Why did some Christians support Hitler? And what informed the ones who opposed him?
One of my professors at Emory University once claimed when Adolf Hitler became the dictator of Germany and took the country down the path of fascism and national socialism he was giving conservative Christians – specifically Christian Protestants – just what they wanted. Of course, most of us in the room realized that this claim is a massive distortion of history, and a highly inflammatory one at that. But in fact, there is just enough of an element of truth behind the statement to enable someone with an anti-Christian agenda to believe it.
The reality is that the vast majority of German Protestants (4o million people, or two thirds of the nation’s population) were politically conservative and nationalist in their convictions. What that meant in that context was that they were not particularly interested in democracy but were instead looking for a great leader to bring Germany and the German people out of the ashes of the Great War (1914-1918). They loathed communism and tended to view Jews as alien members of society. They wanted to see Germany return to the military glory of the past.
Roman Catholics (20 million people, or one third of the German population) tended to be much more skeptical about the Nazis. The Catholic Church had been persecuted by Bismarck in the early years of the German Empire (the second Reich), and unlike the Lutherans and the Reformed it maintained allegiance to a power outside of Germany, the papacy. The Catholic Church also boasted a massive infrastructure of schools, youth organizations, journals, and political parties, all of which amounted to a state within a state, a serious threat to the all encompassing claims of National Socialism.
But what my professor’s comments failed to acknowledge was that the sort of Protestant Christianity that was susceptible to the Nazi temptation tended to be the more theologically liberal or nominal form. Indeed, even those Christians who loathed what was going on in the “German Christian” (ardently pro-Nazi) movement often avoided association with the Confessing Church (which explicitly rejected totalitarian Nazi claims) because the latter was to a large extent “formed by a piety that veered increasingly towards biblical fundamentalism,” or that required rigid allegiance to Scripture and to orthodox Christian doctrine (Richard J Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 226).
In other words, while virtually all German Christians were politically conservative and therefore susceptible to Nazi ideology, theologically conservative Christians tended to be much more resistant to that ideology by virtue of their commitment to orthodox Christian teaching. Theologically liberal Christians, on the other hand, having rejected such orthodoxy as well as the authority of Scripture, had little basis with which to reject a movement that seemed to be so deeply sensitive to the philosophical and social ethos of the day.
To be sure, when push came to shove (or prison, or death) most Protestants supported the Nazi regime regardless of where they fell on the theological spectrum. And prominent liberal theologians like Paul Tillich were just as hostile to the Third Reich as were prominent conservative theologians and pastors like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And the tragic thing is that while the Catholic Church and the Confessing Church rigorously opposed Nazi claims to totalitarian power over their churches and other church-related organizations, neither said much at all in the way of denouncing Nazi policy towards Jews, or to the mentally-handicapped.
In fact, the religious group that the Nazis found more hostile to its goals than any other was the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This group alone – committed in its very essence to faithful witness to the point of suffering – seemed immune to the pressure of imprisonment or death.
What is worth noting in the context of contemporary debates about political theology is that the two kingdoms doctrine was used in conflicting ways, both to support allegiance to the Nazi regime and to oppose it. For those inclined to support the regime the two kingdoms doctrine taught that the realm of politics and the state is separate from the realm of the gospel, representing a source of authority and identity distinct from that of Christ and yet binding on the Christian’s allegiance.
For those who opposed the regime, on the other hand, the two kingdoms doctrine functioned in the context of a higher allegiance to the lordship of Christ over all of life. The Barmen Declaration, adopted in 1934 by the Confessing Church, declared, “We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords – areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.” It went on to declare that the church is not “permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.”
We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church’s vocation as well. We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, over and beyond its special commission, should and could appropriate the characteristics, the tasks, and the dignity of the State, thus becoming an organ of the State.
What those Christians and churches who maintained this confession – and their opposition to the Nazi regime – seemed to recognize, in contrast to many of those Christians who supported Hitler, was that the allegiance of Christians and of the church to Christ is preeminent in every area of life, and that therefore the authority of Scripture must always be the ultimate judge in matters of justice, political ideology, or politics. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued so carefully, versions of the two kingdoms doctrine that divide life into distinct realms, one of which is outside the authority of Christ, are denials of the Christ in whom all things exist. To conceive of any action or authority apart from Christ is to conceive of an abstraction.
Christians who held to the two kingdoms doctrine but who lacked this Christocentric perspective had little with which to resist the claims of a state that masterfully channeled the spirit of the times. Given our contemporary debates, that something we need to take seriously.
Posted on October 10, 2012, in Confessions, fundamentalism, Roman Catholic Church, Two Kingdoms and tagged Barmen Declaration, Bismarck, Confessing Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Christians, Hitler, Karl Barth, Nazi, Paul Tillich. Bookmark the permalink. 30 Comments.
Matthew,
This is probably an aside to the main point of your article, but it interests me as to how Barth, who was instrumental in the crafting of the Barmen Declaration, was able to so clearly articulate a view that almost any modern Reformed 2ker would deem appropriate:
We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church’s vocation as well. We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, over and beyond its special commission, should and could appropriate the characteristics, the tasks, and the dignity of the State, thus becoming an organ of the State.
And yet, he was so ardently against Natural Law. I know there was some disagreement over NL amongst dialectic theologians in Germany, such as Brunner who thought it was appropriate. At the time of Barmen had the issue of NL been settled amongst the German conservatives (or neo-orthodox).
FWIW, I do think that the Barmen signatories do offer a good example of responsible confessionalism in the face of totalitarian politics, even if there areas where I am not in agreement with Barmen.
Matt, for the institutional church isn’t there an alternative to simply an opposition or affirmation to a civil regime, as in silence? I know, I know, “silence is tacit approval.” But I have hard time seeing any despot like Hitler not seeing silence as tacit opposition, in which case it won’t be long before he comes knocking at the door to crack skulls.
Plus, if the Third Reich is the template here, and if whatever gets us to opposition is the right answer, then doesn’t that suggest that when the template is a democratic regime that whatever gets us to approval is the right answer? In which case, we have the church still vulnerable to civil influence. And it all turns on deciding what civil regime is “good” or “bad.” Maybe the “good” definition is democratic regimes, but middle eastern churches could have plenty to wonder about what it means to approve regimes that practice pre-emptive wars. You can see how this gets dicey. Wouldn’t silence be the best policy, even if some interpret silence as either approval or opposition?
Zrim, how could the church be silent when the regime was forcing its children into the Hitler Youth (as well as into Nazi controlled schools) to swear oaths of allegiance to the fuhrer, when it was requiring the church to exclude Jews from its numbers (as well as to mistreat them), when it was seeking literally to take over the church by reappointing its leaders, when the church was finding its own members embracing the racist ideology of the party, and on and on and on?
Even more basically, why would the church even want to be silent, when its most fundamental calling is to proclaim the gospel to sinners? Isn’t the obligation of the church to proclaim the law and the gospel, no matter how opposed these are by the state or by the political agenda of others?
The Church has allowed to come it so far that Hitler could take power and closed their eyes for many horrendous actions because they were more concerned about their assets and the growth of their church instead of human love.
Though we may not forget that not all pastors and nuns may be put in the same box.
Zrim,
I am not sure that what you are advocating here ends up ultimately upholding the church-state distinction. It seems that, in Nazi Germany, at a minimum the National Socialists that were in power were adamantly intolerant of any institution that did not give the Nazi Party it’s enthusiastic and unwavering support. The neo-orthodox, even with their shaky neo-Kantian presuppositions and suspect theological assumptions, can, at minimum be credited with understanding exactly what was at stake. They saw themselves as churchmen who were seeking to recover the confessional witness of Protestantism in Germany, and this was something that the Nazi’s simply could not tolerate, because confessional Protestantism both in terms of doctrine and piety was fundamentally opposed to the Nazi brand of fascism, and on many ideological fronts. They had a different understanding of history, and it’s meaning which functioned as a challenge to the ultimately eschatological vision of Nazism; they had a different anthropology, which would not allow them to acquiesce to Nazi barbarism – because they shared with older Reformed orthodoxy the view that man was made in the image of God and this was not lost in the fall.
So, simply by being confessional as they defined it, the German neo-orthodox of the Nazi era stood in opposition to Nazism by virtue of their confessions. The Nazi vision seemed to include an odd pluralistic melding of old Teutonic paganism, elements from the occult, and the nationalistic sympathies of the once pietistic, and contemporaneously liberal elements of German Protestantism. Had there been a significant presence of German Reformed churches still insisting on a confessionalism based on the 3FU, or congregations holding to a post 1789 version of the WCF, they may have found themselves on the outs with the Nazi regeime as well. The Waldensian church in Italy similarly ran into trouble with the Italian fascists. Part of the nature of totalitarianism in the 20th century is that it demanded absolute adherence – one could not assert that they would submit to the state but continue to worship as he so chose. Either he worshipped according to the sanction of the state, or he was persecuted, shipped to a concentration camp, or the Gulag, or a Himalayan prison camp, or just killed.
The signatures of Barmen were simply seeking to preserve their confessional witness, which at that time required certain measures of opposition to the Nazi regime. I think we can agree that Boenhoffer was wrong to seek an end to Hitler’s life, and that this may have violated some of his other confessional ideals. But, thinking that there is a way where a confessing Christian could’ve submitted to Nazi Germany, and stay consistent with either Natural Law, or Scripture, is to make a point that I don’t think can be defended given the history on the ground. Should America ever descend into totalitarian rule, it is not at all inconceivable that confessional Reformed Christians would find themselves in a similar to the situation surrounding the neo-orthodox who drafted Barmen. All this to say, I think you are grossly underestimating the massive breadth of what submission means in a totalitarian state.
We’ll probably keep coming back to the question of “what about the Nazi’s” as long as some in the 2k camp continue to assert that there is no eventuality where resistance to the state is permissable, and pass this off as 2k orthodoxy. I would have less of an issue with your arguments on this manner if you touted it as your reading of 2k ethics, instead of being the essence of a 2k understanding of a Christian’s relationship to political authority.
Zrim,
To add to my last comment, I think that the rub that you and I have over the matter of Civil Disobedience, and whether or not tyranny can be legitimately resisted is because I think you are taking an incredibly narrow reading of the Reformed Natural Law tradition on the matter. Also because you aren’t really navigating the difficult aspect of biblical ethics where obeying one biblical command, to obey the magistrate may be at legitimate odds with another biblical command such as to love one’s neighbor, or not to kill. It is easy in our current setting to be more absolute on the matter, because as Americans we haven’t had a good deal of experience in dealing with political tyrants, but in other periods in history, the matter was far from cut and dry.
The Nazi example keeps popping up because it is a great litmus test for the discussion. The signers of the Barmen Declaration (IMO) rightly understood that if they did not resist the Nazi’s they would at minimum be complicit in the degradation of their Jewish neighbors(and others undesirable to the Nazi’s), and to seek the protection of such neighbors would have been a capital offense in Nazi Germany. Therefore, biblically speaking, they saw a precedent where obeying the Nazi’s was less preferable than fulfilling the higher ethical ideals in Scripture.
In all of our discussions, you seem to only allow a few sources to speak authoritatively on the matter – now all are reputable, I am not disputing this – Van Drunen, Calvin, and your own reading of Scripture. However, Van Drunen himself conceded that the Reformed Resistance Theorists were quite instrumental in his arguments for the use of Natural Law in Two Kingdoms theology. One of the possible historical reasons why Calvin held to his position, which basically disallowed Christians from any sort of civil disobedience, calling them to submit to persecution as Providential, was because he hadn’t faced the kind of political resistance that might have forced him to think otherwise.
I found a succinct, well written article by Nathaniel Warne, a PhD student at Durham University titled The Reformation and Civil Disobedience. Here he outlines how the St. Batholomew’s Day Massacre of French Huguenots in 1572 lead to a sharp change in Reformed thinking on the matter of civil disobedience. Calvin would have simply maintained that the Huguenots were bound by Scripture to submit to this persecution. However, after thousands of lives were lost, and whole congregations were wiped out, the Reformers reconsidered how they should respond to political tyranny. Theodore Beza, Calvin’s own successor, was a leader in this shift, essentially using both Scriptural and Natural Law argumentation to assert that there are limits upon the power of the magistrate, and there are, albeit only a few, very dire circumstances where Christians could legitimately seek to resist or even overthrow a political tyrant in an effort to establish a more equitable rule of law. So, the emergence of Reformed Resistance Theory was very early in the tradition, and in response to the first legitimate exercises of tyranny.
All this to reiterate, I get that you are adamantly against all forms of civil disobedience, except what you deem as religious to be fair, and I accept that you have sound conscientious reasons for holding your position. But, rejecting the legitimacy of civil disobedience in every form is not an essential feature of 2k theology, yet you speak as if it is. As one who follows the political (and economic) movements in this country and internationally quite closely, I do not think it is reasonable to automatically assume that the US will always be broadly free from the exercise of political tyranny – our past towards blacks and Native Americans demonstrates this, and many current political developments today could lead us once again to a place where Americans must stand up to domestic tyranny. Hopefully it will not come to this, but if it does, I am not so sure many who write off civil disobedience currently will continue to do so. There might come a point where conscience dictates that injustice can no longer be tolerated and endured because it has become egregious, and therefore must be resisted. Our Reformed tradition has a long history of Christians having to make these sort of choices, and in retrospect some got it wrong, but I am not willing to say that they all did.
Excellent thoughts Jed. One thing helpful that you point out is that Reformed resistance theory itself was largely a function of two kingdoms logic. That’s a point on which more work needs to be done. At the same time, there is a difference between the opposition to tyrants of lesser magistrates (i.e., classic Reformed resistance theory) and opposition to tyrants by the church itself (i.e., Peter and Paul: we must obey God rather than men). These two forms of resistance line up nicely with the two kingdoms, and must therefore take two different forms. In the first violence may be appropriate. In the second, the route is faithful proclamation, and the willingness to suffer the consequences.
Matt et al,
For what it’s worth, Barmen and the Confessing Church is not all it’s cracked up to be. The quote you have from Barmen didn’t really change anything, nor did the Confessing Church opt out of the ecclesiastical establishment. The quote does say that the state should not overstep, but none in the Confessing Church minded the Nazi’s much if they recognized the right Protestants to run the church. To their credit, some did take issue with the Nazi’s racial policies.
More specifically for Matt, I have reservations about two claims. The first is that anything conceived apart from Christ is an abstraction. What does this mean? Not to be vulgar, but can I conceive of human waste apart from Christ? And what about doctoral studies? You bring Christ into your dissertation proposal and what reaction do you get from your committee? Maybe a publicly accessible Christ will work. But that’s not the full-blown Christ of John 1.
And what does it mean that German Christians had no way to resist the Nazi’s apart from a Christocentric perspective? There were plenty of German Christians who opposed Weimar because they wanted the Kaiser back. Politically, they favored a monarchy like government to the Nazi regime. Why overload the discussion with complicated questions of Christology?
Darryl,
I agree that theologically Barmen was something of a bust, and in general I am not persuaded by the neo-orthodox theologians, as impressive as some of their works may have been. Nor am I inclined to capitulate to their terminology, as Barthian Christology, to me is not an improvement on our own Reformed formulations. I am more than happy to stay in the bounds of the confessional language we already have – since Barth clearly means something different than we do when we (might)say anything outside Christ is an abstraction, since he collapsed all of his theology surrounding divine revelation into Christology. However, the Barmen signers were faced with a situation not so radically different from late 16th c. Reformers such as Beza who faced the elimination of a good deal of the Reformed church in France. The situation surrounding Barmen, theology aside does seem to me to fall in line with WCF strictures where in 31.4 the church may petition the state over political matters in extraordinary cases. The end result of neo-orthodox resistance is a mixed bag, where Bonhoeffer erred in his conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and in the end Barth probably made the best choice in heading for Switzerland. But, Barmen itself, aside from it’s questionable theology seems to stand against the clear over-reach of the Nazi’s in a reasonable manner.
Darryl, thanks for your comment. I realize, of course, as I pointed out in my post, that even the Confessing Church failed to oppose Nazi policies as it should have. Barmen amounted to an imperfect statement of the church’s understanding of the truth; that doesn’t mean the church was always faithful to it.
I think the statement about everything being an abstraction apart from Christ is soundly biblical, simply a paraphrase of Paul’s statement in Colossians 1:17 that in Christ all things exist. What it means is that we understand nothing truthfully apart from its relation to Christ. Unless Christians understand this, they are sure to misunderstand the significance of various things, whether by viewing them in an idolatrous way, or by repressing their significance as what God has created good.
The main point of that last paragraph was that if Christ – the Christ of Scripture – is not the lord of the civil kingdom as well as the spiritual kingdom (though obviously in different ways), per Ephesians 1, then there is no reason to insist on allegiance to Christ when civil magistrates (or totalitarian regimes) go against that. There may be other reasons to resist, but they will hold no authoritative claim over Christians, who are called to submit to the civil magistrate unless he calls them to go against God.
I actually don’t think this will “overload” the discussion with “complicated questions of Christology.” To say that Jesus is Lord, and that he will return to judge the living and the dead, and that therefore all owe their ultimate allegiance and obedience to him, and not to the state, is at the heart of the Christian gospel in its simplest form (Acts 17).
Darryl, I should add that none of this contradicts the fact that Christians should seek to persuade their neighbors on the basis of the shared natural law written on the heart, as well as of what Calvin called the sensus divinitatis. The problem in Nazi Germany was that Hitler’s own rhetoric was saturated with invocations of God and of natural law – natural law understood through the lens of social Darwinism. It made sense for Christians to resist these claims without constantly invoking Scripture, but at the same time it was necessary for the church unequivocally to proclaim the clear Christocentric truth of Scripture as well, especially where that truth clashed with the dominant form of idolatry and false religion of the day – the Nazi ideology.
Even more basically, why would the church even want to be silent, when its most fundamental calling is to proclaim the gospel to sinners? Isn’t the obligation of the church to proclaim the law and the gospel, no matter how opposed these are by the state or by the political agenda of others?
Matt, my point about being silent means to be politically silent, not spiritually silent. When the church, saves her political breath in order to proclaim Jesus alone is Lord, this would likely not be viewed as regime affirming to a tyrant. So, yes, the church is to proclaim law and gospel without any exception. But that a spiritual calling, which should happen whether in a free or tyrannical context.
Jed, I appreciate your comment, but I don’t think it’s really as complicated as all that. I think tyrants want all persons and institutions to yield enthusiastic and unwavering support. Political silence is simply not interpreted by tyrants as anything but opposition, because there is only affirmation or opposition. Silence has a funny way of being interpreted by affirmers as opposition and by opposers as affirmation. But sometimes silence is neither.
But, thinking that there is a way where a confessing Christian could’ve submitted to Nazi Germany, and stay consistent with either Natural Law, or Scripture, is to make a point that I don’t think can be defended given the history on the ground.
But that’s actually the standard of Scripture, regardless of hard it is or the history on the ground: submit to the civil authorities, but also obey God rather than men. It’s a classic tension. I don’t pretend that certain circumstances are a cake walk, but I fail to see how Nazi Germany is some sort of exception to the rule about submission. Part of what I think is at play is this rather sloppy assumption (perhaps informed by too many movies and novels) that to submit to a certain tyrant means to kill people. But I dare say plenty, nay most, of German citizens were never personally compelled to have to kill anybody or otherwise break God’s laws. Try a thought experiment: Is to submit to the American regime to kill Muslims?
All this to reiterate, I get that you are adamantly against all forms of civil disobedience, except what you deem as religious to be fair, and I accept that you have sound conscientious reasons for holding your position. But, rejecting the legitimacy of civil disobedience in every form is not an essential feature of 2k theology, yet you speak as if it is.
Jed, all I am doing is holding up the confessional forms about civil disobedience, all of which condemn it. I appreciate all the historical and political theorizing you provide to find some way or another to affirm it. But the institutional church has yet to affirm any form of civil disobedience. You may find this frustrating, but the fact is that our shared forms just never give it any cover. Is your argument with me or with the forms? That’s a serious question.
Zrim,
I realize that you are seeking to be confessional here, and I commend you for that. But the facts of history bear out that confessionally Reformed Christians came down on both sides of the matter – a fact that you don’t seem willing to admit. We do not have the confessional revision of WCF 1789, one which you defend, without 1776, which oddly you see as unbiblical insubordination. My problem is not with your view, you are free to hold it in your own conscience, my problem is that you hold your view out to be the confessional view. It is easily demonstrable from a cursory survey of Reformed history to demonstrate that what you call the one and only confessional view with respect to civil disobedience, is in fact not the only view.
You tout tolerance on civil matters as a hallmark of 2k theology, and with the other hand take it away, by calling those who disagree with you as a) unbiblical; and b) non-confessional. I am not quite sure how you square that circle. Especially given the fact that you are tolerant of almost any political position in the church, so long as it doesn’t affect what happens on the Lord’s day. Honestly, I am not sure how you hold that dichotomy together. I’d be cureious.
The reason why Beza departed from Calvin’s views on the matter of civil disobedience was not because he saw it as preferable, but because he saw it as necessary. If he didn’t modify from Calvin’s position the Reformed community in Continental Europe faced extermination, what he offered was a biblically reasoned, natural law alternative that allowed Reformed Christians to seek political recourse in the face of persecution, where they had previously been forbidden. 60k dead Reformed Christians (conservatively) in a few short years of French persecution nearly squashed the Reformation in France. He wasn’t aiming for anarchy, which was more deplorable to him than tyranny, which is why he insisted that any civil disobedience be undertaken under the authority of a lower magesterial authority – which in a sense freed Reformed Christians to engage the political process where previously there was only unquestioning submission to the magistrate. If you want to read for yourself Beza’s reasoning, here’s a short tract he wrote (taken from his larger work On the Rights of Magistrates):
Concerning the Rights of Rulers Over Their Subjects and the Duty of Subjects to Their Rulers
Unless you are going to cast Beza outside the pale of orthodoxy, you might want to start taking the arguments of Reformed Resistance Theorists, and the fact that you are very much the political beneficiary of their resistance, more seriously before condemning the very notion of CD.
Matt, not to set you off on a memoirs project — Lauren Winner notwithstanding, you need to be over 60 to write memoirs — but you did go to Covenant College, right? So I wonder if you inhaled more neo-Calvinism than you recognize.
I do believe we agree theologically. But I would not construe the Pauline passages the way you did at least in your comments here. And it is striking how neo-Cal’s also invoke those “all things” passages, even though Calvin generally understood “all” to include men and angels.
As a historian I don’t do much exegesis professionally. So finding help from Scripture is not what I do in writing and most speaking (church groups are different). But when it comes to being helpful, I do think it is possible to shock neo-Cals and evangelicals with how outrageous their claims about Christ’s Lordship are compared to how they actually live their lives. Of course, it may be simply that they are inconsistent. It could also be that “all things” rhetoric breeds a kind of perfectionism that is deeply at odds with other parts of Scripture.
At the same time, the more I read about Islam and other political theologies, including the West, the more I am convinced that Christ said something completely different when he recognized something that belonged to Caesar and something to God.
Zrim, that helps. But part of the problem is that often clear lines cannot be drawn between the political and the spiritual. As VanDrunen writes in Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, “no area of life can be completely slotted as civil and not at all as spiritual.”
If you actually look at the record though, the Nazis did work hard to get churches to be silent. Of course they preferred whole-hearted endorsement, but realistically speaking, they were willing to accept silence. If all the people hear is Nazi propaganda and not even the church is contradicting it, Hitler will truly be the leader, the only leader when it comes down to it.
Matt, I still don’t understand the point about Christ and abstractions. Everything exists in Christ, yes. Explaining that is another question entirely. Your imperative that Christians need to see everything in Christ or else is a blank check for all sorts of nonsense in Christ’s name. (Of course, this is not yours but Kuyper’s.) I still think that lots of non-Christians understand the way the natural world operates better than Christians do who believe that everything was created by Christ and that he governs all things. Again, neo-Calvinist rhetoric invites non-Christians to think they understand some things even better than the experts. As I’ve said many times, this is pietistic (anti-) intellectualism. Not saying you’re guilty of this. But I am objecting to the neo-Cal rhetoric.
Darryl, fair point, and of course I agree with you that this sort of language is subject to all sorts of abuse (as is just about every other Scriptural doctrine, such as justification by faith alone; see James). And as you know, I happen to agree with you on many of the particular abuses to which it has been put by both the right and the left. But I think retreating from Scriptural language is just as dangerous and just as subject to abuse.
The only solution, I believe, is to emphasize Scriptural language and insist on its proper interpretation. I don’t think emphasizing the lordship of Christ over all things, or emphasizing that all things exist in Christ (and therefore nothing has existence apart from Christ, i.e., it is an abstraction) is neo-Calvinistic language. It’s simply biblical language, and if the way in which the radical neo-Calvinists use it is problematic then that simply means we have to win it back from them.
To be honest, in the end I think the credibility of the two kingdoms doctrine demands this sensitivity to the Scriptural language and teaching. Without it, we 2k advocates will be legitimately rejected.
Matt, but do we use this language in academic work? Do we disregard the work of non-xian scholars who don’t have this language? Maybe this explains why you think I sound more threatening than other 2kers. But I simply don’t see why what I confess on the Lord’s Day needs to be part of my work day expression, especially when I am trying to explain Aristotle to freshmen.
Darryl,
How threatening can a cigar smoking Phillies fan really be?
Matt, what aI hear you saying is “I think the credibility of the two kingdoms doctrine demands [using language that will more often than not be misunderstood]. Without it, we 2k advocates will be legitimately rejected.” The word “legitimately” seems quite out of place here.
Mikelmann, not sure what you are trying to say here. Are you suggesting jettisoning the language of Scripture because it is too misunderstood?
If you are asking whether I think the legitimacy of the two kingdoms doctrine depends on its fidelity to basic Scriptural affirmations then my answer is yes. Thankfully, the Reformed two kingdoms doctrine always has done this.
Darryl, of course I agree we need to be able to use different language in different contexts. What is appropriate for the church to say is different from what it is appropriate for a congressman to say in a congressional debate, or for a history professor to say in a class on Aristotle. Of course, all the while Christians understand what they do in light of Christ, and they are always ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them.
But of course, the two kingdoms doctrine is a theological doctrine, and this post is about the public confession of the church. So I’m not sure what you are trying to say here …
Matt, my only words were “using language that will more often than not be misunderstood.” From this you get “If you are asking whether I think the legitimacy of the two kingdoms doctrine depends on its fidelity to basic Scriptural affirmations..”? Uh, no. It involves issues of communication and intelligibility. But I’ll check out for now.
Matt, what I’m saying is what I’ve been saying. Dr. K. loves 2k when you say, “To conceive of any action or authority apart from Christ is to conceive of an abstraction.” And that theological affirmation leads him to want to talk about everything, including matters not revealed in Scripture, by reference to Christ. It is also what led Kuyper to found a university.
So a theological affirmation by the church becomes a rationale for members of the church when they teach Aristotle, draft legislation, write cookbooks. Remember, every action needs to be articulated in relation to Christ.
But then you sound 2k when you talk about language in different contexts. I believe there is a tension here in your neo-Calvinism and your 2k. It’s the neo-Calvinism that needs serious qualification. At the same time, it sounds like an inconsistency to say that everything is an abstraction apart from Christ and then to say that in some contexts we allow abstractions because we don’t speak about Christ.
Darryl, that’s a fair assessment, although again I think my main point here is less derivative of neo-Calvinism than it is of the fact that I’ve been working through Paul (especially Colossians) in my preaching in the past few years and am absolutely convinced that Bonhoeffer (no neo-Calvinist)’s claim is faithful to what Paul is getting at. I have to admit, I have read very little within neo-Calvinism. It is not my horizon of thought.
That said, I agree that there is a tension in my thought, but I would argue that this tension is the direct result of the two kingdoms doctrine itself. After all, the doctrine is fundamentally eschatological, involving the life of Christians in the already and not yet. We do all things for Christ, in recognition that he is lord of all, and yet what that actually means in practice usually amounts to fidelity to natural law, to our vocations, to what we learn from general revelation (i.e., Eph 5-6). It requires a humility on the part of Christians, as you rightly and helpfully point out throughout your work, and a willingness not to make special revelation say more than it does on the practical details of life, a willingness to learn from unbelievers in the various areas you mention, because the same Lord who is our redeemer is our creator, and because his common grace extends to unbelievers as well.
If we are going to convince people of the helpfulness of the two kingdoms doctrine we need to be able to emphasize both sides of the tension at once: the lordship of Christ, and yet the secular nature of life short of his return. I think you agree with me theologically at least right?
But part of the problem is that often clear lines cannot be drawn between the political and the spiritual. As VanDrunen writes in Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, “no area of life can be completely slotted as civil and not at all as spiritual.”
Matt, it may help to distinguish between persons and institutions. You and are as persons are both political and spiritual. But I think it’s fair enough to say that city hall is a political institution (not spiritual) and Trinity URC is a spiritual institution (not political). Now, if you want to read that as “slotting areas of life,” fine. But I think you’d be hard pressed to say without any qualification that city hall is spiritual and TURC is political. As a political and spiritual person, I pay my taxes at one and tithe at another precisely because of the stark differences in the institutions.
So it may be better to say that no person who straddles the two ages can parcel his life out into only the political and only the spiritual, because he’s a spiritual and political creature. But there are areas of life where spirituality just doesn’t have much relevancy (city hall) and others where politics are just as irrelevant (church).
Zrim, I generally agree with you here. The two kingdoms doctrine does indeed distinguish between what is spiritual and eternal, on the one hand, and what is temporal and passing (or secular) on the other. And there are many things, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7, that are objectively secular, even though when Christians use them they are to express their service toward Christ’s spiritual kingdom. I think VanDrunen is right to say that the church is the only institutional expression of the spiritual kingdom, even though from a certain perspective the trappings of the church are secular as well.
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