Koyzis is not moved by arguments about what the Bible does and does not reveal, or by what properly belongs or does not belong to the church’s authority. He concedes that the Bible does not speak to a host of matters, and that the church as institution should not regulate a wide swath of human endeavor. But because the Bible teaches that everything we do should be done to the glory of God, and because Scripture also prohibits idolatry, something that clings to everything human beings touch, the neo-Calvinist project is still in order. We still need, Koyzis argues, to find a Christian outlook on politics, the arts, economics, and the rest of subjects taught and studied in modern learning. He writes, “Disparage as he might the supposed pandemic of world-and-life-viewitis amongst evangelical Christians, Hart’s approach does not represent a workable alternative.” If we want discernment “with respect to the idolatries afoot in ‘secular’ areas of life,” Koyzis recommends turning away from two-kingdom thought to neo-Calvinism.

Part of the basis for this critique is the drift of secular culture, its influence upon universities, and neo-Calvinism’s apparent capacity to remedy the situation. (One point that neo-Calvinists don’t seem to understand about two-kingdom thought is that the two-kingdom view is not a solution to this world’s problems; two-kingdom folk actually don’t believe solutions will come in this fallen world until the consummation.) So Koyzis complains about the toxic mix of secularism, idolatry, and Christians who simply stand back and watch the accident happen.

Many two-kingdom advocates are not pleased with the way the West is going, or the state of higher learning in North America. But we are befuddled that folks like Koyzis do not seem to notice that most of the places where neo-Calvinism has tried to remedy secularism have also brought liberal Protestantism (or at least a movement away from Reformed Christianity) with it. Frankly, I like the Dutch, maybe even more than hard-core Vossians and Van Tillians. I spent four great years in the Christian Reformed Church. They even ordained me as an elder. And for that reason I do not write with glee about the effects of world-view thinking on communions like the CRC, where in seeking to establish the Lordship of Christ over all spheres of life, his Lordship over the keys of the kingdom seems a lot less firm. And what has happened in the CRC only seems to follow what happened in the Netherlands to many of the institutions that Abraham Kuyper, the granddaddy of neo-Calvinists, founded.

If the record of neo-Calvinism was strong in preserving both the Canons of Dort and a Christian view of medicine, then I would be much less inclined to be critical of the Kuyperians. But precisely because Koyzis does not seem to notice the problems for churches that embrace neo-Calvinism, I will continue to have my reservations. In fact, I often wonder if neo-Calvinist views of the keys of the kingdom are so inconsequential that they start the search for signs of Christ’s Lordship almost anywhere but the church.