Was Abraham Kuyper een fundamentalist? Het neocalvinisme langs de fundamentalistische meetlat Can Abraham Kuyper be called a Fundamentalist? Neo-Calvinism compared to Fundamentalism

Abstract

This article aims to assess whether Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and his adaptation of Calvinism into a systematic theological, political and social ideology, known as ‘neo-Calvinism’, can be rightfully associated with ‘fundamentalism’. First, the article outlines the constitutive elements of neo-Calvinism: the concepts of antithesis, presumptive regeneration, sphere sovereignty, common grace, ecclesial multiformity, and organic Scriptural inspiration, the differentiation between the church as organism and as institute, the erasure of a theocratic fragment in the Belgic Confession, and the idea that Calvinism is the ‘core element’ of the Dutch national character. Second, it applies recent literature on fundamentalism to neo-Calvinism and the development of the neo-Calvinist movement. Although, as this article concludes, the neo-Calvinist movement did have some ‘fundamentalist’ features, neo-Calvinism in itself did not inevitably lead to what Jan Buskes has called ‘the triumph of fundamentalism’ at the synod of the Reformed Churches in Assen in 1926.