Posts Tagged ‘neo-Calvinism’

After a visit to my father at his local hospital, I had a worldview moment. What should have alerted me from the outset was the name of the place – St. Mary’s. But then I noticed that the spiritual services wing of the hospital had dropped off for him a brochure about their activities which was included with information about television channels and daily menus – talk about trivializing the eschaton. But the kicker was the crucifix in my dad’s ICU room. Shazzam!!! That’s a whole lot of idolatry for a man who is on a heart monitor.

But is Roman Catholic medicine really any different from Reformed medicine or even – dare I say – secular medicine. If worldviews go all the way down to the very tips of our toes, and if we can’t escape the claims of Christ in any parts of our lives, can I really look the other way in good conscience when entering a hospital room that displays an image of Christ on a cross?

And then there is the concern for quality of health care. If Abraham Kuyper was right that Roman Catholicism “represents and older and lower stage of development in the history of mankind” and if Protestantism occupies a “higher standpoint,” shouldn’t my dad try to find treatment at a Protestant hospital? Kuyper, by the way, wasn’t real complimentary of Roman Catholicism on science either.

It could be that I have once again misunderstood the claims of neo-Calvinism and that some algorithm exists for taking the gold of scientific advances from the dross of defective worldviews. But it could also be that the language of worldviews and the difference they make for every aspect of human existence is overdone, simply a rallying cry for inspiring the faithful, but not anything that would prevent my father from receiving treatment from unbelieving nurses employed by Roman Catholic administrators. Then again, the power of modernity is stunning, making all of those religious claims about connections between spiritual and physical reality look fairly foolish – as if a creed actually produces better medicine.

I mean no disrespect to the neo-Calvinists and their epistemological purity. But if they could help me out on this one, I’d be grateful. Does a Reformed worldview really make a difference for modern medicine and the ordinary decisions a sick believer must make in seeking a physician or hospital – under the oversight, of course, not of the elders but the insurance company.

Postscript: yes, I am preoccupied with neo-Calvinism. Shouldn’t Keller’s fans be happy? Oh, wait a minute.

Imagine the hurdles that Kuyperians in Indiana who practice law are facing. In fact, look at the vow this allegedly wholesome mid-western state, known for Booth Tarkington and high school basketball – if only they’d invented hot dogs and motherhood – requires of attorneys.

Rule 22. Oath of Attorneys
Upon being admitted to practice law in the state of Indiana, each applicant shall take and subscribe to the following oath or affirmation:

“I do solemnly swear or affirm that: I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Indiana; I will maintain the respect due to courts of justice and judicial officers; I will not counsel or maintain any action, proceeding, or defense which shall appear to me to be unjust, but this obligation shall not prevent me from defending a person charged with crime in any case; I will employ for the purpose of maintaining the causes confided to me, such means only as are consistent with truth, and never seek to mislead the court or jury by any artifice or false statement of fact or law; I will maintain the confidence and preserve inviolate the secrets of my client at every peril to myself; I will abstain from offensive personality and advance no fact prejudicial to the honor or reputation of a party or witness, unless required by the justice of the cause with which I am charged; I will not encourage either the commencement or the continuance of any action or proceeding from any motive of passion or interest; I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless, the oppressed or those who cannot afford adequate legal assistance; so help me God.” (From Indiana Rules for Admission to the Bar and the Discipline of Attorneys)

The nerve of the Hoosiers. No acknowledgment of God as the creator and sustainer of all things, of Christ as redeemer of his church, no sense that notions of truth and falsehood, justice or crime come from the holy standard of God’s revealed will. Even worse, no mention of a Reformed world and life view, though I suppose the mention of God helps this go down better and lifts Indiana out of the vicious depths of Gotham.

But you do have to wonder how someone committed to the Lordship of Christ in every square inch could take such a vow. Isn’t Indiana guilty of proposing a common realm in which Christian and non-Christian lawyers must serve? And wouldn’t a Christian lawyer who took such a vow be acknowledging the existence of such a common realm. (Of course, it’s not neutral either; Indiana attorneys must always root for IU to beat Michigan.)

The answer could be the difference between theory and practice. Ideally, every square inch should be ruled by Christ, but of course it doesn’t work out in practice. If this were the explanation, then why mock those who try to find a theological rationale for such a common realm (which is what two-kingdom theology attempts)? After all, a two-kingdom attorney would have no problem taking such a vow. His conscience is clear because he knows the older Protestant teaching on the civil magistrate was afflicted with Constantinianism and that expectations for a Christian state died with the passing of Israel.

But the attorney who regularly chastises two-kingdom proponents for selling out the Reformed faith and then turns around and lives with rules of Indiana’s common realm of rules for attorneys, well, that seems remarkably inconsistent if not a tad perverse. It’s as if he’s a Kuyperian in only parts of his life, like the holy times when dropping the kids off at the Christian day school and attending the school board meeting, and then in the common realm living the rest of his day under the rule of Indiana’s legal institutions. How dualistic!

Our friend and constant critic, Baus, likes to point out the incomplete reading of paleo-Calvinists in the wonders of neo-Calvinist wisdom. He also regularly recommends the work of Roy Clouser as providing a significant criticism of secular thought and the incompleteness of any thought or system that leaves out religion. Neutrality is not only a myth but a no-no.

So I was surprised to find a piece by Clouser in which he argues that faith is the most basic part of human identity, but will actually yield a Rodney King-like world in which people of different faiths will hold hands and sing “We Are the World.” This is antithesis with a heavy dose of synthesis.

On the one hand, Clouser insists that beliefs control all forms of human thinking so that faith affects all theories about the world and the way we live in it. He writes:

If theories differ according to the religious beliefs controlling them, then those of us who believe in God should have distinctive theories from those who do not share our biblical Faith. It is for this reason [my] book concludes with blueprints for constructing or reinterpreting theories so as to bring them under the control of belief in God. These include guidelines for a theory of reality, a theory of society, and a political theory, all of which consciously attempt to make the Judeo-Christian idea of God their controlling presupposition.

On the other hand, Clouser believes that such theoretical and religious differences will not result in antagonism. Instead, these differing blueprints of the world and ourselves will result in relations very much like those in a liberal, democratic social order. He responds to the question of whether such deep and profound differences will divide people and set them at odds:

For it means that theories are the products of spiritual faith communities working out explanations which differ relative to their religious beliefs. Moreover, the position goes beyond simply uncovering that religious control has in fact occurred. It argues that such control is unavoidable because the role of religious belief is embedded in the very nature of theoretical reasoning. In addition, it acknowledges that because theoretical reasoning is always faith-directed there can be no religiously neutral faculty or procedure by which religious beliefs themselves can be adjudicated. So won’t this position result in isolating the “isms” of philosophy and science and encouraging intolerance among them? . . .

The answer to such questions is that nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, pointing out the root causes of theory differences does not itself produce intolerance or lack of communication on the part of those who differ, any more than it produces the differences themselves. Intolerance and unwillingness to communicate with those who disagree are the fruits of the sin that infects human nature, not of uncovering the ultimate cause of disagreements. . .

The second part of our reply is even more important. It is that uncovering the religious roots of theoretical perspectives actually opens the way to more fruitful communication than is otherwise possible. . . . recognizing that all people have religious beliefs which regulate their theorizing can allow thinkers a mutual respect of one another’s large-scale theory differences as expressions of their alternative faiths. They may then be able to appreciate why others, starting from their contrary religious beliefs, developed their opposing theories in just the way they did. On this basis they can then explore any points of contact and agreement they may have, as well as gain greater insight into the nature of their genuinely irreconcilable differences. And this may all be done without the temptation of either side to view the other as sub-rational.

Wow! Who knew that religion was such a source of friendship and mutual good will? Sure, creeds were divisive and resulted in military conflict before the Enlightenment, and sure, the Irish are still conflicted over religion not to mention those delicate matters of Middle Eastern politcs. But apparently worldviews are swell and will give us what creeds couldn’t – a utopian world of peace and harmony.

Clouser leaves me wondering how seriously he takes faith. If it goes all the way down in one’s worldview and yet is not bothered by the false god or idol motivating my fellow interlocutor, citizen, or neighbor, how much does that faith take seriously the first of the Ten Commandments? Could it be the Clouser, like many neo-Calvinists, talks a better game of antithesis than liberal, democratic secular society allows him to practice?

On balance, Reformed Protestants were no more responsible for the glories of the modern world (e.g., science, capitalism, education, liberal democracy) than were other western Christians. That is at least the conclusion of Phillip Benedict in his remarkable social history of Calvinism, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed. But Benedict does detect a level of activism among the Reformed that differentiated it from Lutherans. And the difference has a lot to do with the Reformed’s zeal for church polity and liturgical reform. Benedict writes:

It remains the case that at certain critical moments Lutheran church leaders held back from establishing churches under the cross or from defending such churches by force when the Reformed plunged ahead and did so – most notably in the Low Countries in 1566, where the Lutheran refusal to oppose the duly constituted authorities contributed to the Reformed church’s assumption of leadership in the movement of resistance to Habsbourg rule. . . . Surveying the entire period of 1517-1700, one cannot avoid concluding the Reformed embraced and acted upon such views more than any other confessional group. This is not because of any enduringly distinctive features of Reformed thinking about political obligation. It stems instead from two other foundational stone of Reformed theology: its profound hostility to idolatrous forms of worship and its conviction that certain kinds of church institutions derived from scriptural authority. The former drove Reformed believers to separate themselves from the church of Rome in situations in which other evangelicals were prone to compromise, and thus to find themselves especially often on a footing of threatened minority impelled to fight for its ability to worship as it pleased. The latter [church government] sparked movements of resistance to perceived threats to the purity of the proper church order.

This is a key difference between paleo- and neo-Calvinists (not to mention other Presbyterian transformers of cutlure). In the case of old Calvinism, the aim was to reform the church, which in turn led to various forms of political resistance and activism in order to worship God truly. In the case of new Calvinism, distinct marks of Reformed worship and polity are sacrificed in order to work with other Christians for the sake of a righteous and just society.

So if neo-Calvinists really want to enlist the support of paleos for the sake of transforming society, they’ll need to clean up their liturgy and bone up their ecclesiology. Please no Fosdickian responses of “what incredible folly.”

The punch line is, what’s the difference? Badop bop.

Timothy George, dean of the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, has a number of articles in a recent issue of Christianity Today that is devoted to John Calvin. George is a very fine historian of the Reformation so the reason for his rendition of Calvin may owe more to his editors and readers at CT than to his training at Harvard University. Still, to make Calvin appealing to American evangelicals, in “John Calvin: Comeback Kid,” George lays on thick the French reformer’s globalizing transformational identity. He writes:

Calvin’s theology was meant for trekkers, not for settlers, as historian Heiko Oberman put it. In the 16th century, Calvinist trekkers fanned out across Europe initiating political change as well as church reform from Holland to Hungary, from the Palatinate to Poland, from Lithuania to Scotland, England, and eventually to New England. . . . Like the Franciscans and the Dominicans in the Middle Ages, Calvin’s followers forsook the religious ideal of stabilitas for an aggressive mobilitas. They poured into the cities, universities, and market squares of Europe as publishers, educators, entrepreneurs, and evangelists. Though he had his doubts about predestination, John Wesley once said that his theology came within a “hair’s breadth” of Calvinism. He was an heir to Calvin’s tradition when he exclaimed, “The world is my parish.”

For some neo-Calvinists the reference to Wesley may be off putting, but not so for evangelicals. But how about one to Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel? George continues:

And so was the Baptist Walter Rauchenbusch [an heir to Calvin] in his concern for the social gospel, which (as Rauchenbusch used the term) did not mean another gospel separate from the one and only gospel of Jesus Christ. It simply meant that that gospel must not be sequestered into some religious ghetto but taken into the real ghettos and barrios of our world.

Despite disputes over links between Calvin and Wesley or Rauschenbusch, indisputable is George’s claim that swarms of Reformed Protestants went to a lot of places and changed them. Whether this is the genius of Calvinism or simply one part of the Great European Migration is another question. After all, the Lutherans who in the seventeenth century came to Germantown, Pennsylvania, also changed that section of modern-day Philadelphia, but they don’t get credit as transformationalists.

But migrating and establishing towns, villages, and counties is one thing. Teaching about how Christians should regard the present life is another. This is where some historians and neo-Calvinists always seem to stumble with Calvin. For he did not advocate trekking but just the opposite:

Let the aim of believers in judging mortal life, then, be that while they understand it to be of itself nothing but misery, they may with greater eagerness and dispatch betake themselves wholly to meditate upon that eternal life to come. When it comes to a comparison with the life to come, the present life can not only be safely neglected but, compared to the former, must be utterly despised and loathed. [Institutes, III.ix.4]

So much for Calvin the transformer of culture.

What then was Calvin’s advice to pilgrims in this weary world?

. . . lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, [God] has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. And that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his limits, [God] has named these various kinds of livings “callings.” Therefore, each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life. [III.x.6]

Could it be that Reformed trekkies actually cease to be Reformed when they trek? Could it be that they need to reject Calvin to follow Methodists and Social Gospelers instead? It sure looks that way. In which case, Calvin’s comeback in this 500th anniversary of his birth will likely be thin and short-lived.

Our favorite theonomic pastor in the Christian Reformed Church has ranted yet again on the infection he diagnoses as the “radical 2k virus.” The good pastor’s comments are useful for showing what the two-kingdom view actually says and does not say, and also for showing the inherent weakness of those who overrealize Christ’s Lordship in this life.

The pastor in question is responding specifically to the claim made here that the teaching of history should differ little if taught in a class at a secular university or a Christian college. The point being that the standards governing historical scholarship do not come from Scripture – since the Bible as little to say about the use of primary and secondary sources or about the polity of nation-states and the relations among them – but from organizations like the American Historical Association.

The really right reverend comments:

Can Darryl be so thick as to miss the decided difference between the Marxists Charles and Mary Beard teaching a survey of American History and a R. L. Dabney teaching a survey of American History? Darryl assumes his position and then goes on to act as if the standards of “secular” history proves his position. Talk about circular reasoning! What Darryl has forgotten is that Theology is the Queen of the Sciences. Biblical Christians would insist that History is but Theology clothed in a different discipline, but this is not the way Darryl reasons. For Darryl, Theology resides in the Church and each compartmentalized discipline is Lord over its own realm. Talk about creating sacred and profane realms. By Darryl’s standards a student could become a Marxist historian, complete with all that implies, and still be a Christian as long as he could navigate the gross contradiction.

A couple of points show how convoluted this reaction is. First, hello! Robert Louis Dabney was not a historian and simply being a theologian does not grant proficiency or expertise in every single academic discipline, secular vocation, or square inch (Kuyper even knew this). If it did, then theologians would function in western society the way Imams do in Islamic societies – that is, as interpreters of God’s word they have authority over everything. So, I would likely trust the Beard over Dabney on interpreting American history – though I might give Dabney extra credit on the South.

Second, why does being a Marxist invalidate one’s credentials as a historian? Why even some very good Christian historians such as Carl Trueman have been known to have affection for Marx and the usefulness of Marxist analysis not only for secular but also church history. Our CRC pastor is apparently aware that sometimes Christian historians apply the insights of Marx but rejects outright the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism.

So as in all good circular reasoning, what goes around comes around. We trust the Pastor will not become so dizzy about two-kingdom theology that his mind explodes. Here’s the trick: take two aspirin (get it?) and keep your theology in the appropriate kingdom.

Caleb Stegall over at Front Porch Republic has already asked a good question about a recent evangelical statement, “Doing the Truth in Love,” that commends the pope’s recent encyclical Caritas in Vertate to the wider evangelical world. Caleb asked, “how many evangelicals does it take to comment on an encyclical?” The answer is a whole lot more than the teamsters it takes to change a lightbulb. The answer to Caleb’s question is 68, the number of evangelicals who signed “Doing the Truth in Love.” The answer to the question about the teamsters is “10, you gotta problem with that?”

Maybe it is oldlife’s current obsession with neo-Calvinism, but we couldn’t help but notice a strong attraction of Kuyperians to Benedict’s encyclical. The Protestant statement backing the pope originally stemmed from a Center for Public Justice effort, and a number of neo-Calvinists added their signatures, among them our favorite Byzantine-rite Calvinist. The convergence of neo-Calvinists and the Roman church’s pontiff does not prove our repeated contention here that a preoccupation with worldview turns the confessional and ecclesial lobes of one’s brain into jello. But it does add to the mix of examples that show neo-Calvinists to be promiscuous in their discernment.

Meanwhile, the neo-Calvinist theological interpretation of Benedict is not reassuring. DTL states:

In Christ’s death and resurrection, God removes all that stands in the way of right relationships between God and the world, among humans, and between humanity and the rest of creation. Human development is included in this restoration of all things to right relationship.

This is the typical neo-Calvinist cosmological rendering of redemption, the license that tells Christians they need to save the world – not just the lost tribes in Africa, but also the kitchen sink. Is it really possible that Benedict is a neo-Calvinist? What would Abraham Kuyper, who thought Rome had nothing to offer the modern world, say?

We do not want to suggest that Benedict or any other pope cannot be read for insight and wisdom. In this case, oldlife has yet to read the encyclical. But would the evangelical signers of DTL also be willing to draft and sign the books by other authors who possess a lot of wisdom about the economy and globalization – say Niall Ferguson or P. J. O’Roarke?

And what about Wendell Berry? Is he chopped liver? Almost twenty years ago he wrote:

Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible. Those who have “thought globally” (and among them the most successful have been imperial governments and multinational corporations) have done so by means of simplifications too extreme and oppressive to merit the name of thought. Global thinkers have been and will be dangerous people. National thinkers tend to be dangerous also: we now have national thinkers in the northeastern United States who look on Kentucky as a garbage dump. A landfill in my county receives daily many truckloads of garbage from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. This is evidently all right with everybody but those of us who live here. (“Out of your Car, Off Your Horse,” 19)

So why no statement recommending The Unsettling of America to evangelical readers. Berry had some of us thinking about the problems of globalization a while ago. It didn’t take the Bishop of Rome to get us to do it. And we didn’t have to issue a declaration and seek signatures to call attention to our debt to Berry.

Mind you, if Benedict actually agrees with DTL when the statement says, “globalization has indeed lifted millions out of poverty, primarily by the integration of the economies of developing nations into international markets. Yet the unevenness of this integration leaves us deeply concerned about the inequality, poverty, food insecurity, unemployment, social exclusion—including the persistent social exclusion of women in many parts of the world—and materialism that continue to ravage human communities, with destructive consequences for our shared planetary habitat” – if that’s what the encyclical affirms, then maybe a Berry declaration is in order. As Stegall notes, “Take it from me, sitting in the belly of the beast, when Evangelicals ask you for a ‘serious dialogue’ about ‘new models of global governance,’ reach for your gun. Or your rosary.”

Beyond globalization, Benedict, and Berry is the cringe produced by watching low church Protestants jump on the papal bandwagon. Could it be that evangelicals get more mileage out of siding with the pope than even a popular American author? Impugning motives is always unwise, but why don’t these evangelicals worry just a little bit about coming off as Vatican groupies?

Sorry for the cynicism, but any good Protestant knows something is wrong when those who are not in fellowship with the Bishop of Rome, and who remain tarnished by the condemnations of Trent, are so eager to recommend the chief officer of the church whose jurisdiction their communions have purposefully renounced.

David Koyzis, over at Notes from a Byzantine-Rite Calvinist, takes issue with the two-kingdom critique of neo-Calvinism. The particular piece that provoked him was first published here.

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.

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