An Evening with Dr. Wolters.

This past Saturday evening, I had the pleasure of attending the high point of the almost-book club that I started last year (it didn't get very far off the ground). Pieter, Sheldon, Sherri, and I, having read Creation Regained got together at my parents' house and discussed the book, and worldview in general with its author, Dr. A. Wolters, professor of Religion, Theology, and Classical Languages at Redeemer University. It was an excellent evening.

While I can't remember everything we discussed, I do remember some things:

• because of the foundation that neo-Calvinist philosophy has in the Reformation, there is, underlying much of it, a reaction to Roman Catholic doctrine and teaching. While this has been toned down in the 2nd edition of Creation Regained (which I have not read), it is still there, since a very fundamental aspect of Reformed Christianity is its un-Roman background.
• Very fundamental to the neo-Calvinist worldview proposed by Kuyper, Bavinck, and later Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoeven (Creation Regained is an introduction to the latter two), is an understanding of Nature and Grace in which Nature, having been created by God and therefore structurally good (although directionally influenced by sin), is reformed or renovated by Grace, which does not simply add to creation, but reaches into it at a fundamental level, and renews it.

I know that there is more that we discussed, but these are two things that really stuck in my head. Wolters discussed 4 different ways of understanding the relationship between Nature and Grace (but my notes are at home on the first page of my copy of Creation Regained. I will look at it again when I get home, if I remember and have time.

I can't help thinking, though, even as I read Creation Regained that there is something there that I don't fully agree with. I haven't quite found it yet, but I think that it might have something to do with the original rendition of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea which had a fairly negative view of Theology. The original practitioners of this philosophy considered themselves beyond Theology, and understood that Philosophy does not need Theology to understand the Scriptures. I disagree with this idea, although, as can be seen from some of my posts from last February or March, I have not worked out what Dr. Wolters called the $64,000 question: "what is the relationship between Philosophy and Theology?"