C. S. Lewis’s line is appropriate here: “I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun, not just because I see it, but by it I can see everything else.” Immersion into God’s world, through Scripture, changes the way we think, feel, and live—even when it doesn’t give us detailed prescriptions on every aspect of our lives

In his blog yesterday (12.16.11) Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, suggested that there has been a lot of helpful conversation about Christ and culture in the last year. I agree, although the caricatures continue unabated and, with it, continued polarization.

“On the surface,” Tim writes, “the Reformed and evangelical world seems divided between ‘Cultural Transformationists’ and the ‘Two Kingdoms’ views.” Although the Transformationists include disparate camps (“neo-Calvinists, the Christian Right, and the theonomists”), “they all believe Christians should be about redeeming and changing the culture along Christian lines.” “On the other hand, the Two Kingdoms view believes essentially the opposite—that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society.”

Here, too, there is a spectrum. Then you have the neo-Anabaptists who “much more pessimistic than Reformed 2Ks about the systems of the world, which they view as ‘Empire,’ based on violence and greed.” Yet 2ks and neo-Anabaptists both “reject completely the idea that ‘kingdom work’ means changing society along Christian lines. Both groups believe the main job of Christians is to build up the church, a counter-culture to the world and a witness against it.”

Among the books that Tim thinks have brought greater moderation to the debate is James Hunter’s To Change the World, particularly the University of Virginia sociologist’s emphasis on “faithful presence” as the appropriate model for Christian engagement with culture.

I confess that I am often baffled by the gross caricatures of the 2K position, especially by some within the Reformed community whose vehemence outstrips their attempt to understand and wrestle with the actual position. Especially after several decades of triumphalism in the name of “Christ’s lordship over all of life,” it’s not surprising that the 2K view would seem something like a party-crasher. But what’s gained by misrepresentation?

That is not true of Tim Keller’s interaction, of course, and he is encouraging healthier conversation. Yet even in his post there remain what I would regard as some misunderstandings about the 2K position. I can’t speak for anyone but myself and for more thorough treatments of the view I’d recommend David VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms and his more scholarly historical work on Reformed social thought, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms. (He also has a new work coming out soon, also with Eerdmans, defending the position with exegetical and biblical-theological depth.)

As usual, Tim is respectful of the different views. However, I want to challenge his description of the 2K position a bit. He describes the 2K position in general as holding that because “Christians do their work alongside non-believers” on the basis of natural law and common grace, “Christians do not, then, pursue their vocation in a ‘distinctively Christian’ way.” Two-Kingdom proponents believe “that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society” and “reject completely the idea that ‘kingdom work’ means changing society along Christian lines. Both groups believe the main job of Christians is to build up the church, a counter-culture to the world and a witness against it.”

This description makes it sound as if 2K folks are more neo-Anabaptist. On one point, I think that’s true. Neo-Anabaptists like Stanley Hauerwas and Scot McKnight argue that the church is called to be a new society in this fading evil age, not to create one.
Beyond that, though, we are worlds apart.

Calvin, who explicitly affirmed the “two kingdoms” in terms identical to Luther’s (for example, Inst. 3.19.15; 4.20.1), not only opposed medieval confusion on the point but also the radical Anabaptist “fanatics” who disparaged God’s common grace in culture (2.2.15). Like Luther, Calvin was convinced that Christ’s kingdom proceeds by Word and Spirit, not by sword, but that Christians could be soldiers and magistrates as well as bakers and candlestick makers.

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