Christian Reformed people have been asking me whether they can be “Kuyperian” in the Reformed Church in America (RCA).
This is obviously a pressing question for people who might be looking to leave, or forced to leave, the Christian Reformed Church. So if you’re asking the question, here is my answer.
Yes, absolutely Yes!
Your particular way of being “Reformed” would not be the only way or the dominant way in the RCA. You might have to translate Kuyperian slogans like “square inch” and “sphere sovereignty,” but your general Kuyperian vision will be welcomed and affirmed.
Your Kuyperian vision would be sheltered under the first sentence of the RCA’s Constitution, which states that the purpose of the RCA “is to minister to the total life of all people by preaching, teaching, and proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and by all Christian good works.” Notice: not just the “spiritual life of Christians,” but “the total life of all people.” That’s our typically relational and personal, RCA way of saying “every square inch.”
Having said that, your comfort in the RCA will depend on what kind of a Kuyperian you are. Are you an Antithetical Kuyperian or a Common Grace Kuyperian? Do you prefer purity or ecumenism? Do you favor protection or expansion?
If you are Antithetical you’ll be frustrated in the RCA. We’ve never been about the Antithesis, we prefer not to draw lines for ins-or-outs, and our conservativism tends not to be a judging one.
But if you lean toward Common Grace, and if, for example, you like how Richard Mouw wrote about it in his book He Shines in All that’s Fair, then your passions will be welcome in the RCA.
The RCA is more internally diverse than the CRC, and you’d face different some responses among us.
In the East, with our “parish” approach, we are used to our churches working to benefit the “whole life” of the larger community, including education, culture, and society. But to do that we are apt to participate in ecumenical and inter-faith organizations instead of exclusively “Reformed” ones.
The Midwestern and Western RCA is more similar to the CRC. Like your own leadership, here we emphasize church planting and personal discipleship. And like many of your own members, we are not compelled by Kuyperianism. We are less critical and defensive, but we will not oppose you. If your passion is the full extent of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you will have our sympathy. And in the Midwest we are more likely to know about “Common Grace.”
Mind you, we rarely use the term “Common Grace” in the RCA. We’re not against it—we just use other categories. (Advisedly so, because we haven’t restricted grace to begin with.) The things that you in the CRC generally attribute to Common Grace we in the RCA attribute to the activity of the Holy Spirit in the world. (Again, advisedly, because we think it’s more biblical.) You can see this worked out in the RCA’s own contemporary testimony called Our Song of Hope.
Furthermore, if you are a Common Grace Kuyperian, then you’ve learned from Father Abraham himself to make coalitions and common cause with believers of other stripes who share the same goals. Kuyper did that masterfully in The Netherlands with the Roman Catholics. Some of you CRCs in Canada are doing that already with the activist coalitions in the Canadian Council of Churches. We’d welcome you doing that within the RCA.
A Kuyperian in the RCA could make common cause with those of us who have been inspired by Lesslie Newbigin or A. A. van Ruler or even Alexander Schmemann. We share the vision that the gospel goes beyond the church into the world, addressing nature and culture and cultural institutions and public justice. And you could make common cause with, and learn from, Black and African-American RCA people who have their own powerful approach to Christ-and-culture.
If you’re an Antithetical Kuyperian you probably would not want to accept the Belhar Confession as a Doctrinal Standard. But if you’re a Common Grace Kuyperian I’m guessing that you would, and maybe with joy.
Belhar will help you surrender (with relief) that whole legalistic “creation-norm” ideology for Christian ethics. You will gain a more eschatological ethic, based on the Resurrection and led by the Spirit, looking not backward but forward, “to the new heaven and earth in which righteousness dwells.” Can you imagine a Christian worldview that is not static or reactionary but dynamic and even apocalyptic? That envisions and practices even now “the life of the world to come?”
We will not only welcome you. We will gain from you. We will listen to you and learn from you. As you from us. No matter how this all shakes out, we need each other. And the Lord Jesus calls us to be One Body, as much as we ever can.
“Belhar will help you surrender (with relief) that whole legalistic “creation-norm” ideology for Christian ethics.” Intriguing. I’d like to hear more about this. Thanks for the whole article.
I hope Daniel will respond here, but in the meantime, I’m going to try a bit. “Creation-norm” is looking back on God’s creation as the norm — trying to get back to the garden. As such, it tends to be cautious, hold-the-line, nostalgic. A more Spirit-led, eschatological view is looking to where the Spirit is leading us, toward God’s good future, toward reconciliation. So the Christian life can be more creative, daring, redeeming, and hopeful.
Some shameless self-promotion from blog posts of the past
Uncommon Grace https://blog.reformedjournal.com/2012/05/22/uncommon-grace/
This Really Isn’t About Caitlyn Jenner https://blog.reformedjournal.com/2015/12/01/this-really-isnt-about-caitlyn-jenner/
God is/is not Conservative https://blog.reformedjournal.com/2019/10/22/god-is-is-not-conservative/
I don’t know why I wrote that overly long answer when Steve’s links put it all better.
Fair enough, here goes. Let me approach it from a side-door. In the debates between situational and deontological ethics, most Christians lean deontological, as do most Dutch Calvinists. Risking anachronism, I would have to say that the debate between the Petrine Circumcision party and the Pauline no-Circumcision party was about more than circumcision, but also about the sabbath, how to eat, how to clean, indeed, how to have a distinctly Christian culture, as distinctive as Judaism was to be, and thus evidently informed by the Torah. Their opposition to St. Paul deserves more honour than we usually give it. They saw in him a total situational ethic, the huge risk of libertinism (“for freedom Christ has set his people free”) and how can we know what righteousness demands in the church, in the world, and especially in cases of church discipline? How shall St. Paul’s approach yield a Christian culture that is a city on a hill? To which St. Paul could reply, but Our Lord also said Salt of the earth.
The historic Calvinist attempt at deontological ethics found its identifiable patterns in the Moral Law of the Ten Commandments, as interpreted by Gospel values. But this did not prove either substantial enough or robust enough to guide a larger culture as Nineteenth Century Protestants were seeking to bolster Christian culture under attack by Humanism and Scientism. Kuyper led with his “ground-motives” in grand conflict theories, and the Christian ground-motive is Creation-Fall-Redemption (the emphasis on Creation no doubt in reaction to Darwinism). This makes the purpose of Redemption to be the restoration of Creation.
There is an undeniable Anti-Revolutionary bias in this version of the Christian ground-motive, not only against the French Revolution but also against the attempted revolutions of 1848. So while the doctrine of Creation is, of course, very important in the New Testament (see St. Paul at Mars Hill), it is not as important there as it is in the Torah itself (in which Exodus is the more important book, and in which Redemption and Return to the Promised Land is the big story, of which Creation is the preface). In the New Testament the Cross and Resurrection are the ground-motive, and they orient the church to the future. Only rarely to the New Testament writes appeal to the Creation as even a central doctrine.
With the general Calvinist appreciation for the Old Testament, we also get the neo-Calvinist emphasis on God’s Words being Laws for Creation (especially, but hardly exclusively, in Dooyeweerd). God’s law-words are norms not only for all the modalities of existence, but also for how molecules behave, and how winds blow and how tulips grow and how numbers behave. You can call these “law-words” “creation-norms.”
And when it comes to human ethics, where we, unlike tulips and winds, have freedom for good or ill to obey God’s law-words or not, these creation-norms can become a standard for deontological ethics. The trick is define those creation-norms for humans. For tulips, the scientific laboratory and field-hand experience suffice. For humans, it’s got to be science and experience more or less transformed by Scripture.
So then, does the story of Adam and Eve give us a “creation-norm” for marriage? Maybe, but not one Old Testament passage says so. Only Our Lord suggests that in his teaching on divorce. (Although he’s actually preaching Gospel here, not Law, and he’s not intending to set up a deontological ethics of creation-norms). But where else in the New Testament do the apostles ever appeal to anything like a creation-norm for church discipline, Christian culture, or culture in general? Will we dare say that women having long hair is a creation-norm identified by St. Paul? Well, I guess some have. If Adam and Eve are a creation-norm, then “complementarity” in the church as a wash.
My point is that it is well-nigh impossible to come up with an integrated and honourable list of creation-norms (racial separate development?) from the interplay of scripture, experience, and science. And it’s not what the Torah and prophets are about, not to mention the Gospels and Epistles. The Torah sets up covenantal-norms for a distinctly priestly people with a specific vocation, making no distinction in itself between moral and cultic laws, So the search for creation-norms in the Bible goes against the Bible’s own interest, and usually becomes an eisegetical exercise in supporting anti-revolutionary traditional social structures.
The New Testament is much more eschatological than creational. For both St. Luke and St. Paul, their emphasis is on the “new humanity,” directed by the Holy Spirit. Their ethic is, riskily, much more flexible, as they call on their churches to “put on the mind of Christ,” for example, which might lead to all kinds of failed moral experiments, of which the circumcision party could probably cite countless examples. To the circumcision party it must look totally situational. Does it have to be? I don’t think so. There are ways to build an ethics out of God-love and neighbour-love, and out of both obligations and rights (see Wolterstorff), and out of public justice and justice for the oppressed and the orphan and the widows and the poor.
Isn’t that approach what the NT consistently calls us to, even James, and even Matthew’s Gospel? So does St. Irenaeus, by the way. The New heaven and earth is where righteousness dwells. It’s creational in the sense that it is not a repudiation of creation, it is certainly a redemption of creation, but not a restoration, rather an advancement.
This is my rough and amateurish answer. I hope my teachers are not embarrassed by it. For a better delineation of this approach, let me recommend the relevant chapters in Hendrikus Berkhof’s Christian Faith, or his Christ the Meaning of History, or Van Ruler’s two popular books in English, The Greatest of these Is Love, and God’s Son and God’s World, or even his technical book, The Christian Church and the Old Testament.
Ancillary to all this is that, scripturally speaking, we DO NOT “build the kingdom.” We receive it, we enter it, we see it, we witness to it. Yes, we build up and edify the church, but not once do we build the kingdom, not once in the NT.
Thank you both for these explanations. I immigrated from Holland (at 4, I had no choice) to Canada and grew up in a Kuyperian world. The Antithesis of Christianity vs. the secular world was big. My parents held the Anti-revolutionary Party up as a shining example of what we should attempt in Canada. I saw much good in this approach to building the kingdom and many positives. But I was also uncomfortable with the anti-flavour.
Your comments on looking forward to the new kingdom rather than backward to the creation (despite having to go to Wikipedia on a few terms) is a great help to providing a framework for me to bring my Kuyperian worldview into a faithful hope in the New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven and we do not build.
Thanks
Gratifying, Mr. Eikelboom. I myself was thrilled at the time by the two Wedge books, Out of Concern for the Church, and Will All the Kings Men. For which today I make no apology, even if my views have evolved.
I’ve always like the picture of “We begin in a garden, we end in a city where we and all of creation are redeemed, liberated, and made new.”
You are a delightful teacher, my friend.
For two years we have been hearing warm, welcoming words from RCA friends, congregations and leadership. We finally left our CRC congregation with broken hearts, but now at the RCA church, four blocks away, we have found everything in this blog post to be true. We are deeply, deeply grateful.
So, so glad to hear….
Thanks, Dan! This is very helpful for all of us who are in the disaffiliation and decision-making process.
Amen. Well said, Daniel.
Thank you for your grace-filled words!
A hearty “Amen” to Daniel Meeter’s “Yes” as to whether a person can be a Kuyperian in the RCA. I have been a member of the RCA for 44 years (joining the RCA just after graduating from Hope College) and have a master’s degree in philosophy from the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto, one of the premier Kuyperian institutions in North America. The Kuyperian worldview of a Christian faith that extends to all of life fits well with what is said in the RCA Constitution about our faith calling us to engage the total life of all people. To the Kuyperians I can affirm with Daniel that your vision will be welcomed and affirmed in the RCA, even if, as he indicates, Kuyperian terminology may need to be unpacked or rephrased.
Also, Richard Mouw’s book “He Shines In All That’s Fair” is a very good resource for all of us. I was Rich’s teaching assistant at Fuller Theological Seminary when he taught a course at Fuller one summer, before he joined the faculty and later became president. This book is excellent and ought to be read by RCA and CRC folk alike.
So thank you, Daniel, for your insights into the similarities and differences between the CRC and RCA and for assuring the Kuyperians among us that they will be welcomed into the RCA.
Thank you Daniel for being the voice of knowledge and trust for our CRCNA friends in answering their questions about a possible denominational fit.
As usual when hearing you speak or reading your articles, I learned from your careful explanations Daniel! Thank you for your wisdom, kindness, inclusivity and grace!
Thanks for this, Daniel. I wonder if a few ground-level differences may surprise some CRC Kuyperians — Christian schools, for example.
Well, David, I suggest that this far less of a divide than it used to be. Maybe not in Ontario, for example, but generally otherwise the CRC expectation of Christian school attendance is waning, and RCAs are no longer as against them as they used to be. Certainly the CRC is far more supportive of them, but it’s no longer the case that conservative RCA’s are against them, as they used to be.
Thanks, Daniel. I said surprise, not divide. 😉
Got it, sorry, I misunderstood your import.
Dan, my wife, Linda, & I are daily readers of the posts published in The Reformed Journal, especially when one of your blogs appears.
In past comments this Calvin Alum has often suggested that those believers who are leaving the CRCNA, as I did in 1967, would be welcomed with open arms in any of the various churches that are part of the RCA.
In this article of you makes strong argument saying that those of us who were strongly imbued with the Kyperian philosophy while we attended Calvin that are “Common Grace Kyperians” not only have found a home in the RCA, but many of us, my wife being one, have found ourselves becoming leaders in the RCA.
There you go! Like my dad, whom you knew,, who was loyal to the RCA, but who also introduced me to Kuyper when I was still in public high school. Always great to hear from you, Ken.
Always impressed with your patient scholarship and ability to clearly articulate in these matters! The wondering, the speculating, even the debating are constructive. But the endless dividing? I always chuckle to see a recently divided church rename themselves Grace United Reformed or Grace Protestant Reformed or Grace whatever. So you won the battle over common vs uncommon grace but had no graciousness in intent or tolerance!
I’m not sure of your criticism with “the endless dividing.” That was the opposite of my intent.
Thank you for this extraordinarily helpful piece, Daniel.
What a timely blog and what a wonderful discussion here in the comments. And thanks, Steve Mathonnet-VanderWell, for giving us links to those three previous blogs. Another link might be to Ryan Struyk’s blog, “A Reformed Theological Case for Same Sex Marriage” where Ryan advocates for an eschatalogical approach to matters of human sexuality. https://reformedjournal.com/a-reformed-theological-case-for-same-sex-marriage/ As much as I’ve been a Creation-Fall-Redemption champion, this argument that Scripture actually orients us to what is new and yet to come more than it brings us back to creation is helping me think about some things in new ways. Thank you, RCA friends. What a great example of how RCA and CRC folks in conversation together can be mutually enriching.
Daniel
Sorry for the confusion. I did not mean to imply that YOUR thoughts were decisive. Rather, the divisive actions prompting your article were the target. The church’s history has been fraught with “endless dividing” over differences that often fade over time. RZ