***This theology is sometimes known as Two Kingdoms theology. While there are a lot of variants, the basic bottom line is that if Christians are to participate in politics at all, they do so as citizens, not as Christians, and they are to use natural law, not Scripture, to make their points.***
Yeah, sure. That’s what Jesus did when he talked with the devil, just used natural law and civil discourse... HE HIT HIM BETWEEN THE EYES WITH SCRIPTURE!!!!! And that is our role model for every personal contact we have, scripture and gospel, gospel and scripture.
You can’t take off Christianity like you are taking off a coat.
We agree.
Since you're a PCA elder, you're in a position to actually help do something about this. You may want to look up Misty Irons and her husband Lee Irons, who used to be an OPC minister and is now a PCA ruling elder. I have a link to a Free Republic thread on Misty Irons in an earlier post of this thread.
The PCA has its problems, but I would hope the strictly confessional “TRs” and the more broadly evangelical people can get together and deal with this stuff.
The typical pattern of liberals is to win by dividing different types of conservatives against each other. That worked in both northern Presbyterianism and southern Presbyterianism, and led to the formation of the OPC out of the (Northern) PCUSA and of the PCA out of the (Southern) PCUS.
Today, however, this “Two Kingdoms” theology is a rising tide in both the OPC and the PCA.
Not all “Two Kingdoms” people are the same — I believe some of them really are the heirs of Dabney, Thornwell, and the old Southern Presbyterian opposition to political engagement by the church — but some of those people are seriously problematic and need to be stopped.
I hope that homosexuality and homosexual civil unions are enough of a “red flag” that TRs and broad evangelicals in the PCA can put aside their secondary disputes to deal with a much more serious problem in the Reformed world.
BTW, I am a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. The rest of my family attend a Korean-speaking PCA where the pastor speaks virtually no English; he'd like to start an English-speaking PCA for soldiers near Fort Leonard Wood but realistically that's not going to happen anytime in the foreseeable future. So while I'm not personally PCA, I do have a “dog in the fight,” so to speak.
Of course, God might have a sense of humor and motivate someone in the Pentagon to cut orders sending a half-dozen Calvinist Freepers to Fort Leonard Wood. Maybe I should be more careful about saying things are or aren't going to happen. I guess that last paragraph about saying things won't happen in the foreseeable future really was rather inconsistent for a Calvinist to write!