Flikkema / Kuyper / Ballor Common Grace (Volume 2)

God's Gifts for a Fallen World
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-57799-695-8
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 856 Seiten

Reihe: Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology

Common Grace is often considered Abraham Kuyper's crowning work, an exploration of how God expresses grace even to the unsaved. Kuyper firmly believed that though many people in the world will remain unconverted, God's grace is still shown to the world as a whole. The second volume of Common Grace contains Kuyper's doctrinal exploration of the impact and implications of this aspect of Reformed theology. Never before published in English, this translation of Common Grace is now available as part of a 12-volume series of Kuyper's most important writings on public theology. Created in partnership with the Kuyper Translation Society and the Acton Institute, the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology will deepen and enrich the church's understanding of public theology in today's world.

Common Grace is often considered Abraham Kuyper's crowning work, an exploration of how God expresses grace even to the unsaved. This second volume of Common Grace contains Kuyper's doctrinal exploration of the impact and implications of this aspect of Reformed theology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kuyper, Abraham

Flikkema, Melvin

Ballor, Jordan

Bratt, James

Leseproben

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION Abraham Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace is one of the most significant, and controversial, aspects of the great theologian’s legacy. This multi-volume translation of his exhaustive treatment of the doctrine is intended to provide deeper insights into the motivations for, reasoning in, and implications for Kuyper’s understanding of this crucial, and oft-misunderstood, element of divine action.1 For Kuyper, common grace was clearly grounded in Scripture and was taught but not fully developed in the historic Reformed faith. In addition to these biblical and historical reasons for articulating his teaching on common grace, there were doctrinal and apologetic reasons as well. In doctrinal terms, common grace was necessary for a full understanding both of special, saving grace as well as for the underlying continuity of God’s faithfulness to his creation. At the same time, common grace also served an explanatory function, helping us to understand how there can so often be such genius and goodness in the world of unbelievers. These diverse foundations of common grace lead to an understanding of the moral significance of common grace as well, which involves the natural law, civic righteousness, and social order. FOUNDATIONS OF COMMON GRACE First and foremost, for Kuyper the doctrine of common grace was biblical, and like Reformed theologians before him, Kuyper was determined not to be silent where Scripture provided positive witness.2 Calvin, when discussing the grace that characterized God’s general relationship to his fallen creatures, refers to Matthew 5:45, which says God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”3 This verse is significant as well for Kuyper, but the main biblical foundation for Kuyper’s exposition of common grace is the Noahic covenant, which Kuyper describes as the doctrine’s “fixed historical starting point.”4 The fact that Kuyper’s biblical exposition of common grace begins with Noah rather than Adam underscores his understanding that common grace is a post-fall necessity, and thus a kind of divine action that is only possible in light of sin. As the first volume of this trilogy focuses on the biblical foundations of the doctrine, the second takes its point of departure in the historical grounding of the doctrine. That is, Kuyper defends his attention to common grace, which passes three quarters of a million words over the three volumes, by pointing out that the Reformers recognized and affirmed the reality of common grace, but given their context did not develop and fully explicate it. An important element of the second volume is thus Kuyper’s articulation of a precedent for his understanding in the writings of the Reformers and Reformed confessional standards, particularly the Canons of Dort.5 Even though he thought the treatment of common grace in the era of the Reformation was underdeveloped, Kuyper understood that it was this way for a legitimate reason. As he put it, the controversy at the time had more to do specifically with the doctrines of salvation and special grace, and so it was natural for the Reformers to spend much of their energy developing and debating the topics that were of the most salience at the time. “Every period cannot do everything at once,” contends Kuyper, “and it was entirely correct that in the days of the Reformation, theologians saved their time and strength for elucidating those contrasts that were of primary importance in that period. Had they acted differently, they might have misjudged their calling for the time in which they lived.”6 In his own time, however, Kuyper judges that it is past time for more attention to be paid to common grace. This should be, in part, the natural outworking of focus on special grace, which can only fully and rightly understood within the context of common grace. Because of the relationship between the work of God in creation, the age of human fallenness, redemption and restoration of the world, and the consummation of God’s providential purposes, the work of special grace which involves regeneration and reconciliation must be connected to God’s original purposes in creation. These purposes have been maintained and preserved, even in the midst of corruption and sin, through common grace. Thus, observes Kuyper, speaking of this gift of preservation, “It also appears that the grace extended to our race that had fallen into sin consists not in the gift of something new, nor in the re-giving of something we had lost, but exclusively in the continuation of something that lay at the foundation of our creation.”7 Special grace has a specifically remedial purpose, as the prophet Isaiah puts it, in the day of redemption: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy” (Is 35:5–6). So while the restorative and reconciling work of special grace and the preservative and sustaining work of common grace need to be properly distinguished, they are best understood as complementary. Special grace depends on common grace, for if humankind were no longer existing after the fall into sin, there would be no one to save. There is also a critical explanatory function that common grace serves, specifically, to help us understand how what is good or true or beautiful in some sense can be said to exist in the non-Christian, fallen, and sinful world. There is, in fact, some virtue that can be found among the unregenerate, even if it is not goodness in its fullest sense, or entirely free from impurities, or soteriologically significant. On one level all that fallen human beings do falls short of the glory of God and merits punishment. But on another level, everything is not as bad as it could be, and there are degrees of corruption, impurity, and evil that allow for some relative and comparative discernment. So among sinners it is not the case that everything is as evil as it could possibly be. And among Christians, because sanctification is a temporal and progressive reality, what is done continues to be marred by imperfection, vice, and sin to a greater or lesser degree. In this way, it would be natural for someone to conclude, when comparing the confession of the church against the reality of the lives of its members, “the world turns out to be better than expected and the church worse than expected.”8 This point about the virtues of unbelievers, often described in terms of civil or moral good as opposed to Christian or salvific good, underscores a salient aspect of Kuyper’s treatment of common grace as it relates to the moral order and civil society. That is, Kuyper connects the doctrine of common grace to the broader natural-law tradition, with implications for a proper understanding of civil virtue and the functioning of the social order. COMMON GRACE AND THE MORAL ORDER Common grace is a multifaceted concept for Kuyper. Indeed, it reflects the diversity and scope of all of God’s creation itself. A critical aspect of that creation for our theological understanding, however, is the moral order. God has created human beings in his image, and this means in part that human beings are moral agents. In its essence, moral agency entails instructions and responsibilities. Humans have been placed as stewards over creation, and their responsibility includes adherence to the moral order that God has instituted. A classic way of articulating this dynamic in Christianity is the rich and diverse tradition of natural law. God has created human beings in a certain way, with a particular set of powers, talents, skills, and habits, aimed at corresponding goods and ends. There is a law that governs the natures that God has created, a law that is fitted to and appropriate for all these different creatures, from stocks and stones to human beings and angels. A good way of understanding the natural law is as “the moral aspect of the penetrating arrow of general revelation.”9 All of this holds true for the state of humanity in its integrity, before the fall into sin and corruption. The fissure that sin creates affects every aspect of human existence, but it does not impact the moral demands that are placed upon humans by their nature and by God. That anything continues to exist of humanity after the fall is an act of grace, and that the moral obligations that govern human nature are not completely lost or eradicated is likewise evidence of God’s ongoing gracious activity. In this way, Kuyper writes that “thanks to common grace, the spiritual light has not totally departed from the soul’s eye of the sinner. And also, notwithstanding the curse that spread throughout creation, a speaking of God has survived within that creation, thanks to common grace.”10 Here Kuyper stands in line with Calvin, who, notwithstanding a strong accent on human depravity, can nevertheless insist that recognition of moral reality is “implanted in all men.”11 Moreover, the seeds of moral discernment in the human heart remain in effect even in the midst of the vicissitudes of life; neither war nor catastrophe nor theft nor human disagreement can alter these moral intuitions. Even those who “fight against manifest reason” in their unjust actions “do not nullify the original conception of equity” that is implanted within.12 We may therefore understand the...