Religious Liberty without Liberalism
Abraham Kuyper offers one non-liberal route for the state to organize itself in a way that is supportive of the basic truths of the divinely ordained natural law within a system that is more tolerant of diversity than the Constantinian settlement.
Abraham Kuyper, the Invisible Church, and Religious Establishments
Early Protestant politics, according to Abraham Kuyper in his famous lecture “Calvinism and Politics,” was in many ways a product of the Middle Ages, exemplified “in an article of our old Calvinistic Confession of Faith [which] entrusts to the State the task ‘of defending against and of extirpating every form of idolatry and false religion and to protect the sacred service of the Church.’…[and] in the unanimous and uniform advice of Calvin and his epigones, who demanded intervention of the government in the matter of religion.”1. It was indeed a relatively straightforward carrying over of the basic Constantinian settlement which brought “differences in religious matters under the criminal jurisdiction of the government” based on the conviction that there “was only one Church of Christ on earth, and it was the task of the Magistrate to protect that Church from schisms, heresies and sects.”2 Calvin’s view on this is stated succinctly in the Institutes:
[T]o the [civil magistrate] it is assigned, so long as we live among men, to foster and maintain the external worship of God, to defend sound doctrine and the condition of the Church…3
In this system, the state has a responsibility to protect and enforce the whole system of the true religion against all competitors. In such a scheme religious liberty is impossible. It would not even have been comprehensible, much less desired, even if it had it been an option at the time.
Religious liberty, however, is seen as one of the chief blessings of the modern world, at least in those nations that are heirs of traditions stretching back to the Enlightenment. Christians since that time, however, have argued for a variety of positions on religious liberty, many of which are not founded on explicitly Enlightenment foundations. Most such arguments are based primarily on a conviction about the dangers to the church when the state has power to regulate the church’s internal affairs and doctrine, rather than a fear about illegitimate influence from the church on the state. Such arguments—in distinction from ones derived primarily from the philosophical principles of the Enlightenment—make an argument from Scripture, whether it is the correct one or not. This is how it should be: if religious liberty is worth preserving, it is worth preserving on explicitly Christian grounds.
This is where Kuyper’s argument is particularly interesting. He, too, makes an argument for (limited) religious liberty on explicitly theological grounds. He argues on the basis of a central point of Reformed theology, even as he attempts to show that the essentially Constantinian vision of the Reformation regarding the state was partially mistaken. In so doing he argues for a form of religious liberty different from that offered by many Christians today. It may very well be a position that retains some of the beneficial aspects of classic Protestant political thought, while at the same time providing a more realistic vision of religious liberty for the modern world than a straightforward application of the earliest Reformed theology would allow. At the very least it could serve as a springboard for further discussion in this area.
It is the doctrine of the invisible church that Kuyper understands as necessitating a reformulation of the medieval relationship of church and state. If one accepts, as even the earliest Reformed theologians did, “that the Church of Christ can reveal itself in many forms, in different countries; nay, even in the same country, in a multiplicity of institutions” then “immediately everything which was deduced from this unity of the visible church drops out of sight.”4 That is to say, there is not necessarily only one institutional manifestation of the church in a given nation. A core conviction of the Reformed churches is that the visible church is always more or less pure, and that not everyone in it is chosen for salvation in God’s eternal counsel. Therefore, there is an “invisible church” within the visible.5
Kuyper insists, then, that since
in Calvinistic countries a rich variety of all manner of church-formations revealed itself…it follows that we must not seek the true Calvinistic characteristic in what, for a time, it has retained of the old [medieval] system, but rather in that, which, new and fresh, has sprung up from its own root…With Rome the system of persecution issued from the identification of the visible with the invisible Church, and from this dangerous line Calvin departed.”6
-
Without the Trinity the Doctrine of the Atonement Goes off the Rails
We need to recognize that, through and through, the doctrine of atonement needs to be thoroughly Trinitarian. It’s centered on Christ. Jesus is the Son of the Father who is empowered by the Spirit.
The Apex of God’s Mission
The atonement is the apex of the triune mission of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together to reconcile sinners and renew creation. And without the doctrine of the Trinity, everything in the atonement goes off.
I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is a classic—you could say infamous—sermon illustration by preachers where there’s the train track conductor who’s looking down and he sees his son playing in the tracks. He looks over and he sees the train coming down, and he has to make the decision. Does he sacrifice his son and save everyone else by shifting the gears, or does he not? And the train goes off of the tracks.
The problem with this illustration, even though it makes the point that God is a father who sacrifices his son, is that it puts the son in a position where he’s not willingly giving his life. He’s blindsided by the father, and the father’s not doing what he does out of love. He doesn’t even know the people on the train. It’s this utilitarian principle of saving the most people.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Public Schools Have Lost Over a Million Students. Here’s Where They’re Going.
Rising enrollments in choice schools, particularly in private schools, not only provide evidence of a continuing school-choice wave sweeping the country, but also demonstrate how these learning environments will continue to be an important part of the United States’ educational fabric.
Public schools in the United States have lost over a million students in the past three years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Where these students went, and why they left, says a great deal about the future of American schooling.
Private Christian schools have absorbed many of these students. In the 2022–23 academic year, schools in the Association of Christian Schools International recorded 35 percent higher enrollment than at the start of the pandemic, according to a new ACSI study. Similar kinds of schools have also seen dramatic increases. For the 2021–22 school year, the National Catholic Educational Association reported a 3.8 percent nationwide enrollment increase, the largest in NCEA’s history. Charter-school enrollment increased by 7 percent during the first year of the pandemic and has held steady since, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. While homeschool “enrollment” doubled during the pandemic, no other form of education saw significant increases — especially not public schools.
Enrollment growth in Christian schools over the past three years reverses the trend in declining enrollment from the preceding years. And it was not just a pandemic-era trend. Attendance at private Christian schools continues to increase even as district public schools have reopened for in-person instruction, while the number of charter-school students and homeschooled students declined in 2022.
Why have private Christian schools benefited in this environment? One explanation is how they responded to students’ learning needs during the pandemic. Public schools that remained the most remote for the longest experienced the greatest enrollment losses, according to an American Enterprise Institute study. Meanwhile, 84 percent of Christian schools returned to in-person instruction “much sooner” than local district schools, according to the ACSI report. Christian schools that reopened earlier have added an average of around 80 students since the start of the pandemic.
Motivated by a desire to serve their families, Christian schools sought creative solutions for getting students back on campus. “Early on, it was clear from seeing our kids struggle emotionally, socially, and academically through distance learning that getting kids back on campus was critical,” said Brian Bell, head of school at Redlands Christian School in southern California. “It required us to be creative and brave with our solutions to get back in person.” Redlands Christian School now educates over 1,400 students, the highest level in its century-long existence.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The Authority of Scripture: Theme #2 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism
Written by Andrew J. Miller |
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
In this life, many guides are full of errors and mistakes and will lead you astray. God’s Word will never fail us. It is completely trustworthy and reliable, it is inerrant and inspired by God himself.Every day millions of people follow directions given to them by GPS. We are guided to our desired destinations by electronic maps. We input searches into these maps to know where to go for food and lodging and many other things. Without maps to guide us, or someone to give us directions, we would be lost.
However, Google maps cannot take you to God. This is why we need the Bible, God’s Word, the Scriptures. It is “the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy” God (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 2). We do have an authoritative and accurate guide to direct us how we should live. “The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man” (Q&A 3).
God not only made us, but he gave us a magnificent purpose in life: to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Where the world portrays Christianity as dull, the Bible presents true religion as joyful, delighting in the Lord! “Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous! For praise from the upright is beautiful” (Ps. 33:1). The Artist who created the beauty of our world invites us to seek his face and gaze on his beauty (Ps. 27). How can we do this? The Bible directs us! It is our authoritative, necessary, and clear guide, showing us what to do and how to live.
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). If you can imagine hiking in the dark, a lamp for your feet allows you to see what is directly ahead of you, so you do not trip on a root or step on a snake. A light for your path allows you to see what is down the road. The Bible guides us in both the long and short term.
Speaking of a path, the Scriptures are called our “canon,” our rule of faith and practice. We “walk by this rule” (Gal. 6:16). In the Greek athletic games (think of the Olympics), each runner had a lane marked out for them by a line—a canon (Greek: κανών). God marks out a path for us in his Word—he shows us how to know, glorify, enjoy, obey, serve, and praise Him.
Read More
Related Posts:
