Common Grace (Volume 1) E-Book

Abraham Kuyper

• Herausgeber: Lexham Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1522

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In Common Grace Abraham Kuyper presents to the church a vision for cultural engagement rooted in the humanity Christians share with the rest of the world.Kuyper fills a gap in the development of Reformed teaching on divine grace, and he articulates a Reformed understanding of God's gifts that are common to all people after the fall into sin. This first volume contains Kuyper's demonstration of the biblical basis for common grace and how it works.This new translation of Common Grace, created in partnership with the Kuyper Translation Society and the Acton Institute, is part of a major series of new translations of Kuyper's most important writings. The Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology marks a historic moment in Kuyper studies, aimed at deepening and enriching the church's development of public theology.

Leseprobe

COMMON GRACE

GOD’S GIFTS FOR A FALLEN WORLD

Volume 1: The Historical Section

ABRAHAM

KUYPER

Edited by Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill

Translated by Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas

Introduction by Richard J. Mouw

Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World

Volume 1: The Historical Section

Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology

Copyright 2015 Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [email protected].

Originally published as De Gemeene Gratie. Eerste Deel. Het Geschiedkundig Gedeelte.© Boekhandel voorheen Höveker & Wormser, 1902.

This translation previously published by Christian’s Library Press, an imprint of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, 98 E. Fulton Street, Grand Rapids, MI, 49503.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from the King James Version. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (SV) are from the Statenvertaling (“States Translation” of the Dutch Bible, 1637). Public domain.

Print ISBN 978-1-57-799653-8

Digital ISBN 978-1-57-799694-1

Translators: Nelson D. Kloosterman, Ed M. van der Maas

Acton Editorial: Jordan J. Ballor, Stephen J. Grabill

Lexham Editorial: Brannon Ellis, Abigail Stocker, Joel Wilcox

Cover Design: Christine Gerhart

Back Cover Design: Brittany Van Erem

ABRAHAM

KUYPER

Collected Works in Public Theology

GENERAL EDITORS

JORDAN J. BALLOR

MELVIN FLIKKEMA

ABRAHAMKUYPER.COM

CONTENTS

General Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction

Volume Introduction

Abbreviations

Preface

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: The Starting Point of the Doctrine of Common Grace

Chapter Three: The Noahic Covenant Was Not Particular

Chapter Four: The Spiritual and Practical Significance of the Noahic Covenant

Chapter Five: The Blessings of the Noahic Covenant

Chapter Six: The Ordinances of the Noahic Covenant

Chapter Seven: The Protection of Human Life

Chapter Eight: The Institution of Capital Punishment

Chapter Nine: Government and Capital Punishment

Chapter Ten: Further Objections to Capital Punishment

Chapter Eleven: The Institution of Government Authority

Chapter Twelve: A New Dispensation

Chapter Thirteen: From Noah Back to Paradise

Chapter Fourteen: The Paradise Story as Historical Narrative

Chapter Fifteen: The State of Righteousness

Chapter Sixteen: The Original Life Span

Chapter Seventeen: The Tree of Life

Chapter Eighteen: Natural or Supernatural?

Chapter Nineteen: The Crown of Creation

Chapter Twenty: Perfect Integrity

Chapter Twenty-One: Original Righteousness

Chapter Twenty-Two: Conscience and the Covenant of Works

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Basis for Further Development

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Language in Paradise

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Probationary Command

Chapter Twenty-Six: Being Like God

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Knowing as Making One’s Own Assessment

Chapter Twenty-Eight: “You Shall Surely Die”

Chapter Twenty-Nine: In That Day

Chapter Thirty: Forms of Grace

Chapter Thirty-One: Doom and Grace

Chapter Thirty-Two: Placing Enmity

Chapter Thirty-Three: Re-creation

Chapter Thirty-Four: Depravity Restrained in the Heart

Chapter Thirty-Five: Depravity Restrained in the Body

Chapter Thirty-Six: Depravity Restrained in Nature

Chapter Thirty-Seven: From Paradise to the Flood (Part 1)

Chapter Thirty-Eight: From Paradise to the Flood (Part 2)

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Flood: Judgment and Act of Grace

Chapter Forty: After the Flood

Chapter Forty-One: The Tower of Babel

Chapter Forty-Two: The Confusion of Language

Chapter Forty-Three: Abraham’s Calling Is Universalistic

Chapter Forty-Four: Abraham’s History

Chapter Forty-Five: Abraham and Melchizedek

Chapter Forty-Six: Isolation Merely an Interlude

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Great Mystery

Chapter Forty-Eight: No Oasis in the Wilderness

Chapter Forty-Nine: Symbol and Type

Chapter Fifty: Israel for the Sake of the Nations

Chapter Fifty-One: Jehovah and the Nations

Chapter Fifty-Two: The Messiah and Israel

Chapter Fifty-Three: The Light in the Darkness

Chapter Fifty-Four: The Baptist

Chapter Fifty-Five: The Tiny Sparks in the Gentile World

Chapter Fifty-Six: The Tiny Sparks Extinguished

Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Preference of the Gentiles

Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Continued Effect of Decay

Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Fixed Pattern of the Progression of Evil

Chapter Sixty: The Process of Sin

Chapter Sixty-One: The Final Judgment

Chapter Sixty-Two: The Abiding Profit

Chapter Sixty-Three: Fruit for Eternity

Chapter Sixty-Four: The Coherence between This Life and the Future Life

Chapter Sixty-Five: The Connection between This Life and Eternal Life

Chapter Sixty-Six: The Congruence between the Life Here and the Life Hereafter

Chapter Sixty-Seven: Review

Appendix: Why the Term “Common” Grace?

Bibliography

About the Contributors

GENERAL EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

In times of great upheaval and uncertainty, it is necessary to look to the past for resources to help us recognize and address our own contemporary challenges. While Scripture is foremost among these foundations, the thoughts and reflections of Christians throughout history also provide us with important guidance. Because of his unique gifts, experiences, and writings, Abraham Kuyper is an exemplary guide in these endeavors.

Kuyper (1837–1920) is a significant figure both in the history of the Netherlands and modern Protestant theology. A prolific intellectual, Kuyper founded a political party and a university, led the formation of a Reformed denomination and the movement to create Reformed elementary schools, and served as the prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. In connection with his work as a builder of institutions, Kuyper was also a prolific author. He wrote theological treatises, biblical and confessional studies, historical works, social and political commentary, and devotional materials.

Believing that Kuyper’s work is a significant and underappreciated resource for Christian public witness, in 2011 a group of scholars interested in Kuyper’s life and work formed the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society. The shared conviction of the society, along with the Acton Institute, Kuyper College, and other Abraham Kuyper scholars, is that Kuyper’s works hold great potential to build intellectual capacity within the church in North America, Europe, and around the world. It is our hope that translation of his works into English will make his insights accessible to those seeking to grow and revitalize communities in the developed world as well as to those in the global south and east who are facing unique challenges and opportunities.

The church today—both locally and globally—needs the tools to construct a compelling and responsible public theology. The aim of this translation project is to provide those tools—we believe that Kuyper’s unique insights can catalyze the development of a winsome and constructive Christian social witness and cultural engagement the world over.

In consultation and collaboration with these institutions and individual scholars, the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society developed this 12-volume translation project, the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology. This multivolume series collects in English translation Kuyper’s writings and speeches from a variety of genres and contexts in his work as a theologian and statesman. In almost all cases, this set contains original works that have never before been translated into English. The series contains multivolume works as well as other volumes, including thematic anthologies.

The series includes a translation of Kuyper’s Our Program (Ons Program), which sets forth Kuyper’s attempt to frame a Christian political vision distinguished from the programs of the nineteenth-century Modernists who took their cues from the French Revolution. It was this document that launched Kuyper’s career as a pastor, theologian, and educator. As James Bratt writes, “This comprehensive Program, which Kuyper crafted in the process of forming the Netherlands’ first mass political party, brought the theology, the political theory, and the organization vision together brilliantly in a coherent set of policies that spoke directly to the needs of his day. For us it sets out the challenge of envisioning what might be an equivalent witness in our own day.”

Also included is Kuyper’s seminal three-volume work De Gemeene Gratie, or Common Grace, which presents a constructive public theology of cultural engagement rooted in the humanity Christians share with the rest of the world. Kuyper’s presentation of common grace addresses a gap he recognized in the development of Reformed teaching on divine grace. After addressing particular grace and covenant grace in other writings, Kuyper here develops his articulation of a Reformed understanding of God’s gifts that are common to all people after the fall into sin.

The series also contains Kuyper’s three-volume work on the lordship of Christ, Pro Rege. These three volumes apply Kuyper’s principles in Common Grace, providing guidance for how to live in a fallen world under Christ the King. Here the focus is on developing cultural institutions in way that is consistent with the ordinances of creation that have been maintained and preserved, even if imperfectly so, through common grace.

The remaining volumes are thematic anthologies of Kuyper’s writings and speeches gathered from the course of his long career.

The anthology On Charity and Justice includes a fresh and complete translation of Kuyper’s “The Problem of Poverty,” the landmark speech Kuyper gave at the opening of the First Christian Social Congress in Amsterdam in 1891. This important work was first translated into English in 1950 by Dirk Jellema; in 1991, a new edition by James Skillen was issued. This volume also contains other writings and speeches on subjects including charity, justice, wealth, and poverty.

The anthology On Islam contains English translations of significant pieces that Abraham Kuyper wrote about Islam, gathered from his reflections on a lengthy tour of the Mediterranean world. Kuyper’s insights illustrate an instructive model for observing another faith and its cultural ramifications from an informed Christian perspective.

The anthology On the Church includes selections from Kuyper’s doctrinal dissertation on the theologies of Reformation theologians John Calvin and John a Lasco. It also includes various treatises and sermons, such as “Rooted and Grounded,” “Twofold Fatherland,” and “Address on Missions.”

The anthology On Business and Economics contains various meditations Kuyper wrote about the evils of the love of money as well as pieces that provide Kuyper’s thoughts on stewardship, human trafficking, free trade, tariffs, child labor, work on the Sabbath, and business.

Finally, the anthology On Education includes Kuyper’s important essay “Bound to the Word,” which discusses what it means to be ruled by the Word of God in the entire world of human thought. Numerous other pieces are also included, resulting in a substantial English volume of Kuyper’s thoughts on Christian education.

Collectively, this 12-volume series will, as Richard Mouw puts it, “give us a much-needed opportunity to absorb the insights of Abraham Kuyper about God’s marvelous designs for human cultural life.”

The Abraham Kuyper Translation Society along with the Acton Institute and Kuyper College gratefully acknowledge the Andreas Center for Reformed Scholarship and Service at Dordt College; Calvin College; Calvin Theological Seminary; Fuller Theological Seminary; Mid-America Reformed Seminary; Redeemer University College; Princeton Theological Seminary; and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Their financial support and partnership made these translations possible. The society is also grateful for the generous financial support of Dr. Rimmer and Ruth DeVries and the J. C. Huizenga family, which has enabled the translation and publication of these volumes.

This series is dedicated to Dr. Rimmer DeVries in recognition of his life’s pursuits and enduring legacy as a cultural leader, economist, visionary, and faithful follower of Christ who reflects well the Kuyperian vision of Christ’s lordship over all spheres of society.

Jordan J. Ballor

Melvin Flikkema

Grand Rapids, MI

August 2015

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

There is often a temptation, particularly among evangelicals, to engage in social reform without first developing a coherent social philosophy to guide the agenda. To bridge this gap, Acton Institute and the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society have worked together with other institutions to translate Abraham Kuyper’s seminal three-volume work on common grace (De Gemeene Gratie). Common Grace was chosen because it holds great potential to build intellectual capacity within evangelicalism and because a sound grasp of this doctrine is missing in evangelical cultural engagement. Common Grace is the capstone of Kuyper’s constructive public theology and the best available platform to draw evangelicals back to first principles and to guide the development of a winsome and constructive social witness.

Common grace, as Kuyper conceived it, was a theology of public responsibility and cultural engagement rooted in Christians’ shared humanity with the rest of the world. Kuyper did not intend these volumes to be academic tomes. They were popular works—collections of newspaper articles written over a six-year period—in which he equipped common people with the teaching they needed to effectively enter public life. Kuyper neither politicized the gospel to accommodate his agenda nor did he encourage his followers to develop a siege mentality in isolation from the rest of the world. As Kuyper writes in his foreword to volume 1, “If the believer’s God is at work in this world, then in this world the believer’s hand must take hold of the plow, and the name of the Lord must be glorified in that activity as well.” This project involves the complete translation of Abraham Kuyper’s three volumes, totaling more than 1,700 pages.

One challenge in editing this translation of Abraham Kuyper’s volumes on common grace was to meet the twofold requirements of scholarly accuracy and completeness while also rendering the text as useful as possible for a nonspecialist audience. These volumes are based on the published versions of Kuyper’s collected essays rather than on some other critical edition with the addition of a large scholarly reference apparatus. As such, this translation is not a substitute for direct academic research into the original source material itself. A significant purpose of this translation project is to render into accessible English primary source material that has been foundational both for positive constructive theology as well as for doctrinal controversy throughout the twentieth century. But the original genre of this work should not be overlooked. These were neither written nor published primarily as exercises in academic theology. Although the task of translating and editing requires scholarly sensitivities, the goal of this project is to produce a translation that will be as accessible as possible not only to a specialized audience of researchers, but also to interested pastors and laypersons.

With all this in mind, the additional editorial apparatus in these volumes has been kept as minimal as possible. Where Kuyper references particular historical events or figures that are likely to be unfamiliar to an Anglophone audience, we have provided some necessary context for Kuyper’s remarks. In places where Kuyper refers to other works, we have attempted to provide some more detail about those sources in order to facilitate further research on Kuyper’s arguments and train of thought. Given the nature of the source material, which originally appeared serially as newspaper articles, there is an unavoidable redundancy in places where Kuyper recapitulates his position, summarizes the flow of argument, and reorients the reader to the larger contours of the work. We have resisted the temptation to abridge the translation at various points, and thus the resulting translation is as faithful and complete a representation of the original text as possible.

Kuyper’s unique voice resonates on these pages, and in an attempt to provide a translation faithful to the author’s original intentions, we have retained as much of his particular, and sometimes even idiosyncratic, renderings as possible. Where Kuyper emphasizes words or phrases through italics in direct references to Scripture, for instance, that emphasis has been retained where it was clearly meaningful. Similar emphasis also commonly occurs throughout the main text itself in the original, but that formatting has been maintained in the English text only where that emphasis is meaningful and not simply distracting or spurious. Editorial interventions in the main text, most often making explicit a reference to Scripture that remained implicit in the original direct quotation, are enclosed in square brackets. In some cases, there were errors or inconsistencies in biblical references, arising in many instances from the difference in versification between the Dutch Bible and English versions. These have been updated and corrected to conform to standard English conventions. Likewise we have adjusted paragraph breaks and broken up some of Kuyper’s longer sentences to enhance the readability of the text in English. One difficulty relating to the accessibility and format of these volumes on common grace involved the decision to number sections of chapters in this modern edition that were originally unnumbered. The hope is that this will enhance accessibility of the text for today’s audience.

A key issue facing those working on translations is how best to render gender-specific references in the original into a different language. Wherever Kuyper’s original intent clearly included both men and women, the translation has preferred a gender-inclusive English rendering. But this practice was not extended in cases where the original reference was more specific or where the resulting English translation would have suffered in terms of style or readability. In some instances, this approach requires understanding man inclusively to refer both to men and women. We have thus not imposed gender-inclusive language on to Kuyper’s text, but rather have sought to provide a gender-accurate and accessible translation.

The editorial apparatus has been updated to conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. Kuyper’s original references have been maintained, but where these were incomplete or provided as in-text citations, they have been dropped to footnotes, and wherever possible the publication details have been updated and corrected. The opening formula “Note by the author” identifies Kuyper’s original footnotes. Throughout the text Kuyper refers to the classic Dutch translation of the Bible, the Statenvertaling (SV). The standard translation of choice for this project is the English Standard Version (ESV), and references to other translations or Kuyper’s own paraphrases are noted throughout the text. Kuyper’s quotations to works that appear in published English translation, such as Calvin’s commentaries, have been adapted to conform to the published version wherever doing so does not obscure or alter Kuyper’s argument. Likewise the references to various doctrinal standards, such as the Heidelberg Catechism, are based on the versions appearing in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation.1

As Richard Mouw rightly notes in his introduction to volume 1, the task remains for this material “to be interpreted in terms that are accessible to ordinary Christians, by teachers, pastors, and other leaders in the faith community.” The publication of these volumes on common grace is only the beginning of a much larger endeavor to responsibly assess and apply Kuyper’s deep insights into the significance of the Christian faith for the contemporary world. It is our hope and prayer that these volumes on common grace will be a fruitful source of revitalization and reformation for Christian social thought and engagement in the Anglophone world and beyond.

Jordan J. Ballor

Stephen J. Grabill

VOLUME INTRODUCTION

A COMPREHENSIVE THEOLOGY OF “COMMONNESS”

What does God think about French Impressionism? Or about the ethical teachings of Confucius in ancient China? Or about the courage shown by a Muslim mother who risks her life to save her son from a burning building?

Furthermore, what does God want us to think about those things? How do we answer those questions in ways that honor what the Bible teaches about the pervasive reality of human sinfulness in our fallen world?

These important volumes address those kinds of questions. Abraham Kuyper’s extensive treatment of the doctrine of common grace has been around for more than a century, but it is now being made available for the first time in its entirety in an English translation. Kuyper had thought long and hard about how we as Christians can look for positive things in the culture around us, even when those things come to us from people who do not worship the God of the Scriptures.

Abraham Kuyper was one of the great Calvinist theologians of the nineteenth century. Calvinists typically do not have a reputation for offering positive assessments of the intellectual, artistic, and moral achievements of unregenerate people. One of the things people think of when they hear the word “Calvinism” is “total depravity.” Kuyper was a good Calvinist, but he did not believe that this prohibited him from looking for truth, beauty, and goodness beyond the boundaries of the Christian community. So he developed a comprehensive theology of “commonness,” a perspective that could provide a helpful framework for encouraging and enabling Christians to benefit from the efforts of unbelievers.

Kuyper’s efforts will surely be helpful to contemporary Christians who share his Reformed theological commitments. But they can also help others who struggle with these concerns from different theological traditions. After all, it can be illuminating to see how someone who operates out of a theological framework that places a strong emphasis on human depravity can nonetheless develop a vibrant theology of active cultural engagement.

It is important to mention, in that regard, that this first volume is one of the products of a partnership between the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society and Acton Institute—the latter being an exciting forum that has been focusing on being a “safe haven” for creative dialogue about Protestant and Catholic social thought. This is a much-needed engagement, and those of us who care deeply about such matters are grateful for this and other fruits of those partnerships.

Again, Kuyper does not reject the Reformed tradition’s strong emphasis on the devastating consequences that resulted from humankind’s fall into sin. Our shared sinfulness has put human beings in a condition of what is often described in the Reformed tradition as “ethical rebellion.” This means that the turning of our wills against God—the decision of our first parents to succumb to the Serpent’s invitation to “be like gods”—resulted in a desperate state. To quote the old formula, “In Adam’s Fall / We sinned All.”1 Created to exercise a God-honoring dominion over the affairs of the creation, we chose instead to serve purposes that defied the Creator’s design for human flourishing. And this decision resulted in the corruption of the totality of our being. Our rebellion has affected our capacity to think clearly about the basic issues of life, which means that all of our efforts—moral, political, economic, interpersonal, plus our interactions with the nonhuman creation—all of it exhibits the effects of our fallen state.

Kuyper not only accepted all of that; he made a point of featuring it in his overall theology. There is an antithesis, he taught, that runs through the entirety of human life and thought in our present world. Once we have been taken hold of by the salvation that can only come by God’s sovereign grace, our lives are meant to take a very different direction than the ways of fallen humanity. Salvation is meant to impact the totality of our lives: Our moral dealings, political perspectives, economic practices, and the ways in which we farm and create art and shape the patterns of our family lives. In all areas of human interaction we are to honor God’s revealed will for his creation.

Calvinists, then, with their doctrine of total depravity, are clearly disposed to distrust the ways of fallen humanity. These pessimistic expectations, however, often run up against realities that do not conform to what our theology of human sinfulness might lead us to anticipate. We often find the church acting worse than we had expected and the world acting better. In their theological formulations, then, Calvinists have frequently found it necessary to introduce some qualifications into their theological perspectives on the capacities of unredeemed human beings. Kuyper took up that challenge of spelling out those qualifications with great dedication.

In setting out to develop a detailed theology of common grace, Kuyper did not see himself as introducing something brand new into the Calvinist way of viewing things. John Calvin himself had already taken up the task. The reformer of Geneva had started in developing his theology at the point where we would expect any good Calvinist to start—with a low estimation of the capacities of the unregenerate mind. In his classic work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, for example, Calvin tells us that while we may come across occasional “sparks” of the light of creation shining through an unredeemed person’s “perverted and degenerate nature,” that original light is so “choked with dense ignorance … that it cannot come forth effectively.” The efforts of sinful humanity to find the truth, says Calvin, amount to little more than a “groping in the darkness.”2

Having set forth clearly his view of the implications of his teaching on the effects of the fall, however, Calvin was not content simply to leave it there without some modifications. He was motivated to take some further steps because of his experiences before his conversion as a student studying law. In those studies he had come to admire the writings of some of the ancient Graeco-Roman thinkers, especially Seneca. He was not inclined, after he had come to an evangelical faith in Christ, simply to change his assessment. This meant that he had to account for the fact that some of these unregenerate thinkers seemed capable of producing a little more than simply the occasional “spark” of truth.

So in the Institutes, Calvin admits that things are not quite as bleak as his straightforward affirmations of human depravity would suggest. God has not completely given the unredeemed human mind over to darkness. There are, he says, some “natural gifts” that are “by nature implanted in men” by God, and these gifts are “bestowed indiscriminately upon pious and impious”—a bestowal, he argues, that should be seen as a “peculiar grace of God.”3

Furthermore, this gift is so significant that when we come across a truth set forth by an unbeliever, “we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.”4

Subsequent Reformed theology continued to deal with these matters. Calvin’s followers devoted much attention to issues of natural theology, general revelation, the image of God, and similar ways of accounting for a more positive assessment of the deliverances of the unredeemed mind, in a way that did not simply abandon Calvin’s emphasis on the serious effects of human rebellion for human life and thought. In exploring these options, these thinkers attempted to be faithful to what they had learned from Calvin himself, who had insisted that whatever good we can get from our studies of pagan thinkers is not due to some area of their being that is untouched by sin. Rather, the positive contributions they continue to make are the result of divine “gifts,” offered by a kind of “peculiar grace of God.”

The ideas of “gifts” and “grace” in that kind of formulation are meant to highlight the fact of divine sovereignty. While our radical sinfulness poses a threat to the unfolding of God’s creating purposes, the Creator still loves his creation, and in his sovereign goodness he will not allow human rebellion to bring great harm to that which he loves. God has ways of exercising restraints on depravity—a fallenness that, if left unchecked, would lead to creation’s ruin. John Calvin put it this way: God keeps our sinful strivings in check “by throwing a bridle over them … that they may not break loose,” especially when the Lord deems doing so “to be expedient to preserve all that is.”5

This picture of a God who continues to love the creation and who expedites the means to restrain and preserve in the midst of human fallenness—this is the picture that Abraham Kuyper fleshes out in this wonderful treatise. And again, what Kuyper has to offer us on this subject has relevance far beyond the Calvinist community that would share his explicitly Reformed convictions. To be sure, non-Calvinists will have to forgive some of the “Calvinism-above-all” tone that frequently shows up in his writing. That offensive tone is all over the place, for example, in his 1898 Stone Lectures, delivered at Princeton Seminary, where he rails against Anabaptists, Lutherans, Catholics, and others. That combative tone, though, is less evident in this series on common grace, where he offers more ecumenical observations, particularly in his quite creative comments about the blessings afforded by the “pluriformity” of the church. Indeed, it would have been odd for Kuyper to show much negativity toward other Christian traditions in a work in which he is exploring the ways in which Christians can learn good things from the unbelieving world!

Again, then, this is a book that can help all of us as we struggle with new twenty-first century versions of the challenges that Kuyper takes up. For one thing, the need for a theology of human “commonness” should be attractive to all believers who worry about the fragmented conceptions of human realities that are so prevalent in our postmodern (or, if you wish, our post-postmodern) world. We are surrounded today by voices that deny—in practice if not also in theory—the existence of any metanarratives. Claims of deep reaching diversities abound: racial, ethnic, sexual, national, religious, and generational. Ironically, as the technological capacity for communication increases, the ability to understand each other often seems to be decreasing. All of this poses important theological challenges about an underlying commonness for those of us who believe that God’s ultimate intention for his human creatures is not the curse of Babel but the blessings of Pentecost. Kuyper’s common grace theology can help to cast light on these matters.

And while Kuyper clearly operates out of a Reformed framework, his theology of common grace is not tied in any necessary manner to, say, specific doctrines about predestination and election. Indeed, many of the theological themes that Kuyper saw in his nineteenth-century context as comprising the unique property of Calvinism—concepts like covenant, kingdom, people of God, cultural discipleship—loom large in the contemporary vocabularies of a variety of Protestant and Catholic traditions.

What is foundational to Kuyper’s presentation of common grace theology is a deep devotion to the notions of God’s sovereignty and our obligation to participate in the divine call to be obedient to the lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas of life. And it is clear that many Christians these days—Wesleyans, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Mennonites, and others beyond the boundaries of Reformed/Presbyterian life and thought—are looking for resources for equipping Christians to find alternatives to the various world-fleeing spiritualities that have long afflicted the broader Christian community.

To use a present-day label for assessing personality types, Abraham Kuyper was an amazing—even compulsive—multitasker. He not only wrote in much detail about a variety of areas of Christian cultural engagement, but actually did a lot of that engagement himself. He was a member of his country’s parliament, heading up the political party that he had created, and even serving for a few years as the nation’s prime minister. He taught and administered at the university he established. He wrote regularly for the newspaper he had founded. He spoke regularly to groups of farmers, at labor union conventions, and to artists’ guilds.

And he was a churchman. This is important to emphasize in thinking about his career, because very often people who have attempted to carry out his vision in a variety of cultural spheres have not paid as much attention to the church as Kuyper would have insisted upon. If he sometimes in his writings seemed to treat the church as simply one among many spheres, it was because he took the realities of the church and its mission so seriously that it was always assumed in all that he said about God’s plan for the creation.

More specifically, Kuyper saw the church as the area in which “particular grace” functioned in a very special way. Kuyper knew the transforming power of saving grace in an intensely personal way. He had been trained, in his theological studies at the great University of Leiden, in the emerging liberal theology of the day, and had begun his ministry as a proponent of that theological perspective. But through the testimony of some very ordinary folks in his first parish, laity who met in their own homes for prayer and Bible study, he came to experience what he later described as “a blessing for my heart, the rise of the morning star in my life.”6 After that, the church’s proclamation that human beings are sinners desperately in need of God’s gracious offer of salvation through the atoning work of Christ was a concept always central to his life and thought.

So for Kuyper, common grace always had to be seen in its vital relationship to God’s sovereign and gracious workings both in the church and in the larger world. The church is where God’s renewing purposes, both for individuals and the creation, are openly revealed and taught about in the light of biblical revelation. But God is also at work in the broader human community. Common grace is a key force for this larger renewing mission.

Thinkers who find much that is helpful in Kuyper’s common grace theology have still wondered at times whether it is helpful to call this phenomenon a kind of grace. As we noted earlier, John Calvin himself employed that concept, in suggesting that the insights offered by pagan writers were the result of a “peculiar grace.” Like Calvin, Kuyper did not limit the operations of divine grace to God’s saving activity, using instead the broader understanding of grace as unmerited favor.7 In that sense of grace, the very air we breathe is an undeserved gift from God, as is recognized in the hymn writer’s prayerful confession: “I’ll love thee … and praise thee as long as thou lendest me breath.”8

The good things that come forth from the unredeemed portion of humankind, then, are not to be attributed to a capacity of fallen human beings to produce meritorious works on their own. They flow from God’s own sovereign choices to fulfill his purpose for the creation. This is why Kuyper’s common grace has to be clearly distinguished from the notion of prevenient grace that shows up in a number of traditions, particularly Wesleyanism and Roman Catholicism. From Kuyper’s perspective, prevenient grace is a way of downplaying the extent of human depravity by positing a kind of automatic universal upgrade of those dimensions of human nature that have been corrupted by sin. To put it much too simply, the goal of prevenient grace is the upgrade; it is to raise the deeply wounded human capacities to a level where some measure of freedom to choose or reject obedience to God is made possible. Common grace, on the other hand, is for Kuyper a divine strategy for bringing the cultural designs of God to completion. Common grace operates mysteriously in the life of, say, a Chinese government official or an unbelieving artist to harness their created talents to prepare the creation for the full coming of the kingdom. In this sense, the operations of common grace—unlike those of prevenient grace—always have a goal-directed ad hoc character.

In discussing various examples of common grace, Kuyper distinguishes between the ways in which God operates both internally and externally in the lives of unbelievers. The internal aspect of these operations is both a risky topic and an important one. It is risky because Kuyper does not want in any way to suggest that common grace transforms human hearts in the way that particular grace surely does. God works mysteriously in, for example, the artistic efforts of a Picasso, without doing anything to the painter’s inner life that might approximate a kind of regeneration of his heart.

But the internal side of things is still an important feature of Kuyper’s insights regarding common grace. Many in the Reformed tradition who have made use of his common grace theology have focused exclusively on matters that can easily be characterized as external workings of God in the lives of the unregenerate. A classic example is the 1924 statement issued by the Christian Reformed denomination, with its “three points of common grace.” That church’s synod, drawing directly on Kuyper’s theology, affirmed that there is indeed a kind of nonsalvific attitude of divine favor toward all human beings that manifests itself in these three ways: (1) the bestowal of natural gifts, such as rain and sunshine, on creatures in general; (2) the restraining of sin in human affairs, so that the unredeemed do not produce all of the evil that their depraved natures might otherwise bring about; and (3) the ability of unbelievers to perform acts of civic good.9

Those points certainly fit clearly into Kuyper’s common grace theology. They do, however, have the kind of purely external character that could lead us to attribute them, not necessarily to actions motivated by a divine favor toward unbelievers, but simply to a traditional understanding of divine providence, where God in his own mysterious manner uses the actions of sinful people to further his own unfolding plan for the creation without bestowing any real gifts on them in the process. And that is exactly the interpretation offered by the opponents of Kuyper’s common grace theology within the Reformed tradition.10

The fact is, however, that Kuyper goes further than those examples of common grace that lend themselves easily to a more providential interpretation, and in doing so he does point to phenomena that have an internal character. In addition to the purely external operations, he says, common grace is at work “everywhere that civic righteousness, family loyalty, natural love, human virtue, the development of public conscience, integrity, fidelity among people, and an inclination toward piety permeates life.”11 These are precisely the features that point us to the internal lives of, say, the virtuous Confucian and the courageous Muslim mother.

Kuyper obviously has much to offer us in our attempts to engage the larger patterns and processes of cultural life. But here is a basic question: What is the real point of this engagement? If Kuyper is right that God wants us to take all of this seriously, why is this so important to God?

To answer these questions we need to pay attention to two aspects of his theology that do not often show up in other theological explorations of culture matters: his theological views about the original creation and about the end of time.

Kuyper is arguably the most prominent proponent of the idea of a cultural mandate issued by God to human beings in the first chapter of Genesis. God programmed cultural formation into the original creation. When the Lord told the first human pair to “be fruitful and multiply,” he was surely talking about procreation, but when he went on to instruct them to “fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” over it (Gen 1:28), he was referring to something more, the filling of the Garden with the products and processes of cultural activity. As they began to fashion tools, work schedules, and patterns of interaction, Adam and Eve would be adding to the original contents of the creation, and eventually, even without the appearance of sin, the Garden would become a city, an arena of complex spheres of cultural interaction. In that sense, not only the family, but also art, science, technology, politics (as the collective patterns of decision making), recreation, and the like were all programmed into the original creation in order to display different patterns of cultural flourishing. God wanted artists to bring aesthetic excellence to the creation and scholars to advance the cause of knowledge. Economic activity would foster stewardship, while politics would promote justice.

Needless to say, all of this was deeply affected by the fall into sin. But the capacity for cultural formation was not lost in fallen humanity. Scarred, yes, and even seriously distorted and corrupted. But the impulse toward cultural activity deeply implanted in human beings by God continues. And common grace sees to it that good things are produced, even where rebellious human spirits are in charge.

God preserves, then, the patterns of cultural formation that he desires for the creation. For Kuyper, though, it is not only about preservation. Common grace is a means by which God prepares. Common grace aims at that which is yet to come. To acknowledge, for Kuyper, that God cares about art, athletics, education, business, politics, and entertainment is to acknowledge also that God will not ever give up on these areas of human cultural achievement. All that has been accomplished in human history in promoting truth, beauty, goodness, justice, stewardship, even that which has flourished in contexts where the name of Jesus has not been lifted up—all of this will be revealed in the end time as counting toward the coming of his kingdom. To be sure, much of it will need a final cleansing, a purging of all that falls short of the full glorifying of God. But it will be gathered in.

Kuyper had a strong interest in eschatology. He was convinced that the works of culture would be gathered into the holy city when it descends from the heavens as the new Jerusalem. His younger colleague Herman Bavinck had argued that there is a collective sense of the divine image that “is not a static entity but extends and unfolds itself” in the rich diversity of cultures, and that this image will be revealed in the end time when redeemed people from many cultures will enter the holy city—and here Bavinck quotes from the book of Revelation’s final vision—to “bring into [the city] the glory and the honor of the nations” (Rev 21:26).12

Kuyper held to the same perspective. He actually wrote a commentary on the book of Revelation, and as he focuses on that same final vision, he argues that in that city, “The whole reborn humanity stands before God as a holy unity that is athrob with life,” and this fully redeemed humanity “does not remain on its knees in uninterrupted worship of God,” but it also engages in “new callings, new life-tasks, new commissions.” The life of the future age “will be a full human life which will exhibit all the glory that God in the first creation had purposed and appointed for the same, but which by us was sinned away.”13

This is a vision that, rightly understood, gives us hope in our daily efforts to serve the Lord, the kind of hope described so nicely in more recent years by the great twentieth-century missionary-theologian Lesslie Newbigin:

We can commit ourselves without reserve to all the secular work our shared humanity requires of us, knowing that nothing we do in itself is good enough to form part of that [heavenly] city’s building, knowing that everything—from our most secret prayers to our most public political acts—is part of that sin-stained human nature that must go down into the valley of death and judgment, and yet knowing that as we offer it up to the Father in the name of Christ and in the power of the Spirit, it is safe with him and—purged in fire—it will find its place in the holy city at the end.14

Kuyper was an activist who often did his theology on the run, with an eye to the very real practical challenges that he faced as a Christian leader in public life. That is one of the strengths of this book. While Kuyper probes some theological issues quite deeply, it is always out of an urgent concern to promote the cause of Christ’s kingdom.

If some Christians in the English-speaking world only know one thing about Kuyper, it is likely his oft-quoted manifesto: “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!’ ”15 That simple but profound affirmation of Christ’s supreme lordship over all of creation—including what human beings are commissioned by God to add to the creation in their cultural engagements—has to be seen as what undergirds Kuyper’s theology of common grace. Christ rules over all—that is basic. But we also need the theology of common grace as a practical fleshing out of how we can best understand the implications of our affirmation of Christ’s lordship.

What Kuyper offers us in these volumes is a perspective that can equip present-day Christians to engage in our own on the run involvements in daily life, with an overall perspective that is solidly grounded in God’s revealed Word. Not all Christians today, of course, will have the patience or the technical understanding to make their way through the pages of this book or the volumes that follow. It needs to be interpreted in terms that are accessible to ordinary Christians, by teachers, pastors, and other leaders in the faith community. The encouragement and inspiration for doing so can come from the example of Kuyper himself. He was well known in his day as a much-admired champion of “the little people” (in Dutch, de kleine luyden) in the Christian community. Those folks had not mastered the texts he had authored, but they did catch his vision, putting it into practice in farming, labor, business, politics, education, family life, and the arts.

That is the kind of putting into practice that is much needed in our own time. This will not happen effectively if we simply repeat Kuyper’s strategies for practical implementations of the cultural mandate. There is much, of course, in his also well-known doctrine of sphere sovereignty that speaks clearly to the issues of our own day. But we need to look for new ways to breathe life into the idea that Christians are obliged to seek out uniquely God-honoring patterns of involvement in all of the spheres of cultural interaction.

All of this calls for the kind of discernment that is grounded not only in solid theological reflection, but also in a communal seeking of the guidance of the Holy Spirit through prayer, mutual correction, and the recovery of a variety of other spiritual practices that have strengthened God’s people for kingdom service in the past.

And—to draw directly on an important element in common grace theology—this will mean openness to accepting truth, goodness, beauty, and justice wherever we find it. But this openness must always be accompanied by an awareness of the dreadful reality of the antithesis, the fundamental opposition between the ways of our shared rebellion and the sanctified desire to serve the Lord in all dimensions of our lives.

This book and its subsequent volumes in the series give us a much needed opportunity to absorb the insights of Abraham Kuyper about God’s marvelous designs for human cultural life.

Richard J. Mouw

ABBREVIATIONS

GENERAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC

AKB

Kuipers, Tjitze. Abraham Kuyper: An Annotated Bibliography 1857–2010. Translated by Clifford Anderson and Dagmare Houniet. Brill’s Series in Church History 55. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

AKCR

Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader. Edited by James D. Bratt. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

CCS

Calvin, John. Calvin’s Commentaries Series. Edited by John King. 45 vols. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1844–56.

CE

The Catholic Encyclopedia. Edited by Charles G. Herbermann, Edward A. Pace, Condé B. Pallen, Thomas J. Shahan, and John J. Wynne. 15 vols. New York: Robert Appleton, 1907–12.

CG

Kuyper, Abraham. Common Grace. Translated by Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas. Edited by Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill. 3 vols. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015–.

CO

Calvin, John. Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia. Edited by Guilielmus Baum, Eduardus Cunitz, and Eduardus Reuss. 59 vols. Corpus Reformatorum, 2nd ser., 29–87. Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863–1900.

DLGTT

Muller, Richard A. Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996.

ESV

English Standard Version

Inst.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559). 2 vols. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960.

KJV

King James Version

LW

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works. 55 vols. American ed. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann. Saint Louis: Concordia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–86.

LXX

Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT)

NIV

New International Version

NSHE

The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. 13 vols. Edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1949–50. Originally published in 12 vols., 1908–12.

NT

New Testament

OT

Old Testament

PRRD

Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. 4 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.

RD

Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. 4 vols. Translated by John Vriend. Edited by John Bolt. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003–8.

SV

Statenvertaling (“States Translation” of the Dutch Bible, 1637)

OLD TESTAMENT

Gen

Genesis

Exod

Exodus

Lev

Leviticus

Num

Numbers

Deut

Deuteronomy

Josh

Joshua

Judg

Judges

Ruth

Ruth

1-2 Sam

1-2 Samuel

1-2 Kgs

1-2 Kings

1-2 Chr

1-2 Chronicles

Ezra

Ezra

Neh

Nehemiah

Esth

Esther

Job

Job

Psa (Pss)

Psalm(s)

Prov

Proverbs

Eccl

Ecclesiastes

Song

Song of Songs

Isa

Isaiah

Jer

Jeremiah

Lam

Lamentations

Ezek

Ezekiel

Dan

Daniel

Hos

Hosea

Joel

Joel

Amos

Amos

Obad

Obadiah

Jonah

Jonah

Mic

Micah

Nah

Nahum

Hab

Habakkuk

Zeph

Zephaniah

Hag

Haggai

Zech

Zechariah

Mal

Malachi

NEW TESTAMENT

Matt

Matthew

Mark

Mark

Luke

Luke

John

John

Acts

Acts

Rom

Romans

1-2 Cor

1-2 Corinthians

Gal

Galatians

Eph

Ephesians

Phil

Philippians

Col

Colossians

1-2 Thess

1-2 Thessalonians

1-2 Tim

1-2 Timothy

Titus

Titus

Phlm

Philemon

Heb

Hebrews

Jas

James

1-2 Pet

1-2 Peter

1-3 John

1-3 John

Jude

Jude

Rev

Revelation

OTHER ANCIENT WRITINGS

b. Sanh.

Babylonian Sanhedrin (Talmudic Tractate)

PREFACE

The Reformed paradigm has suffered no damage greater than its deficient development of the doctrine of common grace.

The cause for this deficiency was the struggle to preserve its hard-won position, a tireless battle with pen and sword. Wrestling to dislodge the ecclesiastical monopoly of Rome required such incredible effort in France, the Netherlands, and Scotland. In addition, the Anabaptist movement arose in Western Europe, while Northern and Eastern Europe periodically faced the extremely hostile opposition of Lutheranism, as well as Arminian and Erastian agitation in our own land.1

This is how, already in its earliest decades, Reformed ecclesiastical, political, and intellectual life came under severe pressure after its remarkably quick blossoming. When finally, by their stout resistance, Reformed people in the Netherlands and in Scotland had secured their freedom of existence, their robust strength was exhausted. Along with their success came a sense of ease that enervated them and diluted any ardor for pursuing the ideal. This explains why all their doctrinal energy was initially concentrated on endless polemic, leading ultimately to endless repetition of doctrinal platitudes.

After 1650, little doctrinal development occurred, either in Switzerland, the Netherlands, or Scotland. After the earliest flowering of Reformed life, not one original talent blossomed in the doctrinal field. The stream of Reformed thinking that had once flowed so freshly across the plains of religious thought dried up. What had begun earlier with breadth and vastness withered into narrow-minded, truly byzantine investigation, the kind of inspection that lacks even the resilience to go back to the root of the Reformed idea. With their narrowness, people were simply repristinating their well-worn polemic against Arminianism, hardly noticing any of the new challenges that have arisen. In this way the connection with the past was lost, and people became isolated from the ethos of their own time. This explains why there has been hardly any influence on the present era. People have quarantined themselves within their own circle, positioning themselves beyond reach of the forces driving cultural life. All the while, the barrenness of hairsplitting within their own ranks has awakened a reaction within their hearts. In various quarters the opposition toward all such intellectualistic biblical learnedness could no longer be averted, and resulted in disjoining what, in the sixteenth century, had been unified.

At the present time a change has occurred in this regard, among us at least. Historical investigation into the Reformed foundation has been reawakened, with the result that people have discovered this memorable truth: initially Reformed people had emphasized various principles that they had developed broadly and logically, looking very much like an all-embracing worldview, one that possessed enough flexibility to determine our own internal attitude amid the contemporary generation in this century.2

What had seemed initially to offer merely historical value acquired significance as being intensely relevant for today. In addition, the pressing question arose concerning the relationship between the Christian life, as we understood it, and the life of the world in all of its manifestation and diversity. How could we restore our influence on this common life, an influence that at one time had extended so widely but regrettably had later been lost? The answer to that question would not arise from a process of give-and-take, but had to be derived from the Reformed paradigm itself. An investigation had to be launched regarding what creative idea had originally governed Reformed people in their relationship to the non-Christian world, a study every bit as practical as it was theoretical.

Every Anabaptist sect had systematically isolated itself from the world. In opposition to this, Reformed people had chosen as their guiding principle the apostolic notion that “all things are yours … and you are Christ’s” (1 Cor 3:21, 23), and had self-consciously invested themselves, with unusual talent and surpassing resilience, into the full range of human living amid the tumult of the nations. This defining character trait, standing out prominently in the history of all of Western Europe, could not have been accidental. The explanation for this character trait was to be found in its comprehensive and dominant foundational conviction. Accordingly, the identity of this governing foundational idea had to be investigated.

This investigation showed with immediate and indisputable clarity that this foundational idea consisted in the doctrine of common grace, an idea deduced directly from the sovereignty of the Lord, a doctrine that is and remains the root conviction for all Reformed people. If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit. The non-Christian world has not been handed over to Satan, nor surrendered to fallen humanity, nor consigned to fate. God’s sovereignty is great and all-dominating in the life of that unbaptized world as well. Therefore Christ’s church on earth and God’s children cannot simply retreat from this life. If the believer’s God is at work in this world, then in this world the believer’s hand must take hold of the plow, and the name of the Lord must be glorified in that activity as well.

Therefore everything came down to resuscitating the rich foundational idea embodied in the doctrine of common grace.

Precise formulation of this doctrine could occur only after all the historical and doctrinal material relevant to this doctrine had first been carefully assembled and organized in terms of the Reformed paradigm. I have tried to the best of my ability to perform such a task in this work on common grace, offered in these volumes to Reformed churches around the world. A comprehensive and well-ordered presentation of the material was most important in this regard. What needed to become apparent was just how extensive this Reformed foundational conviction is, extending across the whole of human living.

Therefore I have divided the material into three sections. In the first section, common grace in its origin and operation must be objectively demonstrated. In the second section, theological reflection must focus on this subject, so that what has earlier been identified in its substance needs now to be illuminated doctrinally. Finally, in the third or practical section, we must bring to light the significance of this doctrine for living.

Spiritual isolation and ecclesiastical isolation are equally anti-Reformed. This work will have achieved the goal I have envisioned only when it ends such isolation without, God forbid, tempting believers to lose themselves in that world, a world that may not hold dominion over us, but rather a world within which we in the power of God must exercise dominion.

Abraham Kuyper

August 1, 1902

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

When God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.

1 PETER 3:20A

§ 1 With its appearance in 1878, the initial summons to duty that De Heraut sounded throughout our country once again bore witness to our people regarding the Calvinistic confession of our ancestors, namely, that grace is particular.1 From then on the struggle to restore Reformed truth has been ongoing. We thank the Lord, to whom all glory belongs, that fifteen years after engaging in this battle, our struggle has achieved its goal. The particularity of grace, this bastion of our defense, at one time so threatened, is safe once again. In recapturing the particular character of grace, we recaptured the heart of our Reformed confession, which finds its necessary background in the doctrine of the covenant, and still further back, in the doctrine of common grace.2

Particular grace deals with the individual, the person to be saved, with the individual entering glory. And with this individual, as child of God, we cannot wrap the golden chain of redemption around his soul unless that golden chain descends from personal, sovereign election.

For that reason, the almighty sovereignty of God, who elects whom he will and rejects those to whom he does not show mercy, remains the heart of the church, the cor ecclesiae, which the Reformed churches must hold firmly until the return of the Lord. The consequence of forsaking this truth would be their vanishing from the earth, even prior to the Maranatha.3 This doctrine is and remains, therefore, the heart of our confession. This is the testimony that, on the authority of God’s Word, sealed by our personal experience, we shout aloud for all to hear: grace is particular.

Nevertheless, that same child of God is something other than an isolated individual limited to himself. This individual is also part of a community, member of a body, participant in a group identity, enclosed within an organism. The doctrine of the covenant emphasizes and does justice to this truth.

Without the doctrine of the covenant, the doctrine of election is mutilated, and the frightening lack of the assurance of faith is the valid punishment resulting from this mutilation of the truth. If separated from the confession of the covenant, election in isolation attempts to take hold of the Holy Spirit without honoring God the Son. The Third Person in the Trinity does not allow that violation of the honor of the Second Person. Christ himself testified that the Holy Spirit “will take what is mine and declare it to you” [John 16:14]. Anyone who presumes to trample upon this divine ordinance will not escape the severe anguish with which this unshakeable ordinance wreaks its misery of soul.

Therefore, in Holy Scripture this sovereign, personal election never appears in any other manner but within the context of covenant grace. The individual, this single soul, must experience being incorporated into the community of the saints. We are elected personally, but together we are