The Calvinist International
“Article 36 of the Belgic Confession Vindicated against Dr. Abraham Kuyper”. by P. J. Hoedemaker Ruben Alvarado (Translator) Pantocrator Press (2019) Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) rightly stands as a towering figure in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Moreover, he is known for key principles that have fashioned the nature of Reformed thought in Europe, […]
Richard Hooker famously (?) said: “A gross error it is, to think that regal power ought to serve for the good of the body, and not of the soul; for men’s temporal peace, and not for their eternal safety: as if God had ordained kings for no other end and purpose but only to fat […]
It seems to me that Christian advocates of an über-Jeffersonian separationism with respect to “church” and “state,” which usually in such a view are taken to mean not quite “church” and “state,” but something more like “religion” and “political order,” need to be able to answer coherently the following syllogism: P1. Man’s chief temporal end is […]
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? […]
Today marks the anniversary of the birth of the term “Protestant,” but its origin is frequently unknown or ignored. The term does not come from the camp of theologians, but from that of magistrates acting as the heads of their realms. It is a term, in other words, that reminds us of the importance of […]
It is well known (though not as well known–or at least accounted for–as it should be, especially in some conservative Protestant circles) that Augustine had high praise for the Christian emperors Constantine and Theodosius at the end of Book 5 of City of God, which indicates that “political Augustinianism”–whatever that is–does not imply or logically lead […]
Mark J. Larson, Abraham Kuyper, Conservatism, and Church and State (Eugene: Wipf and Stock), 2015, 111 pp + xii. Abraham Kuyper is becoming more and more a point of conversation for politically-minded Christians. Indeed, as my TCI associate Jordan Ballor has just pointed out, we threaten to morph into the Neo-Calvinist International if recent article trends continue. In […]
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 […]
There are a number of dualisms that often come up in discussions of political theology. Many of these bear resemblances with one another, even while they remain distinct–which is to say, some of them share similarities rather than identity. Below I’ve tried to sketch out what is proper to each one of these dualisms. Obviously […]
This is Part 2 of Aquinas’ exegesis of the phrase “My kingdom is not of this world” in his sixth lectio on John 18. (Part 1 can be found here.) Text Hic adhibet signa evidentia ad probandum quod regnum eius non est de hoc mundo, et primo ponit signum; secundo concludit intentum, ibi nunc autem regnum […]