Ecumenical concern begins at home. It is therefore not surprising that many of us have recently paid significant attention to the reformed community in the Netherlands. That community is a member of the “family.” It is the mother of reformed groups in distant parts of the world: Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, North and South America. Today the daughters are worried about the mother’s spiritual health. She is apparently experiencing a revolution in theology, focused especially on the trustworthiness of Holy Writ. But there is also something else, though closely connected with it. Some of her younger, radical members are proposing a “theology of revolution.”
Anti-revolutionary heritage
Groen van Prinsterer and Abraham Kuyper, both converts from liberalism and the most outstanding leaders of Dutch national life in the last century, insisted that redemption in Christ changes the life of individuals and should affect the direction of human culture, in an anti-revolutionary manner. Behind this negative adjective lay a positive thrust. “Revolution” for them meant a radical change in social relations according to norms set by man himself. They were not conservative “counter-revolutionaries” who deny the necessity of basic social change. Instead, they coined the word “anti-revolutionary” to describe a transformation of social structures demanded by the Scriptures in harmony with the so-called creation-ordinances.
This triple division of basic social conceptions (revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, anti-revolutionary) implied a great advantage over the dual approach present in the Anglo-Saxon nations, viz. that of the humanist progressive Left, with its various degrees of radicality, and the humanist conservative Right, with its absence of clear direction in modern politics. Kuyper and his followers were able to flesh out the anti-revolutionary skeleton with a broad cultural program relevant to education, politics and the socio-economic sector.
Christian radicalism
The new “Christian-radicals”—as they like to be called—in the Dutch reformed world have in principle broken with the century-old anti-revolutionary direction. With his typical and admirable honesty Dr. H. M. Kuitert once remarked that he had never read Groen van Prinsterer because in his view Groen has nothing to say to our world.
What alternative direction do the new radicals suggest? From the wealth of literature that is already on the market one can distill the contours of what some like to call a theology of revolution. Though risking simplification, I would like to point out a few basic characteristics.
Horizontal Christianity
The Scriptures do not posit an antithesis between the believer’s “vertical” love to God and the “horizontal” love to fellow-men. Christ gave mankind the first and great commandment but also a second like unto it (Matt. 22:38, 39). If man does not love God with his entire being, then the horizontal relations with his fellows—including the multiple social structures -are apt to he misdirected. Christ’s redemption in principle restores both dimensions: “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Believers are not to behave like the pagans; they are to seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness. and then all the other things shall be theirs as well (Matt. 6:33).
Marx taught the opposite. Human society, the politico-economic basis of life must be transformed if necessary by (violent) revolution—before man can be redeemed, before man can achieve genuine freedom. A good deal of today’s social thought is closer to this “horizontal” view of Marx than to Christian revelation. And that not only in the left-wing of the World Council movement but also in the Dutch reformed community.
This is evident from a statement issued in Anti-revolutionaire staatkunde (May 1967) by six persons, four of whom serve as professors in various Dutch universities. They state: “Every Christian is bound by the great commandment of Christ: love God and your neighbor as yourself. Now love can only show itself in deed. The Christian who desires to fulfill the great commandment must therefore perform certain deeds. And since the Christian, too, is a human being, an earth-bound creature, he can only perform such deeds on this earth, deeds toward his fellow-men, toward human society in which he lives. In these deeds of love to neighbor he shows his love to God.” This love is the motivation for Christian politics and presents the norms for Christian social involvement: peace, justice, mercy, support for the weak, and protection of the oppressed.
Love without law
No one will argue against these norms. But what do they concretely mean in political and economic institutions? In my view an answer to this question depends upon the proper relation between the central religious love-command and the divine order for creation upon which these institutions are founded (cf. Rom. 13).
In other words, here we are confronted with God’s “general” revelation in creation, accepted by Calvin, the Belgic Confession (Art. 2 and 3), Kuyper, and reaffirmed by C. C. Berkouwer (cf. his General Revelation, 1951). The basic reformed position has been this, that the written revelation of God presents the indispensable illumination of God’s revelation in creation, but docs not eliminate it. And in connection with the problem at hand: Christ’s love-command presents the indispensable key to the proper religious direction of the creation-founded social institutions, but does not abolish them. He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law (Rom. 13:8–10).
Tn contemporary theological ethics God’s revelation in creation is disregarded. The attack on it was spearheaded by Karl Barth and, in a different context, continued by Robinson’s Honest to God and Harvey Cox’s The Secular City. In the absence of the normative social structures (family, marriage, state, economic institutions) as the channels of necessary social change, radical revolution is readily accepted.
The six gentlemen cited above put it this way: “Revolution must he defined in Christian thought as the frank rejection of views and conditions which obstruct the building and development of a society of free and mature people.” In this light they want to redefine private property and private economic initiative in terms of “love,” that is, social service to one’s fellowman and to mankind.
Authority upside-down
Especially revealing is the new definition of authority. This is how it is described: “Authority is a characteristic of relations between people and groups and thus does not have a divine origin. Authority is human power recognized and accepted by those subjected to it.” In another context one of the authors of this statement, Dr. H. J. Van Zuthem of the Free University, put it thus: “If we read in Lord’s Day 39 of the Heidelberg Catechism that we must show all honor, love, and fidelity to all in authority over us, since it pleases God to govern us by their hand, then it becomes rather urgent that we place a large question-mark behind this explanation and that we ask ourselves in all seriousness whether this explanation is anything but ideology rather than Gospel. And indeed ideology in this sense, that this expression in the Heidelberg Catechism in fact serves no other purpose but to leave matters as they are.”
Over against this supposed authoritarianism and conservatism Van Zuthem defends a functional view of authority. By this he means: “authority about which the person subjected to human power says: I accept this exercise of power over myself because I agree with and consent to the purpose for which this power is used.” This conception is related to that old humanist view of “government by consent of the governed.” And it is related to the foundation of the permissive society—the opposite of the authoritarian society but just as destructive as we are beginning to discover in the United States and Canada.
Renewal
Renewal in reformed theology and Christian social thought is imperative, in Europe as well as in North America. But the new directions on the other side of the ocean reveal, I think, that we must not glibly accept every wind of doctrine but test the spirits whether they are of God. Reformational renewal presupposes acceptance of God’s revelation in creation, in Christ and the Scriptures.
Dr. Zylstra is assistant professor of political theory at the Institute for Christian studies in Toronto, Canada.
Anti-revolutionary heritage
Groen van Prinsterer and Abraham Kuyper, both converts from liberalism and the most outstanding leaders of Dutch national life in the last century, insisted that redemption in Christ changes the life of individuals and should affect the direction of human culture, in an anti-revolutionary manner. Behind this negative adjective lay a positive thrust. “Revolution” for them meant a radical change in social relations according to norms set by man himself. They were not conservative “counter-revolutionaries” who deny the necessity of basic social change. Instead, they coined the word “anti-revolutionary” to describe a transformation of social structures demanded by the Scriptures in harmony with the so-called creation-ordinances.
This triple division of basic social conceptions (revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, anti-revolutionary) implied a great advantage over the dual approach present in the Anglo-Saxon nations, viz. that of the humanist progressive Left, with its various degrees of radicality, and the humanist conservative Right, with its absence of clear direction in modern politics. Kuyper and his followers were able to flesh out the anti-revolutionary skeleton with a broad cultural program relevant to education, politics and the socio-economic sector.
Christian radicalism
The new “Christian-radicals”—as they like to be called—in the Dutch reformed world have in principle broken with the century-old anti-revolutionary direction. With his typical and admirable honesty Dr. H. M. Kuitert once remarked that he had never read Groen van Prinsterer because in his view Groen has nothing to say to our world.
What alternative direction do the new radicals suggest? From the wealth of literature that is already on the market one can distill the contours of what some like to call a theology of revolution. Though risking simplification, I would like to point out a few basic characteristics.
Horizontal Christianity
The Scriptures do not posit an antithesis between the believer’s “vertical” love to God and the “horizontal” love to fellow-men. Christ gave mankind the first and great commandment but also a second like unto it (Matt. 22:38, 39). If man does not love God with his entire being, then the horizontal relations with his fellows—including the multiple social structures -are apt to he misdirected. Christ’s redemption in principle restores both dimensions: “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Believers are not to behave like the pagans; they are to seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness. and then all the other things shall be theirs as well (Matt. 6:33).
Marx taught the opposite. Human society, the politico-economic basis of life must be transformed if necessary by (violent) revolution—before man can be redeemed, before man can achieve genuine freedom. A good deal of today’s social thought is closer to this “horizontal” view of Marx than to Christian revelation. And that not only in the left-wing of the World Council movement but also in the Dutch reformed community.
This is evident from a statement issued in Anti-revolutionaire staatkunde (May 1967) by six persons, four of whom serve as professors in various Dutch universities. They state: “Every Christian is bound by the great commandment of Christ: love God and your neighbor as yourself. Now love can only show itself in deed. The Christian who desires to fulfill the great commandment must therefore perform certain deeds. And since the Christian, too, is a human being, an earth-bound creature, he can only perform such deeds on this earth, deeds toward his fellow-men, toward human society in which he lives. In these deeds of love to neighbor he shows his love to God.” This love is the motivation for Christian politics and presents the norms for Christian social involvement: peace, justice, mercy, support for the weak, and protection of the oppressed.
Love without law
No one will argue against these norms. But what do they concretely mean in political and economic institutions? In my view an answer to this question depends upon the proper relation between the central religious love-command and the divine order for creation upon which these institutions are founded (cf. Rom. 13).
In other words, here we are confronted with God’s “general” revelation in creation, accepted by Calvin, the Belgic Confession (Art. 2 and 3), Kuyper, and reaffirmed by C. C. Berkouwer (cf. his General Revelation, 1951). The basic reformed position has been this, that the written revelation of God presents the indispensable illumination of God’s revelation in creation, but docs not eliminate it. And in connection with the problem at hand: Christ’s love-command presents the indispensable key to the proper religious direction of the creation-founded social institutions, but does not abolish them. He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law (Rom. 13:8–10).
Tn contemporary theological ethics God’s revelation in creation is disregarded. The attack on it was spearheaded by Karl Barth and, in a different context, continued by Robinson’s Honest to God and Harvey Cox’s The Secular City. In the absence of the normative social structures (family, marriage, state, economic institutions) as the channels of necessary social change, radical revolution is readily accepted.
The six gentlemen cited above put it this way: “Revolution must he defined in Christian thought as the frank rejection of views and conditions which obstruct the building and development of a society of free and mature people.” In this light they want to redefine private property and private economic initiative in terms of “love,” that is, social service to one’s fellowman and to mankind.
Authority upside-down
Especially revealing is the new definition of authority. This is how it is described: “Authority is a characteristic of relations between people and groups and thus does not have a divine origin. Authority is human power recognized and accepted by those subjected to it.” In another context one of the authors of this statement, Dr. H. J. Van Zuthem of the Free University, put it thus: “If we read in Lord’s Day 39 of the Heidelberg Catechism that we must show all honor, love, and fidelity to all in authority over us, since it pleases God to govern us by their hand, then it becomes rather urgent that we place a large question-mark behind this explanation and that we ask ourselves in all seriousness whether this explanation is anything but ideology rather than Gospel. And indeed ideology in this sense, that this expression in the Heidelberg Catechism in fact serves no other purpose but to leave matters as they are.”
Over against this supposed authoritarianism and conservatism Van Zuthem defends a functional view of authority. By this he means: “authority about which the person subjected to human power says: I accept this exercise of power over myself because I agree with and consent to the purpose for which this power is used.” This conception is related to that old humanist view of “government by consent of the governed.” And it is related to the foundation of the permissive society—the opposite of the authoritarian society but just as destructive as we are beginning to discover in the United States and Canada.
Renewal
Renewal in reformed theology and Christian social thought is imperative, in Europe as well as in North America. But the new directions on the other side of the ocean reveal, I think, that we must not glibly accept every wind of doctrine but test the spirits whether they are of God. Reformational renewal presupposes acceptance of God’s revelation in creation, in Christ and the Scriptures.
Dr. Zylstra is assistant professor of political theory at the Institute for Christian studies in Toronto, Canada.