Matthew Tuininga
Brandon Adams of Contrast recently posted a link to a helpful post by Matthew Tuininga which was recently posted on the Reformation21 blog. (You can see Brandon’s post here.) Here are some parts that jumped out at me in light of all the political ruckus that accompanies election time in the United States (bold emphasis is mine):
But in the late nineteenth century a new challenge arose. Protestant liberalism, particularly the version epitomized in the social gospel, sought to emphasize the immediate implications of the kingdom of Christ in this world. Any Protestant doctrine deemed too conservative, or too tolerant of the status quo, was minimized or abandoned. The kingdom of God, it was said, was to transform all of the institutions of this life, and this was to be the goal of all Christians in all their vocations, including politics.
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Some contemporary two kingdoms advocates, particularly Darryl Hart, have stepped on the toes of many conservative evangelicals by arguing that the evangelical attitude toward the church and politics is often nothing better than a conservative version of the social gospel. In several books, including The Lost Soul of American Protestantism,A Secular Faith, and From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin, Hart has skillfully demonstrated the pietist post-millennial origins of both American evangelicalism and the social gospel, arguing that these groups have far more in common than most scholars would like to admit. In contrast, Hart argues, confessional Reformed Christians have always been much more careful not to identify the kingdom of God with social or political transformation. They have rightly recognized that the institutional expression of the kingdom in this age is the church, not the state, the family, or any other created institution.
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The kingdom is otherworldly in the sense that it is future and its full consummation awaits Christ’s return. The way in which we access that kingdom…is through the regular means of grace, specifically preaching and the administration of the sacraments. When we emphasize all of life as kingdom activity, just as when we view all of life as worship, we lose sight of what is distinctive and vital about the church itself.
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As 1 Corinthians 7 and Ephesians 5-6 make clear, because Christians live between two ages, they cannot turn everything they do into the kingdom of God, but they are to do everything that they do in obedience to Christ’s lordship.
The Sovereign Logos 