A Word from Bob
For Part 1 of this series on Kuyper and common grace, see, Abraham Kuyper on Common Grace. For a collation of all of my posts on common grace, see, 10 Reformed Theologians on Common Grace.
Minimizing God’s Amazing Common Grace?
Some Christians who are just beginning a cursory reading of the Reformed doctrine of common grace fail to understand how all-encompassing common grace is. They do not realize that common grace impacts every square inch of human existence.
Likewise, some biblical counselors want to limit the reach and impact of common grace.[1] However, they fail to understand how Reformed theologians inescapably link together common grace, God’s affectionate sovereignty over everything, God’s glory in all things, Christ’s lordship over all creation, the Creation Mandate/Cultural Mandate, grace and nature, and the body and soul.
Richard Mouw, in his “Introduction” to Abraham Kuyper’s seminal three-volume set, Common Grace, explains well how Kuyper saw the comprehensive nature of common grace.
“If some Christians in the English-speaking world only know one thing about Kuyper, it is likely his oft-quoted manifesto: ‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’ That simple but profound affirmation of Christ’s supreme lordship over all of creation—including what human beings are commissioned by God to add to the creation in their cultural engagements—has to be seen as what undergirds Kuyper’s theology of common grace. Christ rules over all—that is basic. But we also need the theology of common grace as a practical fleshing out of how we can best understand the implications of our affirmation of Christ’s lordship” (xxix).
A God-Created Instinct to Investigate
Some are talking today about “an instinct to integrate.” God’s Word talks about an instinct to investigate.
God instilled in humanity an impulse to study and advance creation. With our creation in the image of God, and with the Creation Mandate, God deeply implanted within us the impulse for cultural formation. Kuyper understood this, and he understood how it relates to common grace. Once again, Mouw explains:
“Kuyper is arguably the most prominent proponent of the idea of a cultural mandate issued by God to human beings in the first chapter of Genesis. God programmed cultural formation into the original creation. When the Lord instructed the first human pair to ‘fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion’ over it (Gen 1:28), he was referring to the filling of the Garden with the products and processes of cultural activity…. Art, science technology, politics (as the collective patterns of decision making), recreation, and the like were all programmed into the original creation in order to display different patterns of cultural flourishing” (xxvii).
God’s Ongoing, Providential Shepherding of the Lives of Non-Christians
Some also fail to understand how this instinct to investigate continues today—because of God’s sovereign providence in the lives of unbelievers. Again, Mouw explains Kuyper’s theology of common grace.
“The capacity for cultural formation was not lost in fallen humanity. Scarred, yes, and even seriously distorted and corrupted. But the impulse toward cultural activity deeply implanted in human beings by God continues. And common grace sees to it that good things are produced, even where rebellious spirits are in charge” (xxvii).
“To acknowledge, for Kuyper, that God cares about art, athletics, education, business, politics, and entertainment is to acknowledge also that God will not ever give up on these areas of human cultural achievement” (xxvii).
Diminishing Common Grace Is Diminishing God’s Glory
Kuyper himself made this connection between God’s sovereignty and common grace. In doing so, Kuyper shows us that common grace glorifies God’s sovereignty. He shows us that that diminishing God’s work of common grace in the unbeliever is diminishing God’s glory.
“The doctrine of common grace is an idea deduced directly from the sovereignty of the Lord, a doctrine that is and remains the root conviction of all Reformed people. If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit. The non-Christian world has not been handed over to Satan, nor surrendered to fallen humanity, nor consigned to fate. God’s sovereignty is great and all-dominating in the life of that unbaptized world as well” (xxxvii).
Denying God’s all-encompassing common grace in the life of the unbeliever is saying that God has handed the non-Christian world over to Satan.
Maximizing Common Grace: Every Square Inch!
In Kuyper’s day, as in ours, some attempted to minimize the extent—the height, depth, width, and breadth—of common grace. Kuyper saw this as an unbiblical attempt to minimize common grace’s applicability. Kuyper balks at this. He sees common grace manifest everywhere—in every square inch of the whole domain of human existence.
“Common grace extends over our entire human life, in all its manifestations. There is a common grace that manifests itself in order and law; there is a common grace that manifests itself in prosperity and affluence; there is a common grace that becomes visible in the healthy development of strength and heroic courage of a nation; there is a common grace that shines in the development of science and art; there is a common grace that enriches a nation through inventiveness in enterprise and commerce; there is a common grace that strengthens the domestic and moral life; and finally there is a common grace that protects the religious life against an excessive degeneration. As for the latter, we only have to compare Islam with the service of Baal Peor (see Numbers 25) to sense immediately what a powerful functioning of common grace is active in the religious realm in Islamic counties. And if we want to get a clear picture of the difference in the effect of common grace in another area, compare then, for example, what we are told of the Egyptians in the days of Moses and the Batavians in the days of Claudis Civilis. Among the Egyptians we see a high development of wisdom, as well as skill in various areas of art and business enterprise” (497-498).
The Biblical Error of Limiting Common Grace to the Earthly and the Inferior
Some today, in an attempt to minimize the Bible’s teaching on the extent of common grace, seek to claim that Reformed theologians link common grace to the inferior, the earthly, the natural, the physical, the body, the exterior realms. Common grace operates in the earthly, but not in the spiritual, they want to claim.
Kuyper’s biblical theology of God’s comprehensive sovereignty belies that lie. For Kuyper, God’s common grace operates not only in the inferior, earthly, natural, physical, exterior realms, but also equally in the superior, heavenly, supernatural, spiritual, soul, interior realm. In fact, Kuyper would not call either realm “inferior” or one realm “spiritual” and the other “unspiritual,” or one realm “supernatural” and the other “natural,” since, for Kuyper, there is no dichotomy between the sacred and secular.
Listen to Kuyper elucidate the comprehensiveness of God’s common grace—infiltrating and impacting the whole domain of our human existence.
“Common grace operates in the entirety of our human life, but not in an identical way in every part of this life. There is common grace directed to the internal part of our life and another part of common grace is directed to the external dimension of our human life. The former [internal-directed common grace] operates everywhere that civic righteousness, family loyalty, natural love, human virtue, the development of public conscience, integrity, fidelity among people, and an inclination toward piety permeates life. The other part of common grace [external-directed common grace] manifests its operation when human power over nature increases, when invention after invention enriches life, faster concourse between countries arises, the arts flourish, the sciences enrich our knowledge, the enjoyments and delights of life multiply, when a glow comes upon every expression of life, it forms become refined, and life’s common features grow in their attractiveness” (539-540).
Don’t miss Kuyper’s Reformed theology of common grace here. Common grace does not only impact the non-Christian’s study of nature or science. God’s sovereign, all-encompassing grace equally impacts and permeates the non-Christian in the inner, spiritual, moral realms of civic righteousness, family loyalty, natural love, human virtue, public conscience, personal integrity, relational fidelity, and an inclination toward piety.
Common Grace and the Embodied-Soul
Interestingly, and relevant to discussions in our biblical counseling world these days, Kuyper insists that the doctrine of common grace opens our eyes to God’s comprehensive focus on not just our soul, but on our body also—on our embodied-soul. Kuyper speaks of Christians falling into a wrong, one-sided focus on the soul, saying that they wrongly,
“…refuse to take into account the significance of Christ also for the body, and for visible things, and for the outcome of world history” (269).
“Consider well that thereby you run the serious risk of receiving Christ exclusively for your soul and of viewing your life in the world and for the world as something standing alongside your Christian religion and not as being governed by it” (269).
Kuyper then describes this false over-spiritualized mindset.
“The world [in this false mindset/ is a less holy, almost unholy area that should take care of itself as best it can. And with but one more small step you arrive imperceptibly at the Anabaptist point of view, which ultimately focused everything holy in the soul, and dug an unbridgeable chasm between this inner, spiritual life of the soul and the life around you. Then science becomes unholy, the development of the arts, commerce, and business become unholy, as well as holding office in government—in short, everything becomes unholy that is not directly spiritual and focused on the soul. The result is that you end up living in two spheres of thought. On the hand the very narrow, reduced line of thought involving your soul’s salvation, and on the other hand the broad, spacious, life-encompassing sphere of thought involving the world. Your Christ then belongs comfortably in that first, reduced sphere of thinking, but not in the broad one. And then from that antithesis and false proportionality proceed all narrow-mindedness, inner untruthfulness, not to mention pious insincerity and impotence” (269).
For Kuyper, dichotomizing the body and soul, minimizing the importance of the body, results in the sins of “narrow-mindedness, inner untruthfulness, not to mention pious insincerity and impotence”
Kuyper’s Scriptural Remedy
Kuyper describes the scriptural remedy to this false “two spheres” view of life that dichotomizes everything into secular and sacred, rather than seeing everything as sacred.
“Scripture demands the restoration of this balance in our confession. Scripture shows us Christ as Savior of the soul and also as Healer of the sick, as Expiator of our sins but also as the generous Savior who feeds the five thousand and the four thousand, and who turns water into wine at Cana. This Scripture not only focuses all the earnestness of our soul on the doctrine of justification, but also continually places before us in clear contours the resurrection of the flesh. Yes, in pointing continually to the primacy of God’s honor and only then to the salvation of the elect, Scripture cannot unfold before us the final act of the mighty drama without showing us Christ who is also outwardly triumphant over all his enemies, and who celebrates his triumph on a new earth under a new heaven.
And with this clearly in view, you immediately encounter the connection between nature and grace. If grace were exclusively the atonement for sin and the salvation of the soul, then grace could be viewed as something standing outside nature, as something circumventing nature. Grace could be viewed like a jar of oil poured on turbulent waters, separate from those waters, floating on those waters merely so that the drowning person could save himself in the lifeboat quickly rushing toward him. [In other words, grace is for salvation only but is separate from real life—like the proverbial never mixing of oil and water.]
If, on the other hand, it is definitely true that Christ our Savior is dealing not only with our soul but also with our body; that all things in the world are Christ’s and are claimed by him; that he will one day triumph over all enemies in that world; and that the culmination will be not that Christ will gather around himself some individual souls, as is presently the case, but that he will reign as King upon a new earth under a new heaven—then of course all this becomes entirely different and it becomes immediately apparent that grace is inseparably linked to nature, that grace and nature belong together. We cannot grasp grace in all its richness if we do not notice that the fibers of its roots penetrate into the joints and cracks of the life of nature.
And we cannot substantiate this coherence if with grace we focus first on the salvation of our souls and not in the first place on the Christ of God. This is why Scripture continually points out to us that the Savior of the world is also the Creator of the world…. So here we have the connection of Christ with nature, because he is its Creator, and also the connection of Christ with grace, because in re-creating he revealed the riches of grace in that nature” (Common Grace, Vol. 1, 269-271).
Notice how Kuyper connects comprehensive common grace to God’s all-encompassing sovereignty over everything—body and soul, earth and heaven, nature and grace. Because God is over all, all is sacred; nothing is secular. Therefore, common grace impacts and infiltrates every square inch of the non-Christian. In Kuyper’s own words:
“So this common grace is an omnipresent working of God’s forbearance that reveals itself wherever human hearts beat and spreads its blessing upon those human hearts” (303).
Common Grace and Universal Sin: Complementary Doctrines
Some might claim that somehow Kuyper was minimizing the spiritual antithesis of sin, total depravity, the noetic effect of sin, the unsaved being dead in sin, and the darkened mind of the unsaved. Not true.
Consider how Kuyper connects the Reformed doctrine of depravity with the Reformed doctrine of common grace. In fact, these two doctrines demand each other. For Kuyper they are less a “spiritual antithesis” and more a “spiritual complement.”
“The Reformed confession has continually placed full emphasis on the deadly character of sin and has seriously combatted any weakening of the concept of sin. ‘Completely incapable of any good and prone to all evil’ was the formular in which the Heidelberg Catechism expressed this truth. And when we stand immovable in this dreadful truth, then it is quite natural that we find traces—in the paradise narrative, in all the rest of Scripture, in human life around us, and in our own human heart—of a divine working through which the swift and absolutely fatal effect of sin has been and is still being restrained in many ways, even where there is no saving grace involved at all. Or do we not find among the pagan nations and unbelievers in our own surroundings many phenomena that show a certain inclination toward good things and a certain indignation about all kinds of crime? True, not an inclination toward anything that has to do with salvation, but an inclination toward what is virtuous and harmonious? Are there not acts of maliciousness and dishonesty, and violations of justice, against which the public conscience, also among nonbelievers, rebels? And are there not many deeds of neighborly love and mercy that can be mentioned that have been performed by unbelievers, sometimes putting believers to shame? When Pharaoh’s daughter saved the infant Moses from the Nile, did she do evil or good? And is it therefore not clear that the absolute ruin of our nature by sin—a truth we wholeheartedly confess—is in many cases in conflict with reality? And do we then not see clearly how, in the face of such cases, we must do one of two things: either surrender our confession of the deadly character of sin or hold on to that confession with all our might, but then also confess along with it that there is a common grace at work that in many cases restrains the full, deadly effect of sin?” (300).
In the quote above, rather than remain generic, Kuyper moved to specifics—Pharoah’s daughter, the wisdom of the Egyptians. In Widom and Wonder, Kuyper was equally specific, this time highlighting, among others, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
“The names of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have always been esteemed among Christian thinkers. It is no exaggeration to insist that the thinking of Aristotle has been one of the most powerful instruments leading themselves to still deeper reflection. In modern times as well, no one can deny that in the disciplines of astronomy, botany, zoology, physics, and so on, a rich science is blossoming. Although being conducted almost exclusively by people who are stranger to the fear of the Lord, this science has nevertheless produced a treasury of knowledge that we as Christians admire and gratefully use” (52-53).
Kuyper continues in Common Grace with these words about common grace throughout human history.
“The history of our human race through all these many centuries is therefore proof that on the one hand the terrible law of sin did indeed rule, but on the other a law of grace broke that power of sin…. Let us be understood clearly: this does not apply exclusively to the elect. Common grace does not treat them in a special way. What we expound here applies to our human race as such….. Common grace has operated for ages in China and India without there being any church of Christ in those countries. We still enjoy the fruits that have come from common grace in Greece and Rome in the days when even the name of Christ’s church had never yet been mentioned…. God has let the wonder of common grace operate among all peoples and in all nations, even where this had no direct connection with the salvation of the elect” (300-302).
In every era in every nation, Kuyper witnesses to the biblical truth of God’s common grace at work in the capacities and contributions of non-Christians.
Every Square Inch
With Kuyper, all Reformed theologians, and most importantly, with the Bible, may we study common grace in light of the beautiful truth that:
“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”
Notes
[1]For example, Francine Tan, in her article in the Journal of Biblical Soul Care, Fall 2024, Vol 8 #2, “Common Grace in Debate,” suggested a major reworking and significant minimizing of the historic Reformed doctrine of common grace. Tan states, “Thus, I propose that biblical counselors ought to revisit how we define CG and make a few qualifications to the traditional Reformed view of CG. When CG is defined as God’s non-salvific yet kind posture towards all mankind, displayed in the delay of final judgment, the restraint of sin’s full impact on the earth, and the bestowal of temporal gifts for the providential preservation of the world, the doctrine distinctly remains an expression of God’s communicable attributes of kindness and goodness. CG should not be understood as the positive contributions made by unregenerate men through discoveries, insights, or ‘good deeds’” (83). This massive limiting of the Reformed doctrine of common grace is in opposition to Calvin (here and here), Bavinck (here and here), Kuyper (here and here), Van Til (here and here), Frame (here) and Powlison (here), to name just a few leading Reformed theologians and one leading Reformed biblical counselor.
