The retired PCA cleric who authored this piece has once again
motivated me to write a response. Clearly he misunderstands the nature of Two
Kingdom Theology. I say this also pointing out that he never clarifies which
variety or strain of Two Kingdom Theology he wishes to oppose.
I would presume all of them and yet I also find that many of
his stripe will come to the defense of Lutheran Two Kingdom Theology when it
suits them and yet they will also condemn it and lump it in with Anabaptist
varieties when convenient. Truly it is no wonder there is so much confusion
when it comes to these discussions regarding the Kingdom. We might expect more
from those who purport to wield authority within the Church but all too often
they are motivated by partisan political concerns. I speak both in terms of
societal and denominational politics.
Ball demonstrates that he also fails to grasp the forces at
work within his own denomination the Presbyterian Church in America. I would
say that Two Kingdom theology's influence within the PCA is negligible and
almost non-existent. It's not part of its largely Evangelical history and has
gained very little traction within its circles.
Ball is attempting to understand why a member of the PCA has
become a political candidate affiliated with what is perceived to be a liberal
party. Rather than blame Two Kingdoms doctrine the culprit lies with the PCA's
embrace of a wide Evangelicalism. And what is at the heart of Evangelicalism?
Dominion Theology.
Some will scoff at this suggestion but they do so in
ignorance. Even though many Evangelicals do not openly espouse Dominion
theology this has always been at its heart. I refer here not to the Evangelical
tradition which goes back centuries but to modern American Evangelicalism which
arose in the wake of World War II. As a movement it sought to break with
Fundamentalism's separatism and instead pursue a programme and theology of
cultural engagement and preservation/transformation. Thought it was not called
Dominionism at the time, that's what it was and still is.
How then does one connect Evangelicalism and its often
Right-wing political leanings with a modern liberal politician? Does this not
represent a defection?
Not really. The forces behind Evangelicalism are
multi-faceted and after a couple of generations it's starting to go in
different directions. Ball has not grasped this and his assessment is badly
mistaken.
What we really have here is not as Ball would have it - a
Bible-based social and political theory in conflict with a sub-biblical worldly
defection from historical Protestantism.
Rather, what we have is a clash of Sacralisms, a battle
within the confines of Sacral-Dominion theology. The largely misnamed Lutheran
Two Kingdom theology also falls within this camp.
The Two Kingdom theology that Ball is attacking and
misrepresenting is outside the scope of this conflict and as one who holds to
such a view I can assure the reader that Biblical Two Kingdom Theology condemns
the One Kingdom views of Evangelicalism, the Theonomy of Ball and the Lutheran
view which is really One Kingdom described in two spheres.
Ball assumes the sacral position which of course if incorrect,
negates the whole of his argument. He believes Sacralism (the Holy
Society-Church/State project and way of defining the Kingdom) should have an
Old Testament gloss. Mosaic Law is appealed to because the New Testament knows
nothing of these issues. I would go further and argue it condemns Ball's
assumptions regarding the Kingdom, his paradigm and use of the Old Testament
but that's for another time.
Ball would argue the Bible is the basis for so-called Christian
civil law and he must therefore turn to the only example of civil law in the
Bible... the Old Testament. In good Judaizing fashion he would use the Old
Testament as the basis for society, even though this is wholeheartedly
condemned by the New Testament on many fronts.
The problem here is that Ball does not understand the New
Testament's teaching about the Kingdom of God and thus he subverts and
supplants the authority of the Apostles and replaces it with Moses.
Evangelicals hold to a view that to Ball seems widely
different, but from my perspective it is the same position just viewed from a
different historical and narrative angle. Like Ball and most Dominionists,
modern Evangelicals would more or less equate the Kingdom of God with Western
Civilisation or Christendom, a view Lutheran Two Kingdoms also embraces... an
impossible view absolutely rejected by the New Testament. There have always
been Christians that have understood this and they've often been persecuted by
the Sacralist camp.
Additionally I think Ball presents a somewhat confused and
convoluted Van Tillian attempt at criticising Natural Law even while he
confuses it with Natural Theology. Van Tillians are usually perceived as being quite
hostile to these concepts but this too is misleading. Kuyperian Worldview
teaching is certainly at odds with Thomism and the Common Sense Realism of Old
Princeton and yet from the Biblicist standpoint they're not that different.
They merely represent a rehash of the School of Athens and the somewhat
superficial and circular battles between Rationalism and Empiricism, Idealism
and Realism, and the primacy of inductive vs. deductive reasoning.
Worldview teaching also believes in a type of Natural
Theology but it masquerades as Biblical because it is arrived at through
deduction taking the Bible as the axiomatic starting point. But even this is
misleading as its deductive method is less than pure. In reality it is a
synthesis if not a form of outright syncretism. It rightly grants Biblical data
priority if not supremacy but then in order to expand beyond the Scriptures
into realms of aesthetics, politics, civics, jurisprudence and elsewhere it
necessarily must incorporate the ideas, concepts, data and categories of the
lost world. And this is just in terms of idealised discussion. In terms of
praxis, realisation and application, the waters grow even muddier... as so many
of this camp have discovered.
It relies not a Natural Theology generated from ostensibly
neutral objective reflections on experience and causality but it does (despite
its 'Biblical' claims) rely on experience and empirical categories in crafting
transcendent concepts, metaphysics and theology which are then effectively
blended with Biblical data to form a comprehensive and coherentist worldview.
It utilises the Bible but to call it Biblical is to necessarily redefine what
the Bible is and what it's meant to do and describe.
At this point one (especially a more rigorous Calvinist like
Ball) might criticise Evangelicalism's method of construction and argue they've
embraced a more Thomistic view. They have a lower view of sin, a greater
emphasis on free will, man's ability and intellect and certainly a more
positive and even progressive view of civilisation. This is true even within
denominations such as the PCA.
And yet even this discussion becomes entangled. Who is being
more 'true' to historic Protestantism? While certainly some Calvinists believe
that historic Calvinism and certainly Evangelicalism have succumbed to Arminian
and Semi-Pelagian tendencies, the truth is that in terms of sociology
Protestantism was until modern times 'forward looking', 'progressive', and
certainly optimistic in its view of culture. It is only within the past few generations
that Protestants have taken a new reactionary and growing romantic interest in
Roman Catholic scholarship, philosophy and social theory. Prior to the post-war
social crisis and the rise of the Moral Majority and movements like
Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) very few in the Protestant world were
interested in looking back. Indeed, even the Postmillennialism of Ball's fellow
Theonomists comes into play here. If I'm reading him right he would probably
condemn the older forms as inconsistent and pietistic expressions of
Postmillennialism and yet the impetus and ethos of that doctrine continues to
play out even in circles where it has formally been abandoned.
Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) is the virtual centre of Dispensational
scholarship in the United States and yet as an Evangelical school it has
embraced Dominion theology. It may retain the Darbyite Eschatological system
but its ethos is just as Postmillennial as Ball's. These days there's far more
talk of cultural war and transformation than there is of the so-called Seven
Year Tribulation.
I commend Ball on his assessment of the US Constitution. I
believe Theonomists have always been up front and honest on this point. They
condemn the Founders as Enlightenment thinkers who founded the nation on sub-
and even anti-Scriptural ideas. Theonomists reject the Constitution, the Bill
of Rights and Democracy. And yet strangely some of them still consider
themselves to be patriotic. I say this as one who believes allegiance to the
Kingdom entails a rejection of worldly allegiances and thus my criticisms of
American idealism are quite different than someone like Ball. I suppose if one
equates nation with tribe as opposed to ideal.... itself a notion at odds with
the founding ideology of the United States... one might be able to concoct some
sort of narrative.
And that's really the issue here... narratives. Ball has a
narrative of Protestantism derailed
and he either embraces what is effectively a revolutionary doctrine... a Theonomist
capture of the US and the tearing up of the Constitution or... a 'from the ashes' view advocated by many
of Rushdoony's disciples. This view argues the West will soon collapse and that
principled Theonomic thinkers who in many cases have bred prolifically will
rise from the ashes and build a new Theonomic civilisation.
Other thinkers in the PCA and the Evangelical world have a quite
different narrative and yet it has nothing to do with Two Kingdom theology.
They have also identified Western Civilisation with the
Kingdom of God and they too think it has been derailed and yet unlike Ball they
have not wholly abandoned the progressive/developmental heritage that was born
of Magisterial Protestantism. The Reformers let the genie out of the bottle and
opened up the West to a new and potentially subjective philosophical course.
Christendom was shattered, something all Protestants once accepted as
necessary. And yet what then? The Age of Reason quickly descended on Europe and
was accelerated by the discord and social unrest. Various attempts were made to
stop the chaos and warfare. Philosophers wrestled with epistemology and social
theory. Confessionalism was utilised largely in terms of and in hope of new
forms of Established Christianity... something Ball (if consistent) would
embrace. Others turned to the Divine Right of Kings, Absolutism and eventually Monarchical
and Republican Constitutionalism.
The dam had been broken and change was afoot. Some embraced
the monarch, others the parliament. New ideas were born and many believed these
were the genuine fruits of scientific and philosophical advance. They
celebrated these developments as proper and necessary Kingdom advancements born
of the freedom of the new Protestant Christendom as opposed to the reactionary tyranny
of Rome. The English speaking world for the most part embraced Empiricism and
this began to shape social and political thought. Many argue this
epistemological reality combined with a somewhat complex combination of other
factors unique to Britain led to the Industrial Revolution. Though there were
aspects of simultaneity to the social 'revolution', it is almost undisputed
that it began in Britain and this was a key factor in the ascendancy of the
British Empire by the dawn of the 19th century. These were largely
viewed as Christian developments,
outworkings of progress, improvement, endeavour, harmony and industry... fruits
of Protestant society. The resulting social changes necessarily led to further
developments in the political order.
These lessons and motifs have largely been forgotten as
today's Protestants have turned to the past and to revisionism, a theme I've
been writing about a lot in recent years.
The French Revolution and Marxism further splintered Europe
and figures like Abraham Kuyper tried to come up with new models and frameworks
for Christian society and social ethics. In the 20th century
thinkers like Van Til and Rushdoony began to offer vigorous criticisms of not
only Enlightenment thought but many of the forms and assumptions that were born
of the Age of Reason and the Post-Reformation era... ideas that had largely
been embraced and endorsed by Protestants in the 17th-19th
centuries. Van Til did this on more of a theoretical level in the realms of
apologetics and systematic theology. Rushdoony and others took some of Van
Til's ideas and tried to apply them to culture and politics... often in ways
Van Til would not have approved of.
Regardless of the particulars, this intellectual revolution
has generated some divisions with the Evangelical and Confessional world. While
most of the people within these camps tend toward various expressions of
Right-wing politics, there are sharp differences over method, extent and ethics.
For example with regard to Andrew White the political
candidate under criticism in the Ball article, the sentiments in the article
(as well as the link in the article) are not those of Reformed Two Kingdom
theology. Those aren't the sort of things they are going to say and in fact
most of them (I'm thinking of some of those affiliated with Westminster
Seminary in California) still tend toward Right-wing positions. None of them
would argue that a law is good simply because it passed democratic muster or
expressed the cultural moment.
First we have to raise the question of whether or not
candidate White is even being sincere or if this isn't just political posturing
and equivocation. On the one hand it's refreshing to find someone (in Texas of
all places) challenging some of the Right-wing assumptions that dominate
Christian circles. On the other hand, his motivations (which despite Ball's
perceptions) are clearly meant to be Christian, are (ironically) like Ball's...
clearly in error. At the end of the day, no faithful Christian should be
running for office, swearing oaths to man-made authorities and documents and
embracing the state's necessary employment of violence. This is the contrast
Paul is making in his argument that is unfortunately divided between what we
call chapters 12 and 13 in the book of Romans. The artificial division has led
to woeful confusion on this point.
I'm afraid in the end, all politicians are ultimately salesmen
seeking power, a vile combination if ever there was one. And as is often the
case on a practical level... the very people that shouldn't be allowed access
to said power.
But let's assume White really believes what he's saying, that
the law of the land is settled and that he shouldn't be imposing his Christian
values on society. I said 'let's assume' but I really can't because again his
other statements indicate that he views this seeking of office as connected to
his Christian faith. Ball would be right to say he can't divorce the two but
like Ball he will necessarily have to re-define Christianity in order to fill
the post.
Once again to remain faithful to Christ and His Kingdom... he
should have nothing to do with seeking power in Rome and Babylon.
The thing is both White and Ball have (through whatever
philosophical means) accepted a host of ideas that are not in Scripture. Or to
put it differently they have baptised and sanctified aspects of worldly thought
and incorporated them into their theology. Ball would deny this but it's clear
even in his short critique of White. His understanding of the social order and
how to apply what he calls Biblical Law to it is built not on exegesis, but
philosophical inference.
Like White, I'm sure Ball accepts Just War Theory, he
probably advocates some form Market Capitalism and a host of other concepts
that were developed in the context Western Civilisation... not from honest New
Testament exegesis. Ball is a Confessionalist. The very methodology rests upon
a prolegomena rooted in philosophical thought and categories. Confessionalists
are quick to divorce themselves from the label 'Biblicist'. Confessionalism is
virtually by definition an addition to and redefinition of Sola Scriptura.
White is no different and yet in his accepted narrative, and
contrary to Ball, Western Classical Liberalism is a child of Christianity and
the Reformation heritage. He could argue democracy, constitutional government
and even the social contract are outworkings of Sola Fide and the place of the
individual conscience. I don't agree with these positions but an argument can
be made for them, one just as viable as what Ball is offering.