What Is Neo-Calvinism?

Below are 16 theses we believe provide a healthy understanding of the core of neo-Calvinist theology. If these are compelling, you can find expansion, explanation, and application in fuller form in our book.

1. Neo-Calvinism is a critical reception of Reformed orthodoxy, contextualized to address the questions of modernity.
2. Christianity can challenge, subvert, and fulfill the cultures and philosophical systems of every age.
3. Neo-Calvinism rejects theological conservatism and progressivism. Instead, it applies historic creedal and confessional theology to the concerns of the contemporary world.
4. The triune God created the world and all creatures as a living unity in diversity, with a definite purpose and goal.
5. “Organism” and “organic unity” are fitting terms to describe creation’s many unities in diversities, as it analogically reflects the triune God.
6. The image of God is the pinnacle of creation’s organic shape, referring to humanity collectively, male and female, and the self as a unity.
7. The problem with the world is not ontological but ethical—sin has corrupted much (in fact, everything).
8. Out of the sinful mass of the organism of humanity under Adam, God elects to regenerate individuals into a new, sanctified organic humanity under Christ, thus asserting a covenantal antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
9. By the Spirit’s work in common grace, God restrains sin and gifts fallen humanity with moral, epistemic, and life-giving goods to enjoy, for the sake of redemption in Christ.
10. God has revealed himself to every person—both objectively and subjectively. This implanted affection and knowledge of God isn’t a human determination as the product of reason (or natu­ral theology) but God’s general revelation by the Holy Spirit.
11. The Bible is God’s revelation of himself, as the Spirit inspires a diversity of human authors to write all that God intends to communicate. The Bible serves as the ultimate norm and agent of unity, though not the sole source, for the fields of knowledge.
12. The triune God and his revelation matter for the entire human life because every person always stands before the face of God.
13. Wisdom points us to a Christian worldview: Christian the­ology should discipline the insights of both philosophy and the various sciences. Christians should conform their entire selves to the lordship of Christ.
14. Re-creation happens by divine agency alone and brings creation to its original goal: that God would make his dwell­ing place with humankind, in a consummated and sanctified cosmos.
15. Jesus Christ’s messianic dominion as King of God’s kingdom is the aim of God’s work in history and the purpose of creaturely redemption.
16. The visible church exists as an institute and an organism: as an institute to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments and as an organism of individuals bound together by the Spirit to witness to new creation.

These theses are helpful to address pressing questions like the following:

How might we continue to trans­mit and translate the older theologies of the past into the contemporary philosophical idioms of the day?

How might we continue to accommo­date the genuine findings of contemporary scientific scholarship without compromising the substance of our theological commitments?

How do we not merely tell but show that the Christian faith continues to be rel­evant for our age and for every age?

As Tim Keller has also suggested in a recent podcast episode, neo-Calvinism has resources to help us show the global and perennial relevance of the Christian faith. We hope these 16 theses and our book might help toward that end. 

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/history-neo-calvinism-explained/