Govert Buijs

International relations are in constant turbulence. Globalisation, the rise and fall of superpowers, the fragilisation of the EU, trade wars, real wars, terrorism, persecution, new nationalism and identity politics, climate change, are just a few of the recent disturbing developments. How can international issues be understood and addressed from a Christian faith perspective? In this book answers are presented from various Christian traditions: Neo-calvinism, Catholic social teaching, critical theory and Christian realism. The volume offers fundamental theological and Christian philosophical perspectives on international relations and global challenges, case studies about inspiring Christian leaders such as Robert Schuman, Dag Hammarskjöld, Abraham Kuyper and prophetic critiques of supranational issues.

8-9 January 2013 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, a seminar took place bringing together people from various parts of the world, various disciplines, and various academic and non-academic professions — philosophers, economists, theologians, historians, social scientists as well as bankers, businessmen, investors and others — to analyze and discuss the economic crisis as it developed in the aftermath ofthe American financial crisis of 2008. An explicit goal was as well to bring together people from various generations, to facilitate and promote a true ‘intergenerational dialogue’. The title of the seminar was ‘Economics, Christianity & the Crisis: Towards a New Architectonic Critique’. More specifically, the aim of the seminar was to develop Christianly inspired reflections on the crisis. An insight that was foundational for the seminar was that the 2008 credit crisis not only was a crisis in the economy, but implied also a crisis in the basic concepts and assumptions that underlie our contemporary thinking about economics, economics as a science as well as economics as a social domain. The crisis, as it erupted and evolved, simultaneously raised urgent questions at the macro- or system-level, at the intermediate level of behavior of banks and corporations, and at the level of personal morality, the vices and virtues involved in business transactions.

This book investigates humanities, social sciences and politics from the perspective of the concept of creation order. It is the second volume in a series that provides a unique and topical overview of attempts to assess the current health of the concept of creation order within Reformational philosophy when it is compared with other perspectives. Divided into a section on fundamental reflections and a section on normative practices, it discusses issues such as redemption, beauty, nature, love, justice, morality, and ethics. It concludes with discussions on a practice-based theory to explain religion in international relations and a normative model for the practice of cooperation in development. This series reflects the role that the branch of Christian philosophy called ‘Reformational’ philosophy plays in the discussion on the status of laws of nature. Ever since its inception, almost a century ago, the concepts of order and law have been at the heart of this philosophy. One way to characterise this tradition is as a philosophy of creation order. Firmly rejecting both scholastic metaphysics and Deism, Reformational philosophers have maintained the notion of law as ‘holding’ for reality. Questions have arisen about the nature of such law: is it a religious or philosophical concept; does law just mean ‘orderliness’? How does it relate to laws of nature? Have they always existed or do they ‘emerge’ during the process of evolution?

In this response to the contribution of Zuidervaart, the idea of creation order, which is an important element in the Kuyper-tradition and which Zuidervaart criticizes, is defended. However, the grounds for this defense that are offered here, are not often called upon in relation to the idea of creation order: our human experiences of suffering. They may give us a hermeneutical witness to something like “creation order.” For suffering to be experienced as suffering, a goodness has to be presupposed as ontologically prior. It is argued that, ethically speaking, restoring the goodness of creation is to be preferred above an ethic that is composed in an eschatological key. Zuidervaart’s terminology of “macrostructures” is questioned for systematic reasons but the critical impetus of the terminology is acclaimed especially for its connection to “societal principles” that may give orientation to our actions in the late-modern world.

In this introduction a brief acquaintance is offered with the idea of ‘creation order’ as articulated within the tradition of reformational philosophy, that has developed in the line of the theologian Abraham Kuyper and the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. On the one hand the idea is compared to experiences of order that we come across in the history of mankind, on the other hand it is compared to more philosophical interpretations of order expressed in the natural law tradition and in nominalism. Referring to both Dooyeweerd and Geertsema, the idea of creation order is presented as a structured-ness of reality that does not diminish concreteness and particularity – as many more universal or general ideas of order tends to do – but allows for and even calls for human freedom to respond responsibly. It is as well clearly distinguished from modern social constructivist ideas of order.