Christ for All of Life and the Lordship of Jesus Christ Theology : Bestial but Legitimate, Legitimacy Not Sanctity

This theological framework directly addresses the tension between the global lordship of Jesus Christ and the functional role of the secular state. By balancing a high view of Christ's cosmic sovereignty with a distinct Reformed Two-Kingdoms approach to civil governance, this model can be structured into two primary pillars:

1. Bestial But Legitimate (The Character and Authority of the State)

• Providential Authority: Civil government is a legitimate institution ordained by God to maintain basic societal order, restrain outward evil, and execute temporal justice (Romans 13).
• The "Bestial" Reality: Because the state belongs to the common, non-holy kingdom of this present age, it frequently operates with fallen, coercive, and self-aggrandizing power—mirroring the "beasts" of biblical prophecy (as seen in Daniel and Revelation).
• The Christian Paradox: Believers owe functional obedience and tax submission to the state, recognizing its divine authorization to rule, even when its leadership or policies are visibly corrupt, pagan, or hostile to the gospel.

2. Legitimacy Not Sanctity (The Boundary of the State)

• No Inherently Holy State: The legitimacy of a secular government is entirely separate from moral sanctity, spiritual holiness, or explicit Christian confession. A state does not need to recognize the lordship of Christ to be considered a lawful authority by God.
• Separation of Realms: Holiness and spiritual transformation belong strictly to the Kingdom of God (manifested in the Church through word and sacrament). The state possesses no authority to administer the keys of the kingdom or enforce spiritual devotion.
• Critique of Totalizing Theologies: This directly opposes any form of Christian Reconstructionism or cultural dominionism that seeks to christianize the civil sword. The state's purpose is strictly common and preservationist, not redemptive or sanctifying

• Briefly, it is this common grace, distinct from special grace, which is the basis of civil society—distinct in its turn, and for this reason, from religious society—with its science, its industry, its philosophy, and its politics. Émile Doumergue, “Music in the Work of Calvin,” The Princeton Theological Review VII, no. 1–4 (1909): 534–535. 

It is called an “everlasting covenant” Gen. 9:16, For all the peoples of the earth as long as the earth endures. Kline calls this covenant “the covenant of common grace.” Importantly, the covenant of common grace renews the cultural mandate. Genesis 9:1: “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’.” This repeats almost verbatim the language of the pre-Fall mandate but with one important difference—the word “subdue” is not repeated. This is because subduing the earth is no longer possible for fallen man.

That task has been transferred to Christ as the second Adam. He has in principle subdued the earth by his death and resurrection. That’s the already. And he will finally subdue it at the end of history when he brings all things into subjection under his feet and ushers in the new creation. That’s the not-yet.

The covenant of common grace is God’s promise to keep judgment in abeyance until the appointed time. Never again will God curse the ground or destroy all living creatures as he did in the flood (Gen 8:21). In his common grace, he will preserve the order of nature, “while the earth remains” (Gen 8:22). And this promise applies to all without distinguishing between God’s holy people and the seed of the serpent. This is precisely what makes it a covenant of common grace, because it is common to the elect and the non-elect. It’s not an administration of the covenant of special saving grace.

Meredith Kline’s view of Christ and Culture

Common grace culture is not headed anywhere. It is headed, in fact, for termination. The Scriptures teach that “The present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31), that “The end of all things is at hand” (1 Pet 4:7), and that, “The world is passing away along with its desires” (1 John 2:17). And in the book of Revelation, God says, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5).

Another way of putting it is this: common grace culture is not building Megapolis. The City of Man, even at its best, is not and never can become the City of God. To be sure, the City of Man has legitimacy, but it does not have sanctity. It is not holy but common. It has an ameliorative but not a redemptive function. Common grace functions as a restraint upon sin. It keeps fallen society from becoming as wicked as it would be apart from God’s restraining activity.

In this connection the relevance of the covenant of the common grace order may be noted. Along with assurances of a relative stability of the realm of nature, that covenant guaranteed equal civil rights within the institution of the state for all the peoples of the earth as long as the earth endures.

Another key point for Kline is that he sees the common grace mode of the cultural mandate in covenantal terms. He views the post-flood Noahic Covenant in Genesis. 9 as the reiteration in covenantal form of the common grace order established immediately after the Fall... We’re specifically told it is a covenant:

“Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you” (Gen 9:9). It is called an “everlasting covenant” Gen 9:16, meaning a covenant that is perpetual for long ages until the appointed end. And God’s covenantal commitment is further reinforced with a covenant sign: “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Gen 9:13).

Ruled out, therefore, is the kind of theocratic enforcement of biblical religion in the common world that is advocated by the postmillennialists.

The slaying of Abel by Cain illustrates a rapid development of sin, issuing into murder in the second generation. Hence the careful manner in which Cain’s conduct before and after the act is described. Cain committed his sin with premeditation, having been warned beforehand. After the act he denies his sin, is defiant, repudiates every obligation to the law of love. 

Even after God has pronounced sentence upon him, he is exclusively concerned about the consequences of his sin, not about the sin itself. When this is compared with the act committed in paradise, it becomes evident that a rapid progress in corruption of the human heart had taken place.

Sin proves powerful enough to prostitute the gifts of God’s common grace in the sphere of nature for purposes of evil. The first step in natural progress is taken by Enoch, the son of Cain, who built a city. Afterwards, in the eighth generation from Cain, the inventions of cattle-raising, of music, of metal-working appear. 

The inventors were sons of the Cainite Lamech, from whose song it appears that the increase in power and prosperity made possible by them only caused a further estrangement from God. The song [Gen. 4:23, 24] is a sword-song. Delitzsch well observes that it is an expression of Titanic arrogance.

It makes its power its god, and carries its god, i.e. its sword, in its hand. What God had ordained as a measure of protection for Cain is here scorned, and sole reliance placed upon human revenge through the sword. Even Cain still felt the need of help from God; the spirit of Lamech depends upon itself alone. Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003), 46.

Kline says that after the fall, cultural functions are mostly profane. What he means by this is that whereas cult must continue to stress exclusive holiness, culture is experienced alongside the enterprise of non-believers. It is “common,” because in the regime of common grace we can no longer do culture in the original way. Culture now “ceases to be holy kingdom culture and takes on a common, profane character.” In particular, political activity is profane. William Edgar, “Cult and Culture,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 287.

Since God has ordained common grace social institutions such as civil government, we as Christians may work together with non-Christians in order to seek to alleviate the most extreme impacts of common curse in this fallen world. Common curse and the effects of the Fall will not be overturned until the eschaton. But in this present age, by common grace, they can be ameliorated and off-set to some extent, and we as Christians can work together with unbelievers to seek those limited, non-holy, non- eschatological goals.

Third, the cultic boundary has a hermeneutical function. It affects the way we use Scripture and bring it to bear on the common grace realm. The cultic boundary means we ought not to misapply Scripture by, for example, treating ancient Israel and its civil law as a model for common grace governments. Kline sees this misapplication in the theonomic hermeneutics on the right, and in the social justice hermeneutics on the left. In both, Israel is viewed as a model for the nations of the earth.

 But the nation of Israel was not a common grace civil government. It was a typological anticipation or intrusion of the eschatological kingdom of the new creation. 

Israel, like the eschatological kingdom, was a theocracy in which cult and culture were institutionally integrated. The culture of Israel was not part of common grace culture. It was cultically-oriented culture, marked with the Sabbath sign, and set apart as holy unto God and with the temple as its cultic focal point. Therefore, it is inappropriate to use the civil laws governing the Israelite theocracy as a model for civil legislation of the common grace nations of the earth (KP 157–59). Christ and Culture: A Covenantal Perspective by Dr. Lee Irons

The result of such a conception is the undue mixing of the biblical concepts of the common and the holy.

 That is, what common grace makes secular is sacralized, and what the old covenant theocracy makes sacred is secularized. 

Kline concluded, “It appears then that certain varieties at least of premillennialism and postmillennialism are not compatible with the biblical doctrine of common grace, so important in Reformed theology. The amillennial position, on the other hand, is altogether consistent with it.” Meredith G. Kline,  The First Resurrection: A Reaffirmation

Social Duty and Utopian Delusion

Though it serves to keep a rein on the extreme effects of the common curse and to restrain the expression of the evil within man, common grace does not eliminate these evils. It is not redemptive. Accordingly, the state as an institutional embodiment of common grace is not designed to provide ultimate and complete solutions for malfunctioning society.

 Sin, which is the root of society’s evils, and death, the inevitable destiny which overshadows the existence of mankind, are overcome only through the redemptive principle and program of God’s special, saving grace in Jesus Christ. Functional objectives that belong to this program of redemptive grace are not to be attributed to the common grace institution of the state.

Justice is the concern of the state, not justification.

Its role is not eternally redemptive but only temporally remedial, and even that only with respect to the essentials of human needs and the excesses of societal malfunctioning. Apostate mankind in constructing the city of man is ever inclined to transgress the common grace boundaries of the state by projecting on it Utopian expectations in lieu of accepting the hope of the redemptive restoration of the kingdom of God, offered through Jesus Christ.

What a baneful disservice it is, therefore, on the part of biblical theologians when they confuse or even merge the Christian eschatological hope with pagan, humanistic Utopian ideals by appropriating the terminology if not the concepts of the kingdom of God and redemptive deliverance from bondage and oppression and prostituting these to the promotional portrayal of social-economic causes related to temporal political institutions. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 178–179.

The kingdom established by grace must be advanced by grace, then consummated in glory. Not by political power, but by the power of the Spirit, is the gospel carried to the nations. Glory as well as grace defines Christ’s kingdom. For him glory has already begun, and by his Spirit from the throne we begin to taste it (Rom. 14:17). The glory that will appear when he appears is a glory in which we already rejoice in spite of our trials (1 Pet.1:7-8, 4:14; 2 Cor. 3:18).

Not through a political utopia enforced by the sword will Christ judge and renovate the earth, but by his return in glory.

Edmund P. Clowney, The Church, ed. Gerald Bray, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 188–189. 

Common grace is understood to be the unmerited favor of God toward all men whereby (1) he restrains sin so that order is maintained, and culture and civil righteousness are promoted; and (2) he gives them rain and fruitful seasons, food and gladness, and other blessings in the measure that seems to him to be good. It is evident from this definition that the doctrine of common grace is closely related to a number of other important matters of theological interest.

 
It is directly related to the doctrine of God, for it is concerned with his attitude toward all men, sinners outside his saving grace as well as those within. It is concerned with the problems of philosophy of history and of culture, for it addresses itself to the progress of history and the personal and social development of mankind. It is a part of the broader problem of revelation, for it has to do with God’s communication of himself to mankind and the relation of special to general revelation.

 Moreover, it is interested in the knotty problem of the relation of the Christian to the world about him, and of God’s general blessings to mankind in relation to saving grace. Most of these intriguing areas of investigation can only be mentioned here without elaboration. A third evidence of common grace is the natural blessings which God showers on all men (Psa. 145:9; Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:35; Acts 14-16; Rom. 2:4; 1 Tim. 4:10). Every good gift is from the Father above (Jas. 1:17) and is an evident token of his constant faithfulness and goodness toward all creatures. Not only believers but all men receive and benefit from these gifts from day to day.

 
God means them as blessings which men should recognize as such so that the goodness of God will lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4). That they are not received as such is not due to any lack in gift or giver but because of impenitent and hard-hearted men who are treasuring up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Rom. 2:5ff.). M. Eugene Osterhaven, “Common Grace,” in Basics of the Faith: An Evangelical Introduction to Christian Doctrine, ed. Carl F. H. Henry, Best of Christianity Today (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 221–222, 224–225.

1924: The Synod, the Three Points, and a Church Divided 

This article has been adapted from MARSCAST Episode 260 featuring Dr. J. Mark Beach, Dr. Andrew Compton, and Rev. Steve Swets of Redeemer United Reformed Church in St. John, Dyer, IN. The defining moment came in 1924, when the Synod of the CRC met in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At the heart of their agenda was the formalization of Kuyperian theology within the denomination—specifically, the adoption of what became known as the "Three Points of Common Grace." These three points were:

 1. God displays a favorable attitude toward humanity in general. This referred to God's general benevolence, seen in things like the rising of the sun on the just and unjust alike (cf. Matthew 5:45) and in His patience and forbearance, as in Romans 2:4. 

2. God restrains sin in the world through His Spirit. Drawing from both Scripture and confessions, this point acknowledged that while humanity is totally depraved, God prevents people from being as wicked as they could be. This restraint allows for social order and general peace. 

3. Unbelievers are capable of performing "civil good." Though not saving works, non-Christians can still act in socially beneficial ways—obeying laws, raising families, creating art, advancing science, and so forth.

 At face value, these points seem reasonable—many Reformed believers today accept them without much fuss. But for Hoeksema and others, the problem wasn't so much what was being said, but how and why it was being said. They feared that the language of "grace" was being diluted, misapplied to the reprobate, and divorced from the covenantal context of salvation. To them, calling anything God does for the non-elect “grace”—even restraining their sin or letting them paint masterpieces—was misleading. Grace, they insisted, is favor, and favor belongs to the elect alone.

 The titular question seems to me (John M. Frame) to be central in the current discussion in the Reformed camp between Kuyperians and Klineans. Kuyperians argue that Scripture governs all aspects of human life, including culture and government. Klineans believe that politics and general culture are governed by natural revelation and common grace.  On their view Christians should not urge distinctively biblical principles upon the institutions of the broad society; rather, they should draw people’s attention to the demands of natural law, the ethical implications of natural revelation.

 “Natural revelation” is God’s revelation of himself in the created order, apart from such verbal revelations as Scripture, prophecy, and the divine voice from Heaven. Scripture speaks of this in passages such as Psa. 19 and Rom. 1. “Special revelation” is God revealing himself in words and sentences. The Gospel of redemption through Christ is part of special revelation. “, God’s kindness to those who do not believe in him, including his restraint on their sin. by John M. Frame  

The Temptations of Calvinist Politics

Kuyper is equally firm in his repudiation of any church-dominated theocracy. In one of his first editorials as editor of the daily newspaper, De Standaard, Kuyper stated his principle of the state's independence from any church interference in categorical language: 

"We absolutely deny the church the right to establish political principles that would bind the state."

 Kuyper explicitly repudiates all theocracies. "We do not desire," he writes in Ons Program (Our Program), the original 1879 platform for the Antirevolutionary Party, "that Reformed Churches receive the power to dictate to the civil authorities how they must apply the Word of God to the political arena." He adds: "In a pluralistic society (lit. "mixed society"; "gemengde gemeenschap"), not only do we not desire such a theocracy but rather we oppose it with all our might."

 The chief end for which Israel had been created was not to teach the world lessons in political economy, but in the midst of a world of paganism to teach true religion, even at the sacrifice of much secular propaganda and advantage. Nor was it merely a question of teaching religion for the present world. A missionary institution the theocracy never was intended to be in its Old Testament state. 

The significance of the unique organization of Israel can be rightly measured only by remembering that

 the

 theocracy typified nothing short of the perfected kingdom of God, the consummate state of Heaven.

 Vos, Biblical Theology. It is this emphasis on the typological character of theocratic Israel, on her temporary character, that we perceive a difference in the way Vos influenced Van Til and the way he influenced Bahnsen.

 That the purpose of Israel was “not to teach the world lessons about political economy” seems to us incongruent with the perception of theocratic Israel espoused in the Theonomic view. For Theonomy, the civil precepts of the Old Testament “are a model of perfect social justice for all cultures, even in the punishment of criminals,” a “model to be emulated by non-covenantal nations as well. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics.” 

For Vos and Van Til, the theocracy and the theocratic legislation are viewed in terms of being “stepping stones to a higher and even to an ultimate ideal.” The theocracy is a “model” of the perfect Kingdom in glory; for Theonomy, the theocracy is a “model” for all other earthly governments. This difference influences the respective ethical programs of Van Til and Theonomy. For Vos and Van Til, the laws of Israel cannot be easily abstracted from the temporary nature and typological purpose of Israel; for Bahnsen, they are much more easily abstracted from this context.

 The Theonomic ethic shares with Van Til a common understanding of the scope and radical principle of ethics. It distinguishes itself from Van Til, however, insofar as it distinguishes itself from Geerhardus Vos. Theonomy has a different understanding of the Theocracy and the theocratic legislation from that of Vos, and this different understanding affects the ethical program substantially. 

Van Til’s ethic is in fact best preserved in the writings of one of Theonomy’s most notorious critics, to whom this volume is dedicated. Meredith G. Kline has advanced the position of Vos and Van Til not only in the realm of ethics but in the realm of biblical theology more generally considered. In the writings of Meredith G. Kline, one finds not only agreement with Vos and Van Til regarding the Theocracy, but one finds this agreement to be programmatically significant.

 
For those interested in knowing what Vos and Van Til would have written in the areas of biblical theology and ethics had they each lived another generation, we can think of no better recommendation than a reading of Kline. T. David Gordon, “Van Til and Theonomic Ethics,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 274–275,278.

  Kline on Multiperspectivalism.  

At the forum I stressed the importance of starting with something that is indisputably held by theonomists and is, moreover, a distinctive and climactic tenet for them, namely, their contention that it is a function of the state to suppress and eliminate those who practice false religions. In my judgment, to impose such a role on the State would be in effect to countermand the great commission. As I see it, this reconstructionist program contradicts the essential biblical ethos and ethic of the church in this present world. Theonomists disagree – 

they see this program as the fulfillment of their millennial aspirations.

 One can take a stand with one side or the other in this dispute but what one cannot do is pass off the conflict as just a matter of varying emphases, as just a relative difference of position on some continuum. Clearly the difference is substantive, a difference not of degree but total contrast.

 It is not simply a matter of minor disagreement as to how to apply some general principle in a given situation. It is not a matter of some general principle of justice at all, but rather of the particular, precise functions that divine revelation assigns to specific institutions – theocracy, State, church.

 The defining of the nature functions and historical mission of these institutions constitutes a major element in the content of biblical law, each covenantal corpus of law being indeed institutionally specific. And dividing theonomists sharply from their Reformed critics is a radical difference of judgment as to the functions appointed by the Scriptures to the several institutions. Kline on Multiperspectivalism.

 
The Scriptures compel us to distinguish between the kingdom of God as realm and reign and to recognize that though everything is embraced under the reign of God, not everything can be identified as part of the kingdom of God viewed as a holy realm. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 170. 

Of special interest is the way the doctrine of common grace fares in different millennial reconstructions

Kline raised the question because he believed that premillennialism conflicted with the doctrine of common grace. Covenantally formalized in Genesis 8:15–9:17, there was the promise from God that all on earth, the just and the unjust, would be granted a measure of the blessings of earthly life until the termination of the present world. Until the consummation, the order of common grace is open to penetration by the world to come, but it is not subject to eclipse.

 Premillennialism, however, features “a theocracy on earth before the consummation, a universal kingdom of Christ in which those blessings hitherto received in common by all men and often in greater measure by the unjust than the just are no longer apportioned according to the principle of common grace but according to a policy of special favor to the people of God.” Short of the consummation, then, the redeemed in premillennialism are already in possession of glorified natures and experience their public vindication over against the wicked, a contradiction of God’s covenantal guarantee in Genesis 8 and 9.

Kline admitted that the cogency of his argument might be questioned on the grounds that Israel was in the Old Testament an earthly theocracy established by divine appointment. But, he countered, theocratic Israel under the old covenant was a limited, local kingdom where other nations coexisted with Israel and the common grace order continued uninterrupted. In classic premillennialism, however, the theocracy is a universal world order where there would be suppression of the common grace principle with its judicial order of the state.

Postmillennialism also has its difficulties in reconciling with the covenant of common grace. In premillennialism, “the millennial kingdom is a church-kingdom ruled over by Christ, who, on this view, had returned before the millennium” In postmillennialism, “Christ does not return with the glorified church until after the millennium and meanwhile the millennial kingdom is a state-kingdom.” But, like premillennialism, postmillennialism is in conflict with the doctrine of common grace when it locates the messianic kingdom prophecies in an earthly millennial kingdom where the universal ideal of old covenant law is realized.

 Consequently, consistent postmillennialists interpret the Mosaic covenant that God gave Israel as the constitution for the Old Testament theocratic kingdom as the constitution for an ordinary state kingdom. “What was meant to apply to the special redemptive institution of the theocracy—the demand to confess God, the guarantee that obedience to the covenant stipulations will be rewarded with earthly prosperity and power, etc.—must all be regarded by the postmillennialist as normative for the state, any state.”

The result of such a conception is the undue mixing of the biblical concepts of the common and the holy. 

That is, what common grace makes secular is sacralized, and what the old covenant theocracy makes sacred is secularized. 

Kline concluded, “It appears then that certain varieties at least of premillennialism and postmillennialism are not compatible with the biblical doctrine of common grace, so important in Reformed theology. The amillennial position, on the other hand, is altogether consistent with it.” The First Resurrection: A Reaffirmation

When Solomon ascends the throne of David in 1 Kings it seems that the promise to Abraham will at last be fulfilled and YHWH will be vindicated completely as the promise-making God. Israel are at their peak politically, and have become a great nation of many people drawing admiration from the surrounding nations. The rest that has come upon the land and the descent of the Sinai cloud over the temple mark the formal end to the exodus (1 Kgs. 4:21;1 Kgs 5:4-5;1 Kgs 8:10-11).

Jerusalem has become a world center since YHWH has ‘chosen Jerusalem so that My name will be there’ (2 Chr. 6:6). Thus the name of the Lord is hallowed on earth as it is in heaven. Furthermore, YHWH’s name as promise appears to be vindicated once and for all as his desire to give himself to his people to be their God is achieved in the permanent medium of his house as opposed to the obviously transitory tent.

However, from this high point the story of Israel’s life with YHWH progresses along a tragically downward spiral of syncretism-[The combination of different religious practices and cultural] and idolatry. The warnings of Leviticus go unheeded as one king after another profanes the name of the Lord, even in the place where YHWH caused it to dwell; for example:

Manasseh set up the carved image of Asherah, which he made, in the temple that the LORD had spoken about to David and his son Solomon, ‘I will establish My name forever in this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel.’ (2 Kgs 21:7) David A. Höhne, The Last Things, ed. Gerald Bray, Contours of Christian Theology (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2019), 70–71

 Although the form of God’s kingdom under the Mosaic covenant was a nation state, the kingdom of God on earth since Pentecost has the form of the church. Consequently, the same laws that governed ancient Israel cannot be insisted on in any land today. God gave laws to a theocratic state, but no theocratic state exists today.

 
Any human attempt to make one would be vain because only God can determine the form of his kingdom. In a similar vein, only God can renew a divinely initiated covenant,—for example, he renews the Sinai covenant with a later generation on the planes of Moab (Deuteronomy 29:1). Any human efforts to “renew” such a covenant can never rise above the level of human recommitments to the existing covenant. The Common Grace Covenants, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 207–208.

 Dumbrell draws attention to the fact that four of the eight occurrences of the word “covenant” in this narrative have the possessive pronoun “my” attached to it: “I will confirm/uphold my covenant with you” (Gen. 6:18,9:9, 11, 15). We must pause for a moment and consider the force of the “my” involved in the expression “my covenant” in these texts. We have already noted that covenant, on any understanding of the term, has the notion of commitment or obligation built into it.

 Is this a covenant by which humans are obligated, or does God bind himself and thus make mankind the beneficiary of the obligation so undertaken? Dumbrell rightly suggests that the “my” of “my covenant” indicates that the latter is the correct interpretation. This is a covenant in which God binds himself and obligates himself, and he will maintain the covenant in spite of human failure. Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 202–203. 

The World That Then Was 

Common Grace! So much has been said of special grace (that which is the result of predestination), that the theologians themselves have ended by ignoring common grace, which nevertheless is not less real, and the rôle of which is not less considerable. In effect, it is by this common grace that God dispenses “the excellent gifts of His Spirit to all the human race”, and “casts some rays of His light even upon unbelievers”.

Even the most accursed, the sons of Cain, are not deprived of this common grace, which, on the contrary, distributes to all “some gifts and graces”, “graces which are to be highly prized”, which enrich the pagans “liberally with excellent graces”, “evident testimonies of the goodness of God”, even with “the admirable light of truth” the brilliancy of which astonishes.

[The way the biblical narrative subsequently traces the significant beginnings of industry, the arts, and sciences in the Cainite communities (Gen. 4:17ff.) underscores the commonness of common grace, the ungodly as well as the godly enjoying its benefits. Thanks to common grace, chaos would be averted; human life would retain societal structuring through the continuation of the institution of the family, afterwards supplemented by the institution of the state (Gen.4:15, 9:6). Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 155.] 

If the gospel promise contained in Genesis 3:15 was to be fulfilled, final judgment must be postponed to make room for the kind of human history that was presupposed in the prophecy of the woman’s seed and the great warfare with the devil and his seed. A confirmation of the divine purpose of salvation was in effect given, therefore, when the Lord pronounced a temporal, common curse rather than an ultimate judgment against the generality of mankind (Gen. 3:16-19).

Though God’s approach to man to pronounce judgment was of such a kind as would manifest his displeasure it was not an apocalyptic appearance in fiery wrath. The world order continued. The sun was not darkened; the heavens did not pass away; the earth was not consumed. Man was not totally abandoned to the power of sin and the devil; he was not cast into outer darkness.

The positive benefits realized in a measure through this restraint on the effects of sin and the curse are not the eternal blessings of the holy, heavenly kingdom that come to the elect through God’s saving grace in Christ, but they are blessings—temporal blessings that all men experience in common by virtue of their remaining part of the continuing world order. These common blessings are not deserved by mankind, but are a benefit enjoyed only by the grace of the Creator in his forbearance with those who have forfeited all blessing by their rebellion against him.

A principle of common grace, a grace that provides benefits to the just and the unjust in common, thus informs the divine government of the postlapsarian world. This principle would subsequently receive more explicit formulation in divine revelation, especially in the postdiluvian covenant of God with all the earth. Gen. 9:16. But it is clearly implicit in the pronouncing of the common curse in Genesis 3:16-19, for common grace and common curse are correlative to one another. The limitations of the common curse, which distinguish it from the postponed ultimate, unmitigated curse, are those imposed by the simultaneously operating principle of common grace. 

Common grace was introduced to act as a rein to hold in check the curse on mankind and to make possible an interim historical environment as the theater for a program of redemption.

By reason of the common curse there would be natural and social evils, destructive earthquakes in various places and devastating wars of nations rising against nations, so that man’s civilization and man himself would be threatened with total extinction. But the restraining hand of God’s common grace would temper the common curse until redemptive history had run its full course and the appointed hour of the final parousia had come. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 153–155. 

Jesus’ reference to the days of Noah as comparable to the days of his own parousia. Although what Jesus emphasizes is the unthinking, unprepared character of the world when suddenly overtaken by the flood, his observation also reveals those days to have been a time of eating and drinking, of marrying and working in the field and in the house (Matt 24:38, 40, 41). That is, more or less the usual common grace conditions obtained. There was that measure of stability in the natural world and human society that the Lord has promised to mankind in spite of their perverseness, the common grace benefits that he had bestowed from the Fall on and will continue to provide as long as the world continues, according to his covenant formally promulgated after the Flood (cf. Gen 8:21–9:17).

 Structuring the common world order were the divinely appointed institutions of the family and the city of man, or the state. And in the midst of this common world with its common institutions there was also the holy institution of the covenant community. Gen 4:15–6:4 traces the development of this common order in the old world through the concluding 120 year period of the days of Noah. In Gen 4:25-5:32 the account focuses on the people of God. They were part of that common world. They were citizens in the city of man. They made their contributions to the advancing culture.

 
But what was distinctive of them was their additional identity as the holy community of faith. They called on the name of the Lord (Gen 4:26b); that is, they identified themselves as belonging to the Lord, as Yahweh-people, as his covenant community. Their calling on the Lord’s name was a confession of him as covenant Suzerain and Father. It was also a prayer for his protective care over them as his servant-sons. 

Along with the covenant community’s priestly witness involved in their erecting altars in the name of the Lord God, a prophetic witness issued from their midst in the form of individuals raised up by God as bearers of his word, agents of his lawsuit against the ungodly world (Gen 5:22; cf. Jude 14, 15; Gen 6:9; cf. Heb 11:7; 1 Pet 3:20; 2 Pet 2:5). And within the 120 year period the prophetic witness to the incredulous world, warning of imminent judgment, was dramatically reinforced by the ark taking shape before their eyes under the direction of prophet Noah, a visual portent of the threatened deluge-doom (cf. Heb 11:7; 1 Pet 3:20). 

As for polity, the altar congregation was strictly a cultic community. It was not a geo-political organization in competition with the ordinary political entities. It was not a holy nation or theocracy but rather a family community. Indicative of this is the casting of the history of the covenant community in the form of the genealogy of Seth (Genesis 5). The authority structure of this holy company was one with that of the patriarchal family of Seth and his successors.

 To be sure, that family also existed as a component of the common world order, but as an altar community it was not of that world. While its stance in relation to those outside included a welcoming evangelistic call to come under the protective sovereignty of the living God of salvation, its altar and prophetic witness—along with the ark under construction—challenged and threatened the devotees of pseudo-gods and their antichrist lords. Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 81,82 

Were it not for the grace of God in his favoring of Noah, the world that then was would never have yielded to the world that now is.

 Miles V. Van Pelt, “The Noahic Covenant of the Covenant of Grace,” in Covenant Theology: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Perspectives, ed. Guy Prentiss Waters, J. Nicholas Reid, and John R. Muether (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 116. 

The condition of humanity after the cataclysmic judgment remains the same as it was before; so the judgment has not altered or changed the condition of the human heart. The implication is that God would be completely justified in wiping out every generation of humanity by means of a great judgment. There is only one reason why he does not do so: because of his own grace and mercy toward us. The earth is maintained and preserved in spite of the human situation. Thus the covenant made with Noah creates a firm stage of history where God can work out his plan for rescuing his fallen world. 

Antithesis without Common Grace Makes a Devil out of Our Neighbors

 John Calvin specifically attributes the work of God’s common grace to the Holy Spirit. He explains, “If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.” Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. 

 If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we contemn and reproach the Spirit himself.

 What then? Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. We marvel at them because we are compelled to recognize how pre-eminent they are.

But shall we count anything praiseworthy or noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God? Let us be ashamed of such ingratitude, into which not even the pagan poets fell, for they confessed that the gods had invented philosophy, laws, and all useful arts. Those men whom Scripture [1 Cor. 2:14] calls “natural men” were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things.

 Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 & 2, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 273–275. article from the thegospelcoalition.org

We have seen that the Holy Spirit, as the third person of the triune Creator, showers many gifts on mankind in general. The Lord’s goodness extends to the whole world (Psa. 145:8,9). God is a model of unconditional, even counter conditional love. The Lord Jesus teaches God’s children to love their enemies, “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:44-45). God “is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35,36 ESV; cf. Acts 14:16-17). Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Spirit and Salvation, vol. 3, Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 80.

 The doctrine of common grace explains it satisfactorily. When man had forsaken his God, death and destruction was his doom. God’s grace, however, interfered. Not only His special grace, whereby He eternally loves His chosen people, but also His common grace to mankind in general. His long-suffering patience not only bore with sinners, but He bestowed many gifts upon the race. God’s friendliness is extended to all.In the history of the human race it is clearly seen that His common grace is the only power which keeps mankind from sinking under the wrath of God into the depths of wickedness and sin.

God reveals Himself in history as the God who loves mankind. Greek civilization, Roman jurisprudence, literature and art, the moral consciousness of the civilized nations, the development of morality in the life of modern nations—we owe it all to the common grace of God. Nicholas M. Steffens, “The Interrelation between the Doctrine of Total Depravity and Soteriology,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 7, no. 25–28 (1896): 306. 

The problem with the Christ-against-culture approach is not that it finds some cultural practices objectionable, or even that it discerns an anti-Christian bias in the spiritual core of a culture. Rather, it fails to take adequate account of what Calvin and later Reformers spoke of as God’s general or common grace, by which God works among fallen humankind to restrain sin and evil and to promote a measure of moral and civic order.

 Calvin says that in the midst of the total corruption of human nature ‘there is some room for Divine grace, not to purify it, but internally to restrain its operation’. God not only controls the wicked so as to defend and bless his people; he also dispenses particular graces ‘in great variety, and in a certain degree to men that are otherwise profane’. Calvin, a scholar in the classics, found much to admire in the writings of Stoic moralists and esteemed the virtues of pagans. He praises God for all relatively good actions, although he recognizes the fatal flaw in actions that ignore the love of God, and do not seek his glory.

 
Human culture in this fallen world has customs that tend to preserve life, to offer some protection to the weak, and to reward virtue. The apostle Paul traced the degrading of worship over the centuries (Rom. 1:18–32). As humankind rejected God, God gave them up to their own lusts, withdrawing the restraint of his common grace. The history of God’s encounter with human beings and their cultures continues, and is now under the rule of Christ, the Son of God. The wrath of God is revealed anew in Christ’s authority; even more God’s goodness and saving righteousness are revealed through Christ (Rom. 1:17).

 God keeps revealing himself in nature, including human nature. Paul argues that the knowledge of God that people cannot escape renders them guilty. Their altar to an unknown God confesses the very God they seek to escape. Edmund P. Clowney, The Church, ed. Gerald Bray, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 178–180.

 
If, then, we think along the lines suggested by Calvin, we may think of the universal offer of salvation as an evidence of common grace. It is evidence of earlier rather than of lower grace. All common grace is earlier grace. Its commonness lies in its earliness. 

It pertains not merely to the lower dimensions of life. It pertains to all dimensions, and to these dimensions in the same way at all stages of history. It pertains to all the dimensions of life, but to all these dimensions ever decreasingly as the time of history goes on. At the very first stage of history there is much common grace. There is a common good nature under the common favor of God. 

But this creation-grace requires response. It cannot remain what it is. It is conditional. Differentiation must set in and does set in. It comes first in the form of a common rejection of God. Yet common grace continues; it is on a “lower” level now; it is long-suffering that men may be led to repentance... Common grace will diminish still more in the further course of history. With every conditional act the remaining significance of the conditional is reduced.

 
God allows men to follow the path of their self-chosen rejection of Him more rapidly than ever toward the final consummation. God increases His attitude of wrath upon the reprobate as time goes on, until at the end of time, at the great consummation of history, their condition has caught up with their state. On the other hand God increases His attitude of favor upon the elect, until at last, at the consummation of history, their condition has caught up with their state. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace And The Gospel (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Nutley, NJ, 1977), 83–84.

 [Van Til’s point addresses a potential misunderstanding: one might assume that because grace becomes “less common” over time, it must be theologically inferior to saving grace. Instead, Van Til argues the opposite—common grace’s universal availability at history’s beginning demonstrates its fundamental importance. This creation-grace requires human response and is conditional; when humanity collectively rejects God, differentiation occurs, and common grace continues but operates at a reduced scope, becoming an expression of God’s patience toward human rebellion]

 Both Scripture and experience attest that common grace is resistible; hence the deprivation and godlessness that exists in the world. The prophet Isaiah put it well: (Isa. 26:10). “Though grace is shown to the wicked, they do not learn righteousness; even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil and regard not the majesty of the Lord” Bruce A. Demarest, The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation, Foundations of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997), 76,77. 

For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. Hebrews 6:7–8 

It was, therefore, plainly an act of grace and mercy when, after man in Adam had broken faith and covenant, God again appointed a city-structure for the benefit of the generality of mankind. This city would not be the same city that the Lord established at the beginning. That is, it would not be a theocratic, covenant city with an institutional integration of culture and cult. Such a holy temple-city would be provided through the redemptive program for God’s elect. 

The city that fallen man would build would be a common city, temporal, profane, and it would exist under the shadow of the common curse. Nevertheless, that mankind in general should in measure be fruitful and their work productive, that they should not be abandoned to chaotic lawlessness, that there should still be an urban structuring of man’s historical existence—this was, indeed, a good gift of the Creator’s common grace.

But the divine provision of the common grace city had been made known in the old world long before the Flood. Indeed, the disclosure concerning some of the necessary components of this common city took place immediately after the Fall. For as we have seen, implicit in the word of God’s curse addressed to the generality of mankind at the judgment in Eden (Gen. 3:16ff.) were intimations of the continuance of the marriage institution and of the task of subduing the earth.

And shortly thereafter the foundation of the judicial authority structure of the city was established in a remarkable divine communication to the one who was to become the founder of the city of man. Genesis 4:15 records God’s reply to a complaint-appeal of Cain and in this word of divine response we have the oracular origin of the city, or state.

In particular, under the contemplated judicial order an act of murder was to be met with full divine vengeance. In the language of Genesis 4:15a, formulated in terms suited to the immediate occasion: “If anyone kills Cain, he will be avenged sevenfold.” In verse 15b this asseveration of God is referred to as a solemn commitment, an oath that has been given to Cain (the text does not have in view any “mark” of Cain). Paraphrased the verse says:

Thus the Lord gave Cain an oath assuring him that it would not be the case that anyone who came upon him would be free to kill him with impunity. God declared that the anarchical situation Cain had described would not actually obtain. God’s face would not be hidden; it was rather his purpose to establish a judicial office to execute vengeance sevenfold, that is, complete divine retribution (cf. Lev. 26:24; Psa. 79:9–12).

The subsequent actualization of the sevenfold divine enforcement of justice in a human agency is reflected in the designation of the human agents of judgment as “gods” (cf., e.g., Psa. 82:6). Also, the Scripture identifies the state’s avenging function as an execution of God’s wrath (cf., e.g., Rom. 12:19; 13:4). Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 163–166.

Particularly significant in the altered identity of the common grace city is the corrective function now performed by it as a governmental structure. Positive regulation of societal order and direction of cultural endeavor must now be supplemented by an enforcing of justice through penal sanctions. As a major means used in his common grace to restrain the manifestation of man’s depravity, God assigns to city government the responsibility to act as his agent for the protection of the community by repressing and punishing evil-doing.

He appoints the city as the minister of the temporal sanctions of justice until the world comes to the hour of God’s final judgment with its eternal sanctions. It has the authority to kill the body until the Judge comes who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Thus the city is invested with the sword, and so heavily preoccupied does it become with this enforcement of justice, with policing and punishing, that it is known in this present evil world as preeminently a judicial order. Its distinctive hallmark is that it bears the sword.

Bestial but Legitimate: Abuses of the city result in urban malformations, like the slum, the ghetto, the gulag. But beyond the city’s malaise of social-economic-political injustice is an evil more central to the concerns of biblical revelation. There is in the city a spiritual malignancy, the fatal consequence of the usurpation of the world kingdom by Satan and the prostitution of the city to demonic service.

In the lurid exposé found in the apocalyptic mode of Scripture, the satanically perverted urban power structure is seen as a beast savagely turned against the citizens of the city who refuse its mark. The conflict thus depicted is not that of class struggle or racial strife. The victims are not those disadvantaged in things temporal. It is rather a matter of religious antithesis, an ancient diabolical enmity.

It is against the redeemed of the Lamb that the controlling powers of the world kingdom direct their hellish hostility.

Yet, in the face of the bestial aspect assumed by the city and the ensuing religious warfare that rages within it, Scripture affirms the legitimacy of the city. One thinks of the historical context of Romans 13. The legitimacy of the city is affirmed not because the bestializing of the city is a relatively late historical development. As a matter of fact, the Beast-power is not just a phenomenon of the present church age. The founder of the city was himself the slayer of the first martyr-prophet.

In particular, he established the institution of the state as a nonholy structure under the principle of common grace. The sphere of the state, though not exempt from God’s rule and not devoid of the divine presence (indeed, though it is the scene of God’s presence in a measure of common blessing) is, nevertheless, not to be identified as belonging to the kingdom of God or sharing in its holiness.

 We may not deny to the Creator his sovereign prerogative of creative structuring and restructuring and authoritative defining and redefining. And least of all should we venture to do so in the name of honoring the universality of his kingly rule. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 167,172.

Legitimacy Not Sanctity: In backing away from the mistake of identifying the city per se with the kingdom of Satan, we must beware of backing into the opposite error of identifying it with the kingdom of God in an institutional sense, an error equally serious and even more common. In the midst of the threatening world environment to which man is exposed through the common curse, the common grace city offers the hope of a measure of temporal safety, but it does not afford eternal salvation.

It should not, therefore, be identified with the holy kingdom of God, which is the structural manifestation of that salvation. Failure to respect the boundary between the common grace culture, of which the city is an institutional expression, and the holy kingdom of God is an error that takes various forms within a variety of theological positions in other respects quite divergent from one another.

With respect to this problem, special account will be taken here of a branch of the Reformed Kuyperian tradition, the tradition to which the present work is most indebted for its concern with the development of a biblical world-and-life view. We shall interact with the neo-Dooyeweerdian school and their application of the cosmonomic philosophy to the subject at hand.

Characteristically, members of that school have been critical of schematizations that distinguish between the city of man and the city of God. In particular, they would frown on the suggestion that the city of man is common, in the sense of nonholy. They believe that they detect a scholastic nature-grace dualism lurking in any such approach.

But to dismiss every two-cities schema on the grounds of such a suspicion is too hasty and undiscriminating. Certainly in the form being advocated here the common city/holy city distinction is part of a total view of Christ and culture that recognizes and indeed emphasizes the full cosmic-creational character of the covenantal kingdom at last realized through the Covenant of Grace.

Our contention is, moreover, that the identification of the common grace city as nonholy is not only systematically compatible with such a total world-view but that it is demanded by the specific relevant biblical data. The Scriptures compel us to distinguish between the kingdom of God as realm and reign and to recognize that though everything is embraced under the reign of God, not everything can be identified as part of the kingdom of God viewed as a holy realm. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 169–170.

We must apparently assume that the neo-Dooyeweerdians are prepared to repudiate structural dualism anytime, anywhere in the divinely instituted order. Otherwise it is difficult to explain their out of hand rejection of any and all views that distinguish between the holy kingdom of God and a common sphere (including the state) not identifiable as God’s kingdom as just so many examples of scholastic nature-grace dualism.

But how fallacious such a stance is becomes manifest when the attempt is made to carry it through to the eschaton and apply it to the eternal abode of the damned. In dealing with the phenomenon we call hell it becomes evident how necessary it is to distinguish in God’s kingly rule between holy realm and sovereign reign.

Hell cannot be accounted for, certainly not fully, in terms of the apostate direction given to the creational order by Satan and his followers. The place of perdition is rather God’s own ultimate structural response to the satanic rebellion. The lake of fire is the place prepared by the Creator for the devil and his angels and his human “seed” (Matt 25:41). And according to the biblical representation it is a place outside the gates of the holy city (Rev 21:8; 22:14, 15).

Though not even hell may be viewed as a realm beyond a presence of God in sovereign power and revelation of wrath, according to the conceptual model of the biblical imagery it is a realm outside the holy realm of the kingdom of heaven. It is embraced within the Creator’s reign (in a general, not redemptive sense, obviously), but it is not part of God’s kingdom realm.

 Nor does the Creator’s structural response to the satanic rebellion against his holy sovereignty wait until the Consummation. Scripture discloses the existence of an interim place for the restraining or imprisoning of demons. Surely this dark realm is no holy realm.

If philosophical theorizing is to remain under the control and correction of biblical revelation, the neo-Dooyeweerdian assumption that all creation can be identified in monistic fashion with the kingdom-realm of God must be abandoned. If our theology is not hampered by that assumption, we will readily perceive that it is too simplistic to appeal to the universality of God’s rule as the reason for rejecting an analysis of postlapsarian culture that distinguishes between a common city and the holy city.

If we listen to what the Word of God says specifically about the institutions in question, we discover that with the emergence of the religious antithesis, the Lord God, in the interests of his redemptive purposes, sovereignly revised the original structure of things, bringing into being within the arena of earthly history an interim world order which involved the holy/common distinction as one of its fundamental features. In particular, he established the institution of the state as a nonholy structure under the principle of common grace.

The sphere of the state, though not exempt from God’s rule and not devoid of the divine presence (indeed, though it is the scene of God’s presence in a measure of common blessing) is, nevertheless, not to be identified as belonging to the kingdom of God or sharing in its holiness. We may not deny to the Creator his sovereign prerogative of creative structuring and restructuring and authoritative defining and redefining. And least of all should we venture to do so in the name of honoring the universality of his kingly rule.

Appreciation is due to the cosmonomic philosophy for contributions it has made to the interpretation of the structure of created reality, but its canonization of a formal monistic schema for the creational structures has tended to render it impervious at certain important points to the instruction of the canonical Scriptures.

It cannot accommodate in its world-view the Bible’s conceptual modeling of the cosmos (as in the case of the apocalyptic depiction of hell as the outside realm) or the Bible’s ordering of culture by specific ordinances (as in the case of the common grace instituting of the state).

Thus, ironically, this world-view which dismisses the distinction between the common city of man and the holy city of God as a form of nature-grace scholasticism itself falls under suspicion of being a new scholasticism by according in practice a hermeneutical priority to philosophical speculation over perspicuous biblical revelation.

It may be added that though the perspectivalist method of doing theology is critical of the cosmonomic philosophy, it too is beset by this same hermeneutical problem, as evidenced for one thing in its handling of this very subject of the theology of the state. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 170–172.

Substitution of the temporal causes of common grace social-political concerns for the absolutely distinctive purpose and program of eternal salvation is theological confusion at a most fundamental level. Redemptive election’s ultimate alignment of saved versus lost cuts across the lines of distinction between peasants and kings with perfect indifference to all such socio-economic partisanship.

God’s saving grace is no respecter of persons, rich or poor. Neither is his holy judgment. To identify the redemptive kingdom of the God of the Hebrews with the common causes of the city of man is a profaning of the holy, a prostitution of the gospel, a diabolical repudiation of the atonement accomplished by Jesus Christ. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 286.

Ruled out, therefore, is the kind of theocratic enforcement of biblical religion in the common world that is advocated by the postmillennialists. This conclusion could be supported by various other lines of exegetical and theological evidence. We might recall the statement of Jesus concerning the similarity of the days of Noah and of the Son of Man (Matt. 24:37–41; Luke 17:26, 27). Or we might show the likeness of the present church age to the patriarchal interim by pointing to the use of the patriarchs’ mode of life as a model for the Christian life.

A particularly pertinent example of this is Peter’s identification of Christians as pilgrims and strangers in the world (1 Pet 1:1; 2:11; cf. Heb 11:9, 13). At a deeper, spiritual level there is also the similarity of the Spirit’s presence and working in the patriarchal and present ages—invisibly present but working mightily within for the transformation of individuals and the edification of the covenant community. Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 170–171. 

The Creation and Fall of Man, and His Incapacity to Perform What Is Truly Good 

We believe that God created man out of the dust of the earth, and made and formed him after His own image and likeness, good, righteous, and holy, capable in all things to will agreeably to the will of God. But being in honor, he understood it not, neither knew his excellency, but willfully subjected himself to sin and consequently to death and the curse, giving ear to the words of the devil. 

 For the commandment of life, which he had received, he transgressed; and by sin separated himself from God, who was his true life; having corrupted his whole nature; whereby he made himself liable to corporal and spiritual death.

 And being thus become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways, he has lost all his excellent gifts which he had received from God, and retained only small remains thereof, which, however, are sufficient to leave man without excuse; for all the light which is in us is changed into darkness, as the Scriptures teach us, saying: The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not; where St. John calls men darkness. THE BELGIC CONFESSION ARTICLE XIV.

 Historic Creeds and Confessions, electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Lexham Press, 1997). 

Therefore all men are conceived in sin, and are by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto; and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their nature, or to dispose themselves to reformation. ARTICLE 3 THE CANONS OF DORDT 

There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural understanding, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the difference between good and evil, and shows some regard for virtue and for good outward behavior. But so far is this understanding of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to true conversion that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay further, this understanding, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and hinders in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God. ARTICLE 4 THE CANONS OF DORDT. Historic Creeds and Confessions, electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Lexham Press, 1997). 

Now apply this to man’s moral attitude toward God. Both parties to the debate on common grace should be willing to agree that Adam and Eve had the requirements of God’s law written on their hearts. We need not concern ourselves here with the distinction between the “works of the law” and the “law.” We are not speaking now of man’s ethical reaction to God. We are speaking only of God’s revelational relationship to man. And on that point all should be equally anxious to maintain that God originally spoke plainly to man, both in the “book of nature” and in the “book of conscience.” 

Wherever man would turn he saw the living God and His requirements. Whether he reasoned about nature or whether he looked within, whether it was the starry heavens above or the moral law within, both were equally insistent and plain that God, the true God, stood before him. It should also be recognized that man was, from the outset, confronted with positive, as well as with natural, revelation. Dr. Vos speaks of this as pre-redemptive special revelation. 

God walked and talked with man. Natural revelation must not be separated from this supernatural revelation. To separate the two is to deal with two abstractions instead of with one concrete situation. That is to say, natural revelation, whether objective or subjective, is in itself a limiting conception. It has never existed by itself so far as man is concerned. It cannot fairly be considered, therefore, as a fixed quantity, that can be dealt with in the same way at every stage of man’s moral life. Man was originally placed before God as a covenant personality.

 It is no doubt with this in mind that Calvin speaks of sinners as being covenant-breakers. The phrase has come into common usage among Reformed theologians. Common as the usage of the phrase may be, however, the point we have made perhaps needs stressing. All too easily do we think of the covenant relation as quite distinct and independent of natural revelation. The two should be joined together. To speak of man’s relation to God as being covenantal at every point is merely to say that man deals with the personal God everywhere.

 Every manipulation of any created fact is, as long as man is not a sinner, a covenant-affirming activity. Every manipulation of any fact, as soon as man is a sinner, is a covenant-breaking activity. We need not hesitate to affirm, then, that in the beginning God loved mankind in general. That was before mankind had sinned against God. A little later God hated mankind in general. That was after mankind had sinned against God. 

Is there any doubt that the elect, as well as the reprobate, were under the wrath of God? Calvin says that the whole human race is “individually bound by the guilt and desert of eternal death, as derived from the person of Adam.” So the elect and the reprobate are under a common wrath. If there is meaning in this—and who denies it? there may and must, with equal right, be said to be an earlier attitude of common favor. Indeed, the reality of the “common wrath” depends upon the fact of the earlier “common grace.” But after the common, in each case, comes the conditional. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace And The Gospel (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Nutley, NJ, 1977), 74.