A Word from Bob
For the past two years, I have been examining first-hand, primary resources written by Reformed theologians on the topic of common grace. For a blog post that collates all of that research, see: Reformed Theologians on Common Grace.
Today’s post is the first of what will likely be a several-part mini-series on Abraham Kuyper and common grace. Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch Christian, pastor, professor, theologian, and even Prime Minister.
Unless otherwise noted, the quotes in today’s post are from Kuyper’s work, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art.
Introducing Common Grace
In Reformed Christian theology, unregenerate persons are totally depraved and all of their thinking is seen as under the noetic (mind) impact of sin and fallenness.
Yet, also in Reformed thinking, the unregenerate/unsaved person can make valid contributions to society, culture, the arts, research, science, and more.
How can these two truths be held together at one time?
The Reformed doctrine of common grace explains how we can hold to both truths. It also explains how to engage with and evaluate common grace resources using the lens/spectacles of God’s all-sufficient Word.
Defining Common Grace
Abraham Kuyper defined common grace as:
“That act of God by which negatively He curbs the operations of Satan, death, and sin, and by which positively He creates an intermediate state for this cosmos, as well as for our human race, which is and continues to be deeply and radically sinful, but in which sin cannot work out its end” (see Principles of Sacred Theology, 279).
Kuyper added:
“God is glorified in the total development toward which human life and power over nature gradually march on under the guardianship of ‘common grace.’ It is His created order, His work, that unfold here. It was He who seeded the field of humanity with all these powers. Without a ‘Common Grace’ the seed which lay hidden in that field would never have come up and blossomed. Thanks to ‘Common Grace,’ it germinated, burgeoned, shot up high and will one day be in full flower, to reward not man but the heavenly Farmer. . . . A finished world will glorify God as builder and supreme Craftsman. What paradise was in bud will appear in full bloom.”
In Wisdom and Wonder, Kuyper further develops the doctrine of common grace.
“Common grace is God’s restraint of the full effect of sin after the Fall, preservation and maintenance of the created order, and distribution of talents to human beings. As a result of this merciful activity of God through the Holy Spirit’s work in creation, it remains possible for humans to obey God’s first commandment for stewardly dominion over the creation (see Gen. 1:28)” (26).
Common Grace and Creation
Kuyper derived the doctrine of common grace from creation.
“There can be nothing in the universe that fails to express, to incarnate, the revelation of the thought of God” (39).
“The whole creation is nothing but the visible curtain behind which radiates the exalted working of this divine thinking” (39).
“So we can and must confess unconditionally that all of creation in its origin, existence, and progress constitutes one rich, integrated revelation of what God in eternity thought and established in his decree” (40).
Kuyper then asks the question that we all must ask:
“Now the only question is whether we human beings are gifted with a capacity to reflect that thinking of God” (40).
Common Grace and the Imago Dei
In part, Kuyper answers that question by tracing the doctrine of common grace to God having created us in His image—the imago Dei.
“Every human being is created according to the image of God. On this basis the Reformed churches confess that the original man in his nature, that is, by virtue of his creation, not through supernatural grace but according to the creation order, had received holiness, righteousness, and wisdom. Here, then attention is drawn to a capacity bestowed upon human beings enabling them to pry loose from its shell, as it were, the thought of God that lies embedded and embodied in the creation, and to grasp it in such a way that from creation they could reflect the thought which God has embodied in that creation when he created it. This capacity of human nature was not added as something extra, but belongs to the foundation of human nature itself” (41).
“In the creation, God has revealed, embedded, and embodied a rich fullness of his thoughts. And, God created in human beings, as his image-bearers, the capacity to understand, to grasp, to reflect, and to arrange within a totality these thoughts expressed in the creation” (41-42).
Common Grace and Science
Recall the subtitle of Kuyper’s book Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art. “For Kuyper, science was not limited to ‘hard’ sciences like chemistry and biology but also extended to the humanities and social sciences” (26).
“Science belongs to the creation. Just think: if our human life had developed in its paradise situation, apart from sin, then science would have existed there just as it exists now, even though its development would obviously have been entirely different” (35).
“Science arises from creation, and as such has received from the Creator a calling independent of the state and the church” (36).
“The moment human beings employ this capacity for reflecting the thoughts of God from creation, science arises” (42).
“Science arises from the fruit of the thinking, imagining, and reflecting of successive generations in the course of centuries, and by means of the cooperation of everyone” (43).
“Science is not the personally acquired possession of each person, but gradually increased in significance and stability only as the fruit of the work of many people, among many nations, in the course of centuries” (45).
Science, Sin, and Common Grace
Track what Kuyper has said so far.
- God created a universe that reveals the Creator.
- God created image bearers who can study that natural revelation.
- But how do sin and common grace impact our study of the cosmos?
“Sin is what lures people to place science outside of a relationship with God, thereby stealing science from God, and ultimately turning science against God” (51).
So, what does that mean for science practiced by non-Christians?
“Apart from common grace, the decline of science would have become absolute without that illumination by the Holy Spirit” (52).
“Anyone who ignores common grace can come to no other conclusion than that all science done outside the arena of the holy, lives off appearance and delusion, and necessarily results in misleading anyone listening to its voice. Yet the outcome shows that this is not the case. Among the Greeks, who were completely deprived of the light of Scripture, a science arose that continues to amaze us with the many beautiful and true things it offers. 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).
“We are really confronting a science that has arisen from the world, a science that lies very definitely under the dominion of sin and that nevertheless on the other hand, may boast of results from which sin’s darkening is virtually absent. We can explain this only by saying that although sin does indeed spread its corruption, nevertheless common grace has intervened in order to temper and restrain this operation of sin” (53).
“Also as far as science is concerned, the situation we find is explicable only if we give both of these their due, on the one hand, the darkening of our understanding by sin, and on the other hand, God’s common grace that has placed a limitation on this darkening. That we very definitely may and must speak in this regard of God’s activity is immediately evident from the undeniable fact that in people like Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Darwin, stars of the first order have shined, geniuses of the highest caliber, people who expressed very profound ideas, even though they were not professing Christians. They did not have this genius from themselves, but received their talent from God who created them and equipped them for their intellectual labor” (53-54).
Note, that these previous quotes include not only the “hard sciences,” but also the “soft sciences” of philosophy (including the philosophical psychology of Plato and Aristotle).
Kuyper continues, asking whether the noetic effect of sin means that non-Christians can no longer reason.
“In order to see this, we must not suffice with the general slogan, ‘darkening by sin,’ but must account for how this darkening works. Has it resulted in our inability any longer to think logically? Has sin induced in us an inability to perceive what exists and occurs around us? Does sin place a blindfold over our eyes so that we no longer see or observe? Absolutely not…. We have not ceased on account of sin to be rational creatures” (54).
Still, sin’s darkening has its impact.
“Sin’s darkening lies in this, that we lost the gift of grasping the true context, the proper coherence, the systematic integration of all things. Now we view everything only externally, not in its core and essence, each thing individually but not in their mutual connection and in their origin from God. That connection, that coherence of things in their original connection with God, can be sense only in our spirit” (55).
However, even here, common grace enters to allow fallen humanity to gain some semblance of coherent insight.
“Wisdom is useful for the moment or for practical living, but it does not construct knowledge of the whole. For that reason, common grace supplies a second element. Once bereft of immediate insight into the essence of things, the pathway was opened so that through the indefatigable labor of further research, observation, analysis, imagination, and reflection, a person can acquire at least some knowledge of the external side of things and can learn to understand the appearance of things together, even if not the law of their motion” (61).
Sin Is a Cracked Mirror
Kuyper used the imagery of a cracked mirror to suggest how even fallen people can at least in part reflect creational truths.
“It is true that a mirror without a crack is preferable. Nevertheless a cracked mirror can assist if necessary. Therefore, we can postulate that the mirror of our consciousness became cracked by sin, and the reflection of the world on that cracked surface would provide us with a knowledge of the world that is not altogether incorrect” (63).
Then he provided specific examples of “cracked science.”
“It is undeniable that throughout the ages, common grace has been operative among numerous more developed peoples, in order to advance to a high degree the spiritual development in our human race by creating intellectual geniuses and bestowing brilliant talents” (82). [Note: Kuyper’s view of the nations and of race are often opposed to Christian thinking on such matters today.]
“Medical science may have gone awry in many ways, but to it still belongs the honor that in God’s hands it has been the instrument for relieving much suffering, for curbing many diseases, and for disarming much latent evil before its outbreak. Natural science has armed us in extraordinary ways against the destructive power of nature, and has subjected that nature to our dominion. The science of the humanities has affected our human thinking in a way that is wonderfully illuminating and influential” (97).
Now, does Kuyper’s positive understanding of unbelieving science mean that he has surrendered the idea of the noetic effect of sin? Certainly not. The next example is as relevant today as it was in Kuyper’s day:
“No further argument is required to see that the discipline of medicine yields profound danger if it proceeds in the direction that increasingly ignores the soul, the spiritual dimensions of people, and views a person as nothing more than a body whose expressions of vitality come forth from matter” (99).
In Summary: The Antithesis at the Intersection of Faith and Unbelief
In his 1898 Stone Lectures, Kuyper traced the sharp antithesis between faith and unbelief, yet he also gushed in eloquent praise for the achievement of unbelievers who hated his God:
“Sin places before us a riddle, which in itself is insoluble. If you view sin as a deadly poison, as enmity against God, as leading to everlasting condemnation, and if you represent a sinner as being “wholly incapable of doing any good, and prone to all evil,” and on this account salvable only if God by regeneration changes his heart, then it seems as if of necessity all unbelievers and unregenerate persons ought to be wicked and repulsive men. But this is far from being our experience in actual life. On the contrary the unbelieving world excels in many things. Precious treasures have come down to us from the old heathen civilization. In Plato you find pages which you devour. Cicero fascinates you and bears you along by his noble tone and stirs up in you holy sentiments. And if you consider . . . that which you derive from the studies and literary productions of professed infidels, how much there is which attracts you, with which you sympathize and which you admire. It is not exclusively the spark of genius or the splendor of talent, which excites your pleasure in the words and actions of unbelievers, but it is often their beauty of character, their zeal, their devotion, their love, their candor, their faithfulness and their sense of honesty. Yea . . . not unfrequently you entertain the desire that certain believers might have more of this attractiveness. . . .”
