This was a fascinating if unsurprising piece written by one
formerly on the inside of the Dutch Calvinist and Evangelical world. One need
not agree with all of the author's views or conclusions to acknowledge that
Abraham Kuyper's ghost haunts and overshadows the Evangelical edifice that
began to emerge in the post-WWII period. While few know his name or are
familiar with his Stone Lectures at Princeton, his influence is pervasive.*
Through figures like Francis Schaeffer and Charles Colson his
teachings have become nearly ubiquitous in Evangelical circles and are now
largely assumed. As one might expect there is a spectrum to Kuyperianism and
many are in fact to the 'Right' of Kuyper. A great deal of his political
ideology was specific to his period and context and thus does not always
translate into the American setting or operate well within the confines of
American Right-wing thought. Though few in Reformed circles seem to understand
it, his teaching is actually closely related to the Vatican's Catholic Social
Teaching which emerged in the nineteenth century – also a response to both the
industrial and revolutionary age.
In other respects some of the terminology is confusing.
Kuyper speaks of Common Grace and Antithesis but uses these terms in a way
quite different than many people would understand.
Nevertheless the broad strokes of his philosophically-driven
theology all but reign supreme and if (like me) you consider Sacralism to be
one of the great theological errors of the Church Age, then Kuyper must be
ranked as one of the great destroyers of the faith, certainly over the past
century. Incidentally he died one hundred years ago in November 1920.
I've been bringing up Kuyper's connections to South African
Apartheid for years. Ironically I think it was F.N. Lee it brought the
connections to my attention in his piece on 'The Christian Afrikaners'. What he
meant for praise I took to be otherwise. Reading his piece (which was juvenile
in many respects) opened my eyes to the nature of some of the connections and
both the necessary and potential deductions of Kuyperian thought.
At the time I was also engaged in a fierce debate with a
family member who had fallen under the spell of Herman Hoeksema and his
critique of Kuyperianism. While it is on this topic that the Hoeksema-ite PRC
shines brightest, their critique also strays from Scripture. And as I can
attest when combined with the influence of Gordon Clark, the resulting product
becomes nothing short of a maddened mess.
Kuyper is a complex figure both frustrating and fascinating,
venerated by the Reformed community and yet often misunderstood. In my book he
is a villain and yet not as severe as what would come after. He is a
transitional figure, a warning of what would come – and what is yet to come.
----
*I have reported elsewhere that I read the lectures (actually
in 1998) and was disappointed and even put off by them. I was already on the
road to questioning the Calvinist narrative of the Magisterial Reformation that
I had embraced. I was still working through things. Later that year I had moved
and upon attending a small Bible church I was thrilled to find Francis
Schaeffer's How Shall We Then Live?
being utilised in the Sunday School. But even as I watched it, I had doubts –
doubts that would gnaw at me for a couple of years ultimately leading me to
break with the whole Dominionist-Sacralist tradition of which the Magisterial
Reformation is a part.
See also:
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2020/07/how-should-we-then-live-schaeffer-legacy.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-should-we-then-live-part-1-roman-age.html
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2019/11/an-example-of-kuyperian-two-kingdom.html
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2019/10/chinese-evangelicals-and-ned.html
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