The Calvinist International
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 […]
I haven’t had the opportunity to post much over here lately, but I thought I’d share one reason why: I’ve been engaged in developing a new series, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology published by Lexham Press. This is a twelve volume collection of Kuyper’s major works on culture, common grace, politics, economics, education, […]
In a thoughtful and honest article at Reformation500 Stephen Wolfe suggests that in my work Reformed social ethics has taken a “social egalitarian turn.” Wolfe is responding to my series of articles on Presbyterians and Race at Reformation 21. He specifically highlights this claim that I made: The real problem was the interpretation of the […]
Having given his name to an international theological and political movement, indeed an ism, it is perhaps surprising to learn that Abraham Kuyper is not more widely read outside of Dutch-speaking audiences. Of the North American followers claiming his name, relatively few have read any of Kuyper’s works outside of the Stone Lectures. A significant minority […]
James D. Bratt helpfully explains how the construct of “worldview” came into Kuyper’s thought and use and why he found it to be so important: “Worldview” as an understanding of collective consciousness had its roots in Immanuel Kant’s later work and had steadily gown with the German Romantic and Idealist movements stemming from it. By […]
While Abraham Kuyper’s life and legacy has very much to commend itself, one of its less felicitous contributions has been its peculiar outlook on philosophy. Though Kuyperianism has in many ways detached itself from Kuyper and become an independent thing, saying both more and less than Kuyper himself, it is still the case that its […]
David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 101: In theology this was the era of neo-Calvinism–the narrowest, darkest, bleakest, and most pessimistic form of Christianity that has ever been invented, more so even than the theology of Calvin himself…. In a later and […]
D.G. Hart Calvinism: A History Yale University Press, 2013 Usually the reader beginning a book by D.G. Hart can expect a good deal of polemic and a rather narrow historical narrative. The introductory section to his latest work, Calvinism: A History, might give the same impression, as Dr. Hart says that “Reformed Protestantism” greatly impacted the […]
Dr. Nelson Kloosterman has been engaged in some very important work over the last few years. He has been translating the works of Abraham Kuyper into English. It’s amazing to consider that a man so widely cited as Kuyper has so little actually available in English, but it’s true. Few “Kuyperians” have ever really read […]
Our friend Jordan Ballor has a helpful essay on Abraham Kuyper’s understanding of nature, sin, politics, and the state. Interacting with Michael Hannon’s recent thoughts on Les Miserables and what it has to say about the basic foundations of politics, Dr. Ballor offers up Kuyper as a better model of legal philosophy. The essay is also […]