Tag: #kuyper

The ‘giving over’ of the nations by God mentioned in Romans 1:28 begins with idolatry which incurs wrath resulting in being ‘handed over’ to the false worship which has been pursued. Alluding to the Ten Commandments, Kuyper says it starts with offence against the first table of the law (concerning duty to God), which provokes God who hands them over to offend the second table (concerning duty to fellow humans).

Tribes and nations degenerate at different times – Kuyper cites Africa and Canaan as examples. The status of a nation is not its ‘badge of honour’ but emblematic of its enjoyment of God’s common grace. Therefore, it does not necessarily signify his approval of the nation, but the stage of his cultivation of it for his purposes.

Therefore, because the Light from whom all things are and have life continued to shine, the world ‘outside’ of particular grace continued to proceed from the Word. Kuyper says that “the grace extended to our race that had fallen into sin consists not in the gift of something new, nor in the regiving of something we had lost, but exclusively in the continuation of something that lay at the foundation of our creation.”

Doesn’t the positive assessment of General Revelation offered by John’s Gospel contradict the first chapter of Romans? Not really, because John wants to talk about the Incarnation so he adopts the order Christ, Creation, Fall, Common Grace, Particular Grace. In the other case, Paul wants to talk about Justification so he starts with man’s misconduct and subsequent need. In his schema, idolatry points us to the human need for God – other animals don’t worship – and common grace stops sin from destroying the need to worship. Hence Paul’s phrase in Romans 1:21-23 that “though they knew God” they instead worship the creature and it is emphatically not ‘because they don’t know God….’ So it is not a new revelation that comes to the sinner but, in fact, the old one which has been preserved as a witness by common grace. 

 

Before turning his attention to the New Testament, Kuyper actually pauses to consider the situation of Israel with regard to its Messiah. He notes how Jesus observed Israel’s special status as the preparation place for salvation of the World, and therefore, the place of greater judgement due to the greater light granted to her.

In Jesus words of lament in Matthew 23:38 – “See, your house is left to you, desolate.” – Kuyper sees the plight of his Jewish contemporaries who oppose Christianity, serving Mammon instead of the Lord and not blessing the church. He sees them as guilty but not as a vanishing people, and trusts that there will be an end time turning of Jews to Christ. He asserts that Jesus knew better than anyone the place of the Jews in the salvation of the whole world and that “the Baptism of the nations has replaced the circumcision of the Jews”. 

In the story of John the Baptist, “the eternal Light is put in the context, not of Israel but of the world in general, for whom the incarnation of that eternal Light was intended.” John the Baptist is spoken of as ‘greater than all’ but how is this so? It is because of his fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 40:3 concerning the one who ‘makes straight a highway for our God’ that John “occupies a place between Israel and the Christ… he does not call people to Israel, but calls people from Israel and invites them to Jesus”

Again Kuyper notes that “the eternal Word stands in twofold relationship or connection to the world. The first is that as Creator of that world he is its Life and its Light, and that he has remained the Light of the world even after the darkness of sin had come over that world. This is common grace. And in the second place, as mediator of God and man he has entered this world now to dwell among us, which means particular grace.”

The Gospel of John doesn’t locate the beginning of the Christian story in John the Baptist, Abraham or even at Creation but in God. Kuyper says, “If we confess with Augustine, ‘My heart remains restless in me till it finds rest in God,’ then we understand how perfectly glorious and perfectly blessed that divine life within God himself must have been from all eternity, that holy interaction of God with God in the triunity of the persons.”

It is from this eternal harmonious unity of relationship that Jesus, ‘the Word’ who is the bearer of the thoughts of God creates and sustains all creation. The Eternal Word is everywhere, but He shines into an unwilling world. Ironically, “Man neither derives his light from elsewhere, nor from himself, nor did he create it. He lives by the eternal Word.” And it is this light which is both the source of human life and of its flourishing. “Light in the intellect, light in the choosing activity of his will, light in his social existence, light in his moral existence, light in his art and scholarship, light in the eye of the soul with which he sees God.”

With reference to John 1:15, Kuyper says that after the Fall, “the Word… shone into the darkness in such a way that the darkening could not progress further. So that a twilight remained in the midst of darkness. And that twilight in the midst of the darkness, those rays of light shining through the mists into the darkness—that is common grace.” This ‘pitying grace’ is the substance of the light which the darkness cannot overcome.

 

Despite the particularity of Abraham, Kuyper reminds us that “from the beginning God is focused on the salvation of the world, and Abraham’s call stands in the service of that salvation.” So, although particular grace is operative in Abraham, we must observe that he is in no way isolated from the common life of humanity but rather embedded in it. A key evidence of Abraham’s ‘embeddedness’ is his interaction with Melchizedek, whose priesthood is a continuation of the Creation ordinance of God to Man. It is a priesthood of this kind which Jesus will fulfil for the whole of humanity.

Kuyper writes to combat ideas of Israel as superior to the other nations in the economy of God’s redemption plan. He says that Abraham’s story does not warrant an isolationist (religiously) nor a nationalist (politically) view of God’s salvation plan. Separatist notions of God’s working come from various corners (Anabaptist, Zionist or whatever), but none do justice to God’s actual working in the whole of humanity, beyond his elect. The ‘great mystery’ is not just that Gentiles can become God’s people but that Christ came in our nature to save all who are in our nature and not just His national people. The God of Israel has providentially instructed individuals and nations throughout history to bring about his purposes, and his claim is upon the whole world. Just as Israel’s ultimate goal was to bring in the nations, so the church must resist inward-focussed particularism.

With regards to Noah’s sons, Kuyper makes various theory deductions about race, the progress of civilizations and God’s purposes. Regarding the confusion of languages at Babel, he says “God appears to do nothing. Only a small change occurs imperceptibly in the instrument of speech. And the immeasurable consequence of this seemingly insignificant change is that the whole history of humankind takes an entirely different course.” But because language is so linked to our interior life, a fundamental change of humanity – including the physical and emotional – occurs with this division of groups from each other. This separation of the streams of humanity makes way for a work of grace through Abraham.

God’s covenant with humanity after the flood can be seen as an alliance against a common enemy: Because God has created humans in his image, “our race could not perish in sin and death without God’s honour suffering” and therefore “not only man, but also God had a vested interest in not cutting off the future development of our race.” In the symbol of this covenant, the rainbow, we have signified the light of God’s ongoing grace dispensed and diffused through his judgments against the ongoing sin and death. 

One of the main features of the working of God’s Common Grace is a ‘muzzling’ of human sinfulness. But, because of this, humankind’s dire need of rescue can be obscured to them. This explains the need for different phases of God’s grace to impress this need upon humans. Citing the shrinking of the human life-span after Noah, Kuyper says “The shrinking of our life span is an increased grace. Old sinners are generally the most dangerous ones, and those who have centuries ahead of them to continue in their evil have every chance that they will break out in even more horrible unrighteousness.”

Kuyper considers the development of the Ark as an example of how far humanity by virtue of God’s grace has technically progressed and notes that he “uses precisely the generation that wanders away from him, and thus cannot serve him in his temple and his sanctuary, to serve him and fulfil his counsel in the material and natural realm” He views the streams of Common and Particular Grace as flowing independently of each other but notes “it strikes us how particular grace joins together with common grace in order to merge completely for a moment in the ark.”

The immediate restraining of Common Grace means that the arena for saving grace is opened: ‘Total depravity’ is a reality restrained by Common Grace in the human heart and not merely restrained by external constraints (such as opportunities for sin being removed). The ‘small sparks’ of the image of God in the human are guarded. This happens straight after the fall as can be observed in Eve’s reaction upon bearing Cain: She is glad that – as she imagines – Satan has been defeated, in fulfilment of the judgement on the serpent and the ‘placing of enmity’ promised by God. These restraining works of Common Grace against the full effects of death and the Fall are also outworked in the realms of bodily death (medicine etc) and the extent of the cursedness of the Earth itself.

God chooses to re-create rather than start again with a new creation because he cares about his glory, even above the salvation of the image-bearing creature (although these concerns are necessarily and inextricably entwined). He cannot allow his image to be desecrated. We see another very early evidence of the working of Common Grace in the fact that Adam and Eve react with shame in their actions. By contrast, Satan is shameless.