Our most basic statement of faith, the Apostles’ Creed sets forth the essential truths about how we are to understand the Christian God. This Creed begins with, “I believe in God the Father Almighty” as the foundational statement of Christian theology and serves to articulate the first leg of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The term “God the Father” applied to the first member of the Godhead is later complemented by the identification of Jesus as the “God the Son.” Identifying these two persons of the Trinity with titles that are also associated with the human roles of father and son.
Who was R.J. Rushdoony? Rush influenced the homeschooling movement, the Moral Majority and remarkably established much of the groundwork for a Kuyperian revolution applying Van Tilian thinking to all areas of life. If you’ve never heard of Rushdoony, this is the perfect episode to find out about this pioneer of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement.
I sat across the table from a father holding his beautiful five-month-old daughter. On my lap, I have my own infant son and another of mine, a toddler, underfoot. Somewhere in between the prattling about of these tiny humans, we were actually able to get a few complete thoughts out. Through the years, one particular thought has come up in our conversations over and over again, “what can we do to ensure our children stay in the faith?” Neither of us was raised by what we would call Christian fathers. We both came to Christ in high school in the context of a public school Bible club and youth group. Back then, we would lament the milquetoast Christianity of those raised in the church. Perhaps it was “old hat” to them or they had just spent years going through the motions – and now they felt no sense of urgency. Or they didn’t share our sense of urgency.
Now both of us went on to marry virtuous women raised in the church – both of the Reformed tradition. And the Lord has blessed us with Children to lead and guide in the way. I explained to my fellow father, how my wife and I had our son in a Christian School. I shouted to our five-year-old at the other end of the dining table, asking him to recite the scriptures he had been memorizing the week before. As if somehow this answered the question weighing on our hearts. The Christian School will certainly help my children learn scripture, discipline their habits, and train them in a variety of academic disciplines, but it will never replace the single greatest influence on my child’s future trajectory: their father.
A Father’s Lasting Influence
It’s not hard to see how much influence a father has on his child’s future. From a worldly perspective, this is often referred to as the “birth lottery.” Writing for Business Insider, Alison Griswold writes, “the amount of money people make is strongly predicted by what their parents earn…” Even in an age of unprecedented social mobility, a father can significantly determine one’s potential opportunities for education, friends, a spouse, and jobs. What college you end up at or who your wife might be, is nearly predetermined by the circumstances created by your father.
Just as fathers play a significant role in determining the worldly circumstances by which children leave the household and enter society, so to do fathers determine the spiritual circumstances by which children enter the faith. The Book of Proverbs takes this a step further to say that the crown of a father is not his children, but his grandchildren. “Children’s children are the crown of old men,” (Proverbs 17:6). A father’s impact is then not merely on his immediate children, but multigenerational. To be a father is to represent the trajectory of an entire lineage. Certainly, the reader can see that the father is an important role which can either bring forth a series of covenantal blessings or a generational disaster. It is for this reason that every father that calls himself a Christian must be wholly committed to the success of his wife, his children, and his grandchildren.
The Father’s Commitment
This commitment to the success of your family is a discipline and habit. It requires the grace of God and a spirit of humility. God’s grace isn’t infused on passive men but requires men to submit and obey the Lord. Grace is free, but not painless. As Flannery O’Connor rightly quipped, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” This is why St. Paul encourages you to, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12) As a father, I have often failed to meet what I understood to be my fatherly obligations. I am often impatient with my wife and children, imprudent with my time, and selfish with my resources. Do not despair. The conviction here is God’s means of renewing his call for you to lead your family. Acknowledge to God and to your family that you have not been the father and leader that our Lord expected you to be. Explain that you truly desire their success. Wives and children need to know that you love and need them.
The Father-Leader Explained
A father-leader must recognize that his family is an essential part of his own salvation. He needs the prayers of his wife and children. He needs their gifts and even their weaknesses. The wife and children the Lord has given you are part of God’s plan of forming you into the image of his Son, therefore the father-leader must recognize where his family is going and be patient. I often remark that my sins are most evident in the sins of my children. Fathers should then look at our sins as a clue to where our children will also struggle. This is why it is so important that Fathers are working out their own issues, so as to avoid their owns sins being, “visited unto the third and fourth generation.” To avoid passing on their sins as their children’s inheritance.
Father-leaders reject that they are fathers by the mere happenstance of biological functions, but see their role as ordained by the sovereign God. Yet this does not mean that he should demand or expect immediate results. A relationship of influence is a privilege that a father must earn, guard, and protect by investing in life-long relationships with each member of his family. This requires time, sacrifice, patience, and humility as you continue to demonstrate your commitment to your family. Your family wants to see in you a certain consistency that they can count on. Commitments must be evident, your wife and children know what it means to be “on your calendar.” They can see how you treat those whom you respect and honor. If raising faithful children is important to you, then you must strive to be more than a sperm-donor and more than a financier of food, lodging, and clothing – you must be a leader demonstrating his commitment to his children by fulfilling his God-given responsibility to lead his family.
As of October 15, 2018, the New York Times is reporting “The Russian Orthodox Church on Monday moved to sever all ties with the Constantinople Patriarchate, the Orthodox mother church, to protest its moves toward creating an independent church in Ukraine.” In more ways than one this represents a real schism in the Eastern Orthodox Church and can undermine the Orthodox claim to be a faithful representative of the historic Christian faith. For the non-orthodox, this is a challenge to our understanding of institutional and denominational Christianity.
(ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO – Getty Images)
Political and Religious Schisms
It is important to note that this schism is hardly a surprise to any who have seen the political undercurrent in this ongoing feud between the Hellenic and Slavic Orthodox Churches. Certainly every church conflict can be said to have some degree of political posturing, whether it is Rome’s Imperial power grab of the Great Schism, Henry VIII in England, or even the German princes that enabled Luther’s work. But this present schism presents a greater crisis to the contemporary Orthodox church and its American diaspora.
The jurisdictional authority of Constantinople as an important patriarchate is an ancient tradition, one that can be traced back to the “pentarchy” – a term used to describe the five self-governing jurisdictions of the undivided church. Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were to be considered chief jurisdictions with special honor, authority, and significance. The stability of this five-headed church begins to fall apart in the 7th century as the Eastern territories are brought under Muslim rule, which happened to coincide with Rome’s increasing claims for universal jurisdiction. After the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, Constantinople becomes the Ecumenical Patriarch of the East and is recognized as “first among equals” of the Eastern Churches.
The Birth of the Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church is born centuries later, first as a subordinate jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but then as the Byzantine Empire crumbled the Russian Church claimed its own canonical independence. It is interesting that just as Rome claimed control as the East fell to the Muslims, the Russian church claims control as Byzantium falls. It would be over a century before this movement of self-government or “autocephaly” was officially recognized by the other Orthodox Churches. Today, the Russian Church represent a large chunk of Orthodox Christians and claims canonical jurisdiction over the Slavic Orthodox churches in Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan as well as Orthodox Christians living in other countries who voluntarily submit to its jurisdiction.
The conflict between the Russian Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the canonical status of Ukraine has reached the point of schism. The Russian church is currently disallowing any of its members from celebrating communion with Churches under the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In the United States, two-thirds of the Orthodox Christians are under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople – what are commonly called Greek Orthodox. And over a hundred thousand Orthodox Christians in America are under Russian-origin jurisdictions like the Orthodox Church in America (autocephalous), the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and the Churches of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Jurisdictional Multiplicity
Many American Christians are familiar with this sort of jurisdictional multiplicity and conflict. In my own tradition as an Anglican we have jurisdictions with identical prayer books, liturgies, and vestments, but completely out of communion. Some is justified, no Christian can or should commune with a female “bishop” as she prays to God using feminine pronouns, and denies the literal resurrection. Other breaks are similar to this current Orthodox struggle in that they are historically complicated and deeply political.
But this Orthodox question of canonical jurisdiction and authority of autocephalous churches poses an issue for all Christians. Many have fled the denominational chaos of Protestantism for the greener pastures of Orthodoxy as a solid, unified church. Perhaps believing that she was the sole representative of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Others frustrated with the canonical division of Orthodoxy turned to Rome, hoping the Pope to lead the church through these conflicts and the Lord gave them Pope Francis.
It is a great sadness that the Russian Church would bar an otherwise faithful Christian from its communion altar. Functionally, the schism excommunicates the majority of American Orthodox Christians, at least temporarily. Can any branch of Orthodoxy claim to represent the unbroken tradition while denying real Christians access to the Body and Blood of Christ? As an Anglican Priest ordained in the Western Apostolic Succession of Sts. Peter, James, and John, and Paul – I recognize that the seeds of these poisonous canonical divisions were planted nearly a millennium ago with the Great Schism of 1054.
Bishops and Princes
The temptation for Catholic-minded Christians is to abuse our Apostolic identity as license to become the sole institutional representatives of Christ’s Kingdom. Bishops and Archbishops, Patriarchates and Metropolitans, are tempted to leave their chief calling to be shepherds of souls for the form of princely rule and worldly control.
Should the Russian Church maintain its stand against the Ecumenical Patriarchate, what effect does this have on the Orthodox identity as the faithful representative of the undivided church?
It is likely that Orthodox Christians in both jurisdictions are troubled over this – I’m sure they want Christ’s Church to be one. But perhaps rather than attempting to maneuver the canons into the favor of one jurisdiction or another, may we seek a humbler solution. Perhaps this moment is a time for Orthodox, Catholic, and Apostolic Churches to revisit what it means to be “one church.”
A Eucharistic Ecclesiology
In evaluating the merits of Russian autocephaly or the canonical authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch, perhaps we have overlooked the basics of Christian ecclesiology. The Holy Spirit brings the risen Life of Christ to us through faithful proclamation of the Gospel and His Sacraments. Imagine what it might look like to return to the simple eucharistic unity of our Apostolic fathers like St. Ignatius of Antioch who wrote: “Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”
The Eucharist is the symbol and the means by which the Church becomes one with Christ and thus one with each other. St. John Chrysostom declares that Christ “mixed Himself with us and dissolved His body in us so that we may constitute a wholeness, be a body united to the Head.” To extend Eucharist fellowship is to recognize another Christian (and their doctrine) as part of the body of Christ. As St. Paul teaches, “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.” Just as to deny or bar one from Eucharist fellowship is to declare them outside of the body.
Perhaps at this time, when the dangers of building entire ecclesiastical structures off the flimsy merits of institutional jurisdictions are most visible, we can seek renewal around the Eucharist. The wounds suffered at 1054 have not healed, but the institutions that emerged have limped their way through a thousand year desert. Here now, as the churches become more and more divided – may we return to the Eucharistic promises of Christ’s real presence and to the reality of a undivided church around a shared altar.
In March 2017, IVP Academic published Craig G. Bartholomew’s systematic introduction to the Neo-Calvinist school of thought entitled, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition.
Kuyper scholars like James D. Bratt, author of the 2013 Kuyper biography Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat, have recommended Bartholomew’s book. “Agree with Kuyper or not, this is the place to go to learn, in brief, what he said, did, and wrought,” said Bratt.
Over at the Jesus Creed blog on Patheos, The Rev. Canon Dr. Scot Mcknight has two posts on the book. On December 22, McKnight overviews his familiarity with Kuyper’s work and poses the usual objection to Kuyperian thinking: the how. In the Reformed world, we have seen a variety of Neo-Calvinist interpretations from Rushdoony’s Reconstructionism to James K.A. Smith’s efforts to revive Augustine’s “permixtum of the saeculum.”
McKnight is likely familiar with this variety (and history) of its applications and expresses his nervousness at Bartholomew’s paragraph: “Mission is easily reduced to evangelism and church activities, and indispensable as these indeed are, mission is much broader. As David Bosch points out, “Mission is more than and different from recruitment to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the universal reign of God.”
McKnight and I belong to the same Anglican Diocese, where he is Canon Theologian. While McKnight doesn’t embrace the term Kuyperian – I do and here’s one reason why. McKnight returned to Contours on December 28, 2017 and pulls up to Kuyper’s conversion story. Interestingly, this is a place where McKnight’s Anglican tradition and Kuyper can actually touch historically. Kuyper’s conversation happens while reading a popular novel: The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte M. Yonge – a disciple of Father John Keble, who closely supervised the writing of the book.
McKnight and Bartholomew point to Kuyper’s quote:
“I read that Philip knelt, and before I knew it, I was kneeling in front of my chair with folded hands. Oh, what my soul experienced at that moment I fully understood only later. Yet, from that moment on I despised what I used to admire and sought what I had dared to despise.”
It is not clear in his blog if McKnight has made (or would agree with) this connection, but I would posit that it is no coincidence that Kuyper’s conversion and ecclesiology are born out of a Yonge novel. McKnight is likely familiar with the “Tractarian/Puseyite” traditionalism (or Oxford Movement) that Yonge hopes to romantically entangle the reader with. Her inclusion of high-church, sacramental Anglo-Catholicism is essential to the historic import of the book. In Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, Bratt notes how Kuyper made the connections himself, “the hero’s funeral rite in the Church of England conveyed the comforts available from a pure ‘mother-church’ that was there to guide each step of the pilgrim’s way.”
McKnight goes on to connect Kuyper’s critique of modernity with his emphasis of separation and the sphere-sovereignty of the church. While Kuyperianism is often maligned as a political theology, McKnight, Bratt, and Bartholomew all point to his bold emphasis on the importance of the Church.
Perhaps, I am putting too much weight on Kuyper’s conversion story and its connection to the Tractarians, but they both spring from the same revolt against modernity. Both Neo-Calvinism and Anglican Traditionalism are born to combat the tides of what they saw as liberalism. It is impossible to understand the Anglo-Catholics as a liturgical movement alone, they also represented an anti-modernist political philosophy for the Church against the encroachments of “whiggery.” In a similar way, Kuyper would develop a political theology as a result of his high view of the church, as a defence against modernism, not as a tool for power or mere social engagement.
St. John begins his Gospel with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” a
The Word as “Logos”
His use of “word” is often explained with its connection with the Greek “λόγος.” bThe Scripture explains that God is Word, and this is associated with the Son in Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity. While there may be additional philosophical and theological meanings for “word,” my core idea here is of God coming to us through the medium of language. (more…)
In this episode of the Kuyperian Commentary Podcast Jarrod Richey and Derek Hale discuss music making in our culture.
The Desert of Musical Literacy
Jarrod begins with the observation, “Everybody in the world has music around them all the time, and yet, no one can make it. Everybody has a device, everybody has access to the world’s greatest music (and the world’s worst music) at the touch of a button or the click of an app. And yet, very few people have formal music training, have the ability to make music, or to be what we would call literate in music.” (more…)
The Constitution as an Expression of Individual Freedom
In his lionhearted defense of the Constitution, James Madison declared, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary…” (The Federalist No. 51) Madison argued that human nature and its tendencies toward the abuse of power demanded a tripartite constitution to restrain human governments. Yet the triumph of the American Constitution is greater than merely actualizing this Montesquieuan balance of power. Rather, the U.S. Constitution represents a revolution toward self-government. By its recognition of delegated powers, our Constitution not only protects individual freedoms, but expresses all political authority as derived from the cooperation of self-governing institutions. Today, in our time of political polarization, Americans must recover their founders’ constitutional hierarchy of authority. An inversion of the medieval hierarchy with the individual at its crest as the sole-grantor of powers for its servant: the constitutionally-restrained Federal government. Today, as communities fear overreach by the President, the Congress, and even the Judiciary – a return to the Constitution’s emphasis on self-government is the only remedy. (more…)
In this episode of the Kuyperian Commentary Podcast, Pastor Uri Brito and Dr. Paul Tautges discuss the role of Biblical Counseling in the Church.
“Counseling is the normal work of Christian Discipleship,” says Dr. Tautges, who also serves as senior pastor of Cornerstone Community Church just outside of Cleveland, Ohio.
Where preaching is often considered the public ministry of the word, Tautges suggests counseling may be the “personal ministry of the word.” The two discuss the Biblical basis for Christian counseling and its relationship to psychology and the Church. Pastor Uri Brito is also a certified counselor through the Association of Biblical Counselors.
In this episode of the Kuyperian Commentary Podcast, Pastors Uri Brito and Peter Jones discuss the impact of the Nashville Statement.
On August 29, 2017, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) announced the release of The Nashville Statement, an evangelical coalition statement on biblical sexuality. The statement, comprised of 14 affirmations and denials, addresses issues related to the Christian view of human sexuality.
“When it came out, the reaction was quick and sharp by the progressives,” said Peter Jones, who published a reaction on Kuyperian entitled Mere Sexuality. Jones writes,”the reaction of progressive Christians and secular folks indicates that the document was necessary.”
In a guest post for Kuyperian, Alistair Roberts said that, “In signing the statement, I am not committing myself to walk in lockstep with a particular party, but am joining with fellow flawed Christians in bearing witness to what I believe to be essential Christian truth.”
The entire text of The Nashville Statement can be read here, with a list of endorsements for the statement found here.
“If you reject the substance of the document that is a serious issue” said Peter Jones, “In my mind, you are rejecting Christian orthodoxy and Christian morality…”
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!’Abraham Kuyper
It’s not hard to see how much influence a father has on his child’s future. From a worldly perspective, this is often referred to as the “birth lottery.” Writing for 
A father-leader must recognize that his family is an essential part of his own salvation. He needs the prayers of his wife and children. He needs their gifts and even their weaknesses. The wife and children the Lord has given you are part of God’s plan of forming you into the image of his Son, therefore the father-leader must recognize where his family is going and be patient. I often remark that my sins are most evident in the sins of my children. Fathers should then look at our sins as a clue to where our children will also struggle. This is why it is so important that Fathers are working out their own issues, so as to avoid their owns sins being, “visited unto the third and fourth generation.” To avoid passing on their sins as their children’s inheritance.
