October 8, 2015 Show with Dr. Nelson Kloosterman, Pastor Bill Shisko, and Pastor Brian Lee

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.
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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon
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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.
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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this eighth day of October 2015, and we've got a very exciting and controversial program today.
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We're going to be discussing the two kingdoms controversy and we're going to have a view from both sides.
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This is in order to promote the Semper Reformata 2015 conference at Preakness Valley United Reformed Church in Wayne, New Jersey, and we'll be giving you more details on how you can attend that conference during this broadcast, but we have three guests to discuss this program today, or to discuss this topic,
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I should say. We have Dr. Nelson Klosterman, who is no stranger to many of our listeners, especially if they happen to be theologically reformed.
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Dr. Nelson Klosterman was formerly on the faculty of the
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Mid -America Reform Seminary until his retirement there, and today he is currently the director of World View Resources International, and he is going to be starting off the program with an hour -long overview of the controversy.
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Later on in our second hour, we're going to have Pastor Bill Shishko, no stranger to the
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Iron Sharpens Iron audience either. Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square is starting off the second hour.
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For the first half of that hour, to oppose Two -Kingdom
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Theology, and then the last half hour of the program, we will have, for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Brian Lee of Christ Reformed Church in Washington, DC.
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He is affirming Two -Kingdom Theology, and Christ Reformed Church in Washington, DC is a congregation within the
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United Reformed Church of North America, and I am looking forward to this discussion with all of these men, and first of all, let me welcome you back for the first time in quite a while, my friend
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Dr. Nelson D. Klosterman. Thank you, Chris. It's good to be back. Yes, good to have you back, brother, and it was so wonderful to see you back about,
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I don't know, was it two years ago when you were in West Sayville at the West Sayville Reformed Bible Church for a conference?
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Yeah, I think it was about that. Yeah, it was so great to see you there, and I'm glad that you are back in the saddle on the
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Iron Sharpens Iron program. Tell our listeners something about Worldview Resources International.
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Well, it's an organization that I began about five years ago after I left teaching at Mid -America
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Reformed Seminary. I left in order to pursue a career change, different objectives and goals, and the
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Worldview Resources International is just simply an organization that offers resources principally through me, offers resources for people who are seeking to apply the
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Christian faith to areas of Christian living. The backbone of my work, however, involves translation from Dutch and Afrikaans to English.
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I am supported and I am equipped to be busy with a multi -volume commentary called
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Opening the Scriptures, which your listeners may want to look up on Amazon, Opening the Scriptures is the series, and we have about six or seven volumes out in print by now.
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In addition, I am participating in the Kuyper Translation Project involving works like Common Grace and Pro Rega, and a number of Bob Ink works, too.
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Herman Bob Ink was a contemporary of Abram Kuyper, both of whom lived in the late part of the 19th, early part of the 20th centuries, and in addition to that I do give consultation in areas of ethics and church polity, and I do quite a bit of preaching.
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And the website for that organization is worldviewresourcesinternational .com,
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worldview resources international .com, in case you want to write that down and look it up later.
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Well, it's great to have you back on the program, and you are yourself a member of the United Reformed Church of North America, are you not?
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No, I'm not. Oh, okay, for some reason I thought you were. I had been. I grew up in the
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Christian Reformed Church, and later left that denomination to participate in starting and guiding the
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United Reformed Churches. Okay. And in 2011, I affiliated with the
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PCA. Oh. I'm an assistant pastor in the PCA, and I belong to the
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Chicago Metro Presbytery. Well, well, there are, you can hear, if you listen very carefully, you can hear the sound of Dutch voices crying all over the world.
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Well, it's good to have you on the program. Now, first of all, please start off with a definition of this two -kingdom theology.
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You know, when I first started investigating evangelicalism as a young Catholic man, a nominal
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Catholic man, and I discovered the evangelical faith,
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I figured, well, we have it all figured out. I'm so glad that we are, that I am here in this wonderful group of folks called evangelicals.
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And then I discovered this thing called Reformed theology, and I, by God's mercy and grace, became a
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Reformed Christian, and I said, well, thanks be to God, I am in the Reformed camp of Christians, and I'm glad we have it all figured out.
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And then I became a Reformed Baptist, and thought we had it all figured out. And then I realized, man, everybody's got disagreements no matter where you go, and this is one that is a subject of hot debate amongst
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Reformed Christians. So tell us about this two -kingdom theology. Well, first of all,
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I need to be clear with you that this so -called two -kingdom theology, and I'm going to stop using the word so -called, because it has a pedigree that goes back to the
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Reformation, to Martin Luther and John Calvin, in a certain sense.
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However, what we have going on today is a variation, it's a variant of that two -kingdom theology that was taught and worked out by both
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Luther and Calvin, so that what you're hearing and reading today, you will not have read or heard at all in previous church history, except the term two kingdoms.
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So that people who hear the term think, oh, that's Luther, oh, that's Reformed social theory.
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But what we're hearing and reading today is not at all what the earlier Reformers taught.
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Let me explain. Briefly, the current 2K position alleges that there are two realms, or kingdoms, in the world.
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There's the world and there's the church, but each is governed by different sources.
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The world is governed by wisdom and natural law, and the church is governed by the scripture and the gospel.
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So already you've heard law versus gospel, which in the
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Reformers' mouths was a distinction, note the careful word distinction, not separation, distinction in the doctrine of justification.
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But now it's being brought to bear, not only hermeneutically on all of scripture, but theologically in terms of a doctrinal, social, ethical set of ideas.
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So that's the first thing, two realms or kingdoms, with each with a different source of governance.
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Okay, here's the second thing. Because the world is governed by natural law, there is no such thing as a
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Christian worldview that can direct all of life or be applied to all of life.
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My reading and my writing on this subject has led me to see that the word
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Christian as an adjective, on the lips and from the pens of advocates of two -kingdom theology, can apply only, exclusively, strictly to the church, not even to family.
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I once asked a proponent, an advocate, a very prominent, central, proponent, whether his marriage was a
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Christian marriage. And his answer was, both I and my wife are members in good standing of such -and -such a church.
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That was his answer. So the second observation is that there is not merely a distinction between these two realms or kingdoms.
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We all agree on that, by the way, Chris, we need to underscore that. We all agree on the existence of natural law, we all agree on the existence of two kingdoms, but the advocates of today's view practice and proclaim a separation of these two realms.
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And thirdly then, this is the enemy, the nemesis, against which the current two kingdoms theology is being erected, and that is so -called transformationalism.
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And some of this, not all of it, but some of it stems from neo -Calvinism, from Abraham Kuyper, and from their attempts and efforts to bring the gospel to bear on structures and relationships and realities beyond the church in the public square.
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The problem is that if you hear the critics, if you hear the two kingdom critics of neo -Calvinism, and that's really where the battle lies, they impute, they allege, they claim that all neo -Calvinists, all
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Kuyperians, and anybody who wants to bring the gospel to bear on public life is seeking to transform culture.
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And the Bible nowhere tells us to do that, the Bible nowhere encourages or even countenances that Christians ought so to live and so to to look forward.
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So that's the brief statement of the current two kingdoms view.
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So in other words, those who are supporting the new version of a two -kingdom theology would be far less to be known for involvement in politics and things like that?
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Oh absolutely, yeah. And does this controversy have any resemblance to the lordship salvation controversy that erupted, well at least it was magnified in its awareness, public awareness, in the 1980s when
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John MacArthur wrote the Gospel According to Jesus. Is there any similarity between that and this controversy?
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Well I think there is, I think there are points of contact, and without being altogether versed in that lordship controversy,
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I think I know enough about it to be able to identify these points of contact, and they are some things like the following.
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The advocates of today's two kingdom view do not like, they do not endorse strong appeals to the lordship of Jesus Christ over all of life, or the call to summons from pulpits, in Bible studies, in writings, etc.,
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appeals and summons to new obedience, to obedience that takes shape, and even communal shape, in the public square.
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Now, there are those, and now I'm wandering the field here from your question, it seems to me that the lordship controversy involves the range, the scope, and the significance of Christ's lordship over history and over personal history as well as cosmic history.
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So I'll leave it at that. Right, and of course John MacArthur's church, though what confuses the issue when you compare the two,
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Grace Community Church is well known for not desiring the church to be involved in politics.
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They applaud individual members of churches and Christians, but not the church to be involved.
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Well that's the case also with two kingdom advocates. They encourage individuals to be involved, but one of the advocates of the current view wrote a book entitled
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Secular Faith, a secular faith, and in that book, his name is
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Daryl Hart, he recommended that we live in this world as hyphenated
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Christians. That is to say, our Christianity represents a foot in one kingdom, one area.
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Our citizenship, our being teachers, our being scientists, our being politicians represents another foot in a second kingdom, and these are two separate feet.
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You cannot do, and this is from their own writing, their own words, you cannot do education Christianly.
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Listen to the adverb, Christianly. You cannot do politics Christianly, and therefore they wish to, like the example you were describing, keep the church absolutely unentangled, disentangled from any and all politics, statements, political statements, political communication, and political preaching of any sort.
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The reason I said that it led to some of the confusion when comparing the two is that although Dr.
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MacArthur would be on the side of avoiding church participation in politics, he was heavy on the side in favor of the
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Lordship of Christ. That's what I meant by there being a little bit of confusion there when we compare the two.
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Yeah. But is this primarily this two -kingdom controversy? Is it primarily a controversy amongst
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Pato Baptist denominations and Christians? I mean, first of all, I know that Reformed Baptists, we have no controversies or divisions.
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That I say with a big tongue -in -cheek there. But is this primarily a
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Pato Baptist argument? Well, I don't know that it's Pato Baptist as much as it is micro -Reformed, micro -Presbyterian.
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Mm -hmm. Yes, I didn't mean that it was related to the ordinance of baptism. I meant as far as those who are involved in the controversy.
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Like, for instance, do you know new two -kingdom theology advocates that are
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Baptists? No, I don't. Okay. There must be some, but I don't know who they are.
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So you say that the two -kingdom concept of theology is traced all the way back to the
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Reformation. Who would be those who you would highlight as bringing about this new understanding of it that is involved in this debate that we're having today, which is not actually a formal debate because the two opposite sides or those who represent the opposite sides during our second hour aren't actually interacting with each other.
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But as far as the presentations are concerned, they will be in opposition to one another.
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Who are the fathers of this movement, if you will?
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Well, I can point our listeners to a book that has set—two books, really—that set out the identity and the writings and analyzed theology of these people, and those books are
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John Frame's book on Escondido theology, because he's referring there to Westminster Seminary in California, in Escondido, California, which has really narrowed its focus as a seminary in its public face, public identity, public representatives, narrowed its focus to this particular narrow emphasis and novel reconfiguration of not just two kingdoms, but it involves an entire set of dualities and dualism that Escondido has come out to defend in terms of not distinctions now, but separation.
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And John Frame's book Escondido Theology is a good primer introduction to that movement.
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The other book that sets out and identifies the advocates is called
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Kingdoms Apart, Engaging the Two Kingdoms' Perspective, and this is edited by Ryan McIlhenny, and it's a
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PNR, or Presbyterian and Reform, publication. Now, the names associated are principally
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David Van Drunen, professor of ethics at Westminster Seminary, California.
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He's written a number of books on this subject, and I have interacted with his writings in print very, very extensively, and another writer and leader in this movement is
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Gerald Hart, whom I've already mentioned. His book is Secular Faith, which book I have reviewed as well in print, and a third is
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Michael Horton. Michael Horton, as being the third, is perhaps the least clear, the most ambiguous, and because of the ambiguity, perhaps the most troubling in terms of his lack of clarity on issues like what used to be called and talked about before June 26, 2015, as homosexual civil unions.
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After June 26, we're no longer talking about that, but such a thing was seen as tolerable, permissible by Michael Horton, and it was in a quote of something that he had penned in a blog, and I think that the quote has been removed from the
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Internet. However, those are the main players. There are others, of course, who have variations.
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The problem has become, as so often happens in trying to offer reasonable, plausible, and responsible criticism of this, that the advocates will often say, well,
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I don't believe that, so it doesn't affect me or apply to me, so that it's a multifaceted, multifaced defense.
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That's why those who put things in books are considered to be, I think rightfully, advocates of this view, as opposed, say, to bloggers or people who throw things on Facebook.
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And perhaps we'll have Dr. Horton on one day to respond in his own words.
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He has been a guest on here, and obviously, in many ways, has been a wonderful contribution to the theological discussion on many things.
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But the issue that you just mentioned, just to make things a little clearer here, and I'm not saying that I'm in favor of viewing same -sex unions, marriages, or whatever you want to call them, in a neutral way.
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I'm vehemently opposed to them. But was it that the New Two Kingdom view that would support that kind of thing?
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Is this just saying that they support it as something that can legally occur in a free society, or are they loosening the fact that this is a damning behavior, a wicked and damning behavior?
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Well, the latter emphasis in my reading is nowhere present in their writings.
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Let me clarify something on this, because this is a point that is resolutely and vigorously resisted and opposed by these individuals with respect to this particular issue.
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Some of your listeners may, once upon a time, have heard of a minister in the
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OPC by the name of Lee Irons. And he was, for a number of reasons, theological.
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He was deposed. He is now, I believe, a minister in the PCA. His wife, her name is
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Misty Irons, and she has blogged and she has written columns online.
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And she is one who used the Bible to defend the permissibility of and the civic plausibility and permissibility of homosexual civil unions.
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She used a hermeneutic. She used a hermeneutic. It is an approach to the Bible that I believe needs to be raised and challenged.
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And I have invited a number of times advocates of two kingdoms to tell us, to tell not me, tell the church, how their hermeneutic, how their use of the
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Bible differs from that of Misty Irons. I am met with two responses. The first response is outrage, that I would dare be a fear mongerer by connecting this new 2k view with a hermeneutic that is as objectionable and a conclusion that is as objectionable as that of Misty Irons.
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How would I dare to connect those two? And the second response is silence. So you're saying this is different from, for an example, there are conservative
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Christian libertarians who believe that homosexuality is straight from the pit of hell, to use the most extreme label for it, and yet they would say that the government has no business in people's marriages anyway.
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So would it be similar to that or are they actually, I'm just trying to have it reclarified, are they actually softening the concept that this is a damnable and unnatural and abominable behavior?
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Now you've raised a very good question. Now listen carefully to my answer. I would not allege that the
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Two Kingdom Advocates today would deny that homosexuality is abomination and from the pit of hell.
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Here's the problem. They refuse to declare such a truth outside, beyond the institutional church.
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However, the conclusion, some of them are libertarians, in the sense that they want the government to stay out of the question entirely.
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But remember you had two parts to your question. Yes. Homosexuality is sinful and abomination.
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The other part is civil unions. And I'm suggesting that the real emphasis with regard to today's two kingdom is that we may talk to each other as Christians in the church about this, but we should not organize, we should not recommend policy, and if I'm a
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Christian politician in Washington or in Indianapolis, I live in Indiana, when
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I speak against homosexual civil unions or marriages or anything like that,
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I am not allowed, it is not recommended, that I bring in the Bible. Wow.
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Wow. Now, like many things, like as we are discussing this, all of these participants that we're addressing are
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Calvinists, and there are many different kinds of Calvinists. Are there many different kinds of new two kingdom proponents?
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Well yes, there are, because you have those who, again, stand in the classic historic line of John Calvin and Martin Luther, who do wish to see that God rules the world, that is, he rules the state, he rules the civil society, he rules humanity in a way different than he rules the church.
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I believe that, I subscribe to that, I hold to that, and so there are people who are,
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I call myself a two kingdom person, but not this way. Now, could a lot of this be a reaction to the politicized gospel that has come about?
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You and I have seen in our lifetime the ecumenical movement, which was at one time the sole property of liberalism, now we see ecumenicalism being rampant in conservative churches who are viewing their own social gospel issues as being just as important sometimes, and sometimes even more important than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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In other words, there are Christians who have Christianized Roman Catholics and Mormons, and who view all sorts of people who are not truly heirs of the
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Reformation, if you will, they will view them as brothers and sisters because they are pro -life and they are against same -sex marriage.
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Could this two kingdom or this new version of two kingdom theology be a reaction to that?
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Yes, absolutely, I believe it is. I believe that, well, let me just identify with you a number of areas of agreement, and you're speaking of one of those areas of agreement that I call the sociopolitical hijacking of the church.
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Now, could we pick up on that when we come up back from the break because we have to go to a station break? Yeah, you bet, sure. Okay, great, we're gonna go to a station break right now, and don't go away, we'll be right back with Dr.
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Nelson Klosterman and his overview of the two kingdom theology controversy. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, give yourself unto reading.
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Welcome back. If you've just tuned us in, we are discussing the new two -kingdom theology controversy, and right now we have in our program to give an overview, and he will continue to do so for the remaining half hour, is
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Dr. Nelson Klosterman, and after Dr. Klosterman is through giving an overview, we're going to be welcoming
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Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Franklin Square, New York, who is in opposition to the new two -kingdom theology view, followed by Brian Lee for the last half hour, who is the pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Washington DC.
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He is going to be affirming the new two -kingdom theology view. If you have any questions of your own that you'd like to join us on the air with our number, or should
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I say our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.
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And if you could pick up right where you left off, Pastor Klosterman, Dr. Klosterman, I'm sorry. Well, we were talking about the apparent, not apparent, the real hijacking of the
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Church for political and social agenda items, and let me make two comments.
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First of all, you asked if the current two kingdoms movement was in opposition to such politicization of the
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Church. My answer flat -out is yes, it is, and I agree with them about the social -political hijacking of the
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Church. And by the way, your listeners need to understand that this hijacking occurs on both the right and the left.
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Okay? Number two, the opposition registered now by the current two kingdoms thinkers is also in the face of what has grown to be what
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I call trench ecumenism, ecumenism in the trenches, which says if we cannot get along in Church, at least we can hold hands in opposition to abortion, in opposition to other current immoral, political, and cultural, and social realities.
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And people are finding brothers and sisters across doctrinal divides and across denominational divides, finding them right alongside them in the trenches of public, what
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I call the public expression and application of Christian principles. So when this occurs,
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I don't know if you were in favor of that or not, but there is a,
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I would assume in your mind, a difference between the type of co -belligerence that occurs when a evangelical votes for a
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Roman Catholic or a Mormon and so on, or a Jew or somebody else, but there's a difference between that and having an ecumenical relationship with them and considering them brothers and having worship services together, having people who deny
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Christ leading in prayer and that kind of a thing. I agree with you about that, and I think the key word in your comment or question is the word co -belligerence.
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I believe very firmly that as Christians we need to develop a theory or a theology of co -belligerence.
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And of course, if we're going to walk on this pathway, you and I and others are going to join us, then we're going to have to make some important distinctions.
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And these distinctions, for example, are between the core of the
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Christian faith, the confessions involved in our tradition, the dogma that are taught as Reformed or Presbyterian theology.
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Here's a big word coming, the theologoumena, that is theological opinions that are shared but differing among Reformed and Presbyterian, and the varia.
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Let me give your listeners what I think is a helpful analogy. Think of six buckets, each of different colors.
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I've written on this, incidentally, in my blog about a year or two years ago. People who are interested can look at it.
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It's Cosmic Eye or Worldview Resources International, and you can catch my blog on that website.
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But here's the thing. You've got five or six buckets. You label them each core. Number two, confessions.
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Number three, dogma. Number four, theological opinion. Number five, the garbage can category, varia.
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Let me ask you this question, Chris. You don't need to answer this if you're uncomfortable, but is it required in order to be saved, in order to get to heaven and see
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Jesus and enjoy eternal life, that one believe the doctrine of either infant baptism or adult baptism?
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I would not believe that that is required. Okay, so that's not a core doctrine.
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No. The deity of Jesus Christ, is that a core doctrine? Yes. All right.
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How about whether you are a four -point or a five -point Calvinist? Oh, all four -point
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Calvinists are definitely locked out of heaven as far as I'm concerned. I'm just kidding, just kidding, just kidding.
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All right. Well, even this discussion about two kingdoms, I think we need to distinguish here between dogma and theological opinion.
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Again, that's a big word. Dogma is that which must be taught or believed.
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Theologoumena are theological opinions. I put this discussion clearly in the basket of theologoumena.
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I do not disenfranchise, I do not excommunicate my brothers with whom I disagree on this.
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I think they are profoundly mistaken, they are deeply mistaken, and their mistake is not just about the relationship of the
39:30
Bible to public life. Their relationship is about the law and the gospel, creation and redemption, natural law and scripture.
39:38
And between each of those categories, they place a solid line.
39:44
There's a division, there's a separation between law and gospel, world and church, creation and redemption.
39:51
Not for me. For me, there's a hyphen or there is a dotted line showing that there is a relationship between the two.
39:59
Now let's get back to cobelligerence. You see, I can call a
40:04
Roman Catholic who confesses the blood atonement of Jesus Christ and confesses salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, despite whatever the
40:17
Roman Catholic Church teaches, I can acknowledge that person as a brother or sister in Jesus Christ.
40:23
That does not mean, therefore, that we're going to sit together in church on Sunday, or that we're going to go to the table together.
40:30
But it does mean that we can work together as Christians in a Christian organization, already
40:36
I'm violating the protocols of two kingdom thinkers, in a Christian organization that advocates for pro -life.
40:44
Now that's interesting because this would obviously bring up a whole other can of worms for another program, but you would call a
40:51
Roman Catholic who believes or affirms the Council of Trent's anathemas against justification by faith alone, you would confirm a
41:01
Catholic such as that as a brother in Christ? That's not what I said. Okay.
41:08
What I said was a person who acknowledges that they are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as being a brother or sister.
41:24
Right. That they would be Catholic in name only, or Roman Catholic in name only then, if they had that faith.
41:32
And they would be either unenlightened, yeah, in essence my answer is yes, they would be unenlightened, uninformed, etc.
41:39
Right. I know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a neo -orthodox person and he had some, you know, very strange theological views, but can someone compare rightly the confessing movement that he was a part of in Nazi Germany, where he was opposing what was happening around them in Germany, the persecution of the
42:02
Jews and other non -Aryan peoples and those who didn't support
42:08
Hitler's cause? Could that be rightly compared to what is viewed as the difference between involvement and non -involvement in the public square with this controversy?
42:20
Absolutely yes. I am, as a modest student of history,
42:28
I am deeply troubled by many of the similarities that I see between the 1930s in Europe, Germany, and today with respect to government policies and with respect to Christian responses to them.
42:45
And the Dietrich Bonhoeffer illustration that you gave is an illustration of cross or trans -denominational engagement with what was obviously an abomination and an evil.
43:01
So obvious was it to him and to others, here comes a little Dutch history, that in 1936 the
43:09
Senate of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands took a decision officially that forbade membership in the
43:17
Nazi Party while being a church member. They viewed those two as incompatible. Well, that warms my heart because I come from a tradition of resistors to Nazism in the
43:31
Netherlands. My family, my ancestors belonged to the Dutch underground. Now, in the
43:39
Netherlands in those days, contrary to Bonhoeffer, you had a lot of German Christians who were saying, well, it's not ours to oppose the government, it's not ours to cause rebellion and stand up in the name of Jesus Christ and in the name of righteousness and justice and truth, it's not our calling.
43:58
And they had their compatriots in the Netherlands too, which is why this war split the middle.
44:04
It split right down the middle in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. I just want to make sure that I announce this conference before time runs out and I forget about it.
44:17
This conference that we are discussing, which is addressing the Two Kingdoms theology controversy, that's the
44:25
Semper Reformata 2015 conference at Preakness Valley United Reformed Church in Wayne, New Jersey.
44:34
That's going to be held October 13th from 1 p .m. to 9 p .m., eight hours.
44:41
I'm sure there's meals involved, at least I'm hoping there is. And for more information on this conference, go to the
44:49
Preakness Valley United Reformed Church website and that is PreaknessValleyURC .org.
44:57
Preakness Valley, which is spelled P as in Peter, R -E -A -K -N as in Nancy, E as in Sam, S as in Sam, ValleyURC .org.
45:10
And we'll hopefully repeat that again before the end of the broadcast today.
45:16
And so, you know, a lot of people I know for a fact, because I hear from these people, that are typically not
45:24
Reformed Christians. They're typically mainstream evangelicals. They might even be moderate
45:31
Roman Catholics who laugh at me sometimes when they hear about a show that I conducted and they'll say, are you kidding me?
45:39
You're actually talking about such minutiae and such, you know, you're counting the number of angels who can dance on a head of a pin while there are babies being murdered by the millions in abortion mills and all these other horrific things.
45:57
Muslim terrorism is happening around the world. And you're talking about these kinds of things.
46:02
How do you respond to that kind of a comment? Well, that kind of comment is aimed in part at what we've been talking about for the last 45 minutes and whether or not a person like me should have been involved for the past five years reading, writing, speaking, and debating on this issue.
46:24
For me, the question really boils down to one of the authority of Jesus Christ, the authority of the
46:31
Bible, and the authority of the gospel. And if all of these authorities, and they're not mutually exclusive,
46:39
I simply distinguished them, if these authorities are valid and operative only, only in the institutional church, then
46:50
I need to keep writing and talking. So yes, these are worth talking about, because the ultimate, the ultimate consequence of this theology is moral and spiritual paralysis, isolation, and cutting short, short -circuiting, short -shrifting the extent of the gospel.
47:16
There's something very, very important at stake here, and it involves the relationship between creation and redemption.
47:22
And we have clearly different views on this. I happen to believe that there is going to be more continuity in the new creation purged of sin, purged of suffering, redeemed in Jesus Christ, there's going to be more continuity between now and then, which part of which, incidentally
47:41
Chris, is embodied and embedded in the notion of reward, that God is going to reward our works purely out of grace, which means that when we get to heaven, so to speak, when the new heavens and the new earth dawn, the
47:58
Lord is going to have a memory of what I did in this life, not to condemn me, but rather to reward me out of grace.
48:07
Our opponents view that this creation of this world and its culture and its structures and its products are going to be burned up in a cosmic conflagration, and that there is nothing from this world, and therefore it's only temporal, it's only passing, and it's a sinking ship.
48:28
So here's your version, if you need one, of Reformed Dispensationalism. Now, how do you react to a theonomist who is listening and they will say,
48:40
Dr. Nelson Klosserman is a theonomist and he doesn't even realize it. How do you respond to that?
48:51
That's an excellent question, Chris. Before I got entangled and involved in this discussion, and have been for now five plus years, when
48:59
I taught at seminary, I taught ethics, I was engaged for more than five years internationally in evaluating and assessing and lecturing about theonomy.
49:08
I am not a theonomist in the sense advocated by my good friend, now deceased,
49:16
Dr. Greg Thonson. My difference is hermeneutical. My difference, and I'll just cut to the chase here,
49:24
I believe that the principles of the Old Testament law are valid for us to consider and apply under the guidance of wisdom in the public square.
49:38
When I talked with Greg Thonson about these things, his main thesis, if you recall, was that the law of God is abiding in exhaustive detail unless, and his unlesses became more numerous, and he had to write several books to clarify all his exceptions, where finally we came down on the same side.
50:02
And I would say, and I did say to him, why didn't you say this at the outset? You know?
50:07
So I think people who, many theonomists do not understand even what
50:13
Greg Thonson wrote in some of his later books, later writings, and I just think that the label and the many, many of the ideas associated with theonomy are unhelpful.
50:30
However, I think there's a middle way then between theonomy, as we understand that, and two kingdoms.
50:39
By the way, two kingdoms proponents are very fond, very fond of Meredith Klein.
50:45
And Meredith Klein wrote, made his big splash, several of his big splashes, but one of his big splashes in opposing vigorously and vehemently
50:57
Greg Thonson and theonomy. And it's my judgment that this discussion, this debate is still ongoing, but now
51:03
Meredith Klein's heirs, his disciples, have picked up this two kingdoms theology and are continuing to run with it against theonomists and all they call theonomists, including, incidentally, neo -Calvinists.
51:18
They use that brush to paint neo -Calvinists, which is ludicrous, because neo -Calvinists are not theonomists in that Bonthenian understanding.
51:28
I think there's a third way. And the third way has two concepts.
51:34
Number one, the Church's organism, which is a concept that Kuyper and Bobbink both used and taught with great effect that Christians outside the institutional church can, should, may organize communally to provide a communal witness in the areas of education, economics, politics, etc.
51:56
And secondly, here's a hermeneutical third way, that we need, the option is not do we use the
52:02
Bible or don't we use the Bible in the public square? The point is that we use the principles of the
52:10
Scriptures, guided and informed by wisdom, and there's a situational component to wisdom.
52:18
And I think that's not emphasized enough and it's not illuminated enough. You have about five minutes to really unburden your heart and really finalize your summary of this discussion today.
52:31
Well, let me summarize it and give you my burden this way.
52:45
I believe that today's two kingdom advocates have some legitimate concerns.
52:52
Particularly they're concerned, as I am, that the mission and witness of the Church should not be hijacked by political and cultural agendas.
53:02
We share that. But in this instance, a cure that they're providing is worse than a disease.
53:12
Two kingdom theology today may well scratch the itch of Christians who need a theological excuse to remain silent in current cultural conflicts.
53:25
But, in my opinion, it's less than biblical and less than faithful to the decided weight of the
53:32
Reformed tradition. John Calvin would be spinning, he probably is spinning in his grave, if you study his work in Geneva, if you read his sermons on Deuteronomy, if you carefully read his
53:48
Institutes where he talks about this subject, John Calvin would be spinning in his grave with the claims now being made that, for example, in public life, that includes education, that includes politics, that includes economics, it even includes, because they're not clear on this, it includes family.
54:09
That out there, what obtains by way of authority is not the Bible, but natural law.
54:16
When I was laboring as a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church, I received my scars in dealing with and debating on issues of biblical authority, relating to women's ordination, relating to theistic evolution, and other things.
54:36
Little did I know that 30 years later, the attacks against scriptural authority would come not from the left, but from the right.
54:47
And I am very concerned when I hear people claim that what is being promoted by today's two kingdom theologians is, number one, classic, traditional, confessional,
55:01
Reformed theology, such that anyone who disagrees with them and who does not share their views is a suspect, is discredited, loudly mocked.
55:15
I think that there's particularly one individual whose principal tool online is the use of sarcasm.
55:26
That bothers me. It bothers me because I don't think that that really is effective, nor is it the style of Christ, and that's really what gets this debate for the
55:37
Millennials and for younger people. It turns them off to this kind of debate with that kind of weaponry, with that kind of attitude.
55:44
I'm willing to discuss and engage and sharply and confront what I think are the implications of this stuff, but I do believe that Rome is burning, and I do believe that we need to put this behind us, get this behind us, but we cannot, within the micro -reformed world, if you read
56:08
John Frame, then I think the heart string, your heart strings will be pulled and will be wounded because of the kinds of abuse that he testifies about in his book, and that is where I see the greatest damage, among other things, being done.
56:28
When you were speaking about Calvin spinning in his grave, are the proponents of the two -kingdom theology, the proponents,
56:38
I have to emphasize, are they claiming that Calvin would be in their camp if he were alive?
56:44
Oh yes. Now that seems to be quite ironic because you and I would even think that he went too far the other way.
56:52
I mean, he agreed to the execution of Michael Servius, didn't he? Well, of course, these are embarrassments.
57:01
Potentially, I'm not quite as embarrassed as others are with regard to that story, but there are embarrassments both in Luther's behavior and Calvin's behavior with regard to their own views and practice and implementation of two kingdoms.
57:19
But today, given our cultural situation, I cannot imagine that Calvin's pulpit would be silent, both in condemning the evils, that's one thing, and by the way,
57:32
I want your listeners to catch this, the gospel has a first word and a second word, and we as Christians are very good at giving only the first word, and Calvin's pulpit would have said, no, this is wrong,
57:46
God dislikes this. That's where we are good at, but the second word we have to say is, yes, here's the gospel's answer.
57:55
You go out there as Christians, you organize if you must, if you can, and you witness, you live, you produce the culture that's born of the gospel in these areas and in response to these evils.
58:08
Yes, when I brought up Calvin and Servius, I was speaking of that as a polar opposite to what the new two -kingdom theory would be, that's why.
58:19
Well, I want to thank you so much for being on the program today, especially since it was such late notice.
58:24
I look forward to having you back, and could you repeat your website once again for our listeners?
58:33
Worldviewresourcesinternational, all one word, dot com. Great, we're definitely going to be having you back,
58:40
God willing, of course. In the near future, Dr. Klosterman, I always love having you on, you're always so well -informed, and there's never a dull moment when you're on the program, and I thoroughly enjoy our discussions, and I look forward to having you back soon.
58:55
Well, I'm glad that you didn't fall asleep. And we're gonna be right back after these messages with Bill Shishko of the
59:02
Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, New York, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
59:12
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, and if you happen to be writing a question, please give your first name, your city and state, and the country where you reside if you're living outside of the
59:25
USA. We'll be right back after this very brief station break, so don't go away. Are you a
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That's the Thriven story. Welcome back.
01:00:35
This is Chris Arns, and if you've just tuned us in, we have been discussing the new Two Kingdom theology controversy.
01:00:43
For the last hour, we have had Dr. Nelson Klosterman on, giving us an overview of the controversy, and it was obvious which side of the controversy
01:00:55
Dr. Klosterman was siding on. And right now, we are joined with someone who is joined by someone who is no stranger to Iron Trump and Zion's audience,
01:01:07
Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York, and he is going to be sharing for the next half hour why he is opposed to this new understanding of Two Kingdom theology.
01:01:20
It's my honor and privilege to have you back on Iron Trump and Zion, Pastor Bill Shishko. Hey Chris, good to be back with you.
01:01:27
Your program's great. I enjoyed listening to a part of my dear brother Nelson Klosterman's presentation in the last hour.
01:01:34
Good material. Yeah, well I'm glad that you listened, and I'm glad that you could be even more. I'm glad that you could be a part of the discussion.
01:01:40
Very briefly, let our listeners know something about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Franklin Square, Long Island, New York.
01:01:46
We're part of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, formed in 1936 as a result of the so -called fundamentalist modernist controversy.
01:01:56
We were led, thankfully, by Dr. J. Gressa Machen and his defense of historic Christianity over against doctrinal liberalism.
01:02:04
And in Franklin Square, I have been with the church, has been there since 1939. I'm now in my 34 and a half, 34 and one half year of ministry in Franklin Square.
01:02:14
We're just about three miles outside of Queens, and would love to have any of your visitors in the area come and visit us sometime.
01:02:20
And the website there? Well, it's in process of being redone, Chris. It's www .opcfranklinsquare
01:02:29
.org, but I think maybe the next time I'm on the program I can give you more information. We're under construction right now.
01:02:36
I should say, well, maybe I shouldn't use the word reconstruction. The site's being redone right now.
01:02:46
Hey, I'm anxious to get to this topic. Yes, well, if you could start with a summary of what you plan on discussing for the next half hour, perhaps some people have just tuned in.
01:03:00
Yeah, well, let me give some background on this, and I'm not necessarily repeating some of what
01:03:05
Dr. Klosterman dealt with, but I realize, too, you may have a different group of listeners. Two Kingdoms theology is basically the outgrowth, as Dr.
01:03:16
Klosterman pointed out, of the work of Meredith Klein, who was a theologian of the latter part of the 20th century.
01:03:25
Dr. Klein, or as many good things that he did, really, really redid some of the historic
01:03:35
Reformed understanding of the Covenants. For example, seeing the Mosaic Covenant as a republication of the
01:03:43
Covenant of Works, and particularly in his opening up in seminal form, the idea that the
01:03:51
Noahic Covenant, the covenant made with Noah following the Flood, is something that just deals with a common sphere, a sphere that doesn't have to do with redemption.
01:04:03
And that, again, kind of seed idea in Dr. Klein has been developed, by and large, through people coming out of Westminster Seminary, California.
01:04:13
They have kind of taken up the Meredith Klein mantle when it comes to propagating the view that the
01:04:19
Mosaic Covenant is a republication of the Covenant of Works, which I know is not the topic of the program, but that's a view that's not presented in any of the historic
01:04:28
Reformed confessions. And then, today, the so -called Two Kingdoms theology, which is basically the idea that there is this common kingdom, or a common sphere that we would think of as state and culture, and then there is a spiritual, supernatural kingdom that, basically, you identify with the
01:04:50
Church. That's kind of oversimplifying it, but that's basically where they're coming from, and I think it is good for your listeners to have just some idea of the history of this.
01:05:02
Back in 2009, at least popular history, there was a book published by a
01:05:08
Westminster, Southern California graduate, Jason Stellman, called Dual Citizens, Worship and Life Between the
01:05:15
Already and the Not Yet. Forward was by Michael Horton, who's a professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster, Southern California.
01:05:24
And Jason Stellman put out, in a very popular way, the outworkings of the so -called
01:05:30
Two Kingdoms theology, and that did become something of an embarrassment, when not long after the book came out,
01:05:38
Jason Stellman became a Roman Catholic. That's an interesting story in itself that I don't want to go into.
01:05:46
Personally, I think there is a relationship between the Two Kingdoms theology and that development in Jason Stellman, but that's for another day.
01:05:56
About a year later, in 2010, I guess it was, there was the publication by Dr.
01:06:05
David van Droenen, who is a very dear friend, another Orthodox Presbyterian minister who teaches at Westminster, Southern California.
01:06:15
Dr. van Droenen came out with what I found actually is a very helpful book in many ways, Living in God's Two Kingdoms, a biblical vision for Christianity and culture.
01:06:27
And I think, this is my read on this, Chris, I think that Dr. van Droenen was trying to correct misconceptions people had.
01:06:37
I think he was trying to do more, actually, give a biblical basis for the Two Kingdoms theology, and so forth.
01:06:44
And I'll come back to that a little bit later. I found especially at the end of the book his treatment of vocation or calling in life, the political realm and education, to be really quite helpful in many ways, although I still have major disagreements with the overall approach of the book.
01:07:03
Now, most recently he's published kind of a magnum opus, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, that was published in 2014,
01:07:11
A Biblical Theology of Natural Law. I've not read all of it, I've poked through parts of it, but that would be something of a development of his viewpoints.
01:07:21
Let me, if you don't mind, let me just give you my little input on why this
01:07:27
Two Kingdoms theology is being propagated, and then give you some of my pastoral response.
01:07:33
Excellent, excellent. Dr. van Droenen, in particular, was brought up in the
01:07:38
Christian Reformed churches under the influence of what's popularly called transformationalism.
01:07:46
And it's boldest expressions. It speaks of redeeming culture.
01:07:53
The proponents of transformationalism will speak of redeeming business, redeeming the arts, redeeming dance, and so on.
01:08:00
And there is, depending on the writer, there is a strong continuity between what is done in this age and in the age to come.
01:08:11
And it does lead very, very much toward, in my opinion anyway, a form of the social gospel, in which gospel is bringing
01:08:21
Christian principles to bear on a culture. And Dr.
01:08:27
van Droenen has rightly reacted to that. And I have just a little story.
01:08:33
When I was in a gathering of Christian Reformed ministers a number of years ago, they were talking about redeeming the dance.
01:08:41
And there was a Dutch farmer from the real old -school Calvinistic background, and finally at one point, in utter frustration, he stood up and he said, when
01:08:50
I was a boy, they used to talk about redeeming people instead of the dance. It would be a whole lot better if we'd say the same thing.
01:08:58
Well, that's the kind of thing, you know, that the gospel is about redeeming people, and of course redeemed people are going to influence culture.
01:09:07
So it's a reaction to this transformationalism. The other thing is, much to its credit, that the
01:09:14
Two Kingdoms proponents really do have a very elevated view of the
01:09:20
Church and worship of the sacraments or the ordinances, as you would put them,
01:09:26
Church discipline. When David van Droenen in his book, Living in God's Two Kingdoms, was speaking about the
01:09:32
Church, in most cases I just had to give a hearty amen over against our very kind of independent and loose view of the
01:09:40
Church. I've got to give credit where credit is due, I think they're trying to really emphasize the
01:09:46
Church and the gospel and redemption the way they should. Now I've been blathering on, Chris, for about ten minutes.
01:09:52
You want to interrupt me before I give my assessment of things? No, you can go right ahead with your assessment. Yeah, okay, well let me, and just so you know, you have mentioned the conference, but the reason why you're doing the program now, and frankly we appreciate the publicity, is next
01:10:08
Tuesday, October 13th, there's going to be a conference that is, you know, essentially jointly sponsored by the
01:10:16
New Jersey Presbyterian, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and Classus Eastern U .S.
01:10:22
of the United Reformed Churches in North America. You have all the data there, but Dr. David van
01:10:27
Droenen will be present, speaking in favor of the 2k idea, and then
01:10:32
Dr. Cornelis Venema, who's president of Mid -America Reformed Seminary, is going to be speaking against the 2k theology.
01:10:41
And he's better, I mean, he's a better Christian gentleman, and we're dealing with an in -house debate, I have to emphasize this.
01:10:48
And then your next speaker, Dr. Brian Lee and I, are to be on the panel at the end, sort of giving a pastoral perspective on this, and I hope that any people who are interested in this that could make it to Preakness United Reformed Church next
01:11:03
Tuesday at noon will be able to be there. Anyway, you have a number of problems with the 2k theology.
01:11:12
I have a dear friend of mine who is in this school of thinking, and I said to him once, to sort of twit him in my
01:11:20
New York nudge -like way, you know, brother, I've come to accept the 2k theology.
01:11:28
And he was stunned, and he said, you have? I said, yeah, the Bible talks about the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.
01:11:38
It was a little bit chagrined, you know, that's not what we're talking about. What are the Bibles talking about?
01:11:44
And that, I guess, you know, funny as that sounds, that's really my first beef with all of this.
01:11:51
The Bible, as I read it, doesn't talk about a common sphere that is a kingdom separate, and at this point
01:11:59
I use the word religion, separate from religion and faith, and a spiritual sphere. I think it really does confuse the biblical category of kingdom of darkness and kingdom of light.
01:12:11
The second thing is, and Dr. Venema will deal with this more, he is a
01:12:16
Calvin scholar, which I'm not, although I try to read Calvin as much as I can. Speaking respectfully,
01:12:23
I think these dear brothers in the two kingdoms school are really misrepresenting
01:12:29
Calvin when they say that Calvin held a two kingdoms view. At least as I read
01:12:35
Calvin, he speaks in the mainstream of the Reformed tradition, speaking of two spheres, which he would call kingdoms, in which
01:12:45
God, Christ, now is mediating his kingdom. The state basically is to restrain iniquity and to encourage righteousness, but those are good things.
01:12:57
And then the church is for the propagation of the gospel and discipling, but quite honestly,
01:13:03
I just, I do not get out of Calvin, and I think Dr. Klosterman dealt with as well, anything like what the proponents of the two kingdoms theology have been saying.
01:13:14
And I would say the same insofar as they've tried to bring other mainstream Reformers into their train.
01:13:23
I don't think that they're rightly representing them. Now as you, as a pastor, since you are addressing the pastoral aspect of this theological controversy, what do you say to people in your congregation who are housewives, business owners, blue -collar, white -collar workers who have to be out in the world, mingling with people, rubbing shoulders with the lost, and even those who are politicians or are helping those candidating for office and all that kind of thing, what do you say to them in regard to this?
01:14:02
Yeah, that's a great, great question. I've got it on my list, if you'll let me get to it.
01:14:08
And that's interesting because there isn't one, at least one, a local politician, he's not in office right now, but has run for office, and we've discussed some of these things.
01:14:17
But let me mention these other things, and then let me focus on that really excellent question. There is in the two kingdoms theology, as I see it, way too much of a dualism, of a separation between state, or what they call the common sphere, a state and culture, and church and its ordinances.
01:14:40
It's interesting that the Bible doesn't speak like this. Romans 13 speaks of the magistrate, and a magistrate would be whether it be a king or a prime minister or, for that matter, it could be a county executive or whatever, or the police even as a representation of the magistrate.
01:14:59
As a minister of God to you for good, well, minister of God is hardly in the common sphere, and I continue to just,
01:15:10
I continue to choke on the two kingdoms theology when I come to language like that.
01:15:16
Also, and I'll get to this in answering your question, very important is how we define good.
01:15:23
He's a minister of God to you for good, and that will bear on that answer. The two kingdoms theology has, in my opinion, a very odd view of the covenant of grace.
01:15:34
Historically, whether we're Calvinistic Baptists or in a more Reformed tradition, we have seen the covenant as sort of an unfolding of what
01:15:46
God would do in Christ, and the covenant with Noah is a preserving of the earth for the redemption of a people, even as it is a picture of the great judgment of the last day, but I don't see that it inaugurates some kind of a common sphere, especially even in the death penalty, where the death penalty is a,
01:16:10
I could put this way, it's a religious thing, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.
01:16:20
That goes back to a biblical principle. I do think, now this Chris is going to bear specifically on your question, and I want to be careful how
01:16:29
I say this. I have serious, serious questions about the two kingdoms theology in relation to a historic
01:16:40
Reformed view of the moral law of God, especially as the moral law of God is explained and developed, say, in the larger catechism that we have as the
01:16:54
Westminster, the Westminster larger catechism, and it would be very similar, Chris, even to the catechism that you would hold as a
01:17:01
Reformed Baptist. That section, see, the two kingdoms people want to go back to natural law, however we define that, and Dr.
01:17:14
Van Drunen is trying to develop that. But our standards go back to the moral law of God, as summarized in the
01:17:25
Ten Commandments, as binding everyone to full conformity in the whole man.
01:17:32
I don't see that as the two kingdoms view. Now that bears, Chris, on your question. People go out into the, they deal with the political realm.
01:17:42
Well, does the Sixth Commandment, you shall not kill as a commandment, bear on our view of abortion or euthanasia?
01:17:50
Absolutely it does. Does our view of the Eighth Commandment, not to steal, does that bear at all on our view of taxation?
01:17:59
Does it bear on our view of property rights over against Marxism, for example?
01:18:06
Of course it does. Does the Fourth Commandment, you shall labor six days, does that not have implications in more ways than one for economic policy and our view of work over against dependence?
01:18:23
And even when we come to the First and Second and Third Commandments regarding God and His worship and His name, do these not have certain things to say about the state, at least in a general sense, seeking to encourage what is right instead of discouraging it?
01:18:41
Not that these are easy questions, but within the historic Reformed standards,
01:18:47
Nelson Klosterman was referring to John Calvin, for example, our Reformed fathers wrestled with the implications of the moral law for society and for culture.
01:18:59
I really see the two kingdoms theology as going backwards in that regard and moving us in a direction that we ought not go.
01:19:08
Let me just finish a couple of other things quickly. I just wanted to go to a listener question.
01:19:16
Chris from Sacramento, California says, if Christians must be active in the political square to oppose all kinds of a righteousness, doesn't
01:19:27
Pastor Shishko have to lower the bar of God's justice in order to pick out certain issues as litmus tests of orthodoxy while overlooking other evils?
01:19:40
For example, I assume Pastor Shishko would affirm the First Commandment and yet I am not aware of him calling for legislation against synagogues,
01:19:50
Mormon temples, Roman Catholic cathedrals, Muslim mosques, etc. Aren't those things violations of the
01:19:56
First Commandment from the pit of hell? What about all the other evil things that the civil government does?
01:20:02
Okay, that's a massive question and that's what I meant when I said we wrestle over these things.
01:20:08
That really, Chris, would be something you'd want to develop in another program, but when he says a litmus test of orthodoxy, that's not at all what
01:20:16
I'm saying. The whole issue of is it legitimate, as some
01:20:22
Reformed people believe, for a nation to declare itself to be a Christian nation as, for example, in the
01:20:29
New Hebrides, the little island of Vanuatu has done? Is there what is called a principled pluralism, as other
01:20:37
Reformed people hold? These are issues that we wrestle with as Reformed people, but the
01:20:44
Two Kingdoms theology as I see it basically vacates the issue of the moral law and dealing with the law in relation to the state, and that's the problem.
01:20:56
And it's a massive topic and that would really take more of a political science person than I am for this.
01:21:03
Sure, and if you could just conclude the way you were planning to with the... Sure, and then let's talk a little bit more with your questions or others.
01:21:11
I think, and I've interacted with Dr. Van Droon about this, I'm baffled about what the
01:21:16
Two Kingdoms people do with the concept of wisdom. Dr. Klosterman had mentioned that so well we take the
01:21:24
Word of God and apply it with wisdom, and maybe that would bear on the fellow's question that just came to me.
01:21:30
Wisdom is walking in the fear of God. That's hardly common, and I don't see,
01:21:37
I guess, I just really don't see the relationship of wisdom and natural law, and I think that Dr.
01:21:45
Van Droon has even admitted more needs to be done in that regard. The last thing, and then throw your questions at me for the remaining minutes.
01:21:52
As Dr. Klosterman said, this is strangely like dispensationalism.
01:21:58
Not dispensationalism where you have Israel and the Church as two parallel tracks, two parallel railroad tracks, but you have the common sphere, which is state and culture, and then you have the church sphere.
01:22:13
And many of us who sat under Dr. Klein's teaching at Westminster Seminary in the 1960s and the 1970s did raise the same concern.
01:22:22
His whole construct sounded, with his view of the Mosaic Covenant, somewhat like dispensationalism.
01:22:28
So those would be my, those would be some of my pastoral theological concerns. Now, having said what you said, what would be your opposition to the other extreme, which would be theonomy and Reconstructionism?
01:22:45
I think what Dr. Klosterman said was very helpful, and Greg Bonson was also a very, very dear friend of mine.
01:22:51
I remember I wept the night that he died. I think that what Greg Bonson did for, in popularizing
01:22:58
Vantillian presuppositionalism, or presuppositional apologetics, biblical apologetics, is just, is magnificent.
01:23:06
Our son sat under one of his classes that he taught locally, and I had the pleasure of interviewing him in Steve Schlissel's study years ago, back in the early 1900s—1990s,
01:23:20
I should say. That was a time, I think, that my son sat under his class. I think my son was actually converted, our oldest son, under that lesson.
01:23:26
Greg was the most masterful teacher under whom I ever had the privilege of sitting or hearing.
01:23:33
I had the problem with theonomy, as Dr. Klosterman did, and I actually spoke with Greg about this.
01:23:40
I didn't understand why he didn't go back, as Reformed people would want to do, to deal with the principles, even, of the civil law.
01:23:49
My classic example is, in the Old Testament, you were to build a parapet around the roof of your house.
01:23:55
Why? So somebody wouldn't fall off, break his neck, and get killed. Well, that's an application, again, of the
01:24:01
Sixth Commandment not to kill. That doesn't mean you require that everyone who builds a house put a parapet on the roof.
01:24:08
That's ridiculous. But it means there are legitimate concerns that we need to have for the safety of others.
01:24:14
And I was never really quite sure of Greg's answer to that, so I would agree with what
01:24:22
Dr. Klosterman said. This is not theonomy. We're talking about, as Dr. Klosterman put it, the application of the whole
01:24:29
Word of God, with wisdom, to specific cultural issues. Will there be differences among Christians?
01:24:36
Absolutely. But when we start saying it's the application of natural law to situations, having read various volumes that come from a natural law perspective, that is not only confusing, it is also not compelling.
01:24:54
Natural law, as best as I understand it, can be...our understanding of it is going to be warped by human sin.
01:25:02
The Word of God, which remember Adam and Eve had before they fell, people are meant to live out of the
01:25:09
Word of God. Any view of the application of the Christian faith to all of life that is divested from commitment to the
01:25:18
Word of God is really a move in the wrong direction. How would you say that this practically works itself out in tangible ways?
01:25:30
How someone with a new two -kingdom understanding would bear fruit with his understanding, and the opposite would be someone who would be in your camp of opposing that view?
01:25:43
How does it practically work out? Because we know people who are Sabbatarian, and we know people that do not believe in the perpetuity of the
01:25:51
Sabbath, but that still live as if Sunday is the Sabbath anyway. So if you could just give us the actual practical outworking.
01:25:59
Well, thank the Lord that he doesn't let us always be exactly consistent with our presuppositions, because we'd be in a real mess.
01:26:06
We're all inconsistent to some extent. In its most severe outworking of the two -kingdoms theology, it just, you know, to put it bluntly, you don't give a tinker's damn about what goes on in the culture and politics.
01:26:20
Now, that's not at all the view that, say, Dr. Van Drunen presents, but you can see where, if you're emphasizing the spiritual realm and the eternal realm with eternal consequences, and basically not doing a lot with the cultural sphere of the state sphere, people, especially the time where people are already discouraged about what's going on culturally, they can just do what some dispensationalists say were to do, don't polish doorknobs on a sinking ship.
01:26:53
I'm not saying that's what they're promoting, but it could lead to that. Now, the other side in our camp, so to speak, is you can have people who are so obsessed with the concept of Christian culture and the application of Christian faith to culture, a good thing in itself, they do begin to lose the primacy of the gospel.
01:27:14
People need to be saved. Individuals need to be transformed by the
01:27:19
Holy Spirit through faith union with Christ. So I think those would be, you know, those would be the dangers on both sides.
01:27:27
Well, you have a minute just to wrap up, leave your final words with our listeners. I hope that those who can be at the conference next
01:27:37
Tuesday at Preakness United Reformed Church, 480 Valley Road, Wayne, New Jersey, and I know
01:27:43
Chris will promote this between 1 o 'clock p .m. and 9 o 'clock p .m. Next Tuesday, October 13th, we'll be there.
01:27:50
Otherwise, you could contact Preakness United Reformed Churches, and they'll have the CDs or some way that people can get the material itself.
01:27:59
But this is going to be a very important conference, and people who are interested in the topic really should listen to Dr.
01:28:06
Vindrunen, to Dr. Venema, and then to the panel discussion following. And that's preaknessvalleyurc .org.
01:28:15
Preakness is spelled P -R -E -A -K -N -E -S -S Valley U -R -C for United Reformed Church dot
01:28:22
O -R -G, and that's the website where you can find out all the information on this conference, October 13th, 1 to 9 p .m.
01:28:31
And thank you so much, Pastor Bill Shishko, for being on the program, and I eagerly look forward to the day you can come back and spend two hours with us.
01:28:39
Looking forward to it, my dear brother. Press on. You're doing a great job. Keep it up. Thank you very much, brother.
01:28:44
Talk with you later. And coming up next, we're going to have our final speaker on this issue. He is going to be a proponent of the new
01:28:53
Two Kingdom theology, and his name is Brian Lee, the pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Washington, D .C.,
01:29:01
which is a congregation in the United Reformed Church of North America. Don't go away.
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We'll be right back with Pastor Brian Lee. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,
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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.
01:30:16
This is Chris Arns, and if you've just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, we have been discussing the new
01:30:22
Two Kingdom theology controversy. We have been presenting both sides of the controversy, and we started off with Nelson Klosterman, who was giving us the overview of the controversy.
01:30:38
The last half hour we had Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York, and right now we're supposed to be having
01:30:48
Pastor Brian Lee of Christ Reformed Church, located in Washington, D .C.,
01:30:55
and while we're waiting for Pastor Lee, hopefully that's him right now.
01:31:02
In fact, welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Brian Lee. Yes, this is
01:31:07
Brian. How are you today? Thank you for having me on. Great. I don't know if that was you that just got disconnected, but somebody had just called in prior to you and heard a busy signal there for a minute.
01:31:18
Yeah, yeah, that's all right, but we're on now. Thank you very much. All righty. Before we even go into your defense of Two Kingdom theology, if you could let our listeners know something about Christ Reformed Church in Washington, D .C.
01:31:33
I'd love to. Actually, next week we're going to be organizing as an independent congregation,
01:31:40
Lord willing. We're going to We were planted eight years ago, and we worship a mile north of the
01:31:47
White House in Washington, D .C. We actually rent a historical building where Teddy Roosevelt worshiped when he was president, the
01:31:55
German Reformed Building. It's a beautiful spot. God's been very kind to us.
01:32:01
But prior to being a part of this church plant about eight years ago, I worked for the
01:32:08
United States Department of Justice. I worked for a congressman on Capitol Hill. I worked for a number of years in the prior president's administration at the
01:32:18
National Endowment for the Humanity. So I have a lot of experience in politics and in the church as well.
01:32:26
I also have... I heard just the tail end of the discussion there with Reverend Schisco.
01:32:33
I have some experience in Reformation Studies in Calvin. I have a Ph .D. in historical theology and Reformation and post -Reformation, really, interpretation of scriptures around covenant theology.
01:32:47
So that's my background, just a nutshell. I've been living in the Washington, D .C. area for about 11 years. And if you could provide your website, just in case time runs out and I forget to do it myself.
01:32:58
Thank you so much. Yes, it's ChristReformedD .C. ChristReformedD .C,
01:33:04
just as you'd think it'd be spelled, dot O -R -G. So ChristReformedD .C dot O -R -G. All right, well, for the last 90 minutes, people who are not in your theological camp in regard to Two Kingdom theology, anyway, have been describing your view for you.
01:33:19
Why don't you now have the opportunity, I'm giving you the opportunity, to give a summary of what you believe it actually is.
01:33:28
Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. You know, I think at the heart of it, Two Kingdoms, first of all,
01:33:35
I don't really buy into calling it Two Kingdom theology, it's just a particular view of the relation between Christ and culture.
01:33:44
As we know, there's been kind of a range of different views in the Church over the last 2 ,000 years, and there's been a range of different views within the
01:33:53
Reformed camp on Christ and culture for the last 500 years. And so the
01:33:58
Two Kingdoms is a certain understanding of Christ and culture. I think a lot of people would say it's not new, it goes back to Augustine and the
01:34:06
City of God, it goes back to Luther and his reading and application of Augustine. For Luther, obviously, he was kind of articulating a doctrine or an understanding of Two Kingdoms over and against the
01:34:20
Roman Catholic Church, which of course claimed authority over the civil sphere, absolute authority, in a way that I think none of us on the
01:34:28
Protestant side of the fence would agree with, in terms of dictating who would be the
01:34:33
Holy Roman Emperor and crowning that Emperor. So it's not new, it's not a theology, it's an ancient way of viewing the relation between Christ and culture.
01:34:46
And I think it's very important to understand that Two Kingdoms begins biblically with Jesus saying, my kingdom's not of this world.
01:34:55
And when Paul talks in Romans 13, I heard Reverend Sisko mention that briefly, you know, in Romans 12,
01:35:02
Paul says something very important. He says, don't take revenge yourself, leave room for the wrath of God.
01:35:09
And it's important there that Paul is articulating a break from the Old Testament, where the
01:35:16
Church, that is Israel, the Old Testament Church, had territory, had land, had a civil authority, and bared the sword.
01:35:28
The power of execution, for instance, executing criminals, was a theocratic reality in Israel.
01:35:35
And Paul's articulating, in obedience to really Christ's teaching, the view that the
01:35:41
Church is now a spiritual expression of God's rule and reign in the world, through the gospel, through word and spirit,
01:35:49
God reigns for the Church. But this doesn't mean that he doesn't reign through the civil magistrate.
01:35:54
He continues to reign through the civil magistrate, but there's now some sort of distinction between the civil magistrate and the
01:36:02
Church, and that distinction really shapes how Christians engage with the world, not whether we engage.
01:36:10
So I don't want to describe the view of Reverend Schisco, Nelson Klosterman, who was on earlier tonight, and frankly
01:36:21
I think oftentimes they don't really do a fair job articulating our view, because for me, and I'll pause here and let you redirect, perhaps, if you want me to clarify a little more, for me to think of this is not about sort of a withdrawal from the civil sphere.
01:36:38
It's about giving the Christian direction in how and why we engage in the civil sphere.
01:36:46
Let me just give the example. Like I said, I have a lot of experience in politics and public policy. One of the founding members of our
01:36:53
Church is no longer a member of a Church, but has since been elected to the United States Senate.
01:36:59
We have a number of other members of our Church that work in Capitol Hill, that serve on the staff of senior senators, as lawyers in the government.
01:37:08
So, you know, we don't have an official two kingdoms rule in our
01:37:13
Church, but I generally avoid politics from the pulpit, and everyone knows that they're free to engage robustly in political and cultural activity.
01:37:26
Using the Word of God and their Christian faith is the guide of how they can do that faithfully. Now these politicians and attorneys and so on in your congregation, are they doing these things in spite of what you teach and believe, or because of what you teach and believe?
01:37:44
Well, I certainly can't speak for all of them, but a couple of examples I just mentioned entirely are on the same page with me in terms of understanding
01:37:55
Reformational Two Kingdoms view. So you already hinted about it a little bit, but just as I compared, or I offered the other two guests the opportunity to compare themselves or to explain why they are not theonomic, how would you be different, and how would those who are proponents of the
01:38:22
Two Kingdom view, how would they be different from the Anabaptist or the pacifist understanding of the, and I emphasize
01:38:31
Anabaptist, not Baptist, that community which, among the
01:38:38
Mennonites and the Amish and so on, who are not involved in politics and are not involved in the civil arena as the majority of professing
01:38:51
Christians would be? Yeah, I think the groundwork of a Two Kingdoms view has a very robust doctrine of creation, and, you know, so out of that we do get an understanding of natural law.
01:39:06
God can and does, in fact, appoint. Romans 13 is descriptive, it's present tense indicative when it says that every ruler has been appointed by God, not just the good ones, not just the
01:39:19
Christian ones. God rules and governs the world through all of those who sit on thrones or are elected to office.
01:39:28
Sometimes it mystifies us how God can be ruling through, you know, the people sitting in authority in the
01:39:38
Republic of Iran, for instance, or the former Soviet Union, Russia, Vladimir Putin, but God is ruling and reigning through them just as much as God is ruling and reigning through Caesar.
01:39:48
So the Anabaptist almost says the civil magistrate is illegitimate, has no authority, and has no authority over me, whereas Two Kingdoms says that the
01:40:02
Christian is a citizen of heaven, which is what Paul says, right? And a citizen of whatever jurisdiction they live in on earth.
01:40:11
As Paul says, I'm a citizen of Rome. So Paul can make two claims in Scripture, in Acts and in his epistles.
01:40:18
I'm a citizen of heaven, and I'm a citizen of Rome. And in two different settings, that can cause him to pursue different courses of action that are complementary with one another, and that citizenship, that dual citizenship that we experience as believers, like Paul, can lead to some tension.
01:40:38
And there are times when we cannot obey a magistrate. The Belgic Confession says, in all things agreeable to the
01:40:45
Word of God, we are bound to obey the civil magistrate. And I think the Belgic Confession, Article 36, is articulating the clear
01:40:52
Two Kingdoms view right there. Because he says, God is king over all things, but rules in the
01:40:57
Church through his Word and Spirit, but God also rules in the world, and rules Christians and non -Christians through princes and magistrates, police officers, you know, military people in such ruling and settings as that.
01:41:12
So yeah, so I think I've answered your question there. The Anabaptist rejects and really doesn't have a doctrine of creation.
01:41:20
We absolutely embrace, and that's why many members of our Church are engaged in politics, because it's a place where you love your neighbor, it's a place where we, you know, serve our masters, just as Paul calls us to go into the world, and slaves, you know, employees, serve your masters as enterprise.
01:41:40
So yeah. Doug, did you say the Anabaptists reject creation? Are you speaking of as -in, six -day creation, and so on?
01:41:50
No, sir. Just to clarify a little bit, I think I would say the Anabaptist has a weak doctrine of creation, and rejects creation ordinances.
01:42:03
So, you know, an example of this, a creation ordinance is marriage, right? Establishing marriage between Adam and Eve before the fall, so it's not a redemptive ordinance, it's a part of creation, and we know that the early
01:42:16
Anabaptists at Munster actually rejected marriage, and were living in a polygamous way, because in heaven, they thought they were purely spiritual.
01:42:27
They thought they were purely heaven -oriented. In heaven, they will never give marriage.
01:42:35
Yes, and I'm sorry, we just, you started breaking up a little bit on your phone, I'm not sure what if it's the connection or something, but in regard to some of the things that many people would call political issues, there are many
01:42:53
Christians who would say these are not political issues, these are moral issues that come straight out of the
01:42:59
Bible. For instance, the issue of men marrying other men, and women marrying other women, and that kind of a thing is beyond a political thing, and abortion is beyond politics, because sodomy and murder are both clearly forbidden in the
01:43:18
Scriptures, obviously. How would the person in the two -kingdom camp approach those things from the pulpit?
01:43:28
Hello? I think Brian Lee has been disconnected somehow. Brian, we're hoping that you call back, that was a horrible time for us to lose
01:43:37
Brian Lee, he may have been on a cell phone, and I should have made it clear to him not to use a cell phone.
01:43:43
So while we are hoping to have Brian call us back, let me give the website again for the
01:43:50
Preakness Valley United Reformed Church, it's PreaknessValleyURC .org,
01:43:58
that's PreaknessValleyURC .org, and Preakness is spelt
01:44:03
P -R -E -A -K -N -E -S -S Valley U -R -C dot
01:44:10
O -R -G, URC for United Reformed Church. This is where the conference is going to be held, and that conference is going to be
01:44:18
October 13th, 2015, from 1 p .m. to 9 p .m.,
01:44:25
and I don't see any cost mentioned here in the brochure, so I'm assuming this is free of charge, and we hope that many of you come to this conference.
01:44:36
Obviously those of you who are either retired or can take the day off since it is a weekday, we would urge that you you go to the conference, especially if you live in the
01:44:47
New Jersey area, and that is, as I said, PreaknessValleyURC .org,
01:44:55
and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to a station break right now, a brief one, and hopefully when this station break - oh, we're getting our call back here, we're getting our guest back,
01:45:07
God willing. Well, thank you very much for joining us again,
01:45:15
Pastor Brian. I don't know if you heard my entire question, but I was saying that many of us view things that are considered political issues as being beyond politics, things like so -called same -sex marriage and abortion.
01:45:33
They are involving things that are wicked, horrific sins, abominations in the
01:45:40
Scripture, sodomy and murder, that cannot be tidily kept tucked away in a political folder.
01:45:50
These are things that transcend that. How do you address that from the pulpit as a two -kingdom advocate?
01:45:59
Yeah, I mean, A, when the text teaches on marriage, when the text teaches on the taking of unborn life or murder,
01:46:08
I would most absolutely preach that law of God. I think it's crucial that the law of God, as we begin to see it bearing fruit in the world, in the kingdom of God, in the
01:46:24
Church, really is first and foremost applied to those within the
01:46:29
Church, right? We exercise Church discipline on members of the Church if they violate God's law in a public way or in a unrepentant fashion.
01:46:38
We don't exercise Church discipline on those outside the Church. And Paul gives that example in 1
01:46:45
Corinthians 5, I think it is, where he says, you know, don't interact, you know, with people who are violating
01:46:56
God's law. Now, I don't mean people in the world. Of course you have to, you know, you wouldn't interact with anyone if you didn't interact with lawbreakers in the world.
01:47:05
But in the Church, we have a different application of that. So whenever it comes to marriage, abortion, the first and primary application of that law, of God's law, is always to the members of His covenant community.
01:47:21
Now, the whole world will be judged by God's law, by that same law. They are judged currently.
01:47:28
God's wrath is being revealed from them now. I would just argue that the Christian job in the
01:47:35
Church, the pastor's job from the pulpit, our goal is not to bring about a change in the civil law under which we live.
01:47:47
The New Testament is virtually silent, articulating for public policy in the
01:47:54
Roman Empire or the Mediterranean communities in which Christians live. That doesn't mean that Christians, in their callings in the world, don't have strong opinions, and in a democracy like America, we have the privilege as well of voting, of organizing, of joining political parties, and that political action may indeed and cannot help but be informed by our
01:48:21
Christian moral principles. But that's a...the public policy question is a second -order question.
01:48:30
To say that there is political engagement is not...is
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to say that...and my distinction would be, the Church should not directly engage in politics.
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Christians, members of the Church, should absolutely engage in To whatever degree they feel called or able or live in a society like America that requires a certain level of good citizenship to be obedient to God's calling to love your neighbor.
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How would you react to someone who would say that this is in violation of Paul's teachings, the
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Apostle Paul's teachings, who not only made it clear that homosexual activity is an abomination and damnable, but even those that condone them are under the same punishment, if you follow what
01:49:26
I'm saying. That...that to say that you are at peace with your neighbor next door who is an atheist marrying another man, or perhaps in ten years marrying his brother or his son, how is a
01:49:43
Christian to remain silent about that when they are going to be clearly viewed as condoning that kind of behavior?
01:49:54
Well, I don't...I don't believe a Christian ultimately remains silent about any sin in their neighbor, and how do we judge or how do we speak to neighbors or unbelievers who sin?
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What's our word to them? I think our clear word to them is to call them to repentance and faith in Christ, right?
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So we live at peace. We must live at peace in a pluralistic society like America with Jews, Muslims, atheists.
01:50:30
They're our next -door neighbors, and I think we turn the other cheek to them, we love them, we serve them, and so to live next door to people who are drunks, drug addicts, you know, let's pick a sin that the
01:50:49
Church has made more peace with, because that always makes it a little tougher. To people who are gluttons and struggle with obesity, or perhaps to people who have been divorced, which in the
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Church would require some serious action in terms of, essentially, Church discipline, depending on what the circumstances were.
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We don't look to exercise Church discipline on people outside the Church, and I think that's a very telling and simple distinction.
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Why not? Because we recognize that they're not directly under the authority of the covenant community of God as unrepentant sinners.
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Now, are they under God's authority? You better believe it. But that wrath,
01:51:33
Paul says, is being stored up for the final day of judgment. Christians have the privilege of uniting themselves to Christ who has borne that wrath on the cross on Calvary, and so when we face the world, our first word and our last word is that gospel word, which includes the law, of you're a sinner and you need
01:51:54
Christ. But it's ultimately not, you know what, I mean, our first word is that you should really stop sinning, because we're not sinless, right?
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Our first word is flee to Christ, and the sanctification that comes about through the grace of Christ is the fruit of faith.
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It's the fruit of that faith taking root in our hearts, right? So what would you say is the most troubling fruit that is born from people who would reject your two -kingdom view?
01:52:27
Well, you know, Reverend Schisco mentioned a little bit the transformationalist view, which
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I think is very prevalent in evangelical churches, in a lot of reformed circles, sort of neo -Cyperian circles, which believe that, for instance, you know, let's state an absolute extreme.
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Those who would say that America is a Christian covenanted community.
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Clearly, America might be demographically full of a lot of Christians. It might have, in its founding, been framed and shaped by Christian ideals and philosophies, also by a lot of theistic and less than Christian ones, but it was a mixed bag.
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But to believe that America is Christian and covenanted with God in the same sense that Israel was is a huge mistake.
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I don't think that's a very common error, but it's out there. And you often see people applying
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Old Testament passages that refer to the nation of Israel, for instance, repenting of their sins so they might find blessing from the
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Lord. To apply a text like that directly to America, the
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United States of America, is, I believe, a gross abuse of the Scriptures. But less than that, less than that.
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I think there are many people who believe that the Church itself should wade seriously into leveraging or transforming culture, making culture more moral, more
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Christian, less wicked. And while I absolutely believe that Christians have that impact as salt and light in the world,
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I mean, the more Christian you have in a culture, any culture, a city, a town, a state, and if those
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Christians are under word and sacrament ministry, and if they're subject to Church discipline, by the way, that will hold them to a moral standard higher than that of the world, then that place will, by definition, show some of that fruit in the broader cultural population.
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But regarding the United States of America, a Supreme Court view on same -sex unions, which
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I just simply don't call marriage, because I think biblically marriage has to be between a man and a woman.
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Regarding what the Supreme Court says, I'm not surprised by their ruling, and I'm saddened by it.
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I think it will bear horrible fruit, and I think it's the way of destruction. But I don't expect nor hold the
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Supreme Court to behave like a Christian body of elders in a Reformed Church.
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I frankly expect godlessness from the kingdom of darkness, and that's what the world is. God is currently ruling and reigning that kingdom of darkness, and will, at the end of history, conclusively judge it.
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But I have no biblical promise. Let me frame it positively in this way to you.
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I have no biblical promise on an outcome regarding America, or our culture, or whether there will be prayer tolerated in schools.
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I have no biblical promise about those things. If the world goes to chaos, and we've seen a lot of chaos, that doesn't surprise me.
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That's kind of what the Scriptures say. If the world is hostile to Christianity, that doesn't surprise me.
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Do I mourn over it? Oh yes. It's a terrible loss from a robust, pluralistic society that we have known here in America.
01:55:58
What happens in the day, if this were to come, and I think it very likely will, when those from the government or the local police force start pounding on your door to arrest you or someone in your church because you have fired the church organist because he is an unrepentant homosexual, or fired or excommunicated the unrepentant elder or deacon or member who is a homosexual, unrepentant homosexual, when politics comes at your doorstep, how do you react to that?
01:56:41
Well, let's just avoid the homosexual issue, because I think we have all sorts of other sins that are just as pressing.
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What about the lawsuit that comes against my church because I exercise church discipline about the unrepentant husband who committed adultery and divorced his wife?
01:56:57
And that's the same issue, right? And that's happening today. And, you know,
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I don't embrace it and I don't seek it. I love the First Amendment, I love the polity under which we live under.
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It is a common grace gift of God. But, you know, if I'm arrested and thrown in prison, that makes me a lot more like the
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Apostles, and the Apostles thought it made them a lot more like Christ in terms of sanctifying them.
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So again, that's why it doesn't surprise me. I don't go looking for it, and I don't celebrate our culture's loss of borrowed capital, which is what we're experiencing now.
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I think it's really important to clarify, I think what's lost when the church says that Christianity is about a particular cultural outcome in terms of a political outcome, a particular jurisprudence, there is a cost.
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There's always a cost to political engagement, and that's one thing I've learned in politics. When you engage in politics, you become captivated.
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And I think one reason that I think Two Kingdoms is very important is that a lot of parts of this country, the church is just viewed as a subset of the
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Republican Party. And that's a problem, because God's Word condemns the Republican Party as much as it condemns the
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Democratic Party. Of both parties, all politics is under God's law, and condemned by it, because human politics is filthy, nasty, dirty stuff.
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I know firsthand, it's really ugly. And so I think the church needs to be careful to stand over and against all human politics, to celebrate it as God's instrument of preserving the peace, but also to recognize that no morality, no sanctification ever came from a civil law.
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The civil law kept people from being as wicked as they would otherwise be. And if you want to see sanctification, turn and flee to Christ.
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Embrace the gospel. And ultimately, the more we do politics, the less we are free, the less people will be receptive to the gospel.
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Let me give one example. I preach the gospel in Washington, D .C. I think Washington, D .C. votes 90 to 92 percent
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Democratic. I hope my congregation is 90 to 92 percent Democratic. If I say that a plank of membership in our church is condemning absolutely the
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Democratic Party, then those people aren't even going to listen to what
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I have to preach. If I have a sign in our church narthex, a sign that I would support, by the way, that says,
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I hope that abortion is outlawed in our country, I believe that personally.
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But if I put up that sign in our church narthex, in the entryway, 90 percent of our guests or visitors would turn around and walk out the door.