Abstract
This article supplements Ximian Xu’s efforts to draw on Abraham Kuyper’s neo-Calvinism to develop a Sino-Reformed theology. It does so noting Xu’s reliance on Kuyper’s views on (i) the tempo-spatiality of theology, and (ii) the manner in which theology progresses organically through cultures across history. The article supplements Xu’s argument by probing the layer of theo-logic that undergirds both points in Kuyper’s view of theology as inherently contextual: namely, the view that theology only exists in archetypal and ectypal forms. Setting neo-Calvinism in its critical reception of this distinction, which it received from early modern Reformed scholasticism, it argues that in its past and present, neo-Calvinism has drawn on the nature of human theologising as ectypal as a fecund resource in the task of contextual theology. In this neo-Calvinist theological framework, it is possible to develop both Dutch Reformed and Sino-Reformed theologies, affirming that both are ‘pilgrim theologies’ expressing the same notion of ‘true theology.’
1 Introduction
As a theological movement, the Reformed tradition’s origins lie in multiple locations across 16th century Europe. Lacking a single, all-encompassing cultural centre, its prominent early articulations of doctrine were crafted in a range of distinct contexts: the names of Bern, Basle, La Rochelle, Edinburgh, Debrecen, Bremen, Augsburg, and Antwerp are synonymous with the various Reformed creeds and confessions of that era, each of which reflects its local context, whilst also being recognisably Reformed in theological orientation (Cochrane 1966). In 1558, a group of French Huguenot missionaries to Brazil published the Guanabara Confession, which marked the first movement of toponymic Reformed confessions beyond the continent of Europe (Feitoza 2024:243). In the present day, Reformed theology remains pluricentric and has spread far beyond its European places of origin. Latin America, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa are all sites of local appropriations of that tradition (Fergusson and Nimmo 2016).
Drawing on the works of the Dutch Reformed theologians Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, Ximian Xu has shown that Reformed theology is certainly no exception to Steven Bevans’ claim that “there is no such thing as ‘theology’; there is only contextual theology” (Xu 2022; Bevans 2002:1). (In context, of course, it should be noted that Bevans’ claim was made in a Roman Catholic setting, rather than the Reformed theological framework within which Xu has repurposed it.) Indeed, with regard to Bavinck and Kuyper, Xu has argued that their distinct branch of the Reformed tradition, neo-Calvinism, is marked by an eschewal of the idea of a deracinated, acontextual theology, which neo-Calvinism treats as an illusory abstraction. Appealing to Kuyper’s twofold admission that human theologising is bound by tempo-spatiality and that it grows organically across cultures in history, Xu has proposed using Kuyper’s Dutch neo-Calvinist contextualisation of the Reformed faith as a resource in building a Sino-Reformed theology.1
This article aims to complement Xu’s argument by focusing on a different aspect of the theo-logic that undergirds the neo-Calvinist branch of the Reformed tradition: its definition of the nature of theology as the knowledge of God, which is articulated archetypally as God’s self-knowledge, and ectypally as human knowledge concerning God. This distinction, it will be argued, plays an important role in accounting for Reformed theology’s pluricentric, locally contextualised character, alongside its simultaneous theological identity as a coherent tradition at large. By drawing upon this distinction, Bevans’ bare observation (as invoked by Xu) is nuanced somewhat: at the level of creaturely thought and speech about the divine, i.e. ectypal theology, there is indeed only ‘theology in context,’ which is to say, theologies articulated in particular places and times. In the Reformed tradition, however, this is not the only (or even the primary) way in which ‘theology’ is construed to exist. Creaturely ectypal theology is logically preceded by divine archetypal theology – a form of the knowledge of God that infinitely eludes the categories of time and space, and that is properly unknowable to creatures. Within this framework, we might restate Bevans’ Roman Catholic claim in a Reformed register: “there is no such thing as ‘theology’; there is only ectypal and archetypal theology.” To this, we might add, “among creatures, there is only ectypal theology.” Within that framework, as will be seen, the possibility of localised, contextual theology on the part of the creature assumes, as its precondition, an infinite, immediate theology-beyond-context on the part of God.
This understanding of the nature of theology was advocated by both Kuyper and Bavinck, who treated the archetype/ectype distinction as a resource for constructive (ectypal) theological thought in local contexts. In noting this, this article highlights the recent efforts of Xu and Sutanto to follow in their footsteps – with Xu drawing on the distinction to respond to current challenges in posthumanism and ai, and Sutanto providing a theological account of human cultural unity-in-diversity. Their writings, however, draw on a variant of the archetype/ectype distinction found in Bavinck that grounds human identity ectypally in relation to its archetypal Creator. This article advances a distinct, but supportive, claim: as used more fundamentally to describe the forms of the knowledge of God pertaining to God and to creatures, the archetype/ectype distinction conditions Reformed theologians to affirm that their articulations of the faith are necessarily hemmed in by a finite location in time and space (and, as such, contextually situated).
In affirming that every (ectypal) account of Reformed theology is developed somewhere and somewhen, this article aims to demonstrate the distinctiveness of Reformed theology vis-à-vis ‘theologies from below’ that affirm contextuality by treating theology in predominantly anthropogenic, radically pluralised forms – even to the point of rejecting ‘theology’ or ‘Christianity’ as meaningful singular categories.2 Rather, in following the internal theo-logic of the Reformed faith, it is incumbent on the finite creature to articulate the faith as both theologia viatorum (‘pilgrim theology’) and vera theologia (‘true theology’). Just as it was possible (and necessary) to articulate Reformed theology in localised Genevan, French, or Scottish forms in the early modern period, so it is theologically possible (and necessary) to do so Shanghai, Seoul, and São Paulo in the present day. In so far as they are pilgrim theologies grounded in true theology, these local expressions jointly constitute a singular Reformed tradition.
2 Archetype, Ectype and Conciliar Reformed theology
Reformed theology has been described elsewhere as producing,
an “open” rather than a “closed” confessional tradition where the former holds a particular statement of faith to be adequate for all times and places, and the latter holds that statements of faith follow one another as a line of gospel proclamation in history, always expecting new confessions as may be required from time to time. (naudé 2014:38)
The pluricentric, conciliar nature of early modern Reformed confessions emerged as an extension of the Reformed tradition’s view of theology itself (Jonker 1994). In that tradition, theology’s central concern is the knowledge of God, which can itself be spoken of, in a manner, as epistemically pluricentric. Across its localised early confessional articulations, the nascent Reformed tradition assumed a sharp ontological distinction between Creator and creature.3 On either side of this distinction, we find discrete conceptualisations of the knowledge of God, which pertains differently to the Creator and to the creature.
In the case of the Creator, Reformed theologians came to assert this knowledge as self-knowledge. By virtue of the infinity and aseity of God, this self-knowledge is immediate, unoriginated, and exhaustive. By contrast, creaturely knowledge of God assumes, as its logical precondition, that God possesses complete self-knowledge, and that God shares from this knowledge in self-revelation directed toward the creature, who receives and appropriates that revelation in a finite location in time and space. As such, creaturely knowledge of God is contingent, mediate, and finite. It is related to divine self-knowledge dependently and receptively. It is recognisably a derivative of God’s self-knowledge, although it should not be treated as identical to that self-knowledge. Indeed, in the scholastic and neo-Calvinist branches of the Reformed tradition, God’s self-knowledge is deemed to be properly unknowable to creatures on the grounds that it is impossible for finite creatures to possess exhaustive, immediate knowledge of God.4 Axiomatically, the tradition insists that such knowledge could only be the possession of an infinite and eternal being, for which reason, creaturely knowledge should be seen as related to yet distinct from it. In Herman Bavinck’s memorable description, this means that the creature’s task in theology is “to think God’s thoughts after him and to trace their unity” (Bavinck 2003:44).5 The same claim has been made in different words by John Webster: “theology is not primarily scholarship or study (though it is that also), but reason following God’s perfect knowledge of himself and of all things” (Webster 2009:59).
In early modern Reformed theology, through the likes of Franciscus Junius, Petrus Ramus, Amandus Polanus, Petrus van Mastricht, Johannes Cocceius, Gisbertus Voetius, Edward Leigh, William Ames, and John Owen, these distinctive-yet-related forms of the knowledge of God were articulated, respectively, as archetypal and ectypal knowledge of God.6 Archetypal theology denotes God’s perfect knowledge of self and of all other things. Conceptually, ectypal theology is only possible because of the prior reality of archetypal theology. (Although it is deemed properly unknowable to humans, Reformed theology posits the existence of the archetype through appeals to Scripture,7 analogy, and abductive reasoning: in this theo-logic, although divine self-knowledge is properly unavailable to us, God must eternally and infinitely possess this knowledge of self in order for it to be shared with finite creatures in accommodated form in Scripture (Tipton 2016:299).
Just as archetypal theology concerns God’s knowledge of self and of all other things, ectypal theology ranges from the creaturely postulation of the category of archetypal theology to an ectypal articulation of the doctrine of God, an ectypal knowledge of the works of God in creation and redemption, and the ectypal articulation of wisdom and prudence in the finite creaturely realm (ectypal theology secundum quid). As with archetypal theology, ectypal theology is also a knowledge of God and all other things in the light of God. (In the Leiden Synopsis, for example, its purview is taken to include ‘physics, ethics, politics, and the other disciplines’).8 Crucially, ectypal theology is a feature of human finitude, not of human fallenness. Prelapsarian in character, it is inherently and originally good. As a form of wisdom about God and creatures, ectypal theology glorifies God by regarding itself as creaturely.
Construed as such, the necessarily ectypal character of human theological reasoning gives Reformed theology a distinct and identifiable character: it is marked by a bold confidence that God has spoken in Scripture, by a receptivity to that revelation (and a concomitant belief that this revelation can and must be appropriated by humans), and by an awareness that human appropriation of that revelation is distinct from that revelation and thus always responsive to Scripture and capable of correction in the light of it. This account of the nature of theology emerged alongside localised Reformed creeds and confessions that were both pluricentric and contingent. Consider, for example, the opening invitation to readers of the Scots Confession (1560) that readers might challenge its contents in the light of Scripture, which might lead its authors to revise its contents further:
if any man will note in this our Confession any article or sentence repugning to God’s holy word, that it would please him of his gentleness, and for Christian charity’s sake, to admonish us of the same in writ; and We of our honour and fidelity do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from his holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss. (cochrane 1966:159)
It is in this sense that a Reformed account of the nature of theology that emerged in that context, as concerning the knowledge of God (archetypally possessed by God, revealed in accommodated form in Scripture, and confessed ectypally by humans), stands as notably different to, for example, an Eastern Orthodox view of theology as a mystical knowledge of God or a Schleiermacherian view of theology as a feeling of absolute dependence on God (Naudé 2014:37). From the outset, Reformed theology’s character as a conciliar movement of localised, contextualised (Fesko 2014:33–64), and harmonisable9 confessions was theologically conditioned, in part at least, by this view of the nature and task of theology as distinct forms of the (creaturely and divine) knowledge of God.10
3 Archetype and Ectype in Neo-Calvinism
As a critical reception of early modern Reformed orthodoxy in a late modern context (Sutanto and Brock 2023:293), the neo-Calvinist tradition is also deeply marked by the archetype/ectype distinction, which was received by the likes of Bavinck and Kuyper from their Reformed scholastic forebears (following the Frenchman Junius’ contribution in the s16th century,11 the 17th century Dutch Calvinists Gisbertus Voetius, Antonius Walæus and Francisus Gomarus, and their Italian Calvinist contemporary Francis Turretin). Indeed, in comparison to much modern Reformed theology, in which claims of the incomprehensibility of God often fell out of fashion (O’Grady 2024), neo-Calvinism is notable as a modern articulation of the tradition in which the affirmation of archetypal theology has been retained – and, as will be seen, even serves as a fruitful resource for ongoing theological development.
In the Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology – a three volume work intended by Kuyper as his magnum opus – the distinction plays a paradigmatically important role.12 In volume one, Kuyper attempted to set out a vast intellectual history charting the development of elaborate, interconnected thought (giving rise both to theology as a discipline and the possibility of encyclopaedic knowledge at large). In volume two, he set out a case for theology’s intellectual coherence as an idiosyncratic form of knowledge. In volume three, finally, he described the various theological sub-disciplines, as well as the import of theology for the study of other spheres of life (the family, national life, the state, literature, science, and art). The archetype/ectype distinction features throughout these volumes: the intellectual history in volume one gives an important place to Junius in first articulating the distinction in the Reformed tradition (Kuyper 1894/1:158–161). The account of theology in volume two assumes the distinction as normative, and grounds Kuyper’s understanding of the nature and character of the creaturely theological task in it (Kuyper 1894/2:215). This volume also provides Kuyper’s account of the development of the distinction and how it gradually fell into disuse among late modern Reformed theologians, while calling for a return to its prototypical early modern version – albeit under the guise of a new term to replace the theologia archetypa label, namely ‘auto-theology’ (Kuyper 1894/2:256, 263). In volume three, Kuyper’s broad attempt to think Christianly about the family, the state, art, and so on, is also cast under the banner of the ectypal knowledge of God, the cognitio Dei ectypa (Kuyper 1894/3:210–220, 355, 368, 373, 465, 467). In the shift from volume two to volume three, we find a movement corresponding to Junius’ earlier distinction between the two ends of ectypal theology: theology that shows us the glory of God (ectypal theology’s ‘primary or highest end’), and theology for the present and future good of the elect (ectypal theology’s ‘secondary or subordinate end’), which was itself rooted in an older distinction between theology as ‘theoretical and practical’ (Junius 2014:207–10).
Herman Bavinck’s writings demonstrate the same reliance on this distinction. In ‘The Science of Holy Theology’, a lecture to mark his appointment as a professor of theology in 1883, he claimed that: “The whole of our theology is ectypal” (Bavinck 2021:46). Later, in his Reformed Dogmatics, we find the idea that if we are to know other humans, we depend on their prior self-knowledge and willingness to share from it. Analogously, Bavinck reasoned, our creaturely knowledge of God depends on the sharing of divine self-knowledge in accommodated form:
The relation of God’s own self-knowledge to our knowledge of God used to be expressed by saying that the former was archetypal of the latter and the latter ectypal of the former. Our knowledge of God is the imprint of the knowledge God has of himself but always on a creaturely level and in a creaturely way. The knowledge of God present in his creatures is only a weak likeness, a finite, limited sketch, of the absolute self-consciousness of God accommodated to the capacities of the human or creaturely consciousness. But however great the distance is, the source (principium essendi) of our knowledge of God is solely God himself, the God who reveals himself freely, self-consciously, and genuinely. (bavinck 2003:163)13
Later still, in the public lecture ‘Modernism and Orthodoxy’ (1911), he again affirmed that “Christian theology recognized that all of our thinking and speaking about God is finite, limited, and incomplete, not archetypal but ectypal, not divine but human, not adequate but analogical. We can actually better articulate what he is not than what he in fact is” (Bavinck 2021:173).
4 Archetype and Ectype as a Generative Resource
In recent times, scholars of neo-Calvinist theology have increasingly turned to this distinction as a generative conceptual resource in localised theological contexts. This development also has precedents in the early days of that tradition. In contextually late modern debates on whether theological education should take place in ecclesiastical or university settings, Kuyper himself used the archetype/ectype distinction to make the novel argument that ectypal theology is pluricentric in relation to church and academy. In his view, the ectypal nature of theology accounted for its place as a science in the academy (in which its vast complexity was honoured), as well as in a different form of the knowledge of God found among believers in the life of the church (where its simplicity was honoured). Embedded in the grammar of Reformed theology, this distinction prompted a degree of constructive theological development from Kuyper.14
More recently, Ximian Xu (2023a) and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (2024) have drawn on the archetype/ectype distinction in the development of constructive, contextualised neo-Calvinist theology. In Xu’s case, this concerns the concept of human sustainability in the technological age, which draws on a cognate use of the distinction in neo-Calvinist thought: namely, that as the image of God, the human being is the created ectype of an uncreated divine archetype (Bavinck 2005:406). As Xu notes, Reformed scholastic theologians generally used the archetype/ectype distinction within the context of theological prolegomena, where it served to articulate the possibility of true theology (vera theologia) in view of the ontological and epistemic gulf that separates Creator and creature. However, in that period, Francis Turretin extended the distinction into the realm of theological anthropology, arguing that God and human beings correspond as archetype and ectype (Xu 2023a:190), although the generative possibilities latent in that description went otherwise unexplored in Turretin’s work. In that light, Xu casts Herman Bavinck as reprising Turretin’s anthropology to develop a novel account of human ontology in which the human being is defined both by constancy and mutability, i.e. the human both is and becomes (Xu 2023a:191–92; cf. Eglinton 2012:114–127).15 On this basis, Xu proceeds to critique the ontology of becoming that attends trans- and posthumanist thought, which he challenges for its minimalist valuation of the constancy of human embodiment. Elsewhere, Xu has drawn on the same anthropological archetype/ectype paradigm to view artificial moral agents in relation to human moral agents, casting the former as ectype and the latter as archetype, and thus setting artificial moral agents in a Reformed theological ethical framework (Xu 2023b:642–659).
In Xu’s example, we see a recourse to the categories of archetype and ectype in addressing historically new (and culturally particular) questions: To what extent is non-technologically enhanced embodiment essential to being human? What is the relationship between the moral decision making of an ai agent and of a human? Within the schema of ectypal theology, these are considerations of theologia ectypa secundum quid (the articulation of wisdom and prudence in the creaturely realm on the basis of ectypal knowledge of God) that serve as a striking example of Junius’ own 17th century admission that “the field of [ectypal] theology is very broad and fertile” and encompasses matters both “theoretical and practical” (Junius 2014:113–114).
In God and Knowledge (2020), Gray Sutanto similarly noted a distinct archetypal/ectypal movement in Bavinck. In Bavinck’s writings, he observed, the Triune God (as three persons in one Godhead, and as the bearer of multiple names and attributes) is the archetypal unity-in-diversity to which creaturely unity-in-diversity is oriented as ectype. “In sum, for Bavinck,” Sutanto writes,
an absolute unity-in-diversity in the triune God implies a superlative organic unity-in-diversity in the bearers of his image, in the human being and in the entire human race. The archetypal unity-in-diversity obtains by perichoretic union and God’s simple essence, while the ectype finds its unity by means of ethical and natural solidarity. (sutanto 2020:36)
In his more recent monograph God and Humanity (2024), this claim is expanded constructively. There, Sutanto draws on Bavinck’s view that as humanity is an analogical ectype of the Triune God, “humanity will bear an organic shape, consisting of unity-in-diversity” (Sutanto 2024:10). In this context, Sutanto notes that Bavinck’s account of being human encompasses both individual and corporate humanity. Through this, he traces Bavinck’s view of humanity’s ectypal corporate ontology both positively and negatively. Positively, humanity was created to be an organic unity, joined by ethical bonds, rather than the mere aggregate of atomised individuals. Negatively, in this light, Sutanto shows that Bavinck treated egocentricity as the organising principle by which sin fractures human unity and corrupts human social relations (Sutanto 2024:111–113).
In an ideal sense, Sutanto argues, Bavinck envisioned this ectypal human unity-in-diversity in the command to ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ which entailed “an organically unfolding human race that would take up distinct cultures as it spreads naturally around the globe” (Sutanto 2024:123). Although this original trajectory toward unfallen cultural diversification was disrupted by sin, the diversity that emerged under those fallen conditions was nonetheless redeemable: because humans were “made for diversity across place and time,” the redemptive work of the kingdom of God demonstrates a concomitant lack of cultural uniformity and is “irreducible to a single culture” (Sutanto 2024:123). In an eschatological sense, then, Sutanto traces Bavinck’s argument that even if accelerated and spoiled by sin, cultural diversity remains present in human eschatological destiny: “Consummate human culture is not uniform, but pluriform” (Sutanto 2024:123). On this basis, Sutanto argues that the particulars of the doctrine of God “inform our understanding—however modestly—of human ontology and social relations” (Sutanto 2024:14), upon which basis he proceeds to develop a constructive account of social and ethical relations (with a distinct focus on cultural difference and race under the conditions of sin and redemption).
Across Sutanto’s monographs,16 this constructive theological work depends on a prior commitment to the archetype/ectype distinction, which affords theological categories by which to address contextually-specific social and ethical questions on unity-in-diversity regarding both Creator and creatures. (It should also be noted that in the realm of prolegomena, Sutanto (2016) has drawn on the archetype/ectype distinction in critiquing different theistic accounts of the laws of logic.) Like Xu, his constructive work demonstrates the conceptual fecundity of this distinction. (A critical evaluation of Xu’s and Sutanto’s constructive projects lies beyond the purview of this article, which aims rather at excavating the deeper theo-logic that undergirds their efforts.)
5 Ectype and the Present Good of the Elect
As described earlier, the ectypal nature of creaturely theology is a feature of finitude rather than fallenness. To reprise Bavinck’s memorable description, the task of “thinking God’s thoughts after him” is always performed by particular humans in specific times and places. Reformed scholasticism also treats the incarnate Jesus’ knowledge of God as ectypal, whilst affirming that it remains unlike the ectypal theology of other humans in so far as Jesus’ sui generis knowledge of God is both finite and perfect.17 For humans other than Jesus, the implication of Reformed theology is plain: everyone theologises imperfectly from somewhere, and nobody theologises from everywhere.18 Ectypal theology also reaches into the particular finitude that marks each individual human’s personality, receipt of grace, and progress in the discipline of theology. As such, Junius writes, it “varies among all men… at present not one man comprehends perfectly the whole form of our theology in every respect” (Junius 2014:219). (The complexity of this aspect of ectypal theology, theologia ectypa in subiecto, is apparent in the neo-Calvinist tradition, in view of J.H. Bavinck’s demonstration that the configuration of the inner life, i.e. the distinctly configured personality of an individual, is also mediated by that person’s local enculturation; J.H. Bavinck 2023:41–58). In this sense, just as every theologian is somewhere, we must also add in a related sense that every theologian is someone. Such was also true of Jesus’ (finite and perfect) ectypal theologising.
Despite this stark affirmation of the finitude that binds human theologising, the neo-Calvinist tradition remains distinct from the examples of ‘theologies from below’ mentioned earlier, in which the theological task is predominantly cast as anthropogenic, and within which the plurality (rather than the harmony) of localised theologies is accented.19 This difference is an expression of neo-Calvinism’s inherent theo-logic: theologia ectypa exists receptively and dependently toward theologia archetypa. In that sense, the inaccessibility of the archetype (to mere creatures) does not prevent the ectype from being anchored in it. Indeed, its ectypal character is defined by its archetypal referent: the infinite self-knowledge of God, made known in accommodated form in Scripture. Because of this, the scholastic and neo-Calvinist branches of the Reformed tradition insist that the finite human theologian is capable of arriving at ‘true theology’ (vera theologia). Although it is creaturely and finite, this theologising need not be merely erroneous opinions based on human speculation (theologia falsa), or a human product whose emergence is adequately explained in strictly immanent terms. Rather, ectypal theology can also be ‘true theology.’ Where it is so, it begins, by necessity, as theologia viatorum, ‘theology on the way,’ the theology of finite pilgrims during their earthly sojourn, until their faith is turned to sight in the beatific vision and their creaturely knowledge of God becomes theologia beatorum. Until then, it must strive to hold together its character as both vera theologia and theologia viatorum – the rejections of which, respectively, constitute unbelief (in theologising as though God has not spoken), and idolatry (in theologising as though speaking as God).20
In affirming the ectypal character of human theologising, the Reformed tradition commits its exponents to treating their boundness in time and space (or in theological categories perhaps more conventional to Reformed theology, in nature and history) as unavoidable, providential (in that each person’s location in nature and history is granted by God’s providence),21 and as a locus of God’s redemptive work. As such, the theo-logic of the tradition affirms that in the here and now, every pilgrim theologises from a particular point in time and space, as a unique individual, and does so by faith that will later become sight.
As described earlier, the function of ectypal theology between volumes two and three of Kuyper’s Encyclopedia mirrors Junius’ earlier distinction between the primary and secondary ends of ectypal theology: namely, the glorification of God, and the good of the elect in the present and future. Although this notion of future good concerns the heavenly theologia visionis, which is perfect but never complete (because the finite cannot contain the infinite), the notion of present good was handled by Kuyper with regard to the postlapsarian realities of family, state, art, culture, and so on. In theologia ectypa secundum quid, finite theological reasoning handles the (no less finite) spheres of our fallen creaturely domain.
In Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (1999), for example, we find him developing a neo-Calvinist account of the state in an ideal sense – a topic dealt with in volume three of the Encyclopedia under the long shadow of the cognitio Dei ectypa (Kuyper 1894/3:328–330). This ideal account is immediately met with the recognition that the real-world application of that theory must reckon with whatever account of the state pre-exists it in any given culture: “Let us not refuse, in Europe at least, to reckon with the effects of historical conditions. It is an entirely different matter whether one puts up a new building on a free lot or whether one must restore a house which is standing” (Kuyper 1999:106). (For this reason, in Kuyper’s lecture, the development of a Calvinistic concept of the state varied in the Netherlands, Scotland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.) Different historical conditions generate culture-specific theological challenges, which in turn demand the cultivation and application of godly wisdom in contextually particular ways. In the case of the state, this is so regarding questions of ethics and social bonds. However, the same can be said with regard to the development and articulation of Reformed doctrine at large: the articulation of theological prolegomena that focuses only on the epistemological challenges raised by English Empiricism, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Scottish Common Sense Realism will be only peripherally useful in a culture deeply rooted in Laozi or Confucius, whose thoughts must be centrally engaged in setting out the epistemological foreground to the tradition’s dogmatic claims. The contemporary Indian Reformed theologian Mohan Chacko’s I Want to Know God: An Asian Catechism (2013) serves as a useful example of this model of conciliar ectypal approach at the level of catechesis: affirming his proximity to the Heidelberg and Westminster catechisms, Chacko nonetheless recognises that Asian culture generates distinct questions that European catechesis leaves unaddressed (for example, regarding assumptions on specific obligations towards one’s parents, or on connections between ethnic and religious identity) precisely because European catechisms are finite articulations of the faith in specific cultural contexts. As such, they cannot be expected to serve the present good of the elect with equal precision in every place and time.22
6 Ectype and Imitation
As noted earlier, in Reformed scholasticism, Jesus’ ectypal theology was described via the category of theologia ectypa visionis, and as such was deemed finite-yet-perfect. In the earthly life of Jesus, the tradition maintained, we see in one finite life the perfect expression of wisdom concerning God and all other things. Writing on this topic, and its consequences for the finite lives of Christians, Herman Bavinck emphasised that just as “the whole of our theology is ectypal,” that theology is also Christologically determined: “God in Christ Jesus is its glorious object” (Bavinck 2021:46; cf. van Asselt 2002:331). In this way, Bavinck emphasised that although Jesus’ incarnation granted him consubstantiality with all other humans (regardless of cultural difference), his assumption of a human nature nonetheless necessarily meant the specific finitude of life in a distinct cultural setting. “Christ himself,” Bavinck writes, “lived in the midst of his people as an Israelite” (Bavinck 2021:173). It was precisely within this finite identity that Jesus’ ectypal theology was perfect. In writings on the imitation of Christ, Bavinck pondered whether this meant that the ectypal theology of believers should follow the entirety of Jesus’ example mimetically. Van Keulen (2011) has shown that Bavinck treated this subject distinctly in his writings on dogmatics and ethics. In dogmatics, which corresponds to the category of ectypal theology held to its primary end (the glory of God), the question of imitating Christ is only minimally (explicitly) treated: in this aspect, Christians follow Christ unreservedly. In ethics, in which ectypal theology is held to its subordinate, secondary end (the present and future good of the elect), Bavinck presents a different picture. There, Jesus is presented as a culture-specific embodiment of the moral law, the shape of which was particular to his own historical circumstances and should not be mimetically repeated in every other setting: “while the virtues to which the imitation of Christ calls us are the same, circumstances may modify the application” (Bavinck 2013:438). (In context, Bavinck wrote in response to claims surrounding the First World War that because of the Sermon on the Mount, Christians should imitate Christ by adopting pacifism, which Bavinck opposed as a contextual expression of Christlikeness.) On historically and culturally contingent questions of ethics, Bavinck argued to be Christlike, a believer was no more obligated to pacifism than to remain unmarried (and refrain from parenthood), become voluntarily homeless, or die by crucifixion. In the specific context of his own life, Jesus’ practice of these things was indeed a perfect expression of the virtues that undergird them. However, the same virtues are not uniformly expressed in every context. (Hypothetically, following Bavinck’s logic, if the incarnation had taken place in a different cultural-historical setting, the particular shape of Jesus’ finite expression of perfect theologia ectypa to this secondary aim might have been different, although its primary aim would have remained constant.) This aspect of Bavinck’s thought has also been the focus of scholarly attention, primarily from Jessica Joustra, who has argued rightly that “Bavinck adds important clarification to imitation: Christ does not demand literal mimicry, rather the virtues Christ embodies in the whole of his life must be imitated according to the specific circumstances of one’s life” (Joustra 2024:22–25). With this Christologically grounded account of ectypal theology in view, the task of pursuing the present good of the elect necessarily becomes highly context specific.
7 Conclusion
At its outset, this article recognised the early historical character of Reformed theology as conciliar and locally embedded in a range of European (and in the case of the Guanabara confession, South American) contexts – a pattern that continues in the present day as the Reformed tradition is expressed in settings across East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Recognising Xu’s attempts to articulate a Sino-Reformed theology by drawing on the resources of neo-Calvinism, it began by noting, as Xu does, that Kuyper’s thought affirms the tempo-spatiality of theology, as well as its pattern of organic progress through cultures across history. Although this article does not aim to provide a direct critical engagement with Xu’s case for Sino-Reformed theology, its attempt to uncover the prolegomena to his argument is, in effect, a pre-critique: it probes the depth with which the prospect of a Sino-Reformed theology is rooted in the theo-logic inherent to the Reformed tradition. (The same might be said regarding this article’s interaction with Sutanto’s constructive work.)
By doing so, the article highlights a different layer of conceptual resource within neo-Calvinism (as a critical reception of early modern Reformed orthodoxy) that further accounts for its inherently contextualised nature: the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology. By invoking this category, which was treated normatively by Kuyper and Bavinck, the article adds an important degree of nuance to Xu’s reception of the idea that “there is only contextual theology” (à la Bevans). Applied to a Reformed framework, this is indeed true of human theologising.
When viewed via the Reformed tradition’s idiosyncratic range of ectypal categories, that affirmation gains a striking degree of acuity. For example, while affirming the inevitably contextual nature of human theologising, it allows for a conceptual distinction between the primary and secondary ends of ectypal theology that, in turn, allows Reformed theology to be both locally situated and harmonisable: in so far as they share the same primary end (the glory of God) and commitment to vera theologia (in responding dependently to Scripture), Sino-Reformed and Dutch Reformed theologies should be marked by close correspondence. At the same time, the nature of ectypal theology’s secondary end (the present good of the elect) will necessitate distinct examples of prudential judgments on a host of local issues: education, culturally variable views of family structures and gender roles, political and economic systems, questions of justice in relation to local histories, and so on.
Earlier, the article acknowledged both Junius’ 16th century claim that the purview of ectypal theology was “very broad and fertile” and encompasses matters “theoretical and practical” (Junius 2014:113–114), and the Leiden Synopsis’ assertion that this purview covers, among other things, the articulation of godly wisdom in ethics and politics (2015:39). In describing the recent attempts of Xu and Sutanto to draw on the archetypal/ectypal distinction to creative ends in the 21st century (on the back of equivalent efforts by Kuyper and Bavinck at the turn of the 20th century), my own claim regarding the distinction’s apparent fecundity is intentionally modest. Like the authors of the Leiden Synopsis, Junius hinted at ectypal theology’s capacious purview. However, his development of the latter did not deal with ai moral agents, late modern notions of race, or Confucian metaphysics and ethics. Further comparison of the Reformed scholastic and neo-Calvinist uses of the distinction may well reveal an asymmetry between them regarding the extent to which the secondary end of ecyptal theology serves as a generative resource in theological contextualisation. Regardless of this, it remains the case that while the neo-Calvinist tradition drawn on by Xu’s Sino-Reformed theology is indeed marked by a sense that theology is tempo-spatially located, and progresses organically through cultures across history, the conceptual framework that undergirds those commitments shows that it does so as the creaturely ectype of a divine archetype.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my colleagues Dr. Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (Reformed Theological Seminary) and Dr. Matthew Baines (University of Edinburgh) for their feedback on an earlier draft of this article.
Notes
In doing so, Xu provides a further example of the practice of “reading Kuyper against himself,” noting the initial complexity of drawing on Kuyper in view of the place of East Asian cultures in his writings on common grace and geopolitical imagination. See Xu, “How to make Sino-Reformed Theology Possible? Retrieving Abraham Kuyper’s Proto-Reformed Contextual Theology,” 166; cf. Eglinton, James. 2017. “Varia Americana and Race: Kuyper as Antagonist and Protagonist,” Journal of Reformed Theology 11: 65–80.
The practice of normatively describing ‘Christianities’ has a number of exponents in early Christian studies: see, for example, Ehrman, Bart. 2003. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford: Oxford University Press; and DeConick, April D. 2024. Comparing Chrisitianities: An Introduction to Early Christianity. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. In American religious history, see Brekus, Catherine A. and Gilpin, W. Clark Gilpin (eds.). 2011. American Christianities: A History of Dominance & Diversity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. In the field of World Christianity, see Phan, Peter. 2018. Asian Christianities: History, Theology, Practice. Maryknoll: Orbis Books; Kim, Heup Young; Matsuoka, Fumitaka; and Morimoto, Anri (eds.). 2011. Asian and Oceanic Christianities in Conversation: Exploring Theological Identities at Home and in Diaspora. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
See, for example, French Confession (1599) articles i-ii; Scots Confession (1560), article i; Belgic Confession (1561), articles i-iii; Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chapter 2; Savoy Declaration (1658), chapter 2.
This aspect of Reformed scholastic theology, which also gained axiomatic significance in later neo-Calvinism, is rooted in the pre-Reformation Scotistic principle of finitum non capax infiniti. See Burton, Simon. 2024. Ramism and the Reformation of Method: The Franciscan Legacy in Early Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 39.
This quote is widely attributed to the 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler, who used it in describing the study of the natural world.
See, for example, Franciscus Junius, De theologia vera (1594) and Amandus Polanus, Syntagma Theologiae Christianae (1609). For the roots of this distinction pre-Junius, see van Asselt, Willem J. 2002. “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology: Archetypal and Ectypal Theology in Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought.” Westminster Theological Journal 64:321–24.
See, for example, Kuyper’s appeal to Job 28 and Proverbs 8. Kuyper, Abraham. 1910. Dictaten dogmatiek van Dr. A. Kuyper: Locus de Sacra Scriptura, Creatione, Creaturis. Grand Rapids: J.B. Hulst, 21.
See, for example, Synopsis Purioris Theologiae / Synopsis of a Purer Theology: Latin Text and English Translation: Volume 1, Disputations 1–23, edited by Dolf te Velde and translated by Riemer A. Faber. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 39.
In 1581, Jean-François Salvart edited the Harmonia confessionum fidei, an early attempt to harmonise an array of localised Reformed confessions, alongside Lutheran and Anglican statements of faith.
On the range of competing factors at play in the development of diverse Reformed confessions – social, linguistic, cultural, and political – see Smit, Dirkie. 2011. “Trends and Directions in Reformed Theology.” Expository Times 122.7:313–326. As Muller and van Asselt have demonstrated, despite the prevalence of the archetype/ectype distinction in the Reformed tradition, a notable minority position refused to use the term ‘theology’ in reference to God’s self-knowledge. This is seen, for example, in Lucas Trelcatius and Francis Turretin, who affirmed the substance of the distinction while reserving the use of ‘theology’ for creaturely knowledge of God. Van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology: Archetypal and Ectypal Theology in Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought,” 328; Muller, Richard. 2003. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 131.
For Kuyper’s writings on Junius’ introduction of this distinction, see Kuyper, Abraham. 1894. Encyclopædie der heilige godgeleerdheid, vol. 1. Amsterdam: J.A. Wormser, 158–161. In this work, Kuyper critiqued the seventeenth century theologian Etienne Gaussen for rejecting the archetype/ectype distinction, alongside his refusal to use the terms natural/ supernatural and polemics/casuistry, which led, Kuyper claimed, to a superficial account of theology (p. 215).
The English translation of Kuyper’s Encyclopedia only contains the first 53 pages of the original first volume, and the contents of the second volume, and omits volume 3 in its entirety.
For the same analogy in Kuyper, see Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, 248: “The knowledge of man presents already the entirely sufficient analogy for the knowledge of God. With man also, the rule applies to each individual that you cannot know him in his personal existence, except he himself disclose the mystery of his inner being.”
For a critique of this constructive development within the neo-Calvinist tradition, see Schilder, Klaas. 1950. Diktaat encyclopaedie i. Kampen: Firma Brever, 6. In Schilder’s critique, the pliability of ectypal theology in Kuyper’s hands, able to encompass both the scientific study of the university scholar and the pious faith of the ordinary believer, represented a fragmented approach to the knowledge of the things of God (congitio rerum divinarum) as somewhat divorced from the knowledge of God himself (cognitio Dei).
It should also be noted that the same concept is found in Kuyper: see Dictaten dogmatiek van Dr. A. Kuyper: Locus de Sacra Scriptura, Creatione, Creaturis, 14.
In essence, God and Humanity is a book-length exposition of the workings and consequences of the following comment made in God and Knowledge: “In sum, for Bavinck, an absolute unity-in-diversity in the triune God implies a superlative organic unity-in-diversity in the bearers of his image, in the human being and in the entire human race. The archetypal unity-in-diversity obtains by perichoretic union and God’s simple essence, while the ectype finds its unity by means of ethical and natural solidarity. Here, the covenant and its federal head’s ethical union with the human race are conceived not merely as a voluntaristic special ordinance of God (though they include that). It is a special ordinance of God which preserves and respects the ontologically triune features of humanity.” (p. 36).
The incarnate Christ’s knowledge of God is taken to be sui generis, and thus distinct from the self-knowledge posited in archetypal theology, and the form of ectypal theology pertaining to other humans. Under the heading of ectypal theology, then, Jesus’ knowledge of God is treated in its own category: theologia unionis. See, for example, Leiden Synopsis 1, 33n6.
On this point, the Reformed tradition stands in the long shadow of the medieval Scotist theory of inadequate concepts. In comparison to Aquinas’ view that inadequate concepts were false, Scotus affirmed that a concept could be both inadequate and true. See Burton, Simon. 2012. The Hallowing of Logic: The Trinitarian Method of Richard Baxter’s Methodus Theologiae. Leiden: Brill, 118–126, and Ramism and the Reformation of Method: The Franciscan Legacy in Early Modernity, 293–295.
In this context, it is also important to note that theologia viatorum is oriented toward, and thus defined in relation to, its consummated form as theologia beatorum: in that sense, ectypal theology as an exercise of prudence in time is a localised, contextual anticipation of both the new creation and the beatific vision. In terms of contextual ethics, then, it is the transcendent as brought to bear on the immanent, rather than mere pragmatism-from-below. In speaking of the ‘good of the elect’ in both ‘present’ (i.e. theologia viatorum) and ‘future’ (i.e. theologia beatorum) tenses, it concerns the way in which God – as the human being’s highest good – makes himself knowable to humans in both forms of theology: now by faith (fides), and later, by sight (visio).
See, for example, Eglinton, James. 2023. “Editor’s Introduction.” In J.H. Bavinck, Personality and Worldview, 15. “A person’s worldvision is a necessary starting point in life, a location in God’s good creation, a set of home coordinates somewhere in nature and history.” The neo-Calvinist J.H. Bavinck developed a distinction between the concepts of worldview (as an objective, infinite, true and wise consideration of nature and history in toto, held only by God) and worldvision (as a subjective, creaturely, finite path into nature and history, and beyond this, toward God) in ways that implicitly assume the categories of archetype (worldview) and ectype (worldvision). One’s ectypal worldvision is an unavoidable, providentially granted starting point in the pursuit of true wisdom concerning God and the world.
In this context, see, for example William Ames’ use of the archetypal/ectypal distinction in service of ethics: van Asselt, Willem; and Abels, Paul H.A.M. 2014. “The Seventeenth Century.” In Handbook of Dutch Church History, edited by Herman J. Selderhuis, Paul H.A.M. Abels, Todd Rester, Frank van der Pol, Peter Nissen, William A. den Boer, Willem van Asselt, Aart de Groot, George Harinck, and Lodewijk Winkeler, pp. 338–339. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht.
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