Christ took on the semblance of sinful flesh in order to
redeem not this fallen temporal world but to save His people who are (and will
be) transformed and reign over an eternal New Heavens and New Earth. This is
essential to understand. The New Testament vision of a Kingdom that is not of
this world, one that is something we are translated into (and thus in contrast
with this world), one that we place our thoughts, affections and treasures in, is a Kingdom negated by the Dominionist
paradigm.
Such assertions invite charges of anti-materialistic
Gnosticism. The New Testament presents the resurrected flesh as certainly
material but more than that it's celestial, eternal and thus represents the New
Heavens and Earth, not the corrupted, temporal and thus less-than-real material
of this damaged and cursed aeon, this realm of death ruled by a dark prince and
destined for fiery destruction.
This is not gnostic dualism. Paul was not a gnostic. This is
not 'Maya' or a Buddhist conception of matter as illusion. Additionally
contrary to the assertions of some opponents of Divine Scriptural authority,
this is not the philosophy of Zeno or Seneca being appropriated by Christian
thinkers.
Once again, the Hellenistic Judaism being opposed by the
Apostles in the New Testament gained great traction because many of its
concepts were seemingly compatible with and ostensibly related to the teachings
of the Apostles. Later in the post-Apostolic period a full blown Gnosticism
would emerge in which Vedic and Buddhist categories would be incorporated with
Christian language and concepts. The New Testament teaching does not present a
non-material ideal but rather takes sharp issue with the notion that this
present evil age, this fallen world could ever become or be transformed into
the ideal. This world, this age, this aeon has been not affirmed, but condemned by the resurrection. Christ inhabiting
flesh and eating food is not a vindication of this world but is rather His
triumph over it and the principalities and powers that rule it. His
resurrection is a harbinger of a better hope, a world that is to come. We do
not lay up our treasures here in hope of transformation. This world is the
realm of death and corruption, an aeon now subject to futility. We lay up our
treasures in heaven, the realm of eternality, the realm of Christ's Kingdom, a
realm in which the material is of a different, redeemed and transformed order.
It is only in this context that we can further understand and
take in the full import of Paul's condemnation of Judeo-Hellenistic impulses
resting in religious practices concerning 'weak and beggarly elements', the
'rudiments of this world', 'shadows of things to come' and the error of
Christians living 'as though in the world'.
Further, an understanding of this helps elucidate a point
which forever vexes the Dominionist. The Apostles clearly had no interest in
challenging or revising the social order. Sacralist polemics will posit an
argument from silence. The Church was living under the shadow of persecution
and therefore the Apostles were not concerned with questions of cultural
redemption. If the situation had been different (we're told), they would have
addressed those questions and developed a positive doctrine in terms of
cultural Christianisation. But of course this merely begs the question and
argues from silence. Additionally whether they realise it or not, this view
undermines the authority of Scripture, particularly in the realm of
Sufficiency.
What it suggests is that there are vast categories of
necessitated Christian thought and imperatives that the Scriptures don't
address and thus it's up to the Church to intellectually develop them. This of
course is done via philosophical inference (so-called good and necessary
consequence) and the utilisation of various forms of Judaized (Old Testament
prioritised) hermeneutical gymnastics which rest on assumptions contrary to the
explicit teaching of the New Testament.
Is it then surprising that the doctrine of Sufficiency has
been all but abandoned or modified to incorporate such philosophical inferences
as the equivalents of Scripture? This again points to the misleading and
perilous nature of so-called Worldview thinking. It is (at heart) an attack on
the Sufficiency of Scripture and thus ultimately Sola Scriptura itself. The
theology of the Church becomes a blend of Scripture and philosophical
interaction with the world's knowledge and categories of thought. Worldview
teaching is consistently presented as 'conservative', a manifestation of
applying 'all the Bible to all of life' and yet in truth the intellectual
movement represents a distinct trend toward theological liberalisation
something we're already seeing in Evangelical circles.
In terms of the Holy Christ administered Realm, the language
of New Testament suggests a holy and transcendent Kingdom which is in fact our
home. And it speaks of this world as being burned up, as being something
temporary and impermanent. This realm conceptualisation in addition to being
eschatological (and thus trans-temporal and other-worldly) is covenantal.
Christ is Head, the Covenantal-Testamental Head not of the world at large, but
of the Church, the ekklhsia or called out ones, the Holy Remnant which living here as pilgrim exiles
remains faithful to the end... and thus proclaims doom to the world. This
remnant glorifies God's strength in weakness by overcoming the powers, wiles
and tactics of this age and its lawless prince.
1 Corinthians perhaps more than any other epistle lays out
the epistemological basis for this other-identity and separatist ethos as Paul
dismantles philosophy in toto. In
rebuking Corinthian worldliness he lays out a doctrine of antithesis in which
the Church lives and thinks in a manner separate from the world. His
condemnations of Corinthian compromise are pronounced and thorough as he
addresses everything from promiscuity, celibacy, marriage, power, our posture
toward the world and its institutions, idolatry and the spirituality of our
ecclesiastical gatherings. He demonstrates the flow of redemptive history and implicitly
(as well as explicitly elsewhere in his writings) marks the break with the Old
Covenant order and (in conclusion) establishes our hope in the resurrection of
Christ.
In light of the Holy Realm we come to understand that
Christ's Reign is both absolute and in a state of incompleteness. All things
are not yet subject to Him. Not all that is... is presently part of His Holy
Realm. This again is but one of a many dualities or unresolved dynamics found
in Scripture.
He is Lord but his lordship (as per 1 Corinthians 15) is in
part restrained and delayed. The Father has put everything on hold (as it
were), kept in store (2 Peter 3.7) in a state of temporal delay because of his
longsuffering (v.9). The actualisation of Christ's Lordship will trigger the
White Throne or Final Judgment in which the Realm-Reign duality will be
eliminated as will this world or age as it is presently known. To seemingly
grant a point to Dominionist impulses we ultimately are looking for a type of
monism in which Reign and Realm are one and the same but it's not yet, and to
posit it as a paradigm for the present is both a dangerous and grievous error.
It is to confuse this world with heaven itself.
The duality between fallen nature and the realm of Grace is
not absolute but it characterises this present evil age. We must hold to an
apocalyptic view of the world which necessitates a certain pessimism regarding
the state of post-lapsarian nature. To put it in blunt and simple terms, this
world, this age, is utterly and absolutely doomed. We can never forget that and
how quickly we are distracted once we lose sight of this. Does the New
Testament encourage us to live and act as if it's something other than doomed
and destined for destruction? We are reminded to persevere as the time is short. We are encouraged to live our lives in light
of the fact that this world, this cosmos will
melt in fiery heat. And repeatedly we are told to focus on heaven, live as
pilgrims and view this world and even our bodies as tents and forms which pass away.
Is this pessimism or a form of defeatism? Contrary to the
prophets of Theonomic Reconstruction Peter and Paul didn't think so. In fact
it's not really a form of pessimism at all. Actually the doom of this world is
intimately tied to what the New Testament calls our Blessed Hope.
Traditional Magisterial Protestantism believes the Kingdom
overlaps with the world and that the world is (in some form) progressively
transformed into the very realm of Christ. There is no real distinction between
reign and realm. In its worst forms it represents a dangerous triumphalism and
over-realisation of eschatology. Some Protestant theological traditions are
certainly better than others but virtually all, whether Evangelicals,
Lutherans, Reformed Confessionalists, Kuyperians and overt Theonomists.... all
hold to this to some extent. Only small factions of Reformed and Calvinist
communities who conscientiously reject it seem to be exempt and yet even then
all too often they seem to succumb to the same old worldly political
aspirations and opinions of the Christian Right. On paper they reject
Dominionism but practically speaking when it comes to politics and the culture
they fall more or less in line with the same (and perhaps more principled but
erroneous) advocates of Dominionism.
With this great confidence in human ability and thus the
erosion of depravity, with this focus on worldly progress and the
identification of cultural advancement with Kingdom growth, it is little wonder
that Protestantism largely succumbed to humanistic Arminianism and ultimately
to rationalism. A high confidence in man's ability to build a metaphysical
colossus necessitated a low view of the Fall, no small amount of hubris and
even to some degree an inclination to wed cultural success with signs of Divine
approval and election. These are but a few of the inherent contradictions
located within Protestant Scholasticism and Calvinism in particular.
Flirtations with totalitarian government sought to correct these contradictions
and the strife they produced but even these experiments failed. From Orangist
Netherlands, to Puritan England and Scotland, Massachusetts Bay and to Geneva
itself... culture was transformed to a point – but in the end the world didn't
become the Church. The Church became the world... and the world triumphed as is
so painfully evident in these very places.
Today not a few in Confessional circles have realised the old
and once dominant Postmillennialism was flawed and its models and expectations
ranged far beyond Scriptural warrant. And yet all too often these very critics
have retained the Dominionist impulse and thus have retained its imperatives.
While the bar of expectation is not set quite so high, and the
transformationalist programme is not as explicit or even as overt, they still
fall into triumphalism. It may be on a lesser scale but volume does not
determine substantial composition. Practically speaking they still fall into
the same groove of over-realised eschatology and thus reject the sharp
Nature-Grace duality of the New Testament and its apocalyptic ethos and ethics.