The Two Kingdoms and the Ordo Salutis: Life Beyond Judgment and the Question of a Dual Ethic by David M. VanDrunen

Inaugural Address
"The Two Kingdoms and the Ordo Salutis: Life Beyond Judgment and the Question of a Dual Ethic"
by David M. VanDrunen

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On February 19, 2008, WSC celebrated the promotion of Dr. David M. VanDrunen to Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics with an inauguration ceremony held in the WSC chapel. His inaugural lecture is reprinted here with permission.

No self-respecting theological tradition or doctrinal system can be unconcerned about the relation of Christian faith to Christian life, of theology to ethics. Certainly this is the case with Reformed Christianity. Two relevant issues that, for various scholarly, pedagogical, and ecclesiastical reasons, have become important to me are the doctrine of the two kingdoms and the concept of the ordo salutis (particularly the relationship of justification to sanctification in the ordo salutis). By the two kingdoms doctrine I mean, most basically, the idea that God rules over all things, but that he rules over his church (the spiritual kingdom) in a redemptive way that is different from the way of preservation by which he rules over the state and other institutions and activities of cultural life (the civil kingdom). By the ordo salutis I mean, again briefly, an articulation of the relationships among the various acts and processes by which the Holy Spirit applies to us the redemption purchased by Christ. In regard to the relationship between those two great soteriological benefits of justification and sanctification in the ordo salutis, I understand that justification stands in a certain priority to sanctification, such that believers are justified as the ungodly, without respect to any subjective holiness of their own, while believers are sanctified precisely as the justified, who are being transformed according to the new reality that justification has created.(1) Even from this brief description it should be clear that one’s understanding of the two kingdoms and the ordo salutis promises to have significant implications for the way in which one thinks about and lives the Christian life.

Both the two kingdoms doctrine and the ordo salutis (with particular reference to the relationship of justification to sanctification) have venerable roots in the Reformed tradition.(2) Both, however, have come under critical scrutiny by Reformed thinkers in recent years, not only constructively but also historically. Though discussions about the two kingdoms and the ordo salutis have largely taken place independently, there seems to be an interesting, similar thread in both: the concern that these concepts unduly shatter the unity of Christian life and experience. In regard to the two kingdoms, critics worry that a division between two realms of life makes Christianity relevant only for one’s life in the church and leaves the rest of life outside of God’s governance, irretrievably corrupted by sin, and uncritically subject to the perverted standards of the world. What is needed instead, many argue, is a perspective teaching that the kingdom of Christ penetrates to all of the fallen spheres of life here and now.(3) In regard to the ordo salutis, critics have suggested that seeing redemption-applied as consisting in a number of discrete acts and processes is unable to account for the soteriological centrality of our union with the resurrected Christ. As an alternative way of viewing Reformed soteriology, some have suggested that there is but one act (our being existentially united to Christ) with several aspects, such that the blessings of justification and sanctification are bestowed simultaneously in this union.(4) However one comes out on such questions—does the kingdom of Christ express itself in all spheres and institutions of cultural life or not, is sanctification fundamentally grounded in an already established decree of justification or not?—surely there are significant implications for the Christian life.

The questions posed are fair enough. Certainly we do not want a Christian life in which our faith is relevant only on Sunday or a soteriology in which subjective, introspective concerns cause us to lose view of the resurrected Christ. Some of the critics’ concerns rest upon a misunderstanding or caricature of the ideas of the two kingdoms and the ordo salutis—or upon what I take to be less than felicitous articulations of these ideas. To that extent, a more satisfactory rendering of these ideas should ease the concerns of the critics or at least help us all to sharpen our perception of where true differences lie and where they do not. It is my contention here that the doctrines of the two kingdoms and the ordo salutis, with the doctrinal and ethical distinctions that they entail, are still critically important for a biblically sound account of the nature of the Christian life and its relation to the Reformed system of doctrine. Furthermore, I contend that these two ideas are related in important ways that do not seem to be widely appreciated, such that to some degree they stand or fall together. Perhaps this discussion may contribute in some way to a convergence among Reformed theologians and to a more coherent and unified Reformed vision of theological ethics with which we might winsomely and distinctively challenge other theological traditions as well as people yet outside of the church.

Footnotes (on this page)

¹ A point of clarification is in order here due to the circulation of a misunderstanding of this sort of claim. This claim is not asserting that justification itself, by virtue of its own inherent power, is accomplishing the work of sanctification. Justification is forensic, not subjectively transformative (even indirectly). The Holy Spirit sanctifies the person united to Christ by faith. I am claiming that justification is prior to and foundational for sanctification only in the sense explored and defined in this article.
²For a few examples of the classic Reformed two kingdoms doctrine, see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.19.15; 4.20.1; George Gillespie, Aaron's Rod Blossoming; or, the Divine Ordinance of Church Government Vindicated (London, 1646; repr., Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle, 1985), 85-114 (Bk. 2, Chs. 4-7); and Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (ed. James T. Dennison Jr.; trans. George Musgrave Giger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992–1997), 2.486-90. For secondary literature on the doctrine found in such works, see, e.g., David McKay, "From Popery to Principle: Covenanters and the Kingship of Christ," in The Faith Once Delivered: Essays in Honor of Dr. Wayne Spear (ed. Anthony T. Selvaggio; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2007), 135-69; W. D. J. McKay, An Ecclesiastical Republic: Church Government in the Writings of George Gillespie (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 1997), ch. 2; David VanDrunen, "The Two Kingdoms Doctrine and the Relationship of Church and State in the Early Reformed Tradition," Journal of Church and State 49 (2007): 743-63; VanDrunen, "The Two Kingdoms: A Reassessment of the Transformationist Calvin," CTJ 40 (2005): 284-66; and VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming). For a few examples of the priority of justification to sanctification in the ordo salutis in classic Reformed theology, see Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.1 and 3.19.4-5; and Turretin, Institutes, 2.693. For recent secondary literature on the doctrine found in such works, see, e.g., Thomas L. Wenger, "The New Perspective on Calvin: Responding to Recent Calvin Interpretations," JETS 50 (2007): 311-28; Hywel R. Jones, "Justification by Faith Alone: No Christian Life without It," in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2007), 285-306; and Justification: Report of the Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification (Willow Grove, Pa.: The Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2007), 59-63. The general Reformed doctrine of the ordo salutis was defended competently in the last century by John Murray in Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans: 1955).
³ I have in mind here particularly the claims of what is sometimes labeled "neo-Calvinism." Representative recent works include Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004); and Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).
⁴ As far as I am able to tell, the advocates of this view cited below all adhere to the traditional Reformed doctrine of justification itself, and thus I sense no difference between us in regard to a definition of justification such as that stated in Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 70. To clarify further, I freely grant that justification and sanctification are bestowed upon believers "simultaneously" in that there is no measurable time gap between the bestowal of one and the bestowal of the other. There is no person who is justified in February but must wait until June to be sanctified; every justified person is also the recipient of sanctification. But in this article I object to the idea of "simultaneous" bestowal insofar as it means rejecting the priority of justification to sanctification in the way this article defines that priority or insofar as it implies that sanctification can be understood in any meaningful sense apart from the foundational reality of justification. A key book for the claims summarized in the text above is Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul's Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), especially its Conclusion (pp. 135-43). Gaffin has discussed these themes further in several places, including By Faith, Not By Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (Waynesboro, Ga.: Paternoster, 2006); and "Biblical Theology and the Westminster Standards," WTJ 65 (2003): 165-79. Similar claims have been made by those drawing upon Gaffin's work; e.g., see Craig B. Carpenter, "A Question of Union with Christ? Calvin and Trent on Justification," WTJ 64 (2002): 363-86; Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996), 94-103; Mark A. Garcia, "Imputation and the Christology of Union with Christ: Calvin, Osiander, and the Contemporary Quest for a Reformed Model," WTJ 68 (2006): 219-51; and Lane G. Tipton, "Union with Christ and Justification," in Justified in Christ: God's Plan for Us in Justification (ed. K. Scott Oliphint; Ross-shire, U.K.: Mentor, 2007), 23-49. It may be noted that Gaffin, though critical of the traditional ordo salutis idea in Resurrection and Redemption, has more recently used the term positively in a broad sense as a synonym for the application of redemption (in distinction from its accomplishment); see B y Faith, Not By Sight, 18-19; and "Biblical Theology," 167-68; similarly, see also Tipton, "Union with Christ," 23 n. 1.

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