This is another example of what I often refer to as
Pseudo-Two Kingdom Theology. While it purports to avoid the direct theocratic
models advocated by some, it nevertheless operates on a Dominionist basis. The
form is different and while it ostensibly observes the necessary distinction
between Church and culture, it nevertheless operates on the false assumption
that the Kingdom includes, incorporates and redeems culture. As Doriani states:
...the kingdom is wider than the visible church.
The visible, corporate church is the vanguard, the concentration point, the
training ground, and the sending agency for kingdom work, but kingdom work is
broader than church work.
Ecclesiastical philanthropy in the name of cultural
redemption is therefore encouraged. The dispute here is reduced to pragmatics
and optics. The Church shouldn't directly
govern social institutions. This is in keeping with Kuyper's concepts of
spheres and cultural pillars and does (as just mentioned) offer a formal contrast to the monistic model
some theocrats have offered. And yet a closer examination of those views
reveals that very few actually advocate a true and undiluted monist position
which is probably more likely to be found in some of the more extreme forms of
Catholic Traditionalism.
As expected Doriani tries to distance himself from the overt Transformationalists
and Neo-Kuyperians but then in a rather candid moment owns the label and rather
argues his views are in fact in line with the true Kuyperian heritage. Doriani
is right but of course the problem is the views of Abraham Kuyper are in the
end just as flawed and erroneous as the rank monistic forms of Transformationalism.
The point here is that many of the arguments or what I've called elsewhere Pseudo-Two Kingdom debates are just
that... disputes over form, not over substance.
All these 'Two Kingdom' folks are effectively arguing against
is a situation in which a cleric reigns supreme, in which an ecclesiastical
figure or body is wholly intertwined with the state. They have a problem with
the feudal order in which the Church was a landholder, bishops were sometimes
princes or in the case of say Geneva where someone like Calvin was the de facto ruler.*
And yet to think their Two Kingdoms doctrine is somehow a
bill of divorce between Christianity and Culture or even Christianity and the
State is to misunderstand their thought. Theonomists rooted in various camps
continue to attack and caricature this variety of Two Kingdoms doctrine though
often in a disingenuous and contradictory way.
As expressed repeatedly the Two Kingdoms doctrine advocated
by Doriani (the author of Work: Its Purpose, Dignity, and Transformation) is
actually a One Kingdom in Two Aspects
view in keeping with Lutheranism, the theology of Abraham Kuyper as well as a
school of revised American Presbyterianism that arose in the aftermath of the
1776 Rebellion. In Reformed circles this view is usually associated with
Westminster California. It also seems to be the common or default view found in
many New Calvinist circles and thus in the writings of The Gospel Coalition
with which Doriani is affiliated.
Dominionists all, they are nevertheless (and absurdly)
defamed as being Anabaptists and Pietists by the more extremist Theonomic
factions. Would that they were, but in reality they are far closer to their
Theonomic cousins than the Anabaptist sphere and its far more Biblical concept
of Two Kingdom theology.
Regardless of one's millennial view, the real question
remains as to one's understanding of the Kingdom and the course of this age.
Dominionism can actually operate within any millennial or Kingdom framework.
Its opposition isn't found in Amillennialism or Two Kingdoms Doctrine per se,
because both schools manifest in various forms and have become ambiguous in
their meaning.
Its real opposition is found in a view of the Kingdom that
emphasises the eschatological and apocalyptic, that believes the Kingdom is not
of this world, a view of the Kingdom that takes the Sermon on the Mount as an
ethical imperative meant to govern the Christian life. Dominionism is
incompatible yea, diametrically opposed to this view which grounds the Church
(and thus the Kingdom) in its pilgrim identity, Apostolic ethics and calls it
to a life of non-resistance. This martyr-witness Parousia-focused view, the actual
position of the New Testament is at odds with the Dominionist impulse that
believes the Church is called to redeem this present age and to sanctify or
sacralise it. The debates in Dominionist circles can be intense but ultimately
they are over style, form and extent. But they all agree on a programme of
Christianisation.
This is the problem and once understood Doriani's arguments
and even the very premise for his discussion... collapse.
Like all Dominionists, Doriani is effectively arguing that
the Kingdom is compromised of the larger culture (or civilisation) and that the
unbeliever plays a part in building and advancing it. The unbeliever's
knowledge is combined (via philosophy disguised as theology) with Christian
thought resulting in so-called Christian Worldview. The Church is reduced to a mere
component of the larger Kingdom task and thus politics, culture and the academy
are just as much Kingdom callings as those who bring the Gospel to the world.
In fact the gospel itself is transformed, the 'good news' becomes a mere
impetus to cultural redemption and transformation, a larger and more extended
'gospel' which ranges far beyond the authority or even the focus of Scripture. To
the Dominionist, building a business or running for political office are
expressions of worship and just as God glorifying as studying Scripture or
witnessing to the lost.
It is hardly surprising to find that such compromised
theology has produced a system which has openly embraced feminism,
psychological counseling as well as the world's models concerning sociology,
politics and economics. It has left the New Testament far behind and history
demonstrates that its adherents all too often lose their way and open the
floodgates... inviting the world into the Church. The culture isn't
transformed, but the Church certainly is.
While Doriani takes the correct historical position with
regard to the Spirituality of the Church and argues against its abuse on the
part of pro-Southern/pro-slavery advocates, the view (in the end) is itself
exposed as something of a canard and actually has nothing to do with the
Biblical doctrine of Two Kingdoms.
There is an element of deception to all this in that while
these institutions are 'redeemed' and yet are outside the Church, there is the
assumption that the leaders of other spheres are accountable to the Church...
not for day to day operations but for mission, means and goals. And thus the
Church is in fact granted a unique authority, something theocrats would be keen
to point out.
And yet the Church is not subject to the other spheres and so
to an outsider this still appears (despite the protests to contrary) as a form
of soft theocracy.
Rejecting the Kingdom ethics of the New Testament this view
advocates not only worldliness but effectively seeks to baptise the world and
its assumptions. Whether 'Christian' lawyers, politicians, fund managers,
soldiers and the like are governed by a central ecclesiastical authority or
not, the end result is the same. We have Christians out in the world, serving
and flourishing within Babylon and using its tools to advance their own
interests and supposedly the interests of the Church.
This is surely a road to apostasy.
It's a hard saying because in order for it to truly sink in,
the very leaders and heroes heralded by modern Evangelicals and
Confessionalists... the Abraham Kuyper's, Francis Schaeffer's and Billy
Graham's are 'transformed'. No longer heroes and stalwarts they are instead
revealed as destroyers and infiltrators, the very wolves in sheep's clothing
that have laid the groundwork for one of the greatest epochs of apostasy in the
history of the Christian Church. Just as the Constantinian Shift was a fusion
of the Hellenistic thought of Late Antiquity with Christianity, we are watching
a new type of fusion between various forms of historical Protestantism with
Modernity. The process involves a dialectical interaction between pre-Revolutionary
forms of Christian Sacralism and the philosophies of the Enlightenment. This
same battle took place in the 18th and19th century and resulted in
the triumph of theological liberalism.
Various Restorationist and Fundamentalist movements appeared
to counter these trends and the surviving Confessionalist elements dug in their
heels and in many cases also resorted (perhaps unconsciously) to a reductionist
understanding of their tradition as a means to survive.
And yet these very elements are all yielding to the present
Dominionist trajectory. The Fundamentalist movement has almost completely
succumbed to Dominionism and the impulses of Evangelicalism and apart from a
few dissenting voices, almost all Confessionalists have been reinvigorated by
the socio-political climate and have abandoned what was left of the old
revivalist Spirit-wrought hope in social change. They have instead embraced
either overt theocratic positions or have embraced the post-Revolutionary Kuyperian
model. Either way, the landscape is bleak.
Even the Anabaptist movement is in a bad way. Those holding
to their historical Two Kingdoms views are mired in legalism and their witness
has been reduced largely to a sideshow or spectacle. Those sectors affected by
Niebuhr's post-war critique have in many cases drifted into theological and
even social liberalism. More than ever we need voices to challenge this
trajectory.
----
*While never formally enthroned or given a title, and while
never wielding absolute power, he was nevertheless the equivalent of Geneva's
overlord. An examination of many
dictatorships will reveal that there have been very few actual autocrats, or
that many who are casually referred to as such nevertheless relied on bureaucracies
and lesser powers and could at times even be resisted to a point. The kind of
autocracy seen in Stalinist Russia for example is almost unique. Even figures
like Mao and Hitler had their power struggles. Mao's Cultural Revolution was
really a re-assertion of power deemed necessary due to his loss of influence
following the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Hitler often faced opposition from
the military and the remnants of the Juncker class.