The Reformed Worldview
on Behalf
Godly Culture
Prof. David J. Engelsma
Faith/Grandville
PRC Evangelism Committees
For a long time, I have
thought that the Protestant Reformed Churches have failed to set forth a full, systematic,
positive statement of their belief concerning worldview and culture. The writers have repeatedly and thoroughly
criticized the common grace worldview and culture of Abraham Kuyper. But a positive statement of the worldview and
culture belonging to the Reformed faith and life described in the Reformed confessions has
been lacking. An exception is Herman
Hoeksema’s pamphlet, The Christian and Culture, which is, however, brief and
incomplete.
The ministers and Christian
schoolteachers have always taught the truth of a distinctively Reformed worldview and the
reality of a genuinely Christian culture, even though the terms were not used. The people have always possessed the Reformed
worldview and lived a Christian culture, even when they were ignorant of the words.
Only the statement has been
lacking.
The lack has been harmful. Members of the Protestant Reformed Churches have
tended to look askance at the “cultural calling” of the Reformed Christians and
to regard the term “culture” with suspicion.
Opponents of the Protestant Reformed Churches have been encouraged to charge
“world-flight” (although they hardly needed this encouragement).
An accusation by Dr. Richard
J. Mouw occasioned the positive statement concerning worldview and culture that is the
content of this booklet. He made the
accusation in a public debate over common grace. The
accusation was that their denial of common grace keeps Protestant Reformed people from
being as active in society as they ought to be. Mouw
made the accusation in a part of the debate that precluded a response at the time.
This booklet is my response,
not only to the milder and kinder charge of Dr. Mouw, but also to the harsher form of the
charge against the Protestant Reformed Churches, made by many in the past, and still made
by some today: “Anabaptists! World flight!”
The work is, at the same
time, at least a first effort at the positive confession, explanation, and defense of a
Reformed worldview that owes nothing to common grace.
“The Reformed Worldview
on Behalf of a Godly Culture” appeared originally as an article in the April 2005
issue of the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal.
Prof. David J. Engelsma
Protestant
Reformed Seminary
Grandville, MI
July 2005
Introduction
In the course of a public
debate in September 2003 over common grace and culture, Dr. Richard J. Mouw charged that
members of the Protestant Reformed Churches are not as active in society as Christians
should be.1 Mouw’s charge, although milder in tone, was
essentially the charge that the Reformed community has been making against members of the
Protestant Reformed Churches since the beginning of the Protestant Reformed Churches in
1924. Because the Protestant Reformed
Churches deny a common grace of God as taught by the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham
Kuyper and as adopted as dogma by the Christian Reformed Church, the members of these
churches are unable to live a full, active earthly life in every sphere of creation.2 The harsher expression of Dr. Mouw’s charge
against the Protestant Reformed people is: “Anabaptists!” Members of the Protestant Reformed Churches are
accused of world-flight. They are the
equivalent in the Reformed community of the Amish or Hutterites. Since full, active life in the world arises out of
a worldview, or world-and-life view, the charge is that the Protestant Reformed Churches
do not have a worldview.
The thinking that prevails
in the Reformed churches is simply this: no
common grace, no worldview.
Underlying the charge that
the Protestant Reformed Churches have no worldview and, therefore, are guilty of
world-flight is the assumption that the only possible worldview for Reformed Christians,
if not for all Christians, is the worldview of common grace. This was certainly Kuyper’s contention in his
Stone Lectures at Princeton and in his three volumes on common grace, De Gemeene Gratie. This is the position of Richard Mouw in He
Shines in All That’s Fair. This is
also the thinking, widely, in evangelical circles today.
Writing in the August 2004 issue of Christianity Today, influential
evangelical Charles Colson begins his “Back Page” article this way:
Some weeks ago I exhorted a gathering of pastors to engage today’s cultural battles, particularly to support the Federal Marriage Amendment. Afterward, the pastors had many questions—but they were also confused. One asked: “But won’t engaging the culture this way interfere with fulfilling the Great Commission? Isn’t this our job—to win people to Christ?” That people still raise this question surprised me. “Of course we’re called to fulfill the Great Commission,” I replied. “But we’re also called to fulfill the cultural commission.” Christians are agents of God’s saving grace—bringing others to Christ, I explained—but we are also agents of his common grace: sustaining and renewing his creation, defending the created institutions of family and society, critiquing false worldviews.3
The worldview of common
grace dreamed up by Abraham Kuyper a little more than one hundred years ago holds that,
alongside His purpose of saving a church in Jesus Christ, God has another purpose with
creation and history, namely, the development of a good, godly, and God-glorifying
culture. God accomplishes this cultural
purpose with creation and history by bestowing a certain grace upon unregenerate,
unbelieving people. This common, cultural
grace of God works wonders in the ungodly. It
restrains sin in them so that they are no longer totally depraved, as otherwise they would
be. It enables these godless, Christ-less men
and women to perform deeds in everyday, earthly life that are truly good, and please God. It empowers the wicked to build a culture, an
entire way of life of a society, or a nation, that glorifies God.
God is supposed to give this
cultural grace also to His regenerated people. Hence,
it is called common grace. It is a grace of
God that is common to elect and reprobate, believer and unbeliever, alike. According to the proponents of the theory, the
believer lives his life in the world by the power of common grace. And with it he must cooperate with unbelievers in
carrying out their mutual task of building a good, God-glorifying culture.
Kuyper and his contemporary
disciples propose the worldview of common grace as the basis of the entire earthly life of
the Christian. Regarding his life with God in
worship, prayer, Bible study, and witnessing, the Christian lives and works by the
special, saving grace of God, which is particular, that is, not shared by the unbeliever. But with regard to his everyday, earthly life of
job, citizen of a country, and neighbor in society, he is called to live and work by
common grace. “The third fundamental
relation” of the Calvinist, in addition to those he sustains to God and to man,
according to Kuyper, is “the relation which you bear to the world.” This relation is based on, and controlled by,
“a common grace” of God.4
Although the common grace
worldview is certainly a worldview and although it is a worldview adopted and defended by
many Reformed people, it is not the Reformed worldview.
The alternatives are not the common grace worldview, or no worldview at all, that
is, world-flight. Particularly for Reformed,
or Calvinistic, Christians, the alternatives are the common grace worldview, or the
worldview of particular, sovereign grace, that is, the worldview of the Reformed
confessions.
The issue is not merely
theoretical. After one hundred years, the
worldview of common grace has proved to be a colossal failure. It has not produced a godly culture anywhere. On the contrary, it has been a Trojan horse, or
more fittingly a bridge, to let the depraved world into the churches, into the lives of
professing Reformed Christians, and especially into the Christian schools.
During the same century,
other Reformed saints have embraced and practiced the genuinely Reformed worldview of the
Reformed creeds, even though these Reformed believers never spoke of worldview and though
many of them were ignorant of the term “worldview.” They had the genuinely Reformed worldview in their
hearts. This worldview sent these Reformed
Christians into the world, in every sphere of creation, vigorously to live earthly life to
the glory of God, while guarding them against worldliness.
It is time that this genuinely Reformed worldview be spelled out and defended.
There is another reason for
this apology for the Reformed worldview. We
are privileged to live at the time—the end of the ages!—when the worldview of
autonomous, sovereign Man (spell “Man” with a capital “M” for
“Man” who has made himself god) ruthlessly eradicates every vestige of
Christianity from Western civilization and cajoles or coerces all of human life into the
worship and service of Man. This worldview
and its powerful development are evident in the legalizing of the murder of the unborn and
the half-born and in the sanctioning by society and state of the perversions of sodomy and
lesbianism. As prophesied by Daniel 7:25, in
its rebellion against God this worldview thinks to change every law of God the creator,
including the fundamental laws revealed in nature itself.
The worldview of deified Man has no fixed principles, except the fixed principle
that whatever pleases godless Man is right.
Andrew Hoffecker and Gary
Scott Smith are right in stating, “one theme dominates the Western mind since the
Enlightenment—autonomy. Autonomy has
replaced the Judeo-Christian God as the single most important worldview issue.”5
Against this aggressive
worldview of the sovereignty of Man stands, and alone can stand, the Christian gospel and
worldview of the sovereignty of the triune God in Jesus Christ.
There is indeed a
“culture war,” as Robert Bork,6 J. Budziszewski,7 Charles Colson,8 and others have told
us, and a “culture war” is a clash of worldviews.
These worldviews are not those of the Democratic and Republican parties. Nor are they the worldviews of political liberals
and political conservatives. But they are the
worldview of the spirit of antichrist, which is already in the world and will produce the
man of lawlessness, according to the apostle in II Thessalonians 2, and the worldview that
sees all things in light of the truth that God is God and that frames the life of the
godly man and woman accordingly.
This latter, which alone is
able to resist and demolish the worldview of autonomous Man, is emphatically not the
worldview of common grace. The history of the
past one hundred years has proved that the supposedly Christian worldview of common grace
is powerless before the juggernaut of the worldview of autonomous Man. By its teachings of a grace of God in the world of
the ungodly and of a grand cultural project of the Spirit of God among the unregenerate,
the worldview of common grace has opened up churches, schools, and individuals to the mind
and practices of the worldview of sovereign Man. This
is fatal.
The worldview that
invincibly withstands the force of the worldview of sovereign Man, and demolishes it, is
the worldview of particular grace, that is, the worldview of the Reformed faith.
Worldview
By worldview, or
world-and-life-view, is meant a comprehensive, unified view of all creation and history in
light either of the knowledge of the triune, one, true, and living God revealed in Jesus
Christ, or in light of the unbelieving rejection of this God. This view of all things determines how one lives
the whole of his or her earthly life in the world. The
power of worldview is that it frames one’s entire life.
This understanding of
worldview is in basic agreement with the definition of the worldview scholars. James Orr states that worldview denotes “the
widest view which the mind can take of things in the effort to grasp them together as a
whole from the standpoint of some particular philosophy or theology.”9 James Sire describes a worldview as a “set of
presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we
hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic
makeup of our world.”10 In his recent examination of the common grace
worldview of Abraham Kuyper, Peter S. Heslam defines worldview as a “set of beliefs
that underlie and shape all human thought and action.”11
The Reformed worldview is
that comprehensive, unified view of all creation and history inherent in the Reformed
faith. The Reformed faith is the body of
biblical truths recovered and developed by the sixteenth century Reformation of the church
especially by the theological work of John Calvin. This
faith is officially and authoritatively expressed in the Reformed creeds, the Three Forms
of Unity (Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession, and Canons of Dordt) and the
Westminster Standards (Westminster Confession of Faith, Westminster Larger Catechism, and
Westminster Shorter Catechism).
In these creeds, there is no
doctrine of a common grace of God, much less of a grand purpose of God in history to
create a good culture by reprobate, ungodly men and women.
The common grace worldview, which by this time is a sacred cow in Reformed circles,
has no basis in the Reformed creeds—absolutely none.
This all by itself is fatal to the worldview of common grace. Such an important aspect of Calvinism as its
worldview surely must have some basis in Calvinism’s confessions. But all such basis in the confessions is lacking. The only mention of “common grace” in
the Reformed confessions attributes the teaching to the Arminians as an essential element
of their heresy of universalizing the grace of God.12
In their fundamental
doctrines, the Reformed confessions demolish the foundations of the worldview of common
grace. God has no attitude of grace toward
the reprobate ungodly, who are outside of Jesus Christ in time and in eternity, but an
attitude of wrath: “The wrath of God
abideth upon those who believe not this gospel.”13 The unregenerate have no ability to perform good
works, whether by nature or by common grace, but, as totally depraved, are wholly
incapable of any good: “Are we then so
corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good, and inclined to all wickedness? Indeed we are, except we are regenerated by the
Spirit of God.”14 As even the secular scholars are well aware,
rather than teaching a grace common to all men without exception, the Reformed confessions
teach particular, discriminating grace, grace that has its origin in election: “All those whom God hath predestinated unto
life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to
call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by
nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ.”15
The Reformed faith, which is
authoritatively defined in the Reformed confessions, not in Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures
on Calvinism, has a worldview. It has its
own unique worldview. Kuyper was right when
he asserted that Calvinism is not “a religion confined to the closet, the cell, or
the church”16 and when he denied
that “Calvinism represents an exclusively ecclesiastical and dogmatic movement.”17 But there was nothing profound, or novel, about
these observations by the Dutch theologian. Calvinism
is the pure Christianity of the Bible, and Christianity, obviously, is not confined to
closet, cell, or church. One needs only to
read the book of Proverbs and Ephesians 4-6.
A worldview is made up of
the following basic elements. First, every
worldview is grounded in a certain belief concerning God and, in light of this fundamental
belief about God, in beliefs about man, the world, the purpose of human life, and the goal
of all things. Belief about God is the
vantage point from which worldview views the world. This
vantage point is the unquestioned starting point for worldview. The issue for worldview is theological: “Who is God?”
Second, a worldview lays
claim to all of reality, to all of human life. This
is true of the worldview of the Roman Catholic Church, of the worldview of Leninist/
Marxist communism, and of the worldview of autonomous Man, now reigning in the West.
Third, a worldview
authorizes and urges men and women to live earthly life in all its aspects energetically,
enthusiastically, joyously, and hopefully, as a good, honorable, useful life. That is, earthly life is good inasmuch as it is
lived according to the adopted worldview.
Fourth, worldview has a
positive regard for culture and for the use and enjoyment of the products of culture. By “culture,” a notoriously difficult
concept to pin down in a brief statement, we may understand simply man’s work with
creation, whether by mind or body; man’s development of the creation, including a man
or woman’s own gifts and abilities; man’s production of various inventions, to
make human life easier or more enjoyable; and man’s ordering of his society. Mozart’s composition of a symphony is
culture. The discovery of anesthetics,
especially for use by dentists, is culture. The
ordering of the United States politically by the founding fathers is culture. But so also are the farmer’s cultivation of
his field, the wife’s care of her home, and the child’s learning to read,
culture.
The Reformed worldview,
inherent in the faith set forth in the ecumenical and Reformation creeds, is characterized
by all these elements of worldview. The
vantage point of the Reformed worldview is the God-given faith that receives Holy
Scripture as God’s own revelation of Himself, of His plan for creation and history,
and of His will for His elect, redeemed, and regenerated people in the world.
Second, the Reformed
worldview imperiously claims all of created reality.
All things are ours because we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s (I Cor.
3:22, 23). Since God has given all things to
the risen Christ Jesus, Abraham Kuyper’s famed statement, that Christ claims every
square inch of the creation, is true.
Third, the Reformed
worldview sends its disciples into all of earthly life.
It instructs the Reformed Christians that their earthly life is a holy calling. In the world, in every human ordinance, they must
serve their God. Jesus prayed, not that God
would take Jesus’ disciples “out of the world,” but that in the world God
would “keep them from the evil” (John 17:15).
Fourth, the Reformed
worldview does not despise, reject, or even fear culture, that is, all kinds of human
activity upon creation and its resources. The
Reformed worldview requires that we hate, despise, and reject the corrupt culture of
ungodly people, as is the command of I John 2:15-17:
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father
is not in him. For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the
Father, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he
that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” Living
the Reformed, Christian worldview, one hates and rejects a concert of music by avowed
lesbians crooning the pleasures of same-sex lust; a movie blasphemously depicting the
sufferings of the Christ; and the dishonest business practices that defraud customers,
investors, and creditors.
But the Reformed worldview
calls Reformed believers enthusiastically to fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1:28, subduing
the earth, having dominion, and that aspect of the mandate that many of its noisy
proponents tend to ignore and even reject: being
fruitful and multiplying.
The Reformed worldview
insists on obedience to the purpose of the cultural mandate in Genesis 1:28: serving and glorifying the true God, the creator
of the world and all things in it. The
cultural mandate is not merely the command to rule and develop creation. The cultural mandate is the divine charge to rule
and develop the earthly creation in the service and to the glory of God. Without this purpose, and in defiance of this
purpose, there is no fulfillment of the cultural mandate.
This is conveniently overlooked by many who stress the cultural mandate on behalf
of a Christian worldview. The reprobate,
ungodly man or woman does not, will not, and cannot fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1:28,
because he or she cannot subdue, rule, and develop creation in the service of God and to
the glory of God. God is not in all his or
her thoughts. Therefore, he or she will not
seek God (Psalm 10:4). Because he does not
seek God in his cultural activities, even the plowing of the wicked is sin (Prov. 21:4). The ungodly subdue the earth and have dominion in
the service of the devil and his kingdom. “Ye
are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father ye will do” (John 8:44).
The only fulfillment of the
cultural mandate is by the Christian, who works with the creation and lives in the
ordinances of creation by faith in Christ, in obedience to the law governing human life,
and to the glory of God.
The Reformed Worldview
What now is the Reformed
worldview?
The Reformed view of all
created reality is determined and shaped by the Reformed faith’s knowledge of the
Godhead of the triune, one, true, living God, who is revealed in Jesus Christ in the
gospel of Holy Scripture. James Orr rightly
said “the fundamental postulate [of the Christian worldview] is a personal, holy,
self-revealed God.”18 “There be gods many and lords many, but to us
there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him” (I Cor. 8:5, 6). This God is truly God, so that His people must
serve Him in all their life. Indeed, all
things do serve Him, willingly or unwillingly. The
truth of the sovereign God of Scripture establishes the Reformed worldview and
distinguishes it from all other worldviews
The Reformed worldview sees
the world as created by this God for the purpose of His own glory in His incarnate Son,
Jesus Christ. As the handiwork of the good
God, the creation—the universe—is good. The
fall into sin did not make the creation evil. The
fall corrupted the human race (Rom. 3:9-13). It
brought the curse of decay and death on the earthly creation (Gen. 3:17, 18). “But every creature of God is good, and
nothing to be refused,” the apostle writes in I Timothy 4:4. The basis of the goodness of every creature is its
creation by God.
Having created all things,
God continues to uphold His creation, care for it, and govern it by His providence. Providence is power; it is not grace. “Providence [is] the almighty and everywhere
present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He upholds and governs heaven,
earth, and all creatures.”19 Providence keeps creation in existence after the
fall. Providence maintains man as a human,
not allowing him to become a beast or a devil. Providence
preserves the ordinances of creation in which humans live their earthly lives: marriage, family, government, and labor. Divine power does all this, not divine grace.
On the basis of the doctrine
of creation, which includes providence, the Reformed Christian may freely live in and work
with creation, using and enjoying all the various creatures. This is the teaching of the apostle in I Timothy
4:1ff. The heretical doctrine that the
Christian life consists of abstinence from marriage and foods is refuted by the truth of
God’s creation of all things: “which
God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the
truth” (v. 3).
But it may not be
overlooked, as many enthusiastic advocates of worldview do overlook, that God made all
things and now upholds and governs all things for the sake of His glory in Jesus Christ. “All things were created by him [Jesus
Christ], and for him: and he is before all
things, and by him all things consist. And he
is the head of the body, the church: who is
the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the
preeminence. For it pleased the Father that
in him should all fulness dwell”(Col. 1:16-19).
A culture vaguely
characterized by “Judeo-Christian principles” does not satisfy a Reformed
Christian. It certainly does not please God. God demands, and God realizes, a culture
characterized by the Spirit of the risen Christ, a Christian culture, a life in and work
with creation that openly honors Jesus Christ as Lord.
In the light of Scripture
and on the basis of the Reformed confessions, the Reformed worldview views the human race
as fallen from its original righteousness by the disobedience of Adam (Gen. 3; Rom.
5:12ff.). Apart from Jesus Christ, all humans
are totally depraved, in bondage to sin, spiritually dead, and rebels against God and His
Christ (Eph. 2:1-3; Canons of Dordt, III, IV/1-5). As
divine punishment, death now destroys every man, woman, and child, and the curse lies
heavy on a groaning creation (Gen. 3:16-19; Rom. 6:23; 8:19-22).
All possibility of a good,
godly culture from fallen, unregenerate humans is cut off.
The hope of unbelieving humanity that by dint of its own efforts and with the help
of the natural process of evolution the race and its earthly home will become a world of
peace and prosperity is illusory. The just
God curses the guilty sinner and his culture. This
is the message of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity
of vanity, all is vanity.” This is also
the message of history.
Knowledge of the fall of the
human race into sin and willing servitude of Satan warns Reformed Christians that they
must expect opposition and warfare as they devote their lives to the service of the God
and Father of Jesus Christ. The ungodly hate
them. The culture of the ungodly opposes the
culture of the godly. In Jesus Christ,
“light is come into the world” in the holy lives of the saints, and the men and
women of darkness hate the light (John 3:19, 20).
The Reformed worldview
understands that, carrying out His original purpose with creation, God redeems an elect
church out of the fallen race by the atoning death of Jesus Christ. The work of redemption includes the renewal of the
elect by the grace of the Spirit of Christ so that they love, obey, and serve God. This is the beginning of the fulfillment of the
cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28. This is the
possibility of good, God-pleasing culture.
In a book that is widely
regarded as a classic on the relation of Christ and culture, H. Richard Niebuhr contended
that Christ is the “transformer of culture.”
“The movement of life . . . issuing from Jesus Christ is an upward movement,
the rising of men’s souls and deeds and thoughts in a mighty surge of adoration and
glorification of the One who draws them to himself. This
is what human culture can be—a transformed human life in and to the glory of
God.”20 Niebuhr was right.
What Niebuhr ignored was that Christ is the transformer of culture in the lives
and deeds of His elect, renewed people—exclusively in the lives of His
elect, renewed people. Niebuhr ignored this,
because Niebuhr denied predestination. Ignoring
this, Niebuhr was profoundly wrong in his assertion that Christ is the transformer of
culture. Christ is not, and never will be,
the transformer of the general culture of the human race universally.
Because God’s purpose
with the redemption of the new human race, made up of the elect in all nations, is not
only their salvation, but also His glory by their lives, God sends the regenerated saints
into all the ordinances and spheres of earthly life, to live, work, and play to the praise
of God.
The Christian life is not
withdrawal from creation and abstinence from the use and enjoyment of the creatures as
much as possible. World-flight is forbidden. World-flight is sin. The will of Christ for those whom the Father has
given Him is not that they go out of the world, even if this were possible, but that in
the world they be kept from evil (John 17:15). Paul
condemns the religious theory and practice of world-flight as the “doctrine of
devils” (I Tim. 4:1). In his searing
indictment of asceticism and world-flight in I Timothy 4:1ff., the apostle exposes the
root of this erroneous notion of the nature of the life of the Christian in the world. World-flight supposes that material reality is
inherently evil, thus denying the biblical doctrine of creation. In addition, world-flight misunderstands the will
of God for the Christian life: in the
world, but not of the world. The
purpose of God is that the light of His own truth and holiness shine the more brightly in
stark contrast with the darkness of the falsehood and depravity of the wicked world.
The Reformed worldview,
convinced of the goodness of creation and obedient to the will of God, calls every
Reformed believer and child of believers to a full, active earthly life, in home and
family; usually in marriage; in the schools; in labor and business; in the church; and in
the state. At the same time, this worldview
frees the Reformed Christian to use and enjoy the various creatures, to benefit from the
cultural products of the ungodly that are usable, to work with and develop all aspects of
creation, and to develop his or her own natural and spiritual abilities—all in the
service of the Lord Christ and to the glory of the triune God.
This was the message of the
Reformation, which saw all of earthly life as a “vocation,” a sacred calling. This is the teaching of the practical parts of all
the New Testament epistles, for example, Ephesians 4-6 and I Peter 2:11-5:14. “Occupy till I come” is the charge of
the Lord Jesus to His disciples in the time between His departure to a far country and His
return to conduct the judgment of His servants, “how much every man had gained by
trading” (Luke 19:11-27).
World-flight is a perennial
threat to Christians in every age. It is
especially a threat when, as in our day, the visible church becomes thoroughly worldly. Then especially, the more godly, spiritual people
are tempted physically to flee society. Against
this temptation, the true church must warn. But
world-flight has never been, and is not now, the doctrine and practice of the Protestant
Reformed Churches in America. The
implication, or hidden agenda, of the denial of common grace is not world-flight.
The charge against the
Protestant Reformed denial of common grace that it results in world-flight,
“Anabaptistic” world-flight, is false. This
charge has been leveled against the Protestant Reformed Churches from the very beginning
of their history in the common grace controversy in the Christian Reformed Church in the
early 1920s. A favorite tactic of the
Christian Reformed opponents of Herman Hoeksema was smearing him as a modern Anabaptist
advocate of world-flight. In 1922 Christian
Reformed theologian Jan Karel Van Baalen warned the Christian Reformed Church that, in the
controversy over common grace, she stood “on the eve of the most important struggle
that she has yet known. That is the struggle
between Calvinism and Anabaptism.”21 Van Baalen charged that “the denial of common
grace is Anabaptist.”22
Hoeksema regarded the charge
as mere “mud-slinging.” He
repudiated it.
Where have you ever heard us defending that we must leave off the various institutions of society, that we may occupy no government position, that we may carry on no war? Exactly the opposite is our conception. We exactly will not to go out of the world. It is exactly our purpose to abandon no single sphere of life. We have exactly called God’s people to occupy the whole of life. However, it is our will that this people of the Lord, which is His covenant people, in no single sphere of life shall forsake or deny its God. That people is called, in every sphere, to live out of grace, out of the one grace by which they are implanted into Christ and love God, so that they keep His commandments.
Hoeksema added:
Therefore, “world-flight” is not applicable to us, as you yourself will now agree, brother [Van Baalen]. If “world” is understood in the sense of “nature,” then you see very well that we do not separate nature and grace but want to live out of grace everywhere. And if “world” is understood in the evil sense, then we do not take to flight, but rather fight the good fight to the end, so that no one may take our crown.23
In a much later work, Hoeksema described his own worldview, which he called
“life-view,” more fully.
And this people of God have their own life-view with regard to every sphere of life and every institution of the world. The home is an institution existing primarily for the perpetuation of God’s covenant in the world. The school is an institution for the purpose of instructing the covenant children according to the principles of Holy Writ for every sphere of life. Society, with business and industry, art and science, and all things that exist, must ... be controlled by the principles of the Word of God and be made subservient to the idea of God’s kingdom in the world. In a word, they have a new life-view. They are members of God’s covenant, His friends in the world, subjects of His kingdom. And, in principle at least, they want to live the life of that kingdom also in the present world.24
The lives of the members of
the Protestant Reformed Churches give the lie to the charge that their denial of common
grace fosters world-flight. Protestant
Reformed people do not ride in buggies pulled by horses; do not dress the women in black;
do not live in communes; do not abstain from good food and drink or any other lawful
earthly pleasure; do not reject modern technology; do not avoid education; do not forbid
involvement in civil government; do not prohibit working in the various professions. In short, the Protestant Reformed Churches do not
conceive the Christian life as sitting “met een boekje in een hoekje”
(‘with a little [religious] book in a little corner”). On the contrary, by the
Word of God these Churches call all their members to a full, rich, active, holy earthly
life in all the ordinances and every sphere of creation.
This call is part of Christ’s redemption of His people.
It is another important
aspect of the Reformed worldview that it promises victory to Reformed Christians and their
obedient lives in the world. Every worldview
encourages its disciples with the prospect of future victory. Every one who lives and fights for the Reformed
worldview will live and reign with Jesus Christ in the new world (Heid. Cat., Q. 32). The cause of the Reformed faith, which is simply
the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ, will conquer all the rival kingdoms of man and
establish itself triumphantly in all creation (Psalm 72; Dan. 2:1-45; Rev. 21, 22). The creation itself will be renewed as a new
heaven and new earth in which the righteousness preached and practiced by the Reformed
faith shall dwell (Rom. 8:19-22; II Pet. 3:13).
The Reformed worldview,
which must do battle and endure reproach throughout the present age, will have this
perfect victory, not in history, but as the goal of history, in the day of
Jesus Christ. Already in this age, the
Reformed worldview is victorious in the pure worship, sound confession, and holy life of
the true church, as in the faithfulness of believers and their children to Jesus Christ
their Lord. This is a spiritual victory.
But this worldview does not
delude its confessors and practitioners with the promise of a carnal victory within
history. The Reformed faith has always
condemned as illusory the “Jewish dream” of a golden age in history during which
the world is “Christianized” and Reformed politicians in Amsterdam; or
Presbyterian theologians in Vallecito, California, Tyler, Texas, or Moscow, Idaho; or
Reformational philosophers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada rule mankind. The Second Helvetic Confession expresses the
Reformed conviction concerning the teaching of a carnal victory of the kingdom of Christ
in history.
We further condemn Jewish dreams that there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgment, and that the pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms of the earth. For evangelical truth in Matt. Chs. 24 and 25, and Luke, ch. 18, and apostolic teaching in II Thess., ch. 2, and II Tim., chs. 3 and 4, present something quite different.25
The Reformed faith maintains
an amillennial eschatology. The same chapter
of the Second Helvetic Confession that condemns the notion of a golden age as nothing but
“Jewish dreams” also warns Reformed Christians of apostasy, persecution, and the
coming of Antichrist in the future.
And from heaven the same Christ will return in judgment, when wickedness will then be at its greatest in the world and when the Antichrist, having corrupted true religion, will fill up all things with superstition and impiety and will cruelly lay waste the Church with bloodshed and flames (Dan., ch. 11). But Christ will come again to claim his own, and by his coming to destroy the Antichrist, and to judge the living and the dead (Acts. 17:31).26
The worldview of common
grace intoxicates those who inhale its vapors with the giddy prospect of an earthly triumph of the kingdom of
God by the creation of a good, godly culture in history.
Charles Colson thinks that the cooperation of evangelicals and Roman Catholics in
building a culture informed by a biblical worldview can yet, by the power of common grace,
win the culture wars and redeem the culture. In
the face of the pessimism that concludes that evangelicals have lost the culture war,
Colson is optimistic.
The new millennium is a time for Christians to celebrate, to raise our confidence, to blow trumpets, and to fly the flag high. This is the time to make a compelling case that Christianity offers the most rational and realistic hope for both personal redemption and social renewal.27
Richard Mouw is more
cautious about the possibilities of culture building common grace. But he too urges the worldview of common grace
among all churches and professing Christians in the hope of accomplishing great, good, and
godly things in the life of society. An
aggressive exercise of “common grace ministries” will promote “the welfare,
the shalom, of the larger human community.”28 In this way Christians are agents of one of
God’s “Kingdom goals” in history.29
Abraham Kuyper, sober
amillennialist though he was in his dogmatics, became a delirious postmillennialist in his
advocacy of the worldview of common grace. The
cooperation of believers and unbelievers in building a good culture by common grace will
result in the “Christianizing” of nations, if not of the world. The task of the “church as organism” is
nothing less than “the transformation of human society by bringing it into harmony
with the insights provided by the Christian faith. … Kuyper aimed … to encourage
… the Christianization of society…. The
Christianization of society would involve bringing all aspects of human life into
conformity with Christian principles.”30
The hope of the common grace
worldview, an incipient postmillennialism, is vain. The
kingdom of Christ is spiritual, not carnal. Its
victory in history is a spiritual victory in the gathering and preservation of the church
and in the salvation of the elect, which includes their holy lives in all the ordinances
and spheres of creation. The perfection of
its victory, when all enemies will be destroyed and the saints will reign with Christ over
the renewed creation—the true “golden age”—awaits the end of history
at the coming of Jesus Christ. This reality,
and not a postmillennial dream, is the prospect of victory that sustains and encourages
those who are committed to the Reformed worldview.31
In the Reformed worldview
described above, what is lacking, so that a Reformed Christian is hindered from a full,
active life in every sphere of creation?
What about this worldview,
which is nothing other than the faith and life of the Christian religion, deserves the
harsh charge, “world-flight!”?
What are Christians called
to do in the world, that they are prohibited from doing by this worldview?
As the worldview inherent in
the Reformed faith, a hallmark of which is predestination, as all the world knows, this
worldview is a worldview, not of common grace, but of particular grace. It is a worldview in harmony with, based on, and
empowered by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ bestowed on elect believers and their
children, and on them alone. This worldview
has distinctive features.
Biblical
The Reformed worldview is
biblical, not philosophical, speculative, or emotional.
The common grace worldview in Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism is highly
philosophical and speculative. It lacks all
biblical foundation and exposition. Indeed,
there is hardly any mention of Scripture. Kuyper
spun the worldview of common grace out of his fertile mind, a mind bent on political power
and influence in the Netherlands.
In Mouw’s He Shines
in All That’s Fair, the common grace worldview is emotional, as well as
philosophical and speculative. Its source is
not the teaching of Scripture, but the feelings of Richard Mouw: his approval of many of the works of the ungodly;
his empathy for the suffering and rejoicing wicked; and his longing to cooperate with
“decent” unbelievers in creating a culture of justice and peace.32
Particularly with regard to
its fundamental tenet of the building of a good, even godly, culture by a grace of God
shared by Christian and non-Christian, the common grace worldview is plainly, egregiously,
absurdly unbiblical. The Bible does not teach
a culture-forming work of God in the world of the ungodly.
The Bible does not know a work of grace in the society of men and women who hate
God and His Son Jesus Christ resulting in a culture that is good and pleases God.
On the contrary.
God destroyed the world of
the ungodly with all their impressive Cainite culture in the flood (Gen. 4:16-24; 6-8).
The great cultural work of
mankind after the flood was the Tower of Babel. This
grand achievement of the seed of the serpent, God hated and ruined (Gen. 11:1-9).
Great civilizations and
impressive cultures appeared in the time of the Old Testament and are recognized in Old
Testament Scripture: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon,
Tyre, and others. The prophets did not
admire them, but condemned them for their idolatry and unrighteousness. Think of the Nebuchadnezzar’s great image
representing four mighty world-powers and splendid civilizations in Daniel 2. God’s little stone—the kingdom of
Messiah—demolishes the four world-kingdoms. Against
highly civilized Tyre, the prophet pronounced the divine woe in Ezekiel 26-28.
The only culture Jehovah
approved in the time of the Old Testament was that of Israel, insofar as it was godly, and
that national and societal way of life was the product of saving grace.
Where in the New Testament
is there a hint, even so much as a hint, of a positive cultural work of God by His grace
among ungodly men and women, or of a calling of the church to cooperate with unbelievers
in building a good, God-pleasing culture? About
the idolatrous civilizations of Greece and Rome, the “glory that was Greece,”
over which Reformed college professors sigh and swoon, Romans 1:18ff. states that the
wrath of God fell on them, giving the people over to a reprobate mind, so that they were
full of perverse sexual desires and practiced sodomy and lesbianism.
In Revelation 18, the last
apostle recognizes the marvelous civilization and remarkable culture of humanity at the
end of time—a “mighty city” of wealth and luxury, of industry and trade, of
music and inventions. He recognizes this
civilization and culture, calls on the reader of the Revelation 18 to recognize it, and
then pronounces the destruction of Babylon the great, and rejoices over its destruction.
God is not pleased to build
a culture by means of the ungodly. He is
pleased to destroy the culture of the ungodly.
One culture, and one culture
only, pleases God: the godly way of life, spiritual and earthly, of the holy nation,
the city of God, that is, the church. This
pleases Him, because this way of life is His own work by the Spirit and grace of Jesus
Christ. The reality of this culture, the
manner of the building of this culture, and the way of life of this culture are the
biblical teaching about the sanctified life of the church and about the holy life of
believers and their children in the world.
Mighty Grace
A second distinctive feature
of the Reformed worldview of particular grace is its requirement that believers and their
children live their earthly lives in the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ and of the
mighty grace that has its source in the incarnate, crucified, and risen Son of God. The Christian works on the farm or in the
factory, runs a business, studies at school, does research, plays or listens to music, and
eats and drinks by the same grace that empowers him to worship, confess, pray, and witness
to his neighbor. The only power and
possibility of an earthly life that pleases God and contributes to good culture is the
life of the risen Jesus Christ, which is received through faith in Him. The urgent exhortation of the Bible is: “Live out of Christ! Walk in His Spirit!
Do all in the name of Jesus Christ!”
The Christian does not and
may not carry out his worldview, or pursue his cultural task, by the power of some other
grace, by some common grace. This, however,
is what the common grace worldview teaches. Abraham
Kuyper wrote: “And thus now it is one
and the same man who enjoys God’s common grace in the life of society and God’s
particular grace in the holy sphere.”33 At church we live by the power of the Spirit of
Jesus Christ and saving grace; throughout the week, we live and work by the power of
another grace, “common grace.” To
propose another power, another grace, than the power of God’s grace in Christ for the
Christian’s life in society is attempted murder of the Christian life, nothing less.
Their attempting to live and
work in the world by common grace goes a long way towards explaining why those who
practice the common grace worldview invariably become thoroughly worldly. They are attempting to live by a wrong and wholly
inadequate power, as though a soldier would go to war with a squirt gun, rather than a
machine gun, or would clothe himself with a nightgown, rather than armor. They are vulnerable to the destructive influence
of the wicked world.
Neither Scripture nor the
Reformed confessions attribute the calling of Christians to live a full earthly life, or
the power to carry out this calling, to a common grace of God, but to the saving grace of
Jesus Christ. It is as those who have learned
Christ and who are renewed by the Spirit of Christ, so that they are new men and women in
Christ, that the Ephesian Christians are truthful with the neighbors; labor faithfully at
some earthly vocation; are kind to each other; avoid sexual filth; abstain from
drunkenness and its debauchery; honor marriage and the family; and are active in the
sphere of labor and business, whether as employer or employee (Eph. 4:17-6:9).
In the explanation of the
law of God and of the model prayer that is the third part of the Heidelberg Catechism, the
Catechism certainly calls the Reformed believer to live a full, active life in the world. This life includes right public worship at church;
submission to the civil magistrates; honorable behavior in marriage and the family; honest
dealings in business; and upright conduct with all one’s neighbors in society. By this life, one seeks and promotes the coming of
the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ (Heid. Cat., Lord’s Days 32-52). This calling is grounded, not in some original
purpose of God with mankind to create a good culture, or “Christianize” society,
but in the redemption of the cross of Christ. The
power of this earthly life in all its aspects is not a common grace of God that the godly
share with the ungodly, but the regenerating grace of the Spirit of Christ. “Christ, having redeemed and delivered us by
His blood, also renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image.”34
Honoring Jesus Christ
The honoring of Jesus Christ
in confession and practice is a third distinctive feature of the genuinely Reformed
worldview. The Reformed worldview confesses
that the one purpose of God with all things is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, our
dear Savior, and the Lord over all. The
Reformed worldview demands a life lived in subjection to and service of Him. Basic to the Reformed worldview is the confession
that God made all things for Jesus Christ, that all things cohere in Jesus Christ, and
that Jesus Christ must have the preeminence in all things.
Jesus Christ, the head of the church, is the one purpose of God with creation and
history. In raising Jesus Christ from the
dead, God has exalted Him to a position of prominence over all things (Col. 1:13-20).
Whatever worldview ignores
Jesus Christ, whatever worldview does not ascribe this centrality, this preeminence, to
Jesus Christ, is false. Whatever culture,
however decent and humane it may be, does not confess and obey Jesus Christ as Lord of the
culture is cursed.
The common grace worldview
ignores Jesus Christ. It leaves Jesus Christ
out of the fine culture it is building with the help of those who deny Jesus Christ. The common grace worldview ignores Jesus Christ
and leaves Him out of its culture by its own frank admission. According to the worldview of common grace, God
has a cultural purpose with creation and history altogether apart from His saving purpose
in Jesus Christ. God has two distinct
purposes with creation and history. One is
the redemption of a church by the saving grace of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. The other is the development of good culture by
reprobate, unregenerate men and women, with the help of Christians, as the original
purpose of God with creation. God realizes
this purpose by His common grace. This
cultural purpose has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen head of the
church. He is certainly not the source,
foundation, life, lord, and goal of this culture.
Abraham Kuyper, who is the
father of the common grace worldview, wrote that “there is beside the great work of
God in special grace also that totally other work of God in the realm of common grace.” This “totally other work” is the
gracious activity of God in heathens and idolaters “to consummate the world’s
development.” God takes “delight in
that high human development” of heathens and idolaters. For by this cultural development of humanity
“all the glory of God’s image can mirror itself.”
Common grace, according to
Kuyper, achieves “a purpose of its own” in history. “Independently [of Jesus Christ as head of
the redeemed church and of His saving grace],” common grace brings about “the
full emergence of what God had in mind when he planted those nuclei of higher development
in our race.” By the independent working
of common grace, “humanity arrives at its goal, it lifts itself up from its sunken
state, it gradually reaches a higher level. The
fundamental creation ordinance given before the fall, that humans would achieve dominion
over all of nature thanks to ‘common grace,’ is still realized after the
fall. Only in this way, in the light of the
Word of God, can the history of our race, the long unfolding of the centuries as well as
the high significance of the world’s development, make substantial sense to us.”35
Richard Mouw’s recent
defense and expansion of Kuyper’s worldview of common grace likewise asserts that God
pursues a cultural purpose in history that is separate from His saving purpose in Jesus
Christ. Mouw speaks of “multiple divine
purposes.” “As God unfolds his
plan for his creation, he is interested in more than one thing. Alongside of God’s clear concern about the
eternal destiny of individuals are his designs for the larger creation.”36
Positing two, independent
purposes of God with creation and history is dualism.
Dualism is the destruction of worldview! By
definition, worldview sees all of created reality whole.
Worldview is a comprehensive, unified view of history and the world. The advocates of the worldview of common grace do
not have a worldview, but worldviews. One
is the worldview of God’s work of glorifying Himself by the redemption of a church by
the saving grace of Jesus Christ. The other
is the worldview of God’s work of glorifying Himself by the development of good,
godly culture by the ungodly by the common grace of God.
Still worse, the common
grace worldview teaches a great purpose of God with, and a marvelous work of God in,
history that has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, the incarnate, crucified, and risen Son
of God. And if this worldview ignores Jesus
Christ, it denies Him. It denies Him with
regard to its worldview. Nothing less than
this is the damning Reformed indictment of the worldview of common grace: It denies Jesus Christ with regard to what is
proposed as one of the great purposes of God with history and with regard to what is
advanced as the foundation of all human life in the world.
Kuyper struggled with these
two weaknesses of his theory of common grace, its inherent dualism and the separation of
God’s work of cultural development from Jesus Christ.
He tried to solve his problems by uniting both the work of redemption and the
cultural work of common grace in the person of the eternal Son of God. “Holy Scripture repeatedly tells us of the
intertwinement of the life of special grace with that of common grace but simultaneously
discloses that the point at which the two come together is not Christ’s birth in
Bethlehem but his eternal existence as the Eternal Word.”37 “The work of creation and the work of
redemption—and to that extent also the work of common and of special grace—find
a higher unity in Christ only because the eternal Son of God is behind both starting
points.”38 In support of this attempt to overcome both the
dualism and the ignoring of Jesus Christ that characterize the worldview of common grace,
Kuyper appealed to Colossians 1:13ff.
Kuyper’s attempt
failed. It merely thrust the dualism back
into the person of the eternal Son. Now the
eternal Son of God has two independent purposes with, and works in, history. Besides, Colossians 1:13ff. does not make the
person of the eternal Son of God the beginning and goal of all creation, the one purpose
of God with the existence and movement of all things in history, and the one who must have
preeminence in all things. The one who has
this importance with regard to creation, all things, and history is the dear Son of God,
into whose kingdom elect believers have been translated (v. 13); in whom we have
redemption through His blood (v. 14); who is the firstborn of every creature, which cannot
be said of the eternal person of the Son (v. 15); who is the head of the church (v. 18);
and who is the firstborn from the dead (v. 18). This
is not the person of the eternal Son, although Jesus Christ’s person is the eternal
Son, but the man born of Mary, suffered under Pilate, and raised bodily on the
third day. Him God has honored with
such incomparable honor. Him the
Reformed worldview honors. And Him the
common grace worldview denies.
Righteous
A fourth distinctive feature
of the Reformed worldview is its insistence that the norm, or standard, of all of
everyday, earthly life, in all the ordinances and spheres of creation, is the law of God
as clearly revealed in Scripture. God’s
law in Scripture governs sexual conduct; marriage; the family; life in the church; labor;
business; medicine; relations with the neighbor; and the behavior of the Christian towards
the state.
Reformed, Christian life is
not lawless. It is not ruled by man’s
own will. It is not governed by the current
thinking and practices of the depraved world, which contraband are then smuggled into
Reformed churches as the cargo of “general revelation.”
The worldview of common
grace opens up the individuals, churches, and schools that embrace it to the world’s
lawlessness. In the name of common grace,
they approve feminism and egalitarianism; divorce and remarriage for any and every reason;
the rebellion of “servants” against their “masters” in the realm of
labor; Sabbath desecration; the enjoyment of Hollywood’s vilest and most violent,
even blasphemous, movies; and now homosexuality, at least in a “committed
relationship.” Acceptance of the wicked
world’s “wisdom” and ways by those who hold the worldview of common grace
is inevitable. For the common grace worldview
posits the gracious operation of the Spirit in the ungodly world and therefore also a
great deal of truth and righteousness.39
Antithetical
In sharp contrast to the
conforming mentality of the worldview of common grace, the Reformed worldview is
antithetical—unashamedly, boldly, urgently antithetical. This is a fifth distinctive feature of the
genuinely Reformed worldview. Two radically
different groups of people, hostile to each other, live in the closest proximity. They develop two fundamentally different cultures
in the same spheres of creation. One group
confesses the sovereignty of the triune God and Father of Jesus Christ and willingly
submit to the Lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. The other rebels against God and His Messiah. The Reformed worldview calls Christians to be
separate from those who deny Jesus Christ and thus the one, true God.
Is any truth clearer, or
more emphatic, in Scripture than the antithesis?
God Himself set the history
of the human race on its way with the word of Genesis 3:15, dividing the race into two
antagonistic families: “I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Old
Testament Israel must dwell in safety alone (Deut. 33:28).
It is no different for the New Testament church and child of God.
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty (II Cor. 6:14-18).
So overpowering is this
truth of the antithesis everywhere in Scripture that it frustrated the strenuous efforts
of H. Richard Niebuhr to gainsay it. In his
acclaimed study of the relation between Christ and culture, Niebuhr searched for evidence
in the Christian tradition and in Scripture that Christ, the transformer of
culture, is not against culture. Again
and again, he was forced to admit, honest scholar that he was, that his champions of
“Christ-as-transformer-of-culture” taught Christ as the foe of culture.
Niebuhr liked to claim
Augustine as a “Christian who set before men the vision of universal concord and
peace in a culture in which all human actions had been reordered by the gracious action of
God in drawing all men to Himself, and in which all men were active in works directed
toward and thus reflecting the love and glory of God.”
But Niebuhr was forced to acknowledge that Augustine “did not develop his
thought in this direction. He did not
actually look forward with hope to the realization of the great eschatological
possibility…—the redemption of the created and corrupted human world and the
transformation of mankind in all its cultural activity.” Due largely to “his predestinarian form of
the doctrine of election, Augustine[’s] … vision [is that] of two cities,
composed of different individuals, forever separate.
Here is a dualism more radical than that of Paul and Luther.”
“Calvin,” alas,
“is very much like Augustine.” There
are in this Reformer ideas that led Niebuhr to hope that Calvin might have taught
“the transformation of mankind in all its nature and culture into a kingdom of God in
which the laws of the kingdom have been written upon the inward parts.” But this is not, in fact, the cultural doctrine of
Calvin.
To the eternal over-againstness of God and man, Calvin adds the dualism of temporal and eternal existence, and the other dualism of an eternal heaven and an eternal hell. Though Calvinism has been marked by the influence of the eschatological hope of transformation by Christ and by its consequent pressing toward the realization of the promise, this element in it has always been accompanied by a separatist and repressive note, even more markedly than in Lutheranism.
Niebuhr was compelled to fall back on the minor, and heretical, figure of F. D.
Maurice.40
The Bible proved to be as
unhelpful for Niebuhr’s thesis as Augustine and Calvin. Christ as transformer of culture “is most
clearly indicated in the Gospel of John.” But,
added Niebuhr immediately, “the close relation of this work to the First Letter of
John at once suggests, it is accompanied there also by a separatist note.” Misunderstanding the “universalistic
statements” in the gospel according to John, Niebuhr thought that John seems “to
look forward to the complete transformation of human life and work.” However, Niebuhr recognized that “such
universalistic statements … are balanced in the Gospel by sayings that voice the
sense of the world’s opposition to Christ and of his concern for the few.” Niebuhr concluded by agreeing with the analysis of
another scholar: “The Fourth Gospel
… is … the most exclusive of the New Testament writings. It draws a sharp division between the Church of
Christ and the outlying world, which is regarded as merely foreign or hostile.”41
The worldview of the Bible
is antithetical, and the antithesis is grounded in divine predestination. Whatever worldview fails to reckon with the
antithesis, weakens the antithesis, or denies the antithesis is false.
The antithesis that is basic
to the biblical worldview for the church and Christian in the New Testament is spiritual. It is the separation and warfare between faith and
unbelief. The believer thinks God’s
thoughts after Him; God is not in all the unbeliever’s thoughts. The believer does all to the glory of God; the
unbeliever lives for self, humanity, and sin. The
believer trusts in God in Jesus Christ for salvation and, indeed, all things; the
unbeliever trusts in the arm of human flesh, or frankly despairs. The believer obeys God in love; the unbeliever
either tramples the commandments of God underfoot, or outwardly observes the laws of God
out of self-interest.
The antithesis between the seed of the woman—Jesus Christ and those who are His by divine election—and the seed of the serpent—those who are Satan’s progeny according to divine reprobation—in the New Testament age is not physical. The antithesis certainly must, and does, come to physical expression. The Christian does not worship with the pagans or with the false church (I Cor. 10:14-22). He may not date and marry an unbeliever (I Cor. 7:39). He may not cultivate friendship with an unbeliever (II Cor. 6:14-18).