The Calvinist International
A. A. van Ruler Address delivered in Hilversum, the Netherlands, on June 3rd, 1941, to the convention of emeritus and officiating clergymen. Translated by Ruben Alvarado The question of the relationship of the kingdom of God to the church is of major significance for the ecumenical question in the broad sense of the word. Is […]
A. A. van Ruler Address delivered in Hilversum, the Netherlands, on April 23, 1942, to the local chapter of the Confessional Union. Translated by Ruben Alvarado In the church, there are people and there are things. It is beyond all doubt true when one says, the church – that is all believers taken together, the […]
A sermon delivered on Sunday, January 29th, 1893, in the Amstelkerk, Amsterdam, by Dr. P.J. Hoedemaker Translated by Ruben Alvarado And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you? […]
This is a complex matter that cannot be understood if we simply engage in emotivist responses to the latest news items that cross our paths. It’s time to get serious with this discussion. So let’s put our thinking caps on and begin with some basic distinctions and principles. We start by distinguishing between migration and […]
On the eve of the 239th anniversary of the independence of the United States, it is a good time to take stock of how matters stand. What is the state of its union? That state is now dominated by recent Supreme Court decisions, most importantly the decision mandating the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex […]
[update April 25, 2017] The following is a chapter from a work by the noted Dutch Reformed theologian Oepke Noordmans. The book is entitled Liturgy and is devoted to the task of elucidating and developing the characteristic Reformed liturgical tradition over against the modern “liturgical movement.” Noordmans situates the Reformed liturgy within the Western Latin tradition, […]
Denominationalism defines the modern church. By denominationalism is meant the social existence of the church as a congeries of groupings (congregations) invested by private law with a certain degree of collective or “moral” personality, grouped together voluntarily in associations of greater or lesser geographic extent, whereby these associations are separated the one from the other […]
The terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo bring into sharp relief a major contradiction in the intellectual framework of modern democracy. In fact, it highlights a fault line. Freedom of speech is one of the supposedly unshakeable pillars of liberal social order. But the way liberals have dealt with the issue brings into […]
‘Tis the season to be jolly? For many, the answer is “What? Are you kidding?” Christmas conjures up images of desperation shopping, crowds, hurriedness, nerves (did I get everyone something? Was it appropriate?). Not to mention the thought of receiving presents for which a polite response requires an effort of superhuman self-control. This obsessive-compulsive gift-giving… […]
Assuming the rightness of the critique provided by anti-revolutionary thinkers such as Groen van Prinsterer, what then should be the result? Obviously, by the nature of the case, Christians, being anti-revolutionaries (whether Rousseauian or Jeffersonian: the difference is not as great as one might think), cannot resort to outright revolution. The social order informed, indeed […]