Wagenman Engaging the World with Abraham Kuyper

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68359-243-3
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 112 Seiten

Reihe: Lived Theology

Christ declares 'Mine!' over every square inch of creation. In his well--known quote, Abraham Kuyper expressed the defining characteristic of his public theology: Jesus' sovereignty extends over all things. He believed Christians should engage the whole world in all of its various spheres. But what does that comprehensive calling practically look like for us today? In Engaging the World with Abraham Kuyper, Michael Wagenman explores the practical application of Kuyper's public theology. Using Kuyper's own life as an example, he shows us how the gospel can permeate all aspects of society: our identity, public discourse, education, the church, politics. Ultimately, this means engaging the world with perceptive truth that's mindful of the dynamics at work in our time and place.

Michael R. Wagenman (PhD, University of Bristol) is the Christian Reformed Church chaplain at Western University (London, Canada). He also teaches theology at Western and New Testament at Redeemer University College (Ancaster, Canada). He is author of Together for the World.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wagenman, Michael R.

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2

Jesus Is Lord of My Identity

God regenerates us—that is to say he rekindles in our heart the lamp sin had blown out.1

In 1863, Abraham Kuyper graduated as an award-winning doctor of theology and took up his first pastoral ministry in the small Dutch village church of Beesd. Shortly after arriving, he was confronted by the question of his identity in the most surprising of ways: a small group of church members refused to attend worship services under his pastoral leadership. But these weren’t just cranky congregants. These “malcontents,” as he called them, presented him with an opportunity to consider his personal identity under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

This encounter must not have been easy—not only because of Kuyper’s lurking pride (see chapter 8) but also because this encounter shook the uneasy balance Kuyper was trying to maintain between the pious faith of his upbringing and the modern faith of his university studies.

Over the weeks, attendance continued to decline, and Kuyper became aware that a certain group of simple, pious members had found his preaching lifeless and his “enlightened” faith problematic. Instead, they had started meeting informally in their homes for Bible study and prayer. For them, Kuyper’s preaching left much to be desired when it came to giving gospel-comfort to their souls.

Kuyper swallowed his pride and determined to meet with them, to hear their complaints, and to persuade them to return to church. But when he arrived on the front steps of their homes, he found them entirely opposed to him. They would not let him enter. They even refused to shake his hand! Such was the determination with which they had set themselves against him and his understanding of the Christian faith. (Before you assume they were just mean-spirited, keep reading.)

Only one young woman, Pietje Baltus, who was in her twenties at the time, was willing to meet with Kuyper and discuss the group’s issues with him. It was through her that Kuyper came to a number of profound realizations about his identity and his Christian faith, starting with the fact that his upbringing, university education, and seminary formation had provided him with only a meager knowledge of the Bible. With that kind of (mal-)formation, he could begin to see why these members opposed him. Kuyper underwent a profound spiritual transformation rooted deep within his self-understanding—a conversion—that transformed his identity and his life’s trajectory. And at the end of his life he would thank God for their determination to oppose him!2

WHO WAS ABRAHAM KUYPER?

Kuyper’s experience at the church in Beesd shaped the rest of his life. At the heart of Kuyper’s growing awareness of his identity was the route he navigated from cultural Christianity, to Modernist Christianity, and finally to confessional Christianity.

Cultural Christianity

Abraham Kuyper was the third child and first son of Henriëtte Huber and Jan Frederik Kuyper, a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church.3 In keeping with the confessional Reformed tradition, Abraham was baptized as an infant and grew up within the orbit of the church. As such, from an early age, he thought of himself as a Christian, but what kind of Christian was he? That was the question he had to sort out early in his career.

Kuyper was raised in an atmosphere of, what we would call today, cultural Christianity. To be a Christian, it was assumed, all one needed to do was be born and baptized and live life within the boundaries of the Dutch Reformed Church. Faithfulness was achieved by staying safe inside these boundaries and by protecting the church from the sinful world. One’s identity, first and foremost, was grounded in the national church and in the cultural and ethnic background that sponsors the church. Christ comes second.

Growing up as a pastor’s son, Kuyper had intimate experiences with the church from a young age. He would write in his autobiography that he knew the church inside-out. But this was not a positive, faith-inducing experience for him. Rather, the kind of church and faith he was exposed to produced aversion more than affection.4

Kuyper came to view the world of the Dutch Reformed Church, especially after his conversion, as merely a cultural expression of traditional Dutch identity. It was a form of hypocrisy, a mere religious routine that one went through as a traditional Dutch citizen. This cultural form of Christianity repulsed him because he viewed it as spiritually dead and lifeless.

In contrast, even from a young age, Kuyper displayed an understanding of and a deep commitment to a world-engaging form of Christian faith and church life—a deep union between faith and action. Kuyper found cultural Christianity distasteful because it failed to engage the world meaningfully. He saw it as a sacrifice of action in the world to retain the purity of faith in the church. But even with these world-engaging impulses, Kuyper did not fully perceive the corrosive consequences of cultural Christianity.

Kuyper’s early departure from cultural Christianity can be seen most clearly in his thoughts about the socio-political issues facing the Netherlands during the early years of his Christian ministry. There were many Dutch Christians who, in the face of social change, wanted to legislate a return to an earlier, more seemingly faithful time. Kuyper vigorously and vocally opposed this particular logic. Attempts to romanticize past periods and then freeze time were inherently doomed to fail. Rather than maintaining a Christian veneer on society, Kuyper believed that God called each generation of Christians to discern how to apply the truth of the gospel to the present. Kuyper believed that the central truths of the Christian faith were unchanging and that Christians always need to authentically articulate these unchanging truths in new cultural moments. Without this discipline, Kuyper believed that Christianity remained merely cultural, religious adornment in history and society.

When it came to faith and action, cultural Christianity sacrificed the hard work of faithful Christian action in order to avoid contamination from the messiness of the world. This approach to Christian faith turned the church into an isolated community separate from the rest of the world and animated by a fierce us-versus-them mentality. Instead, Kuyper was convinced that the Christian faith required intentional public Christian action—a particular kind of action, no less: engagement of the world with the gospel. This action couldn’t be frozen in time and served like reheated leftovers later. That would rob the gospel of its vitality. In Kuyper’s mind, the church must fully engage with the world rather than remain a dusty members-only religious museum. So when Kuyper went to university and found a form of Christian faith that was current with contemporary issues and struggles, he was ready to jump in with his whole heart and mind.

Modernist Christianity

At university and seminary, Kuyper came under the powerful influence of Modernist Christianity. Like little else in his younger years, this form of Christian faith captured his attention and imagination with its commitment to engaging contemporary ideas. Here he found a form of Christianity and faith willing and eager to engage the problems and potentials of the modern world. It was, to Kuyper, the faithful unification of faith and action.

Under the tutelage of his university and seminary professors, he explored this version of Christian faith that wasn’t fixated on a past historical era (the Reformation period of the sixteenth century) or person (John Calvin). Modernist Christianity was liberated from the dusty theological debates and confessions of yesteryear and fully engaged, with sleeves rolled up, in the present issues and debates of society. Here he found a way to maintain public action in the present. In short, Modernist Christianity was the opposite of an out-of-date faith. It was conversant with the modern scientific and technological world developments of the present. It did not view cultural or political changes with a default suspicion. Rather, Modernist Christianity viewed these cultural advances as loaded with promise. Kuyper quickly concluded that Modernist Christianity could save the Christian faith from embarrassing marginalization by new scientific discoveries which challenged traditional interpretations of the Bible. It was a compelling form of faith and church interested in dialogue with the world.

But the “malcontents” in his Beesd congregation helped him to realize that Modernist Christianity had a major flaw. It was only able to capture the attention of the cultural elites and engage in a dialogue with godless science and philosophy through serious distortions of the basic tenets of orthodox Christian faith.

The result was that while Kuyper served as the pastor of the Beesd congregation, he placed Modernist Christianity under the microscope. He found that it had moved the center of authority from the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in authoritative Scripture to individual human judgment revealed through the authority of science, politics, and cultural trends. Inherent in this substitution, Kuyper discovered that Modernist Christianity limited Jesus’ sovereign and comprehensive lordship to only the spiritual or religious or ethical realms, leaving Jesus merely an inspirational model or compelling example for the rest of life, which was subject to a rival authority (for...