Neo-Calvinism

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Neo-Calvinism, a form of

Kuyper wanted to awaken the church from what he viewed as its pietistic slumber. He declared:

No single piece of our mental world is to be sealed off from the rest and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'^{[2][page needed][3]}

This refrain has become something of a rallying call for neo-Calvinists.

Emphases of neo-Calvinism

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Source:^{[4][self-published source]}

• Jesus is Lord over all of creation. Jesus’ Lordship extends through every area and aspect of life – it is not restricted to the sphere of church or of personal piety.
• The idea that all of life is to be redeemed. The work of Jesus on the cross extends over all of life – no area is exempt from its impact. All knowledge is affected by the true knowledge of God through redemption in Christ.^[5]
• Cultural Mandate. Genesis 1:26–28 has been described as a cultural mandate. It is the mandate to cultivate and develop the creation.^[6] There is a historical development and cultural unfolding. Some neo-Calvinists hold that the Cultural Mandate is as important as the Great Commission.^[7]
• Creation, fall and redemption. God's good creation has been disrupted by the
  fall. Redemption is a restoration of creation.^[8]
• Sphere sovereignty (Soevereiniteit in eigen kring). Each sphere (or sector) of life has its own distinct responsibilities and authority as designed by God – for instance, communities dedicated to worship, civil justice, agriculture, family, etc. – and no one area of life is sovereign over another. Hence, neither faith-institutions nor an institution of civil justice (that is, the state) should seek totalitarian control or any regulation of human activity outside their limited competence.^[9]
• A rejection of dualism. Dualisms are (purportedly false) bifurcations, dichotomies, contrasts, or oppositions, such as the dualism between nature and grace that [allegedly] dominated much of Scholasticism. In the neo-Calvinist view, nature is the God-created and sustained cosmic order, not a "non-supernatural" category, and grace is God's means of renewing the cosmic order, it is not something "non-creational" added onto nature (albeit eschatological in consummated glorification of bodily resurrection to eternal life and cosmic transformation of the new heavens and earth).
• Structure and direction. Structure denotes created laws and norms for (other) created things. Direction denotes relative deviation or conformity to norms; primarily regarding the central orientation of the human heart toward or away from God in Christ.^[10]
• Common grace. God providentially sustains the created order, restraining of possible evils and giving non-salvific good gifts to all humanity despite their fall into sin, God's curse, and his eventual condemnation of the unredeemed.^[11]
• theologically Reformed worldview in particular. The principles of logic and the use of reason assume the existence of God. Presuppositionalism is a reductio ad absurdum approach to Christian apologetics
  , in that it argues that all non-Christian worldviews are internally inconsistent.
• The antithesis. There is a struggle in history and within every person – between submission to and rebellion against God; between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness; between the age to come (already inaugurated in Christ) and this present evil age (of sin).[12]
• World views. Neo-Calvinists reject the notion that theoretical thought can be religiously neutral. All thinking and practice is shaped by world views and religious ground motives. For the neo-Calvinist, life in all its aspects can be shaped by a distinctively Christian world view.^[13]
• The role of law. For neo-Calvinists, "Law" is more than the Mosaic Decalogue, or even the entire abiding moral will of God. Law is, rather, the order for creation (or creation ordinances) established by God and includes a variety of types of cultural norms including physiological, psychological, logical, historical, linguistic, social, economic, aesthetic, juridical, and faith norms.