The Calvinist International
In his 1911 volume which began the trilogy of Pro Rege, Abraham Kuyper reflects on the importance of Matthew 11:20–30 for our understanding of the kingship of Christ. In that passage, Jesus is denouncing the cities where he worked and preached and then affirms the authority that has been given to him by the Father. In verses […]
In volume 1 of Pro Rege, Kuyper expounds upon the theme of the origins and nature of authority. In his exposition, he shows himself to be quite the political theologian. As a side note, this is one of the virtues of taking the effort to read these new Lexham Press translations of Kuyper’s public theology; they […]
In the midst of a discussion about the connection between common grace and particular, or special, grace, Kuyper sets out to make clear that Christ is the telos of all things. He does so by distinguishing between Christ himself, and then his ‘body’, the Church. Both are important for Kuyper, but Christ is the ultimate aim of universal […]
In Common Grace, Kuyper combines the questions of God’s institution of capital punishment and the institution of civil government into one moment. He understands God’s command to Noah in Genesis 9:6 as the moment when God instituted civil government. He also rejects outright the modern liberal conception of the origins of civil government as founded upon […]
In Common Grace (Lexham/Acton Institute: 2015), Kuyper spends a number of chapters examining Genesis 9:5 and Genesis 9:6 in relation to capital punishment and, therefore, the instituting of civil government. Genesis 9:5-6 reads as follows: And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow […]
In the preface to his three-volume Common Grace, Abraham Kuyper writes of the deflation of Reformed thought since the seventeenth century. His historical analysis might be debatable, but there is something prescient about his critique for our own day. The quote is from the new Lexham Press/Acton Institute translation of volume one of De Gemene Gratie (1902). What […]
Some friends and I have put out a new book which will be of interest to TCI readers. For Law and For Liberty: Essays on the Trans-Atlantic Legacy of Protestant Political Thought is the published collection of essays which were first presented at the 2015 Convivium Irenicum. The 2016 Convivium Irenicum is right around the corner, […]
Mark J. Larson, Abraham Kuyper, Conservatism, and Church and State (Eugene: Wipf and Stock), 2015, 111 pp + xii. Abraham Kuyper is becoming more and more a point of conversation for politically-minded Christians. Indeed, as my TCI associate Jordan Ballor has just pointed out, we threaten to morph into the Neo-Calvinist International if recent article trends continue. In […]
I haven’t had the opportunity to post much over here lately, but I thought I’d share one reason why: I’ve been engaged in developing a new series, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology published by Lexham Press. This is a twelve volume collection of Kuyper’s major works on culture, common grace, politics, economics, education, […]
David Koyzis has a thoughtful piece up over at First Things today, reflecting on the legacy of pillarization in the Netherlands in the generations following Abraham Kuyper. Discussing the challenges of post-war secularization, Koyzis writes, “A religious community focused only on its own survival in a hostile environment may already have lost the battle, and […]