Common Grace, 3.38

This post is part of a series walking through the third volume of Abraham Kuyper’s Common Grace

One objection sometimes raised to the “Kingly rule of Christ” is that between the ascension and Christ’s return, God has paused his personal rule over the world and has passed it to Christ, who rules in His place and from whom human authority must derive. So all governments are obligated to enforce Christ’s rule, reform the church, and pursue purity. Every false church is an affront to Christ and the government must stamp it out.

Obviously there is something to this, and some of the points made logically follow. Yet, we also see that other denominations can have a similar logic. See what the Arminians and the caesaropapists/Erastians have done, to say nothing of the Roman Catholics. (319)

“Christ’s rule” can be explained or confused in various ways, not least “if… we confuse and mix the visible and the invisible, the external and the internal” etc. (319) Specifically, if we do this three things might happen:

“Ecclesiastical authority subjects the government to itself;
government exercises authority even in the church;
the spiritual is divorced from the organizational in the churches, with the result that the governing authorities rule over the church, leaving to the church’s overseers only a spiritual authority by which to determine doctrine.

The first was exercised by the Roman Catholic Church, the second served by the caesaropapists, while the Anabaptists chose a division of authority.” (319-320)

But is this confusion correct? The three forms of unity say little about Christ’s rule and much about God’s action. God’s providence is the order of the day there. Still, this suggests that God’s rule has not been outsourced to Christ and that the whole premise above is wrong. God continues to rule as he always has, and Christ’s mediated intercession is a part of this rule.

Obviously we’re in complex theological territory here. Christ does have a kingly office and is united in the Triune God. The point is there’s no real room for a “reign of Christ” competing with a “reign of God.” (323) We have to keep the whole of the providential plan for history in view.