@article{Schlebusch_2020, title={Democrat or traditionalist? The epistemology behind Groen van Prinsterer’s notion of political authority}, volume={56}, url={https://pubs.ufs.ac.za/index.php/tcw/article/view/527}, abstractNote={<p>The antirevolutionary statesman, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876) constructively and actively engaged as public political figure&nbsp;during the early years of the Dutch constitutional democracy. Despite&nbsp;real opposition to the constitutional revision of 1848 that brought about&nbsp;this political system, Groen, by means of this constructive engagement,&nbsp;managed to play a significant historical role in the consolidation and&nbsp;shaping of the Dutch political system. Most of the existing literature&nbsp;has attributed this to a change in his political theory occurring around&nbsp;1848, with the institutionalization of the constitutional democracy in&nbsp;the Netherlands. The general claim is that Groen accepted the new&nbsp;democratic system in a way that he would not have, had he maintained his&nbsp;pre-1848 stance regarding what constitutes legitimate political authority,&nbsp;a position characterized by a rejection of republicanism in favor of the&nbsp;res privata notion of political authority. Through an investigation of the&nbsp;primary sources in light of the intellectual traditions that shaped Groen’s&nbsp;political thought, this claim is critically evaluated. The article proposes a&nbsp;novel perspective on Groen’s notion of political authority, emphasizing&nbsp;its consistency even in the midst of the strategic and flexible political&nbsp;engagement that characterized Groen’s career.</p>}, number={3&4}, journal={Tydskrif vir Christelike Wetenskap | Journal for Christian Scholarship}, author={Schlebusch, JA}, year={2020}, month={Dec.}, pages={113-129} }