Two Kingdoms and Cultural Obedience

In recent decades, many Christians have been drawn to the Reformed understanding of the faith due to its holistic approach to the life in Christ—an emphasis found especially in the neocalvinist revival in the nineteenth-century Netherlands, led by Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck and others. Transplanted to North America in the twentieth century, neocalvinism has led to the establishment of a number of confessionally-based organizations, including a network of Christian day schools, universities, labour unions, think tanks, political movements and farmers' associations. The Kuyperian influence has expanded over the last three decades due to the efforts of, among others, the Center for Public Justice, the Coalition for Christian Outreach, Redeemer University College, the Christian Labour Association of Canada and, of course, Cardus. It is now more common to hear ordinary evangelical Christians speak in terms of all of life belonging to Christ and of grace restoring nature, though they may differ in the practical implications they draw from this basic confession.

However, not all evangelical Christians are necessarily on side of this neocalvinist revival.

Read more here.

'World-and-life-viewitis' revisited: a response to Hart

Now that we have returned from our holiday on the balmy shores of the Huron Sea, it is time to respond to Darryl Hart's Losing the Keys and Finding a World View and to one of the comments he left in my original post on the subject.

Let me begin by observing that, because Hart has not offered a point-by-point rebuttal to my arguments, I am unable to respond on that level. What he has done is to employ a form of argument which, if it is not precisely ad hominem in character, certainly skirts at its edges. Says Hart:

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.

If a colleague gives me a paper he has written for my critique, it would generally not do for me to tell him in response that he has ugly circles under his eyes. To be sure, he may have been up late any number of nights working on this essay, and I may judge that he was unwise to do so at the expense of his health and alertness. In fact, his lack of sleep may have affected the quality of his paper. But to comment on his altered appearance does not in itself address the flaws in his argument.

Similarly, there may be all sorts of problems within the neocalvinist fold. Given that neocalvinists, like other Christians, are sinners saved by grace, it should not be unexpected that there will be failings — perhaps even spectacular failings — amongst them. To pretend otherwise would be naïve. Yet what is lacking in Hart's critique is a persuasive argument as to why the neocalvinist position logically leads in a liberalizing direction. Instead his argument is an appeal to fear: we don't want to end up like. . . [fill in the blank]. I might also point out that many of the older Reformed and Presbyterian bodies in Europe and North America experienced the effects of liberalism well before the arrival of neocalvinism on the scene.

Now it is true that neocalvinists have generally sought to build bridges to their fellow Christians in other traditions. They are not to be found in any single denomination, although their ecclesial roots are generally in Dutch Calvinism, and especially the Christian Reformed Church in North America. While many if not most of us, contrary to Hart's accusation, greatly appreciate the importance of the institutional church, we will not turn aside those evangelicals with more voluntaristic/baptistic views of the church. If Hart objects to this ecumenical focus in neocalvinism, then I suppose I would have to admit, for myself at least, to being guilty as charged. I will leave him to come up with the appropriate penalty for the likes of me.

One last point on the institutional church: I might indicate, to extend an olive branch, that I find much to like in many of the essays collected in Hart's Recovering Mother Kirk. His analysis and critique of evangelicalism with respect to ecclesiology and liturgy are dead-on. As someone with a special love for the biblical Psalms, I particularly applaud his endorsement of their use in the church's liturgy and hope his efforts at recovering sung psalmody bear fruit amongst his students and readers. I have listed his book in the bibliographic page of my own Genevan Psalter website. I would love to keep our conversation going on this topic at least.

Let us now turn to the rest of life outside the formal context of the worshipping community. Here once again is where Hart's position is weakest, and thus far he has said nothing to persuade me otherwise. Decades ago philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd showed the connection between the pretended autonomy of theoretical thought, as manifested in the special sciences, and the secularizing direction of western civilization. Hart again: "Many two-kingdom advocates [in whose company he counts himself] are not pleased with the way the West is going, or the state of higher learning in North America." Yet it is not at all clear how a solution will be found in re-emphasizing the neutrality of human reason in the face of the manifold ideological distortions it has facilitated and then tried to disguise. If there's a logical connection, he had best explain it, because his approach looks to me like an effort to turn back the clock to an earlier stage in the progression of the disease, rather than an attempt to remedy the disease itself.

But then there's this:

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.

Whether or not Hart means this to apply to problems in the academy is unclear. If so, it appears to allow him an out with respect to the point I made in the previous paragraph. If we Christians must await the arrival of the eschaton to address the problems of this world, then perhaps it doesn't matter ultimately what we do with our schools, universities, businesses, labour unions, &c. And if this is true, then my objection that his commitment to neutral reason will inevitably secularize the university is perhaps beside the point, which I suppose leaves us nothing left to discuss.

Finally there's this curious remark from the comments to my first post. Hart again:

If I accept the liberal [political] order it is simply because it is a historical reality that makes pining for the Netherlands circa 1901 or the Holy Roman Empire around 1400 unbecoming.

So neocalvinists are reactionaries? I thought we were liberalizers. Which is it? This smacks of going after the beast with whatever weapon is at hand, appropriate or not. If a spear doesn't do the trick, try poison. If poison fails, there's always a pistol. Something's bound to work eventually.

I will reiterate something I hinted at in my first post. The validity of a particular school of thought can be assessed by how well it accounts for the fulness of created reality. In this case there is simply too much of life that Hart's worldview — and yes, he does have one! — cannot take into account.

D. G. Hart and 'world-and-life-viewitis'

Darryl G. Hart has fought hard to make himself the bête noir of the christian university community in North America and, truth to tell, he has largely succeeded. This is a typical entry from his blog: If the Bible Speaks to All of Life, Why Not the Confession? Here's Hart in his own words:

[A] recent speaking engagement at Grove City College . . . got me thinking about the world-and-life-viewitis that has reached epidemic proportions among Protestants. Most evangelical Protestant colleges these days are justifying their existence and identity by saying they provide a wholistic [sic] vision on learning that is grounded in the Christian faith. The Lordship of Christ, the authority of Scripture, even the cultural mandate come in for aid and comfort.

This ideal is an honorable one and springs from generally wholesome motives. Who would not want to see Christ honored in all aspects of the created order, and who would want to be unfaithful where Scripture has revealed God’s holy will?

There’s just one problem: the Bible doesn’t speak to all the arts and sciences, let alone whether incoming freshmen should receive a laptop or whether it should be an Apple or an IBM machine. In fact, the one place where Christ is revealed, the Bible, has very little to say about the curriculum of an undergraduate education. If we say that it does, we are in danger of putting the imaginations of men above the Word of God — that is, making the Bible say what we want it to say.

This point becomes pretty plausible if we consider that the Reformed creeds and catechisms have nothing to say about rhetoric, logic, grammar, music — the list could go on but not much longer for the medieval university’s curriculum. It has even less to say about quantum physics or critical theory and the vast range of subjects offered by today’s universities. But if the Bible speaks to all of these areas of human endeavor and inquiry, don’t we need to revise the confessions so that the church may rightly speak on what God has revealed?

Or could it be that what the creeds and confessions teach is pretty much the sum of what the Bible reveals? In which case, for the other areas of life we are left to our reasonable ability to make sense of God’s created order, thus leaving the church jurisdiction over divinity and the university faculty authority over the arts and sciences.

Hart represents a particular school of Reformed Christians who not only put great emphasis on the confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries, but also put something of a lutheranizing two-kingdoms spin on these confessions and on the Scripture on which they are based. This school is primarily associated with Westminster Seminary California, Hart's former employer. The expanding influence of Abraham Kuyper's worldviewish Christianity comes in for special criticism from this group.

In response three points can be made here.

First, Hart is correct to observe that the Bible has nothing to say about quantum physics and a host of other issues. He is also right to assert that we should not try to make it say what it doesn't say. My friend Roy Clouser has addressed this error in speaking of the encyclopedic assumption, i.e., the belief that the Bible is a kind of encyclopedia giving us scientific data about human origins, astronomy and, well, even political science.

However, Hart is missing something of the all-embracing character of the life in Christ as understood in Scripture as a whole. One need hardly accept the encyclopedic assumption to recognize that biblical religion has implications for how we live all of life, not just what we do in church on sundays: "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (I Corinthians 10:31). Or this, also from St. Paul: "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ" (Colossians 2:6-8).

Second, and perhaps more seriously, Hart's approach to Scripture is based on an inadequate epistemology. The Bible, it seems, is filled with a number of propositions, which have relevance to some of our activities in God's world, but not to most. In this huge swath of territory we simply rely on our own native reason, which we share with all human beings, whatever their religious commitments. Scripture informs our spiritual life, but not much beyond that. If Hart is correct about this, then it is little short of amazing that so many people emphasizing the need for a consistent christian worldview have found so much to write about. Are the issues to which they draw attention not genuine issues? Can their concerns be dismissed so easily?

In my own Political Visions and Illusions I undertake to explore the five political ideologies of liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, democratism and socialism. Despite their respective followers having access to reason, they nevertheless manage to embrace quite different visions of politics and indeed of reality as a whole. It is not too difficult to see the impact of more than one mutually incompatible worldview at play. It is also evident that these are a matter of adherents making entirely too much of a good thing, which is what Scripture calls idolatry. If Scripture is silent on a lot of particular things, it speaks clearly on idolatry, which inevitably affects the whole of life, including those academic disciplines left up to "our reasonable ability."

Third, Hart's approach must be viewed against an historical trajectory that has seen the secularization of any number of universities over the centuries, despite their christian origins. Here's Hart once more: "Or could it be that what the creeds and confessions teach is pretty much the sum of what the Bible reveals? In which case, for the other areas of life we are left to our reasonable ability to make sense of God’s created order, thus leaving the church jurisdiction over divinity and the university faculty authority over the arts and sciences." I agree that the church as institution should not attempt to pronounce in the arts and sciences. But Hart appears to be saying more than this. If we read this in light of what he's said above, we are left with a pretty toxic mix, and one that has led to the erosion of the christian character of countless universities in the past, from Harvard and Yale to Hamilton's own McMaster University, whose Divinity College sits with increasing unease on its campus among the other faculties of arts and sciences.

Disparage as he might the supposed pandemic of world-and-life-viewitis amongst evangelical Christians, Hart's approach does not represent a workable alternative. There is simply too much that it does not take into account, and for that reason it is unlikely to gain a foothold in the christian universities of North America. Though he undoubtedly has much to offer in the fields of "divinity" and liturgy, if we seek discernment with respect to the idolatries afoot in "secular" areas of life, we had best turn elsewhere.