(NOTE: This post is part of a series showing the errors of so-called Two-Kingdom Theology. We refer to it as "so-called" Two-Kingdom Theology because what the church historically has meant by "Two-Kingdoms" bears little resemblance to what Escondido Theology men mean when they write it today. Thus sometimes we write "Two-Kingdom Theology," but more often we write "Radical Two Kingdom," "Rigid Two Kingdom," or "R2K.")
The heart of R2K is their intense work to keep the civil magistrate's authority out of the Christian church and God's authority out of the public square. Some might quibble with the way this is worded but it's undeniable R2K is all about the rigid policing of the boundaries between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. Thus "R2K" is an abbreviation for Rigid-Two-Kingdom or Radical-Two-Kingdom.
To most of us it sounds helpful to guard the church against usurpations of ecclesiastical authority by the civil magistrate. John Calvin fought against this in sixteenth century Geneva. He was willing to die in the cause of protecting the authority of the officers of the Church over the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper from Geneva's civil magistrates.
No one wants Hitler's SS guards enforcing the use of patriotic hymns of the Third Reich in Lord's Day worship. No one wants today's public school teachers leading their classrooms in prayer. Like Dad before us forty years ago, David and I don't believe in school prayer because any prayer to any deity among our pluralistic pantheon of gods would be a prayer no orthodox Christian could join in. The melting pot has done its work starting with religion. School prayer has long been dead.
Similarly, David and I don't want the Indiana or Ohio State Police forcing single mothers to baptize their newborn infants as a condition of receiving WIC coupons. We don't hope for the day water cannon are used by Army National Guard...
to corral the masses thrusting them into the Lord's Day corporate worship of Clearnote Church, Bloomington or Christ the Word.
On the other hand, David and I do want those thirteen states who right now today have sodomy laws on their books to enforce them and we're opposed to the Evangelical and Reformed leaders who seek their repeal. The Washington Blade, Mother Jones, and Huffington Post are huffing and puffing against these thirteen states for a reason and we believe the opposition of the Washington Blade and Huffington Post are a possible indication the thing they oppose is doing some good.
What's the difference between the state police or mayor presiding over the Lord's Supper and the state police or mayor forbidding sodomy?
Did you really ask me that question? Were you serious?
Yet R2K men are very serious when they ask this question. They're so serious about this question that this is one of their main talking points. They say in order to be consistent, the man who doesn't think sodomy laws should be repealed must seek the passage of blasphemy laws, the enforcement of blue laws (aimed at keeping the sabbath holy), and so on. To them it's clear: any enforcement of any law of God by the civil magistrate requires the enforcement of every law of God by the civil magistrate—there's nothing in between.
Why?
Because they say so. R2K men accuse anyone who opposes the repeal of present sodomy laws of "cowardice" if they do not also seek the passage of Sabbath or blasphemy laws. "You can't enforce the Second Table of the Law without enforcing the First Table of the Law."
Really? Why not?
Because they say so.
Readers should know this is simply the false dichotomy fallacy. When men want to shut down a debate, it's common for them to force an either-or choice between A and Z on their opponent as if there's no place to stand between the two. Their opponent responds, "What about B and C and D. Or V and W? Are we really required to choose either A or Z?"
To which the R2K man responds, "What's the matter with you? You said you want to see sodomy laws enforced. Taking the Name of the Lord our God in vain is in the Ten Commandments, also. Are you too much of a coward to enforce that law, too? If you're going to enforce civil laws that encode any commandment from the Second Table of the Ten Commandments, you have to enforce every last one of the Ten Commandments including those commandments in the First Table of the Law."
We respond, "No we don't. In connection with parallels between the Ten Commandments and civil law, there are thousands of places to stand. And specifically, no one who supports the sodomy laws on the books of Western nations for many centuries, and still on the books of thirteen states of the Union, is logically required to seek the passage of blashemy laws, and here's why."
God commanded heterosexuality for all men in all places across all time in the Garden of Eden when He made woman for man, ishah for ish, Eve for Adam. This was not a revelation to Noah after the flood or the Sons of Israel in the Ten Commandments. It is the core DNA of man created by God and revealed to man prior to the Fall. Heterosexuality is, therefore, the bedrock of natural law as the Apostle Paul says in Romans:
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. - Romans 1:26,27
Biology is destiny. This is God's kindness and love. In His great love He has created sexuality in such a way that to violate His Creation Order is deadly for oneself and one's partner. From His kindness He has designed man's sexuality such that the violation of our biology, physiology, apparatus, body parts, or nature in sexual intimacy will always be harmful and often fatal. Again, He says that men's rejection of His universal law of heterosexuality will cause them to receive "in their own persons the due penalty of their error." The Holy Spirit declares concerning these things:
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. - Galatians 6:7, 8
Recognizing the iron-clad connection God has ordained between the violation of His Creation Order of heterosexuality and the corruption and death of those doing the violating, for many centuries nations and states used civil laws banning sodomy to protect the public health of their citizens and to guard those citizens inclined to homosexuality from murdering themselves and others.
Were all those civil magistrates passing and enforcing laws against public nuisance and fatal sexual practices cowards for not also passing laws requiring repentance and faith in Jesus Christ? A few years ago during the AIDS epidemic when
Of course not. Anyone who said such a thing would prove himself a fool. Yet this is the essence of the argument of R2K men who claim a man can't support sodomy laws without also supporting blasphemy laws.
Of course he can. San Francisco's public health officers did it and no one took them to court for inconsistency. They were taken to court for other reasons, but not because they stopped short of closing down bars where blasphemy occurred.
Men have always known sexual sin destroys and kills men and women.
All the talk of homosexual practice being a victimless crime is hooey. Every public health official including the Surgeon General at the time of the onslaught of AIDS, C. Everett Koop, knows full well that sodomy kills men. Scripture reveals it and nature confirms it. Homosexuality is death, destruction in this life, and Hell in the life to come.
But let's say you don't believe in Hell or the life to come—what then?
Well, you're still left with death and destruction. Not only homosexual practice but other sexual sins including adultery, incest, fornication, and bestiality cause bloodshed and death. It's inarguable. It's obvious. It's the reason nation's have always had laws against sexual sins and only our modern faith in the gods of science and technology combined with God having blinded us and given us over to degrading passions causes us to act and speak as if crimes of passion, sickness, and death are not caused by sexual immorality.
So really, we have a choice whether we're going to live in a nation where murder of self and others will be legal or not? R2K men think it should be legal whereas historic Reformed men think it should be criminal. Whether the murder is of self or others. Whether the murder is of sodomites or unborn babies. Whether the murder is public or private. Every civilized man has always known that the rule of law starts with the protection of life and the protection of life begins with the guarding of the family and the guarding of the family begins with the purity of the marriage bed and the purity of the marriage bed starts with the DNA God decreed in the Garden of Eden in the state of perfection prior to the Fall: Adam and Eve, not Steve.
At the end of the day, R2K fails because it's rigidity requires it to choose between abandoning every law of God or no law of God. But who forces them to make that choice?
Not I. Not any other historic Two-Kingdom man I've read or known. Not any church father. Not any reasonable pagan.
Yet sometimes men create a prison for themselves they can't escape. Wanting to view homosexuality as a victimless crime in order to cede the territory to the frenzied hordes rioting in the streets today, they defined homosexual practice as a religious matter about which men of good consciences may disagree, and thus they end up ceding the point that murder, too, is a religious matter about which men of good conscience may disagree.
After all, who believes any more that "in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them," and thus "whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He created them." Who believes any more that "from the beginning of creation God made them male and female" (Mark 10:6). Note our Lord's words "from the beginning of creation."
The R2K men tell us these are private truths for Christians only (or Christians and Roman Catholics, or Christians and Roman Catholics and Jews), and thus they ought not to be codified in these United States of America.
We say they must be codified in these United States of America because these things are written into the DNA of man and without them the rule of law will end because the bloodshed of innocents will be everywhere.
This is the fourth in a (so far) eleven-part series opposing the liberal theology called "Two Kingdom," "Radical Two-Kingdom," "Rigid Two Kingdom," or "Revisionist Two Kingdom," and abbreviated here simply as "R2K." Here's the first in this series, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth, and the eleventh. And here's a post subjecting R2K to an historical critique.
A change to the title has reset the social networking stats at zero.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
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