You Should Know Common Grace

 My article on Common Grace is now online at the Laymen's Lounge - courtesy of Jason Estiponal. 

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 25

25 The Probationary Command

The issue of language discussed in the previous chapter is important as when Adam and Eve  were told “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” it must mean something to them. If they did not understand this prohibitory command then humans are not culpable.

Adam knew nothing theoretical about the animals, yet they were not unfamiliar to him through “life contact”. 

“Man had been created in God’s image, and thus in human measure and human form, God mirrored his own knowledge in man’s consciousness. Man knew nothing by way of study, and even less from within himself. Neither did nature as such teach him. All his knowledge in which he had been created was light from God that glowed in the mirror of his consciousness” (233).

Adam would have filed a biology assessment yet his “immediate awareness nevertheless functioned impeccably”. Kuyper thus rejects the idea that Adam’s moral self-awareness was only awakened through the eating of the tree. Sin did bring an opening of the eyes, but sin brought darkness not clarity of insight. 

 The probationary command was a “sovereign ordinance based on nothing but the sovereign determination of God’s will” (235). It stands outside of the moral world order and of the law of God, “the eating or not of the tree was such as morally indifferent”. What mattered was not the tree but “but only that God presses upon man his absolutely sovereign will and forbids him something by virtue of that sovereignty.” (235)

“[I]f Adam had continued entirely to follow the good for the sake of the good, because that good drew him and comported with the inner exhortation and sense of his heart, then he would have been a lover of virtue but of such a kind that he would have denied the God of his life in whose image he had been created. “ (236) 

The content of the command is in one sense irrelevant as Kuyper in his final sentence notes: “The more insignificant the matter, the more decisively and certainly it would be clear whether obedience was because of God’s will.” (238)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 23

23 The Basis for Further Development

Humanity was in Paradise In good relationship with God, with a “perfect flawlessness”. What hen about development? With development comes a choice: development in accordance with God;s will or against it: “a choice that would correspond to the requirement implicit in the position of image-bearer or that would go against being that image.” (212)

“Adam had to move forward. The state of simply being a product of creation could not continue. He had to move from that state to go on to that second state, which would be the product of creation together with a choice of will. Man himself working in God’s work and as his work. Or, if he chose against God, working against God’s work and therefore immediately locked in punishment and curse by the reaction of God’s sovereignty.” (213)

Original righteousness was the starting point, but only a starting point. There had to be development.

Kuyper then turns again to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He prefers to call this tree “the tree of conscience” (215).  The tree of life, the other named tree, is found in other places in the scriptures but the tree of conscience is not.

The two trees, Kuyper maintains, show a duality in humanity. The tree of conscience relates to our body and the tree of life to our soul. He rejects a trichotomous view as being “twaddle” and “simply absurd” (216); “the duality of our existence is understood as a necessary [doctrine]” (219)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 22

22 Conscience and the Covenant of Works

Kuyper sums up the argument so far:

“God created man in such a way that he saw his image reflected in man for the purpose of being able to use him as an instrument for his glory, and that he created him for that purpose: wise, holy, and righteous, i.e., not only without any defect, but also definitely at that normal point in the adult human life when that life just begins its richer unfolding.” (201)

He then poses the question of conscience. He starts by saying that it did not exist in the newly created Adam. Conscience is not a Urim and Thummin of the heart. The Reformers denied that conscience was something distinct in humans. Kuyper sees conscience not as a “capacity” or “an inner habit”, but as “an expression or activity of our consciousness.”  (202) 

This requires a certain moral awareness or knowledge of good and evil. 

Kuyper then looks at covenant. 

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 21

21 Original Righteousness

As the chapter heading suggests Kuyper is staying with the discussion on “original righteousness". According to Kuyper being righteous is "being in the right position with God” (191). The term “original” means that it “was not acquired nor later allotted to him, but was a fruit of creation itself” (191).
righteousness”. According to Kuyper being righteous is “

Kuyper then looks at “original holiness”.  In what sense is Adam holy? “Adam stood originally in holiness and fell away from that holiness by his yielding to Satan.” (195).

On the relationship of body and soul Kuyper writes:

“Our body belongs with our soul. It is not an envelope in which the soul has been inserted, but an artful instrument that is prepared by God to serve the soul, and that for each soul individually. Soul and body are organically one, and even though they are pulled asunder in death, they will nevertheless be reunited in the resurrection of the dead. The body also has abiding, enduring, eternal significance. One day the body will inherit immortality.” (197)

Kuyper acknowledges that our bodies are important: “Nevertheless, our body is only the form of our being through which we manifest ourselves in the visible [world] and through which we have fellowship with the world outside us; our actual human essence lies deeper within us and exists spiritually. ” (197)

Kuyper's Comon Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 20

20 Perfect Integrity

Still remaining on the discussion of “original righteousness” Kuyper uses the metaphor of a mirror:

“In creating man, God makes for himself a mirror in which he wants to see his own image as clearly as the nature of the creaturely makes this possible. In this case it does not depend, as it does for the mirror maker, on glass and mercury that already exist, but he forms that glass and mercury himself as he needs it for this his creation. And this is why this creation would have been unworthy of God and a failure if, as soon as Adam was completed, God had not seen in Adam, as in a mirror, the clear reflection of his own image.” 

He then turns to the question of the creation of humanity. Is it an immediate creation or or an accelerated growth process. He suggests the former. Another issue is Adam’s spiritual existence at the moment of creation.

Kuyper concludes that Adam was created in  the adult state of mental existence as the fruit of immediate, direct creation of God.

“So in Paradise he stood under God, before the face of God, existing only for God, and thus he had dominion over all of creation. Dominion is the Lord’s, and therefore this trait of dominion could not be absent in his image. But dominion in Adam was nothing but a reflection, a shadow, and it served to let God see his image in man.” (190). 

In Paradise was spiritual perfection but not final consummation.

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 19

19 The Crown of Creation

Kuyper returns to the question of whether original righteousness belonged to Adam’s nature or was added to it. He briefly discusses the views of the Roman Catholic Robert Bellarmine. According to Kuyper, for Ballarmine God created humans in need of a bandage!

Those who think that humans “climbed up from animal wildness to a degree of human consciousness” don’t believe in a Paradise, or in the creation of the first human.

To be created in the image of God means that “it is not our excellence but our suitability for God” and that “in the state of righteousness Adam lived by grace, ” a “sustaining grace” not a merciful grace. Kuyper sees a key role for humanity as being the image of God:

“Apart from man the world stands at a distance from God; in man it comes close to him. Now for the first time something of God’s own life beats and sparkles in this world. Mute before God as long as man was still absent, the whole creation now speaks to God through man. ” (181)

 “We can understand Adam’s unique position in Paradise only in this way. That creation and that Paradise do not exist for his sake. Every-thing exists for God’s sake, and also Adam himself exists only for God’s sake. Without Adam creation was not finished. He is its crown, not that he might take creation for himself but in order that he might bring it to God. No altar stands in Paradise, but all of Paradise is an altar on which Adam as priest of God offers God the glory of his handiwork. ” (181)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 18

18 Natural or Supernatural?

Kuyper now looks at Adam’s “inner existence”. He maintains that: “The doctrine of ‘common grace’ cannot be known nor understood without having a clear perception of the scriptural truth, especially with regard to the state of righteousness.” 

In the Roman Catholic view original righteousness was  added as a “supernatural gift”, it was not part of Adam’s original creation. Grace is an addition to nature. So, in the fall what was affected was what was added, not was created. Hence, we can still be free to choose and this then leads us to (semi-)Pelagianism. 

Kuyper uses a number of interesting images including bridles on horse, spiders and bees, the pressure valve on a boiler. For example:

“for a bee, merely its ability to gather honey, to make a honeycomb, and to fill that honeycomb belongs to the bee’s nature, but that the fact that instead of spilling the honey, as many species of wasps do, the bee delivers the honey to the comb is a mysterious function that is added to the nature of this insect, then we have a depiction of the view of Rome concerning original righteousness. On the other hand, if our answer is, no, God created the bee not only with the ability to do it but also with the impulse and the instinct to actually do it, so that both the ability to do it and the doing itself belong to the nature of the bee, then we have the Reformed system.” (169)

In contrast, then to the Roman Catholic system the Reformed have argues that our nature became so corrupt after the fall, we did not lose something that was added but rather something that was part of our nature: “What has changed is not his essence but the functioning of his nature. Undamaged in his essence, he has become depraved in his nature.” (171)

To think that something has to be added is an affront to God as Creator:

“When he creates, he is not dependent on anything. He speaks and it is. And it is as he has willed it. And if we say that in creating human nature, God ordained that nature to be so in- sufficient, so imperfect, so inadequate that at an incalculable moment after creation, something had to be added, affixed to it, coupled to it, dripped in, or whatever you want to call it, but nevertheless always in such a way that this human nature as created constituted a danger, and that in order to avert this danger a safety valve had to be installed—does not such a view detract from God’s honor? ” (173)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 17

17. The Tree of Life

The dominant view of the tree of life in the early twentieth century was that it was a sacramental sign. Kuyper feels that this view is weak.  To understand the significance of the tree we need to move from what is known to what is unknown. And nothing is mentioned about it being a sacrament. 

There were two trees: a duality; an is also according to Kuyper a duality: soul and body. The two trees correspond to intellectual consciousness and moral knowledge. The tree of life has to do with our physical not our spiritual existence. It is the tree of knowledge that has spiritual significance. All the other trees in the garden Adam was permitted to eat, they were for the physical nourishment of his body. 

The tree of life will be common on the new earth - “spiritual salvation will be fully accomplished” (164)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 16

16 The Original Life Span

The early patriarchs lived to a much older age that we do today. Kuyper looks at some explanations that have been put forward for this. These include different ways that have been used to calculate years or the idea that the supposed number of years were actually months. That would, however, mean that Mahalalel was five years old when he became a father! 

Kuyper wants to take scripture seriously and writes: "We are told that they lived ten times as long as we, and we must accept this report". He maintains that the decline in longevity is a consequence of the fall. Humans were intended to live for eternity. "Death is not part of God's creation. Death entered God's creation through, and as a result of sin. And if sin had not entered the human race, humanity would never have experienced death." (149)

When Jesus returns those who are still alive will not die but be changed. 

“Adam was susceptible to sin, death, and curse, such that he had to make a transition to a state that was sin-proof, death-proof, and curse-proof.” (153)

In Paradise there was no sin, but sin could have occurred. In contrast in the kingdom of glory there is no sin and there is no danger of sin entering it. The tree of life played an important role in Paradise, it is a tree that maintains life and whose leaves bring healing. Kuyper mentions two views regard the red, the first is that it has a divine power, the second was that it was a sign, comparable to the bread and wine.  This theme is take up in the next chapter. 

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 15

15. The State of Righteousness

Kuyper sees humans as created, fallen and restored (137).  Humanity in a state of righteousness befits paradise; as fallen a cursed earth; as redeemed “a glory as that of heaven” (137)

The name “paradise” does not occur in the Old Testament. Paradise is an old name for pleasure garden and a sushi was used in the Septuagint. Adam and Eve after the fall were explode from Paradise to elsewhere. The whole earth was good, but it was not Paradise.

Adam had to work and keep the garden, this implies it had certain boundaries. It is important to understand the state that Adam was in as it helps us to understand what we have lost and it is also the ideal towards which we can reach in Christ.

The only “lacunae and void” was loneliness. The animals were created in pairs, but not Adam. This was felt more keenly as humans are created as male and female in God's image. Woman is taken from the side of man; not from the outside.

Regarding Darwinian evolution Kuyper comments: "that man evolved from the animals lacks all compelling power." (143)

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).

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 13

13 From Noah Back to Paradise

Kuyper starts by again justifying why he started with the Noahic covenant. It has been alluded to by others but the full appreciation of it has been neglected. 

Common grace began after the fall, but underwent a change after the flood. 

In Paradise we read of a threat (“you shall surely die”) that did not occur - at least not in the way Adam and Eve understood it. Adam had a “stay of execution”: it was “a very powerful act of common grace”(121). If Adam had died there would be no human race:

“The total and direct outworking of sin, had it not been arrested, would have destroyed the entire human race with a sin- gle death sentence.” (121)

Kuyper then justifies staying close to the Scriptures. He briefly discusses the Ethicals, Schliermacher and the mechanical use of the Bible as all being flawed approaches. They separated form and content.

Kuyper maintains that :

“we must maintain and prove our right to take the words as literally as they stand in Genesis 1–5, to depend on the facts told us in those words, to draw our inferences from those facts and words, and thus to come to the conclusion that not simply for our imagination and not merely in appearance, but in reality and in truth, the origin of things transpired precisely in the way we are told in these opening chapters of Holy Scripture.” (126)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 12

12 A New Dispensation

In this chapter Kuyper takes stock and considers the preceding chapters. 

• The flood altered the state of affairs on the earth and it now displays a different character.
• The change comes from the Lord’s decree.
• The flood manifested God’s wrath but pointed to his grace.
• This grace was not special grace but common grace.
• It was not a restrictive grace - it included all those that had breath.
• The post-flood situation continues to his day.

He then summarises the main points:

1. The human race not just a few people are reused from the flood.

2. The earth is still the same though it has been changed by the catastrophe of the flood.

3. The atmosphere of the earth was changed.

4. The blessings are not jet for the church but for all humanity and the animals.

5. The relationship between humans and animals and the earth is now regulated. 

6. A change tok place in the life of humanity itself. Humans didn’t live for as long.

7. God instituted government for an orderly human life and was designed to thwart the outbreak of violence.

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 11

11 The Institution of Government Authority

The authority of government is grounded in the grace of God. If it is not then it is unstable. 

In three ways humans have attempted to ground government in “voluntary human action”. (99)

The first was in the right of the conqueror to subject to himself those conquered: might is right. 

The second in the free will of man. We have a right to determine our own fate. If we wish we can of our own free will call a government into being. This, Kuyper notes, was the foundation of the system of the French Revolution’s notion of social contract. (100) It leads to an unstable situation.

The third is by spontaneous development. There is a “natural impulse” where: “a certain power of the one group arises over the other group, which ultimately is consolidated in the supremacy of an individual person.” (101)

God’s common grace is at work, a “ gracious arrangement whereby he created order amid the chaos of a sinful world and arrested the disruptive destruction of sin.” (101) He organises government and ordains his “providential administration”.

Government authority is different to a father’s authority over his children:

“In a sinless situation there would have been no government authority proceeding from people, even as in the kingdom of glory there will be no more government from people over people. “ (103)

Kuyper then poses the question “Where is the authority of God instituted and validated? (104) To answer that he goes back to Genesis 9:6. He stresses that humans have no authority of their own, all authority belongs to God. In Genesis 1 we are given dominion and authority. Power and control only exists if God grants it.

He concludes:

“that in Genesis 9:6 both government authority is validated and capital punishment is instituted, not only for that time but for all times, for all of Noah’s descendants, and thus also for us and for our descendants, until the coming of the Lord on the clouds.” (107)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 10

10 Further Objections to Capital Punishment

Many do not agree that Genesis 9:6 instigates a “juridicial institution” for the “putting to death of a murderer”. (89) Some because they do not think this because they do not believe the words were to be taken in a literal sense.

Others object that it was what God ordained but it no longer applies today. Kuyper respond to this by asking “where does it say that this divine ordinance is abolished?“ (90); by noting that it was a command given to Noah and his children - we are all children of Noah. “It is not a national but a universal-human ordinance…” (90); and that it belongs to the Noahic covenant that is still binding today. He then adds that Romans 13:4 adds more justification to it continuing, government is to wield the sword.

There are some "anaemic" arguments agains capital punishment:

• It eliminates the possibility of the murderer converting
• An innocent person my be executed
• Execution debases people

For a Reformed person the first objection is absurd: salvation is the work of God alone. For the second reason, should we then abolish every action of government that may injure someone? “ [M]istakes are simply the disastrous consequence of the limitation and sinfulness of civil servants, and also of judges in cases of judicial mistakes.” (94) Regarding the third objection he writes:

“People sensed that it was God’s justice that was being executed, and there was no trace of de- basement or excess to be found. We need say no more about this.” (95)

On capital punishment as a deterrent he asserts:

“It is impossible to show by means of numbers whether capital punishment is a deterrent against murder and whether abolishing capital punishment causes the number of murder cases to increase.” (95) 

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 9

9. Government and capital punishment

Kuyper begins by expressing agreement with the Reformed position expressed in the notes of the Dutch Bible on the institution of government being established in these verses (Gen 9). He notes too that Rivet of Leiden has shown the untenability of Nieuwenhuis’s position expressed in the previous chapter.

Nevertheless, Kuyper sees the need to examine these verses to see if the Reformed position is the correct position.

Capital punishment is not primarily about the protection of human life, it arises from the sovereignty of God:

“People are his people. They belong to him. He has jurisdiction over them. Since in those people he has deposited something of his divine honor, for that reason the honor of God is always attacked with murder. That may not happen. His ordinance opposes that. Precisely on that basis alone can capital punishment be ordained for the murderer.” (86)

This is why if someone kills a murderer without a mandate form God then their blood too has to be shed: “the exercise of capital punishment never entails a second violating of God’s honor and justice, because it is performed by virtue of God’s ordinance and upon his authority.” (86)

These words in Genesis 9, than cannot be a prophecy but a command and an ordinance. Who then has this duty? It cannot mean anyone. Kuyper quotes Luther and the Dutch Bible approvingly:

“Luther was entirely correct to say that here lays the official institution of government, as were the Dutch Bible commentators in observing that here the legitimacy of government is being established.” (88)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 8

8. The Institution of Capital Punishment

After a few teasers on capital punishment Kuyper now turns to it in Genesis 9:6. 

He starts by examining the “untenable” argument of Nieuwenhuis, a professor of Law at Groningen, who maintains that the legislation was placed in Israel and that it was a private vendetta and nothing to do with government. Kuyper dismisses the first by distinguishing between moral, ceremonial and political laws; the form has passed away but not the principle. As for the second point:

“The requirement of “an eye for an eye” was a stipulation of a judicial nature in the Mosaic legislation. It was hardly intended that the individual citizen would act according to this rule, but only that the government would function in terms of recompense when it came to judicial punishment.” (73)

Kuyper then goes on to challenge the position that it is only personal vengeance intended here.

He maintains that what we have here is not a prescription but an institution; the institution of government is sanctioned and “capital punishment is prescribed to be exercised by the neared blood relative” (79)

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 7

7. The Protection of Human Life

After the flood the future of the human race depended on one family. Life is precarious. God’s ordinance to avenge murder come then as a “shield to cover the life of people”. Three things had cause death: “predatory animals, murder, and the flood” (62). God, thus, protects them against all three:

“Against the flood by means of his promise, against the predatory animal by means of his ordinance, and against murder by means of his commandment.” (62)

As an aside Kuyper looks at the extent of the flood: “it could well be that in the narrative of the flood, such general expressions are referring only to that part of the world that counted for Noah or where people lived”(63).

Genesis 9:5 is not a command for capital punishment. Mention is only made here as to what God will do. Capital punishment is the subject of the next few chapters.

Kuyper's Common Grace #CG1.1 Chapter 6

6. The ordinances of the Noahic Covenant

Jewish scholars identify seven so-called “Noahic commandments”:

“These consist of prohibitions against (1) idolatry, (2) whoredom, (3) blasphemy, (4) murder, (5) theft, (6) eating blood, and (7) anarchy, ..” (53)

But, Kuyper, argues these are mistaken in that there are only two ordinances: 

“(1) the prohibition given to the humanity that sprouted from Noah against “eating flesh with its life,” and (2) the commandment given to this renewed human race to punish a murderer with death”. (54)

He then considers these two in more detail. For the first some have asserted, wrongly according to Kuyper, that it means not eating the blood of the animals. Rather it is an 

“order in which man kills the animal in the name of his God, respecting the supremacy of his Creator over that animal, and therefore takes it for food only when its life has completely departed and the flesh that initially contained the soul became flesh without the soul.” (58)

Regarding the second ordinance he notes that it opposes cannibalism. There is a distinction between human and animal. 

“The tiger devours the ox with its life; the man takes him for food only when the life has departed. The tiger steals its prey and does not know God; the man uses a right given him by God, but simultaneously honors the Creator and the Giver of life by waiting until life has departed.” (59)

He goes on:

“No animal may devour a man, and no man may take a fellow man as food. Despite this having occurred, however, God will require an accounting for all this shed blood.” (60)

This question of capital punishment is then explored in several subsequent chapters.