Eight: Influential Afrikaner Thinkers since the 'Sixties
We have now reached 1960/61. Here we wish to spend this lecture in looking at the eschatology of victory in the Afrikaner thought of some very brilliant and relatively young Afrikaner thinkers -- Johan Heyns, Danie Strauss, Adrio K�nig, Errol Hulse and Cornelius van der Waal.
Professor Johan Heyns started preaching and teaching at an early age. He was born on a farm. As a little boy, he would scoop together empty cobs of corn (after the corn had been eaten off), and build himself a pulpit. He would assemble around him the little Black boys of men working on the farm and get them to listen to his expositions.
Since then, he has never looked back. When he grew up, he went to Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education. There he majored in philosophy under Professor Hendrik Stoker who -- says Heyns -- "left an ineradicable stamp on my whole thought and outlook." We will see that, when I give you a few quotations from the work of Heyns a little later on.
Heyns then proceeded in 1949 to the University of Pretoria. There he took his B.D. (Bachelor of Divinity), and his M.A. in Philosophy -- both of them cum laude (with honours). That is very difficult to achieve in South Africa, by the way. Then he went to the Free University of Amsterdam, where he took his theological Doctor's Degree under Professor Berkouwer with a dissertation on the modalistic or Sabellian doctrine of the Trinity with specific reference to Karl Barth.
After that, he undertook a further Doctor's Degree in the area of anthropology under Stoker. Berkouwer sent Heyns to Barth in Switzerland. In Basel, he attended lectures at the feet of Karl Barth (about whom he later wrote a book). Heyns also had the privilege of studying at the feet of the great Existentialist Philosopher Karl Jaspers.
Heyns has written much. Some of his publications include: the doctoral dissertation on The Basic Structure of the Modalistic View of the Trinity. Then there is also his work on anthropology, Is Christianity Dying? Also: Theology in the Grip of the Spirit of the Times; The Bridge Between God and Man; The Church; Karl Barth, Who Is He and What He Wants; Systematic Theology; The Millennial Idea (a critique of premillennialism); and his long and very important essay on The Theology of Obedience.
The last mentioned work was at the time somewhat criticised by Prof. Norman Shepherd of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. But I believe, since then, Shepherd himself has reached a position that would be in almost complete agreement with what Heyns then wrote in that work some ten or twelve years ago. This can also be seen from Heyn's ethical work on the exposition of the Law of God entitled The New Man Underway.
Here are some very interesting quotations from Heyns's work on systematic theology that I believe you will enjoy. He points out that man must exist in relationship not only to God but also to nature.
"Being a man, means being in the world. Man and world belong together. They are directed toward one another, intended for one another, and cordially interwoven with one another in a whole host of ways. For his existence, man is dependent upon nature, and for its transformation, nature is dependent upon man. Man, himself part of the nature around him, received the words from God: 'subjugate it, work at it and guard it and keep it.'
"To the animals, man was to give names, and plants and seeds of trees and fruit were to be his food. Man was to rejoice in this nature (Psalms 104, 147 and 65); and whenever the ground calls out to be worked, whenever the animals call out to be named and the land calls out to be planted and man gives his answer to it -- there, man performs labour.
"Man is God's co-worker, and in this way he images God. Man who labours -- that is to say, who works creatingly, preservingly, and protectingly with the world -- does not merely refer to the God Who labours, but in actual fact continues God's creation works through man's action as God's vice-president, while man in labouring proclaims God's praise.
"The calling of man unto obedient labour, his equipment for this job and his destination -- all of this plays a role inside of the structure of a covenant which God made with Adam as head of humanity. Working and working, man unfolds the possibilities which have been folded into nature. And man thus expresses the forms of his own creative and imaginative spirit on the things he touches. Just as God lovingly and caringly interacts with creation -- so too does man himself, as the image of God.
"In human labour, man is thus concerned with making the earth liveable -- liveable for man, for animals and for plants. We must therefore say that with the earth and earthly things, man is to interact in accordance with the destination of them all -- i.e., to make them capable of providing a living for all of the earth's inhabitants" whether humans, plants or animals.
"Man in this interaction with nature may therefore never maim nature -- may never exploit it or tarnish it. Because in this way, man would make the world unlivable -- both for its present inhabitants, and for its future inhabitants.
"God promises us a new earth under a new heaven, which has not been prepared by any child of man. That is exclusively God's work, and God's gift to us. But the manner in which God gives it to us is by purification -- through fire and judgment over all of the works of man's hands on the old earth.
"Constantly labouring in this world, we therefore believe that the new world of the future will be revealed to us in a manner at the moment unclear to us. But in the light of Revelation 14:13 -- 'Blessed are they who from now on die in the Lord!' [Indeed:] 'Yes,' says the Spirit, 'that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them!' We must accept that the uncompleted labour of man, of sinful man, is nevertheless accepted by God -- and that this human work will follow man right up to the throne of God. This is the overwhelming dimension of eternity in all human labour today.
"The relationship between man and nature unfolds itself in the form of history. For, constantly labouring at nature, it is not only man who changes -- but nature changes too. Through and in his labour, man builds onto nature and changes it into culture -- so that culture can indeed be regarded as nature which is being continued in a certain way. We can also say: culture is nature that has been made liveable and enjoyable.
"From Genesis 2:15 man in obedience to God began to do something -- to keep and to dress the entire earth, to take care of the garden, to give names to the animals, later to make clothes, to farm with sheep, to make musical instruments, to build an altar, to plan a city, etc. Even in the formation of culture, this must take place in obedience to definite laws and norms -- otherwise God's intention with nature could not be realised.
"In this way we also arrive at the structure of marriage and family (Ephesians 5); the structure of labour which has its own labour rhythm (Exodus 20:10); the various labour relationships (Ephesians 6 and Matthew 20); the structure of the covenant, with it covenantal obligations (Genesis 17); the structure of the state with its legislation (Romans 13).
"Further, the life of man exhibits an involved intertwinement of structure to which man must give implicit obedience." This is the development, you see, of Heyns's "theology of obedience" -- as he calls it.
Then Heyns expresses the following intriguing thoughts about the covenant of works with Adam before the fall: "Adam was created in the image of God and was called good by God Himself. However, this does not imply that Adam at that time had already received everything which God intended to give to him and to his descendants. Their task of being fruitful and multiplying and of exercising culture, by subjugating and controlling nature, had hardly begun. Men themselves were still capable not only of not sinning, but also capable of sinning and dying.
"Everlasting life, in its completion, had not yet been given to sinless man. This is something that man would receive later from God. And he would receive it in a particular way, namely, by way of obedience. Man himself would then also have acted as a fellow-worker of God -- by way of God's providence. He would have been a fellow-worker, because it was a covenant of works. He would have been a fellow-worker of God, because it was a covenant of works." Lee: Adam's everlasting life was then losable.
Heyns then tells us: "Prophetically, man knew and professed God. As a priest, man could dedicate himself as a thank-offering to the Lord and to his neighbour. And royally as a king, man could subjugate the earth and rule over it and live everlastingly with God."
Coming now to Heyns's eschatology of this "theology of obedience" -- he makes a very intriguing distinction between what he calls futurology and eschatology. "Futurology," says Heyns, "is never certain. It is man's planning about what man intends to do. Futurology remains a study inside of the span of time of the human work-week. Within the perspective of the six days of human labour, man plans to do this and that tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. That's futurology.
"Eschatology, on the other hand, deals with God's labour at the evening of His great seventh day -- when He will bring the results of all human labour, even of man's futurological speculations, and change them into a thoroughly liveable world of the future which begins in the morning of the following day: the everlasting day of rest for God, and for man, and the world."
This book of Heyns appeared this year (1980). In reading it recently, I thought to myself: "That's what I said in my own Doctoral Dissertation that I wrote in 1966" Suddenly I remembered that Heyns had been my co-examiner. So it is possible that he picked this up from me. On the other hand, it is possible we both picked it up from the Bible. But I think Heyns said it better in 1980 than I said it in my 1966 dissertation -- except for the unfallen Adam's everlasting life.
Heyns then deals with what he calls "universal eschatology." He says: "Universal eschatology concerns the emergence of the new humanity throughout the earth and down through all of the ages. A consummation of the ages, indeed, touches the entire cosmic reality." Then he tells us: "In that measure in which man directs his eye to the coming future, as man discovers that he already has something of the future in the present -- to that degree man will begin to see the need of the world all around him. And man will then, in the Name of Christ, give food to the hungry and water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, law and righteousness to the oppressed -- and to all (F.N. Lee).
"Just as man looks forward with expectation into the future, so shall man's own present activities be enhanced. For, in the present, man is engaged in polishing the appearance of the future. In this way, the work of the believer -- both in his capacity as churchman and in collecting all of the believers together -- man himself will see further and further into the meaning of his own life. He will see himself as God's fellow-worker, and make himself serviceable in the advance of the coming of the kingdom.
"Precisely for this reason, eschatological preaching with a radical Christocentric focus is absolutely necessary at all times. This true eschatological preaching will never misdirect our attention to far distant events still lying outside the sphere of men's present interest, and only of interest to the next generations. But true eschatological preaching will much rather call upon the present generation to act in the Name of God and to be watchful in His Name and to obey His Holy Law and to undertake the preaching of the gospel to all nations -- as a witness for all of the nations!"
Then Heyns gives a description of the new earth. He says: "After the second coming of Christ, the new earth which will then appear will be our old earth which will then have been purified by God's judgment from all of the sins and the consequences of sins. It will be the earth the way God originally intended it to be, and which it would indeed have become if sin had not taken place. On the new earth, the beauty of God's works will blossom in perfection... The glory of the nations in their power of science and technology; in their power of knowledge and art; in the unfolding of all gifts and talents -- will have been purged and sanctified and carried into the everlasting Jerusalem, to the praise of Him Who will then be all things in all people. And there, on the new earth, the Church will be gathered together which has been purchased by the blood of Christ from every tongue and tribe and nation and people."
Heyns then tells us that "nothing substantial or essential in this present earth will ever have been lost in the next. We must rather think of the purification and a refinement of the things of this earth through a divine judgment -- that is to say, a judgment which cuts into the length and the breadth and the vertical axles of our present life. The creatureliness of our present creation will not disappear at that time. Man, in his new time on the new earth, will not be less than what he is now. He will be more. Not more in the sense that he will be more than man. But he will be more human than he is now. That will be the glory of man.
"Finally , it concerns the totality of creation which will be maintained. The boundary between the Creator and the creature will never be eradicated. And, just as we see in the human nature of Christ which itself is not deified -- so it will be with us. We will then know all things as men in the depth of their own essence. And we will, in that way, know God perfectly and praise Him forever.
"The perspective of everlasting life in the future expectation of Scripture is not an eschatological fantasy which should appear to be foreign to us and which should only attract us as music of the future but without in fact actually existing today. Rather should we see this as a hidden stimulus today, which works in our present daily life and which achieves a concrete formation there. While man accepts the challenge to be man today by faith, and executes it in hope, he also lifts up his eye towards the far horizon -- where he knows that his labours today will receive a sanctifying fulfilment, and where he will always be able to revel in the presence of the Triune God forever." All very reminiscent of my own book The Central Significance of Culture (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, Philadelphia, 1976).
Heyns has something further to say this time about the role of the Church in South Africa today -- anent the complicated problems of race relations. He says: "The Church is God's instrument of reconciliation. Especially in our country, we have been given the opportunity of showing the world what reconciliation can mean in a [racially] pluralistic society. The Church is a piece of the future embedded into the present. It must constantly be creative under God, and must plan and affect for good the flow of history through time.
"If we do not fulfil our vocation today, we in South Africa run the same risk of ending up where the European churches have ended up -- churches with a tremendous past, but churches with no future. The new times in which we live ask of the Church new forms and new answers. That is only possible if we are redeemed from our neuroses and anxieties, and if we fearlessly move forward in the grip of the love of Christ."
Says Heyns: "The kingdom of God is thus not of the world. But it is indeed in the world. Actually, the world is under God's dominion. And signs of this already-present but still-future kingdom, are being erected everywhere men bow before the authority of God and His Word and where powers are being subdued by God's dominion. The appealing order of the kingdom means this world is concerned not only with man, but with men who obey God with the realisation of His plan and His goal which He has set for all things -- and within that, with us, our happiness, our service, our future. It thus concerns infinitely more than just the salvation of man's soul -- even more than just the salvation of the whole man. It concerns the fulfilment of a destiny shared by the entire cosmos -- namely, the honour and majesty and glory of God. Thus, obedience to the Ten Commandments becomes one of the scores of signs of the tentatively present kingdom of God erected by men -- when by their faith in the atoning merit of Christ, they launch out above all things and lay hold of God's original plan and ultimate destiny for man."
I must now pass on, briefly, to mention at least the name of H.J. Strauss -- the Professor of Political Science at the Orange Free State University. He has written many fine brochures -- such as those on History and Civilisation and Political Development and the Limited Franchise.
And I must especially refer to his "multi-genius" son, Danie Strauss. Danie Strauss is the Professor of Philosophy at the Orange Free State University who replaced my doctoral promoter Professor Kock after he suddenly died. Danie Strauss, a young man, is I believe just about the most brilliant man I have ever met. He seems to know a good deal about almost everything. For he seems to be an authority on mathematics and all of the schools of mathematics; aesthetics and all of the schools of aesthetics; and linguistics and all of the schools of linguistics. He has knowledge of languages. He has studied Greek and Hebrew, as an amateur, in a way that would put many Preachers to shame. His book on the relationship between philosophy and the special sciences is one of the most tremendous and complicated books that I have ever read.
After that big get-together at Potchefstroom University in 1975 I referred to earlier, when Christian Calvinistic academicians at university level from nineteen countries met at the world's first International Conference of Calvinistic Academicians, some of the American delegates (particularly those from Calvin College) went back and said some extremely critical things about South Africa and her race policy. One of them, Woltersdorf, who subsequently became the President of Calvin College, went so far as to say quite rightly that now the Free University of Amsterdam was sinking, in his opinion, the future torchbearer of international Calvinism would (because of racism) not be South Africa but the United States and specifically Calvin College.
At this point, Danie Strauss took up the cudgel. He pointed out that South Africa has far more Calvinistic academies than the United States has right now. Woltersdorf was wrong to say that South Africa's race policies disqualify her from playing the role as a viable leader of world Calvinism. Strauss humbly said that South Africa knows her place in the world; knows that she can only make a partial contribution to the world development of Calvinism. Yet her contribution would hardly be inferior to that of the United States in general and Calvin College in particular as regards things Calvinistic. For in Strauss's opinion, the United States in general and Calvin College in particular were riddled with a much more deadly heresy than racial discrimination. They were, he declared, riddled with the ungodly philosophy of pragmatism. That should disqualify Calvin College, in the opinion of any Calvinist anywhere in the world, from picking up the torch and carrying it further!
Strauss has written many books. He also wrote a critique of Dr. D.J. Malan's doctoral dissertation on A Critical Study of the Philosophy of Stoker from the Point of View of Dooyeweerd. And Strauss seems to agree with Van Til in his appreciation of this doctoral dissertation.
Says Strauss: "He who wishes to bypass the human selfhood in his faithful acceptance of revelation is engaged in putting an end to man's subjective (but not his subjectivistic) faith. Only the complete self-surrender of man to the central Scriptural basic motive, effects a radical conversion in the root of our existence by Christ's directedness towards the heart. It is not revelation which engages in philosophy, but it is man, and from his full selfhood under the control of some or other religious basic motive.
"Christian philosophy and the special sciences would only be grounded in subjective religion if it or they exalted the full selfhood of man (whence all acts of thought arise) to the Archimedes' point of philosophy. So therefore Dooyeweerd writes, 'the Archimedes' point of philosophy is chosen in the new root of mankind in Christ -- in which, by regeneration, we participate in our reborn selfhood."
Here, Strauss is siding with the Van Til of 1940 against Potgieter. But at this particular point, and with much respect, I myself side with Potgieter and with the Van Til of 1980 -- against Strauss and against the Van Til of 1940.
Another very famous figure in modern South Africa, is Professor Adrio K�nig, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of South Africa. UNISA you probably know, is the biggest correspondence university in the whole world. Now Adrio Koenig has written a number of good books: I Am That I Am; and Here Am I; and also a very powerful eschatological book called One Who Is Stronger. The latter is a vindication of the strength of Christ in this world, here and now, over Satan and the demons.
Writes K�nig: "When Paul in Colossians 2:15 uses the word 'triumphing' for Christ, it means that Christ has conquered and bound the evil powers and is now marching victoriously throughout the world. The only other time Paul uses this word triumphing (in Second Corinthians 2:14) is in the expression, 'Christ causeth us to triumph.' There too it means that the worldwide mission is Christ's great triumphal procession throughout the world -- to give everyone everywhere the opportunity to see that Christ has conquered the enemy so that they too can begin rejoicing and celebrating the victory together.
"That is the deepest meaning of the Church's missions. This is the meaning of Paul's declaration in Second Corinthians 2:14 -- 'Christ always causes us to triumph' (or, translated a little more clearly, 'Christ always causes ourselves to participate in His own triumphal procession'). The devil and his hordes have been demoted. Humiliated, all they can do is to run along like little dogs -- behind the missionaries, in Christ's worldwide victory march!"
K�nig also tells us that another connection should be indicated -- the connection between Revelation twenty and John 12:31. "Now here too," he says, "there is first of all an agreement in the words. Derivatives from the same Greek word are used. John 12:31 declares that the devil is cast out; and in Revelation 20:3 it is declared that he is cast into. This similarity of the word 'cast,' in both places, however, goes much further -- especially if one compares the context in which the two passages occur."
I myself would add to what K�nig is saying. For both passages are of Johannine authorship. Therefore, they need to be taken together.
"John 12:31," says K�nig, "follows on the request of the Greeks to see Jesus. Jesus reacts by saying two things. First, Satan was then to be cast out of his dominion. John 12:31. Second, Jesus would thereupon draw all men unto Himself. John 12:32. This means that Satan is now being conquered and bound, and that Jesus is now, by means of worldwide missions, turning all nations into His disciples.
"This means, by Christ's actions of death and resurrection, that the power of Satan over the nations has been broken. The house of Satan or the strong man's house -- that is, the world -- is now being taken over by the stronger man Christ. He executes this through His worldwide missions -- through His Church -- as pictured in Matthew 12:29!"
In his doctoral dissertation Jesus Christ the Eschatos (alias the Last One), K�nig tells us the following: "The continued progress of the Kingdom throughout the world is indeed not an unpleasant surprise. To the contrary, it is one big pleasant surprise. Jesus was not just a Jewish apocalyptic who would have been satisfied if the end of the world had arrived immediately, and if only a handful of Jews would have been saved -- while God's judgments would have broken loose over all mankind. No!
"In the first place, Jesus is the revelation of the God of love. First John 4:8 & 16. He is the revelation of the God Who so loved not just the Jews but the whole world, John 3:16. He is the revelation of the God Who sent His only Son not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3:17. And this is why Jesus was called the Saviour of the world. John 4:42, cf. First John 4:14 and First John 2:2.
"This Father and this Son do not just quietly supervise the arrival of the end as nothing more than a destructive condemnation of the human masses. No! This Father told this Son: 'It is a light thing that Thou shouldest be My Servant to raise up only the tribes of Jacob, and to restore only the preserved of Israel! I will give Thee for a Light to the Gentiles -- so that Thou mayest be My Salvation unto the ends of the earth!' Isaiah 49:6."
I now point briefly to a South African perhaps already known to you (because he writes in English). I mean the Reformed Baptist from South Africa known as Erroll Hulse -- who has left South Africa, settled in England, and become the leading Reformed Baptist in England (chiefly through his books and well-known magazine "Reformation Today").
I would like to give you a quote from his readable book The Restoration of Israel. Says Hulse, "Jesus reigns as king. He has an invincible purpose to redeem a great many from the nations of the earth. The universal kingship of Christ is far more prominent in Scripture, than the idea of defeat and apostasy. To the end of time -- believers have to face indwelling sin, persecution, tribulation and death. Yet the ultimate triumph of the believers is certain, and their triumph includes the proclamation of the Gospel on a vast scale -- to the salvation of an innumerable multitude.
"Now is a dark time. But the rains and harvest will come once more. The promises are ripe. They await fulfilment. Yes, in these last days it shall come to pass that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted in the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. Isaiah 2:2 and Micah 4:1f. Now we see the tiniest trickle. Then shall come the river-flow irresistible. Hallelujah!"
Finally, I would like to close with a quotation from my friend Rev. Dr. Cornelius van der Waal. Van der Waal is a very brilliant South African New Testamentician. He wrote a number of doctoral dissertations. One was on the Church Father Mileto of Sardis, who flourished round about 150 A.D. Another was on the priestly motive, in the book of Revelation.
Van der Waal has written a massive two-volume commentary on the book of Revelation which still needs to be translated. He has also authored shorter works on the book of Revelation -- arguing strenuously that the book was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Some of his works are only now being translated into English by Paidia Press in Canada. These include: In the Latter Days (his work against Hal Lindsay); and his eight-volume series on Sola Scriptura (alias By the Scriptures Alone). A writing from his pen that urgently needs translating, is his work The Cultural Mandate in Discussion.
This van der Waal is a fascinating person. He has a paradise-like home in Pretoria, which he adorned with all kinds of palm-trees and mosses and ferns and desert plants -- both inside and outside his house and further into his garden. It is all surrounded by a huge fence -- to keep out "snakes" (and other poisonous theological characters)! There he has tried to rebuild the garden of Eden -- or, perhaps, his vision of what the perfect combination of culture and nature will be like on the new earth -- as reflected in Revelation 21 and 22.
The most interesting thing of all -- if you visit the home of van der Waal as I have done -- is the way in which you walk out of his house into the garden. You are never quite sure where the garden ends and the house begins, and the other way round. The two melt into one another!
He visited me in America several years ago, and I took him on a tour through my home. I asked him for tips as to how to recreate the garden of Eden in my own home -- and he was very helpful.
Van der Waal has written a number of important books, even over and above those titles I have just mentioned. A very fine book he wrote is entitled: What Exactly is Written There? It is a book dealing with some of the most difficult and misunderstood texts in the Bible which the pietists love to misinterpret. He straightens them out, with his painstaking exegesis. He deals, in this citation I am about to read, particularly with Hebrews 11:13. This states that the patriarchs confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Van der Waal does not like the pietistic interpretation of the word "pilgrim" -- and sets out to straighten them out.
Says van der Waal: "The translations have the writer saying in Hebrews 11:13 that the patriarchs 'confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.' Now it is very questionable to me whether this translation 'on the earth' is justified. Instead of 'on the earth,' we would like to plead for the translation, 'in the land.' Compare the Hebrew word 'erets -- meaning 'land' or 'earth' or 'country.'
"So here, we should be thinking of the promised land. Then the meaning would be: 'Abraham confessed that he a stranger and a pilgrim in the land.' In verse 8, we read of a place which Abraham received as an inheritance. Canaan was no halfway-house. No! It was his inheritance, his place. Hebrews 11:9 speaks of this place -- as the land of promise!
"Woe unto Abraham -- if he thought that this 'land' was still not actually the true and the real thing! There would be no 'Platonic' land in the sweet by-and-by more real, which he would only one day inherit. It is true on account of Abraham's situation, that he lived in that land as a sojourning stranger. Yet he was still the legal heir of that land.
"Of course, Abraham also expected the city which has foundations. Here, however, we should think of both Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem. For both are lineal fulfilments of the promise. Hebrews 11:14 says that the patriarchs sought a city. Hebrews 11:16 declares they were not thinking of the fatherland which they had left. But now, they were longing for a better country, i.e. a heavenly one.
"Here, we do not read that they longed for heaven as a fatherland. Instead, we read that they longed for a heavenly fatherland -- namely a fatherland determined by, and given from, heaven: an earthly fatherland given from heaven; an earthly fatherland of heavenly character!
"In addition, the contrast is not between Ur the deserted fatherland plus Canaan as the lesser promised land -- versus heaven as a better fatherland. No! The contrast is rather between leaving Ur as a lesser fatherland deserving to be deserted, versus the promised land of Canaan here on earth. That latter in turn was of course a picture of the new heaven and the new earth of the then-messianic future -- the fulfilment of Canaan, when heaven comes down to earth and when the earthly Canaan and the heavenly Canaan will be one!
"Now we are only threatened by a horizontalisation of Canaan -- if it is described as a fatherland better than the one to come after death, or if one stops only at the earthly Canaan. Then, of course, there will [quite rightly] be an immediate reaction -- to refer to heaven as being a still better fatherland than the earthly Canaan.
"But we are also threatened by a pietistic distortion of the Gospel -- which practically denies God as Creator, and denies the goodness of the earthly Canaan. As a result of this kind of distorted pietistic spiritualisation -- which ignores the history of salvation -- the Old Testament is obscured. People then know no better than to use terms like 'external' and 'earthly' and 'national' to characterise the underestimated gift of the earthly Canaan.
"Here in the Bible, however -- as too in respect of Jerusalem -- we should never docetically picture Canaan as simply being earthly. For heaven is included in the gift of the earthly Canaan -- just as the vine and the fig-tree are included when spoken of in regard to the Messiah and His coming kingdom in Micah 4.
"The geographical Jerusalem and the geographical Canaan were on the same line as the new Jerusalem and the new earth which we are still expecting. Precisely because we have our rights, we also have our duties -- politics in respect of our nations, and culture too in the broadest sense of the word. We must not play down 'the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee' of Exodus 20 and Ephesians 6 -- as if it were merely an earthly blessing!
"After Christ's ascension, no change has occurred in the attitude of the Church to earthly life. It regards earthly life as being the same blessing it was in Old Testament times. There is, at least, no change in the sense that the outlook of the New Testament Church is now -- after Christ's ascension -- more directed towards that [pie-in-the-sky by-and-by] misinterpretation of Colossians 3:1-2's 'Seek the things above where Jesus is.' For such a 'Platonic' misinterpretation conveniently ignores verse 18, which describes the things that are above -- namely: 'husbands love your wives,' etc.
"Even under the Old Covenant, the outlook was directed also toward the Messianic Age. Even under the New Covenant one must still live according to the words of the great Christian theologian Hondius: 'Look downward and think upward!' Even under the New Covenant, the land has been given to the children of men. But the citizens of God's kingdom must fulfil their tasks consciously -- and fully!"
They are to do so "not with the attitude that they are living at the end of the ages -- but to do so rather by executing the mandates of Genesis 1:28 and Matthew 28:19 (the mandates of their heavenly Lord and Saviour)." As van der Waal's mentor Klaas Schilder said in Holland during World War II when he was hiding from the Nazi oppression: "De schuilkelder uit; het uniform aan!" ("Get out of hiding, and put on your uniform!")
Van der Waal also approves of Schilder's statement that gasoline, rather than incense, is an explicit theme of the Bible. Van der Waal himself then goes on to add: "Nothing is being absolutised here. For here there is only fear and trembling before the God Who tells me that what God hath joined together -- gasoline and incense; prayer and utilisation -- let no man put asunder!" And again (says Schilder): 'what God hath cleansed (gasoline) -- call not thou common!'
"Let us beware lest texts and terms wrenched out of their contexts by pietists, should ever bring us before the false dilemma: Christ or culture. It is not Christ or culture; nor even Christ and culture. It is Christ's culture! On the pietist's road of the pilgrim's progress to eternity, the cultural mandate dies. There, people no longer know how to do anything meaningful with their riches. There, they stand not knowing what to say before today's challenging problems." For pietism is what Rushdoony rightly calls: the doctrine of cultural irrelevance.
"I shall never forget," says van der Waal, "a conversation I had with an old gardener about pot-plants. We were discussing the point that was made against the cultural mandate by the pietistic Dr. Douma in his doctoral dissertation -- a work which the gardener had read three times. Is it so that we only have a modest cultural task? Are we really only strangers and pilgrims here on earth?
"The gardener said, 'Dr. van der Waal, I am more that 75 years old. I really don't need to work anymore. Do you think' -- and here the gardener's hand swept over his beautiful bromelias, begonias, delicious monsters and other treasures of the plant-world in his hot house -- 'Do you think [or does Douma think!] that I work with these plants today, just to earn a living? No! I do it to glorify my Creator!'"
[Back to Chapter 7]
[Goto Chapter 9]
[Back to Index] [Mail to: Ligstryders] [Home] [Top of Page]
Compiled by Ligstryders. You can e-mail us at: [email protected] or http://ligstryders.bizland.com