Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought
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Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802864437 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2009 |
| Series: | Emory University Studies in Law and Religion |
| Pages: | 478 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
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Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms
A Study in the Development of Reformed Social ThoughtBy David VanDrunen
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2010 David VanDrunenAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6443-7
Chapter One
Natural Law, the Two Kingdoms, and the Untold Story of Reformed Social Thought
Reformed Christianity is widely respected for having a vibrant tradition of social thought. Whether the examples be taken from John Calvin's Geneva, Puritan New England, or Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands, friend and foe alike often admire Reformed Christianity for inspiring its adherents to think not only about ecclesiastical piety but also about the wide spectrum of political and cultural affairs. Many people, accordingly, have written about the tradition of Reformed social thought from a variety of angles. Yet there are important aspects of this tradition that are largely unknown and frequently overlooked in such studies. The place of the natural law and the two kingdoms doctrines in the development of Reformed social thought is one of these aspects.
For the better part of four centuries Reformed thinkers widely affirmed doctrines of natural law and the two kingdoms and treated them as foundational concepts for their social thought. In affirming natural law they professed belief that God had inscribed his moral law on the heart of every person, such that through the testimony of conscience all human beings have knowledge of their basic moral obligations and, in particular, have a universally accessible standard for the development of civil law. In affirming the two kingdoms doctrine, they portrayed God as ruling all human institutions and activities, but as ruling them in two fundamentally different ways. According to this doctrine, God rules the church (the spiritual kingdom) as redeemer in Jesus Christ and rules the state and all other social institutions (the civil kingdom) as creator and sustainer, and thus these two kingdoms have significantly different ends, functions, and modes of operation. Furthermore, classic Reformed theology interconnected the natural law and two kingdoms doctrines, particularly in looking to natural law as the primary moral standard for life in the civil kingdom. Through these two doctrines, therefore, the older Reformed writers rooted political and cultural life in God's work of creation and providence, not in his work of redemption and eschatological restoration through Jesus Christ.
In the present day, however, at least in North America, most adherents of Reformed Christianity look with suspicion upon or expressly reject the doctrines of natural law and the two kingdoms. And most outside observers of Reformed social thought would not think to identify these two ideas with the Reformed tradition. For many contemporary Reformed people, natural law is at best a sub-theological Roman Catholic idea wedded to Rome's unduly optimistic view of human moral and epistemological capabilities and unduly low view of the importance of Scripture. At worst it is an Enlightenment idea designed to foster social dialogue without reference to religion or apart from God altogether. Contemporary Reformed people also typically dismiss the two kingdoms doctrine as a Lutheran construct that creates an unwarranted dualism between the church and the world, which in turn tends to confine religion to private life and to encourage uncritical conservatism and passivity in public life. In other words, recent Reformed writers have not simply set aside the previously common categories of natural law and the two kingdoms but have rejected them as inherently foreign to Reformed theology. Yet, with some exceptions, they have done so without demonstrating significant acquaintance with how the earlier Reformed tradition actually defended and used these categories. It is this often forgotten story of the place of natural law and the two kingdoms in the Reformed tradition that this book seeks to tell and to interpret.
Before I proceed, a few comments about my use of potentially slippery terms such as "social" and "culture" in this book are appropriate. By "social" or "society" I generally refer to the common life that people live together in their various economic, political, and legal (etc.) relations. By "culture" I generally refer to that vast range of activities that constitute human life, including but not limited to our commercial, scientific, artistic, academic, familial, and recreational endeavors. These terms do not mean the same thing, but they are largely overlapping (though some cultural activities are not strictly social) and sometimes I use them virtually interchangeably. In both cases I use such terms to refer to activities and institutions outside of the church and other religious bodies. This is not to say, of course, that religious bodies are not social and do not have their own cultures which may influence and be influenced by the world at large. As will be evident to readers, however, this book is very much concerned with how ecclesiastical society and culture relates to the society and culture of the world more broadly, and hence my use of terms such as "social" and "cultural" in a non-ecclesiastical sense.
Contemporary Reformed Social Thought
A number of writers, from both mainline and smaller, conservative Reformed circles, have offered various alternatives in place of the older natural law and two kingdoms categories. For the introductory purposes of this chapter, I will take one popular perspective among many self-consciously Reformed writers today in North America as representative of a contemporary Reformed approach, namely, the school of thought often referred to as neo-Calvinism. Those taking this perspective continue to commend a high view of God's work of creation and many other themes clearly reflective of historic Reformed theology. But for them the foundation for cultural activity is not so much the creation order as it is being preserved as it is God's redeeming the creation order and moving it toward its eschatological goal of a new heavens and new earth. A common motif of Reformed neo-Calvinist thought is that of creation-fall-redemption: God created all things, all things fell, and now God is redeeming all things. Rather than two kingdoms, these writers affirm one kingdom of God. This kingdom, encompassing all human activities and institutions, was originally created by God in perfect righteousness (with potentialities that were to be actuated in history), was corrupted through the fall into sin, and is now being redeemed from corruption and advanced toward its eschatological goal. Christians are not to dismiss any area of life as outside of God's redemptive concern, and thus are to seek to transform all activities and institutions in ways that reflect the kingdom of God and its final destiny. Proponents of this vision often attempt to develop biblical models for what a redeemed, transformed society would look like, to construct a Christian account of all of reality through a Reformed world and life view, and to subject non-Christian thought and action to radical critique. Though they may cite Dutch polymaths Abraham Kuyper or Herman Dooyeweerd as more immediate inspiration for their vision, they also hail it as "Reformational" and as drawn from the thought of Calvin in particular. The differences between Calvin and his neo-Calvinist followers today, however, are often striking, yet largely unobserved. For instance, Calvin identified only the church with the redemptive kingdom of Christ and denounced the claim that civil government was a part of Christ's kingdom. But today Reformed intellectuals frequently assert that Christ's kingdom penetrates every legitimate social institution, and ordinary Reformed people found goat-breeding societies on a "Reformed basis" and wrestle with how to develop college football programs in accordance with a Reformed world and life view. Whatever the points of continuity with the earlier tradition, surely some significant things have changed in Reformed social thought.
The larger context within which these theological changes have occurred makes these shifts puzzling in certain ways. The first couple of centuries of Reformed Christianity existed within the confines of Christendom, the long Western project dating back to Constantine and marked by the ideal of a unified Christian society with church and state in close partnership. Though the early Reformed theologians taught the two kingdoms doctrine and advanced natural law as the standard for civil law, they held on to this Christendom ideal and regularly advocated state repression of unorthodox religious practice. The Reformed social thought of the past century, however, has taken place within a context in which only the remnants of Christendom survive after a long process of deterioration. In its place the Western world has almost universally embraced freedom of religion, accepted the idea of a religiously pluralistic civil society, and ended or significantly weakened ecclesiastical establishments, a situation to which most Reformed people, including those of neo-Calvinist persuasion, have given their assent. Yet even as they have given their assent to a tolerant, politically liberal, religiously pluralistic society, they have sought to construct specifically Christian world views, bring Christ's kingdom to expression in every area of life, and level radical critiques of non-Christian thought. In short, earlier Reformed writers affirmed a natural law and two kingdoms perspective, which seems to have offered theological reasons for positing a common social life among all people of whatever religion, yet simultaneously supported religious repression in their Christendom-inspired societies; but recent Reformed writers have affirmed a different perspective, which encourages recognition of the sharp antithesis between Christian and non-Christian thought and the Christianization of all things, even while supporting the free exercise of religion. Certainly the development of Reformed social thought presents some puzzling historical questions.
Reformed Social Thought and Contemporary Christian Discussions
How this puzzling history and current state of affairs came to be may be an interesting enough story as it is. But a couple of other things make it all the more intriguing. The first is that in very recent years a fledgling renaissance of interest in the natural law and two kingdoms doctrines has emerged in some Reformed circles. Throughout the twentieth century writers here and there voiced dissent concerning the reigning Reformed paradigm of social thought. In some cases they preserved awareness of older Reformed ideas through historical studies and in others sought to refine older doctrines (sometimes even unwittingly) through their own constructive projects. But a number of books and articles from Reformed sources in the past several years have displayed a self-conscious desire to retrieve and revitalize older patterns of Reformed social thought. In 2006 alone three Reformed writers published books advancing various versions of the natural law and/or two kingdoms doctrines. Even outside of Reformed circles, several competent scholars recently have attempted to recapture similar ideas, at least through the medium of Augustine, whose work is an important precursor to early Reformed social thought.
A second thing that adds interest to the story of Reformed social thought, viewed from the lens of the natural law and two kingdoms doctrines, is its potential to contribute to broader contemporary discussions about Christian participation in cultural and political life. Reformed social thought ought not to be evaluated simply as a parochial affair. Other Christian traditions, particularly Protestant, have often looked to Reformed Christianity as a leader in articulating Christian social thought. Today that reputation for leadership seems rather well-deserved, as many pieces of evidence suggest that ideas animating contemporary Reformed social thought have gained wide acceptance in many Protestant circles, in a number of Christian ecumenical discussions beyond mere Protestantism, and even in central concepts widely favored in the mainstream Western intellectual world. In Protestant circles relatively close to home, one can see the significant influence of twentieth-century Reformed social thought in the calls for cultural transformation and for development of a Christian world and life view in the rhetoric of many historically non-Reformed evangelical colleges. In broader, ecumenical Christian discussions many have advanced the case that religious arguments have an important and even necessary place in the public square. In the mainstream Western intellectual world perhaps furthest from home, the very prevalence of postmodern philosophy, with its insistence that theories are never neutral nor void of worldview-driven assumptions, makes twentieth-century Reformed figures such as Dooyeweerd and Cornelius Van Til, though no postmoderns themselves, look like prophets.
Most profitable for present purposes, however, may be a somewhat lengthier consideration of some influential recent trends and movements in broader, ecumenical Christian thought which seem remarkably friendly, and in some cases perhaps indebted, to the last century of Reformed social thought. The so-called New Perspective on Paul, a major player in contemporary biblical studies, offers a case in point. While scholars associated with this school of thought, such as N. T. Wright, are better known for critiquing historic "Lutheran" (but also Reformed) views of Paul on the doctrine of justification which have allegedly skewed New Testament scholarship for centuries, they have also disputed the historic "Lutheran" (and Reformed) two kingdoms doctrine that has allegedly dichotomized religion and politics and thereby obscured important aspects of Paul's thought. The echoes of many decades of recent Reformed social thought is evident in this latter concern about an unwarranted division between religion and politics, and it is perhaps of little surprise that some contemporary Reformed neo-Calvinists have expressed their own appreciation of and debt to Wright.
Another example comes from the recent revival in interest in the social tenets of the radical reformation, historically associated with the Anabaptists and Mennonites. The most influential voice here is surely that of Stanley Hauerwas, though himself a Methodist. A perspective grounded in the radical reformation would not ordinarily be associated with a perspective looking to Calvin and the magisterial reformation for inspiration, but they in fact share remarkable similarities. Hauerwas was influenced not only by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder but also by the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, whose tour de force, After Virtue, subjected modern, post-Enlightenment, liberal, secular, value-free Western society to a withering critique. MacIntyre concluded that the autonomous individuals within it share no common story or telos and therefore have no resources from which to draw in order to have genuine moral discussions about anything. Not only has Hauerwas picked up on such analysis in condemning the quest for freedom and autonomy in a morally fragmented world scarred by capitalism and materialism, but he has also rejected, as inimical to Christian faith, the idea of a universal ethic or common morality grounded in natural law. Nevertheless, he has called for Christian activism in the world, but in a way peculiar to Christianity. The church, he says, is to live out its existence as a community of faith and hence display to the world how the peaceful kingdom of Christ provides an alternative to a politics built upon violence and falsehood. Hence Hauerwas voices familiar contemporary Reformed themes in rejecting a natural law social ethic, sharply critiquing modern thought and practice, promoting social activism, and calling on Christians to have the ways of the kingdom of Christ shape all of their activity in the church and in the world. Hauerwas has many admirers that have picked up and developed such themes, including those associated with the New Perspective on Paul and scholars in American evangelical circles without historic connection to Mennonite theology. The work of Brian McLaren, a chief spokesperson for the so-called emerging church movement, is also similar in many important respects.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms by David VanDrunen Copyright © 2010 by David VanDrunen. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface....................ix1. Natural Law, the Two Kingdoms, and the Untold Story of Reformed Social Thought....................1
2. Precursors of the Reformed Tradition....................21
3. Reforming Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: John Calvin and His Contemporaries....................67
4. Natural Law in Early Reformed Resistance Theory....................119
5. The Age of Orthodoxy: Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms in Reformed Doctrine and Practice....................149
6. Theocratic New England, Disestablished Virginia, and the Spirituality of the Church....................212
7. An Ambiguous Transition: Abraham Kuyper on Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms....................276
8. The Christological Critique: The Thought of Karl Barth....................316
9. The Kuyperian Legacy (I): Herman Dooyeweerd and North American Neo-Calvinism....................348
10. The Kuyperian Legacy (II): Cornelius Van Til and the Van Tillians....................386
Conclusion: The Survival and Revival of Reformed Natural Law and Two Kingdoms Doctrine....................423
Bibliography....................435
Index....................463