General - Friday, September 29, 2006 0:10 - 0 Comments

Are you a neo-Calvinist?

I have given some thinking to Kuyperian and Schaefferian apologetics lately which has led me to ask the question which titles this post. Since I’m a fan of both of these great men (Abraham Kuyper and Francis Schaeffer), I am trying to make an attempt to clearly and concisely articulate what it was that Kuyper was getting at. It seems to me that his theology needs to be framed as a fully orbed worldview rather than a disjointed abstraction one adopts along with other systematic commitments that have little bearing on ones life.

Since Abraham Kuyper is given the dubious title as the founding father of neo-Calvinism, I wanted to investigate how to best articulate this theology in a way that is more of an overview rather than a long dissertation on this subject. Doing a search for such a definition reminded me why it is good to look for thinkers who have written on such topics instead of reinventing the wheel (thank you again google and wikipedia).

I wanted to lay out a couple of definitions that touches on many of the aspects of neo-Calvinism that I find so attractive. Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, don’t jump to the conclusion that “neo” means a liberal version of the older view. I find that this usage of the term to describe a particular form of Calvinism has more to do with expanding the previous rather than abrogating its basic doctrinal commitments. Ok, enough of my garble. Here is a definition I found on Gideon Strauss’ site which I think is fair and more succinct than I have been able to produce up to this point.

Strauss defines neo-Calvinism as someone who… Continue…