Christmas together

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Kuyper's Foreword

Foreword

Kuyper begins his foreword with this provocative statement: “The Reformed paradigm has suffered no damage greater than its deficient development of the doctrine of common grace” (3). He then goes on to lament the lack of doctrinal development that occurred in Calvinism after 1650. What happened was a “repristinating their well-worn polemic against Arminianism” (5). 

For Kuyper common grace is “deduced directly from the sovereignty of God” and is the “root and conviction for all Reformed people” (p 5). Resuscitating the doctrine of common grace, which Kuyper plans to do here, will help the believer “take hold of the plow” rather than retreat from this life. It provides the foundation for engagement with the world and so avoid spiritual and ecclesiastical isolation and so help believers exercise dominion (5).

Interview with Harry Van Dyke editor and translator of Kuyper's Ons Program

Harry Van Dyke, Professor Emeritus in History at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, and Director of the Dooyeweerd Centre for Christian Philosophy, has recently completed the translation of Abraham Kuyper's Ons program. It is now available from Christian's Library Press as Guidance for Christian Engagement in Government. I caught up with Harry and he was kind enough to answer some of my questions.


Harry, could you please tell us a little about yourself?
I was born in Rotterdam and moved with my parent to Canada at the age of 12. Translating has been my hobby ever since.

Your translation of Kuyper's Ons program has recently been published. What prompted the translation and publication of the book?
While attending the annual Kuyper Conference at Princeton Theological Seminary I heard that a translator was being sought for the book Ons program. I volunteered and was accepted on condition that I submit a time schedule. I estimated it would take me 18 months and after 20 months the job was done. I could not have done without the Internet.


What is the background to Ons program?
The Dutch historian and statesman G. Groen van Prinsterer battled his whole life against the repercussions of the French Revolution in his country and the ramifications of secular humanism in Dutch politics. Pastor Abraham Kuyper inherited his position of leadership and looked for ways of making the "anti-revolutionary" movement a more effective fighting machine. He and others gave formal organization to it by means of a national political party for which Kuyper single-handedly composed a "Program of Principles." He wrote a systematic commentary on it in weekly instalments in his daily newspaper. These articles were published in a popular edition in 1880. They helped galvanize his followers and for years was an oft consulted manual for determining what political line to follow.


In what ways is a nineteenth-century political programme relevant for today?
The book Our Program is less a political platform and more a commentary on fundamental principles for engaging in politics from a biblical standpoint. These do not change, although their formulation varies of course with the concrete situation in which one finds oneself. Meanwhile it is fascinating to see how Our Program in places immediately tries to apply those principles to concrete issues of the day. Kuyper's ideas about politics are best mirrored, I think, in the careers of Gladstone in the UK and Woodrow Wilson in the USA. It opens one's mind to a rich heritage that remains inspiring.

As is to be expected after a century and a half, quite a few, if not many, of Kuyper’s notions, suggestions and concrete proposals, even if attractive, would be unworkable today. Despite his originality and his courage to row against the current of his time, he too was very much a child of his time. Ideas that were common coin in his day—such as a romantic view of national genius, an appreciation of the wholesome effects of war, a father’s exclusive headship of the family, an approach to colonial policy as the White Man’s Burden—have long since been moderated or abandoned. Equally open to question may be the apparent ease with which Kuyper detects divine ordinances in specific empirical patterns and historical growths. I would say, therefore, that the enduring value of his musings, dreams and alternatives lies, rather, in the backdrop against which he approaches the whole area of practical politics: his biblically honed common sense, fair-mindedness, indignation at patent injustices, zeal for genuine liberty, and freshness of ideas.


You have mentioned before that North Americans sometimes confuse pluralism with sphere sovereignty. Could you expand on what you mean by this? Why is it important to distinguish the two?
There is sociological pluralism and worldview pluralism. The first distinguishes the plurality of unique structures and relationships (spheres) that compose human society and that are each subject to distinct laws and norms which must be respected (their sovereignty honored) if society is not to become unhinged. The second recognizes that humanity is divided over a plurality of religiously defined worldviews that cannot be treated with coercion but only persuasion, hence demand parity treatment or a level playing field so that each can speak up for its convictions and try to shape society in accordance with them without disadvantage or penalty. To confuse these two pluralisms is to commit a category mistake, which in this case can lead to misconstruing Kuyper's career and goals at several points.


What started your interest in Kuyper?
 It's all providential, really. I attended a Reformed day school in Holland, followed by a public high school in Ontario where I experienced the "antithesis" in outlook and learning. I then enrolled in Calvin College in Michigan where Evan Runner became my mentor. My graduate work was done in the Free University of Amsterdam, where I ended up as an instructor in the theory and philosophy of history under the guidance of Meyer Smit. Returning to Canada, our family settled in Hamilton, Ontario, and I taught history for a quarter century at Redeemer University College, an undergraduate school based on Reformed Christianity. Since my retirement I have been involved as a co-editor of the Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. Translating Kuyper texts is more or less a sideline. You should know that my published dissertation was dedicated to the memory of my grandfathers "in whose home I first saw the portraits of some of the leading anti-revolutionaries who appear on the following pages." That book, my only one, dealt with Groen van Prinsterer's lectures in 1845/46 on Unbelief and Revolution, a work that marks the birth-cry of the anti-revolutionary movement in the Netherlands. I guess you could say about me that neo-Calvinism was bred in the bone.

What would you say is the essence of neo-Calvinism?
That Christ came to redeem the world, of which humanity is a crucial part, but only a part.

There seems to be a resurgence in Kuyper studies - several major books have been published this year on or by  Kuyper. What do you think has sparked off this resurgence?
Ever since the Chicago Declaration of 1993, American evangelicals have been searching for a full-bodied "public theology," a system of thought that helps analyse the challenges posed by a secularizing public arena. One source that has now been (re)discovered is the work of Abraham Kuyper, especially his elaboration of the doctrines of common grace and the antithesis - common grace creating the possibility and the obligation to engage in the world's affairs, and the antithesis defining the manner in which to do so as a Christian alternative or "third way." As well, when Princeton celebrated the centennial of Kuyper's famous Stone Lectures on Calvinism, it expected 40 people to attend, but 400 came! Soon after, a retired banker endowed a Kuyper Chair at Princeton Seminary, where for the past ten years a student can choose an ethics course, besides Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth, in Abraham Kuyper. A Kuyper Study Center there is now equipped with many materials to which researchers are drawn for months on end.


What advice would you give to someone who wants to study more about Kuyper? 
Learn Dutch! Hah, fond hope. No, start with Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader that came out with Eerdmans and the Paternoster Press in 1998. Then read some recent publications by Richard Mouw and the well-researched biography of Kuyper by James D. Bratt. Other good books about Kuyper are by Vincent Bacote and James E. McGoldrick. Get your library to subscribe to the Kuyper Center Review that comes out of Princeton.


Are there any other projects in the pipeline that you are working on?
Four of us are doing pieces for an anthology of Kuyper's writings on education.

What do you do for fun?
Translate, play the harmonium, read historical novels, do crossword puzzles.

What music are you listening to at the moment?
Bach's trio sonatas played by blind organist Helmut Walcha.

What books are you reading now?
The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan and a novel about the War of 1812 by David Nevin.

If you were on a desert island and were allowed two luxuries what would you take?
Oh sure, a pipe organ and a New King James Version of the Bible in gilded leather.


Thanks Harry for taking the time to respond to my questions.

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Preliminaries

In 1895 Abraham Kuyper began a series of newspaper articles on common grace. They were completed in 1901 and were then published in book form as De Gemeene Gratie in 1902.13, 1903.13 and 1905.08. Now in 2013 we have the first part of volume 1 translated into English as Common Grace. In the following weeks I'll be posting a summary/ review of this excellent book.

Kuyper began these at the peak of his career, the books were published when he was prime minister. The first volume of the English translation covers the first third of the first Dutch volume (from Noah to Abraham). The first Dutch volume covers the historical sections. The complete English translation will be in ten volumes - it is proposed that the tenth will be a comprehensive index.

This volume of dedicated to Dr Rimmer De Vries. It is translated by Nelson Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas on behalf of the Abraham Kuyper Translation Project and the Acton Institute. There is a foreword by Jordan Ballor and Stephen Graybill the editors, and an introduction by Richard Mouw. The books has 29 chapters in 249 pages.

The editors note that “There is often a temptation, particularly among evangelicals, to engage in social reform without first developing a coherent social philosophy to guide the agenda” (xi) They hope that Kuyper’s idea of common grace will help to provide that social philosophy. They see common grace as the “capstone of of Kuyper’s constructive public theology” (xi).

In his introduction Mouw describes Kuyper as an activist (xxix) as well as churchman (xxiv) and  “multi-tasker” (xxiv) who did “theology on the run”(xxiv). Mouw stresses that Kuyper with his emphasis on common grace does not reject the notion of the antithesis. Kuyper was a good Calvinist and held to the doctrine of “total depravity”. Kuyper saw his common grace project as a development of Calvin, though Calvin never used the term common to preface grace, he seems to prefer the term “peculiar”. Mouw is keen to stress this continuity between Calvin and Kuyper. Indeed this is something that Kuyper acknowledged. Mouw sees Kuyper’s common grace as “a divine strategy for bringing the cultural designs of God to completion” (xxv).

Kuyperania Stop Press: Guidance for Christian Engagement in Government ed and translated by Harry van Dyke

Available here.

Abraham Kuyper’s Our Program was originally written to inform people participating in the Dutch general elections of 1879. The French Revolution was long over, but not its ideas. The influence of modern life and its secularizing influence was growing and reshaping the minds and hearts of Europeans and the rest of the Western world. What should the Dutch people believe and understand on the basis of Scripture, sound reason, and common sense?

Kuyper reminded them of their Dutch Calvinist heritage and the legacy left to them by the freedom fighters against Spanish tyranny in the sixteenth century. But Kuyper wisely concluded that they should not strive for a “Calvinist utopia” but rather for a pluralist state, one in which all groups enjoy a level playing field as they try to enlist support for their vision of a just society. So he laid out the intellectual architecture of what we now call “sphere sovereignty,” an ordering principle that takes on new and contemporary relevance as globalization reorganizes governmental and nongovernmental jurisdictions.

Kuyper’s antirevolutionary (or Christian-historical) vision attempts to remedy the failure of modernity to satisfy the human spirit and its propensity to establish monstrous tyranny. As the emancipator of the then still disenfranchised middle and lower classes in his country, Kuyper in this English translation of his seminal foray into political theory and practice takes his place beside Locke and Tocqueville as a titanic European intellect whose thought can help us understand the American experiment in religious liberty and constitutional democracy.

Calvinism: A History by D. G. Hart - an Anglocentric (re)view

Calvinism: A History
D. G. Hart
Yale: Yale University Press, 2013
xii + 339 pp, hbk, £25
ISBN 9780300148794

Publisher's website.

It was Bishop John Aylmer in his 1559 book An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subjects who identified the English roots of the Reformation he wrote: “Wycliffe begat Hus, who begat Luther”. Sadly, this Englishness of the Reformation is neglected in Hart.

Hart looks at how Calvinism has become a global faith (xii). He identifies three phases:

1. Calvinism took root in settings where church reform was tethered to efforts to establish political autonomy.
2. Calvinists adopted new models for extending their beliefs; and
3. Adjusted to the rise of secular political orders prompted by the 18th century.

Calvinism was most dominant in Switzerland, the German-speaking Palatinate, the Dutch Republic and Scotland. So, inevitably these geographical areas then have the most words. However, only a few pages are devoted to the English scene (primarily pp 35-41, 83-90). At least McNeill in his History and Character of Calvinism had a chapter on England and Ireland. David Creamans’s Reception of Calvinism in England - surprisingly absent from Hart’s bibliography - would fill in some of the gaps. Sadly, though, we still wait for the definitive history of Calvinism in England.

Hart’s take on the English Puritans is interesting and worth further investigation. Their emphasis on personal holiness and pursuit of a “vein of introspective piety” replaced the “zeal for a thoroughly reformed church” (p 84). He claims that it was then responsible for the “unintended consequence” of a “high-church sacramental Anglican reaction” (p 85). This may well explain why Jim Packer wasn't asked to write a Foreword! Here perhaps in Puritainism are the roots of a privatisation of the gospel.

Despite the title this book is more a history of Presbyterianism than Calvinism. Perhaps Hart thinks that Presbyterianism is Calvinism? Which would explain the lack of Anglican or Baptist emphases in the book. The gaps are easy to identify - Carl Trueman has already mentioned the lack of Baptists and Steven Wedgworth has highlighted the injustice done to Anglicans. There is no mention of Henry Atherton and the Sovereign Grace Union or D. Martyn Lloyd Jones his Calvinistic Methodist roots. Despite concentrating on Presbyterianism there is no mention of the formation of the URC in 1972 from the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Church in England and Wales or even Thomas Cartwright, one of the first English Presbyterians. Or if we go more up to date there is no mention of the  aberration of Calvinism that is New Calvinism (perhaps justly so). Of course, to include all of these (and more) would probably mean that a separate volume would be needed for each country and that is not Hart’s aim. This is intended to be global and an overview - and as such it works.

Rather that the Diet of Worms it seems the Reformation started with another diet: sausage eating (in 15522)! And this is where Hart begins his narrative. He is correct that “Reformed Christianity existed before Calvin became a Protestant, and so calling the churches to which he belonged Calvinistic is anachronistic” (p 20). The story then finishes with a look at the geography of global Calvinism in the 21st century.

Sadly, there is a lack of footnotes - and the notes are few (8 pages) - so we are left to guess where some of the information has come from. There is however, a useful “Further reading” section.

Hart concludes with: “If it is not responsible for the blessings of democracy, liberty, and prosperity, in its own way Calvinism’s history qualifies as remarkable” (p 304). This book too qualifies as being remarkable in that Hart has been able to survey the complicated global history of Calvinism in less than 350 pages.

Luke (Teach the Text) by R. T. France

Luke
Teach the Text Commentary Series
R. T. France
General Editors: Mark L. Strauss and John H. Walton
Grand Rapids: Baker Books
ISBN9780801092350, hbk, 416pp,

Publisher's website here.

This book is part of a new commentary series: Teaching the Text, a commentary series aimed primarily at pastors and teachers. The series is designed to provide a ready reference for teaching the biblical text. Each chapter of Luke, like others in the series, has a section in the commentary and each chapter is divided in to sections:

1. The Big Idea - as a sub heading
2. Key themes - in a side box

And then the main three sections:

3. Understanding the text
4. Teaching the text
5. Illustrating the text.

The text is in two columns and is well illustrated with colour photographs and images.

In the "Understanding the text" section each chapter is placed in its context, there is usually an outline of the text, and brief discussion of the historical and cultural background and finally, the main focus, interpretative and theological insights.

The "Teaching the text" section offers helpful ideas on applying the passage. "Illustrating the text" offers appropriate suggestion from resources such as poetry, other scriptures, films, news stories, books and object lessons. The layout makes it accessible and easy to use.

R. T. France (1933-2012) was an excellent choice to write this commentary. He has already produced a superb commentaries on Mark and Matthew. He was an astute and wise commentator letting the biblical evidence shape his views and approach. He takes the traditional view that Luke-Acts is one work composed, most likely, by Luke, a non-Jewish physician who had excellent Greek and was an associate of the apostle Paul. He sees this Gospel as being more than a "simply revised version of Mark". He thinks that dating Luke is problematic. Acts was written before the Neroian persecution ( AD 64-65), which suggests the Gospel written before that; however, Luke (in ch 19-21) seems to be familiar with the Roman siege in AD 70 and if Luke was reliant upon Mark and Mark was written in AD 60 then a later date may be possible. On balance France favours the earlier date.

Luke is a man with a message - the message of salvation. A message that was for all that were lost including the marginalised and disadvantages, even for the tax collector and Gentiles. France successfully brings out these themes. This is particularly evident in Luke 4:14-30, what France terms “Jesus’s manifesto”. Here the Big Idea is:

Back in Nazareth, Jesus sets out his mission of deliverance, but his own townspeople in Nazareth reject him because of his vision for salvation of fall people everywhere, which includes the Gentiles.

France maintains that “the Nazareth sermon plays out in miniature the whole ministry of Jesus, including his proclamation of the gospel in the power of the spirit and his ultimate rejection by his own people.” He suggests that it would be helpful to go through the quoted Isaiah passage and “point out how each of the statements there find expression in Jesus’s later ministry”. To illustrate the text he provides vignettes of Martin Luther and Gandhi, anecdotes told by Leighton Ford and John Killinger regarding Mother Teresa and D. T. Niles respectively, as well as a quote from Extreme Righteousness by Tom Hovestol.

In many ways France’s description of Luke could also apply to France and this commentary: “his aim is to write reliable, accurate history, set out in an acceptable literary form, and he went to considerable pains to ensure that he was as well informed as he could be”. The literary form of this commentary and France’s reliability and considerable pains will certainly help preachers to be better informed before they go on to preach from Luke.

Recent Kuyperania (November 2013 part 2)

Brett McCraken (Gray Matters) is interviewed on the Acton blog and discusses the influence Kuyper has had on him.

Kuyper’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty over all creation has been huge in informing my own theology of culture. I grew up with a pretty defined sense of “sacred” vs. “secular,” and like many in my generation of evangelicals, I grew up consuming mostly “Christian” music, books, movies, etc. But Kuyper argues that we should have a broader view of what God can redeem.

Literacy Licensing, LLC have released reproduction of two of Kuyper's works: Lectures on Calvinism and The Implications of Public Confession. Both at rather inflated prices. 

Kuyper's Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology has also been reproduced by Nabu Press - again at an overinflated price, particularly as it's available free as a pdf on the Internet!

Bruce Wearne has reviewed two books by Richard Mouw and Kuyper in America in Zadok

Perspectives (Spring 2013): 23-25. Bruce asks some pertinent questions at the end of his reviews:

 These books lead us to ask: Has the failure of Kuyper’s world view to ‘take hold’ among North American evangelical and reformed Christians anything to do with the traditional tendency, endorsed ambiguously by Richard Mouw, that a ‘Christian world view’ is primarily a matter of theology? Does Kuyper’s exposition of a Calvinistic world view actually provide guidance to those wanting to understand why his views have not really caught on?

Why Study History? by John Fea

Why Study History?
Reflecting on the Importance of the Past
John Fea
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013
ISBN 9780801039652
Publisher's website

What is history? Why bother studying it? John Fea has written this accessible and jargon-free book to address these questions. He helpfully focuses on “the pursuit of history as a vocation” (ix).

His aim is to provide a primer on the study of the past. Its intended audience is “Christian college students who are studying history” (ix), but it would be a shame if those were the only ones who read it.

Fea writes with wisdom and insight and provides a helpful introduction of history undergraduates and for those who would like to study history. Fea is a Professor of American history at Messiah College, he is also the author of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, and so it is inevitable that his illustrations draw from that country. This has the down-side of making it less accessible for those who study non-American history.

Particularly helpful was the discussion on providence and history. How are we to interpret history from a Christian perspective? Can we have a God-perspective on history? Some would claim to, Fea is more sceptical. God obviously intervenes in history, but can the historian be true to her calling and interpret events as God interventions? Fea believes in providence (p 67) but contra Steven Keillor, is sceptical about providential history. He looks at one contemporary popular providential history book, that of The Light and the Glory by Marshall and Manuel. These authors write a Christian history focused on the sovereignty of God (p 74). Fea maintains that “An appeal to providence in a historical narrative like that of the East River fog of 1776 fails to help us better understand what happened on that day, and one of the historian’s primary tasks is to aid our understanding of the past” (p 78). My concern is that this could lead to the historian practicing methodological naturalism but on the other hand the danger is that providence can become what is beneficial to the one describing it. (p 81) Fea is right though when he states that we need to approach history with a “sense of God’s transcendent mystery, a health does of humility, and a hope that one day soon, but not now, we will all understand the Almighty’s plan for the nations" (p 81). Again to quote Fea: “historians are not in the business of studying God; they are in the business of studying humans” (p 85).

Providence, may not then be a useful tool for the historian but there are others that Fea reveals; these include: the idea that humans are created in the image of God; the reality of human sin; an incarnational approach to the past; the role of moral reflection in historical work. There is a good emphasis on the need for the historian not to preach or moralise.

As Fea states “the Christian church is in need of a history lesson”. He obviously has a passion for history, and this passion comes through. He also has a very high regard for history for him history is: “a discipline …the art of reconstructing the past .. the exciting task of interpretation” (p 3); “more about competing perceptions of the past event or life than it is about nailing down a definitive account of a specific event of life” (p 16); “a discipline that requires interpretation, imagination, and even literary or artistic style” (p 29); “the glue that holds communities and nations together” (p 37); “like being swallowed up in an immense ocean or field and losing oneself in its midst” (p 60); “essential for producing the kind of informed citizen, with the necessary virtues and skills, needed for our society to thrive” (p 116). “Doing history is not unlike the kind of ‘disciplines’ we employ in our spiritual lives—disciplines that take the focus off of us and put it on God or others (p 132). History has the power to civilise us and to transform. Sometimes I think he overstates the case, but nevertheless he makes some excellent points.

The final chapter takes a look at what those with history degrees are doing now (adapted from here). History degrees obviously prepares people for a wide range of vocations. The epilogue is a heart-felt appeal for “historians who are willing to go into churches and listen to people” to the benefit of the historian and the church. To this end, in an appendix, he makes an appeal for a “Center for American history and a civil society”. I hope it comes to fruition.

This book will help all budding historians be better historians.



Contents
Prologue
1. What Do Historians Do?
2. In Search of a Usable Past
3. The Past Is a Foreign Country
4. Providence and History
5. Christian Resources for the Study of the Past
6. History for a Civil Society
7. The Power to Transform
8. So What Can You Do with a History Major?
Epilogue: History and the Church
Appendix: A Proposal for the Center for American History and a Civil Society
Index


For other resources on a Christian approach to history see here.