A Theocratic Kuyperianism: A Response to the Two-Kingdom Theology of Westminster Seminary in Escondido, CA

This spirit pushes me to declare that God’s kingdom cannot be neatly divided into spiritual and physical, heavenly and earthly, but that all spheres must conform to Jesus' rule.

Introduction

I came to the Reformed faith primarily through Christian Reconstructionist writings in Gary North, James B. Jordan, and David Chilton. But another man was quite influential in my thinking in those days, Dr. Michael Horton. I didn’t know then, but both groups would offer starkly different visions of cultural engagement.

I had only read Horton’s Putting Amazing Back into Grace in 2001, which had me in a Genevan spell. It was only in 2003 that I reacquainted myself with other works from Dr. Horton.

He is a Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California. He was prolific 20 years ago when I was first introduced to him. Since then, he has added several books, including a massive Systematic Theology, where he develops his views on Covenant and other categories.

In 2003, I was reading Horton and listening to his well-known White Horse Inn podcast. The White Horse Inn was an excellent show of catholicity. It included Horton, a Reformed theologian; Rod Rosenbladt, a Lutheran pastor; and Ken Jones, a Baptist pastor.

The whole podcast was charming because it carried this strong Christo-centric emphasis. Christ was the center of every Biblical passage. Sermons are designed to lead us back to Jesus. Yes, Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Theology was a neat division between Law and Gospel. The Law taught us how to live, and the Gospel taught us who already lived for us. They talked about how evangelicals are legalists, telling people what to do when the Gospel promises us rest in Jesus. As a proponent would say, “Cheer up! You're a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you're more loved than you ever dared hope.” Stop thinking highly of your works. The Spirit in us does the hard work of sanctification. They would repeat this refrain: “Stop talking about what we must do and tell the world what Christ has done.” The Church needs to communicate this one message. It was a very comforting word, especially for someone coming out of a fundamentalist background.

But the more I engaged with that world, the more I realized they were not speaking in a vacuum. They were articulating a specific school of thought. As I began to see their influence in the broader Reformed world, I realized that while some of these things sound good to the ear, they do not reflect what I saw in reading the Bible or what was taught among our Reformed forefathers.

The Kuyper Revolution

When I went to seminary, John Frame would tell us that law and gospel are used flexibly in the Bible.[1] While it would be convenient to divide the Bible into these two categories in a given text, this distinction is impossible to maintain. For instance, Jesus and John say that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Is that Gospel, or is that law? Does the kingdom bring with it commands for us to obey? Does the kingdom proclaim the Lordship of Jesus? Yes, on both accounts.

Psalm 1 says that the law of God is blessed. Is that law or gospel? In the Bible, sometimes law precedes gospel, and gospel precedes law. Which comes first? When the Beatitude begins with the benediction of “Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Blessed are the persecuted,” or “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” is that law or gospel? If you become a peacemaker by following God’s law, is that law or gospel?  

Defining Escondido Theology

I wish to address a modern phenomenon that has radically shaped the Reformed world in Presbyterian and Baptist circles in the last few decades and was detrimental to our efforts during COVID. We refer to it as Radical Two-Kingdom or R2K. It differs from the Reformation version in a radical way. In the Reformed view, the Two-Kingdoms argued for a distinction between the redemptive kingdom—the church—and the common kingdom—society, culture, and politics. The Church deals with spiritual things concerning heaven, and the State deals with the ordering of earthly things. But, unlike R2K, in the writings of the Magisterial Reformers, the State was not divorced from the Church entirely. The King or the Prince could call a Council, and the pastors/theologians would decide on doctrinal issues. The State could also enforce Christian rule even if some in the population were not Christians. On the other hand, the Church—through her ministers—could exhort the State to defend the Church; she could rebuke and warn the King—as Calvin did—that judgment would come if he didn’t stay true to the Christian religion. Calvin writes to King Francis:

"For where the glory of God is not made the end of the government, it is not a legitimate sovereignty, but a usurpation.”

The Radical Two-Kingdom view of Escondido proposes a sharper separation of Church and State. David Van Drunen, Darryl Hart, R. Scott Clark, Michael Horton, and well-known figures in the Baptist world like Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman articulate a vision that puts the Church completely at odds with the State; the redemptive has nothing to say to the common and vice versa (consider COVID disputes).

The Role of the Nohaic Covenant

What is the root of their argument? Their argument stems from their interpretation of the Noahic covenant in Genesis 9. They believe that the covenant God made with Noah differed from all other covenants in the Bible. God made a covenant with Adam, Abraham, and David. But Escondido argues that those are covenants made with man concerning human relationship before God, but the covenant he made with Noah was about all of creation. So, think about God’s covenant with Adam, Abraham, and David having to do with the Church and the covenant with Noah having to do with society/government/creation.

So, this is where things get interesting. In Genesis 1, God tells Adam and Eve to have dominion over all things. We refer to it as the cultural mandate. According to Horton and others, that mandate was only lasting if Adam merited eternal life. But since Adam failed and fell, that cultural mandate no longer applies to the Church today. Christ fulfilled Adam’s covenant, so there is no longer a need to engage the cultural mandate. We now live under the Noahic covenant, a universal covenant for all men to live under this natural law. Escondido argues that the idea that man has the duty to engage culture and seek to transform institutions by the power of the Gospel is no longer applied because the cultural mandate is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

How does this flesh itself out practically?

R2K proponents affirm that the institutional Church cannot exercise any activity in relation to the common kingdom (society). The nature of the Church is spiritual and ministerial.[2] As an individual, you can do certain things outside the Church, like run for political office, but what you can’t do is run for political office applying your Christian ideals to society (example of Dever telling a politician in his church who sought his counsel: “I am not here to tell you how to run D.C. I am here to tell you how to get to heaven.”)

Let me give you two examples of this: Darryl Hart was once teaching an ethics class when he argued that the Pro-Life movement is largely wrong when it claims the Church opposes abortion. The Church should stay within its lane of spirituality and not delve into political issues or causes on behalf of Christianity. The Church’s role is to ensure a heavenly home for its residents and not waste time on earthly causes of justice.

As Van Drunen notes, “We should not seek an objective way of pursuing Christian activities.”[3] In other words, there is no unique way of pursuing science, sociology, mathematics, or literature as a Christian. We share the same creational norms as unbelievers, and therefore, our contributions are just as valuable as the non-Christians.

The second example shows how this affects preaching. The preacher in this school of thought should not make moral assessments of characters or urge people to do certain things to please God. Nothing we do can please God; therefore, our goal is to look to Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith. Preaching should avoid imperatives (what I must do) and dwell fundamentally in the indicatives (what Christ has done!).

Let’s say there is an imperative to love your neighbor. They would say, “We cannot love as we should, but Christ loved us.” Or we are told, “Be kind to another!” They would say, “We cannot be kind as we ought, but Christ was kind to us.” So, what we see is a rich Christo-centrism, which is wonderful! But there is a failure to see the crucial impulse of the Scriptures: to love Jesus is to obey his commandments (John 14). Again, this is a clear case of Law and Gospel coming together in a text.

As the Lutheran theologian, Dr. Jordan Cooper notes, the ultimate concern is that this theology will lead to cultural isolation. It will make the role of the Church irrelevant and silent in a loud world of chaos.

The Kuyperian Response

This thinking was not prevalent in Kuyper’s day, but he does respond to this perspective. He argues that all of society’s ills are religious. If a man kills someone for revenge, it’s because he has a religious impulse to be God. After all, “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” And if society’s ills are religious, then the Church must speak to society’s ills since it is a religious institution.

John Frame noted that Abraham Kuyper was animated by Christ being Lord over every square inch. He believed that while there are necessary sphere distinctions, the Church should not remain silent because Christ is Lord over the Church and culture. These institutions have different roles, but they do not have different Lords.

Kuyper was distraught that the Kingship of Jesus was absent in modern institutions. He writes:

It is an incontrovertible naked truth that no voice raises itself in the circle of our leaders on behalf of Christ as our divinely anointed King. Just look at the mainstream press and literature. See what scholarship produces. Come to lectures, attend meetings, and listen to conversation—you will hear almost nothing of the name of Jesus, and when his name is mentioned, no call is sounded on behalf of Christ as the King given to us by God.[4]

Kuyper was concerned that the apathy of the Church produced a state wholly given to compromise. He discovered that ministers within the National Church were changing the traditions of the Church and going straightway into hell by rejecting the Reformed Confessions. He also learned that ministers had bought into the modernist version of the faith. They refused to baptize in the Name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, choosing instead to baptize in the name of faith, hope and love.[5]

Kuyper believed that when the Church failed to be the Church, she would compromise her message. He lamented that churches were attracting people “resorting to entertainment at the expense of preaching.”[6] If the Church did not preach truth, it could not speak to totalitarian regimes. The Lutheran Church had compromised so much that she joined the Nazi party in the 1920’s. Similarly, Kuyper says that if the Church did not challenge falsehood within her ranks, she would be swallowed by tyrannical government systems.

Abraham Kuyper

When ecclesiastical authorities support false teaching, he urges believers to leave these apostate institutions.[7] He wrote that “true freedom prevails where people submit to the laws of God.”[8]

Kuyper affirmed the separation of Church and State in terms of their responsibilities. But he also affirmed that Church and State are both responsible to God in their responsibilities. Unlike Escondido Two-Kingdom advocates, Kuyperian thought stressed the necessity of Law and Gospel in a Calvinistic system that encouraged obedience to the Gospel as Law and the Law as Gospel.

In discussing John the Baptist, Kuyper noted that the preaching of the Gospel goes forth from the synagogues, and the synagogues were responsible for “supplying the serious Gentiles with knowledge of Israel’s revelation.”[9] Kuyperianism saw the Church as spiritual, but not in the other-worldly sense, but as the Spirit-led world that had everything necessary for life and godliness. The Church’s work would overflow into the common kingdom. It was not to remain isolated but to be the headquarters of this kingdom.

Conclusion

We can conclude this response by observing five Kuyperian affirmations:

a)     Kuyper believed in the dominion mandate. In his Pro Rege: Living Under Christ’s Kingship (Volume 1), he notes: “There can be no separation or contrast between the authority of God and the authority of Christ.” For Kuyper, the dominion power is not inherent in fallen humanity but comes from the divine power of the Son, who creates everything. The cultural mandate is still very much a part of our mandate. God never overturned that mandate. His covenant with Noah was merely an accentuation of his mandate to Adam. When Noah goes forth and worships and builds cities, he is practicing exactly what God had told Adam.

b)   Kuyper believed in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Though Kuyper did not use the theological categories of Postmillennialism in his writings, his vision harmonized quite well with his fellow theologian B.B. Warfield, who invited Kuyper to deliver the famous Princeton lectures in 1898. Kuyper notes in profoundly optimistic categories:

"Christianity [is] being carried forth into the world, coming into contact with theelements and laws of human life and through that contact modifying and changing life entirely."

Jesus’ Commission was not a mere hope but the promise that the nations would come under Christ’s authority. Everything Christianity touches changes for the good, Kuyper notes.

c)     Kuyper viewed the world through incarnational lenses. His view of the world was not in the abstract because he believed that Jesus’ arrival on earth signaled a transition into a new way of being. Jesus did not come as a ghost, but he embraced humanity. He writes:

"On the contrary, he becomes one of us—a human being just as we are; he organically incorporates all the elect into his mystical body, and he rules over them by ruling in them and making them spiritually free."

Kuyper affirmed that this world is guided by a flesh and blood King who sits at the Father's right hand. He is not separated from his creation, but he entered creation so that we might live as new men and women in his kingdom. The incarnation was the turning point of redemptive history when heaven came to earth in human flesh. Thus, Kuyper advocated a Christian life deeply free from the slavery of sin and free to serve God on earth as it is in heaven. This freedom is achieved through the God/Man, Jesus Christ.

d)    Kuyper’s theology was doxological. The catechism famously notes that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. The goal of dominion is not to change people by force but to see lives transformed by the Gospel, making them free to worship the great and Triune God. As Kuyper observes:

"Our salvation is indeed the goal of Christ’s kingly rule, but its primary goal is the glorification of the Triune God."

We are not saved to live as we please, but we are saved to live as He pleases. That is true freedom: to use our gifts and callings to serve the God who created us. We are doxological beings.

e)    Finally, Kuyper viewed the role of the Church as more than spiritual but also didactic. He writes:

"The church may not be content simply to bring the gospel to the lost. Instead, its primary calling is to lead those the Lord calls into a deeper understanding of God’s intentions…"

Suppose the Great Commission is going to be fulfilled on earth. In that case, it must be a commission rooted in discipling the nations, which includes a sacramental component (baptizing them) and a sanctification component (teaching them all my commandments). The Church’s call is to feed the people of God and send them out to feed the world. First, we are nourished, and then we nourish.

The Christian writes and thinks based on these fundamental assertions advocated and taught by the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper. A Kuyperian commentary must be faithful to these principles. Principles, which are rooted in the very fabric of sacred Scriptures.

Michael Horton’s theology cannot function in God’s world because every sphere works in harmony with God’s plans to bring all things into subjection to his Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:8). Christ is King! If we fail to demand that our rulers submit to Christ’s kingship or if we act as if they can work out their salvation in neutral categories, we are forsaking God’s will for the nations.

As Abraham Kuyper so nobly observes:

“Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand - in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science - he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God. He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.”

This Kuyperian spirit pushes me to declare that God’s kingdom cannot be neatly divided into spiritual and physical, heavenly and earthly, but that all spheres must press the world into conformity with God’s plan to rule the nations through his son, Jesus Christ.

Appendix A

An Excursion on Christian Nationalism

Now, before we move on with Escondido theology, also known as Radical Two-Kingdom theology, I want to make a few remarks about Christian Nationalism and how that plays into this conversation. I want to make sure that distinctions are clear between these two schools of thought.

I know many of you have read or are reading Stephen Wolfe’s book on Christian Nationalism. I have engaged Stephen Wolfe online a few times and in person. The last time we saw each other, we were in D.C. for a political event, where we had lunch together. I attended the event to support him in a debate against Dr. Paul Miller, who argued that there was no room for Christian morality in the public square.

The question of Christian Nationalism arises because Dr. Wolfe’s book is a case for a society ruled by distinctly Christian laws and preserving Protestant norms. In his worldview, America would have a president working through the legislative and judicial branches to uphold a distinctly Christian environment and proclaim a distinctly Christian culture. The president would function as a princely magistrate ordained to advocate the Christian religion in holidays, festivals, cultural events, political decisions, etc. Wolfe states, “The Christian nation has submitted to magistrates and constitutes a people whose cultural practices and self-conception provide a foretaste of heaven” (223). 

Now, postmillennialists shouldn’t struggle with these propositions. We want America to be a Christian nation, and we want that culture to preserve its Western tradition. I, for one, do not want Islamic chants in Detroit or Times Square, which is why we need to think about illegal immigration as an invasion of different cultures and different religions. This damages the pursuit of a Christian state.

But I would differ with Stephen Wolfe in his defense of a Thomist version of Christian nationalism. In his view, natural theology, also known as natural law, should guide our discourse. We should not apply Biblical law since that law was distinct for the Old Testament people but on natural law. Natural law displays a sense of order and reflects the natural instincts among races to preserve our cultural norms.

Now, I am a theocrat. I don’t subscribe to natural law as an independent revelation to guide society. I affirm natural revelation (the heavens declare the glory of God) grounded in special revelation. But Wolfe is arguing for natural law to be the ruling principle for America. In his definition, natural law refers to universally accessible truths that can be universally affirmed. This natural law implies the two tables of the law, but it must be derived from the general prudential wisdom of our Western fathers like Aristotle and Aquinas. But he is not defending a Christian nation guided by exclusive Biblical law. Thus, he and other Reformed men function with a “Two-Kingdom” model, where Biblical Law is for the Church, and something else—in this case, Natural Law—is for the state.

I don’t have time to delve into this version of Two-Kingdom theology, which I think has roots in Reformational history. Still, I want to ensure you don’t confuse Escondido Two-Kingdom theology with what Stephen Wolfe says. My critiques of Christian Nationalism focus on the means of pursuing God-rule rather than the project. I think there can be synergy between varying nationalist projects.

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[1] Frame develops this in his interview on the Whitefield Seminary podcast.

[2] Jordan Cooper’s Lecture on Two-Kingdom.

[3] Quoted in Jordan Cooper’s Talk.

[4] Abraham Kuyper, Pro Rege, Volume 1, pg. 20.

[5] James E. McGoldrick, Abraham Kuyper: God’s Renaissance Man, 38.

[6] Ibid. 171.

[7] Ibid. 93.

[8] Ibid. 65.

[9] Abraham Kuyper, Pro Rege, Volume 1, pg. 343.