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Abraham Kuyper – A Centenial Anthology
Edited by James D. Bratt; Eerdmans 1998
Rev. John Westendorp
In this periodical and in the Reformation Forum 2000 studies the name of
Abraham Kuyper keeps cropping up. Rightly so! His influence continues to
be felt. Even today one cannot fully understand the rise of the
Christian-Parent Controlled schools in Australia and New Zealand apart
from Kuyper. True, the origin of the push for such schools goes back
beyond Kuyper, but he was certainly a driving force in their
proliferation. With Kuyper came a renewed ‘all of life for Christ’
outlook that refused to divide life up into little compartments where
some areas were labelled as secular and others as religious.
Last year T&S reviewed a book about Kuyper by Peter Heslam, “Creating a
Christian Worldview”. Eerdmans, at that time, also produced a companion
volume, “Abraham Kuyper – A Centenial Reader”, edited by James D. Bratt.
Those who would actually like to read some of Kuyper’s own writings will
find this book a rich and stimulating resource.
There are some surprises that many a pew-sitters can relate to. For
example there is a chapter on Kuyper’s conversion in which we get an
insight into his background. “In the years of my youth the Church
aroused my aversion more than my affection. Having grown up in the
Church, I knew it inside out, and particularly through the way that
church life manifested itself in Leiden, I felt repulsed rather than
attracted.”
Yet Kuyper entered the ministry of the Church, even though he admitted
it was with an “unconverted, self centred soul”. There were three events
that led to a turn around in his life. The seemingly miraculous
appearance of some writings, that had he needed for his studies and that
had eluded his search, brought about the conviction that there had to be
a God. In the second phase it was the reading of a novel that broke his
own self-sufficiency and showed him the need of that God. However, it
was his contact with ardent Calvinists in his congregation that really
made the gospel come alive for him.
Dr.Bratt finds it telling that “Kuyper came to repentance by reading,
not the Bible, but a novel.” Kuyper was to become the great defender of
Christ’s lordship – that there is not a square inch of the universe of
which Christ does not say: this is mine. For him there was no neat
division of life into compartments – a trap modern Christians repeatedly
fall into – where work and sport are labelled as secular and where
worship and devotions are labelled as spiritual. But already in the role
played by that novel we see the blending of culture and religion in
Kuyper’s life.
In this ‘reader’ Bratt offers us a sampling of the various issues that
Kuyper addressed as pastor, theologian, newspaper editor, politician and
Prime Minister.
There are chapters dealing with:
- manual labour, not consigned to a ‘secular’ compartment of life, but
something ordained by God;
- with political issues, such as the situation in South Africa that
culminated in the Boer War;
- with theological matters, such as the holiness movement that led some
Christians to claim they could achieve perfection in this life;
- with contemporary cultural issues, such as society embracing Pantheism
(that God is all and all is God).
Kuyper also entered the debate on evolution but not, as Bratt says, by
invoking literalistic readings of early Genesis, nor by fantasizing
about Flood geology, but by tackling the principial framework of
evolution. “If only we could say that the Evolution-system took a stand,
at least in principle, against this physical violence and usurpation of
power – but just the opposite is true. The Evolutionary-theory, by
virtue of its ‘struggle for life’, encourages this usurpation. Its basic
law is that... the weaker and the stronger are involved in a life and
death struggle, that in this struggle the stronger must triumph...!”
Bratt has included a chapter on ‘Common Grace’. Kuyper rejected the idea
that common grace only serves to make it possible for the elect to come
to salvation. Indeed he roundly rebukes the attitude, still so common in
evangelical Christianity today, that “people focus on their own
salvation instead of on the glory of God.” Kuyper argues that if grace
is exclusively concerned about dealing with our sin and the salvation of
our souls then it operates outside of nature. On the other hand if it is
concerned also with our bodies then “all things in the world belong to
Christ and are claimed by Him.”
Kuyper, being a child of his time, can be verbose but Bratt has done a
good job of making him digestible for modern readers.
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