Lectures on Calvinism

by Abraham Kuyper

But if you now proceed to the decree of God, what else does God’s fore-ordination mean than the certainty that the existence and course of all things, i.e., of the entire cosmos, instead of being a plaything of caprice and chance, obeys law and order, and that there exists a firm will which carries out its designs both in nature and in history?

do not for a moment propose to enter just now into a discussion about man’s free will. We have no time for it. But it is a fact that the more thorough development of science in our age has almost unanimously decided in favor of Calvinism with regard to the antithesis between the unity and stability of God’s decree, which Calvinism professes, and the superficiality and looseness, which the Arminians preferred.

But of course, wherever two elements appear, as in this case the sinner and the saint, the temporal and the eternal, the terrestrial and the heavenly life, there is always danger of losing sight of their interconnection and of falsifying both by error or onesidedness. Christendom, it must be confessed, did not escape this error. A

not un-frequently you entertain the desire that certain believers might have more of this attractiveness, and who among us has not himself been put to the blush occasionally by being confronted with what is called the “virtues of the heathen” ?

not only the church, but also the world belongs to God and in both has to be investigated the masterpiece of the supreme Architect and Artificer.

This does not mean that science is entirely untrammeled in the use of its liberty and need obey no laws. On the contrary, a fish lying on dry land is perfectly free, viz., to die and to perish, while a fish, which really shall be free to live and to thrive must be entirely surrounded by water and guided by its fins. In the same manner every science has to keep up the closest connection with its subject, and strictly to obey the claims of its proper method; and only when strictly bound by this double tie, can science move freely on.

Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.

Every science presupposes faith in self, in our self-consciousness ; presupposes faith in the accurate working of our senses; presupposes faith in the correctness of the laws of thought; presupposes faith in something universal hidden behind the special phenomena; presupposes faith in life; and especially presupposes faith in the principles, from which we proceed; which signifies that all these indispensable axioms, needed in a productive scientific investigation, do not come to us by proof, but are established in our judgment by our inner conception and given with our self-consciousness.

and that they did not understand the primordial demand of science, which of course claims unity of conception.

On the contrary, its nobler effort must be to release religion and divine worship more and more from its sensual form and to encourage its vigorous spirituality.

When therefore the first education of Northern Europe was completed. and the church still persisted in swaying her absolute sceptre across the entire domain of life, four great movements were started from as many different sides, viz., the Renaissance in the domain of art, the Republicanism of Italy in politics, Humanism in science, and centrally, in Religion, the Reformation. No

The world after the fall is no lost planet, only destined now to afford the Church a place in which to continue her combats; and humanity is no aimless mass of people which only serves the purpose of giving birth to the elect. On the contrary, the world now, as well as in the beginning, is the theater for the mighty works of God, and humanity remains a creation of His hand, which, apart from salvation, completes under this present dispensation, here on earth, a mighty process, and in its historical development is to glorify the name of Almighty God. To this end He has ordained for this humanity all sorts of life-utterances, and among these, art occupies a quite independent place.

It raised our Christian religion to its highest spiritual splendor

created a church order,

became the preformation of state c...

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propagated a political scheme, which gave birth to constit...

fostered agriculture and industry, commerce ...

put a thorough Christian stamp upon home-life...

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The modern philosophy, which gains the day, considers itself in ever-increasing measure as having outgrown Christianity.

And out of this modernized private life there emerges a type of social and political life characterized by a decadence of parliamentarism, by an ever stronger desire for a dictator, by a sharp conflict between pauperism and capitalism, whilst heavy armaments on land and on sea, even at the price of financial ruin, become the ideal of these powerful states whose craving for territorial expansion threatens the very existence of the weaker nations. Gradually the conflict between the strong and the weak has grown to be the controlling feature of life, arising from Darwinism itself, whose central idea of a struggle for life has for its mainspring this very antithesis.

A theology which virtually destroys the authority of the Holy Scriptures as a sacred book; which sees in sin nothing but a lack of development ; recognizes Christ for no more than a religious genius of central significance; views redemption as a mere reversal of our subjective mode of thinking; and indulges in a mysticism dualistically opposed to the world of the intellect,—such a theology is like a dam giving way before the first assault of the inrushing tide. It is a theology without hold upon the masses, a quasi-religion utterly powerless to restore our sadly tottering moral life to even a temporary footing.

Mysticism is sweet, and Christian works are precious, but the seed of the Church, both at the birth of Christianity and in the age of the Reformation, has been the blood of martyrs; and our sainted martyrs shed their blood not for mysticism and not for philanthropic projects, but for the sake of convictions such as concerned the acceptance of truth and the rejection of error.

Not ecclesiastically, confined to a narrow circle, but as a phenomenon of universal significance, have I commended to you the Calvinism of history.

Now, when we compare these two systems of Selection and Election, does not history show that the doctrine of Election has century upon century, restored peace and reconciliation to the hearts of the believing sufferer ; and that all Christians hold election as we do, in honor, both in creation and in providence; and that Calvinism deviates from the other Christian confessions in this respect only, that, seeking unity and placing the glory of God above all things, it dares to extend the mystery of Election to spiritual life, and to the hope for the life to come?