{"id":7531,"date":"2020-11-17T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/?p=7531"},"modified":"2020-11-17T13:14:26","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T20:14:26","slug":"common-grace-2-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2020\/11\/common-grace-2-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Grace, 2.10"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This post is part of a series walking through the second volume of Abraham Kuyper\u2019s\u00a0Common Grace<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the previous post Kuyper continued his discussion of the Roman Catholic and Anabaptist views of the relationship between the world and grace. In today\u2019s chapter Kuyper continues his discussion by pointing out that up through the Reformation, the world\/secular-church\/holy division persisted. Monks dwelt at the peak of the \u2018holy\u2019 side of the equation, only coming in below canonized saints. This perspective then lays the groundwork, in Kuyper\u2019s view, for the views of the Anabaptists.<\/p>\n

The Anabaptists found themselves stuck in this dualism<\/p>\n

\u201cand changed it only to the extent required by their altered view of the church. From the outset they harbored two kinds of impulses that, depending on their differing instincts, conducted a very different opposition to the church: they either protested against the church from a desire to be free of the clergy, or they separated from the church out of an aversion to its externalization of the sacred.\u201d (86)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, Anabaptists can be divided into those who pursue freedom and those who pursue internal piety. Both, however, move the action of making something \u2018holy\u2019 from the church (which was the Roman Catholic view) to a direct, internal action of the Holy Spirit. The consequence is that \u201cnew creation\u201d replaces \u201cre-creation\u201d, at times to the point of denying Christ\u2019s humanity.<\/p>\n

So for the Anabaptist, the believer is internally new with no \u2018organic connection\u2019 between this world and grace. Hence the powerful push towards avoidance of the world. No service in government, no need for formal politics among the saints, no oaths are to be taken by believers, no fighting or service in the military, are just a handful of the results of the Anabaptist position. All worldly politics and life are restraints on sin, such things are not necessary for believers. (For this last point, Kuyper is too sweeping in his conclusion\u2013some Anabaptists certainly thought that, but not all of them.) Some Anabaptists even end as antinomians, rejecting completely the role of the Law in the life of the believer.<\/p>\n

The result of these views was all manner of immorality. Even the visible church was at times given the boot, with gatherings of believers being merely leaderless assemblies of the regenerate led by the Holy Spirit. Another result was the idea that only their baptism counted, thus negating the views of other varieties of believers. All of this was done in the name of Scripture.<\/p>\n

By contrast:<\/p>\n