Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Richard J. Mouw is the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary and former director of the Institute of Faith and Public Life. He has authored over twenty books and served as an editor of Reformed Journal.

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Abraham Kuyper

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Introduction.................................................................viiKuyper's Calvinism...........................................................3"Filling the Earth"..........................................................6Celebrating Many-ness........................................................16The Spheres..................................................................23Cultural "Dykes and Dams"....................................................28"Placing" Kuyper Politically.................................................38A Third Way..................................................................40Spheres in the Bible?........................................................45Politics and Creation........................................................50The Church's Place...........................................................55The Antithesis...............................................................60God's "Excellent Gifts"......................................................64Kuyperian Aggiornamento......................................................75Race: Adding Another "Neo"...................................................80Kuyper for Evangelicals......................................................86World-Viewing................................................................90Will the Bell Still Toll?....................................................95Enhancing the Church's Role..................................................99Nurturing Cultural Patience..................................................105Beyond "Christendom".........................................................111When Spheres "Shrink"........................................................119The Challenge of Islam.......................................................124A Kuyperianism "Under the Cross".............................................132

Chapter One

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Kuyper started off his career as a Dutch Reformed pastor who was deeply influenced by the liberal theology that he had been taught at the University of Leiden. But in the rural village where he served his first pastorate he encountered parishioners who exhibited a vibrant evangelical faith, and through his contacts with them he experienced a life-changing evangelical conversion. The person who initially influenced him in this regard was Pietje Baltus, the young daughter of a miller. Pietje was known in the community to be a person of deep spirituality, but she did not regularly attend the worship services, choosing instead to meet in private homes with others who shared her Calvinist faith.

When Kuyper found out that she was boycotting his services because of the content of his preaching, he paid her a pastoral visit. When he arrived at her home, she refused to shake his hand. This was a gesture of disrespect, and she was obviously signaling her rejection of his pastoral authority. Instead of being offended, though, Kuyper listened carefully to what she had to say, and he made a point of pursuing further conversations with Pietje and her friends. Later he wrote: "I did not set myself against them, and I still thank my God that I made the choice I did. Their unwavering persistence has been a blessing for my heart, the rise of the morning star in my life."

Creation's "Square Inches"

Having embraced evangelical Calvinism, Kuyper ever thereafter placed a strong emphasis on personal piety. In the midst of his busy public career he wrote hundreds of meditations about the need for the individual believer to turn away from the demands of the active life and retreat into that very private sacred space where the soul is alone with her Maker.

But Kuyper was not content with a religion that was limited to the cultivation of a purely personal spirituality. In addition to his celebration of the experience of a Savior's love, he also placed a strong emphasis on the supreme Lordship of Jesus Christ over all spheres of social, political, and economic life. Kuyper's followers are fond of quoting the manifesto he issued at Free University's inaugural convocation: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry 'Mine!'" That manifesto is a good summary of his overall perspective. Calvinism is well known for its insistence that we are saved by grace alone, and that God "elects" those who are to be recipients of this saving grace. This perspective focuses on human sinfulness and divine sovereignty. Out of sheer mercy God does for human beings what they cannot do for themselves. He reaches into the depths of a human heart and irresistibly draws that person to himself.

Many think that's all they need to know about Calvinism. But Kuyper was not content to leave it there. When God saves us, he insisted, he incorporates us into a community, the people of God. And this community, in turn, is called to serve God's goals in the larger world. In the life of the church we worship a sovereign God, but that God then commands us to be active witnesses in our daily lives to God's sovereign rule over all things.

For Kuyper, every Christian is called to be an agent of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, wherever they are called by God to serve. The system of thought that Kuyper developed was an elaborate spelling out of how we are to understand this call to Kingdom service. How are we to understand God's intentions in creating the world and — in response to the human rebellion that thwarted God's creating purposes — in sending the divine Son to reclaim the world that had been so corrupted by sin? Given the continuing presence of sin in the world, how are Christians best to structure and pursue their Kingdom service "out there" in the near and far reaches of the creation? These are the questions that motivated much of Kuyper's thinking about how Christians are to serve the Lord in the broad reaches of culture.

"Filling the Earth"

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Introductions to the study of culture often begin by observing that "culture" carries the meaning of "cultivation." Thus, agriculture is the cultivation of the agros, Greek for "field"; horticulture is the cultivation of plants; and so on. When we use the word "culture" to apply to human realities, we are referring to the ways in which we human beings cultivate patterns and processes that give meaning to our collective interactions, as well as the things that we "grow" as a result of those interactions.

The Cultural Mandate

For Kuyper, God cares deeply about culture and its development — so deeply that the divine desire that human beings engage in cultural activity was a central motive for God's creating the world. In the narrative of Genesis 1, immediately after creating human beings in God's own image, God gives them instructions about how to behave in the garden.

In the three-part mandate of Genesis 1:28, the first thing God tells them is to "be fruitful and multiply." That is about reproduction. He wants them to procreate, to have children. But when the Lord...