Over at the Hang Together blog, Greg Forster takes a long look at the images of the gospel as “pearl” and “leaven” and the implications for Christian engagement and creation of culture, particularly within the context of the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate:

The main difficulty we seem to have in discussing Christian cultural activity is the strain between two anxieties. These anxieties create unnecessary divisions between brothers, because those who are more worried about making sure the gospel is leaven view those who are more worried about making sure the gospel is pearl as people who are leading the church astray, and vice versa. We treat people as opponents when we could be treating them as allies, if we could just get over our fears.

The question of what it means to be a Christian line worker on a factory floor gets precisely at many of the thorny issues that have led to so many debates, disputes, and controversies over cultural engagement (or transformation), the “two kingdoms,” natural law, and faith and work.

Read more on Church, Culture, and the Gospel as Pearl and Leaven…

In this week’s Acton Commentary, I take a look at the relationship between sacrifice and self-interest. One of the common complaints against market economies is that they foster selfishness.

But as Paul Heyne points out, it is crucially important to distinguish between self-interest and selfishness: “Many of the most eminent and sophisticated theorists in the economics profession make no effort to distinguish between self-interest and selfishness or between rational behavior and greedy behavior.” The failure to make such a distinction leads to some pretty strange conclusions about the motivations behind human behavior. If you want to know why people work, just look at what they do with the money they earn.

To this end, I also highlight the perspective of Herman Bavinck, who describes the rhythmic relationship between the spheres of family and work:

Through the family God motivates us to work, inspiring, encouraging, and empowering us to work. Through this labor he equips us to survive not for the sake of satisfying our lusts but for the sake of providing for our family before God and with honor, and also to extend the hand of Christian compassion to the poor.

We go out to work to provide for our families, and we return home from work to enjoy and share the fruits of our labors. We do this daily, in fact. There is a deeply intimate connection here in the cycle between home and work, the dual aspects of the cultural mandate: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and exercise dominion over it.
Read more on Acton Commentary: Sacrifice and Self-Interest…

I remember when I was a kid and would ask why we celebrate Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. What about Children’s Day? To which I would receive the inevitable response, “Every day is Children’s Day.” I use the same response now when some smart-alecky kid pipes up with this kind of question.

That may be true, in a sense, but today (Nov. 20) is also “Universal Children’s Day.” This event is a vehicle in part for UN advocacy on behalf of the ratification and implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the last issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, Johan van der Vyver examined the convention, with an eye particularly toward the complications of ratification and implementation in the United States in comparison with that of South Africa, in his piece, “Children’s Rights, Family Values, and Federal Constraints.”

Van der Vyver argues, “There is strong opposition against ratification of the convention from within the ranks of evangelical Christians, based essentially on a perception that the convention undermines family values. However, this article argues that the main obstacle confronting the United States in this regard derives from the constitutional dispensation of federalism.” The basic point, says van der Vyver, is that the autonomy of the family unit is not essentially undermined by the convention, but that the particular polity of the U.S. government and the nature of the process of treaty ratification is what stands in the way of American participation.

As to a classical expression of the place of children within the family and the significance of the family as a social institution, it’s worth noting the recent translation of the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck’s treatise, The Christian Family. This is a wonderful book, full of insights into the nature of social relationships, the divine institution of the family, and the importance of the family to a free and virtuous society.
Read more on Every Day is Children’s Day…

A rare work in which Kuyper dispatches a particularly troublesome vampire.

However history remembers me … it shall only remember a fraction of the truth.

The multi-talented Abraham Kuyper is sometimes difficult to introduce. I often use the descriptors, “theologian, statesman, journalist” to highlight his many interests and talents. But there is much more than this to the life and work of this complex and compelling figure. As a recent introduction to Kuyper’s thought puts it, “Kuyper was a man of many hats: statesman, politician, educator, preacher, churchman, theologian, and philosopher.”

Kuyper was, indeed, the head of state of the Netherlands from 1901-1905, and had previously led a church movement that formed a new denomination, initiated the publication of two newspapers, wrote a series of essays, books, and editions of works across decades, and much, much more. He is the real-life kind of persona that the words recently placed in the mouth of a fictionalized Abraham Lincoln, who apparently enjoyed a career as a vampire hunter before his ascendancy to the nation’s top political office, would aptly apply to: “However history remembers me before I was a President, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth…”
Read more on Abraham Kuyper: Vampire Hunter…

Christian’s Library Press and Acton Institute announce the release of the first English translation of The Christian Family by Herman Bavinck.

When this book was first published in Dutch, marriage and the family were already weathering enormous changes, and that trend has not abated. Yet by God’s power the unchanging essence of marriage and the family remains proof, as Bavinck notes, that God’s “purpose with the human race has not yet been achieved.”

Accessible, thoroughly biblical, and astonishingly relevant, The Christian Family offers a mature and concise handling of the origins of marriage and family life along with the effects of sin on these institutions, an appraisal of historic Christian approaches, and an attempt to apply that theology.

Aptly reminding Christians that “the moral health of society depends on the health of family life,” Bavinck issues an evergreen challenge to God’s people: “Christians may not permit their conduct to be determined by the spirit of the age, but must focus on the requirement of God’s commandment.”

John Bolt, professor of Systematic Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary says this about Bavinck’s The Christian Family:
Read more on First English Translation of Herman Bavinck’s ‘The Christian Family’…

I was recently invited to write an essay on the importance of interdisciplinary studies for the Calvin Seminary student publication Kerux. In my essay “The Truth is One,” I reflect on the famous quote of Abraham Kuyper,

[N]o single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”

To this, I add a philosophical observation:

[I]f we truly believe that the Truth is one and indivisible, then we ought to acknowledge that all disciplines of study are essentially interdependent, because all ultimately seek to study the same thing—the Truth. And for this reason, I argue that, whenever possible, theological education ought to be augmented with insights from the vast treasuries of other disciplines (and vice versa).

Despite this philosophical orientation, the essay is largely practical. With my target audience of seminarians at my Alma Mater in mind, I offer a few suggestions for how to go about broadening one’s theological education with insights from other disciplines, including the following:

[T]ake the time to read Christian authors of the past who have endeavored to wrestle with the unity of the Truth in the diversity of academic disciplines, such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Abraham Kuyper, or Vladimir Solovyov. Such great minds offer thoughtful, Christian models for broadening our worldviews, whether or not we end up agreeing with their conclusions all the time.

In light of this, I would like to take this opportunity to shamelessly promote some of the work that Acton has been doing, specifically through our imprint Christian’s Library Press, translating the work of some great thinkers who model this broader perspective. Read more on Wisdom & Wonder & Interdisciplinary Studies…

Today is Reformation Day, and I wanted to pass along a quote that I have found to embody a valuable perspective about the imperative to always be seeking reform of one’s own life and manners, without needing to tarry for broader social or political change.

The quote appears in the newly-published translation of a work by the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, The Christian Family, which originally appeared in 1908.

Read more on Always Reforming, Without Tarrying…

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), the multi-talented Dutch theologian, statesman, and journalist, is dead. But a new group has formed to make sure that his ideas and legacy are not.

As Chris Meehan of CRC Communications reports, the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society has been formed to “translate and promote books, articles and other materials written by Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper.” Kuyper College will act as the host institution for the society, which involves scholars from a variety of institutions around the world.

Read more on Abraham Kuyper is Dead…

I’m pleased to announce that the first fruits of the Kuyper Common Grace Translation project are forthcoming, in the form of Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art. This is the first selection out of the larger three-volume set that will appear in complete translation in English.

Read more on Announcing Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art…

As part of our ongoing engagement with the Protestant world, the Acton Institute has taken on the translation of Abraham Kuyper’s Common Grace, under the general editorship of Stephen Grabill and in partnership with Kuyper College. We’re convinced that renewed interest in the thought of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), and in fact rediscovering aspects of his thought that have been lost or misconstrued in the intervening decades, is critically important for the reconstruction of Protestant social thought.

Read more on New Amsterdam Redivivus…