Kingdoms Apart: Engaging the Two Kingdoms Perspective by Ryan C McIlhenny & Editor

Author:Ryan C McIlhenny & Editor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw
Tags: Protestant, Church and the World, Eschatology, Christian Ministry, Christianity and Culture, Creation, Kingdom of God, General, Religion, Sociology of Religion, Christian Church, Reformed Church - Doctrines - History, Christianity, Two Kingdoms (Lutheran Theology), Christian Theology, Social Science
ISBN: 9781596384354
Publisher: P&R Publishing
Published: 2012-10-15T17:23:50+00:00

9. In his recent book, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical View for Christianity and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), David VanDrunen tries to demonstrate that no legitimate cultural mandate remains for Christians today. Because Christ fulfilled the first Adam’s original (failed) commission, those belonging to Christ by faith are no longer given that cultural task, he says. VanDrunen states, “Christians already possess eternal life and claim an everlasting inheritance. God does not call them to engage in cultural labors so as to earn their place in the world-to-come” (28). Two problems plague this line of reasoning. First, Scripture repeatedly testifies to mankind’s ongoing call to manage God’s world. Even after the fall, there remains a divine calling for us to be wise and faithful caretakers or “stewards” of God’s creation (Ps. 8:6–8; Gen. 48:3–4). This stewardship is grounded in creation, and it is part of what it entails to be the image-bearers of God in the more comprehensive sense (Gen. 1:28–30). Even after the fall, having lost the image of God in the restricted sense, mankind remains the image of God as it fulfills the creation mandate. This stewardship still comprises our human vocation in Christ. Precisely because we are members of Christ by faith and already rule spiritually with him over all opposing spiritual powers (Eph. 6:10–12), we share in his anointing as King over all creation, overseeing it faithfully and beneficially through our office as kings (H.C. LD 12; A 32). God’s glory and our neighbors’ good are the goal of our mandate to have dominion over God’s world. Second, VanDrunen offers his readers a false dilemma. Simply by affirming the ongoing mandate to be caretakers of this world and cultivate human culture for God’s glory, we do not fall into legalism, hypocrisy, or the intention of earning (meritoriously) the world to come by our cultural labors. Of course, we do not work as Adam did to obtain a permanent state of righteousness in the garden. We labor out of grateful faith in Jesus Christ, trusting in his righteousness, glorying in his kingly victory, believing his promise that he will re-create the existing world where we will rule forever in the new (and better) garden city, Jerusalem! We see that Old Testament Israel continued to heed God’s cultural mandate, even as they possessed eternal life, looked forward to their coming Savior, and anticipated their eternal inheritance. To affirm an ongoing mandate to develop human culture for the sake of Christ need not generate a works-righteousness mentality, as VanDrunen would have us believe. Nor should the fact that fallen human culture itself cannot attain the new creation keep us from fulfilling that which remains of the “cultural mandate”—the call to stewardship and witnessing to Christ’s lordship in our day-to-day activities.

10. Goheen and Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads, 49.

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