I have said many times that the prefix “neo” is more important for understanding neo-Calvinism than the noun. But the more I read neo-Calvinists, I wonder if they actually read Calvin or simply make up what they contend to be the Reformed faith. Just this afternoon I was reading Henry Van Til’s A Calvinistic Concept of Culture and saw the classic Reformed triumphalism which turns Calvin into a reason for Reformed Protestants to take credit for all the blessings of modern Western society — his impact on economics, politics, and culture. Why I even read that Calvin was responsible for defending and maintaining civil liberty. That may be, but do neo-Calvinist cheerleaders ever consider the downsides of liberty and whether Calvinism deserves blame for libertinism and licentiousness? Most would respond, “of course, not, because Calvin properly grounded liberty in the Word of God.” But once people taste civil liberty is it so easy to avoid Rousseau or Voltaire (Calvin was a Frenchman, for those who may be ethnically challenged).
Meanwhile, the idea of redemption as the restoration of creation picks up more and more steam and neo-Calvinism puts more and more novelty into ideas Calvinistic. Here’s just a smidgeon of the contrast. Over at a website devoted to Kuyperianism, I ran across a whimsical essay by James K. A. Smith on the nature of redemption from a Reformed perspective. For Smith, salvation is not individual but cosmic:
The Word became flesh, not to save our souls from this fallen world, but in order to restore us as lovers of this world—to (re)enable us to carry out that creative commission. Indeed, God saves us so that—once again, in a kind of divine madness—we can save the world, can (re)make the world aright. And God’s redemptive love spills over in its cosmic effects, giving hope to this groaning creation.
Odd perhaps might be the idea that we can save the world. (Bad enough, as James Davison Hunter reminds us, is the idea that we can actually change the world.) Smith not only has us changing but also saving the world. Charles Finney and John Calvin have joined sides.
But even odder is the idea that the work of recreation is not reserved for the regenerate. It is also something in which unbelievers engage:
One of the New Testament words for “salvation” (soteria) carries the connotations of both deliverance and liberation as well as health and well-being. So salvation is both liberation from our disorder and the restoration for health and flourishing. I can think of no better picture of this than the sort of health-giving practices that Wendell Berry notices and celebrates in his recent collection, Bringing It To The Table: On Farming and Food. . . .
Thanks be to God, such redeeming, health-giving, cultural labour is not the special province of Christians. While the church is that people who have been regenerated and empowered by the Spirit to do the good work of culture-making, foretastes of the coming kingdom are not confined to the church. The Spirit is profligate in spreading seeds of hope. So we gobble up foretastes of the kingdom wherever we can find them. The creating, redeeming God of Scripture takes delight in Jewish literature that taps the deep recesses of language’s potential, in Muslim commerce that runs with the grain of the universe, and in the well-ordered marriages of agnostics and atheists. We, too, can follow God’s lead and celebrate the same.
But what does redemption look like? For the most part, you’ll know it when you see it, because it looks like flourishing. It looks like a life well lived. It looks like the way things are supposed to be. It looks like a well-cultivated orchard laden with fruit produced by ancient roots. It looks like labour that builds the soul and brings delight. It looks like an aged husband and wife laughing uproariously with their great-grandchildren. It looks like a dancer stretching her body to its limit, embodying a stunning beauty in muscles and sinews rippling with devotion. It looks like the graduate student hunched over a microscope, exploring nooks and crannies of God’s micro-creation, looking for ways to undo the curse. It looks like abundance for all.
Redemption sounds like the surprising cadences of a Bach concerto whose rhythm seems to expand the soul. It sounds like an office that hums with a sense of harmony in mission, punctuated by collaborative laughter. It sounds like the grunts and cries of a tennis player whose blistering serve and liquid forehand are enactments of things we couldn’t have dreamed possible. It sounds like the questions of a third grader whose teacher loves her enough to elicit and make room for a sanctified curiosity about God’s good world. It even sounds like the spirited argument of a young couple who are discerning just what it means for their marriage to be a friendship that pictures the community God desires (and is).
Redemption smells like the oaky tease of a Napa Chardonnay that births anticipation in our taste buds. It smells like soil under our nails after labouring over peonies and gerber daisies. It smells like the steamy winter kitchen of a family together preparing for supper. It smells like the ancient wisdom of a book inherited from a grandfather, or that “outside smell” of the family dog in November. It smells like riding your bike to work on a foggy spring morning. It even smells like the salty pungence of hard work and that singular bouquet of odors that bathes the birth of a child.
Golly gee.
Does redemption ever smell like the manure of agribusiness dairy farms in Southern California when the Santa Anna’s are pumping those odors into your car windows as you sit in a traffic jam on the 15, fearful that your car is going to overheat? Mind you, I like Wendell Berry too. But I don’t think I need to turn him into a re-creator or re-restorer in order to appreciate him.
The novel part of neo-Calvinism is particularly striking, maybe like that manure’s odor, when you compare it to Calvin. Here is what he writes about Christ’s office as king:
We must, therefore, know that the happiness which is promised to us in Christ does not consist in external advantages—such as leading a joyful and tranquil life, abounding in wealth, being secure against all injury, and having an affluence of delights, such as the flesh is wont to long for—but properly belongs to the heavenly life. As in the world the prosperous and desirable condition of a people consists partly in the abundance of temporal good and domestic peace, and partly in the strong protection which gives security against external violence; so Christ also enriches his people with all things necessary to the eternal salvation of their souls and fortifies them with courage to stand unassailable by all the attacks of spiritual foes. Whence we infer, that he reigns more for us than for himself, and that both within us and without us; that being replenished, in so far as God knows to be expedient, with the gifts of the Spirit, of which we are naturally destitute, we may feel from their first fruits, that we are truly united to God for perfect blessedness; and then trusting to the power of the same Spirit, may not doubt that we shall always be victorious against the devil, the world, and every thing that can do us harm. To this effect was our Saviour’s reply to the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God is within you.†“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation,†(Luke 17:21, 22). It is probable that on his declaring himself to be that King under whom the highest blessing of God was to be expected, they had in derision asked him to produce his insignia. But to prevent those who were already more than enough inclined to the earth from dwelling on its pomp, he bids them enter into their consciences, for “the kingdom of God†is “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,†(Rom. 14:17). These words briefly teach what the kingdom of Christ bestows upon us. Not being earthly or carnal, and so subject to corruption, but spiritual, it raises us even to eternal life, so that we can patiently live at present under toil, hunger, cold, contempt, disgrace, and other annoyances; contented with this, that our King will never abandon us, but will supply our necessities until our warfare is ended, and we are called to triumph: such being the nature of his kingdom, that he communicates to us whatever he received of his Father. Since then he arms and equips us by his power, adorns us with splendour and magnificence, enriches us with wealth, we here find most abundant cause of glorying, and also are inspired with boldness, so that we can contend intrepidly with the devil, sin, and death. In fine, clothed with his righteousness, we can bravely surmount all the insults of the world: and as he replenishes us liberally with his gifts, so we can in our turn bring forth fruit unto his glory. (Institutes, 2.15.4)
What is striking is the opposing themes of Smith and Calvin. For Smith, we are involved in doing the saving. For Calvin, it is all from Christ. And for Smith, redemption is part and parcel of this world. For Calvin, it is spiritual, eternal, heavenly — not to be realized in this world.
As I say, do neo-Calvinists ever read Calvin (on their way to the Bible)? Or does their philosophy give them liberty to make up whatever they want to believe?
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2 Peter could be a slam dunk, except for manuscript issues that make it difficult to know what word was used in the original (hence the ESV’s use of “exposed”) and the apocalyptic language of Peter that lead him to state the earth had already been “destroyed” or “abolished” in the flood.
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Fair enough on the half-hearted thanks; even half is being generous. So, I’ll get some books down from the shelf to give you some authoritative neocalvinist writings, so that you may rejoice and be glad.
“The whole New Testament, which was written from the viewpoint of the ‘church under the cross,’ speaks the same language. Believers, not many of whom are wise, powerful, or of noble birth, should not expect anything on earth other than suffering and oppression. They are sojourners and foreigners; their citizenship is in the heavens; they do not look at the things that can be seen, but mind the things that are above. There they have no lasting city but are looking for the city that is to come. They are saved in hope and know that if they suffer with Chrisit they will also be glorified with him. Therefore, along with the entire groaning creation, they wait with eager longing for the future of Christ and the revelation of the glory of the children of God, a glory which the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing. Nowhere in the New Testament is there a ray of hope that the church of Christ will again come to power and dominion on earth.”
I think even you’ll admit, there is some good neocalvinism. (Bavinck Reformed Dogmantics IV p. 674).
And another neocalvinist systematics text, on squaring Calvin and taking every thought captive (this is the final conclusion of the book):
“How shall we then live? The New Testament addresses this question with eschatological insistence. Time is short… The watchword is semper paratus, which does not mean being always out looking for Christ’s return. But it does imply a state of readiness for this future, undergirded by a clear recollection of the past. A sense of fulfillment and expectancy go hand in hand… Readiness calls for no new decision, however, beyond the standing call of obedient response to the Christ of the gospel. Biblical eschatology is therefore no excuse of an otherworldly retreat from our God-given callings. It does not have ‘negative, but a positive significance in our life in the present time.’ (Ridderbos) The expectation of the future reinforces our present mandate, for the norms of God’s Word do not change They are the same from creation to consumation. Between God’s past and his future, our present life has a provisional character. But it brings with it no ‘interim ethics’ which departs from the cultural mandate. We are indeed called to ‘set [our] minds on things that are above,” remembering, however, that this command is not structural in its thrust, telling us ‘where’ to live our lives, but directional, telling us ‘how/in whose Name’ to do so. The best way to seek the things above is to participate in God’s mission in his world… ‘Nothing in the gospel forbids [Christians] to be faithful to life, to the earth, to culture.’ Rather, the gospel urges us to ‘accept life for the time gives us to enjoy it’ (Ridderbos)–as active peacemakers, earthkeepers, advocates of justice, and agents of neighborly love.” (Spykman, Reformational Theology, 529-530)
Sure, Spykman specifically condemns otherworldliness, but of the ontologically dualistic sort, not the two-age sort, which, drawing from Ridderbos, he affirms. It’s the otherworldliness of physical separation from the world for the sake of false holiness or opposition of spirit to matter that neocalvinism rejects, not the expectant longing for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom, which our faithful cultural endeavors now only foreshadow dimly. I think that’s in line with the “otherworldliness” (if we must call it that) we find in Calvin, with the caveats that the two-age perspective is more clearly focused later in Vos and Ridderbos, and that occasionally Calvin does use platonic-sounding language such as the “prison house” of the body.
So now your joy may be full, Darryl, even unto overflowing.
Russ, thanks for a quote from Bavinck that I may use for otherworldly Thursday. How you fit Spykman and Bavinck in the same instruction to Christians is a puzzle. I guess you guys will figure it out at Providence.
But I think your own comments could use some further attention. It is a straw man to simply put Christian otherworldiness into the Platonic bin and let it rest there. And I am not sure what you mean about separating from the world for the sake of false holiness. Even Kuyper and the CRC in its Kuyperian moment rejected cards, theater, and dance as worldiness.
Meanwhile, the apostle Paul does see a real conflict between the spirit and the flesh, and also between believers and the world, the devil, and the flesh.
The point then is that the language of taking captive or establishing dominion over every square inch could actually start in the neo- and paleo-Cal’s heart and that would be enough for a lifetime.
But Spykman’s view of the cultural mandate going from creation to consummation is seriously contested. And you won’t find support for that construction in Calvin or Moses.
Since Bavinck would have held to the same view of the cultural mandate as Spykman, I don’t think Bavinck would have been puzzled (nor am I). But a discussion on the cultural mandate would be a good one to have at some point in the future.
Again, I’m not condemning what you call “Christian otherworldliness” in its entirety; I’m distinguishing that which is in line with the two-age structure of redemptive history and that which tends toward ontological dualism. The second is what I meant by false holiness – the kind of pietism, fundamentalism, and holiness movements that locate worldliness as “out there” somewhere, that avoiding certain places, people, professions, or activities, they can avoid all sin, not realizing the problem of sin in their own hearts. I think the language of structure and direction immensely helpful in making these biblical distinctions.
“Prison-house” is, if I remember correctly, a distinctively platonic term, drawn from the Allegory of the Cave, so it’s hardly a straw man to think that Calvin was at least drawing on some platonic strain of humanism.
Russ, but how do neo-Cal’s get around dualism of their own. If they take antithesis seriously, then they have a Christian world and a secular or anti-Christian world, hence the need for Christian schools where Shakespeare is taught from a Christian world and life view. Now some neo-Cals may acknowledge the insights of non-believers in teaching Shakespeare, but why then send your kids to Christian schools if the pagans are as smart about the three R’s as non-Christians.
So it seems to me, neo-Cals simply move the goal posts of dualism in ways that resemble fundamentalism remarkably.
The other alternative is to emphasize common grace and get the GC video on the churches and the arts. You may not like that stuff, but I’m not sure you can escape the charge that neo-Cals are in some way response for this “robust” view of culture to former fundies. What used to be worldly is now one big quiet-time.
I don’t know why we can’t let the church be the church and let Christians engage their vocations as we all await Christ’s return.
The neocalvinist critique of dualism isn’t an opposition to anything that could be divided into two categories. The critique of dualism rejects dividing creation into two realms, whether that would mean: 1) making some callings higher than others (being a missionary as more “spiritual” than the mere businessman); 2) declaring some aspect of culture as utterly evil (Christians should avoid all forms of dance, or film, non-Christian literature, etc.); or 3) more extreme views identifying what Paul called “the flesh” or John called “the world” as physical creation, and the “spiritual” as some kind of non-physical, non-bodily existence. This is why I think Wolters’s categories of structure and direction are helpful. Dividing the structures of creation (including life spheres) into good/evil, sacred/worldly, is what neocalvinists mean by “dualism.” All of creation was created good; all of creation is fallen. The imago dei persists in all humanity, though obscured by the fall. The antithesis is not about structure, but about direction, whether the individual (and the social spheres that individual participates in – whether family, business, church, state) is directed toward God and his glory, or toward sin and idolatry. Only the church has the ministry of redemption, but the redeemed seek to glorify God in all aspects of life.
Non-christians, as created beings in the image of God, have valid and truthful insights into creation and culture. As Calvin says, it would be ingratitude to the Spirit not to recognize the truth that comes from non-Christian sources. But it would be foolish not to test those sources against the standard of Christ and the Scriptures. Christian children need both the insights that come through common grace and general revelation as well as the truth and discernment that comes through special revelation. To emphasize either the antithesis or common grace to the exclusion of the other would likely push either toward fundamentalism or liberalism, and there are plenty of examples of neocalvinism imbalanced to the left or to the right.
I’m all for letting the church be the church, and letting Christians engage in their vocations. I just don’t understand why it’s so objectionable that (for example) Christian artists might think about their vocation in conversation with other Christian artists about how they can be faithful to Christ in their art (even if they never produce art with biblical or evangelistic themes).
Russ,
It may be that where neocals talk of dualism 2kers talk of triadalism. Horton is good for it in “God of Promise.” After briefly sketching out the narrative of Cain in his “stay of execution that allows Cain to build a city,†Horton explains that:
…we begin the story with one creation, one covenant, one people, one mandate, one city. Then after the fall, there is a covenant of creation (with its cultural mandate still in effect for all people, with the law of that covenant universally inscribed on the conscience) and a covenant of grace (with its gospel publicly announced to transgressors), a City of Man (secular but even in its rejection of God, upheld by God’s gracious hand for the time being) and a City of God (holy but even in its acceptance by God, sharing in the common curse of a fallen world). Just as the failure to distinguish law covenant from promise covenant leads to manifold confusions in our understanding of salvation, tremendous problems arise when we fail to distinguish adequately between God’s general care for the secular order and his special concern for the redemption of his people.
Religious fundamentalism tends to see the world simply divided up into believers and unbelievers. The former are blessed, loved by God, holy, and doers of the right, while the latter are cursed, hated by God, unholy, and doers of evil. Sometimes this is taken to quite an extreme: believers are good people, and their moral, political, and doctrinal causes are always right, always justified, and can never be questioned. Unless the culture is controlled by their agenda, it is simply godless and unworthy of the believers’ support. This perspective ignores the fact that according to Scripture, all of us—believers and unbelievers alike—are simultaneously under a common curse and common grace.
Religious liberalism tends to see the world simply as one blessed community. Ignoring biblical distinctions between those inside and those outside of the covenant community, this approach cannot take the common curse seriously because it cannot take sin seriously…everything is holy.
…[But] the human race is not divided at the present time between those who are blessed and those who are cursed. That time is coming, of course, but in this present age, believers and unbelievers alike share in the pains of childbirth, the burdens of labor, the temporal effects of their own sins, and the eventual surrender of their decaying bodies to death…there is in this present age a category for that which is neither holy nor unholy but simply common.
So, what I don’t understand is what’s so hard to understand about the value of artists who are Christian meeting with other artists who aren’t (or are) in that common sphere in order to pursue art. If Christians of whatever worldly vocation want to meet with other Christians over how to be faithful to Christ that seems to be something best done every Lord’s Day.
I find Horton’s book to be helpful – we assign it in our Reformed Doctrine class at Providence Christian College (required by all students).
I didn’t intend to exclude Christian artists working and exploring their vocation with non-Christian artists; I take that as a given, as is meeting for congregational worship with other Christians. But the vocation of a politician is not identical to the life of a farmer or an artist or an elementary school teacher. These many be “common” vocations, but to say something is “common” does not invalidate attempts to think about the subject as a Christian, to understand what the creator’s intent was in making this vocation possible, what specific effects of the fall may be most problematic for those pursuing that vocation, and how Christ, the second Adam, in and through whom all things were made, renews our thought about our vocations.
Russ, here is where I demur. There are holy callings and there are common ones, and I’ve long thought that the CRC devalued church offices by elevating every legitimate activity to a religious calling. Pastors are set apart; plumbers aren’t.
Also, I don’t know how you test baseball or knitting against the standard of Scriptures. On some matters the Bible is silent.
So neo-Cals are no help against every member ministry (read: kingdom work) or against biblicism.
Sorry for the snark, but the resemblances to fundamentalism are tallying up.
Russ, I understand that certain vocations are not identical to others. But what I don’t understand is the idea of contemplating the Creator’s intent in making whatever vocation possible. That seems highly speculative, as Dt. 29:29. But instead of cracking divine codes, isn’t it better to contemplate what is revealed, which is to say how to do the task well? Maybe that’s not attractive enough, or maybe it runs the risk of saying that unbelievers know just as much about that question if not more, which for whatever reasons turn believers off and reaching for Dooyeweerd. But that’s just reality. Sorry, but the language of “how Christ, the second Adam, in and through whom all things were made, renews our thought about our vocations” not only sounds like cleaned up fundie but just plain like religious fantasizing.
No surprise that you disagree here. I should note that I feel no obligation to defend every aspect of neocalvinist theory or practice. At a former institution, we used a book for first-year students that suggested the church should ordain everyone – teachers, plumbers, and pastors. The only thing more ridiculous than this was that most on the faculty didn’t get how ridiculous it was. I’m fine with the division of holy and common callings, so long as “common” doesn’t mean “neutral” (which 2k folk tell me they don’t mean). “Common” does not negate the possibility of distinctive Christian (and a variety of non-Christian) perspectives. I know Baus has made the case again and again that Christian perspective is more apparent at the theoretical level and less apparent at the practical level, so I won’t delve into that much. There’s no biblical guide for using a microscope, but it does make a difference in understanding human behavior and ethics whether we are created and fallen beings (abnormalists, in Kuyper’s terminology) or if we have evolved to our current “normal” state (as in the famous example of whether rape is merely an evolutionary adaptation).
I’m not sure how you are able to be so precise in your diagnosis of the CRC that neocalvinism is the cause of devaluing church offices rather than the CRC’s eager embrace of evangelicalism. Well, I guess if there’s no such thing as evangelicalism, neocalvinism is left holding the bag. But I strongly suspect C. Peter Wagner and Bill Hybels have had far more influence in the CRC in the past few decades than Kuyper.
Zrim: Sounds to me more like using special revelation to rightly understand general revelation, which is perfectly appropriate unless you’ve dug a ditch between special and general revelation so deep that your spiritual life on Sunday has no bearing on your life Monday through Saturday.
Are you really sure you want to assert that Christ has no effect on how we pursue our vocations? In speaking to the Roman context, was Paul engaged in “just plain like religious fantasizing” in Ephesians 6?
And if you think a distinctive characteristic of fundamentalism was seeking out distinctively Christian perspectives on secular vocations, I’m not sure what to say, except perhaps to make some bibliographic suggestions on the history and theology of fundamentalism.
Russ, you have once again distinguished yourself as a historian (read: reasonable). Glad to hear you’re opposed to every member ministry. But I don’t quite understand the hyperventilation over “neutral.” It’s almost code for communist. I am not defending neutral. But if all things are lawful, according to scripture, why can’t neutral be lawful, especially parts of the creation that do not have souls — like math, plumbing, and language?
I don’t disagree on evangelicalism’s effects on the CRC. But don’t you think it ironic that neo-Calvinism was no immunity against it, but in fact provided a high-flown theory for Hybels and Wagner?
Russ, let me help Zrim out (not that he needs it), but fundamentalism did have a distinctly Christian perspective on all secular vocations — that perspective was “worldly.” Now along come neo-Cals who tell us that fundies were wrong, but there is a Christian perspective on those vocations — “redeemed.” Neo-Cal’s have moved the line between black and white, but neither neo-Cals nor fundies have any room for gray (read: common, good, proximate).
Russ, having emerged out of funda-evangelicalism and into neo-Cal environs, whatever other differences there are what I find to be the common denominating principle is that faith has a direct and obvious bearing on creational tasks and worldly cares. I hear neo-Kuyperians preach in evening services how the church missed the boat by not creating a Christian Hollywood, something I heard all the time in my mega churches. If that’s not enough, consider education: you both have your own schools because of the aforementioned principle. The ironic upshot for me has always been that the application of this principle actually creates the redemptive bubble the neo’s disdain amongst the fundies. Sure, the fundies have a lot of world-flight Gnosticism in the mix, but it seems to me that the principle is the lynchpin for making ghetto.
So, yes, Christ does have effect on how we pursue our vocations, just not the one either fundamentalism or neo-Calvinism seem to think: creation is very good as-is and needs no redemptive contemplation, full stop.
I wasn’t aware I was hyperventilating, but the concern about “neutral” is that it would seem to fit into a larger theological context in which creation and culture are untouched by the effects of fall. Even those parts of creation that do not have souls have been subjected to futility by those who do.
In my own experience amongst the fundamentalists (of a sort, though I had plenty of friends in all the varieties southern California has to offer), common professions weren’t seen as “worldly” in the sense of being sinful. No one looked down on the used car salesman or realtor. Some professions were of course utterly evil – prostitute, liquor store owner, casino dealer. But honest professions, while inferior to the holy professions of full-time Christian service, were necessary, since someone had to support the missionaries. But regular jobs were of no ultimate value, since all things earthly and cultural were going to be burned to a crisp. Going to college was ok, but only those seeking training to be a minister or a minister’s wife went to Bible colleges. Everyone else went to the state university, since it was best to get job training (i.e. a Bachelor of Arts degree) at the cheapest place possible, and outside of Bible classes, education was pretty much neutral. K-12 Christian schools were important, of course, but for moral protection and evangelism. That doesn’t sound much like neocalvinism to me.
Russ, that all sounds more or less like my fundamentalists as well (I reluctantly converted but happily married into mine). You’re quite right that Cornerstone University is different from Calvin College in certain ways: the former deems the latter “dark” because it doesn’t have the same institutional legalisms over substance use and worldly amusement. That, plus frontier fundamentalism simply thinks that world-class education must mean some sort of worldly (as in sinful) compromise.
But what they share is the principle of gospel relevance to worldly care, even if the applications differ. From my experience, the neocals talk about education the way the fundamentalists talk about substance use and worldly amusement. It’s quite uncanny, really. Not having come from either by my own upbringing, I do muse in how the Reformed by-and-large think they circumvent legalism by making it only and ever something about booze, tobacco and film, all the while missing they make up for it in spades with education. Maybe you’re familiar with the PRC finally formalizing educational legalism?
But the advantage of the older 2k outlook is that we can send our kids anywhere: Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, secular, neocal, etc. And that’s because the dirty little secret about education (like law, medicine and art) is that it has nothing to do with religion. That doesn’t mean neutral, it just means that everybody has equal access to doing creation, even if some totally fumble redemption.
More support for discontinuity:
1. our righteousness is as filthy rags.
2. the first shall be last
Russ, all neo-Cals sound the same to me, hence the remark about heavy breathing.
To add to Zrim’s point, the fundamentalist view of worldly vocations is not the same, and that’s why I say neo-Cal’s move the bar. But in order to make worldly vocations valuable, neo-Cals have to appeal to redemption rather than creation. And as your own remark suggests, an activity only has value if it contributes to the ultimate goal of salvation, hence your use of the phrase “ultimate value.” 2kers want to say that worldly vocations are good, not best, that the created order is proximate, not ultimate, that our redeemed state here is saved, not blessed. What I hear in your responses, especially regarding eschatology, is more already than not yet.
And I don’t think you need to say that everything here will be burned to a crisp — what happens to everything here is a mystery — to think that discontinuity is more realistic than continuity. Again, just look at marriage.
Too late to jump in here, but I want to say a word in defense of Plato (coming from the heart of neo-Calvinism, no less, Calvin College, where my office is yards from Jamie’s!)
Russ, perhaps the straw-man to which Darryl alludes is to argue along these lines (which one hears more often from fundamentalists than from frisky, bucking Neo-Calves):
1. a given other-worldly proposition regarding body-soul/this life and the next resembles some aspect of Plato’s thought, like the cave allegory you mention
2. we all know that true biblical teaching on body-soul/this life and the next has nothing in common with anything in Plato; indeed, there is a restraining order somewhere in “Hebrew thought” and nepheshism that forbids Plato from coming within 500 yards of the Bible
3. therefore, the other-worldy proposition under consideration cannot be biblical in any true sense and thus not acceptable to Christians
This is the straw-man as I know him. How I could wish that more Neo-Calves read Plato well, like Calvin himself did, before reading Calvin.
And Merry Hodgemas, Russ, to you and Erin and the children.