Klaas Schilder’s review of Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism

 De Reformatie 12 (18 Dec 1931)

Dr. Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism, New Edition, with an Introductory Chapter by Dr. Henry Beets.
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 234 Pearl St., N.W. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1931.

This book contains the English edition of the famous and well-known Stone Lectures that Dr. Abraham Kuyper delivered in the fall of 1898 at Princeton, New Jersey. These Stone Lectures have already been introduced multiple times to our Dutch people; not long ago, Mr. Kok published an excellent edition in the Dutch language. The Stone Lectures by Dr. Kuyper have been discussed so often in the Dutch press that we can forego a proper attempt at evaluation here.

Even if one considers that Dr. Kuyper in 1898 could enjoy all the benefits that any early effort in a "beginning" of "liberating Israel" can typically exploit—both in his own positioning and in the reaction his work received from interested kindred spirits—Kuyper's Stone Lectures have nonetheless had significant importance for the judgment of later years. How fine their structure was, and how aptly the hand of the general-theologian has struck in this case, becomes even clearer when one considers how painfully later announced plans to revive Calvinism fundamentally missed the mark; here, I am thinking of names like Barth, Haitjema, and others.

Now, Dr. Beets has provided an introduction for this English edition. With great expertise, Dr. Beets offers an overview of the state of affairs in revived Calvinism across the board since 1898. An overview for which many will be grateful to Dr. Beets, even if they think differently in certain areas. For example, I see in Barthianism—and in any reserved praise of its axioms—nothing less than a radical assault on Calvinism. Only in so far as Barth and others have adopted certain well-known slogans of Calvin is there a resemblance in tone. But even then, only to a limited extent; one only needs to think of the "objectivity" element in Barthian theology. The "turn toward the objective," which attracted some, ultimately amounted to a "turning away from the objective" in the case of a man who forever forbade calling God an "object."

Nevertheless, Dr. Beets has generally provided a very fine and accurate overview of the gains Calvinism has made since 1898. His overview, which indeed presents rich possibilities for the future, becomes for us a further encouragement, when placed alongside the material content of Kuyper's lectures, to ensure that we do not allow Calvinism to bleed out in our own country—or in our external work—by, for instance, extending a hand to ethical or Barthian movements (whether inside or outside a particular group) that, while invoking Calvin's name, are laying anti-Calvinist explosives under what was painstakingly built e voto Calvini (in accordance with Calvin's will).

K.S.