According to Dutch historian and politician Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, the primary conflict of history is the struggle between belief and unbelief. He taught that the French Revolution, with its attendant massacres and horrors, was caused by a radical philosophy of unbelief. His greatest concern was that this revolutionary philosophy had not died with the defeat of Napoleon, but lived on in the seminaries, universities, and parliaments of Europe. His public life was a protracted effort to defend Holland and the Dutch Reformed Church against further “revolutions.” The quote below is an apt reminder that all political struggles are ultimately religious in nature. Men who lead such movements either submit to the authority of God or make an idol of reason.

The [French] Revolution ought to be viewed in the context of world history. Its significance for Christendom equals that of the Reformation, but then in reverse. The Reformation rescued Europe from superstition; the Revolution has flung the civilized world into an abyss of unbelief. Like the Reformation, the Revolution touches every field of action and learning. In the days of the Reformation the principle was submission to God; in these days it is a revolt against God . . . The Revolution proceeds from the sovereignty of man; the Reformation proceeds from the sovereignty of God. The one has revelation judged by reason; the other submits reason to revealed truths. The one unleashes individual opinions; the other leads to unity of faith. The one loosens social bonds, even family ties; the other strengthens and sanctifies them. The latter triumphs through martyrs; the former maintains itself by massacres. The one ascends out of the bottomless pit and the other comes down out of heaven.1

. . . Revolution is in its entirety nothing other than the logical outcome of a systematic unbelief, the outworking of apostasy from the Gospel . . . [S]ince religion and society have the same origin, God, and the same end, man, a fundamental error in religion is also a fundamental error in politics . . . The Revolution doctrine is the religion, as it were, of unbelief. It is the negation of everything resting upon belief . . . The principle of this vaunted philosophy was Reason, and the outcome was apostasy from God and materialism.2

Footnotes:
1
Groen van Prinsterer, Lectures in Unbelief and Revolution, ed. Harry Van Dyke (Ontario: Wedge, 1989), 14; quoted in David W. Hall, The Arrogance of the Modern: Historical Theology Held in Contempt (Oak Ridge, TN: The Calvin Institute, 1997), 209.

2
Van Prinsterer, 192; Hall, 216.

article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located on Rt. 40 in Perryville, MD.