Some notes + natural law redux

• Reflections on the newly formed World Communion of Reformed Churches from Jason Goroncy and Bruce Hamill. Even Benedict gets in on the fun (poor J. Calvin).
• Jamie Smith briefly reviews Luke Bretherton’s new book.
• A new collaborative blog, Transpositions, from the folks at St. Andrews’ Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts.
• Twelve years after the Presbyterian Church in America’s “Creation Study Committee,” PCA geologists join the discussion.
• Steven Wedgeworth reviews and critiques David VanDrunen’s book on the two kingdoms. Old School stalwart D.G. Hart takes up the defense, and Steven replies in kind. The back-and-forth is great reading. At the same time, it also suggests that the resurgent Reformed interest in natural law from scholars like Hart and VanDrunen may be historically — and programmatically — distorted by anxiety over the Christian Right (including the unique aberration of Christian Reconstructionism). But as Wedgeworth points out, it’s possible to reject politicized religion as well as de-spiritualized politics. The “secular,” or temporal, need not be wholly independent or wholly evil. So a project like VanDrunen’s, while ably pointing out the uses of natural law in the Reformed tradition, cannot conceive of a more nuanced and eschatologically-complicated relationship between church and earthly government. More thoughts on this in the near future…