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.

If you first take a minute, an hour or a month to let go of feeling annoyed, frustrated or critical of the person or situation that may be driving you crazy, you set yourself up for much greater leadership and personal success.

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.

Your private self must become the same as your public self.

When you have nothing but love, you have everything. This means you must live as if you have nothing to hide, nothing to prove and nothing to lose.

Each of us is the best we can be when we are fully present, focused yet relaxed, curious yet non-judgmental, committed yet flexible.

In its highest form, not judging is the ultimate act of forgiveness.

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

You cannot do what's important now for you if your mind cannot accept what is happening in this present moment.

To not judge is to be like a peach. We shrink our space by giving up controlling others. Instead, we focus on controlling ourselves. We set others free to be who they are.

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.

When you are present, you are not needy.

There is one undeniable truth about our body: it only exists in the present moment.

When you are authentic without an intent to harm others, you give yourself an awesome feeling which is the feeling of self-love.

Judgments are like a snowball. They stick to you. As time rolls along, the snowball becomes a boulder and then an avalanche.

A judgment with an evil design comes about when we compare a person to our pre-conceived beliefs about what is right or wrong and then condemn that person.

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.

The present moment is the definition of eternity. It has never not been the present moment. This isn't scriptural or unscriptural - it is merely a logical fact.

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.

We cannot let go of the past enough to live in the present unless we are able to grieve our losses. We must deeply feel our emotional pain in order to accept that what is happening is not what we wanted.

The present is what is happening when you strip away all the resentments of your past and all the worries you have about your future.

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.

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

One of the greatest joys of not judging others is becoming capable of discerning God's will in a difficult situation.

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

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.

In order to live in the present, we have to learn how to feel safe even when a situation feels threatening to us.

Learning how to recognize and act on your Inner Knowing is the greatest tool for discovering what's important now by living in the present.

The Paradox of Change: People can only change when they feel accepted as they are now.

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.

To live in the present, you need to act or accept but never stay stuck.

...as long as you are motivated by the approval of others, you cannot know with confidence whether the decisions you are making in your life are what's right for you...

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.

When you do what's important now for you, you create a past that leaves you ready to handle the present. By default, the future is taking care of itself as you make decisions that are acceptable to you no matter what happens tomorrow.

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.

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.

When you are living in the present, you know what's important now for you and you act on that knowing.

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.

Non-judgment softens the heart and opens the ears. When you are non-judgmental, you are letting God participate in the decision. The Lord works miracles when you give Him space to reveal His power and glory. You become His instrument, not His replacement.

I have no doubt that Mother Teresa would gladly endorse Kuyper’s manifesto: “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!’” She knew that Jesus has conquered sin . She believed deeply in the ultimate triumph of the cross . But Mother Teresa did not see the square inches Jesus has redeemed as territory that we must now triumphantly claim as our prize . She knew that many of those square inches are presently occupied by people with stinking, rotting flesh, by grieving parents, by frightened children—the abused, the abandoned, the persecuted and the desperately poor . And she was convinced that our “claiming” those places in the name of Christ means that we must go out to join him “in the distressing disguise” as he makes the agony of the suffering ones his very own . The square inches for which Christ died are still often very lonely and desolate places . And we must be willing to take our place in those situations, knowing that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us .

For Kuyper, both of these models embody a fundamental error. The medieval perspective rightly acknowledged God's rule over all cultural activity, but it mistakenly thought that this rule was to be mediated by the church. The secularist perspective rightly wanted to liberate culture from ecclesiastical control, but it wrongly insisted that to do so was to take it out from under God's rule. Kuyper's alternative is summarized in the "not one square inch" manifesto. God's soverign rule extends over all of our lives. All that we do takes place-to use a favorite kuyperian phrase-Coram Deo before the face of God.

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.

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!

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.

This notion of the centrality of the church...could hardly be more pertinent to the perennial question of "Christian culture" and our evaluation of the great figures such as Calvin and Kuyper. Hearing the words "Christian culture" may evoke visions of godly emperors, medieval Madonnas, or Bach cantatas. None of which are really about the church. Or perhaps the phrase "Christian culture" resonates with contemporary Reformed buzzwords like "world and life view," "transformation," and "kingdom vision"---all of which, I fear, are often enlisted in the service of convincing Reformed youth that it is a mistake to think of the church as central to the Christian life.

In this essay I reflect upon this topic of Christian culture in its relation to the church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ and to the heritage and future of the Reformed Christianity so energetically championed by Calvin and Kuyper. Contrary to much contemporary Reformed wisdom--though consistent, I believe, with the spirit of what I learned from Bob Godfrey--I suggest that we have good biblical reason to speak of "Christian culture" with respect to the church and to reassert boldly the preeminence of the church for our understanding of Christian piety. A consideration of Calvin and Kuyper compels us to ponder whether we are seeking a Christianity that is primarily of our own extrapolation (in our cultural endeavors of commerce, art, science, etc.) or that is primarily of Christ's own giving (in the life, ministry, and worship of the church). The better answer, I argue, is the latter.

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.

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.)

Much less may believers retreat to their ecclesiastical corner and, satisfied with simply having faith, abandon the building of the temple of science to unbelievers, as though science does not concern them.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kuyper called upon Christians to wage a struggle against all compromises with truth in every area of life and learning.

Hence while Warfield held that it was the task of apologetics to lay the foundations for theology, Kuyper took the opposite view and regarded theology as the starting point for apologetics.

It is a symptom of spiritual poverty if the church of Christ is afraid to address the burning problems of the day… every burning problem, after all, and above all the social problem of the working classes, arises from dire needs, wretched conditions, and painful woes, and therefore calls for the healing balm on a hurting social wound. How could one conceive of a church of Christ that had no heart for such suffering and had that did not feel the urge to let her Savior shine in this area with the majesty of his redeeming love?

De mens is geroepen in zijn doen zijn eigen wezen af te spiegelen. Hij zelf is een wereld in het klein, maar het ganse heelal vindt hij in zijn boezem terug. Niet het grote, het onbegrensde, het onbereikbare is daarom zijn taak, maar het lokale, het afgeperkte, het kleine, doch dat binnen zijn bepaalde afmetingen toch altijd het grote weerkaatst.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.