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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2023 10:33:51 GMT -5
About
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)
We seek to offer Christian insights into the pressing issues of the day from a uniquely Kuyperian viewpoint that seeks to exalt the Christian principle above all others.
Kuyperian Commentary begins with two central presuppositions: First, we are worshipping beings (homo adorans). Our identity is first and foremost a Trinitarian identity. We are worshippers of the God who is Three and One, and that worship shapes us as thinkers and doers. We are Churchmen who are loyal to Christ, the head of the Church. Second, we believe that the federal government has grown to an uncontrollable size, and thus abandoned its constitutional goal and biblical purpose. It has abandoned its constitutional goal by forsaking its Constitutional principles, and it has abandoned its biblical purpose by forsaking its Lord.
We reject the libertine or non-Christian forms of the libertarian movement. We believe that morality is transcendent, and not subject to change. An example of this is the abortion industry with its vicious attack on the God who is life-affirming. We further believe in a humble foreign policy. We believe that the Augustinian just war theory is not to be overlooked as archaic simply because we consider ourselves to be enlightened 21st century scholars. The “War on Terror” ought not to be a justification for every form and means of attack to accomplish our goals. Our adventures around the world have contributed to what scholar Chalmers Johnson referred to as “blowback.” Foreign policy deserves significant attention, and we hope to offer helpful commentary.
We hope to theologize often. The writers share similar theological commitments, which facilitate the unity of our message. We do not pretend to offer perfect solutions, or the most well-crafted critiques of systems, but rather to offer an alternative vision that is biblically consistent and faithful to the wisdom of our forefathers.
Why Abraham Kuyper?
Abraham Kuyper was a 19th century theological and political figure. His interests were broad. He was not merely satisfied with the intellectualization of ideas, but also the implementation of ideas. He was known as the “theologian of the people.” His time as a pastor gave him a unique sense of the needs of the people. Kuyper defended a localist vision. He knew that significant change did not begin at the top, but at the local level. Further, he opposed the vicious totalitarian tendencies of his culture. He even began his own political party as a way of combating these dangerous threats. Thus, in more ways than one, Kuyper represents a moral libertarian vision; a vision which is also compatible with traditional conservatism.
Abraham Kuyper and Common Grace
During the COVID era, I had the opportunity to deliver a few talks via zoom to men’s groups around the country on the legacy of Abraham Kuyper. One of the prevailing themes of these talks was a hearty focus on Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace.
Kuyper made a distinction between special grace and common grace. “Special grace” had to do with church life (ecclesiastical matters) and “common grace” focused on things pertaining to culture and society. Kuyper believed that post-reformational theology focused almost exclusively on “special grace.” The basic features of their controversies dealt with the sacraments, church architecture, church polity, and issues regarding the clergy. Now, to be clear, the Reformers did deal with issues outside the church, but because they were fighting and continued to fight church/liturgical abuses in the 16th century, those topics carried the day.
When Kuyper comes on the scene in the 19th century, he’s living in a day of cultural confusion. He doesn’t think the church is preparing men and women to do their jobs well in the culture. Thus, Kuyper develops this robust view of grace that focuses on the Christian’s contributions to society as image-bearers. If you are a painter, how do your painting skills reflect God’s grace? If you are a politician, how are you applying your Christian faith to particular agendas? You may say it was the outworking of the cobbler’s paradigm in Luther’s reformation.
Kuyper wanted to see how the Christian faith would be applied to public theology. Dutch scholars at the time thought the doctrine of common grace was absolutely ridiculous and considered worldly by many. He even argued that unbelievers contributed certain graces to society that Christians should enjoy, take and transform (Matt. 5:45; Luke 6:35).
The entire endeavor opened a new vista to public theologians seeking to incorporate biblical thought into society. If God has bestowed upon mankind good gifts, then mankind is indebted to the Creator God. There is mutuality, an exchange of blessings between God and man. God grants and men return thanks with offerings. Even unbelievers participate in such gift-giving despite their unbelief. They may assert that they are not offering such blessings, but their inventions and their opinations on the plague of transgenderism (thanks Bill Maher!) offer the church greater confidence in her labors.
Common grace does not act contrary to special grace; common grace validates special grace. It strengthens societally what is already true ecclesiastically.
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2023 13:24:47 GMT -5
Edited Exerpts of Abraham Kuyper Stone lectures-Calvinism;
Allow me, therefore, in six lectures, to speak to you on Calvinism.
1. On Calvinism as a Life-system;
2. On Calvinism and Religion;
3. On Calvinism and Politics;
4. On Calvinism and Science;
5. On Calvinism andArt; and
6. On Calvinism and the Future.
Clearness of presentation demands that in this first lecture I begin by fixing the conception of Calvinism historically. To prevent misunderstanding we must first know what we should not, and what we should, understand by it. Starting therefore from the current use of the term, I find that this is by no means the same in different countries and in different spheres of life. The name Calvinist is used in our times first as a sectarian name. This is not the case in Protestant, but in Roman Catholic countries, especially in Hungary and France. In Hungary the Reformed
Churches have a membership of some two and a half millions, and in both the Romish and Jewish press of that country her members are constantly stigmatized by the non-offlcial name of “Calvinists,” a derisive name applied even to those who have divested themselves of all traces of sympathy with the faith of their fathers. The same phenomenon presents
itself in France, especially in the Southern parts, where “Calviniste” is equally, and even more emphatically, a sectarian stigma, which does not refer to the faith or confession of the stigmatized person, but is simply put upon every member of the Reformed Churches, even though he be an atheist. George Thiebaud, known for his anti-Semitic propaganda, has at the same time revived the anti-Calvinistic spirit in France, and even in the Dreyfus-case, “Jews and Calvinists” were arraigned by him as the two anti-national forces, prejudicial to the “esprit gaulois.” Directly opposed to this is the second use of the word Calvinism, and this I call the confessional one. In this sense, a Calvinist is represented exclusively as the out-spoken subscriber to the dogma of fore-ordination. They who
disapprove of this strong attachment to the doctrine of predestination cooperate with the Romish polemists, in that by calling you “Calvinist,” they represent you as a victim of dogmatic narrowness; and what is worse
still, as being dangerous to the real seriousness of moral life. This is a stigma so conspicuously offensive that theologians like Hodge, who from fulness of conviction were open defenders of Predestination, and counted
it an honor to be Calvinists, were nevertheless so deeply impressed with the disfavor attached to the “Calvinistic name,” that for the sake of commending their conviction, they preferred to speak rather of
Augustinianism than of Calvinism.
3 Another historian, who was even more outspoken in his rationalistic sympathies, writes: “Calvinism is the highest form of development reached by the religious and political principle in the 16th century.”
4 And a third authority acknowledges that Calvinism has liberated Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, and in the Pilgrim Fathers has provided the impulse to the prosperity of the United States.
5 Similarly Bancroft, among you, acknowledged that Calvinism “has a ntheory of ontology, of ethics, of social happiness, and of human liberty, all derived from God.”
6 Only in this last-named, strictly scientific sense do I desire to speak to you on Calvinism as an independent general tendency, which from a mother-principle of its own, has developed an independent form both for our life and for our thought among the nations of Western Europe and North America, and at present even in South Africa.
The domain of Calvinism is indeed far broader than the narrow confessional interpretation would lead us to suppose.
Calvinism had entered life as a well constructed system, and had presented itself as an outcome of study.Their struggles were for the sake of the glory of God and a purified Christianity;
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2023 16:29:49 GMT -5
Thus I maintain that it is the interpretation of our relation to God which dominates every general life system, and that for us this conception is given in Calvinism, thanks to its fundamental interpretation of an immediate fellowship of God with man and of man with God. If everything that is, exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to God. The sun. moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of Nature around us, but, above all, man himself, who, priestlike, must concentrate to God the whole of creation, and all life thriving in it. And although sin has deadened a large part of creation to the glory of God, the demand,
–the ideal, remains unchangeable, that every creature must be immersed in the stream of religion, and end by lying as a religious offering on the altar of the Almighty. A religion confined to feeling or will
is therefore unthinkable to the Calvinist. The sacred anointing of the priest of creation must reach down to his beard and to the hem of his garment. His whole being, including all his abilities and powers, must be pervaded by the sensus divinitat*, and how then could he exclude his rational consciousness,
– the logos which is in him,–the light of thought which comes from God Himself to irradiate him? To possess his God for the underground world of his feelings, and in the outworks of the exertion of his will, but not in his inner self, in the very center of his consciousness, and his thought; to have fixed starting-points for the study of nature and axiomatic strongholds for practical life, but to have no fixed support in his thoughts about the Creator Himself,
–all of this was, for the Calvinist, the very denying of the Eternal Logos.
The same character of universality was claimed by the Calvinist for the sphere of religion and its circle of influence among men. Everything that has been created was, in its creation, furnished by God with an unchangeable law of its existence. And because God has fully ordained such laws and ordinances for all life, therefore the Calvinist demands that all life be consecrated to His service, in strict obedience. A religion confined to the closet, the cell, or the church, therefore, Calvin abhors.
With the Psalmist, he calls upon heaven and earth, he calls upon all peoples and nations to give glory to God. God is present in all life, with the influence of His omnipresent and almighty power, and no sphere of human life is conceivable in which religion does not maintain its demands that God shall be praised, that God's ordinances shall be
observed, and that every labora shall be permeated with its ora in fervent and ceaseless prayer. Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce. and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science, he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, he has strictly to obey his God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God. Consequently, it is impossible for a Calvinist to confine religion to a single group, or to some
circles among men. Religion concerns the whole of our human race. This race is the product of God's creation. It is His wonderful workmanship, His absolute possession. Therefore the whole of mankind must be imbued with the fear of God,–old as well as young,–low as well as high,
– not only those who have become initiated into His mysteries, but also those who still stand afar off. For not only did God create all men, not only is He all for all men, but His grace also extends itself, not only as a special grace, to the elect, but also as a common grace (gratia communis)
to all mankind. To be sure, there is a concentration of religious light and life in the Church, but then in the walls of this church there are wide open windows, and through these spacious windows the light of the Eternal
has to radiate over the whole world. Here is a city, set upon a hill, which every man can see afar off. Here is a holy salt that penetrates in every direction, checking all corruption. And even he who does not yet imbibe
the higher light, or maybe shuts his eyes to it, is nevertheless admonished, with equal emphasis, and in all things, to give glory to the name of the Lord. All partial religion drives the wedges of dualism into life, but the true Calvinist never forsakes the standard of religious monism. One supreme calling must impress the stamp of one-ness upon all human life, because one God upholds and preserves it, just as He created it all.
This brings us, without any further transition, to our fourth main question, viz, Must religion be normal or abnormal, i.e., soteriological?
The distinction which I have in mind here is concerned with the question, whether in the matter of religion we must reckon de facto with man in his present condition as normal, or as having fallen into sin, and having therefore become abnormal. In the latter case religion must necessarily assume a soteriological character. Now the prevailing idea, at present, favors the view that religion has to start from man as being normal. Not of course as though our race as a whole should conform already to the highest religious norm. This nobody affirms. Everyone knows better than
to make such an absurd statement. As a matter of fact, we meet with much irreligiousness, and imperfect religious development continues to be the rule. But precisely in this slow and gradual progress from the lowest forms to the highest ideals, the development demanded by this normal view of religion contends that it has found confirmation.
In Paradise, before the Fall, there was no Bible, and there will be no Bible in the future Paradise of glory. When the transparent light. kindled by Nature, addresses us directly, and the inner word of God sounds in our heart in its original clearness. and all human words are sincere, and the function of our inner ear is perfectly performed, why should we need a Bible?
What mother loses herself in a treatise upon the “love of our children” the very moment that her own dear ones are playing about her knee, and God allows her to drink in their love with full draughts? But, in our present condition, this immediate communion with God by means of nature, and of our own heart is lost. Sin brought separation instead, and the opposition which is manifest nowadays against the authority of the Holy Scriptures is based on nothing else than the false supposition that, our condition being still normal, our religion need not be soteriological. For of course, in that case, the Bible is not wanted, it becomes, indeed, a hindrance, and grates upon your feelings, since it interposes a book between God and your heart. Oral communication excludes writing.
When the sun shines in your house, bright and clear, you turn off the electric light, but when the sun disappears below the horizon, you feel the necessitas luminis artificiosi,i.e.,the need of artificial light, and the artificial light is kindled in every dwelling. Now this is the case in matters of religion. When there are no mists to hide the majesty of the divine light from our eyes, what need is there then for a lamp unto the feet, or a light upon the path? But when history, experience and consciousness all unite in stating the fact that the pure and full light of Heaven has disappeared, and that we are groping about in the dark, then, a different, or if you will, an artificial light must be kindled for us,–and such a light God has kindled for us in His Holy Word.
For the Calvinist, therefore, the necessity of the Holy Scriptures does not rest in ratiocination, but on the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit, on the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. Our theory of inspiration is
the product of historical deduction, and so is also every canonical declaration of the Scriptures. But the magnetic power with which the Scripture influences the soul, and draws it to herself, just as the magnet draws the steel, is not derived, but immediate All of this takes place in a manner which is not magical, nor unfathomably mystical, but clear, and easy to be understood. God regenerates us,
–that is to say, He rekindles in our heart the lamp sin had blown out. The necessary consequence of this regeneration is an irreconcilable conflict between the inner world of our heart and the world outside, and this conflict is ever the more intensified the more the regenerative principle pervades our consciousness. Now, in the Bible, God reveals, to the regenerate, a world of thought, a world of energies, a world of full and beautiful life, which stands in direct opposition to his ordinary world, but which proves to agree in a wonderful way with the new life that has sprung up in his heart. So the regenerate begins to guess the identity of what is stirring in the depth of his own soul, and of what is revealed to him in Scripture, thereby learning both the inanity of the world around him, and the divine reality of the world of the Scriptures, and as soon as this has become a certainty to him, he has personally received the testimony of the Holy Spirit.
Everything that is in him thirsted for the Father of all Lights and Spirits.
Outside the Scripture, he discovered only vague shadows. But now as he looked upward, through the prism of the Scriptures, he rediscovers his Father and his God. For this reason he puts no shackles on science If a man wants to criticize, let him criticize. Such criticism even holds the promise that it will deepen our own insight into the structure of the scriptural edifice. Only no Calvinist ever allows the critic to dash out of his hand, for a moment, the prism itself which breaks up the divine ray of light into its brilliant tints and colors. No appeal to the grace bestowed inwardly, no pointing to the fruits of the Holy Ghost, can enable him to dispense with the necessitas which the soteriological standpoint of religion among sinners carries with it. As mere entities we share our life
with plants and animals. Unconscious life we share with the children, and with the sleeping man, and even with the man who has lost his reason.
That which distinguishes us, as higher beings, and as wide awake men, is our full self-consciousness, and therefore, if religion, as the highest vital function, is to operate also in that highest sphere of self-consciousness, it
must follow that soteriological religion, next to the necessitas of inward palingenesis, demands also the necessitas of an assistant light, of revelation to be kindled in our twilight. And this assistant light coming from God Himself, but handed to us by human agency, beams upon us in His holy Word.
Summing up the results of our investigations thus far, I may express my conclusion as follows. In each one of the four great problems of religion, Calvinism has expressed its conviction in an appropriate dogma and each time has made that choice which even now, after three centuries, satisfies the most ideal wants, and leaves the way open for an ever-richer development. First, it regards religion, not in an utilitarian, or eudaemonistic sense, as existing for the sake of man, but for God, and for God alone. This is its dogma of God's Sovereignty. Secondly, in religion
there must be no intermediation of any creature between God and the soul,– all religion is the immediate work of God Himself, in the inner heart. This is the doctrine of Election. Thirdly, religion is not partial but universal,–this is the dogma of common or universal grace. And, finally, in our sinful condition, religion cannot be normal, but has to be soteriological,–this is its position in the twofold dogma of the necessity of Regeneration, and of the necessitas S. Scripturae.
Having considered Religion as such, and coming now to the Church, as its organized form, or its phenomenal appearance, I shall present, inthree successive stages, the Calvinistic concept of the essence, the manifestation and the purpose of the Church of Christ upon earth.
In its essence, for the Calvinist, the Church is a spiritual organism, including heaven and earth, but having at present its center, and the starting-point for its action, not upon earth, but in heaven. This is to be
understood thus: God created the Cosmos geocentrically, i.e., He placed the spiritual center of this Cosmos on our planet, and caused all the divisions of the kingdoms of nature, on this earth, to culminate in man,
upon whom, as the bearer of His image He called to consecrate the Cosmos to His glory. In God's creation, therefore, man stands as the prophet, priest and king, and although sin has disturbed these high designs, yet God pushes them onward. He so loves His world that He has given Himself to it, in the person of His Son, and thus He has again
brought our race, and through our race, His whole Cosmos, into a renewed contact with eternal life. To be sure, many branches and leaves fell off the tree of the human race, yet the tree itself shall be saved; on its new root in Christ, it shall once more blossom gloriously. For regeneration does not save a few isolated individuals, finally to be joined together mechanically as an aggregate heap. Regeneration saves the organism, itself, of our race. And therefore all regenerate human life forms one organic body, of which Christ is the Head, and whose members are bound together by their mystical union with Him. But not before the second Advent shall this new all-embracing organism manifest itself as the center of the cosmos. At present it is hidden. Here, on earth, it is only as it were its silhouette that can be dimly discerned. In the Future, this new Jerusalem shall descend from God, out of heaven, but at present. it withdraws its beams from our sight in the mysteries of the invisible. And therefore the true sanctuary is now above. On high are both the Altar of Atonement, and the incense-Altar of Prayer; and on high is Christ, as the
only priest who, according to Melchizedek's ordinance, ministers at the Altar, in the sanctuary, before God.
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