Kuyper On Charity and Justice

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68359-596-0
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten

Reihe: Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology

Kuyper on a Theological Approach to Justice The practical outworking of Kuyper's doctrine of common grace demanded a commitment to seeking Christ's glory in every sphere of human life. Christians are called to witness to the lordship of Christ through sacrificial service, not domination, and such service calls us to seek charity and justice for all people. In this anthology of articles and reflections, Kuyper articulates a Christian vision for engaging with society. Though his analysis was intended for his late-nineteenth-century Dutch context, his thoughts remain strikingly relevant for Christians living in the modern world. For Kuyper, God's law preserved civil justice, making humane life possible. However, the law itself could not save society-only the gospel can transform the heart. But the gospel is for all of life. Kuyper elaborated a social Christian approach to politics, resulting in a distinct perspective on property, human dignity, democracy, and justice.

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a leading Dutch figure in education, politics, and theology. He was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, was appointed to Parliament, and served as prime minister. Kuyper also founded the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, a political party, and a denomination, in addition to writing on a wide array of subjects.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kuyper, Abraham

Leseproben

VOLUME INTRODUCTION ABRAHAM KUYPER: ALWAYS REFORMING JOHN WITTE JR. English historian Herbert Butterfield once wrote of the habit of his fellow English Protestants “to hold some German up their sleeves … and at appropriate moments to strike the unwary Philistine on the head with this secret weapon, the German scholar having decided in a final manner whatever point may have been at issue.”1 Many American Protestants have had a similar habit of holding a secret Dutchman up their sleeves with which to strike unwary Philistines on the head—whether in the classroom, courtroom, or conference hall. The “secret Dutchman” is the author of the work you are holding, Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), one of the great polymaths in the history of the Netherlands. Kuyper was a formidable theologian and philosopher, journalist and educator, churchman and statesman of extraordinary accomplishment. He was the author of some 223 scholarly works, and thousands of devotionals, sermons, speeches, lectures, letters, op-eds, briefing papers, and media quotes.2 He served for nearly half a century as editor-in-chief of both the Dutch daily Standaard and the weekly Heraut. He founded the Free University of Amsterdam in 1880 and taught there intermittently for two decades. Throughout much of his career, Kuyper was a leader of the Protestant Antirevolutionary Party in the Netherlands, and served as member of Parliament, minister of justice, and then prime minister from 1901 to 1905. On the national celebration of his seventieth birthday in 1907, his toastmaster declared: “The history of the Netherlands, in Church, in State, in Society, in Press, in School, and in the Sciences of the last forty years, cannot be written without the mention of his name on almost every page, for during this period the biography of Dr. Kuyper is to a considerable extent the history of the Netherlands.”3 Happily, Kuyper’s life and work are no longer so secret in the English-speaking world, or indeed well beyond now too in the Global South and on the Pacific Rim. Over the past generation, several of Kuyper’s writings have been (re)published in English, along with a score of major new academic studies, and hundreds of articles and dissertations.4 These earlier efforts have been greatly enhanced by the production of Kuyper’s twelve volumes of Abraham Kuyper Collected Works of Public Theology, all published in crisp English edition, expertly translated, judiciously edited, and handsomely produced. Here readers can find an excellent cross-section of his work over a long career—multivolume theological tomes, expansive political platforms and policy statements, learned sermons and speeches, pithy op-eds and popular articles. All these new publications have not only solidified Kuyper’s place high on the honor roll of great Dutch Calvinists. They have also helped secure his standing as a towering Christian public intellectual of the later nineteenth century, whose teachings offer an enduring and edifying witness to modern churches, states, and societies alike. Much as his contemporary Pope Leo XIII led a retrieval and reconstruction of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and the Thomist tradition to reform modern Catholicism, so Abraham Kuyper helped revive and retrieve the best teachings of John Calvin and the Reformed tradition to reform modern Protestantism. Much as Leo used natural law and subsidiarity theory to build a new “social teachings” movement for modern Catholic engagement with the world, so Kuyper used theories of creation order, common grace, and sphere sovereignty to build a comparable political theology for the Protestant world. Much as Leo understood the need for the “development of doctrine” to keep Catholicism as a vital and valuable alternative to secular forms of liberalism and socialism in his day, so Kuyper urged an ethic of semper reformanda, a constant openness to reform the Reformed tradition in light of new insights from Scripture and the Spirit, and new challenges of his religious pluralistic and rapidly secularizing world.5 The main topics that occupy Kuyper in this volume On Charity and Justice—family, property, labor, welfare, democracy, sovereignty, and liberty—have been of cardinal importance to the Calvinist tradition since the sixteenth century, with deeper roots of reflection at hand in the Bible and earlier classical and Christian traditions. Most of these topics remain critical and sometimes controversial today, as Matthew Tuininga relates in his brilliant editorial introduction herein as well in as his own recent masterwork on Calvinist political theology.6 On some of these topics, Kuyper largely stuck to the tradition, convinced by the enduring cogency of his forebearer’s views, and content to make only modest reforms in light of new challenges. On other topics, he was transformative, urging reforms of thought and practice that still remain relevant. Allow me just two main illustrations. Kuyper’s discussion of the family or “The Family, Society, and the State” illustrates his more traditional side. The family was one of the first institutions that sixteenth-century Protestants had reformed root and branch.7 John Calvin in particular replaced medieval Catholic teachings that marriage is a sacrament under the canon law authority of the church with the idea of marriage as a covenant under the spiritual guidance of the church and the legal governance of the Christian state. The Christian family was created by God as a two-in-one-flesh union of “male and female” called to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:27–28; 2:24). Couples were to court properly, and marriages were to be formed with mutual consent of the couple, parental consent on both sides, two or more witnesses, public state registration, and consecration and celebration in a church wedding. Both husbands and wives were called to respect the other’s sexual bodies and needs and to abstain from sex only temporarily and by mutual consent (1 Cor 7:2–5). Spouses had to love, respect, and sacrifice for each other, although wives were to “submit in everything to their husbands” as Eve was made subject to Adam after the fall, and the church “submits to Christ” (Gen 3:16; Eph 5:21–33). God hates divorce (Mal 2:16) and discourages remarriage (Matt 19:9; Rom 7:2–3), but allows it in cases of serious fault, such as adultery or desertion (Matt 19:9; 1 Cor 7:15), much as Yahweh himself threatened to “divorce” his beloved metaphorical bride Israel when she “played the whore” in violation of the covenant (Ezek 16; Jer 3:7–8; Isa 50:1). Both fathers and mothers were to nurture, educate, and discipline their children in loving preparation for their own vocations, marriages, and lives as adults. Adult children were to honor and obey their parents (Exod 20:12), and to care for them in their old age in exchange for presumptive inheritance. Church, state, school, and community alike were to support the family but without encroaching on its inner workings or liberties, or subjecting it to the “covetous” privations of neighbors. Calvin and his protégé Theodore Beza had built an intricate theology, law, and practice of the covenant family for sixteenth-century Geneva, and this early example was echoed and elaborated in numerous Calvinist communities thereafter in Continental Europe, Great Britain, North America, the Caribbean, southern Africa, and colonial India and Indonesia.8 This Calvinist family heritage was still part of Dutch Reformed theology and culture in Kuyper’s day. But Napoleon’s legal reforms after the French Revolution had catalyzed strong new efforts for reduced church involvement in marriage; greater sexual liberty and expression; enhancement of women’s suffrage, education, and public access; joint marital property; easier divorce; joint child custody after marriage; and more.9 Kuyper had rather little sympathy with such domestic reforms, and he used the pulpit, press, and political platform to push hard against them. For he regarded the traditional family to be an essential cornerstone of ordered liberty and a properly organized society. Kuyper also recognized, however, that urbanization, industrialization, and international commodities trade were rapidly separating work and home, parents and children, managers and workers, rich and poor, and yielding many more industrial injuries, disabilities, and deaths, a trend further exacerbated by destructive military campaigns and a scourge of natural disasters in his day. In response, he advocated stronger protections for workers; a more generous system of worker’s insurance, compensation, and pension; and new forms and forums of social welfare for the “deserving poor.” Kuyper defended private property and enterprise, market capitalism, and free trade, and he warned against socialist campaigns designed to foment “class struggle.” But in his writing and policy making, he remained deeply concerned for “widows and orphans,” the poor and the homeless, the sick and maimed, and other personae miserabiles. Jesus said, “As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matt 25:45), encouraging his followers to adopt an ethic of love and care of all neighbors.10 Kuyper translated this teaching into a robust system of charity, welfare, and a “preferential option” for the deserving poor or involuntarily disadvantaged. His preferred system of caring and...