Pro Rege (Volume 2): Living Under Christ the King

By Abraham Kuyper

Abraham Kuyper firmly believed that Jesus Christ is King not just of Christians, but of the entire cosmos.

In volume two of Pro Rege, he continues his analysis of the extent to which Christ rules--first in the human heart, then in the life of the church, and continuing to the life of the Christian family. Kuyper believed that it was nonsense to distinguish between life inside and outside of church walls. Here, he shows that although Jesus' kingship has been denied and denigrated, Christ still exerts his power in the world through his people.

This new translation of Pro Rege, created in partnership with the Abraham 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Release date: Mar 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781577997801

Abraham Kuyper

Abraham Kuyper (1937-1920) was a prominent Dutch Calvinist theologian, politician, educator, and writer. His thinking has influenced the Neo-Calvinist movement in the United States and Canada. Many of his writings, including Pro Rege, have never been translated into English.

Book preview

PRO REGE

LIVING UNDER CHRIST’S KINGSHIP

Volume 2: The Kingship of Christ in Its Operation

ABRAHAM

KUYPER

Edited by John Kok with Nelson D. Kloosterman

Translated by Albert Gootjes

Introduction by Govert Buijs

ACTONINSTITUTE

FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION AND LIBERTY

Pro Rege: Living Under Christ’s Kingship

Volume 2: The Kingship of Christ in Its Operation

Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology

Copyright 2017 Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty

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

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All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission.

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Originally published as Pro Rege of het Koningschap van Christus, door Dr. A. Kuyper. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1911–1912

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.

Print ISBN 978-1-57-799671-2

Digital ISBN 978-1-57-799780-1

Translator: Albert Gootjes

Lexham Editorial: Brannon Ellis, Joel Wilcox

Cover Design: Christine Gerhart

Back Cover Design: Brittany Schrock, Quincy Stacy

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

Series I: Christ’s Kingship and His Subjects

I.1: A People of His Own

I.2: The Bond of Love

I.3: Confessing Our King

I.4: Being Witnesses

I.5: Bearing Our Cross

I.6: Soldiers of Our King

I.7: Denying Ourselves for Our King

I.8: Always Ready!

I.9: Conformed to the Image of His Son

I.10: Pilgrims

I.11: The New Commandment

Series II: Christ’s Kingship in His Church

II.1: The Mystical Body

II.2: The Visible Church

II.3: The Calling of the Disciples

II.4: The Training of the Apostles

II.5: The Holy Sacraments

II.6: Church Federation

II.7: Dwelling in His Church

II.8: Broken Unity

II.9: The Constitutive Significance of the Sacraments for the Church

II.10: The Church and the Holy Scriptures

II.11: The Disintegration of the Church

II.12: The Worldly Church

II.13: A Unique People

II.14: No King without a People

II.15: Neighboring Churches

II.16: Parish System

II.17: The Shepherd’s Care

II.18: Training for the Ministry

II.19: Tempted to Blasphemy

II.20: Private Initiative

II.21: Philanthropy

II.22: Summary

Series III: Christ’s Kingship and the Family

III.1: The Family is Not a New Creation

III.2: Christian Family

III.3: Corruption of the Best

III.4: Christ as the Head of the Husband

III.5: The Husband as the Head of His Wife

III.6: Feminism I

III.7: Feminism II

III.8: Children

III.9: Authority

III.10: Servants

III.11: Contact with the Outside World

III.12: The Family Altar

III.13: The Family and the Church

III.14: Work in the Family

III.15: Poverty in the Family

III.16: The Care for the Body

III.17: Nurture

III.18: The Unity of the Family

Bibliography

Subject/Author Index

Scripture Index

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 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 a 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 the J. C. Huizenga family and Dr. Rimmer and Ruth DeVries, 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

Transposing a book from another time (early twentieth century) and another language (Dutch) into contemporary English is a delightful, but challenging process. That latter feature requires us to clarify for our readers a number of translation and editorial decisions designed to enhance this English edition of Pro Rege. These decisions, naturally, involve alterations, subtractions, and additions.

When citing Scripture, Kuyper employed either the Dutch Statenvertaling or his own paraphrase of the text. Consistent with our goal of producing a contemporary English edition of this work, we have used the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible, unless otherwise noted. To aid the reader, at some points we have replaced Kuyper’s paraphrase with the actual text of the ESV, and we have supplied (in brackets) those specific textual references, of either Scripture citations or paraphrases, that were absent from the original. The renderings of various doctrinal standards, such as the Heidelberg Catechism, are taken from the versions appearing in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, 4 vols., ed. James T. Dennison Jr. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008–14). The editorial style conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition.

In the footnotes, the opening formula Note by the author identifies notes from Kuyper himself. All other notes are editorial additions to these editions. These brief editorial notes have been added throughout in order to identify persons, terms, schools of thought, or events mentioned in the original that might be unfamiliar to contemporary readers.

Other stylistic alterations have been made for ease of reading and for the sake of appearance. Italics are used less frequently in the English edition than appear in the original. More importantly, large paragraphs and long sentences have been divided, and subordinate clauses have occasionally been rearranged to render accurately the emphasis present in Kuyper’s original. Sections within chapters were originally unnumbered; numbering has been added to aid readers in finding specific references.

Bringing significant intellectual works into the modern day by way of translation frequently confronts the translator and editor with matters involving sensitive sociocultural views and associated language. As times change, so do modes of expression. This pertains to Kuyper’s work as well. For example, where possible we have opted for a responsible, though by no means rigorous, use of gender-neutral nouns and pronouns (for example, speaking of people rather than men). Where necessary and only infrequently, infelicitous formulations have either been altered for the modern ear or omitted altogether.

For some time now, translators and publishers have been laboring diligently to provide the English-speaking world with access to the formative writings of Dutch cultural theologian Abraham Kuyper. Combined with his seminal volumes on Common Grace, and with his 1898 Lectures on Calvinism, these three volumes of Pro Rege constitute an essential resource for faithfully transposing Kuyper’s insights into a modern key. Being far more than a mere supplement to his works on common grace and worldview Calvinism, these volumes of Pro Rege are fundamentally correlative and complementary to those well-known works. In other words, these three major works of Kuyper are mutually interpretative.

In contrast to the somewhat philosophical and sweeping timbre of Common Grace and Lectures on Calvinism, Pro Rege offers teaching textured specifically for the church in the world, that is, for Christians living life coram Deo, in the presence of God. Because Christians share in Christ’s own anointing as Chief Prophet, Only Priest, and Eternal King (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 12, Q&A 31–32), they are called and may expect, among other things, with a free conscience [to] fight against sin and the devil in this life, and hereafter in eternity [to] reign with Him over all creatures. Until then, Christians live pro Rege within various spheres of human cultural activity, such as family, business, labor, art, science, education, and politics. As Kuyper’s title confesses and these volumes explicate, such living before God entails submitting to his pervasive sovereignty, to his gracious claims, and to the present kingship of Jesus Christ over the entire world and its history.

John Kok

Nelson D. Kloosterman

VOLUME INTRODUCTION

ON ENTERING KUYPER’S CATHEDRAL OF EVERYDAY LIFE

CHARTRES’ CATHEDRAL RESTORED

Thirty years ago, when one entered perhaps the finest and most impressive example of Gothic architecture—the cathedral of Chartres—one walked into a dark, dark building with almost black walls; high up there, mysteriously, some light entered from above through the stained windows with their wonderful, heavenly, intense palette of colors. The light, spectacularly breathtaking as it was, nevertheless was unable to overcome the mystical darkness of the building. The building almost amounted to a reversal of the famous image from the beginning of John’s gospel: the light shines in the world and darkness has almost overcome it. The French cathedral apparently was an attempt to symbolically convey the struggle between light and darkness, where the part closest to the earth was indeed irremediably dark and the light was only in the transcendent world, high above. Only a few rays were granted to humanity, just enough to allow them to move on through this miserable world as pilgrims on their way to the spiritual world of the afterlife.

Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment intellectuals were keen on maintaining and even promoting this imagery. They even employed the darkness of the Gothic cathedrals as a symbol of the basic attitude that they claimed Christianity fostered among its adherents: a rejection of the world, a rejection of this concrete life, and a longing for the life beyond—the afterlife as the real life. This image was crucial in the justification of their claim that all progress in this world, all light, all enlightenment was only the result of non-Christian sources, either from Greek or Roman antiquity, or from a Renaissance conceived entirely in secular terms, and of course, above all, from the Enlightenment itself. Christianity, as the entirely otherworldly religion of the West, did not have anything to do with the West’s modern worldly achievements. The rule of law, human rights, science, figurative arts and literature—everything worthwhile in the West was there in spite of Christianity, not thanks to it. It was against this otherworldly interpretation of Christianity that Nietzsche voiced his rejection of the Hinterwelten (the idea of worlds behind this present world) and launched his strong enjoinder, remain true to the earth!¹ He wrote this as if Christianity had said something entirely different.

However, historical research has pointed out that the cathedrals were not at all built as expressions of earthly darkness. It turns out that they were not attempts to catch the darkness of the world, but on the contrary, as attempts to represent the divine light as a present reality, in this world, as an embodied, enfleshed reality. When the cathedrals were built, their walls were light, bright, and white, not the many dark shades of gray they have adopted after 800 years of candle smoke and humans breathing. In hindsight, it has to be concluded that the cathedral as an expression of contrast—that is, between the darkness of the present world and the sparkles of light shining from beyond this world, from heaven—is a nineteenth-century distortion of history, and especially a distortion of Christianity.

Based on these insights, recently a very radical (and therefore highly contested—the entire heritage of secular Enlightenment is at stake here!) restoration has begun. It transforms Chartres’ cathedral from an expression of the so-called darkness of Christianity (with a distant glimmer of light) to an expression of what architectural historians now believe was the original intention of a cathedral: to catch the heavenly light as fully as possible within this world. Its builders were trying to convey the idea that divine light is to be seen here, today, in this world. The restored walls are now indeed made bright again, in stark contrast to the still unrestored parts. Indeed, some of the Romantic-mystic mysteriousness has gone, and we may regret that artistically, but we have gained a perhaps much more accurate representation of what Christianity may have implied and still may imply for the world- and lifeview of its adherents and for society at large.

KUYPER’S WORK AS A CATHEDRAL OF EVERYDAY LIFE

It may seem odd to introduce a work of a staunch Protestant nineteenth/early twentieth-century theologian like Abraham Kuyper by describing a medieval Roman Catholic cathedral. Protestants are not particularly known for building cathedrals, let alone in a Roman Catholic style. However, on closer inspection, such an introduction is indeed fitting. Protestants didn’t build cathedrals—their cathedrals were the everyday life of the believers, which they saw as the location where divine light should shine in the world, in what Charles Taylor called the affirmation of ordinary life.²

However, this idea of ordinary life as a cathedral of divine light has suffered the same fate as the cathedrals of stone and glass in Europe—at least, that was Kuyper’s view. In later Protestantism, ordinary life—the life of politics, the family, work, science, the fine arts—has been distorted into a place of intrinsic darkness that believers should avoid. Or it is at best a neutral domain, which believers should make use of as just everyone else does. God’s light, as revealed in Christ, is not allowed to shine in it. The rays of divine grace are only confined to the world high above, and they are not able to illuminate this concrete, embodied world. A strict separation between life in this world and the afterlife, a rift between the immanent and the transcendent, has crept in and prompted Christians to be concerned only with the salvation of souls. Or even worse, they may care only about the salvation of their own soul, leaving their fellow human beings and the world they share together, entirely alone. After centuries, Christianity at last has started to conform to the secular Enlightenment interpretation of it.

Reading Kuyper’s Pro Rege (For the King), first published in various forms between 1907 and 1912, is like entering the restoration of Chartres’ cathedral and witnessing the transformation of an expression of the dim presence of God, covered under layers of historical dust, to a fresh presentation of Christ as the light of the world—the divinely appointed King of our present reality, here and now. Kuyper’s ponderings may be shocking at first, as it is for many intellectuals today (secular and religious alike) when they notice the restoration project going on in Chartres’ cathedral. Old, ingrained images are shattered. One has to position oneself anew in relation to the Christian tradition as a whole, and in relation to the various streams within that tradition.

If one takes in Kuyper’s oeuvre as whole, one can indeed compare it to a cathedral. The entrance, with its huge towers, can be compared to the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Everyone who wants to enter into the Kuyperian corpus has to under-stand (to stand under) this entrance. The ship of the cathedral may well be compared to the doctrine of common grace, where the divine light that shines into the world is represented in its splendor, but also in its brokenness, leading one toward the sanctuary where the altar is, where reconciliation between God and humans is represented but where the altar also becomes the throne of Christ as King. In this imaginary sanctuary of Kuyper’s work, what is at stake is not only reconciliation with God through Christ but the submission of the people of God to Christ as King as well. The confession of Christ as King completes the Kuyperian cathedral and provides it with its ultimate direction. This confession accounts for the light that shines brightly in the Kuyperian edifice.

After the three volumes on Common Grace, first published between 1896 and 1903, the three volumes of Pro Rege, presented here for the first time in an English translation, complete the structure. The exact relation between the two works will occupy us further below. Concentrating for now on Pro Rege, Kuyper makes it clear from the onset that the central biblical notion that he sets out to restore is that of the kingship of Christ, including Christ’s breathtaking claim that All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me (Matt 28:18). Inherently associated with this notion of kingship is that of a kingdom, and of a people consisting of subjects to the king. Full and primary attention is given here to the church, as the new people of the newly appointed King of the world, Christ. And the kingdom of the new King is transforming the world, right now, in history, as we speak. The people of the King, the followers of Christ, are called to be present with him in this transforming work.

If the New Testament had emphasized only all authority has been given to me in heaven, Kuyper would not have had much to go on and the earlier volumes on Common Grace would have been the epitome of what he had to say. But the spiritual and intellectual thrust of the kingship of Christ is located in these three simple words and on earth. It is no exaggeration to state that these three words are the pivot, the axis of Kuyper’s project in Pro Rege. Christ as (spiritual) King gathers on earth a people that is subject to him, is obedient to him. It is not an earthly people, and yet it is (also) a people on earth. And Christ’s kingdom is not an earthly kingdom, and yet it is (also) a kingdom on earth that interacts with all of reality, inside as well as outside the church.

So what Kuyper sets out to develop is a full-orbed theology of everyday life, a theology of incarnation of Christ’s kingship, ranging from politics to philanthropy, from the family to public opinion and the media, from civil society to academia, from economics to the arts. Why was this so important to him? Why not just be satisfied with spiritual salvation and then wait as a quiet pilgrim for the end of times to come? Here we touch upon two central elements in Kuyper’s personal development.

THE SPIRITUAL DEPTH AND CULTURAL BREADTH OF KUYPER’S PROJECT

What are the inner dynamics that led Kuyper to build this cathedral, this theology of everyday life? We can sense some of this in a passionate passage in the third volume of his large exposition on common grace. The passage is autobiographical in tone and temper. For Kuyper, Calvinist-Christian spirituality stems from a struggle, a personal struggle between God and man. What is at stake in this struggle is the question of authority. A man may discover in himself the tendency of self-aggrandizement, the longing to be king and master of his world. That tendency is to be characterized as rebellion. Like Jacob on the bank of the Jabbok River, a person may fight with God. God wins, man loses, but in this loss a new life is gained: Jacob becomes Israel, for you have striven with God (Gen 32:28). And the conclusion is, in the words of the prophet Jeremiah: you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed (Jer 20:7). Conversion and salvation for Kuyper have very much to do with recognizing the lordship of God—God’s sovereignty—in and over one’s life, in and over one’s own soul.

However, once you have come to this very intimate and personal recognition, the recognition of the lordship of God cannot stop at the boundaries of your soul. If God is so powerful that he is able to win over a man’s stubborn soul (and Kuyper was a staunch personality), it cannot be otherwise than that he must be the Lord of everything.

God is then the Sovereign over his soul, the Sovereign over his body, the Sovereign over his family, the Sovereign over his occupation, the Sovereign over his homeland, the Sovereign over all peoples and nations, indeed, over the firmament above and the heaven of heavens—they are all subject to the sovereignty of the Lord of Lords. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. [Ps. 8:1]. (…) There is nothing that falls outside it.³

This spiritual basis is quite different from a philosophical insight. It is a transformation of the soul, which gives a new vision and a new drive, which has all kinds of practical implications for all the areas of life mentioned. As another—and without a doubt the most famous—quote of Kuyper has it:

No single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and 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!⁴

This deep awareness of the sovereignty of God implied for Kuyper that no other person or institution on earth could claim to be God. Neither political leaders or the state, the economy or captains of industry, the church or religious leaders, nor intellectuals or a university, can claim a divine position through which they ask for the total allegiance of human beings. So too, the confession that God alone is sovereign directly implies the need for social freedom and a multiplicity of institutions, each with its own limited role, with none lording over the other.

This spiritual heart of Kuyper’s endeavor combines with a specific trait of his personality and with his personal development: he had a vivid love and admiration for and interest in life; he enjoyed life in all of its forms—the life of nature, but even more the life of human culture, both high and low culture. Growing up, Kuyper was able to thoroughly enjoy art, literature, music, and the theatre; so much so that he once belittled his young fiancée in a letter, saying she didn’t like Shakespeare enough, promising to explain to her why this was wrong and encouraging her to educate her own taste.⁵ The same holds for low culture—the life of craftsmen, of women doing the laundry, of farmers herding cattle, seamen sailing ships, politicians making decisions, journalists writing articles, children playing games. One impressive example of Kuyper’s ability to take in life in all of its breadth and depth is recorded in two heavy volumes including countless astute observations he made during his extensive travels around the Mediterranean Sea during 1906–1907.⁶ One also can find many examples of this insightfulness in these volumes of Pro Rege. Kuyper was an ardent and perceptive observer of everyday life, able to discern the dignity and beauty in and of the ordinary, as well as in and of the exceptional creations of the human spirit. This admiration for life brought Kuyper to an even stronger faith in God as the creator of life, and the creator of humans who have this beautiful ability to themselves create.

But the very same ability to enjoy life gave Kuyper at the same time a deep sense of the brokenness, the fallenness, the distortions that abound everywhere, in nature and especially in culture, throughout the world. There are political structures (thanks be to God) but how often they are distorted and oppressive. There are family structures (thanks be to God) but how often they are broken. There is art (thanks be to God, the Father of all artists) yet so many artists do not acknowledge and thank God as the source of their creative talents.

These two elements—Kuyper’s spiritual conversion, which led to his acknowledgment of the lordship of Christ, and his ardent love of life in all its forms, especially the life of human culture and its concomitant brokenness—led Kuyper to ask: how is Christ Lord on earth, in this life, in this beautifully created, yet fallen and broken world, this world in which he became incarnate, and in which he is still invisibly present? There we have the central question of Pro Rege and especially of its second volume, dealing with The Kingship of Christ in Its Operation.

What is immediately clear when one examines these volumes of Pro Rege is that the topics dealt with are much broader than in earlier theologies. Where else in the nineteenth or early-twentieth century do we find a theology that deals with so many topics, ones that we usually only find in social and political philosophy or in sociology? In theology, there was usually one preferred topic—the right to resistance—when it came to the relation between church and the world and the relation between church and state. One might also find treatises on what we today would call the field of economics or on certain issues regarding usury and just prices. From the seventeenth century onward, treatises on family life also appeared. Kuyper includes all of these topics and adds many more: he gives a critical analysis of contemporary culture and deals with entirely new topics like public opinion, the new role of money in capitalism, the role of human creative talents in shaping cultures, the arts, the role of science, and so on. Here is indeed a full-orbed theology of everyday life, probably the first of its kind.

WHY, AFTER COMMON GRACE, NOW PRO REGE?

Although the three volumes of Pro Rege have a substantial thematic overlap with the three volumes of Common Grace—for example, politics, science, the arts (some of which still were relegated to the huge appendix)—Kuyper, strangely enough, did not start Pro Rege with a reflection on the relation between the two works. This may indicate several things. Kuyper may have seen the two works as simply building upon each other, without any shift of accent, without any inconsistencies. Or Kuyper may have sensed some inconsistencies, without having felt able to make them entirely explicit and deal with them. It may well be that Pro Rege indicates a shift of accent away from Common Grace, as Kuyper may have felt that the doctrine of common grace was somehow starting to be overemphasized and ran the risk of becoming too independent either in his own thinking or in the reception of his thinking. The doctrine of common grace is mentioned only incidentally in Pro Rege, and when it is mentioned, the context is often that of a further qualification or even downplaying its implications (the exception being the part on the state, the Fifth Series, where the idea returns prominently, entirely consistent with how Kuyper sees the state). Therefore one almost gets the impression that Pro Rege is somewhat of a subdued correction to Common Grace.

As the earlier work primes the reader to a reasonably optimistic view of the world and its development, the later work warns its readers that, as a member of the body of Christ, they are in for trouble, for struggle, for hardships. It seems that the time of rebellion, the apostasy of which Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians speaks (2 Thess 2:3), has started, both in society and in the church.⁷ As a sign of this, Kuyper points to the great difference between the Islamic world, where the reverence for their prophet can still be felt everywhere and in everyone, while in the West, people in general—particularly the leaders of public opinion—do not feel the least inclination to maintain even an outward reverence for Christ. But the situation is even more serious than that: the entire sense of religiosity as such may be in decline as well. It seems that we are going to live in what Charles Taylor a century later called a secular age, in which secular humanists and equally secular anti-humanists abound and in which religion as such has become at best a private option for the few.⁸ So Kuyper sharply dismisses here the impression of optimism that could have resulted from reading Common Grace. But how then should the relation between the two works be assessed?

The heart of the argument in Common Grace can be summarized as follows: God has not abandoned this world, neither the natural world nor the human world, but still bestows his humanity with many gifts; these are apparent in political structures, science, philosophy, and art. And the explicit moral of this exposition is clear: if God does not abandon this world, then neither should those who have come to know God as savior in Christ. If God himself is present out there, Christians can be and should be present out there also, in politics, science, art, and so on. The gist of the argument here is clearly anti-Gnostic and anti-Anabaptist, but also takes issue with the quiet types of Christianity that simply or ardently await the afterlife, without engagement in this world. The world of nature and of humanity is God’s creation to which he stays loyal even after human rebellion, after the fall. The doctrine of common grace is related to but goes beyond the traditional doctrine of divine providence. God not only keeps the world, maintaining it (hence providence), but is also actively giving gifts, offering it freedom, stimulating it to grow, to develop, to make progress (all of which Kuyper enjoyed so much, as noted above). So what God himself has not abandoned, the Christian believer should not abandon either. If God remains faithful to a world in trouble, the Christian should remain faithful as well. If God continues to love the world, to love humanity, to care for it, the Christian should continue to love the world and humanity, to care for it. If God does not defect, we simply don’t have the right to defect either. Be present where God is present!

This doctrine in itself could easily stimulate Christians to indeed get out there, be active, go with the flow, to become involved in the sciences, politics, and the arts like other people do. That would come close to what has traditionally been associated with the Lutheran position. In this view, God reigns the world in two entirely separate, sometimes even contradictory ways, with his right hand through the Word and the church, and with his left hand through his providential presence (which is most visibly present in the state). This leads to two different types of ethics: ethics for the church (for example, in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and in nonviolence) and ethics for the state (eye for an eye, and using the sword). The Christian believer can be legitimately involved in both, but should never confuse them. Thus there is no recognizable Christian presence in this world. The Christian can be a good citizen, a good statesman, a good soldier, a good craftsman, according to the present common civil, political, military, or economic standards, but not an agent of transformation of civil, political, military, or economic practices. The so called Ethical Theology within nineteenth-century Dutch Protestantism went one step further along these lines, saying that a good statesman, a good soldier, or a good businessman can as well be called a Christian statesman, soldier, or businessman by virtue of fulfilling the ordinary requirements appertaining to these positions. The good citizen is a Christian citizen and vice versa.

But that is not how Kuyper saw the world nor how he understood Christian engagement in it. The world that is graciously maintained by God is at the same time occupied territory! Therefore there is a struggle going on between light and darkness. In spite of common grace, there is much darkness in politics (Kuyper lived in an age in which there were overwhelmingly more dictatorships than constitutional democracies—certainly different than today, but not by much). There is darkness in philosophy, darkness in economics (read what Kuyper has to say about the dominance of money), darkness in science, darkness in the arts. Ultimately, it is a struggle about spiritual rulership, about spiritual kingship. Who is the King of the world: Christ or the prince of darkness?

Ultimately, what we are witnessing when we enter the world is a spiritual struggle between these two kingdoms, not a peaceful coexistence (so the Lutheran position) nor a smooth coalescence (so the ethical movement). Within the one God-created, God-given world, which is still ardently loved by God and is graciously bestowed by him with everyday goodness and even growth, the world that we all live in together, the one world of common grace, shared by Christians and non-Christians alike—within this world a struggle is going on between the Christ of light and the prince of darkness.

It may well be that in this change of emphasis from Common Grace to Pro Rege, and the sober, sometimes even somber tone of the latter work, an autobiographical element is at work as well. Between 1901 and 1905 Kuyper was the prime minister of the Netherlands, a period that in itself was of course highly prestigious but that in terms of content was not particularly successful for Kuyper. Due to various reasons, as well as fierce opposition, he was not able to carry to completion some of the most pressing parts of his agenda, while a massive railway strike forced him (at least that is how he saw it) to take severe action to end it, a decision which has damaged his reputation ever since. Apparently, the field of common grace did not give an easy ride for those who desired to follow Christ in the political realm.

NOT CHRISTIANIZATION, BUT UNDERSTANDING GOD’S CREATIONAL INTENTIONS

To go out into the world, engaging oneself as a Christian in politics, science, philosophy, the arts, economics, the media and public opinion, or education, is not neutrally going with the flow; it means engaging in battle. Therefore Kuyper in Pro Rege first deals with a topic that he rightly did not deal with in Common Grace, namely the mystical union of Christ the King with his subjects, with the people of God. Rooted in Christ, they learn to confess him as their King, to suffer, to bear the cross, to deny themselves, to struggle, to live together in a new mutual love as pilgrims in the world, conforming to the image of Christ. Grafted into the mystical body of Christ, they are prepared for the battle between light and darkness (second volume, first series). The visible church, as the exercise ground for the relation between Christ as King and his people, has to be well-organized—and Christ has provided for that and is providing for that by means of disciples, sacraments, elders, and so forth (second volume, second series). Next to the church, as a kind of linchpin between church and society, is what Kuyper sees as the Christian family (second volume, third series). Out of the church and out of the Christian family, Christians enter the world, acknowledging Christ as King not only in their personal, ecclesiastical, or family life, but also in the world, in society, in public life. What does this entail?

If one wants to understand Kuyper’s project correctly, one thing needs to be very clear: Obeying Christ’s kingship in public life and society, does not imply a call to Christianize it, as if society should be reformed into a kind of church at large, an extensive religious community. Kuyper abhors this possibility. He therefore does not call for an overload of Christian symbolism in the state or for some kind of cultural recognition of Christian values in public schools. He explicitly rejects the possibility of a Christian nation in any meaningful sense. Would he, for example, endorse corporate prayer in public schools? Based on what he says about the watered down, externalist Christianity in the nineteenth-century Dutch public school system, it is almost certain that he would reject it. The public sphere should be a sphere of spiritual freedom, not of force or religious coercion. Only in such a context of political freedom can the spiritual battle take place properly. So the state, according to its God-given task, should provide for and preserve spiritual freedom—very different from the church where there is no spiritual freedom but where people are called to obey Christ. Calling for a secular state is obedience to Christ as King; calling for an explicitly Christian state is heresy, apostasy. So the Christian community is not simply the measuring stick or model for the world. In other words, Kuyper does not simply call for a Christian society, as many evangelical Christians in the world today would see it.

So here is the twist: for Kuyper, Christians active in public life should not strive to Christianize public life but to bring it into line with its creational intentions, to re-create it.⁹ The soldiers of Christ should engage in attempts to restore creation, not to implement a kind of image of heaven. Their engagement is—theologically speaking—creationally rather than eschatologically oriented. Their orientation in public life should not be the new heaven and the new earth, but the present earth—although mysteriously some of their work will as the harvest of history be brought into the New Jerusalem. They will not work toward the heavenly future but remain faithful to this creational world, to restore ordinary life, nothing more than that (but how valuable this is, in light of the many distortions that occur in history!). Christ’s kingship is in heaven, and it is on earth, in this creation, working toward a restoration of creation.

What is at stake in the battle therefore is the restoration of creation in its original intentions, including its developmental potential. Kuyper is clear as to what this entails: it is the vision of all humans living together in freedom as one organic community under the kingship of God, each member of the human family able to develop one’s own talents for mutual service, and each people able to make its contribution in history, to the honor of God who has given these talents to individuals and to peoples. In short, it is a vision of what we perhaps today would call (using the Hebrew word) shalom. If our political, economic, military, educational, scientific, or artistic practices violate this, if they are oppressive to human beings and their talents, then our practices should be reformed. A Christian is not out there in the world to be silent about injustice, to be silent about oppression, to be silent about human suffering, to be silent about all the many instances in which God’s original intention for his creation is violated. Christians are there to join Christ as the King of creation in his battle for the restoration of creation. This means transforming the world, turning oppression into freedom, injustice into justice, hatred into love, oppressive swords into plowshares—although always partly and provisionally (the just sword of the government should not be hammered down yet).

Moreover, Kuyper believed, thanks to Christianity and ultimately thanks to the incarnate appearance of Christ, that this battle not only has historical concreteness but also historical direction. Thanks in part to common grace, but in much greater part to the active influence of Christianity on (Western) culture, the world has made visible steps toward the creational vision of all humans living together in freedom as one organic community, providing space for individual talents. Family life has become different, less despotic, less authoritarian, and polygamy has given way to monogamy. Political structures have changed from authoritarian despotism to freedom. Slavery has been outlawed, for the first time in history. Poverty has been reduced, human happiness has become the focus of attention, which has led to an actual growth in well-being. Science has started to flourish. Processes of what we today call globalization have started, making political and racial boundaries more blurry and bringing people into contact with each other—a kind of reversal of the confusion at Babel. Christ indeed signifies a turning point in history—and it shows, through a glass darkly perhaps, but it shows. With willing and unwilling subjects, with peoples who may be conscious of it or not, Christ as King is silently transforming the world in history (not unlike Hegel’s concept of Geist, of which Kuyper may have borrowed some elements). In all this Christians are called to be on the right side of history, as the restarted unfolding of creational potentialities. Against this background, one can better understand why Kuyper, in a way markedly different from many other orthodox theologians, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, can be in principle positive about modernization and modern life as far as it redeems some of the promising potentials of creation.

And yet, and yet, and yet … this all will not be a preparation for a smooth transition toward the ultimate kingdom of heaven; this very same Christian-modern age has become the scene for an unprecedented spiritual rebellion (as Kuyper observes at the beginning of Pro Rege). The struggle between light and darkness continues and even intensifies. Internal decay befalls exactly those nations that have been leading the world in a breathtaking process of making the world more humane.

In this way Kuyper remains firmly within the age-old Christian tradition of the Two Kingdoms, avoiding utopianism that does away with all providential structures of this world. Yet he dynamizes this tradition at the same time to avoid the awful possibility that Christians would stand by idly when the most terrible injustices and distortions occur in the world, wrongly assuming that this just happens to be the way the world is (and then why bother, as we are on our way to heaven anyway?).

That Christians are called to be on the right side of history does not preclude the possibility that others in some respect are on the right side as well (thanks to common grace). Christians do not at all have an exclusive claim on moral progress. Nor does it preclude the other awful possibility that Christians can be on the wrong side of history. One cannot possibly say that Christians empirically are always the torchbearers of light and non-Christians the representatives of darkness. Sometimes the church can be a source for disappointment, while the world can positively surprise us, according to Kuyper.

Therefore, as Kuyper states pointedly, immediately in the preface of Pro Rege, it is certainly possible to cooperate with others in the world, with Christians from other dogmatic or ecclesiastical denominations (in the political arena Kuyper himself closely cooperated with the Roman Catholic movement in the Netherlands). Common Christian action, and thus an ecumenical endeavor, is possible in public life. Elsewhere he enlarges this to see possibilities for cooperation with people from entirely different faiths and worldviews. Common action is possible, based on common grace, jointly obeying Christ in his restoring kingship (although some may acknowledge it and others not).

Let me give an example. One area in which Kuyper himself was actively engaged was the field of economics and labor. It was clear that in the nineteenth century this had become a heavily troubled field, one of severe injustice. As soon as he entered the Dutch parliament in 1874, he started to push for labor legislation. Contrary to many others, including most Christians, who considered the existing status quo an expression of divine providence and were therefore at most prepared to do a little philanthropy, Kuyper saw the need for structural measures—and increasingly so. Only in that way could the original, creational intentions of labor relations be restored: people working together, albeit with different responsibilities, in one organic community; serving each other without the one exploiting the other. His impressive address on The Social Question and the Christian Religion was the epitome of this line of thinking and called for an architectonic critique of the basic layout of contemporary society.¹⁰ He fully acknowledged here the signaling role of socialism. Not only common grace, but Christ’s restoring work as well moves in mysterious ways.

In summary: Kuyper enjoins Christians to be actively involved in the world, promoting the original intention of the Creator to have a free community of people living in equal dignity, each employing their individual, God-given talents. With this vision they should not just go with the flow, to be only good citizens, only good businessmen, only good husbands and wives, only good craftsmen, artists, and so forth. No, they should be critical citizens, critical businessmen, critical husbands and wives, critical artists, working to promote shalom.

This implies that in all the domains of this world Christians have to ask (1) what is actually going on and going wrong at this particular juncture in time, in terms of the ongoing struggle between light and darkness, between good and evil; and (2) how their faith, their acknowledgment of Christ as King, can be brought to bear on this specific situation. A Christian thus has to live geared to the times, being critically engaged in the present, not in some distant or remote past, nor in a shadowy or utopian future.¹¹

THE ACHILLES’ HEEL OF KUYPER’S PROJECT: THE ART OF DISCERNMENT

With his thoughts in Pro Rege, Kuyper hoped to foster critical citizens, critical artists, critical businessmen, and the like. That is why it was written for a larger audience, not for fellow academics (and thus has no footnotes). Like the apostle Paul, Kuyper urges all Christians to complete their love with "knowledge and discernment [aesthései], so that they may approve what is excellent" (Phil 1:9, 10). But what does this mean? Where I say critical, Kuyper often simply says Christian, although he is in general very guarded not to claim this word too quickly, as if it were just a cover. If one uses the epithet Christian, as in Christian citizens, Christian artists, Christian businessmen, then this carries high obligations. Discerning what is and what is not Christian clearly is a delicate affair. History has shown that mistakes abound—and Kuyper was aware of that. But given the delicate nature of this discernment, one might expect Kuyper to reflect deeply and systematically on this and develop a kind of art of discernment, one that would guide him and his readers away from an easy identification of the Christian faith with particular cultural ideas and even prejudices, thus mistakenly crowning contextually limited insights with the terse epithet Christian. That Kuyper did not develop such an art of discernment—one that involved not only a critique of contemporary culture (Kuyper seems to have achieved much in this regard) but also criteria for ongoing self-critique—seems to be the Achilles’ heel of Kuyper’s project. His art of discernment lacks self-examination and self-critique and hence it lacks humility as well.

I believe that the fundamental framework of Kuyper’s cathedral is still highly relevant and basically sound. It still stands as a call for all Christians to be aware of the world around them; to be aware of the suffering and oppression that surrounds them; and to engage themselves not only in charitable deeds, but also in promoting political, economic, social change, as well as changes in the arts and sciences—wherever the dignity of humans is violated and shalom is threatened. Christians should never leave themselves open to the charge of complacency and indifference, not even when they try to compensate for their withdrawal by living a subversive church ethic that may be perfectly holy and radical but one that refuses to get them out into the world and dirty their hands in politics, in economics, or other social issues.

And yet, I suspect that the uninformed modern reader will experience severe disappointments and bumps in the road, next to many enlightening insights, while reading the present volumes. Why? In my analysis this has to do with exactly what I just called the missing art of discernment (as explained here by means of Paul’s use of the word aesthesis, or sharp perception; others would perhaps use a term like hermeneutics). The fact that Kuyper did not develop such a well-thought out art of discernment seems to be a critical weak point in his edifice, a structural failure in his cathedral.

The central question that is never explicitly raised by Kuyper, but which we cannot and should not avoid, is: how can we discern what in a particular context is representative of light, and what is representative of darkness? Is Scripture sufficient in this respect? But Scripture doesn’t deal with modern science, nor with journalism, public opinion, or capitalism. And even if Scripture would be sufficient, then one still has to decide what weight to give to which elements in Scripture—the problem of hermeneutics. How does one interpret the relation between the Pauline assertion that in Christ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female (Gal 3:28) on the one hand and his submission texts regarding women? What is creational, what is cultural, what are the elements of evil and brokenness in this regard? What is—even in Scripture—mere cultural adaptation of the biblical message, and what is essential and therefore normative? Is the basic equality of all human beings more normative, or is it the hierarchical ordering that Kuyper sees in Scripture also?

For Kuyper, Scripture indeed was not sufficient to uncover the creational intentions of the Creator. Without much reflection, he often employs a kind of ad hoc phenomenology, trying to discover in reality, or in a particular given situation a kind of creational essence that is supposed to be normative. He makes observations, sometimes very acute, sometimes trivial or even mundane, trying to read from (or into) reality, both nature and culture, some original intentions of the creator. The results are sometimes surprising, but often as well quite speculative and even more often characteristically nineteenth-century Dutch. Of course, this method is fraught with danger. One may easily mistake a particular status quo as being creationally normative. So often, when one reads Kuyper’s generally impressive theology of everyday life one can be disappointed by the fact that one actually finds oneself in late nineteenth-century Dutch culture, and then especially the bourgeois stratum of that culture.

It is against this background that we have to place the work of the person who undoubtedly was Kuyper’s most gifted intellectual successor, the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977). He shared with Kuyper the basis assumption that reality, as divinely created, is not a silent, mute product of random chance, but has something to say to us, something we have to listen to carefully in order to avoid doing violence to reality. So he did set out to develop a much more sophisticated and self-critical art of discernment, entering into a critical dialogue with both contemporary philosophy and a wide range of empirical sciences, in order to discover some universal principles that perhaps can be called creational. He thus developed a method that, at least in principle, can avoid some of the arbitrariness and cultural limitations of Kuyper’s insights (and incidentally, he incorporated philosophical reflection as a necessary element in the development of a Christian worldview as it aims to have relevance in contemporary culture).

The lack of a well-thought through art of discernment in Kuyper becomes very pertinent regarding some issues to which we, at the beginning of the twenty-first century have become very sensitive, such as colonialism, racism, and male-female relations. At a basic level, Kuyper’s sense of discernment still today seems for us very sound: there should not be any domination of one people over another, all races are equal before God, men and women are equal before God. That for Kuyper was always the bottom line. But this fundamental judgment is then often combined with some other judgments that for us may seem to be more nineteenth-century prejudices than normative biblical insights.

But then again, even in the situations where he passionately defends some kind of hierarchical order, this for Kuyper can never be justification for the abuse of power, for exploitation. So as prime minister of a country that happened to have colonies, especially the so-called Dutch Indies (today Indonesia), Kuyper did not advocate giving up these colonies but he did advocate what came to be called the ethical policy, an attempt to change the colonial relationship from exploitation to education, making the colonies ripe for independence in the long (actually very long) run. That this is condescendingly paternalistic didn’t seem to occur to him, but at least he made a step in the right direction.

This was different on another occasion, which was mentioned above already. In spite of his struggle for social justice, as prime minister Kuyper took a very severe stance toward a strike of railway-workers, although he had to admit that their demands were in themselves quite justified. However, the threat for the Dutch authority structures that resulted from the strike was for Kuyper unacceptable. It has tainted the memory and legacy of Kuyper even to the present day.

These examples reveal some deep ambiguities in Kuyper’s theology of everyday life. One sometimes makes or is forced to make choices that even in one’s own time, but certainly later, are seen as just the wrong choices. But in the meantime, these choices are defended as God’s will. Thus, to avoid this it may seem better, or at least easier, not to get involved—or at least not get involved as a Christian, or at the very least not under an openly Christian banner. When you make historical mistakes as a Christian, then your public legacy may be much worse than that of the myriads of people who have done nothing, neither harmful nor sound, and whose memory actually fades away in history. What is the better choice? Kuyper’s choice was clear: it is better to get out there, to be a Daniel, even to get one’s hands dirty perhaps, than to just leave the world to the world, and let injustice take its course.

How could he have remedied, and how can we remedy the danger of making wrong judgments? How can one develop the art of discernment as a Christian? How can one develop a critical stance that removes the plank of cultural and historical boundedness from one’s own eye, while at the same time setting out to remove the splinters of, say, cultural backwardness from the eye of another? Kuyper saw himself as a leader and hence was more prone to provide direction than to receive it, more prone to lead than to listen, more prone to being obeyed than to obeying. Although he confessed the catholicity of the church, it didn’t occur to him that (as Ephesians 3:18 has it) only with all the saints one can see the greatness of God’s work.