Jonathan Chaplin: A Christian-democratic Vision

Jonathan Chaplin chats après lecture at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, 2008) 

A Christian-democratic Vision: Foundations and Futures

by Jonathan Chaplin 

(2008 Kuyper Lecture, Center for Public Justice) 

     In this lecture I want to reflect on the meaning of the rather unusual hyphenated term in my title, “Christian-democratic.” This is not a reference to the movement of political parties in Europe and Latin American known as Christian Democratic, though they are instances of what I have in mind. Rather, in the term “Christian-democratic” the word “Christian” qualifies the word “democratic” adjectivally. The implication is that there is such a thing as an authentically Christian conception, and practice, of democracy. I think there is, and in this lecture I want to consider some dimensions of what a “Christian-democratic politics” might look like and of its prospects for advancement in the highly pluralistic and increasingly turbulent political orders of the twenty-first century. 

Download PDF (16 pages) of full lecture HERE

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See also philosophical essay -
‘Public Justice’ as a 
Critical Political Norm
by Jonathan Chaplin
Philosophia Reformata 72 (2007) 130–150

     ‘Public justice’ is one of the most widely-invoked of the many distinctive terms coined by Herman Dooyeweerd but, strangely, one of the least well analysed. Dooyeewerd holds that that the identity of the state is defined by a single, integrating and directing norm, the establishment of ‘public justice’. Elaborating the implications of this claim has occupied much neo-Calvinist political reflection and guided much political action inspired by that movement. Yet surprisingly little sustained theoretical reflection has been devoted in recent times to examining its inner meaning and coherence. This article offers some preliminary groundwork necessary to that theoretical project. The first part presents a close reading of Dooyeweerd’s account of public justice, identifies ambiguities and inconsistencies in that account, and suggests a reconstruction displaying its wide-ranging dynamic thrust more prominently. The second part identifies two substantial challenges confronting this account: its relative neglect of processes of democratic deliberation and advocacy, and its underdeveloped critical potentials.

Download PDF (21 pages) HERE
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See also philosophical essay -
Dooyeweerd’s Notion of Societal Structural Principles
by Jonathan Chaplin
Philosophia Reformata 60 (1995) 16–36 

     The notion of societal structural principles is the foundation stone of Dooyeweerd’s social philosophy, and of the political and legal philosophy grounded in it, yet it has so far received little detailed critical analysis or constructive reformulation among reformational scholars. The aim of this paper is the modest one of illustrating the kind of analysis still to be done if the notion is to be put to more constructive use within social theory. I shall say little about the epistemological or methodological implications of the notion, concentrating on its central ontological problematics. I shall do so by discussing the notion with special reference to its specific application to one particular societal structure, namely the state. Part I analyses Dooyeweerd’s general account of the notion of societal structural principles. I identify there a number of critical problems running through the paper, especially: a) the problem of how structural principles secure the internal unity of a societal structure; b) the distinction between the invariant character of societal structural principles, and the variable forms in which they are positivised; and c) the undeveloped link between societal structures and the structure of the human person. Part II illustrates these problems (especially the second) in relation to Dooyeweerd’s account of the structural principle of the state. Part III briefly sketches the direction of a possible reformulation of the notion of societal structural principles in the light of a more fully elaborated philosophical anthropology.

Download PDF (21 pages) HERE
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