Speaking of the foundation of the systematic pursuit of knowledge in the form of scholarship, Abraham Kuyper observes, “Science is not the possession of one individual person; rather, it gradually increases in significance and stability as the fruit of the work of many people, among many nations, and over the course of centuries” (Kuyper 2020, 3:531). It is in light of this sense of the development of scholarship as a shared enterprise that we inaugurate a new journal: Neocalviniana, a review in the Neocalvinist tradition.
In this particular case, there is a definite connection to preceding work, in that Neocalviniana stands as a successor to other scholarly initiatives, notably the Kuyper Center Review and the Bavinck Review. Neocalviniana is an outgrowth of the Kuyper Conference and Prize, founded as part of the Kuyper Center at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1998 and housed at Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary since 2018. The Kuyper Center Review produced five volumes, from 2010 to 2015, and functioned as a venue to disseminate material growing out of the annual conference. Founded at the same time as the Kuyper Center Review, the Bavinck Review ran for over a decade, publishing eleven volumes from 2010 to 2020. With the transition of the Kuyper Conference from Princeton to Grand Rapids, and with the development of the programming in the intervening years, it seemed appropriate to engage on a new endeavor to provide a platform for scholarship and intellectual discourse in and about the Neocalvinist tradition.
But as Kuyper aptly notes, scholarship is a work that is pursued in community. In this way Neocalviniana is intended to serve as an instrument to promote and catalyze Neocalvinist scholarship, commentary, and community. While there are a number of projects, institutions, and publications that overlap to some degree or another, or have an affinity with various elements of Neocalvinism, there is no single initiative that is intentional in its grounding and point of departure in Neocalvinism that covers these different venues for discussion (scholarly as well as practical and intellectual) and that is based in North America. The Kuyper Conference, given its history and its resources, is a natural catalyst for such a platform, aimed at bringing together diverse institutions, communities, and scholars in common conversation.
Neocalviniana is in this sense an appropriate extension of the Kuyper Conference, providing an ongoing forum for both technical and scholarly research as well as more contemporary, timely, and salient commentary and discussion about Neocalvinism and its ongoing legacy. Neocalviniana aims to fulfill these purposes through convening a community of learning focused on Neocalvinism and its engagement with and applications for diverse traditions and disciplines. And while Neocalvinism is a movement that was birthed in Europe and has flourished in the Anglosphere, it is also a global phenomenon, naturally manifesting what Herman Bavinck called “a world-encompassing tendency” (Bavinck 1894, 6), and now enjoys adherents and devotees across the majority world. Neocalviniana likewise aims to be a global platform, welcoming contributions and consideration from all over the world.
The open-access journal will focus on scholarship on Neocalvinism and Neocalvinistic engagement with a variety of topics, disciplines, and perspectives. While figures like Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck are rightly considered founders of this movement—and continue to receive a great deal of attention—this journal is also focused on the history, context, development, and significance of the Neocalvinist tradition in all its varieties and expressions. The aspiration is for this journal to be broadly and generously Neocalvinistic in the best sense. It is also intended to be interdisciplinary. While the growing field of public theology is an organically appropriate venue for Neocalvinistic expression, this tradition also relates directly to all areas of human endeavor. So Neocalviniana welcomes theological and philosophical work as well as theologically and philosophically informed work in all academic disciplines.
Neocalviniana also plans to be a forum for expression in a variety of genres. Technical research articles remain the staple of scholarly communication, but the journal’s editorial contributors will also solicit and publish reviews, essays, translations, and other occasional pieces. Neocalviniana will also be a forum for essays and reviews applying Neocalvinist perspectives to contemporary challenges as well as shorter, less technical commentary on Neocalvinist topics, themes, and figures. In all this the journal aims to embody the Neocalvinist spirit, which as Kuyper puts it, intends “to go back to the living root of the Calvinist plant, to clean and to water it, and so to cause it to bud and to blossom once more, now fully in accordance with our actual life in these modern times, and with the demands of the times to come” (Kuyper 1931, 171).
Neocalviniana is made possible through the primary sponsorship of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary under the auspices of the De Vries Institute for Global Faculty Development and the Bavinck Institute, as well as through partnership with scholars and institutions around the world, including the Albert M. Wolters Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University, the Neo-Calvinism Research Institute at Theological University Utrecht, the Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life at Fuller Theological Seminary, and more. We are grateful to the scholars who have agreed to serve this new initiative, whether as editors or as part of the editorial advisory board. We thank these contributors and partners and welcome new ones as the journal continues and grows as a humble contribution to scholarship (or science, wetenschap), “this system of human reflection,” as Kuyper puts it, “which is a unique creation of God that possesses a calling to independently fulfill a task assigned to it by God himself” (Kuyper 2020, 3:532).