GW: Rev. Cassidy wasn’t advocating a “pastor doing everything” model. He mentions ruling elders, who share with the pastor the governing, administrative and shepherding responsibilities of the church. (Incidentally, 1 Tim. 5:17 supports the classic Presbyterian distinction bertween Ministers/Teaching Elders and Ruling Elders/Church Governors.) The contemporary pragmatic dissection of the pastoral office into multiple fractured functions is based on the model of the megachurch (where the large number of members makes a large pastoral staff necessary). However, I’m not sure that the large church or megachurch model is biblical (or practical either). Christ’s undershepherds must know their sheep personally, just as Christ knows us, His sheep, personally. But once a congregation reaches a certain number it is simply impossible for a single pastor and a small team of ruling elders to shepherd the flock effectively. I think a better, more biblical, shepherding model is the smaller church (say @ 150 members max), and for churches that grow to be large congregations to plant daughter congregations that can call their own pastor.

Megachurches are often popular because they allow members be anonymous (i.e., avoid accountability and genuine biblical shepherding). Megachurches that take shepherding seriously often rely on “small groups” to make up for the lack of personal shepherding by the pastor and elders; but sadly such “small groups” can turn into cliques or even sources of schism in the church. My view is that a church which is too large for the pastor to be personally and meaningfully involved in the lives of its members is a church which is simply too large.

I have addressed that crucial distinction in relation to the “(neo-) two kingdoms view” here:
http://honest2blog.blogspot.com/2012/04/sanctifying-common-2.html

One clarification offered by the structure/direction distinction is that the antithesis is a “directional” matter. And ethical/moral (and other kinds) norms are indeed an “objective” structural matter.
The WLC 121 says there is “there is less light of nature for” the Sabbath, but it is nevertheless objective (others have pointed to Scriptural argument for that). And I think it can be argued from 1 Cor.11:8-9 that a wife’s submission to here husband is a matter of natural revelation.

In any case, a deeper problem with VanDrunen’s approach is that while he insists that Christian’s ought to do their cultural activity in faith to God’s glory, VanDrunen does not think the implications of faith will result in real concrete differences in a Christian’s faithful cultural activity. VanDrunen does not consistently work out the fact that the unbeliever’s access to (common) general revelation and cultural action is always ‘partly falsified’ (mis-directed) through unregeneracy (falleness-apart-from-redemption), nor does he consistently work out the fact that a believer’s access to (common) general revelation and cultural action can be ‘re-directed’ in concrete ways through faith.

I have elaborated on that in the comments to my post (above).

It’s important to note that there were two “Babylon artifacts” in the Garden of Eden, Tree of Life & Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. The Tree of Life (ToL) is the forgotten tree that was dumped for the curse of knowledge.

The consequence of discovering knowledge of good & evil: institute individualization, idolize “happiness,” experience alienation, devotion to progress, & the artifice of fear.

Sentient species who partook in the Tree of Knowledge (ToK) are creatures who deviated from their original life in paradise. The acquisition of knowledge in turn leads to reflection, a shocking realization that one no longer belongs to that which one perceives. The mortal becomes a stranger in paradise, alienated from what he/she perceives. This unnatural state is unique to the eater of the ToK.

The natural functions of the environment (always surprising or overwhelming to the sentient beings) are more natural than the surprised sentient beings. They stick out of the natural environment like a sore thumb, more than animal but less than divine. The sentient being is the animal who symbolizes the world in terms of how it is not.

In order to succumb to the temptation of the ToK, the first parents of the sentient species had to have felt a “malaise” that made them determine the temptation was more truthful and that their god’s commandment were hollow. Thus this poison of malaise was already there before the first parents ate/imbibe from ToK. After knowledge was acquired, the first parents realized their choice was a personal one that changed everything. Thus, the ancient curse of individualization every subsequent offspring experiences/suffers in times of action or produce is the consequence of knowledge. The idolization of “happiness” is the inability to find something implicitly within, but something that is not present must be sought.

The sentient species’ situation is condition of individualized position: self-reflective, interpersonal & interpretable experience. Had the sentient species attempted at recovering a “dissolving into gods” they would’ve succeeded. But they chose progress, which led to the great failure of personal & social experience: civilization. The sentient species are essentially weak, thus they feel the need to conquer whatever they see. The truth of death is both humiliating and inflates pride. The plant and animal are more in sync with the gods, while the sentient species are feeble, aware of time and death, infected with primordial malaise, feel the need to compensate for the disconnection from their gods by progress.

These species’ situation is also entrenched in the artifice of fear. They exist through fear, even in the absence of physical danger. Imagination of the horrible is unique to the sentient species. Such artifice of fear drives the species to produce, escape their own selves, act in distraction from the artifice. Fear is a huge component of the sentient species, that it is sensed only when it disappears, and briefly do they glimpse into the abyss within.

The fallen creature, being aware of its being, proud & humiliated at the absolute truth of death, relies on technology and conquest of everything, is the time-soaked and alienated self.

Where the gods are self-sufficient, that “they are that which are,” & mortals define themselves as “that which are not.” Basically for the mortals, after imbibing from the Tree of Knowledge, the artifice is spliced into the fabric of reality. Mortals exist through imagination, symbols, rather than a direct confrontation with reality. This failure of confrontation with the real becomes apparent during moments of “lucidity.” Mortals exist only within a “semblance” of reality, and very rarely, experience a direct confrontation of reality. During those all-too fleeting moments of lucidity do the mortals trace backwards to their decision of abandoning the ToL.

During those moments, those in-between moments, the mortals find themselves or catch themselves int he middle, hesitant and uncertain, face to face with the abyssal void, a crack in the artifice of reality.

Mortals as animals entranced by their own images are in an unnatural state of being. It is within recognition and experience of self-reflexivity that made them sentient, existent but nonetheless distracted by the artificial image of how they see themselves to be reflected by others. Through this indirectness mortals confront the world, but separated from the purity of primal existence. They are haunted by a shadow, a terrifying & haunting, yet blank image of oneself, an image nobody can rid themselves of — this shadow is the blank space between the mortal and the Real.

Then again…. transcendence holds curative powers. When a mortal assumes a mask, he gains a step towards recovery. Even their Adversary is a superior recourse than their own kind. In order to escape this “kingdom of shadows” the sentient mortals must seek that kernel of Being (not being) that sustains their own being. The focus on sentient mortals is the focus on that emerged from error or lie. Ergo, the search for a mode of recovery or transcendence lies in the image of a god, or the force that remains in direct communion with Being itself.

The mortal in this mode is supposed to subdue himself to the periphery, to the cracks and seek to rediscover the abyssal Void from which it came, the disregarded Tree of Life.

Irreality is corresponding to the mortal situation (kingdom of shadows). The fallout of living through this astigmatic deception is gigantism, the imagination that one is more than what one really is. After rejecting the Tree of Life, this is the essential status of mortal existence.