Protestant Two Kingdom Theology

Conversations That Matter iconConversations That Matter

4 views

0 comments

00:09
Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. Here with me, two guests actually we've had on before, we have
00:16
Thomas Accord, who is the headmaster of a Christian school, and his links for his social media are going to be in the info section.
00:24
And then Stephen Wolf, who's actually an author, he's coming out with a book on Christian nationalism very soon.
00:30
We'll have to have you on again, Stephen, to talk about that. And you can find him on Twitter, links are in the info section. He's a political theorist.
00:36
And we're going to talk about Two Kingdom theology today a little bit, which
00:41
I think is probably new for a lot of you. And my hope today is that we'll just have an introduction to it, so that at least if someone uses that, or talks about it or asks about it, you'll at least know what they're talking about.
00:57
And so it is an important subject. And so thank you so much, both of you guys for just coming on and being willing to talk about it.
01:05
Yeah, thanks for having us, John. Yeah, thanks. Great to be here. So a little background first from me.
01:12
I am kind of, this has been a development in my life to kind of come to this place where I'm, I think, comfortable at this point saying, yeah, okay,
01:20
I believe in Two Kingdom theology. And it's really been a journey that your podcast helped me to some extent with, because you did a whole podcast on this topic.
01:31
There were a number of other things that played into this as well. But I've had this sense on one side, there's this
01:37
One Kingdom view in Christianity, which it always seemed to me to be kind of a one size fits all, kind of simplistic, tending towards legalism, perhaps at times view.
01:50
And I can flesh that out, maybe we will later in the podcast. And then I would see this sort of this
01:55
Two Kingdom view that was, in my mind, kind of crazy. It was secularism. It was this principled pluralism where you have a separation of church and state and one has nothing to do with the other.
02:07
And you can have a secularized state that's not accountable to God really at all. And that serves as a neutral ground for Christians to function in.
02:15
And I thought, well, that's ridiculous too. And now I'm realizing, okay, that's a different kind of view. That's a radical
02:20
Two Kingdom view. And both of you, as I understand it, you represent more of a classic or maybe an
02:27
Augustinian or a Reformation Two Kingdom view. And that's what we want to talk about today.
02:34
And so I'll ask you first, Thomas, are my terms accurate there? Is that what you believe is a, is it, what would be the term, a classic
02:42
Two Kingdom view? Yeah, you could say classic or Protestant Two Kingdoms.
02:49
There are several versions or iterations of it, and they vary.
02:56
And so today there's some people call it a Mono Kingdom view and then a
03:01
Reform Two Kingdom coming from Escondido and Van Drouin and others.
03:08
And then there's the Protestant or classical view. And there's, different people have written on this too.
03:16
I think there's a helpful book from Brad Littlejohn, it's maybe a hundred pages and he differs, he parses the views there.
03:26
And actually I've been reading that I'm probably 30 % through, it's called Two Kingdoms, a guide for the perplexed, which would probably describe most of us and myself up until fairly recently.
03:39
So you would represent that, Steve, and I know that you're kind of on board with that view. I think probably maybe the best way to get started with this, to flesh all this out is, can you give me a definition, if you would, of a
03:53
Two Kingdom approach, the one that you represent, Stephen? Well, any definition would be hard, but let me just start off with a quote here from Calvin.
04:04
All right, so this is from his Institutes. He says, having shown above that there is a twofold government in man and having fully considered the one which, placed in the soul or inward man, relates to eternal life, we are here called to say something or the other which pertains only to civil institutions and the external regulation of manners.
04:24
He says, the civil government is distinct from the spiritual and internal kingdom of Christ, which begins the heavenly kingdom in us.
04:32
Okay, so I think that what Two Kingdoms theology is identifying is that there's these two, you say, aspects of man.
04:41
There's the inward and the outward. And what it's saying is that each of those,
04:48
I guess you could say, forms or aspects of man is governed by, in a way, a sort of separate kingdom.
04:57
So there's this twofold government. And what this allows people to affirm is that whatever is true of the church spiritually, inwardly, what's true in conscience, what's true in the heavenly kingdom of Christ, what they get to be revealed, the eschatological kingdom, is not necessarily going to be true of the outward relations.
05:23
So men and women, so a husband, a woman submits to her husband, and that's an outward sort of submission because of gender.
05:35
And but inwardly in Christ, they're equal.
05:40
In a way, they're equal with Christ. Because like it says, in Christ, there's no male, female,
05:50
Jew, Gentile, master, slave. And so that relation, you could say, is kind of the inward or the spiritual kingdom of Christ, where we're all united to Christ, and gender, and socioeconomic status, and whether you're powerful or weak.
06:10
None of that factors into your union in Christ. And so it's that essential union that is the church as an invisible thing is governed in a separate kingdom, a distinct and separate kingdom from the outward kingdom.
06:27
And that outward kingdom, you can talk about this like the civil power in terms of the magistrate. You can also just talk about just natural relations.
06:36
So we are drawn towards marriage, and I would say there's no marriage in the kingdom of God.
06:44
There's no marriage or having children. We're drawn to these things outwardly, but they're temporal. They're temporal things that in, say, the eschaton or in heavenly life will not be true.
06:56
So you have, in this way, the two kingdoms or the two kind of governments, it allows you then to, in a way, harmonize what is true good, but temporal, and what is eternal, and without conflating or confounding the two by saying there's one kingdom.
07:16
So I think that's kind of the two kingdoms. And I didn't mention in the Institute of Church yet.
07:22
We can talk more about civil government, how that relates to these things. But I think the essential difference is between a sort of inward, invisible, or yet to be visible kingdom that's spiritual and a natural temporal kingdom.
07:37
So you have those natural relations, and you have a spiritual relation, how those are kept separate so that they're not confounded.
07:44
The two kingdoms are, in the classical view, what we mean is the spiritual and the physical kingdom.
07:56
There's spiritual and physical. And I think that for Christians, especially since maybe the 1800s or 1700s or something, we've been trained to think of church and state, church and state.
08:10
We have separation of church and state, and it's bred into us to think that way.
08:15
So when people hear two kingdoms, they think, okay, so basically church and state. There's an ecclesial realm and a civil realm.
08:25
And Christians have whatever to do with the one, but not the other.
08:32
And that's not what we're saying. That's not what we're saying. We're saying there's a spiritual and a physical realm, a spiritual and a physical kingdom.
08:42
Now Christ is over both of those, but he rules them differently. So in one sense, there is a sense in which there's only one kingdom.
08:50
And I think a lot of the later guys, the theonomists, the reconstruction guys, maybe some other people today would want to say, there's not two kingdoms.
09:02
There's only one because there's only one king. How many kings are there? There's not two kings.
09:08
There's not two kingdoms. I agree. There's only one king, and there's only one king, but he rules them differently.
09:14
And it's helpful for us as humans to speak of two kingdoms, therefore, and based upon different modes of government.
09:24
And those are not state and church, but spiritual and physical or heavenly and earthly.
09:31
And then that has a lot of implications, for instance, because the church, there's a sense in which there's an eternal church that's in the heavenlies.
09:40
And then there's a sense in which there's a physical church here on earth. And so some people would want to exempt the church from all earthly government, from all earthly or civil rule or order.
09:56
But what the classical view is, no, the physical church is also here in this physical world.
10:02
And so it has things to do here. It has concerns. It has duties. It has obligations. And of course, to what extent all that is, it's a matter for discussion.
10:12
Yeah, I mean, on that, we're not saying that when you step through the doors of the church, suddenly you're now spiritual and you're no longer married to the wife you just walked in with.
10:24
You know, it's not like the church is some sort of immanentized heavenly thing where we still become spiritual.
10:36
So you don't, you still are, even within your relationship, you're kind of calling it ecclesial relation or whatever.
10:45
You're still husband and wife. You're still, if you see someone who's the president, the president walks in, he's still the president of the
10:51
United States when he's in the church. But in a fundamental spiritual sense, all
10:58
Christians are united to Christ. And that actual relation is irrelevant in that kingdom if you separate them properly.
11:04
But yeah, outwardly, we continue to relate to each other as we would according to our temporal arrangements.
11:13
Now, this to me seems like it doesn't have the same appeal that perhaps a one kingdom or the
11:22
Escondido's kind of two kingdom view would have where. So in my mind, at least a lot of Christians, how they fan out is some would want to say everything is kind of over -spiritualized everything.
11:37
And everything's sacred, right? And this is kind of, I think, what I grew up reading a lot, especially in my teens.
11:43
To some extent, I see echoes of this almost in like Francis Schaeffer stuff and some of his disciples where like there is really no sacred.
11:52
Everything's sacred, really. That's what it is, I guess. And then you have on the other side, this view that is like you have church and state, which
12:02
I think you just said, Thomas, and the state can be secularized. And these are very simple approaches in a way because it just organizes everything in your life very simply.
12:12
You know what your obligations are. With this, it seems like it takes a little more work to figure out if the distinction is really between temporal and eternal or visible, invisible, eternal, temporary.
12:26
You have to then in each decision you make in life, or at least a lot of them, you kind of come into this adiaphora situation where wisdom must be applied.
12:38
Is that an accurate depiction of maybe where your view would be a little more difficult to apply?
12:50
Well, I mean, I would say that the one world thing is just incoherent. It leads to, I think, absurdities.
12:56
And again, I mean, if you're going to say like a one kingdom approach, then you're essentially saying that whatever is the kingdom is heaven.
13:06
So you have to live like heaven out here. So I really think that everyone who even claims there's one kingdom, they live like there's two kingdoms because they live as if they live according to temporal life and the relations and arrangements of temporal life, and they affirm those things.
13:21
And yet they're also saying that, no, there's only one kingdom, and this kingdom is this. And so in other words, in doing that, you have to kind of transport these hierarchies and these what we think are temporal matters into the heavenly kingdom.
13:38
Or you can go the opposite effect. You say, well, we're supposed to immunitize heaven now.
13:45
I mean, bring heaven to earth now, which means we have to determine what is heaven like and then act accordingly.
13:52
But isn't that what you hear all the time? Which I would say, yeah. And I mean, you hear that same view from everything from like gospel coalition types to neo -Calvinists.
14:04
And I think it's just typically it's presented in an incoherent way.
14:10
And if you affirmed it, it'd lead to these absurdities or at least conclusions that you wouldn't probably want to conclude.
14:20
So again, I think what this is allowing is for there to be, again, in Christ, no man, woman, gender relations are irrelevant.
14:35
But it would seem that a one kingdom view would require a radical egalitarian position.
14:45
It's not clear how you'd be able to fit magistrates with civil power into that arrangement.
14:50
Because that appears to be a temporal thing. That's something that's going to be done away with.
14:58
And so it just leads to all these problems. But I think that you have to, within two kingdom framework, there is a distinction between sacred and secular.
15:09
It's just absolutely the case. And secular just means temporal. I mean, it just means that there's these temporal things.
15:15
It doesn't mean they're bad. Usually they're very good. And they're usually necessary for us to live well.
15:21
But they still are secular and temporal. And then you have sacred things. So the worship is a sacred act.
15:32
The Lord's Supper is a sacred act. So there's these sacred things of the kingdom that point us to heavenly life.
15:39
But there's also a lot of secular things. You could say secular things that are temporal that are necessary for living well here and now.
15:49
And so yeah, there is that clear distinction. And is it difficult? I don't think it's very difficult to determine what is what.
15:59
But I guess it does add a complexity. I mean, if you say everything is sacred, then I guess that simplifies things in a way.
16:06
But other than I think practically, it leads to absurdities. Yeah, it's not practical, I guess.
16:11
But on an abstract level, if you just tell yourself that it's one kingdom or there's just such a complete separation between the church and the government or something, it makes things more convenient until you get into the details.
16:26
And then I think, yeah, what you're saying is true, because it might seem like for the
16:32
Gospel Coalition's view on racial reconciliation or Tim Keller's view on political power or something, it may seem like, oh, one kingdom.
16:39
But then, of course, with the example you gave marriage, then you're like, well, none of them are applying it to that. Right. Yeah, go ahead,
16:47
Thomas. Did you say something? Yeah. So I was going to say there's a sense in which it is complicated. But I think if we had our own team of people making aphorisms for us like the other systems do, then people might be able to slap it on a bumper sticker.
17:04
Nobody's really doing that for Protestant classical theory here. But just to give some examples, it can be complicated.
17:12
Sometimes we get things confused. Jesus was being arrested, and Peter drew his sword.
17:19
And Jesus said, put it back. I mean, here is the disciple of Christ taking matters into his own hands, taking the coercive power into his own hands.
17:30
And Jesus says, no. And so Peter got it mixed up. And then you can skip.
17:36
I'm just giving examples here. Augustine wrote The City of God as basically
17:42
Rome was collapsing. And Rome was supposed to be this eternal city. And Christianity was supposed to be dominating and flourishing.
17:50
And here come everything seems to be working backward now. And he writes this huge book, by the way.
17:57
It's not this small little tract or treatise or article. It's 1 ,200 pages, at least my version.
18:04
And he's arguing in that, among other things, that there's two cities and there's the city of God and the city of man.
18:14
And he also talks about how they're antagonistic to each other. But there's also some commonality.
18:21
And it's not easy always to parse, in other words.
18:26
If it was, he could have written it really quickly or maybe not at all, because everybody would have understood. But apparently they didn't back then, and they needed instruction.
18:34
And Martin Luther talks about this. There's other people, too. William of Ockham wrote about this and many people.
18:43
But I would say an easy way to keep the two in your mind. If you want to follow the classical
18:50
Protestant two kingdom view, the idea is that there's a spiritual realm and our spiritual kingdom and a physical kingdom and that there's laws or ways that Christ govern both that are distinct.
19:08
And if you mix them up, you often get into trouble, a lot of trouble. And you can usually know this in messing it up.
19:16
So, for instance, some people want to say that, hey, look, heaven is a place where all people from all nations come and they come freely and it's open to all.
19:30
The gates are not closed. It's anybody who believes the right ideas can come.
19:36
And so we need to make America this place that's a place where all nations come.
19:44
It's a huge project where the lost are outside. They're weeping and gnashing, those poor people.
19:50
But if they come in, they're going to be better. They're going to be ennobled, enlightened. And you have a lot of this millenarian language or this gospel heavenly language applied to the state of America or the nation of America.
20:07
And that's a confusion of the two kingdoms. You're taking the heavenly and applying it to the civil.
20:14
And it's interesting because the people who do that are often claiming that those to their right are confusing politics and religion all the time.
20:23
Whereas you're turning America into it's called a messianic nationalism. That's what
20:28
I call it, at least messianic nationalism. The nation is the salvific. This is the new promised land.
20:36
So you can see that clearly. And Stephen mentioned also the no genders in Christ.
20:42
So no genders in society anymore. You went from the heavenly to the earthly and you just mashed them together.
20:49
Whereas clearly there has to be a distinction. So we all know that in Christ, people aren't getting married in heaven and things.
20:58
But we still get married on earth. We should love everybody together equally in heaven.
21:05
But on earth, we know that we don't do that, at least in our families. And also there's been more than this, too.
21:12
A lot of some people in history have said, look, Christ set us free. So we're not going to be aware of that.
21:20
Listen to any man's laws. We're under Christ's laws. There's no ruler except Christ.
21:28
So we're not going to have a ruler. Well, clearly that leads to anarchy. It leads to chaos. Christ also tells us
21:34
Paul in Romans 13 says, obey all the authorities. They're all from God, legitimate authorities.
21:41
So you have this duality. And it's either you either have a contradiction in scripture where it says there's no gender, but there is gender.
21:51
There's no law above you, but there is a law above you. Or you have a way of parsing these issues.
21:58
And I think the best way to do it is there's a spiritual realm, our kingdom, and there's a physical kingdom as well.
22:07
Now, what that means can be complicated. But keeping those two markers in your mind is not complicated.
22:13
Yeah, I mean, a comment on that. I think that, yeah, there's like the people often appeal to, in Revelation, like the great congregation, heaven.
22:21
Say, well, heaven is multicultural. So then the Christian political thought should be multicultural because we're
22:27
Christians and heaven's the ideal. So that's, again, that's a conflation of the two kingdoms where you're saying, well, heaven's like this.
22:38
Therefore, earth should be like this. This. But two kingdoms, what it allows you to say, and again, it harmonizes what's in scripture.
22:49
It allows you to say that, yes, all Christians are, you're in community of the saints.
22:58
And you have a sort of spiritual union with all Christians. But that doesn't mean that you could all form a workable nation that actually leads to the realization of the common good on earth.
23:15
So you have to separate the two kingdoms in that regard. I mean, another thing
23:21
I was gonna say, unless there's something you guys have, I was gonna say, like, there's two kingdoms.
23:27
There's also two powers. Another way to think of it is two powers. So, and this is another way how people kind of conflate it.
23:34
They say, well, Jesus didn't, he didn't use the sword to get what he wanted. He didn't use the physical weapons to get what he wanted.
23:42
And the apostles didn't do that. And so they basically deny civil power to Christians.
23:48
They say, well, all we have is a spiritual sword, and that's it. And so in that way, they're again bringing heaven door.
23:54
The spiritual power would be just the word of God. It would be a matter of persuasion. But the most, this predates
24:00
Protestantism really far back is the idea of the two swords, that there's two sorts of spiritual and a civil sword.
24:07
And I think those are essentially different swords, and one's located in civil kingdom. The other's located in the spiritual kingdom.
24:18
One kingdom is a, or one, the spiritual sword is a matter of persuasion. So that the kingdom of God in itself is not gonna grow by coercion.
24:28
It's gonna grow by persuasion and also it's gonna be God as Lord of the conscience and regenerating people.
24:39
But it's gonna be in terms of our use of the spiritual sword in the world, it's a matter of persuasion with the word and we're not coercing.
24:49
So that's primarily what ministers don't have. They don't have civil power because their power is a spiritual power and that's the power of preaching the word of God and administering sacraments.
25:05
So that's a spiritual power. But if you have two kingdoms, that means you can separate that power from the civil power and the civil power is the coercive power.
25:16
So that's the civil magistrate can say, do this and you do that. And they can order the outwardly, they can outwardly order the world for our earthly and our earthly good.
25:29
So it allows you to separate these two powers, which means that yes, Christians as earthly beings can then wield this real power, civil power and even in a way, simultaneously have the word of God to preach for the salvation of souls and have the spiritual power.
25:48
So you have those, I think that's a good way to at least show the importance of that.
25:54
But if it's more like a one kingdom idea, you're gonna end up conflating those two and you're gonna go one or the other.
25:59
Well, do we have coercive power or not? There is no coercive power temporal in heaven.
26:05
We have that that doesn't exist. How does the kingdom of God grow? Well, it's through persuasion of the word.
26:10
So how can you then force someone through the power of law to do anything? Or you can go the opposite side and say, oh, well, you could just convert people through civil power.
26:21
I guess that's less common thinking today. But again, two kingdom theology resolves those two powers that are clearly identified in scripture.
26:30
King of God grows through persuasion, through spiritual power. But same time magistrates as ministers of God can coerce for the outward good of the community.
26:45
Yeah, so what I hear you saying - Go ahead, John. Yeah, what I hear you saying, Stephen, just to make it clear for everyone, is that it's not a separation of church and state in the modern form that we're used to hearing about, where they not only have unique roles, but they're so separate that the state's not even accountable to God.
27:07
You're not saying that. You're saying the state is accountable to God, but it's actually accountable in this narrow channel that God has made for them.
27:17
And their application of the power God's given them is going to look different than the application of power that maybe a minister has.
27:26
There's going to be certain tools they have that someone in the church who's a leader there is not going to have, and vice versa.
27:34
Yes, civil power is ordained of God. It's a power of God, which, as I would argue, that means if a civil law is just, then it's, in fact, it's an ordinance of God, because civil rulers are, in a way, mediators of divine civil rule, not for salvation or grace, but as they are ministers of God for our outward good.
27:59
So yeah, so it's a power of God. But the same, so is the spiritual power of God. But that power is located in two separate, yes,
28:10
I mean, yeah, it's located in two separate offices, I guess you could say. And those two offices administer to their respective kingdoms.
28:19
The magistracy has civil power and administers for the good of outward civil arrangements.
28:28
And the ministers, church ministers, have a sort of spiritual power in the ordination, and they administer to the spiritual kingdom of Christ.
28:39
That is the heavenly kingdom. And that's our first story.
28:44
That's why a pastor, even though he can, a pastor can speak about politics and ethics, but their first calling is salvation, is eternal life, is to preach eternal life in Christ.
28:59
And that's their principal duty in the relation to you is to preach the gospel that is the sole basis for eternal life.
29:09
And that's his job. And I think, I mean, we haven't got into how church and state relate to one another, but in other words, the minister's first concern is the salvation of souls, but there are secondary concerns, but his first primary, whereas the magistrate's first concern is outward civil order and the good of the outward, kind of the body, you could say.
29:35
I just want to add to this too, that during the discussion of two kingdoms in history, you would always encounter the discussion of natural law as well.
29:46
And there's an important reason for this. So we're talking about the civil magistrate ruling almost as a minister of God.
29:55
And the response will be, well, if they're not Christian, then they're not fit to rule because they're fallen and a fallen man is always sinful and they don't know righteousness and their hearts are evil always, all of these things.
30:07
So therefore only Christians should rule. This is some of the discussion later on in political theory,
30:14
Christian political theory. But if you go back to Luther, if you go back to Calvin, if you go back to people prior to this too, as Stephen mentioned, you'll have a discussion of natural law and where these people would be saying, natural law is accessible to all men.
30:33
It's accessible and God has put it into men and you have pagan or unchristian men ruling and they must rule in the righteousness of God.
30:43
They must rule according to his law, even if they don't have the word of God accessible to them like Nebuchadnezzar or something.
30:50
God requires Nineveh to repent and they don't have the Bible. I assume they didn't have the Bible. They had someone that had came to them and preached to them and then they heard the word of God that way and they did repent, but they weren't the people of God.
31:05
But they are required to rule righteously and justly and uphold truth and peace in society.
31:13
And so you have the same theory. This is very, very, very important. I'll just say to your listeners, if you are not buying what
31:20
Stephen was just saying, consider natural law first. Go into a study of natural law in the
31:27
Protestant reformed tradition, it's teaching. And then from there, move into, then consider two kingdom theology, because if you're thinking, well, pagans, this can't happen.
31:40
What Stephen's saying can't happen because non -Christians are always going to be wicked. They're always going to be in rebellion against God.
31:47
Go listen to what the reformers had to say about natural law and non -Christians ruling according to natural law, which they would summarize many of them as the
31:58
Ten Commandments and not only as the Ten Commandments, but Ten Commandments. Paul says it's written on the heart.
32:04
They do by nature. The thing is written on the heart. Now they can rebel against that, but it is there and they're required to rule in this way.
32:12
And it's very, very important and it's linked. And I mentioned Van Drunen earlier. He's got a book, I don't remember the title.
32:19
I'll give it to you after, I guess, but it's on the two kingdoms and natural law. It's like a history and they go together.
32:27
And oftentimes if you're studying the one, you're studying the other. Yeah, no, that's fascinating.
32:32
And that's, in fact, there's a book by Sam Smith from Liberty University called Among the
32:38
Deplorables. And he actually makes the argument in that book that he was able to vote for Trump specifically because of his two kingdom view.
32:46
And that Trump would essentially, this goes along to what you're saying with natural law, would be, even though he kind of admits,
32:54
I don't think Trump is a born again Bible -believing Christian, but he is going to apply some of these things that we know are moral and right from natural law, especially over the alternative.
33:07
And I thought it was interesting. And then, because he specifically attributes it to his view, his two kingdom view, that he was able to do that.
33:16
And there's so many directions that this can go in. And I think for a lot of people, when they're introduced to this, it raises more questions.
33:22
You got into history there, Thomas. And I was hoping maybe you could flesh that out a little bit. So maybe survey from Augustine's time, you mentioned two cities, which
33:32
I know is, as I think the little, I don't know if that's different or in the same family, because I know I was just reading in Brad Littlejohn, he says that that's different than Luther's view, but you have the two cities and then kind of bring us to where we are today in why this is such an unpopular thing in Christianity.
33:49
Was it Kuiper? Like, what was it that brought us from Augustine to where we are with like gospel coalition?
33:58
If you could, in 30 seconds now. Stephen, can you take that one?
34:04
That's a complicated question. You have the magisterial reformers, right?
34:10
You have the Puritans who tried to sort of sacralize it. So, you know. Well, you just said something
34:15
I don't agree with. Oh, I don't. Okay, all right. I just tried to sacralize. That's why I have you on and I'm not doing it solo.
34:22
Excuse me. Yeah, well, I would say that there's a, the neo -Calvinist rejection of dualism, that they hate like this idea of dualism, the heaven and earth and nature and grace and two kingdoms.
34:36
That's just, that's an opposition to practically the entire Christian tradition.
34:41
I mean, the two cities is just one. Then you have the two swords doctrine that I mentioned before. Luther's two kingdoms and Calvin's two kingdoms.
34:50
Those are just, yeah, I think you mentioned that Brad believes it's different than the two cities.
34:57
Luther's view, he says, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and that's fine. But the point is that there's this recognized kind of duality, if you want to say, that you have to, it's the only way to resolve in a coherent, systematic way, the biblical data and what heaven and earth seem like.
35:14
So, but I think the, I think it's, it is, it's just the case that historically, two kingdom theology is the received view of the reformed tradition.
35:27
That includes Anglicans, includes Presbyterians, includes continental reform, includes all the
35:32
Puritans of the New England era. That is the received view. Everyone I've read affirms some version of it.
35:40
And there are just, there are differences. So, I mean, you can read Samuel Rutherford's opposition to Erastus and Richard Hooker.
35:49
They have different views, but still they affirm two kingdoms. So you've Rutherford versus like a Presbyterian versus Anglicans.
35:56
You can also read, I mean, a lot of times they wouldn't talk about these idea of a two kingdoms. They wouldn't explicitly say that.
36:04
Sometimes they would separate almost in three kingdoms, but I don't want to go into that. But they essentially mean two, just like that.
36:12
But the point is that the, that is the, I didn't want to say most common. I haven't seen anyone say otherwise in all my studies.
36:21
The only people that said otherwise were maybe some Roman Catholics or something. Yeah, it would be Roman Catholic is
36:26
Anabaptists. I mean, that's why people will accuse some of the new two kingdom people of being
36:32
Anabaptists or Roman Catholic. I mean, sometimes you can say Anabaptist, Roman Catholic kind of merged in bizarre ways in their political theology with very different applications.
36:42
But yeah, I mean, it's just the received view. So the 20th century is weird in Protestantism for things like rejecting natural law, for rejecting two kingdom theology.
36:56
And this is what I think happened, is the people who, I don't know why they didn't see it before because they were reading
37:01
Calvin and even Tertu when he was finally published. But the people who recovered two kingdom theology, they recovered it in a way that suited their sort of boomer post -war values sort of way.
37:19
So you have Van Drunen and Horton, they didn't like theonomy and they didn't like the neo -Calvinism, but they liked this two kingdom theology that into their mind allowed them to radically separate sacred and secular, such that the secular doesn't really have any clear relation to the sacred.
37:38
That is, you can't order the secular to the sacred, you can't order, but practically, the government cannot privilege
37:46
Christianity. There's Christianities of grace, it's heavenly, it's in a different kingdom. So everything with, even though they affirm natural law and they affirm the two kingdoms, they want to radically separate them to the point that the secular doesn't even know that the sacred exists pretty much.
38:02
They probably wouldn't like that characterization, but I think that's what it is. And so that's, it was useful for them to then beat back the theonomists and to beat down the neo -Calvinists.
38:13
And I think they were right in affirming that there's this two kingdom theology that's prevalent pre 20th century
38:19
Protestantism. They just mischaracterized it for their own political conclusions.
38:27
And because they want to do this, they want to say in a sense that the two kingdoms is church and state the church kingdom is the only truly
38:38
Christian kingdom. And when a
38:44
Christian enters the civil realm outside the church, they can't enter it as Christians hoping to serve the good of the church or Christ as Christians, but more as humans, just as common humans.
38:59
So they like to call it the common kingdom, which again, I don't have any problem with that phrase that these in common, but they say that then you can't actually do any sort of distinctively
39:11
Christian ordering of that society. That's culture, that's civil politics and law.
39:18
And that's completely, I mean, it's funny. Like Thomas mentioned Van Drunen's book, it's natural on the two kingdoms.
39:25
I believe it's called, I have it right here. Yeah, natural on the two kingdoms. And it's funny in that book because it's like he even records the classic view, but then he doesn't see it.
39:38
Like he'll say invisible, visible. And you're like, dude, you're saying it, but then he'll go back and say, and then he'll basically thinks that the, for centuries, the reformed tradition was incoherent.
39:50
It was inconsistent. And somehow it blindly carried on some like Roman Catholic church and state or protecting the church positions through law.
40:05
But that's inconsistent. So they were just inconsistent. And I just think that's just wrong, but I hope that makes sense.
40:10
So they recovered it. And so now when people who want to have a
40:15
Christian politics look for the options, they see two kingdoms, they see Van Drunen saying you can't do that.
40:21
So then they think two kingdoms, you can't do that. So they choose theonomy or neo -Calvinism when they don't have to.
40:29
And they can read their own tradition and see Calvin say that a magistrate must protect the church.
40:37
He must suppress heresy. He must punish blasphemy and know that that's consistent with their theology, with their political theology.
40:47
Could I make a comment here? So one thing Van Drunen does in his book, which
40:52
I do appreciate is he gives context to all of the people he discusses. So he says,
40:57
Augustine differed from Galatius a little bit, and then Aquinas with his natural law, and they all had different contexts.
41:05
And that's why their political theology went this way or that way. And I don't want to psychologize people or overly contextualize them.
41:13
But the way I understand it is that during the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were these statist, totalitarian, atheistic ideologies that said, nothing belongs to Christ at all.
41:30
No more. You don't even get the church. You don't even get your private sphere anymore. We're going to create an entire universe, communism, let's say, for instance, or whatever, socialism, where there's no
41:41
Christ. He owns nothing. And then you get a reaction where every square inch belongs to Christ.
41:50
Everything belong and everything, therefore, the scriptures are going to come and inform all that's going to be the opposite of everything is going to pertain to the sphere of the church or the theologian.
42:06
And I think there's truth in that. I'm not going to just disparage this. Christ owns everything.
42:14
And he is in control. And he is the two king of theology affirms this, by the way. He is the king of all.
42:20
But then you then the more the later guys here that we're talking about, the neo -Calvinists and others.
42:27
They so we have we have a political theology today that says, don't go don't go fight the culture wars.
42:34
Don't go fight. In fact, there are no culture wars. There's there's these two distinct spheres. There's the secular and the sacred.
42:41
And the Christians should not get into this one. And I think it's convenient to argue that if you feel like we're going to lose and we're not going to win.
42:53
And so there's no use getting into the fight. And I have a I have a I have a again, I don't want to just dismiss these people, but I think it's from a feeling of we're losing.
43:04
We're on the losing side of things right now. It feels like. And so there's a political theology that's a two kingdom theology that says, well, this sphere wasn't ours to begin with anyway.
43:14
So, yeah, it makes sense that we're going to we're going to lose it. And we shouldn't go after we shouldn't go into it.
43:21
We should we should remain in the area that's our ours and discuss this area and build this area up.
43:30
And again, I don't want to psychoanalyze these guys, but I kind of think in about just almost. Yeah.
43:36
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they drift towards. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think we should say why.
43:43
Why? I think one of the questions people might be asking is, OK, well, why, in our view, can can the state.
43:52
Well, you just said you wanted to punish people for heresy using the sword of the state. I'm pretty sure Thomas heard you say that.
43:58
I said I said suppress. I said suppress heresy. That's different than. Oh, OK. All right. No, I mean,
44:03
I guess you could say. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that the. The. The idea is that I mean, there's different arguments you can make, but one is that magistrates, a minister of God.
44:17
But I'll just say I won't make the argument. I'll just say why it's why it can be consistent. So, yeah, there are these two separate kingdoms, one secular, one sacred, one spiritual, one's natural.
44:27
But the the natural or I could say the the temporal can be ordered to the eternal, meaning that even though the magistrate cannot order you to believe in Christ, he cannot command you to say, believe in Christ or you'll be punished.
44:43
And then they subject you to inquisition. That's all. That's not that's not the only wrong. Practically, it's wrong in principle, because because you become a
44:51
Christian through persuasion. I mean, the work of the spirit, but it's a matter of persuasion. And so it's wrong and it's wrong in principle.
44:58
But still, the the the magistrate can do a lot of things outwardly that support that ministry.
45:05
The support that, you know, in other words, create conditions where the word can can flourish.
45:12
And there's there's I guess there's light measures where you can fund seminaries, you can you can fund you can do you can build churches so that those positive things you can yeah, just support the ministry generally.
45:29
And then the more I guess the negative or the checks would be to check on heresy and blasphemy or yeah, or to privilege
45:38
Christianity. And then in culture, it would be that that the Christians would consider them outwardly as Christians, not just from a church, but outwardly as a people or a
45:48
Christian people. And then they can mutually support each other. Always, I think the pointing to the ministry of the church is a church.
45:56
The church is the site of spiritual administration. So everything should be ordered to the instituted church where where there's the word sacrament.
46:06
Yeah. So I just want to give an example of what you're saying. So I mentioned
46:12
Nineveh earlier where Jonah goes and preaches repentance to them. And the king declares a day of fasting and weeping and repentance.
46:19
And God saved the city and didn't destroy it. And I would ask every Christian, do you think that was a good thing or a bad thing?
46:27
OK, I mean, he made an edict and declared it from the top down and God did not kill everyone.
46:35
Was that good or bad? Right. I think that was a good thing. I think God commanded it. In fact, he did.
46:41
And I don't think God has changed in the way he deals with people. Nineveh was not a nation covenanted with God like Israel.
46:48
But he still commanded them to repent. And and you have also examples in America where George Washington, for instance, declares a national day of Thanksgiving and prayer that we should bow before the almighty and give him thanks.
47:01
And he says all nations should do this, by the way. So he says this isn't just us. Everyone should do this.
47:06
Every nation. That's great. That's wonderful. And I would like to see
47:12
Thanksgiving become re -infused with Christian theological richness again.
47:19
So I think that it doesn't have to be all the way from one extreme to another.
47:25
There's there's these mild forms that can flourish. And just one other thing I'll say, too, if you think that suppression of heresy is a bad thing, we're going to have that in our culture.
47:37
We already have it. It's just that it's no longer the God of scripture. Yeah, it's other gods.
47:44
We can't blaspheme against certain privileged groups or whatever it might be. But there's there's going to be blasphemy laws.
47:50
And I would prefer to put the God of creation in that place rather than man.
47:56
Right. Yeah, I'm totally with you on why I thought your views were so similar to what
48:03
I'm arriving at. I wanted to hear from you. Two things that just came to my mind. One, you know,
48:08
Thomas, you just talked about this reformed 2K or radical 2K view that as being a result, perhaps of this defeatism.
48:18
And I think you're probably on to something. There was something else that I've noticed. I haven't heard anyone else articulate this, but it might explain some at least of versions of one kingdomness that I see on the rise, mostly in the theonomy camps, in Christian reconstruction camps where civilizations as they're dying tend to have this sort of last gasping breath of we're actually going to win.
48:42
You know, we have these these these ghost shirts that can like, you know, bullets can't touch us or there's a
48:49
Nazi experimental aircraft out there that they those allies don't know what we're about to unleash on them. Right. And it's like none of this stuff was true, but it was like and I'm not
48:57
I'm about to get all sorts of hate mail from people saying, like, that's not what post -millennial teaches. And I'm not making
49:03
I'm not saying that that's the prime motivation for everyone. There's very theological reasons. Some people believe that,
49:08
I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I would expect to see both of those options presented in a scenario in which your people are under attack and it does seem like you're on your way out.
49:20
The society I grew up in, and I'm sure you both grew up in, was very different than it is now.
49:26
I remember when I was like, I don't know, 16 or 17. I worked for the local town.
49:32
It was a little 18. I was working for the local town, and I remember the change. We used to have a nativity set right every
49:40
Christmas, and the town employees would set that up in our town. We had a little war memorial nativity set, and the good old
49:46
American town, Norman Rockwell, would have had a great time drawing a picture of it. Well, when I was like 18, all of a sudden, we could not the town was not allowed to do that because, believe it or not, it was a
49:58
Christian judge, and I talked to him in the local area who made the order. Based on this idea that this is separation of church and state and government funds should not be given to erecting a religious establishment, which would be a nativity set.
50:14
We were not allowed to touch it. We'd have to have the church come in and do it, and then, of course, we have all these holidays, their symbols popping up all over the place.
50:26
It's a different world, and something like that happens, and I'm bringing up this scenario to get your reaction.
50:32
There's a number of just very practical things I thought we could talk about in relation to this view.
50:39
In that scenario, it sounds like, from what I'm hearing, it would be perfectly fine for the civil magistrate to have employees from the local government or whatever erect a nativity set.
50:49
What do you guys say? Does that contradict two kingdoms, or is that? No. No. Okay.
50:57
I mean, I am Presbyterian, so I don't know about having an image of Christ, but if you just want to do something like that, yeah, that's fine.
51:05
Okay, so here's another practical one. Do you have more in common with a
51:11
Nigerian woman than you do with an American conservative, right? Thomas did a whole podcast on this.
51:18
I'll let him answer it. Two kingdoms, two kingdoms, right? Yeah, yeah. We have lots in common, I'm sure. So in one sense, yes, in one sense, no, but there's...
51:27
Yeah, no, this is so two kingdoms. I did not talk about this in that podcast, but two kingdom theology undergirds everything that was said in that podcast.
51:36
So we do have a lot in common with Christians all over the globe, and we have a lot in common with Christians who are dead and gone, by the way, right now, who are in heaven and who will see one day.
51:53
We have so much in common with them that we don't with unbelieving neighbors and unbelieving. If you have an unbelieving spouse, there's a sense in which you have more spiritually in common with others than you have with that person.
52:08
But that's the heavenly kingdom. Do you see? That's the spiritual kingdom.
52:13
In the earthly kingdom, you have more in common with your unbelieving spouse than you do with anyone else in the world.
52:21
And it doesn't matter their spiritual status, because we're talking about a spiritual and a physical relation, a realm, sphere, kingdom, mode of life, rules, laws, loyalties, duties, obligations, all of these things pertain.
52:38
And I'm not making that up. This is two -kingdom classic, two -kingdom theology coming to bear upon bumper sticker theology in the
52:46
Twitter sphere now. And it's so helpful to clear our minds. And it's actually, I think a lot of this is wrecking churches.
52:56
I need to get off my soapbox here and just answer your question. No, I love it. This is great. Yeah, it helps us to think through, yes, we have obligations to Nigerian princess
53:09
Christians, whatever they are. But physically, we have obligations to those near us.
53:17
And just read Luther. We're not the first people to wrestle with this, by the way. If you feel like you're wrestling with it,
53:22
John or me or the listeners, go read Martin Luther. He was really struggling with this stuff.
53:28
And he would almost sound like he was contradicting himself in the way he was in one moment being a
53:33
Christian in the spiritual kingdom. And the next moment, the physical realm and what pertains there.
53:41
Very different rules, very different obligations and duties and almost roles that you adopt like clothing that you put on when you're in one and you're in the other.
53:51
And if it sounds contradictory, I would say there's this tension that we live in.
53:57
It's the here, the already and not yet.
54:02
I guess some people say it that way. But it helps you, though, in the end of the day, when you wrestle through this, it helps you to live your life and not be confused or duped by people who would take your
54:14
Christian sensibilities and try to exploit that for political gains or something, political purposes.
54:21
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I mean, I could just I'll just I'll just say if I could add to that.
54:27
Yeah, yeah. I was going to pitch another scenario at you, but yeah, please. Okay. Yeah. I mean, and that is just the whole are you somewhere near Nigerian than your neighbor?
54:38
It's one of those cases where it might sound good as like a theological statement.
54:45
It's one of those things that looks good on Twitter, some moralism. But if you just think about it, if you have a group of people who are trying to live together in all the complexities of life, of all the different goods you pursue daily, of the various arrangements and relationships we need to just live well in the world, not just spiritually, but physically, earthly, it's just absurd that most of the things that concern your life, in order to supply those goods, you need people you can actually relate to at some level, culturally.
55:30
I mean, you need the same language so you can do transactions, you can work together on common projects.
55:37
If you have common loyalties where you or your grandfather, I mean, I might have a neighbor that's a nominal or not a
55:44
Christian, but his grandfather fought in World War II like mine, something like that, where you have these common loyalties for these very earthly, but extensive and comprehensive goods that you need.
55:56
And it's just kind of absurd to think that you have more in common. I mean, just because you have, just because you share in the highest good doesn't mean that you share in what you might call the complete good.
56:08
And the complete good includes heavenly, earthly. And I mean, most of our life, our lives, we concern ourselves with these very earthly things, and there's nothing wrong with that.
56:19
I mean, the highest good, we should pursue the highest good first and order those things to the highest good. But still, in terms of you wanna lay out how many different goods we pursue on a daily basis or weekly, yearly, it's mainly earthly things.
56:31
And that's fine. And you can't expect to achieve all that when you don't have the same culture, language, mutual expectations.
56:42
So I just think, yeah, it's a case where it sounds good, but if you just think about it practically, it just is kind of ridiculous.
56:50
I mean, just look around at who you relate to and achieve most things in life.
56:55
Well, they're probably pretty similar to you in a lot of ways. And that's by design, where you gravitate towards people who are similar to you because you know in that relationship you can get things done.
57:11
So just look around, and it kind of disproves the theory,
57:16
I think. Right, right. I mean, I think all this stuff with Protestant two -kingdom theology is also like that.
57:22
If you just think about it, it might take some work, but you realize this is how
57:28
I already live in a way. I think that's how I came to this. It's like, well, I already kind of make these distinctions. Like, this isn't anything, but it doesn't fit into my favorite theologians at the time when
57:39
I was looking at this and what they were saying. So another scenario, global pandemic, or supposedly a pandemic, and the government says indefinitely shut down your church, shut down singing, shut down everything.
57:54
Is there a two -kingdom, Protestant two -kingdom approach to this that helps you navigate something like that?
58:05
This is like a hot -button issue, I know. I was going to answer that, too. Yeah. Let me just preface by saying that within the two -kingdom theology world, there's difference of agreement on what the civil magistrate can tell the church to do and not do.
58:24
And generally, it's agreed that because the physical church is in the physical world, which is governed by the civil power, that therefore the civil power can have something to say to the church.
58:43
And so generally speaking, the civil magistrate can tell the church, you can only allow 500 people in this size building.
58:50
Right. So if you have 800, consistently, we find out about it, we're going to come talk to you.
58:58
You have to pay property taxes, or I don't know whatever the tax codes are, but there's some things that the civil magistrate can and does tell the local church to do.
59:08
Yeah, just look around. I'm sorry to interrupt just real quick. Just look around in your sanctuary and see those exit signs that glow, because those are required by law, they put those in there.
59:18
That's it. Yeah. Now, I know that's not answering your question, but I'm just prepping the listener to get in your mind that there is a sense.
59:27
And by the way, Calvin agrees with this, but they all agree varyingly, though. It's like the later reformers came along and they wanted less of this, but they still said, yes, the civil magistrate can have something to do with telling the physical church.
59:42
And it's usually on the long lines of keeping peace, keeping order, safety, welfare.
59:49
Some Christians came along and said that the civil rulers can tell the church what to do in their liturgy. But others said, no, that's getting into spiritual matters.
59:59
So there's going to be a difference of agreement here. That would be the Anglicans and the
01:00:04
Puritans, yeah. Yes. So yeah, but I know there was difference of agreement with how far the civil magistrate could tell churches what to do during the pandemic.
01:00:18
Yeah. I mean, my own view, and this might be a Presbyterian view, my own view is that the government can regulate the church, the church building and the meeting and the activities of the church, to the extent that it governs these public associations and their buildings.
01:00:45
So if you have like a chess, like a, I don't know, if you have some kind of, like any public meeting or building that brings people in can be kind of regulated as to that sort of thing it is, you know, as a public meeting place or some kind of institution.
01:01:05
They're drinking Kool -Aid or murdering people, like the state has an interest in going and stopping that kind of thing, right?
01:01:11
Yeah. But also just building codes and like Thomas mentioned, like occupancy limits.
01:01:19
So, and the church as a building, as a, and also as an association of people who meet together is subject to that kind of regulation.
01:01:29
I, and, but it, but the government cannot regulate, I think this, this, the distinctively spiritual matters of that association.
01:01:38
So it's a spiritual association. I mean, I don't get too technical here, but, but it's like, like the things that govern, like the spiritual aspect of the church, it should be outside the governance of the church.
01:01:47
So I do think that the church, that the government can actually say you can't meet for worship.
01:01:53
Now that, that doesn't mean it, but I do think they can cross the line. And I think it's a judgment of pastors to say whether or not they're going to obey, because I think they can, if they, to the best of their ability, determine that it's overreach.
01:02:07
I mean, this is not like a chess club. It's not like they're playing bridge. It's the worship of God. And, you know, so it's highly important.
01:02:15
It's the first importance. So they, if it, if it, if they deem that it's an overreach and they can, they can.
01:02:23
Here's where it seems to get, and this is where I think a lot of wisdom must be applied, but it seems like at, at, at such a point that the civil magistrate would then prevent the exercise of the ordinances, the spiritual matters.
01:02:40
That's where the problem comes in because now the government is regulating spiritual things in a sense, perhaps using the, in the name of ruling the physical world.
01:02:50
Right. And that was kind of the posture I took in trying to oppose at least. And I understood, I think most people understood you have blizzards, you have there are legitimate pandemics.
01:03:02
There are things that take place, but they're not indefinite. They're a temporary at best. And they don't the concern is that they don't inhibit the spiritual disciplines and activities that churches are supposed to be engaging in.
01:03:19
Yeah. Well, I would agree with you, John. And, and also add that this was, this was not a, it was my, my opinion about the pandemic is that it was not a pandemic.
01:03:30
Yeah. Well, there's that, there's that. Okay. I'm just going to say this. I think this was, I think a lot of this was just madness and chaos, and it was a luxury pandemic.
01:03:40
Now, all that said, I think that, I think that it was the governments around the world were shutting things down selectively.
01:03:50
So they didn't shut down gay pride parades. They didn't shut down BLM protests.
01:03:56
They didn't shut down all kinds of things, but then they shut down things that they knew people weren't going to get up in arms about like churches.
01:04:04
And when I see that happening, I think this isn't, this isn't for the public good, which is what the civil magistrate should be concerned with.
01:04:13
And in that case, I would support the churches that are saying, well, we're not, we're not going to shut down. We're going to disobey.
01:04:19
And this would be John MacArthur's church, for instance. And then they won their suit. So they were justified in the eyes of the law.
01:04:27
They were, they were vindicated in what they did. And so they were, they were legally in the right and the laws of, of, of land.
01:04:33
So I, I think that was a good example, but I do know some people who were two kingdom advocates who criticized
01:04:40
John MacArthur because they were being staunch and rebellious or whatever, but it ended up being that they were right.
01:04:47
And I don't know where those two kingdom advocates came out and said, sorry, you were right. More of the radical two kingdom camp.
01:04:54
I would think I can't put names on people at the moment. It's off the top of my head, but I just remember it happening.
01:05:00
Yeah. So I would say there's, there's wisdom here. There are things that touch the worship of God that the magistrate shouldn't handle.
01:05:10
And if it's for the public safety, like if there's a, if there's really some serious pandemic or natural disaster or war going on and they have to, they're looking out for us, they're really are looking out for our safety then.
01:05:23
Yeah. Let's listen to them. But if, if this is a ruse, if this is a game, if this is a woke power play here to just shut down their enemies and, and let, and give freedom to their frame and narco tyranny, essentially, then, then we're just, we're disobeying that the, the, the church, the civil magistrate is never to suppress the worship of God.
01:05:43
And I think that's what was happening. And if that's what's happening, then it's no longer an issue of the powers being just and legitimate.
01:05:51
And we should, we should have grounds there to resist it. Yeah, no, that's excellent. Do you mind, I know we're going long.
01:05:56
Can I, can I give you one more scenario to work through? All right. So reparative therapy, which is, is a controversial thing where someone wants has same sex attraction and behavior perhaps, and wants that changed.
01:06:11
And it goes to a, a doctor or a psychologist. There are some Christians who say Jesus isn't at the center of that though.
01:06:18
That's not, I mean, you could probably say this more broadly about psychology or I don't know,
01:06:24
I guess you could say this about counseling in general, if it's not specifically within the purview of the church, then it is horrible.
01:06:33
Some people would even say demonic and, and cause there's only one acceptable form and that's within the boundaries of the church.
01:06:39
Does two kingdoms have anything or the view you take the Protestant two kingdom view that you hold to, does it have anything to say about something like this where someone seeks help?
01:06:49
Maybe they're doing it in the church, but they're also seeking help from more secular sources on matters that pertain in some ways to is more complicated, but spiritual things.
01:06:59
So there, there is a relationship we have to admit with, with God's law and then same sex attraction. So I would go back to the discussion of natural law here and the idea that non, that there is wisdom in the world.
01:07:15
Generally, God has diffused things through natural revelation that man has picked up and it doesn't have to be a
01:07:23
Christian man that has picked it up or a Christian woman. And so there, there is wisdom and truth found everywhere and we should, and it's, it's all belongs to God and we should appropriate that and use it for our, for ourselves and not throw it aside because it happens not to be found in the church at the moment.
01:07:43
So generally speaking, yes. I don't know if it would be a distinctly two kingdom theology that would inform that, at least at first, it would be for me, it would be natural theology.
01:07:54
They're like, you may agree or disagree with Jordan Peterson. I'm just using him as an example. He said some things that a lot of Christian men and probably women have heard and thought that's,
01:08:05
I want to hear more of that. I like that. I want to, I want to use that as wisdom in my life. And then you have
01:08:10
Christians who say, you shouldn't be listening to this atheist, agnostic, whatever he is, non -Christian. And what you're saying is when people say that, you're saying there's no wisdom to be found outside of, outside of Christians.
01:08:23
Now it's true that there's no wisdom to be found outside of Christ. He is the Logos. However, he has infused all men with reason and he's in his natural revelation.
01:08:33
I mean, we can learn things true, true things in the world such that even atheists and pagans and Greeks and Romans and Egyptians, they have wisdom and we should access that and use it.
01:08:47
Now, if there's, I know psychology, especially modern psychology can get into a lot of atheistic or anti -Christian traditions.
01:08:58
And so those, we should probably avoid those that are explicitly anti -Christ in their foundations.
01:09:06
But I would not tell people to avoid things just because they're outside of the church.
01:09:12
When it comes to reparative, I don't know all the schools of reparative theology. I don't know if there's one or five, but I wouldn't tell people not to do it.
01:09:19
And I do know that there have been problems in the church because the church has tried to take care of some issue like abuse or something where it turned out that the authorities, the legal authorities needed to handle it.
01:09:33
And that later on, it was found out that they didn't report it or whatever. And they never called the police.
01:09:39
Right. So we shouldn't be afraid of that. And I think two kingdoms should help us understand that there are layers of authority here.
01:09:49
And then sometimes they overlap a little bit, but we need to have wisdom to know when to kick the ball one way or the other.
01:09:55
Okay. Yeah. Stephen, do you have any thoughts? No. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah,
01:10:02
I don't know. I don't know if it answers the question directly, but I don't think we should like the many problems that people have.
01:10:11
I don't think that should be the concern of the church as an institution. And I don't think the pastor should be kind of the one -stop shop to solve all your problems.
01:10:21
That's kind of what I was getting at. Yeah. Yeah. So again,
01:10:26
I think the pastor should preach a gospel first. And these are the things secondary, but relevant.
01:10:33
But that Christians should. So Christians can be
01:10:39
Christians apart from the church itself. So it doesn't have to be a ministry of the church. It doesn't have to be something sanctioned by the pastor.
01:10:46
Or I don't know. You don't have to have a title of a church. You can be a marriage family therapist or whatever.
01:10:55
It could be a lawyer, all these different professions. You can be them as Christians.
01:11:00
And so what I hope is that, yeah, we can take a lot from...
01:11:05
Like I agree with Thomas that we can take a lot from non -Christians. But I would prefer that there'd be people who fill these different roles within society who have read these non -Christians who can then filter them and actually have a distinctively
01:11:21
Christian approach to these different things. So we could go, for all of our problems, we can go to a
01:11:28
Christian. So for me, I do politics. I don't know if anyone would come to me for advice.
01:11:35
But if I'm doing Christian political theory, I'm going to read people who are not
01:11:40
Christians and I can learn something from them. But I'm not going to... I'd prefer them to read what
01:11:46
I have to say filtered through a Christian lens, I guess, than have them go to this other guy who's not a
01:11:53
Christian and talk politics. So, you know. I think we're on the same page. I would see the office as pastor as you have to be...
01:12:00
To be an elder, one of the requirements is to be able to teach, refute those who contradict.
01:12:06
So you know the scripture and the scripture is going to have something to say about sin.
01:12:12
And so if it's a sin problem, I would prefer, yeah, within the boundaries of the church. So two kingdoms, this is spiritual things, but then not neglect the...
01:12:20
And this is where each case might be different. But the aspect of us that is in this physical temporal world as well, where there's going to be a lot of things, even medical, physiological things sometimes, especially if you're talking about like transgenderism.
01:12:37
And I mean, there has to be some medical knowledge on some of these things that's applied.
01:12:42
And so not to be afraid to then step outside of the church. And I know of Christians who are afraid of that with everything.
01:12:50
Like the pastor becomes the one -stop shop for every single discipline. And I just don't know how any pastor, they can meet the requirements to be an elder, but how are they supposed to be the experts on everything?
01:13:02
And that's, I think where two kingdoms might be helpful. So, but anyway,
01:13:07
I know we've gone long and I appreciate you guys so much giving me so much of your valuable time. And I hope you get some really good follows on social media from this.
01:13:15
And I neglected to mention you both still are doing, I know you're doing it, Thomas, but Stephen, are you still doing the Ars Politica podcast?
01:13:23
Yeah, I'm still there. I took like two months off. I had to take a break, but we're back.
01:13:28
Yeah, we're back. So people can check that out. I'll put the link in the info section for your podcast and they can subscribe on iTunes and on YouTube, I believe, right?
01:13:39
So go give them a follow. Thomas Accord, Stephen Wolfe on social media. Yeah, we just, we just interviewed
01:13:44
Yoram Hazony. So check out that interview. That was fun. Oh, did you really? Okay. Yeah. I haven't read his book.
01:13:49
It's out there now. Yeah. I heard, did, yeah, without getting into your whole podcast, I heard, do you guys familiar with Brian McClanahan at all?
01:13:56
Have you listened to him at all? Yeah. Yeah. So he did, he just did, I don't know if you heard it. He did this whole thing on Yoram Hazony.
01:14:01
I don't think he was too favorable to it, but it was interesting. Yeah, I figured he wouldn't, sorry to,
01:14:08
I don't want to go in this direction, but it was against his view of American history. Definitely. Yes.
01:14:14
Yeah. Yeah. So he sort of starts the podcast with like, well, it's a pretty good book, very interesting book.
01:14:19
And then like the rest of the podcast is just ripping it a new one. I was like, yeah, but anyway, that's cool that you had him on.
01:14:27
And so I would just encourage you to go subscribe. People ask me all the time. What are some good sources? There's so much bad out there in Christianity.
01:14:34
What are some good podcasts you can recommend? And I'll be honest. There's very few that I find worth listening to just because I want meat, right?
01:14:43
And I don't want to just listen to people telling inside jokes the whole time. And I want meat. I want good, solid content.
01:14:51
You guys are one of the podcasts, one of the few podcasts I actually listen to regularly. So thanks,
01:14:58
John. Yeah. So anyway, I appreciate what you're doing and God bless. Yeah. Take care.