The Two Kingdoms Doctrine at Calvin Seminary: John Bolt
Amid all the discussions and debates over the two kingdoms doctrine in conservative Reformed circles – which tends to revolve around questions of how the Bible should be used in political and cultural engagement – people easily forget that one of the main reasons why Calvin articulated the doctrine in the first place was to demonstrate that the future “heavenly” kingdom of God should not be conflated with the earthly or political order of the created world. As we might put it in modern theological terms, Calvin rejected what he perceived as the Anabaptist tendency of having an “over-realized eschatology.”
Contemporary critics of the two kingdoms doctrine object that Calvin repeatedly described the effect of the gospel in terms of restoring creation to its natural order. Yet as Brad Littlejohn helpfully points out in a recent article, they tend to forget the distinction between the transformation that looks forward to the eschatological kingdom of God (glorified creation, or what Calvin called the heavenly kingdom) and the restoration that in a limited way looks back toward the created order.
In a little noticed essay in John Calvin and Evangelical Theology Calvin Seminary’s John Bolt (sometimes oddly claimed as an opponent of the two kingdoms doctrine) makes a similar argument while demonstrating the importance of Calvin’s two kingdoms doctrine for his broader eschatology. He writes,
While not disputing that Calvin’s theology provides rich resources for a strong this-worldly, the-kingdom-is-already emphasis, I shall argue that the formulation of this emphasis in recent scholarship potentially misrepresents Calvin and also that in our context it is important to accent the equally strong two-kingdoms, other-worldly, not-yet dimension of Calvin’s eschatology. (243)
Bolt identifies the former tendency with the liberal cultural protestantism Americans associate with the social gospel, expressed more recently in the liberation theology of the Reformed theologian Jurgen Moltmann. And he is not entirely critical of this trajectory of thought. He agrees that Calvin’s eschatology affirms the close relation between redemption and creation. “Calvin does indeed think of the renewal that is the fruit of Christ’s work as cosmic, involving the whole creation. Salvation is the restoration of lost order, a restoration that had already taken place in Christ, ‘especially in his death and resurrection.’” He agrees with David Holwerda that “The history of salvation which becomes visible in the church contains within it the meaning of the history of the world. And the renewal manifesting itself in the body of Christ is the renewal that embraces the whole creation.” (251)
Even here, it is important to note, Bolt reminds us that for Calvin the kingdom is very closely identified with the church. It is in the church that the renewal of the creation is primarily manifest in this age. For all his emphasis on Calvin’s theology as a theology of hope, for instance, even T. F. Torrance clearly acknowledges Calvin’s view that the church is the institutional expression of the kingdom in the age preceding Christ’s return.
Yet Calvin stresses that the cultural and political work that Christians do does not establish the kingdom of Christ on earth. Rather, it witnesses to the kingdom that exists in Christ and that is manifest primarily in the church’s communion with Christ.
Calvin is an Augustinian on this score while Moltmann’s eschatology of hope is part of a tradition of challenge to Augustine. Instead of seeing the kingdom of God as a spiritual reality manifested primarily in the church, as Augustine did, Moltmann joins a long line of theologians of messianic eschatology or historicizing eschatology that was present in the early church, repudiated by Augustine, but revived by the twelfth-century Calabrian Abbot, Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202).
In that sense the Anabaptists of Calvin’s day, who wanted all of life to conform to the egalitarian and pacifist structure of the coming kingdom of God, were guilty of the same over-realized eschatology as are contemporary liberals who want to transcend nature by eliminating the significance of gender (whether in terms of gender roles or in terms of traditional institutions like marriage, both of which the New Testament indicates will be transcended in the kingdom that is coming; cf. Luke 20 and Galatians 3). And this is what Bolt means to reject when he says that for Calvin “gospel categories are not to be applied to the arena of law, politics, and statecraft” (260).
To be sure, figures like Augustine and Calvin believed that faithful cultural and political engagement need to contribute to the restoration of the natural, created order (i.e., natural law). But they absolutely rejected the suggestion that such affairs should be transformed according to the character of the future kingdom that is inherently heavenly and spiritual. Restoration, in short, is to be distinguished from transformation. The former takes place even now; the latter awaits Christ’s return. For all their criticism of theologians like David VanDrunen for exaggerating the distinction between creation and redemption some neo-Calvinist theologians seem to miss the significance of precisely this point.
Bolt writes of the transformationalist model:
Calvin strongly opposes this tradition, believing it the greatest confusion to think of the kingdom of Christ in non-spiritual, earthly, forms…. It is patience and endurance in our pilgrim life of suffering that Calvin accents, not a history-grabbing, world-transforming revolutionary program for action. (258, 259)
When Calvin talks about the establishment of the kingdom in the earth, even when he has the role of the magistrates in that process in view, he is thinking of the establishment of the true church rather than the conformity of the social or political order to the future heavenly kingdom. That’s why it’s so important not to minimize the close correlation that Calvin made between the spiritual kingdom and the church, and the clear distinction he made between the things of this age (earthly things) and the things of the age to come (heavenly things). For while it is true that believers witness to the power of the kingdom and to the lordship of Christ in everything that they do, even in the political kingdom, the focal point of that kingdom is in the place where Christ rules by his word and Spirit, the communion of the saints that is the church.
Posted on October 15, 2012, in Two Kingdoms, Calvin, Liberation Theology, Social Gospel, Neo-Calvinism, David VanDrunen and tagged Anabaptists, Calvin Seminary, John Bolt, Jurgen Moltmann, T. F. Torrance. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
And this is what Bolt means to reject when he says that for Calvin “gospel categories are not to be applied to the arena of law, politics, and statecraft”
Which is also what some mean when they wonder about formulations to “let politics be shaped by the gospel.”
Restoration, in short, is to be distinguished from transformation. The former takes place even now; the latter awaits Christ’s return.
Could you expand a little more on this, because it seems that restoration and transformation are much too synonymous—if the difference turns on what is happening now as opposed to in the future, then it still seems like preservation and transformation is the better taxonomy, especially since preservation captures the fact that original creational norms and institutions continue now even as they will give way in the future in transformation.
Do you think the kingdom to come will operate under substantially different norms than the current one? Obviously, some things, such as death, will be erased from that future kingdom, but would the rule of love for neighbor no longer apply? If you say that the way we care for the poor is normed by our love for our neighbor, it seems illusory to me to insist that this is a restoration of the law of the created order but not reflective of the norms of the kingdom to come, of which Christians are already part.
After all, the more innocuous aspect of transformationalism is a simple logical progression. As Christians, we live already now as citizens of the heavenly kingdom. This will cause certain operative changes in our behavior, which, when multiplied and amplified by the factor of a Christian community where many people operate based on these norms, should have a transformative (read, changing) effect on society at large, since society is a collective expression of underlying communities.
I may be wrong, but looking to the positive statements made by two kingdoms advocates, I don’t see them opposing the notion that we ground our behavior as Christians in God’s law, nor that this would affect how we interact with society, nor, on the whole, the idea that a large number of Christians in community with one another would operate in a different way than one still ruled by the world.
Instead, I see the distinction here being when Neokuyperians make the jump from speaking of the transformative effects of our membership in Christ’s kingdom to the redemptive effects of it. That is, when we hear about “redeeming culture” or “redeeming the dance,” then I feel that gut response that says that we’re thinking of things wrongly.
Maybe I’m just splitting hairs in a different way than you are, but I have no problem with a Christian saying that they are working for the transformation of society. After all, whether we think it can be achieved or not, I don’t think any of us would condemn efforts to end poverty as inappropriately trying to accomplish now what can only happen in the kingdom to come. My problem kicks in when we switch from speaking of goals (like transformation) and start speaking of each of us as agents of redemption, inaugurating the reign of Christ’s kingdom through our work in, for instance, redeeming politics.
Zrim and Donald, I generally agree with both of you. The problem with all of these words (redemption, transformation, restoration, preservation) is that they are all buzz words that mean different things to different people. And one of the most frustrating things that happens is when we get in a huge debate that is simply over words. What matters is the meaning of those words.
I think we should be quite flexible with our word usage, although we should try to stay as close as possible to the biblical language. But I think the main thing is that we need to remember that we cannot turn secular things into eternal things; we cannot turn the natural order into the kingdom of Christ. That awaits the consummation. For now we access the kingdom only in our communion with Christ, which is why the church is the focal point of that kingdom. Of course, insofar as we serve Christ in everything that we do, including secular things, then the kingdom has relevance for all of life. But that doesn’t make all of life the kingdom.
Donald, not condemn but certainly question what lies behind any effort, religious or not, to eradicate conditions that even Jesus himself said would always be with us. Which helps to show that while there is such a thing as word-buzzery, it’s not so obvious that it applies quite as much in this discussion. It may be an indication of how fluid language can be, and thus it can be important how we choose them. And so when someone says “end poverty” he might simply mean “effectively address poverty,” with which nobody has any serious qualms. But one could also mean it in an “immanentize the eschaton” sort of way. Same with “transform.” It’s a little harder to see how “preserve” could be employed for the immanentizing project.