When it Comes to the Question of Vocation, Rome is Closer to
the Truth than the Dominionist ideology of the Gospel Coalition
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When we speak of Vocation, when we speak of the Kingdom and
Culture, when we speak of the sacred-secular divide, what we're really talking
about is a larger category of thought sometimes referred to as the question of
Nature-Grace dualism.
What is Christ's Kingdom? How is the Kingdom's relationship
to be understood with regard to post-Edenic nature and to the world? Is there a
fissure separating the two? A chasm? Or no division at all? Is the Kingdom
tasked with redeeming a damaged world and repairing nature (and thus culture)
or is nature to be understood as fallen, accursed and doomed? In which case,
how then is Christ reckoned as King... if He's King over a domain of death and
destruction? Or is the Kingdom and thus Kingdom thought and life something
'other' than nature as it now stands? Is there a duality present, a tension in
how nature and grace, how the Kingdom and the world relate to one another? And
what is the nature of this tension? Is it something surmountable by reflective
cognition, conscience and sound logic, or is it in reality an impossibly vast
gulf bridged only by the Holy Spirit?
Before one answers these questions he must wrestle with a
primary issue. Just to what extent is the world fallen? How we answer this
question will inform us as to what extent must Christians live in and rely upon
the realm of grace, and what hope, expectations and knowledge are potentially
found in this world. This is both with regard to apperceptions of truth
pertaining to nature after the fall (post lapsum) and a larger (and for some)
more poignant question as to what extent can nature (and culture) be healed,
redeemed and restored to something approaching the Edenic ideal?
And of course while we can wrestle with these issues on a
philosophical-theological level, we (as Christians) must constantly return to
the question of what does the Bible and specifically the New Testament actually
teach? The entirety of the Dominionist project strains to find even a modicum
of New Testament evidence to support its presuppositions let alone its larger
agenda. In truth the movement and all its impulses are born of philosophical
inquiry and various assumptions which drive not only its primary questions but
its conclusions. And for good form and
to create a larger coherence, if these questions and answers are not found in
the New Testament, the necessary hermeneutics will be constructed and woven
into the larger Biblical narrative. In almost every case this hermeneutic
relies upon a premise which prioritises the Old Testament, often at the expense
of the New. Its advocates have laboured long and hard and they've enjoyed
considerable success. I would argue this is largely (but by no means entirely)
due to a general lack of familiarity with the Scriptures on the part of the
Evangelical public. Almost without exception the Christian who sits down and
reads the New Testament in earnest and with an objective intent (which is
admittedly difficult), he will nevertheless come away with a set of ideals and
questions alien to the Dominionist project. It has only been through an aggressive
programme of indoctrination and propaganda that the larger Evangelical world
has succumbed to this.
Though misguided in many ways the historical forms of
Protestant Fundamentalism and Separatism born of a return to the Scriptures
have been subverted and all but destroyed by the Dominionist project. Post WWII
Neo-Evangelicalism (today's Evangelicalism) sought to undermine and eliminate
the old Evangelical and Fundamentalist mindset which dominated a great deal of
conservative Protestantism. They have won and today their views are the new orthodoxy and increasingly large
numbers of people believe in the assumptions of Dominionism wholly unaware that
an opposition ever existed at all and reckoning any challenge as immediately
heterodox.
While certainly advocating the idea of a Fall, modern
Evangelicalism (following to some degree in the footsteps of the Reformation
and yet clearly exceeding it) has lessened the extent and effects of the Fall.
They will of course deny this and argue that the Reformation if anything helped
to recover the doctrine of the Fall from Thomistic Rome's misguided concept of
the Fall being little more than a loss of added grace.
Additionally they will criticise Two Kingdom advocates of
being essentially gnostic and that it (as a school of thought or even a theological
spectrum) is guilty of reckoning matter as something intrinsically flawed or
evil.
While the Reformation (and in particular the Augustinian
thought that dominated its early stages) recaptured the doctrine of the Fall,
the movement (speaking generally) at the same time retained the Sacralist
assumptions of Rome as well as its broader Constantinian and culture-embracing
concepts. This is but one of the many internal contradictions at work in the
Reformation. Over time the scholastic impulse (as well as practical outworkings
and applications of the Constantinian principle) would eventually undermine the
doctrine of the Fall and this is manifest in the various dissident movements
and theologies which arose in the 17th century and after. And yet
Confessional 'Protestant Orthodoxy' was hardly immune. While Protestant
lapsarian formulations and narratives differ from Rome, the end result is
Dominionist theology which necessarily must downplay the effects of the Fall.
If culture is to work hand-in-glove with the Church to build the Kingdom of
God, then the chasm between Church and world (as presented in the New
Testament) must be filled and the sharp edges must be softened. The breach
between the redeemed and the lost which is primarily due to the Fall must be bridged,
mitigated and mollified. I would argue that for Sacralist and 'worldview'
assumptions to function at all in the world, the chasm brought about by the
Fall must be largely eradicated.
For the Sacralist, the world and its redemption, or in other
words the redemption of culture becomes the preeminent project of the Church.
For the advocates of this view, the transformation of culture (however that is
defined) becomes the primary task of the Church. Evangelism proper is not
discounted but practically speaking becomes almost a secondary concern. Or
rather it's but a stepping stone toward the larger project.
True Two Kingdoms doctrine, here being contrasted with the
Lutheran conception of Two Kingdoms which is really One Kingdom with two
aspects, does not see matter or the world as intrinsically evil but the
creational declarations of goodness are understood to be seriously modified by
the Fall. Not only are fallen man's perceptions of reality affected, reality
itself has suffered serious modification, even an intrinsic change in which the
'good' proclaimed at the time of creation no longer means the same thing.
In Romans 1 Paul suggests that man's epistemology is intact
enough to discern the Divine and yet damaged enough to always result in
idolatrous error and thus condemnation. Further in 1 Corinthians we learn that
apart from Spirit activated revelation we are incapable of apprehending the
Truth which is spiritual in nature, let alone reaching a point of comprehending
it. This world, once proclaimed 'good' has lost its seeming eternality and has
been banished to the realm of temporality, something Paul suggests makes it to
be something less than fully real... a point even many non-Christian
philosophers would appreciate. This point flies in the face of certain
understandings and covenantal narratives regarding Eden as a provisional
arrangement but if 'goodness' is tied to that which is real and eternal, the
advocates of Eden as a proto-heaven have a difficulty. It would seem (or at
least must be considered) that its goodness was merely potential and must be
something less than fully good, something less than what is eternal and
unchangeable. And so then of course what would its corruption and fall signify?
Once again, the Sacralist-Dominionist spectrum has completely
misunderstood the Reign-Realm dynamic presented in the New Testament. Christ is
indeed Lord and thus He Reigns. The physical and spiritual domains are subject
to Him. I would add the emphasis on this point needs to be connected not just
to Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity, but to Christ as the Son of
Adam, the Incarnate and resurrected Christ. The resurrection which is through
our union with Him, our very salvation, not only defeats death... it condemns
this world and the fell prince that governs it. The Incarnation is not an
affirmation of this cursed and doomed world but instead represents God's love
in redeeming His people, translating them into a New Heavens and Earth in which
we temporal but transformed beings will judge and effectively reign over the
angelic entities and 'gods' (as it's put in Psalm 82). We are elevated into
glory while they are doomed to the fate of man, and to die like him.
Evangelical Dominionists have this backwards and argue the
Incarnation was an affirmation of this
world and its goodness.
Rather it is a supreme manifestation of God's love and grace
and it posits hope in a restored eternality, not in this age but in that which
is to come. It is a lifeline of escape (as it were) from this doomed age.
Again, this is not a gnostic rejection of matter or the visible but a
condemnation of this age which was captured and corrupted by the Dragon and his
hosts.