The Importance of the Penultimate: Reformed Social Thought and the Contemporary Critiques of the Liberal Society (Essay‪)‬

I argue that the predominant approach to social thought among Reformed thinkers of the past century--what might be termed generally Kuyperian or neo-Calvinist--anticipated the contemporary critiques of the liberal society in many respects and offers considerable intellectual support for this critique, though equivocally. I also argue, however, and here is the twist that may be unexpected, that an older Reformation and post-Reformation era Reformed approach to social issues, from which twentieth-century Reformed social thought has in significant ways turned aside, may offer a rather distinct theological response to the critique of liberalism. This older approach, which appealed to categories such as natural law and the two-kingdoms doctrine, was not itself utilized at the time to defend a liberal society--such a claim would be anachronistic. What it does do is offer an intriguing and largely forgotten alternative to the current terms of debate over liberalism and its trappings; it provides a tempered and indirect theological defense of the liberal society. It does not dictate liberalism as the Christian social theory but gives many reasons to appreciate it. Important backdrop for this article is the contemporary critique of the liberal society, particularly from theological quarters. I mean liberal not in the sense of ideologically leftist but in the classical sense of a free, open, tolerant, and pluralist social order. A liberal society is characterized by liberty of speech and religion, democratic participation in the political process, free markets, and the rule of law. It depends upon the idea that some sort of limited, common morality is possible in the social realm despite religious pluralism. The liberal society is an ideal that the American experiment from its inception has generally embraced and that America and other Western nations continue to attempt to export to historically nonliberal countries around the world. It is also an ideal, however, that a number of prominent philosophers and theologians of late have subjected to trenchant critique, often in the name of a robustly orthodox Christian theology, or at least something close. These critics do not focus their attacks on abuses of liberalism or on particular freedoms or characteristics usually associated with liberalism (which one could embrace without embracing liberalism itself) but on that core, fundamental feature of liberalism, namely, the idea of a common social life built upon no shared religious or philosophical foundation.