I recently received Dr. David VanDrunen's new book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. It is my first exposure to VanDrunen, and I am enjoying it very much. I've found this work to be, among other things, substantive, thorough, precise, clear, and very well written. I ran across this insight early in the book. VanDrunen writes:
Another example [of an influential recent trend in broader, ecumenical Christian thought which seems remarkably friendly to the last century of Reformed social thought] comes from the recent revival in interest in the social tenets of the radical reformation, historically associated with the Anabaptists and Mennonites. The most influential voice here is surely that of Stanley Hauerwas, though himself a Methodist. A perspective grounded in the radical reformation would not ordinarily be associated with a perspective looking to Calvin and the magisterial reformation for inspiration, but they in fact share remarkable similarities. Hauerwas was influenced not only by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder but also by the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, whose tour de force, After Virtue, subjected modern, post-Enlightenment, liberal, secular, value-free Western society to a withering critique. MacIntyre concluded that the autonomous individuals within it share no common story or telos and therefore have no resources from which to draw in order to have genuine moral discussions about anything. Not only has Hauerwas picked up on such analysis in condemning the quest for freedom and autonomy in a morally fragmented world scarred by capitalism and materialism, but he has also rejected, as inimical to Christian faith, the idea of a universal ethic or common morality grounded in natural law. Nevertheless, he has called for Christian activism in the world, but in a way peculiar to Christianity. The church, he says, is to live out its existence as a community of faith and hence display to the world how the peaceful kingdom of Christ provides an alternative to a politics built upon violence and falsehood. Hence Hauerwas voices familiar contemporary Reformed themes in rejecting a natural law social ethic, sharply critiquing modern thought and practice, promoting social activism, and calling on Christians to have the ways of the kingdom of Christ shape all of their activity in the church and in the world. Hauerwas has many admirers that have picked up and developed such themes, including those associated with the New Perspective on Paul and scholars in American evangelical circles without historic connection to the Mennonite theology. The work of Brian McLaren, a chief spokesperson for the so-called emerging church movement, is also similar in many important respects (7-9).
2 comments:
That messes with my categories a bit. I thought NPP and FV types were of a transformationalist perspective and Hauerwas was of an Antithetical Perspective.
This is probably what I need to explore next. I tend to think whoever I am listening to, Hauerwas, Two Kingdoms or Transformationalists always seem to sound good at the time. A Tranformationalist view with a high ecclesiology seems to have more going for it than evangelicalism which is tranformationalist without an ecclesiology. I don't think I will criticize Kuyper til I read him.
A transformationalist approach is marked by a fundamental (i.e. defines the character of each realm) antithesis between church and culture, hence the need for the transformation of the common realm to a Christian faith and practice (e.g. Christian civil gov't, Christian mathematics, Christian entertainment, Christian beer-making, all things Christian, etc.).
A two kingdoms approach, while seeing some amount of antithesis (or tension), does not see it as fundamental. Some things about the common realm are good simply because God created them and sustains them as good even though they are not, properly speaking, Christian. My beer is not in need of redemption (unless it is a bland near beer). The goodness of the human endeavors in the common realm is governed by God's moral law revealed in nature (i.e. natural law). When a beer-maker makes good beer he is, in some imperfect but nonetheless true sense, fulfilling the second table.
I am planning to read Kuyper this year too. Interestingly, VanDrunen makes the point that Kuyper held to a two kingdoms view. Neo-Kuyperians have extended his thought out further, rejecting the two kingdoms.
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