Ok, we ought not be given to over-statement.  And, being the second most uninterested North American male in athletics, I am loathe to make sports analogies.

But, come on, you have to admit that Clark makes it all look effortless.

While I can’t help but like the Vosian observation that pre- and post-mill views are two sides of the same skewed coin, I am still a bit more warm to finding forms of theonomy (hard and soft) to be versions of Cross-as-kick-off-prosperity-gospel. Some forms come in cheesy comb-overs on TV, while others come in sober, well-read intelliegentsia. For some it’s about personal health-and-wealth, for others institutional health-and-wealth. Then there’s everything in between for those a bit scanadalized by the cheesy comb-over or scared by the ominous leering of Rushdooney (man, that guy petrifies me just looking at him).

Are there really raised hands after, “For those in Christ, the sting of death has been removed but death has not”? What isn’t understood here? Everybody dies. If we are still subject to something as undeniable as death, what makes anyone think life in this age is all that different for those who have faith?

Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. has recently made available a chapter called “Theonomy and Postmillenialiam.”

There is a lot of good stuff in here (I could do without his out-of-place “transformative” language toward the end; but I would rather give the benefit of the doubt by employing the tried and true analogia fidei, interpreting this piece via the whole and conclude that Gaffin doesn’t mean what someone like Keller does). But I particularly like Gaffin’s phrase “fully involved detachment” in describing what seems more conducive to a genuinely Amillenial Reformed piety when it comes to our approach to the world in a two-kingdom model. I think it is a nice complement to Hart’s “Tracking with the Liturgicals.” It seems especially helpful in light of some recent discussions over at DRD in which there seemed quite a bit of sympathy for terms such as “activism” (and the tributaries which run through it) by those who otherwise espouse good two-kingdom Reformed confessionalism.

Whenever I try to articulate just how I understand the way we negotiate our world as Reformed Christians over against every other tradition, I have managed to be accused amongst my own with fairly mild charges (“ho-hum”), to more animated ones (“apathetic,” or “Dispensational-polish-stower”) to much more strident and not a little loaded ones (“Liberal,” or even “antinomian”). My guess is that this is similar to many miscommunications in human exchange, a problem of either not speaking correctly, not hearing accurately or, realistically, both.

Such interpretations remind me of another current discussion about Mormonism when I make the point that the nomenclature of “cult” to describe it is completely unhelpful; it is a supremely sloppy, outdated term that only serves to both obscure and promote religious bigotry. Hunter S. Thompson may have dubbed it a sustained effort at “fear and loathing on the Washington 2008 trail.” At best it is simply lazy, and at worst, it is a thinly veiled effort to carelessly allow slander to unfettered falsity in order to make a point about that falsity—an old Fundamentalist trick. Doing so seems to say more about the slanderer than the victim. But it sure does seem curious to me that those of us who stand in a historical and truly evangelical, Protestant tradition that makes such a phenomenal fuss over the word “alone” in five poignant places—to the point of still enduring Trent’s anathema—can exercise such sloppiness as to suggest there is no significant difference between Jim Jones and LDS President Gordon B. Hinkley (insert a plug here for PBS’s documentary Jonestown); the failure to make no appreciable distinction between Jonestown (cult) and Sault Lake City (false religion) is similar to the failure to distinguish between “fully involved detachment” and “ho-hum, apathetic antinomianism.” I quite feel Mitt’s pain.

Nevertheless, here’s to Dr. Gaffn having better luck than me in trying to make the point that true Christianity is nothing if not cognizant of the balance and nuance necessary to at once fully embrace a thorough-going high view of creation and a world-affirming piety (fully involved) and fully reject that such implies, contra Calvin, that we are to be just attached enough to this world that we think ours is a project to do what is God’s alone to finally effect (detachment). Granted—like Forrest said—it can be hard to know where the earth stops and heaven begins. But that seems to be exactly the point.

Forgive me for not wading completely through the over two-hundred comments on THIS THREAD before I posted this. But I’m not sure this was even discussed over there.

In his article, How Many Points?, Richard Muller rightly argues that Calvinism=The Reformed Faith “as defined by the great Reformed confessions.” These confessions are listed as The Second Helvetic Confession, The Three Forms of Unity, and the Westminster Standards (he also mentions are the Geneva Catechism and the Scot’s Confession).

Of them Muller writes:

All of these documents, in addition to standing in substantial agreement on the so-called five points — total inability to attain one’s own salvation, unconditional grace, limited efficacy of Christ’s all-sufficient work of satisfaction, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints — also stand in substantial agreement on the issues of the baptism of infants, the identification of sacraments as means of grace, and the unity of the one covenant of grace from Abraham to the eschaton. They also — all of them — agree on the assumption that our assurance of the salvation, wrought by grace alone through the work of Christ and God’s Spirit in us, rests not on our outward deeds or personal claims but on our apprehension of Christ in faith and on our recognition of the inward work of the Spirit in us. Because this assurance is inward and cannot easily or definitively be externalized, all of these documents also agree that the church is both visible and invisible — that it is a covenanted people of God identified not by externalized indications of the work of God in individuals, such as adult conversion experiences but by the preaching of the word of God and the right administration of the sacraments. Finally, they all agree, either explicitly or implicitly, that the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 is the kingdom of grace established by Christ at his first coming that extends until his Second Coming at the end of the world.

I’ve highlighted what I’d like to focus on. This sentence is a broad outline of the amillennial position, the view I hold. In the conclusion of his article Muller asserts that the amillennial view of the end of the world is in fact a “point” of Calvinism and the Reformed faith.

It’s easy to figure out that Dispensational Premillennialism counters the covenant theology of the Reformed confessions and is therefore a position that counters Calvinism. Muller explains:

The problem of multiple dispensations of salvation is clearly related to the problem of the millennium. Such a teaching assumes not only that salvation has been administered differently in various ages of the world but, contrary to the Reformed Confessions’ understanding of Scripture, also that one church has not existed “from the beginning of the world,” will not “last until the end,” and has not been universally “preserved by God against the rage of the world” (BC, XXVII). Does this approach to salvation indicate anything in relation to the five points? At very least, it implies that the perseverance of the saints and, above all, the understanding of that perseverance as the perseverance of God for his saints, is not a teaching universally applicable to the people of God. And, granting that a multiplication of covenants bars the way to a perseverance of the saints throughout the history of God’s people, it must also introduce conditions for the election of the chosen people in past dispensations. Entrance into these other covenantal arrangements rests on obedience or decision — rather than obedience resting on the covenant itself and on the unconditional election that is its foundation.

But by saying that the confessions teach that “the ‘thousand years’ of Revelation 20 is the kingdom of grace established by Christ at his first coming that extends until his Second Coming at the end of the world”, Muller also disqualifies from Calvinism all who believe in a yet-to-come millennial kingdom (a golden-age if you will) on the earth. He may have had postmillennialism in mind when he wrote:

Various forms of millennialism militate against the irresistible grace and the perseverance identified in the five points by placing the church into an interim condition before the fullness of the grace and lordship of Christ is revealed.

Here are some questions to consider and discuss:

Do the Reformed Confessions teach, explicitly or implicitly, the amillennial view of last things?

Is postmillennialism counter-confessional?

Can postmillenarians be called Calvinists or Reformed?

If we say that we are able to call postmillenarians Calvinists, then isn’t Muller wrong about the amillennial view being a “point” of Calvinism?

And for kicks and good measure consider the following section from Chapter XI of the Second Helvetic Confession:

We further condemn Jewish dreams that there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgment, and that the pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms of the earth. For evangelical truth in Matt., chs. 24 and 25, and Luke, ch. 18, and apostolic teaching in II Thess., ch. 2, and II Tim., chs. 3 and 4, present something quite different.