ABSTRACT

A MISSIOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF THE
NEDERDUITSE GEREFORMEERDE KERK’s
NEW SOCIAL THEOLOGY
(CHURCH AND SOCIETY 1990)

Mark Robert Kreitzer

Church and Society’s new social theology desires a classic Reformed culture-transformation worldview. However, it adopts much of the futurist eschatology and individual based social ethics shared by the Radical Reformation and contemporary theologies. Like these theologies, C&S’ church centered ecclesiology and eschatology cut off from a literal creation, is influenced by a non-covenantal and non-Trinitarian dualism. This it shares with medieval, neo-orthodox, and Radical Reformation theology. C&S rejects biblical inerrancy and a view of justice based on biblical law. Instead, it adopts a humanist philosophy of rights. The result is a covert radicalism seeking to realize a postulated future holistic kingdom in today’s social structures. The classic covenantal perspective based on biblical law and the presuppositions that C&S shares with dualist theologies cannot be fused.

Rejecting apartheid, this dissertation still acknowledges a covenantal worldview founded on the infallible Word, literal creation design-norms, and a long-term optimistic hope. This alternative social theology allows for self-determining ethno-cultures under God in church and state. At the same time, holds to the ideal of visible structures of unity, modeled on the Trinity. This biblical alternative also provides for social compassion and impartial justice for all, including aliens and the poor.

The dissertation also proposes mandatory biblical stipulations for ethno-churches in the unity of the new covenant and suggests a structure for a federation of ethno-churches’ and non-ethnic churches’ governments.

In addition, the dissertation contrasts two models for transforming culture: an updated classic Reformed model and a neo-Radical model advocated by neo-orthodox theology and Theologies of Hope.

The dissertation concludes that the NGK has embarked on the long process of falling away from a biblical view of the relationship of Scripture and church to social systems. This is truly an anti-Reformational paradigm shift.