Two Kingdoms (again)

[PuritanCovenanter]

As Mr. Helbert said in a recent thread, "We need fewer professional theologians, ideologues, and nit pickers, who strain at gnats, and more pastors, teachers, deacons, and missionaries who are willing to get into the trenches and do the grunt work of coming along side people who have everyday needs."

While I agree with this sentiment there needs to be a balance of recognition that these doctrines effect some of these areas you are concerned about. There is a balance. Orthodoxy leads to Orthopraxy. As I noted earlier, a Pastor friend of mine who does what you are calling grunt work was asked to go pray for a City Counsel meeting and was challenged by one of his fellows to consider if he was mixing the two kingdoms. You would be surprised who those people were.

 

[The Baptist]

OH I See, so basically it's the old american error invented at the foundation of their republic

Ooo. I wanna know what this error was.

 

[jandrusk]

It would be interesting for someone to apply the Two Kingdom strategy to the concept if "Hitler had won WW II". The Moral Law for the secular society is not sufficient to rule righteously due to the corruption of human nature. History is full of examples of this and I don't see how they can reconcile this.

 

[RamistThomist]

It would be interesting for someone to apply the Two Kingdom strategy to the concept if "Hitler had won WW II". The Moral Law for the secular society is not sufficient to rule righteously due to the corruption of human nature. History is full of examples of this and I don't see how they can reconcile this.

Might not actually change that much. The Church--aside from the Vatican--doesn't have an army so they couldn't have opposed Hitler on that point. If the Nazis (Or others) wanted us to participate in putting Jews (or Japanese Americans) into Concentration Camps, then a 2K advocate could have resisted via natural law and in the sphere of civil righteousness. Not a perfect answer, but one that has Reformed precedent. Further, and with the exception of the White Horse Inn, maybe, few 2K advocates advance full quietism in the pulpit. If all the 2K advocates are saying is that the Church shouldn't waste valuable gospel rallying the masses at City Hall, then I agree.

 

[mvdm]

If all the 2K advocates are saying is that the Church shouldn't waste valuable gospel rallying the masses at City Hall, then I agree.

But of course, they are saying much more than that.

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

One of the problems in the whole discussion is that there are a lot of assumptions made in ignorance, especially when it comes to establishmentarianism.

For example, the Establishment position when it comes to the day-to-day operations of the church looks a lot more like the "Spirituality of the Church" position than not. The State does what it is supposed to do and the Church does what it is called to do. WCF 23 and 25 (in the 1646 confession) is pretty clear here I think.

 

[MW]

The land/exile difference is not going to work because the American revision still allows for the legal recognition of religion even if it excludes a specific denomination.

The term "voluntary" seems to be misused in this thread when it is made to apply to principled pluralism. Voluntarists simply believe that the church should be supported by voluntary giving as opposed to civil endowment. Endowment and establishment are two different things, as many of the establishmentarians pointed out during the Voluntarist controversy in Scotland in the nineteenth century.