

“God is redeeming a people for himself, by virtue of the covenant made with Abraham and brought to glorious fulfillment in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has completed Adam’s original task once and for all” (p. 15). As VanDrunen explains, “redemption is not ‘creation regained’ but ‘re-creation gained’” (p. 26).

When one follows this reasoning closely one realizes that for R2K Amillennialism the intent of Biblical Christianity is to preserve culture so that individuals alone, as extracted from their cultural context, might be redeemed. Individuals are redeemed while their cultural context by definition is unredeemable. If Van Drunen were a linguist he would say that God intends to redeem the text while leaving the context to experience soul sleep. This is consistent Amillennialism and because of this Amillennial “theologians” will go spastic in condemning Postmillennialists for preaching on subject matter that in their Amillennial worldview does not particularize the need for the individual as an individual to be redeemed.

This thus creates a ever growing hostility between consistent Amills and consistent Postmills. In this hostility the Amils will forever be accusing the Postmills of diluting the Christian message since, as the Amills believe, the Postmills major on the minors and the Postmills will forever rightly accuse the Amills of being cowardly pietists who love them some retreat and who are characterized in preaching a Christianity that redeems the text (individual) while leaving the context (culture) unaffected.

This explanation also sheds light on the fact that Amillennialism Christianity and Postmillennialism Christianity create very different types of character and personalities in people. People who are decidedly Postmil are typically going to be type “A” personalities who have a thirst to conquer while people who are decidedly type “B” personalities will be content to be passive and retiring — except when attacking postmillennialists and their eschatology. Amills typically refuse to fight unless it is to fight those (postmills) who never tire of fighting for the honor of Christ.

Zuidema & McAtee On The Ecclesiasticizing of Christianity

“The ecclesiasticizing of religion necessarily calls into being the profaning of the non-ecclesiastical area …. the ecclesiasticized church calls into being a secularized world… The more church becomes ecclesiasticized, the more it will profane life outside the church and abandon it to profanation… The more the Church profanes life, the less it becomes the humble servant of Christ and his spiritual world dominion… people lament, certainly not without justification, about the ongoing secularization of life in the lands populated and governed by Western peoples. Concurrent with this secularization comes the distressing problem…and oppressive reality of human emancipation as the self-liberation out of the bonds to God and his Word… This is a problem which, unless it leads man to retrace his steps in this emancipation, will irretrievably abandon us to nihilism and the destruction of every last human worth, human honor, human value, and human responsibility…”

S. U. Zuidema

Communication and Confrontation

1.) Ecclesiasticizing of religion = Christianity existing only for the sake of the church. This is the goal and object of Radical Two Kingdom “theology.”

2.) This is merely the admission that if Christianity is to retreat from the public square the consequence will be a vacuum that is filled by some other prevailing religion that shapes and informs the public square. The public square can never be “neutral.” The public square is always the incarnation and thus expression of some religion. The public square only exists as being animated by religion.

3.) It is true that the public square because of secularization becomes increasingly profane. However, the profanation of the secular realm for the Christian is the divinizing or sacralizing of the public square as consistent with the tenets of the false religion that is shaping and informing the public square. In other words the profanation of the public square according to the standards of the Christian religion becomes the sacralizing of the public square according to the standards of whatever religion replaces Christianity. It’s not that the public square is no longer set apart as belonging to the God of Christianity. It is that the public square is set apart as belonging to the god of some other faith system (religion).

4.) Radical Two Kingdom Theology (R2Kt) is doing the devil’s work and as such ministers who imbibe R2K theology are of their Father the devil, intentionally or unintentionally. They are doing the work of the devil because in their work to ecclesiasticize the Christian faith they are de-Christianizing the public square in favor of some other religion which will fill the vacuum that their de-sacralizing the public square has done.

5.) When the Christian religion is ecclesiasticized the consequence is that men are released from the guiding ethos of the Christian faith. Being thus “liberated,” from Christianity in their everyday living because of the clergy’s work to ecclesiasticize the Christian faith men instantly experience bondage to some other false demon god. If men will not have the freedom that comes from living in the constraints of God’s Word then they will live in bondage to false demon gods who promise absolute libertinism. How free is a goldfish who has been set free from their fish bowl? How free is a train that is free from it’s tracks? The R2K false religion, because it ecclesiasticizes the Christian religion is guaranteed to be the greatest engine of bondage ever invented by Satan’s engineers.

6.) Unless the Lord Christ grants Reformation and renewal and delivers us from this sulfur laden doctrine of R2K that ecclesiasticizes the Christian faith mankind will continue to de-man themselves in pursuit of ever greater expressions of “freedom.” This in turn will lead to the nihilism that Zuidema speaks of, as well “as the destruction of every last human worth, human honor, human value, and human responsibility…” If the public square will not be ruled by the standards of a vibrant Christianity that informs and applies to the public square then the consequence will be the loss of true meaning and then the loss of the manishness of man. Finally, the coup de grâce will be the loss of Christianity in the ecclesial (the Church). If all that surrounds the Church is a public square that is being governed by the impulse of a false religion then the inevitable consequence is that the Church itself will fall to the public square god that was given hegemony by a Christian Church that had ecclesiasticized the Christian faith.

7.) This is not some kind of children’s game. If we cannot arrest this demonic work of ecclesiasticizing the Christian religion we will have reached a pivot in the history of mankind wherein we will find a great descent of darkness falling upon mankind.

Tim Keller’s Preference For Democracy

“I’d rather be in a democracy than a state in which the government is officially Christian. Instead of trying to take power, I think what Christians ought to be doing is trying to renew their churches.”

-Tim Keller, Wall Street Journal

02 September 2022

1.) Understand what Keller has said here. He has said he’d rather be under a government that is non Christian than under a government that is officially Christian. Tim would rather have his magistrates be Christ-haters than have magistrates who are in submission to Christ.

2.) Tim talked about how Christians shouldn’t “try to take power.” The question is “take power from whom?” Presumably, in Tim’s world Christians shouldn’t try to take power from non Christians and should be happy to be ruled by Christ hating pagans.

3.) You know Tim, it is possible to both try and renew our Churches and in godly ways seek to take power.

4.) Tim’s statement above implies that there is something automatically wicked about Christian’s wielding power. Yet, here is Tim seeking to wield his power as a highly platformed Evangelical voice in service of keeping Christians from pursuing power.