While nascent Romanticism stressed inhibited freedom, it soon swung to the opposite extreme and embraced political totalitarianism. This transformation was effected by the Romantics' assessment of the supposed depersonalizing effects of capitalism and the industrial revolution on society. While Enlightenment man wanted to accomplish his rationally oriented society by education, the Romantics were committed to violence and revolution. In this sense, all modern political revolutions are Romantic. Explicitly Biblical Cultural Dominion Kelley concludes by arguing that each of these phases, ancient Greek, medieval monastic, medieval scholastic, medieval ecclesiocentric, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romanticism, constitute a decisive deviation from Biblical Christianity, and the only hope for establishing Christian culture lies not in restoring some version of a discredited pagan or synthetic culture of the past, but in building our culture squarely on the written Word of God, the Bible.
Man is an inherently dominion being, and therefore the dominion commission is inescapable.
The only question is whether man will exercise dominion in terms of the Bible, or in terms of his own depraved ideas. Man's only hope for cultural reclamation is explicitly Biblical Christian culture. This is a reverent, learned, profound, and penetrating work that probably will not get the widespread recognition it deserves. The evangelicals and fundamentalists are too pietistic and anti-intellectual to take it seriously. The Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are too ecclesiocentric not to be offended by its full-Biblical foundation.