Something I've always seen comes more into focus

Quick point... Reading Abraham Kuyper really for the first time. I could always kind of sense when a writer or theologian was not sound, and I'd always had that impression of Kuyper; so never really read anything by him until now. Now I'm reading his Lectures on Calvinism, being directed to them by something I came across in a lot of worldview material I've been reading lately.

Reading the first lecture I found it very impressive, for about three quarters of the way. Then I could see why Kuyper is kind of not fully in the main ranks of Reformed theologians. He just gets a little soft-headed, like a modern liberal type. 1. Islam was Christianity's teacher (he states); 2. Race mixing makes for strong culture and nations. Well, OK, I suppose in some ways, but it also seems to make for giving birth to a lot of demon-infested hybrids too (or maybe that's just where I live, or the news I read).

But in the first part of Lecture One he makes a very striking observation; a powerful one I could 'see' immediately upon reading it: he speaks of life systems (kind of his synonym for worldviews) and sees in our era (he was speaking at the turn of the 20th century, but it still applies to today) five strong types of life systems:

1. Paganism
2. Islamism
3. Romanism
4. Modernism

and,

5. Calvinism.

Yes, Calvinism. Not Protestantism, but specifically Calvinism. And he is very good at defining what he means by Calvinism, but you just have to read that.

What I saw in this was what I've always seen in specifically Calvinism. I've always seen it as like a suit of armor. Like a complete, real, enveloping body of armor that one goes through life with. And what further impressed me was how Kuyper set Calvinism in contra-distinction to Modernism, accurately setting the genesis of Modernism in the horrifically demoniacal and atheist (not to mention obnoxiously ignorant) French Revolution.

He also talks about the subject of how more than a few truly great historians of the past stated that John Calvin was really the Founding Father of the United States. I always understood that statement that could be so easily misunderstood, and Kuyper sees why historians have said that: it's why the American Revolution was so different from its contemporary revolution, the aforementioned French Revolution.

It's always amusing when atheists try and try and try to frame the American Revolution as Deist/Atheist all the while ignoring the big fact that *their* revolution, the atheistic French Revolution, happened almost contemporaneously. That is the atheist revolution par excellence, in all its stupendous idiocy and terroristic bloodletting ending in fully expected (by any observer with a three digit I.Q.) tyranny. In this case military control.

So Kuyper sets Modernism (which came from the French Revolution) against Calvinism showing the fruits of both in world history (not least in the American Revolution and system of government in the United States), and one can see how today both life systems are still present and in conflict (Modernism having the numbers of course).

This is why I would kind of see old books of Calvinist doctrine in imagery of chainmail. That could be mocked easily by anyone, an unintended metaphor, whatever, I mean it as seeing Calvinism as a complete armored position on the spiritual battlefield. And, oh, by the way, the fact that it was merely hard truth, on-the-mark, apostolic biblical doctrine was not just a bonus, but was kind of the point. Calvinism gives the complete armor of God, when armor is seen as doctrine; and it encompasses all of creation and culture.

This is a vision of Calvinism that the Calvinist churches don't have, by the way. This is a vision of Calvinism much bigger than what is taught in the Reformed seminaries today. It's something you have to feel in a battle sense and see in a culture sense. You have to have some real development to come into it. That Renaissance humanist element that the three great Protestant reformers (Luther, Zwingli, Calvin) exhibited and that is not mentioned much by modern day Reformed and Calvinist types.

In all my current worldview reading it becomes apparent that the two ground motives of any worldview are the Holy Spirit or the spirit of Satan. You can see that the Christian worldview writers kind of want to go off into philosophy play land but inevitably get pulled back to recognize that basic, foundational reality. If they are Christians. And if they are Christians to a spiritual battlefield level they will be Calvinists, and they too will see the basic types and how we are surrounded today by the soldiers dressed in the uniform of "No God Over Us!" Modernism.