“Kuyperians were pluralists before pluralism was cool,” writes James K. A. Smith.[1] Indeed, neo-Calvinists in the tradition of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) display a marked fondness for stressing the possibility and imperative of shared cultural labor between Christians and non-Christians in society. Christians can work alongside non-Christians to create God-glorifying artifacts of culture, such as art or music, as well as less tangible elements of culture, such as shared values, language, philosophic systems, or social and political institutions. While Smith certainly appreciates such contributions of the Kuyperian tradition, his critique aims at correcting what he perceives to be far too great an interest in the commonness which Christians share with the rest of society, at the expense of neglecting their distinctiveness. Neo-Calvinists have lost a sense of Christianity’s prophetic cultural witness, he argues. Or, to put it in more Kuyperian terms: neo-Calvinists have neglected the ecclesial contours of the antithesis between Christ’s work of redemption and humanity’s rebellion in sin. More specifically, they have failed to live out the active ministry of the institutional church of shaping communities in the distinctiveness of Christian liturgical life, which in turn is to serve as a leavening force in society for civic virtue.[2]
To rekindle the force of the Kuyperian antithesis, Smith has shown interest in the lesser known influence of Dutch theologian Klaas Schilder (1890–1952). Schilder, a strident critic of Kuyper and his legacy, provides what Smith sees as an element lacking in many contemporary neo-Calvinist theologies of social and cultural life. This is namely a “dispositional deflection” away from public life steeped in non-Christian principles, while at the same time providing a call to remain faithfully present within society, for its good and for Christ’s glory.[3] Smith is not alone in recognizing the value of the greater emphasis Schilder puts on what neo-Calvinists call the antithesis, the epistemic and existential divide between regenerate Christians and the unregenerate, especially concerning social and cultural cooperation. A growing group of Kuyperians have begun to look to Schilder in an effort to strengthen their Kuyperian heritage.[4]
This willingness of those sympathetic to Kuyper’s theology of culture and common life to reach across what has been a bitter divide in the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition represents a promising new chapter in the conversation.
A change in approach to the Kuyper-Schilder debate can provide new traction in overcoming what has been an intractable divide in order to resource Schilder for a Kuyperian theology of culture. In surveying their eschatological vision of culture and the resulting imperative for Christians to be diligent in the cultural labors out of a sense of calling in light of God’s future work of recreation, Kuyper and Schilder impel Christians towards similar ends. Further, their respective differences, owing to divergences in their understanding of God’s purposes in creation, can help strengthen the other’s view by adding a counter-stress against where they each descend into problematic conclusions.
In Kuyper’s paradigm, it has been seen that Kuyper provides a fundamentally positive account of cultural life, along with a strong foundation for Christian collaboration with non-Christians in common cultural endeavors. The dangers of this, however, have also been seen, as Kuyper leaves the door open for the downplaying of the antithesis. Schilder returns a theology of culture to a strong emphasis on the antithesis, and in so doing helps orient Christians to their prophetic and missional purpose in common cultural endeavors. The means by which Schilder does so, however, serves to absolutize the divide between Christian and non-Christian in God’s economy in ways non-supralapsarians would find disconcerting. Can it be that God’s purposes with culture necessitate an equal emphasis on wrath as with grace? Such a duality of divine purposes would be appealing only to the more extreme forms of divine determinism.
Abraham Kuyper and his theology are presently experiencing a resurgence among English-speaking evangelicals. The historic, and what often seems parochial, debates among Dutch Calvinists over Kuyper’s legacy offer necessary nuance to his thought from which those eager to embrace a revived Kuyperianism should seek to learn. This study is an initial proposal of one way such debates can produce a constructive harmony which addresses several dangers in Kuyper’s approach to culture. May there be more to come.
Dennis Greeson is associate director of the BibleMesh Institute and a PhD candidate in systematic theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. This article is excerpted from a longer publication in the journal Themelios.
[1] James K. A. Smith, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology, Cultural Liturgies 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 131.
[2] Smith, Awaiting the King, 142, 144.
[3] James K. A. Smith, “Reformed Monasticism? Klaas Schilder for the 21st Century,” in Wie is die man? Klaas Schilder in de eenentwintigste eeuw, ed. Marius van Rijswijk, Marinus de Jong, Pieter Kars van de Kamp, and Maarten Boersema, Ad chartas-reeks 22 (Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 2012), 202. Smith describes his turning to Schilder as motivated by his dissatisfaction with certain Kuyperian tendencies: “I began to worry that ‘common grace’, while often invoked to encourage Christians to ‘transform culture’, was actually functioning as a license for assimilation to culture.” Smith, “Reformed Monasticism?,” 197.
[4] Two other Kuyperians who have expressed an interest in Schilder are Richard Mouw and Henry Van Til. Although avowedly critical of many elements in Schilder’s thought, Mouw shows an interest in Schilder’s provision of a corrective to what he sees as a “triumphalist spirit and a too-easy accommodation to the patterns of non-Christian thought and action” owing to certain elements internal to Kuyperian theology. Richard J. Mouw, “Klaas Schilder as Public Theologian,” Covenant Theological Journal 38 (2003): 287. In his forward to Schilder’s Christ and Culture, Mouw expresses appreciation for Schilder’s eschatological realism which, more so than Kuyper’s thoughts on culture, see history culminating towards a cultural darkening in the rule of the antichrist prior to Christ’s parousia. Richard J. Mouw, “Forward,” in Christ and Culture, trans. William Helder and Albert H. Oosterhoff, by Klaas Schilder (Hamilton, ON: Lucerna CRTS Publications, 2016), viii. Mouw also sees, as argued in this essay, some similarities between Schilder and Kuyper. Both take seriously the call to cultural obedience on the basis of God’s purposes with humanity. However, regarding their eschatological vision of the end of history, Schilder anticipates only the weakening of common grace such that as God’s restraints on sin decrease, lawlessness and eventual cataclysm emerge. For Kuyper, common grace continues in its fullness and leads the best of this creation into the new creation, even if the end will come with greater degrees of lawlessness and sin because the blessings of common grace can enable expressions of both virtue and extraordinary wickedness. Richard J. Mouw, All that God Cares About: Common Grace and Divine Delight (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020), 108–112.