Embracing Church History: Kuyper's Vision for Faith Today

Well, you know, people who don't know any history don't know where they've come from, they don't know how they've gotten here, and they most of the time don't know where they're going. So, it's a pretty deplorable state of reality because we are so shaped by those who came before us, and if we don't have some awareness of that, we really don't know our own character, much less our own history. And so, it's, it's crucial. [00:02:13]

I read a statistic recently that in many of the American universities, the study of history is in radical decline. And I think it's really dangerous for the Republic, for people not to know how we were shaped, what were the ideals of the country that shaped us, and, of course, as a church, that's true as well. So, as Luther said, "You cannot heap too much praise on historians." [00:02:43]

Abraham Kuyper, I think, was a remarkably important figure in the modern history of Christianity. He was born in 1837. So, he's not all that modern. He lived down to 1920. But he very perceptively saw that the West was in dramatic change, earlier in Europe probably than in America. And he was convinced that Christians needed to rethink their understanding of the relationship of Christianity to culture generally, and particularly, to the state. [00:04:55]

One of the things that Kuyper helps us think about is the importance of having a public faith. Now, we live in a day that very much discourages public expressions of faith. And on the one hand, you have those who think, "Well, just keep your faith to yourself." Others are more aggressive and will say that "Your faith is absolutely irrelevant, and it expresses intolerance." [00:06:28]

Kuyper was one who said, "We ought to live in a society where people are free to express their ideas and to try to give some institutional form to those ideas, and to do so respectfully, to do so carefully, thoughtfully. But nonetheless, we as Christians have as much right as anyone to speak up for our faith, our beliefs, and what we see as the implication of those beliefs for the world in which we live. [00:07:37]

Kuyper presents another way, what he calls "sphere sovereignty." So, how does sphere sovereignty help us think about our role today as Christians in the modern world? GODFREY: Well, Kuyper, from the perspective of the late 19th century, said, as we look out on the development of Western thought, you see two tendencies in Western thought. And they're all related to the question, "Where do rights come from?" [00:08:58]

Kuyper said, "Instead of saying all rights are vested either in the state or in the individual, we have to see that rights are given by God to the institutions he has created." And so, Kuyper stressed the family as an institution God created, the church as an institution God created, the state, an institution God created, other things as well. And he said, "We have to insist that the family is not created by the state, the family is not created by the individual; the family is created by God, and the family can flourish only in that context where the family is defined by God, established by God, and is accountable ultimately to God. [00:10:43]

Kuyper said, "What we need is reformation. Of course we need change, of course human society can be improved, but the way forward is not through violence, but the way forward is through reflection, through reasonable discussion, where we listen to one another, where we respect one another, and where we reach some kind of agreement to pursue change together. It's a very different vision of society and of progress. [00:15:30]

Kuyper wanted very much not to compromise any of the biblical revelation. And so, he said part of biblical revelation is that there is a radical difference, a radical antithesis, he called it, between Christians who are regenerated by the Spirit of God, and because of the Spirit of God, have a new life and a new understanding of truth, and the unregenerate, who have no such understanding of truth from God. [00:16:46]

At the same time, we want to recognize that there is a general humanity that God in His kindness preserves, so that we as human beings do not descend into the very worst kind of life that we could have. And he said, it's not because we're there's an area of life unaffected by sin, which he thought was the mistake of Roman Catholic, some of Roman Catholic natural law reasoning, he said we're all equally affected by sin, but God restrains the effect of sin so that we can find common grounds of cooperation with unregenerate people to pursue certain goals. [00:17:21]

Christians opposed abortion for their biblical reasons but were willing to cooperate with Orthodox Jews or Muslims or other secularists who opposed abortion for their own reasons, but because of God's restraining grace had come to the conclusion that unrestricted abortion was wrong and we could cooperate then on that specific goal. So, that was very much Kuyper's idea. We may not be able to cooperate on everything all the time, but we can find specific areas where we can cooperate and try to move forward. [00:18:19]