Andrew Matthews
A Non-redemptive Providential Reign of Christ?
“The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Take silver and gold from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon. Go the same day to the house of Josiah son of Zephaniah. Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the high priest, Yeshua son of Jehozadak. Tell him this is what the Lord almighty says: ‘Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from this place and build the temple of the Lord. It is he who will build the temple of the Lord, and he will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne. And he will be a priest on his throne. And there will be harmony between the two’†(Zech. 6:9-13).
In order to maintain his earthly people/heavenly people dichotomy, John Nelson Darby multiplied Christ’s priestly ministries. In studying Hebrews, Darby thought he discovered a distinction between Christ’s Melchizedekian ministry of blessing and another sacrificial ministry analogous to Aaron’s priesthood. The Klinean-W2K theology accomplishes the same effect in the particular way it distinguishes between common and redemptive grace. The intent is to maintain an earthly secular kingdom (culture) parallel with a heavenly kingdom of redemption (cult). For example, Darryl Hart writes: “Well, maybe we could choose the wise, strong and high and reputable if two ways are at work, the way of redemption and the way of creation-providence.†Both Dispensationalism and W2K have an interest in denying the catholicity of the new covenant—its cosmic universality and authority—during the present “parenthetical,†as they call it, Church age.
While Meredith Kline employs “common grace†language, Darryl dislikes the term, since it is a legacy of Abraham Kuyper’s Neo-Calvinism. He prefers instead to talk about Christ’s providential rule vs. redemptive reign. This is basically a semantic difference, however. Darryl understands history in light of Kline’s cult/culture dichotomy. Having examined Kline’s arguments for common grace in Kingdom Prologue, I have found them to be exceedingly weak (See below). In the final analysis, the Klineo-Hartian method of “dispensationalizing†Scripture turns out to be yet another destructive nature-grace dualism.
There is no providence/redemption dichotomy to be found in either God’s redemptive purpose, the post-Fall economy, or Christ’s mediatorial ministry. Rather, considerations may be brought to bear from each which imply a complete coordination of divine creative and redemptive acts in every era prior to the eschatological consummation. What I intend by “complete coordination†must be understood in light of the incarnate economy of Christ’s two natures united in his single hypostasis. It is time to exorcize the Nestorian spirit from the Reformed subconscious once and for all.
A. God’s Redemptive Purpose
First, redemption, broadly considered, is the activity God undertakes to save his created works from the ravages of sin, death, and corruption. It is quite literally the salvation of the kosmos (John 3:16-17). The argument being made here is that it was God’s intent all along to beatify creation. Compelling evidence for this is to be found in St. Paul’s teaching in Romans 8. Paul speaks of an intrinsic “desire†within creation for the liberty it will experience when God’s sons are revealed (Rom. 8:19). This desire, a desire for life—not annihilation, was inherent within it from the very beginning, part of its nature as created by God. This is because all creation was to be glorified with Adam after the probationary term of the CoW expired. Therefore, the world’s originally created purpose and its anticipated deliverance seamlessly coincide.
St. Paul’s teaching in Romans 8 is not a metaphorical anomaly easily dismissed by sophistical rationalization. Creation’s corruption and consequent suffering is integral to the narrative structure of redemptive history. When Adam fell, sin came into the world, and death by sin (Rom. 5:12). Also, the ground was cursed to yield thorns and thistles, and generally to impede man’s labor, which had once been a joyous task (Gen. 3:17-19).
There is thus a relationship between creation and the fate of humanity. Man was to rule and subdue the earth, rule the animals, and be sustained by the earth’s produce. However, the ground was cursed because of Adam’s sin, and the principles of death and corruption entered the created order. This means, at the very least, that the structure of organic life was biologically altered. At this point I’d like to recommend the traditional view against Kline that animal death did not naturally occur before the Fall. Indeed, Kline’s work is largely an attempt to demystify Scripture. He seems intent on providing theological reasons to explain away the mystical-cosmological features of biblical revelation, effectively dissolving much of the material into insubstantial abstraction: ceremonial symbol (e.g., the typological theocracies of the Ark and Israel) and literary metaphor (e.g., the framework hypothesis).
B. The Perpetuity of the Cultural Mandate
Meredith Kline argues that the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:26-31) was altered after the Fall. He writes:
The common culture that is the direct fruit of common grace is not itself identifiable with the holy, Sabbath-sealed redemptive kingdom of God…Another way of saying this is that common grace culture is not itself the particular holy kingdom-temple culture that was mandated under the creational covenant. Although certain functional and institutional provisions of the original cultural mandate are resumed in the common grace order, these now have such a different orientation, particularly as to objectives, one cannot simply and strictly say that it is the cultural mandate that is being implemented in the process of common grace culture. It might be closer to the truth to say that the cultural mandate of the original covenant in Eden is being carried out in the program of salvation, since the ultimate objective of that mandate, the holy kingdom-temple, will be the consummate achievement of Christ under the Covenant of Grace. On the other hand, the genealogical and earthly aspects of the original cultural mandate that were to consummate its preconsummation history are not part of the redemptive program per se…As brought over into the postlapsarian world, the cultural mandate undergoes such refraction that it cannot be identified in a simple, unqualified way with either the holy or common enterprises. (KP, 156-7, bold face added).
Here we see that Kline held that the original mandate had as its goal consummated glorification. He writes, “to produce the cult itself, the cosmic-human temple, was the ultimate objective in view in the cultural enterprise†(ibid., 89). We know that man’s confirmation in a state of righteousness was promised in the sacrament of the tree of life and was to be granted after Adam completed his probationary test. Humanity was to fill and cultivate the world in anticipation of his future glorification. Kline believes he can affirm the perpetuity of the cultural mandate post-Fall, and at the same time say it has been refracted. The question I have been raising is whether Kline has indeed preserved anything like the original cultural mandate in his theological reading of Scripture.
The answer is no. To refract a beam of light is to bend it. A prism can be used to break light up into its constituent spectral colors. Kline says that the post-fall economy divides the cultural mandate into parallel redemptive and common grace rays, and redirects cultural labor under common grace to a different end, a dead end. Here, then, is the source of the W2K providence-redemption bifurcation. Prisms are used to produce beautiful rainbows of light. Kline’s hatchet job on the cultural mandate separates the means from the end, effectively destroying it. Man’s work is now not only rendered difficult by God’s judgment; it is drudgery, stripped of its God-glorifying potential. God is then glorified only in the intention of one’s faith and not in one’s labor.
It should be noted that W2K proponents work with demonic persistence to strip temporal vocations of any intrinsic transcendentally oriented character. They applaud pagans who organize society on “neutral†technological and utilitarian principles, and oppose Christian transformationalists at every turn. W2K’s raison d’etre is to desacralize human life and to keep it profane.
Kline has two arguments that the common grace order was established to be secular: 1) Adam and Eve were addressed in the post-fall arrangement as representatives of common humanity, not as God’s elect and, 2) The Sabbath was not to be observed outside Eden, the Sabbath sanctuary.
Kline finds special significance in the fact that on the occasion of the protoevangelium, the first gospel, God addressed all three offending parties: Satan, Adam and Eve. He writes,
In pronouncing his verdicts, the Lord followed the sequence in which guilt had been incurred in the temptation and Fall. Judgment, therefore, moved on from the devil, by whom the temptation was first conceived, to the woman (Gen. 3:16) and then to Adam (Gen. 3:17-19)…Covenant-breakers though they were, Adam and Eve were predestined to become God’s covenant people once again through redemptive grace. Before long they were displaying faith and hope in the salvation promise contained in the curse of Satan (Gen. 3:15). Nevertheless, the divine revelation addressed directly to them (Gen. 3:16-19) did not have in view their personal identity as elect individuals; it rather contemplated the mankind that had been represented in Adam and in him had broken the covenant (ibid., 134).
Here we have simultaneously what Kline calls “the inauguration of the covenant of grace†(ibid., 143), and the inauguration of the common curse/common grace order. It can be clearly seen that whatever common grace is for Kline, it is founded by and for the Covenant of Grace (CoG).
Kline’s methodology is that of the Darbyite dispensationalist. Where there is only one covenant, he tries to find two. He wants so badly to find both a redemptive and a common grace covenant, that he imports predestination into the scriptural context.
Wonderful things in the Bible I see, things put there by you and by me.
Adam and Eve not viewed as elect? What is he talking about? Were they elect or weren’t they? Where else was the woman’s seed to come from that would defeat the serpent?
Yes, Adam and Eve broke the covenant. But God’s purposes for humanity and creation were not to be overthrown. This is the predestinarian error as opposed to true Calvinism: to underplay God’s steadfast commitment to ensure that his creative purpose is achieved. This can only arise from a hesitation to affirm that the Lord is truly good. Seeking to glorify God, an imbalanced piety says that God could have destroyed all creation and started everything over after the Fall. No, he would not. For his own sake, God initiates a covenant of grace to save the world.
Immediately after confronting the man, God pursues a line of interrogation until he reaches the source of the rebellion: Satan (Gen. 3:9-13). Without asking Satan his side of the story, God pronounces judgment upon him and declares warfare between Satan and the woman(!). He also announces—and by his word, guarantees—that the woman’s offspring will destroy him (vv.14-15). Redemption is clearly in view.
Why then does Kline claim that God “did not have in view their personal identity as elect� The answer is simple: he wants to literally divide the covenant into separate dispensations. But God’s word cannot be broken. The contextual chain of thought remains intact: When he next speaks, God addresses the woman, taking up the difficulty she will experience in laboring to bring forth her seed (v.16). In doing so, the original mandate to “be fruitful and multiply†is perpetuated in the service of redemption.
When he addresses the man, God declares that man’s toil will be both painful and wearisome, that the earth will not easily yield its produce as before (vv.17-19). The original mandate to cultivate the earth is perpetuated despite the fact that death has entered the picture. Adam and Eve must have breathed a collective sigh of relief. Kline is surely correct to note that God’s graciousness maintained marriage, the propagation of offspring, and labor to sustain human life and realize “cultural satisfactions†(ibid., 154). For Kline, “cultural satisfactions†must mean anything other than works done to glorify God, because he thinks he has successfully divided redemptive cult from common grace culture. But he hasn’t.
Everything we have seen so far shows that God has graciously carried over the cultural mandate into the post-Fall phase of history. He has done so in the context of his announced redemptive plan. He affirms the perpetuation of the mandate’s various duties despite new difficulties. There aren’t two covenants present in Genesis 3; there is only one.
I mentioned above that Kline also argues for common grace’s secularity on the basis that the Sabbath was not institutionally reissued after the Fall (ibid., 155-6). Did it need to be reissued? God sanctified the seventh day (Gen. 2:2-3) so that man would labor six days and rest the seventh (Ex. 20:8-11). Was Adam to laboriously toil without respite, without following this pattern? Was Adam to pursue cultural ends without reference to the final rest of which the Sabbath is a sign? To ask these questions is to answer them.
A principle of discontinuity—a kind of crazy regulative principle—is at work in Kline’s theology here. In fact his treatment of the Sabbath is nothing more than an argument from silence. To assume that man is no longer to pursue the cultural mandate’s original purpose through his labor, despite all the evidence of continuity; to deny that God’s original purpose remains intact, despite his gracious intervention, evinces a presumptuous wresting of the word of God.
C. The Corruption of the Earth
After God cursed the ground for Adam’s sin, subsequent acts by succeeding generations led to further curses. The shedding of Abel’s blood led to Cain’s alienation from the ground (Gen. 4:10-12). By Noah’s time, the earth was corrupted so much by violence that God wished to destroy it (Gen. 6:5-7, 12-13). And though after the Flood, God promised never to comprehensively curse the ground again (Gen. 8:21), sinful and violent men have further defiled it. Later, the land of Canaan vomited out the nations that had originally settled it due to the defilement they perpetrated (Lev. 18:24-28). All this is to show that, according to Scripture, death and sin, especially the shedding of man’s blood, corrupt the earth. The provided examples show this “corruption principle†to be operative well before the “typological kingdom†of Israel was established in the land of Canaan (Numbers 35:33-34). The Israelites were even commanded to destroy the livestock of particularly wicked peoples (e.g., 1 Sam. 15:3). The same principle forms the basis for the Jerusalem council’s prohibition of food associated with idolatry (Acts 15:29) and St. Paul’s teaching about food associated with demonic idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14-22; Cf. 2 Tim. 2:20-21). This is confirmed by the fact that the council grouped “idol food†together with blood-eating and sexual immorality. The reasons for this particular association will become clear in my dicussion of the Noahic covenant.
The corruption of the earth by sin provides an explanation for the biblical differentiation between clean and unclean animals. The ground is where blood is shed and corpses are left to rot. This defiles the earth (Gen. 4:10; Num. 35:33-34; Cf. Deut. 21:22-23) and the creatures that move upon it, especially carnivorous animals (Lev. 5:2; 11:1ff.; 17:15-16). To engage in a bit of speculation, we know that once an animal tastes human blood it acquires a taste for it. There may be a partial explanation here for the disorder and violence of the natural world. However, it can hardly be denied that a cosmic imbalance occurs when the image of God is destroyed (or murderously attacked) (Gen. 4:10; Num. 35:33). Such is intuitively understood by every man whose moral sense has not been entirely extinguished.
Even the killing of an animal is not meaningless, but contributes to the disruption of the created order. When animals are slaughtered their blood must be poured out and buried under earth (Lev. 17:13-14). This is because burial is a kind of temporary atonement, a restoration of balance in creation. Since life is in the blood (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:10ff.), the consumption of animal blood entails an unlawful taking of what belongs only to the Lord (Lev. 17:11) and is indicative of man’s transformation into a bestial deity who wastes and destroys creation for satiating his own lusts. It is plain that the prohibition against blood-eating has validity outside the Mosaic dispensation (Gen. 9:4; Acts 15:20, 29), and is therefore obligatory for Christians as well. Therefore, a “corruption principle†is operative in the fallen creation that is not peculiar to the symbolic economy of the Mosaic covenant. Even now there is “fruit†forbidden to us.
Kline tries to evade the import of the scriptural data by restricting the clean/unclean distinction to various “intrusive†theocratic dispensations. Another strategy he employs is to restrict the blood prohibition to altar communities (ibid., 256-62). What his explanation does not account for is why all animal blood is disallowed, and not just that of animals designated for sacrifice. His account also fails when he tries to explain the presence of the blood prohibition in the so-called postdiluvian common grace covenant. I will return to this issue in my discussion of the Noahic covenant in the next installment of this series.
The Bible presents a metaphysical view of reality that constantly leaps off its pages. God sovereignly created the world to be enchanted by supernatural powers. Angelic beings govern creation. The Fall affected creation metaphysically. Sin is the principle of corruption and death. Both righteous acts and sin affect the world. Demonic possession happens; exorcisms are performed. Symbolic actions have cosmic ramifications. The water of baptism is the washing of regeneration. We should take care that we accept Scripture’s teaching by faith and then seek to understand it. We do not begin by deciding what is first possible. God’s word defines what’s possible. Meredith Kline’s biblical theology is an attempt to accommodate Scripture—to domesticate it—to the modern secular mind’s sensibility. It’s time to identify this kind of theology for what it is—a form of godliness that denies the power thereof.
To be continued…
No peace, no justice, no short posts from Andrew.
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Sorry, Darryl, but eye for an eye, I say…
Transformationism and any related system seems to be a function of American and Western need to make the world less hostile, to make it safer for us, to perpetuate creaturely comfort and ease. Simply discomforted by the fact that the world we must share includes them, it wants to swallow up the world of unbelief, not by conversion, but by transformation. The former word is seen as weak, while the power language of transformation really gets something done. One is about the depressing, disenchanted and disheartening life, while the other is the very opposite of all that.
The same American impulse that fortifies children in head-to-toe crash gear to peddle a block to a friend’s house is the same one at work in transformationism. The same one that is wholly persuaded that homosexuals can go in one end of a make ‘em straight factory or programs and get spit out the other end as fully functioning hetero’s is the same one that says we don’t have to live with those icky and off-putting unbelievers in the common sphere. Or take Sinclair Ferguson’s book “Discerning God’s Will,†giving voice to a popular piety in which any given situation in life can be subjected to 6 criteria in order to figure out if it’s all right to go ahead, demonstrating yet again another example of the Americanistic impulse not to die, not to have to live with either uncertainty or regret. Such is a recipe for an ultimately fragile piety which, as the old-timers used to put it, becomes three sheets to the wind when real trouble comes round. Transformationism wants to make the world safe for believers so they don’t have to contend with real humanity with all its warts.
Whether it’s the objectivist-transformation, such as that espoused by Andrew Matthews or popular transformer D. James Kennedy, or subjectivist-transformation, such as that espoused by popular transformer Tim Keller (Keller and Kennedy are ministers in the PCA), both seek to transcend humanity by either objectively legislating against unbelief or subjectively cultivating it (“changing the world, one believer at a time!†declares Keller, versus hostile takeover). Per the subjectivistic, one may tell co-worker, friend, family, neighbor, acquaintance to “cheer up, you have been graced by the presence of me. Whatever troubles you had prior to my showing up they are that much more put away because I am in the room.†The arrogance is stifling. Sorry, Dr. Keller, but there is at once a fine line and a wide gap between being born again from above and being transformed. Those are two entirely different things.
But, unbeliever, despite what we may try to gloriously sell you, we, in point of fact, do not hold the secrets to ordering you or society, improving your marriage, straightening out your orientation, or making NYC a better place to live (whatever that means). So when this stuff comes knocking at your door or shows up on TV, do yourself a favor and refrain from cutting it a check. We do not have formulas to transcend your humanity one iota. You will be told that this sort of talk is weak and disenchanted, whether by health and wealth gospels or by stout intellectuals looking to inaugurate Christian monarchies. It’s all the same impulse that stands in front of Jesus and absolutely refuses Him His Cross and causes Him to call Peter Satan incarnate. All we have to offer you is the Gospel in word and sacrament, painfully weak as that may sound. We do not offer you false hope for a better life in the here and now. Bluntly put, you are just going to have to live with whatever currently ails both you and your world in our shared humanity, just like the rest of us. However, you can do so with great hope for all things to be made new by the sole hand of God. Little wonder John concludes his book with an entreat, not to either gentle or militant arms or radical transformation, but to a looking forward to the return of the sovereign Prophet, Priest and King. Only He can make all things new.
Steve
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Gentlemen. Greetings.
Andrew writes:
“Everything we have seen so far [from the creation and fall] shows that God has graciously carried over the cultural mandate into the post-Fall phase of history. He has done so in the context of his announced redemptive plan. He affirms the perpetuation of the mandate’s various duties despite new difficulties. There aren’t two covenants present in Genesis 3; there is only one.”
Steve then writes:
“Transformationism and any related system seems to be a function of American and Western need to make the world less hostile, to make it safer for us, to perpetuate creaturely comfort and ease. Simply discomforted by the fact that the world we must share includes them, it wants to swallow up the world of unbelief, not by conversion, but by transformation. The former word is seen as weak, while the power language of transformation really gets something done. One is about the depressing, disenchanted and disheartening life, while the other is the very opposite of all that.”
At the very least, two different paragraphs by two authors who are actually thinking about different things; not surprisingly, on different levels.
While Andrew addresses very specific biblical theological concerns, such as Creation, Fall, and Covenant, Steve addresses a much larger and perhaps theoretically prior consideration, namely, the cause or reason(s) why Andrew (and presumably those who could or would adopt something close to Andrew’s view) could understand or see or believe such things to be in scripture.
Simply put, Andrew’s concerns seem to be primarily first order with a little bit of second order sprinkled around (for instance when he attributed the view he contests to be from a “Nestorian spirit” or a destructive nature/grace). However, Steve’s concerns seem to be entirely second order.
I think Steve summed up his comments well when he said, “Bluntly put, you are just going to have to live with whatever currently ails both you and your world in our shared humanity, just like the rest of us.”
Whether or not Steve is correct about the ‘why would you be saying what you are saying’ question, his blunt admonition is certainly true, if anything or nothing else.
But more interestingly and importantly, neither Andrew’s specific questions about Kline, Genesis 3, etc.; nor his claims concerning a more thorough understanding of christology have been addressed.
b.
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B, if you want a first order consideration of Andrew’s first order considerations, try Augustine’s City of God. No reason to reinvent the wheel. I do wonder, though, whether it is possible to be Reformed and non-Augustinian.
By the way, on Andrew’s specific point that salvation is for the cosmos, I once checked how Calvin interpreted all of those cosmological passages about Christ saving the world — turns out Calvin only understood the cosmos to include beings with souls. God’s saving all things, then, was an assertion that he was saving men and angels. Not even Calvin was a neo-Calvinist. Could be because he was an Augustinian.
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D Hart,
So you once checked out how Calvin interpreted all those cosmic passages
and found out that Calvin believed all of them to be referring only to beings with souls and pretty much nothing else? I guess I’ll take your word for it.
With Calvin then, it does seem odd that back then (in whatever passage it occurs)the word ‘kosmos’ meant only beings with souls and yet presently means not just beings with souls, but usually something big, like the world, the cosmos; something much larger than just beings with souls. But it only appears odd because it is true that words, though maintaining their spelling, through time, have a tendency to change in meaning. Just seems like a big change.
But I’m sure if we went back twice or even three times we’d find more rich and illuminating stuff from Calvin. It isn’t unusual to find Calvin’s interpretation of those passages evaluated within the topic of the efficacy and extent of the atonement. Many have tried to see how Calvin’s treatment of those passages could fit with the theology later to coming out of Dort. Perhaps this is why you did it once (I know I have). But study habits notwithstanding.
Perhaps there are others on this blog who will take up concerns about the possibility of an imbalanced christology having wider theological implications or God’s relationship to creation pre-/post Fall vis a via Andrew’s post.
b.
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I was wondering whether anybody but a poor layman, such a myself, would notice the non-response responses to a critical critique that Andrew artfully articulated and happily “B” came along and catgorized one of the non-response responses into what one poor layman would call a “strawman argument”. (leaving aside the other mild ad-hom)
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Sure, it’s a straw man if someone says simply that Calvin said this so everyone else is wrong. The point was simply that it is possible to handle those christological passages dealing with Christ’s redeeming the cosmos in a way different from the Kuyperians. It was also to suggest that Kuyperians have an agenda that they read back into Scripture. Cosmos may not mean what they think it means. That certainly explains some basic differences between Calvinists and Arminians.
If GAS thinks some of us have not responded to Andrew because we are left speechless by its insightfulness, think again. What I like about blogs is generally the brevity of its action. Anything very long needs to be printed out. I also noticed, though, that GAS did not notice Steve’s response on transformation. Does that mean Steve is right?
For what it’s worth briefly, if the cultural mandate is still operative, then isn’t the Covenant of Works also? How do you keep part of the pre-fall imperative and not all of it. Methinks Andrew needs to go back to the hermeneutical drawing board.
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So, Darryl, God couldn’t have perpetuated the cultural mandate under the auspices of the CoG?
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“Sure, it’s a straw man if someone says simply that Calvin said this so everyone else is wrong.”
No, actually. It would be a straw man if, in an attempt to contest someone’s argument, a responder “attacks” the presenter’s argument by making it seem that his position(or argument for it)suffers from something, whatever claimed deficiency, but it in fact does not so suffer. In so doing, straw men divert the attention away from the main argument to something else that is irrelevant. Gas was right. You’re probably looking for like appeal to authority or something..
“What I like about blogs is generally the brevity of its action.”
‘Course clarity, focus, even to an extent, pedantry, are all on the side of truth. If brevity can function with these characteristics, so much the worse for longer posts.
But of course, if none of the above characteristics are realized in any form, then so much the worse for any posts.
b.
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Darryl,
Sure Steve can be right (and I think generally is on target) when it comes to subjective transformationalism. However, he makes only the slightest reference to what he terms objective-transformationalism in reference to Andrews post.
BTW, when did we Calvinists reject the second use of the law?
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B, in your convoluted defense of pedantry you failed to notice that Calvin doesn’t interpret the cosmological passages the way that your fellow transformers do. Does it make any difference to your quest for truth that a lot of exegetical weight may be leaning on passages that won’t support it?
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Andrew, since the Covenant of Works was made with all men (through Adam) and the Covenant of Grace applies to only some men (those in the last Adam), if the cultural mandate was part of the CofW then only God’s people are to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.
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Anybody got a DRC rulebook handy? What page dictates a comment has to address every jot and tittle of a post-proper again? I tend to do just that, but I have to concede a better anti-transformer will have to take that wheel. I am absoluetly no match for Andrew…but don’t take that to mean I am one iota convinced that he has anything correct.
My response was a deliberate, as has been called, “non-response.” I have attempted enough to go back and forth with Andrew, with relatively little satisfying results, to be honest. So, for kicks, I tried a response that simply took into consideration the evident assumptions and logical results of this horrid thing called transformationism.
And what I wanted to do was suggest some angles I see in transformationism in general and how they seem to share similar properties in American piety, namely the resistence to all things that fall under the category of death. And in American religion it translates into the need to swallow up unbelief and perpetuate creaturely comfort for believers, not through the categories of conversion (i.e. being born from above, you know, the model God seems to suggest), but through either objectivistic or subjectivistic might of men; one wants to attack from without, the other from within; they both want to eliminate believer discomfort and dis-ease. Unfortunately for both, no matter how hard they click their heels, the world is still the same when we open our eyes, and we still have to both deal with our world even when it doesn’t shake out they way we would like…we even have to still die.
Steve
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“Sure Steve can be right (and I think generally is on target) when it comes to subjective transformationalism. However, he makes only the slightest reference to what he terms objective-transformationalism in reference to Andrews post.”
GAS, I think that was simply because I was particularly interested in teasing out ST’ism at the time, sorry. Let’s see, references for OT’ism…think World Council of Churches, Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Sojourners/Red Letter Christians, National Ten Commandments Day. Think Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, James Dobson, James Kennedy, Jerry Falwell (insert remark here about the book of James’s call to action and the penchant for OT’ism to attract a lot Jim’s).
What I find also interesting is how the likes of Tim Keller, and even our own Andrew Matthews, lament phenomenon that comport under OT’ism. That is, they complain about things like the Moral majority or the so-called Religious Right. It is interesting because they don’t seem to recognize that they are different species of the same genus. But just like Emergent is just more Evangelicalism looking to counter Evangelicalism, more transformationism cannot really correct transformationism. It’s like wiping grease from your chin with a muddy hand.
Steve
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Just for the record, Steve, I do consider Dobson, Kennedy, Falwell & others on the Christian “right” to be co-belligerants with me in pursuit of a society that submits to God’s law. I view Sojourners and others on the Christian “left” as working from an even more flawed system (anabaptist heresy) than dispensationalism.
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Darryl, you write, “since the Covenant of Works was made with all men (through Adam) and the Covenant of Grace applies to only some men (those in the last Adam), if the cultural mandate was part of the CofW [Darry means “CoG” –AM] then only God’s people are to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.”
Well, the cultural mandate was always supposed to be carried out with respect to God’s glory. All law if not obeyed for the right motives is sin. Without faith it is impossible to please God. So…only believers can carry out the cultural mandate. Unbelievers don’t even try.
Sure, unbelievers marry and procreate, but this is for the sake of the elect, or put another way, God’s redemptive purposes.
Darryl, I don’t see how you can get around the fact that the cultural mandate was reaffirmed as part of the redemptive promises made after the Fall.
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Andrew, by this point in the blog, surely you can see “how I get around the fact that the cultural mandate was reaffirmed as part of the redemptive promises . . .” I don’t know how I could be clearer. You disagree, of course. But really, you don’t see how I separate the cultural mandate from redemption?
Let me try one more approach: the Westminster Divines do not regard the cultural mandate as part of redemption. Questions 21 to 38 of the Shorter Catechism teach about Christ’s work and the application of it by the Holy Spirit. There the cover effectual calling, justification, adoption, etc. I look in vain for anything that approximates the cultural mandate or its subsidiaries.
Why would the Divines be silent? It could be they ran out of time or room. It could also be that the saw how to distinguish between the perishable and imperishable.
If you think the Divines were wrong, Andrew, what revised questions do you propose adding to the Shorter Catechism?
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Andrew,
Yes, I would have predicted your co-belligerancy take. That makes sense to me. But, wanting to be as Presbyterian as I can, thanks for contributing to the spirit of “all things in a good a decent order” and making it a matter of record!
But I see no difference between the proverbial left and right, as they are called. They both play by the same rules. I don’t see how, depsite each’s absolute yet predictable conviction otherwise, one is righter than the other. Both are, as they say, out to lunch…and quite irrelevant to the Gospel and actually work against it. In fact, like Peter Berger famously said, “neither the left’s nor the right’s political agenda belongs in the pulpit, in the liturgy, or in any statements that claim to have the authority of the Gospel. Any cultural or political agenda is a manifestation of ‘works-righteousness’ and ipso facto an act of apostasy.” And to add a touch of shame, as Darryl responded once to that observation, Presbyterians shouldn’t need a Lutheran sociologist to tell them that.
Steve
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I took the liberty of moving Steve’s comment here under the appropriate discussion board.
stevez
July 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm e
“Well, the cultural mandate was always supposed to be carried out with respect to God’s glory. All law if not obeyed for the right motives is sin. Without faith it is impossible to please God. So…only believers can carry out the cultural mandate. Unbelievers don’t even try.â€
Andrew,
If this is true, what is it exactly that’s going on in the buzz of the world? If that’s not the quiet hum of persons trying to justify themselves or pathetically trying to yet graduate from the probationary period, what is it? What are unbelievers trying to do exactly? Is it arbitrary activity which has no meaning whatsoever?
And as long as Darryl wants to reference his WCF, if we are truly Reformed in the HB’s sense of a life of gratitude where true works are only done from faith (and even then horribly mixed up with sinful pride) as a pure response to God’s Gospel, how does that really jib with the cultural mandate’s inherent message to “do this and live� That is, one seems entirely backward looking and response-driven and based upon a work done entirely on our behalf by God alone and naturally promotes only thanks, while the other seems entirely forward looking, expecting reward based upon might (or its antithesis of punishment) promoting only self-glory.
Steve
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Just a quick reply to Steve’s challenges:
1) Find me an unbeliever who is trying to graduate from the probationary period by fulfilling the cultural mandate & I’ll reconsider my position. Are not unbelievers, rather, trying to live as if this world is all there is? Are they not trying as hard as they can to forget God and the thanks (for their creation) they owe him? They are seeking their own righteousness, that is, the rectitude of life that they have chosen for themselves as good. It is the pursuit of knowing in the sense of determining what is good and what is evil.
2) Scripture is clear that believers are to “lay up our treasures in heaven,” to run the race to attain the prize and to perservere and overcome to attain a crown of glory. I have been arguing that the cultural mandate has been incorporated into the economy of grace. Deal with the scriptural arguments please.
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Steve said,
“…more transformationism cannot really correct transformationism. It’s like wiping grease from your chin with a muddy hand.”
Non sequiter, Steve.
Perhaps the terminology of objective v. subjective is confusing the matter?
Since we are not speaking of sotriological matters I would suggest that a better way to differentiate is by corporate v. personal categories. It is also not surprising that the Arminians you listed would conflate the personal and corporate distinctions. Kennedy, as a minister of the gospel, should preach only the 1st and 3rd uses of the law, but if he is so concerned about the 2nd use he should step down from the pulpit and enter politics.
What concerns me about the Klinean model is that it appears to be a Reformed version of a baptistic/dispensational worldview at best and doectic at worst.
If we want to make it really interesting we should consider A.A. van Rulers thesis that politics is what Christianity is about.
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GAS writes: “Since we are not speaking of sotriological matters I would suggest that a better way to differentiate is by corporate v. personal categories.”
Hear, hear!
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Andrew,
(Thanks again for correcting my blogging blunder…)
1) Quite simply, no. From my POV man simply cannot get away from God and the natural programming God gave him. In an odd way, nobody is really “running away from God” no matter how popular such a sop-sentiment seems to be, which seems pretty clear from your words you have been hornswagled into believing. Rather, man is running *to God* (where else is there to go?), not on God’s terms (i.e. faith), but his own. That’s the difference. A bee can’t help but to make honey and man cannot help but to justify himself–he was made for it.
Show you an unbeliever who does this? I’ll do you one better: take your pick. And I don’t care how much he doth protest this to be the case.
2) Oh, Andrew, you poor dear.
GAS,
For my part, I think I will stick with the objective/subjective categories. (Ultimately, we are in fact speaking of soteriological matters. I am never quite sure why those categories get conveniently set aside or quarantined. It’s like the expositor who says, “I will now talk about love, so open your Bibles to Corinthians…next week we do theology and we will examine Romans.” This compartmentalizing seems odd. But no matter how far you want to get away from it you still have that category tied to your heel and whatever moves you make effect it.)
Maybe you want personal/corporate categories because you still are sympathetic to subjective transformationism(?). I don’t know, but it does seem that those who are exhausted by the burned-over effects of objective transformationism (like Keller is) offer up a kinder, gentler form which tends pretty heavily on things “personal.” Just read his little tract called “The Missional Church.†He’s had it with Christendom’s tactics. He’s burned out, but who isn’t? I think even Andrew shows his hand with this when he tells us he’s not so keen on the Religious Right, despite whatever admitted co-belligerency.
But what Keller offers up is still the idea that ours is to change the world. He’s still been bitten by the “salt and light†bug. We seem to do the world a favor by existing in our transformed selves, not by holding out the Gospel to sinners by and as fellow sinners. It’s very personal in this way. Eventually, because it’s all really the same, it will come to the end of its rope, just like conventional Christendom has, and be utterly burned over. It will look around and have very little to show for itself. Transformers might do well to observe Liberals, who have come to their own dead-end and are looking at each other in the midst of their own failed projects wondering what’s next. At least they are honest about their state right now. The title of ex-Liberal Thomas Oden’s “After Modernity, What?†seems to say it all.
Steve
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Bravo, Andrew. I think you have successfully shown me that a little Klineage is a dangerous thing. Perhaps better than a bifurcation of common and redemptive grace (or a simple dismissal of the distinction, which is no better) would be a renewed sense of “graduated holiness” a la the later chapters of Ezekiel. Scripture traces redemption, with varying degrees and kinds of implications for common human (and non-human) life.
In addition, I applaud Andrew for his rejection of the modern “empty sky”.
The language of “transformationalism” does not enlighten me. It reeks of a neo-Calvinism that I still think is full of flaws (including an undervaluation of the eschaton, which I don’t accuse Andrew of). But does anyone seriously intend to convey that godliness holds no promise for this life? That the church holds out no alternative way of family and sociality? That its witness to the life to come has no impact on this life?
I hear angry, defeated, defensive Calvinists. At a certain point we must give up arguing and start serving, leading the church from within to become a counterculture for the common good.
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Daniel,
A favorite prof of mine in college once described his relationship to his wife with hand gestures: with one he made the “come here” gesture and with the other he made the “go away” gesture.
From this defeated and defensive Calvinist’s view, it seems unclear to me how the language of transformationism and neo-Calvinism can be so odious to you when you seem to believe that the Gospel has “a direct and obvious bearing on this temporal life.” If so, what is so bad about these sorts of systems? I find nothing wrong with them, more or less, if such a view of the Gospel is assumed.
If you mean by “countercultural” the fact that the Gospel and its necessary consequence to produce covenant-keeping believers and is antithetical to absolutely every worldview conceivable, I agree. But if you simply mean it will produce a very particular worldview that looks oddly and suspiciously like any number of traditions of men, no. Those looking for worldviews ought to be monumentally frustrated when the Gospel is held out. For my own part, the life I lead as a believer versus the sort I did as a reared unbeliever is very much “counter.†But the fulcrum of that counter-ness is the Gospel, not how I raise my family or approach society (even as my approach to those things is different per my belief). This is why I say that while Christianity certainly and necessarily has a way of life resident within it, it is not at all a way of life (or worldview). To my mind, this is where the subtle yet vast difference seems to lie. The Gospel, as you suggest, does break into this life. But like Mandy Patinkin said, “You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.†I think when transformers hear that the Gospel has no direct bearing on this life they hear it said that it has no power or reality, etc. But that certainly is not what I mean by such a phrase; that would be absurdity. What I mean is that it absolutely does not serve any here and now interest of man or help him in his programming to satisfy the CoW. To suggest, as I contend that transformers do, that the Gospel lends us any measure of knowledge or ability to improve upon this life and gain any measure of reward (and necessarily punishment) is counter-Gospel. And with all due respect, I find it a bit dismissive to suggest that such difference of views ought to be dropped so we can get on with things, especially when your last line seems to more than imply that what we are getting onto is a transformationist agenda. It’s a bit like arguing Calvinism versus revivalism, where the latter tells us to just drop it so we can get on to the alter call or anxious bench. I’d be happy to move on, so long as we eliminate such activity as the bench. But my revivalist friend won’t have that…so we must go back to the theological drawing board since the non/action we are called to still demands definition and we are both very much opposed. How about we drop it and move on to holding out the Gospel instead of being a “counterculture for the common good”?
Steve
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Steve,
First, let’s agree on the spelling of “altar.” Okay, snide comments done.
When I said I didn’t find “transformationalism” enlightening I simply meant the term. I’m breaking into the middle of this discussion. Having given up on online conversation during the Secular Faith discussion.
Wouldn’t you agree, though, that the Gospel offers transformation: of individuals (partially and imperfectly now, fully and utterly in the eschaton) and the world (ditto)? The Gospel that I preach promises resurrection, not simply the intermediate state. I agree that the Gospel (which I assume you are referring to when you talk about “Christianity,” a fraught term itself) is not a worldview–at least it is not a “this-worldview”. It does involve a vision of the coming age, and ourselves within it. And Scripture gives us glimpses of what it means to live the eschaton before the eschaton, in places like Acts 2.
I am conservative enough to agree with T. S. Eliot that “there are no lost causes because there are no won causes,” and with the O’Donovans that society exists in the “bonds of imperfection”. I am also confident that the eschatological vision of the Gospel radically critiques the pretensions of every society and family, and that it gives it hints toward a chastened version of itself. Dualism in the guise of heavenly-mindedness bothers me: the idea that a living community that witnesses to the eschaton in the middle of this world’s fractured communities will not/should not/cannot affect those communities.
I also want to express huge support of Keller and others who point out that the Gospel has lost its credibility, comprehensibility, and plausibility in the West. I do not see in history of the ancient church our forefathers making it their priority to transform/bring under the kingship the institutions of society. Instead, they made sought to “do good to all men, and especially the household of faith”, so that in “the very thing in which they revile you” the pagans would give glory to God. An example: slavery. Many decry the early church’s failure to demand the abolition of slavery. This is a patronizing anachronism, and should embarrass those who say it aloud. But the church did not simply approve or ignore it: it understood that all human relations are (as Oliver O’Donovan puts it) “either community-building or exploitative” and they said so. In speaking the truth about human relations (which is the only proper power of the church in any age) they undermined the traditional and philosophical foundations of the institution. In the relevant passage in *The Ways of Judgment* O’Donovan goes on to say that it is the task of the church today to do the same with capitalism exchange-contract practices.
That kind of bringing the eschaton to bear on the the world through truth-telling seems exactly right to me. The Gospel is a message of judgment, decisively on the cross and finally in the parousia, as well as a message of grace. Keller makes a great point when he says that all theology must be an explication of the Gospel. O’Donovan has begun to do that in politics.
So, my thoughts for now. In retrospect it was a little silly to suggest on a blog that we stop arguing. It reflected my aforementioned disgust with the medium rather than a studied hippie sensibility.
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Daniel,
OK, then let’s agree that quotes go outside punctuation:”…is not a worldview–at least it is not a “this-worldviewâ€. goes to “…is not a worldview–at least it is not a “this-worldview.” My snide comments done now, too.
“Wouldn’t you agree, though, that the Gospel offers transformation: of individuals (partially and imperfectly now, fully and utterly in the eschaton) and the world (ditto)?”
Yes, but as I have said before, I think the language of transformation (as is used by Keller, for example) is simply different from the biblical language of sanctification. This seems close to the heart of these discussions, I think. The lingo of transformation seems to imply rather strongly that one can transcend his humanity. I don’t believe that is what sanctification means, especially when I read the Reformed forms that teach those things. When I listen to Keller (whom I use as a catch-all to represent the warp and woof of American Christian piety across all traditions) I hear the same sort of thing I hear when I listen to any host of popular psychologies that tell us we can have our best life now, that we don’t have to die, that we are somehow exempt from having to slog our way through this life the way “the others” do.
“Dualism in the guise of heavenly-mindedness bothers me: the idea that a living community that witnesses to the eschaton in the middle of this world’s fractured communities will not/should not/cannot affect those communities.”
It does. But, again, something quite distinct tells me that what it means as defined by the flesh and the Spirit are, again, just two wholly different things. The former seems to suggest, “I am going to make it all better.” The latter seems to suggest, “I am going to begin killing you now; it’s going to get worse before it gets better…so don’t go about promising you are going to clean up NYC.” Yes, there is an effect. To suggest otherwise seems absurd. I am just not convinced that effect is as promising and golden as someone like Keller seems to imply, which is to say, “when we are done with this project NYC will never be the same, be better, etc.”
Taken from this view, I think I can say that when I went from unbelief to belief, that is to say became a Christian, it “was the worst thing that ever happened to me.” That is not what I hear in Keller’s transformationism, or in crasser propserity gospels. What I hear is the opposite: “Believe and things will only get better…for you and the world around you.”
“I also want to express huge support of Keller and others who point out that the Gospel has lost its credibility, comprehensibility, and plausibility in the West.”
Mee, too. I just don’t think what he proposes as an alternative is really any different. He wants to exchange the crassness of an institutional “outside-in” transformationism with a kinder, gentler “inside-out” form. I am happy for the reprieve of being burned-over by the former. But kinder forms that tell us we can transcend our humanity are still not the Gospel and still have no grasp on biblical notions of sanctification.
Steve
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