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{"id":16002,"date":"2014-05-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=957"},"modified":"2014-05-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T00:00:00","slug":"kuypers-common-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/05\/kuypers-common-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuyper’s Common Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

The great Dutch statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper is largely responsible for the prominence of this notion in Reformed worldview thinking, but as described by James Bratt in his recent\u00a0Abraham Kuyper\u00a0<\/a>biography Kuyper\u2019s own thinking on this topic is more nuanced than that of \u201csome of his acolytes\u201d (202).<\/p>\n

Bratt writes that Kuyper always dealt with special and common together, as \u201cdistinguished but not divided\u201d works of the same God, \u201caimed at the self-same goal of re-creating the whole world until it finally reflected the glory of the divine image.\u201d The church was destined to fill the world as the new humanity, but \u201ccommon grace permitted the spoiled creation to stay in being while that development went forward,\u201d with \u201csignificant achievements\u201d of culture and political along the way.<\/p>\n

Kuyper\u2019s scheme was not a simple common-special binary, but a \u201cfour-part typology\u201d: \u201cAt the two ends lay the two graces pure and simple. In lands not (yet) evangelized, common grace operated alone, with no small record of accomplishment but no hopeful goal in sight either. In the institutional church, purely reformed, particular grace operated safe from the corruptions of the world. In the two middle segments the two graces overlapped with complex results\u201d (202-3).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Special grace, Kuyper argued, \u201cstrengthened and best realized the possibilities of common grace,\u201d not because believers were necessarily \u201cmore gifted than unbelievers at science, art, technical skill, or political acumen.\u201d Kuyper thought the opposite was more the case. Rather, \u201cthose endowed with the insights of the gospel knew the ultimate purposes and norms\u201d for technical, artistic, and political gifts (203).<\/p>\n

Besides, many of the common blessings of secular modernity were the \u201clong-term residue of a once-dominant public faith.\u201d The West was not a common-grace realm but reflected, in Kuyper\u2019s words, \u201cthe life of non-confessors in a Christian country,\u201d the word \u201cChristian\u201d in this context telling us \u201cnothing about the spiritual state of the inhabitants of such a country but only [bearing] witness to the fact that public opinion, the general mindset, the ruling ideas, the moral norms, the laws and customs there clearly betoken the influence of the Christian faith\u201d (203).\u00a0Kuyper\u2019s willingness to use \u201cChristian\u201d to describe a \u201ccountry\u201d shows his distance from some of his followers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kuyper gave most of his attention to this middle ground, where special and general mixed. I would only add that the middle ground is the only ground we have. Purely common-grace and purely special-grace communities are theoretical only. They have never actually existed for sons of Adam and Noah.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"