(David) The simplistic nature of the two-kingdom solutions flowing from Westminster West is nowhere more obvious than in this comment by Darryl Hart under another post on this blog:
While I have you, since you think 2k is nonsense, I wonder if you reject the separation of church and state and would prefer ministers and elders to rule over everything. As an elder I can kind of warm to that idea, but I'd hate to have to share power with the Anglo-Catholic priest across the street.
Now I know that Dr. Hart wrote a whole book (Secular Faith) lauding separation of Church and State as a Christian virtue. And I know he's convinced that if everyone did it his way it would work quite nicely. But imagine Calvin's work with Geneva's city council in the face of Dr. Hart's excoriation of pastors exercising temporal-kingdom influence. Imagine Luther facing the weight of papal authority without prevailing upon a prince's religious faith for support.
Dr. Hart will likely respond, "But my system wouldn't allow Rome greater authority than Geneva or Mecca within the state. All religions would be equally disenfranchised under the rule I propose."
Is there a rogue virus on the loose in Escondido? An outbreak of utopian idealism? There snuggled amidst the Westminster worthies do we spy a wide-eyed believer in the perfectibility of man? No, yet more remarkable, in the a-religious neutrality of human government?
Dr. Hart clears Washington of Christian influence, segregates Christian teaching and practice to the Church, and Washington D.C. becomes a religion-free zone? Nonsense. What Dr. Hart's proclaiming is eradication of Christ from state. Remove the Church, remove the Word, remove Christian influence and teaching from worldly authority and the vacuum will not go unfilled. Dr. Hart, here's my answer to your question: I will take the rule of your hypothetical Anglo-Catholic priest if the alternative is the rule of a Muslim imam--or even the rule of Nancy Pelosi.
Luther and Calvin's two-kingdom practices bear no resemblance to the teaching of such men. In all honesty, modern advocates of the two kingdom approach stand closer to the Mennonites than to the magisterial Reformers.
Where, I ask, but in Dr. Hart's mind does a human government devoid of religion exist?
