Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 1

by Abraham Kuyper

Publishers:

Lexham Press; Acton Institute

, 2015

God’s Gifts for a Fallen World

In Common Grace Abraham Kuyper presents to the church a vision for cultural engagement rooted in the humanity Christians share with the rest of the world.

Kuyper fills a gap in the development of Reformed teaching on divine grace, and he articulates a Reformed understanding of God's gifts that are common to all people after the fall into sin. This first volume contains Kuyper’s demonstration of the biblical basis for common grace and how it works.

Praise for Common Grace

Abraham Kuyper’s Common Grace is founded on a deep devotion to the notions of God’s sovereignty and our obligation to participate in the divine call to be obedient to the lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas of life. The release of this multi-volume series is timely because many Christians these days—Wesleyans, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Mennonites, and others beyond the boundaries of Reformed/Presbyterian life and thought—are looking for resources for equipping Christians to find alternatives to the various ‘world-flight’ spiritualities that have long afflicted the broader Christian community. This work gives us a much-needed opportunity to absorb Kuyper’s insights about God’s marvelous designs for human cultural life.

—Richard J. Mouw, professor of faith and public life, Fuller Theological Seminary

Abraham Kuyper was a profound theologian, an encyclopedic thinker, and a deeply spiritual man who believed that it is the believer’s task ‘to know God in all his works.’ In a day when secular science is seeking to establish hegemony over all knowing, and when postmodern art is threatening to bring an end to art, Kuyper’s solid, biblical insights can help to restore perspective and sanity to these two critical areas of human life.

—Chuck Colson, founder, Prison Fellowship and Colson Center for Christian Worldview

God’s redemption is as wide and high and deep as the expanse of his creation. This is the central message of Abraham Kuyper that has been heard anew by a generation of young evangelicals who have a new appreciation for the importance of Christian culture-making. This book is a wonderful way to meet Kuyper face to face and hear from him firsthand. I look forward to pointing friends and students to this wonderful anthology. It’s just what we need.

—James K. A. Smith, The Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview, Calvin College

The Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology

Lexham Press is pleased to announce the publication of a major series of new translations of Kuyper’s writings in public theology. Created in partnership with the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society and the Acton Institute, the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology will mark a historic moment in Kuyper studies, and we hope it will deepen and enrich the church’s interest and engagement in public theology.

 

Top Highlights

“The Reformed paradigm has suffered no damage greater than its deficient development of the doctrine of common grace.” (Page xxxiv)

“There is an antithesis, he taught, that runs through the entirety of human life and thought in our present world. Once we have been taken hold of by the salvation that can only come by God’s sovereign grace, our lives are meant to take a very different direction than the ways of fallen humanity. Salvation is meant to impact the totality of our lives: Our moral dealings, political perspectives, economic practices, and the ways in which we farm and create art and shape the patterns of our family lives. In all areas of human interaction we are to honor God’s revealed will for his creation.” (Pages xviii–xix)

“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!’ ’¹⁵ 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.” (Page xxviii)

“By contrast, after the flood it states the matter entirely differently: ‘the intention of man’s heart is evil’ [Gen 8:21]. Here we have a description not of human development during a particular period, but of the orientation of the heart of the sinner in general. Because sin takes refuge so deeply in the root of the human heart that from birth onward it poisons the soul—for that reason God will never again provide redemption by means of a flood. Rather, he will take an entirely different route for the salvation of his church.” (Page 26)

Contents

• Editors’ Introduction by Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill
• Volume Introduction by Richard J. Mouw
• Introduction
• The Starting Point of the Doctrine of Common Grace
• The Noahic Covenant Was Not Particular
• The Spiritual and Practical Significance of the Noahic Covenant
• The Blessings of the Noahic Covenant
• The Ordinances of the Noahic Covenant
• The Protection of Human Life
• The Institution of Captial Punishment
• Government and Capital Punishment
• Further Objections to Capital Punishment
• The Institution of Government Authority
• A New Dispensation
• From Noah Back to Paradise
• The Paradise Story as Historical Narrative
• The State of Righteousness
• The Original Life Span
• The Tree of Life
• Natural or Supernatural?
• The Crown of Creation
• Perfect Integrity
• Original Righteousness
• Conscience and Covenant of Works
• The Basis for Further Development
• The Language of Paradise
• The Probationary Command
• Being Like God
• Knowing as Making One’s Own Assessment
• “You Shall Surely Die”
• In That Day
• Forms of Grace
• Doom and Grace
• Placing Enmity
• Re-creation
• Depravity Restrained in the Heart

• Depravity Restrained in the Body
• Depravity Restrained in Nature
• From Paradise to the Flood (Part 1)
• From Paradise to the Flood (Part 2)
• The Flood: Judgment and Act of Grace
• After the Flood
• The Tower of Babel
• The Confusion of Language
• Abraham’s Calling Is Universalistic
• Abraham’s History
• Abraham and Melchizedek
• Isolation Merely an Interlude
• The Great Mystery
• No Oasis in the Wilderness
• Symbol and Type
• Israel for the Sake of the Nations
• Jehovah and the Nations
• The Messiah and Israel
• The Light in the Darkness
• The Baptist
• The Tiny Sparks in the Gentile World
• The Tiny Sparks Extinguished
• The Preference of the Gentiles
• The Continued Effect of Decay
• The Fixed Pattern of the Progression of Evil
• The Process of Sin
• The Final Judgment
• The Abiding Profit
• Fruit for Eternity
• The Coherence between This Life and the Future Life
• The Connection between This Life and Eternal Life
• The Congruence between the Life Here and the Life Hereafter
• Review

Product Details

• Title: Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 1
• Author: Abraham Kuyper
• Translators: Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas
• Volume Editors: Jordan J. Ballor & Stephen J. Grabill
• Series Editors: Melvin Flikkema & Jordan J. Ballor
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Publication Date: 2015
• Pages: 672
• Format: Logos Digital, Hardcover
• Trim Size: 7x10
• ISBN: 9781577996538

About Abraham Kuyper

Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was the Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905. He founded the Free University in Amsterdam and served as a professor of theology. At the invitation of B. B. Warfield, Kuyper traveled to the United States to deliver the Stone Lectures at Princeton and address Reformed congregations in Michigan and Iowa.

Kuyper studied at the University of Leiden, and received his doctorate there in 1863. He became a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church in 1863, and consistently called for the separation of church and state. He also led a secession from the Dutch Reformed Church and united several disparate Reformed churches in the Netherlands.

Kuyper also led an active political life. He served as a member of Parliament in the Netherlands beginning in 1874 and served as prime minister from 1901–1905.

Abraham Kuyper was instrumental in the development of Neocalvinism, and is remembered for his articulation of common grace and for popularizing the notion of a Reformed worldview. He has influenced such notable figures as Francis Schaeffer, Cornelius Van Til, Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Chuck Colson.

Some of Kuyper’s publications, which are available in Logos, include Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, The Antithesis between Symbolism and Revelation, and Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles.