Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms

A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought

David VanDrunen

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

© 2010 David VanDrunen

All rights reserved

Published 2010 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 / P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

ISBN 978-0-8028-6443-7

www.eerdmans.com

EMORY UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN LAW AND RELIGION

John Witte Jr., General Editor

Contents

Preface

1. Natural Law, the Two Kingdoms, and the Untold Story of Reformed Social Thought

2. Precursors of the Reformed Tradition

3. Reforming Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: John Calvin and His Contemporaries

4. Natural Law in Early Reformed Resistance Theory

5. The Age of Orthodoxy: Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms in Reformed Doctrine and Practice

6. Theocratic New England, Disestablished Virginia, and the Spirituality of the Church

7. An Ambiguous Transition: Abraham Kuyper on Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms

8. The Christological Critique: The Thought of Karl Barth

9. The Kuyperian Legacy (I): Herman Dooyeweerd and North American Neo-Calvinism

10. The Kuyperian Legacy (II): Cornelius Van Til and the Van Tillians

Conclusion: The Survival and Revival of Reformed Natural Law and Two Kingdoms Doctrine

Bibliography

Index

Preface

As a law student and then a doctoral student in ethics, I often wished that I could read a book explaining the fate of natural law in my own Reformed theological tradition. As far as I could tell that book did not exist, and I was left to my own resources, with the vague sense that the rhetoric of many recent Reformed theologians did not match that of Reformation and post-Reformation Reformed writers that I was running across. After I finished my studies and got settled in my teaching position I decided to try to write the book that I had wished to read.

When I was a good way through my research, the appearance of Stephen Grabill’s Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics made an excellent contribution to this area of study. It seemed to me, however, that there was still more of the story to tell. For one thing, Grabill focused upon sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed writers, while I hoped, perhaps too ambitiously, to follow the story into the present. But I was also coming to the conviction that the two kingdoms theme could provide very helpful insight into Reformed thinking on natural law. The fates of natural law and the two kingdoms have been interconnected in the Reformed tradition, and examining these two ideas simultaneously provides a useful window into broader questions about evolving Reformed perspectives on Christianity, culture, and social ethics.

I am very grateful to John Witte for expressing interest in my project while it was still in its early stages and for his encouragement to submit it to the Emory University Studies in Law and Religion. It is a privilege to participate in ...