hughbiquitous

David “Jollyblogger” Wayne got me thinking with his post Defining Neocalvinism?, in which he writes,

Basically, neo-Calvinism descends from the thought of Abraham Kuyper who famously taught that there is not one square inch in all creation over which Jesus does not say "this is mine." The link to Calvinism comes in its emphasis on the sovereignty of God. The neo-Calvinists flesh this out in different directions, and do not limit their discussion of divine sovereignty to the theological. They are seeking to flesh out the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in all areas of life — social, economic, vocational, the arts, politics, education and so on and so forth. …It seems to me that the neocalvinists are particularly concerned with the implications of divine sovereignty for all of life…

He goes on to cite Gideon Strauss’s definition of a neocalvinist: A neocalvinist is someone who

• Confesses Jesus the Christ as God and Lord over all of life.
• Recognizes the enduring design of the world and seeks to shape their life in attentive response to that design.
• Grieves the agony of evil, pain and failure in the world.
• Brings hope and healing in their spheres of responsibility, conscious that hope only finds its fulfillment in the return of the Christ.
• Cherishes the dignity of the human person as created in the image of God.
• Accepts human responsibility for the cultivation of the world and therefore for the shaping of culture.
• Relishes the rich natural and cultural diversity of the world, and seeks to conserve and elaborate that diversity.
• Works against the social effects of both individualism and collectivism, by taking part in the building of a diverse range of social relationships and helping to make room for social diversity in society.

Sounds like Rich Mullins!

Finally, he quotes Strauss once more:

Neocalvinism seeks to bring about cultural renewal in diverse cultures, starting out from a few basic convictions. These include convictions shared with most Christians: That the world belongs to God, and that God structured this world in wonderfully complex ways, ways that are in the deepest sense good; that the world is broken and hurt by human evil, and that our evil reaches into every nook and cranny of the world, and yet, that there is hope and healing in the world because of the redemption worked by the Christ; that people really matter. Perhaps more than most Christian religious traditions neocalvinism emphasizes the need for Christian engagement in every sphere of human culture. While its emphasis on normative patterns given in creation is not extraordinary, its emphasis on the complexity and diversity deriving from those patterns is.

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with all those points, and I don’t have the first clue who Gideon Strauss is; prior to reading Wayne’s piece, the only thing I really knew about neo-Calvinism is that Francis Schaeffer would be considered a representative neo-Calvinist. But taken together, and looking simply to these objective philosophical points, I think it’s worth considering neo-Calvinism as a school of thought.

This is quite timely for me; I have been working through lots of thoughts about vocation and the question of “how does my calling to follow Christ inform my calling to work in software development?” My post yesterday about the gifts of grace is part of that crystallizing train of thought. God gave me one life, not a God-life and a work-life and a family-life and a self-life and so on. I have one life that ought to spread God’s fame in all the spheres of influence it inhabits.

Labels like “neo-Calvinist” aren’t important; it’s the ideas they represent that matter. On the surface, at least, this is one label I might be able to identify with.

Have you ever thought that the question of spiritual gifts was a bit overplayed? To be sure, it’s vitally important that we understand the talents God has entrusted to us, but do we have the same attitude about our service to God that God does? (more…)

The European Leadership Forum has posted a ton (or tonne, if you’re in the UK) of downloadable messages that look simply smashing.

Being less sure doesn’t make you humble. That’s just a plain fact. In the past, humility was the opposite of pride. But now it has become the opposite of conviction. Being sure of something is now often considered a character flaw.

bethinking.org

(HT: The Christian Mind, Melinda Penner)

Gene Edward Veith concisely notes that postmodernism’s attempt to discount meaning is perhaps an tacit admission that meaning matters.

The problem has to do with our inability to understand things that are crystal-clear, yet leave us scratching our heads. Postmodernism tends to abandon objective meaning, preferring subjective interpretation instead. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, requires a humble embrace of the mystery and submission to what is clear… (more…)