A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
by Timothy M. Haupt
In the foreword, George Harinck notes, “One can study neo-Calvinism or employ neo-Calvinist notions without being acquainted with its theology” (xv). Abraham Kuyper, in particular, is known to many for his social, political, and cultural theories and educational reforms. But, as Harinck notes, the two “founding fathers” of neo-Calvinism, Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, were first of all theologians, their most important works were theological, the academic institutions they shaped were primarily theological, and the ideas for which they are best-known – sphere sovereignty, democracy, pluralism, worldview – are “deeply rooted in theology” (xv). But the written corpus of these two men is immense and wide-ranging, making the task of acquainting oneself with their theology a daunting one indeed. Where does one begin?
This was the impetus behind Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto’s recent monograph from Lexham Academic. In just under 300 pages of text, Brock and Sutanto introduce readers to the “central dogmatic contributions of neo-Calvinism,” those distinctive theological loci that Kuyper and Bavinck inherited from the Reformed tradition and rearticulated and refined for their contemporary milieu during the long nineteenth-century (290). Both authors are eminently qualified for the task, having researched and written extensively on neo-Calvinism in general and Bavinck in particular. Brock is minister at St. Columba’s Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh and adjunct lecturer at Edinburgh Theological Seminary and Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi. N. Gray Sutanto is assistant professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and is an associate fellow at the Neo-Calvinism Research Institute in the Netherlands.
In the introductory chapter, Brock and Sutanto set forth their purpose. “The theologies of Kuyper and Bavinck not only contain promising possibilities for contemporary dogmatics but are also a significant but sometimes silent influence behind many theological trajectories today: the theological interpretation of Scripture, redemptive-historical hermeneutics, theological retrieval, Christian missiology, apologetics, and eschatology. This book seeks to fill this need by providing a theological introduction to the unique dogmatic contributions of the first-generation neo-Calvinists, especially Kuyper and Bavinck” (2). Brock and Sutanto mention three additional impulses behind this book: first, to overcome the deficiency in theological literature that examines the dogmatic creativity of neo-Calvinism; second, to correct the present misunderstanding of neo-Calvinism as a movement primarily aimed at social transformationalism and mischaracterization of neo-Calvinism as a movement dissociated from the church and its history; and third, to provide a gateway into the expansive revival of scholarship and resources dedicated to the study of neo-Calvinism. Brock and Sutanto define “historic neo-Calvinism as a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century movement in the Netherlands. Neo-Calvinism was a revival of Reformed confessionalist theology in the Netherlands roughly beginning with the rise of Kuyper as a theologian, with the founding of the Vrije Universiteit in 1880, the formation of the Gereformeerde Kerken in 1892, and its systematization in the theological output of Herman Bavinck. Its most mature distinctive was not first in political theology, Reformational philosophy, or public-theological models for the relation between the church and social order, but in its careful, nuanced, and unique marriage between classical, Reformed confessionalist dogmatics and modern philosophy and theology that allowed it to speak Reformed dogmatics to a particular European, modern world” (3-4). According to the authors, the movement is characterized by three “distinctive neo-Calvinist modes of the thinking operation”: first, it is “orthodox yet modern,” seeking to foster an engagement between classical Reformed orthodoxy and modern theology and philosophy; second, it is “self-consciously holistic,” arguing that the Christian faith leavens every facet of human society; and third, it is “organic, not mechanical,” asserting that the all of nature, both material and immaterial, exists as diverse components of a unified creation under the Triune God whose sovereign purpose governs all, such that, for example, there is no artificial fence between theology and science (8-10). These three distinctives provide the themes that bind together the chapters of this book.
In the second chapter, Brock and Sutanto examine the term “neo-Calvinism” and its relationship to the theology and program of the Genevan Reformer. The term “neo-Calvinist” was first used in 1887 as a pejorative, and continued to be used in very polarizing ways over the next several decades by both critics and admirers of Kuyper and Bavinck. Bavinck himself preferred the term “Reformed,” but both Kuyper and Bavinck eventually adopted its use to describe their own program. “While they insisted on their dependence on Reformed orthodoxy, Bavinck and Kuyper were self-conscious that their retrieval of Calvin signaled something new, as they were motivated by the distinct questions of the modern age” (16). What did Kuyper and Bavinck retrieve from classical Calvinism? “Kuyper and Bavinck identify Calvinism with the development of a Christian world- and life-view, a theology of God’s sovereignty, and the doctrine of common grace (concomitant with a radical doctrine of sin) as that which undergirds natural life” (21). What was “new” about their particular representation of Calvinism was their holistic application of these doctrines for all of life. “The term ‘neo-Calvinism,’ then, refers to their development of Calvin’s theology into a holistic worldview that had a particularly God-centered orientation toward all things within the context of the modern consciousness. A number of theological claims are at the forefront of neo-Calvinism: the absolute sovereignty of God, the unity of humanity as God’s image bearers, the radicality of sin, the restraining power and provision of common grace, the church’s mission to engage in every sphere of life, and the kingdom of God as a kingdom of renewal” (20-21). The remainder of the chapter examines selections from Kuyper’s 1898 Lectures on Calvinism and Bavinck’s “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church” (1888), “The Future of Calvinism” (1894), and Christian Worldview (1904) to demonstrate this thesis. The last work, Christian Worldview, is particularly salient, as Bavinck deploys the neo-Calvinist worldview, not against various Christian alternatives (Lutheranism, Catholicism, Protestant liberalism), but against Nietzschean nihilism, demonstrating that the Christian worldview provides the only certain foundation for epistemology and ethics. . . .
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