Thoughts on Living in God’s Two Kingdoms by David VanDrunen

I recently linked to Keith Mathison’s review of Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture by David VanDrunen, and I would still recommend it as a comprehensive, thoughtful, and friendly critique of VanDrunen’s book. Living in God’s Two Kingdoms is Van Drunen’s attempt to lay out clearly the doctrine of the two kingdoms as he sees it from Scripture so as provide a faithful account of how the church should relate to the world today.  As I’ve thought through the argument that he makes, there are several features of the book that I find compelling, while there are others that leave me dissatisfied.

Compelling Connections

First, VanDrunen notes how pervasive talk of “transforming culture” or “redeeming culture” is in the current evangelical scene.  From neo-Calvinist/transformationalist branches of the Reformed world, to advocates of N.T. Wright’s take on the New Perspective on Paul, to the emerging church movement as expressed by Brian McLaren (though his identification as an evangelical is in some doubt), societal transformation as the work of the kingdom is a repeated call of many sections of the broader church.  Mathison argued that lumping these three together “poisons the well” as they have more differences than similarities, but simply in terms of noting how pervasive one answer to this question is, I find the identification of the three groups helpful.

Secondly, VanDrunen’s use of the biblical Adam-Last Adam construct as a means of viewing the Christianity and culture question is helpful, though, as I will mention below, I do have some reservations about the specifics of his use of it.  His basic point in chapters 2 and 3 is this: what Adam could not do through the cultural mandate, Christ did.  Accordingly, we do not achieve the new creation now through our cultural endeavors.  Rather, we trust in Christ’s achievement of the new creation for us, for that is the only way we will enter God’s eternal kingdom. This ought to bring modesty in our expectations for cultural achievement in this life, as well as confidence not in our ability to change the world, but in what Christ has done to save us from our sins.

Thirdly, VanDrunen articulates well what I find to be the most convincing piece in the two-kingdom case: the exilic situation of the Old Testament as the operative motif for Christians’ conception of their place in the world. Noting how Daniel and his friends lived, studied, and worked in Babylon, VanDrunen notes:

It is important to note that Christians presently participate in the cultural activities of Babylon.  As explained in later chapters, Christians today engage in the same politics, the same commerce, the same music, and the same institution of marriage that nonbelievers do.  Though Christians are called to pursue these activities with righteousness and suffer persecution at the hands of Babylon, Christians and non-Christians share many cultural endeavors in common.  Christians are not summoned to withdraw into their own cultural ghettos, but their cultural activities are intertwined with those of the world at large.  As God required the Israelites of old to engage in normal cultural activities as exiles in the historic city of Babylon (Jer. 29:4-9), so he expects Christians today to engage in normal cultural activities as residents of “Babylon,” the social and economic institutions of our own time. (69-70)

In other words, just as Daniel and the other Israelites did not try to turn Babylon into Jerusalem, so Christians do not try to turn their economic and political situations into the new Jerusalem. They participate in the common affairs of life, but they do so knowing that they have a much more ultimate home to which they should look forward. In terms of the broad features of this understanding of the Christ and culture question, I find it quite compelling.  However, I will discuss later what I find to be some practical difficulties with this understanding.

Fourthly, VanDrunen’s emphasis on the operation of sola Scriptura in the life of the church is refreshing.  He notes that “nothing that happens during the worship service should be optional or designed to exclude some people–everyone should be edified and able to say “amen” to everything that transpires” (156).  I recognize that this is not always as simple as it sounds in practice, but I believe that it is important the principle of sola Scriptura in the life of the church is vitally important.

Fifthly, the last point leads to an important suggestion for evaluation:

The church may wish to test itself by asking whether something it does or teaches necessarily excludes some Christians from participating in its life and worship because of their ethnic or national identity…let us imagine that one Christian is randomly chosen from all of the Christians in the world and dropped into an American worship service (and given the ability to understand the language).  Here is the test that I suggest: does the minister say anything in the sermon to which this Christian cannot say “amen,” is there any phrase in any of the songs which this Christian cannot sing, or is there any visual prop that causes discomfort or offence [sic] to this Christian, on account of this Christian’s ethnic or national affiliation?
If the minister prays for the peace and prosperity of America, this Christian from a foreign land should have no difficult saying “amen,” since Scripture straightforwardly instructs believers to pray in this manner (e.g., see Jer. 29:7; 1 Tim 2:1-2) and surely on Christian should wish war and poverty upon fellow believers anywhere in the world…
But now we might imagine that the minister prays for America’s victory in an international dispute or that the congregation is asked to sing a patriotic song after the sermon (perhaps this Christian just happens to visit America on Fourth of July weekend)…When we are immersed in our own culture and our own national interests, it is often difficult to realize how often we attach the church’s identity to a national or ethnic identity, and hence to betray the spirituality of the church.  The scenarios that I have imagined might cause us to pause and to reflect upon how the church can do better at living as though there really is no Jew, Greek, barbarian, or Scythian within its walls. (150)

Other than the brief note about the “spirituality of the church”–a concept which he discusses elsewhere and about which I am not fully convinced–I heartily concur with what he has said.  If the church is to be the church, it ought not to place divisions because of national or ethnic identity.  We are a separate people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, called to proclaim the praises of God, not of a particular country (1 Peter 2).

There is more that is commendable about VanDrunen’s work, but I will leave it at that, because even though I do find many of these elements compelling, I do find several other elements quite dissatisfying.

Dissatisfying Developments

First, VanDrunen more than once makes a connection which I found quite doubtful. He notes, “God therefore does not call us back to complete the task that the first Adam fumbled.  This is a key reason why I stated above that a Protestant doctrine of justification is ultimately incompatible with a redemptive transformationist view of culture along the lines of neo-Calvinism, the New Perspective on Paul, or the emergent church movement” (58). I’ll mention some of my doubts regarding his bases for this view below, but for now, suffice is to say that I find such a claim unwarranted and unhelpful.  The reality is that there have been many transformationists who have held to justification by faith alone, and such poisoning of the well is not helpful. While I mentioned earlier that his identification of the three groups is helpful in that one can see how pervasive this question is, his equating of the three groups here on the question does indeed poison the well. One can be a neo-Calvinist and strongly reject the New Perspective and the likes of Brian McLaren. VanDrunen also states, “But to think that our sufferings contribute to atoning for sin or that our cultural obedience contributes to building the new creation is to compromise the all-sufficient work of Christ” (51). I do not think any Reformed transformationists suggest that we add to Christ’s atoning work through cultural endeavors, and VanDrunen has provided no evidence to suggest that they do.

Secondly, a few elements of VanDrunen’s case seem speculative.  (1) He repeatedly insists that had Adam kept God’s commands perfectly, he would have inherited a new creation.  For example, he says, “The first Adam did not bear God’s image in order to work aimlessly in the original creation but to finish his work in this world and then to enter a new creation and to sit down enthroned in a royal rest” (40).  I do not see justification for this idea from the pages of Scripture. Certainly Adam was promised life on the condition of obedience (the covenant of creation or covenant of works), but I do not see that Scripture promises Adam a new creation instead of continued life (with a work and rest pattern) in the original creation.

VanDrunen does appeal to several New Testament passages to support this (Hebrews 4 and Revelation 21-22), but nowhere does he draw out explicitly from there how it was Adam’s expectation of a “world-to-come.” Certainly we are promised such a world in those passages, but we live post-Fall, post-cross, and post-resurrection, and so I don’t think he made his case well that Adam would have inherited a different creation.

(2) He seems to overstate his case about the continuation of human cultural endeavors into the new creation.  I am hardly convinced either way on this point, but he argues primarily from 2 Peter 3 that one only humans will continue into the new creation (and thus that cultural works are common, not holy, and temporary, rather than lasting).  I do not see Peter making the argument that VanDrunen does. I won’t discuss this issue in detail here, but I would recommend Mathison’s review on this point, as he discusses how much of VanDrunen’s argument hinge on this point.

Thirdly, it seems like VanDrunen relies entire argument hinges on his understanding of the Noahic Covenant.  He argues that the common realm or kingdom was initiated by God in the Noahic Covenant.  He says,

Several important features characterize this common kingdom established by the Noahic covenant: it concerns ordinary cultural activities (rather than special acts of worship or religious devotion), it embraces the human race in common (rather than a holy people that are distinguished from the rest of the human race), it ensures the preservation of the natural and social order (rather than the redemption of this order), and it is established temporarily (rather than permanently). (79)

I confess that I do need to read Meredith Kline’s work on the Noahic covenant to fully grapple with VanDrunen’s argument, but nonetheless, I find that bloating God’s promise to never send a flood (and his instructions to fill the earth) into a divine establishment of a common realm for the family, state, commerce, and so on, to be more assumption and projection of ideas onto the text than something that can directly be drawn out of the text. This does not seem like a sufficient foundation on which to build his whole conception of the common kingdom as opposed to the spiritual.

Fourthly, while I appreciate that VanDrunen’s desire is to make certain that the church functions only in the way that God commands, I found his discussion of the church’s responsibility to the poor to be somewhat stunted. VanDrunen says,

When the New Testament gives instructions about diaconal work, it authorizes the church to give material assistance to the needy of the church and not the needy of the world in general…The New Testament, however, never commands the church’s diaconal work to assist people outside the church.  What the New Testament authorizes, therefore, is that the church’s diaconal ministry should be directed toward needy Christians. (158)

As I said, I appreciate his desire to emphasize the church’s responsibility to do only what God commissions her to do.  But nevertheless, it seems that he has neglected several aspects of the biblical witness on this subject. As Keith Mathison noted in his review, he devotes nearly no space to the witness of the Old Testament prophets on the subject. And he does, in a cursory fashion, acknowledge the presence of Galatians 6:10 (“Do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith”), but he dismisses it quickly as being an instruction for individual Christians to simply be kind to their neighbors.  I am not sure that it can be so quickly dismissed. Nor am I sure that the ministry of Jesus in word and deed can be easily dismissed. Nor am I sure that when the Psalms mention repeatedly that God cares for the materially poor that we can merely restrict that to our own poor. That’s not to say that there isn’t a priority to the church taking care of her own poor, just a man shouldn’t let his own family starve while he feeds someone else.  But to say that Scripture never indicates we have any warrant for helping the poor outside of the covenant community seems to me to be an overstatement.

Summary

I would strongly encourage Christians to read VanDrunen’s work, clearly not because I believe he is correct on everything, but because I believe that this conversation about Christ and culture is worth having. There are very different ways of approaching the church’s role in culture today even within the Reformed world, and VanDrunen’s work is important for understanding the two kingdom position.  I would simultaneously recommend that readers check out Keith Mathison’s review, as he gets into more detail about the specific points of difference between him and VanDrunen. In another post I will mention some more practical questions I have regarding two kingdom theology.