This post is part of a series walking through the second volume of Abraham Kuyper\u2019s\u00a0Common Grace<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Common grace did not cease with Pentecost. It runs through all of history until the end. This includes in countries that have not been influence by Christianity, though Kuyper believes that they are \u201coutside the historical development of our human race as a whole, and it is not through these countries and these peoples that the broad stream of common grace pushes on toward the end.\u201d (197) We see this, Kuyper tells us, in the civilizations in the Western Hemisphere that have \u201cperished forever\u201d (198). Of course by putting it in the passive Kuyper elides the fact that these \u2018perished\u2019 civilizations have \u2018perished\u2019 because they were intentionally and systematically wiped out by those \u2018higher civilizations\u2019 where common grace flows so much more freely in his view.<\/p>\n And, well, more commentary from me shortly. Kuyper is wrong in his view of Western Civilization relative to non-Western Civilizations from the perspective of Christianity, but more on that below.<\/p>\n Kuyper argues that the East is \u201csomewhat different\u201d from those destroyed Western civilizations (the Aztecs, Incas, etc), and we\u2019ll have to wait and see how things unfold. For now (~1900), the West seems to be steamrolling the East (i.e. the British are ruling India, the Dutch Indonesia, everyone\u2019s pushing around China, etc). China and Japan are particularly civilized, and are quickly adopting to the \u2018modern\u2019 world\u2013yet only externally. What they are adopting from the West is not organically connected to their pagan past\/present. Common grace was and is at work there, but not in a way that Kuyper thinks makes lasting contributions to \u201cthe human race.\u201d<\/p>\n Kuyper argues that much the same is true of Islam. Common grace was once even stronger there than it was in the West, and it (Islam) certainly impacts all it touches. If nothing else, it\u2019s successfully stamped out idolatry in regions of the world where it holds sway. Yet, it has a solid stopping point. Kuyper doesn\u2019t want to dig too much into Islam here (see\u00a0Pro Rege<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0On Islam<\/em><\/a> for Kuyper\u2019s thoughts); we can only note that it matters more to world history than the other world civilizations, primarily because it has been so heavily influence historically by Christianity.<\/p>\n Looking around the world aside from where Christianity has flourished, we can see that there are \u201ctwo rich operations of common grace\u201d:<\/p>\n The former kind was in the Western Hemisphere, the East, and partly Islam; the latter kind of common grace was in Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and the modern West under the cross. The former we might call \u201cspecial\u201d common grace; while the latter is \u201cgeneral\u201d common grace. We see common grace flourish in its fullness only \u201cthrough the Christian religion.\u201d (202-203)<\/p>\n So we must reject views that separate Christianity from history. \u201cChrist was bound entirely to this\u00a0general<\/em> line of common grace\u2026\u201d (203) So too we must reject the idea of a divide between nature and grace. The two are one work bound by the Mediator who is also the Creator. The ancient world is not bound for destruction\/replacement; it is Adam\u2019s world bound for renewal and restoration. That\u2019s why the Christian nations are the pinnacle of development\u2013and their fall will mark the end of history.\u00a0Whatever the future holds, we can at least be certain about the thrust of the past.<\/p>\n Okay, so what to do with this difficult and certainly-dated chapter? Obviously, any good 21st century individual is going to categorically reject Kuyper\u2019s categorical rejections of the various peoples and cultures of the world. That almost goes without saying, but given the sensitive culture these days I want to say it anyway. I think the challenge here is to sift out Kuyper\u2019s tools without holding on to his conclusions. The distinction he makes between \u2018special\u2019 common grace and \u2018general\u2019 common grace is probably his most interesting point. By way of example, the ziggurats of the Central and South American pre-Columbian civilizations have not influenced modern architecture and thought in the same way or to the same extent that the ziggurats of the ancient Middle East have. (Disclaimer: I am neither an archaeologist nor an architect, so if this claim is wrong please do tell me so in the comments). That doesn\u2019t mean the achievements of the Central\/South American peoples aren\u2019t impressive\u2013certainly they are the result of common grace. It is to say that their primary impact has so far been limited to the peoples of the past who lived in the region, rather than ongoing.<\/p>\n Now, with that said, the interconnectedness of peoples today means that more and more of us are exposed to more and more ideas. It may very well be that what was in the category of \u2018special\u2019 common grace, because once limited to its own time and place in influence, moves too the category of \u2018general\u2019 common grace as it becomes influential on the world of today. Here we might think of how much people were discussing the Mayan calendar back in the lead-up to 2012 (for better or worse). We might also see instances of ideas and influences moving from the category of \u2018general\u2019 common grace into the category of \u2018special\u2019 common grace. Where once an idea was widespread it increasingly becomes a relic of the past. One of the trends in agriculture in the past decade has been a move to no-till farming (basically, replacing the use of a plow with cover crops as a means of preventing erosion and keeping carbon locked in the soil). It may be that the influence of the Medieval European heavy plow has moved from \u2018general\u2019 to \u2018special\u2019 common grace. (Though I do know something about farming, I am by no means an agricultural scientist, so again corrections are welcome here too.)<\/p>\n A bit of fluidity between the categories will, hopefully, help us to avoid falling into the trap that got Kuyper of passing absolute judgements on the value of civilizations past and present. What was of no interest or use today might be tomorrow the center of a new cultural activity; and what everyone was doing today might be completely forgotten a generation from now. This isn\u2019t to say we\u00a0never\u00a0<\/em>judge cultures or civilizations, or that Christ won\u2019t sort them out Himself when He returns. Just that we should be cautious\u2013certainly more cautious than Kuyper\u2013to avoid hubris when it comes to passing judgment by declaring ourselves the pinnacle of civilizations and others to be \u2018lower\u2019 on some kind of scale of merit. And we should\u00a0certainly<\/em> avoid hitching that scale of merit to Providence. Frankly, Kuyper should have known better, and we should learn from his (negative) example.<\/p>\n Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the\u00a0City of Man Podcast<\/a>\u00a0and an Associate Profess<\/em>or of Political Science at\u00a0Southwest Baptist University<\/a>\u00a0in Bolivar, MO<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kuyper on the peoples of the world and the categories of common grace<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1469,"featured_media":7410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,6,115],"tags":[942,1128],"class_list":["post-7759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-christian","category-classics","category-philosophy","tag-abraham-kuyper","tag-common-grace"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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