In Neo-Calvinism, sphere sovereignty is the concept that each sphere (or sector) of life has its own distinct responsibilities and authority or competence, and stands equal to other spheres of life. Sphere sovereignty involves the idea of an all encompassing created order, designed and governed by God. This created order includes societal communities (such as those for purposes of education, worship, civil justice, agriculture, economy and labor, marriage and family, artistic expression, etc), their historical development, and their abiding norms. The principle of sphere sovereignty seeks to affirm and respect creational boundaries, and historical differentiation. Neo-Calvinism, a form of Dutch Calvinism, is the movement initiated by the theologian and former Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper. ...

Sphere sovereignty implies that no one area of life or societal community is sovereign over another. Each sphere has its own created integrity. Neo-Calvinists hold that since God created everything “after its own kind,” diversity must be acknowledged and appreciated. For instance, the different God-given norms for family life and economic life should be recognized, such that a family does not properly function like a business. Similarly, neither faith-institutions (e.g. churches) nor an institution of civil justice (i.e. the state) should seek totalitarian control, or any regulation of human activity outside their limited competence, respectively.

Historical Background

Sphere sovereignty is an alternative to the worldviews of ecclesiasticism and secularism (especially in its Statist form). During the Middle Ages, a form of Papal Monarchy assumed that God, through the Church, rules over the world, exercising dominion over every sphere of human life. George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906), British writer who coined the term secularism. ... Statism is a term to describe an economic system where a government implements a significant degree of centralized economic planning or intervention, as opposed to a system where the overwhelming majority of economic planning occurs at a decentralized level by private individuals in a relatively free market. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... By the expression temporal power is commonly indicated the political and governmental activity of the Popes of the Roman Catholic Church, as distinguished from their spiritual and pastoral activity (also called eternal power). ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ...

Ecclesiasticism was widely evident in the arts. Religious themes were encouraged by art's primary patron, the Church. Similarly, the politics in the Middle Ages often consisted of political leaders doing as the Church instructed. In both economic guilds and agriculture the Church supervised. In the family sphere, the Church regulated family procreation, sexual positions, sexuality, and infidelity. In the educational sphere, several universities were founded by religious orders. A guild is an association of craftspeople in a particular trade. ... Catholic social teaching comprises those aspects of Catholic doctrine which relate to matters dealing with the collective aspect of humanity. ... The first European medieval institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and the 12th centuries for the study of arts, law, medicine, and theology. ...

During the Renaissance, the rise of a secularist worldview accompanied the emergence of a wealthy merchant class. Some merchants became patrons of the arts, independent of the Church. Protestantism later made civil government, the arts, family, education, and economics officially free from ecclesiastical control. While Protestantism maintained a full-orbed or holistically religious view of life as distinguished from an ecclesiasticism, the later secular Enlightenment sought to rid society of religion entirely. Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations Ecumenism · Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas · Wycliffe Tyndale · Luther · Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Pope · Archbishop of Canterbury Patriarch of Constantinople Christianity Portal This box:      Protestantism encompasses the forms... The Age of Enlightenment (French: ; German: ) was an eighteenth-century movement in European and American philosophy, or the longer period including the Age of Reason. ...

Sphere Sovereignty was first formulated by the Neo-Calvinist theologian and Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper and further developed by philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Kuyper based the idea of sphere sovereignty partially on the Christian view of existence coram Deo, every part of human life exists equally and directly “before the face of God.” For Kuyper, this meant that sphere sovereignty involved a certain form of separation of church and state and a separation of state and other societal spheres, or anti-statism. Neo-Calvinism, a form of Dutch Calvinism, is the movement initiated by the theologian and former Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper. ... The prime minister of the Netherlands is the head of the cabinet, and, as such, coordinates the policy of the government. ... Prof. ... Herman Dooyeweerd Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) was a Dutch juridical scholar by training, who by vocation was a philosopher, and the founder of a new approach called, the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea. ... Constantines Conversion, depicting the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great to Christianity, by Peter Paul Rubens. ... Statism (or Etatism) is a very loose and often derogatory term that is used to describe: Specific instances of state intervention in personal, social or economic matters. ...

Criticisms

For Kuyper, because the Netherlands included multiple religious-ideological (or, worldview) communities, these each should form their own "pillar," with their own societal institutions like schools, news media, hospitals, etc. This resulted in a pillarized society. Kuyper himself founded the Vrije Universiteit, where ministers for the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands would be educated without interference by the Dutch state, because educating ministers lies beyond the sphere of civil government in Kuyper's view. Kuyper also helped establish a Reformed political party, several Reformed newspapers, and an independent Reformed church. Pillarization is a term used to describe the way their dutch and belgians dealt with the multicultural societies. ... The Vrije Universiteit is a university in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ... For other types of minister, see Minister In Christian churches, a minister is a man or woman who serves a congregation or participates in a role in a parachurch ministry; such persons can minister as a Pastor, Preacher, Bishop, Chaplain, Deacon or Elder. ... The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Dutch: Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland, in short Gereformeerde kerk) was the second largest protestant church in the Netherlands until it merged into the Protestant Church in the Netherlands in 2004. ...

Addressing the emergence of pillarization in the context of Kuyper's view of sphere sovereignty, Peter S. Heslam states that 'Indeed, it could be argued that if Dutch society had been of a more “homogenous” nature --rather than manifesting a roughly tripartite ideological divide between Catholics, Protestants, and Humanists-- sphere sovereignty would still have been practicable whereas verzuiling [i.e., pillarisation] would not have been necessary.' ^[1]. Pillarization is a term used to describe the way their dutch and belgians dealt with the multicultural societies. ...

Some see the development of pillarization in the Netherlands as a failure of Kuyper to genuinely separate the state from societal spheres, and to distinguish societal spheres from worldview communities. ^[2].

References

1. ^ Peter S. Heslam (Spring 2002) Prophet of a Third Way: The Shape of Kuyper's Socio-Political Vision. Journal of Markets & Morality 5(1).
2. ^ James C. Kennedy (Spring 2002) The Problem of Kuyper’s Legacy: The Crisis of the Anti-Revolutionary Party in Post-War Holland. Journal of Markets & Morality 5(1).

External links

• PDF article on Dooyeweerd's Societal Sphere Sovereignty
• Andrew Basden's Dooyeweerd pages: irreducible ontology