Christ & Culture: An Illustrative Life

A young reformer who had grown increasingly critical of the departure of the Reformed Church and the nation from their theological moorings, Kuyper was encouraged to enter politics, which he did in 1874, when he was elected a member of Parliament. The church at this time was already sliding toward liberalism, having tolerated Arminianism and Deism for some time already. In some circles theologians openly denied Christ’s bodily resurrection and Kuyper himself had accepted liberalism during his student years. It was Kuyper’s own congregation which led him to conversion in those early years of ministry before he entered politics. He writes of the experience, “I had not yet found the Word of reconciliation. In their simple language they brought me this in the absolute form in which alone my soul can rest. I discovered that the Holy Scripture does not only cause us to find justification by faith, but also discloses the foundation of all areas of human life.” (1)

In 1880 Kuyper founded the Free University of Amsterdam, built on the premise that all of human knowledge and endeavor must serve the glory of God and be informed by Scripture. God considered all of life important, not just religion, Kuyper was fond of insisting, in the great tradition of the Protestant Reformation.

At the national celebration held in honor of Kuyper’s seventy-fifth birthday, it was declared, “The history of The Netherlands, in Church, in State, in Society, in Press, in School, and in the Sciences of the last forty years, cannot be written without the mention of his name on almost every page, for during this period the biography of Dr. Kuyper is to a considerable extent the history of The Netherlands.” (2) After returning from the United States in 1898, where Princeton University conferred on Kuyper the Doctorate of Laws after he delivered the Stone Lectures, titled, Lectures on Calvinism, the elder statesman was “summoned by Queen Wilhelmina to form a cabinet.” (3) Finally, after serving as Prime Minister of The Netherlands for the next four years, Kuyper “resided in the Hague as Minister of State, in the public eye the foremost figure in the land, and in some respects without a peer in the world.” (4)

Kuyper warned both of nationalism and revolutionary forces (such as Communism) at work in Europe during this time. (We have much to learn from Kuyper as neo-Fascism and revolutionary movements are rising in our own time.) He warned of “George Thibaud, known for his anti-Semitic propaganda,” who “at the same time revived the anti-Calvinistic spirit in France, and even in the Dreyfus case, ‘Jews and Calvinists’ were arraigned by him as the two anti-national forces” of France. (5) Kuyper was a man ahead of his times.

One note which might be of interest to Dutch pietists of South Africa would be Abraham Kuyper’s remarks about apartheid. The “commingling of blood,” he noted in his Stone Lectures, has always contributed to great prosperity. While his scientific reasoning might be considered antiquated, his social ethics were, once more, ahead of their times: “History shows that the nations among which Calvinism flourished most widely exhibit in every way this same mingling of races.” Of course, however, Kuyper was addressing an American audience!

Kuyper’s biographers all point to his preference for “the common man.” According to one biographer, Kuyper preferred to “speak of the ‘little fellows’ (kleine luyden) of the Reformation, who had persevered when many other people with great names had not.” (6)

But at the heart of Kuyper’s life was the gospel and he was engaged in doctrinal disputes and pleas for reformation throughout the rest of his life. While inheriting the Reformation impulse to transform culture, Kuyper never lost sight of the fact that this was not an evangelistic activity. It will hopefully serve to pre-evangelize; that is, to prepare the way for the gospel, but Kuyper was able to defend both the gospel and involvement in society without confusing either. When all was said and done, the elder statesman of the Dutch republic declared, “It is as if Christ said to us, ‘This is my world, every inch of it!'”