Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 10:2 (May 1948)
Article: The Social And Economic Responsibility Of The Visible Church
Author: Johannes G. Vos

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WTJ 10:2 (May 1948) p. 107

The Social And Economic Responsibility Of The Visible Church

Johannes G. Vos

I. The Church has a Social and Economic Responsibility

THAT the visible Church has a responsibility in the social and economic spheres is and always has been quite generally accepted by Calvinists. Doubtless there has been, and still is, disagreement, and also vagueness, concerning the question of precisely what that responsibility is, but that it exists has been generally accepted by adherents of the Reformed Faith. The purpose of the present article is to attempt to define and clarify the basic principles involved in the matter of the social and economic duty of the visible Church. It is not proposed to consider in any detail matters which ought to be included in the content of the Church’s testimony concerning social and economic matters, but rather to discuss the relation of social and economic matters as such to the visible Church. Thus, for example, this article will not undertake to discuss either capitalism or socialism from the Christian point of view, but will rather seek to show what is involved in the Church’s responsibility concerning whatever economic principles it believes to be sanctioned by the Word of God. The present article does not purport to be a discussion of either sociology or economics from the Christian point of view, but only a study of the relation of the visible Church, as an institution, to these realms.

The method employed will be to present, first of all, a brief grounding of the Reformed position that the visible Church has a responsibility in the social and economic spheres; then to state and criticize certain widely prevalent views concerning the social and economic duty of the Church; and finally to discuss in a positive way the witness of the visible Church in the social and economic spheres: its derivation from the

WTJ 10:2 (May 1948) p. 108

Scriptures, its formulation in creedal doctrine, its proclamation in the pulpit, its relation to the acts of ecclesiastical judicatories, and its necessary limits.

That the visible Church has a responsibility in the social and economic spheres is denied, in general, by mysticism, pietism, certain types of eschatologism, and to some extent by Barthianism or the theology of crisis. Over against all these tendencies, that responsibility is emphatically affirmed by the Reformed Faith. Wherever Calvinism has been professed in a really pure and consistent form, it has always manifested a genuine concern that the truth of special revelation be brought to bear on all realms and aspects of human life. For Calvinism is the antithesis of the anabaptistic position which would virtually limit the relationships of Christianity to the realm of special grace a...

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