Reformed theology and politics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5952/54-0-363Keywords:
Reformed theology, Political involvement, Early Christianity, Calvin, Karl BarthAbstract
The Reformed tradition has always been involved in political issues. In terms of this perspective the views of two major Reformed theologians, John Calvin and Karl Barth, are compared with opinions in early Christianity regarding the relation between Christians and politics. Theologians in the early patristic period kept their distance from politics. Calvin pleaded for sober involvement, while Barth eagerly calls for a prophetic participation in the public sphere. These differences may be interpreted as a natural development related to historical changes: from a persecuted community to the corpus christianum, and subsequently to the challenge of a perverse political ideology, and the call for a response in a new situation its defeat. From this perspective all three positions are understandable. However, being true to the Reformed call ad fontes one must conclude that Barth’s theology is totally different from both that of early Christianity and the New Testament. This calls for a reconsideration of positions regarding the relation of church and politics.Downloads
Published
2013-12-18
Issue
Section
Articles • Artikels
License
Copyright of all NGTT material belongs to the Pieter de Waal Neethling Trust (PDWN Trust). The PDWN Trust is a trust fund established in 1932 with the aim of promoting quality theological research and publications.
The PDWN Trust pledges to maintain a legitimate scholarly record of the author’s work and to defend the author’s article against plagiarism and copyright infringement.
The PDWN Trust is committed to full Open Source publishing. This means that all articles published in NGTT will gradually be made freely available online. Authors maintain the right to:
- Share and self-archive their work.
- Make printed copies of their article for educational use.
- Present their article at a meeting or conference and distribute printed copies of the article
- Adapt and expand their published journal article to make it suitable for their thesis or dissertation.
- Republish the article (ensuring that the original article is cited as published in NGTT).
For any questions or queries in this regard, please contact the Editor.