Review Article: Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction
Pastor at Stanton Lees Chapel, UK Executive Director and Lecturer in Systematic Theology, Carey Outreach Ministries
Brock, Cory C., and N. Gray Sutanto. Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction. Lexham Press, 2023.
The authors of this book are concerned that the theological contribution of the two founders of Dutch Neo-Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, has been sidelined by a preoccupation with their political emphases, resulting in a distortion of their main concerns. The aim of the book is to redress the balance. Where necessary, it also corrects theological misreadings of their position.
I. What is Neo-Calvinism?
The Introduction is followed by a chapter which analyses the term “Neo-Calvinism”. Each of its two parts is significant. The reference to “Calvinism” is important because Kuyper and Bavinck saw a retrieval of the teaching of Calvin as necessary, for two main reasons: first, they feared that the Reformed movement since Calvin had veered towards an unhelpful, rationalistic approach; second, they applauded Calvin’s emphasis on a God-centred concern for every area of life, seeing this as Biblically superior to a retreat into a Christian ghetto mentality. The significance of “Neo-” is the recognition that the Calvinist emphasis on an all-encompassing world-view needs to be reconfigured to speak into the issues raised by the modern philosophical outlook.
What particularly struck me in reading the book was the centrality in Neo-Calvinism of the doctrine of common grace. The bibliography includes two articles by each writer on this subject, plus a major three-volume study by Kuyper. Common grace is mentioned in every chapter: this has the effect of portraying it as an underlying thread which runs through Neo-Calvinist theology in its entirety, the glue which holds together all the separate theological loci. It is on this motif that I want to major in this review because I personally found this the most exciting and inspiring aspect of the book. As a result of reading it, I have gleaned many fresh insights on this subject, and for that I am very grateful to Drs. Brock and Sutanto.
The introduction paves the way by noting how Kuyper thought that common grace had been a neglected topic since the time of Calvin, and that it ought to be treated as a specific doctrine within dogmatics. He summarises the meaning of common grace in terms of God’s loving and patient preservation of this cursed creation, such that progress and development are possible even in a world wrecked by human sin and rebellion.
References to common grace crop up at regular intervals in the chapter which expounds the term “Neo-Calvinism”. The doctrine is seen as going hand-in-hand with a radical doctrine of sin: even where sin abounds, God’s common grace undergirds natural life, and in that context, Christianity has a leavening power (in a good sense) in the present world. By his common grace, God is said to maintain the life of the world, relax the impact of the curse, and arrest the process of corruption, with the result that the unhindered development of human life is allowed to take place, and so he, as Creator, is glorified, even in this fallen world.
II. Common Grace and the Gospel
Each of the next seven chapters addresses a different theological theme, one of them focussing particularly on common grace, under the heading “Common Grace and the Gospel”. I shall first summarise this chapter before noting the references to common grace in the other six chapters.
The chapter opens by defining common grace both negatively and positively: negatively, it is how God curbs the operation of Satan, death and sin; while positively, it refers to the provision of an intermediate state — an era between the Fall and the Second Coming of Christ — for Creation and the human race, so that, although humanity is deeply and radically sinful, sin cannot work out its end.
The reference to total depravity is fundamental to this book’s presentation of the doctrine of common grace, and I personally found the explanation of this relationship to be the most far-reaching aspect of it. Total depravity has often been explained in a way which qualifies it somewhat, applying it to man’s inability of his own resources to achieve any saving good but acknowledging that fallen human nature is still capable of much natural good. Neo-Calvinism, by contrast, interprets total depravity in an unqualified way. It really is total; all possibility of good was eradicated by the fall. The Neo-Calvinists also acknowledged that, in this fallen world, people do still do good, and admitted that this observation does not seem to tally with such a radical version of total depravity. However, they were at pains to insist that this is not at all because of some spark of goodness remaining in human nature, that human achievements may not be attributed to vestiges of human ingenuity. Rather, it is against the background of human helplessness and inability that God’s common grace enables good to be done and allows beneficial and joyful experiences to occur. The truth is that there is absolutely nothing praiseworthy in this fallen world except that which comes from God. It is he who enables good to be done, and every expression of goodness is a conferred grace. But for God’s common grace the world would have been annihilated, and there would be no possibility of knowledge, or progress, or peace.
Neo-Calvinism acknowledges its debt to Calvin at this point. He spoke of God’s “general grace” as an aspect of his all-encompassing providence, which maintains human life and culture, and gives birth to the things which we admire, including civic order, philosophy, the art of rational disputation, medicine, and mathematics. Kuyper and Bavinck identified God’s common graces as moral, intellectual, and natural goods, and summarised them under the two headings of internal and external graces. The former are seen in expressions of truth, goodness, and beauty, and include the family, natural love, human virtue, the public conscience, integrity, fidelity and piety. The external graces embrace human power over the natural world, life-enriching inventions, the arts and sciences, music, the seasons, crops, food, clothing, and all of life’s beneficial and enjoyable experiences. In short, we have received the gift of life, every breath that we breathe being a gift of God’s grace, and not something to which we have a right. Moreover, we are in a stable world where, although there is no universal moral consensus because of sin, nonetheless, neither is there total confusion.
It is worth enlarging on the reference to piety in the list of common graces. For Kuyper and Bavinck, even false religions are tokens of God’s common grace, in so far as they recognise the reality of the divine and ensure the human search for the true God. Even pagan religion is a fruit of God’s self-revelation in Creation and the conscience, albeit that fallen man is inevitably prone to misread the evidence.
The point about the intermediate state of the present world in which common grace abounds also needs elaboration. Although common grace came into effect immediately upon the Fall and the Curse, its covenantal basis is traced back to Noah, who stood as the representative of the whole creation. Common grace prepared the way for Christ’s first coming, both in the sustaining of a religious disposition, and in the spread of the Greek language. In this time between his two comings, common grace continues its work as preparatory for the Eschaton. It provides the arena, the stage, the field for the work of salvation with a view to the ultimate redemption. When that day comes, the work of common grace will terminate, as grace and nature come together in glory. The Neo-Calvinists said that while the “germ” of the internal graces will continue its external accomplishments will not.
This is not to say that common grace is inevitably universal throughout this interim period. Kuyper and Bavinck recognised, on the basis of Romans 1, that there are times when God withholds common grace, gives up to their own desires those who idolise created realities, and nullifies the possibility of participation in his revealed law.
Kuyper and Bavinck understood common grace to be an outworking of God’s absolute and overall sovereignty, and brought out its trinitarian reality: the Father wills the preservation of the creaturely realm; Jesus Christ the Son is the mediator of common grace, the light of the world shining in the darkness; and it is the Spirit who distributes God’s gifts of love to the world, giving and maintaining life and being at every level — human, animal and inanimate. In such a world, the leavening task of the Church and of individual believers is to witness to God’s special grace in Christ, to live in a godly way, and to be involved in society to the glory of God.
III. Common Grace in Broader Neo-Calvinism
The first of the other six chapters is headed “Catholic and Modern”, its point being that the churches are both rooted in the universal, historic Christian faith, but also adaptable, though not uncritically so, to all cultural and generational differences, so that within its unity there is space for vast diversity. The beneficial aspects of each of the multiple cultures throughout time and across the nations are the good gifts of God in his common grace.
The next chapter addresses the subject of “Revelation and Reason”. The primary concern is God’s general revelation of himself in the works of Creation and the human consciousness of absolute dependence. This is distinguished from natural theology, which is rational reflection on that inbuilt revelation. In the estimation of Kuyper and Bavinck, Medieval Thomism and subsequent Roman Catholic teaching claimed that natural truths could be known without supernatural grace; by contrast, they insisted that it was only through God’s common grace that the sinful human mind could attain to correct beliefs.
The title of the following chapter is “Scripture and Organism”, by which is meant both that Scripture, in all the diversity of its component parts, is a unified whole, and that the entirety of human knowledge arising from observation and discovery is a single entity, with Scriptural truth as its unifying foundation. One of Kuyper’s articles was entitled “Common Grace in Science”; it is referenced five times in the earlier part of this chapter. He saw the learning of philosophers and scientists, not excluding Charles Darwin, as a fruit of common grace. He notes that the effects of sin do not impede the observation of data but lead to a misconstrued system when the attempt is made to organise the data coherently: it is Scripture which provides that foundation.
Next, we come to a chapter on “Creation and Re-creation”. Common grace is seen in the general gifts of creation, and in human development. The practical skills of the farmer and the intellectual ability of the scholar are alike the fruits of God’s common grace. In connection with the cessation of common grace at the Eschaton, Kuyper and Bavinck rejected the idea of a gradual transition from the present age into the New Heaven and Earth, which they believed would be ushered in cataclysmically.
The chapter on “Image and Fall” depicts the human race as the image of the Triune God in its diversity within unity, and in the unity of man’s constitution as a being both physical and spiritual. It is God’s common grace which prevents the total loss of the image as a result of the Fall: but for the restraint of common grace, sin would have destroyed the image completely. The human race would have lost its unity, breaking up into disconnected and egocentric individualism but this tendency is curbed by common grace. It is the moral conscience, a primary element in common grace, which judges human sin and so preserves the spiritual aspect of human being. Moreover, the human vocation of dominion under the rule of Christ continues to be evident in every age as human beings exercise stewardship in the life of the world; this too is an expression of common grace.
The last of these six chapters is headed “Church and World”. It recognises that God preserves and governs the world through his common grace, which brings into being the three main spheres of family, state and culture, the last being a wide term embracing multiple aspects of social life, including farming and the arts. In the midst of this world, the church, brought into being by special grace, becomes a fourth sphere which, as the presence of special grace, can penetrate any of the other spheres and enhance the domain of common grace as a witness to renewal in the future Kingdom. The earthly homelands of believers and churches continue as a result of common grace, and this prevents Creation from collapsing into chaos under satanic dominion. Through his common grace, it is God in Christ who continues to govern life in the world, and, in a world sustained by common grace, artwork, for example, when done from a Christian perspective, displays the glory of God.
IV. Conclusion
The book closes with a brief summary chapter containing 16 theses listing the main points made in the preceding chapters. These are introduced by a synopsis which includes the observation that our contemporary situation still enjoys the gifts of common grace. Thesis nine then affirms that by the Spirit’s work in common grace God restrains sin, and grants to fallen humanity moral, intellectual, and life-giving gifts to enjoy, with a view to the ultimate redemption in Christ.
The inclusion of enjoyment in that final reference to common grace is surely significant. It emphasises the amazing kindness of God even towards a fallen and rebellious world. His purpose is not merely to preserve the world for a better future; the implication is that he himself finds pleasure, and is the more greatly glorified, when his sinful creatures are still able to enjoy life even in a fallen creation.
The theme of common grace especially captivated my imagination as I read this work. However, there are also many other stimulating themes, and I heartily recommend this book as an important introduction to a branch of theology which is probably largely new to many of us.
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