A Christian Theory of Social Institutions

Editor, Herman Dooyeweerd, A Christian Theory of Social Institutions, Magnus Verbrugge, trans. (Toronto: Paideia Press, 1986) 
Description

An English translation of Dutch jurist and philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd’s lectures on social theory at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1937, and a sturdy philosophical defense of the neo-Calvinist idea of sphere sovereignty introduced in the prior generation by Abraham Kuyper.  The volume further provides a pithy introduction to Dooyeweerd’s more complex theories of law, politics, and society set out in later books like his Encyclopedia of Legal Science, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, and Reformation and Scholasticism.   A long editorial introduction situates this work within Dooyeweerd’s system of thought.
​Table of Contents

  • Introduction by John Witte, Jr.
  • Lectures I and II: The Struggle to Define the Province of Social Science and Social Philosophy
  • Lectures III and IV: The Religious Foundations of Historical Social Philosophies
  • Lecture V: Prerequisites to a Christian Social Philosophy
  • Lecture VI: A Modal Analysis of Social Institutions and Their Interrelationships
  • Lecture VII: A Classification of Social Institutions
  • Lecture VIII: An Analysis of Undifferentiated Social Organizations 
  • Lecture IX: An Analysis of Natural Communities and of State and Church 
  • Lecture X: An Analysis of Non-Institutional Social Organizations