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My Father’s father had died in 1952 when my Father was 15 and his death was a relief to my Father and Grandmother as by all accounts my Father’s Father’s best friend was the bottle and his greatest triumph was in beating his 2nd wife and their son. Carl McAtee had been a violent force in their lives.

The man I knew as my Grandfather on that side of the family came into our lives somewhere around 1967. His name was Floyd Persails and he was a good man with the kind of quirks that all of us have.

Floyd made a career working in the Buick plant in the city where he raised his family; Flint, Michigan.

Second marriages, even in 1967 could be fraught with family issues. Even adult children can feel threatened by a parent having a new spouse. And I think those tensions existed between Floyd’s children and my father as Eva’s only son, but I was only 8 at that time and those tensions didn’t impact me. I liked Grandpa Persails. What was there not to like?

The man grew gigantic gardens. I retain fond memories of helping him in the Garden. Grandpa Floyd wore a brown pith helmet to ward off the sun and I fancied myself his Gunga Din. Part of the garden was a huge plot of sweet corn. Grandpa would take the tractor out pulling behind him a huge cart and my brother, sister, and I would fill up the cart with sweet corn so that it was huge and overflowing. We would then sit perched atop the sweet corn as he wound the tractor back to the house. From there we would spend hours shucking corn and we would eat ourselves stuffed with sweet corn that he boiled in a huge pot outside. Out of the pot onto the plate and quickly in between a folded slice of bread as we applied generous amounts of butter.

The garden didn’t end with the sweet corn, though admittedly that may have been the high point for me. Grandpa Persails would also make huge vats of tomato soup from garden tomatoes as well as potato soup from his garden potatoes. What I wouldn’t give to have another cup of each in 2021. My grandmother delighted in her husband’s garden tomato sandwiches — a couple of slices of tomato between two pieces of bread with a little mayo and salted and peppered to taste. Now that was good eating.

When Grandma married Floyd Persails her house had no running water. Floyd soon fixed that has he built a bathroom addition to the small house and brought in running water. Even for a 10-year old that was nice as it was an end to that nasty outhouse with its Sears-Roebuck catalogue toilet paper.  Eventually, Grandpa built a four-car garage onto the house which was kind of funny because that made the garage as big as the house.  However, Grandpa kept busy in that garage as it soon became cluttered up as garages often do. Indeed, he was so busy he eventually brought a small house-trailer and put it on the property. In that house-trailer, he put all his caning material and opened a small business of caning chairs.

Oh… and he was an auctioneer also. His indecipherable speech at auctions mesmerized me. How could anyone know what they were buying or how much they were paying? I never understood a word he said as an auctioneer.

Grandpa Persails had a big personality. I suspect he came from a family of big personalities. He had a brother named Fred, I met a few times while visiting and Fred likewise had a big personality. They had a sister also, whose name slips my mind who likewise was no shrinking violet in the personality category. When those three got together all the oxygen was sucked out of the room by those huge personalities.

Visiting Grandma and Grandpa (they were only 45 minutes up the road) usually included playing Aggravation. Grandpa made a huge board that fit the kitchen table and drilled the holes in their appropriate spots. Grandma always chose the white marbles and Grandpa always had the black marbles. Everyone else randomly took whatever colors were left. We spent many evenings as children playing Aggravation with Grandma & Grandpa Persails. Again, I wish I could go back and play just one more game with them.

I don’t recall Grandma and Grandpa being particularly church-going people. It’s possible they may have been and I just didn’t know. However, every meal was preceded by a table blessing as led by Grandpa Persails.

Bless us, O Lord,
And these Thy gifts
Which we are about to receive,
Through Thy bounty
Through Christ our Lord we pray.

Amen.

I remember when I was about 17 something shocking happened. Grandpa asked me to lead the meal prayer and after that first time, it wasn’t uncommon for Grandpa to ask me to ask the meal prayer. To this day I don’t know why he made this decision. I never remember any of my siblings or anybody else being asked to give the table prayer. I promise that he had no reason to think that I would end up in the ministry. It was the furthest thing from my mind at 17.

When I was about 20 Floyd had to have some serious surgery and I, being in a in-between time of life was elected to shepherd Grandma during this time. As such, I spent a good deal of time at the hospital with Grandma and Grandpa. The one thing I remember the most was Grandpa trying to get his Doctor to try a piece of hard candy that Grandpa especially enjoyed. Every time that Doctor showed up for rounds Floyd would badger the Doc about trying this great hard candy. Finally, the Doc relented, just to shut Floyd up about the candy. Grandpa gave the Doc a piece of the candy and the Doc just tossed it in his mouth and began to crunch away. Of course, the idea behind hard candy is to suck and enjoy but as the Doc was being condescending he thought he would just crunch away and get it over with. The problem though is that the Doc had not bothered to take off the clear wrapper around the hard candy. Grandpa started laughing immediately while trying to tell the Doc he had to take the clear plastic wrapper off but by that time the Doc was to proud to fish the hard candy out of his mouth to get the wrapper off since that would have been a royal mess. Even I was laughing at this point knowing that the Doctor had so much pride he was going to swallow that damn hard candy — wrapper and all — because he was too proud to take the candy out of his mouth. Just a funny memory.

At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned that Grandpa Floyd had quirks. One of his quirks had to do with a framed picture. This picture was large, especially as it was placed in the center of Grandma’s very small living room. Keep in mind the house as a whole was small and was only rescued by having a second story where we could sleep when visiting overnight. For years I stared at that large picture directly over the television in the tiny living room having no earthly idea who that woman was. Only later did I learn that that picture was a picture of his first wife “Hazel.” At the same time, I learned that painting had created some friction in the marriage. What second wife wants the main attraction of her home to be a portrait of her husband’s first wife? I am now roughly the age they were then and I have to say that at this age I look back and still think that was a strange thing for him to do. Doubtless, he loved his first wife, but he should’ve found a better way to keep his memory ever before him.

Years later as I learned more, I began to admire Grandpa Floyd’s hatred for FDR. Whenever FDR’s name would come up the man would go into an absolute rant. Of course, at that early age, FDR was just a name to me. However, now I look forward to ranting with Grandpa Floyd in Heaven about the hell stationed FDR.

Floyd Persails was a good man. He filled a necessary gap as “Grandpa” for his stepson’s children wonderfully. It is a shame that in later years my Father and Floyd had a serious and significant falling out when my Grandmother died. Things happened at her death that often do when families are blended and my Father and Floyd’s children came to serious loggerheads about the estate. That put me and my siblings in the position of either supporting our Father or Grandpa Floyd and that decision wasn’t really difficult given some of the unfortunate things that happened surrounding Grandma’s funeral.

I was 24 when Grandma died and flew back from Maine for the Funeral. Matters were already tense when I rolled into Tekonsha, Michigan. I saw Grandpa a few times over the weekend of the funeral but after Grandma’s funeral, I never saw or heard from or contacted Floyd Persails again.

At this age, I now regret that.

“The colonists were WASP supremacists. Without moral qualms, they drove the Indians over the mountains and established a society of white and Christian men and women along with African slaves. Catholics were unwelcome. Priests were put back on the boats that brought them. Virginia had been named for the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth, who was determined to complete the work of her father, Henry VIII, who sought to end religious diversity in England by eradicating Catholicism. America was largely settled by colonists from the British Isles. Nearly two centuries after Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, when Washington took his oath as president, the thirteen states were 99 percent Protestant. In 1790, U.S. citizenship was opened up for “free white persons” of “moral character.” No others need apply.”

Pat Buchanan

Roman Catholic

Suicide of a Superpower

The Left affirms this but denounces it as the greatest evil.

The “Right” (so-called) denies it and denounces it as the greatest evil.

Where are all those who affirm the reality of Buchanan’s statement as well as the positive goodness of it?

Now before someone goes off the rails hyperventilating about what a “racist” I am (sorry … went to the concert and got the T-Shirt already) ask yourself if it would be wrong to complain about the Japanese having a Japanese Supremacist country in their Japanese nation or the Chinese (Han people) having a Han Supremacist country in their Han nation? If that is too complicated ask yourself if you in your own household should hold to a (fill in your family surname) supremacy. The only people who would think that are those who believe in their own supremacy to the degree they want to knock down the supremacy of those they are kvetching about.

That Buchanan is correct is seen in the Founders own language;

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The founders wrote, signed in session, and then ratified collectively in the several states, a document that was intended for White Anglo Saxon Christians and their posterity. There were no other people who were present at those conventions and so no other posterity is included as to why they wrote the US Constitution.

Of course, all of these simple and obvious observations are anathema to both left and “right.” They are anathema to the left because of their inherent philosophy of leveling undergirding their egalitarianism. They are anathema to the putative right because this violates their cherished principle of propositional nationhood. The neo-cons can’t accept any notion that this country was based at all on what nations are normatively based upon and that is blood. So, anybody who observes that propositional nationhood is bunkum in terms of our American history must be put down.

That the neo-cons hate this reality of America having a foundation in blood and not propositional nationhood is seen in Sen. Ben Sasse’s bloviating,

“It would be a grave mistake to reduce … the universalist principles of the Founding [for an] ethno-nationalism.”

Senator Ben Sasse — R. – Nebraska

Twitter account

Foreigner talking heads chime in with Sasse supporting this lie;

“There are many liberal democracies, even Republics in the world today, but no other country from its outset believed in the idea of openness and the mixture of people as central to its founding. America is a nation created on the basis of its diversity of race, religion, national origin, and there are efforts to change America, There are plans for religious and ethnic tests and to bar immigrants and even visitors and also to track visitors and immigrants when they are in the US. There have been calls to deport people, even American citizens. There are proposals to monitor houses of Worship. These ideas would fundamentally change America, tearing at its founding DNA. It would make it much more like the rest of the world. Making it one more nation in which certain ethnic groups and religions are privileged and others are outsiders. A country in which diversity is a threat to National Character rather than a strength.”

Fareed Zakaria

CNN News show

And yet the founders did not agree with this Sasse-ian and Zakarian nonsense;

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, without which a common and free government would be impossible.”

John Jay
Federalist #2

“The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another.”

Alexander Hamilton

The first step in liquidating a people — and a step that Sasse and Zakaria understand — is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around will forget even faster.

Also when it comes to supremacy the Biblical Christian is duty-bound by His allegiance to His God to be convinced that Christian people build cultures that are significantly superior to other non-Christian cultures precisely because the God they serve is supreme over all other gods. If culture is religion externalized then those cultures which are a reflection of the one true God and His religion are going to be those cultures that have the supremacy. Just as not all Gods are equal, so all religions are not equal, so all cultures are not equal, so all peoples are not equal. Some peoples are superior to other peoples and those peoples should be humbly convinced of the superiority of their culture because they are convinced of the superiority of their God.

“The PROBLEM, of course, is that now we have a great deal of illegal immigration. We HAVE IMMIGRATION LAWS THAT NO LONGER FOLLOW THE OLDER PATTERN AND CONCENTRATE ON EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. We allow many, many peoples in who have nothing in common with us, who are Moslems or members of other religions and it appears that there is an effort to break the Christian heritage and character of the United States.”

~R. J. Rushdoony

I don’t know who Justin Eimers is. This is the first time I’ve laid my eyes on him. I know he works for the State Government of Michigan and that speaks volumes. Note as you move through this piece the irrationality of Justin. Because of that irrationality, Justin is a legend in his own mind.

Justin Eimers

An area that I think Calvinists do get it right is in the area of perseverance of the saints (POS). I know that comes with issues of it’s own…however those issues are logical not textual which is why lean in that direction.

 Bret L. McAtee

•  . If the perseverance of the saints is right Justin, (and it is) then T U L and I are right as well. They rise and fall together.

• Justin Eimers

  
  Not true Bret, they aren’t as interdependent textually as people think. Philosophically they definitely are, but my interest isn’t in the philosophy or systematics it’s in the biblical theology.

  Bret responds

  I did not respond to this publicly on the thread because this response announced that I was dealing with an irrationalist. When dealing with an irrationalist the only thing one can do is mock since their irrationality will not allow them to interact with what is being said.

  Anyone who thinks they can do any discipline (including Biblical Theology) without apriori systematic (theology) and philosophical presuppositions is a fool. All Justin was telling me here is that his philosophy is anti-philosophy and his systematics is anti-systematics. There is no way one can have a rational discourse with a person who thinks that they have risen above the pedestrian disciplines of systematics and philosophy to some kind of hermeneutical nirvana.

  Second, this is a mistake often made by those enchanted with Biblical theology. They think they are interpreting the text from nowhere as if they have no systemic approach that is beholden to systematics and philosophy. These chaps tend to be inductive and they must be forced to ask themselves how they know the particulars without presupposing the whole.

  Third, we are five hundred years removed from the Reformation. We have had Reformed giants like Gerhardus Vos doing Biblical theology. Our exegetes and Biblical theologians both have demonstrated repeatedly that T, U, L, I, and P rise and fall together.

   

   

  Bret L. McAtee

  This is how I responded publicly. Remember … the man having embraced irrationalism all that I can do is shred and rend hoping to shake him. No rationality is going to shake someone who suggests that he’s not concerned with systematics and philosophy and who is just reading the text without presuppositions.

  
  LOL … actually they are interdependent textually as all the exegesis done by the Reformed over the centuries demonstrate and prove.

Second, to suggest that the Scripture is contradictory gives you and others a major problem with the character of God.

Third, Biblical theology that allows for a textual reading that renders a non-systematic reading of Scripture is inherently flawed.

Will Hess

The only part of tulip that is true is, P, Bret. Indeed, the P. Because if one does fall away – He did not persevere – thus he is apostate.

Bret L. McAtee

You clearly miss the thrust of the “P,” Will, in the perseverance of the saints. The perseverance of the saints is because the sovereign God preserves them. Is man stronger than God?

John 10:28

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.

• Justin Eimers
  

  They’ve done no such thing Bret. Calvin wasn’t interested in creating a soteriological mechanism. He was interested in explaining how God preserves the church and those that dwell within her. Augustine (not a church reformer) was more interested in a mechanism approach but even he fell well short of TULIP. The points are interdependent philosophically, not textually.
  

I never stated text contradicted I stated that the text flatly says some things and doesn’t say others. TULIP is a machination born of philosophical rationalism, it is not a biblically situated doctrine. Proof texting isn’t going to prove that to me. I see you’re a research fellow, so do the research.

Really? So the God and master of the universe must create a text that allows for himself and the truths he wishes to communicate to be boiled down to propositional truths and systematic mechanisms? Interesting…I mean garbage but interesting nonetheless. Systematics can be helpful when they work within the confines of biblical theology. The issue is that many times they become philosophical rationales that exist outside of scripture, not within them. Inerrancy is a good example of this as is iconographic veneration of saints. The moment we move beyond the text to create a systematic (which necessitates rationality above all else) we move outside of historic Christian orthodoxy (real orthodoxy, not the made up orthodoxy of recent fundamentalist baptist types).

• Bret L. McAtee
  

  LOL … you’re bananas if you really believe all that. I don’t debate people who are bananas.

  What I am now adding below was not in the public thread because I knew this young man (35 y/o tops) was seriously disturbed as I will now show. With disturbed people, you do not debate. You mock as I did with the banana comment above.

  #1 – Calvin’s Institutes alone suggests that he was indeed concerned about demonstrating a soteriological mechanism. Then when you pile on his sermons and commentaries (of which I’ve read large swaths of both) it doesn’t take much to realize that only a fool would say that Calvin was not concerned about demonstrating a soteriological mechanism. Next, on this score, when you realize that Calvin was breaking with Rome over issues of soteriology it is case of brain deadness to say as Justin says here that Calvin wasn’t interested in creating a soteriological mechanism. Now people may not like Calvin’s soteriological mechanism. They may say it needed to be teased out more. But to say that Calvin wasn’t interested in creating a soteriological mechanism is just mindless. Has Justin ever read Calvin’s Geneva Catechism?

  #2 – Justin says he doesn’t hold to contradictions in the text and then implicitly affirms again that the text does not teach the harmony of Scripture. If Scripture doesn’t uniformly teach TULIP then Scripture teaches either Molinism, Arminianism, Pelagianism or Neo-Orthodoxy. But as each of these are contradictory Justin’s denial that he isn’t embracing contradiction is just another contradiction. One wonders which of the doctrines of Grace Justin would insist isn’t biblically situated? Is he denying Total Depravity? Is he denying Unconditional Election? Is he denying Limited Atonement? Is he denying Irresistible Grace? Is he denying God’s preservation of the Saints? If any one of these are, per Justin, not Biblically situated while even one of the others are then Justin is reading the Scripture apart from the principle of the harmony of Scripture.

  #3 – Note Justin is denying the doctrine of inerrancy which means he is affirming the idea that Scripture has an error in it.

  #4 – Note that Justin is being sarcastic about the idea that truth is communicated in Scripture via the verbal propositional form. With this Justin is inching towards some form of post-modernism. Certainly, the Master of the Universe can indeed speak in stories, parables, and allegories but those stories, parables, and allegories each have a verbal propositional truth contained in them. To deny that is just to embrace mystical gobbledygook. Justin is preening as a sophisticated intellectual but he is just one more dumbass in our current dumbass parade.

  #5 – Note Justin complains again against rationality. Could Justin complain against rationality without being rational?

  #6 – Allow me to suggest that Justin wouldn’t know orthodoxy if it became a cancerous tumor blocking his breathing airways.

  #7 – Note that Justin is an irrational fundamentalist. He is inching towards some kind of neo-orthodoxy. Not believing in inerrancy Justin is his own god determining what is errant in the text and what isn’t errant. He is involved in some serious solipsism, talking only to himself and perhaps a handful of other people who somehow have tuned into his unique airwaves. And yet the wonderful thing about this is that this poor chap sees himself as giving us the very nard of sophisticated theology. LOL … what a maroon.

   

• Justin Eimers
  

  Ad hominem, and now you’ve proven to no longer be worth the time or effort. I used to believe as you do (from what I can gather from your webpage and affiliations). Copious amount of reading and study moved the needle for me.
  

   

  Bret L. McAtee
  

Irrationality, and now you’ve given proof upon proof that you’re not worth the time or effort.

I promise you sonny … you’ll have to read and study for 40 more years to catch up to me.

See you then.

The following was not said on the public thread.

I’m now in my 63^rd year. From the time of 18 forward I have spent most of my days and nights reading and studying. I’ve studied in airplane pits while I waited for the next cart of baggage to be put on the belt loader. I’ve read while traveling 65 mph down the highway on my way to work @ 4:30 in the morning. I’ve read while waiting for customers to purchase airline tickets when I worked the airline. I’ve read in lunch break rooms of factories across the midwest. For 45 years I have hit the books morning, noon, and night. I had to because I was so much slower than everyone else in the ministry and I had to work extra hard to catch up. I had to make the most of my time. And now, I am entering into the last 25% of my life and I’ll be hanged if I’m going to let some kid just starting to tell me that he has advanced beyond me because of his “Copious amount of reading and study moved the needle for him.” I’ve forgotten more in my life than Justine has yet learned. Call me proud. Call me arrogant. I don’t care. As Ali said … “It ain’t bragging if you’ve done it.”

• Justin Eimers
  

  Aww that’s cute Bret. Will he thinks he’s read more than me.

• Bret L. McAtee
  

  If you only knew. I’ve got 30-40 years on you and most of what I’ve been doing for that 30-40 years is reading.
  

  I do, however, look at threads like this once in a while, to get a good chuckle over the newbies.

• Justin Eimers
  

  Bret, again I am finding this whole “I’m your elder” schtick quite entertaining. I also find your presumptions of me rather amusing.

  Bret L. McAtee
  

What… you don’t think Elders exist?

I see you’re a Ph.D., doing your work at some very second rate schools. (Which is probably better than if you had done your work at so-called 1st rate schools.) You have told me you are an irrationalist. I’m not presuming anything old chap.

Justin Eimers

Bret CIU is no place to write home about so I would be careful.

Second there is a difference between a person who uses rationale as a tool and one who worships it. I am the former you are the latter. Rationale outside of historical theology, and textual expression are heresies.

Old chap…my aren’t you quite the character. My reference to you as an elder had to do with your age, not your office. Old people exist…you are old…therefore the “I’m your elder” schtick. As for the office, you aren’t the pastor of any community I recognize nor have placed myself under. Your no Elder to me. Just another old guy trying to stay relevant by looking through these pages.

Bret

What follows was not on the public thread because his contempt for the 5^th commandment brought me to an end of dealing with such hubris.

#1 – Justin uses ratiocination when it is convenient for him to do so and when it is not convenient he invokes “rationalism.” Again, not believing in inerrancy Justin is not even a Christian.

#2 – Any man who would treat any Elder in age with such contempt is not worthy to listen to. Any man who would treat a Pastor of 33 years with such contempt speaks for itself. With such swine, Jesus teaches us not to cast our pearls.

1,) The most obvious version of two Kingdom theology which is perfectly necessary in order to be orthodox is the view that speaks of the Kingdom of Satan vs. the Kingdom of God.

Colossians 1:13f

13 He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins

There are two dominions / Kingdoms. One either belongs to the dominion of darkness or one belongs to the Kingdom of Christ. Here we find Augustine’s great work “The City of God,” wherein he describes these two Kingdoms as the City of God and the City of man. Of course, these two co-exist together at the same time on planet earth and because of the antithesis between the two, there is a conflict between these two kingdoms.

Now, keep in mind here that the kingdom of God, in this understanding, is not limited to the Church in terms of its presence. The kingdom of God is present wherever men are living in subjection to Christ regardless of whether that is in Church, Business, Family life, Education, Law, etc.

If one insists that the kingdom of Christ is only limited to the Church realm that is a different two kingdom than Augustines.

2.) A subsequent version of two kingdoms that can live alongside the #1 is the two kingdom theology which bespeaks the idea of internal vs. external. The former is invisible/spiritual while the latter is visible/material. The former applies to God’s immediate authority over the consciences of believers — what is sometimes called the rule of Christ in the hearts of His people. The external kingdom appeals to the mediate authority of Christ as incarnated through delegated human authorities in family government, church government, and civil government.

This has been held by establishmentarians (theocrats or ‘state church’ advocates like Luther, Calvin, and most of the early Reformers), but isn’t necessarily tied to that. (It should be understood that establishmentarianism is an inescapable category that all men embrace.)

A potential problem here is when family, church, or civil governments are ruling as mediate stand-ins for the authority of Christ but are ruling inconsistent with the authority they are intended to be representing (Christ’s authority). A visible/material mediate authority that does not mediate Christ’s rule is an authority (Kingdom) that is no kingdom that needs to be recognized by God’s kingdom people who desire that their magistrates in family, church, and civil rule consistently with the revelation of God.

R2K begins to creep in here when it absolutizes these disobedient visible kingdoms and gives them a mediate authority that is sequestered and cordoned off from being informed by God’s word. R2K absolutizes these visible kingdoms and insists that they should not be ruled by God’s special revelation appealing instead that the mediate realms are ruled by the ever amorphous Natural Law.

3.) Here we find the distinction between the external mediated Kingdom of the civil realm (civil government) and the kingdom of the institutional Church. This two-kingdom theology finds that in the Church Christ is the one head and king and rules explicitly through His Word as ministered by duly ordained church officers, meanwhile in the civil Government rule not by Christ’s Word but by the sword.

Of course, a potential problem here is that civil Government has to have some standard by which the sword is brought to bear. R2K desires that standard to be the ever shape-shifting Natural Law, while Biblical Christians desire that standard be God’s Law Word as found or legitimately deduced from Scripture.

One advantage of this 2K model when properly used is that it keeps the snout of civil magistrates out of the affairs and rulings of the institutional Church. This 2K model insists that a civil realm magistrate as he enters into the church realm leaves behind his status and is just one more member of the kingdom wherein Christ is ruling in the Church. The magistrate comes into the Church realm under Christ’s officers in the Church. Civil magistrates have no authority in the church realm any more than any other member of the Church. Throughout history, would-be tyrants in Christian lands have hated the restriction this 2K model brings.

4.) Here we begin to creep into clear R2K territory, at least as R2K as bastardized this concept. The fourth version of 2K theology sometimes co-exists with any of the above views. It teaches that there is a kingdom of “common grace,” and a kingdom of “special grace.” In this concept, one kingdom exists where people of all different faiths live, move and have their being as they live various aspects of life that are common to all people. This is the kingdom of common grace. The other kingdom in this model would be that kingdom wherein Christians as Christians alone live and move and have their being. Obviously, this would include the Christian’s life in the Church and has particular reference to Word & Sacrament.

This one is especially where R2K begins to bollix things up. It typically so desires to live the hyphenated-life where there exists an imagined impermeable wall between the kingdom of common grace and the kingdom of special grace that no distinctly Christian category can any longer exist in the common realm. For R2K in this model Christian education, Christian law, Christian family, Christian culture, Christian kings, Christian art can’t be conceived of since education, law, family, culture, kings, art, etc. by definition are only common and therefore cannot be handled as being distinctly Christian.

Here it is not only rabid amillennialism that is playing into matters but the whole idea of common grace has been let loose from any Christian mooring and is allowed to play havoc with the idea that Christ has all explicit authority in heaven and on earth.

5.) There is a 2K version wherein the now, not yet hermeneutic is employed. This 2K version would speak of the now present inaugurated kingdom of grace and the not yet but certain future consummated kingdom of glory. This view is consistent with any number of the above views and is hardly contested except among die-hard premills who see the kingdom as all future and die-hard full Preterists who see the kingdom as all present.

I am indebted to this post for my expanding work here.

https://honest2blog.blogspot.com/2021/05/different-versions-of-two-kingdoms.html?fbclid=IwAR21Ja46ZaCJuPcHD5ImDIeHvUd8YShK2ILW-uEYJPpe_3_x1HkwlDvxxHM