The Anti-Fundamentalist Party

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch politician, Church leader, theologian and university lecturer. For a few years, he was the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Theologically, Kuyper is often designated as a Neo-Calvinist, to emphasize both the roots of his religious convictions and their distinct applications to modern realities. Politically, Kuyper could be described as a Christian Democrat. He headed the so-called Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), a confessional political party which represented the “orthodox” Calvinists. Rightly or wrongly, Kuyper is often considered to be the main inspiration behind “pillarization”, the peculiar form of pluralism which became dominant in the Netherlands after his death. Under this system, each political and religious group (such as Calvinists, Catholics or Socialists) formed its own distinct community, organized “vertically”, the Netherlands in effect being a federation of such “pillars”. After a long period of uncritical adulation, Kuyper's legacy have come under increasing scrutiny, sometimes to the point of painting the man in wholly dark terms, even turning him into a putative founding father of South African apartheid. Meanwhile, Kuyper has been turned into a fundamentalist icon by certain extreme Christian groups in the United States, making his legacy almost as pluriform as Dutch pillarization…

So much for an introduction.

In 1898, Kuyper visited Princeton in the United States and gave a celebrated series of speeches, known as “Lectures on Calvinism”. Peter Heslam's book is a commentary to and exegesis of these lectures, but also deal more broadly with Kuyper's life and legacy. If you just want to read one book on Abraham Kuyper and Neo-Calvinism, this might very well be that book. I first heard of Kuyper when I was reading literature on creationism. The Dutch theologian is often regarded as the founder of the “presuppositionalist school of apologetics”, today mostly associated with Creation Ministries International or Christian Reconstructionism. If Heslam's book proves anything, it is that Kuyper wasn't a fundamentalist nor a theocrat. Behind the militant rhetoric about “the antithesis”, “anti-revolution”, God's sovereignty over all aspects of life, and calls for a specific kind of Christian science, Kuyper was actually a theological and political moderate. The best comparison would be to Edmund Burke or even to modern European Christian Democracy.

Kuyper and his Anti-Revolutionary Party were opposed to the ideals of the French Revolution (hence the curious name), but their alternative was not Throne and Altar conservatism. Rather, Kuyper's project was to make Calvinism relevant to the modern world, more specifically the late 19th century Western world. In effect, he called for a different kind of modernity than the secular-unitary version associated with 1789. The ARP supported universal male suffrage. As a confessional party of Calvinists who had broken away from the “official” Reformed Church, the ARP demanded the separation of Church and state. The ARP cooperated with the Catholics, Kuyper regarding “Rerum Novarum” (Leo XIII's famous social encyclical) as a great document. Kuyper had no problems with the Dutch, Glorious or American revolutions, since he perceived these to have been inspired by Calvinism. In the United States, he supported the Republican Party (which he associated with Alexander Hamilton) against the Democratic Party (which he associated with Thomas Jefferson).

One of Kuyper's main objections to the French Revolution was its advocacy of a strong, unitary state. Since this state would be secular, the independence or even existence of Christian groups came under threat. Kuyper's solution was not a Genevan theocracy, however, but a consistent pluralism and diversity, both in Church and society at large. This would enable Calvinists to form their own educational and social institutions, while making co-existence with other groups possible. Kuyper placed heavy emphasis on the concept of “common grace” to explain how God ruled the entire world, including the unbelieving/unsaved individuals, communities and states. Even Kuyper's Christian science turns out to be less extreme than expected, since he emphasized that regenerate and unregenerate scientists might come to the same conclusions about the material world. It's not even clear whether Kuyper was a creationist! Judging by Heslam's book, he would have been classified as a theistic evolutionist in today's America. Kuyper opposed “evolutionism” as a worldview, but not necessarily the theory of evolution itself (a somewhat unstable position).

That Kuyper engaged with the modern world, rather than simply preaching a return to good ol' Geneva or Salem, can also be seen in his attempts to develop a Calvinist aesthetic, his frequent references to the works of Eduard von Hartmann (the leading German philosopher of the late 19th century), his Dutch nationalism and his “organic” conception of the structure of the cosmos, which probably owed quite a deal to the German Romantics he usually criticized. Even Kuyper's complex blend of optimism and pessimism towards the fate of Western civilization feels very modern. On a somewhat different note, it's intriguing that Kuyper while attacking “Puseyism” and “symbolism” nevertheless supported the Liturgical Movement in the Netherlands.

Heslam, described by the back matter as a curate at the Church of England in Huntingdon who frequently publish in scholarly journals, should be commended for writing this book, which is both easy to read and surprisingly comprehensive at the same time. Apart from proving that Kuyper wasn't Jonathan Sarfati's or Rousas Rushdoony's grand daddy, this volume contains a few surprises, such as B B Warfield's reactions to Kuyper's lectures, or Kuyper's comments on the heliotropic development of civilizations…

Five stars.