NXR Podcast - THE CONFERENCE - Kuyperianism - Session 6 - Doug Wilson | Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 2024
Aired: 2024-04-30
Duration: 48:39


=== Confessions and Christian Worldview (12:53) ===

[00:00:00]  Well, let's ask God to bless our time together.
[00:00:03]  Our gracious God and Father, we lift this time up to you.
[00:00:05]  I pray that we would be careful in how we think through these things.
[00:00:09]  I pray that your spirit would be at work.
[00:00:11]  Teach and instruct us, correct us, I pray.
[00:00:14]  In Jesus' name, amen.
[00:00:17]  So, in a talk about Kuiperianism, I probably ought to begin with a brief biographical mention of Abraham Kuiper, just as Calvin helped to nickname A theological position that existed long before Calvin was born, so also Abraham Kuyper did the same thing.
[00:00:40]  What we call Kuyperianism did not come into being with Abraham Kuyper, but in the rough and tumble of human history, his name got attached to a position that existed long before Kuyper was born.
[00:00:54]  Calvin exalted the sovereignty of God in salvation in much the same way that Augustine and the Apostle Paul had done before him.
[00:01:04]  And in the same way, Abraham Kuyper exalted the lordship of Jesus Christ in every field of human endeavor in much the same way that Calvin had done centuries before him.
[00:01:17]  So Calvin makes a distinction between the church and the kingdom, which we're going to get to in a few minutes, but that's key to understanding how Jesus Christ is Lord of mathematics and Lord of bicycle repair shops and Lord of cooks and bakers and so on.
[00:01:38]  Abraham Kuyper lived as he taught.
[00:01:42]  He was in turns a minister of the gospel, a theologian, an author, the founder of a political party, the founder of a university, the founder of a newspaper, the founder of a denomination, and the prime minister of the Netherlands.
[00:02:00]  In short, he was a tornado in boots.
[00:02:04]  He was an amazing man, and I couldn't drag a rope after him.
[00:02:09]  It's just amazing if you look at the things that he did, things that he wrote, all of his accomplishments.
[00:02:15]  So, Kuiper is very famous for having said, There's not one square inch in all of creation over which the Lord Jesus does not say, Mine.
[00:02:24]  The Lord Jesus lays claim, territorial claim, by the right of creation and by the right of redemption.
[00:02:31]  He lays claim to absolutely everything.
[00:02:34]  There is no neutrality anywhere.
[00:02:38]  No neutrality anywhere.
[00:02:39]  If you get that down, If you understand what it means to deny neutrality, you're well on your way to Christian worldview thinking.
[00:02:47]  That's the cornerstone of all Christian worldview thinking.
[00:02:51]  We heard it in the previous talk on apologetics.
[00:02:54]  There's no neutrality in presenting the gospel, there's no neutral zone where you can go and take the unbeliever by the hand and say, let's agree on these common facts, which are autonomously true, whether or not there's a God, and then reason our way to God.
[00:03:08]  Because there is no such place.
[00:03:11]  Now, Let's talk about Kyperianism.
[00:03:14]  A friend once commented to me, echoing a theologian that he had read, that there are three main currents in the Reformed river.
[00:03:24]  Three main currents in the Reformed river.
[00:03:28]  As it turns out, this observation that my friend passed on to me is something of a commonplace.
[00:03:34]  A number of people, I think, have observed this.
[00:03:37]  The first current would be the Pietists.
[00:03:40]  The Pietists.
[00:03:42]  These are those people for whom Personal conversion and resultant personal devotion, sanctification are the principal thing.
[00:03:51]  That everything, get saved and stay clean.
[00:03:55]  That's get saved, stay clean, go to heaven when you die.
[00:03:59]  That is the pietist streak.
[00:04:02]  Keep your own nose clean, stay out of trouble.
[00:04:04]  So that's the pietist stream.
[00:04:07]  Then there are the confessionalists, we might call them the doctrinalists, to whom the precise doctrinal formulations of the canons of Wutzberg are everything.
[00:04:23]  And they memorize the confessions, they study the confessions, and what I'm saying here is no knock against the confessions.
[00:04:30]  I'm.
[00:04:31]  As will become apparent, I believe that we need to be confessional Christians.
[00:04:36]  We need to connect ourselves, tie ourselves to the historic church, and confessions is one of the ways we do it.
[00:04:45]  But the confessionalist is someone who has tunnel vision with regard to the confessions.
[00:04:51]  The confessions are marvelous.
[00:04:53]  The Westminster Confession of Faith is, I think, a glorious document, but it doesn't address everything, it doesn't address Darwin.
[00:05:02]  Darwin lived long after the Westminster Confession of Faith was drafted.
[00:05:08]  You can't just say, I'm going to limit myself to this high water mark of doctrinal development in the Reformed world as though that settles everything.
[00:05:17]  So the Pietists are the first group, the Confessionalists are the second group.
[00:05:22]  The third group would be the Kyperians.
[00:05:25]  The third group would be the Kyperians.
[00:05:27]  These are the transformationalists.
[00:05:30]  The Kyperians are the transformationalists, and this ties in with my talk this evening on post millennialism.
[00:05:37]  Kyperians want to see every aspect of life brought under the Lordship of Christ in a practical, tangible way.
[00:05:45]  And if that were to happen, it would be a great transformation.
[00:05:49]  So the Kyperians are the transformationalists.
[00:05:53]  These are the reformed believers who hold that every aspect of life needs to be brought under the functional authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, under the functional authority, not just the formal authority.
[00:06:08]  Not just Jesus in the 17th dimension authority.
[00:06:13]  You know the difference.
[00:06:14]  So we're not just talking about Jesus is up in heaven and he has opinions, and we're going to find out that those opinions were correct when we get there.
[00:06:25]  That's not what it is.
[00:06:26]  He has opinions.
[00:06:28]  He wrote a book.
[00:06:29]  He gave us the book, and he told us to pray.
[00:06:33]  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
[00:06:36]  Where?
[00:06:37]  On earth.
[00:06:39]  As it is in heaven.
[00:06:40]  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.
[00:06:42]  That's transformationalism.
[00:06:44]  All right, so, pietists, confessionalists, and Kyperians.
[00:06:49]  Now, it's important to note, right at the beginning, that these do not represent three isolated emphases.
[00:06:58]  They can be isolated, I think, wrongfully and sinfully, but they're not supposed to be isolated.
[00:07:04]  Nothing is supposed to be isolated, nothing is supposed to be fragmented.
[00:07:08]  So, two of these emphases frequently are isolated, but that's a problem.
[00:07:13]  Not all three.
[00:07:14]  An emphasis, for example, on personal piety frequently excludes attention to the other aspects of worldview Christianity.
[00:07:23]  If you're focused on personal piety alone, you're not going to be absorbed by what the confessions say, and you're not going to be absorbed by the task of transformation.
[00:07:34]  You're just trying to get to heaven when you die.
[00:07:37]  So, that's the first.
[00:07:38]  An emphasis on personal piety frequently excludes attention to these other aspects.
[00:07:45]  And a rigid confessionalism often limits itself to those topics addressed by the confessions.
[00:07:52]  The confessions say nothing about transgenderism.
[00:07:56]  They say nothing about the sexual revolution.
[00:07:59]  Now, they condemn old fashioned sins like adultery and fornication.
[00:08:04]  Those things are addressed.
[00:08:06]  But the idea that the cosmos is an amorphous lump that can be shaped into anything you want, right?
[00:08:17]  Existentialism is the philosophy that says existence precedes essence.
[00:08:23]  Existence precedes essence.
[00:08:25]  That means matter is just atoms banging around.
[00:08:29]  It has no purpose, no meaning, no nothing.
[00:08:33]  And so, you, to follow Jean Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher, you have to choose who you're going to be, what you're going to be.
[00:08:43]  You have to take your choice, your will, will put an imprint on the little bit of Play Doh, neutral, tasteless, odorless Play Doh that is your part of this cosmos, and you just will to become whatever it is.
[00:08:58]  And that's where we get the idea that you can be whatever you want to be.
[00:09:02]  Do you want to be a girl?
[00:09:03]  Do you want to be a boy?
[00:09:04]  Do you want to be a six foot ten NBA player?
[00:09:09]  Well, they won't let you do that.
[00:09:10]  But, yes.
[00:09:16]  Yes, I hope I'm dead before this is.
[00:09:22]  Before all these, all my.
[00:09:23]  It's harder and harder to be a satirist these days.
[00:09:28]  Making stuff up, and you say that's wild and crazy, and that you put it out there, and then someone sends you an email hey, look what they just did.
[00:09:38]  So, a rigid confessionalism limits itself to those topics addressed by the confessions, and they didn't anticipate everything.
[00:09:47]  Now, of course, the confessions, because they're so scriptural, you can think in confessional terms and extend principles out to the modern issues, which is one of the things we should be doing, but we need to be going back to the The quarry from which everything comes, the scriptures, all the time.
[00:10:06]  But the third, the all encompassing worldview thinking of Kyperianism does not exclude personal piety or confessional orthodoxy.
[00:10:16]  How could it?
[00:10:17]  Personal piety is part of the world, and Jesus claims authority over the whole world, including devotions, including your personal commitment to Christ, including your walk with Christ, including the practice of confessing your sins and loving your wife and bringing up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
[00:10:34]  So, Kyperianism does not, Pietism can exclude Kyperianism, but Kyperianism cannot consistently exclude piety.
[00:10:44]  Neither can Kyperianism exclude confessional orthodoxy.
[00:10:49]  But it has to be grasped and held and embraced in its appropriate place.
[00:10:55]  Everything has an appropriate place, and balance is the name of the game.
[00:11:00]  So, if the lordship of Christ extends over every aspect of human life, We must therefore recognize that our personal devotional behavior is an aspect of that human life, as would be our confessional commitments.
[00:11:15]  So, Kyperianism, I would submit to you, is the total package.
[00:11:20]  Kyperianism is the whole ball of wax.
[00:11:23]  Having said that, we have to recognize that the devil is sneaky.
[00:11:28]  The devil knows how to sneevel into anything, including Kyperianism.
[00:11:33]  All right, so let's talk about that for a minute.
[00:11:36]  Kyperianism is the total package, depending.
[00:11:41]  So we want to follow Calvin, not Neo Calvin.
[00:11:45]  We want to follow Calvin, not Neo Calvin.
[00:11:48]  There is a movement, a group of reformed scholars calling themselves neo Calvinists.
[00:11:54]  And if you look up Kuiper, he'll be identified as a neo Calvinist.
[00:11:58]  There's an innocent way to talk about that, and there's also a suspect way to talk about that.
[00:12:03]  And I'm going to get into what is suspect about it right now.
[00:12:08]  So this is also important to note, and also right at the front end, right at the beginning.
[00:12:14]  Given the kind of world we live in, the progressive left gets into everything.
[00:12:20]  And This includes Kyperianism.
[00:12:24]  So, since I'm going to be loudly praising the Kyperian train, urging all of you to get your ticket and get on board, I need to make a distinction first because not everything that goes by the name Kyperian is Kyperian.
[00:12:40]  Not everything that goes by the name really is.
[00:12:43]  So, by Kyperianism, I am not referring to the third way above the fray approach taken by Tim Keller and his followers.

=== The Grand Indicative of Ephesians (04:49) ===

[00:12:53]  Okay?
[00:12:53]  Not talking about there is no third way above the fray.
[00:12:57]  While he would loudly, Tim Keller would loudly proclaim the name of Keller.
[00:13:03]  He would fly the banner of, not Keller, well, he'd probably presume fly the banner of Keller too, but he would fly the banner of Kuyper.
[00:13:14]  He would also want to embrace all three currents that I mentioned above the pietist, the confessionalist, and the transformationalist.
[00:13:22]  All right?
[00:13:22]  But he takes those three things in a particular order with a particular emphasis.
[00:13:28]  Remember, piety, confessions, and transformation.
[00:13:31]  For Keller, it is transformationalism first, piety second, and doctrine third.
[00:13:41]  Transformation first, piety second, and doctrine third.
[00:13:46]  Now, I hope you see the problem with this right off the bat.
[00:13:49]  This is actually a photo negative of the order we find in the book of Ephesians.
[00:13:55]  It's inverted.
[00:13:57]  In the book of Ephesians, it is doctrine first.
[00:14:01]  Doctrine first, three chapters of doctrine.
[00:14:05]  If you went hunting through the first three chapters of Ephesians looking for something to do, virtually nothing there.
[00:14:15]  It's just all these glorious truths.
[00:14:17]  There's a difference between an indicative statement and an imperative.
[00:14:21]  An indicative statement is simply a statement of fact.
[00:14:25]  The lectern is on the stage, the doors are closed.
[00:14:29]  Just simply a statement of fact.
[00:14:31]  Ephesians 1 through 3 is just one grand indicative after another.
[00:14:36]  Imperatives are where you're told what to do.
[00:14:38]  Close the door, move the podium, end the talk, those sorts of things.
[00:14:45]  That's an imperative.
[00:14:47]  The last three chapters of Ephesians are full of imperatives.
[00:14:50]  Husband, love your wives.
[00:14:52]  Wives, submit to your husbands.
[00:14:54]  Children, obey your parents.
[00:14:55]  Put on the whole armor of God.
[00:14:57]  It's telling you what to do.
[00:14:58]  So in Ephesians, it's all these imperatives, three chapters of imperatives.
[00:15:03]  And then we have, excuse me, indicatives.
[00:15:05]  Then we have the imperatives that are put on top of these indicatives.
[00:15:10]  And the most critical word in the whole book of Ephesians is therefore.
[00:15:16]  At the end of three chapters, he says, therefore.
[00:15:18]  All right?
[00:15:21]  Whenever you see a therefore, what's it therefore?
[00:15:24]  All right?
[00:15:25]  Therefore, do these things.
[00:15:27]  So in the book of Ephesians, you find doctrine first, doctrine first, piety, obedience, second, and then transformation third.
[00:15:37]  We begin with the doctrinal emphases of the first three chapters, the doctrines of high Calvinism, and move on to the personal ethics enjoined in chapters four through six.
[00:15:48]  The end result of all of it is the bride without any spot or wrinkle coming down the aisle of chapter five transformed.
[00:15:56]  That's what we have.
[00:15:58]  So you have doctrine, piety, transformation.
[00:16:01]  The transformation at the end of the process, at the end of the process, is entirely dependent on the preliminary work.
[00:16:09]  Amen.
[00:16:10]  If the foundation is crooked, the roof line is going to be crooked.
[00:16:14]  If you get it wrong at the bottom, it's going to be wrong at the top.
[00:16:19]  Now, what happens?
[00:16:21]  Here's the challenge.
[00:16:22]  What happens to you if you simply, like Keller, start with an emphasis on transformation?
[00:16:28]  I want to be in the city, I want to love the city, I want to transform the city.
[00:16:32]  And if you begin with that, what happens?
[00:16:36]  Because of the creational nature of man, all work of transformation must proceed from blueprints.
[00:16:45]  This is just the way God made us.
[00:16:46]  We can't work on anything without a plan.
[00:16:50]  You can't go into the workshop and just start cutting and sawing and gluing and hammering and have your wife come in and say, What are you doing?
[00:16:57]  And you say, I don't know yet.
[00:17:01]  Might be a birdhouse.
[00:17:04]  I don't know.
[00:17:06]  Whenever you start cutting and measuring and doing those things, you have a plan from somewhere.
[00:17:10]  This is just the way God made the world.
[00:17:12]  So, because of this creational nature of man, all work of transformation has to proceed from blueprints.
[00:17:19]  But if you have not self consciously started with the biblical blueprints, i.e., doctrine, then you're going to find yourself surreptitiously working from unbiblical blueprints supplied to you by old Slewfoot.
[00:17:35]  And this is why the third way above the fray, Neo Calvinism, is always going to veer into the left ditch.
[00:17:42]  Always.

=== Biblical Blueprints for Modern Life (09:47) ===

[00:17:43]  Unless they're already there, which they frequently are.
[00:17:48]  But when they're doing this, When they're starting with transformation and onto piety and then minimizing doctrine, when they're doing this, in order to maintain the appearance of balance to the outside Christian world,
[00:18:02]  which is oftentimes more conservative than the leaders are, I was talking to a Dutch Calvinist Canadian farmer once, and he said, You know, no denomination ever went bad because the pig farmers went liberal.
[00:18:22]  That's not where the rot starts.
[00:18:24]  So, in order to maintain the appearance of balance, they're going to need to keep up.
[00:18:30]  When you say, I'm in a third way above the fray, well, we're neither Republicans nor are we Democrats.
[00:18:36]  We're above the fray.
[00:18:39]  In order to do that, you have to remember back in the old days of the Cold War where the liberals would try to maintain a moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and the United States.
[00:18:50]  In order to do that, they had to suppress and deny things that the Soviets were doing.
[00:18:54]  And magnify bad things that we were doing.
[00:18:56]  And there's always bad things that we were doing, but they had to amplify them and they had to suppress the other in order to keep the thing looking like it was somewhat balanced.
[00:19:05]  It's the same way here.
[00:19:07]  In order to have the appearance of balance, they're going to need to insist on a moral equivalence between the racism they keep hearing about on the right and the death cult love affair with abortion and every form of sexual perversion on the left.
[00:19:23]  They will have to greatly amplify every hint of racism until it is an incipient holocaust.
[00:19:29]  Almost on top of us, and then minimize what's going on with all the Alphabet Plus people.
[00:19:36]  Well, what do I mean by minimize?
[00:19:39]  For example, James Wood, an author I appreciate very much, in an appreciative review of a book called Biblical Critical Theory, promoted by Keller, it's a 672-page cinder block of a book.
[00:19:59]  It's designed to help Christians, quote, make sense of modern life and culture.
[00:20:05]  Okay, we want to think biblically about modern life and culture.
[00:20:08]  Okay, amen.
[00:20:09]  That's what we're here for.
[00:20:11]  That's what we're doing, right?
[00:20:12]  This book is dedicated to making sense of modern life and culture.
[00:20:16]  And yet, there's nothing in it about abortion, nothing about the sexual revolution, nothing about the alphabet people.
[00:20:26]  Now, the phrase that Turreton would have used for this kind of stratospheric theorizing is completely out of touch.
[00:20:34]  That's not what you're dealing with.
[00:20:36]  How can you be taught how to make sense of modern life and culture when the problems you're facing in your community is how to keep Bruno out of the junior high girls' showers?
[00:20:48]  How do we do that?
[00:20:49]  Well, the men in charge of the big things aren't helping us, they're not giving us the tools that we need to fight that kind of thing.
[00:21:00]  So, how would this comport with the book's subtitle?
[00:21:02]  How the Bible's unfolding story makes sense of modern life and culture.
[00:21:07]  How on earth are we going to make sense of modern life and culture without reference to our polymorphous, orgasmic, and androgynous imperative, where everybody can be absolutely anything they want to be?
[00:21:19]  The wheels have come, everything has come unstuck.
[00:21:21]  Absolutely everything.
[00:21:23]  And sex is right at the center of it.
[00:21:26]  Sex is right at the center of it.
[00:21:27]  And you can't write a big think book without addressing it and act like you're not completely missing the point.
[00:21:37]  I realize that Kevin DeYoung might not appreciate me quoting him with appreciation.
[00:21:45]  But I'm going to do it anyhow.
[00:21:46]  Me and Kevin.
[00:21:53]  Because Kevin is right on the money here.
[00:21:56]  This is really good.
[00:21:57]  Quote Keller has often made use of George Marsden's observation that the reformed tradition in America comprises three different priorities or impulses the doctrinalist impulse.
[00:22:10]  Which emphasizes the confessions of the church and correct theology, the pietist impulse, which emphasizes right behavior and the internal affections of the heart, and the culturalist impulse, which emphasizes collective action and the external work of the church to transform society.
[00:22:29]  Keller has acknowledged before that he is a culturalist first, then a pietist, then a doctrinalist, that order.
[00:22:36]  So Keller himself says this.
[00:22:39]  I would say that my order is just the opposite.
[00:22:43]  In fact, if it's not too doctrinalist of me, I think that sound doctrine is more than an impulse.
[00:22:48]  It is foundational and indispensable for the other two emphases.
[00:22:53]  And amen to that.
[00:22:54]  While I'm at it, I might as well say that I'm not convinced that the culture forming agenda belongs to the church qua church, nor that it won't end up being co opted by an ever expanding list of social justice causes.
[00:23:07]  I think that's right on the money.
[00:23:08]  And when he says, I don't think the culture transforming agenda belongs to the church as the church, This is exactly correct, and it goes back to my earlier observation about the distinction between the church and the kingdom that we're going to get to in a moment.
[00:23:22]  And yet, do you all remember that time when Princeton gave an award to Keller and then revoked it because of his distinctly nuanced and muted negative stance on homosexuality?
[00:23:36]  So Keller disapproved of homosexuality because even though doctrine was at the caboose, it was still there, and he said he would nuance it to death.
[00:23:47]  But yes, at the end of the day, homosexuality is not conducive to human flourishing.
[00:23:52]  Okay, something like that.
[00:23:56]  So he had this prize awarded to him by Princeton, and then it was revoked after the outcry against someone as rabidly right wing as Tim Keller.
[00:24:08]  Now, the proof, and we have so many proofs of this, but the proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy is found in the fact that the award they revoked was the Kuiper Prize.
[00:24:24]  So, what is Princeton doing awarding the Kuiper Prize?
[00:24:27]  And what are they doing taking it away from someone who is simply a mild shadow of what Kuiper would have said about it?
[00:24:36]  Well, so because the woke hordes understand that religious commitment is a totalizing affair, there's absolutely no way for a Christian to remain faithful on issues surrounding the sexual revolution and also remain above the fray.
[00:24:52]  Simply not possible.
[00:24:54]  If at the end of the day you say, no, that's an abomination.
[00:24:58]  No, it is confusion, the way the Bible says.
[00:25:01]  Someone's going to put the Bible in front of you and say, This verse says that bestiality is confusion.
[00:25:06]  What do you say to that?
[00:25:07]  You either say amen to that or you don't.
[00:25:10]  And there will come a moment of decision where it's either going to be down that road or this one.
[00:25:17]  And so it's not possible to stay faithful on the creational design of God's image carried by the human race in the fact that God created us male and female.
[00:25:31]  All right, so one quick comment.
[00:25:32]  I don't want to burn too much daylight here, but a quick comment here.
[00:25:36]  The reason in Genesis chapter one, God embeds his image in the human race, and he does it, male and female created he them.
[00:25:46]  Right?
[00:25:48]  In the image of God, he created them.
[00:25:49]  That's the image of God, male and female.
[00:25:52]  It's God's handiwork.
[00:25:53]  That's God's signature on it.
[00:25:56]  So God painted that painting, and he signed it.
[00:25:59]  And he put himself into it.
[00:26:01]  His image is projected onto it.
[00:26:03]  Now, in the parable, pretend that the Lord Jesus is the king and he lives on the castle on the hill.
[00:26:11]  And let's say there's a bunch of peasants down in the valley who are in his kingdom, but they don't like the king at all.
[00:26:17]  And let's say the king is very strong, has a very strong castle, mighty men defending it, and the peasants are incapable of expressing their hatred of the king on the castle.
[00:26:31]  They couldn't overthrow him, it can't be done.
[00:26:34]  But they still want to vent their hatred.
[00:26:36]  What would they do?
[00:26:38]  Well, they would riot and burn his image in effigy.
[00:26:42]  That's what they would do.
[00:26:43]  They'd burn the image of the king they don't like in effigy.
[00:26:46]  And that's what all this trans stuff is it is vandalism of the one they hate in heaven, whom they can't reach.
[00:26:55]  That's what they're trying to do.
[00:26:57]  Now, and anyone who gets in the way, in any way, is going to be the enemy, is going to be cast as the enemy.
[00:27:05]  And if you're going to be an enemy at the end of the day, And everyone who loves Jesus is going to be the enemy at the end of the day, then you need to start learning now how to be a faithful enemy of the godless.
[00:27:18]  Because you don't want to be having them herd you into the cattle car and be trying to learn the lessons then.
[00:27:25]  So, following Calvin, I therefore want to make a distinction between the church and the kingdom.

=== Worship Central to All Authority (11:05) ===

[00:27:31]  The church proper is the ministry of word and sacrament, its primary functions are discharged on the Lord's day as the people of God gather to worship Him.
[00:27:41]  The church discharges its central obligation in the worship of God every Lord's day.
[00:27:48]  The cathedral at the center of the town is the church.
[00:27:52]  The town is the kingdom.
[00:27:54]  The church, the cathedral is the church, the town is the kingdom.
[00:27:58]  There's traffic and flow between the two, obviously.
[00:28:01]  The people in the town go to church, and then after church is over, they go back out to the town.
[00:28:05]  There's traffic and flow, but the church of God and the kingdom of God are not synonyms any more than the cathedral and the town itself are synonyms.
[00:28:14]  In all of this, there necessarily must be a harmonious relationship between the three governments that were established directly by God.
[00:28:22]  You'll sometimes hear in discussions of Kyperianism, you'll hear the phrase sphere sovereignty, and the three central spheres are family, church, and state.
[00:28:33]  Those are the three central spheres.
[00:28:36]  Under these three governments, underneath all three of these governments, is the foundational government of self control, which is wrought in us by the Spirit of God through the gospel.
[00:28:49]  Without this self governance, the balance of form and freedom in the other three governments becomes a radical impossibility.
[00:28:57]  As our second president, John Adams, once observed, as I mentioned last night, our Constitution presupposes a moral and a religious people.
[00:29:05]  It is, he said, wholly unfit for any other.
[00:29:09]  If you have a nation of fornicating potheads, they will not be free.
[00:29:14]  It is not going to happen.
[00:29:16]  If you have a nation of porn addicts, they will not be free.
[00:29:20]  It's not going to happen.
[00:29:22]  If you have people hooked on drugs, they're not going to be free.
[00:29:26]  It's not going to happen.
[00:29:27]  You have to be self governed.
[00:29:29]  The Holy Spirit has to be working in your life and heart and family such that the family hangs together because everyone in it is disciplined by the Holy Spirit.
[00:29:40]  That's how a family stays together.
[00:29:44]  But this is true of all three governments.
[00:29:46]  But assuming this conversion by the Holy Spirit, assuming this work by the Holy Spirit, then what happens?
[00:29:52]  When men are forgiven and set upright again, they find themselves functioning within the framework of these three basic governments.
[00:30:00]  Now, by basic governments, I'm talking about these governmental arrangements established directly by God.
[00:30:07]  The government was created by God.
[00:30:09]  This would not include the structure of your quilting club, your book reading group, or any hunting parties you put together.
[00:30:16]  You can structure those bylaws how you like, right?
[00:30:19]  It's your club, right?
[00:30:21]  You have dominion there.
[00:30:24]  You can structure your book reading group as a democracy or as a monarchy.
[00:30:29]  I decide the book, or we all decide the book.
[00:30:32]  You can structure it however you want.
[00:30:34]  Those governments are man made, but the three governments we are talking about here were created by God directly, and so consequently, He writes the bylaws.
[00:30:45]  The first God ordained government is the government of the family, following the order that God has established.
[00:30:52]  The husband is the head, his wife is his body and the executive, and together they shepherd their little ones.
[00:31:01]  So, don't just as a side comment, so don't treat your wife like she was a conservative airhead and then proudly say, and to her I've entrusted.
[00:31:08]  The education of all my sons.
[00:31:12]  She doesn't know anything.
[00:31:14]  And that's why I've given that task to her.
[00:31:17]  That's not right.
[00:31:18]  So, this is not a low view of women, it is a high view of women.
[00:31:24]  But it is a structured and hierarchical view of men and women together.
[00:31:28]  The man is the head, the woman is his body, and together they shepherd their little ones.
[00:31:34]  So, the family is the ministry of health, education, and welfare.
[00:31:39]  The family is the ministry of health, education, and welfare.
[00:31:42]  The second is the civil magistrate, which is the ministry of justice.
[00:31:47]  Their task is to make it possible for you to walk across town safely at 2 a.m. in the morning.
[00:31:53]  And justice here is defined by the Bible and not by the hurt feelings of somebody.
[00:31:58]  We're not talking about social justice.
[00:32:00]  The phrase social justice should hit you like the phrase bone cancer does.
[00:32:04]  Social justice is a lie from the pit.
[00:32:07]  Justice, simple justice, is biblically defined.
[00:32:11]  And then the church is the ministry of grace and peace, who is the Holy Spirit Himself.
[00:32:18]  Every epistle in the New Testament says grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, and one of them adds mercy.
[00:32:26]  But every one of them says grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus.
[00:32:31]  And you may have wondered, where's the Holy Spirit?
[00:32:32]  Why is the Holy Spirit never mentioned in these letters?
[00:32:35]  I would agree with Jonathan Edwards at following him and say the Holy Spirit is the grace and peace.
[00:32:41]  Grace and peace to you from the Father, Filioque, and the Son.
[00:32:47]  Now, what is the relationship of the three governments to one another?
[00:32:51]  These are Kyperian spheres that operate in the context of the kingdom.
[00:32:55]  In God's order, not one of the three is permitted to domineer over the others.
[00:33:00]  The state can't come to the church and say, You're not essential, you can't meet because of this virus.
[00:33:06]  Each one has its assigned task, and each one needs to tend to its own knitting.
[00:33:12]  The church does not declare war, the church does not collect the trash, the family does not administer the sacraments, the state does not review cases of church discipline.
[00:33:23]  And not one of these spheres is dependent on any of the others for its existence.
[00:33:28]  The church is established directly by God, the family directly by God, and the state directly by God.
[00:33:34]  Now, there are, this is the fallen world, in times of extreme crisis, as when Rome was threatened by the Lombards, one government may pick up some of the responsibilities of another.
[00:33:47]  Say there's a failed state and there is no civil government, but the church is still there.
[00:33:53]  All right?
[00:33:55]  If the church is still present, the leading ministers might get together and make decisions because they have to.
[00:34:02]  Or in other unusual circumstances, it may be the same way as when Paul prohibits Christians from filing civil suits against one another before unbelieving judges in 1 Corinthians 6 1 through 7.
[00:34:13]  Ordinarily, the church ought not to be adjudicating property line disputes, but we should prefer that to the scandal of asking pagans to define justice between two believers.
[00:34:24]  But with that said, There's definitely a hierarchy of honor in this glorious and eschatological fulfillment.
[00:34:32]  There's definitely a hierarchy of honor.
[00:34:34]  This is what it looks like the church does not fill up the world, and the church does not turn every day into Sunday.
[00:34:41]  But the knowledge of the Lord does fill up the world as the waters cover the sea.
[00:34:45]  Habakkuk 2 14.
[00:34:47]  So, how does this work?
[00:34:48]  In Scripture, remember the flow goes two directions.
[00:34:51]  The living water flows from the church out to all the families and nations of men, and then all the families and nations of men flow back to the church.
[00:35:00]  The living water, the gospel, flows out of the church to all the nations, and then all the nations stream back to the church in order to be refreshed, renew covenant, and then go out again themselves.
[00:35:12]  So, the nations don't stream to the church in order to live there.
[00:35:18]  They don't come into the church in order to establish permanent residency there.
[00:35:23]  They come to eat from the tree of life, and then they go back out again with a benediction and with a piece of Christ on their heads.
[00:35:30]  You are commissioned, go make a difference.
[00:35:33]  Go make a difference when you're writing code.
[00:35:35]  Go make a difference when you're changing diapers.
[00:35:37]  Go make a difference when you're repairing bicycles.
[00:35:39]  Go, in the name of Jesus, go.
[00:35:42]  Transform the world.
[00:35:44]  So picture it this way The worship of God is central to all of life, but it does not devour all of life.
[00:35:50]  The worship of God is central to all of life, but it does not devour.
[00:35:54]  It is the axle, not the wheel.
[00:35:56]  The sun does not burn everything up, but it does give light to everything.
[00:36:01]  The water does not flood the world, but it does irrigate the entire world.
[00:36:06]  The anchor fastens the ship.
[00:36:08]  The ship does not turn into a gigantic anchor.
[00:36:11]  The cathedral is in the center of the town, but it does not take over all the activities of the townspeople.
[00:36:17]  Their printing, their auto mechanics, their software designing, their lawn mowing.
[00:36:21]  In one sense, all of that is none of the church's business.
[00:36:24]  But at the same time, the church instructs the townspeople in the adverbs how these things are to be done, meaning honestly and before the Lord, with one eye always on the text and with a hard work ethic.
[00:36:35]  So the church is therefore at the center of the kingdom, but the church and the kingdom are still very different.
[00:36:41]  You can see the cathedral spire from every part of the town.
[00:36:47]  So, this next section of the talk is called somewhat oddly the restroom test.
[00:36:55]  You'll have to wait.
[00:36:58]  So, the authority of Jesus, the kind of authority that is granted to a sacrificial king, is an authority that mediates the kindness of the Father, and he mediates that kindness with the center fixed and all the edges in play.
[00:37:11]  The church teaches you how to be a father, but does not take over the role of a father.
[00:37:15]  The church instructs the magistrate, but does not rival the magistrate.
[00:37:20]  The church teaches wives to submit to their husbands and models that submission through dutiful and cheerful submission to the authority of Christ as found in the scriptures.
[00:37:30]  Interestingly, when churches say, no, only men can be elders, only men can preach the word, the church is being really masculine when they do that.
[00:37:41]  No, the church is being the bride, the church is being a submissive and obedient wife.
[00:37:46]  Our husband said, Men preach, men rule, no women.
[00:37:50]  And we're dutiful.
[00:37:52]  And the church, in obeying that, by having masculine male leadership up front, churches that do that, churches that insist on that, are not squashing the women.
[00:38:01]  They are modeling for the women what submission looks like.
[00:38:05]  This is obedience.
[00:38:07]  We're Christians, we're under orders.
[00:38:08]  We should do what we're told.
[00:38:10]  So, reflecting Christ, the church suffuses all of life the way sunlight fills up the day.
[00:38:18]  It does not displace ordinary life the way one billiard ball displaces another.
[00:38:23]  Rather, it informs and instructs ordinary life.
[00:38:26]  Wherever you are in the town, out in the kingdom, whatever you are doing, whether changing a tire or changing a diaper, you can turn around and look, and from that place you can see the church spire.

=== True Kyperian Practice Defined (04:00) ===

[00:38:36]  Everything is calibrated by that.
[00:38:38]  Everything is oriented.
[00:38:40]  And whatever you do, whenever you do this, whenever you're looking like this, whatever you're doing, you are reminded that you are part of the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
[00:38:48]  Now, returning to an earlier point, a problem has been caused by Abraham Kuyper's success and subsequent influence, in that Kuyperian is now generally taken as a term of praise in reform circles and not as a term of abuse.
[00:39:05]  Princeton University wants to give prizes with that name on it.
[00:39:09]  As a term of praise, this means that everybody wants it, and this has resulted in a number of pietists and doctrinalists who think they are Kuyperian, but who are not at all.
[00:39:18]  Wouldn't it be nice to be Kyperian?
[00:39:20]  It's not the same thing as actually engaging the world at every point.
[00:39:24]  True Kyperian practice is not to go out into the world and do pretty much what everybody else is doing, only with a Jesus label attached.
[00:39:33]  Anything the world can do, we can do five years later and worse, is not Kyperian.
[00:39:41]  You got fad diets?
[00:39:43]  We got fad diets.
[00:39:43]  You got aerobics?
[00:39:45]  We got aerobics.
[00:39:46]  You got whatever.
[00:39:47]  This is not the lordship of Christ.
[00:39:49]  Rather, it is Christians getting into the manufacture of knockoffs.
[00:39:53]  If something gets popular in the world, the Christians are right there with a competing model made with cheap labor in the third world and using a lot more plastic.
[00:40:02]  In order for the Kyperian spheres to be rightly related to one another, it is necessary for all of them to be rightly related to worship, a worship of God that is at the center.
[00:40:13]  In the first place, this means worship on the Lord's Day, and in the second place, worship in other settings like chapel at seminary or in your family worship around the dinner table.
[00:40:22]  You have to hallow God's name, you've got to reverence his name.
[00:40:28]  So, as seminaries vie for the privilege of instructing the next generation of Kyperian ministers, and a bunch of reformed instructors want to say, well, we want to teach our seminarians to be Kyperian ministers, how would you decide which one would do a good job of it?
[00:40:46]  One of the things you can do if you're dubious about a restaurant is to simply walk in and take a look at one of their restrooms.
[00:40:52]  Depending on the conditions there, you can go on to look at other things the menu, the prices, the service, etc.
[00:40:59]  But an appalling restroom ought to be a deal breaker.
[00:41:02]  If you're in a strange town, should we eat there?
[00:41:04]  Just go in and look at the restroom.
[00:41:07]  Using a similar approach, take a grand tour of all the Reformed seminaries in the United States.
[00:41:12]  Do not sit in on the classes or visit the bookstore or examine the curriculum, at least not at first.
[00:41:18]  Just make sure you hit the chapel service.
[00:41:22]  That's the restroom.
[00:41:24]  Sit there and ask yourself if you want this to be the future of the Reformed world.
[00:41:29]  Are they singing Jesus is my girlfriend music?
[00:41:33]  Is the worship inane?
[00:41:35]  Is the message God honoring?
[00:41:37]  Is the overall demeanor breezy and casual with shorts and flip flops abounding?
[00:41:42]  Is this what reverence and godly awe mean to them?
[00:41:45]  And the chances are, if you get into a conversation with someone about this and you raise the point, the defense will be to retreat to their true justification for carrying the reform mantle, and it will either be a tight doctrinal defense, the Heidelberg doesn't say we can't worship this way, or it will be a love and good works defense.
[00:42:02]  Our students volunteer in evangelistic outreach and numerous crisis pregnancy centers.
[00:42:07]  That's piety, and the other is doctrinal.
[00:42:11]  And this is nothing against doctrinal precision or active evangelism or social engagement.
[00:42:17]  The Kyperian approach includes these, and it does so robustly.
[00:42:21]  But the Kyperian approach never justifies a glaring lack in one place by pointing out another place where the lack is not so evident.
[00:42:29]  You can't defend yourself against a charge of stealing something by pointing out all the houses in town that you didn't burn down.

=== Chastisement in a Clown World (06:03) ===

[00:42:36]  On one other thing.
[00:42:39]  I'm not saying that all reformed seminaries have atrocious chapel services, any more than I'm saying that every restaurant in town has a filthy restroom.
[00:42:46]  I'm just saying that what they're doing in their chapel service matters, and it tells you a whole lot more than anything else you might look at there.
[00:42:56]  And so, let's bring this down.
[00:42:58]  I haven't said a lot about the state, so let's say a few things about that as I conclude.
[00:43:05]  So, let me conclude with a great quote from Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism.
[00:43:10]  If you want to start reading Kuyper, I would recommend you start with that book, Lectures on Calvinism.
[00:43:18]  And this is a quote that addresses the great crisis of our day, which is the fecklessness of our cultural, political, and ecclesiastical leadership.
[00:43:29]  Kuiper is quoting from Calvin's commentary on Samuel here.
[00:43:33]  So this is Kuiper quoting Calvin, talking about Samuel.
[00:43:37]  Quote, And ye, O peoples, to whom God gave the liberty to choose your own magistrates, see to it that ye do not forfeit this favor by electing to the positions of highest honor rascals and enemies of God.
[00:43:53]  Oh, that's centuries old, not relevant.
[00:43:59]  One of the temptations to folly that falls out of the notion that American liberty is a unique thing in the world is the idea that the threats to that liberty that we're currently facing are also unique.
[00:44:11]  But they're not.
[00:44:12]  Because of this, we don't look to God's word for wisdom on how to deal with it.
[00:44:16]  We think our temptation is a singularity.
[00:44:19]  We think that this moment that we're dealing with, this clown world, Athanasius, centuries ago, famously said, he was told, Athanasius, don't you know the whole world is against you?
[00:44:34]  And his adversaries were meaning the whole world of bishops were against you.
[00:44:39]  The whole Christian world is against you.
[00:44:41]  And Athanasius famously said, then let it be known that Athanasius is contra mundum, against the world.
[00:44:47]  If the world is against me, then I'm against the world.
[00:44:50]  We're in a more privileged position than Athanasius.
[00:44:53]  We are contra mundum nugosum, which is against clown world.
[00:44:59]  Don't you know that all of Clown World is against you?
[00:45:03]  Don't you know that these guys want to make themselves permaclowns?
[00:45:08]  They do, but let it be known, we're against all of that.
[00:45:12]  So, we think that this singular situation that we're in is the first time in human history that it's happened.
[00:45:21]  No, no, this is part of the life cycle of empires.
[00:45:26]  This is what diseased empires do.
[00:45:29]  This is what happens when we lose our faith in God and we wander off.
[00:45:34]  How many times in the book of Judges alone does this sort of thing happen?
[00:45:41]  So we think our temptation is a unique event.
[00:45:44]  We don't look to history to see how it has been dealt with in the past, but it has been dealt with by the Holy Spirit of God repeatedly in the past.
[00:45:53]  Blessings and curses are always binary.
[00:45:56]  Blessings and curses are always binary.
[00:45:59]  There's always a mountain of blessing to the right and a mountain of curses to the left.
[00:46:03]  There have always been scoundrels and fools ready to assemble in the king's court, and there has always been God's requirement for kings to look for good men who are ready to help banish the greasy climbers.
[00:46:15]  This was true prior to 1776, and it has been true ever since that time.
[00:46:20]  For century after century, many nations have experienced the heavy hand of tyranny and mismanagement.
[00:46:25]  For century after century, many other nations have been responsibly governed and have enjoyed the blessings of liberty for a time.
[00:46:33]  This is the kind of general truth that can be described in a proverb.
[00:46:38]  When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.
[00:46:41]  But when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.
[00:46:45]  Proverbs 29 2.
[00:46:47]  This is generally true.
[00:46:48]  Just look around, look down the corridors of history, read a book.
[00:46:54]  We are in a period of mourning right now, and we're in a period of mourning because God is chastising us with our rulers.
[00:47:00]  God is chastising us with our rulers.
[00:47:03]  The response to chastisement is not to blame them, the response to chastisement is repentance.
[00:47:09]  God, you are judging us with our rulers.
[00:47:13]  What do we need to do?
[00:47:15]  We need to turn back to you, we need to cry out to you.
[00:47:19]  So, we're in a period of mourning right now, and this is so because the wicked are currently in control.
[00:47:23]  Yates nailed it.
[00:47:24]  The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
[00:47:29]  But lest we blame the scoundrels inside the Beltway as though that were where the problem arose, the wicked bear rule there in a nation that holds orderly elections every two years.
[00:47:40]  We chose these people, which means that we are ignoring to our peril the pointed warning that Calvin gave.
[00:47:47]  What happens to a people who use this favor from God, free and untrammeled elections?
[00:47:53]  In order to bestow the highest honors on skunks, graspers, thieves, grifters, blackguards, miscreants, villains, and stinkers.
[00:48:03]  Such people lose their liberty to choose their own leaders.
[00:48:06]  And given how they were using that liberty, this constitutes no great loss.
[00:48:12]  The United States is only a nation, and we are experiencing no temptations except those that are common to nations.
[00:48:20]  And there's no way of escape.
[00:48:22]  We have to stop supporting a regime run by airbrushed mountebanks.
[00:48:28]  So there, I said it.
[00:48:29]  I'm clearly spinning out of control, so I better conclude.
[00:48:35]  Father in heaven, thank you for your goodness to us.
[00:48:36]  We commit all of this to you.
[00:48:38]  In Jesus' name, amen.