Howard the Reformer
Puritan Board Freshman
Has anyone read this and have any response?
Neo-Calvinism and American Decline | Jackson Waters
Evangelicals Finally Waking Up Should Beware
americanreformer.org
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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.
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.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.
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.
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.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.
The Redeemer model was to just do the "Yoda thing" and tell us that Democrats care about public health, Republicans care about babies,
At least Yoda believed in the supernatural...............In which case it would go, "care about public health, Democrats do" and "care about babies, Republicans do"...
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.
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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.