Nine: Afrikaner Thought in the Unsettling 'Seventies

In this present lecture, we wish to deal with the consolidation of the Afrikaner's answer to the present cultural revolution especially during the last decade (1970 to 1980).

Now a very interesting thinker with whom we could begin, is Dr. Piet Meyer. He is a very famous writer -- and the Chairman of the nation-wide South African Broadcasting Association -- in charge of all of the radio programming in South Africa. He is also a philosopher of national culture and existentiality, and has written a number of very important books.

Meyer wrote his first doctoral dissertation on the psychological phenomenon of attention. He also wrote the definitive work on the Afrikaner -- from the culturological and the sociological viewpoint -- dealing with the Afrikaner's cultural roots and psychological behaviour and mores.

Meyer has reflected deeply about existentialism -- especially in his work: Tussen Iets en Niks (alias Between Something and Nothing). It is largely a philosophical evaluation of Nietzsche and Heidegger and Sartre. Meyer also has a very interesting eschatological book called Nog Nie die Einde Nie (alias Not Yet the End) -- in which he optimistically predicts that the twenty first century, in spite of difficulties and threats from the outside world, will bring the Afrikaner to new heights that he has never before reached. Indeed, Meyer has also written massively on the relationship between economics and culture.

Then there is the famous South African logician, Dr. N.T. van der Merwe of the University of Potchefstroom. He has taken over and developed old Professor Los's book on Logic to the "nth" degree. Indeed he has produced a book on Christian Logic of some 700 pages -- a book which is very highly esteemed at Dordt College in Iowa (in the United States). That book certainly needs translating!

Another famous young thinker, is Dr. Willem de Klerk -- sometime Professor of General Studies at the University of Potchefstroom. His manual On General Studies -- entitled Studium UniversalE -- is compulsory reading for all of the students at Potchefstroom University (regardless of whether they later want to specialise in physics, in art, in theology or whatever). The intent is to give all students a bird's eye view of the inter-connectedness of all disciplines telescopically -- before they specialise microscopically on a particular field for their own life-long career study. De Klerk also wrote on the Afrikaner's answer to the present cultural revolution. He later left the University, and became Editor of a prestigious newspaper in the Transvaal. In that capacity he is still writing. He has also co-authored a three-volume modern work on the philosophical inter-connection of the various sciences.

There are also a variety of other philosophers -- such as Professor Taljaard, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Potchefstroom and the successor to Hendrik Stoker (when he retired). Taljaard wrote a good book called Radical Thought. There he points to the radical and integral nature of Christian philosophy -- in contradistinction to all other kinds of philosophy. He also wrote an important work on Christianity in a Changing World.

Another important thinker from Potchefstroom, is Professor Bennie van der Walt. He has written much in the field of Epistemology -- and also in the field of Medieval Philosophy. He previously taught the history of philosophy at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. He has just come out with an anthology called The Anatomy of Reformation -- scheduled for release in January 1981. He was also appointed the Director of the Institute for Calvinist Scholarship and the Institute for the Promotion of Calvinism at Potchefstroom.

The Professor of Philosophy -- or I should say one of the several Professors of Philosophy -- at Stellenbosch University, is Dr. Hennie Rossouw. He promoted under Berkouwer in Holland with a dissertation on The Perspicuity of Holy Scripture. He has also written in other areas of philosophy and theology. He has the distinction of having received the highest marks ever achieved in the history of the Reformed Theological Seminary at Stellenbosch University in its existence of more than a hundred years. When he was finally awarded his doctorate under Berkouwer, the latter made the statement that Rossouw was the most brilliant student that he had ever had -- and that Berkouwer had nothing left to teach him which Rossouw did not already know.

Another very brilliant man is Professor Pieter du Plessis -- formerly of the University of Port Elizabeth, and currently Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg. His doctoral dissertation was written on The Abridgement of the Ethical. There, he protested against the tendency to abridge ethical decisions in modern life. He has also written works on philosophy, culture and the future -- a kind of eschatological orientation of culturology and philosophy. He has further written a work on The Renaissance and the Reformation and the Revolution -- the impact of these three movements in the development of the sciences. He has also written a polemic work entitled, Calvinism on the Attack. All of these, and especially the last, need translating into English.

There have also been other important thinkers in the last ten years or so. I'd like to refer to Dr. Schalk Duvenage. Schalk is a man with three earned doctor's degrees. He was Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Potchefstroom -- until he recently resigned (because he felt that he enjoyed preaching as a Pastor in the churches more than he enjoyed teaching). He was also Chairman of some twenty business Companies. He has written a number of works. These include: The Church and the Future and The Relationship Between the Church and the Kingdom in the Afrikaner Culture. He kindly consented to be the Co- Examiner of my work toward my Master of Cultural Science (Sociology) at Potchefstroom University -- which status I attained several years ago.

His brother, Ben Duvenage, is also a learned man. He is Professor of Inter-Disciplinary Sciences at the University of Potchefstroom. He wrote a very fine work that would be of interest to us here -- a work on Calvin's Vocational Ethics. It is a collection and a discussion of all that Calvin had to say on the ethics of choosing different vocations -- in the extension of God's kingdom. Ben Duvenage also wrote a work on the ethical aspects of the population increase. That is a demographical survey in the light of Reformed ethics. Indeed, he further wrote yet another work on The Kingdom of God and Ecumenism; and also even a further work (on The Kingdom and Reformation).

There have also been several theologians of note. Professor J.J. Mueller of Stellenbosch, a New Testamentician who died just recently, was perhaps the world's leading authority on the kenosis doctrine (or at least on the Reformed understanding of the kenosis). See his doctoral dissertation thereon. He was also the writer of the commentaries on Philemon, Philippians and Colossians -- in the Westminster series of Bible commentaries (which he wrote in English). Indeed, he has also commented widely on most of the books of the New Testament.

Then there is Professor Willie Jonker. He taught for several years, under very difficult conditions, at a Dutch Theological Seminary -- until he was called back to South Africa -- to the Chair of Systematic Theology at Stellenbosch, in order to succeed Professor Potgieter (who was then retiring, and who had suggested me as his successor). I read just recently that Jonker received a prize for writing a definitive work on The Church. It has been crowned as the best South African religious work written in the year. He also functioned as a Visiting Professor of Systematic Theology here in the United States in the recent past.

Coming now to the last stage in the development of South African Christian Afrikaner thought, we deal with the elaboration of the philosophies of the various special sciences. More or less following the order of the Dooyeweerdian modal spheres from the numerical through the pistical, we can enumerate the following thinkers.

First of all, there are Christian mathematicians in South Africa like Professor D.J. van Rooy, A.J. van Rooy and Heidema. These men are always writing articles on the philosophy of mathematics from a Christian perspective -- generally of a theoretical but sometimes of an empirical or a practical nature.

Then, in the realm of the physical sciences, we have men like Dr. van der Berg of Potchefstroom University. He is a very interesting figure, and constantly approaches and re- evaluates physics and the history of physics and the interrelationship between physics and the non-physical sciences (generally from a Dooyeweerdian perspective). Also, there is Dr. Schutte of the University of Port Elizabeth. And then there are also Christian biologists such as Dr. Eloff, the Christian zoologist, who has written much in the area of the classification of animals. Above all, perhaps, there is the internationally known Professor Duyvene De Wit.

Now De Wit was a very famous biologist (who recently died). He was acclaimed internationally for refuting the theory of evolutionism as developed by the Russian biologist Oparin. Headquartered at the Orange Free State University in Bloemfontein whose chair of biology he filled, part of his refutation consisted of experimenting with tropical fish from Indonesia which he imported from just north of Australia.

I forget the details of the experiment. But as my memory serves me, I believe it was that the female of this species of fish would lay eggs into the mouth of the male fish. And it was only inside the male's mouth that the temperature and the degree of saltiness (etc.) were exactly correct to incubate the eggs at least for a time (in order to promote their hatching).

After the eggs had been deposited by the female in the mouth of the male fish for a while, the female fish would then scoop out a little hole in the bottom of the ocean. Then the male would come along and deposit the eggs out of his mouth into the hole, and the female would cover up the hole again (with sand).

De Wit, by means of experimental biology, was able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of all reasonable men that there is no way this very complicated system of reproduction and fructification of the eggs of this particular fish could ever have evolved by blind chance. And so this played a major role in the ongoing refutation of evolutionism.

Well, Dooyeweerd told me personally, when I visited him in his home in Holland, that when De Wit heard about the death of Dooyeweerd's wife, he bought an airplane ticket and flew all the way from Bloemfontein to Amsterdam (about a thirteen-hour journey). De Wit then prayed with Dooyeweerd, before getting back onto a plane and flying back another thirteen hours so as to be back at his classes (and with his fish) at the University of the Orange Free State. This long trip of De Wit, just to console Dooyeweerd, made a lasting impression on him when he was in mourning for his wife.

Unfortunately, De Wit died before he had finished the experiment with the fishes -- and the University of the Orange Free State really did not know quite what to do with these tanks full of tropical fish from Indonesia which De Wit left behind him! Anyway, he did manage to finalise some of his research on them and get some of it down in writing -- before the Lord took him to glory.

There are also Christian psychologists in modern South Africa -- men like Dr. Smit of the Huguenot College at Wellington (established by Dr. Andrew Murray). There is also Dr. A.B. van der Merwe, who is the Rector (or the President) of Huguenot College. He is a man with two or three doctor's degrees, a critic of Dooyeweerd, a psychologist and a theologian. If I am not mistaken, he was recently appointed to the chair of Medical Psychology of the University of the Orange Free State.

There are also many Christian historians in South Africa. There is Dr. Marius Swart, who writes especially on Afrikaner history and South African church history from a very strong but accurate and compassionate Calvinistic perspective. So too, my old professor, Dr. Tobie Hanekom -- who specialises in 18th and 19th century theological history of the Cape. He has written many fine monographs on the centennial celebrations of various congregations of the Reformed Church in South Africa. He is also the leading authority in South Africa on the rise and fall of liberal theology within the Reformed Church.

In addition, there are Christian sociologists such as Dr. Keyter of the University of the Orange Free State. He came to the conclusion that unless a man has been born again, there is no way in which he can be a good or a useful sociologist and systematise sociological data accurately. Also, Professor Cronje -- who has written a several-volume work on various sociological studies (such as on the subjects of juvenile delinquency and the degeneration of people in urban slums and so forth). A book by him was the first present my wife ever gave me.

Dr. P.O. Le Roux, Professor of Sociology at Huguenot College in Wellington, has written particularly in the area of The Relationship Between the Church and Christian Social Services. Another famous writer and sociologist is Dr. J.H. Coetzee, Professor of Sociology at Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education. He gave quite a few addresses at the 1975 International Conference of Christian Academicians. He has written several books, one on Christian Politics in the Republic (a sociological evaluation), and another on population problems.

There are many Christian educationalists in South Africa who write from a Calvinistic perspective. The aged Professor Dr. J. Chris Coetzee has written several books on education, sex education, the first principles of our Calvinistic education, burning problems of Calvinist educational philosophy, and so forth. Dr. E. Greyling is the great authority on Sunday School Education in the churches. Then there are also Dr. J.J. Pienaar, Dr. van Loggerenberg, Dr. Manie Malan, and many others.

Writers in the area of Christian Physical Education include Professor I.R. van der Merwe. He has written two or three books on the Calvinist approach to the human body and to bodily exercises and athletics. Also Professor Fleischmann has also written works toward the development of a Christian approach to athletics -- and the development of the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.
There are quite a few Christian economists in South Africa who have written from this general perspective. Dr. Diederichs, sometime Professor of Economics at the Orange Free State University, wrote works on communism and economics -- and later became Minister of Economic Affairs in South Africa (and then, State President). Also Dr. F.J. du Plessis and other writers especially at the Orange Free State University have been writing on "hard economics" and the importance of gold and precious metals in the development of a viable economy.

By the way, let me interject at this point that the South African economy is approximately 37% gold-backed. It is not 100% gold-backed, yet its backing is of course greater than that of any other country in the world today. In spite of the recession of the last decade, South Africa has sustained an annual per capita growth rate of a minimum of 7% per year. No waning is contemplated in the future, regardless of any developments in other countries. From time to time -- if things look like they may cause a drop in the growth rate -- South African gold tycoons simply withhold gold sales on the world market. That, of course, drives up the price of gold. In that way, by releasing controlled amounts of gold onto the world market each month, they are able to sustain a steady growth rate -- regardless of vacillating or even falling growth rates in other important trading countries throughout the world.

Coming now to Christian aestheticians, we have important figures such as D.F. Malherbe. He is perhaps the pioneer of modern Afrikaans writers, with his masterly work Hans die Skipper (meaning John, the Ship's Captain) -- a very fine novel about the sea. He has also written beautiful poems about the relationship between Sisera and Deborah, and other works too.

Professor Dekker of Potchefstroom University has written extensively on art theory and also on the history and development of Afrikaans literature -- as well as giving a systematisation of the various writings of Afrikaans writers.

Professor D.P. van der Walt has written extensively in this field. He has especially explored the area of a Christian's attitude toward pornography as an art-form -- and the legal obligations of censorship in relation to art-forms deemed to be objectionable by many sections of the population.

Then there are Christian legal philosophers and political philosophers -- men like the celebrated Dr. L.J. du Plessis, Professor of Political Science at Potchefstroom University, from whose pen I read extensively the other day (on Calvin's doctrine of the calling of the State to implement the Ten Commandments). He is an international figure -- and is regarded as the best in that field even by Dutch thinkers.

Professor Herman Strauss, whom I referred to in the last lecture, has written extensively in the field of civilisation and the qualified franchise in countries with different groups of people and with different levels of civilisation such as South Africa. He has also given theoretical reflection to this -- as well as to the attitude Christians should sustain towards trade unions (whether they be voluntary trade unions, or compulsory trade unions, as the case may be).

There is also Judge G.F. de Vos Hugo. He has written many monographs on the nature of Law and the extent to which the Law Courts should have some elasticity in their application of the principles of Law to specific cases brought before the Courts.

There is further my old Co-Promoter, Dr. Vessels, Professor of Political Science at the University of the Orange Free State. He is a great critic of the United Nations Organisation -- and a man who has written much on the eschatology of political development and also on the idea of state sovereignty on the international scene.

Also, Dr. A.P. Treurnicht wrote a doctoral dissertation under Andrew Murray's grandson, my own promoter, Prof. Dr. Andrew H. Murray at the University of Cape Town. Treurnicht's dissertation, a standard work, is on The Relationship Between Church and State in the Thought of Abraham Kuyper. Treurnicht, a minister of the Gospel and later editor of the Kerkbode (or "Church Messenger") magazine, left the pulpit to enter politics. There he speedily became a Member of Parliament, and then Leader of the National Party in the Transvaal.

He is about the second most powerful man in South Africa today (on the political scene). He was kind enough to write an introduction to my own work The Central Significance of Culture, (which is printed up in the front of that book). He has also written many other works, such as Party Politics and the Future of the Afrikaner's National Culture.

Then there are Christian criminologists at various South African universities -- such as Professor P.J. van der Walt. Indeed, Professor Swanepoel of Potchefstroom is also an Elder of the Reformed Church -- and never misses a General Assembly.

Frankly, Christian theologians in South Africa are almost too numerous to mention. They are all more and more playing an important role in the further development of South African thought.

There is a relatively new science in South African universities which I have not seen taught on a faculty basis anywhere else in the world. That science is called cultural science or culturology. To my knowledge, this subject is taught only at the Potchefstroom University for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education. It was pioneered by my old promoter, Professor Dr. Klaas Venter.

Venter died just before, under him, my own work for my Master of Cultural Science course was submitted. But his protege, Professor Dr. Elaine Botha, was kind enough to evaluate the work I had done for Venter.

Now Professor Venter had written many works. These include writings on socialism in South Africa and how to counteract it; works on the relationship between national life and culture; and works on our new republican citizenship. He was a great fan of Professor Dr. Schilder, and rather critical of Kuyper at those points where Schilder clashes with Kuyper.

Venter had in his backyard the most enormous ram that I had ever seen. He believed it was his duty to cultivate sheep to the glory of God -- apart from just lecturing at the university. And this enormous male sheep, he told me, weighed some 308 lbs (if you can just imagine it).

The development of State Social Services in South Africa Venter regarded as by and large a socialistic usurpation of the diaconal work of the Church. He had said so repeatedly, appealing time and again to the Heidelberg Catechism and the other Reformed documents.

He had also written a work called: A Calvinistic View of Culture (in the Compendium called The Atomic Age in Thy Light). Venter is at pains to distinguish culture as the human work performed by men, from cultural products as the result of that human work. To him, our culture here and now would still yield eschatologically permanent fruit.

"Even if and when and where our present cultural products might prove to be transitory," says Venter, "nevertheless the work of our producing culture in this life does something to us and changes us. And the change in us is preserved for all eternity -- and for a life of ongoing cultural production on the new earth to come."

Venter has remarked that "the Christian believer's cultural vocation and his ultimate cultural destination consist of the Christian faithfully executing his baptismal promises -- and living out in practice the Christian faith which he professes in his culture." This is extremely interesting.

From a culturological viewpoint, Venter says one is introduced to Christian culture at one's infant baptism. There, one is set aside in the Name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit to be the Triune God's great prophet, priest and king on this earth. As the child grows up, and as the parents and the teacher of the child discover the different cultural gifts in each of their children, and as they encourage the development of these specific gifts especially in terms of an education becoming all the more specialised and tailor-made to develop the specific gifts one discovers in a child -- so is culture developed even by this child. Thus he increasingly understands the cultural implications of his own infant baptism.

As the Puritans would say, he then "improves" his baptism -- in relation to culture and the development of the arts and the sciences. As Christ's representative here on earth, he then lives out in practice the faith which the growing covenant child or youth or man or woman professes. Thus he lives out his Christian faith, even in the field of his culture. That is to say, the person does so in his daily task six days a week, as well as in his religious service of God morning and evening each day, and especially while worshipping with the Christian community in church on Sundays.

"All of this," says Venter, "is to be done in accordance with the demands of a pure and continually reforming tradition -- on the basis of the covenantal promises of God. Doing all of this is, after all, man's reasonable religion. And the works of culture are nothing more than the good works required by the Heidelberg Catechism.

"They are the products of the application of the Ten Commandments in the life of the grateful Christian, and the outworking of the Ten Commandments culturally on a cosmic scale -- as man lives out his career before the Lord, to the glory of God, as a baptized person looking forward to the future cultivation of the new earth!"

Venter is now dead. He was succeeded by Professor Dr. Elaine Botha, herself a lady with two earned doctorates. Her first doctoral dissertation was written on the subject of Socio-Economic Meta-Questions. Of late, she has been writing particularly in the realm of ladies' attire and dress. She has certain very definite and conservative tastes in this area, and is constantly elaborating culturologically what she thinks are appropriate Calvinistic dress-styles for ladies. She strongly condemns pornography and skirts that are too short and this sort of thing. In all respects, she is a very brilliant woman.

I would like to say a few words about people who have left South Africa after being trained there. I referred earlier to Dr. Willie Jonker, the theologian who lived for several years in Holland and disseminated these ideas there and then returned to South Africa.

There is also the famous Professor de Kiewiet. Many years ago he wrote on the imperial factor. He went to the United States, and became President of a very prestigious American University. Another, Sir Solly Zuckermann, went to England and has now become the Head of the British Atomic Energy Research Department.

But, others trained specifically from a Calvinistic perspective in South Africa. Prof. Dr. Vincent Brunner never came back from Holland. Prof. Dr. Philip Edgecombe Hughes, an Australian by birth, did his Doctorate of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa under Professor Dr. Andrew H. Murray (the grandson of the world-famous South African theologian). Hughes's dissertation was on the great Renaissance figure Pico della Mirandola. He has also written many other books -- all of them in English and available in the United States. Such include: The Problem of Origins; Scripture and Myth; a fine commentary on the book of Hebrews; a commentary on Second Corinthians; The Control of Life; and A Theology of the English Reformers.

Further books by Hughes include his very valuable Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin; his But for the Grace of God; his Confirmation in the Church Today; his Interpreting Prophecy; his Creative Minds; his Contemporary Theology, and other works.

Hughes, who has visited me in my home, is the master of fourteen languages -- and often has commentaries in about fourteen different language spread out over his desk when he writes his own various commentaries! He has recently left Westminster Theological Seminary to become a Professor at Trinity Evangelical Theological Seminary in Deerfield (Illinois). He was also up in Massachusetts at Gordon- Conwell for a while, having previously worked at Xenia Theological Seminary and elsewhere.

There is also the case of Gerald van Groningen, sometime Professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary Mississippi -- and currently the new President of Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights (Illinois). Van Groningen is working on a second doctorate in Old Testament at Potchefstroom University -- where his son is also enrolled working on a degree in association with my cousin (Professor David N.R. Levey, a Professor of English at Potchefstroom University).

Then there is Guy Oliver, sometime Professor of Church History at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson (Mississippi). He is working on a doctor's degree at UNISA, the University of South Africa.

Too, the American Professor Robert Vasholz, now Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St Louis, got his Doctorate at the University of Stellenbosch under Dr. Piet Verhoef (Professor of Old Testament). The latter, incidentally, once turned down an offer by President Ed Clowney to move to the United States and teach at Westminster Seminary.

Covenant Theological Seminary in St Louis recently entered into an agreement with the University of Stellenbosch, whereby Covenant's graduates could be enabled to end up with a University of Stellenbosch doctor's degree in the field of theology.

But I think the most significant figure to have passed through South Africa, is the celebrated American Professor of Sociology and Economics at Dordt College (Iowa), Hebden Stacey Taylor. Born of missionary parents who worked in Africa, Taylor was schooled in Durban (South Africa). He has written many important works such as The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State; and Dooyeweerd and Biology. He has also published a recent book on Christian economics -- under the auspices of the Christian Studies Center in Memphis (Tennessee).

I would like to give you a quotation from Hebden Stacey Taylor's important book Reformation or Revolution. On page 516, he is discussing race relations. He says in this important quote: "The South African approach of separate development has evoked the concentrated hostility of the United Nations and so-called world opinion. The impartial observer can only conclude that race is not really the issue at all, but merely the ogre created to work up emotion and troubles in the councils of mankind.

"What, then, is South Africa's real crime? The answer must be that she has dared to call into question that great sacred cow of our revolutionary age -- that godless dogma, that sovereignty over the individual resides in the general will of the majority rather than in the revealed will of Almighty God written in the Holy Scriptures!"

I referred earlier to the world's first International Conference of Calvinist Academicians held in 1975 at, and financially sponsored exclusively by, the South African Calvinistic University of Potchefstroom. It hosted, at its expense, representatives from: the United States, Canada, Australia, Holland, Argentina, Germany, England, France, Scotland, Japan, Korea and almost every Black country in Africa as well.

I also referred to the work of Bennie van der Walt, sometime Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa -- and currently the organiser and curator of the Institute for the Promotion of Calvinism and the Calvinistic Study Centre at Potchefstroom in South Africa.

In January 1981, van der Walt is to publish a new book -- called The Anatomy of Reformation. It will be published both in English and in Afrikaans. Its price will be approximately $8.00. It will be about 300 pages long, and it will deal with flashes and fragments of a Reformed life view in action.

The table of contents of this book just about to appear, reads as follows: (1) Christ -- Conservative, Revolutionary, Ascetic or What?; (2) Christ and the Religious Order of His Day; (3) Christ and the Social Order of His Time; (4) Christ and the Political Situation of His Day; (5) The New Way of Reformation; (6) Sixteenth Century Models for Christian Involvement in the World; (7) Renaissance and Reformation -- Contemporaries, but Not Allies; (8) Christian Nationalism -- Tracking Down Calvinism in South Africa; (9) Church Reformation -- the Permanent Call; (10) Out of Love For My Church -- On the Reformation of a Reformed Church; (11) Not of the World, but in the World -- the Calling of the Church in the World; (12) Church Mission or Kingdom Mission? -- the Kingdom Perspective in Our Missionary Endeavour; (13) The Significance of a Biblical View of Man for the Pastorate; (14) God's Hand in History; (15) A Total Onslaught -- Revolutionary Warfare in Southern Africa; (16) The Relevance of a Calvinistic Cosmoscope to the Black Peoples of Africa; (17) Panorama of Reformation in the Year of Our Lord 1980 -- a Survey of World-Wide Reformed Faith and Action; and last, (18) Reformation or Revolution.

I would like to close out the scenario of South African Afrikaner Calvinism in the last decade, by referring to a passage from a work called, Christ the Triumphant One. This work appeared from the pen of Professor Dr. Kleynhans, Moderator of the National Assembly of the Reformed Church of South Africa and Professor of Church History. Recently appointed such, he relinquished the pastorate to take up a position in an academic institution.

Kleynhans writes: "The unstoppable progress of the Stone of Daniel two is very conspicuous. It hits and pulverises the mighty image. The Stone which the builders refused, has become the Headstone of the Corner -- and whosoever shall fall on this Stone, shall be broken. But on whomsoever It shall fall, It will grind him to powder. Psalm 2; Psalm 118; and Matthew 21.

Yet this Stone is not only predestinated to destroy. At length, it becomes a Stone which covers the whole earth. In the realm of the future, there is place for only one kingdom -- the kingdom of God. Just as scaffolding is broken down and disappears when a building is completed -- so too shall the history of the world lead to the day in which the kingdom of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea!"

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