This post is part of a series walking through the third volume of Abraham Kuyper’s Common Grace Contemporary readers tend to look to the Old Testament to connect church and state. The New Testament has little to say and we’re left to derive our view from Biblical principles. We do this regularly, though obviously it’s better to have explicit statements–which is why people turn to the Old Testament where the church/state connection is much more clearly established. So we must... Read more

Kuyper on the corruption of the relationship between church and state Read more

Kuyper on the influence of the church on culture Read more

This post is part of a series walking through the third volume of Abraham Kuyper’s Common Grace Because, as we saw in the last post, there is no moral neutrality, there is likewise no religious neutrality. Every nation is religious–some even say that the Netherlands is a “Protestant nation”. But what does that mean? (212) In the early 19th century, “Protestant nation” “still had an ecclesiastical meaning,” with the idea of there only being one church possible and so having... Read more

This post is part of a series walking through the third volume of Abraham Kuyper’s Common Grace There are three areas in which government must know God’s will: The role of government itself; The relationships in society; “the basic distinction between good and evil.” (203) This tells us that there is no “neutral state” possible. More specifically on this topic later, but generally this matters because Kuyper himself has been called the standard bearer of the neutral state. That’s not to... Read more