R2K Chronicles #3 – Soteriology

“To adopt any theory which would stop the mouth of the Church and prevent her bearing her testimony to the kings and rulers, magistrates and people, in behalf of the truth and law of God, is like one who administers chloroform to a man to prevent his doing mischief. We pray God that this poison may be dashed away, before it has reduced the church to a state of inanition, and delivered her bound hand and foot into the power of the world.”

Charles H. Hodge

19th Century Reformed Theology

When it comes to soteriology R2K has its ordo salutis down just fine. It properly speaks of the necessity to proclaim God as Holy, man as sinful, and Christ as the only solution for man’s problem of a wrathful God. When it speaks of salvation of an individual man or woman it is orthodox.

However R2K so limits its soteriology that its doctrine of salvation ends up being severely truncated. R2K results in any number of saved individuals but as Hodge notes above the salvation that R2K offers ends up binding the saved people of God hand and foot into the power of the world. That doesn’t sound like much of a salvation. At the very least it is the kind of salvation that provides fire insurance against hell but it is not the kind of salvation that brings the aroma of Christ to every area of life. In brief, R2K offers a salvation that Christ would not recognize.

To separate the salvation that is in the atonement from the dominion mandate is to give man a man centered meaning to his life, and also to the atonement, and this is precisely what R2K does. Because R2K constrains the impact of the atonement to the private individual personal sphere, R2K strips the Atonement of its vertical impact and so horizontalizes the atonement so that it merely becomes a means of fire insurance — an escape from Hell.

Not so for the Biblical Christian. The Biblical Christian understands the Atonement and the salvation it secures has put the Christian back in the position of being God’s Dominion man. Having his sins removed man can now handle all that he handles so as to establish God’s dominion in what he handles.

R2K tells those who have been atoned for that their atonement has given them peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ but at the price of their making peace with the authorities of this wicked age who hate God and His Christ. R2K trumpets an atonement and so a salvation that is flaccid, weak, and emasculated. It is an atonement / salvation for the pacifist, the coward, and the disobedient. It is an atonement / salvation that allows and even demands the atoned and saved to surrender before those who would have dominion over Christ’s totalistic Kingdom.

This is the atonement that is being sold to you by David Van Drunnen, R. Scott Clark, Matthew Tuininga, Mike Horton, J. V. Fesko, T. David Gordon, Carl Truman and all the R2K imp professors at countless Seminaries sprinkled across America.

To see the limits of R2K’s salvation we have only but to quote one of its leading champions — Dr. Mike Horton.

“This ‘good news’ is not moral improvement or a Christian society or any political system—whether democratic or totalitarian, capitalist or socialist. It’s the announcement that in his incarnation, obedient life, sacrificial death, and resurrection Jesus Christ has accomplished redemption from sin, death, and hell and reconciled sinners with God.”

Mike Horton
Westminster-Cal “Theologian
TGC Article — “The Cult Of Christian Trumpism” One chief problem of R2K is it seeks to reduce Christianity to “the Gospel,” (Horton’s ‘good news’ above) as if Christianity has nothing else to say to Christians except as it pertains to learning that Christ will receive and save sinners. Mikey engages in serious reductionism as to what the Scriptures fully mean by “salvation.” Salvation is NOT limited to justification and no more than that. Doubtless “the Gospel” is the centerpiece of Christianity but to suggest, as R2K consistently does, that Christianity = the Gospel and individual salvation is a gross reductio ad absurdum. So, while the good news, narrowly defined is certainly not a Christian society or any political system as Mikey says, that doesn’t mean that the good news of Christianity does not multiply so that it has far-reaching implications that touch the issue of Christian social order, or Christian political systems bringing salvation to those cultural institutions. It does not mean that the salvation found in the Gospel pronouncement is limited to individuals. While the Gospel in its saving power is never less than the salvation of individuals from sin, the Gospel in its saving power is always more than the salvation of individuals from sin.For R2K the individual “soul” is saved but the salvation has no visible effect on society or culture. Instead R2K soteriology results in the saved “believer” retreating to a position outside society (like a monk) waiting for the destruction of the social order. R2K yields a Gnostic salvation of the soul. Thus we see that the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of R2K is hyper individual to the point of being atomistic. We might say that for all practical purposes it is Baptistic. Individuals get saved but the whole idea of covenantal categories that include children in salvation is negated by R2K’s insistence that the families can not be Christian since family life lies in the common realm and not in the grace realm. Listen to former President of Westminster-Cal. Dr. Robert Godfrey, take Dr. David Van Drunen (DVD) to the woodshed on DVD’s insistence that families could not be Christian,

“Is the family a common institution in every way? It seems to me that the Bible say’s “no, it is not a common institution in every way.” If it were a common institution in every way how could the Apostle Paul talk about the children of belivers as ‘holy?’” Children, it seems to me, must be seen on a Two Kingdoms approach, as Dr. VanDrunen expresses it as a cultural product of a common grace institution, and cultural products of common grace institution are never taken over into the new heavens and the new earth.”

R2K’s denial then that families can be Christian and so spoken of as “saved” is a denial of covenantal categories. Next, in terms of soteriology, while Reformed theology has typically taught that God’s salvation is cosmic so that as salvation comes to peoples and nations so it comes to their Institutions, cultures, and civilizations. R2K denies all of this insisting that salvation is only personal, individual, and private.

Dr. R. Scott Clark, another R2K pop theologian also has a problem with the idea that salvation can be spoken on in anything but an individual sense.

“We might speak of a fourth view: grace transforming nature cosmically beyond redemption. The great question is this: what is the biblical warrant for speaking and thinking this way? Practically, what does it mean to speak of transforming softball or orchestral music or any other cultural endeavor? Why cannot softball simply be what it is, recreation? What is distinctively Christian about “Christian art” or “Christian history” or Christian math”? I understand that the rhetoric is sacrosanct (a shibboleth, as it were) but what does it signify? What are the particulars?”

Here R2K Clark is struggling with the idea that grace has a salvific effect on anything but individuals leading to those other things being transformed. R2K Clark objects to the idea of grace transforming nature (and so culture) preferring instead to say that grace renews nature in salvation. Clark desires to keep the renewing power of grace constrained to humans as it pertains to their salvation. However, this seems to be a constrained view of reality. After all, it is grace renewed and saved people who are the ones who create culture (an embodiment of nature). If grace renews nature in salvation then grace is going to renew everything that those salvifically renewed people are going to create in culture. One simply can’t have grace renewing nature in salvation without that renewal getting into everything the renewed and salvation visited person touches.  The products of culture, after all, don’t come into being apart from the renewed or unrenewed people who create them.

Instead of seeing salvation as only personal, individual, and private as R2K Horton sees it listen to the way that salvation and its effects was spoken of in other generations by other men of God;

“A Christian has no right to separate his life into two realms… to say the Bible is good for Sunday, but this is a week-day question, or the Scriptures are right in matters of religion, but this is a matter of business or politics. God reigns over all, everywhere. His will is the supreme law. His inspired Word, loyally read will inform us of His will in every relation and act of life, secular as well as religious; and the man is a traitor who refuses to walk therein with scrupulous care. The Kingdom of God includes all sides of human life, and it is a Kingdom of absolute righteousness. You are wither a loyal subject, or a traitor. When the King comes, how will He find you doing?”

A.A. Hodge
19th Century Reformed Theologian

“We not only claim our rightful place among the commonwealths of education but we have a definitely imperialistic program. No mere Monroe doctrine will suffice. We are out to destroy—albeit with spiritual weapons only and always—all our competitors. We do not recognize them equals but regard them as usurpers. Carthage must be destroyed.”          Cornelius Van Til

The problem with R2K’s soteriology is that it is a constrained and limited salvation that is not to extend beyond the boundaries of the individual. Another way to say this is that R2K’s soteriology is without effect except as that effect impacts personal and individual categories. One has to question if such a salvation is really salvation. The Reformed understanding of salvation has always been that individuals being saved bear the effects of that salvation in everything they put their hands to. The saved become the aroma of Christ in all to which God calls them. The saved, being a people characterized as those people who take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ (II Cor. 10:5) bring the impact of their salvation on family life, education, law, politics, arts, politics and everything else. Can salvation really be salvation when it is constrained, as R2K constrains it, so that its effects are disallowed?

What R2K does to arrive at this consequence free salvation is that they cut off the office of Jesus Christ as King from the office of Jesus Christ as our great High Priest. All orthodox Christians concur with the idea that Christ as our great High Priest saves us from our personal and individual sins. Praise God for so great a salvation. However, our salvation is also related to Jesus in His office as our great liege Lord. As our High Priest Christ has saved us from our sins, and as our Great High King Christ has saved us to be warriors in Christ’s Kingdom seeking to bring the effects of our salvation to everything wherein God has assigned us in our lives so that our families, careers, and every other matter we pursue finds the grace of salvation transforming nature. R2K shrinks the domain of the office of Christ as King relating to our salvation so that Christ’s Kingship governs only our personal individual lives. R2K’s Christianity makes their converts nice people (except to those who don’t like R2K) whose Christian convictions wouldn’t threaten the queers reading at the Drag Queen Story Hour.

Read the quotes above again. Can you imagine any R2K fanboy ever saying anything like what is said in those quotes? Can you imagine Mike Horton, David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, or D. G. Hart saying with Van Til on the matter of education, “Carthage must be destroyed?” Of course you can’t imagine that and that is because R2K has a markedly different soteriology when considered in toto than Reformed theology has embraced for generations.

The salvation of the Reformed faith has always been a world conquering, and kingdom of God establishing salvation. The salvation of the Reformed faith has shut the mouths of impious magistrates, while at the same time gently nurturing God’s covenant children placed within our families. The salvation of the Reformed faith shaped the glorious thing we once called Christendom. The salvation of the Reformed faith is heroic.

That is not true of the salvation R2K offers.

 

 

 

Salvation & Meaning

In the pages of Scripture we see a connection between God’s creative and redemptive work and the establishing of meaning. The drama of God’s divine work in the Old Testament moves through the creation of the world, the redemption out of Egypt, and the conquest of Canaan. Each of these three acts wrests meaning from meaninglessness: first, the world emerges from nothing, secondly, Israel from the grave of Egypt, and thirdly the promised land blooms as from the desert.

In the New Testament this same drama of meaninglessness to meaningfulness  moves through the resurrection of Jesus Christ recorded in the Gospels, and the need of the Gospel for the nations in Acts. Each of these acts likewise wrest meaning from meaninglessness: the seeming meaninglessness of the Cross is given meaning by the resurrection, and the nations find meaning only as they submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

All these acts thus interpret one another as works of divine power where the coming of salvation means the dissolution of meaninglessness in favor true meaning. We see here that the progress of redemption is closely tied up with the progress of meaning. In these historical stages the realm of meaning grows.

What is true in the progress of redemption is true for the individual who is caught up in God’s redemption as provided in Christ and applied by the Holy Spirit. The individual outside of Christ is without form and void – he finds no basis for meaning – but when the Spirit of God hovers over the individual in order to recreate by way of regeneration, the individual, by way of salvation, is for the first time given meaningful meaning. The individual is delivered from the kingdom of darkness, characterized as it is by the absence of meaning and significance and is translated to the kingdom of God’s dear Son (Col. 1:13) where for the first time true meaning and significance is found.

It is then, not only the soul that is saved in salvation, but also the mind, for in salvation the mind can find objective meaning and be delivered from the subjectivism and meaninglessness that is so characteristic of those who are without God and without hope.

It is not only the case that we as Christians have abundant life to offer those trapped in their miserly lives of ongoing death, we also have to offer to people who are living life without meaning and significance genuine meaning.

Series on Justification From Eternity — Part VI

Justification may well be considered as a branch of election; it is no other, as one expresses it, than setting apart the elect alone to be partakers of Christ’s righteousness; and a setting apart Christ’s righteousness for the elect only; it is mentioned along with election, as of the same date with it; “Wherein”, that is, in the grace of God, particularly the electing grace of God, spoken of before, “he hath made us accepted in the beloved”, #Eph 1:6. What is this acceptance in Christ, but justification in him? and this is expressed as a past act, in the same language as other eternal things be in the context, he “hath” blessed us, and he “hath” chosen us, and “having” predestinated us, so he hath made us accepted; and, indeed, as Christ was always the beloved of God, and well pleasing to him; so all given to him, and in him, were beloved of God, well pleasing to him, and accepted with him, or justified in him from eternity.

Dr. John Gill
18th century Baptist Minister

Justification, like Election is completely extra nos (outside of us) and as completely outside of us I can’t understand why Reformed people would get upset over when the “completely outsidedness” of Justification occurs.  If Justification is completely outside of us (and it is) and if we do not contribute in one scintilla (and we don’t) to our Justification then why could it possibly matter whether or not Justification is from eternity or whether Justification is after the subjective work within us of regeneration? Never mind that positing regeneration prior to Justification in the ordo salutis finds the Holy Spirit inhabiting a unholy thing (person) who has not yet (in this scheme) been declared righteous before God strikes one as distinctly problematic.

Gill appeals to the Ephesians 1 passage we touched on yesterday;

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

I don’t know how justification from eternity could be made any more clear than what the Holy Spirit inspired St. Paul does here? In vs. 3 the elect are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Is Justification not a spiritual blessing? How could we be holy and without blame before Him in love if we were not Justified from eternity? How could we be predestined to be adopted without first be predestined to be Justified? Clearly, all this occurs when we were made accepted in the Beloved and the text teaches explicitly that we were made accepted in the Beloved upon being chose in the Beloved from the foundation of the world.

I honestly don’t understand how this is controversial in the least.


Jon Harris & Rev. Larry Ball Discuss Race … McAtee Chimes In

Over here there is a podcast I recommend cautiously;

(17) Critical Race Theory and The Church with Pastor Larry Ball – YouTube

Rev. Ball and Jon Harris are inching closer and closer to getting the whole issue of what makes men of different families, tribes, nations, and races to differ. Much of what they say is laudatory and should be listened to. However, I still am convinced that they are selling short the very real genetic differences God has ordained for the people. You listen to it and tell me if I am wrong.

It seems to me that they keep wanting to delete the genetic aspect of our differences. It is certainly true that Kinism is not only about accepting genetic realities. We wholeheartedly  embrace the idea of grace as a reason that one race differs from another. (This is Rev. Ball’s argument as I understood it). However, one can’t deny that grace also includes giving one race the genetic inheritance (strengths and weaknesses) they have while another race doesn’t receive the same gift or the same limitations. This is no different than the parable of the talents where the Master gives out 5, 3, and 1 talent to three different servants (Mt. 25:14-30). God gives out the different genetic information to different races and that can be used for God’s glory or it can be used to the end of evil. (Compare the glorious Christendom of White nations vs. the two wicked World Wars between white nations.)

In terms of genetics impacting differences keep in mind that if a person of a particular race and ethnicity is graciously saved that salvation does not add IQ points to the person saved. No… IQ points is a genetic reality that won’t change much with conversion. Now, it certainly would be the case that the saved person is going to make better decisions about marriage partners and by those better decisions over the generations, upon the family as a whole becoming Christian, there is going to be an uptick of IQ points but that uptick will be present in each generation for each different family of a different race so that the delta between one saved people group is going to remain the same for a different ethnic group that is also visited with salvation. IQ is just an example. Other examples could be as easily adduced.

There is nothing wrong or racist about observing reality and so believing all this. With this explanation one is still affirming that the differences between races among the human race just as the difference among families in a ethnic group is all of grace. God decreed that the races would each be differently gifted with different limitations just as he decreed that different families existing within one race would each have differing strengths and limitations.

All that to say that the IQ of the average Oriental (saved or unsaved) is always going to be higher than the average IQ of the average Occidental (white). On the other hand the Occidental is superior in creativity than the Oriental on the whole. Yes … there are studies on all this. One you might want to check out is “The Bell Curve,” by Charles Murray.

So, while grace in conversion is certainly a differentiating factor when it comes to these matters, it simply is never going to be the case that redemptive grace is going to change the genetics that God’s creational grace gave to differing peoples, nations, families, and races to begin with. The Occidental will never, on average, have the IQ average that the Oriental has, though the Occidental will improve on this score if converted as a result of the impact of better marriage choices made over generations by members of Christian families.

It is the refusal to see that God determined genetics, as appointed to the differing races, nations, tribes, and families does impact our reality and that creational grace is not going to be changed by conversion, though conversion does give men from different races a common spiritual bond in Christ. However, that common spiritual bond still should not be translated as a reason why we can ignore the boundaries of race that God has appointed and so marry inter-racially, just as one does not reason that a 85 year old widow from Japan should marry a 18 year old male from the Ndebele people simply because they are both converts to Christianity. These things used to be so obvious before 1950 or so that following the maxim of St. Vincent of Lérins it was one of those  things that by the consent of those who at diverse times and in different places remained steadfast in the unanimity of the universal Christian faith. Now, because of the influence of Cultural Marxism on the Church St. Vincent of Lérins goes a beggaring.

I don’t know how I can explain it any more clearly. When it comes to racial differences among men it is the case that both genetics and personal belief about the nature of reality creates both individuals, people groups, and races and in turn individuals, people groups, and races create cultures, with the culture then retro-conditioning the beliefs of individuals and people groups. It is only salvific grace that can break the cycle of wrong beliefs that in turn will then change over the course of time both genetics and culture.

The R2K Chronicles #2 — Dualism as the Hyphenated Life

Webster’s dictionary defines dualism simply as;

 a doctrine that the universe is under the dominion of two opposing principles one of which is good and the other evil.

This definition can be found among hard Anabaptists who compartmentalized life into the separated Anabaptist community and the evil world. Dr. Herman Bavinck gives a quick low down on Anabaptist dualism.

“Anabaptism proceeded from the premise of an absolute antithesis between creation and re-creation, nature and grace, the world and the kingdom of God, and therefore viewed believers as persons who in being born again had become something totally different and therefore had to live in separation from the world. Its program was not reformation but separation: Anabaptism wanted a separated church. For centuries [they said] there had been no church but only Babel, and Babel had to be abandoned and shunned. In Munster it was said that there had been no true Christian in 1,400 years. The true church was a church of saints who, after making a personal profession of faith, were baptized, and who distinguished themselves from others by abstaining from oaths, war, government office, and a wide assortment of worldly practices in food and drink, clothing, and social contact”
 
Herman Bavinck
Reformed Dogmatics — vol. IV — pg. 292

Radical Two Kingdom Theology (R2K) is not straight up Anabaptist in its dualism. Instead R2K goes all linguistically clever and replaces the Anabaptist notion of a “evil” world with a “common” world. The results is that a nature/grace dualism is still embraced by R2K with the difference being, per their attestation, that the “world” is not “evil” but “common.” We will examine that attestation eventually.

That R2K makes this move to dualism is seen in the words of R2K devotee Dr. D. G. Hart;

“After examining myself and studying historical subjects I am not so convinced that religion is so basic to a person’s identity….
 
In other words, life as a Christian is complicated. The best word to describe that is one that the intellectual historian, David Hollinger, coined in his book “Post-ethnic America” — hyphenation. To recognize that people (even Christians) are a mix of different responsibilities and loyalties is to admit that ‘most individuals live in many circles simultaneously and that the actual living of any individual life entails a shifting division of labor between the several ‘we’s’ of which the individual is part.’”…

It strikes me that admitting this complicated outlook is basic to being human as opposed to living up to some sort of super-spiritual ideal of a life dedicated and consecrated to Christ 24/7.

 
Dr. D. G. Hart

Hyphenated Greetings

1.) In this quote Dr. Hart demonstrates, once again, how his religion bleeds into his identity. His religious conviction is that religion is not so basic to a person identity. Now, inasmuch as that statement is a religious conviction that statement of his religious conviction creates for him his “hyphenated life,” where there are official zones where religious impact must be considered and official zones were religion must not be considered. But, make no mistake, it is his religion of compartmentalized religion that is basic to Darryl’s identity. His whole reason for existence is characterized by his zeal for his religion.

2.) The implication of Hart’s last sentence above is that there are some areas where the Christian individual must consider Christ and other areas where the Christian individual can dispatch with considering Christ. For example, according to Darryl, why should a Christian have to consider Christ when he is cheering for the Detroit Tigers at a Tigers ballgame? I suppose this means that when Darryl attends a Tigers game he can scream invective at the Umpires for bad calls since that is part of the ballgame. After all … it is a hyphenated life and what does Christ have to do with rooting as a fan at Tigers games?

3.) It is true that Christians have many roles in life but to suggest that any of those roles can be taken up apart from consideration of Christ is just not Biblical.

Hart is not unusual in this advocacy for the “hyphenated life” (i.e. — Dualism). R2K “theologians” routinely speak of the realm of grace (church) and the realm of nature (common).

“Traditional marriage is part of the created order that God sustains through his common grace, not a uniquely Christian institution, and society as a whole suffers when it is not honored. Christians are responsible to commend the goodness and benefits of marriage in the public square…. To call attention to that evidence in the public square is a way of communicating that marriage is not a uniquely Christian thing, but a human thing, and that all people have an interest in getting marriage policy correct.”
 
~ David Van Drunen
Chief of the R2K Tribe

The careful reader here will easily spot the dualism in Van Drunen’s above words. Traditional marriage exists in the common realm and not in the realm of grace. This is Van Drunen’s version of Hart’s “hyphenated life.”

There are several problems here before we even get to passages like Ephesians 5

1.) How do we know what “Traditional” is in “Traditional Marriage.” It simply is the case that in order to get to Traditional Marriage you need Christian categories to begin with. One can’t get to Christian categories without the Scriptures. Therefore the common in R2K’s “common realm” is only common as common secures its definition from the realm of grace, and if that is true the common realm is not a distinct realm from the realm of grace.

2.) There is an appeal here by Van Drunen to a “Human thing.” And yet, apart from Scripture how do we know what it means to be Human? In point of fact I would contend that those who are outside of Christ are doing all they can to put off genuine humanness in favor of putting on beastliness. Man loses his manishness the further he goes in sin. So, all appeals to a “human thing” are question begging if we can only consistently determine what Human is using Christian categories.

3.) The fact that pagans embrace marriage has more to do with their being inconsistent with their own Christ hating presuppositions than it has to do with “being human.” Would Lamech have denied he was being “Human” when he took two wives? Does Justice Anthony Kennedy (he who penned the Majority opinion in the overturning of DOMA) believe that sodomites are less human for being coupled?

4.) The very fact that we are moving in the opposite direction regarding “getting marriage policy correct,” (i.e. — sodomite marriage) is evidence that all people do not have an interest in getting marriage policy correct. And what of this idea of getting marriage policy correct? Correct by whose or what standard?

5.) It is true that marriage is a creational institution but the mistake here on VD’s part is forgetting that grace restores nature. Creation itself has fallen and part of the effect of redemption is to restore creation to its original design. Redemption does so by leaving creational creational while at the same time restoring creational to what it would be minus sin.

Of course all this explains why recently well known Westminster California Seminary Professors have suggested that they could accept sodomite civil marriage. If marriage belongs to the Creational realm — a realm that is completely compartmentalized from the Redemptive realm –then why should the Church pronounce on it?

So, we have established that R2k with its common realm vs. grace realm are practitioners of dualism. R2K creates two airtight compartmentalized realms (grace vs. nature) and then tells Christians to “go live the hyphenated life,” communicating that there is an inherent dichotomy to living as a Christian.

Now to add to this we have the proof for R2K dualism from the mouth of their chief prophet;

“Since membership in the civil kingdom is not limited to believers, the imperatives of Scripture do not bind members of that kingdom. These imperatives are not “directly applicable to non-Christians” (40).”

David Van Drunen, “
A Biblical Case for Natural Law,” p.40.

“Scripture is not given as a common moral standard that provides ethical imperatives to all people regardless of their religious standing.”

David Van Drunen
“A Biblical Case for Natural Law”, (p. 53)

So, we see that in the common realm there is different set of imperatives (Thou Shalts) that exist for the unregenerate than the Thou Shalts that we find in God’s Law-Word and so are applicable for the regenerate living in the grace realm. This is straight up dualism. This is Hart’s “hyphenated-life.”

And if any doubt still exists about the dualism of R2K we offer;

Generally speaking, believers are not to seek an objectively unique Christian way of pursuing cultural activities.

David Van Drunen
God’s Two Kingdoms, pg. 168

The reason Christians are not to seek an objectively unique Christian way of pursuing cultural activities is because culture lies in the common realm and by definition culture cannot be Christian. Being uniquely Christian seeking the uniquely Christian way of pursuing culture can only be found when in the grace realm (Church).

Note what Van Drunen is saying is that the objectively unique R2K Christian way of pursuing cultural activities is to not seek an objectively unique non-R2K Christian way of pursuing cultural activities.

Then there is this dualism gem from the guru of Escondido;

“Our earthly bodies are the only part of the present world that Scripture says will be transformed and taken up into the world-to-come. Believers themselves are the point of continuity between this creation and the new creation.” 

David Van Drunen
Living in God’s Two Kingdoms — p. 66

This R2K declamation despite God’s testimony that in the New Jerusalem;

Revelation 21:26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.

The Dualism is seen in the fact that everything in R2K’s common realm belongs to such a realm of discontinuity that it cannot enter into the grace realm that will be found as fulfilled in the New Jerusalem. Two realms. Two realities. Dualism.

This brings us to the inevitable conclusion that R2K is inherently Gnostic. For R2K those realities that exist in the common realm are not as important as those realities that exist in the grace realm. We see that this is true if only we find it the case that nothing from the common realm is important enough to enter the eschaton — the fulfillment of the current grace realm. Nothing else from the common realm can be glorified and so enter the new Jerusalem.

This brings us back to the observation made earlier in the chapter that R2K is guilty of linguistic deception when it tags the things of this world as “common” as opposed to the more stringent label of evil as labeled by the Anabaptists. It seems the difference here is that for Anabaptists that which is evil can’t be common for the Anabaptist faithful, whereas that which is evil can be common for the R2K faithful. In both cases there is a whole realm wherein no redemption is possible and wherein there is no possibility wherein grace could restore nature. For R2K like the Anabaptists grace does not restore nature. So, what is the difference between the dualism of Anabaptists and the R2K? Anabaptists call the nature realm “evil” and insist that their acolytes can’t participate in it whereas R2K call the nature realm “common” and insist that their acolytes can participate in it as long as they don’t participate in it in a “uniquely Christian fashion.” Color me disappointed if that doesn’t strike anybody else as odd beyond all expression.

I’m not the only one who has made the observation about R2K being cloaked dualsim.

“I intend to show in the present book that (R)2K theology is a kind of neo-Scholasticism … Of course, someone like Van Drunen is aware of the accusation of scholasticism… (Joe) Boot has wondered whether Van Drunen imbibed scholasticism at Loyola University, a Private Roman Catholic university in Chicago… Van Drunen is aware of the accusation of scholasticism… he hardly enters into the factual question: Is (R)2K nothing but a variety of this nature-grace dualism and might this be a problem.”

Willem J. Ouweneel
The World is Christ’s: A Critique of (Radical) Two Kingdom’s Theology — pg. 6-7

There is another thing that should be said about the dualism of R2K and that is that they need another realm. R2K gives us the realm of nature (common) and grace (church). Those are it’s “two kingdoms.” However R2K’s dualistic two Kingdoms does not account for a third Kingdom that needs accounting for.

What about “this present wicked age?” Where is the Devil’s Kingdom located in all of this R2K “theology?” Certainly Christ’s Kingdom in the Church is not the Devil’s Kingdom. And certainly neither Dr. Van Drunen or his main disciple Dr. Hart would posit that the Devil’s Kingdom equals the common realm for that would be classic Anabaptist doctrine. So where exactly do our twin spin Doctors put the Devil’s Kingdom? Non R2K minds want to know.