Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 14

14 The Paradise Story as Historical Narrative

Kuyper restates that that “first chapters of Genesis must be understood as history” (127) It is important that “we have in these first chapters a narrative of events that have really taken place in this way” (127). He insists that God speaks. 

Genesis is a book of origins:

“The origin of the universe;
The origin of the angels;
The origin of all creatures;
The origin of humanity;
The origin of marriage;
The origin of sin; The origin of grace;
The origin of suffering;
The origin of the present state of the earth;
The disruption of the order of human society;
The origin of all justice and all dominion;
The origins of all that still stirs your interest, of all that surrounds you in your own personal life, and of all that goes on within your heart, are unfolded before us in this book of Genesis” (132).

Christians must stand firm on the Scriptures as their point of departure. However, it is differences in interoperation of Genesis 1-5 that keeps Christians divided. Kuyper places a high emphasis on common grace:

“It is not going too far to assert that the future of the Reformed churches and the renewed flourishing of Calvinism hangs on the question as to whether this doctrine of “common grace” will revive again with the force it once had. If this doctrine remains neglected as it has been thus far, then the Reformed churches are doomed to locking themselves into a preaching of salvation without background and without foundation” (134)

He goes on:

“And we cannot perceive clearly the relationship between those two, namely, between church and world, as long as we have not been grounded in the doctrine of ‘common grace.’” (135).