Pro Rege
Volume XLII, Number 4
June 2014
Features
From Defending Theism to Discerning Spirits:
Reconceiving the Task of Christian Philosophy
Neal DeRoo
Poythress’s Trinitarian Logic: A Review Essay
Calvin Jongsma
Ties that Bind: A Review Essay
James Schaap
Reformed Theology as Worldview Theology:
The Public Nature of the Gospel and Spirituality
Jay Shim
Jake Van Wyk’s Angels and Beasts—an art exhibition:
No Holds Barred
David Versluis
I Recognized the Mitten – poem
David Schelhaas
Book Reviews
Worthen, Molly. Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in
American Evangelicalism.
Reviewed by Scott Culpepper.
Smith, James K.A. Discipleship in the Present Tense: Reflections on
Faith and Culture.
Reviewed by Neal DeRoo.
Kaiser, Robert G. Act of Congress: How America’s Essential Institution
Works, and How It Doesn’t.
Reviewed by Jack R. Van Der Slik.
A quarterly faculty publication of
Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa
Chapell, Bryan. Christ-Centered Sermons: Models of Redemptive
Preaching.
Reviewed by Mark Verbruggen.
Pro Rege
Pro Rege is a quarterly publication of the faculty of Dordt College. As its name
indicates (a Latin phrase meaning “for the King”), the purpose of this journal is to
proclaim Christ’s kingship over the sphere of education and scholarship. By exploring
topics relevant to Reformed Christian education, it seeks to inform the Christian
community regarding Dordt’s continuing response to its educational task.
Editorial Board
Mary Dengler, Editor
Josh Matthews, Review Editor
Sally Jongsma, Proofs Editor
Carla Goslinga, Layout
Erratum
In Pro Rege XLII.3 (March 2014), in
“Two-kingdom Worldviews: Attempting
a Translation,” by Renato Coletto, note
the following correction for Figure 3 (10)
for the increasing distance between the
two “poles”:
Type:
1) “Liberal”
2) “Catholic”
3) “Lutheran”
4) “Anabaptist”
Structure
C f >R
Cf > R
cF > R
cF > R
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ISSN 0276-4830
Copyright, June, 2014
Pro Rege, Dordt College
Editor’s note: Dr. Neal DeRoo presented this paper at a joint meeting of the Society for Christian Philosophers and
the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology, held at Trinity College, June 2014. The topic of the meeting was
“What is Christian Philosophy,” celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the publication of Alvin Plantinga’s landmark essay
“Advice to Christian Philosophers.”
From Defending Theism
to Discerning Spirits:
Reconceiving the Task of
Christian Philosophy
ourselves and the world and God” (18). In this
paper I will argue that philosophy is not only
an arena in which these deep commitments play
out and are systematically clarified but also a key
method by which those commitments are brought
to intellectual light in the first place. In this regard,
philosophy is not just about examining and understanding theistic beliefs and their relation to our
other thoughts and actions; rather, it is the means
by which we discern the spirits of our time.
by Neal DeRoo
In his “Advice to Christian Philosophers”1 Alvin Plantinga lays out two pressing tasks for philosophy: systematizing, deepening, and clarifying
Christian thought on key philosophical topics
(16) and exploring how the result of such clarification bears on the rest of what we think and do
(18). These tasks are necessary because philosophy
provides “an arena for the articulation and interplay of commitments and allegiances fundamentally religious in nature; it is an expression of deep
and fundamental perspectives, ways of viewing
Dr. Neal DeRoo is Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Dordt College, and Fellow of the Andreas Center for
Reformed Scholarship and Service.
Spirits of the Age?
If this recourse to spirits seems too mystical—or,
perhaps even worse, too Hegelian—to be included
in meaningful rational discourse, that is an issue
you will have to take up with Prof. Plantinga himself. For it is he who uses this language to describe
the urgency of the task of Christian philosophy:
“Most of the so-called human sciences, much of
the non-human sciences, most of non-scientific intellectual endeavor and even a good bit of allegedly
Christian theology is animated by a spirit wholly
foreign to that of Christian theism” (3; emphasis
added). It is highly unlikely that we are to think of
this animation by a spirit along the lines of supernatural possession, as if a distinct immaterial entity somehow occupies and controls the scientific
enterprise. But if it’s not Casper the un-friendly
ghost, then what are we dealing with here?
Generally, we tend to speak of a spirit of the age
Pro Rege—June 2014
1
as analogous to a certain cultural mood, a felt disposition that leads in certain directions and away
from other directions. Hence, we can speak of the
“spirit of 1968” as a certain felt disposition, widespread during the late 1960s, toward free love and
away from power hierarchies and inter-personal
violence. If we work with this definition of spirit,
then a non-theistic spirit animating the scientific
enterprise would mean that there is a certain felt
disposition, widespread among participants in the
scientific enterprise, that moves those participants
away from theistic thoughts and conclusions.
And how would such a spirit become known
and articulated? Plantinga does not elaborate this
point, but he also claims that he doesn’t have to,
since “it is familiar to you all” (3). This sense of
familiarity is perhaps bred from the proximity of
philosophers to the environs in which this spirit is
wide-spread. Because the spirit is a felt disposition,
it is plausible to assume that those who live and
operate in the environs where that spirit is widely
spread would themselves feel that spirit, either directly or via its effects. But precisely because it is
a felt disposition, it is not clear how such a spirit
could have an impact on the theoretical commitments and presuppositions of those it affects. Even
more, if such a spirit is a felt disposition, how could
we speak of it as animating theology (or any other
theoretical discipline), which is clearly not capable
of being the subject of feelings or of possessing dispositions?
A Spirit-ual Anthropology
To better understand this notion of a spirit that
animates the scientific enterprise, I think we need
to clarify the philosophical anthropology with
which we are operating. In doing so, I will take
Professor Plantinga’s advice and offer a distinctly
Christian anthropology that is fully committed to
the belief that humanity has been created in the
image of God (12). In this view we will come to
see a slightly different account of spirits at work,
one that will open up for us a new (or at least clarified) task for Christian philosophy.
This account of anthropology begins with the
assumption of a radical distinction between Creator and creature, such that the latter can never
be a miniaturized version of the former. As such,
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Pro Rege—June 2014
humanity is not an image-bearer in the sense of
exhibiting a similar property in a similar way to
God.2 Indeed, being an image-bearer of God is not
a property of humanity at all but is rather its essential definition: humanity is image-bearing-ness
itself and not merely a thing that happens, accidentally, to bear the image of God. That is to say,
bearing God’s image to creation is not a part of
human activity, but it is, in fact, the totality of it:
everything that humanity does bears the imprint
of the God who created it—or the image of something else functioning as if it were God.
An anthropology that seeks to systematize this
understanding of humanity as image-bearers was
sketched out by Herman Dooyeweerd and elaborated by some of his followers (notably James H.
Olthuis3). Central to this anthropology is the notion of the heart as the spiritual center and integral
whole of humankind, the center from which the
entirety of human living flows. A key metaphor
in understanding this notion of the heart is that
of light shining through a prism: just as light is a
solid beam of white light on one side of the prism
but is refracted into the many colors of the rainbow on the other side of the prism, so too, the
heart is like a prism through which the creative
spirit of God shines and is refracted, in temporal
(creaturely) life, as all the various types of creaturely inter-action. On one side of the heart is the
unrefracted spirit of God, and on the other (temporal) side of the heart are the multiple aspects of
human existence, which are nothing but the spirit
of God refracted and expressed in particular temporal circumstances. The heart is therefore not a
part of the human being, but it is rather the essential condition of humanity: we do not have a
heart: we are heart-ed. As heart-ed creatures, we
cannot help but reflect some type of spirit in all
that we do, since it is our very natures to do so. All
of human action is a refraction of the spirit flowing
through our hearts.
On this anthropology, humanity is essentially
spiritual, insofar as everything we do is a refraction
of the spirit flowing through the human heart. This
spirit is picked up from, and is expressed within,
creation. Because the spirit is expressed through
every human action, other creatures can pick up
that spirit from human actions. Human action
functions as a transmitter that spreads that spirit to
other creatures. As creatures ourselves, we humans
also receive the spirit expressed in the work of other humans; because we are uniquely image-bearing
creatures, all human action is driven and animated
by a spirit of this type. Through all of our actions,
then, humans not only express the spirit that is at
work in their heart but also receive the spirit that is
to be expressed. Other people’s expressions of the
spirit become the fodder for our own expressions
of the spirit, and vice versa. The spirit is therefore
Indeed, being an image-bearer
of God is not a property of
humanity at all but is rather its
essential definition: humanity is
image-bearing-ness itself and not
merely a thing that happens,
accidentally, to bear the image
of God.
an essentially communal endeavor, insofar as it is
received and expressed in the interaction among
human beings.
This communal spirit is therefore an affective
force which may or may not be a distinct entity. As
an affective force, it drives (or animates) a course
of human action but is not expressed solely in one
or another element of human living. Rather, the
spiritual driving force is expressed in all the colors
of the rainbow,4 each of which is a distinct color
that yet remains necessarily integrally connected
to the other colors (since they are all expressions
of one and the same beam of light). Any act of
theoretical thought, then, is an action that betrays
multiple modes of relating (logical, historical/formative, linguistic, social, etc.), each of which is expressive of the spirit that animates the community
producing that scholarship. As such, no theoretical thought is spiritually neutral; instead, all theoretical thought is, by dint of being the product of
human action, essentially expressive of a spiritual
force that drives it.
Discerning the Spirit(s)
This anthropology has the virtue (at least in this
gathering) of lending credence to Professor Plantinga’s claims that Christian philosophers need be
no more apologetic of their own spiritual starting
point than are philosophers whose work expresses
a different spirit (humanist, materialist, etc.), as
well as his claims that Christian philosophers are
responsible first to the Christian community and
only secondarily to the philosophical one. This anthropology also helps us understand more clearly
what it might mean for a spirit to animate human
actions and institutions (such as the scientific enterprise and/or the institution of academic theology). While its implications on this score might
raise some questions about certain elements of the
anthropology that Plantinga lays out in “Advice
to Christian Philosopers,” especially pertaining to
voluntaristic free will and agent causation, here I
will focus on what this anthropology tells us about
the relation between animating spirits and human
action and how it helps us re-think the task of
Christian philosophy.
We have already established that this anthropology suggests that all human actions are expressive of a spirit that is at work in the human
heart, the spiritual, integral core of human existence. This spirit is communal rather than individual—it is expressed in, and received from, human interaction with other creatures (especially
other humans). As the spirit is communal, certain
communities will have a consistent spiritual vision
vis-à-vis other communities, insofar as different
spirits are animating each.5 While these different
spirits will be expressed in different ways through
concrete human actions, there is no guarantee that
the spirits themselves are rationally or consciously
known to the people within the communities they
are animating. That is to say, because these spirits
work directly on the heart, they work on a register that is pre-rational (and pre- everything else,
too, for that matter) and so may work in a way
that is totally unavowed to those expressing that
spirit: While I cannot help but express the spirit
at work in the heart, there is no guarantee that I
realize I am doing so. And because these spirits are
so integral to human living, their influence is massive, whether we realize this or not. And because
Pro Rege—June 2014
3
it is so massive, we might like the opportunity to
think more carefully about the spirits animating
us and our communities, both to determine what
spirits drive us and whether we are all right with
that spirit or not. What is required, then, is a way
of distilling (or discerning) from human actions
the spirit(s) that animate or propel those actions.
Indeed, such a discerning of spirits is a primary
religious and spiritual task, insofar as these spirits
determine the religious and spiritual direction of
a community.
I would like to argue here that philosophy has
a unique role to play in this discerning process.
Where each discipline is tasked with investigating
a particular aspect of creation (or, rather, is tasked
with investigating creation from the viewpoint of a
particular aspect: biological, linguistic, psychological, etc.), philosophy is tasked with investigating
the integrity of creation: how do the different aspects and different disciplines hang together? Philosophical conceptions of ontology, anthropology,
and epistemology deal with these larger questions
and so are in a unique position to determine the
larger forces operating within and upon multiple
disciplines, multiple aspects (though these conceptions themselves will bear the mark of the spirit
that animates them). In addition, the self-reflective, wisdom-seeking elements of philo-sophia, as
opposed to merely the more specialized, technical elements of academic philosophy, also move
in the direction of articulating the spiritual forces
that animate the human world. Something similar
to this impulse seems to already be on Professor
Plantinga’s radar when he describes philosophy
as an arena for the “articulation … of commitments…fundamentally religious in nature” (18).
What I am suggesting here is to take this definition
of philosophy a step further, as that which pertains
to the very driving forces of cultural life itself. Philosophy is not merely one arena, one discipline,
among many in which these spiritual forces can be
articulated (though it is certainly that, too), and
its articulations are not limited merely to rational
or theoretical claims, to ideas; rather, philosophy
is a unique tool in the discernment, articulation,
and elaboration of the spirits that animate human
endeavors, be they the spirit of God or the spirits
of the age. This particular philosophical task might
4
Pro Rege—June 2014
be one that is apparent only to Christian philosophers (though I don’t think this is the case6), but
Professor Plantinga would be the first to concede
that that alone does not make it any less pressing a
philosophical problem. As Christian philosophers,
we need not let our conception of philosophy, its
tasks and problems, be defined by the broader
academy.
A Final Suggestion
Before I proceed further, let me offer a word of
caution: that I want to add discerning the spirits
of our age as a task of Christian philosophy does
not imply that I want to abandon the other tasks
of (Christian) philosophy laid out by Professor
Plantinga. There is still a need for philosophy to
be academically rigorous; to systematize, deepen,
and clarify Christian thought; and to explore how
the result of such clarification bears on the rest of
what we think and do (18). That is, even as it is
tasked with discerning the spirits of the age, philosophy must remain a theoretical and academic
venture. But the academic venture of philosophy
must, ultimately, be in the service of the pursuit of
the wisdom that requires a discerning of the spirits
that animate us, whether that be the spirit of God
(“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom”) or of something else. This is not to say that
all Christian philosophers must be so-called popularizers, but merely that the results of Christian
philosophizing ought to be helpful beyond merely
academic borders.
In that light, I would like to offer an exploratory hypothesis, a tentative suggestion: Christian
philosophy would benefit greatly from using the
resources of phenomenology in its pursuit of its
task. Phenomenology offers two distinct elements
of methodology that make it a beneficial addition to the Christian philosophical toolbox: first,
it elaborates the life-world, that is, the world of
everyday human experience, by recourse to the
promises already inherent in that life-world and so
takes that world on its own terms while further
clarifying, deepening, and understanding those
terms; and second, it uses both synthesis and analyticity in service of integrality, which again points
to its orientation to the world of everyday human
experience. Both of these elements helpfully serve
the tasks of Christian philosophy—the discerning
of the spirits of the age and the systematic clarification of those spirits and their influence on human
thought and action.
The notion of phenomenology as a promissory discipline—the discipline concerned with
the articulation and elaboration of promises—is
an attempt to find the coherence among thinkers as diverse as Husserl and Marion, Heidegger
and Dastur, and Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Francois
Courtine. Its basic claim is that phenomenology
investigates a matter (a Sache rather than a Ding)
according to what that matter says about itself, implicitly or explicitly, and what the role that matter
plays in our broader social (inter-personal) world
says about it. A phenomenology of music, for example, is interested both in what music claims
to be and to do (again, implicitly and explicitly)
and what role music plays in human living (how
it relates to other matters within and transcending
the human subject). Matters are both self-given
and externally constituted, and both of these elements must be examined if a matter is to be properly understood. In looking at what a matter says
about itself, phenomenology seeks to determine
what promise is being made within that matter by
that matter itself; in looking at the role the matter
plays in our broader social world, phenomenology
seeks to determine how well the matter is living
up to its own inherent promise. Crucial here is
that phenomenology seeks to balance what is true
of the matters themselves (so as to avoid extreme
idealism, nominalism, and relativism) and what is
contextually determined about the matters themselves (so as to avoid naïve realism, essentialism,
and absolutism). This balance is key to properly
understanding the relationship between the spirit
and the actions that are expressions of that spirit.
Part and parcel of this balance is its constant
recourse to the broader picture of the world of naïve, pre-theoretical experience—the life-world, the
world in which we live. In service of this broader
picture, phenomenology seeks to balance the analyticity necessary to understand the parts with the
synthesis necessary to relate them to the whole. As
phenomenology does both, analytic rigor is pre-
served in the service of a broader integrality that is
not merely synthetic but spiritual. This notion of
integrality is central to the heart-ed anthropology
laid out here, and I think phenomenology offers
a methodology that can respect that integrality
without losing the necessity of analytic rigor, clarification, and articulation.
As heart-ed creatures, we
cannot help but reflect some
type of spirit in all that we do,
since it is our very natures to
do so.
Much too briefly, then, I suggest that phenomenology might be key to any attempt to achieve
the discerning task of Christian philosophy. While
phenomenology may not be alone in its promissory and integral methodology, I think we would
be re-miss to ignore its literature and methodology
as we pursue further what it means to be Christian
philosophers in the 21st century.
Endnotes
1. Accessed February 2014 from http://www.calvin.edu/
academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/advice_to_christian_philosophers.pdf; pp.
1-19. In text citations are to this work, unless otherwise
cited. The article was originally published in Faith and
Philosophy 1:3 (1984), 253-271.
2. This idea seems to go against Plantinga’s claims on
page 12 of “Advice to Christian Philosophers.”
3. The account presented here draws on Olthuis, “Be(com)
ing: Humankind as Gift and Call,” Philosophia
Reformata 58 (1993), 153-72.
4. Dooyeweerd enumerates them as the mathematical,
spatial, kinematic, physical, biological, sensitive, logical, historical (formative), lingual, social, economic,
aesthetic, judicial, ethical, and the pistic (faith).
5. Or that a similar spirit is being animated differently,
but pursuing this topic would take us too far afield for
our purposes here.
6. See, for example, Husserl’s Crisis of the European
Sciences.
Pro Rege—June 2014
5
Poythress’s Trinitarian
Logic: A Review Essay
by Calvin Jongsma
Poythress, Vern Sheridan. Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought. Crossway, 2013. 733 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4335-3229-0
In the “quick-summary” from an online video
taken at a Westminster Seminary dessert social
held a year ago to celebrate this book’s publication,
Vern Poythress claims, “This is a Christian approach to logic. It challenges everything in Western civilization from Aristotle onward. I believe
that logic is rooted in the Trinitarian character of
God, and nobody, virtually, has said that.” Again,
in words from early in the book itself, the author
asserts, “This foundation … in logic [for] the
Dr. Calvin Jongsma is Professor of Mathematics, emeritus,
at Dordt College. Over the past three decades he regularly
taught an introductory logic course for the philosophy department and a transition course in mathematics focused
on logic and proof.
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Pro Rege—June 2014
whole of Western thought has to be redone.” Providing a genuinely alternative Christian approach
to the logical basis of Western thought seems an
outrageously grand goal, but one that is worth examining in an essay review. Unfortunately, while
Poythress almost predictably promises more than
he delivers, I believe he also delivers more than he
should have promised.
One expects from the title of the book and the
blurb on the back cover that this work could be an
ideal (though massive) textbook for the beginning
study of logic at a Christian college or seminary,
so I will review it largely from that vantage point.
As I do for any such text, I will examine its approach, analyze its main components and ideas,
and see how these things are developed. After beginning with a few practical matters, I will focus
extensively on several substantive technical issues.
I will conclude by reviewing the theological matrix
in which the logic is embedded.
Educational Considerations
Logic does indeed treat topics typically appearing
in an introductory logic textbook: Aristotelian syllogistic logic (AL), propositional logic (PL), and
first-order predicate logic (FOL), among other
things. And it places the study of logic within a
broader Christian context. But, having taught introductory logic at Dordt College for over three
decades in both philosophy and mathematics
classes, I would not choose this as my textbook,
for a number of reasons.
From a practical point of view, Logic lacks a
sufficient supply and range of exercises to be con-
sidered a self-contained textbook. Each section
concludes with questions “For Further Reflection,”
but these are rather limited, and not enough of
them help students consolidate their understanding of the material. Moreover, the book is organized into 68 chapters and 22 appendices of varying lengths, with little pedagogical guidance for
how the various sections might be combined into
appropriate-sized lessons and units to be taught
and studied in a more formal educational setting.
It is even unclear how central some of the topics
might be; for instance, the Preface and the Part
headings make it seem as if PL and FOL might
Unfortunately, while Poythress
almost predictably promises
more than he delivers, I believe
he also delivers more than he
should have promised.
not be all that necessary for learning elementary
logic. And, since the author is so intent on providing A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation
of Western Thought, Trinitarian theology gets pride
of place. The more systematic technical material
(logic proper) doesn’t begin until 192 pages into
the book, and even then, it is often eclipsed by
theological reflections. Furthermore, as I will document below, there are a number of significant deficiencies in Poythress’s exposition of logic’s main
ideas and systems. At best, I would consider using
this book as supplementary reading on the theological perspective it espouses. For that purpose,
you can’t beat the price, for the author has posted
the entire text on his website as a searchable PDF
to be freely downloaded.
In addition to elementary classical logic,
Poythress touches on a wide range of topics not
ordinarily included in a first course in logic: Boolean algebra, lattice theory, the formal axiomatization of logic and mathematics, set theory and Russell’s Paradox, the theory of computability, Gödel’s
Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems,
model theory, intuitionistic logic, and modal
logic. These are mostly treated summarily in the
supplementary appendices, though a number of
them appear in the later chapters as enrichment
topics. While these areas are of interest to modern
logicians, I doubt that many will connect well with
the typical reader beginning to learn basic logic.
Their inclusion may reveal more about the author’s graduate training in abstract algebra (under
Garrett Birkhoff) and mathematical logic (under
Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke) than about any
pressing need to include them in an introductory
survey of logic.
Logical Content and Methodology
As indicated, Poythress’s academic pedigree is impeccable. A Putnam fellow in 1964, he received his
Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in
1970. Poythress is obviously familiar with the logic
and the mathematical foundations he discusses.
Nevertheless, these credentials don’t guarantee that
he presents his material on logic in the most fitting
or up-to-date manner; nor does it keep him from
making some major mistakes.
Let me begin with a small but irritating stylistic
preference. Poythress notes in defining a concept,
such as the truth-functional connective or ( 235),
that he will use the conditional only if instead of
the fuller and more accurate biconditional if and
only if (hereafter, iff) because he finds the former
more natural/less pedantic. In my experience, he
is in a tiny minority on this; mathematicians (and
occasionally Poythress himself ) tend instead to use
the oppositely directed if as an informal substitute
where iff is called for. They do so because uninitiated students find the meaning of only if confusing; in fact, it seems to have tripped Poythress up.
After saying that the compound sentence p or q is
false only if both sentences p and q are false (i.e.,
if p or q is false, then both p and q are false), he
completes his truth-functional definition of p or q
by saying that otherwise it is true (i.e., if it is not
the case that both p and q are false, then p or q
is true—the logically redundant contrapositive of
the clause he just asserted), which, taken strictly,
still leaves open the truth value of p or q when both
are false—that could be true without violating the
definition.
More important problems surface in how
Pro Rege—June 2014
7
Poythress perceives the central goals of logic and
how he subsequently tries to achieve them in developing the three main systems of formal logic.
Poythress never gives his reader a succinct definition of logic, though he formulates some statements by others that he seems to accept: logic
aims to codify the basic forms of valid reasoning
and to point out some common fallacious/counterfeit forms so that a knowledgeable practitioner
can properly analyze and evaluate arguments. In
accord with this view, Poythress notes that logic
is largely and rightly unconcerned with the truth
and specific meaning of the statements involved
in an argument (material irrelevance), focusing
only on whether the premises logically imply the
conclusion—though he, like some, may want to
place logic within the larger context of seeking and
communicating the truth about whatever is being
investigated.
I am not unhappy with emphasizing valid argumentation and logical implication as central
to logic, but Poythress adheres to this viewpoint
rather unevenly, and this emphasis fails to cover
two other key concerns of logic. In opposition to
this goal of validity, but only superficially so, logic
is also intensely interested in the notions of truth
and logical truth, since they are tied to a criterion
for validity and can be used in a certain sense to articulate some basic laws of logic. Strangely enough,
as we will see, although Poythress doesn’t identify
truth at the outset as a central concern of logic,
this becomes almost his sole interest when he turns
to consider PL and FOL.
A third main aim of any system of logic is to
provide an adequate inferential basis for constructing conclusive arguments. This aim requires one to
choose and use a set of inference rules for making
deductions. Concentrating only on logical implication is insufficient; derivations or proofs provide
a level of logical discourse that goes beyond valid
argument forms. Poythress does present a number
of deductions in the book, but too few of these illustrate how rigorous derivations can be constructed using rules of inference, and so opportunities
are lost for showing students the value of what is
being studied. Deductions of conclusions from
premise sets ought to be presented for each system
of logic on the basis of an appropriate inferential
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Pro Rege—June 2014
infra-structure that validates their construction,
but these are largely missing.
Once a logic’s system of inference rules for deducing conclusions is stipulated, one can also investigate two meta-logical properties tied to this:
whether the system of logic is deductively sound
(whatever can be deduced from a premise set using
the inference rules is logically implied by the premises)
and whether it is deductively complete (whatever is
logically implied by a set of premises can be deduced
from them via the inference rules). Poythress does
explore some of these properties in his treatment
of PL and FOL, but he does so in a rather narrow
way, as we will note further below.
Before discussing those modern systems, however, let’s look briefly at how Poythress presents AL.
Since traditional syllogistic logic was the reigning
system of logic for almost 2200 years following
its inception in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics (c. 330
BC), students should get to know a version of this
system if they want to understand what Western
thinkers long considered deductive reasoning to
be, whether they accepted it as foundational (e.g.,
Aquinas) or challenged it as useless (e.g., Bacon
and Locke). Poythress does discuss the various
forms of syllogistic inference, but he focuses mainly on the four most basic first-figure moods—
Barbara, Celarent, Darii, and Ferio (Chapters 26
- 29)—relegating the other 20 valid moods to the
appendices (A2 and A3).
In addition to establishing the validity of the
basic forms via Venn Diagrams, Poythress explores
their logical interrelationships by deducing them
one from another (Chapter 28). In order to do
this, he must make use of some (unidentified) immediate inference rules (Obversion rules as well as a
Double Negative rule), which he treats as pertaining
to sentence retranslation rather than to the deduction process per se. Furthermore, in comparing the
syllogistic form Darii with its stronger counterpart
Barbara, he acts as if the former is a special instance
of the latter and should therefore be accepted; but
of course this conclusion doesn’t follow. The conclusion of Darii can, in fact, be deduced from its
premises using Barbara as an inference rule, but
in addition, a number of other rules and proof
strategies must be employed (Reductio ad Absurdum [RAA] along with Obversion and Conversion;
else RAA along with the second-figure form Camestres suffices, without Barbara). Poythress later
(Appendix A2) shows conversely that Barbara can
be derived from Darii, but he again uses RAA and
some immediate inference rules, still treating the
latter as relevant to rephrasing statements instead
of inferring with them. His deductions thus form a
patchwork of sentence inter-translations, proof by
contradiction (without setting out the traditional
Square of Opposition), and syllogistic conclusions.
Syllogistic logic is a wonderful first system to
explore with students because, in addition to its
historical significance, it relates well to everyday
kinds of argumentation. Also, it can be used to
nicely and simply illustrate the main concerns connected to any formal system of logic: validity (assessed by Venn Diagrams and counterarguments),
derivations (using some system of inference rules),
soundness, and completeness. Poythress considers
only validity for AL and ignores the other matters: he rarely presents an argument that goes beyond a simple syllogistic form, and the fact that he
never identifies a basic set of inference rules to be
used for constructing deductions means he is unable even to entertain the potential soundness and
completeness of AL.
When Poythress begins systematically to study
PL and FOL in Chapters 39 and 50, he seems to
forget his earlier circumscription of the purposes
of logic (valid arguments, logical implication).
Now his aim seems instead to be to identify and
derive all logical truths or tautologies, statements
like the Law of Excluded Middle, “p or not-p,”
which are always true, under any interpretation of
the sentence p. Truth tables naturally provide an
effective means for showing this for PL, but, evidently following Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica, Poythress chooses to treat PL
primarily as an axiomatic system of tautologies. To
derive complex logical truths from a chosen set of
axioms, one must use just two rules of inference,
Modus Ponens and Substitution. The first rule is
crucial for constructing all sorts of garden-variety
arguments, but it functions primarily here in the
restrictive context of deriving tautologies from
tautologies. Such derivations can be extremely artificial, long, and complicated, even for rather simple results. Poythress thus expands his list of infer-
ence rules to a more natural collection, originally
proposed to capture the ways we typically reason
in mathematics and elsewhere, but he continues
to use them as a means for deriving logical truths
as theorems. This is far too narrow a focus for an
introductory logic course. Students (along with
mathematicians) aren’t really interested in proving
logical truths from axioms; they want to use inference rules to deduce conclusions from premises,
none of which are typically logical truths. Moreover, operating within Poythress’s constrictive
view of deduction, one finds that the properties of
soundness and completeness are likewise limited
to claims about logical truths.
Given the understanding that a major (even if
not the sole) goal of logic is to study valid argumentation, an introductory text ought to clearly
explain when a set of premises logically implies its
conclusion, or, to put it in other words, when a
conclusion logically follows from or is a logical consequence of its premises. This is something that
can and should be discussed first in general terms,
Given the understanding that
a major (even if not the sole)
goal of logic is to study valid
argumentation, an introductory
text ought to clearly explain
when a set of premises logically
implies its conclusion, or, to
put it in other words, when
a conclusion logically follows
from or is a logical consequence
of its premises.
proposing broad intuitive criteria, but it should
also be specialized for each system of logic under
consideration. Logic is inadequate on both counts.
Two common criteria for testing logical implication make use of the notions of truth-values under all interpretations (a conclusion logically follows
from a set of premises iff it must be true whenever the
Pro Rege—June 2014
9
premises are) and information content (a conclusion
logically follows from a set of premises iff the information contained in the conclusion is already contained
in/doesn’t go beyond the premises). Poythress never
highlights these (or any other) principles as criteria for deciding whether a conclusion is a logical
consequence of a set of premises, though they lie
behind how one evaluates arguments as valid or
invalid for all the systems of logic. For instance,
the information-content criterion justifies the use
of Venn Diagrams to represent and test syllogistic
reasoning, but this background is never explicitly
spelled out. Instead Poythress appeals to the theological doctrine that “the persons of the Trinity
indwell one another” (203), a truth that he claims
provides an “uncreated foundation for [the] spatial
relations” exhibited by these diagrams. Similarly,
the above truth-value criterion (with its side-kick,
counter-arguments) provides the necessary foundation for evaluating valid arguments in PL and
FOL, but Poythress doesn’t explore this criterion
much for either system, presumably because his
strong interest in logical truth leaves little room
for other concerns.
A reader of Poythress’s Logic may feel I’m being unfair in claiming that PL lacks a proper focus
on validity and implication. After all, doesn’t the
text analyze logical implication and logical equivalence in some detail when it introduces the if-then
and the iff connectives? Sadly, no. What Poythress
does instead by presenting these PL connectives as
formally capturing the meaning of logical implication and logical equivalence is to perpetrate a serious error that an elementary logic text ought to
forestall and oppose, not propagate. Poythress may
be following Whitehead and Russell here, too, for
their early twentieth-century work is a historically
important source for this regrettable equivocation.
As Poythress correctly notes early on, whether
a conclusion logically follows from a premise set
doesn’t depend on the actual truth values of the
statements; it depends upon the interrelationship
of their logical forms. On the other hand, whether
a conditional statement is true completely depends
upon the truth values of the sentences involved.
That alone should alert one to the fact that logical
implication cannot be encapsulated by the conditional PL-form if p then q (nor logical equiva10
Pro Rege—June 2014
lence by the form p iff q), not even if you factor
in some sort of fuzzy idealization process. The real
connection is actually captured by an important
meta-logical result that can be used to motivate or
justify the peculiar conventional truth-functional
definition given for the conditional connective
if-then (if p then q is true just in case q is true or
p is false). This result is a semantic version of the
Herbrand-Tarski Deduction Theorem: a premise
p logically implies its conclusion q iff the associated
conditional if p then q is logically true. Poythress
nowhere alerts his reader to this important linkage.
He instead obscures the connection by glibly reading the conditional sentence if p then q as asserting p implies q, thereby reinforcing the confusion
instead of dispelling it. Naturally there are times
when Poythress mentions logical implication and
logical equivalence when that really is what he
wants, but his identification of these semantic relations with logical operators within PL is a category
mistake. Collapsing a meta-logical semantic claim
into a particular syntactically formed statement
inside PL is analogous to identifying the relation
of divisibility in number theory with the operation
of division.
Logical implication is relevant, of course, for
much more than single-premise arguments in PL
(something Poythress fails to emphasize), but in
the context of that system of logic, full-fledged
implication is best explicated by means of an extended truth table, showing that whenever a valid
argument’s premises are jointly true, so is its conclusion. No such table for or analysis of a valid argument is to be found in Logic. Poythress chooses
instead to derive a conclusion from its premises by
means of a deduction, but then only for statements
that are tautologies proved from the system’s axioms. Using an extended truth table in this context,
where all statements are logical truths, would be
rather silly; the conclusion is always true, whatever
the truth value of the premises—nothing really
needs to be checked except the truth value of the
conclusion.
There are other difficulties with Poythress’s
technical development of logic, but I will note
only one more—his treatment of completeness.
Logic has several notions of completeness, and the
terminology for naming them has not been fully
standardized. Poythress takes up a couple of these,
which I will call deductive completeness and theory
completeness. Deductive completeness, defined
above, is a system-dependent property of the logic
under consideration: a formal system of logic is deductively complete iff whatever is logically implied by
a set of premises can be deduced from them using the
inference rules chosen for the system. Well-designed
variants of both PL and FOL are deductively complete, an important result first proved by Gödel
in 1929. Theory completeness, on the other hand,
is a property of a theory rather than of the logic
involved in developing it: in semantic terms, a set
of axioms is theory complete iff its logical consequences form a maximally consistent set; i.e., iff for any
proposition formulated in the language of the theory,
either it or its negation (but not both) logically follows
Since Poythress insists on
developing modern logic in the
style of Whitehead and Russell,
as an axiomatic system, he has
the possibility of examining PL
and FOL from both points of
view, but he fails to do either
satisfactorily.
from the axioms. Since Poythress insists on developing modern logic in the style of Whitehead and
Russell, as an axiomatic system, he has the possibility of examining PL and FOL from both points
of view, but he fails to do either satisfactorily. Naturally, these systems of logic (as theories) are not
theory complete. Logical statement forms include
more than logical truths and contradictions: it is
not the case for a primitive sentence P that either it
or its negation not-P must be a tautology. In contrast, however, these systems of logic (as logic) are
deductively complete; but here Poythress must be
content with what we might call weak deductive
completeness: whatever logical truth follows from
the stipulated axiomatic basis (all such truths, of
course) can be derived from the axioms. Whether
this result can be parlayed into the stronger, more
interesting and desirable claim about the logical
consequences of any premise set being derivable is
never discussed. Logic is de facto about truth, it
seems, not validity.
After noting that PL and FOL are (weakly) deductively complete, Poythress proceeds to explore
whether mathematics is complete. Here he also appeals to Gödel, this time to his two Incompleteness
Theorems (1931). Unfortunately for the unsuspecting novice, Poythress has subtly shifted to a second
meaning of completeness, which he never defines,
treating the new idea almost as if it were the same
as or an extension of the former. He notes loosely
that “any ordinary set of axioms for arithmetic is
incomplete in the logical sense” (424), and he later
equates an axiom system being complete with the
possibility of deriving true results from the axioms
(451), which in the absence of any further distinction is reminiscent of deductive completeness. Actually, what Gödel proved in his first theorem (refined by Rosser in 1936) was that if arithmetic is
logically consistent, then it is not theory complete:
one can generate sentences in the language of
arithmetic that cannot be proved or disproved. But
this does not mean, as one might falsely conclude,
that there are arithmetic statements (FOL-) implied by the axioms that cannot be (FOL-) proved
from them—FOL remains deductively complete
when used for arithmetic as well as for any other
theory. One can naturally claim, as Poythress does,
that there are unprovable true arithmetical statements, but then one must tacitly take the notion
of being arithmetically true in an absolute systemindependent or extra-systemic sense while keeping
the notion of provability restricted to the formal
system of logic being employed. Regardless, the
conceptual divergence between truth and proof
shouldn’t be articulated in a way that makes one
think in vague terms that arithmetic is incomplete
while logic is not: axiomatic logic is also (trivially)
theory incomplete. To avoid creating confusion
about all this, Poythress ought to define theory
completeness and carefully distinguish it from deductive completeness before proceeding to explicate Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems.
It should be clear from the above analysis that,
at least in its technical particulars, Logic falls short
Pro Rege—June 2014
11
of establishing an alternative foundation for transforming Western thought; it is not even a fully adequate exposition of elementary logic. Components
essential to an introductory logic text (valid arguments, derivation) are missing or underdeveloped
or artificial, and some important notions (implication, completeness) are wrong or confused. I think
these problems may arise in large part because of
what Poythress relies upon as his main resource for
defining and treating logic—Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). That’s
a work that treats logic as an axiomatic theory of
logical truths and that sees logical implication as
captured by conditional statements. But given that
Poythress wants to reject pagan and secular philosophy with its attendant dependence on the autonomy of logic and rationality, it’s not clear to me
why he would so strongly endorse their approach
to logic. Russell is a well-known atheist whose passion was to create an absolutely certain foundation
for all of mathematics by reducing it to logic. Since
idolizing logic in this reductionistic way is diametrically opposed to the sort of foundation Poythress
hopes to achieve, I expected him to distrust their
logicist development of logic, but he seems on the
contrary to admire it greatly (cf. 309 and 343-4).
A more modest aim regarding the role of logic
would lead one to conceptualize and systematize
logic differently. For instance, rather than taking logic to be the grand theoretical foundation
for mathematics, a view that seems to require a
Russell-style axiomatic approach, one can view
logic as formulating the laws for valid and conclusive reasoning as it actually occurs in everyday
life and in all rational disciplines. This aim is best
met by adopting a more genuine natural-deduction approach to logic, an alternative that was first
developed by Jaskowski around 1930, promoted
by Fitch in 1952, and has now been adopted in
some version by many logic texts. Organizing
logic around the idea of capturing the deductive
ways we ordinarily and correctly reason, one can
give more balanced attention to the various components of logic as well as a better explication of
the key meta-logical properties of soundness and
completeness.
12
Pro Rege—June 2014
Theological Foundations
Having analyzed various methodological aspects
of Logic in some detail, I will now turn to examine
the theological basis Poythress has constructed for
the field of logic. This is the part of the book that is
most original with Poythress and on which he pins
his hopes of providing something truly alternative.
Since this is not my area of professional expertise,
I will merely summarize his main points, make a
few remarks, and raise some questions for further
reflection. As Poythress discusses these matters at
length throughout the book, more can certainly be
said about this than I will do here.
Poythress notes in numerous places that he is
setting out a theistic foundation for logic, in all its
parts and aspects (cf. Chapters 26, 47, 49, 57, 59,
61, and 66). But this is too generic a description
of his goal. Poythress wants to create a Christian
theological foundation for logic in order to purify
and transform the pagan and secular ways it has
been pursued throughout the history of Western
thought. For him this means relating logical ideas
and procedures to the Trinitarian God of the Old
and New Testaments. Which he does in great detail: his Scripture Index of cited texts runs to almost
five pages, four columns each.
Poythress draws upon the Bible in several ways.
There is first of all his use of Scripture passages to
illustrate various forms of valid argumentation,
something found in few other logic texts. But
because these often involve statements that talk
about Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy
Spirit, they also function as opportunities for him
to expound on various attributes of God and point
out relations holding among the three persons of
the Trinity.
Since, according to Poythress, God is the Original while creatures, their properties, relations,
and activities are all reflections of the Original,
the more deeply we understand the nature of God
from Scripture, the better we’ll understand the
true character of logic (cf. Chapters 7 and 11 –
13). God is constant, dependable, faithful to his
nature, and self-consistent; human logic reflects
this consistency. God is eternal and omnipresent;
valid human arguments hold (insofar as is possible) everywhere and at all times, independent of
when and where they are made. God is omnipo-
tent, absolute, and immutable; the laws of logic are
constant, abiding, unchangeable, and necessary.
God is truthful; the laws of logic are infallibly true
and cannot be annulled.
I don’t find the pervasive use of analogies to be
a terribly persuasive way to argue for God being
intrinsically related to logic. On the other hand,
I’m certainly not opposed to making connections
between the Creator and the creation (including
logic), though I would mostly want to turn them
around, adopting what might be termed a generalized incarnational approach. Our experiential
knowledge of how the creation is structured and
operates helps us to better understand the One
who made it, also because, as Scripture indicates,
the Creator has chosen to reveal himself to us by
taking on certain features of his creation. Whether or not these are part of the essential nature of
God, I’m unwilling to speculate about; I think this
view transcends what we can rightly infer from
Scripture and creation. We can know something
of God’s faithfulness to his creation from logical
consistency, which follows from what might be
called the harmonious agreement of reality; we
can understand how God’s sovereignty over creation functions within the realm of argumentation
by seeing that valid reasoning must satisfy certain
criteria for soundness, that certain principles are
used in constructing conclusive arguments, and so
on. The structure and richness and beauty and applicability of logic reveal in some small measure
God’s greatness and loving care for his creation, as
do other aspects of human life and the wide world
around us. But I don’t think a Christian foundation for logic (or mathematics or any other creaturely reality) is properly laid by focusing on the
being and character of God.
Poythress criticizes Western logic for severing
all connections to God. While mainline thinkers
may still recognize various salient features of logic,
they refuse to ground them in God’s nature, taking
logic and rationality as autonomous. In particular,
Poythress judges that pagan and secular thinkers
exhibit their sinful rebellion against God by making logic impersonal, formal, and mechanical (cf.
Chapters 8 and 22). He admits that logic does
indeed have a sort of independence from humans
and from specific meanings, but he says that when
logic is made overly precise and formal, it is no
longer related to a personal God. His alternative is
to conceive of logic as personal. God is a person,
so logic must be personal, too. I have difficulty
grasping the exact meaning and full significance
of Poythress’s claim here, and I fail to see how developing a formal system of logic, seeing logic as
applying to argumentation whatever the information content, promotes atheism. Certainly some
Western thinkers asserted human autonomy from
God and human mastery over the world by idolatrously elevating Reason over against divine Revelation, thus denying the biblical notion of God as
sovereign Creator, but I don’t see this as cause for
rejecting the development of logic into formal systems for evaluating and constructing arguments.
As noted above, I would find this anti-Christian
trend instead a strong incentive for rejecting Russell’s logicistic approach to logic and mathematics, but here Poythress seems hesitant to pull the
trigger.
Besides emphasizing the personal nature of
God, Poythress wants to ground logic in the mystery of the Trinity. He does this in a number of
ways, treating them as providing different theological perspectives on the nature of logic (cf.
Poythress wants to create
a Christian theological
foundation for logic in order to
purify and transform the pagan
and secular ways it has been
pursued throughout the history
of Western thought.
Chapters 8, 9, 11, and Appendix F5). Here, too,
I don’t fully understand the import of his analogies. For instance, he says that God the Father
created according to a certain plan in harmony
with divine self-consistency (this corresponds to
logical consistency), God the Son speaks reality
into existence as the divine Word (corresponding
to the articulation of logical laws), and God the
Spirit holds creatures responsible to the plan for
Pro Rege—June 2014
13
their existence (thus, particular arguments cannot
violate the laws of logic but instantiate them). Or,
since logic depends upon language, the Trinitarian
character of language contributes as well to a Trinitarian foundation for logic. Symbolic logic has a
referential component for the meaning of its words
and sentences, a grammatical component for properly combining words into sentences, and a syntactic component for writing or expressing words and
sentences. According to Poythress, this is all based
in the nature of the Trinity: meaning connects to
God the Father, grammar to God the Son, and
speech or expression to God the Spirit. If one were
to query why this particular assignment, Poythress
would likely appeal to the fact that God is one and
that each person of the Godhead exhibits all the
features of divine speech and logic in some respect.
These parallels may strike the reader as loose
or far-fetched, but Poythress makes an even stronger claim about the intrinsic connection between
logic and God. Based on John 1:1, which identifies Jesus as the Divine Word (Logos) made flesh,
and on Genesis 1, where God speaks to create order from chaos, Poythress concludes, “This eternal
Word is the eternal speech of God. He is therefore
also the eternal logic or reason of God. … Now it
becomes more evident why [logic] is personal. It is
not only personal, but a person, namely, the Word
of God” (71). Of course, Jesus is acknowledged to
be more than divine logic, and all persons of the
Trinity are deemed logical by virtue of their being
self-consistent, but divine logic resides principally in the second person of the Trinity. This truth
about logic stands behind all human logic, which
is but a dim reflection of eternal logic: “Logic as
we human beings experience it has roots in eternal
logic, namely, the eternal Word, the second person
of the Trinity, in fellowship with the Father and
the Spirit” (86).
Having condemned Western thinkers for making logic autonomous, an autonomy that gives
it a divine character usurping the place of God,
Poythress recognizes the need to guard against a
similar accusation of his own position. He admits
that on his account “the laws of logic … look suspiciously like the biblical idea of God” (68). So
the question naturally arises, “By claiming that the
laws of logic have divine attributes, are we divin14
Pro Rege—June 2014
izing nature? That is, are we taking something out
of the created world, and falsely claiming that it is
divine? Is logic part of the created world? Should
we not classify it as creature rather than Creator?”
(69). Those seem like excellent questions to me.
His answer is that “logic seems to be independent
of the world. We cannot imagine a world in which
logic does not hold. This fact shows that we are
confronted with a transcendent reality. … [Thus]
logic as it really is … is an aspect of the mind of
God” (69). God himself is not subject to logic,
but His logic is no less divine, transcending created reality, because it is embodied in the second
person of the Trinity. Poythress believes that this
position doesn’t divinize logic or abrogate God’s
transcendence over his creation because our immanent creaturely logic merely reflects God’s original
eternal logic. I don’t find his response to the questions he posed very satisfying, though. It seems to
trade upon fluctuating notions of “independence”
and “transcendence,” not to mention “logic.” One
man’s analogy borders on another man’s equivocation, I suppose.
Frankly, all the theological speculation about
logic’s divine attributes—how logic must be an aspect of God’s nature, how it resides in the mind
of God, and why it is personified as one of the
persons of the Trinity—is enough to make the lay
reader a little dazed and perplexed. How can such
religious mysteries function analogically as a coherent theoretical or ontic foundation for logic?
Without knowing what God’s transcendent logic
is, how can we tell whether our human logic is a
faithful reflection of it? Where can we get trustworthy information about divine logic, from Scriptural discourse? Are tautologies such as the Law
of Excluded Middle essential parts of God’s nature?
Could God have made the laws of logic different
from what we experience them to be? Does God
make paradigm valid arguments that we should
emulate? Does God create elegant derivations of
tautologies from axiomatic truths via Modus Ponens and Substitution? Does God have a favorite
privileged set of natural deduction inference rules?
Perhaps we need to press Poythress to provide an
explicit and cogent definition of logic so that we
can better assess just what all this mystical musing
comes to. It certainly seems pious to locate logic in
the mind of God, to see an eternal version of logic
as embodied in the second person of the Trinity,
but I do not know why or that this is the case, nor,
if it were true, what difference it would make in
Frankly, all the theological
speculation about logic’s divine
attributes—how logic must be
an aspect of God’s nature, how
it resides in the mind of God,
and why it is personified as one
of the persons of the Trinity—is
enough to make the lay reader
a little dazed and perplexed.
the organization and interpretation and application of logic, beyond providing a theological gloss.
Concluding Assessment
In the end, one might ask what this textbook does
for Christian students who desire to learn elementary logic, positioning this knowledge within a
broader Christian view of God’s world.
Readers will certainly learn a number of standard things about classical systems of logic—what
some basic syllogistic forms are and how to use
Venn Diagrams to evaluate them, how to construct truth tables and use them to define truth
functional connectives, how quantifiers and relations enter into deductive arguments, etc.—
and they will be introduced to (a certain way of
making) derivations and to various foundational
linkages between logic and mathematics; but as I
have indicated above, some significant parts of the
logical presentation are incomplete, ill-conceived,
outdated, and even confused. The technical side of
this work would no doubt have been improved by
employing a knowledgeable editor or by submitting an early draft of the text for review to people
who teach introductory logic.
In addition, students who use this book will
be exposed to an extensive presentation of Cornelius Van Til’s Trinitarian and analogical theology,
developed specially for logic by Poythress. Some
may consider this the genius of the work. Others,
however, if they manage to make it all the way
through the book, may find this aspect somewhat
tiresome, wishing the logic would be more simply
presented without overwhelming it at every stage
with theological ruminations. While I appreciate
seeing Poythress’s viewpoint worked out, I am nevertheless sympathetic to this latter sentiment: less
would have been more.
Personally, I don’t find that an analogical theological approach generates a very helpful Christian viewpoint on logic. I don’t think one should
locate logic (any variety) in the mind of God or
identify it with Jesus Christ. One need not make
connections to God’s nature and character in order to place logic in proper Christian perspective.
Like other scientific endeavors, logic studies an
important aspect of God’s creation, attempting to
determine and formulate the laws that hold for the
part of the cosmos where logical consequences and
deductive arguments are prevalent. Logic can be
used to illuminate and enrich certain parts of human experience and various rational activities, so
we are called to unfold this part of the creation. Its
scope, however, is limited. Here I fully agree with
Poythress: absolutizing logic and deductive rationality is an intellectual form of idolatry. But that
very tendency also makes me refuse to locate logic
within the divine character and being of God.
There we may have to differ profoundly.
Pro Rege—June 2014
15
Ties that Bind:
A Review Essay
by James Schaap
Lynn Japinga, Loyalty and Loss: The Reformed
Church in America, 1945-1994. Grand Rapids:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013.
340 pp. ISBN: 9078-0-8028-7068-1.
Historians list five reasons, generally, for the
departure of the Christian Reformed Church
(The True Dutch Reformed Church) from the Reformed Church in America (The Dutch Reformed
Church) way back in 1857, none of which have
much currency a century-and-a-half later. These
days you might be able to pick a fight about whether or not communicants may be lodge members,
but that issue is barely a footnote, since lodges—
sometimes called, back then, secret societies—are
as much a relic as denominations seem to be.
What angered the dissidents in 1857 was what
Dr. James Calvin Schaap is Professor of English, emeritus,
of Dordt College.
16
Pro Rege—June 2014
they saw as an abandonment of principles by the
old-line Reformed Church, principles of worship and church order established by the Synod
of Dordt 200-plus years earlier and half a world
away. There was, for instance, “close” communion,
the Lord’s Table guarded militantly so that only
confessed believers of the correct theological stamp
could partake. My forefathers were sure the oldliners had let down their guard.
Neither were the Dutch Reformed preaching
the catechism. What’s more, they were being more
than a little spotty when it came to house visitation, huis bezoek, a Dutch phrase that hasn’t disappeared because there is no English equivalent. The
truth is, they might have said, the liberals let just
anybody hold public office too.
It’s alarming and embarrassing to realize how
little those things mean today. If there’s anything
that separates the Reformed Church of America
(RCA) from the Christian Reformed Church in
North America (CRC), at least in the Midwest, it’s
Christian education at the elementary and secondary levels. But a head count of Christian school
pupils across the continent might well turn up as
many RCA as CRC kids at those busy grade school
tables.
Because so much has changed, it’s hard to indict Dominie Van Raalte, the preacherly potentate
of the entire West Michigan Dutch community
in the mid-19th century. It was Van Raalte who
insisted that all these new immigrants—dozens
of whom had died in the first cold lakeshore winter—join forces with the Dutch Reformed Church
of New York and New Jersey, a fellowship that had
been here in America for 200 years when Van
Raalte himself decided West Michigan would be
home for a new, proudly Dutch colony.
The Dutch Reformed people out east would
offer generous aid and comfort as the immigrants
began life in the new world, he reasoned. The
While the eastern wing of
the Reformed Church of
America would have known
this country’s ways in a fashion
that could and likely did benefit
those new immigrants, those
old churches have consistently
occupied ground on the other
side of what has grown into a
significant fault line between
the RCA’s eastern and western
branches, creating ties that
really do bind and an un-royal
gorge which has only widened
with Falwell and Dobson and
the political religious right.
Dutch language hadn’t entirely evaporated from
those churches, and neither had Calvinism, although its American manifestation was probably
lower in octane than that which propelled midcentury immigrants, the vast majority of whom
were the Afscheiding, the breakaways who left the
Dutch state church in the 1830s.
Sorry, but if you don’t know this history, it can
get really confusing.
A theologian might blame doctrine for the
1857 split, but some believe (count me among
them) that the real cause for distrust between
Van Raalte’s immigrant followers in West Michigan and the unruly radical Calvinists who refused
to truck with secret societies and would tolerate
only the psalm-singing (those who created the
CRC), was the perception that the eastern Dutch
Reformers hadn’t a clue about the suffering that
people had undergone during the separation, the
Afscheiding, in the Netherlands. And those Yankee
Dutch didn’t. What they might have said, if they
could have put words to their fears and quarrelsomeness, was that if those New York Dutch don’t
know our suffering, they don’t know us.
Whatever the reason, a number of congregations, led by a group from Graafschap, Mich., determined not to go along with Van Raalte’s proposed union with the American Dutch church
and therefore split. Just for the record, that action
birthed this magazine, the college from which it is
published, and the churches who’ve so diligently
supported Dordt College through its own first
half-century.
Honestly, I’ve often considered Van Raalte
a fine man who wasn’t wrong in considering the
needs of the immigrants he’d led; all those established brethren out east, not to mention their
investments, would likely make Americanization
much easier for immigrants, after all. Besides, the
truth is, many of those separatists were not the
kind of people I’d care to go fishing with.
That they were great theological brawlers, even
mean-spirited rapscallions, doesn’t mean that I
don’t have them to thank for the words presently
appearing on the computer screen in front of me.
I think I would have liked Van Raalte; I’m not so
sure about a man like Gysbert Haan.
However, Professor Lynn Japinga’s new book
about the RCA’s last fifty years gives cause for me
to rethink Gysbert Haan and his ilk, the dissidents.
They may not have been wrong. While the eastern
wing of the Reformed Church of America would
have known this country’s ways in a fashion that
could and likely did benefit those new immigrants,
those old churches have consistently occupied
ground on the other side of what has grown into
a significant fault line between the RCA’s eastern
and western branches, creating ties that really do
bind and an un-royal gorge which has only widened with Falwell and Dobson and the political
religious right.
Lots of observers and historians have attempted to define the separate voices of the CRC, a task
which Japinga takes on herself in order to identify
the forces arranged on either side in the RCA. In
Dutch Calvinism in America, James Bratt identiPro Rege—June 2014
17
fied the differences between believers in the Dutch
(American) Reformed world by calling some “confessionalists,” some “positive Calvinists,” and others “Antitheticals.”
Confessionalists were dynamically conservative, believing in and defending “the tradition,”
as they saw it, especially in creeds and confessions
and church order. CRC confessionalists tended to
be excited by the importance of 1928 synodical
warnings against worldly things like dancing and
movies.
“Positive Calvinists” worked other ground
completely, tended to associate culture with the
church, saw change and progress wherever they
looked, and embraced most of it, if not all. If confessionalists tended to be skeptical of change, positive Calvinists just smiled.
“Antitheticals” were given the name because
of the influence of Abraham Kuyper, who tended,
in his own “confessionalist” way (ironically) to see
secular society as something antithetical to Christianity, not necessarily something to be afraid of but
something always to oppose.
These “mind-sets” Bratt identifies in the wars
which have found their place in the history of the
Christian Reformed Church.
When I wrote Our Family Album: The Unfinished Story of the Christian Reformed Church, I
wanted some easier handles, so, rightly or wrongly,
I identified the differences by what I wanted to call
“predilections.” Some Christians define their faith
by social action, by the Sermon on the Mount; I
called them “outward” Christians because their
orientation and predilection was to define the
Christian life in terms of what their own faith did
for people, for society, for the world around us.
Other Christians have an “upward” orientation. They tend to see the Christian life in terms
of the separation between the things of the world
and the things of the next. “Only one life will soon
be past,” an old plaque of my mother’s used to say;
“only what’s done for Christ will last.” Upward
Christians are sure this world is not their home.
Finally, “inward” Christians are those who
measure the assault of change in life as being imminently destructive to all that is claimed by the
Christian gospel. What they seek to do more than
anything is hold fast to what they’ve been given,
18
Pro Rege—June 2014
lest it slip away.
All three exist; all three are important. Blessed
be those who can accomplish all of them simultaneously, but it seems that few of us can.
In drawing up the battle lines for the fights
that have been waged in the Reformed Church
in America since 1945, Japinga also has to find
ways to identify the forces in the field, and her
designations are both interesting and telling. Basically, when the warfare begins, she says there are
only two opposing forces—the “purists,” as she
calls them, and the “moderates.” As she takes us
through the years, a third group appears more and
more frequently, a group she refers to as the “conservatives.”
“Purists,” she claims, “wanted congregations to
demand a high level of commitment and refuse to
compromise their values for the sake of popularity.” Call them ideologues—my-way-or-the-highway people. Bratt would likely have called them
“confessionalists”; I tried to call them “inward” believers. My ancestors were “purists” in 1857, when
they wouldn’t hear of anything that wasn’t written up forever at Dordtrecht. Those who left the
CRC—Protestant and United Reformed, in separate movements—would undoubtedly be “purists”
as well, had they stayed with Van Raalte and what
became the RCA.
“Moderates,” on the other hand, Japinga says,
“hoped that the denomination would become
much more engaged in and with the broader
American culture.” I called them “outward” believers. Moderates inhabit the middle ground by general definition; moderation is even biblical, right?
Were I, in spirit, among the RCA’s purists
(and here in Sioux County, Iowa, I’m quite sure I
am, demographically-speaking), I’d likely roll my
eyes since Japinga rather obviously avoids words
which almost necessarily are part of the expected
binary: the L-word, “liberal,” or even its softer version, “progressive.” If a reader had little perception
about the Reformed Church in America, he or she
might wonder whether something might be missing here: all this warfare, and the enemy combatants are just a few degrees apart?—the liberals are
really moderates? True?
I’m guessing that Japinga would willingly answer that question in the affirmative because she
obviously refuses to regard any of the disparate
voices in the RCA through a half-century of alienation as real, old-fashioned, theological liberals.
And she’s probably right. In her defense, she
should know—educated as she was in the east, first
at New Brunswick, home of the eastern wing of
the RCA, and then at Princeton. Japinga knows
what a theological liberal is in late 20th- century
America, and quite frankly believes—and she’s
probably right—there were few, if any, in the denomination.
Still, it seems disingenuous to draw up the
battle lines in the way that she does, as if what
divides the denomination theologically is pithy
but insubstantial. If she’s right—and I’m not saying she’s wrong—then the bickering itself has to
find its source in something other than significant
theological differences; and if that’s true, then the
historical record is even more depressing.
Anyone who’s cared at all about denominational life in the RCA or the CRC can list, without reading, the issues that have divided members
of both fellowships since the Fifties: (1) communism—and how do we fight it? (2) abortion—
does a woman have the right to choose? (3) racial
equality—how can we do something about racial
injustice? (4) poverty—how can we best help the
poor? (5) women in ecclesiastical office—should
we or shan’t we? (6) and homosexuality (gay marriage was almost unheard of as recently as 1994,
when Japinga’s study ends)—how best do the rest
of us love them?
These hot buttons were and still are incendiary issues when whatever glue held the fellowship
together appeared to have dried up. And it’s important to remember that all denominations are
in trouble today; even the Roman Catholics claim
that their kids don’t begin to understand the sacramental character of their particular faith. “Nones”
are celebrated these days, their numbers growing
as more and more people, if they bowl at all, bowl
very much alone. Communities change, but so
does community itself. There was a moment, last
Christmas, when our living room was full of family, each of us running a stylus or pointer finger
over some kind of tablet or smart phone. Without
technology—and more importantly, without the
bucks to buy in—that couldn’t have happened.
Even here in Sioux County, we aren’t what we were
in 1955.
In Loyalty and Loss, perhaps the most notable
change one feels between what was in the RCA and
what is, is the fact that today there is no Church
Herald. Japinga retells the stories of the fights
within the denomination by using endless, colorful quotations from the denomination’s magazine
that are, in many ways, the foundation for the
story. It’s tragic to realize that there is no similar
public forum within the fellowship, no truly public square. The denominational magazine offered a
space for fighting, a commons, a town hall, a place
to make war and a place to make peace.
Maybe it’s time in this
long history of separations
and divorce for there to be
some kind of reconciliation,
maybe even a marriage,
a resolution to get along
rather than suffer more
afscheidings, peace in the
open fields where there’s
been far too much war.
It’s gone. If there is more history to record
after 1994—and there is and will be--that clearing house for ideas and opinions is no more, and
with it goes a legitimate public record. There are
times, honestly, when she marches them out in a
fashion that feels almost like death by a thousand
paper cuts. Some quotes simply haven’t aged well,
although they probably never were particularly
lovely.
I really liked Professor Japinga’s book. Even
though I had only a cursory sense of the stories she
recounts in this marvelously readable history, it
wasn’t difficult for me to identify and understand
the forces on both sides of troublesome issues, in
part because they’ve played similar roles CRC hisPro Rege—June 2014
19
tory. One can come away from the stories she tells
deeply discouraged, as if finding even the narrowest pathway to unity and love is just about sheer
nonsense when the sides are so fitfully fortified.
But it’s what happened, and someone needs to
tell the story.
The real issue that underlies the wars is Scripture—specifically, how do we read it?
Some of the finest biologists and chemists and
geologists I know, strong and pious believers, do
not disdain evolution.
“But what does the Bible say?—‘six days created he them.’”
“How can it be that women can be presidents
and mayors and school superintendents, but for
some reason lack whatever is needed to hold
church office?”
“You don’t know?—don’t you read the Bible?”
“How can we not work for racial equality?”
“Don’t forget about Ham, banished to Africa,
sentenced to serve.”
The world is round.
“Bible says flat.” The fights we wage don’t have to do with the
Bible; they have to do with us and how we read
it. Co-existence is difficult and invites brawls like
the ones so well-documented in Loyalty and Loss
and any denominational history. We create our
fortresses and claim He did, all of us.
All of which reminds me of a story. Once upon
a time, a man was stranded on an island in the
South Seas. When finally he was found, his rescuers couldn’t help but notice that he’d built a whole
city of his own. “There’s my post office,” he said,
pointing down the street, “and there’s my hardware store.” The rescuers went slack-jawed. “And that must
be your church?” they said, pointing at a steeple.
“But then what on earth is that?” they asked,
pointing at yet another.
“Oh,” the straggler said, smiling, “that’s the
church I used to belong to.” Perhaps I didn’t tell it right, but that, methinks,
hits us right in our vulnerability. But here’s the
punch line. Substitute synagogue for church, and
you’ve got the telling I first heard. That’s right—
Jewish folks told me that joke, not Dutch-Americans. 20
Pro Rege—June 2014
We fight. Comes with territory covered by the
spacious human condition. Where two or three are
gathered, someone goes home mad. I can’t imagine
that any Christian believer who makes it to his or
her fourscore and ten hasn’t been bloodied somewhere along the line. It happens, and Japinga’s
lively and thoughtful history keeps running score
of the battles along the trail, as if RCA history were
just another take on the Great Sioux Wars.
If you’ve ever spent any time reading over centennial books meant to tell the story of individual
churches, you know they can be as mechanical
as the formula obituaries well-meaning funeral
homes crank out daily. You know, “When Rev. O
came, we built the narthex and the Sunday School
had 89 pupils.” The numbers may be plentiful, but
the stories aren’t there, the real stories, the human
story. Telling the human story, for better or for
worse, is what Japinga is attempting here and what
she does. She helps us understand and thereby see
a bit more clearly, through battlefield smoke and
dust, just who we are. That’s not pretty, but it’s
noble work.
One more story. A decade ago, Phillip Yancey,
a fine and popular Christian writer, came up to me
at a retreat and said, “Jim, there’s this other college
really close to you out there in Iowa, isn’t there?”
“Northwestern,” I said.
“I don’t know the name exactly,” he said, “but
aren’t there two of you really close?”
I nodded.
“What’s that about?” he said.
The histories of the CRC and the RCA are
pockmarked with conflicts, but also full of triumphs we altogether too easily forget, like what
the CRC has done, by grace alone, in New Mexico; and what the RCA has done, by grace alone,
in the Middle East. No work groups will ever,
ever contribute in such fulsome ways to human
neediness, and we have because we’ve stuck it out.
We’ve persevered. We haven’t just bounced in and
bounced out, our digital cameras full of pictures
for coffee tables scrapbooks.
Denominations like ours have done good
things, wonderful things, by grace alone.
Maybe it’s time in this long history of separations and divorce for there to be some kind of reconciliation, maybe even a marriage, a resolution
to get along rather than suffer more afscheidings,
peace in the open fields where there’s been far too
much war.
I tried to explain to Phillip Yancey how the two
colleges were different. I know the stories, after all,
and he gave me his time. But when we parted, I’m
not sure he caught on at all, as most haven’t and
wouldn’t. Sometimes I’m not sure I do. After all,
the academic dean at Northwestern is an ex-Dordt
prof, and the president of Dordt was once a board
member at Northwestern, the runner-up for president over there just a year or two before he came
on board here. Explain all of that away.
Seems to me we’d all do ourselves and the cause
of the Kingdom some real good if we’d sing a few
fewer feel-good praise songs and go back to an old
favorite, now and then, sung in good old four-part
harmony. You know the old hymn, the one about
ties that bind, in a good sense, in a blessed, righteous sense.
Pro Rege—June 2014
21
Reformed Theology as
Worldview Theology:
The Public Nature of the
Gospel and Spirituality
its own position and function? Does it not mean
that your position and your work is the place
where you worship the great God? This confession
captures the essence of the Reformed worldview
and spirituality that inspired thousands of Calvinists to bravely serve God and people in the world.
Now, listen again to the same author:
by Jay Shim
Introduction
In The Work of the Holy Spirit, Abraham Kuyper
states,
God’s glory in creation appears in various degrees
and ways. An insect and a star, the mildew on the
wall and the cedar on Lebanon, a common laborer
and a man like Augustine, are all the creatures of
God; yet how dissimilar they are, and how varied
their ways and degrees of glorifying God.1
What do you feel when you hear such a jubilant confession—that each part of the creation, big
or small, high or low, is praising the great God in
Dr. Jay Shim is Professor of Theology at Dordt College.
22
Pro Rege—June 2014
Why did we, Christians, stand so weak, in the face
of this Modernism? Why did we constantly lose
ground? Simply because we were devoid of an
equal unity of life-conception, such as alone could
enable us with irresistible energy to repel the enemy at the frontier.2
While these two statements by Abraham
Kuyper are related in various ways, Kuyper is
struggling with a particular problem, even with
his confession that all creation reflects the glory of
God. Kuyper laments that Christians are losing the
battle with the enemy—modernism—even when
they are confessing the great God. For Kuyper, as
the quotation above indicates, the reason for such
failure is the absence of a coherent Christian life
system in the church. As secularism assails the
church in a systemic way, Christians, armed intellectually and emotionally with long-standing
humanism, are not equipped with a coherent and
comprehensive Christian life system. They are not
ready to live out the power of faith in actual life
situations.3
It is my humble judgment that we can extract a
shining gemstone from the treasure box of Kuyper
to shine on our Christian life in its battle with secularism today, even though his gemstone is more
than a hundred years old. The power of the church
does not lie in confession itself but in confession
that works in action. I think Kuyper’s words on the
power of the true church make a relevant point to
conservative churches today:
A Calvinist worldview and life
system shapes and determines
actual Christian thinking and
living from a particular vantage
point, for it determines the
way one interprets the world,
as opposed to other ways of
interpretation.
True conservatism exerts itself not for the shell
but for the pearl within the shell. It loves not the
appearance of things but the hidden germ of life
with which Christ has impregnated it….Therefore
all its love is focused on that Word of God, the
Word not only as it is spoken in sound but also as
it became flesh in Christ, and from Him entered
the joints of this world as the unique life-force in
which all things rest.4
The essence of the true church lies in the power
of the new life extended to the sanctified life in
the world, not in any external form of the church,
whatever that may be or whatever form the church
may be self-righteously proud of. With the ministry of the spoken Word, the church becomes the
flesh of the Word. And the “flesh” is to live according to the new life-system in the world. Thus, the
power of the church lies not in the form of the flesh
but in the mode of new living of the flesh.
On that basis, I will attempt to (1) describe
the Reformed theology as a worldview theology
based on a broad perspective of God’s redemptive
history from creation to re-creation, (2) describe
the Reformed spirituality as a world-affirming and
world-reforming spirituality for the goal of living
the comprehensive Christian life, and (3) suggest
that recognizing the public nature of the gospel
and spirituality serves to motivate and guide the
inner power of the new life toward a comprehensive Christian life. I will try to present these ideas
broadly, from the Calvinist tradition, particularly
on the basis of Abraham Kuyper and the neo-Calvinist development after him. Though the subjects
of this presentation—gospel, theology, worldview,
and spirituality—may sound heavily theological, I
will try to present this paper with a conviction that
they are not simply objects of study but also words
of wisdom; for these subjects guide our thinking
and living.
Kuyper found the basis of the then-needed true
Christian life in historic Calvinism. Let me begin
with Kuyper’s broad definition of Calvinism: a
“form of religion” or a religious “life-system” rather
than, understood in a narrower sense, a form of
theology or confession; in other words, Calvinism
is a mode of Christian thinking and living, not
simply a set of confessional statements. In a technical way, Kuyper defined Calvinism as a Christian “world-and-life-view”; he preferred the longer
term “world-and-life-view” to the shortened form
“worldview” to prevent the otherwise misunderstood connotation of the shortened term as one’s
view of the physical world.5 Thus understood,
Calvinism means a comprehensive framework of
Christian thinking and judging with which Christian humans experience, think, and live. It is an
all-embracing mindset founded on and shaped by
a trinitarian reading of the redemptive history of
God as revealed in the Scriptures. As such, it is
the vantage point from which we locate the meaning of salvation and the proper mode of Christian
life in the world. From this religious framework,
Kuyper developed a particular theology, the Calvinist theology, and its life view.
He proposed this view, the Calvinist life-system
in his Lectures on Calvinism, as a Christian alternative to the modernist life-system of his day and applied it to the whole of human life. In doing so,
he attempted to prove that the Calvinist life-view
is a coherent system, based on the sovereignty of
God, which encompasses the whole of human life.
With this purpose in mind, Kuyper described and
Pro Rege—June 2014
23
defended the Calvinist framework of life, through
which Calvinist Christians believe, think, and live.
1. Worldview comes with a power of interpretation
Before we move on to Kuyper’s worldview, let me
highlight the point that any view of the world powerfully shapes and determines our actual thinking
and living. A Calvinist worldview and life-system
shapes and determines actual Christian thinking
and living from a particular vantage point, for it
determines the way one interprets the world, as opposed to other ways of interpretation. In the postmodern culture, we are surrounded by a plethora
of challenging world-and-life views, each of which
demands that we see the world from a particular perspective and make decisions accordingly.
Temptation comes armed with reasonable ideas to
convince us. Temptations do not tempt us for the
sake of temptation, devoid of reason. Temptations
are often well-prepared intellectually and emotionally to persuade us. Every believer is tempted to
serve two lords: the Christian God of salvation and
the secular gods of success, happiness, or wealth.
We are not usually tempted to deny our God as a
whole but tempted to add another god. Temptation’s power is its distortion of the Christian view
and its promise to satisfy us with a certain meaning of life and a joy of life. Choosing a particular
view of life, a vantage point from which we interpret the world, is a matter of choosing between
two competing views of life.
Choosing a Calvinist worldview and lifesystem, a Christian deliberately decides to think
and live with the belief that the entire world and
our whole life belong to God. From such a vantage point, Calvinist Christians make all decisions
of thinking and living. From that vantage point,
Christians must discern the true view of life from
the untrue ones. Kuyper argued more than a hundred years ago that “two life systems are wrestling
with one another, in mortal combat.”6 I believe this
analogy of combat between a Christian life-system
and a secular life-system explains quite acutely the
present Korean Christian situation. As it was during the days of Kuyper, so it is even more today:
the battle is desperately fought not only between
competing life-systems but also between compet24
Pro Rege—June 2014
ing confessions. Understood this way, a Calvinist
life-system is an essential framework for living a
Christian life.
The power of the Calvinist life-system comes
from God’s own acts in the world. We come to
know the true view of life and the world from
understanding God’s acts of creation and redemption of the world. The power of the Calvinist lifesystem is based not on any idea or promise but on
God’s own acts! God, as the Creator and Law-giver, the Lord in action, is thus the true Interpreter
of the world. We come to know the true meaning and direction of human life in the world from
his redemptive history: creation, fall, redemption,
and consummation. The divine drama of salvation
is well summarized in Col. 1:15-20. There Paul
summarizes the crucial Christian truth: salvation
is intrinsically related to creation. He makes two
points regarding the salvation of the creation. The
first is that Christ the Creator is Christ the Redeemer: the One who created the world came to
save it. The second point is that Christ reconciles
all things, the created world, to himself by his crucifixion. Salvation, then, means a restoration of
the created world. The God who is accomplishing the ministry of reconciliation of the world calls
the reconciled to participate in his ministry. To the
reconciled Christians, God gives the “ministry of
reconciliation,” equipping them with the “message of reconciliation” so that they may live in the
world as “Christ’s ambassadors” (II Cor. 5:17-21).
Thus, God’s view of the world and human life
becomes the foundation of our interpretation,
which judges and directs human thinking and living. The divine act of salvation embraces the whole
created world, and that view of salvation should
shape our view of the redeemed life. Kuyper summarizes the Calvinist view in cosmological terms:
“the Sovereignty of the triune God [is] over the
whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms,
visible and invisible.”7 That comprehensive view
of God’s creation and re-creation has moved thousands of Calvinists to serve the Lord even in a tyrannizing context, for it gives a power to think and
live for the glory of God.
2. The Holy Spirit’s work from creation to recreation
The determining and guiding power of the Calvinist life-system is given by the Holy Spirit, according to Kuyper. He offered his view of the Holy
Spirit’s work as follows:
First, the work of the Holy Spirit is not confined
to the elect, and does not begin with their regeneration; but it touches every creature, animate and
inanimate, and begins its operations in the elect at
the very moment of their origin.
Second, the proper work of the Holy Spirit in every creature consists in the quickening and sustaining of life with reference to his being and talents,
and, in its highest sense, with reference to eternal
life, which is his salvation.8
Indeed, this view of the Holy Spirit’s work is
based on a trinitarian reading of Scripture as God’s
redemptive history. Kuyper’s summary of the Holy
Spirit’s work is that the Holy Spirit works from the
creation to the re-creation. In creation, the Holy
Spirit quickens the living beings that are created
by the Father and the Son, and in re-creation, he
re-quickens the living beings that are called by the
Father and redeemed by the Son, consummating
the goal of creation. In this way, Kuyper provides
a macroscopic and microscopic understanding of
the work of the Holy Spirit. In a microscopic way,
the Spirit inspired and stimulated each life-system
and moved each at creation and then applies the
work of Christ to individual members of the elect
at re-creation. In the macroscopic way, he maintains the system of life and brings the whole creation to its highest culminating potential, given at
the original creation. Both the microscopic and
macroscopic works of the Spirit in the created
world hinge on his quickening and re-quickening
of humans. Since the whole world turned to corruption and was cursed because of the human fall,
God in the Spirit re-creates the whole world by
restoring humans to the true image of God. The
principal work of the Holy Spirit’s re-creation is
not, then, simply to re-quicken the life (regeneration) but also to re-quicken the originally given
ability of knowing and interpreting the world correctly, in order to choose the divine goal of life
(discernment).9
It is noteworthy to see that Kuyper joined the
Spirit’s quickening life with spiritual regeneration
and with intellectual and moral sanctification. Indeed for Kuyper, inner conversion, or regeneration
of the heart/soul, is the foundation and starting
point of the Christian life. From regeneration,
the Christian is led by the Spirit to live a sanctified life. Kuyper does not sever the regeneration
of the soul from the sanctified life. The power of
the Holy Spirit that transforms the inner soul also
transforms the actual life.
Sanctification then is to be achieved in an actual life situation. Kuyper defines sanctification as
“a duty imposed, and not a gift imparted.” 10 The
sanctified life is a Christian duty! It means theologically that good works do not achieve merit for
salvation but instead are a consequence of salvation. It means practically that sanctification is
our work to do. While the theological meaning
suggests a negative connotation of work (Not by
works!), the practical meaning demands a positive connotation of work (Now live and work!).
Calvinists view sanctification and the fruits of the
Spirit as evidence of salvation and as a means of
serving others for the common good.
It is noteworthy to see
that Kuyper joined the
Spirit’s quickening life with
spiritual regeneration and
with intellectual and moral
sanctification. Indeed for
Kuyper, inner conversion, or
regeneration of the heart/soul,
is the foundation and starting
point of the Christian life.
This quickening work of the Holy Spirit, who
calls the redeemed to serve, governs every aspect
of redeemed life. Kuyper pointed out some of
the more significant aspects of the redeemed life
that have an impact on the Christian life. These
are consciousness, reason, will, and passions. ConPro Rege—June 2014
25
sciousness is humanity’s thinking faculty that governs “cognition, contemplation, reflection, and
judgment” of all human experiences in the world:
with the faculty of thinking we acquire a new set
of knowledge from a new perspective, “having reason qualified for the exercise of entirely different
functions.”11 The function of human thinking is
analogous to the role of a quarterback in a football
game. As the quarterback is to plan the strategy of
winning the game, based on his overview of the
game as a whole, so sanctified thinking provides
the direction of the godly life, based on a Christian
interpretation of the world. The faculty of human
thinking is an integral aspect of the Holy Spirit’s
work for Christian living.
The guiding function of thinking for the
Christian life is clearly illustrated in the New Testament. Rom. 1:21-32 describes in detail how
unregenerate humans live with the effects of depraved thinking. Rom. 12:2 indicates the guiding
function of Christian thinking for the redeemed
life: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern
of this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind.”12 Renewing the mind is an integral
aspect of the Spirit’s re-quickening life.
We just discussed the point that Kuyper placed
the spiritual aspect and reasoning aspect in the
whole of sanctified life, affirming their particular
positions and functions in it. In the Calvinist lifeview, the reasoning faculty is not relegated to the
so-called “worldly” function with an anti-spiritual
character, as in a dualistic view. Rather, the reasoning faculty is deemed a God-given gift that is to
be sanctified and restored to serve the spiritually
determined direction of life. This broad view of
the work of the Holy Spirit may serve as an antidote to all kinds of anti-intellectual tendencies
in the church and as a springboard to move to the
holistic Christian life. It may also work as a biblical alternative to the supernaturally biased views of
the work and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The Calvinist life-view is shaped by the biblical
teaching that the Spirit sanctifies and re-appoints
all the God-created aspects to their proper places
and functions in the re-created world. What God
the Father created good, though it became corrupted, is being redeemed by Christ and is now all
being re-created by his Spirit. In the re-creation,
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Pro Rege—June 2014
no one aspect dominates over other aspects; rather,
all are found harmoniously in their own indigenous places and function under the lordship of
God in Christ. Thus, even though the Calvinist
life-view is explained more in philosophical and
theological fashion, it is not to be understood as
a rationally oriented system of thought. And it
is not to be regarded as merely an object of academic comprehension. For it is, rather, biblical
wisdom for actual Christian living. And since, being shaped by a trinitarian reading of Scripture,
it provides a broader and more balanced idea of
the Holy Spirit’s work, it serves as an antidote to
partial understandings of the Holy Spirit’s work.
Thus, there is no separation of the sacred and
the secular or of the domain of God and the domain of the evil in the world. The biblical teaching of creation and redemption does not allow any
form of dualism. All aspects of life are reclaimed
for sanctification under the lordship of Christ.
As a result, cultural sanctification and communal
sanctification become as significant as personal
sanctification for the Christian. It is undeniable
that certain Christian theologies have dealt with
the doctrines of justification, sanctification, and
spirituality more in terms of personal and private
piety than of cultural and communal obedience.
The point that I want to make along with Kuyper
is that the creation, re-creation, election, and redeemed life are all described in a communal sense
“in Christ” (Eph. 1-2). The cause and effect of justification and sanctification are to be found in the
communal sense of “in Christ.” When this salvation “in Christ” is applied individually by the Spirit, we may see the effect of salvation beginning in a
person and becoming extended to the broader life.
3. Public nature of the gospel and spirituality
From this broad perspective of the Holy Spirit’s
work, we can draw the Calvinist world-and-lifeview. And the Calvinist world-and-life-view is
characterized by the public nature of the gospel
and spirituality. By the public nature of the gospel,
I mean that the knowledge of the gospel—knowledge about God, human beings, the world, and
salvation by grace in faith—is known publicly, to
the world. The knowledge of the gospel is a public
knowledge because it is known to all, because it is
for public benefit, and because it is about all. The
message of the gospel is the reconciliation of the
created world to Jesus Christ. The spiritual aspect
of the gospel, namely that salvation is made possible by God’s grace through faith, is a spiritual
message, and the fact that only those who are renewed by the Spirit may receive it does not prevent
it from being known to the whole world. Rather,
the spiritual message of the gospel came to be
If sanctification is a Christian
duty, as we discussed above,
then spirituality is a calling
for discernment (stressing the
responsibility of the human
agent) and at the same time an
invitation to humble obedience
(stressing the source of the
sanctified life).
known, to be received by people, for the benefit
of the world. Jesus Christ became incarnate to deliver the spiritual message to the public. Christian
spirituality, then, may be incarnated by the public
nature of the gospel.
At this point, some words are necessary to
clarify the meaning of Reformed spirituality, for
the term “spirituality” has been defined, or misdefined, from diverse points of view. Spirituality,
in its essence, is a spiritual disposition, formed
“according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:5), that directs
the believer to feel, interpret, think, and live in the
world from a regenerated point of view. The very
essence of Christian spirituality lies in the combination of the regenerated heart and mind. Spirituality is not limited to spiritual matters, for the regenerated life is to form a certain view of life, both
actively and passively. The combination of heart
and mind may be formed by diverse methods of
Scripture reading and theology. The Reformed
spirituality is characterized, as we have discussed
above, by its comprehensive view of creation and
redemption. I define Reformed spirituality as a co-
herent combination of a deep personal piety and
a comprehensive outlook of mind, caused and
shaped by the Holy Spirit for sanctified life in the
world. I believe that the combination of personal
piety and a comprehensive outlook may not be
limited to the Reformed circle, for it is drawn from
the biblical teaching.13
If sanctification is a Christian duty, as we discussed above, then spirituality is a calling for discernment (stressing the responsibility of the human agent) and at the same time an invitation
to humble obedience (stressing the source of the
sanctified life). The Christian is the spiritual man/
woman. The Christian is the one who is born again
by the Holy Spirit and thus now lives as the temple
of the Spirit. Paul points to a particular way of life
for the spiritual person—discernment: “The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but
he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment”
(I Cor. 2:15). In this passage the apostle teaches
that when “we are enlightened by the Spirit,” we
become equipped with “a spirit of discernment.”
So, does this passage teach an errorless Christian
life? Far from it, says Calvin. It is only the power
of the Holy Spirit that enlightens our mind. The
ability of Christian discernment is based solely
on “whether he is born again, and according to
the measure of grace bestowed on him.”14 Thus,
though this verse seems to exalt the human capacity of discernment, it actually teaches our total dependence on the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
The public nature of the gospel and spirituality
is a logical consequence of God’s acts of creation
and redemption. At the very beginning of Scripture, God reveals himself as the King addressing
his people; God is known to the public! In God’s
first act of salvation, God’s covenant connects
the creation to the post-flood re-creation (Gen.
1, 6-9). The correlation between the creation account and the post-flood covenant account anticipates the restoration of the created world. In
shaping his people, the God of the Hebrews is not
a tribal god but is proved to be the true God and
Lord of all nations (Ex. 6:6-8; 7:3-5; 12:12; 14:4,
18). The Jews were supposed to be the “light for
the Gentiles” with a purpose to preach the gospel
“to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). Jesus came
as the King-Messiah over the whole world and is
Pro Rege—June 2014
27
reconciling “all things” to God (Col. 1:15-20). The
Holy Spirit is shaping reconciled humans to be the
salt of the earth and light of the cosmos (Matt.
5:13-16). Christians are identified, in their relationship to the world, as humans originally were,
in the creation account. And God is proclaiming
at the end of the Bible, “I am making everything
new” (Rev. 21:5). A brief outline of redemptive
history shows that the God of the Bible is known
as the public God in his creation, in the way of
salvation, in the extent of salvation, and in the way
of the redeemed life.
As God is known publically in the world, so
humans are known publically. God created human
beings in his own image; God did not create only
religious humans in his image. And God did not
create humans in his image only in their religious
aspect. Rather, God created the human being as
nepes, the whole human person, out of dust of the
ground, with God’s own breath. Thus, the human
being, though created, became a “person,” who is
endowed with the gifts of a consciousness and free
will. The whole human person was supposed to
act and live in total dependence on the Creator.
God is restoring the whole human person, not just
the religious part of the person, to the true image of God in Christ. The regenerated Christians,
to whom the “new life” (Rom. 6:4) and the “new
self ” (Col. 3:10) are given, are Christian humans,
not simply religious humans. As a result, Christian
spirituality should shape the whole human person
and all human faculties. Richard Mouw captures
this biblical idea of spirituality in terms of the
whole human person: “First and foremost, I am
a human being. But I find being a Christian to be
the best way for me to be a human being.”15
Explaining that gift, Kuyper summarized the
public nature of the gospel as religion’s “universal
character, and its complete universal application”:
The whole created world must run according to
the law of God since “God has fully ordained such
laws and ordinances for all life”; the whole of the
human being, as God’s image, “must be pervaded
by the sensus divinitatis”; and all human activities must be done for the service of God. In other
words, as Mouw explains, “Religion concerns the
whole of our human race. This race is the product
of God’s creation.”16 The Christian life, then, must
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Pro Rege—June 2014
be understood as a holistic “life-system,” which is
described by Kuyper’s famous words, “there is not
a square inch in the whole domain of our human
existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over
all, does not cry, “Mine!”17
The public knowledge of God and Christians
is well captured in Christ’s identifying the Christian community as “the light of the world,” “a city
on a hill,” and “a lamp” (Matt. 5:14-15). Indeed,
this view of the Christian community as a public
reflection of God’s glory is recognized only from
the Christian point of view. This very spiritual perspective of the Christian community demands that
Christians move into the world with a recognition
of the public nature of the gospel. The gospel is
given for the homo peccator, human sinners. God’s
glory is to be reflected in all human culture. It is
to be reflected in the lives of individual Christians
(as the organic church in their living in the world)
as well as in the ministry and life of the church (as
the institutional church). This public reflection of
God’s glory in the Christian community is more
its own identity than a tool for mission and evangelism. When the Christian community reflects
the true human life, its preaching of the gospel
may bear beneficial fruits to the world.
The idea of antithesis does not prevent Christians from engaging the world with the public
nature of Christianity. Antithesis implies the conflicting principles of the regenerated life and the
natural sinful life. Antithesis does not mean a separation of the world into two different dominions
but a separation of the different worldviews and
lifestyles in the undivided world. The idea of antithesis thus may emphasize the radically different
principle of spirit-quickened regenerated life in
the context of the sinful world. When the antithesis is emphasized by Christ’s regenerating power,
it demands active engagement of Christians in the
world. Such engaging the world is made possible
only when the regenerated person is convinced by
and equipped with the public nature of the Christian worldview. The public nature of the gospel calls Christians
to work for the benefit of the world in all cultural
activities. With the confession that Christ is reconciling all things to himself and the recognition
of the gospel’s public nature, Christians are called
to work in the world. This belief is the basis for
Christian scholarship, Christian education, and a
Christian understanding of work as vocation. Living the gospel in the public, ordinary, and natural realm of the world is as serious and important
to God as living the gospel in the spiritual realm.
Christian living in the natural realm glorifies God
as much as service in the supernatural realm. For
God’s salvation restores nature.
Truth and justice may be singled out as significant aspects of reflecting God’s glory in the public arena as well. God by nature is true and just.
The whole Scripture testifies God’s demand for his
people to live out truth and justice in the public
life. Amos the prophet, for example, teaches that
true worship must be materially reflected in actual
life by living out truth and justice (Amos 5:24).
The sin of Israel was the combined transgression of
formalistic worship and immoral life. When one is
broken, the other must be corrupt also. In the New
Testament, the episode of Zacchaeus dramatically
illustrates the public nature of salvation’s effect.
Interestingly, Luke records Jesus’ announcement
of salvation to the sinful tax-collector without any
mentioning of repentance and spiritual regeneration. I assume that Zacchaeus repented of his sin
and accepted Jesus as his savior, but the main point
of the episode lies in the fact that Zacchaeus lived
Jesus’ offer of salvation in his economic life by
making compensation to the people from whom
he had extorted (Luke 19:1-10).
Combining the messages of Amos and Zacchaeus, we can conclude that we are to reflect our
worship of God materialistically in the very aspects
of our life that we deem the most essential and
the most important for living. For Zacchaeus, that
aspect is money and power. It was also money and
power in the case of the Israelites in the prophecy of Amos. I assume that humans and their lives
have changed much and the challenge remains the
same: living the gospel by acting out truth and justice in the world.
Based on the discussions above, we may characterize Reformed theology as a worldview, in that
the Christian confession is rooted in the trinitarian
understanding of creation and redemption and its
call to believers to live out their faith in the restored world. Reformed theology invites believers
to live within a grand structure of the world and
life for the glory of our great God, for it is “trinitarian in theology and catholic in vision.”18 The
public nature of the gospel guides believers to live
the redeemed life with a world-affirming and, at
the same time, world-reforming spirituality. The
world is God’s House and our Home within God’s
redemptive history: “For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16),
and “the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of
the world” (I John 4:14). The Kingdom of God’s
creation, the object of God’s love and care, must be
distinguished from the world as life corrupted by a
sinful nature (I John 2:15-17). The Reformed theology, with its public nature of the gospel and its
world-affirming spirituality, leads toward a public
theology.19
Conclusion
The Scripture reveals God creating and restoring
humans in the world. God redeems sinners to
become Christians, with an ultimate purpose of
shaping them into true humans. And the Kingdom that God is re-building embraces the whole
domain of the created world. The whole and every part of the world (the physical realm) and the
whole of human life (the cultural realm) must
reflect the creation principles that are restored in
Christ’s redemption. This comprehensive view of
God’s redemptive history shapes the all-embracing
Calvinist worldview and life-system. The width
and depth of God’s salvation shapes the public
with God’s world-embracing, and, at the same
time, world-reforming spirituality.
As a result, Calvinist spirituality leads Christians to participate in the reforming work of
Christ in all aspects of human life, with a confession that this work, no matter how sincere and
faithful that work may be, is not of humans but
of God, in Christ, who actually reforms the world.
In every moment of our participating in the work
of Christ, through success and failure, we should
maintain deep personal piety.
Illustrating several warnings on the Calvinist
tradition, Bratt mentions its potential tendency
of beginning the Christian life with the “inscrutable sovereignty of God” and ending it with
“magnifying human agency.”20 The replacement
Pro Rege—June 2014
29
of God’s sovereignty with human autonomy was,
in fact, the cause of the atheistic French Revolution, which Kuyper so vehemently opposed. Another possible flaw of Calvinism may be its heavy
emphasis on principles for the Christian life and
its arduous intellectual orientation, at the expense
of dynamic personal piety. Though principles provide formative direction for the Christian life, it is
persons, Christian humans, who actually obey and
live. The fundamental impetus for the Christian
life is not principle but power of the Holy Spirit in
the redeemed person. I have already pointed out
that Christian discernment depends on the power
of the Holy Spirit. I want to make a concluding
comment on the need of the right combination—
a sound, formal Christian worldview and personal
and communal pious spirituality.
The Calvinist life-system works best for the
Christian life when it is truly motivated by Calvinist spirituality. When Calvin identifies theology
as the study of knowledge of God and humanity, he defines that knowledge as faith-knowledge
based on the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. The
faith-knowledge we come to have of God and of
humanity presents us with an even higher conviction than the best reasoning can do in natural
knowledge. The starting point of faith-knowledge,
for Calvin, is personal piety: “that reverence joined
with love of God which the knowledge of his
benefits induces.”21 Such piety is created when an
individual is convinced of the countless benefits
of God’s salvation in his/her personal relationship
to God. That personal piety is the spiritual cradle,
a prerequisite and an essential condition for the
growth of a sanctified mind.
When the right combination is broken between the motivating personal piety and the formative Christian mind, two opposite dangers may
emerge as a consequence. The first is caused by an
absence of the power of the personal piety or by
an imbalanced emphasis on the intellectual side
of Christian principles. Without the proper inner
spiritual piety, the formal principle of living every square inch of human life under Christ’s rule
sounds like only an empty slogan. The opposite
danger may be caused by a blind emphasis on private spirituality at the sacrifice of the intellectual
and social aspect of the Christian life. In this case,
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Pro Rege—June 2014
the regenerated life becomes focused on a narrow
understanding of church mission and is directionless. The former danger appears in the form of a
Christian cultural program, while the latter danger appears as an other-worldly spirituality. While
not wanting to over-generalize, I tend to find the
former problem more among the transformationist circle and the latter problem more among the
fundamentalist and piety-oriented churches.
The inquiry looming here is not which one of
the two is more essential or significant for Christian thinking and living but how we find a working combination of the two. My answer to the
question and the thesis of this paper is that the
public nature of the gospel and spirituality can
join in an effective way. Recognition of the gospel’s
public nature motivates and directs inner personal
piety, the power of the new life, towards engaging
the world.
Endnotes
1. Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, tr. Henri
De Vries (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls
Co., 1900), 22
2.Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), 19.
3. Kuyper pointed out modernism in his European
context as a false promise in the name of the modern
human-centered uniformity, devoid of truth, in
“Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life (1869),”
Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D.
Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 19-44. Kuyper
preached on the radical newness of the Christian
life system, in its difference from the modernist
culture, as evidence of the true conservative church,
in “Conservatism and Orthodoxy (1870),” Abraham
Kuyper 65-86. In the American context there are
ample references from the Evangelical circle that point
out the problems of an anti-intellectual tendency and
the church’s unwillingness to engage society. Carl
F. H. Henry, already in 1947, lamented the failure
of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists to apply “the
fundamentals of the faith” in actual life, in The Uneasy
Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1947), xviii. George Marsden identified
American Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism
of the mid-1900s with the effort of maintaining
orthodox faith and other-worldly, individualistic,
and anti-intellectual spirituality, in Understanding
Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1991), 98-121. And Mark Noll pointed out
that the “failure to exercise the mind for Christ in these
areas [areas of life in the world] has become acute in the
twentieth century,” a failure he termed The Scandal of
the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994),
7. Noll also presents an example of the Christian mind
in scholarship and work from a rigid Christological
perspective, in his work Jesus Christ and the Life of the
Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011).
4. Kuyper, “Conservatism and Orthodoxy (1870),” in
Abraham Kuyper, 80.
5. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 11. For a
summary of the recent development of Kuyper’s ideas
in North America, see Albert Wolters, “Dutch NeoCalvinism: Worldview, Philosophy and Rationality,”
Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, eds. Hendrik
Hart, Johan Vander Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff
(Lanham: University Press of America, 1983), 113-131.
6. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 11.
7.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 79; Recently Wolters
summarizes the Calvinist view of redeemed life:
“Distinctive about the Calvinist understanding of the
Christian worldview… is that it takes all the operative
words of this basic formulation in a universal, all
embracing sense… So the Kingdom of God is truly a
re-creation, a restoration of the entire range of earthly
reality to its original goal.” Albert Wolters, “Dutch
Neo-Calvinism,” 116.
8.Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 46.
9. Vincent E. Bacote reads the re-quickening work of
the Holy Spirit as the agent that provides the context
of the common grace, The Spirit in Public Theology:
Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), 112-116.
10.Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 487.
11.Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 491-95.
12. See also Rom. 8:5-8.
13. Reformed spirituality is characterized by the fact “that the
personal experience of grace and salvation is inseparable
from the corporate relationships of church, community,
and world,” according to Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe,
“Piety,” Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith (Louisville:
Westminster Press, 1992), 279. Howard G. Hageman
summarizes John Calvin’s spirituality: “Calvin believed
nothing so much as that ‘our religion… must enter our
heart and pass into our daily living and so transform
us into itself that it may not be unfruitful for us…
[but]a religion of the tongue and mind, a piety of faith
alone,” in “Reformed Spirituality,” Exploring Christian
spirituality: An Ecumenical Reader, ed. Kenneth J.
Collins (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 138157. See, for a modern development of the Reformed
spirituality, James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom:
Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 2009) and Howard L. Rice,
Reformed Spirituality (Louisville: Westminster, 1991),
ch. 2, 6. Francis A. Schaeffer, a popular Evangelical
thinker, summarizes the spirituality also broadly, based
on his dialectical understanding of the “inward” piety
and the “external” life: Salvation is not just for going to
heaven. He reaches the conclusion of “positive inward
reality, and then positive outward results…. And we
are to love men, to be alive to men as men, and to be
in communication on a true personal level with men,
in this present moment of history” in True Spirituality
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1972), 17.
Donald Dorr, a Catholic missionary priest, suggests
also a comprehensive view of Christian spirituality by
linking spirituality and justice. He points to Micah 6:8
as the foundation of his “balanced spirituality”: “This is
what Yahweh asks of you, only this: That you act justly,
that you love tenderly, that you walk humbly with
your God,” in Spirituality and Justice (Dublin: Gill and
MacMillan, 1990), 8. See also pp. 195, 200-203.
14.John Calvin, Commentary on Corinthians, tr. John
W. Fraser, eds. David W. Torrance and Thomas F.
Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 2:15-16.
15.Richard Mouw, Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 20. Otto Gründler
summarizes Calvin’s spirituality in the same way:
“Homo Christianus is he who, being conformed to the
image and exemplar of Christ, lives not according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit” in “John Calvin:
Ingrafting in Christ,” in The Spirituality of Western
Christendom, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo:
Cistercian Publications, 1976), 187.
16.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 52-53.
17.Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” Abraham
Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.
18.John Bolt, Christian and Reformed Today (Jordan
Station: Paideia Press, 1984), 20.
19. For a general review of the kinds of public theology,
see Bacote, The Spirit in Public Theology, 40-53; John
Bolt, A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper’s
American Public Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2001), xvii-xviii, 193, 187-225.
20.James D. Bratt, “Raging Tumults of Soul: The Private
Life of Abraham Kuyper,” On Kuyper: A Collection
of Readings on the Life, Work and Legacy of Abraham
Kuyper, eds. Steve Bishop and John H. Kok (Sioux
Center: Dordt College Press, 2013), 38.
21.John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed.
John T. McNeill, tr. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1960), I. i-ii., III.ii.14-15.
Pro Rege—June 2014
31
Editor’s note: David Versluis wrote this paper to celebrate the final art exhibition of Jake Van Wyk, Professor of Art at
Dordt College. The image below is titled “The Coming” — a 7 foot by 12 foot ceramic tile piece by Jake Van Wyk.
Jake Van Wyk’s Angels
and Beasts—an art
exhibition: No Holds Barred
by David Versluis
But it takes Holy Scripture to tell the truth, that the sun
is a servant of the Lord speaking to all and sundry about
the Hound of heaven and earth.1 —Calvin Seerveld
David Versluis is Professor of Art and Graphic Design at
Dordt College.
32
Pro Rege—June 2014
For at least a decade the highly symbolic apocalyptic books of Revelation, Daniel, and Zechariah
have inspired much of Jake Van Wyk’s ceramic
sculptures and reliefs. The book of Revelation, in
particular, influences Van Wyk’s work.
Much of Van Wyk’s work in this exceptional exhibition is an expression of emotions. Interestingly,
Van Wyk’s artwork highlights a paradox of visually
based thought—what Iowa State University Art
Educator Dennis Dake talks about as being created
by implied and subconscious processing and automatism.2 This exhibition acknowledges Van Wyk
as an automatist artist, a characterization that can
be seen in the interchange between his clay work
and his prints and drawings.
Van Wyk, who grew up in the Christian
Reformed Church and is grounded in the
Reformed tradition, does not approach the symbolism of Revelation as fundamentalist eschatology,
trying to decode the symbolism in order to predict
the end times. For Van Wyk, Revelation is about
visualizing and expressing an unseen dimension.
The apocalyptic genre and the themes of death,
judgment, heaven, and hell can be disconcerting to
viewers. Yet, with unique sensory perceptiveness,
Van Wyk focuses on the astonishing apposition of
strong images that Revelation evokes. This exhibition is about the symbolic portrayal of the artist’s
imaginative ability.
Van Wyk believes that drawing and modeling
from life and nature as a way to personify the spirit
and movement of his subject gives meaning and im-
pact to his work. His work embodies what the prodigious early modern French sculptor Rodin said:
“Art cannot exist without life. If a sculptor wishes
to interpret joy, sorrow, any passion whatsoever, he
will not be able to move us unless he first knows
how to make the beings live which he evokes. For
how could the joy or the sorrow of an inert object
— of a block of stone—affect us? Now, the illusion of life is obtained in our art by good modeling
and by movement. These two qualities are like the
blood and the breath of all good work.”3
In the works in this exhibition, Van Wyk creates life and dynamic movement through his personal style and with surface treatments that range
from gestural marks to highly finished or more
natural-looking glazes. The impact of The Coming
is in offering front and side views in which figures
meet the viewer in the round—in human scale.
Van Wyk preserves and sometimes exaggerates the
sketch-like qualities and textures of his clay figures,
and the uneven surfaces come alive when struck by
light.
Artistically, Van Wyk explores traditional tools,
but he sees and uses them in a new light, which
presents exciting possibilities. An essay once quoted
by Van Wyk is titled “Exploration of the Tool,”
in which the author states, “tools may be considered more basically—not as ‘drawing’ or ‘painting’
tools, but as tools that make a mark of some kind
when combined with some material.”4 This statement may be the essence for many of Jake’s pieces.
He is interested in action work, that is, as the essay
continues to say, “the position of the hand, arm, or
body, and how they are moved; the position of the
tool and the portion of it that is grasped or used
and the position of the material in relation to the
tool enter into the exploration.”5
VanWyk’s abstract work and the multi-color
lithographs are his forte. In Jake’s graphics he usu-
ally works the space by dividing the layout with improvisational marks in gestured patterns, textures,
and syncopated rhythms. With this work he emphasizes changes in direction through the marks,
shapes, layering of subtle color, and slight fragmentation. Each mark, each stroke, of the lithographic
crayon or the incredible richness of reticulated tusche made by a wide brush is expressively independent, autonomous, and yet coherent. Many of Van
Wyk’s pieces are strangely beautiful and perhaps
are best described the way Mikhail Baryshnikov
described Merce Cunningham’s dance performances—as a “kind of organized chaos.”6
Light is key to Van Wyk’s work, moving the
viewer from the surface to the deeper meaning of
eternity. The light shines through in the negative
spaces of the white paper of his drawings and prints
and in the sheen of his sculptures and reliefs. His
techniques of layered ceramic glazes that build-up
shine on shine seem to capture, reflect, and originate light. And, while the light in Van Wyk’s sculptural pieces contrasts with the shadows, the shadows never overpower the light.
Endnotes
1. Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows for the Fallen World, first ed.
(Downsview, Ontario: Toronto Tuppence Press, 1980),
12. Print.
2. Dennis M. Dake, “A Natural Visual Mind: The Art
and Science of Visual Literacy.” International Visual
Literacy Association (IVLA). Ames, IA. 11 Oct. 2000.
Keynote speech.
3. Auguste Rodin, Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell,
trans. Jacques de Caso and Patricia B. Sanders (Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1984) 41.
4. Author of source unknown.
5. Author of source unknown.
6. Francis Romero, “Merce Cunningham.” Time 10 Aug.
2009: 21. Academic Search Elite. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.
Pro Rege—June 2014
33
Editor’s note: This poem was originally published in Pro Rege LII.2, but in an incomplete form. Here is the complete poem.
I Recognized the Mitten
David Schelhaas is Professor of English, emeritus, of Dordt College.
I recognized the mitten
as soon as I saw it,
gray fuzzy leather
and a wide wristband
stitched with gold thread,
horizontal lines crossed with V’s going up and down
around the band.
I must have dropped it there
sixty years ago
while checking to see
if my glasses were
in my pocket (they weren’t, they were lost again)
as I walked home from school
in mid-December.
Of course it’s not really the one I dropped—one of many I lost over the years—
it was dropped by some kid,
some forgetful kid whose mind was so full of plans for a snow fort
or the plot of a Hardy Boy book or the wonder of sailing ships like the three
Columbus sailed,
some kid, one of hundreds of kids all over the state
who lost a mitten yesterday
after the first snowfall of winter, kids who are constantly
driving their mothers crazy
because they lose their mittens and glasses
and forget
to take out the trash or feed the dog,
mothers who love their forgetful sons dearly even though they
threaten, whine, cajole—anything—
to get them to
develop a bit of consistency—
carry out a plan,
bring their homework home,
return an overdue library book.
These boys
have by now been diagnosed as ADD
and are probably taking medicine for it
or at least getting special strategy training to help them remember all
the terribly important things
they usually forget
like taking a pencil to class or putting their name on the paper or checking if
34
Pro Rege—June 2014
they have both mittens
before they head for home.
Shall I pick it up? The mitten?
Bring it to the school down the street?
I think I shall even though I know its owner will forget to check for it in the
lost and found tomorrow.
He may not even miss it for a day or two.
I wish I could talk to him, tell him it’s not as bad as they think it is,
that once upon a time
before adults discovered ADHD, a boy would just be called forgetful
and though he would never quite grow out of it,
he could survive adulthood with it.
I’d say “Just keep having fun, keep doing your best.
You may freeze your fingers a few times or get
an F for not turning in the book-report you lost on the way to school.
But everything will be all right
in the end.”
Pro Rege—June 2014
35
Book Reviews
Worthen, Molly, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism, Oxford, U. K.: Oxford
University Press, 2013. 376 pages. ISBN 978-0199896462. Review by Scott Culpepper, Associate Professor
of History, Dordt College.
If the primary goal of an author writing an academic work is to illicit intense debate, then Molly
Worthen’s Apostle of Reason is wildly successful.
Worthen’s comprehensive exploration of what she
calls a “crisis of authority” within contemporary
evangelicalism exposes the tensions at the very center of American Christianity and tips more than a
few sacred cows. She identifies the issue of clashing
authorities as the basic conflict within contemporary evangelicalism. This conflict in turn drives the
intellectual, political and evangelistic approaches
that evangelicals have pursued in order to influence
American culture.
Worthen, an assistant professor of history at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, focuses
on this clash of authorities from the very beginning
of Apostles of Reason. In the introduction, she argues
that“[t]he central source of anti-intellectualism in
evangelical life is the antithesis of ‘authoritarianism.’
It is evangelicals’ ongoing crisis of authority—their
struggle to reconcile reason with revelation, heart
with head, and private piety with the public square—
that best explains their anxiety and their animosity
toward intellectual life” (2). Yet Worthen also quickly
insists that this same desire to “reconcile” reason with
revelation has pushed some evangelicals to embrace
the life of the mind, even to the point of pursuing
academic careers, just as other evangelicals reject
academic authorities and instead rely on popular “experts.”
The main catalyst for the tension between mind
and heart in American evangelicalism, according to
Worthen, is the adoption of presuppositionalism by
several Reformed thinkers in the late nineteenth century. She identifies the development of the Princeton
school of theology, and the formulation of biblical
inerrancy as a theological concept, as contributors
to a greater dependence on presuppositionalism and
propositionalism in evangelical thought. Worthen
also points to the public theology of Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper as essential to
the adoption of presuppositionalism by evangelicals.
It is Kuyper and his disciples who encouraged evan-
36
Pro Rege—June 2014
gelicals to recognize and highlight the influence of
presuppositions on all worldviews, not just religious
worldviews. The popularity of worldview construction based on Christian presuppositions, which now
predominately orders evangelical thinking, is portrayed by Worthen as an alluring sphinx and a double-edged sword. According to Worthen, the same
worldview emphasis that drives the more intellectual
and socially active Reformed traditions was also utilized by the early founders of Neo-Evangelicalism in
the 1940s and ‘50s to support a more populist form
of the same vision. This populist form tended to
emphasize the influence of nonacademic “experts.”
This movement leaned toward the anti-intellectual
tendencies that many evangelicals and secular critics
have long bemoaned in contemporary culture.
Several interesting facets of Worthen’s argument
are introduced as she fleshes out these main ideas
throughout the book. After discussing the Reformed
influence on the founding of Neo-Evangelicalism in
the early 1940s, she then intimates that Reformed
ideas and influence were penetrating other traditions
attracted to the Neo-Evangelical movement who had
not previously been concerned with worldview or
inerrancy. Her particular focus on the influence of
ideas she identifies as “Reformed” on Wesleyan and
Anabaptist groups is particularly interesting. She
portrays Anabaptist thinkers such as Harold Bender
and John Howard Yoder as heroic purists determined
to preserve the integrity of their tradition against persistent inroads of Reformed ideas. As she points out,
certain Anabaptists found in Reformed theology “an
appealing framework in which to respond to secular
science and culture . . . , [yet o]thers wrestled to purge
this influence and nurture internal renaissance—and
even to “evangelize” the neo-evangelicals” (78). One
particular concern of these theologians was the possibility that Reformed views of Scripture and society
might lead members of the historic “peace” traditions
to abandon their pacifism. This alleged Reformed
transformation of other evangelical traditions is a
major theme in Worthen’s text. It is used in Apostles
of Reason to account for the surge in evangelical inter-
est in academia as well as the rise of populist forms
of worldview formation such as creation science and
Christian Reconstructionism.
Apostles of Reason contains a fairly detailed account of evangelical thought and cultural engagement in the late twentieth century. Detail is definitely one of Worthen’s strengths. Apostles of Reason
differs from many treatments of evangelical life in
American culture by broadening its scope to note
how the international growth of evangelicalism has
affected American evangelicalism. She also explores
the influence of the Charismatic movement on evangelical life and worship. These influences and their
tension with the intellectual tendencies toward presuppositional argument and the quest for intellectual
respectability are portrayed as both destructive and
creative aspects of evangelicalism. Worthen observes
that while the “charismatic renewal swept through
mainline Protestant and evangelical churches, converts mainstreamed and modernized practices long
exiled to the margins of Christianity, supposedly the
purview of snake-handlers who had resisted the taming of the Enlightenment” (142). In Worthen’s view,
international missions in particular have brought
evangelicals into engagement with non-western traditions, whose thought-categories are not as amenable to an emphasis on worldview construction and
presuppositional argument. Adjusting to these conditions on the mission field has helped to accentuate
the more emotive and pietistic elements of evangelicalism, as well as give evangelicals a more objective
perspective on American culture. Evangelical missionaries questioned the methods and morays of their
parent culture in areas such as civil rights and church
growth strategies. As Worthen succinctly puts it, “[i]
deas that hatched in the mission field came home to
roost”(133).
While Worthen captures the quest of more emotive evangelicals to weigh the head/heart balance in
favor of the heart, she also explores the quest of other
evangelicals to find more intellectual depth in worship
and worldview. Her discussion of the Charismatic
influence on evangelism is tempered with a parallel
focus on those evangelicals whose intellectual spirituality eventually led them back to more traditional
forms of worship. Noted evangelicals returned to
Canterbury, Rome, and Constantinople in a quest
to reconnect the future with more ancient forms of
devotion.
Many books about evangelism have been written
by evangelical scholars, but Worthen turns the microscope back on evangelical scholars in Apostles of
Reason. She describes how Francis Schaeffer’s modified form of Kuyperianism inspired a generation of
young scholars to pursue advanced studies in the humanities. These young evangelicals became part of an
evangelical intellectual renaissance of sorts, one that
both praised Schaeffer for his inspirational influence
and also challenged his sometimes distorted interpretation of evidence. Schaeffer and his progeny parted
ways when Schaeffer became more of a cultural warrior and evangelical academics focused on a more
careful, nuanced engagement with secular academia.
Commenting on Schaeffer’s epistolary exchange with
evangelical historian Mark Noll in the early 1980s,
Worthen observes that ”Schaeffer wanted evangelical
Americans to become soldiers of history rather than
careful students” (218).
The “culture war” and the emergence of the religious right feature prominently in the final chapters
of the book. Worthen seems to intentionally resist arriving at this topic too soon due to her stated purpose
to avoid the tendency of other scholars to make the
evangelical story a primarily political story. Worthen’s
analysis of the political engagement of evangelicals
is built on her previous foundation of emphasizing
the ideas and theological ideologies of evangelicalism. For Worthen, even the activist and public parts
of the puzzle are simply an extension of the battle
of authorities at the heart of evangelical experience.
Because evangelicalism derives so much of its energy
from its internal battles and intellectual contradictions, Worthen prefers to use to the term “evangelical
imagination” rather than “evangelical mind” to describe the way evangelical reflection influences evangelical action. Her conclusion is that these tendencies
are inherent in the evangelical construction of reality
and will continue unresolved. As she puts it, “[t]he
evangelical imagination has been both an aid to intellectual life and an agent of intellectual sabotage”
(265). This “evangelical imagination” will continue
to serve as a source of both inspiration and friction
for evangelicals. Worthen concludes ironically that
“[i]f the evangelical imagination harbors a potent
anti-intellectual strain, it has proven, over time, to be
a kind of genius” (265).
Worthen’s work is impressive for its sheer scope
and detail. She has a good command of the differences among evangelicals. Unlike many commentators
on evangelicalism, she does not paint all evangelicals
with the same label. One can disagree with the way
she positions different groups within evangelicalism.
For instance, Worthen appears to argue that the evangelical scholar who thinks that he or she is funda-
Pro Rege—June 2014
37
mentally different from a Ken Ham or David Barton
is fooling himself/herself to some degree. Scholars
and popular authorities may seem to come to different conclusions about the Christian approach to
science and history, but Worthen posits that they are
fundamentally the same in terms of their quest to
use Enlightenment categories tamed with Christian
worldview to understand the world. She may have a
point that evangelicals of all stripes are struggling together with the tension between Enlightenment categories and faith, but so is everyone else. Throw in the
fact that presuppositional thought possibly has more
affinities with post-modernity than with modernity,
and complications arise with Worthen’s formulation.
Evangelical historians have typically pointed to the
influence of Scottish Common Sense philosophy
as a major cause for adoption of an easy harmony
between Baconian Scientific thought and Christian
theology in early American culture. Both Mark Noll
and George Marsden, along with many others, have
expanded on these connections. Worthen notes this
influence of Scottish Common Sense philosophy in
passing, but focuses primarily on presuppositionalism
as the root of the evangelical crisis of authority. Yet it
would seem, more than anything else, that the quest
of modern culture warriors is to recapture the easy
affinity between Baconian induction and Christian
theology that existed in nineteenth-century America.
One assumption Worthen seems to make is that
everyone who uses worldview terminology in the
twentieth century must have been influenced by the
ideas of Kuyper and the Reformed tradition. This
perspective does not take into account the diversity
of the Reformed tradition or the actual content of
Kuyper’s world and life view, in contrast to the way
it is portrayed by other advocates of a worldview
approach to Christian thought. While evangelicals
have incorporated Reformed ideas, they have not
subsumed these ideas holistically, instead using elements of them in an incomplete or distorted fashion.
Worldview emphasis did not originate in the nineteenth century. Christians have been describing faith
in terms of comprehensive worldviews since the days
of Christ and the Apostles. While it is true that some
Reformed thinkers developed a distinctive language
and concepts for understanding Christian worldview
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the evangelical embrace of worldview has often
tweaked those ideas in ways that have sometimes
subordinated the Reformed conception of worldview
to aspects of their own tradition. For example, Mark
Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind contains an insightful investigation of the many ways that populist
modes of thought and a variety of traditions shaped
the evangelical mind, or what Worthen describes as
the evangelical imagination.1 Intellectual influence is
notoriously difficult to trace. It is doubly so in the
complex world of evangelical life and thought. The
Reformed influence in both academia and popular
evangelicalism would seem to be more complicated
and more multi-directional than Worthen describes.
While there are many aspects of Apostles of Reason
that are sure to provoke furious debate, the book
is definitely a page-turner and conversation-starter.
Worthen tells a good story and supports her thesis
with many interesting details. Apostles of Reason is a
provocative critique for Christians to consider as we
strive together to hold together the pondering of the
mind, the yearning of the spirit, and the devotion of
the heart.
Endnote
1. Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, l995).
Smith, James K.A., Discipleship in the Present Tense: Reflections on Faith and Culture. Grand Rapids: Calvin
College Press, 2013. ISBN 9781937555085. Reviewed by Neal DeRoo, Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Dordt College and Fellow of the Andreas Center for Reformed Scholarship and Service.
John Wilson, editor of Books and Culture, has
described James K.A. Smith as a “whirling dervish
of public philosophy [who] generates enough
intellectual energy to supply a middle-size city all by
himself.”1 While, as far as I know, he does not whirl
any more than the average person, the rest certainly
seems true—Smith is a great public philosopher
whose output is simply staggering. By my count,
Discipleship in the Present Tense is the 20th book that
bears Smith’s name as either author, editor, co-editor,
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Pro Rege—June 2014
or translator, and the ninth since 2009. But it is
not simply the quantity of Smith’s publications that
bears recognition. It is also the style and the quality
of those publications. His Cultural Liturgies series
(2009’s Desiring the Kingdom and 2013’s Imagining
the Kingdom, with a third volume still to come) has
shaped the conversation about Christian worship and
Christian education, shifting the focus away from
human thinking and believing and toward human
action and loving. That his name is as likely to be
mentioned in a Provost’s or principal’s office as it is
at a meeting of the American Academy of Religion
shows the extent to which Smith’s work has impacted
the broader Christian world, not merely the narrower
confines of academia.
Discipleship in the Present Tense is a reflection
of the breadth of Smith’s engagement as a public
intellectual. Like 2009’s The Devil Reads Derrida,
Discipleship in the Present Tense is a collection of essays
that (mostly) have been published in venues aimed at
the general population: magazines like The Banner,
Comment and Perspectives, as well as various online
sites and blogs. As such, the pieces are relatively short
(24 chapters, in a book that’s barely 200 pages long),
easy to read, and quite engaging on topics of interest
to a wide variety of people (such as parenting, praise
bands, posers, sports, and Thanksgiving).
The tie that binds the pieces together is laid out
in an excellent introduction. There, Smith claims that
the primary question of discipleship is the question
“What do we do now?” (xv). Answering this question
requires not only an understanding of what is to be
done but also an understanding of what time it is,
of the now in which we are called to act. Because
of this emphasis, discipleship requires an intimate
knowledge of both “the church” and “the world”
(xvi). This double knowledge is required, not so that
we can remain relevant in our present day and age
(204) but so that we can remain faithful in it; if we
do not understand the ways in which we are formed
by the cultural environments in which we live, we
will miss ways we have been formed that may run
counter to Christian discipleship. Historically, this
need to wrestle with the ways that the church has been
formed by the world has been captured in the motto
“the Reformed church is always reforming” (xix). It
captures the dual necessity of being the enduring
people of God while also unfolding new possibilities
in creation.
For Smith, this dual necessity is best met by
engaging the present via the depths and resources
of our historical tradition, a theme that he has been
discussing at least since his 2004 book Introducing
Radical Orthodoxy (though it is present in nuce
already in his first work, The Fall of Interpretation
[2000]). In Discipleship, Smith proudly declares
that his own tradition is “catholic Christian…with
a distinct Reformed accent” (2), and he regularly
draws on the resources of that tradition in speaking
to contemporary issues. The issue of discipleship
“in the present tense,” then, is to determine how
best to build on that (catholic, Reformed) tradition,
without changing the tradition to fit better in our
contemporary day and age. “Faithfulness,” he writes,
“requires knowing the difference between authentic
extensions [of the tradition] versus assimilative
adaptations” (xix). Either way, we cannot remain
content to live where we have lived, “simply
parroting what we’ve said and done in the past” (xix).
We must live in the now in a way that is faithful to
the tradition from which we emerge and allows us to
live in and out of that tradition today. This kind of
living requires a deep understanding of the present,
our tradition, and how they interact in our selves
and our lives. Discipleship in the Present Tense offers
insight into all of those things.
In the first part of the book, Smith outlines the
Reformed tradition, telling anew (which is “not
the same as merely repeating”) some of its main
elements, its best stories (1). These elements include
the goodness of creation, the universal (but not
universalist; see chapter 20) scope of redemption,
the sanctification of all parts of human living, and
the importance of Christian education. Much of
this will be familiar to readers of Pro Rege, but Smith
formulates these elements in ways that may help us
see them in a different light, to see them anew.
The book’s second and third parts examine
this present age. Part two contains reviews of three
different books (published between 2008 and 2011)
as examples of one way of critically engaging our
times. Especially of note in this section is his review
of James Davison Hunter’s 2010 book, How to
Change the World, where Smith, following Hunter,
argues that Christianity ought to be concerned
with “faithful presence” in culture rather than
with “transforming culture” (this theme comes
up in several essays throughout the book but is
concentrated most strongly here). For those of us
working at CCCU schools where this rhetoric has
becoming increasingly influential in recent years, the
notion of “transforming culture” and its alleged ties
to particular political programs must be meaningfully
discussed, and Smith here shows us how Hunter can
help begin that discussion on solid ground.
In part three of the book, Smith’s analysis of
the present age shifts to art, poetry, and literature.
Smith is careful to show that the arts are not merely
“instrumental ways to package religious claims,
but [are] genuine expressions of what creational
flourishing might look like,” and so are essential to
shaping the Christian imagination, thereby helping
train Christian love and desire (97). However, it bears
noting that the non-literary arts do not get much
Pro Rege—June 2014
39
attention; all the essays in this third part deal with the
written word—including novels, poetry, and a book
on “poetic theology.” There are no essays on theatrical
productions, musical performances, or art shows
(though Smith appreciatively mentions one in part
four), to say nothing of movies, television series, or
popular music. In fact, Smith seems to purposefully
distance himself from the latter, claiming that “the
church needs to move beyond its obsession with
the au courant of pop culture and reinvest in those
cultural forms that ask more of us: poetry, the novel,
painting, and more” (97-98).
This claim about re-investing in certain cultural
forms is underdeveloped, and it strikes me as
somewhat puzzling, given much of Smith’s work
elsewhere. If Smith’s Cultural Liturgies series has
taught us nothing else, it strongly argues that
spiritually deep and religiously meaningful formative
practices occur in cultural things as shallow as
Michael Bay films and iPhones. As such, it seems
we should be encouraged to grapple deeply with all
things and not merely be encouraged to grapple with
deep things. Granted, we should not ignore the things
traditionally described as “high” art—literature,
poetry, the visual arts—and if that is all that Smith’s
claim is asking for, then I have no problem with it.
However, one wonders if Hunter’s claim that “worldmaking and world changing are, by and large, the
work of elites” is not in the background here, perhaps
implicitly influencing Smith’s call for Christianity to
engage in what are traditionally more elitist cultural
practices (67). Given his own penchant for “faithful
presence” rather than for “changing the world,”
Smith should work against this influence, not in
support of it. As such, I would have liked to have
seen more investigations into how popular artistic
ventures shape the social imagination, investigations
that Smith has done so well in other venues; at least
a more thorough explanation for the focus on “‘high”
culture is warranted in Discipleship.
Finally, the fourth part of the book provides
site-specific pieces, offering us visions of how to let
the Reformed tradition speak to unique times and
places, in response to unique issues in the present.
These brief pieces probe issues that transcend the
time for which they are written, and some of the
most valuable chapters in the collection are in this
section. In fact, the interview in chapter 23 is an
immensely valuable introduction to Smith’s thought,
and I strongly recommend it as a go-to piece if
someone asks you who Smith is and what he’s all
about. Still, for people not interested in the particular
topic(s) under discussion—including the prosperity
gospel, universalism, sports, and doubt—some of
these chapters may be of little interest. Those who are
interested in the topics, however, will get a glimpse
of how short, popular pieces can be thoughtful, and
move a conversation forward by raising a new set of
questions. In this regard, these chapters are a reminder
to academics that we need not confine ourselves to
the monograph or the peer-edited journal in order to
do something deep and meaningful; indeed, doing
otherwise might help us find better ways of sharing
our gifts with our brothers and sisters in Christ (204),
and so help us produce “Christian scholarship for the
church” (xxi; emphasis added).
Endnote
1. See his endorsement on the back cover of Smith’s
2009 collection of essays, entitled The Devil
Reads Derrida and Other Essays on the University,
the Church, Politics and the Arts (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans).
Kaiser, Robert G. Act of Congress: How America’s Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn’t. New
York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 2013. 417 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-74451-7. Reviewed
by Jack R. Van Der Slik, Professor Emeritus, Political Studies and Public Affairs, University of Illinois
Springfield.
According to recent Gallup surveys, Americans
who “approve of the way Congress is handling
its job” constitute only a small minority of the
people. In August 2013, just ten percent of survey
respondents expressed approval. It is in the context
of this discontent that Robert Kaiser’s study has
appeared, a discerning study of a notably important
act of Congress, properly referred to as the DoddFrank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection
40
Pro Rege—June 2014
Act of 2010.
Acts of Congress come in all sizes and degrees of
complexity. This one, Dodd-Frank for short, grew
increasingly complex as it passed through the basic
legislative stages—initially House committees and
House floor; Senate committee and Senate floor; then
reconciliation of two different versions in a conference
committee of both senators and representatives. This
procedural outline is just as portrayed in elementary
civics texts. But the particular process for DoddFrank had the engagement of many players along the
way to enactment. The legislative history began with
the Obama administration, then moved to the House
Democrats, obtained greater Republican input in
the Senate, only to be overruled by the Democratic
majority there. The major administrative players were
under Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury.
In the House, the primary player was Democrat
Barney Frank of Massachusetts, first elected in 1980
and then chairman of the House Financial Services
Committee. The committee itself was a broad cross
section of the House with 71 members. The Senate
Banking Committee was led by Chairman Chris
Dodd of Connecticut, who worked hard to engage
help from the ranking minority Republican, Richard
Shelby of Alabama.
The story of this legislation is told in remarkable
detail by a Kaiser, a deeply experienced congressional
reporter from the Washington Post. His introduction
traces the steps he took to gain extraordinary access
to the congressional players, importantly including
the legislative staffers who usually serve their
memberships in anonymity. Kaiser was present
at many decision points, and he continuously
interviewed a variety of participants at key points
along the way. It was Kaiser’s good fortune to explain
the legislative process for a bill that was often in doubt
for passage but ultimately gained enactment, capped
by the president’s signature. Of course, he could have
accounted for a bill that ended in defeat, but this
story concludes with celebration in the Democratic
camp for a winning strategy.
Dodd-Frank was a legislative response to the
fiscal crisis that deepened in 2008 into what is now
referred to as the “Great Recession.” The law added
2000 pages to the United States Code. Its provisions
are too numerous even to sketch out here. Suffice it
to say that it changed all of the nation’s regulatory
laws regarding banking, securities, and mortgage
lending. Lawmakers sought to prevent future bailouts
and protect citizens from companies “too large to
fail.” Some key elements in the legislation include a
Financial Stability Oversight Council, with power to
break up companies whose collapse could undo the
financial system. The law adds consumer protection
and regulation of derivative financial instruments
and hedge funds. It tightens credit regulations and
mortgage requirements.
Kaiser offers three precious takeaways in this
legislative saga: One, how important elections are
to the substance of legislation; two, how crucial
legislative staff is to substantive quality of legislation;
three, how artificial and misleading the public version
of policy debate is for citizens. Here are a few words
about each.
Dodd-Frank could not have passed in its present
form except for the 2008 election outcome that
put Obama in the White House and Democratic
majorities in both the Senate and the House.
Contemporary partisanship means that, particularly
in the House, the minority adds very little to the
substance of bills with either amendments or votes.
The Senate is different, mostly because common
usage of the filibuster necessitates 60 votes to pass
bills. A cohesive minority party of 41 or more (in the
111th Congress there were 47 Republican Senators)
can bargain on substance by threatening to kill
legislation by filibuster. Consequently, Republicans
in the Senate were more of a force in this legislation
than were the House Republicans. Nevertheless, the
bulk of this legislation reflected the will of majority
Democrats.
Kaiser reports extensively on the work of
congressional staff on both partisan sides. He notes
again and again that the knotty details of legislative
substance are routinely unraveled and smoothed out
by technically competent staffers who have deeper,
more thorough competence in legalese then do their
politician overseers. The following illustrates this
point: “Staff....meetings were held out of public
view. This could often be the most important part of
the legislative process, where practical decisions were
made that could have a big impact when enacted
into law. Members never participated in those
technical conversations. They relied on their aides to
respect whatever instructions they had been given.
The instructions were invariably broad and vague,
so much was always left to the staff’s creativity and
discretion” (170).
Disappointingly, Kaiser’s close scrutiny revealed
to him that after hours of hearings, accommodations
to Republican objections and other significant
compromises, Senator Shelby would still argue that
“[a]ll [Democrats] were trying to do is exploit the
crisis in order to expand government further and
reward special interests.... [I]t will not prevent future
bailouts....” (366-367). Not true, because provisions
to the contrary were clearly in the legislation, but the
Republican minority would not publicly abandon its
partisan script. Repeatedly members of both parties
attacked the bill, based on faulty perceptions or news
reports, not on the actual content of the legislation.
In short, member ignorance of legislative content
Pro Rege—June 2014
41
was repeatedly evident during the course of public
debate.
One of the author’s great strengths is in pausing
in his chronology to explain procedures and historic
context for the reader. While hardly a textbook, this
thoroughness significantly helps the reader who
comes with a basic understanding of the workings
of Congress. As his story unfolds, Kaiser reveals his
favor for the substance of the bill, but his criticisms
fall upon nearly all the participants in an evenhanded
way.
We may credit Dodd-Frank for making
substantial improvements in a flawed regulatory
environment, but the effort and accomplishment fall
short of the injunctions from the prophet Amos to
“let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a
never-failing stream!” There has been a remarkable
lack of concern for penalties upon the exploiters or
for provisions to make up the losses to those who
were deprived by unjust mortgages or for interest that
was foregone. The political players were content with
a secular rebalancing of political interests in a system
that previously drifted away from regulation into
exploitation. A more thorough vision for creational
renewal is not present in this legislative story.
Speaking as one who desires a successful, just,
effective, and trusted Congress, I find it disquieting
to acknowledge that the Congress and its members
typically quoted in the news media mostly mouth
talking points to claim credit and avoid political
blame. Substantive discussions of public justice in
matters of policy are extraordinarily rare. Neither
Kaiser nor I have easy remedies for this lack. I
do, however, recommend Act of Congress as an
enlightening read about the contemporary American
legislative process.
Chapell, Bryan, Christ-Centered Sermons: Models of Redemptive Preaching. Ada, Michigan: Baker Academic,
2013. ISBN: 978-080148692. Reviewed by Reverend Mark Verbruggen, Pastor of the First Christian
Reformed Church, Sioux Center, Iowa, and adjunct with the Dordt Theology Department.
Every week, thousands of sermons are preached
across the United States. People from every walk of
life come together in churches to hear a portion from
the Bible read and to hear someone preach a sermon
based on that reading of the Word. Why do they
come? Why do they subject themselves to a sermon
drawn from a Bible reading? Generally speaking,
people do not come in such numbers to other public
forums. Lectures given on topics derived from
works of literature, science, or some other academic
discipline do not attract nearly the number of listeners
as does the preaching of the Word occurring weekly
in churches. There is surely something about the
sermon that draws people to come and hear. Perhaps
that is because the purpose of preaching is not like
any other speaking event. Yes, some Christians do
go to church because such attendance is a spiritual
habit. But a sermon is not mere information about a
topic or situation. It is more than that. It is a Christcentered event.
Though thousands of sermons are preached every
week, how many of them are focused on the main
thing, that being the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Bryan
Chapell, author of Christ-Centered Sermons, argues
in his introduction that true Gospel preaching is
not simply a lecture but an encounter with God. If
God is real and the Word of God is living and active,
then God is active in the preaching of his Word. The
power of preaching is not in the preacher himself
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Pro Rege—June 2014
but in the God who speaks through the preacher to
convict the heart, renew the mind, and strengthen
the will. Chapell calls each occurrence of these effects
a “redemptive event.” Sermons can lift listeners from
the mundane things of this life to a view of God that
brings new life to them and the world through the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
With Christ-Centered Sermons, Chapell, senior
pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria,
Illinois, has given us a helpful how-to book for
preachers. Yet anyone who values preaching or who
has ever wondered what makes for a good sermon
will appreciate the insights offered in this book.
Church leaders—including elders, deacons, and
Sunday School teachers—will find this book helpful.
After a brief introduction, in which Chapell explains
what preaching ought to be, the remainder of the
book consists of thirteen example sermons written
by Chapell himself. God, he argues, is active in his
Word, so we should “preach with the conviction that
the Spirit of God will use the truths of his Word as we
preach to change hearts now!” (x). The sermons that
follow Chapell’s introduction are written with this
conviction. Each of them comes with explanatory
notes that explain why and how sermons are
organized, and when and how to use illustrations in
sermons. The book’s other notes include how to use
“Prayers for Illumination,” or prayers during worship
specifically about the sermon; how to introduce the
Scripture reading; and how to introduce the sermon
itself.
The book’s example sermons show clearly
Chapell’s gift for Christ-centered preaching. I will not
offer a review of every sermon, but one that I found
particularly intriguing was “Example Sermon Four,”
which Chapell introduced as a “Topical Sermon for a
Special Occasion” (55-69). When I first read that this
would be a “topical sermon,” I nearly skipped over it.
After all, I am passionate about Reformed expository
preaching and find myself turned off by sermons
centered around particular topics. Ordinarily, topical
sermons are more about the preacher’s opinion on a
subject than about the Word of God. And if listeners
want to know the “keys to a successful marriage” or
“how to raise healthy and happy children,” they can
buy books on those ever-popular topics. Chapell
understands this concern as well. In the introduction
to one of his topical sermons, he tells us that “[t]he
danger of a topical sermon is that it may drift into
expressing personal or popular opinion. Because the
message is not anchored to a biblical text, the preacher
may float free from biblical truths.” This point was
quite easy for me to agree with. But then, Chapell
says topical sermons are “not inherently” opinionbased and that good preachers should attempt to
preach them on occasion. This point at first struck
me as an odd comment, and I didn’t know whether
or not to believe him. Chapell adds, though, that
a topical sermon can be very biblical, but whether
it is or not is more a consequence of the speaker’s
commitments than a consequence of the sermon’s
structure. He followed this point with an example
topical sermon based on Psalm 126, one entitled
“The Glory of the Lord,” which Chapell preached in
an African-American congregation in 2009, on the
eve of the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
As a preacher living in Northwest Iowa—a
place and culture that will vote predominately for
Republicans—this sermon was not only fascinating
to read but transformative to my mind. I had never
thought about how that political event would speak
to the theology of a Christian community that was
very different from mine. As I read the sermon, I
began to realize how much context and culture will
affect how we hear the Word of God. The words
of this sermon were filled with power and passion,
as the biblical text was spoken into the context
of the times and the congregation. In Chapell’s
sermon we hear such passion expressed in eloquent
biblical language: “The glory of the Lord comes to
earth and rings in heaven when the church is the
multicolored body of Christ that God intends. The
faith solution requires the body of Christ to love
one another despite our differences and to help one
another despite our distance.” Chapell applies this
overarching point to the immediate sociopolitical
context by adding substantive comments about
reactions to the presidential election: “I don’t know
how it will happen, but I do not believe that we,
as the body of Christ, will have a more important
time to express this love than during the next few
years. I cannot imagine but that President Obama’s
racial background will be used by some to divide,
deride, and suppress. If he makes a mistake, some
will immediately blame his race. If he is challenged,
some will immediately charge racism. If he is not
challenged, some will immediately assume racial
privilege” (66-67).
So how do we evaluate preaching? What makes a
sermon “good”? Chapell’s view is that our preaching
should not be judged primarily by what people sense,
learn, or remember from the sermon. Instead, after
hearing a good sermon, we are compelled to think
about how we now live. How do we become “living
letters” of the Truth we have heard? How can our
day-to-day lives bring “gospel” into the places we
live, work, and play? Chapell answers that “[t]he
preacher’s obligation to transform as well as inform
should compel us to ensure that our sermons are
instruments of empowering grace and conduits for
needed truth” (xi). Earlier in this review, I mentioned
that Chapell says that preaching is a “redemptive
event.” When I came across this particular phrase,
I knew that this book would be one that I would
be glad to read. There is something special about
the sermon. If it is rooted in the Word of God and
delivered in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is not
mere words to the wind. The sermon has power
because God’s Word is powerful. It is a “redemptive
event” that brings grace and truth into this world’s
time and space. As a preacher myself, I must believe
that it can change hearts and lives. In a culture
that celebrates celebrity, it is no surprise that even
preachers have felt the pressure to be a celebrity
of sorts. Anyone with access to a television or the
internet can watch all kinds of celebrity preachers
preach their sermons to massive crowds. There is a
temptation to be an entertainer from the pulpit, a
method that might draw in big crowds. We might
even conclude, from watching celebrity preachers,
that success is determined by the number of people
drawn in by the preacher. However, and Chapell
probably concurs with this, we know that the size of
Pro Rege—June 2014
43
the crowd has nothing to do with whether or not the
sermon is really a “redemptive event.”
Although Chapell writes this book primarily for
preachers, they are far from the only ones who will
benefit from this gem of a book. All who love the
Church, love the Word of God, and are passionate
about seeing that Word declared in power will
benefit from reading this book. One group I have in
mind are those who serve as elders in their particular
congregations. In the Reformed tradition, elders are
ultimately charged with overseeing the preaching
of the Word in their congregation. The form for
the “Ordination of Elders and Deacons” from the
Christian Reformed Church, for example, says that
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Pro Rege—June 2014
“[e]lders are responsible for the spiritual well-being
of God’s people. They must provide true preaching
and teaching, regular celebration of the sacraments,
and faithful counsel and discipline.” Therefore
elders, too, would benefit from Chapell’s book
because they are to be keen listeners of the sermon
in order to make sure it is truly based on the Word
of God, accurate according to sound doctrine, and
affective in encouraging the people to be agents of
transformation in all of life. Perhaps Chapell’s book
can be a starting point for them to ensure that sermons
are not merely words to the wind or entertainment
but truly transformative, Christ-encountering events!
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Dordt College is a Christian liberal arts college in Sioux Center, Iowa, which believes
that the Bible is the infallible and inspired Word of God and which bases the education
it provides upon the Bible as it is explained in the Reformed creeds. Hence, the college
confesses that our world from creation to consummation belongs to God, that Jesus
Christ is the only way of salvation, and that true comfort and reliable strength can be
had only from his Holy Spirit.
Dordt College was established in 1955 and owes its continuing existence to a
community of believers that is committed to supporting Christian schools from
kindergarten through college. Believing in the Creator demands obedience to his principles
in all of life: certainly in education but also in everything from art to zoology.
The Dordt College community believes in the Word of God. God’s revelation in
word and deed finds its root in Jesus Christ, who is both Savior from our sin and Lord
over the heavens and the earth. The Bible reveals the way of salvation in Christ Jesus
and requires faithful thanksgiving to him as the Lord of life, especially when exploring,
coming to understand, and unfolding the diversity of creation.
Dordt College, in its many departments and programs, celebrates that diversity and
challenges students not merely to confess Christ with their mouth but to serve him with
their lives. Empowered by the strength of his Spirit, Dordt College stands ready to meet
the challenge of providing and developing serviceable insight for the people of God.
Pro Rege
A quarterly faculty publication of
Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa