Defining Neocalvinism?

In a prior post I made an offhand reference to neocalvinism, and my friend and regular commenter Brendt sheepishly asked what neo-calvinism is, afriad that he was showing his ignorance in not knowing.

There is nothing to be sheepish about here as I am sure many don't know what neo-calvinism is.  And frankly, I shouldn't call myself a neo-calvinist because I have only dabbled in their writings and don't know enough about it to consider myself a member of the club.   However, I have read a few of the books that descend from the neo-calvinist tradition and several of the leading neo-calvinist blogs and find it to be a very attractive theological/philosophical/pragmatic approach to life under the sun. And I thought it would be helpful to point Brendt and others to some definitions and resources that are helpful in this regard.

Basically, neo-Calvinism descends from the thought of Abraham Kuyper who famously taught that there is not one square inch in all creation over which Jesus does not say "this is mine."  The link to Calvinism comes in it's emphasis on the sovereignty of God.  The neo-Calvinists flesh this out in different directions, and do not limit their discussion of divine sovereignty to the theological.  They are seeking to flesh out the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in all areas of life - social, economic, vocational, the arts, politics, education and so on and so forth.  From what I can tell the neo-calvinists have varying degrees of affinity to the traditional statements of Calvinism, like the TULIP, with some being fully on board and others less so.  It seems to me that the neocalvinists are particularly concerned with the implications of divine sovereignty for all of life, thus though many affirm the soteriological aspects of calvinism, that is not the heartbeat of their movement (if you can call it a movement).

In the post-continuation  I've got a couple of comments where some neo-calvinists speak for themselves.

Macht at Prosthesis refers to well-known neocalvinist Gideon Strauss in what I believe is a good concise description of neocalvinism.

Gideon Strauss has defined here what it takes to be a neocalvinist: A neocalvinist is someone who ...

... confesses Jesus the Christ as God and Lord over all of life.
... recognises the enduring design of the world and seeks to shape their life in attentive response to that design.
... grieves the agony of evil, pain and failure in the world.
... brings hope and healing in their spheres of responsibility, conscious that hope only finds its fulfillment in the return of the Christ.
... cherishes the dignity of the human person as created in the image of God.
... accepts human responsibility for the cultivation of the world and therefore for the shaping of culture.
.... relishes the rich natural and cultural diversity of the world, and seeks to conserve and elaborate that diversity.
... works against the social effects of both individualism and collectivism, by taking part in the building of a diverse range of social relationships and helping to make room for social diversity in society.

Elsewhere, Gideon says about neocalvinism,

"Neocalvinism seeks to bring about cultural renewal in diverse cultures, starting out from a few basic convictions. These include convictions shared with most Christians: That the world belongs to God, and that God structured this world in wonderfully complex ways, ways that are in the deepest sense good; that the world is broken and hurt by human evil, and that our evil reaches into every nook and cranny of the world, and yet, that there is hope and healing in the world because of the redemption worked by the Christ; that people really matter. Perhaps more than most Christian religious traditions neocalvinism emphasizes the need for Christian engagement in every sphere of human culture. While its emphasis on normative patterns given in creation is not extraordinary, its emphasis on the complexity and diversity deriving from those patterns is.

One consequence of these convictions is a neocalvinist politics that is "structurally pluralistic," in contrast to both political individualisms (such as libertarianism) and political collectivisms (such as fascism). But David Koyzis can discuss that more knowledgeably than I can."

If you are interested in learning more on neo-calvinism, my own personal go-to blogs in this regard are Gideon Strauss and Prosthesis.

I have also benefited from reading An Accidental Blog by Steve Bishop and Notes from a Byzantine-Rite Calvinist by David Koyzis. 

Also, from time to time Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost will do a post post on neocalvinism and if you read him long enough you will see that neocalvinist thought influences a good deal of what he writes.   He even has a post called What is Neocalvinism?

I also just discovered, through Joe, Gregory Baus at Honest to Blog.

Hope this helps.