Good morning. It's time to begin. And what I want to do today is pretty much wrap up our discussion of Quineanism, as we'll call it, not so much talking today about republication as much as I want to just kind of give a brief description of what's known as Two Kingdoms Theology. How many of you have heard of this, Two Kingdoms? Okay, now it does get interesting because you ask the average Christian on the street what Two Kingdoms Theology is all about And it's, you get different answers. And the reason you get different answers is because the way it's being proposed today in our own reform circles is very different than what it has historically been thought of really throughout Christianity. So for instance, you know, when I hear the term two kingdoms, Even before this kind of came on my radar, particularly in seminary, but before it came on my radar, this modern Two Kingdoms thing, when I would hear Two Kingdoms, I would think of Augustine's City of God. That's what would come to mind. It's not the same thing, okay? So that's one thing I want you to understand. You know, City of God, Augustine wrote it to describe why it was, and I know this is simplistic. He wrote City of God to really explain why the Roman Empire fell. I mean, you know, you have the City of God and then you got the City of Satan, or the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Evil One. And you know, City of God, if you have a copy of it, a hard copy, it's like this fat, it's massive. I'll probably have to revisit that again sometime, along with everything else on my to-read list. So there is something very different about what is being proposed by these two kingdoms. I will say, like the doctrine of republication that we spent about three weeks explaining and critiquing, these two kingdoms have some overlap in that if you oppose it, you're automatically labeled as like an NT right new perspective on Paul fan. It's just a knee jerk reaction. And in fact, I've got one book because I've got a hard copy of it. And I have another book, which I have on Kindle, which Obviously I can't show you since it's on Kindle. This one is called Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms by David Van Droonen, who is a OPC minister. He teaches at Westminster West. I've met David a couple times at General Assembly. Really nice guy. Sweet disposition. So he's not like this cantankerous individual that I've ever seen. So I want us to understand that. This book, Natural Law and Two Kingdoms, really what this is, is his attempt at a historical development of this two kingdoms theology. He has a more, and this is pretty academic from a historical standpoint. I will say, and this is my own personal pet peeve that has nothing to do with the content in and of itself. If you read through this, there is a tremendous amount of repetition. Each chapter, he keeps re-saying everything over and over again. Now he gets to the point of each chapter, but it was kind of a... To me, I had to read this for seminary and I'm thinking, I've got limited time and if you're gonna keep rehashing the same thing, that's kind of wasting my time. So it was probably my own seminary in a rush to get everything read that kind of frustrated me the most about that. But what he does in this particular book, is, as I said, he tries to expand upon this from a historical perspective that this really has always been the reformed perspective and reformed way of doing it. So you've got, for instance, the first chapter, natural law, the two kingdoms, and the untold story of reformed social thought. Then you have precursors to the reform tradition. And of course he spends a good amount of time talking about Augustine. Then you move into more reformers and so forth. So of course he talks about Calvin and his contemporaries. And then you have natural law in early reformed resistance theory. How's that for a chapter title? Then the age of orthodoxy, natural law in the two kingdoms and reform doctrine and practice. Then you have theocratic New England, disestablished Virginia, and the spirituality of the church. And this is where things start to shift in his view. Abraham Kuyper focuses on, if you know anything about Kuyper, and the whole spheres of influence and becoming prime minister of the Netherlands and all of that and trying to create a Christian culture, they're not big fans of Kuiper. We'll just put it mildly. And then, this is what actually irks me. The repetition stuff that I talked about earlier, that's just a personal thing. But from a historical standpoint, especially as you move into the reformers and reform doctrine, he includes in here a chapter as though he's reformed, a chapter on Karl Barth. And I remember even in seminary, reading through this and I'm scratching my head. How in the world can you include Karl Barth into this discussion as one who's reformed? He doesn't even have a serious view of scripture. You talk about a guy who has had, sadly, untold influence on the 20th, into the 21st century church, who really spoke, wrote lots of word salad. And some speculate, and I think there may be some good reason to this, that really it's his secretary slash mistress that helped him write some of this stuff. And yes, his mistress slash secretary had a room at the side of his study. That's just fact. So, Just keep that in mind. And then other Kuyperian legacies, like Herman Dewey Weird and the North American neo-Calvinism. And then more Kuyperian legacy, he gets into Cornelius Van Til. So he's not a huge fan of Van Til either. Okay. Like I said, this is a longer read. His other book, which is more Layton's version, is called Living in God's Two Kingdoms. That one's thinner. I don't have a hard copy. I just have it on Kindle because it was cheaper. What can I say? And because it's not a book that I... I only read it because I'm trying to get a handle on this stuff. Van Drunen is not the only proponent of this two kingdom theology that's coming out of Westminster West primarily. But at least as far as the OPC is concerned, he's probably the most well known. What exactly is this two kingdoms then? The idea behind this version of two kingdoms The common thread, first of all, it all traces back to Klein again, and it is a stepchild of republication. It's the idea that we as Christians live in two different kingdoms. We have the spiritual kingdom, which is the church, and then we have what they call the common kingdom, which deals with all of culture and everything around us. And we share that with unbelievers. So it's this common kingdom. Well, where do they get this idea from? Really, it boils down to their interpretation of the Noahic covenant. And it seemed, you may think back, when we started looking at the Noahic covenant, I said, we're gonna look at this two kingdoms stuff. And then I decided, no, let's kind of lump it together with republication, because the one really does follow the other. And I've talked to a couple of individuals that know this stuff far better than I do, and understand the implications far better than I do. And I've kind of asked them, I've posed a question this way, a chicken and the egg kind of question. Which comes first, republication or these two kingdoms in their view? And republication seems to lead into, that's the common consensus, there's no academic study to prove that or anything like that. But it's related. So you go to the Noahic covenant, and what they say is, basically, you look at Genesis 8, you look at Genesis 9, and how God establishes his covenant with Noah, and you read the text there. You can skim through it if you want, in Genesis 8 and 9. With whom did God make the covenant? Yeah, I know, Noah, but? All living flesh. Now, you see how there's a little bit of a distinction with that covenant. It's with all flesh. And because there is this general covenant with all of creation, that includes all of mankind. And in that sense, they're not wrong. And so what you see in the Noahic Covenant is a reiteration of some things, a republication, if you will. How about that? Of the cultural mandate that was given to Adam in the Garden of Eden. So if you can think back that far, what were some of those things in that cultural mandate? Be fruitful and multiply, what else? care for the garden. And of course that follows through in the Noahic covenant that they're supposed to take care of the ground and all of that. And so what they see in this view of the Noahic covenant is obviously, I'm sorry, I'm saying that somewhat sarcastically, I know. that there is, for all of mankind, this cultural responsibility that is not necessarily Christian. Okay? Now, part of what happens in this also, and this is where my critique comes in especially, they see this carryover of this common kingdom related to the cultural mandate And they primarily focus on Adam's sin as being a failure on his part to follow through with the responsibilities of the cultural mandate. That's their emphasis. And I read through, even in preparing for this before and then even again recently, I kept trying to read through Van Drunen's smaller book, Living in God's Two Kingdoms, to see if I, you know, try as much as I could to give the benefit of the doubt. But his emphasis was that the sin of Adam was his failure to uphold the cultural mandate. Now, is there truth, in fact, that Adam failed in his cultural mandate? Well, sure. But when God comes to meet Adam and Eve after the fall, what did God say? Yeah, he didn't ask why the animals weren't named. Not even that. He was specific. Where are you? And they said, well, we hid because we were naked. Who told you you were naked? And then God said what? Did you fail to do the cultural mandate that I gave you? I realize I'm being facetious and sarcastic here, What I'm seeing in this is an emphasis that is misplaced. It's not that they're wrong per se that Adam failed in the cultural mandate. Of course he did. I get that. But the emphasis on the fall in scripture is always Adam rebelling by eating the forbidden fruit and Eve being deceived for doing that. The sin that is highlighted is not a failure to uphold the cultural mandate. The sin that is highlighted is, did you eat of the fruit that I forbade you from eating? So right there, there's where the issue comes. And so throughout the Old Testament, the idea based on the Noahic covenant is that there is sort of this new rehashing of a cultural mandate. And like the doctrine of republication and the purpose of the Mosaic law, it's presented there to indicate to mankind that they can't do it, Jesus did it. Jesus fulfilled the cultural mandate. And again, that's true as far as it goes, but that's not really the emphasis that I see in scripture. Now, some of the implications of this, what this means is that we as Christians living into, well, actually I need to backtrack a bit. Let me just backtrack and indicate some oddities that I see sometimes with this. The cultural mandate now, and see, this is where I actually tend to get confused, and those who may hold to a two kingdoms are probably gonna listen in. Yeah, see, he doesn't understand it. He doesn't get what we're trying to say. Yeah, well, I do and I don't. It's the implicate, I can articulate it, but I can't piece it together. It just, there's too many disconnects. So you have this establishment of a common kingdom that no longer we have to worry about since Christ came, this cultural mandate, but at the same time, we're still living in God's two kingdoms. So there's my first disconnect. Yeah, Conrad? They will say that it's not. They will say that the Great Commission is not involved with a cultural mandate, but it's building the church, the spiritual side of things. That's what they will say that. And so because we have what is known as this common kingdom, that common kingdom is ruled by Christ. They will say Christ rules the common kingdom. but he doesn't rule the common kingdom by the word, he rules it by natural law. So the church is ruled by Christ by the word. The common kingdom, which is the rest of everything else, is ruled by natural law. Maybe. So, And this is another area where I run into some disconnect. And I don't know if it was in Van Drunen's books or another proponent of two kingdoms. I don't remember. But what ends up happening is you have this situation where things that are considered cultural are common. There's a commonality in which that part we agree. But because of that, we shouldn't Christianize culture. Yeah, it is common, but that's not a cultural thing. That's what they would say. So when you get into things like, what are some cultural things? Just throw them out there. When we talk about culture. Well, that's one thing, but that's politics. What else? What are things that help define a culture? Law? Holidays? How about, let's take a step back. Let's just get simple. When we talk about people that are cultured, they like art, education. Okay, so they see that that's common to all mankind and we really don't have no need to Christianize any of that. So there really shouldn't be like Christian art or Christian music or Christian education. Oh, that's where it gets interesting, isn't it? Now, already I can tell, one of the areas we do need to be careful of Well, let me come back to where to be careful. So this stuff gives me a headache, it really does. And you start to understand why when I read some of these two kingdoms guys, you've heard me say this before, I read some of these two kingdoms guys and it makes me wanna swing hard to theonomy. But then I read these theonomists, and I'm like, man, these guys are crazy too, and I just want to swing the other way, other direction. Somewhere in the middle, okay? Just somewhere in the middle. So this idea of the common kingdom being ruled by Christ via natural law is the idea. And we see that in the Noahic covenant because the seasons will continue, there's going to be common order for all things. And you see how there's some truth to that, but it ends up getting twisted. So what that means then, Those things that are in the common realm, the church, as the church, really has no business to speak on. So, for instance, a friend of mine asked at a general assembly, And it wasn't asking David Van Droon, and it was asking another proponent of this two kingdoms. And I realized, I'm telling you what somebody else relayed to me in his conversation. So technically this is hearsay, but I believe him. Okay? He was an officer of the church. I believe him, though I technically realize that this is hearsay. He asked this well-known proponent of this two-kingdom stuff about some laws that are being passed or about having restrooms in department stores being single-sex now. His response was, well, this is a common kingdom and this is outside my jurisdiction. Something more recent, and that's one I will name because it's been posted all over the internet just in the last couple of weeks, is an article by R. Scott Clark, who teaches out at Westminster West. And I've had interesting dealings with Scott Clark in the past. 45 minute Twitter back and forth discussion, which I thought was congenial, and then he ended up blocking me. Okay, that's fine, whatever. His recent article was, now Scott Clark's actually in the URCNA, he's not in the OPC or the PCA, so his doctrinal standards are technically the three forms of unity. That's fine too, I love the URCNA, great guys in there. His recent article had to do with the PCA's overture to the General Assembly. The overture says something to the effect of basically sending a communication to the government levels to call the government to ban in minors transgender surgeries. This is the hot topic today. Scott Clark's argument is, he tried to use the Westminster Confession of Faith, the chapter on the state and the church and so forth, that this was not an extreme enough reason to petition the government to do this. I made a comment online about this, and I'm thinking, so the mutilation of children is not a serious enough thing for the church to speak up against the government to forbid this? I mean, I just posed the question. This is the idea. And so, because that's the common realm, they were given wisdom and knowledge to understand this. Now here's where I think it breaks out, and I know everybody's got their hands up and they want to ask specific questions about things. But here's where I see things break down. First of all, how do you define natural law? Right. Right. And see, that's actually the problem. How do you define natural law? The interesting thing is that some of these proponents of this two-kingdom theology, they admit that even our confession of faith speaks of natural law being synonymous with the Ten Commandments. but they will also at the same time say that the church as the church really can't bring God's word into the common realm for those kind of cultural things. And I'm thinking, wait, natural law is synonymous with the 10 commandments, but we can't bring the 10 commandments in? This is why I get headaches over this stuff. I just don't get it. It makes no sense. Now I want you to also understand one other thing that takes place with this. You move into Israel, not modern day Israel, talking promised land Israel of the Old Testament. This idea of the Noahic covenant ruling the common kingdom was kind of put on a shelf because of the theocracy of Israel. So it really wasn't a common kingdom anymore. It was just, that was temporarily set aside. Now, I don't know where they get that from, but I've read that in a couple of different places and I have no idea where they're getting that from. I think their argument is it must be the case because Israel was the theocracy. And so everything they did was in a theocratic fashion. Their entire culture was ruled by God's word. So that common kingdom for them, that common kingdom idea was set aside. And then it comes back. Now, here's where it gets interesting, because then you start asking them, well, when did it come back? Well, after the exile. Okay, you say after the exile. You remember in the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah, they're coming back. And Nehemiah notices that the people are doing something kind of naughty. And I'm not talking about the marriages. You know what they were doing? They were buying and trading on the Lord's debt. What did Nehemiah do? He shut down the city, the totality of the city. Well, if this idea of two kingdoms comes back into play, because Israel's kind of lost its status as a theocracy, and are now under the Persians, technically, then he violated natural law, this whole two kingdoms thing, by appealing to God's word to shut down the entire city, regardless if they were Jew or not. So there's so many inconsistencies like that that I see that transpires. So their idea is we shouldn't, and you know, the truth is I haven't. And it's not because I buy into this two kingdoms stuff. I just try to avoid, you know, this Sunday and that Sunday and this Sunday, and then preach a sermon related to that cultural theme Sunday. It does get tiring. So for instance, I'm staunchly pro-life and anti-abortion, but I don't preach pro-life sermons on Sanctity of Life Sunday. But that's not because I have an issue with some sort of common kingdom thing. I just think it's wiser in the general health of the church to consistently preach through the word straight through. And yes, last week, I preached a resurrection sermon. On Christmas Day, I preached an incarnation sermon. But there are so many different this Sunday and that Sunday that ends up dictating completely what should be preached. Now, there are gonna be certain occasions. I think you may remember back when, end of June, I ended up taking a portion out of Ephesians 6. with respect to our warfare because of Pride Month and things like that. I thought it was appropriate at that point to bring it out because of how extreme things were getting. But I'm not gonna do that each and every year. Chase? Well, of course. But see, that's the issue. I would say, and let me go one step back from natural law versus written law, meaning God's word, and go back to natural revelation versus special revelation. The two actually do depend on each other. You can't fully understand even special revelation without some aspect of natural revelation. Because how many things in scripture are pulled from the everyday outside? Natural revelation. Stars, sun, you know, children, food, grass, trees, sand. I mean, you think about what God said to Abraham. If there was not the natural revelation of stars, that statement would have no context and make no sense. So the two do depend upon one another, and they are authoritative as far as what their purpose is. And that's, to me, a great legacy of Van Til in modern times, is seeing the proper use of natural law and revelation and the proper use of scripture. So you come back to this question of natural law. To me, the issue is there seems to be an unintended idea that out there in the common kingdom, yeah, there's sin and so forth, but that mankind is able to properly interpret not natural law. That's pretty naive, in my opinion. I don't think anybody who promotes this two kingdoms stuff is intentionally saying that. I don't think so at all. But I don't see how you could say, well, the common kingdom, they know what they're doing on this. They rule by natural law. Their interpretation of natural law is that a man loving a man is OK. Because after all, we see certain animals do this. What does a Two Kingdoms guy say to that? Or animals killing each other. That's natural. That's natural law in action. To rightly understand natural law, we need special revelation. Why? Why, why, why? That's a really good question. Are they Thomistic in their... I will say, I think... I think Van Drumen is. I don't think he explicitly says it in his two books that I've read. But his critique of Van Til in this one book that I showed you leads me to this. The other individual seems to be. And so they tend to be very critical of Van Til and the like. So are you guys confused? I get it. I can articulate the position, but there are so many things that are a consequence of this that it just, I end up with this, we call it the where's your mother look. It's like you're looking like this. You're like that dad trying to figure out what's going on and you have this look on your face. Where's your mother? You know? I look at some of the implications of this, and I just scratch my head. I don't understand. Look, Romans chapter 13 tells us what about the magistrate? That they are what? They are ordained by God, and they are God's ministers for good. Who defines good? Well, they do. That's the problem. That's exactly right. And that's the problem. God is the one who defines good. And they will respond and they will say, well, that's done through natural law. Well, how do they define natural law? Animals killing each other. Men and men, women and women, that's okay. You can go ahead and mutilate yourself. There's nothing wrong with that. It's how you identify. That's natural law to the world. So how do you tell, if the magistrate is God's minister for good, the only way we can rightly interpret natural law is through the written word. Why? Why? That's the key question that I want you to answer for yourself. Why? Okay, it's the same author, but why do we even need scripture? Our minds are bent, and that's putting it mildly. So what's caused the mind to be bent? Sin. It seems that there is, and I'm gonna say, unintentional. I know it's unintentional. There seems to be this unintentional forgetting that there's sin in the world and the world cannot rightly interpret natural law. They'll twist it to whatever they want. So at the end of the day, when Romans 13 says that the civil magistrate is God's ministers for good, Who's going to tell the civil magistrate what good is, if not the church? Yeah, they'll naturally come to it. And see what Robert said just a minute ago is the problem. They interpret natural law. They make them the final arbiters of what is good in the cultural thing. And who's to say what's really good or not then? So this is where it becomes a struggle. Trish? But see, they will say that that's exactly right, and that's exactly the point. We're not to Christianize the common kingdom because Christ fulfilled everything, therefore we don't need to. Now we just look at this common kingdom we live in intermix. Well, right. And see, yeah, that's just it. You look at the two lines after the fall. Oh, I agree. We do need to stop arguing this stuff. Now, at the same time, just understand, I'm not going to, from the pulpit, here's where they are right. It is not my job from the pulpit to tell you who you need to vote for. There are certain circumstances where I think it justifies saying you can't as a Christian vote for this individual, but at the same time it doesn't mean you have to vote for that one. We have basically a two-party system on our federal level and really state too. to say, I want everybody to understand this, that when Christians from the pulpit say that we have a duty not to vote for this individual, that's not an automatic to say that we then therefore have a responsibility to vote for the other one. Let your conscience be your guide. And you might think, well, what other choice do I have? You have the choice not to vote. Well, yeah, you can be a covenanter, but they're pretty inconsistent nowadays on that. What's that? Yeah, write in your pastor. Yeah, no? Because my job is to preach the word. Sorry. So is some of this a reaction to the past decline that's occurred in the denomination? It might be, but I think a lot of it, like republication, this as well. Because a lot of theonomists are also reconstructionists, and they want to create this Christian society. And you do that by enforcing Christian law. Well, right, that is man-centered. And so I understand the reaction, but I think they've swung it so far. So what ends up happening is they will say that if you are trying to set up this Christian society, Christian law, then what you're doing is relying on something else other than Christ for your salvation. And that's why their knee-jerk reaction is always to say, oh, do you hold a new perspective on Paul? Yeah, in general I would agree with that, but I could also say that there have been times I go to the ballot and there are certain things that are on there that I have no clue about person A or person B. And I'm not gonna just say because they might have the letter on their name that affiliates better with me that that's a good choice. See, all right, let me just name names now. And get where I'm getting at. The last election, we had the choice, federal election, presidential election, we had the choice of Biden and Trump. Now, some in evangelicalism are practically deifying Trump, and it's sick, it's disgusting. And I've seen people that have tried to stress a Christian worldview that they have basically said, you know, as a Christian, I don't know how you could possibly vote for Biden, for the things that he promotes, et cetera, et cetera. I get that. And then some other Christians get up in arms, and it's like, well, Trump's no piece of cake either. He's no peach. But he didn't say, therefore, vote for Trump. He just said, how can you vote for Biden, who holds these views, and how can you vote for that as a Christian? You don't have to vote for Trump. See, Conservatives will look at Trump, and they'll see certain things that he has promised, and also certain things that he did, not everything, that seem to follow through with what certain ideals are. But you have recently, in echoing his father, you've got the younger Trump saying, all of you should stop boycotting Bud Light. Everybody know what's going on with Bud Light? You know, the drink by Anheuser-Busch that pretends to be beer? Well, Bud Light has plastered recently in a marketing gem this guy who's pretending to be a woman. And all of a sudden, they lost apparently billions because people started boycotting them. Well, that's fine. But you have Trump Jr., and I don't remember if it's Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump, I don't care. It doesn't matter. They're reflecting their dad. Their dad's actually okay with this kind of stuff. And for so much of evangelicalism to put out Trump as the virtuous Christian man who's gonna save America, he's out there saying, love whoever you wanna love. or many at a time. Now, I'm not saying that that therefore means you can't vote for him, because on the flip side, he put in justices in the Supreme Court that got Roe v. Wade overturned. But I can't stand here from the pulpit and bind your conscience as to who you must vote for. I can say this is why you probably shouldn't vote for this person, but I'm not going to say therefore you must vote for that person, because you know, less or two evils. Trish? Well, right. And I always wonder, what does disciple the nations mean? Right. Right, so look, at the end of the day, you know, I've got my own criticisms of Kuiper because, you know, Kuiperian, this idea of redeeming culture, that all sounds great. Their idea is let's just get Christians into the cultural thing. And okay, that's fine as far as it goes. But me doing art for Christ isn't going to save anyone. Now, go ahead and do art for Christ because you love the Lord. That's why you do it. And you want to serve him. So this is really what it boils down to. If we are trying to force it through laws and so forth, this is where it becomes problematic. Jim, you've had your hand up a bit. Right. Yeah, the individual versus the church. So the church as the church can't speak to these things. But as a Christian, you can. But even there, as a Christian individual, they somehow think you're limited and you should do things in terms of natural law. They would say that's overstepping the bounds. Chase? Right. That could be it. I think also at the end of the day, you talk about this question of art. You know, from the pulpit, I'm not going to get up there and say you need to, your art needs to focus on the church. But what I will say is if art, so-called, is being used wickedly, does the church not have a responsibility to say so? I think that's a rhetorical question, and I think the answer to that question is the church absolutely has an obligation. Some of these two kingdom guys would say, no, that's outside the sphere of the church. So we're like past time, I'm sorry. I know there's a lot of confusion here and I get it. Yes, there's confusion and things like that. Like I said, I can articulate it, but I get confused in the actual outworking of it in really all areas. So, and I'm also going to, stop the whole republication and two kingdoms discussions and start moving back into where we need to go. We could spend, there's been plenty of volumes. If you want some more critiques of some of this stuff, interestingly, sometimes the theonomists are helpful in their critique of republication and two kingdoms, but you gotta be careful in what you read. Some of them are kind of off the wall themselves. So that can be a struggle. Cornelius Venema, who teaches at Mid America, he's got some good stuff out there. I would encourage reading some of that as well, but he's got stuff. There's a book that he's got a collection of deep essays on covenant theology that could be helpful. Anyway, let's just close in prayer. Our Father in God and heaven, we do thank you for your word and that your word directs us and teaches us. Lord, it is true. We don't fully understand exactly how we are to act in the culture and every aspect of it. But Lord, help us to simply live as Christians, to stand firm on the truth of your word and not sacrifice that. That the church would be bold in its proclamation of the truth. but also not overstep its bounds into other areas that it shouldn't. Lord, help us to have the wisdom to discern such things. These are complicated issues and they are hard to sort out. We pray, Lord, that wisdom would prevail and that we would simply seek to live as Christians. Now prepare our hearts as we're about to be coming into your presence to worship and adore you. We pray all this in Christ's name, amen.