James Smith on Two Kingdoms

James K. A. Smith of Calvin College (who is actually in Australia right now to deliver the New College Lectures on “Imagining the Kingdom: On Christian Discipleship and Action”) has a provocative article in Calvin Theological Journal entitled, “Reforming Public Theology: Two Kingdoms or Two Cities.” You know it’s a provocative article because it commences with the words, “Based on voices emerging from some corners of the Reformed tradition, you would think that the future of Calvinism is Lutheran. At just the moment that neo-Calvinism has begun to be absorbed by wider evangelicalism and has become the de facto paradigm for Christian higher education in North America, scholars such as D.G. Hart, Michael Horton, and David Vandrunen argue that the neo-Calvinists are not really Calvinists. Curiously, the basis for this claim is the neo-Calvinist rejection of the Lutheran model of two kingdoms that they see in Calvin and ‘the earlier Reformed tradition.'” Whoa, okay, you have my attention! A very interesting read.