On the Shoulders of Giants (IX)

Reformata, Semper Reformata has a piece on Abraham Kuyper written by Jeffrey Waddington; he begins:

At this point in our series we will turn to Abraham Kuyper. We should hasten to add that we must dismiss the suggestion that Van Til totally rejects Warfield and wholly accepts Kuyper.

Not so. We happen to believe that Kuyper is correct in recognizing that the antithesis between belief and unbelief is absolute in principle. However, he apparently failed to understand how this antithesis works itself out in history.

We have already noted that Kuyper works with what might best be labeled a territorial view of the belief/unbelief antithesis and common grace. I suspect this sets up a see-saw relationship between the two so that Kuyper must account for what looks to him like areas of neutrality or practices which are not affected by the fall. As in a war, there are zones of neutrality where enemies can meet on equal terms and come together to forge common notions of peace.