The Blog of Brian Collins
On Monday I presented a paper at the BJU Seminary symposium for Fall 2018 on Genesis 1:26-28. The paper is posted on the Theology in 3D website. I’m thankful for the opportunity to present the paper, and I welcome feedback.
I’m grateful to Dr. Ken Casillas for inviting me to present the paper and to Dr. Eric Newton for his insightful response.
PBS’s American Experience recently aired a two-hour program about eugenics: “The Eugenics Crusade: What’s Wrong with Perfect?”. It is well worth watching.
Eugenics is the textbook example of the problem with placing unquestioning trust in the latest scientific consensus. When Christians raised moral questions about embryonic stem cell research, they were admonished not to let faith stand in the way of progress and science.
Interestingly, Christians were viewed similarly when they raised objections to eugenics.
And it was when these self-identified liberal and modernist religious men abandoned bedrock principles to seek relevance in modern debates that they were most likely to find themselves endorsing eugenics. Those who clung stubbornly to tradition, to doctrine, and to biblical infallibility opposed eugenics and became, for a time, the objects of derision for their rejection of this most modern science.
Christine Rosen, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 5.
Interestingly, the American Experience documentary did not identify this aspect of eugenics history. It did not distinguish between the social gospel ministers who embraced eugenics (Rosen, 17) and the conservatives who opposed it.
Indeed, the documentary makers framed the issue differently. They repeatedly emphasized that the proponents of eugenics promoted their ideas with religious fervor. Eugenics became to them a religion. The connection between religion and eugenics can even be seen in the title: “The Eugenics Crusade.” On the one hand, I have no problem with framing false ideologies in religious terms. They often are religious in nature. On the other hand, the documentary closed by claiming that better science debunked eugenics.
By eliding the religious opposition to eugenics, and by framing proponents of eugenics in terms of religion, the documentary created a narrative arc in which science triumphed over religion rather than presenting a narrative in which religious wisdom, if heeded, could have prevented oppression in the name of scientific consensus.
The worldview of the program also appeared in its handling of abortion. Abortion was never mentioned in the program. Margaret Sanger did make a brief appearance, but she was presented merely as promoting birth control. Her connection with eugenics, even specifically racist eugenics, was presented as a pragmatic way to promote the liberation of women through birth control. So instead of investigating the link between eugenics and abortion, the documentary seeks to distance them from each other.
The program does accurately convey the degree to which eugenics was in the mainstream of educated opinion for significant period of the early twentieth century, and it intends for viewers to be aghast that such ideas, and their implementation, were accepted so widely by Americans. I can only hope that in a future generation a PBS documentary on abortion will expect its audience to be aghast that abortion was mainstream.
I think this documentary is worth watching, but watch it with an awareness of how the creators’ worldview has shaped, and distorted, the story being told.
Leeman, Jonathan. How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age. Nashville: Nelson, 2018.
Leeman, a pastor and theologian with a degree in political science, is writing to help American Christians think biblically about politics. While he states up front that he is “not a political radical” or revolutionary, and while he values the political heritage that Americans have been bequeathed, he is concerned that American Christians often accept certain political principles because they are American without examining whether they are truly biblical.
For instance, many American Christians read Jesus’s words in Matthew 22:21, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” as if God’s things (“worship, faith, church, etc.”) belong in “the private domain” while the government’s things belong in the public domain. Leeman argues that Jesus’s words in Matthew 28 do not allow for this: “Jesus said he possesses all authority in heaven and on earth” (12). While Leeman affirms the separation of church and state (as two distinct institutions), he rejects “the separation of religion and politics.”
That is, Leeman rejects the old European model of Christendom in which church and state jointly ruled a nation. In Leeman’s view, this arrangement violated the unique spheres of authority that God gave church and state while bearing bad fruit (e.g., nominal Christianity, states that persecuted Christians in the name of Jesus).
But Leeman also rejects the model of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson in which the state rules over “outward things” and the church rules over personal, inward, religious matters. Leeman notes that people who hold such a view delude themselves into thinking that certain parts of life are not religious. For instance, the American values of “rights, equality, and freedom” may seem neutral. But when you ask: freedom to do what? rights to what? equality in what way? it becomes clear that religious viewpoints are smuggled in under these allegedly neutral terms. This, makes the fiction of a neutral public square damaging to the public good because it maintains a fiction.
Leeman explains:
When the non-Christian affirms his belief in the separation of church and state, he means separation of government from my church, not his own. He effectively says, ‘You can’t impose any of your beliefs and morals on me because they come from your church.’ Okay, but does that mean he cannot impose his idolatrous and non-Christian views on me? Ah, there’s the catch. He has no official church and no god with a name. And there’s no such thing as separation of idolatry and state. Too bad for me. Lucky for him. [41]
Thus the public square is not truly neutral: “What you really have is a square rigged against organized religion. Organized religions are kept out. Unnamed idols are let in” (34).
Leeman’s view is that the church and state should be largely separate institutions. God has given them two distinct jurisdictions. But all of life is religious. There is no neutrality.
What is at stake is found in the title of the book How the Nations Rage. While nations war among themselves, the greatest political rivalry is that of the nations conspiring against the Messiah. Leeman insightfully observes that “worship and rule belong together.” In a fallen world, rule is claimed by those who justify themselves as deserving the right to rule. Part of the challenge that Christians face is that the “politics of the new creation,” is currently present only in the church, which God by his Word and Spirit transforms hearts. And yet Christians are involved in the politics in this fallen world.
In order to navigate politics in a fallen world a right understanding of how the Bible relates to politics is needed. Leeman argues that “when it comes to thinking about politics, the Bible is less like a book of case law and more like a constitution. A constitution does not provide a country with the rules of daily life. It provides the rules for making the rules” (79). Leeman does not deny that the Bible makes some direct demands that should be translated into law. Law’s against murder come to mind. But in most cases, the Christian applying the Bible to the political realm is in need of wisdom. Leeman says that “wisdom is both the posture of fearing the Lord, as well as the skill of living in God’s created but fallen world in a way that yields justice, peace, and flourishing” (84; cf. Prov. 8:15-16). His point is that whereas there are some “straight-line issues” where the Bible can be directly applied (no murder means no abortion), most issues are “jagged line issues” where the Bible still applies, but not directly (e.g., health-care policy). Leeman argues that churches can bind people’s consciences on straight-line issues but should not do so with jagged line issues.
Leeman then turns to the Bible’s teaching about the origin, purposes, and forms of government. He notes that the Bible’s view of the origin of government “sits uncomfortably with aspects of America’s liberal, democratic tradition.”
Our liberal, democratic tradition teaches that “governments derive their powers … ‘from the consent of the governed'” (101). This is the social contract view. On this view people lived in a pre-political state until they consented to form a government. Since the government provided a framework for life rather than something that regulated all of life, the formation of government created public aspects for everyone’s life while leaving a substantial portion of life private. The “source of the government’s moral authority … depends on our consent.” On this view, religion is considered a private matter, rather than a public one.
Leeman notes that the Bible’s view of government has no room for a “pre-political” state because everyone is “always under God’s rule.” When people form a social contract, they ought to do so under the rule of God since, according to the Bible “a government’s authority comes from God” (Rom. 13:1, 2, 4; John 19:11). “Our governments, after all, are simply a way of working out in time and space the rules that God has provided” (105).
Leeman’s discussion of the biblical purposes for government begins with Genesis 9. God requires “a reckoning for the life of man” in Genesis 9. From this, Leeman concludes that the first purpose of government is “To Render Judgment for the Sake of Justice.” Other biblical texts that support this purpose include 1 Kings 3:28; Proverbs 20:8; Romans 13:3-4. The second purpose of government also Leeman also derives initially from Genesis 9: “The authority that God gave to shed blood for blood (vv. 5-6) facilitates the larger enterprise of filling the earth and ruling over it (vv. 1 and 7)” (112). Thus the second purpose for government is “To Build Platforms of Peace, Order, and Flourishing.” See also Prov. 29:4; 16:12, 15; Joseph’s preparation for famine in Egypt and Mosaic regulations that provide for the poor. From 1 Timothy 2:1-4, Leeman discerns a third purpose for government: To Set the Stage for Redemption.” A good government “clears a way for the people of God to do their work of calling the nations to God.”
This last purpose of government raises the issue of religious freedom. Leeman supports the view that governments should tolerate false worship because Scripture authorizes no government, except Old Testament Israel, to punish people for false worship. Leeman points out that this argument is not based on the freedom of the conscience (though that is a “fruit” of the argument) but on the authorization that God gives to government. Second, Leeman argues that “governments possess no authority to exercise the keys of the kingdom, and no ability to coerce true worship” (122).
With all this in view, what is the best form of government? Americans may be tempted to answer, “democracy.” But Leeman observes that a democracy only functions well when “the right kind of political culture must be in place.” He observes, “There must be a strong tradition of respecting the rule of law. Citizens must prize honesty and eschew bribes. They must trust one another to keep their contracts. They must know how to negotiate, persuade, compromise, and lose votes, yet still submit to the system. Apart from these kinds of public and private virtues, democracy has a much harder time working” (122). The Bible itself provides “no abstract ideal form of government.” Instead, a good government is any government that fulfills the three biblical purposes for government noted above.
Leeman then turns from the role of the government to the role of the church. He emphatically denies the path of arguing that the church focuses on spiritual matters while the government focuses on political matters. Instead, he asserts, “Every week that a preacher stands up to preach he makes a political speech. He teaches the congregation “to observe all” that the King with all authority in heaven and on earth has commanded (Matt. 28:20)” (131-32). On the other hand, Leeman is skeptical of making the church into a lobbying organization. He notes that it is beyond the church’s mission and competency to formulate public policy. “Therefore, churches should ordinarily not seek to influence government policy directly. … It risks misidentifying Jesus’ name with human wisdom. It risks abusing the consciences of church members. And it risks undermining Christian freedom and unity” (145). He observes, “I have watched churches unite their names and therefore the name of Jesus to a Supreme Court nominee, to presidential candidates, and to legislation in Congress. And nearly every time I want to ask, ‘Are you sure? Do you really want to stake the reputation of Jesus and the gospel to that nominee or candidate or reform?'”(148).
Leeman acknowledges there are certain issues that are so clear that the church can speak directly to them. In fact, he notes that “churches can sin and prove faithless by not speaking up in matters of government policy when they should” (147). But the church has to be able to discern the difference between what it can bind consciences on and what a Christian, working in a sphere outside the church, might conclude as he brings policy expertise together with a biblically-shaped worldview.
The limitations that Leeman places on the involvement of the church as an institution do not apply to general Christian involvement in politics. In fact, Leeman argues that disengagement from civic life is wrong, as is capitulation, “positively endorsing the world and its ways.” Leeman cautions, “Be leery of being too captivated by any political worldview” (181). Neither the right or the left provide the Christian with a biblical worldview. For the Christian to simply embrace the zeitgeist of either side or either party will result in conformity to the world in some areas of life. A third wrong path is to be worldly in the way the Christian acts politically. “There is a way of engaging that’s right on the substance but wrong on the strategy or tone” (164).
Leeman also notes various strategies for Christian engagement in the political realm. The first approach is to find some common ground in the way the argument is made. For instance, Leeman observes that when the Affordable Care Act required employers to provide insurance coverage that included abortion, Christians objected to this requirement (and prevailed in court) on religious freedom grounds. Leeman notes that he agrees with the religious freedom argument, but he observes: “Religious freedom isn’t the real issue. It’s a backup issue. The real issue, for a Christian, is murder. We don’t want the state to require us to fund something we believe is murder” (183). A second approach is to appeal to natural law. This was attempted in the debate over the redefinition of marriage. A third way of engagement Leeman calls the “sociologists approach.” For instance, a Christian defending policies that support two-parent homes or opposing policies that undermine two-parent homes could point to studies showing that children do better in two-parent homes.
Leeman does not object to Christians deploying any of these approaches when appropriate. But he does issue a warning about these ways of making a political argument. “All three lack the force of conviction because the very thing they are good at—finding common ground—affirms our modern intuitions that all authority and moral legitimacy rests in every individual’s consent. Unless I can be convinced something is true on my terms, it must not be true. And so you owe it to me to convince me on my terms. Ironically, the very attempt to persuade risks hardening people in the deeper certainty that they are right” (184).
This objection runs up against the way Americans tend to think about the public square. Leeman observes that John Rawls argued that “we are morally obligated to only bring arguments that everyone can understand on his or her own terms” (186). Leeman calls this view “a Trojan horse for small-g god idolatry.” Governments do not make laws only about matters for which there is consensus. When there is no consensus, on whose terms is the decision made. Leeman argues that it is better to observe that everyone’s god is attempting to set the terms of the debate. There is no religiously neutral public square or religiously neutral public argument.
Leeman’s final chapter addresses the issue of justice. The primary responsibility of government is to ensure justice, and Americans have a particular viewpoint on justice. “Together Jefferson’s Declaration and Lincoln’s Address present America’s mission statement on justice: we are a people dedicated to the principles of equality, freedom, and natural rights” (204).
Leeman is skeptical that this view of justice works. Just as there is no religiously neutral public argument, so there is no religiously neutral approach to justice: “Pick your God or gods; out will come your views on justice. Pick your conception of justice; out will come your views on equality, freedom, and rights” (206). Leeman’s point is that equality, freedom, and rights are themselves empty concepts that will be filled with different content depending on one’s worldview.
Leeman also challenges the more recent views of identity politics. He notes such approaches deny the Bible’s teaching about our “common humanity” and speak as if both truth and morality are social constructs of different groups. Instead of bringing about justice, identity politics, pits groups against each other so that they cannot even communicate with each other, much less work together as citizens. In contrast, Leeman says “The Christian path affirms both our common humanity and our created differences. It requires color-blindness with respect to our oneness in Adam and (if believers) in Christ (Gal. 3:28). It requires color-consciousness with respect to our different experiences, histories, and cultural traditions, as well as the unique ways different people can glorify God (1 Cor. 12:13–14; Rev. 7:9)” (221).
Good books on Christians and politics are difficult to find. Often Christians are tempted to baptize current political philosophies (whether from the left or right) rather than testing these philosophies against Scripture. Leeman does an admirable job of letting the Bible challenge our customary ways of thinking. This is probably the best brief book on politics that I’ve read.
Althusius, Joannes. Politica: An Abridged Translation of Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples. Edited and translated by Frederick S. Carney. Foreword by Daniel J. Elzazar. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995.
This is an early treatise of political theology from a Christian perspective by a 16th/17th century Reformed thinker. He was a colleague of Caspar Olevianus, coauthor of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). He was an intellectual opponent to the still famous Hugo Grotius.
In defending the rights of cities and guilds, etc. against a push toward a unitary state, Althusius developed the idea of federalism. The term “federal” is related to the Latin word for covenant. For Althusius, a federal form of government is one in which the government is in covenant with the people and in which different levels of government are in covenant arrangements with each other.
The introduction to this particular translation (available for free from the Liberty Fund website) is helpful. Here’s a sample:
The first grand federalist design, as Althusius himself was careful to acknowledge, was that of the Bible, most particularly the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament. For him, it also was the best—the ideal polity based on right principles. Biblical thought is federal (from the Latin foedus, covenant) from first to last—from God’s covenant with Noah establishing the biblical equivalent of what philosophers were later to term natural law (Genesis, chapter 9) to the Jews’ reaffirmation of the Sinai covenant under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, thereby adopting the Torah as the constitution of their second commonwealth (Ezra, chapter 10; Nehemiah, chapter 8). The covenant motif is central to the biblical world view, the basis of all relationships, the mechanism for defining and allocating authority, and the foundation of the biblical political teaching.
The biblical grand design for humankind is federal in three ways. First, it is based upon a network of covenants beginning with those between God and human beings, which weave the web of human, especially political, relationships in a federal way—through pact, association, and consent. In the sixteenth century, this world view was recreated by the Reformed wing of Protestantism as the federal theology from which Althusius, the Huguenots, the Scottish covenanters, and the English and American Puritans developed political theories and principles of constitutional design.
Second, the classic biblical commonwealth was a fully articulated federation of tribes instituted and reaffirmed by covenant to function under a common constitution and laws. Any and all constitutional changes in the Israelite polity were introduced through covenanting. Even after the introduction of the monarchy, the federal element was maintained until most of the tribal structures were destroyed by external forces. The biblical vision of the restored commonwealth in the messianic era envisages the reconstitution of the tribal federation. Most of the American Puritans and many Americans of the Revolutionary era, among others, were inspired by the biblical polity to seek federal arrangements for their polities.
Third, the biblical vision for the “end of days’ ’ —the messianic era—sees not only a restoration of Israel’s tribal system but what is, for all intents and purposes, a world confederation or league of nations, each preserving its own integrity while accepting a common Divine covenant and constitutional order. This order will establish appropriate covenantal relationships for the entire world. …
In some respects, all subsequent federalist grand designs until … the mid-nineteenth century are derived from or somehow related to that scriptural precedent. …
Althusius’ grand design is developed out of a series of building blocks or self-governing cells from the smallest, most intimate connections to the universal commonwealth, each of which is internally organized and linked to the others by some form of consensual relationship. Each is oriented toward some higher degree of human harmony to be attained in the fullness of time….
…In the struggle over the direction of European state-building in the seventeenth century, the Althusian view, which called for the building of states on federal principles … lost out to the view of Jean Bodin and the statists who called for the establishment of … centralized states where all powers were lodged in a divinely ordained king at the top of the power pyramid or in a sovereign center. While Althusian thought had its exponents until the latter part of the century, after that it disappeared from the mainstream of political philosophy. It remained for the Americans to invent modern federalism on the basis of individualism and thus reintroduce the idea of the state as a political association rather than a reified entity, an artifact that is assumed to have an existence independent of the people who constitute it.”
Daniel J. Elazar, “Althusius’ Grand Design for a Federal Commonwealth,” in Joannes Althusius, Politica: An Abridged Translation of Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples, ed. and trans. by Frederick S. Carney (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995), 23-25.
Two of the most helpful concepts that I’ve gleaned from Al Wolters’s Creation Regained are creational norms and structure and direction.
Wolters holds that law is built into creation. Creation is not only material things; creation includes non-physical laws like gravity and norms for marriage. Drawing on the wisdom literature Wolters observes that God designed his world to work in particular ways. Wisdom is to observe God’s world to through the lens of God’s Word to discern how best to live in the world God made.
Structure refers to the essence of a thing, and it is rooted in creational laws. Direction refers to the degree to which a creational entity (which, recall, is not limited to the physical world but includes institutions such as marriage) is perverted by the fall or is being brought back to conformity to creational law.
Related to these two concepts is the critique of ideology developed by David Koyzis. Building on Wolters’s structure/direction distinction, and applying it to politics, Koyzis argues that ideologies are idolatrous because they seize on one aspect of the way God made the world (creational norms/structure) and make it ultimate. If only the ideology could take root, the thinking goes, then the nation or community or world could be saved by the evil which threatens it. The “fundamental evil” identified by the various ideologies is itself another aspect of God’s creation (identifying evil with structure not with direction). As a result of deifying one part of the creation and demonizing other parts, ideologies develop warped soteriologies that lead to more evil and suffering because governing moral principles built by God into his world (creational norms/structure) are subverted by the salvific goal set up by the ideology.
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Here is copy from Oxford University Press, describing Clare Chambers’s new book Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State:
Part I makes the case against marriage. Chambers investigates the critique of marriage that has developed within feminist and liberal theory. Feminists have long argued that marriage is a violation of equality since it is both sexist and heterosexist. Chambers endorses the feminist view and argues, in contrast to recent egalitarian pro-marriage movements, that same-sex marriage is not enough to make marriage equal. Chambers argues that state-recognised marriage is also problematic for liberalism, particularly political liberalism, since it imposes a controversial, hierarchical conception of the family that excludes many adults and children.
Here is the book’s cover:
A colleague of mine, observing that the cover presents marriage in a fallen direction, commented that a common rhetorical approach for rejecting biblical teaching is to use fallen direction as a way to oppose creational structures. In these conversations, therefore, it is important to distinguish between structure and direction.
Further, the copy illustrates the benefit of Koyzis’s analysis of ideologies. The copy indicates that equality and freedom are the governing standards for Chambers. Both equality and freedom have a role in God’s good creation. Indeed, both have a role within marriage. But if equality and freedom become the absolute norms and if heirarchy and limits become the great evils, then Chambers has invented an idol. And since this idolatry does not conform to the way the true God made his world to work, the only result will be greater pain and suffering for living contrary to creational norms.
A friend emailed after I posted my review of Bradford Littlejohn’s book on the two kingdoms asking for more specifics. The following is a slightly edited version of my reply to him:
In my review I flagged the big historical contribution. Littlejohn shows clearly that the two kingdoms division was not between institutional church and institutional state, as R2K/W2K folks like Van Drunen (DVD) say. I think Littlejohn showed this conclusively, and historically this is important because DVD wants to use R2K to enforce a kind of separation of church and state, or as Littlejohn puts it, “the religious neutrality of modern liberal politics.” Historically, that’s hard to see in Luther and Calvin, and Littlejohn shows why. Their two kingdoms are different from those of R2K.
Littlejohn argues that the Reformers’ 2K doctrine is not about dividing the life into two distinct spheres but are different ways to look at all of life. So, Luther argues that “inwardly, before God, the Christian is not subject to the mediation of any human authority, or conscience-bound by its commands” (Littlejohn’s summary, p. 16). But because of love for neighbor, the Christian does outwardly submit to human rulers. I’ve read the treatises Luther wrote on this subject, and I’d say Littlejohn’s summary is accurate. But I’m not convinced that Luther is right! So I still find myself at variance from a 2K approach. Calvin is, I think, better in his formulations than Luther, though he like Luther is using the formulation to defend Christian liberty. (And here Littlejohn makes a helpful clarification: “not Christian liberty in the sense we often mean it today—the freedom of individual believers to act as they wish in matters where Scripture is silent—but is fundamentally soteriological, the proclamation of the freedom of the believer’s conscience from the bondage of external works” (p. 26). As Calvin develops it, he is not saying that “human authorities cannot prescribe outward conduct for believers in matters indifferent,” because that would do away with all government (p. 27). But he means that the conscience cannot be bound.) So government and church alike can make laws concerning church order or about things indifferent, but neither state nor church can say about such things: “this you must do to be right with God.”
As he goes on with the historical survey Littlejohn turns to Hooker’s response to the Puritan objection to various ceremonies and forms being imposed on them. Littlejohn likes Hooker, so here’s where my sympathies diverge from Littlejohn. Littlejohn sees Hooker make use of the 2K distinction of Luther and Calvin to oppose Puritanism. Littlejohn summarizes: “We can now see why Hooker’s Lawes represents such an important contribution to Protestant two-kingdoms theology, even if we might resist the conclusions Hooker himself draws for religious uniformity and royal supremacy. However oppressive these might seem to us today, they were, at least as understood and defended by Hooker, much less so than the Puritan legalism he opposed, which brooked no opposition and left no room for discretion in the outward ordering of the Christian community. Hooker deserves credit for freeing Christian consciences from the tyranny of Scripture conceived as an exhaustive law-book, desacralizing human authority in both church and state, and resisting the Puritan tendency to immanentize Christ’s eschatological rule in the visible church. In all this he both re-affirmed the core agenda of Luther’s reform, but he also clarified and filled out Luther’s sometimes paradoxical formulations by spelling out how it was that the visible church had a foot in both kingdoms, so to speak.” I’m not convinced that that Hooker stood in the breach against those bad Puritan legalists. I rather think that the Puritans were correct about their church worship concerns. So I remained unconvinced of the benefits of 2K.
As to the chapters on practical implications in the spheres of church, state, market, etc., I’m of two minds. I liked a number of conclusions he reached and disagreed with others. But I think I can get to the applications that I found insightful apart from 2K theology.
Littlejohn, W. Bradford. Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed. Davenant, 2017.
This brief book is helpful contribution to the discussion of Two-Kingdoms theology. Littlejohn states in the introduction, “I will argue that both the R2K advocates [Reformed Two Kingdoms view associated with David Van Drunen and Westminster Seminary, California] and their critics have largely missed something much richer, more fundamental, and more liberating and insightful for the church today: the original Protestant two-kingdom doctrine, as articulated by such giants as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Richard Hooker” (6). I did find Littlejohn’s historical survey to be more accurate than what I’ve found in Van Drunen. He rightly notes that the distinction between the two kingdoms historically was not a distinction between the institution of the church and other institutions. Thus in the historical view the institutional church is part of the temporal rather than spiritual kingdom. When he surveys the impact of this historic two kingdoms theology on church, state, and market, I found Littlejohn’s applications a mixed bag. In the end, I’m still not convinced that “two kingdoms” is the best model for Christian involvement in the world. I would recommend Littlejohn’s book as a good entry way into understanding the debate.
Rowe, C Kavin. One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
This is one of those books that stands head and shoulders above other recent books. It comes in three parts. In Part I Rowe examines the Stoic philosophers Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. In Part II Rowe summarizes the thought of Paul, Luke, and Justin Martyr. In Part III Rowe investigates the question of whether these two rival traditions can be compared.
I began reading the book to gain a better understanding of Stoicism, and Rowe’s treatment in Part I is an outstanding introduction. It involves a close reading of three specific Stoics. This gives a good sense of both continuities and discontinuities between Stoics. Rowe also interacts with scholars of Stoicism, so his notes are a good guide for further study.
I only skimmed Part II. I wasn’t reading this book to be introduced to the thought of Paul, Luke or Justin. And were I to summarize the thought of Paul or Luke my treatment would be different (for instance, his treatment of faith and works was influenced by E. P. Sanders; he did not discuss union with Christ).
In Part III Rowe made a compelling case that Stoicism and Christianity were rival and incommensurable traditions. In this part of the book Rowe’s argument reminded me a great deal of Van Til, though Rowe was actually dependent on Wittgenstein and may not have read Van Til.
Rowe’s case can be summarized:
“These examples reflect the dominant assumption about the use of the word God in the Stoic and Christian texts, that is it is used in the same or similar enough ways that we can treat it as referring to the same object/subject. The Christians and the Stoics both speak of the same basic thing called God. The trouble with this assumption is that they do not…. If we pose the question of how to ‘translate’ the Stoic use of the Word theos/deus into Christian usage so that the Christians would say the same thing with the word God in their grammar that the Stoics said in theirs…it is best approximated not by God but by cosmos/ktisis.” And even then it is only an approximation since Christians have different view of creation. If one were to reverse the process and try to translate “the Christian use of the word theos into Stoic usage so that the Stoics would say the same thing with the word God in their grammar that the Christian said in theirs”—we would find no equivalent concept. The Christian would need to explain his entire narrative. “Of the many implications of this asymmetry, we need mention only two…. First, the fact that God does not mean anything like the same thing for the Christians and the Stoics makes it all but obvious that patterns of language that are directly tied to God in the grammars of the different traditions will not mean the same thing. Providence, for example, no more names a shared conviction about a God/world relation than it does a shared sense of what that God or world is. Second, precisely because of the role that God plays in each tradition, the patterns of language that are inextricably bound to God are constitutive of each traditions identity as a distinctive tradition in the first place. The consequence, therefore, of the fundamental different ‘God’ makes for the tradition’s existence as a tradition is the expectation of incommensurable (and incompatible) difference elsewhere” (227-28).
Harlow, J. Porter. How Should We Treat Detainees? An Examination of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” under the Light of Scripture and the Just War Tradition. P&R, 2016.
Harlow, who served as an attorney in the Marine Corps and as an associate professor at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School, wrote this book as a thesis for an M.A.R. degree from RTS.
He opens the dissertation with an account of how his views began to change on this subject. While teaching at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School he invited Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch to address the class. He described Couch as “a prosecutor’s prosecutor, a strong advocate for the Government who I did not believe had ever served as a defense counsel” and as “as self-described Republican and evangelical Christian” (xvii-xviii). In this lecture Couch explained why he had refused to prosecute an al-Qaeda terrorist because his “confessions had been obtained by the U.S. Government as the result of torture” (xvii). Couch found this not only unlawful (and thus evidence “inadmissiable in a court”) but he also registered his moral objections. This prompted Harlow, an evangelical Christian, to begin to rethink his position on torture and to investigate the nature of the enhanced interrogation techniques that had been used for a time by the U.S. government.
In this work he reviews the biblical argumentation for just war theory and then applies his findings to the enhanced interrogation techniques employed early on in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He concludes that these techniques, especially when combined are torture and violate the principles of discrimination (in which only combatants are to be targeted in war) and proportionality (principles that he earlier grounded in Scripture).
One of most interesting discussions in the book has to do with the ticking time bomb scenario. It is in connection with this scenario in particular that some evangelicals have sanctioned torture. Harlow finds this fundamentally problematic because it sets aside a deontological approach to ethics (something is right or wrong because it conforms to or violates the law of God) for a utilitarian ethic (something is right or wrong depending on the potential outcome). He concludes: “Ticking time bomb scenarios have been criticized as intellectual frauds because they (1) provide for unrealistic certainty in the factual circumstances, (2) limit the leader’s options so as to only consider whether to torture or not to torture, and (3) mis-frame the entire debate over detainee treatment by developing principles based upon the most exceptional circumstances and then applying those principles to detainee treatment in general circumstances” (90).
Harlow concludes that evangelicals have not applied the Scripture to this issue with the same rigor and concern that they have to issues like abortion. Instead they have often been overly influenced by their political affiliations. He calls for evangelicals to test treatment of detainees by Scripture and to allow Scripture to shape their approach to public policy in this area.
However, there is a persistent tendency amongst some to misidentify the Cultural Mandate as a command to redeem the larger culture from the distorting effects of sin. Chuck Colson’s recent Breakpoint commentary is typical in this respect . . . . I will not deny that there are battles to be fought over significant issues, but that’s not really what the Cultural Mandate is about. . . .
Of course, one cannot escape the fact that our culture-making activities are affected by our sinful natures. This is the implication of Genesis 4:19-22. To be sure, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with fashioning culture. Yet neither can we escape the taint of sin in all our undertakings. Moreover, a distinction must be made between obedient culture-making and disobedient culture-making, which corresponds to St. Augustine’s distinction between the City of God and the City of this World. Rightly-oriented culture-making obeys the norms God has given us for life in his world: social, economic, aesthetic, ethical, political and other norms.
A good portion of what Colson calls the “Cultural Commission” must rather be understood to be the last part of the “Great Commission”: “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Evangelization requires that we proclaim, not only God’s saving grace, but the norms by which he intends those who are in Christ to live. In no way do mere human beings redeem culture by engaging in creative activity. This is presumptuous. Only God in Christ redeems his fallen creation. We are at most agents of his kingdom, manifesting his saving grace in everything we do — including the shaping of culture.
David T. Koyzis, “What the Culture Mandate Is Not,” First Things 11.30.11