Three Realms, Two Kingdoms, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
Uh oh…
There’s not actually a post here. Bait/Switch. Now you know why I’m the pseudepigrapher.
If I were to write a post on these topics, the following bullet-points would be my very bare-bones notes. With that said, I’d like to start a discussion, and I’m hoping that interested readers will work with me in the comments. Perhaps after a little combox dialectic has transpired, I’ll be ready to write an actual post.
So…
- The three realms are the sacred, the profane and the mundane.
- The sacred is that which is of God.
- The profane is that which is of the Devil.
- The mundane is that which is of the World.
- The Kingdom of the Right Hand is the Kingdom of the Gospel.
- The Kingdom of the Left Hand is the Kingdom of the Law.
- The “Partridge in a Pear Tree” is Christ on the Cross — threw that in there just for fun/to justify the title of this pseudo-post. Don’t get too hung up on this.
It occurs to me that we might — emphasis on might; I’m not sure yet — be able in some way to relate the above three realms with the tripartite distinction made by Dr. Joel Biermann in A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics.
My summary of “The Biermann Trifecta”:
- Three articles of the Creed;
- Three uses of the Law;
- Three kinds of righteousness:
- The Order of Creation (Article 1 of the Creed)
- The Law as Curb
- Merely civil righteousness in the City of Man; coram mundo, “before the world”
- Government, politics, civil society
- The Order of Redemption (Article 2 of the Creed)
- The Law as Mirror
- The passive, imputed righteousness of Christ; coram Deo propter Christum, “before God on account of Christ”
- Justification, the forgiveness of sins received by grace through faith alone
- The Order of Sanctification (Article 3 of the Creed)
- The Law as Guide
- The active, incipient righteousness of holy living; coram hominibus in Christo, “before men in Christ”
- Sanctification, the new obedience, good works, the fruit of the Spirit
So…thoughts, anybody? I’ll be watching the comments.
+SDG+
Jul 10, 2014 @ 12:01:39
Trent,
I like what you are doing here, and thinks it holds promise. One thing that I think is worth exploring in more depth is the “Merely civil righteousness in the City of Man; coram mundo, “before the world”” in article 1. How was this really understood by the Lutheran reformers, who were thinking about things like this primarily in a Christian context? How much, if at all, did they make of this context – did it matter to them that they were talking about these issues in a Christian context and not some other context (for them Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, etc… for us now, an “Anonymous God of American civil religion” context)? As best I can tell – and perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge in this area can speak to this – they would have been thinking about how this “civil righteousness” would have involved the following the 10 commandments before the eyes of men – both second and first tables….
+Nathan
Jul 11, 2014 @ 13:53:32
Nathan,
Thanks for responding. Yes, in brief, I think you are correct: they were in a sense “assuming Christendom” — and they didn’t even really need to assume it, for they were living in it. This points to a fundamental duality to the Law. Even though we speak of it according to three “uses”, it addresses us negatively (curb and mirror) and positively (guide); though we can rightly speak of three realms, there are two kingdoms, the temporal and the eternal; though we can in some sense speak of three kinds of righteousness, the Confessions speak of two, righteousness coram Deo and coram hominibus, to whit:
The difference between the reformers’ day and our own is that which you point out: we live in a liberal and pluralistic society, and civil righteousness coram mundo is relegated to the realm of ethics sans religion — the irony of course being that without religion, ethics (i.e., a recognition of Lewis’s “Tao”) cannot long last.