In the world but not of
the world
Reeves and the Dominionist camp seek to celebrate and
sanctify every-day life. While the New Testament doesn't denigrate every-day
life and rejects ascetic elitism it does stress otherworldliness.
This otherworldliness and antithesis is once again not rooted
in legalistic frameworks, false cosmologies or works salvation. But clearly
there is an indifference to the security and respectability the world has to
offer. Money, status and cultural integration are not concerns of the New
Testament.
The New Testament doesn't present the Dominionist confidence
in the long road of patient cultural triumph. Instead it presents a
supernaturalism, a spiritual warfare that (at times) almost smacks of the same
celestial dualism found in Gnosticism. Once again I argue the affinity is the
means of infiltration and holds the potential danger that had to, and still
must be guarded against. Although Dualism, while the dominant cosmological motif
found in movies and occasionally in geopolitics is not often found in the
Church of today. The problem of the present hour is that of Monism.
Calvinism has never been able to reckon with the Spiritual
duality (not absolute dualism) found in Scripture wherein Satan and his legions
are real viable forces at work in the world and working against the Church and
often located within its ranks. The Cosmology of Scripture is itself presented
in a dualistic form. God is over all to be sure and yet running parallel to
this reality is a secondary order in which Christ, particularly as the Son of
Man battles, overcomes and destroys the gods of the nations and the demonic forces
of death and darkness.
The Scriptures present the New Testament believers with a
vision of insecurity and instability in the world, persecution, suffering,
warfare and a pilgrim life that finds solace only in the fellowship of the
Christian community and the spiritual meat and drink it affords.
It is no wonder that many if not most Dominionists come to
downplay the Lord's Supper and Baptism. They've have so sanctified everyday
life, the life and rites of the Church cannot stand out. The everyday common
labours and even the partaking of food are so sanctified that virtually all of life becomes sacramental. Some
openly teach this. And yet this must be decried as pantheism in a Christian
form and just as dangerous as the absolute dualism of some Gnostics.
The New Testament places no emphasis on the acquisition of
money, nor does it value it. It's not something to steward (as we're often
told) but a means and one that is to be happily dispensed with. The New
Testament view of money is closer to the Gnostic affinity with asceticism than with
the Judaized views of the Dominionists. The early Church almost universally
understood this. It was post-Constantine that the Church's attitudes to money,
possessions and power changed and thus the ethics of the New Testament were
inverted. Worldliness became spirituality. This is yet once again a form of world-affirming
Judaizing.
We might refer to it as a 'Kingdom Now' theology and yet even
this is misleading. There is a sense in which the Kingdom is indeed found in
the now, in the present. And yet it's through the Spirit that we participate in
the Kingdom. It's now but it's not here other than through it Spirit-led exilic
community. The Kingdom Now viewpoint finds expression in all forms of
millennialism that understand the reign of Christ to be focused on This Age as
opposed to finding its reality in The Age to Come, the New Heavens and New
Earth.
After Constantine, the older Gnosticism was no longer the
primary threat. In fact by that time Manichaeism had become perhaps the more
dominant form or expression of the same ideas. And while it was prevalent it
was clearly something 'other' than Christianity and thus in that sense no
longer presented the same type of threat. Instead it was the Hellenistic
Judaizing tendency which would come to dominate. Facilitated by the Constantinian
Shift it would essentially establish itself as orthodoxy. The
Judaizing-Gnostics won so to speak, at least by their own worldly terms and
standards.
Later in the Middle Ages there would be a true Gnostic
resurgence among groups like the Bogomils and Cathars. The remnant that trod the
narrow way of Biblical truth persevered through this dark era and yet all but
disappeared with the Reformation. It was swallowed up. Like the 'victory' of
Constantine, the Magisterial Reformation through its triumph seduced and
largely destroyed the Biblical witness which had survived the preceding
centuries.
The Magisterial Reformation which in many ways reformed and
corrected the abuses of Medieval Catholicism in other ways re-infused and
solidified the ethics of Christendom. Roman Catholicism which had developed a
series of tensions and a broad spectrum of doctrine and spirituality was now
narrowed and under Reformation theology grace transformed nature to such an
extent that any form of antithesis vis-à-vis the world was all but lost. The
utter sanctification of the common order produced a new ecclesiology, sociology
and civilisation that in the end was just as evil and in some ways worse than the Medieval synthesis of
Late Antiquity and Germanic cultures.
The attempts at correction found in Pietism and many of the
19th century Restorationist movements provided some improvement but
in an increasingly complicated intellectual and cultural milieu were unable to
sufficiently address the foundational problems. These movements while positive
on many levels ultimately failed to correct the core problems and we (in the
Protestant spectrum) find ourselves in the 21st century further
removed from the Biblical position than we were even a few centuries ago. Calls
to return to the Reformation are at best wishful panaceas that may temporarily
stop the cancerous decay but will by no means eradicate it.
Contrary to our modern Evangelical and increasingly Roman
Catholic Dominionist Consensus, the Scriptures do not celebrate material goods
or the works of this world. The Christian is not to value possessions, lands,
money and status. The Creation and all the works of man are to be burned.
Even marriage is a temporary arrangement for This Age, and is
eliminated at the Eschaton. Marital relations will not continue.
Once again this sounds a little bit like Gnosticism, at least
something closer to it than Dominion theology's Pantheistic-Judaizing tendency.
It must be said again and again. Gnosticism was dangerous because it often came
close to the New Testament and yet totally missed the mark.
Dominionism finds it scriptural home as it were in the Old
Testament with its typological heaven on earth. But like the Jews, the
Dominionist spectrum of Christianity misunderstands that the earthly Kingdom
was temporary, type and even shadow. It only hinted at the real and true. This
kind of imagery presented in the book of Hebrews would once again resonate with
certain Gnostic tendencies and was evidently exploited by Scripture twisters.
It is no wonder that next to Revelation the book of Hebrews is probably the
most misunderstood and neglected book of the New Testament. It utterly lays
waste to the assumptions of both Dominionism, Dispensationalism and the
Easy-Believist intellectual and solely forensic focus when it comes to saving
faith and the doctrine of salvation. Though the New Testament as a whole is at
odds with the Evangelical spectrum, the book of Hebrews in particular is its
bane.
Remember the New Testament is fighting a two front battle
against Hellenistic Judaizers and Hellenistic Paganism as forms of Gnosticism.
This is everywhere in the epistles. The error of the 'Hebrews' is still
debated. Was it a pure reversion to Judaism? Were these Jewish Christians returning
to Moses, or were these Gentile converts embracing a form of philosophical and
practical Judaism? If it's the latter as Geerhardus Vos contends, the nature of
error in the New Testament is greatly illuminated and all the more pertinent to
today.
Reeves lecture while in some ways provides a helpful
introduction it nevertheless contains within it assumptions and errors as
dangerous as the movement he critiques. While many points he makes are prima
facie factually accurate the whole tenor of the lecture is in the end somewhat
misleading. The average 'layman' stumbling onto this audio track or even
attending his seminary and sitting under his tutelage risks being misled.
finis