Last week I started a short series looking at God’s two-fold revelation as expressed in Psalm 19. This week we focus on the first form of God’s revelation—his natural revelation. Verses 1–6 of Psalm 19 express God’s natural revelation. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” This is… Continue Reading
God has filled our world with pleasures, and He has given His image-bearers the power to create even more. We could survive by eating insects and drinking water, but we enjoy deep-dish pizza, pork tenderloin sandwiches, Chicago-style hot dogs, and Vernors ginger ale. We could sleep on gravel, but we luxuriate in king-size mattresses, fluffy… Continue Reading
Some contemporary Christians think it is counterproductive or even sinful to proclaim moral standards to unsaved people. One of the reasons they think this is because unsaved people are totally depraved. One of the effects of total depravity is that, apart from special or saving grace, people have no ability whatever to please God. Furthermore,… Continue Reading
What is clear from this exploration is that each of the three primary post-Christendom approaches to culture have strengths and weaknesses when compared to the NT’s understanding of culture as behavior. The separatist approach rightly recognizes the fundamental antithesis between belief and unbelief, but it fails to also recognize commonality that exists due to common… Continue Reading
The fourth conclusion coming out of the idea that culture is behavior is that holy values ought to affect every aspect of a Christian’s behavior. The Bible is clear with regard to the behavior of Christians—it is to be holy. James says of a Christian, “by his good conduct (ἀναστροφῆς) let him show his works”… Continue Reading
The third principle that emerges from the idea of culture as behavior is that fundamental antithesis exists between the values of Christians and unbelievers, but not always between their behaviors. Up to this point antithesis has been emphasized to the degree that the separatism of the Radical Reformers may seem the most biblical approach to… Continue Reading
The first of Kuyper’s direct followers to explicitly transition away from the Reformed doctrine of two kingdoms was Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). Building on Kuyper’s ambiguity, and parallel to Barth’s own views, Dooyeweerd further develops the idea of worldview as the center of antithesis1 and roots the Son of God’s relationship to cultural matters in redemption rather… Continue Reading
The history of Christian approaches to culture clearly enters a stage of transition in the work of Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). VanDrunen argues that Kuyper retained enough of the important categories of two-kingdom theology to be categorized squarely in its line of thought. In fact, even one-kingdom proponents such as Jeremy Begbie acknowledge… Continue Reading