Kuyper’s words, works & world

 https://www.kuyperonline.nl/

Herman Bavinck: “All of God’s creation is good … “

 Herman Bavinck from The Problem of War:

But it is all the more striking that Christianity is devoid of all asceticism and from its very beginning took on a positive relationship to the world at large. This fact is principally found in the statement that God loved the world and that Christ came not to destroy the world but to save it. From this focal point lines are drawn in all directions to indicate the place Christians are to occupy and the attitudes they are to have in this sinful world. They must not withdraw from the world, but being in the world they are to keep themselves from the evil one. Nothing is unclean of itself. All God's creation is good and nothing is to be rejected if it be accepted with thanksgiving. Marriage is honorable among all. The government is God's servant and is entitled to obedience and respect. Whoever becomes a Christian is to remain in the calling to which he was called. The prayer of Jesus' disciples is that God's name be hallowed, that His kingdom come, that His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. All this points, not to an avoidance, but to a sanctification of the world.

Translated by Stephen Voorwinde. The Banner of Truth (July-August 1977): 46–53.

Why we should read Vollenhoven today

 Available here

Some new and forthcoming books

 

Kuyper Chronicles Podcast

 The Kuyper Chronicles Podcast is well worth checking out 

Roques & Yeadon on a Dooyeweerdian approach to evangelism

 Yeadon, M. & Roques, M., 2023. Mr Dooyeweerd, Modal Aspects and Dynamic Evangelism. KOERS — Bulletin for Christian Scholarship, 88(1). Available at: https://doi. org/10.19108/KOERS.88.1.2528

Dooyeweerd’s Reformation & Scholasticism read by Rudi Hayward

 This is brilliant!

Neo-Calvinism in Germany

 

Origin of the term neo-Calvinism pre 1855?

The term neo-Calvinism is becoming more and more popular as this ngram of the number of usages of the term in books in the Google database shows:

 

The earliest known use of the noun neo-Calvinism is in the 1850s according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It suggests that it stems from 1854, in the writing of J. Guthrie.

The reference it gives is J. Guthrie in Evang. Union Worthies

The Revd John Guthrie had died in 1839, so the article is a brief biography of him, not by him as the OED suggests.

I couldn’t find an 1854 version, but the 1883 The Worthies of the Evangelical Union Being the Lives and Labours of Deceased Evangelical Union Ministers; Illustrated with Portraits has this:

 

However, the first mention cannot have been in 1883 as a paper by a Mr Rutherford with the title “Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism, or the Divine intention in the Atonement” is mentioned.

This is from The Evangelical Repository - Volumes 1-2 - Page 106 published in 1855. Presumably by a Mr Guthrie.

This, of course pre-dates Kuyper and how the term is used today. The first mention of the term applying to the approach of Kuyper and Bavinck et al appears to be in an 1887 review of Wilhelm Geesink’s Calvinisten in Holland by by J. Reitsma (George Harinck, “Herman Bavinck and the Neo-Calvinist Concept of the French Revolution,” in  James Eglinton and George Harinck (eds) Neo-Calvinism and French Revolution (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 21 fn 43. The term originally had negative connotations, but Anne Anema (1872-1966) used it as a convenient term to describe the movement and the term stuck. (Anne Anema, Calvinisme en rechtswetenschap: een studie (Amsterdam, 1897), p. xvi.)

 

 

Some new and forthcoming books

 

Discovering Dooyeweerd edited By Danie Strauss (Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2023)

A new book - it promises to be the book of the year (if not decade):

Available here https://paideiapressorders.com/products/discovering-dooyeweerd-d-f-m-strauss

The cheapest UK price is here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/D-F-M-Strauss/Discovering-Dooyeweerd/29274473

Contents

Foreword

Introduction by Danie F: M. Strauss

1. The Idea of a Christian Philosophy by Roy Clouser

2. The Ground-Motive of Greek Culture by Herman Dooyeweerd

3. Dooyeweerd on The Medieval Ground-Motive of Nature and Grace by Herman Dooyeweerd

4. The Rise of the Ground-Motive of Nature and Freedom by Herman Dooyeweerd

5. The Internal Tension Present in the Ground-Motive of Nature and Freedom by Herman Dooyeweerd

6. The Significance of Dooyeweerd's Philosophy for

Understanding the Foundational Role of Worldview by Michael W. Goheen

7. Dooyeweerd and Radical Orthodoxy by Danie F. M. Straws

8. Dooyeweerd and Theology by Willem J. Ouweneel

9. Reformed Scholasticism and Reformational Thinking by Joseph Boot

10. The Church, Society, and the Kingdom by Willem J. Ouweneel

11 Realism and Nominalism - Part 1 by Danie F. M. Strauss

12. Realism and Nominalism - Part 2 by Danie F. M. Strauss

13. The Distinction between Structure and Direction by Danie F. M. Strauss

14. Dooyeweerd's Perspective on Early Greek Philosophy by Danie F. M. Strauss

15. The Scope of Sphere Sovereignty by Danie F. M. Strauss

16. Dooyeweerd's Philosophy of Time by Danie F. M. Strauss

17. Philosophical Reflection on Physical Entities by Danie F. M. Strauss

18. Dooyeweerd: Enriching Our Understanding of Number and Space by Danie F M. Strauss

19. Modal Universality by Danie F M. Strauss

20. Philosophical Roots of Psychology by Willem J. Ouweneel

21. Galileo and Einstein by Danie F. M. Strauss

22. Modes of Explanation Making Identity Understandable  by Danie F. M. Strauss

23. Understanding Enkapsis as Contrasted with the Chemical Bond by Martin A. Rice, Jr.

24. Antimony and Contradiction by Danie F. M. Strauss

25. Different Kinds of Criticism by Danie F. M. Strauss

26. The Significance of Dooyeweerd's Work for the Natural Sciences by Richard Gunton

27. What Happened to "Evolution"? by Danie F. M. Strauss

28. Of History and the Science of History by Harry Van Dyke

29. Constitutive and Regulative Historical Principles by Danie F: M. Strauss

30. The Significance of Dooyeweerd's Philosophy for Understanding the Complexity of Technology by Maarten J. Verkerk

31. The Significance of Dooyeweerd's Philosophy for Understanding Human Responsibility in Technology by Maarten J. Verkerk

32. Understanding One's Own Professional Practice:
The Triple I Model

by Maarten J. Verkerk

33. Basic Aesthetics, as Dooyeweerd Could Have Written It by Calvin Seerveld

34. Is Language Uniquely Human? by Danie F: M. Strauss

35. The Prevalent Technicism in Society by Egbert Schuurman

36. Popular Sovereignty by Danie F. M. Strauss

37. The Intriguing Nature of Firms and/or Markets and/or Workers
 by Frederick CuN. Fourie

38. Developments within Roman Law bY Dame k: M. Strauss

39. Dooyeweerd's Critical-Empirical Theory of Law by Alan Cameron

40. The Relationship between Dooyeweerd's Systematic
Philosophy and his Theory of the Basic Concepts of the Science of Law by Alan Cameron

41. Civil Private Law by Herman Dooyeweerd

42. Theory of an International Legal Order by Romel Regalado Bagares

43. Are Norms and Principles Ethical or Moral in Nature?  by Danie F. M. Strauss

44. What Is Inherent in Normativity? by Danie F. M. Strauss

45. Compound Basic Concepts by Danie F. M. Strauss

46. Traditional Societies by Danie F. M. Strauss

47. Differentiation and Integration by Danie F M. Strauss

48. Dooyeweerd on Romanticism by Herman Dooyeweerd

49. Classifying Social Forms of Life by Danie F: M. Strauss

50. Context Is Everything, or Is It? by Albert Weideman

51. The Meaning of Technology by Egbert Schuurman

52. Human Freedom and Political Order by James W. Skillen

53. The Good of Politics: Dooyeweerd's Contribution by James W. Skillen

54. Political Idolatry: Assessing the Ideologies of Our Day by David T. Koyzis

55. Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven: What They Share, How They Differ, and How They Complement
One Another by Jeremy Ive

56. Everyday Life with Dooyeweerd by Andrew Basden

57. Understanding and Practicing Research with Dooyeweerd's Help by Andrew Basden

58. Adam and Biology by Willem I. Ouweneel

59. Dooyeweerd's Approach to Philosophical Anthropology 549 by Gerrit Glas

60. What Could Dooyeweerd Teach Us About the Study of the Brain? by Gerrit Glas

61. Health Care from a Dooyeweerdian Perspective:
A Normative Practices Approach by Gerrit Glas 

Bibliography

Subject Index

Windows on Worldviews

 A fantastic new resource for GCSE RE and Philosophy, and foryouth workers

https://thinkfaith.net/windows/

The pack comprises:

• Six short story films (about five minutes each) exploring worldviews

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfgTxb7HTGsXSPTyZNTGWiD6Bw4-o2Uj-

• Six accompanying ‘Boffin Slots’: explanatory videos (about five minutes each) opening up

philosophical thinkers and roots of commonly held beliefs where teacher, philosopher and author Mark Roques plays ‘professor’ - undergirding the learning points in the story films 

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfgTxb7HTGsVGzrgMmZMHDLH9EY8dM1gs

Asia Kuyper Institute

 

Kuyperania 2022

 My "Kuyperania 2022" has been published in Koers 

Bishop, S., 2023. Kuyperania 2022. KOERS — Bulletin for Christian Scholarship, 88(1)

https://doi.org/10.19108/KOERS.88.1.2554

Articles and books discussed include:

Beck, Michael and Falconer, Robert 2022. Toward a Substructural Cartography of Reformed Cultural Engagement: Key Areas in Confessional Reformed and Covenantal Thought. The South African Baptist Journal of Theology (2022):153-181.

Bishop, Steve 2022a. Abraham Kuyper’s Critics. Tydskrif vir Christelike Wetenskap/Journal for Christian Scholarship 58(3&4), 57 - 93. Retrieved from https://pubs.ufs.ac.za/index.php/tcw/article/view/785.

Bishop, Steve 2022b. Abraham Kuyper and evolution. Koers - Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 87(1) https://doi.org/10.19108/KOERS.87.1.2510.

Harefa, Surya 2022. “The State of Neo-Calvinism in Japan”. 

  Online: https://thelaymenslounge.com/the-state-of-neo-calvinism-japan/

Intan, B.F. 2022, Kuyper’s Sphere Sovereignty and the Restriction on Building Worship Places in Indonesia. HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 78(1), a7309. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts. v78i1.7309.

Joustra J.R. and Joustra R.J. 2022 Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures. Downers Grove: IVP.

Kristanto, David 2022. Sovereignty of God and Religious Tolerance: A Kuyperian Perspective. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 669:124-127. https://doi.org/10.2991/ assehr.k.220702.029.

Kuyper, Abraham 2022. On Charity and Justice. Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Li, Jin (李晋) 2022. Meaning, Objectivity and Universality: Bavinck and Pannenberg on History and Revelation. Journal of Chinese Theology 8(2): 220–249. https://doi.org/10.1163/27726606-20220011.

McIlhenny, Ryan 2022. Contact and Conflict: Integral Experience in Classical Chinese and Reformational Philosophies. Journal of Chinese Theology 8(2): 186–219. https://doi.org/10.1163/27726606-20220012.

Pass, Bruce 2022. Review of Common Grace by Abraham Kuyper. Journal of Reformed Theology 16(1- 2):164-165. https://brill.com/view/journals/jrt/16/1-2/article-p164_16.xml

Salurante, Tony, Kristanto, David, Malik, Malik, Bora, Lewi Nataniel, and Nelly, Nelly 2022. A Virtual Sacred Space Some Theological Considerations. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 645:144-148. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220207.023.

Schilder, Klaas 2022. Schilder Reader: The Essential Theological Writing. G. Harinck, M. de Jong, and R. Mouw (ed.). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Sidharta, Leonard (戴永富) 2022. How to Make Athens Closer to Jerusalem: Construing a Neo-Calvinist Model of the Relationship between Philosophy and Theology. Journal of Chinese Theology 8(2): 135– 162. https://brill.com/view/journals/jct/8/2/article-p135_2.xml

Tseng, Shao Kai (曾劭愷) 2022. Editorial. Journal of Chinese Theology 8(2): 129–134. https://brill.com/view/ journals/jct/8/2/article-p129_1.xml

Un, A. S. 2022. Ideological Uniformity and Political Integralism in Europe and Indonesia: A Kuyperian Critique. Philosophia Reformata 87(2), 129-150. https://doi.org/10.1163/23528230-bja10049.

Vásárhelyi Bálint Márk 2022. Common Grace in Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism. British Reformed Journal 71: 14-24.

Wisse, Maarten 2022. Holy Supper: Retrieving Abraham Kuyper. In Reinventing Christian Doctrine: Retrieving the Law-Gospel Distinction. London: T&T Clark, 2022. 165–184. https://www.bloomsburycollections. com/book/reinventing-christian-doctrine-retrieving-the-law-gospel-distinction/ch8-holy-supper- retrieving-abraham-kuyper

Xu, Ximian 2022. How to Make Sino-Reformed Theology Possible? Retrieving Abraham Kuyper’s Proto-Reformed Contextual Theology. Journal of Chinese Theology 8(2): 163–185. https://doi. org/10.1163/27726606-20220010.

Kuyper on Mysticism

 

https://thelaymenslounge.com/mysticism-by-abraham-kuyper/

New Journal: Neocalviniana

 

Full details here https://neocalviniana.org/

This Earthly Life Matters by A.A. Van Ruler - a review

This Earthly Life Matters: The Promise of Arnold A. van Ruler for Ecotheology

Arnold Van Ruler

Ernst M. Conradie (Editor), Dirk van Keulen (Introduction), Douglas G. Lawrie (Translator)

Pickwick Publications, 2023, 381 pp, hbk.  

Arnold Albert Van Ruler (1908-1970), a former professor of dogmatics at the University of Utrecht, is not well-known in the English-speaking world. This is mainly because only a few of his works have been translated. Thus this volume is more than welcome.

Van Ruler's approach has been described as "creation theology" by W.H. Velema, and he himself has been called "a theologian of earthly reality" by L.J. Van den Brom. It is exciting to see this volume dedicated to Van Ruler's approach to ecotheology. His thinking was largely influenced by theocratic ideas and his involvement with the "Protestantse Unie", which aimed to promote the theocratic vision of P.J. Hoedemaker (1839-1910), a writer who greatly influenced Van Ruler, especially in his views on a State church. Although this volume only provides glimpses of Van Ruler's theocratic notions.

Dirk van Keulen, who provides an introduction and a brief biography in this volume, has edited Van Ruler's Collected Works in Dutch. The selected translations by Douglas G. Lawrie included in this volume cover various topics such as God, creation, providence, being human, sin, earthly life, and animal protection. These chosen topics highlight Van Ruler's significance for ecotheology.

Van Ruler's writings are not easy to read, and some of the selections in this volume consist mainly of bullet points. However, he does offer some insightful aphorisms. Here are a few examples:

• God did not create me in order to get me down on my knees and to extend grace to me as a sinner.

• The Creator is revealed in creation—that is the mystery that evokes worship.

• Not only Holy Scripture is the Word of God; the entire created reality is that too.

• Heaven is created reality. Just as much as the earth is.

• Our knowledge of God is never direct and unmediated. It is always mediated.

• Even when we question anthropologically—and question thoroughly—we automatically question theologically.

• the Creator ≠ creation

• The world is indeed a “cosmos” but in the sense that it is a jewel, a bracelet on the arm of the Creator.

Conradie's essay in this volume provides an excellent overview of Van Ruler's approach. Conradie observes that Van Ruler's polemical intention is to affirm creation as good, even eschatologically, without the need to add or replace anything in creation. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing ourselves as creatures and the concept of re-creation. This notion of re-creation aligns with Herman Bavinck's understanding of restoration rather than repristination. Van Ruler's work can in some sense be seen as an extrapolation and eschatological radicalization of Bavinck's position. Van Keulen has described Van Ruler's approach as a radicalized reception of Bavinck's central thought that "grace does not abolish nature, but affirms and restores it."

Van Ruler's emphasis on re-creation and his strong doctrine of creation provides valuable insights for ecotheology. He firmly believes that the world was intentionally created by God and, therefore, belongs to God. Creation is not divine or demonic; it is a good thing that came into existence ex nihilo, from nothing. Van Ruler contrasts Christianity with paganism philosophy, noting that in Christianity, the world is not necessary but is good, while in paganism, the world is seen as necessary but not good.

In addition to his focus on creation, Van Ruler stresses the importance of eschatology. He stresses “God will not create a new world to put it in the place of the present world. God will renew this old world of ours and this renewed world will be the new world.”.

Overall, this volume serves as an excellent introduction to Van Ruler's work and provides valuable insights into a Christianity that not only affirms but embraces creation.

Findings 5 is now out

 

Findings 5 - June 2023 - now published.

Contents:

Chris Gousmett. Editorial – Seeking Exemptions from Legislation

Bruce Wearne. Reformational scholarship: current position and prospects

Alan Cameron. Dooyeweerd and Feldenkrais on the Human Body

Léonardo Balena and Ney Maranhão. Faith and sustainability: A Christian Contribution to the Issue of Environmental Preservation

Maaike Eline Harmsen and Gijsbert van den Brink. The Great Filter and Space Exploration: A Dooyeweerdian Response

Bruce Wearne. The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea and the Chapters of Sociology’s 20th Century Story

Chris van Haeften. The Riddle of Reality

https://www.thumbwidthpress.net/product-page/findings-5-june-2023

The Evangelical Imagination by Karen Swallow Prior

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis 

 Karen Swallow Prior

Hi, 304pp, Brazos, 2023 

ISBN 9781587435751

Prior is a reader, writer, and professor of English and Christianity and culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In this  book she draws upon her evangelical background and her academic speciality, to examine evangelical sensibilities. She writes as a critical friend,  and as an insider. As she puts it, “In a way, what follows in these pages is simply my testimony. It is a picture of the evangelical imagination as I have found it over the course of years of researching, studying, reading, worshiping, and living and grappling with my own imagination—what fills it and fuels it.”

In many ways it is an iconoclastic book - in it she shows how evangelical culture has been shaped by Victorian values and ethos as much as it has by biblical ones. Drawing on her academic research she examines Victorian literature:

You will notice a pattern emerging from all this Victorian literature. You will see in both the texts and their surrounding historical contexts qualities strangely similar to many of the defining characteristics of modern American evangelical culture. And by seeing in that literature many of the values and beliefs prominent within American evangelicalism today, you might find yourself wondering whether some of the ideas that characterize today’s evangelical culture are Christian as much as they are Victorian.

She provides an excellent critique, and one that deserves close attention. She ably exposes contemporary evangelicalism’s overemphasis on patriotism, self-improvement, achievement, marketing, business techniques, triumphalism, and consumerism.  Two quotations will serve to illustrate:

Evangelicalism’s infatuation with secular notions of social progress and self-improvement is marked throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While evangelicals initially opposed nineteenth-century movements that emphasized the possibility that human effort could bring physical healing, mind cures, victory over sin—movements such as New Thought, the Keswick movement, and the Victorious Life—the influence of these popular teachings could not be entirely stemmed: therapeutic culture snaked its way into evangelicalism. Nineteenth-century revivalists such as D. L. Moody and Billy Sunday were among those whose teachings blended evangelicalism with notions of social progress and transformation through personal purity and piety. 

And:

This triumphalist spirit of empire was cultivated on an individual level too. “Do great things for God!” was for a generation (or two) of evangelicals not just an encouragement but an expectation that became a mandate. One younger friend who grew up evangelical told me she had the sense that if she didn’t grow up to do something great or radical, then she would have failed as a Christian.

Components of evangelicalism see examines include: Conversion, Testimony, Improvement, Sentimentality, Materiality, Domesticity, Empire, Reformation, and Rapture. For each one she shows how these are integral to evangelicalism and how each one has been shaped by the Victorian ethos. Her analysis is nuanced and profound. The literature she discusses includes work by well-known authors such as Dickens, Swift, Defoe, Bunyan, Alcott, Hardy along with the currently less popular works including Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded,  by Samuel Richardson. Works of “art” by Thomas Kinkade and Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ are also examined, both as examples of evangelical sentimentality.

In short, The Evangelical Imagination is an engaging, well-written, and thought-provoking read; it may disturb, but it will disturb those that need to be disturbed. Her main concern is that evangelicalism becomes more focused on Jesus and the scriptures rather than exemplify a Victorian ethos.  

Contents
Introduction: Victorians, Evangelicals, and the Invitation
1. Made in His Image
Imagination, Imaginaries, and Evangelicalisms
2. Awakening
Mumford, MLK, Hurston, Hughes, and Other Poets
3. Conversion
Language, Dr. Pepper, and Ebenezer Scrooge
4. Testimony
Grace Abounding and "Evangelically Speaking"
5. Improvement
The Puritan Work Ethic, Paradise Lost, and the Price of Progress
6. Sentimentality
Sweet Jesus, Uncle Tom, and Public Urination
7. Materiality
Jesus in the Window, the Virgin Mary on Grilled Cheese, Gingerbread Houses, and the Sacramentality of Church Space
8. Domesticity
Angels and Castles and Prostitutes, Oh My!
9. Empire
"The White Man's Burden," His Man Friday, the Jesus Nobody Knows, and What Johnny Cash Really Knew
10. Reformation
Pardon Me, Reckoning or Rip Van Winkle?
11. Rapture
Or How a Thief Came in the Night but Left My Chick Tracts Behind

Concept/mind maps of Bavinck's Personality & Worldview

 

Review of J.H. Bavinck's Personality and Worldview

 Personality & Worldview

J. H. Bavinck

Translated by James Eglinton

208pp, hbk, 

Crossway Books

ISBN: 978-1-4335-8483-1

J.H. Bavinck (1895–1964) was the nephew of Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) and a professor of missiology at Kampen Theological School and the Free University of Amsterdam. He had also been a pastor and missionary in Indonesia, so, he was no armchair missiologist. In this book, a translation of Bavinck’s 1928 book Persoonlijkheid en wereldbeschouwing. This was originally a set of lectures for engineering students. The book is thus not overly technical, it is clear, accessible, and straightforward in its approach.

"Worldview" is a concept that is starting to go out of fashion. Keller, in his Foreword, notes some key reasons for this - particularly in North America; it is seen as being: 

Individualistic

Rationalistic

Simplistic 

Triumphalistic

To this, we could add that it has recently lost favour due to concerns about its ambiguity, and connection to Western-centric and imperialist methods of analysing culture and society. Bavinck’s approach provides an important correction to these misconceptions regarding worldviews, not least because Bavinck was fully acquainted with East Asian culture as a pastor. 

By "personality", Bavinck means “an organized soul that has come to consciousness of itself.” 

One of Bavinck’s main theses is the intriguing distinction he makes between a worldview and a worldvision. He maintains that we all have a worldvision but only a few move to a worldview. 

A person without a worldview is a person without a firm foundation, without a compass, without a vista. He may have a worldvision; he might live, for example, as though there are no norms. But such a worldvision proceeds from himself and is rooted in his nature. He cannot pull himself upward on it, and with it he always remains on the same plane. A person with a worldview, in all cases, has light, sees more widely, more broadly, more deeply. And however much deeper and more objective that worldview is, the more it gives him stability to leave this maze of subjective inclinations and climb up to the height of the life that is grounded in the truth.

 Unfortunately, this insight is left largely undeveloped - it would be interesting to trace what mileage this distinction had in Bavinck’s further writings. 

In exploring the relationship between personality and worldview, he notes two positions that must be guarded against: that they are one and that they are utterly different.

In chapter 3 especially, we can see in Bavinck two important neo-Calvinist themes: the distinction between creator and creation, and a disdain for dualism. He makes some important points regarding dualism: it disjoints personality, it means that salvation is only possible through world flight and that it leads to mysticism and asceticism.

Chapter 4 provides some fascinating insights into the distinction between Eastern and Westen thinking and an overview of the impact of the Renaissance on British empiricism particularly. Here he provides a devastating critique of the poverty of empiricism in that it devours itself.

Chapter 5 exposes the problems with rationalism, Descartes, and Spinoza. He makes the interesting point that pantheism is a presupposition of rationalism: “Pantheism is not the conclusion of rationalism, but it is its presupposition. Reason only has such power when it is itself god.” 

Chapters 4 and 5 show that neither empiricism nor rationalism have explored the depths of personality.

Kant attempted to reconcile empiricism and rationalism, but as Chapter 6 shows, this project was unsuccessful. 

Mysticism, a topic Bavinck studied for his doctorate and while he was in Java, comes under scrutiny in Chapter 7. As he observes, mysticism is difficult to define as it is not a single worldview. It is an emphasis on the being of God, and yet he is a formless and utterly other divinity. There is no comfort or salvation in such a god. It results in self-withdrawal from life and groping after eternity. He notes that Christian mysticism is differently focused and maintains the boundary between God and creation.

The final Chapter provides an overview of the main themes. Most people live as if there is no worldview, although it is there in seed form, worldview is the revelation of the personality, although there is often tension between the two. We all need a worldview, as it provides norms, direction, and unity in living. He contrasts two common Western worldviews, atheistic materialism and positive Christianity. Atheistic materialism is never accepted unreservedly, and Christianity, a relationship with the living God, depends not on us but on revelation.

This book is certainly well worth buying. The introduction by Eglington alone is worth the price of the book. 

Foreword by Timothy Keller

Acknowledgments

Editor’s Introduction

Chapter 1: The Struggle for a Worldview

Chapter 2: The Essence of Personality

Chapter 3: The Problem of Unity

Chapter 4: Passive Knowing

Chapter 5: The Power of Reason

Chapter 6: The Reaction of the Conscience

Chapter 7: Mysticism and Revelation

Chapter 8: Personality and Worldview

General Index

Scripture Index

Abraham Kuyper and some of his critics

 My paper looking at some of Kuyper's critics has now been published:

Bishop, S. (2023). Abraham Kuyper and some of his Critics. Tydskrif Vir Christelike Wetenskap | Journal for Christian Scholarship, 58(3&4), 57 - 93. Retrieved from https://pubs.ufs.ac.za/index.php/tcw/article/view/785

Findings 4 is out

 Findings 4 has now been published - Theme issue on "Theology." 

Available free (PDF) to download from https://www.thumbwidthpress.net/ 

Go to "Shop" to select items.

Contents:

Kerry Hollingsworth: H Evan Runner – The heart of his vision

Chris Gousmett: What is theology?

Jim Skillen: What is public theology?

Raymundo Mendiola: Are we all theologians? Definition and contours of theology

D F M Strauss: How can we talk scientifically about God?

O. C. Broek Roelofs: Popma’s Philosophical Approach to Theology

Chris van Haeften: Divine reality

Alida Leni Sewell: Paul at Athens: An Examination of His Areopagus Address in the Light of its Historical and Philosophical Background

A Kuyper Book Club - Reading through Pro Rege 3

 KUYPER BOOK CLUB! Kuyper's Pro Rege Vol. 3 

A group are going to read Kuyper's Pro Rege Vol. 3 over the next 6 months (starting Feb). 

Jason of the Laymen's Lounge, has created a Facebook Group so we can throw up quotes, thoughts, questions, etc.

To join use this QR code

The provisional reading plan is:

Feb. 1-5: pp. 1-18

Feb. 6-12: pp. 19-43

Feb. 1319: pp. 44-68

Feb. 20-26: pp. 69-94

Feb. 27-Mar. 5: pp. 95-119

Mar. 6-12: pp. 120-143

Mar. 13-19: pp. 144-167

Mar. 20-26: pp. 168-186

Mar. 27-April 2: pp. 187-215

April 3-9: pp. 216-241

April 10-16: pp. 242-270

April 17-23: pp. 271-288

April 24-30: pp. 289-315

May 1-7: pp. 316-340

May 8-14: pp. 341-364

May 15-21: pp. 365-380

May 22-28: pp. 381-406

May 29-June 4: pp. 407-431

June 5-11: pp. 432-449

June 12-18: pp. 450-467

June 19-25: pp. 468-475

June 26-July 2: pp. 479-480