Neo-Calvinism

[Howard the Reformer]

Has anyone read this and have any response?

Neo-Calvinism and American Decline | Jackson Waters

Evangelicals Finally Waking Up Should Beware

americanreformer.org

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Evaluation: The author's stance is Politics and culture uber alles; neo-Calvinism is NOT the horse to ride to that victory; instead, what's needed is a revived, explicitly-Reformed Protestant national religion capable of militantly suppressing (with varying degrees of disapproval) all potential rivals; thereby clearing the way to the elimination of women's suffrage, among liberalism's other evils.

 

[michaelrjones]

I read it earlier today. He is spot-on. I have no substantive disagreements. I've had concerns about Kuyperianism for years now and it's nice to see someone else (someone with a platform) bringing those concerns to light.

 

[RamistThomist]

I have huge problems with neo-calvinism, and many leading neo-calvinist institutions are going full-speed towards apostasy. Making everything "worldview" has been a disaster. I balk at some of the author's larger conclusions, though.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

He tends to lump the entire decline of American Evangelicalism with neo-Calvinism. It gives far too much credit and influence to Reformed ideas and thinkers.

He also lumps together Kline's influence on Reformed theology and treats it as another form of neo-Calvinism.

I think his article would be much sharper if he focused on the limits of certain theological approaches or emphases.

Fro instance, in one of his comments he notes:

One of my concerns is the need of contemporary Neo-Calvinists to tie political platforms to specific Bible verses, and then act like they’ve solved the political crisis “biblically”. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Bavinck or Kuyper themselves, but many of their disciples seem all too willing to do this, as can be seen throughout Christopher Watkin’s “Biblical Critical Theory” or “Thinking Through Creation: Genesis 1-2” or much of the simplistic pietism coming out of the Gospel Coalition pretending to be cultural analysis.

I share this concern that the City Church culturalists are not saying anything to the culture, but I think this owes more to their Missional Theological commitments than it does to neo-Calvinism. Neo-Calvinism provides a toolbox from a Reformed perspective to do this, but I think people like Harvey Conn and Leslie Nebigin are far more influential in what drives an "everything is contextual" approach to things.

I think the article would have been better if he had honed in on particular lazy abuses of certain ideas that Kueper and Bavinck introduced rather than lay the decline of American Evangelicalism on a single linchpin.

 

[Claes Jacob Heijndericksz]

Neo-Calvinism justifies your non-threatening presence in the city, academy, denomination, or National Institute of Health by leaving the currently objectionable parts of your theology in the past (a century ago in the U.S. the historicity of the Bible, today the presence of natural law and politically binding claims on the magistrate) by making them matters of individual faith and personal expression instead of normative claims for all nations, places, and cultures.

If this is neo-calvinism, then Kuyper isn’t a neo-calvinist. He would (because he didn’t believe the reformed faith to be a matter of only personal opinion) found his own academy (Vrije Universiteit) and denomination (Nederduitsch Gereformeerde Kerken). And well I assume he would also have founded his own national health institute if possible.

In hindsight, it seems hard to avoid the neo-Calvinists’ baptized “free state” as a sort of Divine Command to not dominate the public square’s multiculturalism. The neo-Calvinist doctrine evolved into political antinomianism. And like any sort of antinomianism, it claims to deal with “real life,” and then suffocates spiritual life. Look at the statistics: from 1840 until 1900 adherence to a Protestant church did not move so much as 2 percentage points (and when it did, it went up). Kuyper’s party came to power with over 60% of the Netherlands worshipping in Protestant Churches. Yet after the decade of Kuyper’s greatest influence, religious participation had declined to a record low 57% Protestant. By the end of his life, it was under 54%, and by 1930 all the Protestant Churches combined to be 46.3% of the nation, the first time since the Reformation Holland was not majority Protestant.

In 1840 We had a population of 2.860.450 people of which were 1.704.275 were protestant. Those people would be mostly members of a denomination in which the Reformed faith was not dominant and which leading authorities scoffed at the 5 points of calvinism: the Nederlands Hervormde Kerk. Only a small minority went with the Secession of 1834 and they were heavily discriminated at this time in history. So it is very difficult to tell how many were really reformed. Thus protestants were at that time 59,58% of our population. http://www.volkstellingen.nl/nl/volkstelling/jaartellingdeelview/VT184000/index.html

In 1889, three years after the doleantie, we had a population of 4.511.415 people. The total protestant population was 2.725.856 people of which the Christelijke Gereformeerde kerken had 189.251 members and the Nederduitsch Gereformeerden 181.017. So the population was 60,4% protestant. But only 8,2% did actually belong to a reformed denomination. http://www.volkstellingen.nl/nl/volkstelling/jaartellingdeelview/VT188902/index.html

In 1930 we had a population of 7.935.565 people. The total amount of protestants were 3.609.291 people or 45,48%. However the total amount of the Christelijk Gereformeerden and Gereformeerden was 688.602 people or 8,68% of the population. http://www.volkstellingen.nl/nl/volkstelling/jaartellingdeelview/VT193003/index.html

These figures would not account for Baptists and some minor experiental reformed churches. At max. these would only count for 2% of the population in 1930.

Can you really blame neocalvinism for the protestant decline of the Netherlands based on these statistics? I would rather blame the modernism within the Hervormde Kerk. They dominated Dutch Protestantism both in 1840 and 1930.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

If this is neo-calvinism, then Kuyper isn’t a neo-calvinist. He would (because he didn’t believe the reformed faith to be a matter of only personal opinion) found his own academy (Vrije Universiteit) and denomination (Nederduitsch Gereformeerde Kerken). And well I assume he would also have founded his own national health institute if possible.

This is the problem with sweeping generalizations because he would have been better critiquing a distortion of a principle or making a certain principle central in all political or ethical discourse.

He's taking aim at the "subversive fulfillment" motif of the Missional Neo-Calvinists. Their new textbook will be Biblical Critical Theory.

The idea is that you can look at some cultural idea, examine it as a negation of the good, and look for the way in which Christianity is a subversive fulfillment of something "good" that the culture is looking for.

As an example, it's popular to look at homosexuality as a distortion of a "genius for friendship". Sure, it's bad, but deep down, what is desired is friendship, and Christianity subversively fulfills that longing better than the culture's answer to homosexuality.

Essentially, every cultural evil is treated in this fashion. Woke theories, homosexuality, abortion, etc, are not confronted as much as synthesized to essentially praise the good that is in them, note that "brokenness" has distorted them, and then say: "Christianity has a better version of this."

This is why it's sort of impossible to form any sense of how one ought to think about a particular social evil. The Redeemer model was to just do the "Yoda thing" and tell us that Democrats care about public health, Republicans care about babies, but Jesus cares about both. People politely gave the golf clap because now nobody was really offended by killing the unborn, and people could still have cultural influence.

As I noted, this is a distortion of Kuyper and Bavinck and the problem with the article is laying the dumb ways that the modern Missional Theologian avoids any confrontation by seeing all theology or public engagement as contextual.

 

[Phil D.]

The Redeemer model was to just do the "Yoda thing" and tell us that Democrats care about public health, Republicans care about babies,

In which case it would go, "care about public health, Democrats do" and "care about babies, Republicans do"...

 

[Gforce9]

In which case it would go, "care about public health, Democrats do" and "care about babies, Republicans do"...

At least Yoda believed in the supernatural...............

 

[therussellhome]

This is the problem with sweeping generalizations because he would have been better critiquing a distortion of a principle or making a certain principle central in all political or ethical discourse.

He's taking aim at the "subversive fulfillment" motif of the Missional Neo-Calvinists. Their new textbook will be Biblical Critical Theory.

...

As I noted, this is a distortion of Kuyper and Bavinck and the problem with the article is laying the dumb ways that the modern Missional Theologian avoids any confrontation by seeing all theology or public engagement as contextual.

Thank you for providing specific criticisms to the article's generalizations. My initial reading left me with the impression he was blaming neo-Calvinism for weakening the "evangelical will" in bringing about the postmillennial age.