{"id":9185,"date":"2022-05-31T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/?p=9185"},"modified":"2022-05-23T16:02:22","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T22:02:22","slug":"common-grace-3-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2022\/05\/common-grace-3-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Grace, 3.5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This post is part of a series walking through the third volume of Abraham Kuyper\u2019s Common\u00a0Grace<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We saw in the last post that government exists because of sin. In this chapter, Kuyper gets even more provocative when he argues that \u201cthe institutional church exists because of sin.\u201d (That\u2019s even the title of the chapter, just to drive the point home\u2026)<\/p>\n

Some theologians have argued that other theologians claim (because that\u2019s how theology works, I guess) that the government only exists because of sin for the purpose of elevating the church at the expense of the state. The problem is that the church also \u201ccame into existence only because of sin.\u201d (36)<\/p>\n

When thinking about church\/state relationships, we mean\u00a0only<\/em> the institutional church. The spiritual organism is \u201cinaccessible to the state.\u201d (37) Government can, of course, also interact with individual Christians\u2013but the church as a body past, present, and future is beyond the sphere of the government. More recently, the state has seen itself as related to denominations or religious associations (so as to include the Jews). But that\u2019s still just a point of contact with the institutional church, not the church as organism. When thinking through all of this, we must also be careful not to confuse the institution and the organism\u2013as the Roman Catholics do.<\/p>\n

When we look at the (Heidelberg) Catechism, we see the confession that the church will endure for ever.\u00a0 If that\u2019s what we mean then of course the church\/state = not sin\/because of sin distinciton holds. But when we focus on the church as an institution, we see an entity that was created after and because of sin, and which will disappear when sin disappears. The church didn\u2019t even exist until Pentecost and the establishment of offices, Word, and Sacrament. The organism, by contrast, is immutable and fixed in the mystical body of Christ.<\/p>\n

In the past, religion was tied to the household under Abraham, then to the family under Jacob, then to the nation as a whole in the people of Israel. Ultimately, however, it had to have its own institution \u201cin order to bless all peoples.\u201d (40) Without sin, religion may very well have remained in the household. [Though this is speculation on Kuyper\u2019s part.]<\/p>\n

So both church and state\u2013institutionally\u2013are formed because of \u201cthe sinful character of the life of individual persons and of groups of persons that made the emergence of separate institutions necessary, in both the ecclesiastical and the political form.\u201d (40) When there\u2019s no more sin, these will vanish. Stating it this way is not intended to denigrate politics or to \u201celevate the church at the expense of the state.\u201d (41) In both, we confess and \u201chonor gifts of God\u2019s grace.\u201d Specifically the church is a gift of particular grace, while the state is a gift of common grace. So we see that government is \u201d a revelation of God\u2019s love toward the human race,\u201d not something to be feared or fled from. (41)<\/p>\n

But why? Even without sin we might need \u201corder and religion,\u201d so what was broken? What would things look like without sin? We must know the healthy condition to understand the sickness. We can see this healthy condition in 1) pre-Fall humanity and 2) what will come with restored humanity. Specifically we see these things in community of people. More on this in the next post.<\/p>\n

Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the\u00a0City of Man Podcast<\/a> an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and 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":"

This post is part of a series walking through the third volume of Abraham Kuyper\u2019s Common\u00a0Grace We saw in the last post that government exists because of sin. In this chapter, Kuyper gets even more provocative when he argues that \u201cthe institutional church exists because of sin.\u201d (That\u2019s even the title of the chapter, just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1469,"featured_media":9085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,6,115],"tags":[942,1128],"class_list":["post-9185","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":"\nCommon Grace, 3.5<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This post is part of a series walking through the third volume of Abraham Kuyper\u2019s Common\u00a0Grace We saw in the last post that government exists because of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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