The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Why the current state of the Netherlands

John,

I may have found at least some relevant passages which support your contention. They are from Isbell's article: Recovering Experimental Religion

Here are three sections which I think might apply:

Neo-Calvinism has presented a more externalized definition of conversion, viewing it more in terms of what we confess, our adherence to Christian doctrine and world view, and our having a place in the church and in a Christian family. The older Calvinism warned that many, despite maintaining a public attachment to doctrinal affirmations of the faith, may never have been delivered from spiritual death, that youth growing up in a Christian setting are often still alienated in heart from God, and that a saving faith will be accompanied by experience of one’s need for Christ and of the power of the gospel....

This error has even more serious implications when it is brought to bear on the life and practice of the church. Kuyper regarded those in the congregation, including the children, as being in a state of grace from their birth. The church, therefore, is not a place where people are being brought to salvation. The congregation need not be warned to flee from the wrath to come. This removes a primary reason for preaching the gospel of justification in the congregation. The call of the gospel is to be directed rather to those who are not in the church. According to this model, what the church should seek among those in its care is not their conversion to new life in Christ, but their nurture in the eternal life which they are presumed to possess already. Unless and until children of the church give clear indication of repudiating the covenant, their parents and the church were to proceed on the supposition that the children are regenerate....

A century ago, the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck had opportunity to observe the effect of Neo-Calvinism on the religious life of his country. Bavinck came from churches in which experimental religion had been cherished, but which had come under a new influence when they merged with churches guided by the perspective of Kuyper. Bavinck commented on what followed, in his introduction to a reprint of the highly experimental sermons by the Scottish Presbyterians Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine: “Here we have an important element which is largely lacking among us. We miss this spiritual soul-knowledge. It seems we no longer know what sin and grace, guilt and forgiveness, regeneration and conversion are. We know these things in theory, but we no longer know them in the awful reality of life.” 7 What Bavinck had witnessed was the widespread absence in his generation of anything like the experience which led Luther to cry out to God for mercy, in concern about sin and guilt. One still found justification, faith and repentance confessed as valid doctrine, but it was no longer expected that they would be reflected in the experiences of the soul in seeking God. The theoretical knowledge of Reformed doctrine had come to be separated from a sense of personal need for salvation.

John, Pilgrim,

I have thought that John verbatim quoted something from the two articles .... hence the confusion.

You well may be right but I am still not sure whether one can ascribe the current state of the Netherlands just to this one factor, ie. neo-Calvinism. Surely not all Dutch were reformed at that time, even though the Kuyper party may have been the strongest. There were RC's and simply non-believers. Society is such a complex thing that sometimes it is difficult to make a one-to-one correlation between historical situations.

Well, I'm not a social scientist so I may be wrong.

Johan

Johan,

about whether or not what the author, Isbell, was saying that this one thing was the sole cause of the problem in the Netherlands. Surely, it was a major contributing factor along with the other elements of the society, etc. What can be surmised, however, is IF the government was comprised mainly of Kuyper's party and shared his views, and the Reformed churches were in sync/agreement with them as well, then surely this was a major contributing factor. During the "Great Awakening" here in this country, not all the churches were of the same mind doctrinally nor experimentally. However, a major difference was that there was no concerted effort to Christianize the country, i.e., to establish a strictly Christian government. Men like Jonathan Edwards focused upon the true conversion of lost sinners and not on social issues, science, etc.

What the article and the quotes I grabbed from it are saying is that because experimental Calvinism (biblical Christianity) was abandoned, for the most part, many? in authority were not truly converted and thus their source of truth was not Scripture but worldly philosophy which eventually took its toll both on society and especially the churches. From my own limited experience with Dutch Reformed churches, this is a fact. There are many who profess to be Christians but there is little evidence to support the claim. And within a short period of time, many of these churches have gone down the road to embracing heresy and some have become apostate. When unregenerate men are installed as Elders, this is doubtless the expected result. The world is brought into the pulpit and embraced and practiced by its members. This is without question a recipe for disaster. Again, in my experience, far too many in these churches had a strong loyalty to their nationality and denomination and not to Scripture, the Lord Jesus Christ and unto holiness.

So, what do you think might have been the major cause(s) that have led to the current situation in the Netherlands?

As I already said, I think society is a complex thing and it is hard to pin down one cause. I have no idea how influential Kuyper's underlying philosophy really was, what fraction of the population was active church members (not meaning that they were necessarily regenerated), what fraction of these were really affected by Kuyper's views etc etc to in the end say "yes, it was this or that".

Your original remark on regeneration certainly is true but then that also has to do with God's will with the church in the Netherlands.

So, my answer is that I don't have an answer. I think it will take more than what we have said here and the quoted articles to come to an answer.

Johan