The NXR Podcast - THE CONFERENCE - Kuyperianism - Session 6 - Doug Wilson ｜ Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 2024

00:00:00.000 Well, let's ask God to bless our time together.

00:00:02.860 Our gracious God and Father, we lift this time up to you.

00:00:05.860 I pray that we would be careful in how we think through these things.

00:00:09.680 I pray that your spirit would be at work.

00:00:11.700 Teach and instruct us, correct us, I pray.

00:00:14.240 In Jesus' name, amen. 0.89

00:00:17.080 So, in a talk about Kuyperianism,

00:00:22.080 I probably ought to begin with the brief biographical mention of Abraham Kuyper.

00:00:27.980 just as Calvin helped to nickname a theological position that existed long before Calvin was born

00:00:36.240 so also Abraham Kuyper did the same thing we what we call Kuyperianism did not come into being

00:00:43.280 with Abraham Kuyper but in the rough and tumble of human history his name got attached to a position

00:00:50.680 that existed long before Kuyper was born Calvin exalted the sovereignty of God in salvation

00:00:57.640 in much the same way that Augustine and the Apostle Paul had done before him,

00:01:04.060 and in the same way, Abraham Kuyper exalted the lordship of Jesus Christ

00:01:08.600 in every field of human endeavor in much the same way that Calvin had done centuries before him.

00:01:17.040 So Calvin makes a distinction between the church and the kingdom,

00:01:20.120 which we're going to get to in a few minutes,

00:01:22.560 But that's key to understanding how Jesus Christ is Lord of mathematics and Lord of bicycle repair shops and Lord of cooks and bakers and so on.

00:01:38.340 Abraham Kuyper lived as he taught.

00:01:41.900 He was in turns a minister of the gospel, a theologian, an author,

00:01:48.180 the founder of a political party, the founder of a university,

00:01:52.740 the founder of a newspaper, the founder of a denomination,

00:01:57.020 and the prime minister of the Netherlands.

00:01:59.920 In short, he was a tornado in boots.

00:02:04.260 He was an amazing man, and I couldn't drag a rope after him.

00:02:08.460 He is just amazing if you look at the things that he did, things that he wrote, all of his accomplishments.

00:02:15.620 So, Kuyper is very famous for having said there's not one square inch in all of creation over which the Lord Jesus does not say, mine.

00:02:24.460 The Lord Jesus lays claim, territorial claim, by the right of creation and by right of redemption, he lays claim to absolutely everything.

00:02:34.260 There is no neutrality anywhere.

00:02:38.080 No neutrality anywhere.

00:02:39.680 If you get that down, if you understand what it means to deny neutrality, 0.94

00:02:44.980 you're well on your way to Christian worldview thinking.

00:02:47.580 That's the cornerstone of all Christian worldview thinking.

00:02:51.160 We heard it in the previous talk on apologetics.

00:02:54.700 There's no neutrality in presenting the gospel. 0.86

00:02:57.960 There's no neutral zone where you can go and take the unbeliever by the hand 0.79

00:03:02.020 and say, let's agree on these common facts, which are autonomously true, whether or not there's a 0.91

00:03:06.280 God, and then reason our way to God, because there is no such place. Now, let's talk about

00:03:13.220 Kuyperianism. A friend once commented to me, echoing a theologian that he had read, that there

00:03:20.320 are three main currents in the Reformed River. Three main currents in the Reformed River. As it

00:03:28.340 turns out this observation that this my friend passed on to me is something of a commonplace

00:03:33.780 a number of people i think have observed this the first current would be the pietists the pietists

00:03:41.060 these are those these are those people for whom personal conversion and resultant personal

00:03:46.880 devotion sanctification are the principal thing that everything get saved and stay clean that's

00:03:55.500 get saved stay clean go to heaven when you die that is the pietist streak keep your own nose 0.87

00:04:02.700 clean stay out of trouble so that's the pietist stream then there are the confessionalists

00:04:09.340 we might call them the doctrinalists to whom the precise doctrinal formula the precise

00:04:16.280 doctrinal formulations of the canons of what's it berg are everything and they they memorize the

00:04:25.180 confessions. They study the confessions. And what I'm saying here is no knock against the

00:04:30.140 confessions. As will become apparent, I believe that we need to be confessional Christians.

00:04:36.220 We need to connect ourselves, tie ourselves to the historic church, and confessions is one of

00:04:43.740 the ways we do it. But the confessionalist is someone who has tunnel vision with regard

00:04:49.880 to the confessions. The confessions are marvelous. The Westminster Confession of Faith is

00:04:54.780 I think a glorious document, but it doesn't address everything. It doesn't address Darwin.

00:05:02.520 Darwin lived long after the Westminster Confession of Faith was drafted. You can't just say I'm going

00:05:09.920 to limit myself to this high water mark of doctrinal development in the reform world and

00:05:14.820 as though that settles everything. So the pietists are the first group. The confessionalists are the 0.93

00:05:21.060 second group. The third group would be the Kyperian, all right? The third group would be the Kyperians. 0.99

00:05:27.620 These are the transformationalists. The Kyperians are the transformationalists, and this ties in

00:05:33.540 with my talk this evening on post-millennialism. Kyperians want to see every aspect of life

00:05:39.920 brought under the lordship of Christ in a practical, tangible way, and if that were to happen,

00:05:46.880 it would be a great transformation right so the the Kuyperians are the transformationalists

00:05:52.560 these are these are the reformed believers who who hold that every aspect of life needs to be

00:05:59.020 brought under the functional authority of the Lord Jesus Christ under the functional authority

00:06:05.560 not just the formal authority not just Jesus in the 17th dimension authority you know the difference

00:06:14.500 So we're not just talking about Jesus is up in heaven, and he has opinions,

00:06:18.900 and we're going to find out that those opinions were correct when we get there.

00:06:25.080 That's not what it is.

00:06:26.820 He has opinions.

00:06:28.220 He wrote a book.

00:06:29.640 He gave us the book, and he told us to pray,

00:06:33.040 Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, where?

00:06:37.160 On earth, as it is in heaven.

00:06:40.160 Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.

00:06:42.580 That's transformational. 0.51

00:06:44.020 All right, so pietists, confessionalists, and Kuyperians.

00:06:49.520 Now, it's important to note right at the beginning

00:06:52.480 that these do not represent three isolated emphases.

00:06:57.680 They can be isolated, I think, wrongfully and sinfully,

00:07:01.480 but they're not supposed to be isolated.

00:07:04.660 Nothing is supposed to be isolated.

00:07:06.200 Nothing is supposed to be fragmented.

00:07:08.140 So two of these emphases frequently are isolated,

00:07:11.500 but that's a problem, not all three.

00:07:14.020 An emphasis, for example, on personal piety frequently excludes attention to the other aspects of worldview Christianity.

00:07:23.100 If you're focused on personal piety alone, you're not going to be absorbed by what the confessions say,

00:07:30.780 and you're not going to be absorbed by the task of transformation.

00:07:34.100 You're just trying to get to heaven when you die.

00:07:37.060 So, that's the first.

00:07:38.680 An emphasis on personal piety frequently excludes attention to these other aspects.

00:07:44.980 And a rigid confessionalism often limits itself to those topics addressed by the confessions.

00:07:52.180 The confessions say nothing about transgenderism.

00:07:56.880 They say nothing about the sexual revolution. 0.83

00:07:59.780 Now, they condemn old-fashioned sins like adultery and fornication.

00:08:04.480 Those things are addressed.

00:08:05.900 But the idea that the cosmos is an amorphous lump that can be shaped into anything you want, right?

00:08:17.880 Existentialism is the philosophy that says existence precedes essence.

00:08:23.380 Existence precedes essence.

00:08:25.520 That means matter is just atoms banging around.

00:08:29.640 It has no purpose, no meaning, no nothing.

00:08:32.380 And so you, to follow Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher, you have to choose who you're going to be, what you're going to be.

00:08:43.120 You have to take your choice, your will, will put an imprint on the little bit of Play-Doh that is neutral, tasteless, odorless Play-Doh that is your part of this cosmos.

00:08:54.160 And you just will to become whatever it is.

00:08:57.920 And that's where we get the idea that you can be whatever you want to be.

00:09:02.380 Do you want to be a girl? Do you want to be a boy?

00:09:04.520 Do you want to be a 6'10 NBA player?

00:09:09.420 Well, they won't let you do that.

00:09:12.300 Yet.

00:09:16.200 I hope I'm dead before this is.

00:09:23.680 It's harder and harder to be a satirist these days.

00:09:27.320 Because you're making stuff up, and you say,

00:09:29.500 that's wild and crazy and that you put it out there and then someone sent you an email hey look

00:09:34.600 what they just did so a rigid confessionalism limits itself to those topics addressed by the

00:09:43.980 confessions and they didn't anticipate everything now of course the confessions in because they're

00:09:50.180 so scriptural you can think in confessional terms and extend principles out to the modern issues

00:09:57.660 which is one of the things we should be doing.

00:09:59.600 But we need to be going back to the quarry from which everything comes,

00:10:04.720 the scriptures all the time. 0.76

00:10:06.680 But the third, the all-encompassing worldview thinking of Kuyperianism

00:10:10.920 does not exclude personal piety or confessional orthodoxy.

00:10:16.560 How could it?

00:10:17.800 Personal piety is part of the world,

00:10:19.620 and Jesus claims authority over the whole world,

00:10:22.200 including devotions, including your personal commitment to Christ,

00:10:26.320 including your walk with Christ, including the practice of confessing your sins and loving your wife

00:10:31.280 and bringing up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

00:10:34.920 So, Kuyperianism, pietism can exclude Kuyperianism, but Kuyperianism cannot consistently exclude piety.

00:10:44.480 Neither can Kuyperianism exclude confessional orthodoxy.

00:10:48.900 But it has to be grasped and held and embraced in its appropriate place.

00:10:55.500 Everything has an appropriate place, and balance is the name of the game.

00:11:00.380 So, if the Lordship of Christ extends over every aspect of human life,

00:11:06.460 we must therefore recognize that our personal devotional behavior is an aspect of that human life,

00:11:12.080 as would be our confessional commitments.

00:11:15.180 So, Kuyperianism, I would submit to you, is the total package. 0.97

00:11:20.600 Kuyperianism is the whole ball of wax. 0.99

00:11:23.480 Having said that, we have to recognize that the devil is sneaky. 0.99

00:11:27.920 The devil knows how to sneevel into anything, including Kyperianism. 0.99

00:11:33.920 So let's talk about that for a minute. 0.93

00:11:37.000 Kyperianism is the total package, depending.

00:11:40.840 So we want to follow Calvin, not Neo-Calvin.

00:11:45.240 We want to follow Calvin, not Neo-Calvin.

00:11:48.120 There is a movement, a group of reformed scholars calling themselves neo-Calvinists.

00:11:54.280 And if you look up Kuyper, he'll be identified as a neo-Calvinist.

00:11:58.880 There's an innocent way to talk about that, and there's also a suspect way to talk about that.

00:12:03.840 And I'm going to get into what is suspect about it right now.

00:12:08.260 So this is also important to note, and also right at the front end, right at the beginning.

00:12:14.840 Given the kind of world we live in, the progressive left gets into everything.

00:12:20.600 And this includes Kuyperianism.

00:12:24.560 So since I'm going to be loudly praising the Kuyperian train,

00:12:29.460 urging all of you to get your ticket and get on board,

00:12:31.660 I need to make a distinction first,

00:12:34.460 because not everything that goes by the name Kuyperian is Kuyperian.

00:12:40.040 Not everything that goes by the name really is.

00:12:43.400 So, by Kuyperianism, I am not referring to the third way above the fray approach

00:12:49.880 taken by Tim Keller and his followers.

00:12:53.320 Not talking about, there is no third way above the fray.

00:12:57.780 While he would loudly, Tim Keller would loudly proclaim the name of Keller,

00:13:02.880 he would fly the banner of, not Keller,

00:13:06.500 well, he'd probably presume fly the banner of Keller too,

00:13:09.040 But he would fly the banner of Kuiper.

00:13:14.560 He would also want to embrace all three currents that I mentioned above,

00:13:18.740 the pietist, the confessionalist, and the transformationalist.

00:13:22.440 But he takes those three things in a particular order with a particular emphasis.

00:13:27.960 Remember, piety, confessions, and transformation.

00:13:30.660 For Keller, it is transformationalism first, piety second, and doctrine third.

00:13:40.920 Transformation first, piety second, and doctrine third.

00:13:46.800 Now I hope you see the problem with this right off the bat.

00:13:49.680 This is actually a photo negative of the order we find in the book of Ephesians.

00:13:54.900 It's inverted.

00:13:56.840 In the book of Ephesians, it is doctrine first.

00:14:00.660 doctrine first three chapters of doctrine there's if you went hunting through the first three

00:14:06.960 chapters of ephesians looking for something to do virtually nothing there it's just all these

00:14:16.080 glorious truths that there's a difference between an indicative statement and an imperative an

00:14:21.380 indicative statement is simply a statement of fact all right my the lectern is on the stage

00:14:26.680 The doors are closed.

00:14:28.940 Just simply a statement of fact.

00:14:31.760 Ephesians 1 through 3 is just one grand indicative after another.

00:14:36.200 Imperatives are where you're told what to do.

00:14:38.660 Close the door, move the podium, end the talk, those sorts of things.

00:14:45.220 That's an imperative.

00:14:47.400 The last three chapters of Ephesians are full of imperatives.

00:14:50.860 Husband, love your wives. 0.76

00:14:52.400 Wives, submit to your husbands. 0.87

00:14:54.240 Children, obey your parents.

00:14:55.380 put on the whole armor of God.

00:14:57.040 It's telling you what to do.

00:14:58.720 So in Ephesians, it's all these imperatives,

00:15:01.780 three chapters of imperatives,

00:15:03.500 and then we have, excuse me, indicatives.

00:15:05.660 Then we have the imperatives that are put on top of these indicatives,

00:15:10.160 and the most critical word in the whole book of Ephesians is therefore.

00:15:15.860 At the end of three chapters, he says,

00:15:17.980 therefore, whenever you see a therefore, what's a therefore?

00:15:23.440 all right therefore do these things so in the book of ephesians you find doctrine first

00:15:30.280 doctrine first piety obedience second and then transformation third we begin with the doctrinal

00:15:39.040 emphases of the first three chapters the doctrines of high calvinism and move on to the personal

00:15:44.940 ethics enjoined in chapters four through six the end result of all of it is the bride without any

00:15:51.620 spot a wrinkle coming down the aisle of chapter five transformed. That's what we have. So you have

00:15:58.600 doctrine, piety, transformation. The transformation at the end of the process, at the end of the

00:16:05.760 process, is entirely dependent on the preliminary work. If the foundation is crooked, the roof line

00:16:13.180 is going to be crooked. If you get it wrong at the bottom, it's going to be wrong at the top.

00:16:19.000 Now, what happens, here's the challenge.

00:16:22.380 What happens to you if you simply, like Keller, start with an emphasis on transformation?

00:16:28.360 I want to be in the city, I want to love the city, I want to transform the city.

00:16:32.540 And if you begin with that, what happens? 0.81

00:16:35.920 Because of the creational nature of man, all work of transformation must proceed from blueprints. 1.00

00:16:44.880 This is just the way God made us. 0.99

00:16:46.300 We can't work on anything without a plan.

00:16:49.320 You can't go into the workshop and just start cutting and sawing and gluing and hammering

00:16:55.720 and have your wife come in and say, what are you doing? 0.53

00:16:57.580 And you say, I don't know yet.

00:17:01.200 Might be a birdhouse.

00:17:03.460 I don't know.

00:17:05.820 Whenever you start cutting and measuring and doing those, you have a plan from somewhere.

00:17:10.420 This is just the way God made the world. 0.97

00:17:12.820 So, because of this creational nature of man, all work of transformation has to proceed from blueprints. 0.97

00:17:18.900 But if you have not self-consciously started with the biblical blueprints, i.e. doctrine,

00:17:26.760 then you're going to find yourself surreptitiously working from unbiblical blueprints supplied to you by old slew foot.

00:17:35.060 And this is why the third way above the fray, Neo-Calvinism, is always going to veer into the left ditch.

00:17:42.120 Always. Unless they're already there, which they frequently are.

00:17:47.540 But when they're doing this, when they're starting with transformation and on to piety and then minimizing doctrine,

00:17:54.800 when they're doing this, in order to maintain the appearance of balance to the outside Christian world,

00:18:02.800 which is oftentimes more conservative than the leaders are,

00:18:06.840 I was talking to a Dutch Calvinist Canadian farmer once, and he said, 0.81

00:18:11.160 you know, no denomination ever went bad because the pig farmers went liberal. 0.96

00:18:21.380 That's not where the rot starts. 1.00

00:18:24.500 So in order to maintain the appearance of balance, they're going to need to keep up.

00:18:30.100 When you say, I'm in a third way above the fray, well, we're neither Republicans nor are we Democrats.

00:18:36.840 We're above the fray.

00:18:38.680 In order to do that, you have to, remember back in the old days of the Cold War,

00:18:44.640 where the liberals would try to maintain a moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and the United States. 0.60

00:18:50.360 In order to do that, they had to suppress and deny things that the Soviets were doing

00:18:54.480 and magnify bad things that we were doing. 0.73

00:18:56.960 And there's always bad things that we were doing, but they had to amplify them,

00:18:59.680 and they had to suppress the other in order to keep the thing looking like it was somewhat balanced.

00:19:05.720 It's the same way here.

00:19:07.680 In order to have the appearance of balance,

00:19:10.280 they're going to need to insist on a moral equivalence

00:19:13.140 between the racism they keep hearing about on the right

00:19:16.320 and the death cult love affair with abortion 0.98

00:19:19.000 and every form of sexual perversion on the left.

00:19:23.020 They will have to greatly amplify every hint of racism

00:19:26.980 until it is an incipient holocaust, almost on top of us,

00:19:30.780 and then minimize what's going on with all the alphabet plus people.

00:19:34.960 well what do i what do i mean by minimize okay for example james wood author i appreciate

00:19:42.560 very much james wood in an appreciative review of a book called biblical critical theory

00:19:49.400 promoted by keller this is 672 cinder block of a book 672 page cinder block of a book

00:19:58.940 it's designed to help christians quote make sense of modern life and culture okay we we want to

00:20:06.520 think biblically about modern life and culture okay amen that's what we're here for that's what

00:20:11.000 we're that's what we're doing right this book is dedicated to making sense of modern life and

00:20:15.700 culture and yet there's nothing in it about abortion nothing about the sexual revolution

00:20:23.400 Nothing about the alphabet people.

00:20:26.620 Now, the phrase that Turretin would have used for this kind of stratospheric theorizing is, quote, completely out of touch.

00:20:34.100 That's not what you're dealing with.

00:20:36.180 How can you be taught how to make sense of modern life and culture when the problems you're facing in your community is how to keep Bruno out of the junior high girls' showers?

00:20:47.920 How do we do that?

00:20:49.620 Well, the men in charge of the big things aren't helping us.

00:20:54.680 They're not giving us the tools that we need to fight that kind of thing.

00:20:59.980 So how would this comport with the book's subtitle?

00:21:02.360 How the Bible's unfolding story makes sense of modern life and culture.

00:21:07.060 How on earth are we going to make sense of modern life and culture 0.94

00:21:10.560 without reference to our polymorphous, orgasmic, and androgynous imperative

00:21:14.680 where everybody can be absolutely anything they want to be?

00:21:19.000 The wheels have come. Everything has come unstuck.

00:21:21.320 Absolutely everything.

00:21:22.880 And sex is right at the center of it. 0.64

00:21:26.000 Sex is right at the center of it.

00:21:27.440 And you can't write a big think book without addressing it

00:21:31.300 and act like you're not completely missing the point.

00:21:35.520 Now, I realize that Kevin DeYoung might not appreciate me quoting him with appreciation.

00:21:41.980 But I'm going to do it anyhow.

00:21:46.300 Now, me and Kevin, because Kevin is right on the money here.

00:21:55.760 This is really good.

00:21:57.680 Quote, Keller has often made use of George Marsden's observation

00:22:02.700 that the Reformed tradition in America comprises three different priorities or impulses.

00:22:08.360 The doctrinalist impulse, which emphasizes the confessions of the church and correct theology.

00:22:13.520 The pietist impulse, which emphasizes right behavior and the internal affections of the heart.

00:22:19.780 And the culturalist impulse, which emphasizes collective action and the external work of the church to transform society.

00:22:29.100 Keller has acknowledged before that he is a culturalist first, then a pietist, then a doctrinalist.

00:22:35.800 That order.

00:22:36.820 So Keller himself says this.

00:22:39.040 I would say that my order is just the opposite.

00:22:41.900 it. In fact, if it's not too doctrinalist of me, I think that sound doctrine is more than an impulse.

00:22:48.440 It is foundational and indispensable for the other two emphases, and amen to that. While I'm at it,

00:22:55.560 I might as well say that I'm not convinced that the culture-forming agenda belongs to the church

00:23:00.320 qua church, nor that it won't end up being co-opted by an ever-expanding list of social justice

00:23:06.140 causes. I think that's right on the money, and when he says, I don't think the culture-transforming

00:23:11.200 agenda belongs to the church as the church. This is exactly correct, and it goes back to my earlier 0.97

00:23:16.240 observation about the distinction between the church and the kingdom that we're going to get

00:23:20.560 to in a moment. And yet, do you all remember that time when Princeton gave an award to Keller

00:23:27.800 and then revoked it because of his distinctly nuanced and muted negative stance on homosexuality?

00:23:36.500 So Keller disapproved of homosexuality because even though doctrine was at the caboose, it was still there.

00:23:44.560 And he said he would nuance it to death.

00:23:47.640 But yes, at the end of the day, homosexuality is not conducive to human flourishing. 0.87

00:23:52.380 Okay? Something like that. 1.00

00:23:55.820 So he had this prize awarded to him by Princeton.

00:23:59.880 And then it was revoked after the outcry against someone as rabidly right-wing as Tim Keller.

00:24:05.760 Now, the proof, and we have so many proofs of this,

00:24:11.300 but the proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy

00:24:14.340 is found in the fact that the award they revoked was the Kuiper Prize.

00:24:23.780 So what is Princeton doing awarding the Kuiper Prize?

00:24:27.440 And what are they doing taking it away from someone

00:24:30.700 who is simply a mild shadow of what Kuiper would have said about it?

00:24:35.760 Wow. So, because the woke hordes understand that religious commitment is a totalizing affair,

00:24:43.340 there's absolutely no way for a Christian to remain faithful on issues surrounding the sexual 0.68

00:24:48.800 revolution and also remain above the fray. Simply not possible. If at the end of the day you say, 1.00

00:24:56.680 no, that's an abomination. No, it is confusion, the way the Bible says. Someone's going to put

00:25:02.060 the Bible in front of you and says this verse says that bestiality is confusion. What do you

00:25:06.800 say to that? You either say amen to that or you don't. And there will come a moment of decision

00:25:13.920 where it's either going to be down that road or this one, right? And so it's not possible

00:25:19.600 to stay faithful on the creational design of God's image carried by the human race in the fact that

00:25:28.580 God created us male and female, all right?

00:25:31.380 So one quick comment.

00:25:32.900 I don't want to burn too much daylight here, but a quick comment here.

00:25:36.280 The reason in Genesis chapter 1, God embeds his image in the human race,

00:25:42.820 and he does it, male and female created he them, right?

00:25:47.360 In the image of God, he created them.

00:25:49.740 That's the image of God, male and female.

00:25:52.740 It's God's handiwork.

00:25:53.900 That's God's signature on it.

00:25:56.040 So God painted that painting and he signed it.

00:25:59.380 And he put himself into it.

00:26:01.460 His image is projected onto it.

00:26:03.640 Now, in the parable, pretend that the Lord Jesus is the king

00:26:09.500 and he lives on the castle on the hill.

00:26:11.600 And let's say there's a bunch of peasants down in the valley

00:26:14.060 who are in his kingdom, but they don't like the king at all.

00:26:17.580 And let's say the king is very strong, has a very strong castle,

00:26:21.000 mighty men defending it and the peasants are are incapable of expressing their hatred of the king

00:26:29.920 on the castle they can't they couldn't overthrow him they can't it can't be done but they still

00:26:35.140 want to vent their hatred what what would they do well they would riot and burn his image in effigy

00:26:41.160 that's what they would do they'd burn the image of the king they don't like in effigy 0.91

00:26:46.300 and that's what all this trans stuff is it is vandalism of the one they hate in heaven whom 0.87

00:26:54.180 they can't reach that's what they're trying to do now and and anyone who gets in the way

00:27:00.080 in any way is going to be the enemy is going to be cast as the enemy and if you're going to be

00:27:06.400 an enemy at the end of the day and everyone who loves jesus is going to be the enemy at the end

00:27:12.020 of the day then you need to start learning now how to be a faithful enemy of the godless

00:27:17.260 because you don't want to be having them herd you into the cattle car and be trying to learn

00:27:22.120 the lessons then so following calvin i therefore want to make a distinction between the church

00:27:29.120 and the kingdom the church proper is the ministry of word and sacrament its primary functions are

00:27:36.580 discharged on the Lord's day as the people of God gather to worship him. The church discharges

00:27:43.060 its central obligation in the worship of God every Lord's day. The cathedral at the center of the

00:27:50.120 town is the church. The town is the kingdom. The church, the cathedral is the church. The town is

00:27:57.040 the kingdom. There's traffic and flow between the two, obviously. The people in the town go to church

00:28:02.340 and then after church is over, they go back out to the town.

00:28:05.300 There's traffic and flow.

00:28:06.660 But the church of God and the kingdom of God are not synonyms

00:28:09.640 any more than the cathedral and the town itself are synonyms.

00:28:14.180 In all of this, there necessarily must be a harmonious relationship

00:28:17.740 between the three governments that were established directly by God.

00:28:22.560 You'll sometimes hear in discussions of Kuyperianism,

00:28:25.820 you'll hear the phrase sphere sovereignty,

00:28:27.760 And the three central spheres are family, church, and state.

00:28:33.220 Those are the three central spheres.

00:28:36.560 Under these three governments, underneath all three of these governments,

00:28:41.620 is the foundational government of self-control,

00:28:45.280 which is wrought in us by the Spirit of God through the gospel.

00:28:49.280 Without this self-governance, the balance of form and freedom in the other three governments

00:28:53.940 becomes a radical impossibility.

00:28:57.100 As our second president, John Adams, once observed, as I mentioned last night,

00:29:01.240 our Constitution presupposes a moral and a religious people.

00:29:05.360 It is, he said, wholly unfit for any other. 0.99

00:29:08.540 If you have a nation of fornicating potheads, they will not be free. 0.99

00:29:14.260 It is not going to happen. 1.00

00:29:16.180 If you have a nation of porn addicts, they will not be free.

00:29:20.440 It's not going to happen.

00:29:22.080 If you have people hooked on drugs, they're not going to be free.

00:29:25.580 is not going to happen you have to be self-governed the holy spirit has to be work

00:29:30.540 working in your life and heart and family such that the family hangs together because everyone

00:29:37.280 in it is disciplined by the holy spirit that's how a family um stays together and this but this

00:29:44.280 is true of all three governments but assuming this uh conversion by the holy spirit assuming

00:29:50.060 this work by the holy spirit then what happens when men are forgiven and set upright again

00:29:55.320 they find themselves functioning within the framework of these three basic governments

00:30:00.060 now by basic governments i'm talking about these governmental arrangements established directly by

00:30:05.740 god the the government was created by god this would not include the structure of your quilting

00:30:11.800 club your book reading group or any hunting parties you put together you can you can structure those

00:30:17.720 bylaws how you like right it's your club right it's you have dominion there you can you can

00:30:24.380 structure your book reading group as a democracy or as a monarchy yeah i decide the book or we all

00:30:31.500 decide the book you can structure it however you want those governments are man-made but the three

00:30:37.340 governments we are talking about here were created by god directly and so consequently he writes the

00:30:43.380 bylaws the first god-ordained government is the government of the family following the order that

00:30:50.280 god has established the husband is the head his wife is his body and the executive and together

00:30:58.240 they shepherd their little ones so don't just as a side comment so don't treat your wife like she

00:31:04.560 was a conservative airhead and then proudly say and to her i've entrusted the education of all my

00:31:09.840 sons. She doesn't know anything. And that's why I've given that test to her. That's not right.

00:31:18.900 So this is not a low view of women. It is a high view of women. But it is a structured and 0.99

00:31:25.580 hierarchical view of men and women together. The man is the head. The woman is his body. And

00:31:32.420 together they shepherd their little ones. So the family is the ministry of health, education,

00:31:37.640 and Welfare. The family is the Ministry of Health, Education, and Welfare. The second is the Civil

00:31:43.480 Magistrate, which is the Ministry of Justice. Their task is to make it possible for you to walk

00:31:49.520 across town safely at 2 a.m. in the morning. And justice here is defined by the Bible and not by

00:31:55.980 the hurt feelings of somebody. We're not talking about social justice. The phrase social justice

00:32:01.640 should hit you like the phrase bone cancer does.

00:32:04.800 Social justice is a lie from the pit.

00:32:07.780 Justice, simple justice, is biblically defined.

00:32:11.740 And then the church is the ministry of grace and peace,

00:32:15.260 who is the Holy Spirit himself.

00:32:18.540 Every epistle in the New Testament says grace and peace to you

00:32:23.080 from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:32:25.520 And one of them adds mercy.

00:32:26.980 But every one of them says grace and peace to you

00:32:28.680 from God the Father and the Lord Jesus.

00:32:30.960 And you may have wondered, where's the Holy Spirit?

00:32:32.640 Why is the Holy Spirit never mentioned in these letters?

00:32:35.800 I would agree with Jonathan Edwards at following him

00:32:38.320 and say the Holy Spirit is the grace and peace.

00:32:41.400 Grace and peace to you, from the Father, Filioque, and the Son.

00:32:47.160 Now, what is the relationship of the three governments to one another?

00:32:51.140 These are Kuyperian spheres that operate in the context of the kingdom.

00:32:55.160 In God's order, not one of the three is permitted to domineer over the others.

00:32:59.820 The state can't come to the church and say, you're not essential, you can't meet because of this virus.

00:33:06.500 Each one has its assigned task, and each one needs to tend to its own knitting.

00:33:12.100 The church does not declare war.

00:33:14.360 The church does not collect the trash.

00:33:16.800 The family does not administer the sacraments.

00:33:19.900 The state does not review cases of church discipline.

00:33:23.260 And not one of these spheres is dependent on any of the others for its existence.

00:33:28.020 The church is established directly by God, the family directly by God, and the state directly by God.

00:33:34.340 Now, there are, this is the fallen world, in times of extreme crisis, as when Rome was threatened by the Lombards,

00:33:43.000 one government may pick up some of the responsibilities of another.

00:33:47.480 Say there's a failed state, and there is no civil government, but the church is still there, all right?

00:33:53.340 if the church is still present the the leading ministers might get together and make decisions

00:34:00.100 because they have to or in other unusual circumstances it may be the same way as

00:34:05.420 when Paul prohibits Christians from filing civil suits against one another before unbelieving

00:34:10.500 judges in first Corinthians 6 1 through 7 ordinarily the church ought not to be adjudicating 0.88

00:34:15.800 property line disputes but we should prefer that to the scandal of asking pagans to define justice

00:34:22.720 between two believers but with that said there's definitely a hierarchy of honor in this glorious

00:34:29.900 and eschatological fulfillment right there's definitely a hierarchy of honor this is what

00:34:35.340 it looks like the church does not fill up the world and the church does not turn every day

00:34:40.280 into sunday but the knowledge of the lord does fill up the world as the waters cover the sea

00:34:45.560 habakkuk 2 14 so how does this work in scripture remember the flow goes two directions the living

00:34:51.600 water flows from the church out to all the families and nations of men, and then all the

00:34:57.400 families and nations of men flow back to the church. The living water, the gospel, flows out

00:35:02.600 of the church to all the nations, and then all the nations stream back to the church in order to be

00:35:07.460 refreshed, renew covenant, and then go out again themselves. So they don't stream, the nations don't

00:35:15.840 stream to the church in order to live there. They don't come into the church in order to establish

00:35:20.860 permanent residency there. They come to eat from the tree of life, and then they go back out again

00:35:26.580 with a benediction and with the peace of Christ on their heads. You are commissioned. Go make a

00:35:32.020 difference. Go make a difference when you're writing code. Go make a difference when you're

00:35:36.300 changing diapers. Go make a difference when you're repairing bicycles. Go in the name of Jesus. Go

00:35:41.460 transform the world. So picture it this way. The worship of God is central to all of life,

00:35:47.720 but it does not devour all of life the worship of god is central to all of life but it does not

00:35:53.200 devour it is the axle not the wheel the sun does not burn everything up but it does give light to

00:35:59.780 everything the water does not flood the world but it does irrigate the entire world

00:36:04.400 the anchor fastens the ship the ship does not turn into a giant gigantic anchor the cathedral

00:36:11.900 is in the center of the town but it does not take over all the activities of the townspeople

00:36:16.520 their printing their auto mechanics their software designing their lawn mowing

00:36:20.300 in one sense all of that is none of the church's business

00:36:23.560 but at the same time the church instructs the townspeople in the adverbs

00:36:27.700 how these things are to be done meaning honestly and before the lord

00:36:31.300 with one eye always on the text and with a hard work ethic so the church is

00:36:36.540 therefore at the center of the kingdom but the church and the kingdom are still

00:36:39.820 very different you can see the cathedral spire

00:36:43.140 from every part of the town so this next section of the talk is called somewhat oddly the restroom

00:36:52.080 test you'll have to wait so the authority of jesus the kind of authority that is granted

00:37:01.760 to a sacrificial king is an authority that mediates the kindness of the father and he

00:37:06.640 mediates that kindness with the center fixed and all the edges in play the church teaches you how

00:37:12.440 to be a father but does not take over the role of a father the church instructs the magistrate

00:37:17.440 but does not rival the magistrate the church teaches wives to submit to their husbands

00:37:22.520 and models that submission through dutiful and cheerful submission to the authority of christ

00:37:27.520 as found in the scriptures interestingly when churches say no only elders only men can be

00:37:34.940 elders only men can preach the word what the church is being really masculine when they do

00:37:40.660 that no the church is being the bride the church is being a submissive and obedient wife

00:37:45.280 our husband said men preach men rule no women and we're dutiful when and the church in obeying that 0.58

00:37:53.820 by having masculine male leadership up front churches that do that churches that insist on

00:37:59.100 that are not squashing the women they are modeling for the women what submission looks like

00:38:04.300 all right this is obedience we're christians we're under orders we should do what we're told

00:38:10.660 So reflecting Christ, the church suffuses all of life,

00:38:16.160 the way sunlight fills up the day.

00:38:18.180 It does not displace ordinary life the way one billiard ball displaces another.

00:38:22.880 Rather, it informs and instructs ordinary life.

00:38:26.260 Wherever you are in the town, out in the kingdom,

00:38:28.480 whatever you are doing, whether changing a tire or changing a diaper,

00:38:31.980 you can turn around and look, and from that place you can see the church spire.

00:38:36.120 Everything is calibrated by that.

00:38:38.480 Everything is oriented.

00:38:39.740 And whatever you do, whenever you do this, whenever you're looking like this, whatever you're doing, you are reminded that you are part of the bride, the wife of the lamb.

00:38:48.760 Now, returning to an earlier point, a problem has been caused by Abraham Kuyper's success and subsequent influence in that Kuyperian is now generally taken as a term of praise in reformed circles and not as a term of abuse.

00:39:05.380 Princeton University wants to give prizes with that name on it.

00:39:08.820 As a term of praise, this means that everybody wants it,

00:39:11.760 and this has resulted in a number of pietists and doctrinalists

00:39:15.180 who think they are Kuyperian, but who are not at all.

00:39:18.720 Wouldn't it be nice to be Kuyperian? 0.99

00:39:20.160 It's not the same thing as actually engaging the world at every point. 0.96

00:39:24.540 True Kuyperian practice is not to go out into the world

00:39:28.060 and do pretty much what everybody else is doing,

00:39:30.480 only with a Jesus label attached.

00:39:33.540 Anything the world can do, we can do five years later and worse, 0.98

00:39:36.840 is not Kuyperian. 0.99

00:39:38.120 You've got fad diets, we've got fad diets. 0.50

00:39:43.980 You've got aerobics, we've got aerobics.

00:39:46.080 You've got whatever.

00:39:47.520 This is not the lordship of Christ. 1.00

00:39:49.080 Rather, it is Christians getting into the manufacture of knockoffs. 1.00

00:39:53.180 If something gets popular in the world, 1.00

00:39:55.220 the Christians are right there with a competing model 1.00

00:39:57.300 made with cheap labor in the third world 0.99

00:39:59.180 and using a lot more plastic.

00:40:01.580 In order for the Kuyperian spheres to be rightly related to one another,

00:40:05.440 it is necessary for all of them to be rightly related to worship,

00:40:10.140 a worship of God that is at the center.

00:40:13.000 In the first place, this means worship on the Lord's Day,

00:40:15.620 and in the second place, worship in other settings,

00:40:17.920 like chapel at seminary or in your family worship around the dinner table.

00:40:22.800 You have to hallow God's name.

00:40:25.080 You've got to reverence his name.

00:40:27.960 So as seminaries vie for the privilege of instructing the next generation

00:40:32.140 of Kuyperian ministers and a bunch of reformed instructors want to say well we we want to teach

00:40:38.860 our seminarians to be Kuyperian ministers how would you decide which one would do a good job

00:40:45.400 of it one of the things you can do if you're dubious about a restaurant is to simply walk in

00:40:50.280 and take a look at one of their restrooms depending on the conditions there you can go on to look at

00:40:55.520 other things the menu the prices the service etc but an appalling restroom ought to be a deal breaker

00:41:01.860 If you're in a strange town, should we eat there? 1.00

00:41:04.440 Just go in and look at the restroom.

00:41:07.000 Using a similar approach, take a grand tour of all the Reformed seminaries in the United States.

00:41:11.960 Do not sit in on the classes, or visit the bookstore, or examine the curriculum. 0.99

00:41:16.820 At least not at first.

00:41:18.800 Just make sure you hit the chapel service. 1.00

00:41:21.780 That's the restroom. 0.98

00:41:23.740 Sit there and ask yourself if you want this to be the future of the Reformed world. 0.99

00:41:28.280 Are they singing Jesus is my girlfriend music? 1.00

00:41:33.340 Is the worship inane?

00:41:35.620 Is the message God-honoring?

00:41:37.660 Is the overall demeanor breezy and casual with shorts and flip-flops abounding?

00:41:41.940 Is this what reverence and godly awe mean to them?

00:41:45.500 And the chances are, if you get into a conversation with someone about this,

00:41:49.480 and you raise the point,

00:41:50.820 the defense will be to retreat to their true justification for carrying the reform mantle,

00:41:55.420 and it will either be a tight doctrinal defense.

00:41:58.440 The Heidelberg doesn't say we can't worship this way

00:42:00.480 or it will be a love and good works defense.

00:42:02.880 Our students volunteer in evangelistic outreach

00:42:05.320 and numerous crisis pregnancy centers.

00:42:07.960 That's piety and the other is doctrinal.

00:42:11.140 And this is nothing against doctrinal precision

00:42:13.580 or active evangelism or social engagement.

00:42:17.300 The Kuyperian approach includes these

00:42:19.520 and it does so robustly.

00:42:21.160 But the Kuyperian approach never justifies

00:42:23.540 a glaring lack in one place

00:42:25.360 by pointing out another place

00:42:27.060 where the lack is not so evident.

00:42:29.080 You can't defend yourself

00:42:30.180 against the charge of stealing something

00:42:31.640 by pointing out all the houses in town

00:42:33.840 that you didn't burn down.

00:42:36.180 On one other thing,

00:42:38.780 I'm not saying that all Reformed seminaries

00:42:41.600 have atrocious chapel services

00:42:43.400 any more than I'm saying

00:42:44.440 that every restaurant in town 1.00

00:42:45.360 has a filthy restroom.

00:42:46.620 I'm just saying that what they're doing

00:42:48.020 in their chapel service matters

00:42:49.560 and it tells you a whole lot more

00:42:52.820 than anything else you might look at there.

00:42:56.260 And so, let's bring this down.

00:42:58.540 I haven't said a lot about the state,

00:43:00.600 so let's say a few things about that as I conclude.

00:43:05.080 So let me conclude with a great quote

00:43:08.140 from Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism.

00:43:10.600 If you want to start reading Kuyper,

00:43:13.200 I would recommend you start with that book,

00:43:15.540 Lectures on Calvinism.

00:43:18.460 And this is a quote that addresses

00:43:20.140 the great crisis of our day,

00:43:22.820 which is the fecklessness of our cultural, political, and ecclesiastical leadership.

00:43:29.420 Kuyper is quoting from Calvin's commentary on Samuel here.

00:43:33.280 So this is Kuyper quoting Calvin, talking about Samuel.

00:43:37.740 Quote,

00:43:38.160 And ye, O peoples, to whom God gave the liberty to choose your own magistrates,

00:43:43.980 see to it that ye do not forfeit this favor by electing to the positions of highest honor

00:43:49.040 rascals and enemies of God.

00:43:52.820 Oh, that's centuries old, not relevant.

00:43:58.860 One of the temptations to folly that falls out of the notion that American liberty is a unique thing in the world

00:44:05.240 is the idea that the threats to that liberty that we're currently facing are also unique.

00:44:10.940 But they're not.

00:44:12.120 Because of this, we don't look to God's word for wisdom on how to deal with it.

00:44:15.920 We think our temptation is a singularity.

00:44:18.780 We think that this moment that we're dealing with, this clown world, Athanasius centuries ago famously said, he was told, Athanasius, don't you know the whole world is against you?

00:44:34.240 And his adversaries were meaning the whole world of bishops were against you. 0.94

00:44:38.640 The whole Christian world is against you.

00:44:41.520 And Athanasius famously said, then let it be known that Athanasius is contra mundum, against the world.

00:44:47.680 If the world is against me, then I'm against the world.

00:44:50.500 We're in a more privileged position than Athanasius.

00:44:53.000 We are contra mundum negosum, which is against clown world. 0.90

00:44:59.440 Don't you know that all of clown world is against you? 0.97

00:45:02.980 Don't you know that these guys want to make themselves perma-clowns? 0.97

00:45:07.800 They do, but let it be known, we're against all of that.

00:45:11.540 so we think that we think this this singular situation that we're in is the first time in

00:45:19.120 human history that it's happened no no this is this is part of the life cycle of empires this

00:45:25.540 is what this is what diseased empires do this is what happens when uh when we lose our faith in

00:45:32.760 god and we wander off how many times in the book of judges alone has does this sort of thing happen

00:45:40.860 So, we think our temptation is a unique event.

00:45:44.400 We don't look to history to see how it has been dealt with in the past,

00:45:47.560 but it has been dealt with by the Holy Spirit of God repeatedly in the past.

00:45:53.780 Blessings and curses are always binary.

00:45:56.960 Blessings and curses are always binary.

00:45:59.420 There's always a mountain of blessing to the right, an amount of curses to the left. 0.98

00:46:03.500 There have always been scoundrels and fools ready to assemble in the king's court, 0.96

00:46:07.780 and there has always been God's requirement for kings to look for good men who are ready to help 0.99

00:46:12.640 banish the greasy climbers. This was true prior to 1776 and it has been true ever since that time. 0.98

00:46:20.280 For century after century, many nations have experienced the heavy hand of tyranny and

00:46:24.760 mismanagement. For century after century, many other nations have been responsibly governed

00:46:29.800 and have enjoyed the blessings of liberty for a time. This is the kind of general truth

00:46:35.180 that can be described in a proverb when the righteous are in authority the people rejoice 0.87

00:46:40.840 but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn proverbs 29 2 this is generally true

00:46:48.300 just look around look up look down the corridors of history read a book we are in a period of 0.95

00:46:55.000 mourning right now and we're in a period of mourning because god is chastising us with our

00:46:59.460 rulers god is chastising us with our rulers the response to chastisement is not to blame them

00:47:06.040 the response to chastisement is repentance god you are judging us with our rulers

00:47:12.360 what do we need to do we need to we need to turn back to you we need to cry out to you

00:47:18.460 so we're in a period of mourning right now and this is so because the wicked are currently in

00:47:22.580 control yates nailed it the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate

00:47:27.680 intensity. But lest we blame the scoundrels inside the beltway as though that were where

00:47:32.900 the problem arose, the wicked bear rule there in a nation that holds orderly elections every two 1.00

00:47:38.420 years. We chose these people, which means that we are ignoring to our peril the pointed warning 0.99

00:47:44.980 that Calvin gave. What happens to a people who use this favor from God, free and untrammeled

00:47:52.000 elections in order to bestow the highest honors on skunks, graspers, thieves, grifters, blackguards, 0.98

00:47:59.640 miscreants, villains, and stinkers. Such a people lose their liberty to choose their own leaders, 0.99

00:48:06.540 and given how they were using that liberty, this constitutes no great loss. The United States is

00:48:13.220 only a nation, and we are experiencing no temptations except those that are common to

00:48:19.220 nations. And there's no way

00:48:21.320 of escape. We have to stop

00:48:23.180 supporting a regime run by

00:48:25.320 airbrushed mountebanks.

00:48:28.040 So there, I said it.

00:48:29.720 I'm clearly spinning out of

00:48:31.320 control, so I'd better conclude.

00:48:34.720 Father in

00:48:35.360 heaven, thank you for your goodness to us. We commit

00:48:37.280 all of this to you. In Jesus' name,

00:48:39.540 amen.

The NXR Podcast - April 30, 2024

THE CONFERENCE - Kuyperianism - Session 6 - Doug Wilson ｜ Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 2024

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