Like a bad dream, the ideology that produced a separation of races in South Africa (i.e., apartheid) won't seem to go away. While advances are made, and the South African situation is much more complicated than the history of African-Americans, there is still a long way to go for a democratic South Africa. Not only ought evangelicals to be concerned about this issue because it touches the very pro-life ethic which makes us so outraged at the continuing horror of abortion, but because, as in our own experience with the Native Americans and African-Americans, the Bible has been used to justify a manifestly unbiblical and unchristian system. By seeing how Christians in other cultures have confused their own ethnic priorities with the kingdom of God, we are better able to see it in ourselves.
This volume is a highly readable series of lectures presented as the B. B. Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1990. A leading anti-apartheid theologian in South Africa, de Gruchy argues that "the problem in South Africa has not been Calvinism but rather, with some notable exceptions, the absence of a truly Reformed theology, one in which prophetic critique and evangelical transformation combine to serve the liberation of those crying out for life" (p. 34). Similar to the transformation of Reformed churches in America, the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa lost its doctrinal distinctiveness to an Arminian revivalism and pietism over the last two and a half centuries. "It is significant that throughout the process of attempting to legitimate apartheid and Afrikaaner nationalism, the Dutch Reformed Church made no appeal to Calvin or to the historic Reformed confessions of faith" (p. 29).
Instead, it has been those who have stood against apartheid who have appealed to the great biblical doctrines of creation, election, redemption, justification, sanctification, and eschatology. In fact, the anti-apartheid leader, Allan Boesak, declared, "I am of the opinion that I have done nothing more than place myself fairly and squarely within the Reformed tradition….As blacks, we commit ourselves to come to a truer understanding of the Reformed tradition" (p. 42).
In fact, de Gruchy demonstrates that "another more prophetic and evangelical Calvinism has existed in South Africa since the beginning of the nineteenth century," citing the London Missionary Society as an example. The first missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church were also committed to social and racial equality, but the nationalism of the nineteenth century transformed not only the Catholic countries of Europe, but the Protestant republic of South Africa as well. But, as in America, revivalism and pietism changed the theological focus that informed Protestant Christians in their social relationships. "A series of revivals in the mid-nineteenth century, largely under the leadership of the famous holiness preacher…Andrew Murray, Jr. (of Scottish descent but influenced by Dutch pietism while a student in Holland)" led Reformation Christians away from their concern for the transformation of this world into a privatized subculture. "As a result, two distinct traditions, two spiritual worlds, continue to exist in the Dutch Reformed Church: the Reformed,…and the 'evangelical-Methodist'….Yet it was under the dominance of such evangelicalism, rather than the strict Calvinism of Dort, that the Dutch Reformed Church agreed at its Synod of 1857 that congregations could be divided along racial lines" (pp. 23-24). De Gruchy even compares the Synod's rationale to contemporary church growth strategies: "Missiologically it was argued that people were best evangelized and best worshipped God in their own language and cultural setting,…somewhat akin to the church-growth philosophy of our time" (p. 24). De Gruchy is probably referring here to the idea, expressed by Donald McGavran and C. Peter Wagner, that "people like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic, or class barriers."
De Gruchy's work is so valuable, not only because it gives an unparalleled insight into the history and character of Afrikaaner religion (which is much more fundamental to the practice of apartheid than most western reporters realize), but because it offers a wider prophetic challenge to contemporary heirs of the Reformation to untangle themselves from the ideologies of the left and the right. The soundest reader will be dizzied by the questions this book raises, not only for South African apartheid, but for our own engagement in political issues: In what ways is the Bible used to justify injustice and unrighteousness in society? How do I contribute to a faith that is more cultural than Christian? We have experienced the liberating power of the gospel that was recovered by the reformers. Now, de Gruchy wants to show us how this central, ultimate event of being justified can open up possibilities to liberation of the oppressed, a liberation that is theologically sound (as opposed to much of liberation theology), biblically commanded, and refreshingly relevant. "The liberating Word of justification and the liberating Word of justice are thus brought together in Jesus Christ in such a way that while they are not confused, neither are they separated" (p. 86).
In spite of the rich insights this book offers, those of us who find Karl Barth and neo-orthodoxy short of the mark will be unhappy with some of de Gruchy's remarks about Protestant scholasticism and infrequent, but nevertheless disturbing, influences of liberation theology (for instance, sacrificing God's absolute transcendence at certain points for the sake of emphasizing his involvement in the struggle for righteousness). And yet, in view of the scope of the book and de Gruchy's over-all use of Scripture, these flaws do not disqualify this book from a wide evangelical readership. We conservative evangelicals need very much to hear the Bible challenge us through the pages of Liberating Reformed Theology.
