This edited volume presents some proceedings of an international conference held in Rome in 2014 as well as some additional contributions. Consisting of fifteen chapters, including an editorial introduction, the contents of this volume are organised into sections dealing with ‘Scripture and Tradition’, ‘Theological Interaction with the (Modern) World’, ‘Christian Ethics and Moral Theology’, ‘Worship’ and ‘Constructive Theological Engagement’. The volume is a welcome addition to scholarship that compares as well as constructively engages neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism.

Neo-Calvinism is a theological tradition arising out of the Netherlands in the nineteenth century, but which includes adherents in a variety of institutional and international contexts into the present day. Associated especially with the Dutch polymaths Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), neo-Calvinism remains an active stream within the broader Reformed tradition, and one that typically is identified by its dynamic orientation to the Calvinist identity. Neo-Calvinism is both focused on retrieving and reviving fundamental Calvinist tenets but also is motivated to update and apply these convictions to contemporary challenges. In some cases this requires critical correction or adaptation of received views, and for this reason neo-Calvinism is often contested, not only within the broader Christian conversation but also within the Reformed and Presbyterian world.

Generally speaking the contributions included in this volume are characterised by charity and clarity. While all of them engage in some level of interaction between neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism, almost all of the authors come from the Protestant side of the Reformation-era divide, if not confessionally then at least in terms of academic specialisation. In his concluding essay, the neo-Calvinist philosopher and academic Richard Mouw observes that ‘many Catholic thinkers these days exhibit a genuine reluctance to allow us to participate in the celebration of God’s cosmic work of reconciliation’ (p. 277). This might be understood as another way of saying that the enthusiasm for cross-confessional theological engagement today is remarkably one-sided. The lack of Roman Catholic contributions to this volume is one bit of evidence for this. The sole exception in this regard is the chapter by Eduardo J. Echeverria, who was himself trained at neo-Calvinist institutions including the Free University of Amsterdam. Echeverria’s contribution helpfully puts into dialogue the traditional Roman Catholic understanding of doctrinal development in light of Vatican I and the Nouvelle Théologie and the view of the later neo-Calvinist theologian G. C. Berkhouer (1903–96).

The contents of this volume make clear, however, that if the current conversation between neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism has only one speaking partner, this has not always been the case. Part of the entanglement of these traditions arises from historical circumstances. The Roman Catholic episcopate was restored legally in the Netherlands in 1853, at the same time as a revival was underway among Dutch Calvinists that ultimately came to expression in, among other things, neo-Calvinism as a theological tradition and the anti-Revolutionary social movement and political party. The first platform for the anti-Revolutionary party (ARP) was published in 1879, along with extensive commentary by its leader, Abraham Kuyper. He founded the Free University of Amsterdam the following year, and was later succeeded by Herman Bavinck as professor of dogmatics (1902) as well as leader of the ARP (1905).

In 1891 Kuyper provided the opening speech at the Christian Social Congress in Amsterdam. Earlier that year Pope Leo xiii had promulgated the encyclical Rerum novarum, widely regarded as inaugurating modern Catholic social teaching. Kuyper explicitly referred to Leo’s work, and commended it to his fellow anti-revolutionaries and Reformed brethren as accurately capturing the common ground between the different ecclesial communities as related to the social question. Kuyper also served as prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905, as head of a coalition government that included the Roman Catholic party. As much as he criticised and departed from some important elements of Roman Catholic doctrine, he worked closely and successfully with a wide variety of figures from other traditions and worldviews, including the Roman Catholic priest and politician Herman Schaepman (1844–1903).

Kuyper’s practical and political ecumenism is touched on in a number of contributions in this volume, including Robert S. Covolo’s outstanding chapter, ‘Theologizing social pluralism: Catholic and neo-Calvinist approaches’ One aspect of the commonalities as well as the distinctives between the social theologies of the two traditions is the Roman Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity and the Kuyperian teaching regarding sphere sovereignty. As Covolo writes that ‘these similarities demonstrate why, for well over a century, Roman Catholics and neo-Calvinists have found themselves side by side in their mutual fight against the narrowing of our social existence to the individual-state-market grid’ (p. 195).

Most of the more historically oriented contributions to this volume are focused less on political theology and social ethics than on more traditional doctrinal topics, including insightful pieces by Koert van Bekkum on the neo-Calvinist engagement with Leo’s 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus and Hans Burger’s chapter on Bavinck’s understanding of the relationship between Scripture and tradition in contrast and dialogue with Roman Catholicism. Other noteworthy contributions include Abraham C. Flipse’s essay on neo-Calvinism and neo-Thomism on natural science, Gijsbert van den Brink on Berkhouwer’s understanding of the relationship between science and Scripture, and Andrew Kloes’s chapter on ecclesiology and politics as manifested in debates between the Belgian Roman Catholic theologian Eduard Schillebeeckx (1914–2009) and the Reformed theologian H. M. Kuitert (1924–2017).

A number of the contributions are more constructive in their approach, attempting to either find rapprochement between the traditions and some particular representatives or to apply insights from figures in these traditions to contemporary challenges. Neo-Calvinist theologians Cory B. Willson and Matthew Kaemingk have contributions that engage the realities of work and economics. The two have previously collaborated to produce an excellent study of liturgical possibilities for affirming Christians in their callings (Work and worship, 2020). Joseph H. Sherrard brings the liturgical philosophical work of James K. A. Smith (b. 1970), a professor at Calvin University, into dialogue with Joseph Ratzinger (1927–2022), raising some important points of potential correction for Smith’s work. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical on the heart and love of Christ, Dilexit nos (2024), provides even more ground for fruitful engagement between these perspectives and promises to illuminate even more correctives grounded not only in Augustine but in the broader tradition itself. The Reformed theologian Cornelis van der Kooi surveys contemporary attraction to and arguments for (and against) conversion to Rome by Protestants, while the Italian Protestant theologian and churchman Leonardo De Chirico highlights one of the figures most critical of Roman Catholicism from the broadly neo-Calvinist tradition, Cornelis Van Til (1895–1987).

This volume makes some valuable contributions to the ongoing conversation between Roman Catholicism and voices in the Reformed tradition. It will hopefully catalyse greater interest in engagement and dialogue from the Roman Catholic side. Both sides must be engaged if there is to be a true conversation rather than a monologue. Such interest might be helped by a greater attentiveness to the extent to which neo-Calvinism in general and particular neo-Calvinists in particular either are continuous with or depart from the broader catholicity of Christianity. Cory Brock’s chapter puts neo-Calvinism in conversation with neo-Thomism and problematises the nature of the relationship of these traditions not only to one another but to their older counterparts. Some serious self-reflection from neo-Calvinists about their dependence on and departures from not only Calvinism but Reformed catholicity is most welcome and urgently needed. Continuing engagement with Roman Catholicism, both in its historic as well as contemporary expressions, is an unavoidable aspect of that needed reform.