Calvinism: Six Stone Lectures

by Abraham Kuyper

And continued historical investigation proves with increasing certainty that all these new Calvinistic forms for our religious life were the logical product of its own fundamental thought and the embodiment of one and the same principle.

Ever since it entered its “mystical” period, Modernism also, both in Europe and in America, has acknowledged the necessity of carving out a new form for the religious life of our time. Hardly a century after the once glittering tinsel of Rationalism, now that Materialism is sounding its retreat in the ranks of science, a kind of hollow piety is again exercising its enticing charms, and every day it is becoming more fashionable to take a plunge into the warm stream of mysticism.

With an almost sensual delight this modern mysticism quaffs its intoxicating draught from the nectar-cup of some intangible infinite.

Now, in contraposition to this, look at the giant spirit of Calvin, who, in the sixteenth century, with one master-stroke, placed before the gaze of the astonished world an entire religious edifice, erected in the purest Scriptural style. So rapidly was the whole building completed that most of the spectators forgot to pay attention to the wonderful structure of the foundations.

In all that the religious modern thought has, I will not say created, as with a master hand, but heaped together, like an unsuccessful amateur—not one nation, not one family, hardly one solitary soul has (to use Augustine’s words), ever found the requiescat for his “broken heart,” while the Reformer of Geneva, by his mighty spiritual energy, unto five nations at once, both then, and after the lapse of three centuries, has afforded guidance in life, the uplifting of the heart unto the Father of Spirits, and holy peace, forever.

First, then, we must consider Religion as such. Here four mutually dependent fundamental questions arise: (1) Does Religion exist for the sake of God, or for Man? (2) Must it operate directly or mediately? (3) Can it remain partial in its operations or has it to embrace the whole of our personal being and existence? and, (4) Can it bear a normal, or must it reveal an abnormal, i.e., a soteriological character?

(1) Man’s religion ought to be not egotistical, and for man, but ideal, for the sake of God.

(2) It has to operate not mediately, by human interposition, but dire...

(3) It may not remain partial, as running alongside of life, but must lay hold u...

(4) Its character should be soteriological, i.e., it should spring, not from our fallen nature, but from the new man, restored by p...

But whatever may be the various stages in the progress of this egoistic religion, it never overcomes its subjective character, remaining always a religion for the sake of man.

in all these different forms it is and remains a religion fostered for man’s sake, aiming at his safety, his liberty, his elevation, and partly also at his triumph over death.

The consequence of this is that all such religion thrives in time of famine and pestilence, it flourishes among the poor and oppressed, and it expands among the humble and the feeble; but it pines away in the days of prosperity, it fails to attract the well-to-do, it is abandoned by those who are more highly cultured.

This is the fatal end of egoistic religion—it becomes superfluous and disappears as soon as the egoistic interests are satisfied.

Of course, religion, as such, produces also a blessing for man, but it does not exist for the sake of man. It is not God who exists for the sake of His creation—the creation exists for the sake of God. For, as the Scripture says. He has created all things for Himself.

For this reason God even impressed a religious expression on the whole of unconscious nature—on plants, on animals and also on children. “The whole earth is full of His glory” (Ps. 72:19; Isa. 6:3). “How excellent is Thy Name, God, in all the earth” (Ps. 8:1). “The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast ordained praise” (Ps. 8:2; Matt. 21:16). Frost and hail, snow and vapor, the abyss and the hurricane—everything praises God. But just as the entire creation reaches its culminating point in man, so also religion finds its clear expression only in man who is made in the image of God, and this not because man seeks it, but because God Himself implanted in man’s nature the real essential religious expression, by means of the “seed of religion” (semen religionis), as Calvin defines it, sown in our human heart.

A sound of need interrupts the pure harmony of this divine melody, but only in consequence of sin.

Just as the anthem of the Seraphim around the throne is one uninterrupted cry of “Holy, Holy, Holy!,” so also the religion of man upon this earth should consist in one echoing of God’s glory, as our Creator and Inspirer.

The starting-point of every motive in religion is God and not Man. Man is the instrument and means, God alone is here the goal, the point of departure and the point of arrival, the fountain, from which the waters flow, and at the same time, the ocean into which they finally return. To be irreligious is to forsake the highest aim of our existence, and on the other hand to covet no other existence than for the sake of God, to long for nothing but for the will of God, and to be wholly absorbed in the glory of the name of the Lord, such is the pith and kernel of all true religion. “Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy Will be done,” is the threefold petition, which gives utterance to all true religion. Our watchword must be, “Seek first the kingdom of God,”

Nor has the philosophy of religion in our own century, in its most daring flights, ever attained a higher point of view nor a more ideal conception.

Now we find that in all non-Christian religions, without any exception, human intercessors are deemed necessary, and in the domain of Christianity itself the intercessor intruded again upon the scene, in the Blessed Virgin, in the host of angels, in the saints and martyrs, and in the priestly hierarchy of the clergy; and although Luther took the field against all priestly mediation, yet the church which is called by his name, renewed by its title of “ecclesia docens” the office of mediator and steward of mysteries.

Religion, as he conceived it, must “nullis mediis interpositis,” i.e., without any creaturely intercession, realize the direct communion between God and the human heart. Not because of any hatred against priests, as such, not because of any undervaluing of the martyrs, nor underestimating the significance of angels, but solely because Calvin felt bound to vindicate the essence of religion and the glory of God in that essence, and absolutely devoid of all yielding or wavering, he waged war, with holy indignation, against everything that interposed itself between the soul and God. Of course he clearly perceived that in order to be fitted for the true religion, fallen man needs a Mediator, but such a mediator could not be found in any fellow-man. Only the God-man—only God Himself could be such a mediator. And this mediatorship could be confirmed not by us, but only from the side of God, by the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in the heart of the regenerated.

He must make us religious, He must give us the religious disposition, nothing being left to us but the power to give form and expression to the deep religious sentiment which He, Himself, stirred in the depth of our heart. There we see the mistake of those who regarded Calvin as only an Augustinus redivivus.

Notwithstanding his sublime confession of God’s holy grace, Augustine remained the Bishop. He kept his intermediate position between the Triune God and the layman. And although prominent among the most pious men of his time, he had so little insight into the real claims of thorough-going religion on behalf of laymen that in his dogmatics he lauds the church as the mystical Purveyor, into whose bosom God caused all grace to flow and from whose treasure all men had to accept it.

Only he, therefore, who superficially confines his attention to predestination can confuse Au...

As long as it remains the chief purpose of religion to help man, and as long as man is understood to deserve grace by his devotion, it is perfectly natural that the man of inferior piety should invoke the mediation of the holier man.

If, on the contrary, the demand of religion is that every human heart must give glory to God, no man can appear before God on behalf of another. Then every single human being must appear personally, for himself, and religion achieves its aim only in the general priesthood of believers.

And only in churches which take their stand in Calvinism, do we find that spiritual independence which enables the believer to oppose, if need be, and for God’s sake, even the most powerful office-bearer in his church.

Only he who personally stands before God on his own account, and enjoys an uninterrupted communion with God, can properly display the glorious wings of liberty.

Only where all priestly intervention disappears, where God’s sovereign election from all eternity binds the inward soul directly to God Himself, and where the ray of divine light enters straightway into the depth of our heart—only there does religion, in its most absolute sense, gain its ideal realization.

This leads me, naturally, to the third religious question: Is religion partial, or is it all-subduing, and comprehensive—universal in the strict sense of the word?

It must seek to express itself either by means of the mystical feelings, or else by means of the practical will. Mystical and ethical inclinations are hailed with enthusiasm, in the domain of religion, but in that same domain the intellect, as leading to metaphysical hallucinations, must be muzzled. Metaphysics and Dogmatics are increasingly tabooed, and Agnosticism is ever more loudly acclaimed as the solution of the great enigma.

And although that same Christ whom these very scholars honor as a religious genius has taught us most emphatically: “Thou shalt love God, not only with all thy heart and with all thy strength, but also with all thy mind,” yet they, on the contrary, venture to dismiss our mind, or intellect, as unfit for use, in this holy domain, and as not fulfilling the requirements of a religious organ.

Religion is excluded from science, and its authority from the domain of public life; henceforth the inner chamber, the cell for prayer, and the secrecy of the heart should be its exclusive dwelling place. By his du sollst, Kant limited the sphere of religion to the ethical life. The mystics of our own times banish religion to the retreats of sentiment.

This brings us naturally to the third characteristic note of this partial view of religion—religion as pertaining not to all, but only to the group of pious people among our generation.

From a quite different standpoint, Rome gradually and increasingly came to favor the same partial views. She knew religion only as it existed in her own church, and considered the influence of religion to be confined to that portion of life which she had consecrated.

So religion was made partial, by carrying it from ordinary days to days of festival, from days of prosperity to times of danger and sickness, and from the fullness of life to the time of approaching death.

Now this whole view of the matter is squarely antagonized by Calvinism, which vindicates for religion its full universal character, and its complete universal application. If everything that is, exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to God. The sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of Nature around us, but, above all, man himself, who, priestlike, must consecrate to God the whole of creation, and all life thriving in it.

A religion confined to feeling or will is therefore unthinkable to the Calvinist. The sacred anointing of the priest of creation must reach down to his beard and to the hem of his garment. His whole being, including all his abilities and powers, must be pervaded by the sensus divinitatis, and how then could he exclude his rational consciousness—the λόγος (logos) which is in him—the light of thought which comes from God Himself to irradiate him? To possess his God for the underground world of his feelings, and in the outworks of the exertion of his will, but not in his inner self, in the very center of his consciousness, and his thought; to have fixed starting-points for the study of nature and axiomatic strongholds for practical life, but to have no fixed support in his thoughts about the Creator Himself—all of this was, for the Calvinist, the very denying of the Eternal Logos.

Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science, he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, he has strictly to obey his God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.

One supreme calling must impress the stamp of one-ness upon all human life, because one God upholds and preserves it, just as He created it all.

To the de profundis with which, thirty centuries ago, the soul of David cried unto God, the troubled soul of every child of God in the sixteenth century still sounded a response with undiminished power.

the Calvinist found the roots of the necessity first of Regeneration, for real existence, and secondly, the necessity of Revelation, for clear consciousness.

and the opposition which is manifest nowadays, against the authority of the Holy Scriptures is based on nothing else than the false supposition that, our condition being still normal, our religion need not be soteriological.

When there are no mists to hide the majesty of the divine light from our eyes, what need is there then for a lamp unto the feet, or a light upon the path?

For the Calvinist, therefore, the necessity of the Holy Scriptures does not rest in ratiocination, but on the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit, on the testimonium spiritus Sancti.

All of this takes place in a manner, which is not magical, nor unfathomably mystical, but clear, and easy to be understood. God regenerates us—that is to say he rekindles in our heart the lamp sin had blown out.

But now as he looks upward, through the prism of the Scriptures, he rediscovers his Father and his God. For this reason he puts no shackles on science. If a man wants to criticize, let him criticize.

And this assistant light coming from God Himself, but handed to us by human agency, beams upon us in His holy Word.

In God’s creation, therefore, man stands as the prophet, priest and king, and although sin has disturbed these high designs, yet God pushes them onward.