Common Grace Inflated

Part 2 of 2 to Debating the Noahic Covenant

The “Escondido theology,”1 as it has been called, is to some extent the fruit of that brand of covenant theology sketched out by Meredith Kline, who originally taught at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, but who moved out to the newer Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California in 1981. I say “to some extent,” because there are other relevant factors, such as the reactionary flight from late twentieth century right-wing culture war, or even from the older ghosts of Christendom, evident in the output of Michael Horton, D. G. Hart, R. Scott Clark, and even their president Robert Godfrey, this added to a polemical axe ever sharpened from their battles with Theonomy or the Federal Vision. This patchwork of views has a kind of unity to it. It becomes a significant foundation to Reformed ethical thought—or, I would argue, the lack thereof—in how it concludes in what is sometimes called Radical Two Kingdom (or R2K hereafter) doctrine today. David VanDrunen of that same Westminster West is the most able proponent of the R2K view today.

This is not the sort of pietism promoted in past generations. This is a bit more sophisticated. It will come in a string of truisms that may cause us to wonder what is wrong with it. For instance, VanDrunen writes, “God has instituted and rules political communities, and Christians should be active within them and promote their welfare. But Christians ought not to seek the kingdom within such communities.”2 Pietists of old would have excluded Christian political involvement for the most part.

A Common Community for an Old Creation

We must imagine two circles next to each, the first representing the Noahic covenant and the second representing the Abrahamic to come. The first creates a common community; the second creates a holy community. Recall that it will not be the most general sense of grace that separates these. Common grace is understood, within the Klinian strand, as purely that principle of withholding final eschatological judgment—first instituted in Genesis 3:14-19, suspended at the flood, and re-instituted in the common grace covenant of 8:20-9:17. This tradition must minimize, or at least segregate, any covenant of grace links with the Noahic covenant.

John Frame summarizes the relevant foundational pieces to Kline’s view:

(1) The Fall led to a split between ‘cult’ (worship) and ‘culture.’ (2) Except in Eden and in the Israelite theocracy, only cult is holy; culture is common or non holy. (3) The Christian has no obligation to seek improvement in the common realm according to God’s standards. (4) The Sabbath pattern applies only to cult, not to culture. So, except in Eden and in the Israelite theocracy, man has no obligation to rest from his labors on the seventh day, but only to worship on the seventh day. (5) The command to Noah in Genesis 9:1-7 is not a continuance of the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28. After the fall, God no longer requires man to take dominion of the world in his name. Man is only required to build the holy, cultic community, the church. Hence the separation of church and culture. (6) The state is ‘common,’ rather than ‘holy,’ and therefore should not be governed in the name of Christ or in accord with the provisions of Scripture. (7) Kline thinks it possible to distinguish the covenants between God and man according to the presence in them of a ‘grace principle’ (post-fall Adamic covenant, Noachic, Abrahamic, Davidic, New) or a ‘works principle’ (Eden, Moses at one level).3

VanDrunen sets forth three defining features of this covenant that are uncontroversial in themselves. It is universal, preservative, and temporary. What this comes to imply is the all-inclusiveness of this covenant, the absence of any decisive triumph (no crushing of the serpent’s head, as in the covenant of Gen. 3:15), and that its duties are not to be worked on as an actually permanent dominion.4 By contrast, the covenant that God later makes with Abraham is particular, redemptive, and permanent. The upshot of the contrast is this: “God is not redeeming the cultural activities and institutions of this world, but is preserving them through the covenant he made with all living creatures through Noah in Genesis 8:20-9:17.”5

VanDrunen’s covenant theology forms the backdrop for how to situate nature and grace. He tells us why this is important: “because I stake much of my political theology on the distinctive nature and purposes of the Noahic covenant (Gen 8:21-9:17).”6 It may be asked: Why would “a covenant of common grace that preserves nature”7 mitigate against the truth of divine law [define] standing over the state? There is a reason that the R2K view would give: God’s revelation to Israel in particular is not a “paradigm”8 for any other nation as a nation. Hence they are ruled under the Noahic Covenant by natural law alone and not by divine law.

There is a more immediate entry point that the critics of the R2K view would give, and it is another outworking of this law of unintended consequences. In defining what is “common” down to the receiving party of the covenant, the whole concept undergoes a transformation.

Commonality versus Particularity.

In one sense, that which is “common” and that which is “particular” may be opposites, as the universal or general is logically opposed to the particular. Ironically, one crucial step in this inflation of common grace is just one more conflation. Here what is conflated are not two different senses of grace into one, but rather a conflation of the subjective and objective senses of “common,” so that what God mandates over all (in common) and “what we all have” or “what we are all doing” (in common) undergoes a shift from the former to the latter. The truth of what is over all is defined down from God’s revelation to man’s interpretation.

Think of the old word commonwealth. This literally means “common good,” as the old English word weal meant the blessing or good of a people. Now how do people ordinarily come to define what is good for the common?

If we take a lesson from 1 Samuel 8, I think we find something that belongs to human nature. There was more of a change in governmental form happening in the mob that day. In the movement from God as King to Saul as king, we gloss too quickly over God’s poetic justice delivered to the people in the form of their source of truth. Formerly it was: Listen to the prophet (whether Moses or Samuel), but now the Lord told Samuel, “Now then, obey their voice” (v. 9). We speak of the rule of law versus the rule of man in this way. No one who uses this terminology in an informed manner ever thinks that pieces of paper ever take the place of persons. Among men, men will rule in one form or another. The expression is meant to speak of the focus—Will it be objectively on the immaterial and eternal substance of law, that is justice? Or will it be on the sheer will to power?

VanDrunen recognizes that many have held to a notion of a “common good,” but that this presents difficulties in a genuinely pluralistic society. There is a “shared moral envision” prerequisite to such a commonwealth. He attempts to resolve the dilemma with a shortlist of bare minimums: “A political community needs some shared moral vision, but this vision need not be substantively rich in order to sustain a peaceful coexistence.”9 What is required, he argues, are three things: 1. families for the sake of procreation, 2. enterprise institutions, and 3. courts for the rule of law. However, he then allows a “wide berth to the judgment of the community’s diverse people as to how these institutions will take shape.”10   

The ethical upshot is pluralism. By pluralism I do not mean simply the empirical reality that observes different cultures mixing together in various ways. I mean an ethical pluralism that takes the form of a doctrine.11 It is inevitable within modern liberalism. The doctrine is not simply that there are many people groups with alternative ways of thinking, speaking, and doing things, but that there ought to be—not merely that they ought to be somewhere out there, but that there ought to be everywhere and especially here. In short, ethical pluralism is moral relativism applied to the concrete political realm. There is nothing in the liberal ethos that runs counter to this inevitability. If the rights and privileges assumed of the maximization of individual liberty and social equality are universal, then

Someone can object that there are limits. The whole point of this covenant being divine is that God does provide the framework. However, because this is the common sphere that includes all mankind, that framework is very minimalistic in a way that parallels the difference between general revelation and special revelation. Indeed, we will see that the R2K viewpoint has what it claims to be a favorable view of natural law. The questions we will want to ask is: How minimalist is this and on what basis? and What to do in the event that the common lot of humanity says No to even this minimalist standard, and on what basis?

A society’s complete openness is an impossibility, yet the R2K position is that the universality of the Noahic Covenant prescribes a maximal degree of diversity.12 This sets a “low bar” for human participation. He acknowledges that violence against life in Genesis 9:5-6 can be extended to deny others “proportionately”13 (who violate lesser elements of that life. This moves closer to admitting a “right view,” yet he adds that “religious profession” cannot function as a disqualifier. What about Islam? It is their religion that demands bloodshed, but are there not other creeds that do so?

Two Kingdoms: Classical versus Modern

When one hears of the so-called “two kingdoms doctrine,” it must be understood that there is a classical meaning to this and a modern version. For one thing, the attempt to root this language in Augustine is a colossal misreading. In The City of God, Augustine spoke of two cities being headed by two rival princes, Christ and Satan, driven by two opposing loves, peopled by two different seeds—the elect and reprobate. Augustine was not speaking primarily about boundaries between legitimate human institutions, but rather the much more ultimate boundary between the forces of good and forces of evil. The problem is not in using the word “kingdom” for this, as the Bible itself speaks of the “domain of darkness” (Col. 1:13) and Satan’s kingdom (Mat. 12:26). The problem comes in misapplying the concept from that ultimate division to the distinctions between social spheres.

The modern version, as I mentioned, goes by this R2K label. We can get a sense of the difference best by looking at what is undisputed in the Reformed tradition. We make a distinction between (1) the essential reign of Christ, by which, as the eternal Son, he is Lord over all things at all times and places; and (2) the mediatorial reign of Christ, by which, as the anointed Messiah, he is Head of the church. These two reigns come together without opposition at the Second Coming and in the eternal state (Phi. 2:10-11, Rev.  21:5-6). The only debate among the Reformed is the sense in which the spiritual reign of Christ has authority over all things in this age (Mat. 28:18). But that is a big debate, and its rational intersects with how one views this covenant made with Noah.

Christ’s essential reign corresponds to the common community descending from Noah, whereas Christ’s mediatorial reign corresponds to the holy community following in the footsteps of its father Abraham. We can rule out one thing that this cannot mean. Israel was to be a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:5-6). However, VanDrunen had previously defined “political life” as “common life,” such that if a holy people are not a common people, then a holy people are not a political people.14 Even once they were big enough to be a nation, and would be political, they were still holy and political.15 And even the old covenant people had the church and state separated at least by the offices of priest and king, so that there was “sphere sovereignty,” to use one of Kuyper’s famed expressions. Moving back out to the common, Frame makes a very interesting yet simple point: “God enables this common effort to take place by his ‘common’ or non-saving grace. But Scripture never calls this common area a realm or kingdom, as VanDrunen’s two kingdom view does.”16

If someone were to counter with one or another biblical use of the devil’s kingdom, they would be at one with those like Gregory Boyd, who argued from his Open Theist perspective, that the kingdoms of the world are now under the absolute dominion of the devil. Boyd actually cited the passage in which Satan tempts Jesus with “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” (Mat. 4:8).17 It is a false interpretation that would agree with the devil that these were in fact his property to give. Nor can anyone retreat to citations of biblical texts speaking of pagan secular nations, since there is no dispute about whether these were all under the dominion of darkness before Christ came. The question regards whether the coming of Christ ought to issue forth in transformation of nations if and when Christian influence would dictate that in a similar proportion to how other cultural and religious influences would bring about regime changes.

Nonetheless, for the modern two kingdom view, the new covenant holy community has a fundamentally spiritual mission, enjoys the benefits of the new creation, and not does not possess the competency to authoritatively direct or exercise power over the common sphere. The Christian may wear all of those hats, but these will not be transformed into a “Christian” sphere. Spheres cannot become Christian in this age; only souls can by the new birth. The R2K advocate will pose the question as much as their critics will: Has the coming of Christ changed anything in the legitimacy of common political arrangements? No. The New Covenant established a community in the same way as the Abrahamic and Mosaic, so not common; but it is also more like the Abrahamic than the Mosaic, and so not national either.18

The idea that the New Covenant “has not established common political communities,”19 especially stated in the plural (communities) suggests something of an equivocation. Of course we agree that the church that the New Covenant creates is not a common political community. But by sleight of hand, VanDrunen’s truism here can come to mean that no ordinary political communities ought to arise out of Christian influence—that, in fact, nations may not take on a Christian character, even though most of the same people would not argued that a home or school or business may not take on a Christian character.

Frame writes that, “The Escondido theologians, under the influence of Meredith Kline … sharpened Luther’s sacred/secular dichotomy into a broad distinction between church and culture.”20 It has also been suggested that this school of covenant theology favors the Lutheran law/gospel distinction as well. Here there is less emphasis on a third use of the law as there is in the Reformed tradition. In other words, while there is a civil use of the law, the other use that looms large for the church is the evangelical use which drives us to Christ. How exactly this deemphasizes the third use—the norm for Christian behavior—and how that relates to this ethical dualism, is the subject of much debate.

The Image of God in 9:5-6

The majority Christian tradition has held that this part of the biblical revelation gives the rational both for the just use of force and for civil government as a whole. As Robertson put it, “the seed-concept certainly is present.”21 VanDrunen agrees that it is “a fundamental issue for Christian political theology.”22 The unity of this nature of man with that same nature of man protected by the moral law commandments at Sinai is crucial here. The life of that man in Genesis 9:5-6 is the same whole life of man at stake in Exodus 20:12-17. In the commandments forbidding dishonor or disobedience to parents, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and coveting, those same commandments are upholding and preserving the authority, life, marriage, property, good name, and anything else belonging to the life of who or what? The answer is the same image of God.

“Of particular importance is the image of God,”23 VanDrunen writes. He too roots Genesis 9 back in Genesis 1, but how he does so begins to tell the difference: namely, that “the character of God’s dominion sheds light upon the proper character of human dominion, and thus upon the meaning of the image and likeness of God.”24 This is what he calls representative kingship. It is an “exercise of dominion involves an exertion of power that is particularly associated with royal activity. It is not a general call to manage the affairs of this world but a specific commission for powerful, kingly rule.”25

Contrary to popular assumptions, the reason this text appeals to the image of God is probably not to highlight why murder is so bad but to explain why God delegates such a profound authority to human beings.26

Here he prejudices the matter for the reader by suggesting up front that this tradition exegesis is equivalent to “popular assumptions.”

The Ground of Just Force.

Calvin describes the rationale in this way: “because he accounts the life of men precious: and because the sole end of his law is, to promote the exercise of common humanity between them.”27 Specifically to the function that the image of God plays in this rationale:

I have explained the simple and genuine sense, namely, that God so highly estimates our life, that he will not suffer murder to go unavenged … that this language rather expresses the atrociousness of the crime; because whosoever kills a man, draws down upon himself the blood and life of his brother.”28 Or further down, “since they bear the image of God engraven on them, He deems himself violated in their person.29

Dabney says of Genesis 9:6 that this is “where we learn that the crime of murder owes its enormity chiefly to this, that it destroys God’s image.”30

Robertson likewise says, “Because God’s own image is stamped in man, the murderer must die.”31

Van Pelt says,

In this case, it is perhaps best not to prefer one interpretation over the other but to maintain both without contradiction. The unlawful destruction of human life constitutes an attack on the image of God, and that same image invests humanity with the judicial authority to uphold the sanction of capital punishment instituted by God in the current era of common grace.32

The Ground of the Office of Magistrate.

The specific party to carry out this duty rests in the civil magistrate. So Henry comments, “by man shall his blood be shed, that is, by the magistrate, or whoever is appointed or allowed to be the avenger of blood. There are those who are ministers of God for this purpose, to be a protection to the innocent, by being a terror to the malicious and evildoers, and they must not bear the sword in vain, Rom. 13:4.”33 The doctrine of the magistrate was sometimes rooted in the historical lineage from Adam and then through Noah, onward through the patriarchs of each people group, to their chieftains over the tribe, until finally the first kings emerged.

Yet each fatherly head was a king in that embryonic society called the family. So Noah was considered a priest, prophet, and king—as Roberts said, “(a) a priest, for a he builded an altar unto the LORD … and offered burnt-offerings upon the altar; (b) a prophet, for he was a preacher of righteousness to the old world. And (c) a king, for the flood having drown the whole world except himself, and his family, Noah was the sole monarch of the whole earth.”34 Thus we see the first kings among the Greeks and Romans emerge in this same way.

All parties will acknowledge that Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-14 are speaking of this exact office. However, an objection by the modern two kingdom view is ready at hand.

Objection. The ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that the magistrate is to judge is generic—not specific, to use VanDrunen’s words, “to discriminate between Christian and non-Christian.”35

Reply. This is nothing but a straw man fallacy. An increased specificity in what is good law and evil law, sound economic policy and unsound economic policy, a just war and an unjust war, would absolutely not lead to a discrimination against non-Christians in favor of Christians until or unless X members of the set “non-Christians” were violating the basic form of the civil sphere, that is, violating the image of God according to the law’s civil use. The function of this straw man is to scare one’s audience into the notion that to demand more specificity is to “impose,” even through violent means, a “Christian” set of values upon the unconverted common culture.

This raises the objection for many against biblical morality—or at least its internal consistency—as the skeptic or the novice alike may understand God to be commanding here that which He Himself violates, or else something which Jesus rescinds in the New Testament. There are a number of overlapping issues here.

This is general to the just use of force. It would be arbitrary to exclude any species of this genus—whether self-defense, private aid given to protect the weak, capital punishment, the use of a police force against domestic violence, or the use of a military force against a foreign invader.

Calvin makes this very point: “On the whole, they are deceived (in my judgment) who think that a political law, for the punishment of homicides, is here simply intended. Truly I do not deny that the punishment which the laws ordain, and which the judges execute, are founded on this divine sentence; but I say the words are more comprehensive.”36

Again, Calvin represents the traditional view:

Therefore, however magistrates may connive at the crime, God sends executioners from other quarters, who shall render unto sanguinary men their reward. God so threatens and denounces vengeance against the murderer, that he even arms the magistrate with the sword for the avenging of slaughter, in order that the blood of men may not be shed with impunity.37

The contemporary of Calvin in the Swiss Reformation, Heinrich Bullinger clearly links the Genesis 9 text to the imagery used of the magistrate by Paul in Romans 13.

For the sword is God’s vengeance, or instrument, wherewith he strikes the stroke to revenge himself upon his enemies for the injury done unto him; and is in the scripture generally taken for vengeance and punishment … But the sword in the magistrate’s hand is to be put unto two uses: for either he punisheth offenders therewith for doing other men injury, and for other ill deeds; or else he doth in war therewith repel the violence of foreign enemies abroad, or repress the rebellions of seditious and contentious citizens at home … The Lord resisteth force with force, and worketh the safeguard and salvation of men; he revengeth them that suffer wrong, and restoreth again whatsoever may be restored.38

In conclusion on the sword, the magistrate, and the state as a whole, for VanDrunen, “When a political community grounded in the Noahic Covenant weds itself to a particular religion or religious body, it adds a priestly dimension to its royal rule. This, I conclude, usurps a divine privilege granted only to the church.”39 VanDrunen is suggesting that the protection and/or patronage of a  particular church by the state is the same as conflating the sword with keys, or kingly with priestly offices. But this is question-begging at best, if not also a non-sequitur.

Natural Law and Moral Law

VanDrunen’s appeal to natural law is first epistemological. In other words: “How do common political communities know about their relationship to God through the Noahic covenant?”40 The answer is natural law. His most basic definition of natural law is,

the idea that God makes known the basic substance of his moral law through the created order itself. Human beings therefore know this law simply by virtue of being human, even apart from access to Scripture or other forms of special revelation.41

Frame counters this not by denying the validity of natural law, but by saying, “‘Apart from’ is a vague expression. I would reject it if VanDrunen had said that natural law can be rightly used apart from Scripture. But I agree that natural law can be known apart from Scripture.”42 We must ask VanDrunen whether “even apart” excludes “even with,” and we must ask Frame what the threshold is for “rightly using” natural law. For instance, is a pagan couple that stays married and opposes transgenderism acting rightly enough according to natural law? Rightly enough for what? If Frame means this as a threshold for teaching an ethics class at a Christian college or seminary, I wholeheartedly agree with him. Such a one would not use the natural law rightly enough. If Frame means this as a threshold for a candidate for president or even sheriff who knows well enough who to sign a treaty with or who to aim his gun at, I would disagree.

For VanDrunen, natural law is covenantal and it is a moral order, rather than a set of discrete moral rules.43 In one sense, this idea of a moral order—not moral rules—follows from the classical distinction between principles and conclusions, or even principles and circumstances. But this can also become minimalistic. An example of morality at the principle level is: You shall not murder. An example of morality at the conclusion level is: Therefore, you may not take away life in the womb. But this is not simply a matter of application of a principle to a particular circumstance. It is that as well. However, it can only make the application by filling out a missing premise: namely, that fetus in the womb is in fact a life. In other words, the movement from moral principles to moral conclusions requires moral reasoning, and this is what a minimalist concept of natural law would endanger.

VanDrunen will consistently maintain the “general moral order” dimension of natural law, against “atomistic rules,” which is to say that natural law is “relatively indeterminate,”44 and that “there are many possible ways to live consistently with the natural law.”45 Such expressions can mean a few different things.

If we judge the robustness of someone’s view of natural law by how many ways they see Scripture speaking to it, we could not call VanDrunen’s view minimalistic. He advances the argument that “Scripture presupposes that there is a natural law, and therefore biblical teaching is coherent only if natural law exists.”46 He shows this in seven ways.

1. Many examples show people who are not members of Israel with a knowledge of right and wrong.

2. Examples of imperatives for Christian conduct to “meet the approval of non-Christians” (Col. 4:5; 1 Thess. 4:12; 1 Tim. 3:7).

3. Similarities between biblical texts and pagan law codes (e.g. Exodus 20:23-23:19 with the Code of Hammurabi).

4. Oracles of God’s coming judgment on Gentiles for their conscious misdeeds.

5. Biblical speech (especially in Proverbs) of a natural order that is “morally charged,” illustrating wisdom for human life.

6. A form of wisdom genre embedded in the Prophets called “cosmic nonsense,” by which Israel is made to see that their wickedness is also stupid. Jeremiah 2:11-13 is a good example.

7. Romans 1:18-2:15, which links natural law to natural theology: the knowledge of God's moral ways (on the heart) as a function of the knowledge of God in general (in the whole world).

It is instructive that natural law could be so informative in these ways, yet not informative to the moral law dimensions of Israel’s political life.

The pair of nature and grace has been mentioned in passing throughout our study so far. VanDrunen seeks a “more nuanced alternative” to the Thomistic “grace perfects nature” and Neo-Calvinist “grace restores nature.”47 “I suggest a better formula: (common) grace preserves nature, and (saving) grace consummates nature.”48 What does this accomplish? He wants to agree with the classical tradition in considering natural law foundational to morality, but here he can do so in a way that keep the Noahic covenant and new covenant in sharp dichotomy.49 Why? Again, it is so that the claims of the original creation and the new creation are kept separate.

There is a synergy in VanDrunen’s view of how the image of God relates to the magistrate, and how his view of natural law relates to the magistrate. Recall that with the image, it pertains immediately to the officer holder only. We are not to concern ourselves with how the image of God in the common man is violated or its remedies. So with natural law, it pertains to general principles and resists a “right” set of conclusions that can draw too many lines around the magistrate. How foreign to the Reformed tradition of resistance theory.

Bullinger, for example, said, “that we ought not obey the wicked commandments of godless magistrates, because it is not permitted to magistrates to ordain or appoint any thing contrary to God’s law, or the law of nature.”50 Further, “if the magistrate’s purpose be to kill the guiltless, I declared in my former sermons that then his people ought not to obey his wicked commandments.”51

Concluding Thoughts

This view has been sharply criticized for an inconsistency in denying that Israel can be exemplary when they have power, but insisting on their exemplary status when they are in exile. On what basis can such special pleading be justified? A predictable reply is that, in this capacity, Israel is no longer viewed in its theocratic form, but rather as God’s people scattered more generally. Such a response would be insufficient, for they are still the same body politic, whether in their blessed or cursed state. Deuteronomy gives the future and Jeremiah the fulfillment of that whole spectrum. This assumes that the diffusion of the church among the nations in the new covenant may be compared to the exile by which Israel was punished. It is true that Peter calls us exiles and sojourners, but the first word is used of those who are being persecuted precisely for righteousness, and the latter is used in a completely positive way.

Another practical question may cross our minds: Do the pagan nations typically see their political communities as common? Not at all! Non-Christian nations (whether we want to call them religious or secular) all have an ultimate object of worship (or set of such objects), and there can be no compromise on these if one is to participate in the community, or, in most cases, if one wants to continue living.

Lastly, bear in mind the proximity of Genesis 10 and 11 to Genesis 9, and allow one more objection to the R2K stimulate reflection. If the ideal of commonality is unqualified, might one reasonably infer that increasing centralization of government over a more common citizenry is maximally ideal? There is certainly nothing in the idea of commonality in itself that would prevent this. Moreover, if what one has in common with all does not transcend the political community, then the greatest commonality would seem to exist in the greatest such common community. This would translate not only into a one-world government, but a one-world religion that is inseparable from it.

__________________________________________

1. cf. John Frame, The Escondido Theology: A Reformed Response to Two Kingdom Theology (Lakeland, FL: Whitefield Media Productions, 2011), where the author recognizes this widespread impression: “Kline’s work is considered the foundation of what I have called the Escondido Theology, to the point that many refer to the advocates of that view as Klineans. Yet Kline’s work, in that context, is actually somewhat anomalous.” 152.

2. David VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 18.

3. Frame, The Escondido Theology, 10-11.

4. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 65.

5. VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 15.

6. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 57.

7. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 57.

8. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 90.

9. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 187.

10. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 188.

11. cf. D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 13-22, for a helpful discussion of these and other diverse senses of the term pluralism.

12. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 181.

13. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 185.

14. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 87.

15. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 88-89.

16. Frame, The Escondido Theology, 135.

17. Greg Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 21.

18. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 101-02.

19. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 103.

20. Frame, The Escondido Theology, 3.

21. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 116.

22. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 58.

23. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 39.

24. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 67.

25. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 47.

26. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 107.

27. Calvin, Commentaries, I:294.

28. Calvin, Commentaries, I:294, 295.

29. Calvin, Commentaries, I:295.

30. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 294.

31. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 115.

32. Van Pelt, “The Noahic Covenant of the Covenant of Grace,” 127.

33. Henry, A Commentary on the Whole Bible, 29.

34. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:519-20.

35. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 33.

36. Calvin, Commentaries, I:295

37. Calvin, Commentaries, I:295

38. Heinrich Bullinger, The Decades (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2004), I:352, 355.

39. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 201.

40. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 124.

41. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 126.

42. Frame, The Escondido Theology, 128.

43. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 126.

44. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 135.

45. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 136.

46. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 126.

47. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 73.

48. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 76.

49. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 77.

50. Bullinger, Decades, I:316.

51. Bullinger, Decades, I:373.