kuyper

In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Jordan Ballor, director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy as well as co-editor of Abraham Kuyper’s Collected Works in Public Theology with Lexham Press. Today, we talk about the life and work of Abraham Kuyper, as well as the task of public theology and Christian ethics.

Meet Dr. Ballor: 

Dr. Ballor earned his doctorate of theology in reformational history from the University of Zurich and PhD in moral theology from  Calvin Theological Seminary. In addition to his role at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, he is also the associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary.

Resources:

• Collected Works of Public Theology by Abraham Kuyper
• Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy
• Lectures on Calvinism by Abraham Kuyper
• Calvinism for a Secular Age by Jessica and Robert Joustra
• Abraham Kuyper: An Introduction by Richard Mouw

As a special treat for newsletter and podcast subscribers, we have partnered with Lexham Press to offer 30% off the newly completed Collected Works of Public Theology by Abraham Kuyper in hardback or Logos editions.

Use code DPSFEB22 or visit lexhampress.com/digitalpublicsquare to learn more. This special discount expires on April 30th.

The Digital Public Square is an audio production of Owens Productions. It’s produced by Jason Thacker and production assistance is provided by Cameron Hayner. It is edited and mixed by Mark Owens.

In this episode, I am joined by my Drs. Jessica and Robert Joustra, co-editors of a new volume called Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures. Today, we talk about Kuyper’s influence and a Reformed approach to our secular age.

Meet Jessica: 

Jessica Joustra (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary and the Free University of Amsterdam) is assistant professor of religion and theology at Redeemer University and an associate researcher at the Neo-Calvinist Research Institute at the Theological University of Kampen (NL). She is an editor and translator of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics and associate editor for the Bavinck Review.

Meet Robert:

Robert J. Joustra (PhD, University of Bath) is associate professor of politics and international studies and the founding director of the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College. He is the author of The Religious Problem with Religious Freedom and the coauthor of The Church’s Social Responsibility, The Persecuted Church, How to Survive the Apocalypse, and God and the Global Order.

Resources:

• Calvinism for a Secular Age by Jessica and Robert Joustra
• Collected Works of Public Theology by Abraham Kuyper
• Abraham Kuyper by James Bratt
• Abraham Kuyper: An Introduction by Richard Mouw
• To Be Near unto God by Abraham Kuyper
• Honey from the Rock by Abraham Kuyper
• Christ and Culture by Klaas Schilder

As a special treat for newsletter and podcast subscribers, we have partnered with Lexham Press to offer 30% off the newly completed Collected Works of Public Theology by Abraham Kuyper in hardback or Logos editions.

Use code DPSFEB22 or visit lexhampress.com/digitalpublicsquare to learn more. This special discount expires on March 15th.

The Digital Public Square is an audio production of Owens Productions. It’s produced by Jason Thacker and production assistance is provided by Cameron Hayner. It is edited and mixed by Mark Owens.

“The Evangelical movement right now is like a cruise liner that has been hit by a bunch of torpedoes.” Political theologian Vincent Bacote wants to be part of a movement that not only proclaims good news, it performs good news. 

Stephen sits down with Vince to be schooled in the ways of the politician and theologian Abraham Kuyper. We find out what drew Vince, an evangelical African American academic and rock fan in the present age to Abraham, a Dutch Reformed prime minister of the Netherlands who died in 1920. Along the way the conversation takes in Calvinism, common grace, KISS and Iron Maiden. We ask: are elections the hinge of history? Can people of diametrically opposite views ever work together? 

Vince is the Associate Professor of Theology and the Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College. He is the author of several books on public theology and a signatory of Christians Against Trumpism.

You can find out more about him and his books HERE

You can become a Fellow Traveller on our Patreon page HERE.

Abraham Kuyper was a man who tried to live his whole life by these teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. He took the teachings of Jesus seriously and tried to live this all-of-life discipleship as a theologian, as a journalist, as an education reformer, and even as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands (a position he held 1901-1905).

In this interview, Brant Himes, who wrote For a Better Worldliness: Abraham Kuyper, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Discipleship for the Common Good, helps us understand who Abraham Kuyper is and how his life is an example of the kind of discipleship to which all of us are called.

THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Brant Himes is the Assistant Professor of Humanities at Los Angeles Pacific University (a part of the Azusa Pacific University system) and Managing Editor of Resonance Journal (which you can learn more about in Episode 8 of Spiritual Life and Leadership).
• Brant recently published his book, For a Better Worldliness: Abraham Kuyper, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Discipleship for the Common Good.
• Key quote from Abraham Kuyper:
  • “No 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 in which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”
• Abraham Kuyper lived from 1837-1920. He was the Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901-1905.
• Kuyper started the Free University in Amsterdam. It was the first university that was free from state control and from church control.
• “Sphere sovereignty” refers to Kuyper’s position that every aspect of life has its own functions and purposes; its own sphere. Over every sphere of life, tying it all together, is the sovereignty of God.
• Abraham Kuyper partnered with Catholics on education reform. He believed that every family should be able to send their child to whatever kind of school they wanted to (state school or religious school), and cost should not get in the way of that. He succeeded in implementing state funding for all schools, regardless of their philosophy or ideology.
• Brant structures his theology of discipleship around four movements: 1) The revelation of God, 2) the reality and sovereignty of Jesus Christ, 3) belief and obedience, and 4) the possibility and potential of discipleship.
• We need to cultivate not only the inner spiritual disciplines in our lives, but also our theological convictions about how and why we are to engage in the world.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• For a Better Worldliness, by Brant Himes
  • Website:  https://betterworldliness.org/
• Resonance Journal
  • Interview with Micah Lunsford, Episode 8: Thoughtfulness Matters

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