New APPS

Today I'm lecturing on issues relating to the adoption of a new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism and the possible adoption of the Belhar Confession into the PC(USA)'s Book of Confessions.

In preparing for them I had to study a fair amoung of neo-Calvanist Kuyperian Apartheid theology (which, if Belhar is correct, is heretical) as well as scholarship on what the Christian Bible does or doesn't say about homosexuality (the new translation of Heidelberg removes a denunciation of gay people that was not in the original German). It's pretty interesting stuff, albeit very dispiriting at times. It's astonishing to me that defenders of Kuyperian "pluralism" at least on the web never seem to take into account its horrific legacy in South Africa.

Anyhow, the full lecture is here.

Given the connection between Dutch Calvanism and Apartheid, it is a wonderful sign of reconciliation that the two biggest American Calvinist denominations (RCA and CRCNA) have added it to the traditional three Confessions accepted by Calvinists (though the more conservative CRNEA has accorded it lesser standing).

This being said, along with South African civil rights pioneer and leader of the campaign for Belhar Allan Boeseck, in my heart of hearts I can't help but take the Belhar rejections to apply to injustices committed against GLBT people. So it's a little bit weird to me that both of these denominations accept Belhar yet embrace explicit doctrinal statements decrying homosexual acts as sins (though some member churches of the CRA, which accords Belhar full confessional status, reject this teaching).

It's probably worth studying the extent to which Kuyperian theology played a role in providing metaphysical grounds for anti-gay theology in the Dutch Reformed tradition. In the Scottish tradition, full bore neo-Aristotelianism only began with Thomas Reid's students and then migrated to the Princeton Theological Seminary. As far as I can tell these Dutch and Scottish neo-Aristotelianisms (one could add the PTS doctrine of biblical inerrancy) are pretty foreign to the spirit of the early Reformation.

It's a very difficult issue, because very smart people disagree about a lot of this stuff. For example, David Van Drunen's Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms characterizes Kuyper as a natural law theorist, and this nice review of philosopher Michael Suddoth's The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology characterizes Kuyper as an opponent of natural theology. I'd like to read both books.