Reforum: A brief but not unimportant chapter in the Dutch Reformed Church’s apartheid saga

In 1985 when storm clouds were gathering over South Africa, and a state of emergency was declared, a group of members of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) Family, clergy as well as laity, founded an organisation, Reforum. The two-fold aim of Reforum was to provide a prophetic witness against apartheid, calling the DRC to take leave of its theology of apartheid, and, secondly, to work towards the reunification of the DRC Family. The article researches the original Reforum documents, minutes, reports, conference material and letters, that hitherto laid untouched in the DRC Archive, in Pretoria. The programme of Reforum, especially the national and regional conferences held by the organisation over the 7 years of its existence, is discussed. The initial negative reaction of the DRC officials and synods, as well as the critique from some in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the DRC in Africa that Reforum was not radical enough in its approach, are recorded. The summation, at the end, is that Reforum did play a significant role, albeit humble and short lived, in the annals of the DRC’s apartheid saga. Relevance: The DRC’s apartheid saga, the story of a church that had over many years lived with apartheid and even provided a theological argument for separate development, eventually came to the point where the DRC not only repented of its past, but declared apartheid and the theology of apartheid a sin and a heresy, continues to fascinate historians, including church historians. For South African Christians, clergy as well as laity, it helps explain their often troubled past, as well as present. The often neglected story of Reforum and the role and contribution of the organisation in this process needs to be recorded. Original research: the author provides original qualitative research, using material that had lain untouched in the DRC Archive for three decades. This may be considered to be a preliminary study. The archival material merits more and deeper attention. It may well provide material for post graduate research.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The research is of value for the study of South African general history, South African church history, ecumenical studies, and practical theology.

“A Power which He Refused”

In Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, as in other early modern treatises, a philosophical defense of the secular is coupled with a theological defense. In the case of Hobbes, his philosophical argument is made in parts I and II of Leviathan, and his theological argument is made in parts III and IV. The latter parts of Leviathan are of no interest to most late modern readers, but to early modern readers the opposite was the case. Many iconic texts in European history may owe most of their influence to forms of reasoning, and to blocs of text, that interest late modern readers the least. This chapter offers a reading of the Leviathan which centers upon Jesus’ words to Pilate: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” It is demonstrated here, for the first time, that there is more in Leviathan about the kingdom of Christ being “not of this world” than there is about Hobbes’s notorious “war of every one against every one”.

Middle-Class Islamist Women’s Activism on Social Media:

This article critically discusses tweets content hashtag #Womenneedkhilafah which is mostly followed by Indonesia’s middle-class Muslimah. A qualitative method with Foucauldian discourse analysis is applied in this study to analyse tweets expressing Islamist women’s activism published on the hashtag #Womenneedkhilafah. The findings have revealed that the hashtag #womenneedkhilafah is cons­tructed through the knowledge-power relations of Hizbut Tah­rir Indonesia’s Islamist ideology by a literal-textual theological argument which is oriented to propagate Islamism and to create an independent Islamic state or caliphate. The manifest­tation of the power-knowledge relation is by limiting women’s role, mobility, and authority over their bodies. HTI has res­tricted women’s role to become household caretakers, parti­cularly to educate their children to prepare a new and stronger generation of HTI.

The Normativity of Measure in Gregory Nazianzus’ and Gregory of Nyssa’s Orations on Love for the Destitute Poor

Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa between them composed three orations on love of the destitute poor: Nazianzen's Oration 14, Peri philoptōchias and Nyssen's On love of the poor 1 and 2 (De beneficentia and In illud: quatenus uni ex his fecistis mihi fecistis). All three situate leprosy as the most extreme, and therefore paradigmatic, form of poverty as a basis for exhorting Christians to the practice of love. Those suffering from leprosy were stigmatised and excluded from society even by Christians, yet the Gregories exhort them to serve Christ by serving them, supporting pastoral entreaty with theological argument. This paper aims to introduce these orations to those unfamiliar with them and contribute new insights to those who already know them. After situating them in their historical context I summarise each then comment on their content, highlighting Nazianzen's reconfiguration of classical motifs in the service of a revisionist social policy and Christian anthropology rooted in the imago Dei and Nyssen's recourse to ascetic theory with marked similarities to that of Egyptian desert asceticism as taught by Evagrius. This paper's discussion of these prophetic orations will contribute to knowledge of them and by extension of the two Gregories.

The First Critique on the Physico-Theological Argument

This chapter examines Kant’s criticisms of physico-theology as they are developed in the first Critique and in his pre-critcal work, The Only Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By ‘physico-theology’ Kant means the project of arguing from the (apparent) fact that the world contains end-directed or ‘purposive’ natural features and arrangements to the existence of God conceived of as an all-powerful, perfectly wise, and benevolent creator—an ‘Author of Nature’, who brings the world into existence through His wisdom and free choice. Kant’s attitude to this project is complex: while he rejects physico-theology in its traditional, crude form (the so-called ‘ordinary’ physico-theology), he nonetheless endorses a more sophisticated, ‘revised’ physico-theology. However, the argument he defends aims to produce, not knowledge, but only a justified ‘doctrinal belief’ in a wise and great (but not perfect) creator of matter ex nihilo: a creator-god with a small ‘g’.

What is Good for Christ is Good for the Cosmos: Affirming the Resurrection of Creation

Many churches and scholars affirm that God renews the cosmos at the eschaton. Some scholars have begun to say the cosmos is resurrected in Christ, without much warrant for that discourse. With a focus on N.T. Wright and Richard Middleton, the article shows why some scholars have begun to say that the creation is resurrected in Christ, along with the relative paucity of an argument for this claim. This article begins to fulfill this need by making a theological argument from biblical sources, utilizing an interpretive approach outlined by David Yeago. It suggests that, for some scholars, the idea that the creation is not destroyed at the eschaton may motivate some resistance to the claim that creation is resurrected.

Liturgy

Despite the variations, even vagaries, of liturgical practice within the Reformed tradition, a considered reflection on worship, articulated with a Reformed accent, both speaks from and sets forth a common theology of worship. Likewise, the Reformed tradition is a Christian tradition, and in this sense is a catholic tradition, belonging to that one community of which the apostle Paul—employing not just theological argument, but liturgical theological argument—says: ‘there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of us all.’ So the way the Reformed tradition speaks theologically—even specifically theologically about liturgy, about worship—voices not a new language, but a commonly Christian language, articulated with a Reformed accent. This chapter traces the basic lineaments of Reformed orders of service, showing their theological inflections.

Apprenticed to the Word

This chapter describes the individuals who influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. as a preacher. It was from Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse College, that King first heard the challenge “Clearly, then, it isn’t how long one lives that is important, but how well he lives, what he contributes to mankind and how noble the goals toward which he strives. Longevity is good . . . but longevity is not all-important.” King paraphrased this sentiment many times in his career, perhaps most poignantly in his speech in Memphis the night before his death. King also discovered three mediating influences who, like Mays, appreciated a good theological argument and, like King Sr., sat astride enormous urban congregations. These influences were William Holmes Borders, Sandy Ray, and Gardner C. Taylor.