Review Of VanDrunen’s Natural Law And The Two Kingdoms

By William D. Dennison

I. Introduction

During the initial decade of the twenty-first century, Westminster Seminary California (WSC) carved out its own prescription for the Christian’s relationship to culture. Many of the faculty there have recommended a revival of what they perceive as the historic and traditional Reformed doctrines of natural law and two kingdoms (NL2K). The leading voice for this proposal seems to be David VanDrunen, whose published works on these subjects have revived them within his own theological environment. From there, his assessment has filtered into the discussion about culture in the wider Reformed world and beyond. Indeed, his corpus and graduate credentials (theology and law) provide ample justification for him to write for the Emory University Studies in Law and Religion series, of which the volume under review is a part.[1]

When VanDrunen engaged complex issues in the field of law and ethics during his graduate studies, he was disappointed that recent Reformed authors within his own circle of thought provided little assistance. In the face of this void, he was drawn to the notion of natural law and its companion, the two kingdoms in the Reformed tradition, as a means to address legal and moral issues in the realm of “commonality,” that is, the domain of cultural socio-civil life shared by Christians and non-Christians (civitas permixta). Although NL2K doctrines have been neglected by recent Reformed thought, VanDrunen believes a “renaissance” of these doctrines “might provide a fresh and coherent contribution to the wider discussions about Christianity and culture” (p. 12). In classic Reformed thought, “Christians are citizens of two distinct kingdoms”—“the church as the non-violent kingdom of Christ and the sword-bearing, coercive state” (p. 13; cf. 267). As VanDrunen unfolds his thesis, the distinction between God’s work of redemption and his work of creation is paramount.

According to VanDrunen, the Reformed tradition grounded the kingdom of God (church) in the covenant of grace, mediated by Christ as redeemer. On the other hand, the tradition grounded the civil kingdom in natural law as based in the covenant of works (law written upon the heart) mediated by Christ as king over the creation (cf. pp. 182, 364). These two kingdoms, VanDrunen asserts, though distinct domains, cause no contradiction or inconsistency in the manner of Christian application to the church and civil society. Moreover, “the state is not at all an amoral institution, thanks to the universal testimony of God-given natural law” (p. 13).

In order to prove and establish his thesis, VanDrunen provides in his volume a historical-critical study that spans a range of writings, persons, and movements: for example, patristics (Didache, Epistle to Diognetus, Augustine); medieval popes/theologians (Gelasius I, Boniface VIII, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham); Reformation (Luther, Calvin, Bucer); early Reformed resistance theory (Marian exiles, Huguenots); views from the age of Reformed orthodoxy (Althusius, Rutherford, Turretin, Westminster Standards); representative models of the church-state relationship from New England (theonomic; Cotton) and Virginia (separation of church and state; Davies, Robinson); Hodge and Thornwell on ecclesiastical authority; and Reformed thought within our more recent era (Kuyper, Barth, Dooyeweerd, Van Til, Bahnsen, Kline).

Although VanDrunen’s study notes variations, ambiguities, and problems of coherence regarding the NL2K doctrines, he maintains that the notions of NL2K emerge as essential doctrines, integral to historic Christian belief. Specifically, he concludes his study on John Calvin with these words: “Calvin developed a distinctive Reformed theology of natural law and the two kingdoms, yet one that stood in significant continuity with the vast past of earlier Lutheran and medieval traditions” (p. 118). Even so, VanDrunen confesses that “certain tensions or even inconsistencies” existed in Calvin’s distinctions “between the civil and spiritual kingdoms,” and thus the Reformed tradition of NL2K was constantly challenged by the changing tide of the political socio-cultural landscape. According to VanDrunen, the Kentucky professor and Presbyterian pastor Stuart Robinson set forth the tradition’s best formulation: “[Robinson] brought the Reformed natural law and two kingdoms tradition to its most coherent expression yet achieved,” yet “even here some unresolved tensions remained” (p. 275). The prescription to VanDrunen is clear; as his volume unfolds, he posits that these “unresolved tensions” find their resolution best in the work of a mentor at WSC, Meredith Kline: “Whether or not one judges Kline’s system to be theologically compelling, I suggest that his . . . development of the Reformed natural law and two kingdoms traditions was in some respects more theoretically and practically coherent than that of the figures considered in previous chapters and is linked in much more explicit detail to the covenant theology that has so often served as an organizing substructure for the system of Reformed doctrine” (pp. 420–21; cf. 427). Although there remains much that is undeveloped in Kline’s thought, VanDrunen firmly recommends Kline as the foundation for enrichment and creativity in the revival of the NL2K doctrines in the face of future challenges in the realm of Christianity and culture.

How effectively does VanDrunen accomplish the enormous task he has set out in this volume? The breadth of VanDrunen’s volume and the scholarly material selected convey impressive intentions; the depth of his scholarly analysis, however, remains elementary and exhibits a number of shortcomings. In light of the volume’s range, not all of its scholarly problems can be addressed in this review. To invoke a cliché, here we will only touch the tip of the iceberg, focusing upon method, the two dominant subjects of the book (NL2K) and, finally, a few pertinent remarks about Kuyper and the Westminster Standards.

II. Method

A casual reading might lead one to miss VanDrunen’s important procedural statement early in the book; he admits there that his work is “primarily theological, but its subject matter is inter-disciplinary” and adds “thus I hope that it will reach an inter-disciplinary audience” (p. 18). He confesses that his study will reveal the expertise of his own learning in “theology, law, and ethics,” but lets his readers know that “in writing this book I have kept an inter-disciplinary audience before my mind” (p. 18). In spite of these intentions, however, VanDrunen provides no indication that he grasps the methodological issues gripping the field of interdisciplinary scholarship over the past century. In fact, the work unfolds in a typically amateur manner; it yields to the popular outlook that any study involving more than one area within the academic curriculum qualifies as an interdisciplinary study. In light of this attitude, he exhibits no comprehension of how an approach of interdisciplinarity (moving from particular disciplines to integration) must be viewed and implemented into a final integrated interdisciplinary study. This failure results in serious limitations in his producing a profound academic integrative study. For example, VanDrunen fails to integrate his study in such areas as the chain of being, canon law, socio-political environment, and cultural issues.

III. Natural Law

Beginning with an analysis of NL, VanDrunen claims that the Reformed orthodox thinkers “utilize not only biblical and Reformed sources, but also patristic, medieval, and contemporary Roman Catholic sources, as well as (and most significantly for present concerns) all sorts of classical, pagan writings as they attempt to defend their claims, though they do not do so uncritically” (p. 172, cf. 207, 210). Although VanDrunen mentions that classical non-Christian writings had an influence on the tradition of NL, nowhere does he unpack the substance of their effect, a critical omission. VanDrunen teaches at an institution that states her continual devotion to the work of Cornelius Van Til and, yet, in his writing, he exhibits little understanding of Van Til’s transcendental critique. In the tradition of Kuyper and Bavinck, Van Til maintained that it is imperative to critically unpack the presuppositional structures of non-Christian thought before Christians make any endorsement of their notions. VanDrunen’s study of NL, instead of providing any substantive analysis, merely mentions that Reformed thinkers were not “uncritical” of previous Christian and non-Christian sources (p. 172). Furthermore, he naïvely claims that the Reformers were free from any autonomous (self-law without the presupposition of Christian theism) notion of NL, which can be traced into the Enlightenment, because they held that Christ as mediator of creation (theism) stood behind their view of NL (pp. 133–34, cf. 405). Van Til would view these as fictitious claims, having demonstrated that the autonomy of human reason and its interpretation of natural phenomena are fundamental to the writings of antiquity and have been assimilated into much of medieval Roman Catholic thought. For the sake of space, I will mention only a few areas where a transcendental analysis could enhance VanDrunen’s shallow interdisciplinary study.

First, a serious transcendental analysis of NL in major figures from antiquity reveals that many autonomous components of their thought have found compatible residence within Christian and non-Christian beliefs from the patristic era to the modern era. For example, at the heart of NL traced from the Greeks is the integral relationship among reason, nature, and justice in a spatio-temporal universe. Within this construct, a common thread exists among Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics on NL, namely, that humans are to use reason as the means to live according to their nature as the external domain of nature directs them to justice and virtue. In the Roman world, perhaps the most concise formulation of this facet of NL is found in Cicero’s De republica: “True law is right reason which conforms to nature.” Further, this thread is the core of Justinian’s definition of NL as found in his Institutes (sixth century)—a document of synthesis between classical Roman law and Christian revelation: “Jus naturale is that which nature has taught to all animals; for it is not a law specific to mankind but is common to all animals—land animals, sea animals, and the birds as well. Out of this comes the union of man and woman which we call marriage, and the procreation of children, and their rearing.” Whether one wishes to couch this notion of NL in divine law and/or eternal law, or under the heading of Christ as mediator of creation, its autonomous roots remain and continue into the thought of the Reformers as well as the French philosophes and Darwin, with his view of utilitarian naturalism. Calvin uses the observation (reason reading nature) of the “king bee” in his commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia as the basis for a NL defense of the authority of a king over his subjects, whereas Rousseau constructs his secular view of human nature and the survival of the fittest by invoking the similarities of procreation between brutes and humans, and this construct of human nature extends into Darwin’s thought regarding natural selection. Clearly, a meticulous transcendental study of this particular autonomous thread of NL—understanding human activity on the basis of the natural activity of brutes—can be traced from antiquity to Justinian, Calvin, Rousseau, and Darwin.

Second, as previously mentioned, in the post-Constantinian world, the synthesis between antiquity’s documents on Roman law and Christian revelation requires scholarly scrutiny. Although VanDrunen refers to these sources (p. 141), he mysteriously fails to investigate these materials and their conceptions of NL by means of Van Til’s transcendental analysis. Such a study would have been fruitful and challenging to his thesis on NL given the rich primary sources available from Justinian’s Institutes and Digest (sixth century), and later Azo’s Summa Institutionum (twelfth century) along with the distinguished secondary studies such as Rudolf Weigand’s Die Naturrechtslehre der Legisten und Dekretisten von Irnerius bis Accursius und von Gratian bis Johannes Teutonicus and Ennio Cortese’s La norma giuridica, and the crucial interaction extracted from the works of Brian Tierney and Michel Villey.

It is also puzzling that VanDrunen’s study does not present a synopsis of NL from the work on canon law done by Gratian and other jurists (e.g., Huguccio, Laurentius, and Alanus) who lived in the century previous to Aquinas. As the main work of the seminal canonist of the twelfth century, Gratian’s Decretum became the principal document for the instruction of law throughout the European continent for the next four centuries and beyond. In fact, the first principle of Gratian’s conception of NL is the golden rule (Matt 7:12; Decretum, prima pars, D.1 pr.)—a notion which had a long history in the Christian tradition. Even so, as Gratian asserted an integral relationship between NL and the golden rule and that this NL principle should be understood as being outside the domain of Christ’s redemptive work, the golden rule was easily prone to secularization. In fact, as the golden rule evolved in this construct within Christian thought, it took on a life of its own until, in the post-Enlightenment era, the rule’s secularization reached a culmination status even within Christendom. As Adolf von Harnark’s Wesen des Christentums (1900) attacked the historic doctrines of Christian orthodoxy, including the canon of Christology, the golden rule became the foundational and fundamental premise of a new secularized model of the Christian religion. The golden rule as a NL concept had evolved outside the realm of Christ as mediator of redemption to become the descriptive essence of the social gospel in Germany.

Meanwhile, looking back again to the influence of Gratian, Calvin would have learned law from Gratian’s printed pages. In fact, a credible argument can be made that when Calvin worked outside the biblical canon, the traditions of Roman law (e.g., discussions in Cicero, Seneca, and the Stoics) and canon law had more influence on his view of NL than Aquinas, whom VanDrunen mistakenly makes a principal focus as a key background figure. In addition, as Calvin’s humanistic education assisted in shaping his view of NL, the views of such academic influences as Mathurin Cordier, Jean Standonck, Pierre Robert Olivétan, Pierre de l’Estoile, and Andreas Alciati would seem to call for necessary investigation. Yet VanDrunen provides no examination of these figures, and thus his study of NL with respect to Calvin as well as the Reformers remains seriously flawed.

Moreover, for VanDrunen’s work to be truly interdisciplinary, the integration of the ecclesiastical, social, and judicial components of the medieval world in relationship to NL needs transcendental examination. The Reformation’s adoption of the NL tradition presupposes an understanding by the Reformers of the evolving conditions of law from the medieval period. For example, Roman law categories taken up and perpetuated by Gratian included public and private law, ius civile, ius gentium, as well as ius naturale. As medieval jurists worked with Roman law categories, they developed theories with wide-ranging socio-political implications, including concepts such as the relationship between the prince and positive law, meaning that the prince’s potestas absoluta transcends positive law even while the prince is bound by natural and divine law. Consequently, in the twelfth century an absolutist government of sorts was defended on the principles of natural and divine law while principles of individual rights and privileges also began to emerge. This latter domain of natural rights is crucial in connecting NL from the medieval period to the Enlightenment, but VanDrunen ignores it entirely in its medieval construction. Simply put, natural rights are sometimes attributed by scholars solely to the seventeenth century (e.g., rights of property, permissive rights of government, rights of self-protection, marriage rights), but these rights in fact have their roots in the medieval era, specifically the canonists of the twelfth century. In this regard, VanDrunen provides no evidence that he has any scholarly comprehension of the patterns of constitutional thought that tie together the canonists (twelfth century), the conciliarists (fifteenth century), and the constitutionalists (seventeenth century).

As VanDrunen summarizes his medieval study of NL, he maintains that he has established the necessary foundation for understanding NL moving into the Reformation from “Thomistic circles and nominalist circles” as “part of a common, catholic theological inheritance” (pp. 54–55). The crucial problem here is that Thomism and nominalism are not as germane to the true cultural interdisciplinary dimensions of NL emerging from the medieval period into the Reformation as the canonical tradition of the high and late Middle Ages, something the work of Brian Tierney has shown (The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150–1625).

Third, a respectable interdisciplinary study of the medieval world and NL should include an examination of its view of hierarchy applied to the chain of being and, by transference, to the social strata. Concerning the former, the works of Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle’s De Anima, and neo-Platonist Plotinus’s Enneads have provided the basic secular components for the structure of Western culture’s chain of being well into the modern era. Neither should the crucial contribution of Dionysius the Areopagite (“Celestial Hierarchy” and “Ecclesiastical Hierarchy”) be overlooked regarding the specific hierarchical structure of the medieval era. The chain’s interrelationship with NL includes the scala naturae, that is, that all animals are arranged on the scale of nature by virtue of their degree of perfection, a model that has significant implications for understanding medieval divine order in the creation. The scale of this perfection is evaluated on the basis of the generic potential of nature for an entity. For example, humans have more potentiality than a plant. Another component that contributes to the chain of being is the continuity principle, which holds that in the hierarchical chain of being there must exist an organic relationship between the one and the many, the whole and the parts. In a rational world created by an Absolute Being, every possible grade or level of potentiality must exist, from the degradation of imperfection to the height of ens perfectissimum. There can be no coherence or continuity in the universe without this chain. Such hierarchical levels of diversity and conflict are necessary for a rational world in which NL upholds the way things are and potentially are. Hence, a rational coherent world must consist of things good and evil; otherwise, the pre-eminence of God’s goodness and perfection cannot be comprehended, nor can the gradation of creatures that are more like God than others.

Such an understanding of the world based on NL clearly had great implications for social views over time. Thus, if VanDrunen’s aim is to establish that NL is essential to historic Christian and Reformed orthodoxy, then a discussion of natural law’s relationship with the hierarchical configuration of medieval and early modern society is necessary but conspicuously missing. An understanding of the hierarchical chain of human beings and their relationship to land is essential for specifying the status of kings, mayors, lords, knights, vassals, serfs—just to name a few. Knowledge of this hierarchical design is critical in comprehending Calvin’s position that hereditary kingship is to be maintained on the basis of the laws of nature. Additionally, NL has fixed the serf’s position to land in this world, and thus the serf will have to wait to be totally free and enriched in the next world. In the evolution of the feudal landscape as well we see the complex movement from “customary laws” ruling the pre-feudal era to the rebirth of Roman law and the establishment of canon law both shaping the ecclesiastical and social landscape—governing the church, government, aristocracy, and common laity. Perhaps property rights deserve particular mention here; in association with NL, property rights emerged from the vassus (vassal) as a privilege that would blossom in the modern era. By nature a subordinate to the lord, the vassal, as a free man, enters into a contract and oath before God with the lord to serve him loyally in return for a grant of land. Although presenting different theses about the feudal era, the works of Marc Bloch (La société féodale) and F. L. Ganshof (Qu’est-ce que la féodalité?) and the primary source material from the thirteenth century (e.g., the poet and jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir’s Coutumes de Beauvaisis) need serious consideration if VanDrunen is to accomplish a full analysis. VanDrunen, unquestionably, would have done well to follow Van Til’s lead as he launched his study on NL. This would have indicated that his second chapter on the “Precursors of the Reformed Tradition” would possibly have been the most comprehensive chapter in the book, if it gave necessary attention to the various presuppositions that contribute to the concept of NL from antiquity to the Reformers. Without giving the reader these components of NL being adopted and synthesized into the Reformed tradition from antiquity and medieval thought, VanDrunen’s volume provides no credible reason to adopt his thesis that NL is a necessary canon to relate to the civil kingdom (culture). After all, nowhere in the volume does VanDrunen provide his reader with a precise and concrete definition of NL from the Reformed tradition.

Moreover, it would seem imperative in a Reformed work that the effects of sin upon NL would be discussed. Oddly, VanDrunen gives no serious consideration of this factor. By contrast, the effects of sin upon NL, as stated in the Canons of Dort 3/4.4, stood behind the assessment of NL by the very Dutch thinkers who seem to be an object of VanDrunen’s criticism (e.g., Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, Van Til). With this explanation of sin missing, VanDrunen’s study has done nothing to differentiate itself fully from medieval Roman Catholic scholasticism and what Van Til calls “less-than-consistent Calvinism,” a form of Calvinism that traces its theological roots to a classical synthesis between reason influenced by antiquity and Christian revelation (e.g., Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield at Old Princeton). VanDrunen may try to deny this, but any close reading of the corpuses of Kuyper, Bavinck, and Van Til will clearly demonstrate that VanDrunen’s construct of NL fails to sidestep the pitfalls described by these three premiere Dutch thinkers regarding the extension of medieval scholastic thought through Old Princeton. In fact, this reviewer is certain that Van Til would view VanDrunen’s assessment of NL serving as a common point of contact to discuss ethical responsibility in the context of a common culture as having compatibility with Roman Catholic Scholastic thought.

Perhaps VanDrunen anticipates this criticism when he distances himself from Van Til’s critique of the Scholastics. In a most enlightening paragraph, VanDrunen defends his assessment of Aquinas, the Roman Catholic tradition, and the Reformed tradition on NL over against Van Til. After commenting on the first two, VanDrunen adds the following: “There seems good reason to suspect that, for Van Til, the idea of natural law is poisoned by its association with the ideas of natural theology and natural ethics. Others have already argued that Van Til’s understanding of the Reformed scholastic view of natural theology was skewed. Of more direct importance for the present study, if Van Til in fact associated natural law with the idea of an autonomous, non-sin-infected realm of nature and identified it as a non-divinely-revealed ethic, then he was certainly not understanding natural law as his Reformed predecessors did” (pp. 405–6). Coming from an alleged Van Tilian, Van Drunen’s statement is baffling. Again he fails to demonstrate an understanding of Van Til’s transcendental analysis. The issue here is not whether sin has a positive position in the Reformed scholastic view of natural theology (and in Aquinas’s position as well); rather, it is what the components of the doctrine of sin are and from whence they arose in biblical and Western thought. Also, to place NL within the context of theism or a “divinely-revealed ethic” that invokes the biblical injunctions of the covenant of works and the law written on the heart still does not free such a construct from autonomy. What Van Til has done, which VanDrunen has not done, is scrutinize the deep presuppositional structures within the construct of the traditional Reformed doctrine of NL, reaching the conclusion that much of this construct is built upon pagan conceptions of autonomous reason and nature (cf. pp. 172, 405). VanDrunen has failed to display the transcendental or interdisciplinary work necessary to claim that the Reformed tradition only accepted from the pagans those ideas that, through common grace, had affinities with the truth of biblical revelation. Until VanDrunen exhibits that he has done this work in examining the concepts of reason and nature in Greek and Roman thought, his claim that autonomy has had no place in the Reformed tradition with respect to NL is, at best, worthy of skepticism (p. 133).

The evolving thought of Kuyper, Bavinck, and Van Til has taught us that any analysis of Western thought must incorporate attention to the radical nature of sin in the human race. VanDrunen’s failure to contend with the inner effects of sin within the construct of NL in the Western tradition leads to two further problems in his work. First, VanDrunen leaves little doubt that he sees Van Til as the principal culprit leading to the current void of appreciation for NL in the Reformed orthodox tradition. In order to make this powerful inference, VanDrunen echoes one of the most popular criticisms leveled at Van Til by his opponents, which is Van Til’s understanding of the relationship between antithesis and common grace (pp. 402–7). In this reckoning, Van Til, as the “apostle of antithesis,” impedes the practical manner in which NL can function in the realm of common grace as a means to advance the cultural commonality between Christian and non-Christian (p. 407). Although VanDrunen’s criticism of Van Til may appease critics of the twentieth-century Christian apologist, VanDrunen makes this accusation without acknowledging that at the core of Van Til’s view of antithesis is the imputation of Adam’s sin to all humankind in contrast to God’s own righteousness. Although VanDrunen realizes that the present conception of NL functions within a fallen world, ironically he does not seem to grasp the practical interdisciplinary ramifications of that fact. Van Til has emphatically applied the biblical and Reformed doctrine of sin with respect to all the faculties of human beings (WCF 6.2) and NL (Canons of Dort 3/4.4), and thus in the Reformed model it can be said that one common thread of rebellious thought concerning NL has existed since Adam’s fall, though concretized and synthesized into different branches over time. Herein, Erik Wolf’s succinct study Das Problem der Naturrechtslehre is significant; he suggests more than 120 views of NL in the history of Western thought. Moreover, Ernest Bloch’s study Naturrecht und menschliche Würde has opened up the avenues of comprehending the socio-political dynamics of NL from the era of antiquity. It is absolutely naïve to maintain that none of the diverse secular branches has found its way into the various formulations of NL in the Reformed tradition.

Second, on the basis of NL as concretized by sinful humanity, Christians (including those who are Reformed) have been critics, supporters, and sympathizers of various forms of civil government such as monarchical absolutism, democratic monarchism, democratic republicanism, socialism, and communism. On the basis of the roots of NL associated with the chain of being, Christians have backed social hierarchies, racial gradation, gender gradation (see VanDrunen’s reference to John Knox’s view of women, pp. 123, 128–29, 138–39), mercantilism, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism. Recognition of these positions prompts us to ask a number of questions. How does NL distinguish between brutes and humans, divine rights and human rights, natural rights and human rights? What is the basis for property rights? How can we resolve the Enlightenment’s tension between reason/passion/will and reason/greed/self-interest? How can we cope with the persistent pleasure/pain dialectic in human and natural history? Of course, these are only a few interdisciplinary areas that Christianity and culture have had to address with respect to the role of NL in Western history as well as the Reformed tradition. Clearly, then, scholars of NL theory have been justified in saying that anyone attempting to come to an objective definition of NL which can be applied universally to culture is destined for failure, and this assessment includes VanDrunen. He, like others, has missed Van Til’s point: those aiming to engage culture with the notion of NL will be paralyzed by the variety of nuances of the concept in combination with their own presuppositions which invariably are used selfishly to support their own system of thought.

This reviewer finds, therefore, little in VanDrunen’s analysis that identifies him with Van Til, though this name is strongly associated with the institution at which he teaches. Moreover, from the tone of the volume, his denouncement of Van Til seems to be done by design, and it is evident in his esteeming Aquinas’s view higher than Van Til’s on the issue of NL. What is also clear is that VanDrunen’s treatise on NL as an apparent point of contact between the Christian and the world of common civil society falls into the exact trap about which Van Til warned. In his work Christian Apologetics Van Til tells us (on p. 127) that “the Reformed apologist must seek his point of contact with the natural man in that which is beneath the threshold of his working consciousness, in the sense of deity that he seeks to suppress. And to do this the Reformed apologist must also seek a point of contact with the systems constructed by the natural man. But this point of contact must be in the nature of a head-on collision. If there is no head-on collision with the systems of the natural man, there will be no point of contact with the sense of deity in the natural man.” VanDrunen’s presentation on NL provides no such militant head-on collision with the natural man; rather, his view of NL serves as a soothing offer of camaraderie with the natural man in the common sphere of civil culture.

IV. The Two Kingdoms

Turning now to the 2K, VanDrunen’s assessment follows a number of paradigms, for example, the “commonality amidst antithesis” found in the Epistle of Diognetus and in Augustine’s antithetical formulation of two cities (p. 25); the two swords theory of Boniface VIII (pp. 34–35); Luther’s 2K membership in two institutional governments—church and state (pp. 60–61); Calvin’s adoption of Luther’s “2K and two governments” viewpoint (pp. 71, 91); and the continuing debates within the Reformed tradition about the relationship between church and state into the present era. Although VanDrunen correctly understands Augustine’s two cities as a “stark” eschatological and antithetical construct, as his volume unfolds he devotes more attention to the realm of “commonality,” the intermingling of the two cities (p. 22). Within this realm of “commonality,” the reader is confronted with the dualistic construct of the 2K, consisting of the kingdom of God (church) and the civil kingdom. These two institutional kingdoms become the prominent focus of the volume from its treatment of the Reformation onward. In VanDrunen’s judgment, Luther’s addition of “two governments to the two kingdoms template accounts for this constructive development of Augustinian thought. For example, Luther’s two governments framework gives the two kingdoms an institutional expression—in church and state—that lurks just below the surface in the City of God.” Furthermore, VanDrunen says that “Luther’s distinction from Augustine may be seen in the genuine dual membership of Christians in the administration of the two governments” (pp. 60–61). By the time VanDrunen reaches his analysis of Luther, Augustine’s eschatological and antithetical construction of the two cities is transformed into the temporal construction of Luther’s 2K (cf. p. 59). For this reason, VanDrunen’s formulation becomes blurry with respect to the historical flow from Augustine’s transcendent eschatological and antithetical conception, which is clearly being displayed on the plain of history, to Luther’s dualistic institutional and temporal conception, in which the transcendent eschatological dimension slips to the background for the sake of accenting the present realm of “commonality.”

VanDrunen’s hazy connection between Luther and Augustine is underlined by his assessment of Calvin, wherein he notes that “lying behind Calvin’s discussions of the two kingdoms is an Augustinian two cities paradigm, though he never to my knowledge explicitly expressed as such” (p. 71). Even without any documentation from Calvin’s corpus concerning a proposed relationship between the Genevan and Augustine, VanDrunen does not hesitate to magnify his unsubstantiated thesis: “But, as with Luther, Calvin moved beyond this antithetical paradigm [Augustine’s] and expressed additionally another twofold conception” (p. 71). Even in this context, VanDrunen continues to fail to provide any proof from primary documents when he claims that “Calvin displayed the influence of Luther’s teaching on the two kingdoms and two governments” (p. 71). The reader is provided no proof from primary documents that Luther’s two governments is a “constructive development of Augustinian thought”; that “lying behind Calvin’s discussions of the two kingdoms is an Augustinian two cities paradigm”; or that “Calvin displayed the influence of Luther’s teaching on the two kingdoms and two governments.” VanDrunen seeks to persuade the reader to believe that a connection exists between Augustine and these Reformation figures even when a number of Augustinian scholars (e.g., Johannes van Oort) have pointed out that the essential character of Augustine’s two cities does not consist of earthly political identity and meaning nor do his two cities consist of conscious overtones with respect to the church and the state. In this light, Luther’s and Calvin’s view of two governments has little or no conscious connection to Augustine’s two cities. Perhaps VanDrunen gives evidence that he is beginning to see this point when he examines the thought of Henry Stob: “Augustine’s idea is distinct from (though not incompatible with) the Reformed idea of the ‘two kingdoms,’ according to which God rules both kingdoms and Christians are citizens of both” (p. 371; cf. 374, 378, 388–89, 407, 410). Here, finally, VanDrunen acknowledges the serious distinction between Augustine’s understanding and his own understanding of the Reformed view of 2K, which eluded his discussion in earlier sections of his book.

Another crucial teaching in VanDrunen’s volume is the functional distinction of Christ as mediator as it relates to the 2K doctrine. Herein, Christ is mediator of redemption in the domain of the kingdom of God (church), whereas Christ is mediator of creation in the domain of the civil kingdom (pp. 173–82). For VanDrunen, noting the thought of Calvin, this distinction serves as a “crucial foundation” for maintaining the historical Reformed position on the 2K (p. 76). This dual construct of Christ as mediator entails a rigid distinction—Christ as mediator of creation is viewed as functioning “apart from [his] work of redemption”; rather, in the civil sphere Christ mediates through the function of NL which is the “basic moral standard . . . [that] continues to bind all people after the fall,” invoking “the essential aspect of the covenant of works” (pp. 161–64; cf. 176–82). VanDrunen drives the distinction home in the context of his critical discussion on Karl Barth. In the Reformed tradition “the two kingdoms doctrine consisted in a distinction between the two reigns of God, one a redemptive reign over his church and the other a providential, non-redemptive reign over civil society and the broader cultural realm. This distinction often involved the corresponding distinction between the Son as eternal God (and, as such, the creator and sustainer of all things) and the Son as the incarnate mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ (and, as such, the redeemer of his people). As the eternal Son of God he reigns over the civil kingdom and as the mediator of redemption he reigns over the spiritual kingdom” (p. 343). In this VanDrunen demonstrates that the 2K are distinct and separate spheres from each other while, at the same time, they must be viewed as complimentary and not contradictory to one another.

As VanDrunen suggests a distinct dual conception of the mediatorship of Christ in the structure of the 2K doctrine, he overlooks the interdisciplinary environment in Reformation and post-Reformation Western civilization, in both the Lutheran and Reformed worlds. In fact, VanDrunen’s analysis of a distinct dual mediatorship of Christ in Lutheran and Reformed thought is a mythology when viewed within the concrete socio-political culture of the West. Although giving it little attention, VanDrunen does provide a hint of the mythology of which I am thinking. In an attempt to distinguish between the Lutheran and Reformed views of 2K and their respective application of Christ’s mediatorship of two domains, VanDrunen claims that typically the Lutherans, in contrast to the Reformed, were “content to hand external administrative matters of the church over to the state” (p. 179). Although VanDrunen’s assertion is justified, he never presents how the Lutheran paradigm worked out in Germany. After all, such an investigation would raise serious questions regarding the thesis of the book and its validity for a Christian approach to culture. Furthermore, his attempt to convince his readers that the Reformed tradition developed a more consistent and tidy application of Christ as mediator in two domains is drawn from theoretical constructs in treatises rather than how those ideas were actually put into practice in the political socio-cultural domains where Reformed thought gained a foothold.

Here is a taste of the complexities within the Lutheran doctrine of 2K which need to be pursued by VanDrunen. First, the use of the sword in association with Luther’s 2K doctrine could be scrutinized, looking at the tension between Luther and Thomas Münzer during the Peasant’s War. Moreover, if the 2K are so clearly distinguished in Luther’s thought, why then is there such intense debate among Lutheran scholars over the relationship between Luther’s understanding of 2K and Philip Melanchthon’s approach, who argued, it is believed, for the cura religionis, the view that the magistrate had the obligation and responsibility to be the custodian and regulator of true religion? Scholars are divided. Some hold that Luther remained faithful throughout his life to a 2K view, which matured over time, while others argue that eventually Luther came under the persuasion of Melanchthon’s cura religionis. VanDrunen provides no view into this provocative debate; rather, he attempts to make his case about Luther’s 2K position by focusing primarily upon the early treatise Temporal Authority (1523) without any serious scholarly attempt to solidify his case by a thorough examination of later primary sources of Luther’s corpus such as his Lectures on Genesis.

Furthermore, VanDrunen’s self-declared interdisciplinary study fails to explore how Protestant Germany reacted for centuries to the so-called 2K paradigm of Luther and Melanchthon and its application upon the ecclesiastical, political, and cultural landscape of Germany. In fact, practical evidence of these distinct spheres of the 2K doctrine in the German cultural milieu is difficult to detect from about the middle of the sixteenth century until the middle of the seventeenth century, what many scholars of the era refer to as the high point of ecclesiastical and political confessionalization of the State in various German provinces. This obscurity becomes noticeable in two crucial documents that made their way into the socio-cultural context of a particular province, state, or nation: the Peace of Augsburg (1555), with its dictum Cuius regio, eius religio, and the implications of the 128 components of the Peace of Westphalia (1648).

In the post-Westphalian era, evidence of a clear consistent distinction concerning the Lutheran 2K doctrine continues to remain scarce, especially when considering the Religionspolitik in Brandenburg-Prussia and the view of constitutional or public church law (Staatskirchenrecht). The tension was genuine between the passive (coram deo) living in God’s kingdom (Reich) and government (Regiment), and the active (coram hominibus) living in this world’s kingdom (Reich) and government (Regiment). In fact, in practice the ecclesiastical and civil realms were quite integrated wherever the Religionspolitik had influence in a German province. Moreover, a deeper look at the era reveals the naïveté of VanDrunen’s conclusion regarding Lutherans’ and Calvinists’ compatibility with respect to the 2K doctrine, especially when one studies the tension of the Religionspolitik between the Wettin dynasty of Saxony (Lutheran) and the Hohenzollern dynasty of Brandenburg-Prussia (Calvinist). In fact, within Brandenburg-Prussia, the relationship between the dynastic rule (Calvinist) and the Lutheran estate owners and their clergy was anything but collegial.

As the seventeenth century evolved, the Lutheran 2K doctrine also faced the practical implications of integrating confessionalism and Religionspolitik in the emerging German pietistic movement as well as the rising dynamics of the German Aufklärung in the various provinces. Both of these movements challenged traditional orthodox Lutheranism and aroused interest in applications of modern enlightened thought among the ecclesiastical and cultural ranks of the denomination. In view of the complex dynamics playing out within Lutheranism during the German Aufklärung, any respected scholar of the Luther 2K doctrine would find it necessary to explore the relationship between the doctrine’s application to the German intellectual and practical state of affairs and Immanuel Kant’s famous distinction and implication between the public and private use of reason within the church, state, and culture.

Indeed, the sweeping tide of influence from the German Aufklärung caused sparring factions within Lutheranism to collide throughout the nineteenth century. Scholars of the denomination broadly organize these blocs into the following categories: the conservatives (e.g., Ernst Hengstenberg), the “mediating school” (the followers of Friedrich Schleiermacher), and the liberals (e.g., David F. Strauss). Each of these groups developed a separate interpretation concerning Luther’s 2K and its application to confessionalism and the Religionspolitik. The complexities of each viewpoint on Luther’s 2K doctrine were then played out within the cultural atmosphere of the century, interacting with such issues as the German Volk, German nationalism, German unification, Bismarck’s Realpolitik, Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against Catholicism, the Pulpit Law of 1871 (Kanzelparagraf), Wilhelm II’s Weltpolitik, the numerous German political parties, and the relationship between the power of the Reichstag and the executive aspect of government. Also, what must not be overlooked at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century is Lutheran Marburg neo-Kantian thought and its clearly defined dualism of Luther’s 2K between the experience of religion (Erlebnis) and the experience of culture (Erfahrung), best embodied in Wilhelm Herrmann and Rudolf Bultmann. Herein, Luther’s 2K would be comfortably adapted into a critical Kantian construct of theology, leading to the eventual emergence of existential philosophical categories in the Lutheran theological scene.

We have merely highlighted a few significant subjects needing interdisciplinary investigation into four centuries of the presence of Lutheran 2K doctrine on German soil. Of course, any serious discussion of the Lutheran 2K doctrine would have to consider also the Nazis’ interaction with that doctrine in the twentieth century. Although there has been an abundance of publications about ecclesiastical resistance towards the Nazis (e.g., the resistance of six thousand clergy as part of the Pastor’s Emergency League under the leadership of Martin Niemöller), the majority of Lutherans were found to be indifferent or to be supportive of Hitler’s regime. As acute scholars have noted, in light of the theoretical construct and belief of a number of dualities in Lutheran thought, for example, the 2K doctrine and the law/gospel paradigm (whereby NL as God’s law can be known and lived without the intervention of the gospel), the ecclesiastical body of Lutheranism became known as the “spiritual traveling companion” of Hitler’s National Socialism (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Soon after the rise of Hitler to power, the Lutheran bishops acknowledged unqualified loyalty to his government (January 1934), denouncing all critics of the Third Reich. In light of the distinct citizenships of 2K and a divinely ordained state, a Lutheran Conference convening in 1935 saw no conflict between National Socialism and the proclamation of the gospel by the church. Furthermore, on the basis of the law/gospel paradigm in Lutheran theology, such prominent theologians within the denomination as Werner Elert, Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Friedrich Gogarten justified their support of National Socialism as visible leaders in the church.

In the judgment of this reviewer, a close examination of Lutheran cultural life in post-Reformation Germany provides no grounds for endorsing the 2K doctrine and its dualistic view of Christ’s mediatory work as the foundation and directive for living the Christian life in culture. In fact, any serious, historically conscious interdisciplinary study of the 2K doctrine as illustrated in the German context yields frightening results. Only one who is truly enclosed within an academic ivory tower or who naïvely isolates the immediate life of the church could suggest that the 2K doctrine can truly serve as a serious directive for the Christian’s relationship with culture. In the providence of God over four centuries, we have already witnessed the horrifying results of this doctrine in the hands of sinful believers. To even suggest that a consistent application of principles found in Meredith Kline’s view of the covenant as well as his view of common grace—whether correctly or wrongly represented by VanDrunen—can present the Christian with a fitting path to follow in responding to culture is further evidence of a naïve understanding of a fallen world.

We also must not forget that although VanDrunen mentions that the two ecclesiastical bodies have their own distinctives for approaching the 2K doctrine, his volume attempts to accent the harmony that existed between them (pp. 93, 114, 118, 179). For VanDrunen, the 2K is an essential teaching in Protestant orthodoxy since the Reformation. However, like the Lutherans, Reformed diaspora throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries furnishes evidence of integrating ecclesiastical “confessionalization” into the socio-political agenda of their control. In the practical and cultural realm of the institutions of human life, strict boundaries between Christ’s two mediatory domains were not a clear feature among the Reformed populace. For example, under the leadership of the Polish reformer John à Lasco, the Church in East Friesland (Reformed) established the Church Council (Kirchenrat) in 1544, which served as a model for the ecclesiastical body known as the “Consistory,” which came into existence towards the end of the sixteenth century. Interestingly, the Kirchenrat was predominantly under the control of the civil government, with both ministers and elders seen as appointees of the State. In other words, the civil town council was the administrator over all ecclesiastical and religious dealings within its jurisdiction. VanDrunen is either ignorant of this state of affairs or willingly avoids the issue which would challenge the theoretical construct of his 2K thesis. If it is the former, for starters, VanDrunen would do well to perform a critical examination of the incisive socio-political scholarship of Wolfgang Reinhard, Heinz Schilling, Benjamin J. Kaplan, and Ian Hunter on the issue of the integration of confessionalization into public life in those environments where the Reformed population settled throughout Europe.

Moreover, VanDrunen’s portrayal of compatible positions on the 2K doctrine in Lutheran and Reformed traditions during the sixteenth century can definitely be questioned. One crucial example will have to be sufficient here. As tension came to a head between the Lutherans and the Calvinists in Emden, it would have been reasonable for like-mindedness on the 2K doctrine to produce an ecclesiastical, political, and cultural resolution. However, the strains between them could not be fixed. In fact, in this East Frisian city, later referred to as the “Geneva of the north,” the Dutch Calvinists uprooted the Lutherans from the control they had exerted there during the last half of the sixteenth century. Interestingly, in Emden the antagonism was so intense between the Calvinists and the Lutherans that one Dutch Calvinist minister remarked that the Anabaptists were of a better stock than the Lutherans. Although the dynamics that brought about the Emden revolution of 1595 are multifaceted and complex, it remains true that explosive situations such as that must be thoroughly examined before the 2K thesis (along with NL) can be suggested as the “ground” for a prescription of Reformed “social thought” in our day (p. 423). (Moreover, should we raise the issue as to how well the NL2K doctrine functioned within the parameters of Presbyterian and Reformed orthodoxy when Presbyterians lined up against Presbyterians and killed each other during the American Civil War?) In fact, if the NL2K doctrine could not resolve serious conflict between Lutherans and Calvinists at the end of the sixteenth century (Christians of the Reformation), why would anyone think that its prescription would be a fine starting point for appealing to Christians as well as for engaging non-Christians on socio-cultural issues?

VanDrunen’s presentation of the 2K as an essential teaching in Protestant orthodoxy also is weakened by an odd peculiarity with respect to its historical continuity. The volume moves from a focus on Calvin and other continental Reformers to those in the English speaking tradition (pp. 67–276). Then, strangely, a positive as well as a critical assessment of the Dutch Calvinist Abraham Kuyper appears without any prior concentrated attention to Reformed thought in the Netherlands (pp. 276–315). In order to persuade his reader to consider seriously Kuyper’s view of the 2K (including the issue of NL), VanDrunen would need to explore more fully the history of Reformed ecclesiastical, political, socio-economic, and cultural life in the Netherlands since the Reformation. The fine scholarship of Joris van Eijnatten might be an excellent place for VanDrunen to begin. Although Eijnatten’s thesis requires continual critical evaluation in light of primary documents and secondary scholarship, his assessment of the metaphysical view of culture within Dutch Calvinism since the Reformation is challenging and credible. He contends that Dutch Calvinism began with a metaphysical view of culture that embraced a Calvinistic nature-grace pattern (sixteenth into the seventeenth centuries); then moved through a “pre-modern” period (seventeenth century), in which the nature-grace pattern became more dominated by a social construct; then moved into a “modern” period (eighteenth century), in which her religious foundation was characterized by “materiality,” or immanent, this-worldly relations (a movement towards the unification of grace and nature). In his discussion of this movement, Eijnatten demonstrates through primary sources that the nature-grace pattern among many Dutch Calvinists in the sixteenth century was shaped by the scholasticism of the Roman church and affinity to Aristotle. As the transition into the “pre-modern” era arrived, many Dutch Calvinists entered into rival camps, synthesizing their scholastic thought either with Descartes or Locke while maintaining certain alliances to Aristotle or to Plato, especially when considering the social order of NL2K. In this movement, issues arose that led to Kuyper’s suspicions regarding the appropriateness of the dualistic construction of the historic nature-grace paradigm as applied to Christian thought and culture. Indeed, Kuyper questioned this dualism and its secular synthesis and attempted to overcome it by presenting a more unitary and organic understanding of general (natural) and special revelation in creation history. VanDrunen, however, never penetrates Kuyper’s serious concerns with a Reformed NL2K position.

Even so, throughout his section on Kuyper, VanDrunen constantly reiterates that Kuyper’s position on NL2K is “harmonious with the early Reformed and broader Christian traditions as examined in the previous chapters” (p. 279; cf. 286, 290, 302, 304, 314–15). Then, VanDrunen proceeds to remark critically that Kuyper “embraced an approach to social and political life based on the creation order, rather than the redemptive and eschatological order” (p. 279; cf. 289, 290, 302, 314–15). What seems confusing in VanDrunen’s section on Kuyper is his attempt on one hand to place him in “harmonious” continuity with VanDrunen’s previous formulation of the Reformed tradition and, then, on the other hand to claim that Kuyper’s own formulation presents a “tension” with “traditional Reformed foundations,” especially his view of “theological coherence,” which VanDrunen sees as militating against VanDrunen’s own understanding of the 2K doctrine (p. 315). Although VanDrunen provides a number of fine insights into Kuyper’s cultural thought, his analysis is paralyzed by sentiment and reaction from the standpoint of his own thesis concerning NL2K. For example, if VanDrunen holds that Kuyper’s presentation is in “tension with his traditional Reformed foundations” what are Kuyper’s traditional Reformed foundations? Prior to the section on Kuyper, VanDrunen offers no distinctive presentation from within the Dutch Calvinistic tradition. There is no interdisciplinary transcendental analysis from within that tradition to shed light upon Kuyper’s own perspective. Specifically, VanDrunen’s study shows no familiarity with Kuyper’s romantic appeal to the Calvinistic roots of the Republic and William the Silent (1533–1584), a nationalism that embraces elements of civil religion—for example, God’s most favored nation, “Dutch Israel,” and the emergence of a more clearly defined Dutch Reformed 2K position involving the “ecclesiastical state” (Kerkstaat) and the “civil state” (burgerstaat), rooted in the thought of Johannes van den Honert (1693–1758). In the immediate context of Kuyper’s life are further examples: the post-enlightenment agenda of civil life conveyed in the thought of Guillaume Groen Van Prinsterer (1801–1876); the Dutch Réveil movement initiated by Isaac Da Costa (1778–1860); the ascension of the Anti-Revolutionary Party; an understanding of tolerance in the Dutch rendering of “cultural pluralism” as portrayed in the Dutch term, verzuiling, that is, “pillarisation” or “vertical pluralism” of vertical blocs of ideology within Dutch society; multiformity versus the Enlightenment’s view of uniformity; and the monistic construct of the Enlightenment utopian world and its influence on nineteenth-century Dutch Reformed social, political, and cultural thought.

Furthermore, on the subject of Kuyper’s embracing an “approach to social and political life based on the creation order,” Kuyper would be surprised to know VanDrunen’s perspective that his approach was in opposition to the “redemptive and eschatological order” (p. 289). In fact, Kuyper understood the creation order to be in organic unity with his eschatological construct. Moreover, Kuyper’s presentation of a unitary and organic (monistic) view of biblical history had its own secular influences when it came to bringing together the creation order with his redemptive and eschatological construct of history. In this construct for Kuyper, the vertical view of eschatology (a transcendent heaven) retreats into the background as a this-worldly linear/horizontal view of eschatology moves to center stage. Again, VanDrunen’s failure to apply a transcendental critique upon the historiography in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought prevents him from elucidating the dynamics at work in Kuyper’s philosophy of history. Kuyper’s monistic construct of history is grounded in a “creation and re-creation” (Schepping and Herschepping) paradigm, specifically a pattern of the linear and organic movement of common grace (creation) to special grace (recreation). Herein, according to Kuyper, Christ as mediator of creation (common grace) and Christ as mediator of redemption (special grace) move in organic unity (a monistic structure) in the cultural life of the world. All of humanity will contribute towards the consummation by acts of civic virtue as well as by exercising their power over nature to enhance the quality of life as the consummation arrives (the eschatological kingdom is unfolding and progressing). In other words, in the linear and organic movement of common grace (creation) to special grace (recreation), we are witnessing the movement of the potentiality of common grace coming to be totally actualized in the final consummation of God’s redemption.

Indeed, Kuyper’s philosophy of history attempted to unseat the lingering elements of the nature-grace dualism within Dutch Calvinism, but he also found it imperative to counter the secular monistic material structure of history sanctioned by the Enlightenment with his own monistic material view of history. Hence, Kuyper’s content and language—potentiality to actuality—fell into the Aristotelian construct of realism as it was assimilated into his explanation of biblical progressive revelation. In this construct, Kuyper still claimed compliance with article 36 of the Belgic Confession concerning the relationship between the church and civil government by maintaining that although the church and the state cannot be separated within civil society, they must remain always distinct with respect to their identity and task. It is within this construct and tradition, therefore, that Kuyper supported the “christianization” of human culture and history.

Though VanDrunen gave attention to recent figures in the Dutch tradition, for example, examining Herman Dooyeweerd and Cornelius Van Til in the context of the continuing thought of Kuyper, there remains an absence—Herman Bavinck receives only minute attention (pp. 288–89). To be sure, VanDrunen discusses Bavinck within this paradigm in writings elsewhere, but it seems peculiar that Bavinck’s contribution is missing in this volume. After all, a strong underlying thesis to VanDrunen’s volume, to which this reviewer offers a sympathetic ear, is a critique of the cultural transformation model of neo-Calvinism which emerged with strong momentum in the twentieth century. Perhaps no motto is more fundamental for the agenda of transformation than Bavinck’s famous, “Grace restores nature.” This principle became foundational for those who adhere to Bavinck’s legacy, aiming to restore and transform the natural, spiritual, cultural, and social realm of creation. According to Bavinck, his motto was built upon a synthesis of Reformed piety and the German liberal social thought of Albrecht Ritschl’s view of the kingdom of God. Surprisingly, however, VanDrunen’s volume never really deals with this key figure in the contemporary agenda of his thesis.

Finally, perhaps, one of the most serious and problematic contentions of VanDrunen’s thesis appears in his assessment of the 2K doctrine as an essential component of confessional Reformed orthodoxy as portrayed in the Westminster Confession of Faith (pp. 189–92). VanDrunen implies that his understanding of the 2K doctrine is at the “heart” of—is “central” to—the teaching of the Westminster Standards with respect to “Christian liberty bestowed in salvation” as well as the Reformed view of worship. The implication here is that the 2K as mapped out in his volume is a clear condition for confessional fidelity to the Westminster Standards. VanDrunen rightly assesses the flow of the Confession; the chapter on the “Civil Magistrate” (WCF 23) appears in the context of “Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience” (WCF 20). From there he places his discussion of the 2K in the context of the Confession’s view of the “regulative principle of worship” (WCF 21). In the overview of this section of the Confession (chs. 20–23), however, VanDrunen makes some questionable dogmatic statements, for example, “The application of Christian liberty to the believer is determined by means of the two kingdoms doctrine” (pp. 190–91). Moreover, he contends that “Reformed worship, therefore, characterized by a unique simplicity in comparison with other Christian traditions, was therefore in significant respect a logical application of the Reformed understanding of the two kingdoms doctrine” (p. 192). In the judgment of this reviewer, VanDrunen is here superimposing his understanding of the 2K doctrine on the Confessional Standards. First, remaining within the flow of the Confession, Christian liberty, not his 2K doctrine, is the determining factor concerning how the church operates with respect to the civil magistrate. Second, and this is absolutely crucial to examining the thesis of VanDrunen’s entire work, WFC 20.1 is clear; the context for Christian liberty and liberty of conscience, Christian worship, oaths and vows, and the civil magistrate is a truly biblical and revelational understanding of the spiritual two kingdoms—the kingdom of God (gospel in Christ) versus the kingdom of Satan (“present evil world”), or, in the structure of NT eschatology, the age to come versus the present evil age. The initial lines of WCF 20.1 must not be overlooked: “The liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the Gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law; and, in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin; from the evil afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation” (italics mine). Reading biblical revelation correctly, the authors of the Confession understood that the church is in a more important spiritual battle than the church’s relationship with civil government or human culture; the church is in this greater battle “for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12 NKJ). When dealing with liberty of conscience, Christian worship, oaths, and the civil magistrate (civil governments, morality in the social realm, and multidisciplinary dimensions of culture), the church must always keep as its primary focus the eschatological battle for the gospel of Christ (the real 2K in biblical revelation). Plainly, the relationship between the kingdom of God and the civil kingdom (if we wish to call it that) is merely a subset of the antithetical religious and spiritual battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

V. Conclusion

As VanDrunen superimposes his dogmatic view of the 2K upon the Westminster Standards, his evaluation and interpretation of the Confession for the life of the church should raise enough alarm that anyone intending serious scholarly use of his volume should proceed with grave caution. This review has offered serious questions about whether VanDrunen truly understands the concrete historical, cultural, and interdisciplinary context of the thinkers and writers to whom he refers in his analysis of NL2K. Although he has shown adequate dependency upon English editions of primary texts, questions remain about whether he grasps these authors’ intentions. In addition, doubts linger as to whether VanDrunen has examined enough of the corpus of various individuals’ writings to present a fair and correct assessment of those investigated. From Augustine and the Epistle to Diognetus to Van Til and the Van Tilians, VanDrunen to a certain degree has imposed upon almost every individual with whom he deals his own analysis of NL2K. For this reason, anyone consulting VanDrunen’s work must add their own primary document investigation to test VanDrunen’s often revisionist scholarship. We still await, therefore, a definitive work on NL2K in light of Reformed orthodoxy; at best, VanDrunen’s study serves as a minor footnote to any sincere historical study of the subject.

Even so, a significant number of Reformed and evangelical Christians will champion VanDrunen’s thesis since they continue to loiter in a consciousness shaped by the Holy Roman Empire when the institutions of church and state defined the core of Western human existence as one of its most persistent problems. For them, such a paradigm provides justification for their daily captivation with politico-cultural issues without acknowledging how they may be jeopardizing or compromising their Christian identity. Sadly, in this condition they refuse to deal honestly with the full-orbed eschatological fabric of biblical revelation that has now reached the “fullness of time” (Gal 4:4; cf. Phil 3:20; Col 3:1–4). Instead, these believers are paralyzed as they hold on to the “flesh” (in this case, a fixation upon the political nature of a State outside the domain of Christ as mediator of redemption) while trying to live out of the “Spirit.” In other words, VanDrunen’s NL2K model gives a rationale for having one foot solidly in place in the civil culture, and the other foot solidly in place in the kingdom of heaven (if there is any doubt about this, just examine blog sites by those sympathetic to the WSC 2K model). In this construct, VanDrunen sees that at the core of biblical revelation is a Christian life defined by his version of 2K, namely, that Christians must view themselves as citizens of two kingdoms, a paradigm absolutely foreign to the core of NT eschatology (p. 13). Herein, VanDrunen has essentially removed the weapons of spiritual warfare out of the hands of the church with a passion upon the temporal order of two governments and, thus, constructed for believers a provisional model as the dominant paradigm to transport them as a pilgrim people. After all, it is no small task to call the Reformed and broader Christian world to face up to the essential character of biblical eschatology, to ask that all, ministers and persons in the pew, surrender, think, and live in the christocentric eschatological nature of biblical revelation. So instead of living out of the full-orbed conditions of biblical eschatology seated with Christ in the heavenly places, VanDrunen’s NL2K paradigm has surrendered the essential eternal character of the progressive post-fall revelation of God—the seed of the woman versus the seed of the serpent—to focus the believer’s attention upon living in the realm of “commonality” that exists in the civitas permixta. Following such a path, however, will only mean that the obsession with politics which has crippled much of the history of the church will never find resolution, and, even more important, that believers will ignore their true eschatological freedom from bondage in the present and eternal reign of Christ (1 Pet 2:13–17).

Notes

1. William D. Dennison is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Ga. He reviews David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. Emory University Studies in Law and Religion. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Pp. 466. $38.00, paper.