A Neo-Kuyperian Assist to the
Vincent Bacote and Daniel Pylman
How does the legacy of a Dutch intuitive genius
intersect with the phenomenon of the emergent church? The aim of tonight’s presentation is to
suggest that neo-calvinism’s emphasis on common grace
offers the same vital support to the postmodern-friendly emergent church as it
did to the late nineteenth century Dutch reformed church that sought to engage
every area of life while maintaining fidelity to orthodoxy. First, I will introduce the emergent church
and highlight a particular emphasis that provides the potential for an
intersection with neo-calvinism. I will then introduce the doctrine of common
grace, and finally discuss how it can be articulated in a way that will benefit
the emergent church.
What
is the emergent church? Is it a
movement? A
conversation? There is no agreed
upon answer among those who label themselves as participants or sympathetic
observers of the emergent church. They
do agree that a group of people has emerged in the last decade or so who have
an affinity for the postmodern (in a very broad sense) and a desire for
authentic expression of the Christian faith, though a mode of expression different
from their evangelical forbears. Who are
these people and what are their concerns?
A variety of descriptions may be helpful.
One description of the emergent
generation reflects the shifting context.
Dan Kimball states in The
Emerging Church that it is vital to have a discussion “about the
fast-changing culture and the emerging church. . . . While many of us have been preparing sermons
and keeping busy with the internal affairs of our churches, something alarming
has been happening on the outside. What
once was a Christian nation with a Judeo-Christian worldview is quickly
becoming a post-Christian, unchurched, unreached
nation. . . . New generations are
arising all around us without any Christian influence. So we must rethink virtually everything we
are doing in our ministries.” (13-14) Kimball labels this generation as
post-seeker sensitive, a group of people cultivated in a postmodern and
pluralist context who are interested in spiritual experiences and in an
authentic presentation of the Christian faith.
These post-seekers often are turned off by Christians and the church,
but interested in Jesus and spirituality.
When members of this generation become Christians, their view of
Christian identity and church significantly differs from their evangelical
forbears.
Robert
Webber’s The
Younger Evangelicals describes the leaders of the emergent church as
follows: “The younger evangelical is anyone, older or younger, who deals
thoughtfully with the shift from twentieth- to twenty-first century culture. He or she is committed to construct a
biblically rooted, historically informed, and culturally aware new evangelical
witness in the twenty-first century. (16)
These leaders aim to maintain the historic Christian faith while recontextualizing it; they want to release the historic
substance of the faith from Enlightenment enculturation. Webber argues that this process of
deconstruction and reconstruction is a process evangelicals have carried out
through history. Demographically, the
younger evangelicals come from “every branch of the church, every denomination,
every parachurch movement, and every ethnic
background.” (19) Webber identifies 24
characteristics of younger evangelicals, among the most important of which are
growing up in a postmodern world, ministering in a new paradigm of thought,
standing for the absolutes of the faith in a new way, recognizing the road to
the future runs through the past, facility with technology, grasping the power
of the imagination, communicating through stories, advocating the resurgence of
the arts, and demanding authenticity.
The emergent village website
offers a third description: “Emergent is a growing generative
friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the
Spirit of Jesus Christ. Our dream is to join in the activity of God in the
world wherever we are able, so that God’s dreams for our world come true. In
the process, the world can be healed and changed, and so can we.” (www.emergentvillage.com) The subsequent
elaboration of this description overlaps significantly with Webber’s
description of younger evangelicals, particularly the openness to the various
streams of Christian tradition, the significance of relationships, the desire
to generate new approaches to thinking and practice, and an emphasis on
narrative. For the purposes of this
paper, perhaps the most significant word in this description is missional,
a term drawn from the work of Lesslie Newbigen that emphasizes Christian belief and practice as
oriented toward the service of God and others in the world. As Brian McLaren expresses it:
“The term
missional asks this question: what is the purpose of the church? To
enfold and warehouse Christians for heaven, protecting them from damage and
spoilage until they reach their destination? Or to
recruit and train people to be transforming agents of the
In the desire to bring
benefit to the world, a central aim of a missional church is cultural
engagement and transformation.
These
three descriptions reveal the emergent church as a recontextualization
project that aims toward the expression of authentic Christian faith in a
culture-affirming fashion. If the emergent
church is to be truly culturally engaged as an expression of missional
Christianity, how might this be articulated
theologically? This is the place where
neo-calvinism intersects with the concerns of the
emergent church. The doctrine of common
grace can provide the emergent church with a significant theological rationale
for Christian participation in every area of society. So what is common grace?
To
understand common grace, one must begin by talking about sin. Christian theology has long taught a doctrine
which in the last few centuries has come to be known as total depravity. This doctrine teaches that man is inherently
corrupted by sin in every aspect of his being.
Louis Berkhof says it most clearly when he
states that the effect of sin “extends to every part of man’s nature, to all
the faculties and powers of both soul and body;” furthermore, “there is no
spiritual good, that is, good in relation to God, in the sinner at all, but
only perversion” (Berkhof, 247). This depravity issues in the complete
inability of the one who does not have faith in Christ to do anything that is
perfectly pleasing to God.
While this doctrine is without a doubt
Scriptural, it immediately raises another question which must be answered: if
Scripture teaches that the heathen can in no way please God, how is it that
“there is in this world, alongside of the course of the Christian life with all
its blessings, a natural course of life, which is not redemptive and yet
exhibits many traces of the true, the good, and the beautiful?” (Berkhof, 432) The
response of many Reformed Christians, throughout the centuries, has been to
posit the doctrine of common grace. My
purpose here will be to explain this doctrine in greater detail, primarily as
it was articulated by Abraham Kuyper, to elucidate how this doctrine is both
helpful and indispensable for the Church today, and to then apply this doctrine
to aims of the emergent church.
While many have heard Kuyper’s infamous statement declaring the fact that there
could not be an inch of all creation over which God does not claim ownership,
the line of thinking in this quote is most often linked to sphere sovereignty
and not perceived as a reflection of his doctrine of common grace. Yet, common grace, when fully developed, is
“a theology of public responsibility, of Christians’ shared humanity with the
rest of the world” (Kuyper, “Common Grace,”165). Kuyper offers a concise definition in the
Stone Lectures at Princeton in 1898, noting that in contrast to a particular or
electing grace there is “a common grace by which God, maintaining the
life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process
of corruption, and thus allows the untrammeled development of our life in which
to glorify Himself as Creator.” (Kuyper, Calvinism, 30-31) The doctrine stems from the belief that all
of creation exists for the purpose of glorifying God and not merely for the
salvation of the elect. After all, as
Kuyper notes, “If God is sovereign, then his Lordship must remain over all life
and cannot be closed up within church walls or Christian circles. The extra-Christian world has not been given
over to Satan or to fallen humanity or to chance” (“Common Grace,”166). Rather, all things remain under the
providential care of a gracious Creator and exist for the sake of his
glory. As a result of this, it
inevitably follows that God has a purpose in all that takes place: history has
a direction, events are meaningful, and people, the elect and non-elect alike,
are valuable.
The objection is often raised that with
God two forms of grace which have no relation one to the other could not exist
and that therefore, common grace does not exist. Kuyper took this objection seriously and
refuted it by noting the fact that apart from the existence of common grace,
“[special grace] cannot function” (169).
The reason for this is that when one takes into account the natural
condition of man after the fall, if God’s common grace had not immediately
followed, humans would not have been allowed to exist in such a sinful state,
let alone would the
This brings us to the question of how it is that
God manifests common grace in this world.
Common grace has generally been divided up into two different
categories: a negative element and a positive element. The negative element refers to that aspect of
God’s “general grace which restrains the devastating effects of sin” (Masselink, 188). As
William Masselink states in his definition, it is
“the divine restraint upon the devastating results of sin in creation and the
human race, to make possible the development of history” (Masselink,
210). This latter definition reminds us
that, because of the natural condition of man, the development of history would
not even be a possibility without the presence of God’s common grace. Looking to Scripture, we are reminded of the
condition of man in his natural state: depraved and lacking the capacity to do
any good. Apart from God’s intervening
grace, man’s life would consist of one evil act followed by another. The Westminster Confession, speaking of man’s
natural post-fall condition, describes man as, “utterly indisposed, disabled,
and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil” (Beeke, 47).
Therefore, it is the negative element
of God’s common grace that prevents man from following the desires of his heart
without restraint. The conscience itself
is an effect of God’s common grace: it provides the individual with a sense of
direction and with some semblance of a moral compass. According to Masselink,
the conscience is evidence of common grace in that it is a testimony to the
operation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers and unbelievers
alike. The Holy Spirit communicates to
all human beings primary logical and moral truths, such as the existence of a God and of the fact that this God is righteous and
holy. The Holy Spirit also communicates
to each individual a general fear of God and the ability to foresee the
devastating consequences of evil actions; all of this is a testimony to the
active grace of God in the lives of all individuals.
There is also a positive element of
common grace, or in other words, there is a favorable attitude within God
towards creation and mankind. Throughout
Scripture, we find various passages which speak to the fact that “unregenerate
men are recipients of divine favor” (Masselink,
220). Masselink
points out the fact that in Genesis 39:5, “The Lord blessed the Egyptian’s
house for Joseph’s sake.” Again, we find Jesus in Matthew 5:44-45 commanding
believers to follow the example of his Father by loving their enemies. Furthermore, we see that natural man has a
level of moral-consciousness and observe unregenerate men performing deeds that
are ostensibly good. The third point of
common grace adopted by the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church at
Concerning the performance of
so-called civic righteousness by the unregenerate, the Synod declares that
according to Scripture and Confession the unregenerate, though incapable of any
saving good (Canons of Dordt,
II, IV, 3), can perform such civic good. This is evident from the quoted
Scripture passages and from the Canons of Dordt, III
and IV, 4, and the Belgic Confession, where it is
taught that God, without renewing the heart, exercises such influence upon man
that he is enabled to perform civic good; while it is evident from the quoted
declarations of Reformed writers of the period of florescence of Reformed
theology, that our Reformed fathers from of old have championed this view.
All of this is to be attributed to the
common grace of God poured out into this world.
What follows from this doctrine is an
understanding that this world has purpose and meaning. The world exists for a reason in the plan of
God. Humans,
elect and non-elect alike, have purpose.
History, and not just the Gospel story or the history of the Church, has
meaning. This line of thought is
dramatically different from how many Christians have been taught to think,
particularly in 20th century
“Thus the church receded in order to be
neither more or less than the congregation of believers, and in every
department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the
dominion of the Church. Thus domestic
life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in
liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and
restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection
of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty,
imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise: “Have dominion over
them”. Henceforth the curse should no
longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and
instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of
serving God in the world, in every position in life.” (Kuyper, Calvinism,
31)
This quote presents the stewardly responsibility that Christians have for creation
and speaks directly to the emergent church’s aim to engage every area of
life. Kuyper’s
view that Christians should serve God in the world resonates with the missional
church that “understands itself
to be blessed not to the exclusion of the world, but for the benefit of the
world.” How might this common
grace emphasis be articulated in a way that benefits the emergent
community?
Kuyper’s quote calls Christians to recognize that God has
called them to a “holy duty” in response to what Reformed theologians call the
cultural mandate. Another way of
speaking of this that ties into Emergent’s missional
aim is to label the first command as the First Great Commission. While Matthew 28:19-20 is rightly called the
great commission because of the command to make disciples, it is a mistaken
notion to assume that the first commission given to humans is to be forgotten
or rendered less significant. While it
is a pre-fall command, it is never revoked after Genesis 3 and is restated in
the Noahic covenant.
Post-fall, common grace makes stewardly
response to the first great commission possible, though admittedly far more
difficult than in intended in the first two chapters of Genesis. The emergent church aims to be missional by
seeking in part to serve throughout the world in areas as diverse as politics,
environmental concerns and the arts.
Cultural engagement and affirmation are highly valued. Common grace theologically buttresses this
aim, and compels Christians to perform their stewardly
duty in creation in obedience to what Kuyper calls the first creation ordinance
(what I am calling the first Great Commission).
There is a vital and often neglected pneumatological aspect as well. The Spirit compels Christians toward public
engagement in two ways. First the
Spirit’s work in creation lies behind common grace. Recall that Kuyper defined common grace as
that which maintains the life of the world, arrests the process of corruption,
and relaxes the effects of the curse. In
his doctrine of Spirit, Kuyper speaks of the agency of the Spirit in creation
as an animating, preserving, and sin restraining influence. Though he never explicitly linked them in his
own work, Kuyper‘s descriptions make it clear that
the Holy Spirit is the agent of common grace.
This in turn means that it is the Spirit in creation who makes broad ranging
public engagement possible in obedience to the first Great Commission. As common grace makes history possible, it
also makes political and sociocultural development
possible, even though the best developments only provide glimpses of God’s
kingdom. Second, the Spirit’s
transforming work in the lives of Christians compels them to be disciples in
the fullest sense. A core aspect of this
is recognition of common grace and the Christian stewardly
response to the first great commission.
The double compulsion of the Spirit enables Christians to recognize the
reality of common grace and then to practice creation stewardship by seeking to
cultivate human flourishing within and without the Christian community. Christian discipleship that permeates every
area of life, especially on Monday through Saturday, finds theological impetus
in this core neocalvinist doctrine.
Why call this neo-Kuyperian
as in this paper’s title? Because the
articulation of and response to common grace as the doubly Spirit-enabled first
Great commission was never explicit in Kuyper and, more importantly, because
the twenty-first century response to common grace must bring Kuyper’s legacy forward while being as creative in recontextualization as he was. To be Kuyperian
today is not to merely cut and paste Kuyper from the nineteenth century into
ours.
In light
of the stated aims of the emergent church, common grace would be a helpful
theological aid in living as truly missional Christians. Do emergent Christians need to become
contemporary neocalvinists in order to adopt this
doctrine? Though it certainly would not
be a bad thing, our answer must be “no.”
While common grace emerges from a Reformed environment, the truth it expresses
is found in the broad range of traditions which comprise the generative
community of friends in the emergent church.
In addition, the neo-Kuyperian project aims to
extend the influence of Kuyper beyond the walls of the Reformed world. The tremendous benefits of Kuyper’s legacy have been confined to enclaves in
Back to vanguardchurch.com