Abraham Kuyper Quotes

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!

He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.

When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.

The question is not if the candidate's heart is favorable to Christianity, but if he has Christ as his starting point even for politics, and will speak out His name!

Whatever 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 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.

God created hand, head, and heart; the hand for the deed, the head for the world, the heart for mysticism.

The curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.

To have faith in the Word, Scripture must not grasp us in our critical thought, but in the life of the soul.

the holy art of “giving for Jesus’ sake” ought to be much more strongly developed among us Christians. Never forget that all state relief for the poor is a blot on the honor of your savior. The fact that the government needs a safety net to catch those who would slip between the cracks of our economic system is evidence that I have failed to do God’s work. The government cannot take the place of Christian charity. A loving embrace isn’t given with food stamps. The care of a community isn’t provided with government housing. The face of our Creator can’t be seen on a welfare voucher. What the poor need is not another government program; what they need is for Christians like me to honor our savior.

Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every aspect of human life.

A charity which knows only how to give money is not yet Christian love. You will be free of guilt only when you also give your time, your energy, and your resourcefulness to help end such abuses for good, and when you allow nothing that lies hidden in the storehouse of your Christian religion to remain unused against the cancer that is destroying the vitality of our society in such alarming ways.

Sun, moon, and stars beckon people to worship the Creator—until people lose sight of the living God and begin to worship the sun, moon, and stars themselves.

Our failure is not that we chose earth over heaven: it is that we fail to see the divine in the earth, already active and working, pouring forth grace and spilling glory into our lives. Artists, whether they are professed believers or not, tap into this grace and glory. There is a "terrible beauty" operating throughout creation. If Christ announced his postresurrection reality into the darkness, even into hell, as the Bible and Christian catechism suggests, then, as theologian Abraham Kuyper put it, there is not one inch of earth that Christ does not call "Mine!

Free love may try to dissolve, and the concubinate to desecrate, the holiest tie, as it pleases; but, for the vast majority of our race, marriage remains the foundation of human society and the family retains its position as the primordial sphere in sociology.

Calvinism is an all-embracing system of principles... It is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and form that specific religious consciousness there was developed first a particular theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life.

It is impossible, Bible in hand, to limit Christ's Church to one's own little community. It is everywhere, in all parts of the world; and whatever its external form, frequently changing, often impure, yet the gifts wherever received increase our riches.

The other parties campaign for parliamentary seats, more or less. We campaign for our principles!

Knowledge (curriculum) and behavior (pedagogy) are embedded in everyone’s core beliefs about the nature of God, humanity, and the world.

The Holy Scripture is like a diamond: in the dark it is like a piece of glass, but as soon as the light strikes it the water begins to sparkle, and the scintillation of life greets us.

What is hell other than a realm in which unholiness works without restraint in body and soul?

The domain of Calvinism is indeed far broader than the narrow confessional interpretation would lead us to suppose.

That Christ's Baptism was not a mere form, but the fulfilling of all righteousness, proves that He descended into the water burdened with our sins.

No man has the right to rule over another man, otherwise such a right necessarily, and immediately becomes the right of the strongest. As the tiger in the jungle rules over the defenceless antelope, so on the banks of the Nile a Pharaoh ruled over the progenitors of the fellaheen of Egypt. Nor can a group of men, by contract, from their own right, compel you to obey a fellow-man. What binding force is there for me in the allegation that ages ago one of my progenitors made a ‘Contrat Social,’ with other men of that time? As man I stand free and bold, over against the most powerful of my fellow-men. I do not speak of the family, for here organic, natural ties rule; but in the sphere of the State I do not yield or bow down to anyone, who is man, as I am.

Every State-formation, every assertion of the power of the magistrate, every mechanical means of compelling order and of guaranteeing a safe course of life is therefore always something unnatural;

Art cannot be excused from following God’s law, and art disgraces itself by seeking that freedom. Anything that cannot be put into an image or onto a canvas without demanding the sacrifice of modesty or injuring shame must simply be eschewed. Art is not autonomous. Art is one of the more refined human life expressions, and all these life expressions are organically related and stand continuously under God’s ordinance.

We believe that our salvation depends solely upon God's work in us, and not upon our testimony; and the little child with stammering lips, but wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, will precede vain scribes into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The greatest gift a church can receive is to have a group of families who take their responsibilities with such Christian seriousness that they are willing to completely alter their lifestyle to raise up disciples for Jesus Christ.

Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy.

But “To Be Near Unto God” in the midst of busy avocations yields its sweetest blessedness when it is cultivated in the face of sin and the world, as an oasis in the desert of life.

Modern science is dominated by distrust when it comes to our own deepest sense of life, and that distrust is nothing but unbelief.

it may never be said that like the state and the church, science arose because of sin and thus from an intervening grace.

all authority of governments on earth originates from the Sovereignty of God alone.

God creates history, while people create an epic or a drama, drawn either from God’s history or from unreality and pure fiction.

Though it was not right, and never can be, we understand what went on in the heart of those who sought escape from the world, in cell or hermitage, for the sake of unbroken fellowship with God. It might have been efficacious, if in withdrawing from the world they had been able to leave the world behind. But we carry it in our heart. Wherever we go it goes with us.

For, indeed, without sin there would have been neither magistrate nor state-order; but political life, in its entirety, would have evolved itself, after a patriarchal fashion, from the life of the family.

Kuyper notes that the scholar is distinct in setting the scope of his stewardship on the mind itself. “Not merely to live,” he writes, “but to know that you live and how you live, and how things around you live, and how all that hangs together and lives out of the one efficient cause that proceeds from God’s power and wisdom.

Without the doctrine of the covenant, the doctrine of election is mutilated, and the frightening lack of the assurance of faith is the valid punishment resulting from this mutilation of the truth. If separated from the confession of the covenant, election in isolation attempts to take hold of the Holy Spirit without honoring God the Son. The Third Person in the Trinity does not allow that violation of the honor of the Second Person. Christ himself testified that the Holy Spirit “will take what is mine and declare it to you” [John 16:14]. Anyone who presumes to trample upon this divine ordinance will not escape the severe anguish with which this unshakeable ordinance wreaks its misery of soul.

When God says to me, “obey,” then I humbly bow my head, without compromising in the least my personal dignity, as a man.

A society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.

A political theory that pays no attention to the reality of sin . . . remains stillborn; it is a rarefied abstraction that fails to take real life into account.

Todo aquele que, movendo-se no finito, torna-se consciente da existência de algo Infinito, deve formar uma concepção da relação que existe entre ambos. Aqui duas possibilidades se apresentam. Ou o Infinito se revela ao homem, e por meio dessa revelação desvela a relação realmente existente; ou o Infinito permanece mudo e silencioso, tendo o próprio homem que adivinhar, conjecturar e representar para si mesmo essa relação mediante sua imaginação; isto é, de uma maneira artificial. A primeira possibilidade é a posição cristã. Havendo o Infinito, outrora, falado, muitas vezes e de muitas maneiras, nos tempos passados, pelos profetas, nestes últimos dias, nos falou pelo Filho – sendo este Filho não um mistério silencioso, mas a Palavra eterna, criadora e expressiva. O paganismo, pelo contrário, sendo destituído da revelação, anseia pelo símbolo, criando assim seus ídolos, “que têm boca, mas não falam; têm ouvidos, mas não ouvem”. O símbolo é um elo fictício entre o Infinito invisível e o finito visível.

Entretanto, por mais infindáveis que essas representações acerca da origem do direito possam ser, a ideia comum a todas elas é que apenas por meio do Estado, visto como o instrumento da sociedade, que o direito absoluto recebe sua sanção. É lamentável que, com exceção de Von Stahl, nenhum desses homens sustentem a imutabilidade da autoridade do Estado. O cetro de autoridade é atualmente brandido ora por um partido, ora por outro – Napoleão é substituído pelos Bourbons; estes são superados pelos Orleans; e deste modo forma-se a sequência daqueles que fazem de si mesmos mestres em lugar da autoridade no Estado, visto que, por ora, são os mais fortes. Portanto, comanda o Estado aquele que efetivamente toma o poder em mãos. E neste sujeito mais forte que estabelece o direito e a lei, triunfa o direito do mais forte não simplesmente de facto, mas, de semelhante modo, na teoria. Destarte, cai por terra a fronteira que separa as autoridades (como poderes designados por Deus) do povo, que, pelo mesmo Deus, são ordenados a se submeter a elas. Ambos são dissolvidos em um Estado absolutamente suficiente. O Estado toma o lugar de Deus; torna-se o poder supremo e também a fonte do direito. Os poderes superiores não mais existem por causa do pecado, porém um Estado é o mais sublime ideal da sociedade humana – um Estado, perante cuja apoteose todo joelho deve se dobrar, por meio de cuja graça somente devemos viver, e a cuja palavra devemos nos sujeitar. E quando, desse modo, destrói-se as fronteiras entre as autoridades e ele (Deus), de que elas são servas; e consequentemente destrói-se também as fronteiras entre o direito como uma ordenança divina e o direito como uma ordem do magistério, não resta nada além de um único Estado, providenciando todas as coisas, no qual todo empenho humano busca seu desenvolvimento ideal.

Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church.

Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church.

Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise : 'Have dominion over them.' Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and, in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world.

Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise : 'Have dominion over them.' Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and, in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world.

Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise : 'Have dominion over them.' Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and, in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world.

Especially in its antithesis to Anabaptism Calvinism exhibits itself in bold relief. For Anabaptism adopted the opposite method, and in its effort to evade the world it confirmed the monastic starting-point, generalizing and making it a rule for all believers. It was not from Calvinism, but from this anabaptistic principle, that Akosmism had its rise among so many Protestants in Western Europe. In fact, Anabaptism adopted the Romish theory, with this difference : that it placed the kingdom of God in the room of the Church, and abandoned the distinction between the two moral standards, one for the clergy and the other for the laity. For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: (1) that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions ; and (2) that the circle of baptized believers—with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God—was in duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam. Hence, on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace.

Especially in its antithesis to Anabaptism Calvinism exhibits itself in bold relief. For Anabaptism adopted the opposite method, and in its effort to evade the world it confirmed the monastic starting-point, generalizing and making it a rule for all believers. It was not from Calvinism, but from this anabaptistic principle, that Akosmism had its rise among so many Protestants in Western Europe. In fact, Anabaptism adopted the Romish theory, with this difference : that it placed the kingdom of God in the room of the Church, and abandoned the distinction between the two moral standards, one for the clergy and the other for the laity. For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: (1) that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions ; and (2) that the circle of baptized believers—with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God—was in duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam. Hence, on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace.

Finally Modernism, which denies and abolishes every difference, cannot rest until it has made woman man and man woman, and, putting every distinction on a common level, kills life by placing it under the ban of uniformity.

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.

Every science presupposes faith in self, in our self-consciousness; presupposes faith in the accurate working of our senses; presupposes faith in the correctness of the laws of thought; presupposes faith in something universal hidden behind the special phenomena; presupposes faith in life; and especially presupposes faith in the principles, from which we proceed ; which signifies that all these indispensable axioms, needed in a productive scientific investigation, do not come to us by proof, but are established in our judgment by our inner conception and given with our self-consciousness.

Every science presupposes faith in self, in our self-consciousness; presupposes faith in the accurate working of our senses; presupposes faith in the correctness of the laws of thought; presupposes faith in something universal hidden behind the special phenomena; presupposes faith in life; and especially presupposes faith in the principles, from which we proceed ; which signifies that all these indispensable axioms, needed in a productive scientific investigation, do not come to us by proof, but are established in our judgment by our inner conception and given with our self-consciousness.

This picture of a God who continues to love the creation and who expedites the means to restrain and preserve in the midst of human fallenness—this is the picture that Abraham Kuyper fleshes out in this wonderful treatise.

This is why Kuyper’s common grace has to be clearly distinguished from the notion of prevenient grace that shows up in a number of traditions, particularly Wesleyanism and Roman Catholicism. From Kuyper’s perspective, prevenient grace is a way of downplaying the extent of human depravity by positing a kind of automatic universal upgrade of those dimensions of human nature that have been corrupted by sin. To put it much too simply, the goal of prevenient grace is the upgrade; it is to raise the deeply wounded human capacities to a level where some measure of freedom to choose or reject obedience to God is made possible. Common grace, on the other hand, is for Kuyper a divine strategy for bringing the cultural designs of God to completion. Common grace operates mysteriously in the life of, say, a Chinese government official or an unbelieving artist to harness their created talents to prepare the creation for the full coming of the kingdom. In this sense, the operations of common grace—unlike those of prevenient grace—always have a goal-directed ad hoc character.

Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper referred to sin’s corrupting influence over our thinking as the noetic effects of sin. It is not that sin has killed our ability to think keenly about life, but instead, without the corrective of God’s wisdom, sin distorts our thinking and darkens our outlook on life.

The real, heavenly, invisible Church must manifest itself in the earthly Church. If not, you will have a society, but no church.

Finally Modernism, which denies and abolishes every difference, cannot rest until it has made woman man and man woman, and, putting every distinction on a common level, kills life by placing it under the ban of uniformity.

It is a sovereignty of the people therefore, which is perfectly identical with atheism. And herein lies its self-abasement. In the sphere of Calvinism, as also in your Declaration, the knee is bowed to God, while over against man the head is proudly lifted up. But here, from the standpoint of the sovereignty of the people, the fist is defiantly clenched against God, while man grovels before his fellowmen, tinseling over this self-abasement by the ludicrous fiction that, thousands of years ago, men, of whom no one has any remembrance, concluded a political contract, or, as they called it, “Contrat Social.

Nevertheless, in whatever form idolatrous religion appeared, precisely because it was derived from the external, and increasingly lost the factor of spiritual revelation, it could develop in no other way than in visible forms.

For whatever sets in motion societal activity originates in the intimate communal living of families in the same village or hamlet, in the same region or country.

Religion demands above all the concentration of the spirit...it is a thrusting into the unity of all things so as to come to grips in the hiddenness of the soul with the unity of the One from Whom it all comes.

...Calvinism has a sharply-defined starting-point of its own for the three fundamental relations of all human existence: viz., our relation to God, to man, and to the world. For our relation to God: an immediate fellowship of man with Eternal, independently of priest or church. For the relation of man to man: the recognition in each person of human worth, which is his by virtue of his creation after the Divine likeness, and therefore of the equality of all men before God and his magistrate. And for our relation to the world: the recognition that in the whole world the curse is restrained by grace, that the life of the world is to be honored in its independence, and that we must, in every domain, discover the treasure and develop the potencies hidden by God in nature and in human life.

Todo en la obra de redención es personal, individual y preparado para cadapersona. Todo tiene su propia dirección, número y título. No es una tienda al pormenor donde se venden las cosas y, por lo tanto, todos pueden tomar según supropia elección. Es un palacio donde se distribuyen los dones y el don estádesignado, por lo tanto, a cada uno de aquellos para quienes están destinados. (Abraham Kuyper, Gracia Particular, 87.)

Though Kuyper's views on special and common grace and sphere sovereignty are a source of difficult questions about the broader "Christian culture" issue, it is important to note that they also underline important aspects of his ecclesiology. Kuyper believed that common grace, under the lordship of the eternal Son of God, preserved this world with its natural activities and institutions. Special grace, on the other hand, under the lordship of the incarnate Son of God, bestowed saving blessing and thereby ushered in something new. The ministry of the saving grace belong particularly to the institutional church and its means of grace. The idea of sphere sovereignty, for Kuyper, indicated that the authority and activity of the church has a monopoly , as it were, over its distinctive work of ministering special , saving, recreating grace to god's people through its word, sacraments, government, and discipline. Kuyper's terms and categories may have been innovative, bu the larger idea of the church's preeminence in the outworking of Christ's redemptive work should have been familiar to those nurtured in the Reformed tradition.

What J. S. Bach gained from his Lutheranism to inform his music, what Jonathan Edwards took from the Reformed tradition to orient his philosophy, what A. H. Francke learned from German Pietism to inspire the University of Halle’s research into Sanskrit and Asian literatures, what Jacob van Ruisdael gained from his seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism to shape his painting, what Thomas Chalmers took from Scottish Presbyterianism to inspire his books on astronomy and political economy, what Abraham Kuyper gained from pietistic Dutch Calvinism to back his educational, political, and communications labors of the late nineteenth century, what T. S. Eliot took from high-church Anglicanism as a basis for his cultural criticism, what Evelyn Waugh found for his novels in twentieth-century Catholicism, what Luci Shaw, Shirley Nelson, Harold Fickett, and Evangeline Paterson found to encourage creative writing from other forms of Christianity after they left dispensationalism behind — precious few fundamentalists or their evangelical successors have ever found in the theological insights of twentieth-century dispensationalism, Holiness, or Pentecostalism. As

As Abraham Kuyper famously said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!

Sin has, in the realm of politics, broken down the direct government of God, and therefore the exercise of authority for the purpose of government, has subsequently been invested in men, as a mechanical remedy.

Sanctification does not merely inspire the soul with a desire for something higher, but it imparts to it such a disposition, tone, shade, flavor, and character that it yields to the divine law.

Self-denial is a fruit of the atonement made perfect only by the atonement. And thus, in the growing and ripening of spiritual fruit, God uses our thoughts, words, and deeds as instruments of sanctification.

There is thus no objection to the use of the term 'faith' for that function of the soul by which it attains certainty immediately or directly, without the aid of discursive demonstration. This places faith over against demonstration, but not over against knowing.

Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!

Abraham Kuyper zaait mosterd na Goudse kaas en de klompendans te Alkmaar.

In Calvinism my heart has found rest. From Calvinism have I drawn the inspiration firmly and resolutely to take my stand in the thick of this great conflict of principles.

For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: ( I ) that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions; and (2) that the circle of baptized believers– with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God–was in duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam. 11 Hence, on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace.

Lectures on Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper resists reducing diverse biblical genres to one prosaic master-truth, arguing with rhetorical flourish that “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.

It[Calvinism] is therefore a political faith which may be summarily expressed in these three theses: 1. God only– and never any creature–is possessed of sovereign rights, in the destiny of the nations, because God alone created them, maintains them by His Almighty power, and rules them by His ordinances. 2. Sin has, in the realm of politics, broken down the direct government of God, and therefore the exercise of authority for the purpose of government, has subsequently been invested in men, as a mechanical remedy. And 3. In whatever form this authority may reveal itself, man never possesses power over his fellow-man in any other way than by an authority which descends upon him from the majesty of God.

Not faith and science therefore, but two scientific systems or if you choose, two scientific elaborations, are opposed to each other, each having its own faith.

Principle must again bear witness against principle, world-view against world-view, spirit against spirit…we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power.

There is no man that seeks, and seeking finds the Scriptures, and with its help turns himself to God. But rather from beginning to end it is one ceaselessly continued action which goes out from God to man, and operates upon him, even as the light of the sun operates upon the grain of corn that lies hidden in the ground, and draws it to the surface, and causes it to grow into a stalk.

Against all such efforts the words of the Psalmist are ever in force: "In Thy light shall we see light," and also the words of Christ: "Neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomever the Son willeth to reveal him." Presently your demonstration may have a place in your theological studies of the knowledge that is revealed, and in your inferences derived from it for the subject and the cosmos; but, observation or demonstration can never produce one single milligramme of religious gold. The entire gold-mine of religion lies in the self-revelation of this central power to the subject, and the subject has no other means than faith by which to appropriate to itself the gold from this mine. He who has no certainty in himself on the ground of this faith, about some point or other in religion, can never be made certain by demonstration or argument. In this way you may produce outward religiousness, but never religion of the heart.

Indeed, man is incapable of doing any good. Are all unbelievers then wicked and repulsive men? Not at all. In our experience we find that the unbelieving world excels in many things. Precious treasures have come down to us from the old heathen civilization. In Plato you find pages that you devour. Cicero fascinates you and bears you along by his noble tone and stirs in you holy sentiments…It is not exclusively the spark of genius or the splendor of talent, which excites your pleasure in the words and actions of unbelievers, but it is often their beauty of character, their zeal, their devotion, their love, their candor, their faithfulness, and their sense of honesty. Who of us has not been put to the blush by the virtues of the heathen? It is thus a fact, that your dogma of total depravity by sin does not always tally with your experience in life. Well, my friends, by its doctrine of common grace Calvinism can hold on to both what the Bible teaches on human depravity and to what experience teaches about the virtues of the heathen.

That which is good in fallen man by the dogma of common grace

If Christianity is to be presented as the hope of the future, then it must be presented to men as a total life and world view.

If the believer's God is at work in this world, then in this world the believer's hand must take hold of the plow, and the name of the Lord must be glorified in that activity as well.

This 'regeneration' breaks humanity in two, and repeals the unity of the human consciousness… [The result is] an abyss in the universal human consciousness across which no bridge can be built.

Sin, indeed, is an absolute darkening power, and were not its effect temporarily checked, nothing but absolute darkness would have remained in and about man; but common grace has restrained its workings to a very considerable degree; also in order that the sinner might be without excuse.

Now then even the unbeliever can be of service to us as in Christ we re-undertake the original mandate given to Adam. We see now that history is a coherent process with the Cross as its center, a process in which every nation has its task, and the knowledge of which may be a blessing to every nation.

Faith gives highest assurance, where in our own consciousness it rests immediately on the testimony of God; but without this support, everything that announces itself as faith is merely a weaker form of opinion based on probability, which capitulates the moment a surer knowledge supersedes your defective evidence.

The Christian Religion and Paganism do not stand related to each other as the higher and lower forms of development of the same thing; but the Christian religion is the highest form of development natural theology was capable of along the positive line; while all paganism is a development of that selfsame natural theology in the negative direction.

One desire has been the ruling passion of my life. One high motive has acted like a spur upon my mind and soul. And sooner than that I should seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon me, let the breath of life fail me. It is this: That in spite of all worldly opposition, God's holy ordinances shall be established again in the home, the school and in the State for the good of the people; to carve as it were into the conscience of the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which Bible and Creation bear witness, until the nation pays homage again to God.

At no single point of the way is there place, therefore, for a support derived from demonstration or reasoning…What God Himself does not bear witness to in your soul personally (not mystically-absolutely, but through the Scriptures) can never be known and confessed by you as Divine. Finite reasoning can never obtain the infinite as its result. If God then withdraws Himself, if in the soul of men He bears no more witness to the truth of His Word, men can no longer believe, and no apologetics, however brilliant, will ever be able to restore the blessing of faith in the Scripture, Faith, quickened by God Himself is invincible: pseudo-faith, which rests merely upon reasoning, is devoid of all spiritual reality, so that it bursts like a soap-bubble as soon as the thread of your reasoning breaks.

The purest confession of truth finds ultimately its starting-point in the seed of religion, which, thanks to common grace, is still present in the fallen sinner; and, on the other hand, there is no form of idolatry so low, or so corrupted, but has sprung from this same semen religionis. Without natural Theology there is no Abba, Father, conceivable, any more than a Molech ritual.

Sin unbridled would have resulted forthwith in the total degeneracy of human life. But God arrested sin in its course in order to prevent the complete annihilation of his handiwork, which naturally would have followed. By his common grace God restrains the working of sin in the natural man. By common grace he tames men as wild animals may be tamed and become attractive as domestic animals.

If special revelation assumes that in consequence of sin the normal activity of the natural principium is disturbed, this implies of itself that the natural principium has lost its competency to judge… Being as he is, he can do nothing else than dispute your special revelation every right of existence; to move him to a different judgment you should not reason with him, but change him in his consciousness; and since this is the fruit of regeneration, it does not lie with you, but with God.

Islam isolates God from the Creature, in order to avoid all commingling with the creature.

It is, indeed, by means of the cognitio specialis that the cognitio naturalis becomes useful. Only in the light of Scripture is the sinner enabled to account for the semen religionis in his heart and of the glory which is patent in the world: where the light of Scripture is hidden I know no more than 'the unknown God' even on the Areopagus.

A person endowed with faith gradually will accept Scripture; if not so endowed he will never accept it, though he should be flooded with apologetics. Surely it is our duty to assist seeking souls, to explain or remove difficulties, sometimes even to silence a mocker; but to make an unbeliever have faith in Scripture is utterly beyond man's power.

Het modernisme rust niet voordat het van de vrouw een man en van de man een vrouw heeft gemaakt, en, alle onderscheid nivellerend, het leven doodt door het onder de ban van de eenvormigheid te leggen.

Conversely, our duty is that we who confess Jesus Christ take hold of science as an instrument for propagating our faith-conviction.