Kuyper Honey from the Rock

Daily Devotions from Young Kuyper
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68359-235-8
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 600 Seiten

Communion with the Lord is sweeter than honey. In his meditations, Abraham Kuyper reveals a side of himself unseen in his well--known theological writings. First published in 1880 and 1883 and never before translated in English, the devotions in Honey from the Rock were written for the nourishment and health of his soul. Rather than the public figure and theologian, we see a man thirsting and hungering for God's presence. Modern readers entering this sacred space will be spiritually renewed, restored, and replenished by the light of God's Word, before returning to our daily callings. James De Jong introduces these powerful devotions from Kuyper.

Abraham Kuyper (1837â?'1920), a Prime Minister of the Netherlands and founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, applied a revived confessional Calvinism to all areas of modern Dutch life. The faith that inspired him and his followers in this effort is captured in his published weekly meditations. Honey from the Rock, now in translation, are the first of these to be published in book form. James A. De Jong, retired president of Calvin Theological Seminary, graduated from Calvin (BA and BD) and the Free University of Amsterdam (ThD). He is widely published in the history of Reformed theology and history of missions. He has taught on the undergraduate and graduate levels and has lectured globally.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kuyper, Abraham

Leseproben

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

Writing a weekly meditation on Sunday was sacrosanct for Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). He tolerated no compromise of that commitment even during his harried years as prime minister of the Netherlands (1901–1905). While he often delayed or interrupted other writing projects, he never did so with respect to writing his weekly meditation. That pattern prevailed from the early 1870s until several days before his death in November 1920. In fact, in the weeks just preceding the high Christian holidays, he consistently wrote two devotionals. The size of this body of material is enormous. It consists of over twenty-two hundred pieces.

Kuyper’s religious rigor in writing biblically based meditations must be understood as the profoundly spiritual experience it was for him. Sitting alone while quietly reflecting deeply, often imaginatively, on a biblical passage, was an act of communing with God. Such intimate fellowship with his Creator and Redeemer replenished his spirit. It fortified, invigorated, inspired, instructed, and directed him. These benefits of his precious time alone with the Lord flowed from his heart and soul through his gifted pen. They become ours through his meditations.

UNDERSTANDING KUYPER FULLY

One cannot understand Abraham Kuyper apart from his meditations. The more one delves into them, the better one comes to know Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper is famous for his initiatives in Christian journalism. He began a Christian daily newspaper in the early 1870s. He founded and edited an eight-page religious weekly. He was a rigorous advocate for government funding for Christian schools. His vision of a Christian scientific mind compelled him to establish a Christian university. Politics and justice were such important arenas needing faith-based guidance that he exchanged his pastoral office for a political one. Urbanization, industrialization, and colonialism all presented new challenges in a rapidly changing world order that begged for Christlike solutions. So he galvanized the Anti-Revolutionary Party into a passionately dedicated political movement. As a theological professor, he produced major theological works, many now being translated into English for the first time. Kuyper’s amazing stamina and productivity, seen in these initiatives, were nurtured by the spirituality so transparent in his meditations. Kuyper did not wear his heart on his sleeve, but his meditations are the lens through which we are privileged to look into his soul.

A great deal of fine scholarship has been directed recently to Kuyper’s many accomplishments. Much of it has focused on the younger Kuyper during the formative years of his public career—when he began publishing his weekly meditations. They first appeared in the Sunday weekly inserted into his daily newspaper, De Standaard (The Standard). After a few years, that insert became the separately printed religious weekly known as De Heraut (The Herald); it began appearing in December 1877. Remarkably, despite scouring Kuyper’s meditations in these two sources, one looks in vain for Editor Kuyper reprinting one of them there under the duress of a heavy schedule. Over the years, he might produce a meditation on the same text several times, even five or six times. But in such cases, each meditation was the product of a new spiritual encounter with the Lord. Despite the originality of each of Kuyper’s meditations, despite their paramount importance in the weekly rhythm of his life, and despite the convictions and biblical insights they convey, modern scholarship has given Kuyper’s meditations largely only casual acknowledgment. This includes studies on Kuyper during the formative stage of his emerging public career. Fortunately, that is beginning to change.

ABOUT THE HONEY FROM THE ROCK MEDITATIONS

These meditations—originally published as two volumes, in 1880 and 1883 respectively—reflect the younger Kuyper’s spirituality. Volume 1 consists of one hundred meditations written from December 1877 to late 1880. Kuyper reprinted them in the same sequence in which they originally appeared in De Heraut. Volume 2 includes another one hundred meditations that first appeared between May 1879 and mid-1882. For unspecified reasons, he did not reprint them in the same sequence in which they were published in that paper. The two-volume collection was republished only once in the Dutch language, in 1896 (volume 1) and 1897 (volume 2).

The title Honey from the Rock is based on Psalm 81:16: “But you will be fed with the finest of wheat. I will satisfy you with honey from the rock.”1 While Kuyper never did write a meditation on this verse, it perfectly captures how he felt about meditating on Scripture. Communion with the Lord is sweet. It feeds the deepest hungers of the human spirit. Spiritual nourishment comes from all parts of the Bible. This collection draws heavily from the Gospels, Psalms, New Testament Letters, and Old Testament Latter Prophets. But it also includes meditations based on passages from the Pentateuch, Former Prophets, and wisdom literature.

The themes and topics in this collection are rather wide ranging. Emphasis on personal assurance based on God’s covenant promises is prominent. So is God’s patience and long-suffering with his often-indifferent people. The power and glory of the Christian life are frequent motifs. Endurance and perseverance in the face of hardship appear consistently. The responsibilities of Christian parenting are regularly treated, as are the sad consequences of neglecting them. Formal, empty, powerless religious practice is often denounced, as are hypocrisy and religious practice for social recognition. The meditations are equally emphatic against cultivating subjective religious experience as the basis for assurance; Kuyper unmasks the spiritual peril of such piety. He is graphic and candid about the power of sin in the lives of Christians as well as among unbelievers. For him, the Devil, sin, and hell are looming realities regularly referenced in his material. He emphasized the ministering power of angels in Christian experience. He stressed the urgency of vibrant Christian community, the Sabbath as a time of sacred refuge and renewal, and the centrality of worship and preaching and sacraments in the ministration of grace. Worldly diversion and the pursuit of material gain and human recognition elicit his warnings. Kuyper does employ theological terms in these meditations: calling, election, adoption, regeneration, sanctification, atonement, and others. But he does so not to teach doctrine; he assumes that readers understand this vocabulary. He uses these terms only to stress the riches of fellowship with God. Kuyper’s handling of his chosen themes and topics, and his occasional use of theological terms, occur in a surprisingly fresh, creative style. His meditations are spiritually gripping and memorable.

Equally important about this collection of meditations is what it does not include. Not found here are urgent calls to Kuyper’s political and social agendas. As he stresses from time to time, meditating and Christian public worship are essential spiritual exercises, in which we leave external preoccupations at the door. Here we enter the sacred space where we consciously stand in the presence of God. Here we search our hearts and souls in the light of his Word. Here we are spiritually renewed, restored, and replenished for returning to our daily callings.

This two-volume set appears here in English translation for the first time. Several meditations in it did find their way into other topical collections of Kuyper meditations that he subsequently published and that have been translated into English. But this involves no more than a half dozen of the two hundred in this set. And their appearance in later Dutch collections and in arcane pre-World War II English translations was not acknowledged as coming from Honey from the Rock.

Because the original two volumes appear here in one volume, original placement is designated in the upper left corner on each meditation’s opening page.

KUYPER’S MEDITATIONS IN CONTEXT

This translation attempts to be completely faithful to the Kuyper text. No attempt is made here to hide the social biases that mark him as a man of his time. It also presents him in readable, contemporary prose. This required breaking apart his inordinately long and intricate sentences, adding an occasional clarifying footnote, and infrequently substituting a contemporary equivalent idiom or term for an arcane Dutch one.

Only one other republished collection of Kuyper meditations is as wide ranging thematically and scripturally as this one. Entitled To Be Near to God, it appeared in 1908 and is a collection of mediations written while and shortly after he was prime minister. They also first appeared in De Heraut and were then republished in book form. Unlike Honey from the Rock, they were soon translated into English and reflect the spirituality of the mature Kuyper.

Six other collections of Kuyper meditations that first appeared in De Heraut and were then republished in book form are shorter and topically focused. They deal with pastoral issues like sickness and death,...