Or, Why the Contemporary Reformed Philosophical Mind Cannot Provide a Robust Public Philosophy
In what follows I will be making less of a critique of either Presuppositionalism or Two Kingdom views per se. At least not in terms of specific thinkers or books. It would be more fruitful (and less obnoxious) to contrast two basic ways of thinking. These two ways of thinking are about the relationship between the truth of Scripture and the truth of the public square. At the prolegomena level of theology, such a contrast is set in several molds—(1) nature and Scripture; (2) general revelation and special revelation; (3) natural theology and supernatural theology; (4) articles of reason and articles of faith—and many others that range from the true and helpful to the forced and absurd. Students of theology can recognize these pairs.
Now at this point I am going to have to leave behind for another day those not already introduced to this topic. I am also forced to ignore the finer points of Reformed apologetics and ethics. For some that are up to speed, the contrast I am about to draw may itself seem forced or at least painted with too broad of a brush. That would be understandable. But that is why I choose to color “outside the lines” here and ask that the reader considers only my basic shapes rather than becoming defensive that I am poking their team mascots or even their star players. Try not to think about the players at all. They will play little more than a tour guide role, so that the topic is not thought of as too abstract.
1K or 2K, or Both?
The question suggested here not so subtly reminds us to break out our law of noncontradiction. The kingdom of God reigns over all in the present world and the kingdom of Christ is eternal and will outlast this world. It is universal and it is elect. It was demanded of Adam and it was fulfilled in Christ alone. It is grace perfecting nature and it is nature all the same. It is hidden in Christ and it is salt and light. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world and the spiritual man appraises all things. OK, you get the idea. This whole subject is paradoxical at first glance.
Now the resolution of these paradoxes is already contained logically in the Reformed doctrine of the duplex regnum Christi. There is the essential reign of Christ, whereby the eternal Son, by virtue of his Lordship over all, has ownership of all things in creation. There is also the mediatorial reign of Christ, whereby the Head of the church was announced to take the spiritual Davidic throne in Acts 2. Whatever the relationship between those “reigns” now, with the inauguration of the kingdom, there is no debate that they will be united as one in the consummation when Christ returns.
There can also be no doubt that the terminology of “two kingdoms” is historic: not only among the Reformed but even going back to Augustine. However we may ask whether or not there has been an overlapping of dissimilar concepts. For the Civitas Dei was primarily showing a division between the two seeds from the beginning, so that the heavenly kingdom was purely on a pilgrimage down here, living in the world with all good works and the like.
Augustine was not primarily making a division between two “spheres” in which true Christians live. He was not opposed to Christians living in those two worlds, to speak in more recent parlance. It just was not how he was using the concept. Then there are the many anachronistic ways we can all cherry pick from Luther, Calvin, and the rest of the continental and English Reformed traditions. But the question is not whether the language has always been used, but rather over the exact content we may be pouring into the molds, perhaps even rooted in our own cultural embarrassment of a more recent past.
Where to draw the line (and what line)?
As if my opening disclaimer was not enough, I want to be clear that by “2K” I am not here concerned to offer critique of the specific writings of David VanDrunen of Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California, nor even really of the same lines of thought in his colleague Michael Horton’s books. In fact, if it helps, substitute the word Pietism for the more general trend that I am speaking of.
The ideas I have in mind here are suggested among devotees of these writings, but the ones in view are general enough to show up in many things said by contributors to the Gospel Coalition, whether Baptist or Presbyterian. This would even be true of the many things John MacArthur has said about what he understands to be “political (contra gospel)” engagement. There is probably no way to avoid offense in lumping all these together. But in fact, there is nothing to lump.
What they have in common here is as clear as day. They have all, for the past two decades, conflated (A) “Christian political involvement” with (B) “the church ‘doing’ politics” that, in one way or another, encroaches over the line between the two kingdoms. Their language may be different. And to be fair, their driving motivations have been different. And yet the common category mistake is a basic failure to distinguish between what Bavinck called the institutional church and the church as an organism. More than that, it has often done so hypocritically.
All parties would grant that Christians live in secular society and that participating in the various callings in question is perfectly legitimate. Christians may be judges, police officers, soldiers, journalists, professors of political science, senators, and yes they may even vote. Someone may reasonably object, “Ah, but there is a clear line where those activities become idols!” Indeed there is. Here too there is no disagreement. In MacArthur’s case especially we can say that his integrity has been consistent (however much we may disagree with his grasp of the historical facts surrounding the War for American Independence, or his exegesis of Romans 13)—for all that, it must be said that MacArthur has been a straight shooter through the years when it comes to motive. He may have the same wrong understanding of what politics is, and yet that is rooted in his faithful devotion to what the Christian ministry is.
I will not say much about those of the New Calvinism by way of contrast. The rise of progressivism in her ranks is well known to those who know, and, well, not so much to those who prefer to bury their head in the sands about it. Instead, our more fruitful focus will be to draw some mental circles and lines. A good launching off point may be from a recent book not on political engagement, but apologetics. Chapters 5 and 7 of J. V. Fesko’s excellent book Reforming Apologetics are all about worldview and dualisms. Please hear me when I say this was an excellent book! I offer not so much a criticism as a series of questions: questions to contemplate with our lines and circles.
Worldview and Objective Natures
Immanuel Kant invented “worldview” in the same way that Aristotle invented logic. He didn’t. Now I realize that the German idealist conception of Weltanschauung took as its starting point the very subjective circle that finite minds were left with, once Kant had plunged the dagger into the objective nature of things. Point granted. Equally valid is Fesko’s critical walk through Historic Worldview Theory (HWT), orbiting around some central dogma. All must answer to this central Idea. For Hegel it was the Absolute. However, we might ask what the real culprit is here. Compare for example the modern theologies of central dogma with the traditional loci method with certain principia such as God and Scripture. Notice anything in common? In both conceptions, some things are more foundational than other things.
Someone may say, “Yes, but traditionally that foundational status to an idea or doctrine was essentially metaphysical in character. Whereas after Kant, it was more epistemological.” Precisely. But take one step further in that very direction. After all, not all “epistemologies” are equal, or even really worthy of the name. Some so-called epistemologies are speaking about nothing but subjectivity. Indeed virtually all were doing so after Kant. It was not “universality” of a view of truth, not comprehensiveness of truth, nor the answerability of its truths to one, or a few, of the biggest objective realities, that was the problem post-Kant. It was rather the whole subjective turn. It was to trap worldview in the bubble of each mind: or at least to pin it down to each shared cultural construct, which of course is only a more socially-conscious way to be a narcissist to one’s neighbor.
Now if none of this is registering yet, think back to the more recent past, to the way that Francis Schaeffer or Carl F. H. Henry or R. C. Sproul talked. Or the way that your basic survey of apologetics book read. How did they use the word “worldview”? From an objective point of view (oh, how I hate to join the rabble and use the word “objective” in this way!), the worldview concept was used to denote the sum of all that is true. When words like “Christian truth” or “the biblical worldview” were used by the past generation, it was taken for granted by conservative Evangelicals that all of reality was being annexed, on earth as it is in heaven, so to speak. No one would have taken these conservative authors to mean, purely and simply, “Reality as constructed around this central dogma in my mind.” No, we would have all taken them to mean the way that a Christian thinks consistently about each part of life and the world. He ought to think “x, y, and z way” about the world because that world outside of him objectively is “x, y, and z,” whether he thinks it or not.
Now why was Fesko bringing any of this up? It is because Van Til appropriated the HWT way of thinking to make the Bible (God’s interpretation of all truths) that central dogma, around which flowed the whole circle of Christian truth. How is that any different than the classical concept of worldview? It is simply that this HWT concept had already taken for granted Kant’s barring the mind’s access to the objective way things are outside of all finite minds. The central dogma, or presupposition, functioned as the only possible antecedent to any line of reasoning.
Between the believer and unbeliever there are no constructive common notions. Van Til affirmed a “common ground” while attempting to deny the epistemological point of contact. And in spite of the protestations of Van Tillians to even put things in this way, it is a rather charitable description considering Van Til’s frequent inconsistencies and hyperbole about such matters.
OK, fair enough. But what does this have to do with the 1K / 2K debate? Well, Fesko makes a few sidenotes of application: “I believe that Christians have drawn unbiblical ideas from the well of Enlightenment confidence by uncritically adopting HWT. They press the Bible into saying things that it does not really say and have unintentionally marginalized the book of nature. Christians undoubtedly stand in antithesis to non-Christians, but not at every point of their existence.”1
Certainly Christians have done this. But what all does Fesko have in mind? I do not know all that he has in mind, but we do know that some family branches of the Van Tillian tree exhibit this very tendency. In fact it is widely recognized that the Neo-Calvinism passed on from Bavinck and Kuyper (somewhat mediated through the Van Tillian channel) had sold much of the “worldview” product to Neo-Evangelicalism.
Note the addition of another critical Van Tillian element, which was appropriated from Kuyper before him: that of the antithesis. There is a fundamental ethical conflict between the kingdoms of light and darkness. And so there is. But where presuppositionalists allow no point of contact in an apologetic encounter with the world, the two kingdom advocate can often erase any point of conflict between the divine and human law, even where natural law is asserted. But I suspect I just moved too fast in this invasive surgery. Let me finally break out my circles by means of the next subject Fesko explored.
Dueling Dualisms
Positive definition first. In Van Tillian thought there is only one circle allowed for the biblical Christian and yet there are other circles. Only the Holy Spirit can move the unregenerate “circle,” or mind, from one basic set of presuppositions to the other. From each fundamental set of presuppositions, all human reasoning is circular. There is no getting out of each circle. But enough about apologetics. The ramifications for worldview is that the only true propositions and true way to do things is the Christian way or the “biblical” way. Beyond this is an antithesis between the Christian and non-Christian circles. Hence everything from Christian society to “growing kids God’s way” and so on.
Natural law, like natural theology, is a “Romanist” or “Arminian” concession to “autonomous reasoning.” It was to allow a kind of dualism into the Christian mind: faith and reason competing at the foundations. Can you see the circles? The statement “No truth of Scripture is a truth of nature,” could be graphically demonstrated in an Euler diagram, for our classical logical students. Two circles next to each other: one labeled S for scriptural truth and the other labeled N for natural truth. There must be a clear empty space between the circles. They must have no hint of intersection. They must practice good social distancing.
Now the irony to this, as Dr. Sproul exposed so well, is that it is precisely the Van Tillian who is recapitulating the double truth theory of Averroes. A fact can be a true fact in nature but not in Scripture, or vice versa. They may not like their view being represented in that way. But this is the inevitable result of marginalizing either nature or Scripture as two fundamentally different orders of processing reality.
Now to be more precise, Sproul compared this to a kind of soft Neo-Orthodoxy in his opening statement to the debate with Greg Bahnsen, a point likely lost on the majority who have listened to that rough audio file ever since. So the Presuppositionalist charges everyone else with dualism and counters with a dualism of his own.
Truth be told, there just are many kinds of dualisms (not all wrong either). The three that typically factor into these discussions are those between grace and nature, general and special, law and gospel. Musings of this sort cannot go into those deeply. Suffice it to say that if our rediscovery of natural law in the Reformed tradition allows no kind of antithesis whatsoever, then we may swing the pendulum of the Van Tillian conflation of ethics and epistemology to our own conflation of common notions with common causes: equally revealed principle with equally valid conclusions. For instance, evil accumulations of power (such as pagans freely talked about, by the way, as an discernible object of political philosophy) must be a basic element of political reflection, or else all our talk of “natural law” is nothing but a hobby horse or else a more sinister pact with a secular political class that lives up to the Van Tillian anxieties.
Natural law as objective moral truth
If natural law participates in the same eternal law as the divine law, to even some extent, then to that same extent, there is a shared substance of moral truths revealed in the conscience of all men and through the mouth of Moses. Paul says so in Romans 2:14-15. The Reformed traditionally held to the General Equity Principle for this reason. So even granting that the civil law of the theocracy has been abrogated as to its letter, there is a “spirit of the laws” that still guide moral reasoning today. My purpose here is not even as controversial as to raise that question. I will set a much lower bar.
Are there more or less just laws? Are there objective laws of economics? Are some wars worth fighting? Did God institute all civil authorities, or didn’t he? Did Paul mean the office itself or just the man in power in each case? Are there such things as “rights” or are they just “responsibilities” or “duties”? And if they are better conceived as duties, what is this “they” in the first part of the sentence that remains in place in the second?
With these and a few other related questions, it may begin to occur to the more inquisitive, or trouble-making (depending on your view) type, that not only may these things actually be “things,” or moral objects with natures, but that they may actually be ontologically related to each other in a fabric of logical grounds and consequents that are not relative. Others may have become more nervous at that last sentence, as this “natural law” may not be so a-Christian after all. I do not mean that as a Van Tillian would. Natural law is revealed in common to all men. But it is not for that reason subject to a common relativism any more than any other truth.
To assert two kingdoms and natural law together (if that natural law comes to mean moral relativity in political matters) has the force of upholding the same two circles implied by Van Tillianism. That it is done for the sake of totally different ends matters little. That the author asserting both has no such intention does not prevent the immutable law of unintended consequences. The Christian is barred access from speaking authoritatively to political objects. To speak of any unity of political and economic verities is to be guilty of collapsing those circles into one again: the same as to be a 1Ker.
But we cannot even allow ourselves to press on, as we are forced to choose between a Van Tillian 1K circle staring in suspicion out at the “competing” circle of nature and reason, or else the 2K explicit two circles, reclaiming a “natural law” that is about as objective as the latest dozen genders that have been added to the list of violent nonsense.
Many are happy to romance a natural law and a Thomism that requires no coherent “ism” claiming too much about the nature of government, jurisprudence, and economics. Nothing that would suggest for a moment that a particular political philosophy may be more true than another, that one may be more intrinsically given to idolatry than another, one more directly a violation of commandments of the Decalogue, five through ten, or that one may be more obviously the bloody enemy of all that is good in heaven or earth. All of that is “obviously” to prefer one political party to another, and thus we are back to “triumphalism” and “moral majorities” and so on. May I suggest that we not be so emotional in our thinking that we cannot do better than this?
If there is one thing I can agree with a good old fashioned liberal on, it is this. To be a better patriot one must be able to criticize his own country. To put it in religious terminology, one has a choice between prophet or pawn. The dominant kind of 2K thinking has operated out of the fear that the more certain and comprehensive one’s public philosophy is, the more one has been co-opted by a secular power class. Such moral and intellectual confusion is going to be very difficult to undo.
From the one side of the recent Reformed we have an epistemological dualism, and from the other an ethical dualism. The first will not be able to tell us what is wrong with Marxism. The second will not be able to reclaim a natural law with any weight to bear on real human law. No, I am not saying that the Presuppositionalist is a closet relativist and the Two Kingdom advocate a closet Socialist. What I am saying is that neither of these two models are going to be sufficient if the goal is to speak in an objective way about right political involvement.
Reformed Classicalism is the better way.
1. J. V. Fesko, Reforming Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 99.
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