T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism (T&T Clark Handbooks) 0567698084, 9780567698087

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T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF NEO-CALVINISM

Forthcoming titles in this series include T&T Clark Handbook of Christology, edited by Darren O. Sumner and Chris Tilling T&T Clark Handbook of Modern Theology, edited by Philip G. Ziegler and R. David Nelson T&T Clark Handbook of the Doctrine of Creation, edited by Jason Goroncy T&T Clark Handbook of the Doctrine of Providence, edited by Tim Harmon and Justin Stratis T&T Clark Handbook of Theology and the Arts, edited by Imogen Adkins and Stephen M. Garrett T&T Clark Handbook of Intercultural Theology and Mission Studies, edited by John G. Flett and Dorottya Nagy T&T Clark Handbook of Biblical Thomism, edited by Matthew Levering, Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen

Titles already published include T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change, edited by Ernst M. Conradie and Hilda P. Koster T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology, edited by Rubén Rosario Rodríguez T&T Clark Handbook of Pneumatology, edited by Daniel Castelo and Kenneth M. Loyer T&T Clark Handbook of Ecclesiology, edited by Kimlyn J. Bender and D. Stephen Long T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences, edited by John P. Slattery T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Ethics, edited by Tobias Winright T&T Clark Handbook of John Owen, edited by Crawford Gribben and John W. Tweeddale T&T Clark Handbook of Theological Anthropology, edited by Mary Ann Hinsdale and Stephen Okey T&T Clark Handbook of Suffering and the Problem of Evil, edited by Matthias Grebe and Johannes Grössl T&T Clark Handbook of Election, edited by Edwin Chr. van Driel T&T Clark Handbook of the Early Church, edited by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, J. A. McGuckin and Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski

T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF NEO-CALVINISM

Edited by Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2024 Copyright © Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, Cory Brock, and contributors, 2024 Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. 5 constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Johan Thorn Prikker (1868–1932), The Sower Photo by Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sutano, Nathanial Gray, editor. | Brock, Cory C., editor. Title: T&T Clark handbook of Neo-Calvinism / edited by Nathanial Gray Sutano, Cory Brock. Description: London ; New York : T&T Clark, 2024. | Series: T&t clark handbooks | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023026810 (print) | LCCN 2023026811 (ebook) | ISBN 9780567698087 (hardback) | ISBN 9780567703149 (paperback) | ISBN 9780567698094 (pdf) | ISBN 9780567698117 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Calvinism. | Calvinists. Classification: LCC BX9422.3 .T155 2024 (print) | LCC BX9422.3 (ebook) | DDC 284/.2–dc23/ eng/20231018 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023026810 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023026811 ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-9808-7 ePDF: 978-0-5676-9809-4 eBook: 978-0-5676-9811-7 Series: T&T Clark Handbooks Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

Editorial Introduction Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock

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Part I  Theological Loci

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1

9

God and Trinity Cameron Clausing

2 Creation Steve Bishop

20

3

Sovereignty of God Henk van den Belt

35

4 Revelation Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

48

5 Scripture Koert van Bekkum

61

6 Anthropology Richard Brash

73

7

85

Common Grace Cory Brock

8 Christology Bruce R. Pass 9

Faith and Salvation Gregory Parker Jr.

96 110

10 Theological Ethics Jessica Joustra

121

11 Ecclesiology Michael R. Wagenman

139

12 Eschatology Ad de Bruijne

151

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CONTENTS

Part II  Key Figures

163

13 Willem Groen van Prinsterer Harry van Dyke

165

14 Abraham Kuyper James D. Bratt

175

15 James Orr Michelle C. Sanchez

187

16 Herman Bavinck James Eglinton

199

17 Geerhardus Vos Nathan D. Shannon

211

18 Klaas Schilder Marinus de Jong

223

19 D. H. Th. Vollenhoven Gayle Doornbos

235

20 Herman Dooyeweerd Jonathan Chaplin

249

21 Johan Herman Bavinck Daniel Strange

264

22 G. C. Berkouwer Gijsbert van den Brink

275

Part III  Neo-Calvinism in Historical Perspective

287

23 Neo-Calvinism and Medieval Theology Mark A. Garcia

289

24 Neo-Calvinism and Reformed Theology Richard J. Mouw

301

25 Neo-Calvinism and Post-Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy Israel Guerrero

312

26 Neo-Calvinism and the Netherlands George Harinck

325

27 Neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism Jennifer Patterson

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CONTENTS



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28 Neo-Calvinism and the Theology of Karl Barth Shao Kai Tseng

351

29 Neo-Calvinism in North America William Edgar

363

30 Neo-Calvinism, Islam, and Other Religions Alexander E. Massad

375

Part IV  Neo-Calvinism and Its Legacy

389

31 Public Theology Matthew J. Kaemingk

391

32 Missiology Michael W. Goheen

404

33 Political Theology David T. Koyzis

415

34 World Christianity Andrew Ong

426

35 Race Vincent Bacote

439

36 Continental Philosophy Christopher Watkin

451

37 Analytic Philosophy Nicholas Wolterstorff

462

38 Science Abraham C. Flipse

475

39 Arts Robert Covolo

487

40 Pastoral Ministry Timothy Keller

498

Annotated Bibliography 513 Dmytro Bintsarovskyi Note on Contributors 554 Index 557

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Editorial Introduction NATHANIEL GRAY SUTANTO AND CORY BROCK

Neo-Calvinism is the critical advancement of Reformed orthodoxy for the sake of modern life. Birthed in the Netherlands at the turn of the twentieth century, initiated by Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), and preceded by the political and theological efforts of Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76), this tradition argued against secularism that a life before God entailed the leavening of faith over all human existence. While the movement originated in the Netherlands, it now has a global reach, with practitioners and thinkers applying its insights in diverse ways and in their own contexts. This handbook is a genealogical introduction to a lively and modern branch of the Reformed tradition. It charts the theological roots, original figures, historical contours, and contemporary influence of neo-Calvinism. What does this term mean, and what does “neo-Calvinism” connote? While we have sketched the theological roots of this tradition elsewhere, some salient features should be highlighted here.1 The term “Calvinism,” though often used rather ambivalently by the original neo-Calvinist proponents and occasionally thrown around as a pejorative by critics, referred to the ways in which the public and theological labors of John Calvin (1509–64) functioned in the religious imagination of Kuyper and Bavinck. Indeed, Calvin and the Reformed orthodox after him believed in the cosmic and practical significance of the sovereignty of God. As such, while the term “Reformed” denoted particular confessional commitments of the Reformed churches, the term “Calvinism” was broader and referred to a whole world-and-life system, a distinct cosmology, and indeed, a Christian worldview. Calvinism, therefore, was not considered as a narrowing or particularizing term, but represented Christianity at its truest and most catholic. It proclaimed that the Gospel should leaven every part of society, that life was to be lived coram Deo, and that grace restores nature. Calvinism showed that God was committed to restoring and consummating an originally good creation, which had otherwise been tainted by sin and corruption. This framework allowed the neo-Calvinists to hold together two realities that are often treated as contradictory: the antithesis between faith and unbelief, on the one hand, and the call for Christian participation in the world for the sake of the common good, on the other. Christianity calls believers to be distinct, yes, and it is precisely in that particularity that Christians should become “salt and light,” as it were, to nature and society. The “neo” in neo-Calvinism, however, reminds us that this tradition had never wanted to repristinate or regurgitate Calvin’s efforts in Geneva or the form of the older Reformed engagements. Rather, they recognize that the human reception of theology is always finite, and that contextualization demands applying the theology of the Scriptures

Cory Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2023).

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T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF NEO-CALVINISM

to new demands, questions, and situations. In fact, each era brings forth intellectual and contextual challenges that might even prompt the Christian community to look back at the Scriptures afresh and to see different dimensions that they might have missed. The doctrine of common grace, after all, suggests that the Spirit is at work in society, and that God in his patience continues to give life-giving, moral, and epistemic gifts to a world that rejects and yet is dependent on God. This attempt at advancing the older Reformed theology was displayed in two ways: one more immediate and intensive while the other broad and extensive. The former had to do with Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s argument that Calvinism should embrace the newer, modern idea of a free church and a pluralist society. Indeed, Kuyper advocates for what has become known as sphere sovereignty, according to which Christ’s lordship reigns in each sphere of society in its own way. Christ’s lordship means that Christians should refrain from seeing themselves as lords, for Christ has indicated that this present life is within the order of God’s patience and not yet the final judgment. The result will be a kind of Christian pluralism that envisions a state that recognizes the rights and freedoms of other worldviews to pursue their own directions in the multiple structures of society. While pluralism, freedom of conscience, and democracy were modern ideals, Kuyper famously argued that modernism, as a worldview, could not actually supply the intellectual and moral resources to follow through with those commitments, because they failed to recognize the religious character of human beings and wrongly assumed that secularity could function as a public and neutral ground. Secularism, while pretending to be presupposition-less, was actually smuggling in its own faith-assumptions. By contrast, Kuyper argued for a system of pillarization, where each “pillar” or “circle” of society could pursue their own worldview-direction within the structures of society, without presuming that there is some neutral middle ground on which each community stands. Such a neutral ground does not exist, and suggesting so risks a re-established hegemony. As Arie Molendijk has shown, then, “In this view, Calvinism represented a modernity that was more modern than that of the modernists, who falsely claimed hegemony for their own point of view.”2 If Christianity is to gain public credence, it would be by way of intellectual argumentation and spiritual influence, not by way of re-establishment. The second and extensive sense of the term “neo-Calvinism” refers to the way in which this tradition calls for the re-articulation of Reformed theology in the newer philosophies and grammars within each context, and the application of Reformed principles for every critical (wetenschappelijke) discipline and area of life. If Christianity was truly universal, they argued, then it’s a pliable faith, able to take up, subvert, and fulfill the philosophies and cultures with which it interacts. Indeed, it could do so without compromising its theological confession and essence, because grace is not against nature, culture, or philosophy as such, but only against sin. Hence, beyond asking the question of how Christian faith can be a firmer foundation for pluralism, democracy, and the like, neo-Calvinists also considered how Christianity might better ground the newer studies and findings of the other critical disciplines, including, say, psychology, religious studies, and the natural sciences. While this tradition drew from a particular dogmatic font, the neo-Calvinists envisioned the leavening of every critical inquiry by way of so-called

Arie Molendijk, Protestant Theology and Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 122. 2

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION



3

“Reformed principles,” and later figures took on that task and sketched a vision for a Reformed philosophy, missions, art, theology of religion, and so on. Both the intensive and extensive senses of neo-Calvinism drew criticism, dialogue, and lively debate. For the former, the neo-Calvinists were often decried by both conservatives and progressive thinkers alike. The conservatives pined for a return not only to the essential theology of the Christian faith but also to the older forms of an established church model, and were suspicious of the deliverances of “modernity.” More liberal, progressive thinkers, however, argued that, despite their talk of accommodating modern life, pluralism, and democracy, Kuyper and Bavinck were really just reviving an outdated Calvinism, and were virtually no different than the conservatives. In the extensive sense, neo-Calvinists often wrestled with how to engage with the newer findings, and how best to articulate their theological confession in the various contexts they were in. This led not only to vigorous internal debates and developments, especially as neo-Calvinism advanced beyond the Netherlands to the United States and the majority world, but also at times to sharp disagreements and separations. Diverse paths were forged. It is helpful therefore to think of this neo-Calvinist tradition as a river with many streams and tributaries, which in turn nurtured particular trees, forests, and ecosystems. While the tradition continues to draw and flow from the works of Kuyper and Bavinck, the second-generation Dutch forebearers and subsequent international reception of their work has developed into different streams. Some trajectories took up much of what the original works said, while others developed ideas that were conceived as modifications of their works, and others still by a self-conscious rejection of those works. The application of this holistic and catholic impulse also led to surprising and penetrating applications to the different fields of life. The four parts of this handbook reflect this image of a river with many streams and tributaries, leading to diverse ecosystems. Therefore, its authorship is necessarily vast, a global effort reflecting the international movement that it is, a diverse theological and philosophical community. The forty chapters and bibliography are written by contributors that reflect its global reach. Over the past century, the neo-Calvinist theological tradition has indeed been a worldwide movement as mentioned. Yet, as of today, it is expanding more than ever. While many discover and re-discover the riches of neo-Calvinism within its many particularized streams, perhaps the most important development is the recovery of its original form—that of the primary sources in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Netherlands. The handbook that follows is indeed expansive, but its focus remains the original Dutch movement of neo-Calvinism and then considers its enduring legacy. Even the chapters that offer detailed treatment of its international reach make clear that the names Kuyper and Bavinck provide the historical and conceptual foundations by which development is interpreted. The handbook is divided into four parts with forty chapters and an annotated bibliography curated by Dmytro Bintsarovskyi. Part I contains twelve chapters on the neo-Calvinist development of the theological loci of systematic theology or, more precisely, dogmatics. The authors are twelve theologians who have spent a significant portion of their own theological development studying the theology of neo-Calvinism. The outline of this part follows a traditional order with respect to systematic theology: a movement from the doctrine of God to God’s actions in the world, to the character of special revelation climaxing in Christ, unto the age of the Church and the eschaton. Within, the reader should notice a unity across the whole: that the neo-Calvinist tradition

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T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF NEO-CALVINISM

emphasizes continuity with the past and development for the future. We, the editors, have typically labeled this the “orthodox yet modern” character of neo-Calvinism. The neo-Calvinist tradition is radically confessional in its origins. Indeed, it was a Reformation product. And simultaneously, its genesis is the product of the question of today: “What does the revelation of God mean for the modern world?” The chapters focused on an overview of neo-Calvinist theological development reflect this character. Part II includes ten chapters on the principal figures of the neo-Calvinist movement. The chapters are arranged according to birth order: Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76), Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), James Orr (1844–1913), Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949), Klaas Schilder (1890–1952), D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (1892–1978), Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977), Johan H. Bavinck (1895–1964), and Gerrit C. Berkouwer (1903–96). This list could be longer, but it includes the most seminal figures of historic neo-Calvinism. Each of the ten authors have research backgrounds concerning the person about which they have written, including three critical biographies in book form. There are significant figures beyond the Dutch and European origins of neo-Calvinism, and those thinkers will find further treatment in the sections on the theological roots, historical dimensions, and legacy of the tradition. Part III focuses on the conceptual origins and development of neo-Calvinism as a movement, a history and pre-history of its legacy. The chapters in this part could be thought of as subdivided into three categories. First, Garcia, Mouw, and Guerrero consider the conceptual backgrounds to neo-Calvinism from within Christian theology and treat the medieval, Reformation, and post-Reformation theologies. Second, Harinck and Edgar unveil the development of neo-Calvinism in the Netherlands and North America, the principal and secondary geographies where the tradition has received the most sustained attention. Third, Jennifer Patterson, Alexander Massad, and Shao Kai Tseng focus on weighty interlocutors alongside which the early and later movements developed in conversation: Roman Catholicism, the Religious “Other,” and the theology of Karl Barth. Part IV brings the handbook to conclusion by reflecting on the legacy of neo-Calvinism to the present. It is organized according to fields of scholarship and neo-Calvinism’s reception, spanning from Matthew Kaemingk’s treatment of public theology (where neo-Calvinism has contributed much), Nicholas Wolterstorff and Christopher Watkin on neo-Calvinism’s engagements with analytic and continental forms of philosophy, to critical reflections from Vincent Bacote on the difficult question of race, Andrew Ong on World Christianity, and Timothy Keller’s personal reflection on how neo-Calvinism matters for the practical discipline of pastoral ministry. The collective contribution of these chapters is that neo-Calvinism’s inner logic must and does matter for all fields of study and practice, and shows that the theological moorings of the tradition have led to distinct neo-Calvinistic treatments of each of these disciplines. There are, of course, potential focused chapters that did not find their way into this handbook on neo-Calvinism. Readers familiar with the tradition might ponder other possibilities including chapter-wide focus on neo-Calvinism’s relationship to the Enlightenment and Modernism, to the Anti-Revolutionary Party, and other theologians or thinkers that are not specifically treated, such as H. Evan Runner, Jonathan Chao, Hans Rookmaker, Cornelius Van Til, and others. All projects must determine their limits and there are helpful treatments of each of these subjects found elsewhere. Nevertheless, all these traditions, ideas, and persons mentioned, and many more, are present or presupposed in the discussions and details of many of the chapters in this handbook.

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION



5

Our hope is that this book will aid in the development of the neo-Calvinist movement for the future, not merely for the sake of an accurate historical consciousness but that it might contribute to its growth as a living tradition that would shape theological and cultural reflection worldwide.

A NOTE ON THE COVER The artwork that adorns the cover of this handbook is The Sower (1911), the work of Dutch painter, Johan Thorn Prikker. It is fitting not merely due to its Dutch and modern origins. Prikker’s Sower impresses a sobering visual representation of the parable from which it is inspired (Mt. 13:18-23) and invokes theological reflections on many themes from the neo-Calvinistic tradition. The work of sowing refers to the proclamation of the word of God, the seed from which true transformation would come in the individual and in the communities to which they belong. Indeed, moral and cultural transformation cannot be brought about without evangelical proclamation. However, as indicated from the posture of Prikker’s sower, such work presupposes the conditions of a fallen world, and as such is burdened with difficulty, entangled with false starts, involves recalcitrant hearers and doers, and external constraints that make triumphalism incompatible with this leavening work. Such work, however, needs to be done, not for the sake of the glory or sovereignty of the Christian, but rather due to the calling of Christ, the true sovereign. The representation of the sower also emphasizes his intrinsic connection with creation. The human body is of dust, and the sower’s form looks to be carved out of the very earthy materials that make up his environment. Yet, he transcends his earthliness by way of his vocation in obedience to a higher, heavenly calling, perhaps depicted by the placement of the sun or moon behind his head, representing a halo. The sowing of the word of God, much like sowing seeds in agricultural contexts, in turn, cultivates creation. The preaching of the gospel leads to moral reformation, but it is a reformation that brings one back to the creational intent of God’s purposes. We fulfill the vocational call of the image of God to the extent that we are conformed to the holistic vision of the kingdom of God.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A handbook like this could only be completed by the shared efforts of its fine contributors. We are grateful for their labors, essays, and patience with the editorial process. Thanks are due to Stephanie DiMaria, who assisted superlatively with the formatting and organization of the entire work, and Jon Huff, for administrative aid as we completed the manuscript. Reformed Theological Seminary (Washington DC) and St Columbas have been ideal contexts from which to work, and we are grateful for the support we received from both of these institutions. George Harinck, James Eglinton, Marinus de Jong, and Dmytro Bintsarovskyi all contributed constructive feedback during different stages of the project. Any remaining shortcomings, of course, are our own responsibility.

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PART I

Theological Loci

8

Chapter 1

God and Trinity CAMERON CLAUSING

Reflecting on the historic understanding of the Trinity, Scott Swain contends, “The Reformers . . . were committed to the doctrine’s traditional modes of expression and to its propagation in the Protestant church. Many of the major Protestant confessions produced in the sixteenth century employed tradition and affirmed the early catholic creeds as reliable summaries of biblical teaching.”1 While there are some that would contend that at the Reformation a door was opened to the Socinian heresy,2 the evidence from the Reformers and the confessions that flow out of the Reformation contradict this assertion.3 If the Reformers were committed to “traditional modes of expression” concerning the Trinity, this same commitment is not evident among many leading theologians of the nineteenth century.4 The nineteenth century saw the rise of history as a science. No longer were theological positions accepted because a particular figure in history asserted them.5 This change came to be known as “historicism.”6 With the rise of historicism, the question of doctrinal development loomed large. Johannes Zachhuber has noted that a “systematic coherence” was necessary so as to present the material “in such a way that the relationship between individual events becomes plausible to the reader and its reconstruction accountable to the community of historians.”7 An intimate relationship developed between history, philosophy, and theology. Concurrent with the rise of historicism was the turn to the subject. This subjective turn took the “I” as the starting point. Whereas before it was God, the world, or society that defined reality, post-Kantian modern thought was egocentric.8 Herman Bavinck Scott Swain, “The Reformers and the Ecumenical Doctrine of the Trinity,” in The Oxford Handbook of The Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 228. 2 John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Westminster: Christian Classics Inc.), 198–9. 3 Swain, “The Reformers,” 232–6. 4 One need only look at Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith and where he said, “We have the less reason to regard this doctrine as finally settled since it did not receive fresh treatment when the Evangelical (Protestant) Church was set up; and so there must still be in store for it a transformation which will go back to its very beginnings.” See: Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960), §172. 5 Planck made this observation in Einleitung in die theologische Wissenschaften, vol. 1 of 2 (Leipzig: Liegfried Lebrecht Crusius, 1794), 109. 6 Stephen Sykes, The Identity of Christianity: Theologians and the Essence of Christianity from Schleiermacher to Barth (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 1–8. 7 Johannes Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany: From F.C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 7. 8 John Macmurray, The Self as Agent (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1957), 31–61. 1

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T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF NEO-CALVINISM

(1854–1921) was critical of this turn to the subject. However, his concern was not that the philosophy, and subsequently theology, had turned to the subject but that this turn was not radical enough.9 As Bavinck saw it, nineteenth-century thinkers had reduced religion to morality (Kant), feeling (Schleiermacher), or knowledge (Hegel).10 Bavinck’s contention was that this limited religion to a particular aspect of life and “religion must, according to the Christian confession . . . not be something but everything in life.”11 These conceptual shifts in thinking (historicism and subjectivism) led to a reimagining of various theological loci including the doctrine of God. Historicism and subjectivism produced an expectation for development in theological inquiry. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) asserted, If one desires to master a particular discipline in its fullest extent, one must make it one’s aim to sift and supplement what others have contributed to it. Without such an effort, no matter how complete one’s information may be, one would be a mere carrier of tradition—the lowest rank of all activities open to a person, and the least significant.12 Theology was meant to progress, and it is always “striving for perfection.”13 It is the situatedness of the subject that brings about this development. Thus, when doing theology, the theology must consider that they are in a particular place, at a particular time, within a particular tradition. Bavinck, echoing Schleiermacher, said: Precisely because the Christian faith, which began at the beginning of time and continues to this age, indeed its essence is the fruit of time, but the form is from this time. No matter how much good Franken’s Kern, Marck’s Merg, and Brakel’s Reasonable Service produced in earlier days, they can no longer be revived. They no longer speak to the younger generation and inadvertently give rise to the thought that Christianity no longer fits this age. Thus, there is an urgent need for a work which can take the place of these works of the fathers; presenting the old truths in a form which will meet the demands of the present time.14

Bruce R. Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocentrism in Herman Bavinck (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 67. 10 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 254–69. 11 Herman Bavinck, “Philosophie des geloofs,” in Verzamelde opstellen op het gebied van godsdienst en wetenschap (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1921), 14; “Philosophy of Religion (Faith),” in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 29. 12 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study, 3rd ed., trans. and ed. Terrence N. Tice (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 9. 13 Herman Bavinck, “The Pros and Cons of a Dogmatic System,” trans. Nelson Kloosterman, The Bavinck Review 5 (2014): 97. 14 Herman Bavinck, Magnalia Dei: onderwijzing in de christelijke religie naar gereformeerde belijdenis, 1st ed. (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1909), 2. Dutch: Juist omdat het Christelijk geloof de erkenning is van een werk Gods, dat begonnen is van den aanvang der tijden en ook in deze eeuw wordt voortgezet, is het wezen ervan wel vrucht der tijden, maar de vorm is van dezen tijd. Hoeveel goeds Frankens Kern, Marcks Merg en Brakels Redelijke Godsdienst in vroeger dagen hebben uitgewerkt, ze zijn thans niet meer tot nieuw leven te brengen, spreken het jonger geslacht niet meer toe en wekken onwillekeurig de gedachte, dat het Christendom bij deze eeuw niet meer past. Daarom is er dringend behoefte aan een werk, dat in de plaats van dezen arbeid der vaderen treden kan en de oude waarheid voordraagt in een vorm, die beantwoordt aan de eischen van dezen tijd. 9

GOD AND TRINITY



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Theology must develop for each generation. For Bavinck, mere parroting of what the ancients have said is not enough for the theologian. This chapter explores the question of theological development in the doctrine of God for the neo-Calvinist tradition. I will argue that neo-Calvinism, as embodied by Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), Herman Bavinck, and Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903–96), does not radically develop the doctrine of God.15 Nevertheless, what the neo-Calvinist movement does with the doctrine of God displays the cultural context in which they are working. To demonstrate this argument, I will look at three thinkers who are identified with the neo-Calvinist movement. First, I will examine Abraham Kuyper. To employ a Kuyperian metaphor, Kuyper was the goldminer of neo-Calvinism. He brought light to important theological concepts without developing them into an intricate system. Second, I will consider Herman Bavinck. Continuing with Kuyper’s metaphor, Bavinck was the goldsmith of neo-Calvinism. He took the gold which Kuyper mined and developed it into a sophisticated system.16 Third, I will explore the work of G. C. Berkouwer. Berkouwer provides a helpful final study because he comes after the pillars of neo-Calvinism (Kuyper and Bavinck) have died. Nevertheless, the movement influences him, setting him on his trajectory. What makes him most fascinating for the purposes of this chapter is the absence of the doctrine of God in most of his writings, and most notably in his multivolume set Studies in Dogmatics.17 This will all come together to support the argument that the neo-Calvinist tradition did little substantively to “modify” the doctrine of God, but did put the doctrine of God to use in new and innovative ways.

I. ABRAHAM KUYPER AND THE DOCTRINE OF GOD A cursory look at Kuyper’s writing career confirms the fact that he was prolific. In 2011 Tjitze Kuipers wrote an annotated bibliography of Kuyper’s works that was more than 700 pages.18 Kuyper’s theological reflection is perhaps best illustrated in his Dictaten Dogmatiek, which are lecture notes taken by one of his students. Originally a threevolume set, these notes contain reflections on various theological loci. For the purpose of this chapter, I will consider sections in the Locus de Deo.19 In the analysis of Kuyper’s doctrine of God, what becomes apparent is that Kuyper, unlike many of his nineteenthcentury contemporaries, does not modify his doctrine of God in accordance with the philosophical developments of the nineteenth century. This is significant because the nineteenth century saw the influence of German Idealists like Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), J. G. Fitche (1762–1814), Friedrich Schelling (1775– 1854), and G. W. F Hegel (1770–1831) on the doctrine of God.20 The common questions An exception could be made for Herman Bavinck, who explored the concept of “absolute personality” in the divine essence. I will examine that more in the following. 16 Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid, vol. 3 (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1909), 389; cf. James Eglinton, “The Reception of Aquinas in Kuyper’s Encyclopedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 17 G. C. Berkouwer, Studies in Dogmatics, 14 vols (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1954–76). 18 Tjitze Kuipers, Abraham Kuyper: An Annotated Bibliography 1857–2010 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 19 Abraham Kuyper, Locus de Deo: College-dictaat van een der studenten, vol. 1–2 (Amsterdam: A. Fernhout, 1896–8); Locus de Deo: College-dictaat van een der studenten, vol. 3 (Amsterdam: W. Kirchner, 1900). 20 Samuel M. Powell, “Nineteenth-Century Protestant Doctrines,” in The Oxford Handbook of The Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 268. 15

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at this time were about God’s relation to time. Is God being or does God become? What does this mean for God’s relation to the creation? That is, to what extent can we say that God is independent? Questions surrounding God’s self-consciousness and personality became new theological considerations for philosophers and theologians in the nineteenth century. In the Netherlands, the influence of this philosophy appeared in a variety of theologians. The most notable figure is J. H. Scholten (1811–85).21 Scholten was a university professor at Leiden and Kuyper’s doctoral supervisor. Scholten’s doctrine of God was a form of monistic-pantheism wherein God “reveals himself in beauty, in the Spirit or Idea, or in nature.”22 Thus, for Scholten, God is always becoming. Added to this view of God, Scholten also held to a high view of divine sovereignty. He argued that it is the “material principle” of Reformed theology.23 Taken with his understanding of God as monistic-pantheism, Scholten argued for a conception of God as “omnicausal” which led him to assert a form of determinism in line with the views in the contemporary natural sciences.24 The significance of Scholten’s theological project cannot be overstated both in the Netherlands in general and in the life of Abraham Kuyper in particular. In the Netherlands, Scholten was the “foremost systematician” of his era at Leiden, the leading university in the Netherlands.25 With regard to Kuyper, Scholten’s image would be the shadow cast over Kuyper’s understanding of modernism. According to Kuyper, what modernist theologians like Scholten do in their inquiries into Christianity is destroy the very thing they set out to study.26 They are like “a child who examines toys by breaking them apart.”27 For Kuyper, pantheism was the biggest danger developed in modern theology. However, he saw the options to the confession of the Triune God being a form of either deism or pantheism.28 Thus, according to Kuyper’s analysis the struggle was between opposing conceptions of God. The views of God which take their foundational beliefs from pantheism and deism are set in opposition to the view of God which flows out of Christian theism and which Kuyper contended found its highest expression in Calvinism.29 Kuyper’s approach to the doctrine of God does not diverge in any significant way from the historic orthodox Christian explication of the doctrine. He begins by acknowledging that God is one eternal being.30 This one eternal being is absolute being.31 As absolute

G. C. Berkouwer calls Scholten “the father of Dutch modernism.” See: G. C. Berkouwer, A Half Century of Theology: Movements and Motives, trans. Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 227. 22 George Harinck and Lodewijk Winkeler, “The Nineteenth Century,” in Handbook of Dutch Church History, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2015), 474. 23 James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Toward a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 14. 24 Johannes Scholten, De leer der Hervormde Kerk (Leiden: P. Engels, 1848–50), 4:lxi. 25 James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 91. 26 Abraham Kuyper, Het modernisme: een fata morgana op christelijk gebied. Lezing (Amsterdam: H. de Hoogh, 1871), 44–5; Abraham Kuyper, “Modernism: A Fata Morgana in the Christian Domain,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 115. 27 Arie L. Molendijk, Protestant Theology and Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 103. 28 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), 131. 29 Ibid., 171. 30 Abraham Kuyper, Dictaten dogmatiek: college-dictaat van een der studenten niet in den handel, 2nd ed., 6 vols, vol. 1 (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1910), 124–5. 31 Ibid., 1, 124. Emphasis original. 21

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being, God is the ground and source for all creatures. Kuyper is quick to assert this is not to be understood in a pantheistic way, “as if God himself were not only the ground of being, but also the being itself in all creatures.”32 To this Kuyper affirmed that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all equally God. That is, that the Father is the being of God, the Son is the being of God, and the Spirit is the being of God.33 In making this claim, Kuyper turned to the category of person and affirms that the Father, Son, and Spirit are three persons without denying the doctrine of divine simplicity.34 In affirming that the Father, Son, and Spirit are persons, Kuyper acknowledged that this word was fraught with problems in his context.35 Nevertheless, he contended that to deny this opened the door to either a deism or a pantheism. If God was not a personal living God, then the only options left open are a form of deism or pantheism.36 Not only does Kuyper address the need to see God as personal, he also avoided the modern definitions of “person” put forward by thinkers like Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, and adopted the definitions of Boethius, “the individual substance of a rational nature,” and Augustine, “it is not a part or quality in another, but that which properly subsists.”37 Once again in this way, it is plain to see that Kuyper is not interested in his doctrine of God as innovative or progressive. Kuyper’s aim was to retrieve the older theology of the Trinity. He believed that to adopt any of the contemporary definitions of person and thus, to modify one’s doctrine of God, was not in keeping with “reformed principles.”38 Kuyper did utilize the doctrine of God in a manner that was innovative, however. Yet, one could argue that even here Kuyper was in continuity with those coming out of Reformed orthodoxy. Richard Muller argues that the Reformed orthodox saw the Trinity as an eminently practical theology. He points to the fact that for the Reformed orthodox, the Trinity’s practical use was to incite worship, adoration, and consolation.39 Kuyper’s expansion of this is to see the doctrine of God not only in those three areas, but also in building his entire program with regard to the Anti-Revolutionary Party and the nation of the Netherlands.40 One example of this is how Kuyper structured his political party. He reduced the party’s principles to one formal principle and three substantive principles. His formal principle was “the fact of sin.”41 This led to the position that humans cannot create a political system on their own because of sin. It also meant that God’s ideas about politics cannot be passed on “with any degree of purity.”42 Thus, to develop a political system, special revelation is needed. “Opposite sin stands the Word of God.”43 Kuyper’s three Ibid., 124. Ibid., 1, 158. 34 Ibid., 1, 148–60. 35 Ibid., 11–31. 36 Ibid., 2, 7–8. 37 Ibid., 2, 30. Kuyper provided the Latin for both these quotes from Boethius, “Naturae rationalis subsistens individuum” and Augustine “non est pars aut qualitas in alio, sed quod proprie subsistit.” 38 Ibid., 2, 30. 39 Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 2nd ed., 4 vols, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 154–7. 40 Abraham Kuyper, “Calvinism: Source and Stronghold of Our Constitutional Liberties,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 313–17. 41 Abraham Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto, trans. Harry Van Dyke (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015), 379. 42 Ibid., 379. 43 Ibid., 380. 32 33

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substantive principles then are: (1) sovereignty for each distinctive sphere; (2) the nation as an organism; and (3) freedom of intellectual-spiritual formation and education.44 He went on to assert that this three-in-one structure comes from Trinitarian theology. “[T]he above three principles are . . . the humble and joyful confession of God’s Holy Trinity in its consequences for the political domain.”45 For Kuyper, it was a Trinitarian theology that held together his understanding of how sphere-sovereignty worked itself out in the world. “[F]or those of us who cannot build otherwise . . . life’s depths are fathomed neither in the theological, moral, and juridical world nor in the social and political domain so long as our investigations have not come to rest in God himself, that is, in the confession of his Holy Trinity.”46 It is the application of the doctrine of God for the ordering not only of a nation but also of a political party that makes Kuyper’s engagement with this doctrine unique, and demonstrates his own context in the late nineteenth-early twentieth-century Netherlands. Kuyper did little new with the substance of the doctrine of God, but he expanded its use from the way that the Reformed orthodox of the early modern period used the doctrine. This substantiates the large claim that the neo-Calvinist approach to the doctrine of God was not a radical break from the larger tradition even while putting the doctrine to use in novel ways. The chapter will now move to consider how the goldsmith of the neo-Calvinist movement developed Kuyper’s thought in his own engagement with the doctrine of God.

II. Herman Bavinck and the Doctrine of God The prolific nature of Kuyper’s writing does not mean that it is without depth. However, to use Kuyper’s analogy, Kuyper was the goldminer of the neo-Calvinist tradition, and Bavinck was the goldsmith. Bavinck took the raw material that Kuyper excavated and turned it into a beautiful system. At the center of Bavinck’s system was the doctrine of the knowledge of God.47 Everything rippled out from this center. This led Bavinck to say in both Magnalia Dei: Onderwijzing in de Christelijk Religie naar Gereformeerde Belijdenis and Handleiding bij het Onderwijs in den Christelijken Godsdienst that “Humanity’s highest good is God and God alone.”48 God, however, is not only the center but he is also the beginning and the end. “But proceeding from God, it descends to his works, in order through them again to ascend to and end in him. So in this method as well, God is beginning, middle, and end. From him, through him, and to him are all things (Rom. 11:36).”49 Bavinck goes so far as to say that the doctrine of the knowledge of God was the Ibid. Ibid., 381. 46 Ibid. 47 Bruce Pass has argued that Bavinck’s central dogma is Christology (see Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics, 37–47). He sets Christology and the doctrine of the knowledge of God up as two competing central dogmas. It appears that Pass sees this as a zero-sum game. However, I have argued elsewhere that there is a reading of Bavinck that can reconcile these two central dogmas. Bavinck is not offering sloppy scholarship or even a development but is looking at the same central dogma from different angles. See Cameron Clausing, “‘A Christian Dogmatic Does Not Yet Exist’: The Influence of the Nineteenth Century Historical Turn on the Theological Methodology of Herman Bavinck” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2020), 93–5. 48 Handleiding bij het Onderwijs in den Christelijken Godsdienst (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1913), 1; Magnalia Dei: Onderwijzing in de Christelijke Religie naar Gereformeerde Belijdenis, 2nd ed. (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1931), 9. 49 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 1: Prolegomena, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols, vol. 1, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 112. 44 45

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only doctrine: “The knowledge of God is the only dogma, the exclusive content, of the entire field of dogmatics. All the doctrines treated in dogmatics—whether they concern the universe, humanity, Christ, and so forth—are but the explication of the one central dogma of the knowledge of God.”50 As has been noted earlier, Bavinck saw the importance of a theologian locating themselves not only physically and temporally but also confessionally. To that end, Bavinck’s dogmatics was Reformed. That is to say, Bavinck self-consciously wrote from within the tradition that flowed out of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and more particularly the tradition that came from the Swiss city-states. However, Bavinck was also aware that the church did not begin in the Reformation, but, in fact, that he wrote as one voice in the Catholic Church. Accordingly, the task of the dogmatician is not to draw the material for his dogmatics exclusively from the written confession of his own church but to view it in the total context of the unique faith and life of his church, and then again in the context of the history of the whole church of Christ. He therefore stands on the shoulders of previous generations. He knows he is surrounded by a cloud of witnesses and lets his witness merge with the voice of these many waters. Every dogmatics ought to be in full accord with and a part of the doxology sung to God by the church of all ages.51 Bavinck’s theology was both Reformed and catholic.52 This Reformed catholicity is most evident in Bavinck’s Doctrine of God. Like Kuyper, Bavinck does not stray much from, to quote Swain again, “the doctrine’s traditional modes of expression” even while having studied at the University of Leiden under Scholten and the modernist Old Testament scholar Abraham Keunen (1828–91).53 What this meant for Bavinck was that when discussing the Trinity he affirmed the confessional categories of essence and person. Regarding essence, he argued that an excessive reliance on nominalism leads to a version of tritheism, and in the opposite direction, being exceedingly dependent on realism leads to a version of Sabellianism.54 Thus, following Bavinck’s thought, one must conceive of God’s essence in a wholly unique way to created things. The divine nature cannot be conceived as an abstract generic concept, nor does it exist as a substance outside of, above, and behind the divine persons. It exists in the divine persons and is totally and quantitatively the same in each person. The persons, though distinct, are not separate. They are the same in essence, one in essence, and the same being.55

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 2: God and Creation, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols, vol. 2, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 29. 51 Bavinck, RD, 1, 86. 52 Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 92; Jan Veenhof, Revelatie en Inspiratie: De Openbarings en Schriftbeschouwing van Herman Bavinck in vergelijking met die der ethische theologie (Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1968), 386. 53 Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 91. 54 Bavinck, RD, 2, 299. 55 Ibid., 300. 50

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Accordingly, Bavinck argued that “God is absolute unity and simplicity.”56 This unity and simplicity means that God’s essence is not broken up among the person or divided into attributes. However, the question of divine essence does lead then to an examination of the persons of the Trinity. He argued that divine persons are subsisting (this is in accordance with Calvin, Polanus, and many in the post-Reformation orthodox tradition). However, going further back he follows Richard of St. Victor, who contended that a “person” has incommunicable attributes (in the divine persons namely “paternity” and “filiation”). Bavinck also demonstrated his connection to “traditional modes of expression,” adopting the Aristotelian distinction that both Augustine and Boethius employed regarding “relations” (i.e., it is a relation toward something).57 That is to say, a relation does not say anything about the thing in itself, but only about that particular thing’s disposition to other things. Bavinck then, quoting Augustine, noted that the language of person is notoriously difficult to understand, and in theology “We speak of persons ‘not to express what that is but only not to be silent [non ut illud diceretur, sed ne taceretur]’.”58 As can be seen from Bavinck’s definitions, his explications and uses of Trinitarian terminology do not stray from the broader catholic tradition. Bavinck, like Kuyper, affirms the traditional modes of expression, and like Kuyper, he sees the doctrine of God and the Trinity, in particular, of eminent practical value.59 Bavinck went further than Kuyper in arguing that the Trinity is the “perfect system” and, thus, the “origin, type, model, and image of all other systems.”60 Eglinton calls this the “triniform” structure of creation. “God is as archetypal (triune) unity-in-diversity the basis for all subsequent (triniform) ectypal cosmic unity-in-diversity.”61 For Bavinck, then, because God exists as one essence and three persons, this is the pattern for understanding all the rest of creation. The entire created order is one that reflects the archetypal unity-in-diversity. Thus, Bavinck saw the doctrine of God, and particularly the doctrine of the Trinity, as the doctrine that gave everything in creation order. It is the pattern on which humanity is able to order itself and the things around it. However, Bavinck’s development of the doctrine of God does not stop with his application in ordering life. Bavinck, unlike Kuyper, saw a potential problem in the way that the doctrine of God has been traditionally confessed. In Bavinck’s view, almost every philosophical system had made a break between the absoluteness of God and the personality of God.62 To bridge the divide between personality and absoluteness, Bavinck posited an attribution of the absolute personality to the divine essence. “The persons are not three revelational modes of the one divine personality; the divine being is tripersonal, precisely because it is the absolute divine personality.”63 Bavinck is not unaware that this move was out of accord with the traditional reading of Trinitarian theology.64 However, Hegel had Ibid. Boethius, The Trinity is One God Not Three Gods, trans. H. F. Stewart (London: William Heinemann, 1918), ch. 4. 58 Bavinck, RD, 2, 302. 59 Bavinck, “The Pros and Cons of a Dogmatic System,” 92. 60 Ibid. 61 Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 54. 62 Bavinck, RD, 2, 34. 63 Ibid., 302. 64 Bavinck, RD, 2, 50. It must be noted here that Bavinck is not making an argument about personhood. If he was, then we can see analogies to this in prior debates in the church around “absolute” or “relative” personhood. 56 57

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cast a shadow over theological reflection on the doctrine of God in his construction of impersonal Absolute idealism. Bavinck’s concern was that Hegel’s construction of God leads to either pantheism or panlogism. To avoid this problem, Bavinck deployed the late modern philosophical category of “absolute personality” and identified it with the divine essence.65 Even while Bavinck differentiated absolute personality from “personhood” generally speaking, he never gave absolute personality a concrete definition. Bavinck hinted at what he meant by personality in Reformed Dogmatics when he wrote, “God is a person, a conscious and freely willing being.”66 He then described it as “self-consciousness” which “is equally deep and rich, equally infinite, as his being.”67 Thus, personality as Bavinck understood it is, “the eternal synthesis of himself with himself, infinite self-knowledge and self-determination, and therefore not dependent on a nonself.”68 This definition implies a psychological depth which Bavinck equates with the divine essence that does not appear to be present in earlier constructions of the doctrine of God. Substantively Bavinck’s construction of his doctrine of God does not stray from “the doctrine’s traditional modes of expression.” Bavinck affirmed one essence and three persons. The fact that he adopted these traditional categories betrayed his location within a tradition. However, he did make two moves that demonstrate his location within time and space. First, he followed and expanded on Kuyper’s modern move in making the doctrine “practical” for all areas of life. Second, he attempted to respond to Hegel’s impersonal Absolute idealism by positing absolute personality in the divine essence. Whether Bavinck’s constructive move concerning absolute personality and the divine essence offers the answer for which he was looking can still be debated. What all this does show, however, is that Bavinck, like Kuyper, did not radically develop the doctrine of God, but what he did with the doctrine does display the cultural context in which they were working.

III. G. C. BERKOUWER AND THE DOCTRINE OF GOD If one was going to stretch Kuyper’s “goldminer/goldsmith” analogy, G. C. Berkouwer could be considered, at least with regard to the doctrine of God, the “jobbing jeweler.” A jobbing jeweler is one who undertakes small and basic repairs/alterations to the jewelry which the goldsmith has produced. Berkouwer taught dogmatic theology at the Vrije Explorations are found in Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus on this question. In the early modern period, Richard Baxter considers these questions too when doing Trinitarian theology. See: Rudi A. te Velde, “The Divine Persons,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 365–8; Russell L. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 183–4; Simon J. G. Burton, The Hallowing of Logic: The Trinitarian Method of Richard Baxter’s Methodus Theologiae (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 228–41. 65 This category develops in the mid- to late nineteenth century out of a philosophical group in Germany that called themselves “speculative theists.” For more on them see: Clausing, “A Christian Dogmatic Does Not Yet Exist,” 173–9. While some have seen Isaak Dorner as the source for this, Bavinck never cites Dorner in this regard and even in his lecture notes on the topic only looks at the “speculative theists.” Doornbos makes this argument in Gayle Doornbos, “Bavinck’s Doctrine of God: Absolute, Divine Personality,” Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies 6, no. 2 (2021), 311–48. Nathan D. Shannon discusses the concept of “absolute personality,” but does not offer a compelling argument for the source of this language. See Nathan D. Shannon, Absolute Person and Moral Experience: A Study in Neo-Calvinism (New York: T&T Clark, 2022). 66 Bavinck, RD, 2, 30. 67 Ibid., 49. 68 Ibid., 49–50.

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Universiteit Amsterdam from 1945 to 1974. He is known for his eighteen-volume (fourteen in English) Studies in Dogmatics. This series covers many of the classical loci of theology (faith, justification, sanctification, perseverance, providence, revelation, Christ, sacraments, election, humanity, sin, the church, and the parousia). What is striking, and the reason it would not be unthinkable to call Berkouwer a “jobbing jeweler,” concerning the doctrine of God is that among this list, the Trinity and even the doctrine of God more generally are noticeably absent. One could be thought to be overstating the case if it were not for the fact that Dirk van Keulen’s bibliography of Berkouwer’s work demonstrates the same neglect concerning the doctrine of the Trinity in the rest of Berkouwer’s work.69 Added to this, in their survey of Dutch theology’s interaction with the doctrine of the Trinity, Gijsbert van den Birk and Stephan van Erp note Berkouwer’s inattention to the topic.70 There are two spots worth mentioning where Berkouwer discussed the doctrine of God. The first is from his A Half Century of Theology.71 Here Berkouwer briefly surveyed the contemporary landscape around Trinitarian theology. He questioned whether the historic terminology still works in our contemporary world. His particular concern was with the language of “persons.” He stated, “In speaking of God the church has always talked of him as a person; it could hardly speak any other way as long as it addressed God in prayer.”72 He went on to show how this is problematic since “person,” in dogmatics, is a technical term used for the three persons of the Trinity. Adding to the confusion, Berkouwer utilized the work of his contemporary Dutch theologian at Leiden, Hendrikus Berkhof, and demonstrated that modern usage of person implied some sort of “self-conscious” individual.73 In this construction, it would be easy to hear echoes of Bavinck in Berkouwer. He, thus, tentatively pointed in a direction which moves away from the historic language of “person” even while attempting to maintain much of the concept in the background. The second point in Berkouwer worth noting wherein he interacted with the doctrine of God and the Trinity more specifically is in his The Work of Christ in the Studies in Dogmatics series.74 He connected the doctrine of God here to the foundation of the political state. He said, “To hold that the state is Christologically founded is to contradict Scripture and the confession of the trinity; nor is there any scriptural proof for a sharp distinction between regnum Christi and regnum Dei.”75 Berkouwer’s point was that identifying the political structures with Christology runs the risk of confusing the church and the state. He then turned to Bavinck and showed how Bavinck said that Christ is the head over the church, but “Christ’s kingship is entirely different from that of the rulers of the earth.”76 The danger he saw in having a Christological foundation for the political state was that it leads to a fusing of church and state wherein one would dominate the other. It is these two small alterations to the doctrine of God that give Berkouwer the Dirk van Keulen, Bibliografie/Bibliography G.C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 2000). Gijsbert van den Brink and Stephan van Erp, “Ignoring God Triune? The Doctrine of the Trinity in Dutch Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 11, no. 1 (2009): 74–5. 71 Berkouwer, A Half Century of Theology, 258–62. 72 Ibid., 258. 73 Ibid., 260. 74 G. C. Berkouwer, The Work of Christ, trans. Cornelius Lambregtse, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1965). 75 Ibid., 232. 76 Ibid. 69 70

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moniker of the “jobbing jeweler” of the neo-Calvinist tradition. With the former, one can see Bavinck’s influence. With the latter, one can see the influence of Kuyper and Bavinck in his deploying of the Trinity as the foundation for the political state.

IV. CONCLUSION This chapter has examined the work of three neo-Calvinist theologians on the doctrine of God. The argument I have made throughout this chapter is that the neo-Calvinist movement did not radically develop the doctrine of God even while it did respond to the cultural context in which it was being worked out. The chapter first considered Abraham Kuyper, the father of the movement, who developed a substantial explication of the doctrine but did not significantly alter the definitions or categories in which he worked. However, he did put the doctrine of God to use in new and innovative ways using it as the model and pattern for his Anti-Revolutionary Party. After Kuyper, the chapter considered the work of Herman Bavinck. Here again, I showed that Bavinck adopted the traditional language of the doctrine of God. However, unlike Kuyper he did make one modification to the doctrine which he recognized as innovative. Bavinck attributed “absolute personality” to the divine essence. This was Bavinck’s attempt to respond to the impersonal Absolute idealism of Hegel. Bavinck also goes one step further than Kuyper and regards the Trinity as the pattern on which all the rest of creation is patterned. As Eglinton says, all of creation is “triniform.” Finally, the chapter considered Berkouwer. Berkouwer came after Kuyper and Bavinck and carried on much of what they did but in a new context. Berkouwer’s interaction with the doctrine of God is notable because it is a doctrine that is largely missing from his work. However, where he does interact with it, he acknowledges the importance of the doctrine for the life and health of the church, and for a correct understanding of the foundation of the state. The neo-Calvinist movement started at a time when “the ground [was] moving beneath their feet.”77 Everything from the rise of historicism to the locating of the “I” as the starting point for modern thought. Theology was not immune to this change. Even a doctrine as historically stable as the doctrine of God was to be recast. Kuyper, Bavinck, and Berkouwer all did this in unique and individual ways while remaining “committed to the doctrine’s traditional modes of expression.” This is because “the Trinity is the heart and center of Christianity.”78

T. C. W. Blanning, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe, ed. T. C. W. Blanning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1. 78 Bavinck, RD, 2, 285. 77

Chapter 2

Creation STEVE BISHOP

I. INTRODUCTION Theologians have often commented on the eclipse of1 and the flight from2 creation. This reflects that in much Christian thinking creation is largely marginalized if not neglected.3 However, this is not the case in neo-Calvinism, where creation plays a crucial role. As Herman Bavinck contended, “A doctrine of creation is one of the foundational building blocks of a biblical and Christian worldview.”4 The tendency to downplay creation within some Christian circles manifests as creation conflated with the beginning of the cosmos; it is not seen in a broader theological context. This has often resulted in an emphasis on sin and salvation in individual terms. The neo-Calvinist perspective with its integrated and holistic approach provides a much-needed remedy to this limited view. In what follows, I attempt to show that the neo-Calvinist doctrine of creation, while standing within the Reformed tradition, has a broader, deeper, and more profound view of creation. To this end, in this chapter, I will examine two key foci of a neo-Calvinist approach to creation: the Creator/creation distinction and the organic motif of creation. Around these two foci are clustered several other facets of a neo-Calvinist perspective (see Figure 2.1), which will be examined. I conclude with some tentative suggestions for further research and exploration but begin with some preliminary observations.

For example, G. S. Hendry, “Eclipse of Creation,” Theology Today 28 (1972): 406–25. Hendy notes: “It is noteworthy that when occasion calls for a brief, summary statement of faith, creation is often passed over” (419). Similarly, David Fergusson laments that “for much of the twentieth century, creation has been off the theological agenda,” Cosmos and the Creator: An Introduction to the Theology of Creation (London: SPCK, 1998), 2. Fergusson does note that it has “reemerged as a major topic of theological inquiry in recent years,” Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 1. And yet there is no chapter on creation in The Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology, ed. P. T. Nimmo and D. A. S. Fergusson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); nor in the Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism, ed. Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 2 Gustaf Wingren, The Flight from Creation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1971). 3 There are several reasons for this neglect/flight/eclipse of creation. These would include a Barthian-turn in theology at the end of the twentieth century; Gnostic tendencies; a nature-grace dualism; a fear of appearing “worldly,” and an (over)emphasis on the nature of the fall. 4 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 2: God and Creation, ed. J. Bolt, trans. J. Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 406. Hereafter RD. 1

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Unity-within-diversity Pancreationism

Dynamic not static Unfolding/ development

The Creator/ Creation Distinction

Creatio ex nihilo

An Organic Whole

Cultural mandate

Goodness of creation Creation ordinances

FIGURE 2.1:  The ellipse has two main foci: the Creator/creation distinction and creation as an organic whole. Clustered around these foci are several sub-themes, these will be examined in Parts III and IV, respectively.

II. THE NEO-CALVINISTS BROAD(ER) VIEW OF CREATION One example of the eclipse of creation is the narrow approach to the term “creation,” where creation refers to the conflict between creation and evolution. Creation is something that happened in the past—God created the universe; the question is how and when did he create it? Much sound has been made by the keys on the keyboard over this issue and a myriad of options have been posited.5 However, for the neo-Calvinist, the term “creation” is “much broader and more comprehensive.”6 For Bavinck, Scripture provides a distinct doctrine of creation, but it does not provide “a philosophical explanation of the problem of existence.”7 His Trinitarian view of creation is linked to a strong Christological perspective. Christ, as the second person of the Trinity, is the beginning, the firstborn, the origin of creation; he “causes and sustains”

See the discussion in Steve Bishop, “A Typology for Science and Religion,” Evangelical Quarterly 72, no. 1 (2000): 35–56. The position favoured by some neo-Calvinists is a literary or structural framework model—this was first proposed by Arie Noordzij, Gods Woord en der Eeuwen Getuigenis: Het Oude Testament in het Licht der Oostersche Opgravingen (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1924). This perspective was popularized by N. H. Ridderbos, Is There a Conflict Between Genesis 1 and Natural Science?, trans. J. Vriend (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957). This is a literary as opposed to a literal approach. It is a way of interpreting Genesis—it says nothing about the interpretation of evolutionary science. Some neo-Calvinists do adopt a more literal view of Genesis; see, for example, Willem J. Ouweneel, Adam Where Are You?—And Why This Matters (Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2018). See also the discussion in A. C. Flipse, “The Origins of Creationism in the Netherlands: The Evolution Debate among Twentieth-Century Neo-Calvinists,” Church History 81, no. 1 (2012): 104–47. 6 Al Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 71. For example, the missiologist J. H. Bavinck (1895–1964) saw the relationship of God with the cosmos as foundational to his “elentics,” An Introduction to the Science of Missions (Nutley: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1977), 247; and for neo-Calvinist philosopher, D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (1892–1978), creation—the origin of reality and the universe—was fundamental to his “types”; see, for example, his Schematische Kaarten: Filosofische Concepties in Probleemhistorisch Verband, ed. K. A. Bril and P. J. Boonstra (Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2000). 7 RD, 2, 407. 5

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the creation.8 The creation is for, by, and with the Son. Several themes appear to shape Bavinck’s thought: Trinitarian, organism, grace restores nature, and catholicity.9 Bavinck’s organic motif has come to the fore in recent studies. It arises from his Trinitarian view of God—God as three-in-one—which evinces a unity-within-diversity as opposed to a mechanical uniformity. Creation is the ectype of God’s Trinitarian archetype; creation reflects the nature of God. Without a Triune God “creation would not be possible.” Grace restores nature has long been recognized as a key theme—grace is not an addition or top-up to fallen creation but is a restoration, a renewal of what God intended creation to be. As regards catholicity in relation to creation he writes: “The Gospel is a joyful tiding, not only for the individual person but also for humanity, for the family, for society, for the state, for art and science, for the entire cosmos, for the whole groaning creation.”10 This is illustrative of the broad view taken by neo-Calvinists. Kuyper saw creation as revelation, “all creation is itself revelation”;11 it is a sovereign act of a self-revealing God. Herman Bavinck, like Kuyper, also sees creation as revelation: “Creation itself is the first, rich revelation of God, the foundation and beginning of every subsequent revelation.”12 Creation reveals to us something of the nature of God, without creation there is no revelation; creation is part of God’s self-disclosure. Creation is for the glory of God. God didn’t have to create but he chose to.13 Kuyper, Bavinck, and all subsequent neo-Calvinists are clear regarding this purpose of creation. In his Dogmatic Dictaten Kuyper is explicit: “The purpose of creation is the self-glorification of God, further the mutual glorification of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”14 Hence, creation is more than the scene for salvation. Creation is all-encompassing, foundational, and comprehensive. The world had a beginning and was created in time, along with time (cf Augustine). God as the Eternal One does not change; he is not limited by time; in him there is no future or past; thus, he did not become creator: “he is the eternal Creator and as Creator he was the Eternal One and as the Eternal One he created.”15 The corollary of this is that God existed before the creation. He is self-existent and pre-existent. Consequently, he Bavinck, RD, 2, 425–6. James Eglinton appropriately describes Bavinck’s perspective as a “triniform Organic Worldview,” in Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2012), 115. Eugene P. Heideman, The Relation of Revelation and Reason in E. Brunner and H. Bavinck (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1959) maintained that “grace restores nature” was central to Bavinck’s theology. Bavinck uses the phrase in RD, 3.577: “Grace restores nature and takes it to its highest pinnacle, but it does not add to it any new and heterogeneous constituents.” 10 “The Catholicity of Christianity and The Church,” CTJ 27 (1992): 223–4. H. Bavinck, De Katholiciteit van Christendom en Kerk, trans. J. Bolt (Kampen: Zalsman, 1888). 11 Abraham Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology, trans. H. De Vries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 259. And again: “Hence creation itself is primarily nothing else than a revelation of the power of God; of the God Almighty, who as such is the Creator of heaven and earth.” Ibid., 260. 12 Herman Bavinck, “Common Grace,” CTJ 24, no. 1 (1989): 39. Also, Herman Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation: A New Annotated Edition, ed. Cory C. Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2018), 209. 13 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World. Volume 1: The Historical Section. (Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology) (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016), 468. (Hereafter CG.) As he put it in his Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931): “It is not God who exists for the sake of His creation;—the creation exists for the sake of God. For, as the Scripture says, He has created all things for Himself,” 45. 14 Abraham Kuyper, Locus de Creatione, Tweede bewerking (1899/1900). College-Dictaat van een der Studenten (Amsterdam: W. Kirchner, 1900), 42. 15 Bavinck, RD, 2, 429. 8 9

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is the origin of all reality; nothing exists apart from him. God created everything; hence it follows that the Creator and creation are distinct but related. Thus, neither creation nor any aspect of it is divine, nor is creation an illusion or emanation.16 This means that everything other than God is creation and that nothing in creation is self-existent.

III. THE CREATOR/CREATION DISTINCTION The ontological distinction between Creator and creation while being a Reformed notion is also a main focus in the neo-Calvinist view of creation. Klaas Schilder (1890–1952) even goes as far as to stress that “He who loses sight of the distinction between God and His creature violates the fundamental concept of Scripture.”17Associated with this distinction are two supportive sub-themes: creatio ex nihilo and pancreationism. These provide a bulwark against false views of creation; a point which is developed by Herman Bavinck. This ontological distinction between Creator and creation stems from the nature of God: God alone is pre-existent and hence nothing else in creation is pre-existent. What is not Creator is creation.18 Bavinck sees this Creator/creation distinction as “the starting point of true religion.”19 Pantheism, dualism, and materialism are three of the worldviews Bavinck discusses which are undermined by the Creator/creation distinction. The fundamental problem with pantheism is that it is unable to describe how being arises from thought, mind from matter, or multiplicity from unity. Likewise, materialism cannot explain the origin of all things: “it rejects absolutes and yet makes atoms absolute; it denies God’s existence yet deifies matter.”20 As Bavinck argued, many materialists bypass this impasse by resorting to mysticism and pantheism, whereas theism is for Bavinck intellectually more satisfying than its rivals. He maintains that the flawed views discussed are riddled with internal inconsistencies and thus fail to satisfy human religious need. They are not in any sense scientific but “religious worldviews masquerading as science.”21 For Bavinck the right response for the church is to confess, “I Believe in God the Father, Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”22

Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, J. H. Bavinck, and Schilder all discuss the incompatibility of the emanation theory with the neo-Calvinist approach. Kuyper describes the emanation theory as teaching “that things are emanant e Deo. First they were in God; then they came out of Him. Thus, the created world consists of particles of God, which now manifest themselves outside Him.” Locus de Creatione. They were responding to a massive cultural shift at the time; mysticism in the form of emanation became an option for many in the light of evolution (those Kuyper mentions include the idealist von Schelling and the theosophist Franz von Baader). Bavinck illustrates this shift in his introduction to the third edition of Groen’s Unbelief & Revolution: “Rousseau has yielded way to Darwin, Kant to Hegel, deism to pantheism, rationalism to mysticism, and optimism to pessimism. While man was formerly envisioned as an angel, he is now looked upon as a clever animal.” “Voorrede,” in Ongeloof en revolutie: Eene reeks van historische voor-lezingen, 3rd ed., ed. G. Groen van Prinsterer (Kampen: J.H. Bos, 1904), v–xiii. 17 Klaas Schilder, Heaven—What Is It?, trans. M. M. Schoolland (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), 13. 18 Cornelius Van Til, the Westminster Theological Seminary apologist, made this the cornerstone of his method. See, for example, John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2008), 116. 19 Bavinck, RD, 2, 406. 20 Ibid., 414 n. 21. (Bolt’s summary). 21 Ibid., 406. 22 RD, 2, 416. 16

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Closely linked to the Creator/creation distinction is creation out of nothing. As Bavinck argues, “The teaching of creation out of nothing maintains that there is a distinction in essence between God and the world.”23

a. Creatio Ex Nihilo The Creator/creation distinction shows a marked difference between God and his creation. Creation out of nothing, creatio ex nihilo, supports the view that God alone is pre-existent. God alone is the origin of all reality; nothing exists apart from him. However, the Genesis passages themselves are unclear about a creation from nothing.24 As Bavinck observes, the expression is “not literally derived from the Scriptures.” The earliest unambiguous mention of creatio ex nihilo is in 2 Macc. 7:28.25 Moltmann writes in his Gifford Lectures: “The later theological interpretation of creation as creatio ex nihilo is . . . unquestionably an apt paraphrase of what the Bible means by ‘creation’.”26 This is an echo of what Bavinck wrote prior: The doctrine of creation out of nothing teaches the absolute sovereignty of God and man’s [sic] absolute dependence; if only a single particle were not created out of nothing, God would not be God. . . . The teaching of creation out of nothing maintains that there is a distinction in essence between God and the world. The creation does not exist as a result of a passage of the world from being in God to being outside of God, nor from being without God to being by God, but from nonexistence into existence.27 The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo has many implications, not least the contingent nature of creation—it is not necessary, and it is not eternal. According to Bavinck, creatio ex nihilo supports at the very least the following notions: the creation (world)/Creator (God) distinction (as noted earlier), the sovereignty of God over creation, and the dependence of creation on God. One reason Bavinck emphasizes the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is that it provides a defense against false philosophies: “The expression ex nihilo was eagerly preserved in Christian theology only because it was admirably suited for cutting off all sorts of errors at the root.”28 It is fitting that he does as the Genesis story was written partly as a polemic against pagan creation stories.29

Ibid., 419. The errors Bavinck has in mind that ex nihilo de-roots include notions of eternal matter, the formlessness of matter, and ontological emanation. 24 For a useful interdisciplinary examination of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo see Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids and Downers Grove: Baker/IVP, 2004). 25 On the history of creatio ex nihilo see Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of Creation Out of Nothing in Early Christian Thought (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994). 26 Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (London: SCM, 1985), 74. 27 Bavinck, RD, 2, 418–19. 28 Ibid., 418. 29 See, for example, G. F. Hasel, “The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology,” Evangelical Quarterly 2 (1974): 81–102. 23

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Kuyper provides an interesting insight: “In Scripture, creation is not taught as a creatio e nihilo in an absolute sense, but as a creatio e nihilo existente per omnipotentiam, voluntatem et sapientiam Dei [creation from nothing by means of the omnipotence, will and wisdom of God].” Creation is from God alone, not from any preexisting matter. Kuyper continues: “There was first nothing outside God, and God by His word of power brought things outside Him into existence.”30

b. Pancreation31 The Creator/creation distinction also implies pancreation. Creatio ex nihilo suggests that God created out of nothing, whereas the closely linked pancreationism is the notion that God created all things—himself excepted—as suggested by Col. 1:15,16. If God had not created all things, then some aspect of creation would at least be co-eternal with God and thus violate the Creator/creation distinction. Pancreation is also supported by the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. It is also an idea within the Nicene Creed.32 Nothing is excluded. Creation is not limited to the things we can see such as rocks, plants, and animals. It includes things we cannot see, including heaven, angels, ideas, institutions, and the products of human cultural development. Pancreation undermines the notion that rationality and logic are uncreated. Creation has a beginning, unlike God. Creation is dependent on the self-sufficiency of God. It is not divine; it is, however, organic.

IV. CREATION AS AN ORGANIC WHOLE The term “organic” has often been associated with Bavinck. It is no surprise that it also shapes the neo-Calvinist view of creation. As Kuyper asserts: “Originally God created his universe as one connected organic whole.”33 This organic concept carries a lot of theological weight in terms of a neo-Calvinist approach to creation. Through the organic motif Bavinck stresses the unity and diversity of creation— reflecting the Trinitarian nature of God—creation is a revelation of God’s divine wisdom. Sutanto sums up this Trinitarian perspective in this phrase: “The Trinity is an archetypal unity-in-diversity, and creation reflects its creator as an organism filled with unities-in-diversities.”34 For Bavinck God is transcendent and immanent in all his creation. The organic metaphor is also used to communicate an eschatological perspective in the flourishing and “opening up” of creation, so that all things eventually become obedient

Kuyper, Locus de Creatione, 42. See, for example, Roy Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 213–19: “Everything other than God is his creation and nothing in creation, about creation, or true of creation is self-existent,” 241 (italics original). 32 We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. 33 Kuyper, CG, 1, 577. 34 N. G. Sutanto, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2020), 177. 30 31

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to him. Nothing in creation will be wasted. There is a strong link, for Bavinck, between creation and consummation and likewise for Kuyper.35 An organic creation means that creation is not static and mechanical. There is a sense of cultivation and development, one characterized by the term “cultural mandate,” and of creation being developed and cultivated according to creational ordinances. I will explore some of these facets in the following.

a. The Unity-within-Diversity of Creation There is unity and diversity within creation. This unity-within-diversity, as mentioned previously, is described by the term “organic.”36 Bavinck argues, “According to this organic worldview, the world is in no sense one-dimensional; rather, it contains a fullness of being, a rich exchange of phenomena, a rich multiplicity of creations.”37 The creation is incredibly rich and diverse, it is full of variation; it is not uniform. The unity-within-diversity is a reflection of the three-in-one God; it “expresses the full revelation of the manifold wisdom of God.”38 For Kuyper it was also central to his sphere sovereignty39 and his view of the church.40 Kuyper points to the infinite constellation of stars and the creation of humanity as man and woman as evidence that “identical uniformity was not part of the creation plan.”41 As Bavinck discerns: “Everywhere in creation we face an endless differentiation, an inconceivable multiformity of creatures, an inexhaustible wealth of essence and life.”42 The problem of uniformity, Kuyper argued, was that it failed to acknowledge the diversity of creation.43 For Kuyper, unity-within-diversity is rooted in the creation and for Bavinck in the Trinity. For Kuyper the enemy of such pluriformity is modernism (the main contemporary secular worldview evident in theological liberalism) and for Bavinck it is monism (everything originates from one source—as seen in pantheism and in materialism). Bavinck remarks: “The foundation of both diversity and unity [of creation] is in God.”44

Kuyper sees a strong continuity between creation and consummation, for Kuyper consummation fulfils creation: “The new life of the reborn humanity on the new earth . . . will be a full human life which will exhibit all the glory that God in the first creation had purposed and appointed for the same, but which by us was sinned away.” The Revelation of St. John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1935), 332; see also CG, 1. 549. 36 Brian Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny: Eschatology & the Image of God in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 46. See Mattson’s discussion on the origin of the term “organic” as used by Kuyper and Bavinck in ibid., 47–54 and in James Eglinton, “Bavinck’s Organic Motif: Questions Seeking Answers,” CTJ 45, no. 1 (2010): 51–71. 37 Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, ed. and trans. Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, Cory Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 71–2. 38 A. Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gift for a Fallen World Volume 3: The Practical Section. (Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology) (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2020), 271. 39 Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 463–90. 40 “The pluriformity of the church . . . is a logical consequence for Kuyper of the church being grounded in a creation which is inherently pluriform,” Michael Wagenman, The Power of the Church: The Sacramental Ecclesiology of Abraham Kuyper (Eugene: Pickwick, 2020), 88. 41 Kuyper, CG, 3, 529. 42 Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 78. 43 Abraham Kuyper, “Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 19–44. 44 Bavinck, RD, 2, 436. 35

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The Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd builds on this unity-within-diversity.45 He takes seriously the plurality of creation and discerns fifteen modal aspects to it. These modal aspects include the numerical, spatial, kinematic, physical, biotic, sensitive, analytical, cultural, linguistic, social, economic, aesthetic, juridical, ethical, and pistic/certitudinal.46 These illustrate the diversity of creation in terms of their sphere sovereignty—each one of the aspects is irreducible to any other— and their sphere universality illustrates the unity of creation—in each one there are echoes of each other (Dooyeweerd calls these analogies). Suffice to say that these aspects help to explain the unity and diversity of creation. Each aspect needs to be unfolded, which explains the continuing nature of creation. Dooyeweerd’s notion of this unfolding or “opening process” of creation points toward the notion of development within creation. This organic development is an important thread in the neo-Calvinist view; it shows that the creation is dynamic, not static.

b. A Dynamic not Static Creation Al Wolters, standing in the neo-Calvinist line, building on both Kuyper and Dooyeweerd, picks up this development theme: “one of the distinctive features of neo-Calvinism is that it conceives of history as the unfolding of creation, the carrying out of a task contained in the ordinances of creation.”47 In the neo-Calvinist tradition, as mentioned earlier, creation goes beyond what God did in the first six days of Genesis. Humans were created to cultivate the creation according to God’s norms—this involved opening up, developing, and unfolding culture, building institutions, doing science, and scholarship. This development is in accordance with God’s ordinances for creation. And those ordinances of God, ruling both the mightiest problems and the smallest trifles, are urged upon us, not like the statutes of a law-book, not like rules which may be read from paper, not like a codification of life, which could even for a single moment, exercise any authority of itself—but they are urged upon us as the constant will of the Omnipresent and Almighty God, who at every instant is determining the course of life, ordaining its laws and continually binding us by His divine authority.48 To reiterate, there is to be an unfolding, a developing, and an opening up of the potentialities God has placed within creation. God delegates to humans this role as part of the stewardship of creation, as his image bearers. This is also exemplified in Kuyper’s approach to art.49 He sees art as God’s creation in which “God has placed in various materials certain possibilities of workmanship, and by applying this workmanship

Dooyeweerd makes an important point: creation is meaning. Not creation has meaning but is meaning. He rejects what he terms a substance view. Everything exists only in relation to the Creator, there is no independent stuff, substance. New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Volume I: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1953), 4. 46 See, for example, Steve Bishop, “Herman Dooyeweerd’s Christian Philosophy,” Foundations 82 (May 2022): 47–81. See also, Jonathan Chaplin, “Herman Dooyeweerd,” 249–63 in this volume. 47 Al Wolters, “Creation Order: A Historical Look at our Heritage,” in An Ethos of Compassion and the Integration of Creation, ed. B. J. Walsh, H. Hart, and R. E. VanderVennen (Lanham, NY: University Press of America, 1995), 42. 48 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 50. 49 Steve Bishop, “Abraham Kuyper’s Nascent Views on Art,” Journal for Christian Scholarship 55, no. 3–4 (2019) (3rd Quarter): 107–29. 45

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man must make out of each what there is in it, and not whatever he chooses.”50 Art is constructed according to the possibilities placed within it by God. Hence art/creation is not something that remains a static quantity. It is to be opened up and developed through the historical process. This unfolding of culture is integral to creation and is implied in what has been termed the “cultural mandate.”

c. The Cultural Mandate The neo-Calvinist view of creation and culture can be summed up in the term “cultural mandate.” It is a term that has almost become synonymous with neo-Calvinism. The phrase was coined by Klaas Schilder.51 Although Kuyper was reluctant to use the term “culture” and he preferred common “grace,”52 his square-inch quote is an embodiment of the cultural mandate as given in Gen. 1:26-28 and Gen. 2:15. The subduing, ruling, tilling, and keeping is a mandate for the flourishing of culture, for the unfolding of the “innate possibilities”53 within the God-given good creation.54 It is about expressing the kingdom of Christ in all areas of life; no area is exempt. It implies that although the creation is good, it needs to be developed and opened up;55 as has often been said, the Bible “begins in a garden and ends in a city.”56 For this to occur there must be growth, thus Kuyper argues: “the highest idea of that glory, was not a paradise but the city with its foundations and precious stones and gates of pearl.”57 Neo-Calvinists take seriously the idea behind the cultural mandate, that humanity is to aid and enable the creation to flourish. This opening up and flourishing of creation includes the family, schools, business, sociopolitical ideas, scholarship, and so on. Once again this is a broad view of creation—there is no sacred/secular dualism. In Kuyper’s meditation on “In the beginning” from his collection of meditations on home life he observes: “God has made a beginning, and thereby has appointed in all His creation the distinction between the beginning of a matter and its further course.”58 Its further course involves the “opening up,” the unfolding,59 and bringing to fruition, of all potentialities within creation, for God’s glory. This aspect of creation involves human involvement as the image bearers and stewards of God; it is so much more than weeding the garden Abraham Kuyper, Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. H. De Vries (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 2001), 121. N. H. Gootjes, “Schilder on Christ and Culture,” in Always Obedient: Essays on the Teachings of Dr. Klaas Schilder, ed. J. Geertsema (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1995). 52 In his Lectures on Calvinism, Kuyper mentions people being highly cultured (44), the cultured classes (45), cultured circles (188), and other than in agriculture and horticulture the term “culture” is not otherwise mentioned. 53 J. H. Bavinck, Between the Beginning and the End: A Radical Kingdom Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 29. 54 Kuyper refers to the replenishing, subduing, and dominion as “the order of creation” Lectures, 130, and as the “original ordinances of Paradise,” ibid., 31. 55 H. Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith: A Survey of Christian Doctrine, trans. H. Zylstra (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 187. 56 The earliest use of this phrase I have found is by “P.” in F. N. Peloubet and M. A. Peloubet, Select Notes on the International Sabbath School Lessons for 1879 (Boston: Ira Bradley & Co., 1878), 242. See also Wolters, Creation Regained, 41. 57 Abraham Kuyper, When Thou Sittest in Thine House: Meditations on Home Life, trans. J. H. De Vries (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 76–7. 58 Ibid., 1. 59 Ibid. 50 51

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and pruning the trees. It includes the discovery, development, and unlocking of the possibilities implicit within the creation in accordance with creational norms. It involves a discerning of the creation order and ordinances placed there by the Creator. Engaging in the cultural mandate involves studying creation and the order within (Isa. 28: 23-26). Understanding creation is essential to unlocking and unfolding creation in a God-given way and in a manner that glorifies God and not human arrogance:60 “Our Christian calling is to proclaim the salvation of Christ in the creation-unfolding task.”61 The cultural mandate has often been associated with an anthropocentric view of creation and in terms of human domination.62 This is neither a biblical nor a neo-Calvinist perspective. Despite the strength of “subdue and rule” and their lexical derivations the verbs do not provide humanity with a mandate to dominate or conquer nature.63 The mandate is to be seen in terms of stewardship. The opening chapters of Genesis reveal humanity’s relationship with the rest of creation: we are part of it and we are above it. We are created from the dust of the earth, and yet we are to rule over it. We are creatures of God and made in the image of God. It is these truths, held in tension, that keep Christianity free from the extremes of biocentrism and anthropocentrism (i.e., the reduction of humanity to grass and the deification of humanity). Christianity is neither anthropocentric nor biocentric: it is theocentric, Christocentric, and pneumocentric; thus, properly Trinitarian. Our solidarity with the rest of the creation should serve to keep us from oppressive rulership. Dominion is not domination and is not dictatorial rulership. Rather, it is delegated rulership, a rulership that is accountable. As God’s stewards of creation, we will be called to account for how we have treated his earth and we are to do so in accordance with the creation ordinances. Because creation is good and not something to be escaped from, creation is not a staging ground for heaven, this calling prevails.

d. Goodness of Creation Both Kuyper and Bavinck argue that creation is revelation—it is a revelation of God. This means that creation is good. Five times in the first chapter of Genesis we have the refrain “And God saw that it was good” (vv 10, 12, 18, 21, 25) and once at the end of God’s work of creation, “it was very good” (v 31). This affirmation undermines any potential dualism. By virtue of his creating, the earth and everything in it (i.e., all its contents) belongs to God (cf also Job 41:11; Ps. 24:1; 50:12) and is an expression of his character. Dualistically oriented worldviews see one aspect of creation as superior to another, whether it be spirit/body, form/matter, grace/nature, sacred/secular. Neo-Calvinists affirm

This in part is the justification that the sciences and scholarship are important God-given activities. See, for example, A. Kuyper, “Calvinism and Science,” in Lectures on Calvinism, 110–41. Steve Bishop, “Abraham Kuyper’s View of the Natural Sciences,” Koers—Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 86, no. 1 (2021). http://dx​.doi​ .org​/10​.19108​/koers​.86​.1​.2497. 61 Stuart Fowler, The Word of God (Potchefstroom: Institute for Reformational Studies, 1985), 34. 62 See, for example, the accusations of Lynn White Jr. in his 1967 paper “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” in The Care of Creation: Focusing Concern and Action, ed. R. J. Berry (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2000), 31–42. 63 See, for example, Steve Bishop, “Green Theology and Deep Ecology: New Age or New Creation?” Themelios 16, no. 3 (1991): 8–14—and the references therein. 60

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that everything in the creation is good and important. There was no aspect of creation created as evil or irrelevant.64 As Bavinck maintains: The confession of the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, upholds the law and the value of the natural; the divine origin of all that exists; the original goodness of the world and in that world of family and society, of science and art, of trade and business. There is nothing sinful in itself. Every gift of God’s is good, to be enjoyed with thanksgiving and sanctified through prayer.65 On this goodness of creation, Gordon Spykman (1926–93) writes: “it is of utmost importance to reaffirm the biblical teaching on the essential goodness of the original creation.”66 This is an important neo-Calvinist perspective: creation was created good. It means that all things are important as “In God’s creation nothing is secondary, nothing is superfluous, nothing can be dispensed with.”67 Once again, providing evidence for the broad view of creation. Kuyper saw the goodness of creation—this meant that it removed any contempt for the world. Kuyper had a world-affirming rather than a world-denying approach. The organic motif also contains an element of control. For organisms to flourish they do so according to certain norms or ordinances. Organisms that go out of control cease to be what they were intended to be according to the intention of creation—they become deformed by going beyond creational norms.

e. Creation Order/Laws/Ordinances/Statutes There is an order in creation. Creation is normed and law-full (Job 38:33; Psalm 19; 119:89-96; 147:18-19; Jer. 33:25). There are structures for creation (that is, the laws and norms established by God for human life and flourishing) and structures of creation (for example, church, school, government—which require human development). God did not create chaos but order. God reveals himself in creation through his Word, which structures the creation. The Word of God is the law by which creation is ordered. As Stuart Fowler comments: “Every operation of the creation is governed by the law of God’s Word. The law that orders the creation is the Word that God speaks, not only has spoken but speaks still.”68 Here the emphasis is on both the order and the dynamic nature of creation—God still speaks. Herman Bavinck notes: In religion and morality, in science and art, in family, society, and state, ideas are everywhere, norms above him, which mutually form a unity and have their origin

Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 166. 65 In a speech at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Higher Education on a Reformed Basis in 1898. Online: https://sources​.neocalvinism​.org/​.full​_pdfs​/bavinck​_1898​_bede​_short​.pdf. Date of access March 9, 2022. 66 Gordon J. Spykman, Reformational Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 144. 67 A. Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gift for a Fallen World Volume 2: The Doctrinal Section. (Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology) (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2019), 123. 68 Fowler, The Word of God, 31. Wolters also emphasizes this point: “Creation is defined (in characteristically Calvinistic fashion), in terms of a cosmic law (decree, statute, word, ordinance), as the expression of God’s sovereignty.” Al Wolters “Dutch Neo-Calvinism: Worldview, Philosophy and Rationality,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, ed. H. Hart, J. van der Hoeven, and N. Wolterstorff (Toronto: UPA, 1983), 121. 64

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and existence in the Creator and Lawgiver of the universe. These norms are the ideal treasures, entrusted to humanity, the basis of all social institutions 69 Likewise, J. H. Bavinck maintained that “the notion of a creation order is a structural component of religion in general.”70 Schilder also advocated creation ordinances: “For God is true to himself, and the covenant is his creation, his ordinance. When we are unfaithful, he continues to uphold his ordinances.”71 The importance of this theme of creation order, law, and ordinances was recognized by Kuyper. He stresses three facts: divine ordinances exist; they are ordinances of God; and there is a way to know them.72 They are not arbitrary, and neither are they products of human construction. He maintains that the ordinances can only be “attained by studying God’s Word” and through empirical study.73 The ordinances apply to the whole of life: “there are also ordinances of God for human life, for body and mind, for the development of our human capacities, for blood relations and kinship, for commerce and industry, for our calling and destiny as a nation.”74 A poem written by Kuyper illustrates both the importance and the comprehensiveness of God’s creational statutes/ordinances: My life is ruled by but one passion, one higher urge drives will and soul. My breath may stop before I ever allow that sacred urge to fall. ’Tis to affirm God’s holy statutes in church and state, in home and school, despite the world’s strong remonstrations, to bless our people with his rule. ’Tis to engrave God’s holy order, heard in Creation and the Word, upon the nation’s public conscience, till God is once again its Lord.75 This theme has also been developed by subsequent neo-Calvinists. Wolters in his Creation Regained76 uses the term “law” to stand for the totality of God’s ordaining acts toward the cosmos. He carefully distinguishes between the laws of nature and norms. Norms

Bavinck, Christian Worldview, 128. Cited by Wolters in An Ethos of Compassion and the Integration of Creation, 34. 71 Klaas Schilder, The Klaas Schilder Reader: The Essential Theological Writings, ed. G. Harinck, M. de Jong, and R. Mouw (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2022), 46. 72 De Standaard, October 16, 1873, translated by Harry der Nederlander, with Gordon Spykman extracted in James W. Skillen and Rockne M. McCarthy (eds.), Political Order and the Plural Structure of Society (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 242. 73 Abraham Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto (Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology), trans. Harry Van Dyke (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015). 74 Ibid., 31. 75 In Gedenkboek, opgedragen door het Feestcomité aan Prof. Dr. A. Kuyper bij zijn vijfen-twintig-jarig jubileum als hoofdred acteur van “De Standaard” (Amsterdam, 1897), 77. Translated by Harry Van Dyke in Steve Bishop and John Kok (eds.), On Kuyper: A Collection of Readings on the Life, Work & Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Sioux Center: Dordt Press, 2013), 22–3. 76 It is worth noting that Wolter’s book is translated in Dutch as Schepping zonder grens (Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn BV, 1988)—Creation without bounds. 69 70

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are “God’s laws for culture and society” (structures for creation).77 God’s rule of law is immediate in the non-human realm but mediate in society and culture. He makes a clear distinction between the creational law for animals, vegetables, and minerals and the creational law as embodied in the cultural mandate as “holds for society and culture.”78 The former he designates as a creatio secunda and the former as a creatio tertia which “govern the earth as developed by God indirectly, through people.”79 He suggests that “God’s ordinances also extend to the structures of society, to the world of art, to business and commerce. . . . Human civilization is normed throughout.”80 Once again this illustrates a broad, all-embracing view of creation. These creation ordinances have a Christological perspective. Jesus is described as the logos (Word) of God (Jn 1:1-3); it was through the Word that God created: “And God said . . . and it was” (cf Psalm 33), and it is by his Word that God sustains his creation. It is by the Word that creation is held together as “it functions for and in the structures of creation.”81 Spykman is one who stresses the importance of the Word. For example, in his “What makes Education Christian?” he states: “The norm for . . . Christian education is the Word of God, manifest in creation, incarnate in Jesus Christ, and inscripturated in the Bible.”82 One innovation that Spykman develops, following Vollenhoven, is a three-factor approach of God/Word/creation.83 God placed ordinances or laws within creation and it was the task of humanity to unfold the creation according to these norms.84 The role of humanity, as the crown of creation,85 and image bearers of God, was to develop and unfold God’s good creation. These norms “continue to this day” despite sin, but because of common grace.86 Creation has implications for all of life. “God has fully ordained such laws and ordinances for all life.”87 All things are important as “nothing is superfluous.”88

V. CONCLUSION AND QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH There is much that neo-Calvinists have in common with other Christian views of creation. The primary difference however is one of emphasis. And in this, neo-Calvinists give greater significance to the doctrine of creation than do other theological traditions.

Wolters, Creation Regained, 16. Ibid., 42. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., 22. 81 Harry Downs, Power-Word and Text-Word in Recent Reformed Thought: The View of Scripture Set Forth by Some Representatives of the Philosophy of the Law-Idea (Nutley, NJ: The Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., 1974), 9. Downs examines the debate in the early 1970s over the term the “Word of God” as used by the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship. 82 Gordon J. Spykman, “What Makes Education Christian?” Convention Address at the 1971 NUCS Convention, National Union of Christian Schools Directory, 1971–2 (Grand Rapids, 1971), 229. Cited in Downs, 10. 83 Spykman, Reformational Theology, 75. 84 Kuyper, CG, 1, 40. 85 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 59. 86 Ibid., 40. 87 Ibid., 53. 88 Kuyper, CG, 2. 123. 77 78

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We could state the neo-Calvinist emphasis as creation, fall, and redemption; rather than creation, fall, and redemption.89 Neo-Calvinism has a broad, all-encompassing view of creation. It emphasizes the role and purpose of creation that goes beyond the debates surrounding evolutionism. It emphasizes creation’s role in theology, philosophy, and in the development of a Christian worldview. The two main emphases of the tradition include the ontological distinction between Creator and creation and the organic nature of creation. The corollaries of these themes are as follows: creation out of nothing, pancreationism, the plurality, diversity, and goodness of creation, as well as the flourishing and unfolding of creation in terms of a cultural mandate according to the God-given ordinances within creation, which continue under common grace despite the fall (sin cannot corrupt God’s good creation structurally or substantially). The ontological goodness of creation doesn’t imply perfection—there is a need for development—“good” in Genesis 1 does not mean “complete.”90 Such a completion awaits the consummation. Several issues are worthy of further examination. Some of these are suggested in the following. First, is the relationship between creation and re-creation, and between creation and ecclesiology. As Bavinck argued in 1888: “How we relate grace to nature, re-creation (herschepping) to creation (schepping), determines whether our ecclesiastical vision will be broad or narrow.”91 Has an eclipse of creation led to such a narrow ecclesiastical vision? What are the implications of an apparent neglect of creation in some Christian traditions? What are the reasons behind such an impoverished perspective on creation? How has this impaired Christian cultural involvement? How can this be alleviated? These are key questions that need addressing. Second, the notion of a creation order can be controversial—not least the accusation that it may bring oppression—and so does it need decolonizing? Some neo-Calvinists have rejected/objected to the notion of a creation order. Henk Hart, for example, maintains that it imports a rationalist conceptual image of reality into the Bible.92 Hart seeks to replace an ethos of creation order with an ethos of compassion.93 Another related topic regarding the nature of the creation order is this: How do we discern creational structures in a fallen world and what are the implications? Third, on the creation-evolution controversy, Spykman wisely comments: “If only we could break the deadlock in that unending round of conflicts between creationism and evolutionism. This raging controversy has consumed far too much valuable energy.”94 He sees the importance of dealing with the hermeneutical issue of how the book of Genesis is interpreted. To this end he makes an interesting suggestion: to distinguish between our present time (creational time—time as it is now) and primeval time (creating time—how

The distinction here is between an emphasis on total depravity as the chief idea as compared with the neoCalvinist emphasis on the cultural mandate and common grace. This is not to say neo-Calvinists deny total depravity. They do not—or that all neo-Calvinists accept common grace, for example, Klaas Schilder rejects it. 90 Henk Geertsema, Homo Respondens: Essay in Christian Philosophy, ed. G. J. Buis and P. Huesmann (Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2021), 517. 91 Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” 222. 92 Walsh, Hart and VanderVennen, An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation (Institute for Christian Studies), 70–1. 93 See Gerit Glas and J. de Ridder (eds.), The Future of Creation Order: Volume 1, Philosophical, Scientific, and Religious Perspectives on Order and Emergence (Cham: Springer, 2019). 94 Spykman, Reformational Theology, 151. 89

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time got to be the way it is).95 The transition he sees occurs at the end of the sixth day. This suggestion of Spykman’s of creation time and creating time may possibly be one way out of the creation/evolution impasse. Fourth, Spykman—following Vollenhoven—also suggested that the Word of God is a boundary between God and creation. How plausible or viable is this? Does it attribute uncreated attributes to the Word of God? Is the Word part of creation (as in the inscripturated Word) or Creator (as in the incarnate Word)? How do the two relate? Does it blur the Creator/ creation distinction? Fifth, Bavinck in particular places a lot of emphasis on creatio ex nihilo. Can creatio ex nihilo support all that Bavinck suggests it can? How viable is creatio ex nihilo? What are the main challenges to this doctrine? Linked to this is the role of so-called abstract objects (e.g., the laws of logic and mathematics)—how does this fit with the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo and the Creator/creation distinction? Sixth, Bartholomew and Ashford, in their seminal study of The Doctrine of Creation,96 conclude with a chapter entitled “Creation and . . . .” There they explore several topics that creation “opens up.” They mention philosophy, food, time, science, the self, and human dignity. Many other areas could be explored, including art and music, architecture, business and economics, the design of cities, energy and food security, legal studies, mathematics, sport, climate change, sustainability, and so on. How does a robust and integrated doctrine of creation speak to these topics?97

Ibid., 154. Craig Bartholomew and Bruce R. Ashford, The Doctrine of Creation: A Constructive Kuyperian Approach (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020), Ch 12. 97 My thanks to Michael Wagenman and the editors for comments on a previous draft. 95 96

Chapter 3

Sovereignty of God HENK VAN DEN BELT

One of the typical products of Dutch neo-Calvinism is the six-volume Christian Encyclopaedia covering every square inch of our human existence from “Alpha and Omega” to “Zwitserland.” It reflects the neo-Calvinist ideal to approach everything in detail from the perspective of a Reformed worldview and the successive editions shed light on developments within neo-Calvinism over the years. An interesting example is the way in which worldview is understood. In 1929, Frederik Willem Grosheide (1881– 1972) defined worldview as “the totality of one’s insights and opinions, as governed by one principle and therefore forming one system. [. . .] In the Calvinist worldview the principle is the recognition of the sovereignty of God.”1 Divine sovereignty was the core of the neo-Calvinist system. The main question in this chapter is how God’s sovereignty was understood by the founding fathers of neo-Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), and how they applied it as a principle, especially in the concept of sphere sovereignty. The chapter argues that in taking divine sovereignty as a hallmark, neo-Calvinism differs in emphasis from earlier Reformed theology.

I. GOD’S ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY The Christian Encyclopaedia defines God’s sovereignty as the fact “that God, as Creator and Former of all things and as Maintainer of all things, has absolute authority over everything.”2 According to the author of the lemma, Klaas Dijk (1885–1968), a pastor of the Reformed Church of The Hague and later professor of practical theology at Kampen, John Calvin’s starting point is divine sovereignty and his whole theological system is dominated by the glory of God, to which all creatures are subject. “God must be the almighty and sovereign God, who from moment to moment carries the world and all that happens in it, governing it by His wise and inscrutable will.”3 God’s sovereignty is the one foundational doctrine of the Reformed churches. All creatures are nothing in themselves, receive everything from God, and are meant to serve Him. This also applies

Frederik Willem Grosheide, “Wereldbeschouwing,” in Christelijke encyclopaedie voor het Nederlandsche volk, 6 vols, 1st ed. ed. F. W. Grosheide, J. H. Landwehr, C. Lindeboom, and J. C. Rullmann (Kampen: Kok, 1926–31), 5: 707. 2 Klaas Dijk, “Souvereiniteit Gods,” in Grosheide, Landwehr, Lindeboom, and Rullmann, Christelijke Encyclopedie, 5: 230–1, there 230. 3 Dijk, “Souvereiniteit Gods,” 231. 1

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to the domains of state and society; there is no room for human absolutism because everything must bow to the sovereign God and His Word. Because divine sovereignty is intertwined with the doctrine of predestination, Dijk refers to the larger lemma on that topic, also authored by him. There he offers a historical and biblical account of the Reformed views of election and reprobation and relates predestination to the final renewal of creation: “in God’s work of salvation we must think of the liberation of the whole cosmos and of the salvation—not of a few people or a collection of souls or some elect here and there—but of humanity.”4 In the Christian Encyclopedia the foundational ideas of neo-Calvinism were communicated to a broader audience.

II. KUYPER ON GOD’S SOVEREIGN RELATIONSHIP WITH CREATION Kuyper’s commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism contains one of his most explicit discussions of God’s sovereignty, although he does not give a clear definition of what he means by it. Kuyper’s language is often metaphorical and here he uses the medieval feudal system as an example. The lord could claim the service of the peasants, but was also obliged to protect them against violence. Christ is not a Slaveholder, but the Sovereign, the Lord and Protector of all who believe in him.5 In his discussion of Lord’s Day 8, which deals with the Triune God as possessing absolute sovereignty, Kuyper states that the Eternal One does not allow anything half-sovereign next to Him, all power and authority are subject to Him and derived from Him. “This sovereignty, which lies in the divinity of the Eternal Being and in His Omnipotence, is rejected by the world, by heresy, and alas, also by present-day Christianity.”6 What follows makes clear that he has both liberal and mediating positions in mind. He explicitly refutes the pantheistic position of modern theologians—mentioning Jan Hendrik Scholten (1811–85)—for whom divine sovereignty is nothing else than a natural process, but also the position of the mediating theologians of the Dutch Ethical Theology, with their concentration on the Person of Christ at the cost of a Trinitarian approach to theology. The hallmark of Reformed Christianity is to confess the sovereignty of the Father in creation, the sovereignty of the Son in salvation, and the sovereignty of the Spirit in sanctification, and yet to confess “that these Three are One, and that our whole being and existence and future depend absolutely on the honour and majesty of this Sovereignty of the Triune One.”7 Kuyper further develops this concept of divine sovereignty in his discussion of the divine decree, where he says that God’s sovereignty implies “that He has determined for all creatures what they should be and become and do; and that He, our God, has laid down a law for all creatures.”8 The

Klaas Dijk, “Praedestinatie,” in Grosheide, Landwehr, Lindeboom, and Rullmann, Christelijke Encyclopedie, 4: 600–4, there 603. 5 Abraham Kuyper, E voto Dordraceno: Toelichting op den Heidelbergschen Catechismus, 4 vols (Amsterdam: J.A. Wormser, 1892–5), 1:14. The concept also is mentioned when Kuyper explains that the law of God roots in his sovereignty and that the fall is apostasy from and rebellion against his sovereignty. Kuyper, E voto Dordraceno, 1:20, 47, 73. 6 Kuyper, E voto Dordraceno, 1:180. 7 Ibid., 1:182. 8 Ibid., 1:190. 4

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laws of nature, like electricity, the laws of the mind, like logic, and the moral law stem from divine sovereignty. For the correct understanding of his view of church and state it is important that Kuyper makes a sharp distinction between the sovereignty of the Triune God and the sovereignty of Christ as King. The Father and the Spirit can also be called King, but this is only done metaphorically and “this has nothing in common with the royal office of the Mediator.”9 The “Eternal Being” is Lord over us in an absolute sense by virtue of creation. He is the Potter, and we are the clay. “This is what the Reformed churches most often professed to be ‘God’s absolute sovereignty’ [. . .] From this, however, the Mediator’s Lordship over us must now be completely distinguished.”10 This undergirds the distinction between the spheres of the church, where Christ rules, and the state, where all authority is derived from divine sovereignty per se. It is remarkable that Kuyper does not offer a clear definition of divine sovereignty. Its essence seems to lie in a combination of authority and the power to enforce that authority. Given the importance of the concept in Kuyper’s theology one would expect many occurrences in the Dictates on Dogmatics, but there the term plays a marginal role.11 Even in the Encyclopaedia of Sacred Theology (1894) the term is marginal. In The Work of the Holy Spirit (1888) divine sovereignty mainly functions in Kuyper’s defense of eternal justification, the idea that God not only decreed to justify the elect but also actually justified them from eternity so that they were just even before they were regenerate.12 Divine sovereignty in declaring the elect just is the foundation for Kuyper’s argument that justification does not take place when believers become aware of it, but has already taken place from all eternity in the council of God. The work for which divine sovereignty is most foundational is Kuyper’s Common Grace. This concept, typical for his theology, flows from the extension of God’s rule over every square inch of the world, that cannot be left to Satan, and “that is why God’s child cannot simply withdraw from this life. If his God is at work in that world, then his hand must also be put to the plough in that world, and the name of the Lord must be glorified there as well.”13 Not all people in his own circles were fond of the idea of common grace. Kuyper met resistance from representatives of the Secession-tradition within the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands after the Merge of the churches from the Secession and the Doleantie in 1892. In a polemical summary at the beginning of the third volume of Common Grace Ibid., 1:325. Ibid. 11 Of course, he discusses divine sovereignty in the context of the doctrine of God, understanding it as the most essential relationship between God as Creator and his creation. He even creates a specific category for divine sovereignty; relation, in which God stands to creation is one of “absolute sovereignty.” Abraham Kuyper, Locus de Deo. College-dictaat van een der studenten [Pars prima] (Amsterdam: A. Fernhout 1896), 286–7. In the dictates on providence, he discusses sovereignty in the context of divine gubernatio. Abraham Kuyper, Locus de providentia. College-dictaat van een der studenten (Amsterdam: W. Kirchner, 1900), 102–3. 12 God as a sovereign Judge decides about us being guilty or not, this does not depend on who we actually are, but on who God declares us to be, because divine sovereignty “is the source and fountain of all that has authority and that will therefore be valid.” Abraham Kuyper, Het werk van den Heiligen Geest, 3 vols (Amsterdam: J.A. Wormser, 1888–9), 2:217, 222, cf. Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. Henri de Vries, (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1900), 365, 370. 13 Abraham Kuyper, De gemeene gratie, 3 vols (Leiden: D. Donner, 1902–4), 1:[ii], cf. Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, ed. Nelson D. Kloosterman, 3 vols (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015–20), 1:xxvii. Divine sovereignty reappears in the discussion of topics like capital punishment and his views of public authority. 9

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Kuyper repeats that a healthy Reformed faith depends on rightly valuing common grace, because the starting point of the Reformed confession lies in the sovereignty of God, and not in the salvation of the individual soul. Election is nothing else than divine sovereignty reaching back into the eternal past. Having understood that correctly, however, the Reformed believer should also acknowledge God’s sovereignty in the present. “God is then Sovereign over his soul, Sovereign over his body, Sovereign over his family, Sovereign over his profession, Sovereign over his life, Sovereign over his fatherland, Sovereign over all peoples and all nations.”14 One cannot profess God’s sovereignty over the spiritual realm of the soul, without acknowledging that same sovereignty over all that exists. Common Grace flows from the heart of the Reformed confession and of Reformed spirituality. In sum, for Kuyper God’s sovereignty determines the relationship between Creator and creature, it is God’s absolute authority and dominion over all that exists. The emphasis on this relationship marks the difference with pantheistic tendencies in liberal theology and the emphasis on the Triune God underlines the differences with mediating theologies that focus more on Christ. The distinction between the lordship of Christ and the sovereignty of the Creator is important for the relationship between church and civil government. Sovereignty terminology does not occur too often in Kuyper’s theological works, though he uses it explicitly to undergird some of his specific ideas like eternal justification and common grace.

a. Sphere Sovereignty or Sovereignty within Its Own Circle The idea of “sphere sovereignty” is most famously formulated in the opening address of the Free University (1880): “O, no single part of our thought world is to be hermetically sealed from the other parts. There is not an inch of the entire domain of our human life over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not proclaim: ‘Mine!’”15 In the address Kuyper defines sovereignty as “the authority that possesses the right and duty, and wields the power to break and punish all resistance to its will”16 and argues that God, as the absolute and supreme Sovereign, has delegated His authority to Christ as Messianic King. This implies a denial of all absolute human sovereignty. Among us sovereignty is divided into spheres because human life is composed organically. Kuyper compares these spheres or circles with the cogwheels in a machine that revolve on their own axes and have their own springs; the worlds of science, business, art, the spheres of the family, and of social life are interrelated but also distinct. If one sphere breaks in upon another “like a jerky cogwheel” the entire machine will be disrupted. Sphere sovereignty characterizes the Free University in its national significance, exactly because it refutes the sovereignty of the state and in its academic aims, because science is a means to defend liberty. Kuyper admires Baruch de Spinoza (1632–77), although his approach and perception were wrong, for steadfastly refusing “to lend himself to the violation of the sovereignty of science in its own sphere. A good Reformed person does Kuyper, Gemeene gratie, 3:9-10, cf. Kuyper, Common Grace, 3: 11-12. Abraham Kuyper, Souvereiniteit in eigen kring: Rede ter inwijding van de Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam: J.H. Kruyt, 1880), 35. Cf. Abraham Kuyper, “Appendix 2 and 3. Sphere Sovereignty: A Translation,” trans. Harry der Nederlanden, Gordon Spykman, and Wayne A. Kobes, in Wayne A. Kobes, “Sphere Sovereignty and the University: Theological Foundations of Abraham Kuyper’s View of the University and its Role in Society” (PhD dissertation, Florida State University, 1993), 281–302, 297. 16 Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” 282. 14 15

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not condemn him but places him far above the unstable and the hesitating.”17 Sphere sovereignty also characterizes the Free University as a Reformed institution; the faculties of law, natural sciences, and arts should work from Reformed presuppositions and principles, for every scholar works from hypotheses and views reality through subjective glasses. Thus, spreading divine sovereignty over many different spheres undergirds Kuyper’s view of the perspectivity of science. In the opening address he refers to Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76), as his source for the concept.18 The address is not the first time that Kuyper uses the concept. In an article from De Heraut (1870), the term refers to the liberty of the local church endangered by the General Regulation of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1816.19 In his Calvinism: Source and Stronghold of our Constitutional Liberties (1874), Kuyper develops the concept more extensively. With a reference to the French liberal aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) he argues that the state is becoming a gigantic monster endangering the liberty and autonomy of provinces, cities, universities, guilds, and families, which all have “sovereignty within their own circles.”20 Kuyper connects this sphere sovereignty to the Reformed tradition regarding the relationship between the king and the lower magistrates; both receive part of the magisterial sovereignty from God. Constitutional law roots in “the fundamental doctrine of the Calvinists: their confession of the absolute sovereignty of God.”21 All authority on earth depends on it and it refutes both the sovereignty of the people (volkssouvereiniteit), which places the source of sovereignty in humankind, and the divine right (droit divin) of the kings. All adoration of earthly sovereigns and every attempt to see them as higher beings robs God of his glory. This relativizing principle also applies to the state as a whole, which as part of created reality owes everything to God. Worshipping a creature is the worst sin. Kuyper elaborates on this idea in his Stone lectures on Calvinism (1899), where he states that “all authority of governments on earth, originates from the Sovereignty of God alone.”22 From the sovereignty of God over the whole cosmos flows a threefold sovereignty: in the State, in society, and in the church. The diverse social spheres have nothing above them, except God himself and “the State cannot intrude here and has

Ibid., 290. He calls it Groen’s constitutional confession (staatsrechtelijk credo). Kuyper, Souvereiniteit in eigen kring, 17, cf. Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” 287. Though the idea is present in Groen’s work, it is not a technical term there and most probably the term is Kuyper’s own invention. Cornelis Veenhof, Souvereiniteit in eigen kring: Schets van de leer der “Souvereiniteit in eigen kring,” zoals die door dr. A. Kuyper werd ontwikkeld (Kampen: Kok, 1939), 103 n. 76. Veenhof adds that he did not find the expression literally in Groen van Prinsterer’s work, but he does give some references that underline the separation and mutual independence of Church and State. According to Harinck the phrase has still not been found in his works. George Harinck, “I Look through My Window into Life: Kuyper’s Notion of Sphere Sovereignty (1870–1880),” Journal of Markets & Morality 23, no. 2 (2020): 271. 19 Abraham Kuyper, September 9, 1870, in De Heraut. Cf. Harinck, “I Look through my Window,” 265–84, there 266. Harinck offer an extensive survey of the use of the term by Kuyper. 20 Abraham Kuyper, Het Calvinisme oorsprong en waarborg onzer Constitutioneele Vrijheden (Amsterdam: B. van der Land, 1874), 6. For the English translation, see Abraham Kuyper, “Calvinism: The Origin and Safeguard of our Constitutional Liberties,” Bibliotheca Sacra 52 (1895): 385–410 and 646–75. The translation and the quote is missing. 21 Kuyper, Het Calvinisme oorsprong en waarborg, 50. Cf. Kuyper, “Origin and Safeguard,” 662. 22 Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism: Six Stone-lectures (Amsterdam and Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser Ltd.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd.; New York-Chicago-Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Company [1899]), 104. 17 18

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nothing to command in their domain.”23 Kuyper distinguishes between the personal sphere; the corporative sphere of universities, guilds, and associations; the domestic sphere of marriage and the family; and the sphere of an autonomous local community.24 The most difficult question, however, regards the sovereignty of the Church in relation to the State. Kuyper disagrees with the claim of the Belgic Confession that the magistrate should oppose idolatry and false religion. This is a leftover from the Constantinian past; “the underlying characteristic of Calvinism must be sought, not in what it has adopted from the past, but in what it has newly created.”25 Kuyper appeals to the defense of the liberty of conscience against the Inquisition to argue for a genuine Calvinist separation of church and state. The magistrates recognize God as supreme Ruler, for instance by confessing him in the constitution as the source of their authority. The State is not profane. “Both Church and State must, each in their own sphere, obey God and serve His honour. And to that end in either sphere God’s Word must rule, but in the sphere of the State only through the conscience of the persons invested with authority.”26 The duty of the magistrates toward the church is completely different. The church lacks visible unity because it has not been the will of God to maintain that as God’s providential guidance of church history shows. The duty of the government is not to judge which church is the true one, but to suspend its judgment, “because every magisterial judgment here infringes the sovereignty of the Church.”27 Thus Calvinism struggles for the liberty of the church or for its sovereignty within her own sphere and defends the truth with spiritual weapons. “The government bears the sword which wounds; not the sword of the Spirit, which decides in spiritual questions.”28 Kuyper founds the separation of church and state in the concept of sphere sovereignty, in which both State and church derive their independent authorities from God’s sovereignty. The Calvinist principle of the liberty of conscience ultimately leads to the liberty of religion, given the fact that the church is divided. “The sovereignty of the State and the sovereignty of the Church exist side by side, and they mutually limit each other.”29 Typical for Kuyper is the division of church and state under the sovereignty of Christ and of God, respectively. According to his view it was one of the mistakes of Ulrich Zwingli not to distinguish between the ways in which divine authority applies to both spheres. The Triune God has placed His authority on civil governments, but “there is a wholly distinct reign ordered by God over His Church, and this reign He has not given to the kings of the earth, but to His Son Jesus Christ, in His capacity as Mediator.”30 In the Church Christ alone exercises absolute and supreme authority and therefore the Church has a sovereignty independent of the state. Both are free from each other, and the only point of contact lies in God’s sovereignty which applies to both. Perhaps it Ibid., 116. Ibid., 123–4. The expression “communal autonomy,” in Dutch gemeentelijke autonomie refers to the independent structures of the municipality, cf. Abraham Kuyper, “Ons Program” (Amsterdam: J.H. Kruyt, 1879), 3 (article 10) and Abraham Kuyper, Locus de magistratu. College-dictaat van een der studenten (Amsterdam: A. Fernhout, 1893), 309. 25 Kuyper, Calvinism, 131. 26 Ibid., 135. 27 Ibid., 136. 28 Ibid., 137. 29 Ibid., 138. 30 Kuyper, E voto Dordraceno, 3:318. 23 24

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would have been more consistent with this distinction if Kuyper had said that there is not one square inch of our human life over which God, who is Sovereign over all, does not proclaim: “Mine!” in the opening address of the Free University. There, however, he is not discussing church-state relationships and then the distinction between the sovereignty of God and of Christ is less essential. The concept of sphere sovereignty is intertwined with Kuyper’s political desire to make a stronger distinction between church and state than was common in the confessional Reformed tradition. It sprung from his reflections on the liberty of the local churches and was most useful to define the relationship between church and state. Later Kuyper applies sphere sovereignty to the diverse circles of civil life and develops it as a broader concept undergirding all kinds of societal freedom.31 Father and mother rule just as much by the grace of God as the sovereign on his throne. That is the sovereignty within its own circle, which emanates from God, and in each circle is placed by God on the one who is the head in that circle. The father in his family, the captain on his ship, the government in the country.32

III. HERMAN BAVINCK ON DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY Herman Bavinck’s views of divine sovereignty can best be derived from his Reformed Dogmatics. In the discussion of the doctrine of God in the first edition he rejects the common distinction between communicable and incommunicable divine attributes and expresses his preference for the term “virtues” which resemble God’s names.33 He distinguishes between the “proper names” used for God in Scripture, the names that reveal God in all his relationships to creatures, which Bavinck calls essential names, and the names of the Persons in the Trinity. The second group is subdivided into names (1) by which God reveals himself to us as “Being in the strictest sense,” for example, his aseity and immutability; (2) by which he is made known as “the Living One,” such as his spirituality and invisibility; (3) which describe his being “as completely self-conscious, as Light,” for example, his knowledge and wisdom (4); by which his ethical nature is revealed “as the Holy One,” his righteousness and holiness; and finally (5) by which God appears to us as “the absolute power, as Lord, King, Sovereign,” his will, liberty, and omnipotence. From the second edition onward, these paragraphs are rewritten, the critical remark about the term attributes is deleted, and the common distinction between the incommunicable (group 1) and communicable (groups 2–5) attributes is reintroduced. Bavinck also adds a group of attributes (group 6) that reveal God in his perfection and blessedness.34 In any case, Bavinck, just like Kuyper, reserves a separate classification for divine sovereignty and the names or attributes related to it. In the first edition the list even culminates in divine sovereignty. Harinck, “I Look through my Window,” 277. Kuyper, E voto Dordraceno, 4:68. 33 “The word attributes is the least preferable, because it always makes one think of a being to which attributes are added; the name of virtues, on the other hand, finds support in Scripture itself. [. . .] In each of God’s virtues both his absolute supremacy above and his kinship with the creature are discernible; every attribute is incommunicable in one sense and communicable in another.” Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 1st ed., 4 vols (Kampen: J.H. Bos, 1895–1901), 2:101–2. 34 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 2: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–8), 4 vols [henceforth Bavinck, RD, 2], 136. 31 32

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In the paragraph on the attributes “that belong to God as sovereign,” Bavinck writes that “God is the Creator and therefore the owner, possessor, and Lord of all things. Apart from him there is no existence or ownership. He alone has absolute authority. Always and everywhere his will decides. Again and again, accordingly, there is mention in Scripture of God’s sovereign will.”35 Pantheism makes the world necessary and deism makes it a product of chance, but in fact the whole of creation reveals God’s wisdom and results from an act of God’s sovereign will. That will is not blind or irrational as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) suggests, but is characterized by God’s wisdom and grace. For that reason, the human heart and head can rest in that will, for it is the will of an almighty God and a gracious father, not that of a blind fate, incalculable chance, or dark force of nature. His sovereignty is one of Unlimited power, but also of wisdom and grace. He is both king and father at one and the same time.36 Similar thoughts occur in the paragraphs on divine providence. Pantheism and its monistic counterpart materialism do not distinguish between God and the world. They leave no place for creation and therefore deny providence, because the laws of nature are identical with God’s decisions, Bavinck claims with a reference to Spinoza. On the other side, deism separates God and the world, allows the creatures to exist and act—in whole or in part, and then again in a greater or lesser part—by their own power and thus essentially renews the pagan doctrine of chance.37 According to Bavinck, those who allow only for a partial independent acting of the creature—like semi-Pelagians, Molinists, and Arminians—also side with “chance.” Typical for Bavinck’s approach is the link between divine sovereignty and the covenant relationship between God and human beings, in which our dependence and liberty are reconciled, because God’s sovereignty is fully maintained while also the human kinship with God is fully recognized. Human beings are absolutely dependent on God, but “by the acknowledgment of this dependence, they become the beneficiaries of forgiveness, adoption as children, and salvation by grace.”38 The doctrine of the covenant “maintains God’s sovereignty in the entire work of salvation.”39 Nothing comes from human beings, while the covenant at the same time does justice to our reasonable and moral nature. In election we are completely passive, but in the covenant of grace we are also active.40 As he writes in his very popular booklet The Sacrifice of Praise (1901), “although the covenant marvellously upholds God’s sovereignty in the work of salvation and excludes every human contribution, it simultaneously does full justice to the rational and moral human nature, to our creation in God’s image.”41

Ibid., 228–9. Ibid., 240. Elsewhere he writes: “In reaction against rationalism, the essence of the world is once again interpreted as will, energy and power in the latest philosophy.” Herman Bavinck, Johannes Calvijn: Eene lezing ter gelegenheid van den vierhonderdsten gedenkdag zijner geboorte (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1909), 15. 37 Bavinck, RD, 2, 599–603. Already in one of his earliest articles, titled “Divine Economy” he writes that the correct understanding of “God’s household” protects from pantheism, which identifies God and the world, and from deism, which separates God and the world; both diminish the majesty and sovereignty of God. Herman Bavinck, “De huishouding Gods,” De Vrije Kerk 9 (1883): 239–42 and 274–82, there 280. 38 Bavinck, RD, 1, 243. 39 Bavinck, RD, 3, 230. 40 Ibid., 228. 41 Herman Bavinck, De offerande des lofs: overdenkingen vóór en na de toelating tot het heilige avondmaal (The Hague: Fred. H. Verschoor, 1901), 20. Cf. Herman Bavinck, The Sacrifice of Praise, ed. and trans. Cameron 35 36

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Bavinck occasionally also mentions sovereignty in diverse circles of life, but the concept is less dominant than in Kuyper’s work. In the family, the state, or society in general all forms of sovereignty are limited because “to God belongs the one, undivided, legislative, judicial, and executive power. His sovereignty is original, eternal, unlimited, abundant in blessing.”42 Just like Kuyper, Bavinck does distinguish between the realms of the church and the state by referring the first specifically to the sovereignty of Christ and the later to the sovereignty of God, who has transferred sovereignty to the government in civil matters, but has appointed Christ as King in the Church.43 Christ is the anointed King in the kingdom of God and sovereignly rules over it until “he will return the sovereignty granted to him to the One who bestowed it and will give the Kingdom without spot or wrinkle to his God and Father.”44 In the present dispensation, however, the church is the heart, the living center of God’s Kingdom. The state is also connected to the kingdom of God, and it is the greatest good on earth after the church because it guarantees the possibility for persons and societal communities to develop. Family, church, culture, all the various spheres of rich human living do not owe their origin and existence to the state—they possess a “sphere sovereignty”—but they do nonetheless owe to the state the possibility of their development. The state secures the full unfolding of human personality. The state, however, is not the highest good but finds its purpose and goal in the Kingdom of heaven.45 All the organic spheres of human life are part of creation and exist through common grace. In all these spheres divine sovereignty descends directly upon the creature; “the state, like the family and society, has its own power and its own authority, granted by God; and the church stands next to it with its own government, given to it by Christ. Thus, domination of the Church by the State, or of the State by the Church, is both impermissible.”46 Christians may desire that the civil government will be guided by Christian principles and by the word of God as a guideline, but grace does not override nature and therefore family, society, and state retain their full independence. “Christ did not come to destroy the world and the various spheres of life within it, but to restore and preserve them.”47 Thus, for Bavinck divine sovereignty is the attribute or rather the name of God by which He reveals his absolute authority, will, liberty, and omnipotence and he uses it to fence his theological position off from deterministic pantheism and arbitrary deism. Our covenant relationship with God both maintains his sovereignty and our true humanity. The distinction between God’s sovereignty as Creator and Christ’s sovereignty as Lord undergirds the distinction between the civil government and the church.

Clausing and Gregory Parker (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2019), 15. 42 Bavinck, RD, 2, 616. 43 Bavinck, RD, 4, 329. 44 Herman Bavinck, “The Kingdom of God, The Highest Good,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, The Bavinck Review 2 (2011): 133–70, there 148–9. Cf. Herman Bavinck “Het rijk Gods, het hoogste goed,” De Vrije Kerk 7 (1881): 185–92, 224–34, 271–7, 305–14, 353–60, there 234. 45 Bavinck, “Kingdom of God,” 160. 46 Herman Bavinck, De Algemeene Genade (Kampen: G. Ph. Zalsman, 1894), 50. Cf. ET: Herman Bavinck, “Common Grace,” trans. R. C. van Leeuwen, Calvin Theological Journal 24 (1989): 38–65. 47 Bavinck, Algemeene Genade, 51.

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IV. THE MOST FOUNDATIONAL REFORMED DOCTRINE? After all that has been said about the importance of divine sovereignty in Dutch neoCalvinism, it might seem surprising that “sovereignty” was not a very common theological term in the Reformed tradition because there is no fixed Latin equivalent. Thus it originates from theological writings in the vernacular. The Dutch term soevereiniteit stems from the French souveraineté and has a political meaning in the first place, referring to a state or person that does not depend on another and thus has supreme authority from itself.48 The noun souveraineté has no theological importance in the works of John Calvin, notwithstanding the fact that the concept of divine sovereignty has become the hallmark of Reformed theology. The noun does not occur in the French edition of the Institutes, although he does use the adjective souverain occasionally.49 Even the older Dutch translation of the Institutes, issued by Kuyper, does not contain the word sovereignty.50 The same is true for Reformed orthodoxy, where the Latin equivalents of sovereignty are primatum and dominium, the latter being a theological term that played a minor role in the Reformed doctrine of God as one of the terms for his omnipotence.51 In English theology, however, divine sovereignty was codified by the Westminster confession, especially when it says that nature teaches “that there is a God, who has lordship and sovereignty over all.”52 Even in the English text of the Westminster standards the term almost exclusively refers to God’s supremacy as Ruler and Legislator and hardly to his sovereign decree.53 It is possible that translations of Puritan writings coined the term Gods souvereiniteit in Dutch, although it is hard to find out how widespread the use was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leave alone to prove influence on the later neo-Calvinist use of the term.54 From Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s writings it is very clear that they viewed divine sovereignty as the most characteristic element, the hallmark of the Reformed faith. According to Kuyper, Luther took a subjective, anthropological perspective from the soteriological

Lemma, “souvereiniteit,” in Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal via https://gtb​.ivdnt​.org. Article originally published in 1933. 49 The adjective souverain for example can be a translation of the Latin ultimus (Institutes 1.5.1), summus (1.7.4); when applied to God it underlines that he is supreme; seul et souverain Dieu is a translation of unus summus deus (1.13.10). A fuller study of Calvin’s use of the term might be interesting. 50 Johannes Calvijn, Institutie ofte onderwijsinghe in de Christelicke religie, trans. Wilhelmus Corsmannus, ed. Abraham Kuyper (Doesburg: J.C. van Schenk Brill, [1887]). This was a reprint of an edition from 1650 edited by Kuyper who also wrote the introduction. 51 E. F. Karl Müller (ed.), Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1903), 3:537–9. 52 Westminster Confession XXI, Shaff Creeds 3:646. WC II.2 has “most sovereign dominion” for summum dominium and III.7 has “the glory of his sovereign power” for gloria supremae suae potestatis. Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes, 3 vols (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985 reprint), 607 and 610. 53 The only exception seems to be in the Larger Catechism where it says that God “according to his sovereign power” hath passed by the reprobate; the Latin has “pro suprema sua potestate” LC q&a 13. Müller, Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche, 2:613. 54 For instance, Elisha Coles, A Practical Discourse of God’s Sovereignty (London: Ben. Griffin, 1673) was translated as Elisha Coles, Stellige en practicale verhandeling van Gods souvereiniteit (The Hague: Pieter van Thol, 1730). But this is the only title with a theological meaning of souvereiniteit in The Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands, a digital bibliography of all known books published before 1801 in the Netherlands and all Dutchlanguage books published abroad up to 1800. The only example of a title using “sovereign” is a reference to Christ as King of the church: Wilhelmus à Brakel, De Heere Jesus Christus voor de alleene ende souveraine koninck over sijne kercke uytgeroepen (Amsterdam: J. Boekholt, 1688). 48

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principle of justifying faith, while Calvin’s starting point “lay in the general cosmological principle of the sovereignty of God.”55 According to Bavinck, the root principle of Calvinism is the confession of God’s absolute sovereignty. From this root principle everything that is specifically Reformed may be derived and explained. It was this that led to the sharp distinction between what is God’s and the creature’s, to belief in the sole authority of the Holy Scriptures, in the all-sufficiency of Christ and His work, in the omnipotence, of the work of grace.56 God upholds His sovereignty and makes it triumphant against all resistance. History is “a gigantic contest, in which God carries through His sovereignty, and makes it, like a mountain stream, overcome all resistance in the end, bringing the creature to a willing or unwilling, but in either case unqualified, recognition of His divine glory.”57 The sovereignty of God is one of the most essential components of Calvin’s deepest religious consciousness.58 Although Kuyper and Bavinck strongly disagreed with the liberal theology of their Leiden teacher Scholten, they held a common view of the historical core of Reformed Protestantism. According to Scholten its formal principle was the recognition of Holy Scripture as the only source of knowledge and touchstone of the Christian confession and its material principle was the recognition of God’s absolute supremacy, especially of His free grace in Jesus Christ, as the only ground of salvation.59 For this analysis Scholten depended on the research in the school of Schleiermacher, especially from Alexander Schweizer (1808–88), who considered predestination as the central dogma (Zentraldogma) of Reformed Protestantism and characterized it as absolute dependence of the human being on God (Abhängigkeit slechthin von Gott).60 The neo-Calvinists rejected Scholten’s pantheistic concept of God as an immanent force leading nature and humanity to their destiny. According to Bavinck, this interpretation proceeded from spiritualistic monism, “borrowed from German philosophy and identified with the idea of the absolute sovereignty of God as embodied in Reformed theology.”61 Nevertheless, both he and Kuyper agreed with Scholten that divine sovereignty was characteristic of Reformed theology, especially when compared with Lutheranism. In his Common Grace Kuyper explicitly contrasts the Reformed principle of divine sovereignty with the Lutheran concept of the justification of the ungodly.62 Bavinck says that while it was enough for Luther to find a merciful God, Zwingli and Calvin penetrated further. Kuyper, Calvinism, 20. Herman Bavinck, “The Future of Calvinism,” trans. Geerhardus Vos, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 5 (1894), 1–24, there 5. 57 Ibid., 5. 58 Herman Bavinck, “Woord vooraf,” in Calvijn als theoloog en de stand van het Calvinisme in onzen tijd, ed. Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1919), 11. 59 Johannes Henricus Scholten, De leer der Hervormde Kerk in hare grondbeginselen: uit de bronnen voorgesteld en beoordeeld, 2 vols, 4th ed. (Leiden: P. Engels, 1861), 1:78 and 2:9. For the material principle he uses volstrekte opperheerschappij but in other cases he replaces that with recognition of God’s souvereiniteit 2:xiv, 17, 24, 312. 60 Scholten, Leer der Hervormde Kerk, 2:12. The reference is to Alexander Schweizer, Die Glaubenslehre der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche (Zürich: Orell, Füssli, 1844–7), 1:46. On Scholten and Schweizer see also James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 15–17. 61 Herman Bavinck, “Recent Dogmatic Thought in the Netherlands,” trans. Geerhardus Vos, in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 3 (1892): 209–28, there 215. 62 Kuyper, Gemeene gratie, 3:8. 55 56

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Behind God’s grace, which is revealed in the forgiveness of guilt, lies God’s sovereignty, the infinite and adorable essence of God with all his virtues and perfections. If God was sovereign in the work of salvation, He was sovereign always and everywhere, in creation as well as in re-creation. If He had become King in the human heart, He must also be so in the head and the hand, in the home and the workplace, in state and society, in science and art.63 The idea that predestination is the central dogma of doctrine, the core or even a principium of Reformed theology, is outdated. The neo-Calvinist emphasis on divine sovereignty was derived from a typical nineteenth-century interpretation of the Reformation. Nevertheless, its analysis of the Reformed tradition in general was not completely wrong. John Calvin and contemporary and later representatives of the Reformed tradition emphasized the supremacy of God and the absolute character of divine grace in salvation. Historical Reformed theology was less one-sidedly orientated on election and divine sovereignty than Kuyper suggested when he said that “it was only by Calvin’s mighty initiative that the doctrine of election became the cor Ecclesiae or the heart of the church.”64

V. CONCLUSIONS The main questions in this chapter regarded the use and understanding of divine sovereignty by the founding fathers of neo-Calvinism. Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck characterize the relationship between God and creation by “absolute sovereignty.” He is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth and therefore the Lord of all things. Both theologians create a specific category in the doctrine of God for the attribute of divine sovereignty. The idea that God’s sovereignty overarches salvation history and guarantees that redemption will ultimately lead to a glorious restoration of a ruined creation is typical for neo-Calvinism and is even reflected in the Christelijke Encyclopedie. It is remarkable that Kuyper speaks in rather abstract terms about God when he defines his sovereignty. God is the Eternal Being, the Absolute One, and the Eternal One. He uses the concept to undergird elements of his theology that were criticized in his own circles: sphere sovereignty, common grace, and eternal justification. Kuyper even saw divine sovereignty as the main foundation for democracy, because from the perspective of election all people are equal.65 The vulnerability of the use of sovereignty as a hallmark of Reformed theology lies in a deterministic tendency of the understanding of the relationship between the eternal decree of God and the way in which it unfolds in history. Kuyper and Bavinck were aware of this vulnerability and rejected the way in which it was developed by Liberal theologians, influenced by German philosophy with pantheistic tendencies. For that reason, they strongly maintained the Creator-creature distinction. Herman Bavinck, Magnalia Dei: Onderwijzing in de christelijke religie naar gereformeerde belijdenis (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1909), 130–1. Cf. Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God: Instruction in the Christian Religion according to the Reformed Confession (Philadelphia: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 109. 64 Kuyper, E voto Dordraceno, 2:161. According to Rouwendal the source of the idea that election is the cor ecclesiae is Johannes Henricus Scholten. Pieter Rouwendal, “De verkiezing als ‘cor ecclesiae’,” in Protestants Nederland 89 (2018), June issue, 23–5 and November issue, 22–4. 65 Election, following from God’s sovereignty, also “creates the proud civic spirit and undermines every principle of religious persecution.” Kuyper, Het Calvinisme oorsprong en waarborg, 54. 63

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One remarkable aspect of their understanding of divine sovereignty is the distinction between the lordship of God over creation and the lordship of Christ over the church. This distinction undergirded the typical anti-revolutionary political view of the church-state relationship that emphasizes the relative autonomy of both under the overarching authority of God. From this distinction Kuyper developed the concept of sphere sovereignty, discerning the specific authority of the head of each circle in society, the father in the family, the captain on a ship, and the government in the country, and Christ in the church. Bavinck moves more in the lines of historical theology, emphasizing the importance of the concept as an analysis of the core of the Reformed and Augustinian doctrines of grace. Typical of Bavinck’s approach is the covenantal understanding of divine sovereignty in which he reconciles human dependence and liberty. Historically, neo-Calvinism over-emphasized the doctrine of election and therefore also of God’s sovereignty, uncritically following the view of historians of theology like Schweizer. This, however, gave a typical flavor to its reception and retrieval of the Reformed tradition and became a source of much theological and philosophical creativity. Though it is incorrect to call divine sovereignty the hallmark of historical Reformed theology, it certainly is the heart of neo-Calvinism.

Chapter 4

Revelation NATHANIEL GRAY SUTANTO

Neo-Calvinism is a theological tradition that is formed by a critical reception of the Reformed orthodox tradition, and this is especially manifested in its articulation of the doctrine of natural revelation. Based on biblical texts like Psalm 19, Rom. 1:18-32, and 2:14-15, the doctrine of natural revelation refers to God’s self-disclosure of his eternal glory, power, and moral law through creation to every image-bearer, leaving all human beings without excuse in our failure to acknowledge God. The Reformed orthodox tradition universally affirmed this doctrine. However, the neo-Calvinists argued that there is some diversity in the tradition on how exactly God discloses himself in nature, and differed on how to articulate the effects of this revelation through creation. The acknowledgment of this diversity and the new challenges of modern theology led the neoCalvinists to evaluate the doctrine afresh, to re-articulate it using newer philosophical tools, and even led some to question the older formulations altogether. Leaning in on the analogy of the neo-Calvinist tradition as a river with many tributaries, this chapter begins with an exposition of Bavinck’s reception of the doctrine of natural revelation as a first-generation neo-Calvinist dogmatician, and also the one to whom later neo-Calvinists responded. Bavinck’s articulation thus forms the font that drew deeply on the broader Reformed orthodox, while rendering particular judgments on that tradition and incorporating newer philosophical tools to articulate the doctrine afresh. What emerges is a clearer distinction, in Bavinck’s mind, between the doctrine of general revelation, which is a work of God that produces pre-theoretical affects and impressions on the human psyche, on the one hand, and natural theology, which is our cognizing of those pre-theoretical affects. While there is a proper place for the latter, that second-order reflection on the religious impressions produced by general revelation should be dependent on special revelation, spiritual illumination, and faith. There is thus an improper form of natural theology, which is a pre-theological form of rational argumentation and a study of what nonbelievers can know about God by diligent reasoning, and a proper, Christian account of natural theology, which is a second-order reflection on general revelation illumined by Scripture and the Spirit. These neo-Calvinist renderings can thus be considered as an extended and constructive reflection on what the Leiden Synopsis has described as the results of natural revelation: “the notion of God has been inscribed on the human soul as a first truth and a first principle.”1

Synopsis of a Purer Theology: Latin Text and English Translation, vol. 1, Disputations 1–23, ed. Dolf te Velde, trans. Riemer A. Faber (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 6, 4. 1

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This distinction is presupposed and developed in different ways by second-generation neo-Calvinists, which led to the particular formulations of Johan Bavinck, Herman Dooyeweerd, and Klaas Schilder. Hence, the structure of this chapter is as follows. First, to initiate the reader into the dogmatic contours of general revelation in neo-Calvinism at its conception, I sketch Bavinck’s account of general revelation within the context of his overall prolegomena and epistemology, while highlighting his distinction between general revelation and proper and improper forms of natural theology. Second, I observe the ways in which later neo-Calvinists receive Bavinck’s account, especially in their emphasis on the objective, psychological, and pre-theoretical effects of general revelation (in Johan Bavinck and Herman Dooyeweerd), and Klaas Schilder’s objections to the older formulations. I conclude by offering some constructive comments for a way forward.

I. ORTHODOX YET MODERN: HERMAN BAVINCK ON REVELATION One should situate Bavinck’s doctrine of general revelation within his broader account of the dogmatic task and matters of prolegomena. Bavinck defines Christian dogmatics as reflection on “the knowledge that God has revealed in his Word to the church concerning himself and all creatures as they stand in relation to him.”2 As such, Christian theology retains a scientific character precisely because God has spoken in creation and climactically in Christ and Scripture. Deus Dixit (God has spoken) is a principle behind which one cannot go in order to account for theology’s presence and validity as both an ecclesial confession and academic discipline. Here, Bavinck stands opposed to the contemporary positivistic epistemologies that rejected the accessibility of theological metaphysics.3 As a way to vindicate this thesis, Bavinck argues that the metaphysical needs of human knowing and the fact of religious consciousness point to the universal reception of God’s revelation. Hence, prior to a discussion of the two modes of divine revelation in creation and Scripture, Bavinck defends classical theological realism against empiricism and rationalism. Knowledge of the cosmos is available to the human mind precisely because the Logos himself connects subjective representations with objective reality.4 He also attends, in a chapter expanded in the second edition, to the growing modern field of the science of religion, which began to study religion as a sociological and historical phenomenon. He argued that the best way to account for the universal character of religious consciousness in the human subject is the existence of God himself and the fact of his revealing work. “The origin of religion can neither be historically identified nor psychologically explained, but points necessarily to revelation as its objective foundation.”5 As Bavinck turned to his discussion of revelation itself in the RD, Bavinck preferred the terms general and special revelation over natural and supernatural theology.6 He argued that the way in which natural and supernatural theology had been distinguished, especially in medieval scholasticism, tended toward an “absolute contrast,” where God’s Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 38. Hereafter, RD, 1. 3 Ibid., 37. 4 Ibid., 231. For more on Bavinck and perception, see my Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck and Thomas Reid on Perception and Knowing God,” Harvard Theological Review 111 (2018): 115–34. 5 Bavinck, RD, 1, 277. 6 Ibid., 311–12. 2

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revelation in nature and Scripture were related together mechanically, merely side by side, rather than organically.7 Emphasizing the unity of general and special revelation is complemented by the recognition that common grace is that which accounts for access to natural law and progress in science: “This is better than seeing it under the purview of creation.”8 In Philosophy of Revelation, Bavinck further argued for the essential unity between the two modes of revelation: “General revelation leads to special revelation, and special revelation points back to general revelation. The one calls for the other, and without it remains imperfect and unintelligible.”9 In another place, he argued that the tendency to put natural and supernatural truths merely “side by side” was one of the defects that clung onto past attempts at defining Christian scholarship.10 Furthermore, deploying the terms of general and special revelation communicates that all revelation is supernatural: “Scripture, though it knows of an established natural order, in the case of revelation makes no distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ revelation. . . . Actually, according to Scripture, all revelation, also that in nature, is supernatural.”11 While the Reformed orthodox did not distinguish between natural theology and general revelation (defining natural theology as one mode of revealed theology), Bavinck argued that “natural” theology is ambiguous and could be confused with rational argumentation.12 If theology is what humans seek to articulate as they attempt to think God’s thoughts after him, it is dependent on the God who reveals: “If it were not given us by an act of free and unobliged favor, there would be no possibility that we could ever achieve it by an exertion of our own efforts.”13 In line with the Reformed scholastic theologian Franciscus Junius (1589–1677), Bavinck argued that God reveals an ectypal imprint of his archetypal knowledge, accommodated to the capacities of finite rational creatures. Human beings can thus know God truly, though not exhaustively. General revelation is God’s disclosure of himself in creation and providence. Bavinck affirmed with classical Reformed orthodoxy that human beings clearly perceive God’s existence precisely because God’s objective revelation is clear, and because, subjectively, human beings possess both the “capacity” and “inclination (habitus, disposition)” to reason unto God.14 But, more so, in the subjective side of revelation Bavinck also affirmed that God reveals himself internally, arguing that there is an “interior impact of revelation upon [humanity’s] consciousness”15 that “precedes” both the implanted and acquired knowledge of God.16 God exerts a “revelatory pressure.”17 Hence, the distinction between innate and acquired knowledge of God needs to be clarified by the further emphasis that Bavinck, RD, 1, 303–4. See also James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Toward a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 149–51. 8 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, vol. 1, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 149. See also Bavinck, RD, 1. 304–6, 319. 9 Herman Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation: A New Annotated Edition, ed. Cory C. Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2018), 25. 10 Herman Bavinck, Christelijke wetenschap (Kampen: Kok, 1904), 17. 11 Bavinck, RD, 1, 307. 12 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 2: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 78. 13 Herman Bavinck, Wonderful Works of God, trans. Henry Zylstra (Glenside: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 16. 14 Bavinck, RD, 1, 71. 15 Bavinck, RD, 2, 72. 16 Ibid., 73. 17 Ibid. 7

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even the innate knowledge of God is, in a sense, acquired, for “God’s revelation precedes both.”18 In the Philosophy of Revelation and the Wonderful Works of God (1909), Bavinck draws from Schleiermacher to clarify the affective effects of this general revelation: prior to reasoning and active cognizing, human beings immediately feel an absolute dependence on God.19 In Bavinck’s reading, Schleiermacher is drawing from Augustine’s turn to the self to show that the soul is pre-categorically aware of God’s presence prior to active reasoning. Human reasoning, therefore, is always a second moment that itself presupposes an implanted phenomenological awareness, an affect that God exists, and that we are absolutely dependent on him. It is precisely through interpreting the result of revelation as a pre-conscious affection that one should read Bavinck’s provocative claim that revelation is the “secret of all that exists”: The world itself rests on revelation; revelation is the presupposition, the foundation (grondslag), the secret (geheim) of all that exists in all its forms. The deeper science pushes its investigations, the more clearly will it discover that revelation underlies all created being. In every moment of time beats the pulse of eternity; every point in space is filled with the omnipresence of God; the finite is supported by the infinite, all becoming is rooted in being. Together with all created things, that special revelation which comes to us in the Person of Christ is built on these presuppositions. The foundations of creation and redemption are the same [één].20 This striking passage signals Bavinck’s commitment to an irreducibly pervasive account of general revelation. Indeed, his Philosophy of Revelation develops the moves found in his Prolegomena.21 The rest of the lectures sought to show inductively that revelation undergirded the other disciplines, including the natural sciences, religious experience, culture, and history. When general and special revelation are interpreted together according to the illumined intellect, an organic worldview becomes possible. That is, though general revelation creates a precognitive impression or affection in the human psyche that we are dependent on God, one can begin to theorize and codify what one knows by taking the information we receive from Scripture and other scientific disciplines. An organic worldview can recognize the Trinitarian shape of creation. Based on the classical doctrine of divine ideas, God creates with his own being and ideas as the exemplar for creation. Hence, because God himself exists as absolutely one-in-three, creation ectypally mirrors God, exhibiting patterns of unities-in-diversities.22 As James Eglinton pithily summarized it: “Trinity ad intra leads to organism ad extra.”23 It follows that “all the works of God ad extra are only adequately known when their trinitarian existence is recognized.”24 This shapes Bavinck’s account of humanity, the kingdom of God, sin, redemption, and eschatology, as he characterized each of the loci in organic terms.

Ibid. Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 57; Wonderful Works of God, 26–7. See Cory Brock, Orthodox yet Modern: Herman Bavinck’s Use of Schleiermacher (Bellingham: Lexham, 2020). 20 Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 24. 21 Ibid., 117–41. 22 Bavinck, RD, 2, 329–34. 23 Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 81. 24 Bavinck, RD, 2, 33. 18 19

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In Christian Worldview, Bavinck thus argued that Christian faith provides an organic world-and-life view in contrast to a mechanical one.25 A worldview is not a rationalist or subjectivist concept, but rather communicates that unity between the self and the world in the triad of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. An organic worldview communicates that the world is irreducibly rich, and that realities previously thought as contradictions are upheld together under a more capacious perception of reality.26 Beginning with sense perception, one traces the empirical data to the first principles undergirding all phenomena and finds there a unity in the divine ideas. Drawing from the German philosopher F. A. Trendelenburg (1802–72), Bavinck argues that the search for a united worldview is the “science of the idea [Wissenschaft der Idee].”27 Our ideas correspond with reality because divine ideas pattern the world: “word precedes deed. All things are knowable because they were first thought. And because they are first thought, they can be distinct and still one. It is the idea that animates and protects the organism’s distinct parts.”28 In sum: “It is the same divine wisdom [Goddelijke wijsheid] that created the world organically into a connected whole and planted in us the urge for a ‘unified’ [einheitliche] worldview.”29 Bavinck could then argue that human knowledge, codified in the sciences (wetenschappen), is ultimately a single unity with a diversity of fields. This diversity is due to the finitude of human labor, and the goal of the university is to articulate this developing organic unity of science.30 It is only sin that loosens this diversity into an atomistic cacophony, separating the disciplines from one another. However, the point here is that a clear structural epistemology emerges: general revelation creates pre-predicative awareness in the mind, and illumined reason can work with the data of sense perception and Scripture to form a more cohesive and cognized map of the world.

II. GENERAL REVELATION BEYOND BAVINCK: JOHAN BAVINCK (1895–1964), HERMAN DOOYEWEERD (1894–1977), AND KLAAS SCHILDER (1890–1952) Bavinck clearly plants the doctrine of general revelation within the context of Christian doctrine and thus disambiguates it from pre-theological natural reasoning. In doing so, and in arguing that the effects of general revelation are affective rather than theoretical, Bavinck charges earlier Reformed theologians for not being as clear on these delineations. “Voetius still discerned the difference between this rationalistic argumentation and the Reformed doctrine of natural theology, but later theologians [Alsted, P. van Mastricht, Johannes á Marck, F. Turretin] progressively lost sight of it.”31 While the “Reformed doctrine of natural theology” refers, in Bavinck’s mind, to a general revelation, distinguished from human reasoning, inseparable from the doctrines of faith and leads

Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, ed. and trans. Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 73. 26 Ibid., 72. 27 Ibid., 51. 28 Ibid., 74. 29 Ibid., 51. 30 See especially, “Religion and Theology,” in Herman Bavinck, On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, ed. and trans. Bruce Pass (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 107–45; and “Christendom en Natuurwetenschap,” in Kennis en Leven: Opstellen en artikelen uit vroegere jaren, ed. C. B. Bavinck (Kampen: Kok, 1922), 184–202. 31 Bavinck, RD, 2, 78. 25

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one to anticipate special revelation as exposited earlier, rational argumentation here refers to a consideration of proofs that is supposed to demonstrate God’s existence by diligent reasoning. For Bavinck, the “proofs” for God’s existence in rational argumentation, then, are not meant to be demonstrations of God’s existence or that God has disclosed himself for us to find him through reason, but are meant to be witnesses to the reception of religion’s affects and impressions by way of general revelation: “The situation is this: Faith attempts to give an account of the religious impressions and feelings [produced by general revelation] that we humans receive and carry with us in our soul.”32 It is precisely this strong distinction raised by Bavinck between general revelation and its phenomenological effects, on the one hand, and theoretical cognizing and reasoned proofs, on the other, that is picked up by the later neo-Calvinists. To be sure, Kuyper, too, made such a distinction: From the finite no conclusion can be drawn to the infinite, neither can a Divine reality be known from external or internal phenomena, unless that real God reveals Himself in my consciousness to my ego; reveals himself as God; and thereby moves and impels me to see in these finite phenomena a brightness of His glory. Formaliter, neither observation nor reasoning would ever have rendered service here as the principium of knowing.33 While reasoning cannot aid us in obtaining God, reasoning works with what God has disclosed in our consciousness; God is first known, before he is reasoned about. As such, Kuyper calls this “natural” knowledge of God “infused”: Knowledge of God is implanted, infused into man. It is inseparable from his nature. He cannot shake it off. . . . The infused knowledge of God is not something that man possesses. It radiates from God from moment to moment as the steady impression on man’s heart of God’s omnipresent power. God has made of man’s heart a mirror. That mirror may be split and broken but it still reflects God’s radiance, though not His true image. The human heart, though fallen, remains open to knowledge of God. Our philosophers may talk proudly of our capacity for knowing God, but the Church speaks of the majestic impression of the Lord that bears down on all men. Thus, the natural knowledge of God is not acquired through training or study. It is infused into all men. That is why all people share in it. It is inseparable from human nature and belongs to man as a human being.34 This tendency to distinguish between what the philosophers identify as the capacity for knowing God, and the “majestic impression” brought about by the Lord, is carried forward by the neo-Calvinist tradition in a heightened degree.35 For the sake of space, I Ibid., 90. Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles, trans. Hendrik de Vries (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 343. Emphasis mine. 34 Abraham Kuyper, “The Natural Knowledge of God,” trans. Harry van Dyke, The Bavinck Review 6 (2015): 75. Emphasis mine. These comments go well with Kuyper’s account of the pre-reflective life of the individual and society in his 1908 political address, Ons Instinctieve Leven (Amsterdam: W. Kirchner, 1908). English translation: Abraham Kuyper, “Our Instinctive Life,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 255–77. 35 For similar observations on John Calvin himself, see Katherine Sonderegger, “Doctrine of God,” in Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 394. 32 33

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will limit myself to three second-generation neo-Calvinist theologians and philosophers to show the influence of this distinction, and the ways in which each thinker developed it in creative and at times diverging ways: the theologian and missiologist Johan Bavinck, the philosopher of law Herman Dooyeweerd, and the Kampen theologian Klaas Schilder. In sum, Johan Bavinck argued that it is the existential, rather than intellectual, knowledge of God that forms the point of contact for missions; Dooyeweerd argued that theoretical reasoning always presupposes pre-theoretical heart commitments; and Schilder objects to general revelation and natural theology insofar as it is meant to affirm something innately positive about human rationality. Johan Bavinck’s lengthy discussion of the “point of contact” for missions centers on a particular reading of Romans 1 in his book Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith.36 He situates this discussion by positing a set of questions, drawn from a reflection of Herman Bavinck’s Prolegomena. These questions chart the options for identifying the point of contact and how to define the results of general revelation: “If that general revelation in fact reaches humanity and does something to people, does that mean, then, that some capacity and capability were present in people beforehand?”37 Notice the options: Is that capacity lodged in human reason, and is that reason unaffected by sin? (Rome) Or, is there a religious a priori or definite openness of the human soul to holiness? Or, are we not better off speaking of a seed of religion (semen religionis) and sense of divinity? What should we understand by these terms? . . . H. Bavinck demonstrates in his Reformed Dogmatics that a religion always contains a unique external principle of knowledge (principium cognoscendi externum) as well as a unique internal principle of knowledge (principium cognoscendi internum) that is responsive to that revelation. But, what, then, is that inner principle and what is its importance?38 The reception of general revelation can either be identified in reason, or in this sense of the divine, and as J. H. Bavinck exegetes Romans 1, the distinction is clearly in his mind. General revelation is a making “evident” that God confronts every individual by way of a “voiceless speech,” and this “manifestio constitutes the only point of contact in mission work.”39 As a self-revelation of God, this is about an existential encounter rather than a “philosophical instinct”: general revelation “must be understood more existentially.”40 It is a confrontation with a person. As such, despite suggesting that the inner principium that receives this revelation is never clearly defined in Scripture, J. H. denies that this inner capacity refers to reason: “it is not so much about all sorts of mechanisms in the understanding that were capable of drawing logical conclusions from created realities, on the basis of which they would decide that God exists.”41 The revelation is received due to “God’s initiative,” and hence all of the focus is on the objectivity of revelation.42 The

Dutch original: J. H. Bavinck, Religieus Besef en Christelijk Geloof (Kampen: Kok, 1949); English Translation: J. H. Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith,” in The J. H. Bavinck Reader, ed. John Bolt, James D. Bratt, and Paul J. Visser (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 145–302. 37 Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness,” 274–5. 38 Ibid., 275. 39 Ibid., 277. 40 Ibid., 278. 41 Ibid., 282. 42 Ibid., 283. 36

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soul is always encountering God; this awareness of God is repressed psychologically and unconsciously. This is a point of contact because, only by being “illumined by the light of the gospel, they sometimes suddenly become aware of the horror of this suppressing process and realize that they have always known but have never wanted to know.”43 Herman Dooyeweerd developed the distinction further as a central presupposition that lays the groundwork for his philosophy of the cosmonomic idea. Three texts are surveyed for our purposes: A New Critique of Critical Thought (Vol. 2), Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy (Vol. 2), and his critical engagement with Cornelius Van Til in Jerusalem and Athens, a festschrift on the latter’s philosophy. In that first work, Dooyeweerd argued that “universal Revelation in ‘nature’” has to be “explained by the Word-revelation.”44 Citing Herman Bavinck’s Philosophy of Revelation, Dooyeweerd notes that a distinct “revelatio particularis, which was no longer universal, did not start before Abraham.”45 After noting the intended unity of general and special revelation, Dooyeweerd clarifies that the natural knowledge of God “was not a kind of knowledge originated from a reason that was self-sufficient in this ‘natural domain’. It was not the ‘theologia naturalis’ of speculative philosophy; but it was knowledge which, in its temporal character, was in the last instance, exclusively guided by faith in the Word of God.”46 The locus of revelation through nature is “primarily in the heart of man,” and as such Dooyeweerd notes that to associate general revelation with natural reason, where one “can start spinning one part of the thread of the explanation of the world, and the other end is supposed to have been prepared by the Word-revelation of special grace” is, in his words, a disastrous “delusion!”47 General revelation prompts a direction of the heart either toward or against Word-revelation. In his Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy, Dooyeweerd explicitly critiques Thomas Aquinas’s reading of Rom. 1:20, which, in Dooyeweerd’s mind, sought to establish that reasoning is precisely the means by which we obtain a knowledge of God from creation. “Does Paul indeed wish to say here that we can know God purely from theoretical conclusions drawn from the nature of creation? . . . This, of course, is out of the question.”48 To the contrary, Rom. 1:20 teaches that it is God who has “revealed” to those who suppresses the truth: “divine self-revelation . . . is directed to the aspect of faith in which the human knowing necessarily functions.”49 Again, general revelation is contrasted with the human act of reasoning, and penetrates the heart pre-theoretically. If Aquinas taught the “autonomy” of theoretical reasoning, Dooyeweerd points to Augustine, who emphasized “the lack of self-sufficiency of theoretical thinking.”50 This emphasis on a heart-centered and pre-theoretical direction for knowing was utilized in Dooyeweerd’s 1977 response to the work of Cornelius Van Til. There,

Ibid., 285. For more on Johan Bavinck, see my “Neo-Calvinism on General Revelation: A Dogmatic Sketch,” IJST 20 (2018): 495–516. 44 Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, vol. 2, The General Theory of the Modal Spheres, trans. David H. Freeman and H. De Jongste (Philipsburg: P&R, 1969), 306–7. 45 Ibid., 2. 307. 46 Ibid., 307 47 Ibid., 308. 48 Herman Dooyeweerd, Reformation and Scholasticism, vol. 2, The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea and the Scholastic Tradition in Christian Thought, ed. Lyn Boliek, Ralph Vunderink, and Harry van Dyke, trans. Magnus Verbrugge (Ancaster: Paideia Press, 2013), 159. 49 Ibid., 2, 159. 50 Ibid., 158. Dooyeweerd’s reading of Aquinas is, to say the least, controversial. 43

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Dooyeweerd focused on the supra-theoretical (and pre-theoretical) foundations of human reasoning, “which relate to the central religious sphere of human existence.”51 This central religious sphere specifically refers to the biblical notion of the “heart,” the core of human personality. Dooyeweerd then relates this religious impulse to Calvin’s semen religionis: “Since man has been created in the image of God, the religious impulse, as Calvin rightly observes, is an innate impulse of the human heart. . . . The religious impulse was, from the beginning, thrown on the central motive power of God’s general Word-revelation, which alone could give it true content and a right direction.”52 As an impulse of the heart, this is prior to theorizing and is non-conceptual—it is rather characterized by a dynamis that directs one’s desires and intellectual efforts. The central religious impulse is itself the result of “the divine order of creation to which our subjective experience is subject,” and it is that which is prior to “the transcendental meaning-structures of our temporal horizon of experience.”53 In Dooyeweerd’s judgment, Van Til fails to make the proper distinction between “theoretical conceptual knowledge,” on the one hand, and “the central religious self-knowledge and knowledge of God.”54 That which theoretical reasoning presupposes are not the concepts of scriptural revelation, but rather the supra-conceptual and phenomenological direction of the heart. Dooyeweerd interprets Van Til’s transcendental argument for Christian theism as rendering the truths of Scriptural revelation as the preconditions for human reasoning, and objects that this does not comport with a biblical view of human knowing: “obeying the voice of God speaking through Christ in Scripture, means making every human thought subject to divine thought in scriptural concepts. . . . Is this really a biblical view? I am afraid not.”55 To the contrary, Dooyeweerd argued that the precondition for theoretical reasoning is not conceptual, but the regeneration of the heart: “It is exactly this central biblical condition that is lacking in your circumscription of obedience. You do not, of course, at all deny the necessity of rebirth. But I fear that the biblical conception of the religious center of human existence does not fit in with your view of the human nature.”56 Dooyeweerd thus accuses Van Til of falling into a kind of rationalism, which posits the human being as primarily a thinking being, dependent on knowing concepts in order to rightly live. In effect, Dooyeweerd was pressing the distinctions already found in Bavinck (and Kuyper) onto Van Til, and worries that Van Til is reducing all epistemology to the theoretical—which was precisely what Dooyeweerd thought Aquinas was doing: The transcendental critique of theoretical thought has shown why true self-knowledge in its biblical sense, i.e., in its dependence upon the true knowledge of God, cannot be itself of a conceptual character. The reason is that all conceptual knowledge in its analytical and inter-model synthetical character presupposes the human ego as its central reference-point, which consequently must be of a supra-modal nature and is not capable of logical analysis. . . . The human ego cannot be theoretically opposed to

Herman Dooyeweerd, “Cornelius Van Til and the Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought,” in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, ed. E. R. Geehan (Philipsburg: P&R, 1977), 76. 52 Ibid., 77–8. 53 Ibid., 80. 54 Ibid., 81. 55 Ibid., 84. Emphasis original. 56 Ibid., 84. 51

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conceptual knowledge since, as the central reference-point of the latter, it transcends every theoretical analysis.57 From this selection of key passages from Dooyeweerd, what emerges is the clear distinction, again, of the pre-theoretical and the conceptual, drawn from the first-generation neoCalvinists. Dooyeweerd sharpened the distinction and utilized it as a tool to analyze the pre-theoretical and directional presuppositions of theoretical thought—it became a key idea to his development of a Christian philosophy. I suggest that Klaas Schilder, who is at times discussed as a representative of someone who denies natural theology and general revelation altogether, is also carrying forward the distinction delineated earlier. Three observations are key on Schilder’s discussion of general revelation: (1) his critique of Bavinck and Kuyper, (2) the comments which might lend the impression that he rejects general revelation forthrightly, (3) and finally his qualified notion of God’s revelation in creation and preservation of human nature.58 As we shall see, though the editors of the Schilder Reader are quite right that Schilder maintains a “firm ‘Neen’ to natural theology and general revelation,” that Neen is rendered to the misuse and overestimation of general revelation, and what Schilder considers is a faulty associating of human reasoning and conscience with general revelation.59 His reasoning is complex, and for the sake of space I shall highlight the salient points for the present purposes. Schilder’s discussion of these issues comes from his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, which locates our knowledge of our misery in the law of God. As such, the conscience, he argues, is not a positive affirmation of our moral capacities, and is not a prompt for theologians to go on affirming a “natural light” to be credited to our ability. It is in this context that Schilder begins to critique Bavinck and Kuyper—not that they have spent an undue amount of positive energy on general revelation, but that they failed to distinguish sufficiently between their own view and the Reformed orthodox on natural theology: “On this point we can thus detect a certain contrast between the Reformed fathers and their offspring. Both Dr. Bavinck and Dr. A. Kuyper have, however, inadvertently made the difference seem smaller and less striking than it actually is.”60 Observing the passages from Bavinck earlier on the deviation of later orthodox Reformed thinkers from an original (Calvinian) Reformed doctrine of natural

Ibid., 85. Emphasis original. It is a matter of debate, of course, whether Dooyeweerd interpreted Van Til accurately. In some places, Van Til makes a clear distinction between the psychological knowledge of God, which is pre-theoretical, and the epistemological knowledge of God, which is conceptual and presupposes the possession of the psychological knowledge of God. See, e.g.: “The present writer made a distinction between notions that are psychologically and metaphysically, that is, revelationally, common to all men, and common notions that are ethically and epistemologically common. The reason for this distinction lies upon the concept of the creation of man in the image of God, who thus has within him the ineradicable knowledge of God, and a view that is based upon man as participant with God in one general being. All men have common notions about God; all men naturally have knowledge of God. In this sense there is, as Calvin points out on the basis of Paul’s letter to the Romans, a natural knowledge of God and with it truth and morality.” Cornelius Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Philipsburg: P&R, 2008), 190. See also Van Til’s lengthy response to Dooyeweerd in Jerusalem and Athens, 89–127. 58 Klaas Schilder, “‘No’ to Natural Theology (1939),” in The Klaas Schilder Reader: Essential Writings, ed. George Harinck, Marinus de Jong, and Richard Mouw, trans. Albert Gootjes and Albert Oosterhoff (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2022), 178–211. 59 George Harinck, Marinus de Jong, and Richard Mouw, in Schilder, “‘No’ to Natural Theology (1939),” 178. 60 Ibid., 183. 57

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theology, Schilder argues that the Reformed orthodox did not define natural theology as properly as Bavinck did. In Schilder’s understanding, Bavinck argued that the natural knowledge of God was “a description at the hand of Scripture, of what Christians can know about God from Creation.”61 Schilder, it is key to note, does not object to this particular definition of natural knowledge. His objection is that, contrary to Bavinck’s own narrative, Bavinck’s definition was not shared by earlier Reformed thinkers, who, in his mind, identified natural knowledge with natural theology, and this knowledge is “not derived from Scripture, but rather comes from ‘creation’, (i.e. created things), even without any guidance from Scripture . . . which not Christians alone obtain, but anyone, including heathens who are without Scripture.”62 From this positive affirmation of the unbeliever, the older theologians were prompted to identify “basic truths” from which to build material that comprised the book of nature and of conscience.63 It is in response to what Schilder thinks is this older definition that he brings his objections, which lends the impression that he rejects general revelation wholesale. Rather provocatively, Schilder argues that the Socinian exegesis of Rom. 1:19-20 is stronger than the one offered by the seventeenth-century Reformed scholastic Johann Alsted. In Schilder’s reading, Alsted wrongly read Rom. 1:19-20 to the effect that the external world stimulates the reasoning mind to form an acquired knowledge of God. To the contrary, the Socinians argued that the text taught that everyone knew God not out of creation, but rather since the beginning of creation. “Today all of us Reformed theologians would concede this point to the Socinians.”64 Despite the agreement on this particular point, however, Schilder is also quick to distance himself from the Socinians: if the Socinians argued that the divine nature is thus to be known only from the Gospel, which interprets Rom. 1:19-20 for Christians, Schilder argues that it is God’s own “creative acts” that disclose the invisible things of God.65 This shows that Schilder does not reject that God reveals himself in creation, despite his hyperbolic statements to the effect that this or that passage (esp. Romans 2) “does not say that God gives his general revelation in the human heart, or that God with his general revelation works from this inside out.”66 When Schilder further explicates on what he means, he specifies that his concern is the move of excusing or rendering positive judgments on the unbeliever due to their possession of general revelation, as if the “situation in which they find themselves is therefore not all that bad.”67 His emphasis is that Romans 1–2 do not affirm a light in unregenerate humanity, or some kind of innate moral capacity that is intrinsically praiseworthy. Rather, the point in these passages is that the sinful nature is culpable and corrupt, leaving them without excuse. The conscience and the “light” is not an affirmation of humanity but a witness to culpability. As such, Schilder argues that the conscience should not be considered as itself revelational of God: “you cannot just consider conscience a part of general revelation, and simply apply to it what Scripture reports—in a poem, no less!—about the heavens, which declare the glory

Ibid., 183. Emphasis original. Ibid., 184. Emphasis original. 63 Ibid., 184. 64 Ibid., 186. 65 Ibid., 187. 66 Ibid., 197. Emphasis original. 67 Ibid., 197. 61 62

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of God, and about the sky, which proclaims his handiwork.”68 From this passage, Schilder hardens the distinction already found in earlier neo-Calvinists between revelation from creation and human reasoning—excluding as well the work of the fallen conscience as revelatory of God. Finally, though Schilder affirms that “remnants” of the image of God remain in fallen humanity, he warns against using this language as an affirmation of the human being: “Will someone now turn to sing the praises of that natural light? Or the praises of the remnants? Or the praises of the conscience? Let them rather sing the praises of God, who preserves the ‘nature’ of his creatures, regardless of how fiercely they struggle against.”69 Hence, despite the polemical tone of Schilder’s writing on this, his rejection of natural theology and general revelation actually discloses an implicit modification and reception of the doctrine. In sum, for Schilder, God does reveal himself in creation, but that revealing work must be distinguished from the workings of the human mind, whether in reason or conscience, and the remnants of the image of God only serve to fortify our sense of dependence on the God who preserves. In his judgment, neither general revelation nor common grace should be used as a means of affirming or prompting an intrinsic goodness in the post-lapsarian human nature.

III. WAYS FORWARD: CATHOLICITY AND PHENOMENOLOGY Where should neo-Calvinistic reflection on revelation proceed from here? I suggest two directions: toward retrieving Reformed catholic eclecticism, and engagement with affective and cognitive sciences. First, what one sees in Herman Bavinck’s prolegomena and epistemology is a principled commitment to Reformed eclecticism. Even in his critiques of particular one-sided epistemologies in the pre-modern, Reformed, and medieval periods, he still argued that Reformed theologians cannot simply eschew the past and must be rooted in it as one labors for the future. As such, despite his disagreements with thinkers like Aquinas, he would still note hearty agreements with him at particular junctures, and would strongly root other motifs in a variety of ancient and medieval divines, like Augustine and Bonaventure. Bavinck also rigorously studied the Reformed scholastic tradition and continued to utilize their vocabulary and theological grammar, even as he sought to utilize the newer philosophies of his own day.70 Later neo-Calvinistic thinkers, however, though generative and creative in pursuing a full-orbed theology, missiology, and philosophy, tend to over-polemicize toward the earlier traditions. While noting agreements here and there with figures like Augustine, the impression one may receive, say, from reading Dooyeweerd and Schilder, would be that theology and philosophy have to be done wholly anew, and that the older traditions ought to be viewed with some suspicion. This is not necessarily so, and in my own work, I have tried to show how the neo-Calvinistic emphasis on God as ever-present to the heart, for instance, could find a hearty resonance in earlier thinkers

Ibid., 207. Emphasis original. Ibid., 209. Emphasis original. 70 For more on these themes, see my God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2020); Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism: On Catholicity, consciousness and theological epistemology,” SJT 70, no. 3 (2017): 310–32. 68 69

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beyond Augustine, such as Bonaventure.71 Neo-Calvinism would do well to be re-rooted in the healthy reception of the broader classical tradition and one ought to be cautious (unlike Schilder), to acknowledge glimmers of truth within Socinianism. Second, neo-Calvinism’s emphasis on the reception of general revelation in the heart as pre-theoretical nonetheless bestows a treasure-trove of resources for contemporary theologians and philosophers. Current literature on the way in which the body shapes rationality, affect theory, and the cognitive science of religion are increasingly perceptive in its description of human agents and in its critiques of the modern view of the self as a primarily thinking being. Reformed theologians have resources in neo-Calvinism to engage and deploy the research in these areas, putting into dialogue key doctrinal commitments like original corruption, covenant, and sanctification, for instance, with those areas of research. As such, it is possible to show that theology intersects with the everyday, more existential aspects of human life. These are avenues where neo-Calvinists can show the holistic way in which Christianity leavens all of life.

N. Gray Sutanto, “Questioning Bonaventure’s Augustinianism?: On the Noetic Effects of Sin,” New Blackfriars 102 (2021): 401–17. 71

Chapter 5

Scripture KOERT VAN BEKKUM

Since the second half of the sixteenth century, Reformed theology regards Scripture as principium theologiae.1 In his inaugural address at the Kampen Theological School in 1883, Herman Bavinck describes how, after Pentecost and the closing of the canon, the Holy Spirit takes everything from Christ, from the Word, adding nothing new, and how thus Holy Scripture became the only source of knowledge, the principle from which theology is drawn. Once the principle was there and the seed was sown, theology arose from it naturally without external coercion by the teaching of the Spirit, although it also took shape through various occasions in history.2 Today, not everyone will agree with this characteristic use of the organic motif. In the history of Christian doctrine, geopolitical ruptures, cultural changes, and probing questions play a major role, even among those who emphatically use Scripture as the principle of Reformed theology. John Calvin’s (1509–64) view and use of the Bible bear the stamp of his humanist formation. New exegetical impulses can be observed in the work of Johannes Polanus (1561–1610), and the background of the early Enlightenment strongly permeated the work of the Cartesio-Cocceian biblical scholar and theologian Salomon van Til (1654–1713).3 Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck were well aware of these developments. While the American Presbyterian dogmatician Charles Hodge (1797–1878) had taken pride in the fact that in his fifty years of teaching at Princeton Seminary he never had developed “a new idea,” Bavinck highlighted that Reformed people of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were children of a new time and a different era. Therefore, to maintain the old forms in formulating the catholic Christian faith would be futile and even contradict “our own confession.” In order to confess the Reformed faith according to its principles in the present age, new ideas had to be developed.4 Cf. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Vol. 2. Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993). 2 Herman Bavinck, “The Science of Holy Theology,” in On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, ed. Bruce R. Pass (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 33–40. 3 Cf. Barbara Pitkin, Calvin, the Bible, and History: Exegesis and Historical Reflection in the Era of Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Stephen B. Tipton, The Ground, Method, and Goal of Amandus Polanus’ (1561–1610) Doctrine of God: A Historical and Contextual Analysis, Reformed Historical Theology 73 (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2022); Matthias Mangold, Towards a Reformed Enlightenment: The CartesioCocceian Synthesis in the Theology of Salomon van Til (1643–1713), Studies in Intellectual History (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 4 Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God: Instruction in the Christian Religion According to the Reformed Confession (Glenside: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), xxxii. Cf. Paul Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of 1

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This contribution describes what new elements neo-Calvinism developed in the doctrine of Scripture and how this teaching and the embrace of the professionalization of biblical scholarship permeated the interpretation of the Bible. After describing the theological context and the general contours of the neo-Calvinist response, a second section sketches the development and emphases of Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s doctrine of Scripture. The third section of this chapter concentrates on its result, that is, the development of neo-Calvinist biblical studies until 1960.

I. CONTEXT AND NEO-CALVINIST RESPONSE 5 The context in which the neo-Calvinist view and handling of Scripture came into being is that of the triangle of the Reformed tradition, modern theology, and the Dutch version of German mediation theology (Vermittlungstheologie), the so-called ethical movement (ethische richting), which had been developed as a response to nineteenth-century idealism and positivism. In the 1840s, modernism with its totally different attitude toward Christianity had emerged first after the dominant deism of eighteenth-century supra-naturalist theology. The new era had de-Christianized the state, humanized the church, and liberated scholarly inquiry. The Christian culture of authority, based on the divinely revealed Scriptures, was broken by the immanent explanations of science. Israel and the church appeared to be only elements in the whole of human history, and humankind was no longer seen as a weak creature in need of salvation but as an autonomous entity who could be raised to a civil morality. The only authority humanity had to respect was its own intellect. By rejecting biblical authority and the belief in miracles, and by seeking certainty of faith in the testimony of one’s own spirit, “theological modernism reflected,” as Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s Leiden professor Jan Hendrik Scholten had put it, “the spirit of the present age.”6 Initially, the anti-supranaturalism and empirical method of modernism was opposed by the Utrecht School of J. I. Doedes and J. J. van Oosterzee, who tried to save biblical authority and belief in miracles by an apologetic-historical approach.7 The intellectualistic and optimistic principles of modernism, however, were addressed more specifically by ethical theology. This school wanted to hold on to objective revelation, but at the same time do justice to the fact that since Kant, the ultimate ground for faith had to be found in the subject. Therefore, it sought its starting point not in the intellect, but in what was called “the ethical principle,” implying that faith reflects the human being as a whole, that is, not only the intellect, but first and foremost experience and character. Accordingly, religious truth is not considered to be theoretical, but existential in nature. God makes himself known through his revelation in Jesus Christ, and revelation is experienced and lived

American Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 363. 5 This section draws on a part in my “Herman Bavinck’s Use of Scripture,” in Bavinck Centenary Essays, ed. Bruce Pass, Studies in Reformed Theology (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 6 J. H. Scholten, “Toespraak bij de opening der Academische lessen van 1872–1873,” Nieuw en Oud, Derde Reeks (1872): 491–502. Cf. Tom-Eric Krijger, The Eclipse of Liberal Protestantism in the Netherlands: Religious, Social, and International Perspectives on the Dutch Modernist Movement (1870–1940), Brill’s Series in Church History 79 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 25–63. 7 Maarten J. Aalders, Ethisch tussen 1870 en 1920: Openbaring, Schrift en ervaring bij J. J. P. Valeton Jr., P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye en Is. van Dijk (Kampen: Kok, 1990), 32–4.

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through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the people of faith. Hence, not Holy Scripture, not the intellect, but the faith of God’s community is the foundation of dogmatics and point of departure for hearing the living voice of God in the Bible and appreciating the confession.8 Against this background Kuyper and Bavinck developed their neo-Calvinist views of revelation and Scripture. Both had been influenced by modernism during their studies at Leiden University. They valued the realism and interest in science of the modernists but had great difficulty with the way in which this theology identified God with creation. They shared the ethicists’ opposition to empiricism and rationalism and were drawn to their appreciation of religious experience. Kuyper severely criticized the lack of certainty and firmness of the ethical principle, while Bavinck’s problem with it was that God and faith became too separated from concrete reality. After all, the ethicists hesitated to say that the Bible was the Word of God and preferred the formulation that God’s Word was in the Bible and that revelation addressed primarily the relationship between Christ and the believer, which created room for moderate forms of higher criticism. In line with the Reformed tradition, neo-Calvinism maintained that, according to Scripture, divine intervention is necessary for the redemption and renewal of creation. To preserve this realism, therefore, it kept revelation and Scripture closely together. In its view, the knowledge of the Triune God in the modern world can neither be guaranteed by the intellect nor by the faith of the church, but only by God’s revelation. God, through his special revelation in Holy Scripture, enters our reality which is alienated from him by sin. Several new elements in this Reformed view relate to its late nineteenth-century context. By speaking of revelation, creation and sin, the dualisms of nature and grace, reason and faith, are rejected, while the problem of Enlightenment is redefined: God is not the problem, but humankind which has alienated itself from God. At the same time, the Kantian distinction between the known object and knowing subject is assumed. Revelation, Scripture, and the testimony of the Holy Spirit become elements of an epistemological framework tying together the object of the content of Holy Scripture as the ground of faith and the subjective element of the assurance of faith. Finally, the relation between revelation and Scripture becomes more dynamic because the human and historical nature of the Bible are emphasized while the history of religions functions as the context of revelation. In this way, revelation, inspiration, Scripture, and illumination are part of a process aimed at appealing to humankind.

II. DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE IN ABRAHAM KUYPER AND HERMAN BAVINCK Throughout his life, Abraham Kuyper published many sermons and about 2,200 meditations on biblical texts, while he also initiated the so-called Flakkeese Bijbel (1893– 6), a revision of the Dutch Statenvertaling (1637), in which Bavinck also participated.9 In his striving for a free church in a free state and personal development from modernism See e.g. J. Veenhof, Revelatie en inspiratie: De openbarings- en Schriftbeschouwing van Herman Bavinck in vergelijking met die van de ethische theologie (Amsterdam: Buijten en Schipperheijn, 1968), 141–249; Aalders, Ethisch tussen 1870 en 1920, 35–188, cf. Cory Brock, Orthodox yet Modern: Herman Bavinck’s Use of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2020), 67–120. 9 Cf. Jaap van Dorp, “Abraham Kuyper en de herziening van de Statenvertaling,” Met Andere Woorden 18, no. 3 (1999): 26–33. 8

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to idealism to Reformed theology, Kuyper started to highlight the authority of Scripture from the early 1870s on.10 Over the years, he developed a close friendship with Johannes Hermanus Gunning Jr. (1829–1905), a Reformed pastor and theologian among the ethicists. Both friends agreed that the Bible and confession should play a role in the restoration of the Dutch Reformed Church but differed on the question of how that had to happen. Gunning appreciated church discipline as brotherly admonition but warned against using it as a means of banishing dissenting opinions. In his view, true humanity— not the free individual, but the human person in his relationship to the community—can only flourish by being captured by the revelation of Christ and the cross. Human beings can only become free and dedicate themselves to others in the way of voluntary selfdenial, out of love. Submission to the authority of Scripture comes about in a similar way and cannot be enforced. In 1878, Kuyper seized the opportunity to increase his support for a more legal approach in revitalizing the church, when Gunning, in discussing David Friedrich Strauss’ Das Leben Jesu (1835), argued that history is surrounded with uncertainty and that the Gospels contain “sacred legends” reflecting the impression that the incomparable person of Jesus had made on the pious. In the storm that broke loose, Gunning withdrew his publication, but despite this fact, Kuyper confronted his friend publicly with the dilemma bericht of gedicht (“factual announcement or invented poem”). In the exchange that followed, he insisted that it now had become evident that the ethicist view of Scripture was not able to withstand modernist criticism. This infamous occasion—in which the principle of historical infallibility clashed with ideas from mediation theology, although the practical view of Scripture of both theologians did not differ very much—significantly helped Kuyper in gathering public support for founding the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (1880). At the same time, he was accused of not taking seriously the confessional integrity of the Reformed among the ethicists and of being, as Gunning put it, “unconsciously dishonest,” precisely because his view of biblical authority hardly offered any room for humility.11 In this light, it was no surprise that Kuyper sought to clarify his position by choosing “Contemporary Biblical Criticism and its Troubling Implications for the Congregation of the Living God” as the topic for his second address at the Vrije Universiteit (1881).12 Again the main emphasis of his lecture was on the devastating ecclesial consequences of higher criticism. Yet, he also offered a more positive account of organic inspiration, which he later developed in his teaching on the Locus de Sacra Scriptura (1881–8) and his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology (1894).13 These expositions heavily draw on Reformed scholasticism and often oppose modernist and mediation theology, thus making it clear

Abraham Kuyper, De Schrift, het Woord Gods (Tiel: H.C.A. Campagne 1870). For the conflict and its reception, see Koert van Bekkum, “Bericht of gedicht. Theologiehistorische overwegingen bij een conflict over Bijbelgezag en spiritualiteit,” in Godsvrucht in geschiedenis: Bundel ter gelegenheid van het afscheid van prof. Dr. F. van der Pol als hoogleraar aan de Theologische Universiteit Kampen, ed. Erik A. de Boer and Harm J. Boiten (Heerenveen: Groen, 2015), 427–40. 12 Abraham Kuyper, De hedendaagsche schriftcritiek in hare bedenkelijke strekking voor de gemeente des levenden Gods (Amsterdam: J. H. Kruyt, 1881); English: “The Biblical Criticism of the Present Day,” Bibliotheca Sacra 61 (1904): 409–42, 666–88. 13 Abraham Kuyper, Locus de Sacra Scriptura: College-dictaat van een der studenten, vol. 1–2 (Amsterdam: J. A. Wormser, 1891); Encyclopaedie der heilige godgeleerdheid, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1909), 351–518. English: Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 397–563. Cf. Dirk van Keulen, Bijbel en dogmatiek: Schrift beschouwing en dogmatiek in het dogmatisch werk van A. Kuyper, 10 11

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that Kuyper is willing to take a new Reformed stance in highlighting the theological nature of Scripture. He also argues at length that the authority of Scripture is not based on a few biblical texts but on the testimony of Jesus Christ, Moses, the prophets, the writings, and the apostles as a whole. At the same time, by locating the doctrine of Scripture in pneumatology and eschatology and connecting both divine inspiration and illumination to the central category of regeneration that is prepared in God’s counsel, his model also contains flavors of mediation theology. As a result, the theological view of reality in Scripture cannot be tested by historical criticism which does not respect the distinction between the secular and the sacred, because Holy Scripture is of a different category. God’s counsel is the seed, the origin of everything. In the whole process of divine revelation and speech, of inspiration, putting words in writing, editing, transmission, and finally, of the canonization of the infallible autographs, the Holy Spirit works immediately in the heart of the biblical writers. The same is the case when people come to faith in Christ, experience the inner testimony that the Holy Scripture is God’s infallible Word, and experience that they no longer read the text of human authors, but hear God’s voice. In addition, Kuyper—who himself had been thoroughly trained in New Testament textual criticism in Leiden—argues for a professionalization of biblical studies, because revelation is deeply historical in nature. While modern criticism reads suspiciously and denies revelation, miracles, and prophecy because of its mistaken principles, even its excesses have produced wonderful positive fruits by God’s gracious disposal. He therefore calls for healthy, spiritual biblical scholarship that avoids the amateur effort of dry apologetics and narrow-minded harmonistica, but is true to Scripture, takes history seriously and appreciates the literary diversity created by the Highest Artist.14 Accordingly, Kuyper devoted a large part of the third volume of his Encyclopedia to a description of the principles of this kind of biblical studies.15 As will become evident in the following, Kuyper’s efforts to stimulate Reformed biblical studies have been exceptionally motivating, while his observation and criticism regarding the often silenced role of worldview and philosophical presuppositions as control beliefs in weighing evidence and scholarly hypotheses is still of great value.16 At the same time, it proved untenable and incorrect to draw a watertight distinction between regenerated and non-regenerated science and scholarship.17 On the one hand, this theological move helped in safeguarding Holy Scripture against historical criticism—although characterizing this step as a foundationalist effort is rather anachronistic.18 On the other hand, however, it remained unclear how biblical scholars had to deal with his preference for the divine over the human factor in interpreting Scripture, and with the distinction between a false, human view of infallibility related to “notarial acts” and “mathematical accuracy,” and a divine infallibility of Scripture, which can be observed with the eye of faith and is related to the “impressionistic certainty of life” and the “higher reality” of revelation.19 H. Bavinck* en G. C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 2003), 20–67; Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, NeoCalvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2022), 99–106, 114–25. 14 Kuyper, Hedendaagsche schriftcritiek, 28–36; English: “Biblical Criticism of the Present Day,” 666–77. 15 Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der heilige godgeleerdheid, vol. 2, 6–182. 16 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993). 17 Kuyper’s controversial supralapsarian view of immediate regeneration also played an important part in the discussions on covenant and baptism in Reformed circles in both the Netherlands and North America. 18 Thus Hans Burger, “Kuypers Anti-Revolutionary Doctrine of Scripture,” in Neo-Calvinism and the French Revolution, ed. James Eglinton and George Harinck (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 127–42. 19 Kuyper, Locus de Sacra Scriptura, 91, cf. Brock and Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism, 122.

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Herman Bavinck was among those inspired by Kuyper, but by nature he was less speculative and preferred to construct his views in an inductive way, always looking for conceptual balance.20 Accordingly, his doctrine of Scripture did not arise from polemic but presented itself more directly as a systematic-theological whole, culminating in the second edition of the first volume of his Reformed Dogmatics (1906). In using an eclectic method in conversation with scholars from modernism, mediation theology, and Roman Catholicism, he seeks to find a balance between nature and revelation, general and special revelation and the communication of truth and life. In this way, the typically nineteenth-century organic motif becomes theologically loaded and motivated as an expression of Bavinck’s Trinitarian approach in describing reality.21 Due to the central place of the historical turn and catholic emphases, his theology can even be characterized as a project of retrieval.22 As a result, Bavinck redefines traditional Reformed terminology regarding the external and internal principia in a new epistemological framework, in which, for instance, the witness of the Holy Spirit of the authority of Scripture in the human heart is more closely connected to the proclamation of the Gospel and reading of the Bible than in Kuyper and traditional Reformed scholasticism, while Scripture itself remains ground of faith because it is self-convincing.23 In Bavinck’s doctrine of Scripture, the close connection and distinction between revelation and inspiration (or better: theopneusty, after the Greek θεόπνευστος, on the “God-breathed” and “God-breathing” Scriptures in 2 Tim. 3:16) is of great importance in doing justice to the dynamics of revelation and the fact that Scripture is both fully divine and human, because “the Holy Spirit, in describing the Word of God, has discarded nothing human to serve as the organ of the divine.”24 Bavinck starts his chapter on organic inspiration with an overview of biblical material from the Old and New Testaments, thus trying to make the reader familiar with how Scripture itself develops a view of its own in history of revelation, for “Scripture contains a testimony, a teaching about itself, about its inspiration and authority.”25 This is followed by a historical section recounting the various views of inspiration until the most recent discussions, and by his own argument.26 Only then the characteristics of Scripture, its authority, necessity, clarity, and sufficiency, are analyzed.27 Interestingly, Bavinck agrees that literary criticism sheds new light on the composition of biblical books, but his overall judgment is less positive than Kuyper’s. Rather, stimulated by his former Kampen colleague in Old Testament, Maarten Noordtzij, his praise goes to

James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2020), 65, 181–2. James P. Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 17 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2012), 168–82; Bruce Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocentrism in Herman Bavinck (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 24–37, 132–44. 22 Cameron D. Clausing, Theology and History in the Methodology of Herman Bavinck: Revelation, Confession, and Christian Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). 23 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 377–85, 563–78, 593–8. Cf. R. H. Bremmer, Herman Bavinck als dogmaticus (Kampen: Kok, 1961), 176–8; Henk van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology: Truth and Trust, Studies in Reformed Theology 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 229–99. 24 Bavinck, RD, vol. 1, par. 443. 25 Ibid., 389–402, 422–8, quote on 443. 26 Ibid., 402–22 and 422–48. 27 Ibid., 452–94. 20 21

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the study of the Ancient Near East as the river bed in which revelation came about and took shape.28 Nevertheless, he still maintains that the results of both types of studies, the phenomena, can only play an explanatory, illustrative role in formulating the doctrine of Scripture, and never be used to argue against its divine inspiration.29 In this way, he protects the positive account that the Bible itself offers of its origin and function and the theological core of the doctrine of Scripture. This raises the question of what to do when biblical historical research results in questioning (traditional) views of inspiration. Bavinck uses several instruments to put this question into perspective. In analyzing the crise moderniste in Roman Catholic theology in France (1902–7), he clearly sympathizes with the idea of the so-called concessionistes that Scripture is true in the sense in which itself intends to be, rather than in the sense of our exact natural and historical science. Yet he firmly rejects their distinction between different kinds of truths, and their idea that the Bible contains fables, myths, sagas, and legends, which are not historical, but only teach some religious or moral truth. In the light of this discussion, the final paragraphs of Bavinck’s exposition of organic inspiration, clearly drawing on the papal Encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893) on biblical criticism, beautifully state how God made all literary genres subservient to its aim and does not give us the degree of exactness we might wish for. Yet if Scripture obviously intends to present a story as historical, biblical scholars have no right to turn it into a myth.30 This illustrates how Bavinck tries to balance form and content and center and periphery of Scripture and explains why he seems to avoid both the terms “infallible” and “inerrant.” Scripture is trustworthy and every word is inspired, but the analogue between incarnation and divine-human written revelation shows that it mainly serves a soteriological purpose. The “infallibility” as confessed in Article 5 of the Belgic Confession and which Bavinck held on to, mainly extends to what Scripture affirms, when read in accord with its religious-ethical purpose. In this way, Bavinck creates room for additional explanations of how Scripture is truthful according to his critical-realist epistemology and openness to new results of Ancient Near Eastern studies, while at the same time safeguarding the objective truthfulness of Scripture in those cases where harmonization of the self-testimony of Scripture and results of historical research is difficult.31

III. DEVELOPMENT OF NEOCALVINIST BIBLICAL STUDIES Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s organic view of Scripture was inspiring and stimulating, both inside and outside the immediate circles of Dutch neo-Calvinism. In Leiden, the restless heart of Arie Noordtzij, son of the Kampen professor and student of Semitic languages,

Ibid., 438; Herman Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation: A New Annotated Edition, ed. Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2018), 17–8, 21, 139–55. 29 Bavinck, RD, vol. 1, 419–20, 423–5. 30 Ibid., 446–8. Cf. Koert van Bekkum, “‘In More or Less Figurative Language’: The Dutch Neo-Calvinist Fascination with the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893) and Its Aftermath,” in Neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism, ed. James Eglinton and George Harinck, Studies in Reformed Theology 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 23–9. 31 Cf. Bruce R. Pass, “Upholding Sola Scriptura Today: Some Unturned Stones in Herman Bavinck’s Doctrine of Inspiration,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 20, no. 4 (2018): 517–36; Brock and Sutanto, NeoCalvinism, 127–31; van Bekkum, “Herman Bavinck’s Use of Scripture.” 28

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found comfort after reading Kuyper’s Encyclopedia.32 In particular the distinction between authenticity and canonicity was considered to be liberating, for now the authority of a biblical book was no longer dependent on its authorship or tradition, but first and foremost on its divine inspiration—a view that liberated Reformed biblical studies from “a barren traditionalism, which in the end cannot be maintained in the face of the facts.”33 While the professors at the Theological School in Kampen were too occupied to obtain a doctorate and to engage in academic publishing, and Kuyper ran into problems in hiring good staff in biblical studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, a new generation of students and ministers felt called to interpret Scripture as the reliable testimony of God’s salvific action in history that could also be applied to the present. In 1907, in a preface to the Dutch translation of James Orr’s The Problem of the Old Testament Considered with Reference to Recent Criticism (1906), published because no other studies on the topic were available, Bavinck recommended the book, again referring to parallel positive efforts by the newly established Pontifical Biblical Institute. Yet he also added a note of disagreement with Orr’s positivist assertion that Israel’s religion should be treated exactly as each other religion.34 Less than fifteen years later, however, prospective ministers in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands were educated by academically trained neo-Calvinist biblical scholars who often published: Cornelis van Gelderen (1872–1945), Gerhard Ch. Aalders (1880–1961), and Frederik W. Grosheide (1881–1972) in Amsterdam, and Jan Ridderbos (1879–1960) and Seakle Greijdanus (1871–1948) in Kampen. Moreover, in 1912 the Dutch government had appointed Arie Noordtzij (1871–1944) as professor of Old Testament at Utrecht University, while his colleague in New Testament, Jacobus A. C. van Leeuwen (1870–1930), slowly but firmly had exchanged his “ethicist” views for a neo-Calvinist doctrine of Scripture. In the long term, the effort of these scholars and their PhD students to develop a neo-Calvinist alternative for modernist and mediating biblical criticism resulted in well-known series in Dutch, such as the commentary on the New Testament with H. A. van Bottenburg in Amsterdam (1922–50), the Korte Verklaring der Heilige Schrift (1922–61) and the Commentaar op het Oude Testament (1948–2017), with J. H. Kok in Kampen.35 In particular the Korte Verklaring is a monument of historical-grammatical exegesis for both ministers and people in the pew, while its translations supported the preparation of the Nieuwe Vertaling van het Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap (NBG1951), to which the Reformed biblical scholars also contributed.36 A. Noordtzij, “Dr H. Bouwman,” in Almanak Fides Quaerit Intellectum (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1934), 131. G. Ch. Aalders, “Dr. Kuyper en de theologie,” in Dr A. Kuyper: Gedenkboek uitgegeven bij gelegenheid van de herdenking op 29 october 1937, ed. L. W. G. Scholten et al., (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1937), 61–2. 34 James Orr, Het Oude Testament beschouwd met betrekking tot de nieuwere critiek, ed. J. C. de Moor (Kampen, J.H. Kok 1907), viii. 35 For the beginnings of the Korte Verklaring der Heilige Schrift, see George Harinck, “‘Het zou mij gewenschter voorkomen die poging nog niet te wagen’. Greijdanus en de voorgeschiedenis van de Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling 1951,” in Leven en werk van prof. dr. Seakle Greijdanus, ed. George Harinck, Ad Chartasreeks 3 (Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 1998), 128–31. Questions regarding origin and composition of biblical books were dealt with in F. W. Grosheide, Algemeene canoniek van het Nieuwe Testament (Amsterdam: H. A. van Bottenburg, 1935); S. Greijdanus, Bizondere canoniek van de boeken van het Nieuwe Testament (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1927–49); G. Ch. Aalders, Oud-Testamentische kanoniek (Kampen: Kok, 1952). Abbreviated in English: A Short Introduction to the Pentateuch (London: Tyndale Press, 1949). 36 Cf. J. A. Koole, “De NBG-Vertaling 1951,” in Om een verstaanbare bijbel: Nederlandse bijbelvertalingen na de Statenbijbel, ed. A. W. G. Jaakke and E. W. Tuinstra (Haarlem and Brussel: Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap/ Belgisch Bijbelgenootschap, 1990), 225–51.

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This, however, by no means precluded exegetes from disagreement. Ridderbos, Grosheide, Aalders, and Van Leeuwen emphasized the absolute historical reliability of biblical historiography and, considering Kuyper’s distinction between the divine and human factors in Scripture, showed sensitivity to the objection that too much attention was paid to human aspects of the Bible. According to Van Gelderen and Noordtzij this was a false dichotomy. They criticized overly harmonizing explanations and frequently referred to the Ancient Near Eastern background of biblical passages. In his analysis of biblical prophecy, Noordtzij also liked to hint at a more psychologizing explanation to characterize its peculiarity.37 Since Van Gelderen had discovered that the principles of Kuyper’s Encyclopedia were too deductive in nature with regard to historical issues, he had developed an approach in which general historical information he regarded to be trustworthy and passages from Scripture were related to one another as foci in an ellipse, so that he could go back and forth, and, in the end, evaluate the results from the perspective of Scripture as a whole. When Van Gelderen reached out to Bavinck, because those supervising the ministerial training questioned his view of Genesis 1–11, Bavinck also approved Van Gelderen’s argument that when Reformed theologians as a presupposition “postulate the absolute historical infallibility of Holy Scripture, this is not a demand that God makes on us, but a demand that we make on God.”38 These discussions did not take place in a vacuum. In the 1910s and 1920s, attempts to integrate results of historical-critical research considered to be inescapable in biblical interpretation came under suspicion worldwide. The Pontifical Biblical Commission took strict decisions on Genesis 1–3, the explanation of “historical presentation” as “historical appearance,” the authorship of the Book of Isaiah and the nature of the Gospel of John. In Tennessee, in the United States, people witnessed the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial (1925) on teaching human evolution at state-funded schools. The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa also experienced a so-called kerkstryd (1928–32) on the moderate positive appreciation of higher criticism by Johannes du Plessis, a biblical scholar of Stellenbosch Theological Seminary, whose critics were inspired by Dutch neo-Calvinism and Old Princeton theology. In the Netherlands, several students of Bavinck and Van Gelderen who had embraced more “ethicist” views of Scripture left the Reformed churches. The deteriorating atmosphere culminated in a conflict around another minister, Johannes G. Geelkerken of the Reformed Church of Amsterdam-Zuid, who considered a non-literal interpretation of Genesis 1–3 in one of his sermons in 1924. In the following dispute he declared the story of Paradise and Fall in Kuyperian terms to be of a “higher reality.” Yet he also refused to give further exegetical substantiation. In the so-called snake trial leading up to the Synod of Assen 1926, the Kampen and Amsterdam professors succeeded in removing Genesis 1, a chapter on which they seriously disagreed, from the For examples and an analysis, see Niels van Driel, “Believing Criticism: Kuyperians versus Kuenen,” in Religious Modernism in the Low Countries, ed. Leo Kenis and Ernestine G. van der Wall, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 255 (Louvain: Peeters, 2013), 205–26; “Fricties in een falanx: Gereformeerde bijbelwetenschap tussen 1890 en 1950,” in Nieuwe en oude dingen: Schatgraven in de Schrift, ed. Koert van Bekkum, Rob van Houwelingen and Eric Peels, Apeldoornse Studies 62; TU-Bezinningsreeks 13 (Barneveld: Vuurbaak, 2013), 13–34. 38 At several occasions between 1916 and 1919, both Bavinck and van Gelderen argued that results of historical and geological research showed that Genesis 1–11 should be read on its own terms, that is, reckoning with its ancient Near Eastern background. Van Gelderen reported on this in detail in his diaries. For the quote, see Cornelis van Gelderen, Mémoires, 1911–21, 35–6. The Van Gelderen Archive, Supplement. HDC—Centre for Religious History, Amsterdam. Cf. van Bekkum, “Herman Bavinck’s Use of Scripture.” 37

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indictment. As it turned out to be impossible to test the extent to which Geelkerken’s view held the biblical chapter to be true in the sense in which Scripture itself intended to be, he was convicted by the Synod of Assen.39 This debate limited the freedom of exegesis in the Reformed churches, as it stimulated Aalders’ rather positivist reading of the story: “a snake is a snake, speaking is speaking, and trees are trees.”40 Nevertheless, it also confirmed the experience that distrust was not converted into concrete action, as long as solid exegetical arguments were given. Finally, the debate underlined the tragedy that the confessional Reformed nature of Bavinck’s openness to new information and methods in his doctrine of Scripture, as explored by Van Gelderen, was poorly understood. It was hard to consider the possibility that God might through Scripture speak in unexpected ways. A final, vital aspect to be addressed in the development of neo-Calvinist biblical studies is the exploration of the historia revelationis, the “history of revelation.” This idea is rooted in the rise of a redemptive-historical view of Scripture, which had come into being as a response to an oration of Johann Philip Gabler in 1787 on biblical theology. His attempt to synthesize conceptual historical developments within Scripture was followed by biblical interpreters related to the early nineteenth-century German Awakening, such as Johann Tobias Beck and Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann. In Kampen, these influences suited up, for instance, the teaching of the dogmatician Helenius de Cock, who kept the Bible and confession closely together and insisted on simplicity and staying close to the text in both preaching and biblical interpretation. Due to his unifying teaching and openness to society, a mild, evangelical spirituality, much less emphasizing predestination, gradually developed in large parts of the Secession churches.41 At the end of the nineteenth century, this resulted in new systematic impulses for a redemptive-historical reading of Scripture, which can be observed in the early work of Geerhardus Vos, and in Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s creation of a new sub-discipline in biblical studies, that of historia revelationis, the “history of revelation” or “biblical theology,” stressing the unity, but also the concrete, historical and progressive nature of revelation in Scripture.42 The later understanding of this discipline as the study of the unfolding story of God’s redemptive plan as presented in the Bible, tracing the major themes of Scripture and culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ, would be in line with the impulses of both Gabler and Kuyper. Yet, in the work of Vos and Bavinck, and Aalders as a second-generation neo-Calvinist, it concerned mostly a description of the history of special revelation.43 Over time, discomfort with this narrow interpretation of the term resulted in a new Reformed variant of salvation-historical Scripture interpretation. The confrontation of Klaas Schilder (1890–1952) with Karl Barth resulted in a new look at the history of Maarten J. Aalders, Heeft de slang gesproken? Het strijdbare leven van dr. J. G. Geelkerken (1879–1960) (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2013), 163–313. 40 G. Ch. Aalders, De exegese van Genesis 2 en 3 en de beslissing der Synode van Assen (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1926), 9. 41 Cf. J. van den Berg, “De spiritualiteit van de afgescheidenen,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 92 (1992): 172–88. 42 Geerhardus Vos, The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline: Inaugural Address (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1894); Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der heilige godgeleerdheid, vol. 3, 106–7, 164–80; H. Bavinck, Historia Revelationis (1896). The Bavinck Archive, 49, HDC—Centre for Religious History, Amsterdam. 43 G. Ch. Aalders, “Geschiedenis van de oud-testamentische godsopenbaring,” in id., A. van Deursen et al., Bijbelsch Handboek, vol. 1 (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1935), 199–230. 39

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the revelation. In his view, Barth had “killed” the historia revelationis by emphasizing that God’s dynamic does not enter everyday life concretely and tangibly. Precisely in this revelation carrying out the plan of salvation, the highly exalted God engages with humankind.44 Schilder’s trilogy Christ in His Suffering (1930) illustrated existentially how a reading of the gospels looked like in this perspective.45 The Amsterdam pastor Simon Gerrit de Graaf (1889–1955) published Promise and Deliverance (1935–6), a remarkable manual for biblical storytelling in Sunday school with similar emphases.46 Moreover, a fierce debate about “salvation history and preaching” was ignited. Representatives of the new movement strongly criticized the usual psychologizing biblical interpretation in sermons and their application with help of the dogmatic category of salvation order. Texts should be explained in their own (salvific-) historical context and applied in a later phase of salvation history, for God both in past and present leads the history of redemption and judgment to its end.47 The new salvation-historical impulses, however, reached its academic peak in the work of Herman Ridderbos (1909–2007), the most famous classical Reformed, neo-Calvinist New Testament scholar. The climate after the First World War resonates in Schilder’s theology and view of preaching. Among his disciples, there is a fascination with the German historical-critical movement in which salvation history is the category for confessing that God reigns, even in the darkness of the Nazi regime.48 Yet during his long career, Ridderbos was in real conversation with peers like Oscar Cullmann and Rudolf Bultmann in studies on the synoptic gospels, Paul, and the Gospel of John.49 He also creatively used the salvation-historical perspective in reflections on the authority of the New Testament.50

V. EPILOGUE This chapter could be expanded by including other aspects, such as the reception of neo-Calvinist biblical studies in North America and South Africa from the 1920s on, and its later indirect impact worldwide, also through Geerhardus Vos. In the Netherlands, however, after 1960, the heyday of the neo-Calvinist doctrine of Scripture and biblical scholarship was over and its tradition was continued elsewhere.51 Inspired by Karl Barth,

The Klaas Schilder Reader: The Essential Theological Writings, ed. George Harinck, Marinus de Jong, and Richard Mouw (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2022), 370–1, 457–85. 45 Klaas Schilder, Christ in His Suffering, vol. 1–3 (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1938). 46 S. G. de Graaf, Promise and Deliverance, vol. 1–2 (Ontario: Paideia Press, 1977–8). 47 For the debate, see Sidney Greidanus, Sola Scriptura: Problems and Principles in Preaching Historical Texts (Toronto: Wedge, 1970). 48 Koert van Bekkum, “‘Het begin van een eigen weg’. Geschiedenis en antithese in het werk van Benne Holwerda,” in Leven en werk van prof. Benne Holwerda, ed. George Harinck (Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 2005), 177–216. 49 Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom (Edinburgh: Christian World Publications, 1979); Paul and Jesus: Origin and General Character of Paul’s Preaching of Christ (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1974); Paul: An Outline of His Theology (London: S.P.C.K., 1977); The Gospel According to John: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018); Cf. Riemer Roukema, “Herman Ridderbos’s Redemptive-Historical Exegesis of the New Testament,” Westminster Theological Journal 66 (2004): 259–73. 50 Herman Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1988). 51 Koert van Bekkum and Eric Peels, “Revelation, History, and Religious Plurality: Old Testament Studies from the Apeldoorn/Kampen Reformed Perspective,” in The Present State of Old Testament Studies in the Low Countries: A Collection of Old Testament Studies at the Occasion of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap, ed. Klaas Spronk, Oudtestamentische Studiën, 69 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 30–46. 44

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a Christological concentration took place in the theology of G. C. Berkouwer, displacing the philosophical reflection regarding creation and redemption and thus providing a new meaning to the analogy between incarnation and inspiration. This offered Reformed theologians in the Netherlands the opportunity to accept the prevailing historical-critical consensus of their day and eventually erased the difference between inspiration and illumination. The question has often been asked how this was possible. According to many, the tension between the formal and material authority of Scripture in Kuyper and Bavinck was too great. Others argue that it had to do with the professionalization of biblical studies as such. Looking back, however, it remains surprising how a doctrine of Scripture influenced by nineteenth-century concepts and so defined by epistemological questions still bears fruit and inspires theologians from a diversity of Christian traditions. Its success in the Netherlands and abroad had and has to do with social factors, but also with the powerful way Kuyper and Bavinck contextualized Reformed ideas. Apparently, they found a modern form in dealing with the classical-Christian tension of how to integrate good, reliable information from outside Christianity into faith, including the interpretation of the Bible, precisely at a moment when that information is also exploited to undermine its authority. Accordingly, there is every reason to disregard the later Dutch history of this tradition as normative. The contextual nature and weaknesses of this doctrine of Scripture should be considered. Nevertheless, the historical context also reveals why its basic contours, which resulted in an intense effort to understand the Bible, still inspire one to study the Scriptures as the Word of God by all means available.

Chapter 6

Anthropology RICHARD BRASH

This chapter reflects the neo-Calvinist preference for a threefold structure to theological inquiry in the biblical sequence of creation-fall-redemption. The sequence is applied to three themes distinctive to anthropology in the Kuyperian tradition, namely, the understanding of the human race as an organic unity, the principle that grace restores nature, and the framing of humanity’s vocation in terms of the “cultural mandate.” A final section notes certain criticisms of neo-Calvinist anthropologies and identifies some potential responses.

I. CREATION-FALL-REDEMPTION The threefold framework of creation-fall-redemption is a formal characteristic of much theology in the neo-Calvinist tradition, not least the doctrine of humanity. Abraham Kuyper organizes his discussion of humanity in ethical relationship to God under three “states”: those of (initial) righteousness, of sin, and of grace.1 In his Reformed Dogmatics, Herman Bavinck distributes the material slightly differently, locating his discussion of human nature and destiny immediately after his broader doctrine of creation in the second volume and developing themes of sin and salvation in volume three, either side of his treatment of Christology.2 Yet in respect of humanity the broad outline of the threefold framework remains in place and may be discerned in microcosm at various junctures in Bavinck’s presentation.3 The threefold formal framework has been followed by many later neo-Calvinists.4

1 Abraham Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, 2nd ed., 5 vols (Kampen: J.H. Kok, n.d.), “Locus De Homine,” vol. 2, 105. Hereafter DD. All translations from this work are my own, although I am grateful to Paul van den Dool for his advice in this regard. 2 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003–8), vol. 2, 511–88, vol. 3, 25–232; 485–595. Hereafter RD. 3 See, for example, RD, vol. 2, 550, where Bavinck considers the image of God in three “areas” related to the covenant of works, and more explicitly on p. 554, where he traces the concept of the image from creation, through ruin, to restoration. 4 Drawing on the work of Kuyper and Bavinck, Herman Dooyeweerd famously argued that creation-fallredemption is the true “ground motive,” which he defines as “a force that acts as a spiritual mainspring in human society.” Herman Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options, trans. John Kraay (Toronto: Wedge, 1979), 8. For Dooyeweerd’s application of the sequence to anthropology, see Herman Dooyeweerd, “What Is Man?,” International Reformed Bulletin 3 (1960): 4–16 (11).

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As Craig Bartholomew rightly observes, “[a]ll orthodox Christian traditions believe in creation, fall, and redemption.”5 Even so, alternative theological anthropologies are often framed differently.6 The most obvious counter-example is a “Christological” anthropology such as that articulated by Karl Barth.7 Anglican theologian John Webster came to distance himself from the anthropological Christocentrism found in some Barthians, and shared some concerns with neo-Calvinists, such as the tethering of anthropology to creational and eschatological moorings.8 Focusing on the space for human moral development in the context of response to the Creator’s vocation, Webster preferred to explicate three (Trinitarian) “passages” or “moments” in “fellowship between God and creatures”: creation, reconciliation, and perfection.9 However, neo-Calvinists typically articulate their distinctive anthropological concerns following their own sequence, as we shall see.

II. MANKIND AS AN ORGANIC UNITY The motif of humanity as an organic unity is found in both Kuyper and Bavinck10 and this becomes a key idea for many of their successors.

a. Creation Kuyper views each individual human being as God’s image: an ectypal reflection of the Trinity, particularly as he or she displays distinction in unity of being.11 But there is also both unity and multiplicity evident in humanity considered as an organic whole. Indeed, the human race constitutes “one coherent organism.”12 Bavinck, likewise, describes each individual human as a “micro-divine-being.”13 But Bavinck goes further than Kuyper in his explicit insistence that the image of God is only

Craig G. Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017), 50. 6 More recently, some neo-Calvinists have preferred a fourfold framework, distinguishing between redemption and completed renewal (or consummation). For an example of this approach, see Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 82–96. However, Hoekema also explicitly adverts to the threefold scheme. David VanDrunen has argued that neo-Calvinism’s threefold approach lacks any clear differentiation between inaugurated and consummated redemption, potentially compromising the uniqueness of eschatological transformation. See David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 353. 7 For Barth’s theological anthropology, see Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley, 5 vols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1968), vol. III/2. For a brief neo-Calvinist critique of a dialectical approach to the doctrine of man, such as that found in Barth and Hendrikus Berkhof, see Gordon J. Spykman, Reformational Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 195–7. 8 On Webster’s theological anthropology, see Michael Allen, “Toward Theological Anthropology: Tracing the Anthropological Principles of John Webster,” IJST 19, no. 1 (2017): 6–29. 9 John Webster, “The Human Person,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 224–6. 10 Organicism has been identified as the prevailing motif throughout Bavinck’s theology, and also as prevalent in wider neo-Calvinism. See James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 72–5. 11 Kuyper, DD, “Locus De Homine,” vol. 2, 18–19. 12 Ibid., 45. 13 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, 562. 5

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fully revealed in the entire human race: “[o]nly humanity in its entirety—as one complete organism, summed up under a single head [. . .]—only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God.”14 Gray Sutanto has convincingly demonstrated that Bavinck’s organic anthropology is not merely realist, for humanity’s unity is more than what Bavinck calls “physical oneness.”15 Rather, although there is a place for realism, unity is based on the ethical solidarity that all men and women share under one covenant head.16 On this account, the covenantal unity of humanity becomes necessary, or at the very least entirely fitting, precisely because it gives expression to what is already implicit in the creation of the organic, ectypal image of God. For Sutanto, this is nothing less than Bavinck’s “creative re-conceptualization of [federalism] in organic language.”17

b. Fall The concept of humanity as organic unity in ectypal relation to God’s archetypal triunity is deployed again by neo-Calvinists in a hamartiological context. According to Kuyper, humanity’s organic cohesion “has been weakened by sin, in part even broken” by it.18 Kuyper employs a range of language to depict the effects of sin on the organism of humanity. Sin is “dissolution” and “centrifugal force.”19 Indeed hell, in Kuyper’s terms, is “the endless disintegration” of the organism.20 Sin, in short, effects decomposition: the breaking down of unity. Although Bavinck’s focus in his Reformed Dogmatics is primarily on the consequences of sin in the individual,21 in his Reformed Ethics he, like Kuyper, turns his attention to sin’s effects on humanity as a whole. “Sin,” Bavinck writes, “is a decentralization of all things away from God, a loosening, an undoing of bonds with God—atomism, individualism.”22 In an earlier lecture Bavinck had made a similar observation: sin is “dissolution,” a “disorganizing force.”23 What sin effects, then, is the opposite of organic oneness: the descent of God-given unity into man-made diversity and, for some neo-Calvinists, the

Ibid., 577. Kuyper hints in this direction when he says that man (mensch), as the image of God, has within him the distinction between the one man (den éénen mensch) and the multitude of men (de veelheid der menschen). Kuyper, DD, “Locus De Homine,” vol. 2, 23. 15 Bavinck, RD, vol. 3, 102. Nathaniel Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck on the Image of God and Original Sin,” IJST 18, no. 2 (2016): 174–90 (185–6). 16 Ibid., 183. See also Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Egocentricity, Organism, and Metaphysics: Sin and Renewal in Bavinck’s Ethics,” Studies in Christian Ethics 34, no. 2 (2021): 223–40 (227–30). 17 Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck on the Image,” 189. 18 Kuyper, DD, “Locus De Homine,” vol. 2, 45. 19 Ibid., 53. 20 Ibid., 54. 21 Bavinck, RD, vol. 3, 169–85. But note Bavinck’s comments on the progress of sin as a result of humanity’s interconnectedness (175). 22 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics: Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, ed. John Bolt, 3 vols, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019–), 105. Hereafter RE. Emphasis original. 23 Herman Bavinck, “Het Rijd Gods, Het Hoogste Goed,” Kennis en Leven, ed. C. B. Bavinck (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1922), 28–56 (34). This lecture was delivered to the Student Corps of the Theological School in Kampen—Fides Quaerit Intellectum—on February 3, 1881. An English translation by Nelson D. Kloosterman is available: “The Kingdom of God, The Highest Good,” TBR 2 (2011): 133–70. 14

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reciprocal attempt to engineer a man-made unity from God-given diversity.24 This is a parody of God’s creation and a plagiarism of God’s work.25

c. Redemption As we might expect, one consequence of man’s redemption in Christ according to Kuyper and Bavinck is his re-organization in organic unity, under the Mediator’s headship. Kuyper says that in Christ the regenerated “tree” of the human race is newly and organically rooted.26 The future, glorious blossoming of this tree is achieved not by mankind, mechanically, but by God, organically: “by divine intervention a new organic cohesion comes into being,” which is the church, the new humanity, of which Christ is the head.27 Bavinck, too, understands salvation in terms of renewal and restoration of the image of God,28 and is particularly interested in the work of the Holy Spirit in this regard.29 In his Reformed Ethics he describes “the love of God in Christ poured out through the Holy Spirit” as the “foundational principle of the spiritual life.”30 This is true of the individual believer, but that is not all.31 The members of the spiritually renewed human organism necessarily avoid the destructive forces of egoism and isolation and come together to cooperate in “achieving the one task of life.”32 At the same time, both Kuyper and Bavinck recognize that one great division in humankind remains: the gulf between the regenerate and the unregenerate. This is known as “the antithesis.”33 We shall return to this typical neo-Calvinist division when we consider the question of humanity’s vocation later.

d. Organic Unity and Competing Visions of Humanity We cannot here address the complex philosophical roots of organicism or the function of the motif in Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s wider systems.34 Instead we may limit ourselves Cornelius Van Til famously argued that in epistemological terms, fallen man is engaged in the fruitless pursuit of autonomous and abstract principles of unity and particularity, apart from the Triune God. See Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology (Nutley: P&R Publishing, 1969), 216–17. 25 See Abraham Kuyper, “Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life,” Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James Bratt (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1998), 19–44 (22). 26 Kuyper, DD, “Locus De Homine,” vol. 2, 60, 79. Humanity is the central and most important organ in the wider organism that is the entire universe, which will itself be remade “once again into one entirely organic, integrated, and connected entity.” See Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, 3 vols (Bellingham; Lexham Press, 2015), vol. 1, 577. 27 Kuyper, DD, “Locus De Homine,” vol. 2, 45; “Locus De Peccato,” vol. 3, 103. 28 We shall return to the underlying point, namely that grace restores nature, later. 29 See, in particular, Bavinck, RD, vol. 4, 87–95. 30 Bavinck, RE, vol 1, 248. 31 This is an important balance for Bavinck to maintain. As Sutanto observes, “Bavinck’s critiques of individualism do not come at the cost of denying personality” (Sutanto, “Egocentricity, Organism, and Metaphysics,” 235). For the argument that a human being “comes to his true nature” only in the human community restored in Christ, see also G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 98–9. 32 Bavinck, RE, vol. 1, 417. 33 For a brief summary of what it means to posit “two kinds of people” see Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles, trans. J. Hendrik De Vries (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 154. Kuyper does not actually use the term “antithesis” here, but it is found elsewhere in this work as a description of the distinction/disjunction between fallen and restored humanity, between unregenerate and regenerate human consciousness. See, for example, ibid., 610, 648. 34 On these questions, see Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 74–5; Brian G. Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny: Eschatology & the Image of God in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 47–54. 24

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to a contextual observation that sheds light on the motif’s function in early neo-Calvinist anthropologies. It is arguable that for both Kuyper and Bavinck, their primary antagonist is “revolutionary” thought, and the individualistic, atomistic philosophy behind the French Revolution in particular.35 As George Harinck puts it memorably, “[t]o neoCalvinism, the French Revolution is like the Fall of Adam and Eve [. . .;] it was universal, and it permeated all just as the original sin had done.”36 Neo-Calvinism’s doctrine of man is therefore at least in part to be understood as an attempt to restate humanity’s essential unity as creationally given, hamartiologically jeopardized, yet soteriologically reconstituted in Christ, against a revolutionary alternative that conceived of man as an individual constituted in freedom, rendered corrupt and shackled only by society and its traditions, and in need of deliverance from these constraints to an authentic autonomy.37

e. Later Developments The foundational influence of such a “revolutionary” understanding on subsequent late modern and postmodern conceptions of the self means it is unsurprising that later neoCalvinists continued to propound an organic view of humanity, even as their particular contexts shifted. On the individual level, the unity of the human person has been strongly affirmed by many neo-Calvinists who have rejected the idea that a human being is a bodysoul dichotomy.38 The whole person is the image of God.39 At the same time, a commitment to the organic unity of the human race is also typically maintained. For example, citing Richard Mouw’s view that “there is no one human individual or group who can fully bear or manifest all that is involved in the image of God,” Anthony Hoekema draws the implication that all of humanity’s cultural works throughout history are included in the image.40 He further argues that this doctrine is an antidote to racism: stated positively, it means that we should look to the contributions of others unlike ourselves “as adding to our enrichment,” a theme which he ties to the doctrine of common grace.41 See Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932), 10–11, 19, 23, 25, 28, 33, 34, 41, 84, 85–90, 99, 106, 109, 176–7, 179, 180, 185, 189, 190, 192–3. The political party which Kuyper founded was, of course, the “Anti-Revolutionary” party. The anti-revolutionary emphasis is less to the fore in Bavinck, but see, for example, RD, vol. 1, 517; vol. 2, 576. Recent scholarship has identified how Bavinck and Kuyper came to part ways in their particular interpretation of the French Revolution and the necessary Christian response. See the chapters by James Bratt and George Harinck in James Eglinton and George Harinck (eds.), Neo-Calvinism and the French Revolution (London: T&T Clark, 2014), 1–30. 36 George Harinck, “Herman Bavinck and the neo-Calvinist Concept of the French Revolution,” in Eglinton and Harinck, Neo-Calvinism and the French Revolution, 13. 37 Readers may recognize in this description the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78). For an excellent analysis of Rousseau’s contribution to the prevailing modern conception of man, see Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 105–28. 38 The dichotomous view is criticized in Herman Bavinck, Foundations of Psychology, trans. Jack Vanden Born, Nelson D. Kloosterman, and John Bolt, TBR 9 (2018): 1–252 (36). See also Dooyeweerd, “What is Man?,” 10–11. Dooyeweerd locates selfhood not in the “organic life” of the human body (9), but in the “heart” (11). The dichotomistic view of a human being is also rejected by Hoekema, who prefers to speak of man as a “psychosomatic unity.” See Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 217–18; Spykman, Reformational Theology, 233–45. See also the defense of “holistic dualism” in John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). 39 See Spykman, Reformational Theology, 224–8. 40 Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 100, citing Richard J. Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 47. 41 Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 100. 35

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It is instructive to trace the particular opposing views against which the second and third generations of neo-Calvinists articulate their anthropologies. For the Dutch-born Hoekema (1913–88), the specter of the French Revolution no longer looms large explicitly. Instead, Hoekema engages idealistic, gnostic anthropologies on the one hand, and materialist (especially Marxist and deterministic) types on the other.42 While Marxist anthropology does at first blush seem to share a neo-Calvinist aversion against individualism, it fails to recognize the intrinsic value of each human being, especially as created by, and for relationship with, God.43 For the later, American-born, neo-Calvinist Gordon Spykman (1926–93), the organic unity of the human race is particularly important to stress in the face of the twin social philosophies of individualism and collectivism. For Spykman, these are “the two leading ideologies contending for the hearts and lives of people today.”44 Spykman’s “biblical alternative,” which he finds also in Kuyper and Dooyeweerd, is “a pluralist view of communal living.”45 Spykman applies this doctrine as the antidote to a range of ills plaguing contemporary society in America and beyond: racism, national superiority, individualist approaches to the question of abortion “rights,” and “indifference in the face of holocausts and genocides.”46 In the work of Dutch diaspora neo-Calvinist theologians like Hoekema and Spykman, then, we see the development and application of an originally Kuyperian and Bavinckian anthropological theme—the organic unity of humanity as the image of God—to a fresh set of contexts and issues.

III. GRACE RESTORES NATURE The dogma that “grace restores nature” is so central to Kuyperian neo-Calvinism that historian Ryan McIlhenny can adopt this watchword to sum up the entire movement.47 This idea has been demonstrated to be a central motif in Bavinck’s theology in general, and his anthropology in particular.48 What, then, is the meaning and significance of the “grace restores nature” paradigm for the doctrine of man?

a. Creation Brian Mattson contends that if we are to see how grace restores nature in Bavinck’s covenantal anthropology, we must understand Bavinck’s protology.49 As we have seen in the previous section, Bavinck emphasizes each human being’s (and mankind’s) creation as the imago Dei. Under the covenantal headship of Adam, in what Reformed theologians have called the “covenant of works,” God’s human image was created with the prospect Ibid., 2–3. Ibid., 3–4. 44 Spykman, Reformational Theology, 245. 45 Ibid., 247. In the thirty years since Spykman wrote, the idea of “communal living” has become quite popular in some Western contexts. Whatever he intends this to look like in practice, Spykman is quite clear that any secular version of this approach, lacking a notion of corporate life coram Deo, “carries within it the seeds of its own destruction” (249). 46 Ibid., 247. 47 Ryan McIlhenny, “A Third-Way Reformed Approach to Christ and Culture: Appropriating Kuyperian NeoCalvinism and the Two Kingdoms Perspective,” MAJT 20 (2009): 75–94, (80). 48 See Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny. Kuyper also attempts to conjoin nature and grace (creation and redemption) by means of his doctrine of “common grace,” but it is questionable whether he is as successful as Bavinck in avoiding residual dualism by positing two forms of grace. 49 Ibid., 7. 42 43

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of a glorious future in view: the attainment of eschatological blessedness and life. Mattson explains: “[t]he state of integrity, although created very good, was oriented to a better perfection.”50 In other words, protology is keyed to eschatology. This relationship presumes the historically mediated grace of God to enable humanity to progress from beginning to end. For Bavinck, the original covenant of “works” is certainly not devoid of “grace,” as long as this is understood to mean “undeserved and nonobligatory” rights given to creatures so that they might reach their appointed goal.51 Such grace enables a human being to attain his divinely given telos, thereby fulfilling both his own nature and God’s purposes for his world. As Japanese Reformed theologian Yoshikazu Makita puts it, “The eschatological XYZ has its origins in the ABC of creation, and the ABC of creation contains within itself the core of the eschatological XYZ in seminal form.”52

b. Fall Sin, in neo-Calvinism, is not an ontological reality.53 Neither is it native to our created nature. Therefore sin, for all its corrupting power, cannot change humanity’s ontology. In the terminology favored by some later neo-Calvinists, the “structure” of creation (and humanity) remains intact after the Fall, even though its “direction” is now thoroughly compromised.54 Yet sin is profoundly far-reaching in its consequences, because it is much more than just a surface-level problem. For Dooyeweerd, sin is no less than “apostasy in the heart” which signifies “the apostasy of the entire temporal creation.”55

c. Redemption Such a disastrous disease requires a drastic remedy. The Fall introduces an interruption into man’s progress toward his destiny, and necessitates a change of covenant if sinners are to be saved and a lost world is to be redeemed. This further requires a new federal head in Christ, the second Adam. Such are the principal discontinuities. However, as Bavinck notes, “The covenant of works and the covenant of grace do not differ in their final goal but only in the way that leads to it.”56 In restoring and perfecting human nature, Christ re-integrates that which has been disintegrated. The new creation which he inaugurates maintains continuity with the old, both as protologically given and as eschatologically oriented. It is in this relationship between end and beginning that we may assess the significance for neo-Calvinism of Geerhardus Vos’s dictum that eschatology precedes soteriology: in

Ibid., 99. Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, 570. 52 Yoshikazu Makita, Kamiron [Doctrine of God], Kaikakuha Shingaku [Reformed Dogmatics], 8 vols (Sapporo: Ichibaku Shuppan, 2014), vol. 2, 249. Author’s translation. 53 “Sin is simply nowhere at home. It does not deserve a ‘locus’ of its own.” Spykman, Reformational Theology, 301. 54 See, for example, Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basis for a Reformational Worldview, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 106–37; Craig G. Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition, 53–4; Spykman, Reformational Theology, 109–10; Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 57. 55 Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. D. H. Freeman and William Young, 4 vols, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1953–8), 100. 56 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, 570. 50 51

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his words, “the eschatological is an older strand in revelation than the soteric.”57 This means that if we seek to account for redemption from the perspective of theological anthropology, we must not forget that God’s primary purpose in salvation is to restore his original plan for humanity, which is to raise humanity to a state of glory in which humans may no longer sin. This eschatological elevation of humanity to a higher level, while not contrary to nature, is no mere “repristination.”58 The destiny which Christ wins for his people in the covenant of redemption and promises his people in the covenant of grace is not quantitatively different from the destiny which Adam lost for his people in the covenant of works, albeit its qualitative glory is now refracted through a new lens of praise to the incarnate God our Savior. Here, neo-Calvinism most clearly distinguishes its anthropological understanding of the relationship between nature and grace from that of Rome. That “grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it” was a dogma of Thomas Aquinas.59 In fact, Bavinck can use similar language.60 However, from a neo-Calvinistic perspective, the Roman church interpreted grace in “complementary” terms: grace was added to the natural, imparting super-[above]-natural blessing, without ever penetrating to, or reforming, the natural as such.61 No human being in the state of nature could ever attain to eternal blessedness by means of the development (even by God’s “grace,” in Bavinckian terms) of nature’s own God-given potentialities. In the subsequent state of sin, Rome’s understanding of grace as “complementary” persists. Grace raises a sinner to his heavenly destiny, as the sinner co-operates with grace in the work of lifting him beyond his nature to his supernatural end. It is not our purpose here to evaluate this characteristically neo-Calvinistic understanding of Roman Catholic soteriology. Rather, we may observe how the neo-Calvinists distinguished their own view. When Bavinck and others in the tradition say that grace restores—and perfects—nature, they are rejecting any and every dualism in our understanding of humankind and its destiny. Man(kind), as an organic unity-in-diversity, is created with his ultimate perfection, as the fulfillment of his nature, in view. All of history, as an organic unity-in-diversity, is conceived as the path to this perfection, a perfection which extends to the entire cosmos. Sin, the arch-plagiarist, resorts to a mechanical and human-centered parody of this progress, vaguely plausible only because it lives on borrowed capital.62 But sin, as a non-entity, cannot affect creation’s structures, only its direction, and that only temporarily. God’s ultimate purposes will not be thwarted. The organism—and God’s story which shapes it—is restored by the personal entry of its author, as a human being, through his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and by the pouring out of his Spirit. In neo-Calvinist terms, God’s objective in salvation is reformation, not revolution.63 The outcome, as it ever has been, remains secure.

Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, repr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 140. Jan Veenhof, “Nature and Grace in Bavinck,” Pro Rege 34, no. 4 (2006): 10–31 (22). 59 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2 vols (Chicago: William Benton, 1923), vol. 1, 8 (1.1.8 ad 2). 60 Bavinck, RD, vol. 1, 322. 61 Veenhof, “Nature and Grace,” 14–15. 62 The phrase “borrowed capital” is often credited in this context to Cornelius Van Til, and the basic idea may be traced to his The Case for Calvinism, repr. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1979), 106–7. 63 Veenhof, “Nature and Grace,” 21–2. 57 58

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d. Two Anthropological Implications of “Grace Restores Nature” There are two parallel implications of the “grace restores nature” paradigm for anthropology. First, this is a high view of humanity as created. A human being is naturally fitted for glory. He does not need to be changed or added to ontologically in order to enjoy his destiny. His body is as much the object of this eschatological hope as his soul. Neo-Calvinists have pressed this point repeatedly in their polemic against Anabaptist and pietistic anthropologies, at least as much as against that of Rome. Second, this is a low (pessimistic) view of humanity as fallen. Sin has utterly vitiated humanity’s moral ability to make progress toward its destiny unaided. Man requires much more than just a spiritual shot in the arm to revitalize sluggish virtues. A human being needs a thoroughgoing change of nature, not of his ontological nature, but of his moral nature, and he is unable to take a single step in the right direction in his own strength. He must be saved by grace alone. Of course, neo-Calvinist thinkers typically share these emphases with other Reformed Christians, some of whom have questioned the viability of the “grace restores nature” formula for articulating a distinctly Reformed anthropology and soteriology. One recent line of criticism, marshaled by David VanDrunen, suggests that the neo-Calvinistic deployment of the Reformed covenant of works “effectively functions as a donum superadditum of a different sort,” so that there is less clear water between Aquinas and the neo-Calvinists than the latter might claim.64 VanDrunen’s alternative framework avoids the language of “nature” altogether and strictly limits “grace” to the postlapsarian context.65 We cannot adjudicate here on the details of this debate. However, if Sutanto is correct concerning the “necessity” of the covenant in Bavinck (as described above), this may well be a good starting-point for a neo-Calvinist reply to VanDrunen.

IV. HUMANITY’S VOCATION IN THE WORLD a. Creation Abraham Kuyper wrote that humanity is called, as bearer of the image of God, “to consecrate the cosmos to His glory” in his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.66 Herman Bavinck echoed this reference to the munus triplex, applying it to humanity as an organic whole.67 In the development of neo-Calvinism, the so-called “cultural mandate” (based on Gen. 1:26-28) has frequently been cited as the grounds of this calling. The mandate is defined by Spykman as the vocation “to open up and develop [. . .] the creational resources along multifaceted lines—farming, linguistics, architecture, dogmatics—as God’s representatives, to his glory, and as a blessing to our fellow men.”68 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully evaluate the concept of the mandate. Rather, we have the more limited concern of tracing its relationship to anthropology. There are two key ideas to consider. First, neo-Calvinism works with a primarily (but not exclusively) dynamic

David VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 30. 65 Ibid., 31–4. 66 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 59. 67 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, 577. See also Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, 30–1. 68 Spykman, Reformational Theology, 109. For an influential neo-Calvinist definition of “culture” in terms of what is here called the “creation mandate,” see Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, xvii. 64

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definition of humanity. Second, and more controversially, neo-Calvinists typically argue that the cultural mandate remains in force, despite sin, and is now taken up in God’s cosmic salvation plan. In respect of the first point (neo-Calvinism’s dynamic definition of humanity) it is not difficult to see how the emphases we have previously discussed on (1) humanity working together as an organic unity-in-diversity to attain the fullness of the divine image, and (2) an eschatologically oriented approach to anthropological inquiry, would create the conditions for understanding humanity in dynamic terms. In the more traditional Reformed language of the broader (structural) and narrower (functional) senses of the image of God, the neo-Calvinist tendency has been to put significant interpretive weight on the latter, especially in terms of its organic and historical development. Like the rest of creation, humanity is endowed with God-given “potentialities,” waiting to be actualized for God’s glory.69 In respect of the second point, neo-Calvinist accounts of humanity have typically stressed man’s “cultural” response to his divine vocation as the primordial (if not primary) means by which the image of God is manifested and God’s purposes for the world are realized. In particular, the argument is often made by neo-Calvinists that mankind’s cultural endeavors are objects of redemption, having some sort of physical or psychological endurance beyond the eschaton and therefore also possessing eternal value.70 It should be noted, however, that neither Kuyper nor Bavinck posit a persistence simpliciter of human cultural accomplishments beyond the eschaton, preferring to speak rather in terms of a rebirth.71

b. Fall If the cultural mandate was a given in the state of creation, in the state of sin it still remains. Sin, for Henry Van Til, has “derailed” man “as to his true goal in life” (seeking God as his true joy), but it has not abolished the human “duty” of culture, nor the “urge to cultural activity,” nor has it destroyed the “cultural milieu.”72

c. Redemption Once again, we find that in neo-Calvinism, redemption is not a change of being or of structure, but rather of direction: “recreation restores creation at its root” by “a profoundly religious change of mind, or heart, which is the inner pivot on which man’s whole being turns.”73 This change enables regenerate humanity to pursue its creationally given vocation in Christ. To expand Van Til’s metaphor, in Christ the derailed train of humanity is returned to its original tracks with a fresh head of steam. It is in the outworking of the cultural mandate in the present dispensation that the neo-Calvinist concepts of “common grace” and “the antithesis” are deployed in ways that most directly affect anthropology. A series of questions arises for neo-Calvinist

Bruce Riley Ashford and Craig G. Bartholomew, The Doctrine of Creation: A Constructive Kuyperian Approach (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020), 101. 70 See, for example, Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In; Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012). 71 See Cory C. Brock, “Revisiting Bavinck and the Beatific Vision,” JBTS 6, no. 2 (2021): 367–82 (375). 72 Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, 57, 59. 73 Ibid., 120. 69

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theologians: Who may legitimately lay claim to this vocation, and what difference do the entrance of sin and regeneration in Christ make? What precisely is the effect on humanity of God’s “grace”? Further, what should be the relationship between non-regenerate and regenerate cultural endeavors in the expression of God’s image? Thinkers in the Kuyperian tradition have not always agreed on the answers to these questions, as other chapters in this book make clear, and doubtless more work is required in this area to refine the conceptual details.

V. CRITICISMS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Among William Dennison’s extensive criticisms of “much of the agenda of Dutch neo-Calvinism,” is the claim that its anthropology departs from Calvin and Reformed Orthodoxy by contributing to an unwarranted optimism regarding transformational renewal of creational structures.74 First, the neo-Calvinist understanding of sin is too heavily weighted toward “an offense against the creational norms [rather] than an offense against our personal relationship with God.”75 For Dennison, this is an overconcentration on the “cosmic effects of sin” in Romans 8, at the expense of the traditional Reformed focus on Romans 5.76 Second, the claim that humanity has innate intuition of creational structures (or of the nebulous essence of “shalom”) allegedly allows some neo-Calvinists to bypass Scripture’s teaching in favor of “a normative routing of cultural redemption into the present.”77 Such biases supposedly reveal neo-Calvinism’s (sometimes unacknowledged) commitments to a catalog of undesirable bed-fellows, including neoKantianism and phenomenology,78 Marxist liberation theology,79 romantic historical idealism,80 Christian socialism,81 Anabaptism,82 universalistic soteriology,83 and radical, deconstructionist feminism.84 How might neo-Calvinistic anthropology, at least, withstand such criticisms? First, it is surely right to acknowledge some of the potential dangers that Dennison identifies. Neo-Calvinistic optimism about humanity’s created goodness and potential ought rightly to be chastened by a full-throated articulation of the corruption introduced into the human heart, and so to all human endeavors, by sin. Hamartiology done in the Kuyperian tradition should certainly be as exegetically sensitive to Romans 5 as to Romans 8, as Kuyper and Bavinck themselves were. Present and future neo-Calvinist William D. Dennison, “Dutch Neo-Calvinism and the Roots for Transformation: An Introductory Essay,” JETS 42, no. 2 (1999): 271–91 (284). 75 Ibid., 286. 76 Ibid., 287. Dennison’s article pre-dates the complete English translations of Bavinck’s RD and several of Kuyper’s best works, in which it became clearer that these theologians by no means underestimated the corruption of sin in the individual. This is not necessarily true of every neo-Calvinist theologian, however. 77 Ibid., 287. Dennison distinguishes the “shalom” approach to neo-Calvinism from the “creation order” approach. From the “creation order” camp he chooses to criticize James Olthuis and his argument in favor of same-sex marriage. The “shalom” perspective, similarly for Dennison, lacks a “specific understanding of sin” (289), which, he claims, contributes to its egalitarian and universalistic emphases in ethics and soteriology (290). 78 Ibid., 280. 79 Ibid., 284, 289. 80 Ibid., 286. 81 Ibid., 287–8. 82 Ibid., 288. 83 Ibid., 290. 84 Ibid. 74

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voices may need patiently to demonstrate that their doctrines of humanity neither bypass the Bible nor silence the voices of Calvin and the wider Reformed tradition, while they remain in conversation with a “catholic” heritage and connect with the many pressing anthropological issues and questions facing our world today. Part of this apology may be made by going on the offensive, demonstrating the positive fruits of neo-Calvinistic anthropologies in such varied fields as grounding human rights,85 theologies of human vulnerability and disability,86 and current debates around gender and sexuality, for example.87 The ongoing challenge for present and future thinkers in the neo-Calvinist tradition is to follow Kuyper’s own prescription, and indeed his example, “not to copy the past, as if Calvinism were a petrifaction, but to go back to the living root of the Calvinist plant, to clean and to water it, and so to cause it to bud and to blossom once more, now fully in accordance [. . .] with the demands of the times to come.”88

See, for example, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), especially chapter 16, “A Theistic Grounding of Human Rights.” 86 See, for example, Andrew Sloane, Vulnerability and Care: Christian Reflections on the Philosophy of Medicine (London: T&T Clark, 2016). 87 With some insights into the historical development of late modern theological anthropology, Ad de Bruijne argues for patient dialogue about sexuality in the public square between “orthodox Christians” and “emancipatory liberals” in “Culture Wars About Sexuality: A Theological Proposal for Dialogue,” Public Discourses About Homosexuality and Religion in Europe and Beyond (Basingstoke: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 105–24. 88 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 171. I am grateful to Dave Skipper and Brett Rayl for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 85

Chapter 7

Common Grace CORY BROCK

I. INTRODUCTION For the neo-Calvinist movement throughout its century and a half development thus far, the question of the relation between Christ and culture and what it should be, has often been the identifying mark of a neo-Calvinist. How should the organic and institutional church relate to the culture around them, particularly when the antithesis looms? What is the relation between the city of God and the spirit of Babylon? The neo-Calvinist had traditionally been marked by an emphasis on moving toward the culture rather than away, on a Christ in culture and Christ for culture theology, sometimes downplaying a pilgrim mentality. A full-orbed answer to this question would take us far beyond the scope of this chapter. But it is the neo-Calvinist doctrine of common grace that provides the key to its detailed answer. Common grace is not first a reference to the fact that Christians should be in the world. Rather, for Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, it is a reference to God’s patience. Common grace is what God offers for the life of the world despite itself. To frame it a different way, in multiple publications Kuyper and H. Bavinck both spoke of all things amid three relations: God, world, and selves.1 First, all things depend on God absolutely. But speech about the relation between world and self, between the “I” and the objective, is difficult to grasp. How should the Christian relate to the common realm, the objective, and particularly so in the modern age? Common grace helps to answer this question but it first speaks of God’s relation to the world after the fall of humankind into sin and offers both the condition and impetus for a Christian ethic: to be in the world but not of it. In this chapter, I consider the theological logic of common grace. I will show (1) how this doctrine develops in Kuyper and Bavinck (the first-generation neo-Calvinists), (2) consider the controversy on common grace within the neo-Calvinist tradition that followed, (3) note some of the generative questions and considerations important for the next generation of neo-Calvinist theology.

1.  THE FIRST GENERATION ON COMMON GRACE The neo-Calvinist doctrine of common grace follows its namesake John Calvin for its development. Kuyper in particular carried Calvin’s earlier reflections forward to develop See for example Bavinck’s Christian Worldview or Philosophy of Revelation. Also, see Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2023), 212–13. 1

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what he considered the only systematic treatment of the subject. For Calvin and Kuyper both common or general grace (as Calvin put it) is a necessary theological concept corresponding to an empirical reality that mediates the possibility of the Christian mandate mentioned earlier. Common grace answers how one can be “in the world” and it does so by assuming the necessary correlate, the antithesis, which speaks to the fact that the Christian is “not of” the world, the spirit of self-sufficiency. On the one hand, an antithesis stands between Christianity and culture insofar as Christians participate in the antithesis between Christ and Antichrist (the world, the flesh, and the devil). Yet, God does not disparage or abandon the world. Though sin has conquered much and spread its parasitical arms into the crevices of creaturely life, God did not abandon his creation, and for this reason, as Kuyper notes, “total depravity by sin does not always tally with [our] experiences of life.”2 The natural order, though cursed, is established in natural love, the bonds that hold between parents and children, neighbors, and colleagues, despite the total corruption of the human faculties. We continue to know, to reason, to make, to do, to breathe, to eat, to live. These verbs are shadows of hope. Yet, these shadows are not the product of nature left to itself after the human fall into sin (pure nature). For Calvin and the neo-Calvinists, they are only because of God’s common grace. Calvin wrestled with this third thing: there is the totality of sin’s corruption; there is salvation in Christ; but what of the “virtue of the pagans”? So, he argues: “Here it ought to occur to us that amid this corruption of nature there is some place for God’s grace; not such grace as to cleanse it, but to restrain it inwardly.”3 In short, Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace is a reference to God’s “loving patience in preserving both humanity and the creaturely cosmos despite human rebellion and its polluting corruption and all for the sake of redemption.”4 It is both a reference to God’s disposition and action. The term can also be used to refer to an era. The age of common grace begins with the entrance of sin and concludes with the Parousia of Christ. In this age, God gives good gifts to the world to maintain a degree of continuity with the pre-fall life. Common grace is distinguished from special grace, the grace of salvation in Christ, but supports and ultimately serves the work of special grace. Common grace is God’s patient love extended over a corrupted cosmos and his act of gifting the world its life and goods all for the sake of his providential unfolding of the organic union of all things in Christ.5 Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace stands and falls then with the belief in total depravity. There is a parallel ubiquity at play between the effect of sin on creation and the extent of God’s sustaining love. On the one hand, on the day of the first sin “Adam would fully die” and on the other “he lives nine times as long as the oldest one among us.”6 While sin corrupts everything (it is a total deprivation in that sense) the “majesty Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), 122. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), II​.iii​​.3. 4 This definition with a fuller explanation is found in Brock and Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction, 214. 5 This paragraph and part 1 of this chapter is drawn and adapted from chapter 8 “Common Grace and the Gospel” in Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2023), 212–49. 6 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts to a Fallen World, trans. Nelson D Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Mass, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill, 3 vols, (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2015–20), I. 288. Hereafter CG. Quoted in Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction, 217–18. 2 3

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of God’s justice works against sin . . . and [delays] its effects.”7 Thus, for Kuyper, God’s love is on display in the most basic of ways and in a manner that people often ignore. It is common: “its tiny roots and fibres everywhere penetrate into the joints and cracks of the life of nature.”8 For Kuyper, this means that God’s grace is twofold: common and special. Both aspects of God’s grace serve the same end: the redemption of the church founded in the glory of Christ, which is summarized as “the coming of the kingdom.” The former grace is common in that it is a stage-setting act of preservation so that the drama of redemptive history may take place. For any drama to play out, there must be a stage and the work of salvation (special grace) unfolds in God’s kindness to keep the stage itself when justice may require otherwise (common grace).9 Kuyper considered his work on common grace to be a recovery of Calvin and the first-ever magisterial treatment, at least since the Reformation. Though it was not Calvin alone from which he found historical support. His own confessional tradition offered Belgic Confession article 14, (and Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 10, Q&A 27) which in part states that humanity by sin separated himself from God who was his true life, having corrupted his whole nature, whereby he made himself liable to corporal and spiritual death. And being thus become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways, he hath lost all his excellent gifts which he had received from God and only retained a few remains thereof, which, however, are sufficient to leave man without excuse.10 As one will see, Kuyper’s doctrine emphasizes the corruption of the whole of nature, with particular focus on human depravity and thereby on God’s “excellent gifts,” which are no mere leftover of a created human nature, but gracious. He wrote on the doctrine for six years, regularly publishing newspaper articles which were later collected into the three-volume work Common Grace. He begins his reflections on God. For Kuyper, the doctrine of common grace is a reflection on God’s character.11 His work consistently reveals that theology is a web from which one might pull any thread and find they are still within the doctrine of God. Bavinck, likewise, writes his four-volume Dogmatics as an explication of the doctrine of God the Father, Son, and Spirit. Common grace accordingly is an important aspect of the doctrine of divine mission, the external and inseparable operations of the Triune God in space and time. Kuyper uses a metaphor in several places where he explains that God is at work to plant a tree in a field. The tree is the cross of Christ. The fruit of that tree is the particular, salvific grace of the Spirit—redemption accomplished and applied. But the soil upon which the tree is planted is creation sustained by the Father’s common grace.12 The neo-Calvinist doctrine of common grace makes a distinction then between creation (nature) in its original form and creation after the fall of humankind and its

Ibid., 1:7. Quoted in Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction, 218. Ibid., 1:173. Quoted in Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction, 213. 9 I referred to this same idea of God’s common grace as stage-setting in Neo-Calvinism: a Theological Introduction, 218. 10 Belgic Confession, Article 14: https://www​.crcna​.org​/welcome​/beliefs​/confessions​/belgic​-confession. 11 Kuyper, CG, 1:2. 12 See CG 1:7. This reference to Kuyper’s metaphor of the tree and soil is found in Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction, 217. 7 8

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corresponding curse. One cannot now know creation as it was or as it should be in a manner that understands natures before and after in similitude. The take-away is that fallen humans are not capable of doing good or producing “good” things out of the bounty of their own nature. God both restrains sin and positively gifts the operations of nature(s) now as an act of grace. Humans left to themselves neither produced Notre Dame nor the Chauvet cave paintings. Rather, they did so from the sustaining gifts of God. A distinction is necessary here. While human nature itself is the gift of God (a created gift), the neo-Calvinist doctrine of common grace suggests more: that God gives gifts not merely in accordance with creation, but despite sin, thus constituting the language of grace. That if anyone is to do well and act rightly after Genesis 3 then it is because of God’s active grace, not in accordance with mere human nature. Thus, God is both holy and patient and this work of commonly gifting to provide a “commonness” is the work of the Triune God. Kuyper’s interest is to highlight that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and that all three persons are at work in both forms of grace. God’s patience is experienced according to the administration of providence, which is an external work of his sovereignty. Kuyper’s doctrinal logic moves from sovereignty to the providentially exercised lordship of God in the government of creation, and only then to the derivative Christian ethic: If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit. The non-Christian world has not been handed over to Satan, nor surrendered to fallen humanity, nor consigned to fate. God’s sovereignty is great and all-dominating in the life of that unbaptized world as well. Therefore, Christ’s church on earth and God’s children cannot simply retreat from this life. If the believer’s God is at work in this world, then in this world the believer’s hand must take hold of the plow, and the name of the Lord must be glorified in that activity as well.13 It is important to note that common grace is not first a reference to an ethic of Christian participation in the life of the world, but that this imperative comes from God’s own relation to the world. The Christian church is required to be in the world because God so loved that world that he first laid the ground for the drama of redemption in a common grace and fulfilled his intention to redeem that world in giving his only begotten Son. Derivatively, Christians have both the impetus to love the world despite the antithesis and within it because of God’s common love, and the condition: that there is a commonness, a relationship between Christ and culture, one established not merely qua creation but qua grace. As the neo-Calvinist impulse trends, theological logic must be ever-moving toward organic unity. One sees this in the twofold work of grace: common and special. Together they form one organic redemptive work. Yet, not only does the grace of the Triune God in its twofold form find its eschatological unity in the glory of the Son, but Bavinck also makes much of the fact that both graces are communicated in the unity of God’s twofold work of revelation. Common grace is communicated empirically in the rain and the sun, human reason, and life itself. But it is also written on the pages of Scripture. One must turn to special revelation to find the covenantal ground of common grace: the Noahic covenant.

Kuyper, CG, 1:xxxvi–xxxvii. Quoted in Neo-Calvinism: a Theological Introduction, 218.

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This covenant narrows the seed of the woman to Noah’s lineage, and is thereby redemptive in its eschatological orientation, and yet is not a covenant of particular grace, Kuyper argues, but is God’s revelation of his common covenant with humanity.14 Bavinck adds that the life and being promised in Noah’s covenant, a covenant with nature, are no longer “natural. Rather they are the fruit of a supernatural grace to which man no longer has a self-evident claim.”15 By this promise, God guarantees an ongoing, preserved organic unity in the life of the world. The historical basis of common grace, the covenant with nature, leads Kuyper to reflect on the types of graces that God gifts in his common grace. For Bavinck too, God’s promise to both maintain and reveal in his bounty of grace helps one understand what the apostle Paul refers to in his claim that all peoples know God. Pagan religion, for Bavinck, is the product of God’s revelation and an expression of the knowledge of the true God, though corrupted by sin. God has promised to pour grace on all peoples (common grace), and so he continually reveals himself to all in that act of grace, general revelation. The difference in the Christian religion and the world religions, for Bavinck, is not one of “natural” religion versus revealed. Rather, “the true material difference in question lies in gratia; gratia specialis is something unknown to the [pagan].”16 As it was put elsewhere, “in all religions standing on common grace alone we see humans seeking after God in order to find him, but in special grace God condescends to humanity in order to save.”17 Thus, religion is a product of God’s common grace as it is the expression of the relation one has to God as creature in the light of his choice to reveal. Common grace manifests in other “graces” too, or gifts, which include a nearly endless list of possibilities cataloguing God’s kindness and patience in concrete forms. In several texts, Kuyper and Bavinck both suggest that it is consciousness itself that is the most important gift of common grace. Human life, self-consciousness, is “not simply grounded in the order of creation . . . [but is] the fruit of common grace . . . being allowed to retain something of what we by nature possessed by Adam.”18 Some of the other graces include public righteousness, love between parents and children, knowledge of the moral law, knowledge of God, the possibility of cultural development, the arts, sciences, and, as reminded in the Gospel of Matthew (5:45) the rain and the sunshine. Finally, the first-generation neo-Calvinists kept focus in the doctrine of common grace an eschatological distinction, a final cause by which the history of common grace would find its end in both senses of the term (telos, finis). On the one hand, common grace is a gift for the sake of the fullness of time: “Christ is the ultimate content.” Common grace prepares the world for Christ and exists because of Christ. Christ’s incarnation, while particular and redemptive, is also a grace to the world, precisely because it is in alignment with Christ’s coming that God determines to keep the world around, and to show loving patience to her. And too, Christ’s Parousia also means the end (finis) of common grace as a historical reality. Common grace is God’s loving kindness despite the presence of sin. But, in the

Kuyper, CG, 1:13. This argument is offered with more detail in Neo-Calvinism: a Theological Introduction, 224. 15 Bavinck, “Common Grace,” 40. Quoted in Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction, 224. 16 Bavinck, “Common Grace,” 42. 17 Brock and Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism, 227. 18 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, vol. 1, Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, trans. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 149. Quoted in Brock and Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism, 229–30. 14

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climatic Parousia of Christ, in the Kingdom of God, common grace will terminate because this cosmos no longer requires an intermediate state.19 One finds, in the end, that the doctrine of common grace for the neo-Calvinist first generation is as much about creation, re-creation, and the glory of Christ as it is an explanation of an empirical observation (commonness) or the justification of a Christian calling (cultural discipleship), though it also includes both.

II. THE CONTROVERSY Kuyper’s (and Bavinck’s to a lesser degree) doctrine of common grace is both a foundation for the tradition but also became the tipping point for controversy and schism. Herman Hoeksema led a group of ministers out of the Christian Reformed Church because, in part, Hoeksema and others denied the existence of a common or general grace of God.20 This schism was sealed by the determination of the synod of Kalamazoo in 1924, which rearticulated and affirmed Kuyper’s doctrine: “The Synod declares that it is certain, on the ground of Scripture and the Confession, that there is, besides the saving grace of God, shown only to those chosen unto eternal life, also a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to all His creatures.” From there, they argued for a non-saving love of God from which one finds two further results: (1) the restraint of sin in human affairs (humans are never as evil as they could be) (2) that unbelievers can perform acts of civic good.21 In the Netherlands, likewise, Klaas Schilder’s opposition to Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace (and doctrine of baptism) was a significant catalyst for controversy and eventual separation.22 In the constraints of space, one can only consider a sampling of these events and arguments, which were written and contended in multiple publications over the decades of controversy, though the publications are not as expansive as one might expect. To be sure, personality and political relations played immense roles in these controversies—they cannot be read as mere theological difference. Common grace became the central character of the drama. In this chapter, I set aside the important controversy about common grace concerning Klaas Schilder and instead point the reader to Marinus de Jong’s chapter in this handbook, which outlines the debate and doctrine. Instead, we will focus here on the North American context and consider both Hoeksema and the Synod of Kalamazoo and then, briefly, Cornelius Van Til’s critiques and reconstruction of the doctrine. In Hoeksema’s early critique of Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace he argued that affirmation of the doctrine participated in a culture with an increasingly critical view of the authority of Scripture and a denial of the basic logic of God’s elective will. In response, and escalating the conflict in short order, Jan Karel van Baalen wrote an article See A. Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 279. For Hoeksema’s own account, see Herman Hoeksema, The Protestant Reformed Churches in America (Grand Rapids: Protestant Reformed Church, 1936). 21 The Christian Reformed Synod of Kalamazoo, 1924. See Acta, 1924: https://www​.calvin​.edu​/library​/database​/ crcnasynod​/1924acts​_et​.pdf. 22 For the history of these controversies, see David H. Holwerda, “Hermeneutical Issues Then and Now: The Janssen Case Revisited,” Calvin Theological Journal 24 (1989): 7–34; Herman Hoeksema, The Protestant Reformed Churches in America: Their Origin, Early History and Dotrine, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: FPRC, 1947); Gertrude Hoeksema, Therefore Have I Spoken: A Biography of Herman Hoeksema (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association), 196. I rely mainly on John Bolt, “Common Grace and the Christian Reformed Synod of Kalamazoo (1924): A Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Retrospective,” Calvin Theological Journal 35 (2000): 7–36. 19 20

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in 1922, The Denial of Common Grace: Reformed or Anabaptist, in which he argued that Hoeksema and anyone else who denied the doctrine was anabaptistic in their resultant political theology, tending toward separation from society in a way antithetical to the Reformed tradition’s emphasis on mission.23 From 1922 to 1924, the controversy gained velocity, culminating in four overtures sent to the synod requesting that the church consider the theology of common grace.24 The overtures entreated that on the basis of Hoeksema’s work (along with Danhof) Van Zonde en Genade the synod affirm the doctrine and show that its denial is contrary to Scripture. There had been a series of publications between both sides from 1922 to 1924, with increasing argumentative intensity.25 The conclusion of the meeting was thus: the “Synod declares that there are various expressions in the writings of the Revs. H. Danhof and H. Hoeksema which do not harmonize well with what the Scripture and the confessions teach us regarding the three points mentioned above.”26 Though they did not discipline the two ministers. The synod did consider Hoeksema’s theological concerns and grievances over the doctrine but constructed their reflection according to the grievances issued to the synod about Hoeksema’s denial of common grace in the overtures. One of the central complaints against Hoeksema was that his denial of God’s favor to the unconverted and necessarily to the non-elect meant that his preaching had no offer of the Gospel. The question over the free offer of the Gospel became one of the central features of the debate about common grace. The synod summarized the key quotes from Hoeksema and Danhof that make clear arguments against the doctrine of common grace.27 Here is a summation of the theological judgments of Hoeksema concerning common grace culled from the works of Hoeksema and Danhof in said summary:

1. That the rain and sunshine are not grace because grace refers only to that which is within God, a disposition, not a thing.



2. Grace is always particular and only directed toward the people of God, the elect.



3. That the outward gifts that fall upon God’s people (like rain) fall on the nonelect not because of God’s grace to them but because of God’s grace to the elect.

Jan Karel Van Baalen, Der Loochening der Gemeene Gratie: Gereformeerd of Doopersch. Cited in John Bolt, “Common Grace and the Christian Reformed Synod of Kalamazoo (1924): A Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Retrospective,” 12. 24 Agenda CRCSynod, 1924, xxvi–xx, cited in Bolt, “Common Grace and the Christian Reformed Synod,” 14. 25 Hoeksema summarizes that sequence accordingly in The Protestant Reformed Churches, 25: The Reverend Jan Karel Van Baalen published a pamphlet entitled: Loochening Der Gemerne Grafie, Gereformeerd of Doopersch? (Denial of Common Grace, Reformed or Anabaptistic?) to which the two ministers replied with another pamphlet bearing the title: Niet Doopersch Maar Gereformeerd (Not Anabaptistic but Reformed). Professor Berkhof wrote an article in The Witness under the deceiving heading: “Genade Voor De Onbekeerden” (Grace for the Unconverted). The two ministers personally approached the professor with the direct question, whether he had thus written in ignorance or intentionally. And the professor promised to make amends, the attempt to which made matters worse. Van Baalen followed up his first attack by the publication of Nieuwigheid en Dwaling (Innovation and Error), to which as well as to other attacks the accused pastors replied in the brochure: Jiangs Zuivere Banen (Along Straight Paths), which was very soon followed by still another pamphlet entitled OmRecht en Waarheid (For the Sake of Justice and Truth). They also had published their chief work of that period: Van Zonde en Genade (Of Sin and Grace). Cited in Bolt, “Common Grace and the Christian Reformed Synod,” 16. 26 1924 Acta, 147. 27 For what follows, see Acta, 1924, pp. 125ff. 23

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They receive those gifts by being in the world with the elect. To them, this is not grace but a “gift” relative to their location.

4. Outside of regeneration there is no way of speaking of grace in the context of nonbelievers.



5. God maintains no disposition of grace to the non-elect and to claim otherwise is inconceivable in the Reformed theological tradition.



6. A sinner standing before the Holy God is without grace. He is not an object of love because of God’s righteousness and resultant wrath.



7. All these conclusions participate in a supralapsarian view of God’s decretal will.

The synod, with the authority of Scripture, the Canons of Dordt, Calvin, Van Mastricht, and Ursinus, concluded that these determinations stood against both the biblical witness and the Reformed tradition. One example will suffice: the synod quoting Van Mastricht: From this there arises a three-fold kind of love of God toward the creatures: one general, Psalm 104:31 and 145:9, through which He created, upholds and directs, Psalm 36:7 and 147:9. A common, which indeed reaches out to men in particular, not to all and each in particular; but even so to all kinds, without distinction, reprobates and the elect, regardless of what sort or race they may be. To all these He distributes His gifts which are recorded for us in Hebrews 6: 4, 5; 1 Corinthians 13:1, 2.28 Cornelius Van Til wrote Common Grace and the Gospel29 to address both Hoeksema (and the controversy of 1924) and the first-generation, Kuyper and Bavinck. Van Til’s doctrine is birthed in wrestling with errors he perceived on both sides. The text is less a coherent whole and more a series of theses because the book is a volume of essays written over twenty-five years. Nevertheless, in search of a unified project, Van Til argues that he is doing a third thing—that one must not move to the “right” or the “left” on the doctrine of common grace, placing his own thought in the center.30 The right is represented by Hoeksema, where Van Til understood him to inappropriately use a hyper-deductive logic based upon the counsel of the ontological Trinity. For Hoeksema, as Van Til read him and in accordance with the synodical determination of 1924, God’s election of some to grace and others to wrath implies that God chooses to pass over a certain people. These affirmations entail that God has no gracious disposition to the non-elect. Derivatively, it is also inappropriate to give a “free-offer of the Gospel” to all, because God does not and is not offering the Gospel to all. The free offer of the Gospel is a sin of speech, according to Hoeksema’s logic. Van Til argues that there is a difference in what God does from eternity and the way the mission of God is undertaken in history. For Van Til, because the doctrine of common grace is biblical, one needs to think in accordance with the biblical logic, avoiding the application of the archetypal mind of God (the elective counsel of his will) in ways that the Bible will not allow, a failure to think in the terms of the limiting concept, according to which the two poles of a paradox qualify each other. Acta, 1924, 127. See also a parallel and clear passage in Petrus Van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 3: The Works of God and the Fall of Man, ed. Joel Beeke, trans. Todd Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2021), 528. 29 The text was originally published in 1972. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 2nd ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015). Van Til considers the debates between Kuyper, Hoeksema, and Schilder, from p. 4. See p. 25ff for more detail. 30 Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 168. See Oliphint’s foreword for a helpful overview, vii–xliv. 28

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The limiting concepts refer to the biblical doctrine of mystery.31 For Van Til, this is called concrete thinking as opposed to abstract thinking, where one attempts to work out the logic of the mind of the ontological Trinity in a creaturely frame. While Van Til wants to “begin” with the ontological Trinity to construct the doctrine (as the Trinity presents the archetypal paradox of a oneness and threeness that must be affirmed together), he regards Hoeksema’s project as a failure to be consciously anthropomorphic, that is, to reckon with one’s createdness. The theologian cannot choose between God’s absolute power and his merciful love, on pain of denying the whole counsel of divine revelation.32 Van Til also made amendments to the “left,” Kuyper’s doctrine. Van Til charged Kuyper with creating a “neutral” space, one where believers and unbelievers share and interact under the same principles and according to the same mind, which he likens with the doctrine of Rome. Van Til suggests there is no activity or concept where an unbeliever avoids rebellion against God. There is no common “interpretation” of the world between the elect and non-elect.33 Van Til wanted to maximize the antithesis between the redeemed and the world, positing not that believer and unbeliever share any neutral ideas but that commonality must be grounded elsewhere. Van Til treats the issue as an epistemological problem. What is “common” instead is the ineradicable sense of deity, the fact of being the object of general revelation, and the image of God in which every person participates.34 Reading Van Til, the reader familiar with Bavinck and Kuyper will notice a tendency to prooftext these first-generation neo-Calvinists without consideration of wider arguments, historical or grammatical contexts, and, at times, some confusion over the point. For example, Van Til supposes that the first generation separated Christ’s mediatorial work in creation (common grace) from redemption (special grace), thereby creating this space of neutrality. He suggests that for Kuyper the work of common grace is “independent of God’s work of saving grace.”35 Van Til argues instead that Christ’s mediatorial work is entirely ordered to the “summing up of all things” in Christ. One doubts whether Bavinck or Kuyper would recognize the injection of this dualism in their own theology. The unity of grace in the telos of Christ’s kingship is clearly affirmed in Kuyper and Bavinck, as outlined in the first section of this chapter. One can only surmise that these conclusions were developed in isolating specific sentences from books and essays from the whole. While a cloudy summary of the history, Van Til’s contribution is important in that it does provide an overview of the development of the idea in the tradition, highlights common grace as a central doctrine of the neo-Calvinist movement, and also shows that it remains controversial, producing a series of debates which carry on to the present.

III. CONCLUSION: SOME GENERATIVE ISSUES AND QUESTIONS There are numerous possibilities for the application of the doctrine of common grace and thus generative questions that come from a potential theology of commonness. For example, what does the neo-Calvinist doctrine of common grace and its resultant

Ibid., xlviii–xlix. See Ibid., 89, for a detailed argument. 33 Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 163. 34 Ibid., 165. 35 Ibid., 260. 31 32

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emphases on commonness mean in relation to the natural law tradition?36 Is the difference between the doctrine of common grace and natural law tradition one that pertains to an account of the underlying mechanics of the common or is it practical as well? As Van Til pointed out, what exactly is shared in the realm of the gift? Is it possible to speak of an underlying rationality, especially after J. H. Bavinck introduced the tradition to the concept of “worldvision”?37 Many more questions could be added. Few have considered the implications of this doctrine and the generative questions like Richard Mouw. Mouw’s opening chapter in his work on common grace, He Shines in All That’s Fair, is titled “thinking about commonness,” where Mouw provides several other reasons for rearticulating this doctrine and developing a theology of culture that is for today. For one, the twentieth-century postmodern philosophies demanded “uncommonness,” that “there is no legitimate way of articulating a basis for our common humanness, because every such formulation is oppressive.”38 Another includes the widening spectrum between mainline and orthodox Protestants, one that encourages theologies that emphasize holistic commonness on the left and a reactive uncommonness on the right. Mouw concludes that Christianity and the neo-Calvinist theological tradition within have the resources to provide foundations for commonness while maintaining the antithesis. Considering the doctrine of the first generation outlined earlier, common grace is not first a theology of culture but is essential to developing one. On the one hand, it is a mistake to think of common grace, and the commonness it produces, and first ask: “what is the relationship between Christ and culture.” Rather, common grace attests God’s loving patience with sin; it is a doctrine of God’s mercy. Therein, the concept is more concerned or first concerned with the doctrine of God than that of cultural discipleship. On the other, a theology of culture is an important deliverance of common grace, particularly because of the gifts God gives in his common grace. The way one construes the doctrine is generative for a theology of culture. The neo-Calvinist tradition needs then to refocus attention on common grace in dogmatics, as an aspect of the doctrine of God and his creation, of anthropology and sin, and then reconsider the theology of culture that it produces and do so for each generation and subculture. The controversies of the previous century (which carry on) require particular attention in the realm of dogmatics to the questions, “what does it mean to do good?” and “what is the disposition of God to the sinner?” Because common grace is wedded to a commitment to the doctrine of total depravity and special grace, one must understand that the antithesis is a product of these two realities: that the world is sinful and cursed and that God has chosen to redeem a community from this plight. In turn, the relation between the need for grace and the depravity of the world is one of confrontation. Likewise, the Christian community is charged, by the neo-Calvinist logic, with the demand for confrontation between Christ and culture. Any attitude of hostility, rather than confrontation borne of love, must be filtered through Kuyper and Bavinck’s emphasis on sin: the difference in Christ and the world runs not through races, classes, nations, or even exclusively between the redeemed and non-redeemed, but through every heart. The antithesis remains not merely between For an initial foray into this topic, see Brock and Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism, 235–48. J. H. Bavinck, Personality and Worldview, trans. James Eglinton (Wheaton: Crossway, 2023). 38 Richard Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 2. See also Matthew Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018). 36 37

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the redeemed community and the world but also in the confrontation between the “justified” and the “sinner.” It is for this reason that Kuyper can point out that sometimes the world looks better than the church. And yet, as Mouw points out, the call of grace includes the imperative that “the Christian community must be very conscious of the significant ways in which God calls us to stand against the prevailing cultures of our fallen world.”39 That is, common grace teaches both difference and commonness, though the difficulty is found in the tension between the two. No organic unity can be had between sin and grace, both within oneself and between the redeemed community and the world. The contemporary generation of neo-Calvinist theology must recognize and develop a clearer focus on a pilgrim theology. While pilgrims, the neo-Calvinist tradition offers a firm foundation of theological reflection that forms the basis for the relation between the church and the world as one not only of confrontation but of commonality. For Kuyper, common grace provides the ground for Christians and non-Christians to engage in friendship, to learn from one another, and for the redeemed community to give thanks for the gifts God gives to all. One is left still to ask whether this commonality is founded in “grace” or if it is better spoken of as “gift” apart from the language of grace. The majority tradition says “yes” to grace and subsequently “yes” to the organic movement of the church into and for the life of the world. Perhaps this commonality is not merely a foundation for sharing, but a reality that leads to an imperative: “seek the peace and prosperity of the city,” and each generation is left to inquire into the how. A longer survey of the neo-Calvinist tradition on common grace would lead more and more to an enigma: that this doctrine is biblical yet raises theological and practical difficulties that become more complex with further study, as Mouw notes. Mouw, citing the North American controversy of the 1920s, notes that Professor Ten Hoor said that after studying the issue for forty years he “felt quite sure there was such a thing as common grace but did not know what it was.”40 To return to Kuyper and Bavinck, common grace, the work of the Triune God enacted by the Spirit means just that: common grace does indeed invite us to contemplate on a divine mystery.

Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 2. Ibid., 13.

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Chapter 8

Christology BRUCE R. PASS

I. INTRODUCTION It is not uncommonly asserted that neo-Calvinists were first and foremost philosophers of culture.1 This viewpoint, however, risks a misunderstanding of neo-Calvinism. Underneath the surface of the neo-Calvinist quest for a reconciliation of historic Christianity and modern culture lay deep theological foundations, as even their detractors on occasion could acknowledge.2 And given the Christocentric contours of Protestant theology in the second half of the nineteenth century, it should come as no surprise that Christology received especially close attention. If there is a distinctive trait of neo-Calvinist Christology, it is its commitment to Chalcedon.3 Over against the post-Enlightenment rejection of the possibility of incarnation and Harnack’s Hellenization thesis,4 neo-Calvinist theologians uniformly upheld the Chalcedonian definition of Christ’s singular person in two natures. Yet alongside this rejection of the modernist impulse there is also an attentiveness, and in certain instances, an openness, toward modern thoughtforms, an openness which yields unexpected moments of agreement with theologians whose broader commitments neoCalvinists would otherwise repudiate. These moments of convergence at once reveal the (modestly) progressive element which characterizes neo-Calvinism. Neo-Calvinism, nevertheless, is not an entirely homogenous sub-branch of Reformed Protestantism. While the family resemblance is plain, there are important differences to be noted between neo-Calvinism’s various exponents. Perhaps the most notable differences can be seen in the contrast between neo-Calvinist theological reflection before and after the First World War. In large part, this contrast can be attributed to the changing mood of the times and changing conceptions of the theological task. In order to draw out this Typical in this regard is van Egmond’s assessment that Kuyper’s cultural influence is more “important” than his theology. Cf. Adrianus van Egmond, “Kuyper’s Dogmatic Theology,” in Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of his Life and Work, ed. Cornelis van der Kooi and Jan de Bruijn (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1999), 85. 2 Cf. Berkouwer’s description of Haitjema, “But—behind this frontline, upon which all of Kuyper’s attention is focused, lies . . . theology.” (Maar—achter die frontlijn, waarop al Kuypers aandacht is geconcentreerd, ligt . . . de theologie.) Gerrit Berkouwer, “Abraham Kuyper en de theologie van het Hollandsche Neocalvinisme,” De Reformatie 13, no. 22 (1933): 169b. 3 For a detailed comparison of the Chalcedonian character of Herman Bavinck’s and Klaas Schilder’s Christology, see Barend Kamphuis, “Chalcedon in Kampen,” Theologia Reformata 48 (2005): 26–40. 4 For a good example of the opprobrium in which the doctrine of the two natures was generally held by modernist Reformed theologians, see John Baillie, The Place of Jesus Christ in Modern Christianity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1929), 123–36. 1

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contrast, an overview of the distinctives of neo-Calvinist Christology will be presented first in its nineteenth- and then in its twentieth-century expressions. The frame of reference is limited to Christology proper—the person as distinct from the work of Christ. This limitation ought not, however, be taken to suggest that neo-Calvinists reflected on the person of Christ in abstraction from his work. Neo-Calvinism stood squarely within the Anselmian tradition which approached the person of Christ from the standpoint of his work.5

II. NEO-CALVINIST CHRISTOLOGY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nineteenth-century neo-Calvinist Christology is characterized by a curious tension. On the one hand, the Chalcedonian definition is held high and the conceptual apparatus of the distinction between person and nature is vigorously defended against its detractors. On the other hand, the Christologies of both Kuyper and Bavinck evidence the influence of the same train of thought that rejected this apparatus: German Idealism. Neo-Calvinist Christology, therefore, is representative of the broader phenomenon that first attracted the criticism of figures such as Cornelis Hylkema (1870–1948) and Bernardus Eerdmans (1868–1948), who argued that Kuyper and Bavinck had actually abandoned classically Reformed doctrine and notwithstanding the conservative character of their theology, were neither orthodox nor modern.6 Irrespective of the (de)merits of this evaluation, this tension is what distinguishes neo- from paleo-Calvinism. Moreover, there are subtle differences to be observed between Kuyper and Bavinck in this regard, and their Christology illustrates these well.

a. Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) Abraham Kuyper wrote extensively on Christology. Beyond the three-volume Locus de Christo (student lecture notes from Kuyper’s lectures in dogmatics at the Vrije Universiteit),7 Kuyper published De vleeschwording des woords, a book which had originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles oriented to a general readership,8 and there is extended Christological reflection in passages of Het werk van den Heiligen Geest,9 a work which reflects Kuyper’s later attraction to a form of Spirit-Christology. Kuyper upheld the Chalcedonian definition unqualifiedly, most often against the specter of “Pantheism,” a catchall phrase by which Kuyper invoked any attempt to erase the

In this regard, it is worth noting that many of the internal controversies over neo-Calvinism’s philosophy of culture invoked the question of whether Christ is rightly characterized as the Mediator of Creation. Cf. Klaas Schilder, Christ and Culture (Hamilton: Lucerna, 2016); Jaap Kamphuis, “Het Lam in het nieuwe Jeruzalem,” in Almanak van het Corpus Studiosorum in Academia Campensi “Fides Quadrat Intellectum” (Kampen: Zalsman, 1987), 202–28. 6 Bernardus Eerdmans, “De Theologie van Dr. A. Kuyper,” Theologische tijdschrift (1909): 209–37; Cornelis Hylkema, Oud en Nieuw Calvinisme: Een vergelijkende geschiedkundige studie (Haarlem: Willink, 1911), 29. For further discussion of Hylkema and Eerdmans’ critique of neo-Calvinism, see Rolf Bremmer, Bavinck als dogmaticus (Kampen: Kok, 1961), 115–21. 7 Abraham Kuyper, Locus de Christo: College-dictaat van onderscheidene studenten, 3 vols (Amsterdam, 1900). 8 Abraham Kuyper, De Vleeschwording des Woords (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1887). 9 Abraham Kuyper, Het werk van den heiligen Geest, 3 vols (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1888); cf. The Work of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966). 5

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Creator-creature distinction and to efface the mystery of God and humanity in Jesus Christ. Beyond the Chalcedonian character of Kuyper’s Christology, four further features warrant special mention. First, Kuyper was a staunch opponent of supralapsarian Christologies, which is to say that he firmly upheld redemption as the motive for the incarnation and opposed any suggestion that God may have become incarnate had Adam not sinned. In De Vleeschwording des Woords, Kuyper portrays supralapsarianism as the bitter root of modern Christology.10 Notwithstanding the contestable historical claim that the church of all ages had rejected supralapsarian Christology as heresy,11 it is plain that what Kuyper protests is a sublation of the human and divine in a tusschenwezen (hybrid) of divinity and humanity. Kuyper’s target, therefore, is not medieval supralapsarians such as Robert Grosseteste or Duns Scotus,12 but the Vermittlungs- (Mediating) theologians: the heirs of Schleiermacher and Hegel who conceptualized incarnation as a form of human ascent rather than divine descent, a godwording (deification) of the human being rather than a vleeschwording (incarnation) of the second person of the Holy Trinity.13 For Kuyper, supralapsarian Christology—the notion that God would have become man irrespective of the Fall—was the root problem of a broader blurring of metaphysical boundaries, including Darwinism, and for this reason, it was to be categorically rejected. Second, in continuity with Reformed Orthodoxy, Kuyper maintained that the incarnation was the first step in the state of humiliation.14 The Christological distinction between the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation has a long history stretching back as far as Pope Leo the Great’s Tome, but Kuyper’s insistence that the incarnation itself belonged to the state of humiliation was formulated in opposition to what he described as modern Christology’s “seductive idea,” the notion that the incarnation was necessary to the development of humanity.15 In support of his broader argument, Kuyper overwhelms any potential resistance by citing passages from a string of Reformed Orthodox Divines including De Moor, À Marck, Junius, Zanchius, Van Mastricht, Van Diest, Polanus, Maresius, Aemilius, Burmann, Gerdes, Heidegger, Leydekker, Pictet, and Ames.16 In alignment with these thinkers, Kuyper regards humiliation as a bedecking, or concealment, of divine glory. Thus, the self-humiliation of the Son consists in his taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7). Yet importantly, it is not just the fact of incarnation

“The root of this anti-scriptural and essentially pantheistic error is exposed at once by the important question: if Adam had not fallen, would the Son of God have become a human being?” (De wortel van deze tegenschriftuurlijke en in den grond pantlieïstische dwaling komt al aanstonds uit bij de gewichtige vraag: Indien Adam niet gevallen ware, zou de Zoon van God dan toch mensch zijn geworden?) Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 10. 11 Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 11. 12 For an overview of medieval supralapsarian Christology, see Justus Hunter, If Adam Had Not Sinned: The Reason for the Incarnation from Anselm to Scotus (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2020). For the basic contours of modern supralapsarianism, see Edwin van Driel, Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 13 Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 17. 14 Cf. Kuyper, Locus de Christo, 1: 87–9, 148–9. 15 Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 41. 16 Ibid., 183–90. This string of quotations makes it seem like Kuyper is making good on his earlier claim: “our readers can rest assured that whatever we set before them is always based on sound research, also when—on account of the nature of these articles—we do not always cite the sources on which have drawn” (onze lezers vertrouwen mogen, dat hetgeen we hun voorleggen steeds op deugdelijk onderzoek steunt, ook waar we, om den aard dezer artikelen, niet altoos de bronnen noemen, waaruit we hebben geput.” Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 134. 10

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that conceals the Son’s glory. Rather, the Son’s humiliation also embraces his reliance on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. “To have to live on gifts,” Kuyper writes, “is shameful for a king.”17 This connection of Christ’s humanity to his reliance on the Holy Spirit draws attention to a closely related theme in Kuyper’s Christology. In Het werk van den heiligen Geest, Kuyper displays his interest in what we might now refer to as a Spirit-Christology. That is, Kuyper attributes not merely the miracles but all of Christ’s work to a reliance on the person of the Holy Spirit. In so doing, Kuyper seeks to avoid any minimization of the full humanity of Christ by directly attributing either his miracles or obedience to the divine nature. Kuyper writes, “it is wrong to suppose that the divine Person accomplished in His human nature what in us is effected by the Holy Spirit. This would endanger His true and real humanity. The Scripture positively denies it.”18 Yet this affirmation discloses a tension between Kuyper’s attempt to defend the reality of the humanity of Christ by means of a Spirit-Christology and his association of Christ’s dependence on the Holy Spirit with the state of humiliation.19 Kuyper maintains that the glorified Christ, precisely because he continues to be a true man in heaven, must continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit.20 Hence, it becomes difficult to see how the state of humiliation would not perdure into eternity, if on Kuyper’s reckoning it is shameful for a king to live on gifts. Kuyper’s Spirit-Christology thus problematizes Kuyper’s commitment to the claim that the incarnation itself is the first step in the state of humiliation. Third, Kuyper rejected the neo-Kohlbrüggian claim that God the Son assumed a sinful nature.21 By way of contrast, Kuyper maintained that Christ assumed a weakened yet sinless human nature. That is, Christ’s human nature bore the effects of sin but was free of sin’s guilt, and, as a consequence, of its pollution. The reason for this is that the person of Christ is not a human person to whom guilt was imputed in Adam. Rather, in the incarnation, the divine person of the Son assumed an impersonal human nature from Mary which bore the effects yet not the pollution of sin. A curiosity of Kuyper’s conceptualization of Christ’s weakened yet sinless humanity is the distinction between general and special weaknesses, or sickness. While Christ was subject to the former, he remained free of the latter because the latter derive from a certain onmatigheid (immoderation), which derives from sin. Kuyper even thinks it significant that the Gospels do not record Jesus ever being sick.22 Kuyper, nevertheless, puts the distinction between general and special weakness to good use in his interpretation of the cry of dereliction (Mk 15:34). The forsakenness Christ experiences on the cross derives from no rupture in the being of God but from the

“Van gaven te moeten leven is smadelijk voor een koning.” Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 149. Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 97. I’m grateful to Chris Gousmett for drawing my attention to this and the following passage from Kuyper’s The Work of the Holy Spirit. 19 And it is worth noting that the previous statement also stands in tension with Kuyper’s comments attributing the sinlessness of Christ to the divine nature’s sustenance of the human nature. Cf. Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 142. 20 Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 110. 21 Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803–75) was an influential Dutch-born Reformed theologian of German background, who was much admired by Kuyper, and in later decades, by Karl Barth Cf. Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (London: SCM Press, 1972), 634–42. Kohlbrügge’s epigones, however, took some of his ideas in directions that Kohlbrügge may not have endorsed. De vleeschwoording des Woords is framed as a rebuttal of Kohlbrügge’s son-in-law, Eduard Böhl (1836–1903). Kuyper makes pains to point out that Kohlbrügge himself held reservations about the direction in which Böhl’s theology was developing. Cf. Kuyper, De Vleeschwoording, xvi. 22 Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 118–19; cf. Loco de Christo, 2: 10, 3: 195. 17 18

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withdrawal of the Holy Spirit’s gifts from the incarnate Son. Accordingly, in the nadir of the state of humiliation Christ remained free of sin. Fourth, Kuyper makes considerable use, especially in the earlier decades of his career, of the notion of continuous incarnation. The best examples of this are to be found in De menschwording Gods: Het levensbeginsel der kerk, Kuyper’s inaugural sermon at the Domkerk in Utrecht.23 The text is replete with descriptions of the incarnation as the form of communion with the infinite, allusions to the current theory of the history of religions, descriptions of the Spirit’s completion of the incarnation in humanity as a whole, and the consequent formation of humanity as an organism.24 Toward the end of the sermon, Kuyper frames the thesis of the sermon elegantly by identifying continuous incarnation as “the principle of the church.”25 The Idealist hue of this sermon was not lost on readers.26 Andries Bronsveld (1834–1929), a staunch opponent of Kuyper, would write, “What else is it but Christian-tinted Hegelianism?”27 Of course, Kuyper himself was not unaware of the origin of these ideas, which is why his frequent condemnations of pantheism need to be taken with a grain of salt. Kuyper could also describe the dreaded pantheists in the following terms: Although we profess from the bottom of our heart that there is a satanic force in this intellectual trend [i.e. German Idealism], from which proceeds a tendency to confuse and intermingle flesh and spirit, we ought, nevertheless, beware of ever or always denying that this tremendous intellectual movement may be of service as an instrument of God to the further unfolding of his deep mysteries. Like all mighty happenings, so too this revolution in the world of thought shall also be to the glory of our God, the first fruits for Jesus’ church.28 In Kuyper, therefore, we see a curious combination of the old and the new. Kuyper’s Christology would be inaccurately described as a repristination of Reformed Orthodoxy, a mere reassertion of the validity of Chalcedon in the face of theological modernism. On the contrary, in certain places one can discern a plundering of the Egyptians, an appropriation of the ideas of his staunchest ideological opponents. Kuyper could freely appropriate modern philosophical idioms, if he thought that they could be made serviceable to the unfolding of the mystery of Christ. Yet he reserved the right to condemn any use of these idioms if he felt that they compromised the church’s confession of the deity and humanity of Christ.

A. Kuyper, De menschwording Gods: Het levensbeginsel der kerk (Utrecht: Van Peursem, 1867). Ibid., 6–8. 25 “Een voortzetting van de vleeschwording des Woords door het wonen van den Christus in en onder ons,—ziet daar dan het van zelf gegevene beginsel der Kerk.” Kuyper, De menschwording Gods, 19. For an overview of German Idealism, see Frederick Beiser, German Idealism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 26 Cf. Jan Veenhof ’s evaluation of Kuyper in George Puchinger, Is de Gereformeerde wereld veranderd? (Delft: Meinema, 1966), 208–9. 27 Johan C. Rullmann, Kuyper-Bibliographie, 3 vols (Kampen: Kok, 1923–40), 1: 26–7. Cit. John Halsey Wood, Going Dutch in the Modern Age: Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free Church in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 63. 28 “Al belijden we dan van ganscher harte, dat er in deze geestesrichting een satanisch drijven is, dat er op uitloopt om vleesch en geest te verwarren en te vermengen, toch zullen we ons hoeden, van ooit of immer te ontkennen, dat deze ontzaglijke geestesbeweging, als instrument Gods, niet ook dienstbaar zou zijn aan verdere onthulling van de diepe mysteriën Gods. Gelijk van alle machtige gebeurtenis, zoo zal ook van deze omwenteling in de denkwereld de eere voor onzen God, de eêrste vrucht voor de gemeente van Jezus wezen.” Kuyper, De Vleeschwording, 7. 23 24

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b. Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) Herman Bavinck also wrote extensively on Christology. While the primary source for Bavinck’s Christology is the third volume of Reformed Dogmatics (RD), a number of other articles illumine the mature Christological reflection of his magnum opus. Bavinck largely agrees with Kuyper’s presentation of this doctrine, yet there are subtle differences of theological judgment which cannot be overlooked, and these differences bear out the generalization that Bavinck was the more progressive thinker.29 This can be seen even in Bavinck’s affirmation of Chalcedon, which bears the caveat that it remains the best option for the time being (voorshands).30 Bavinck held that “[theology] is a progressive science . . . it stops neither at Chalcedon nor Dordrecht. It is deeply convinced that in these times and those to come God shall be pleased to cast more light on what in Holy Scripture still lies hidden and shrouded in mist.”31 Bavinck’s more circumspect posture toward the Reformed tradition and even toward the ancient creeds is reflected in four elements of Bavinck’s Christology, which not only illustrate the differences between Kuyper’s account of this doctrine and his own but also illustrate Bavinck’s greater openness toward modern thoughtforms. First, there is a decided ambiguity to Bavinck’s rejection of supralapsarian Christologies. Bavinck rejects the speculative claim that God would have become incarnate irrespective of the Fall because Scripture orders incarnation to the atonement, because the election of the Church cannot be separated from the election of Christ as the head of his Church, and because supralapsarian Christologies quickly become burdened with possible humans and possible Christs.32 Yet this rejection stands in tension with a number of theological judgments which inform the structure Bavinck’s theological system. For example, Bavinck states that creation “must be conceived in infralapsarian fashion.”33 Brian Mattson has rightly noted that an infralapsarian view of the decree to create the world provides Bavinck firm grounds for his identification of Adam as a type of Christ,34 but whether Mattson is correct to assert that this does not imply a supralapsarian Christology is moot. Who, for example, does God permit to fall if the decree to permit the Fall is logically anterior to the decree to create? Similarly, Bavinck maintains not only that there

Arie Theodorus van Deursen, The Distinctive Character of the Free University in Amsterdam, 1880–2005: A Commemorative History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 96. 30 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, 4 vols (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–8), 3: 304; Hereafter RD. cf. Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 4th ed., 4 vols (Kampen: Kok, 1928), 3: 288. Barend Kamphuis notes that Bavinck does not elaborate on the shortcomings of the Chalcedonian formula, offering some interesting reflections on what Bavinck may or may not have had in mind. Kamphuis, “Chalcedon in Kampen,” 32. It is worth noting, however, that Bavinck’s successor in Kampen, Anthonie Honig (1864–1940), did not share this view. By contrast, Honig held that Chalcedon was the terminus ad quem for the development of Christological dogma. Anthonie Honig, De persoon von de Middelaar in de nieuwere Duitsche dogmatiek (Kampen: Kok, 1910), 74. 31 Herman Bavinck, On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, ed. Bruce R. Pass (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 57; cf. De wetenschap der heilige godgeleerdheid (Kampen: Zalsman, 1883), 47. Cf. Bavinck’s remarks in the foreword to the first edition of Gereformeerde dogmatiek, “To cherish the ancient simply because it is ancient, is neither Reformed nor Christian.” Bavinck, “Foreword to the First Edition (Volume 1) of the Gereformeerde dogmatiek,” Calvin Theological Journal 45, no. 1 (2010): 10. 32 Bavinck, RD, 3.278–80; 2.403–4; 2.386. 33 Ibid., 3.278. 34 Brian Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny: Eschatology and the Image of God in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 176–7. 29

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was a mediator of religion before the Fall but also that the personal knowledge of God from which all religion arises is predicated on the Mediator’s possession of a human soul.35 This too would seem to make incarnation more than incidentally necessary for humanity’s communion with God. And Bavinck’s characterization of the divine decree as an organism and the incarnation as the constitutive principle of the organic God-world relation would suggest the logical priority of the decree to become incarnate.36 These features of Bavinck’s broader theological reasoning put pressure on his stated rejection of supralapsarian Christologies. Second, Bavinck maintained, pace Kuyper, that the incarnation does not belong to the state of humiliation. Although Bavinck’s critique of Kuyper is somewhat muted in Reformed Dogmatics, it can be more clearly heard through the mouthpiece of his students. The doctoral thesis of Seakle Greijdanus (1871–1948), for example, mounts an elaborate historical and constructive argument in defense of Bavinck’s claim that the incarnation itself does not belong to the state of humiliation.37 In support of this claim, Bavinck invokes the minority report within Reformed Orthodoxy that Kuyper rejects. These thinkers maintained that if incarnation belonged to the state of the humiliation, the state of humiliation would perdure into eternity, as Christ does not cease to be incarnate after the ascension. Accordingly, Bavinck held that the incarnation is more accurately described as an act of “condescending goodness” (nederbuigende goedheid),38 a phrase which ostensibly derives from the Mediating theologian, Isaak Dorner (1809–84).39 Indeed, this connection to Dorner comprises a significant clue with regard to the origins of the modern tincture of Bavinck’s Christology and warrants further investigation. Third, Bavinck showed considerable interest in what Kuyper described as modern Christology’s “seductive idea.” Rolf Bremmer rightly identified Bavinck’s interest in human development as a markedly modern feature of Bavinck’s Christology,40 but did not trace out the significance of this theme beyond the development of Christ’s own humanity. While Bavinck certainly affirmed growth and development in the boy Jesus, Bavinck also held that the humanity of Christ effects the development of humanity as a whole, such that in Christ humanity eventually becomes the “fully developed image of God.”41 It is for this reason that Bavinck held that humanity must be conceptualized as an organism with the person of Christ as its constitutive principle. This characterization of humanity as an organism presents a good example of Bavinck’s appropriation of German Idealism.42 A characteristic feature of the Idealist organism is the indirect identity of Bavinck, RD, 2.558; Kennis en leven (Kampen: Kok, 1922), 233. For a more detailed discussion, see Bruce R. Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocentrism in Herman Bavinck (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 72–5. 36 Bavinck, RD, 2.392, 3.298. For more detailed discussion, see Pass, Heart of Dogmatics, 123–5. 37 Seakle Greijdanus, Menschwording en vernedering (Wageningen: Vada, 1903). 38 Bavinck, RD, 3.310; cf. Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 3.295. 39 Isaak A. Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, trans. David W. Simon and William L. Alexander, 5 vols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1862), 2: 340. 40 Bremmer, Bavinck als dogmaticus, 251. 41 Bavinck, RD, 2.577. 42 A revisionist reading of Bavinck has challenged the older view that the organism in Bavinck is derivative of German Idealism. See Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny, 47–54; James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 58, 65, 78. While the broader claim regarding the centrality of the organic motif and the relationship in which it stands to the doctrine of the Trinity is sound, the claim that the content of this idea does not originate in the thought-world of Schelling and Hegel does not stand up to close scrutiny. See Pass, Heart of Dogmatics, 27–31, 79–83, 158–9. 35

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efficient and final causes. That is, efficient and final causes are real, yet the former do not directly realize the latter. This relation of indirect identity is an important feature of Bavinck’s characterization of humanity as an organism. Because the unity of an organism is both physical (mechanical) and ethical (teleological), the unity of humanity exceeds mere common descent,43 and can only be attributed to the organism’s constitutive principle, namely, Christ.44 Fourth, Bavinck also reserves a place for continuous incarnation in his theological system. Like Kuyper, Bavinck can characterize the church as a continuation of the incarnation, maintaining that “the incarnation of God in Christ . . . in a certain sense is its continuation, the path along which Christ makes his dwelling in the church, the praeparatio viae ad plenam inhabitationem Dei. Only, in this indwelling it then has its τέλος, its end and goal (1 Cor. 15:28).”45 Although Bavinck does little to develop this insight, its basic contours recur at various points in Reformed Dogmatics, such as the enigmatic claim that eschatology “is rooted in Christology and is itself Christology.”46 Although the precise content of this idea remains elusive, much of what Bavinck understands under continuous incarnation can be ascertained from his characterization of humanity as an organism. In the same way that Christ’s humanity completes the development of the organism that is humanity, the church can in a qualified sense be construed as a continuation of the incarnation. Nonetheless, it is important to note Bavinck’s caveat that the church can be characterized as the continuation of the incarnation only “in a certain sense.” Bavinck defends the uniqueness of Christ as the incarnate Son and the particularity and physicality of the Parousia.47 In Bavinck, therefore, we also see a curious combination of the old and the new. Like Kuyper, Bavinck’s Christology is no mere republication of Chalcedonian Christology. Like Kuyper, Bavinck was not averse to the appropriation of modern philosophical idioms if he thought that they could be made serviceable to the unfolding of divine mysteries. Yet in Bavinck there is a greater openness toward modern thoughtforms, an openness which ostensibly derives from his understanding of theology as a progressive and developing science.

III. NEO-CALVINIST CHRISTOLOGY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY It is difficult to overestimate the impact of the First World War on European Christianity generally and the Reformed churches specifically. The disillusionment caused by the Great War contributed to a re-evaluation of the presuppositions that governed the theological task at the turn of the century and a realigning of the relation in which theology stood to the church and the academy. Within neo-Calvinist circles, one notes a turn away from the production of large-scale projects of the older style of dogmatic theology and a turn

Cf. Bavinck, RD 2.578. For a more detailed discussion of how Bavinck conflates the Reformed Orthodox doctrine of the covenant of works with Christ’s function as the constitutive principle of the organism, see Pass, Heart of Dogmatics, 104–12. 45 Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 1: 352; cf. RD, 1: 380–1. 46 Bavinck, RD, 4,685. 47 Ibid., 4.701. 43 44

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towards the task of ecclesially minded exegesis.48 This new posture is embodied in works like Klaas Schilder’s Lenten trilogy.49 There is a haunting beauty in these books which is mostly absent in Kuyper and Bavinck. Yet, as Barend Kamphuis rightly points out, this feature also makes it difficult to get a handle on Schilder’s Christology.50 This is not, however, to suggest that neo-Calvinists were unconcerned with the precise dogmatic contours of Christology. Twentieth-century neo-Calvinists were especially attentive to the meta-theological relationship of anthropology and Christology. In the first instance this concerned the so-called anhypostasia of the human nature which God the Son assumed in the incarnation. In the second instance, this concerned the question of whether anthropology could be derived from Christology. Both themes dominated the Christological horizon in the new century.

a. The Dispute over the Anhypostasia The most significant Christological discussion that emerged in the decades between the world wars was the question of the (im)personal character of Christ’s human nature. The 1930s witnessed the ignition of a rancorous dispute which waxed and waned in intensity over the course of the decade.51 Initially, the disagreement arose from certain statements by Jan Waterink (1890–1966), who at that time was the professor of pedagogy at the Free University. In 1930, Waterink published De oorsprong en het wezen van de ziel (The Origin and Essence of the Soul), in which he upholds the anhypostasia—the theologoumenon that affirms that God the Son was not conjoined with a human person in the incarnation—in the context of an extended exposition of a tripartite anthropology which attempted to incorporate elements of both traducianism and creationism.52 According to Waterink, an individual human being’s body and soul are procreated by their biological parents, but their spirit is created directly by God. The Christological implication of this schema is that God the Son received a human body and soul from Mary, but not a human spirit. Almost immediately, Waterink’s book provoked a reaction from the Kampen Theological School. Tjeerd Hoekstra (1880–1936) accused Waterink of implicit Apollinarianism and claimed that Waterink’s tripartite schema collided with

No neo-Calvinist multi-volume Dogmatiek emerged in the twentieth century after the appearance of Bavinck’s magisterial contribution to the genre. Tragically, Valentijn Hepp’s projected magnum opus came to nothing after the manuscript of the first and notes for the ensuing volumes were destroyed in 1944 during the battle of Arnhem, and Berkouwer’s eighteen Dogmatische studiën bear a decidedly different character and fulfill a different purpose. 49 Klaas Schilder, Christus in zijn lijden: Overwegingen van het lijdensevangelie, 3 vols (Kampen: Kok, 1930); cf. Christ in his Suffering (St Catharines: Paideia, 1979); Christ on Trial (St Catharines: Paideia, 1979); Christ Crucified (St Catharines: Paideia, 1979). 50 Kamphuis, “Chalcedon in Kampen,” 34. Schilder did not write a Dogmatiek but published mainly polemical, homiletical, and devotional works. Moreover, his lectures on dogmatics do not cover Christology and his commentary on the Heidelberg catechism only covers Lord’s Day 1–10, stopping just before the questions which specifically address the person of Christ. 51 The following summary draws on the analysis presented in Barend Kamphuis, “Onpersoonlijk? De controverse inzake de zogenaamde ‘onpersoonlijke menselijke natuur van Christus’ in de Gereformeerde Kerken vóór de Vrijmaking, mede beoordeeld in het licht van het latere dogmenhistorische/dogmatische onderzoek,” unpublished Masters thesis, Kampen Theological University (1986); cf. Berkouwer, The Person of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 305–26. 52 Jan Waterink, De oorsprong en het wezen van de ziel (Wageningen: Zomer & Keuning, 1930). 48

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Article 19 of the Belgic Confession.53 Naturally, the revised second edition of Waterink’s book included an additional chapter offering a rebuttal to these criticisms.54 The controversy continued with several other figures weighing in to various aspects of this initial squabble, prompting the general synod of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland to appoint a committee to investigate differences of opinion over the union of Christ’s divine and human natures. The debate died down but was fanned into flame once again in 1937 by a series of brochures published by Valentijn Hepp (1879–1950). Under the provocative title, Dreigende deformatie (Threatening Deformation), these brochures set out a detailed response to what he regarded as a dangerous line of anthropological reasoning in another publication originating in the Free University: Het Calvinisme en de reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte (Calvinism and the Reformation of Philosophy) by Dirk Vollenhoven (1892–1978).55 For Hepp, the basic problem with Vollenhoven’s reasoning was his equation of the human soul of Christ with his entire person and the equation of this entire person with a human “I.” And one offhand statement in particular drew Hepp’s ire. Tucked away in the volume’s endnotes Vollenhoven writes, “These days, it can also be heard in the nominalist camp that the human nature of the Mediator is not imPersonal but it is impersonal! If one interprets this expression [i.e. anhypostasia] in this way, then it is Monophysite and for this reason to be rejected.”56 Implicitly, the “nominalists” and “Monophysites” to whom Vollenhoven refers included those who defended Waterink against Hoekstra in the initial skirmish. For obvious reasons, Hepp could not let this go unanswered, and so, in the third of Hepp’s brochures, he accused Vollenhoven of promoting a Christology that teetered a meter or two from the Nestorian abyss.57 Hepp’s brochures reignited the earlier controversy, prompting Klaas Schilder (1890– 1952) to enter the fray. Schilder published a string of articles that subjected Hepp’s condemnation of Vollenhoven to close scrutiny. Schilder argued that Hepp’s judgment was premature and that Vollenhoven’s wariness of the term “mpersonal” did not imply everything Hepp claimed. An important plank in Schilder’s argument is his examination of the Reformed confessions and theological treatises. His analysis showed that the Reformed Orthodox Divines did not express themselves quite as clearly as Hepp had led his readers to believe. In response to Hepp’s question, “Can one explain this in any other way other than that the only person is the Person of the Son?,”58 Schilder drew attention to a number of sources that showed that one could. Schilder argued that in the Synopsis of a Purer Theology, “anhypostasic” does not necessarily mean “impersonal,” for

Tjeerd Hoekstra, “De oorsprong der ziel,” Gereformeerde Theologisch Tijdschrift 33, no. 10 (1932): 240. It’s important to note that Hoekstra was hardly alone in objecting to the anhypostasia. In the Netherlands, yet stronger rejections of the term were articulated by Frederik Korff (1887–1942). Cf. Frederik Korff, Christologie: De leer van het komen Gods, 2nd ed., 2 vols (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1942), 1: 194–8. For a contemporary Lutheran rejection of the term, see Paul Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit: Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 2nd ed., 2 vols (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1949), 2: 225. 54 Cf. Waterink, De oorsprong en het wezen van de ziel, 2nd ed. (Wageningen: Zomer & Keuning, 1932), 156–71. 55 Dirk Vollenhoven, Het Calvinisme en de reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte (Amsterdam: Paris, 1933). 56 “Tegenwoordig wendt men hem ook wel in ‘t nominalistische kamp aan: de menschelijke natuur van den Middelaar zou niet onPersoonlijk maar onpersoonlijk zijn! Vat men de uitdrukking zoo op, dan is ze monophysitisch en dus te verwerpen.” Vollenhoven, Het Calvinisme en de reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte, Aanteekeningen, 16 fn. 188. 57 Valentijn Hepp, Dreigende deformatie, 4 vols (Kampen: Kok, 1936–7), 3: 10. 58 “Kan men dit ooit anders verklaren, dan dat die eenige persoon de Persoon des Zoons is?” Hepp, Dreigende deformatie, 3:32. 53

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the simple fact that the Synopsis refers to God the Son’s assumption of an anhypostatic person.59 Schilder then pointed out that the various translations of Article 19 of the Belgic Confession show that it is possible to speak of the divine and human natures as being united “into” a person (accusative case) or “in” a person (ablative case).60 The controversy began to wane in 1940, when Vollenhoven offered an unqualified retraction of one of his most problematic statements. In Het Calvinisme en de reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte (Calvinism and the Reformation of Philosophy), Vollenhoven had described the eternal Word as having been united with the second Adam.61 Vollenhoven freely renounced this statement as a poor choice of words, although he did strenuously maintain his innocence with regard to the two basic errors of the Nestorians and Adoptionists and insisted that the term anhypostatos bears no dogmatic authority in and of itself but represents a tradition of theological reasoning whose use of the term is far from unambiguous.62 With these words the dispute over the anhypostasia was largely quelled. But what was the outcome of this long civil war? Neo-Calvinism was grappling with what it means to be truly human. Yet precisely how Christology should be used to answer this question was not clear. On the one hand, Waterink claimed that his anthropology accorded with Greijdanus’ assertion that anthropology must have Christology as its starting-point and center.63 On the other hand, others denied that it was possible to derive anthropology from Christology.64 One outcome, therefore, is that the sustained analysis of the relation in which Christ’s personhood stands to his humanity drew attention to the question of dogmatic order, a question which would continue to occupy neo-Calvinists in subsequent decades.

b. Gerrit Berkouwer (1903–96) The unresolved question of the relation of Christology and anthropology came to a head in a new way in neo-Calvinism’s engagement with the so-called Dialectical Theology. In a searching essay entitled “Christologie en anthropologie” (Christology and Anthropology),65 Berkouwer asks whether Karl Barth’s ordering of anthropology to Christology, namely, the claim that Jesus is the source of our knowledge of the creature that is the human being, is what neo-Calvinists like Bavinck, Greijdanus, and Waterink were talking about when they spoke of Christology as the starting-point or center of anthropology. He not Klaas Schilder, “Rationaliseerend het mysterie naderen,” De Reformatie 17, no. 38 (1937): 317. Schilder, “Rationaliseerend het mysterie naderen,” De Reformatie 17, no. 39 (1937): 325–6. 61 “In other words, prior to the word as imparted knowledge stands the Word, which in a utterly unique way united with himself with him, who—conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin MARY—is the second ADAM, and in spite of his connection with fallen human nature, guides all that belong to him of Adam’s lost progeny through all hostility to their eternal destiny by means of his irrefragable bond with God and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.” (M.a.w. achter het woord als meegedeelde kennis staat het Woord, Dat zich op geheel eenige wijze verbond met hem, die, ontvangen uit den Heiligen Geest en geboren uit de maagd MARIA, de tweede ADAM is, en in weerwil van z’n band aan de gevallen menschelijke natuur, door z’n onverbrekelijk verband met God en door de salving met den Heiligen Geest, al wat uit ADAM’S verloren kroost het Zijne is, door allen tegenstand heen tot z’n eeuwige bestemming leidt.) Vollenhoven, Het Calvinisme en de reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte, 47. 62 Vollenhoven, “Anhypostatos?,” Philosophia Reformata 5 (1940): 77–9. 63 Waterink, De oorsprong en het wezen van de ziel, 2nd ed. (1932), 112; cf. Seakle Greijdanus, Toerekeningsgrond van het peccatum originans (Amsterdam: Van Bottenburg, 1906), 49. 64 Importantly, some of Waterink’s defenders numbered among the sceptics. Cf. Hepp, Dreigende deformatie, 3:30. 65 Gerrit Berkouwer, “Christologie en anthropologie,” in Feestbundel uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van het vijfentwintigjarig jubileum als hoogleraar van doctor Jan Waterink (Amsterdam: Drukkerij Holland, 1951), 7–19. 59 60

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only concludes that it is not but argues in the strongest terms that Barth’s Christological concentration of anthropology is impossible. Berkouwer’s analysis of the relationship of Christology and anthropology provides an important clue for discerning the relation in which neo-Calvinism stands to the various modes of Christocentrism that emerged in Protestant theology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.66 Berkouwer notes that Barth reverses the order of the biblical logic, which describes Jesus as participating in human nature (Heb. 2:14-17). For Barth, the Urbild, or archetype, of humanity is not Adam but Christ. Human beings, therefore, are the Abbilder, or copies, of Christ insofar as they are conformed to his image. Hence, a properly theological anthropology ought not speak of Christ participating in human nature but of human beings participating in Christ.67 Yet for Berkouwer, this reversal of the biblical logic marks the transgression of an important methodological boundary. The theologian ought not transpose the content of Christian proclamation to the register of a speculative thesis regarding the hiddenness of human nature.68 Yet Barth does just this, for which reason Barth’s form of Christocentrism must be rejected. Barth’s misstep, according to Berkouwer, is the assertion that what it means to be a human being is only revealed in Jesus Christ. For Barth, ignoring this hiddenness is the “tragic” mistake of much anthropology that masquerades as theological.69 Berkouwer, however, disagrees. A properly theological anthropology cannot ignore the order in which the kerygma presents the relation of Christ to human beings. If one is to speak of “tragedy,” then that tragedy is the suppression of this order.70 Hence, for Berkouwer, it is Barth’s theological anthropology that bears a tragic character. Berkouwer could even go so far as to say that Barth’s Christology risks Docetism because it discounts anthropology. Yet this Docetism is cloaked by the manner in which Barth had smuggled in elements of the anthropology he decried. While Barth stood in full agreement with the condemnation of Apollinaris, his condemnation of Apollinarianism proceeded from an anthropology that could not be derived from his Urbild-Abbild schema.71 Berkouwer’s bold conclusion, therefore, is that it is only after one recognizes the impossibility of Barth’s Christocentrism that a genuinely theological anthropology can be developed. “For then the path to reflection on human being that no longer bears a tragic, but rather a Christian, character is no longer blocked, and the dualism between

For further discussion of this issue, see Pass, Heart of Dogmatics, 167–97. Berkouwer, “Christologie en anthropologie,” 12. 68 Ibid., 17. 69 Ibid., 16. 70 “[T]hat the Word became flesh and that this becomes the content of preaching may not be transposed into a radical ontological-epistemological thesis regarding the hiddenness of human being. Rather, in the notrevelationless world it presupposes according to the form of the words: the direction of the Son toward flesh, in complete agreement with all the words of Scripture about the incarnation. If it is possible to speak of the “tragedy” of many anthropologies, then this lies in any case not in the hiddenness of revelation but in its radical suppression, in which case it would be better to drop the word “tragedy.” (Dat het Woord vlees is geworden en dat dit tot inhoud der prediking wordt, mag niet worden getransponeerd tot een radicale-ontische en noetischethese inzake de verborgenheid van het mens-zijn, maar onderstelt in de niet-Openbarings-loze wereld naar de gang der woorden: de richting van de Zoon naar het vlees, in volle overeenstemming met alle woorden der Schrift over de incamatie. Als er van een “tragiek” van veel anthropologieen gesproken kan warden, dan ligt deze in ieder geval niet in de verborgenheid der Openbaring, maar in haar radicale verdringing en dan zou men ook beter maar het woord tragiek kunnen laten vallen.) Berkouwer, “Christologie en anthropologie,” 17. 71 Berkouwer, “Christologie en anthropologie,” 18. Cf. the similar criticisms in Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (London: Paternoster Press, 1956), 335–7, 340. 66 67

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theological anthropology and philosophical anthropology, which might be described as untheological and, thus, neutral, will disappear.”72 Thus, while Berkouwer’s own anthropology differs from that of Bavinck, Greijdanus, and Waterink, he can affirm the kind of Christological starting-point of which these neo-Calvinist thinkers speak.73 Such an anthropology takes the temporal-historical presentation of Scripture as its methodological starting-point, yet allows Christology some degree of control in determining its content. What is important to note in Berkouwer, however, is that the dogmatic relation between Christology and anthropology turns on prior decisions regarding the relation of Christology and revelation. This decisive question is addressed at length in the final chapter of Berkouwer’s The Person of Christ.74 Drawing on the thought of Emil Brunner (1899–1966), Berkouwer uses the term incognito as a label for the notion that the flesh of Christ conceals as much as it reveals God. Berkouwer traces this idea to Kierkegaard but notes that there is actually another motif present in both Brunner and Barth’s notion of concealment which can be traced to Kohlbrügge, and hence, the “old conflict between Kuyper and Böhl suddenly achieves new relevance to the student of present-day Christology.”75 This connection is important to note, as the incognito ought not be reduced to the influence of Kierkegaard on twentieth-century Protestant theology. Rather, thinkers like Brunner and Barth were grappling with much older questions. In this case, there is a demonstrable connection between the incognito and the question of whether or not the incarnation simpliciter belongs to Christ’s state of humiliation. As we have noted, the default position of Reformed Orthodoxy was that the incarnation did belong to the state of humiliation. Importantly, many of the theologians of the seventeenth century included incarnation in the state of humiliation on the basis of a veiling of God in Christ. For example, Van Mastricht, Heidegger, and Leydekker associate the state of humiliation with hiddenness, citing John 1:14. Polanus adds depth to this by further specifying that the second step of the state of humiliation is marked by Christ’s active obedience inasmuch as the divine Law-Giver being made subject to the law is an act of self-humiliation.76 Berkouwer points out, however, that at no point did Calvin or the Reformed Orthodox regard the occultatio of Christ as an obstacle to divine revelation. Nor did Christ ever incorporate disbelief—a response to revelation—into the structure of revelation itself. Rather, “Scripture makes plain . . . that we are not confronted by a dual possibility given with the form of revelation but rather by the rejection of the content of the revelation. . . . The flesh which Christ assumed does not eclipse the radiant light of God.”77 Hence, the veil that conceals Christ’s glory from humanity is not his weakened flesh but our sin. The problem with the incognito, therefore, is that it “narrows the scope of “Want de weg is dan niet meer versperd naar een bezinning over de mens, die niet meer tragisch, maar Christelijk van karakter is. En het dualisme tussen theologische anthropologie en wijsgerige anthropologie, die niet-theologisch en daarom neutraal zou heten, is dan verdwenen.” Berkouwer, “Christologie en anthropologie,” 18. 73 Gerrit Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 88–90 and notes. 74 Gerrit Berkouwer, De persoon van Christus (Kampen: Kok, 1952); cf. The Person of Christ. 75 Berkouwer, The Person of Christ, 338–9. 76 Kuyper, De Vleeschwording des Woords, 186, 187, 189. 77 Berkouwer, The Person of Christ, 345. Berkouwer also points out that incidents such as the transfiguration and even the miracles more broadly problematize the dialectical relation of revelation and hiddenness that is presupposed by the incognito. Berkouwer, The Person of Christ, 346–7. 72

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revelation and runs the danger, willy-nilly, of lessening the responsibility of unbelief.”78 In this respect, the difference between the incognito and the older notion of hiddenness consists in the way incognito sidelines the motive of the incarnation. The very term suggests that a person wishes to remain disguised and to pursue his way unnoticed in utter anonymity. But in Christ we do not encounter any such incognito. When he conceals himself for a time, he does it with a view to his work of self-revelation and never to be able to go by unnoticed. He is concerned that people should learn to know the Incarnate Word.79 More abstractly, the incognito theory fails because it effects a “divorce of the unio personalis from its purpose.”80 Since the redemptive purpose of the incarnation must govern reflection on the person of Christ, Christ’s flesh can only be regarded as an obstacle to the knowledge of God insofar as it is an obstacle to a mind darkened by sin.81 Thus, while Berkouwer agrees that the incarnation belongs to the state of humiliation,82 this concealment of divine glory in the flesh of Christ poses no hindrance to divine revelation. Rather, what conceals the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ is the darkness of the all-too-human refusal to receive the Word of God.

IV. CONCLUSION The Christology of Neo-Calvinism, therefore, bears several distinct features beyond its affirmation of the Chalcedonian definition. First, neo-Calvinist theologians in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries strived to do greater justice to the full humanity of Christ, albeit in different ways. While Kuyper drew on the work of the Holy Spirit to affirm the full humanity of Christ and Bavinck explored the manner in which Christ’s humanity is decisive for the development of humanity as a whole, the neo-Calvinists of the interwar period strived to articulate the manner in which Christ’s humanity should be related to his personhood. What unites these contrasting strategies is a common commitment to the confession that Jesus of Nazareth is not only vere Deus (truly God) but also vere homo (truly man), and an awareness of the apparent shortcomings of Reformed Orthodoxy. Second, neo-Calvinist theologians in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries paid close attention to the dogmatic relation in which Christology stands to other doctrines and the manner in which Christology might inform, and even determine, other loci. While Kuyper and Bavinck flirted with the concept of continuous incarnation, neo-Calvinists in the twentieth century paid closer attention to the relation in which Christology stands to anthropology. The anhypostasia controversy of the 1930s exposed the importance of this question, and Berkouwer posited a conclusion in his interactions with Barth. Thus, while there are differences to be observed between the various neo-Calvinists, a family resemblance can also be discerned. Their Christologies are unreservedly Chalcedonian yet often reflect a concerted attempt to extend the logic of the church’s confession.

Berkouwer, The Person of Christ, 346. Ibid., 355–6. 80 Ibid., 356. 81 Ibid., 357. 82 Ibid., 360. 78 79

Chapter 9

Faith and Salvation GREGORY PARKER JR.

This chapter explores the ordo salutis (order of salvation) in a select heritage of neoCalvinism. Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and G. C. Berkouwer all intend to vanguard the grace of Christ in their articulations of the ordo salutis. Rather than foregrounding the underbelly, or the “ordering” it is Christ—the grace of Christ—that is headlined. Neo-Calvinism puts forth an “all gas (or petrol!) no brakes”—or better put an “all grace no brakes”—approach to the order of salvation.1 Reformed theologians have utilized the term ordo salutis to describe the theological steps by which individual humans transition from being children of wrath to children of God, through the work of the Triune God. It is a theological ordering—rather than a temporal ordering—of the benefits foreordained by the Father in the decree of election, acquired by the Son in his fulfillment of the covenant of grace, and applied by the Holy Spirit. The terminology of ordo salutis did not develop into a terminus technicus (technical term) until the eighteenth century and the arrangement was not uniform.2 Scholars have also noted the earlier use of the golden chain to discuss the order of salvation.3 The development of the ordo salutis is partially due to a shift away from reflection on the more objective focus historia salutis (history of salvation) and toward its subjective appropriation.4 The serious scholarly reflection that precipitated the development of ordo salutis as a terminus technicus was precisely an attempt to resolve the latent ambiguity surrounding Niall McKenna, “All Gas No Brakes Is Documenting America’s Most Unhinged Cultural Fringes,” Dazed, May 22, 2020; Lonnie Nadler, “‘All Gas No Brakes’ Is Capturing America’s Weird Underbelly on an RV Road Trip,” Vice, April 30, 2020. For a blip of YouTube history an independent journalist named Andrew Callaghan hosted a channel titled “All Gas No Brakes.” The channel featured Callaghan traveling around America interviewing everyday people about everything from Bigfoot Hunting to Fourth of July on Lake Michigan at the height of Covid unease. Provocatively, the show forefronts the “digital fringes” and “underbelly” of American culture; Andrew Callaghan (​@andreww​.me), “I am No Longer Associated with All Gas No Brakes,” Instagram, March 9, 2021, Retrieved August 21, 2022. By March of 2021, Callaghan and his pair of thrift-store suits broke off from All Gas No Brakes on account of a contract dispute leading to the re-invention of the show under the banner of “Channel 5.” 2 J. V. Fesko, “Romans 8:29-30 and the Question of the Ordo Salutis,” Journal of Reformed Theology 8 (2014): 35– 60, 38; See Robert Letham, “Saving Faith and Assurance in Reformed Theology: Zwingli to the Synod of Dort” (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 1979). Although tangential to Letham’s aims he draws out the distinction in the ordo salutis of several Reformed theologians (Robert Rollock, William Perkins, John Calvin, Johannes Polyander). 3 J. Todd Billings, “Redemption Applied: Union with Christ,” in The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology, ed. Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 497–513, 504. 4 G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Justification: Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 25–6. Berkouwer argues against the ordo salutis having independent significance apart from the work of God. 1

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the order of salvation in Reformed thought. Hence, in John Calvin some have argued, such as G. C. Berkouwer, that properly speaking, no ordo salutis exists—although admittedly, it would be unfair to suggest he did not bring an orderly systematic treatment to salvation.5 Neo-Calvinism, generating just prior to the twentieth century, comes not long after serious scholarly engagement commenced on the ordo salutis. Neo-Calvinism is then an interesting lens into theological development in this arena.6 In Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion this systematic ordering of doctrines is a depiction of how the grace of Christ in salvation is obtained, believers are made partakers of this grace by the Spirit, and the holy work in Christ that follows.7 Admittedly, in Calvin a narrow ordering does not immediately come to the surface.8 The presentation of the way of salvation in the Institutes is engaging because it continually circles back to Christ. As such, Calvin repeatedly brings the benefits of Christ into conversation with its victor, the person of Christ. For Calvin the benefits of Christ’s person can only be dispersed through the activity of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit unites the believers to Christ and is the seal of their salvation.9 As the believer is united to Christ, the benefits of his person find their significance.10 These lines that are drawn to Christ offer a multiplicity of irreducible yet inseparable angles through which to understand the work of the exalted Christ. Following Calvin, the natural theological progression of Reformed theology then led to further maturing on the ordo salutis. The primary interlocutor for Kuyper, Bavinck, and Berkouwer in the distinguishing features of their arrangement is John Calvin.11 Neo-Calvinism, which seeks to re-appropriate Calvin, is part of both an ordering and

Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, 29; see also Richard Gaffin Jr., “Biblical Theology and Westminster Standards,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003): 165–79. 6 For the birth of the term “neo-Calvinism” see James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 157–8; George Harinck, “Herman Bavinck and the Neo-Calvinist Concept of the French Revolution,” in Neo-Calvinism and the French Revolution, ed. James Eglinton and George Harinck (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 21 n. 43; see also N. Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2023), 3–4, 18–21. 7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), Book III, c.1, 4. 8 Venema, “The Duplex Gratia Dei and the Organization of Calvin’s Institutes: Ordo Docendi or Ordo Salutis?,” in Studies in Honor of Richard A. Muller on the Maturation of a Theological Tradition, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, vol. 70 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 123–34, 131–4. Venema has forcefully argued that Calvin does give a logical ordering of justification prior to sanctification with repentance preceding them both. 9 Gaffin Jr., “Biblical Theology and Westminster Standards,” 172–3. Gaffin gives priority to unio mystica in Calvin’s ordo salutis; see also Todd J. Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Billings relates the activity of believers in Calvin’s thought to their union with Christ. 10 Calvin, Institutes, Book III, c.1, 1. 11 Venema, “The Duplex Gratia Dei and the Organization of Calvin’s Institutes,” 134. Venema has noted that interpreters of Calvin’s ordo salutis have often attempted to make his thought more linear than it is exhibited. Kuyper and Bavinck seem to be suitable targets for Venema’s critique (see Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. III, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], 524–5, 527). In the third volume of Reformed Dogmatics Bavinck attends to the ordo salutis in the Reformed tradition—namely contrasting Calvin with Luther—before setting forth his own: (1) Just as the acquisition of the salvation took place by way of covenant so also its application will follow the same manner. The covenant of grace in this manner precedes the order of salvation and is its foundation. Therefore, the sowing of the elect must be viewed in relation to the entirety of the organism of the elect. (2) Regeneration, faith, and conversion are already benefits of the covenant of grace and are not preparations for Christ but are already the imputation of the benefits of the covenant of grace and mystical union. (3) Repentance for the Reformed was more of a decisive act of obedience to God’s will. (4) The Reformed gave faith and repentance each their own step. (5) With repentance added to the Christian life he could also do justice to the active side (i.e., it is both a gift and an activity (sanctification)). For Calvin it means sanctification is a part of repentance. 5

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disordering of the ordo salutis. The preceding diversity within the Reformed tradition and its rather early development (what is 200 years in theology?) of the discussion allows for an important qualification as we consider the development of the ordo salutis in the tradition of neo-Calvinism. Namely, we ought to expect diversity rather than uniformity among the neo-Calvinists on the ordo salutis, though, as one shall see, this diversity coalesces around the unity of grace in Christ. The chapter moves forward in three sections. Like Joshua who followed Moses—neo-Calvinist’s live in the shadow of their significant forefather. Having already introduced us to Calvin’s broad arrangement, I turn now to consider Abraham Kuyper and his appropriation and adaptation of Calvin’s ordering; this will be followed by attending to Bavinck and Berkouwer, before sketching lines of construction in the conclusion that the neo-Calvinist tradition lays forth.

I. ABRAHAM KUYPER—A NEO-CALVINIST HARE As one of the progenitors of neo-Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper is most synonymous with the label. This is because Kuyper was a bold hare whose mobilizing personality and pen garnered him international recognition and reception long before his peers.12 The clearest entry into Kuyper’s understanding of the ordo salutis may be found in his Dictaten Dogmatiek.13 The work is a carefully composed set of student notes from lectures given by Kuyper at the Vrije Universitiet from 1880 to 1901 (just before Bavinck, the neoCalvinist tortoise, took over lecturing in dogmatics). In Kuyper’s Dictaten he presents the order of salvation under the umbrella of grace. That is, that the whole of salvation is the presentation of God’s grace.14 He unfurls it succinctly here: This shows how the operations of grace are riveted together as the links of a chain. The work of grace must begin with quickening the dead. Once implanted, the still slumbering life must be awakened by the call. Thus awakened, man finds himself in a new life, i.e. he knows himself justified. Being justified, he lets the new life result in conversion. Conversion flows into sanctification. Sanctification receives its keystone through the severing of sin in death. And in the last day, glorification completes the work of divine grace in our entire person.15 Kuyper’s triune ordering of salvation is as follows: election, justification (from all eternity), regeneration, calling, justification-by-faith, conversion, sanctification (including mortification), and glorification.16 Importantly for Kuyper, election must precede Christology, and this is to magnify God’s grace and to maintain the unity of the decree. Following Calvin, the root from which everything grows in Kuyper’s ordo salutis is

James Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2013), xx–xi. 13 Abraham Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek van Dr. A. Kuyper, I-V (Grand Rapids: J.B. Hulst, 1910–13); Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. Henri de Vries (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1900). 14 Abraham Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek: van Dr. A. Kuyper—Locus De Salute, Ecclessia, Sacramentis, IV (Grand Rapids: J.B. Hulst, 1912), 21–2, 52. 15 Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, Vol. II, 297. 16 Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, iii–vii; cf. J. Mark Beach, “Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and ‘The Conclusions of Utrecht, 1905’,” Mid-America Theological Journal 19 (2008): 11–68, 25–6; Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, 17; Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, Vol. II, 297. 12

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election. For only then does theology adequately move from, through, and to God and maintain God’s sovereignty.17 The second of these—eternal justification—was the subject of much debate at the 1905 Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN) Synod in Utrecht.18 For Kuyper the question of eternal justification was one of relating faith and justification. Does justification precede faith (and therefore occurs in eternity) or does faith precede justification therefore making sense of the epithet “justification through faith”? For Kuyper, justification is an eternal divine act and therefore faith is an act by which the believer simply accepts their justification. “Justification through faith” then describes the act of the believer’s conscious appropriation of this truth. Much like how bread is not bread on account of being eaten but is already bread prior to being consumed.19 Already here, then, Kuyper takes a distinct reading of Calvin.20 Calvin, he thought, overall was too subjective, this being “the great defect of the Institutes.”21 Kuyper likewise took a different position on regeneration than Calvin, believing Calvin to have wrongly placed calling prior to regeneration.22 According to Kuyper, regeneration has three senses: “(1) either as the ingrafting of the new life, (2) or the new life’s advent into the world, (3) or its culmination.”23 He believed that we ought to talk about regeneration according to the first sense—and that other distinctions introduce categorical confusion. Kuyper does introduce some confusion with his idea of presumptive regeneration, but he does have a pastoral concern in mind, which is deceased children, particularly infants. And in this case, Kuyper’s argument is that God saves these children through the implanting of a regeneration in the first sense, even if this never comes to fruition in a confession of faith. God gives these infants the faculty of faith (fides potentialis), despite the actuality of faith (fides acutalis) never coming to fruition. The question then posed is whether this activity of the Spirit in regeneration is mediated or unmediated. In other words, is it accompanied by the activity of the Word (whether preached or read), or does it happen disconnected from the Word? Kuyper claimed: “The Holy Spirit may perform this work in the sinner’s heart before, during, or after the preaching of the Word.”24 Thus, suggesting that the Spirit might work unmediated or disconnected from the Word. In Bavinck’s mediating of Kuyper’s creative thinking he agrees with Kuyper’s distinction between faith potentialis and faith actualis. Likewise, Bavinck agrees with Kuyper’s distinction between humans as passive in regeneration, and humans as active in repentance. Therefore, he agrees with Kuyper that God’s activity of regeneration precedes the activity of faith. Nevertheless, Bavinck departs from Kuyper on key points: (1) The affinity of Word and Spirit is maintained in infant baptism, (2) if we detach the activity of the Word

Craig Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 288. Bartholomew noted the Triune nature of neo-Calvinist theology. He has in mind particularly Bavinck and Kuyper. 18 Gregory Parker Jr. and Cameron Clausing, “Introduction,” in The Sacrifice of Praise, xvii–xxxiii (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2019), xxvi–xxix. 19 Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, 64. 20 Cf. Bavinck, RD, IV, 201. 21 Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, 17–18. 22 See Bavinck, RD, IV, 151. As Bavinck notes Calvin does introduce some confusion in the way he discusses regeneration. It seems to function as both the renewal of the human mind and heart (Calvin, Institutes, Book II, c.2, 20), but also as the ongoing activity of repentance in the Christian life (Calvin, Institutes, Book III, c.3, 9). 23 Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, 70. 24 See Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 317. 17

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we will soon arrive at the conclusion that we have no need for Christ, and (3) we must be careful to not reduce “Word of God” to nature, creation, and providence. It must be the Word of re-creation. Where Bavinck disagrees with Kuyper is over the distinguishing between mediated and immediate regeneration. As such, Bavinck maintains that the work of the Holy Spirit in Reformed theology was never understood to exclude the Word as a means of grace, to which the Holy Spirit works in conjunction.25 But what about the covenant children? Bavinck placed the burden for the baptism of infants in a different location. He moved it away from the assumption of regeneration and over to a more properly load-bearing doctrine that of the covenant of grace. He wrote: “Not regeneration, faith, or repentance, much less our assumptions pertaining to them, but only the covenant of grace gave people, both adults and children, the right to baptism.”26 Returning to Kuyper’s ordo salutis he understood regeneration to involve then the implanting of new life, the gift of the faculty of faith (fides potentialis). In Kuyper’s ordo salutis regeneration is followed by vocation or calling. Vocation is “a speech that emanates from God to our human consciousness in order to show us our condemnation, as sinners, through the law and our redemption in Christ through the Gospel, and in order to call us out of the darkness into the light.”27 This external calling takes place by the operation of the Word, which has its spiritual effect internally on account of the operation of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration precedes calling because of the implied receptivity of calling, that the individual must be able to understand the Word and respond.28 This calling results in “the third act of grace,” that of conversion.29 Or as Kuyper illustrated, the bread of justification—the gift of justification in eternity—is placed into effect in regeneration and calling, finally reaching forth in conversion. The faculty of faith (fides potentialis) given in regeneration becomes the actuality of faith (faith actualis) as the fruit of conversion. The effects of faith are fivefold for Kuyper; the believer becomes (1) conscious of their justification, (2) of the implanting of Christ, (3) of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, (4) of their belonging to the people of God, (5) and of the reality of being a child of God.30 Faith is followed by sanctification, which organically proceeds from Christ as the body is transformed into the image of the Mediator.31 Sanctification then connects to glorification like a seed, which will blossom into a plant.32 For Kuyper it is important that the life of the believer is seen as proceeding from God and not from the church, the locus de ecclessia (doctrine of the church) following the locus de salute (doctrine of salvation). Hence, after sanctification is treated, he begins his presentation of ecclesiology. With eternal justification, presumptive regeneration, and the reordering of calling and regeneration Kuyper diverges from Calvin in several innovative ways in the ordo salutis. ​s​ee Bavinck, RD, IV, 79–80. see Ibid., 525. 27 Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, 84. According to Kuyper, vocatio may have two meanings. In one sense, it refers to the vocatio Dei, the ad intra calling of God which precedes the act of re-creation—God’s decision to be for us. In another sense, vocatio refers to the spiritual calling which takes place in the life of the unbeliever leading them to grasp grace. 28 Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, 84–5. 29 Ibid., 93. 30 Ibid., 129. 31 Ibid., 133–4. 32 Ibid., 156. 25 26

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Importantly, Kuyper envisions discussions of the ordo salutis to be headlined by one concept—grace.33 His innovative spirit—outpacing his peers—was often subtly corrected by his colleague Herman Bavinck, whom we turn to next.

II. HERMAN BAVINCK—A NEO-CALVINIST TORTOISE In contrast with Kuyper, Bavinck was not a hare but a tortoise. No doubt, Bavinck was well-known in theological circles at the turn of the twentieth century.34 Recognition of his theological and intellectual acumen only recently has recovered from being hidden in its shell in the Anglophone world. Whereas in a previous generation of neo-Calvinist scholars, Kuyper, the hare, was prominent, it is now Bavinck who is taking center stage.35 Bavinck begins his own unfurling of the ordo salutis with a Triune confession. Salvation is the work of the Triune God, and therefore both the acquisition and application of redemption is the divine operation of the one God. However, we may appropriate aspects of this work to specific persons. This ad extra mission mirrors the ad intra relations and as such the Word precedes the Spirit in both creation and re-creation.36 The acquisition of redemption is therefore appropriated to the Son in his prophetic, priestly, and kingly activity, which continues after his exaltation with the Father and the Son sending the Spirit to apply the benefits of communing with the Triune God.37 The “whole way of salvation” therefore attends to the “applicatory grace of the Holy Spirit.” 38 All the benefits of Christ acquired and applied by the Spirit can be summarized by the word “grace.” From beginning to end salvation is from, through, and to God, as such the benefits of grace—of communing with Christ—are innumerable.39 Dogmatics sets forth what the ordo salutis is according to the word and thought of God. The task of the dogmatician is to “display the treasures of salvation that God has caused Christ to acquire for his church and distribute to it by the Holy Spirit.” Scripture has a multiplicity of ways of discussing these benefits and therefore the task is not to place these ideas side by side, but rather to sum up the whole transformation that takes place in humans.40 First, all the benefits acquired in the application of salvation are the benefits of the covenant of grace. As such the benefits of the covenant of grace are established in eternity, although they are not executed in eternity.41 The ordo salutis bears a different character in Reformed Theology because of its attention to communing with the person of Christ and its foundation resting in the covenant of redemption.42 All the benefits of Christ are gifted

Ibid., IV, 21. “Points about People,” The Courier-Journal, October 13, 1908, 5. “He is undoubtedly the foremost living Calvinistic theologian.” 35 James Eglinton, “Everybody Loves Bavinck,” Christianity Today, February 16, 2022. https://www​ .christianitytoday​.com​/ct​/2022​/february​-web​-only​/herman​-bavinck​-dutch​-calvinist​-theologian​.html. 36 Bavinck, RD, 3. 570–1. 37 Ibid., 570–2. 38 Ibid., 572. 39 Bavinck, Guidebook for Instruction in the Christian Religion, trans. and ed. Cameron Clausing and Gregory Parker Jr. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publisher, 2022), 132–3. 40 Bavinck, RD, 3. 589. 41 Ibid., 590–1. This is a subtle jab at Kuyper by Bavinck; see also RD, IV. 216 n. 125. 42 Bavinck, RD, 3. 523. 33 34

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to the church as he continues his prophetic, priestly, and royal work by the application of salvation by the Holy Spirit in the church.43 Second, Bavinck attends to the divine ordering of Word and Spirit in the ordo salutis. The benefits for the Christian have been entirely acquired by Christ; they are included in his person and lie prepared for his church in him. There is no participation in these benefits apart from communing with the person of Christ who as the Mediator of the covenant mediates the benefits to his people.44 In the dispersing of the benefits of the covenant of grace the Word precedes the Spirit as all the benefits proceed from the fullness of Christ. All the benefits that are acquired by Christ and established by the Father are distributed by the Holy Spirit. As Bavinck writes, “All the benefits of salvation that the Father has awarded to the church from eternity and the Son acquired in time are at the same time gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thus, Christ by the Spirit, and the Father himself by Christ, incorporates all his children into most intimate fellowship with himself.”45 Third, the benefits themselves are “organically connected” and therefore are distributed in a particular order. As such, calling as a rule precedes all the other benefits as the Spirit binds himself to the activity of the Word.46 It should be noted that Kuyper and Bavinck take a different ordering here. Under the banner of this first group Bavinck includes calling (external/internal), regeneration, faith, and repentance. The Spirit continues to minister to the church through the “same bountiful Word” cultivating it in the growth of grace and knowledge in Christ.47 The benefits that follow the initiatory benefits Bavinck splits into three categories, which are organized according to the effects of sin: (1) guilt, (2) pollution, and (3) misery.48 The benefits are then aligned to these three: (1) restoration with God, (2) renewal in God’s image, (3) preserving us unto our heavenly inheritance. Provocatively, Bavinck links this to the threefold office of Christ. “The first group of benefits is that which again anoints us as prophets, the second as priests, the third as kings.”49 The church is to execute Christ’s threefold office via the activity of the Holy Spirit. One might also note in Bavinck’s presentation that he vacillates between the person of Christ and the application of the Holy Spirit. Hence, the first group of benefits is given us by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, is accepted on our part by faith, changes our consciousness, and makes our conscience free. But also, in the first, our eye is especially directed toward the past, to the historic Christ, to the cross of Golgotha, where our sin was atoned. The second group of benefits are conferred on the elect by the regenerative activity of the Holy Spirit, renewing the believer’s very being, and redeeming them from the power of sin. In this case, “our gaze is directed upward to the living Lord in heaven,

Ibid., 565. Ibid., 590. 45 Ibid., 592–3. 46 Ibid., 593–4. 47 Ibid., 594. 48 Bavinck, Guidebook for Instruction in the Christian Religion, 132–3. In Guidebook for Instruction in the Christian Religion, Bavinck arranges the ordo salutis into three categories each in relation to the covenant of grace. The first, the benefits that prepare and initiate humans into the covenant of grace (election and calling, faith, conversion); the second include those blessings that restore the nature of man in his relation to God (justification, adoption; and the third set of benefits include those benefits which reform man in the image of God (sanctification, perseverance, glorification). 49 Bavinck, RD, 3. 594. 43 44

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where he is seated as high priest at the right hand of God’s majesty.”50 Finally, in the third group of benefits the Holy Spirit preserves, guides, and seals the believer’s redemption, freeing them from the misery of death. Once more, “we look forward to Christ’s future, a future in which he will have put all his enemies under his feet and deliver the kingdom to God the Father.”51 This threefold office of Christ, which believers may behold in the work of redemption, is likewise gifted to believers in redemption. To close Bavinck’s treatment, he attends to these four groups once more: calling (including regeneration, faith, and repentance), justification, sanctification, and glorification. He notes their presence in 1 Cor. 1:30 and Rom. 8:30. Notably, Bavinck presses for the inclusion of glorification.52 Bavinck’s subtle corrections of Kuyper in his Reformed Dogmatics display his “tortoise-like” theological movement. Likewise, at least one notable feature comes to the surface and that is Bavinck’s deployment of the threefold office of Christ as a paradigm for summarizing not just the work of Christ, but the benefits of Christ.53 Therein, believers find themselves near his person and work. This too would be a significant highlight of G. C. Berkouwer’s work, to whom I now turn my attention.

III. GERRIT CORNELIS BERKOUWER—A NEO-CALVINIST FOX While I introduced Kuyper as the hare of neo-Calvinism and Bavinck as the tortoise alluding to the well-known Aesop’s fable, Berkouwer acts as “the fox” from the fable playing the role of adjudicating the theology of the two neo-Calvinist forebearers.54 Berkouwer had the privilege of refereeing his tradition because he entered the scene after the deaths of Kuyper and Bavinck, and perhaps more importantly during the development of neo-orthodoxy and the traumatic experience of Nazi occupation in Amsterdam, as well as the shifting theological scene of post-Vatican II Catholicism.55 Berkouwer’s most focused writing on the ordo salutis appears in the first volume of his Studies in Dogmatics series. This series was a compilation of theological newspaper articles produced for the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland weekly paper Gereformeerde Weekblad. Berkouwer saw three reasons to reflect on the ordo salutis: (1) dialectical theology, (2) renewed Catholic and Reformed dialogue, and (3) the Luther renaissance.56 And since, “dogmatic study, like confessional expression, wears the images of its days” it was time to discover if the clothes still fit.57 According to Berkouwer, “the way of salvation” is the application of the benefits secured by Christ in his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.58 Many feared that Ibid., 594. Ibid., 594–5. 52 Ibid., 595. 53 See also ibid., 4. 284–5 and 375–6. 54 George Harinck and Lodewijk Winkeler, “The Twentieth Century,” in Handbook of Dutch Church History, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 521–644, 598. Harinck and Lodewijk provocatively suggest that Berkouwer brought the tradition of “Kuyper and Bavinck to a close.” 55 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, ed. Geoffrey Bromily and Thomas Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 505–6; IV/2, 505–7; IV/1, 109–10. Neo-Orthodox theologians such as Karl Barth suggested that it is better to not “embark” on the “venture” of ordo salutis. 56 Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, 12–17. 57 Ibid., 19. 58 Ibid., 25. 50 51

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the ordo salutis brought too much reflection on human activity (on order) rather than on divine action (salvation), Berkouwer sympathized with this critique, but ultimately saw that in attending to the ordo attention was being drawn toward the “maintenance of the sovereignty of God’s grace.”59 Nonetheless, the ordering matters only if it helps us to appreciate “the fullness of divine salvation.”60 The way that God moves is too diverse to be placed in “a fixed stadia.”61 Calvin’s impression of the ordo salutis intrigues Berkouwer. Berkouwer suggests Calvin perceived the way of salvation to be “the manner in which the grace of Christ is obtained, the fruits that come to us therefrom, and the works that follow”—a reference I pointed out earlier.62 His simple definition is attractive to Berkouwer because it maintains its fixation upon God’s salvation and is controlled by the idea of “faith worked in us by the activity of the Holy Spirit.” It continually circles back to salvation as wrought by Christ. Even in treating the various elements of the ordo salutis Calvin always returns to salvation in Christ. According to Berkouwer, there is an orderliness to Calvin’s system which orbits salvation in Christ. As Berkouwer puts it, “Salvation in Christ—this is the center from which the lines are drawn to every point of the way of salvation in Christ.”63 The lines (of faith) only have significance because of the grace of God in Christ. Berkouwer is unwilling to put forth an ordering to his “way of salvation.” For him the pattern of the ordo salutis is irrelevant, but the starting point of the Holy Spirit is of greatest importance.64 He proposes that Scripture does not provide a strict ordering citing Rom. 8:30, 1 Cor. 1:30, 1 Cor. 6:11, and Tit. 3:5. This rich and diverse arrangement of Scripture keeps him from a strict ordering. As Berkouwer puts it, “It is clear that we cannot answer the question of the ordo salutis with a combination of scriptural terms. The determinative question is whether, in the way of salvation, we give sufficient expression to the fact that the life of the believer from first to last—is embraced by divine salvation.”65 According to Berkouwer, then, to put forth a strict sequence would devalue the significance of sola fide, as confession of resting entirely on sola gratia. The pivotal hinge for Berkouwer is the relationship between faith and justification. Theological study of the way of salvation, or ordo salutis, must then, always revolve about the correlation between faith and justification. . . . Heresy always invades the ordo salutis at this point, and this is why it is necessary to realize that the entire way of salvation is only meant to illuminate sola fide and sola gratia. For only thus can it be confessed that Christ is the way.66 So how does our fox understand the relationship between faith and justification? The “mysterious” correlation between faith and justification is lost in strict concentration

Ibid., 26. Berkouwer emphasized that the ordo salutis had no independent existence outside of the salvation won by Christ. 60 Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, 27. 61 Ibid., 28; Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, 505–6; IV/2, 505–7; IV/1, 109–10. Berkouwer was likely influenced by Karl Barth on this point, who suggested that it is better to not “embark” on the “venture” of ordo salutis. 62 Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, 28. 63 Ibid., 28–9. 64 Ibid., 30. Although Berkouwer avoids a strict ordering he is careful to delineate the relationship between faith and sanctification, and faith and justification. 65 Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, 32. Contra Bavinck, Berkouwer is against seeing the ordo salutis as the application of salvation. 66 Ibid., 33. 59

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on the ordering of salvation.67 According to Berkouwer the reality and possibility of justification rests in the phrase in Christ.68 It is in this exchange where believers are “in Christ” that faith is positioned. As such, faith points to the activity of the Holy Spirit and the preservation of God’s sovereignty in guiding man to God.69 Reflecting on the relationship between faith and justification is to demonstrate that an active faith is not side by side with Christ, but that “faith becomes true Christian faith only in him.”70 Considering this, Scripture talks about “the Way” not as “strict steps” but rather as in the beginning and end defined by salvation given in Christ (Acts 24:14; Mt. 7:13-14; Mk 12:14; 2 Pet. 2:2; 2 Pet. 2:15; Jn 14:6). The New Testament simply sees “the Way” as Christ, “walking on the way as the knowledge that one is in Christ, who is the way” (Lk. 1:78-79; 1 Cor. 4:17; 2 Pet. 2:21; Jude 11; 2 Pet. 2:15; Acts 18:25-25 cf.; Rom. 11:33; Rev. 15:3). The church then must “perpetually” reflect on the way of salvation—“not to refine” its systematization, but to promote Christ as the exclusive Way.71

IV. CONCLUSION The hare of neo-Calvinism, Kuyper, adapts Calvin in a few innovative ways in his ordo salutis with eternal justification, presumptive regeneration, and the rearranging of calling and regeneration. Importantly, Kuyper’s reflections attempt to preserve God’s sovereignty in salvation as he envisions his articulation of the ordo salutis to be emphasizing God’s triune grace.72 The tortoise of neo-Calvinism, Bavinck, reads Calvin slightly differently than Kuyper (not following Kuyper down the road of eternal justification nor presumptive regeneration and “re-ordering” calling and regeneration), reflecting a lack of uniformity in the tradition. His articulation highlights God’s triune action and emphasizes grace in Christ. Uniquely, he also utilizes Christ’s threefold office as prophet, priest, and king as a lens through which to understand the ordo salutis. A fox of neo-Calvinism, Berkouwer’s reflection brings many of the same themes to the surface.73 He attempts to maintain God’s sovereignty and headline the grace of Christ by attending to sola fide, sola gratia, and solus Christus. Berkouwer avoids setting any “fixed stadia” to his ordo salutis, preferring to promote the close connection between the benefits of salvation and communing with Christ’s person. Again, Berkouwer demonstrates for us a lack of uniformity to the neoCalvinist tradition. A delicate balance must be struck in attending to ordo salutis in contemporary theology. Like Berkouwer, we must be concerned with any sort of myopic attending to the creature in the divine work of salvation. Yet, on the other hand, creatures are both called to a certain kind of regenerate activity in the work as those being drawn to the Father, by the work of the Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit (Jn 14:6, 21; Acts 2:38; 1 Cor. 8:6). Moreover, communing with the Triune God has implications for the Christian life,

Ibid., 177–8. “But the correlation of which we speak involves a relationship which is unique, sui generis, and which therefore must remain ultimately mysterious.” 68 Ibid., 43. 69 Ibid.,178. 70 Ibid., 36. 71 Ibid., 35–6. 72 Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, IV, 21. 73 Berkouwer’s adjudication of his tradition is not lopsided. He doesn’t seem to favor Bavinck or Kuyper (the tortoise or the hare) and it is here that my illustration reaches its limitations. 67

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even now.74 A constructive rethinking of ordo salutis in neo-Calvinism ought to draw on features of the tradition. Nonetheless, the theologian must always return to the well-spring of Scripture and lift her eyes to the Lord once more (Isa. 40:26; Ps. 105:4; 121:1-2). Three features of the tradition stand out as noteworthy of developing from: (1) the application of the threefold office of Christ to the church; (2) attending to Trinitarian theology; and (3) the elevation of grace in the “ordering/disordering” of salvation. In the Dutch Reformed tradition, there is a characteristic deployment of the threefold office of Christ to describe the activity of believers in the world. This feature of Dutch Reformed theology has its roots in Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 12, which mirrors Q/A 31 and 32 with Christ’s threefold office framing the title of Christian. Both Bavinck and Berkouwer discuss the threefold office of Christ in the context of ordo salutis, with Bavinck directly connecting it to the church. As the church communes with Christ’s person, they are restored to their original vocation as prophets, priests, and kings in Christ. This threefold office of Christ, as mediator, is harmonized as the benefits are attached to particular offices. The introduction of the threefold office into the benefits of communing with Christ appropriately reframes Christian activity in the world. The ordo salutis then naturally finds itself having lines drawn to Christ. A second noteworthy feature of the tradition is an attention to Trinitarian theology when engaging in the unfurling of the ordo salutis. Just as the threefold office highlights the churches communing with and participating in Christ’s person, a delineating of certain features of Trinitarian theology in conjunction with ordo salutis brings greater clarity to salvation as a communing with the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. To some degree this is the great failure of Berkouwer in contrast with Kuyper and Bavinck. Kuyper’s The Work of the Holy Spirit consciously draws Trinitarian lines to the applications of salvation. Likewise, Bavinck’s Trinitarian program is diligent in tracing out the implications. We must admit, however, that more work is necessary here—not just in neo-Calvinist theology—but Reformed theology as a whole. Finally, all three thinkers attempt to maintain God’s sovereignty and put forth the ordo salutis as an act of divine condescending grace. Each makes theological moves that attempt to preserve divine activity. However, this grace-centered approach to the ordo salutis did result in the near abandonment of an ordering by Berkouwer. Does the path forward for neo-Calvinist’s include a particular arrangement? I think so. A theo-logical ordering—even if not uniform—seems necessary to preserve the sovereignty of God in salvation.75

G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification: Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 27. See for example Richard Gaffin, “The Work of Christ Applied,” in Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic, ed. Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 268–90, 288–90; see also, Billings, “Redemption Applied,” 505. 74 75

Chapter 10

Theological Ethics JESSICA JOUSTRA

I. INTRODUCTION In his Lectures on Calvinism, Kuyper articulated the work of neo-Calvinism as going “back to the living root of the Calvinist plant, to clean and to water it, and so to cause it to bud and blossom once more.”1 Given such a vision, it is nearly impossible to understand neo-Calvinist theological ethics without looking back to John Calvin. For some neoCalvinist ethicists, their work is a matter of retrieval: bringing the themes he taught to bear on a new time and place. For others, the work is both retrieval and cultivation—or even correction—taking the themes of Calvin’s theological ethics, refining them, and bringing to light underexplored themes within them. Central to Calvin’s ethics is a robust understanding of the law. In the law, he argues, “God has revealed his will.”2 In fact, Calvin’s emphasis on the law is so central that some claim that his ethic “is more Hebraic than Christian.”3 But a fulsome study of Calvin’s emphasis on the law4 underscores that he holds together the moral injunctions of Old and New Testaments through his understanding of the uses of the law and the example of Christ. To apply the law to the Christian life,5 Calvin taught the triplex ursus legis, or threefold use of the law;6 in its primary sense, the law is nothing less than the pattern for sanctification, the goal of which is to become like Christ. Adding nothing to the law, rather “restor[ing] it to its integrity,” Jesus shows us the way of life in God, the way of the law.7 In his teaching and example, he is the law’s “best interpreter.”8 He “has been set before us as an example,”9 of how to follow the law, in his self-denial and cross-bearing.10

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 171. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 2.8.59. 3 Georgia Harkness, John Calvin—The Man and His Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1958), 71. 4 For such a study, there is none finer than I. John Hesselink’s Calvin’s Concept of the Law (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 1992). 5 Calvin follows the “common division” of the Mosaic law, distinguishing between moral, civil, and ceremonial law. When he refers to “the law”, he is referring to the moral law. For more, see Calvin’s Institutes, 4.20.14–15. 6 See Calvin’s Institutes, 2.7.6–12. 7 Ibid., 2.8.7. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 3.6.3. 10 John Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 2, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 194. 1 2

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The law of God, Calvin argues, is embodied in the person of Christ, and through the Spirit, Christians are empowered to respond in obedience and gratitude to God’s will. As they sought to re-articulate and apply distinctly Reformed ethics to the moral questions of their own day, neo-Calvinist ethicists continue to assert, with Calvin, the primacy of the law in theological ethics and Jesus’ perfect fulfillment of the law. For some neo-Calvinist ethicists, these two insights are the central components of a Christian ethic. Others, upholding these two emphases, also follow Calvin in his insistence that Christ is “our example.”11

II. FIRST-GENERATION NEO-CALVINIST THEOLOGICAL ETHICS: THINKERS AND THEMES The first generation of neo-Calvinists, while known for many theological insights, are not primarily known for their work in theological ethics. Abraham Kuyper’s major works on common grace, politics, education, worldview, and more are lauded, but for all his polymath-like accomplishments, he is not known for theological ethics. Herman Bavinck is similarly not well-known for his theological ethics, but in Bavinck’s case, his teaching and scholarship—including previously unknown work on theological ethics discovered in 2008—prove to be an important corrective. Along with his Free University colleague, Wilhelm Geesink, Bavinck stands among the builders of a neo-Calvinist theological ethic. Both take Calvin’s ethical insights, cultivate them, and work to apply these insights afresh to the challenges of the modern age.

a. Major Thinkers: Herman Bavinck and Wilhelm Geesink Herman Bavinck is known as a dogmatician, a well-earned reputation, given his acclaimed Reformed Dogmatics (RD).12 Throughout his career, he taught dogmatics, both at the Theological University in Kampen and at the Free University in Amsterdam. Alongside his legacy as a Reformed dogmatician, he is a significant voice in Reformed ethics. As a student, his interest in theological ethics was already on display: his PhD thesis was on the ethics of Ulrich Zwingli.13 Bavinck then went on to teach not only dogmatics but ethics at the Theological University in Kampen. While teaching in Kampen, Bavinck produced the first edition of his RD. During that time, he was also working on another manuscript: Reformed Ethics (RE) intended as a companion to his dogmatics. As he articulated in RD, Bavinck understood the two subjects, dogmatics and ethics, to be both closely related and necessarily differentiated: Dogmatics describes the deeds of God done for, to, and in human beings; ethics describes what renewed human beings now do on the basis of and in the strength of those divine deeds. In dogmatics human beings are passive; they receive and believe; in ethics they are themselves active agents. In dogmatics, the articles of faith are treated; in ethics, the precepts of the Decalogue. In the former, that which concerns faith is John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. and ed. John Owen (Edinburgh, 1885), 89. Here, Calvin is commenting on 1 Pet. 2:22. 12 Henry Zylstra, for example, in the preface to Bavinck’s Our Reasonable Faith writes “Bavinck was primarily the theologian, the dogmatician. His magnum opus is the four volumes of his Reformed Dogmatics” (Henry Zylstra, “Preface,” in Our Reasonable Faith, trans. Henry Zylstra [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1965], 6). 13 Herman Bavinck, De Ethiek Van Ulrich Zwingli (Kampen: G. Ph. Zalsman, 1880). 11

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dealt with; in the latter, that which concerns love, obedience, and good works. . . . Dogmatics is the system of the knowledge of God; ethics is that of the service of God.14 From the beginning of his career, Bavinck taught and wrote on theological ethics, a topic which remains an area of scholarly interest throughout his life. Alongside his unpublished RE manuscript,15 Bavinck published many articles and booklets on ethics, including articles on the imitation of Christ in 1885 and 1886, Present-Day Morality in 1902, and The Imitation of Christ and the Modern World in 1918.16 Even in the titles of some of these—and no less in their content—two major themes begin to emerge in Bavinck’s theological ethics: the law and the imitation of Christ. Prior to Dirk Van Keulen’s 2008 discovery of Bavinck’s RE manuscript17—an 1,100page handwritten tome in the form of lecture notes on the subject—Bavinck’s work in theological ethics was undoubtedly present through student notes from his ethics courses18 and his booklets and articles. The discovery of Bavinck’s RE manuscript, however, is important in our understanding of Bavinck’s theological ethics. In it we find, albeit in unpublished, unfinished form, a sustained treatment of theological ethics from Bavinck’s own hand. A critical question results: Why was Bavinck’s work on RE never published? While this remains a question without an answer, there are two dominant theories that involve the other first-generation, neo-Calvinist ethicist: Wilhelm Geesink. One theory simply suggests that when Bavinck moved from the Theological University of Kampen, where he taught ethics and dogmatics, to the Free University, where he taught dogmatics and Geesink taught ethics, he did not want to infringe on the work of the new colleague by publishing in an area in which he no longer taught. A second theory suggests that around the time of Bavinck’s transition to the Free University, he had begun to rethink his approach on teaching theological ethics, adding substantial attention to philosophical

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 58. Hereafter, RD. He outlines the same relationship, using very similar language, in Reformed Ethics: Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, vol. 1: Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, ed. John Bolt with Jessica Joustra, Nelson D. Kloosterman, Antoine Theron, and Dirk Van Keulen (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 22. Hereafter, RE. 15 This manuscript, never finished by Bavinck, is now published in both Dutch and English. In English, RE is divided into three volumes: Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, vol. 1: Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity; Reformed Ethics, vol. 2: The Duties of the Christian Life, ed. John Bolt with Jessica Joustra, Nelson D. Kloosterman, Antoine Theron, and Dirk Van Keulen (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021); Reformed Ethics, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, forthcoming). In Dutch, it is published as one volume, including critical notes: Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Ethiek, ed. Dirk Van Keulen (Utrecht: KokBoekencentrum, 2019). 16 Herman Bavinck, “De navolging van Christus,” De vrije kerk 11 (1885): 101–13, 203–13; 12 (1886): 321–33; Hedendaagsche moral (Kampen: Kok, 1902); De navolging van Christus en het Moderne Leven (Kampen: Kok, 1918). These two works are translated into English by John Bolt: Herman Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ I (1885/86) and The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” in A Theological Analysis of Herman Bavinck’s Two Essays on the Imitatio Christi, trans. John Bolt (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2013), 372–440. 17 For more on this discovery, see Dirk van Keulen, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics: Some Remarks about Unpublished Manuscripts in the Libraries of Amsterdam and Kampen,” The Bavinck Review 1 (2010): 25–56. 18 Three of these dictaat (student notes) are preserved: “Reformed Ethics. Class Notes of Prof. Dr. H. Bavinck,” by Reinder Jan van der Veen, who studied theology in Kampen from 1878 to 1886, “Reformed Ethics—Class Notes from Prof. Bavinck”, author unknown, though assumed to be Cornelis Lindeboom, who studied in Kampen from 1889 to 1895 and “Reformed Ethics of Prof. Bavinck” by Jelle Michiels de Jong, who studied in Kampen beginning in 1901 (Dirk van Keulen and John Bolt, “Introduction to Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics,” Bavinck, RE 1, xxiii–xxiv, xxxvi–xli). 14

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ethics.19 In either case, because of Bavinck’s move to the Free University, he no longer taught ethics: that was the work of Wilhelm Geesink. Wilhelm Geesink was a professor of ethics at the Free University, where he taught from 1890 to 1923. While Bavinck did his work in theological ethics alongside work in dogmatics, Geesink worked principally in theological ethics, as seen in his academic training, with a dissertation on Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen,20 his teaching, and his two major works: Van’s Heeren Ordinantiën (Concerning the Lord’s Ordinances) and Gereformeerde Ethiek (Reformed Ethics), published posthumously by Valentijn Hepp.21 Given his focus on theological ethics, Geesink has been described as the “premier ethicist of the Dutch Neo-Calvinist revival.”22 In his work, Geesink focused on the Ten Commandments.

b. Major Themes: Law and Imitation As neo-Calvinist thinkers, it is unsurprising that both Geesink and Bavinck take up Calvin’s insistence on the centrality of the law for theological ethics. To this emphasis on law, Bavinck also follows Calvin in integrating the law and the imitation of Christ. Here, Bavinck builds on Calvin, making the imitation of Christ central in his theological ethics, and expanding the categories for imitation beyond merely self-denial and cross-bearing to an imitation of Christ’s positive virtues. i. Law In his treatment of the law, Bavinck follows Calvin, distinguishing both the content of the law and its use.23 There are “three parts in God’s law: the ceremonial law, the judicial or forensic law, and the moral law. The first two have not been abolished or removed by Jesus—he did not abolish anything—but have been fulfilled in and through him,” Bavinck argues in his RE, and theological ethics focuses on the moral law.24 These distinctions follow Calvin’s theological ethics exactly, as does his differentiation in the uses of law: (1) civil, “the law is a bridle that tames and restrains,”25 (2) pedagogical or convicting: the law “convicts us of sin” and “convicts us of judgment and punishment,”26 and (3) teaching: the law is a “perpetual rule of life.”27 The third use of the law is his focus as he articulates the “duties of the Christian life,” providing both a careful study of biblical data and ethical insights throughout church study and normative claims regarding what each commandment prohibits and what is commanded.

The De Jong manuscript begins with a section on philosophical ethics. The second section of this manuscript is on theological ethics, closely paralleling the way Bavinck organized his theological ethics earlier: “The Doctrine of the Moral Subject,” “The Doctrine of the Law,” and “The Purpose of Morality” (van Keulen and Bolt, “Introduction to Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics,” xxvi-xli). 20 Wilhelm Geesink, Gerard Zerbolt Van Zutfen (Amsterdam, 1879). 21 Wilhelm Geesink, Van Heeren’s Ordinantiën, 2 vols (Amsterdam: Kirchener, 1907–8); Gereformeerde Ethiek, 2 vols (Kampen: Kok, 1931). 22 Bolt, A Theological Analysis, 20. 23 The centrality of the law for Bavinck’s ethics is seen in the structure of RE: Bavinck discusses the law in parts one and three of his RE: humanity in conversion and humanity after conversion. 24 Bavinck, RE 1.222. 25 Ibid., 1.226–7. 26 Ibid., 1.227. 27 Ibid., 1.228. Bavinck repeats his emphasis on the threefold use of the law in part 3 of his RE: see Bavinck, RE 2.4, 13. 19

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“The will of God,” Bavinck affirmed, “is revealed in the law.”28 Christians, living in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, still follow the law, for Jesus “came to fulfill [the law], not to set aside, abolish, or any such thing.”29 Rather than setting aside the law, Jesus interprets the law, casting aside false interpretations.30 “The law is not nullified but is completely fulfilled for the first time in Christianity,” argued Bavinck.31 The task of the Christian, then, is to obey. As in Calvin, Bavinck affirms that this is “possible only through regeneration.”32 The law is our guide for daily life, teaching us how to follow God’s will, a task only possible in Christ, through the Spirit. In their discussion of the law, there is very little difference between Bavinck, in his RE manuscript, and Geesink, in Van’s Heeren Ordinantiën (Concerning the Lord’s Ordinances), a two-volume work that consists of detailed analysis of natural and moral laws33 and Gereformeerde Ethiek (Reformed Ethics), his systematic study of theological ethics. The law, Geesink argued, is “God’s revealed will.”34 As he explains in Van’s Heeren Ordinantiën, it extends to whole of life, for it concerns “the existence and behavior of our direct relationship to him, as well as to our fellowman, and so not only embody a religious, but also . . . a moral or ethical character.”35 With Calvin, Geesink affirmed the triplex usus legis, threefold use of the law, as a central hermeneutical key to understanding how the law functions: the law has a “political,” “pedagogical,” and “normative” use.36 Again, like Calvin, Geesink’s focus is on the third, normative use of the law. As he explicates the law in his Gereformeerde Ethiek, Geesink explicitly invoked Calvin’s method for teaching the Decalogue: (1) synecdoche to understand the scope of the commandment, (2) examining what virtues are commanded in the commandment, and (3) examining what is prohibited in the commandment.37 Following his detailed exposition of the Ten Commandments, Geesink turns to the New Testament. Here, he examines the “connection”38 between Jesus’ teaching and the Old Testament law. The Old and New Testaments, he argued, are deeply connected: Jesus’ ethical teaching is not new, but is a true explanation and illumination of Old Testament law.39 Jesus argued against Jewish interpretations of the law, not the law itself.40 He is no “novus legislator,”41 but the one who makes known the truth of God’s law, in its

Ibid., 2.7. Ibid., 2.8. 30 Ibid., 2.8–13. 31 Ibid., 2.11. 32 Ibid., 2.466. 33 In the first volume, Geesink examines God’s laws in the natural world; in the second, he examines God’s moral laws, that is, the Decalogue. 34 Wilhelm Geesink, The Fourth Commandment, trans. Gilbert Zekveld (1998), 3. This work is a translation of Geesink’s Van’s Heeren Ordinantiën, vol. 2, on the fourth commandment. See also Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 231, Geesink’s introduction to his teaching the Ten Commandments. 35 Geesink, The Fourth Commandment, 3. 36 Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 234. 37 Ibid., 235. 38 “Samenhang,” Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 453. 39 Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 453. He writes: “sluit Jezus’ ethisch onderwijs zich bij de Oud-testamentische wet ann.” 40 Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 453 ff. Between Jesus’ teaching of the law and Jewish ethics, Geesink argues, there is a great “antithesis.” (453, 456). 41 Ibid., 454. 28 29

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fullest sense.42 Here, again, Geesink followed traditional Reformed teaching, in the line of Calvin.43 For Geesink, Christian morality, or theological ethics, is rooted in the law. The Ten Commandments are the guide for Christian life, making known the will of God for humanity. In this, he both follows and intensifies Calvin’s claims regarding the role of the law in Christian ethics. As a theologian, Geesink placed a great emphasis on creation orders, an emphasis which undergirds his insistence on the centrality of the law in the Christian life.44 “The moral world-order,” he argued, “can be seen as the ordinance, created and maintained by God, which has to be obeyed by his creatures to whom God gave self-consciousness and self-determination.”45 He understood such a focus on the centrality of the law in Christian ethics to be both deeply Reformed and ecumenical; “Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed,” he argued, “unitedly acknowledge the Decalogue as a brief summary of the will of God for man’s moral life.”46 For Geesink, the content of the moral life was wholly determined by God’s commandments, summarized in the Decalogue. ii. Imitation of Christ The imitation of Christ, Bavinck argues, is the “shape of the Christian life.” It has a central place in Bavinck’s RE, treated in detail in part two and woven throughout his explication of law.47 Bavinck also devoted two standalone pieces to the imitation of Christ, at the beginning of his career in 1885/6 and near the end of his career in 1918. In his Reformed Ethics, his 1885/6 essays on the imitation of Christ, and The Imitation of Christ in the Modern World in 1918,48 Bavinck’s understanding of the imitation of Christ is remarkably consistent: “it is,” he wrote, “precisely all those virtues and obligations which conform to God’s law that Christ in his words and deeds leave as an example for us.”49 For the Ten Commandments “form the constitution of a life of obedience to God.”50 The imitation of Christ plays a central role in Bavinck’s theological ethics, woven together with the other dominant themes of his work: grace restoring nature, the leavening power of the gospel in the world, common grace and the goodness of creation, and the centrality of the Trinity.

Ibid., 456–7. For more on Geesink’s approach to the relationship between Jesus and the Old Testament, see the section of Geesink’s Gereformeerde Ethiek entitled “De Inhoud van het Ethisch Onderwijs van Jezus,” 458–66. 44 For more on this, see Geesink’s 1897 Rectoral Address “De Geschiedenis der Gereformeerde Ethiek,” especially in regard to natural law and ethics. 45 Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 190; Hans Schaeffer, trans., Createdness and Ethics: The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Ethics in the Theology of Colin E. Gunton and Oswald Bayer (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 17. 46 Wilhelm Geesink, “The History of Reformed Ethics,” in Selected Readings for Course in Reformed Ethics, ed. Clarence Bouma, trans. Clarence Bouma (Grand Rapids, 1941), 233. 47 See, for example, Bavinck’s use of Jesus’ example as a description of how we ought to follow the commands of the first commandment: “Jesus is [an example of strong faith in God] when he sleeps in the midst of the storm” (Bavinck, RE 2.148). 48 These are his detailed treatments of the theme. It is, unsurprisingly, also present throughout his other works. See, for example: Herman Bavinck, “Christian Principles and Social Relationships,” in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 133. 49 Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ I (1885/86),” 400. 50 Ibid. 42 43

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As Bavinck discusses the imitation of Christ in his RE, both in its historical usage and normative form, he refers to Calvin explicitly. Within Protestantism, he argued, Not a great deal is said about the imitation of Christ because people sought the norm for the Christian life in the law of the Ten Commandments and not in the person of Christ. For the most part it was discussed only in treatments of cross-bearing and selfdenial (Calvin),51 as well as in discussions of our mystical union (unio mystica) with Christ.52 Later, in the same chapter, Bavinck again drew upon Calvin—though not explicitly, this time—in his conclusions regarding what the proper imitation of Christ is: “Inwardly, the imitation of Christ consists in Christ taking shape within us (Vilmar), our entering into the permanent communion with him, particularly in the fellowship of his suffering. As such, it has two parts: self-denial and cross-bearing.”53 The two-part structure that Bavinck identified as constitutive of the imitation of Christ is the same two aspects that Calvin taught: self-denial and cross-bearing. However, Bavinck does not merely echo Calvin’s understanding of the imitation of Christ. To it, he added an extended discussion on virtue. Self-denial and cross-bearing, argued Bavinck, are a critical part of the imitation of Christ; these fall under what he later describes as “negative” or “passive” virtues.54 But there is more to the imitation of Christ: the “positive elements” or active virtues of Jesus’ instruction and example.55 Not only are Christians called to follow Jesus in his “self-denial,” “forsak[ing] the world,” and the cross,56 Bavinck argued, they are to follow him in his joy, resurrection life, and the creation-affirmation of the incarnation.57 Importantly, for Bavinck, this is not merely a task for people as individuals but as a collective. “People cannot be viewed loosely as mere individuals,” he writes as he begins Reformed Ethics;58 rather, humans are “born out of, in, with, and toward various relationships.”59 As he consistently emphasizes throughout his dogmatics, Bavinck affirms that humanity is necessarily bound together, organically, an ontological reality that has bearing for our understanding of ethics. Ethics, and in it, the centrality of the imitation of Christ, for Bavinck, is bound together with key theological themes that define all his work, including organicism,60 grace restoring nature,61 the leavening power of the gospel.62 In this, Bavinck draws heavily on Calvin, without merely echoing him.

Bavinck is referring to Calvin’s Institutes, Book 3, chapters 7–8. Bavinck, RE 1.335. 53 Ibid., 1.339. 54 Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” 424. 55 Ibid. 56 Bavinck, RE 1.322. 57 Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” 424–5, cf. Bavinck, RE, vol. 1, 325, 341. 58 Bavinck, RE 1.49. 59 Ibid., 1.60. 60 See RE 1.35–44, 49–62. For more on the relationship between organicism and ethics in Bavinck, see: Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Egocentricity, Organism, and Metaphysics: Sin and Renewal in Bavinck’s Ethics,” Studies in Christian Ethics 34, no. 2 (2021): 223–40. 61 For example, he writes: “Adam did not have to become good, he was good and had to ensure that he remained good” (Bavinck, RE 1.39, emphasis original). 62 Dirk van Keulen, “Herman Bavinck on the Imitation of Christ,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 29, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 90. 51 52

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For Bavinck, Christ and the law are necessarily woven together in Christian ethics because “Christ is the moral ideal, the living law.”63 The “shape of the Christian life” is the imitation of Christ, and Christians imitate Christ as he follows the law. Without both imitation and law, Christian ethics is incomplete. We do not properly understand one without the other.64 The imitation of Christ is law-patterned imitation of Christ’s virtues. While central to Bavinck’s theological ethics, the imitation of Christ is not a focus of Geesink’s Reformed Ethics. His was an ethic based wholly on the law. The lack of focus on the imitation of Christ in Geesink’s work cannot be explained by a lack of exposure to the imitation tradition: Geesink’s PhD thesis was on Gerard Zerbolt, a member of the Brethren of the Common Life and an important influence on Thomas à Kempis, whose work popularized the theme.65 Though he knew of it, the imitation theme does not play a significant role in Geesink’s ethics. Even the word “imitation” (navolging) is rarely found in Geesink’s Reformed Ethics.66 Geesink invokes this language on two occasions: his treatments of the first and fourth commandments. In his treatment of the first commandment, he references the imitation of Jesus (navolging van Jezus), within a broader discussion of self-denial (zelfverloochening), and submission to God.67 Geesink’s argument in this section is not, primarily, about the imitation of Christ. However, it is about submitting to God’s will, even amid difficult circumstances and suffering. As John Bolt contends, for Geesink “imitation” (navolging) involving self-denial is not an ethical norm, it has to do with submission to the hidden will of God.”68 In Geesink’s references to navolging in his treatment of the fourth commandment, he did not reference the imitation of Christ, but instead imitating God, in connection to Sabbath rest.69 For Geesink, imitating Christ does not have a normative role in theological ethics, only the law does. There is not a “universal view of ethics” among early neo-Calvinist ethicists, especially regarding the imitation of Christ.70 Both Geesink and Bavinck understand the law to have a central place in Christian ethics, but for Bavinck, the imitation of Christ is necessarily woven together with the law. As James Eglinton argues, Bavinck “frames the entire ethical undertaking as the imitation of Christ”71 which, by virtue of his understanding of imitation, places imitation and law at the center of Christian ethics. Geesink’s ethics, on the other hand, are “dominate[d]” by the law of God, argues John Bolt.72

Bavinck, RE 1.341. Jesus, Bavinck argues, provides a new, in his day, and true, for all ages, “understanding of the law.” Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” 415. The “Ten Commandments,” in turn, shed light on the imitation of Christ for they “form the constitution of a life of obedience to God and, in the final analysis, determine that which may and must not be imitated in the life of Jesus.” Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ I (1885/86),” 400. 65 Geesink’s biographer, Hepp, argues that this early work on Zerbolt was “of inestimable influence” on Geesink’s thought. Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 27–8, translated in Bolt, A Theological Analysis, 20–1. 66 In the entirety of his Gereformeerde Ethiek, it is found less than two dozen times. 67 Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 245–6. 68 Bolt, A Theological Analysis, 22. 69 In his treatment of the fourth commandment in Gereformeerde Ethiek, Geesink refers to the imitation of God, in connection to Sabbath rest, Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 346, 348, 366, 370, 371. Of note in this Reformed interpretation of imitating the rest of God on the Sabbath: Geesink explicitly notes that he is following Calvin’s own emphasis in his commentary on Genesis, Geesink, Gereformeerde Ethiek, 346, 348. 70 James Eglinton, “On Bavinck’s Sanctification-as-Ethics,” in Sanctification: Explorations in Theology and Practice, ed. Kelly M. Kapic (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2014), 174. 71 Ibid. 72 Bolt, A Theological Analysis, 23. 63 64

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III. BUILDING ON THE FOUNDATION: SECOND- AND THIRD-GENERATION NEO-CALVINIST ETHICS In the Netherlands and abroad, as waves of Dutch immigration brought neo-Calvinist insights to North American shores, Bavinck and Geesink’s ethical insights were brought to subsequent generations, and continued to be developed, refined, and refreshed for changing cultural landscapes. Second- and third-generation neo-Calvinist ethicists continue to stress the primacy of the law in their theological ethics. Some, like Geesink, maintain an exclusive stress on the law in theological ethics. The law is, they argue, the ethical norm for Christians; there is no other. Others, like Bavinck, argue that the law and the imitation of Christ are necessary for Christian ethics. But all are united in their insistence that the law is a central aspect of theological ethics. Here, we will examine three neo-Calvinist theologians and their work on theological ethics: Harry M. Kuirter (1924–2017) and Jochem Douma (1931–2020) who continued to teach and develop neo-Calvinist ethics in the Netherlands at the central neo-Calvinist institutions, the Free University and the Theological University in Kampen;73 and Richard Mouw (1940–) who worked to translate these insights for a North American audience and continued developing neo-Calvinist ethics abroad.

a. Harry M. Kuitert: Finding a “Way Between” for Modern neo-Calvinist Ethics H. M. Kuitert was a professor of ethics and introduction to dogmatics at the Free University in Amsterdam from 1967 to 1989.74 While much of his writing explores questions of hermeneutics and dogmatics, he also wrote on Christian morality. He does all of this in conversation with prominent theological trends of his day, drawing upon his Calvinist roots and seeking to find a “way between Protestant Orthodoxy and Existentialist Theology.”75 In this task, he garnered suspicion, at times, from others within the Calvinist and neo-Calvinist theological tradition. As Fred Klooster, professor at Calvin Theological Seminary and Kuitert’s contemporary, noted, “Kuitert has become something of a controversial ‘Hans Küng’ within Reformed circles at home and abroad.”76 Responding to the challenges of his day, especially “existentialist theology,” Kuitert affirmed the centrality and historicity of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for the Christian faith.77 His work in both dogmatics and ethics centered on articulating a ground for Christian faith that was not merely subjective, but did understand revelation “within the mold of history.”78 Arguing against the claims of “antimetaphysical trend” in modern Alongside his appointment at the Theological University in Kampen, Douma had an appointment at the Free University, in medical ethics. 74 To the surprise of some, when G. C. Berkouwer retired, rather than simply becoming his successor as professor of dogmatics, Kuitert remained professor of ethics and gained the title “inleidening in de dogmatiek,” making his full title “hoogleraar ethiek en inleiding in de dogmatiek,” or Professor of Ethics and Introduction to Dogmatics. 75 This language comes from the English subtitle of Kuitert’s 1966 work, De realiteit van het geloof (Kampen: Kok, 1966), translated into English as: H. M. Kuitert, The Reality of Faith: A Way Between Protestant Orthodoxy and Existentialist Theology, trans. Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968). 76 Fred H. Klooster, “Book Briefs: March 28, 1969,” Christianity Today, March 28, 1969. 77 Kuitert, The Reality of Faith, 163; see also H. M. Kuitert, Do You Understand What You Read?: On Understanding and Interpreting the Bible, trans. Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 40; this work is a translation of H. M. Kuitert, Verstaat Gij Wat Gij Leest? (Kampen: Kok, 1968). 78 Kuitert, The Reality of Faith, 141. 73

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theology, which included hermeneutical movements like demythologizing and “heavy moralizing of the Christian faith,”79 asserting the real substance and truth of Scripture, Kuitert’s work was for modern Christians, but did not capitulate to all of modern theology’s claims. But he was careful to attend to the “human factor in faith,” which produced a distinct—and sometimes controversial—emphasis on humanity and context in his work. Given this, he argued that the reality of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are true and central for their dogmatic importance, not ethical significance: The story of [Christ’s] cross and resurrection is told as our story: we are buried and risen with Him (Rom. 6:4). The inclusiveness of Jesus’ person and work determines everything for us. We are not dealing with an application of something that is really external to the application made as well as to the thing to which it is applied. We should not try to make Jesus’ story significant for us by applying His life to ours in a moral sense.80 In a later work, I Have My Doubts, Kuitert’s rejection of Jesus as exemplar becomes even more clear. Kuitert argues that Jesus cannot be a general model for Christian behavior: so is Jesus the true man and therefore normative for us? But that too doesn’t help. Jesus was unmarried. . . . He didn’t know from experience what being a father means. . . . he lived as a Jewish male in an agricultural culture, in a world in which slaves were a regular phenomenon, and so on. I don’t see how we could construct a normative picture of humanity from his life and world. . . . We find norms in what Jesus does and suffers, especially in the exemplary way in which he loved God and his neighbor to the death. But even of these I have to say that they are so closely connected with his calling that it’s impossible for us to make them a general model.81 Even the disciples, Kuitert argues, who were much closer to Jesus’ historical situation, did not understand him to be an exemplar in every life situation. If that is the case for the disciples, how much more is it the case for twentieth-century Christians.82 The imitation of Christ cannot function as an ethical model, he argued. Drawing upon Luther and Calvin, and thus remaining “faithful to tradition,” Kuitert argued instead that general moral principles are found in the law; the Ten Commandments “form a summary of what we can call the basic moral principles.” In them, we see “God’s will.”83 Though often stated negatively, Christians are to fill out the moral commands and prohibitions of the Ten Commandments through the command to love, which is the “positive side of God’s will,” the “fulfilling of the law.”84 The Ten Commandments, Kuitert contends, “form a summary of what we call basic moral principles.”85

Ibid., 11, 67. Ibid., 178–9. 81 H. M. Kuitert, I Have My Doubts: How to Become a Christian Without Being a Fundamentalist, trans. John Bowden (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1993), 79–80. This work is a translation of Kuitert’s original, Het algemeen betwijfeld christelijk geloof: een herziening (Baarn: Ten Have), 1992. 82 Kuitert, I Have My Doubts, 120. 83 Ibid., 252; cf. 267–9, where he appeals to the distinctions Calvin makes regarding the law—civil, ceremonial, and moral—as a helpful means of determining which commandments are “for us.” 84 Ibid., 273. 85 Ibid., 252. 79 80

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Kuitert did not want to “reject” the “light that Calvin and Luther have given”86 in theology and ethics, but strove to take their insights and continue to refine them, in a modern context and for modern Christians. He was keenly aware that the time in which he lived and taught was not like Calvin and Luther’s, nor was it even like his grandparents.87 His moral questions and moral context were significantly different—the Netherlands was now bursting with “plurality”88—and thus, one cannot simply regurgitate what they said, for a new day. In his time, “the anxious question [was] whether there are any fixed [moral] points at all”;89 modern people, he argued, do not and cannot simply appeal to “nature or to the revelation in creation.”90 But in a context swimming with subjectivity and autonomy, Kuitert insists that “it isn’t impossible to know what God’s will is for human beings.”91 In the Ten Commandments, which are both written on our heart and articulated as a moral code, we know God’s ‘timeless’ will.92 Taking seriously the importance of context, and once again seeking to find a “way between,” Kuitert argues that “moral discussion” begins with the timeless commandments of God; with this beginning, one must “culturally and historically” determine the content not only of the timeless commands but a “moral code” in a particular time and place.93

b. Jochem Douma: Law as Content, Christ as Motivation Jochem Douma, professor of Christian ethics at the Theological University in Kampen from 1970 to 1997, also took up the task of teaching and developing neo-Calvinist ethics in the institutions and ecclesial contexts of first-generation neo-Calvinists. He wrote extensively on Christian ethics, arguing that the law is central for Christian ethics, while also maintaining the importance of Christ and his example, albeit in a slightly different way than Calvin and Bavinck, who understand both imitation and law to form the content of Christian ethics. The content of Christian morality is the law, Douma argued; the motivation is the imitation of Christ. As revealed even in the title of his expansive work on Christian ethics, The Ten Commandments, Douma’s theological ethics is centered on the law.94 The law reveals

Kuitert, The Reality of Faith, 145. Kuitert, I Have My Doubts, 254. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid., 255. 90 Ibid., 259. 91 Ibid., 267. 92 Ibid., 269. 93 Ibid., 271, 253. For Kuitert, this involved grappling with pressing ethical questions of his time, including suicide. See Suidice: Wat is Er Tegen? Zelfdoding in Moreel Perspectief (Baarn: Ten Have, 1983). Importantly, throughout Kuitert’s life, there is a significant development in his thought, both regarding the theological foundations of ethics and the practical applications, where he took the anthropological emphases already present in his midcareer thought to an extreme (see, for example, Voor Een Tijd Een Plaats Van God: Een Karakteristiek Van de Mens [Baarn: Ten Have, 2002]), and development of a moral code (including, for example, a significant and rather sudden change in his approach to abortion: in 1965, Kuitert argued that abortion was morally indefensible; only four years later, in 1969, he argued in favor of abortion [Matthijs de Blois, “The Netherlands,” in Abortion and Protection of the Human Fetus: Legal Problems in a Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Stanislaw J. Frankowski and George F. Cole (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 172]). For a helpful overview of Kuitert’s theological development, see: Gerrit Neven, “Doing Theology without God? About the Reality of Faith in the 21st Century,” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 6, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 33–6. 94 Jochem Douma, The Ten Commandments: Manual for the Christian Life, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1996), 376–7. This work was originally published as De Tien Geboden: 86 87

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God’s “core commandments,”95 he wrote, and thus it was not only “important for ancient Israel, . . . the New Testament church derives her norm for Christian living from the Decalogue”;96 in other words, the law is the “norm for life.”97 Appealing to Calvin’s triplex ursus legis, Douma argued that in Christ, “the law remains the charter of our liberty,” it “teaches us the form of Christian living.”98 As such, the law is the normative guide for Christian ethics, but Christians cannot understand the law without Christ. Only as those “in the hands of Christ” can Christians follow the law, and only on account of Christ’s fulfilling of the law can Christians know the depth of the commandments.99 In his discussion of the law, Douma asked a critical question: Given that the Ten Commandments provide normative guidance that is not only for Christians (especially the second table), how are Christian actions uniquely Christian? “In many respects,” he argued, “Christians act exactly like non-Christians.”100 Scripture appeals to “ordinary” virtues like “friendliness, modest, moderation,” and so on that can be recognized by, and affirmed in, Christians and non-Christians alike.101 But even so, Douma contended that “the full picture of the conduct of the Christian would still look different from that of non-Christians.”102 To understand this difference, Douma appealed to following, or imitating, Jesus. Transformed by Christ, a Christian’s actions have a different motivation. Even if the ethical standard is the same for all people, the internal motivation and direction is different for Christians: Christian receive “another direction which can be classified as following Christ.”103 The newness in direction, Douma argues, is not a new standard for ethical behavior. Rather, it is a new motivation to follow the law: one of gratitude, marked by the following of Jesus Christ.104 Because the Christian is transformed in and through Christ, “he accepts in his life the Decalogue as his rule of gratitude.”105 A difference in one’s internal motivation, that is, morality characterized by following Christ, cannot remain merely internal, Douma argued. It changes how a person lives and acts. But even so, when one’s life “blossom[s] anew” on account of their transformation in Christ and they “no longer steal, not grumble, leave sexual indulgence behind, and flee dirty language and drunkenness”106 (actions which remain normed by God’s law),

Handreiking voor het Christelijk Leven (Kampen: Uitgeverij Van den Berg, 1992). 95 Jochem Douma, Responsible Conduct: Principles of Christian Ethics, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2003), 90. This work was originally published as Jochem Douma, Verantwoord Handelen (Kampen: Uitgeverij Van den Berg, 1984). 96 Douma, Responsible Conduct, 90. 97 Ibid., 94. 98 Douma, The Ten Commandments, 11. He goes into depth on the meaning and application of the threefold function of the law in Responsible Conduct, 101–11. 99 Douma, The Ten Commandments, 11; see Douma, Responsible Conduct, 97–9. 100 Douma, Responsible Conduct, 115. 101 Ibid., 116. 102 Ibid., 117. 103 Jochem Douma, Christian Morals and Ethics (Winnipeg: Premier Pub., 1981), 52, emphasis original. 104 He argues that Ephesians 6 makes this clear: Paul instructs children to “obey your parents in the Lord [Jesus],” Douma, Responsible Conduct, 78; emphasis original. Explaining this passage, Douma argues that “the motive here is following Christ. Christians must walk differently than the pagans, not (only) because the Ten Commandments require that, but because they have learned to know Christ,” Douma, Responsible Conduct, 78; Douma repeats this example in The Ten Commandments, 374. 105 Douma, Responsible Conduct, 119. 106 Ibid.

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this remains the “normal” morality. While it may seem “different,” given the norms and patterns of the world in which Christians live, it is not a different, or new, morality. The difference is simply from a “negative attitude toward the command of God.” This is why, said Douma, “a morality that is entirely normal and human has come to be viewed as something weird and unusual.”107 According to Douma, the Ten Commandments are the normative, natural, universal guide for human living, and remain so when one is in Christ.108 But Christians follow the law on account of their transformation through, and union with, Christ. With this, Douma brought together the law and the imitation of Christ. Following or imitating Christ is the direction of Christian ethics; the content remains the law. Thus for both timeless and contextual ethical dilemmas, Douma appealed to a robust application of the Ten Commandments to daily living: from questions on iconography to Sunday observance in a secularizing society, to questions based on new scientific developments, like artificial insemination.

d. Richard Mouw: Amending “Creational Theology” Richard Mouw is the president emeritus and a senior professor of faith and public life at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is also senior research fellow of the Henry Institute at Calvin University, the university where he began his academic career as a professor of theology from 1968 to 1985. His father, a pastor in a denomination with historic Dutch roots, was, as Mouw described, “more generically evangelical” in his theology “than Reformed.”109 His mother, “the daughter of strict Dutch Calvinist immigrants.”110 The imprints of both Dutch Reformed theology and North American neo-evangelicalism are deep and vibrant in his work on theological ethics. Alongside thinkers like his colleague, Lewis Smedes (professor of theology and ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, who both translated Dutch neo-Calvinist texts, including Kuitert’s work, into English and made his own important contributions to neo-Calvinist ethics, especially through his widely received primer on Christian ethics, Mere Morality),111 Mouw has brought key neoCalvinist ethical insights to North America, articulating them in, and building upon them for, a new context. Mouw strongly emphasizes the place of the law in Christian morality. But his theological work was, and is, to a great extent, a quest for dialogue and a search for commonness. Without neglecting or abandoning the theological distinctives of his own neo-Calvinist ecclesial and theological tradition, Mouw is eager to learn from the insights of other theological traditions. This posture gives unique accents to his theological ethics, particularly regarding the imitation of Christ. Drawing both on insights from his own tradition in Bavinck and Calvin and the insights of Anabaptist ethicists who stress the centrality of Jesus’ example and teaching for Christian morality, Mouw presents several “amendments” to Calvinist ethics, without negating an emphasis on the law.

Ibid., 122. Douma notes that “we are indeed free from the yoke and curse of the law, but that doesn’t mean we are free from the commandments and norms of the law,” Douma, Responsible Conduct, 95. 109 Richard Mouw, Adventures in Evangelical Civility: A Lifelong Quest for Common Ground (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), 142. 110 Ibid., 143. 111 Lewis Smedes, Mere Morality: What God Expects from Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983). 107 108

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In his major work on theological ethics, The God Who Commands, Mouw argues for a “morality based on obedience to divine commands,” that is, the moral law.112 Echoing Bavinck, Mouw situates the demand to follow the law within our covenantal relationship with God; the law does not hang over us to simply condemn or issue cold demands, but the Christian “delight[s] in the Law of the Lord,” for the “God who commands is the same one who has, in the person of Jesus, entered into a human frame of reference.”113 Like neo-Calvinist thinkers before him, Mouw places great emphasis on the exegetical and historical context of the “Thou shalts’ of Exodus 20”: the commands of God follow the liberation and deliverance of God.114 Avoiding both legalism and antinominalism, he reaffirms that Christians neither follow the law to bring themselves into right standing with God nor reject the law on account of their relationship with God. The imitation of Christ sharpens, refines, and amends Mouw’s Calvinist, Trinitarian, law-based ethic.115 Mouw explores this theme through both a Reformed understanding, in Bavinck’s work, and through Anabaptist interpretations of the theme.116 While he remains “much more of a ‘Sinai commandments’ thinker when it comes to charting out the proper paths of a godly moral life,” dialogue with other Christian theologians, particularly Anabaptist theologian John Howard Yoder, is instructive, and constructive, for his theological ethics, “as a corrective to the relative lack of attention given to these teachings of Jesus in my own tradition.”117 While he does not accept all of Yoder’s teaching on the imitation of Christ, especially as it relates to imitating Christ on the cross,118 Mouw argues that there is a “power and profundity” in the Christian vision Yoder espouses that can and must correct some Reformed impulses.119 What does this mean for neo-Calvinist ethics? Mouw argues that Jesus is both “the fulfillment of the potentials and yearnings of the older patterns of righteousness” and he “radically changes those previous understandings of God’s will for human beings.”120 In other words, he argues that “the newness of Jesus’ witness needs to be stressed more energetically in Calvinist ethics.”121 Jesus must matter, concretely and definitively, for Christian ethics, argues Mouw, and thus, Christian ethics cannot simply be about the law; it must include the life, death, resurrection, and teachings of Jesus. “Given the arrival of Jesus in our midst, we can never again be content simply to guide our lives with reference to creational ordinances or revealed laws.”122

Richard Mouw, The God Who Commands (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 20. Ibid., 18, 19. 114 Ibid., 19. 115 He also consistently exhorts Christians to “imitate the divine character,” with an appeal to the imitatio Dei. See: Richard Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2010), 35; Richard Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002), 32; Richard Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 77. 116 Years before the discovery of Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics manuscript, he references John Bolt’s work on Bavinck and the imitation of Christ with great receptivity (Mouw, The God Who Commands, 156). 117 Mouw, Adventures in Evangelical Civility, 151. 118 For his criticisms, Richard Mouw, Politics and the Biblical Drama (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1983), 112–16. 119 Ibid., 116. 120 Richard Mouw, “Creational Politics: Some Calvinist Amendments,” in The Challenges of Cultural Discipleship: Essays in the Line of Abraham Kuyper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 122. 121 Ibid., 122. 122 Ibid. 112 113

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IV. NEO-CALVINIST THEOLOGICAL ETHICS: ONGOING QUESTIONS In his rectoral address on the “Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” Bavinck succinctly summarized a critical insight of the Reformation: replacing the dominant, “dualistic” worldview with a worldview that “embraces all of life,” a catholic worldview.123 After the work of Luther and Zwingli, Bavinck argued, this vision was finally seen in the “powerful mind of the French Reformer,” Calvin, who teaches that “re-creation is . . . a joyful tiding of the renewal of all creatures.” In Calvin’s work, “the Gospel comes fully into its own, comes to true catholicity.”124 But for all his praise, Bavinck argued that “even in Calvin the negative virtues of self-denial, cross-bearing, longsuffering, and moderation are emphasized.”125 While Calvin comes closest to embracing a full catholicity—that is, a clear understanding of the way grace restores, not supplants, nature—there is still work to do. Calvin’s law-based ethic drives Christians toward Christ’s example, his perfect pattern of self-denial and cross-bearing. But is this all of Christ’s example? Bavinck’s ever-so-slight critique of Calvin suggests that it is not. In his RE and “The Imitation of Christ and the Modern World,” Bavinck articulated an imitation of Christ that embraces not only these “negative virtues”126 but the “positive elements” of Christ’s example.127 Neo-Calvinist ethics is not only a retrieval of Calvin’s themes for and in the modern world but a testing of these themes, in light of Scripture, and refining them by Scripture where necessary. Both tasks remain ours today: retrieving critical themes from generations past for our own time and continuing to sharpen, refine, and even amend these themes, in accord with Scripture.

A. The Example of Christ: What Role Ought It Play? The neo-Calvinist tradition universally affirms the central place of the law in the life of the Christian. The Ten Commandments reveal God’s will and, for those who are in Christ, are a means of instruction in the Christian life. Alongside the normative, positive understanding of the law for the life of the Christian, the theme of imitating Christ persists. Sometimes the imitation of Christ is in the foreground, as in Bavinck, sometimes in the background, as in Douma, and sometimes rejected, as in Kuitert. The relationship between these two ethical motifs, the law and imitation, raises important questions for neo-Calvinists to continue to wrestle with: Should Christ’s example have a normative place in Christian ethics? And if it should, how ought we imitate Jesus? Theological traditions that do place the imitation of Christ as central for theological ethics answer the latter question in different—even opposing!—ways. Bavinck describes four prominent ways the theme has been utilized throughout Christian history: (1) the martyr, imitating Christ in his suffering and death; (2) the monk, imitating Christ in his poverty, chastity, and obedience; (3) the mystic, imitating Christ in piety and deep meditation on his suffering; and (4) the rationalist, seeing Christ only as example. Bavinck Herman Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” trans. John Bolt, Calvin Theological Journal 24, no. 1 (1989): 235, 211. 124 Ibid., 238. 125 Ibid., 237. 126 Ibid. 127 Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” 424. 123

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advocated for a different understanding: the Ten Commandments should “determine that which may and must not be imitated in the life of Jesus.”128 But if we imitate Christ as he follows the law, the functional result may not be all that dissimilar from an ethic based only on the Ten Commandments. In dialogue with Anabaptists, who argue that “the life of Jesus is the revelation of true humanity—as the Ten Commandments could not be,”129 Mouw wrestles with the relationship between Jesus and the law. Within a tradition that stresses fulfillment and continuity, what should we make of the “newness” Jesus brings?130 Bavinck, too, raises the question of the relationship between law and gospel, seeking to address both their continuity and distinction: the law certainly had no knowledge of Christ at all, knew nothing of saving faith, and so forth, but as soon as the gospel comes with proclamation—Believe in Jesus and be saved—then that believing comes to us as a demand and obligation on the basis of the law. The law requires that we believe and do whatever God may command and demand later; the law considers the command to believe as part of it, as it were, and makes it binding and mandatory for all of us. For it is a command from the God who is also the author of the law.131 Bavinck and Mouw provide important insights, but there is still work to do to flesh out a neo-Calvinist answer to the question: When joined together, what substance does Jesus’ example bring to a law-based ethic? Can Jesus introduce something new ethically while affirming the created order? To these, Bavinck raised another important question: If we are to imitate Christ, how do we imitate the full Christ, given a Reformed commitment to the positive use of the law? Bavinck undoubtedly explored this more than Calvin, most notably when he argued that the church “is to be a reforming and renewing presence in the world.”132 This positive accent on the imitation of Christ also briefly emerges in his RE, where Bavinck argued that imitation is “also a participation in [Christ’s] resurrection and life . . . we also share in his ascension.”133 But the majority of Bavinck’s work on imitation remained focused on what he deems “negative virtues.” His description of the disciples’ imitation of Christ is a “life of denial, cross-bearing, and complete opposition to the world”;134 and most of his emphasis in his conclusions regarding a biblical imitation of Christ remains on—as in Calvin—self-denial and cross-bearing.135 But is following Jesus’ example only, or at least primarily, about suffering? If the law, as Calvin’s triplex usus legis argues, contains not only prohibitions, but a positive, beautiful vision of the Christian life, following Jesus—the law’s best and perfect interpreter—as he follows the law should lead us to not only suffering and denial, but joy. Certainly, this is Bavinck’s argument in “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church” and is at the

Ibid., 400. John Howard Yoder, “Walking in the Resurrection,” in Revolutionary Christianity: 1966 South American Lectures, ed. Paul Martens, Mark Thiessen Nation, Matthew Porter, and Myles Werntz (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 39–40; emphasis original. 130 Mouw, “Creational Politics: Some Calvinist Amendments,” 122. 131 Bavinck, RE 1.146. 132 Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” 437, cf. 424. 133 Bavinck, RE 1.325–6. 134 Ibid., 1.321. 135 Ibid., 1.322–3. 128 129

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core of Bavinck’s criticisms of imitation motifs that are so ascetically oriented that they “experience no joy in living.”136 The neo-Calvinist tradition affirms that the will of God laid out in the law is more than mere prohibitions; the law is a beautiful picture of God’s life for his people. Thus, the question remains: How can we be fully catholic in our understanding of Jesus and his example? Jesus is the one who brings creation “tidings of joy,” who gives “good and perfect gifts”;137 his grace restores nature; he is the one who not only took upon himself the sin and misery of the world, but came to give life abundant;138 he is the one who suffered and died, and the one “through whom all things were made”;139 the one who teaches us to delight in the law. The neo-Calvinist emphasis on the positive, normative use of the law, and the catholicity of Christianity, pushes us to continue exploring the “positive aspects” of Jesus’ example.140

V. NEO-CALVINIST ETHICS: DIVERSITY, APPLICATION, AND CONTINUED DISCERNMENT As neo-Calvinist theological ethics continue to be explored, retrieved, and rearticulated in and for diverse times and places, one of the exciting developments is the application of ethical principles. This is not to say that for Bavinck, Geesink, and later neo-Calvinists, ethical principles were merely understood in abstraction. In his explication of the Ten Commandments, Bavinck raised intensely practical examples: from Sabbath observance (can Christians cook or take a walk?), to clothing and make-up (can Christians wear wigs or whiten their teeth?), to questions about money (should Christians be voluntarily poor?). Similarly, Douma discussed pressing, contemporary questions in his work on the Ten Commandments: abortion, euthanasia, suicide, civil disobedience, marriage, artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, and more. Neo-Calvinist theological ethics has never been mere theory; it has always wrestled with practical, ethical questions of the day in light of the Ten Commandments and, at times, the imitation of Christ. New generations of neo-Calvinists, though, standing on the shoulders of those who have come before, can take these insights and apply them to particular, concrete ethical questions and quandaries. In 2013, Richard Mouw argued that “one of the problems in neo-Calvinism is that we’ve never really developed an ethics. We have politics and we have a good economic theory . . . but how do you live your life?”141 The foundational insights to answer this question are steadfast within the neo-Calvinist tradition. But Mouw identified important work yet to be done, and this work has certainly begun, with Nico Koopman’s work on reconciliation, justice, and equality in South Africa, Ximian Xu’s work on the church’s public witness in China,142 Romel Regalado Bargares’s work

Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” 406. Ibid., 429. 138 Jn 10:10. 139 Col. 1:16. 140 Richard Mouw argues this in All that God Cares About, as he continues his dialogue with Anabaptists on this theme. Richard Mouw, All that God Cares About (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020), 15–17. 141 Richard Mouw and James K. A. Smith, “An Anabaptist-Reformed Dialogue: Continuing our Conversation with Richard Mouw,” Comment Magazine, September 20, 2013. 142 Ximian Xu, “3 Lessons for Chinese Churches from Herman Bavinck,” Christianity Today, February 18, 2022. 136 137

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on populism and violence in the Philippines,143 Matthew Kaemingk’s work on hospitality and immigration in the United States,144 Vincent Bacote’s work on political formation and discipleship in the United States,145 and so much more. As the cultural contexts for neo-Calvinist theological discernment grows and diversifies—from Europe to North America, to Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, China, and beyond—we have the opportunity to continue both distilling principles from cultural applications, and stretching our ethical imaginations with diverse insights, each convinced that God’s will is disclosed, for all people in every time and place, in the Ten Commandments. Honoring one’s mother and father, for example, takes a particular shape in the Western world. How might neo-Calvinists in the non-Western world expand our understanding of what it means to honor our parents? We can ask these questions with confidence and expectation when taking seriously the neo-Calvinist affirmation that “Christianity has a particular responsibility with respect to nature and culture. It never opposes nature and culture in themselves but only their degeneration . . . the Gospel only, but then completely and universally, opposes sin.”146

Romel Regalado Bagares, “Power Politics in the Philippines: A Reformed Response to the Populism and Violence of Duterte,” in Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for the World, ed. Matthew Kaemingk (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), 135–48. 144 Matthew Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018). 145 Vincent Bacote, The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015). 146 Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” 430. 143

Chapter 11

Ecclesiology MICHAEL R. WAGENMAN

I. INTRODUCTION At the dawn of the twentieth century, the neo-Calvinist impulse began to re-examine1 the place and role of the church within the Reformed tradition and modern society. Sweeping political, economic, technological, and cultural changes taking place across Europe during the preceding century had sparked this re-examination. Abraham Kuyper emerged as one of the earliest and most vocal Reformed theologians to perceive that the question of the church in the modern world was “none other than the problem of Christianity itself.”2 In this chapter, we will examine the ecclesiology of the sixteenth-century Reformed confessions, which form the foundation of the neo-Calvinist tradition, before turning to those key theological elements which were given renewed attention during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will conclude with a brief survey of twenty-first-century developments within the global neo-Calvinist tradition as well as those areas of ecclesiology which still require further retrieval and renewal for the life of the church in the world. Neo-Calvinist ecclesiology is a non-dualistic, world-engaging form of Christian faith and practice in which discipleship takes place in the gathered community of believers so that Christians can be sent to deploy their gifts as part of a worldwide Christian movement of serving the world in love. This neo-Calvinist impulse which propelled the church into God’s comprehensive mission grew as the sixteenth-century Reformation made its way through the scientific, technological, and cultural revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries to meet the urgent needs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

II. THE CHURCH IN THE REFORMED CONFESSIONS The Belgic Confession (1561), the Second Helvetic Confession (1562), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and the Canons of the Synod of Dordrecht (1618–19) are often The exact nature of the neo-Calvinist impulse on the Reformed tradition (Calvin) is debated. Peter Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 260, argues that Kuyper only sought to modernize the “application of Calvin’s theology” (emphasis original). 2 Abraham Kuyper, “Conservatism and Orthodoxy: False and True Preservation,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 68. 1

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considered to be the Dutch Reformed tradition’s key confessional documents. One may also add Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.3 Due to the polemical nature of this period, McNeill argues that the Reformers and their confessions reveal “no great fundamental variations of thought”; rather, they “differ in phraseology, in the order of treatment, in the structure of their argument; but they can hardly be said to contradict each other”4 in charting a view opposed to Rome. The Reformed confessions define the church as the gathered body of all true Christian believers in Jesus Christ, the head of the church, by the power of the Holy Spirit. This body of God’s elect has always existed throughout the world and is bound together through a common faith in Jesus Christ because “Christ is eternal King who cannot be without subjects.”5 When the church is considered as a historically manifest gathering in the world, the Reformed confessions indicate that the true church is marked by being organized under proper biblical leadership for the true preaching of the Word of God, the right administration of the sacraments, and the practice of mutual discipline/instruction.6 Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 82-83, for example, also refers to these marks as constituting the “keys” whereby the doors of the Kingdom of God are opened or closed. The Reformed confessions also address the creedal attributes of the church’s unity, holiness, catholicity/ universality, and apostolicity. Despite recurrent reminders of the polemical context in which the Reformed confessions were written, this background to neo-Calvinist ecclesiology is important. The neo-Calvinist understanding of the church developed as a distinct strain within Reformed ecclesiology over time as key figures responded to the challenges and opportunities of its context—in many cases, a context which involved separating from state churches and a mix of emerging denominations in each country, region, and even city.

Questions Three primary questions emerged after the period of the Reformation. The neo-Calvinist tradition would eventually engage these key questions in order to equip the church to respond to the growing theological and sociopolitical challenges of the modern era. These questions relate to the church’s polity (with the added nuance of separating [or not] from state churches), the church and its relationship to the Kingdom of God, and the church’s place and role in the mission of God to the world. The first question is the issue of congregationalism versus denominationalism. Due to their engagement with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformers emphasized the congregational nature of the church in its various local settings. Belgic Confession article 27 speaks of the ekklesia as “a society of men [sic] called out . . .

1559/60 is often seen as when Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008) achieved its definitive shape. 4 John T. McNeill, “The Church in Post-Reformation Reformed Theology,” The Journal of Religion 24, no. 2 (April 1944): 98. Richard Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), argues that this assessment may not be entirely correct. 5 Belgic Confession, article 27. 6 There is debate within the Reformed tradition on the exact number and nature of the marks of the true church. See Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 4:307–19. Bavinck, RD, 4:312, summarizes this debate by saying that “The Word is truly the soul of the church. All ministry in the church is a ministry of the Word.” 3

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and assembled” in a particular place. Bavinck summarizes the belief of the Reformed tradition by saying that in each local congregation the entire church is present: “Every local church is therefore simultaneously an independent manifestation of the body of Christ and part of a larger whole.”7 While the later Reformed tradition worked out how the local congregation related to the national or denominational church, neo-Calvinists like Abraham Kuyper used this ecclesiological distinction to safeguard local congregations from the intrusion of national or denominational bureaucrats.8 A second question is the extent to which the Reformed confessions define the church conterminously with the Kingdom of God. Calvin writes in the Institutes (4.2.4) that “the church is Christ’s Kingdom.” This is echoed in article 27 of the Belgic Confession and Q/A 123 of the Heidelberg Catechism. The point the confessions are making is that God rules his people by his Word faithfully proclaimed in the church. But this repetitious equating of the church with the Kingdom serves to define the church as the Kingdom of God. Due to the ambiguity, one wonders if God’s redemptive interest is not only actualized but also intended solely for within the boundaries of the church as the believing community. Christ’s kingship over all of Creation has fallen from view. Neo-Calvinist ecclesiology will address this in the twentieth century. The third question that remains largely untouched during the Reformation period but which the neo-Calvinist tradition will pick up with dynamic interest is the place and the role of the church, within the Kingdom of God, for the comprehensive mission of God to the world. As European society undergoes a process of secularization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, neo-Calvinist theologians will return to how the church participates in the missio Dei.

III. ABRAHAM KUYPER Though many important others predate and follow him, Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) marks a decisive point of development in what will be called neo-Calvinist ecclesiology. Kuyper perceived that how the church related to modern society was the key issue for ongoing Christian faith and practice. While Kuyper retains the Reformed ecclesiological framework noted earlier, he relocates ecclesiology within the entire enterprise of theology in a highly creative and dynamic way for addressing the pressing challenges of modern society. Bratt perceives various phases in the development of Kuyper’s ecclesiology.9 Rather than rehearse this history, we will attend to his most significant contributions to neo-Calvinist ecclesiology as a whole.

a. Palingenesis/New Birth For Kuyper, the church emerges ultimately from God’s organic work of New Creation in the world of fallen Creation. This is not the same as Kuyper’s distinction between the organic and institutional modes of the church’s existence in the world, which will be addressed below. Instead, the point here is that behind and before the emergence of the

Bavinck, RD, 4:374. For a summary of Kuyper’s sustained attention to abuse of church power, see Michael R. Wagenman, The Power of the Church: The Sacramental Ecclesiology of Abraham Kuyper (Eugene: Pickwick, 2020), 9–19. 9 James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2013), 172–3. 7 8

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church in the world is the organic infusion of God’s redeeming grace that meets the fallen world and restores and renews it. One form this will take is what we call the church; the church comes to expression in the world because of palingenesis or the new birth God lovingly bestows to redeem and renew the fallen world. We can analyze this emergence of grace at many levels of resolution, from the cosmic “body of Christ” view of the whole church to the level of the individual’s mystical union with Christ through faith and Spirit. In either case, palingenesis is the organic essence of the church which comes to temporal expression in the world as believers, believers congregated together in visible local churches, and Christ’s entire redeemed people. Kuyper will use this idea to argue for both the doctrinal purity of the church as well as the comprehensive world-engagement of the church (true faith being manifest through participation in the comprehensive redemptive mission of God). This is where Kuyper’s (and the neo-Calvinist) interest in the church as the “mother of believers” originates. Bartholomew has shown how Gal. 4:26 (“the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother”) was picked up by theologians in the third century and especially with Augustine in the fourth century to underscore how our belief is birthed by God working through the church, our mother.10 Kuyper himself tells the story of his own conversion while reading Charlotte Yonge’s novel, The Heir of Redclyffe. It was his encounter with a church that was “a mother who guides our steps” when, he says, “my ideal for churchly life came to me in this fleeting world.”11 Kuyper connects this maternal metaphor with the church having an organic root in new birth. He says, humanity is born from her maternal womb . . . “She is a mother”—to use Calvin’s beautiful expression—“whose womb not only carried us, whose breast not only nursed us, but whose tender care leads us to the goal of faith. . . . Those to whom he is a Father, the Church must also be Mother, and apart from her motherly care no one grows to maturity”. The church is our mother! . . . Her womb granted us life.12 Therefore, Kuyper argues that the church “is not just a collection of Jesus’ followers” but is “the rich organism in which not just his spirit but Christ himself is in a full sense . . . where a new power reveals itself and that new life works.”13

b. Cosmology and Sphere Sovereignty Kuyper also relocates where the church is considered theologically: not in God’s redemption post-Fall (soteriology) but rather God’s Creation (cosmology). This theological innovation alone may be what has resulted in neo-Calvinism’s dynamic world-orientation. Earlier, in the Reformed confessions, the Reformed tradition placed the emphasis on the church being a gathering of believers. Kuyper does not deny this but instead grounds the church in the structure of God’s Creation as a whole, giving the church a comprehensive, rather than merely a religious, focus.

Craig G. Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017), 161–5. 11 Abraham Kuyper, “Confidentially,” in Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 54–5. 12 Abraham Kuyper, Rooted and Grounded: The Church as Organism and Institution, ed and trans. Nelson Kloosterman (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library, 2013), 15, quoting Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.1 and 4.1.4. 13 Abraham Kuyper, “De Menschwording Gods het Levensbeginsel der Kerk” (author’s translation). 10

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In Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism, he emphasizes that God is not only the Savior but also the Creator. As the sovereign Creator, God’s interest extends to all things. Thus, if God is sovereign over and concerned with “the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible” then the church shares in this comprehensive vision.14 Kuyper’s most explicit description of this occurs in his “sphere sovereignty” speech at the founding of the Free University of Amsterdam (1880).15 In this speech, Kuyper outlines a Christian cosmology in which God’s Creation is multiform: there are a multitude of “spheres” of human cultural activity which all manifest various institutions in society. Each sphere and each sphere’s institutions, including the state and the church, find their proper place. Rather than the medieval church-dominated society, and pushing back against the modernist state-dominated society, Kuyper conceives of all of human life and society as made up of differentiated realms or spheres of activity. Each sphere (like the church or the family) has its own direct accountability to the sovereign Creator for its activities in that sphere. And each sphere captures something universal about human beings (e.g., one’s faith permeates all one’s activities). Kuyper’s theory of “sphere sovereignty” contributed to neo-Calvinist ecclesiology the idea that the church or the human activity of faith is not an extra, superfluous activity, unrelated to the rest or the whole of life. Rather, the church has a unique place within the structured potentials of Creation; faith is a universal human faculty that gives rise to public societal expression. In a secularizing context (like Kuyper’s and much of the West today), this creational grounding of the church theologically safeguards it against flimsy efforts to limit or marginalize faith/church to the private or personal margins of life. Faith coming to public societal expression as church (or temple or mosque) is what one would expect from Kuyper’s neo-Calvinist cosmology.

c. Institute and Organism The dynamic world-engagement of neo-Calvinist ecclesiology comes clearly into view in Kuyper’s explanation of the church’s bimodal existence in the world as gathered (institution) and sent (organic).16 Since the Reformed confessions, the church was considered as being both invisible (“body of Christ”) and visible (local congregations). But it was Kuyper who explained the further distinctions in the visible church and its relevance for modern life. For Kuyper, the church is not only God’s redemptive response to a fallen world. Rather, the church is grounded in God’s multiform creation, with human beings having an inherent religious nature. The church emerges from the potentials of Creation for human beings to build human societies (and not just Redemption). The church is one institutional sphere alongside others within the rich sociocultural fabric of Creation.17

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1943), 79. See Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty: A Public Address Delivered at the Inauguration of the Free University of Amsterdam,” in Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 467–8. 16 For Bavinck’s treatment of this distinction, see his RD, 4:297–304. 17 Bavinck’s entire presentation of Reformed/neo-Calvinist ecclesiology begins with the church’s unity. The church is the single new community created by God’s love and grace through union with Christ (and his benefits— see Bavinck, RD, 4:298, 275 and 321) and the outpouring of the Spirit. It is by holding together both the church’s unity and social nature that Bavinck anticipates the individualistic tendencies of many Western cultures: “Neither is the church an association of individual persons who first became believers apart from the church and subsequently united themselves [to the church]. But it is an organism in which the whole exists prior to the 14 15

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Thus, for Kuyper, it is the natural human capacity and impulse for faith/religion that combines with Creation’s potentials and structures for sociocultural institutions that is the foundation for the church’s manifestation in the world. The organic church is the church viewed from the perspective of Christian believers in the whole of their lives, participating in the Jesus-movement within culture, orienting their lives in Creation- and other-serving ways, forming associations and organizations to work together toward a common purpose. In this sense, the organic church is analogous to associations in other cultural spheres. The institutional church is the church viewed from the perspective of organized society. This is the church of Sunday morning worship in a particular building with an address, organized with elders, deacons, and pastors, the church of proclamation, sacraments, discipline, and diaconal acts of justice and mercy.18 Kuyper’s reliance on and development of the distinction between the church as an organism and the church as an institution was primarily to avoid the church withdrawing from society, retreating from public engagement with the challenges of the day, and to orient the church toward holistic world-engagement. Kuyper builds the church’s posture toward the world on the doctrine of the Incarnation: just as Christ entered the world, so too the church is called to enter the world. The sectarian or pietistic withdrawal of the church, for Kuyper, would constitute a negation of the logic of the Incarnation.19 Kuyper, therefore, sees the church emerging from the organic working of God’s grace within Creation—matched by the human capacity for faith/religion. As the church becomes visible, it manifests itself in these two modes: the organic life of Christian believers sent into the whole of life and the gathered body of Christians in local settings, under proper leadership, for the ministry of the Word. For Kuyper, the purpose of the institutional/gathered mode of the church is to serve and equip the organic/sent mode of the church. The institutional church is meant to be the training ground so Christians

parts; its unity precedes the plurality of local churches and rests in Christ. It is he who, continuing his mediatorial work in the state of exaltation, joins his churches together and builds them up from within himself as the head” (Bavinck, RD, 4:280). Thus, just as Kuyper was attentive to how the church became (properly) manifest in the world of human culture (organism) and society (institution), so Bavinck does not allow neo-Calvinist ecclesiology to remain a theological abstraction. The church is always “the gathering of believers who at a given time live on earth (the church militant)” while never losing sight of “the connectedness between the church on earth now and that of the past and the future” (Bavinck, RD, 4:301). 18 Bavinck argues that in Reformed/neo-Calvinist ecclesiology, the church moves through the world in communion with God through “the gathering of believers with its organization as an institution” in society (Bavinck, RD, 4:303–4). In fact, for Bavinck, “the church is not conceivable without a government because it is the way the sovereign Christ exercises his sovereignty in the world” (Bavinck, RD, 4:329). This is the “dual form” the church takes in the world, with both “a passive as well as an active sense,” for “The universal church is anterior to the particular church and to individual believers just as in every organism the whole precedes the parts. The church of Christ is indeed a mother, but she is that not only as institution but also as organism. Believers are simultaneously producer and product” (Bavinck, RD, 4:330–2). 19 This can also be observed in Bavinck, though to a greater level of thoroughness. Bavinck begins with the “invisible church” or “the spiritual dimension” in which only God ultimately knows the “true members” of the church (Bavinck, RD, 4:303). This relates to a longstanding discussion within Reformed ecclesiology over the distinction of the true and the false church. For Bavinck, the invisible church is only knowable to God for “a true church in an absolute sense is impossible here on earth; there is not a single church that completely and in all its parts, in doctrine and in life, in the ministry of the Word and sacrament, meets the demand of God. On the other hand, it also became clear that an absolutely false church cannot possibly exist, for in that case it would no longer be a church at all. . . . There was a difference, therefore, between a true and a pure church” (Bavinck, RD, 4:315–16).

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(the organic church) can be a visible and constructive presence in the world, bringing the salt and light of Christian influence to every vocation and what Kuyper calls “all fields of life.”20 Wolterstorff offers a helpful metaphor for this bimodal nature of the church: The best image I have for expressing the connection is the image of a heartbeat: systolic and diastolic. The church assembles and it disperses. In both its assembling and its dispersing, it is living before the face of God but in two different ways. . . . You can’t have a heartbeat without having both the systolic and the diastolic phases.21

d. The Role of the Diaconate The Presbyterian/Reformed version of church polity seeks to find a middle ground between the hierarchical/episcopal model and the independent/congregational model. For the Reformed tradition, every local congregation participates in the fullness of the church of Christ when it is gathered under the proper ministry of the Word (proclamation, sacraments, discipline, and diaconal acts of justice and mercy) and biblical ordained leadership (pastors, teachers, elders, deacons). Within the neo-Calvinist tradition, though, we see a renewal and resurgence of the role of the diaconate in ministering justice and mercy both within the church and into the world. Kuyper, for example, believed that the proclamation of the Word did not only happen through preaching, sacraments, and discipline; it also occurred through the church’s tangible response to what he called “the social question.”22 This resulted in a high view of the office of deacon for Kuyper. Kuyper says that no one “caught the real meaning of the Diaconate . . . [For] The Deacons are not our servants, but servants of Christ” in whose “name [alms] must be distributed to His poor.”23 In this way, neo-Calvinist ecclesiology embraces the role of the deacon in mediating Christ through acts of justice and mercy. It is this insight which has propelled neo-Calvinist churches to address poverty, labor rights, and a host of other ills, not merely as humanitarian good works, but as a tangible form of the proclamation of the Gospel to the world, which is the church’s unique power within neo-Calvinist ecclesiology.

e. The Power of the Church The final aspect of Kuyper’s neo-Calvinist ecclesiology that we will address here is his understanding of the power of the church. As noted earlier, the entire span of Kuyper’s public career is marked by attention to the power of the church. Bavinck devotes an entire chapter in his Reformed Dogmatics to “The Church’s Spiritual Power”24—a topic that Louis Berkhof also addresses in a (very short) chapter in his Systematic Theology.25

Kuyper, “De Menschwording Gods het Levensbeginsel der Kerk” (author’s translation). Nicholas Wolterstorff, Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World, ed. Mark R. Gornik and Gregory Thompson (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 417. He also uses the metaphor of respiration and not only heartbeat in this work (19). 22 This can be most clearly seen in Abraham Kuyper, The Problem of Poverty, ed. James W. Skillen (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991). 23 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 83. Emphasis original. 24 Bavinck, RD, 4:389–440. 25 Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1941), 593–603. 20 21

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Bavinck argues that “the power of the church . . . [lies] in the administration of God’s Word. . . . the sum of all ecclesiastical power, the totality of the power of the keys. . . . Either directly or indirectly, all power in the church is administration of the Word.”26 He then goes on to describe how this power is mediated as teaching power, ruling power (discipline), and mercy.27 Following the work of Max Weber (1864–1920), which becomes even more focused in the postmodern period, attention to the dynamics and structures of power has only increased since Kuyper.28 Kuyper not only perceives the importance of the Word of God for the church (institution), but he connects the Word of God to the (organic) church’s participation in the missio Dei outwardly to the world. First, Kuyper perceives that the power of the institutional church is kerygmatic. The church is called to proclaim the Word of God to the entire world. The church is the means by which God is present to, and works within, the whole world by his Word. Through proclamation of Scripture, celebration of sacraments, discipline/discipleship, and diaconal acts of justice and mercy, the church announces and embodies the good news of God’s redemptive love and grace. Second, because of Kuyper’s “sphere sovereignty” framework, the power of the institutional church within its sphere is different from the power at work in other spheres (the State, for example). The power of the institutional church is an alternative to coercive or manipulative forms of power because the institutional church’s unique power is kenotic (self-emptying, other-serving), incarnational (embodied, contextual), and sacramental (sign and instrument). This means that the power of the church is invitational. The institutional church announces God’s redemptive love and grace and opens new possibilities for life in the midst of death—which the organic church then lives out in the whole of life. The world-engaging and -transforming power of the organic church is on full display when we observe Kuyper’s own career. As the institutional church exercises its kerygmatic power of the Word to equip the believing community, Christian believers are then sent into the world as the organic church occupied in the whole range of human affairs. Thus, the centrifugal force of the gathered institutional church is transformed into the centripetal force of the organic church in the world—or, as Wolterstorff would put it: the systolic becomes diastolic. The institutional church gathers, equips, and sends the organic church into the world. The power of the church, therefore, within a neo-Calvinist ecclesiology doesn’t see the church as the center of Christian life. The center is the King himself and his rule (the Kingdom of God), which is broader than the church. The believing Christian is not called to a life monopolized by church activities but a life under the lordship of Christ and in the fullness of the world.29 Kuyper avoids these ecclesial pitfalls by recognizing the bimodal

Bavinck, RD, 4:407–8. Bavinck, RD, 4:418–27. Peculiarly, Berkhof begins his entire discussion of the church’s power with “the right to excommunicate” (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 593) before returning to the more traditional Reformed understanding of ecclesial office: the power of proclaiming the truth, the power of guarding the church’s holiness (through the proper use of discipline), and the power of charismatic healing and ordinary benevolence (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 595–602). 28 A fuller summary can be found in Wagenman, The Power of the Church. 29 If the institutional church occupies the center of Christian life, this contributes to either a pietistic legalism or the civic marginalization of the church. But if the world becomes the center of Christian life, then through 26 27

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nature of the church that is gathered around Christ and sent into the world as part of God’s redemptive mission.

IV. RECENT AND GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS As the Reformed tradition generally and the neo-Calvinist tradition specifically became global phenomena, further developments have given more recent systematization and contextual application to this ecclesiology. There are many other notable Reformed theologians whose work flourished during the middle of the twentieth century, both in Europe and in North America. Louis Berkhof and Gordon Spykman are noteworthy. Louis Berkhof (1873–1957) systematized Reformed theology in his classic tome, Systematic Theology.30 It is here that we find gathered together the many strands of Reformed ecclesiology within the whole theological enterprise of the church—with detailed and organized thoroughness. While Gordon Spykman (1926–93) did not match Berkhof’s thoroughness, his treatment of Reformed theology is heavily influenced by the neo-Calvinist tradition in rearranging the organization of his presentation in Reformational Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics.31 His “new paradigm” relies on Scripture’s own redemptive-historical narrative as the organizing framework for theology. Rather than beginning with God, Spykman begins the scriptural narrative with Creation which is how he views Genesis’ beginning. The result is that ecclesiology is more deeply rooted in the work of the Holy Spirit, who bridges Creation to Christ’s atoning death and resurrection and the eschatological New Creation. The church, for Spykman, is shown to be integral to the mission of God’s cosmic creating and redeeming. This turn toward the redemptive-historical or narrative shape of Scripture has been further developed by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen in The Drama of Scripture with implications for our understanding of the church.32 As noted earlier, the apostolicity of the church and the church’s diaconal acts of justice and mercy are two elements of ecclesiology that the neo-Calvinist tradition has been keen to address. Spykman and Bartholomew/Goheen have returned the missional focus to our understanding of the place and role of the church in the world. Nicholas Wolterstorff, in particular, has revived our appreciation of the diaconate within neo-Calvinist ecclesiology. Part of the reason why neo-Calvinists have continued to develop ecclesiology is because, Wolterstorff explains, at the heart of the Reformed tradition is a passion for totality, for wholeness, for integrity, for not allowing life to fall into bits and pieces, for constantly asking, “What does my faith—what does the gospel of Jesus Christ—have to do with this and what does it have to do with that?” And then never being content with the answer “Nothing!” . . . The heart of the tradition is not theology but a certain, difficult-to-

syncretism or compromise, the life of faith becomes reduced to either works-righteousness or anti-ecclesial cultural accommodation. 30 Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996). 31 Gordon Spykman, Reformational Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1992). 32 Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). This has been republished as The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama (Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2004, and Brazos Press, 2020).

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describe, way of being in the world before God, in which the notion of totality and wholeness is central.33 For ecclesiology, the key insight here is that Wolterstorff correctly identifies how “The church is to gather for the celebration of the liturgy, and when it is dispersed it is to practice and struggle for justice and to spread the word about its Lord.”34 This outward- or worldfacing posture of the church is opposed to the inward-facing retreat from the world, something which Wolterstorff laments when he says that “over and over the church, when confronted by social realities that are unjust but that it prefers not to change, retreats into spirituality.”35 It is the deacons of the church, the ones commissioned to act for justice and mercy, that Wolterstorff has in mind.36 As neo-Calvinism spread around the world, some of its European assumptions generally and Kuyper’s flawed attitudes specifically caused great harm. One example is how neo-Calvinism became tied up with apartheid in South Africa. This is a complex and debated topic.37 European, North American, and South African authors have wrestled with how the Dutch Reformed tradition took shape in South Africa. Despite the tragedy, it is the Belhar Confession of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa that bears the marks of neo-Calvinist ecclesiology, primarily in its attempt to engage the world with the good news of God’s redemptive grace after the horrors of apartheid.38 The Belhar Confession does not attempt to give a comprehensive theological account; rather, it gives voice to how the church and its theology need ongoing reformation, especially in the post-apartheid South African context. One way of responding to this confession would be for neo-Calvinist ecclesiology to wonder what difference it makes to confess that the church is made up of those who have true faith in Jesus Christ. The Belhar Confession says that “true faith in Jesus Christ is the only condition for membership in the church” and then goes on to explain that this means that “we reject any doctrine . . . which explicitly or implicitly maintains that descent or any other human or social factor should be a consideration in determining membership in the church” (article 2). This is the same world-engaging ethos of neo-Calvinism on full display: that “the church is called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world” (article 3) which means that “the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need” (article 4). The Wolterstorff, Hearing the Call, 415–16. Ibid., 40. 35 Ibid., 213. 36 See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 Delivered at the Free University of Amsterdam (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983) and the two volumes of Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010) and Justice in Love (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011). 37 For some background, see James D. Bratt, “Kuyper’s Legacy,” http://the12​.squarespace​.com​/james​-bratt​/2014​/1​ /18​/kuypers​-legacy​.html, Accessed January 18, 2014; James C. Kennedy, “The Problem of Kuyper’s Legacy: The Crisis of the Anti-Revolutionary Party in Post-War Holland,” Journal of Markets and Morality 5, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 45–56; H. Russell Botman, “Is Blood Thicker Than Justice?,” in Religion, Pluralism, and Public Life: Abraham Kuyper’s Legacy for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Luis E. Lugo (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), 342–61; and Wagenman, The Power of the Church, 104–7, 184–6. Wagenman, “Who Apologizes for Social Injustice? Abraham Kuyper, Sphere Sovereignty, and Canada’s Indian Residential School System” (Princeton Theological Seminary, 2015 Kuyper Conference paper) relates these same themes to a decolonizing Canadian context. 38 The text of the Belhar Confession being relied upon here is the English translation available from the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa available at https://urcsa​.net​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2016​/02​/Belhar​ -Confession​.pdf, Accessed February 18, 2022. 33 34

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Belhar Confession contextualizes the same neo-Calvinist emphasis that the church is both an institutional gathering of Christian believers as well as a cultural movement of people seeking through word and deed to be the signs and instruments of the Kingdom of God on earth.

V. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY One of the gifts of neo-Calvinism is its impulse to continue reforming faith and practice as we further understand the implications of Scripture and the gospel for each time and place. While considerable work has been done by Kuyper, Bavinck, and other early neoCalvinists, there are many fruitful ways that this tradition and its ecclesiology can continue to develop and be applied. This final section will outline a few of these trajectories that future research should examine and renew. How should we conceptualize ecclesiology? Should the church even be conceptualized? Is it fruitful for the church to be the subject of abstract theologizing or are there better ways of examining the history and practice of the church instead? These are important questions, not only because of the idealism-realism dialectic within the history of theology, but because the church only manifests itself as a community within history. As such, what is the benefit of further reflection on conceptions of the church as “the elect” in abstract scholastic fashion? In the history of Reformed theology, the answer to this question is often assumed but rarely addressed directly. Second, has the use of the concept of the church “militant versus triumphant” expired? Originally, this distinction between the church militant and the church triumphant was an attempt to distinguish that portion of the church which was alive out of the total elect in the mind of God across all of time. This is not only a question related to the issue above but it is also a question of the appropriateness of this terminology after recent anti-colonial criticism of Constantinian Christianity and imperialism.39 This “militant” terminology is not found in Scripture (though passages such as Romans 8 use metaphors for victory). And even the idea of the church being “triumphant” is only secondary to the triumph of the crucified and risen Christ. When viewed from decolonization perspectives, the worldview which surrounds the church “militant” bears the marks of an imperial history. Is there a way of referring to the church in today’s cultural climate that more firmly grounds the church’s being, witness, and work in the world in love and service rather than militaristic warfare that can continue to justify ongoing imperialism and colonialism? As we have seen earlier, one of the distinguishing characteristics of neo-Calvinist ecclesiology is its attempt to clarify the relationship between the church and the Kingdom of God. There are times when these are elided in an unhelpful and theologically problematic manner. Yet, the opposite danger exists: that they can be divorced from each other. A third element that calls for further reflection and greater clarity is how the church, as a historical phenomenon, relates to the Kingdom of God as an eschatological hope. What is the place and role of the church in history as it points toward and is the instrument of the Kingdom of God being revealed? How do the attributes and marks of the church relate to this issue? Put concretely, how does the Kingdom of God (eschatology) relate

For an accessible introduction to these perspectives, see Randy S. Woodley and Bo C. Sanders, Decolonizing Evangelicalism: An 11:59pm Conversation (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2020). 39

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to the church (history) if the church is a product of the Word of God, the incarnational movement of God from eternity to history? Fourth, the church is a community; yet, in the twenty-first century, especially in Western cultures, rampant individualism is pervasive. Therefore, a practical theology question emerges: How does the church frame its witness not only in terms of belief, doctrine, and ideas but also in terms of practice, liturgy, and imagination? James K. A. Smith and Dru Johnson40 have begun work on this question. Further studies are needed which not only uncover the historical and cultural roots of this problem but also provide fruitful new theological ground and Scriptural insight in a way that exposes us to liberating and life-giving “good news” in our own contemporary context. Finally, is neo-Calvinist ecclesiology open to self-criticism? Where have we been less than fully guided by Scripture when it comes to the identity and mandate of the church? Where has neo-Calvinism retained too much of the past or one particular culture or one revered figure? Where has the anti-institutionalism in some versions of neo-Calvinist ecclesiology originated? How might neo-Calvinist ecclesiology, because it seeks to be as attentive to Scripture as possible, more deeply address the heart and imagination of today and tomorrow as it has the head of yesterday? And, through self-critical questions like this, how can neo-Calvinist ecclesiology bear witness to one faith, one Lord, one hope for the restoration of justice across all of Creation and the healing of the nations?

James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009) and You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2016). Dru Johnson, Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2019). 40

Chapter 12

Eschatology AD DE BRUIJNE

I. INTRODUCTION Does neo-Calvinism have a future in the twenty-first century? The answer to this question depends at least in part on how neo-Calvinism itself deals with the future. After all, the future of creation and humanity is on the public agenda increasingly. An ecological crisis, weakening democracies, crumbling prosperity, and international instability are causing pessimism. At the same time, scientific and technological progress leads to optimism. Some expect the demise of humankind, others a transhumanist leap forward in evolution. This Western focus on the future is a secular legacy of Christian eschatology. Whereas virtually all cultures think in cyclical terms, Christianity has brought a purpose-oriented historical approach to reality. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, this has been reflected in the modern idea that the given evolves organically towards a recognizable outcome. However, today, many experience the future as more contingent and different. But this dimension, too, recalls an aspect of Christian eschatology. Therefore, it is precisely a renewed Christian eschatology that could be valuable for today’s orphaned secular expectations of the future. It is not a foregone conclusion that neo-Calvinism harbors this potential. In the history of church and theology, eschatology has often stood in the shadows. Theology was oriented primarily toward natural law or creation order. Neo-Calvinism too attaches great weight to a created normative order. Historical development then simply serves the affirmation of that order. It leads to a view of the eschaton that is hardly eschatological. Yet neo-Calvinism also contains an explicit eschatology. It moves not only along the nineteenth-century track of gradual organic development but also displays a surprising emphasis on the discontinuous and new character of the future. I will show this primarily from the thoughts of Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper, but I also include other neo-Calvinists. First, I describe the heart of neo-Calvinist theology as giving a central place to God’s honor and the orientation toward the earth. Then I discuss the relationship between continuity and discontinuity in the transition from old to new creation. Next, I examine whether neo-Calvinism assumes that there will be a special end time. After that, I consider the vision of Israel and the Millennium, and some minor subjects. I finally offer a short evaluation. Where possible, I indicate the consequences of neo-Calvinist eschatology for the earthly responsibility of Christians.

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II. THE HEART OF NEO-CALVINIST ESCHATOLOGY Neo-Calvinism’s reputation implies a focus on creation and history more than on eschatology. Yet the last chapter of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, which is devoted to eschatology, is so long that it has also been published as a separate book.1 It displays precisely that eschatology which fits the neo-Calvinist approach to creation and history. Even more telling is the oeuvre of Abraham Kuyper. As the culmination of his publications, he planned volumes on eschatology, which he first published as a series of articles. They were entitled Van de Voleinding (Of the Consummation). After his death his son edited them in four volumes.2 Right at the start, Kuyper shows how central eschatology is to his way of thinking. He recognizes four nuclei, to which he devoted his attention successively during his career: special grace, common grace, the kingship of Christ, and eschatology.3 These four moments are directly connected with his life’s work. Special grace underpins his departure from traditional and modernistic national church models and his commitment to church reformation. Common grace avoids the sectarian risk that could result from quitting the traditional Christendom settlement. Even in a de-Christianizing society, Christians should fulfill their public calling in the service of Christ’s lordship. Clarifying the character of Christ’s kingship then unites special and common grace, preventing a dualist risk. Finally, eschatology helps and motivates Christians to understand their specific time and the vocation that comes with it. Bavinck and Kuyper are no exception. From the outset, other neo-Calvinists also paid attention to eschatology (e.g., F. W. Grosheide, K. Dijk, K. Schilder, and J. H. Bavinck).4 The importance of eschatology for neo-Calvinism is also clear from Kuyper’s criticism of the history of church and theology. According to him, the church since Constantine the Great has neglected eschatology, becoming too entrenched in the present world. Only Anabaptists and other sects paid attention to it. The church, together with Christian governments, tried to establish God’s kingdom already in the present world. It Christianized nations and societies as a whole. As a result, the expectation of Jesus’ Second Coming, the resurrection, and the renewal of creation faded. Attention narrowed to life in heaven for the soul after death. At best, this attention focused on union with Christ, but often the hope of reunion with deceased loved ones became more prominent. Influenced by Immanuel Kant, modern Christians concentrated on the immortality of the soul. They considered that to be the reward for fulfilling one’s moral duty during earthly life. This narrow eschatology led to a limited vision of the Christian calling in the world. This revolved around mission and the salvation of souls. At most, philanthropic efforts

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 4: Holy Spirit, Church and New Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 589–730; Herman Bavinck, The Last Things: Hope for This World and the Next, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1996). 2 Abraham Kuyper, Van de Voleinding I–IV, ed. H. H. Kuyper, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1935). 3 Ibid., 9. 4 F. W. Grosheide, De verwachting der toekomst van Jezus Christus: Exegetische studie (Amsterdam: Van Bottenburg, 1907); K. Schilder, De Openbaring van Johannes en het sociale leven, 3rd ed. (Delft: Meinema, 1925); K. Schilder, Wat is de hel? (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1932); K. Schilder, Wat is de hemel? (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1935); K. Dijk, Het einde der eeuwen (Kampen: Kok, 1952); K. Dijk, De toekomst van Christus, Over de laatste dingen (Kampen: Kok, 1953); K. Dijk, De toekomst van Christus, Tussen sterven en opstanding, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1955); J. H. Bavinck, And on and on the Ages Roll: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2019). 1

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were added as an underlining of Christ’s love for a lost world. Although Kuyper appreciated these emphases of movements such as Pietism, Methodism, and Réveil, he considered them insufficient and not doing justice to the heart of the Christian calling.5 In them an anthropocentric perspective supplants the theocentric one. For neo-Calvinism, God’s honor is the overriding motive. This honor will only be realized when the cosmos has become as God intended it. This surpasses a concentration on heaven and soul. An appropriate eschatology primarily expects a new heaven and a new earth.6 Later, G. C. Berkouwer even preferred to speak only of a “new earth.” Following K. Schilder, he considered heaven to be the base of God’s action on earth.7 One day heaven no longer exists independently but descends to earth. This central place for the earth motivates one to take responsibility for the earth and its development. This well-known feature of neo-Calvinism proves to be related to its eschatology. It is this theocentric emphasis that makes Bavinck and Kuyper consciously choose the term “consummation.” The term “eschatology” would merely indicate a chronological reality. Consummation however refers to the completion of God’s plan and the final goal of honoring God. The moment must come when all of creation reflects the infinite riches of God’s thoughts and thus his glory.8

III. CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY This concept of “consummation” implies that, in principle, continuity exists between the new earth and the present world, along with discontinuity. There are different views on the relationship between the two within neo-Calvinism.9 Bavinck represents the majority approach. According to him, God would have led creation through a process of development to a completion even without the fall. What God had put in it would have to come out to His honor. Within a covenant of works, He employed man for that purpose. Despite sin, God does not give up on this goal. His common grace guarantees the ongoing development of creation. Meanwhile, His special grace in Christ ensures that creation is freed from sin and its consequences. Thus, the intended destination is reached. This eschatology is rooted in Christology. Christ brings a restoration of creation, not a second creation. Therefore, the outcome of this process will be the same as it would have been without the Fall. Bavinck does not deny the new earth to be different from the present one in many ways. For example, marriage and procreation will not exist anymore. However, such changes would also have occurred without the intervention of sin.10

Kuyper, Voleinding I, 11–12, 17, 214, 226, 229, 284–5, 328, 340; Abraham Kuyper, Van de voleinding II, ed. H. H. Kuyper, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1935), 27–9; Abraham Kuyper, Van de voleinding III, ed. H. H. Kuyper, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1935), 27, 66–8. 6 Kuyper, Voleinding I, 18–19. 7 G. C. Berkouwer, De wederkomst van Christus 1, Dogmatische Studiën (Kampen: Kok, 1961), 270–2; Schilder, Hemel, 70–4. 8 Kuyper, Voleinding I, 11. 9 For this section see Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume I, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, Stephen J. Grabill, and J. Daryl Charles, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. Van der Maas (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016), 142–3, 171, 396, 401, 423; Kuyper, Voleinding I, 24, 28, 142, 149; Bavinck, RD, 4, (694–6, 717). 10 Bavinck, RD, 4, 694, 716–17; Brian G. Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny: Eschatology & the Image of God in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, Studies in Reformed Theology, vol. 21 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 238–9. 5

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Later neo-Calvinists have adopted the conviction that the historical development of the earth will organically reach the climax of the consummation. When man, under God’s common grace, has extracted from the earth what God placed in it, the eschaton will arrive. Frequently quoted in this context is Revelation 21 about the glory of the kings and peoples entering the New Jerusalem. This conviction often goes together with the idea that God’s final judgment will leave the earth and its development intact. According to Wolterstorff, the disclosure of creation, through human activity, makes an intrinsic contribution to God’s coming kingdom. Adherents to this approach usually interpret the burning fire in 2 Peter 3 as a fire of purification. Others prefer manuscripts that do not have “burning” but “finding” the earth and its works. Schilder already made a correction to this optimism. He expects this development of the earth to arrive at no more than a truncated pyramid. For him, this implies criticism of the way earlier neo-Calvinists employ common grace. It leads him to a Christological and ecclesiological reinterpretation of the meaning of human efforts for the new earth. He grants eschatological significance only to what flows directly from Christ’s work and service to Him in the context of His church. Moreover, Schilder supposes that even in a sinless world continuity would not have been self-evident. Instead, a “shock moment” caused by an exclusive act of God, would have come. Kuyper, on the other hand, had explicitly drawn the undisturbed development of a sinless creation with the words “without shock.”11 Yet also for Kuyper and Bavinck the continuity was less obvious than later adaptations suggest. Both emphasize the radicality of the final judgment. This is not a purification in which the existing creation and its development remain intact, but a complete combustion. The existing creation will first disappear. No cultural products will cross the threshold of the new earth. Kuyper explicitly states that the fruits of common grace are not part of the consummation. They are only an aid to bring that consummation closer. The relationship between the development of the present creation and the new creation is indirect. No human writing or work of art survives the world fire. Yet Kuyper and Bavinck do not mean an Anabaptist destruction of creation to make way for something entirely different. The continuity, however, exists only in the form of a miraculous new act of creation by God. Where first everything disappears, then everything returns in new forms. Therefore, despite this discontinuity, Kuyper can also state that nothing will be lost. It will, however, return surprisingly transformed. Kuyper supposes, for example, that people on the new earth will still eat and drink, because Jesus himself promised to share new wine with his disciples. However, these nutrients will no longer be absorbed in a metabolic process but in a new way, since belly and food will disappear, according to Paul. There will also be a completely new plant and animal world and a new nature. On the one hand, these are not the returning plants and animals of today, which have perished. But on the other hand, this new flora and fauna will recognizably fulfill the existing ones and not imply a break with them. Also, truly new ordinances will appear, which nevertheless prove the fulfillment of the present ordinances. Kuyper also believes the consummation to reach

Kuyper, Voleinding II, 199; Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Kampen: Kok, 1981), 66; Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005); Schilder, Hemel, 92–3; K. Schilder, Christ and Culture (Winnipeg: Premier, 1977), 62; W. G. Rietkerk, The Earth and Its Future (Kampen: Kok, 1991), 30–8; J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 179–210; Craig G. Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017), 44. 11

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beyond God’s original creation purpose. Unlike Bavinck, he assumes a consummation adapted by the Fall. Not only does God’s work of creation reach its climax, but also God’s work of salvation, which occurred because of sin. He speaks of a twofold consummation, in which both lines are interwoven. The end will therefore bring more glory to God than would have been the case in a sinless world.12 Kuyper and Bavinck as well as later neo-Calvinists like Berkouwer point to the resurrection body to draw an analogy to the new creation. This resurrection body will be completely new because the old body has been completely decayed. Also, its structure will be different. Paul typifies it as “spiritual” and “heavenly,” and Kuyper therefore uses the term “etheric.” Nevertheless, the new body is the same body as the perished one. In the same way, these neo-Calvinist leaders approach the continuity between the vanished old world and the newly created future world. Both Bavinck and Kuyper (also J. H. Bavinck) support their view with additional scientific considerations. In their days, it had become apparent that the universe is finite, and the sun is dying out. This rules out continued progression. Moreover, every seven years all human body cells die off. Nevertheless, the then completely new body remains identical to itself. Bavinck therefore states that God does not create new matter but creates anew from the same matter. Kuyper says the same with his beloved metaphor of the “germ.” The fire of the Last Judgment leaves the germs intact from which God creates the new creation. Later neo-Calvinists criticize this metaphor, because a world fire does not leave germs intact either.13 In so doing, they forget the plausibility of Kuyper’s parallel between new creation and resurrection body. If Paul can call the consumed body seed, you can no longer brush aside Kuyper’s “germ.”14

IV. A SEPARATE END TIME? The questions of continuity and discontinuity are related to the expectation of a special end time. One might think of a period in which evil grows so great that life on earth becomes unbearable. This would bring the development of creation to a standstill and break the line of continuity. Such an end time comes after a period of relative calm and culminates in Jesus’ return. There are different views on this within neo-Calvinism. The first generations subscribed to this view. According to Kuyper, God did not abandon his creation after the fall, but guaranteed its development under his common grace. In so doing, He primarily serves His own honor, in that despite sin, what He has put into creation is sufficiently brought to the fore. However, Kuyper believes that common grace will not last until the eschaton. At a certain point in history, God withdraws it again.15 Thus, the development of creation Kuyper, Common Grace I, 544, 549, 573, 582–5; Kuyper, Voleinding I, 29–30, 316, 318, 326, 345, 491; Kuyper, Voleinding II, 38, 42, 181, 223; Abraham Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek VI: Locus de consummatione saeculi. Collegeditaat van een der studenten, 296, https://ia800208​.us​.archive​.org​/2​/items​/dic​tate​ndog​mati​ e06kuyp​/dic​tate​ndog​mati​e06kuyp​.pdf, Accessed August 22, 2022. 13 Schilder, Hemel, 297; J. van Genderen, De nieuwe hemel en de nieuwe aarde, Apeldoornse Studies no. 29 (Kampen: Kok, 1994), 42–7. 14 Kuyper, Voleinding I, 142, 375–9, 392, 403; Kuyper, Voleinding II, 5, 195, 198; Bavinck, RD, 4, 694; Berkouwer, Wederkomst 2, 295. 15 See for this section Kuyper, Common Grace I, 301, 512–17, 595; Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, Volumes II, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, Stephen J. Grabill, and J. Daryl Charles, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. Van der Maas, Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016), 204; Kuyper, Voleinding I, 271, 276; Kuyper, Voleinding II, 506; Kuyper, Voleinding III, 126.

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stagnates and turns in the wrong direction. From that moment on, evil will manifest itself ever more unhindered. For Kuyper, this end of the phase of common grace marks the beginning of the end time or last days. The period of “holding back” of which Paul speaks in 2 Thessalonians 2 is coming to an end. Opinions differ on the interpretation of that “holding back.” Schilder, for example, thinks of God himself, while Hepp points to the archangel Michael. But all share the vision that the removal of this restraint will result in the coming of the Antichrist. He is envisioned as a real historical person who will manifest himself in the context of mass apostasy in once “Christian nations.” Those neo-Calvinists who agree with Kuyper in this respect already detect signs of this in their own days. From the outset, Kuyper assumed that the development of common grace would come to an end after the then incipient flourishing of Calvinism in North America. Around the First World War, he and others saw the eschaton approaching all the more, although Hepp reckons that it may still take a century before the Antichrist actually appears. Apart from the war, they identified other signs, such as the rise of communism, social inequality, Western moral decay, de-Christianization, and disappointing developments in America. Around the time of the Second World War, similar views were voiced, among others by Dijk and J. H. Bavinck. Apart from the war, they also mention the post-war efforts toward supranational unity.16 According to Kuyper, in this end time all gains of common grace would seemingly be lost again. That implies discontinuity. He opposes nineteenth-century-inspired evolutionary models that see the new earth emerging from the old in an unbroken line. He also refuses to characterize Christian efforts as “building the kingdom,” a favorite expression among later neo-Calvinists. Only God’s work of redemption in Jesus, a miraculous act without human intervention, will bring the new earth. Only as dimension of this divine act will the unexpected continuity with the old earth and its development be guaranteed. With Kuyper, this vision is embedded in a model of multiple dispensations. He characterizes the historical development of creation as “the ordinary course of things” and the saving work of Jesus as the “extraordinary.” In this, God intervenes from above and thus miraculously. According to Kuyper, the first phase of this extraordinary act was completed with the ascension of Jesus. After that, the miracles ebb away. Throughout the history of the church, the ordinary creaturely course of things dominates. When God withdraws His common grace, however, the next phase of God’s extraordinary work in Christ begins. Then supernatural manifestations return. In Kuyper’s eyes, the end time is therefore qualitatively different. Also, for this reason, the continuity between the new and the present creation is not self-evident.17 This view of the end time has consequences for the earthly responsibility of Christians. During the period in which God’s common grace guides the development of creation, Christians must serve in all spheres of life. But in the end time, priorities will change. Then persecution will await, and the challenge will be to endure and survive. Christians will fall back on the institutional Church and the emphasis will be on missionary witness. More distance to the surrounding society will be appropriate as it develops in a wrong direction, and eventually the biblical call will be to depart from it. Although most later V. Hepp, De Antichrist, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1920), 148–54, 165–70, 246–56; Schilder, Christ, 56–8, 61–2; KS OPB; Dijk, Einde, 171, 181–4; Bavinck, Ages, 124–42; Peter S. Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998), 226–9, 243–9; James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 369–70. 17 Kuyper, Voleinding III, 5–7, 2–23, 70, 160. 16

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neo-Calvinists lack this emphasis, it is present in Jochem Douma’s plea for a re-evaluation of the Christian vocation to be strangers. The cultural-critical warning against a “Babel culture” in the work of the neo-Calvinist philosopher Egbert Schuurman, is also in harmony with these earlier eschatological accents.18 At the same time another line is developing within neo-Calvinism which no longer assumes a special end time. We encounter this in Berkouwer, but similar accents play a role in J. H. Bavinck and Schilder. They bring a more existential dimension to eschatology. Especially newer exegetical insights contribute to this. According to this approach, the last days started with Jesus’ ascension, and it is not defendable to identify more specific phases within that period. However, during these “last days” several alternating tendencies occur. J. H. Bavinck connects this with the Augustinian view that church and world are still mixed up during history but will once again present themselves in their distinct identities. This leads to a middle position, in which, on the one hand, the manifestations of the end time can always be seen, while on the other hand, they will come to the fore even more outspokenly in the future. Berkouwer opposes “reportage-eschatology,” which he also finds with earlier neo-Calvinists. According to him, the New Testament does not provide a script of events. For him, the diversity of eschatological accents serves the gospel’s call to repentance and comfort. In the varying circumstances of the last days, they help us to understand that these are the last days indeed, in line with Romans 13. Periods of tribulation and periods of rest alternate and coexist. Thus, according to this view, the Antichrist is not one particular person but a dynamic that occurs again and again.19 At the same time, Bavinck’s connection with so-called “Christian nations” and an expected period in which these will have had their time disappears in later authors. In connection with this, another solution to the problem of the imminent return of Christ (“Naherwartung”) and the meaning of the interim between his first and second comings emerges. Kuyper had already pointed out that, at first glance, the New Testament seems to be heading for an imminent return of Jesus. Was the Bible, and even Jesus himself, mistaken? On the other hand, he points out that other passages indicate a longer period until the eschaton. Moreover, he attributes a hermeneutical function to the conversion of Constantine the Great. This uncovered that God still had a plan for the earth that could not yet be clear in the New Testament itself. Under Christ’s reign, the gospel would exert an indirect influence on common grace and the development of the earth, lifting it to great heights for a certain time to glorify God. Initially, Kuyper, following Augustine and the dominant tradition after him, linked this intervening phase with the 1,000 years from Revelation 20. The more existential emphasis of Bavinck, Berkouwer, and others proposes another solution to the apparent delay of Christ’s coming. The eschaton has been continually near since Christ’s first coming. His second coming is already implied in his first coming. Besides, these texts are not predictions but promises. They are permanently open to fulfillment but at the same time share the characteristic of all divine promises. Precisely tense expectation raises the question of why the fulfillment waits so long. This vision does not include a speculative sense of the interim period, nor a historical transitional moment for the tenor of the Christian calling. The whole interim is marked by the proclamation of the Gospel and space for humans to repent. At the same time, this Kuyper, Voleinding III, 297–8; Jochem Douma, Common Grace in Kuyper, Schilder, and Calvin: Exposition, Comparison, and Evaluation, ed. William Helder, trans. A. H. Oosterhoff (Hamilton: Lucerna CRTS Publications, 2017); E. Schuurman, Faith and Hope in Technology, trans. John Vriend (Toronto: Clements Pub., 2003). 19 Bavinck, RD, 4, 677–8, 684–8; Schilder, Christ, 81–3, 86; Berkouwer, Wederkomst 2, 5–35. 18

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need not lead to a narrow view of Christian vocation. For connected to conversion, the interim is also the time to walk in the good works that God has prepared (Ephesians 2) in the context of God’s creation as long as this exists. This existential approach implies in some contexts commitment to develop creation, while at other times it requires a concentration on perseverance under pressure and in suffering.

V. ISRAEL AND MILLENNIUM The difference within neo-Calvinism regarding the concept of the “end time” is reflected in divergent views on the future of Israel and the millennium. Kuyper himself exhibits a shift on this point. Unlike in his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, in Van de Voleinding he sometimes looks almost dispensationalist. He considers most of John’s Revelation an eschatological prophecy. Only Revelation 2 and 3 concern typologically ordinary church history as a whole.20 According to Kuyper, under the reign of the Antichrist exceptionally severe persecution will occur, which will cause a new generation of martyrs. The pressure becomes so great that Christ intervenes and temporarily removes His church from the earth.21 Then Christ makes a final appeal to the nations. For this purpose, He binds Satan and raises those new martyrs from the dead. Their witness simultaneously brings about a hardening of hearts and (probably numerous) conversions, among whom are many Jews. This phase does not last long but is indicated in the Bible by the symbolic number of 1,000 years. Then, Christ will let go of Satan temporarily to provoke his own downfall. Satan will mobilize the remaining (non-Christian) nations for an offensive against Christ. Christ, however, intervenes by defeating him and instituting the final judgment. Apart from this future conversion of Israel in the end time, Kuyper also expects an important place for Israel on the new earth. He does not see any special role for Israel in the context of salvation history anymore. In that context, the era for Israel is over. Jews too will only find salvation when they join the church. But based on his idea of a twofold consummation, Kuyper claims a special future for Israel via another route. The consummation of God’s work of creation and common grace requires the recognition of Israel’s unique and lasting position as a people among the other nations. In the future world, nothing will be lost but everything will come forth according to its own nature in a fulfilled form to the glory of God. This also applies to people’s nature. In this context, therefore, Israel’s unique historical status will remain recognizable. Kuyper even reckons with the possibility that the place of the old Jerusalem will be related to the New Jerusalem as the center of the new earth.22 Kuyper is not the only neo-Calvinist who has expectations for Israel. Some envisioned a future conversion of Israel or a kind of restoration of Israel in the context of the new creation as well.23 Others, however, deviated from them. Bavinck, for example, states that

Kuyper, Voleinding III, 76, 78. Kuyper, Common Grace I, 301. 22 Abraham Kuyper, E voto Dordraceno. Toelichting op den Heidelbergschen Catechismus II, 3rd ed. (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1892), 279, 287; Kuyper, Voleinding II, 341; Kuyper, Voleinding III, 135, 217, 218, 253–5, 326–30, 343, 347–9, 367, 369, 379; Kuyper, Common Grace, 427–36, 439, 460, 462. 23 G. Doekes, De beteekenis van Israëls val. Commentaar op Romeinen IX–XI (Nijverdal: E.J. Bosch, 1915); Seakle Greijdanus, Het heilig evangelie naar de beschrijving van Lucas II, Kommentaar op het Nieuwe Testament (Amsterdam: H.A. Van Bottenburg, 1941), 998. 20 21

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nothing more can be expected for Israel. As a people, this nation has fulfilled its salvation historical task. Bavinck does not share Kuyper’s speculations about Israel’s future based on common grace. On balance, therefore, Israel does not occupy a prominent place within neo-Calvinist eschatology. Regarding the millennium, Hepp more or less follows in the footsteps of the later Kuyper, although he rejects the idea that a special conversion phase will follow. Most other neo-Calvinists assume that the millennium refers to the history of the church. Some (Berkouwer) see this beginning with Jesus’ ascension, while others (Bavinck) tend to the Augustinian interpretation that places the beginning with the Christendom settlement after Constantine.24

VI. REMAINING ESCHATOLOGICAL ACCENTS Although it is impossible to present here a complete picture of the eschatology of neoCalvinism, I will supplement the central aspects above with some secondary elements.

a. After Dying Eschatology traditionally includes a treatment of human existence between death and resurrection. In essence, neo-Calvinism does not deviate from the mainstream of the Christian tradition in this respect. Nevertheless, the pronounced emphasis on the earth has consequences for the approach to the intermediate state after death. Whereas in the tradition almost all attention was paid to this interim at the expense of the earthly plot of history, in neo-Calvinism this is reversed. The central expectation concerns the resurrection and the new creation, while life after death becomes secondary. Kuyper and Bavinck are careful not to make the existence after death too beautiful. Dying believers have not yet reached their goal and are waiting for resurrection and consummation. Our knowledge about their existence is very limited. They are in the realm of death together with the nonbelieving dead, although their fate is different there. For them this is not a provisional place of torment but of fellowship with God. But according to Kuyper, they do not yet see the face of God. They share in “salvation” (“zaligheid”) but not yet in “glory” (“heerlijkheid”).25 Later neo-Calvinists like Schilder and Janse criticize the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which Kuyper and Bavinck still accepted. The exegete F. W. Grosheide, who obtained his doctorate in eschatology, also wrote reluctantly about the existence of dead believers. Kuyper believes that whoever dies exists “out of time.” That is why he can even write that for the consciousness of a deceased person the moment of his death practically coincides with the consummation. Interestingly, this resembles later voices within neo-Calvinism like those of B. Telder and C. Vonk. Others reproached them for making a Barthian distinction between the time of God and ordinary history. Schilder and Berkouwer, among others, rejected that distinction. According to them, heaven shares the same history as the earth.26 However, perhaps not only Barth but also Kuyper could Bavinck, RD, 4, 665–72, 683–4; Berkouwer, Wederkomst 2, 74–109. Bavinck, RD, 4, 604–5, 614, 620–7; Kuyper, Voleinding I, 309; Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2018), 338–43; Hans Boersma, “Neo-Calvinism and the Beatific Vision: Eschatology in the Reformed Tradition,” Crux 56, no. 3 (2020): 25–9, 28. 26 Kuyper, Voleinding II, 36; C. Vonk, De doden weten niets (Franeker: Wever, 1969); B. Telder, Sterven, en dan? Gaan de kinderen Gods, wanneer zij sterven, naar de hemel (Kampen: Kok, 1960); A. Janse, De mensch als “levende ziel” (Culemborg: De Pauw, 1934). 24 25

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have inspired them. Telder and Vonk came close to the doctrine of soul sleep, which was vigorously rejected by Bavinck, Kuyper, and other neo-Calvinists. Middleton, too, believes that there is little evidence for the idea that dead believers go to heaven.27 Yet the dominant position in neo-Calvinism is different. Those who have died go to heaven and are aware of their fellowship with God. At the same time neo-Calvinist authors distanced themselves from views (e.g., Roman Catholic) which attributed knowledge of earthly events to the deceased or even assumed a form of communion between dead and living Christians.

b. Seeing God Boersma has argued that neo-Calvinists largely distanced themselves from the doctrine of the visio Dei.28 This has traditionally formed a central aspect of Christian eschatology. Neo-Calvinists, however, consider it too spiritual and insufficiently oriented toward earthly life. For example, Bavinck and Schilder opposed the idea that we will see God’s essence with our eyes and emphasized that we remain dependent on revelation. They also believe this doctrine unduly suggests that future life would breathe passivity. Instead, they expect us to work and be active on the new earth. We can, however, see God indirectly in the communion with our fellow Christians. Cory Brock and Gray Sutanto, however, have shown that Bavinck definitely accepted the beatific vision. His brevity on the subject results from epistemic modesty and from his having already dealt with the theme in the context of Christology. We will see God in the face of Christ. While our eyes will not be the medium for this, the visio is real and will go far beyond God’s revelation within the present life. Kuyper certainly nurtured the expectation of the beatific vision. He too expects us to be actively at work on the new earth. Different from other neo-Calvinists, he combines both mysticism and worldly action. Seeing God goes hand in hand with a focus on the earth. That is why he comes to an interesting adaptation of the visio dei. Seeing God requires a physical, earthly existence. Contrary to the tradition, Kuyper therefore does not position this eschatological experience already after death but only after the Second Coming.29

c. Eternal Punishment Kuyper and Bavinck both show a striking reticence when it comes to God’s eternal judgment. Later neo-Calvinists, such as Berkouwer, adopt this. Even Schilder, who has been criticized for speaking about an eternal hatred in God as counterpart to his eternal love, agrees with Bavinck that God still mixes sparks of mercy even in the punishment of hell. Kuyper even dares to write that the idea of eternal fire can be “shockingly unsatisfactory” in the light of the biblical image of God. For example, this is the case with the billions who have died without ever having known Christ. Bavinck also points to children and the mentally disabled. He expresses sympathy for theologians who search for a wider radius

Middleton, Reclaiming, 236–7. Boersma, Seeing, 33–40; Boersma, “Beatific,” 25. 29 Cory Brock, “Revisiting Bavinck and the Beatific Vision,” Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies 6, no. 2 (2021): 367–82; Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck on the Beatific Vision,” International Journal of Systematic Theology (2022): 1–18. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/ijst​.12610; Bavinck, RD, 4, 722, 727–30; Kuyper, Voleinding III, 388, 391, 400; Schilder, Hemel, 159. 27 28

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of salvation. He appreciates the humanness that the Enlightenment taught to Westerners and the softening of human punishment that came along with it. And he articulates that this appreciation could seem to be at odds with God’s eternal judgment. However, both Kuyper and Bavinck stop at this point. They continue to confess eternal punishment and leave the solution of these difficulties open to God.30

d. Place of Christ Kuyper had an outspoken view on the place of Christ in the new creation. On the basis of 1 Corinthians 15, he believes that Christ will renounce his mediatorship. Only as the Son of God does He hold the position of king. Later, Berkouwer, among others, turned against this idea. He appeals to the biblical prophecy about “the Lamb” at the center of the New Jerusalem. Strangely enough, such a vision also seems to fit better with Kuyper’s own assumption of a twofold consummation. As a matter of fact, this implies that the unique fruits of salvation must also be permanent. This applies, for example, to the bridal relationship between Christ and his church. This relationship is not rooted in creation but in re-creation. In the same way, Christ’s mediatorship could remain a foundational reality forever. Kuyper’s thoughts here remain unclear.31

VII. CONCLUSION AND PROSPECT Does neo-Calvinism have a future in the twenty-first century? At least, its vision of the future harbors potential to respond to the various contemporary expectations of the future. It provides a theocentric anchorage of and correction for both anthropocentric optimism and pessimism. Besides, acknowledging God at the center, one can honor both continuity and discontinuity. Focusing on the earth motivates us not to flee to a higher reality or another world but to take responsibility for the existing creation. At the same time, many later and contemporary neo-Calvinists tend to overreact against otherworldly tendencies. They see this earthly future as continuous with present realities and results from human efforts. This resembles the secular pitfall within the present context, which has set in motion a pendulum of optimism and pessimism. On that point, a combination with a more mystical concentration on God himself, as found in Kuyper, can be beneficial. In doing so, neo-Calvinism would also be enhanced by acknowledging more than it does heaven’s specific character as compared to the earth. Heaven is more than a base for God’s concentration on the earth. It is also a sacrament of the unique higher sphere of existence of God himself. In the eschaton not only heaven descends to earth, as neo-Calvinists like to emphasize, but also all what had been created earthly will be lifted to heavenly glory and splendor (1 Corinthians 15). Despite Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s eye for discontinuity, neo-Calvinist eschatology remains too much indebted to a nineteenth-century organic growth model. God’s new actions then always must build on his previous actions. The creation of the beginning remains primary. Alongside this emphasis, however, the Bible (e.g., Isaiah 40–66) also allows for completely new acts of God. These, as it were, move from future to present and they reinterpret earlier actions. That emphasis could be more fully incorporated into neo-Calvinist eschatology. It would equip the latter to respond Bavinck, RD, 4, 707–9, 714, 724–7; Kuyper, Voleinding I, 236; Schilder, Wat is de hel?, 142. Kuyper, Voleinding II, 279; Dijk, Toekomst, 226; Berkouwer, Wederkomst 2, 251–69; Van Genderen, Nieuwe, 52v. 30 31

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to contemporary experiences of the new more effectively as qualitatively and radically different from the existing. Finally, debates surrounding neo-Calvinism often focus one-sidedly on the question of whether our actions produce results that will survive the transition to the new world. However, the Bible itself does not address this question. Nevertheless, the Bible does contain the idea that our present actions stand in the light of the new world and have meaning for it, but in different ways. For example, they help to prepare the world for Christ’s coming, or embody God’s ongoing commitment to creation and the hope for the coming kingdom. In executing these acts, the church already forms the proleptic community of that kingdom. Therefore, Bartholomew rightly argues that neo-Calvinist eschatology should be more concerned with another question: the question is not “how will present activities contribute to the eschaton,” but “how is the eschaton already affecting the existing world.”

PART II

Key Figures

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Willem Groen van Prinsterer HARRY VAN DYKE

I. INTRODUCTION Willem Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76) was a Dutch historian and statesman of aristocratic birth. Although he was not a neo-Calvinist—the term dates from the late nineteenth century and was meant as an epithet—he may in many respects be called a forerunner of neo-Calvinism. More than a dozen doctoral dissertations have been written about aspects of his life and work. Scores of streets and school buildings in the Netherlands bear his name, testifying to his role as a testator (“erflater”) of modern Dutch history. Groen’s official Christian name, Guillaume, was given to him when he was baptized as an infant in the fashionable French-speaking Walloon Church of The Hague, whose theological stance may be characterized as moderate Calvinist. By his own admission Willem Groen (the double-barreled surname is usually shortened to the first element, never to the second element alone, as in “van Prinsterer”) grew up a lukewarm, if not nominal, Christian. By the age of thirty-three, however, he had personally appropriated the historic Christian faith. That decision was providentially prepared by the sermons of court chaplain (and later church historian) Merle d’Aubigné, as well as by the gentle influence of his pious wife Elisabeth van der Hoop (1807‒79) and by the patient prodding of friends in The Hague and Amsterdam who belonged to the revival movement of the time known throughout Europe as the Réveil. In later life Groen described himself as “an offspring of Calvin and a child of the Réveil.”1 His conversion was gradual, in part because he feared it entailed a devaluation of scholarly pursuits. Fortunately, his friend Willem de Clercq, a former Mennonite turned Calvinist, set him straight: I am not saying that you should become stupid, but that all your gifts may become sanctified. . . . If we have learned and studied history apart from Christ, we must now learn to see that Christ is the center of history. . . . If we have studied philosophy and come to admire it, we must now learn that . . . this same philosophy can teach us the vanity of all purely human knowledge.2 This advice planted the seed in Groen that grew into his lifelong striving after integral Christian scholarship.

About Calvin and Reveil, Groen stated this in his book Maurice et Barnevelt (Utrecht, 1875), clvi. Briefwisseling, I, 284.

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Young Groen had an auspicious beginning. An eager student, mother Groen made French his mother tongue and father Groen made sure he mastered the native Dutch, while his governess taught him German and English. Young Groen was given a classical education at a Latin school. By age twenty-two he completed his studies at Leiden Academy, where he earned two doctorates, one in law and another in letters, giving his public oral defense of both dissertations on one and the same day. After a few perfunctory years as a barrister—which he enjoyed very much as it gave him time for historical study—he served King William I (1772–1843; r. 1813‒40) as cabinet secretary in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This rather artificial kingdom was a union of Protestant Holland and Catholic Belgium which the Allied Powers created to keep France in check after they had defeated Napoleon. In his role at the court, Groen was a close observer of the political tensions that exploded in the Belgian Revolt of 1830. He analyzed and assessed this traumatic event with clarity and candor in a series of privately published pamphlets which he entitled Nederlandsche Gedachten (Netherlandic Thoughts). The entire experience made him decide to study the recurring revolutions of his time. Not long after Belgian independence was finally recognized, Groen resigned his position with the king, who then appointed him supervisor of the archive of the House of Orange. In this capacity he would edit and publish fourteen volumes of correspondence by members of that royal house. He published all letters integrally, without omitting passages that were less flattering to the writer, and he defended the importance of pursuing historical science impartially on the basis of unrestricted access to primary sources. In this he was a pioneer in his country and earned him the name “father of modern Dutch historiography.”3 He also helped Christian secondary school teachers with a nine-hundred-page Handbook of Dutch History; the chapter for which he had done pioneering work on the diplomatic intricacies of the eighteenth century has retained its value to this day. Most importantly, what he took away from his historical studies was the firm conviction that Calvinism was “the source and safeguard of our constitutional liberties.”4 In addition to these historical publications Groen spent nearly a decade studying the roots and driving force of the French Revolution of 1789. By the fall of 1845 he felt confident that he understood this earthshaking event and its (he believed) undiminished influence up to his own time. He invited a score of friends and close acquaintances to come to his house on Saturday evenings to hear him lecture on the results of his findings. Out of these evening sessions was born the book Ongeloof en Revolutie (Unbelief and Revolution).5 It was both a diagnosis of the times and a manifesto of basic principles for engaging public affairs in an age dominated by a complex set of beliefs and assumptions, an ideology which the author captured under the single term “the revolution.” The completion of this work marked a significant reorientation in Groen’s career. Having formulated his basic worldview and stance in life, he entered public life. As a man of independent means, he purchased an existing daily newspaper and for five years was its chief editor. For several terms he held a seat in the lower house of parliament, where he participated in the debates on many issues, notably freedom of education, the relation H. Smitskamp, Groen van Prinsterer als historicus (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1940), 130, 143. Nederlandsche Gedachten, October 22, 1873. 5 Leiden, 1847; 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1868. Eng. trans. pub. by Wedge Pub. Foundation, 1989; repr. by Lexham Press, Bellingham, WA, 2018. 3 4

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between church and state, and provincial and municipal autonomy. After the first series of Netherlandic Thoughts were published between 1829 and 1832, he resumed his trenchant commentaries on the issues of the day in a second series of pamphlets under the same title, published in five volumes between 1869 and 1876. Groen rejected the choice between conservative and liberal and held out for a third way. (At this time in Europe, conservatism favored paternalistic, interventionist government, and censorship, while liberalism stood for free enterprise and a free press.) He concluded that conservatism would be no match for what was gaining strength in society, referring to conservatives as “hand-wringing onlookers” of “the revolution.” At the same time he emphasized that the liberals, whether moderate or progressive, were cautious but convinced proponents of “the revolution,” while more radical groups like socialists and anarchists were simply “more consistent liberals” or “liberals in a hurry.”6 Throughout his career Groen would defend the rights of parliament and aided in the country’s development toward a genuinely constitutional monarchy with a generous franchise. He scorned “census democracy”—the liberal policy that favored the middle and higher classes by limiting suffrage to the higher taxpayers. He often made himself the spokesman of the disenfranchised “people behind the voters,”7 many of whom he knew held deep sympathy and affection for him and his witness. In both his personal life and his parliamentary conduct Groen showed concern for the working classes and stood up for their rights to more equitable treatment in what was then still a highly stratified society undergoing the advantages and drawbacks of unchecked capitalism and early factory production. Groen’s prominence as a leading spokesman for gospel-inspired social reforms enhanced his reputation abroad. At one time a delegation of abolitionists from Britain came to The Hague to plead with Dr. Groen to take the role of “Holland’s Wilberforce.”8 Another time he was visited by Elizabeth Fry, who came to solicit his support for a European-wide campaign for prison reform. In the mid-1840s Holland was recovering from the secession of Belgium and passing through the twilight years of the Restoration period. Political rumblings announced inevitable change. Conservatism had spent itself, and liberalism stood poised to assume leadership. The ruling class had shored up an autocratic monarch, an “enlightened despot” whose benign centralist administration sought to foster economic prosperity but also unity, concord, and public tranquility through religious uniformity.9 This last aim had led to harsh measures against religious dissenters such as the Seceders, people who left the national church in 1834. The measures were defended by the liberals but condemned by Groen as being out of place in traditionally tolerant Holland ruled by a descendant of William of Orange, the sixteenth-century champion of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience in defiance of the Spanish Inquisition. Groen’s publications and correspondence of these years deplored the “listlessness” of the period, of dire socioeconomic conditions, and of the swelling ranks of paupers on

Cf. Harry Van Dyke, Challenging the Spirit of Modernity: A Study of Groen van Prinsterer’s Unbelief and Revolution (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), xviii. 7 See Isaac Esser, Antirevolutionaire catechismus (The Hague, 1874), passim. 8 R. Reinsma, Een merkwaardige episode uit de geschiedenis van de slavenemancipatie (The Hague: Van Goor, 1963), 15. 9 A. Goslinga, Koning Willem I als verlicht despoot (Baarn: Bosch, 1918), passim. See also E. H. Kossmann, The Low Countries, 1780–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 127–8. 6

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public relief. He found the intellectual climate “stifling”: a moderate middle course in everything was deemed safest, while strongly held beliefs were kept at bay as symptomatic of uncultured “enthusiasm.”10 Groen, who was himself a “guarded” admirer of Plato, decried both the hybrid of Christian Platonism taught in the universities as well as the Groningen school of theology which spurned the “rigor” of Dutch Calvinism “imported” from Geneva and preferred a “gentler” version of Christianity that was presumably “more native” to the Low Countries.11 In terms of economic conditions, times were tough. The carrying and transit trade that had enriched the Dutch Republic had not regained former levels. Manufacturing industry was still in its infancy, but the country’s infrastructure was outmoded; canal construction was begun in earnest, but railroads were slow in coming. Half of the country’s workforce still made a living in the agricultural sector, a sector that had made only very modest gains. If all these factors prompted Groen to paint a dismal picture of his times, when it came to the sphere of religion his concern rose even higher. His concern was offset only by his grateful recognition of the European-wide evangelical revival that had been at work also in the Netherlands since 1820. The Réveil emphasized that outward observance of the faith and church attendance as a social custom were dangerous for the soul, and that instead a vibrant faith had to be based on earnest study of the Scriptures and a personal relationship with Christ. Moral conduct was a fruit, not a condition of salvation, and works of mercy and benevolence were a Christian’s privilege, not his burden. As the revival grew in the major urban centers, foreign missions, inner-city missions, campaigns for prison reform, and abolition of slavery were taken in hand. But what worried Groen about the state of religion in his country was the creedal indifference in the national church and the attempt by her leaders to steer toward a broad church which increasingly condoned confessional laxity if not outright rationalist interpretations of Scripture and suppression of the gospel of free grace. For example, at their ordination Reformed pastors were obliged to subscribe to Calvinist doctrines, no longer “inasmuch as” (quia) it was in conformity with Scripture, but (only) “insofar as” (quatenus) these doctrines could be found in Scripture.12 He and six other friends petitioned national synods to reverse the trend, but to no avail. At the same time the friends, led by Groen, showed care for the upcoming generation by working hard to overcome officials’ reluctance—in some jurisdictions turning into outright obstruction— to grant charters to faith-based day schools. On the floor of Parliament Groen protested: Parents who, with or without adequate grounds, are honestly convinced that the character of instruction in the [religiously neutral] government schools is non-Christian, must not be prevented, directly or indirectly, from providing their children with the kind of education which they believe they can justify before God. That coercion, to put it bluntly, is intolerable and must stop. It is a presumption springing from the teaching of the revolution which, disregarding the rights of parents, regards children as the property of the state.13

Challenging the Spirit of Modernity, 9–10, 426. See also Kossmann, The Low Countries, 189–90; R. P. Meijer, Literature of the Low Countries (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), 209–15. 11 J. Vree, De Groninger godgeleerden (Kampen: Kok, 1984), 280–9. 12 See Challenging the Spirit of Modernity, 31–3. 13 Adviezen in de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal in dubbelen getale (Leiden, 1840), 57. 10

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Similarly, the harassment of dissenters in 1834 and following years was painted by Groen as symptomatic of liberalism’s illiberal intolerance. What spirit was responsible for all these woeful developments?

II. WRITINGS Of Groen van Prinsterer’s prodigious oeuvre (his bibliography would total 150 titles), his most characteristic and influential publication was beyond doubt the book Unbelief and Revolution. This work seeks to demonstrate that the malaise of his country and of Western Europe in general was caused by the intellectual and spiritual revolution that had taken hold of the modern mind and continued in various forms to guide society and politics in an unwholesome and ultimately disastrous direction. Thus, the term “revolution” here does not refer to the overthrow of a government but to the sea change in the intellectual and spiritual outlook of Western civilization. Groen’s detailed treatment of the French Revolution of 1789 was justified by his contention that this dramatic series of events illustrated for the first time on a large scale what can happen when “the revolution” is put into practice in a concrete, real-life political experiment. The French Revolution is not really over, he warned, but lives on in its ideas—and these ideas are bad for society. Groen’s account stands out by its inner coherence and consistency as he analyzes both the source and the course of the French Revolution and its aftermath, pointing out its unique character in comparison with all previous political and social upheavals in the history of modern times. In this stance, Groen was strongly influenced by the writings of the British conservative Edmund Burke and the works of French “legitimists” like Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, and Félicité de Lamennais. Groen came to see the Belgian Revolt, too, as a convulsion of the same liberal ideology that had inspired the French Revolution. Delving deep into the nature of this ideology, Groen developed his theory that these revolutions were not merely political upheavals but were rooted in a comprehensive worldview to which people were attached with a kind of religious devotion that colored everything they thought, said, and did. The case made in Unbelief and Revolution comes down to a critical overview of the preceding century and a half that saw the birth of modernity under the auspices of secular humanism. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment project of human emancipation, Groen writes, may have had many laudable goals, but from the outset it went astray when it replaced divine revelation with unaided human reason. Historically speaking, the Enlightenment was essentially a proclamation by Western man of human autonomy and independence. It launched the Age of Reason and Revolution, the birth of the culture which Groen stamps with the single term “the revolution,” an approach to public affairs dominated by religious indifference if not hostility and a rejection of the past culminating in defiance and denial of God’s revealed will in his Word and works. What Groen captures with the term “the revolution” has since come to be called modernity, the culture of secular humanism in which religious faith is banished to the private sphere and replaced by a form of ultimate commitment to a pseudo-religion, one which Groen calls “the religion of unbelief.”14 The new spirit invading culture, once it emerged around 1680 and set the tone after 1750, caused a radical break with Western civilization thus

Challenging the Spirit of Modernity, 192.

14

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far and turned its fundamental values on their head. It substituted all transcendent orientation with self-chosen, inner-worldly standards. Thus it based its public philosophy on four pillars: convention, consent, coercion, and consensus. Convention: society, its structures, and institutions can be shaped any way men agree upon. Consent: authority, to be valid, must have the approval of those under it. Coercion: justice is decided by those who are in power, preferably but not necessarily with majority support. Consensus: truth is determined by the public opinion of the day. These four errors came to replace the fourfold foundation of an anti-revolutionary, Christian-historical approach to life and society: a given order anchored in the creation; the limited but valid authority of a diversity of offices; objective standards of justice rooted in the righteousness of a holy God; and truth that is independent of man and ultimately derives from divine revelation. The inner logic of modernity, traced and analyzed by Groen in his fifteen lectures, would eventually lead to the full-blown skepticism and relativism that he saw unfolding in his day (and that we have seen in full bloom for a while in post-modernism). In an uncanny anticipation of 1848, known in European history as the “Year of Revolution,” the author of Unbelief and Revolution predicted that unless the nations of Europe re-embraced the transcendent norms taught in the Christian religion, the Continent would experience new revolutions, culminating in a chronic condition of “permanent revolution” issuing into new reigns of terror. Accordingly, Groen’s book has been called “prophetic.” He was a far-sighted commentator on his age. His book was published one year before the Communist Manifesto and three years before Karl Marx used the expression “the permanent revolution” in his famous London Address,15 Groen’s x-ray examination of the spirit behind the French Revolution anticipated the nature of the Bolshevist revolution of 1917 and the Nazi revolution of 1933, each with its own reign of terror. At the fifth general assembly of the Evangelical Alliance, held in 1867 in Amsterdam, Groen gave an impromptu speech in which he warned: “Should [modern] nationalism ever triumph, we will see the atrocities of a new barbarism amid the most exquisite refinements of civilization.”16 When in the 1930s, Dutch voters were given the choice “Moscow or Mussert” (i.e., communism or fascism), a latter-day neo-Calvinist, Jan Schouten, leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, warned the voters against so-called “benevolent dictators”: Stalin and Hitler are like Robespierre and Napoleon, only worse so. . . . Since all dictators must begin by denying the supremacy of God, they make the State into a god, maintain it by brute force, and end by destroying all liberty: they first abolish your political liberties, they then gradually abolish all your civil rights, and finally they destroy your intellectual and moral freedom.17 Schouten spoke for the party’s entire constituency. Once Nazi Germany occupied their country, they would be found, alongside communists, in the forefront of the Resistance. Groen had little patience for progressive politicians who claimed to stand for the “separation of Church and State” and “religious neutrality.” That is nothing, he said, but a euphemism for “atheism” in the public square, for “godlessness” throughout human affairs “Their [the proletariat’s] battle-cry must be: ‘The Permanent Revolution!’ Closing sentence of the address by Marx and Engels to the Communist League,” London, March 1850. 16 G. Groen van Prinsterer, La nationalité religieuse en rapport avec La Hollande et L’Alliance Évangélique (Amsterdam: Höeveker, 1876), 13 17 Election speech, reprinted in Geen vergeefs woord (The Hague: Kuyperstichting, 1951), 321. 15

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beyond the strictly personal and private.18 Consequently, Groen called for resistance to “the revolution” across the board—in whatever form and in whatever area it turned up and sought to give shape to things. In positive terms Groen championed the notion that the input of the Christian religion must not be debarred from public life but should rather be invited and welcomed to help deal with the affairs of state and society, and to forge its own solutions to the challenges in public education, the social question, and so on. Groen van Prinsterer was often ridiculed as a loner, as “a general without an army.” His enduring significance, however, is brought out in the fact that over time he inspired widespread resistance to the spirit of modernity, giving birth in his country to what came to be called an “anti-revolutionary” movement. This movement grew into a multifaceted engagement of public life by orthodox Christians who refused to capitulate to a public philosophy that banished religious convictions to the strictly private sphere and ruled all appeals to divine law “out of order.” Groen’s uncompromising message drew a sharp dividing line between a secular and a Christian approach to the many issues facing modern society and culture. His depiction of two rival worldviews locked in mortal combat inspired generations to look for practical alternatives that could be a match for the prevailing philosophy of the day and for the new organizations and institutions that modern industrializing society was spawning. Because Groen was not a conservative who clung to the past, he was able to recognize the French Revolution as a “destructive but cleansing storm.”19 Its lofty ideas—liberty, equality, fraternity—are worth pursuing, he argued, but only on a Christian basis and in a Christian spirit. For many years Groen invited the conservatives in his country to be his allies and join him in his anti-revolution—today we would say, in his anti-secularism campaign. However, when these potential allies hesitated or shrank back, he stopped those efforts and turned resolutely in a more progressive direction, adopting the slogan “In our isolation lies our strength.” This slogan meant for Groen and the Anti-revolutionaries that by not compromising in coalitions with the self-styled “anti-clerical” parties, but instead sticking to their starting principles in a separate organization, they would safeguard their identity and keep their bearings in the policy debates of the day. Toward the end of his life, Groen organized his mission into a more disciplined movement. Under the energetic leadership of Abraham Kuyper, the “Groenian” members of parliament began to gather around an articulated “anti-revolutionary” platform. Groen advised Kuyper not to call it “Calvinist” for fear that potential allies would back away if theological doctrines became criteria for joining the caucus. From that point on, the Groenian-Kuyperian engagement of public life was never tied to any confessional standards specific to Reformed church denominations. Three years after Groen’s death saw the formal founding of the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP). The ARP would play a disproportionate role in parliament and government for more than a century, serving as a first line of defense against the onslaught of secularism. It stood for Christian principles such as freedom of conscience, social legislation to combat poverty, and a colonial policy geared to indigenous development rather than profits for the mother country. Though never a majority, between 1880 and 1980 the ARP always held seats in the houses of parliament and regularly contributed ministers to coalition cabinets as well as seven prime ministers. It helped remove discriminating policies against faith

18 19

Challenging the Spirit of Modernity, 94. Ibid., 89.

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communities and promoted a pluralist society of mutual tolerance and accommodation. The story of this party unrolls in a fascinating manner in the brilliant career of Groen’s disciple and successor, the churchman-publicist-scholar Abraham Kuyper. To be sure, initially Groen and his supporters had faced a form of “politicophobia” among their fellow Christians. Yet their co-religionists, once galvanized, abandoned their aversion to public action and could be mobilized to engage the many aspects of national life on their own terms, with their own values and guiding principles. A striking instance of this occurred in the rising labor movement. Common workingmen, with whom Groen’s Christian witness resonated, initiated a labor federation based on biblical principles. The Christian Workingmen’s Association “Patrimonium” soon formed a solid phalanx against the rising socialist movement and prevented the latter from claiming the whole of labor relations for themselves. At its founding, its president expressed the vision and mission of the new organization in words like these: We reject all strikes as fruits of the revolution, but we also condemn every association of money or power entered into for the purpose of securing a monopoly. . . . We await the help of Him who has made the heavens and the earth, and we call out to all: join us, so that our country may be preserved from the spirit that is not of God, from the ruinous plans of the revolution.20 Over time, “Patrimonium” and other vehicles of Christian social thought and action injected a spirit of accommodation, cooperation, and regular consultation into industrial relations and economic policy. This spirit has had a leavening effect far into the twentieth century and still makes itself felt today in what observers call the “polder model” of socioeconomic planning for the country based on fiscal and monetary policies negotiated periodically in a three-way partnership of government, organized labor, and organized owners/managers. Another field of active engagement was elementary education. If the government schools were mandated to be religiously neutral—an impossibility, said Groen—the response of the Reformed people was to set up private Christian schools, not seldom at considerable financial sacrifice. Groen devoted many a speech in parliament arguing for the full and equal rights of these schools. It was the schools’ struggle that led naturally to political action extending from the local to the national level and initially moved people to support the fledgling ARP.

III. SUMMARY With historical hindsight one can see that the two most critical battles in Groen’s career concerned the life-giving roots of any culture: church and school. First, he fought for the historic Christian faith in the church. He combatted the doctrinal freedom that was boldly practiced from the pulpits, where preachers held sermons on Easter Sunday in which they said that Christ arose from the dead “symbolically,” and where pastors baptized in the name of the “Trinity” of faith, hope, and love. The man in the pew, said Groen, has a right to a worship service that is in harmony with the church’s confessional standards.

Klaas Kater, De Werkmansvriend, April 1877, 1.

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Groen’s second battle aimed at unrestricted Christian content in the government schools for elementary education. When that became politically impossible, he did not allow himself to be placated by Christian trappings in the public schools which limited Bible instruction to the story of the virtuous Joseph (Genesis 37–50) and the noble statements of the Beatitudes (Mt. 5:1-12). Instead, he struck out for a fully parallel system of public and private schools. The educational pluralism that was ultimately established in his country is today studied by scholars from other countries. Parity treatment is the law of the land, including proportionate sharing in public funding. As a spin-off, faith-based organizations in higher education, but also in labor relations, the media, health care, and social services flourish and participate in the public domain on an equal footing with their secular counterparts, a situation often referred to as “pillarization” but more aptly named “institutionalized worldview pluralism.”21

IV. SEMINAL IDEAS The public philosophy advocated by Groen rides on elements of long standing in the Christian tradition, at times half forgotten, at other times revived to respond to a crisis. Groen was not original in appealing to these elements, nor was he alone in this. But he formulated them afresh and applied them rigorously to serve as criteria by which to assess modernity. One such element was Groen’s emphasis on the concept of divine calling, according to which there is a wide variety of offices in human society, each directly accountable to God. This emphasis laid the groundwork for the doctrine of sphere-sovereignty elaborated later by Kuyper. It rejects every form of statism that tends to deprive church and school, family and firm, art and media of their intrinsic autonomy.22 A second truth emphasized by Groen is the existence—the active presence—of an order of creation. The divinely created order for reality, which encompasses both the natural and the moral realms, represents God’s will for life and invites man to follow it in joyful obedience and humble submission, but which also brings retribution when denied or defied. Thus it is an order which man cannot ignore with impunity and which explains much of the misery and malaise in the life of mankind, but when heeded explains the wonder of human life flourishing in peace and prosperity. A third emphasis, flowing from the second, is Groen’s belief in a covenant relationship between God and humankind: the promise that obedience bears blessing, disobedience brings woe. Scripture assured him that “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 33:12a) and “godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Tim. 4:8). On the other hand, people and nations can bring down judgment upon themselves: “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee” (Jer. 2:19; also 6:19, KJV). Fourthly, Groen works with an expansive understanding of religion as being as broad as life itself. It defines the entire relationship between God and his human creatures. Accordingly, religious commitments, whether true or false, pervade all the domains of human life: not just theology and worship, but no less thinking and acting, scholarship

This is my own terminology. See David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the image of God (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014). 21 22

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and education, ethics and business, public policy and law-making. In each, God is served, or a god that takes His place. From this followed the lesson which Groen drew from his studies and applied throughout his life: Resist beginnings! Presuppositions, starting points, first principles— they are crucial in human affairs. The history of the French Revolution in particular cries out: Tell me where you start, and I will tell you where you will end up. These five seminal ideas would become pillars in the neo-Calvinism spearheaded by Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck and in the reformational philosophy associated with the Amsterdam scholars Herman Dooyeweerd and Dirk Vollenhoven.

Chapter 14

Abraham Kuyper JAMES D. BRATT

Abraham Kuyper is generally regarded as the founder of neo-Calvinism and, indeed, his vision, intellect, charisma, and strategic initiatives together did more than anything else to put the movement on the map and keep it there.1 So monumental a work could give the impression of being entirely original, generated out of Kuyper’s native genius by deduction from Scripture and eternal principles. But that notion can obscure how contextually Kuyper operated, how his great gifts were deployed in tandem with the changing demands of his times, how he drafted off the work of predecessors and contemporaries in improvising a fresh Christian response to the challenges of modernity. Certainly, Kuyper operated by—and dearly needed—fixed principles; his set was complete by his early thirties. Similarly, he was immersed in and commented at great length on the Bible both theologically and devotionally. At the same time, his priorities, tone, and agenda shifted notably over the course of his life. For an eventual prime minister, he was out of political office more of his active years than he was in, and the complete Calvinistic “life system” for which he is remembered today crystallized later in the course of his career. As other pieces in this volume attend to Kuyper’s ideas and legacy, this chapter examines the life-course out of which they arose, the sources that inspired him, the challenges that provoked him, and the inner yearnings he was ever trying to assuage.

I. YOUTH AND EDUCATION: 1837–62 Kuyper was born on October 29, 1837, to Jan Frederick and Henrietta Huber Kuyper, he a pastor in the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK), the national church of the Netherlands. Jan Frederick had come later than most to the ministry, working his way up from artisan origins; he valued the stature the church lent him and rendered it fealty in return. He served in a series of provincial parishes until he landed in Leiden in 1849 so as to afford his precocious son the chance to enroll at the city’s stellar gymnasium. There young Bram began to encounter a broad world via his favorite subjects of literature and history. He followed the heroes of Greece and Rome, read medieval sagas and the German Sturm und Drang, learned five languages, and became especially enamored of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century “Golden Age,” when it led Europe in trade and manufacturing, in science, art, and education.

The substance of and sources for this article can be followed in J. D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). 1

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Indeed, the Republic’s prosperity had attracted six of Kuyper’s eight great-grandparents from abroad, giving his ancestry an international cast that prefigured his own global vision. But by the year of his birth the Netherlands, now a Kingdom, had fallen on hard times; the 1840s saw famine, plague, and absolute decline in GDP and life expectancy. In the great year of revolution, 1848, King William II commissioned a new constitution that fell along classic Liberal lines—increasing Parliament’s power, disestablishing the church, and nationalizing lower education. The new regime, while steadily invoking the mantras of free trade, milked the colonial East Indies for massive funding of domestic infrastructure that promised a better economic future. Its green shoots were emerging by the time Kuyper entered Leiden University in 1855. Calls for cultural renewal were in the air too. Kuyper’s favorite undergraduate professor, Matthias de Vries, led the way in his studies of Dutch language and literature, while the centerpiece of his graduate studies in theology (1858–62) was a prize essay comparing the ecclesiology of Johannes á Lasco, the Polish-born leader of sixteenth-century Dutch Protestant exiles, with that of John Calvin. In keeping with the agenda of the sponsoring University of Groningen, Kuyper found for the irenic and “authentically” Dutch á Lasco over against the alien French and doctrinaire Calvin. His success in this venture sparked visions of a glorious academic career. At the same time Kuyper was eagerly observing the bold new theology unfolding at Leiden at the hands of his graduate mentor, J. H. Scholten. This “Modern” school summarily dismissed the various options of the previous generation, including the rational supernaturalism of Kuyper’s father, and set out to remake Christian theology according to the demands of modern science. Behind this “realism,” however, Scholten drafted heavily on German Idealist philosophy, especially Kant and Hegel, and insisted that theology proceed by strict logic from a single fixed principle—for Reformed theology, that meant divine election. Kuyper absorbed all these intellectual habits, even if he would harness them to a very different agenda than Scholten’s. For the moment, he could be classified as a Unitarian of Calvinistic tone and rigorous moral aspirations. To account Christ as divine would be to take away from God’s unique glory, he argued; true worship involved not Sunday ritual but the quest to attain Christ’s pure God-consciousness. Such a combination of ambition and remorseless self-scrutiny could be onerous, and twice during his university years Kuyper broke under the strain. First, the overwork from composing his prize essay while preparing for qualifying exams led to a total collapse in 1861. It took him five months at the home of his fiancée, Johanna Schaay, to recover. Then, with doctorate in hand but no better work prospects than a village pastorate, Kuyper experienced Christian conversion from reading The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), a Victorian bestseller written by Charlotte Yonge, a parishioner of John Keble of Oxford Movement fame. Riveted by Yonge’s counterpoint between the pride of one of her male protagonists and the forgiving spirit of the other, Kuyper was driven to his knees in repentance before God and before Jo, whom he had been handling peremptorily during their long courtship. It was of some theological significance that Kuyper absorbed Yonge’s liturgical and High-Church sensibilities—even more, for his future cultural program, that he was first converted by a novel.

II. FROM PASTOR TO POLITICS: 1863–74 A few months later, in August 1863, Kuyper was installed in the pulpit of the Dutch Reformed Church at Beesd, a small town in the Dutch heartland. Little more than a decade

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later, in March 1874, he entered Parliament. So rapid an ascent testifies to Kuyper’s talent but also to an urgent new threat he saw dawning over all of Europe and the political opportunities at hand for meeting it. But first he had to give his newfound piety a clear theological framework and found it in a rigorous form of Calvinism. Much later he ascribed that step to a confrontation with local “malcontents,” extreme predestinarians who absented themselves from church services in protest of the compromised fare on offer there. But evidence from the time testifies to his higher-level shock at seeing some of the ablest Modernist preachers in the NHK quit the ministry in favor of cultural and scientific work. After all, if the church were but a holding space for people on the way to moral and cultural maturity, why not leap ahead to the end goal at once? And so in the autumn of 1865 Kuyper delivered a series of lectures and sermons in which he espied and decried an emerging hegemony of philosophical naturalism that would yield devasting materialistic consequences for society and ethics. The times offered but two options, he concluded, Christianity or Humanism. Everyone had to make a definite choice between them and then live out that choice as an all-embracing “life-conception.”2 For himself he sought “shelter in the rocks which, being founded on the rock and being hewn from the rock of thought, laughs at every storm.” And where was that to be found? In “Calvin himself” whose “solid unwavering lines . . . [laid] the foundations which, banning all doubt, permitted the edifice of faith to be constructed in a completely logical style—and with the surprising result that a most consistent ethic ruled in its inner chambers.” Most simply, in the traditional Calvinist God he found “the power of the absolute.”3 Happily, modern times also offered ways to meet the modern menace. Kuyper’s years at Beesd saw its last cholera epidemic and the arrival of the telegraph and railroad, signaling a national network of ready communication. The disestablishment of the church opened possibilities for democratizing church elections, a step Kuyper endorsed on principle and on the correct surmise that ordinary laity were closer to Calvinist tradition than to Modernist innovation. Kuyper’s first publication, in 1867, argued both points and won him attention in the traditionalist capital of Utrecht. In accepting a call there, Kuyper gave up his continuing á Lasco project and the dream of being a scholar. As one commentator put it, he would now not write history but make it. Kuyper fulfilled his hosts’ expectations in pushing for orthodoxy, particularly via strict enforcement of the baptismal liturgy. But he defied them in taking his campaign to the school as well as the church, and so inevitably into politics. If the public mind controlled the future, he thought, then education was as crucial as religion. Moreover, education was everywhere moving to the center of national politics. The Dutch economy now had to improve social capital as it just had physical infrastructure, and around the world newly consolidated states (the United States 1865, Japan 1867, Germany and Italy 1871) looked to public education as a prime means of nation-building. Kuyper approved the first measure if less so the second, but he demanded that traditional religion not be driven out in the bargain. The emerging public school in the Netherlands threatened to become a “sect school of Modernism” on the way to atheism, he thundered. The only fair policy would be to fund plural options—Calvinist, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and “neutral”—and

Abraham Kuyper, Wat moet wij doen (Culemborg: A. J. Blom, 1867), 6. A. Kuyper, “Confidentially” [Confidentie, 1873], in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. J. D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 46–61. Emphasis original. 2 3

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let parents choose the one consonant with their own convictions.4 This the powers in Utrecht did not like, favoring as they did a uniform system that upheld “Christian and social virtues,” however attenuated their grounding and expression might be. Receiving overtures to take his cause to Parliament, Kuyper in 1870 accepted a call to Amsterdam, the center of civil as well as ecclesiastical politics. He signaled his orthodoxy by preaching on election his second Sunday in town; he pushed for more rigorous church education; he urged liturgical renewal, including weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper; he organized more vigorous diaconal services; and he proposed pluralizing governance here too by allocating different parishes to different theological orientations. He pushed the cause of cultural witness by taking to lecturing on topics of the day, offering a critical Christian viewpoint on Modernism and the rising standardization of contemporary life. But politics exerted the strongest draw; he stood for Parliament, unsuccessfully, in 1871, and then with a better outcome in 1873. By law that required he give up his ordination. His organizational gifts now had a wider scope. He took to the lecture circuit in 1873 to recruit a new generation of university students to Calvinistic politics but made his most decisive move, into journalism, the year before. Taking advantage of reduced mailing charges on newspapers, Kuyper transformed De Heraut (The Herald), an old organ of Jewish evangelism, into a religious weekly, and began De Standaard (The Standard) as a political daily. By this means he created a following that remained loyal to him for the rest of his days. The papers represented a pioneering venture in popular journalism and provided a continuing education, a virtual night school, for working people on topics of church and state, culture and piety, theology and international affairs. Words were matched by deeds. Kuyper cultivated contacts all over the country to create a network that would become a political party—a step the political elite of all persuasions opposed. Accordingly, he had to activate “new men,” the able and aspiring of modest means who were traditionally shut out of political participation. He also had to uphold his cause in parliamentary debate against disparagements that he was a religious ideologue of common pedigree. The pressure built and finally exploded in another collapse, this one prefaced by yet another conversion.

III. FALSE START AND NEW CALLING: 1875–80 In May 1875 Kuyper journeyed to the seashore of Brighton, England, for an international religious gathering convened in the afterglow of the recent Dwight Moody-Ira Sankey revival crusade. The message he heard there came straight out of the American Holiness playbook. Hannah Whitall Smith, the best though unofficial preacher on site, taught the earnest Victorians in attendance to stop relying on their own powers and yield to Jesus; if they did so “entirely,” they would be delivered from all sin and struggles with temptation. The energy thus released could be devoted to a life of heroic service to the Lord, service guaranteed to be successful upon the Master’s promise. No one was readier to hear this message than Kuyper, and he duly experienced Holiness’s “second blessing” of perfect consecration. But the promise was meant for personal and interpersonal dealings like evangelism and works of mercy, not the politics of church and state. Yet that is where Kuyper took it upon return to the Netherlands. Now pushing a grander agenda than ever, he spent half a year proselytizing in new form

A. Kuyper, Het Beroep op het Volksgeweten (Amsterdam: B. H. Blankenberg, 1869), 17–21.

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before spiraling into his greatest collapse ever. He repaired to Switzerland and the south of France for seventeen months of recuperation. When he returned home in the summer of 1877 it was with a more modest theology and a trimmed occupational agenda. The claims of sanctity on offer at Brighton, Kuyper rued, being Arminian and self-centered, were both inflated and falsely grounded. Better to hold to Calvinism’s divine sovereignty, the focus of his previous conversion. Likewise, he recognized that parliamentary activity was particularly stressful to him, so he determined to work behind the scenes. More precisely, he set out to build institutions to sustain a movement. He organized a remarkably successful “people’s petition” campaign in June 1878 to protest laws imposing a uniform secular school system on the nation, and then wove its signatories into the country’s first mass political organization, the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP). He founded the Free University of Amsterdam to create a leadership cadre. He made his newspapers his top priority to sustain these causes and more. All this happened in a remarkable three-year run, climaxing with the opening of the Free University in October 1880. There Kuyper delivered his most famous speech, “Sphere Sovereignty,” which laid out his core political, social, and educational philosophy in a tight, memorable compass. Kuyper’s speech invoked Scripture but drew off a variety of historical sources. It invoked the late medieval glory of the Low Countries and mirrored the consociational political philosophy of Johannes Althusius, syndic of Emden, when it had been the “Geneva of the North.” Earlier, in his 1873 lectures, Kuyper had combined Edmund Burke against the French Revolution with the Huguenots’ justification for resisting Catholic “tyranny.” He owed most to his mentor, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, erstwhile leader of the Christian Historical caucus in Parliament and author of its ur-text, Unbelief and Revolution (1847). While channeling the German historical approach to the social sciences, Groen aimed to found his theory on strictly Christian principles while avoiding the reactionary conclusions of other legitimists. He looked to Kuyper to modernize the cause, and Kuyper dearly hoped to inherit his mantle. For all his homage to tradition, Kuyper’s means were innovative. The Free University used a provision of the law secularizing Dutch higher education to found a school independent (hence its name) of church or state control. Officials in the NHK warned, correctly, that this spelled trouble for the denomination’s traditional control of pastoral ordination. The ARP pioneered not only mass organization but a complete agenda for national politics, from military affairs to water management, well beyond its catalytic issue of education. It then made that program binding on all its parliamentary candidates, and it organized local chapters to carry out recruitment, training, and party discipline. Every one of these measures was opposed by traditional elites across the ideological spectrum.

IV. THE STRUGGLE FOR CHURCH REFORM: 1881–6 As long as the Dutch franchise remained one of the most exclusive in all of Europe, however, the promise of the ARP was limited. Kuyper accordingly spent his next years on church reform. He issued his manifesto, Tractate on the Reformation of the Church, in 1883 to coincide with the 400th birthday of the original Reformer, Martin Luther. While the book mourned the various theological errors abroad in the NHK, it especially went after the synodical boards that composed its administration. Kuyper never pilloried any opponent, political or ecclesiastical, as harshly as he did these. Unwarranted by tradition or Scripture, the boards had usurped authority in the church from its proper

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head, King Jesus, who had a direct, original relationship with every congregation of the faithful. They were entirely competent—and far more likely—to correctly supervise doctrine and life. Since the national church had fallen far from this mark, Kuyper went on, alliances of orthodox churches should draw together, bring in the faithful from wayward congregations, and let the dead wood fall by the wayside. The Netherlands would see the flowering of the true church, the withering away of the false, and the renewal of national life. But for once Kuyper’s strategic skill failed him. He was outmaneuvered on the local level and defeated in the courts. Most of all, large numbers who were conservative in institutional loyalties as well as in theology did not join his ranks. Kuyper’s breakaway movement, the Doleantie (from those grieving the decline of the church), enlisted just 11 percent of the country’s churches and only a third of the orthodox. For all its traditionalist claims, Kuyper’s move was a radical step and came in radical times. The 1880s were one of the Netherlands’s most turbulent decades, hammered by economic depression, renewed epidemics, violent street demonstrations, and radical proposals on the political Left, including a burgeoning Socialist movement. The Doleantie channeled such discontent for its devotees but reflected it all too much for its opponents. Six years after their formation in 1886, the Doleants merged their churches with those descended from an earlier (1834) secession from the NHK into a new denomination, the Reformed (Gereformeerde) Churches of the Netherlands. Their 8 percent of the Dutch population fell quite short of Kuyper’s hopes; yet the discipline he helped instill in them gave them influence far beyond their numbers in national councils. Kuyper’s theologizing in these years fit these circumstances but also went beyond them. On the one hand his long magazine series on Particular Grace and The Doctrine of the Covenants elaborated in detail on classic teachings in Reformed theology. So did the substantial section of The Work of the Holy Spirit that treated the ordo salutis. But the latter work also forecast the bracing departures that Kuyper would complete in his three volumes on Common Grace years later. The Holy Spirit was the agent of that process by which God would work the redemption not just of single souls or even the church but of the entire cosmos. All human gifts and talents were required to that end, and every good thing, whether an action or an invention, something individual or collective, from the regenerate or not, showed the Spirit at work. That Kuyper wrote these sentiments in the mid-1880s, just as the strife of church reform was building, showed that he was never a man of one topic, or one mood. They also presaged the decade to come when he reached the height of his powers and success.

V. THE PEAK YEARS: 1887–97 In 1887 Kuyper pivoted from church to politics, and for good reason. A constitutional revision that year doubled the size of the Dutch electorate and another extension in 1896 doubled it again, enfranchising 50 percent of adult males. Aligning the ARP with its Roman Catholic counterpart, Kuyper aptly predicted that coalition’s triumph in the 1901 elections. Meanwhile, he solidified the party’s democratic character, adapted its agenda to the full arrival of Dutch industrialization, and simultaneously reached the peak of his intellectual creativity. Little wonder that the celebration of De Standaard’s silver anniversary in 1897 was a high-water mark of his life. The economic challenge was most immediate. Dutch agriculture had started drowning under a flood of American and Ukrainian wheat in the mid-1870s, and when in the mid-

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1880s the urban sector slumped in turn, thousands were left unemployed, sick, even near starvation. Going back to Groen the ARP had majored in jurisprudence, not economics, so now it had to catch up quickly. Kuyper’s contributions, delivered in a newspaper series on Manual Labor in 1889 and a stem-winding speech at a Christian Social Congress in 1891, combined his customary suspicions of overweening government with a sharp critique of the ideological roots and deleterious consequences of utilitarian laissez-faire. Christians were to take their bearing from Christ who was always on the side of the poor, he emphasized. Practically, moral dignity as well as material welfare could be best upheld if workers organized into councils that would negotiate issues with management from the local level up. These views evolved further over the 1890s as successive reform-Liberal cabinets passed a bevy of legislation establishing minimum standards of social welfare and economic regulation. It helped that the Dutch economy began a quarter century of improvement at the same time. Kuyper’s Cabinet came right in the middle of a rising tide. Some party leaders suspected the new “red Kuyper,” however, and the national battle over further franchise extension (1892–6) brought the issue to a head. The secular parties were similarly divided so that both “democratizers” and “aristocrats” found themselves in unusual coalitions. In the ARP the split became permanent. Kuyper rallied his “new men” to purge the ranks of the “men with double names,” elite sorts who had sometimes migrated over from the old Conservative party. The most pointed clash came with his long-time collaborator Alexander F. C. Savornin Lohman, a lawyer and the leader of the party’s parliamentary caucus. Kuyper reentered Parliament to argue the democratic cause in person against his old friend, while also maneuvering behind the scenes to oust Lohman from the Free University faculty. During it all, in 1894, Kuyper suffered another health crisis, this time necessitating recuperation in Tunisia. Remarkably, amid all this strife Kuyper published his most lasting work. His scholarly capstone, the three-volume Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, appeared in 1893–4. Next in line was the six-year series of articles in De Heraut that laid out his theology of common grace, a project he finished in July 1901, just as he became prime minister. In the middle of that, in 1898, he delivered his summa, Lectures on Calvinism, at Princeton, where he received an honorary doctorate. These were the three legs that supported the project for which Kuyper would be long remembered. It involved (1) the elaboration of Calvinism as an all-embracing way of life, a Protestant alternative to the day’s prevailing Roman Catholic and evolutionary pantheist options. This necessitated (2) a coherent worldand life-view, a concept popularized at the time by eminences as disparate as Friedrich Engels and Wilhelm Dilthey to address the epistemological vacuum left by the collapse of positivist models. The Calvinist enterprise (3) was to be deployed by the church as an organism working out its faith through the day-to-day life of believers in their various vocations, in contradistinction to the institutional church where Kuyper had long labored and been frustrated. All of this was made possible (4) by the “common” grace (beyond the “particular” grace of salvation he had elaborated twenty years before) that God endowed in the structures of society and creation, as well as the conscience, to restrain the effects of sin and make possible the creative appeal of the gospel.

VI. HONORS AND TRIALS: 1898–1905 With such mandates for worldview and world-engagement, Kuyper ramped up his attention to world affairs as the nineteenth century came to a close. His 1898 trip to the United States left him ambivalent. He praised its virtues to the skies before his Standaard readers

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as the outworking of common grace and Calvinist principle alike, but he warned his hosts on site about their country’s pervasive materialism and recent entry into imperialism via the Spanish-American War. Harder for him to bear was the outbreak of the South African (Boer) War in 1899. Kuyper published a long critique in the eminent Revue des Deux Mondes assailing the hypocrisy of perfidious Albion, foreseeing the pyrrhic victory its aggression would entail, and disparaging the character of the indigenous peoples. In other writings he had celebrated the grand diversity of the human race as embodying the full image of God, each component group being necessary to its rich glory. But he also accepted the heliotrophic picture of world history which put the West at its apex, the East as valuable but superseded contributors, and sub-Saharan Africa as entirely bypassed and of no account. Kuyper’s white South African acolytes would eventually turn this racism to help warrant apartheid, however much they betrayed other parts of his theology and political practice in so doing.5 Two months before the outbreak of the war, in August 1899, Kuyper’s wife Jo died of heart disease, aged fifty-seven. That accentuated his fin de siècle anxieties and helped inform the rectorial address on “Evolution” that he gave at the Free University that fall. It was his best in that genre since he had opened the school with “Sphere Sovereignty” nineteen years before. Darwinian evolution being at its nadir within the academy, Kuyper spent (too) much time criticizing particular details of the science. He did better in targeting the ethical implications that materialist acolytes like Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel were drawing from the brand. That is to say, Kuyper was more worried about social than biological “Darwinism.” As at his start in 1865, he saw a grand conflict between two antithetical “systems,” each with its own ethic: the atheistic evolutionary warrant for power and conquest over against the “Christ of God who seeks the lost and has mercy on the weak.”6 Once the new century was underway, however, better possibilities dawned at home and were realized when the religious coalition won the 1901 Dutch elections. Kuyper entered (in fact, innovated) the prime minister’s post with an ambitious two-term agenda. In his first four years he would push his educational platform; in the second, his social policy. Both were complex and holistic, and the religious parties had little proven talent to draw on for their implementation. Kuyper’s imposing personality drove some off some potential cabinet members as well, leaving him as his own minister of domestic affairs. His education bill returned to the issue that had galvanized his cause in the first place— equitable funding for all, not just secular schools—and it gave the Free University rights to grant degrees. But he went beyond “sectarian” appeal too, chartering Delft as a technical university, dramatically improving vocational education, and raising quality across the board. Still, the religious measures were contested fiercely, and Kuyper had to resort to royal intervention in the Upper House of Parliament to see them through. If Liberals took umbrage on this score, the rising Socialists—who had once supported equal school funding—were angered by Kuyper’s suppression of a railroad strike in 1903. This had built from a dockworkers’ strike, which Kuyper deemed legitimate in theory and negotiable by the interested parties, into a general strike called by anarchists, which On Kuyper’s attitudes toward and ironic legacy in South Africa, see Bratt, Abraham Kuyper, 289–96. Of the many treatments of Kuyper’s racism, Vincent Bacote, “Kuyper and Race,” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures, ed. Jessica R. Joustra and Robert J. Joustra (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022), 146–62, is outstanding. 6 Kuyper, “Evolution” [Evolutie, 1899], in Bratt, Kuyper Centennial Reader, 405–40 (439). 5

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Kuyper deemed illegitimate for being politically subversive in intent and subject to criminal law. In the process the government called out the militia to restore transportation, the anarchists fell out with fellow Leftists and the general population, thousands of workers lost their jobs, and Parliament saw heated exchanges between Kuyper and the Socialists’ leader, Pieter J. Troelstra. If Kuyper defended his policies by comparison to the horrific industrial clashes of America, his moralistic tone deeply offended the opposition and left them highly motivated for the 1905 elections. That contest was as heated as the suffrage election had been a decade before, but now Kuyper the person rather than a concrete issue was at the center of the storm. The religious parties again took the popular vote, but the vagaries of parliamentary districting gave the opposition the majority of seats. Kuyper was so stricken that, defying protocol, he left the country before the new government was installed. He set off on a nine-month trip around the Mediterranean Sea where the air was as fresh and the scene as wide as The Hague’s was stale and narrow.

VII. RECONNOITERING THE WORLD: 1905–12 Kuyper’s tour proceeded in a great clockwise circuit from the Balkans through Asia Minor, down the Levant and Nile, across the North African coast to Portugal and Spain. Back home in June 1906, he spent the next two years writing up his impressions in the massive, two-volume Around the Old World Sea (1907–8).7 The work was classic Kuyper, interlacing rich local detail with grand cultural and geopolitical speculations. The two aspects came together best in his appreciation of how Islam had imbued a common faith across such a remarkable diversity of peoples, all without a trace of his bete noire, bureaucratic supervision—all the more remarkable an achievement, he thought, since Islamic doctrine seemed as cold as deism, offering little for vital spiritual life. (He discounted Shia and Sufism as inauthentic deviations.) Likewise, while he gave French and British imperialism some credit, he thought its days were numbered both by demography and native resistance. He especially scorned the secular technocrats who thought that trade, transportation, and education would lift locals from the reign of superstition into bright European Enlightenment. Such “experts,” having shrunken souls themselves, could not fathom the spiritual hungers of the colonized nor the persistence of religion in defining the future.8 As to that future, Kuyper’s trip had begun in September 1905 just as Japan had finished its shocking triumph over Russia, the first of an Asian over a European power in centuries. He was far from alone in seeing heavy portents here for the West but also called for self-critique and a reassessment of loyalties. That is, in the coming conflict of civilizations he foresaw between a polytheistic East Asia and a monotheistic West, Islam held the balance. Would it ally with its fellow victims of European colonialism or with its fellow monotheists among Euro-American Christians? The latter option was to be ardently preferred, of course, but it would require the West to live out the principles of the gospel instead of arrogance and greed. He gave his ethnocultural musings one last turn in concluding on the macro-history of the Mediterranean itself. It had always seen

A. Kuyper, Om de Oude Wereldzee, 2 vols (Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1907–8). Kuyper’s reflections on Islam in Om de Oude Wereldzee are collected in A. Kuyper, On Islam, ed. James D. Bratt with Douglas A. Howard (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2017). 7 8

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an oscillation between Semitic influences from the east and Aryan power to the north. European Christianity had triumphed by blending the two, but only by maintaining the Semitic side of the mix against Modernist efforts to purge the same could it thrive in its own house and bless its neighbors going forward. Future fascists would cast things very differently. While drafting his travel memoirs, Kuyper also embarked on his last great theological series in De Heraut (1907–11), published in three volumes as Pro Rege (1911–12). If Common Grace had established the possibilities for world-engagement, Pro Rege prescribed how Christians were to conduct that engagement—under the kingship of Christ, the same principle as in his church reform, only now deployed by the church organic in the toils of everyday life. The most creative part of the work came in its first hundred pages, where Kuyper combined ten years of world travel and political administration into a riveting picture of emergent modernity. The world, he observed, was becoming one great metropolis of rapid exchange that left the soul dispersed and distracted, unable to focus on spiritual quests or questions, fragile and superficial in its social relationships, all too prone to the mammon of money and fashion. The new world required some alteration of his previous formulae. Where the state had once loomed as a threat, in Pro Rege it was overshadowed by the power of a once-benign society; in fact, the power of spontaneous social formation now required more state regulation. Family and church, once the cornerstones of human life, had weakened, so Christians needed to devote more energy to the formation of public opinion via journalism and the arts. Yet as one critic has noted, in Pro Rege Kuyper’s grip for the first time seemed to weaken. His counsels sometimes retreated into individual behaviors and symbolic gestures. At only one point did he bring out the antithesis that subsequent generations in his line would raise to an operational principle equal to his others, and that was in describing how his followers were segmenting themselves into self-contained associations in daily life as in Sunday worship. Christ might be king of the world, but believers were settling for islands therein.

VIII. END GAME: 1914–20 This constriction reflected some of the hard times the political Kuyper met in his last phase. He thought he deserved another term as prime minister but the rising generation of ARP leaders, whom he had inspired, disagreed and took over the lead. The tension eventuated in a harsh public rift that left Kuyper in charge of the party’s central committee but outside its parliamentary activity. Increasingly, he gave off the air of an embittered elder statesman, invoking battles on the barricades, giving too much attention to his own grievances and too little to the question of succession. When the end eventually came, that fell to Hendrik Colijn who had parlayed military service in the East Indies into oil speculation there, eventually landing in London banks at the service of Royal Dutch Shell, a veritable trifecta of the corporate imperialism that had always discomfited Kuyper. He struggled with his health as well. A new regimen of daily calisthenics and vegetarian diet helped, but his hearing loss continued, forcing him to leave the Lower for the Upper House of Parliament. He took annual trips to the baths outside Dresden, even after the outbreak of the First World War made those parlous. The war itself he could hardly fathom. He took Germany’s side more than the Entente’s but held out most hope for a negotiated peace through the good offices of Woodrow Wilson. When that

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went a-glimmering, he brooded about mysterious powers operating behind the scenes and surrendered to the providence of God. Yet he did not lose all hope. The two issues that had arched over Dutch politics his entire career—education funding and franchise extension—were settled in a great compromise struck by a wartime cabinet of national unity. The religious parties got full equitable school funding; the opposition won universal adult suffrage. While Kuyper had held out for a “household” (i.e., usually male) franchise instead of this “individualistic” scheme, he turned to new frontiers. At age eighty, the grand old man gave one last party plenary address, calling for renewed attention to the social question he had raised thirty years before. The health of a nation could be measured, he said again, by how well it encouraged the rich development of the full human being. That remained the calling of a true Christian political party—and for that matter, of the Christian church. Kuyper died on November 8, 1920, of his long-standing pulmonary ailments. He was buried with high honors by representatives of all the fields he had worked in—church, state, academe, journalism—but would have especially savored the love and loyalty that came forth from the “little people” whose language he had spoken, whose faith he had deepened, and whose worlds he had opened with the hope of a consistent Christian witness in all of life and society.

IX. LEGACY In the fifty years after his death Kuyper’s influence largely flowed within Dutch channels. In the Netherlands it was central and formative. His political party formed part of the Cabinet more often than not for the rest of the twentieth century, and his followers created the first of the segmented confessional/ideological “pillars” that structured Dutch society until the 1970s. In the United States his theology precipitated a major schism in Dutch immigrant communities between those who accepted (and remained in the Christian Reformed Church/CRC) and rejected (and formed the Protestant Reformed Churches/PRC) the doctrine of common grace. Thereafter, the Kuyperian wing of the CRC promoted cultural engagement more than did their pietistic siblings along with a less conservative brand of civil politics. The same profile was even stronger among Dutch immigrants to Canada following the Second World War. At the same moment a twisted version of Kuyper’s thought helped frame the apartheid regime in South Africa. From the 1970s on, Kuyper’s influence diversified ethnically and geographically. Particularly in post-colonial Indonesia and South Korea his ideas of common grace, sphere sovereignty, and principled cultural engagement attracted people within conservative Reformed and Presbyterian churches who were seeking an intentional Christian path into public life. The same aspiration marked the excited discovery of Kuyper by various evangelicals in North America. Its association with apartheid made Kuyperianism a hard sell, however, in mainline Protestant circles both there and in South Africa. Meanwhile, back in the home country, the “breaking-open” of Dutch pillarization in the 1960s turned the youth revolution of that decade away from Kuyper’s reputation and set those loyal to his cause in search of a fresh, creative address to contemporary issues. This led to a rediscovery of an “early Kuyper” bristling with insights and possibilities before his heirs congealed them into fixed systems. Perhaps more than any of its ideas, the social segmentation growing out of Kuyperianism proved to be both a major attraction and an imposing limit in his legacy. Whether in a modernizing Dutch society or ethnic enclaves in North America or as a hegemonic racial

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minority in South Africa, one could engage the modern world with all sorts of critique from within the safe orthodoxy of “our own circle.” That invited the ossification of principles, particularly sphere sovereignty and the antithesis, into additional layers of orthodoxy, triggering heresy hunting against those who sought to engage with people in “the world” from a posture of learning. On the other hand, the thoroughly relational character of all Kuyper’s thinking—in theology and ethics, in social and political theory—was prescient for our own times and has lasting value everywhere. Thus, against secular individualism of Left or Right, Kuyper underscored that both personal and social well-being correlate closely with community and connection. Against pious individualism he emphasized that the vertical and horizontal dimensions of our life in faith are inextricably interrelated and that our Christian calling transcends not only ourselves but also the nuclear family that has been so fetishized on our own church scene. Rather, it reaches into every ring and layer of human association in a principled quest for the common good as informed by Scripture, history, and God-given human rights. One measure of the continuing salience of a thinker like Kuyper is the degree to which his principles can correct his own errors and whatever time reveals to be misguided conclusions. Kuyper’s mandate for Christians to subject themselves, and not just their opponents, to the standard of the word of God does just that. Further, while landing on the conservative side of the spectrum, Kuyper insisted that all acquired customs and habitual loyalties be measured by their fidelity to gospel principles and to the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, in the world as well as in the church. Likewise, the grand systemic thinking he inherited from his Hegelian teachers can easily lead to over-generalization, but its imperative to look for animating impulses beneath the surface and for connections between apparently disparate phenomena is a wonderful tonic against the tendency to formulate theology by the week and to prescribe ethics by behavioral legalism. Finally, Kuyper’s robust assertion that religious convictions have a rightful place in public life must always be paired with his principled pluralism, so that our claims of rights must also uphold our neighbor’s—perhaps especially the neighbors who believe opposite to ourselves. Beyond all he taught and did, Kuyper’s lasting achievement was to pump fresh inspiration into a religious tradition all too prone toward the formal, defensive, and doctrinaire. In Calvinism’s core “principle” of divine sovereignty he found instead an invitation to imagination, providential possibilities far beyond Calvinists’ habitual comfort zone: The world after the fall is no lost planet, only destined now to afford the Church a place in which to continue her combats; and humanity is no aimless mass of people which only serves the purpose of giving birth to the elect. On the contrary, the world now, as well as in the beginning, is the theater for the mighty works of God, and humanity remains a creation of His hand, which, apart from salvation, completes under this present dispensation, here on earth, a mighty process, and in its historical development is to glorify the name of Almighty God. With that he also extended a bracing invitation for us to fathom, even help realize, something of those possibilities, “to go back to the living root of the Calvinist plant, to clean and to water it, and so to cause it to bud and to blossom once more, now fully in accordance with our actual life in these modern times, and with the demands of the times to come.”9 A. Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961 [1898]), 162, 171.

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Chapter 15

James Orr MICHELLE C. SANCHEZ

Scottish Presbyterian theologian James Orr (1844–1913) is not completely forgotten, only mostly forgotten. His name is more likely to appear in a background citation than an academic title. If it weren’t for Abraham Kuyper’s deference to Orr when introducing the concept of Weltanschauung in his Stone Lectures (1898), Orr might well have slipped into obscurity. Yet anyone who seeks to retrace how Christianity became reconfigured as a “worldview” will swiftly arrive at Kuyper’s lectures, read the opening pages, and ask, “Who is James Orr?” Kuyper begins his lectures with the claim that “life systems are wrestling with one another”: specifically, modernism and Christian heritage. He then adds a note: “As Dr. James Orr (in his valuable lectures on the Christian view of God and the world) observes, the German technical term Weltanschauung has no precise equivalent in English.”1 Several recent commentators, such as Peter Heslam and David Naugle, have taken this comment to suggest that Orr was the first to rethink Christianity as a “worldview” or “life system” in concert with German intellectual and popular trends of the time.2 However, closer historical scrutiny shows that Orr is better understood as part of a contemporaneous groundswell of Protestant interest in the concept, traceable along both liberal-modernist and conservative-traditional theological lines.3 If Orr is not the first to represent proto-Evangelical Christianity as Weltanschauung, why then might contemporary readers take interest in his work? Even Orr’s sole recent biographer, Glen Scorgie, remarks that Orr might better be remembered for his vigor and

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), 20 n. 1. See James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013); David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002); Peter Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998). In a different reading, Jason E. Whitehead treats Kuyper and Orr as two different trajectories of Christian worldview apologetics. See Jason E. Whitehead, “Tool or Lens? Worldview Theory and Christian Conservative Legal Activism,” Journal of Law and Religion 36, no. 1 (2021): 29–66. I remain skeptical that the conceptual difference between a lens and a tool can stand up to scrutiny. Accommodations (lenses, canes, medications, and so forth) are, after all, tools that enable certain aims (reading, walking, clear thinking). 3 German jurist Julius Friedrich Stahl used the term Weltanschauung as early as 1845 to articulate a holistically Christian legal and political system. See Friedrich Julius Stahl, Philosophical Foundations, trans. Ruben Alvarado (Aalten, Netherlands: Wordbridge Publications, 2022). Schleiermacher and Ritschl were also early adapters of Weltanschauung for modernist Christianity. See Clifford Blake Anderson, “Jesus and the ‘Christian Worldview’: A Comparative Analysis of Abraham Kuyper and Karl Barth,” Cultural Encounters 2, no. 2 (2006): 61–80. 1 2

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scope than for his originality or brilliance.4 Yet this is exactly why Orr’s writing invites attention today. Orr was adjacent to not one, but two movements of lasting significance to contemporary Evangelicalism. First, he was a pioneer of worldview theology, which has had an enormous afterlife. Second, he penned four of the ninety essays published between 1910 and 1915 under the title The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth.5 This movement would play a critical role in the later emergence of the politically active Christian Right and Moral Majority.6 Orr offers an opportunity to explore the output of one keystone of political and apologetic Reformed Evangelicalism who is notable because of his success as a vigorous and sweeping communicator. Examining what Orr took to be the basis of his theological method—what his arguments looked like, who he cited, what he allowed and resisted— offers a window, in other words, into the founding architecture of contemporary Reformed Evangelicalism. Doing so shows the significance of Orr’s deep debt to the modes of modernism he opposed. In this chapter, I give a reading of Orr’s overall contribution to philosophical theology as a foundation for the defense of Christianity. I focus on the sources that Orr deemed relevant, the method he deemed appropriate, and the overall strategy he used to rearticulate Christianity in the particular time and place of late nineteenth-century Europe with an eye to the United States. I then draw out the distinctive positions Orr takes, especially vis-a-vis the nature of history and of the Christian human person as a historical actor who bears and represents the aim of divine revelation. I conclude by reflecting on the kinds of questions Orr enables us to ask, situated as we are in our own historical moment.

I. WHO WAS JAMES ORR? James Orr was born in 1844 in the thriving industrial city of Glasgow, Scotland, the child of an engineer whose untimely death left him orphaned. His early exposure to theology seems to have been largely mediated by his involvement in the YMCA and Glasgow City Mission. He was also a member of Sydney Place Church, a large Christian body with an economically diverse congregation and a strong outreach program to students and those experiencing poverty. The institutions that shaped Orr shared a generally evangelical and evangelistic orientation, emphasizing biblical faith and individual conversion as the best solutions to socioeconomic struggle. The YMCA also provided apologetic training to young people in the face of emerging challenges, such as Darwinism. Orr’s early job as a bookbinder apprentice further confirms his early experience of economic disadvantage. Glen Scorgie, A Call for Continuity: The Theological Contribution of James Orr (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1988), 155–6. This chapter has benefited greatly from Scorgie’s illuminating account of Orr. 5 R. A. Torrey and A. C. Dixon (eds.), The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, 2 vols (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003). 6 See B. M. Pietsch, “Lyman Stewart and Early Fundamentalism,” Church History 82, no. 3 (2013): 617–46; Darren Dochuk, “Fighting for the Fundamentals: Lyman Stewart and the Protestant Politics of Oil,” in Faithful Republic: Religion and Politics in Modern America, ed. Andrew Preston, Bruce J. Schulman, and Julian E. Zelizer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 41–55; and the monograph that followed: Darren Dochuk, Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 2019); for a historical account tying Stewart’s influence to US worldview theologies and presuppositional apologetics, see Michael J. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 4

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The facts of these personal circumstances paint Orr as one whose encounter with Christianity was shaped by the search for personal transformation and community in the face of loss and struggle.7 In contrast, nineteenth-century Europe was, for educated men and some women, a scene of optimism. Historical sciences led to knowledge accumulation at the same time that the natural sciences funded rapid technological development. Majority populations largely interpreted these advancements as harbingers of progress writ large. The increased ability to catalog human events and master the forces of nature enticed many to associate the dispelling of myths with increased welfare and happiness, the promise of a modernity guided by a use of reason capable of unifying the sciences and securing the human good.8 Yet for others, rapid change and widespread unification were harbingers of loss and struggle, including for some in Orr’s orbit. His denomination, the United Presbyterian Church, was founded in 1820 when a union of various churches seceded from the established Church of Scotland. In 1900, it merged with the Free Church of Scotland. Largely a Reformed phenomenon, “free” and “seceding” churches like Orr’s exhibited one enduring feature of the magisterial Reformation: discomfort over participating in an ecclesial structure institutionally submissive to the state.9 The 1555 Peace of Augsburg marked princely sovereignty as the solution to religious dispute among Catholics and German Evangelicals, a precedent actualized with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and Hobbesian statecraft. Yet while radical reformers insisted on the independence of churches from state governance, Reformed bodies viewed the state with ambivalence. The Lutheran and Catholic solution to civil war—cuius regio eius religio, establishing that the religion of the prince would be the religion of the principality—set the stage for Reformed churches’ struggle against perceived tyrannies of both church and state. For Orr, as for “neo-Calvinists” like Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, Reformed churches ought to be disestablished from the state in order to preserve and proclaim sound doctrine while culturally transforming civic life.10 This placed the “free” church at odds with the widespread progressivism of nineteenth-century statecraft insofar as fantasies of mature nationhood were nourished by the perception of all-encompassing, unified sciences in which religion played an ancillary role.11 The advancement of Darwinism, for example, portended the loss of anthropocentrism; physics and historical criticism excised miracles; and German Idealism

Scorgie, A Call for Continuity, 19–35. See also “The Late Dr. Orr: A Leader of the United Free Church,” The Scotsman, September 8, 1913, 7. 8 In addition to Scorgie, A Call for Continuity, 3–17, see Johannes Zachhuber, Theology as Science in NineteenthCentury Germany: From F.C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch, Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 9 For a general overview, see Jonathan Willis, “Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe, ed. Grace Davie and Lucian N. Leustean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 104–5. 10 For more on the relationship of secession movements in Scotland and the Netherlands, see George Harinck, “Groen van Prinsterer en Thomas Chalmers: ‘Precious Ties of a Common Faith’,” in Groen van Prinsterer in Europese Context, ed. George Harinck and Jan de Bruijn (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2004), 43–54. 11 For helpful discussions, see James Eglinton, “Reformed Theology in Modern Europe (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries),” in The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 134–53; James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 7–16, 35–6. 7

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undermined the credulity of supernatural persons generally. Much of Orr’s written corpus attempts to curtail these losses. In a posture that foreshadows that of later worldview apologists like Francis Schaeffer, Orr’s strategy was not one of sectarian isolationism. He fully engaged the philosophical and scientific developments of his time, maintaining his theological independence by boldly appealing to the prior authority of supernatural realities: God as person, the incarnation, scriptural miracles, and human regeneration as the true engine of world progress. For Orr, these realities represented that which is de facto genuine in worldly life, whereas modern progressivism achieves only a facsimile. By assuming this stance, Orr was at home in his nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural world; at the same time, he sought to demonstrate that he was not of it. The relative success of this position is, predictably, difficult to discern. Orr held chairs at the United Presbyterian College in Edinburgh and the Free Church College in Glasgow. He gave prestigious lectures in Scotland and the United States. As a scholar of philosophical theology, he had command over the major schools of his time and even expanded his focus to biblical studies. Few in Orr’s time challenged his command of the scholarship, but critics were less persuaded by the methodological and philosophical coherence of Orr’s apologetic arguments.12 Where one kind of reader might perceive an uneven analysis of historical evidence or unacknowledged and inconsistent traces of Hegelianism, another reader could perceive the exact task of theological apologetics: making connections between the putative object of divine revelation and the objective unfolding of history. Orr might best be described as a tactical theologian rather than a systematic one. As Orr performs this task, he occupies a theological posture that is both produced by and fit for nineteenth-century Europe. Here, I am not interested in declaring Orr’s relative success but in articulating the distinctive way he reoccupies theology to counter the perceived modernist threat. My approach to Orr’s legacy is mindful of the descriptive and normative dimensions of the task of theology itself. Is the goal of theology to achieve originality, systematic coherence, historical-scientific accuracy, or practical-ethical clarity? What does Orr’s project, with its modest but pervasive influence, tell us about how theology has functioned? And how does Orr help us to consider how we think theology ought to function?

II. THE “CHRISTIAN VIEW” Let me begin with Orr’s best-known publication: the 1890–1 Kerr Lectures, published in expanded form as The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation (1893).13 The opening page contains a discussion of the German terms Weltanschauung and Weltansicht, two closely related terms that Orr renders as “view of the world.”14 As such, the title could just as easily be rendered The Christian Worldview and Godview as Centering in the Incarnation, marking Orr’s text as an early installment of the “Christian Worldview” genre that has become extraordinarily popular within

Scorgie’s account cites numerous examples. See, for example, A Call for Continuity, 67–78 and 85–99. James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation (Edinburgh: A. Elliot, 1893). 14 Ibid., 3. 12 13

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broadly Reformed Evangelical apologetic and pedagogical literature.15 While Orr was not the first to use Weltanschauung to refer to Christianity, he played an early and significant role in its emergence. Eight years later, Kuyper, citing Orr, used Weltanschauung to define Calvinism. Fourteen years later, in 1904, Herman Bavinck published a handbook titled Christian Worldview.16 What first stands out in Orr’s text, then, is the titular place he gives to Weltanschauung. But Orr’s title also draws a second, more rarified connection between the “view of God” and the “view of the world.” While Gottanschauung and Gottsicht are not entirely absent from the Christian worldview literature of the past century, they are comparatively rare. Orr’s inclusion of Gottanschauung invites further scrutiny of the theological significance of Orr’s work insofar as it was written when German philosophy’s rearticulation of the building blocks of philosophical anthropology served as both the adversary of and the source for neo-Calvinism’s response to modernism. On one level, Orr is attempting a bricolage synthesis of Scottish common-sense realism, Kantianism, and Hegelianism—all modes of thought falling in and out of vogue during Orr’s career. On another level, however, Orr is unwaveringly committed to the objectivity of God, miracles, and scriptural revelation. This is where it is possible to read Gottanschauung and Weltanschauung as a thoroughly nineteenth-century reoccupation of a distinctly Calvinist mode of Christian teaching. Calvin’s 1559 Institutio Christianae Religionis, a pedagogical manual, begins neither with faith-seeking understanding nor the exposition of dogma ex cathedra, but with the ontic-epistemological claim of cognitio Dei et nostri: the perception of God and ourselves are joined by many bonds.17 This is a claim about the human faculties (and particularly the imagination) as much as it is a claim about God rooted in Christian revelation. For Calvin, fallen perception of God and ourselves is inversely intertwined. The more one learns about what God is like through the apprehension of God’s works, the more one attains a feeling of one’s own cognitive-affective impoverishment and distortion. Therefore, one cannot perceive oneself as worthy and able until one receives the accommodating lens given by God as Redeemer. For Calvin, God is genuinely “other” to the world in a way that conveys ontic force within the world. God, in other words, is a special kind of non-worldly being whose activity fundamentally challenges the assumed trustworthiness of fallen cognition. This cognitive challenge is crucial to the transformation of the Christian. Yet such a transformation—effected by the work of the Spirit—is only recognizable insofar as it draws the believer into a set of reforming practices that operate at every level of life. One becomes not a knower, but a participant in a mode of life, an activity by which revelation hedges the faculties as much as it enables them.

For example, see Nancy Pearcey and Phillip E. Johnson, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008); Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1983); James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, 4th ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004); Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). 16 See Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, and Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, trans. N. Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory C. Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019). 17 John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics, 2 vols (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 35–9. For more on the relationship of cognitio to perception in Calvin’s teaching, see my discussion in Michelle Chaplin Sanchez, Calvin and the Resignification of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), ch. 1. 15

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Orr’s antidote to modernism—specifically modernism’s perceived claim to hold a monopoly over the progressive unity of the sciences—recalls Calvin insofar as it is rooted in an appeal to God as real and distinct person-object, other than, prior to, and involved in the world. Orr, however, puts a sharper point on this move by positioning God as a “supernatural” person and by reconceiving the regenerated human as one whose faculties have the power to intuit the world order in light of “supernatural” revelation. Calvin, in contrast, conceives the relation between the natural and the supernatural in an altogether different way. Following Augustine, all of creation is, at its most basic, a miracle that is granted regularity by divine providence. Historical context is relevant, here. Unlike Calvin, Orr is writing at a time when leading Christian theologians were conceding to the basic structure of a Kantian subject constrained epistemically by the phenomenal bounds of the world, and Orr’s supernaturalism can be conceived as one of many possible responses to this different scientific-subjective context. On one level, Orr’s insistence on objective supernaturalism draws on the cultural salience of the Scottish common-sense realism of Thomas Reid a century prior. For Reid, something may be deemed real if it causes an immediate conception accompanied by an immediate belief about it.18 For Orr, God causes much in the way of conceptions and beliefs about supernatural objects. Yet, as his interest in the German terms Weltanschauung and Gottanschauung demonstrate, he does not settle for Reid’s approach: Orr makes a common-sense assertion about God’s reality while articulating that assertion with the Kantian language of intuition.19 For Kant, objects of knowledge must be subject to the intuitive forms of space and time, thus excluding transcendent, aesthetic, and sublime ideas. Yet Kant admits that these ideas can still be used reflectively to guide the mind in interpreting objects of knowledge. Orr, however, argues that if God is in fact a real person, then Gottanschauung should enable the knowledge of this supernatural object. This is where Orr appeals to the incarnation and, accordingly, the epistemic power of the salvation that Christ makes possible. According to Orr, “He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God is thereby committed to much else besides”: a view of God, man, sin, redemption, and history, which together form a Weltanschauung.20 In other words, belief in Christ entails a complete and coherent worldview. On the one hand, Orr’s language is biblical and creedal. Yet instead of making the more traditional (and Calvinian) move of grounding belief in a sacramental way of life, he moves to the distinctively nineteenth-century language of intuition, Anschauung. Orr again takes up modernist thinking when he proceeds to improvise on the broadly Augustinian fides quaerens intellectum: “Faith cannot but seek to advance to knowledge—that is, to the reflective and scientific comprehension of its own contents. Just because its propositions are held to be not only ‘judgments of value’, but to contain objective truth, they must be capable of being submitted to theoretic treatment.”21 When Orr writes that faith seeks not understanding but advancement in knowledge, he does three things: he iterates a traditional theological formula; he alludes

Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (Glasgow: William Falconer, 1817), e.g., 65–9. 19 For a helpful analysis of the attraction and limitations of Reid for neo-Calvinism in a post-Kantian context, see Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology (London: T&T Clark, 2020), ch. 5. 20 Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation, 4–5. 21 Ibid., 34. 18

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affirmingly to the nineteenth-century intellectual context; and he mobilizes both previous moves to attack the sufficiency of Ritschlianism’s emphasis on value. This tactical combination of Augustine and Kant is compelling, but is it coherent? According to Kant, Weltanschauung—an intuition of the world—is admissible on behalf of the faculty of cognition because it “enlarges the mind” so it “feels itself empowered to overstep the limits of sensibility from another (practical) point of view” by bringing the idea of infinity to the intuition of sensibility.22 In other words, the idea of infinity is not admissible on its own, but only insofar as it enables the mind to make connections between things for the purpose of practical reason—culminating in morality, which Kant reframes in the third Critique as involving the cultivation of judgments in relation to a wider sphere of value. Yet this latter move is what Orr cuts off at the turn. For Orr, it is because the propositions of Christian faith are a priori objective truth that they are de facto capable of being submitted to both reflective and constitutive use, and thus of altering the chain of phenomena from the inside. This deeply modernist mode of Christian traditionalism is rooted in the unconditional assertion of the incarnation event as a miracle that renders other miracles admissible phenomena. Such an Augustinian gesture runs contrary to Kant’s critical goal of constraining knowledge to make room for faith.23 Orr nevertheless completes this move in Kantian terms by rethinking the incarnation event as that which joins the divine mind to the human being in the worldly sphere, effectively providing ontologically solid backing for human endeavors. Orr is explicit, even as his argument runs contrary to the Augustinian-Reformed tradition. According to Orr, “The Incarnation sheds new light on the nature of man, alike as respects its capacity for union with the Divine, its possibilities of perfection, and the high destinies awaiting it in the future,” which Orr proceeds to describe as the founding of a “Kingdom of God on earth.”24 Calvin was not the only Reformed theologian to critique the expectation of perfectibility.25 Yet this tension only underscores what is enduringly interesting about Orr’s project. Like the white US Evangelical movement that has embraced the category of worldview in recent decades, Orr’s task is situated as a kind of extra-ecclesial cultural transformation that employs the tactics of culture war. These tactics, alive and well in Orr’s nineteenth-century German context, articulate a Christian worldview that sanctions a strategy of cultural appropriation in the name of advancing what rightfully belongs to Christ and Christ’s Kingdom.26 This project lends itself to Orr’s characteristic eclecticism, the bricological method that subsequent scholars acknowledge as philosophical weakness. Of course, the judgment of a project’s strength and weakness is relative to one’s aims, and one’s aims are contingent on one’s goal. Orr is executing what he refers to as the “deputed sovereignty” given to regenerated humans and legitimizing “conquest over material conditions.”27 If the incarnation undergirds a progressive program of world Kant, The Critique of Judgement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), sec. 26. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 117. 24 Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation, 39. 25 See, for example, Calvin, Institutes, 426, 565, 602–7. One can see this picked up, generally, by Niebuhrian realism. 26 Todd Weir (ed.), Monism: Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); “Hitler’s Worldview and the Interwar Kulturkampf,” Journal of Contemporary History 53, no. 3 (2018): 597–621. 27 Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation, 166. 22 23

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redemption and world realization—the realization, in other words, of a “view of God and the world”—then all intellectual strategies are available for the task. In what remains, I will look more closely at how this method leads Orr to reconceive world history and the nature of the human person as a historical actor, including shifts in his use of philosophical resources and the ensuing implications. This, I hope, will ultimately clarify the questions that attention to Orr enables us to ask.

III. ORR’S FUNDAMENTALIST PROGRESSIVISM AND CHRISTO-SOTERIOLOGICAL HUMANISM Insofar as Orr finds Weltanschauung a helpful category for his modern-facing rearticulation of Christianity, he also finds himself tangled in the fundamental questions driving the intellectual needle back and forth between Kant and Hegel in the late nineteenth century. For example, Kant coins Weltanschauung as a reflective judgment that expands the mind for practical purposes. Orr takes a stronger position, writing that the Christian Weltanschauung must be read to “affirm the objective truth of the ideas it entertains.”28 One must never concede “any necessary divorce between the mind in its practical and the mind in its theoretical activities, so that propositions may be affirmed in the one sphere which have no relation to, can receive no corroboration from, may even be contradicted by, propositions affirmed in the other.”29 Orr’s position hews closer to a post-Kantian position typified by Hegel, who refuses to concede the fundamental division between phenomenal and noumenal, practical and theoretical, and reflective and constitutive judgments. For Hegel, every contradiction is an opportunity to recognize the shared structure of subject and object in Reason’s journey to absolute truth. It is not surprising, then, that Orr deploys some of Hegel’s tools to smooth out the tensions noted earlier. This becomes clear when Orr positions Christianity as the rightful owner of claims to progress—claims that, in modernist circles, took their point of departure from the occlusion of theology.30 Unlike Hegel, however, Orr does not merely defend the expanse of human knowing, but anchors that expanse in dogma. In what follows, I briefly outline Orr’s account of history before concluding with an assessment of how this bears on Orr’s view of theological anthropology—particularly, the significance of the human as saved. In 1897, Orr gave a series of lectures at Pennsylvania Western Theological Seminary that represented another front in his war against the Ritschlian school’s theological dominance. This time, his crosshairs rested on Adolf von Harnack’s History of Dogma, which argues that dogma has historically imported illegitimate metaphysical substructures into Christian practice.31 In lectures that were later published as The Progress of Dogma, Orr argues that history’s production of and verdict over dogma is, in effect, the very substance of Christian truth. Dogma encapsulates the encounter of the saved human with God, refining the articulation of metaphysical constants and generating progressive moral-religious revelation. Like Hegel, for whom Reason has drives that generate its Ibid., 29. Ibid., 34. 30 Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries argues that metaphysics and theology do not evidence progress. See Immanuel Kant, Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings, ed. Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 31 Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, 7 vols (London: Williams & Norgate, 1896–9). 28 29

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dialectical development objectively and subjectively, within and beyond individual humans, Orr posits that dogma “has shaped itself in history.”32 This allows Orr to counter what he sees as the fundamental subjectivism of Ritschlianism and modernist theology more generally. The stated purpose of The Progress of Dogma is structurally similar to The Christian View in several ways. For one, Orr boldly counters modernism by claiming ownership over modernism’s very tools. As Orr argues in The Christian View, if the Christian God incarnate is an objectively real supernatural subject whose knowing and creative expression constitute the truth of worldly order, then the epistemological developments accompanying nineteenth-century optimism and scientific progressivism pose no threat to Christianity. Instead, they reveal deeper insight into the world order itself, insight adjudicated positively or negatively relative to the human knower’s epistemic submission to the Christian worldview. In Progress, the tactic is the same, but the question is whether theology can attain the status of a science by manifesting steady advancement. This was a pressing question posed by the emerging human sciences to theology. For someone like Wilhelm Dilthey, Weltanschauung is a crucial anchor point for the possibility of the human sciences per se because the human sciences studied the output of human cultures in the context of their uniquely expressed views of world order.33 Thus, theology might be an expression of a particular society, but it is not itself an engine of transhistorical progress. Orr, however, begins with the claim that Christian revelation constitutes worldly truth, and thus historicizes objects of human production by indexing them to history’s encounter with revelation. This encounter is what produces dogma and renders it the central engine of human progress. Here, Orr turns away from the late nineteenth-century drift toward neo-Kantianism and back to Hegel as a philosophical ally. Orr enlists “the verdict of history” as an objective criterion which “will lift us above the uncertainties and fallibilities of individual judgment” and “place our feet on more stable ground.”34 History is “a tribunal before which the personal equation in the individual judgment is cancelled; the accidental elements in the thought of an age drop away, and only its abiding contribution to truth is retained.”35 Orr thus draws on post-Kantian German Idealism to anchor theology as a historically sovereign discourse and to protect the “throne” that he feels the discipline rightfully occupies.36 In short, Orr follows Hegel in viewing history as a progressive working out of the self-consciousness of an idea or a logic, in this case Christian revelation; Schiller in positing history as the unfolding of a living form;37 and Schelling in describing this living form as an organic unity of thinking with a kind of hidden materiality, which for Orr points to the incarnation.38 These moves rely on Orr’s most fundamental presupposition: that Christian faith furnishes special intuition (Weltanschauung) to those who have been transformed by it, and this intuition enables the gradual perception of the world form.

James Orr, The Progress of Dogma (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1901), 4. Wilhelm Dilthey, Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume VI: Ethical and World-View Philosophy, ed. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). 34 Orr, The Progress of Dogma, 16–17. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 8. 37 Ibid., 16–17; Friedrich von Schiller, “Resignation,” in Thalia (1785). 38 See for example Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Freiheitsschrift (1809). 32 33

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The second way that Progress structurally echoes The Christian View is by presuming the higher knowledge of the Christian. Orr explicitly appeals only to those who have faith.39 The faith-shaped imagination perceives the risings, fallings, and steady refinement of Christian dogma over the long haul and in the theater of human struggle. Dogma criticizes, corrects, eliminates, incorporates, and opens to the future without retreating into a “bygone stage.”40 In a striking move, Orr does not shy away from bolstering his Hegelianism with Darwinism. Discussing creeds as products of historical development, he writes: “They have centuries of development, of conflict, of witness-bearing behind them. . . . They represent the ‘survival of the fittest’ in doctrine under the severest possible strain.”41 Orr argues that dogma should not be excluded from the evolutionary paradigm. He views evolution as the coming-to-consciousness of the human as a “special product of divine wisdom and power”: “With man’s appearance at the head of the organic world, a new moral and spiritual kingdom was founded.”42 This “appearance” of “man” is the “promise and potency” of the incarnation itself.43 For Orr, God and Christ are personal and singular, and salvation entails a miraculous joining of the human to the divine in Christ. When this miracle occurs, Christian humanity becomes organically endowed with privileged knowledge and powers of perception. This is evident, for one, in the specific historical arc Orr traces across Progress. Scorgie observes that the text, for all its ambition, tells a limited story: after devoting the first five (of ten) lectures to the second-fifth centuries, Orr narrows his focus to the Western Church, then to Protestantism. Scorgie takes this as a weakness and recommends appraising the text on method, not content.44 Yet I wonder whether the selective content isn’t exactly what Orr needs in order to support his particular account of progress. Orr needs to narrate how a peculiarly gifted mode of self-consciousness drives the very kind of progress the text describes, and a particular trajectory of theological anthropology supplies the unifying thread, tying early Christological controversies to later atonement theories. When Orr arrives at the Reformers, he focuses on forensic justification because, according to Orr, forensic justification gives an account of how the human achieves the status of being “truly set right by God in presence of His own law.”45 When he shifts to nineteenth-century critical thought, he reframes modernism as a critical test of the capacities and limitations of the human, ultimately providing “a grander and stronger edifice of theology” fit for the peculiar task of the twentieth century: “to bring Christianity to bear as an applied power on the life and conditions of society; to set itself as it has never yet done to master the meaning of ‘the mind of Christ’.”46 The end of dogmatic progress, in other words, is a particular kind of human mastery.

Orr, The Progress of Dogma, 8. Ibid., 17. 41 Ibid., 18–19. See also Scorgie ch. 6 for more context. 42 Ibid., 229. 43 Beginning with Sylvia Wynter, scholarship has begun exploring the colonial force of the modern European philosophical construction of “Man.” A longer study, such as one I am developing elsewhere, would read Orr’s distinctly modernist-traditionalist construction of “man” in this and other critical contexts. See Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337. 44 Scorgie, A Call for Continuity, 75–8. 45 Orr, The Progress of Dogma, 234. 46 Ibid., 353. 39 40

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Read this way, Progress is a detailed account of Christian power. It is an account of how dogma manifests the logical power of Christian salvation in historical context, beginning with Christ becoming human and concluding with the mastery of the “mind of Christ” by elect human beings.47 Orr theorizes Christian power clearly earlier in the text, writing that if God’s chosen method of salvation is election, then this is “in order that in each soul saved [God] may set up a new centre—a point of vantage, shall I say, chosen with infinite wisdom—from which He may work with greater effect for the accomplishment of wider ends.”48 Here, Orr picks up a theme again from The Christian View: how the Christian gains the ability to execute “deputed sovereignty” over material conditions.49 Progress ventures a dogmatically sanctioned answer to the question set up in The Christian View, namely that when human consciousness encounters the organic reality of incarnation, Gottanschauung becomes Weltanschauung.

IV. CONCLUSION Orr’s work is not commonly known for its precision or originality. In some ways, this is not fair to Orr. For a long time, he was considered the top scholar on Ritschl in the English-speaking world. Later, he ventured to publish in biblical studies, evidencing decades of careful attention to the literature. Orr did not fail to put in the labor necessary, nor did he read too narrowly. As this chapter shows, Orr was deeply engaged with figures commonly perceived as antagonistic to Evangelical Christianity: Darwin, the German Idealists, Ritschl, Harnack, and interlocutors not mentioned here like Herbert Spencer and August Comte. Orr often began his lectures with epigraphs drawn from the full breadth of this pool of thinkers. Are these broad engagements best understood as markers of intellectual inconsistency, or a cunning exhibition of how “inconsistencies” can precisely harness the kind of power Orr sought—the power to actively restitch the relationship between history and dogma? Perhaps Orr’s project was in fact a decades-long effort to both articulate and perform Protestant Christianity as an exercise of mastery over material conditions by those with the privileged vantage to do so, namely, elect Christians with a Christian worldview. In a sense, Orr plays out what a Christian intellectual life looks like that simultaneously clings unwaveringly to Christian “fundamentals” while also consuming and digesting the best of contemporary thought. Orr may look like a poor Kantian, a cherry-picking Hegelian, or an inconsistent common-sense realist, but perhaps he’s making a case for what these various approaches offer someone who is already firmly convinced of the “supernatural” yet “organic” existence of God incarnate in Christ as revealed in scripture. Here, Orr’s project can be read as a bellwether of the presuppositional worldview-apologetic tradition that gained popularity over the next century. Whether one meets Orr’s project with admiration or revulsion, there is little doubt that it has been subtly influential across large swaths of the conservative Christian public in the United States. Orr leaves us one more important question: should we agree so easily that the modernist ideals of progress, mastery, and knowledge are the best markers of truth? All three ideals are notably lacking in Calvin, whose cognitio Dei et nostri guides the reader toward

Ibid. Ibid., 295. 49 Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation, 166. 47 48

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personal and communal sacramental practice while ceding a rightful place to the common good and civic virtue. For Calvin, election did not secure subjective mastery, it alleviated psychic turmoil. These positions were no doubt inflected by Calvin’s own intellectual context and personal intellectual proclivities, shaped as much by Seneca and Cicero as Augustine and Bernard. Yet this only underscores the significance of the question with which those interested in neo-Calvinism must continue to grapple: has someone like Orr successfully mastered the civilization-building ambitions of nineteenth-century European intellectual elites, or has he merely become mastered by them?

Chapter 16

Herman Bavinck JAMES EGLINTON

During his own lifetime, and across the century since, the neo-Calvinist Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) has proven a surprisingly difficult figure to categorize. The author of the acclaimed four-volume Reformed Dogmatics,1 his writings, vision, and nuance gave shape to neo-Calvinism as a theological movement, for which reason his name belongs at its forefront alongside that of his older colleague Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). In one of the most vivid descriptions of their status as representatives of the neo-Calvinist tradition, Harinck has written of how, When mentioned together, we take the name of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck not as the name of two individuals but as a brand name. Kuyper and Bavinck belong together like Goldman and Sachs or like Mercedes and Benz. Together they stand for neo-Calvinism.2 Bavinck first came into Kuyper’s orbit as a teenager and went on to craft Kuyper’s grand vision—that of a reinvigorated and orthodox Calvinism fit for the modern age—into an elaborate and detailed corpus of theologically charged works. Indeed, Bavinck’s relationship to Kuyper takes on a particular hue when viewed in the light of Kuyper’s own writings on the notion of genius, which distinguish between those whose genius lies in the perception of new, paradigm-shifting insights and those whose different kind of genius lies in the elevation of those insights to great refinement. In his Encyclopaedie der heilige godgeleerdheid, Kuyper compared these distinct giftings to those of the gold digger (whose skill allows him to see streams of gold hidden in the dark recesses of a mine) and the goldsmith (who turns that raw gold into beautiful objects).3 In Kuyper’s view, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was one such gold digger, yielding a cluster of profound insights on Christian thought that a later goldsmith, Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), smelted and reworked as the Summa Theologiae. Among the proto neo-Calvinists, a case can be made that Kuyper saw himself as something of a modern Augustine—a gold digger who Bavinck published two editions of this work. The first edition was published in four volumes between 1895 and 1901, following which he set about significantly revising and expanding the work. The second edition, some 700 pages longer than the first, appeared in print between 1905 and 1911. See Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 1st ed., 4 vols (Kampen: J.H. Bos, 1895–1901); Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 2nd ed., 4 vols (Kampen: J.H. Bos, 1906–11); Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–8). 2 George Harinck, “Herman Bavinck and Geerhardus Vos,” Calvin Theological Journal 45 (2010): 18. 3 For a summary of Kuyper’s view, see James Eglinton, “The Reception of Thomas in Kuyper’s Encyclopaedie der heilige godgeleerdheid,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 462. 1

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had spotted a rich vein of new insights on the Reformed faith in the modern world—who was looking for his own Thomas Aquinas. In that reading, Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics comes to be seen as a Summa for the neo-Calvinist tradition.4 For that reason, perhaps the most direct manner of introducing Bavinck is as the neo-Calvinists’ great dogmatician: a first-generation neo-Calvinist whose careful endeavors bequeathed his tradition with its own extensive articulation of Christian doctrine. This association is a long-standing one, for which reason the claim found at the start of this chapter—namely, that Bavinck is somewhat difficult to classify—might indeed be surprising to some readers. Alongside that magnum opus of dogmatic theology, however, Bavinck also wrote on a broad array of topics, often to a striking degree of social and intellectual impact in his native Netherlands—from literary criticism to philosophy, and from psychology to pedagogy. He combined a career in academic theology (before which, he had served briefly as a pastor) with significant roles in national politics and journalism. It is precisely the manifold, multi-directional nature of his efforts that has made Bavinck difficult to categorize: viewed as part of a constellation of great modern Protestant theologians, his species is perhaps more like that of the broadly engaged, multidisciplinary Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1830),5 than that of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886– 1968), whose working life was largely dedicated to the production of the never-finished, labyrinthine Church Dogmatics.

I. LABORING UNDER MANY LABELS For example, in Bavinck’s own immediate context, and in the first few decades after his death, many contemporaries regularly and rightly described him as a dogmatician. However, this was not the only label applied to Bavinck—or even the first label that came to the minds of some. He was often also referred to as, “a born philosopher,”6 “the great Christian philosopher,”7 a “theologian-philosopher,”8 the “great philosopher-dogmatician of the Reformed movement” (a description made, notably, in Tijdschrift voor wijsbegeerte, an important academic philosophy journal in that era),9 and as “a theologian, but no less, and perhaps even more so, a philosopher.”10 To some, he was appropriately labeled as a “historian,”11 or as “a historian and a philosopher,”12 although others described him in contradictory terms as, “not a historian or an economist, but a theologian-philosopher

Eglinton, “The Reception of Thomas in Kuyper’s Encyclopaedie der heilige godgeleerdheid,” 465. See, for example, Christine Helmer, “Schleiermacher,” in The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, ed. David Fergusson (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 33. 6 “Leestafel,” De gereformeerde kerk, February 18, 1904. “Prof. Bavinck is een geboren filosoof, maar een filosoof bij de gratie Gods.” 7 “Geestelijke gistingen,” De Volksvriend, March 28, 1929. “Men mag dan den grooten Christelijken wijsgeer Bavinck verachten.” 8 Lucas van Klinken, Bavinck’s paedagogische beginselen (Kampen: Kok, 1935), 7. 9 H. W. van der Vaart Smit, “Boekbespreking,” Tijdschrift voor wijsbegeerte 23 (1929): 235. “. . . den grooten wijsgeer-dogmaticus der Gereformeerde richting.” 10 van Klinken, Bavinck’s paedagogische beginselen, 7. “Bavinck was theoloog, maar niet minder, misschien nog meer wijsgeer.” 11 Ons eigen blad; tijdschrift voor onderwijsgevende kloosterlingen 9 (1921): 569. 12 S. Rombouts, Prof. Dr. H. Bavinck: Gids bij de studie van zijn pedagogiese werken (’s-Hertogenbosch: L.C.G. Malmberg, 1936), 5. “Behalve theoloog blijkt Bavinck hier reeds historikus en filosoof te zijn.” 4 5

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of repute.”13 Although he was identifiable as a prolific newspaper columnist, and for a period, as the editor of a newspaper, contemporaries also debated whether he might indeed be labeled as a journalist. (One contemporaneous critic, who claimed Bavinck’s attempts to write popular-level theology in newspaper columns were “too dull, too dry, too learned,” argued that, “Bavinck was absolutely not a journalist.”)14 Others described him as “a theologian and scientific pedagogue,”15 and as “the philosopher of modern Calvinist pedagogy.”16 Shortly after his death, one pedagogue described how, “We see Dr. Bavinck as a theologian, as a philosopher, etc, etc, but before all else we wish to see him as a pedagogue.”17 In the same year, a newspaper review summarizing the Netherlands’ cultural high points in the previous quarter century described Kuyper as that period’s greatest Dutch theologian, and Bavinck as its most important pedagogue.18 In a notable effort to hold a number of these labels together, one early Bavinck interpreter, Lucas van Klinken, wrote in enthusiastic terms of Bavinck as a polymath (“een universeel geleerde”): a “theologian-philosopher, pedagogue-psychologist!”19 As such, although a century on from his death Bavinck continues to be identified primarily as the neo-Calvinist tradition’s great dogmatician, his legacy was more complex than this label might convey if taken simpliciter. When viewed with a keen eye to historical detail, and particularly to the contours of his biography, his legacy resists wholesale reduction to the “dogmatician” label and prompts us to describe him in more capacious terms. Even if he were to be termed primarily as a dogmatician, the details of his life and work require (at least) some secondary range of description. Indeed, a number of the previous examples of interpreters who foreground distinct labels gesture toward such efforts at some kind of triangulation between these labels: such can be said, for example, of van Klinken’s attempts to read Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics as philosophy (of revelation) written in the register of dogmatic theology,20 and of the attempt made in De School met den Bijbel to relate Bavinck’s dogmatic, philosophical, and pedagogical contributions.21 Recognizing this complexity, this chapter aims to introduce and portray Bavinck by presenting his life in context as the setting for both the Reformed Dogmatics and his wider (and wide-ranging) oeuvre and will conclude with the argument that the striking fecundity

Compare, for example, Jacob Brederveld, Hoofdlijnen der paedagogiek van Dr. Herman Bavinck (Amsterdam: N.V. Dagblad en drukkerij de Standaard, 1927), 6, and “Van vrouwenleven,” De Nederlander, April 13, 1918. “Niet een historicus of econoom, maar een theoloog-philosoof van naam.” 14 J. Jansen, “Dr. H. Bavinck †,” Vragen van de Dag 36 (1921): 650. “Een korten tijd schreef hij ook dogmatische artikelen in de Bazuin, doch die waren voor de lezers te taai, te droog, te geleerd. Journalist was B. helemaal niet.” 15 Onze partij en haar leiding (Den Haag: Naaml. Vennootschap Chr. Dagblad “Nieuwe Haagsche Courant,” 1915), 11. 16 J. C. Coetzee, “Opvoedkunde en calvinisme,” in De reformatie van het calvinistisch denken, ed. C. P. Boodt (’s-Gravenhage: Uitgeverij Guido de Bres, 1939), 220. “Ek kom nou by die bespreking van Dr. H. Bavinck as die filosoof van die moderne Calvinistiese opvoedkunde.” 17 A. J., “Hoever we zijn,” in De School met den Bijbel 19 (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1921), 3. “We zien Dr Bavinck wel als theoloog, wel als wijsgeer, enz. enz., maar allermeest willen we hem zien als pedagoog.” 18 “De opbloei van het leven tijdens de 25-jarige regeering van Koningin Wilhelmina,” Onze Courant: Katholiek Dagblad voor West-Friesland, September 3, 1923. 19 van Klinken, Bavinck’s paedagogische beginselen, 5. “[E]en universeel geleerde: theoloog-wijsgeer; paedagoogpsycholoog!” 20 van Klinken, Bavinck’s paedagogische beginselen, 5–9. 21 A. J., “Hoever we zijn,” in De School met den Bijbel, 3. 13

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of studies on Bavinck (as the area of neo-Calvinist thought currently receiving the most intensive scholarly attention) lies precisely in the variegated nature of his interests and efforts. Stated differently, it will argue that Bavinck is a particularly fruitful object of reflection within the sphere of dogmatic theology because of the extent of his labors beyond it. He is of interest to many because his own interests were many.

II. BAVINCK’S LIFE Herman Bavinck was born in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands, on December 13, 1854. His father, Jan Bavinck (1826–1909), originally from Bentheim in Lower Saxony (on the German side of the Dutch-German border), was a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church, a theologically conservative denomination that had left the mainstream Dutch Reformed Church in the Secession (Afscheiding) of 1834. His mother, Geziena BavinckHolland (1827–1900), was Dutch, and had joined the Christian Reformed Church as a young adult. Prior to the framing of the modern Dutch constitution in 1848, which granted all citizens full freedom of religion, the first generation of Christian Reformed pastors and members experienced sustained state-led persecution on account of their allegiance to an as yet contraband breakaway church that did not enjoy the favor of the state. In its earliest existence, the Seceder church wrestled with questions concerning the relationship of the state to the church(es), the issue of free religious expression and pluralism, the merits and desirability of their socially disempowered cultural existence, and the existential question of whether to struggle onward on hostile home terrain or emigrate to greater freedom in the new world. (Many Dutch immigrants to North America in the mid-nineteenth century were persecuted Seceders.)22 In that setting, Jan Bavinck was ardently anti-emigrationist, believed in the calling of persecuted Christians to contend for the faith in their own nations, and saw much to appreciate in modern culture—including liberal democratic freedoms and advances in technology.23 By the time Herman Bavinck was born, that religious persecution had ended, and the Seceders were free to practice their faith. While some Seceders struggled to be reconciled to a pluralistic society in which confessional differences were effectively relativized, the Bavincks were typical of a movement within the Christian Reformed Church that sought to tread “the path from separation to integration.”24 The Bavinck household was a notable example of this impulse to remain ecclesiastically separate (in distinction to the mainstream Dutch Reformed Church) while pursuing a high degree of participation in every other sphere of society. Indeed, the Bavincks stood out in that milieu as particularly socially ambitious, upwardly mobile members of the new middle class, setting their sons on privileged educational trajectories that would eventually lead to access to the then rare opportunity to attend university. The Bavinck home produced two sons who completed doctoral degrees, respectively, in theology and medicine (Herman and Berendinus (1870–

Robert Schoone-Jongen, “Dutch and Dutch Americans, to 1870,” in Immigrants in American History: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration, ed. Elliott Robert Barkan (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2013), 1:59–66. 23 James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 17–40. 24 Jasper Vree, “Van separatie naar integratie: De afgescheidenen en hun kerk in de Nederlandse samenleving (1834–1892),” in Religies en (on)gelijkheid in een plurale samenleving, ed. R. Kranenborg and W. Stoker (Leuven: Garant, 1995), 176. 22

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1954)), another who died during his doctorate in law (Johannes (1872–96)), and another who became a Christian Reformed pastor (Bernardus (1866–1941)). Herman’s educational track reflects this effort to participate in Dutch culture as Seceders: as a teen, he attended both the Hasselman Institute (a private, modern school run by a Seceder) and the Zwolle Gymnasium (a non-Seceder classical school with a long, prestigious pedigree). As a student thereafter, he attended both the Theological School in Kampen (the Christian Reformed Church’s seminary) and Leiden University (the Netherlands’ oldest, and most socially prestigious university). Previous scholarship on Bavinck’s time at Leiden—where he studied theology and Semitic languages, and eventually wrote a doctoral thesis on Zwingli’s ethics25—has tended to draw a stark contrast between Bavinck’s own theologically orthodox background and convictions, and the anti-supernatural, rigidly liberal theology espoused by the Leiden faculty at that time.26 In such scholarship, Bavinck was portrayed as locked in daily battle with his modernist professors. In reality, Bavinck encountered a more or less relativized confessional environment there and met an older generation of liberal professors who treated him politely while making little concerted effort to unsettle his Seceder faith. This time at Leiden (1874–80) marked Bavinck’s life and eventual emergence as a neo-Calvinist in four key ways. First, it further established (and confirmed) the strong sense of upwardly mobile Christian social ambition learned in his parental home. Leiden offered him an elite-level experience in terms of intellectual and social development. By and large, its graduates went on to positions of power and influence in Dutch society. By mixing in Leiden circles, he befriended young aristocrats, future political leaders (and the offspring of then current political leaders), and celebrated literary figures, and also grew closer to Kuyper.27 (It was in this period that Bavinck first rejected an approach from Kuyper to join his fledgling Free University of Amsterdam project.) Second, the influence of his de facto doctoral supervisor in particular, the higher critical Old Testament scholar Abraham Kuenen (1828–1921), taught Bavinck the practice of historical theology as a careful, inductive, scientific discipline. Although Bavinck’s starting assumptions and eventual conclusions were markedly different from those of Kuenen, the scholarly method learned under his tutelage—that of reading texts carefully, always with an eye to history and an awareness of the current state of the field—marked Bavinck profoundly. In context, Kuenen also modeled intellectual generosity (and the practice of faithfully representing those with whom one disagrees) for Bavinck. These traits would go on to mark Bavinck’s own life and work.28 Third, it left Bavinck with a lifelong sense of distance from the pre-critical faith and piety of many rank-and-file members of the Christian Reformed Church—an outcome that he saw as a mixed bag of blessing and sad loss.29 Fourth, the influence and example of his Seceder pastor in Leiden, J. H. Donner (1824–1903), had a deep impact on Bavinck’s own life. A highly regarded preacher whose ministry attracted intellectuals and nobility, Donner combined rigorous biblical exegesis with attentiveness to human psychology and the particulars of modern culture and was highly engaged in

Herman Bavinck, De ethiek van Ulrich Zwingli (Kampen: G. Ph. Zalsman, 1880). See for example, Ron Gleason, Herman Bavinck: Pastor, Churchman, Statesman, and Theologian (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2010), 45. 27 Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 79. 28 Ibid., 97–9. 29 See George Harinck, “Something That Must Remain, If the Truth Is to Be Sweet and Precious to Us: The Reformed Spirituality of Herman Bavinck,” Calvin Theological Journal 38 (2003): 248–62. 25 26

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the life of the city. Donner was a regular source of counsel as Bavinck tried to imagine “the path from separation to integration.”30 Each of these strands contributed to the eventual picture of Bavinck’s neo-Calvinism, bequeathing him with distinct sensibilities regarding the authority of Scripture, the progression of history, the exercise of the life of the mind, and the relevance of orthodox Calvinism to the modern age. Following the completion of his Leiden degrees, he was ordained by the Christian Reformed Church to serve as pastor of a congregation in Franeker (1881), in the northwest province of Friesland. This proved to be a lonely and difficult period in Bavinck’s life. His intentions to marry a young Seceder woman, Amelia den Dekker (1849–1933), had not been successful, for which reason he had been sent to live with an elderly couple from the congregation, whose members treated him with unrelenting formality. As a reluctantly single young man, this was far from ideal.31 Having received his formative theological education at Leiden, rather than within his own denomination, Bavinck felt theologically under-equipped to minister to a smalltown Christian Reformed congregation, so he set about studying, and then producing, a new version of the Leiden Synopsis, a key seventeenth-century (Latin) work in orthodox Reformed theology that shaped their tradition.32 Although that particular scholarly endeavor also served to support his efforts at pastoral ministry among conservative Calvinists, it quickly became apparent that Bavinck was busying himself with other publishing endeavors that were designed to carry him beyond Franeker and into an appointment at the Theological School in Kampen, writing regularly in the Seceder journal De Vrije Kerk, and then being appointed its editor. Not much more than a year after his arrival in Franeker, the efforts to position himself as a capable Seceder theologian rapidly amassing ecclesiastical and scholarly experience came to a quick result: Bavinck was appointed to teach in Kampen in 1882, joining the faculty in 1883, and remaining there until 1902. In his first decade there, he was responsible for a large teaching load, covering dogmatics, ethics, encyclopedia, philosophy, and third-year Latin. Two years into his time in Kampen, in 1884, he wrote to his Leiden-era friend Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857–1936) that he was “still busy gathering the building materials for my own dogmatics and ethics.”33 Although he had begun his work on twin volumes of dogmatics and ethics in the early 1880s, it is worth noting that this volume on Reformed Ethics was never completed (although it has recently been transcribed and published both in Dutch and English),34 and that his plans for a work in Reformed Dogmatics developed rather differently to his original aim. The first volume of Reformed Dogmatics would not appear in print until 1895, eleven years after his preparatory work on it had begun. Even at that Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 69–77. James Eglinton, “De onbekende liefde van Herman Bavinck,” in Tussen Kampen en Amsterdam: George Harinck en het Historisch Documentatiecentrum van de Vrije Universiteit 1985–2017, ed. Wim Berkelaar, Hans Seijlhouwer, and Bart Wallet (Amsterdam: Donum Reeks, 2018), 56–8. 32 Herman Bavinck (ed.), Synopsis purioris theologiae: disputationibus quinquaginta duabus comprehensa ac conscripta per Johannem Polyandrum, Andream Rivetum, Antonium Walaeum, Antonium Thysium, S.S. Theologiae Doctores et Professores in Academia Leidensi. 6th ed. (Lugduni Batavorum: Apud Didericum Donner, 1881). 33 George Harinck and Jan de Bruijn (eds.), Een Leidse vriendschap (Baarn: TenHave, 1999), 117. “Ik ben zelf maar steeds bezig aan het verzamelen van bouwstof voor eene eigen dogmatiek en ethiek.” 34 Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde ethiek, ed. Dirk van Keulen (Utrecht: Uitgeverij KokBoekencentrum, 2019); Reformed Ethics, ed. John Bolt, 2 vols (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019–21). 30 31

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point, Bavinck publicly stated his intention for Reformed Dogmatics to be a two-volume set: “The first volume discusses the introduction and the principia. The second volume shall handle dogma.”35 Despite having held this intention in 1895, the eventual scope of the Reformed Dogmatics would require no fewer than four volumes, the remainder of which followed in 1897, 1898, and 1901. (As will be described later, he then spent a further decade revising and considerably expanding his magnum opus, with new editions of each volume appearing in 1905, 1907, 1909, and 1911.) Evidently, the production of the Reformed Dogmatics transpired to be far more time-consuming than he had first anticipated. While his efforts to write an equivalent work in ethics seem to have ground to a halt fairly soon, his attention was focused on Reformed Dogmatics from the early 1880s until 1911. Beyond this, Bavinck’s own copy of the second edition of the Reformed Dogmatics contains many notes on possible revisions for a third edition, the latest dated from 1918, although no such edition was ever produced.36 Although that long-term project would eventually mature into the revised second edition, turning Bavinck into the modern Calvinistic goldsmith sought by Kuyper (and providing the neo-Calvinist tradition with its own veritable Summa), early in the Kampen years Bavinck also produced a selection of shorter works that display many key traits that remained more or less constant in his work. In early works like “The Kingdom of God, the Highest Good”37 (1881), “The Science of Holy Theology”38 (1883), and “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church”39 (1888), we find “an important source for tracing the inner structure of Bavinck’s thought, often disclosing its pathways with greater clarity than Reformed Dogmatics.”40 In these, an already identifiable picture of Bavinck emerges: a theologian drawn both to the historic Reformed tradition and the needs of the late modern age, and inspired by Abraham Kuyper. While dogmatic rumination would be a constant feature of his life and work from the early 1880s until the end of his professional life, the trait that made Bavinck surprisingly difficult to characterize—namely, the readiness to apply his intellect and energies beyond the realm of dogmatics—was already apparent in his Kampen years. In 1897, for example, while working on volume two of Reformed Dogmatics, he published Principles of Psychology,41 a substantial work on the inner life that made waves, both in praise and critique, in Dutch pedagogical circles. In April 1899, the Dutch Pedagogical Association held a seminar discussion of Bavinck’s book42 at which a leading mainstream

Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 1st ed., vol. 1. “Dit eerste deel bespreekt de inleiding en de principia. Het tweede deel zal het dogma behandelen.” 36 George Harinck, “‘Eén uur lang is het hier brandend licht en warm geweest’: Bavinck en Kampen,” in Ontmoetingen met Bavinck, ed. George Harinck and Gerrit Neven (Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 2006), 110; Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 263. 37 Herman Bavinck and Nelson Kloosterman (trans.), “The Kingdom of God, the Highest Good,” The Bavinck Review 2 (2011): 133–70. 38 Herman Bavinck, “The Science of Holy Theology,” in On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, ed. and trans. Bruce Pass (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 30–60. 39 Herman Bavinck and John Bolt (trans.), “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” Calvin Theological Journal 27 (1992): 220–51. 40 Bruce Pass, “Introduction,” in On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, 2. 41 Herman Bavinck, Beginselen der psychologie (Kampen: J.H. Bos, 1897); “Foundations of Psychology,” trans. John Bolt, Nelson Kloosterman, and Jack Vanden Born, The Bavinck Review 9 (2018): 1–224. 42 “Binnenland,” Het Oosten; wekelijksch orgaan der Weesinrichting te Neerbosch, March 8, 1899. 35

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psychologist—W. Jansen of Utrecht—praised him as a “very talented and erudite scholar with regard to psychology,” and recommended the book as instructive for those with a prior knowledge of the field, while also critiquing the book as “too primarily deductive” in method, and too clouded by Bavinck’s Christian principles to serve as a first introduction to psychology for beginners.43 The context of this particular critique concerns the approach to psychology used by Bavinck: to explore psychology in relation to Scripture, as understood across history, in more recent theory, and then constructively. As such, the critique advanced by Jansen was that while Bavinck’s commentary on historical and contemporary psychology was often instructive and insightful, its location in a larger framework (one that assumed the authority of Scripture in order to make normative claims within the field of psychology, which is to say, within a Christian worldview) limited its usefulness to readers unconvinced of the Bible’s authority.44 Notably, more or less the same pattern and method is found throughout Reformed Dogmatics. Following the first volume’s account of the relevant epistemological prolegomena—the issues of what can be known and said in order to know and speak of God—the subsequent three-volume doctrinal tour de force relies on a pattern of exegeting Scripture on particular doctrinal loci, before which the reception of that exegesis in the history of the church is explored, and the challenges faced in advancing the doctrines concerned in the present day are engaged. Writing for a theological audience, the sort of criticism drawn by his early psychological work—namely, that it assumed the vantage point of the Christian faith throughout—was irrelevant. Although Bavinck’s publication record in the 1880s and early 1890s was consistent and thorough, it was nonetheless fairly modest, certainly when considered from a broader historical perspective. By the late 1890s and early 1900s, however, Bavinck’s reputation had been established as an outstanding writer: alongside three volumes of Reformed Dogmatics and Principles of Psychology, he published books on participation in the Lord’s Supper (The Sacrifice of Praise),45 the idea of certainty in an age of doubt (The Certainty of Faith),46 infant baptism (Parents or Witnesses?),47 and evolution (Creation or Development?).48 In those years, his prolific journalism also led to his appointment as chief editor of the Christian newspaper De Bazuin in 1900. Albeit perhaps unevenly, Bavinck was trying to write Christianly in two distinct disciplines (theology and psychology) while working bi-vocationally (as a theologian and a journalist). Evidently, Bavinck disagreed with his critic Jansen’s assertion that “the Bible is no less a manual for psychology than for the natural sciences or politics.”49 While rejecting a simplistic biblicism, his conviction was firm that Scripture provides the

De Hollandsche revue 3, no. 6 (1898): 415. For Bavinck’s response, see Herman Bavinck, “Ter toelichting en verdediging,” Christelijk schoolblad, June 2, 1899. 45 Herman Bavinck, De offerande des lofs: Overdenkingen vóór en na de toelating tot het heilige avondmaal (’s Gravenhage: Fred. H. Verschoor, 1901); The Sacrifice of Praise, eds. and trans. Cameron Clausing and Gregory Parker (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2019). 46 Herman Bavinck, De zekerheid des geloofs (Kampen: Kok, 1901); The Certainty of Faith, trans. Harry Der Nederlanden (St. Catharines: Paideia Press, 1980). 47 Herman Bavinck, Ouders of getuigen: Toelichting van art. 56 en 57 der Dordsche Kerkorde (Kampen: G. Ph. Zalsman, 1901). 48 Herman Bavinck, Schepping of ontwikkeling? (Kampen: Kok, 1901). 49 Bavinck, “Ter toelichting en verdediging,” “De heer Jansen . . . wil niets weten van de H. Schrift ‘als leerboek voor de psychologie, evenmin als voor natuurwetenschap of staatkunde’.” 43 44

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foundation for a distinctively Christian account not only of psychology but of each of these spheres. It was possible for Christianity to shape every contour of human life, even in the modern age. That combination of conviction and desire was not something that dawned on Bavinck as he penned Principles of Psychology. In fact, the first extant source demonstrating this combination—in which he described his “wish to apply [Christ’s lordship] to the whole of human life, in all the breadth it allows”—was written when still a relatively new faculty member in Kampen, in 1884.50 The production of simultaneous works in dogmatics and psychology, and the combination of theologian and journalist roles in society, was the fruit of that (by now settled) intuition and sense of vocation. By the late 1890s, Bavinck was married and a father: he had married Johanna Adrianna Schippers in 1891, following which, in 1894, their only daughter, Johanna Geziena (known as Hannie), was born. In the same decade, he had also played a significant role in the fusion of the Christian Reformed Church with another Reformed denomination, the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (Doleerende), which had been led out of the mainstream Dutch Reformed Church by Kuyper in a further secession (the Doleantie) in 1886. With the creation of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland) in the union of 1892, Bavinck and Kuyper became exceptionally influential voices in a new church with some 370,000 members.51

III. PERSONAL CHALLENGES Although in many respects, the 1890s formed a successful decade in Bavinck’s life— marriage, fatherhood, scholarly and professional acclaim, and the undoing of some of the splintering that had beset the Dutch Reformed ecclesiastical scene across the nineteenth century—they also presented him with many unsettling, discouraging, and exhausting circumstances. In those years, Kuyper made several (unsuccessful) attempts to recruit Bavinck for the Free University of Amsterdam and tried to convince him to abandon his plan to write the remainder of the Reformed Dogmatics in order to meet the needs of the Free University by retraining, instead, as an Old Testament scholar. The 1892 ecclesiastical merger also created a conundrum for the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands: What should be done with its preexisting theological institutions (the Theological School in Kampen and the theological faculty of the Free University of Amsterdam)? This proved to be a particularly knotty question for the church, as the respective institutions had historically been run along starkly different visions: Kampen was an explicitly churchoriented seminary that had long since maintained an awkward posture toward the academy of the sciences, whereas the Free University asserted a principled independence from the church.52 Throughout the 1890s, Bavinck was locked in conflict with his publicly anti-Kuyperian Kampen colleague Lucas Lindeboom (1845–1933) over their contrasting visions of the future settlement between Kampen and Amsterdam. Having spent most of that decade trying to convince the denomination to accept that it could value and retain, and even merge, both a faculty of scientific theology and a church-oriented seminary,

Harinck and de Bruijn (eds.), Een Leidse vriendschap, 124. Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 182. 52 George Harinck and Wim Berkelaar, Domineesfabriek: geschiedenis van de Theologische Universiteit Kampen (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2018), 61. 50 51

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but to no avail, Bavinck eventually resigned from his editorship of De Bazuin and his professorship in Kampen in exasperation. Remarkably, when Bavinck accepted an offer from Kuyper to move to the Free University, half of the Theological School’s student body (and Bavinck’s colleague and close friend Petrus Biesterveld (1863–1908)) departed for Amsterdam at the same time.

IV. A NEW ERA IN AMSTERDAM While the immediate setting of Bavinck’s move to Amsterdam was ecclesiastical, its deeper backdrop concerned national politics. Two decades before, in 1879, the young Kuyper had formed the Netherlands’ first modern democratic political party, the AntiRevolutionary Party, which attempted to reject the thoroughgoing secularizing influence of the French Revolution on Dutch national life. From his teenage years onward, Bavinck was drawn toward this movement, and saw in Kuyper a new vision of the Dutch future: that of a modern, democratic society in which the Dutch nation voluntarily turned away from the threadbare Enlightenment ideology of the late nineteenth century, and instead re-embraced (modern) Calvinism en masse. Throughout the 1880s to 1890s, Bavinck dreamed dreams of precisely the Calvinistic future that seemed to be approaching when in 1901, Kuyper was elected prime minister of the Netherlands. Indeed, this was the change in Kuyper’s life that meant vacating his own chair of dogmatics at the Free University and creating space for Bavinck to relocate without having to retool in some other theological discipline. To a certain extent, these were heady days for Bavinck and Kuyper, and those in their Anti-Revolutionary circles, who by this point had begun to embrace the neo-Calvinist label that had first been used pejoratively against them in the late 1880s.53 However, this would be Kuyper’s first and only term as prime minister. In that regard, his (political) sun set almost as quickly as it had risen. At the same time, the deep, long-term trajectory of Dutch culture shifted through the surprising posthumous popularity of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)—a German atheist intellectual who was largely ignored by the Dutch during his lifetime, but whose works were cited thousands of times by Dutch authors in the first decades of the twentieth century.54 Unlike the moralistic materialistic atheists with whom Bavinck had interacted in the 1880s to 1890s, who had assumed that the excision of God from Western culture would leave its moral framework otherwise untouched, Nietzsche argued for a muscular atheism that presented Jesus Christ as the central problem in Western culture. This Jesus had hoodwinked the West into valuing weakness and servility over power and dominance which, in turn, had entrenched an Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 157. It is worth noting that while Nietzsche received relatively little attention in Dutch scholarship during his lifetime, he was the subject of steadily growing journalistic interest in the final decade of his life—some of which concerned his ideas (see, for example, “De leer van Dr. Nietzsche,” Deli Courant, February 11, 1893), with other coverage dealing with his mental collapse (see, for example, “Kunst -en Letternieuws,” Het Vaderland, May 4, 1889). On the early history of Nietzsche’s reception in the Netherlands, see Jos Gielen, “Nietzsche in Nederland,” De Nieuwe Taalgids 37 (1943): 19–26; Jaap Kamphuis, Nietzsche in Nederland (Ermelo: Woord en Wereld, 1987). For significant early twentieth-century Dutch works dealing with Nietzsche, see Herman Bavinck, Hedendaagsche moraal (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1902); H. Lichtenberger, Nietzsche’s philosophie, trans. M. FrançoisMerkus (Amsterdam: n.p., 1903); Herman Bavinck, Christelijke wereldbeschouwing (Kampen: Bos, 1904); T. J. de Boer, Nietzsche en de wetenschap (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1906); M. H. J. Schoenemaekers, Het geloof van den nieuwe mensch (Baarn: Hollandia-Drukkerij, 1908). 53 54

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anti-natural selflessness in humans whose proper nature was inherently selfish.55 The sudden growth of Dutch interest in Nietzsche, alongside the rapid translation of his works in Dutch in the early 1900s,56 was noted by Bavinck in his 1902 work Hedendaagsche moraal (Current Day Morality), in which he noted that, “in his morality, Nietzsche has only given voice to what lived unconsciously in many hearts.”57 In the 1870s to 1890s, Bavinck’s efforts to articulate a holistic, systematic account of the Christian faith in late modern culture were prompted by the systematic logical and social momentum of the French Revolution in its efforts to assert its philosophy of ni Dieu ni maître in every sphere of life. In the early 1900s, that effort continued against a new backdrop: the Nietzschean challenge to the consequences of Christianity in each of those spheres. Bavinck’s quest to be “a child of God in all things” was, in a distinct way, a herculean striving to defend the chain that tethered his earth to the sun. Facing this new foe, Bavinck added many new strings to his polymathic bow: among other things, he stepped forward as a biographer and literary critic,58 into (and soon out of) party-political leadership,59 into an effective decade as a parliamentarian,60 and a champion of education for girls and voting rights for women.61 In 1920, aged sixty-six, while attending his denomination’s Synod in Leeuwarden, Bavinck suffered the heart attack that led to his death in the following year. Following a state funeral and burial in Amsterdam, his earthly remains were later moved to his wife’s family cemetery in Vlaardingen, where the extreme brevity of his gravestone belies the complexity and impact of his life: Dr. H. Bavinck, b. 13 Dec. 1854, d. 29 July 1921.62

V. CONCLUSION Earlier, this chapter nodded toward the fecundity of Bavinck studies within the broader field of scholarship on neo-Calvinism and suggested that his work is of interest to many precisely because his own interests ran deep and wide. It lies somewhat beyond the scope of this chapter, however, to chart the breadth of current developments in Bavinck studies: such would take the remit from Bavinck himself to the rapidly growing number of more recent Bavinck interpreters. (Indeed, the rapidity of that growth would almost certainly make any such summary out of date in very little time.) By contrast, this chapter’s aim has been more modest: to introduce Bavinck to a twenty-first-century audience, while also

See, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche, “Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer,” in Ecce Homo, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 209. 56 Friedrich Nietzsche, Aldus sprak Zarathustra, trans. L. S. A. M. van Römer (n.p. 1905); Ideeën, trans. G. H. Priem (Amsterdam: Craft & Co, 1905); De wil tot macht: Proeve eener omzetting aller waarden, trans. J. A. Bergmeijer (Amsterdam: Cohen Zonen, 1908). 57 Bavinck, Hedendaagsche moraal, 51. “Inderdaad heeft een man als Nietzsche in zijne zedelijke wijsbegeerte slechts uiting gegeven aan wat onbewust leefde in veler hart.” 58 Herman Bavinck, Bilderdijk als denker en Dichter (Kampen: Kok, 1906); Johannes Calvijn (Kampen: Kok, 1909). 59 Anne Anema, Herman Bavinck, Pieter Arie Diepenhorst, Theodorus Heemskerk, and Simon de Vries, Leider en leiding in de Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (Amsterdam: Ten Have, 1915). 60 Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 273, 283–4. 61 Herman Bavinck, De vrouw in de hedendaagsche maatschappij (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1918); “De Opvoeding der Vrouw,” Onze Jonge Meisjes 25 (1919). 62 Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, 291. 55

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introducing that audience to Bavinck’s more immediate early twentieth-century audience. In doing so, his audience today—most familiar with him as a dogmatician—is challenged by the less-than-straightforward nature of his early reception history, particularly with regard to fundamental (and by no means easy) questions about how to categorize and make sense of his life and thought. To return to this chapter’s earlier claim that Bavinck’s species was perhaps closer to that of the polymathic Schleiermacher than that of the dogmatic Barth, the Schleiermacher scholar Theodore Vial has offered an astute reminder that while the English-speaking world reads Schleiermacher’s theological output mostly to the exclusion of his other writings, “In Germany, Schleiermacher is seen as a broader ranging intellectual, and that is what he is.”63 While a careful reading of Bavinck on his own terms leads to some reluctance to apportion his writings as “theological” and “other” (on the grounds that Bavinck intended the entirety of his intellectual and practical project to be theologically saturated), Vial’s reminder remains helpful: Schleiermacher readers whose vision extends to his philosophical works, his grasp of linguistics, his political theory, and so on, will make greater progress in reading through Christian Faith.64 Something similar can be said for those learning to find their way in the field of Bavinck studies. Beyond this, though, it is also true that Bavinck’s life harbors the breadth of subsequent neo-Calvinism—a movement that contains, among other things, theology, philosophy, politics, journalism, social action, art, and science—in a microcosm. Those who learn to make sense of him will find the many paths crisscrossing that terrain to be strangely familiar and surprisingly interconnected.

Theodore Vial, Schleiermacher: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 2. Vial, Schleiermacher: A Guide for the Perplexed, 2; Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian Faith: A New Translation and Critical Edition, ed. Terrence N. Tice, Catherine L. Kelsey, and Edwina Lawler, 2 vols (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016). 63 64

Chapter 17

Geerhardus Vos NATHAN D. SHANNON

I. INTRODUCTION The career of Geerhardus Vos was curiously unspectacular. One reason for this may be that Vos himself lacked conviction in practical matters, as he tended even as an adult to favor loyalty to his parents over more favorable employment conditions. His decision to return to Michigan, for example, after completing his studies in Europe—or better, his surrender to old habits of familial faithfulness—may have been, as George Harinck suggests, perhaps too dramatically, “the ultimate tragedy of his life.”1 In Michigan, Vos faced the sobering reality that his impressive credentials lacked currency in his adoptive homeland, plus the general academic disadvantage which afflicted his own DutchAmerican community.2 Vos was unlikely to feel very useful in America. If that was not enough, he was socially unexciting and seems to have lacked a natural inclination toward the busy self-importance of academic professionalism.3 Fellow Dutch-American Henry Dosker wrote back to the homeland, to none other than Herman Bavinck, observing, “I don’t hear anything from Vos. He is very dry and seems to become a bookworm more and more.”4 Similarly, in a letter to Abraham Kuyper, Hope College professor Nicholas Steffens reported that Vos was “not understood in his own circles, because his people are well meaning, but unmannerly and narrow-minded.”5

George Harinck, “The Poetry of Geerhardus Vos,” in Dutch-American Arts and Letters in Historical Perspective, ed. Robert P. Swierenga, Jacob E. Nyenhuis, and Nella Kennedy (Holland: Van Raalte Press, 2008), 6. 2 In a letter to Herman Bavinck, Vos would cite the poor academic performance of his students in Michigan as one of the reasons for accepting a professorship at Princeton. See James T. Dennison Jr., ed., The Letters of Geerhardus Vos (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2005), 175. 3 Vos writes: “I have always been more averse to rather than a friend of a personal ‘stepping into the limelight’. This is perhaps a residue of the somewhat world-repudiating spirit of the Old Seceder Pietism in which my parents lived and which I grew up.” Vos to Albertus Eekhof, October 28, 1932, in Dennison, Letters, 225–6. Cited in Danny E. Olinger, Geerhardus Vos: Reformed Biblical Theology, Confessional Presbyterian (Philadelphia: Reformed Forum, 2018), 265. Indeed, Vos’ Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, arguably his magnum opus, was published posthumously. Herman Bavinck reportedly remarked, with Vos in mind, that “a man can be too modest.” See Olinger, Geerhardus Vos, 278. 4 Henry E. Dosker to Bavinck, February 25, 1893. H. Bavinck Papers (Historical Documentation Center for Dutch Protestantism, VU University Amsterdam). Translation by George Harinck. Cited in Harinck, “The Poetry of Geerhardus Vos,” 6. 5 Steffens to Kuyper, January 25, 1891. Kuyper Papers. Translation by George Harinck. Cited in Harinck, “The Poetry of Geerhardus Vos,” 6. 1

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Vos joined the faculty of Princeton Seminary in 1893, to relative fanfare, the first appointee to a new chair of biblical theology. But when J. G. Machen founded Westminster Seminary in 1929, Vos declined to join the new venture, nominating in his stead his student, Ned Stonehouse. As Westminster got underway only a short distance from Princeton, Vos was left, perhaps in “sorrowful resignation,” to teach his last years in a rapidly changing environment, an obsolescent fixture in an institution now headed in a new direction.6 Stonehouse is hardly read at Westminster anymore, but his portrait, not Vos’, now hangs adjacent to John Murray’s, in Machen Hall at Westminster. Vos retired from Princeton in 1932 and spent his retirement between Santa Ana, California, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. At Vos’ memorial service near his summer home in Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania, in August of 1949, Cornelius Van Til preached to five other attendees, Princeton Seminary unrepresented. Especially peculiar is the indifference to his work throughout the now substantial scholarly interest in biblical theology. The net effect of this latest disinterest is perfect timing. We have today an excellent opportunity to revisit the development and distinct character of Vos’ work on the nature and promise of biblical theology, and as Vos would have it, of biblical theology within the organism of confessional theology itself and the life of the church. “Every discussion of what is to be understood by Biblical Theology,” writes Vos, “ought to proceed from a clear understanding of what Theology is in general.”7 The following reflections operate within this rich interdependence, concerning which the substance and promise of Vos’ work still await due appreciation.

II. VOS’ IDEAS IN CONTEXT The search for the origin of Vos’ approach to biblical theology has yet to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Richard Gaffin has identified only hints in the work of Herman Bavinck, and Richard Lints has argued that no precedent worthy of the name can be identified at Old Princeton.8 Lints notes the curious fact that scant mutual influence is detectable in the work of Vos’ close friend and colleague, B. B. Warfield. More recently, Richard Barcellos notes a possible dependence upon the work of Thomas Dehany Bernard, and Shao Kai Tseng explores Vos’ critical appropriation of Hegelian organicism and other idealist themes in his doctrines of history, redemption, and revelation.9 But as Tseng says, Vos rarely mentions Hegel, so the question of the nature and extent of Vos’ utilization of relevant thought patterns is tricky. Clearer, though, are a handful of motivations, a few of which Vos himself identifies on various occasions. The first is faithful stewardship of a theologico-methodological

The words of Ned Stonehouse. See Olinger, Geerhardus Vos, 262. Vos, “The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Philipsburg: P&R, 1980), 4. 8 Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 38, no. 3 (1976): 281–99. Vos, says Richard Lints, was “the first evangelical proponent of that theological method which has come to called biblical theology.” The Fabric of Theology: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 182. See also Richard Lints, “Two Theologies or One? Warfield and Vos on the Nature of Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 54 (1992): 235–53. 9 Richard C. Barcellos, “An Analysis of Geerhardus Vos’ Nature and Method of Biblical Theology,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 31, no. 2 (2020): 157 n. 35; Shao Kai Tseng, G. F. W. Hegel (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2018), 69ff. 6 7

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principle evident in the history of Reformed covenant theology, the second an apologetic concern regarding the rise of higher critical studies.

a. Covenant Theology and Biblical Theology Vos had joined the faculty of the Theological School of the Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids in 1888, and delivered a rectoral address entitled, “De verbondsleer in de Gereformeerde Theologie.”10 In that address, Vos articulates what he understands to be the singular distinctive of a Reformed understanding of human experience and religion, one signaled by the consistency of Reformed interest in covenant and covenant theology. Vos observed that the Reformed did not merely find covenant in Scripture but also located Scripture itself within the broader reality of a historical covenant relation between God and the creature, where covenant is the bedrock context for human experience, even human consciousness. Scripture does not inaugurate covenant but publishes, articulates, and expresses covenant because covenant precedes Scripture. Covenant does not enter history; history is covenantal; historical experience is covenantal experience. This is evident in the very close relationship that Vos sees between the covenant of works and the natural relationship between the image-bearer and his Creator. Vos indicates that the requirement for full, personal, and perpetual obedience is an aspect of creatureliness, not an imposition of the covenant of works, and he rejects the notion of Adamic experience and self-consciousness historically prior to that first covenant.11 That is: there is no “natural experience” as such, in a non- or pre-religious sense. God is the first and final fact of human existence and experience. In the prelapsarian order, therefore, the image-bearer was meant to develop not from nonreligion to religion nor from moral ambivalence to uprightness—a Pelagian conception—but from mutable godliness to perfected, immutable godliness, and thus to enter religious-relational consummation.12 From this inaugural condition ever after, human experience as such is irreducibly religious and eschatological. Vos thus arrives at this central claim: “This root idea which served as the key to unlock the rich treasuries of the Scriptures was the preeminence of God’s glory in the consideration of all that has been created.”13 That is, to get things the right way around: “God does not exist because of man, but man because of God. This is what is written at the entrance of the temple of Reformed theology.”14 Appropriate methodological self-awareness therefore means that Scripture cannot be a religious book offering a religious perspective upon a world and an experience which are, in themselves, in a positivistic or metaphysically naïve sense, brute, and matter-of-fact. The Bible is not the Urtext of Christian religious talk, nor is it a record of religious history or of collected witnesses to religious experience. Of course, strictly speaking, Scripture is these things, but in a descriptive sense rather than a definitional one. Rather, Holy Scripture is divinely inspired commentary upon divine activity within the realm of creaturely covenant experience. First the divine, then divine history, then revelatory The text was translated in 1971 and then edited and republished as “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Gaffin, Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 234–67. 11 Vos writes, “the distinction between the natural relationship and the covenant of works is logical and judicial, not temporal.” Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, Anthropology, trans. and ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Bellingham: Lexham, 2012–14), 44. 12 Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant,” 243–6. 13 Ibid., 241–2. 14 Ibid., 242. 10

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engagement with the image-bearer. Or to put it another way, as Vos will labor to articulate the doctrinal and hermeneutical implications of the Reformed theo-foundational principle, he will argue that revelation is designed to usher the image-bearer into fuller experience and expression of religious-eschatological enjoyment of God. Revelation is arranged, in the prelapsarian order first of all, not to train the image-bearer to speak religiously about a nonreligious world, but to draw the image-bearer into perfected communion with his Creator, who himself is the immanent fabric of creaturely experience and consciousness. The purpose of special revelation is to facilitate acknowledgment, embrace, and advance of religion and righteous religious consciousness, subjectively, even as the created order experiences supernatural advance, objectively. Accordingly, Vos believes that a Reformed doctrine of the image of God is such that “there is no sphere of life that lies outside his [the creature’s] relationship to God and in which religion would not be the ruling principle.”15 He prefers this thoroughly theo-relational conception to the “entirely externalist character of Roman Catholic religion.”16 “According to the deeper protestant conception,” he writes, “the image does not exist only in correspondence with God but in being disposed toward God.”17 “[W]e have here the strongest recognition of the antecedent work of God. Man cannot create the good for himself, but he has to develop the divinely given good that lies within him.”18 The image-bearer is created to progress from communion with God to perfected communion with God, and revelation, from the beginning, is deployed as the primary means of accomplishing this. Vos understands his approach to biblical theology as an articulation of the implicit theological principles which have historically motivated Reformed interest in covenant theology, even where Christian anthropology is essentially covenantal and eschatological. More succinctly: biblical theology was for Vos a natural extension of classical Reformed covenant theology, not only downstream, so to speak, but upstream as well, touching on the nature and possibility of human consciousness and experience.

b. Higher Critical Studies and Historical Fact As he developed his approach to biblical theology, Vos was also motivated by an apologetic concern. At a conference in Princeton, in October of 1905, Vos delivered an address entitled, “Christian Faith and the Truthfulness of Bible History,” in which he explained that, in his day, “the immemorial conflict between naturalism and supernaturalism” had “more than ever before, concentrated itself in the field of history.”19 “This could not be otherwise,” he claimed, “because it is a conflict which always assumes the specific form of whatever mode of thinking is characteristic of the age.”20 Vos here articulates a particular apologetic positioning, and in so doing holds the neo-Calvinist antithetical line, steady from Kuyper to Van Til, according to which there are essentially two world-and-life views. One is characterized by doxological acknowledgment of the one true God, the God of the Bible, and operates from within what Herman Bavinck Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:13. Ibid., 2.12. 17 Ibid., 2.13–14. 18 Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant,” 244. 19 Vos, “Christian Faith and the Truthfulness of Bible History,” in Gaffin, Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 461. 20 Ibid., 461. 15 16

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calls “the domain of special revelation.” The other is characterized by rejection of that God.21 Obviously, in this statement both doxological acknowledgment and rejection are idealized. The first is embodied in Scripture, and best (but not perfectly) represented in Calvinism; the latter comes in many forms. Since each is comprised of ideas borrowed from Christianity, it survives only by a fortuitous inconsistency. One notices that Vos also gives voice to a common theme in neo-Calvinist reflection upon the cultural implications of this principal antithesis, that the same “immemorial,” antithetical, “conflict” will always be, culturally speaking, a moving target. In his own day, the primary question was that of the nature and the interpretation of historical fact. “Our age prides itself upon being preeminently the age of historical research,” and there is no doubting the benefit of this, even of higher critical studies in particular: “Modern criticism has at least preserved or cured the church from one fault—the fault of indolence in research with regard to the facts of God’s truth.”22 In the 1905 address in particular, Vos states clearly his appreciation for the scientific advances of higher critical studies. And yet, “unfortunately,” he says, “there is another side to the matter.”23 The general public, says Vos, “is accustomed to look upon history as the realm of facts par excellence, second only to pure science in the absolute certainty of its concrete results.”24 What eludes them, he says, is the important role of “interpretation shaped by a priori philosophical principles.”25 In this case, there are “naturalistic principles” at work which “predetermine conclusions.”26 The issue at hand then is not particular facts but “a certain philosophy of the facts made to discredit the Bible.”27 Leading theologians were more self-aware than the public in this regard. They had embraced “the positivistic philosophy of the times” and attempted to re-articulate Christianity on the basis of a Kantian phenomenalism—chiefly, the idea that “the human mind is incapable of knowing the metaphysical reality of things and must content itself with cognizing phenomena, appearances.”28 Theological doctrine is at issue because “cognition of the supernatural in history” is disqualified by this method of historical inquiry. God, deity as such, is expelled from history and from the sphere of human experience: “For to know the supernatural in its historical embodiment would be nothing less than to know the metaphysical reality of God obtruding itself into the world of sense,” which is, given this philosophy of historical fact, impossible because it is contradictory. God, therefore, cannot reveal himself in the realm of human experience. Even if God could somehow enter or effect the realm of human experience, the human being would never be able to hoist theological propositions on the strength of cognizable evidence. The incomprehensible God has become the ineffable one, and the study of theology is dispersed into anthropology, religious studies, and religious psychology. As “The moment we step outside the domain of this special revelation in Scripture, we find that in all religious and philosophical systems the unity of the personality and absoluteness of God is broken.” Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 34. 22 Vos, “Christian Faith and the Truthfulness of Bible History,” 460. 23 Ibid., 460. 24 Ibid., 461. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 463. 21

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one might expect, the primary object of the modernist naturalization of the historical data of Christianity is Christ himself. Vos points out that “the much-used phrase, ‘the historical Christ’ . . . means the empirical, phenomenal Christ and that subjectively considered.”29 The point, for present purposes, is that Vos identified supernatural history as the issue at hand. He believed that in his own day preservation of the doctrines of historic Christian confession—what else are doctrines but “theological interpretation of the facts?”—required a robust articulation of a theological approach to history and historical fact.30 And so in his development of a Reformed biblical theology, he would resist the modern approach to historical fact and its “rupture of the bond between religion and history,” claiming instead that “a thing is no less historical because it is supernatural.”31 William Henry Green, professor of Old Testament at the time, appealed precisely to the urgency of this polemical front as he sought to convince Vos to join him on the faculty at Princeton Seminary. He wrote these words to Vos in 1892: “Remember that the master, under whose orders you serve, rules the whole field of battle, and not one corner of it merely. Is he not calling you to a point where you can do his work more effectively, and where there is a more pressing need than where you are now?”32 Vos would accept a professorship in biblical theology at Princeton precisely for these strategic purposes.

III. VOS’ BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AND THE NATURE OF THEOLOGY: THREE EMPHASES While acknowledging that the standard overtures to Vos’ work are those written by Richard Gaffin,33 I have for present purposes identified three themes which, cumulatively, represent the broader doctrinal organism within which Vos’ biblical theology is best understood. These are eschatology and apologetics, the objective and the subjective in Vos’ epistemology, and the doctrine of God and divine action.

a. Eschatology and Apologetics In the thought of Geerhardus Vos, the term “biblical theology” stands not for biblical studies of a thematic nature nor for discrete inquiries into recurring biblico-literary motifs, but rather for Vos’ re-equipping of the doctrines of revelation and Scripture in a mode of constructive response to higher critical studies, the anti-supernaturalistic bias of modernism, and an undying Roman dualism. Vos’ biblical theology is in fact a multifaceted response to what is arguably the singular modern challenge to a living biblical religion: the possibility of creaturely knowledge of God—knowledge of the religious and personal

Ibid., 464. See Vos, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus: The Modern Debate about the Messianic Consciousness (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1954). 30 Vos, “Christian Faith and the Truthfulness of Bible History,” 468. 31 Ibid., 464. 32 Personal correspondence dated March 18, 1892. Cited in Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Introduction,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, xi n. 6. 33 Namely: Gaffin, “Introduction,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, ix-xxiii; “Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949),” in Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, ed. Donald McKim (Downers Grove: IVP, 2007), 1017; “Biblical Theology and the Westminster Standards,” in The Practical Calvinist: An Introduction to the Presbyterian and Reformed Heritage, ed. Peter A. Lillback (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2002). 29

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sort.34 His strategy is first to subvert the modern paradigm by exposing its methodological prejudice as foreign to Scripture’s own self-understanding—as contrived and principally hostile to the original data of Christianity, and therefore constitutive of an altogether distinct belief system (as Vos’ student J. G. Machen would argue in his Christianity and Liberalism of 1923)—and then to re-theologize creaturely consciousness and experience in terms of a classically Reformed approach to covenant. Vos approaches Scripture not as the husk of an ancient religious subjectivity but as the divinely inspired record of a covenantal and organic history of special revelation. And Vos leverages his apologetics on the strength of eschatology. He says: “Eschatology has become the large mountain of offense lying across the pathway of modern unbelief.”35 That is to say: A robust Christian theistic eschatology, as portrayed in the Scriptures, would be in Vos’ view the most strategic front in orthodoxy’s clash with modernism. Vos would take modern historicism captive by means of a biblical re-eschatologization of religion. And Vos was optimistic: “there was and may still further appear to be something good from the Lord in this modernistic setback.”36 Nor did Vos consider this coordination of eschatology and apologetics novel. In fact, he believes that the empty tomb itself strikes precisely this chord, juxtaposition of proclamation and vindication, as the foundational one of the church: Biblical eschatology . . . was first held in esteem because of the service it was able to render to early apologetics. The two at the outset were practically identical. The vindication of the new-born faith depended upon the proof that the Messiah, that great Agent and Consummator of God’s world-purpose, had appeared upon the scene. Whosoever believed this found himself drawn into the center of the eschatological movement, by prophets long foretold.37 Accordingly, Vos’ investigation into the nature of theology begins in the garden, in the first moments of human consciousness and creaturely experience. Vos gives special emphasis to pre-redemptive eschatology as a bedrock for both, but he begins with a corrective adjustment. He argues that contrary to common conception, “eschatology is not necessarily bound up with soteriology.”38 That is, soteriology is not eschatological for its own sake. Moral perfection does not imply creational teleology or covenant consummation. Rather, the reverse is the case, that eschatology is the rationale or context for soteriology, since the latter recovers the originally eschatological design of creation and human experience. Soteriology is fitted to a prior and more determinative eschatological character of creation such that, in being saved, “man is not made merely normal, but is prepared for the supernatural.”39 “There is an absolute end posited for the universe before and apart from sin,” and this is seen in the fact that “the principle of God’s relation to the world from the outset was a principle of action or eventuation.”40 This pre-redemptive

The “Shemitic and Biblical idea” of knowledge, says Vos, is “to have the reality of something practically interwoven with the inner experience of life.” Biblical Theology, 8. 35 Vos, “Preface,” in The Pauline Eschatology (Philipsburg: P&R, 1994), para 6. 36 Ibid, para 5. 37 Ibid, para 1. 38 Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2001), 73. 39 Ibid., 74. 40 Ibid., 73. 34

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eschatology proves that “eschatology is the essence of true religion.”41 Vos thus conceives of biblical theology as the vindication of true religion, of the Christ of the Scriptures himself, against modern immanentism.

b. Objective and Subjective in Vos’ Epistemology Vos’ epistemology, too, expresses redemptive eschatological specifics. He says, first, that redemption is an objective eschatological order, that it is none other than the new heavens and the new earth inaugurated in and by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Redemption is re-creation, which God accomplishes by “creating within the organism of the present world the center of the world of redemption, and then organically building up the order of things around this center.”42 The resurrection, in other words, is the historical inauguration of “the world of redemption,” of a re-created world, and thus also of a juxtaposition of worlds or ages. In its accomplishment and inauguration, the world of redemption is dependent upon the present evil age (even as the present evil age is sustained by God for the sake of Christ and eschatological redemption in his name), but the one is designed to outgrow and outlast the other. The one is perishable, the other imperishable. The objectivity of the redemptive order and of the divine acts of accomplishment and establishment constitute the necessary preconditions for a truly redemptive revelation. Revelation is redemptive because it is instrumental for human participation in that objective, redemptive, and eschatological order. When a sinner is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, Vos would have us understand both that the sinner has been brought into the order of redemption—out of the darkness of his former state and into the light of grace—and that the kingdom has overtaken the sinner precisely where he was. The planting of the seed, as it were, of the age to come within the organism of the present world thus has important implications for ethics, culture, and the Christian life. But on the relationship between redemption and revelation, Vos says the following: revelation is organically connected with the introduction of a new order of things into this sinful world. Revelation is the light of this new world which God has called into being. The light needs the reality and the reality needs the light to produce the vision of the beautiful creation of His grace. To apply the Kantian phraseology to a higher subject, without God’s acts the words would be empty, without His words the acts would be blind.43 If the essence of the new order is the resurrection itself, then all biblical revelation serves to record and exposit that singular redemptive work in either prospective fashion, as in the Old Testament, or retrospective fashion, as in the New—or in eschatological fashion, in the whole of Scripture. Biblical revelation is thus a running commentary not on the mechanical aggregation of an inorganic accumulation of deeds but on the gradual revelatory accomplishment of the one mediator and the one mediation. Vos’ progressive organism of revelation is part and parcel—“organically connected”—with the progressive organism of salvation in Jesus Christ. Christ himself is the organism of both.

Ibid., 75. Vos, “The Idea of Biblical Theology,” 12. 43 Ibid., 10. 41 42

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Therefore, to suggest that the progressive aspect of biblical theology impairs the conceptual stability of systematic theology is to accuse Vos of precisely the modernist paradigm he rejects. The only alternative to contending with the modern challenge would be simply to ignore it and hunker down in pre-critical metaphysics and consequently to abandon the fields of historical research, biblical studies, and philosophy to non-Christian patterns of thought. But insular, defeatist counterculture runs contrary to the grain of neo-Calvinism. Retreat is not an option. Nor does the claim that a biblically theologically generated, exegetically driven theological method endangers classical divine ontology have much sticking power, but only re-emphasizes the primary motivations for Vos’ project. Vos argues that modernist notions of biblical theology express an inverted methodology in which the absoluteness and universality of God is replaced by the absoluteness and universality of human reason. Where in the Reformed view historical religion is underwritten by the very triunity of God and the triune coherence of creation and redemption, in modernist biblical theology history has become the realm of “the contingent, the relative, the arbitrary, whilst only the deliverances of pure reason possess the predicate of absoluteness and universal validity.”44 The modernist framework, then, claims to see in history becoming, while attributing to reason and logical construction the attributes of absoluteness, of being as such. Modernist historical research rejects metahistorical unity and reasserts that unity in the same breath. On this account, to affirm that truth is historical or that truth comes in historical form is to surrender the hope that drives the search for truth in the first place. But for Vos, the unity of redemptive history, and thus the unity of historical fact and meaning, is Christ himself, who is “the same yesterday today and forever.” Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but also he is the same yesterday, today, and ever after. The (epistemological) question remains: How does revelation facilitate the incorporation of the unregenerate into the eschatological order of redemption? According to Vos, affirmation of the authority of the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures is the fruit of regeneration, whereupon revelation is accepted for what it is, the self-attesting Word of God (a thoroughly Christian theistic characterization), and accomplishes the end for which it was given: “the reflection of divine realities in the sphere of knowledge.”45 Vos explains: By the new birth and the illumination of the mind darkened through sin, a new subject is created. By the objective self-manifestation of God as the Redeemer, a new order of things is called into being. And by the depositing of truth concerning this order of things in the Holy Scriptures, the human mind is enabled to obtain that new knowledge which is but the reflection in the regenerate consciousness of an objective world of divine acts and words.46 Vos here expresses in his own way, with the challenges of modernist theology in the background, classical Reformed theological principia cognoscendi. The external principle of knowledge is Holy Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit. The internal principle of theological knowledge is the Holy Spirit, particularly the Spirit’s regenerative work

Ibid., 15. Ibid., 12. 46 Ibid., 5. 44 45

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of convincing the image-bearer of the divine origin and authority of the Scriptures. Theology’s principium essendi, the immutable, tri-personal God, also figures in Vos’ approach to biblical theology.

c. The Doctrine of God and Divine Action In developing biblical theology, Vos takes divine activity in history as a given. He uses phrases like “supernatural history” frequently, without qualification, making no direct argument for the possibility of such activity. That is, he does not feel beholden to the modern bias, and this is likely for the singular reason that the God of the Bible is presented as, uniquely, the living God. That is, biblical religion not only assumes that God acts in history but champions divine historical activity as the self-vindication of God against false gods, counterfeit conceptions of God, and human obstinance—where the resurrection itself is not the only but the primary and summative self-vindication of God. The key religious distinction between the one true theism and counterfeits—that is, between true and false religion—is that the former is received, because it is revealed, and the latter is contrived. The former theism repeats and rehearses divine self-disclosure; the latter is a monologue steeped in covenant-religious plagiarism. That is, the key distinction between religious truth and religious falsehood is that one begins with and affirms an uncompelled divine act of self-revelation, and the other begins with but obscures that uncompelled divine act of self-revelation, preferring autonomous speculation to divine self-description. The study of the text of Scripture, says Vos, “deals with God under the aspect of Revealer of Himself and Author of the Scriptures.”47 It is assumed in Vos’ theological method that the raw materials for theological formulation are the products of divine revelatory activity that precedes and gave rise to the text of Scripture, and to which the Scriptures then refer. “Back of the formation of the Scriptures as a whole,” says Vos, “back of the writing of the single books of Scripture, lies the great process of the supernatural self-disclosure of God in history by word and act.”48 A certain sequence of theological logic must be recognized in the development of Vos’ biblical theology. First is the self-existent God who, because he existed prior to and then exists ontologically independent of the created order, because of this immutable and categorical ontological asymmetry, cannot be contained by created limitations, namely, time and space. Modern thought had agreed with this but took it to mean that God could not penetrate the spatio-temporal sphere. This reasoning must reckon with Chalcedonian Christology in which the two natures are united in the divine person of the Son but remain undiminished and distinct. Christological orthodoxy may be identified with this integrity of natures, but also with their inseparable union in the person of the Son. For Vos, the incarnation represents not a tolerable exception to an otherwise satisfactory metaphysic, but a redemptive-climatic expression of the substance of the Creator-creature relation. In his view, the eternal cannot mix with the temporal, so God as such cannot be subject to the categories of creaturely experience which were his design and creation and which he upholds from moment to moment. The doctrines of creation and providence in this sense display the doctrine of God in relation to the sphere of human experience. But this ontological distinction does not entail divine inability to reach the creature. God has

Vos, “The Idea of Biblical Theology,” 6. Geerhardus Vos, “The Nature and Aims of Biblical Theology,” The Union Seminary Magazine 13, no. 3 (1902): 194, https://www​.kerux​.com​/doc​/1401A1​.asp. 47 48

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not in the act of creating restrained, restricted, or reduced himself. He has not built a house and marked the property lines only to find himself on the wrong side of the fence. Rather, the creature is reached by God as the precondition of his own self-consciousness. God, as it were, reached the creature before the creature entered subjective consciousness. To be a conscious human being is already to be known by God. Creator/creature ontological asymmetry implies as much. Theology, understood as self-conscious creaturely reflection upon God, first comes to the image-bearer in the form of pre-redemptive special revelation, according to which Adam is, representatively, invited to know God according to the pattern of God’s own self-presentation to him. Notice that this is a second type or tier of theological knowledge. As a conscious image-bearer, Adam already knows God. Special revelation invites him consciously to acknowledge God as God. This primal invitation revolves around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of God. The prohibition of Gen. 2:17 presents Adam with an opportunity self-consciously to prioritize the express law of God over his own intuition, perception, and reasoning. He may think for himself, as it were, autonomously, or he may self-consciously set obedience as the primary mode of his engaging the world around him. This obedience has to do with empirical observation, in the sense that Gen. 2:9 describes all the fruit of the garden as appealing to the eye and good to eat, while the prohibition singles out the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as an exception. Obedience to the prohibition also bears a rational obligation in the sense that if he will obey, Adam must allow his own thought processes to be subdued. Rather than sitting in judgment over the commandment of God, scrutinizing it, or suspending judgment until all his lingering questions are answered, Adam must engage his critical faculties in a mode of obedience. He must embrace the important difference between agreeing with God and obeying him. Adam must think, but he must think after the pattern of the thoughts of God revealed. The prohibition bears moral authority as well, in the sense that the whole person of Adam must acknowledge the right of God to issue a commandment, and to re-order the operations of Adam’s self-direction, without apparent justification, at least not one which flatters the creature. Adam must accept that God owes him no explanation, that the Creator God as such is entitled to speak with self-evident and self-attesting authority. Theology at this point, by definition, issues from a holistic and self-conscious orientation of the human person under the self-authenticating speech of God. The fallen angels are no theologians, Adam when he has sinned is no theologian, though both know much about God. “The demons also believe,” but in responding in a hostile mode to revelation they cannot be said to know God as God wishes to be known. Theology as such is from its introduction in the created order an essentially doxological orientation issuing into confession and conduct according to the express word of God. And for Vos, from the prelapsarian order onward, theology has been not merely cognitive but also, and essentially, doxological and eschatological. Eschatology is a baseline orientation of special revelation and therefore also of obedient response to special revelation—that is, of theology. Accordingly, after the fall, that eschatological orientation of special revelation is upheld by a transhistorical redemptive efficacy which draws upon the redemptive accomplishment of the Son in the fullness of time. In other words, special revelation is eschatologically efficacious because it draws the obedient hearer into the pneumatological efficacy of the work of Christ. God is accomplishing redemption in history, and revelation is God’s gracious invitation, even

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summons, unto incorporation into the redemptive recreation which revolves around the resurrection. And now the denouement of the structure of theology for Geerhardus Vos. Theology mirrors the structure of its template, its prototype, which is special revelation, and special revelation exists for the sake of a singular divine work of eschatological redemption. Revelation draws the hearer into the order of the new creation, creating a renewed knower in whose mind are reflected the contours of the kingdom. Christian theological predication presupposes self-conscious departure from autonomous interpretation of the self, the world, and of God—repentance, in other words—and redemptive incorporation into an eschatological order of being whose primary reality is the enthronement of the resurrected Son and his reign alongside the Father in the already-not-yet.

IV. CONCLUSION Appreciation for Vos’ work grew in the years following his retirement. Ned Stonehouse made sure Vos was read at Westminster, making it clear that in his view Vos “displayed ability of a superior order.”49 Cornelius Van Til described Vos as “the finest teacher I have ever had as well as the greatest scholar I have ever known, and the most lovable Christian person.”50 On the occasion of the 1974 republication of Vos’ Biblical Theology, John Murray wrote: “Dr. Vos is, in my judgment, the most penetrating exegete it has been my privilege to know, and I believe, the most incisive exegete that has appeared in the English-speaking world in this century.”51 More recently, George Harinck has said that “in his life and work,” Geerhardus Vos, along with Herman Bavinck, “embodied the best of the Calvinistic world and life view for modern society.”52 This chapter seeks to encourage consideration of the breadth not only of Vos’ understanding of the nature of theology but of the greater neo-Calvinistic enterprise of which his project is a part. That primary impulse of neo-Calvinism, conspicuous in the life and labor of Kuyper and Bavinck and others, which was to rise to the challenge of modern thought, politics, and culture, is to their credit reflected in that very breadth of their work. Vos’ biblical theology, accordingly, is misunderstood when it is not viewed within this broader project, and when its philosophical sophistication, apologetic drive, ecclesiastical concern, pastoral value, and basic doxological orientation are not duly acknowledged. It ought to be recognized, in other words, that Geerhardus Vos, too, no less than Herman Bavinck, was concerned to be orthodox and yet modern.

Ned B. Stonehouse to K. Lavern Snider, June 7, 1962. Geerhardus Vos, Special Collection at Princeton Theological Seminary. Cited in Olinger, Geerhardus Vos, 292. 50 In a letter to Geerhardus Vos, Jr., dated December 10, 1971. Westminster Theological Seminary Archives. Thanks to Shelby Myers for bringing this to my attention. 51 Murray’s endorsement of the 1974 republication of Biblical Theology. See Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Introduction,” in Grace and Glory, ed. Geerhardus Vos (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), ix. 52 George Harinck, “Herman Bavinck and Geerhardus Vos,” Calvin Theological Journal 45 (2010): 30.

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Chapter 18

Klaas Schilder MARINUS DE JONG

I. INTRODUCTION This chapter marks a transition within this section on key figures of the neo-Calvinist tradition. After Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, who paved the way for the two fathers of neo-Calvinism, Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper, we now turn to a number of second-generation figures who developed the tradition into the twentieth century. Philosophers and theologians alike developed the tradition into various, sometimes opposing directions. This is a witness to the broadness and the continuing development of this tradition. Klaas Schilder (1890–1952) is a characteristic example of the development of neo-Calvinism into a new era. It is the purpose of this chapter to explore his theological contribution to the tradition. As I seek to show, Schilder offers potential correctives to the tradition that contain important lessons for contemporary neo-Calvinism. In what follows I will first provide a brief sketch of Schilder’s life to enable the reader to put his thought into the proper context. In two consecutive sections I will explore two key theological loci where Schilder makes an important contribution to the neo-Calvinist tradition: common grace and culture, and eschatology. This list could easily have been longer. Ecclesiology is also an obvious candidate as Schilder devoted a great deal of his work to this locus. Since I have treated that elsewhere extensively, I have opted for two different loci that have received less attention.1

II. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH a. The First World War If 1848 was a watershed moment in the nineteenth century, 1914–18, the First World War, was another such moment and was already experienced as such during the war itself. The war was experienced as the collective failure of Christianity. After the progressive nineteenth century, the hope that modern Christianity would bring lasting peace was brought to a devastating end. Even though the Netherlands remained neutral, it shared in the widespread sense of deep crisis. Klaas Schilder, born into a working-class family in

Marinus de Jong, The Church is the Means, the World is the End (doctoral dissertation, Theologische Universiteit Kampen, 2019). 1

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the town of Kampen, became a minister in the Gereformeerde churches the year the war broke out in Europe.

b. Preacher and Polemicist After his training in Gymnasium and the Theological Seminary in Kampen he served as a pastor in five congregations throughout the country. Schilder soon became a popular preacher and started to publish his meditations and articles.2 His existential tone of voice, his creative exegesis, his literary style, and his sensibility to the cultural context made him a prominent young voice in the neo-Calvinist world as it faced a new era. He felt that neo-Calvinism needed the depth of a poet like the Roman Catholics had in their Guido Gezelle—one who came after the breadth of “our giant, gift of God,” which can only refer to Kuyper.3 If the war was defining for Schilder, so was the Synod of Assen in the Gereformeerde churches in 1926. This year has often been understood as the divide between the early and later Schilder.4 That synod affirmed the perspicuity of Scripture over against a minister who had uttered his doubt and it consequently became the lens through which Schilder came to engage the upcoming Swiss theologian Karl Barth. With him, or rather with his Dutch followers, Schilder started to work on another characteristic: his polemics.5

c. Barth and Dogmatics But Barth required more than polemics. In the early thirties, when a worldwide economic crisis hit the Netherlands, Schilder spent two study leaves in Erlangen, Germany, to work on his PhD on the idea of paradox in the theology of Karl Barth. He defended his dissertation successfully in 1933. His argument was that Karl Barth’s use of the paradox was informed by Kierkegaard and diverging from Calvin.6 The defense was just in time for Schilder to be appointed to the vacant chair of dogmatics in the Kampen seminary in 1934, the chair once occupied by Herman Bavinck. As a professor Schilder attracted many students, and he became an increasingly influential voice on the Dutch theological scene. His 1935 Wat is de hemel? (What Is Heaven?) would become the apex of his dogmatic work, covering history, culture, and eschatology.7 The more systematic work by Schilder was never published and has only come to us through the meticulous notes made by his students, which they published afterwards without Schilder’s official approval.8 See for example Klaas Schilder, Licht in den rook (Delft: Meinema, 1st ed., 1923). And in English “Eros and Christ,” “The Church in the World: Fleeing and Flying” and “Light in the Smoke,” in The Klaas Schilder Reader: The Essential Theological Writings, ed. George Harinck, Marinus de Jong, and Richard Mouw, trans. Albert Oosterhoff and Albert Gootjes (Washington: Lexham Academic, 2022), 106–49, 238–43, 444–56. 3 Klaas Schilder, Om woord en kerk: Preeken, lezingen, studiën en kerkbode-artikelen. Deel 4, ed. C. Veenhof (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1953), 171. 4 De Jong, The Church is the Means, the World is the End, 95–103. 5 See for two examples of Schilder’s polemics with Barth, Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 340–427. 6 Klaas Schilder, Zur Begriffsgeschichte des “Paradoxon”: mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Calvins und des nachKierkegaardschen “Paradoxon” (Kampen: Kok, 1933). 7 Klaas Schilder, Wat is de hemel?, 1st ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1935). 8 See for example his lectures on the creed, in dialogue with Barth, K. Schilder, Het credo: verslag van de collegevoordrachten over het apostolisch symbool, 1st ed. (Kampen: Fides Quaerit Intellectum, 1936); His lectures on ecclesiology, Klaas Schilder, De kerk: verslag van de door prof. Schilder gegeven intermezzo-colleges over de problemem i.z. de kerk n.a.v de “Heraut”-artikelen over “het leerstuk der kerk,” ed. N. Bruin and C. van Venetië, 1st ed. (Utrecht, 1942); And his dogmatics lectures on the doctrine of God, Klaas Schilder, Kompendium 2

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d. War and Schism During that time, the tension in the Gereformeerde kerken increased, along with the tensions in society over the looming danger of German National Socialism. Schilder was vocal on both fronts: he argued for a synodical ban on national-socialist membership and was at the same time involved in many theological debates on the Kuyperian heritage: common grace, pluriformity, and so on. In 1944, when the German occupation was most intense, Schilder was deposed as professor and minister because he failed to obey the synodical decision that forbade him to take certain doctrinal positions. Schilder ended up as the leader of an ecclesial schism, the Vrijmaking (liberation), where about 10 percent of the Gereformeerde kerken followed him. He would continue in the new seminary, that was also based in Kampen, taking most of the students with him. He stayed in that position until his unexpected death in 1952, at the age of sixty-two. In the time after the war Schilder also published the first four volumes of his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, which was to become his twelve-volume systematic theology.9

III. COMMON GRACE AND CULTURE a. Neo-Calvinism without Common Grace? Common grace is to neo-Calvinism what wheels are to a car: it’s a defining feature, an essential part. If someone has heard of Klaas Schilder, it is probably because of his critique of precisely this doctrine. Why did he critique this concept and how does this not tamper with the essential strength of his tradition? Before going into his critique, it is good to observe Schilder’s self-understanding of neo-Calvinism. Schilder repeatedly asserts that he seeks to preserve and improve the legacy of Kuyper and Bavinck. Schilder sought improvements in areas where he thought it contradicted either exegesis or confessional standards.10 Schilder’s critique on common grace serves, in his own view, the purpose of developing the important work of Kuyper and of promoting cultural engagement. Schilder writes in 1937, “And, we ourselves are in the difficult position of those who in order to preserve Kuyper’s foundational ideas, have to differ from him on a few points.”11 It is important to keep this in mind when reading Schilder, because on the surface it appears as if he is distancing himself from his tradition entirely. The same applies to common grace. Schilder’s primary concern is the doctrine’s reception and application. His concern is not the original purpose for which Kuyper developed it. He even coins a term that, in his view, is a better concept which has the same effect but with less theological and practical problems.

b. Schilder’s Practical Objection Schilder’s critical engagement with the doctrine is twofold: practically and theologically. First, to properly understand Schilder’s practical objection, the historical backdrop is

dogmatiek deel I, ed. R. H. Bremmer and J. Verlaere, 1st ed. (Kampen: Fides Quaerit Intellectum, 1938). See the first part “American Lectures” and “A Holy Catholic Christian Church: Lectures on the Creed,” in Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 22–105, 273–328. 9 See the bibliography appended to this volume. 10 Schilder, De Kerk verslag, 113; Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 177. 11 Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 160.

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necessary. As explained above, Schilder was faced with explicitly anti-Christian ideologies. These were no armchair academic adversaries, as it was in the time of neo-Calvinism’s insurgence in the late nineteenth century. Now, they were political parties that rallied concrete people and threatened the fragile equilibrium of Interwar Europe. Secularization was no longer an academic quibble, but a concrete reality. It was Schilder’s fear that the doctrine of common grace would only exacerbate the rise of secularism. This works in two ways. The first is that the idea of common grace was used to “regard the cultural terrain as a kind of neutral territory [. . .] a place where we can pause and ‘rest’ from time to time.”12 Common grace then becomes a separate terrain that is neutral where antithesis is not a necessary category, a place of armistice, so to speak. While Schilder does not say so explicitly, such an understanding of common grace separates it from particular grace in a way Kuyper never intended. Neutral terrain was exactly what Kuyper denied the liberals in his politics. This could even be called the heart of his political program. On the other hand, Kuyper provides theoretical possibilities that allowed the development of common grace in this direction. He speaks of common grace as a sphere or a terrain that is also found independent of particular grace.13 What is particularly problematic, Schilder continues, is that this common domain is called “grace.” This gives the impression that something is to be enjoyed or to be received. As I will further develop in the following, for Schilder culture is not primarily about enjoyment but about a mandate. “Rather than the Christian who was able to put his hands on the fat cultural loot and feasts on its chunks” we need the “Christian office bearer.”14 The consequence of this emphasis on “grace” or on a “neutral terrain” is that the cultural becomes separated from the ecclesial, from particular grace, and from Scripture. A new dualism can enter through the backdoor, Schilder warns, even if Kuyper precisely wanted to attain the opposite. Common grace makes the Christian complacent. And in times of spiritual war, putting down the weapons is dangerous.15

c. Schilder’s Theological Objection Schilder’s second concern is more theological and focuses on the term “common grace,” rather than critiquing notions of commonness per se. Even though Schilder is more wary of natural theology than many of his Reformed forebears, he does not deny the “natural light” of the Canons of Dordt, nor the “book of nature” of the Belgic Confession.16 The problem is again with the word “grace,” this time in relationship to the doctrine of double predestination and the immutability of God. Both these doctrines are central to Schilder’s theology, and he defended them against what he perceived as threats. According to the Belgic Confession, God is immutable, there is no change in Him, he “possesses all of life simultaneously” (author’s translation), as Schilder borrows from Boethius repeatedly.17 Moreover, God predestines humanity in his eternal unchangeable council to election and reprobation. How then is it possible to speak of common grace toward the reprobate Ibid., 157. A. Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World. Volume 2, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill; trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2019), 308–15. 14 Schilder, Wat is de hemel?, 287. 15 The Klaas Schilder Reader, 156. 16 See “No to Natural Theology (1939),” in Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 178–211. 17 Klaas Schilder, Heidelbergsche Catechismus: zondag 8–9. Volume 3 (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1950), 110–28. 12 13

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from a theological point of view? God cannot be gracious to someone who will eventually be among the reprobate. Of course, from an anthropological perspective, there appears to be common grace. But theologically, from God’s perspective, this can never be grace.18 In other words, the question Kuyper offers in the first paragraphs of his second volume of Common Grace, is the wrong question. Kuyper speaks of the common experience that “the world was better than expected, the church worse than expected.”19 Rather, Schilder repeats, theology, also in questions of culture, should start not from experience but from theology proper, the doctrine of God. “This doctrine is more anthropocentric than theological. And by falling into this error, it necessarily commits a third one: in a culpable way it starts to broadcast culturally optimistic sounds.”20

d. Schilder’s Alternative: Cultural Mandate As I hinted at above, Schilder’s proposal is to replace common grace with common mandate, or cultural mandate.21 The idea of a cultural mandate is for Schilder closely connected with the classical Reformed notion of the office of all believers. “It is better to choose one’s position, one’s point of view in the discussion, not in the idea of common grace but in the Reformed idea of office.”22 Schilder points to the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 12, where this threefold office of Christ as priest, prophet, and king is described and connected to the life of the believer who “shares in his anointing.” That this office is primarily a cultural mandate, Schilder reads “on the first pages of the Bible: till the garden, fill the earth, be fruitful and multiply. The very first pages of the Bible are the ABCs.”23 These are the ABCs: the primordial command God gives to humans, the foundational command of the covenant of works. And it still stands. Schilder explains how Christ was the second Adam who came to restore this original mandate. Only after the Fall, the antithesis came in the world and Christ was needed to restore mankind to its original purpose. “We are God’s fellow workers,” Schilder quotes 1 Cor. 3:9. This is not a soothing word of reassurance posthumously proclaimed by Paul to a seceded church somewhere in a secluded corner. No, this is a command that leads us back to the first principles of the world. It is not only a suitable text for a minister’s inaugural sermon, but also the day-text for any cultural worker, for a professor as well as for a street sweeper, for one who is busy in the kitchen as well as for a composer who has written a Moonlight Sonata.24 In doing so, Schilder maintains the key cultural impetus so characteristic of (neo)-Calvinist theology. “For religion is not a ‘province’ of life, not a separate function of or for the ‘heart,’ not an isolated activity of a devout conventicle of people during exalted fragmentary stages of human life.”25 Schilder saw his own proposal not as a deviation from Kuyper, but as an improvement or radicalization. “Therefore I am unable to agree

Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 26–31. And K. Schilder, Christ and Culture, trans. W. Helder and A. Oosterhoff (Hamilton: Lucerna, 2016), 86–93. 19 Kuyper, Common Grace, 2. 10 20 Schilder, Christ and Culture, 145. 21 It was Schilder, not Kuyper, who coined this term which is now widely used as a key neo-Calvinist concept. 22 Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 151. See also ibid., 30. 23 Schilder, Christ and Culture, 71. 24 Ibid., 76. 25 Ibid., 79. 18

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with those who join Abraham Kuyper in declaring that Christianity or Calvinism cannot and should not design its own artistic style. [. . .] I am afraid that here the founder of a free university has restricted its task far too much.”26 When common grace is replaced by common mandate, the pitfall of an anthropological starting point that may unintendedly lead to secularization is avoided, while the neo-Calvinist’s strong cultural impetus remains in place.

e. Church in the Heart Schilder’s way of setting up the cultural mandate has another advantage: it puts the church on central stage. Elsewhere I have discussed at length that Schilder is critical of the separation between the church as organism and the church as institution, as this was made by both Kuyper and Bavinck.27 Schilder’s concern is that this distinction leads to a devaluation of the church as institution. While this is not what Kuyper intended, neoCalvinism has been accused of this devaluation both in the Dutch context in the first half of the twentieth century but also in contemporary international neo-Calvinism.28 The idea that a distinction can become a separation is a recurring motif in Schilder’s critical engagement with his forebearers. The distinction of the church as organism and institute runs parallel with the distinction between common and particular grace. And what is more, they are interwoven. If common grace is separated from particular grace, the organism will lose sight of the institution. Simply put, if God’s grace abounds outside of the church walls, is the institute then necessary? By replacing common grace with common mandate, Schilder ties the church as organism and as institution together (hence also his critique on the distinction). The original, common mandate is now only accessible through Christ as the second Adam. And Christ gathers his people in the church where his Word is preached, and his sacraments administered. In Schilder’s words, a consequence of his proposal is “the deep reverence that, also from a cultural perspective, may be demanded for the church.”29 The church, as institution, is for Schilder the hub of cultural life. That is why, for the sake of a Christian culture, i.e., a culture that is true to its own sense and purpose, all energy must be devoted to work done for the church, the body of Christ. Take the church away and the essentially human element will disappear, while a humanism that boasts about its ruins will come back.30 In Schilder’s proposal the church as institution can never be sidelined at the cost of cultural engagement. The church is, to cast it in Kuyperian terms, the hub of the spheres of life. But the church is never an end, it serves the original mandate to the glory of God.

f. Isolated Christian Culture? Before closing this section, we need to deal with an obvious objection to Schilder’s alternative to common grace. How is this not a plea for a completely isolated Christian

Ibid., 147–8. De Jong, The Church is the Means, the World is the End, 147–52, 214–19. 28 See the chapter by Tim Keller in this volume, and James K. A. Smith, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 86–9. 29 Schilder, Christ and Culture, 149. 30 Ibid., 160. 26 27

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culture centered around the church where only church members participate? Is Schilder aiming at a kind of “Benedict Option” of supposed true Christian culture isolated from raging secularism?31 And isn’t this also a new kind of triumphalism, maybe isolated and modest, but a triumphalism nonetheless, where true Christian culture will blossom around the true church? Such questions were also raised by Schilder’s contemporaries Heiko Miskotte and Oepke Noordmans.32 This is, however, far from what Schilder wants, and he anticipates the objection explicitly. “For many this will seem too strong a statement,” Schilder avows.33 Above, we already saw that Schilder had no intention of abandoning notions of commonness altogether. Schilder’s “nee” to natural theology is not like Barth’s “nein.”34 But Schilder has a similar leaning in a similar cultural context. In his discussion of Christian culture, his modest notions of commonness return. For there is no such thing as a demarcation line between Christian and non-Christian culture. For in time God not only withholds his grace, he also withholds his judgment. There is a “common temperance,” Schilder posits, which functions similarly as Kuyper’s common grace. God withholds his final judgment as long as time continues.35 In practice, therefore, one will find a lot of sunousia, as Schilder calls it, a “being together” among humans. Christian culture cannot be clearly distinguished from non-Christian culture. It would be an eschatological mistake to try to separate the two. Moreover, the “working material” is what binds all humans together, we live on the same earth; the one creation, that is our common ground. This culture is one; the two-ness in it is real but it awaits its eschatological fulfillment. Schilder uses the image of truncated pyramids when he describes culture. That image keeps triumphalism at bay. Schilder often points to the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 44, which speaks of “a small beginning of obedience” as it comes to the sanctification of the believer.36 This is also how Schilder sees humanity’s cultural endeavors. Different from Kuyper, Schilder did not focus on results or political influence. What mattered to Schilder is the act of obedience itself, the here and now, an emphasis he likely borrowed from Soren Kierkegaard.37 To put it in the dark tones of Schilder’s earlier work, “the place where they have fallen proves that to the very last moment their struggle sought the center of the world and not a position of remoteness.” The church should seek the “broad street of the great city,” as Schilder translates Rev. 11:8.38 We have to be in those streets, not because of what can be achieved, but because God demands us to be there, and we have to obey even if we fall there. Schilder both radicalizes and continues the cultural impetus of Abraham Kuyper. To achieve that, he distanced himself from the notion of common grace, without abandoning notions of commonness altogether. His focus was more on the deed of (cultural) obedience

R. Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017). 32 K. H. Miskotte, “Boekbesprekingen,” in Onder Eigen Vaandel (1933), 163. For Noordmans’ critique, see G. Puchinger, Een theologie in discussie: prof. dr. K. Schilder: profeet, dichter, polemist (Kampen: Kok, 1970). 33 Schilder, Christ and Culture, 108. 34 Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 178–211. 35 Schilder, Christ and Culture, 110–14. 36 See for example, Klaas Schilder, De kerk: Deel 1, ed. J. Kamphuis (Nijkerk: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1960), 108. 37 For more on Schilder and Kierkegaard see, de Jong, The Church is the Means, the World is the End, 43–5. See also George Harinck, “Is Kierkegaard daar? Over de ontvangst van de Deen onder Nederlandse protestanten,” Liter: Christelijk literair tijdschrift 12, no. 54 (2009): 31–40. 38 Klaas Schilder, De Openbaring van Johannes en het sociale leven, 1st ed. (Delft: Meinema, 1924), 241–2. 31

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and faithfulness than on valuing and connecting to what can be found outside of the church.

IV. ESCHATOLOGY This final section focuses on Schilder’s eschatology. While some themes found in the early Schilder move to the background as he matures, the emphasis on eschatology does not. His early lectures on heaven and on hell in the late 1910s gradually grew into larger publications, the third enhanced edition of Wat is de hel in 1932 and Wat is de hemel in 1935.39

a. Neo-Calvinism’s This-Worldly Eschatology Eschatology is not the first thing that comes to mind when talking about neo-Calvinism. The old critique of a materialist or this-worldly eschatology has surfaced again recently in Hans Boersma’s Seeing God.40 The critique of Bavinck, in this case, has been answered, but the issue still haunts neo-Calvinism.41 Its emphasis on all of life coram Deo, on the cultural mandate, and on common grace carry in themselves a tendency to neglect eschatology or to an overemphasis on a this-worldly concept of the new earth. It is good to note, however, that other neo-Calvinists, past and present, sought to balance the this-worldy tendency themselves.42 In the case of Kuyper, there is a tension between eschatological continuity and discontinuity within his own oeuvre. In Common Grace, Kuyper emphasizes continuity between this life and the next.43 While in Van de Voleinding, the emphasis is on discontinuity.44 With this tendency in mind, let’s turn to Klaas Schilder’s contribution to the topic.

b. Schilder’s Theology of History The tension inherent in neo-Calvinism is at the heart of Schilder’s seminal work, Wat is de hemel?45 Schilder seeks to strike a balance between a neo-Calvinistic emphasis on this world, the cultural mandate, and a focus on God. For Schilder this means navigating two threats. On the one hand Schilder is critical of his own tradition, notably Kuyper. Schilder engages Kuyper’s ideas as developed in Common Grace. In line with his critique For Schilder’s early lectures see Klaas Schilder, Verzamelde Werken 1917–1919, ed. Wim van der Schee (Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 2004), 465–6, 473–5. Klaas Schilder, Wat is de hel?, 3rd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1932). 40 Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 33–41. 41 See Cory Brock, “Revisiting Bavinck and the Beatific Vision,” Journal for Biblical and Theological Studies 6, no. 2 (2021): 267–381 and N. Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck on the Beatific Vision,” International Journal of Systematic Theology (Online First: 2022): 1–18. 42 See for example Abraham Kuyper who wrote three volumes on common grace (which were translated into English), but four volumes on eschatology, Van de voleinding: Tweede deel (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1929). See more recently, Richard J. Mouw, All That God Cares About: Common Grace and Divine Delight (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2020) and Richard J. Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). 43 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World. Volume 1: The Historical Section, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015), 543–86. 44 Kuyper, Van de voleinding, 294–303. 45 Schilder, Wat is de hemel? 39

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on the entire concept of common grace, Schilder criticizes how Kuyper speaks of how the “treasures of common grace” are carried into the New Jerusalem and how the seeds of this life will remain and blossom again in the next.46 On the other hand, Schilder engages in debate with Karl Barth. With Barth, Schilder fears, God’s transcendence overrules his immanence. History becomes a lower stage where God does not really engage nor is he present.47 This of course has ample consequence for ethics and for the cultural mandate. With Barth, Schilder fears a new dualism.48

c. The History of Heaven Schilder’s solution is to elevate the idea of heaven as a separate “realm” that was created by God besides earth. This realm is the dwelling place of God, something we often find in Scripture. It is also where the angels dwell and worship him. This realm is not a place like earth nor is it a “condition.”49 It is like a different dimension. It is not just spiritual, however. Since the ascension when Christ with his renewed human body entered the heavens, it became clear that heaven is not merely spiritual. His creative idea is that heaven, just like earth, has a history. Here again, the ascension is a key moment in that history.50 Heaven as a realm of God and the angels open the possibility for Schilder to strike a healthy balance between God’s immanence and transcendence. Positing a history of heaven cannot be read otherwise than as a counterpart to Barth’s distinction between Geschichte and Historie. Barth thus separates two kinds of history, a temporal history on earth and a timeless eternity of God. Schilder emphasizes that heaven is on the one hand part of creation and at the other is distanced from earth. This distance is creational, and not due to the fall. Sin has added a layer to this distance, but from paradise, history was destined to move forward, both in heaven and on earth to a merger between the two.51

d. Schilder’s Eschatology And that brings us to eschatology, the purpose of our inquiry. This history of heaven and earth moves forward to its consummation when “the new Jerusalem” will descend on earth (Rev. 21:1). “God’s presence will be like a tent over the earth” (Ezek. 37:27). These biblical images point to the merger of heaven and earth at the end of time. Now the distance between God and earth will be suspended. God’s dwelling place will be among his people.52 The strength of this way of putting things is that it underlines the unity of God’s work of creation and safeguards against dualism. Heaven is a separate realm. There is a duality. But this duality is temporary and has always been God’s plan since the Fall. The new heaven and the new earth are not “new” strictu sensu; they are a recreated and renewed heaven and earth. God’s dwelling in his creation is not new. He has been doing so from

Ibid., 289–94. Ibid., 29–33 and Harinck, de Jong, and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 367–74. 48 See de Jong, The Church is the Means, the World is the End, 95–103 for an overview of Schilder’s critique of Barth. 49 Schilder, Wat is de hemel?, 89–113. 50 Ibid., 148–50. 51 Ibid.,113–22. 52 Ibid., 150–6. 46 47

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the beginning. A world of angelic beings that live in harmony with God and do not die is not new. The angels already have some of the qualities humans will also have. Thus far, we have seen Schilder emphasizing the unity between creation and recreation, a neo-Calvinist trope. But Barth is not Schilder’s only concern here. Schilder also worries about the tendency in neo-Calvinism I evoked in the beginning: too much continuity. Here Schilder’s arrows are aimed at Kuyper and especially his seminal work Common Grace. In this volume, Kuyper uses the biblical images of “the kings carrying in their treasures into the new Jerusalem” and “the seed that remains” to further underline continuity between this life and the next.53 It is precisely these two texts Schilder criticizes and, building on the work of the Kampen New Testament Scholar Saekle Greijdanus (1871–1948), presents a different exegesis.54 While continuity remains the overarching framework, it is essential that it is not overstated, says Schilder.55 Theologically, Schilder’s concern is that such continuity between this life and the next is insufficiently theocentric. Here we see clear echoes of Schilder’s critique of common grace discussed above. The question should not begin from our perception: What will become of the beautiful treasures on this earth? It should rather be: What is the will of God’s council? How do all things find their purpose in Him?56 The paintings and structures of this world will not continue in the new world, nor will their seed. It will all be renewed and go through the fire (2 Pet. 3:7).

e. Fixing Kuyper When we pause to reflect on this for a moment, it becomes apparent that Schilder solves potential problems in Kuyper’s account. For how would it work for the treasures of the kings to be carried in? What is a treasure and what is not? Is a Van Gogh more valuable than a stilted painting of a four-year-old? Likely not in the eyes of her parents. And what about all the beautiful things that have already perished? Perishing is the nature of things, Schilder rightly says, and the final fire will simply be a continuation of that.57 It is value in the eyes of God that matters, not the things in themselves. It is in Kuyper’s account of common grace in history and how these workings of common grace are preserved in the new world that is particularly problematic. Deeply embedded in Kuyper’s theology is the idea of pluriformity and hierarchy within that pluriformity. It is not only that churches reveal this pluriformity and have more or less truth in them (the Calvinists are top tier of course), this is also visible in creation depending on how strongly common grace has worked. The demarcations run for Kuyper along the lines of race and nation, according to the nineteenth-century custom. Africans are then regarded lower than civilized Europe.58 The suggestion is that more of European culture will end up on the new earth than African culture. Kuyper is deeply wrong. It is important to note, however, that for Kuyper this pluriformity and hierarchy is not a matter of “blood and soil,” but of workings of the Holy Spirit. Still, the hierarchy according to Kuyper, Common Grace 1, 554. and Mouw, When the Kings, 43–69. Schilder, Wat is de hemel?, 289–93. For more about Greijdanus see George Harinck (ed.), Leven en werk van prof. dr. Saekle Greijdanus (Barneveld: Vuurbaak, 1998). 55 Schilder, Wat is de hemel?, 299–302. 56 Ibid., 150–1. 57 Ibid., 303. 58 Kuyper, Common Grace 1, 497–500. For Schilder’s critique on the pluriformity of the church see Harinck, de Jong and Mouw, Schilder Reader, 90–7, 281–8. See also Vincent Bacote’s chapter for this handbook.

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nineteenth-century cultural observations remains for Kuyper. Schilder does not deny that the pluriformity of God’s creation will be visible in the next. But he stays away from connecting the dots through history and the supposed workings of common grace. It is value in the eyes of God that matters and should inform our thinking regarding the next life. Not unlike Karl Barth, Schilder’s eschatological and theological reservations means that he creates a healthy distance between our observations and judgments of history and its hidden value in the eyes of God.

f. The Value of History But how then is there continuity? How does this not make Schilder’s account dualistic, notwithstanding the unity of heaven and earth? One of the biblical images Schilder uses for the next life is the Supper of the Lamb. It is telling, Schilder says, that central in this Supper is the Lamb. Jesus Christ as a Lamb that was slain is a vivid memory of the history of the old world. This means that history will be present at that table, as a memory that is more vivid and clear than ever. And it will be present in and through God, not as our limited personal memory, but as it was seen by God from eternity. So Schilder sums it up, “The actual value does not lie in the present works of culture, fixed on a certain date, even if it were the last date on the calendar, but in its living tension, in its tendency, in the ups and downs of the undulating culture-soil, stretching itself slowly till it becomes the arena of Christ and Anti-Christ in latter days.”59 Even today our works of culture do not find their value in the result, because the results perish and will eventually perish entirely, but in its significance in God. In the new earth, all those things will be remembered as they truly were, and we will see sharper and clearer than ever. So Van Gogh will be enjoyed, but also the painting of the young girl. African art will be measured, not by the standards of an ideal civilization, but by its value in the eyes of God. They will all be seen as God saw them and that will be wonderful. “Any attempt to describe the modus quo, we deem futile” and speculative, Schilder asserts.60 So, the old earth will be present in the new through memory as God sees, but the account may still appear dualistic. Isn’t the breach between the old and the new world too strong? This may well be the case. Schilder tilts the balance toward discontinuity. Aware of this danger, Schilder introduces the novel notion of evolution and shock. History, Schilder explains, moves forward through a dual process of evolution, but also of shock.61 Evolution is the immanent process of humans developing culture on earth. But this evolution would never have been able to arrive at the new earth without God’s interruption, which was the purpose from the beginning. To bring the works of culture to their timeless rest needs a moment of shock, of divine intervention from heaven. Evolution and shock are both part of the fabric of God’s creation. Also, the days of creation were moments of shock, of divine intervention.62 Thus, the consummation is not a breach of history of God’s one work of creation, they are a moment of shock in its progress that was intended from the beginning. Of course, sin has made this shock more intense in that it stands against the will of humans. Without sin, we would have longed for this moment of shock; now our heart resists it. But the shock, just as evolution, belongs to

Schilder, Wat is de hemel?, 304–5. Ibid., 303. 61 Ibid., 121–34. 62 Ibid., 298–302. 59 60

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God’s created order. A certain element of discontinuity belongs to the fabric of creation. Thus, Schilder seeks to steer away from dualism.

g. Which Kuyper? Before we conclude this chapter, a note is in order on Schilder’s use of Kuyper. In Wat is de hemel? Schilder only refers to Kuyper’s Common Grace. Schilder criticizes Kuyper’s emphasis on continuity between this life and the next, as we saw above. Kuyper, however, wrote more extensively on eschatology in his later work Van de voleinding, referred to above. Not only is Kuyper more expansive there, but the emphasis has also shifted somewhat. The Kuyper of Van de voleinding ends up much closer to Schilder than the Kuyper of Common Grace. The continuity of common grace is much less prominent; it is the newness of the new world Kuyper stresses.63 If Schilder wanted to emphasize the continuity with Kuyper, as he does repeatedly, why not point to Van de voleinding?64 This becomes even more mysterious when we see that many ideas Schilder develops in Wat is de hemel? are also found in Van de voleinding, especially volume 2. The notion of heaven as God’s dwelling place that is both distant but also part of the same creation; the idea that at the end of times the realm of heaven and earth will come together and that this was God’s council from the beginning, irrespective of the Fall; even the elevation of Christ’s Ascension as a key moment in the relationship of heaven and earth—all figure prominently in Van de voleinding.65 Schilder quoted from Van de voleinding a few years earlier and we also know Schilder read De Heraut where Kuyper first published these articles in 1914–15.66 Plagiarizing the most famous and widely read author among your readers seems unlikely, but the relationship between Wat is de hemel? and Van de voleinding is surrounded by unanswered questions. Like modern critics, Schilder worried about the this-worldly tendency of his neo-Calvinist heritage. His emphasis on the history of heaven, his critique on eschatological continuity in Kuyper, and his own account of the remembrance of history by God are his attempts for balance. While avoiding a Barthian dualism, Schilder sought to create a duality without losing the overarching unity between this world and the next.

Kuyper, Van de voleinding 2, 285–303. Schilder, Wat is de hemel?, 294–5. 65 Kuyper, Van de voleinding 2, 184–275. 66 For Schilder quoting Van de voleinding see, K. Schilder, Christus in zijn lijden: overwegingen van het lijdensevangelie. Deel 2: Christus in den doorgang van zijn lijden, 1st ed. (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1930), 496. In 1919 Schilder describes that he considers reading De Heraut part of the weekly duties of a minister, Schilder, Verzamelde Werken 1917–1919, 289. 63 64

Chapter 19

D. H. Th. Vollenhoven GAYLE DOORNBOS

Dirk Henrik Theodoor Vollenhoven (1892–1978), one of the founding fathers of the Reformational Philosophy movement of the twentieth century, sought to develop a distinctly Christian and comprehensive philosophy based on neo-Calvinist principles. Developing his philosophy alongside his more famous brother-in-law Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977), Vollenhoven has remained relatively obscure outside a small (yet dedicated) circle of contemporary reformational philosophers. However, within this small circle, Vollenhoven is lauded as a “rewardingly imaginative thinker” who produced a religiously rooted, scripturally informed, historically attuned, distinctly Christian philosophical alternative to the entire Western philosophical tradition.1 Vollenhoven’s creative and imaginative project was highlighted in a song written for him by his students called “Farewell my Sweet World-Picture” in which they bid farewell to the world of “classical antiquity” through the work of Vollenhoven. This chapter will serve as an introduction to Vollenhoven by (1) providing a brief biography followed by (2) an outline of his systematic, scriptural philosophy, and (3) an overview of his problem-historical method. The chapter will conclude with brief reflections on Vollenhoven’s philosophy, its reception, and ongoing questions. Outlining Vollenhoven’s thought, however, is no easy task. Beyond the sheer scope of his project, his writing style is notoriously obscure and difficult to understand, partially due to his idiosyncratic use of common philosophical terms. Vollenhoven scholar, Anthony Tol once noted: “Vollenhoven was not always inclined to do his thinking overtly, as readers of his work will soon discover.”2 Anyone who seeks to engage in Vollenhoven studies will be confronted with this reality as his writing and approach require the reader to slow down and undertake the effort to comprehend the holistic, philosophical vision he develops. Thus, this chapter introduces the main threads of Vollenhoven’s philosophical vision in order to provide an orientation to it rather than a comprehensive account of every aspect of his system and its development.

K. A. Bril, H. Hart, and J. Klapwijk, “Dedication,” in The Idea of a Christian Philosophy: Essays in Honour of D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1973), 2 and Anthony Tol, “Foreword,” in Introduction to Philosophy, ed. Anthony Tol and John H. Kok, trans. John H. Kok (Sioux Center: Dordt Press, 2010), xii. 2 Anthony Tol, Philosophy in the Making: D. H. Th. Vollenhoven and the Emergence of Reformed Philosophy (Sioux Center: Dordt College Press, 2010), 7. Echoed by B. J. van der Walt, At the Cradle of a Christian Philosophy (Potchefstroom: ICCA, 2005), 35. 1

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I. BIOGRAPHY Vollenhoven was born in Amsterdam on November 1, 1892 to Dirk Hendrik Vollenhoven and Catharina Pruijs.3 His family belonged to the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland— a community strongly influenced by Kuyper and his neo-Calvinist vision of Christ’s lordship over “every square inch of creation.” Thus, from the newspapers that his family read to the schools that he attended (Eben Haezer primary school and the Gereformeerde Gymnasium in Amsterdam), Vollenhoven grew up immersed in Kuyperian thought and formed by its intuitions. In September 1911, Vollenhoven enrolled at the VU to study theology and literature. From 1914 to 1918 Vollenhoven worked on his doctoral thesis, De wijsbegeerte der wiskunde van theïstisch standpunt (The Philosophy of Mathematics from a Theistic Standpoint). After completing his doctorate in philosophy in 1918, Vollenhoven married Hermina Maria, Dooyeweerd’s older sister, and entered the pastorate. He served two congregations from 1918 to 1926, one in Ooskappelle in Zeeland (1918–21) and the other in The Hague (1921–6). Although a committed pastor, Vollenhoven continued to engage in philosophical conversations. He read extensively from the Badan school of neo-Kantians, engaged in correspondence and conversation with Dooyeweerd and Athenunis Janse (a schoolmaster in Oostkapelle), and studied with Felix Kruger for four months. His views changed significantly during this period; he became increasingly convinced that Christian philosophy (including his own) needed to be excised of any blatant or latent scholasticism and humanism, which eventually became synonymous with anti-scriptural, synthetic thought in Vollenhoven. During his time in the pastorate, Vollenhoven suffered a nervous breakdown while preaching in January of 1923. His recovery took over ten months. His son-in-law attributed it to overwork and a spiritual crisis caused by wrestling with a “philosophical matter of a sensitive nature.”4 Later correspondence between Vollenhoven and Janse suggests the breakdown was partially caused by his conversations with Janse as they precipitated a radical shift in his anthropology in which he rejected the substantial nature of the soul and denied the innate immortality of the soul.5 After recovering, he served as a pastor in The Hague for another few years before being appointed to the VU in 1926, along with Dooyeweerd, who joined the faculty as a professor of law. At the VU, Vollenhoven continued to develop and refine his philosophical approach as he lectured on the history of philosophy and systematic philosophy.6 The syllabus he created and eventually published for his systematics class as Isagôgè Philosophiae (Introduction to Philosophy) contained the outlines of Vollenhoven’s positive development of Christian philosophy. Undergoing several revisions, the final version was published in the 1940s.7

The most comprehensive biography of Vollenhoven is only available in Dutch (Stellingwerff, D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, 1892–1978: Reformator der wijsbegeerte (Baarn: Ten Have, 1992)). 4 J. Glenn Friesen, “The Investigation of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven by the Curators of the Free University” (Unpublished), 20. 5 Janse’s influence on Vollenhoven’s anthropology is undeniable, as Vollenhoven indicates in his memoriam of Janse: “For at this point Janse meanwhile had arrived at a more biblical vision of ‘the living soul,’ which liberated me of a good deal of unprofitable traditional speculation.” D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, “In Memorian Antheunis Janse 1890–1960,” in Mededelingen van de Vereniging Voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte, trans. vdM (May): 2. 6 Tol, Philosophy in the Making, 20. 7 In 1967, Vollenhoven published an edition that included a new forward but remained unaltered from the 1945 publication. 3

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Whereas the Isagôgè represented the positive side of Vollenhoven’s philosophical vision, Het Calvinisme en de Reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte (1933) presented his call for the reform of philosophy in light of Scripture through his critiques of scholasticism and humanism. In 1935, he and Dooyeweerd founded the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy (now the Association of Reformational Philosophy) and established the journal Philosophia Reformata. In the mid-1930s, following the publication of Het Calvinisme, Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven were embroiled in a battle with the theological faculty at the VU.8 Starting in 1936, V. Hepp, the successor of Herman Bavinck in the Faculty of Theology, published critiques of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd in a series called Dreigende deformatie (threatening deformation). Among the criticisms, most of which were aimed directly at Vollenhoven, were the “sickness of originality,” biblicism, the law as a boundary between God and the cosmos, the radical reinterpretation of the image of God, the denial of the immortality of the soul, and the way “subject” was construed.9 From 1937 to 1939, the Curators of the VU got involved, requiring Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd to respond to the charges made by Hepp and other members of the theology faculty. Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd were also required to submit their positions on the immortality of a substantial soul and the union of the two natures in Christ. The responses and writing did not adequately satisfy the theological faculty who charged Vollenhoven with stepping outside confessional bounds. The controversy lasted for several years, and impacted Vollenhoven’s health and well-being throughout 1937.10 Tol commented on this period, writing, “Vollenhoven was not easily given to polemicize, but the problems posed in terms of the scholastic synthesis could inwardly drive him to fury. For one then remained to find the non-biblical religious determination of thought and the need of biblically reforming it.”11 The issue, while intense, never reached a satisfactory resolution. After the Second World War, there was turnover in the theology faculty, and as G. Friesen has suggested in his analysis of the controversy, the theological controversy that led to the removal of Klaas Schilder from his post at the theological school at Kampen likely pivoted the attention of the Curators.12 By the 1950s, Vollenhoven shifted his focus to the development of his problem-historical method. He published the first of a planned ten-volume series in 1950 on pre-platonic thought, Geschiedenis der Wijsbegeerte I (History of Philosophy I). Poor critical reception caused the funds for the series to be withdrawn; it was Vollenhoven’s last book. Vollenhoven retired from the VU in 1963, when he also stepped down as chairman of the Association for Calvinist Philosophy. His health started to decline over the course of the last years of his life. However, his legacy was passed on through his students as they took up academic posts in the Netherlands and abroad. Vollenhoven’s wife passed away in 1973, five years prior to his own death. They had five children together.

See Jeremy Ive, “The Contribution and Philosophical Development of the Reformational Philosopher Dirk H. Th. Vollenhoven,” Philosophia Reformata 80, no. 2 (2015): 167–70. 9 See Friesen, “Investigation of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven,” 3 and Ive, “Contribution and Philosophical Development,” 169. 10 Friesen, “Investigation of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven,” 3 and Stellingwerf, D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, 140. 11 Anthony Tol, “In Memoriam: Dirk Hendrik Theodoor Vollenhoven,” Philosophia Reformata 43, no. 3/4 (1978): 93. 12 Friesen, “Investigation of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven,” 4. 8

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II. THE REFORMATION OF PHILOSOPHY By the time of his appointment at the VU, Vollenhoven was convinced that philosophy needed to undergo a radical reformation. Already formed by the Kuyperian insight that all engagement in the world is religiously rooted, including, as Dooyeweerd would later articulate “theoretical thought,” Vollenhoven started to develop a biblical philosophy. For Vollenhoven, biblical philosophy was “a philosophical perspective which refers itself continuously to the Holy Scriptures.”13 Lest this be taken as a form of philosophical prooftexting, Vollenhoven was careful to explain that “biblical philosophy” sees Scripture as the divinely inspired result of God’s Word-revelation,14 “lean[s] on scripture,”15 thinks “in accordance with it,”16 believes its teachings,17 and reflects philosophically, that is methodologically,18 on the “faith in scripture and Christ.”19 Scripture provides the fundamental insights; philosophy explores and develops the implications of these insights. Scriptural philosophy does not, as Vollenhoven writes, “take a critical stance towards the Word of God and take a soft line against traditional philosophy, but on the contrary, while we unconditionally kneel before the authority of Holy Scripture, we freely have to investigate everything which remains.”20In sum, biblical philosophy “thinks in line with Scripture,” as it proceeds from the life of faith and seeks to articulate the philosophical implications of God’s Word-revelation.21 By implication, Christian philosophy can either be scriptural or non-scriptural.22 It can either kneel before Scripture or not. For Vollenhoven, nearly the entire history of Western Christian thought has been marred by non-scriptural philosophy because it imported fundamental insights from non-Christian philosophy in one of three ways. First, through the method of eisegesis-exegesis, or inlaying, philosophical perspectives one already held were read onto Scripture in order to find conformity between them. Second, through the method of paradox, one would assume Scripture and philosophy had nothing to do with one another. And finally, through the method of nature, philosophy would be crowned

D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, Het Calvinisme en de Reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1933), 22. Vollenhoven defines Scripture itself as the divinely inspired result of God’s Word-revelation (the speaking and revealing action of God) and the law of human faith-life. God’s Word-revelation is more expansive than Scripture, but Scripture alone is the divinely inspired result of the Triune God’s revealing activity after the fall to humans who are lost, ruined, and in need of redemption. D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, “Scripture Use and Philosophy,” in Mededelingen van de Vereniging voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte (1953): 6. 15 Vollenhoven, Calvinisme, 23. 16 Ibid., 22. 17 Vollenhoven often preferred to say, “I believe the Bible” rather than “I believe in the Bible.” See John Kok, “Vollenhoven and Scriptural Philosophy,” Philosophia Reformata 53, no. 2 (1988): 109. 18 Tol, “Foreword,” in Introduction to Philosophy, by D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, ed. Anthony Tol and John H. Kok, trans. John H. Kok (Sioux Center: Dordt Press), xxv. 19 Vollenhoven, “Scripture Use and Philosophy,” 9. 20 See D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, “The Foundations of Calvinist Thought,” Lecture notes from teaching for visitors from Düsseldorff Evangelical Pastoral Seminary (Vrije Universiteit. March 8, 1934) https://www​.allofliferedeemed​ .co​.uk​/Vollenhoven​/Fou​ndat​ions​Calv​inis​tThought​.pdf. See also D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, “The Significance of Calvinism for the Reformation of Philosophy,” Evangelical Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1931), 388–91. 21 Paraphrase of Lambert Zuidevaart, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 50. 22 Vollenhoven divided the history of philosophy into three basic categories: pre-synthetic (700 bce-40 ce), synthetic (40 ce–1600), and post-synthetic (1600 ce–today). 13

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by Christian thought.23 In this method, philosophy belonged to the realm of nature, surpassed by the realm of grace.24 For Vollenhoven, each method produces synthetic thought, and thus detrimental to Christianity.25 Vollenhoven was particularly concerned with the final method, which he saw present in the period of scholasticism, because it was guilty of a fatal error for any neo-Calvinist: a confusion of the relationship between nature and grace.26 But what are the fundamental insights of Scripture that philosophy thinks in line with? For Vollenhoven, the answer is mediated through the Calvinist tradition, which he holds teaches abiding principles (principia) that can be summarized into the following three fundamental ideas or motives.27

1. The Sovereignty of God: The total sovereignty of God, who is the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth, has revealed himself in his Word, and exercises his sovereignty “over all things in context and relationship.”28 God alone is the Creator and ruler of all. Everything in the cosmos is a creature and subject to him.



2. The Covenant: This covenant is “the way in which God relates to a human being and in which a human being relates to God.”29 Therefore, religion is a covenant “which is known to the human family by Word revelation also already before the fall into sin.”30 And its fundamental law is love. From the human side, only two responses are possible: loving obedience or rebellious disobedience. One’s response to God directs the whole of one’s life, in all its manifold functions, for “out of the heart flow the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23).



3. Post-Fall Circumstances: The fall, a rebellious disobedience, caused “the total depravity of humankind, death as a punishment to sin, and the revelation of the grace of the sovereign God in the Mediator.”31 The reception of grace by faith is a gift of God that reorients the believer’s heart such that she seeks to follow God’s law in every area of life.32

a. The Sovereignty of God First, the distinction between God and creation (whereby God is the sovereign Creator of all that exists) means that “every square inch of creation” radically depends on God. While all of creation exhibits a vast and glorious diversity, there is no hierarchy within creation

See D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, “Short Survey of the History of Philosophy,” in The Problem-Historical Method and the History of Philosophy, ed. K.A Bril, trans. John de Kievit et al. (Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2005), 61–71. 24 For a helpful introduction see B. J. van der Walt, “Eisegesis-Exegesis,” in The Idea of Christian Philosophy, ed. Herman Dooyeweerd (Toronto: Wedge Publishing, 1973), 191–241. 25 Vollenhoven, Calvinisme, 16. 26 Vollenhoven, Calvinisme, 111–305 and “Scripture Use and Philosophy,” 6–9. 27 See Vollenhoven, Calvinisme, 18–21 and “The Significance of Calvinism for the Reformation of Philosophy,” 388–91. 28 See Vollenhoven Calvinisme, 22 and Introduction to Philosophy, ed. Anthony Tol and John H. Kok, trans. John H. Kok (Sioux Center: Dordt Press), 14. 29 Vollenhoven, Calvinisme, 38. 30 Vollenhoven, “Calvinist Thought.” See also Calvinisme, 38 and Introduction, 21, 78–93. 31 Vollenhoven, “Calvinist Thought,” 4. See also Calvinisme, 42. 32 Vollenhoven Introduction, 92–102. 23

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because it is all equally dependent. All things are created by God and are sustained by him. As Vollenhoven articulates in his Introduction to Philosophy: “Heaven and earth belong to that which is created. They are both similar in that they are subject to God.” Furthermore, he continues, “the words Heaven and earth say more than being-created. They both denote determinants of being-subject.”33 However, as Vollenhoven later states, being-subject “makes no sense . . . without accepting a law that holds for that which is subject to it.”34 For Vollenhoven, the law is that which God has set for the cosmos, and it is that to which all of creation stands in subjection.35 In contrast to Dooyeweerd’s philosophy of the law idea in which he postulated a distinction between the law-side and the subject-side of the cosmos, Vollenhoven developed his philosophy according to the triad of God-law-cosmos. Here, within his articulation of “being-subject” and the God-law-cosmos triad, one encounters what Tol rightly describes as “the founding edge of philosophy.”36 Vollenhoven radically transforms the philosophical conception of subjectivity by extending it to the whole of creation and defining it in light of God’s creative activity and relation to Him. Furthermore, the law is that which directs and guides the “standing in subjection” of the cosmos. The law and the cosmos, when considered as a whole, are “correlative to each other.”37 Standing in subjection is the basic point of orientation for biblical philosophy, and it is what Vollenhoven draws on to give philosophical articulation and development to the Kuyperian idea of Sphere Sovereignty, especially as he explores the manifest diversity of creation in its structure and development. According to Vollenhoven, there are fourteen diverse modes of subjection within the cosmos: arithmetic, special, physical, organic, psychic, analytic, historic, lingual, social, economic, aesthetic, juridic, ethical, and pistic.38 These diverse modes, which Vollenhoven also describes as “law-spheres,” run parallel to the “diversity in the determination of being-subject . . . an arithmetic law holds for that which is arithmetic, a spatial law for that which is spatial, a psychic law for that which is psychic.”39A law-sphere is a specific mode of being-subject within created reality. This, for Vollenhoven, is the first determinant of earthly being, or the “thus-so” determinant.40 Within created reality, individual things are characterized by their “multiple but simultaneous participation in modes of subjection.”41 Vollenhoven uses the terms “subjection units” or “subject-units” to define individual things. Every “subject-unit” has a leading function, which marks out its individuality.42 Importantly, “subject-units” are not just a conjunction of functions but integral wholes that participate in multiple spheres. The spheres themselves relate to one another analogically through a complex web of anticipation and retrocipation.43

Ibid., 19. Ibid., 27. 35 D. H. Th Vollenhoven, “Divergentierapport I,” in Vollenhoven Als Wijsgeer, ed. A. Tol and K. A. Bril (Amsterdam: Buijten & Shcipperheijn, 1992), 107–17. 36 Tol, “Foreword,” xviii. 37 See Vollenhoven, “Divergentierapport I,” 109. 38 Vollenhoven, Introduction, 25. In the 1950s Vollenhoven split the physical law-sphere into two separate spheres. 39 Vollenhoven, Introduction, 27. 40 Ibid., 24–6. 41 Tol, “Foreword,” xxi. 42 Vollenhoven, Introduction, 51. 43 Ibid., 41–4. In a given function, Vollenhoven uses the term “substrate” to describe functions that are not presupposed and “superstrate” to describe functions that are presupposed. The pistic mode has no superstrates and the arithmetic mode has no substrates. 33 34

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Individuals stand in relationship with one another and are relationally directed (horizontally) toward another individual (inter-individual) or elements that make up a specific individual (“intra-individual”). Two immediate benefits of this approach are that individual things are treated in both their unity and diversity as well as understood as standing in relation to themselves and other individual things. If modality is the first determinant of earthly being, individuality is the second determinant or the “this-that” determinant.44 While all of created reality holds equal standing, creation bears a remarkable diversity and complexity. In articulating the law-spheres, Vollenhoven discerns a “certain natural order” that obtains, whereby higher functions necessarily presuppose lower functions.45 This means that “subject units” that have a higher leading function are more complex (e.g., human beings), even though they share the same ontological status (creature) as “subject units” whose leading function is lower. Furthermore, it is within this complex development of the law-spheres, subject-units, and “subject-functions” that Vollenhoven provides a new context within which to understand the subject-object relationship. Individual things can have both a subject-function and object-function. The object-function of a “subject unit” (thing) occurs when perceived by a subject-unit whose leading function is higher. To explain this, Vollenhoven gives the example of a flower. It possesses a subject function in the organic sphere, but it processes an object function when it is perceived in the supra-organic spheres.46 Here, one can see how Vollenhoven radically shifts modern epistemological categories and subsumes knowing under being. Pistical Ethical Jural Aesthetic Economic Social Lingual Historical Analytic Psychic Organic Physical Spatial Arithmetic Human Being

Animal

Plant

Physical Material

Mathematical Figure

Table from Vollenhoven, Introduction, 37. Ibid., 27–9. Ibid., 37. 46 Ibid., 47. 44 45

Number

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Vollenhoven’s philosophy of the law-spheres also helps him articulate a more philosophically complex understanding of Sphere Sovereignty. Institutions also have a leading function, by which they are distinguished and according to how they are to direct themselves. For example, the leading function of the church is the pistic, whereas the leading function of the state is juridical.47 For Vollenhoven, it is the work of those in authority—which he defines as office-bearers—to not only explore the structure of institutions and their history but steward their development. Thus, institutions and officebearers are not sovereign over their spheres but stand under the sovereignty of the law as they develop.

b. The Covenant and Humanity Early on, Vollenhoven accepted the substantial nature of the soul and its inherent immortality, but in his mature thought, he rejected these positions as scholastic, the result of adopting a dualism between nature and grace. Rejecting the perceived scholastic dualism between the body (lower) and the soul (higher), Vollenhoven develops an anthropology in which the whole person (body and soul) is a temporally located unity.48 Contrary to the critiques of the VU theologians, Vollenhoven does not deny a distinction between the body and the soul, but he does situate his distinction within his distinct (and somewhat atypical) anthropology. He locates this unity in the heart (spirit or soul), which is prefunctional and temporal. The heart is not equivalent, nor can it be identified with any of the modes. It is not a function; it is prefunctional.49 Rather, the heart is the religious center, meaning it is a directional principle. The body, then, is not physical or purely organic aspect of a person but rather the “totality of human functions” or that which “is determined in its direction.”50 In understanding the whole person as a temporally located unity, including the prefunctional heart, Vollenhoven presents a distinctly different anthropological vision than Dooyeweerd, who developed a conception of the heart as supratemporal. According to Vollenhoven, there are only two possible directions for the heart: obedience to God’s law of love or disobedience.51 The direction does not originate “in the functions.” Rather, the functions are determined “by this difference in antithetical direction.”52 Thus, religion lies at the heart root of life itself—not just philosophy. For religion (covenantally defined) is the relationship one has to “the first and greatest command” to love God. In loving God, the heart is directed toward the good and not evil, but the opposite is also true. In Vollenhoven, it truly is out of the (prefunctional) heart that the issues of life flow for the heart directs the whole person’s functions (both physical and mental). In this sense, as one of Vollenhoven’s students H. Evan Runner used to say, “life is religion.” Good and evil are the third determinant of earthly beings.53 However, unlike modality and individuality, the good and evil determinant is directed vertically and

Ibid., 71. Ibid., 109–26. 49 Ibid., 62 and Calvinisme, 33. 50 Vollenhoven, Introduction, 62. 51 Ibid., 61. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 56. 47 48

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is not a feature of the structure of creation but rather a response to God’s sovereignty in obedience or disobedience.54 In his early development of the philosophy of the law idea, Vollenhoven gave the law ontological and epistemological status as the knowable boundary between God and the cosmos. This law, as previously noted, is that which the cosmos stands in subjection to. By the 1950s Vollenhoven expanded his conception of the law to include two further distinctions of the law, which give a fuller picture of the relationship between humanity and the law. First, Vollenhoven began to discuss the law of love, which was addressed to human hearts, as well as the positive law. The positive law was what was obtained as human beings responded in freedom to the law of love—or the law of love in concrete situations.55 This is a helpful nuance within Vollenhoven as it eradicates the common misconception that his philosophy is all about strict compliance to law ordinances. Rather, buried within his complex and often dense prose is a dynamic account of creation, its structure, and its development as the whole of creation responds to its “calling forth” and participates in its unfolding in all its manifold diversity.56

b. Post-Fall: Depravity, Death, and Redemption As directional and rooted in the heart as a religious response, good (obedience) and evil (disobedience) stand in antithetic relation to one another and cannot be conflated with the other determinants of earthy beings.57 After the fall, this determinant “plays an extremely important role in the earthly subject and especially in human existence.”58 The important role it plays is in relation to the heart’s directionality, not creation’s structure. The fall does not have ontological consequences. Post-lapse, human beings still stand in relation to God as creatures, but now the heart needs to be redeemed and restored through the mediatorial work of Christ for the heart to respond to God’s sovereignty in obedience. Through the work of Christ, the heart’s right relationship to God is restored and “learn[s] obedien[ce] to the love command through the spirit of Christ.”59 In this way, grace truly restores what was lost in the fall. Importantly, the pistic function is the mode of belief and certainty, not what differentiates believers from nonbelievers (as if the pistic function was operative in believers and not functioning in nonbelievers). Rather, as the pistic mode is the leading function of human beings, “all people believe, but not everyone believes in Christ.”60 The direction of belief is rooted in the heart. After the fall, death comes to humanity as a punishment for sin. Vollenhoven distinguished between a first and a second death. The first death is a separation, a “discontinuation of the coherence in which the ‘living soul’ stood with its environment.”61 The second death, Ibid., 57. Vollenhoven, “Short Survey of the History of Philosophy,” 30. 56 Here the intellectual backdrop of Creation Regained, one of the more well-known texts to arise out of the reformational philosophy tradition is evident, especially concerning structure and direction. See Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), Chapter 5. 57 Vollenhoven, Introduction, 57. 58 Ibid., 56. 59 Ibid., 100. 60 Ibid., 26. 61 Vollenhoven, “Calvinist Thought,” 15 54 55

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for Vollenhoven, follows from the first and comes to “all those who have not been saved by Christ.”62 The first death is temporal; the second death is eternal. Those who are saved in Christ are restored in this life and have hope in a future resurrection by which the whole person, body and soul, will be raised to life immortal. For Vollenhoven, then, eternal life does not rest on an inherent quality of the soul (immortality) but on the heart’s continued existence that is conferred on humans by God. What remains unresolved in Vollenhoven’s anthropology, however, is a philosophically coherent account of what happens between death and resurrection.

III. PROBLEM-HISTORICAL METHOD For the last three decades of his life, Vollenhoven sought to develop a philosophy of history that was sufficiently philosophical in nature. His interest in the history of philosophy was already evident in his dissertation, but beginning in the mid-1940s, he began to develop his treatment of the history of philosophy more systematically.63 He eventually defined his method as the “consequent-probleemhistorische methode”—the consistent or consequential problem-historical method.64 Vollenhoven’s concentration on the history of philosophy itself is not unique. In the early twentieth century, Neo-Kantian philosophers developed the idea of Problemgeschichte, which understood the history of philosophy as philosophers grappling with perennial systematic problems.65 As Albert Wolters notes, a characteristic of this approach was the “subordination of historical study to systematic philosophical interests.”66 Situated within this context, Vollenhoven did develop a unique approach, which along with his anthropology and development of the God-cosmos-law triad, marked another significant divergence between him and Dooyeweerd. Vollenhoven’s approach can be summarized as a method of study whereby he restricts himself to the results of philosophizing (concepts) and seeks to see philosophers in “light of the whole.”67 The history of philosophy for Vollenhoven is “only a part of the history of culture as a whole” but it is an important part because it presents a scientific treatment of “life-and-worldview.”68 In distinction from many contemporary accounts of worldview that treat them as philosophical systems in intellectual combat with one another,69 for Vollenhoven, worldview is a pre-scientific, pre-theoretical vision of the Vollenhoven, Calvinisme, 43. For an excellent introduction to Vollenhoven’s method in English see K. A. Bril and R. W. Vunderink, Vollenhoven’s Problem-Historical Method: Introduction and Explorations (Sioux Center: Dordt College Press, 2005). 64 Debate remains on how to best translate this term. Consistent refers to the consistency of method whereas consequential emphasizes the implications of the different types. 65 See Albert M. Wolters, “On Vollenhoven’s Problem-Historical Method,” in Hearing and Doing: Philosophical Essays Dedicated to H. Evan Runner, ed. Anthony Tol and John Kraay (Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1979), 231. 66 Wolters, “Problem-Historical Method,” 231. 67 This statement presupposes the distinction Vollenhoven makes between scientific and non-scientific thought. Non-scientific knowledge arises through “everyday experience” and is pre-theoretical and concrete; it arises intuitively and is acquired naturally as human beings live in the world. See Vollenhoven, “Short Survey of the History of Philosophy,” 30. 68 Vollenhoven, “Short Survey of the History of Philosophy,” 29. 69 Wolters identifies at least five different views of the relationship of worldview to philosophy. See Albert M. Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview and Its Relation to Philosophy,” in Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science, ed. P. Marshall et. al. (Lanham: University Press of America, 1989), 14–25. 62 63

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world that is passed on through families and communities as visions of “God, of the world, of life, of man, of your fellowman, and of yourself. Such a view imprints its stamp on the human being.”70 Philosophical conceptions give articulation or expression to worldviews, which are inescapably religious. Outside of God’s Word-revelation, one will always reduce or elevate one aspect of reality thereby creating reductionist philosophical accounts of the world that get caught up in classic antinomies and philosophical quandaries. According to Vollenhoven, the history of philosophy is concerned primarily with the result of philosophical activity as it grapples with the place of the law and three ontological problems:

1. the problem of genesis and static structure, of which there are three basic categories:



a. Mythologizing (theogono-cosmogenic),



b. Comogono-cosmological, and



c. Purely cosmological.



2. the problem of unity and diversity (or the relationship between the modal aspects), of which there are two basic classes:



d. Dualism and



e. Monism71



3. the problem of individuality and universality (or the relationship of the individual to the modal), of which there are three classes:



f. Universalism,



g. Partial Universalism, and



h. Individualism.72

Vollenhoven’s conception of the interrelation between these three basic problems adds another layer of complexity. However, his main goal is to identify basic types or ontological visions of the world that occur and reoccur throughout history. According to Vollenhoven, once a philosophical response arises in the history of philosophy, it continues to arise in various periods in waves throughout the history of philosophy. Thus, philosophy does develop but its development is not teleological. Why? The answer becomes clear when viewed through the lens of Vollenhoven’s systematic philosophy. These ontic visions deal with created reality. As Calvin Seerveld helpfully summarizes: “These basic ontic matters are perennial historical challenges (“problems”) and have staying power through the ages because they are creational

Vollenhoven, “Use of Scripture,” 8. Not to be confused with Vollenhoven’s utilization of monism and dualism in anthropology. Here he uses them as ontic categories. 72 See Wolters, “Problem-Historical Method,” 252; Anthony Tol, “Vollenhoven and the Philosophy in Early Classical Antiquity,” in In the Phrygian Mode: Neo-Calvinism, Antiquity and the Lamentations of Reformational Philosophy, ed. Robert Sweetman (Toronto: University Press, 2007), 134; and K. A. Bril, “A Comparison Between Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven on the History of Philosophy,” Philosophia Reformata 60 no. 2 (1995): 131–5. 70 71

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structural affairs.”73 Scriptural philosophy alone can adequately articulate the vertical dimension of things and avoid classic pitfalls like having to choose between unity or diversity. Moreover, as types are enduring ontological visions of the world, Vollenhoven defines visions of “the place of the law, of normativity, of criteria, including the criteria of truth” as time-currents.74 Unlike types, time-currents are not enduring. Rather, they are time periods or eras in which the types reoccur and are held together by their response to the law. Vollenhoven identifies over sixty time-currents. Thus, the problem-historical method approaches the history of philosophy through the matrix of types and time-currents. The result is an unbelievable complex treatment of the history of philosophy as Vollenhoven that also demonstrates how philosophical problems remain irresolvable outside of God’s Word-revelation. While this method does aid in a transcendent critique of philosophical alternatives (and often is utilized to that effect), for Vollenhoven first the mode of philosophical critique should be immanent, seeking to understand and find inconsistencies within a philosophical system before critiquing it from one’s own standing point. While affirming immanent critique, Vollenhoven’s methodological approach also served his systematic project. As with the neo-Kantians, the history of philosophy is subordinate to systematic interests in Vollenhoven and is derived from the basic insights and presuppositions of his scriptural philosophy, ultimately illuminating the necessity of philosophy’s reform.

IV. CONCLUSION Vollenhoven’s sought to reform Western philosophy itself by developing a comprehensive, scriptural philosophy by philosophically articulating the implications of neo-Calvinist principles such as God’s sovereignty, the covenant, and the condition of humanity after the fall, and God’s gracious work in Christ. Attending to the diversity of created life, the idea that grace restores nature, and creation’s reliance on God, Vollenhoven developed Kuyper’s idea of Christ’s lordship over “every square inch.” Along with Dooyeweerd, he initiated the Reformational Philosophy movement—a movement whose impact can still be witnessed in the Association for Reformational Philosophy, the continued publication of Philosophia Reformata, and the several institutions of higher learning that were impacted by or founded upon reformational principles (e.g., VU in the Netherlands, The Institute for Christian Studies and Redeemer University in Canada, and Calvin University and Dordt University in the United States). While impressive in its scope and undeniably generative, significant questions have plagued Vollenhoven’s project since its inception, specifically concerning three relationships: (1) Reformational Philosophy and the Christian tradition, (2) philosophy and theology, and (3) Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd. First, even though Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven develop distinctly different historiographical methods, they both diagnose the Christian tradition as infected with Calvin Seerveld, “Biblical Wisdom underneath Vollenhoven’s Categories for Philosophical Historiography,” in The Idea of Christian Philosophy (Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1965), 27–43. 74 D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, “Conservatism and Philosophy,” in The Problem-Historical Method and the History of Philosophy, ed. K. A. Bril, trans. J. De Kievit, S. Francke, J. G. Friesen, and R. Sweetman (Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2005), 13. 73

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the same ailment: synthetic thought. The cure? A radical reformation of philosophy and theology. This posture not only represents a significant shift from the neo-Calvinist tradition inherited from Kuyper and Bavinck but also creates a hermeneutic of suspicion toward thinkers of the past, easily lending itself to typological pigeonholing or a categorical typecasting. In some of the subsequent generations of reformational philosophers, this approach has also led to vehement debates about being “reformational enough.” The danger, although not the necessary result, is a tradition that operates from critique rather than curiosity and might nurture insularity, undue pride, and parochialism.75 All of this raises a crucial question to those carrying forward Vollenhoven’s vision: Do his systematic insights depend on his historiography? Furthermore, viewed from the perspective of the history of philosophy and theology in the twentieth century, Vollenhoven’s posture is simply one melody in the chorus of the negative impact of Hellenistic philosophy on Christianity. As such, one wonders if Vollenhoven’s analysis is based on Reformed insights from Scripture or the broad consensus toward Hellenism in his philosophical milieu. Along with this, Vollenhoven’s utilization of other contemporary philosophical concepts, particularly “intuition” within his epistemology and his focus on the philosophy of history, seems to make him fall victim to his own critique of the history of philosophy.76 If the Greek concept of substance is off limits, why do neo-Kantian concepts and approaches get passes? A second related issue is the relationship between philosophy and theology. Philosophers and theologians within the Reformational Tradition coexist in an uneasy relationship. For Vollenhoven philosophy is a general science whereas theology a special science, reduced to the pistic mode. As one reformational scholar noted, “theology is pisteology” it does not study “God, revelation, scripture, creed, or church” but is rather “a systematic analysis of the essence, norms, development, and role of the subjective or human and objective or non-human pistical dimension of created reality.”77 Belonging to the pistic mode, theology analyzes the pistical dimension of being-subject; God is no longer the object of theology. Besides sounding remarkably modern and post-Kantian in tenor, the approach radically remakes theology. While supposedly generative and freeing for theology, this approach often creates a wide rift between theologians and philosophers who often have fundamentally different understandings of their disciplines. Finally, there remain questions concerning whether the differences between Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven on epistemology, the law, anthropology, and ontology are ultimately irreconcilable. If so, Reformational Philosophers must choose which father to follow. If not, creative methods of critical retrieval, such as Zuidevaart’s idea of generative themes, are required. 78

The history of the VU and Dordt University serve as interesting examples. See Marlin Vanden Bosch, The History of Dordt College: The B. J. Haan Years (Sioux Center: Dordt College Press, 1990), Chapters 5–6. 76 Vollenhoven utilized intuition as a key aspect of his epistemology. Starting with his dissertation and refined through his anthropological shift in the early 1920s, intuition (theistically defined) was crucial in coming to know the modalities. See esp. Dirk D. H. Vollenhoven, Reformed Epistemology: The Relation of Logos and Ratio in the History of Western Epistemology, ed. John H. Kok, trans. Anthony Tol (Sioux Center: Dordt College Press, 2013) and Introduction, 25, 33. 77 See John Vander Stelt, “Theology as a Study of Faith-Life,” Pro Rege 18, no. 1 (1989): 16, 19. 78 See Zuidevaart, Reformational Philosophy, Chapter 1. 75

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To close, despite some of the issues raised, Vollenhoven was an “imaginative thinker” who sought to develop a scriptural philosophy in which all areas of life are seen in light of their relationship to God. This relatively unknown figure’s work and influence have contributed significantly to the development of the Reformational Philosophical tradition.

Chapter 20

Herman Dooyeweerd JONATHAN CHAPLIN

Neo-Calvinism gave birth not only to a powerful and distinctive stream of systematic theology but also to a remarkable and innovative movement of Christian philosophy. In this it was unique among modern schools of orthodox Protestantism. By far the most influential of such schools, Barthianism, not only did not birth such a movement but, in effect, argued that the very aspiration to a “Christian philosophy” (and a “Christian politics” or “Christian economics,” and so forth) was not only unattainable but misguided in principle. Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) and his collaborators stand as perhaps the boldest Protestant challenge to such theological skepticism.1 This article will summarize Dooyeweerd’s context and career, explain his aspiration to develop a “Christian philosophy,” and note the sense in which his work is a recognizable fruit of “neo-Calvinism,” even while moving beyond it.2

I. DOOYEWEERD’S CONTEXT AND CAREER 3 Neo-Calvinist philosophy emerged in the Netherlands in the 1920s and 1930s, shortly after the passing of the two theological giants of neo-Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper (d. 1920) and Herman Bavinck (d. 1921). It arrived, then, just as neo-Calvinism was reflecting on its future in the absence of its founding fathers.4 The question was lent mounting urgency by the deepening political, economic, and cultural turbulence spreading across Europe as a whole. Neo-Calvinist philosophy was one of many Christian and other responses to what was widely termed in the interwar period as the “crisis of European civilization.” Dooyeweerd was the most formative and influential founder of the new school, although

It might be noted that the movement they launched anticipated by sixty years some key concerns of the school of Radical Orthodoxy, an arresting British Anglo-Catholic initiative also purporting to revive a project of a distinctively Christian philosophy and Christian sociology, albeit more self-consciously grounded in theology, notably Augustinianism. Both schools offer searching critiques of the intellectual foundations of secular modernity and defend positions converging with central themes of Continental postmodernism. For a comparison, see J. K. A. Smith and J. H. Olthuis, (eds.), Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition: Creation, Covenant, and Participation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005). 2 For the most part, I only expound rather than critique Dooyeweerd’s thought. 3 See M. Verburgh, Herman Dooyeweerd: The Life and Work of a Christian Philosopher, trans. and ed. H. D. Morton and H. Van Dyke (Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2015 [1989]), ch. 2. Jonathan Chaplin, Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011). 4 There were, of course, significant leaders of the movement in disciplines other than theology and in practical fields such as education, labor, and politics. 1

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he began the task in close cooperation with his brother-in-law Dirk T. H. Th. Vollenhoven. Vollenhoven, who was trained in both philosophy and theology, charted his own pathway and disagreed with some of Dooyeweerd’s central philosophical claims, yet their lifelong partnership was vital to the movement’s birth and growth. They, and a growing number of scholarly associates, forged a strikingly new conception of Christian philosophy that flowed out of the shared worldview they inherited from Kuyper, Bavinck, and others. In his early writings, Dooyeweerd described his project as the development of a “Calvinist” philosophy. In his mature writings, however, he abandoned this designation and spoke of “Christian philosophy.”5 He increasingly appreciated that the “biblical ground motive” on which he claimed his philosophy was based was essentially ecumenical in character and could not be seen as the property of any one confessional tradition.6 The Christian philosophy he helped form is now widely known, at least among its practitioners, as “reformational philosophy,” a term alluding both to its roots in one strand of the Reformed tradition and to its openness to continual “reformation,” in the spirit of semper reformanda.7 Dooyeweerd was born into a “gereformeerde” family8 committed to a neo-Calvinist worldview and supportive of its many organizational manifestations. As a young man, however, Dooyeweerd did not endorse neo-Calvinism uncritically but displayed an intellectual restlessness that led him to critique some of its claims.9 He studied law at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (VU), also founded by Kuyper, where he completed a doctorate on the Dutch cabinet in 1917, after which he worked briefly as a civil servant in the Ministry of Labor. His most formative early appointment, however, was as assistant director of the research department of the “Anti-revolutionary Party” (ARP),10 launched by Kuyper in 1879 on the back of the schoolstrijd (the “school struggle”) through which orthodox Calvinist churches had first been politically mobilized. The appointment allowed him considerable freedom to choose his own directions of research and publication. This freedom he exploited to the full—sometimes to the consternation of his board members— delving deep into the history of Western legal and political philosophy in order to critically interpret the formative contemporary intellectual trends in these fields, with a view to forging distinctive pathways guided by a neo-Calvinist worldview. In 1923 he helped launch the political journal Antirevolutionaire Staatkunde, contributing to it for much of his career. He was appointed professor of law at the VU in 1926, where he was assigned to teach legal philosophy, legal history, and legal science. His substantial inaugural lecture laid

H. Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. D. H. Freeman and W. S. Young, 4 vols (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris/Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1953–8), vol. I: 524. Subsequent references to this text in notes are indicated by NC followed by volume number and page. 6 See H. Dooyeweerd, “Het oecumenisch-reformatisch grondmotief van de Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee en de grandsslag van de Vrije Universiteit,” Philosophia Reformata 31 (1966): 3–15. 7 For a brief overview of reformational philosophy in the context of the history of Christian philosophy, see C. Bartholomew, Christian Philosophy: A Systematic and Narrative Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), ch 15. See also S. Griffioen and B. M. Balk (eds.), Christian Philosophy at the Close of the Twentieth Century: Assessment and Perspective (Kok: Kampen, 1995). 8 That is, members of the Gereformeerde Kerk founded by Kuyper. 9 In fact, he and Vollenhoven faced robust opposition in the 1930s from a small group of conservative gereformeerde church leaders and theologians, notably Valentijn Hepp, Bavinck’s successor as professor of theology at the VU. See Verburgh, Herman Dooyeweerd, ch. 6. 10 “Anti-revolutionary” did not mean reactionary, but rather, opposed to the atheistic humanism of the French Revolution. 5

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down the central ambitions of his scholarly project.11 No less evocative, however, was the maiden lecture he delivered in 1926 to his first undergraduate class in law, setting out a stirring vision of the need for a distinctively Christian intellectual program, and urging his students to commit to such a project and not to endorse uncritically the regnant theoretical paradigms they were to encounter in law.12 Upon his appointment, he embarked upon what was to be an extraordinarily prolific and wide-ranging publishing career, not only in legal philosophy but also in several other philosophical fields. He completed his three-volume magnum opus, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (The Philosophy of the Law-Idea) in 1935–6.13 Considerably revised and expanded, this was translated into English as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953–8), securing him a growing international reputation.14 In 1948 he was appointed to membership of the Dutch Royal Academy of the Sciences. He retired in 1965.15 On his seventieth birthday he was described by G. E. Langemeijer, then chair of the Royal Academy, as “the most original philosopher that the Netherlands had ever produced, not excluding even Spinoza.”16 Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven soon began to gather around them an expanding network of sympathetic scholars, working in philosophy and several other fields. In 1937, the Association for Calvinist Philosophy was formed, with Vollenhoven as Chair and Dooyeweerd as Vice-Chair. It quickly attracted a large membership and launched three publications, including the specialist philosophy journal Philosophia Reformata. After 1945, and especially after the appearance of A New Critique, reformational philosophy began to elicit support from hundreds of sympathizers across the globe, especially in contexts where Reformed churches had established a significant presence, notably the United States, Canada, and South Africa; to a lesser extent Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom; and, more recently, also in majority world countries such as Indonesia, South Korea, and Brazil. The journal Philosophia Reformata still exists today, as does the association, now under the name Association for Reformational Philosophy. Over the decades, a very substantial scholarly literature has been produced by representatives of the movement across a wide range of fields, including many central areas of philosophy as well as other disciplines including physics, biology, environmental studies, ethics, law, political theory, economics, sociology, technology, and more.

H. Dooyeweerd, De betekenis der wetsidee voor rechtswetenschap en rechtsphilosophie (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1926) (“The Significance of the Law-Idea for Legal Theory and Legal Philosophy”). On his extensive work in legal philosophy, see A. M. Cameron, “Editor’s Introduction,” in H. Dooyeweerd, Encyclopedia of the Science of Law vol.1, ed. A. M. Cameron, trans. R. N. Knudsen (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2002), 1–10. Series A, vol. 8, The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd; H. G. Geertsema et al. (eds.), Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977): Breedte en actualiteit van zijn filosofie (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1994), chs 2–4. 12 Verburgh, Herman Dooyeweerd, 111–15. The full text is the Appendix to Verburgh (485–97). 13 H. Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, 3 vols (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1935–6). 14 It included a substantial index as the fourth volume. 15 Surprisingly, during a forty-year career he mentored only nine doctoral students, all in the law department, only three of whom dealt with philosophical subjects. One was H. J. Van Eikema Hommes, his successor in the law faculty. The others were Jan D. Dengerink, who became Curator of the Board of Trustees of the VU and later adjunct professor of Christian philosophy at the universities of Utrecht and Groningen; and Bernard Zylstra, later professor of political theory at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto. 16 Cited in G. Puchinger, “Prof. Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977),” in Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977): Breedte en actualiteit van zijn filosofie, ed. H. G. Geertsema et al. (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1994), 11–27, at 25. 11

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II. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY Dooyeweerd’s idea of a “Christian philosophy” was not driven primarily by a concern with apologetics as conventionally understood.17 His main project was not to engage in the rational defense of the doctrines of the Christian faith, in response to Enlightenment skepticism, materialism, or atheism.18 Nor were his interests framed chiefly by what have become the preoccupations of “philosophy of religion.” In the English-speaking world, these two enterprises have been overwhelmingly shaped by the methods and agenda of analytic philosophy, as seen in the (much more influential) late twentieth-century movement known as Reformed Epistemology.19 Dooyeweerd’s project was motivated by what he took to be a much wider deficiency in the intellectual capacities of modern (Protestant) Christianity. The central problem was not secularist assaults on claims regarding the existence of God or other Christian doctrines but, to use a term coined by Alasdair McIntyre, the intellectual “resourcelessness” of Christianity20—its inability to offer substantial alternative accounts of reality, morality, society, and culture that would contribute to the healing and renewal of modern civilization (and, in the process, also render the faith more interesting to skeptics). Dooyeweerd appreciated the success of neo-Calvinist theologians like Kuyper and Bavinck in showing that Calvinism, at its best, was not merely a doctrinal or ecclesial movement but also a comprehensive worldview with culture-wide significance. But he judged that the embrace of even such a capacious worldview was not sufficient to yield the specifically philosophical resources that such engagement demanded. Right at the start of his career he was seized by a painful awareness of the failure of even the Calvinist tradition, which like Kuyper he took to be the most promising stream of Protestantism, to generate anything like the comprehensive philosophical framework of, for example, Thomism. While Calvinism had produced impressive doctrinal systems, he lamented that “the great architectonic line [of Calvinism] had not been carried through systematically” into other areas.21 In the 1920s, for example, Calvinist political theory consisted of little more than “a collection of adjacent and partially unrelated concepts, a complex of notions intuitively forged in the heat of battle and mixed up with foreign additions from

One of his few forays into more conventional apologetics was a brief, and not wholly successful, dialogue with the American Reformed apologist Cornelius Van Til. See H. Dooyeweerd, “Cornelius Van Til and the Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought,” in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, ed. E. R. Geehan (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1971), 74–89 (and “Response by C. Van Til,” 89–126). 18 As Van Woudenberg puts it, Dooyeweerd’s project can be seen as pursuing the Anselmian formula of “faith seeking understanding,” not in the sense of reflection on faith with the aid of reason—“thinking believing”—but in the sense of (philosophical) reflection on reality in the light of faith—“believing thinking” (R. Van Woudenberg, Gelovend denken: inleiding tot een christelijke filosofie [Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1992], 1–2). 19 R. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories, rev. ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), offers an accessible rendition of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy with the aids of tools of Analytic philosophy. 20 The term describes the condition of an intellectual tradition reduced to impotence due to its inability to renew itself internally. 21 H. Dooyeweerd, “Calvinism and Natural Law,” in H. Dooyeweerd, Essays in Legal, Social and Political Philosophy, ed. D. F. M. Strauss (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1997), 3–38. Series B, vol. 2, The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd, 5. See also H. Dooyeweerd, The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory, ed. D. F. M. Strauss and H. Van Dyke (Grand Rapids: Paideia, 2010 [1931]), Series B, vol. 7, The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. 17

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the storehouses of Scholasticism and German scholarship.”22 For all its doctrinal prowess, Calvinism had thus proved ineffective in critically engaging with the most formative contemporary secular philosophical paradigms and in proposing alternative paradigms that might shape the various disciplines in healthier directions. Dooyeweerd came to this conviction first through his extensive early work in the history of legal and political philosophy while working at the research department of the ARP. There he found himself confronting intellectual problems that seemed insoluble within the terms of prevailing “humanistic” legal philosophies, such as positivism, historicism, Marxism, or rationalistic natural law theory. By “humanistic,” he meant, in the grip of the “dialectical humanistic ground motive of nature and freedom” (on which more in the following). He was coming to see that the determining concepts of any field of study depended on philosophical presuppositions that needed to be subjected to critical investigation and reconstruction, if a Christian alternative were to be elaborated. In law, it would not be enough simply to apply Calvinist theological principles directly in that field—to propound a “theology of law.” That would in no way correct the deficiencies of humanistic legal philosophy. Authentically Christian theorizing in law or any discipline required the intermediary of a Christian philosophical framework. Only in this way could there be an “inner reformation” of scholarly disciplines, as distinct to a mere positing of outer limits to acceptable belief, determined by theology or an appeal to the Bible.23 Audaciously—and, in his early years, somewhat arrogantly—he judged that most previous attempts at Christian theorizing in most disciplines had been built on an unstable, accommodationist “synthesis” of biblical religion with some variant of non-Christian philosophy. Such a synthesis consisted of an external conjunction of internally incommensurable perspectives, not a true internal transformation of philosophy by biblical faith. Even a revived neo-Thomism (popular in his time) would not suffice, since it had not yet fully cast off a “scholastic” synthesis of Christian and pagan thought. Only “the biblical ground-motive” avoided the “dialectical” inner contradictions afflicting all forms of non-biblical thought. Only it could yield non-dualistic accounts of faith and reason, theology and philosophy, faith and philosophy, natural and revealed knowledge, mind and body, reason and emotion, nature and culture, and so forth. Such accounts could not be derived directly from the Bible, nor were they merely philosophical elaborations of theological doctrines. Rather, they demanded the provision of thoroughly Christian philosophical accounts of the full range of philosophical areas central to the Western tradition, including ontology (his preferred term to “metaphysics”), epistemology, philosophical anthropology (including what is today called “philosophy of mind”), philosophy of culture, philosophy of history, social philosophy (which framed specific disciplinary fields like law, political science, and economics), and more. Christian philosophy, then, is the systematic theoretical investigation of the deepest structures of all dimensions of reality from the perspective of biblical faith. These accounts would be “integrally Christian” insofar as they were rooted in “the biblical ground motive of creation, fall and redemption through Jesus Christ in

Dooyeweerd, “Calvinism and Natural Law,” 5. See H. G. Geertsema, “The Inner Reformation of Philosophy and Science and the Dialogue of Christian Faith with a Secular Culture: A Critical Assessment of Dooyeweerd’s Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought,” in Christian Philosophy at the Close of the Twentieth Century: Assessment and Perspective, ed. S. Griffioen and B. M. Balk (Kok: Kampen, 1995), 11–28. 22 23

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the communion of the Holy Spirit.”24 This he took to be the essential core of biblical Christianity—the overarching “biblical drama” of God’s creating, sustaining, and saving work. It is striking that, notwithstanding his encountering of such a motive within the family of neo-Calvinism, he was insistent that the biblical ground motive itself was not the product of the scholarly discipline of “theology.”25 Dooyweeerd was not opposed to theology as such, which he regarded as a legitimate and necessary enterprise among the scholarly disciplines. But it is important to note that his fundamental reason for speaking of the biblical ground motive as a “motive” rather than a doctrine or a worldview is that such a motive is not an intellectual construct but a dynamic spiritual power gripping the believer in the “heart,” before it expresses itself outwardly in ways of living or thinking. The academic discipline of theology could be no substitute for the work of the Holy Spirit.26 To make sense of Dooyeweerd’s idea of Christian philosophy, we must further unfold his understanding of the biblical ground motive. His accounts of its three elements— creation, fall, and redemption—evidently reflect core neo-Calvinist convictions, yet Dooyeweerd lends them his own distinctive inflections. The “creation motive” refers to the absolute sovereignty of God over all of reality. It is “integral,” embracing everything created, and “radical,” penetrating to the root of reality.27 Central to this is the claim that the whole of the cosmos is determined by a “divine law” that structures and sustains its existence. The notion of creation in turn grounds the biblical understanding of humanity. God finds his creaturely image in the human “heart,” the “spiritual root” of human beings. The heart is not one function among others (such as will, soul, or mind) but is “identical with our relationship to God”: it is “the religious focus of human existence in which all . . . diverging rays are concentrated.”28 This root is not only individual but as wide as humanity: humankind has been created as a “religious root community,” as the concentration point of the whole creation. While this particular claim has seemed mysterious to some, one of its key implications is that all human life, individual and collective, personal and cultural, must be directed to the service of God in willing obedience to his law. Humankind as image-bearer of God is called to exercise dominion, under divine law, over the whole creation. This is the divine “cultural commandment” (Gen. 1:2628): “God created man as lord of creation. The powers and potentials which God had enclosed within creation were to be disclosed by man in his service of love to God and neighbour.”29 Creation, then, refers not only to an original endowment of created goods but also to a humanity-wide summons to unfold and develop such goods. It is not a static set of primordial background conditions for human life, but the springboard and guiderails for all human history and culture. The products of history and culture are thus not mere happenstances—random consequences of arbitrary human activity—but the H. Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular and Christian Options, ed. M. Vander Vennen and B. Zylstra, trans. J. Kraay (Toronto: Wedge, 1979 [1959]), 28. 25 On his view of the relation between philosophy and (“dogmatic”) theology, see H. Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought: Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Philosophical Thought (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1999 [1960]), chs 5–7. 26 Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought, Series B, vol. 4, The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd, 120. 27 Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture, 28–9. 28 Ibid., 30. 29 Ibid., 30–1. Emphasis original. 24

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fruits of humanity’s response to the original cultural commandment, whether obedient or disobedient. Accordingly, the “fall” is understood as the radical rupturing of humankind’s created relationship to God, the original act of rebellion against God’s authority—of “apostasy.” Against theologians who speak of a “happy fall” (felix culpa), Dooyeweerd holds that the fall is an unmitigated disaster and could be no part of God’s intended plan. It is an ultimately inexplicable act of revolt against God and his created order, bearing in its train devastating consequences for all of creation. The fall “swept with it the entire temporal world precisely because the latter finds its religious root unity only in man.”30 In the fall the three central relations by which humanity is constituted—to God, to self, and to all other creatures—are profoundly disrupted. The distortion of self-knowledge is particularly relevant to Dooyeweerd’s account of Christian philosophy. Losing true self-knowledge, humans come to see themselves in the image of an idol (some created thing). Such idolatry lies beneath all false conceptions of reality, leading to various “absolutizations” of one aspect of reality or another. Sin thus causes a splintering of an original human unity, causing humanity to fragment into rival spiritual communities directed by false (“apostate”) ground motives. At the intellectual level, this is the deepest cause of the emergence of radically incommensurable philosophical paradigms. But while the consequences of the fall are creation-wide, the fall does not destroy the divine order of creation, nor does it abrogate the original cultural commandment: “Sin changes not the creational decrees but the direction of the human heart.”31 With Augustine, Dooyeweerd denies that the fall implies “an autonomous, self-determining principle of origin opposed to the creator. . . . Sin exists only in a false relation to God and is therefore never independent of the creator.” Rather, “Without the law commanding the good there could be no evil. But the same law makes it possible for the creature to exist. Without the law man sinks into nothingness; the law determines his humanity.”32 If the fall brings about creation-wide disruption, “redemption” effects creation-wide restoration. It means “the rebirth of man, and, in him, of the entire created temporal world which finds in man its center.”33 It does not abrogate, improve upon, or supersede creation, for the redemptive Word is none other than the creative Word. It is the comprehensive setting-right of a fallen creation. Thus, just as everything in reality is creaturely, and everything in it touched by the taint of fallenness, so everything in it is caught up in the cosmic sweep of redemption. This divine saving intervention has begun already in Jesus Christ but will only be consummated after the final judgment of all things, “when the reborn creation, liberated from its participation in the sinful root of human nature, will shine through with the highest perfection.”34 Until then, however, redemption not only works to begin a restoration of the lost unity of creation but also simultaneously introduces into human history a radical spiritual disunity, a “religious antithesis,” between the spirit of faith and the spirit of apostasy. This is “an unrelenting struggle between the kingdom of God and that of darkness” that will abate only at the end of time. Christians must confront the depth and persistence of this conflict, also in intellectual life, while remaining keenly aware that the poles of the Ibid., 36. Ibid., 59. 32 Ibid., 37. Emphasis original. 33 Ibid., 37. 34 Ibid. 30 31

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antithesis are not coterminous with the community of believers (the church) and that of unbelievers. The spiritual battle is waged within each human being, including Christians. Yet the worst consequences of the spiritual splintering of humanity are graciously mitigated by God’s upholding of a law-governed order of creation.35 This is how Dooyeweerd understands “common grace,” that merciful divine beneficence that continues to sustain and bless believers and unbelievers alike. “Common grace curbs the effects of sin and restrains the universal demonization of fallen man, so that traces of the light of God’s power, goodness, truth, righteousness and beauty still shine in culture directed toward apostasy.”36 For Christians, this is already one powerful source of hope, ruling out an embrace of “the radical pessimism of a modern philosophy of cultural decline” and keeping them from “an abandonment of culture to the power of apostasy.”37 Yet such hope is not separate from the hope yielded by the promise of redemption. Common grace is not juxtaposed to special grace; it is not a parallel track operating within the divine economy of salvation. Rather, it operates only through Christ, presupposing Christ’s creative and redemptive work.38 Nor is common grace a blunting of the antithesis between biblical and apostate ground motives. It does not establish a neutral territory in which the spiritual antithesis ceases to operate but, by reaffirming God’s law in the face of humanity’s rebellion against it, is itself a manifestation of that antithesis.

III. CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY: THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRITIQUE As noted, the biblical ground motive is not an intellectual construct: it is “religion,” not “philosophy.” The Christian philosophy that Dooyeweerd seeks to elaborate on the basis of this ground motive is comprehensive and highly intricate. It is impossible here to give an adequate survey of even its main contours, hence the restricted focus of this chapter on the nature of Christian philosophy. We can distinguish the critical from the constructive components of this account. This section considers the former, and the next section briefly sketches the latter. The critical component is termed the “transcendental critique.” Context is important here. Dooyeweerd acknowledged that he was originally drawn to two contemporary philosophical paradigms influential in the Netherlands in the early decades of the twentieth century: neo-Kantianism and phenomenology.39 While the conceptual toolkits of these two schools left a clear imprint on his thought, he claimed, however, to have emancipated himself from the distorting influence they initially exercised. Professors at the VU were particularly attracted to neo-Kantianism because they found its robust attacks on materialism and positivism conducive to a Christian worldview. Dooyeweerd’s early publications reveal a considerable engagement with neo-Kantian thinkers, and by far the largest entry in the Index (thirty pages) to A New Critique is to Kant. The title

NC 2: 33–4. Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture, 37. 37 NC 2: 262. 38 Ibid. 39 On the influence of these and other schools of thought with which Dooyweered interacts, see Verburgh, Herman Dooyeweerd; Geertsema et al., Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977); C. T. McIntire (ed.), The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd: Reflections on Critical Philosophy in the Christian Tradition (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985). 35 36

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A New Critique of Theoretical Thought directly echoes that of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and the “new critique” he offers is cast in Kantian language as a “transcendental critique.” Its aim is to offer an investigation into the transcendental conditions of the possibility of theoretical thought.40 As already indicated, Dooyeweerd’s initial aim was to show that underlying every intellectual framework, and in turn every discipline, were powerful, if often unrecognized, philosophical presuppositions. But a radical turn in his philosophical journey was, he discloses, the discovery that behind these lay yet deeper religious presuppositions. The presence of such religious presuppositions was, however, systematically and necessarily denied as a result of Enlightenment humanism’s commitment to the supposed neutrality of rational theorizing. This had led to the self-deluding claim by humanistic thinkers that reason was autonomous with respect to religion. Dooyeweerd calls this “the dogma of the pretended autonomy of theoretical thought.”41 The proximate aim of this critical part of his project was to show that this commitment was indeed “dogmatic”—that it was taken on faith rather than rationally demonstrated—and to press adherents of rival philosophical systems to acknowledge the deeper religious assumptions on which they, mostly unwittingly, proceeded. The larger goal, however, was to promote better philosophical dialogue: this could only occur when each participant engaged in a common pursuit of truth while fully aware of their “religious” starting-points.42 Accordingly, Dooyeweerd opens A New Critique not by setting out the contents of the “biblical ground motive” but by examining the nature of “theoretical thought” itself. His aim is to demonstrate the dependence of all philosophical reflection on religious presuppositions that are themselves “pre-theoretical.” By this he did not mean “irrational.” “Theoretical thought” is distinct to the practically oriented thought-processes every human being routinely engages in, in ordinary experience. He termed this “naïve” experience, not to suggest that it was uninformed or especially susceptible to error, but rather to indicate that such thought-processes in ordinary experience did not involve the highly specialized, abstract, and systematic rational deliberation typical of the scholarly enterprise—namely, “theoretical” thought. In A New Critique, Dooyeweerd proposes two distinct approaches to such a transcendental critique. The “first way” was already advanced in De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee and is restated in the opening pages of A New Critique. It argues that it is in the nature of philosophy itself to be oriented to ultimate religious presuppositions because philosophy necessarily seeks to grasp the totality and integrality of reality. Thus, it cannot avoid reaching for such larger and deeper horizons (even when it denies it is doing so). The “second way” was formulated to meet an obvious objection to the first, namely that it expected his interlocutors to accept what is, evidently, a highly controversial account of “the nature of philosophy.” The second way investigates not the nature of philosophy but the internal structure of all theorizing. It involves “an inquiry into the universally

The depth of Dooyeweerd’s engagement with Kant has led some to deem him merely a “Christianized Kant.” But while several of his terms of art clearly bear Kantian connotations, the content he puts into them is profoundly different. The claim overlooks the radicality of his critique of Kant and neo-Kantianism as fruits of “the humanistic ground motive.” 41 Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought. 42 The subtitle of volume I of A New Critique, in which the transcendental critique is set forth, is “the necessary presuppositions of philosophy.” Subsequent references to this work in the text and notes are rendered as NC followed by volume and page numbers. 40

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valid conditions which alone make theoretical thought possible, and which are required by the immanent structure of this thought itself.”43 The most fundamental such condition was the inescapable dependence of all theorizing on religious commitments, a claim he painstakingly seeks to defend in the first volume of A New Critique. His argument is that the very activity of theory-construction, which involves practices of distinction, abstraction, synthesis and so forth, focusing on some specific dimension of reality, cannot proceed without at least an implicit appeal to deeper notions by which reality is thought to cohere amid its ramifying diversity and to refer beyond itself. Developing the point noted earlier about the insufficiency of theology to yield a Christian philosophy, Dooyeweerd argues that a “transcendental critique” is fundamentally different to a “transcendent” critique. The latter does not address the internal nature of theorizing but merely seeks to ascertain whether factual conflicts exist between the claims of Christian faith and those of philosophy or other disciplines. Such a critique remains “dogmatic” insofar as it applies an external standard of evaluation to the conclusions of philosophy or science.44 It is therefore “valueless to science and philosophy, because it confronts with each other two different spheres whose inner point of contact is left completely in the dark.”45 Dooyeweerd deems the task of exposing the presence of the (non-biblical) religious “ground motives” to be the “decisive stage” of the transcendental critique. Ground motives are comprehensive, pre-theoretical, and supra-individual religious visions that profoundly shape all aspects of a particular cultural period, including its leading intellectual currents. He identifies four ground motives that have come to dominate Western culture since classical times. The first to appear was the “Greek ground motive of form and matter.” This is characterized by an “unreconciled conflict” between a deified “formless, cyclical stream of life” and a principle of order, construed as harmonic “form.” This ground motive framed the underlying structure of all classical culture and philosophy.46 The biblical ground motive was the second to appear. It decisively broke with the pagan assumptions of classical culture and, given its comprehensive, transformational vision, opened up the prospect of a wide-ranging redirection of culture and philosophy. The third was the medieval “scholastic ground motive of nature and grace” which, however, mistakenly attempted a “synthesis” of the biblical and pagan Greek ground motives, thus blunting the renewing potentials of the former. Dooyeweerd recognizes that in scholasticism “nature” is now understood as divine creation, itself a significant departure from paganism. But by construing nature in dualistic “form-matter” terms, scholasticism failed to grasp the integral character of created order, and thus of human beings: As a natural being . . . man consists of a “rational soul” and a “material body.” Characterized by its capacity for thought, the rational soul was both the “invisible, essential form” of the body and an imperishable “substance” that could exist apart from the body.47

NC I: 37. By “science” he means all the scholarly disciplines. The Dutch term is wetenschap (= German wissenschaft). 45 NC I: 37–8. 46 Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture, 20. 47 Ibid., 116. 43 44

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A second layer of dualism is evident when scholasticism views “grace” as a “supernatural” reality, a “superadded gift,” rather than the redemptive spiritual dynamic at work restoring all of creation.48 The fourth ground motive shaping Western culture was the “humanistic ground motive of nature and freedom,” appearing first in Renaissance humanism but in more full-blooded form in early modern philosophy, enthralled as it was by the spectacular potentials of modern science. In this ground motive, an unbounded desire for rational control over nature (as seen, for example, in mechanistic accounts of nature) nevertheless finds itself in an “irreconcilable dialectical tension” with a “faith in the absolute autonomy of free personality.” Dooyeweerd devotes 350 pages of volume I of A New Critique to an exhaustive critical analysis of the “dialectical tensions” in this ground motive. The “apostate” pagan and humanistic ground motives are examples of “immanence philosophy,” a standpoint that seeks to identify the ultimate source of meaning and truth within the created order itself.49 Such a vision is radically incompatible with that of a biblically rooted philosophy, making any compromise at this level impossible. Christian philosophy, therefore, “cannot permit itself to accept within its own cadre of thought problems of immanence-philosophy which originate from the dialectic ground motives of the latter.”50 Rather it must aspire to radical “inner reformation” of philosophy, which presupposes a rejection of the immanence standpoint.51 Yet while the religious presuppositions of immanence philosophy must be repudiated, this is not to say that the theoretical fruits of such philosophy cannot be accepted. On the contrary, Dooyeweerd pays tribute to the many “insights” emerging from philosophers oriented to the immanence standpoint. In spite of that standpoint, they often strike upon an indisputable “state of affairs,” which “force themselves upon everybody” whatever their ground motive.52 Such insights are in effect the testimony of creation order within the misdirected thought-patterns of those who reject it. This is one of the factors that make possible successful communication between philosophical schools even across deep religious difference. Indeed, Christian philosophy could not engage in the “inner reformation” of philosophy if it cut itself off from conversation with rival schools. On the contrary, it is “wedded to the historical development of philosophic and scientific thought with a thousand ties.”53 Dooyeweerd acknowledges that some of his most fundamental concepts, notably “transcendental critique” and “sphere sovereignty,” disclose such dependence. Christian philosophy “is not creation out of nothing.”54 It is thrown into a long-standing philosophical conversation in which it can claim no “privileged position.”

Scholasticism “introduced an internal split into the creation motive by distinguishing the natural and the supernatural and by restricting the scope of all and redemption to the “supernatural,” thereby “[robbing] the scriptural ground motive of its integral and radical character” (Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture, 116–17). I will not explore here the accuracy of Dooyeweerd’s rendition of the scholastic ground motive, which has been robustly challenged. 49 The pagan and humanistic ground motives are inherently “dialectical” in that they generate a necessary internal contradiction arising from the “absolutization” of one or other dimension of reality. This inevitably evokes a “reaction” from some other, neglected or distorted dimension: this is the corrective power of created order at work in humanity’s own misguided religious visions. 50 NC I: 114. 51 NC I: 522. 52 NC I: 116. 53 NC I: 118. 54 Ibid. 48

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IV. CONSTRUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY: ORIGIN, TOTALITY, AND COHERENCE I noted that Dooyeweerd sees ground motives as religious wellsprings that are formative on the entire culture of a historical epoch. But if they are spiritual dynamics rather than intellectual constructs, how precisely do they come to exercise an influence on philosophy and other theorizing shaped by philosophy? He proposes that ground motives do not operate immediately on philosophy but shape it through fundamental theoretical notions—“ideas”—situated at the boundary between religious commitment and philosophical thought. In particular, they frame philosophy “through the medium of a triad of transcendental (ground) Ideas, which . . . yield answers to the three transcendental basic problems” (NC I: 69). These are the problems of the “Origin,” the “totality,” and the “coherence” of reality.55 Such ideas supply the determining categories in terms of which more specific theoretical concepts in the various philosophical fields and in other disciplines come to be formed. As the “theoretical expression of the pure biblical groundmotive,”56 they mediate the contents of pre-theoretical religious ground motives in the realm of theorizing. They function, if you will, as a conceptual “transformer,” converting the pre-theoretical current of religious presuppositions into the different current of theory.57 Dooyeweerd often also formulates these questions concerning the origin, totality, and coherence of reality as questions about “meaning.” He uses this term not in the narrow sense familiar within analytic philosophy (where it primarily refers to propositions) but in an unusual, vastly broader sense, to refer to the radical dependence of all things on God. The very meaning of creaturely existence is to be so dependent.58 This is perhaps especially clear in the first of the three ground ideas furnished by the biblical ground motive. The idea of the “Origin” of reality refers to “God’s holy sovereign creative will,” a will that posits the law that conditions and sustains the whole cosmos. The divine law that orders reality is thus “the absolute boundary between God and His creation . . . [and] all creatures are by nature subject to the law.”59 Indeed, law does not first confine, but enable and shape, existence, thus conferring “meaning” upon it. The idea of the “totality”

NC I: 41ff. In fact these three ideas are really elements of a single “transcendental ground Idea,” called a “cosmonomic idea” (NC I :70; see also I: 88, 93–4). “Cosmonomic” is Dooyeweerd’s translation of the Dutch term “wetsidee” (“law-idea”). Hence his philosophy has been termed “the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea,” an inelegant phrase that has not endeared itself to many. 56 NC I: 506. 57 There is an obvious criticism of Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique. I noted earlier that the “second way” to such a critique was formulated to meet the objection that it expected his dialogue partners to accept a controversial account of the nature of philosophy. But it becomes clear that his formulation of the problems that the critique is intended to resolve is itself dependent on large portions of his general ontology that are only explained long after the transcendental critique has been completed. It thus appears that the “second way” expects such interlocutors to accept a controversial account of the nature of the whole of reality, hardly a promising advance on the “first way.” Critics have therefore suggested that the critique does not establish the common terms of philosophical communication that Dooyeweerd looks to it to do. For a clarification and “hermeneutical” reformulation, see H. G. Geertsema, “Dooyeweerd’s Transcendental Critique: Transforming it Hermeneutically,” in Contemporary Reflections on the Philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd, ed. D. F. M. Strauss and M. Botting (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2000), 83–108. Series C, vol. 1, The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. 58 “Meaning is the being of all that has been created” (NC I: 4). 59 NC I: 507. 55

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of reality alludes to the thought that the whole of reality is ultimately unified. It is so by being concentrated in “Christ as the root and fullness of meaning of the cosmos.”60 The idea of the “coherence” of reality speaks of the deeper integrality lying behind the vast diversity of things, processes, people, institutions and so forth in the world. It too is spoken of as a “coherence of meaning.” The implications of “coherence” are likely to be more familiar to those with some initial familiarity with Dooyeweerd’s thought. The coherence of reality is secured by a complex ontological labyrinth of “modal aspects.” These include the physical, biological, logical, social, aesthetic, ethical, and “pistical” (referring to faith). These are mutually irreducible dimensions of reality; each enjoys modal “sphere sovereignty.” All existents participate (“function”) in all these dimensions: every aspect is “displayed” in each. Such aspects cannot be read straightforwardly off the surface of the world. On the contrary, Dooyeweerd argues that they can only be identified on the basis of sustained empirical investigation, with philosophy serving to clarify their meaning and interrelations. After extensive research, he eventually settled on there being fifteen such aspects, while acknowledging that this number, the exact nature of each, and their interrelations, might well change upon further inquiry (as, he acknowledges, might any element of his philosophy).61 Now, an array of irreducible aspects might not at first blush appear to allow for much coherence. But Dooyeweerd argues that these aspects cohere deeply by being internally interwoven with each other, each one referring to all the others. Thus, for example, we can speak of “logical economy.” This is not the logical operation of an economic system but the application of the norm of economy within logical reasoning (as, for example, in “Occam’s razor”).62 What is more, the modal aspects are not simply juxtaposed to each other but reveal an “order of succession,” each one “founded on” the ones preceding it. For example, biological functioning presupposes underlying chemical and physical realities; ethical norms presuppose the logical capacity to make distinctions; legal relationships (contracts or treaties) presupposes the prior capacity for sociality; and so forth. A yet further layer of complexity is that Dooyeweerd refers to this labyrinth of modal aspects not only as a coherence of “meaning” but as a “temporal” coherence (hence the reference to aspects “preceding” others). Modal aspects are not static ontological strata, but are caught up in the dynamic phenomenon of “time.”63 Time for Dooyeweerd refers not first of all to duration or historical development but to an all-embracing, structuring frame propelling the entire cosmos (in which, to be sure, duration and historical development have their proper place). As Van der Hoeven puts it: “If ‘meaning’ points to the uniqueness and sameness of the creative power, in its very pervasiveness, ‘time’ indicates the track or course which that power takes, throughout.”64

Ibid. Dooyeweerd’s intentions are not well-served by commentators who present his account of fifteen aspects peremptorily as a self-evident and completed list. 62 “Logical economy” is not a mere metaphor. It is an ontologically grounded “analogy,” where a moment of economy “shows up” in processes of logical reasoning. 63 “The cosmic order of time guarantees the integral coherence of meaning between the modal aspects” (NC I: 508). Emphasis added. 64 J. Van der Hoeven, “In Memory of Herman Dooyeweed: Meaning, Time and Law,” Philosophia Reformata 43 (1978): 130–44, at 139. 60 61

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Equally, while this order is dynamic, it is framed by universally holding conditions— laws—that govern both the various modal aspects and the innumerable existents that display them. (These too are termed “structures of meaning.”) Such laws do not themselves change over time but they condition all existents, namely everything that does come into existence in time; they are “principles of possibility.”65 It should be noted that my term “existents” does not only cover “medium-sized physical objects” (as analytic philosophers like to call them). It is a comprehensive term including what Dooyeweerd classifies as three extremely capacious categories, “things, events, and relationships.” A “thing” might be a tree or a machine; an “event” might be a conference or a military defeat; a “relationship” might be a friendship or a state. He also terms these “typical structures of individuality.” They are “typical” insofar as they exist not as wholly idiosyncratic existents but as concrete instances of law-governed “types.” Each is framed by a “typical structural principle” which is a specific configuration of modal aspects in which one aspect exercises an identity-conferring or “leading” function, and another a facilitating or “founding” function. Together these determine the nature of all existents. That nature is further conditioned by the “enkaptic interlacements” holding between many existents.66 The concepts of “modality,” “individuality,” and “interlacement” lie at the base of Dooyeweerd’s further detailed specifications of all facets of reality, natural and human. Many other notions come into play as these are developed. The outcome is a highly elaborate and complex—and often elusive and sometimes bewildering—conceptual apparatus yielding a comprehensive intellectual framework by which, he proposes, any feature of the world can be interpreted, in ways faithful to biblical religion. This apparatus can appear to be a self-sufficient theoretical system driven by an obsessive desire to classify. However, it is intended to serve Dooyeweerd’s larger project of devising a constructive philosophy that goes beyond mere critique and yields true theoretical insights into a reality created by God for the blessing of humankind: this, indeed, is philosophy’s unique gift to, and calling within, the academy and to the world. It is an honorable and necessary Christian task done in faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

V. CONCLUSION: A “BIBLICAL” PHILOSOPHY? The previous section offered the barest sketch of the conceptual foundations of Dooyeweerd’s constructive philosophy. But it will already be evident that at this point we have moved a considerable distance from what might be thought of as obvious or immediate implications of “the biblical ground motive.” This raises the question: In what sense the specific contents of this apparatus can be called “biblical”? Dooyeweerd’s answer would be that such elements are the hard-won, contestable, developing, and unfinished fruits of a reading of rigorous empirical evidence across many disciplines, in the light of careful philosophical clarification and argumentation. He would claim they are biblical in the specific sense that, in his considered judgment (reached in close cooperation with a community of scholars sharing the same starting-point), they appropriately express the sorts of conceptual elaborations that are powerfully suggested by the biblical ground motive. He would deny that they are in any sense logical deductions from that ground NC I: 105. Van der Hoeven again: “If ‘meaning’ is the most basic and most comprehensive characteristic of the ‘being of all that has been created,’ and ‘time’ indicates the ‘course’ through which meaning is disclosed, then ‘law’ stands for the structuration of that course” (1978, 142). 66 See Chaplin, Herman Dooyeweerd, 67–70. 65

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motive, even from the transcendental ground ideas that it births. He would also affirm that other philosophers seeking to be faithful to that ground motive could readily come up with quite different accounts (as, indeed, his brother-in-law Vollenhoven, and other close colleagues such as J. P. A. Mekkes, did).67 They are the results of a sustained engagement with the difficult, demanding enterprise of philosophy, as directed by that motive, in which there are no easy or final answers and no guaranteed routes to truth. Christian philosophy must, then, be continually committed to the principle of semper reformanda. Critical contributions to that enterprise inspired by Dooyeweerd’s work have emerged in the last two decades in, for example, epistemology and theories of knowledge and truth, philosophical anthropology, aesthetics, physics, philosophy of technology, evolutionary biology, environmental studies, legal theory, social and political philosophy, philosophy of economics, and in several areas of applied philosophy such as information systems, professional and medical ethics, media studies and development studies.68 This is another significant contrast with Reformed Epistemology, which has never claimed to be able to generate distinctive positions in fields outside epistemology or philosophy of religion. It has had an intensive impact in those fields, but no extensive impact beyond them. It is true that a few philosophers attached to Reformed Epistemology have made substantial Christian-inspired contributions to other fields.69 In doing so they have deployed the tools of analytic philosophy to powerful effect, but the results do not display a “Reformed Epistemology” perspective. There are no “Reformed Epistemology” approaches to biology, technology, economics, anthropology, and so forth. While Dooyeweerd’s own writings remain known only by a small number of scholars willing to master his obscure intellectual constructs and demanding prose style, these developments indicate the continuing fruitfulness of his ambitious project of Christian philosophizing.

Of course, Thomists, and other Christian philosophers (such as Reformed Epistemologists), would also claim they are seeking to be faithful to the “biblical ground motive.” Dooyeweerd would not deny that intention, but would argue that a thinker like Vollenhoven was working with a much more reliable and comprehensive account of it. For examinations of such a claim, see J. Klapwijk et al. (eds.), Bringing into Captivity Every Thought: Capita Selecta in the History of Christian Evaluations of Non-Christian Philosophy (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991). For a detailed assessment in relation to classical philosophy, see R. Sweetman (ed.), In the Phrygian Mode: Neo-Calvinism, Antiquity and the Lamentations of Reformed Philosophy (Lanham: University Press of America, 2007). 68 For information on some of these developments, see the websites of the Association for Reformational Philosophy, https://www​.ref​orma​tion​alph​ilosophy​.org; and of All of Life Redeemed, https://www​.allofliferedeemed​.co​.uk. 69 E.g. Nicholas Wolterstorff in political philosophy and philosophical ethics. 67

Chapter 21

Johan Herman Bavinck DANIEL STRANGE

I. INTRODUCTION Overshadowed by, and commonly mistaken for, his more illustrious uncle Herman,1 Johan Herman Bavinck (1895–1964) is arguably the most important and influential twentiethcentury missiologist within both Dutch and English-speaking neo-Calvinist traditions. Edmund Clowney stated that J. H. Bavinck’s An Introduction to the Science of Missions2 was “not merely a text on missions; it is the text on missions of this generation. . . . The stature of the author is enough to give significance to this major work.”3 Clowney’s generation included colleague Harvie Conn, who drew on J. H. Bavinck extensively in his own teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary, and also a young Timothy Keller, who encountered the text at Gordon Conwell before then moving to Westminster to do his DMin under Conn. Conn and Keller evidence Bavinck’s influence in their life and ministry. First, they do so as reflective practitioners with a strong academic bent and teaching gifts. Second, their work reveals a deep commitment to Reformed confessionalism but with a semper reformanda creativity that can unsettle and be unsettling. Third, they demonstrate a love and fascination for the Other motivated by a missiological urgency and drive to communicate and contextualize the gospel so all people can be called to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and enter the Kingdom of God. Given the state of our late modern situation, coupled with the state of the discipline we call “missiology,” it is characteristics and qualities like these that are needed now more than ever. For this reason J. H. Bavinck has prophetic relevance for the church and her mission in the twenty-first century. In this chapter, we will sketch Bavinck’s life, distinctive lines of thought, and continuing significance.

Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). J. H. Bavinck, An Introduction to the Science of Missions, trans. David Hugh Freeman (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1960). 3 Clowney had been using the material in classes and produced a rough translation used for its English publication. This statement is made on the inside dust-jacket of the hardback edition. 1 2

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II. CONTOURS OF J. H. BAVINCK’S LIFE 4 Born in 1895, Johan Herman was the fourth of eight children and part of a family of “unaffected piety”5 closely associated with the 1834 Secession (Afscheiding) from the national Dutch Reformed Church and the formation in 1892 of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN)). As a student Johan evidenced scholarly gifts and also a desire for missionary service. While at the Free University in Amsterdam, he was part of the interdenominational Dutch student Christian movement which brought him into contact with another Reformed missionary polymath, Hendrik Kraemer.6 Bavinck undertook doctoral studies at Erlangen in the psychology of religion focusing on the medieval mystic, Heinrich von Suso. Apart from a short period of further study and ministry back in Holland,7 from 1919 to 1934 Bavinck served as an ordained minister in the GKN in Indonesia in congregations in Medan, Bandung, and Solo in Java. Paul Visser notes four characteristic features of Bavinck’s ministry in these years.8 First was Bavinck’s immersion into the Javanese culture and mind in order to bring the gospel to the indigenous population. Second, was his desire to contextualize the gospel as seen in his book Christ and the Mysticism of the East (1934).9 Third was his concern for youth work and the setting up of popular initiatives like the “circles of five” (pantja saudara)— discipleship Bible studies to support young Christians. “Bavinck chose five (pantja) as the guiding number for these groups because in traditional Javanese culture that figure denoted a multiplicity that formed an unbreakable unity, like five fingers on one hand.”10 Fourth was Bavinck’s sympathy for a growing desire for Indonesian nationalism with its missiological implications for the importance of the indigeneity of the local church and less reliance on the missionary, ecclesiastically and pastorally. In 1934 Bavinck took up a teaching position at the Theological School in Jogjakarta. This was a formative and productive period for Bavinck who declared it to be the most wonderful time of his life. As well as writing a commentary on the whole Bible, Bavinck focused on “the cultivation of theologia in loco, i.e. the encouragement of indigenous expressions of the faith.”11 Bavinck was named Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau by Queen Wihelmina in 1938. In 1938, Bavinck returned to the Netherlands to take up the position of extraordinary Professor of Missions at Kampen. His appointment was not (at least initially) uniformly welcomed by all in the faculty, with Klaas Schilder questioning Bavinck’s theological method and his too-close association with “non-Reformed” thought. However, Bavinck The most detailed description and analysis of J. H. Bavinck’s work has been done by Paul Visser, Heart for the Gospel, Heart for the World: The Life and Thought of a Reformed Pioneer Missiologist Johan Herman Bavinck, 1895–1964 (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2003). Visser has also written a shorter abridged “Introduction, The Life and Thought of Johan Herman Bavinck,” in The J. H. Bavinck Reader, ed. John Bolt, James D. Bratt, and Paul J. Visser (Grands Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 1–92. 5 Visser, “Introduction,” 5. 6 (1888–1965). Later and while in Indonesia (1930–4), J. H. Bavinck had a great deal of contact with Kraemer and considered him a teacher and influence yet not uncritically. See Visser, Heart for the Gospel, 89–90. 7 He was a pastor in Heemstede between 1927 and 1929. During this period he wrote an important early work, Personality and Worldview (Wheaton: Crossway, 2023). 8 See Visser, “Introduction,” 13–18; Heart for the Gospel, 29–38. 9 Included as part of Bolt et al., The J. H. Bavinck Reader, 303–411. 10 Visser, “Introduction,” 16. 11 Ibid., 18. 4

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quickly established himself as a well-loved and respected teacher and scholar. The years of the Second World War were extremely difficult for Bavinck and his family. His three children were involved in the Dutch resistance movement. Both his sons were arrested in 1944 with one held in custody for three months, the other being deported to two concentration camps until 1945 when thankfully he was liberated, unhurt. Moreover, there was theological “warfare” within the GKN, the main agitation coming from the aforementioned Klaas Schilder who was critical of the Kuyperian teaching of baptismal regeneration. Bavinck’s attempt to diffuse the situation in the form of a lecture (The Future of Our Churches) on the invitation of the Student Union, was well received by the students but not by Schilder, who was sent a report of the speech. The eventual suspension of Schilder in 1944 would lead to schism and the forming of a new denomination.12 After the war, Bavinck was able to teach, write, and travel, gaining a wider international reputation and influence as he encouraged a more ecumenical and collaborative outlook within his denomination. In 1954 he became a professor of practical theology at the Free University of Amsterdam, where he was able to teach on a number of subjects as well as missiology. He died in June 1964.

III. CONTOURS OF J. H. BAVINCK’S THOUGHT Bavinck was a prolific writer and his interests ranged over a number of theological and non-theological disciplines, particularly psychology and the psychology of religion. Only a selection of his writings have been translated into English. In order to outline some of the more distinctive contours of his thinking I would like to concentrate on a trilogy of interconnected later works which represent his most mature thought. Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith13 was started during the war years when Bavinck was suspended from teaching by the German authorities. The Church Between Temple and Mosque14 is a posthumous work in English “originally given as lectures to a small class of students in an American University”15 which was most probably the Federated Theological Faculty at the University of Chicago in 1960/1961 where Bavinck was a guest professor. The provenance of these lectures is especially interesting as the invitation to lecture in Chicago appears to have come from none other than the world-renowned Romanian scholar of religion Mircea Eliade16 who had been struck by Bavinck’s morphology of religions in Religious Consciousness. Finally, the aforementioned An Introduction to the Science of Missions (1954) was translated into English in 1960 with a publisher’s note which states, “Seldom, if ever, have we been as confident that a book will be recognised and used as the authoritative textbook in its field.”17 Before outlining a number of key themes, there is one more preliminary observation. Visser rightly describes Bavinck as a “more passionate thinker and prophetic seer than

For more details of this incident see Visser, Heart for the Gospel, 55–61. J. H. Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith,” in The J. H. Bavinck Reader, ed. John Bolt, James D. Bratt, and Paul J. Visser (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 145–299. 14 J. H. Bavinck, The Church Between Temple and Mosque (Glenside: Westminster Seminary Press, 2023). 15 R. Pierce Beaver, “Preface,” to J. H. Bavinck, The Church, 5. Beaver as an American missiologist who was at the time a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. 16 (1907–86). The source of this information is Johannes Verkuyl, Contemporary Missiology: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 40. 17 Bavinck, Introduction, v. 12 13

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systematic theologian,”18 noting that Bavinck once said of himself, “I was born as it were, with a strong penchant for monastic mystical experience; that’s why I speak of it: I have to fight against it every day.”19 This admission coupled with his penchant for psychology and even the psychoanalytic do give an evocative mysterious and existential quality to Bavinck’s writing. If one comes to J. H. Bavinck looking for a forensic Reformed scholasticism one will leave disappointed. However, Bavinck’s curiosity and breadth of learning and his use of illustration and metaphor are wonderfully rich and make him a delight to read, re-read, and reflect upon. Indeed, Bavinck’s medium serves the message: the relationship between created human beings and their Creator as evidenced in “religion” is complex and not easily captured. Bavinck’s more impressionistic and suggestive style of writing provokes the need for further research and investigation which is itself an achievement.

a. The Science of Mission Describing in short compass and in an orderly fashion J. H. Bavinck’s distinctive contribution is a challenge, given his eclecticism. Therefore we need to take a slightly circuitous thematic route. Bavinck was a champion for the discipline of missiology as its own distinct “division” within theology: “missions is not simply a by-product of ecclesiastical life and theology. Missions belongs to the very essence of the church and therefore always pushes itself to the fore in all theological reflection.”20 Bavinck’s introduction to the science of missions is meant to be precisely that as one looks at every aspect of mission in light of Scripture.21 This science of missions itself can be divided into two basic parts: the theory of missions, and the history of missions. Having surveyed the biblical material, Bavinck comes to the aim and purpose of mission. Here he follows the “grandfather” of Reformed missiology Gisbertus Voetius (1589– 1676) from his Politica Ecclesiastica which speaks of a threefold aim: the conversion of the nations, the planting of the church, and the glorification and manifestation of divine grace. However, Bavinck stresses that these are three interdependent aspects of a single purpose: “the coming and extension of the kingdom of God. . . . There are not three separate purposes, but one great final and exalted purpose that is disclosed to us in three blessings, of which the glorification of God is undoubtedly foremost, the establishment of his church second, and the conversion of the heathen, third.”22 Under these definitions, Bavinck deals biblically with a number of common missiological issues and problems, remembering that after the Second World War, issues surrounding colonial rule were becoming increasingly complex and disputed. While championing the discipline of missiology, Bavinck also recognizes that “the object of missionary science is too intimately interwoven with the other subdivisions of theology to permit missionary science to the isolated . . . Theology is a living organism and not a hodge-podge of separate studies.”23 This is a revealing and helpful comment, for it explains Bavinck’s unusual disciplinary “filling” to place between the “theory of missions” and the “history of missions,” which is fundamentally his theology of religions,

Visser, Heart for the Gospel, 76. Visser, “Introduction,” 8. 20 Bavinck, Introduction, 233. 21 Ibid., xviii. 22 Ibid., 156. 23 Ibid., xx. 18 19

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what he calls “elenctics.”24 Ironically, a weakness of Bavinck’s Introduction is that his theology of religions is largely implicit and assumed, articulated as it was in previous works. Therefore, we will return to “elenctics” after first sketching his “theology of religions.”

b. Religious Consciousness and the Magnetic Points Bavinck’s “theology of religions” can be described as a faithful yet creative reformulation of Calvin’s notions of the sensus divinitatis, semen religionis, and fabrica idolorum. The raw material out of which “religion(s)” is fashioned is divine revelation and our response to it, “religion is by its very nature a communion, in which man answers and reacts to God’s revelation.”25 Such revelation and response is not only individual but communal and cultural; “there is no other realm of human life where the individual is so much a part of the community to which he belongs as the religious life. . . . Culture, in so far as it is real culture . . . is based upon the fundamental attitude of man toward the universe and the invisible powers.”26 In both Religious Consciousness and Church Between Temple and Mosque, Bavinck’s locus is a thick and psycho-analytically tinged exegesis of Rom. 1:18-32, which centers on the “perilous exchange” that is humanity’s variegated but universal suppression and substitution of divine revelation which Bavinck calls humanity’s “religious consciousness.” First, Bavinck notes that the created order delivers true and objective knowledge of God but that the nature of this knowledge is not found through rational philosophical reflection but rather is dynamic, personal, and relational in character, “the meeting point of general revelation and the human being is not isolated. . . . It lies first of all simply in the problems inherent in being human, that is, in being a fallen human being.”27 Bavinck recognizes that while there must be in human beings some principium internum (inner principle), or organ, to receive this revelation, the Bible does not speak about it, but rather focuses on the divine initiative of God’s objective revelation and the I–Thou dialogue that ensues (for more on this, see Sutanto’s chapter on revelation in this handbook). Second, concerning the content of this revelation, Bavinck notes that God’s “eternal power” and “divine nature” pertain to the dependence and accountability of human beings to God. “Eternal power” “conveys the sense that in all things God is the only initiator; he completes everything by virtue of his own capability.”28 God’s “divine nature” “conveys the ‘wholly otherness’ of God; God belongs to a completely different order than we human beings.”29 The term also notes personality and relationship: it designates a Someone, a mysterious Someone, who meets us in our interaction with the world around us. . . . People stand in an I–Thou and in a dialogical relationship, and they can only really exist in that relationship. . . . All of this is presented to people with overwhelming evidence, and they know that they are accountable to this Someone.30

Which derives from the Greek ἐλἐγχω (“convict” or “unmask”). Bavinck, Introduction, xxi. Bavinck, The Church, 13. 26 Ibid., 15. 27 Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness,” 279. 28 Ibid., 243. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 281. 24 25

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Third, Bavinck moves onto mankind’s subjective reaction to this revelation. The first thing to note is that there is a reaction: general revelation “does not simply slide past people like a drop of rain does off the waxy leaf of a tree.”31 God’s eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen. Bavinck is emphatic here: “Thus, people know. Yes, they know. They are addressed as ‘knowers.’ ‘For although they knew God . . .’ are words that Barth’s theology will never give full due. People know.”32 However Bavinck immediately admits a paradoxical situation between a de jure (juridicial) knowledge but a de facto (actual) not knowing: “They know but they do not know. Their legal position is that of knowing but their actual position is that of not knowing. They proceed as unknowing knowers, as though they ‘might possibly find him.’”33 Elucidating this paradox further, Bavinck focuses on Paul’s use of the words “suppression” (katechein) and “exchange” (allasso/met’allasso), and employs terminology more associated with psychology. The dynamic nature of what is occurring is reiterated. Suppression carries with it the sense of violently holding down. The sinner, albeit with variegated force, constantly suppresses general revelation and is therefore without excuse. Bavinck notes that “the idea might well be that this suppression occurs so directly, so spontaneously, so simultaneously with the ‘understanding’ and ‘seeing clearly’ that at the precise moment that people see, they already no longer see; at the very moment they know, they no longer know.”34 This suppression occurs “in unrighteousness”; “it occurs with the mysterious, always unstated, often also entirely unconscious motive of moral opposition to God.”35 Suppression comes with a simultaneous substitution, what Bavinck calls a “perilous exchange.”36 General revelation is not obliterated, “the cavity or empty space that occurs as a result of suppressing needs to be filled. It has to be the case that what replaces truth and sweeps across the entire terrain must manifest in something resembling eternal power and divinity.”37 To illustrate this Bavinck employs a memorable metaphor of the dreaming state where real items experienced in the daytime are taken from their original context and distorted to become new ideas: With the help of this metaphor, then, I would like to clarify what people do with God’s general revelation. That revelation impinges on them and compels them to listen, but it is at the same time pushed down and repressed. And the only aspects of it that remain connected to human consciousness, even while torn from their original context, become the seeds of an entirely different sequence of ideas around which they crystallize. Definite connections exist between general revelation and human religious consciousness, but those connections are extremely complicated because the repressing and replacing actions are inescapably involved in the process.38 In what might be called a Reformed comparative religions, Bavinck further develops the notion of religious consciousness and presents a morphology:

Ibid., 283. Ibid. 33 Ibid., 284. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 285. 36 Bavinck, The Church, 118. 37 Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness,” 288. 38 Ibid., 290. 31 32

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There seems to be a kind of framework within which human religions need to operate. There appear to be definite points of contact around which all kinds of ideas crystallize. There seem to be quite vague feelings—one might better call them direction signals that have been actively brooding everywhere. . . . Perhaps this can be expressed thus: there seem to be definite magnetic points that time and again irresistibly compel human religious thought. Human beings cannot escape their power but must provide an answer to those basic questions posed to them.39 Fashioned from our distortions of “eternal power” (which stresses our creaturely dependence) and “divine nature” (which stresses our creaturely accountability), the “magnetic points” are aspects or perspectives to the one religious consciousness and, while noting individual, cultural, and religious variegation, are as perennial, fixed, and universal as both the imago Dei and the suppression and substitution of truth. As Bavinck writes, “since they are rooted in our existence, they are stronger than ourselves, and somehow we must come to grips with them.”40 Even if they are never consciously articulated, human beings still answer them by “their entire conduct” and “attitude to life”: their “whole way of living already implies an answer, and is an answer.”41 Bavinck calls the first magnetic point “I and the Cosmos.” Human beings have an innate sense of totality, “the feeling of communion with the cosmic whole.”42 We know we do not stand alone as islands in the universe but have a sense that we somehow belong. With this, though, comes a tension, since in the face of the cosmos, we simultaneously experience that we are insignificant nothings but yet “so powerful as to experience all things converging and uniting within oneself.”43 In the second point “I and the Norm,” we discern, however vaguely, that there are rules to be obeyed that do not originate with ourselves. With this comes a sense of responsibility to live up to those norms: “life is a dialogue between law and reality, between natural self-fulfilment and the moral demand for self-restraint. People chafe against the law and they want to be enveloped by it, carried by it.”44 Bavinck calls the third magnetic point “I and Salvation,” and it is concerned with deliverance. We know there is something not right with the world. There is finitude, brokenness, and wrong-doing in the world, and the problem of suffering and death consistently confronts us. We mourn for a “paradise lost” and yearn for deliverance from these evils, craving redemption: “man has that remarkable tendency not to accept reality as it presents itself to him, but he always dreams of the better world in which life will be healthy and safe.”45 The fourth point Bavinck calls “I and the Riddle of my existence.” Humans are active doers and passive victims; they lead but they also undergo their lives. As a result, an existential tension is created between human freedom and boundedness.

Ibid., 226f. Bavinck describes these magnetic points in two places using different orderings: “Religious Consciousness,” 151–98; Bavinck, The Church, 31–109. The same points are also described in a less schematic way in Bavinck’s Introduction, 247–72. 40 Bavinck, The Church, 26. 41 Ibid., 28. 42 Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness,” 160. 43 Ibid., 162. 44 Ibid., 293–4. 45 Bavinck, The Church, 27. 39

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The fifth and final point may be called “I and the Higher Power.” People everywhere perceive that behind all realities stands a greater reality. This greater reality is variously conceived but is always a superior power. There is also a sense that humans stand in some sort of relationship to this higher power, or at least, they should. This understanding creates the expressed desire to seek connection with this power, but what is it? Who is it? These five magnetic points are all connected and demonstrate a particular inter-relationship, in that, “totality” and “destiny” focus on human insignificance and boundedness, while “norm” and “deliverance” focus on human significance and freedom: at the intersection of these two lines of thoughts . . . lies the awareness of being related to a higher power. The higher power is at the same time the deepest meaning of the whole, the bearer of cosmic laws, the energiser of the norm, the helper toward salvation. That intersection of these two lines is obviously the heart of religious consciousness.46 For Bavinck, it is only the preaching of the gospel that is able to break through this religious consciousness: The message concerns God’s Kingdom, God Himself, and His world, in which we have a place. It concerns Jesus Christ, the Savior, on whose suffering, death, and resurrection the future of the Kingdom is founded. The message concerning the Kingdom is to a certain extent an unmasking—it reveals the very deep processes of repression and substitution and makes us ashamed of what we have done with God.47 The relationship between the magnetic points and the gospel of Christ requires careful articulation: “No continuity exists between the gospel and human religious consciousness, although definite continuity does exist between the gospel and what lies behind human religious consciousness, namely God’s general revelation.”48

c. Points of Attack, Possessio, and Elenctics It is in the light of Bavinck’s “theology of religions” and “comparative religions” that we return to Bavinck’s Introduction which articulates some of the missiological implications of this theological foundation. In terms of missional theologizing and in particular preaching, Bavinck would rather speak of a “point of attack” than a “point of contact.”49 Likewise in terms of ecclesial theologizing, Bavinck is uncomfortable with the notion that the gospel “accommodates” and adjusts itself to a culture and its customs which inevitably leads to syncretistic denial or mutilation. Rather he uses the term possessio.50 Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness,” 203. Bavinck, The Church, 199–200. 48 Elsewhere Bavinck writes: “Everything depends on what we mean by an element of ‘truth’. If taken in a vague and general sense, it must be admitted that such elements are found in the non-Christian religions. If taken in a more special and defined meaning, then it will be hardly tenable. All central ideas involved in Christian belief . . . are found in most religions, but they are all understood in a fundamentally different sense and applied in a quite different connection. The deeper one enters into them, the more one grows aware that all is different in non-Christian religions. J. H. Bavinck, “General Revelation and the Non-Christian Religions,” in Bolt et al., The Bavinck Reader, 108. For a detailed exploration of this in the Bavinckian tradition but using the concept of “subversive fulfilment” see Daniel Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015). 49 Bavinck, Introduction, 141f. 50 Ibid., 179. 46 47

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And so we return to Bavinck’s treatment of elenctics, the concern of which “is always with the all-important question: ‘What have you done with God?’”51 In more prosaic fashion Bavinck describes elenctics as the science which is concerned with the conviction of sin. In a special sense then it is the science which unmasks all false religion as sin against God and calls people to the knowledge of the one, true God. To be able to do this well and truthfully it is necessary to have a responsible knowledge of false religions, but one must be able to lay bare the deepest motifs which are therein expressed. This can actually occur only if one recognizes and unmasks these same undercurrents within himself. Elenctics is possible only on the basis of a veritable self-knowledge, which is kindled in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.52 From this one quotation we can pull out several key features of Bavinck’s elenctics. First, the Holy Spirit is “subject” and “author” of elenctics. From a Reformed monergistic soteriology, Bavinck stresses the sovereign agency of the Holy Spirit in the work of the conviction of sin: “he alone can call to repentance and we are only means in his hand.”53 While we must work hard within the elenctic science, our role is instrumental, being totally reliant on the Spirit’s role in awakening and awareness of guilt and shame: “this knowledge gives us the comfort that in the last instance the results do not depend on our weak powers, but that it is the Holy Spirit who would make us powerful in Christ.”54 Second, we note the necessity of “a responsible knowledge of false religions.”55 Elenctics requires both professional expertise and personal relationship. Concerning the former, Bavinck notes that elenctics must first of all begin with the precise and calm knowledge of the nature of the religion with which it is concerned. It must do this honestly and calmly; that is to say, it must not be too quick to interrupt, it must listen to this religion state its case. . . . In the very nature of the case elenctics makes thankful use of the data provided by the science of religion and by the history of religion. These two subjects constitute the building blocks with which it works.56 However, such scientific awareness must be complemented by a “living” approach, “Each generalization, every systematization, carries within itself the danger that one will do injustice to the living person. In practice I am never concerned with Buddhism, but with a living person and his Buddhism.”57 Finally, we note Bavinck’s comment of the need to recognize and unmask our own indwelling sin: “Elenctics is possible only on the basis of a veritable self-knowledge, which is kindled in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”58 Bavinck calls this the “warm undertone of meeting-in-love”: “the recognition of myself in the other person, a sympathetic feeling

Ibid., 223. Ibid., 222. 53 Ibid., 229. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 222. 56 Ibid., 241. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 222. 51 52

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of his guilt and a sincere desire in Christ to do with this man what Christ has done with me.”59

IV. CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF J. H. BAVINCK Although J. H. Bavinck died nearly sixty years ago, the life and work of this missionary scientist and seer continue to have great relevance for today. First, he demonstrates that our missiology must be biblically rooted and theologically rigorous. Moreover, through all the creativity, suggestiveness, and sensitivity of the writing, Bavinck’s theology of religions and the theological anthropology underpinning it, remain squarely with historic Reformed orthodoxy and the riches this tradition affords. Second, under the discipline of elenctics Bavinck gives us a “theological religious studies.” The magnetic points present us with a morphology of religion which enables commensurability and comparison with the religious Other, but one which is not a Western/colonial/imperialistic controlling construct, but rather rooted in ontological, epistemological, and anthropological realities revealed in Scripture. However, far from religious consciousness and the magnetic points entailing a homogenous rigidity, Bavinck recognizes the mysteriousness of religious consciousness, it is “vague and nebulous,” “a complicated thing, full of tensions and contrasts.”60 If only people could shed their self-awareness, their individuality, their sense of royalty; if only they could simply dissolve into the world around them like plants and animals do, without norms or morals! But they cannot. They are human. They exist with the indescribable greatness as well as the pathetic woefulness that that term covers. That is where God meets them.61 This anthropological complexity invites us, indeed urges us with a “partisan objectivity”62 to the careful scholarly study of “religion” and encourages advancement in disciplines dear to Bavinck: the psychology of religion, history of religion, phenomenology of religion, and philosophy of religion63 but all “within” the theology of religions, and all which recognizes the personal and “lived” religious experience. We are not obligated to agree with every point of Bavinck’s own phenomenological descriptions of the Other in his work. Bavinck was a fallible located scholar of his time and the intervening half-century has seen development and growth in the study of particular phenomena which may well supersede Bavinck’s own observations and analysis. However, his method is as robust and relevant today as it was then and one we would do well to follow. Third, it would be a mistake to relegate Bavinck’s theology of religions and missiology to a niche or specialized “missions” audience. Bavinck himself recognized that his theological anthropology was relevant both to those labeled “religious” and the “so-called non-religious” men and women.64 On the one hand he notes that “sometimes it looks to me as if our modern civilization is speeding on without knowing where it is going or whither it is drifting, and as such though it had lost sight of the ultimate realities with

Ibid., 127. Bavinck, The Church, 24. 61 Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness,” 279. 62 This phrase comes from Terry C. Muck, Harold A. Netland, and Gerald R. McDermott’s Handbook of Religion: A Christian Engagement with Traditions, Teachings, and Practices (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 4. 63 Bavinck mentions each of these disciplines directly in Introduction. 64 Bavinck, The Church, 28. 59 60

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which every human enterprise is confronted.”65 On the other hand he can still conclude that “the history of the world compels us to reflect upon the course which we have taken in our civilisation and as soon as we begin to do so we shall see that modern culture too, is a religious phenomenon, either in the positive or negative sense.”66 While recognizing the difference dynamics of Bavinck’s 1930s Indonesia and 1950s Holland, compared to our 2020s “secular age,” in a context where we are struggling to get apologetic traction with the “nones,” Bavinck’s articulation of a universal religious consciousness unpacked in the magnetic points is a profoundly helpful framework which we must apply for our own context, be it the so-called dis-enchanted, the enchanted, or perhaps more accurately, the “diff(erently)-enchanted.”67 Finally, Bavinck’s life and work exude the adage suaviter in modo, fortiter in re (“gentle in persuasion, powerful in substance”). The notion that our elenctic witness flows from our own discipleship is so obvious, but needs to be reiterated time and again through the ordinary means of grace: “there is no more humbling work in the world than to engage in elenctics. For at each moment the person knows that the weapons which he turns against another have wounded himself. The Holy Spirit convicts us, and then through us he convicts the world.”68

Ibid., 16. Ibid., 17. 67 For an attempt at this, see Daniel Strange, Making Faith Magnetic: Five hidden themes our culture can’t stop talking about . . . and how to connect them to Christ (Epsom: Good Book Company, 2021). 68 Bavinck, Introduction, 272. 65 66

Chapter 22

G. C. Berkouwer GIJSBERT VAN DEN BRINK

I. INTRODUCTION Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903–96), one of the leading Dutch Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, was a pivotal figure in the history of neo-Calvinism. In fact, he was pivotal in the twofold sense of that word: he not only was a key player in shaping neoCalvinism’s theological outlook but also marked an important turning point in the history of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (RCN).1 Berkouwer was a prolific writer of both academic and more generally accessible work. Due to the fact that many of his books were translated into English, he also received a wide international readership. Up to this day he continues to be influential, both in the Netherlands and in the evangelical world in the United States. In this contribution, I will explore Berkouwer’s life, work, and influence in Dutch and international neo-Calvinism in more detail. First, I will offer some biographical data, embedding Berkouwer in his cultural and ecclesial context (Section II). Next, I will sketch the main contours of his theology, with special attention to its development over time (Section III). Third, I will zoom in on the issue of Berkouwer’s theological method (Section IV). Finally, I will briefly discuss the influence that Berkouwer exerted and continues to exert (Section V).

II. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Berkouwer was born in Amsterdam in 1903 as the second of three children. His father was a Reformed schoolteacher. His older sister died when she was only sixteen years old—an event that may have confronted Berkouwer with the problem of theodicy for the first time in his life. Although he had hesitated for a while to become either a sports teacher or a mathematician, in 1922 (which is one year after the death of Bavinck and one and a half years after that of Kuyper) Berkouwer enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Theology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The choice for this university was a natural one—the institution was not far away (the Berkouwers lived in The Hague at the time) and had been established by Abraham Kuyper, who had also co-founded the RCN.

Not to be confused with the Dutch Reformed Church (or Netherlands Reformed Church), the mainline Protestant church since the Reformation; both churches merged with each other and with the (much smaller) Lutheran Church in the Netherlands in 2004, forming the current Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN; c. 1.55 million members). 1

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Berkouwer was a smart student who imbibed the neo-Calvinist theology of that time, including its strongly apologetic flavor. After his studies, in 1927, he became a minister in the Frisian village of Oudehorne. In that same year he married Cornelia Elisabeth Rippen (1904–82), with whom he would have nine children. In 1931, the Berkouwer family moved to Amsterdam, where Gerrit served as minister of the Reformed church in the neighborhood of Watergraafmeer until 1945.2 In the meantime, Berkouwer had continued his academic studies, graduating with a dissertation on “faith and revelation in the newer German theology” in 1932.3 His promotor (supervisor) was Valentine Hepp, Bavinck’s successor as professor of dogmatics at the Vrije Universiteit from 1922 to 1950. Hepp was a polemical theologian (even in his own churches), who tried to cast neo-Calvinist theological thinking in the form of a fixed dogmatic system, thus extrapolating the intellectualist element in Abraham Kuyper’s theology at the expense of its more mystical side. Like both Kuyper and Bavinck, Hepp gave the famous Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary (1930), but unlike Kuyper and Bavinck, He seems all but forgotten in international Reformed and evangelical theology. Apparently, his scholastic and polemical way of doing theology did not meet the spiritual needs of many people-in-the-pew. It would be Berkouwer’s role to reconnect theology with the concerns of contemporary believers, re-installing in this way Herman Bavinck’s mode of doing theology.4 Bavinck had always considered contemporary developments in science and culture as real challenges to Reformed theology with which he had to seriously wrestle, and he attempted to find a way through them instead of just ignoring or rejecting them. In 1940 Berkouwer was appointed at his alma mater as a special professor for “the newer theology” (a field deemed important but not covered by the ordinary professors at the time) and in 1945 this was changed into a full professorship for “the history of the newer theology, symbolics, and hermeneutics.” When Hepp retired in 1950, Berkouwer’s teaching task became “dogmatics and the history of dogma.” Berkouwer would continue to serve in this role until his retirement in the Fall of 1973. Although Berkouwer had already published a couple of books before he was appointed as a full professor (during the years of his pastorate),5 he became really productive from 1949 onward, publishing a new volume of his Studies in Dogmatics almost every year.6 This series counted eighteen volumes when Berkouwer finished it with the second volume

The biographical details on Berkouwer’s family are derived from E. P. Meijering’s In memoriam of Berkouwer in Levensberichten en herdenkingen 1997 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen, 1997), 7–14. As one of the few orthodox theologians deemed worthy of that honor, Berkouwer had been elected a member of the KNAW (the Dutch national academy of sciences) in 1953 (11). 3 G. C. Berkouwer, Geloof en openbaring in de nieuwere Duitsche theologie (Utrecht: Kemink, 1932). An extensive Dutch-English bibliography of Berkouwer’s many articles, books, reviews, and so on, has been composed by Van Keulen: Dirk van Keulen, Bibliografie/Bibliography G. C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 2000). 4 Cf. Hendrikus Berkhof ’s evaluation: “I consider Hepp as an infelicitous interim, though unfortunately characteristic of the time of the epigones (. . .). With Berkouwer the line of Bavinck was reintroduced and connected with all sorts of modern problems.” In George Puchinger (ed.), Honderd jaar Vrije Universiteit (Delft: Meinema, 1980), 187. Berkouwer, however, never met Bavinck in person. 5 G. C. Berkouwer, Karl Barth (Kampen: Kok, 1936); G. C. Berkouwer, Het probleem der Schriftkritiek (Kampen: Kok, n.d. [1938]); G. C. Berkouwer, De strijd om het roomsch-katholieke dogma (Kampen: Kok, n.d. [1940]). The titles show the two main fronts by which Berkouwer felt challenged early on and with which he would remain in conversation for many decades: the theology of Karl Barth and Roman Catholicism. In his inaugural lecture he discussed both of them: G. C. Berkouwer, Barthianisme en Katholicisme (Kampen: Kok, n.d. [1940]). 6 He gave the series a kickstart in 1949, when he published its first three volumes almost simultaneously: Geloof en rechtvaardiging, Geloof en heiliging, Geloof en volharding. As we will see, the coupling of such objective dogmatic 2

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on ecclesiology in 1972, one year before he retired (and presumably the last year in which he lectured).7 Apart from his widely acclaimed major study of Karl Barth’s theology,8 it was especially through this series, which was almost fully translated into English, that Berkouwer gained a lasting impact in the United States, both in circles of Dutch Reformed immigrants and beyond.9 Among neo-Calvinists in the Netherlands Berkouwer was also very influential through his many contributions to Dutch Reformed newspapers, weeklies, and other journals. For example, as editor of the Gereformeerd Weekblad, the “Reformed weekly” that appeared from 1945 until 1982, he opined on many issues in church, theology, and society on an almost weekly basis. He continued in this capacity after his retirement, as far as the ailing health of his wife allowed him to do so. His final book, a theological autobiography, appeared in 1989.10 Interestingly, one of Berkouwer’s many books was written directly in English: an edition of the six lectures he had held at Calvin College and Seminary, Grand Rapids, in 1952.11 Berkouwer played an important role in Dutch church life. He was well-known for his friendly and nonpolemical character and his striving for harmony and mutual understanding, and therefore often functioned in a mediating role. It was typical that in 1943, amid severe ecclesial tensions, none other than Berkouwer was elected president of the national synod of the RCN. Even Berkouwer could not prevent, however, the dramatic split of the church as a result of diverging views on the covenant, baptism, and regeneration, as well as (related to this) the authority of the synod over the conscience of individual church members. After having been suspended and impeached by the synod because of their deviating views and their unwillingness to comply with the synod’s decisions, theologians Klaas Schilder and Seakle Greijdanus started the “liberation” (vrijmaking) of the church that resulted in the Liberated Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, which would establish its own theological school in Kampen.12 It seems that Berkouwer felt more and more guilty about his role in this unfortunate concatenation of events when he grew older. In any case, he looked back on it with grief and acknowledged his involvement in it in his 1989 theological autobiography.13 Another of Berkouwer’s roles should be mentioned here: his involvement in ecumenical dialogue. Berkouwer did not only take part in the formation of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod in Grand Rapids, 1946, but also stimulated the accession of his churches to the

notions as justification, sanctification, and perseverance to the concept of faith was a hallmark of Berkouwer’s own take on the theological task. 7 Berkouwer was used to teaching a different dogmatic locus (or part of it) every year, immediately afterwards preparing his lecture notes for publication in a new volume of his dogmatic studies. He thus set a wonderful example of closely intertwining research and teaching—in a rhythm that only few academics can emulate. 8 G. C. Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956). 9 Berkouwer’s dogmatic studies were published in English (some of them in slightly abbreviated form) in fourteen volumes by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, between 1952 and 1976. 10 G. C. Berkouwer, Zoeken en vinden: Herinneringen en ervaringen [Seeking and finding: memories and experiences] (Kampen: Kok, 1989), 436pp. (This book remains untranslated.) 11 G. C. Berkouwer, Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), a booklet that was later translated into French, Japanese, and Spanish (but never in Dutch). Berkouwer also lectured at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, during this tour (Zoeken en vinden, 17). 12 This school has very recently (2023) moved to Utrecht, continuing there as the Theological University Utrecht. 13 Berkouwer, Zoeken en vinden, 312–66, and see also the long and appreciative preceding chapter on Schilder’s theology (235–311). Cf. on Berkouwer’s relationship with Schilder: Aad van Egmond, “Uiterste barmhartigheid. Uitgangspunt, inhoud en criterium van Berkouwers theologie,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 96 (1996): 117–28.

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World Council of Churches (WCC), which took place in 1969. This accession was typical for the growing openness toward other churches in the RCN, which for a long time had cherished a more isolated position. Most famously, Berkouwer was one of the few theologians from non-Roman Catholic churches who participated on personal invitation by Pope John XXIII as an “observer” in the meetings of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5). This testified to Berkouwer’s international fame at that time as an expert on Roman Catholic doctrine. In addition to his earlier work in this area, Berkouwer would relate afresh to Roman Catholicism in two subsequent books, the first of which was translated into English.14

III. THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT Following a proposal of Cornelis van der Kooi (one of Berkouwer’s successors on the VUChair of systematic theology), we can distinguish four periods in Berkouwer’s theological development.15 First, starting with his dissertation (1932), there is the apologetic work of the young Berkouwer. Next, with the launch of his Studies in Dogmatics (1949), a more constructive and explorative period begins. Third, this period is receiving a new twist in the final parts of his Dogmatic Studies, from those on the return of Christ onward (1961), which testifies to a hermeneutical period. Finally, after Berkouwer’s retirement in 1973 an evaluative period begins, ending with his final book in 1989. It is important to add to this that any discontinuities between these stages should not be overstated, since the main motifs of Berkouwer’s mature theology can already be found implicitly in his earliest publications. The atmosphere of Berkouwer’s apologetic period can be succinctly illustrated from the first thesis which he added to his dissertation: “All problems of the newer German theology are closely connected with the abandoning of the absolute authority of Holy Scripture.”16 It is the theological atmosphere of Kuyper and Hepp that is palpable here: Holy Scripture is the absolute and completely certain foundation of Christian faith and theology, and even the tiniest qualification of the nature of its authority has drastic consequences. It was the atmosphere that had led the RCN Synod of Assen in 1926 (six years earlier) to impeach pastors who were not sure that the serpent in paradise had literally spoken to Eve (Genesis 3). The neo-Calvinist movement at the time formed a closed, self-confident community that was not entirely free from sectarian character traits. In such a context, border control is important. Berkouwer’s first studies on Barth fit this paradigm in a very intelligent and considered way. Barth’s theology is rejected because it is not based directly on Scripture, Scripture being considered by Barth as the means through which revelation takes place rather than as itself the deposit of divine revelation. As a result, Barth’s theology threatens to become speculative. The same concern for the absolute authority of Scripture permeates Berkouwer’s 1938 study on the problem of biblical criticism.

G. C. Berkouwer, The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), orig. edition Kampen 1964; G. C. Berkouwer, Nabetrachting op het Concilie (Kampen: Kok, 1968). 15 C. van der Kooi, “Berkouwer, Gerrit Cornelis,” in Biografisch Lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse protestantisme, vol. 5, ed. C. Houtman et al. (Kampen: Kok, 2001), 51–5 (53). A slightly different division in periods (up to 1965) has been proposed by H. Berkhof, “De methode van Berkouwers theologie,” in Ex auditu Verbi: Opstellen aangeboden aan prof. dr. G. C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 1965), 37–55. 16 Berkouwer, Geloof en openbaring, [v]; cf. the conclusion of Berkouwer’s research on p. 243. 14

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After having become a professor in 1940 (and especially after 1945—Berkouwer did not write any major studies during the Second World War), the thrust of Berkouwer’s work became more constructive. This is clear from the first volumes of his dogmatic studies, and also from the new study of Karl Barth’s theology (1954) in which Berkouwer goes to much greater length to understand Barth “from within.” While he still opposes Barth’s theology, he is now much more appreciative of it than in his previous books on Barth, trying to do full justice to Barth’s deepest motives.17 The Triumph of Grace has been hailed as one of the best introductions into the contours of Barth’s theology. Barth himself was positive about it as well, and in its wake Berkouwer and Barth became friends. Yet, Berkouwer continued to disagree with Barth on various issues, among which was the role of faith and the believing subject (which Barth underestimated in Berkouwer’s view). Parting company with his predecessor Hepp and scholastic theology in general, Berkouwer began to shun all talk of God that tried to take a quasi-objective standpoint, outside the realm of faith.18 It is only from within the faithful recognition of God as revealed in Scripture that we can avoid fruitless dilemmas (e.g., between divine determinism and human responsibility) and come to acknowledge the spiritual meaning of dogmatic concepts like justification, sanctification, and perseverance (1949), but also of providence (1950) and election (1955). In order to retrieve these meanings, Berkouwer carefully listened to traditional statements as well as contemporary voices. He eventually measured both of these by an appeal not to isolated biblical texts but to the Sache, the substance matter of the Scriptures. Incidentally, he could even question confessional formulations from this perspective, such as passages in the Canons of Dordt that suggest a strict parallelism between divine election and reprobation. Following on this, in the third stage of Berkouwer’s development, a new concentration on Scripture, its authority and interpretation can be observed. This tendency first comes to the fore in his dogmatic work on eschatology.19 Here he had to interpret apocalyptic passages from the New Testament, which at face value often suggest a concrete timeline of events culminating in (or circling around) the second coming of Christ. Berkouwer knew how variously such passages were explained not only in traditional Christianity but even more so in contemporary American evangelicalism. He was familiar with American debates on pre- and post-millennialism but rejected both of these movements because of what he considered their common mistake: taking the apocalyptic literature as informative rather than exhortative.20 That did not mean that Berkouwer spiritualized the relevant passages—he firmly criticizes Bultmann’s de-mythologizing approach in this regard. Nor did he succumb to some form of hermeneutical relativism: Berkouwer was convinced of the clarity of Scripture, that is, the idea that at the end of the day Scripture can speak for itself with a clear voice. Rather, his solution was based on a careful study of the literary Berkouwer, Triumph of Grace; it is often suggested that this book signaled a revision of Berkouwer’s earlier dismissive attitude toward Barth, but already in his Karl Barth en de kinderdoop (Karl Barth on Infant Baptism) (Kampen: Kok, 1947) Berkouwer—even though disagreeing with him—had started to take Barth’s theology remarkably seriously. 18 Van der Kooi, “Berkouwer, Gerrit Cornelis,” 53, rightly points out that references to Kuyper are usually favorable, except when Kuyper paid tribute to scholastic rationalism or speculative idealism. Berkouwer’s connection with Bavinck is much stronger, especially where Bavinck himself proceeded tentatively in his explorations. 19 See G. C. Berkouwer, The Return of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972); the Dutch original had appeared in two volumes, published in 1961 and 1963 respectively. 20 Berkouwer, Return of Christ, 291–322; Berkouwer followed Karl Rahner in rejecting an “advance eyewitness” account of biblical eschatology, 247.

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genre of apocalyptic texts and its exegetical implications. Thus, he came to reject the idea that, for example, the Book of Revelation should be read as a form of “reporter theology,” as if a series of clearly distinguishable sequential events was predicted.21 Instead we have to look for the intent or purpose of such passages, which is not to provide us with correct information but to underline the urgency of accepting the offer of God’s salvation in faith, and to live up to God’s promises in the intense expectation of his Kingdom. This line of thought is further elaborated in Berkouwer’s subsequent volumes, which have Holy Scripture as their theme.22 Drawing on his approach to apocalyptic literature, in these volumes Berkouwer argues more generally that biblical texts can only be properly understood if we take into account “the specific literary form in which the words appear and the great variety of ways in which Scripture speaks to us.”23 This brings him to discuss the vexed questions on the interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis. Things are more complex here than in the case of eschatology and apocalypticism, Berkouwer suggests, because alongside the question of literary genre the findings of contemporary science come into play. Berkouwer is adamant that science can never dictate the meaning of Scripture (for that reason he is critical of all forms of “concordism,” that is, attempts to harmonize the Bible with contemporary science). Yet, he argues that “certain results of science, be it natural science or historical research, can provide the ‘occasion’ for understanding various aspects of Scripture in a different way than before.”24 Here again, we have to carefully examine the intention or purpose behind the texts, their kerygmatic power—or what Berkouwer came to call their scopus. In the case of Genesis 1–3, this scopus entails “a reality of the creation of heaven and earth (. . .), of the gap that arose between God and humanity, a gap of guilt and alienation that became deeper and deeper, and of the divine initiative towards salvation and light in this utter darkness.”25 In this way, Berkouwer upheld the basic “creation-fall-redemption” structure of classical Reformed and evangelical theology, while acknowledging the culturally situated imagery in which the first chapters of Genesis have been couched.26 In general, in this stage of his development Berkouwer came to highlight the human character of Scripture (with all its consequences and questions) more emphatically than its divine authority—without, of course, by any means questioning the latter. The fourth stage to be distinguished in Berkouwer’s work starts with his retirement in 1973, and is characterized by retrospection, extension, and (self-)evaluation. In his A Half Century of Theology, for example, the main themes of his previous work return and are complemented with further reflections. Interestingly, Berkouwer starts this book

Berkouwer, Return of Christ, 247–9. He parts company with Abraham Kuyper in this connection (249). For an extensive analysis of Berkouwer’s views on Scripture and their development over time, see Dirk van Keulen, Bijbel en dogmatiek: Schriftbeschouwing en Schriftgebruik in het dogmatisch werk van A. Kuyper, H. Bavinck en G. C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 2003), 285–542. 23 G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 291. This view is in line with the so-called organic view of the inspiration of Scripture that had been endorsed by Kuyper and Bavinck. Berkouwer would unpack this view in more detail than his predecessors had done. 24 Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, 133. For more on this, see Gijsbert van den Brink, “‘All the More Reason to Exercise Caution while Discussing Genesis’: Gerrit Berkouwer on Scripture and Science,” in Neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism, ed. George Harinck and James P. Eglinton (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 93–113. 25 G. C. Berkouwer, Heilige Schrift 2 (Kampen: Kok, 1963), 313 (my translation; emphasis original). The quote stems from one of the portions of the book that have been skipped in the English translation. 26 Cf. Gijsbert van den Brink and Harry Cook, “A Variety of Voices: Reformed Theologians on the Theory of Evolution,” Calvin Theological Journal 56 (2021): 281–5. 21 22

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with a chapter on apologetics (thus mirroring the beginning phase of his own career), which he concludes with a critical note: Lacking a “profound analysis of the critical questions that are placed before Christian faith by the world of thought in which we are all sojourners together,” apologetics will “fall into mere repetition and fail to give a real answer to real questions,” thus becoming “cheap.”27 Berkouwer notes that this awareness grew over time, leading to a more “self-critical attitude” in communication with critics.28 This then naturally leads him into a chapter on Barth’s theology, followed by chapters on the doctrine of election (Berkouwer considered his 1955 book on divine election a highlight in his oeuvre), Scripture, and the reasonableness of faith. This final topic, which also reflects a long-standing interest of Berkouwer,29 is enriched by an extensive but critical reading of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie that had just appeared (1973). Over against Pannenberg, Berkouwer advocates a theology “that will (. . .) choose to take the route in which the content of faith is always part of the assumptions”; that is, theology should not try to make the message of the gospel credible by means of external arguments and considerations, but seek “its basic resources within the gospel itself.”30 This remark brings us quite naturally to consider the question whether there is a common thread—or even a unique method—to be found in Berkouwer’s theology.

IV. THE QUESTION OF BERKOUWER’S METHOD There has been some debate as to whether or not Berkouwer had a theological method of his own. The first thing to be said here is that Berkouwer was wary of what in Dutch is called systeemdwang: rigorously applying a uniform method or principle to even the most remote corners of one’s theological thinking. He rather stayed close to the Scriptures— indeed, Berkouwer made extensive use of the Bible in his dogmatic work, more and more not by “prooftexting” his own views but by carefully probing main lines and underlying connections in the biblical testimony.31 He could blame colleagues from other traditions for going beyond the scriptural witness, which in his view easily led to thought forms he was keen to brand as “speculative.” Berkouwer even deliberately refrained from developing a dogmatic system. His Studies in Dogmatics don’t have a particular order but seem to jump quite arbitrarily from one locus to another; and a number of important doctrinal themes that aroused quite some debate in his days—for example the prolegomena, the doctrines of God, the Trinity, creation, and pneumatology—are conspicuous by their absence. Yet, it has been argued that Berkouwer’s theology is characterized by a specific method, namely the so-called method of co-relation or correlation.32 Indeed, this concept surfaces G. C. Berkouwer, A Half Century of Theology: Movements and Motives (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977) [orig. Dutch ed. Kampen 1974], 37. I have slightly adapted the translation (the Dutch quite naturally speaks of “critical questions” in the plural, instead of “the critical question” as the ET has it). 28 Berkouwer, A Half Century, 38. 29 Cf. e.g., Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith, 49–62. 30 Berkouwer, A Half Century, 37. 31 Van Keulen, Bijbel en dogmatiek, 617–19. 32 See e.g., H. Berkhof, “De methode van Berkouwers theologie,” 41–55; Lewis B. Smedes, “G. C. Berkouwer,” in: Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, ed. P. E. Hughes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 65–71; G. W. de Jong, De theologie van G. C. Berkouwer: Een strukturele analyse (Kampen: Kok, 1971); J. C. de Moor, Towards a Biblically Theo-Logical Method: A Structural Analysis and a Further Elaboration of Dr. G. C. Berkouwer’s Hermeneutic-Dogmatic Method (Kampen: Kok, 1980); De Moor argues that the concept of correlation is so 27

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at many critical places in his work, especially in its earlier phases, but it has been an issue of debate how central it actually was in Berkouwer’s thinking. Harry Kuitert has suggested that it only applies to a couple of Berkouwer’s earlier studies, and, moreover, that it is not a method in the academic sense of the word.33 On the latter, Kuitert was certainly right: the notion of correlation signifies a central insight of Berkouwer more than a protocolized procedure to collect results from data. As to the former, however, the notion of correlation is central indeed in that it permeates large swaths of Berkouwer’s work. It is not just palpable in the dogmatic studies in which the relationship between faith and revelation takes central stage, as Kuitert concedes, but it also determines Berkouwer’s assessment of both Barthianism and Roman Catholicism throughout the years. In particular, this core notion, or principle, enabled him to transcend the penchant for scholastic rationalism in neo-Calvinism (e.g., in parts of Kuyper’s work, Hepp, Hoeksema, Van Til, and others), which he more and more saw as a theological dead end. Here is what Berkouwer had in mind: in thinking about the nature of Christian faith it is key to get the relation between human faith and divine revelation right. Faith, or so Berkouwer contends, is a person’s grateful existential appropriation of the message of the gospel. Conversely, the gospel and Holy Scripture are not given to us in order to provide us with information of various kinds, but to evoke in us this response of faith and conversion. That is why the preaching of the gospel as the central appealing message of Scripture is so important.34 There are two opposite alternatives here, both of which fundamentally distort this deeply personal involvement (or “correlation”) of faith with revelation. On the one hand, there is the danger of underestimating the role of our personal commitment by emphasizing the divine salvific initiative to such an extent that our human response is (or seems) no longer relevant. This is the danger that Berkouwer sensed in Barth’s theology, but in a different way also in attempts to rationally “objectify” notions like justification, sanctification, perseverance, the sacraments and so on in scholastic accounts. Here it seemed as if such notions can be understood outside the believer’s personal relationship with God. On the other hand, there is the danger of overestimating the significance of the believer’s personal involvement by ascribing a creative role to the human subject in the salvation process. This is the danger that Berkouwer observed in Roman Catholic “synergistic” constructions of the faith-relationship, which in his view must necessarily lead to existential uncertainty and fear (for if my salvation depends even to the slightest degree on my own efforts, I will always have reason for despair). In a different way, deviations that attribute a creative role to the human subject can be found in various forms of modern theology. In Berkouwer’s view, we can never speak about God and God’s actions (justification, providence, election, etc.) as if they were objective truths which can be explained in a non-involved way—that attempt will necessarily lead to a caricature of the biblical and spiritual meaning of such notions.35 We can only fathom these spiritual meanings ambiguous and can mean so many different things, that it is inadequate to use it as a label of Berkouwer’s dogmatic method (64). 33 H. M. Kuitert, “De theologie van G. C. Berkouwer,” in Registers op de dogmatische studiën van G. C. Berkouwer, ed. M. P. van der Marel (Kampen: Kok / Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1988), 9–18; see esp. p. 12: “I hold this take on Berkouwer’s way of doing theology to be unfruitful” (my translation). 34 Cf. Van der Kooi, “Berkouwer, Gerrit Cornelis,” 52, 54. 35 Berkhof, “Methode van Berkouwer’s theologie,” 54–5, has insightfully asked whether this personal, existential take on the Bible and theology can do full justice to the collective, cosmic, and historical dimensions of revelation; it seemed to him that Berkouwer unduly narrowed the biblical horizons here.

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in a thoroughly personal appropriation of the gospel. Nor can we speak about God in a subjectivist way that goes beyond God’s self-revelation, building speculative castles of our own. Such humanly created constructions are just that: projections (or idols) which have no anchor in reality. It seems to me that Berkouwer conveys a stance here that is in deep continuity with the concerns of the Reformed Reformers, perhaps John Calvin in particular. Berkouwer may even be more accurate here than his esteemed predecessor Herman Bavinck, who has not been able to avoid the impression of a subjectivist bent in his theological thinking.36 Meanwhile, apart from this central insight to which Berkouwer returns time and again at crucial moments, his theological method—as exemplified both in his lecturing and writing—also has some typical informal characteristics. Though we have already come across some of these in passing, it is instructive to mention them more explicitly, since it is through these characteristics that Berkouwer may have wielded as much influence as through his material views, given the fact that he must have taught thousands of students over the years of his professorship. First, one very prominent characteristic of Berkouwer’s way of doing theology was his desire and capacity to probe the deepest motives and intentions of those with whom he interacted. Berkouwer went to great lengths (as mirrored by the lenghty expositions in in his writings) in his attempt to do justice to his conversation partners. This is why both Barth and the Roman Catholic magisterium appreciated his work so sincerely. Berkouwer never tried to win an easy victory, or to polemicize with those with whom at the end of the day he disagreed. On top of that, the range of theologians and other scholars whom he took seriously is exceptionally wide. He tried to make the best out of fundamentalists (not being unduly dismissive toward them) as well as liberal theologians who were deeply critical of his orthodox convictions. Interestingly, it is this very same attitude of “listening out”—that is, to go on and on with listening and interpreting until you have touched upon a text’s or a person’s deepest motive—that he also applied to the confession and the Bible. This explains the many passages in his work in which he sets out to fathom the scopus of biblical verses or passages, often in this way trying to find an anchor point in Scripture in the midst of sometimes disturbing theological discussions that he had surveyed.37 Second, there is also a flipside to this characteristic that should be noted. As a result of his wish to do hermeneutical justice to everyone, Berkouwer’s writing style is often meandering. There are no clear-cut research questions or problems with which he starts, just themes and topics which he explores. He does so by listening extensively to various voices, moving back and forth from his contemporaries to his neo-Calvinist predecessors (mostly Kuyper and Bavinck), classical theologians, confessions, and the Bible—all the while postponing a clear articulation of his own view on the matter at hand. In fact, one often has to delve deeply in order to track down Berkouwer’s own views at all, even though it is clear that he is very involved. According to Kuitert, Berkouwer needed this long-winded way of writing because it is only in dialogue with himself and others that he could come to trace the truth: there is no direct access to the relevant answers. True as that

Thus e.g., Henk van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology: Truth and Trust (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 266–7; cf. the discussion in Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 103–9, 148–9. 37 The title of the first Festschrift that was offered to Berkouwer (when he had been a professor for twenty-five years), Ex auditu Verbi (Kampen: Kok, 1965), was therefore well chosen: in Berkouwer’s view dogmatics is born first and foremost from the hearing of the Word. 36

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may be, that is no excuse for the fact that there is hardly any signposting in Berkouwer’s work or clearly structured arguments, and one can only sympathize with analytic thinkers who have found this frustrating.38 Even Lewis Smedes, a student and translator of Berkouwer who deeply admired his work, politely remarked: “An Anglo-Saxon may be forgiven for wanting at times less circumlocution and more succinctness than he finds in European theologians.”39 Third, at the same time there is always a vast historical learning in Berkouwer’s work. A nice sample of this learning is in the tables of contents of almost all of Berkouwer’s Dutch books.40 These tables of contents are very characteristic (if not unique in kind) and must have been composed by Berkouwer himself. Here is a random example, taken from the final chapter (entitled “Concern for the Faith”) of A Half Century of Theology: Sölle against Barth 365; Gollwitzer on the caricature 365; sinners and enemies 365; the radical “pro nobis” 365; objective—subjective? 366; letting oneself be reconciled 366; the nature of elimination 366; Van der Zanden 366; the alibi 366; Bloch on the “Ersatz” and the “Absetzung” 367; Bakker on Wiersinga 367; the three hours of darkness 367; the riddle 367; Christus traditus 367; crucifying Christ afresh 368; the agony of Christ (Pascal) 368; no vice-versa 368; possibility and impossibility 368; Barth on substitutionary atonement 368; the new man 368; a conversation with Barth 1954: 369; being unable and abundantia 369; apathy? 370; “the suffering God” 370; Kitamori 370; the compassion 370; Jonah and Nineve 371.41 I have always found these lists deeply intriguing. As one can easily spot, Berkouwer is going back and forth here between Bible, classical and confessional categories (the pro nobis, the Christus traditus), and contemporary theologians of various stripes in only six pages. And so it goes on and on (the Table of Contents in A Half Century comprises eighteen pages in small font). One immediately senses how much scholarship must be involved—not just in terms of in-depth knowledge but also in terms of the capacity to make all kinds of connections. Already as a student I felt intimidated by these lists, and I still do. Oftentimes I cannot resist the temptation to turn to the relevant pages out of sheer curiosity, because I want to know what caricature Gollwitzer was commenting on, and what on earth Berkouwer meant by “the alibi,” what topic Berkouwer discussed with Barth in 1954, what Jonah has to do with all this, and so on.42

Cf. Nicholas Wolterstorff, In this World of Wonders: Memoir of a Life in Learning (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), Ch. 2 Kobo 23/26, who relates (speaking of 1957, when he studied at the VU) that according to the dominant opinion at the time, both in the States and in the Netherlands, Berkouwer was “the finest systematic theologian then active in the Reformed tradition.” When attending Berkouwer’s lectures, there was much that Wolterstorff admired (e.g., Berkouwer’s ecumenical spirit and nonpolemical attitude), but “I found them seriously lacking in the sort of rigor that characterized the analytical tradition of philosophy (. . .). After a month or so, I decided that if Berkouwer was the best of contemporary Reformed theologians, I could not spend the rest of my life among theologians. I would stay with philosophy.” 39 Smedes, “G. C. Berkouwer,” 93. 40 In the English translations of his work, these typical ToC’s have usually been replaced by regular indices. 41 G. C. Berkouwer, Een halve eeuw theologie: Motieven en stromingen van 1920 tot heden (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1974), 410–11. 42 For those who want to know the answers, see A Half Century of Theology, 249–53.

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V. INFLUENCE Berkouwer first of all influenced the course of his own churches in important ways. In particular, he implicitly but effectively countered the rationalist strand that had emerged in Dutch neo-Calvinism when Kuyper and Bavinck had passed away. In Berkouwer’s view many scholastic questions and distinctions (as they had been re-introduced by e.g. Valentine Hepp) were irrelevant for the life of the church. In order to prevent unbiblical speculations from taking hold, theology should be carried out from the perspective of faith in its strict concentration on God’s revelation in Scripture. This revelation speaks to the human heart, asking for our faithful and grateful response to God’s grace in Christ. As a result of this focus, Berkouwer’s theology was not of much help to Christian scholars (philosophers, anthropologists, etc.). Indeed, Berkouwer often “gives the impression that he slides off a theological problem into the area of personal faith.”43 Yet, in doing so he called theology back to a “more modest and (. . .) more specific task,” namely “serving the Church by helping to make the Gospel clear.”44 In doing so, he can be seen as a representative of the so-called theological interpretation of Scripture avant-la-lettre. Berkouwer is often said to have played another role in neo-Calvinism as well. In the eyes of many, as a result of his irenic character, his adjusting of some of his former views in light of a growing appreciation of theologians outside the (neo-)Calvinist tradition, and his wish to do justice to the intentions of each of them, he opened the doors to an influx of liberal theology.45 In the Netherlands, this mainly happened under the influence of one of Berkouwer’s most intelligent and prolific students, the systematic theologian Harry Kuitert (1924–2017). Kuitert started his career as an orthodox Reformed minister but left increasing portions of church dogma behind him during his tenure as a VU-professor in order to end up as a virtual atheist after his retirement. Indeed, Berkouwer never criticized the direction in which Kuitert was heading, and even though he did not follow him either there is a kernel of truth in the idea that Berkouwer, by leading his churches out of their self-imposed theological isolation, opened the way for their later more radical departure of classical Reformed theology that was epitomized in the theological development of Harry Kuitert. Here, we see the second way in which the role played by Berkouwer in his churches was “pivotal,” as mentioned in the introduction (Section I). Yet, it is often forgotten that Berkouwer had forty-six students who graduated under his supervision, many of whom would continue to work in his spirit over the years or even took more traditional positions (such as W. H. Velema, the leading theologian at the Theological University of Apeldoorn for many years).46 Institutionally, the dogmatic orientation of Berkouwer at the Vrije Universiteit continued (and even became more “evangelical” over time) through the respective successors of his chair: Jan Veenhof (1973–89), Aad van Egmond (1991–2001), Cornelius van der Kooi (2003–19), and Henk van den Belt (2019–).

Smedes, “G. C. Berkouwer,” 94. Ibid., 95, 92. 45 See for such a view Carl W. Bogue, A Hole in the Dike: Critical Aspects of Berkouwer’s Theology (Cherry Hill: Mack Pub. Co., 1977); cf. https://www​.all​-of​-grace​.org​/pub​/others​/hole​_in​_dike​.html. Accessed August 9, 2023. A similar story, based on secondary sources only (!), is told by historian Arie Th. van Deursen, The Distinctive Character of the Free University, 1880–2005 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 252–4. 46 Most of these graduates are mentioned in the list in his second Festschrift: Septuagesimo Anno. Theologische opstellen aangeboden aan prof. dr. G. C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 1973), 299–300. 43 44

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From an international perspective Berkouwer is rightly considered one of the leading evangelical theologians of his time. In a much-used survey of twentieth-century theology, Berkouwer is discussed—along with German Lutheran Helmut Thielicke and American Baptist Carl F. H. Henry—as a typical representative of contemporary evangelical theology.47 His Studies in Dogmatics are considered “one of the most comprehensive and systematic expositions of theology from an evangelical perspective available in the English language.”48 The author also makes clear what exactly he means by the label “evangelical” in this connection. He rightly distinguishes evangelical theology from fundamentalism, and defines it in terms of (1) a concern for orthodoxy in doctrine as rooted in the “sola’s” of the Reformation, (2) a concern for biblical authority, and (3) a concern for the personal experience of salvation as proclaimed in the gospel and received by faith.49 Indeed, even though he came to shun particular labels (like “infallible” or “absolute” as designations of the nature of biblical authority), these concerns aptly encapsulate the deepest motives of Berkouwer’s tireless theological efforts throughout the years.

Ray S. Anderson, “Evangelical Theology,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed., ed. David F. Ford (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 480–98. 48 Anderson, “Evangelical Theology,” 484. By contrast, David F. Wells’ chapter on evangelical theology in the third edition of this handbook, which Ford co-edited with Rachel Muers in 2005, only briefly mentions Berkouwer in passing. 49 Anderson, “Evangelical Theology,” 484. 47

PART III

Neo-Calvinism in Historical Perspective

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Chapter 23

Neo-Calvinism and Medieval Theology MARK A. GARCIA

The cover of this volume features The Sower, a watercolor drawing by Dutch artist Johan Thorn Prikker. The sower is a popular choice of subject in the history of art, especially familiar in the well-known renditions by Van Gogh and Millet. But Prikker’s version is strikingly different. The drawing prominently features a farmer plodding through his field with evident purpose in the heat of the day, his bag in one hand while the other spreads seed along the path of dark, prepared soil. He faces down, but nowhere in particular, as he works methodically. He is drawn in motion, mid-step, muscular, with a slightly hunched, bowed back sloping with the years of his rhythmic toil, his right foot raised in a long, deliberate stride, his pace undoubtedly measured by the desired space between tossed seeds. He is caught in a moment of exertion, but without strain. Intriguingly, too, Prikker has chosen shades and lines which strongly suggest that the farmer emerges from his environment while belonging unmistakably to it. The ridges and contours of the terrain conspicuously match the ridges and contours of the man. The color of his sunned skin resembles the clays and soils of his setting. The man is not the same as his world, but he is unintelligible apart from it. Metaphysically, we notice that he fits his world as a microcosm of it, shaped by it and shaping it. He is formed by that which he forms. He approaches us from the backdrop of his native world, and—as the land recedes at the same rate as the man proceeds—he brings that world with him to us. Perhaps most captivatingly, the artist has placed the sun immediately behind the farmer’s head. Its placement ensures that it doubles as a halo. Is the sower a saint? Is he, the laborer, an icon of something glorious, and is that possible in so mundane a world as this field? The contrast with traditional images of the intellectual life is marked. His halo notwithstanding, and despite his wearing garb reminiscent of the ancient philosophers, his mouth and eyes are closed and he has no visible students. He does not speak. If he teaches it must be by the silent eloquence of his example. His body recalls the old statues of cut limestone and marble, but he is alone in a field, not on a pedestal in a square. He is neither a statesman nor a professional wise man but a skilled laborer. Can one so organically one with his earthy, material world be a source of spiritual knowledge? Can the quotidian be a source of wisdom? Such questions have found a perhaps surprisingly prominent place in each era of Church history. Evidence from the early Church suggests Christians were encouraged

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toward craftsmanship.1 But the nature of that encouragement and the role of craft and workmanship in an overall picture of wisdom and formation have ebbed and flowed with the tides of philosophical and cultural changes. The resulting tensions converged rather sharply in the turn toward modernity and in Herman Bavinck’s tumultuous world of nineteenth-century Dutch pedagogical and curricular unrest. Even cursory attention to these discussions confirms that they are neither ancient nor modern but universal, with roots that reach deeply into the complex history of Western and particularly Christian reflection on the relationship between reality and education. Where the goal in education is formation rather than mere content delivery, the question of the sources and contexts of wisdom invariably present themselves—and with them, questions, too, about the metaphysics of reality and the place of the mundane in that real world.

I. TWO VOICES, ONE CONVERSATION: READING BAVINCK AND HUGH OF ST. VICTOR TOGETHER What follows is not a conventional account of how Bavinck or other neo-Calvinists used the fathers and medievals. Nor will I engage the substantial literature on education in Bavinck (or Kuyper) as such, though this literature, in addition to the superb work done in recent years on Bavinck’s theology, will serve as important background to what follows. Instead, with the benefit of the fine scholarship available in these areas, I approach the question of Bavinck and the medievals by way of a case study. In what follows I accent features of Bavinck’s “organic” theology that may be more richly appreciated when they are set within and alongside a long-standing pedagogical and metaphysical discourse, namely, the question of the artes mechanicae (“mechanical arts”) in relation to the liberal arts, the soul, and the cultivation of wisdom. My unconventional approach to the historical question is prompted by Bavinck’s own theology and constitutes an attempt to explore our question as his theology would appear to indicate we should. I suggest Bavinck’s organic catholicity and anthropology reflect deeply catholic concerns especially well connected to what Hugh of St. Victor accomplishes in his innovative deployment of the mechanical arts. I do not suggest that Bavinck uses, or even read, Hugh on the topic. I commend them instead as two voices in a long-standing traditional discussion in which one may help illuminate, interrogate, and extend the value of the other’s work.

Cf. Sophia Germanidou, “Attitudes of Early Patristic Writers Toward Technology in the Sphere of Byzantium,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 59, no. 1–4 (2014): 41–53. Germanidou concludes, “Although we may discern ambiguity, in general, in the Christian approach to handiwork and crafts, relating to the ‘sophistication’ of the elite class of theologians, the holy Fathers nevertheless don’t miss a chance to praise technical activities. The Fathers persuaded Christians to craftmanship, and eventually the patristic literature couldn’t avoid reflecting this tendency, even if it, on theoretical and philosophical grounds represented ethics of diminishing value” (46, emphasis mine). For fuller discussion of the historical topics explored in this essay, see Cary J. Nederman, “Practical and Productive Knowledge in the Twelfth Century: Extending the Aristotelian Paradigm, c. 1120-c. 1160,” Parergon 31, no. 1 (2014): 27–45; C. Lis, “Perceptions of Work in Classical Antiquity,” in The Idea of Work in Europe from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. J. Ehmer and C. Lis (Surrey: Burlington, 2009); M. Ludlow, “Science and Theology in Gregory of Nyssa’s De Anime et Resurrectione: Astronomy and Automata,” Journal of Theological Studies 60, no. 2 (2009): 467–89; J. P. Oleson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); B. Shaw, Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). 1

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In short, the combination of Bavinck’s organicism and theological anthropology serves as a modern insight indexed to Hugh’s medieval appreciation of similar concerns. In Hugh and the tradition which gave rise to his innovations, and in Bavinck during the intensification of modernity, we encounter theologians endeavoring to account for the whole of humanity (across social and vocational strata) and of the person (the body as well as the mind) as providentially provided and ordered sources and contexts of wisdom. Thus, the following study relates Bavinck’s theological commitments to a deep, varied Christian tradition of which he may or may not have been aware in specific terms, rather than documents his use of that tradition. Bavinck’s theology, particularly regarding catholicity, anthropology, and revelation in an overall “organic” conception— all explored to great effect in recent scholarship—suggests such a relationship. Regarding catholicity, Bavinck’s theology points fruitfully away from thin definitions which extend only to visible or invisible oneness or unity, antiquity, or tradition as such. For Bavinck, catholicity includes these things but reaches far more deeply. For him, the archetypal unity in diversity of the eternal, Triune God is imaged and represented in the panoply of unities-in-diversities in creation. The variety and differentiation within creation is thus not a mere assemblage of disparate parts but an organic whole. Yet this is more than a description of how things are related; it serves as a disposition for inquiry. Among other things, catholicity describes that mode of investigation and reflection which accounts relentlessly for this organic unity in diversity, an organic oneness that is ultimately anchored in the Triune God and, with respect to the works of God, in the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ in relation to the eschatological purpose for all created things.2 Thus while antiquity, universality, the uses of historical texts and figures, and the consensus patrum are important features of catholicity as a mode of theology and church practice, they are not synonymous with catholicity. They are better appreciated as descriptive of and based upon the reality of catholicity and which reflect the underlying theological (and Christological) reality to which they belong. This is also (and especially) true anthropologically within creation, for not only the individual human person but all of humanity itself is an organic whole. Importantly for Bavinck, this organic unity has an ethical character, a principle which serves as the metaphysical infrastructure for his Reformed federal commitments regarding original sin, its transmission, and related concerns.3 Bavinck’s understanding of “catholic” includes not only the unified wholeness of the Church, inclusive of the faithful from all times and places, but also “embraces the whole of human experience”—an expression which we will do well to keep before us throughout our study. With respect to his use of historic and contemporary sources, Bavinck scholars have demonstrated that it is his organic view of reality which allows him to use thinkers across history, Christian and pagan—including those whose teaching would appear to be in tension—as potential resources for theology.4

See Brian G. Mattson, Restored to our Destiny: Eschatology and the Image of God in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 3 Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Egocentricity, Organism, and Metaphysics: Sin and Renewal in Bavinck’s Ethics,” Studies in Christian Ethics 34, no. 2 (2021): 223–40. 4 For these and other remarks by Bavinck on catholicity, see “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” trans. John Bolt, Calvin Theological Journal 27, no. 2 (1992): 220–51. On these themes in Bavinck, see James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Toward a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: T&T Clark, 2012); Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism: On Catholicity, Consciousness and Theological Epistemology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 70, no. 3 (2017): 310–32; and the 2

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Among the many fascinating elements in Bavinck’s writings on education and pedagogy, his concept of revelation is also especially relevant to our question. These publications often begin with or at least include sweeping, panoramic statements about the nature of knowledge, revelation, and the process of human maturation in relationship. Bavinck’s determination to pursue a philosophy of revelation reflects his conviction that nature, culture, and all other areas of human knowledge are invariably responses to general revelation.5 The path of knowing, therefore, is the path of reality on which we discover that revelation discloses the true ratio of all that is. But the path of knowing does not begin with the thinking of the I but with the I who thinks. It is “pre-cognitive,” beginning with the phenomenon of self-consciousness, inasmuch as the whole, organic, embodied person and not merely the intellect is involved in the encounter with the self-revealing God. Here Bavinck ties anthropology and the philosophy of revelation closely together.6 These features of Bavinck’s organic vision prompt the kinds of questions Prikker’s drawing provokes and with which the Christian tradition has long wrestled, including— and maybe especially—the neo-Calvinists. They are questions forced by any sustained reflection on the relationship between humanity (or the individual human person) and reality, especially a philosophy of history. Acted upon by nature and acting upon nature, the human being is invariably related to his environment—and this porosity of the self is by divine design. This conviction is neo-Calvinist, yet it is also deeply traditional, not least in how it involves us in reflections on the cosmos, including to what degree it is mechanical, organic, personal, and so on. The relatedness of all things in such a vision prompts a goal, a telos, namely, the fruitful alignment of one’s purpose with that of all created things, even as it also clarifies the meaningfulness of one’s life and vocation within creation.

II. HUGH OF ST. VICTOR AND THE ARTES MECHANICAE Locating Bavinck in this ancient and medieval discussion requires that we recall the notorious Greek disdain for physical labor so familiar to students of ancient philosophy, especially in its influential Aristotelian form. On this complex but influential view, the inherently demeaning “banausic” or “illiberal” arts belonged to those on the lower end of the work hierarchy who worked with their hands. They are set in contrast to those on the top of the hierarchy whose hands-free work provided opportunity and leisure for the pursuit of wisdom and statecraft. In the opening discussion of his Metaphysics, Aristotle distinguished production and the productive sciences (his poesis) from theoretical knowledge in that the former concerns the relatively inferior matters pertaining to the

literature cited. For all the Bavinck topics explored in this essay, see the relevant material in Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham: Lexham Academic, 2023). 5 Brock and Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism,” 320 n. 31. 6 Much more should be said that bears on this highly relevant theme in Bavinck. This suggests the special importance of Bavinck’s Philosophy of Revelation: A New Annotated Edition, ed. Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2018). See Brock and Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism”; Cory C. Brock, Orthodox Yet Modern: Herman Bavinck’s Use of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2020).

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individual, whereas the latter treats general and universal causes and principles.7 This perspective would hold with relative stability over the course of the first millennium but would undergo radical reconfiguration and reconsideration with the rise of the universities and the scholastics, changes in culture and technology, and curricular revisions in the monasteries. This review reached a tentative resolution in the innovative work of Hugh of St. Victor, whose theory of the artes mechanicae shaped the medieval curriculum for generations. Hugh did not invent the mechanical arts but devoted great attention to them.8 By locating them within the ultimate concerns of metaphysics, his Didascalicon has been called the finest example of the twelfth-century “meta-scientific statement.”9 Anya Burgon’s recent study is especially helpful in explaining the nature of Hugh’s contribution.10 His interest was not strictly scientific but prudential: Hugh’s aim was nothing less than to elucidate how the liberal arts aid in the discovery of divine wisdom in Scripture.11 In fact, Grover Zinn identifies salvation history as the “theological key” to Hugh’s work. Zinn’s reading is based on Hugh’s De scripturis, which as a genre might appear at first to be more conducive to such a judgment than the curricular and pedagogical concerns at work in Didascalicon. For his part Paul Rorem agrees with Zinn.12 This suggests that the world of Holy Scripture is not far removed from Hugh’s mind as he writes Didascalicon. To that end, Hugh divides philosophy into four parts: theoretical (the speculative, including the theology, physics, and mathematics of the quadrivium), practical (the active, containing ethics, politics, and economics), logical (the linguistic, consisting of the verbal arts of the trivium: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric), and mechanical (“adulterate,” concerned with labor). It is in this last part, the mechanical, where Hugh contributes his metaphysical and curricular innovation. The mechanical arts, he explains, consist of seven arts: fabric making, armament and building, commerce, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and theatrics. They are categorical of concerns distinguishable from those in the liberal arts. In fact, reduced to its basic concern, his overall model regards philosophy as made up of only two kinds of arts, liberal and mechanical. Hugh’s innovation consists in his thoroughgoing insistence that these two kinds of arts are related to one another in the course of personal formation: the liberal arts “restore in us the likeness of the divine image,” and the mechanical arts “take thought for the necessity of this life.”13 The fifth chapter of Didascalicon focuses attention on the arts, their origins, categories, and functions and provides an anthropological framework for them. Humanity (human

Nederman, “Practical and Productive Knowledge in the Twelfth Century,” 31. I will refer to Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon, trans. Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). For the Latin, I use Didascalicon: De Studio Legendi, ed. Charles Henry Buttimer (Washington, DC, 1939). 9 Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter (eds.), Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 368; noted by Anya Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts and Poiesis in the Philosophy and Literature of the Twelfth-Century Schools” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2018), 21. 10 Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts.” Given the value of her focus to our interests, I will lean on Burgon’s work often in what follows. 11 Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 21. 12 See Grover A. Zinn, “Hugh of St. Victor’s ‘De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris’ as an Accessus Treatise for the Study of the Bible,” Traditio 52 (1997): 134; and Paul Rorem, Hugh of Saint Victor (Oxford University Press, 2009), 21. However, one should note (with Rorem) that some of the material in Didascalicon repeats material from the earlier De scripturis and borrows from other sources such as Isidore of Seville. 13 Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 21–2. 7 8

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nature) is in view according to distinct modes or phases: as created good, and as fallen and suffering corruption, needing repair or restoration.14 The “need for repair,” which is either theological (“to restore in us the likeness of the divine image”) or prompted by the present conditions of life in this world (“take thought for the necessity of this life”), functions deeply in Hugh’s model. It accounts for the theoretical and curricular shape of certain human activities which he regards as beneficial over against the largely pejorative classical (Aristotelian) tradition. The character of Hugh’s view comes through in how the quotidian functions in his approach. When referring to fabric making, for example, Hugh does not simply mention the craft as such. Instead, he lists kinds of handwork such as sewing, weaving, twisting by hand, and needling; mentions materials made of flax or fleece or sorts of hide; lists coverings, drapery, blankets, saddles, napkins, strings, and nets; things made from straw, and so on. They are the words of a man who is personally, intimately familiar with daily life in the real world of craftsmen and seamstresses in the markets and not only the philosophers and politicians of the academy. His teaching only proves more interesting when set in context. Burgon demonstrates the rich relationship of Hugh’s model to antecedent metaphysics and philosophy. Interest in the 1960s and 1970s in Hugh’s teaching on the mechanical arts was often limited to recognizing the value of his innovation for funding medieval technological revolution. His contribution to the history of technology is real, but Burgon is more intrigued by Hugh’s vision of the mechanical arts not as a part of but as an image for philosophy as a whole. She recognizes in Hugh a significance for the mechanical arts that “transcends and encompasses his ‘official’ categories of ‘mechanical’ and ‘liberal’. Their hands-on procedures—or ‘taking thought for necessity’—serve,” she demonstrates, “as illustrations for the mission of ‘recovering the divine likeness’, which is elsewhere said to be a wholly separate and superior project.”15 These practices, instruments, and materials do not matter to Hugh simply because of their “real-life” character, but as means of uncovering a poetic (poesis) vision of learning where “necessity” is, at heart, a “making sense” of nature. So far from being merely utilitarian in import, they belong to his philosophical psychology as well as function as “part” of philosophy.16

III. ELOQUENCE WED TO WISDOM This is intimated in Hugh’s mythological introduction of the mechanical arts: he introduces them as “handmaids” in the marriage of wisdom (Philology) and eloquence (Mercury). In the medieval schoolmen, Mercury was the Roman god of eloquence and poetry who served as the patron of the mechanical arts. Mercury received a dowry of seven handmaids from Philology, “for every human activity is servant to eloquence wed to wisdom.”17 This mythological framing of the mechanical arts recalls their source in a commentary by John Scotus Eriugena on a pagan work by Martianus Capella, “The Marriage of Philology and Mercury” (De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii). To this union of Philology and Mercury, Eriugena added, in his commentary, the dowry of the artes

Didascalicon 1.5; Taylor, Didascalicon, 51–2. Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 23. Emphases mine. 16 Ibid., 23. 17 Didascalicon 2.20; Taylor, Didascalicon, 75. 14 15

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mechanicae. In Hugh, these figures were personifications of an educational goal of uniting “wisdom” and “eloquence,” as per “Tully’s” (Cicero’s) De Inventione. In Cicero, who was Capella’s own source, wisdom is native to man, but eloquence is needed for wisdom to be cultivated. Eloquence is not native to a person but “an art, a study, a skill” which renders wisdom effective and gives it voice. By way of eloquence, one rises above mere necessity and cultivates the soul.18 Cicero’s union was discussed by several notable Christian authors in late antiquity including Augustine, who investigates it at length in the fourth book of his De Doctrina Christiana. By the time of Capella it had become commonplace in and outside Christian contexts. For Capella, the marriage contract involves Philology’s promotion from mortality to immortality. When Philology ascends to the gods and enters the wedding ceremony, her mother, Phronesis, asks Mercury to present Philology with his gifts. Mercury’s gifts are the seven ancillae who will act as Philology’s servants, and these are the seven liberal arts: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and harmony. Thus, the ancient myth is deployed to commend a Neoplatonic paideic lesson, namely, that the soul’s immortality, including the recovery or cultivation of nascent wisdom, requires the “servitude” of these disciplines as a “path of salvation.”19 In the ninth century the Carolingians Eriugena and Remigius of Auxerre supplied what Capella failed to include: Philology’s gift to Mercury. For Eriugena, “after Mercury has given the seven liberal arts, the maiden will then give the seven mechanical arts.”20 Whereas the liberal arts arise from within, internally, the mechanical arts are their “acquired” counterparts which require engagement with and perception of the world around us. The mechanical arts are learned skills that advance and improve what we are or have by nature. Indeed, in Eriugena we find again that eloquence is required for wisdom’s cultivation: in Neoplatonic terms, they are necessary to “help realise the soul’s potential for the liberal arts.”21 In light of David Summers’ work on the special role of excogitatio in Eriugena’s presentation, Burgon also suggests that Eriugena’s introduction of excogitatio (“imitatio quadam vel excogitatione humana fiunt”) raises the possibility that the mechanical arts were introduced to reflect the “human devising” that (skillfully acquired) eloquence brings to (natural) wisdom.22 Through Cicero, Martianus Capella, and Carolignians, this in turn commends to Hugh the importance of poiesis to eloquence—the “making” in the ancient world which designated a wide range of activities now considered distinct. In particular, verbal invention was included alongside physical acts of making, and “poetry” is the necessary imitation and engaged “remaking” of the world’s materials into the shape of the mind. From Cicero to the days of Hugh, then, wisdom’s cultivation requires the constant interplay of forming and being formed in relation to both the immediate environment to which one belongs and the higher reality to which one is ordered.23

Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 25–7. Ibid., 27–31. 20 Iohannis Scotti: Annotationes in Marcianum, 79, 12, ed. Cora Lutz (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 74; translation by Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 31. 21 Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 33. 22 David Summers, The Judgement of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 244; Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 34. 23 Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 36; cf. 36–48, 123–6. 18 19

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It is at least likely, therefore, that when Hugh introduces the mechanical arts as the “seven handmaids which Mercury received in dowry from Philology,” he draws from and participates in this tradition of connecting the material world of workmanship with the metaphysical and spiritual world in terms of the soul’s formation. Furthermore, when Hugh maps the mechanical arts onto the liberal arts and says the two enjoy an analogy or similitudo (likeness), he demonstrates their fit with the structure of the higher disciplines.24 It should be remembered that Hugh’s discussion of the mechanical arts in Book One of the Didascalicon includes the vision of the tria opera of God (who creates that which was not), nature (which brings forth what was hidden in creation), and man (who puts together otherwise disjointed things) which together make up the cosmos, within with God proves to be the grand Artificer since the human craftsman works by imitation.25 This is an early indicator in Hugh’s discussion of the mechanical arts that they are located within—and arise from—a metaphysic in which their “poetic” role serves to relate the human to the divine by way of imitation.26 Hugh explains, “These arts are called mechanical, that is adulterate, because their concern is with the artificer’s product, which borrows its form from nature.”27 While much more of importance could (and perhaps should) be said, here we arrive summarily at our chief interest in Hugh’s innovative and influential vision for the mechanical arts and also at the areas of conspicuous material overlap with Bavinck’s theological project: the work of the craftsman or artificer (artifex) stands for all human work, opus humanum, and all human labor is domesticated under the figure of the mechanical artist, including that of the philosopher. “This hierarchy reminds the reader of the necessitous origins of his ‘liberal’ art, that he is just another postlapsarian craftsman.”28 What is more, Hugh is persuaded that the mechanical arts are located within the union of wisdom and eloquence. They are the seven handmaids set opposite the seven liberal arts. Yet they are not related to the liberal arts metaphorically but revelationally: the mechanical arts reveal the processes of the liberal arts. The soul carries out its “mechanical” work by imitating and internalizing the ways of nature, using its received impressions. It is not passive like a wall but like metal receives the image impressed upon it. The weaver’s skill reveals the process of wisdom’s cultivation. Education is the poetic (poiesis) “making” of knowledge not by the avoidance of nature but by its attentive engagement—the “world making” that realizes that we were made “of a higher order” than the animals and can live rationally, above the level of nature and mere necessity.29 Bavinck would of course take this further, specifying that we were made not simply for a higher order but for eschatological life and fellowship with God. In light of this end in which the harmony of all things will be in perfect service to the divine glory, sin unravels what the Artificer has woven together. Drawing from Plato’s Timaeus, Hugh understood the imagery of craft and “making” as the soul’s process of putting back together the parts of

Ibid., 37. Didascalicon, 1.9; Taylor, Didascalicon, 55; Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 44. 26 The proximate intellectual tradition for Hugh’s perspective here is Neoplatonism. For Hugh’s important relationship to the Aristotelian tradition on these matters, see Nederman, “Practical and Productive Knowledge in the Twelfth Century.” 27 Didascalicon 2.20, Buttimer, p. 39; Taylor, Didascalicon, 75; Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 38 n. 56. 28 Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 45. 29 These are Hugh’s images: Didascalicon 1.1; Taylor, Didascalicon, 46; Burgon, “The Mechanical Arts,” 43. 24 25

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nature of which the soul is made, since they have become disjointed and dissembled.30 Bavinck sees sin as the great disjointing power, pulling apart the ordering of reality which God has fashioned. He thus sees redemptive grace as the reordering of the self in relation to the reordering of all things in Christ.

IV. THE TURN AWAY FROM THE METAPHYSICS OF THE ARTES MECHANICAE, AND BACK AGAIN It would be natural to wonder where the story of education went after Hugh. We learn something of how Bavinck viewed the matter in how he tells the story of the history of education in his essay on classical education. Bavinck describes the transition from ancient to modern education in Bacon and Descartes as a move toward the useful on modern terms, allegedly “from books to reality, from words to deeds, from verbalism to realism.”31 At work in this transition, he explains, was a “major revolution in the thinking and striving of the people of Europe” as the apostles, prophets, church fathers, and scholastics of the past were no longer seen as a resource for wisdom but must be “outpaced and surpassed” by forward-looking moderns.32 Natural science thus emerged with the new commitment to what Bavinck calls a “mechanical, causal conception of nature that put aside all metaphysics and teleology and sought to explain all phenomena from action and reaction and finally from the all-controlling law of gravity.” He continues, “[M]aterialism tried to understand man himself as a machine and expanded its dominance ever further, until a reaction occurred toward the end of the previous century and the dynamic worldview again found acceptance with many scholars.”33 From these remarks at least the following seems clear: Bavinck recognizes the metaphysical infrastructure in the older model of education, recognizes too the rejection of that metaphysic in the turn toward the natural sciences and the (necessarily) reconceived “mechanical,” and notes anti-metaphysical models for science and labor invariably provoke a reactionary interest in recovering “the dynamic worldview.” Indeed, Bavinck notes that the modern increase of interest in educating people for the skilled labor class is driven by the lingering assumptions of that older, more enchanted model. Modern pedagogical theorists such as Christoph Semler saw such labor as important for the general good of society and attendant to the practical needs of “real life” in the new world, yet this skilled labor class was still seen as providing the “foundation” for the other classes of church and state.34 How might Bavinck consider pedagogical and educational models which seek to reunite the mechanical arts with a (Reformed and thus corrective) metaphysic? Bavinck’s own long interest in matters of education and pedagogy reflects questions that were at the heart of Hugh’s innovative reconfiguration of the mechanical arts. This includes the anthropological focus. A century ago, J. Brederveld cast Bavinck’s pedagogy as the culminating stage of a three-stage development in his interests. As a student, Bavinck Taylor, Didascalicon, 177–80. Herman Bavinck, “Classical Education,” in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 232. 32 Ibid., 232. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 233. Bavinck refers to Christoph Semler’s 1705 work, Nützliche Vorschläge von Auffrichtung einer mathematischen Handwerk-Schule. 30 31

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focused on the history of dogma and as a professor produced his principal dogmatic output, the Reformed Dogmatics. In due course he turned to philosophical and ethical problems before, in the third and last stage according to Brederveld, Bavinck turned to pedagogy. This “inner development” in Bavinck is of more than psychological interest to Brederveld: it provides, he thinks, the scheme according to which one may appreciate the developmental growth in Bavinck of “that fundamental trait . . . which can be best described as his concern for man, and which causes him to seek the field of study most congenial to this concern.” Humanity in ideal terms, man’s struggle for all that he has been created to long for, is, according to Brederveld, the string along which the glistening beads of Bavinck’s remarkable career should be strung.35 In a further point of similarity with Hugh, Bavinck, in his Paedagogische Beginselen, grounds the need for education in a developmental telos (the need to move from infant helplessness to mature adulthood), explains the human’s distinction from plant and animal development along the lines of the internal rather than merely external capacity for such growth, and emphasizes the need for cultivating the disposition for that development under guidance or mentorship. This need for mentorship distinguishes the person from the plant, which develops via a natural process. This latter point highlights something specific to humanity as an organic whole: body-care is necessary but insufficient, and soul-care (education) is necessary for the moral and rational nature of man. For Bavinck “[t]he need of education, then, roots in our human nature.”36 Properly explained, one could say that, in terms of Bavinck’s theology of reality and of the human person, the form, sources, and context of that education also root in our human nature. Importantly, there were attempts to recover the mechanical arts in Bavinck’s day, but they tended to reflect the thinness of the modern naturalistic perspective on labor rather than the place of craft and skill in a theological and metaphysical account of the human person and formation in wisdom. In his essay on classical education, Bavinck narrates the tensions and developments in his time between the trade or vocational schools designed for the good of society and the educational institutions formed for spiritual and intellectual training of the citizenry. A contemporary example was Kerschensteiner’s “work school,” a model Bavinck knew well. In his Paedagogische Beginselen Bavinck expresses appreciation for Kerschensteiner’s efforts. But Bavinck also explains that the self-activity he is concerned to commend is more than manual activity. One can safely conclude Bavinck’s preferred model at least includes such activity, however, since Bavinck expands the scope of this self-activity to include all the faculties and forms of life belonging to the person: thinking, willing, judging, feeling, memory, and so on.37 Bavinck does not deny the import of training for practical usefulness, therefore, but the reader cannot help but hear in his faint praise that he is unimpressed with the modern efforts to relate the two “kinds” of labor educationally and generally. He is at least not persuaded that the effort has reached its satisfactory resolution. The theological rationale for his perspective would appear to arise from his own rich understanding of the organic relationship of reality and particularly of humanity (including the harmonious relationship of distinguishable human faculties). That understanding J. Brederveld, Christian Education: A Summary and Critical Discussion of Bavinck’s Pedagogical Principles, trans. “two members of the Faculty of Calvin College” (Grand Rapids: Smitter Book Company, 1928), 9–10. 36 Ibid., 18. 37 Cornelius Jaarsma, The Educational Philosophy of Herman Bavinck: A Textbook in Education (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1935), 154–6. 35

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requires more than merely recognizing the practical value of the skilled-worker “part” of humanity (distinct, for the sake of description, from the “white collar” world of labor) but also pressures the Christian to see it as providentially, ordinarily, and perhaps even necessarily ordered for the multifaceted good of the organic whole of humanity. Given the medieval conviction that the craftsman’s skill is refined to the extent it faithfully imitates the example set in how creation “works,” Bavinck’s grounding of the scholastic principle that “like is known by like” in his organic ontology also suggests an interesting overlap of concern with the mechanical arts tradition.38

V. CONCLUDING REMARKS A more conventional examination of our topic would involve a tabulation and analysis of Bavinck’s knowledge of the historical figures and ideas explored earlier, especially Hugh of St. Victor. I have not carried out such an examination, and I have not discovered instances of Bavinck’s explicit interaction with Hugh along these lines. That study would be valuable, as would more general studies of Bavinck’s use(s) of texts and ideas across the Christian tradition. I have sought instead to explore a facet of Bavinck’s thought in a way that deploys Bavinck’s own theology of creation, the human person, and catholicity, which moves past interest in identifying putative sources to the relationship—historically, theologically, and otherwise—of parts to the organic whole. This includes the Hugh and Bavinck “parts” of what proves to be a long-standing and widespread discourse, in relationship to which the real nature and significance of the “parts” is disclosed, however much or little one might be self-consciously aware of the other. Returning to our opening question, could, then, Prikker’s The Sower serve not only as practically useful for the maintenance of modern society but also as a source of wisdom, one which even the professional theologian and philosopher needs to grow in wisdom? Is there a fruitful way to account educationally for the interplay of the human person as forming the world while being formed by it, one which relates one to the other by relating both to the reason for all things? Both Hugh and Bavinck appear to answer these questions in the affirmative inasmuch as they locate the processes of creation and providence and the skilled labor of the craftsman within rather than outside the formation of the moral, communal self in wisdom. They do within different metaphysical frameworks (Hugh’s is largely Neoplatonic, whereas Bavinck’s represents a Reformed reconfiguration of metaphysics along stricter Creator/creature lines) and with at least distinguishable epistemologies. But on Bavinck’s terms, they are parts of the organic diverse unity and unified diversity of what God is doing in the story of his Church and of humanity as a whole, so that the best of each theologian’s contributions may be related fruitfully to the other’s. Rather than relating Hugh and Bavinck in before-and-after terms, then, Bavinck’s theology suggests the propriety of seeing Bavinck’s own thinking about God, creation, reality, the human person, and formation as a distinct overlay on Hugh’s, itself an overlay on what had come before. Both participate in a conversation larger than themselves, and neither has provided the last word—for in the unity in diversity that is the Church as organic whole, no individual could. We can be thankful that the surge of current interest in recovering a philosophy and theology of craft has moved past exclusive interest in its place in the history of technology

38

See the remarks by Brock and Sutanto in “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism,” 328.

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or the superficial recognition that handwork is practical, useful, and valuable.39 Here neo-Calvinism has something to offer, particularly in its Reformed theological reconfiguration of the revelatory metaphysics back of creation, providence, and the human condition. But its contribution will likely be the richest and most fruitful if, in the humility that is becoming of such a perspective, it is related to the far longer story of the human (and especially Christian) negotiation of the sources and contexts of wisdom present in the depth and scope of created reality. If it is consistent with Bavinck’s vision for creation, anthropology, and catholicity, such a task will not content itself with the identification of preceding roots—whether authors, texts, or constructed “trajectories”—for modern ideas (or the lack thereof). It will instead inquire as to the contributions various voices across history make to what is in fact a common, fundamental, even timeless conversation about our prudential, formative relationship to all things outside of us—indeed, all things for which all that is, is.

For a scholarly and institutional example, see, respectfully, Jeremy H. Kidwell, The Theology of Craft and the Craft of Work: From Tabernacle to Eucharist (New York: Routledge, 2016), and Greystone Theological Institute’s Mechanical Arts Program (https://www​.greystoneinstitute​.org​/mechanical​-arts​-program​-map). 39

Chapter 24

Neo-Calvinism and Reformed Theology RICHARD J. MOUW

I. INTRODUCTION During the years 1879–80 Abraham Kuyper wrote a series of short pieces in his newspaper De Heraut, where he defended some fine points relating to the Reformed doctrine of election. Marvin Kamps, who translated these pieces into English, reports that some of Kuyper’s friends had tried to discourage him from engaging in polemics about these oftdebated aspects of the doctrines of predestination and election. They thought it unwise for him to speak out at that point on what are seen as some of the more controversial issues in Calvinist theology. Kuyper had much going on in leading his party in Parliament while also actively preparing for the 1880 opening of the Vrije Universiteit, of which he was the founder, and his friends were convinced that he needed to build broad support for what he wanted to accomplish in Dutch society. This was not a time, they were convinced, to stir up controversies by arguing for some of the difficult points of Calvinist doctrine. But Kuyper persisted. To hold back from addressing theological issues that he was concerned with would run the risk of “cheapen[ing] the honor of the love and mercy of the Lord our God.”1 It is important to understand why Kuyper chided his advisers in this manner. They were assuming that arguing about predestination and the like was a distraction from his need to exercise public leadership. For Kuyper, though, there was a clear connection between the two areas of concern, and the failure to acknowledge the connection was to “cheapen” the divine “honor.” It can be tempting for us to downplay the connection in our own time as well, especially because staying away from Calvinist specifics can help our conversations with non-Reformed Christians to go better these days. Since translations as well as original English language studies of neo-Calvinist writings have been appearing at a rapid rate in this century, some Christians of non-Reformed persuasion are convinced that key neo-Calvinist ideas—common grace, sphere sovereignty, principled pluralism—are compatible with other theological perspectives. This results in Pentecostals embracing the

Marvin Kamps, translator’s introduction to Abraham Kuyper, Particular Grace: A Defense of God’s Sovereignty in Salvation (Grandville: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2001), ix. 1

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doctrine of common grace and Catholics adopting sphere sovereignty as a good way of fleshing out the classic Catholic principle of Subsidiarity. Most striking in this regard is the theologian J. Richard Middleton, who manages a blog site with the title “Reflections of a Kuyperian Wesleyan.”2 Further on we will suggest that this phenomenon should be welcomed by neo-Calvinists while also motivating us to make serious efforts to preserve the awareness of how Kuyper and Bavinck saw neo-Calvinism as firmly grounded in Reformed theology. For now, though, we must see how Kuyper’s personal effort to introduce his neo-Calvinist vision to North America was misunderstood by people who actually loved Reformed theology but who did not grasp Kuyper’s call for an ambitious program of cultural renewal.

II. KUYPER AT PRINCETON When Kuyper accepted the invitation from his friends at Princeton Theological Seminary to deliver the 1898 Stone Lectures, he clearly saw this visit as an opportunity to inspire his Presbyterian audience to initiate a “new offensive” that would demonstrate the genius of Calvinism for renewal in the broad reaches of North American culture. However, as the Dutch historian George Harinck has observed, there was a considerable disconnect between Kuyper and those who attended his lectures. The “Old School” Presbyterian theology that had held sway at Princeton for the previous five decades featured a Calvinist orthodoxy that focused largely on, as Harinck put it, “the domains of church and theology.”3 This brand of Calvinism had been under attack from those who were influenced by the growing liberalism both in the church and among theologians, with the result that the folks at Princeton were feeling increasingly marginalized in the larger church and seminary world. What they heard in Kuyper’s lectures were words of encouragement to keep up the defense of orthodoxy, but they filtered out his urging them to go on the offensive in an active cultural engagement. Kuyper was not clueless about the struggles that his Princeton friends were experiencing in their church and seminary life. He had faced similar battles of his own recently in the national Reformed denomination in the Netherlands where he had led a minority movement, the Doleantie (the “grieving ones”), who had actively lamented the growth of liberalism. This group had eventually split from the larger church body to establish a new denomination, under Kuyper’s leadership Kuyper had found a way to use the Dutch ecclesiastical struggles to his advantage. Not only had he come out of that conflict as the leader of a new and vigorous church movement, but he also had founded the Vrije Universiteit in the 1880s. During this period he had also managed to strengthen his political influence in the Dutch Parliament to the point that he would be returning home to serve a term as his country’s prime minister. A key factor in the disconnect was the likelihood that the Princeton people were not accustomed to a theologian who could not only call for a bold cultural initiative but could also provide the leadership for making it happen. In addition to his obvious skills in navigating controversies in the church and in the theological guilds, Kuyper was very much a public leader. His leadership roles in the larger society meant that he had several

https://jrichardmiddleton​.com​/2019​/06​/12​/reflections​-of​-a​-kuyperian​-wesleyan/. George Harinck, “A Triumphal Procession?,” in Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of His Life and Work, VU Studies on Protestant History 3, ed. Cornelis van der Kooi and Jan de Bruijn (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1999), 276. 2 3

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platforms from which to exert his influence: the newspaper that he had founded, his university, and his role in the parliament. Wherever in Dutch life he took up a cause, he was a formidable opponent. There was no one quite like him in the nineteenth-century “Old School” Presbyterianism. Kuyper’s lectures covered territory that the Princeton theologians were not ready to explore with confidence. They had made some serious effort in taking on some topics relating to religion and science, but the arts and politics would have been a stretch. They were familiar with some of Kuyper’s essays on traditional Reformed theological topics and they trusted him as a champion of Calvinist orthodoxy. So when Kuyper said—meaning to spur them on to a cultural initiative—that the task of Calvinism in their time was “not to restore its worn-out form” but rather to apply the basic principles of Calvinism in a way that meets “the requirements of our own century,”4 they were inclined to take him as advising them to be more creative in their own pressing theological battles. Of course, even if they misunderstood Kuyper’s intentions, we can be grateful that they took heart from his words for their important theological engagement. After all, Kuyper was committed to a strong defense of Calvinist orthodoxy. But given what he hoped to accomplish at Princeton, George Harinck’s verdict about Kuyper’s visit is correct: the Dutchman’s message about initiating a bold cultural initiative “did not have any impact in the Presbyterian world at all.”5

III. AFTER A HALF-CENTURY Kuyper’s Stone Lectures were published in book form, which means that what he said at Princeton would be accessible if a time should come when North American Calvinists were ready to pay more careful attention to what Kuyper had meant to convey. For several decades, though, existing copies of Lectures on Calvinism mainly sat on bookshelves in the small Dutch Calvinist communities in the Midwest. Then in the years following the Second World War Kuyper’s vision began to make its mark in North America. At first his ideas took hold without being connected to his name. In his 1947 book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism the evangelical theologian Carl Henry chastised evangelicals for their long-standing anti-intellectualism and insensitivity to important cultural concerns.6 Evangelical colleges, campus ministries, and publishers took up Henry’s challenge, emphasizing Christ’s lordship over the life of the mind and the need for cultivating a biblical worldview. Although Kuyper’s influence was privately acknowledged he was not widely discussed. Things developed differently in Canada during this time, where a sizable number of Dutch immigrants arrived after the war. Many of them were familiar with Kuyper’s thought and were eager to apply neo-Calvinist ideas to the new cultural opportunities that they experienced in Canadian life. In 1967 the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship (AACS) was established in Toronto to promote neo-Calvinist ideas. The AACS quickly founded the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS), which soon became accredited as a graduate school. The AACS also sponsored programs and activities that reached

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1931), 41. Harinck, “A Triumphal Procession,” 276. 6 Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947). 4 5

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beyond the academy: family conferences, lecture series, study groups, popular books, and articles. All of this was carried on with enthusiasm. There was talk, for example, of “a twentieth-century reformation,” featuring projected scenarios where major Canadian institutions were “radically transformed” in accordance with neo-Calvinist principles.7 The Canadian neo-Calvinists were closely associated with the Christian Reformed Church, and the rhetoric employed by the AACS soon began to irritate some of the older denomination leaders—to the point that the tensions led to public criticisms of the Canadian neo-Calvinists. At that point the Calvin College philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff stepped into the fray with an article published in a Reformed magazine where he set forth a typology of different “minds” within the conservative Dutch Calvinist community in North America.8 He employed three labels: the “Doctrinalist,”, the “Pietist,” and the “Kuyperian.” The Doctrinalists, Wolterstorff said, emphasize a body of theological truth claims to which we must give our intellectual assent. For the Pietists, it is essential to cultivate certain godly experiences that nurture important subjective dispositions. And for the Kuyperians, he argued, the Bible gives us our cultural marching orders, instructing us in the ways of discipleship in the collective patterns of life in the larger human community—a pattern of activism that Wolterstorff would advocate in his subsequent writings as “world-formative Christianity.”9 Wolterstorff’s article was widely read and was helpful in calming the waters in the CRC community. While he criticized some of the rhetorical excesses of the AACS members, he was able to show that they were giving expression to a legitimate Calvinist voice in the broad Reformed community. The strength of Woterstorff’s typology was that it helped the CRC community see that disputes among the three perspectives were to be expected and that each group was concerned to preserve something important for the health of the Reformed faith. We can rightly ask, though, whether the types can legitimately be thought of as representing different “minds,” an image that suggests that the differences go deeper than they really are. The idea of different “minds” certainly makes it difficult to know what to do with Kuyper and Bavinck’s understanding of robust Reformed Christianity. Given the fact that Kuyper wrote strong defenses of Calvinist doctrine and that Herman Bavinck authored his multivolume Reformed Dogmatics, it is difficult to exclude them from the Doctrinalist camp. And Kuyper’s 700 pages of meditations on the believer’s relationship with the Lord in To Be Near Unto God certainly establish Kuyper’s Pietist credentials. Since the neo-Calvinism of Kuyper and Bavinck was committed to the integration of the three “minds” we will look now at how their vision of cultural renewal drew in significant ways on Reformed theology and piety.

IV. THEOLOGICAL THEMES Like all Reformed Christians, neo-Calvinists take divine sovereignty as their starting point. The teachings associated with what are popularly known as the “TULIP” doctrines, for

Cf. the five essays in John Olthuis et al., Out of Concern for the Church (Toronto: Wedge Publishing, 1970). Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The AACS in the CRC,” Reformed Journal, December 1974, 9–16. 9 Cf. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1983). 7 8

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example, basically summarize God’s sovereign role in the salvation of individual human beings: fallen individuals are totally incapable of initiating or even contributing anything decisive to the redemptive transaction; to become a beneficiary of salvific grace is to be chosen solely by divine discretion; God accomplishes all that he intends to in his redemptive initiatives; nor can God’s redemptive grip on an individual life be broken by any created force. In short, God maintains sovereign control over the salvific process. While Kuyper and Bavinck firmly endorsed this soteriological perspective, they insisted on a clear understanding of what God elects individuals for: incorporating them into a covenant community that is empowered by grace to show forth God’s sovereign rule over all spheres of created life. A second prominent theological factor is the reality of human sin. Even the very brief comments just made about divine sovereignty could not avoid a reference to human depravity and rightly so, since it is impossible to devote much attention to Reformed soteriology without noting the Calvinist focus on the ravages of sin in the human condition. As we will see shortly, Kuyper focused much on how best to understand the noetic effects of sin in the human condition. Before that, though, we need to look at a third theological topic: the idea of law. Reformed theology has insisted on a strong pattern of continuity between the Old and the New Covenants. One way in which this insistence on continuity is manifested is how the Decalogue is given a central role in the Reformed understanding of the patterns of obedience to the divine will; thus the well-known Calvinist fondness for “the third use of the law”—in addition to revealing our sinfulness to us and setting forth norms for civil society, the Decalogue provides believers with positive guidelines for daily life. In the Dutch Reformed tradition it has been a requirement that the Decalogue be read in worship each week and that a sermon on each of the commandments, based on the Heidelberg Catechism, be preached annually. These worship patterns have led to what is labeled these days as a “divine command ethic.” Reformed moral theology has been alone in this emphasis. In different ways various confessional groups have assumed a moral discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. Lutheranism has often spoken of “Law versus Love” in establishing the moral guidance for the Christian life. The Anabaptist tradition sees a significant shift as having taken place when the nonviolent “Way of the Cross” took precedence over the coercive moral law culture of ancient Israel. And the dispensationalism of the Scofield Reference Bible, widely influential in American fundamentalism, has been quite happy to posit a rather deep difference between the soteriological patterns of a dispensation of Grace versus an older dispensation of law. Like the larger Reformed community, neo-Calvinism has given law a central place in its theology, liturgy, and ethics. But neo-Calvinism has gone further in seeing law as playing a crucial role in God’s relationship to the creation as such. This emphasis on the lawful character of reality came to be highlighted in a special way when Herman Dooyeweerd and others developed their complex philosophy based on Kuyperian principles and named their system de wijsbegeerte van de wetsidee, “the philosophy of the law idea”— thus taking this key Reformed theological concept and investing it with epistemological and metaphysical significance. The neo-Calvinist view of the creational law obviously has similarities to “natural law” in Catholic and other traditions. But neo-Calvinists have made a special effort to show how the ways that God creates and sustains the cosmos in a lawful manner says something important about the divine character, in a way that differs from other strands

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of Calvinism. While all Calvinists have emphasized the importance of obedience to the law of God, there has been a strong tendency among many Calvinists of a more pietistic sort to understand this law as a series of disconnected arbitrary commands. On such a view, it is easy to see God as inscrutable in his ways with his human creatures. It is this image of the divine character that has led some critics of Reformed Christianity to charge that Calvinism nurtures a strong strain of irrationality in its understanding of the Christian life. This criticism was given prominent attention by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who argued in his influential book After Virtue that John Calvin viewed morality as grounded in commands that are issued by a God who is “arbitrary” and “despotic.” As Maclntyre analyzed the situation, Calvin discarded the widely accepted medieval notion of a rationally discernible human telos; thus Calvin no longer viewed divine commands as guidelines that God offers human beings as they engage in the rational quest to realize their own proper natures. Having lost in the fall the power to understand ultimate issues rationally, human beings have no proper alternative but to submit without questioning to a set of moral directives whose rationale, if there is any, they cannot grasp.10 Whatever the value of this account as an exposition of Calvin’s actual views, there can be no doubt that many Calvinists have operated with an understanding of their relationship with God that closely conforms to this picture. Indeed, for many Reformed Christians this moral irrationalism is bounded by an even more poignant soteriological irrationalism. In much of the Puritan-influenced “experiential” strain of Calvinism, for example, God is surrounded in mystery in the manner in which he distributes his redemptive benefits. Thus the phenomenon of Calvinists who insist that they cannot be sure of their own inclusion among the elect because they view themselves as completely at the mercy of a God who dispenses his saving grace in what appears to be a purely arbitrary manner. It should be obvious that this kind of Calvinism gets much mileage out of the first two of the three theological themes I have mentioned. This is a picture of the religious divine-human encounter in which a thoroughly sovereign God stands over against a thoroughly depraved sinner. What seems to be absent from this view of the situation, of course, is any strong sense of lawful predictability. Calvinists who endorse this picture of things may, to be sure, make frequent use of the word “law.” But for them the divine “law” actually functions as a series of disconnected fiats with no rational coherence. It is precisely in their understanding of divine law that neo-Calvinists differ radically from this kind of soteriological irrationalism. This is certainly true for the devotees of the wetsidee philosophy. For them, divine law extends far beyond its Decalogic manifestation. As noted, they view law as the basic mode of God’s relationship to his creation. God always speaks and acts lawfully; his words and deeds always take legislative form. Because the God of the Bible commits himself to lawful activity, the believer does not need to stand in primitive fear before a divine despot whose ways are totally unfathomable to human beings. To be sure, the neo-Calvinist will insist that our relationship to God must never lose the fundamental sense of awe that is appropriate when the creature enters the presence of the Creator. But the harsher tones of that divine mystery have been eliminated by God’s own publicly announced commitment to juridical fidelity. The God of the Bible is a faithful God who redeems his people so that they may come to understand and obey

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 53. 10

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his ordinances. Thus the affirmation that divine sovereignty as bounded by law allows believers to trust in God’s predictable ways of governing his creation. Some neo-Calvinists have questioned, however, whether the wetsidee system poses some spiritual risks of its own.11 What does the insistence that law is the boundary line between Creator and creature mean for the believer’s relationship to God? Isn’t there a danger in that we will tend to see ourselves as relating to “law” rather than to God? Can neo-Calvinism find a place in the Christian life for an “I-Thou” encounter with the living God, without law “standing in the way,” as it were? Since the wetsidee philosophical system features a fairly dominant ontological character, it is easy to see how law can be seen in static terms, as occupying a “place” at the boundary between Creator and creation. This contrasts with the way many neo-Calvinists have insisted on a more dynamic understanding of creation law, where rather than the deity establishing a static law, God actively “laws.” As the neo-Calvinist Lewis Smedes puts it: The presence of God is an ordered and ordering presence. As he formed the world, so he also keeps forming it; as he once ordered it, he keeps ordering it. He is the creative bulwark against spiritual disorder, moral chaos, and physical disease. He moves through his fluid creation in accustomed ways, moves so regularly that we can speak of his creative paths as natural laws. What we call the laws of nature are laws, notations of predictability, only because the God of creation continuously orders as he upholds his creation.12 Smedes’ formulation comports well with Kuyper’s celebration of an active divine ruling of creation in which the resultant “moral order” makes claims on us to which we are called to respond: Can we imagine that at one time God willed to rule things in a certain moral order, but that now, in Christ, He wills to rule it otherwise? As though He were not the Eternal, the Unchangeable, Who, from the very hour of creation, even unto all eternity, had willed, wills, and shall will and maintain, one and the same firm moral world-order! Verily Christ has swept away the dust with which man’s sinful limitations had covered up this world-order, and has made it glitter again in its original brilliancy. . . . [T]he world-order remains just what it was from the beginning. It lays full claim, not only to the believer (as though less were required from the unbeliever), but to every human being and to all human relationships.13 Most important for our purposes here is that as Kuyper wrote his theological-devotional reflections in To Be Near Unto God, he depicts the14 believer’s personal encounters with God as not in any way hindered by anything that can hinder a “sweet” fellowship with the Lord. We are encouraged to seek and find God’s “face” and to experience the spiritual protection that can only be found under the divine “wings.” Kuyper saw himself as exploring “a spiritual reality which far exceeds mere intellectual acumen, and which

In describing this concern I am recounting the way it was raised by Professor Henk Geertsma in an informal discussion at a gathering of neo-Calvinist philosophers in the late 1970s. 12 Lewis B. Smedes (ed.), Ministry and the Miraculous (Pasadena: Fuller Theological Seminary,1987) 35. 13 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 71–2. 14 Abraham Kuyper, To Be Near unto God, trans. J. H. de Vries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Sevensma Publishing, 1918), 49. 11

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merely employs the abstractions of dogma and doctrine as means by which to clarify impressions that are received and to explain sensations of soul and inner experiences.”15 In a striking passage, Kuyper makes use of the imagery of Israel’s Tabernacle: the soul has its holy of holies as well as its holy place and its outer court. The world does not come nearer to the soul than this outer court. There it remains and has neither vision nor understanding of the several elements that constitute the soul. Intimate, spiritual friendship makes closer approaches to the soul. There are some congenial spirits that understand us and see more clearly through us, and who are therefore better able, with tenderness, to sustain and to comfort us. But even they do not enter into the holy of holies. There is always a deep background into which they cannot come, and where the soul remains in its solitariness. He who alone can enter into this holiest and most hidden recess of the soul is God by his Holy Spirit.16 Kuyper is careful in all of this to link what he labels a healthy “mysticism” to the person and work of Christ. To have a personal relationship with God, he writes, “is beautiful, provided that it always is in Christ. We, impure and unholy, are brought by our Savior alone, into this tender communion with God.”17 Kuyper knows that as depraved sinners we stand condemned under the law. But because of the redemption that has been accomplished in Christ, the sinless One can usher us directly into the presence of the Father and the Spirit because we are now “in” him.

V. AFFIRMING COMMON GRACE In making translations of Kuyper’s writings available in recent years, Lexham Press has led the way with twelve volumes, totaling over 8,000 pages. In that collection three volumes are dedicated to Kuyper’s writings on common grace. Since that topic is clearly foundational to all else in Kuyper’s vision of cultural engagement, the theological attention that Kuyper gave to it is not surprising. Our focus here is on the way Kuyper saw his understanding of the topic as firmly grounded in Reformed theology. The theological understanding that Kuyper came up with has been criticized from two directions within the Calvinist world. Cornelius Van Til, for example, argues that Kuyper and Bavinck failed to be consistent in holding to the doctrine of total depravity. While they boldly proclaim the reality of the antithesis between a consistent biblical worldview and other perspectives, he argues, they do not follow through adequately on their affirmations. In the final analysis they give too much credit to the noetic abilities of the unredeemed human mind. They fail to abide, Van Til says, by the biblical depiction of the “would-be autonomous man” as someone who is “dead in trespasses and sins [and] lives in the valley of the blind, while yet he insists that he alone dwells in the light.”18 On the other hand Benjamin Warfield saw Kuyper as failing on occasion to give due credit to the remaining abilities of the fallen mind to grasp the truth. Warfield finds Kuyper too

Ibid., 49. Ibid., 57–8. 17 Ibid., 38 18 Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and Witness-Bearing (Philadelphia: P&R, 1954), 7. 15 16

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harsh in dealing with the efforts of unbelievers particularly in scientific matters. Kuyper’s verdict that “Two kinds of men, two kinds of science,” is, said Warfield, “too absolute.”19 Kuyper took up the subject of common grace with a fascinating autobiographical comment in which he tells how his affirmation of this topic was for him “drawn from life itself”: Since we have been raised in a confession that, as generally understood, knows nothing of the world other than that it is bent on evil, and of the church little else than that it is the congregation of believers, we expect to encounter in the world sin upon sin, and to feel attracted in the church by an ideal, holy life of love. And a person who, expecting to find it so, goes out into the world at an adult age and has the good fortune of being allowed to find himself in more noble-minded worldly circles, after having heard of much censure and ecclesiastical vexation in church circles, will doubt the correctness of his confession; he will find the expression the world was better than expected, the church worse than expected to be a reflection of his own experience.20 Kuyper’s appeal to “experience” here is similar to how John Calvin saw his encounters with “pagan” thinkers. In his law studies Calvin had been impressed by the writings of Greco-Roman philosophers, particularly Seneca. Later, in his Institutes, Calvin speaks glowingly of the “admirable light of truth shining” in the works of unregenerate thinkers. “The mind of man,” Calvin says, “though fallen and perverted from its wholeness,” can still be “clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts.” And if we fail to recognize this, he warns, we “dishonor the Spirit of God.”21 The problem in relying too much on Calvin in this is that he is not consistent in what he says on this subject. He can be quite dismissive of the ability of non-Christian thinkers to offer us truths, as in this remark: “They are like a traveler passing through a field at night who in a momentary lightning flash sees far and wide, but the sight vanishes so swiftly that he is plunged again into the darkness of the night before he can take even a step—let alone be directed on his way by its help.”22 In contrast to the Reformer, Kuyper took on the assignment of providing a systematic theological explanation of his experience-based discovery that “the world was better than expected.” He makes it clear that since he will not abandon the doctrine of total depravity Calvinists are faced with an important choice at this point: “either [we] surrender our confession of the deadly character of sin, or [we] hold on to that confession with all our might, but then also confess along with it that there is a common grace at work that in many cases restrains the full, deadly effect of sin.”23

Benjamin B. Warfield, “A Review of Herman Bavinck’s De Zekerheld des Getoofs,” in Selected Shorter Writings, vol. 2, ed. Benjamin B. Warfield (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1973), 117. 20 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gift for a Fallen World, vol. 2, The Doctrinal Section (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2019), 10, emphasis in original. 21 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), II, 3, 6, 273. 22 Ibid., I. 2 2.18–19, 277–8. 23 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, 3 vols, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2019), 2:59. Kuyper, Common Grace, 2:58–9. 19

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Kuyper deals directly with the Heidelberg Catechism’s harsh verdict that human depravity means that “we are wholly incapable of any good and prone to all evil.”24 It is obvious, says Kuyper, that this assessment does not really “fit with our personal experience, since we encounter all kinds of things that strike us as attractive in the lives of people who are alienated from any kind of faith and in whom we cannot assume regeneration.” What then do we do with the Catechism’s “incapable of any good, and prone to all evil?” That formulation, Kuyper argues, “expresses how each human being, apart from regeneration, would prove himself to be if common grace did not keep his evil impulse in check.” The doctrine of total depravity “acknowledges what lies in our depraved nature and what would immediately proceed from us as soon as God ceased to temper this evil impulse through common grace.”25 While Kuyper’s case here is impressive, he could have strengthened it even more with a brief reference to the Canons of Dort. The Canons offer a description of the noetic effects of the fall that is very similar to Heidelberg, but with the addition of one important word: the unregenerate, the Canons state that we are “unfit for any saving good,”26 thus emphasizing the fact that any good things the non-elect may produce by way of truth, goodness, or beauty do not have any salvific merit—which fits nicely within Kuyper’s common grace framework. There are spiritual lessons to be learned from the theological exercise that we have just witnessed in seeing how Kuyper developed his doctrine of common grace. The theological insights that were for him “drawn from life itself” had to do not only that “the world was better than expected” but also that “the church was worse than expected.” An affirmation of common grace for him did not mean a downplaying of the reality of our shared depravity as believers. Neo-Calvinism should foster both the willingness to learn from others and a humble posture of self-critique.

VI. NEW EFFORTS Common grace allows us to learn and appreciate important things from unbelievers. But, then, don’t we have an even stronger motivation as neo-Calvinists to learn from our fellow believers who adhere to other theological traditions? Al Wolters assures us that we do. Wolters has taught many of us through his Creation Regained (1988), a book that served for years as a primer in the basics of neo-Calvinist thought. In a 2005 essay he offered us more wisdom by reflecting on how neo-Calvinism can adapt to new challenges. He placed a strong emphasis on our need to be enriched by engaging fellow believers from “Protestant, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox circles,” as well as the “vibrant biblical Christianity of Pentecostal and charismatic movements.”27 This engagement will be most fruitful, Wolters insisted, if it focuses on “biblical and confessional rootedness, and not on finding the lowest common denominator.” For neo-Calvinism, this means that we

Heidelberg Catechism, Q.8, in Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. III, https://www​.ccel​.org​/ccel​/schaff​/ creeds3​.iv​.xvi​.html. 25 Kuyper, Common Grace, 2:58–9. 26 Canons of Dort, Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine, Article 3, in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. III, https://www​.ccel​.org​/ccel​/schaff​/creeds3​.iv​.xvi​.html. Emphasis mine. 27 Al Wolters, “What Is to Be Done . . . Toward a Neo-Calvinist Agenda?,” Comment 23, no. 2 (December 2005): 38–9. 24

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must stay “true to [our] radical original intuition” while we “embrace the riches of other traditions.”28 Wolters is right about our need to learn from others, even seeking them out for dialogue. For starters we can certainly reach out to those who have demonstrated a sympathetic interest in neo-Calvinist ideas, asking them to help us strengthen our commitment to Kingdom service. Wolters rightly urges us to learn from others, but he also calls us to find new ways to share the riches of neo-Calvinism with fellow Christians. This will require developing new sensitivities on our part. The Dutch Reformed culture of the nineteenth-century Netherlands differed significantly from the national contexts in which neo-Calvinists today are called to serve the Lord. While knowing that we need to let go of, we must hold onto at all costs to what is essential in the Reformed tradition that informed the founders of neo-Calvinism. Wrestling with these issues will require that some of us must be diligent in our efforts to understand what must be recontextualized. For example, Wolters insists that we need to examine critically Dooyeweerd’s philosophy—no longer as influential as it was in the past—to explore new philosophical categories and terminology in our contemporary efforts “to give philosophical expression to the basic neo-Calvinist vision of life and the world.” And he rightly insists that what we must preserve at all costs in the wetsidee system “the philosophical commitment to the constancy of creation, and to creation as delivered by the creator, prior to the Fall, as the normative standard to which creation is being redeemed and restored.”29 But in order to be confident that we are properly focused on those essentials, it certainly seems necessary for at least some of us to keep studying the ways that Dooyeweerd and his followers gave systematic expression to those essentials. The same holds for our efforts to recontextualize the wisdom of Kuyper and Bavinck. Kuyper’s own assignment to his Princeton audience can serve us well in this regard: to apply the basic principles of Calvinism in a way that meets “the requirements of our own century.”

Ibid., 40. Ibid., 38.

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Chapter 25

Neo-Calvinism and Post-Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy ISRAEL GUERRERO

But a little more Puritanism in our circle would not hurt. Puritanism in our speech: no profanity, no triviality. . . . Puritanism in our feasts: moderation in drinking. . . . Puritanism in our assembly: more interest in missions, Kingdom of God, experience; the religious life. —Herman Bavinck1

I. INTRODUCTION Since its beginning, neo-Calvinism emerged as a movement that helped expand the implications of Reformed theology into different areas of human development. For neoCalvinism, the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God embraced the creational and recreational works of the Trinity, through God’s common and special grace. This holistic approach led neo-Calvinist theologians to write about and participate in enriching different areas of life. From birth to death, from baptism to the Lord’s Supper, from the catechism to schools to the academy, everything was permeated by the principle that Christ was the Lord of every square inch. Today, after the centenary of the death of two prominent neo-Calvinists—Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921)—it is possible to see their influence on political, philosophical, cultural, and theological ideas. As Cory Brock and Gray Sutanto argued, neo-Calvinism must be grasped as a revival and systematization of Reformed theology in the late Dutch modern context. Thus, its pluriform application must be understood through “its careful, nuanced and unique marriage between classical, Reformed confessionalist dogmatics and modern philosophy and theology that allowed it to speak Reformed dogmatics to a particular European,

DO: “Maar iets meer puritanisme in onzen kring kan geen kwaad. Puritanisme in ons spreken: geen profanie, geen trivialiteit . . . Puritanisme in onze feesten: matigheid in het drinken . . . Puritanisme in onze samenkomsten: meer belangstelling in zending, kon. Gods, bevinding; het relig. leven.” Herman Bavinck, Exercitia Pietatis (manuscript, 1896), 6. 1

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modern world.”2 But how should we understand this Reformed appropriation within neo-Calvinism? The catholicity and diversity within the Reformed tradition do not allow us to determine its essence by examining the works of a single man in a specific period.3 Reformed theology’s catholicity does not only imply the “catholic substance of the faith as summarized in the Ecumenical Creeds, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer” but also, as Scott Swain points out, its agreement with other Christian traditions in terms of doctrines such as the “being and attributes of the triune God and the person of Jesus Christ.”4 At the same time, Reformed theology aligns with some Protestant traditions—contra Roman Catholicism—on the nature of the authority of the Bible and justification by faith while distinguishing itself from other Protestant traditions on matters of “biblical interpretation, the sacraments, and church polity.”5 In sum, the development of the Reformed tradition presents a rich degree of diversity, within its different historical periods, locations, and internal issues. Because neo-Calvinism belongs to the Reformed tradition, catholicity was also essential to its development. This catholic disposition implied dialogue, observation, criticism, and appropriation of theological ideas from different pre-Reformation periods. As Bavinck wrote in the foreword for the first edition of his Reformed Dogmatics (1895), “Irenaeus, Augustine, and Thomas do not belong exclusively to Rome; they are Fathers and Doctors to whom the whole Christian church has obligations.”6 Further, as James Eglinton identified, Kuyper referred to Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) as “the ‘doctor’, just as Augustine is the ‘pater ecclesiae’ upon whom all branches of the Christian Church still depend, and whose ecumenical significance no theologian, irrespective of [theological] orientation, can ever omit with impunity.”7 Importantly, neo-Calvinism presented both a positive and critical appropriation of pre-reformation theology. For example, in the first and second edition of his Reformed Dogmatics, Bavinck indicated that “Thomas’s division not only differs from that of Bonaventure but is in many respects inferior to it.”8 This critical and catholic appropriation also led the neo-Calvinists to interact with modern theologians, even adopting some modern grammar in their theology.9

Cory Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2022), 4. Hereafter, NCTI. 3 See Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 45. Hereafter, PRRD. See also Muller’s introduction in Diversity in the Reformed Tradition: A Historical Introduction in Michael Haykin and Mark Jones, Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates Within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprech, 2011), 11–17. 4 Scott Swain, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology, ed. Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 3. 5 Ibid. 6 Herman Bavinck, “Foreword to the First Edition (Volume 1) of the Gereformeerde Dogmatiek,” trans. John Bolt in CTJ 45 (2010): 9. 7 James Eglinton, “The Reception of Aquinas in Kuyper’s Encyclopaedie der heilige Godgeleerdhei,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 452. Emphasis in original. 8 RD I, 98. 9 See Cory Brock, Orthodox yet Modern: Herman Bavinck’s Use of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2020). 2

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Fundamentally, Reformed theology cannot be understood apart from its dogmatic and confessional development from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.10 Therefore, if the neo-Calvinist movement is to be regarded as part of the Reformed tradition, grasping Kuyper and Bavinck’s reception of sources from the post-Reformation Reformed period is vital to understanding their theological/holistic project. In other words, the reception of Reformed orthodoxy—from its early, high, and later periods—cannot be ignored if a fuller understanding of the first neo-Calvinist generation is to be had.11 Kuyper and Bavinck’s writings demonstrate interaction with Reformed theologians who belonged to the early, high, and late periods of Reformed orthodoxy. Consequently, even though Calvin occupies a prominent place in the thought of both, the analysis of their reception of English Puritans, Nadere Reformatie, and Scottish Presbyterian theologians is a valuable area within neo-Calvinism research. The words of the mature Bavinck confirm this. If a young Bavinck (1894) refers to “Reformed” as “being more limited and less comprehensive” than “Calvinism,” where the latter is “of wider application,” denoting a “specific type in the political, social and civil spheres,” an older Bavinck (1911) prefers “Reformed” above terms such as orthodox, Calvinistic, and neo-Calvinistic. Bavinck’s reasons for this are, first, “in the name Reformed there lies within it a connection to the past, historical continuity, and maintenance of the Christian confession.” Second, because of “the demand and obligation to continually review the doctrine and life of one’s own person and household . . . according to these scriptural and historical principles.”12 In sum, studies in neo-Calvinism must appreciate the significance of post-reformation Reformed dogmatics and piety in the theological thought of its representatives. Some authors have highlighted a certain discontinuity, in different degrees, between “old” Calvinism and neo-Calvinism (sometimes accentuated more in Kuyper’s followers).13 Without denying that Bavinck and Kuyper were critically engaging with Reformed orthodox theologians, I aim to present, in a general way, a receptive appropriation of the post-reformation Reformed theology and piety in neo-Calvinism. Undoubtedly, this field of study is broad, and an exhaustive study will not be possible. Instead, I focus on the reception of some theologians from the early, high, and late periods of Reformed orthodoxy in Kuyper and Bavinck, but with more emphasis on the latter. This will be done by presenting the appropriation of post-reformation concepts in two general sections: dogma and ethics. In other words, how did the theology and piety of Reformed orthodox theologians of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries help shape the thinking of the first generation of neo-Calvinists, especially in Bavinck’s theology? Finally, I will conclude this chapter by proposing some research areas to better understand the reception of the Reformed orthodox theology (1560–1770) in neo-Calvinism.

PRRD I, 27–32. Ibid., 30–2. 12 Herman Bavinck, “Modernism and Orthodoxy (1911),” in On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, ed. and trans. Bruce R. Pass (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 156–7. This should not be seen as a contradiction per se, but as maturation of thought where the holistic application of the elements of his 1894 definition of “Calvinism” (as neo-Calvinism) are enfolded into his understanding of “Reformed” in 1911. 13 See, for example, William Young, “Historic Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism,” WTJ 36, no. 1 (Fall 1973): 48–64 and “Historic Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism,” WTJ 36, no. 2 (Winter 1974): 156–73. 10 11

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II. REFORMED ORTHODOX DOGMATICS IN BAVINCK’S NEO-CALVINISM For the Reformed tradition, the chief end of dogmatics is the glory of God because God himself is the fundamental principle of theology (principium essendi). According to the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, an influential book during the second phase of the early orthodoxy, “the glory of God is the highest goal of Theology.”14 At the beginning of his career, Herman Bavinck edited the sixth edition of the Synopsis. His editorial work should be considered part of Reformed orthodoxy retrieval by the first generation of neo-Calvinism. The editors of the seventh edition of the Synopsis (2014, Latin/English) express: “the neo-calvinist movement in the Netherlands led to a renewed appreciation of seventeenth-century orthodox theology.”15 In a certain sense, the editorial work helped the recent Leiden graduate, Bavinck, to study and consolidate his own understanding of Reformed thought and also the importance of Reformed orthodoxy for his late modern context.16 Thus, the concept of God’s glory occupies a prominent place in the thought of the young Herman’s purpose of theology. This is evidenced in his early writing entitled “the Honor of God,” where he writes: All theology, which truly deserves this name . . . seeks to maintain His glory for all things. A true theologian is the one who—if he needs to be against everything, science and public opinion, State and church, and all things on the earth—holds fast to God and His Word and intends His glory among everything. This glory is the guideline and goal of all things.17 Undoubtedly, Reformed orthodoxy helped the young Bavinck to become “more and more Reformed,” as he indicated in another letter (1881) to Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857–1936).18 Which Reformed sources did Bavinck assimilate to formulate his own theological opinions? Henk van den Belt rightly proposes the Synopsis, even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the earlier letter (nor are any other theological works mentioned). The date of this letter (1881) is vital to search for these Orthodox sources that helped Bavinck become more Reformed.

Synopsis Purioris Theologiae / Synopsis of a Purer Theology: Latin Text and English Translation: Volume 1, Disputations 1–23, ed. Dolf te Velde, trans. Riemer A. Faber (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 43. 15 Ibid., 17. Willem van Asselt points out that during the nineteenth and “and even into the twentieth century, Reformed Orthodoxy and Scholasticism have remained alive” in the theological works of professors such as Herman Bavinck. See Willem van Asselt, “Reformed Orthodoxy: A Short History of Research” in A Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 11. 16 See Henk van den Belt and Mathilde de Vries-van Uden, “Herman Bavinck’s Preface to the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae,” TBR 8 (2017): 105–6. Even when Bavinck acknowledges that times change (and therefore, “another time required something different”), he also indicates that this new edition (1881) arrives in “a very favorable time” for its own context. This is because the same theological principles of seventeenth-century orthodoxy are the same principles of his late nineteenth-century ecclesiastical context that have begun to revive even beyond the Dutch Reformed context. This confirms that neo-Calvinism was born as a theological movement. For the influence of the Synopsis in Bavinck’s career see Ximian Xu, Theology as the Science of God: Herman Bavinck’s Wetenschappelijke Theology for the Modern World (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022). 17 Herman Bavinck, “De Eere God,” De Vrije Kerk 9 (1883), cited in Ximian Xu, “Gloriously Intertwined: A Bavinckian Account of the Single Organism of Dogmatics and Ethics,” IJST 24, no. 1 (January 2022): 83. 18 See van den Belt and de Vries-van Uden, “Herman Bavinck’s Preface to the Synopsis,” 109. 14

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In 1881, Bavinck wrote a review of De Borg des beteren verbonds (“the Surety of a better covenant”), a series of articles written by Simon Albertus van den Hoorn (1851–90) which exhibits Bavinck’s favorable acquisition of early and high Reformed orthodoxy. The ten-page review shows Bavinck’s understanding of Reformed orthodoxy to nuance van den Hoorn’s federalism. This article also reveals Bavinck’s early ideas about covenant theology. There, Bavinck highlights Jesus not only as “Mediator” (Middelaar) of the covenant of grace but also especially as the “Surety” (Borg) of the testament of the Father in the “Council of Peace” (Raad des Vredes). Here, Herman mentions the works of Tako Hajo van den Honert (1666–1740) and Thomas Boston (1676–1732) while developing arguments for the distinction of Borg/Middelaar in Christological and covenantal terms. So too, Bavinck highlights the foundation of the covenant of grace established in time, that is, the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son. There is a distinction for Bavinck between the covenant of grace in its eternal decree and its execution in time. In addition, to correct van den Hoorn’s understanding of the concept of “Surety” (Borg) in covenantal thought, Bavinck relates Borg to the Reformed scholastic distinction of fidejussie and expromissie. Regarding this distinction, Bavinck prefers the latter.19 In sum, this review reveals some Reformed orthodox sources which led Bavinck to become more Reformed and also to link orthodox definitions (i.e., the place of Borg in the pactum salutis idea) to important aspects of Christian piety that Bavinck developed in his career, such as the certainty of faith. The theocentric principia of Bavinck’s formulation of theology as a sacred science— principium essendi and principium cognoscendi externum and internum—can also be traced to post-reformation sources. The 1883 oratio delivered at the beginning of Bavinck’s professorship at the Kampen Theological School reveals, for example, Bavinck’s critique and appreciation of early modern Reformed orthodoxy. On the one hand, and to maintain God’s supremacy as the object of theology, Bavinck disagreed on specific points with Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706), Johannes à Mark (1656–1731), and Bernadinus de Moor (1709–80), because they spoke of both God and the cultus Dei as being the proper objects of theology.20 On the other hand, he quoted Francis Junius (1545–1602) positively, in support of the “theological, theocentric” nature of the “whole of our science,” when describing the material content of theology as “God or what has some relationship to Him.”21 Finally, in the same address, Bavinck uses Herman Witsius’ (1636–1708) words to draw attention to the praxis pietatis aspect of theologians. To avoid the danger of theologia irregenitorum,22 Bavinck explicitly quotes Witsius’ de Vero Theologo to indicate

In RD, Bavinck states that the doctrine of the covenant was “most fully developed in Reformed theology,” indicating that it “is not the brainchild of Cocceius” nor a “peculiar feature of the German Reformed theology.” See RD III, 209. Furthermore, he also made some comments about fideiussor and expromissor in RD III, 213–14. 20 Herman Bavinck, On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, ed. and trans. Bruce Pass (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 44. Hereafter, OT. In another part of this same speech, Bavinck leans on Bernardinus de Moor to speak of reason as a valuable instrument to illuminate the truths of the Bible. See OT, 51. So too, Bavinck positively appropriated some ideas of Petrus van Mastricht regarding the genus and practical aspect of theology. See OT, 54–5. This is important so as not to quickly think that criticism of a specific point does mean a rejection of a divines’ theology in toto or, in this case, of Reformed orthodoxy. 21 OT, 47. 22 For Bavinck’s understanding of a theologian as a regenerated individual and the study of theology see Gregory Parker Jr., Theological Thinking and Loving: Dogmatics and Ethics in the Theology of Herman Bavinck (PhD diss. University of Edinburgh, 2022), 52–4. 19

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the holistic and God-centered character of the theologian. In Witsius’ words, a theologian is someone who “is instructed with true knowledge of God and divine matters—God himself being the Teacher—not just in words alone but in the entire institution of his life, who puts into practice God’s praiseworthy virtues, and who is complete for His glory.”23 The study notes prepared by Bavinck to teach in his first years in Kampen (1884–5) reveal the acquisition of Reformed orthodox vocabulary. In fact, the title of his notebook reflects some of the seventeenth-century treatises: Medulla Theologiae Dogmaticae. The first chapter of his notes—De Sancta Theologia—contains the terminology used by Francis Junius and the Synopsis in their respective prolegomena, such as the division of theology into vera and falsa. Bavinck assumed Reformed orthodoxy by noting that “theologia vera est archetypa vel ectypa.”24 So too, theologia ectypa considers the theology of union (theol. unionis), theology of vision (theol. visionis competit bonis angelis et beatis), and theology of pilgrims (theol. viatorum) regarded as natural (theol. naturalis est insita vel acquisita) and supernatural.25 In Bavinck’s Medulla, the genus of theology “est scientia . . . Sapientia . . . Doctrina.” At this stage, Bavinck acknowledges with Junius, van Mastricht, and Francis Turretin’s understanding of theology as both theoretical and practical: “[theologia] no solum theoretica sed etiam practica.”26 Furthermore, some of scholastic terminology is identified in mentioning the causa efficiens (Deus) and the instrumentalis cause (verbum Dei) of theology. Finally, Bavinck regards the end (finis) of theology in a threefold manner: piety (pietas), salvation (salus), and the glory of God (Dei gloria). Sacra Scriptura, which est verbum Dei is the principium cognoscendi Theologiae. While some studies have dealt with the doctrine of Scripture in Bavinck’s theology,27 little attention has been paid to Bavinck’s thought of biblical commentaries as tools in explaining the Bible’s content. In this case, two forewords (1909 and 1912) that Bavinck wrote for the new Dutch translation of Matthew Henry’s (1662–1714) commentary show Bavinck’s catholicity by commending an author who used to be read by pious people.28

Bavinck, OT, 55. For the archetypal and ectypal knowledge of God in Reformed Dogmatics, see RD I, 212–14, 233 and RD II, 107–10. 25 Manuscript van een [collegedictaat] “Medulla Theologiae. Dogmaticae. 1884/5,” inv​.n​r. 46 // Collegedictaten. Archief van Herman Bavinck, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 26 Interestingly, Bavinck criticizes in a sense part of William Ames’ theology by saying that his theology exhibits “one-sidedness” (eenzijdigheid). One reason is that for Bavinck, Ames makes the will the “subject of theology” (het subject der theologie). Likewise, Bavinck considers that the knowledge of God (kennisse Gods) has its seat (zetel) not in the will but in the consciousness (in het bewustzijn). See Herman Bavinck, “Eene Leidsche Dissertatie.” Review of Guilielmus Amesius, by H. Visscher. From Bazuin 42, no. 41 (1894). For a contemporary account of the moderate nature of Ames’ voluntarism see Takayuki Yagi, “‘Doctrina Deo vivendi’: William Ames, the Nature and Sources of His Voluntarism,” Reformation & Renaissance Review 22, no. 1 (2020): 64–79. 27 See, for example, Henk van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 229–99; James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Toward a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 155–82; Bruce Pass, “Upholding Sola Scriptura Today: Some Unturned Stones in Herman Bavinck’s Doctrine of Inspiration,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 20, no. 4 (2018): 517–36. For Kuyper and Bavinck on organism and Scripture NCTI, 98–132. 28 David Murray identifies Henry as a representative of the Reformed high orthodoxy period. See David Murray, “MATTHEW HENRY (1662–1714): The Reasonableness and Pleasantness of Christianity” (PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit, 2019). Both Harman and Bartholomew call the attention to Bavinck’s foreword to Matthew Henry’s Bible commentary in Allan Harman, “The Legacy of Matthew Henry,” Reformed Theological Review 73, no. 3 (2014): 189. 23 24

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In 1909, J. H. Kok in Kampen released a new translation of Henry’s New Testament commentary for which Bavinck wrote a five-page foreword. According to Bavinck, we can notice a shortcoming in Luther and Calvin’s commentaries. While the Reformation put the Bible back at the center of the Christian life, and while Luther, Calvin, and their followers wrote commentaries on Scripture, most of their explanations were “unsuitable” (onbruikbaar) and “inaccessible” (ontoegankelijk) to the people. Therefore, there was a need for an interpretation of the whole Scripture, which could be consulted with “fruit” (vrucht) by the “simple” (eenvoudige).29 For Bavinck, Henry’s commentaries came to fill the gap. After presenting a short biography of Matthew Henry, Bavinck acknowledged that there are other explanations which in “erudition” (geleerdheid) “exceed” (overtreffen) Henry’s commentaries. For Bavinck, Henry was not a “scholar by profession” (geleerde van beroep). However, his commentaries are still valuable because of Henry’s approach to the Bible—as the word of God for the present time. For Henry, the Bible was not only a book that illuminates the past but also one which comes to us in the present as the word of God, for the man of God to be perfect, furnished to every good work.30 Bavinck notes that, even when Henry does not possess a “clean style” (schoonen stijl), he has “liveliness and cheerfulness” (levendigheid en opgewektheid) of tone and “edifying reflections” (stichtelijke overdenkingen).31 Notably, and besides the recognition given to Henry’s commentary by people like “Doddrige, Whitefield, Spurgeon and Chalmers,” Bavinck indicates that Henry’s books are not only in the scholar’s (geleerde) or minister’s (predikant) library but also in the house of the “farmer” (landman), “merchant” (handelaar), “workman” (werkman), and “little citizens” (kleinen burger).32 However, according to Bavinck’s observation, it could be “too much” (te veel) to say Henry’s commentary satisfies all the needs of the late modern context. Still, Bavinck observes that his own context is “poor” (arm) in that area. Bavinck therefore proposes a particularly neo-Calvinist solution. That is, not repristination but retrieval and development by putting together the essence of practical theology (as can be noticed, in part, in Henry’s commentary) with modern and scientific theological research. In his words, “the ideal would be that a popular, short, comprehensive, solid, and practical explanation of Scripture should come to light, which would benefit from the latest research, on the basis of a scientific exegesis.”33 By whom should this work be done? Bavinck answers, by “skilled and pious men” (bekwame en vrome mannen). In other words, people need theological material with practical applications for daily life written by people of piety and academic rigorousness. The Reformed tradition has examples of godly academic people, such as Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676). Indeed, examining Bavinck’s thoughts on Voetius will help us move from objective theological principia to praxis pietatis to confirm neo-Calvinism’s appropriation of Reformed piety.

Herman Bavinck, foreword in Matthew Henry, Letterlijke en practicale verklaring van het Nieuwe Testament, ed. Deel I. Mattheüs-Lukas (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1909), iii–vii. Here, iv. 30 Ibid., vi. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., vii. 33 DO: “Het ideaal zou zijn, dat er eene populaire, korte, doorloopende, degelijke en practische verklaring der Schrift in het licht kwam, welke met de nieuwere onderzoekingen haar winste deed, op den grondslag eener wetenschappelijke exegese.” Ibid. 29

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III. REFORMED ORTHODOX PIETY IN NEO-CALVINISM Reformed scholastic theologians were undoubtedly held in high esteem by neo-Calvinist theologians. While Kuyper regarded Calvin as a pater ecclesiae, Voetius was a doctor eclessiae.34 Similarly, for Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949), Voetius occupies a place of high honor among the Dutch theologians of the seventeenth century. He was, perhaps, the ablest, the most learned and the most influential of all Calvinistic divines belonging to that period so rich in eminent names. . . . He was a scholastic of the first rank, who knew how to handle the weapons of his craft with great skill and subtlety; a mystic of a deeply pious vein; a writer of exceptional fertility; and a teacher of wide influence.35 The previous paragraph is part of Vos’ review of the first volume of Duker’s biography of Voetius. However, Vos was not the only neo-Calvinist who reviewed that biography. Herman Bavinck wrote five reviews of A. C. Duker’s biography of Voetius between 1893 and 1915. From there it is possible to identify, for example, the relevance for both the young and the mature Bavinck of Voetius’ understanding of the relationship between piety and theological sciences.36 In 1893, Bavinck wrote that “Voetius was, without doubt, the most solid theologian of the Dutch Reformed Church in the seventeenth century.”37 In the same review, Bavinck acknowledged a unity and diversity of features in Voetius’ persona. “He united in himself many characteristics and abilities, each of which would have already made his name famous. He was a dogmatician and moralist, canonist and practical writer, and in every field, upon which he moved, a master in the full sense of the word.”38 Significantly, in 1915, despite being grateful for the latest volume of Duker—where Voetius is described from different angles, including “his piety” (in zijne vroomheid)—Bavinck regards that Duker’s work could be better appreciated if someone can write about Voetius in “the unity of his personality” (in de eenheid zijner persoonlijkheid).39 Importantly, personality is linked to Bavinck’s understanding of healthy piety. In fact, morbid expressions of piety, manifested in some aspects of mysticism and pietism, communicate a disharmony in personality, as he pointed out in his Reformed Ethics.40

Eglinton, “The Reception of Aquinas in Kuyper’s Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid,” 464. Geerhardus Vos, “Review of Gisbertus Voetius, door A. C. Duker,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 5 (1894): 714–15. 36 The importance of piety in the life of the theological students was emphasized by Voetius. See Andreas Beck, Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) on God, Freedom, and Contingency: An Early Modern Reformed Voice (Leiden: Brill, 2022). Here page 109. 37 DO: “Voetius was ongetwijfeld de degelijkste theoloog van de Naderlandsche Gereformeerde Kerken in de zeventiende eeuw.” Herman Bavinck, “‘Gisbertus Voetius’ Review of Gisbertus Voetius by A. C. Duker,” De Bazuin 41, no. 41 (1893). 38 DO: “Hij vereenigde een tal van eigenschappen en bekwaamheden in zich, die elk op zichzelve reeds zijn naam beroemd zouden hebben gemaakt. Hij was dogmaticus en moralist, kanonist en praktikaal schrijver, en op ieder terrein, waarop hij zich bewoog, een meester in den vollen zin des woords.” Ibid. 39 Herman Bavinck, “Review of Gisbertus Voetius by A. C. Duker,” De Bazuin 63, no. 19 (1915). 40 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, vol. I, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 2018), 418– 19, 433, and 429. Hereafter, RE. For the relationship between piety and personality see Herman Bavinck, “Godsvrucht en wetenschap,” De School met den Bijbel 4, no. 26 (1907): 145–6. 34 35

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For Bavinck, Voetius was “the most important Dutch Reformed Theologian,” as he wrote in 1895.41 Considerably, Bavinck does not repristinate Voetius’ thought, but acknowledges—again in a neo-Calvinistic mindset—the significance of Voetius’ kernel of wisdom for his late modern context. Thus, even when “the forms” (de vormen) of Voetius’ struggles (i.e., contra Descartes and Cocceius) did not belong to and do not speak to the late modern context, Bavinck says that a “core of issues” (eene kern van vraagstukken) remain which “also are important for our time” (die ook voor onzen tijd van belang).42 In other words, Bavinck assumes that the essence of Reformed orthodoxy should be retrieved and contextualized for particular contemporary circumstances. This is why we see quotations from Voetius in Bavinck’s influential works, such as The Catholicity of Christianity (1892), The Teaching Office (1899), Calling and Regeneration (1903), Reformed Dogmatics, and Reformed Ethics, and also why we see Bavinck taking on Reformed orthodox (Voetian) elements in his understanding of holistic theology and piety. For example, in 1907, Bavinck emphasized the Scripture as the principle of every science. In his words, “Voetius takes the position that the Holy Scripture is a light for all paths and a lamp for everyone’s feet. . . . All sciences (wetenschappen) must, regarding its foundation and principle, uphold on the Holy Scriptures, which is ‘the book of all science’, the ‘sea of all wisdom’, ‘the academy of academies.’”43 The holistic approach of Voetius seems to be a reason why Bavinck stated in 1907 that (in total agreement with A. C. Duker) “Voetius was not a pietist” (Voetius was geen piëtist).44 This implies that the Utrecht professor did not in principle (beginsel) condemn opulence in different areas such as feasts, home, and clothing. In fact, Voetius never sought the “evil” (het kwaad) in the “matter” (de stof) and the world. Rather, in every place, Voetius upheld the “Biblical principle” (Bijbelsch beginsel) of “moderation” (matigheid) and “Piety” (Godzaligheid, capitalized by Bavinck). Thus, through Duker’s book, Bavinck came to know Voetius as a man of “firm principles” (vaste beginselen), “deep conviction” (diepe overtuiging), and pious conduct (vromen wandel).45 The holistic and influential approach of Voetius is another aspect considered in Bavinck’s review. In 1911, he mentions that Voetius was highly regarded by the academic senate and the magistrate of the city of Utrecht. Voetius’ opinion was highly valued. His vote was often the deciding factor when appointing professors. He was appointed Rector four times during his forty-two years of professorship.46 Such was his influence that Bavinck reminded his readers that the university in Utrecht was known as the Voetiana academy. Importantly, Bavinck highlights that Voetius achieved this high position because of his “diverse gifts” (veelzijdige gaven), “great devotion” (groote toewijding), and “extraordinary labor” (buitengewone arbeidskracht). These things are reflected in his

DO: “van den voornaamsten Nederlandschen Gereformeerden Godgeleerde.” Herman Bavinck, Review of Gisbertus Voetius, vol. 1, part 2, by A. C. Duker. De Bazuin 43, no. 42 (1895). 42 Herman Bavinck, Review of Gisbertus Voetius, vol. 2, part 2, by A. C. Duker. Hollandia 23, no. 942 (1907). 43 DO: “Voetius het standpunt in, dat de H. Schrift een licht is op alle pad en eene lamp voor ieders voet . . . Alle wetenschappen moeten, wat haar fundament en beginsel betreft, steunen op de Heilige Schrift, die ‘het boek van alle wetenschap,’ de ‘zee van alle wijsheid,’ de ‘academie der academiën’ is.” Ibid. 44 Ibid. Thus, it seems that Bavinck could not identify Voetius’ piety within the individualistic and separatist tendencies of some pietistic circles identified in his Catholicity of Christianity (see p. 246). 45 “Ibid. 46 Herman Bavinck, Review of Gisbertus Voetius, vol. 2, part 3 and vol. 3, part 1, by A. C. Duker. De Bazuin 59, no. 10 (1911). 41

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rigorous academic teaching and pastoral approach as a professor of theology. In Bavinck’s words, In his numerous lectures [Voetius] not only introduced his students to the knowledge of Reformed dogmatics, ethics, ascetics and church law, but he also tried to inform them of all kinds of theological trends and scholastic distinctions, while in doing so, he did not neglect practical training and took great care in teaching preaching and catechism.47 The last point is key for neo-Calvinism: scholarly and godly theological training in connection with practice, preaching, and catechism. In other words, theology is both for the scholar and the simple. This is one of the features that Kuyper reminds his readers of in a republication of Voetius’ explanation of the Heidelberg Catechism. Even when seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed theologians wrote in Latin, Kuyper rejoiced in the fact that “our greatest men” (onzer grootste mannen) perceived the necessity to write also for the “ordinary citizen and farmer” (gewonen burger en landbouwer) because they lived in the communion of the saints and participated in the life of the church.48 In his foreword for Voetius’ explanation of the Catechism, Kuyper described the context of nominal Christians in which the book was written. The political affairs brought a good number of people into the Reformed churches. However, in Kuyper’s words, “the churches themselves forgot all too quickly that their strength lay not in the large number of their members, but in their pure confession and godly walk.”49 This situation led preachers to complain about the “complete lack” (volslagen gebrek) of a “good knowledge of the truth” (goede kennis der waarheid).50 Even after the Synod of Dort, many people who were not keen on the “Calvinistic spirit” (Calvinistischen geest) remained in the church, and, consequently, there was a significant number of “apparent believers” (schijngelovigen).51 In this context, Voetius wanted to form solid preachers in order to teach at the school and to catechize. The attempt was unsuccessful and the material fell into disuse at the beginning of the eighteenth century,52 but Kuyper saw the necessity of republishing this work with a twofold goal: “to chase away the fog obscuring the confessions in numerous Reformed circles and to advance basic knowledge of the faith.”53 However, Kuyper warns their readers not to misuse this kind of literature by attributing an “infallible character” (onfeilbaar karakter) to Voetius’ statements.54 So too, Kuyper and Bavinck caution their readers about any world-abandonment pietism. Nevertheless,

DO: “Op zijne talrijke colleges leidde hij zijne studenten niet alleen in tot de kennis van Gereformeerde dogmatiek, ethiek, ascetiek en kerkrecht, maar hij trachtte ze ook op de hoogte te brengen van allerlei theologische richtingen en scholastische onderscheidingen, terwijl hij daarbij ook de practische opleiding niet verwaarloosde en aan het onderwijs in prediking en catechisatie groote zorg besteedde.” Ibid. 48 Abraham Kuyper, Voetius’ catechisatie over den Heidelbergschen Catechismus. Naar Poudroyen’s editie van 1662 op nieuw uitgegeven, bij ons publiek ingeleid, en met enkele aanteekeningen voorzien door Dr. A. Kuyper (Rotterdam: Gebroeders Huge, 1891), 6–7. 49 DO: “De Kerken zelve vergaten maar al te spoedig, dat haar kracht niet schuilt in het groote cijfer van haar leden, maar in haar zuivere belijdenis en godzaligen wandel.” Ibid., 14. 50 Ibid., 15. 51 Ibid., 16. 52 Ibid. 53 Tjitze Kuipers, Abraham Kuyper: An Annotated Bibliography 1857–2010 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 211. 54 Ibid., 19. 47

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by any means, this warning signified the loss of sound spirituality. On the contrary, the reading of post-reformation pietistic theology was encouraged by Kuyper and Bavinck to revive the vitality of Reformed spirituality and confessionalism among neo-Calvinism. Notably, Bavinck presents the theology and piety of the Scottish Erskine brothers in order to remark on the importance of holistic covenant theology and the experience of spiritual truths for his context. In Bavinck’s words, “it seems as if we no longer know what sin and grace, what guilt and forgiveness, what repentance and regeneration mean. We know them theoretically, but we no longer know them in the awesome reality of life.”55 This scenario may explain Bavinck’s appeal to consider the quotation mentioned at the beginning: “but a little more Puritanism in our circle would not hurt.” In this sense, Bavinck himself considered the application of Reformed orthodox piety in his lectures on ethics. Thus, we should not be surprised by the number of post-reformation quotations and his dependence on them in his Reformed Ethics (alongside RD) and the references in his Philosophical Ethics. For example, in his Reformed Ethics, Bavinck depends mostly on Campegius Vitringa (1659–1722)—even more than on Calvin—to explain the nature and origin of spiritual life.56 In this way, we see that neo-Calvinism as a theological movement cannot be fully understood if we leave aside its positive and critical appropriation of the holistic and experiential Reformed piety of post-reformation theology.

IV. CONCLUSION The contextualization of Reformed confessionalism by first-generation neo-Calvinists signified their appropriation of Reformed orthodoxy both in theology and piety. In this sense, Kuyper and Bavinck reflected the interdependence of scientific theological rigor and deep piety characteristic of Reformed orthodoxy for their context. Neo-Calvinism’s reception of Reformed orthodoxy shows a favorable and critical approach to the development of its theology, in terms of keeping the essence of orthodoxy and contextualizing the form of doing theology. For example, on the one hand, Kuyper manifests a more favorable attitude toward Alexander Comrie’s (1706–74) definition of faith than Wilhelmus à Brakel’s (1635–1711). Even when the name of “‘father Brakel’ is still precious to us,” Kuyper concludes that “following the line of Augustine, Calvin, Voetius, Comrie, one goes safest.”57 On the other hand, even when Bavinck recognized the “much good” that Brakel did in “former days,” he also acknowledged that because of the late modern context, “they can no longer be brought to new life.”58 Both Kuyper and Bavinck adopted, in different degrees, the Reformed scholastic distinction of archetypal/ectypal theology in their dogmatics.59 Notably, regarding some

See Henk van den Belt in “Herman Bavinck on Scottish Covenant Theology and Reformed Piety,” TBR 3 (2012):164–77. Here 175. 56 See Bavinck, RE I, 244–53. 57 Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. Henri de Vries (Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans, 1900), 390–6. 58 Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God (Glenside: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), xxxii. 59 For Kuyper’s archetypal/ectypal theology, see Richard A. Muller, “Kuyper and Bavinck on Natural Theology,” Bavinck Review 10 (2019): 5–35. Here 10–11. For Bavinck’s archetype/ectype distinction see Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 19–25, 34, 48–9. 55

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of the scholastic aspects of Reformed theology, Bavinck underlined that the diversity of presentations of truth (e.g., positive theology and catechesis and so forth) did not mean a difference in “content” but in “form and method.” With this methodology, Reformed theologians maintained the “unity and bond between faith and theology, church and school” and also the “scientific character of theology.”60 In other words, Bavinck’s understanding of Reformed orthodoxy is, in some sense, in line with contemporary definitions of Reformed scholasticism as a method for theological formulations.61 Significantly, even when Bavinck titled some of his writings with the “Calvinist” label and wrote on Calvin’s theology, this should not be considered a neglect of post-reformation theology. In this sense, Bavinck’s theology does not express a “Calvin versus Calvinism” understanding of the Reformed development from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. The difference between Calvin’s theology and Reformed orthodoxy, noted by Kuyper and Bavinck, must be understood in view of the “fundamental continuity between Calvin and the Reformed orthodox.”62 Consequently, Bartholomew’s observation that “Bavinck [. . .] consciously distances himself from the scholasticism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theology” should be nuanced because of the implication of Reformed orthodoxy in Bavinck’s neo-Calvinist theological project.63 Nevertheless, Bartholomew sheds light on an essential aspect of neo-Calvinism that must be considered: spirituality. Even when Bavinck was critical of some forms of pietism, Reformed orthodox theologians were used by him to retrieve holistic piety and spirituality. In addition, Reformed orthodoxy was crucial for bringing clarity and unity to Reformed churches at the beginning of the twentieth century regarding the benefits of the covenant of grace. To solve the conflicts that threatened the unity of his denomination, Bavinck turned to post-reformation sources to provide theological answers, as we can read in Bavinck’s Calling and Regeneration. Finally, the relationship between Reformed orthodoxy and neo-Calvinism is an area that should be explored in more detail. A critical analysis of Kuyper and Bavinck’s reception of the first and secondary literature of post-reformation theology, in its different periods of orthodoxy, should be done to understand in more depth both the development of Dutch Reformed theology and the theological foundations of neo-Calvinism.64 In fact, given

Herman Bavinck, RD, I, 84. As Muller states, “‘scholastic’ indicates an academic style and method of discourse, not a particular theology or philosophy” (PRRD I, 30). For Reformed scholasticism as a theological method see also Willem J. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011) and “Protestant Scholasticism: Some Methodological Considerations in the Study of Its Development” Nederlandsch archief voor kerkgeschiedenis 81 (2001): 265–74. In Reformed Ethics, Bavinck presents some criticism of scholasticism when there is an emphasis on the intellect at expense of the emotional and practical life. Nevertheless, in the same section of pathologies in the area of the intellect, Bavinck acknowledges that to arrange dogmas “according to a fixed method” in itself “was not wrong.” In fact, scholasticism “is the attempt to absorb into our consciousness that part of church doctrine that is externally available to us. In and of itself, that is not wrong . . . nor is it wrong to seek connection, unity, and system in dogmas.” Nevertheless, Bavinck also recognizes that there are “a number of areas where Scholasticism went wrong, both in the Middle Ages and in the seventeenth century.” Interestingly, for the last observation, Bavinck depends on authors such as Johannes Marckius, Bernardinus de Moor, and Voetius. See Bavinck, RE I, 422–6. 62 Brock and Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism, 18. 63 Craig Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 285. 64 For example, William Young provides an interesting case of some of Kuyper’s misreading of certain Reformed theologians. See Young, “Historic Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism” (1974). 60 61

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the retrieval and development of the doctrine of the covenant by Bavinck and Kuyper in late modernity, contemporary neo-Calvinist studies should consider the importance of covenant theology in areas such as theology proper, revelation, anthropology, and eschatology. Thus, neo-Calvinism as a theological movement should also be understood in light of trinitarian covenant theology. An important question to be investigated in more detail is whether Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s criticisms of a particular type of pietism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries should be directed chiefly toward theologians/authors or toward the manner of appropriation of their readers/people of that period. In other words, are the Puritan authors and Nadere Reformatie theologians promoting separatism, or is it readers with the “with-my-book-in-a-quiet-nook” attitude who encourage in some sense, a kind of narrow-mindedness?65 Could we say that a holistic view of theology and life was a distinctive of the Reformation, particularly in Calvin, and not of the post-Reformation period, including Voetius, for example? The answer lies in understanding neo-Calvinism as a critical appropriation of Reformed orthodoxy for the late modern context, that is, the theology of figures such as Calvin and Voetius, for example.66 Likewise, there would be value in works focusing on how different generations and representatives of neo-Calvinism (or movements associated with it) appropriated or distanced themselves from the dogmatics and piety of Reformed orthodoxy. Another interesting point would be the analysis and comparison of Kuyper’s devotional literature with the different Puritan devotional literature. This research can help to shed some light on the importance and continuity of the spirituality of Reformed orthodoxy in neo-Calvinism as a theological movement. In conclusion, because neo-Calvinism is a Reformed theological movement, the dogmatics and piety of Reformed orthodoxy should be considered when studying, recovering, developing, and contextualizing neo-Calvinism in the diversity of churches today. Therefore, neo-Calvinism, as a theological movement, should continue discovering Reformed orthodoxy’s riches in order to continue applying its implications in different spheres of life with the primary end of all things: the glory of the Triune God. In Bavinck’s words, “a little more Puritanism in our circle would not hurt.”67

See NCTI, 17–18. See Brock’s and Sutanto’s thesis one of Neo-Calvinist theology in NCTI, 293. 67 Bavinck indicated in Christianity (1912) that “Puritanism is a brainchild of Calvin.” See Herman Bavinck, What Is Christianity?, trans. and ed. Gregory Parker Jr. (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2022), 46. 65 66

Chapter 26

Neo-Calvinism and the Netherlands GEORGE HARINCK

I. INTRODUCTION Locations are vital for the dispersion and development of ideas and their pace. In St. Paul’s days, Athens was the place where ideas were exchanged and adapted. The medieval cities in Tuscany, Burgundy, and Flanders with their international trade connections were an ideal location for the exchange and development of ideas, like universities in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford were, and cities like Vienna, New York, and Singapore are in modern times, and the internet is today. The relevance and value of these locations and of the vehicles for transport change over time. We cannot imagine that Catholic Poland as we know it today had seemed to become a Protestant hotspot in the late sixteenth century, and it is hard to imagine the Heidelberg Catechism as a highlight of the Calvinist era of the Pfalz when one looks to present-day Heidelberg. This raises questions related to the topic of this chapter: What conditions made the Netherlands in the late nineteenth century the cradle of neo-Calvinism? In the first part, we focus on reasons why the Netherlands was the place where neo-Calvinism originated and flourished, and in the second part we deal with the question of how neo-Calvinism structured Dutch society.

II. ORIGINS a. Protestant Country and Decentralized Government In the history of the Netherlands, Calvinism has played an important role. This nation came into being in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, when the Dutch revolted and separated from the Habsburg Empire, culminating in a formal rejection of King Philip II in 1581 by about half of the provinces, and after a long war with shifting opportunities and alliances, it was finally recognized as a sovereign state internationally in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This Dutch Republic covered roughly the territory of present-day Netherlands. A major reason for this revolt was the religious policy of the Habsburg rulers Charles V and his son Philip II, who defended the Catholic Church forcefully and persecuted Protestants severely. In resisting this policy under the leadership of stadtholder William of

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Orange (1533–84) and his sons, a minority group of Calvinist leaders and citizens turned out to be his most ardent and radical supporters. Unlike Lutherans and Anabaptists, they had a theological argument to justify political resistance, were well organized, and were proto-democratic. The Dutch Republic was successful economically and culturally, resulting in a Golden Age in the seventeenth century. Politically it was a complex structure. Highly decentralized, it had no royal court to coordinate authority. Sometimes the House of Orange could compensate for this absence, but at other times it was suspected of aiming to gain power. It was a Republic of citizens, with a large role for cities and a weak central government. Some Calvinists were intolerant toward Catholicism, as well as toward Anabaptism and Lutheranism, others were milder. In the Dutch Republic Calvinism became the public religion. The Reformed Church, organized in 1571 while still persecuted, became the privileged church in the Republic. Its organization was decentralized as well and in the first two ages of its existence a national synod did not meet after the Synod of Dordrecht of 1618/19. Abraham Kuyper described the situation of the Reformed Church and the young republic in a historical article as “a free church in a free state,”1 but this is a Calvinist ideal that did not match the complex reality of church-state relations in the Dutch Republic. Other religions and confessions, like Roman Catholicism, Anabaptism, Lutheranism, and Judaism, were tolerated to varying degrees. This toleration or “social ecumenism” turned out to be a balancing act, navigating between the poles of coexistence and exclusion.2 Compared to other European nations, where most of the times only one religion was allowed in the public domain, either Protestant or Catholic, the practical tolerance of religious diversity made the Dutch Republic historically an interesting experiment. Though in the early seventeenth century this experiment faltered for some years when a Calvinist conflict on predestination brought the country on the verge of a civil war, tolerance grew over time. Due to the absence of severe religious persecution, the Republic became a haven for dissidents from elsewhere in Europe, a feature often (over) stressed by neo-Calvinists. Still, the Calvinist ideology of tolerance did not develop into reconciliation or freedom of religion. The Reformed (Calvinistic) Church had a radical wing to deal with and kept its exclusive prerogative in public life till the end of the Republic in 1795. The French Revolution had far-reaching consequences for the Dutch. The old Republic was occupied by French armies in 1795 and eventually became part of the French empire. After the liberation of the Netherlands from the French rule and after Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, a new political entity was created, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This Kingdom comprised present-day Belgium and the Netherlands. The heir of the last stadtholder William V of Orange-Nassau was made king: William I. The transition from a republic into a kingdom implied a more centralized government than the Netherlands had been used to, in accordance with modern French political ideas. A constitution was introduced, and a parliament, but the king was the determining

A. Kuyper, “De eerste kerkvergaderingen of de vestiging onzer Hervormde Kerk, en de strijd om haar zelfstandig bestaan,” in Geschiedenis der christelijke kerk in Nederland in tafereelen, ed. B. ter Haar and W. Moll (Amsterdam: G. Portielje & Zoon, 1869), 80; translation by the author. 2 Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, 1650: Bevochten eendracht (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers, 20002), 358; see also R. Po-Chia Hsia and H. F. K. van Nierop (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 1

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factor in politics. The kingdom split in 1830 into the two countries, Belgium and the Netherlands, and the latter gradually developed politically and culturally from seven provinces into one nation. After the split of 1830 the country was dominantly Protestant, with a large Catholic minority. The Reformed Church was part of this transition into a kingdom. It now became a nationally organized church, and though other denominations had been granted freedom of worship as well from 1795 on, the Reformed Church was still prominent as the largest one, with more than half of the population belonging to this denomination. The revised Constitution of 1848 was a decisive step toward civil liberties, protecting freedom of press, association, education, a democratic system limiting the power of the king, and a separation of church and state. The Netherlands was developing into a liberal democracy.

b. A Liberal Context To a large extent neo-Calvinism has been stamped by this history from liberation in the sixteenth century to liberalism in the nineteenth century. Freedom is one of the most frequent words in Kuyper’s Stone lectures. Neo-Calvinism was not a countermovement like Calvinism had been under Spanish rule in the sixteenth century, or within the Reformed Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or in continental Europe. It was part and parcel of the modernizing movement that dominated the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century. The birth and rise of neo-Calvinism cannot be understood without this context.3 Though the name may be misleading, neo-Calvinism is not an ecclesial movement at first. As a matter of fact, the movement started in the political domain and broader in the domain of culture. If we take Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer’s (1801–76) lectures Unbelief and Revolution (1847) as a foundational text of an orthodox Protestant revival in the Netherlands4 and an impulse to the neo-Calvinist tradition, the issue in these lectures is not the decline of the church and the need for its reformation, nor a critique of a modernizing theology, nor the decay of Christian morality as such. The issue of Groen’s lectures is broader and more general; it was on a “comprehensive paradigm shift in the intellectual and spiritual outlook of Western civilization.”5 The battle cry of the French Revolution ni Dieu et ni maître expressed for him in a nutshell what was going on: the turning away of Western culture of religion, of the supernatural, and of revelation, in favor of a natural view of the world and a stress on the immanence of morality and the equality of mankind. At the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989, George Steiner aptly wrote that it is “the pivotal historical-social date after that of the foundation of Christianity.”6 Of course, this turn, this revolution, as Groen preferred to call it, involved church and theology, as well as politics, but he stressed its general, all-encompassing character. As a matter of fact, the “revolutionary ideas are a rival conception of humanity, evil, salvation, and the eschaton as defined by Christianity. But they’re also antithetical to

See Arie Molendijk, Protestant Theology and Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). 4 Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, Unbelief and Revolution, trans. Harry van Dyke (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2018). 5 Harry van Dyke, “Translator’s introduction,” in van Prinsterer, Unbelief and Revolution, XVI. 6 George Steiner, “Aspects of Counter-Revolution,” in The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and Its Legacy, 1789–1989, ed. Geoffrey Best (London: Fontana Press, 1988), 151. 3

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creation’s most basic ordering, which can’t be flouted forever with impunity.”7 The claim of liberalism made Groen realize that the Christian worldview was not a given but had to be reformulated in competition with and opposition to other emerging worldviews. This was the habitat of the modern age. The perception of Christianity as one of the worldviews among others was new in the nineteenth century. The opposition was no longer the Christian world (Europe and the Americas) versus Islam, Judaism, and the heathens and their false religions, a geographical divide and supporting the colonial impulse, but a spiritual or religious divide, that had developed within the Christian world, and required a new reflection on what actually was Christian, in the church, in politics, in art, in society, and so on. Antithetical to liberalism’s starting point in reason, Groen did not start with the church, or with God-given authority in the political realm, but with revelation, the most general formulation of a God making himself known in his world. Groen did not become a counterrevolutionary, withdrawing himself from the culture and the society he criticized. He accepted the Dutch revised, liberal Constitution of 1848, got involved in Dutch politics, and as a Member of Parliament defended and expanded an Anti-Revolutionary position in the first decade after 1848. But these were still the years of analysis, and criticism, and less of synthesizing his ideas in an Anti-Revolutionary blueprint for political action.8 Groen did not abandon the ideal of the Dutch Republic as a Protestant nation. In 1864 he founded a Christian-National Education League, but in the end he did not succeed in his efforts to turn institutions like the state, the church, and the school Protestant again. The neo-Calvinists adopted Groen’s description of the liberal worldview opposing Christendom but turned away from his aim to re-create a Protestant public domain. This neo-Calvinist development was not shared by the majority of Dutch Protestants. A Groenian national Protestant sentiment would never be absent, even within the neo-Calvinist tradition, rooted in the history of the Dutch Republic, accompanied by a love for the House of Orange and a longing for a “church of the fatherland.” However, the dominant leader after Groen van Prinsterer was Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), and he went in a different direction. After having become Reformed orthodox in his first years as a pastor in Beesd, he embraced liberal democracy as the best expression of his religious conviction, since liberalism was an “atheistic imitation” of Calvinism.9 He was as opposed to the liberal worldview as Groen was, but he abandoned the ideal of a Protestant nation. Liberalism, defined by Martin Walzer as “the art of separation,” realized religious freedom, academic freedom, free enterprise, the separation of private and public life, civil society, and political community.10 As a child of his time Kuyper embraced these separations (think of his notion of sphere sovereignty) and in his Utrecht days (1867–70) started to stress the distinction between the church and the nation. Inspired by John à

Bruce Ashford in a blog on https://www​.thegospelcoalition​.org​/reviews​/unbelief​-revolution/ (consulted September 5, 2022). 8 R. Kuiper, “Het Reveil en de grondwet van 1848,” Radix 14 (1988): 125–6. 9 A. Kuyper, Calvinism: Six Stone-lectures (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser Ltd.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd.; New York-Chicago-Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Company, [1899]), 46; see also 36, 239. 10 Michael Walzer, “Liberalism and the Art of Separation,” Political Theory 12 (August 1984): 315–17. 7

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Lasco’s view of the church as a congregation of believers, he around 1870 called for a sharply defined membership of the Reformed Church, distinct from citizenship.11 Kuyper radicalized Groen’s struggle for Protestant schools in 1869 by calling on members of the League to take their children from the free public school, even though they had to pay for a private, Christian school. He wanted the public school to show its true colors. Here a first split in the orthodox Protestant movement of Groen van Prinsterer occurred. Part of the supporters of Groen’s aim blamed Kuyper for handing the Dutch youth over to neutral public education. Their wish to keep the public-school Christian, even if this would be confessionally indeterminate, was in line with their ideal of a Protestant nation. Kuyper’s confrontational stance in the school struggle was the first expression of a new view of society. He corrected liberalism, by stating that his Anti-Revolutionary viewpoint was bolder and more consequential when it came to freedom, compared to the liberal one—which he labeled as “liberalist”—by also making room for error and apostasy.12 No government is allowed to define the religions of their citizens, as actually happened in the public school. The battle should not be about the orthodox Protestant versus the liberal viewpoint, but about a pluralistic public domain instead of a liberal one. This plural character implied that Dutch citizens should not hide their worldview in public life and leave the public domain to the dominating opinions but would present themselves in public as Catholics, Jews, socialists, liberals, and so on. This was in line with two Calvinist principles Kuyper utilized and applied to the context of the nineteenth century. One confessed that religion is not just about piety or restricted to the church, but concerns all of life, and the other (unlike in Calvin’s days) that any religious compulsion “clashes most vehemently with the character of the Christian faith.”13 The first notion was related to Kuyper’s view on common grace, an extension of Calvin’s recognition “that God by His secret bridle restrains the majority of men from abandoning themselves to all kinds of crime.”14 The second was related to the conscience of men “as the palladium of all personal liberty.”15 This resulted in a view on society that was inclusive on the one hand and promoted public debate on the other hand. Kuyper expected every group to participate in public debate and demarcate its own position. Here again, a segment of the orthodox Protestants would not follow Kuyper. Though he defended the duty of the state to uphold the “natural knowledge of God”—expressed in recognition of a godhead, writing out prayer days, and Sabbath observance16—he did not pursue a Protestant nation or public domain. This opposition against the exclusive liberal worldview changed the scene, not only in the public debate on education or religion but also in politics. Kuyper became the editor of a new newspaper, De Standaard, in 1872, and a Member of Parliament in 1874. Cf. Jasper Vree, Kuyper in de kiem: De precalvinistische periode van Abraham Kuyper 1848–1874 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2006), 199–324, esp. 323: Kuyper presented the Reformed Church in Utrecht “as a testing ground for the church of the future. The old broad national church should give way to a church whose members had consciously made their choice.” 12 F.e. De Standaard, June 18, 1874; Jeroen Koch, Abraham Kuyper: Een biografie (Amsterdam: Boom, 2006), 143. 13 A. Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto, trans. Harry van Dyke (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015), 64. Kuyper criticized the trial of Michael Servetus in Geneva (1553) more than once. 14 H. Kuiper, Calvin on Common Grace (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1928), 78. 15 Kuyper, Calvinism, 139. 16 After the Second World War this position was abandoned in the later Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition, as does Jonathan Chaplin et al., as a non-necessary limitation of Kuyper’s pluralism. 11

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From that moment on the opposition to liberalism as a suppressing ideology in general and against liberal school politics specially became his theme in the national debate. The Roman Catholics supported his viewpoint in politics from the 1870s on (though Kuyper polemicized against Roman Catholic theology) and later on in the nineteenth century socialists shared his criticism of the liberal elite. Dutch politics changed from a deliberative to a more confrontational mode.17 Kuyper’s pluralist view fitted hand in glove in this democratic development, including more public involvement in politics and extension of the suffrage. This took shape in his restructuring in 1879 of the loosely organized political group of antirevolutionaries from Groen’s day into the Anti-Revolutionary Party, the first modern political party in the Dutch Parliament, with a comprehensive political program. Instead of incidental campaigns around elections once every few years, politics became a more permanent matter of importance to the people. In this situation, extension of the electorate became a prominent desideratum, from the late 1880s on also an important socialist political demand. From 1888 to 1891 the Anti-Revolutionary Party for the first time participated in government, followed by a cabinet led by Kuyper himself (1901–5). Kuyper’s stress on participation of the people had a flip side. He also invited the government to participate in society, not by assuming responsibilities of the citizens but by facilitating participation in society and protecting their rights, for example, by recommending legal protection of labor and promoting a fair relationship between labor and capital, between employee and employer. This call for a more responsible attitude of the government corresponded with a younger generation of liberal politicians, who developed social policies, especially the liberal cabinets of the 1890s. This generation of liberals was more open to extension of the vote than previous ones and more open to the acceptance of worldviews in politics, be it Christian or socialist. The pluralist view started to prevail and would largely characterize the Dutch society of the twentieth century. Liberals were an indigenous threat in Kuyper’s eyes. After all, the ideas of the French Revolution had originated in a Christian culture. They were a caricature of Calvinism; liberalism looked like Calvinism, it was its “tyrannical twin sister.”18 If liberalism shed its coercive character or was tamed, its place in society would not be contested by confessionals; there was too much common ground for that. This is what started to happen at the end of the nineteenth century. As is well-known, Kuyper initially described his political program as “Christian liberalism,”19 and it fitted in well with the development of liberal democracy. Given this context, a “Christian-liberal synthesis,” as political historian J. Bosmans called it, was within reach and would be realized after the First World War.20

c. The Support of the Catholics Although anti-Catholicism may have slumbered in the nineteenth-century Netherlands— an era in which many Dutchmen viewed their country as a “Protestant nation”—it never

See Jouke Turpijn, Mannen van gezag: De uitvinding van de Tweede Kamer 1848–1888 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2008). 18 Kuyper, Calvinism, 183. 19 A. Kuyper, Het calvinisme, oorsprong en waarborg onzer constitutioneele vrijheden: Een Nederlandsche gedachte (Amsterdam, 1874), 66. 20 J. Bosmans, quoted in J. A. Bornewasser, Katholieke Volkspartij 1945–1980. Band 1: herkomst en groei (tot 1963) (Nijmegen, 1995), 73; George Harinck, “De Pacificatie van 1917: begin van een nieuwe agenda voor de confessionele politiek,” in Een christelijk-liberale synthese: 100 jaar Pacificatie 1917–2017, red. George Harinck, Alexander van Kessel en Hans Krabbendam (Utrecht: KokBoekencentrum, 2018), 121–36. 17

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truly slept. The most famous outburst of this sentiment was the April Movement of 1853, a vehement Protestant protest against the restoration of the ecclesial hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church after three centuries of absence, made possible under the liberal Constitution of 1848.21 Though this old feud did flare up occasionally during the rise of neo-Calvinism, especially in Kuyper’s journalism, it is hard to imagine though how this tradition would have gained influence in Dutch society without a political coalition with the Catholics. This essential support by the Catholics may seem strange, since the Netherlands was predominantly a Protestant nation, and traditionally Roman Catholicism was the archenemy, especially of Calvinists: “Rome and Dordt” remain two, Kuyper wrote in De Standaard.22 In the Kingdom of the Netherlands, separated from Belgium since 1830, the Catholics were a large minority of 35–38 percent of the otherwise Protestant population (plus a small minority of Jews). And what was more important: toward outsiders they were way more unified than the Protestants, who got only more divided over the nineteenth century. The neo-Calvinists could not count on the support of modern, non-orthodox Protestants, and as we have seen earlier, even the majority of the orthodox Protestants did not support the neo-Calvinists. Many orthodox Protestants did not vote for the Anti-Revolutionary Party anymore when it became more outspokenly neo-Calvinistic in the 1890s, did not join the Reformed Churches Kuyper founded in 1892, and after 1870 did not support the radicalizing Christian school movement. At the end of the nineteenth century about 57 percent of the Dutch were Reformed, but the Anti-Revolutionary Party had only 27 out of 100 seats in Parliament at best (in 1889). This limited support had also to do with the fact that many supporters were “little people” (“kleine luyden”), who still lacked the right to vote, while modern Protestantism was overrepresented in the ruling class. The Catholics had a stable electorate. In the 1890s they won about 25 out of 100 seats. Without the Catholics, the Anti-Revolutionary Party could not have played an important role in Dutch politics, in the nineteenth century or in the twentieth century. From 1874 on, the Catholic priest and journalist Herman Schaepman (1844–1903) promoted the political cooperation of Catholics and Antirevolutionaries and initially envisioned an interconfessional political party. His aim was exceptional in Catholic circles, but thanks to Schaepman’s recommendation to his readers to vote for Kuyper the latter won his parliamentary seat that year.23 In 1880 Schaepman became a Member of Parliament himself. In the 1880s and 1890s Kuyper was more hesitant to cooperate with the Catholics than his political companion A. F. de Savornin Lohman,24 because of the theological anti-papism of him and his constituency, and also because of the conservative character of the Catholic faction in Parliament. However, in 1901 he stressed his Anti-Revolutionary constituency the Catholics were partners in the defense of the Christian foundations of the Dutch state: “If you exclude the Catholics from present Christendom, then Protestant faithful Christendom is bound hand and foot, and forever at the mercy of the unbelieving

G. N. M. Vis and W. Janse, Staf en storm: Het herstel van de bisschoppelijke hiërarchie in Nederland in 1853: actie en reactie (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002). 22 A. Kuyper, “Rome en Dordt I-VI,” De Standaard, July 3–9, 1875. 23 Ton Crijnen and Ina Herbers, Een groot emancipator: Mgr. dr. Herman Schaepman, politicus en dichter 1844– 1903 (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2022), 208, 210, 212. 24 Johan van Zuthem, “Heelen en halven:” Orthodox-protestantse voormannen en het “politiek” antipapisme in de periode 1872–1925 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 53–4. 21

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majority, and all opposition to the Revolutionary principle will be futile.”25 Since the elections of 1901 the coalition of Catholics and Antirevolutionaries was an almost permanent component of Dutch politics. The reliance on Catholic support in politics seemed at odds with Kuyper’s heavy criticism of Roman Catholicism and his anti-papism. He admired the Roman Catholic Church for its coherence: “In the Roman Catholic Church everybody knows what he lives for, because with clear consciousness he enjoys the fruit of Rome’s unity of life system.”26 This unity implied adherence to the pope and his rejection of liberalism and democracy (Quanta Cura and Syllabus Errorum, 1864), which took on a holy character since the proclamation of the doctrine of the papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council in 1870. No less than 400,000 Dutch Catholics signed a petition against this invasion, handed over to King William III.27 To Kuyper and other Protestants this action bordered on a betrayal of the Dutch nation. Moreover, Roman Catholicism was a threat to the freedom of conscience, which was, to Kuyper, a major fruit of Calvinism, and a main difference with Rome. He did not reject liberalism totally, as the pope did, but, as explained previously, embraced the separation of church and state, for example. With his anti-Catholic opinions Kuyper was in accordance with mainline Protestantism. The miracle was that thanks to the threat of liberalists, he started to appreciate Catholicism’s religious and moral stance. He agreed with Allard Pierson’s critique of the tyrannic trait in Dutch liberalism, turning the public school into “sectarian modernist schools.”28 The liberalists turned out to be a greater threat to the freedom of conscience and public religion than the Catholics. In 1888 the first Christian coalition cabinet was a fact, and one of its characteristic features is the financial support of Christian schools, a principal change from a uniform to a liberal—that is, plural–public domain. Since 1918, the cooperation of Rome and Dordt in Dutch politics was a given, culminating in the merger of the various political parties involved into the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) in 1980.

III. STRUCTURES In historiography there is a tendency to reduce the neo-Calvinist tradition to Abraham Kuyper’s ideas and actions.29 But this is an oversimplification. Of course, Kuyper was an authority, and especially in the two decades after his death his person, ideas, and achievements were subject to boundless admiration, but one of the characteristics of this tradition is that there is no central authority, like the church in Catholicism or the International in socialism. Neo-Calvinism embraced the “art of separation”; it acknowledges various spheres in society and their relative autonomy. In 1905 theologian and politician Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) stressed that in this way neo-Calvinists met the demands of modern society: “They are no praise-singers of the past times and do not wail idly about the miseries of the present, but they intervene and reform according to the

A. Kuyper, Volharden bij het ideaal: Openingswoord ter deputatenvergadering van 17 april 1901 (Amsterdam and Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, [1901]), 13; translation by the author. 26 Kuyper, Calvinism. Six Stone-lectures, 16. 27 Koch, Abraham Kuyper, 212. 28 A. Pierson, De liberale partij op staatkundig gebied (Arnhem: D. A. Thieme, 1869). 29 For a recent example, see Molendijk, Protestant Theology, who focuses almost exclusively on Kuyper and neglects a theologian like Herman Bavinck. 25

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ideal they face. (. . .) No repristination, no maintaining of the status quo, but reformation is their motto.”30 This influence was not so much personal as it was structural. Patient observation reveals that in the twentieth century the structure of Dutch society has been stamped by neo-Calvinism.31 Let me cite three examples. First, consider the position of the church in society. In distinction from Protestant countries such as Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, and to a certain extent also Germany, the church as an institution has not been a social or political power or partner in twentieth-century Dutch society. This is the result of Kuyper’s action, which, starting with the Doleantie of 1886, broke the pretense of the Reformed Church as a national church— thus not only lifting a de facto second-tier position for Catholics, unchurched Dutchmen, and smaller Protestant denominations but also shifting the responsibility for Christian action in society from the institute to its members. That is to say, the responsibility shifted to Christian organizations. This was called the church as an organism by neo-Calvinists, but those organizations were never considered part of the church.32 The institutional church was withdrawn from the Dutch public domain, tucked away behind a garland of organizations. Moreover, after Kuyper, Christianity no longer existed in Dutch society as “generally shared discourse, but in the form of different complexes ( . . ) within different subcultures”33 Then there is politics. Neo-Calvinism provided the argument to organize Dutch politics ideologically: the variety of worldviews should have the right of expression in Dutch society.34 This neo-Calvinist notion has played a major role in Dutch politics since the late nineteenth century. It implied the relevance of the diversity of beliefs in structuring society and encouraged its expression in public. In the years when liberalism and social democracy were mutually exclusive, for the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) or later the CDA, political cooperation was in principle possible with both, even if it was sometimes against all odds or the choice was called “lead for scrap.”35 The neo-Calvinist vision of the ARP was an impetus for other confessional parties, either in tandem or in opposition. This strong presence of neo-Calvinism was also reflected in the fact that most Western European countries had had interconfessional political parties since the Second World War and the Netherlands only since 1980, as well as in the fact that most European Christian Democratic parties, “under the influence of de-confessionalization and modernization phenomena, had long since taken a much greater distance from the faith,” while the CDA continued to emphasize the “C” in Christian Democratic politics.36 To this CDA accent, neo-Calvinism made not the smallest contribution.

H. Bavinck, Christelijke en neutrale staatkunde: Rede ter inleiding van de deputatenvergadering, gehouden te Utrecht, op 13 april 1905 (Hilversum: Witzel & Klemkerk, 1905), 30. 31 For this section I rely partially on my inaugural address at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam: George Harinck, Waar komt het VU-kabinet vandaan? Over de traditie van het neocalvinisme. Inaugurele rede (Amstelveen: AON Pers, 2007). 32 J. P. Kruyt, “Sociologische beschouwingen over zuilen en verzuiling,” Socialisme en Democratie 14, no. 1 (1957): 11–29, did not count the church as a part of pillarization. 33 Peter van Rooden, “Oral history en het vreemde sterven van het Nederlandse christendom,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 119, no. 4 (2004): 545. 34 Kuyper, Calvinism, 142: “In the French Revolution a civil liberty for every Christian to agree with the unbelieving majority; in Calvinism, a liberty of conscience, which enables every man to serve God, according to his own conviction and the dictates of his own heart.” 35 Jan-Jaap van den Berg, Deining: Koers en karakter van de ARP ter discussie, 1956–1970 (Kampen: Kok, 1999), 312. 36 Alexander van Kessel, “Ruggen recht heren:” Hoe de Nederlandse christen-democraten het tegenover hun Duitse geestverwanten aflegden in het debat over het profiel van de Europese Volkspartij (Hilversum: Verloren, 2003), 397. 30

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Finally, there is society. That in Dutch society “everyone is allowed to be different”37 and that public resources are also available for this purpose is hard to imagine without neo-Calvinism. Kuyper biographer Jeroen Koch writes that he was not the architect of the pillarization, but he gave “the decisive impetus” to this end.38 According to neo-Calvinists, the criterion of community was inner, not outer. And therefore, the vitality of society depended on whether everyone’s beliefs could be shaped in the public domain within the limits of the law. Many grunted at this key of division; others profited, such as the Salvation Army with its probation work, Muslims and their schools—and, of course, the neo-Calvinists. In this vision, the government had the role of policeman; society was conceivable without it. This structure of Dutch society presupposed an emphasis on citizens’ worldviews, on civic initiatives in every sphere of society, and on responsibility for each other’s freedom. This structure closely matched the societal vision of neo-Calvinism.

a. Different Dynamics By the early twentieth century, the neo-Calvinist tradition was firmly established in Dutch society, but not unthreateningly so. The First World War knocked the fuses out of European culture and made it clear that the Christian cultural optimism of previous decades was a bubble. Where should the new rules come from now that Christendom was bankrupt? The new, modern worldview that emerged was dynamic: there were no longer fixed benchmarks, such as reason or revelation; it was ambiguous: there was no single idiom, which could claim general validity; and it required shaping: man had to create, in a sense, a worldview acceptable to him himself. This cultural shift struck Neo-Calvinism at its heart. Now it became problematic that the worldview of the neo-Calvinists was largely built on the objective knowledge of eternal, divine principles. Such certainties had fallen by the wayside in modern times. Bavinck put his finger on the sore spot in 1919: For [a] long time people had thought they could solve everything with “principles,” theoretically, deductively, but reality did not bother. It continued, placing a barrier against those abstract principles. Facts were more powerful than principles.39 He stated unequivocally that the “time of principia” was over: “We do not know on many points where we stand, what the bearing and radius of our principles is.”40 Most neo-Calvinists, however, were not troubled by these intellectual concerns and counted their blessings above all. In practice, around 1918 a division of labor had developed in neo-Calvinist circles, covering all aspects of life: politics was represented by the ARP, education by school associations, and socioeconomic sphere by labor unions like Patrimonium and the Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond. “We went from meeting

Piet de Rooy, “De pacificatie van 1917: Iedereen in Nederland mag anders zijn,” Historisch Nieuwsblad 14, no. 2 (April 2005): 9–14. 38 Koch, Abraham Kuyper, 575. 39 G. Harinck, C. van der Kooi, and J. Vree (ed.), “Als Bavinck nu maar eens kleur bekende:” Aantekeningen van H. Bavinck (. . .) (november 1919) (Amsterdam: Historisch Documentatiecentrum, 1994), 42, 50; translation by the author. 40 A. Anema and H. Bavinck e.a., Leider en leiding in de Antirevolutionaire Partij (Amsterdam: Ten Have, 1915), 43, 45. 37

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to meeting. That was because all of us fulfilled the need to totalitarianize ourselves.”41 The church was the common denominator of the neo-Calvinists at that time, and a new vision of society was expected from its theologians after 1918 that was in line with such dynamic forces as urbanization, democracy, and economic crises. But the church was behind the times and, according to Johan Bavinck (1895–1964), already did not even know “well anymore, how to preach the content of her faith invitingly and emphatically to the outside world” in modern times.42 Structurally, Dutch society was not touched by the changing mood till after the Second World War, but socially, the neo-Calvinist world had become static.

b. New Avenues Among the searchers in the interbellum era for an alternative to the rigid application of principles were the theologian Klaas Schilder (1890–1952) at the Theological School in Kampen and the philosophers Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (1892–1978), at the Vrije Universiteit. Schilder dynamized the relations between God, man, and world, by conceiving them not as static but as an activity, and he therefore preferred to describe man as God’s coworker.43 He maintained Kuyper’s broad view of life and worldview, with a somber, activist outlook, appropriate to the unstable modern world.44 Dooyeweerd developed a neo-Calvinist philosophy in response to the cultural crisis of the First World War, like Schilder did in theology, which discounted the dynamics of reality more fully. Everyone understood reality based on religious presuppositions. Instead of the fixed opposition of subject-object, Dooyeweerd emphasized a variety of reality relations—expressed in the law circles of the philosophy of the law.45 Here, too, Kuyper’s basic thinking became more dynamic without abandoning the breadth of his philosophy of life and worldview. The incitements to renewal in Schilder, Dooyeweerd, and Vollenhoven filled a need. Liberalism was no longer the main opponent. Now Karl Barth (1886–1968) offered the neo-Calvinists a theological alternative, rejecting a societal structure related to a Christian worldview.46 And totalitarian National Socialism beckoned, raising a rampart against J. H. Bavinck, De toekomst van onze kerken (Bruinisse: Van der Wal, 1943), 16. Ibid., 17. 43 See: J. Veenhof, “Medewerkers van God. K. Schilder over plaats en taak van de mens in het handelen van God,” in “Achter den tijd:” Opstellen aangeboden aan dr. G. Puchinger ter gelegenheid van zijn vijfenzestigste verjaardag, ed. W. F. de Gaay Fortman e.a. (Haarlem: Aca-Media, 1986), 139–54. 44 See: J. Marinus de Jong, “De jonge Klaas Schilder en Karl Barth: parallellen, vijandschap, katalysator,” in De receptie van Karl Barth in Nederland, ed. George Harinck and Dirk van Keulen (Amersfoort: Vuurbaak, 2022), 41–60; George Harinck, “The allure of utopia: Klaas Schilder’s stress on the relevance of hic et nunc,” in Utopian Thinking in Law, Politics, Architecture and Technology: Hope in a Hopeless World, ed. Bart van Klink, Marta Soniewicka and Leon van den Broeke (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2022), 150–67. 45 See: Marcel E. Verburg, Herman Dooyeweerd: Leven en werk van een Nederlands christen-wijsgeer (Baarn: Ten Have, 1989), 59–61. Verburg pointed to the fact that this dynamic tendency in Dooyeweerd’s philosophy has often been overlooked (71). 46 Clifford Blake Anderson, “Jesus and the ‘Christian World view’: A Comparative Analysis of Abraham Kuyper and Karl Barth,” Cultural Encounters 2, no. 2 (2006): 61–80: George Harinck, “De eerste Nederlandse contacten met Barth,” in De receptie van Karl Barth in Nederland, ed. George Harinck and Dirk van Keulen (Amersfoort: Vuurbaak, 2022), 25–40; C. van der Kooi, “Karl Barth als Katalysator: die Niederländische neocalvinistische Barthrezeption nach 1926 als Funktion kulturtheologischer und offenbarungstheologischer Debatten,” Zeitschrift für Dialektische Theologie 25, no. 2 (2009): 95–117. 41 42

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communist atheism in the name of Christian values. The three neo-Calvinists defended against Barth the explicit connection of religion and culture, on the one hand, and against Hitler, spiritual freedom, on the other, and gathered around them a group of enthusiastic young people who hailed their insights as a way out of the impasse of principle. Their efforts to transform neo-Calvinism into a dynamic, militant, and totalizing movement fitted into a multitude of European “initiatives, blueprints, and experiments by which contemporaries tried to build lasting possibly illiberal structures in the circumstances of radical instability.”47 Schilder advocated a total vision “that does not place a sharply delineated perimeter around ‘church’ and world, nor should it (for every Christian, even in culture, must be a missionary).”48 He rejected that the church in neo-Calvinism had no function in society and sought new arrangements between church, society, and Christian organizations with the church as the center, as a battery, energizing the whole of Christian life—an aspiration characteristic of the interwar period and also evident in the Reformed Church.49 The opposition in neo-Calvinist circles against this dynamic interpretation of the tradition was vehement, for it challenged the authority of Kuyperians who claimed to be guardians of Kuyper’s legacy, criticized the tradition, and suggested new societal arrangements, and thus questioned the social and theological status quo. The resulting tensions led to a church split in 1944. Instead of renewing the neo-Calvinist life and worldview to make this tradition fit for the twentieth century, the renewal movement ended in ecclesial dissension that would also have its repercussions on neo-Calvinist social and political action after the war.

IV. CONCLUSION What conditions made the Netherlands the cradle of neo-Calvinism? We started this contribution with a stress on the relevance of location. The fact that neo-Calvinism developed in the Netherlands, and not in Great Britain or the United States, made all the difference. Liberalism as an intellectual force and as a political context, the tradition of decentralization, and the large Catholic minority, all these conditions molded the neoCalvinist tradition in a way that would not have happened elsewhere. It facilitated the rise of neo-Calvinism in church, education, media, and politics, and stamped the structure of Dutch society. Its heyday in Dutch history was the interbellum era, but that was a time of crisis at the same time. The tradition tended to become petrified, and attempts to renew it failed bitterly, especially in the church. Overall, the influence of neo-Calvinism in Dutch society and intellectual life diminished after 1945, being marginal today, but present in Christian political parties and Reformed denominations. The Netherlands is still relevant within the neo-Calvinist tradition worldwide, for its history and example, but at present the tradition thrives elsewhere in the world.

Peter Fritzsche, “Nazi Modern,” Modernism/Modernity 3, no. 1 (1996): 3. K. Schilder, “Jezus Christus en het cultuurleven,” in Jezus Christus en het menschenleven, ed. N. Buffinga (Culemborg: De Pauw, 1932), 273. 49 See on Schilder’s view on the church: Marinus de Jong, The Church is the Means, the World is the End: The Development of Klaas Schilder’s Thought on the Relationship between the Church and the World (Ede: GVO, 2019); on the developments in the Reformed Church: P. Kromdijk, Eenheid in verscheidenheid: De doorbraak in de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk en de samenleving tijdens het interbellum (Hilversum: Verloren, 2017). 47 48

Chapter 27

Neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism JENNIFER PATTERSON

Neo-Calvinism emerged in the friction of European modernity. Enlightenment rationalism, political revolution, and industrialization had led to broad social changes. These contributed to a reconfigured relation of church to state and society. New ideologies challenged Christian confessions. Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck sought to develop a world-and-life view faithful to the magnitude of God’s work in nature and grace and conversant with this modern situation. Amid these dynamics, Roman Catholicism was both foil and friend for the early neo-Calvinists. As Kuyper and Bavinck articulated their theological system, Roman Catholicism was a primary contrast case. During this period, the Catholic Church adopted some of its most “Roman” features, as Bavinck characterized them, including the definition of papal primacy and infallibility at the First Vatican Council (1870).1 The Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemned many aspects of modernity, and Aeterni Patris (1879) revived Thomism in response to modern challenges.2 Kuyper and Bavinck viewed these reactions to modernity as contrasting with their own. Still, despite a “fundamental antithesis” between the two theological frameworks, the neo-Calvinists believed they shared with Roman Catholics central doctrines of the Christian faith.3 These doctrines had common antecedents in church history and forged between the two traditions a common cause for Christian witness in the face of modernist ideologies. The contrasts and commonalities between first-generation neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be organized using the theological concept of catholicity. Catholicity was a capacious theme in the work of the early neo-Calvinists, encompassing the catholicity of the church stated in the Apostles’ Creed and the antecedent idea of the catholicity of Christianity.4 In neo-Calvinist usage, the concept described the universality of the faith by identifying Herman Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” trans. John Bolt CTJ 27 (1992): 220–51 (242); and Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 357. Hereafter, RD. See John W. O’Malley, Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 2 See M. de Wulf, Scholasticism Old and New, trans. P. Coffey (Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son, 1907), 203–4, 261–2; and Ralph Del Colle, “Neo-Scholasticism,” in The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology, ed. David Fergusson (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 375, 380–2. 3 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), 183. 4 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 221. 1

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the mode of Christianity’s presence and the dimensions of its influence in the world. Catholicity conveyed the neo-Calvinist understanding of Christians’ ecclesial, dogmatic, and cultural tasks in the light of how God’s grace relates to his work in nature.5 Kuyper and Bavinck used the doctrine of catholicity as a lens to consider the contrasting neo-Calvinist and Roman Catholic perspectives on the relation between grace and nature and how this divergence shaped their respective world- and life-views.6 At the same time, the practice of catholicity compelled neo-Calvinists to recognize what they shared with Roman Catholicism in terms of Christian faith and witness. The two traditions were firmly aligned in the belief that nature is God’s creation and that God continues to reveal himself and to work in this world through grace. Both agreed on the objective reality that God works in nature and grace, while differing on what it means to subjectively appropriate the fullness of that truth in the life of the believer and what implications that has in the church and the world.7 This chapter focuses on the work of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck between 1870 and 1920, summarizing their assessment of Roman Catholicism with respect to nature and grace. It does not treat later neo-Calvinists’ evaluations of this assessment or twentieth-century developments in Catholicism itself, particularly at Vatican II, and how Kuyper and Bavinck’s disposition toward Rome should be evaluated in such light today. This chapter documents the early neo-Calvinists’ perspective on Roman Catholicism in their own day to inform our engagement with subsequent critiques, affirmations, and reinterpretations of their outlook. The chapter contains five sections. The first identifies the dimensions of catholicity we can discern in the work of these neo-Calvinists, most clearly in Bavinck’s 1888 essay on the topic. The second section discusses how Kuyper and Bavinck understood catholicity differing in neo-Calvinist and Roman Catholic theology because of an underlying divergence on the relationship between grace and nature. The third section shows how they saw this doctrinal distinction shaping Rome’s disposition toward modernity in contrast to their own. The last two sections describe how neo-Calvinists exercised the task of catholicity by engaging Roman Catholic sources and by acting in coalition with Roman Catholics in response to certain modern social realities, particularly worldviews denying the God of nature and grace.

I. THE INTENSIVE AND EXTENSIVE DIMENSIONS OF CATHOLICITY In his 1888 essay “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” Herman Bavinck looked first to Scripture to define catholicity, drawing implications about the mode and dimensions of God’s grace at work within the created order and delineating neo-

Bavinck’s doctrine of catholicity entailed responsibilities. His “Catholicity” essay treats the subject biblically, confessionally, and with respect to “the obligations catholicity places before us today.” Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 222. Cory C. Brock, and N. Gray Sutanto consider aspects of the “task” of catholicity in their essay, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism: On Catholicity, Consciousness and Theological Epistemology,” SJT 70, no. 3 (2017): 315. 6 For a Roman Catholic view of the relation of nature and grace published during the same period, see Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1954). 7 Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, ed. and trans. James Eglinton, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, and Cory C. Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 129–33. 5

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Calvinist and Roman Catholic perspectives.8 In the Pentateuch, Bavinck found a sharp asymmetry between the magnitude of God’s creation of the cosmos and the particularity of his covenant with a specific people. From this asymmetry, with Israel as its focal point, Bavinck drew the lesson of “inner catholicity,” a “religion that encompasses the whole person in the wholeness of life.”9 The biblical account of God’s presence amid his people showed how revelation shaped all of their life, exhibiting the organic coherence of God’s works as Creator and Lord, rather than a mechanical imposition of the supernatural on the natural.10 The asymmetry signaled that God’s design in working through a particular people had creation-wide implications. That became much more explicit as the New Testament introduced a second asymmetry, between a fledgling church and the world. “No matter how small and insignificant it thus appeared, this church was truly catholic, heir of the future, proclaimer of a joy destined for all creatures.”11 This second asymmetry showed that the catholicity of Christianity influenced the whole cosmos, as unfolded at the cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost. At the cross, the mediator of creation was the mediator of redemption, thus able to bring restoration by defeating the opposition of sin in the world. The resurrection displayed God’s love for the world despite its sin. At Pentecost, Christ’s bodily absence made way for his presence by his Spirit. The implication was that the church is catholic through Christ’s spiritual presence, not a sacramental bodily manifestation,12 and the church’s mode of influence in the world is an ethical force, not an institutional authority.13 The inner catholicity of Christianity shows what can be called its intensive dimension.14 This intensive catholicity is the way in which the objective truth of Christianity becomes “constitutive of our thinking and doing” throughout all of life so that it may “spread outside us until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord,”15 displaying what can be described as the extensive dimension of catholicity. Stated in biblical metaphors Bavinck frequently used, Christianity is both a treasured pearl and a leavening agent throughout creation.16

II. DOCTRINAL CATHOLICITY: ORGANIC AND MECHANICAL MODES OF RELATING GRACE AND NATURE Bavinck observed that a tradition’s answers to all significant theological questions are shaped by its understanding of how God’s work of re-creation relates to his work of

Elsewhere, Bavinck notes that the word catholicity does not appear in Scripture, while citing biblical passages on which the doctrine stated in the Apostles Creed is based. See RD, 4.323. 9 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 221. 10 Ibid., 222. 11 Ibid., 225. 12 Ibid., 223–5. 13 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, vol. 2, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and J. Daryl Charles, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas (Bellingham: Lexham, 2019), 311–12. 14 Brock and Sutanto note Geerhardus Vos’ reference to an “intensive” aspect of catholicity. See Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham: Lexham, 2023), 62 n. 49. 15 Bavinck, Christian Worldview, 133. 16 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 223–4, 231, 236, 248. 8

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creation.17 The neo-Calvinist conception of catholicity was grounded in a view of an organic mode of relation between God’s work in grace and nature. This contrasted with the mechanical mode of grace-nature relationship, which Kuyper and Bavinck perceived at the heart of Roman Catholic theology. In such neo-Calvinist usage, organic implied a relation faithful to the Trinity-reflecting character of creation (unity in diversity), while mechanical referred to a rendering that set aspects of the God-given coherence of created reality at odds.18 Neo-Calvinists affirmed creation as the good work of God, through which he brought forth the world and humanity to exist in complete purity, integrity, and communion with him. Sin corrupted humanity and the whole of nature, rupturing perfect fellowship with God. Yet creation remained God’s handiwork. God’s purpose of restoring creation proceeded through his common grace at work in the created order to restrain sin so that by special grace Christ might renew humanity and the cosmos, restoring right relationship to God. Both common and special grace showed continuity between the divine works of creation and re-creation. As mediator of both, Christ’s grace opposes sin and restores nature. Creation is not ethically inferior to re-creation, nor the natural to the supernatural. While sin corrupted creation, it is not substantial and could not displace the goodness of God’s workmanship.19 On Bavinck’s reading of Rome’s teaching, “the natural is of a lower order, easily becomes the cause of sin, and therefore needs the restraint of the supernatural.”20 Original righteousness was a divine addition of supernatural grace to human nature, required to address the conflict between body and soul.21 Original sin was the loss of this superadded righteousness, not a positive corruption.22 The beatific vision is a destiny “superadded” to created human nature, and human beings require supernatural grace to be elevated to that end, even before the fall.23 Revelation discloses supernatural truths of a higher order, beyond human capacity for comprehension.24 The essential character of grace is that it is added to human nature, elevating it so that a person may attain supernatural knowledge, perform supernatural good works, and reach his supernatural end. Only incidentally does grace heal sin’s damage.25 Bavinck thought this view obscured sin’s corruption of humanity by emphasizing the lack of capacity in human nature to attain to the supernatural. The Roman system was a matter of quantitative addition that operated through supplement; grace was appended to nature to elevate it.26 This mechanical view could never fully harmonize nature and grace, he argued. Grace transcended, completed, and elevated nature; it did not permeate, renew, and sanctify nature.27

Herman Bavinck, “Common Grace,” trans. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen CTJ 24 (1989): 55–6. Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 229, 231, 236. For discussion of the neo-Calvinist usage of organic and mechanical terms and motifs, see Brock and Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism, 9–10. 19 Bavinck, RD, 4.435–6. 20 Ibid., 4.435. 21 Bavinck, RD, 2.546–7. See Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 61–9, 89, 192–4, 308, 333. 22 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 229. See Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 49–59. 23 Bavinck, RD, 2.539–40, 543. See Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 28–9, 57, 86–8, 93, 102, 110–15, 122, 149. 24 Bavinck, RD, 1.620. 25 Herman Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” PTR 7 (1909): 442–3; and Bavinck, What Is Christianity?, ed. and trans. Gregory Parker, Jr. (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2022), 46–7 (Kindle). 26 See Joseph Wilhelm and Thomas B. Scannell, A Manual of Catholic Theology: Based on Dogmatik by Matthias Joseph Scheeben, vol. 1 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner; 1908–9), 428–9. 27 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 229–30; “Common Grace,” 56–7. 17 18

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Where Rome emphasized a quantitative, metaphysical, supernaturalist antithesis between nature and grace, the Reformation restored focus to a qualitative, ethical antithesis between sin and grace.28 For the neo-Calvinists, original righteousness was inherent in the image of God, characteristic of what it means to be human and in right relation to God, and its loss debilitated human nature. Christ’s righteousness imputed to a sinner is a supernatural gift, but it is only “incidentally” supernatural, restoring what originally belonged to human nature.29 Grace does not operate mechanically to add an elevating element to nature or to subtract elements of a lower order from it. Grace purifies nature from sin, working organically within nature to restore it, intensively throughout the life of the Christian individually and the church corporately, and extensively throughout the cosmos.30

a. The Catholicity of the Church Neo-Calvinist and Roman Catholic differences with respect to nature and grace led to divergent perspectives on the catholicity of the church. The neo-Calvinists thought Rome’s understanding of institutional catholicity, located in the church’s hierarchy and sacramental system, had obscured its meaning.31 Rome’s conception of catholicity was based on its global institutional unity, its continuity through history, and its role as a sole depository of the supernatural truth and grace necessary for salvation.32 Catholicity resided in the institution because God had designated the Roman Catholic Church as the guardian of truth, distributor of grace, and adjudicator of good works. The church held supernatural truth, ensured by papal infallibility, that far exceeded human understanding. Those belonging to the church gained access to these “supernatural, inscrutable mysteries” by intellectual assent to the church’s authoritative teaching.33 The natural human being could not partake of supernatural truth or grace or perform supernaturally good works except by the elevating grace imparted through the sacraments. The hierarchy at the center of Roman Catholicism was established on this rigid differentiation between grace and nature, with the sacramental system providing the essential means of ascent from the natural to the supernatural and the beatific vision.34 The church is a “mystic middle-link” through which God relates to human beings.35 The invisible church was inseparable from the visible institution, and the latter held priority. Visibility was an essential characteristic, leaving unbelief inexcusable.36 By contrast, the neo-Calvinist conception of the visible church grew out of its understanding of the invisible church. In an 1870 address, “Rooted and Grounded,” Kuyper used the term “rooted” to characterize the church as a body, an organism Bavinck, RD, 2.545; RD, 4.410; “Catholicity,” 235. Bavinck, RD, 2.551. 30 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 236; RD, 4.436. 31 Abraham Kuyper, “State and Church,” in On the Church, ed. John Halsey Wood, Jr., and Andrew M. McGinnis, trans. Arjen Vreugenhil and Nelson D. Kloosterman (Bellingham: Lexham, 2016), §6; and Bavinck, Christianity, 48 (Kindle). 32 Bavinck, RD, 4.322. See Dei Filius: The Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith of Vatican I Proclaimed by Pope Pius IX on April 24, 1870, chapter 3. 33 Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 442. See Dei Filius, chapter 2. 34 Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 442–4; RD, 1.512. 35 Kuyper, Lectures, 21. 36 Bavinck, RD, 4.284–5. See Wilhelm and Scannell, Manual of Catholic Theology, vol. 2, §240.I, §241, §245.II.3; and Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum (Vatican: Librera Editrice Vaticana, 1896), no. 3. 28 29

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whose life and growth owe to Christ’s spiritual presence. “Grounded” referred to the church as an institution, a house requiring faithful human effort to build on solid ground.37 The church should first be rooted and then grounded, he argued; the organism should enliven and equip human work to build the institution. But Rome’s ecclesiology reversed this, Kuyper observed. “Rome wishes to govern the growth [of the church] according to the building.”38 In Kuyper’s view, Christ governs his church directly through his Spirit, not mediated through a hierarchy. Ministers receive their call and authority to serve directly from Christ, and the church is the body of believers of “equal standing” before him.39 The unity and universality of the church do not require hierarchical uniformity,40 according to the neo-Calvinists. Rather, ecclesial “multiformity” across cultures characterizes catholicity.41 Christianity is “suited and intended for every people and age, for every class and rank, for every time and place. That church is most catholic that most clearly expresses in its confession and applies in its practice this international and cosmopolitan character of the Christian religion.”42

b. Grace at Work in Human Nature: The Inner, Intensive Catholicity of Christianity The neo-Calvinists emphasized that grace is to shape the whole person, displaying the inner, intensive catholicity of Christianity. As Kuyper explained, “One supreme calling must impress the stamp of one-ness upon all human life, because one God upholds and preserves it, just as he created it all.”43 Kuyper and Bavinck thought Rome’s dualistic view of nature and grace detracted from this coherence of the Christian life. Rome’s teaching on original sin emphasized the forfeiture of superadded original righteousness and neglected the corrosiveness of sin, suggesting that human beings are capable of natural good but not supernatural good (which the neo-Calvinists found to be at odds with Scripture’s unified view of human nature and the moral law).44 The categorization of sins into mortal and venial further eroded the organic wholeness of God’s law. Rome’s conception of sin was “atomistic” and “mechanical.”45 In reality, sin pervades creation, argued Bavinck.46 “Sin is not a quantity that, isolated from the perpetrator of it, can be counted on one’s fingers and weighed in a scale.”47 The additive supernatural grace of Rome’s sacraments “never becomes one with believers.”48 With regard to the supernatural truths imparted by Rome’s teaching,

Abraham Kuyper, “Rooted and Grounded,” in Kloosterman, On the Church, 82–3 (Kindle). Ibid., 92 (Kindle). 39 Kuyper, Lectures, 62–3. 40 Catholic historian John O’Malley documents the conflict in the decades leading up to Vatican I between ascendant ultramontanism and lingering local liturgical customs characteristic of French Gallicanism. Ultramontanism prevailed initially in the papal encyclical Inter Multiplices (1853), compelling conformity with the Roman rite, and finally in the Vatican Council’s declaration of papal supremacy (1870). See O’Malley, Vatican I, chapter 2 (55–95). 41 Kuyper, Lectures, 63–4; and Herman Bavinck, “The Future of Calvinism,” PRR 5 (1894): 22–3. 42 Bavinck, RD, 4.323. 43 Kuyper, Lectures, 54. Emphasis in original. 44 Bavinck, RD, 3.96–8, 123, 174. 45 Ibid., 153–5. 46 Ibid., 402. 47 Ibid., 154. 48 Ibid., 4.494. 37 38

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Bavinck observed, “The faith which accepts these mysteries has for its specific object the Church-dogma; it does not penetrate through the dogma to the things themselves of which the dogma is the expression; it does not bring into communion with God.”49 This “partial” and “dualistic” religious system50 meant Rome had “always reared two types of children.”51 Christian faith and morality had to negotiate between the natural and supernatural, with the natural order regarded as good, but lower. Marriage and worldly vocations were acceptable, but celibacy and monasticism were better.52 The church’s hierarchical system could simultaneously indulge weakness and idealize sanctity,53 fully claiming a person in Lent after relaxing expectations during Carnival.54 Monastic life represented a sort of “Holy of Holies” while the church could “wink” at worldliness outside.55 The result was a tendency toward world-flight on the one hand or a dualistic worldly life on the other.56 Rather than Rome’s mechanical addition of grace to raise nature above itself, the neo-Calvinists taught that re-creation worked within creation to restore it.57 Marriage, for example, is naturally instituted by God and should be renewed according to its created pattern, not raised above the natural order by treating it as a sacrament.58 Bavinck concluded, “Living for heaven, therefore, does not compete with life in the midst of the world: it is precisely in that world that Christ keeps his disciples from the evil one.”59

c. Christianity and Culture: The Extensive Catholicity of Christianity Concerning the extensive catholicity of Christianity, Bavinck identified two major ways of construing the relationship between Christianity and culture: “the Roman Catholic and the Protestant way, the supernatural and the ethical way.”60 The neo-Calvinists reasoned that if the Roman Catholic Church holds the treasury of supernatural grace within the natural order, then grace relates to nature as the church relates to the world and extends so far as the church’s reach in the world. All aspects of life, to serve humanity’s supernatural ends, needed to be connected to the church as an institution.61 The “wings of the Church” must extend across all society to protect and consecrate it, including government, trade, art, science, and family.62 From this outlook emerged the dualistic tendencies to disavow the world on the one hand or to dominate it on the other.63

Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 442. Kuyper, Lectures, 52. 51 Bavinck, “Common Grace,” 47. 52 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 229–30. 53 Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 444. 54 Kuyper, Lectures, 52, 123. 55 Ibid., 29, 51. 56 Bavinck, RD, 4.494. 57 Ibid., 436. 58 Ibid., 495. 59 Ibid., 436, 721. 60 Ibid., 435. 61 Kuyper, Lectures, 51, 123; and Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 444. 62 Kuyper, Lectures, 29. 63 Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 444. 49 50

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The Reformers sought “to free the entire terrain of the natural from the hegemony of the church” so that all of it might relate directly to God.64 Every calling was to be undertaken as from and for God. Sinfulness in the world was cursed, but not the world itself. God’s common grace restrains the effects of sin and allows humanity to pursue its charge to develop creation to the glory of God.65 “To be sure there is a concentration of religious light and life in the Church,” Kuyper acknowledged. But the church had large windows, thrown open so that the rays of God’s light would extend throughout the world.66 Kuyper’s emphasis on the church as organism shaped his view of its influence in society. The church as the body of believers “must purify and raise general understanding, elevate public opinion, cause these principles to be accepted, and thus carry to a higher level the commonly accepted view of life in state, society, and family.”67 As Bavinck explained, this implied an ethical mode of relationship between Christianity and culture: Accordingly, the relationship that has to exist between the church and the world is in the first place organic, moral, and spiritual in character. Christ—even now—is prophet, priest, and king; and by his Word and Spirit he persuasively impacts the entire world. Because of him there radiates from everyone who believes in him a renewing and sanctifying influence upon the family, society, state, occupation, business, art, science, and so forth.68 The neo-Calvinists sought “a rigorously confessional church, but not a confessional civil society, not a confessional state,” wrote Kuyper. “The church of Christ envisions through her influence on state and civil society only a moral triumph, not the establishing of confessional ties, nor the exercise of authoritarian dominance.”69 Bavinck described the neo-Calvinist ethical mode in contrast to the Roman Catholic supernatural mode of relating Christianity and culture: “The Christian faith is not a quantitative reality that spreads itself in a transcendent fashion over the natural but a religious and ethical power that enters the natural in an immanent fashion and eliminates only that which is unholy.”70 Christianity is a leaven whose purpose is to restore all things to their full created potential.71

III. CATHOLICITY AND MODERNITY, VIEWED FROM AMSTERDAM AND ROME Modernity presented numerous changes for Christianity to navigate. Scientific advances and the emergence of the religiously neutral state had contributed to a conception of exclusively temporal flourishing. Anti-supernaturalist theology and religious pluralism

Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 235–6. Kuyper, Lectures, 30, 69. 66 Ibid., 53. 67 Kuyper, Common Grace, vol. 2, 383. 68 Bavinck, RD, 4.437. 69 Kuyper, Common Grace, vol. 2, 311–12. Emphasis in original. 70 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 236. 71 Ibid., 236, 248. 64 65

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reacting to rationalist reductionism both challenged confessional Christianity.72 As Bavinck observed, “Christianity more than ever has to demonstrate its catholicity and show that the Gospel is a message for all peoples, times, and conditions.”73 Kuyper and Bavinck’s engagement with modernity proceeded from their understanding of the relationship between nature and grace and their view of the organic relation of general and special revelation. They were convinced that, in every generation, theology is to show the harmony of God’s work in grace and nature, including by learning from general revelation in its day. Contemporary scholarship could not be ignored. At the same time special revelation was essential to bring coherence and unity to all knowledge. Scripture conveyed that the “true and living God who revealed his mercy in Christ” is the same God “who also testifies to his eternal power and divine majesty through the medium of recent natural and historical scholarship.”74

a. Renewal, Not Repristination Kuyper and Bavinck argued that Reformed theology had the resources to meet contemporary challenges by developing its principles to address the modern mindset and to apply them throughout all domains of life.75 Neo-Calvinism drew on a theological tradition “sufficiently pliant and flexible to appreciate and appropriate what is good in our age,” Bavinck observed.76 Catholicity made cultural engagement an “eclectic procedure,” through a process of “trying all things and holding fast to that which is good.”77 Kuyper and Bavinck disavowed repristination, a simplistic return to past cultural forms and expressions of the Reformed faith.78 “To cherish the ancient simply because it is ancient is neither Reformed nor Christian,” argued Bavinck. Neo-Calvinist theology “is rooted in the past but labors for the future.”79 Its “living root” needed tending “to cause it to bud and to blossom once more, now fully in accordance with our actual life in these modern times, and with the demands of the times to come.”80 For those who idealized their theological forebears, Kuyper advised them to foster in their own lives the spiritual vitality of their fathers and “then articulate that life in your own language as they did in theirs. Struggle as they did to pump that life into the arteries of the life of our church and society.”81 Reformed ecclesiology “contains the germ of a rich, multidimensional development,” which in Kuyper’s view had only just begun. A renewed church must reacquaint and relate itself to a changed modern society with new social structures and conditions.82 As Bavinck wrote, the faith that can overcome the world is catholic: Herman Bavinck, “Modernism and Orthodoxy,” ed. John Bolt, trans. Bruce Pass, Bavinck Review 7 (2016): 84, 87, 92, 106. 73 Ibid., 104. 74 Ibid., 104–7. 75 Kuyper, Lectures, 194. 76 Bavinck, “Future of Calvinism,” 21. 77 Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 439. 78 Kuyper, Lectures, 171; and Bavinck, “Future of Calvinism,” 13, 23. 79 Herman Bavinck, “Foreword to the First Edition (Volume 1) of the Gereformeerde Dogmatiek,” trans. John Bolt CTJ 45 (2010): 10. 80 Kuyper, Lectures, 171. 81 Kuyper, “Conservatism and Orthodoxy,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 74. 82 Kuyper, “Rooted,” 103–4 (Kindle). 72

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It can enter into all situations, can connect with all forms of natural life, is suitable to every time, and beneficial for all things, and is relevant in all circumstances. It is free and independent because it is in conflict only with sin and in the blood of the Cross there is purification for every sin.83 The neo-Calvinists saw Rome choosing the path of repristination in response to modern developments. To Bavinck, the Roman Catholic resurgence during the nineteenth century seemed to consolidate and intensify ecclesial authority along the lines of the Middle Ages. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864) pitted Rome against many aspects of modernity.84 In the 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris calling for a return to Thomism, “Leo XIII summoned the mighty thinker of the Middle Ages to stave off the spirit of the age.”85 Bavinck considered the retrieval of Thomism constricted in its scope and influence, an intellectual method that did not engage the whole person or the whole of humanity.86 To the neo-Calvinists, these features signaled that Rome was recommitting itself to doctrinal expressions and social arrangements that did not account for the changes in modern society and therefore showed a lack of holistic catholicity.

b. Religious Freedom In the neo-Calvinists’ view, the Roman Catholic Church’s self-understanding as the institutional depository of the one, true faith explained its continued resistance to religious freedom and endorsement of recourse to civil enforcement.87 Kuyper and Bavinck acknowledged disapprovingly that the early Reformers had countenanced coercion and that a vestige of this principle persisted in the Belgic Confession’s Article 36, directing civil authorities to “prevent all idolatry and false worship.” Kuyper expressed concern for the social disadvantages Dutch Roman Catholics had experienced due to this clause and he argued successfully for its removal.88 The neo-Calvinists declared they would not use the power of the state to combat confessional error nor endorse a national church.89 Bavinck wrote that they could “heartily accept the freedom of religion and conscience, the equality of all before the law.”90 Kuyper defended the church’s freedom from government intervention, including for Roman Catholics, who should not face compulsion or infringement of rights that neo-Calvinists would not themselves accept.91 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 249. Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 245. The Syllabus of Errors rejected the institutional separation of church and state as well as religious freedom. The last of the eighty condemned propositions in the Syllabus stated: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” See Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, 1864. 85 Herman Bavinck, De katholiciteit van christendom en kerk: rede gehouden bij de overdracht van het rectoraat aan de Theol. School te Kampen op 18 December 1888 (Kampen: G. Ph. Zalsman, 1888), 43. Dutch original: “Leo XIII heeft ter bezwering van den geest der eeuw den machtigen denker der Middeleeuwen opgeroepen.” 86 Bavinck, RD, 1.157. 87 Bavinck, “Catholicity,” 233, 235. See Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, 1864; and Martin Rhonheimer, “Benedict XVI’s ‘Hermeneutic of Reform’ and Religious Freedom,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, 9, no. 4 (2011): 1029–54, 1031–2, 1035–6, 1046. 88 Kuyper, Lectures, 99–100; and Common Grace, vol. 2, 726. See Abraham Kuyper, Our Program, ed. and trans. Harry Van Dyke (Bellingham: Lexham, 2015), §55 n. 8. 89 Kuyper, Our Program, §50, §54, §58. 90 Bavinck, “Future of Calvinism,” 13. 91 Kuyper, Our Program, §58. 83 84

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IV. CATHOLICITY AS METHOD: NEOCALVINIST THEOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENT OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM Catholicity characterized the neo-Calvinist theological method, including its engagement with Rome.92 Bavinck’s foreword to the first edition of Reformed Dogmatics explained that theology requires “our communion and fellowship with generations past.” Consequently, he intended to interact more with patristic and scholastic sources than was typical of Protestant dogmatic works. “Irenaeus, Augustine, and Thomas do not belong exclusively to Rome; they are Fathers and Doctors to whom the whole Christian church has obligations.”93 Catholicity also required engaging contemporary Roman Catholic theology. Bavinck explained: “In general, Protestants know far too little about what we have in common with Rome and what divides us. Thanks to the revival of Roman Catholic theology under the auspices of Thomas, it is now doubly incumbent on Protestants to provide a conscious and clear account of their relationship to Rome.”94 Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics treated the emergence of Roman Catholic thought through patristic, scholastic, and contemporary sources. He traced the history of Roman Catholic dogmatics from the Middle Ages to his day through three periods of scholasticism, beginning with the work of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure in the thirteenth century. This golden era waned as nominalism gained ground.95 Scholasticism returned in the sixteenth century with the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation, then receded again by the early eighteenth century as Enlightenment rationalism advanced. Rationalism and revolutionary politics prompted Rome to consolidate its authority, for which it returned once more to its scholastic heritage, reviving Thomism.96 Bavinck read Catholic theologians of his day extensively. Reformed Dogmatics contains dozens of citations each to Joseph Kleutgen, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Johann Baptist Heinrich, Giovanni Perrone, Christian Pesch, and Joseph Pohle.97 Many of these references are critical. Others simply cite historical facts. But Bavinck also referenced Roman Catholic theologians in areas of doctrinal convergence. Kuyper similarly acknowledged that his views were sharpened by reading Roman Catholic theologians. He particularly thought it behooved Protestants to learn from

Brock and Sutanto note that for Bavinck, “[T]he requirement for modern theological and dialectical engagement is already contained in the concept of catholicity.” See Brock and Sutanto, “Eclecticism,” 314. 93 Bavinck, “Foreword,” 9. 94 Ibid. 95 Bavinck, RD, 1.146–7. 96 Ibid., 152, 154–6. 97 Throughout the four volumes of Reformed Dogmatics, Bavinck repeatedly references J. Kleutgen, Die Philosophie der Vorzeit, 2nd ed., 2 vols (Münster: Theissing, 1878), and Die Theologie der Vorzeit, 2nd ed., 5 vols (Münster: Theissing, 1867–74); M. J. Scheeben, Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, 4 vols (Freiburg: Herder, 1873–98); C. Pesch, Praelectiones Dogmaticae, 9 vols (Freiburg: Herder, 1902–10); G. Perrone, Praelectiones Theologicae, 9 vols (Louvain: Vanlinthout & Vandezande, 1838–43); J. B. Heinrich and C. Gutberlet, Dogmatische Theologie, 2nd ed., 10 vols (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1881–1900); J. Pohle, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 4th ed. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1912–14). Bavinck’s close interaction with such sources is shown, for example, in several parallels between his discussion of the attributes of the church and Scheeben’s treatment of the same in Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik (e.g., Bavinck, RD 4.282 and Scheeben, Handbuch, vol. 4, 353; Bavinck, RD 4.322 and Scheeben, Handbuch, vol. 4, 351). 92

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Rome’s scholarship on points they mutually sought to defend against modernist challenges to Christianity.98

V. CATHOLICITY AS PRACTICAL DISCIPLINE: SHARED WITNESS TO THE GOD OF NATURE AND GRACE The discipline of catholicity prompted neo-Calvinists to recognize principles they shared with Roman Catholics at stake in contemporary social developments. They found cause to ally with Roman Catholics in education policy, social welfare, political coalition, and in Christian witness against a new atheism.

a. Education Policy In the nineteenth century, Dutch education was centralized, uniform, and ostensibly religiously neutral. Dutch liberal party education policy promoted “neutral” state schools for all children while discouraging alternatives preferred by many Roman Catholics and observant Protestants. In 1878, when proposed policy imperiled religious schools, Kuyper helped organize a Protestant petition against the policy, alongside a Roman Catholic petition. The campaign failed to stop the legislation, but through the Anti-Revolutionary Party launched the following year, Kuyper advanced the shared concern of Calvinists and Roman Catholics to educate their children according to their religious distinctives.99 While Kuyper organized, Bavinck turned his systematic efforts to educational theory. His Principles of Pedagogy was widely regarded, including by the influential Roman Catholic educator in the Netherlands at the time, Fr. Siegbertus Rombouts.100

b. Social Welfare Kuyper highly esteemed Catholic intellectual and practical leadership in response to modern social conditions. He praised Catholic social thought, associations, and Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. These prompted Kuyper to organize a Christian Social Congress in the Netherlands in 1891, where he chided his brethren for trailing rather than leading such Christian social thought and action. He thought Rerum Novarum expressed principles neo-Calvinists shared with Roman Catholics and urged Protestants to follow the example.101

c. Political Coalition As the neo-Calvinists were eclectic in their use of theological sources, so they could be in selecting political partnerships. Kuyper explained that the Anti-Revolutionary political movement would align with other political parties when the application of their

Kuyper, Lectures, 184. Wendy Naylor, “Editor’s Introduction” and “Text Introduction” to “The People’s Petition,” in Abraham Kuyper, On Education, ed. Wendy Naylor and Harry VanDyke (Bellingham: Lexham, 2019), xiv–xviii, 335–6. 100 James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 230. See also Jacques Dane, “The Catholic Educator and Clergyman Siegbertus Rombouts on Herman Bavinck (1922),” Conference paper, Herman Bavinck Centennial Congress 1921–2021, Kampen, November 11, 2021. 101 Abraham Kuyper, “The Social Question and the Christian Religion,” in On Business & Economics, ed. Peter S. Heslam, trans. Harry Van Dyke (Bellingham: Lexham, 2021), 224, 497 (Kindle). 98 99

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differing systems coincided.102 While Kuyper thought neo-Calvinists could not unite in the same party with Roman Catholics,103 he noted their shared antipathy for the French Revolution’s principle of “emancipating the creature from the Creator.”104 The Revolution had unleashed a “doctrinaire democracy” with its own catholicity, espousing “one holy catholic democratic state as the cure-all for all civic ills.”105 Kuyper explained to his party members that Roman Catholics were suitable political partners because they shared the belief that God worked in nature and grace, a confession of the central doctrines of the Christian faith, and the conviction that this had implications for the political sphere.106

d. Christian Witness For the neo-Calvinists, working with Roman Catholics became more urgent by the end of the nineteenth century. “I do not see how we could repulse the attack of Modernism save by combined exertion,” said Kuyper.107 He was alarmed by the influence of the new atheistic modernism epitomized by Nietzsche.108 Kuyper and Bavinck recognized that working with Roman Catholics was critical, and each sounded this note at the conclusion of works published around the turn of the century. At the end of Lectures on Calvinism (1899), Kuyper reflected on the Roman Catholic Church’s “marvelous energy” in combating atheism and pantheism during the late nineteenth century. Rome was engaged in the “struggle of the age,” which dealt with the rejection of Jesus’ deity, the Bible’s divine inspiration, God’s moral law, and theism altogether. Kuyper argued that “what we have in common with Rome concerns precisely those fundamentals of our Christian creed now most fiercely assaulted by the modern spirit.”109 Bavinck’s Christian Worldview (1904) closed on a similar note. Autonomy and the will to power characterized the temper of the age.110 The battle today is no longer about the authority of pope or council, of church and confession; for countless others it is no longer even about the authority of Scripture or the person of Christ. The question on the agenda asks, as principally as possible, whether there is still some authority and some law to which the human being is bound.111 Bavinck believed all Christians must together defend “the objectivity of God’s word and law,”112 and he increasingly focused on rallying a coalition around essential Christianity.113

Catholic priest and politician Herman Schaepman described in similar terms his efforts to act in coalition with the Anti-Revolutionary Party. See H. J. A. M. Schaepman, Een Katholieke Partij: Proeve van een Program (Utrecht: J.R. van Rossum, 1883), 8, 67–8; and Chronica over staatkunde en letteren (Utrecht: J.R. van Rossum, 1901), 7. 103 Kuyper cited the nineteenth-century tendency toward ultramontanism in the Roman Catholic Church as an obstacle to such a consideration. See Our Program, §12. 104 Abraham Kuyper, “Calvinism: Source and Stronghold,” in Bruinsma, Centennial Reader, 284–5. 105 Kuyper, Our Program, §73. 106 Abraham Kuyper, “Maranatha,” in Vriend, Centennial Reader, 218. 107 Kuyper, Lectures, 186. 108 Ibid., 178. 109 Ibid., 183. 110 Bavinck, Christian Worldview, 127–8. 111 Ibid., 129. 112 Ibid. 113 George Harinck, “The Religious Character of Modernism and the Modern Character of Religion: A Case Study of Herman Bavinck’s Engagement with Modern Culture,” SBET 29 (2011): 74–5; and Eglinton, Bavinck, 227, 241–2. 102

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Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and the Reformed “have had to get used to existing side by side. God seems to want to teach us even more in this direction; his teaching in previous centuries of the lack of charity of our hearts has not yet been received seriously enough.”114

VI. CONCLUSION Neo-Calvinism emerged in the late nineteenth century with the conviction that a faithful testimony to God’s work in nature and in grace required applying Reformed theology to all spheres of life in modern conditions. This led Kuyper and Bavinck to focus on catholicity, a theme they developed to describe the universality of Christianity in the mode of its presence and dimensions of its influence in the world. Neo-Calvinist catholicity entailed clear theological differences from Rome as well as responsibilities to engage, learn from, and work with Roman Catholics. Kuyper and Bavinck believed that grace works in an organic mode within the natural order, restoring it from the effects of sin so that creation more clearly reflects the unity in diversity of the Triune God. They described the Roman Catholic understanding of the nature-grace relation as mechanical, suggesting a dualistic relationship that failed to present the continuity of God’s work in creation and re-creation. From Bavinck’s 1888 essay on catholicity, we can discern the dimensions of Christianity’s influence in the world, as understood by the neo-Calvinists. The inner, intensive dimension of catholicity is redemptive grace holistically shaping a person’s character and life. The extensive dimension is Christianity’s leavening influence extending throughout all creation. Rome’s theology detracted from the intensive catholicity of the Christian life by teaching that human nature must be elevated above itself to attain to the supernatural. With respect to extensive catholicity, Rome related the church to the world as a supernatural addition spread over the created order, as Bavinck described it. The neo-Calvinists saw an ethical mode of relationship, with Christianity operating as an immanent, leavening power in culture. Neo-Calvinists believed that catholicity implied a responsibility to show the interrelationship of all truth, grounded in Scripture and engaging contemporary scholarly developments. By contrast, Rome had condemned many aspects of modernity, fortified its external unity by declaring papal infallibility, and returned to Thomistic scholasticism. Neo-Calvinists saw this as a retrenchment that moved further away from holistic catholicity. At the same time, catholicity fostered a neo-Calvinist theological approach of engaging Roman Catholic dogmatics, both critiquing and appropriating insights, and a readiness to ally with Roman Catholics to address modern challenges. For Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, an intensively and extensively catholic faith was essential to address modern consciousness. Pluralism had eroded Christian social consensus and the external cohesiveness that had reinforced the institutional church.115 In the midst of these changing dynamics, the neo-Calvinist conception of catholicity emphasized a coherence internal to the Christian faith with which it could illuminate modern society.

Bavinck, Christianity, 77 (Kindle). Harinck, “Religious Character,” 68–71.

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Chapter 28

Neo-Calvinism and the Theology of Karl Barth SHAO KAI TSENG

This chapter is on neo-Calvinism and the theology of Karl Barth. After a historical overview of Barth’s reception among neo-Calvinists, I offer an exposition of his Christocentrism to bring him into dialogue with Herman Bavinck, focusing on their respective treatments of revelation and the originally idealist notion of “worldview.” The chapter concludes by observing the shared commitment between Barth and mainstream neo-Calvinism that dogmatics is a science bound to the sphere of the church.

I. NEO-CALVINIST RECEPTIONS OF BARTH: A BRIEF HISTORICAL REVIEW The Swiss dogmatician Karl Barth (1886–1968) was a contemporary of neo-Calvinists of the generation of Klaas Schilder (1890–1952), D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (1892–1978), Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977), and Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987). In the year of Herman Bavinck’s (1854–1921) death, Barth embarked on his career as a full-time academic theologian with his appointment as Professor of Reformed Theology at the University of Göttingen. Barth commends Bavinck in the Church Dogmatics (henceforth CD) II/2 (1942) as the only modern scientific dogmatician to have honored the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility.1 There is, however, no extensive discussion of neo-Calvinism in any of Barth’s published writings. The documented interactions between Barth and neo-Calvinists of his generation were not entirely reflective of the best of their theological characters. In the early 1920s, Barthians under the lead of Theodoor L. Haitjema (1888–1972) emerged as a formidable contender in Dutch theology.2 Barth was initially considered a possible ally of neo-Calvinism in those years. In 1926, however, the Dutch Barthians launched an attack on neo-Calvinism. This was followed by two treatises against Barth by Schilder, published

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols in twelve parts (I/1–IV/4), ed. Geoffrey Bromiley and Thomas Torrance, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–75), II/2, 186. Henceforth it is abbreviated in the following format: CD II/2. 2 For more detail, see George Harinck, ‘“How Can an Elephant Understand a Whale and Vice Versa?” in Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism, ed. Bruce McCormack and Clifford Anderson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 14. 1

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in 1927 and 1929, respectively. By the 1930s, “the Barthians” had become “the most serious opponents of neo-Calvinism.”3 These conflicts were, to say the least, premature, for the simple reason that Barth’s own theology was still undergoing maturation. His Anselmian Denkform was still under development in the late 1920s. The earliest statement of the Christocentrism that came to be synonymous with his name did not appear until 1936. What the Dutch Barthians represented in the late 1920s and early 1930s, then, was at best a premature image of Barth, and the criticisms from the neo-Calvinist side were likewise against a theologian in the making. The case of Schilder is quite telling. He took a somewhat positive interest in Barth in the early 1920s. By 1927, however, Schilder had come to the formed opinion that Barth was essentially a modern dialectician who treated the gospel as a Kierkegaardian paradox. Schilder further developed this view in his 1933 doctoral dissertation, published under the title On the History of the Concept of Paradox, at the University of Erlangen, where he graduated summa cum laude.4 Schilder was astute in observing that the Barth of the late 1920s still held to some Kierkegaardian notion of paradox. The second edition of Barth’s ballyhooed Romans commentary (1922) is indeed fraught with Kierkegaardian dialectics.5 While his Christian Dogmatics in Outline (1927) took on a much more dogmatic form, he retained the view that “God is a free Lord, not only over the law of non-contradiction, but over his own deity.”6 What Schilder overlooked was Barth’s gradual turn from dialectics to dogmatics/ analogy in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It must be noted in Schilder’s favor, however, that this understanding of Barth’s theological maturation was not established in the scholarship until the 1951 publication of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s celebrated volume on Barth, a view challenged by Bruce McCromack in 1995 and defended again in 2018 by Sigurd Baark.7 Despite Schilder’s acumen, he was not adequately equipped to appreciate the significance of Barth’s announced break with dialectical theology in 1932 (CD I/1).8 Schilder neglected the fact that by 1932, Barth had come to adopt the language of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata to insist that God cannot contradict his own essence or his own decrees.9 It was not until 1951 that Barth finally weighed in on the fight between his Dutch followers and neo-Calvinist critics, calling the latter “men of stupid, cold and stony hearts to whom we need not listen.”10 Barth’s distaste for neo-Calvinism in the late 1940s and

Ibid., 19. Klaas Schilder, Zur Begriffgeschichte des “Paradoxon” (Kampen: Kok, 1933). 5 See Sean Turchin, “Kierkegaard’s Echo in the Early Theology of Karl Barth,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2012, no. 1 (2012): 323–36. 6 Karl Barth, Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf (Zurich: TVZ, 1982), 217. Cited in Sebastian Rehman, “Does It Matter if Christian Theology Is Contradictory? Barth on Logic and Theology,” in Engaging with Barth, ed. David Gibson and Daniel Strange (Nottingham: APOLLOS, 2008), 63. 7 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 86–113; Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 14–19; Sigurd Baark, The Affirmations of Reason: On Karl Barth’s Speculative Theology (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 115–20. 8 CD I/1, xv. 9 See CD I/2, 41. 10 CD III/4, xiii. 3 4

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early 1950s had to do with the kind of criticisms represented by leading figures like Van Til, who insisted that Barth was committed to a putatively Kantian “modernism.” Van Til adopted this view in the 1930s and published it in The New Modernism (1946). The form of Kantianism that Van Til read into Barth must be understood against his Dutch-American background. In mid-twentieth-century Anglo-American Kant scholarship, there was a newly rising current that culminated in P. F. Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense (1966). Scholars following this trend adopted phenomenalistic two-object interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism, partly as a response to logical positivism and analytic philosophy.11 Meanwhile, Amsterdam neo-Calvinists of Van Til’s generation had already adopted a similar account of Kant, owing to the dominance of neo-Kantianism in Dutch philosophy in the 1910s and 1920s.12 Whereas Bavinck still recognized the differences between Kant’s own doctrine and phenomenalist revisions by neo-Kantians like Julius Kaftan (1848–1926), Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd customarily used the name of Kant to designate a phenomenalistic neo-Kantianism in which the noumenal is entirely severed from the phenomenal and expelled from the ranks of the sciences.13 Given this background, it is understandable how Van Til came to view Barth as a theologian in the shadow of a radical phenomenalism misattributed to Kant. More specifically, Van Til read into Barth a neo-Kantian phenomenalism in which being is entirely deemed to be a function of becoming: Van Til called this Barth’s “activism.”14 It should be clarified that contra popular perception, Van Til’s attitude toward Barth was in fact one of critical admiration. Van Til was never shy to admit that “in reading it [the Church Dogmatics] one’s admiration for Barth knows no bounds.”15 In a personal letter to Barth dated December 21, 1965, Van Til fondly recounted their first and only personal encounter in 1962 and reassured Barth: “I have never, never judged of your personal faith in . . . Christ. . . . If, and so far as I have, in spite of this, misunderstood and misrepresented your views I beg for your forgiveness for Christ’s sake.”16 Van Til undersigned the letter by jokingly referring to himself as “ein Menschfresser [a cannibal].”17 This is a reference to the preface to CD IV/2 (1955), in which Barth dismisses the “fundamentalists” among the neo-Calvinists as “butchers and cannibals.”18 These pejoratives are found in a context where Barth issues an open apology for “the fierce attack which [he] made on Dutch neo-Calvinists in globo.”19 This apology was occasioned by his reading of G. C. Berkouwer’s famed Triumph of Grace (1954).20 A phenomenalistic interpretation of Kant is explicitly stated in Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism (Philadelphia: P&R, 1946), 25. 12 See Albert Wolters, “The Intellectual Milieu of Herman Dooyeweerd,” in The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd, ed. C. T. McIntire (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985), 10–11. 13 See Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 38–42. Cf. Herman Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought: Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Philosophical Thought, Series B, Volume 4, ed. James Smith (Grand Rapids: Paideia, 2012), 17. 14 Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism (Philadelphia: P&R, 1962), 104. 15 Ibid., 1–2. 16 Cornelius Van Til, Cornelius Van Til Papers, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Cited in Harinck, 41. 17 Ibid. 18 CD IV/2, xii. 19 Ibid. 20 Gerrit Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Harry Boer (London: Paternoster, 1956). 11

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Berkouwer (1903–96) was nearly twenty years Van Til’s junior and was bred against a different intellectual milieu than Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd in the same city of Amsterdam. This intellectual generation gap is partly reflected in Berkouwer’s friendship with Hendrikus Berkhof (1914–95), often labeled as a “heterodox Barthian.” One shared concern between Berkouwer and Berkhof was the question of the meaning of history.21 The quest for the meaning of history was characteristic of a loosely formed intellectual-historical view developed by German-speaking Christian thinkers who reflected on the devastations of the Second World War. Meaning-of-history thinkers like Barth, Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), Paul Tillich (1886–1965), Karl Löwith (1897–1973), and others characteristically focused on Hegel and idealism to analyze the secularization of the Christian doctrines of election, providence, and the eschaton in modern German thought and culture.22 Dooyeweerd’s philosophy of history began to show signs of affinity with this intellectual trajectory only in the aftermath of the Second World War, and his thought as a whole was still informed in large part by the questions raised by Dutch neo-Kantianism.23 Berkouwer, of course, relied much more heavily on Dooyeweerd than on the meaning-of-history thinkers in his Studies in Dogmatics volumes. However, the eschatological concerns characterizing the meaning-of-history thinkers featured much more prominently in Berkouwer than in neo-Calvinists of the generation of Van Til and Dooyeweerd. Compared to Van Til, then, Berkouwer was much more sensitive to Barth’s struggles with historicist immanentizations of election, providence, and the eschaton. Berkouwer observes: “the question of the universality of the triumph of grace confronts us squarely with Barth’s doctrine of election.”24 Berkouwer arrives at the conclusion that Barth only pays lip service to “the open situation” of the futurity of God’s activity in the Christocentric doctrine of election.25 Despite Berkouwer’s criticisms, Barth commended Berkouwer as a reader who truly understood his concerns.26 With Barth’s acknowledgment, Berkouwer’s Triumph of Grace marked the beginning of a more eclectic approach to Barth among neo-Calvinists. A similar approach is adopted in our own day by John Bolt.27 He is convinced that “even for a theologian as problematic as Barth, there are . . . useful insights and some salutary lessons to be learned from exploring Barth’s eschatology.”28 Bolt observes that in Barth’s Christocentric ontology, creation is rendered ontologically dependent on

See Hendrikus Berkhof, Christ and the Meaning of History (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2004). E.g. Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2019); Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume I: Reason and Revelation; Being and God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 266–9. 23 See Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, vol. 3, trans. David Freeman and H. De Jongste (Philadelphia: P&R, 1969), 583–8. 24 Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, 262. 25 Ibid., 296. 26 CD IV/2, xii. I address Berkouwer’s misinterpretation in my “Condemnation and Universal Salvation: Karl Barth’s ‘Reverent Agnosticism’ Revisited,” SJTh 71 (2018): 324–38. 27 See John Bolt, “Exploring Barth’s Eschatology: A Salutary Exercise for Evangelicals,” in Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology, ed. Sung Wook Chung (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 209–35. 28 Ibid., 211. 21 22

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redemption.29 This prompts the question of whether Barth’s theology blurs “the Creator/ creation distinction.”30 This question is crucial for a right understanding of Barth’s theology as a whole. In what follows, I will first present an emerging trajectory of a neo-Calvinistic Barth interpretation that, by and large, answers this question in the negative. This will be followed by my own exposition of Barth’s Christocentrism as a neo-Calvinist.

II. NEO-CALVINISTIC BARTH SCHOLARSHIP: AN EMERGING TRAJECTORY “Orthodox and modern” is a famous description of Barth’s theology proposed by Bruce McCormack.31 More recently, Cory Brock has described Bavinck’s critical reappropriation of Schleiermacher as “orthodox yet modern.”32 Neo-Calvinist critics of Barth from Van Til’s generation tended to think of Barth’s “new modernism” under the guise of “traditional phraseology” as “new wine in old bottles.”33 Bavinck, as we know, has also been interpreted along similar lines.34 A more recent interpretative trajectory, however, has sought to demonstrate the fundamental unity between Bavinck’s confessional orthodoxy and his critical uses of originally idealist vocabularies.35 This newer approach to Bavinck has led neo-Calvinists like Ximian Xu to discern in Barth a similar pattern of articulating historic doctrine in the language of modern thought. In two 2019 articles, Xu attempted to bring Barth and Bavinck into dialogue by identifying points of similarity previously neglected by neo-Calvinist.36 Xu’s 2021 article on Barth’s ontology of Scripture drew on my work on Barth’s actualistic ontology.37 This article marked a more decisive break with the once predominant view among neo-Calvinists, that whereas Bavinck’s “divine ontology” was “in line with the extra-Calvinisticum [Calvinistic extra: explained anon],” Barth held election to be “determinative” of God’s “ontic reality.”38

Ibid., 216–17. Ibid., 217. 31 Bruce McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008). 32 Cory Brock, Orthodox Yet Modern: Herman Bavinck’s Use of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Bellingham: Lexham, 2020). 33 Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism, 2. 34 For example, Jan Veenhof, Revelatie en Inspiratie (Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1968). 35 See Brian Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny: Eschatology and the Image of God in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (Leiden: Brill, 2012); James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Toward a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: Bloomsbury, 2012); Brock, Orthodox Yet Modern; Bruce Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocentricism in Herman Bavinck (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2020); Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). 36 Ximian Xu, “Herman Bavinck’s ‘Yes’ and Karl Barth’s ‘No’: Constructing a Dialectic-in-Organic Approach to the Theology of General Revelation,” Modern Theology 35 (2019): 323–51; “Appreciative and Faithful? Karl Barth’s Use of Herman Bavinck’s View of God’s Incomprehensibility,” Journal of Reformed Theology 13 (2019): 26–46. 37 Ximian Xu, “Karl Barth’s Ontology of Holy Scripture Revisited,” SJTh 74 (2021): 26–40. See my “Barth on Actualistic Ontology,” in Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth, ed. George Hunsinger and Keith Johnson (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 739–51. 38 This was James Eglinton’s view back in 2012. See Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 120. 29 30

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a. Barth’s Christocentrism: Creator-Creature Distinction and the Gulf of Sin This reading of Barth is popular not only among his neo-Calvinist critics. There has in fact been a certain tendency among recent Barthians to confuse his notion of being-in-act with a neo-Kantian or idealist understanding of being-as-act. The thrust of Barth’s socalled “actualism,” on this interpretation, is such that there is for Barth “no state, no mode of being or existence above and prior to . . . [God’s] eternal act of self-determination. . . .” [The] the action of God in electing to be God for humanity in Jesus Christ is not the act of an already existing agent. Rather it is an act in the course of which God determines the very being of God.39 This view of Barth’s putatively “actualistic” Christocentrism is largely based on an intellectual-biographical account according to which he never quite left behind his neoKantian origins.40 In particular, it was Hermann Cohen, it is claimed, who bequeathed to Barth this phenomenalistic-actualistic mode of thinking.41 Incidentally, Van Til also claims that Barth’s “rejection of the Logos asarkos [non-incarnate Word], of the God ‘in himself,’ . . . spring[s] from his activistic notion of the Christ-Event.”42 The imposition of this neoKantian actualism on Barth neglects, inter alia, how he wrestled with the theologies of divine-human identity in post-Kantian idealism. In Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, comprising written lectures from the late 1920s and early 1930s, Barth paints a picture in which Hegel and Schleiermacher tower far above Kant in the fields of philosophy and theology, respectively. Barth states that the “concern” of “nineteenth-century man . . . in the realm of thought had truly achieved ultimate recognition in Hegel’s philosophy,” and denies that “after him [Hegel] the development was possible of a school of positivism, of pessimism and even of materialism, of Neo-Kantianism and whatever else the other modern philosophies may be called.”43 In the field of theology, too, Barth deemed the neo-Kantian paradigm adopted by his Ritchlian teachers to be basically inconsequential. Barth recounts that during his student years, the large consensus among academic theologians was that they had to “conquer” the field of “theology . . . anew under the banner of Schleiermacher, or perhaps of Hegel, and on no account under that of Ritschl.”44 Barth saw the dominance of “the band of historians led by [Ernst] Troeltsch” (1865–1923) as solid evidence that Ritschlian neo-Kantianism had lost its ground by the 1910s and that “Schleiermacher’s influence was incomparably stronger in 1910 than in 1830.”45 In this light, it would be quite objectionable to contend that Barth’s theological thought-form was initially a neo-Kantian Realdialektik (real dialectic) developed in an

Paul Nimmo, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth’s Ethical Vision (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 8. Citing Bruce McCormack, “The Ontological Presuppositions of Barth’s Doctrine of the Atonement,” in The Glory of the Atonement, ed. Charles Hill and Frank James III (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004), 359. 40 See McCormack, Barth’s Dialectical Theology, 31–77. 41 McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 12. 42 Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism, 107. 43 Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Brian Cozens and John Bowden (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 370. 44 Ibid., 640. 45 Ibid., 640–1. 39

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attempt to “overcome Kant by means of Kant.”46 Rather, he saw in German idealism the primary challenges to theology and, on his own account from 1958, found in Anselm’s analogia fidei (analogy of faith) “a vital key, if not the key, to an understanding of that whole process of thought that has impressed [him] more and more in [his] Church Dogmatics as the only one proper to theology.”47 It has to be clarified that Barth, like Bavinck, was not entirely dismissive of idealism. Barth agreed with the idealist insight that God is knowable to us only through historical activity and progress. Against idealism in general and Hegel in particular, however, Barth adamantly affirmed since around 1924 the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as an expression of, in Baark’s incisive words, “God’s unsublatable subjectivity, which is revealed in Jesus Christ.”48 This seminal insistence on God’s unsublatable subjectivity is what Barth came to describe famously in CD II/1 as the primary sense of the loving “freedom of God . . ., his primary absoluteness,” which “has its truth and reality in the inner trinitarian life of the Father with the Son by the Holy Spirit.”49 God’s love is free in the primary sense that “even if there were no such relationship [between God and the creature], even if there were no other outside of him, he would still be love.”50 When the mature Barth speaks of God as being-in-act, then, he begins with God’s immutable opera ad intra [acts within God’s essence]. Does this not, however, violate Barth’s own epistemological principle, that God is only knowable to us through historical activity? Does this not contradict his Christocentrism, according to which the electing God is knowable to us only as elected man? Barth’s answer, in short, is that we know of God’s primary absoluteness only from reflective after-thinking (Nachdenken), in an Anselmian pattern of faith seeking understanding, of the election of the man Jesus who is very God. God’s eternal yet ad extra (i.e., outside of God’s essence) act of election is historically enacted through Christ’s death and resurrection. Through these historical events, written in Scripture and proclaimed by the church, we come to know Christ, on the basis of faith, as the God who loves in freedom. It was this Christological doctrine of election, which Barth began to develop in 1936, that finally allowed him to speak of “the essence and act of God” in such a way that we can and do indeed come to know God’s immutable essence through God’s historical activity.51 Like Bavinck, Barth is emphatic on God’s unknowability per essentiam (per essence).52 For Barth, as for Bavinck, there can be no immediate divine revelation to creatures because of the “principle . . . finitum non capax infinitum [the finite cannot contain the infinite].”53 Barth would agree with Bavinck that “Kant is perfectly correct when he says that our knowledge does not extend farther than our experience.”54 For both Bavinck and So McCormack, Barth’s Dialectical Theology, 465. Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, trans. Ian Robertson (London: SCM, 1960), 11. 48 Baark, The Affirmations of Reason, 255. See Karl Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics, ed. Hannelotte Reiffen, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 107. 49 CD II/1, 317. 50 CD II/2, 6. 51 Karl Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1936), 46. 52 See RD 2, 40. 53 CD I/1, 407. 54 Bavinck, RD 2, 50. 46 47

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Barth, human knowledge of God comes only from our intellectual reflections on sensory experiences of God’s self-revelation through creaturely means, which we cognize in the form of spatiotemporality. As Barth puts it, in our “human mutability” we can only perceive God’s “act” in historical actuality: “we have to gaze upon God’s immutability in human mutability.”55 We do, however, know by faith—enacted by the Holy Spirit, canonized in Scripture and symbolized by church’s regula fidei (rule of faith)—that the man Jesus who died not as God is very God, and “only by faith can we speak about God’s immutability and faithfulness and identity,” the identity between God-for-us and God-in-and-for-himself.56 Put another way, God’s essence would have been unknowable to us without the enacted history of his covenant with us in Jesus Christ, which according to Barth constitutes the internal basis of creation (CD III/1, §41). In addition to (but not in place of) the notion of God’s primary freedom as aseity and unconditionedness, Barth states that God’s love is free in the secondary sense that God freely binds himself to covenantal relationship with the creature without ceasing to be God. In line with the extra Calvinisticum—Reformed orthodoxy’s ruthless insistence on the abiding distinction between Creator and creature in the person of Christ—Barth stresses that the covenantal relationship between God and his people “is a relation ad extra, undoubtedly; for both the man [Christ] and the people represented in him are creatures and not God.”57 It is, however, “a relation in which God is self-determined, so that the determination belongs no less to him than all that he is in and for himself.”58 Note that Barth adopts the Hegelian language of determination and absolute being (being-in-and-for-itself) here to contend against Hegel, that what God self-determines is his ad extra being-for-us, rather than his essential being-in-and-for-himself. Through the covenantal history of God’s self-determination, grounded in God’s unsublatable essence, the believer may, through faith, reflect on the eternal God who is unknowable per essentiam. Now, because all creation is, on Barth’s view, ontologically determined by the Christological covenant, creation is inherently revelatory. Profane speech is for Barth an ontological impossibility: “there is no genuinely profane speech. In the last resort there is only talk about God.”59 In the historical actuality of fallenness, however, “it is quite impossible to interpret human talk as such as talk about God.”60 This is not only because of the infinite Creator-creature divide but also because of “the other and much more incisive principle: homo peccator non capax verbi divini [fallen humanity is incapable of the divine Word].”61 In the reality of fallenness, there can be no human knowledge of God apart from biblical witness to and the church’s confession of Christ’s incarnate person and redemptive work. “Talk about God has true content when it conforms to the being of the Church, i.e., when it conforms to Jesus Christ.”62

Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, 48. Ibid. 57 CD II/2, 7. 58 Ibid. 59 CD I/1, 47. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 407. 62 Ibid., 12. 55 56

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In other words, because the covenant is the internal basis of creation, it is impossible on Barth’s view for creatures to understand the meaning of creation and world history apart from the history of the covenant. Meanwhile, Barth also insists that the eternal covenant has to be enacted and revealed to us on its external basis, for the simple reason that as finite creatures, our very being and knowing are confined to spatiotemporality. On this view, Barth’s affirmations of history, nature, and reason as ontologically revelatory in Christo are not based on some allegedly Zinzendorfian or Schleiermacherian “Christomonism.”63 Rather, they proceed from an understanding of creation as ontologically distinct from the Creator, and as fallen and redeemed in accordance with God’s eternal covenant with creatures in Christ.

b. Revelation and Worldview: Barth and Bavinck in Dialogue From the foregoing analysis we can see that Barth’s Christocentrism operates on two theological and epistemological axioms: (1) the transcendence and incomprehensibility of the Creator to creatures (finitum non capax infiniti) and (2) the gulf of sin between God and fallen humanity (homo peccator non capax verbi divini). Barth’s doctrine of revelation developed on the basis of this Creator-creature ontology is in fact much closer to Bavinck’s than is often thought. Both Bavinck and Barth reacted to an idealist view of providential history by appealing to Christology upon an insistence on the Creator-creature distinction and the total depravity of fallen creatures. Nathan Shannon has recently suggested that Bavinck is closer to Barth than is often thought, in that Bavinck, like Barth, does not restrict the application of Christology to “only the doctrines of revelation and Scripture,” but rather makes “the role of the incarnation” central to his “Creator-creature ontology” as a whole.64 For both Bavinck and Barth, then, there can be for fallen humans no natural knowledge of creation and its history apart from the redemptive-historical aspect of revelation. Both, however, intended to create theoretical space for some natural theology. Bavinck aligns himself with “the Reformation,” which “indeed adopted” the “natural theology” of medieval scholasticism “along with its proofs but, instead of treating it prior to the doctrine of faith, incorporated it in the doctrine of faith.”65 T. F. Torrance rightly explains that Barth, too, only “rejects” the “status” of “natural theology . . . as a praeambula fidei [preamble of faith],” but “instead of rejecting natural theology tout court, Barth has transposed it into the material content of theology where in a changed form it constitutes the epistemological structure of our knowledge of God.”66 One ostensible difference between Barth and neo-Calvinism of course has to do with his rejection of the notion of general revelation. Barth insists that there is no revelation apart from the history of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, however, Barth states that revelation consists of two aspects, namely, creation and the covenant, which are for him abidingly distinct in their inseparable unity. Concrete knowledge of Christ as verbum Dei essentiale (essential Word of God) is given through the reconciliatory history of the covenant, which the believer receives through

CD IV/1, 683; IV/2, 398–9. See Nathan Shannon, Absolute Person and Moral Experience: A Study in Neo-Calvinism (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 153. 65 Bavinck, RD 2, 8. 66 Thomas Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976), x. 63 64

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verbum Dei scriptum (written Word of God) alone, as proclaimed within the bounds of the church’s regula fidei. The Word of God in this threefold form is for Barth the special, redemptive aspect of revelation, on the basis of which alone the meaning of the general aspect—creation and world history—can be correctly understood. Barth insisted against what he mistook to be the teaching of historic Reformed theology that the general and the special are not two separate revelations adjacent to one another. John Fesko has rightly argued that Barth’s rejection of historic Reformed formulations of nature-grace relations was based on a fundamental misreading of Reformed covenant theology.67 What Barth might not have realized in his fierce Nein! to the concept of general revelation is that mainstream neo-Calvinists, rooted in confessional Reformed theology, also insisted on the unity of revelation. Bavinck, in particular, envisions general and special revelation as two concentric circles centered on Christ. “All revelation [singular!]—general and special—finally finds its fulfillment and meaning in Christ.”68 Barth’s phraseology may well be borrowed to express Bavinck’s view: general revelation is the external basis of special revelation, and special revelation the internal basis of general revelation. As Bavinck puts it, “general revelation is the foundation on which special revelation builds itself up.”69 This means, in the language of modern historicism, that redemptive history is the internal basis of world history, and world history, the external basis of redemptive history. These two abidingly distinct aspects of revelation as God’s historical activity are inseparable for Bavinck: “Special revelation should never be separated from its organic connection to history, the world, and humanity.”70 Fesko, again, rightly points out that this view of revelation, which undergirds the brand of natural theology espoused by Kuyper and Bavinck, finds its roots in historic Reformed theologians like Gisbert Voetius (1589–1696).71 With Fesko, I would suggest here that Bavinck carries an advantage over Barth in that Bavinck was clearly the better historical theologian. Bavinck understood, in a way that Barth did not, that in normative Reformed understandings of the covenant as God’s revelatory condescension, the general and special aspects of revelation constitute an inseparable unity. Bavinck also knew how historic Reformed theologians like Voetius strictly differentiated themselves from early modern rationalists by treating natural theology as a function of the regula fidei. Thus, Bavinck’s theology generally exhibits much greater confidence in Reformed orthodoxy than Barth’s. This confidence becomes especially significant when Bavinck, as a constructive theologian, ventures into dogmatic territories previously untrodden, where Bavinck often tends to make bolder moves when Barth appears indecisive. One example is Bavinck’s development of a distinctively Reformed understanding of “worldview.” The notion of a worldview (Weltanschauung: literally “world-intuition”) was originally idealism’s response to Kant’s rejection of the rationalist proposal to develop some total determination of metaphysical reality on the basis of intellectual intuitions

John Fesko, The Covenant of Redemption: Origins, Development, and Reception (Göttingen: V&R, 2016), 191. Bavinck, RD 1, 302. 69 Ibid., 322. 70 Ibid., 353. 71 John Fesko, “Introduction,” in Natural Theology, ed. Geerhardus Vos, trans. Albert Gootjes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2022), 31–4. 67 68

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of the essential features of the world. Idealists like Hegel and Schleiermacher posited various notions of divine-human identity to argue for the possibility for humans to gain knowledge of the absolute or infinite essentiality of world-occurrences by systematizing our individual intuitions of putatively divine appearances. Barth famously rejected the idealist notion of Weltanschauungen on the basis of his shared commitment with Bavinck that Kant, from the viewpoint of Protestant orthodoxy, is right about the cognitive limits of our intellectual faculty. Hegelian and Schleiermacherian Weltanschauungen are, on Barth’s view, essentially anthropologies disguised as theologies. At the very beginning of the Christocentric phase of his theology, Barth repudiated Schleiermacher’s Christocentrism as a “systematics of human history that can certainly not be described as anything other than a speculative worldview.”72 Bavinck was also sharply wary of the monistic-pantheistic dangers of idealism. Well before Barth, Bavinck appealed to Feuerbach and Strauss to disclose the idolatrous essence of Hegelian and Schleiermacherian worldviews.73 Bavinck rejects, as does Barth, the idealist proposal to participate intellectually in God’s mind by systematizing our intuitions of divine appearances. Bavinck would heartily agree with Barth that idealist notions of the “appearance of the divine [dem Schein-Göttlichen]” must be regarded as “the demonic.”74 Bavinck, however, takes a positive step here to develop a distinctively Reformed understanding of wereldbeschouwing (worldview). He explicitly adopts the basic definition of “worldview” by the empiricist idealist Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (1802– 72) as a “science of the idea.”75 As Sutanto explains, Bavinck agrees with idealism that “because created reality is the product of divine wisdom, human thought can correspond to God’s,” but Bavinck would insist that human participation in God’s thought “always” remains “on a created, ectypal level.”76 That is, if the idealist Weltanschauung is an intellectual union with God’s mind from below, then the Reformed wereldbeschouwing presupposes revelation from above across the infinite Creator-creature divide. More concretely, Bavinck’s vision of a Christian worldview is such that the believer, by faith in the mediation of Christ through redemptive history, may analogically participate as even finite creatures in God’s infinite knowledge of the world and its history.77 The archetype-ectype analogia fidei between God’s omniscience and our ever-finite knowledge allows for systematic knowledge of God in relation to everything that is not God and vice versa.

III. CONCLUSION In view of the foregoing analysis, Bavinck’s formulation of Christelijke wereldbeschouwing (Christian worldview) can be understood as a modern restatement of and improvement upon the historic faith-seeking-understanding program, which Barth also adopted as

Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, 25. Bavinck, RD 1, 166. Cf. Barth, Protestant Theology, 554. 74 KD II/1, 461. 75 Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, ed. and trans. N. Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 51. 76 Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Shao Kai Tseng, “Revisiting Bavinck on Hegel: providence, reason, and the unsublatable,” SJTh, 75 (2022): 221–34. 77 See Herman Bavinck, Christelijke wereldbeschouwing (Kampen: Kok, 1913), 56. 72 73

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the basis of his mature thought-form. The central theme of archetype-ectype analogy in Bavinck’s formulation in fact finds an interesting parallel in Barth’s notion of analogia relationis (analogy of relations), according to which God’s intra-Trinitarian love-infreedom is the archetype (Urbild) of the Creator-creature relationship in Jesus Christ as its ectype (Abbild/Nachbild).78 Through this analogy, according to Barth, the meaning of world history is made recognizable to the believer. Barth, of course, fell short of affirming the possibility of Christian worldviews. This was partly because he did not have adequate knowledge of classical Reformed theology that would lend him the confidence to restate the historic doctrine of general revelation in the idealist language of “worldview” and “system.” The biases that Barth inherited from Heinrich Heppe and Alexander Schweizer in his readings of the Reformed classics, in addition to false assumptions he retrieved from Adolf von Harnack on the Hellenization of early Christianity, led him to depart from the tradition where he might have actually agreed with it, had he understood it correctly.79 I would suggest, however, that neo-Calvinists who treasure the inheritance of historic doctrine owe to Barth an appreciation of his diligence in studying the primary literature of Reformed orthodoxy within the limitations of his educational and ecclesiastical backgrounds. John Webster rightly points out that Barth’s reading of historic Reformed texts in the 1920s was “deeply formative of the direction of his theological thinking.”80 In view of Barth’s commitment to ecclesial dogma, Webster laments that “contemporary Christian theology . . . has simply not learned the traditions of Christianity deeply enough and lovingly enough to be able to move around within them, restate them or even disagree with them with much accuracy.”81 In many instances, Barth’s criticisms of and departures from the Reformed tradition were unintended results of the constraints of his intellectual background. He did not “receive” the same kind of confessional upbringing that Kuyper and Bavinck were blessed with (1 Cor. 4:7). Yet, Barth did urge in earnest that “dogmatics is not a free science. It is bound to the sphere of the Church, where alone it is possible and meaningful.”82 With this shared commitment between Barth and mainstream neo-Calvinism, the following statement from Bavinck may well serve as a foundation for future dialogues between neo-Calvinists and Barthians in the ongoing developments of Christian dogmatics: Whereas today . . . everyone establishes his own dogma, it is a privilege and an honor for the Christian dogmatician to position himself in the faith and by doing this to articulate his submission to the Word of God and his participation in the fellowship of the church of all ages. For that reason the definition of dogmatics . . . also contains the idea that it sets forth the knowledge of God that is laid down in his Word to the church.83

KD III/2, 260–2. See Ryan Glomsrud, “Karl Barth as Historical Theologian,” in Gibson and Strange, Engaging with Barth, 84– 112. 80 John Webster, Barth’s Earlier Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 1. 81 Ibid., 64. 82 CD I/1, xiii. 83 RD 1, 46. Italics original. 78 79

Chapter 29

Neo-Calvinism in North America WILLIAM EDGAR

Neo-Calvinism sought to apply the basic principles enumerated by the reformer John Calvin (1509–64) to the modern world, particularly the nineteenth-century milieu. Neo-Calvinism is a discrete category. Though strictly speaking it is in a direct line with its founders, the label covers something of a panorama. How broad is it? How did it come to North America? What are its North American contours? How have international expressions influenced the North American phenomenon? In the beginning it was tied to the Dutch entry into the continent. Dutch immigration to North America came in waves. The earliest arrived in 1621, with the Dutch West India Company. They founded New Netherlands, which became New York. A surprising number of towns or boroughs in the New York area were Dutch: Albany, Brooklyn, Flushing, and Harlem. By 1790 over 100,000 Dutch people had populated places near the Hudson River and in Northern New Jersey. By 1845 some 1,150 were immigrating annually. These immigrants were motivated by religious discontent: conservative Calvinists left the larger, more progressive national church. In addition, economic hardship, including a potato famine and high unemployment, contributed to the need to emigrate. Most immigrants were from rural areas in Holland and sought land to work on farms. After 1900 the Dutch sought refuge in urban centers, such as Grand Rapids, Paterson, and Chicago. The Second World War saw at least 80,000 Dutch people flee their homeland to come to the United States. Today some 3.5 million Americans claim entire or partial Dutch heritage. Many of them have a Calvinist legacy.

I. BEGINNINGS What exactly is neo-Calvinism? It is a movement originating in the Dutch Réveil, the awakening that originated in the Netherlands in the early nineteenth century (c. 1815– 65). This awakening was connected to the larger ones that spread throughout Europe, particularly the French réveil whose origins were in Geneva. The main protagonists of the Dutch awakening were the lawyer, Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831); the Jewish poet, Isaäc da Costa (1798–1860); and the physician, politician, and historian, Guillaume Groen Van Prinsterer (1801–76). Groen wielded an enormous influence. He never left the state church in which he grew up, though he was critical of its serious failings. He had an aristocratic background and

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was the secretary to King William II of Holland. He studied under Merle d’Aubigné, the French historian. He held various positions in the government and ultimately became head of the Anti-Revolutionary Party. He was a principal influence on Abraham Kuyper. Groen is a towering figure in the history of ideas. The central theme pervading his work is that revolution represented the greatest danger to the West and opposed the faithful worldview of the Reformation. Groen was influenced by such conservative thinkers as F. J. Stahl, Edmund Burke, and François Guizot. His book, Revolution and Unbelief, became the manifesto for the intellectual opposition to the spirit of the Réveil.1 Groen had a decisive influence on the beginnings of neo-Calvinism, particularly on Abraham Kuyper. His view of the fundamental opposition between the modernist notion of the reign of reason and the traditional view of submission to revelation animated the central conflict of the times. Politically, Groen’s was a losing battle, but through his successors the genius of his positions lived on.2

II. TWO GIANTS Two giants inspired the neo-Calvinist approach and its spread. The main intellectual and spiritual founder of neo-Calvinism is Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920).3 He was a Renaissance man: writer, theologian, lecturer, politician, and journalist. He founded the Free University of Amsterdam (1880) and was briefly the prime minister of Holland (1901–5). Born into an ethical Protestant family, he became a pastor and then had a dramatic conversion. He embraced Calvinism, which he considered the loftiest and most far-reaching branch of thought. Strongly influenced by Groen, though less aristocratic than he, and consequently better able to speak to ordinary people, Kuyper believed only a return to historic Calvinism could save the soul of Europe. He believed America was poised to promote such a movement. His twin goals were to stir up religious affections and to combat liberalism. His critics worried that his desire to see social and cultural transformation would obscure gospel concerns. His answer was to advance an analysis of trends based on “Principal thinking” (we might call it “principial thinking”). That is, to look for the undergirding spiritual principle characterizing every ideal. One can find the shadow of Groen in this conviction. Included here is the Christian, or “anti-revolutionary” worldview which was founded, according to Kuyper, on biblical revelation. He especially elaborated this vision in his Lectures on Calvinism (Princeton, 1898).4 To Kuyper, aspects of the modern world were incompatible with biblical thought. Here one senses an echo of the church fathers, particularly Tertullian (155–220) who had placed a great emphasis on the contradiction between Christian belief and non-Christian thought. Kuyper also followed Augustine (354–430) and Calvin closely. Kuyper did not set Christian faith against science but belief against unbelief. Yet the antithesis required two kinds of science. Kuyper developed two great themes which at first may seem contradictory. The first is the antithesis between the gospel and the world. He considered this a matter of worldview Ongeloof en Revolutie (1847; Barneveld Nederlands Dagblad, 2008). For an overview of Groen’s life and views, see H. Van Dyke, “Groen van Prinsterer: Godfather of Bavinck and Kuyper,” Calvin Theological Journal 17, no. 1 (2012): 72–97. 3 See especially James Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). 4 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1943). 1 2

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against worldview, spirit against spirit. This required having separate organizations in every field, whether in science or politics or the arts. This approach is sometimes known as “pillarization.” Ironically it implied a nearly negligible role for apologetics, which he deemed a compromise to the purity of the gospel (ironically though, because so much of his work was apologetical). Kuyper’s second theme is common grace. God’s grace not only accomplishes redemption but extends to all people by restraining sin and by promoting human culture outside of the church.5 Kuyper appealed to Calvin in support of his view. Like Calvin, he sought to contrast his view of human depravity with the obvious fact that significant achievements had been produced by cultures with no apparent connection to the presence of God’s redemption. In contrast with Calvin, however, Kuyper made a sharp distinction between the purposes of common grace and special grace. Perhaps Kuyper’s view was closer to Augustine’s two cities than to Calvin’s more positive view of the state and human culture. Still, he thought by common grace God upholds his “creation ordinances” and does not forsake the work of creation.6 Thus, despite his pleas for separate disciplines, Kuyper thought common grace was the justification for the rise of science and medicine and even for our enjoyment of the classics: reading Plato and Virgil. As we suggested, this doctrine, though rooted in John Calvin, was opposed by some critics who worried about any program for cultural transformation.7 Kuyper was enormously influential on the American expression of the Christian Reformed Church, with its strong emphasis on both the antithesis and common grace. The second great founder of neo-Calvinism was Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). His life and influence have been well documented, though perhaps a bit less so than Kuyper’s, at least in the English language.8 His father was a minister in the conservative Christian Reformed denomination. Bavinck was trained at the Theological School of Kampen, and then at the University of Leiden. In 1881 he was appointed Professor of Dogmatics at Kampen, and then in 1902 he moved to the Free University of Amsterdam, succeeding Abraham Kuyper, where he would remain until retirement.9 In 1808 he visited the United States and among other things delivered the Princeton Stone Lectures. Though Kuyper’s work on common grace is more extensive than Bavinck’s, Bavinck was the first to base the doctrine theologically. He laid out the broad principles for his approach in his Rectoral Address at Kampen, 1894.10 He argued that the church fathers wanted neither to reject nor completely accept the findings of science. In effect he believed the Christian faith could “sanctify” or even “redeem” ancient civilization and science. But he also warned that Christian philosophy must never adopt the method of scholasticism or the doctrines of Thomism. He rejected what he saw as their promulgating a “donum superadditum” rather than a transformation of existing blessings.11 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, ed. Jordan Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill, 3 vols (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016). 6 See Kuyper’s Common Grace, I:243, 259, 7 See Jacob Klapwijk’s assessment of the antithesis and common grace, https://jacobklapwijk​.nl​/wp​-content​/ uploads​/2021​/05​/Antithesis​-and​-commom​-grace​.pdf. 8 See James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2020). 9 Bavinck is the author of the monumental Reformed Dogmatics. 10 Herman Bavinck, “Common Grace,” trans. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen Calvin Theological Journal 24 (1989): 35–65. 11 We should note Bavinck’s nephew, the missiologist (1895–1964) developed these ideas as they applied to religious consciousness. See The J. H. Bavinck Reader, ed. John Bolt, James D. Bratt and Paul J. Visser (Grand Rapids: 5

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Bavinck’s views were very close to Kuyper’s. We may speculate, however, that he thought inductively, whereas Kuyper was more of a deductive thinker. It may be a caricature to dub Bavinck an “Aristotelian” thinker in contrast to Kuyper, a “Platonic” thinker, but there is some truth to characterizing Bavinck as a more scientific intellectual and Kuyper as a more intuitive one. Both helped shape neo-Calvinism and its influence in North America in significant ways.

III. TO NORTH AMERICA Neo-Calvinism spread to North America in several ways, but especially through institutions of higher learning. Both Kuyper and Bavinck were well-known in Princeton Theological Seminary. They both delivered the influential Stone Lectures (1898, 1908). Their invitations came from Benjamin Warfield, the most prominent scholar and an avid defender of Calvinism at Princeton. The influence of Kuyper and Bavinck on North American theology was not identical. G. C. Berkouwer argues that Kuyper’s influence was channeled more through the “idea of law” philosophy espoused by Herman Dooyeweerd and Dh. T. H. Vollenoven, whereas Bavinck’s was through theological issues that preoccupied North American theologians.12 Some of the institutes of higher learning were founded on specifically Calvinist grounds. Among the most prominent are Calvin Seminary and Calvin College (now Calvin University). Originally, they shared the same campus. Both were created to serve the Christian Reformed Church. Today, both have expanded into world-class institutions. Though he started at Calvin, teaching in Dutch, Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949) left Calvin for Princeton Seminary, bringing his groundbreaking approach of biblical theology to that seminary, and marking generations of students with his insights on the historical unfolding of revelation that characterizes Scripture. When he left Calvin, however, his successor in theology was the radically anti-Kuyperian Foppe Ten Hoor (1855–1934). While the influence of Kuyper remained in much of the curriculum, ministerial preparation was taught by the denominational department, not, as Kuyper would have wanted it, as one discipline among many. Calvin Theological Seminary was founded in 1876 as the denominational training place for CRC ministers. There are some 1,000 congregations of the CRC in North America. Though most of its ministers trained at Calvin, nearly half of the students today are from other denominations. Its orientation is Reformed, specifically neo-Calvinist. Calvin College began as a part of the Seminary. In 2019 it reorganized itself as Calvin University and made several adjustments to its curriculum. Abraham Kuyper had a decisive influence on this institution. His arguments for a distinctive, principial approach to each discipline have characterized the curriculum since the beginning. Their motto says it clearly: “Think deeply, act justly, live wholeheartedly as Christ’s agents of renewal in the world.”. Majors at Calvin include Engineering, Registered Nursing, Accounting, Philosophy, Physical Education, Biology, and Computer Science.

Eerdmans, 2013). C. A. Van Peursen (1920–96) pursued Bavinck’s thought as it applied to phenomenology and psychology. 12 G. C. Berkouwer, A Half Century of Theology: Movements and Motives, trans. L. B. Smedes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 13.

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One remarkable organization jointly sponsored by Calvin Seminary and Calvin University is the H. Henry Meeter Center. Its purpose is to study John Calvin, the Genevan Reformation, and the post-reformation orthodox Protestants. The Center promotes lectures, hosts seminars sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, awards scholarships to faculty, pastors, graduate students, and high school seniors and offers occasional courses on early modern French paleography. The Meeter Center helped spawn the Junius Center in 2008. This unique facility features digital and online resources and is connected to a number of European research centers. It is significant that Abraham Kuyper considered Franciscus Junius (1545–1602) a most influential figure. He edited Bibliotheca Reformata in 1882, citing Junius’ prominence in many settings. Several distinguished faculties have worked at the university. The following list includes but does not exhaust the most prominent of them. The philosopher William Harry Jellema taught from 1920 to 1945, and then from 1948 to 1963. He founded the philosophy department at Calvin and influenced a number of future greats. Alvin Plantinga considered him “by all odds . . . the most gifted teacher of philosophy I have ever encountered” and “obviously in dead earnest about Christianity; he was also a magnificently thoughtful and reflective Christian.”13 Though not a prolific writer, Jellema was a great defender of liberal education. He considered college or the university as a philosophical enterprise. Several thinkers came under Jellema’s sway. Among them is Nicholas Wolterstorff. Nicholas Wolterstorff taught at Yale from 1989 to 2002. Among his achievements is his Calvinistic rethinking of various epistemological issues. His Reason Within the Bounds of Religion (1976) reversed the standard Kantian model where reason reigns over religion. There is an echo of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy here, though only an echo. One of his most poignant offerings is his reflections on the tragic death of his son Eric in a mountain climbing accident, Lament for the Death of a Son (Eerdmans, 1987). He believes in the ultimate goodness of God, though he falls short of a full belief in his sovereignty. Wolterstorff rejects foundationalism—the Cartesian view that all of our beliefs must either be indubitable or inferred from indubitable beliefs. He also rejects penal substitution and justification by faith alone. He supports the view that John Locke is the father of modernity, who argued that beliefs entailed moral responsibility. A second significant figure is Richard Mouw. Richard John Mouw (b. 1940) was the president of Fuller Theological Seminary (1993–2013) and is a popularizer of Reformed theology. He helped spread the contours of Reformed theology to a varied audience. Among his publications one should include The Smell of Sawdust: What Evangelicals Can Learn from Their Fundamentalist Heritage (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000); He Shines in All that’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2001); Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History and Theology, with Mark A. Noll (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004); and Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport: Making Connections in Today’s World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004). Mouw is known for reaching out beyond the evangelical community. He has urged Protestants to enter into more dialogue with Roman Catholics. He has even fostered conversations with Mormons, including an apology for the way some evangelicals have

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treated them. He defends the amillennial eschatology in When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983). A third giant from Calvin University is Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga has become one of the most influential philosophers of our times, and his arguments address many of the issues facing philosophers and laypersons alike. One of his most important ideas is that a good God is not incompatible with the presence of evil (see his God, Freedom and Evil, 1989). He has also argued that belief in the existence of God is a basic belief, not requiring apologetic arguments. Plantinga has been the president of the American Philosophical Association. He has taught at Yale, Calvin, and at Notre Dame. It is said that no serious philosopher today can go very far without reckoning with Plantinga. A number of other notable products of Calvin in the neo-Calvinist heritage would include Howard Evan Runner (1916–2002) who taught Christian philosophy at Calvin, where he created the Groen Van Prinsterer Society, and Henry Zylstra (1906–56), who taught English at Calvin, using Kuyper’s principial approach. Among his most significant contributions is the creation of the ICS, the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, which we will examine shortly. It is remarkable that this modest institution has produced such important thinkers.

IV. NEO-CALVINISTIC ESTABLISHMENTS Other institutions of higher learning that embody neo-Calvinism include the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. The ICS has been a center for neo-Calvinism since its founding in 1967. Its vision is to promote findings in various disciplines from the standpoint of “reformational philosophy.” Today it is authorized to issue a Master of Philosophical Foundations and doctoral degrees. The major impetus undergirding the ICS is the work of philosopher and law professor Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977). Dooyeweerd constructed his system on a transcendental critique of “the pretended autonomy of theoretical thought” in contrast to a “biblical ground-motive.”14 He developed an “anti-scholastic” approach which traced the vestiges of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought in both modern philosophy and theology. Accordingly, though basically committed to Kuyper’s views he found in them vestiges of “logos-speculation” stemming from Neoplatonic thought. He found those in Bavinck as well.15 Dooyeweerd’s system is somewhat complex. He posits fifteen “modalities,” discrete units in the creation (aspects of reality) ranging from numbers to aesthetics and theology. To absolutize any one of them is idolatry. But together they cohere under the sovereignty of God. Man in his full selfhood transcends the temporal earthly cosmos in all its aspects and partakes of the transcendent root of this cosmos.16 Dooyeweerd had a considerable influence on a number of neo-Calvinists as did his brother-in-law D. T. H. Vollenhoven. The two were very close in ideas, although there were subtle differences. Vollenhoven was arguably the more systematic thinker, whereas Dooyeweerd looked at the big picture. But they both embraced Reformational philosophy. Both worked at the Free University of Amsterdam from 1926 on. The list of thinkers

Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1997). Herman Dooyeweerd, “Kuyper’s wetenschapsleer,” Philosophia Reformata 4 (1939): 193–232. 16 Dooyeweerd, A New Critique, II, 593. 14 15

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associated with the ICS influenced by Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven is significant in the neo-Calvinist tradition. It includes Hank Hart, Hendrik van Riessen, C. A. van Peuren, Paul Schrotenboer, Evan Runner, Bernard Zylstra, James Olthuis, and Calvin Seerveld. Interestingly, the distinguished historian C. T. McIntire (1939–), son of Carl McIntyre, guest-lectures at the ICS. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and teaches history and religion at the University of Toronto (1982–). It is fair to say that none of these scholars wholly embraced Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven, though all have greatly benefited from their insights. One of the most original and creative thinkers from this group is Calvin Seerveld, the Senior Member in Aesthetics. Seerveld (b. 1930) has written extensively on topics ranging from the problem of evil to Scripture to European cultural challenges to education. One significant part of his output includes writing on arts and aesthetics. Interestingly, he has criticized the easy acceptance of the concept of beauty. For many people, including Christians, “beauty” is tied more to Plato than to the Bible. Books such as Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves (Tuppence, 2000) and Normative Aesthetics (Dort College Press, 2014) dig deep into contemporary aesthetics, including how to interpret modern art.17

V. WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Several professors who qualify as neo-Calvinists have taught at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia as well. The most well-known of them is Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987).18 Though deeply indebted to Abraham Kuyper, he differed with him on the details of Christian apologetics. Born in the Netherlands, he immigrated to Indiana with his family when he was ten. Steeped in the Reformed tradition, he was educated at Calvin University, then for a year at Calvin Theological Seminary, followed by Princeton Seminary and University, where he earned a PhD in 1927. Van Til was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church and then in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. After teaching for a year at Princeton Seminary and then a year in pastoral ministry he left with several colleagues, led by J. Gresham Machen, to teach at the newly founded Westminster Theological Seminary, where he was active for forty-three years. The heart of Van Til’s apologetics is the beginning point: what he called the ontological Trinity. God is “fully rational” giving meaning to all of life. Though Van Til strongly believed in common grace, he argued that there was no neutrality and that no test could be devised which God had to pass in order to verify his authority. God is “self-authenticating.” His method became known as “presuppositional” because unless one presupposed the God of Scripture, he argued, no meaningful predication is possible. Van Til used the label but did not particularly care for it. His followers, including this author, prefer the term “covenantal apologetics” because it stresses the way God accommodates and condescends to his creation. Van Til invested a good deal in the criticism of Karl Barth (1886–1968), whom he believed had substituted dialectical thinking for the authority of revelation. Van Til influenced a generation of neo-Calvinist scholars. These include his colleague Robert Knudsen, his interpreters John Frame and Greg Bahnsen, and, earlier, the evangelist Francis Schaeffer. K. Scott Oliphint, an analytic philosopher, is a most capable Without naming him Seerveld takes a different tack from Hans Rookmaaker’s declinist Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1970). 18 See his The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2008). 17

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interpreter and applier of Van Til’s thought.19 My own work has been to apply Van Tilian principles to cultural studies.20 Mention should be made of exponents of the systematic theology department at Westminster. Stemming from the traditions of John Murray and Edmund Clowney, followed by the esteemed Richard Gaffin, the approach combines exegetical depth with dogmatic integrity. Other significant exponents of Westminster include urban missiologists, the pioneering Harvie Conn, and Bill Krispen (Bill is the retired the Executive Director of CityNet Ministries for planting churches in Philadelphia).

VI. POLITICS, HISTORY, AND MINISTRY Many neo-Calvinists, some more comfortable with the label than others, have had considerable influence in their fields.21 There is a remarkable group of historians who unquestionably owe debts to Kuyper. Two of the most prominent American historians are Mark Noll and George Marsden. Noll (1946–) is one of a prolific specialists in American as well as world history. He is a graduate of Wheaton College and holds a PhD from Vanderbilt. He taught at Notre Dame for fourteen years. His many books include America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford University Press, 2002), The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), and Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity (Baker, 1997). One of his most controversial books, suggesting the waning of neo-Calvinist influence, is The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994), with its famous sentence, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” He later followed this up with a more positive statement of the way forward.22 The second historian is George Marsden (1939–). He is a specialist in North American history. He attended Westminster Seminary and earned his doctorate at Yale under Sydney Ahlstrom. He taught at Calvin (1965–86) and then Notre Dame (1992–2008). His biography of Jonathan Edwards is considered the gold standard (Yale University Press, 2004). He wrote a defining history of Fuller Theological Seminary called Reforming Fundamentalism (Eerdmans 1995). And one of his most intriguing books is The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, a study of the role of the 1950s in the modern cultural revolution (Basic Books, 2014). Several other neo-Calvinists (applying the label approximately) are prominent in North American thought. Among them one should include Os Guinness (1941–), the British sociologist, and student of world history. His works on the problem of evil, on calling, and on threats to freedom are noteworthy.23 There is also the lively worldwide movement known as the L’Abri Fellowship (established by Francis Schaeffer, a direct spiritual descendant of Abraham Kuyper, in 1955). L’Abri generates thoughtful analyses

K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013). He is also the editor of The Defense of the Faith, 4th Edition. 20 William Edgar, Created and Creating: A Biblical Theology of Culture (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016). 21 For an excellent summary, see John Bolt, “From Princeton to Wheaton: The Course of Neo-Calvinism in North America,” in Vicissitudes of Reformed Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. George Harinck and Dirk van Keulen (Amsterdam: Meinema, Zoetermeer, 2004), 163–84. 22 Mark Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016). 23 Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelsen, 1998). 19

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of modern life and culture. Richard Keyes is the founder of the North American branch in Southborough, Massachusetts. Keyes (1979–) is a prolific lecturer and writer on a variety of topics from apologetics to ethics. His book on heroism versus celebrity is groundbreaking.24 One of the most influential neo-Calvinists is Timothy Keller (1950–2023). Founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, he was a pastor-theologian with a significant vision to spread the gospel to the city. Keller was one of the most notable preachers of our time. His messages combine the rich insights of biblical theology with application to our contemporary world. His apologetical work, The Reason for God, was on the New York bestseller list. The work of City-to-City, a church-planting network founded by Keller, shows the application of Keller’s rich insights into how to bring the gospel back to the West and the majority world.25 Collin Hansen is the author of the important book, Young, Restless and Reformed. The subtitle is A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists.26 Hansen, a close associate with Timothy Keller, is the president of content and editor-in-chief for the Gospel Coalition, a distinct movement with a strong neo-Calvinist essence. The book describes an emerging group of leaders unhappy with the current inertia in evangelical churches. One of the most creative contemporary defenders of Reformed theology in the neo-Calvinist tradition is James K. A. Smith, whose books, including Desiring the Kingdom, are a plea for a more culturally and aesthetically aware Christian worldview.27 He also wrote Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition (Brazos 2010). Smith’s is not dissimilar to the work of Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton, asking that our worldview not be limited to the cognitive.28 Craig Bartholomew is one of the most thoughtful advocates of Abraham Kuyper today. This South African theologian (b. 1961) is much appreciated in North America. He has written extensively on cultural issues, worldview thinking, South African history, and, particularly, Kuyper. His book Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition thoroughly and sensitively presents themes spawned by Kuyper, such as sphere sovereignty, creation and redemption, the public square, and questions about race. He goes beyond Kuyper into contemporary issues the father of neo-Calvinism did not address. He faults Kuyper for his antiquated views on race, for example. Neo-Calvinist influence has also extended into politics and government. The most prominent advocacy group applying Kuyperian principles to politics is the Center for Public Justice (CPJ), founded and led by James Skillen. It is a movement which publishes thoughtful articles on various subjects related to world events.29 Those involved include the advocate of government-supported faith-based initiatives Stanley Carlson-Theis as well as authors and scholars such as Stephanie Summers, Michael Gerson, Vincent Bacote, Gideon Strauss, and Dean Trulear.

Richard B. Keyes, Heroism in a World of Cynicism and Celebrity (Keyes, 2021). See https://redeemercitytocity​.com/. 26 (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008). 27 James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009). 28 Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2005). 29 See James W. Skillen, The Good of Politics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014). 24 25

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VII. BLACK AND REFORMED Several important Black leaders have discovered and defended neo-Calvinistic ideas. As the reflective African American scholar W. E. B. Dubois suggested, one should live in light of revelation: “and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.”30 That insight certainly applies to Black Reformed thinkers. One commentator surmises that most Reformed Black theologians did not become Calvinists by reading John Calvin, but by reading Scripture in the light of the Black experience.31 Allan A. Boesak is originally from South Africa. But he has had a considerable sway in North America. He has won the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Award. He currently holds the Desmond Tutu Chair for Peace, Global Justice and Reconciliation Studies at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. He has been the president of the World of Alliance of Reformed Theology (WARC). His most influential book is Black and Reformed (2015), with the subtitle Apartheid, Liberation and the Calvinist Tradition. Chapters include studies of apartheid but also in-depth examinations of Reformed theology with applications to North America. Native-born North American Reformed Black thinkers include the notable and unique Francis Grimké. Grimké (1850–1937) was born into slavery, but after the Civil War he became established as a remarkable intellectual and an avid Presbyterian. For most of his career he was the minister of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. He also founded the American Negro Academy and was a trustee of the Colored Settlement House and Howard University. Among the notable Black graduates of Westminster Seminary, three stand out. First, Eugene Callendar (1926–2013). He was a Presbyterian minister, serving the Church of the Master in Morningside, Harlem. He directed the New York Urban League and the New York Urban Coalition. He was a friend and colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was active in antidrug and anti-poverty organizations. Second, Dr. Carl Ellis, Jr. (b. 1946). Ellis is the author, among other books, of Free At Last? As a historian of Black consciousness, he appeals for “jazz theologians,” applying the principles of improvisation to theology. Ellis has held a number of significant positions connected to cultural apologetics, including, the Center for Urban Theological Studies (CUTS) in Philadelphia, Inter-Cultural Studies at Westminster Seminary, New City Fellowship, and Reformed Theological Seminary. He is married to the talented Karen Ellis. Finally, there is Dr. Anthony Bradley, who has taught at Covenant Theological Seminary and the King’s College in New York. His PhD dissertation from Westminster Theological Seminary contains a thoughtful critique of Black liberation theologian James Cone.32 Bradley’s 2013 book, Aliens in the Promised Land, is a “minority-led” discussion

Quoted by Sean Wilenz in Lapham Quarterly “Round Table,” Lune 1, 2016, https://www​.laphamsquarterly​.org​ /roundtable​/dialectic​-doubleness. 31 ​https:/​/www​.thebanner​.org​/features​/2011​/01​/a​-short​-history​-of​-being​-black​​-and​-reformed. 32 This became the book, Liberating Black Theology: The Bible and the Black Experience in America (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010). 30

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of racism in the American evangelical church. He has continued to produce thoughtful reflection on difficult topics, such as his recent book on mass incarceration.33

VIII. NEO-CALVINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY Neo-Calvinism has made its way into the world of North American counseling also, albeit with mixed reactions. The movement CCEF (Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation) has spawned such well-versed psychologists as David Powlison (prolific author and practical theologian) and Paul David Tripp. Neuropsychologist Ed Welch has written extensively on subjects such as addiction and depression, unwilling to reduce these to purely “spiritual” issues.34 Neo-Calvinist James Hurley has espoused a somewhat different model of therapy, known as systems analysis. He has worked extensively with abused spouses as well as dysfunctional families. Other specialists in abuse should include Dr. Diane Langberg, who has worked over fifty years with issues such as trauma, trafficking, and clergy abuse.

IX. CRITICS Various opponents of Kuyper and neo-Calvinism have arisen. Foppe Martin Ten Hoor (1855–1934), mentioned earlier, was a mentor to Herman Hoeksema. He was a fierce opponent of Kuyper, fearing that his followers would not fully grasp the sobriety of God’s requirements.35 Among the most recognized scholars who oppose neo-Calvinism, one must include historian Darryl Hart. Hart calls himself a “Paleo-Calvinist” in contrast to a neo-Calvinist. Hart is worried about the putative emphasis on special revelation versus natural law neo-Calvinists deny. His major criticism is a bit of a surprise. Kuyperian “reforms” have not led to amelioration but to great decadence. Like Carl Trueman, he points to the degeneration of the city of Amsterdam as evidence. This is a bit like blaming Calvin for the decadence of modern Geneva.36 Similar objections are lodged by David VanDrunen, who objects to Kuyper’s “transformationalism.”37 There is some debate over whether the term “neo-Calvinism” adequately represents all those who claim the name. Some argue there is a second category within the Reformed resurgences titled Neo-Puritanism, which differs at points from neo-Calvinism. Ray Pennings argues that whereas neo-Calvinism is the direct heir of Groen Van Prinsterer, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Bavinck, with their emphasis on the doctrine of creation and on social transformation. Neo-Puritanism, represented by John Piper, Mark Driscoll, C. J. Mahaney, and Albert Mohler, with roots in John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, stresses individual piety and churchly revival. This movement is sometimes titled

Anthony Bradley, Ending Overcriminalization and Mass Incarceration: Hope from Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 34 Edward Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave (Glenside: New Growth, 2012). 35 Accordingly, he criticized Kuyper’s view of presumptive regeneration. See Richard J. Mouw, The Challenges of Cultural Discipleship: Essays in the Line of Abraham Kuyper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 151 36 Carl Trueman, “Hart on Calvinism,” Reformation 21, August 13, 2013, https://www​.reformation21​.org​/hart​ _on​_calvinism. 37 In David Van Drunen’s important book, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Vision for Christianity and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010) he faults Kuyper for his views on transforming culture. See p. 11ff. 33

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“neo-Calvinism” or new Calvinism but is distinct from the Dutch tradition while there is indeed overlap but largely confined to soteriology.38

X. CONCLUSION What is the future of neo-Calvinism in North America? It is likely that neo-Calvinism will survive these critiques and continue its work. It has become ensconced within various academies and advocacy groups. It is unlikely that neo-Calvinism will “lose its saltiness.” Some even deem it the future of evangelicalism.39

See Scot Mcknight, “What to Call the So-Called New-Calvinists?,” https://www​.patheos​.com​/blogs​/jesuscreed​ /2014​/05​/28​/what​-to​-call​-the​-so​-called​-new​-calvinists/. 39 See Mark Wingfield, “Is the Future of Evangelicalism with the Christianity Today ‘Elite’, or with the Firebrand Neo-Calvinists,” https://baptistnews​.com​/article​/is​-the​-future​-of​-evangelicalism​-with​-the​-christianity​-today​-elite​ -or​-with​-the​-firebrand​-neo​-calvinists/#​.YipxhN9Olp8; https://reformedforum​.org​/john​-pipers​-twelve​-features​ -new​-calvinism/. 38

Chapter 30

Neo-Calvinism, Islam, and Other Religions ALEXANDER E. MASSAD

I. INTRODUCTION In missions, it is not enough for you simply to profess Christ, to learn the language of an unfamiliar people, and to dedicate yourself personally to preaching the Gospel in that strange tongue; what is even more essential than daily bread in this regard is that you possess a living rapport with the religious thought-world of the people that you would like to convert, and ultimately that you discover that point of connection that makes you one with them.1 This statement from Abraham Kuyper embodies the tension within neo-Calvinist consideration of other religious traditions. On the one hand, Kuyper, the pastor and theologian, affirms the necessity of Christian missions to convert non-Christians. The question is not whether missions should occur. Kuyper presumes that Christians will engage in missions. At issue is when one does mission work, then Kuyper has some thoughts on how the work of preaching the Gospel should proceed. Christianity is the true religion and Christians are obliged to “dedicate” themselves to preach the gospel through effective contextualization. Yet, on the other hand, Kuyper advocates that missionaries must “possess a living rapport with the religious thought-world of the people.” The missionary must immerse herself or himself in the thoughts, practices, and living tradition of the religious other. However, the extent to which and means by which one should and can delve into the “thought-world” of another religious tradition is not clear. Indeed, it is in this latter statement that we find diversity among subsequent neo-Calvinist approaches toward other religions. Among neo-Calvinist theological discussions of other religions we find that Muslims and the Islamic tradition have served, and continue to serve, as the religious other par excellence.2 One reason why neo-Calvinists have had a preoccupation with Muslims and

J. H. Bavinck, in John Bolt, James D. Bratt, and P. J. Visser, The J.H. Bavinck Reader (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2013), 117. 2 For an examination of the Reformed tradition’s engagement with Muslims as a Christian trope, see Joshua Ralston, “Islam as Christian Trope: The Place and Function of Islam in Reformed Dogmatics,” The Muslim World 107, no. 4 (October 2017): 754–76. 1

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the Islamic tradition is due to the colonial history of the Netherlands in Indonesia where it was the primary mission field for the Dutch. Although Indonesia is no longer a Dutch colony, Muslims have remained the religious other par excellence as globalization and migration have increased the Muslim population in the Netherlands, causing theologians to rethink the nineteenth-century notions of religious identity.3 This chapter serves as a brief survey and examination of neo-Calvinist theologies of other religions, with a particular focus on the Muslim tradition. Section II examines three seminal figures for neo-Calvinist theology regarding other religions—Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck (Bavinck), and Johan Herman Bavinck’s (J. H. Bavinck). These seminal neo-Calvinist theologians posited theologies of common grace and general revelation that affirm God’s divine work in non-Christian religions and the antithesis, which emphasizes the divide between following God and rejecting God. Although all subsequent neo-Calvinist theologians utilize common grace, general revelation, and the antithesis in their theologies of other religions, the way these theologians utilize these concepts differs. Section III examines what I term the “antithesis-driven approach” to other religions within neo-Calvinism. I focus in particular on Daniel Strange’s work developing a neo-Calvinist theology of religions. Section IV examines what I term the “common-grace-driven approach” to other religions within neo-Calvinism. I focus on Richard Mouw and Matthew Kaemingk as emblematic of this approach. I end this chapter with a brief discussion on the future of neo-Calvinist engagement with other religions focusing on political and demographic change. This chapter serves as an entry into a developing field of theology.

II. EARLY NEO-CALVINIST FORMULATIONS a. Abraham Kuyper and the Paradox of Islam Kuyper was struck by the enduring transplantation of Islam over Christianity in the Mediterranean. Kuyper wondered, “How did the unruffled progress of Islam meet with such unprecedented success, particularly in supplanting what was at the time a powerful Christian Church, far superior in spiritual and moral ideals to the claims of Mohammed?”4 Ultimately, it is difficult to put together a clear picture of what Kuyper thought about other religions and Islam in particular because his writing on the matter is dispersed among several works.5 Still, there are at least two lenses that Kuyper used to engage with other religions, Islam in particular. The first is a biblical lens, through which he attempted to define Islam as a historical phenomenon within biblical salvation history. The second lens sees a tension between nomistic legalism and a mystical emotivism within Islam.

This does not mean that neo-Calvinists did not write about other non-Christian religious traditions. Indonesia was also home to a large Buddhist community, which Johan Hermann Bavinck wrote about in several of his works. Johan Herman Bavinck, The Church between Temple and Mosque: A Study of the Relationship between the Christian Faith and Other Religions (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1966). 4 Abraham Kuyper, On Islam, ed. James D. Bratt and Douglas A. Howard, trans. Jan van Vliet (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2017), 180–1. 5 The translated and edited volume On Islam fills a major lacuna in this literature. This text is not exhaustive of Kuyper’s discussion on Islam. Kuyper discusses Islam in Our Program, his series of lectures on Old Testament women collected in Women of the Old Testament, and in his Stone Lectures where Islam represents one of the great worldviews alongside Calvinism and Catholicism. 3

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From this perspective, he admires Islam’s spiritual force but is also critical of what he sees as an overly cold and legalistic religion. First, Kuyper understands Islam through the two biblical themes in salvation history. The first is the Abrahamic covenant and God’s promises to Hagar and Ishmael. Kuyper believed that the Islamic tradition was the fulfillment of God’s “rich promises” to Hagar and Ishmael that they would have “great influence on the earth.”6 God, therefore, “firmly established” ties between God’s people, Abraham’s descendants, and the progeny of Abraham outside the covenant—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and, Kuyper adds, Muslims. Kuyper, however, makes a stark distinction between the Edomites and the Moabites, Ammonites, and Muslims, “Ammon and Moab came from sinful comingling, and Ishmael was born from unbelief.” Although Kuyper considered Muslims and the Islamic tradition as a part of God’s divine plan to fulfill the promises to Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael, Islam “was born from unbelief.” Thus, Muslims and the Islamic tradition remain outside of God’s salvation plan for Abraham and his covenant. The second biblical theme through which Kuyper viewed Islam was the propagation of monotheism. Kuyper viewed Muslims as compatriots in spreading monotheism to the pagans.7 Kuyper saw God’s divine plan to counter paganism in Muhammad’s “elevated sense of divine calling and God-ordained” sense of dominion, which resulted in the spread of Islam’s monotheistic beliefs among the pagan Arabs, Persians, and Africans.8 Interestingly, Kuyper even believed that the Prophet Muhammad would not have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity if he understood it properly. He presents Muhammad’s monotheism as so radical that anything that resembled paganism, such as a tritheistic interpretation of the Trinity, was categorically rejected.9 Kuyper praised Islam’s view of God’s sovereignty and the import this doctrine had on Islamic culture and politics. His robust view of God’s sovereignty and creation as “coram deo” led him to appreciate Islam’s perspective on God’s sovereignty over all cultural spheres. Within salvation history, Islam served as a tutor for the previously unbelieving pagan masses showing that God’s concern extends to every sphere of human existence, something Kuyper lamented Christianity had forgotten. Thus, Kuyper’s biblical lens envisions some of God’s covenantal promises to Abraham as extending not only through the lineage of Isaac but also to some extent through Ishmael and his descendants, which, according to Kuyper, led to the Muslim tradition. The second lens by which Kuyper assessed the Muslim tradition was as through a tension between nomistic legalism and mystical emotivism. Islam, according to Kuyper, began as a nomistic religion rooted in the Qur’an, which he saw as a normative and legal code that governs and weaves together all aspects of a Muslim’s life.10 Under this regime, all life is constantly and coercively redirected toward oneness—the oneness of God and the oneness of the Islamic community. It is this unrelenting focus on oneness, the binding of all life together under one regime, where Kuyper believed Islam found its strength.11 The issue with nomistic religions, according to Kuyper, is that they are naturally cold

Abraham Kuyper, Women of the Old Testament, trans. Henry Zylstra (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1934), 19. Kuyper, On Islam, 303. 7 Kuyper, On Islam, 212. 8 Ibid., 183. 9 Kuyper believed Muhammad “took issue with what he considered to be the pretension that held Jesus to be God’s son . . . [as an] adulterated representation of the doctrine of the trinity as tritheistic.” Kuyper, On Islam, 24. 10 Kuyper, On Islam, 29. 11 Ibid., 333. 6

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and lack affective power.12 Their rigid legal norms cannot excite the heart nor stimulate creative thinking. This results in moral deficiencies and stagnation. He believed that only the concept of rebirth or divine reconciliation could elevate one above the simple external constraints of legal religious codes.13 As Kuyper did not find these concepts in Islam, he concluded that Islam is essentially a morally deficient religion, devoid of enthusiasm, and uncritically unitarian. However, when Kuyper visited the Mediterranean Muslim world in 1906 he found Muslims enthusiastic about their faith and realized his nomistic assessment could not account for this phenomenon. Nomistic religions are cold, but mysticism offsets this harshness with the warm glow of the life of the mind and affective spirituality.14 He attributed the Muslim fanatical urge to spread Islam to mysticism. This mystical impulse was so fundamental to Kuyper’s vision of Islam that he claimed Islam would have faltered after its initial few generations because its nomistic essence could not affect the hearts and minds of its adherents or those to whom it was preached.15 Only Islamic mysticism could explain Islam’s continual presence and spread for Kuyper. In sum, Islam was a mystery for Kuyper. He saw the Islamic tradition as a fundamentally rigid nomistic religion whose unrelenting monotheism and unswerving laws unapologetically bound all life together. This nomistic vision of Islam fits with Kuyper’s understanding of Islam as a religion “stuck in the Old Testament.” Just like the nomistic Israelites whose legal code requires redemption by a savior, so too did Kuyper see Islam as a religion in need of a savior to free them from nomistic oppression. Kuyper nuances this nomistic vision of Islam with ethnological psychology. From this vantage point, Muslims are seen as a Semitic people who desire affective religious experiences of the heart. Kuyper’s personal experiences during his travels around the Mediterranean enforced this trope as he described the passion and zealotry Muslims had for their faith. Thus, Kuyper concludes that the Islamic tradition is a mixture of nomistic legalism and Semitic affectations that are misaligned and in need of Christ and Christianity.

b. Herman Bavinck’s Meditations on Islam Herman Bavinck was critical of the way past Christian scholars studied non-Christian religions. He chastised them for inquiring into other religions exclusively for the purpose of advancing apologetics and dogmatics, slandering the founders of non-Christian religions, such as Muhammad, as “imposters, enemies of God, [and] accomplices of the devil.”16 Bavinck believed such a position was no longer tenable by the time he was writing his Reformed Dogmatics (1906–11). Colonialism and economic trade had brought a trove of new knowledge about non-Christian religions to the European scholars. Thus, it was evident to Bavinck that several non-Christian religions were just as intellectually complex, spiritually dynamic, and sometimes more ancient than the Christian tradition. Whereas Kuyper attempts to fit Islam between Judaism and Christianity, Bavinck presents only two categories of religion—Christianity and others. Bavinck does not

Ibid., 335. Jn 3:3-8 (NRSV). 14 Kuyper, On Islam, 335. 15 Ibid., 9. 16 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 318. 12 13

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differentiate Islam as distinct from other non-Christian religions. For Bavinck, all non-Christian religions are the products of human responses to general revelation. General revelation in Bavinck’s theology is not a passive divine deposit given at the moment of creation and left to human manipulation. For Bavinck, general revelation “is a revelation of God, an illumination by the Logos, [and] a working of God’s Spirit.”17 It is a dynamic engagement of the Trinitarian Godhead in all aspects of creation. This perspective implies that all religions, including their practices and teachings, benefit in diverse ways from the active interest the Trinitarian God takes into the development of creation. Although general revelation shares in one source, the Trinitarian Godhead, religions are diverse because human culture is not unitary. This explains why the same “illumination” of the Logos confronts Hinduism and Islam and the “work” of the Spirit. Yet, these traditions differ because cultural factors have varied the reception of the Logos and Spirit. Though infrequent, when Bavinck refers to another religious tradition he tends to refer to Islam as a foil for his theological positions. In discussing the human need for redemption, Bavinck presents Islam as finding redemption in liberation from punishment through an act of faith in the shahada, declaring the oneness of God and Muhammad’s prophetic station and in maintaining obligatory religious rites.18 Although Bavinck recognizes this as a kind of redemption, it is not a gift from God but the result of “a person’s own act.”19 This sets up Islam as a theological foil against which Bavinck juxtaposes Christianity’s uniqueness in “the reality of Jesus Christ and the redemption he brings as fully God’s initiative.”20 He also employs Islam as a foil for his discussion of God’s free will as holy and not arbitrary,21 and the uniqueness of the Christian church as a blessing to society and state.22 In sum, Bavinck presents a dynamic vision of God personally interacting with the religions of the world. Religions are not solely the productions of the human imagination. Nor are they demonically inspired. For Bavinck, religions are human constructions whose building blocks are derived from God’s active engagement with the world. Despite Bavinck’s positive assessment of the inspirations that stimulate the religions of the world, he retains his exclusivist presuppositionalism regarding redemption. Like Kuyper, Bavinck argues religious beliefs are the presuppositions that form the foundation of a particular culture. Although Bavinck is open to non-Christian cultures, he is not open in the same manner to non-Christian religions. Christianity, he contends, is unique among the religions because it developed out of God’s initiative to bring redemption through the historical acts of Jesus Christ. Islam, though developed from the prompting of God’s Trinitarian revelation, is seen as a powerful alternative to the Christian narrative that has entrapped Muslims in seeing God as arbitrary and putting their faith in a monotheistic creed (the shahada) with no inherent redemptive power.

Ibid., 1.318. Ibid., 1.474. 19 Ibid., 474. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 272–3. 22 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1.590. For an interesting perspective on Bavinck’s understanding of Islam and political culture see his dialogue with Snouck Hurgronje. Herman Bavinck and Snouck Hurgronje, “Pearls and Leaven,” The Bavinck Review 2 (2011): 171–3. 17 18

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c. Johan Herman Bavinck’s Preoccupation with Islam Johan Herman Bavinck served as a missionary in Indonesia (1928–38), was the first professor of Reformed missiology at the Kampen Theological University, and was a professor of practical theology at the Free University of Amsterdam. Although J. H. Bavinck employed similar theological themes as Kuyper and his uncle Herman Bavinck, he also utilized contemporary studies in psychology and had an appreciation for mysticism. He approaches other religions through a dialogical approach between scriptural interpretation and psychology to understand how God affects the human heart.23 From Rom. 1:19, he deduced the existence of a pervasive and illuminating general revelation as a “person-directed, relevant [and] impinging expression of God’s will.”24 It is in the human consciousness where creation, which is God’s unavoidable “wordless speech,”25 confronts all the senses at every moment.26 The history of religious diversity is the result of diverse human responses to this unending wordless speech. The human consciousness is also the site where one encounters general revelation, In the created order there is true and objective knowledge of God, but that the nature of this knowledge is not static and found through philosophical reflection but “occurs in the living connection between people and the world around them in what one could call the symbiotic relationship of people and the world.” This revelation is dynamic, personal and relational in character. Additionally, J. H. Bavinck posits an internal dynamism within the human conscience, between a sense of absolute dependency on another and a feeling of self-regulating normativity, in which he finds something of God in non-Christian religions. Although all non-Christian religions arise from human engagement with general revelation, J. H. Bavinck insists there is no continuity between Christianity and non-Christian religions. The moment general revelation is grasped, it is immediately “suppressed” and “exchanged . . . for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.”27 Humans immediately suppress God’s truth and substitute something from their own machinations due to their “hidden, invariably unvoiced, often totally unconscious motive to stand in moral opposition to God.”28 When people repress general revelation it is banished to the realm of unconsciousness. This suppression happens without cognizance, in the “total silence [of] the human heart.”29 However, general revelation remains and continues to prompt the human mind. It is in response to these prompts that humans maintain religious consciousness within their non-Christian religious traditions. As a missionary in Indonesia, J. H. Bavinck was committed to late-night conversations with local religious leaders and attended wayang events.30 J. H. Bavinck’s attempt to grasp the Javanese psyche led him to conclude in his 1934 Christ and the Mysticism of the East that personally absorbing and using Javanese mysticism in one’s presentation of Bavinck, The J.H. Bavinck Reader, 10. Ibid., 44. 25 Ibid., 246. 26 Ibid., 42. 27 Rom. 1:17, 23 (NRSV). 28 Bavinck, The J.H. Bavinck Reader, 54 n. 253. 29 Ibid., 242. 30 A wayang is a Javanese puppet shadow-play dramatizing mythological religious and cosmological events. 23 24

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the Gospel would be the most effective manner to approach mission work in Indonesia.31 Interestingly, J. H. Bavinck remarked, “The great moments in the history of religion are the moments when God wrestled with man in a very particular way.”32 On laylat al-qadr (the night of power), when Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation, he proposed, “God dealt with Mohammed and touched him. God wrestled with him in that night, and God’s hand is still noticeable in the answer of the prophet, but it is also the result of human repression.”33 He also believed the Buddha’s attainment of nirvana under the bodhi tree was a moment where “God was touching him and struggling with him.”34 The Buddha responded to this revelation leading to Buddhism, which he saw as the result of “God’s hand” and “human repression.”35 Thus, J. H. Bavinck’s conclusion is that all non-Christian religions are the result of a mixture of general revelation and human suppression, requiring evangelism because other religious traditions do not offer anything unique to the Christian tradition. What is common to all three theologians is the agreement that one cannot simply dismiss non-Christian religions. Kuyper struggled to reconcile his theological beliefs that other religions do not share in salvation history with his appreciation for aspects of non-Christian life and thought he encountered during his travels. Bavinck utilized other religions, and the Islamic tradition in particular, when he wanted to compare his systematic Reformed theological doctrines to another religious tradition and chastised his contemporaries for uncritically maligning non-Christian religions. His nephew, J. H. Bavinck, drew upon Bavinck’s theology of general revelation and Kuyper’s theology of common grace to develop a psychological explanation for the pervasiveness of other religions. Yet, he could not allow for general revelation to bring people to a salvific understanding of God.36 Thus, Kuyper, Bavinck, and J. H. Bavinck establish a precedent of neo-Calvinists engaging with other religions through the doctrines of common grace and general revelation in order to explain how religions like Islam appear to hold principles that neo-Calvinists affirm (monotheism, religious engagement in the public spheres, pious devotion, etc.) and yet reject Christ’s lordship and the Christian tradition’s doctrines of redemption.

III. AN ANTITHESIS-DRIVEN APPROACH TO OTHER RELIGIONS The reception of Kuyper and the two Bavinck’s work in the development of a “neo-Calvinist” theology within Anglo-American scholarship has split into two general trajectories. One branch of neo-Calvinism comes from those who emphasize Kuyper’s antithesis theology in relation to non-Christian religions. Kuyper developed the theological category of the antithesis out of Calvin’s belief that any of the original light of the image of God that remained after creation is so “chocked with dense ignorance . . . that it cannot come forth

Bavinck, The J.H. Bavinck Reader, 14. Bavinck, The Church between Temple and Mosque, 125. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Bavinck, The J.H. Bavinck Reader, 49. 31 32

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effectively.”37 The antithesis for Kuyper is the “basic opposition that he saw as holding between the patterns of human life and thought in its fallenness and that which God intends for the life and thought of the redeemed community.”38 Although the antithesisdriven approach affirms common grace’s work in restraining the ultimate effects of sin on the life of the non-Christian, the praiseworthy productions of non-Christians are limited to the realm of external civic virtues and cultural productions. The antithesis-driven approach is ultimately pessimistic about non-Christian epistemology, ethics, and religious life.39 In other words, sin has so corrupted the internal functions of the human person (mind and will) that neither can glorify God apart from being fully regenerated by the Holy Spirit. From this perspective, common grace seen in the imago Dei is a metaphysical “check” against the realities of the antithesis and common grace, the Holy Spirit is an ethical “check” against the full antithetical rebellion of unbelief.40 Ultimately, Christians can participate with non-Christian religions civically and ethically as “co-belligerents,” but they cannot go so far as to affirm the inherent ethical, metaphysical, or religious content of the religious other’s tradition.41 Daniel Strange’s thesis in Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock is an example of the antithesis approach to neo-Calvinism, From the presupposition of an epistemologically authoritative biblical revelation, nonChristian religions are sovereignly directed, variegated and dynamic, collective human idolatrous responses to divine revelation behind which stand deceiving demonic forces. Being antithetically against yet parasitically dependent upon the truth of the Christian worldview, on-Christian religions are “subversively fulfilled” in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, non-Christian religions are the result of erring human interactions with common grace and any resemblance between Christianity and non-Christian religions is the result of borrowing from the Christian worldview. Following Cornelius Van Til, Strange discusses the difference between Christians and non-Christians as an antithesis between “ultimate commitments, ultimate motivations, [and] ultimate eternal desires.”42 Yet, it is common grace that prevents the antithesis from devolving into a “radical discontinuity,” where the two groups could not share basic beliefs about the world.43 Common grace serves as an “ethical” check against the full expression of the antithesis, such that the accomplishments of non-Christians are “not their own and cannot be accounted for apart from the grace of God.”44 Thus, affirmations of non-Christian traditions are affirmations of the “divine purposes behind common grace.”45

Jean Calvin, John T. McNeill, and Ford Lewis Battles, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), II: 2, 12. 38 Richard Mouw, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 61. 39 Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 50, 76, 83, 86, 212, 319. John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg N.J: P & R Pub., 2008), 54–71. 40 Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, 319. 41 Ibid., 276, 319. 42 Ibid., 92. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 306. 37

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This understanding of the antithesis and common grace helps Strange to answer— “Why has God ordained the rise and flourishing of other religions, and what purposes do they serve in the divine economy?”46 First, God uses non-Christian religions as a preparation (preparatio) for the gospel, in the sense that it provides a “point of attack” for missionaries, and a framework to subvert and fulfill with the gospel (possessio).47 Second, God uses non-Christian religions “didactically and disciplinary in the sanctification of his church.”48 Both of these functions are the result of common grace, which Strange, following John Murray, argues is intended to serve the purposes of special, or saving, grace.49 Thus, the purpose of other religions, and those who follow them, is to serve God’s sovereign plan “to display his glory in judgment and mercy” to the church, and by implication—Christians.50 Strange employs the Islamic tradition as the religious other par excellence to explain his concept of subversive fulfillment as used by his former graduate student Christopher Flint.51 Flint argues that the fundamental discontinuity between Christianity and Islam consists of respectively competing visions of God as relational and triune against a “non-relational and undifferentiated monad.”52 Resemblances between Christianity and Islam, such as shared prophetic characters or certain ethical codes, are the result of “inferential revelation,” that is, knowledge gained by coming into contact with the Jewish or Christian traditions.53 Flint concludes that missionaries should seek out “elements of truth” in the Islamic tradition, due to common grace, affirm these truths as also dear to the Christian tradition, and then proclaim that the gospel fulfills this truth by showing the incongruity between the Islamic worldview and the truths that are shared between the missionary and the Muslim. This, Flint claims, leaves Muslims with an “inevitable” choice: either follow Christ or “in hatred of Christ, snuff out that glimmer of light . . . and retreat yet further into darkness.”54 Flint’s approach adapts Strange’s argument that non-Christian religions serve as a preparatio and possessio for the gospel. This is the model that Strange hopes Christians will apply “in their encounters with the religious Other.”55

IV. COMMON-GRACE-DRIVEN APPROACH TO OTHER RELIGIONS The common-grace-driven approach to other religions in neo-Calvinism challenges the antithesis-driven claim that divine blessings upon non-Christians are nothing more than a bridle restraining the non-elect’s sinful desires. Common-grace-driven theologians such Ibid., 304. Ibid., 323. 48 Ibid., 307. 49 Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, 321; John Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray, 4 vols (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1977), 113. 50 Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, 307. 51 Christopher Robert Flint, “How Does Christianity ‘Subversively Fulfil’ Islam?,” St. Francis Magazine 8, no. 6 (December 2012): 776–822. 52 Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, 295. 53 Ibid., 296. 54 Flint, “How Does Christianity ‘Subversively Fulfil’ Islam?,” 812 quoted in Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, 300. 55 Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, 300. 46 47

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as Richard Mouw insist that God’s grace is at work “everywhere that civic righteousness, family loyalty, natural love, human virtue, the development of public conscience, integrity, fidelity among people, and an inclination toward piety permeates life.”56 In contrast to the antithesis-driven perspective, the common-grace-driven approach of neo-Calvinism not only praises the civic and cultural contributions of non-Christians but also finds theological novelty in the ethical and metaphysical aspects of other religions that they believe God also finds pleasing.

a. Richard Mouw and Affirming Other Religions Mouw is representative of the common-grace-driven approach’s emphasis on common grace’s internal function, “God’s delight in these phenomena (religious pluralism, cultural diversity, etc.) does not come because they bring the elect to glory and the non-elect to eternal separation from the divine presence . . . God enjoys these things for their own sakes.”57 Mouw posits that non-Christian acts are not only beneficial for civic virtues but that non-Christians can please God. He supports this perspective of common grace by two operations of common grace. External common grace advances the arts, sciences, and government as well as restrains the full effects of sin and the provision of the material world for human use. In this regard, the antithesis-driven and common-grace-driven neoCalvinists agree. Common grace also has an interior operation “wherever civic virtue, the improvement of the public conscience, integrity, mutual loyalty among people, and a feeling for piety leaven life.”58 This internal operation gives a warrant for Mouw to positively engage with the religious life of non-Christians. If unredeemed persons exhibit the internal motives that neo-Calvinists recognize as the work of the Spirit in the lives of the elect, then the Holy Spirit must also be at work in the life of the non-Christian. Mouw justifies his pneumatological perspective arguing if “the work of the Holy Spirit consists in leading all creation to its destiny (the glory of God) . . . [then] glory in creation appears in various degrees and ways.”59 God’s plan for creation is not only concerned with the eternal destiny of individuals but with the “eschatological ingathering of the fruits of humankind’s cultural labors.”60 In other words, God is also concerned with the redemption of all of creation including culture, nature, and human institutions. A second foundational tenet for Mouw is Bavinck’s Trinitarian theology of general revelation. Mouw looks to Bavinck’s Trinitarian formulation of general revelation, particularly as it relates to non-Christian religions, “Also among the pagans, says Scripture, there is a revelation of God, and illumination by the Logos, and a working of God’s Spirit.”61 The diversity of religious traditions manifests from different geographic and historical encounters with the active Trinitarian work of general revelation Mouw adds that, with Islam, “we must also take into account the ways in which Muslims have from

Abraham Kuyper, Jordan J. Ballor, Stephen J. Grabill, and J. Daryl Charles, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016), 539–40. 57 Richard J. Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace: The 2000 Stob Lectures (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 36. Emphasis in original text. 58 Abraham Kuyper, “Common Grace,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 181. 59 Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 44. Emphasis in original text. 60 Ibid., 50. 61 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1.318. 56

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the very beginning been in close interaction with the content of biblical revelation.”62 Thus, Mouw sees Bavinck’s theology of general revelation as recognizing the dynamic presence of the Trinitarian Godhead within non-Christian religions and individuals. However, Mouw is not a universalist. When it comes to the issue of salvation, he confesses that a fully committed Buddhist, “someone whose understanding of reality is spelled out in consistently Buddhist terms,” cannot find salvation solely through the Buddhist tradition. It is only in a soteriological sense that Buddhism or any other non-Christian religious tradition “false religions,” in the sense that these religions are not vehicles for salvation. Mouw summarizes his disposition in a meditation on Deut. 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the worlds of the law.” From his Calvinist position, Mouw holds that the ultimate decision about salvation is hidden within God’s inscrutable knowledge, leaving Mouw uncertain about “how God draws people to himself.”63 Yet, Mouw asserts that non-Christian religions cannot offer their adherents salvation without Christ intervening. Non-Christian religions are not vehicles of salvation, though he is open to the idea that non-Christians might still find salvation. Although Mouw does not affirm the soteriological effectiveness of non-Christian religions, he distinguishes between soteriology and epistemology to affirm the latter in non-Christian religions. When it comes to whether there is truth in other religions, he is very much in the affirmative. To engage with other religions Mouw adopts a “bracketing strategy” that takes Bavinck’s insistence on the active presence of the divine in general revelation to “temporarily set aside questions about who is saved or not, or, whether the overall perspective of a specific religion points to the reality for the God of the Scriptures.”64 Mouw believes that, if we can bracket soteriological questions, then we are free to investigate how non-Christian religious teachings or practices illuminate our shared reality. Through this path, Mouw finds an ability to appreciate what is good, true, and beautiful in all non-Christian worldviews. He even goes so far as to hope to find new understandings of spiritual reality that can enrich the Christian understanding of truth.65 Second, he promotes the concept of “convicted civility,” which argues God has a positive, though non-salvific, regard for the non-elect for the sake of God’s desire to see all creation flourish and not just the elect.66 Thus, Christians and non-Christians can cooperate to create mutually beneficial societies that promote the flourishing of all creation.

b. Matthew Kaemingk’s Christian Pluralism Another neo-Calvinist work that engages with other religions, and Muslims in particular, from a common-grace-driven approach is Matthew Kaemingk’s Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear. Although Kaemingk does not offer a theology of religions, he does offer a neo-Calvinist perspective on the phenomenon of global migration as it pertains to Muslim migrants to countries like the Netherlands and the

Richard J. Mouw, Adventures in Evangelical Civility: A Lifelong Quest for Common Ground (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), 184. 63 Ibid., 195. 64 Ibid., 184. 65 Ibid., 185. 66 Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 36, 82. 62

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United States.67 He responds to Rousseau’s critique that it is impossible to live at peace with those whom one has damned.68 The challenge is to balance an uncompromising commitment to Christ’s lordship with a Christian ethic of justice, hospitality, and grace to those who deny Christ’s lordship. To this end, Kaemingk builds upon Mouw’s search for the common good with Muslims with the concept of “Christian pluralism.”69 Kaemingk attempts to engage with religious pluralism at large, and with Muslims in particular, by listening attentively to the religious other and fighting for the religious other’s public rights and freedoms. He calls those Christians who attentively listen to other religions and advocate for non-Christian rights in the public sphere “Christian pluralists.” The Christian pluralist praises Muslim contributions to the common good. The Christian pluralist views Muslims as partners that help increase Christian influence and the public image of religions because Muslims and Christians share “common concerns for religious freedom and the flourishing of all.”70 Kaemingk suggests that the Christian pluralist may even “come to know, respect, and even enjoy” Muslims.71 Like Mouw, Kaemingk tempers his positive approach to Muslims with the conviction that the Christian pluralist must retain her religious convictions. She cannot “give praise” or “delight” when people “choose life-directions that lead away from God.”72 In other words, though the Christian pluralist delights in partnering with Muslims for common goals and can take pleasure in friendships with Muslims, the Christian pluralist cannot encourage Muslims in their beliefs or piety if they conflict with the Christian tradition. Kaemingk remains a soteriological exclusivist, but he wants to encourage mutually affirming Christian-Muslim engagements. Thus, he attempts to balance his soteriological conviction, which takes a negative perspective toward Islam, with a Christology that bestows “dignity, rights, and freedoms on Muslim citizens,” which Christian pluralists cannot take away.73 Kaemingk’s goal is to see Christians fervently defend the rights and freedoms of those with whom they disagree. In the case of his case study, the religious other happens to be Muslims. Both Mouw and Kaemingk attempt to balance the tension between affirming God’s grace in the lives of Muslims and the benefit of the Islamic tradition on public life with a soteriologically exclusivist Christology by emphasizing an ethic of interreligious cooperation. Mouw presents common grace as a theological warrant for seeing God’s delight in other religions. This opens space for Christians and Muslims not only to engage in common political causes but also to engage in fruitful interreligious dialogue. Kaemingk echoes Mouw’s theological optimism with his concept of the Christian pluralist. Christian pluralism advocates for the positive influence of Muslims in the public space and for Christian enjoyment of interreligious friendships. Still, Mouw and Kaemingk are clear that salvation is found only in the salvific work of Christ. Mouw’s openness to Muslim Currently, Kaemingk is working with the political scientist Shadi Hamid on a coauthored work on ChristianMuslim political theologies and is hosting a podcast “Zealots at the Gates” with Hamid. 68 Matthew Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), xxii; Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (New York: Cosimo, 2008), 135–6. 69 For a full description of Kaemingk’s concept of Christian pluralism see Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration, 24–5. 70 Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration, 223. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., 24. 73 Ibid., 224. 67

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insights does not extend into soteriology. Epistemologically, the Islamic tradition can reflect aspects of God’s common grace and general revelation. Kaemingk adopts a similar soteriological position as Mouw and balances his commitment to Christ’s lordship with an ethic of grace, hospitality, and justice to those who reject Christ’s lordship.

V. THE FUTURE OF NEO-CALVINISM AND OTHER RELIGIONS From Kuyper to Kaemingk, the neo-Calvinist tradition’s construction of a theology of other religions has struggled with the tension of affirming the dynamic presence of the Trinitarian God in other religions with the corruptive effects of sin. Contemporary neoCalvinist theologians are faced with phenomena such as globalization, global migration, post-colonialism, and postmodern theology. Such phenomena affect the theological positions of contemporary neo-Calvinists in different ways than their early nineteenthcentury predecessors. The rise of Islamophobic rhetoric in Europe, the UK, and North America has made it more pressing that the neo-Calvinists engage with Muslims as theological equals in dialogue. Even more important is that these neo-Calvinists engage with Muslim thought and practice and not the Islamic tradition as a reified category. Theologically, neo-Calvinists must be prepared that Christian ideas could be meaningless or minimally analogous in another religious context. This comes about through attention to the history of interreligious encounters and the manner in which the religious other has been engaged with through the history of one’s own religious tradition. In response to religious pluralism there is new exploration between neo-Calvinism and comparative theology, a practice that engages other religions for constructive theological insight and inspiration.74 My own work employs comparative theology to make space for exclusive religious claims while affirming the revisionary power of non-Christian religious ideas and practices. Indeed, other scholars such as Joshua Ralston have found resonances between neo-Calvinist theologies and comparative theology. Still, there is much work that remains in exploring neo-Calvinist theology in relation to the dynamic relationship between Christianity and other religious traditions.

Catherine Cornille, Meaning and Method in Comparative Theology (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 1.

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PART IV

Neo-Calvinism and Its Legacy

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Chapter 31

Public Theology MATTHEW J. KAEMINGK

While “public theology” as a formal academic discipline did not emerge until the late twentieth century, Christian discussions regarding the proper relationship between faith and public life are as old as Christ’s response to a question about taxes.1 One can witness the seeds of public theology in early Christian debates over how to respond to Roman governors and persecution, to pagan idols and magic, to the care of orphans, the sick, and the poor. We can hear public theology echoing through Christ’s beatitudes and we can see it in his interactions with tax collectors, soldiers, merchants, foreigners, and prostitutes. We can hear public theology in the prophets’ jeremiads against the injustice in Israel’s markets, courts, and palaces. We can trace public theology’s development in the political careers of Esther and Daniel, Joseph and Moses as they navigate the palaces of Persia, Babylon, and Egypt. Today the formal academic discipline known as public theology is young, developing, and contested. Its precise methodology is a matter of considerable debate. Founded in 2007, the Global Network for Public Theology is composed of scholars from a global variety of theological and cultural backgrounds.2 The International Journal for Public Theology regularly publishes a diverse and ecumenical collection of articles and book reviews. In its pages one can find European Lutherans, African Anglicans, North American Baptists, Latin American Liberationists, Asian Presbyterians, and many more combinations too numerous to mention. Emerging from these diverse contexts and voices, public theologians engage a manifold variety of public issues and theological themes. Given the profound methodological contestation within the field, it might be best to speak of public theologies in the plural. This brief chapter has three simple aims. First, to offer an overview of the emerging discipline we call “public theology.” Second, to consider a neo-Calvinist response and contribution to the field of public theology. Third, to highlight a number of important historical and global resources within neo-Calvinism for engaging in public theology today. Those interested in the historical and global source material can find them in the footnotes. Finally, this chapter will constructively build upon lessons learned during a recent global collaboration entitled Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the

The author would like to thank David Park for his diligent research and editorial contributions to this chapter. Elaine Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age (London: SCM, 2013), 75. 1 2

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World.3 Within this volume, scholars and practitioners placed the Reformed tradition in creative conversation with a wide variety of public issues and global contexts. This particular chapter offers the fortunate opportunity to focus more constructively on the neo-Calvinist voice within the larger Reformed tradition. We now turn to our initial task of defining “public theology” and exploring the discipline’s methodological pillars. As we do so, we will consider various neo-Calvinist responses and contributions to this global and ecumenical discourse.

I. PUBLIC THEOLOGY: A GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL DISCIPLINE Elaine Graham offers a definition of public theology that, while not comprehensive, connects faithfully with the discourse and methodology emerging in the field over the past few decades. She defines it as “an academic discipline and ecclesial discourse” that “seeks to comment and critically reflect from a theological perspective on aspects of public life such as economics, politics, culture, and media. Traditionally, public theology sees itself as rooted in religious traditions, but strongly in conversation with secular discourse and public institutions.”4 Nico Koopman, a public theologian in South Africa, offers a more Christocentric framing arguing that the field “reflects upon the implication of the confession of the Lordship of Christ for life and for life together in all public spheres, from the most intimate to the most social, global, and cosmic.”5 While the methodological diversity is profound, there are a number of common patterns beginning to emerge within the literature. In the following, I’ve briefly outlined eight “marks” of public theology. Though a matter of contestation, their prevalence is undeniable.6 As we proceed, we will briefly consider neo-Calvinist responses to the methodology being used in public theology. 1. Scripture and Theology as Public: Public theologians insist that scripture and theology carry public value, authority, and consequence. While their precise methods of scriptural interpretation and theological application in public life are matters of significant debate, the public nature of scripture and theology is not. In this, public theologians endeavor to engage the questions of public life in and through a transformative encounter with scripture and theology. If public theologians untether themselves from these two sources, their work ceases to be public theology proper and becomes something else. By insisting on the public nature of the faith, public theology is directly challenging modern secularism and its pressure to privatize, spiritualize, and domesticate the faith (rendering it incapable of a prophetic contribution to the public square).7

Matthew Kaemingk (ed.), Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021). 4 Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, xix. 5 Nico Koopman, “Public Theology in the Context of Nationalist Ideologies: A South African Example,” in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 161. 6 For a background on the historical and methodological development of public theology, see Kim and Day (eds.), A Companion to Public Theology. 7 Kathryn Tanner, “Public Theology and the Character of Public Debate,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 16 (1996): 79. 3

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Neo-Calvinists wholly and completely affirm this “mark” of public theology. Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck openly and repeatedly reference scriptural commands, narratives, and themes throughout their public speeches and editorials. Bavinck insists: Scripture is the Book of the Kingdom of God, not a book for this or that people, for the individual only, but for all nations, for all of humanity. It is not a book for one age, but for all times. . . . Scripture must be brought into relationship with all our living, with the living of the entire human race. And Scripture must be employed to explain all of human living.8 While Bavinck and Kuyper make frequent public reference to scripture, they endeavor to avoid two modern hermeneutical mistakes. Bavinck calls these the mistakes of the “literalist” and “rationalist.”9 Literalists, he argues, read scripture and attempt to rigidly mimic, parrot, and apply that scripture directly in the modern world. Bavinck criticized this method as hopelessly wooden and overly brittle. He concluded that the literalist lacked the contextual sensitivity, wisdom, and imagination necessary to creatively apply an ancient text to the dynamic complexity of the modern world. But if the literalist lacked creativity, the rationalist lacked courage. The rationalist, according to Bavinck, views scripture as too removed, too radical, and too demanding for modern Western civilization. The rationalist concludes that a civilized and truly “modern” Christian should try to smooth out the rough edges of scripture and domesticate the radical and raw nature of scripture’s hard-edged demands. The “rational” theologian must domesticate Jesus, turning him into a civilized modern sage of moderate Christian values. Having distilled a few modern values from the life of Jesus, then (and only then) can Jesus serve as a rational example for the modern European. Bavinck could not bear this domestication of scripture. Against the rationalist, Bavinck demanded that Christians wrestle publicly with the “rough edges” of Scripture. Followers of Jesus must struggle with Christ’s concrete life and teachings, even the radical and wild parts that offend their modern sensibilities. A neo-Calvinist reading of scripture in public life must therefore avoid the mistakes of the rigid literalist and the sheepish rationalist. Instead they must pursue a public hermeneutic that is both concrete and creative, both textual and contextual. Following Bavinck, neo-Calvinists must wrestle with the raw, difficult, and demanding teachings of scripture for public life. They must also develop their own God-given gifts of creativity, wisdom, and curiosity, as they imagine new redemptive responses to unforeseen public questions, challenges, and opportunities. In this way, neo-Calvinists might offer a welcome challenge to both “conservative” and “progressive” public theologians whose work might have

Bavinck, “The Kingdom of God, the Highest Good,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, The Bavinck Review 2 (2011): 166. 9 Herman Bavinck, “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” in A Theological Analysis of Herman Bavinck’s Two Essays on the Imitatio Christi, trans. John Bolt (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2013), 402–40. 8

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grown ideologically narrow and tired. Conservative public theologians might find in neo-Calvinism an invitation to creatively wrestle with new contexts and questions, the wisdom of the global church, and the dynamic voice of the Holy Spirit active in the world. Likewise, liberal public theologians might find in neoCalvinism an energizing invitation to return to the wildness of scripture and its uncomfortable demands for a strange form of Christian faithfulness that does not quite fit in with the modern liberal consensus. On this point, neo-Calvinism offers an invitation for public-hermeneutical renewal for both “liberal” and “conservative” approaches to faith and public life. 2. Public Listening: But scripture and theology are not the only things that public theologians listen to. The discipline also advocates a posture of listening toward the public square itself. This posture can be witnessed most clearly in the field’s interdisciplinary nature. Public theologians regularly immerse themselves in the fields of political science, sociology, economics, literature, cultural studies, anthropology, and more. They regularly study different cultures, industries, philosophies, and religions as well. In all public theologians listen carefully for public wisdom and insight wherever it might be found. The “ethnographic turn” has recently come to the discipline of public theology. Many are increasingly exploring the lived habits, practices, and wisdom of people and cultures “on the ground.” Finally, listening to those on “the underside of public power” is a matter of particular interest for many public theologians. They do this because they believe that much can be learned from those who view public power structures and systems from below. Neo-Calvinists have consistently emphasized listening carefully to the “wisdom of the world.” Terms like “common grace” and “general revelation” serve as their theological justification for learning from a diverse variety of disciplines, cultures, religions, and voices. The wisdom of the world represents the good gifts of the Creator. Neo-Calvinists believe, therefore, that they honor that Creator when they engage the wisdom of creation. While neo-Calvinists have the theological resources to ethnography and its unique insights into the lived experiences of people “on-the-ground,” neo-Calvinists have been slow to pick up the discipline.10 This marks an opportunity for growth in the tradition. Do neo-Calvinists listen to the poor and those on the underside of public power? The answer to this question is decidedly open. Given the humble origins of the neo-Calvinist movement, one might assume that they would engage the poor and marginalized with eagerness. After all, the movement emerged outside the elite centers of Dutch political, economic, and ecclesial power. Kuyper saw himself as a voice in the wilderness speaking up for the humble kleine leyden (the little people). Early neo-Calvinists were a largely rural and working-class community often excluded from political, cultural, and ecclesial power. Without universal suffrage, Kuyper’s first task was to win them a voice, a vote, and a form of social organization and political power that they had not yet experienced. Establishing a neo-Calvinist labor union and speaking publicly about the rights of workers, Kuyper clearly valued those on the underside of

An early example can be found in See also, Cory B. Willson, “Poetics of Everyday Work: A Neo-Calvinist Approach to Vocational Discipleship in Local Churches” (PhD dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2015). 10

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industry. Kuyper believed that they had unique insights to share. At one point he argued that a boy “who has had his bringing-up in the midst of want and neglect will entertain entirely different views of jural relationship and social regulations from him who from his youth has been bathed in prosperity.”11 That said, Kuyper’s practice of engaging and speaking for the marginalized is not a consistent feature of twenty-first-century neo-Calvinism. As they entered the halls of academic, economic, and political power, it could be argued that some neo-Calvinists became detached from the concerns (and wisdom) of the marginalized. That said, there is a fascinating minority report on this matter from a group of scholars and practitioners influenced by neo-Calvinism who consistently engage the concerns of the global poor.12 3. Public Speech: Having listened, public theologians begin to speak. Conversant in the languages of both church and world, academy and culture, they become “bilingual.” They begin to speak—however haltingly—across the boundaries of culture and discipline, religion and ideology, class and race. While their linguistic abilities are imperfect and incomplete, public theologians endeavor to serve as translators and bridge-builders across worlds long divided. When they speak, they engage in two primary forms of discourse: public persuasion and public critique. While they differ as to exactly how public persuasion occurs, public theologians believe that they can make their theologically informed arguments persuasive within a religiously diverse and divided public square. Some appeal to a natural law, reason, or morality that connects all cultures and religions. Whatever their justification, public theologians believe that theologically informed speech can, in fact, connect with—and even persuade—their diverse neighbors. Public theologians will occasionally go beyond dialogue and persuasion to engage in forceful acts of public critique. Here they sense a prophetic calling to shine the light of God’s truth on public injustice, ugliness, and evil. Public theologians insist that mere dialogue with unjust principalities and powers is insufficient, one must actively expose and confront them as well.13 Some will even criticize the foundations and construction of the public square itself. They will point out that certain religions, races, and people groups are being actively excluded from public discourse, that what is labeled “public consensus” is really just the consensus of the dominant. What we call “the public square,” they argue, is simply a social construction—one that is subject to prophetic scrutiny.14 Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles, trans. J. Hendrik De Vries (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 109. 12 Some examples include, Allan Boesak, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation, and the Calvinist Tradition, ed. Leonard Sweetman (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015); Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987); Kent A. Van Til, Less than Two Dollars a Day: A Christian View of World Poverty and the Free Market (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007); B. Goudzwaard and Harry de Lange, Beyond Poverty and Affluence: Toward an Economy of Care with a Twelve-Step Program for Economic Recovery, ed. and trans. Mark Vander Vennen (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995). 13 Andrew R. Morton, “Duncan Forrester: A Public Theologian,” in Public Theology for the 21st Century, ed. William Storrar and Andrew Morton (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 34. 14 See Stephen Burns and Anita Monroe (eds.), Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism (New York: Routledge, 2014); Also see Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80. 11

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When Abraham Kuyper established a public newspaper, political party, labor union, and university he set in motion a tradition of public persuasion, dialogue, and critique within neo-Calvinism that extends to this very day. A neo-Calvinist’s confidence in the possibility of public dialogue and persuasion emerges from their pneumatology—the assured belief in the work of the Holy Spirit in non-Christian communities and movements. The Spirit, they argue, is at work in their neighbors’ lives and in public debate graciously enabling public dialogue across deep ideological divides.15 Likewise, neo-Calvinists have their own tradition of prophetic critique in the public square. Kuyper frequently confronted public authorities in the state, the church, the marketplace, and the academy on a wide variety of justice issues. Kuyper’s prophetic critique was far more comprehensive than an isolated justice issue here or there. Instead he offered a totalizing and architectonic critique of the modern public square itself. Modern public discourse, he insisted, was constructed on the false foundation of secular liberalism. Modern liberals claimed a level of religious neutrality, rationality, and secularity that they could never achieve. All citizens carry a diverse and divided range of faith commitments with them into the public square. No one is neutral. In this, Kuyper prophetically insisted that the public square is—and always would be—a religiously contested space filled with diverse religious voices. As such, the public square must remain open to a diverse range of religious interlocutors and modern secularists must own up to their own faith-based commitments. 4. Praxis and Reflection: The best public theology is written in the streets. It’s actively embodied, performed, and lived. As a discipline, public theology is fearful of losing itself in academic theory and abstraction.16 As such, public theologians develop their work in and through public action in this they attempt to form a deep bond between both praxis and reflection. To put it differently, public theologians insist that following Jesus in the public square is less a way of believing and more a way of walking. Christians today don’t simply believe in Jesus in Tokyo, and in Kinshasa, Seattle, and Sao Paulo, they actively follow him as he walks through their cities. Public theology, as a discipline, is best understood as a theological reflection on the walking. The neo-Calvinist tradition did not emerge from a library or a lecture hall. It began as a grassroots movement. It included pastors and business leaders, merchants and farmers, politicians and academics. Only decades later would the movement establish a university or a formal academic approach to philosophy, theology, and the sciences. Neo-Calvinist theology was not developed in an academic vacuum. It followed after—and was influenced by—a nationwide political campaign called the schoolstrijd in which neo-Calvinists campaigned

For a primer on common grace, see Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, Stephen J. Grabill, and J. Daryl Charles, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas, 4 vols (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015–20) and Richard J. Mouw, All That God Cares About: Common Grace and Divine Delight (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020). 16 Sebastian Kim and Katie Day, ‘Introduction’, in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 18. 15

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for religious freedom and equality in education policy. Their activism came first, their scholarship came second, praxis then reflection. Reflecting on the movement, Vincent Bacote argues that early neo-Calvinists “believed that there are real divine ordinances built into creation by God that can be discovered through experience. These laws are discovered not merely through biblical exegesis or spiritual reflection, but in the process of governance.”17 Remember, public theology is “written in the streets.” According to James Bratt, Kuyper’s notion of worldview “sought to furnish a feedback loop between convictions and experience, each clarifying the other so as to propel action.”18 We can see this in Kuyper’s praise for “amphibious” clergy whose “hard study for the pulpit alternated with parish rounds that kept them in daily touch with ordinary folks.”19 We can also see it in Kuyper’s critique of career politicians “who knew not the real life of those they invited to the policy table.”20 Kuyper’s lived epistemology is poignantly displayed in his reflections on the creation narrative. He imagines Adam and Eve walking through the garden beside the animals observing, studying, loving, and finally naming each one of them. Their knowledge of the animals grows through a common life that is lived in intimacy, sympathy, and connection with their existence.21 Adam and Eve knew the garden in and through their participation in it. Participatory love precedes knowing. Praxis and reflection connect through creational engagement and affection.22 Adam and Eve could rightfully know and name the animals because they loved and lived alongside them. 5. Reformation over Revolution: As a discipline, public theology aims to bend and reform public powers, principalities, and institutions in more just and life-giving directions. This distinguishes public theology from other forms of theological discourse that call for a more “revolutionary” public posture. Revolutionary discourses see the dominant institutions of public life as irredeemable. Attempts at public dialogue, negotiation, and compromise are therefore naive. There is nothing to do but deconstruct what is and build anew. While public theologians differ in their exact methods, they consistently advocate for reform over revolution. One of the first labels affixed to the neo-Calvinist movement was “antirevolutionary.” They positioned themselves as an opposing force to the radical modernism of the French Revolution.23 While it might be tempting to frame neo-Calvinism as a “conservative” reaction to the revolution, Abraham Kuyper Vincent E. Bacote, The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 57. Emphasis added. My thanks to David Park for this reference. 18 James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 208. 19 Ibid., 352. 20 Ibid. 21 See Ibid., 209 and Kuyper, Encyclopedia, 111. 22 A contemporary example of praxis and reflection within neo-Calvinism can be found in the Canadian organization, Cardus. Here, neo-Calvinist activists and scholars work together betwixt and between the academy, church, and society on a wide variety of public questions. 23 See Guillame Groen van Prinsterer, Unbelief and Revolution, ed. and trans. Harry Van Dyke (Bellingham: Lexham, 2018). 17

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would not have embraced this label. Kuyper did not desire a conservative “counter-revolution” but an alternative to both the secular progressivism of the revolution and the reactionary conservatism of the old Dutch guard. Against the revolutionaries, neo-Calvinists did not wish to destroy and replace the marketplace, palace, church, and academy, they wanted to renew them. Against the conservatives, neo-Calvinists did not wish to simply preserve the old social structures (that were clearly stagnant, oppressive, and ineffective); they wanted to reform them. Kuyper’s “third-way” beyond conservatism and revolution is captured nicely in the following passage. Christianity aims at a new creation, but the new form from the old, a newfashioned from the old fallen world that already exists. It produces children of God not by calling them forth from the stones of the wilderness but by regenerating human beings. . . . Unlike the revolution . . . it does not conjure up castles in the air. . . . Whereas conservatism wants to keep the sin-sick life as it is, Christianity intends to save the sin-sickened life by driving out the sickness. While it would freeze the eternal in the form of things, Christianity seeks to reanimate that dead form with the eternal breath.24 Passages like these explain the difficulty onlookers regularly encounter when they attempt to label neo-Calvinism either “conservative” or “progressive.” Finally, public theologians cite the need for prudence, pragmatism, and effectiveness when making the case for slow reform over radical revolution. Not so for neo-Calvinists, rather than common sense pragmatism, they make a theological case for gradual public reform. As can be seen in the foregoing Kuyper quotation, the seeds of God’s goodness and wisdom are already present in fallen public structures and systems. As a result, neo-Calvinists believe that social flourishing can be cultivated from the creational goodness which resides in the soil we have been given. In this, social flourishing will not descend from the castle we have fashioned for ourselves in the sky; it will emerge from a tilling of the soil we have been given. 6. Complex Flourishing: While political theology tends to concern itself with the nature, behavior, and responsibility of the state, public theology takes a broader view of social concern and responsibility. Political theology tends to focus on the importance of governmental justice and action. Public theology pursues a broader and more plural set of social paths to societal flourishing. For public theologians societal flourishing cannot be reduced to a single metric. Neither economic wealth, legal justice, technological development, aesthetic beauty, intellectual discovery, leisurely play nor religious worship can—on its own—fully capture what it means for a society to flourish.25 Public theologians insist that societal flourishing requires all of these elements and more. Because human societies are complex, their flourishing involves a multifaceted array of varied public goods and institutions. Thriving cities require

Kuyper, Encyclopedia, 69–72. E. Harold Breitenberg, “To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Public Theology Please Stand Up?” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 23, no. 2 (2003): 59. 24 25

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schools and families, courts and businesses, artist guilds and sports teams, newspapers and unions, churches, and sewer systems. In light of these complex goods public theologians aim to further the manifold flourishing of public life beyond the purview of the state. When it comes to the construction of a complex understanding of public flourishing, neo-Calvinists were ahead of their time. Drawing on the early social theology and imagination of the great Reformed jurist Johannes Althusius, Kuyper developed his theology of social complexity and flourishing through the theory of “sphere sovereignty.”26 Here Kuyper argues that the complexity of modern society is not a historical accident but the result of divine intention. God created human beings with diverse gifts, responsibilities, and desires. Built into their very beings, humans desire to build, play, explore, create, love, worship, and cooperate. Pursuing these diverse human desires and potencies, they establish diverse communities like families, schools, businesses, universities, and art galleries. For Kuyper the flourishing of these diverse associations is a created good that should be both celebrated and protected. Based on Kuyper’s theology of the complex society, neo-Calvinists are known to actively resist political, economic, and religious forces that would forcefully narrow the complexity and differentiation of society. Imagine, for example, that an expansive state would seek to manipulate and hijack a diversity of art galleries, schools, churches, and families and turn them into a mere extension of state power. Or imagine a society in which marketplace forces and corporations dictated the behavior of parents, professors, and pastors. Imagine a society in which a group of religious clerics attempts to control social and political institutions to direct them toward their denomination’s identity. Neo-Calvinists would resist these forces of societal uniformity arguing that families, churches, schools, artists, and so on have diverse social goals. These diverse communities do not (and should not) conform to the agenda of either a single political, economic, or religious power. In this neo-Calvinists resist the social dominance of the state, the marketplace, and the church in favor of empowering the complex communities and goods of society. Once again, this public theological instinct explains the difficulty onlookers sometimes experience when they attempt to label neo-Calvinism along the right- and left-wing spectrum of the modern political imagination.

II. TOWARD A NEO-CALVINIST PUBLIC THEOLOGY While neo-Calvinists share much in common with the ecumenical project we’ve described as “public theology,” there are a few points of emphasis that appear to set the tradition apart. While not exclusively owned by neo-Calvinism, these five marks appear with uncommon regularity within tradition’s public imagination. In a way, we might consider these “the public habits of the neo-Calvinist heart.”

See Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 461–90; cf. Johannes Althusius, Politica, ed. and trans. Frederick Smith Carney (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995). 26

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1. Listening to the Laity: As academics and clergy, public theologians are in danger of cutting itself off from the day-to-day lives and wisdom of the laity. The Reformed tradition’s emphasis on the “priesthood of all believers” demands that the laity contribute to any public theology that neo-Calvinism produces.27 Neo-Calvinists around the world serve outside the church as artists and activists, lawyers and philosophers, entrepreneurs and business leaders, chaplains and community organizers who each seek to engage public life in a theologically conversant way. While some hold degrees in theology, their lived theology is developed through embodied public action in the boardroom, the arts studio, the campus, the courtroom, and the street protest. Engaging in God’s creation, they develop an intimate awareness of the divine patterns and ordinances contained therein. They are also closely attending to the unique manifestations of sinful injustice and evil active in their particular sphere of activity. Because the laity have insight into specific corners of the public square, neoCalvinist public theologians seek to carefully attend to their wisdom and insight. Advocating a humble engagement with the laity, Richard Mouw writes, “We would all think it odd if a lifelong resident of Paris wrote a book about how to live a life of discipleship in Latin America. . . . Similarly there is something odd about an attempt by clergy and professional theologians to speak with authority about the situations faced by mechanics, insurance agents, and farmers.”28 2. Dispersing Power: Neo-Calvinists are particularly concerned with issues related to the public stewardship of power. To be more specific, neo-Calvinists can often be found advocating that power should be pushed both down and out throughout society. In pushing power down, they show a particular allergy to hierarchical constructions of public power at the upper echelons of the state, economy, church, and so on. Likewise, in pushing power out, they demonstrate an allergy to the centering of power within a single institution such as the state, the market, or the church. No single community should rule the others. Instead, public power should be generously distributed out amid the arts and sciences, markets and courts, universities and press, states and cities, churches and families. Neo-Calvinists will (of course) disagree on the specifics of power dispersal. Some are more concerned with the consolidation of state power, while others are more concerned with the pervasive influence of market forces.29 While diverse, neo-Calvinists share a common allergy to the consolidation and apotheosis of public power within a single sphere of public life. This neo-Calvinist allergy is founded on two theological convictions regarding the creation and fall of society. First, neo-Calvinists see the Creator as gifting the whole of society with a diverse array of gifts, callings, and responsibilities. These diverse social powers and potencies are not given to a particular class of elites See, for example, Richard J. Mouw, Consulting the Faithful: What Christian Intellectuals Can Learn from Popular Religion (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994). 28 Richard J. Mouw, Called to Holy Worldliness (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 25. 29 One might juxtapose Kuyper’s concern about the size and scope of the state with Goudzwaard’s concern about the global market. See Bob Goudzwaard, Capitalism and Progress: A Diagnosis of Western Society, ed. and trans. Josina Van Nuis Zylstra (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979). 27

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or a particular sphere of life. Instead, they are distributed widely throughout a variety of individuals and institutions. Therefore, any public consolidation of these powers into the hands of a single leader, community, or institution is interpreted by neo-Calvinists as a form of creational theft. The consolidation of power robs diverse individuals and institutions of their God-given creational gifts, callings, and responsibilities. When a state faithfully pushes power down and out, it is not engaged in a generous act of beneficence and magnanimity, it is making a humble recognition of inherent power, dignity, and authority that belongs to these diverse communities. When public leaders and institutions gather power into themselves they are engaged in acts of creational theft— consolidating power and authority that never belonged to them. Second, neo-Calvinists hold to a viral conception of social depravity. They believe that the disease of sin has infected all social systems and structures with the libido dominandi. All forms of public power are capable of corruption and consolidation. There is no individual or institution free from the idolatrous desire for power. In the light of society’s collective depravity, neo-Calvinists argue that it is prudent and wise to guard against the concentration of power. Finally, by dispersing public power widely—by pushing it further down and further out—not only liberates the powerless in a society, it liberates the powerful to wield their potency with integrity. 3. Temporal Awareness: “What time is it?” Being Augustinian, neo-Calvinists insist that Christians in public life become more aware of the divine epoch in which they live. According to their “watches,” neo-Calvinists argue that we live, work, and play within God’s “already and not yet.” The Spirit and mission of God has already broken into the world. The Holy Spirit is already active within the world’s social structures and systems. Christians can and must make holy progress in their public action and transformation. However, we also live in the “not yet.” The fulfillment and consummation of the Spirit’s work in public life is not yet fully manifest. The creation is still groaning; it is not yet restored. Every tear has not yet been wiped away. The New Jerusalem is not yet within our sight or grasp. Because of their belief in the already, neo-Calvinists are not permitted to wallow in public despair, cynicism, and apathy about the possibilities of public action and transformation. This Spirit, after all, is already alive and active in public life. Because of their belief in the not yet, neo-Calvinists are not permitted to become swept up in overly optimistic visions of imminent public justice, equality, and harmony that can only be accomplished in the new heavens and the new earth. Jesus Christ, after all, is not yet here and he alone has the power to establish perfect unity, justice, and harmony. Herman Bavinck writes: While at the present time the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan still dwell alongside each other, the boundaries of both cannot be accurately distinguished by our eyes. But at that time, both will manifest themselves in their true form before the eyes of all. Every pretense will then fall away, every excuse will then be in vain.30

Bavinck, “The Kingdom of God, the Highest Good,” 169.

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As Augustinians, neo-Calvinists understand that an over- or an under-realized eschatology has consequences for the public square. A neo-Calvinist will therefore insist that Christians enter public life knowing what time it is. 4. Aesthetic Neighborliness: While the field of public theology tends to focus the bulk of its energy on the issues of politics, economics, and culture, the question of public aesthetics is somewhat ignored. Neo-Calvinists, on the other hand, have demonstrated an enduring interest in the aesthetic life as a public good. They’ve published widely on the spiritual and civic value of poetry and painting,31 music and fashion,32 urban design and architecture.33 Here neo-Calvinism points to the aesthetic life as a unique medium through which Christians are called to publicly love and serve their neighbors. Through artistic and architectural creativity, decoration and dress, poetic rhyme and musical rhythm Christians can enrich the shape and color of the public square we all inhabit. 5. Public Worship and Spirituality: Numerous neo-Calvinists have argued that Christian liturgy, worship, and spiritual discipline should play an important role in shaping and forming public theology and action.34 Arguing for a deeper connection between worship and public life they insist repeatedly that the walls between the “sacred” sanctuary and the “secular” square should become increasingly porous. The patterns of grace sung in the church should be reflected in the patterns of the lives we live in the public square. Likewise, the burdens the laity bear in the world should be carried into the sanctuary and laid upon the altar in worship. A deeper and more honest conversation between Sunday worship and Monday work is critically important—the integrity of both worship and public life depends on it. Herman Bavinck writes: the church aims to consecrate people to God, not only in their religious life but also, proceeding from that source, in their natural life, moral life, civic life, and political life. Sunday may not stand alongside the other days of the

See Hilary Brand and Adrienne Chaplin, Art & Soul: Signposts for Christians in the Arts (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2001); James K. A. Smith, “Poetry and the Reformed Tradition,” in Kaemingk, Reformed Public Theology, 175–85; Makoto Fujimura, “Japanese Aesthetics and Reformed Theology: Reflections on Rikyū, Kintsugi, and Endō,” in Kaemingk, Reformed Public Theology, 163–74. 32 Robert Covolo, Fashion Theology (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020). 33 See Eric O. Jacobsen, Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003); Matthew Kaemingk, “Theology and Architecture: Calvinist Principles for the Faithful Construction of Urban Space,” in The Kuyper Center Review, Vol. 3: Calvinism and Culture, ed. Gordon Graham (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2013), 163–84. See also Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s commentary on Calvinism and architecture in his chapter, “A City of Delight,” in Until Justice and Peace Embrace. 34 Critical works in this area include Nicholas Wolterstorff, Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World, ed. Mark R. Gornik and Gregory Thompson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011); John D. Witvliet, Worship Seeking Understanding: Windows into Christian Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003); James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009); Abraham Kuyper, Our Worship, ed. Harry Boonstra, trans. Harry Boonstra, Henry Baron et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); Kyle David Bennett, “Confession: Practice for Civil Discourse,” in Kaemingk, Reformed Public Theology, 288–98; John D. Witvliet, “Public Trauma and Public Prayer: Reformed Reflections on Intercession,” in Kaemingk, Reformed Public Theology, 265–75. See also Chapter 7, “Pluralism and Worship,” of Matthew Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 196–236. 31

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week but must sanctify them and seek to lift them up to their highest purpose. The church is what she is supposed to be when she labors beyond herself and is not satisfied when people are pious on Sundays in church.35

III. THE FUTURE OF NEO-CALVINIST PUBLIC THEOLOGY The original context for neo-Calvinist public theology during the nineteenth century was limited to the Netherlands. During the twentieth century, it expanded further to the UK, North America, South Korea, and South Africa. By the twenty-first century, the tradition was gaining voices in countries like Brazil, Australia, Egypt, Chile, and China. Recently a group of diverse neo-Calvinist scholars from around the world published a collection of essays in the book Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World. Their work is indicative of a more global future for public theological scholarship within the neo-Calvinist tradition. Neo-Calvinists engaged the arts in Japan, a drug war in the Philippines, apartheid in South Africa, tax policy in Brazil, workers’ rights in China, fashion in America, euthanasia in the Netherlands, Islam in Indonesia, and more. While these scholars made ample use of the historical resources within neo-Calvinism, they were not content to simply reproduce the Dutch perspectives of Kuyper and Bavinck. Instead, they pushed the tradition forward, bringing new and imaginative insights from diverse cultures and disciplines. In this they display neo-Calvinism at its best, rooted in scripture and the theological wisdom of the past, while reaching out into the future with branches of public innovation, curiosity, and imagination.

Bavinck, “The Kingdom of God, The Highest Good,” 159.

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Chapter 32

Missiology MICHAEL W. GOHEEN

Neo-Calvinism holds great promise for missiology today. I address this theme by offering a brief description of neo-Calvinism as it emerged historically at the end of the nineteenth century, and then by surveying five missiological themes where the rich resources of the neo-Calvinist tradition can make a helpful contribution to contemporary missiology today.

I. THE RISE OF NEO-CALVINISM Neo-Calvinism arose as a recovery of orthodox sixteenth-century Calvinism at the end of the nineteenth century. It emerged in the context of the triumph of Enlightenment humanism in European life. The Enlightenment marked the conversion of a whole civilization to a new religious faith. This secular humanist faith spread and reached its pinnacle during the late nineteenth century, subjugating the public life of Europe to its religious vision. Christ and his church were relegated to the private realm and stripped of cultural power. Neo-Calvinism arose in direct response to this threat. Thus, neo-Calvinism from its outset was molded by the conviction that the church must witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every part of cultural life. The gospel, if it is to be biblical, cannot be reduced to a message of individual salvation but announces the restoration of God’s sovereign rule over the whole creation and entire spectrum of human life. The church is not a private religious community but the new humanity who exercises cultural power through ordinary Christians in their vocations. The only defense against the formidable modernist tide was to recover a robust understanding of the historic Christian faith capable of matching humanism’s scope and power to equip Christians for faithful witness in public life. Thus, neo-Calvinism articulated the core of the Christian faith in terms of the comprehensive restoration of the good creation from the creation-wide effects of sin through Jesus Christ and by the Spirit. What is striking is the comprehensive scope of each key term: the whole of reality is God’s creation, is distorted by sin, and is being and will be restored to its original goodness. This all-encompassing vision of the Christian faith offers an alternative to reigning humanism as a basis for a culture-wide mission. So, the identity of neo-Calvinism was stamped from its origins by two things: it is a historic Christian tradition, orthodox Calvinism in particular. But neo-Calvinism is a recontextualized version of this historic tradition that takes place after the monumental culture-wide conversion to a secular humanist faith. It elaborates the historic Christian faith in a way that resists the power of confessional humanism to relegate the Christian

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faith to a private realm. Thus, it offers rich resources for the task of a culture-wide witness today. A number of theological themes were cultivated that equipped the church for its comprehensive witness to the sovereign reign of Christ. The Bible tells a story that begins in creation and reaches its goal in new creation. It is a story about the restoration of the whole of creation and the entire life of humanity from sin, idolatry, and the curse. The heart of the Christian faith is this comprehensive story into which everything must be fit. Jesus Christ announces the coming of God’s reign in the gospel at the center of this story, and this is the clue to reading the whole story. Since salvation is about comprehensive restoration, a rich doctrine of creation developed that included creation order, humanity as the image of God and as culture-maker, culture as central to the meaning of creation, the goodness of creation, and more. Over against the presumed neutrality of humanism, neo-Calvinism maintained the religious nature of humanity and the consequent religious character of all cultures, humanism included. As the church began to engage the public life of culture, neo-Calvinism shaped theological, philosophical, and worldview tools that would enable it to participate critically in the cultural task and witness to the dominion of Christ. The twin notions of common grace and antithesis enabled neo-Calvinist engagement to affirm creational structure but reject the spiritual distortion of idolatry. Indeed, this tradition has developed a rich resource bank for witness. However, neo-Calvinism arose in a certain historical context in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. It cannot be imported wholesale to North America or to any other part of the world. It needs to find fresh and recontextualized forms of life on other continents and in new times. Herman Bavinck, certainly one of the greatest of all neo-Calvinist figures, speaks against remaining stuck in older theological works because they are “no longer of our time.” They considered issues weighty to them but which are insignificant today because “we are children of a new time and live in a different era.” It is not only pointless to go on maintaining older forms but also “contradicts our own confession.” What we need is “old truth in a form that corresponds with the demands of this era.”1 At the heart of neo-Calvinism from its inception is its historical character that looks to the past only to faithfully recontextualize the gospel in the present to address its current issues and contemporary questions. There are two great missiologists who have worked within the neo-Calvinist tradition: J. H. Bavinck (1895–1964), missionary to Indonesia and professor of missiology at the Free University of Amsterdam, and Harvie Conn (1933–99), missionary to South Korea and professor of missiology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. The question we will pose in this chapter is this: “How can the resources of neo-Calvinism, especially following the lead of Bavinck and Conn, address the burning questions raised by missiology today?”

II. THE PROMISE OF NEO-CALVINISM FOR MISSIOLOGY a. Redemptive History and Mission David Bosch says that “if we want the missionary enterprise to be authentic and our reflections on mission to be relevant” we will need “to pay even more serious attention Herman Bavinck, “Foreword,” in The Wonderful Works of God: Instruction in the Christian Religion according to the Reformed Confession (Glenside: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), xxxii. 1

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to this branch of missiology than we used to do.” He refers to a biblical foundation for mission. He observes that in the past a biblical foundation for mission was done by gleaning certain “missionary texts” from the Old and New Testament to undergird the contemporary missionary enterprise. He advocates a missional reading of Scripture, which recognizes the centrality of mission to the entire biblical story. Instead of grasping isolated missionary texts we need to read Scripture “as a whole.”2 The neo-Calvinist tradition is positioned particularly well to take up this challenge. During the twentieth century, the neo-Calvinist tradition followed the lead of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, and developed a strong tradition of reading the Bible as a redemptive-historical whole. Scholars embraced Bavinck’s challenge to “pursue seriously”3 the emerging salvation-historical approach that sees Scripture as a progressive unfolding of God’s salvific work culminating in Jesus. The Bible contains a single redemptive-historical narrative with the covenant as the central theme. Perhaps the exponent of this blossoming best-known outside the Netherlands is Herman Ridderbos. J. H. Bavinck seized this redemptive-historical reading for his own missiology. He begins his own sketch of missiology in An Introduction to the Science of Missions with a section on the “Foundation of Missions.” What follows is a helpful summary of the biblical story that moves from the Old Testament through the intertestamental period to the gospels and on to Acts and the New Testament epistles.4 Paul Visser articulates Bavinck’s “foundation of mission” throughout his entire corpus following the same narrative progression.5 He notes that Bavinck’s biblical work has both a “Trinitarian scheme” and a “salvation-historical orientation.”6 A reading of his telling of the biblical narrative makes clear that mission is not simply one more theme in Scripture but central to the whole story.7 Conn deliberately follows Bavinck on this score. His consistent approach, permeating his literary corpus, is redemptive-historical or biblical-theological. Good examples are his magisterial Urban Ministry and a series of Bible studies written for the Lausanne consultation on simple lifestyle. In the first book he surveys the history and the present context of the city and then offers a rich “Biblical Perspectives” following the narrative storyline of Scripture.8 In the second book he moves through the Old Testament to the good news of the kingdom preached by Jesus and on to the church in its mission to embody the gospel.9 For Conn, in fact, all theology, if it is to be faithful to Scripture, must David J. Bosch, “Reflections on Biblical Models of Mission,” in Toward the Twenty-First Century in Christian Mission: Essays in Honor of Gerald H. Anderson, ed. James M. Phillips and Robert T. Coote (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 175, 178. 3 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 344. Cf. Jan Veenhof, Revelatie en Inspiratie: De Openbaringsen Schriftbeschouwing van Herman Bavinck in vergelijking met die der ethische theologie (Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1968), 330–4. 4 J. H. Bavinck, An Introduction to the Science of Missions (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1960;), 11–76. 5 Paul J. Visser, Heart for the Gospel, Heart for the World: The Life and Thought of a Reformed Pioneer Missiologist Johan Herman Bavinck (1895–1964) (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2003), 184–207. 6 Ibid., 206–7. 7 I published A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011) as an extended update of his approach which shaped me. 8 Harvie M. Conn and Manuel Ortiz, Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City and the People of God (Downers Grove: IVP, 2001; paperback 2010), 83–155. 9 Harvie M. Conn, Bible Studies on World Evangelization and the Simple Lifestyle (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1981). 2

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be based on a “biblical-theological” or “redemptive-historical” hermeneutic that assumes the Scriptures as a unified history of redemption culminating in Christ.10 For Conn mission is not an incidental theme but a central thread in redemptive history: there is a missional direction that moves from the one nation to all nations, from one geographical center to the ends of the earth. Today in missiology there is a need for this redemptive-historical approach to Scripture. There are especially two areas in which the redemptive-historical tradition holds promise. The first is a missional hermeneutic. Richard Bauckham defines a missionary hermeneutic as “a way of reading the whole of Scripture with mission as its central interest and goal.”11 He points to two current trends in biblical studies that are favorable to a missionary hermeneutic: canonical and narrative approaches. Both trends treat the Bible as a canonical and narrative whole. The redemptive-historical approach of neo-Calvinism may perhaps be an even better resource, not only because it reads Scripture as a narrative whole but also because it recognizes the importance of both the historicity and worldview breadth of this story. The second area is the missio Dei (mission of God). This notion as a basis for mission continues to garner much support and attention across confessional boundaries. The original articulation of God’s mission was deeply rooted in the Bible as a single redemptive-historical whole. The Triune sending formulation expressed in shorthand the mighty acts of God in Israel, in Christ, and by the Spirit working in and through the church sent by Jesus. Unfortunately, often God’s mission has been reduced to a Trinitarian theological sending formula detached from its original salvation-historical framework. Consequently, it has become like a wax nose that can be shaped to suit one’s preference. The redemptive-historical theme in neo-Calvinism is in lockstep with the original formulation and can contribute to a recovery of a more biblical articulation of God’s mission.

b. Holistic Mission The evangelical and ecumenical traditions have dominated missiology in the recent past. One of the rotten fruits of this is the tragic split between word and deed, evangelism and social engagement that has crippled missiology. Consequently, David Bosch believes that the “relationship between the evangelistic and the societal dimensions of the Christian mission constitutes one of the thorniest areas in the theology and practice of mission.”12 Adding to the confusion about the nature of mission is the breakdown of the colonialist paradigm and the emergence of the missio Dei as the broader interpreting framework. Mission is more than words or deeds or cross-cultural missions. It involves the witness of the whole church, both gathered and scattered, in its life, words, and deeds. Witness is as broad as life. In response to the encroaching religious vision of nineteenth-century humanism the neo-Calvinist tradition has developed significant resources to contribute to this discussion. As it struggled toward a comprehensive understanding of the Christian faith in response to the powerful tides of Enlightenment faith, it recovered the gospel as the good news of the kingdom, salvation as restorative and comprehensive, the church as more than a religious

Harvie M. Conn, Eternal Word and Changing Worlds: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialogue (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 225–9. 11 Richard Bauckham, “Mission as Hermeneutic for Scriptural Interpretation,” in Reading the Bible Missionally, ed. Michael W. Goheen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 28; cf. Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 11–12. 12 David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2011), 410. 10

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community but the new humanity expressing itself in its gathered and scattered forms, the notion of “worldview” that challenges the privatization of the Christian faith, and a fruitful approach to the Christian church living out the gospel in all the sectors of public life. J. H. Bavinck seized this and commented that it is imperative that “missions claim the kingship of God over the whole of life. Jesus Christ is Lord of everything. The whole of life ought to be subjected to the royal authority of Him who has redeemed us by His precious blood.”13 He struggled with the prevailing notion of the “comprehensive approach” criticizing its secularistic expression but affirming its breadth, indeed expanding it to all of life. He also rejects an earlier articulation of a Dutch synod that prioritized evangelism and saw all social action as merely preparation. Rather “the preaching of the gospel is a very complicated affair that touches man in all his aspects and relationships” and when deeds of justice and mercy are rooted in true love and compassion “then they cease to be simply preparation, and at that very moment they become preaching.”14 Conn followed Bavinck and was perhaps even more insistent on a holistic mission. He wrote Evangelism: Preaching Grace and Doing Justice to challenge the dichotomy between word and deed in contemporary mission. He was known for his call for justice and mercy in urban mission, for his summons to and practice of a simple lifestyle, and for his sympathetic, yet critical, interaction with liberation theology with its commitment to justice. He articulated his own comprehensive and integrated view of mission in terms of five dimensions: (1) communal life—we are called to embody the life of the new humanity in our communal life as a sign of the kingdom; (2) scattered witness in vocation—we must witness to the gospel in its scattered life in the midst of the world; (3) deeds of mercy and justice—both as scattered members and as a community we must do deeds of mercy and justice; (4) evangelism—we are to give intentional verbal witness to Jesus Christ; and (5) missions—we are to organize systematic efforts to cross-cultural boundaries to extend the gospel to places and peoples who have not yet heard the good news.15 Today the neo-Calvinist voice may enrich this missiological conversation. First, the dichotomy between word and deed remains even among some who seek integration. Of this, Conn comments that we remain “far from a holistic solution that integrates the two components. . . . Formerly the emphasis was on either body or soul, church or society, evangelism or social action. Now it is on both soul and body, church and society, evangelism and social action. Two abstractions do not make a whole. But two are better than one.”16 Conn resolves this dichotomy by rooting both aspects in the deeper life of people of God around a gospel of the kingdom. Conn (and likewise Bavinck) has passionately advocated for justice and broad cultural engagement without sacrificing evangelism and cross-cultural missions. Second, flowing from Kuyper the neo-Calvinist tradition has developed a flourishing worldview tradition that has produced a rich literature that articulates and defends a vision of mission that is as wide as life. There has been a long tradition of the witness and involvement of the people of God in the public square. Today this is a growing concern in missiology. And, as Lesslie Newbigin put it, the neo-Calvinist tradition has “obviously been J. H. Bavinck, Impact of Christianity on the Non-Christian World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 30. Bavinck, An Introduction to the Science of Missions, 113. 15 Harvie M. Conn, “Teaching Missions in the Third World: The Cultural Problems,” in Missions and Theological Education in World Perspective, ed. Harvie M. Conn and Samuel F. Rowen (Farmington: Urbanus, 1984), 267; Eternal Word, 304–5. 16 Harvie M. Conn, Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992), 62. 13 14

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at work long ago spelling out concretely in the various spheres of society what it means to say ‘Jesus is Lord’”17 and thus, he believed, offers rich resources for cultural engagement.

c. Religion, Culture, and Contextualization The language of indigenization, inculturation, and contextualization has become widespread in missiology. By its very nature, the gospel is translatable; and so, the gospel will always take on some cultural form. Yet each culture organizes its life around other gods, and this threatens to compromise every embodiment. The missionary movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the consequent growth of the multicultural global church makes the issue of gospel and culture(s) an urgent one. The neo-Calvinist tradition offers an important contribution to this discussion. Neo-Calvinism has developed a conception of culture that is rooted in a rich doctrine of creation, especially the notion of creation order. Al Wolters has unpacked this heritage.18 Further, neo-Calvinism insists that culture is shaped at its deepest level by religious faith. Religion is the inescapable covenantal relationship between God and humanity in which the whole life of humanity is a response to God’s call to develop and care for the creation. Religion is the deepest dimension of human life that orients all aspects of cultural life to either God or idolatry. It is also a “spirit” or a power that animates and directs all aspects of cultural life. Unlike modern humanism that makes religion another department of life, neo-Calvinism sees religion as a deeper all-embracing directional power that unifies and shapes the whole of civilization. Henry Van Til says that religion “extends to the whole of life; it is all-permeating; it radiates from the heart out to every area on the periphery of man’s existence . . . religion and culture are inseparable. Every culture is animated by religion.”19 J. H. Bavinck has developed this in a missiological direction. He says that “there is not a single element of the cultural structure that can be called absolutely neutral; all elements have their secret ties with the religious faith of the people as a whole,” and then makes the arresting comment that “culture is religion made visible; it is religion actualized in the innumerable relations of daily life.”20 Bavinck’s notion of contextualization, which he calls possessio, is based on common grace and antithesis. God maintains the order of his creation but there is a battle for all creation between the all-embracing formative power of idolatry and comprehensive power of the gospel. For Bavinck, the gospel drives to the idolatrous core and takes hold of the deepest recesses of religious life and begins to transform and change the entire worldview. Since all dimensions of human life are “unified in a single totalitarian view of the world” the “preaching of the gospel must therefore include a transformation of life in its entirety.”21 In any culture all customs and practices flow from and serve an idolatrous worldview. The gospel takes every part of culture and “turns them in an entirely different direction; they acquire an entirely different content. . . . Christ takes the life of a people in his hands, he renews and re-establishes the distorted and deteriorated; he fills each thing, each word, and each practice with new Quoted in Michael W. Goheen, “Mission and the Public Life of Western Culture: The Kuyperian Tradition,” The Gospel and Our Culture Network Newsletter 26 (Autumn 1999): 6. 18 Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, 2nd ed. with a Postscript coauthored with Michael W. Goheen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 13–51; “Creation Order: A Historical Look at Our Heritage,” in An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation, ed. Brian J. Walsh, et al. (Lanham: University Press of America, 1995), 33–48. 19 Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinist Concept of Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1959, 1972), 37, 44. 20 Bavinck, Impact of Christianity, 57. My emphasis. 21 Bavinck, Introduction to the Science of Missions, 109. 17

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meaning and gives it a new direction.”22 Wolters’ well-known distinction of creational structure and religious direction23 is based on Bavinck’s notion of possessio. Conn embraces both Bavinck’s notion of a religious core of culture and his corresponding view of possessio. He speaks of “the core place of religion in the structuring of culture’s meaning and usage.”22 Thus religion is not an area of life, one among many, but primarily a direction of life. . . . Religion, then becomes the “heart” of culture’s integrity, its central dynamic as an organism, the totalistic, radical response of man-in-covenant to the revelation of God. . . . They are powerful life-controlling entities, indivisible structures, each element cohering with all others and receiving its meaning from the total structure.24 The religious direction of the collective human heart shapes a worldview, which is “a deeprooted ‘map’ of reality ordinarily unquestioned by the culture. Through the particularity of the world view, its proponents perceive and structure reality.”25 It is a comprehensive belief-framework that colors all of a person’s activities. It is a communal direction of the heart, a framework of belief-commitments commonly held by a community of like mind. It includes a person’s act of believing, the heart’s integrator for all other acts and functions. It also includes the set of beliefs and values flowing from that act of believing.26 He offers the following diagram of his model.27

Ibid., 179. Wolters, Creation Regained, 87–114. 24 Harvie M. Conn, “Conversion and Culture—A Theological Perspective with Reference to South Korea,” in Down to Earth: Studies in Christianity and Culture, ed. John R. W. Stott and Robert Coote (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 150. 25 Ibid., 154. 26 Harvie M. Conn, Eternal Word and Changing Worlds, 319; cf. also 49. 27 Diagram found in “Conversion and Culture,” 149. 22 23

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Perhaps the most important book Conn wrote was Eternal Word and Changing Worlds where a central theme is the relationship of the gospel to culture. He distinguishes his own view as he engages and critiques other popular evangelical understandings of contextualization that merely place religion alongside other cultural aspects rather than at the core as a directing power. The issue of gospel and culture remains an ongoing issue in missiology. Neo-Calvinism has profound wealth to offer in this conversation. Few models of contextualization have thought as deeply about the religious nature of culture as the reflection we find in Conn and Bavinck. Moreover, the rich background of a biblical doctrine of creation and especially of creation order as the backdrop for gospel and culture has withered in many places under Karl Barth’s forceful critique. Yet this remains foundational for a biblical engagement of culture. The notion of creational structure and religious direction provides an immensely helpful model of contextualization to both affirm and critique culture. Bavinck’s notion of possessio is similar to Hendrik Kraemer’s immensely helpful notion of “subversive fulfillment.”28 Yet it deepens it with a fuller doctrine of creation. The twin notions of common grace and antithesis are essential for faithful Christian engagement in the public square.

d. Missiology of Western Culture Newbigin believes that “there is no higher priority for the research work of missiologists than to ask the question of what would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and this modern Western culture.”29 Why was this so urgent? Western culture is the most powerful global force at work in the world today. It is also the most pervasive cultural force as it spreads through the process of globalization to dominate all the urban areas of the world. It is the most dangerous foe the church has faced in its long history and the most resistant to the gospel. The church in the West lives in a state of syncretism with this culture, not challenging its idolatry but living in comfortable domestication. The work of Newbigin has placed this item firmly on the missiological agenda. Much of the development of neo-Calvinism and particularly the work of Bavinck and Conn came after a missiology of Western culture emerged. Nevertheless, the historical origins of neo-Calvinism make it particularly conducive to address this theme. Neo-Calvinism was born in response to the pervasive spread of modern humanism across Europe to protect the gospel and vocation of the church in public life from modernity’s powerful forces. Thus, neo-Calvinism has the resources for a meaningful contribution to many issues in a missiology of Western culture. We can start with Kuyper whose concern in developing the notion of wereldbeschouwing (worldview) parallels Newbigin’s concern. Both articulated the gospel over against individualistic and otherworldly expressions that threatened to withdraw Christ’s lordship from public life. Both emphasized that modern culture was religious and disguised by a cloak of neutrality. Both were concerned with the privatization of the faith that abandoned cultural activity to the religious powers of modernity. Both developed an understanding of the church that emphasized the primary importance of the vocation of the church in the public square. J. H. Bavinck lived at a time when modernity’s claims to neutrality reached a peak. And one can feel his hesitance as he discusses Western culture in the context of world religions.

Hendrik Kraemer, “Continuity and Discontinuity,” in The Madras Series, vol. 1, The Authority of Faith (New York: International Missionary Council, 1939), 4. 29 Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 3. 28

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Yet he says that “we have forgotten that our culture, too, is rooted in a specific existential attitude, and that this attitude is by virtue of its essence a religious phenomenon.” It is built on “certain presuppositions about man, his place in the world and his responsibility towards God” and all this “implies a definite worldview.” If we probe the historical development of our civilization “we shall see that modern culture, too, is a religious phenomenon.”30 Like Bavinck, Conn did not make this a primary focus of his missiology. However, he too addressed the issue amid his concern for urban mission. As he directed his attention to global cities, he acknowledged the unique role of Western culture in shaping the city and often responded to unspoken mistaken theological assumptions in urban studies. For example, in Scripture cities were “a reflector of religious commitment.” While “Western scholarship is used to treating religion as one isolated component of urban life—and a private, individualistic component at that” such is not the case in the urban world of the Ancient Near East. Religion is the “hub connecting all urban spokes.” 49 These integrating religious worldviews were “faith commitments foreign to any separation between the sacred and secular.”31 It is the holistic response of the total human self, the image of God, and the heart that shapes all of urban life either in covenant faithfulness or rebellion. In Scripture, the city is the battleground between Yahweh and the pagan gods. Likewise in the New Testament “religion was intertwined with the life of the city. The worldviews of cities were faith commitments foreign to any separation between the sacred and secular.”32 Religion is the comprehensive and formative core of urban culture. Conn takes direct aim at the claim of neutrality made by Western culture as it spreads its religion to the urban areas of the globe. Moreover, he speaks against the consequent privatization of the gospel. If our mission is to be faithful, we must confess the equally comprehensive scope of the gospel that propels the church’s mission. This demands that the whole life of God’s people, including the cultural, social, and public aspects of human life, be submitted to the lordship of Christ. Thus, Conn is concerned for the comprehensive scope and public nature of the gospel, the all-embracing nature of the church’s mission in cultural life, and the religious nature of urban culture. These correspond to the three primary areas of focus developed in a missiology of Western culture. The first is theological: the gospel must be liberated from its privatized cage and be reclaimed in its public and comprehensive nature. The second is ecclesiological: the church must be restored to its missional identity as a distinctive people who embody the gospel across the entire spectrum of their lives. The third is cultural: the myths of a Christian or neutral culture must be rejected and the powerful spirits of our culture exposed as religious. Precisely in all three areas neo-Calvinism has been long at work as it revived orthodox Calvinism in post-Enlightenment culture. In each of these three areas there is a wealth of reflection in biblical and worldview studies, in philosophy and missiology, that can contribute to this urgent quest.

e. Missionary Encounter with World Religions Gerald Anderson contends that “no issue is more important, more difficult, more controversial, or more decisive for the days ahead than the theology of religions. . . .

J. H. Bavinck, The Church Between Temple and Mosque: A Study of the Relationship Between the Christian Faith and Other Religions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 22–3. 31 Conn and Ortiz, Urban Ministry, 118. 32 Ibid. 30

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This is the theological issue for mission in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century.”33 He wrote those words four decades ago and perhaps this is even more true today. The fact of religious plurality means that we live in proximity to adherents of other faiths. But plurality moves beyond describing a reality to prescribing an ideology that affirms pluralism as a desirable diversity. And this has often silenced the church especially as it conforms to its relativism or becomes aware that religious tensions have heightened global crises that threaten the future of our planet. The rise of the church in the global South also exacerbates the issue as it lives within cultures which do not confine religion to the private but see it as an all-embracing cultural vision. More work to develop a rich and coherent theology of religions based firmly on Scripture is urgently needed. Perhaps neo-Calvinism can make its greatest contribution here yet in the main that still awaits us.34 Specifically, J. H. Bavinck has offered a theology of religions based on the notion of religious consciousness.35 This was clearly articulated by his uncle Herman Bavinck who developed John Calvin’s idea of the sensus divinitatis (basic sense of God’s existence) as the semen religionis (seed of religion).36 Based on his missionary experience in Indonesia, J. H. Bavinck widened and deepened this reflection on the uniqueness of the Christian faith and its relationship to the world religions as well as to the way these religions shaped culture. His work was taken up and updated significantly three decades after Bavinck’s death by Conn in twenty-four lectures comprising a course entitled “A Missionary Encounter with World Religions.”37 It is regrettable that this biblically, theologically, historically, and missionally fruitful work on a theology of religions is not widely known since it offers a depth of insight seldom found elsewhere.38 J. H. Bavinck reflected often on Rom. 1:18-32 as his starting point.39 Humanity is incurably and essentially religious: we are created as God’s image to respond and answer to his pervasive and inescapable creational revelation in faith, love, and obedience. Our response is comprehensive: the whole of our lives is an answer to his all-embracing revelation. But as rebels against God, our response is twofold. We repress the truth (1:18). We seek to stifle and hold down God’s revelation. But we cannot and it continues to “get through” and operate often unconsciously in our lives. Our response is concretely embodied in distorted ways. We also exchange the truth of God for the lie of idolatry (1:21-23, 25). Our rebellion does not make us any less religious; rather we substitute idols for God as the object of our religious allegiance.

Gerald H. Anderson, “Theology of Religions and Missiology,” in The Good News of the Kingdom: Mission Theology for the Third Millennium, ed. Charles van Engen, et al. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1983), 200. 34 See Daniel Strange, Their Rock is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), for a contribution to a theology of religions in the neo-Calvinist tradition. 35 Bavinck, Church Between Temple and Mosque; John Bolt et al. ed. The J.H. Bavinck Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). 36 Bavinck, RD 1, 235–79. 37 Harvie Conn, The Missionary Encounter with World Religions (1997), https://odbu​.org​/courses​/wm504/. 38 I offer my own up-to-date articulation of this tradition in three places: (1) Introducing Christian Mission Today: Scripture, History, and Issues (Downers Grove: IVP, 2014), 331–69; (2) the 2013 Kistemaker lectures at Reformed Theological Seminary on The Church and Religious Pluralism, 3, https://rts​.edu​/resources/​?fwp​_resources​_series​ =simon​-j​-kistemaker​-lectures​-orlando​&fwp​_resources​_date​_range​=2013​-01​-01​%2C2013​-12​-31; (3) A Logos Mobile Ed course entitled Missional Approach to World Religions, https://www​.logos​.com​/product​/52474​/mobile​ -ed​-th191​-missional​-approach​-to​-world​-religions. 39 Bavinck, Church Between Temple and Mosque, 122–77. 33

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What exactly is the content of this religious consciousness? This is where Bavinck makes his most unique contribution. It can be found in five areas. As religious creatures we grope after God (I and the Supreme Power), crave salvation (I and salvation), search for our place in the universe (I and the cosmos), seek the ultimate meaning of life (I and the riddle of my existence), and sense a moral order that shapes our lives (I and the norm). We will always respond personally to God’s revelation and give concrete and existential answers to these questions in the way we live. But these are not simply individual answers; our religion always has a communal character. Religion is the deepest power that unifies and integrates all aspects of our communal life together. Answers to these questions are concretely embodied in our cultural institutions, customs, relationships, and practices. And so, Bavinck spent much time demonstrating how the world religions shaped and gave meaning to the various aspects of the world cultures. While he was baffled by the turn from God in the modern world, he believed that a religious consciousness shaped Western humanism as well. “Modern man, nonreligious man included, is confronted with the five questions. . . . For they are basic to his existence and he must respond to them in some way or other.” The answers that even modern culture gives are “religious—that is to say, it touches the deepest religious realities with which man is confronted.”40 Yet he never analyzed Western humanist religion as deeply as non-Western religions. This remains an unfinished agenda, rife with resources, for those who would follow Bavinck’s lead. There have been two major traditions in the history of the church regarding the relationship of the gospel to other faiths. The first emphasizes the continuity between the gospel and other religions, while the second highlights discontinuity. The way Bavinck speaks of religion as the inextricable combination of revelation and sinful response opens up a way to faithfully integrate these two in a satisfying way. The notion of possessio allows one to recognize the revelational insight that remains present because God’s revelation cannot be fully suppressed. But it recognizes that idolatry always twists all responses to God’s revelation. In terms of continuity and abiding evidence of God’s revelation, we see in Islam the majesty of God, in Buddhism sympathetic compassion for suffering, in Hinduism the desire to connect with spiritual reality beyond creation, and in Confucianism the existence of a moral order. Yet there is discontinuity, effects of idolatry: Allah is not the God of Scripture, the compassion of Buddhism differs from Christ’s compassion, the Hindu notion of Brahman is an impersonal spiritual reality, and Confucianist moral order is an impersonal standard.

III. CONCLUSION Neo-Calvinism and missiology presents us with a puzzle. On the one hand, there are remarkably abundant resources both in the neo-Calvinist tradition generally and in neoCalvinist missiology in particular that hold great potential for missiological discussions today. And yet, on the other, neo-Calvinism has produced remarkably few missiologists. Bavinck and Conn were remarkable missiologists in their own right. But for whatever reason, there have been precious few who have followed in their footsteps. The issues of our world demand solid missiological reflection based on Scripture. And neo-Calvinism has much to offer in this conversation if there are those willing to take it up.41 Ibid., 111. My own small attempt is found in the book Introducing Christian Mission Today.

40 41

Chapter 33

Political Theology DAVID T. KOYZIS

I. THE PLACE OF POLITICS IN GOD’S WORLD Since the nineteenth century, when the Christian-Historical/Anti-Revolutionary movement began under the leadership first of Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76) and second of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), the neo-Calvinist movement has been closely associated with politics. Kuyper himself first stood for a seat in the Dutch Second Chamber in 1874, founded the Anti-Revolutionary Party in 1879, and served as the prime minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905.1 This is not to say that neo-Calvinists believe that political life is the most significant of the many life spheres in which we participate. Marriage, family, education, business, labor, the arts, and the institutional church all have their respective places within a complete life lived coram Deo—before the face of God. Nevertheless, it is evident that, given the central biblical command to love God and our neighbors as ourselves and given the significance of political life for scores of millions of our neighbors, neo-Calvinists highly esteem the political calling. In this they follow their sixteenth-century teacher, John Calvin (1509–64), whose celebration of political life is surprisingly positive. Calvin affirms that “civil authority is a calling, not only holy and lawful before God, but also the most sacred and by far the most honorable of all callings in the whole life of mortal man.”2 Furthermore, its “function among men is no less than that of bread, water, sun, and air; indeed, its place of honor is far more excellent.”3 Furthermore, we know from the biblical record and from subsequent history that entire societies can stray from the path of life under the leadership of bad rulers. The psalmist recognized this when he wrote: “For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest upon the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous put forth their hands to do wrong” (Ps. 125:3 RSV). Think of the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, who led their people to worship the false Canaanite god Baal. None of that kingdom’s rulers measured up to God’s standards of righteousness and justice, and, consequently, Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722 bc, scarcely two centuries after the division of Solomon’s kingdom following his death. Most of the southern kingdom For the definitive biography in English of Kuyper, see James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). 2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. XXI, 2 vols (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), IV.20, 1490. Subsequent references are to this edition. 3 Ibid., 1488. 1

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of Judah’s monarchs were evil as well. Yet, there were enough righteous rulers, most notably Hezekiah and Josiah, that God patiently stood by Judah until he allowed it to fall to the Babylonians in 587 bc. Political rulers often set the spiritual tone for a nation, as subjects follow their lead in a variety of avenues. Hence, it is not surprising that the Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries typically address the status of the civil magistrate, along with other doctrines more evidently associated with the life in Christ. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, neo-Calvinists would be the first to admit that life in Christ consists of considerably more than politics and that politics is but one part of life, which also includes marriage, family, agriculture, business, industry, labor, education, the arts, the institutional church, and so forth. Another way to put it is that labor, leisure, and liturgy add up to life. Nevertheless, the task here is to explore how neo-Calvinists have understood the place of politics in God’s world. We begin by observing that the expression political theology, despite its increasing use among Christians,4 is something that most neo-Calvinists would refrain from using. This is because theology is a particular theoretical discipline with its own distinctive place in the academy. Some have described theology as the study of God, of God’s word, of human religious consciousness, or of the deposit of the faith.5 Those following Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) are likely to define it as the theoretical exploration of the faith aspect of experience, or, as Willem Ouweneel puts it, “the special science that investigates the logical-analytical distinctions that it encounters in the depositum fidei.”6 Those in the scholastic tradition, stemming from Thomas Aquinas and his heirs, enthrone theology as the queen of the sciences, or regina scientiarum, assuming that any connection between faith and life must be filtered through it.7 But there are problems with this approach. First, it ignores the reality that theology is subject to various spirits, some of which are antithetical, not only to the others but to biblical revelation. Paul Tillich’s theology is at variance with Karl Barth’s. Herman Bavinck’s theology breathes a different spirit than Adolf von Harnack’s. The best theology rests on the foundational assumption that God has revealed himself in specific ways to specific people and that this revelation is knowable by his human image bearers. Much less helpful are those theologies that assume that God is ultimately unknowable and that all religions are reducible to fallible human efforts to ascend to the divine. If we attempt to derive political action from one of these theoretical efforts, especially the latter, we will likely be disappointed. Second, because each of the special sciences (to use Dooyeweerd’s expression) has its own appointed place in the academy and because each is dependent directly on God for its existence and functioning, they are not dependent on theology as a specialized discipline. The inner renewal of political life depends not on theology but on changed hearts converted through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Thus, See, e.g., David C. Innes, Christ and the Kingdoms of Men: Foundations of Political Life (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2019). 5 Willem J. Ouweneel, What Then Is Theology? (Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2014), 43–62. 6 Ibid., 61. 7 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q. 1, a. 5. Although Thomas does not use the expression regina scientiarum, he does affirm that theology is nobler than the other sciences. On the use of regina scientiarum, see Gijsbert van den Brink, “How Theology Stopped Being Regina Scientiarum—and How Its Story Continues,” Studies in Christian Ethics 32, no. 4: 442–54, article first published online: August 13, 2019; Issue published: November 1, 2019. 4

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the proper question is not how theology relates to politics but how redemption in Jesus Christ might renew our political life. Given this restatement of the issue, let us examine more closely the relationship between neo-Calvinism and politics.

II. EVERY SQUARE INCH The best-known statement associated with Kuyper is this: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”8 This confession flows out of the basic Christian conviction that our world belongs to God and that we are not our own. The sovereignty of God is a foundational principle for Reformed Christians in general, and his sovereignty over the whole of life is a characteristic emphasis of neo-Calvinism. However, this does not imply that our political communities are best governed as theocracies with established churches. In this respect, neo-Calvinists, following Kuyper, have parted ways with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed confessions, which, following Calvin, had held that “civil government has as its appointed end, so long as we live among men, to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church.”9 In fact, Kuyper himself succeeded in persuading the Synod of Utrecht (1905) of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland to place in parentheses the sentence in Article 36 of the Belgic Confession (1561), mandating that the state protect the true religion.10 If neo-Calvinists admit that God is sovereign over political life, why do they reject theocratic governance? First, there is the practical consideration that we live in societies characterized by a plurality of religions. Christians live alongside Jews, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, secularists, and so forth. Even among Christians, Catholics, different varieties of Protestants, and Orthodox must coexist. Privileging any one of these is a nonstarter because it would be impossible to secure a consensus on which one. The best we can do is to seek what John Rawls calls an overlapping consensus emphasizing the things we share and on which we can build and maintain a common political and legal framework.11 Second, there is a more principled reason for avoiding theocracy: the institutional church does not possess the institutional competence to pronounce on political matters. To be sure, many denominations do indeed weigh in on concrete political issues, such as the thorny Israel–Palestine conflict and the proper amount of a minimum wage. Yet that takes such bodies well outside what might be called their normative competence, something that many Christians, especially those outside the Reformed tradition, have not always understood.12 Nevertheless, one’s approach to political life cannot be divorced from one’s ultimate religious commitment. This is where the often-expressed sentiment

Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids and Carlisle: Eerdmans and Paternoster, 1998), 488. 9 Calvin, Institutes, IV.20, 1487. 10 See “Belijdenis des Geloofs,” art. 36, De Berijmde Psalmen (Amsterdam: Brandt en Zoon, n.d.), 60. See also David T. Koyzis, “Persuaded, Not Commanded: Neo-Calvinism, Dignitatis Humanae, and Religious Freedom,” in Catholicism and Religious Freedom: Contemporary Reflections on Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, ed. Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert P. Hunt (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 115–33. 11 See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 133–72. 12 See David T. Koyzis, Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019), 275–86. 8

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that we should not mix religion and politics goes wrong. It is not a question of whether but of which religion affects politics. Even the various political ideologies vying for control of public life are foundationally religious, rooted in redemptive stories that imitate and parallel the biblical redemptive narrative.13 This suggests that the best political arrangement we can hope for in this life is a power-sharing framework that allows the various faith communities, including devout secularists, to live according to their own convictions in public life without attempting to impose them on their compatriots. However, recognizing that a community’s ultimate faith commitments will have concrete implications for the life of a nation, Christians cannot afford to treat their own beliefs as one religion among others—as if all religions are equally valid as understood in a relativistic fashion. If we genuinely believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings life to the world, we will live our lives accordingly. The biblical redemptive story is not just our story; it is the world’s story, and we are called to witness to this truth to our neighbors, even in public life. Of course, we cannot necessarily expect that they will accept our witness, but following the path of obedience is not dependent on the world’s approval. We are called to faithfulness, and we must leave in God’s hands whether our efforts meet with success. Moreover, because of God’s common grace, that is, because “he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt. 5:45), we should expect to learn from our unbelieving neighbors, who may offer insights that we ourselves have not seen or have neglected, whether this be due to our created limitations or to our sinfulness. In short, despite the antithesis between belief and unbelief, we share with our unbelieving neighbors in the larger human project of cultural formation, which should warn against setting up impermeable boundaries separating faith communities. One of the key areas of life we share is the political community, which brings together a diversity of people based on common citizenship. My own country of Canada is the shared home of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and secularists, all of whom must live together under a common political constitution and legal framework. Each of these communities lives out its faith according to its own respective commitments. If these commitments are sufficiently at variance with each other, this may have a destabilizing effect on the political order, as we have seen in such places as Lebanon, Nigeria, South Asia, and Indonesia. Elsewhere, different faith communities have learnt to coexist through a variety of mechanisms encouraging compromise on concrete political issues.14 Indeed, within the context of a constitutional democracy, Christians refrain from imposing their principles on others; rather they propose principles, ready to defend them when called upon to do so in an open forum where the faith communities can gather without being compelled to leave behind their ultimate commitments.15

This is one of the major themes of my Political Visions and Illusions. See especially the first six chapters. See, e.g., the literature on consociationalism, that is, power-sharing among potentially antagonistic communities in such small countries as Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland, including Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), esp. pp. 16–58, for an examination of the impact of verzuiling on the Dutch political system. See also James W. Skillen and Stanley W. Carlson-Thies, “Religion and Political Development in Nineteenth Century Holland,” Publius 12 (Summer 1982): 43–64; and H. Daalder, “Parties and Politics in the Netherlands,” Political Studies 3 (1955): 1–16. 15 See, e.g., Jonathan Chaplin’s argument in Faith in Democracy: Framing a Politics of Deep Diversity (London: SCM Press, 2021). 13 14

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III. SPHERE SOVEREIGNTY What are these principles? The one with which the neo-Calvinist tradition is most associated is sphere sovereignty or sovereignty in its own sphere. This has also been called differentiated responsibility, or, as I would prefer, societal pluriformity or the pluriformity of authorities.16 This expression was used by Kuyper to describe something easily accessible to human experience. It takes no great theoretical sophistication to discern that families are families, schools are schools, gathered church communities are gathered church communities, and states are states. Although some business owners, such as George F. Pullman (1831–97), have tried to reconfigure their businesses as extended families, the familial metaphor carries great risks, as Pullman discovered when the 1893 depression saw him taking cost-saving measures prompting his workers to strike the following year.17 Indeed, paternalism in work communities is now typically regarded as an abuse of authority, in so far as it fails to recognize the unique characters of both work community and family. Similarly, a father who tries to impose military discipline on his children, along the lines of Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music, is guilty of confusing a military unit with family, with unfortunate consequences. Intuitively we understand that something is amiss in such situations, and these come from neglecting the legitimate sovereignty of each life sphere. Sphere sovereignty is predicated on three assumptions that proponents believe correspond to the realities of God’s world: (1) ultimate sovereignty belongs only to God and not to an earthly authority, (2) all earthly sovereignties are subordinate to and derivative from God’s sovereignty, and (3) there is no mediating earthly sovereignty from which others derive. This last point means that there is no ontological hierarchy within society, although there are, of course, complex patterns of authoritative offices relating to each other in asymmetrical ways. The first two assumptions distinguish Kuyper’s theory from those of liberal individualism, in which the individual is seen as sovereign over the array of communities he is supposed to have created, and of the various collectivisms, in which a single overarching community is deemed sovereign over other communities and individuals that might be said to exist beneath it. The third implication differentiates sphere sovereignty from the principle of subsidiarity, whose roots are in the Roman Catholic tradition, as set forth especially by Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) and his successors in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Subsidiarity means that in any society authority permeates every level, with “lower” agents functioning relatively independent of the “higher.” However, when one of these “lower” agents, which could be an individual or community, goes awry in some fundamental way, a “higher” agent properly steps in to set it aright, whereupon it again withdraws. Subsidiarity, while growing out of a laudable effort to avoid an excessively top-down statist model, is nevertheless based on a hierarchical understanding of society, with a mere prudential mechanism offered to mitigate its hierarchical nature. But much as the Reformation had sought to emphasize the direct, unmediated access of Christians to God, so also Kuyper’s principle pointed to the direct, unmediated authority conferred by God on the various societal forms that have emerged over the course of history.

See David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God (Eugene: Pickwick, 2014). See Richard Sennett’s discussion of the Pullman episode in Authority (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 62–77. 16 17

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In one way or another, the various ideological visions that have vied for power over the past more than two centuries have attempted to suppress this societal pluriformity by emphasizing instead either collective or individual sovereignty. The modern preoccupation with state and popular sovereignty is based on the general quest to find a principle of unity holding together human societies. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) sought unity in an all-powerful sovereign capable of ending the general state of warfare thought to characterize pre-political life. John Locke (1632–1704) sought it in a social contract in which participating individuals came together to invest their natural authority to defend their lives, liberty, and property in a civil government empowered to remove the inconveniences found in the pre-political state of nature. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712– 78) located sovereignty within something he called the general will of the people, namely, their capacity to confer legitimacy on the laws under which they must live. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), while influenced by Rousseau, located sovereignty in the apparently universal capacity of human beings to judge according to abstract principles based in a shared possession of reason. While these important figures would have a great influence on the development of Western philosophy, their ideas were filtered through more evidently popular figures and movements appealing directly to large masses of people. Here is where the various political ideologies have played their role. The French Revolution of 1789 was the watershed moment in the crystallization of these ideologies, and it gave a huge impetus to their dissemination across the European continent and later to the rest of the world. Thus, while there have been countless rebellions and uprisings against sitting rulers and regimes throughout history, the signature event of our era has been a particular kind of social revolution, whose proponents take up arms, not just to overthrow a leader but to remake society according to an abstract vision translated into popular form. If such revolutions do not invariably produce a totalitarian regime, the visions behind them have definite totalitarian tendencies. Any effort to transform society, if severed from a solid grasp of God’s creation and the norms by which he upholds it, will be compelled in principle to leave no corner of life untouched and to subject it to its own animating vision over the objections of ordinary people who do not share it. After the French Revolution had set a precedent, successive revolutions followed suit, motivated by one or another ideological illusion which its followers undertook to impose on the larger social fabric—often with horrific violence causing scores of millions of deaths. The major examples include the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949, and arguably the Islamist Revolution in Iran in 1979. The ascent of the National Socialists to power in Germany in 1933 had many of the features of a revolution, although its followers came to power via organized intimidation and violence rather than through an outright overthrow of the predecessor regime. In the late twentieth century, the Sexual Revolution upended the sexual standards that had once governed Western societies, replacing them with a no less dogmatic paradigm that ties sexual behavior to the dominant ethos of expressive individualism mitigated by mutual consent.18 Once again, although it obviously did not effect a political coup d’état, the Revolution is decreasingly tolerant of dissidents, even if it has not had the high casualty

See Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020). 18

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rate of other revolutions,19 and is willing to use the coercive arm of the state to enforce its dogmas.

IV. THE MEANING OF PUBLIC JUSTICE: CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND FEDERALISM A neo-Calvinist political theory uniquely affirms the pluriformity of society, recognizing that the state has an obligation to do public justice to the various pluriform agents within its jurisdiction, whether these be individuals or the distinctive communities in which they are embedded and with which they associate. Public justice requires that the state treat equitably these agents, carefully weighing in the balance their respective claims. In a conflict between an individual and the community, a consistent liberal will tend to favor the individual over the community, while a collectivist will be predisposed toward the community, depending, of course, on which community is at issue. By contrast, public justice requires that those invested with decision-making authority hear the claims of all sides in a potential dispute, thoroughly discuss the merits of each, and render a judgment that respects the pluriformity of society and upholds the respective callings of the diverse agents therein. Too often those who style themselves champions of social justice are quick to judge, effectively biased toward some groups at the expense of others based on a subjective division between oppressors and oppressed. By contrast, an affirmation of societal pluriformity will not allow political authorities to cut corners or to make facile judgments based on superficial moralizing. Seldom are the issues at stake in the political process easily grouped into obvious rights and wrongs. Instead, legitimate interests may clash, requiring prudent adjudication, especially where scarce financial and other resources are involved. Public justice has implications, not only for what political community does but for how the institutions of government are organized. This suggests that some forms of government are more conducive to doing justice than others. Calvin himself admitted that “every nation is left free to make such laws as it foresees to be profitable for itself. Yet these must be in conformity to that perpetual rule of love, so that they indeed vary in form but have the same purpose.”20 While the end of government is more important than its organization, which admits of legitimate variation according to conditions on the ground, Calvin nevertheless offers a prudential judgment: “For if the three forms of government which the philosophers discuss be considered in themselves, I will not deny that aristocracy, or a system compounded of aristocracy and democracy, far excels all others.”21 It is by no means coincidental that those countries most influenced by Reformed Christianity developed either republican forms of government or constitutional monarchies which in effect were “disguised republics,” to use Walter Bagehot’s expression.22 Calvin’s preference for a so-called mixed constitution is not original with him but has an ancient

Those in the pro-life camp argue that there has indeed been a high casualty rate in the scores of millions of unborn children aborted over more than half a century. 20 Calvin, Institutes, IV​.xx​.​15, 1503. 21 Ibid., IV​.xx​​.8, 1493. The three forms of government discussed by the ancients are monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. 22 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867). 19

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lineage extending back to the Greek historian Polybios (c. 200–118 bc).23 Christian theologians and philosophers affirmed the mixed constitution, which combined the best features of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, primarily because of their understanding of man’s sinful nature. Because of original sin, no one person or group of persons should be given uncontested power because they will tend to abuse it. Rather, a wise constitution will see authority distributed among several institutions, each of which will check the others. In England, this was understood to imply that King, Commons, and Lords would hold each other accountable and would function in a balanced manner. This is the lesson that Montesquieu (1689–1755) took from his studies of the English Constitution, which he preferred to that of his own France, governed by a succession of absolute monarchs.24 Montesquieu in turn influenced the American Founders, who established a constitution based on the separation of powers with checks and balances among legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. And while the document known as the Constitution of the United States of America was the product of compromise among the several state delegations, none of whom got everything they wanted, later generations of Americans came to ascribe a certain architectural brilliance to the drafters, who were thought to have set up so carefully crafted a system of government that it could not possibly fail. In reality, the Constitution, along with the traditions supporting it, was based on generations of experience in representative government, both in the colonies and in England itself. Other countries influenced by the non-Lutheran Reformation were the Netherlands, Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, parts of Germany, England, and the overseas territories of British settlement. Here we find a pronounced preference for federal states, that is, political communities divided among local, regional, and central governments, the former of which have a constitutionally protected autonomy vis-à-vis the latter. During and after the Eighty-Years War, the former Spanish provinces in the Low Countries became known as the United Provinces of the Netherlands, a loose confederal union presided over by the princes of Orange and Nassau. Switzerland evolved into a federal union of cantons formerly within the Holy Roman Empire. Between 1603 and 1707 (except during the Interregnum between 1649 and 1660), the British Isles were governed under a single monarch as three kingdoms with strong parliaments. Even after the unions of 1707 and 1801 created the UK, laws continued to vary among the component kingdoms. Although Prime Minister Tony Blair’s reforms of the late twentieth century did not create a federal state, they did devolve political authority to assemblies for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Hungary was less politically affected by the Reformation because of its historic ties with Austria and the Habsburgs, who favored the Counter-Reformation and centralized imperial governance. Although subsidiarity is historically associated with Roman Catholicism, for neo-Calvinists it is a principle best suited to a federal division of powers within government itself rather than a means of distinguishing different types of communal formations. Subsidiarity is arguably embodied in the ninth and tenth amendments to the US Constitution, the latter of which provides that all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government under article 1, section 8, “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Canada’s Constitution Act, 1867, explicitly lays out the respective powers of federal and provincial governments in sections 91 and 92, with the provinces jealously

Polybios, The Histories, book VI.1-18, and especially 10. See Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois (1748), especially book XI.

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guarding their policy spheres against Ottawa’s encroachment. Subsidiarity is also one of the principles embodied in the founding treaties of the European Union. One reason for a federal division of powers is like that of an internal organization of “branches” of government, namely, to prevent too much power concentrating in too few hands. But there is another reason of equal importance: to allow local communities to govern themselves through representative political authorities who understand the issues that matter most to them. The alternative is a centralized unitary government with imperial reach over a large territory tempted to impose uniform standards on localities where they might not be appropriate. While Luther and his heirs were willing to accord vast powers to monarchs in the territories they dominated, Calvin’s heirs were distinctly inhospitable to any form of empire, instead favoring self-government, a division of powers, and a constitutional balance between centralized governance and local rule. In this they also differ from Roman Catholicism, which in many respects supports imperial rule, as seen theoretically in Dante Alighieri’s De Monarchia and historically in the 1,000-year existence of the Holy Roman Empire, a latter-day instantiation of imperial Rome; and from Orthodoxy, whose alliance with imperial rulers has been even more pronounced than in the West.25 It is worth recalling that Reformed Christianity’s immediate political impact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occurred in city-states such as Calvin’s Geneva and Johannes Althusius’ Emden.26

V. CONCRETE POLITICAL REFORMS As an implication of their religious and political commitments, neo-Calvinists have focused their energies on three principal political issues, namely, the franchise, electoral reform, and school choice. All these issues were dear to the hearts of Kuyper’s original neo-Calvinist supporters in the Netherlands, because they flowed out of their concerns over the advance of the secular ideologies during the nineteenth century. First, the franchise and democracy. This is less of an issue today when virtually all Western countries are constitutional democracies with something close to a universal adult franchise. In the nineteenth century, however, the right to vote was generally restricted according to property qualifications, education, and, of course, sex. The Dutch Anti-Revolutionaries and their sympathizers were largely common folk lacking the franchise and thus a political voice. As the heirs of Enlightenment liberalism were attempting to reshape Dutch society according to their own principles after the Napoleonic Wars, orthodox Reformed Christians were on the receiving end of such efforts, lacking the power to register their dissent. Kuyper initially favored a household franchise allowing heads of household to vote.27 But eventually a law enfranchising all men twenty-five and older was enacted in 1917, with women being given the vote two years later.28

See David T. Koyzis, “Imaging God and His Kingdom: Eastern Orthodoxy’s Iconic Political Ethic,” Review of Politics 55 (Spring 1993): 267–89. 26 On Althusius see Otto von Gierke, The Development of Political Theory (New York: Howard Fertig, 1966), 15–32; and Thomas O. Hueglin, Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World: Althusius on Community and Federalism (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999). 27 See Abraham Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto (Bellingham, WA, USA: Lexham Press/Acton Institute, 2015), § 141, 175–6; and Bratt, Modern Calvinist, 360–1. 28 From the website of the Dutch Second Chamber of Parliament, https://www​.hou​seof​repr​esen​tatives​.nl​/dossiers​ /hundred​-years​-universal​-suffrage​-celebration. 25

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Neo-Calvinists have generally refrained from fully identifying just governance with democracy, recognizing that a variety of forms of government can do public justice. Nevertheless, there is a definite affinity between public justice and constitutional democracy. Jonathan Chaplin makes a case “that the participation of citizens in the political process is indeed a structural norm—not necessarily an immediate imperative, but at least a normative vocation—implied in the very idea of the state as a public-legal community.”29 Citizens properly have co-responsibility with government in seeing that public justice be done within the political community. The right to vote is no longer controversial as it was in the Netherlands of the 1890s and 1900s, when the franchise was still quite narrow. But a wide franchise is necessary to ensure that a plurality of voices will be heard and accounted for in the policymaking process. In this respect, neo-Calvinists share with their un- or other-believing fellow citizens a commitment to constitutional democracy and the health of the political institutions it encompasses. Second, electoral reform. In most English-speaking democracies, citizens’ representation is embodied in an electoral system called single-member-plurality (SMP) or first-past-the-post. Under SMP a country is divided into so many electoral districts, each of which is represented by a single officeholder elected by a plurality of voters. In an evenly matched contest among three candidates—a not unusual occurrence in Canada—the winner may receive only slightly more than a third of the popular vote yet receive the seat over the objections of nearly two-thirds of voters. The net result is that vast numbers of citizens, along with their political convictions, go unrepresented in the relevant parliamentary chambers. Votes for a “losing” candidate are quite literally wasted, which distorts election results. With a few exceptions, neo-Calvinists favor implementing some form of proportional representation (PR) that would see the partisan configuration of parliament more closely matching their percentage of support by the public. If, for example, a social democratic party were to receive 42 percent of the vote, it would take roughly 42 percent of the seats. This would ensure that political convictions more territorially dispersed would not be penalized at the polls relative to those more geographically concentrated. The Center for Public Justice explicitly favors electoral reform, advocating a state-by-state party list system.30 Canada’s Citizens for Public Justice argues for a mixed-member-proportional system like that used in Germany.31 Electoral reform would break the hold of the two major parties that SMP generally encourages, allowing a more diverse range of convictions to be heard, including those of believing Christians. Third and finally, school choice. During the nineteenth century Western countries began to establish common public schools with compulsory attendance for all children. Whereas education was once the province of the churches and monasteries, political elites strove to secularize the schools, bringing them under the authority of the state. The result would be a unified educational system molding children according to the convictions of

Jonathan Chaplin, Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 216. 30 “Citizenship,” Center for Public Justice, https://www​.cpjustice​.org​/index​.php​/public​/page​/content​/citizenship. 31 Brad Wassink, “Faith in Our Vote: A Public Justice Case for Proportional Representation,” https://cpj​.ca​/faith​ -in​-our​-vote/. See also Koyzis’ 2007 submission to the Canadian province of Ontario’s Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform, http://www​.citizensassembly​.gov​.on​.ca​/en​-CA​/Get​-Involved​/View​-And​-Search​-Submissions​/ Detailed​-View​.aspx​?ID​=1672. Oddly, Cardus, a neo-Calvinist think tank in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, has refrained from taking a stand on electoral reform. 29

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the state authorities. For Christians this was unacceptable because it would effectively restrict the life of faith to a private sphere based on the secular (religious!) assumption that education was intrinsically neutral with belief in God effectively sidelined. Kuyper fought for equitable public funding for all schools irrespective of their faith commitments, finally achieving that goal in 1917.32 His heirs have followed him in this effort, sometimes meeting with success but often not, depending on jurisdiction.33 According to most proposals for ending the state’s educational monopoly, government revenues would follow parental choice of schools for their own children. If they choose not to send their children to a state-sponsored common school, opting instead for a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or other school, they would not be financially penalized for so doing. Public funding would go via parents to children through a voucher system rather than directly to a school system enjoying a monopoly of educational funds. Christian parents could establish a faith-based school, confident that, if enough parents decide to enroll their children, they will receive the appropriate financial backing without discrimination. Neo-Calvinists have championed this approach because they believe that, if every square inch of the cosmos belongs to God in Christ, then education cannot be excluded from this domain. For the most part, however, a neo-Calvinist approach to politics cannot be reduced to a series of proposed reforms, and even less to an effort to transform society using political means. Instead, Kuyper’s heirs have striven to recognize the intrinsic value of political community and the role it plays in ensuring that justice will be done to individuals and to the variety of communal formations characterizing a mature differentiated society. Their approach cannot be summed up in a catchy slogan like “liberty, equality, fraternity,” or “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It resists facile solutions to complex issues, affirming instead that government has a divinely appointed task to maintain a just political order in which the pluriform agents within its jurisdiction can flourish in a balanced and proportionate way.

See Bratt, Modern Calvinist, 144, 311–14; Kuyper, Our Program, 188–210. See, e.g., Rockne M. McCarthy, James W. Skillen, and William A. Harper, Disestablishment a Second Time: Genuine Pluralism for American Schools (Grand Rapids: Christian University Press, 1982); James W. Skillen, ed., The School Choice Controversy: What Is Constitutional? (Washington, DC and Grand Rapids: Center for Public Justice and Baker Books, 1993); James W. Skillen, In Pursuit of Justice: Christian-Democratic Explorations (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 93–109; The Good of Politics: A Biblical, Historical, And Contemporary Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 155–68; and Koyzis, We Answer to Another, 197–201. 32 33

Chapter 34

World Christianity ANDREW ONG

A key test of any theological tradition’s relevance in the twenty-first century is whether or not and how it is able to engage with “World Christianity.” The historical roots of World Christianity as a field of study can be found in the areas of ecumenics, missions, and world religions, but it has also come to engage social science, history, and theology.1 This chapter aims to provide a twenty-first-century perspective on the interplay between the neo-Calvinist theological tradition and World Christianity as a burgeoning phenomenon and significant field of study. It will be suggested that although neo-Calvinism has Western roots in the Dutch Reformed tradition, neo-Calvinism is not at odds with World Christianity. Rather, neo-Calvinism, at its best, possesses distinct, internal resources and theological commitments that allow it to constructively support, continually learn from, and practically engage World Christianity.

I. WHAT IS WORLD CHRISTIANITY? At the dawn of the twentieth century, 83 percent of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and North America.2 Today, the majority of Christians across the globe—almost 70 percent—reside in Africa, Asia, or Latin America and “nearly half of the world’s fulltime cross cultural missionaries are being sent from the non-Western world.”3 As a consequence of this past century’s demographic shift in which the majority of the world’s Christians actually now live in the majority world and also in response to the increasing awareness of a growing plurality of cultural contexts engaging and expressing Christianity according to their own unique concerns, “World Christianity” has emerged as a significant field of study. For the term “Christianity” by itself has too often been reduced to naming one or more of the dominant Western historical forms of this religion, rendering the broader global Christian reality invisible. The study of World Christianity is in contrast an emerging field that investigates and seeks to understand Christian communities, faith, and practice as they are found on six continents, expressed in diverse ecclesial traditions, and informed by the multitude of historical and cultural experiences in a world that for good and ill is rapidly globalizing. It is concerned with both the diversity of local or indigenous expressions of Christian life and faith throughout the world, and the Dale Irvin, “World Christianity: An Introduction,” Journal of World Christianity 11, no. 1 (2008): 2. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xi. 3 F. Lionel Young, III, World Christianity and the Unfinished Task (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2021), 1. 1 2

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variety of ways these interact with one another critically and constructively across time and space.4 Thus, to speak of “World” Christianity is to re-emphasize the reality of Christianity as a world religion that is not simply beholden to Western culture and history. The notion of World Christianity acknowledges that Christianity is (1) spread across more than just one region of the globe, (2) both universally applicable and locally inclusive, (3) locally practiced among different geographical communities, (4) enmeshed within the dynamics of both indigenous, grassroots movements and more traditional agents of sociopolitical power, (5) historically multiple, complex, and nonlinear with various launching points, and (6) a transnational, connected network of organizations and communities.5

II. SUPPORTING AND LEARNING FROM WORLD CHRISTIANITY World Christianity as a field of study has done a helpful service in critiquing the oftunexamined conflation and commingling of Christianity with Western culture and the Eurocentric bias of so much of Christian reflection over the past fifteen centuries. Thus, to suggest that a Western theological tradition birthed in the Netherlands might have something to contribute to World Christianity may seem odd and even raise suspicion. It is important to remember, though, that Western theology is far from monolithic and that “World Christianity means world Christianity, and not simply the Christianity of the southern hemisphere.”6 So while it is important to engage critically with this Dutch-originated tradition—as with all traditions, both Western and non-Western—it is also important not to overreact to the previous overemphasis on Western Christianity or to simplistically discount every theological idea that happens to originate from a geographically or culturally Western source.7 If a Christian tradition supports the good intentions of World Christianity, it should be welcomed according to the very spirit of World Christianity, upholding the simultaneous unity and diversity of the Christian faith.

a. Unity and Diversity in Creation, Culture, and Church One could argue that the unity and diversity of Christianity may be the central theme of what World Christianity seeks to celebrate, explore, and hold together, in creative tension and compelling harmony. In the words of Dana Robert: What at first glance appears to be the largest world religion is in fact the ultimate local religion. . . . Flexibility at the local level, combined with being part of an international network, is a major factor in Christianity’s self-understanding and success today. The Irvin, “World Christianity,” 1. Sebastian Kim and Kirsteen Kim, Christianity as a World Religion (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 3. 6 Brian Stanley, Christianity in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 8. 7 James Eglinton problematizes any simplistic notion of what even makes for a “Western” Christian tradition when he discusses J. H. Bavinck’s view of Augustine as a figure not formed within Western culture, but as the non-Western Bishop of Hippo whose Mediterranean and Near Eastern interlocutors “were no less alien to twentieth century Westerners than the Hindus and Buddhists with whom [he] interacted on Java,” and thus as “an African hinge between the indigenous forms of Christianity found in the East and the West.” See James Eglinton, “Planting Tulips in the Rainforest: Herman and Johan Herman Bavinck on Christianity in East and West,” Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies 6, no. 2 (2021): 277–92. 4 5

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strength of world Christianity lies in its creative interweaving of the warp of a world religion with the woof of its local contexts.8 It is precisely this impulse of World Christianity that makes neo-Calvinism such a promisingly supportive theological tradition. Neo-Calvinism’s distinct commitments to the organic implications of the Trinity, the redemptive-historical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, and its distinctively Protestant catholicity are just a few of its many features which affirm World Christianity’s insistence upon the unity and diversity of the Christian faith across the globe. As Richard Mouw suggests, “The ‘manyness’ of God’s creating and redeeming purposes in the world is surely a—if not the—key theme in neo-Calvinism.”9 The emphasis upon unity and diversity in neo-Calvinism—not just within Christianity, but in all creation—is rooted in an “organic worldview” founded on the Trinitarian doctrine of God.10 For Herman Bavinck the created order is marked by both unity and diversity at the same time because God is Triune and the universe fittingly reveals and reflects his identity as three-in-one. Describing this organic view of the cosmos, Bavinck writes: Everything was created with a nature of its own and rests in ordinances established by God. . . . There is the most profuse diversity and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity. The foundation of both diversity and unity is in God. . . . Here is a unity that does not destroy but rather maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not come at the expense of unity, but rather unfolds it in its riches. In virtue of this unity the world can, metaphorically, be called an organism, in which all the parts are connected with each other and influence each other reciprocally.11 Out of this foundational commitment to unity and diversity, rooted in Bavinck’s doctrine of God and creation, neo-Calvinism finds resonance with the themes of both human and specifically Christian unity and diversity in the study of World Christianity. Neo-Calvinism insists on a truly “world Christianity” because “[t]he idea of creation naturally implies God’s jurisdiction over the whole world.”12 The God of Adam, Noah, and Abraham always intended to be the God of the nations, rather than simply the God of a single nation, even after the election of Abraham and his offspring. Neo-Calvinists understand creation redemptive-historically and thus in light of its new creation telos. Therefore, they understand the creation mandate to imply God’s divine will for creational plurality and variation when he created humankind in his image and likeness and told them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it with dominion (Gen. 1:26-28). One goal of creation was the new creation vision, revealed to the apostle John, of a diverse multitude of people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Rev. 7:9), a truly

Dana Robert, “Shifting Southward: Global Christianity Since 1945,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 2, no. 2 (2000): 56. 9 Richard Mouw, “Neo-Calvinism: A Theology for the Global Church in the Twenty-first Century,” Calvin Theological Journal 51, no.1 (April 2016): 10. 10 James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Toward A New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 67. 11 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 435–6. 12 J. H. Bavinck, An Introduction to the Science of Missions, trans. David H. Freeman (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing Co., 1960), 12. 8

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worldwide Christianity manifesting the manifold and divinely ordained differentiation of God’s united people and their varied gifts. According to Abraham Kuyper, “That all life should multiply ‘after its kind’, after its own unique, given character is the royal law of creation which applies to more than seed-bearing herbs. . . . Uniformity in God’s creation! No, rather infinite diversity, an inexhaustible profusion of variations that strikes and fascinates you in every domain of nature.”13 Applying this creational conviction to humanity and following its telos into the demographic diversity of new creation, Kuyper continued: All humanity stems from one ancestor, but from its very beginning it was destined to be sent forth in a variety of directions along different roads. If humanity at Babel’s tower tries to unite itself to be a single people forever, the Lord disturbs that undertaking and scatters the peoples over the ends of the earth. . . . In the unity of the kingdom of God diversity is not lost but all the more sharply defined. On the great day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit did not speak in one uniform language. . . . Someday, before the throne of the Lamb, doxologies will be sung to him who conquered, not by a uniform mass of people but by a humanity diversified in peoples and tribes, in nations and tongues.14 Bavinck shared Kuyper’s convictions concerning God’s intention for variety in the creation mandate: “For from the beginning it was the will of God. . . . The wonderful expansion of the human race, the infinite variety among people, and the inexhaustible richness of peoples, are all due to this divine will.”15 Like Kuyper, he did not see the outcome of Babel as mere judgment, but as actually fulfilling God’s redemptive-historical purposes: “Indeed, though the division of humanity into peoples and languages was occasioned by sin, it has something good in it, which is brought into the church and thus preserved for eternity. From many races and languages and peoples and nations Christ gathers his church on earth.”16

b. Neo-Calvinism and Catholicity Understandably, one may wonder if this neo-Calvinist insistence upon unity and diversity within creation and among humanity necessarily entails a proportional unity and diversity within Christianity itself. After all, while the Nicene creed has long led Christians to confess the unity of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” what creedal statements have also commended the confession of the church’s diversity to the hearts, minds, and lips of Christian confessors? Should not Christians simply imitate the apostolic faith passed down through the centuries, starting from the foundation of the apostles’ imitations of Christ? Rather than making a watertight case for a single uniform expression of Christianity, these questions actually just provoke the deeper question of what “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” mean and look like. According to neo-Calvinist thought, catholicity and unity do not require uniformity. The neo-Calvinism birthed out of Kuyper and Bavinck’s readings of Calvin is quite distinct Abraham Kuyper, “Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life,” in Abraham Kuyper, A Centennial Reader, ed. James Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 34. 14 Ibid., 35. 15 Herman Bavinck, The Christian Family, trans. Nelson Kloosterman (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2012), 15–16. 16 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 319. 13

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from what one might call “paleo-Calvinism,” a Calvinism that only seeks to repristinate and impose its unaltered, historic, Calvinistic forms onto various new historical and cultural contexts without any mutual negotiation or consideration of the context it enters. Bavinck found such Calvinism miserable.17 Neo-Calvinism is aptly named because it not only pursues its own continual reformation but also affirms new and varied expressions of Christian reformation across the world’s myriad contexts—each new expression of reformation contributing to the unity and diversity of a truly catholic Christianity. This neo-Calvinist impulse to be orthodox and yet modern, traditional and yet innovative, and united and yet diverse is rooted in a truly Protestant and Reformed commitment to catholicity. To quote Brock and Sutanto, “Bavinck’s theology is catholic and ecumenical. It is never ancient without also being current. It never cries ad fontes without inciting development.”18 The catholic unity of the church does not preclude the diversity of the world’s Christianity and new expressions of the faith but assumes such: “Christianity is a world religion suited and intended for every people and age, for every class and rank, for every time and place. That church is most catholic that most clearly expresses in its confession and applies in its practice this international and cosmopolitan character of the Christian religion.”19 In other words, a neo-Calvinist understanding of catholicity and what it looks like to imitate the apostolic faith does not commend a mechanical institutional unity or a carbon copy imitation of the faith, but rather “catholicity is most expressed not in spite of diversity but precisely in diversity.”20

c. Safeguards and Tools Admittedly, such celebration of diversity in neo-Calvinism and World Christianity may unsettle those who fear the real dangers of syncretism, relativism, and tribalistic division, disunity, and discord. But this is also why neo-Calvinism has much to contribute to World Christianity studies. Neo-Calvinists are confident that both unity and diversity can be held and maintained because neo-Calvinists are committed to a revelational epistemology that simultaneously upholds the absoluteness of truth, the multi-perspectival nature of truth, and the possible apprehension of such truth by finite, creaturely human beings. As a confessionally Reformed tradition affirming sola scriptura, neo-Calvinism is inherently opposed to relativism. As Eglinton writes, “[t]he safeguard against relativism is Deus dixit,”21 the reality that God has spoken, and that he has spoken clearly and infallibly, revealing himself and his knowledge to his dependent creatures. Neo-Calvinists “All the misery of the Presbyterian Churches is owing to their striving to consider the Reformation as completed, and to allow no further development of what has been begun by the labor of the Reformers. Calvinism wishes no cessation of progress and promotes multi-formity. . . . It does not demand for itself the same development in America and England which it has found in Holland.” Herman Bavinck, “The Future of Calvinism,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 5 (1894): 23. The first sentence of this citation is a quotation from John Robinson. 18 Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism: On Catholicity, Consciousness and Theological Epistemology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 70, no. 3 (2017): 313–14. 19 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, 323. 20 Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Confessional, International, and Cosmopolitan: Herman Bavinck’s Neo-Calvinistic and Protestant Vision of the Catholicity of the Church,” Journal of Reformed Theology 12 (2018): 26. Emphasis in original. 21 James Eglinton, “Vox Theologiae: Boldness and Humility in Public Theological Speech,” International Journal of Public Theology 9, no. 1 (February 3, 2015): 27. 17

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insist that truth is consistent, real, and knowable in creation and history. For Bavinck, truth is not relative, but “agreement between thought and reality and thus . . . a relation between the contents of our consciousness and the object of our knowledge,”22 and “God’s self-consciousness is the source of all knowledge.”23 Because the Triune God is a revelatory God who possesses archetypal knowledge of himself and all creation, it is possible for humanity to have a common and united ectypal knowledge of God and creation. As Sutanto explains, “The world is intelligible and rational because a rational Creator is behind it, and the world is accessible to the human being because they are part of a larger organic whole.”24 Similarly, Cornelius Van Til wrote: “God has adapted the objects to the subjects of knowledge; that the laws of our minds and the laws of the facts come into fruitful contact with one another is due to God’s creative work and to God’s providence, by which all things are maintained in their existence and in their operation in relation to one another.”25 Of course, neo-Calvinists’ mere insistence upon sola scriptura, the absoluteness of truth, and the real correspondence of subjects and objects does not eliminate the challenge of interpretative pluralism. No tradition can escape this challenge, but neo-Calvinists do have theological resources and tools to explain and embrace such diversity. A Reformed doctrine of sin and its noetic effects along with a Reformed anthropology emphasizing the Creator-creature distinction and the inherent diversity that exists among those made in the image of the Triune God suggest that of course human beings will be fallible, finite, and varied in their apprehension of truth. Yet, neo-Calvinists view this not simply as a problem but as an opportunity to delve more deeply into communal fellowship and the richness of truth and its multiple perspectives, all ultimately held together in the mind of the infinite and Triune God. As Vern Poythress explains in his advocacy for a “symphonic theology”: The use of a multiplicity of perspectives does not constitute a denial of the absoluteness of truth. Rather, it constitutes a recognition of the richness of truth, and it builds on the fact that human beings are limited. Our knowledge of the truth is partial. We know the truth, but not all of the truth. . . . We are enabled to learn what others know, partly by seeing things from their perspective. Again, we may use the analogy of a precious jewel. The jewel has many facets. . . . The facets are all present objectively, as is the jewel as a whole. But not all facets of the jewel may be seen equally well through only one facet. Likewise, not all aspects of the truth can be seen equally well through one perspective.26 With these safeguards and tools protecting against relativism and embracing multiperspectival diversity, a neo-Calvinist understanding of creation, culture, and catholicity resonates with a central—if not the central—theme in World Christianity. Appreciation for plurality and diversity in dependent conjunction with authentic Christian unity is a

Herman Bavinck, The Certainty of Faith (Ontario: Paideia Press, 1980), 19. Rudy Phen, “Organic Revelation in the Theology of Herman Bavinck,” Verbum Christi: Jurnal Teologi Reformed Injili 5, no. 1 (April 2018): 69. 24 Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck and Thomas Reid on Perception and Knowing God,” Harvard Theological Review 111, no. 1 (2018): 128–9. 25 Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, ed. William Edgar, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 122. 26 Vern Poythress, Symphonic Theology (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1987), 45–6. 22 23

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shared value in both the neo-Calvinist tradition and the study of World Christianity as evidenced by the words of Herman Bavinck and Lamin Sanneh. In “The Catholicity of the Christian Church,” Bavinck wrote: [N]o matter how harmful the ongoing divisions have been for the unity of the church and doctrine, the consequences to Christianity itself have not been unqualifiedly negative. They testify to the vitality of the Christian faith, to its power in a people, a power that still moves thousands. The richness, the many-sidedness, the pluriformity of the Christian faith, has in this way become evident.27 In this same spirit, Lamin Sanneh writes in Whose Religion Is Christianity?: Christianity is not intrinsically a religion of cultural uniformity . . . in its historical expansion it has demonstrated that empirically by reflecting the tremendous diversity and dynamism of the peoples of the world. Christian pluralism is not just a matter of regrettable doctrinal splits and ecclesiastical fragmentation, but rather of variety and diversity within each church tradition. . . . Seen from the perspective of the river rising no higher than its source, this situation is not a failure of the religion but the triumph of its translatability.28

d. Neo-Calvinism Semper Reformanda Neo-Calvinism is not to be viewed as a Western Reformed tradition giving its authoritative approval and affirmation of World Christianity like a paternalistic pat on the head. Rather, the best of neo-Calvinism seeks continual reformation by simultaneously learning from the study of World Christianity even while supporting it. Timothy Tennent is right “that the theological reflections of the Majority World church need to be heard as a part of the normal course of theological study in the West.”29 Neo-Calvinists who fail to learn from the global church demonstrate infidelity rather than faithfulness to their tradition.30 Built into Bavinck’s catholicity was an implicit dependence upon Christian traditions outside of the Reformed tradition. For Bavinck, Calvinism was not the whole truth or the only truth,31 nor did it claim to be.32 He wrote: Calvinism, though laying claim to being the purest religion, and to having most thoroughly purified Christianity of all Romish admixture, has never pretended to be the only true Christian religion. . . . [I]t has never denied the catholicity of Christianity. Calvinism is a specific and the richest and most beautiful form of Christianity, but it is not coextensive with Christianity.33

Herman Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” Calvin Theological Journal 27 (1992): 249–50. 28 Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 130. 29 Timothy Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 15. 30 Eglinton, “Planting Tulips in the Rainforest,” 284. 31 George Harinck, “Calvinism Isn’t the Only Truth: Herman Bavinck’s Impressions of the USA,” in The Sesquicentennial of Dutch Immigration, ed. Larry J. Wagenaar and Robert P. Swierenga (Holland: The Joint Archives of Holland, Hope College, 1998), 151–60. 32 Herman Bavinck, “Common Grace,” trans. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, Calvin Theological Journal 24, no. 1 (April 1989): 39. 33 Bavinck, “The Future of Calvinism,” 23–4. 27

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At their best, neo-Calvinists actively seek out all that they might learn from others in the expansive development of World Christianity, celebrating the diversity of God’s people and their gifts: “And all those nations—each in accordance with its own distinct national character—bring into the new Jerusalem all they have received from God in the way of glory and honor (Rev. 21:24, 26).”34 Neo-Calvinists agree that “the full meaning of Scripture will emerge only as Christians throughout history and around the world read and respond to it together.”35 Neo-Calvinists should be eager to commune, fellowship, and be nourished by the whole church in the whole world: The first task of the catholic dogmatician is to commune, to live in fellowship with the generations of the saints. . . . The task of theology, then, fulfills the command that the church be one body. The one body drinks deeply from the depths of every other age, tribe, nation and tongue not for the sake of creating structures of authority but in order to read the scriptures in community.36

III. ENGAGING WORLD CHRISTIANITY Rather than being an imitation and expansion of Western Christendom, the Christianity that presently exists in the world today could be characterized as “a culturally plural and geographically polycentric religion clustered around a number of new metropolitan loci in the non-European world, from Seoul to São Paulo” with “the majority of its rapidly growing number of adherents [finding] the post-Enlightenment questions that preoccupied the churches of the North and West to be remote from their pressing everyday concerns of life and death, sickness and healing, justice and poverty.”37 As Harvie Conn observed decades ago: “The agenda is no longer largely a metaphysical one supplied by Western philosophy. We are no longer primarily interested in purely ontological or epistemological topics, in questions of formal theological encyclopedia.”38 Conn does not denigrate these past topics and questions that have occupied much of Christian theologizing but insists that the urgent and pressing matters faced and raised by the non-Western church today demand their own specific theological responses. Thus the question that must be asked is: “Can and will neo-Calvinism practically engage with the themes, concerns, and issues presented by the phenomenon and study of World Christianity?”

a. Neo-Calvinism at Work in the World Such a question may seem daunting, for the themes, concerns, and issues of World Christianity are numerous and increasing. To name some prominent themes, World Christianity demands theological responses to mass migration and refugee crises, the histories of colonialism, slavery, and racialization, local, national, and international political questions such as church and state relations, matters of injustice and human Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, 720. William Dyrness and Oscar García-Johnson, Theology Without Borders (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 66. 36 Brock and Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism,” 315. 37 Stanley, Christianity in the Twentieth Century, 4. 38 Harvie Conn, Eternal Word and Changing Worlds (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1984), 211. 34 35

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rights, the complexities of multiple and marginal national, ethnic, cultural, and religious identities and belongings, missionary discourse concerning integral and holistic mission and theologies of liberation, questions about the indigenization, inculturation, or contextualization of the gospel, ecumenical discourse, the problem of global poverty, the global reality of religious and cultural plurality, the rise of globalization and nationalism, cries for environmental justice, and the rise of Pentecostalism and renewalist theologies in the majority world. While the neo-Calvinist tradition surely cannot boast a fully formed theology addressing the numerous topics raised by World Christianity, neo-Calvinism can and has been engaging with many of them. In this volume, Michael Goheen discusses neo-Calvinism and missiology, Alexander Massad discusses neo-Calvinism and the religions, David Koyzis discusses neo-Calvinism and political theology, and Vincent Bacote discusses neo-Calvinism and race. Another contributor to this volume, Matthew Kaemingk, has helpfully edited Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World, which features chapters by various thinkers around the world applying neo-Calvinist thought to subjects such as language diversity in Scotland, euthanasia in the Netherlands, religious pluralism in Indonesia, a theology of work in New York City, the political economy in Brazil, workers’ rights in China, modern political ideologies in the West, populism and violent power politics in the Philippines, public and political activism in the United States, art and aesthetics in Japan, racism and sexism in South Africa, and critical race theory.39 One might also mention Wang Yi, pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, Sun Yi, a former professor of philosophy at Beijing’s Renmin University of China and elder of Beijing Shouwang Church, and Yu Jie, a writer, democratic activist, and former Beijing house church leader, all of whom have utilized neo-Calvinist concepts, such as sphere sovereignty and the cultural mandate, within their own situations as native Chinese Christians responding to the Chinese Communist Party.40 Thus, neo-Calvinism has already begun to make progress and inroads for the good of its own tradition and also the global church, even as it can and should find further development across the many contexts of World Christianity.

b. Neo-Calvinist Theology of Religions Neo-Calvinism has a developed theology of religions that can and should be included within “World Christianity” as a field of study. Perhaps the most recent and distinctively neo-Calvinist theology of religions has come from Daniel Strange, who draws from Cornelius Van Til, Hendrik Kraemer, Herman Bavinck, J. H. Bavinck, and Mark Kreitzer to make the following case: From the presupposition of an epistemologically authoritative biblical revelation, nonChristian religions are sovereignly directed, variegated and dynamic, collective human idolatrous responses to divine revelation behind which stand deceiving demonic

Matthew Kaemingk (ed.), Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021). 40 See Chloë Starr, “Wang Yi and the 95 Theses of the Chinese Reformed Church,” Religions 7, no. 12 (December 2016): 142–6, Alexander Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology in Urban China Today,” International Journal of Public Theology 8, no. 2 (May 2014): 158–75, and Alexander Chow, Chinese Public Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 173. 39

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forces. Being antithetically against yet parasitically dependent upon the truth of the Christian worldview, non-Christian religions are “subversively fulfilled” in the gospel of Jesus Christ.41 Strange’s theology of religions begins with neo-Calvinist theological building blocks, such as a revelational epistemology, the Creator-creature distinction, the imago Dei, the antithesis, and common grace. From these he makes the case that all humans, whether Christian or not, have received divine revelation of the one, true God who made them in his image as religious creatures knowing their responsibility to worship him. When humanity fell, refusing to acknowledge God’s lordship, they did not cease to be religious creatures, but their worship was misdirected as they trusted false gods, sought counterfeit salvations, and wrongly responded to God’s revelation. Thus, an antithesis between God’s people and God’s enemies was born, as well as God’s evil-restraining common grace by which history could advance toward redemption as these two diametrically opposed, yet ever-religious peoples coexisted in the meantime. Then, Strange explains, the proliferation of peoples and cultures at Babel concurrently led to the proliferation of multiple idolatrous religions at odds with the one true religion of God’s covenant people. Following J. H. Bavinck’s exposition of Rom. 1:18-25, Strange views all non-Christian religions as idolatrously exchanging the truth about God for a lie, worshiping and serving the creature over the Creator.42 Framing non-Christian religions as idolatrous responses to divine revelation that can be subversively fulfilled by the good news of Jesus, Strange acknowledges both the discontinuity (antithesis) and the continuity (parasitic dependence) of non-Christian religions with the truth of Christianity. Such a neo-Calvinist theology of religions upholds the exclusivity of Christ as the only way to the Father along with humanity’s responsibility before their revelatory God. But even while pointing out the error and sin of non-Christian religiosity, Strange does not understand such sin to be mere rejection of truth. His framework of idolatry demands compassion for people worshiping false gods and seeking faulty salvations as they are deceived by demonic forces and the counterfeits that distract them from true and real satisfaction. Highlighting the parasitic dependence of such counterfeits on the truth helpfully provides a point of contact to help people see the good that has been twisted in the minds and hearts of those who worship alternative gods. In this way, subversive fulfillment through the gospel of Jesus highlights the beauty of the gospel as more than just the truth that sinners must accept, but the better and more fulfilling truth that sinners have not realized they needed. It humanizes those who are not united with Christ by viewing them as image bearers who both know and do not know God and who are running to and running away from him at the same time.43 Not only is this neo-Calvinist theology of religions relevant to the discussions of missiology, cultural contextualization, and religious identity and belonging in a pluralistic world, but it also supports and aligns itself with some key concepts celebrated in World Christianity. Strange’s utilization of general revelation, the antithesis, and common grace allow him to give an account of non-Christians both knowing and not knowing God, both running to and running away from him, which finds much resonance with Andrew Walls’

Daniel Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 42. J. H. Bavinck, “Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith,” in The J.H. Bavinck Reader, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 240–8. 43 Daniel Strange, “Never Say ‘the Phones Are Quiet,’” Themelios 44, no. 2 (August 2019): 216. 41 42

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understanding that there is always a measure of continuity (indigenizing principle) and a measure of discontinuity (pilgrim principle) that people can find between their Christian faith and their diverse cultures, backgrounds, desires, and orientations.44 Strange’s insistence on humanity’s possession of God’s general and historical revelation also finds resonance with the work of Kwame Bediako, who insisted that the God revealed in Christ has always been present to all people, rather than simply exported by missionaries into new situations that were previously devoid of God’s presence and activity.45 Admittedly—if one accepts the limited, but helpful categories of pluralist, inclusivist, and exclusivist theologies of religion—this exclusivist, neo-Calvinistic theology of religions may find itself at odds with the many advocates of inclusivist or pluralist theologies of religion in the vast field of World Christianity studies. However, even if it is a minority voice, it is not a voice to be ignored in the development of World Christianity studies, especially insofar as it offers an exclusivist position that is still able to view those who are not Christians with compassion, understanding, and empathy as genuinely religious worshipers seeking salvation and fulfillment.

c. Neo-Calvinist Theology of Liberation Another area in which neo-Calvinism is less developed, but holds much promise for further theological development in the service of World Christianity, is in the theology of liberation. In the wake of Western colonial history and as our rapidly globalizing world cries out for responses to its increasing awareness of global poverty and the various forms of systemic oppression and injustice in the world, the study of World Christianity is right to give its attention to the emergence, influence, and concerns of liberation theology. While one could debate what liberation theology is and whether there is or could be such a thing as a neo-Calvinistic liberation theology,46 perhaps a more helpful question is whether neo-Calvinism might legitimately be considered as a theology of liberation. Out of respect for the ethos of liberation theology, it must be acknowledged that neo-Calvinism in and of itself as a mere theological tradition, divorced from a concrete ecclesial context committed to faithful Christian praxis, cannot be considered a theology of liberation.47 As Leonardo and Clodovis Boff explain, “Liberation theology is the theology of a liberation Church—a Church with a preferential option for solidarity with the poor” and “the theology of liberation is reflection on the life of the Christian community from a standpoint of its contribution to liberation.”48 Neo-Calvinism can be considered a theology of liberation only insofar as neo-Calvinist-influenced Christians and churches engage in the actual work of liberation. Still, what neo-Calvinism can provide for Christians and churches is a theological vision to inspire liberative praxis. While neo-Calvinism may not be considered a full-fledged liberation theology, it has the potential to be a theology of liberation, particularly if the

Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 3–15. Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), 226. 46 See Allan Boesak, Black and Reformed (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1984), 87. 47 “Behind liberation theology are Christian communities, religious groups, and peoples, who are becoming increasingly conscious that the oppression and neglect from which they suffer are incompatible with their faith in Jesus Christ. . . . These concrete, real-life movements are what give this theology its distinctive character; in liberation theology, faith and life are inseparable.” Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), xix. 48 Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Liberation Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986), 9, 13. 44 45

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heart and “message of liberation theology can be reduced to the purpose of Jesus Christ’s ministry as articulated in the Gospel of John: ‘I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly’ (10:10).”49 While Kuyper may have affirmed the preferential option for the poor,50 what makes neo-Calvinism a possible candidate for a theology of liberation is its scope and commitment to honor Christ’s lordship over every square inch of creation. Interestingly, Nicholas Wolterstorff’s 1981 Kuyper lecture identified liberation theology and neo-Calvinism as “two of the most penetrating contemporary articulations of world-formative Christianity” because, he believed, both contain “a penetrating analysis of our contemporary social world combined with a comprehensive Christian vision of history and society.”51 Wolterstorff was able to make this comparison because out of their redemptive-historical understanding of God’s dealings with the world and people’s responsibility in it, neo-Calvinists have not hesitated to comment on modern society and critique its ills.52 Neo-Calvinism rejects individualistic expressions of Christianity that resist corporate and collective responsibility for the pathologies of society.53 Eschewing dualistic doctrines of creation that elevate soul and spirit above body and matter in such a way that denies the goodness of God’s material creation and downplays human vocations, neo-Calvinism rather insists upon a cosmic Christ who came to bring about new creation by the holistic, liberating reign of his kingdom, already inaugurated, though not yet consummated: Christ did not come just to restore the religio-ethical life of man and to leave all the rest of life undisturbed, as if the rest of life had not been corrupted by sin and had no need of restoration. . . . Christ has also a message for home and society, for art and science. . . . [I]f the kingdom is not of, it is certainly in this world, and is intended for it. The word of God which comes to us in Christ is a word of liberation and restoration for the whole man, for his understanding and his will, for his body and his soul.54 Admittedly, this is not a full-fledged liberation theology or perhaps even a full-fledged theology of liberation, especially if one accepts the commonly discussed link between much of liberation theology and Marxist ideology. However, at the very least, one can discern within neo-Calvinism a liberative spirit capable of contributing to important discussions within World Christianity concerning the gospel and justice.

Miguel De La Torre, Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 42. 50 “When rich and poor stand opposed to each other, Jesus never takes his place with the wealthier, but always stands with the poorer. . . . [T]he Christ, and also just as much his disciples after him as the prophets before him, invariably took sides against those who were powerful and living in luxury, and for the suffering and oppressed.” Abraham Kuyper, Christianity and the Class Struggle, trans. Dirk Jellema (Grand Rapids: Piet Hein, 1950), 27–8, 50. 51 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 43. 52 See Abraham Kuyper, The Problem of Poverty, ed. James Skillen (Sioux Center: Dordt College Press, 2011); Herman Bavinck, Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 53 “By virtue of God’s good order for creation, human life is integrated into a coherent web of familial, social, political, economic, academic, cultic, and other relationships. Such an understanding of our humanity is the biblically animated antidote to . . . every form of racial ideology, ethnic arrogance, and national superiority complex. . . . We are responsible to God and responsible for his other creatures, accountable to our Maker for his cosmos.” Gordon Spykman, Reformational Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 247, 251. 54 Bavinck, “Common Grace,” 61–2. 49

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IV. CONCLUSION Summarily, neo-Calvinism, while having much to learn and glean from the phenomenon and study of World Christianity, should also be viewed as a tradition that can not only constructively support World Christianity but practically engage with it in significant ways. There is much to explore and many more exchanges to be had, but the future is bright and promising for the relationship between neo-Calvinism and World Christianity as both, at their best, seek “to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:15-16).

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There are no pristine Christian traditions. While Christian traditions are often wellintended expressions of fidelity to God, those who develop and refine the attempts to coherently convey the Christian faith are imperfect people who are themselves on paths of sanctification and transformation. Put differently, the lingering effects of depravity ensure that even the most stalwart have feet of clay and mental/intellectual cracks and fissures. No matter how insightful the figure and no matter how helpful the tradition, deficiencies and imperfections await all who dive below the shimmering surface. There are good reasons for us to take the plunge into traditions such as neo-Calvinism, but we cannot expect that we are in the most pure and clear waters. The deeper we dive the more we discover the waters are murky or potentially toxic. This is perhaps especially true when discussing the topic of neo-Calvinism and race. While the brilliance of Abraham Kuyper may attract and invite us into this tradition, once we have taken the plunge into the waters, we discover there are elements, indeed contaminants, that at least distress and at most devastate us when we face what is there. Once we face this reality, we then arrive at the place of decision where we choose whether to stay in the water or exit the pool. This chapter is an example of staying in the pool and discerning how to be clear and truthful about the impurities in the water and how to pursue a water treatment strategy that makes an imperfect tradition a little less so. Before going further, an important clarification. While Kuyper is the focus here, neo-Calvinism cannot be reduced to him. His presence (and prominence) in neo-Calvinism is an example of the fact that traditions can be comprised of much more than the thought of one person and that criticisms may be aimed at a person or aspect of a tradition while refraining from putting the entirety of a tradition on trial. In addition, what follows can be regarded broadly as part of a project of stewarding the legacy of neo-Calvinism and more narrowly as part of a project I labeled as “neo-Kuyperianism.”1 This is an important distinction because some use the label “Kuyperian” instead of neo-Calvinist and because it helps us assess the overall tradition without reducing it to the gifts and liabilities of one person. Indeed, Herman Bavinck did not share Kuyper’s views on race and was aware of the great and necessary challenge that had to be addressed if a place like the United States was to avoid great division and hostility across races.2 While what follows fits “neo-Kuyperian” pursuits, it is ultimately part of the larger stewardship of the neo-Calvinist legacy.

Vincent Bacote, The Spirit in Public Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 154–6. See James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 247–9.

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Given the nature of this topic, this is no mere academic exercise. The topic of race has direct impact on human experience. The genuinely visceral experiences and effects of race make it impossible to address in the formal, detached manner often associated with scholarly discourse. It is not a deficiency to acknowledge this truth, nor does it mean the topic cannot be addressed without fairness. Specifically, here it means that neither Abraham Kuyper nor the topic of race can be treated without the recognition that the prospects for human flourishing for all persons are involved. It also means that any effort to bring improvements to the tradition cannot be done in a way that ignores the prospects for the pursuit of a better world with better possibilities for those who have encountered the clouds and rains of racism. This is no admission of an inability to assess Kuyper on race with integrity but instead the aspiration to pursue with truthfulness a neo-Kuyperian approach to race while being aware that the stakes for human flourishing are as real as life itself. Indeed, this is an opportunity to take a strategy that Kuyper himself recommended. He said our task is not to copy the past, as if Calvinism were a petrifaction. but to go back to the living root of the Calvinist plant, to clean and to water it, and so to cause it to bud and to blossom once more, now fully in accordance with our actual life in these modern times, and with the demands of the times to come.3 The times long ago demanded a better approach to race. In keeping with his metaphor, we must clean the plant, pruning away the weed-like roots and shoots and providing water filtered of contaminants of racial or ethnic preference. But first, we must face the truth about Kuyper and race.

I. FACING ABRAHAM KUYPER’S WORDS ON RACE To contend with Abraham Kuyper on the question of race, it is first important to present several direct quotes. I begin with Lectures on Calvinism. In the first of Kuyper’s six lectures presented at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1898, he presents a theory of human cultural and social development. He states: In China it can be asserted with equal right that Confucianism has produced a form of its own for life in a given circle, and with the Mongolian race that form of life rests upon a theory of its own. But what has China done for humanity in general, and for the steady development of our race? Even so far as the waters of its life were clear, they formed nothing but an isolated lake. Almost the same remark applies to the high development which was once the boast of India and to the state of things in Mexico and Peru in the days of Montezuma and the Incas. In all these regions the people attained a high degree of development, but stopped there, and, remaining isolated, in no way proved a benefit to humanity at large. This applies more strongly still to the life of the colored races on the coast and in the interior of Africa—a far lower form of existence, reminding us not even of a lake but rather of pools and marshes.4 Kuyper is very clear here that he regards those on the African continent as far behind and indeed “lower” in civilization than other people groups. Two pages later, he reveals more:

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 171. Ibid., 32.

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From the high-lands of Asia our human race came down in groups, and these in turn have been divided into races and nations; and in entire conformity to the prophetic blessing of Noah the children of Shem and of Japheth have been the sole bearers of the development of the race. No impulse for any higher life has ever gone forth from the third group.5 Here Kuyper cites the so-called “Curse of Ham” in Genesis 9 as part of the justification for his argument that those of African descent have not contributed anything to the development of society. It is ironic that Kuyper proceeds to make an argument that the best developments in society have occurred because of intermarriage (“commingling of blood” is Kuyper’s phrasing), yet he omits Africans as potential contributors to this genetic cross-pollination. In an article that contrasts the views of Groen van Prinsterer and Kuyper on race, D. Th. Kuiper observes: The peculiarity of his cultural theory of the development of mankind is that it attributes superiority to no single race but rather to the results of intermingling of races and nations. One might say that in a sense Kuyper rejects Darwin’s theory of natural selection in favor of Mendel’s genetic theory. But although he applauds the intermingling of races in principle, in practice he excludes one group. . . . Thus he crossed a materialistic theory of selection by commingling of blood with an idealistic theory of election. It is not difficult for us to see that Kuyper’s interpretation of the text about the curse of Noah was faulty, that it should really be understood in the context of a polemic between Israel and the Canaanites. And we are tempted to ask impertinent questions. Why did not Kuyper plead for the intermingling of blacks and whites in order to test his theory? And did he reckon with the possibility that his theory could be falsified by the conversion of blacks to the teachings of Calvin?6 Kuiper poses questions important to consider not just about Kuyper’s perspective but also our own as we pursue refinement and revision of this tradition. Kuyper makes another observation about historical development in his third lecture. He states: The historic development of a people shows, as a matter of course, in what other ways authority is bestowed. . . . In a word it may assume a variety of forms, because there is an endless difference in the development of nations. A form of government like your own could not exist one day in China. Even now, people in Russia are unfit for any form of constitutional government. And among the Kaffirs and Hottentots of Africa, even a government, such as exists in Russia, would be wholly inconceivable. All this is determined and appointed by God, through the hidden counsel of His providence.7 While it is not only African peoples and nations in view, Kuyper’s low regard remains explicit. Moreover, Kuyper invokes the doctrine of providence as a theological justification

Ibid., 35. D. Th. Kuiper, “Groen and Kuyper on the Racial Issue,” in Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of His Life and Work, ed. Cornelis van der Kooi and Jan de Bruijn, VU Studies in Protestant History 3 (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1999), 69–81 (79–80). 7 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 84. 5 6

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for his evaluation. Here it is important to observe that the use of the doctrine does not validate the clearly negative value judgments made in tandem with a recognition of significant differences in the level of sociocultural and sociopolitical development among people, though such strong assertions are far from atypical in Kuyper’s discourse on many matters. In the final lecture, Kuyper makes the statement that cast me into the waves of crisis. These words come as Kuyper contrasts the doctrine of election with the theory of evolution. He writes: The problem concerns the fundamental question: Whence are the differences? Why is not all alike? Whence is it that one thing exists in one state, another in another? There is no life without differentiation, and no differentiation without inequality. The perception of difference the very source of our human consciousness, the causative principles of all that exists and grows and develops, in short the mainspring of all life and thought. . . . To put it concretely, if you were a plant you would rather be a rose than mushroom; if insect, butterfly rather than spider; if bird, eagle rather than owl; if a higher vertebrate, lion rather than hyena; and again, being man, richer than poor, talented rather than dull-minded, of the Aryan race rather than Hottentot or Kaffir. Between all these there is differentiation, wide differentiation.8 While Kuyper makes these statements as part of a significant question, the very clear value judgments made here about ethnic groups again convey what Kuyper regarded as obvious and came across to me (and to others) as an explicitly racist perspective. This caused a crisis for me because it was like discovering that a figure you admire regards you as a lower form of humanity.9 As I have stated: “I will never forget where I was and what went on in my mind when confronted with these words. How could someone who was, on the one hand, so devoted to articulating the wonder of God’s pluriform creation, affirm accounts of racial diversity that led to claims of inferiority and threat?”10 For certain, the elevation of a particular group of Europeans and the diminution of particular groups of Africans reflect a view far from uncommon in Kuyper’s era. Of this perspective reflected in the preceding quotes (and others to follow), James Bratt observes, “The only explanation for such a reversal was Kuyper’s full-blown subscription to contemporary European race theory, to which he added a dollop of biblical imagery. The theory postulated first a stark hierarchy of fixed qualities, with the ‘Aryan race’ on top and the ‘Negro’ at the very bottom. It also interpreted history as a unified evolutionary development.”11

Ibid., 195–6. As I considered my aspirations for doctoral work with Kuyper at the center, I was vexed as I wondered whether I would face criticism for featuring and commending his work. I not only had to come to terms with the fact that my own scholarly pursuits seemed in tension with what Kuyper seemed to believe about people of my ethnicity but also the prospect of critique from scholars who had no use for Kuyper due to his racism. This personal crisis forced me to become a critical thinker who asked whether Kuyper’s views on race were woven into the aspects of the doctrines of common grace and pneumatology that were the basis for my project in public theology. My conclusion was that the particular dimensions of common grace in my project were not tethered to Kuyper’s racist views of human development and not at all connected to his pneumatology. This crisis was an unanticipated benefit for my development as a scholar. See “Gifts from Father Abraham,” Comment 22 (April 2004). 10 Vincent Bacote, “Kuyper and Race,” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures, ed. Jessica R. Joustra and Robert J. Joustra (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022), 148. 11 James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 293–4. 8 9

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In addition to the Princeton lectures, we find similar remarks from Kuyper elsewhere. In James Eglinton’s article on Kuyper’s assessment of African Americans in Varia Americana, Eglinton quotes Kuyper as follows: Is it now not understandable that the workman of the Aryan race compares favorably against the dark shadow that continues to rest on the negro population? Although it is still doubtless true that now, some eminent men have come forth from negro circles, and that more than one of the normal negroes has come to a nobler mind. As for the majority, though, the negro population lacks skill and pride and character, and it is not least through the contrast with this abhorrent self-degradation that the white workman, out of self-respect, is prompted to act more nobly and to occupy a better social position.12 Though here there are positive observations, the overall summation is resonant with Kuyper’s low view of persons of African descent. We see a succession of negative comments in Common Grace, particularly the third volume. What follows are several examples of some necessarily long quotes that convey Kuyper’s consistently negative assessment of Africans: If the institution of government is an act of God’s grace and an important part of his common grace, it is obvious that a people is punished with a bad government and blessed with a good one. As the people is, so will its government be in principle as well. If, as is the case among many African tribes, there is no respect for human life among the people themselves, even to the extent of practicing cannibalism, and if they murder indiscriminately among themselves and with other tribes, it is quite understandable that their heads and rulers should have no respect for the lives of their subjects.13 Again, At the same time, we not infrequently find among non-Christian people a family life that displays an unmistakably elevated character, even when it lacks Christian identity. . . . We therefore cannot conclude that all that is non-Christian is bad and that all that come under Christian baptism is absolutely good. . . . The aforementioned historical element is apparent to the degree that common grace impacts the nations to a greater or to a lesser degree. This is evidenced by the simple observation that even outside the sphere of Christian religion there are nations that achieve a more advanced cultural development, while other nations in fact remain less developed. The differences more or less follow ethnic and geographical lines. African cultures generally have not achieved a higher level of cultural development except with rare exceptions. That African continent is home to most human misery. . . . There is no trace there of any higher development, be it in the realm of politics, of science, or of art. And no matter how high a level the Zulus may stand among their neighboring cultures, their understanding of life nevertheless, in our view barely deserves to be called human life.14 James Eglinton, “Varia America and Race: Kuyper as Antagonist and Protagonist,” Journal of Reformed Theology 11 (2017): 75. 13 Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and J. Daryl Charles, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed. M. van der Mas, vol. 3 (Bellingham, Washington: Lexham Press, 2020), 64. 14 Kuyper, Common Grace, 350. 12

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And it is true that the less the human creation works, the more it descends to the level of an animal. Conversely, the more—and the more unceasingly—it works, the more it rises to a higher level of existence. Empirical evidence supports this. The African, who stands on a comparatively lower level in terms of technical development, works when he has to and the for the rest of the time lays down inside or in front of his hut with nothing to do. The more cultured European, by contrast, knows no other life than the life of work, and the North American even surpasses him in being steadily busy.15 The ravages of superstition, including those that still appear among us only sporadically, continue to dominate all of life in Africa. It would be difficult to identify one system of law worthy of that name which order and the rule of law might be introduced among those tribes. No one has ever heard of the freedoms and rights of people having replaced the arbitrariness of tribal chieftains. Women endure lives of denigration and humiliation. There is no concept of nurturing children in any refined sense. People lack every capacity to resist the ravaging power of nature. . . . Care for the poor and needy does not exist there. . . . The notions of honesty and fidelity appear at a very low level. Human life has no value and is not respected. And the most scandalous sensuality dominates there without shame and without restraint.16 The curse is observable everywhere, yet it was restrained in its operation, and thanks to that preserving operation of common grace, this world can still display to us so much beauty. Nevertheless, beauty no longer adorns the earth in its fullness; rather, we discover alongside each other the beautiful, the ordinary, and the ugly. A lion is beautiful, a calf is ordinary, a rat is ugly. The same holds true for the plant kingdom. The cedar enthralls us with beauty, the willow strikes us as ordinary, and the thistle repels us. Arabian culture attracts with its beautiful form, we Dutch are rather ordinary in our appearance, while the Khoi arouse in us a sense of aversion.17 Common grace is one of the most important, indeed foundational aspects of Kuyper’s theology and vital for a theological rationale for public engagement. It is the terrain for our pursuit of stewardship and development of our life in creation. The quotes above make it impossible to escape the tension between this theological basis for development and a view of those of African descent as deficient in reception or stewardship of common grace. As noted in the preceding Bratt quote, Kuyper’s confident observations convey the racist conclusions characteristic of European race theory. If we face the words in these quotes at full strength, we cannot avoid the presence of racism in Kuyper. This is a good place to raise a related question: Does Kuyper’s racism easily lead to the conclusion that he is the father of apartheid in South Africa?

II. ABRAHAM KUYPER AND APARTHEID It may be easy to assume that Abraham Kuyper is the “father of apartheid” because of a superficial resemblance between Kuyper’s idea of sphere sovereignty and the lines of legal (in 1948) separation/discrimination in South Africa between those of European origin,

Ibid., 503. Ibid., 565. 17 Ibid., 590. An alternative translation of the final phrase is “the Hottentot fills you with loathing,” (see James D. Bratt, “Abraham Kuyper: Puritan, Victorian, Modern,” in van der Kooi and de Bruijn, Kuyper Reconsidered, 56). 15 16

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Indian and Eastern origin, African origin, and colored (mixed race) persons. In part this is because some regarded the ideas for separation of whites and Blacks (with whites as superior in society) as supported by Kuyperian ideas. Though Kuyper himself never went to South Africa and while the Netherlands did not have similar demographic circumstances to South Africa, some who argued for racial superiority and supported official apartheid policy believed they were in the line of Kuyper’s thought. George Harinck’s discussion of F. G. Badenhorst’s dissertation provides a good example. According to Harinck, Badenhorst had argued that there was a ranking in the development of races, and the first-ranking white Christianized race therefore had a responsibility over the non-Christian races of lower rank. This included upholding the differences between the races. Interracial marriage, for example, was a violation of this order. The ideas developed in Badenhorst’s dissertation were an expansion of Kuyper’s ideas on common grace and on pluriformity, and were welcomed at the VU University as a congenial development of the thoughts of its founding father. . . . The reason for this naive attitude was an insufficient awareness of the evil of racism—the anti-Semitism of the National Socialist state “next door” had yet to be recognised among the Dutch—but also the fact that points of view like Badenhorst’s were mainstream in Reformed circles in the Netherlands and South Africa at that time. He could rely on Dutch anthropologists in stating his views on race. And in the 1940s H.G. Stoker of Potchefstroom University—who was befriended by the Vrije Universiteit Professors Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven—applied Kuyper’s notion of sphere sovereignty to race and people.18 While Badenhorst and others saw themselves in Kuyperian lineage, Kuyper himself never espoused a social and legal order like apartheid. What we do find in Kuyper is the language found in documents like “The South African Crisis” that offers affirmation to hierarchy and social order that become the policy of apartheid. Kuyper writes, The Boers are not sentimental but men of practical genius. They understood that the Hottentots and the Bantus were an inferior race and that to put them on an equal footing with whites, in their families, in society, and in politics, would be simple folly. They have understood, further, the danger of mixed liaisons, and to save their sons from this scourge they have inculcated the idea that carnal intercourse with Kaffir women is incest. On the other hand, they have treated their slaves as good children. They have habituated them to work and have softened their manners. In South Africa you will find no one more skillful in dealing with the natives than a Boer patriarch.19 While there is no argument here from sphere sovereignty nor any other theological justification, Kuyper’s language conveys approval of the Boers actions toward Africans. This is part of the reason Craig Bartholomew concludes Kuyper is at least partially responsible for the connection of his thought with apartheid. He also indicates both that Kuyper could not be aware of what would develop in South Africa and that Kuyper’s

George Harinck, “Wipe Out Lines of Division (Not Distinctions): Bennie Keet, Neo-Calvinism and the Struggle against Apartheid,” Journal of Reformed Theology 11 (2017): 86–7. 19 Abraham Kuyper, “The South African Crisis,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 339. 18

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“view of the state as being there to provide public justice for all citizens runs entirely counter to the sort of oppression the majority experienced under apartheid.”20 It is important to state that Kuyper’s larger purpose in his article included a strategy to elevate the Boers in contrast to the British. D. Th. Kuiper gives us a clear sense of the context: He took his stand in favor of the Boers in opposition to the British and the South African blacks at a time when Dutch society was fundamentally pluralized. As spiritual and political leader of a Calvinist minority, he was offered a rare opportunity to unite the public behind an issue that involved both nationalist sentiment and civil religion when South African President Paul Kruger met Queen Wilhelmina on the occasion of Kuyper’s investiture as prime minister . . . Kuyper would not criticize in a genealogical and ideological sense cognate Boers for their subordination of blacks, especially not when the former were threatened by the British.21 We can argue then that Kuyper is not the father of apartheid while also stating that his nationalistic interests led to statements that some interpreted as encouragement for a paternalistic approach to Africans that later became the horrific policy and practice of apartheid. He did not invent apartheid, but he did not say enough to ensure his legacy was not misused in this terrible manner.

III. RESOURCES WITHIN KUYPER? How does a neo-Calvinist strategy move forward on the question of race? How do students of Kuyper clean and water the plant so that it becomes more beautiful and more beneficial to the life and mission of the church in God’s world? First, it is important to look within Kuyper’s own works to see what may already be present that establishes a positive trajectory. Beginning with Lectures on Calvinism, there are already theological claims that challenge racism. In the first lecture Kuyper speaks of fundamental human equality: If Calvinism places our entire human life immediately before God, then it follows that all men or women, rich or poor, weak or strong, dull or talented, as creatures of God, and as lost sinners, have no claim whatsoever to lord over one another, and that we stand as equals before God, and consequently equal as man to man. Hence we cannot recognize any distinction among men, save such as has been imposed by God himself, in that He gave one authority over the other, or enriched one with more talents than the other, in order that the man of more talents should serve the man with less, and in him serve his God. Hence Calvinism condemns not merely all open slavery and systems of caste, but also all covert slavery of woman and of the poor; it is opposed to all hierarchy among men; it tolerates no aristocracy save such as is able, either in person or in family, by the grace of God, to exhibit superiority of character or talent, and to show that it does not claim this superiority for self-aggrandizement or ambitious pride, but for the sake of spending it in the service of God.22

Craig Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017), 156. 21 Kuiper, “Groen and Kuyper on the Racial Issue,” 80–1. 22 Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 27. 20

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There is clear language of equality here, though there is the qualification about hierarchy (yet it is only to be used in serving God and for the benefit of others). We cannot escape the irony that the same chapter includes language that denigrates Africans in terms of development according to a faulty interpretation of Genesis 9. Despite this tension in Kuyper, the important element here is his clear language about fundamental equality that has implications for the pursuit of a more just society. Elsewhere in the Princeton lectures we find language of multiformity that also presents an important element for refining and revising the legacy of Kuyper: if the churches are formed by the union of confessors, and are united only in the way of confederation, then the differences of climate and of nation, of historical past, and of disposition of mind come in to exercise a widely variegating influence, and multiformity in ecclesiastical matters must be the result. A result, therefore, of very far-reaching importance, because it annihilates the absolute character of every visible church, and places them all side by side, as differing in degrees of purity, but always remaining in some way or other a manifestation of one holy and catholic Church of Christ in Heaven.23 The same idea is found in Kuyper’s Principles of Sacred Theology: It had already been seen that the truth of God was too rich and the great salvation in Christ too aboundingly precious, by reason of the divine character exhibited in both, for them to be able to reach their full expression in one human form. And though several nations assimilated one and the same truth and the selfsame salvation, the disposition of the several groups of people was too many-sided not to adopt them in different ways, and to reproduce them in several manners. The claim could never be surrendered that each one for himself could accept and confess the truth in the way which it appeared most accurate to him and satisfied his needs most fully. . . . She (the church universal) also was not able to make the full content of Divine truth shine forth in a single deduction.24 Both quotes reveal Kuyper was aware that truth could come from the breadth of the church, which taken at full strength means that our path to greater truth in theology and ethical practice requires the contributions of Christians from all backgrounds. We need a healthy multicultural perspectivalism. Kuyper likely did not have “in mind” contributions from African Christians (or those of African descent in the United States or elsewhere) when he wrote this, but an honest recognition of this truth must set aside the racist condescension we see above. A larger vision of the possibilities for contributions from all members of the global church can readily follow from Kuyper’s understanding of multiformity rather than an interpretation of this diversity subject to ethnocentric and racist lenses that diminish those deemed less civilized and thus less able to offer their gifts to the life and mission of the church. Further, in contrast to Kuyper’s negative language about Africans when speaking of development that unfolds due to common grace, this emphasis on multiformity invites us to look again in the past and present for the ways God has been glorified in places Kuyper regarded with disdain. Additionally, we are prompted to cast our gaze broader and wider, seeking input from family members who have been

Ibid., 63–4. Abraham Kuyper, Sacred Theology (Wilmington: Associated Publishers and Authors, n.d.), 295.

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either unseen or passed over. Within Kuyper’s language of equality and multiformity lie some of the foundation for contending with the challenge of race. Now we turn to the contributions of some contemporary neo-Calvinists.

IV. NEO-CALVINIST REFINEMENTS To move forward, neo-Calvinists have the resources to answer Allan Beosak’s call to “not accept the sinful realities of the world. Rather we are called to challenge, to shape, to subvert, and to humanize history until it conforms to the norm of the kingdom of God.”25 This requires imaginative and creative engagement in the cleaning and watering of the Kuyperian variant of the Calvinist plant. Before sharing my own suggestions, I first consider Richard Mouw’s work. Like many, Mouw was drawn to Kuyper because of his theology of public engagement that was a vibrant expression of faithful Reformed and Protestant Christianity. Aware of the imperfections of Kuyper, he is convinced that a neoCalvinist project is far from a quixotic quest. Regarding race, Mouw is catalyzed by Russel Botman and Allan Boesak to pursue the greater fruit of Kuyper’s view of multiformity. Boesak’s emphasis on the African idea of the wholeness of life prompts Mouw to direct our attention to how different cultural contexts characterize God’s creation. “The ongoing discussion of ‘Christ and Culture’ has to expand and tackle the important contemporary agenda of ‘Christ and the Cultures.’”26 The trajectories pursued here are important not only to discern “where” we might discover the ways God is at work throughout the world but also for the development of the legacies of Kuyper (and Bavinck and other neo-Calvinists) in cultural domains outside those of Dutch heritage. Even though it is true that there is greater attention to Kuyper and Bavinck in recent decades (including considerable attention in Brazil), there remains the need for the tradition to become a global theological enterprise. This greater expansion, exposure, and ownership of the tradition could create opportunities for theological-ethical cross-pollination of insights and ideas, particularly those focused on the common good and human flourishing. This would be a greater expression and realization of the fruits of the multiformity Kuyper espoused. Jeff Liou is a second neo-Calvinist whose work invites us to a better approach to race.27 Liou directs our attention to the benefits of a dialogue between Critical Race Theory28 and Reformed theology. While here I focus on a single recent book chapter, his earlier work is also helpful and informative.29 Liou points out that CRT and Reformed theology have a common critique of modern Western liberalism and a mutual affirmation of cultural wealth, followed by a proposed antidote to the tendency toward abstraction in the Reformed tradition. He observes:

Allan Boesak, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation, and the Calvinist Tradition (New York: Orbis Books, 1984), 88. 26 Richard J. Mouw, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 83–4. 27 What follows is found in Jeff Liou, “Critical Race Theory, Campus Culture, and the Reformed Tradition,” in Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World, ed. Matthew Kaemingk (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), 237–49. 28 Liou provides a sketch of Critical Race Theory and a range of Christian responses. See Liou, “Critical Race Theory,” 239–45. 29 See Jeff Liou, “Taking Up #blacklivesmatter: A Neo-Kuyperian Engagement with Critical Race Theory,” Journal of Reformed Theology 11 (2017): 99–120. 25

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Students of Reformed theology can easily be tempted to sit back in self-satisfied intellectual analysis of racism and CRT. They can comfortably affirm aspects of CRT by using the theological doctrines of general revelation and common grace. Or they can comfortably dismiss CRT by asserting a clean antithesis between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of Marx. If Reformed Christians are going to deeply engage racist systems and structures with their minds and hearts, their ideas and institutions, they are going to need to go beyond abstract theological or sociological reflection. They need to actively listen to and learn from the embodied struggles of their brothers and sisters on the underside of these systems of power. . . . They are going to need to actively engage in Reformed action themselves.30 One of the ironies of the work of Kuyper and other neo-Calvinists is that a creationattentive approach to theology and ethics has often been subject to the critique of being more a matter of ideas than practice. For certain, Kuyper was not merely a man of ideas and was involved in many concrete actions, but even he fell prey to this abstract tendency in his failure to follow the implications of his own theology to its fullest extent. His theological ideas were unable to ascend to their potential heights due to the gravitational pull of his cultural and philosophical reasoning that kept him stuck to the ground of racism. Liou pushes us to give attention to the particularity of the culture and experiences of those who have experienced (directly and indirectly) the effects of racial oppression. Those who read about Kuyper cannot help but notice that he saw himself as a figure of liberty and liberation; neo-Calvinists can heed Liou and give attention to the broad scope of racial and ethnic oppression with the aim of pursuing a society characterized by greater justice (attention to both harms done and opportunities for flourishing). This emphasis on attention also requires learning an important lesson from Kuyper’s failures on race; we must look at ourselves and with the help of others try very hard to discern our blind spots and challenges with the gravitational pull of cultural norms. We cannot move as far as we would hope if we only look for flaws outside our own selves and contexts. Finally, I include part of a recent reflection on Kuyper and race in order to address challenges in contemporary evangelicalism. After noting that my pneumatological emphasis now includes both common and particular grace (what I refer to as the “double compulsion of the Spirit”) as important for the pursuit of social transformation, I write: The double compulsion of the Spirit can provide the vision to recognize that we Christians have a perpetual opportunity to seek after the construction of forms of society where there is consistent commitment to the flourishing of all—true common good. This common good in society is not pursued as an act of fanciful imagination but as creative projects always subject to refinement and revision; some fruit of common grace may cross into the heavenly city but not all. Specifically, this is the building of systems of politics, public health, economic life, education, the arts and more. . . . What this means in terms of racism is not only asking whether white supremacy is baked into systems but considering which ones can be improved and which ones need replacement or radical transformation. Because this work is the work made possible by common grace, it is important to emphasize that this is a great human task.31

Liou, “Critical Race Theory,” 249. Vincent Bacote, Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News: In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 49. 30 31

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Empowered by particular grace on the terrain of common grace, neo-Calvinists can do the careful and challenging work of cleaning and watering the plant of a tradition that has brought good but also pain. To move forward requires not an exile of Kuyper, but a responsible stewardship of the tradition where we learn from his failures and strive toward a neo-Calvinism that better glorifies God in this world, especially on race.

Chapter 36

Continental Philosophy CHRISTOPHER WATKIN

What has Amsterdam to do with Paris, Dooyeweerd with Derrida, or neo-Calvinism with Continental thought? As I hope to show in this chapter, much in every way. They respond to similar problems and make some of the same assumptions, though their starting points and conclusions are irreconcilable. In short, there is both antithesis and common ground between the neo-Calvinists and the Continental thinkers, and neither one of these realities cancels out the other. The neo-Calvinists and the French high theorists were, of course, not contemporary.1 Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault, whom I will be discussing in this chapter, all wrote their first major works in the 1960s, a good four decades after the death of Bavinck and Kuyper. Dooyeweerd and Van Til both lived long enough to see the Continental thinkers growing in renown, but they wrote their own major works before this emergence, do not engage explicitly with Continental thinkers, and died before their heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. So what can we mean by the “and” in “Neo-Calvinism and Continental Philosophy”? What principles should guide our attempt to bring these two distant groups of thinkers into conversation? We could let the neo-Calvinists tell us why the Continental thinkers are wrong (i.e., tell us all the ways in which they are not neo-Calvinists), or we could let the Continental thinkers tell us why neo-Calvinism is mistaken. But then everyone would leave the encounter with just those ideas they brought, and no one would be any the wiser. Moreover, that would not be a very neo-Calvinist way to proceed. I propose three principles to guide this perhaps unlikely encounter. First, audi alteram partem: listen to the other side. My aim is to have neo-Calvinism and Continental thought listen to each other, rather than just speak at each other. This does not mean they will be made to agree—far from it—but that we should understand why both groups of thinkers are persuaded by their own arguments, whether or not we ourselves find those same arguments persuasive. Second, everyone gets to set their own table. In other words, Continental thinkers should explain themselves in their own categories, and neo-Calvinists should get to do the same. Third, I want to give full rein both to the antithesis and to the common ground between neo-Calvinism and Continental thought.2 An approach that is all antithesis and no common grace treats the two like oil and water: utterly immiscible. An approach that is all common grace and no antithesis treats them There is not a little discussion about the beginning and extent of “Continental” thought. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus on the post-structuralist generation of French thinkers that emerged in the mid-to-late 1960s, with whom the moniker “Continental” is frequently associated. 2 I take the double emphasis on antithesis and common ground here to be a particular neo-Calvinist twist on Paul’s approach to Greek wisdom and Jewish signs in 1 Cor. 1. 1

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like Coke and Pepsi: two ways of saying the same thing. Both approaches fail to do justice to either group of thinkers.

I. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS Before we delve into the nitty-gritty of the complex relationships between the neoCalvinists and the Continental thinkers, let me set the scene with some more impressionistic reflections. I was a Christian before I began studying the Continental thinkers, but I was a scholar of Continental thought before I discovered the neo-Calvinists. My reception of neo-Calvinism was therefore partly inflected by the grand questions with which the Continental thinkers wrestle, questions such as meaning, power, and the possibilities of historical change. From my first readings in neo-Calvinism I was drawn to these Dutch thinkers at least in part because they struck me as dealing with similar issues to the philosophers I was studying, in four principal ways. First, neither group assumed that we can get rid of God while everything else (justice, beauty, truth, predication, etc.) carries on merrily just as it did within a Christian frame. Second, they shared a transcendental disposition, interrogating the presuppositions and conditions of possibility subtending the intellectual moves we make and the conclusions we draw. They were, in Van Til’s term, being “epistemologically self-conscious.”3 Third, they both showed an unwillingness to atomize knowledge. This is one of the insights of structuralist thought and the “epistemes” of Foucault: that our concepts are related to each other and cannot be excised and transplanted individually across cultures or across time. It is also what Van Til intends when he argues that “[t]he meaning of words derives from the total system of which they form a part.”4 Fourth, both the neo-Calvinists and the Continental thinkers rejected the view that there is a neutral, “zero degree” or merely factual, context-independent account of the world. All empirical observation is always already laden with theory. In Derrida’s much misunderstood phrase, “there is nothing outside the text”5 or, as Van Til again was fond of saying, there are no “brute facts,” and “[d]escription itself is explanation.”6 Turning now to pursue some affinities and differences with a little more rigor, I propose to present three vignettes: three encounters between Continental and neo-Calvinist thought that illustrate both some common concerns and some very different approaches to addressing those concerns. In each case there is a problem or tension that the Continental thinkers and the neo-Calvinists both intuit, but that they approach in different ways.

II. DERRIDA, VAN TIL, AND PREDICATION For Derrida, language is violent. It does violence to the singularity of things. Granted, if we say of a long wooden object with a graphite tip, “this is a pencil,” it hardly seems to be the crime of the century. But what about declaring, in particular contexts, “she is a Jew” Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (Nutley: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1977), 5. 4 Cornelius Van Til, The Intellectual Challenge of the Gospel (London: Tyndale Press, 1950; reprint, Phillipsburg: Lewis J. Grotenhuis, 1953), 9. 5 See my explanation of this phrase in Jacques Derrida (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishers, 2017), 6–11. 6 Van Til, Common Grace and The Gospel, 3. 3

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or “he is black” or, indeed, “they are evangelicals.” If someone introduces an individual or a group to us in those terms, we are unable to refrain from making some assumptions about these people on some level, whether we want to or not. But these same people might have been categorized quite differently. Perhaps my Jewish friend is also a cat lover and a photographer; perhaps my black friend is also a Rhodes scholar and a French speaker. Whatever categorizations we select, we are always privileging some features over others, making value judgments about what is important, and reducing some unique thing or person to a set of repeatable (Derrida would say “iterable”) categories. Sometimes the violence and prejudice of these categories is very apparent (“the shooter was a black man”), and sometimes it is only subtle. So should we then remain silent? No: refusing to say anything is not an option, because this too is violent. If you come to me parched and beg, “Please can I have a cup of water,” it is hardly the height of neighborliness for me to reply, “well, I can’t possibly presume to know with absolute certainty how to interpret your request, so for fear of getting it wrong and misrepresenting you, I must virtuously determine to do nothing.” This, then, is the problem of predication: language conjures with broad, often abstract categories, but things and people are singular, unique, and not exhausted by the categories they are put into. So what does Derrida do about the problem of predication? In Of Grammatology he fully recognizes that he needs to use categories, but he tries to do so with a lightness of touch, disrupting and destabilizing those categories even as he uses them. His way of treating them with this lightness of touch goes by many names, one of which is to write “under erasure,”7 which means to acknowledge (1) that no concept is ever fully present to consciousness in the way the metaphysical tradition thought it was (“being,” for example, is not a simple, self-contained idea that can stand on its own two feet without a history), and concomitantly (2) every concept is haunted by neighboring ideas, irreducibly inhabited by remnants of other notions it does not name. Writing under erasure is often indicated with a line or cross through a word (e.g., being), and it is a way of acknowledging both the metaphysics of presence and the violence of silence, both the need to speak of that which impels speech and stands at its origin, and the impossibility of speaking truly. In Derrida’s own characteristically sinuous language, “The value of the transcendental arche [origin] must make its necessity felt before letting itself be erased. The concept of the arche-trace must comply with both that necessity and that erasure.”8 Writing under erasure is, as he indicates here, a way of speaking and writing not in terms of presences but of traces. The trace introduces a hesitancy, a provisionality into predication: we always mean when we speak, but we never quite mean the fullness of what we say. Categories are not utterly absent from the things about which they are predicated, but they do not exhaust or even adequately render those things either. A trace—like a footprint in the mud or a plate of crumbs on the table—is the sign of an absent presence, something not utterly absent but not exhaustively present either. Putting concepts under erasure is “the sort of contortion and contention that discourse is obliged to undergo” if it is to avoid both naïve empiricism and naïve critiques of experience.9 Like Derrida, Van Til also senses the difficulty of predication. He frames the problem in the language of the opposition between a naked, formal reason on the one hand, and

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 60. Ibid., 61. 9 Ibid., 60. 7 8

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brute facts on the other, summing up in his own language a dilemma similar to Derrida’s. Brute facts are uninflected by any human interpretation or divine creation: a zero-degree reality to which we would have direct access. For Van Til, there is no such thing. Such a putatively brute reality could never be compassed within the categories of our thought, and to attempt to do so would be to descend into a Kantian “subjectivism.”10 So “modern man” finds himself caught on the horns of a dilemma: subsume reality under thought and embrace subjectivism, or refuse to force brute reality into the Procrustean bed of formal rationality, and embrace irrationalism.11 Kantian modernity, in fact, is forced to embrace both subjectivism (in the phenomena) and irrationalism (in the noumena) simultaneously. Van Til’s “subjectivism” here is like Derrida’s violent predication, and his “irrationality” like his violent refusal to speak at all. For Van Til, as for Derrida, the general categories of rational thought necessarily “subtract from the uniqueness of individuals,”12 and predication has to “demolish the individuality of each fact as it becomes known.”13 But if Van Til’s diagnosis of the problems of predication is similar to Derrida’s, his prognosis is radically different. For Van Til, it all hinges on the relationship between the universal and the particular, and specifically on how that relationship is uniquely understood in biblical trinitarianism. It is the Trinity that allows Van Til to exceed the two-speed Derridean gearbox of singular things and abstract, universal categories. First of all, the God of the Bible is not a universal abstract force but a personal God: YHWH. But this same, particular God is also absolute: the Creator of heaven and earth, the Alpha and the Omega, “I am who I am.” This is what he calls the “absolute personality” of God.14 There is no room in this absolute personality view of God for the neutral “view from nowhere” of universal categories. God’s view is not a view from nowhere but, so to speak, the view from heaven, or perhaps the view from the perspective of upholding the universe moment by moment (Heb. 1:3). But neither is God’s view just one more violent attempt at dressing singular beings in off-the-peg and ill-fitting universal categories. Van Til puts it this way: God’s interpretation of the facts precedes the facts. God can speak truly of reality, for the very good reason that his very words bring into being and sustain that reality. For Van Til there are no brute facts, not because every fact carries our interpretation, but because every fact is a created fact, interpreted by the God who “saw that it was good.”15 Whereas Derrida assumes that all knowers and acts of predication must be qualitatively equivalent: all partial, prejudiced, and violent, Van Til makes room for one knower alone, one predicator, who is sui generis: God is not just one more knower among others. Derrida is operating, Van Til would argue, on a “monistic assumption,” violently denying the existence of the Creator/creature distinction and the importance of God’s absolute personality for the problem of predication. In this way, the biblical deity can split the horns of Derrida’s dilemma: neither a violent totalization of singular entities nor a mute, impotent silence.

Cornelius Van Til, Christian-Theistic Evidences (Phillipsburg: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1978), 38. 11 Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008) 146–7. 12 Van Til, Christian-Theistic Evidences, 79. 13 Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 141. 14 Ibid., 33–4. 15 Ibid., 64–5. 10

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It is important to note that Van Til is not suggesting that all our own predications are underwritten by God in a way that puts them on a level with his own divine logos. We can still labor under prejudices; we can still mistakenly or maliciously ascribe particular things or people to categories that do violence to their individuality, whether through ignorant finitude or pernicious sin. Whereas Derrida and Van Til both identify predication as a problem, Van Til approaches Derrida’s categories of violent predication and mute silence from left field, with a position that Derrida does not see coming: the equal ultimacy of universality and particularity in the Trinity. Whereas Derrida disrupts predication and puts it under erasure, Van Til recontextualizes it, painting a bigger picture which encompasses the violence of which Derrida is rightly worried but reframes it within God’s divine logos. Van Til’s position both confronts and completes what Derrida is seeking to achieve.

III. DELEUZE, DOOYEWEERD, AND DIFFERENCE Our second vignette brings together Gilles Deleuze and Herman Dooyeweerd’s interpretations of Plato. For the Deleuze of Difference and Repetition (1968) and The Logic of Sense (1969), Plato is the arch antagonist. For Plato, knowledge is reduced to discerning the eternal forms in which the ephemeral, imperfect objects of this sensory world participate. And if the forms are indeed eternal, there can be nothing new: no new knowledge, just a glorified bingo game of “unforgetting” (anamnesis) in which we passively match the things of this world to the perfect forms they imperfectly represent. This, for Deleuze, is deadly: it stifles creativity and serves to shore up the existing political and social systems. In fact, he argues, Plato’s theory of the forms was concocted with the express aim of bolstering political conservatism: it is an elaborate philosophical police operation. What must be policed are simulacra, those false copies of the eternal forms that deceive us into thinking that they participate in realities to which, in fact, they bear no relation. A carpenter’s bed, for example, is a true copy of the form of a bed because one can lie on it and take one’s night’s rest. A picture of a bed by contrast, Plato helpfully reminds us in the Republic, is not a bed at all; it is a false copy, a simulacrum of a bed. What is wrong with simulacra? They are uncontrolled, untamed, unpoliced, cut asunder from any form, just like the Sophists that Plato considered a threat to the Athenian polity. So for Deleuze, Plato’s “will to eliminate simulacra or phantasms has no motivation apart from the moral.”16 Deleuze characterizes this Platonic paradigm of forms, copies, and simulacra as an “image of thought,” not something we think about but something that “determines our goals when we try to think”:17 something akin to our mental operating system. He leaves us in no doubt about his judgment of Plato’s image of thought when he baptizes it as “dogmatic.”18 In order to free knowledge from this predictable box-ticking exercise in which nothing innovative can ever be thought and where philosophy is simply the handmaiden of the political status quo, Deleuze undertakes what, after Nietzsche, he calls the “overturning” or “reversal” (renversement) of Platonism. In short, Deleuze reverses the priority of the

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 265. Ibid., xvi. 18 See ibid., 129–67. 16 17

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form and the simulacrum: “overturning Platonism means denying the primacy of original over copy, of model over image; glorifying the reign of simulacra and reflections.”19 This happens, Deleuze argues, when we realize (as Plato himself comes so, so close to doing at the end of the Sophist), that simulacra are real. We can never be sure if something is a true copy of a form, and so “the very idea of a model or privileged position is challenged and overturned.”20 Simulacra are just what there is, and “true copies” are just a particular kind of simulacra. This issues in a situation diametrically opposed to the Platonic orthodoxy. Whereas, for Plato identity always precedes and grounds all difference, for Deleuze “difference is behind everything, but behind difference there is nothing.”21 Difference is most fundamentally what there is, and identities occasionally emerge from the flux of differences. Whereas Deleuze sees epistemological history in terms of the dominance of the “dogmatic image of thought,” Dooyeweerd presents a series of historical “ground-motives.”22 Every culture (such as the culture of ancient Greece or medieval Europe) has a religious ground motive, a communally assumed “spiritual mainspring” that “governs temporal expressions and points towards the real or supposed origin of all existence,”23 determining the life and worldview of a society. For Dooyeweerd, the founding ground motive of the Western tradition is the form-matter motive that reaches all the way back to the pre-Socratic philosophers but finds its most canonical expressions in the thought of Plato and Aristotle. Like the other religious ground motives he identifies, Dooyeweerd characterizes Plato’s form-matter motive as “internally dualistic and fragmentary,”24 setting a discord at the heart of reality that “pushes one’s posture of life to opposite extremes that cannot be resolved in a true synthesis.”25 This inability to resolve the dualism leads, according to Dooyeweerd, to seeking refuge “in one of the antithetical principles within the ground-motive by giving it religious priority” while debasing and deprecating the opposite principle.26 Prioritizing the “matter motive” leads to the ancient nature religions, and prioritizing the “form motive” leads to the religion of the Olympian deities.27 The “form motive” is Dooyeweerd’s analog to what Deleuze identifies as the dogmatic image of thought. It is the religion of the Greek city-state: idealized, stable, supremely ordered, and epitomized in Apollo the lawgiver. Very interestingly, Dooyeweerd agrees with Deleuze that the form motive’s ideology of order can only prevail at the expense of the suppression of a more fundamental chaos and formlessness. For Deleuze this is the anarchy of the simulacrum, but for Dooyeweerd it is moira, the incalculable, blind, irresistible, and sinister fate to which even Zeus is subject.28 Whereas Deleuze sets the dogmatic image of thought and his own privilege of the simulacrum in strict opposition, Dooyeweerd weaves a subtler story of the relationship Ibid., 66. Ibid., 69. 21 Ibid., 57. 22 Herman Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular and Christian Options, ed. Mark Vander Vennen, Bernard Zylstra and D. F. M. Strauss, trans. John Kraay (Grand Rapids: Paideia Press, 2012), 9–11. 23 Ibid., 8. 24 Ibid., 11. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 13. 27 Ibid., 16. 28 Ibid., 18. 19 20

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between the form and matter motives. The ancient Greeks, finding that the Olympian religion was too removed from their everyday lives, clashed with their morals, and gave them no comfort in death, continued the public Apollonian cult while entertaining ancient rites of the nature religions in private. Each idolatry beckons forth and makes a space for its inverse form of worship,29 as we saw with Van Til’s characterization of Kant as embracing both subjectivism and irrationalism simultaneously. So whereas for Deleuze the problem with Platonic forms is the muffling blanket of conformity that they throw across all that is knowable, for Dooyeweerd it is the way in which they lead to an irrevocably split experience of reality and artificially privilege one side of that split over the other. Deleuze and Dooyeweerd also differ in how they address the deficiencies they see in Plato’s thought. Whereas Deleuze responds to the problem of Platonic forms by overturning and disrupting their priority over simulacra, Dooyeweerd emplots them. His account of the “scriptural ground motive” is quite strikingly different from all the other ground motives he identifies in the history of Western thought stretching from the Greeks to the Romantics. Whereas every other ground motive is structured around two irreconcilable poles, the scriptural motive alone has a threefold rhythm of creation, fall, and redemption (often abbreviated to CFR). Unlike form and matter, creation, fall, and redemption are not in dialectical tension; they are successive (and also palimpsestic) moments in an unfolding story. There is therefore no fundamental split in this scriptural ground motive (such as that between form and matter), because the Creator is “the absolute, complete, and integral origin of all things.”30 There is also no need artificially to privilege one moment of CFR over the other two (though almost every Christian denomination, ministry, or individual tends to unbalance them in some way!). Viewed from this perspective of CFR, we can see that the Platonic form-matter motif is in fact a reductive simplification and a corruption of a complex, temporalized biblical narrative. As Dooyeweerd argues, “[e]very absolutization of what is relative points at the deification of what has been created’ and ‘considers self-sufficient that which is not self-sufficient.”31 Form and matter are two decontextualized and falsely juxtaposed moments abstracted from the unfolding story and from the subtle perspective of God’s dealings with his world. In view of the scriptural ground motive, Dooyeweerd’s creation-fall-redemption response to the split in the Platonic ground motive is different from Deleuze’s overturning of Platonism in at least one very important respect. Whereas Deleuze continues to operate within the terms of the form-simulacrum duality, disrupting only the priority and relationship between them, Dooyeweerd’s CFR ground motive disrupts the very binary structure that sets the horizon of Plato’s and Deleuze’s thought alike. We can see a similarity with Derrida and Van Til here. For Derrida predication itself is always violent, but for Van Til it is not predication per se that is a problem, but the attempt to bridge brute facts and abstract truths once they have been sundered from each other and dichotomized by “rational man.” Furthermore, whereas Deleuze seeks refuge from the form in the simulacrum, Dooyeweerd would see this as just exchanging one idolatry for another, jumping from

Ibid., 19. Ibid., 28. 31 Ibid., 13. 29 30

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the frying pan of the Olympian deities into the fire of the ancient nature religions. In this sense, Dooyeweerd’s critique of Platonism might be thought to be more complete than that of Deleuze: he is alive to the deadening, dogmatic predictability not only of the worship of form and being but also of a devotion to flux and becoming.

IV. FOUCAULT, BAVINCK, AND TOTALITY For the third and final vignette we turn to the question of history and to a comparison between the thought of Michel Foucault and Herman Bavinck. Foucault and Bavinck both set themselves in opposition to the view of history propounded by G. W. F. Hegel and by Karl Marx who hangs onto Hegel’s historical coattails even as he tries to offer a materialistic version of Hegelian history. Hegel, it is safe to say, is a historian with whom Foucault does not feel an overwhelming affinity. His grand, all-encompassing historical schema seeks to explain the whole of human history in terms of the progressive self-realization of “spirit” or “mind” (Geist). What this means, concretely, is that everything from ancient Egypt through Judaism and Christianity, medieval and modern Europe, and (surprise surprise!) culminating in the unsurpassed glory of nineteenth-century Germany, is one unbroken account of slow but inexorable progress toward one single goal. Everything is part of the story; nothing is left out. This story progresses by a series of “sublations,” in which ideas that were previously opposed to each other are shown to be compatible if they are considered as parts of a larger reality.32 One classic example is the binary of “being” and “nonbeing” sublated into “becoming.” The history of civilizations, for Hegel, is a story of just such sublations as these, with every negative development recuperated into something positive, and every civilization superior to those that preceded it. For Foucault this is far too neat and far too hubristic, and so he determines to oppose Hegel’s total, progressive view of history. He does so by understanding history as a juxtaposition of periods (in some of his earlier books he calls them “epistemes”) that have no necessary progress from one to the next. Rather than looking for the continuities between different periods, Foucault scrupulously interrogates the discontinuities and ruptures, a little like the paradigm shifts in science from, say, the Newtonian to the Einsteinian universe. So, for example, the thing we call “madness” is, historically speaking, not one thing at all, but a series of very different things in the medieval, renaissance, and modern periods, occupying different spaces in society, being associated with different theological and anthropological traits, and bearing different moral significance, to the point where the single term “madness” becomes more of a hindrance than a help, papering over myriad differences and incompatibilities. This view of history so frustrated the Marxist Sartre that he complained that Foucault “replaces cinema with a slide show, movement with a succession of immobile structures.”33 Bavinck, too, distances himself from a Hegelian view of history, and some of his reasons are close to Foucault’s. What Foucault characterizes as Hegel and Marx’s closedness and totality, Bavinck calls their mechanical view: Hegel’s organicism and Marx’s economism are controlled by an inexorable, unstoppable process of cause and effect. Like Foucault,

This is what is often called Hegel’s dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, terms for which he shows no fondness. 33 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Jean-Paul Sartre répond,” L’arc 30 (1966): 87. CW’s translation. 32

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Bavinck pours scorn on totalizing history’s pretension to furnish a complete or authoritative picture of historical progress: ‘It may at best point out that the history of a people here or there has followed a certain course,” but “[i]t can never furnish the proof that this course is really necessarily and universally prescribed to all peoples.”34 Like Foucault he rejects the logical idealism of Hegel’s view of history, looking down on the details of history through the glasses of aprioristic speculation from a theoretically comfortable 30,000 feet.35 Bavinck is quite willing to agree with Hegel that there is change in history, but quite unwilling to characterize that change as an inexorable progress,36 and quite unwilling to concede that, from studying history alone, we can discern its meaning.37 Unlike Foucault however, Bavinck’s problem is not with teleology per se, but with the mechanistic process that is thought to govern it, and the root of this critique is in Hegel and Marx’s monism, a position not echoed by Foucault. Foucault, in fact, shares Hegel and Marx’s monism: there is nothing outside history that shapes history. Given this shared commitment, the only way Foucault can disrupt Hegelian totality by fracturing history from the inside, but Bavinck has different tools in his toolbox. Three features of Bavinck’s thought are salient in his response to Hegel: the Creator-creature distinction, the incarnation, and unity in diversity. It is the Creator-creature distinction which allows Bavinck to break the mechanistic, predetermined stranglehold of history. What Foucault seeks to achieve with the rupture of closure that fractures the smooth progress of history into a series of juxtaposed snapshots, Bavinck accomplishes not by denouncing teleology but by opening history to the radical otherness of God. Whereas, for Hegel’s monism, everything is interwoven in an organic whole, for Bavinck there is one exception to organicity: God. Creation is organic, but God is Triune.38 It is this divine otherness that allows Bavinck to shatter the iron manacles of the mechanistic process: “Precisely because Christianity rests on revelation, it has a content which, while not in conflict with reason, yet greatly transcends reason,”39 and “[a] worldview founded on a Trinitarian doctrine of God must move towards a non-mechanical interpretation of the universe.”40 This revelation introduces a nonlinearity into history, a paradox that is anything but the tame and predictable outworking of predetermined conditions because “the fixed, unalterable will of God to rescue the world and save sinners” is “a will at variance with well-nigh the whole appearance of things.”41 Second, Bavinck opposes the Hegelian account of history to the material historicity of Christ. Hegel, convinced that “philosophy is religion transposed into concepts by thinkers,”42 sought to thresh away ephemeral and contingent church dogmas from the

Herman Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, ed. Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2018), 157. 35 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, vol. 1, ed. John Bolt, and John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 517. 36 Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 156. 37 Ibid., 158. 38 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2, ed. John Bolt and John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 111. 39 Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 53. 40 James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Bavinck’s Organic Motif (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2012), 67. 41 Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 53. 42 Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, trans. and ed. Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory C. Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 52. 34

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pure ideas that—he fancied—underlay them, but in so doing he lost their articulation with each other, stripping the living flesh from its bones and leaving himself only with a disjointed skeletal heap.43 But for Bavinck there is no pure concept of God as opposed to the living God himself, no insubstantial idea of God without time, place, or material. It is Christ who is the image of the invisible God and makes him known; to penetrate beyond the particularity of Christ is to pass by the true God.44 Christianity for Bavinck is no metanarrative; it is a meso-narrative, unfolding itself through (and as) the dust and disorder of first-century Palestine.45 The third way in which Bavinck opposes Hegel’s view of history is with an insistence on both unity and diversity. In the Triune God we have “a unity that does not destroy but rather maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not come at the expense of unity, but rather unfolds its riches.”46 Foucault and Hegel both oppose unity to diversity, sitting on opposing sides of the binary. But Bavinck folds them both into a more complex relationship, replacing dualism with paradox in a way that makes unity no longer a threat to diversity, nor diversity a wrecking ball on a collision course with unity. Does this marrying of unity and diversity in God mean that, after all, Bavinck is adopting Hegel’s idea of synthesis in which all the loose ends of the universe are neatly tied up in the end, all the negativity sublated into the final, glorious outcome? It does not. As James Eglinton succinctly explains,47 the Hegelian dialectic rests on a reconciliation of thesis and antithesis by finding their common ground, but there is no common ground between sin and grace for Bavinck. His paradigm is not one of sublation but of grace restoring nature,48 not simply a return to the original thesis (the New Jerusalem is not simply a retrieval of the Garden of Eden), but a sifting that finally expels sin in the very moment that it restores and transfigures everything that sin marred (see Rev. 20:1). As we saw with both Van Til and Dooyeweerd, once again Bavinck takes Hegel to task not for saying too much or going too far, but for stopping short and only telling half the story. Hegelian totality (like the Platonic form motive and the impossibility of perfect predication) are dismembered elements of a broader biblical picture: Hegelianism is “a view of history that has been derived from Christianity but that also is disconnected from Christianity.”49 Foucault can only resist Hegel’s system by breaking it. Bavinck, by contrast, seeks to restore it (like grace restoring nature), reintegrating it into a Trinitarian system of which it is a partial and lopsided representation.

V. CONCLUSION Despite the singular nature of each of these vignettes, we can nevertheless cautiously discern some common traits. Time and again, the Continental thinkers seek to resist an oppressive or constraining structure by disrupting it from the inside: writing under erasure,

Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, 517–18. The image of Hegel as a philosopher reduced to skeletal abstraction is Bavinck’s. See Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 52. 44 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, 379. 45 Bavinck, Christian Worldview, 115. 46 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, 2.436. 47 Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 41. 48 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, vol. 3, ed. John Bolt and John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 577. 49 Bavinck, Christian Worldview, 120. 43

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overturning Platonism, or insisting on a history of ruptures. However, while this does somewhat destabilize the problematic categories it seeks to resist, it still operates within the horizon they set, taking its reference from them. The approach of the neo-Calvinists, by contrast, is consistently different. Rather than erasing, fracturing, or overturning the thought forms that they deem problematic, they reassemble them differently, showing them to be partial fragments of a more complex, more adequate scriptural whole from which they have been wrenched. Disruption and reassemblage: we might think of these as the characteristic gestures of Continental and neo-Calvinist thought, respectively. One consequence of this difference is that the neo-Calvinists are not subject to the same circumspection that characterizes the Continental thinkers: they can still speak unblushingly of adequate meaning, of truth, and of totality. Nevertheless, and crucially, their approach also means that they do not do this at the expense of the quite proper epistemic humility that the Continental thinkers evince. The Bible predisposes us to think that, in the age between the fall of Adam and the descent of the New Jerusalem, our predication will not be perfect, our assertions about what is true will not always infallibly tally with ultimate reality, and our interpretation of individual historical events will not be total and unimpeachable. But this, for the neo-Calvinists, is never the last word. Because there is a God who speaks the world into being, whose word is truth, and who sees the end from the beginning, holding the heart of every worldly ruler in the palm of his hand. We may not understand or perceive all he is doing in the world, and we may not have arrived at a full and perfect interpretation of his word, but that was never the game plan. Where the Continental thinkers can only sit among the ruins of time, truth, and totality, the neo-Calvinists can trust in the one who promises to make all things new.

Chapter 37

Analytic Philosophy NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

My topic is the legacy of neo-Calvinism within analytic philosophy. The topic is open to being treated in a number of different ways. One might, for example, compose a survey of what has been written by analytic philosophers who identify themselves as neo-Calvinists. I judge that it would be more interesting, and also more illuminating, to personalize the topic by narrating how the ideas and emphases of neo-Calvinism have shaped my own work as an analytic philosopher. Along the way I will also take note of the work of my longtime friend and erstwhile colleague, Alvin Plantinga. He, too, is an analytic philosopher whose thought has been shaped by the tradition of neo-Calvinism. After first characterizing the neo-Calvinist tradition of Christianity as I received it, I will then describe the tradition of contemporary philosophy commonly called analytic philosophy. When I was introduced to analytic philosophy in the mid-1950s, it was dominated by a movement that, had it remained dominant, would have made it impossible for a neo-Calvinist to work within the analytic tradition—or if not impossible, would have consigned what they wrote to the fringes. That movement died a sudden death in the late 1950s and early 1960s, making the analytic tradition hospitable to those of a neo-Calvinist orientation. I will conclude by taking note of some of the ways in which my own work within the analytic tradition has been shaped by my neo-Calvinist orientation.

I. THE NEO-CALVINIST TRADITION I was inducted into the neo-Calvinist tradition of Christianity by my professors when I was a student at Calvin College in the early 1950s. Those who stood out for me were Harry Jellema and Henry Stob in the philosophy department and Henry Zylstra in the English department. It is commonly said that the “essence” of Calvinism is the doctrine of double predestination. I view that as an egregious distortion of the thought of John Calvin. But be that as it may, neither that doctrine nor any other was central in neo-Calvinism as it was presented to me and my fellow students. What was central was not doctrine but a vision of what it is to be a Christian. It is often said or assumed, by religious and nonreligious persons alike, that religion is an add-on: religious persons add on beliefs about the transcendent—God and the afterlife—to beliefs about mundane reality that they share with nonreligious persons. Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age, is an extended critique of this line of thought. If I ever thought of Christianity along those lines, I was disabused of it by my college professors.

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A concept common among German writers in Abraham Kuyper’s day was worldview (German: Weltaanschauung; Dutch: wereldbeschouwing). The Christian religion, Kuyper taught, incorporates a certain worldview; my professors sometimes adapted Kuyper’s terminology and spoke of a world-and-life view. The thought was that the Christian religion includes not only distinct views about the transcendent—which it certainly does—but also a distinct complex of views about this mundane world and this present life. We must step carefully here. It was not Kuyper’s thought, nor was it the thought of my professors, that being a Christian consists of holding certain beliefs about this mundane world and this present life in addition to beliefs about the transcendent. Kuyper was not always a careful writer, and there are passages which, read in isolation, do give the impression that it was his view that being a Christian is reducible to holding certain beliefs. There is an abundance of other passages, however, which make it decisively clear that that was not his view. The Christian life includes not only believing certain things but acting in certain ways, responding in certain ways, experiencing certain emotions, having certain hopes, cultivating certain virtues, and more besides. It’s a distinct way of life. It is the calling of each and every Christian to live that way of life—to live as a Christian in this world. Using high-flown Romantic rhetoric, Kuyper wrote: A religion confined to feeling or will is . . . unthinkable. . . . The sacred anointing of the priest of creation must reach down to his beard and to the hem of his garment. His whole being, including all his abilities and powers, must be pervaded by the sensus divinitatis.1 As to what it’s like to live as a Christian in this world, Scripture is our basic guide. The neoCalvinist tradition is not a biblicist tradition; one cannot just quote individual passages of Scripture as golden nuggets of instruction; Scripture must be interpreted. The neoCalvinist tradition is one among other traditions of comprehensive biblical interpretation. The points made in the preceding paragraphs imply that fundamental to the neo-Calvinist tradition of biblical interpretation is interpreting Scripture as a guide for living faithfully in this present world—not just as instructions for getting to heaven. What this comes to, in practice, is that God as Creator receives a good deal more emphasis in the neo-Calvinist tradition than it typically does in North American evangelicalism. Though Scripture, responsibly interpreted, is the Christian’s basic guide for how to live, it does not answer all our questions. Far from it. With Scripture responsibly interpreted as our fundamental orientation, we have to think for ourselves—think for ourselves about city zoning laws, about matters of child rearing, about reparations to African Americans, about whether to get vaccinated against Covid-19, and on and on. The Catholic tradition says that when Scripture is silent on how to act, one appeals first to natural law. John Calvin, and the tradition to which he gave birth, shares with the Catholic tradition the conviction that there is natural law. However, appealing to natural law as a guide for how to live has never had the prominence in the Calvinist tradition generally, nor in the neo-Calvinist tradition in particular, that it has had in the Catholic tradition. The reason is important. A fundamental doctrine in the Calvinist tradition generally is that of so-called total depravity. The doctrine is commonly misinterpreted. One might say of someone like

Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism (New York: Fleming H. Revell. Co., n.d.), 62. Emphasis in original.

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Hitler that he was “totally depraved,” meaning that he was corrupt through and through, that in him there was nothing good. It is not the teaching of the Calvinist tradition that we are all totally depraved in that sense—that “there is no health in us.” In an eloquent passage in the Institutes Calvin wrote: Whenever we come across these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.2 Kuyper developed Calvin’s thought in this passage with his well-known doctrine of common grace: in addition to God’s redemptive grace, there is God’s common grace. What the doctrine of so-called total depravity claims (when rightly understood) is that there is no aspect of our personhood that does not, in some way and to some degree, exhibit the effects of “the fall.” Our will does, of course; but so does our reasoning, our emotions, our affections, our habits of attention and inattention, on and on. Later in this chapter, I will highlight how this doctrine of pervasive fallenness, as one might call it, has shaped my thought in the area of philosophy of art. Back to natural law. Given its doctrine of pervasive fallenness, the Calvinist tradition is less optimistic than is the Catholic tradition that human beings, in general, will acknowledge and rightly interpret natural law. Using the image of Scripture as spectacles, Calvin argued that we need Scripture to correct our blurred apprehension of creation. It is the combination of the doctrine of pervasive fallenness with the doctrine of common grace that lies behind one of the most distinctive components of the neo-Calvinist tradition. Christians are not to go off by themselves somewhere to set up their own separate and distinct Christian society. The neo-Calvinist tradition is different, in this respect, from certain branches of the Anabaptist tradition. Rather, Christians are to participate in the social practices and institutions of their society— political, economic, educational, medical, artistic, and so on. It is there that they are to live as Christians, alongside those whose life orientation is different from theirs—Jews, Muslims, secularists, whoever—agreeing with those others on some matters, disagreeing on others. Insofar as possible, they are to live and act qua Christians within the shared social practices of their society. What this comes to in practice obviously differs a great deal from one social sphere to another. It differs for a poet from what it comes to for a businessman or woman, for a physician from what it comes to for a politician, for a banker from what it comes to for a carpenter. As for philosophy, the Christian philosopher is to participate in the social practice of philosophy alongside those of other worldviews, with the shared goal of arriving at philosophical insight and understanding. Scholarship is not a generically neutral enterprise in which we leave our worldviews at the door. We offer reasons, and we listen to reasons, with the aim of arriving at agreement, often failing in that aim. Sometimes our differing worldviews lead us to see some matters differently; often our disagreements cannot be

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), II​.ii​.​15. 2

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traced to our differing worldviews. And we agree on many things in spite of our differing worldviews. A qualification is in order. There will be some topics Christian philosophers discuss that will not be of interest to philosophers in general. Some will be of interest only to fellow theists: the nature of God, for example. Yet others will be of interest only to fellow Christians; for example, the nature of the atonement effected by Christ. There are some who would say that such discussions should be seen as philosophers stepping out of the role of philosopher and functioning as ersatz theologians. Call it what you will, “philosophy” or “theology,” neo-Calvinism does not see these two disciplines as distinct in principle from each other. What is the case is that they are distinct in practice. Usually it’s quite clear whether some discourse about God has been written by a philosopher or by a theologian. There are, of course, borderline cases. An important point remains to be made before we move on. Anybody who has spent some time in the modern university knows that there are many scholars who address only their fellow scholars within their own fields. Their scholarship is a hermetic enterprise— or would be if their university did not require them to teach courses in which the enrollment does not consist just of budding scholars in their own field. Philosophy is for philosophers, that’s the idea. Deep in the neo-Calvinist tradition is the conviction that scholarship is not just for scholars but for the well-being, the shalom, of human beings generally. There’s nothing wrong with some philosophers confining themselves to addressing only their fellow philosophers. But it is the calling of the community of philosophers as a whole, and of the community of Christian philosophers in particular, to address their fellow human beings generally, sharing with them such insight and understanding as they have gained into this awesome and mysterious world in which we find ourselves, and such insight and understanding as they have gained into those awesome and mysterious beings that we ourselves are, and how we should live in this world. It’s not accidental that a good deal of my writing has been semipopular.

II. THE TRADITION OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY It’s impossible to characterize analytic philosophy in such a way that those not acquainted with it will be able, when they come across an example, to identify it as such on the basis of the characterization. The only way to get a “feel” for it is to spend some time reading books and essays written by analytic philosophers. Let me explain why this is. In antiquity there was a Platonist philosophical tradition, consisting of a cluster of distinct doctrines, originating in Plato, handed on from one generation to the next. Today, especially among Catholic thinkers, there is the Thomistic philosophical tradition, a cluster of distinct doctrines, originating in Thomas Aquinas, handed on from one generation to the next. Call traditions like those, which consist of doctrines handed on from generation to generation, doctrinal traditions. The neo-Calvinist tradition is like the Platonic and neo-Thomist traditions in that it too is a doctrinal tradition, religious, however, rather than philosophical. Analytic philosophy emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century; now, a century later, it continues to flourish. It too is a tradition, handed on from one generation to the next. What is handed on is not a distinct cluster of doctrines, however; it is not a doctrinal tradition. There are no distinct doctrines of analytic philosophy. Suppose

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someone asks a question of the form, “What is the position of analytic philosophy on such-and-such?” No matter how “such-and-such” is specified, the question has no answer. In principle, a philosophical tradition might be characterized not by doctrines handed on from generation to generation but by enduring distinctions, concepts, emphases, questions, and the like. But that too does not characterize the analytic tradition. It’s true that analytic philosophers, following in the footsteps of Socrates, have a fondness for “What is it?” questions. “What is art?,” “What is knowledge?,” “What is the logic of science?,” and so on. But one can be an analytic philosopher and never pose any such “What is it?” questions. So, what then makes analytic philosophy a tradition? A philosopher in the analytic tradition finds their fellow analytic philosophers, both their predecessors and their contemporaries, emphasizing certain topics, drawing certain distinctions, employing certain concepts, asking certain questions, arriving at certain answers. They engage their fellows, emphasizing those same topics or explaining why other topics should be emphasized instead, drawing those same distinctions or explaining why different or additional distinctions should be drawn, employing those same concepts or explaining why different or additional concepts should be employed, asking those same questions or explaining why different or additional questions should be asked, affirming those same answers or explaining why different answers should be offered. This is what constitutes working within the analytic tradition of philosophy. Just as there are no doctrines shared by all analytic philosophers, so too there are no emphases, distinctions, concepts, or questions shared by all. The Platonic tradition, the Thomist tradition, and the neo-Calvinist tradition are like cables, unified by doctrines that continue throughout the tradition. There’s nothing that runs from end to end of the analytic tradition. Not only no doctrines but also no emphases, no distinctions, no concepts, no questions. The analytic tradition is like a mesh rather than a cable, the mesh composed of links, unified by the fact that each link in the mesh is linked to other links in the mesh, except for those at the beginning of the tradition. The standard view is that the tradition began with the German philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) and the British philosophers Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and G. E. Moore (1878–1958). The analytic tradition is also characterized by a certain style. It’s a style that’s easy to recognize but difficult to characterize. It is commonly said by analytic philosophers that what is distinctive of the analytic style is rigor of argument and clarity of writing. This reeks of self-importance. The implication is that philosophy in other traditions is not up to snuff in rigor and clarity. The feature of the analytic style of argument that others identify as rigor I would identify as follows. Analytic philosophers tend to employ a good many examples to make their points, and in their engagement with fellow philosophers, they commonly employ counterexamples. In this way they fly close to the ground, as it were. No grand flights of speculative imagination untethered to examples. To find imagination in analytic philosophy, look to the counterexamples. These are often highly inventive counterfactuals. A corollary of the fact that analytic philosophy flies close to the ground is that analytic philosophers do not construct systems. The work of a good many analytic philosophers is systematic, not at all piecemeal. But no analytic philosopher has developed anything like Kant’s system, or Hegel’s, or like that of the early twentieth-century British idealist F. H. Bradley. The feature of the characteristic analytic verbal style that others identify as clarity I would identify as a certain flatness. What I mean is that analytic philosophers are sparing

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in their use of such literary tropes as metaphor, simile, hyperbole, and so on. They prefer to speak literally. The twentieth-century French philosopher Jacques Derrida says in one place (in English translation), “there is nothing outside of the text.”3 No analytic philosopher would ever say such a thing.

III. HINDRANCES The fact that, in the analytic tradition of philosophy, there are no handed-down canonical emphases, distinctions, concepts, questions, and answers, means that analytic philosophy is wide open to being employed by someone, such as myself, who stands in the religious tradition of neo-Calvinism. It would be different if analytic philosophy were a doctrinal tradition. The doctrines of the neo-Calvinist religious tradition would then almost certainly conflict with at least some doctrines of the philosophical tradition. However, analytic philosophy, at the time of my introduction to it in the mid-1950s, was not in fact hospitable to a neo-Calvinist orientation. A movement, logical positivism, consisting of doctrines that were incompatible with neo-Calvinism, had gained prominence in the analytic tradition. Animating the logical positivist movement was the conviction that modern natural science, along with the technology that it enables, constitutes the path to human progress and that such traditional enterprises as theology and metaphysics must be left behind as backwaters. This veneration of natural science was, of course, not unique to the positivists; it was, and remains, part of the spirit of the age. What was distinctive of logical positivism was the way in which members of the movement defended their position. Theology and metaphysics are like natural science in that (for the most part) they purport to make contingent claims about reality; in that respect they are unlike mathematics, in which the claims made are necessarily true or false. But the positivists did not argue that the claims of theology and metaphysics are false whereas those of natural science are true. Nor did they argue that it was impossible to determine whether the claims of theology and metaphysics are true, whereas those of natural science are well established. They argued that the texts of theology and metaphysics make no claims. The sentences lack meaning—nothing is being claimed, nothing is being said—whereas the sentences of natural science do have meaning. What then is left for philosophers to do? The business of philosophy, said the positivists, is to analyze concepts and appraise arguments. Claims about such matters, if true, would be necessarily true. The reality philosophers deal with is the “reality” of concepts and arguments. To establish their radical thesis about meaning, the positivists needed an account of the meaning of contingently true or false sentences such that, on that account of meaning, the sentences of natural science have meaning, whereas those of theology and metaphysics do not. The positivists proposed the so-called verification criterion of meaning: a sentence has meaning just in case it says something that can, in principle, be empirically verified. Not for a moment was I tempted to sign on. My philosophical training at Calvin led me to look past the claims of the positivists concerning meaning so as to spy the worldview coming to expression with those claims. Not for a moment was I tempted

Jacques Derrica, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chaktravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976), 178. 3

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to embrace their veneration of natural science. I was encouraged in this stance by the attitude of my favorite professor at Harvard, D. C. Williams. Williams was an analytic philosopher who, resisting the positivist surge, taught and wrote classical ontology. His attitude toward positivism was: this too shall pass. And so it did. Had positivism retained the popularity it enjoyed in the mid-1950s, analytic philosophy would have been for me, a neo-Calvinist, thoroughly inhospitable. But in the late 1950s and early 1960s it died a sudden death, its demise caused not by attacks from the outside but by problems on the inside, in particular, by the inability of the positivists to explain the concept of verifiability in such a way that it would achieve the results they wanted, viz., that the sentences of natural science would prove to be verifiable, and hence to have meaning, whereas those of theology and metaphysics would prove not to be verifiable, and hence to lack meaning. What happened, roughly speaking, was this: when verifiability was explained in such a way that natural science, including its highly theoretical components, turned out to be verifiable, most of theology and metaphysics also turned out to be verifiable; and when, conversely, verifiability was explained in such a way that theology and metaphysics turned out not to be verifiable, large stretches of natural science also turned out not to be verifiable. Sentences expressing moral and aesthetic claims also posed a problem. Nobody thought that, on any plausible account of verifiability, such sentences were verifiable. Are they then without meaning? Surely not. In its heyday, positivism performed a sort of policing function, telling philosophers what could and could not be meaningfully said and declaring that the sole business of philosophy is the analysis of concepts and appraisal of arguments. Once positivism died its well-deserved death, there was no longer any such policing function within analytic philosophy. Philosophers could now say what they wanted to say. Analytic philosophy was wide open for those of us who located ourselves in the neo-Calvinist tradition.

IV. THE FLOURISHING OF PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION WITHIN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY But before we get to that, let me take note of a related but distinct development, namely, the remarkable flourishing of philosophy of religion within analytic philosophy, beginning in the late 1970s and continuing to the present day. When I was a graduate student at Harvard, there was no course in philosophy of religion, neither in the philosophy department nor anywhere else in the university. So far as I could determine, all the other Ivy League schools were like Harvard in this respect, with the exception of Princeton, where a course in philosophy of religion was being taught by an atheist. Had anyone at the time asked whether, in the future, philosophy of religion was more likely to flourish in the analytic tradition of philosophy or in the contemporary continental tradition, the answer would have been, “in the continental tradition.” That’s not how it turned out. 4

See my essay, “How Philosophical Theology Became Possible Within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy,” in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 155–68. 4

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Though there was no course in philosophy of religion at Harvard in the mid-1950s, there was a fair amount of informal talk about religious language. Given the positivist dictum that we cannot refer to and make claims about God, what then is the function of religious language? In 1955 a collection of essays appeared titled New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Anthony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre. I opened it with high expectations; here, at last, the grip of positivism would be loosened. Not so; the title is misleading. The essays were not about God but were, instead, worried reflections on what to make of God-talk, given that it was not about God. Positivists, had they read the book, would have found little to disagree with. The first real breakthrough was the publication in 1967 by Alvin Plantinga of God and Other Minds. Notice, not God-talk, but God. Now, more than fifty years later, it is almost impossible to appreciate what a bold move this was. A young philosopher stepping into the talk about God-talk and announcing a book about God. Plantinga argued compellingly that the claim of the positivists that speech about God lacks meaning was indefensible and went on from there to argue that belief in God is “rational,” by which he meant, epistemically valid. The book proved to be as influential as it was bold. Philosophers now felt free to talk about God. Philosophy of religion began to flourish within the analytic tradition, especially philosophical theology (i.e., philosophical reflections about God), the epistemology of religious belief, and discussions concerning the problem of evil. Plantinga went on to make noteworthy contributions to epistemology in general (Warrant: The Current Debate in 1993) and to the epistemology of religion in particular (Warranted Christian Belief in 2000 and Knowledge and Christian Belief in 2015).5

V. AT THE INTERSECTION OF NEO-CALVINISM WITH ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY I remarked that the flourishing of philosophy of religion within analytic philosophy was related to, but distinct from, the participation in analytic philosophy by neo-Calvinists. Neo-Calvinist philosophers will, of course, be interested in philosophy of religion— witness the career of Alvin Plantinga. A good deal of my own work has likewise been in this area, including Divine Discourse (1995), Inquiring about God (2010), The God We Worship (2015), Acting Liturgically (2018), and some of the essays collected in Practices of Belief (2010). However, it is by no means only neo-Calvinists who have contributed to the flourishing of analytic philosophy of religion; other Protestants have also contributed, as have Catholic and Orthodox philosophers. Conversely, neo-Calvinist philosophers will be interested not only in philosophy of religion but will be concerned to think as a Christian within philosophy generally. So let me now move on to highlight some of the

Plantinga is well known for holding that religious persons in general, and Christians in particular, are warranted in holding certain of their beliefs basically—that is, not holding them on the basis of arguments. One day, while reading around in the works of the Dutch neo-Calvinist theologian Herman Bavinck, it struck him that this was Bavinck’s position. It was for this reason that he famously called the position “Reformed epistemology.” I review Plantinga’s extraordinary contributions to analytic philosophy, in general, and to Christian analytic philosophy, in particular, in my essay “Then, Now, and Al,” included in Kelly James Clark and Michael Rea, eds., Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind: Essays on the Philosophy of Alvin Plantinga (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 5

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ways in which neo-Calvinism has shaped my own thinking in areas of philosophy other than the philosophy of religion.

a. Religion and Scholarship My recent publication, Religion in the University (2019), is an articulation of the neoCalvinist understanding of the relation of religion to academic learning. I do not describe it as such in the book, but that’s what it is. Let me briefly rehearse the line of thought I develop there.6 I begin by presenting Max Weber’s view concerning the place of religion in the modern university, a view that was prominent, if not, indeed, dominant, in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. What is typical of modernization, Weber argued, is the emergence of distinct spheres of human activity: the sphere of business, the art world, the sphere of scholarship, and so on. Activity within a sphere is governed by the value definitive of that sphere; activity within the sphere of business, for example, is governed by “the bottom line.” Whereas in an earlier day the religion of a person contributed to shaping their activity in business, in art, in health care, and so on, in the modern world religion is squeezed out of the differentiated social spheres. (Weber was noticeably reluctant to say that, in the modern world, religion has its own distinct social sphere; it appears to have been his view that, in the modern world, religion is confined to the private lives of individuals.) What was true, as Weber saw it, for the differentiated social spheres in general, was true, in particular, for academic learning. Religious convictions have no place in the academy. Academic learning aims at “knowledge of interrelated facts.” It aims “to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structure of cultural values.” Whenever “the man of science” allows some additional value to shape his activity, such as his religion, whenever “he introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases.”7 After presenting Weber’s line of thought, I go on to tell the story of how no one, any longer, holds this simplistic view of the academic enterprise. In the field of natural science, the groundbreaking publication was Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn granted that Weber’s picture was more or less true for “normal science,” but went on to argue that it does not describe what happens when a scientific revolution takes place. A scientific revolution does not consist of replacing a theory that no longer fits the known facts with a theory that does fit. It consists of what Kuhn called a “paradigm shift.” A paradigm shift consists of a change in how the facts are interpreted, a change in the significance ascribed to the facts. I argue that what is true of natural science is true of scholarship in general. Scholars do not just drink in the facts and try to come up with theories or generalizations that fit the facts. Academic learning is an inherently interpretive enterprise, the interpretations of Several of the essays collected in my Educating for Shalom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) are likewise articulations of the neo-Calvinist understanding of the role of religion in academic learning; in most of them I likewise do not identify it as such. However, in “On Christian Learning,” I expound what Kuyper says on the matter. An early attempt on my part to articulate a neo-Calvinist understanding of the role of religion in academic learning was Reason Within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976). 7 Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 152, 146, as cited in Religion in the University (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 19. 6

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scholars shaped, in part, by values and convictions they bring to the enterprise, especially in the humanities and social sciences. I then go on to present my understanding of the nature of religion—a thoroughly neo-Calvinist understanding. Most religions are like Christianity in that adherence does not consist just of beliefs about the transcendent which, for some reason, are added on to beliefs about the mundane, the latter shared with those who are not religious. Most religions incorporate a world-and-life view, that is, beliefs about this world and this life, along, indeed, with beliefs about the transcendent. Religions incorporate interpretations of the very same reality that scholars deal with. I conclude by articulating and defending my understanding of the role-ethic of the scholar. I call it dialogic pluralism. One enters the academy as who one is—formed as one has been formed, making no attempt to become what one cannot become, viz., The Human Being Itself. One enters as someone who possesses human nature, of course, but also as someone who exhibits the particularities of a contingent character-identity and orientation: male or female, gay or straight, Caucasian or African American, rich or poor, Christian or Buddhist. To enter the academy is to participate in an ongoing social practice together with persons of diverse character-identities who embrace different comprehensive orientations. Amidst all the variations in identities and orientations, . . . the participants share one deep goal, however, to discover the facts in certain domains of reality and to arrive at theories and interpretations that both are faithful to the facts and satisfy one’s values and judgments of significance. Truth suffused with significance is their shared goal.8 A fundamental aspect of the fact that, in spite of the diversity of character-identities and worldview orientations, scholars are engaged in a shared enterprise, is that they do not simply mount a speaker’s platform to declare how they see things. When differences arise on significant matters, they offer reasons to each other, “reasons against the position of the other person, reasons for one’s own position. . . . The goal of this interchange of reasons is to arrive at agreement on the matter at hand. One starts from dissensus and aims at consensus—living with the reality that often one does not achieve the agreement one aims at and hopes for.” And they do not just offer reasons to each other. They “also listen to reasons, listen to them with an open mind.”9

b. Political Philosophy Abraham Kuyper delivered the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1898. Kuyper’s lectures, titled Calvinism, were wide-ranging, combining a rather chauvinistic account of the contributions of Calvinism to the formation of the modern world with a systematic articulation of what Kuyper identified as a Calvinistic view of academic learning, of political authority, and of art. I was honored to be invited to deliver the Stone Lectures on the centenary of Kuyper’s lectures. Rather than attempting anything so wide-ranging as Kuyper’s lectures, however, I decided to concentrate on articulating a neo-Calvinist account of political authority; The Mighty and the Almighty (2012) is a revision of the text of the lectures.

Religion in the University, 127–8. Quotations are from pp. 128 and 129 of Religion in the University.

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Though the account I develop goes well beyond what Kuyper said in his lecture, “Calvinism and Politics” in his Calvinism, not only is it very much in the spirit of what Kuyper said, but I make explicit reference to his well-known idea of sphere sovereignty. I do not, in the book, identify the account of political authority that I develop as a neo-Calvinist account; I identify it as a Christian account. But anyone who reads both Kuyper’s Calvinism and my The Mighty and the Almighty will see, at once, that that is what it is.10 Kuyper shared with Max Weber the idea that at the core of modernization is the differentiation of human activity into distinct social spheres; his view of what can and does take place within these spheres was radically different, however. We saw earlier that it was Kuyper’s view that being a Christian includes holding a certain worldview. Christians are not peculiar in this regard, however; to be a human person is to have a worldview, a more or less comprehensive interpretation of reality. We each, to a greater or lesser extent, revise our worldviews across the course of our lives. But we cannot shuck our worldviews and become purely objective, generically human, apprehenders of facts. Kuyper acknowledged that in the modern world there is pressure on those in business, for example, to make the bottom line their sole consideration. He was convinced however, contrary to Weber, that this pressure was not ineluctable, and he insisted that Christians ought to do what they can to resist it. They should do their best to conduct business qua Christians—do their best to act in accord with their Christian worldview. Likewise for political activity in modern democratic societies. Christian citizens should resist the siren call to act out of self-interest, seeking power for their own group, and instead act qua Christians, listening to the biblical call for justice. An important aspect of social justice in a democratic society is that Christians and non-Christians should have equal voice. Citizens, whatever their religion or nonreligion, should be free to articulate and debate their differing views on the issues at hand, some of those differences traceable to their differing worldviews, some not; they then take a vote, and live with the results of the vote.11 I have articulated and defended this neo-Calvinist picture of religion in politics in several of the essays collected in Understanding Liberal Democracy (2012) and in my contribution to the exchange with Robert Audi, Religion in the Public Square (1997). When doing so, I have often used John Rawls’ well-known theory of public reason as a foil. Here is not the place to explain what Rawls meant by public reason.12 Suffice it to say that public reason is a body of politically relevant principles that all reasonable citizens can accept. When debating significant political issues, citizens are not to appeal to their diverse comprehensive doctrines but to shared public reason. I argue that, for a variety of reasons, this is impossible.

In my essay, “Abraham Kuyper,” I expound Kuyper’s account of political authority. The essay is included in the collection, The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politic, and Human Nature, vol. I, ed. John Witte Jr. and Frank Alexander (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 288–327. 11 The organization, Citizens for Public Justice, headquartered in Washington, DC, calls this vision of political activity structural pluralism. I discuss Kuyper’s views on Christian political activity in “Abraham Kuyper’s Model of a Democratic Polity for Societies with a Religiously Diverse Citizenry,” in Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of His Life and Works, ed. C. van der Kooi and J. de Bruijn (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1999). 12 In the two books mentioned earlier, I expound and critique Rawls’ idea of public reason in considerable detail. 10

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c. Philosophy of Art I have also written a good deal in the area of philosophy of art: Works and Worlds of Art (1980), Art in Action (1980), and Art Rethought (2015). It is widely agreed that in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries a fundamental change took place among the bourgeoisie of Western Europe in how they engaged the media that we now call “the arts”: contemplation became prominent to a degree it had never been before. The people of Western Europe had always had works of the arts: liturgical music, folk music, sculptures in and on the cathedrals, an so on. And among the multitude of ways in which they engaged works of the arts, they had listened to the music, looked at the sculptures, and so on. What was new in the early modern period was the emergence into prominence among the bourgeoisie of contemplation as a way of engaging works of the arts—more specifically, of what writers began to call disinterested contemplation. This change in how works of the arts were engaged was accompanied by a change in writing about the arts. Before the eighteenth century, most writing about the arts focused on the practices of making works, offering advice to poets, musicians, architects, and so on, on how to practice their craft. Now the focus shifted from the artist who makes the work to the public who engage it as an object of contemplation. Then in the nineteenth century there emerged what I call, in Art Rethought, “the grand narrative of art in the modern world.” The grand narrative attributed a revolutionary art-historical and sociological significance to the change that had taken place in how the arts are engaged. The art-historical significance attributed to the change was that the emergence into prominence of disinterested contemplation as a way of engaging works of the arts represented art finally coming into its own, freed from the strictures of princes and prelates. The sociological significance was that art for contemplation transcends the corrosive dynamics of the instrumental rationality that pervades modern capitalist society. Here is what an author of the time, Wilhelm Wackenroder, wrote: Art galleries . . . ought to be temples where, in still and silent humility and in heartlifting solitude, we may admire artists as the highest among mortals . . . with long, steadfast contemplation of their works . . . I compare the enjoyment of nobler works of art to prayer. . . . Works of art, in their way, no more fit into the common flow of life than does the thought of God. . . .That day is for me a sacred holiday which . . . I devote to the contemplation of noble works of art.13 Until recently, much if not most writing by philosophers about the arts over the past century and a half has accepted the grand narrative as its basic framework. Not many have echoed the elevated idolatrous tone of Wackenroder. But that art comes into its own when engaged as an object of disinterested contemplation has been common coinage, as has been the claim that art for disinterested contemplation is socially other and transcendent. In Works and Worlds of Art and in Art in Action I implicitly reject the grand narrative; in Art Rethought, I do so explicitly. Participation in the Christian liturgy is an important part of my life. I reject the idea that liturgical art is somehow art not come into its own, and that liturgical engagement with art is inferior to disinterested contemplation. And as to the claim that art for disinterested contemplation is socially other and transcendent, Quoted on p. 35 of Art Rethought. M. H. Abrams, Doing Things with Texts: Essays on Criticism and Critical Theory, ed. Michael Fischer (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 157. Emphasis in original. 13

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my neo-Calvinist orientation makes me immediately suspicious. Also, in art, our pervasive fallenness comes to expression. In Art Rethought I analyze in some detail a few of the ways in which we engage works of the arts other than as objects of disinterested contemplation. I discuss art for veneration, such as icons, memorial art, social protest art, work songs, liturgical art, and more. It was my neo-Calvinist-inspired rejection of the grand narrative that led me to explore a few of many ways in which art is embedded in life and action.

VI. CONCLUSION My neo-Calvinist orientation has shaped my participation in the analytic tradition of philosophy in additional ways. For example, it has shaped my writings about justice: Until Justice and Peace Embrace (1998), Journey Toward Justice (2013), Justice: Rights and Wrongs (2008), and Justice in Love (2011). Analytic philosophers have written a great deal about justice over the past half-century, much of it in response to John Rawls’ 1971 publication, Theory of Justice. Much of it is hermetic: philosophers addressing philosophers, with little attention paid to the injustices that surround us. Indeed, Rawls made clear that he intended his theory of justice as an account of justice in an ideal society. It was not what Rawls, or any other philosopher, wrote about justice that stimulated my own reflections on justice; it was rather my encounter with victims of injustice in South Africa and Palestine. I felt called to speak up, as a philosopher, for these suffering people. In retrospect I discerned that it was once again my neo-Calvinist orientation that was shaping my thought: scholarship is for the shalom of all human beings, not just for scholars. Analytic philosophy, once logical positivism was no longer on the scene, has been hospitable to neo-Calvinists. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this claim could have been supported by a survey. I have chosen to support it, instead, with a brief review of the work of the neo-Calvinist analytic philosopher that I know best.

Chapter 38

Science ABRAHAM C. FLIPSE

I. INTRODUCTION Science had the special attention of Abraham Kuyper and the other founding fathers of neo-Calvinism. After all, Kuyper founded a university that was viewed by himself and others as “the centre” of his thought and work.1 This university, the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam, began in 1880 with only three faculties (theology, arts, and law), but it was planned to develop into a complete university. In the Dutch context of that time this meant that faculties of medicine and natural science were to be added. This expansion followed only later on: a small beginning of a medical faculty came in 1907 when a professor of neurology and psychiatry was appointed; the faculty of natural science was opened in 1930, comprising mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Biology followed only in 1950 and geology in 1960. Nonetheless the founding fathers of neoCalvinism were already engaged with topics in natural science. In his well-known address on “Sphere Sovereignty,” delivered at the opening of the Vrije Universiteit, Kuyper already briefly indicated what his conception of science implied for the natural sciences.2 Central to Kuyper’s thought, and to neo-Calvinism in general, was the ideal of a Christian science. This conception of science was the most important justification for the founding of the Vrije Universiteit and it also played an important role later on internationally when other Christian colleges and universities were created and developed. It inspired penetrating reflection on the themes of science and religion; at the same time, it sometimes led to misunderstandings and fruitless debates. Some scientists felt it was unhelpful in practical contexts because it didn’t take its starting point in concrete points of conflict or harmony, but proposed a radically different perspective on the problematic. This chapter begins with a discussion of the thought of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) against the background of the debate about science and religion, and the developments in the sciences in the late nineteenth century. This makes clear the views with which Kuyper

See, for example, R. H. Woltjer, cited in: Gedenkboek ter herinnering aan het overlijden van Dr. A. Kuyper en de sprake die daarbij uit de pers voortkwam (Amsterdam: Ten Have, 1921), on 31. Cf: A. Th. Van Deursen, The Distinctive Character of the Free University in Amsterdam, 1880–2005: A Commemorative History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 6. 2 A. Kuyper, Souvereiniteit in eigen kring: Rede ter inwijding van de Vrije Universiteit, den 20sten October 1880 gehouden, in het koor van de Nieuwe Kerk te Amsterdam (Amsterdam: J.H. Kruyt, 1880). Translation: A. Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 463–90, on 487–8. 1

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engaged in debate, where he agreed with his contemporaries and where he differed from them. Although Kuyper didn’t produce a detailed philosophy of science, his views are sufficiently coherent to take them as the starting point of a neo-Calvinist tradition of reflection on faith and science, which was later worked out in different directions.3 It is important to realize that Kuyper used the Dutch word “wetenschap” (cf. German: Wissenschaft) for both the natural sciences and the humanities and that he viewed philosophical—“big”—questions as an integral part of science.4 In this chapter I confine myself to the natural sciences. Kuyper’s views are reviewed in detail, but the views of the other pioneer of neo-Calvinism, Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), are also considered. Next, I will discuss how these conceptions were worked out by the following generation, particularly in the Netherlands, and finally a few links will be made to the present day.

II. KUYPER: NO CONFLICT, BUT PLURIFORMITY What is at stake in Kuyper’s approach becomes clear in his Sphere Sovereignty address. Kuyper there not only defended the rationale of “free” (i.e., autonomous) universities but also sketched the ideal of scientific activity inspired by faith for all domains of science, because “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”5 This is an appeal therefore to Christians to view science and faith not as separate worlds and to put their hands to the plow in the area of science as well. In the following decades Kuyper elaborated his ideas about science. He wrote about the topic in his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology (1893–4), discussed it in his Stone Lectures delivered in Princeton (1898), and went more deeply into various themes in rectoral addresses and in many articles in his weekly journal De Heraut (The Herald), which were later collected in a number of larger publications, including Common Grace in Science and Art (1902–4).6 The development of science obviously was at the heart of Kuyper’s attention. In his Stone lecture on “Calvinism and Science” an important basic principle is found: Notice, that I do not speak of a conflict between faith and science. Such a conflict does not exist. Every science in a certain degree starts from faith and, on the contrary, faith which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not. Every science presupposes faith in self, in our self-consciousness; presupposes This chapter is largely based on previous publications of mine: A. C. Flipse, Christelijke wetenschap: Nederlandse rooms-katholieken en gereformeerden over de natuurwetenschap, 1880–1940 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014); A. C. Flipse, “Shared Principles, Diverging Paths: Neo-Calvinism, Neo-thomism and the Natural Sciences, 1880– 1960,” in Neo-Calvinism and Roman-Catholicism, ed. James Eglinton and George Harinck (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 67-92; A. C. Flipse, “Abraham Kuyper over geloof en wetenschap,” Soφie 11, no. 1 (2021): 30–3. 4 Cf. Deborah B. Haarsma, “Kuyper and Science,” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures, ed. Jessica R. Joustra and Robert J. Joustra (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021), 80–105, on 81; Bratt, Kuyper: Centennial Reader, 441–2. 5 Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” 488. 6 A. Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid. Deel 2. Algemeen deel (Kampen: Kok, 1894) (Translation: Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its principles [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898], see esp. 150–210). A. Kuyper, “Calvinism and Science,” in Calvinism: Six lectures delivered in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, ed. A. Kuyper (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1899), 143–88. A. Kuyper, De gemeene gratie in wetenschap en kunst (Amsterdam: Höveker & Wormser, 1905) (Translation: A. Kuyper, “Common Grace in Science,” in Bratt, Kuyper: Centennial Reader, 442–60). 3

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faith in the accurate working of our senses; presupposes faith in the correctness of the laws of thought; presupposes faith in something universal, hidden behind the special phenomena; presupposes faith in life; and especially presupposes faith in the principles, from which we proceed.7 In this way Kuyper turned against the view, popular at the time, that there was a conflict between science and religion, an idea that has become known as the conflict or warfare thesis. In the Anglophone world this was expressed in publications like the chemist John William Draper’s History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874), which was particularly aimed against the Roman Catholic Church, and Andrew D. White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). White sketches a picture of an intellectual struggle that had been raging for centuries and in which science had gradually managed to free itself from the suppression by orthodox faith.8 In this conception, science, which had freed itself from faith, was neutral, and had to steer clear of religious interference. Over against this view Kuyper argued that there is a close connection between science and faith, linking faith both with basic intuitions and with principles rooted in someone’s worldview. Worldviews are therefore shaping forces in the development of science. In addition, Kuyper noted that, in the contemporary world, society and culture have become pluriform, something he valued positively. This pluriformity should also have its repercussions on science, where different schools and directions of thought would exist alongside and in opposition to each other because “friction, fermentation, and conflict are the hall-mark of every expression of life on higher ground in this present dispensation.” It was precisely this that produced progress in science.9 There was one contradistinction that Kuyper viewed as the most fundamental, because it was basically religious: that between naturalist and Christian science, or as he phrased it in his Stone lecture: The science of the “normalists” and that of the “abnormalists.” “Normalists” (elsewhere also called “naturalists” by him) view the cosmos as “normal”: they have a closed worldview, in which all phenomena must have an identical interpretation and must be explained through the logical inferences of cause and effect. Abnormalists on the other hand have an open worldview, in which the cosmos is viewed as creation and man as the bearer of the image of God. They are aware of sin and also of the restoration of creation by the miracle of God’s continuous engagement with the world.10 What is the origin of this dichotomy in science? Kuyper pointed—just like the conflict thinkers had done in their own way—to history. For centuries, Kuyper argued, the abnormalists had had the upper hand. This had had positive effects for science, according

Kuyper, “Calvinism and Science,” 173. For systematic analyses of Kuyper’s view of science, see, e.g.: Del Ratzsch, “Abraham Kuyper’s Philosophy of Science,” in Facets of Faith and Science, Vol. 2: The Role of Beliefs in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: An Augustinian Perspective, ed. Jitse M. van der Meer (Lanham: University Press of America, 1996), 1–32; J. Klapwijk, “Abraham Kuyper on Science, Theology and University,” Philosophia Reformata 78 (2013): 18–46; R. van Woudenberg, “Abraham Kuyper on Faith and Science,” in Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of His Life and Work, ed. C. van der Kooi and J. de Bruijn (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1999), 147–57; S. Bishop, “Abraham Kuyper’s View of the Natural Sciences,” Koers: Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 86, no. 1 (2021): 1–14. 8 J. W. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton, 1874); A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: D. Appleton, 1896). 9 Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, 171. 10 Kuyper, “Calvinism and Science,” 174–7. 7

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to Kuyper.11 Calvinism in particular had fostered a love of science, had restored the domain of science, and had delivered science from its unnatural bounds.12 The roles had been reversed, however, since the revolutionary developments in the past century, and the normalists now dominated science. Although Kuyper recognized the normalists’ right to practice science on the basis of naturalist assumptions, he was opposed to the normalists imposing their assumptions on the abnormalists: “Free science is the stronghold we defend against the attack of her tyrannical twin-sister.”13

III. KUYPER: OUTLINE OF A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE The general idea of a Christian science was, because of the critique of the conflict thesis, the emphasis on the importance of principles, and the plea for pluriformity, diametrically opposed to the dominant ideal of science, which assumed a single, neutral science. But obviously more had to be said then that a Christian science had a right to exist. The idea of a Christian science had to be fleshed out. What was Kuyper thinking of when he used this concept? He sketched the contours of what he had in mind in various places. Kuyper emphasized that there was no need to build a Christian science from scratch but that a tradition could be continued that had flourished in former times.14 This was not just the case for theology, although the difference was most obvious there, but in other areas of science the underlying worldview was influential as well. This was the case in the humanities, where the subject is always involved, and also in the natural sciences. Particularly in the natural sciences a change had taken place in the nineteenth century that, according to Kuyper, had been driven mainly by developments in worldviews.15 Contemporary historians of science actually point to a transformation in the study of nature in the nineteenth century. While the study of nature had until then been viewed as a buttress of natural theology, it was now valued rather as the driving force of progress. In addition, science had become a professional, often specialized activity, so that a kind of “internal secularization” took place. An explanation of the rise of the conflict thesis is often sought in social developments like these.16 This analysis of underlying developments is not to be found in Kuyper. His approach was rather normative—criticizing the important religious change that had taken place, but at the same time greatly valuing all kinds of developments in science. Not everything needed to be done differently in Christian science, as there was, as he expressed it, a “broad field” of study where there would be no difference. In the humanities this was, for example, the case when historical facts and events had to be established; and in the natural sciences where the empirical side of research was concerned: observation, weighing, measuring, and calculating. In addition, everybody used the same logic.17 This meant that entire disciplines came into view again:

Ibid., 177–9. Ibid., 143. 13 Ibid., 183; emphasis in original. 14 Ibid., 184. 15 Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, 155–76. 16 For an introduction to the historiography of the nineteenth-century relation of science and religion see: Frederick Gregory, “Science and Religion,” in From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences: Writing the History of Nineteenth-Century Science, ed. David Cahan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 329–58. 17 Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, 158–66; Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” 487–8. 11 12

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Everything astronomers or geologists, physicists or chemists, zoologists or bacteriologists, historians or archaeologists bring to light has to be recorded—detached of course from the hypothesis they have slipped behind it and from the conclusions they have drawn from it—but every fact has to be recorded by you, also, as a fact, and as a fact that is to be incorporated as well in your science as in theirs.18 But what followed—theorizing, philosophical reflection—was just as much part of science, and there, differences might become visible: As soon as one climbs up from this lower level to higher science, the subject comes into play and, with that, the difference between “natural” and “spiritual” man [appears]— and not just in theology, but in any spiritual science as well as in the philosophical framework of the natural sciences.19 Kuyper’s aim was therefore not to distinguish, in an artificial way, two kinds of science, or to saddle Christians with the task of doing something different in every area. What Kuyper was opposed to was that science had been cut off from its Christian roots and that its results were incorporated in a naturalist worldview as a matter of course. When the world was no longer viewed as creation, something else would replace it, such as the idea of an autonomously functioning machine. In such a mechanist conception of nature there was no longer room for a creator who was engaged with his creation. God disappeared from the picture or was reduced to a deus ex machina, a supreme being who incidentally intervened. What did Kuyper propose instead? In various places he spoke— often metaphorically—about the relation of God and nature, for example, in a discussion of God’s providence in his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 10. There, Kuyper was critical of the fact that nature was often described as a mechanism or a steam engine. A different image was more appropriate: “a palace, in which there is not a single pivot or cogwheel or cylinder, but in which a king sits enthroned.” From there a royal will works, “and that invisible will works unseen through everything and is the basic cause of everything that happens day after day.” And “each element in nature, and every force in such an element, is a servant, a retainer of God in his palace, and all these elements and all these forces wait for the order that proceeds from his mouth to the furthest ends of creation.” In this way God was, Kuyper argued, continually engaged with his creation, through his omnipresent power, in which nature was upheld from moment to moment.20 With this approach Kuyper tried in particular to cut off the possibility of deism or a worldview from which God was more and more eliminated as a God of the gaps. For the development of a Christian science this offers, however, few concrete clues. Kuyper largely confined himself to general dissertations on the nature of science and the world. There were, however, a few topics that Kuyper discussed in more detail, in particular Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was after all the most important point of contention on the interface of faith and science at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1899, Kuyper devoted an entire rectoral address to it.21 In it he noticed first that the

Kuyper, “Calvinism and Science,” 185–6. Kuyper, “Common Grace in Science,” 458. 20 A. Kuyper, E Voto Dordraceno I (Kampen: Kok, 1892), 239–40, 225. 21 A. Kuyper, Evolutie: Rede bij de overdracht van het rectoraat aan de Vrije Universiteit, 20 Oct. 1899 (Amsterdam: Höveker & Wormser, 1899). Translated as: Abraham Kuyper, “Evolution,” in Bratt, Kuyper Centennial Reader, 18 19

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theory of evolution had almost become a dogma for his contemporaries. This fitted in with his wider analysis of science, which tended to expand into a worldview. In particular Darwin’s evolutionary theory lent itself to this, for Kuyper characterized it as a dogma pretending that “by means of its monistic mechanics, it could explain the entire cosmos, including all life processes within that cosmos, to the very earliest origins.”22 Some adherents of the theory extended this also to social and cultural life. In Kuyper’s view the consequences were disastrous, as in this way the individual character of the aesthetic, ethic, and religious aspects of life were denied. This meant that evolution became a new faith, a pseudo-dogma.23 Kuyper didn’t develop a Christian alternative for evolutionary theory. This would require thorough study and scientific research, and therefore Kuyper concluded precisely this address with the wish that a science faculty would speedily be realized at the Vrije Universiteit.24 For the development of such a theory the rule applied again that “well-established facts” could be accepted even if they were derived from the Darwinist school.25 Might this be extended so far that even the phenomenon of evolution itself could be reconciled with the belief in God as Creator? Could it be that one could speak of an “evolutionistic creation” by God? For Kuyper this question was separate from his own critique of the mechanist theory of evolution. He therefore answered it in the affirmative, for: “We will not force our style upon the Chief Architect of the universe.”26 Kuyper therefore displayed here again, notwithstanding his critical attitude, openness toward the science of his day. The fundamental difference was the worldview within which a theory was located.

IV. BAVINCK: CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CONTRA MECHANIST SCIENCE The idea of a Christian science also occupies a central place in Herman Bavinck’s reflections on faith and science. His starting point seems to be somewhat less confrontational than Kuyper’s. In his brochure Christian Science of 1904, Bavinck claimed, for example, that a wide resurgence of Christian science was already taking place. He emphasized that, historically, Christianity had always been a fertile breeding ground for science and that science should not cut itself loose from its Christian roots. It was only in the nineteenth century that natural science had moved into mechanist and naturalist territory, and this was what Christian science had to resist.27

405–40. In the course of time, different interpretations of Kuyper’s address have been put forward, including: Clarence Menninga, “Critical Reflections on Abraham Kuyper’s Evolutie Address,” Calvin Theological Journal 33 (1998): 435–43; P. S. Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 104–11; Gijsbert van den Brink, “Evolution as a Bone of Contention between Church and Academy: How Abraham Kuyper Can Help Us Bridge the Gap,” in The Kuyper Center Review, Volume 5: Church and Academy, ed. Gordon Graham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 92–103, on 94–8; J. F. A. L. Gomes, “Dead-Ends and New Directions: Abraham Kuyper and Contemporary VU Philosophers on the Creation-Evolution Debate,” Journal of Reformed Theology 15 (2021): 327–47, on 329–35. 22 Kuyper, “Evolution,” 405. 23 Ibid., 431–6. 24 He discussed this in the “Annalen,” that followed the address itself: Kuyper, Evolutie, 53. 25 Kuyper, “Evolution,” 416. 26 Ibid., 436–7. 27 H. Bavinck, Christelijke wetenschap (Kampen: Kok, 1904), 5–9, 61–3. On Bavinck and science: Al Wolters, “Herman Bavinck on Faith and Science,” in Van der Meer, Facets of Faith and Science, vol. 2, 33–55.

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Bavinck’s publications include a contribution to a pamphlet, from 1907, in which opinions “pro” and “contra” evolution were discussed.28 Bavinck defended the “contra” position, but his critique of evolutionary theory, like Kuyper’s, concentrated on its “mechanical character.” Because of this, Bavinck argued, it leaves no room “for a plan or goal,” but it has an aleatory character.29 The “mechanical worldview” which, according to Bavinck, underlies the Darwinistic view of evolution, a priori excluded the idea of creation, and prescribed that everything should be “reduced to mechanical motion.” Therefore, Darwinists claim that mankind has descended from animals and that life has emerged spontaneously from inorganic matter. How could it have happened otherwise?30 If the mechanical worldview was abandoned, Bavinck believed, a different “theory of development” could be produced “on the basis of creation.” Such a theory might contain elements of Darwinism and would still be in harmony with belief in creation.31

V. SECOND GENERATION: SCIENTISTS, THEOLOGIANS, AND PHILOSOPHERS ON SCIENCE In the period after the demise of the “founding fathers,” Kuyper and Bavinck, their ideas were discussed and elaborated in the Netherlands by neo-Calvinist scientists, theologians, and philosophers. What were the results of this reflection? The Calvinist scientists who were active in the 1920s and 1930s had been trained at one of the Dutch public universities, and they were therefore familiar with the practice of mainstream (naturalist) science. At the same time many of them were inspired by neo-Calvinist thought. They had learned from the neo-Calvinist leaders that “the mechanist worldview” and naturalist science were in conflict with Christianity. However, especially encouraged by some of Bavinck’s ideas, who was inclined to recognize “moments of truth” in his opponents’ ideas (also because he was convinced that since about 1900 changes were taking place in science away from naturalism and toward Christianity), they sometimes stressed that the contemporary situation was different from that in the nineteenth century. Uncompromising “naturalism” was a thing of the past, they believed, and mainstream science could not be considered suspect just because it was based on non-Calvinist principles. Moreover, many of the practicing scientists increasingly demarcated a domain of “pure” scientific research, where religion does not play a direct role, from the domain of “natural philosophy,” where it does.32 This allowed some of the Calvinist scientists to go so far as to accept the biological theory of evolution. One of them was J. P. de Gaay Fortman (1887–1983), a zoologist by training, biology teacher, and coauthor of a series of biology textbooks for Christian secondary education. In the 1920s and 1930s he argued in several lectures and articles that, if it is used purely scientifically, there is no objection to the idea of evolution. He expressly wanted to follow in the footsteps of Kuyper and especially Bavinck, but he

H. Bavinck, “Contra,” in Pro en Contra Evolutie, ed. P. G. Buekers and H. Bavinck (Baarn: Hollandia, 1907); translated as “Evolution,” and included in Essays on Religion, Science and Society. Herman Bavinck, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 105–18. 29 Bavinck, “Evolution,” 109. 30 Ibid., 118. 31 Ibid., 119–20. 32 A. C. Flipse, “Against the Science-Religion Conflict: The Genesis of a Calvinist Science Faculty in the Netherlands in the Early Twentieth Century,” Annals of Science 65 (2008): 363–91, on: 379, 389–91. 28

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developed concrete ideas to fill the space that they had created. In his PhD dissertation (1918) he made the following claim: “In the theory of evolution, if it is conceived in a non-mechanistic way, there is a truth that has to be recognized from the theistic point of view.”33 In 1926 he argued that Bavinck, in his 1907 essay on evolution, had been too critical of evolutionary theory, since he had identified the theory with the mechanist worldview. But such an identification was not justified. It was very well possible to accept evolution without accepting the mechanist worldview.34 The young biologist J. H. Diemer (1904–45) wholeheartedly agreed with De Gaay Fortman and stated that Christians “can accept the idea of evolution as a scientific theory” and at the same time “hold on to the principle that the essence of evolution is a plan of the Divine Spirit.”35 Diemer was inspired by the philosophy of H. Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (1892–1978) of the Vrije Universiteit, who from the 1920s developed their own philosophy of science, building on, but on some points also deviating from, Kuyper’s thought.36 This Reformational philosophy was, remarkably enough, not well received by either natural scientists or theologians (Diemer was an exception, and later on Jan Lever as well—see later), but from that side there were also contributions to the debate about faith and natural science.37 However, the ideas of De Gaay Fortman and Diemer were a bridge too far for others and they especially met theological resistance. Generally speaking, the second generation of neo-Calvinist theologians in the Netherlands were stricter than the founding fathers had been. A case in point is the notorious “Geelkerken Case,” which took place in this period. The Reverend J. G. Geelkerken (1879–1960), a Reformed minister, had publicly doubted whether the story of the Fall (Genesis 2–3) should be taken literally. In 1926 the Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands decided to suspend Geelkerken. Contemporaries compared it with the Scopes “monkey trial” that had taken place in Dayton, Tennessee, one year before. Leading theologians tightened the reins and initiated more “fundamentalist” policies.38 Theologians of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam still advocated the neo-Calvinist ideal of a “Christian science,” but they also appealed to anti-evolutionist writers like the Canadian amateur-geologist and Seventh-day Adventist, George McCready Price (1870–

J. P. de Gaay Fortman, Onderzoekingen over de ontwikkeling van de wervelkolom der amphibiën, in ’t bijzonder bij Megalobatrachus maximus (Leiden: Brill, 1918), proposition XV: “In de evolutieleer, mits niet mechanistisch opgevat, ligt een waarheid, die ook van het standpunt van het theisme dient te worden erkend.” 34 J. P. de Gaay Fortman, “Evolutie en christelijke wetenschap,” in Gedenkboek der Societas Studiosorum Reformatorum ter gelegenheid van haar 8ste lustrum 1886–1926, ed. W. J. Kolkert et al. (Rotterdam: Donner, 1926), 107–12. 35 J. H. Diemer, “De Evolutiegedachte,” Orgaan der Societas Studiosorum Reformatorum 1 (1929): 125–7, on 127. About Diemer: C. Gousmett, “The Nature of Miracle and the Miracle of Nature: A Study of the Thought of J. H. Diemer Concerning Nature and Miracle” (MPhil Thesis, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto: 1985); H. Cook and A. C. Flipse, “Jan Lever: Challenging the Role of Typological Thinking in Reformational Views of Biology,” Philosophia Reformata 82, no. 1 (2017): 3–25, on: 6–7. 36 M. E. Verburg, Herman Dooyeweerd: The Life and Work of a Christian Philosopher (Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2009), 263–70. 37 A recent contribution to the creation-evolution debate from the circle of Reformational philosophy is: J. Klapwijk, Purpose in the Living World?: Creation and Emergent Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 38 M. J. Aalders, Heeft de slang gesproken? Het strijdbare leven van dr. J.G. Geelkerken (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2013), 307–13; S. Mathieson and A. C. Flipse, “Religious Controversy in Comparative Context: Ulster, the Netherlands and South Africa in the 1920s,” History 106 (2021): 429–55, on 441–3, 450–1. 33

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1963), who is now considered the founding father of twentieth-century “young-earth creationism.”39 Price’s influence is, for example, apparent in the Stone Lectures that the professor of dogmatics, V. Hepp (1879–1950), gave in Princeton in 1930, in which he sketched the outlines of a Calvinist natural science and in the influential exegetical work of the Old Testament professor, G. Ch. Aalders (1880–1961), Divine Revelation in the First Three Chapters of Genesis (1932), in which he discussed the “theory of descent” and relied heavily on Price’s “flood geology.”40 At Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, the theologian Louis Berkhof (1873–1957) arrived at a similar viewpoint. In his Reformed Dogmatics (1932) there are also several references to Price.41 Between 1930 and 1950 the broader discussion about creation and evolution came to a virtual standstill and was largely limited to the scientists among themselves. The relative openness toward science (including evolution) of the turn-of-the-century founders of neo-Calvinism had been replaced by a restricted, young-earth doctrine.42

VI. THE THIRD GENERATION AND BEYOND: A WIDE STREAM OF NEO-CALVINIST REFLECTION Only after the Second World War was the thread resumed. Neo-Calvinist scientists claimed room for further reflection on the theme of creation and evolution, and they also began to write about the topic for a wider audience. In 1950 the professor of physics of the Vrije Universiteit, G. J. Sizoo (1900–94) organized a conference about “The Age of the Earth” during which he himself and several other Calvinist scientists discussed several methods of determining the age of the earth. They all agreed that there was no doubt that it was at least hundreds of millions of years old. A conference volume was published, which was reviewed surprisingly favorably in several Calvinist periodicals. In the wake of the conference a renewed discussion between neo-Calvinist theologians and scientists was reluctantly initiated.43 From 1950 onward a central role in the discussion in neo-Calvinist circles in the Netherlands was played by the professor of zoology, Jan Lever (1922–2010), founder of the biology department at the Vrije Universiteit. Lever’s focus was not on the Authority of Scripture or the interpretation of Genesis, but he followed the neo-Calvinist worldview approach and advocated the idea that the theory of evolution could be incorporated in the Christian worldview and did not necessarily imply “evolutionism,” a worldview

R. L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design. Expanded Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 88–119; G. McCready Price, The New Geology (Mountain View, Cal.: Pacific Press, 1923). 40 V. Hepp, Calvinism and the Philosophy of Nature: The Stone Lectures Delivered at Princeton in 1930 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1930), 183–223; G. Ch. Aalders, De Goddelijke openbaring in de eerste drie hoofdstukken van Genesis (Kampen: Kok, 1932), esp. 284–98. 41 L. Berkhof, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932), 150–64; Davis A. Young, “The Reception of Geology in the Dutch Reformed Tradition: The Case of Herman Bavinck (1854–1921),” in Geology and Religion: A History of Harmony and Hostility, ed. M. Kölbl-Ebert (London: Geological Society, 2009), 289–300. 42 More extensively in: A. C. Flipse, “The Origins of Creationism in the Netherlands: The Evolution Debate Among Twentieth-Century Dutch neo-Calvinists,” Church History 81 (2012): 104–47, esp. 122–30. 43 G. J. Sizoo et al., De ouderdom der aarde, 4th ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1955); A. C. Flipse, “‘Natuuronderzoekers dagen de kerk uit’. Natuurwetenschappers, theologen en de kerken in de jaren vijftig,” in “In de vergifkast”? Protestantse organisaties tussen kerk en wereld in de jaren vijftig, ed. George Harinck and Paul van Trigt (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2013), 119–37, on 132–3. 39

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that conceives of the process of evolution as autonomous and independent of God.44 In his best-known book, Creation and Evolution (1956—English translation 1958), Lever did of course discuss Genesis, but he dismissed what he called the “fundamentalism” of theologians like Aalders and Hepp in only a few pages.45 Most of the book deals with philosophy and biology. Remarkably, Lever was—like Diemer earlier on—not only inspired by Kuyper but also by Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, in particular Dooyeweerd’s anti-reductionist view that various irreducible aspects can be distinguished in the created reality. For Lever, however, this did not imply the idea of constancy of species.46 Lever concluded his book with a positive discussion of Kuyper’s address on evolution. He argued that it was possible to accept the biological theory of evolution and at the same time adhere to belief in a providential God who guided the evolutionary process. He called this “evolutionistic creation,” referring to Kuyper.47 Although some doubted whether Lever was still strictly orthodox, and Lever in his later work distanced himself from the Reformed view of the Authority of Scripture, Lever’s early thought was unmistakably influenced by Kuyper’s (and Dooyeweerd’s) conception of science.48 However, in the Netherlands an anti-evolution movement arose in reaction to the developments among scientists at the Vrije Universiteit like Jan Lever. These young-earth creationists sometimes also appealed to Kuyper, identifying the idea of a Christian science with their own young-earth creationism, just as the theologians of the 1930s had done. They were inspired by the revival of the flood geology after the publication of Henry M. Morris’ The Genesis Flood (1961), which was also influential in the Netherlands.49 Lever’s books were translated into English, but they were not very influential outside the Netherlands. It seems that neo-Calvinist ideas about science only gained influence later on. Starting in the 1980s scientists at Calvin College (now Calvin University) took up the neo-Calvinist reflection on science and from there it found its way to other evangelical colleges.50 Neo-Calvinists also became active in the Biologos Foundation, founded in 2007 by Francis Collins for Christian reflection on science. Since 2013 the president is Deborah B. Haarsma, previously a professor of astronomy at Calvin University.51 J. Lever, “Evolutionisme,” in Christelijke Encyclopedie: Tweede geheel herziene druk, ed. F. W. Grosheide and G. P. van Itterzon, vol. II (Kampen: Kok, 1957), 686–9. A. C. Flipse, “Jan Lever: bioloog, bruggenbouwer en boegbeeld van de VU,” in Verder kijken: Honderdvijfendertig jaar Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in de samenleving— zesentwintig portretten, ed. A. C. Flipse (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2016), 195–202; A. C. Flipse, “Tussen Utrecht en Amsterdam: zoektocht naar een christelijke biologie: Studie- en promotietijd van Jan Lever, 1939– 1950,” in Jan Lever—Honderd: Terugblikken op leven en werk van VU-bioloog Jan Lever (1922–2010), ed. A. C. Flipse (Amsterdam: HDC, 2022), 11–38. 45 J. Lever, Creatie en evolutie (Wageningen: Zomer & Keunings, 1956). Translated as: J. Lever, Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids International Publications, 1958), see esp. 15–20. 46 Lever, Creation and Evolution, 129–40, 192–9; See also: Cook and Flipse, “Jan Lever,” 7–9. 47 Lever, Creation and Evolution, 226–31. 48 Compare: B. J. van der Walt, “Kontra of pro evolusie en evolusionisme? Drie Christelike bioloë se besinning oor die ontstaan en ontwikkeling van die wêreld en die mens,” Tydskrif Vir Christelike Wetenskap | Journal for Christian Scholarship 52 (2016): 117–43, on 134–9. G. van den Brink, “‘Maar ik heb de belangrijkste, de meest kardinale geloofspunten, met grotere overtuiging, behouden’: Jan Lever en hedendaagse evangelicals over de oorsprongsvragen,” in Jan Lever—Honderd: Terugblikken op leven en werk van VU-bioloog Jan Lever (1922– 2010), ed. A. C. Flipse (Amsterdam: HDC, 2022), 39–58, on 39–43. 49 Flipse, “Origins of Creationism,” 137–46. 50 Haarsma, “Kuyper and Science,” 94–5. 51 Earlier she published, together with Loren D. Haarsma: Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, and Evolution (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2007), including a chapter on worldviews and science: 31–45. 44

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When we consider the philosophical and theological reflection on science in the widest sense, we see that the neo-Calvinist tradition is diverging in different directions. Building on the work of Herman Dooyeweerd, Reformational philosophy was developed further as the foundation for a Christian science; it is being taught at several Christian universities and colleges. In addition, neo-Calvinist ideas play a role in the school of Reformed epistemology, for example, in the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff with his notion of “control beliefs” in the practice of science and in that of Alvin Plantinga and his critique of naturalism.52 In the recent research into “scientism” at the Abraham Kuyper Center of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam under the direction of the philosopher René van Woudenberg, with analyses of the boundaries and the specific character of scientific knowledge, neo-Calvinist ideas also play a role.53 The theologian Gijsbert van den Brink, who holds the Chair of Theology & Science at the Vrije Universiteit, publishes extensively on the compatibility of evolution and creation, and he also has a constructive relationship with the neo-Calvinist tradition.54

VII. CONCLUDING REMARKS A common element in the neo-Calvinist tradition is the idea that science and faith cannot be separated from each other, as scientific theories always have their origin in the context of a particular worldview. And yet, the results and theories that have been shaped within one worldview can get a place in a different worldview, because they are to a certain extent pliable. How far this pliability stretches remained a point of discussion, and certainly for the case of evolutionary theory the general assumptions, as we saw, had not been decisive. The neo-Calvinists questioned unconsidered assumptions and conceptual frameworks, such as the view that there is an unavoidable conflict between science and religion, or that the world is an autonomous mechanism or machine. In this way it was possible to advance beyond established controversies; Christians were stimulated to participate in science, and space was created for a science that could develop freely in harmony with faith. An important insight here is the emphasis on the wider philosophical background of science and the worry that science itself may be turned into a worldview. Awareness of this point has, in the past century, inspired a variety of thinkers about faith and science. In continuing this tradition, further discussion of the “big questions” concerning the sciences seems worthwhile. This can be done, first, by including neo-Calvinist insights in philosophical reflection on new fields of research. This is especially relevant in areas close to the boundary between science and worldview (in brain research, for instance), evolutionary perspectives on morality, and the cognitive science of religion. Second, the neo-Calvinist tradition also needs to continue to reflect on the University. Kuyper considered it necessary to establish a “free university,” among other things to create space for pluriformity in academia and science. Apart from the question of whether a genuinely autonomous university is feasible at all, the issues Kuyper raised about freedom and pluriformity are still important, especially at a time when the freedom of science is N. H. Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976); A. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 53 See, e.g.: René van Woudenberg, “Christianity and Science,” in Customized Science? The Impact of Worldviews on Contemporary Science, ed. Steve Fuller, Mikael Stenmark & Ulf Zackariasson (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2014), 55–72. 54 Gijsbert van den Brink, Reformed Theology and Evolutionary Theory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 210–11, 262. 52

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increasingly under pressure from the influence of all kinds of extrascientific forces. Third, there is a task for historians. On the one hand, neo-Calvinist insights can alert students of the historical relationship between science and religion and to the role of worldviews in the development of science in the past. On the other hand, historical research into the development of natural science in the neo-Calvinist tradition itself can be enlightening, especially the question of how natural scientists of the second and third generations (some of whom have been discussed in this chapter) put the ideas of the founding fathers into practice.

Chapter 39

Arts ROBERT COVOLO

“The arts” refer to a wide range of practices that employ a broad range of media. Examples of the arts include architecture, ceramics, cooking, dance, drama, drawing, fashion design, filmmaking, folk art, music, painting, photography, poetry, sculpting, theater, textiles, and writing. Additionally, the term “aesthetics” refers to a field of study that seeks to understand the arts. In what follows, we will take up the consideration neo-Calvinists have given to the arts and aesthetics. As we shall see, the neo-Calvinist tradition has enjoyed a disproportionately large amount of reflection on the nature, role, and theological place of the arts. This emphasis is due, in no small part, to the significant role neo-Calvinism’s founder, Abraham Kuyper, gave to the arts. But to do full justice to Kuyper’s desire to reclaim the arts for the Reformed tradition we must start with the namesake of the tradition, that is, John Calvin.

I. JOHN CALVIN To appreciate the origin of what came to be the neo-Calvinist aesthetic tradition requires understanding the movement’s fountainhead and namesake, John Calvin (1509–64). As a humanist scholar and writer Calvin certainly could appreciate aesthetic achievement. Add to this Calvin’s unguarded embrace of creation’s visual delights and aromatic bouquets and one can see why—all things being equal—Calvin might approach the arts as Godgiven helps along life’s journey. But Calvin was cross-pressured. His humanist embrace of the arts was matched by his ecclesiastical iconoclasm that led him (and other Reformers) to call for a distance between the visual arts and the patronage of the church. Some scholars have seen an overarching aesthetic theory behind Calvin’s (quite modest) mentions of the arts. As early as 1937, Léon Wencelius offered a systematic overview of L’esthétique de Calvin, and more recently Randall Zachman in Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin (2007) has argued for a positive, comprehensive take on Calvin’s approach to aesthetics. Despite these positive takes on Calvin’s approach to the (visual) arts, the weight of scholarship believes Calvin neither expounded general aesthetic principles nor based his theology on a general theory of the arts. Instead, Calvin’s treatment of the arts is best understood in light of pressing historical and theological concerns which—in light of Calvin’s understanding of the second commandment—tended to privilege the ear over the eye.1

William Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 82.

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Despite the modest nature of Calvin’s engagement of the arts, his largely ad hoc approach to the arts has had a disproportionate impact on those who followed in his wake. In this regard, two important themes in neo-Calvinist aesthetics emerged from Calvin: first, Calvin’s call for a distance between the (visual) arts and the patronage of the church resulted in neo-Calvinism’s call for the arts to come out from under the church and find their own rightful place as a sphere of engagement. Indeed, this theme of the legitimacy of the arts is picked up and developed throughout the history of neo-Calvinist aesthetics—with creation serving as the primary loci from which to think about art. Second, the neo-Calvinist tradition picked up on Calvin’s Creator/creation distinction so as to increasingly question the mimetic chain linking God, creation, and art. With the dismantling of these links, the neo-Calvinist tradition would eventuate new horizons for thinking theologically about art in the twentieth century, including emerging art forms. To further appreciate the way these themes (and others) unfolded we turn to key thinkers in the neo-Calvinist aesthetic tradition.

II. ABRAHAM KUYPER Neo-Calvinism’s founding figure, Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), lived in a very different historical and cultural location than Calvin. Influenced by post-Enlightenment nineteenthcentury Romanticism and convinced that art was both a considerable domain of human activity and an influential force at work in modern society, Kuyper set out to inspire a new age of Reformed aesthetics. To do so, Kuyper taught courses on aesthetics and art at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and published four principle works on the subject.2 In these undertakings Kuyper employs a variety of his signature theological rubrics (the cultural mandate, sphere sovereignty, common grace, etc.) to address an assortment of subjects including art and worship, mimesis, the role of the imagination, and art for art’s sake. At the center of Kuyper’s aesthetic reflections and in accord with the patristic and medieval tradition stands Kuyper’s unflinching defense of an objective beauty that (when paired with truth and goodness) Kuyper believed could offer a proven criteria for artistic excellence, a safeguard from art’s vulgarization, and a witness to creation’s original and future glory. Although Kuyper’s accent on the resonance of natural beauty and the arts is in line with Calvin,3 there are five ways Kuyper’s discussion of aesthetics departs from Calvin’s. First, Kuyper speaks approvingly of the role of Reformed aesthetics in the expansion and democratization of the arts. Second, in contrast to Calvin’s call for simplicity and self-denial, Kuyper idealizes lavish and magnificent artworks.4 Third, Kuyper speaks in glowing terms regarding a larger human thirst for beauty that is rooted in

Abraham Kuyper, Het Calvinisme en de Kunst (Amsterdam: Höveker & Wormser, 1888); Calvinism: Six Stonelectures (Amsterdam: Höver & Wormser, 1898); De Gemeene Gratie in Wetenschap en Kunst (Amsterdam: Höveker & Wormser, 1905); Pro Rege: Het Koningschap van Christus (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1912). 3 Compare Calvin’s, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008) (III. x. 2.), 720– 1 with Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2011), 123. 4 For example, when speaking of clothing, Kuyper looks past John the Baptist’s world-denying frock to Jesus, one who “was so fashionable that the clothes stripped from him [. . .] were thought desirable enough to be divided among the soldiers.” See Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder, 126. 2

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the imago dei.5 Fourth, Kuyper speaks of the human quest for creativity as also basic to being in the image of God. Fifth, Kuyper greatly elaborates Calvin’s call for bringing art out from ecclesial space; in fact, Kuyper reads the emergence of the fine arts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a witness to not only Calvinism’s liberation of the arts but as a testimony to his doctrine of sphere sovereignty. Kuyper’s desire to update Calvinism led him to place a high premium on the arts. Yet his elevation of beauty and the sublime as the sine qua non of art put Kuyper in tension with popular arts, particularity for their visceral appeal and instrumentality. This tension is evident in Kuyper’s call for a democratization of the arts. While such suggests a kind of expressionism that recognizes the importance of diverse tastes, Kuyper understood this not as celebrating a variety of individual tastes but as beauty gaining popular appeal among the masses. This reminds us that Kuyper thought in terms of a hierarchy of taste, with those arts that work more closely with popular appeal—theater, dance, and so on— being especially vulnerable to corruption. Additionally, within this hierarchy, Kuyper did not see many of the things we call “the arts” (architecture, cooking, dress design, etc.) as art proper, but part of “van winkelstand en handel” (commercial industry and merchant business).6 Indeed, Kuyper assumes that because beauty is an intrinsic good, true art must not become sullied by market forces or instrumentality.7 Finally, Kuyper’s comments on the art of his day are relevant to his understanding of the arts. In a telling section, Kuyper contrasts transcendent, robust, clarifying art evincing beauty with the contemporary art of his period—art that “lacks a soul,” “lacks masculine power,” and “lacks the steadiness of lines.”8 Given Kuyper’s position, he would scarcely consider the full canon of the arts we take for granted as worthy of the term “art.”

III. HERMAN BAVINCK Kuyper’s colleague and theological successor at the Vrije Universiteit, Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), followed many of Kuyper’s moves and ideals, even as he expanded the discussion. In his article “Of Beauty and Aesthetics” (“Van schoonheid en schoonheidsleer,” 1914), Bavinck sketched the history of aesthetics from ancient to contemporary thought to make the case that a suitable theological aesthetic must hold both an empirically based aesthetic from below (an analysis of humanity’s own sense of beauty, the nature of artistic activity, and the objects themselves) and a more idealist aesthetic from above (seeing beauty as having objective status). Simultaneously displaying both an Aristotelian and proto-Barthian impulse, Bavinck was cautious of what he believed to be Neoplatonic impulses in Augustine’s view of creation’s beauty. To safeguard God’s otherness and retain creation’s distinction, Bavinck suggested limiting the term “glory” for God and “beauty” for resplendence in art and nature. At first blush, there is reason to believe Bavinck’s aesthetics might be somewhat amenable to a broad embrace of the arts. After all, he expresses a desire to expand aesthetics to include not only the objects of aesthetics but also the experiences of the artists. To do so, Bavinck suggests employing innumerable methods: exploring psychological, Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder, 128–9. Kuyper, Pro Rege III, 101–2. 7 “There is the art of cooking, the art of horsemanship, the art of fencing, the art of dancing, and many more, but all of this has nothing to do with art.” Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder, 149. 8 Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder, 161. 5 6

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physical, ethnological, social, and biological influences on aesthetic experience.9 Indeed, in thinking of aesthetic experience as a particular kind of experience applicable to the world outside the fine arts and to be examined from numerous angles, Bavinck displays assumptions that resonate with Dewey’s view of aesthetic experience.10 What’s more, Bavinck’s desire to accent the discontinuity between creation’s resplendence and God’s resplendence furnishes the possibility of an aesthetic more comfortable with so-called “lower” arts (furniture, dance, fashion design, theater, etc.), which tend to be marked by mutability, particularity, and visceral qualities. But Bavinck does not go in this direction. Rather, he often characterizes “lower” and “popular” arts as part of an aesthetic leveling at work.11 This sentiment is further reinforced by Bavinck’s view that popular pursuits and “low” art counterpressure the high vocation of the artist. Popular art stands in tension with Bavinck’s Romantic vision of the artist’s vocation as that of a maverick abandoned to their unique vision. Merging a Kierkegaardian call to stand against facile consensus with a romantic image of the artist as a lone genius, Bavinck’s view of true artistry makes more mundane arts (cooking, dance, textiles) suspect. And as with Kuyper, Bavinck suggests many modern forms of art fail to reconnect beauty with her transcendental sisters (of truth and goodness).12 Even more, although Bavinck is appreciative of modern art’s protest against an undue homogenizing of taste and reduction of the uniqueness of each individual, he sees modern art as stripping beauty away from her organic relationship with truth and goodness. Despite their desire to update Calvinism by granting art its own autonomy and account for the empirical realities found in modern life, neither Kuyper nor Bavinck provided the entire scope of the arts’ full status as art. Even so, the impulse to grant art its own autonomy, the desire to do justice to the empirical realities of creation, and their penchant for taking seriously the challenges of modern life were to be picked up in the aesthetic work of succeeding generations of neo-Calvinist thinkers.

IV. HANS ROOKMAAKER Unlike Kuyper and Bavinck, Hans Rookmaaker (1922–77) sought to work out his aesthetics within what would come to be known as Reformational philosophy (H. Dooyeweerd, D. Vollenhoven). A professional art historian and critic, Rookmaaker taught art history at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. During his career he wrote a substantial corpus including reviews, articles, and volumes on a wide variety of subjects (aesthetics, African American music, art history, creativity, culture, entertainment, philosophy, etc.). At the heart of Rookmaaker’s approach to the arts was a keen appreciation for the significance and integrity of the arts combined with an avid desire to show their relationship to a Christian worldview. Notably, at a time when both the public at large and many art historians eschewed modern art, Rookmaaker distinguished himself as one of the first Dutch art historians to take modern art seriously, writing one of the first histories of modern art (Synthetist Herman Bavinck, “Of Beauty and Aesthetics,” in Essays on Religion, Science and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 249–50. 10 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Penguin, 1934). 11 Herman Bavinck, Hedendaagsche Moraal (Kampen, NL: J.H. Kok, 1902), 14. 12 Ibid., 59. 9

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Art Theories, 1959). Additionally, Rookmaaker spent quite a bit of time researching and writing about jazz. These two facts alone reveal that Rookmaaker held a keen sensitivity to emerging art forms and the power of popular culture. Yet despite the surprising variety of subjects Hans Rookmaaker explored, his considerable attention to modern art, and various insights regarding everyday art and pop culture, Rookmaaker was never entirely comfortable with emerging art forms. Although quick to point out technical excellence in styles of modern advertising, appreciative of the search for new forms of pictorial language, and friendly toward the rejection of materialism in elements of modern art, Rookmaaker was highly critical of what he perceived to be nihilistic trends in modern art. This criticism, given sustained attention in Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (1970), was born out of Rookmaaker’s penchant for reading art as ontological disclosure; that is, for Rookmaaker art inevitably brings a view of the structure of reality—and it is this structure which is to be assessed in light of Dooyeweerd’s modal spheres. This is not to say that everything within Rookmaaker’s approach would be problematic for modern aesthetics and an expansive understanding of the arts. After all, Rookmaaker’s aesthetic was in line with Bavinck’s own strong distinction between Creator and creation. Aesthetics for Rookmaaker was to be developed as a field proper to creation order, rather than a transcendental bridge between creature and Creator. As we’ve seen, one of the beneficial outcomes of this distinction was the idea of art as deserving its own sphere or language.13 Yet even though Rookmaaker left Kuyper and Bavinck’s classical sources feeding an ontology of beauty behind, his reading of Dooyeweerd’s aesthetic modal sphere retained beauty as a formal quality.14 As a result, Rookmaaker’s aesthetics would encounter similar tensions one finds in the classical theo-aesthetic elements of Kuyper and Bavinck. A Rookmaakerian reading of the arts had other problematic elements as well. As I noted, Rookmaaker’s hermeneutic was drawn to worldview analysis.15 At first blush, one would think that reading the arts through worldview might gain traction. After all, many arts are employed for the purpose of narrative; therefore, one might assess the “world” within which a piece of art exists. But in this regard, Rookmaaker’s attempt to exegete art as always containing “human insights and understanding, of human values and truth— human in the sense that they belong to people . . .” would invariably work to limit the kinds of things that could count for the arts.16 Even more, Rookmaaker’s penchant for Dooyeweerdian metaphysics and a transcendent “T” truth left him predisposed to reading aesthetics through a stable, reliable, order.17 This makes it hard to imagine how popular and modern aesthetics which value flux, particularity, and surface could be registered. Indeed, these qualities of emerging and popular arts appear to fall within the sights of Rookmaaker’s critique of modernity itself: a movement Rookmaaker characterized as seeking to escape from truth and reality.18

Hans Rookmaaker, Art Needs No Justification (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1978), 39–40. Hans Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture in The Complete Works of Hans Rookmaaker Vol. 5 (Carlisle: Piquant, 2003), 153, 155. 15 Jonathan A. Anderson and William A. Dyrness, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic, 2016), 56–9. 16 Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, 16. 17 Ibid., 18, 21. 18 Anderson and Dyrness, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture, 57. 13 14

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V. CALVIN SEERVELD Also working within the Reformational philosophical tradition is neo-Calvinist philosopher Calvin Seerveld (b. 1930–). Seerveld served for several years as a senior member in philosophical aesthetics at the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto. In his now classic, Rainbows for a Fallen World (1980), Seerveld expresses concern for the role of “the Greek concept” of beauty has played in both the larger Christian aesthetic tradition (Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin) and among fellow neo-Calvinists (Kuyper, Bavinck, Dooyeweerd, etc.).19 Indeed, taking aim at Rookmaaker in his chapter “Modern Art and the Birth of a Culture,” Seerveld suggested continuing to approach art in terms of beauty was in no small part responsible for Christianity’s woefully inadequate understanding of the aesthetics of modernism.20 To correct this deficit, Seerveld developed a very distinct view of art that merged Dooyeweerd’s view of the aesthetic modal aspect with his own concept of “allusivity” or “suggestive imaginativity.” Indeed, in numerous publications Seerveld explicated art as the sphere of cultural endeavor uniquely tasked with a normative aesthetic based on the fabric of creation’s modal aspect of allusivity: an intentional making that uses the free play of suggestions to stimulate the senses and emotions. When explicating allusivity, Seerveld would often do so inductively, drawing from examples in daily life such as enjoying a meal, play, and even choices in cosmetics. Seerveld depicts “allusivity” as a feature of created reality that is manifested in all things aesthetic. It involves “a parable character, a metaphoric intensity, an elusive play in its artefactual presentation of meanings apprehended.”21 By claiming the aesthetic modal sphere is about “suggestion,” “indirection,” “playfulness,” “making allusions,” or “allusiveness,”22 Seerveld sought to move theological aesthetics away from what he viewed as an undo fixation on transcendental beauty, a God-artist analogy, and the penchant to treat all art as essentially sacramental.23 Instead, Seerveld called for viewing aesthetics as involved in a particular quality of “nuancefulness” in symbolic action. This shift toward understanding art along the line of communicative action joins art and literary criticism and thereby repositioned aesthetics away from both the privileging of the fine arts (such as the paintings that worked particularly well for Rookmaaker’s approach) and the role of deductive argumentation.24 Rather, Seerveld believed some of the best windows into the nature of art can be drawn from one’s daily experience. Although Seerveld jettisoned beauty, the idea of artistic inspiration, and the imposition of sacramental art on all the arts, he left untouched the idea (posited by Calvin and reiterated by Kuyper) that the aesthetics of the arts are to resonate with the aesthetics of creation. All arts should fall in line with the replete allusivity of creation.25 In practical terms this meant that a bespoke outfit discriminately tailored was more allusive and therefore was preferred to ready-to-wear, or a carefully prepared delicious meal that is given thoughtful presentation was more allusive than fast food. Thus, Christians ought to care about layering the environments and artifacts in their lives with suggestive nuancefulness such that they echo the multifaceted aesthetic modality of creation itself. Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows for the Fallen World (Toronto: Tuppence Press, 1980), 117. Ibid., 200. 21 Ibid., 27. 22 Ibid., 131–5. 23 Ibid., 333. 24 Ibid., 133. 25 Ibid., 145. 19 20

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VI. NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF In line with Seerveld’s concern to locate aesthetics as a vital part of our well-being in everyday life, fellow neo-Calvinist philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff (1932–) diagnosed the intellectual and cultural developments in Western society that have resulted in a restricted, institutionalized art as the production of artifacts for disinterested contemplation.26 Wolterstorff accredited this shift to the Cartesian turn that placed man as a center of consciousness rather than the biblical vision of man as an agent in the world for shalom. In his Art in Action (1980), Wolterstorff defied this shift and sought instead to understand art in terms of a widely diverse set of actions. As Wolterstorff stated, “works of art equip us for action. And the range of actions for which they equip us is very nearly as broad as the range of human action itself.”27 For Wolterstorff, creating art which gives pleasure when seen (Aquinas), expresses ultimate concern (Tillich), evokes contemplation (Schopenhauer), or even exposes the institutions and rubrics that determine what constitutes art (Duchamp) are all possible actions for artworks, but so too are many artistic actions that are usually excluded from high art institutions: songs that accompany labor, chairs that ennoble sitting, dinners that elevate the palate, and so forth. In developing this thesis, Wolterstorff goes into extended analysis of what constitutes aesthetic excellence, the role of the mastery of material, how artists attend to “fittingness,” the ontological status and communicative role of world projection, norms in art, and so on—all of which embellish and qualify his account of art as a kind of action. Some three decades later, Wolterstorff further advanced his theory of art in his Art Rethought: The Social Practices of Art (2015). Seeking to deepen, expand, adjust, and fill-in his thought in Art in Action,28 Wolterstorff outlines and contests what he calls “the grand narrative of art.”29 According to Wolterstorff, this is the narrative that art came into its own in the modern period as a socially other, transcendent practice. It did so by exchanging the construction model with the disinterested contemplation model. The latter approach (as advanced by Kant and Hegel) drove a wedge between the “fine” and the “mechanical arts.” According to Wolterstorff, nearly everything we take for granted in today’s art world—art history, art criticism, philosophy of art, and even museums—has been informed by the contemplation model. One of the chief problems Wolterstorff has with the grand narrative is its inability to adequately address works that don’t fit into traditional “fine” arts (poetry, prose fiction, drama, painting, sculpture, music, dance, and architecture) or new arts (still-photography, film, and ceramics). As Wolterstorff states, under the grand narrative “a good many recent artworks are not works of the arts.”30 In place of the grand narrative Wolterstorff provides a new general framework composed of two features. The first feature regards the social practices surrounding

For Seerveld’s take on Woltestorff ’s “instrumentalism” see “Cal Looks at Nick: A Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s Art in Action,” in In the Fields of the Lord: A Seerveld Reader, ed. Craig Bartholomew (Carlisle: Piquant, 2000), 360–5. 27 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 4. 28 Wolterstorff points to three concrete corrections he wishes to make: (1) He wishes to move from an atomistic view of action to one which recognizes actions as performed within the context of “long-ending, ever-changing, social practices” (vii). (2) He wants to employ the idea of the meaning of a work of art. (3) He wants to give a better account of the grand narrative that has driven the tunnel vision of engaging art through disinterested attention. Wolterstorff, Art Rethought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 29 Wolterstorff, Art Rethought, 26–30. 30 Ibid., 56. 26

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artworks. Seeking to amend the implicitly atomistic view of making works of art in Art in Action, in Art Rethought Wolterstorff amplifies the social embeddedness of artworks and artists. Accordingly, art is never a socially transcendent act but inevitably enmeshed in political, economic, classed, gendered, and religious dynamics.31 These larger social worlds inevitably inform the particular socially developed practices that are employed to generate art. After all, Wolterstorff argues, when creating a work the artist does not normally pluck “arbitrarily from the Platonic realm of universals” but, rather, makes their work in conjunction with an established social practice.32 Said another way, artists are not lone mavericks but rather work within shared practices that involve a tradition of know-how, a body of esteemed practitioners, critics, standards of excellence, criteria for correctness, and abiding parameters that determine what constitutes a given artistic practice.33 The second move Wolterstorff advances in his effort to dislodge the grand narrative regards the shift from assessing an object of art in light of its capacity for disinterested aesthetic attention, to that of its importance as a site of meaning. Given “meaning” is such a multivalent term, Wolterstorff clarifies that he is calling for the recovery of the threefold horizons of the author, art object, and observers of artworks. In turn, Wolterstorff distinguishes three kinds of meaning: the intent the maker had in creating (“act-meaning”), the meaning this intent brings to an object (“maker-meaning”’), and the way a work is engaged by the public (“social practice-meaning”).34 Thus, works of art are sites of meaning in all three of these senses. Wolterstorff’s reframing of art opens the door for a new way to understand the arts. His depiction of the slow dissolution of the grand narrative explains the changing faces of what constitutes “art.” As Wolterstorff argues, the twentieth century has witnessed the collapse of the grand narrative. It is also during the twentieth century that more “mechanical arts” found their way into the museum. Additionally, Wolterstorff’s account of “art-reflexive art” sheds light on the place of much modern art—artforms (such as Duchamp’s “Fountain”) are often used to push against the boundaries of art as dictated by the grand narrative. They do so by blurring the boundaries between art and our everyday world, by rejecting “disinterest” and recognizing the explicit association of art with the power of market forces, by placing the arts within the warp and woof of cultural realities, and by recognizing that the significance of all artworks is in some way contingent upon what has come before and after them.35 The above litany reveals that Wolterstorff understands the arts as inclusive in the broadest sense. But is Wolterstorff’s account sufficiently theological? If art is not a socially transcendent activity pointing to the universal and timeless in what sense can it point above or beyond to the divine? In Art in Action Wolterstorff lays out his theological rationale. Here we witness Wolterstorff’s Reformed impulse to amplify the Creator/creation distinction that drives his views. According to Wolterstorff, it is precisely because God is God and humans are humans that one should take seriously working within creation’s

Ibid., 86–90. In making this change, Wolterstorff appears to have taken to heart Lambert Zuidervaart’s early criticisms of his view of art as a kind of action free from larger sociohistorical features. 32 Wolterstorff, Art Rethought, 86. 33 Wolterstorff critiques the “Artist as Creator,” in Art in Action, 50–8 and again in Art Rethought, 52–3. 34 Wolterstorff, Art Rethought, 112–14. 35 Ibid., 116. 31

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social, material, and hermeneutic worlds.36 Said another way, because our calling is that of agents within creation called to act (i.e., constructing rather than merely contemplating) with the stuff of this world—employing both the realities of color, texture, etc., and the social, cultural and hermeneutic realities—such action is already theological. This being even more when we consider the implications of the directions our actions take.37 Will our action move toward the biblical concept of shalom? Will they work within the grain of the givenness of creation?

VII. LAMBERT ZUIDERVAART We conclude this brief survey with one final thinker in the neo-Calvinist aesthetic tradition: Lambert Zuidervaart (1950–). As with Seerveld and Wolterstorff, Zuidervaart held a deep concern for the inadequacy of reducing art to worldview.38 For Zuidervaart, worldview assessment is limited precisely because it misunderstands both the nature of “artistic truth” and the sociohistorical embeddedness of artworks. (On this second point, he sounds very similar to the later Wolterstorff.) Even though Zuidervaart shared Seerveld’s and Wolterstorff’s rejection of Rookmaaker’s view of art as worldview, in his 1982 article, “Toward a Shared Understanding of the Arts,” Zuidervaart further departed from Seerveld’s and Wolterstorff’s views on what constitutes art. Rather than adopting Seerveld’s “essentialist” approach which sees art as allusivity or (the early) Wolterstorff’s “functionalist” approach that depicts art as a kind of action, Zuidervaart posits art as a shifting sociohistorical constellation of features and factors with significant (though typically unrecognized) economic underpinnings.39 In place of (Kuyper and Bavinck’s idea of) the artist as a sole luminary, Zuidervaart posits the artist as someone embedded in various communities—ethnic, political, local, national, religious, educational, artistic, and so on—from which and by which the artists operates.40 It is worth noting that in making this move Zuidervaart sought to expand Kuyper’s understanding that knowledge works within communities with shared practices and perspectives (“life and worldview” perspectives). Furthermore, Zuidervaart uses this “communal” view of the arts to return to Kuyper’s concern for civil society and Habermas’ concern for protecting the public sphere. In other words, Zuidervaart wants to address how art serves democratic culture. Finally, as Zuidervaart’s concerns with the “economic” underpinning reveals, Zuidervaart draws from Adorno’s views of the economic underpinning of cultural life. Although Zuidervaart rejected art as a worldview assessment, he was not ready (as Kant was) to dismiss the idea that art held truth. Therefore, in his volume Artistic Truth:

As Wolterstorff states, “Man’s embeddedness in the physical creation, and his creaturely vocation and creaturely end within that creation, are where we must begin if we are to describe how the Christians sees the arts, provided, in turn, that the arts are seen as instruments and objects of action. To begin there is to begin at the center of the Christian’s convictions concerning God the Creator and man His creature.” Wolterstorff, Art in Action, 69. 37 Al Wolters, Creation Regained: The Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 87–114. 38 Notably, Zuidervaart displays the inadequacy of worldview approaches to art by critiquing Hans Rookmaaker’s friend and popularizer Francis Schaeffer. See Lambert Zuidervaart, Art, Education, and Cultural Renewal: Essays in Reformational Philosophy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 38–59. 39 Lambert Zuidervaart, “Toward a Shared Understanding of the Arts,” Pro Rege 11, no. 2 (December 1982): 18–25. 40 Lambert Zuidervaart, “Art is no Fringe: An Introduction,” in The Arts, Community, and Cultural Democracy, ed. Lambert Zuidervaart and Henry Luttikhuizen (London: Macmillan, 2000), 1–12. 36

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Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (2004) Zuidervaart sought a new way to understand how artworks can be “true” without recourse to assessing them in terms of logically valid propositions or merely emotive assertation. Having carefully exegeted numerous philosophers in regards to the question of art being true (Beardsley, Hofstader, Rapaport, Richards, Greene, Godoman, etc.), Zuidervaart pulled from Theodor Adorno’s view of artistic truth, Martin Heidegger’s understanding of truth as disclosedness, and Jürgen Habermas’ notion of communicative rationality, to argue for a nuanced nonpropositional and noncorrespondence theory of artistic truth as involving “imaginative disclosure”: an intersubjective process of exploring, interpreting, and presenting aesthetic signs under the expectation of authenticity (corresponding to the artist), significance (corresponding to the public), and integrity (corresponding to the artwork).41 Thus, while it may be difficult to speak of artistic truth in an easily specified way, artworks can be true to the artist’s intentions, be true to the needs of the audience (even when the audience doesn’t like the artwork’s message), and be true to itself (demonstrate internal integrity). This idea of a nonpropositional, noncorrespondence theory of truth clearly suggests the importance of communities in the construction of artistic knowledge. In this regard, Zuidervaart’s second major contribution moved the focus from artworks as the product of individual genius (Kuyper and Bavinck’s view) to assessing art in light of the numerous participants, communities, cultural institutions, and economic substructures that feed art. In doing so, Zuidervaart was particularly interested in how art—being that it is embedded in various communities—can serve a Kuyperian vision of civil society. These themes came together in Zuidervaart’s Art in Public: Politics, Economics, and a Democratic Culture (2011) wherein Zuidervaart shows how behind the social dimension of artistic truth resides the power of art’s imaginative disclosure for shaping a robust civil and democratic society. In doing so Zuidervaart not only connects art to broader social, political, and economic concerns but also offers important insights into his understanding of art’s autonomy.

VIII. CONCLUSION The foregoing is merely a survey of some of the key thinkers and themes. There is no way to include all of the important voices and lines of inquiry in the rich history of the neo-Calvinist discussion on the arts. Undoubtedly, a more extensive treatment would include the contributions of other neo-Calvinists such as Adriane Dengerick Chaplin and Wessel Stoker42 and assess those offering critical engagement of the tradition such as Jeremey Begbie, William Dyrness, and Jonathan Anderson.43 A thorough retracing of neoCalvinist aesthetics could easily fill multiple volumes.

In 1991 Zuidervaart wrote the first English monograph explicating and engaging Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory wherein Zuidervaart offers an extended argument that Adorno’s idea of artistic truth provides crucial insights for contemporary philosophical aesthetics. See Lambert Zuidervaart, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). 42 Adrienne Degerinck Chaplin taught philosophical aesthetics from 1999 to 2007 at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. Wessel Stoker was a professor of Aesthetics at VU Amsterdam (2006–19). 43 Jeremy Begbie’s Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts has a considerable section that retraces notable neo-Calvinists (Kuyper, Bavinck, Rookmaaker, and Seerveld) by way of proposing a more “Trinitarian” approach to the arts. Additionally, William Dyrness (who studied under Rookmaaker) and Jonathan Anderson have offered their own criticism of Rookmaaker’s “worldview” approach while adding their own understandings 41

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Additionally, the above might lead one to believe that the neo-Calvinist aesthetic tradition is a gradually shifting discussion informed by commitments to different philosophical traditions: Kuyper and Bavinck appropriating classical aesthetics (Kuyper being more Platonic and Bavinck more Aristotelian), Rookmaaker and Seerveld fundamentally differing on what constitutes Dooyeweerd’s aesthetic modal sphere, and Wolterstorff and Zuidervaart working out their aesthetics in light of their own analytic and continental sources, respectively. Or again, from another angle, one might see the ever-shifting discussion in light of a diversity of disciplines in play: Kuyper and Bavinck write primarily as theologians; Rookmaaker as an art historian, and Seerveld, Wolterstorff, and Zuidervaart as philosophers. Yet again, we can assess these contributors in terms of the way they engage with art: Rookmaaker, Seerveld, and (the later) Wolterstorff are more actively engaged with the interpretation of individual works than Kuyper, Bavinck, and Zuidervaart. However, such facile characterizations miss not only the important ways these thinkers have deeply cross-pollinated each other’s work, but they also miss the way significant motifs have continued to surface within these various voices that comprise the tradition. For example, throughout the tradition there has been a call for the democratization of the arts: Kuyper believed that the growing role of the arts in society could counteract the cold sterility of Enlightenment rationalism; Bavinck applauded attempts to educate the Dutch people aesthetically; Rookmaaker bemoaned the way the Enlightenment placed art on a pedestal outside daily life; Seerveld claimed everyone was called to “aesthetic obedience”; Wolterstorff sought to make art both widely defined and broadly accessible; and Zuidervaart emphasized the social significance of art for democratic cultures. Additionally, there is general agreement that an unmitigated embrace of Kant’s aesthetics is ill-advised: Kuyper, Bavinck, Rookmaaker, Seerveld, and Zuidervaart all take aim at the way Kant’s aesthetic eliminates aesthetic knowledge, and Wolterstorff sees Kant as part of the Cartesian turn that has hemmed in art. Finally, the relationship of worldview to art has been a constant motif: Kuyper made the audacious claim that Calvinism’s worldview held out the most promise for an affirmation of the arts; Bavinck argued the lack of a reigning worldview brought “an anarchistic situation in the arts”; Rookmaaker sought to understand modern art history in light of the unfolding of the Enlightenment worldview; Seerveld developed a cartographic method in which diachronically and perchronically charted movements intersected; Wolterstorff considered the projection of worldviews as merely one of any number of possible actions; Zuidervaart called for an end to interpretations of artworks in terms of worldviews given the multidimensional, historically stationed, layered, dialogical, and participatory nature of art. Although in no way uniform, the above suggests it is right to speak of the neo-Calvinist aesthetic tradition as an ongoing dialogue seeking to build a positive, constructive Reformed approach to the arts in light of modern challenges and concerns. As such, it serves as an invaluable resource for not only the broader Reformed community but, indeed, all those seeking to understand the relationship of the arts to the Christian faith.

of the way Dutch Reformed theology (and Kuyper in particular) shaped notable Dutch artists such as Van Gogh and Mondrian.

Chapter 40

Pastoral Ministry TIMOTHY KELLER

My main pastoral ministry has been in New York City where, with my family, I planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 1989. To understand how neo-Calvinism influences pastoral ministry, I will look at Redeemer as a case study. My thesis is that many of the features that seemed so unusual about our church within the field of American evangelicalism can be traced back to the Dutch Reformed tradition.

I. MY BACKGROUND WITH NEO-CALVINISM I was converted at the age of twenty through the ministry of Inter-Varsity (I-V) Christian Fellowship. The book table of my I-V group provided a good dose of British evangelical pietism. But also available were volumes from Francis Schaeffer as well as from an art professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. In Schaeffer’s books I saw the term “world-view” for the first time, but it was in reading Hans Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (1970) I first realized that different worldviews produced different art. I had only thought of theology as something you believed in order to please God and relate to him, but did it also change the way you did everything else in life? Rookmaker’s answer was a thunderous “Yes”! Rookmaaker met Francis Schaeffer in 1948 and his neo-Calvinistic views had a major influence on the American fundamentalist. In Switzerland Schaeffer established L’Abri, an open Christian community that became a magnet for disaffected, spiritually doubting young adults. Rookmaaker was active in it and began his own branch of L’Abri in the Netherlands. Reading the books of these men in my college years, I learned at least two tenets of neo-Calvinism: 1. “We should be orthodox, yet modern.”1 The world is not something from which we should withdraw. While remaining grounded in traditional, historic Christian doctrine, we should engage the modern world in its every aspect. 2. “Christianity is a world-and-life-view.”2 Christian beliefs constitute a worldview, a way to think about all of life and to be distinctive in our practices in each area—art, business, politics, civic life, family life, education, and so on. We

See Cory Brock, Orthodox Yet Modern: Herman Bavinck’s Use of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020). I did not use this term “orthodox and modern” at the time, I am using the phrase as borrowed from Cory Brock’s book as a perfect summary of this mindset or principle. 2 See Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, trans. and ed. James Eglinton, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, and Cory C. Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019). 1

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should articulate those distinctive ways of thinking, speaking, and acting out in the world with non-Christians in our shared spheres and institutions. In the fall of 1972 I enrolled in Gordon-Conwell Seminary. There, especially under the tutelage of the Swiss Reformed theologian Dr. Roger Nicole, I learned more about neoCalvinism (including the actual name!). Dr. Nicole’s main assigned text in our theological courses was Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology, which followed Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics closely. This theology assumed an epistemology that denied the possibility of value-free knowledge and that saw reason and reasoning based on a foundation of faith (as in Bavinck’s theology) rather than seeing faith based on a foundation of reason (as in Hodge’s theology). Dr. Nicole also required us to read Bavinck’s Doctrine of God—at that time the only part of the Dogmatics that was in English—and parts of Our Reasonable Faith, which was the title of an English translation of The Wonderful Works of God. Through all this I learned four other features of neo-Calvinism: (i) “Grace restores nature.”3 God’s redemptive plan is not only to save individual souls but to heal all sin’s results, all the ways evil has marred creation— spiritually, psychologically, socially, physically, and culturally. The goal of creation and redemption is the same: to create a perfect material world filled with embodied souls who love one another because they love God and live for his glory. This cosmic view of salvation moves Christians to not only evangelize but to work on social evils and for justice also. (ii) “There is both an antithesis yet common grace.” Due to the noetic effects of sin (Rom. 1:18-32) people are not neutral and objective. Alternative worldviews differ from Christianity at their roots, and so there is always a radical antithesis between the thought systems of the world and Christianity. But because of general revelation and common grace, many have wisdom from God that is inconsistent with their worldview. Hence, we engage nonbelievers with both respect and critique, with neither angry denunciations nor compromise. (iii) “Christianity brings together head and heart.” The Christian approach to evangelism is neither mainly rationalistic nor simply declarative. Nonbelievers have a knowledge of God they suppress (Rom. 1:18-32). Evangelism points to the inconsistencies between their best intuitions and the rest of their worldview. It affirms their aspirations but redirects them to Christ, so they can bring their “head” (their professed beliefs) together with their heart. (iv) “All Scripture points to Christ.” We should read the Bible not only synchronically in a topical, systematic-theological way (so the gospel is “God-Sin-Christ-Faith”), but also diachronically in a chronological, redemptive-historical way (so the gospel is also “Creation–Fall–Redemption–Restoration”). This shows how every inter-canonical theme, traced out through the stages of redemptive history, finds its fulfillment in Christ. After graduating from Gordon-Conwell I was ordained into the ministry of the newly established Presbyterian Church in America. There I began to learn not only that all Calvinists are not alike, but they often feared and disliked one another. George Marsden’s essay on the “three major Reformed emphases that have flourished in the American See Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 577. 3

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cultural setting” mirrored my experience.4 Marsden named the three impulses or emphases “doctrinalist,” “pietist,” and “culturalist.” He names the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) as one in which doctrinal issues were preeminent and most of the church’s energy was expended in maintaining an extremely high degree of agreement on how to understand and subscribe to the Confession. He then names the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) as a denomination that is “culturalist,” calling all its members to see the lordship of Christ over all of life and to work in the world and culture out of a Reformed “world-and-life” view. While Marsden does not name the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) as a “pietist” Reformed denomination, it is. I was present in the early years, and in good pietist-revivalist fashion the tasks of evangelism, church-planting, and world missions were lifted as the paramount concerns.5 Nevertheless, the PCA became large enough to also have a strong doctrinalist and a strong culturalist wing, though both are significantly smaller than the broad pietist “middle.” Marsden points out, “In reality all three groups typically [also] embody the traits dominant among the other two. Thus a ‘pietist’ is not typically a person who is lax in doctrine or lacking in cultural concern.”6 But the friction and hostility between the groups comes precisely at this point. Each perceives that the other two groups do lack their dominant trait or at the very least possess it to an inadequate degree. The doctrinalists are continually convinced that the culturalists are about to “go liberal” because of their efforts to engage modern culture. The culturalists believe that the doctrinalists are legalists, while the pietists see both of the other parties to be egregiously deficient in mission mindedness. In the PCA this antipathy has caused a series of controversies over the years that I will not recount here. But for our purposes it is important to see how the three emphases flesh out in different kinds of pastoral ministry. Here is a very generalized schematic to describe that in Table 40.1: Doctrinalist

Pietist

Culturalist “Organic” church in world

Main concern Institutional church

Individual Christian

Favored ministry

Preaching/catechesis

Evangelizing and missions Integrating faith with work; doing justice

Ministry emphases

Most emphasis on doctrine and sacraments; few beliefs seen as “secondary”; uniformity over unity; generally, produces smaller churches

Most emphasis on doctrine and little on sacraments; most beliefs seen as “secondary”; unity over uniformity; generally, produces bigger churches

Much emphasis on doctrine and sacraments; less than doctrinalists, more than pietists; a midpoint on theological uniformity between pietists and doctrinalists; produces different sized churches

George Marsden, “Introduction: Reformed and American,” in Reformed Theology in America, ed. David F. Wells (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1997), 1–12. It is crucial to keep in mind that these three manifestations of Reformed Christianity are especially characteristic of the American church. While I think these different emphases will surface in other parts of the world, they may look different. 5 In fact, many of the founding fathers of the PCA told me in the mid-1970s that they saw the OPC as being too narrow and ingrown and the CRC as being too intellectual and ingrown and both being less than passionate about missions. 6 Marsden, “Reformed and American,” 3. 4

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Pietist Emphasis on stories; (relative to others), the most practical; emphasizing common sense; assuming commonalities with nonbelievers except for salvation

Culturalist

Preaching

Emphasis on exegesis; (relative to the others), the most doctrinal; emphasizing the antithesis between Christianity and nonbelievers

Emphasis on Christ; (relative to the others), the most culturally related; effort to honor both the “antithesis” and common grace

Relationship to other churches

We are We are part of the church We are part of the part of the church that is that is conservative/ church more broadly; conservative/Reformed evangelical catholicity

Evangelism

Invite people to hear preaching; no equipping of lay people; presuppositional apologetics, or none at all; “Just preach the Bible”

Share faith with friends; much equipping of lay people; evidentialist and traditional rational apologetics; “Evidence for the resurrection”

Be a witness in the culture through one’s vocation and working for justice; cultural apologetics—find common grace in culture; “Express faith through art”

Politics

Very politically conservative

Politically conservative

Politically centrist

Formation

Formation through ecclesial processes and ordinances; pastoral care by ordained elders only; most stress on historic confessions and catechisms

Formation through individual and group discipleship; pastoral care by lay leaders of small groups; least emphasis on historic confessions and catechisms

Formation through Christian schools and scholarship in all fields, not just theology; pastoral care through both ministers and lay leaders; midlevel stress on historic confessions and catechisms

“Kingdom work”

Done by elders in the church courts; by church courts doing all work through judicatories

Done by lay people through the congregation; by churches and parachurch agencies doing mission work

Done by lay people in vocations and culture; by organizations, agencies, doing work in the culture

Dangers/ disadvantages

To be smug and selfrighteous over its purity; theological narrowness; bad track record on evangelism; can be over-contextualized to past historical cultures; not enough emphasis on inner experience, common grace, and all kinds of outreach

Uncritical use of church growth techniques; theological shallowness; bad track record on formation and catechesis; can be overcontextualized to popular consumerist culture; not enough emphasis on doctrine formation by community, faith-work integration, justice

Uncritical accommodation to cultural themes; bad track record on evangelism and missions; can be overcontextualized to elite contemporary culture; not enough emphasis on inner experience, antithesis, evangelism, local church

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Despite the tension there are advantages to being in a denomination with strong representations of each of these “wings” of American Reformed Christianity. One can see each “up close” and therefore can better see both its strengths and weaknesses. I came into the PCA while imbibing a mixture of pietism and neo-Calvinism. Early on I was challenged by our doctrinalist wing to see that I was not sufficiently grounded in our confessional documents. That was a great help to me. I also got to hear the doctrinalist critique of both revivalism and neo-Calvinism. In the latter case, it enabled me to better be able to see neo-Calvinism’s shortcomings, at least as it takes shape in the United States. First, neo-Calvinism puts such a heavy emphasis on lay people being salt and light out in the culture through their work that there was a de-emphasis on the importance of the local church and the ordained ministry. Young people are not challenged to consider the gospel ministry as a vocation. Second, the concept of “worldview” was often conceived in heavily cognitive terms. It was seen more as a set of bullet-point beliefs rather than an order of loves in the heart, or a way of imagining the world. Third, in line with this, neo-Calvinism projected a view of the Christian life that was intellectual and philosophical. On the one hand, it did not seem to offer much to Christians apart from highly educated professionals. On the other hand, it did not emphasize inward Christian experience, communion with God, formation through prayer, or the power of the Spirit. Finally, neo-Calvinism in North America became identified with “cultural transformationism,” a movement that promised to “redeem” and transform culture radically.7 Some in the Christian Right movement in the United States invoked Abraham Kuyper for their power strategy of taking over the “high places of culture.” Others in neo-Calvinist circles wedded Christianity closely to left-wing political movements and became sympathetic to secular views of sexuality and gender. The concerns of the doctrinalists—that neo-Calvinists tended to compromise orthodoxy in order to “reach the culture”—did have some merit. For these reasons, I also drew generously from the pietist and doctrinalist arms of Reformed Christianity while shaping my pastoral ministry. One great resource for me was the English Puritans, a group ignored or often criticized by neo-Calvinists. Several of them—particularly John Owen, Thomas Brooks, John Flavel, Stephen Charnock, and Richard Sibbes—have profoundly shaped my understanding and experience of communion with God and “spirituality” in general. In addition, the pietist wing of the church introduced me to the revivalism of Jonathan Edwards and others. While I did not reject revivalism, the doctrinalist critique of it certainly modified how I applied the dynamics of spiritual renewal in my ministry. Finally, my friend James D. Hunter, in his book To Change the World, helped me see both the reality and yet the complexity of cultural change agency. This enabled Redeemer to neither give up on cultural renewal nor to make triumphalist claims for fast or direct social change.8 I am a neo-Calvinist. But, as a close second, I am also a revivalist-pietist-evangelist, and third, a doctrinalist who does not want to jettison or water down or de-emphasize a single part of the Reformed faith as embodied in the Reformed confessions. I am so grateful for a denomination in which these three emphases—so often at odds—were nonetheless able to move me toward the philosophy of ministry that I found so durable and effective in Manhattan. I critique “transformationism” in Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel Centered Ministry in your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 199–201. 8 James D. Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 7

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II. REDEEMER AND NEO-CALVINISM In the rest of the chapter I turn to consider the way that neo-Calvinism shaped the ministry of Redeemer Church in New York City. It provided a path forward in a highly secular society that neither doctrinalist churches nor pietist churches seemed to have been able to reach. Joel Carpenter gives a nice summary of what neo-Calvinism can offer in such a situation: [a] positive, capacious, yet ultimately modest vision. . . . For Protestant communities, including the Reformed, that have seemed trapped between the alternatives of liberal accommodation to the secular world, fundamentalist crusading to regain cultural power, or pietist world-retreat, neo-Calvinism posits a way out and a way forward. . . . The Reformed people’s vision of God’s reign of shalom encourages them to sustain the tension of being in the world but marching to a different set of orders. They can serve the common good without seeking to dominate the scene or feeling dismayed by an apparent lack of sweeping success. God will make all things right, in God’s own good time so the Reformed can be who they are, bloom where they are planted, and get along with their neighbors. This simply is a different outlook than the one shared by both liberal and conservative Protestants.9

a. Public Identity Redeemer made strong use of the “orthodox yet modern” motif of neo-Calvinism in order to create a public identity that enabled it to reach secular New Yorkers.10 Manhattan’s Protestant religious field sharply divided between very liberal, mainline churches and conservative fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches. Both groups were in a weakened condition.11 The liberal churches still had social, cultural, and economic capital. That is, they had a history rooted in the city, beautiful buildings, staff and clergy with degrees from respected academic institutions, some members who were prominent New Yorkers, and many espoused viewpoints that were culturally accepted in secular society. Nevertheless, they were declining because of factors outlined by sociologists.12 Their beliefs and values were so aligned with secular liberal culture that they offered Manhattan residents no resources or moral claims that secular society wasn’t already providing.

Joel A. Carpenter, “The Perils of Prosperity: Neo-Calvinism and the Future of Religious Colleges” Prepared for the conference, “The Future of Religious Colleges,” held at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, October 6–7, 2000. 10 William McMillan, “Cosmopolitan Calvinists: Global Religion in a Secular Age” (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: Yale University, 2018). McMillan examines how Redeemer, over a twenty-five- to thirty-year period, despite holding orthodox Christian beliefs that were at sharp variance to its social-cultural location (Manhattan) grew and thrived and achieved a level of influence. He uses two sets of tools largely from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu—field theory and forms of “capital” (see also David L. Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997]; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984]; Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” found at https://home​.iitk​.ac​.in/​~amman​/soc748​/bourdieu​_forms​_of​_capital​.pdf). 11 See Kyle B. Roberts, Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783–1860 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016); M. Bowman, The Urban Pulpit: New York City and the Fate of Liberal Evangelicalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 12 Dean M. Kelley, Why Conservative Churches are Growing (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1996; Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998). 9

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Conservative churches in Manhattan were small and even weaker. None were geared to reach people who were highly educated and immersed in secularism. They existed only to serve the needs of already conservative people from outside New York City who were there for work and who, in general, could not wait to leave. These churches had many of the social traits of modern US fundamentalism—anti-intellectualism, legalism, separatism, and cultural brittleness. As a result, they had neither social capital (lots of relational connections to long-time New Yorkers) nor cultural capital (knowledge, manner, credentials, skills that were respected in the Manhattan culture).13 Conservative churches were written off by secular residents. Redeemer, however, crafted a public identity that found an “interstitial space” (or better “inter-sectional” space) between sectors in the Manhattan religious field.14 Redeemer largely escaped the ability of incumbents and others to categorize it. From the liberal side, that would take the form of: “You shouldn’t go there—it’s just a right-wing fundamentalist church” or “You should not go there—those people are anti-science obscurantists.” From the conservative side, that would take the form of: “You shouldn’t go there—they don’t really teach or believe the Bible like we do.” But these kinds of characterizations were untrue and did not work. This gave many people—both Christians but especially nonbelievers and secular people—the freedom to attend services or events at Redeemer. Redeemer clearly upheld the biblical-theological doctrines of Protestant orthodoxy— the authority of the Bible, the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead, the necessity of the new birth, and so on. But there were three key ways Redeemer took a “modern” stance along with its orthodoxy in neo-Calvinist fashion. They could be called “combination” strategies. 1. By combining critiques of both moralism and relativism rather than only criticizing one or the other. Secular culture is extremely critical of religious legalism and triumphalism. Redeemer put forward a salvation-by-grace alone narrative that produced a “combination” critique—critique of both moralistic conservativism and liberal antinomianism at the same time and from the same source—the gospel of the “solas,” by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. Both moralism and relativism were seen as denials of the gospel of grace. This twofold critique was evident in virtually every sermon. It enabled Redeemer to distance itself from both liberal unorthodox Christianity and an orthodox Christianity that was legalistic and separatist. Nearly all listeners at Redeemer had previously believed there were only two options: moralistic religion and free-spirited relativism. Now they had the prospect of a different way forward.

I am using the term “cultural” or “symbolic” capital as Bourdieu would. Someone has “cultural capital” to the degree she or he has goods valued by that particular culture. That can include: (1) knowledge of a particular culture—its members’ beliefs, values, narratives, aspirations—and skillful in deploying that cultural knowledge in any situation; (2) culturally appropriate manner, language, tone, expression, emotions, and common experiences; (3) qualifications and credentials; experience or training in culturally high-status institutions and organizations; (4) skills and abilities that are highly valued by the culture; able to do things that the culture finds impressive and credible; and (5) physical things—books, beautiful buildings, libraries, art, fashionable clothes, and the appearances of bodies and objects that the culture finds compelling. 14 See McMillan, “Cosmopolitan Calvinists.” 13

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2. By combining both evangelism and social justice and love for the city. Virtually no other church was doing this at the time (though that is no longer the case, thankfully). And the case for both evangelism and doing justice had to be deeply grounded in Scripture, or Redeemer would have rightly lost its reputation for being orthodox and conservative in doctrine. Of course, both doing justice and evangelizing the lost have abundant grounds in the Bible. Here again neo-Calvinism with its understanding of grace restoring nature was crucial. Redeemer’s Presbyterian heritage also enabled us to draw on the Old Testament’s abundant legislation regarding justice.15 3. By combining both respect for and challenge in assessing worldviews. Rather than making a case for Christianity in the mode of “We have all the truth and you are wholly in the wrong,” Redeemer’s teaching was as follows: (1) Every worldview is ultimately based on faith, and this levels the field. Everyone equally has the burden of proof, even secular people who claim to be just rational. (2) Many secular values are affirmed (e.g., emphasis on individual value, human rights, care for the poor) but also challenged as insufficiently grounded. (3) Other worldviews are appreciated, but their best aspirations were redirected toward Christ as their only true fulfillment. By taking an “orthodox but modern” stance, Redeemer failed to exhibit the traits Manhattanites expected from conservative churches. Those traits included: ●

no concern for economic or racial justice; no language to speak of structural injustice;

●

a self-righteous combativeness with a strong note of superiority and pride;

●

a “Manichean” view that sees everything as either wholly good or wholly evil;

●

no ability to engage opposing views with patience, humility, hope, and tolerance;

●

●

●

●

●

●

a pitting of Christianity against culture, so that the only options are either a hostile takeover of society or a retreat from it; no concept of how faith shapes the way we work in other spheres with an attitude of service rather than combat; a deep mistrust of scholarship, art, and science and a rejection of any expressions of them that are not overtly and loudly Christian; a shallow approach to biblical interpretation that ignores the biblical author’s intended meaning in the original context and the scholarship that helps us discern it; a wedding of Christianity to popular, traditional US culture, including gender stereotypes, a nationalistic, “God and country” ethos, and hints of misogyny and racism; and a rejection of the importance of ethnic and cultural diversity in our churches.

While the coming of Christ radically changes our relationship to the civil law of the Old Testament, Presbyterians still recognize the “general equity thereof ” the principles of justice embodied in them. Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter XIX, “Of the Law of God,” section IV: “To them also, as a body politick, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.” 15

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b. Community Formation The “orthodox yet modern” stance of neo-Calvinism can create a unique outward public identity for a church, but it can also shape its internal community dynamics. Christians’ respectful yet critical engagement with the culture around them can make nonbelievers feel welcomed and heard within the various services and gatherings of the church. There they can “incubate,” processing their questions and doubts in close connection with other believers. Most churches cannot include nonbelievers within their community gatherings in this way. In this we at Redeemer were following the example of the early years of L’Abri—to create an explicitly Christian community that was deliberately open to and inclusive of nonbelievers. Redeemer was intentionally crafted to be the same kind of place. It was dedicated to speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). 1. Speaking Truth. Redeemer maintained a vocabulary, attitude, and a way of conversing that made the outsider feel not just safe but attracted to the community. Redeemer made nonbelievers feel they were “ratified participants”16—genuinely expected, desired, and served. They were brought to feel that way even though they knew that to be a member of the church one had to put one’s faith in Christ. Nevertheless, they felt included. How did that happen? ●

●

●

The obvious: Redeemer leaders and speakers anticipated and respected the doubts of nonbelievers, always articulating their concerns and arguments in the strongest form—not as “strawmen” easy to knock down. We also sought to avoid insider jargon and especially “pious-talk,” flowery and pompous language that is used in many churches to sound spiritual. In general, we sought to remember what it was like to not believe and express sympathy for doubt (Jude 22). The less obvious: We avoided “code switching.” We spoke about non-Christians when they are not there exactly the way we talked to non-Christians when they were. In other words, we always assumed their presence. We also sought a stance of nondefensiveness when listening to criticism of the church. Talking about both faith and nonbelief in these ways not only attracted outsiders but also aided the Christian formation of our members. It helped adults and children see how their faith answered the questions of the culture in which they lived. In fact, by always talking inside the church about how Christianity answers objections and cultural narratives, it “vaccinated,” as it were, our children against being surprised and co-opted by those objections and narratives out in society. When making a presentation of Christian truth from the Bible, Redeemer teachers usually showed how the biblical truth solved a modern problem or fulfilled a modern longing. Christianity was presented not simply as the right view of things but as the fuller explanation of reality, which includes the best insights of other worldviews but also accounts for things those worldviews cannot.

2. In Love. Redeemer sought to create a hospitable, loving, worshiping Christian community such that there was little need for an evangelistic department. We

This is the language of McMillan, “Cosmopolitan Calvinists,” 7, 12, 33.

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wanted the Christian community itself to be the evangelistic “program.” At any given moment there were dozens of patient, caring, thoughtful, relationships between Christians and non-Christians. Jake Meador explains the basic dynamic well (though he is not speaking here of Redeemer): L’Abri is a place that challenges its non-Christian students by sharing the Christian faith with them while also welcoming them with a hospitality that is directly attributable to that faith. So as these students consider the intellectual claims of the faith they can’t simply look at the teachings of the faith in an exclusively intellectual way. They are not just principles to be affirmed or rejected. These students are forced to reckon with the undeniable delight of the place and the fact that the people who have created it say it all comes from Christianity. You are, essentially, being asked whether you believe in apples as you enjoy a slice of apple pie.17

c. Preaching There are two crucial ways in which neo-Calvinism influenced and shaped my preaching at Redeemer. The first was in its “Christo-centric” model for understanding biblical texts. Neo-Calvinism brought what is sometimes called “Redemptive-Historical” or “ChristCentered Preaching” to the United States. I was first introduced to it by one of its American pioneers and proponents, Edmund P. Clowney, who was for many years, president of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. His book Preaching and Biblical Theology was based on the insights of “biblical theology” as framed by Geerhardus Vos and Herman Ridderbos, two Dutch theologians who were taught prominently at Westminster in the mid-twentieth century.18 Clowney’s volume was perhaps the first that reached out to the American church outside of the Dutch community of the upper midwest. It argued that when preachers read the Bible “diachronically,” along the historical plotline of the Bible, it produced preaching that is less moralistic and more Christ-centered. Ed called preaching that did not “get to Christ” but mainly laid out moral and practical principles “synagogue sermons”—sermons that could just as easily be preached in a synagogue as in a church. I was first exposed to this approach to preaching when Clowney came to Gordon-Conwell during my student days and delivered a set of lectures on preaching Christ from all of Scripture. Before this my ideal had been the methodical expository preaching of British evangelical Anglicans such as John Stott, A. M. Stibbs, and Dick Lucas. Their preaching was carefully biblical and extraordinarily clear but lacked the dimension that Clowney brought. In that lecture series Clowney argued that God could have poured out judgment on humankind in the Garden, and therefore the only reason there is any history is because God purposed to send his Son into the world, to pour out judgment on him and thereby save us and renew the whole world. Jesus is therefore the goal of human history. Thus, when we read the Bible along its storyline, we discern how each state in redemptive history prepares for and points toward Jesus. To read the Bible “redemptive-historically” sees every stage and story, every law and proverb as pointing to Christ and his work. In short, we do not understand the text when we https://mereorthodoxy​.com​/home​-retreat​-and​-the​-benedict​-option/. Edmund P. Clowney, Preaching and Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962).

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merely have discerned its doctrinal and ethical teaching. Unless we see how it also points toward Jesus and his salvation, the sermon will end up being a “try harder” moral exhortation.19 By always ending a sermon with Christ, there was emphasis on salvation by grace and a call for renewed faith in Christ rather than merely a list of “to-dos” to take away and obey. Second, however, neo-Calvinism made it possible for me to preach to both Christians and non-Christians at the same time, an absolutely crucial component in Redeemer’s outreach. In the United States “apologetics” was understood as the presentation of rational evidences—for the existence of God, for the reliability of the Bible, and for the truth of the resurrection. To speak to skeptics in a public presentation it was assumed you had to begin not by expounding the Bible to them but by exposing them to facts that would convince them to trust in God and the Bible. However, this “common sense realism” approach ignored the teaching of Rom. 1:1832, namely, that nonbelievers have a knowledge of God which they more or less (but never perfectly) suppress. Neo-Calvinism’s robust understanding of general revelation taught that there are many things the Bible teaches that will resonate deeply in a nonbeliever’s heart, even if their “head” tells them these things cannot be true.20 This opens a wide door for evangelizing nonbelievers with the gospel even while edifying Christians with that same gospel. For example, the following is a set of topics that can be preached responsibly from numerous texts. These are all benefits for members of the kingdom of God on which the Christians in your congregation need full instruction. But they are also “cultural felt needs”—goods for which modern people feel a need that our secular culture does not provide. Notice that they are framed in a way that shows nonbelievers the distinct or unique offers of Christianity to deliver goods they have not found elsewhere.21

1. Christianity uniquely offers a non-performative identity—not constantly ebbing and flowing based on your accomplishment and conduct, and enabling embrace, not exclusion.



2. Christianity offers a resolution to guilt, shame, and self-laceration that avoids both minimizing your own failures and allowing other people to ultimately define you.



3. Christianity offers a kind of freedom (embracing the right restrictions) that, unlike the secular definition (the absence of restrictions), does not undermine love relationships.



4. Christianity offers a contentment and joy not based on changing circumstances. Our bad things will turn out for good, our good things can’t be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.

More than Clowney, Bryan Chapell’s book, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), first issued in the early 1990s, moved many American evangelicals, especially in the Reformed world, toward the redemptive-historical approach of Dutch neo-Calvinism. Chapell’s work was far more practical than Clowney’s books. The subtitle indicates that many other American preachers came to understand the redemptive-historical approach after embracing the British close expository method. 20 For more on this, see Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2020), and Sutanto’s chapter on revelation for this handbook. 21 For more on this topic see Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022. 19

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5. Christianity offers a meaning and purpose in life that suffering cannot take away from you, but indeed can enhance you. It can enable you to face death without any fear.



6. Christianity offers a basis for morality and justice that avoids the twin dangers of relativism and oppression. (Though we freely admit that many Christians veer toward relativism or oppression.)



7. Christianity offers a unique view of power. The incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus show us power both voluntarily relinquished and yet deployed for service to others.



8. Christianity offers a unique account of truth; not subjectivism grounded in culture or evolution (secularism) nor objectivism grounded in an impersonal transcendent norm (Greek-Roman; idealism). Rather it is grounded in an absolute Person—Jesus.



9. Christianity offers a unique hope for the world—not eventual nothingness (secularism) and not even mere spiritual paradise (other religions). It promises a renewed, perfect physical world—a new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

10. Christianity offers a unique approach to repairing relationships. It neither privileges the forgiven (that leaves justice undone) nor privileges the forgiver (so forgiveness is withheld). Without both, we cannot maintain human social relationships. In his little book Plugged In, Dan Strange presents a communication strategy based on the neo-Calvinistic missiology of J. H. Bavinck.22 He argues, because nonbelievers have aspirations and intuitions that are at the very least “echoes” of the knowledge of God, the evangelist can build on them and both subvert (critique) and yet fulfill them by redirecting them toward Christ. What Dan Strange calls the approach of “subversive fulfillment” has enormous potential for weekly preaching that not only builds up believers but persuades nonbelievers. I should not end this preacher’s tribute to neo-Calvinism without noting some limitations that I, at least, found in the neo-Calvinist preaching tradition. Bavinck himself taught that sermons must not just convince the mind but touch the heart and conscience and move the will to practical action.23 Nevertheless, in the United States at the very least, the redemptive-historical approach to preaching was often doctrinal rather than practical, and intellectual rather than heart-changing. Some proponents of the redemptive-historical approach counseled preachers very specifically to avoid “application” because of their fear of moralism. Here then I was able to supplement what neo-Calvinism gave me with the experiential theology of the Puritans and particularly of that late Puritan Jonathan Edwards. Edwards Daniel Strange, Plugged In: Connecting Your Faith with What You Watch, Read, and Play (London: The Good Book Company, 2019). 23 See his essay, “Eloquence,” in Herman. Bavinck on Preaching and Preachers, ed. and trans. James P. Eglinton (Peabody: Hendrickson Academic, 2017). See particularly p. 32 where Bavinck speaks of the importance of argument, description, and persuasion. His idea of “description” is particularly interesting. He seems to be calling preachers to avoid abstractions and to touch the heart through careful descriptions of sense experience. See my observations on Jonathan Edwards, in Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Viking, 2015). 22

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was a revivalist, though one with reservations about ministers like Whitefield who often played so much directly to the emotions. Edwards developed a theology of Christian experience in which the heart was reached without bypassing the mind. Edwards did not use a dramatic style nor long stories and illustrations as did Whitefield, perhaps because he thought they worked superficially—stirring the emotions without changing the heart’s fundamental commitments. Instead of merely informing the mind or stirring the emotions, aimed to bring truth to bear, but to the truth not simply clear to listeners but “real.”24 Edwards described and sought in preaching a “sense of the heart” that was analogous to the senses of the body. Edwards sought this largely through vivid images and sustained metaphors. He connected the memory of a sense experience with a theological truth. For example, he preached (“your good deeds cannot keep you out of hell”)—there is the theological proposition—(“any more than a spider web can stop a falling rock”)— there is the sense experience.25 Think about how differently this teaching falls on the ear if you give out the proposition only. This showed me a way forward. My colleague in ministry Charles Drew speaks about the difference between what he calls “Christo-telic” and “Christo-phanic” preaching. Christo-telic is to show your hearers that your text points forward to Christ. So, if you are preaching on the temple, Jesus is the true temple; if you are preaching on a sacrifice, Jesus is the true sacrifice. These explanations are “Christo-telic” and crucial. But Christo-phanic preaching is to make Christ visible and compelling, to portray him in such a way that listeners’ hearts are drawn out to him. That must be part of Christo-centric preaching as well.

d. A Three-fold Understanding of Outreach Redeemer did “outreach to the world” in three ways. We evangelized and called individuals to faith in Christ and extended this ministry through the planting of new churches. Second, we helped the economically disadvantaged within the church and equipped our members to—outside the church—do mercy and justice in the neighborhoods of our city. Finally, we discipled our members to integrate their faith with their work and to pursue their vocations distinctively from a Christian worldview. This approach was nearly unique in the city for orthodox Protestant churches, and the roots of it were in neo-Calvinism. The emphasis on the sovereignty of Christ over every area of life and the concept of worldview led to the Faith and Work ministry. The redemptive-historical reading of the Bible that showed salvation touching every aspect of life in the world—individual, social, physical, cultural—brought with it an awareness of the importance of Christians working for justice. And the neo-Calvinist idea of the church as both gathered under its officers (the institutional church) and scattered in the world (the organic church) influenced how we went about doing these three kinds of outreach. Redeemer formed four “arms” for them.

See Wilson H. Kimnach, “Jonathan Edwards’ Pursuit of Reality,” in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 102–17. See also Michael S. Keller, “Experiencing God in Words: Rhetoric, Logic, Imaginative Language, and Emotion in Jonathan Edwards Sermons—A Computational Analysis,” (unpublished PhD diss., Free University of Amsterdam, 2018). 25 Paraphrased. The full quote is found in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader, ed. W. Kimnach (Yale, 1999), 56: “All your righteousness would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.” 24

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Because we saw “Faith-Work Integration” as basically a form of discipleship, even though it was discipling mainly for work outside the walls of the church, we created a department within the church, under the elders. We formed the “Center for Faith and Work,” which eventually developed into a multi-staff ministry, with an annual income of 1 million dollars. At various times it sponsored eighteen different vocational fellowships, including for writers, academics, artists, dancers, fashion, diplomacy, advertising and marketing, finance, business, health care, law, and education. It developed a year-long program called “Gotham Fellows” for relatively young workers new to their vocations. For many years it awarded grants in the “Entrepreneurship and Innovation” Initiative (EI) to Christians beginning new enterprises in the business world, the non-profit world, and the arts.26 For our “Mercy Our Justice” ministry we had two major arms. First, we had a highly active and skillful diaconate working with dozens of people within Redeemer who had socioeconomic problems and needs. I knew that in the British context Presbyterian deacons were more involved in the management of church property and finances, but I deliberately oriented our diaconate in the early days to a more Dutch practice of deacons as ministers of mercy to the needy. The diaconate became a juggernaut, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars away to hundreds of people within the congregation with various physical, material, and economic needs. But for getting Christians involved in meeting the needs of the poor and marginalized outside in the rest of the city, the organization “Hope for New York” (HFNY) was spun out as its own 501©3 organization, with its own board. Although it was a separate organization it worked very tightly with Redeemer and even today shares office space with Redeemer congregations. HFNY, however, has come to work with many other churches. It provides financial grants, volunteers, pro-bono help, and training for over fifty nonprofits throughout New York City that work with a wide range of needy populations, including the working poor, prostitutes on drugs, the formerly incarcerated, disadvantaged teens, the homeless, people with HIV/Aids, the elderly, various kinds of newly arrived immigrants, the poor with chronic health problems, the disabled, and the jobless. In addition, there are some ministries that reach out to multiple needs in one location, generally the poorest neighborhoods in the city.27A number of these nonprofits actually grew out of Redeemer in that they were founded and pioneered by Redeemer members and then related back to the church through HFNY. Our ministry of evangelism had several “arms.” Within Redeemer there were ministries such as “Public Faith” (which, contrary to the impression of such a title, was not about political or cultural engagement but was an evangelistic ministry), “Questioning Christianity” (which was a series of talks by me to audiences that were majority nonbelieving), and “Open Forums” (which were artistic-music events with an evangelistic lecture or address). But most importantly, Redeemer’s public identity, based on neo-Calvinistic themes, made Redeemer itself, in nearly all its services and meetings, into a place where nonbelievers were welcomed and incorporated, as I argued earlier.

There was a debate around the EI initiative, because here we had church money being awarded to people to begin businesses out in the world. Some argued that this violated “sphere sovereignty” and so EI should have been spun out to be a ministry of the “organic” church rather than the “institutional” church. In the end, EI stayed within Redeemer, but the debate showed an ability of leaders to think in neo-Calvinist categories. 27 See https://www​.hfny​.org​/affiliates. 26

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Finally, Redeemer’s evangelistic ministry extended to the planting of new churches in NYC and in other great global cities around the world. In the early 1990s churches in both the Netherlands and China approached us for help in planting churches in their greatest cities. Out of this eventually grew its own organization, “Redeemer City to City.”28 It partners with local leaders and pastors to plant new evangelical churches in global cities throughout the world. As of this writing it has aided in helping over 1,000 new churches begin in over seventy cities on every continent.

III. CODA Redeemer is thoroughly orthodox in its theology but culturally engaged (rather than merely hostile or withdrawn) and that is profoundly counterintuitive to the secular people of New York City. There have been many efforts to deny Redeemer its public identity so as to blunt its work. Articles in newspapers and magazines have sought to paint Redeemer as a “hard-line” and “fundamentalist” church with a thin, erudite-sounding veneer.29 On the other side there have been many conservative voices charging that Redeemer “waters down the gospel” in order to be popular. But these efforts, while surely convincing some, largely did not work here in the city. Redeemer—while maintaining orthodox doctrine—grew large among cultural elites in center-city Manhattan, something that had not happened in a century.30 It continues now as a network of five churches which intends to continue to grow. In addition, Redeemer City to City actively helps churches of other denominations plant new congregations in the city employing the same “DNA” of orthodoxy with the outreaches of evangelism, faith-work integration, and neighborhood engagement. A model that accounts well for this growth can be found in Christian Smith’s American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving.31 A high-level summary of his “Subcultural Identity Theory of Religious Strength” is this: that a church thrives in a pluralistic secular environment when it strikes a nuanced balance such that it can “can create both (a) a clear distinction from and (b) significant engagement and tension with other relevant outgroups.”32 Such a model of religious strength, if true, bodes well for neo-Calvinist-influenced churches in a secular society.

http://www​.redeemercitytocity​.com. For example, see a New York Magazine article—Joseph Hooper, “Tim Keller Wants to Save Your Yuppie Soul,” November 25, 2009. Kathy Keller pushed back into interstitial space when she wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine and opined that they should rename the article—“Manhattanites More Stupid Than We Thought; Attend [Fundamentalist] Church.” 30 Prior to its 2017 multiplication into three congregations—and now existing as five—Redeemer as a single church drew a weekly attendance of over 5,000. 31 See Smith, American Evangelicalism, especially chapter 4, “Toward a ‘Subcultural Identity’ Theory of Religious Strength,” 89–119. 32 Ibid., 118–19. 28 29

Annotated Bibliography Primary Sources on Neo-Calvinism DMYTRO BINTSAROVSKYI

I. GROEN VAN PRINSTERER (1801–76) a. History While working as the royal archivist at the House of Orange, Groen published thirteen volumes, which established his reputation as a historian. They included lengthy introductions in French, in which Groen summarizes the contents of the volume and gives his own interpretation of the historical significance of the documents. Archives ou correspondance inédite de la maison d’Orange-Nassau: Recueil publié avec autorisation de S.M. le Roi. Series I (8 vols; Leiden: Luchtmans, 1841–7); Series II (5 vols; Utrecht: Kemink et Fils, 1857–61). Groen’s historiographical magnum opus was his Handbook on the History of the Fatherland in which, based on the Biblical covenantal model, he connects the rise and decline of his nation with its faithfulness to the Gospel. Handboek der geschiedenis van het vaderland (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1841). Other important historical writings include the defense of his historiographic method; his reflections on the significance of the House of Orange for the Netherlands; and his study of Prince Maurice and John of Oldenbarnevelt. Antwoord aan mr. M.C. van Hall (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1844). 1813 in het licht der volkshistorie herdacht (Den Haag: Gerritsen, 1863). Maurice et Barnevelt: Étude historique (Utrecht: Kemink et Fils, 1875).

b. Jurisprudence Groen actively participated in the discussions concerning the constitutional revisions of the 1840s. In 1840, he published two works in which he insisted on the necessity to keep Protestant political principles and warned against a religiously neutral education. Bijdrage tot herziening der Grondwet in Nederlandschen zin (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1840). Adviezen in de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal in dubbelen getale (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1840). In a similar vein, he criticized the 1848 Constitution, arguing that it has a fundamentally revolutionary spirit, which contradicts the principles of the old Dutch political system. Grondwetsherziening en eensgezindheid (Amsterdam: Müller, 1849).

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Groen’s contributions to the constitutional provisions of education include his parliamentary address on September 28, 1864, and his recollections on how the Education Law of 1857 came to be. Het lager onderwijs en art. 194 der Grondwet—Parlementair advies van 28 september 1864’s (Gravenhage: Van Cleef, 1864). Hoe de onderwijswet van 1857 tot stand kwam: Historische bijdrage (Amsterdam: Höveker, 1876). While remaining loyal to the national church, Groen defended the rights of the oppressed Seceders. In an important tract, he analyzes the causes of the 1834 Secession and points out the illegality of the persecutions against the movement. De maatregelen tegen de Afgescheidenen aan het staatsregt getoetst (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1837). As a legal scholar, Groen wrote a work in honor of the German constitutional lawyer Friedrich Julius Stahl, which was recently translated into English: Ter nagedachtenis van Stahl (Amsterdam: Höveker, 1862). In Memory of Stahl (trans. Ruben Alvarado; Aalten: Pantocrator Press, 2022).

c. Anti-Revolutionary Worldview The origins of the Anti-Revolutionary movement can be traced back to Groen’s contributions in his periodical Nederlandsche Gedachten (Dutch Thoughts). The best expression of his views can be found in a series of fifteen private lectures published in 1847, with a second, slightly revised, edition appearing in 1868. In an abridged form, the lectures were translated into English in 1975 and recently republished: Ongeloof en revolutie: Eene reeks van historische voorlezingen (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1847). Unbelief and Revolution: A Series of Lectures in History (trans. Harry Van Dyke; 2 vols; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018–19). In 1860, Groen wrote another major work on Anti-Revolutionary Christian politics. While “Unbelief and Revolution” had a more academic character and was originally presented in a circle of like-minded people, in the 1860 book Groen tried to reach a broader audience. Le parti anti-révolutionnaire et confessionnel dans l’Église Réformée des Pays-Bas: Étude d’histoire contemporaine (Amsterdam: Höveker, 1860). Christian Political Action in an Age of Revolution (trans. Colin Wright; Aalten: WordBridge Publishing, 2015). Other important publications on Christian-historical politics include Groen’s works on the Dutch national spirit, on epistemological foundations, on the deceptive nature of the Enlightenment principles, on political theory and history, and on the importance of the Christian heritage for European nations. Volksgeest en burgerzin (Leiden: Van der Hoek, 1829). Beschouwingen over staats- en volkerenregt. Eerste deel: Proeve over de middelen waardoor de waarheid wordt gekend en gestaafd (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1834).

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Vrijheid, gelijkheid, broederschap: Toelichting van de spreuk der revolutie (Den Haag: Roering, 1848). Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: A Refutation of Liberalism (trans. Jan Adriaan Schlebusch; Reformed Conservative, 2022). Verscheidenheden over staatsregt en politiek (Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1850). La nationalité religieuse en rapport avec La Hollande et L’Alliance Évangélique (Amsterdam: Höveker, 1867).

d. Further Bibliographical Sources Vries, Tiemen de, Handleiding tot de kennis van het leven en de werken van mr. G. Groen van Prinsterer (Appingedam: Van der Ploeg, 1895).

II. ABRAHAM KUYPER (1837–1920) a. Calvinism as a Worldview Outside the Netherlands, Kuyper’s most influential work has been his Stone lectures, in which he presented Calvinism as a comprehensive life system. The lectures appeared in Dutch and in two slightly different English editions. Het calvinisme: Zes Stone-lezingen in october 1898 te Princeton (N.-J.) gehouden (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1899). Calvinism. Six Stone-lectures (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1899). In four other addresses, Kuyper argued that Calvinism rather than the French Revolution was the true source of constitutional liberties, that sphere sovereignty was a fundamental Reformed principle, that Calvinism was not hostile toward art, and that Calvin’s theology had important political implications. Het calvinisme oorsprong en waarborg onzer constitutioneele vrijheden (Amsterdam: Van der Land, 1874). “Calvinism: The Origin and Safeguard of Our Constitutional Liberties,” trans. John Hendrik De Vries, The Bibliotheca Sacra 52 (1895), 385–410, 646–75. Souvereiniteit in eigen kring (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1880). “Sphere sovereignty,” trans. Harry Van Dyke, in On Charity and Justice. Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology, 111–50 (ed. Matthew J. Tuininga; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2022). Het calvinisme en de kunst (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1888). “Calvinism and Art,” trans. John Hendrik De Vries, in Christian Thought: Lectures and Papers on Philosophy, Christian Evidence, Biblical Elucidation, vol. 9, 259–82, 447–59 (New York: Ketcham, 1892). Niet de vrijheidsboom maar het kruis: Toespraak ter opening van de tiende deputatenvergadering in het eeuwjaar der Fransche revolutie (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1889). “Not the Liberty Tree but the Cross!,” trans. Harry Van Dyke, in On Charity and Justice, 81–110.

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Kuyper’s most important anti-modernist publications include his rejection of uniformity typical for modern life, his criticism of theological liberalism as divorced from the reality of life, his case against contemporary biblical criticism, his address about pantheism blurring the boundaries that God has set in the world, his juxtaposition of the Christian religion and “the dogma of evolution,” and a series of articles on three threats to Christianity: intellectualism, mysticism, and practicism. Eenvormigheid, de vloek van het moderne leven (Amsterdam: De Hoogh, 1869). “Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life (1869),” trans. John Vriend, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 19–44 (ed. James D. Bratt; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). Het modernisme, een fata morgana op christelijk gebied (Amsterdam: De Hoogh, 1871). “Modernism: A Fata Morgana in the Christian Domain (1871),” trans. John Vriend, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 87–124. De hedendaagsche Schriftcritiek in hare bedenkelijke strekking voor de gemeente des levenden Gods (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1881). “The Biblical Criticism of the Present Day,” trans. John Hendrik De Vries, The Bibliotheca Sacra 61 (1904), 409–42, 666–88. De verflauwing der grenzen (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1892). “The Blurring of the Boundaries,” trans. John Vriend, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 363–402. Evolutie (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1899). “Evolution,” trans. George Kamp, Calvin Theological Journal 31 (1996), 11–50. Drie kleine vossen (Kampen: Kok, 1901).

b. Reformation Studies As a scholar, Kuyper began with the Reformation studies: he won an essay contest with his analysis of the ecclesiologies of John Calvin and John à Lasco. This essay was published in a critical edition and partly translated into English. Abraham Kuyper’s Commentatio (1860): The Young Kuyper about Calvin, à Lasco, and the Church (2 vols; ed. Jasper Vree and Johan Zwaan; Leiden: Brill, 2005). “Commentatio,” trans. Todd M. Rester, in On the Church, 1–39 (ed. John Halsey Wood Jr. and Andrew M. McGinnis; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016). In other works, Kuyper focused on the early struggles in the Dutch Reformed Church and the development of Reformed liturgy, on the events of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre and the role the Roman Catholic Church played in them, on the life and work of Alexander Comrie, and on the Dutch editions of Calvin’s Institutes and the significance of this book. “De eerste kerkvergaderingen of de vestiging onzer Hervormde Kerk, en de strijd om haar zelfstandig bestaan,” in Geschiedenis der Christelijke Kerk in Nederland, in tafereelen, vol. 2, 71–86 (ed. B. ter Haar en W. Moll; Amsterdam: Portielje & Zoon, 1869). “De eeredienst der Hervormde Kerk en de zamenstelling van haar kerkboek,” in ibid., 87–113. “The Worship of the Reformed Church and the Creation of Its Service Book,” Calvin Theological Journal 50 (2015), 59–90.

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De Bartholomeusnacht (Amsterdam: De Hoogh, 1872). “Alexander Comrie,” The Catholic Presbyterian 7 (1882), 20–9, 192–201, 278–84. “Inleiding,” in Johannes Calvinus, Institutie ofte onderwijsinghe in de christelicke religie, 3–14 (Doesburg: Van Schenk Brill, 1887).

c. Reformed Confessions Kuyper urged the Reformed church to uphold its confessional standards and argued for their extensive use. His most influential work in the field is his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. E voto Dordraceno: Toelichting op den Heidelbergschen Catechismus (4 vols; Amsterdam: Wormser, 1892–5). Kuyper also wrote a preface to his own edition of the Three Forms of Unity, introductions to a commentary on the Belgic Confession and on Gisbertus Voetius’ work on the Heidelberg Catechism, and an article on the preconditions for revising confessional documents. “Voorrede,” in De drie formulieren van eenigheid, met de kerkorde, gelijk die voor de gereformeerde kerken dezer landen zijn vastgesteld in haar laatstgehouden Nationale Synode (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1883), v–xiv. “Inleidend woord op deze nieuwe uitgave,” in Verklaring der Nederlandsche Geloofsbelijdenis van ds. A. Rotterdam (Rotterdam: Gebroeders Huge, 1890), v–xvi. “Inleiding,” in Voetius’ catechisatie over den Heidelbergschen Catechismus (Rotterdam: Gebroeders Huge, 1891), 5–22. “Calvinism and Confessional Revision,” trans. Geerhardus Vos, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 2 (1891), 369–99.

d. Biblical-Theological Studies and Devotionals Kuyper regularly wrote biblical-theological studies for a broad audience, many of which were later collected in books and series. The most comprehensive of them was the Uit het Woord series. The second part of its third volume, the fourth, and the last volume were partially translated into English. Uit het Woord (6 vols; Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1875–86). “Perfectionism,” trans. John Vriend, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 363–402. Particular Grace: A Defense of God’s Sovereignty in Salvation (trans. Marvin Kamps; Grandville, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2001). The Practice of Godliness (trans. Marian M. Schoolland; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948). Thematically, this series was followed by Kuyper’s systematic studies on common grace and the significance of Christ’s kingship for our lives. De gemeene gratie (3 vols; Leiden: Donner, 1902; Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1903–5). De gemeene gratie in wetenschap en kunst (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1905).

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Common Grace: God’s Gift for a Fallen World (trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and ed. M. van der Maas; 3 vols; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016–20). Pro rege of het koningschap van Christus (3 vols; Kampen: Kok, 1911–12). Pro Rege: The Kingship of Christ (trans. Albert J. Gootjes; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016–19). Kuyper’s articles on the Holy Spirit, which he published weekly in 1883–6, were reprinted in three volumes. Het werk van den Heiligen Geest (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1888–89). The Work of the Holy Spirit (trans. Henri De Vries; New York/London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900). Another two major collections contain Kuyper’s meditations on Christmas Eve, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and New Year’s Day (with the second volume partially available in English), and an unsystematic selection of his weekly devotionals (also partially translated into English). Dagen van goede boodschap (4 vols; Amsterdam: Wormser, 1887–8). The Death and Resurrection of Christ: Messages for Good Friday and Easter (trans. Henry Zylstra; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1960). Honig uit den rotssteen (2 vols; Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1880–3). Honey from the Rock: Daily Devotions from Young Kuyper (trans. James A. De Jong; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018). Kuyper’s meditations were further collected in the following volumes: on the sacraments (with the part about public confession translated into English), on the ministry of the Word, on the twelve patriarchs, on the Sabbath, on the women in the Bible, on the three offices of the church, on family life, on sickness and death, on the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, on mourning and dying, on the angels, on special days in the church calendar, on living close to God, on the consummation of the world (with the last volume partly translated into English in Christianity Today and partly as a separate book), and on the Psalms. Voor een distel een mirt: Geestelijke overdenkingen bij den heiligen doop, het doen van belijdenis en het toegaan tot het heilig avondmaal (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1891). The Implications of Public Confession (trans. Henry Zylstra; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1934). Dienst des Woords and Oefening en dienst des Woords (Rotterdam: Ter Weeme, 1896). De twaalf patriarchen: Bijbelsche karakterstudiën (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1887). Gomer voor den sabbath: Meditatiën over en voor den sabbath (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1889). Vrouwen uit de Heilige Schrift (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1897). First published 1890–1. Women of the Old Testament (trans. Henry Zylstra; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1933). Women of the New Testament (trans. Henry Zylstra; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1934). Van het kerkelijk ambt (Rotterdam: Ter Weeme, 1898).

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Als gij in uw huis zit: Meditatiën voor het huislijk saamleven (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1899). When Thou Sittest in Thine House: Meditations on Home Life (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1929). In de schaduwe des doods: Meditatiën voor de krankenkamer en bij het sterfbed (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1893). In the Shadow of Death: Meditations for the Sick-room and at the Death-bed (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1929). Zijn uitgang te Jerusalem: Meditatiën over het lijden en sterven onzes Heeren (Amsterdam/ Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1901). His Decease at Jerusalem: Meditations on the Passion and Death of Our Lord (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1928). In Jezus ontslapen: Meditatiën (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1902). Asleep in Jesus: Meditations (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1929). De engelen Gods (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1902). God’s Angels: His Ministering Spirits (trans. Richard Stienstra; Friesen Press, 2015). Vier uwe vierdagen: Meditatiën (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1904). Keep thy Solemn Feasts: Meditations (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1928). Nabij God te zijn: Meditatiën (2 vols; Kampen: Kok, 1908). To Be Near unto God (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1925). Van de voleinding (4 vols; Kampen: Kok, 1929–31). The Revelation of St. John (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1935). Ever in Thy Sight: 31 Devotions on the Psalms (trans. James De Jong; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020).

e. Ecclesiastical Matters During his pastorate in Utrecht and Amsterdam, as well as in later periods, Kuyper was deeply involved in ecclesiastical matters. He published works on the right of local congregations to call pastors; on the miserable condition of the Dutch Reformed Church; on the status of church properties; on the liberation of the church; on his reform proposals and the motivation behind them; on the right formation of the church, its actual deformation, and the need of reformation; on the conflict around the Amsterdam congregation; on synodical hierarchy; and on the church order. Wat moeten wij doen, het stemrecht aan ons zelven houden of den kerkeraad machtigen? Vraag bij de uitvoering van art. 23 toegelicht (Culemborg: Blom, 1867). Kerkvisitatie te Utrecht in 1868 met het oog op den kritieken toestand onzer kerk historisch toegelicht (Utrecht: Van Peursem, 1868). De kerkelijke goederen (Amsterdam: Höveker, 1869).

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Vrijmaking der kerk (Amsterdam: De Hoogh, 1869). Confidentie: Schrijven aan den weled. heer J.H. van der Linden (Amsterdam: Höveker, 1873). “Confidentially (1873),” trans. Reinder Bruinsma, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 45–61. Partial translation. Tractaat van de reformatie der kerken, aan de zonen der Reformatie hier te lande op Luther’s vierde eeuwfeest aangeboden (Amsterdam: Höveker, 1883). “Tract on the Reformation of the Churches,” in On the Church, 75–280. Het conflict gekomen (3 vols; Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1886). Afwerping van het juk der synodale hiërarchie (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1886). Separatie en Doleantie (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1890). Kuyper’s ecclesiology was further developed in the works on Christ’s indwelling in the church, on the nature of true conservatism, on the church as organism and institution, on the essence and purpose of missions, on Christians’ stance toward their earthly and heavenly fatherland, on missions as God’s work and a task of the church, and on the church ceremonies and buildings. De menschwording Gods het levensbeginsel der kerk (Utrecht: Van Peursem, 1867). Conservatisme en orthodoxie: Valsche en ware behoudzucht (Amsterdam: De Hoogh, 1870). “Conservatism and Orthodoxy: False and True Preservation,” trans. John Vriend, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 65–86. “Geworteld en gegrond”: De kerk als organisme en instituut (Amsterdam: De Hoogh, 1870). “Rooted and Grounded,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, in On the Church, 41–73. De zending naar de Schrift: Inleidend woord voor het elfde jaarfeest der Nederlandsche Gereformeerde Zendings-Vereeniging (Amsterdam: De Hoogh, 1971). “Missions according to Scripture,” trans. Pieter Tuit, Calvin Theological Journal 38 (2003), 237–47. Tweeërlei vaderland, ter inleiding van de zevende jaarvergadering der Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1887). “Twofold Fatherland,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, in On the Church, 281–314. Historisch document: Referaat van wijlen professor dr. A. Kuyper over zending, uitgesproken op het Zendingscongres te Amsterdam, op 28, 29 en 30 Januari 1890 (Utrecht: Bootsma, 1940). “Address on Missions,” trans. Harry Van Dyke, in On the Church, 439–57. Onze eeredienst (Kampen: Kok, 1911). Our Worship, trans. Harry Boonstra et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). Abridged translation. Many of the sermons Kuyper delivered in Beesd, Utrecht, and Amsterdam were included in: Predicatiën in de jaren 1867 tot 1873, tijdens zijn Predikantschap in het Nederlandsch Hervormde Kerkgenootschap (Kampen: Kok, 1913).

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f. Other Theological Works After the foundation of the Vrije Universiteit, Kuyper taught several courses there. His lectures on theology as a scientific discipline served as a basis for the only purely academic book in his teaching career. Its English edition includes only a small part of the first volume and the second volume in its entirety. Encyclopædie der heilige godgeleerdheid (3 vols; Amsterdam: Wormser, 1894). Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles (trans. John Hendrik De Vries; New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1898). Kuyper’s lectures on dogmatic theology became available through printing student notes, but these publications were meant only for the students of the Vrije Universiteit. In chronological order of publication, they cover the following loci: creation, angels, man, Holy Scripture, Christ, sin, salvation, the sacraments, the consummation, the Church, the magistrate, God, covenant, and providence. In other important theological works, Kuyper criticizes J. I. Doedes’ views of God and creation; discusses the doctrine of the incarnation, paying special attention to the ideas of H. F. Kohlbrugge and his followers; describes the history and meaning of the Sabbath; examines the antithesis between symbolism and revelation; and traces the development of the use of the Bible by European theologians. Ex ungue leonem, ofte dr. Doedes’ methode van symbool-uitlegging op een enkel cardinaal punt getoetst (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1882). De vleeschwording des Woords (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1887). Tractaat van den sabbath: Historische dogmatische studie (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1890). The Antithesis between Symbolism and Revelation (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1899). The Evolution of the Use of the Bible in Europe (Gravenhage: Bootsma, 1915).

g. Education Advocating for the equal state funding of religious and public schools, Kuyper referred to the “school question” in many publications. Most important of them are included in a large collection printed in view of the anticipated amendment of the school law. Several articles of this collection were published in English in a volume from the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, which contains also other contributions, particularly relevant parliamentary speeches. De schoolkwestie (6 vols; Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1875). On Education. Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (ed. John Kok and Nelson D. Kloosterman; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019). In his works related to high education, Kuyper defended the right of founding a Reformed university; discussed the job prospects of its students; shared with them his thoughts about the value and nature of scholarship; and emphasized the university teaching’s faithfulness to the Bible. “Strikt genomen”: Het recht tot universiteitsstichting staatsrechtelijk en historisch getoetst (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1880).

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Welke zijn de vooruitzichten voor de studenten der Vrije Universiteit? (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1882). Scolastica, of ’t geheim van echte studie (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1889). Scolastica II: Om het zoeken of om het vinden? Of het doel van echte studie (Amsterdam/ Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1900). Scholarship: Two Convocation Addresses on University Life (trans. Harry Van Dyke; Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press, 2014). Band aan het woord. Antwoord op de vraag Hoe is eene universiteit aan het woord van God te binden? (Amsterdam/Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1899). “Bound to the Word,” trans. Harry Van Dyke, in On Education, 67–94.

h. Social Issues Kuyper’s most important writings on social issues include his reflections on family life, a collection of articles on manual labor, an address about the connection between Christian faith and social problems, two series of articles about wealth and poverty and about expanding the franchise, a proposal for a pension system, and a discussion about the position of women in society. Antirevolutionair óók in uw huisgezin (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1880). “The Family, Society, and the State,” trans. Harry Van Dyke, in On Charity and Justice, 263–328. Handenarbeid (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1889). “Manual Labor (1889),” trans. Reinder Bruinsma, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 231–54. Het sociale vraagstuk en de christelijke religie (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1891). “The Social Question and the Christian Religion,” trans. Harry Van Dyke, in On Business & Economics, 169–230 (ed. Peter S. Heslam; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021). First published 2016. De Christus en de sociale nooden en democratische klippen (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1895). “Christ and the Needy” and “The Reefs of Democracy,” trans. Herbert Donald Morton and Harry Van Dyke, in On Charity and Justice, 1–80. Proeve van pensioenregeling voor werklieden en huns gelijken (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1895). “Draft Pension Scheme for Wage Earners,” trans. Harry Van Dyke, in On Business & Economics, 231–52. De eerepositie der vrouw (Kampen: Kok, 1914). The volumes On Charity and Justice and On Business & Economics from the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series include many other contributions on social issues, particularly extracts from larger works.

i. Politics The most important work of Kuyper the politician was his commentary on the Anti-Revolutionary program. Its second, abridged edition does not contain extensive appendices after each chapter and was translated into English.

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“Ons program”, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1879). Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto (trans. Harry Van Dyke; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015). First published 2013. Selected Kuyper’s speeches from his first term in the parliament were published in a separate book, while a collection of the speeches from the second term and his ministerial addresses appeared in a four-volume series. Eenige Kameradviezen uit de jaren 1874 en 1875 (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1890). Parlementaire redevoeringen (4 vols; Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1908–12).

j. International Affairs After his trip to North America in 1898, Kuyper published a report about his experiences and impressions there under the title Varia Americana. This report was recently reissued together with Kuyper’s letters to family members during the journey. Another volume, Kuyper in America, includes the editor’s overview of Kuyper’s stay and an English translation of the letters. Harinck, George, Mijn reis was geboden: Abraham Kuypers Amerikaanse tournee (Hilversum: Verloren, 2009). Kuyper in America: “This is where I was meant to be” (ed. George Harinck; trans. Dagmare Houniet; Sioux Center: IA, Dordt College Press, 2012). Another of Kuyper’s journeys, now around Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea in 1905/6, led him to write a two-volume work on life in the countries he visited. Om de oude wereldzee (2 vols; Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1907–8). On Islam. Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (ed. James D. Bratt and Douglas Howard; trans. Jan van Vliet; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017). Partial translation. See also Kuyper’s reflections on the role of international press; his brochure on the South-African crisis, which reflects his sympathies for the Boers; and his analysis of the Netherlands’ neutral position in the First World War. “De pers als vredesapostel,” in Grotius. Internationaal jaarboek voor 1913, 54–65 (Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1913). “The Press as the Apostle of Peace,” in On Charity and Justice, 249–62. “La crise sud-africaine,” Revue des Deux Mondes 70 (1900), 481–533. The South-African Crisis (trans. A. E. Fletcher; London: Stop the War Committee, 1900). “Die Niederlande. Von Staatsminister a. D. Dr. Abraham Kuyper, ehemaligem Königlich Niederländischen Ministerpräsidenten,” Die Woche 18 (1916), 1821–5.

k. Further Bibliographical Sources Kuipers, Tjitze, Abraham Kuyper: An Annotated Bibliography 1857–2010 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011). A revised and enlarged version of this bibliography is available on the site of the NeoCalvinism Research Institute (https://sources​.neocalvinism​.org).

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III. HERMAN BAVINCK (1854–1921) a. Complete Dogmatics Herman Bavinck is known primarily as a dogmatician whose Reformed Dogmatics remains a standard work in the field. Bavinck wrote the first edition when teaching at Kampen Theological School and published it between 1895 and 1901: Gereformeerde dogmatiek (4 vols; Kampen: Bos, 1895–1901). The second, expanded and revised, edition appeared in his Amsterdam period: Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 2nd ed. (4 vols; Kampen: Bos; Kampen: Kok, 1906–11). The third edition (1918) was unaltered, while the fourth (1928–30) and subsequent editions differed from the second only in pagination. The first edition remains available only in Dutch, but the second has been translated into many languages. Early efforts to produce English and German translations were not successful, although a large part of the second volume appeared in 1951 as: The Doctrine of God (trans. William Hendriksen; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1951). A major breakthrough in Bavinck studies came with the publication of the English translation edited by John Bolt: Reformed Dogmatics (4 vols; ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003–8). Bavinck’s magnum opus was also fully published in Indonesian, Korean, and Portuguese. The German translation is complete and expected to come out in 2022; the Russian translation is mostly ready, with the first volume already out of print; the critical Chinese edition is still under preparation; and the publication of the Spanish translation will start in 2022. Volume 2 was partly published in Italian. John Bolt produced also a one-volume English “outline” of the originally four-volume Reformed Dogmatics: Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume (ed. John Bolt; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011). Bavinck himself wrote a shortened and more popularly intended dogmatics under the title borrowed from Acts 2:11: Magnalia Dei: Onderwijzing in de christelijke religie naar gereformeerde belijdenis (Kampen: Kok, 1909). The second edition appeared in 1931 posthumously: in the foreword, Bavinck’s brother Coenraad Bernardus explains the inclusion in this edition of a new chapter on church offices. The first edition of Magnalia Dei was published in English as: Our Reasonable Faith (trans. Henry Zylstra; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956). After several reprints, the English translation was recently published with a new title, updated typesetting, and an introduction: The Wonderful Works of God: Instruction in the Christian Religion according to the Reformed Confession (intro. R. Carlton Wynne; Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019).

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The book is also available in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. To reach a yet broader audience, Bavinck wrote a much shorter explanation of the key tenets of the Reformed faith: Handleiding bij het onderwijs in den christelijken godsdienst (Kampen: Kok, 1913). Guidebook for Instruction in the Christian Religion (ed. and trans. Cameron Clausing and Gregory Parker Jr.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic, 2022).

b. Essentials of Christian Faith Bavinck wrote several articles about Christianity in general: about the character, foundation, and content of Christian faith; about the essence of Christianity as consisting in the person of Christ; and about the origins and development of the Christian religion. “Het christelijk geloof,” in Kennis en leven: Opstellen en artikelen uit vroegere jaren, 86–97 (Kampen: Kok, 1922). First published 1883. “The Christian Faith,” in What Is Christianity, 63–78 (ed. and trans. Gregory Parker Jr.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic, 2022). “Het wezen des Christendoms,” in Verzamelde opstellen op het gebied van godsdienst en wetenschap, 17–34 (Kampen: Kok, 1921). First published 1906. “The Essence of Christianity,” in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, 33–48 (ed. John Bolt; trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008). Het Christendom (Baarn: Hollandia, 1912). “Christianity,” in What Is Christianity, 3–62.

c. Faith and Christian Life Bavinck often emphasized the central place of faith in Christian life. He wrote a book on the certainty of faith, discussed the essence and object of religious faith, and published a series of articles on faith and contemplation. Bavinck’s only sermon in print was about the power of faith according to 1 Jn 5:4b. De zekerheid des geloofs, 3rd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1918). First published 1901. The Certainty of Faith (trans. Harry der Nederlanden; St. Catherines, ON: Paideia Press, 1980). “Philosophie des geloofs,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 9–16. First published 1918. “Philosophy of Religion [Faith],” in Essays, 25–32. “Geloof en aanschouwing,” De Bazuin 50 (1902), 42–8. De wereldverwinnende kracht des geloofs (Kampen: Zalsman, 1901). “The World-Conquering Power of Faith,” in Herman Bavinck on Preaching and Preachers, 67–83 (ed. and trans. James Eglinton; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2017).

d. Theology as a Science One of the most important pursuits of Bavinck was to defend the scientific character of theology and the importance of knowledge in the Christian life. The following articles focus on the harmony of faith and knowledge; on the consequences of positing a dualism between them; on the strong and weak sides of a dogmatic system; on the scientific calling of the church; on theology as a

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scientific discipline; on the confessional nature of dogmatics; on the relation between theology and religious studies; on the distinct office of the Doctor of the church; on the importance of knowledge for Christian life; and on the close ties between theology, congregational life, and piety. “Geloofswetenschap,” in Kennis en leven, 1–12. First published 1880. “Het dualisme in de theologie,” in Kennis en leven, 145–64. First published 1887. “Het voor en tegen van een dogmatisch system,” in Kennis en leven, 57–67. First published 1881. “The Pros and Cons of a Dogmatic System,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, The Bavinck Review 5 (2014), 90–103. “De wetenschappelijke roeping onzer kerk,” De Vrije Kerk 8 (1882), 88–93, 97–106. De wetenschap der H. Godgeleerdheid (Kampen: Zalsman, 1883). “The Science of Holy Theology,” in On Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Academic Orations, 30–60 (ed. and trans. Bruce R. Pass; Leiden: Brill, 2020). “Confessie en dogmatiek,” in Theologische Studiën 9 (1891), 258–75. “Godgeleerdheid en godsdienstwetenschap,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 35–54. First published 1892. “Theology and Religious Studies,” in Essays, 49–60, 281–8. Het doctorenambt (Kampen: Zalsman, 1899). “The Teaching Office,” in On Theology, 61–106. “Kennis en leven,” in Kennis en leven, 203–40. First published 1900. Godsdienst en godgeleerdheid (Wageningen: Vada, 1902). “Religion and Theology,” in On Theology, 107–45.

e. Reformation Studies Bavinck’s interest in the Reformation was evidenced already in his Leiden dissertation dealing with the ethical thought of Ulrich Zwingli: De ethiek van Ulrich Zwingli (Kampen: Zalsman, 1880). Later Bavinck prepared an extensive review in which he discussed some aspects of the Reformation theology and the meaning of the terms “Calvinist” and “Reformed”, wrote an article for an American audience about the history of Calvinism in the Netherlands and its future, delivered an address about the influence of the Reformation on Western societies, gave a lecture on Calvin’s life and theology, and published two essays on Calvin’s doctrines of the Lord’s Supper and common grace. “Calvinistisch en Gereformeerd,” De Vrije Kerk 19:2 (1893), 49–71. “The Future of Calvinism,” trans. Geerhardus Vos, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 5 (1894), 1–24. “The Influence of the Protestant Reformation on the Moral and Religious Condition of Communities and Nations,” in Proceedings of the Fifth General Council in Toronto, 48–55 (London: Publication Committee of the Presbyterian Church of England, 1892).

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Johannes Calvijn: Eene lezing ter gelegenheid van den vierhonderdsten gedenkdag zijner geboorte (Kampen: Kok, 1909). “John Calvin: A Lecture on the Occasion of his 400th Birthday,” trans. John Bolt, The Bavinck Review 1 (2010), 57–85. “Calvijn’s leer over het avondmaal,” in Kennis en leven, 165–83. First published 1887. “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, Mid-America Journal of Theology 19 (2008), 127–42. “Calvin and Common Grace,” trans. Geerhardus Vos, The Princeton Theological Review 7 (1909), 437–65. On the 400th anniversary of the Reformation, Bavinck presented a general introduction into its context and an analysis of its influence on the Netherlands: “Algemeene Inleiding,” in H. Bavinck, H. H. Kuyper, H. Bouwman, J. H. Landwehr and J. C. Rullmann, De kerkhervorming: Gedenkschrift bij het vierde eeuwfeest, 3–33 (Middelburg: D’Huy, 1917). “De hervorming en ons nationale leven,” in H. Bavinck and H. H. Kuyper, Ter herdenking der hervorming, 5–36 (Kampen: Kok, 1917).

f. Recent Developments in Theology Another article by Bavinck written for American readers traces the history of the Reformed Church in the Netherlands from the Reformation to more recent developments. “The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands,” The Princeton Theological Review 8 (1910), 433–60. In other publications, Bavinck surveyed the theological schools of his times in the Netherlands, focused on the ethical theology of D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, and offered a critical analysis of Albrecht Ritschl’s views and of Dutch modern theology. “Gereformeerde Theologie,” De Vrije Kerk 7 (1881), 497–509. “Theologische richtingen in Nederland,” Tijdschrift voor Gereformeerde Theologie 1 (1894), 161–88. “Recent Dogmatic Thought in the Netherlands,” trans. Geerhardus Vos, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 3 (1892), 209–28. De theologie van prof. dr. Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye: Bijdrage tot de kennis der ethische theologie (Leiden: Donner, 1884). “De theologie van Albrecht Ritschl,” Theologische Studiën 6 (1888), 369–403. “The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl,” trans. John Bolt, The Bavinck Review 3 (2012), 123–63. “Moderne Theologie,” De Vrije Kerk 14 (1888), 253–86. Modernisme en orthodoxie (Kampen: Kok, 1911). “Modernism and Orthodoxy,” in On Theology, 146–82.

g. Christianity as a Worldview As a neo-Calvinist, Bavinck believed that Christianity offers a unique and coherent world and lifeview, which brings it into conflict with other worldview systems. Noteworthy in this regard

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are his early analysis of competing worldviews and his review of James Orr’s book The Christian View of God and the World: “De hedendaagsche wereldbeschouwing,” De Vrije Kerk 9 (1883), 435–61. “Eene belangrijke apologie van de Christelijke Wereldbeschouwing,” Theologische Studiën 12 (1894), 142–52. Bavinck’s own reflections on the Christian worldview are found in his address: Christelijke wereldbeschouwing (Kampen: Bos, 1904). Christian Worldview (ed. and trans. Cory C. Brock, James Eglinton and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto; Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2019). According to Bavinck’s own remark, further elaboration of the fundamental ideas expressed in this address can be found in his Stone lectures, which were simultaneously published in English, Dutch, and German, and later translated into Italian and Chinese. Wijsbegeerte der openbaring: Stone-lezingen voor het jaar 1908, gehouden te Princeton N.J. (Kampen: Kok, 1908). The Philosophy of Revelation: A New Annotated Edition (ed. Cory C. Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2018). Related to this theme is Bavinck’s view on the catholicity of Christianity, which implies for him the pervasive influence of Christian faith upon every area of life. De katholiciteit van christendom en kerk (Kampen: Zalsman, 1888). “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” trans. John Bolt, Calvin Theological Journal 27 (1992), 220–51. According to Bavinck, the Calvinistic appreciation of the natural life was rooted in the doctrine of common grace: De algemeene genade (Kampen: Zalsman, 1894). “Common Grace,” trans. R. C. van Leeuwen, Calvin Theological Journal 24 (1989), 38–65. In two publications, Bavinck set forth a distinctively Christian approach to science: Christelijke wetenschap (Kampen: Kok, 1904). Geleerdheid en wetenschap (Amsterdam: Höveker & Wormser, 1905). Bavinck also paid special attention to evolution theory and the relation between Christianity and natural sciences: “Christendom en natuurwetenschap,” in Kennis en leven, 184–202. First published 1887. “Christianity and the Natural Sciences,” in Facets of Faith and Science, The Role of Beliefs in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: An Augustinian Perspective, vol. 2, 47–52 (ed. J. M. van der; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996). This article is a translation of pages 196–202 in the Dutch edition. Schepping of ontwikkeling (Kampen: Kok, 1901). “Creation or Development,” trans. John Hendrik De Vries, The Methodist Review 83 (1901), 849–74. “Contra,” in Herman Bavinck and Peter Gijsbert Buekers, Evolutie, 21–38 (vol. 3; no. 3; Baarn: Hollandia, 1907).

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“Evolutie,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 105–20. “Evolution,” in Essays, 105–18. “Christendom en natuurwetenschap,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 78–104. First published 1913. “Christianity and Natural Science,” in Essays, 81–104.

h. Other Theological Works In other important theological contributions, Bavinck discussed the concept of God’s glory, the creative and salvific economy of the Trinitarian God, and God’s work in bringing sinners to salvation. “De eere Gods,” in Kennis en leven, 106–14. First published 1883. “De huishouding Gods,” in Kennis en leven, 98–105. First published 1883. Roeping en wedergeboorte (Kampen: Zalsman, 1903). First published 1902. Saved by Grace: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Calling and Regeneration (ed. J. Mark Beach; trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman; Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008).

i. The Church Bavinck commented on different aspects of ecclesiastical life, including church discipline, the history and principles of Reformed synodal assemblies, the necessity of Word-saturated preaching and the role of eloquence, baptismal liturgy, and—in one of his most popular books—the importance of making public confession of faith. “Kerkelijke tucht,” De Vrije Kerk 8 (1882), 483–91. “Synodale kerkinrichting,” in Kennis en leven, 68–77. First published 1882. “De predikdienst,” in Kennis en leven, 78–85. First published 1883. “The Sermon and the Service,” in Herman Bavinck on Preaching, 57–65. De welsprekendheid: Eene lezing voor de studenten der Theol. School te Kampen (Kampen: Zalsman, 1889). “Eloquence,” in Herman Bavinck on Preaching, 17–55. Ouders of getuigen: Toelichting van art. 56 en 57 der Dordsche Kerkorde (Kampen: Zalsman, 1901). De offerande des lofs: Overdenkingen vóór en na de toelating tot het heilige avondmaal (‘s Gravenhage: Verschoor, 1901). The Sacrifice of Praise (ed. and trans. Cameron Clausing and Gregory Parker Jr.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2019). Bavinck played an important role in bringing the union of the Secession churches and those of the Doleantie to fruition. Apart from official documents that he coauthored, Bavinck’s most important contributions in print were his reviews of the books of F. M. Ten Hoor and A. Kuyper: “Separatie en Doleantie,” De Bazuin 38:46; 38:48; 38:49; 38:51; 38:52 (1890). “Afscheiding of Doleantie?” De Bazuin 39:18 (1891).

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Bavinck was also involved in discussing the role of the church in theological education and the proposed unification of Kampen Theological School and the Vrije Universiteit: Bavinck, Herman, Petrus Biesterveld, Maarten Noordtzij and Douwe Klazes Wielenga, Opleiding en theologie and Nadere verantwoording (Kampen: Kok, 1896). Theologische School en Vrije Universiteit: Een voorstel tot vereeniging (Kampen: Bos, 1899). Het recht der kerken en de vrijheid der wetenschap (Kampen: Zalsman, 1899). Blijven of heengaan? Een vraag en een antwoord (Kampen: Zalsman, 1902).

j. Missions and Evangelism Bavinck’s publications on missions and evangelism are still available only in Dutch: “Waarmede moet de zending beginnen: met de bearbeiding van geheele volken of met den enkele? Referaat gehouden op den zendingsdag der Chr. Geref. Buitenlandsche Zending,” Het Mosterdzaad 7:1 (1888), 1–16. “Het begrip en de noodzakelijkheid der evangelisatie,” in Handelingen van het congres voor gereformeerde evangelisatie, 22–36 (Amsterdam: Kirchner, 1913). “Evangelisatie,” in Christendom en maatschappij (series 5; no. 9; Utrecht: Ruys, 1913). “De Zending in de Heilige Schrift,” in Beets, Henry, Triumfen van het kruis: Schetsen der christelijke zending van alle eeuwen en allerlei landen voor ons Hollandsch volk geteekend, 7–30 (Kampen: Kok, 1914).

k. Ethics Apart from dogmatics, Bavinck taught several other classes in Kampen, including ethics. The 1,075-page manuscript of these lectures, written for the most part during the first decade of his professorship at Kampen, was discovered in 2008, decoded, edited, and published as: Gereformeerde ethiek (ed. Dirk van Keulen; Utrecht: KokBoekencentrum, 2019). This work becomes available in English in a three-volume set, two of which have already been issued: Reformed Ethics: Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity (vol. 1; ed. John Bolt; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019). Reformed Ethics: The Duties of the Christian Life (vol. 2; ed. John Bolt; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021). Bavinck’s lectures on philosophical ethics are presently available only in Dutch: Filosofische ethiek (ed. Dirk van Keulen; Amersfoort: Vuurbaak, 2021). Apart from the aforementioned dissertation on Zwingli’s ethics, worthy of note are also Bavinck’s early articles on the human conscience, God’s kingdom as the highest good, and the imitation of Christ: “Het geweten,” in Kennis en leven, 13–27. First published 1881. “Conscience,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, The Bavinck Review 6 (2015), 113–26. “Het rijk Gods, het hoogste goed,” in Kennis en leven, 28–56. First published 1881.

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“The Kingdom of God, The Highest Good,” trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, The Bavinck Review 2 (2011), 133–70. “De navolging van Christus,” De Vrije Kerk 11 (1885), 101–13, 203–13; 12 (1886), 321–33. “The Imitation of Christ I (1885–86),” in Bolt, John, A Theological Analysis of Herman Bavinck’s Two Essays on the Imitatio Christi: Between Pietism and Modernism, 372–401 (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2013). Later in his career, Bavinck discussed ethical issues primarily in: Hedendaagsche moraal (Kampen: Kok, 1902). “De navolging van Christus en het moderne leven,” in Kennis en leven, 115–44. First published 1918. “The Imitation of Christ II (1918),” in Bolt, Theological Analysis, 402–40.

l. Family, Society, and Politics Bavinck discussed moral life as revealing itself in many circles, including family, society, and the state. The following publications focus on abortion, on marriage and family, on the position of women in contemporary society, on the employment of married women, on the Biblical principles for the social question, on Christian perspectives on social relationships, on the political and social inequality, on experimental aesthetics, on the great Dutch poet Bilderdijk, on Christian and neutral politics, on ethics in politics, and on the problem of the war in the context of the First World War. “Het levensrecht der ongeboren vrucht,” Orgaan van de Christelijke Vereeniging van Natuuren Geneeskundigen in Nederland 3 (1904), 1–3. Het christelijk huisgezin (Kampen: Kok, 1908). The Christian Family (ed. Stephen J. Grabill; trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman; Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press, 2012). De vrouw in de hedendaagsche maatschappij (Kampen: Kok, c. 1918). “De beroepsarbeid der gehuwde vrouw,” in Tweede christelijk sociaal congres 10–13 maart 1919 te Amsterdam: Proces verbaal, 206–25 (Rotterdam: Libertas, 1919). “Welke algemeene beginselen beheerschen, volgens de H. Schrift, de oplossing der sociale quaestie, en welke vingerwijzing voor die oplossing ligt in de concrete toepassing, welke deze beginselen voor Israel in Mozaisch recht gevonden hebben?” in Proces-verbaal van het Sociaal Congres, gehouden te Amsterdam den 9, 10, 11, 12 November 1891, 149–57 (Amsterdam: Höveker & Wormser, 1892). “General Biblical Principles and the Relevance of Concrete Mosaic Law for the Social Question Today (1891),” trans. John Bolt, Journal of Markets & Morality 13:2 (2010), 437–46. “Christelijke beginselen en maatschappelijke verhoudingen,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 121–50. First published 1908. “Christian Principles and Social Relationships,” in Essays, 119–44. “Over de ongelijkheid,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 151–71. First published 1913. “On Inequality,” in Essays, 145–64. “Van schoonheid en schoonheidsleer,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 262–80. First published 1914.

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“Of Beauty and Aesthetics,” in Essays, 245–60. Bilderdijk als denker en dichter (Kampen: Kok, 1906). Christelijke en neutrale staatkunde (Hilversum: Witzel & Klemkerk, 1905). “Ethiek en politiek,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 281–301. First published 1916. “Ethics and Politics,” in Essays, 261–78. “Het probleem van den oorlog,” Stemmen des Tijds 4 (1914), 1–31. “The Problem of War,” trans. Stephen Voorwinde, The Banner of Truth (1977), 46–53. Partial translation. “Christendom, oorlog, volkenbond,” Stemmen des Tijds 9 (1919), 1–26, 105–33.

m. Pedagogy In his Amsterdam period, Bavinck wrote several works on pedagogy, which exercised a profound influence in the Netherlands. Paedagogische beginselen (Kampen: Kok, 1904). “Paedagogiek als wetenschap,” De School met den Bijbel 2:11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 40, 42, 44, 46 (1904–5). “Richtingen in de paedagogiek,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 215–19. First published 1913. “Trends in Pedagogy,” in Essays, 205–8. De opvoeding der rijpere jeugd (Kampen: Kok, 1916). De nieuwe opvoeding (Kampen: Kok, 1917). “Klassieke opleiding,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 220–61. First published 1918. “Classical Education,” in Essays, 209–44.

n. Psychology Bavinck lectured on psychology already in Kampen and published his most important work in the field in 1897. But over the course of time his interest in psychology grew even more, which resulted in many publications. Beginselen der psychologie, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1923). First published 1897. “Foundations of Psychology,” trans. John Bolt, Nelson D. Kloosterman and Jack Vanden Born, The Bavinck Review 9 (2018), 1–244. “Psychologie der religie,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 55–77. First published 1907. “Psychology of Religion,” in Essays, 61–80. “Richtingen in de psychologie,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 172–82. First published 1909. “Trends in Psychology,” in Essays, 165–74. Bijbelsche en religieuze psychologie (Kampen: Kok, 1920). Biblical and Religious Psychology (trans. H. Hanko; Protestant Reformed Theological School, 1974). “Kinderstudie,” Paedagogisch Tijdschrift 5:6 (1913–14), 241–52, 289–99, 1–17.

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“Het onbewuste,” in Verzamelde opstellen, 183–207. First published 1915. “The Unconscious,” in Essays, 175–98. De overwinning der ziel (Kampen: Kok, 1916). “Primaat van verstand of wil?” in Verzamelde opstellen, 208–14. “Primacy of the Intellect or the Will,” in Essays, 199–204.

o. Further Bibliographical Sources Bavinck’s complete bibliography and all of his published works in Dutch, with the exception of Gereformeerde ethiek and Filosofische ethiek, are available digitally in different formats on https://sources​.neocalvinism​.org.

IV. JAMES ORR (1844–1913) a. Defense of Evangelical Orthodoxy James Orr’s first major contribution as an apologist was a series of lectures at the United Presbyterian College in which he tried to demonstrate the coherency of the Christian beliefs about nature, human beings, and God. The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation (Edinburgh: Elliot, 1893). Orr presented and defended basic tenets of the Christian faith in numerous other publications, both academic and popular. “What is God?” in Questions of Faith: A Series of Lectures on the Creed, 1–27 (ed. P. Carnegie Simpson; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1904). God’s Image in Man and Its Defacement in Light of Modern Denials (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1905). “Evangelical Principles in the Bible,” in Maintaining the Unity: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference and Diamond Jubilee Celebration of the Evangelical Alliance, 142–51 (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1907). The Virgin Birth of Christ (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1907). The Resurrection of Jesus (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908). Sidelights on Christian Doctrine (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909). The Faith of a Modern Christian (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910). Sin as a Problem of Today (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910). Orr also authored four essays for The Fundamentals, a famous series aimed at defending Evangelical orthodoxy. “The Holy Scriptures and Modern Negations,” in The Fundamentals, 1:94–100 (4 vols; ed. R. A. Torrey et al.; Los Angeles, CA: Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1917). First published 1912. “The Early Narratives of Genesis,” in ibid., 1:228–40. First published 1911.

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“Science and Christian Faith,” in ibid., 1:334–47. First published 1911. “The Virgin Birth of Christ,” in ibid., 2:247–60. First published 1910.

b. Criticism of Modernism Given the influence of Albrecht Ritschl’s theological school, Orr gave an analysis of Ritschlianism from an evangelical standpoint. The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1897). Ritschlianism: Expository and Critical Essays (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1903). “Review of The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine, by Albrecht Ritschl,” Critical Review 11 (1901), 3–11. “Prof. Swing on Ritschl and His Critics,” The Princeton Theological Review 1:1 (1903), 38–50. In other works, Orr paid attention to other modern currents that affect theology, including antisupernaturalism, monism, Bible criticism, evolutionism, and the science of comparative religion. “Can Professor Pfleiderer’s View Justify Itself?” in The Supernatural in Christianity: With Special Reference to Statements in the Recent Gifford Lectures, 35–68 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1894). “Prevailing Tendencies in Modern Theology,” Review and Expositor 3 (1906), 571–87. “Some Recent Developments in Criticism and Theology,” Princeton Theological Review 5:2 (1907), 177–87.

c. Scripture Recognizing the dependency of Evangelical doctrines on the trustworthiness of the Bible, Orr argued for the traditional reading of the Biblical history against the higher criticism. Most important here was his work on the Old Testament in which he presented arguments against Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis. The Problem of the Old Testament (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1906). In other contributions on the doctrine of Scripture, Orr defended the need for special revelation, the reliability of Biblical stories, and the supernatural character of Christian religion. “Professor W. E. Addis on Hebrew Religion,” Expository Times 18 (1906), 119–25. The Bible under Trial: Apologetic Papers in View of Present-Day Assaults on Holy Scripture (London: Marshall Brothers, 1907). “The Problem of the Old Testament Re-Stated,” Contemporary Review 92 (1907), 200–12. “Professor Peake on Biblical Criticism,” The Interpreter 4 (1908), 364–72. “Need and Basis of a Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Review and Expositor 6 (1909), 379–93. The Biblical and Critical Views of Israel’s Religion (Toronto: Haynes Press, 1909). Revelation and Inspiration (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1910).

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Orr was also the general editor of The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (5 vols; Chicago: Howard-Severance, 1915).

d. Church History Although Orr is known primarily as a theologian and apologist, he began his academic career as Professor of Church History. His lectures on the early Church were collected in two volumes: Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1899). The Early Church: Its History and Literature (New York: Armstrong & Son, 1901). Another lecture series covers the development of Christian doctrines from the early Apologists to the XIX century theology. The Progress of Dogma (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1901). See also: “Calvin,” in The Reformers: Lectures Delivered in St. James’ Church, Paisley, 241–95 (ed. James Brown; Glasgow: Maclehose & Sons, 1885). “The Factors in the Expansion of the Christian Church,” in Christ and Civilization: A Survey of the Influence of the Christian Religion upon the Course of Civilization, 189–233 (ed. John Brown Paton et al.; London: National Council of Evangelical Free Churches, 1910).

e. Other Works Orr published other works on a wide range of philosophical, historical, and theological topics: The Sabbath: Scripturally and Practically Considered (Edinburgh: Gemmel, 1886). “Some Aspects of Kant’s Theory of Religion,” The Thinker 8 (1895), 238–43. David Hume and His Influence on Philosophy and Theology (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1903). “Why the Mind Has a Body,” Princeton Theological Review 2:4 (1904), 563–9. “Autonomy in Ethics,” Princeton Theological Review 6:2 (1908), 269–77.

V. GEERHARDUS VOS (1862–1949) a. Biblical Theology As the father of Reformed biblical theology, Vos first extensively explained the essence of this discipline in his inaugural address: The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline (New York: Randolph, 1894). Another of Vos’ books became the classical exposition of Reformed Biblical theology as the description of the organic progress of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity: Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948). First published 1934.

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A brief rationale for the necessity of biblical theology as a separate discipline is presented in: “The Nature and Aims of Biblical Theology,” The Union Seminary Magazine 13 (1902), 194–9. See also Vos’ contributions on the concept of the covenant and his address on the importance of the trustworthiness of Bible history: “Covenant,” in A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, vol. 1, 373–80 (ed. James Hastings; New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1906). De verbondsleer in de gereformeerde theologie (Rotterdam: Mazijk’s Uitgeversbureau, 1939). First published 1891. “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, 234–67 (ed. Richard B. Gaffin; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1980). First published 1971. “Christian Faith and the Truthfulness of Bible History,” in Redemptive History, 289–305. First published 1906.

b. Old Testament Studies Vos entered the academic world with a treatise prepared as a thesis in competition for the Hebrew fellowship at Princeton Seminary: The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes (New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1886). The notes of Vos’ course on the Old Testament eschatology were published as: The Eschatology of the Old Testament (ed. James T. Dennison; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001). See also: “Some Doctrinal Features of the Early Prophecies of Isaiah,” in Redemptive History, 271–87. First published 1897. “The Modern Hypothesis and Recent Criticism of the Early Prophets,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 9 (1898), 214–38, 411–37, 610–36; 10 (1899), 70–97, 285–317. “Eschatology of the Psalter,” The Princeton Theological Review 18 (1920), 1–43. “Jeremiah’s Plaint and its Answer,” in Redemptive History, 288–98. First published 1928.

c. New Testament Studies Vos’ first major work on the New Testament was his analysis of God’s kingdom as inseparably associated with the person and work of Christ and bringing the renewal of the world by God’s supernatural power. The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church (New York: American Tract Society, 1903). Three other books are dedicated to Jesus’ messianic consciousness, Paul’s teaching on the resurrection and eternal state, and the theological themes of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

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The Self-Disclosure of Jesus: The Modern Debate about the Messianic Consciousness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954). First published 1926. The Pauline Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1930). The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Philadelphia, PA: Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church, 1944). In addition to numerous contributions included in the Redemptive History volume, see the following articles: “The Pauline Eschatology and Chiliasm,” The Princeton Theological Review 9 (1911), 26–60. “The Range of the Logos-Name in the Fourth Gospel,” The Princeton Theological Review 11 (1913), 557–602. “The Continuity of the Kyrios-Title in the New Testament,” The Princeton Theological Review 13 (1915), 161–89. “The Kyrios Christos Controversy,” The Princeton Theological Review 15 (1917), 21–89. “The Messiahship: Formal or Essential to the Mind of Jesus?,” The Biblical Review 5 (1920), 196–208. “The Name ‘Lord’ as Used of Jesus in the Gospels,” The Biblical Review 7 (1922), 515–36. “The Pauline Doctrine of the Resurrection,” The Princeton Theological Review 27 (1929), 1–35. “Alleged Development in Paul’s Teaching on the Resurrection,” The Princeton Theological Review 27 (1929), 193–226. “The Structure of the Pauline Eschatology,” The Princeton Theological Review 27 (1929), 403–44.

d. Dogmatic Theology While working at the Theological School of the Christian Reformed Churches (1888–93), Vos, along with other courses, taught dogmatics. These class lectures were first published in Dutch as a handwritten manuscript in 1896, then transcribed in 1910, and recently published in English. Reformed Dogmatics (5 vols; trans. Richard B. Gaffin; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013–16). See also the notes of Vos’ lectures on natural theology and a series of 191 lessons on the Larger Catechism of the Westminster Assembly: Natural Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2022). The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary (ed. G. I. Williamson; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002). First published 1946–9.

e. Collected Works During his lifetime, a collection of Vos’ chapel sermons delivered at Princeton seminary was published, as well as two collections of verses, some of which were written first in Dutch and then translated into English.

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Grace and Glory: Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Press, 1922). Charis: English Verses (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1931). Western Rhymes (Santa Ana, CA, 1933). More recently, Logos Bible Software prepared three collections of Vos’ reviews, articles, and dictionary entries, and a volume of Vos’ letters was published. The Letters of Geerhardus Vos (ed. James T. Dennison, Jr.; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006).

f. Further Bibliographical Sources Dennison, Jr., James T., “A Bibliography of the Writings of Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949),” Redemptive History, 547–59.

VI. KLAAS SCHILDER (1890–1952) a. Salvation History As a pastor, journalist, and theologian, Schilder commented on countless aspects of God’s salvific works in history. In his early works, he treated salvation history mainly from the eschatological perspective focusing on hell and the implications of the Book of Revelation for social questions: Wat is de hel?, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1920). First published 1919. De openbaring van Johannes en het sociale leven, 2nd ed. (Delft: Meinema, 1925). First published 1924. In this period, Schilder also published a collection of his devotionals. The meditation that gave the title to this collection was translated separately into English: Licht in den rook (Delft: Meinema, 1923). “Light in the Smoke’, in The Klaas Schilder Reader: The Essential Theological Writings, 444–56 (ed. George Harinck, Marinus de Jong and Richard Mouw; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2022).

While Schilder’s lectures on hell were published almost immediately, his lectures on heaven remained unpublished until 1935, when they were reworked into his major theological book, which in an abbreviated form appeared also in English: Wat is de hemel? (Kampen: Kok, 1935). Second expanded edition 1954. Heaven, What Is It? (abbr. and trans. Marian M. Schoolland; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1950). Over time, Schilder focused more on the concept of the covenant, which summarizes God’s relationship with his people in history. Het verbond in de gereformeerde symbolen: collegeverslagen symboliek cursus 1941–1942 (ed. N. Bruin and C. van Venetië; Utrecht: Copieerinrichting Elinkwijk, 1942).

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An uncorrected stenographic recording of Schilder’s 1944 speech on the covenant is available in English translation: “The Main Points of the Doctrine of the Covenant,” trans. T. van Laar. Available online: https://spindleworks​.com​/library​/schilder​/covenant​.htm (accessed February 17, 2022). See also other contributions from The Klaas Schilder Reader: “The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace,” 35–61. “Christ and Biblical History,” 68–89. “Salvation History and Preaching (1931),” 457–85. “Melchizedek, Abraham, and Christ (1941),” 486–500. Schilder’s meditations on Christ’s path to the cross appeared as a collection in three volumes. This trilogy was translated into English during his lifetime (1938–40) and later republished: Christus in zijn lijden: Overwegingen van het lijdensevangelie (3 vols; Kampen: Kok, 1930). Second revised edition 1949–52. The Schilder Trilogy, 2nd ed. (3 vols; trans. Henry Zylstra; St. Catharine’s: Paideia, 1979). Among Schilder’s later works, the most remarkable is his unfinished commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. Heidelbergsche catechismus (4 vols; Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1947–53).

b. Revelation Accepting the Bible as a truthful account of God’s salvific acts in history, Schilder first defended its trustworthiness in view of the alleged contradictions in it, and in later publications critically engaged with Karl Barth’s theology: Tegenstrijdigheden in den Bijbel? (Zutphen: Van den Brink & Co., 1919). Bij dichters en schriftgeleerden: verzamelde opstellen (Amsterdam: Holland, 1927). Tusschen “ja” en “neen”: verzamelde opstellen (Kampen: Kok, 1929). Barthiaanse existentie-filosofie contra gereformeerde geloofsgehoor-theologie (ed. E. A. de Boer; Franeker: Van Wijnen, 1989). Some of the articles on the subject were recently published in The Klaas Schilder Reader: “The Paradox in Religion,” 340–400. “On a Theology of Crisis,” 401–27. “Barthianism and Secularization,” 428–42. “Why Barthianism Approaches the Neo-Calvinist Position in Times of War,” 530–8.

c. The Church Schilder’s separately published contributions on the church include his plea for a modernization of church language; a refutation of the links between Pharisaism and the Reformed faith; an examination of the relation between the church and the university; an analysis of the relevance of the 1834 Secession; and reflections on the nature of ecumenism.

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Kerktaal en leven (Amsterdam: Holland, 1923). Gereformeerd farizeïsme? (Delft: Meinema, 1925). Afbouw: Een woord inzake de praktische erkenning van het promotierecht der Theologische School te Kampen (Kampen: Kok, 1930). De dogmatische beteekenis der “Afscheiding” ook voor onzen tijd (Kampen: Kok, 1934). Uw oecumenische taak (Goes: Comité tot verspreiding van goedkoope Gereformeerde lectuur, 1952). Your Ecumenical Task (Pub. Committee of the Free Reformed Church, Launceston Tasm, 1975). Ons aller moeder anno domini 1935: een roepstem beantwoord (Kampen: Kok, 1935). Most of Schilder’s church-related contributions were compiled into collections. Om woord en kerk: Preeken, lezingen, studiën en kerkbodeartikelen van prof. dr. K. Schilder (4 vols; ed. C. Veenhof; Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1948–53). De Kerk (3 vols; ed. J. Kamphuis; Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1960–5). “Part III. The Church,” in The Klaas Schilder Reader, 224–338.

d. Culture and Society Advocating an active Christian involvement in society, Schilder produced important works on cultural mandate and the church’s engagement with modern culture. “Jezus Christus en het cultuurleven,” in Jezus Christus en het menschenleven, 225–85 (ed. H. L. Both and N. Buffinga, Culemborg: De Pauw, 1932). Later Schilder expanded this article into what will become his most important book on the subject: Christus en cultuur (Franeker: Wever, 1948). Christ and Culture (annot. Jochem Douma; trans. W. Helder and A. Oosterhoff; Hamilton: Lucerna, 2015). Other important contributions include Schilder’s reflections on the concept of common grace: “Common Grace,” in The Klaas Schilder Reader, 22–34. “Part II. Common Grace and Culture,” in The Klaas Schilder Reader, 106–222. Is de term “algemeene genade” wetenschappelijk verantwoord? (Kampen: Zalsman, 1947). Bovenschriftuurlijke binding: een nieuw gevaar (Goes: Comité tot verspreiding van goedkoope Gereformeerde lectuur, 1952). Extra-Scriptural Binding: A New Danger (Neerlandia: Inheritance, 1996).

e. Other Collections Since Schilder’s contributions were mostly short, occasional, and scattered, collections of his works have a great significance. Apart from the aforementioned volumes, the following collections are noteworthy:

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Preken (3 vols; ed. W. G. de Vries; Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1954–5). Schriftoverdenkingen (3 vols; ed. C. Veenhof; Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1956–8). Verzamelde werken 1940–1941 (ed. G. Harinck; Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 1995). Verzamelde werken 1942–1944 (ed. W. G. de Vries; Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 1998). Verzamelde werken 1944–1945 (ed. W. G. de Vries and G. Harinck; Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 2001). Verzamelde werken 1917–1919 (ed. W. van der Schee; Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 2004). See also the correspondence between Schilder and Vollenhoven: Eender en anders: Correspondentie tussen K. Schilder en D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (ed. W. G. de Vries; Kampen: Kok, 1992).

f. Further Bibliographical Sources Hoeven, J. van der, “Bibliographie prof. dr. K. Schilder,” in Almanak van het Corpus Studiosorum in Academia Campensi „Fides Quadrat Intellectum” 1953, 122–67 (Kampen: Zalsman, 1953). Jong, Marinus de, “Bibliography,” in The Church is the Means, the World is the End, 305–9 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Theologische Universiteit Kampen, 2019).

VII. DIRK HENDRIK THEODOOR VOLLENHOVEN (1892–1978) a. Epistemology Assuming his appointment as Professor of Philosophy and Theoretical Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit, Vollenhoven gave an inaugural address on epistemological issues, which was published as a monograph. Logos en ratio: Beider verhouding in de geschiedenis der westersche kentheorie (Kampen: Kok, 1926). Reformed Epistemology: The Relation of Logos and Ratio in the History of Western Epistemology (trans. Antony Tol; Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2013). In the same year, Vollenhoven published two important articles focusing on such issues as the knowing subject, cosmic ordinances, the relationship between God and the cosmos, and scientific knowledge. “Enkele grondlijnen der kentheorie,” Stemmen des Tijds 15 (1926), 380–401. “Kentheorie en natuurwetenschap,” Orgaan der Christelijke Vereeniging van Natuur- en Geneeskundigen in Nederland 2:4 (1926), 53–64, 147–97.

b. Introduction to Philosophy Vollenhoven’s syllabus for his philosophy course Isagôgè Philosophiae was continually revised: versions published in 1930, 1939, and 1941 considerably differ between themselves. A bilingual Dutch-English parallel version was published in 2005:

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Isagôgè philosophiae / Introduction to Philosophy (ed. John H. Kok and Anthony Tol; trans. John H. Kok; Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2005). As part of his doctoral dissertation, Tol prepared also a text-critical edition in Dutch: Isagôgè philosophiae 1930–1945: Tekstkritische uitgave (ed. Anthony Tol; Amsterdam: Free University Press, 2010).

c. Greek Philosophy From 1945 on, Vollenhoven focused on the history of philosophy. He intended to write a tenvolume history of Western philosophy, but, having faced criticism after the publication of the first volume, he decided to stop. The first volume presented a detailed and systematic overview of pre-Platonic thought. Geschiedenis der wijsbegeerte. Vol. I: Inleiding en geschiedenis der Griekse wijsbegeerte vóór Plato en Aristoteles (Franeker: Wever, 1950). The History of Ancient Philosophy (trans. H. Evan Runner; Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin College, 1958–9). The translation is partial: pages 21–79 is a translation of pages 17–106 of Geschiedenis; pages 79–193 is a translation of pages 138–312 of Geschiedenis. Other works on Greek philosophy include: “De makro- en mikrokosmos bij de vóór-socratische subjectivisten,” Philosophia Reformata 12 (1947), 97–129. “The Course of Plato’s Development,” in Library of the 10th International Congress of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Philosophical Essays, 1–16 (Amsterdam: Veen, 1948). “De ontwikkelingsgang van Aristoteles,” Philosophia Reformata 16 (1951), 16–63; 21 (1956), 45–80. “Plato’s realism,” Philosophia Reformata 18 (1963), 97–133. “Methode perikelen bij de Parmenides-interpretatie,” Philosophia Reformata 30 (1965), 63–112. A summary of this article in English was prepared by the author himself: “Methodical Dangers in the Parmenides Interpretation,” Philosophia Reformata 31 (1966), 68–71.

d. Consequent Problem-Historic Method Vollenhoven’s approach to the history of philosophy was expressed in his “consequent problemhistoric method,” which focused on presenting each author in the historical (a “time-current”) and intellectual (a “type”) context. Vollenhoven’s most important contributions on this subject were collected in a separate volume. De probleem-historische methode en de geschiedenis van de wijsbegeerte (ed. Kornelis A. Bril; Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2005). The Problem-Historical Method and the History of Philosophy (ed. Kornelis A. Bril; trans. John de Kievit, Stefan Francke, J. Glenn Friesen, and Robert Sweetman; Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2005).

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Vollenhoven’s Short Survey of the History of Philosophy (included in this volume) was supplemented by schematic charts, which present philosophers in their historiographical relationship (the index of names includes more than 1,600 philosophers). First produced in 1962 and modified in 1967, the charts were published as: Schematische kaarten: Filosofische concepties in probleemhistorisch verband (ed. Kornelis A. Bril and P. J. Boonstra; Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2000). A helpful introduction to Vollenhoven’s approach can be found in his guest lectures at South African universities that will soon be published also in English. Gastcolleges wijsbegeerte: Erfenis voor het heden (ed. K. A. Bril and R. A. Nijhoff; Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2011). Vollenhoven’s philosophical articles in Oosthoek’s Encyclopedie (1959–64) were included in: Wijsgerig woordenboek (ed. Kornelis A. Bril; Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2005). See also: Ancient Philosophical Conceptions in Problem-Historical Layout, 6th century bc to 6th ad (ed. Anthony Tol; Amsterdam: Filosofisch Instituut VU, 1979).

e. Calvinist Philosophy Throughout his career, Vollenhoven tried to develop a distinctively Calvinist philosophy with a particular emphasis on God’s sovereignty. Most important publications include: “De betekenis van het calvinisme voor de reformatie van de wijsbegeerte,” Antirevolutionaire Staatkunde 5 (1931), 180–98, 266–334. “The Significance of Calvinism for the Reformation of Philosophy,” Evangelical Quarterly 3 (1931), 387–403; 4 (1932), 128–60, 398–427. Het calvinisme en de reformatie van de wijsbegeerte (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1933). An English translation of chapter 2 is available online: “The Groundmotives of Biblical Philosophy.” Available online: https://www​ .allofliferedeemed​.co​.uk​/Vollenhoven​/HetCalvinischme​.pdf (accessed February 17, 2022). “Die Grundlagen der Calvinistischen oder schriftgemäßen Philosophie,” Theologische Blätter 24 (1935), 46–56. “The Foundations of Calvinist Thought,” trans. J. J. Venter. Available online: https://www​ .allofliferedeemed​.co​.uk​/Vollenhoven​/Fou​ndat​ions​Calv​inis​tThought​.pdf (accessed February 17, 2022). “Het geloof, zijn aard, zijn structuur en zijn waarde voor de wetenschap,” in Levensbeschouwing en levenshouding van de academicus, 71–7 (Utrecht: Dekker en Van de Vegt, 1950). Faith: Its Nature and Structure, and Its Significance for Science (Toronto: Tomorrow’s Book Club, 1950). “De souvereiniteit in eigen kring bij Kuyper en bij ons,” Mededelingen van de Vereniging voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte (1950), 4–7. “Sphere Sovereignty for Kuyper and for Us,” in On Kuyper: A Collection of Readings on the Life, Work and Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (ed. Steve Bishop and John H. Kok; Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2013), 317–22.

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“Schriftgebruik en wijsbegeerte,” Mededelingen van de Vereniging voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte (1953), 6–9. “Scripture Use and Philosophy,” trans. J. J. (Ponti) Venter. Available online: https://dooy​.info​ /voll​/scripture​.phil​.html (accessed February 17, 2022).

f. Logic Vollenhoven wrote several works on logic in which he criticizes its supposed neutrality and pleaded for a distinctively Christian logic corresponded to a distinctively Christian philosophy: De noodzakelijkheid eener christelijke logica (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1932). Hoofdlijnen der logica (Kampen: Kok, 1948).

g. Further Bibliographical Sources Bril, K. A., “A Selected and Annotated Bibliography of D. H. Th. Vollenhoven,” Philosophia Reformata 38 (1973), 212–22. Petersen, A. M. and L. D. Derksen, Bibliografie D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (Amsterdam: Filosofisch Instituut V.U., 1976). Bril, K. A., L. D. Derksen and J. H. Kok, Aanvullende bibliografie D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (Amsterdam: Filosofisch Instituut V.U., 1979).

VIII. HERMAN DOOYEWEERD (1894–1977) a. Transcendental Critique of Philosophical Thought Dooyeweerd is known for his transcendental critique, which points out the religious root of thought itself and insists on the irreconcilability of the Christian faith with the philosophical belief in the self-sufficiency of human reason. In a systematic form, Dooyeweerd presents his views in his magnum opus, translated into English as a four-volume work (including index): De wijsbegeerte der wetsidee (3 vols; Amsterdam: Paris Uitgeverij, 1935–6). A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (4 vols; trans. David H. Freeman, William S. Young and H. De Jongste; Jordan Station, ON: Paideia Press, 1984). First published 1953–8. Three other contributions are available in English: a translation of the lecture delivered to French students in Amsterdam, Dooyeweerd’s exposition of the fundamentals of his philosophy written specifically for an English-speaking audience, and his response to Cornelius Van Til’s remarks about the transcendental critique: “Introduction à une critique transcendentale de la pensée philosophique,” in Mélanges philosophiques. Bibliothèque du Xème Congrès international de philosophie 2, 70–82 (Amsterdam: Veen, 1948). “Introduction to a Transcendental Criticism of Philosophic Thought,” The Evangelical Quarterly 19 (1947), 42–51. Transcendental Problems of Philosophic Thought: An Inquiry into the Transcendental Conditions of Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948).

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“Cornelius van Til and the Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought,” in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, 74–89 (ed. E. R. Geehan; Nutley, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1971). Other important works on the cosmonomic idea and the transcendental critique include: “De wijsbegeerte der wetsidee en de ‘barthianen’: een tweegesprek naar aanleiding van dr. K. H. Miskotte, ‘Barth over Sartre’,” Philosophia Reformata 16 (1951), 145–62. “De transcendentale critiek van het wijsgeerig denken en de grondslagen van de wijsgeerige denkgemeenschap van het Avondland,” Philosophia Reformata 6 (1941), 1–20. “De autonomie van het wijsgerig denken in het licht ener transcendentale denkcritiek,” Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte en Psychologie 52:5 (1960), 225–40.

b. The Calvinist Worldview as Grounded in the Cosmonomic Idea In the light of the cosmonomic idea, Dooyeweerd tried to reconsider various spheres of human existence, especially jurisprudence and politics. In 1924–7, he wrote a series of articles in the Antirevolutionaire Staatkunde in which he traced the development of political thought from early Christianity to modernity. They appeared in English as: The Struggle for a Christian Politics (trans. Phil Brouwer; Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2012). First published 2008. In 1926, Dooyeweerd was appointed Professor in Philosophy of Law, Encyclopedia of the Science of Law and Ancient Dutch Law at the Vrije Universiteit. In his inaugural address (which is expected to appear in The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd series), he explained the implications of his central idea for jurisprudence and philosophy of law: De beteekenis der wetsidee voor rechtswetenschap en rechtsphilosophie (Kampen: Kok, 1926). Dooyeweerd’s systematic account of law and legal theories is presented in a five-volume series, of which the first two volumes have been published in English. Encyclopaedie der Rechtswetenschap (5 vols; Amsterdam: Studentenraad van de Vrije Universiteit, 1967). Encyclopedia of the Science of Law: Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2021). First published 2012. Encyclopedia of the Science of Law: History of the Concept of Encyclopedia and Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2021). Other collections in English include Dooyeweerd’s articles on Calvinism and natural law, the modal structure of jural causality, the relation between philosophy of law and sociology of law, the Christian idea of the state, and on the problem of time, the structure of jural principles, Aristotle’s concept of justice, the concept of sovereignty in modern jurisprudence, and the relationship between individual and community. Essays in Legal, Social, and Political Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2013). First published 1997. Time, Law, and History (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2017). Political Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2012). First published 1997.

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Dooyeweerd’s presentation of a modern Calvinist view of the state and his understanding of the relationship between science and religion are published as separate books. De crisis der humanistische staatsleer in het licht eener calvinistische kosmologie en kennistheorie (Amsterdam: Ten Have, 1931). The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2010). “La sécularisation de la science et la réponse réformée,” La revue réformée V, 17/18 (1954), 138–57. The Secularization of Science (trans. Robert D. Knudsen; Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2020). First published 1968. See also: “The Contest about the Concept of Sovereignty in Modern Jurisprudence and Political Science,” Free University Quarterly 1 (1951), 85–106. “Sociology of law and its philosophical foundations,” in Truth and Reality: Philosophical Perspectives on Reality Dedicated to Professor H. G. Stoker, 55–73 (Braamfortein: De Jong’s Bookshop, 1971). ‘Grondproblemen der wijsgerige sociologie,” in Verkenningen in de wijsbegeerte, de sociologie en de rechtsgeschiedenis, 67–146 (ed. J. Stellingwerf; Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1962). First published 1947. A Christian Theory of Social Institutions (trans. Magnus Verbrugge; Toronto: Paideia Press, 1986). “Het juridisch causaliteitsprobleem in ‘t licht der wetsidee,” Antirevolutionaire Staatkunde 2 (1928), 21–121. “De beteekenis van de wijsbegeerte der wetsidee voor de theorie der menschelijke samenleving,” Philosophia Reformata 2 (1937), 99–116. “Kuyper’s wetenschapsleer,” Philosophia Reformata 4 (1939), 193–232. “Kuyper’s Philosophy of Science,” in On Kuyper, 153–77.

c. History, Philosophy, and Theology While focusing on his epistemological principles and their application in different spheres, Dooyeweerd also wrote many works on wider historical, philosophical, and theological subjects. In 1960, he published a book in English based on his lecture series and designed as an introduction to Reformational philosophy and theology. In the Twilight of Western Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2012). First published 1960. Five other volumes of The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd series include: his book on the antithesis and synthesis in Christian thought; a collection of articles about Calvinist philosophy, the meaning of history, the criteria of progressive and reactionary tendencies in history, and the dangers of the intellectual disarmament of Christianity in science; and a trilogy in which he analyzes the development of Greek philosophical thought, compares Reformational epistemology with scholastic philosophy, and offers his account of philosophical anthropology.

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Vernieuwing en bezinning: Om het reformatorisch grondmotief (Zutphen: Van den Brink & Co, 1959). The Roots of Western Culture (trans. John Kraay; Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2012). First published 1979. Christian Philosophy and the Meaning of History (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2012). First published 1996. Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy (3 vols; Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2011–12). First published 2004–5.

d. Further Bibliographical Sources Harry Van Dyke compiled an annotated Dooyeweerd bibliography, which is available on https://sources​.neocalvinism​.org.

IX. JOHAN HERMAN BAVINCK (1895–1964) a. Psychology of Religion Bavinck’s early interest in psychology resulted in three books, in which he treated different aspects of the human inner life, including the thinking process, the formation of representations, memory, intuition, consciousness, personality, and religious feelings. Zielkundige opstellen (Batavia: Javasche Boekhandel en Drukkerij, 1925). Inleiding in de zielkunde (Kampen: Kok, 1926). Persoonlijkheid en wereldbeschouwing (Kampen: Kok, 1928). Personality and Worldview (trans. James Eglinton; Wheaton: Crossway, 2023). In his later works, Bavinck focused more on human religiosity paying particular attention to ideas and presumptions present in all religions. Religieus besef en christelijk geloof (Kampen: Kok, 1949). “Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith,” in The J. H. Bavinck Reader, 145–299 (ed. John Bolt, James D. Bratt and Paul J. Visser; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013). The second Dutch edition of this book in 1989 includes Bavinck’s essay on general revelation, which originally appeared in English as: “General Revelation and the Non-Christian Religions,” Free University Quarterly 4 (1955), 43–55. See other publications on God’s general revelation as speaking to all human beings and their reaction to it: “Het probleem van de pseudo-religie en de algemene openbaring,” Orgaan van de Christelijke Vereeniging van Natuur- en Geneeskundigen in Nederland (1941), 1–16. “Human Religion in God’s Eyes: A Study of Romans 1:18-32,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 12 (1994), 44–52. First published 1964. Bavinck’s further reflections on the nature of religion, the universality of religious consciousness, and the unique characteristics of Christianity were reflected in his Chicago lectures that posthumously appeared as a book:

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The Church between Temple and Mosque: A Study of the Relationship between the Christian Faith and Other Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1966).

b. Science of Missions Bavinck’s most valuable legacy lies in the development of missionary theology. While serving as a missionary and instructor of indigenous pastors in the Dutch East Indies, Bavinck wrote his first missiological study, which reflected both his openness to native culture and the realization of the dangers of syncretism. Christus en de mystiek van het Oosten (Kampen: Kok, 1934). “Christ and Asian Mysticism,” in Bavinck Reader, 303–411. Upon returning to the Netherlands, Bavinck was appointed Professor of missiology at both Kampen Theological School and the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam and dedicated his inaugural address to the complexities of preaching the Gospel on the mission fields of Asia. Christusprediking in de volkerenwereld (Kampen: Kok, 1939). “Proclaiming Christ to the Nations,” in Bavinck Reader, 110–42. Bavinck divided the science of missions into three parts: the theory of mission, elenctics, and missions history. This structure is reproduced in his most systematic treatment of missiology, which became a standard Reformed textbook: Inleiding in de zendingswetenschap (Kampen: Kok, 1954). An Introduction to the Science of Missions (trans. David Hugh Freeman; Philadelphia, PA: P&R Publishing, 1960). Other important publications on the essence, goals, challenges, and method of missions include: De strijd op het derde front (Zeist: Studenten Zendingscommissie, 1937). De boodschap van Christus en de niet-christelijke religies (Kampen: Kok, 1940). Alzoo wies het Woord: Een studie over de voortgang van het Evangelie in de dagen van Paulus (Baarn: Bosch & Keuning, 1941). Zending in een wereld in nood (Wageningen: Zomer en Keuning, 1946). Onze kerk zendingskerk (Kampen: Kok, 1948). The Impact of Christianity on the Non-Christian World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948). “The Problem of Adaptation and Communication,” International Review of Mission 45 (1956), 307–13. “Theology and Mission,” Free University Quarterly 8 (1961), 59–66.

c. Essentials of the Christian Faith and New Testament Studies During his missionary stay, Bavinck published booklets on basic truths of Christianity. De tien geboden (Magelang: Chr. Persvereeniging, 1932). Hoe kunnen wij den Heere Jezus vinden? (Magelang: Chr. Persvereeniging, 1933).

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Het licht des levens (Magelang: Chr. Persvereeniging, 1934). Paulus de grote apostel (Djokja: Ribbens, 1937). Bavinck also published lay-level books on the various people that encountered the Messiah, on the pastoral ministry of Jesus, on the meaning of life and its fundamental questions, on the struggles of the life of faith and its joys, and on the life in the Spirit and spiritual gifts. Menschen rondom Jezus (Kampen: Kok, 1936). Jezus als zielszorger (Baarn: Bosch en Keuning, 1938). Het raadsel van ons leven (Kampen: Kok, 1940). The Riddle of Life (trans. Bert Hielema; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016). Bavinck, J. H., J. de Groot and M. J. A. de Vrijer, Het geloof en zijn moeilijkheden (Wageningen: Zomer en Keuning, 1946). Faith and Its Difficulties (trans. Wm. B. Eerdmans Sr.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959). Ik geloof in de Heilige Geest (Den Haag: Voorhoeve, 1963). Worthy of note are also Bavinck’s general overview of the New Testament, his commentary on the Book of Revelation, his reflections about living before the face of God, his understanding of the impact of God’s kingdom for our lives, and his book on the clarity of Scripture for all nations. Geschiedenis der Godsopenbaring: Handboek voor de kennis van de bijbelsche geschiedenis, Het Nieuwe Testament, vol. 2 (Kampen: Kok, 1938). En voort wentelen de eeuwen: Gedachten over het boek der Openbaring van Johannes (Wageningen: Zomer en Keuning, 1952). And on and on the Ages Roll: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2019). De Bijbel, het Boek der ontmoetingen (Wageningen: Zomer en Keuning, 1942). De mensch en zijn wereld (Baarn: Bosch en Keuning, 1946). Between the Beginning and the End: A Radical Kingdom Vision (trans. Bert Hielema; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014). Het Woord voor de wereld (Baarn: Bosch en Keuning, 1950).

d. Further Bibliographical Sources Visser, P. J., Bemoeienis en getuigenis: Het leven en de missionaire theologie van Johan H. Bavinck, 303–8 (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1997). Wessels, A., “Bibliografie van professor dr. J. H. Bavinck,” in Pos, A., Christusprediking in de wereld, 224–46 (Kampen: Kok, 1965).

X. GERRIT CORNELIS BERKOUWER (1903–96) a. Complete Dogmatics Berkouwer’s magnum opus is his dogmatic series written in eighteen volumes and translated into English in fourteen books (in Dutch, some of the titles appeared in two parts). M. P. van der

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Marel prepared a helpful supplement to the series, which includes indexes of key terms, authors, Bible texts, and official church documents. Dogmatische studiën (18 vols; Kampen: Kok, 1949–72). Studies in Dogmatics (14 vols; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1952–76). Marel, M. P. van der, Registers op de Dogmatische studiën van dr. G.C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 1988).

b. Karl Barth Throughout his career, Berkouwer had a distinct interest in Karl Barth’s theology. In the early period, it resulted in a small article written by Berkouwer as a student, a series of essays on Barth’s ethics, and a major monograph written from a rather critical standpoint. “Erich Schaeder en Karl Barth,” Fraternitas 12/9–10 (1926), 267–70. “De ethiek van Karl Barth,” De Reformatie 11 (1930–1). Karl Barth (Kampen: Kok, 1936). Over the years, Berkouwer came to a more positive view of Barth’s theology. This was reflected in his highly regarded study translated into English, German, and Korean: De triomf der genade in de theologie van Karl Barth (Kampen: Kok, 1954). The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956). Other important contributions focused on Barthianism include Berkouwer’s article about the dialectical theology of Barth, Thurneysen, Brunner, and others; his inaugural lecture at the Vrije Universiteit; and a study about Barth’s attitude to infant baptism. “De dialektische theologie,” in Beproeft de geesten: Hedendaagsche stroomingen op religieus gebied, 76–124 (ed. N. Buffinga, Amsterdam: Holland, 1934). Barthianisme en katholicisme (Kampen: Kok, 1940). Karl Barth en de kinderdoop (Kampen: Kok, 1947).

c. Roman Catholicism Another principal field of Berkouwer’s studies was Roman Catholic theology and its relation to Protestantism. In the 1940s, he wrote two books discussing key issues that divide Roman Catholics and Protestants: the unity and authority of the church, dogma and its development, dogmatics and exegesis, grace and assurance of faith, and Mary and the communion of the saints. De strijd om het Roomsch-katholieke dogma (Kampen: Kok, 1940). Conflict met Rome, 2nd ed. (Kampen: Kok, 1949). First published 1948. The Conflict with Rome (trans. David Freeman; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1958). In later publications, Berkouwer paid more attention to new accents of Roman Catholic theologians, especially to their attempts to reach a new appraisal of the Reformation and particularly of Luther.

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Nieuwe perspectieven in de controvers: Rome-Reformatie (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1957). Recent Developments in Roman Catholic Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1958). In response to the Second Vatican Council, Berkouwer published two books. In the first (written during the Council), he focuses on the nouvelle théologie and the changed theological climate within Catholicism, while in the second (translated only into German) he continues his assessment and deals with the actual documents of the council. Vaticaans concilie en nieuwe theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1964). The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism (trans. Lewis Smedes; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965). Nabetrachting op het concilie (Kampen: Kok, 1968). Other publications dealing with the Roman Catholic thought include: “Neo-Thomisme,” Bezinning 7 (1952), 1–5. “Identiteit of conflict? Een poging tot analyse,” Philosophia Reformata 21 (1956), 1–41. “Calvin and Rome,” in John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet, 185–96 (ed. J. T. Hoostra; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1959). “Sacrificium intellectus?” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 68 (1968), 177–200. “Convergentie in de rechtvaardigingleer?” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 72 (1972), 129–57. “Nieuwe diskussies over de onfeilbaarheid,” Rondom het Woord 14 (1972), 351–66. “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” in Wat is Waarheid? Waarheid en verificatie in kerk en theologie, 7–12 (ed. G. C. Berkouwer and A. S. van der Woude; Kampen: Kok, 1973). “Terugblik op de serie Waarheid en Verificatie,” in ibid., 186–92. Berkouwer also prepared a short essay about ecumenism specifically for an American audience: “Evangelicals and Ecumenism: What Conservative Evangelicals Can Learn from the Ecumenical Movement,” Christianity Today 10 (1965–6), 877–80.

d. Contemporary Theology Berkouwer’s interest in contemporary theology was reflected also in the title of his first academic position: in 1940, he was appointed extraordinary Professor in “new currents in theology.” While Berkouwer’s long-standing focal point was Barthianism and Roman Catholicism, he paid attention to other movements as well. For the present volume, noteworthy are his early articles on Kuyper and Honig: “Abraham Kuyper en de theologie van het Hollandsche neocalvinisme” I–VII, De Reformatie 13 (1932–33). “Dr. Kuyper als polemist,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 38 (1937), 464–83. “Neocalvinistische’ dogmatiek,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 40 (1939), 405–12.

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In 1952, Berkouwer gave Calvin Foundation lectures at Calvin College and Seminary published as: Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1953). From 1957 to 1972, he published a long series of contributions in Christianity Today under the titles “Review of Current Religious Thought” and “Current Religious Thought.” Berkouwer’s most systematic account of the contemporary theological thought is presented in: Een halve eeuw theologie: Motieven en stromingen van 1920 tot heden (Kampen: Kok, 1974). A Half Century of Theology: Movements and Motives (trans. and ed. Lewis B. Smedes; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977). Berkouwer’s last book includes his reflections on theological developments in the twentieth century, particularly in the Dutch context: Bavinck’s legacy, Hepp’s theology, the tensions around Geelkerken’s views, Schilder’s insights, the 1944 conflict and its consequences, and Barth’s influence. Zoeken en vinden: Herinneringen en ervaringen (Kampen: Kok, 1989).

e. Scripture and Revelation Recognizing the role of Scripture for theological problems, Berkouwer devoted, in addition to the volumes in the Studies in Dogmatics series, several works to this theme: “Geloof en openbaring in de nieuwere Duitsche theologie” (Utrecht: Kemink en Zoon N.V., 1932). Het probleem der Schriftkritiek (Kampen: Kok, 1938). “Het Schriftgezag,” in De Bijbel in het geding, 7–14 (ed. G. K. Berkouwer and A. S. van der Woude; Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1968). “Vorm en inhoud,” in Schrift en uitleg: Studies van oud-leerlingen, collega’s en vrienden aangeboden aan prof. dr. W. H. Gispen, 31–42 (ed. D. Attema et al.; Kampen: Kok, 1970). “The Authority of Scripture (A Responsible Confession),” in Jerusalem and Athens, 197– 203.

f. Other Works In his publications, Berkouwer discussed virtually all theological loci. Most important of them include: Wereldoorlog en theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1945). Gevaren en perspectieven voor ons kerkelijk leven (Kampen: Kok, 1946). “Calvin and Humanism,” in Calvinism in Times of Crisis: Addresses Delivered at the Third American Calvinistic Conference, 63–76 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1947). “Simul peccator en justus,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 47 (1947), 17–33. “Uit de geschiedenis van het dogma,” in Het dogma der kerk, 30–79 (ed. G. C. Berkouwer and G. Toornvliet; Groningen: Jan Haan, 1949).

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“Ex opere operato,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 53 (1953), 78–88, 93–103. “De kritische functie van het ‘sola fide’,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 57 (1957), 137–46. “General and Special Divine Revelation,” in Revelation and the Bible: Contemporary Evangelical Thought, 11–24 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1958). Het licht der wereld: Het evangelie van Johannes (Kampen: Kok, 1960). “Vragen rondom belijdenis,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 63 (1963), 1–41. Verontrusting en verantwoordelijkheid (Kampen: Kok, 1969).

g. Further Bibliographical Sources Keulen, Dirk van, G. C. Berkouwer: Bibliography (Kampen: Kok, 2000).

Contributors Vincent Bacote is Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton, USA. Henk van den Belt is Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Herman Bavinck Center for Reformed and Evangelical Theology at the Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Koert van Bekkum is Professor of Old Testament at the Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven, Belgium. Dmytro Bintsarovskyi is Research Fellow at the Neo-Calvinism Research Institute of the Theological University of Kampen-Utrecht, the Netherlands. Steve Bishop is Trustee at Thinking Faith Network, United Kingdom. Richard Brash is Assistant Professor of Theology at Christ Bible Seminary, Nagoya, Japan. James D. Bratt is Professor of History, Emeritus at Calvin University is in Grand Rapids, USA. Gijsbert van den Brink is Professor of Theology and Science at the Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Cory Brock is Minister at St. Columbas Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh and parttime lecturer in Systematic Theology and Preaching at Edinburgh Theological Seminary is in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ad de Bruijne is Professor of Ethics and Spirituality at the Theological University of Kampen-Utrecht, the Netherlands. Jonathan Chaplin is Member of the Divinity Faculty at Wesley House, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Cameron Clausing is Lecturer in Applied Theology and Missional Engagement at Christ College, an affiliate college of the Australian College of Theology, Sydney, Australia. Robert Covolo is Affiliate Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture at the Brehm Center of Fuller Theological Seminary and Director of Vocational Discipleship at the Center of Faith and Work, Los Angeles, USA. Gayle Doornbos is Associate Professor of Theology at Dordt University, Sioux Center, USA.

CONTRIBUTORS

 555

Harry van Dyke is Professor Emeritus in History at Redeemer University, Ontario, Canada. William Edgar is Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, Glenside, USA. James Eglinton is Meldrum Senior Lecturer in Reformed Theology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Abraham C. Flipse is University Historian at the Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Mark A. Garcia is President and Fellow of Scripture and Theology at the Greystone Theological Institute, Coraopolis, USA. Michael W. Goheen is Director of Theological Education at the Missional Training Center is in Peoria, USA. Israel Guerrero is PhD Candidate in Systematic Theology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. George Harinck is Director of the Neo-Calvinism Research Institute (NRI) and Rector at the Theological University of Kampen-Utrecht, the Netherlands. Marinus de Jong is Researcher at the Neo-Calvinism Research Institute at the Theological University, Kampen-Utrecht, the Netherlands. Jessica Joustra is Assistant Professor of Religion and Theology at Redeemer University is in Ontario, Canada and Associate Researcher at the Neo-Calvinist Research Institute of the Theological University, Kampen-Utrecht, the Netherlands. Matthew J. Kaemingk is Richard John Mouw Professor of Faith and Public Life and Director of the Richard John Mouw Institute of Public Life at Fuller Theological Seminary, California Timothy Keller was Pastor Emeritus at Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York, USA. David T. Koyzis is a Global Scholar with Global Scholars Canada, Toronto, Canada. Alexander E. Massad is Assistant Professor of World Religions at Wheaton College in Wheaton, USA. Richard J. Mouw is President Emeritus and Senior Professor of Faith and Public Life at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, USA. Andrew Ong is Pastor of Care and Discipleship at Christ Church East Bay, Berkeley, USA. Gregory Parker Jr. is Assistant Professor of Divinity at Cairn University, Langhorne, USA.

556

CONTRIBUTORS

Bruce R. Pass is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland, Australian College of Theology, Australia. Jennifer Patterson is Director of the Institute for Theology and Public Life and a Visiting Lecturer at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, USA. Michelle C. Sanchez is Associate Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, USA. Nathan D. Shannon is Associate Director of global curriculum and assessment and Adjunct Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Glenside, USA. Daniel Strange is Director of Crosslands Forum is in Newcastle, United Kingdom. Nathaniel Gray Sutanto is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington, DC., USA. Shao Kai Tseng is Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Zheijang University, Hangzhou, China. Michael R. Wagenman is Christian Reformed Campus Minister at Western University, Ontario, Canada. Christopher Watkin is Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow at Monash University is in Melbourne, Australia. Nicholas Wolterstorff is Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University is in New Haven, USA.

Index Page numbers followed with “n” refer to endnotes. AACS. See Advancement of Christian Scholarship (AACS) Aalders, Gerhard Ch.  68–70, 483, 484 absolute authority, of God  35–6, 38, 42–3 absolute being, God as  12–13 absolute idealism  17, 19 absoluteness of truth  430–1 absolute personality  16–17, 19, 454 absolute sovereignty  254 of God  35–7, 37 n.11, 39, 45–6 Adorno, Theodor  495, 496 Advancement of Christian Scholarship (AACS)  303 aesthetic neighborliness, in public theology  402 Aeterni Patris (1879)  337, 346 Africans  443–7 Americans  443 Christians  447 Alighieri, Dante  423 allusivity  492, 495 Althusius, Johannes  179, 399 Anabaptism  326 analytic/continental philosophy  4, 451–2, 462 absence of doctrines  465–6 Deleuze, Gilles  451, 455–8 Derrida, Jacques  451–5, 457 Dooyeweerd, Herman  451, 455–8 Foucault, Michel  451, 452, 458–9 intersection of neo-Calvinism  469–74 philosophy of art  473–4 political  471–2 of religion  468–9 religion and scholarship  470 tradition  465–7 Van Til, Cornelius  451–5, 457, 460 Anderson, Gerald  412–13 anhypostasia controversy of 1930s  104–6 anthropocentrism  29, 189 anthropology  81–4, 106, 242, 273 Barth, Karl  106–7 Bavinck, Herman  291–3, 300 Christology and  74, 104

Berkouwer, Gerrit  106–9 creation-fall-redemption  73–4, 73 n.5 criticisms of neo-Calvinist  83 grace restores nature for  78–81 humanity as an organic unity  74–8 vocation in the world  81–2 Marxist  78 Reformed  81 theological  107–8, 273 tripartite  104 anti-Catholicism  330–2 Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP)  171, 179, 208, 330, 331, 333, 348 anti-Semitism  445 antithesis  1, 76, 76 n.34, 82, 86, 88, 93, 94, 186, 215, 255, 256, 308, 337, 341, 364–5, 376, 405, 409, 418, 435, 449, 460, 499 Kuyper’s  381–2 non-Christian religions  381–3 apartheid  445. See also race/ethnicity Kuyper, Abraham and  444–6 in South Africa  182, 185 apocalypticism  280 Apollinarianism  104, 107 apologetics  190, 252, 252 n.17, 281, 365, 369, 371, 372, 378 eschatology and  216–18 United States  508 Aquinas, Thomas  55, 56, 59, 80, 81, 199–200, 313, 347, 416, 465 aristocracy  421, 422 Aristotelian  16, 292, 294, 296 n.26, 366, 489, 497 Aristotle  292, 456 Around the Old World Sea (Kuyper)  183 ARP. See Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) artes mechanicae (mechanical arts)  293–6 metaphysics of  297–9 Art in Action (Wolterstorff)  473, 493, 494 artistic truth  495, 496 Art Rethought: The Social Practices of Art (Wolterstorff)  473–4, 493, 494

558

arts/aesthetics  487 Bavinck, Herman  489–90 Calvin, John  487–8 Dooyeweerd, Herman  491, 492 fine  489, 490, 492, 493 grand narrative of  473, 493–4 Kuyper, Abraham  488–9 low  490 mechanical  493, 494 modern  490–1, 494 nonpropositional and noncorrespondence theory  496 philosophy of  473–4 popular  490, 491 Reformed  488 Rookmaaker, Hans  490–1, 495 Seerveld, Calvin  492, 495 social embeddedness of  494 Wolterstorff, Nicholas  493–5 Zuidervaart, Lambert  495–6 Aryan race  442, 443 Ashford, Bruce R.  34 atheism  170, 177, 252, 349 attributes, of divine  41–3, 41 n.33, 46 Augustine  13, 16, 22, 51, 55, 59, 60, 142, 157, 192, 193, 199, 255, 295, 313, 347, 364, 365, 489 Augustinian/Augustinianism  47, 157, 159, 192, 193, 249 n.1, 401–2 Bacote, Vincent  4, 138, 397 Badenhorst, F. G.  445 Bagares, Romel Regalado  137 Bagehot, Walter  421 Barth, Karl  4, 70–1, 74, 109, 159, 200, 210, 224, 231–3, 269, 335, 336, 354, 361–2, 369, 416 actualism  355–8 analogia relationis (analogy of relations)  362 and Bavinck in dialogue  359–61 Christocentrism  107, 352, 354–7, 359, 361 Christology  106–8 on creation  358, 359 criticisms of Berkouwer, Gerrit  354 Van Til, Cornelius  353 doctrine of election  354 of revelation  359 idealism  357

INDEX

neo-Calvinism  351–5, 362 scholarship of  355–61 neo-Calvinist critics  355, 356 neo-Kantianism  353, 354, 356 rejection of natural theology  359 of worldview  361 theological anthropology  106–7 theology  277–9, 281, 282 Barthianism/Barthian  20 n.3, 74, 159, 249, 282, 351–2, 354, 356, 362, 489 dualism  234 heterodox  354 Bartholomew, Craig G.  34, 74, 142, 147, 162, 323, 371, 445 Bauckham, Richard  407 Bavinck, Herman  1–3, 9–11, 14 n.47, 18–20, 23 n.16, 35, 56, 57, 61–3, 68, 69, 69 n.38, 70, 72, 73, 75–8, 80, 82, 83, 88, 89, 92, 93, 109–11, 113–14, 119, 120, 133, 134, 137, 155, 157–9, 174, 199–200, 252, 276, 296–7, 304, 305, 313, 314, 332, 334, 335, 353, 355, 357, 362, 365–6, 373, 376, 405, 406, 411, 412, 416, 429, 481 absolute personality  16–17, 19 arts/aesthetics  489–90 beatific vision  160 belief of the Reformed tradition  141 catholicity  290–1, 299, 300, 317, 338–9, 338 n.5, 345–7, 350, 430, 432 of Christianity  342–3 Christianity and culture  344 Christian science  480–1 Christology  101–3 Christ’s law  124–5, 128 consummation  155 continuity  154 covenant of grace  79 of works  79 creatio ex nihilo  24–5, 34 Creator/creation distinction  23–4, 33 criticisms of pietism  324 critique of Calvin  135 of evolutionary theory  481 denial of repristination  345 discontinuity  161 diversity and unity of creation  26–7 divine ontology  349, 355 on divine sovereignty  41–7

INDEX

doctrine of God  14–17, 41 of Scripture  66–7, 70, 317 as dogmatician  200, 201, 205, 210 dogmatics  122–4 ecclesiology/church  144 nn.18, 19 education at Leiden  203–4 and pedagogy  297 engagement of Roman Catholicism  347 eschatology  152 eternal punishment  160–1 evolutionary theory and  482 family  202–3, 207 freedom of religion  346 general revelation  379, 381, 384–5 grace restores nature  80 Hegel’s view of history, opposition to the  458–60 humanity as an organism  74–5, 81, 102–3, 291, 298–9 imitation of Christ  126–8, 135, 136 incarnation  102–3, 109 influence of  366 and Islam  378–80 journalism  206 labels of  200–1 life after death  159–60 life history  202–7 mechanical worldview  481 metaphysics  297 new era in Amsterdam  208–9 opposing the idea of seeing God  160 order of salvation  115–17 organicism  291–3 pastor  203, 204 personal challenges  207–8 philosophy of revelation  292, 293 power of the church  146 praise and critique  205–6 protology  78 publication  206 public reference to scripture  393 public worship and spirituality  402–3 Reformed dogmatics  15 Reformed orthodoxy  322–3 dogmatics in  315–18 piety in  319–22 Reformed theology  15 and catholic theology  15 relationship with Kuyper, Abraham  200 religion  379, 413–14

 559

retrieval of Thomism  346 review of biography of Duker, A. C.  319 of De Borg des beteren verbonds (van den Hoorn)  316 role in Christian Reformed Church  207 Roman Catholicism  337, 340 shorter works  205 Stone Lectures  366 theocentric principia of  316, 318 theological anthropology  291–3, 300 theological ethics  122–4, 126, 128 theology of creation  291, 299, 300 unity and diversity  428 view of creation  21–7, 29–31, 33, 34 Bavinck, Johan Herman  31, 49, 54, 94, 155–7, 264, 335, 376, 405, 408, 435 Christian worldview  52 culture and religion  409, 410 elenctics  268, 272–4 epistemology  59 foundation of mission  406 general revelation  380–1 God’s existence  53 and Islam  380–1 life  265–6 magnetic points  270–1, 273 as minister  265 natural knowledge of God  58 notion of possessio  409, 410 point of attack  271 possessio  271 prolegomena  49, 51, 54, 59 religious consciousness  268–71, 273, 274 revelation  48–55, 57 science of missions  267–8 theological anthropology  273 theology of religions  268–71, 273, 413 writings  266 beatific vision  160, 340, 341 Bediako, Kwame  436 being-subject  240 Belgian Revolt of 1830  166 Belgic Confession  40, 226 Article 5  67 Article 19  105, 106 Article 27  140–1 Article 36  346, 417 Belhar Confession  148–9 belief-framework  410 Berkhof, Hendrikus  354 Berkhof, Louis  145, 146 n.27, 147, 483, 499

560

Berkouwer, Gerrit Cornelis  11, 72, 109–11, 120, 153, 157, 159–61, 275, 353–4, 366 apocalyptic literature  279–80 apologetic period  278 Barth’s theology and  277–8, 281, 282 biographical notes  275–8 Christology  106–9 and anthropology  106–9 church life  277 concentration on Scripture  279–80 co-relation or correlation method  281–2 dissertation  278 doctrine of God  17–19 dogmatic studies  279 early life  275 incognito  108–9 influence  285–6 involvement in ecumenical dialogue  277–8 as minister  276 order of salvation  117–20 professorship  276 publishing the books  276–7 theological development  278–81 theological method, questions  281–4 writing style  281 biblical ground-motive  250, 253–4, 256–8, 260, 262–3, 263 n.67, 368 biblical philosophy  238 Dooyeweerd, Herman  262–3 Vollenhoven, Dirk Henrik Theodoor  238 biblical theology  70, 212–14, 406–7, 507 modernist notions of  219 Vos, Geerhardus  212–14 apologetics  217 doctrine of God and divine action  220–2 epistemology  218–20 eschatology  217 Boers  445–6 Boersma, Hans, Seeing God  160, 230 Boesak, Allan A.  372, 448 Boethius  13, 16 Boff, Clodovis  436 Boff, Leonardo  436 Bolt, John  128, 354 Bonaventure  59, 60, 313, 347 Bosch, David  405–6 Boston, Thomas  316 Botman, Russel  448 Bradley, Anthony  372–3 Brakel, Wilhelmus à  322

INDEX

Bratt, James  397, 442, 444 Brederveld, J.  297, 298 Bremmer, Rolf  102 Brock, Cory  160, 312, 355, 430 Bronsveld, Andries  100 Brunner, Emil  108 brute facts  454, 457 Buddhism  272, 381, 385, 414 Bultmann, Rudolf  279, 354 Burgon, Anya  293–5 Burke, Edmund  169, 179 Callendar, Eugene  372 calling of God  114, 116, 117, 119, 152–3, 157, 173 re-ordering of  114, 119 Calvin, John  1, 35, 44–6, 61, 83, 85, 108, 110–14, 119, 125, 130, 131, 133, 135, 136, 140, 141, 165, 177, 193, 198, 306, 309, 314, 318, 322–4, 329, 365, 413, 415, 417, 423, 429, 462–4, 487–9 arts/aesthetics  487–8 common grace  86, 87 imitation of Christ  127 mixed constitution  421–2 order of salvation  118 perception of God  191 public justice  421 semen religionis  56 theological ethics  121–2, 124 law for  121, 124, 135 triplex usus legis  125, 132, 136 Calvin College/University  277, 366–70, 462, 467, 484 Calvinism  2, 40, 45, 252–3, 302–3, 306, 432, 446, 462, 489 defined  1 equality before God  446 the Netherlands  325–6 Calvinism: Source and Stronghold of our Constitutional Liberties (Kuyper)  39, 139 Calvinist orthodoxy  302, 303 Calvin Theological Seminary  366, 367, 369 Canons of Dordt  92, 226, 279, 310 Capella, Martianus  294, 295 Carpenter, Joel  503 caste systems  446 Catholicism  326, 332 Roman (see Roman Catholicism)

INDEX

catholicity  135–7, 313, 337–8, 350 Bavinck, Herman  290–1, 299–300, 317, 338–9, 338 n.5, 345–7, 350, 430, 432 of Christianity  342–3 of church  341–2 dimensions of  338–9 extensive  339, 343–4, 350 inner  339, 342, 350 intensive  339, 342 modernity and  344–6 neo-Calvinism and  429–30 neo-Calvinists conception of  340 and Roman Catholic differences  341–2 social developments  348–50 theological method  347–8 organic and mechanical modes  339–44 as practical discipline  348–50 Reformed  15, 59–60 “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church” (Bavinck)  135, 136, 205, 338–9, 338 n.5, 350 Catholic tradition  463–4 CCEF. See Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF) CDA. See Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) census democracy  167 Center for Public Justice (CPJ)  371 centralized governance  423 ceremonial law  124 CFR. See creation, fall, and redemption (CFR) Chalcedonian Christology  220 Chalcedonian definition  97, 109 Chao, Jonathan  4 Chaplin, Jonathan  424 Christian ethics  134–5 Christ in  128–9, 133 law in  126, 128, 131 norms  132 faith  3, 129–30, 193, 343, 344, 404–5, 407, 432 nations  156, 157 pluralism  385–7, 432 religion  170, 171 theism  56 vocation  5, 81–3, 114, 145, 152, 157–8 witness  349–50 Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF)  373 Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA)  332, 333

 561

Christian Encyclopaedia  35, 36, 46 Christianity  1, 2, 4, 29, 62, 94, 151, 168, 177, 184, 189, 191, 194–7, 215–17, 228, 247, 254, 310, 327–8, 345, 362, 367, 375–80, 398, 432, 458–60, 481, 498–9 and Calvinism  432 catholicity of  135–6, 205, 337–9, 342–4 and church  135, 205, 338 Constantinian  149 and culture  343–4 distinct or unique offers of  508–9 extensive catholicity of  343–4 inner, intensive catholicity of  342–3, 350 intellectual resourcelessness of  252, 252 n.20 and Islam  383 Kantian phenomenalism  215 and non-Christian religions  382 Protestant  197, 448 Reformed  36, 304, 306, 421, 500 n.4, 502 World (see World Christianity) as world-and-life-view  498, 500 Christian philosophy  236, 238 Dooyeweerd, Herman  250, 252–6, 258, 259 Christian Reformed Church (CRC)  185, 304, 500 Christian science  482, 484 Bavinck, Herman  480–1 Dooyeweerd, Herman  477–80 Kuyper  477–80, 484 The Christian View of God and the World as Centering in the Incarnation (Orr)  190, 195–7 Christian worldview  33, 52, 187, 190–5, 197, 206, 250, 256, 328, 349, 360–2, 364–5, 371, 382, 397, 435, 463–4, 483, 510 Bavinck, Herman  23, 26, 52, 206, 360–1 epistemology  397 Kuyper, Abraham  397, 463, 472 Orr, James  187–8, 190–7 Christian Worldview (Bavinck)  51, 349 Christocentrism  107, 361 anthropological  74 Barth, Karl  107, 352, 354–7, 359, 361 Christology/Jesus Christ  18, 21, 28, 32, 36–8, 40, 43, 45, 49, 51, 56, 63, 65, 73, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86–9, 96, 137,

562

154, 158, 160, 196–7, 243–4, 291, 307, 357–9, 386, 404–5, 437, 460 anhypostasia controversy of 1930s  104–6, 109 and anthropology  74, 104 Berkouwer, Gerrit  106–9 Barth, Karl  106–8 Bavinck, Herman  101–3 belief in  192 benefits of  115–17, 116 n.48, 119, 120 coming  157, 162 cosmic body of  142 and culture  85, 88, 94 death and resurrection  357 divine nature  105 eschatology in  153 following  132 God’s work of redemption in  156 grace  115, 118–19, 340 humanity of  99, 102–6, 108, 109 human nature  104, 105, 107 imitation of  126–8, 130, 131, 133, 135–6 Bavinck, Herman  126–8, 135, 136 Calvin  127 Geesink, Wilhelm  128, 128 n.69 Mouw, Richard  133–4 imitations of  429 imminent return of  157 incarnation of God in  103 kingship  152 law of  124–6, 131–3, 135–6 Bavinck, Herman  124–5, 128 as content, Douma, Jochem  131–3 Geesink, Wilhelm  125–6 Mouw, Richard  134 lordship  2, 38, 47, 146, 152, 207, 246, 303, 381, 386, 387, 392, 404, 411, 412, 437, 500 love of God in  76 man’s redemption in  76 mediatorship  161 as motivation, Douma, Jochem  132–3 nineteenth century Bavinck, Herman  101–3 Kuyper, Abraham  97–100 place of  161 redemption in  114, 358, 361 resurrection  130, 218 revelation  62, 64, 108 salvation  29, 45, 86, 118 grace of  111 Schilder, Klaas  104

INDEX

seductive idea  98, 102 sovereignty of  37, 38, 40, 43 state of humiliation  98–100, 102, 108, 109 supralapsarianism  98, 101 threefold office of  116, 117, 119, 120, 227 twentieth century  103–4 Berkouwer, Gerrit  106–9 dispute over the anhypostasia  104–6 Christomonism  359 Christo-phanic preaching  510 Christo-telic preaching  510 Church Dogmatics (Barth)  351, 353, 357 Cicero  198, 295 Clowney, Edmund P.  264, 507 Cohen, Hermann  356 coherence of reality  261 common grace  37–8, 43, 45–6, 50, 77, 78 n.49, 82, 85–9, 152–9, 181, 182, 225–30, 232, 256, 301–2, 344, 345, 376, 382, 405, 409, 418, 435, 442 n.9, 443, 444, 447, 449, 450, 499 Calvin, John  86, 87 controversy on  90–3 Danhof’s arguments against the  91–2 end of the phase of  156 first generation on  85–90, 94 generative issues and questions  93–5 Hoeksema’s denial of  90–2 Kuyper, Abraham  185, 225–7, 229, 230, 232, 234, 308–10, 329, 365, 381, 464 non-Christian religions  381–3 Kaemingk, Matthew  385–7 Mouw, Richard  384–6 Van Til, Cornelius  92 Common Grace (Kuyper)  37–8, 45, 87, 180, 184, 227, 230, 232, 234, 443, 476 commonness  93–5 “common sense realism” approach  502 condescending goodness  102 confessions/confessionalism  2–4, 10, 15, 18, 30, 61, 63, 64, 309 church in  139–41 ecclesial  49 God’s absolute sovereignty  39, 45 Protestant  9 Reformed  38, 41, 64, 70 Scripture and  18, 90, 91 Triune God  12, 14

INDEX

Westminster  44 Confucianism  414 congregationalism  140–1 Conn, Harvie  264, 405–8, 410–13, 433 conservatism  167, 398 conservative churches  504 constitutional democracy  418, 423–4 government  421–2 Constitution of the United States of America  422 constructive philosophy  260–2 consummation  26, 26 n.35, 33, 153, 154, 158, 159, 161, 428 continuity  153–6, 161 control beliefs  485 convicted civility  385 copy of a form  455–6 co-relation or correlation method  281–2 cosmology  142–3 covenant  239, 246 of grace  114–16, 116 n.48, 316, 323 theology  213–14 of works  78–81, 153 covenant relationship, God and humankind  173 craftmaking  296 craftsmanship  290, 290 n.1 CRC. See Christian Reformed Church (CRC) creatio ex nihilo  23–5, 34 creation  20, 74–5, 78–9, 81–2, 291, 299, 300, 358–9 Bavinck’s view  21–7, 29–31, 33, 34 creatio ex nihilo  23–5 cultural mandate  26, 28–9, 32, 33 development of  153–6, 379 doctrine of  34 dynamic, not static  27–8 and evolution  483–4 and evolutionism  33 God  22–34, 88, 142, 143, 153–5, 239– 41, 254, 339, 377, 428–9, 479, 499 goodness of  29–30, 33 Kuyper’s view of  22, 25–31 God’s sovereign relationship  36–41 law  30–2 motive  254 neo-Calvinist view  21–3, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32–3 norms  30–2 from nothing  23–5, 32 order  31, 33, 56, 89, 173, 255, 256

 563

ordinances  31–3 organic  22, 25–33, 43, 75, 459 pancreation  23, 25, 33 as revelation  22, 29 statutes  31 structure of  30–3, 79 as triniform  16, 19 Trinitarian view of  21–2, 25, 51 unity and diversity in  25–7, 427–9 creation, fall, and redemption (CFR)  73–4, 73 n.5, 280, 457 creational theology  133–4 Creation and Evolution (Lever)  484 Creation Regained (Wolters)  310 Creator/creation distinction  23–5, 33, 46, 98, 356–9, 431, 435, 459, 488, 494 critical philosophy, transcendental critique  256–9 Critical Race Theory (CRT)  448–9 culturalist  500–1 culture/cultural mandate  26, 28–9, 32, 33, 81–2, 227–31, 456 Christ and  85, 88, 94 Christianity and  343–4 missiology of Western  411–12 religion and  409–10 theology of  94 transformationism  502 “Curse of Ham”  441 Danhof, Revs. H., denial of common grace  91–2 Darwin/Darwinism  98, 182, 188, 189, 196, 197 theory of evolution  479–85 theory of natural selection  441 death  243–4 De Borg des beteren verbonds (van den Hoorn)  316 Decalogue  122, 125, 126, 132, 305 de Gaay Fortman, J. P.  481–2 de Graaf, Simon Gerrit  71 De Inventione (Cicero)  295 deism  12–13, 42, 43 Deleuze, Gilles  451, 455–8 interpretations of Plato  455–7 overturning Platonism  455–7 De menschwording Gods: Het levensbeginsel der kerk (Kuyper)  100 democracy  2, 3, 46, 335, 421–4 census  167 constitutional  418

564

doctrinaire  349 liberal  327, 328, 330, 332 social  333 de Moor, Bernadinus  316 Dennison, William  83, 83 n.78 denominationalism  140–1 Derrida, Jacques  451–5, 457 arche-trace  453 brute facts  454 problem of predication  453–5, 457 de Savornin Lohman, A. F.  331 Descartes, Rene  320 De scripturis (Hugh)  293 Deus dixit  430 development cultural and social  440–1 historical  441 De vleeschwording des woords (Kuyper)  97, 98 Dewey, John  490 de wijsbegeerte van de wetsidee (“the philosophy of the law idea”)  305–7, 311 diaconate/deacons  144–8, 511 dialectical tensions  259 dialectical theology  106, 352 dialogic pluralism  471 Dictaten dogmatiek (Dictates on Dogmatics, Kuyper)  11, 22, 37, 112 Didascalicon (Hugh)  293–4, 296 Diemer, J. H.  482, 484 differences  442–3, 445, 456 Dijk, Klaas  35, 36 discontinuity  153–5, 161. See also continuity disinterested contemplation  473 dispersing power, in public theology  400–1 divine calling  173 character  305–6 command ethic  305 election  176, 279, 281 law  254, 305–7 nature  268–70 sovereignty  35–9, 37 nn.11, 12, 186, 304–7 Bavinck, Herman on  41–7 Kuyper, Abraham on  36–41, 44–7 vocation  82 Docetism  107 doctrinaire democracy  349 doctrinalist  500–2 doctrinal traditions  465–6

INDEX

doctrine of God  94 Bavinck, Herman  14–17, 41 and divine action  220–2 Gerrit Berkouwer, Gerrit Cornelis  17–19 Kuyper, Abraham  11–14 Reformed  44–6 Scholten, Jan Hendrik  12 Doedes, J. I.  62 dogmatic image of thought  456 dogmatics  122–4 Reformed  312, 314 Doleantie  180, 302 Donner, J. H.  203–4 Dooyeweerd, Herman  27, 27 n.45, 49, 57 n.57, 78, 79, 174, 236, 237, 305, 311, 335, 353, 354, 366, 368–9, 416, 451, 455–8, 460, 482, 484, 485 arts/aesthetics  491, 492 biblical philosophy  262–3 Christian philosophy  250, 252–6, 258, 259 Christian science  477–80 coherence of reality  261 constructive philosophy  260–2 context and career  249–51 critical philosophy: transcendental critique  256–9 de wijsbegeerte van de wetsidee  305–7, 311 ground-motive (see ground-motive) interpretations of Plato  456–8 natural knowledge of  55 neo-Kantianism  256 origin of reality  260 revelation  55–7 science  484 totality of reality  260–1 transcendental critique  256–9, 257 n.42, 260 n.57, 368 Vollenhoven and  237, 246 Dorner, Isaak  102 double compulsion of the Spirit  449 Douma, Jochem  129, 131, 132 n.104, 157 Christ as motivation  132–3 law as content  131–3 theological ethics  131–3 Draper, John William  477 dualism  23, 29, 80, 93, 107, 226, 231 Barthianism/Barthian  234 nature and grace  63 perceived scholastic  242 sacred/secular  28

INDEX

Dubois, W. E. B.  372 Duker, A. C.  319 ecclesial confession  49 ecclesiology/church  8, 43, 47, 88, 139, 144 nn.18, 19, 321, 327–8, 333, 336, 342, 404–5 apostolicity  147 Augustinian view  157 Berkhof, Louis  145, 147 catholicity of  339, 341–2 catholic unity of the  430 as Christ’s Kingdom  140–1, 149 congregationalism  140–1 cosmology  142–3 denominationalism  140–1 future study questions  149–50 institution  85, 143–4, 144 n.17, 146, 156, 228, 333, 417 justice and mercy  147, 148 key questions  140–1 Kuyper, Abraham  141–8 militant versus triumphant  149 mother of believers  142 neo-Calvinist conception of  341–2 organism  85, 143–4, 144 n.17, 146, 228 palingenesis/new birth  141–2 power of  145–7, 146 n.27 recent and global developments  147–9 reform  179–80 Reformed  1, 35, 37, 39, 140, 147, 345 in Reformed confessions  139–41 regula fidei (rule of faith)  358, 360 renewal  345–6 rise of  413 role of the diaconate  145, 147 self-critical questions for  150 sovereignty of  40–1 sphere sovereignty  143, 146 Spykman, Gordon  147 theology of a liberation  436 traditions in the history of  414 unity  447 and universality of  342 Western culture  411 eclecticism, Reformed catholic  59–60 educational monopoly  425 education policy  348 Edwards, Jonathan  509–10 Eerdmans, Bernardus  97 Eglinton, James  16, 19, 51, 313, 430, 443, 460

 565

election  18, 36, 38, 42, 46, 46 n.64, 110, 112, 113, 176, 178, 197, 198, 226, 279, 281, 282, 301, 355, 357 Christ  101, 357 Church  101, 177 divine  46, 92, 176, 279, 281 doctrine of  47, 57, 281, 301, 354, 442 Dutch  182–3 theory of  441 electoral reform  424 elenctics  268, 272–4 Ellis, Carl Jr.  372 eloquence  294–6 Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology (1894, Kuyper)  64, 65, 68, 69, 181, 199, 476 end time  155–7 Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiative (EI)  511, 511 n.26 epistemology  59, 218–20, 305, 385, 387, 397 equality, fundamental  446–8 Eriugena, John Scotus  294 eschatological hope  81 eschatology  79–80, 103, 151–3, 217–18, 221, 230–4, 279, 280, 291, 296 Bavinck, Herman  152 in Christology  153 consummation  26, 26 n.35, 33, 148, 153, 154 continuity  153–6 discontinuity  153–5 end time  155–7 eternal punishment  160–1 existential approach  157, 158 future of Israel and the millennium  158–9 life after death  159–60 pre-redemptive  217–18 seeing God  160 soul sleep  159, 160 eternal being  12, 36 eternal justification  113, 114, 119 eternal power  268–70 eternal punishment  160–1 ethics Christian  134–5 Christ in  128–9, 133 law in  126, 128, 131 norms  132 theological (see theological ethics) ethnic oppression  449 evangelicalism  279, 280 evangelism  407–8, 499, 505, 508

566

Evangelism: Preaching Grace and Doing Justice (Conn)  408 Evan Runner, C.  4, 368 Evan Runner, Howard  4, 368 evolution/evolutionism  182, 196, 483 creation and  33, 483–4 and shock  233 theory of  479, 481–4 existence after death  159 existentialist theology  129 existents  262 extensive catholicity  339, 343–4, 350. See also inner catholicity; intensive catholicity extra Calvinisticum  355, 358 faith  192, 282, 411–13 actuality of  113–14 Christian  3, 129–30, 193, 343, 344, 404–5, 407–8 faculty of  113–14 and justification  118–19 justification on through  113 sanctification  114 and science  476–7, 479, 480 “Faith-Work Integration”  511 fall  98, 101, 102, 255, 428 federalism/federal head  75, 79, 316, 422–3 Fesko, John  360 fine arts  489, 490, 492, 493 Flint, Christopher  383 following Christ  132 form motive  456–7 forms  455–7 Foucault, Michel  451, 452, 458–9 opposition to Hegel’s view of history  458–60 foundational Reformed doctrine  44–6 Fowler, Stuart  30 franchise  423–4 Free University/Vrije Universiteit  17–18, 38–9, 41, 64, 68, 104, 105, 112, 122–4, 129, 143, 179, 182, 207–8, 250, 301, 335, 364, 365, 368, 380, 475, 480, 482–4, 488–90, 498 French Revolution  77–8, 166, 169–71, 179, 208, 209, 326, 327, 330, 349, 397, 420 fundamental antithesis  337 fundamental equality  446–7 fundamentalism  23, 39, 239, 286, 305, 484, 504

INDEX

Gabler, Johann Philip  70 Geelkerken, Johannes G. (Reverend)  69, 482 Geesink, Wilhelm  122 Christ’s law  125–6 imitation of Christ  128, 128 n.69 theological ethics  123–4, 126 gender/sex  84, 502, 505 general grace. See common grace German idealism  100, 102, 189 glorification  22, 112, 114, 117 God  92, 191–2 absolute authority  35–6, 38, 42–3 as absolute being  12–13 absoluteness of  16, 219, 357 absolute personality  16–17, 19, 454 absolute sovereignty of  35–7, 37 n.11, 39, 45–6 absolute supremacy  41 n.33, 45 as archetypal (triune) unity-in-diversity  16, 22, 25–7 calling of  114, 116, 117, 119 common grace (see common grace) creation  22–34, 51, 58, 88, 142, 143, 153–8, 239–41, 254, 339, 340, 377, 428–9, 479, 499 divine nature  268–70 doctrine (see doctrine of God) eternal being  12, 36 eternal power  268–70 every square inch of creation  239, 246 existence  53 grace  46, 118, 344, 418, 464 and nature  340–1, 345 image of  82 immutability  357, 358 incarnation of  103 knowledge of  56 natural  53, 55, 57 n.57, 58 psychological and epistemological  57 n.57 law of  254, 305–7 love  242–3 lordship  47, 88, 435 mission  407 as monistic-pantheism  12 omnicausal  12 omnipotence  25, 36, 41, 43–5 ordinances of  31 perception of  191 re-creation  339, 340 redemption  305, 306, 365, 499

INDEX

revelation  22, 25, 26, 29, 55–6, 58, 63, 65, 88, 89, 93, 360, 413–14, 416, 431, 435, 459 salvation  36, 42, 46, 76, 80, 155, 305, 447 self-determination  358 self-revelation  54, 55, 220, 283, 358 sovereignty  35–6, 37 nn.11, 12, 44–6, 88, 118–20, 143, 179, 239–43, 246, 254, 304–7, 377, 417 Bavinck, Herman on  41–7 Kuyper, Abraham on  36–41, 44–7 special grace  86–90 as “supernatural” person  192 Trinitarian  25, 459 Triune  428, 431, 460 truth of  447 unity and diversity  16, 22, 460 view  191, 192, 194 wisdom and grace  42 Word-revelation  238, 238 n.13, 245, 246 The God Who Commands (Mouw)  134 Goheen, Michael  147 Gotham Fellows  511 governance  417, 422, 423 grace benefits of  115 of Christ  45, 115, 118, 119 in salvation  111 common (see common grace) covenant of  79, 80, 114–16, 116 n.48 God  46, 118, 344, 418, 464 special (see special grace) third act of  114 at work in human nature  342–3 grace restores nature  78–81, 499 Graham, Elaine  392 Greek ground motive  258 Greijdanus, Seakle  68, 102, 106, 108, 277 Grimké, Francis  372 Groen van Prinsterer, Guillaume (Willem)  39, 39 n.18, 165–8, 179, 327–9, 363–4, 373, 415, 441 active engagement in elementary education  172, 173 “anti-revolutionary” movement  171 Belgian Revolt of 1830  166, 169 belief in covenant relationship, God and humankind  173 career  166–7 concept of divine calling  173 conservatism and liberal, rejection of  167 educational pluralism  173

 567

French Revolution  166, 169–71 historical publications  166 order of creation  173 parliamentary conduct  167 public life  166–7 “the revolution”  166, 167, 169, 171 rising labor movement  172 “the religion of unbelief  169 Unbelief and Revolution (Groen van Prinsterer)  166, 169–70 understanding of religion  173 writings  169–72 Grosheide, Frederik Willem  35, 68, 69 ground-motive  258–60, 263, 456–7 biblical  250, 253–4, 256–8, 260, 262, 263 n.67, 368 Greek  258 humanistic  259, 259 n.49 pagan  258, 259, 259 n.49 scholastic  258, 259 n.48 Guinness, Os  370 Gunning, Johannes Hermanus Jr.  64 Habermas, Jürgen  495, 496 Haitjema, Theodoor L.  351 A Half Century of Theology (Berkouwer)  17–19, 280–1, 284 Hansen, Collin  371 Harinck, George  77, 211, 222, 302, 303, 445 Harnack, Adolf von  194, 197, 362, 416 Hellenization thesis  96, 362 Hart, Darryl  373 Hart, Henk  33 heaven  43, 58, 99, 116, 152, 153, 159–61, 234, 240, 280, 447, 463 Creator of  30, 46, 454 history of  231, 234 Hegel, G. W. F.  98, 176, 194, 195, 354, 356–8, 361, 458–9, 466, 493 absolute idealism  17, 19 construction of God  17 monism  459 totality  458–60 Hegelianism/Hegelian  190, 191, 196, 197, 358 Heidegger, Martin  496 Heidelberg Catechism  36, 57, 87, 104 n.50, 120, 140, 141, 158, 227, 229, 305, 310, 321, 325, 479 Hellenization/Hellenistic philosophy  96, 247, 362 Henry, Carl  303 Henry, Matthew  317–18

568

Hepp, Valentine  105, 124, 156, 159, 237, 276, 278, 279, 483, 484 Heppe, Heinrich  362 hermeneutical relativism  279 heterodox Barthian  354 Het werk van den Heiligen Geest (Kuyper)  97, 99 H. Henry Meeter Center  367 Hinduism  379, 414 historicism  9, 10 history of revelation  70–1 Hobbes, Thomas  420 Hodge, Charles  61 Hoekema, Anthony  74 n.7, 77–8, 77 n.39 Hoeksema, Herman, denial of common grace  90–1 Hoekstra, Tjeerd  104, 105 Holy Spirit/Pneumatology  22, 61, 63, 65, 66, 76, 99–100, 106 n.61, 109–11, 113–19, 140, 147, 180, 186, 218–19, 232, 254, 272, 281, 294, 308, 357–8, 382, 384, 394, 396, 401, 417, 429, 442 n.9 double compulsion of  449 in Reformed theology  114 sovereign agency  272 Hope for New York (HFNY)  511 Hugh of St. Victor  291–2, 299 artes mechanicae (mechanical arts)  293–6 metaphysics of  297–9 innovation  293–4, 296, 297 metaphysics  293–4 humanistic ground motives  259, 259 n.49 humanistic legal philosophy  253 humanity  26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 79–83, 254, 255, 340, 413, 429, 478 of Christology  99, 102–6, 108, 109 dynamic definition of  82 eschatological elevation of  80 and law  243 neo-Calvinist accounts of  82 organic unity of  74–8 as organism  74–5, 102–3, 291, 298–9 Bavinck, Herman  74–5, 81, 102–3, 291, 298–9 unity of  103 vocation  81–3 vocation in the world  81–3 human mutability  358 human reasoning  55–6, 59 Hurgronje, Christiaan Snouck  204, 315, 379 n.22

INDEX

Hylkema, Cornelis  97 idealism  357, 361 absolute  17, 19 German idealism  100, 102, 189 I Have My Doubts (Kuitert)  130 image of God/Imago dei  5, 29, 42, 56, 57 n.57, 59, 73 n.4, 74–8, 75 n.15, 78, 81–3, 93, 102, 116, 116 n.48, 160, 182, 214, 237, 270, 341, 381–2, 405, 412, 413, 435, 477, 489 imitation of Christ. See Christology/Jesus Christ: imitation of The Imitation of Christ in the Modern World (Bavinck)  126 immanence standpoint  259 incarnation  96, 101, 103, 108, 192, 193, 220 Bavinck, Herman  102–3, 109 Kuyper, Abraham  98–100, 109 incognito  108–9 inner catholicity  339, 342, 350 Institute of Christian Studies (ICS)  303, 368–9, 492 Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin)  111, 113, 140, 141, 191 institutional church  85, 143–4, 144 n.17, 146, 147 n.29, 156, 228, 333, 417 intellectual resourcelessness of Christianity  252, 252 n.20 intensive catholicity  339, 342, 350 interlacement  262 intermarriage  441 internal motivation  132 international reception (of neo-Calvinism)  3 Introduction to Philosophy (Vollenhoven)  240 An Introduction to the Science of Missions (Bavinck)  267, 268, 271 Irenaeus  313, 347 irrationalism  454, 457 Islam  183, 375, 376 n.5, 414 Bavinck, Herman and  378–80 Bavinck, Johan Herman and  380–1 Christianity and  383 God’s sovereignty  377 Kuyper, Abraham and  376–8 monotheism  377, 378 nomistic religion  377, 378 Israel and the millennium  158–9 Janse, A.  159 Jansen, W.  206 Jellema, William Harry  367

INDEX

Johnson, Dru  150 journalism  178, 184, 206 Judaism  326, 458 judicial or forensic law  124 Junius, Franciscus  50, 316, 317, 367 justification eternal  113–14, 119 faith and  118–19 Kaemingk, Matthew  4, 138, 434 Christian pluralism  385–7 common grace approach  385–7 Kampen Theological University  104 n.51, 380 Kamphuis, Barend  104 Kant, Immanuel  62, 152, 176, 192, 256, 257 n.40, 353, 356–7, 361, 420, 457, 466, 493 worldview (Weltanschauung)  193, 194 Kantian/Kantianism  63, 83, 191, 192, 197, 218, 256, 257, 353–4, 356, 454 phenomenalism  215 Keller, Timothy  4, 264, 371, 498–502 ministry of Presbyterian Church  499 neo-Calvinism background doctrinalist critique of revivalism and  502 learning features of  499 learning two tenets of  498–9 preaching  507 Keunen, Abraham  15 Keyes, Richard  371 Kierkegaard, Søren  108 Kierkegaardian  352, 490 Koch, Jeroen  334 Kohlbrügge, Hermann Friedrich  108 Kok, J. H.  68, 318 Koopman, Nico  137, 392 Korte Verklaring  68 Kraemer, Hendrik  265, 411, 434 Kuenen, Abraham  203 Kuhn, Thomas  470 Kuiper, D. Th.  441, 446 Kuitert, Harry M.  129, 129 nn.74, 93, 282, 283, 285 existentialist theology  129 modern neo-Calvinist ethics  129–31 theological ethics  129–31 Kuyper, Abraham  1–3, 14–17, 19, 23 n.16, 35, 43–5, 56, 57, 61, 63, 66, 68, 70, 72, 76–8, 82, 83, 92–5, 108–11, 116, 120–2, 154–8, 171, 172, 174,

 569

175, 200, 252, 276–8, 301, 302, 305, 313, 314, 321, 344, 364, 366 , 367, 373, 375, 406, 408, 415, 429, 439–40, 475–6, 482, 485, 495. See also Bavinck, Herman actuality and faculty of faith  113–14 antirevolutionary political movement  348–9 antithesis  381–2 in between gospel and world  364–5 and apartheid  444–6 arts/aesthetics  488–9 assessment of African Americans  443 beatific vision  160 Calvinist orthodoxy  302, 303 catholicity  338, 350 of Christianity  342 Christian science  478–80, 484 Christian worldview  397, 463, 472 Christology/Jesus Christ  97–100 church reform: 1881–6  179–80 common grace  37–8, 45, 181, 182, 185, 225–7, 229, 230, 232, 234, 308–10, 329, 365, 381, 444–5, 464 concept of incarnation  98–100, 109 consummation  26, 26 n.35, 153 continuity  154 creation goodness of  30 view of  22, 25–31 criticisms  152, 308–9, 324, 373 cultural and social development theory  440–1 Darwin’s theory of evolution  479 death of  185 denial of repristination  345 discontinuity  161 divine ruling of creation  307 divine sovereignty  36–41, 44–7 doctrine of God  11–14 of scripture  63–5, 67, 69 doctrine of common grace  86–90, 95 Hoeksema’s critique of  90–2 ecclesiology/church  141–8 cosmology  142–3 institution and organism  143–4, 144 n.17, 146 mother of believers  142 power of  145–7, 146 n.27 role of the deacon  145–7 sphere sovereignty  143, 146

570

education bill  182 education funding issue  182, 185 effects of sin  75, 305 eschatology  152 eternal justification  37, 38, 46, 113, 114, 119 eternal punishment  160–1 every square inch of creation  417–18 false start and new calling: 1875–80  178–9 family  175 franchise extension issue  185 freedom of religion  346 fundamental equality  446 future of Israel  158 God’s sovereign relationship with creation  36–41 historic development of a people  441 honors and trials: 1898–1905  181–3 humanity as bearer of the image of God  81 as organic unity  74, 75 influence  185, 366 infused knowledge of God  53 and Islam  376–8 salvation history  377, 381 leadership roles  302–3 lectures and sermons  177 legacy  185–6 liberation theology  437 life after death  159 multiformity  447, 448 negative assessment of Africans  443–4, 447 neo-Calvinist conception of church  341–2 the Netherlands  326–36 order of salvation  112–15, 119 palingenesis/new birth  141–2 and parental choice of schools  425 parliamentary activity  178, 179 from pastor to politics: 1863–74  176–8 peak years: 1887–97  180–1 petition against Dutch education policy  348 place of Christ in the new creation  161 pluriformity  26, 26 n.40, 225, 232, 233, 445, 477 political/politics  208 coalition  348–9 influence  302 phase  184–5 at Princeton Theological Seminary  302–3

INDEX

principled pluralism  186 prophetic critique  396 public reference to scripture  393 public speaking  394–5 and race  440–9, 442 n.9 reconnoitering the world: 1905–12  183–4 Reformed orthodoxy  322–3 regeneration  113–14 rejection of Darwin’s theory  441, 442 of supralapsarian Christologies  98, 101 relationship with Bavinck, Herman  200 role of prime minister  182–3 Roman Catholicism  337 science  476–8, 484 faith and  476–7 and religion  477 social welfare  348 special grace  365 sphere sovereignty  2, 14, 27, 38–41, 39 n.18, 43, 46, 47, 179, 185, 240, 399, 419–21, 489 to race and people  445 Spirit-Christology  99 Stone Lectures  39, 187, 276, 302–3, 327, 365, 366, 471–2, 476–7 substantive principles  13–14 theology of the complex society  399 theory of cultural and social development  440 total depravity  86–7, 308–10 worldview  411 L’Abri  370–1, 498, 506–7 Langberg, Diane  373 law  121, 305 of Christ  124–6, 131–3, 135–6 Bavinck, Herman  124–5, 128 as content, Douma, Jochem  131–3 Geesink, Wilhelm  125–6 Mouw, Richard  134 of God  305–7 humanity and  243 moral  305 philosophy of  242, 243 theology of  253 law of God  254 Lectures on Calvinism (Kuyper)  39, 121, 143, 181, 187, 276, 302–3, 349, 364, 440–2, 446 legal philosophy  253

INDEX

Leiden Synopsis  204 Leiden University  63, 176, 203 Lever, Jan  483–4 liberal arts  292–3, 295, 296 churches  503 democracy  327–8, 330, 332 individualism  419 liberalism  167, 327–30, 332, 335, 336 liberation theology  436–7, 436 n.47 life after death  159–60 life-and-worldview  244 Lints, Richard  212 Liou, Jeff  448–9 Locke, John  420 logical economy  261, 261 n.62 loving God  242–3 low art  490 Luther, Martin  44–5, 111 n.11, 117, 130, 131, 135, 179, 318, 423 Lutheranism  45, 305, 326 McIlhenny, Ryan  78 MacIntyre, Alasdair  252, 306 McNeill, John T.  140 magnetic points  270–1, 273 Makita, Yoshikazu  79 Mark, Johannes à  316 Marsden, George  370, 499–500 Marx, Karl  458–9 monism  459 Marxist anthropology  78 materialism  23, 297 matter motive  456–7 Mattson, Brian  78–9, 101 Meador, Jake  507 mechanical arts  293–5, 297–9, 493, 494 mechanical worldview  481 mediating theology  36, 38, 98, 102 “Mediator” (Middelaar)  316 medieval scholasticism  49, 359 Medulla Theologiae Dogmaticae (Bavinck)  317 “Mercy Our Justice” ministry  511 metaphysics  215, 253, 289–91, 296, 297, 299, 300, 305, 467–8 of artes mechanicae  297–9 millennium  159 ministry  4, 204, 437, 498–500, 502 of Redeemer Church “combination” strategies  504–5 community formation  506–7

 571

four arms  511 “orthodox yet modern” stance  503–6 planting of new churches  512 preaching  507–10 Protestant orthodoxy  504 public identity  503–5 speaking the truth in love  506–7 three-fold understanding of outreach  510–12 truth and love  506–7 missio Dei (mission of God)  407 missiology  264 biblical foundation  406 contextualization  409 neo-Calvinism for  405–7 culture  409–10 holistic mission  407–9 missionary encounter with world religions  412–14 religion  409–10 Western culture  411–12 redemptive-historical approach  406–7 theological, ecclesiological and cultural  412 “A Missionary Encounter with World Religions” (Conn)  412–13 mixed constitution  421–2 modality  262 modern art  490–1, 494 modernity/modernism  2, 3, 12, 26, 62, 63, 169–71, 178, 191, 192, 195, 196, 216–17, 219, 291, 337, 344–6, 350, 411, 454, 472 Molendijk, Arie  2 Moltmann, Jurgen  24 monarchy  422 monasticism  343, 454 monistic-pantheism  12 Montesquieu (1689–1755)  422 moralism  504 moral/morality  132–4, 306, 343 commands  130 irrationalism  306 law  124–6, 305 order  307 principles  130 Mouw, Richard  4, 77, 94, 95, 129, 136, 137, 367–8, 400, 428, 448 amending “creational theology”  133–4 common grace approach  384–6 imitation of Christ  133–4 law for God  134 theological ethics  133–4

572

Muhammad, Prophet  376, 378, 379, 381 Muller, Richard  13 multiformity  447, 448 munus triplex  81 Murray, John  222, 383 natural knowledge of God  53, 55, 57 n.57, 58 natural law  464 natural science  297, 467–8, 470, 478–80 nature/natural theology/nature and grace  48–50, 239, 242, 258, 338, 340–3, 345, 479 dualism of  63 natural knowledge and  58 Reformed doctrine of  52–3, 57 Schilder, Klaas  54, 57–9 Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK)  175, 179–80 Negro  442, 443 neo-Calvinism  1–4, 47, 48, 60, 96, 110, 111, 305, 310–12, 350, 373, 502 Barth, Karl  351–5, 362 scholarship of  355–61 of church  341–2 criticisms  83, 373 defined  2 doctrine of man  77 eschatology  230 general revelation  508 Keller, Timothy  498–502 ministry of Redeemer Church and  503–12 for missiology  405–7 culture  409–10 holistic mission  407–9 missionary encounter with world religions  412–14 religion  409–10 Western culture  411–12 the Netherlands  327, 331–4, 336 and psychology  373 and race  446 redemptive-historical approach of  407 Reformed orthodoxy  322–4 dogmatics  315–18, 322 piety in  319–23 religions in antithesis approach to  381–3 common-grace approach to  381–3 future of  387 revelation  63

INDEX

rise of  404–5 Roman Catholicism  337, 347–8 Scripture  62–3, 68, 71 spread of  148 World Christianity  428 and catholicity  429–30 liberation theology  436–7 semper reformanda  432–3 theology of religions  434–6 unity and diversity in  428 at work in the world  433–4 neo-Calvinist biblical studies  67–71 Scripture  67–71 public theology  399–403 tradition  462–6 neo-Kantianism/neo-Kantian  195, 244, 256, 257 n.40, 353, 354, 356 neo-Puritanism  373 neo-Thomism/neo-Thomist  253, 465 the Netherlands  1, 3, 4, 12, 14, 37, 68, 71, 72, 90, 129, 131, 165, 166, 168, 176, 177, 180, 302, 327, 330, 333, 336, 481–4 anti-Catholicism  330–2 Antirevolutionary Party  330, 331, 333 April Movement of 1853  331 Calvinism  325–6 Catholicism  326 centralized government  326 different dynamics  334–5 education  329 Groen van Prinsterer, Guillaume  327–30 history of  325–6 Kuyper, Abraham  326–36 legal protection of labor  330 liberal Constitution of 1848  327, 328, 331 liberalism  327–30, 335, 336 liberal school politics  330 neo-Calvinism  327, 331–4, 336 neo-Calvinist circles  335–6 development  328 tradition  327, 328, 332, 334, 336 perception of Christianity  328 politics  328–33 Protestant country  327–31 Protestant schools  329 public school  329, 332 Reformed Church  326, 327, 331, 333, 336

INDEX

religions  329 and confessions  326 Roman Catholic Church  331, 332 Roman Catholicism  331, 332 society  334 split in 1830  327, 331 structure of  334 support of the Catholics  330–2 Newbigin, Lesslie  408 new creation  155, 159 A New Critique of Critical Thought (Dooyeweerd)  55 A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Dooyeweerd)  257–9 New Testament  125, 157, 305, 339, 406 NHK. See Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK) Nicene Creed  25 Nicole, Roger  499 Nietzsche, Friedrich  208–9 Noah’s covenant  88–9 Noll, Mark  370 nomistic religions  377, 378 non-scriptural philosophy  238 Noordtzij, Arie  67–9 Noordtzij, Maarten  66 norms Christian ethics  132 creational  29–32, 83 God’s  27 North America  4, 366–8 Black and Reformed  372–3 Calvin College/University  366–8 Calvin Theological Seminary  369 Center for Public Justice (CPJ)  371 higher learning institutions  368–9 Institute of Christian Studies (ICS)  368–9 neo-Calvinism  502 critics  373 and psychologists  373 neo-Calvinists  370–1 politics, history, and ministry  370–1 Westminster Theological Seminary  23 n.17, 369–70 obedience  221 Of Grammatology (Derrida)  453 “Old School” Presbyterian theology  302, 303 Old Testament  125, 305, 406 omnipotence  25, 36, 41, 43–5 omnipresence, of God  51, 53, 479

 573

order of creation  31, 33, 56, 89, 173, 255, 256 order of salvation  110, 111, 111 n.11, 112 Bavinck, Herman  115–17 Berkouwer, G. C.  117–20 Calvin, John  118 Kuyper, Abraham  112–15, 119 ordo salutis. See order of salvation organic/organicism  74 n.11, 76, 127 Bavinck’s  291–3 church  85, 143–4, 144 n.17, 146, 228 creation  22, 25–33, 43, 75, 459 Hegel’s  212, 458 unity-in-diversity  80, 82 unity of humanity  74–8 worldview  26, 51, 52, 428 organic worldview  26, 51, 52 organism  144 n.17 church as  85, 146, 228 humanity as  74–5, 81, 102–3, 291, 298–9 institute and  85, 143–4 original righteousness  340–2 original sin  77, 340 Rome’s teaching on  342 origin of reality  260 Orr, James  68, 188–90, 197–8 Christian worldview  187–8, 190–7 Christology  196–7 fundamentalist progressivism  194–7 magisterial Reformation  189 post-Kantian position  194 Reformation of church  189 soteriology/salvation  196–7 supernaturalism  192 Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC)  500 orthodoxy Calvinist  302, 303 Reformed  1, 13–14, 44, 48, 50, 83, 98, 100, 102, 108, 314, 322–4, 358 of natural theology  52–3, 57–8 Ouweneel, Willem  416 overturning Platonism  455–7, 461 Paedagogische Beginselen (Bavinck)  298 pagan ground motives  258, 259, 259 n.49 paleo-Calvinism  430 palingenesis/new birth  141–2 pancreation  23, 25, 33 Pannenberg, Wolfhart  281 pantheism  12–13, 17, 23, 42, 43, 45, 97, 100, 349 papal infallibility  332, 337, 341, 350

574

paradigm shift  470 parental choice of schools  424–5 parity treatment  173 pastoral ministry  498, 499 Patrimonium  172 Pelagian conception  213 Pennings, Ray  373 perilous exchange  268, 269 pervasive fallenness  464 phenomenalism, Kantian  215, 353 phenomenology  59–60, 83, 256, 273 Philosophia Reformata (Dooyeweerd)  251 philosophy  293–4 analytic/continental (see analytic/continental philosophy) of art  473–4 biblical  238 Christian  250, 252–6, 258, 259 constructive  260–2 critical  256–9 four parts of  293 of historical fact  215–16 history of  244–7 of law  240–3 non-scriptural  238 political  471–2 presuppositions  253, 257, 257 n.42 reformation of  238–42, 246–7, 250, 251 of religion  468–9 of science  482, 485 scriptural  238, 246 systematic  245 Philosophy of Revelation (Bavinck)  50, 51, 53, 55 pietist  500–1 piety  135, 177, 203, 304, 314, 316–18, 323 Reformed orthodoxy  319–22 pillarization  364 pistic mode  243, 247 Plantinga, Alvin  367, 368, 462, 469, 469 n.5, 485 Plato  168, 296, 365, 369, 455–7, 465 theory of the forms  455–7 Platonic tradition  465, 466 Platonism  168, 455–8 pluralism  2, 3, 350 Christian  385–7, 432 principled  186, 301 pluriformity  26, 26 n.40, 225, 232–3, 445, 477 Polanus, Johannes  61 polder model  172

INDEX

political coalition  348–9 communities  422 community  418 philosophy  253, 471–2 reforms  423–5 popular art  490 positivism  467–8 post-fall  239 condition of humanity  243–4, 246 power  422–3 federal division of  423 sharing  418, 418 n.14 Poythress, Vern  431 praxis and reflection, in public theology  396–7 preaching  507–10 predestination  36, 45, 46, 70, 177, 226, 301, 326, 462 predication, problem of  453–5 prelapsarian order  213–14, 221 pre-redemptive eschatology  217 Presbyterian Church of America (PCA)  500, 502 presumptive regeneration  113, 114, 119 presuppositions/presuppositionalism  51, 55, 57, 65, 69, 103, 174, 195, 197, 246, 369, 379, 382, 412, 434, 452, 476–7 philosophical  253, 257, 257 n.42 Reformed  39 religious  257, 259, 260, 335 pre-theoretical  244 Price, George McCready  482–3 Prikker, Johan Thorn  289, 292, 299 principium/principia  46, 53, 54, 66, 205, 239, 318, 334 Bavinck’s formulation of theology  316 cognoscendi externum  316 cognoscendi Theologiae  317 essendi  315, 316 internum  268, 316 principled pluralism  301 Principles of Psychology (Bavinck)  205–7 Principles of Sacred Theology (Kuyper)  447 problem-historical method  244–6 problem of predication  453–5 The Progress of Dogma (Orr)  194–7 prophetic critique  396 Pro Rege (Kuyper)  184 Protestantism  45, 196, 197, 252, 332 Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Barth)  356

INDEX

protology  78, 79 providence  42 psychology  200, 203, 206–7, 267, 269, 373, 380 neo-Calvinism and  373 of religion  265–6, 273 public aesthetics  402 consensus  395 critique  395–6 dialogue  396 justice  421, 424 listening  394–5 persuasion  395–6 power  394, 400 reason  472 reform  397–8 square  395, 396 worship and spirituality  402–3 public education, in the Netherlands  177 public theology  391 defined  391 neo-Calvinist  394–5 aesthetic neighborliness  402 dispersing power  400–1 future of  403 listening to the laity  400 public worship and spirituality  402–3 temporal awareness  401–2 praxis and reflection  396–7 public listening  394–5 public speech  395–6 reformation over revolution  397–8 scripture and theology as public  392–4 societal flourishing, complex  398–9 Pullman, George F.  419 Puritanism  322, 324 race/ethnicity  4, 182, 440, 442, 442 n.9, 443, 446, 449 Africans  443–7 apartheid  444–6 Aryan  442, 443 differences  442–3, 445 and ethnic oppression  449 fundamental equality  446 Kuyper, Abraham and  440–9 Liou, Jeff  448–9 Mouw, Richard  448 multiformity  447, 448 Negro  442, 443 neo-Calvinism and  446

 575

ranking in  445 separation of whites and Blacks  445 superiority  441, 445 racism  182, 445, 446, 449 rational argumentation  53 Rawls, John  417, 474 public reason theory  472 re-creation  339, 340, 343 redemption  76, 79–80, 82–3, 86–9, 93, 115, 156, 192, 218–19, 221–2, 243, 255, 305, 306, 308, 339, 358, 360, 365, 379, 406–7, 428, 435, 499 redemptive grace  350 redemptive-historical approach  406–7, 509 reformational philosophy  238–42, 246–7, 250, 251 Reformational philosophy (Dooyeweerd)  485 Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy (Dooyeweerd)  55 reformation over revolution  397–8 Reformed aesthetics  488 anthropology  81 Black  372–3 catholicity  59–60 Christianity  36, 304, 306, 421, 500 n.4, 502 Church  1, 35, 37, 180, 189, 333 the Netherlands  326, 327, 331, 333, 336 confessions  140–3, 417 ecclesiology  140, 147, 345 eclecticism  59–60 epistemology  252, 263 evangelicalism  188 orthodoxy  1, 13, 14, 44, 48, 50, 83, 98, 100, 102, 108, 314, 322–4, 358 dogmatics  312, 314–18 of natural theology  52–3, 57–8 Protestantism  45 scholasticism  64, 66, 267, 323, 323 n.61 theology  2, 12, 44–7, 147, 176, 305, 308, 312–14, 448–9 Bavinck, Herman  15 worldview  35 Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN))  265, 266, 275, 277, 278 Reformed Dogmatics (Bavinck)  17, 41, 51, 54, 66, 73, 75, 87, 102, 103, 111 n.11, 117, 122, 145, 152, 199,

576

200, 204, 206–8, 298, 304, 313, 347, 378 Reformed epistemology (Wolterstorff)  485 Reformed Ethics (Bavinck)  75–6, 122–7, 135, 136, 204, 319, 320, 322, 323 n.61 Reformed Ethics (Geesink)  125, 128 Reformed orthodoxy, neo-Calvinism  323–4 dogmatics  315–18, 322 piety in  319–23 Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World (Kaemingk)  391, 403 Reformed worldview  35 regeneration  113–14, 119, 310, 322 presumptive  113–14, 119 Reid, Thomas  192 relativism  430–1, 504 religion  10, 49, 53, 54, 89, 171, 173, 189, 329, 379, 409–10, 412–14 antithesis approach to  381–3 Buddhism  381, 385 Christian  170, 171 common grace approach  381–3 Kaemingk, Matthew  385–7 Mouw, Richard  384–6 non-Christian religions  381–3 culture and  409–10 future of  387 Hinduism  379 Islam (see Islam) and neo-Calvinism  413 and politics  418 psychology of  265, 266, 273 and scholarship  470 science and  477 theology of  412–13, 434–6 theology of, Bavinck, J. H.  268–71, 273 Western humanism  414 “the religion of unbelief”  169 religious antithesis  255 religious consciousness  45, 49, 214, 268–71, 273–4, 380, 413 religious freedom  346 religious ground motives  456 religious persecution  202 religious pluralism  344, 386, 387, 413, 434 religious presuppositions  257, 259–60, 335 Remigius of Auxerre  295 re-ordering of calling  114, 119 reportage-eschatology  157 repristination  345–6

INDEX

resurrection  130, 155, 159, 218, 220, 339, 357 Réveil  165, 168 revelation  22, 25–6, 29, 55–6, 58, 63, 65, 88–9, 93, 195, 218–19, 282, 339, 340, 359–60, 413–14, 416, 431, 435, 459 Bavinck, Herman  292, 293 Christ  108 general and special revelation  3, 13, 16, 48, 66–7, 221–2, 268, 269, 360, 376, 379, 380, 435, 449, 499, 508 Bavinck, Herman  379, 381, 384–5 Bavinck, Johan Herman  48–55, 57, 380–1 in Christ  62, 64 creation as  22, 29 defined  48 Dooyeweerd, Herman  55–7 eschatology  221 God  22, 25, 26, 29, 55–8, 63, 65 of God  22, 25, 26, 29 history of  70–1 neo-Calvinism  63 pre-redemptive  221 Schilder, Klaas  54, 57–9 Scripture  49–51, 54, 56, 63 God  88, 89, 93, 360, 413–14, 416, 435, 459 universal  55 Revelation 20  157 Revelation 21  154 revelational epistemology  430, 435 Revelation 2 and 3  158 revivalism  502 revolution  166, 167, 169, 171, 420 revolutionary discourses  397 Ridderbos, Herman  21 n.5, 71, 406, 507 Ridderbos, Jan  68, 69 Ritschl, Albrecht  197, 356 Ritschlianism  193, 195 Ritschlian neo-Kantianism  356 Robert, Dana  427 Roman Catholic Church  140, 331, 332, 341, 343, 346, 349, 477 Roman Catholicism  4, 66, 276 n.5, 278, 282, 283, 313, 326, 331–2, 338–41, 343, 344, 422, 423 church  341 dogmatics  347 Kuyper’s criticism of  332

INDEX

neo-Calvinist theology  337, 347–8 the Netherlands  331–2 resurgence  346 soteriology  80 theology  67 tradition  419 Roman Catholics  181, 214, 224, 330, 337, 338, 346, 348–50, 367 Romanticism (romantic philosophy)  463, 488, 490 Rookmaaker, Hans  4, 498 modern arts/aesthetics  490–1, 495 Rorem, Paul  293 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques  420 Sabellianism  15 sacramental system  341, 343 The Sacrifice of Praise (1901, Bavinck)  42 salvation-historical approach  406 sanctification  112, 114 Sanneh, Lamin  432 Schaeffer, Francis  498 Schaepman, Herman  331 Schilder, Even  160 Schilder, Klaas  23, 28, 31, 49, 59, 70–1, 90, 105–6, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 223, 237, 265, 266, 277, 335, 336, 351, 352 biography  223–5 Barth, Karl and dogmatics  224 preacher and polemicist  224 war and schism  225 Christology  104 church as institution  228 critique on common grace  225, 231, 232 practical objection  225–6 theological objection  226–7 cultural mandate  227–31 debate with Barth, Karl  231 eschatology  231–2, 234 general revelation  54, 57–9 history of heaven  231, 234 idea of heaven  231 isolated Christian culture  228–30 Kuyper’s common grace and  225–7, 229, 230, 232, 234 natural theology  54, 57–9 theology of history  230–1 Schleiermacher, F. D. E.  10, 45, 51, 98, 200, 210, 355, 356, 361 scholastic ground motive  258, 259 n.48

 577

scholasticism  236, 237, 239, 253, 258–9, 259 n.48, 347, 365 medieval  49, 359 Reformed  64, 66, 267, 323, 323 n.61 Scholten, Jan Hendrik  176 doctrine of God  12 pantheistic concept of God  45 school choice  424–5 Schopenhauer, Arthur  42 Schouten, Jan  170 Schuurman, Egbert  157 Schweizer, Alexander  45, 362 Scorgie, Glen  196 Scotus, John Duns  17 n.64, 98 scriptural ground motive  457 motive  457 philosophy  238, 246 Scripture  1–2, 18, 21, 23–5, 41, 42, 45, 49, 58, 61, 83, 88, 90–2, 99, 101, 108, 115, 118, 119, 132, 135, 147, 149, 150, 168, 206, 213, 217–20, 238, 238 n.13, 239, 278–80, 282, 293, 318, 320, 342, 355, 357, 358, 406–7, 412, 433, 463–4, 499 and confession  18, 90, 91 context  62–3 defined  393 doctrine of Bavinck, Herman  66–7, 70 Kuyper, Abraham  63–5, 67, 69 neo-Calvinist biblical studies  67–71 reading in public  393–4 view  62–3, 68, 71 redemptive-historical view  70 revelation and  49–51, 54, 56, 63 and theology as public  392–4 secularism/secularization  1, 2, 133, 141, 143, 171, 179, 208, 226, 228–9, 354, 392, 478, 504, 509 Seerveld, Calvin  245, 369 allusivity  492, 495 arts/aesthetics  492, 495 self-existent God  220 self-humiliation  98, 108 self-revelation  54, 55, 220, 283, 358 semen religionis  56 Semler, Christoph  297 semper reformanda  263, 432–3 shalom  83, 83 n.78, 465, 474, 493, 495 Shannon, Nathan  359

578

simulacra  455–7 sin  75, 79–82, 86–8, 94, 95, 99, 255, 340 conviction of  272 corruption of  1, 83, 83 n.77, 86, 340 cosmic effects of  83 neo-Calvinist understanding  83 reality of  305 Rome’s conception of  342 Sinai commandments  134 single-member-plurality (SMP)  424 Sizoo, G. J.  483 slavery  446 Smith, James K. A.  150, 371 SMP. See single-member-plurality (SMP) social depravity  401 social justice and love  505 social welfare  348 societal flourishing  398–9 societal pluriformity  419–21 Socinians  58 sola fide  118, 119 sola gratia  118, 119 sola scriptura  430, 431 solus Christus  119 soteriology/salvation  44, 67, 76, 77, 79–81, 83, 142, 158–9, 161, 181, 196–7, 217, 272, 282, 305, 385–7, 405, 499 benefits of  115–16 in Christ  86 of God  36, 42, 46, 76, 155, 305, 447 grace of Christ in  111 irrationalism  306 of Jesus Christ  29, 45 order of (see order of salvation) soul  308 sleep  159–60 South Africa, apartheid in  182, 185, 444–6 sovereignty of Church  40–1 of God  35–9, 37 nn.11, 12, 44–6, 88, 118–20, 143, 239–43, 254, 304–6, 377, 417 absolute  35–7, 37 n.11, 39, 45–6 Bavinck, Herman on  41–7 Kuyper, Abraham  36–41, 44–7 of Jesus Christ  37, 38, 40, 43 of state  40–1, 43 special grace  86–90, 93, 94, 152, 153, 340, 365, 449, 450. See also common grace sphere sovereignty, Kuyper, Abraham  2, 14, 27, 38–41, 39 n.18, 43, 46–7, 143,

INDEX

146, 173, 179, 182, 185–6, 240, 242, 259, 261, 301–2, 399, 419–21, 489 Spinoza, Baruch de  38, 42 Spirit-Christology  97, 99 Spykman, Gordon  30, 32–4, 78, 81, 147 state of humiliation  98–100, 102, 108–9 state/political theology  398, 416 constitutional government  421–2 federalism  422–3 in God’s world, places of  415–17 political reforms  423–5 public justice  421, 424 religion and  418 sovereignty of  40–1, 43 sphere sovereignty  419–21 Strange, Daniel  382, 383, 434, 509 theology of religions  435, 436 Strauss, David Friedrich  64 Studies in Dogmatics (Berkouwer)  276, 278, 281, 286 subjection units  240–1 subjectivism  10, 195, 454, 457, 509 subject-units  240–1 subsidiarity  419, 422–3 substantive principles  13–14 Summers, David  295 supernatural grace  340–3 revelation  192 theology  49 truth  341, 342 suppression  269 supralapsarian Christologies  98, 101 supra-theoretical  56 supreme authority  40, 44 “Surety” (Borg)  316 Sutanto, Nathaniel Gray  25, 75, 81, 160, 312, 361, 430, 431 Swain, Scott  9, 313 Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX)  337, 346, 346 n.84 symphonic theology  431 Synod of Dort  321 Synod of Kalamazoo  90, 91 Synod of Utrecht (1905)  417 Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (Bavinck)  315, 315 n.16 systematic philosophy  245, 247 systematic theology  3, 219 Telder, B.  159, 160 teleology  297

INDEX

temporal awareness, in public theology  401–2 Ten Commandments  125–7, 130–1, 135–8 The Ten Commandments (Douma)  131–3 Ten Hoor  95, 366, 373 Tennent, Timothy  432 Tertullian  364 theocracy  417 theological anthropology  107–8, 273 theological discernment  138 theological ethics  121 applications  138 Bavinck, Herman  122–4, 126, 128 Calvin, John  121, 124 law for  121, 124, 135 discernment  138 diversity  138 Douma, Jochem  131–3 first-generation  122 Geesink, Wilhelm  123–4, 126 Kuitert, Harry M.  129–31 Mouw, Richard  133–4 ongoing questions  135–7 theology  467–8 biblical (see biblical theology) covenant  213–14 defined  416 of history  230–1 of law  253 of liberation  436–7 nature of  217 Reformed  2, 12, 44–7, 147, 176, 305, 308, 312–14, 448–9 of religions  268, 434–6 Bavinck, J. H.  268–71, 273 on science  485 systematic  219 Trinitarian  14, 16, 18, 36, 120 theoretical (pre-theoretical)  56–7, 57 n.57, 59, 257, 258 theoretical reasoning  55–6 theory of evolution  479–85 “the third use of the law”  121, 124, 125, 305 Thomas  313, 347 Thomism/Thomist  252, 253, 263 n.67, 337, 346, 347, 350, 365, 465, 466 threefold office of Christ  116, 117, 119, 120, 227 Three Forms of Unity Belgic Confession  40, 226 Article 5  67 Article 19  105, 106 Article 27  140–1 Article 36  346, 417

 579

Canons of Dordt  92, 226, 279, 310 Heidelberg Catechism  36, 57, 87, 104 n.50, 120, 140, 141, 158, 227, 229, 305, 310, 321, 325, 479 Tillich, Paul  416 time-currents  246 To Be Near Unto God (Kuyper)  304, 307 Tocqueville, Alexis de  39 Tol, Anthony  235, 237, 240 Torrance, T. F.  359 total depravity  33 n.89, 86–7, 94, 239, 305, 306, 308–10, 463–4 totality  458–60 of human functions  242 of reality  260–1 trace concept  453 transcendental critique  56, 256–9, 257 n.42, 260 n.57, 368 transformationalism  373 tree of the knowledge  221 Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf  52, 361 triniform, creation as  16, 19 Trinitarian creation  21, 25, 51 God  22, 25 revelation  379 theology  14, 16, 18, 36, 120 Trinity  13–16, 18, 25, 51, 93, 454 tripartite anthropology  104 triplex usus legis  125, 132, 136 truth absoluteness of  430, 431 of God  447 “TULIP” doctrines  304 Turretin, Francis  317 typical structural principle  262 Unbelief and Revolution (Groen van Prinsterer)  166, 169–70 “under erasure”  453 The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Kuyper)  303 unity-in-diversity  16, 22, 25–7, 51, 52, 291, 299 organic  80, 82 universal adult franchise  423–4 universal revelation  55 van Baalen, Jan Karel  90–1 van Bottenburg, H. A.  68 van den Belt, Henk  315 van den Brink, Gijsbert  485 van den Honert, Tako Hajo  316 van den Hoorn, Simon Albertus  316

580

Van der Hoeven, J.  261 Van de Voleinding (Of the Consummation, Kuyper)  152, 158, 230, 234 VanDrunen, David  81 van Gelderen, Cornelis  68, 69, 69 n.38, 70 Van Gogh, Vincent  232, 233, 289 Van Keulen, Dirk  123 Van Leeuwen, Jacobus A. C.  68, 69 van Mastricht, Petrus  92, 316, 317 van Oosterzee, J. J.  62 Van Til, Cornelius  4, 55–6, 57 n.57, 90, 93, 94, 212, 214, 222, 308, 353, 354, 356, 369–70, 382, 431, 434, 451–5, 457, 460 common grace and Gospel  92 problem of predication  453–5, 457 subjectivism  454, 457 Van Til, Henry  82, 409 van Til, Salomon  61 van Woudenberg, René  252 n.18, 485 verification criterion of meaning  467, 468 Vial, Theodore  210 view of God (Gottanschauung)  191, 192, 194 visio Dei  160 Visser, Paul  265, 266, 406 visual arts  487–8 Vitringa, Campegius  322 vocation  114 Christian  5, 81–3, 114, 145, 152, 157, 158 divine  82 of humanity, in the world  81–3 Voetius, Gisbertus  267, 318–21, 324, 360 Vollenhoven, Dirk Henrik Theodoor  32, 34, 105, 106, 174, 235, 244 n.67, 250, 251, 335, 353, 354, 366, 368–9, 482 biblical philosophy  238 biography  236–7 Christian philosophy  236, 238 criticisms on  237 and Dooyeweerd  237, 246 history of philosophy  244–7 immanent critique  246 philosophy of law  240–3 post-fall  243–4 problem-historical method  244–6 reformational philosophy  238–9 covenant and humanity  242–3 sovereignty of God  239–42 systematic philosophy  245, 247 Vonk, C.  159, 160

INDEX

Vos, Geerhardus  70, 79, 211–12, 319, 366 biblical theology  212–14 apologetics  217 doctrine of God and divine action  220–2 epistemology  218–20 eschatology  217–18 covenant theology  213–14 higher critical studies  215 nature of theology  217 organism of revelation  218 philosophy of historical fact  215–16 pre-redemptive eschatology  217 supernatural history  215–16 Wackenroder, Wilhelm  473 Warfield, Benjamin  308–9, 366 Waterink, Jan  104–6 Wat is de hemel? (Schilder)  224, 230, 234 Watkin, Christopher  4 “Way of the Cross”  305 Weber, Max  146, 470, 472 Webster, John  74, 362 Weltanschauung. See worldview Western culture missiology  411–12 Westminster confession  44 Westminster Theological Seminary  369–70, 372, 405 wetenschap/science  52, 476 Bavinck, Herman  480–1 faith and  476–7, 480 Kuyper, Abraham  476–80 natural  297, 467–8, 470, 478–80 philosophy  482 and theology  485 and religion  477 science and worldview  485, 486 wetsidee philosophy  305–7, 311 White, Andrew D.  477 white supremacy  445, 449 whole of reality  404 wisdom  294–6 Witsius, Herman  316–317 Wolters, Albert  27, 30 n.68, 31–2, 244, 409, 410 Wolterstorff, Nicholas  4, 145, 147, 148, 154, 304, 310–11, 367, 437, 485, 493 n.28 arts/aesthetics  493–5 Wonderful Works of God (Bavinck)  51 Word-revelation  55, 238, 238 n.13, 245, 246

INDEX

The Work of Christ in the Studies in Dogmatics (Gerrit Berkouwer)  18 The Work of the Holy Spirit (Kuyper)  37, 120, 180 Works and Worlds of Art (Wolterstorff)  473 world-and-life-view  498, 500 World Christianity  4, 427–8, 438 issues of  433–4 neo-Calvinism and catholicity  429–30 semper reformanda  432–3 theology of liberation  436–7 theology of religions  434–6 at work in the world  433–4 safeguards and tools to protect the relativism  430–2 unity and diversity  427–9 world-order  307 world religions  411, 413 worldview  1, 2, 20, 23, 29, 65, 135, 149, 166, 187, 252, 254, 408–10, 412, 463, 471, 472, 477–80, 491, 495, 497–9, 502, 505 anti-revolutionary  364 Christian (see Christian worldview)

 581

defined  35 Islamic  383 Kant  193 liberal  328, 329 mechanical  481, 482 neo-Calvinist  250, 334, 336, 483 organic  26, 51, 52 Reformed  35 science and  485, 486 view of life and  335 worship and spirituality  402–3 Xu, Ximian  137, 355 Yoder, John Howard  134 Yonge, Charlotte  142, 176 Zachhuber, Johannes  9 Zerbolt, Gerard  124, 128 Zinn, Grover  293 Zuidervaart, Lambert artistic truth  495–6 arts/aesthetics  495–6 Zwingli, Ulrich  40, 45, 122, 135 Zylstra, Henry  368

582